World of Warcraft helps capture criminal!

[rageaholic]

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/p...-crook/1383804

WoW (pun intended)

[PepperElf]

woot

i guess you can say the police pwned him

[the_std]

One Google Earth search later, and Canadian authorities had apprehended Hightower in Ottowa, Ontario.

Wouldn't it behoove a newspaper to spell the name of the freaking capital city of CANADA properly? That's like saying Woshington!

Ugh.

[Anthony K. S.]

This news story has caused quite a stir on the message boards at Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft website.

Many WoW players, including myself, have applauded Blizzard's actions in helping the police to apprehend a drug dealer.


However . . . There are also a fair number of WoW players who have expressed disappointment, concern, or anger over Blizzard's willingness to give out the personal information of their players.

Some of them have gone on wild rants about how it violates the privacy of their players, and how we will soon see Blizzard giving out information to debt collectors, telemarketers, and anybody else who asks for them.

All of which completely ignores the facts that :

(1) Blizzard was sent a subpoena for the information,

(2) Blizzard's Terms of Service, which all World of Warcraft players have to agree to in order to play the game, specifically state that Blizzard has the right to disclose players' personal information with or without notice to the players, under circumstances including a request from law-enforcement officials,

(3) There is a huge difference between giving information on a suspected drug dealer to the police and giving out information on a player to a debt collection company, a telemarketer, or just somebody who randomly calls up Blizzard on the phone and asks for such information.


And it doesn't stop there.

One person posted a thread on the WoW message forums condemning Blizzard for not standing up for their customers.

Seriously.

This guy claimed that since this Alfred Hightower was a "paying customer," Blizzard should have protected him from the police, or at the very least, they shouldn't have helped the police capture him.

Absolutely unreal. Apparently, if one of your customers commits a crime, the fact that he's your customer means you now have an obligation to ignore subpoenas and even break the law yourself to protect him from being captured by the authorities.

One person who responded to that thread said, "So if I was running a lemonade stand and a guy bought some, and then turned around and slit the throat of the next guy in line, I should do nothing? I should try to protect him from the police, because he's a customer?"

(Another person responded to that by saying, jokingly, "Well, if I was running a lemonade stand and a guy did that, I'd probably say to him, 'Want some more lemonade? Free, all you want!'")

<Sigh> Every time you think that a customer's entitlement complex can't possibly get any worse . . .

[El Pollo Guerrera]

So, now the real question is...

What will be the theme song of the new series coming this fall, "CSI: Azeroth"?

1) Magic Bus

2) I Can See For Miles

3) Pinball Wizard

[dalesys]

...What will be the theme song of the new series coming this fall, "CSI: Azeroth"?...

Who will be the star?

[rageaholic]

LOL I don't watch CSI, but I remember an episode of numb3rs dealing with people getting killed in some online game.

[AdminAssistant]

Online gaming has featured prominently in a number of forensic-esque TV shows. An early episode of NCIS was about an MMORPG, Second Life was used in an episode of CSI: NY, and I seem to remember a similar type game used in CSI: Miami.