Today I read about the slime incident, the assassination of Richard Garriot and the Crimson Dragon heist. Things like this are both the reason why there should be more MMOs like Ultima Online and the reason why there will never be another.
Hehe. these stories remind me of one of my own. Granted, it wan't nearly as big as this, but I like to think I had something to do with the outcome.
I was playing WoW. It was sunset in Perenolde, and my guild was assembling to run Karazhan. While waiting for them to gather from the far corners of the world, I decided to kill some of the local ghosts. For a few minutes, all was normal. Suddenly, I realized my heath had dropped dangerously low. There was a ghost, running at breakneck speed toward me. But I was prepared. Like a boss, I feigned death. By this time the ghost had triggered my snake trap. While the ghost reset, the snakes did not. They were restless. They needed
blood. Without their designated target to vent their frustrations, they turned to anyone else who may be around them. Some paladin nearby was viciously attacked by my renegade snakes! I was flagged pvp because of a scuffle with some alliance punks a few minutes earlier, and this paladin became flagged as well. Not missing a beat, I pounced and pwned that fool. Smelling blood in the water, I naturally repeated it, with mixed results. Not everyone got flagged like the paladin. It appeared that they neded some sort of damage return active to trigger pvp automatically. It was fun nonetheless. I would sometimes get people to flag from their damage return, while others would attack the snakes outright. Though there were many alliance at the site, a great many horde were there as well, which I guess was preventing them from mercilessly slaughtering me. Then a rather large group of alliance came out of the instance. Clearly outnumbered, I decided now would be a good time to haul ass. One of the paladins gave chase, but never caught up.
The next patch, the snake trap problem was fixed. I never faced any charges.