In the fantasy MMO World of Warcraft, fans are so eager for the release of the next expansion Warlords of Draenor that a creative phrasing on Facebook led to high hopes and then to disappointed faces.
One cannot accuse Blizzard’s alternate account on Facebook of malicious intent: They creatively stated that a scout behind the Dark Portal had seen something quite strange. Maybe it was nothing. They didn’t know. But the next day around noon, one should “be here”, then something would happen – or perhaps not. Alongside this, they posted a laden image of a triumphant Garrosh Hellscream over Cenarius.
Now, to put this in the right context, it should be known that if MMOs were celebrities, World of Warcraft would be a mix of Tom Cruise, Shakira, the Queen, and President Obama. Every single tweet from the fourth employee on the left is analyzed, interpreted, posted on numerous fan sites, and read by hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans.
The post on Facebook has now been eagerly interpreted by fans as either “Oh my God, we’re getting a release date for Warlords of Draenor tomorrow” or “Oh my God, the pre-patch is coming tomorrow” or “Oh my God, something amazing is happening at the Dark Portal tomorrow, I have to be there.” The fact that the “here” in the Facebook post did not refer to the “Dark Portal”, but to “the Facebook” page got somewhat overlooked in the general tumult, if the fans even heard it at all. Who knows what can become of a rather dull piece of news when it is spun through the “Telephone Game” wolf via the trade channel in Orgrimmar or Stormwind among the fans?
According to fan reports on that very Facebook page, countless players gathered at the “predicted” hour on various servers at the Dark Portal, waiting for something monumental to happen there.
The answer: Nothing. Blizzard’s Facebook page merely wanted to raffle off 1000 beta keys at that time – and indeed on their Facebook page. It had nothing to do with the Dark Portal or any release dates. And a little tidbit: German players were apparently excluded from the raffle.
