How I once called myself Voldemort in an MMO and gained many followers and enemies

Watch out, Harry Potter! In his gamer youth, MeinMMO author Michael posed as the most powerful and darkest wizard and turned the MMO Habbo Hotel upside down. 

Some players might describe Habbo Hotel as a strange MMO where ICQ chatting meets Pokémon graphics. I, on the other hand, perceive it as an incredibly funny original version of today’s roleplays. A good example of this is my time as Voldemort, which was somewhere between my career with the Mafia and my job as a company CEO.

You must understand one thing about Habbo Hotel: it is free, and nobody has to spend money to have fun. However, anyone who wants to climb the ranks in the game’s society, have power and influence, and hang out at every important party needs in-game objects and fluff. For that, one has to reach into their pockets. 

So, convinced free players like me had nothing else to do but hang out somewhere or work their way up with small jobs in one of the many genre worlds. And in the many Hogwarts, you are just a student and need to go to class, which I wasn’t interested in. Instead, I created a Lord Voldemort character to troll people a bit. 

What was supposed to be a joke escalated immediately

My dark career ended quite quickly: I walked through the entrance hall of a random Hogwarts and was discovered by two supervisors who immediately threw me out. It was just meant to be fun, so that was enough for me. However, a few players from the entrance hall sent me friend requests and wanted to know what the dark Lord would plan next.

Apparently, they had only been waiting for a leader like me. “Not much,” I replied, since I owned neither money nor buildings. One of my followers couldn’t let that stand and promptly offered me his room, complete with stylish wizard furniture. And I went for it, so I organized a meeting with my ten followers and showcased the dark Lord.

“I am disappointed in you. Hogwarts is completely intact and no one fears the Death Eaters,” I typed in all capital letters in the chat to yell at them. “Sorry, Master,” they replied meekly in chorus. I won’t lie; it was pretty cool. I established a dress code for us, sent people to spy, and explained to them that we needed to attack the Hogwarts from which I had originally been thrown out.

The revenge is mine!

Funny enough, this Hogwarts had also long been waiting for a serious threat. I didn’t even have an idea of how we should break in, but already the headmistress wanted to talk to me in her luxurious office. What would she have to do to prevent the attack? I had no idea and suggested that dark magic should be treated more broadly in the curriculum. She agreed to that.

However, that didn’t happen: No sooner had I left the office than a few Slytherins approached me and pledged their loyalty. Moreover, they offered to sneak my crew in through a back door in their common room. A good idea that I wouldn’t have come up with myself. In Habbo Hotel, it is impossible to break into rooms if you are not the owner of the rooms or do not have permissions transferred for those rooms.

With about fifteen Death Eaters, I entered the common room and sent my people to the other wings to cause chaos. Just like in the movie! However, since Habbo Hotel is a peaceful game, you have to roleplay and improvise a bit when it comes to violence. Spells, for example, are typed in through the chat and hopefully not quickly countered by a counterspell. Destruction can only be caused by people with permission – my loyal Slytherins, for example – throwing furniture around, which they did. Oh, cleaning it up would take so long! I let some epic battle soundtrack play in the background.

The strange end of my reign

Even though we had imagined the attack quite well, it did not proceed well coordinated. My people were a bunch that was hardly controllable, playing pranks, suddenly having private conversations with friends, or even switching sides in the middle and thus being severely punished by us. Despite heavy losses, we were able to destroy a few rooms and take out a few teachers – and we also caught a few Harrys.

In the last duel, I faced the headmistress and a huge crowd of students, against whom, of course, I quickly drew the short straw and capitulated. Many players were expelled from the school, and I was captured. But there was a silver lining: I got to see the entire interior that many students didn’t get to see during their entire school time. Really not bad and really not cheap.

So, what did they want to do with me? I had caused a huge chaos, but on the other hand, it was also extremely funny. From the founding of my clan to the attack to this tribunal held in front of all the teachers specifically for me – I had the most fun in Habbo ever. When reading the truly harsh sentence (sixfold execution!), the headmistress suddenly decided to spin the game in a completely different direction. “We cannot destroy him. Because he is my father.”

Um … okay, I wasn’t prepared for that, and I found the peace offering to work as a teacher for the dark arts at Hogwarts somehow too peaceful. The execution would have been cooler. So I decided to end my reign of terror and hand over all power to my successor, who, as I later heard, also didn’t last long.

I keep conducting funny experiments in games. If you want to read more, find out how it went for me as a taxi driver in GTA Online.