Red Shirt Guy
In 2010, an inconspicuous WoW fan wearing a red shirt made history at BlizzCon. His name: Ian Bates. Many now know him better as the “Red Shirt Guy”. His superpower: To stump Blizzard’s story managers with targeted lore questions.
Right at his first BlizzCon appearance, Bates pointed out an error in the Cataclysm beta, as Kurdran Wildhammer mistakenly took the role of the representative instead of Falstad Wildhammer. The developers corrected this and positioned a new NPC named “Wildhammer Fact Checker” next to Falstad. Of course, he also wears a red shirt.
Colleague Benedict was also live at BlizzCon; here’s his report:
It did not end with just one appearance. The following year, Bates stood in front of the stage again to ask a question. Chris Metzen himself left his seat, embraced the lore enthusiast, and inquired about his well-being. More BlizzCon visits followed in the years 2012 to 2019.
Since 2013, Bates has been one of the authors of the website BlizzPlanet.com. He also has his own blog. In 2022, he claimed to have even applied to Blizzard. However, it seems that nothing came of it.
Rextroy
MeinMMO has reported not only on Doubleagent in recent years. A certain Rextroy has also made it into numerous news articles. The WoW player is a phenomenon as well. No one else is as good at leveraging existing means to manipulate the systems, rules, and mechanics of WoW, thereby pushing the limits of the possible in Azeroth.
Here are some examples:
- YouTuber kills a group of Horde players in less than a second – with a frog
- With this trick, you can kill enemies while remaining invisible
- This naked player kills you without dismounting from his mount
- WoW player causes 115 million damage, kills raid boss in one second
And that is just the tip of the iceberg of remarkable actions that Rextroy has orchestrated over the years in Azeroth. Often enough, his experiments drew the attention of Blizzard developers to unintended exploit possibilities, which could later be removed.
However, Rextroy’s last video on his YouTube channel was released over eleven months ago. On Reddit, a community member explains that there was likely brief contact with the well-known WoW player and that he is currently focusing on his studies.
Mionee/Mionelol
Rextroy was not the first WoW player to enthusiastically challenge current raid bosses solo or to brave high-level Mythic Plus dungeons. Before him, Mionee, or Mionelol, as a death knight, hunter, or demon hunter, made the instances of Azeroth unsafe to test what is possible and what is not – starting from Vanilla WoW with World-First successes from Wrath of the Lich King.
In July 2017, for example, Mionee mastered the Dungeon of the Watchers on Mythic+ 17 and the Court of Stars on Mythic+ 19. When the Night Hold was only a few months old, even the Chronomatic Anomaly was defeated on Heroic. Other victims of the player included Atramedes and the Lich King (during Cataclysm), Elerethe Renferal, Cenarius, Guld’dan, Helya, and Archimonde.
In August 2018, Mionee announced his departure from World of Warcraft, and the corresponding X-account was deleted. In the end, the player still gave a big interview on Icy Veins to talk about the biggest challenges and leaving WoW.
