Game Masters in World of Warcraft have a lot of power. They can even abduct characters – and stop entire raids.
Back in the early days of World of Warcraft, Game Masters could still be seen quite often. When you submitted a ticket and needed help because of a bug, a Game Master often showed up to address the issue. But Game Masters are only human – and therefore make mistakes. A curious incident abducted a poor dwarf multiple times.
What happened? The Reddit user named lockstock85 shares about his workday as a Game Master – back in the early days of World of Warcraft. The raid Zul’Gurub was still quite new back then, and a patch had caused a bug. High Priest Venoxis was not reset correctly after a fight. Sometimes Game Masters could fix this, but often they could not. He explains:
Bug fixing usually starts with me “hitting” the NPC once. As a Game Master, I am both invisible and visible. Sometimes that is enough to confuse an NPC so that it resets. But this time, I had no luck.
My next option: Move the NPC. In the console, I target the enemy and type “summon mob” to move and reset it. I tried this a few times, nothing.
Up to this point, it was actually nothing unusual. However, that changed when the Game Master was summoned a few days later by his superior. He wanted to talk to him about the whole “Venoxis situation” and what he had actually done.
He showed me exactly what I had done. And then he pointed out my typo. The correct command would have been “summonmob”, a single word without a space.
When Mob is not a Mob at all
However, the small typo had big consequences. Because not only did it explain why Venoxis could not be reset. The wrong chat command had implications far beyond the borders of Zul’Gurub.
What I was trying to do was summon a player named Mob into the Zul’Gurub instance of this guild.
And here’s the twist: At exactly that moment, Mob (a dwarf warrior) was tanking the adds from Garr in the Molten Core for his guild. I had no idea [what I was doing], because I was in the Zul’Gurub version of a different guild. But his raid suddenly lost the off-tank.
Apparently I killed Mob like six or seven times, but fortunately his guild was able to defeat Garr without him.
After the mistake was discovered, the Game Master apologized to Mob and not only reimbursed him for the repair costs incurred, but also gave him a name change on top. Just to ensure that such a mistake could not happen again in the future.
The community finds it hilarious: In the community, the incident is being discussed enthusiastically. Many find such a story “epic” and want to hear more insider tales about what can go wrong in a Game Master’s day-to-day work. Some of the comments:
- “That must have been the most confusing event in all of Mob’s career. I can hardly imagine it.” – John_Hunyadi
- “That’s extremely funny, and yes, if this player still exists, I guarantee he will tell this story to every new guild member today.” – aessedai03
- “That really made me laugh. The smallest mistakes lead to the funniest anecdotes. He probably had a moment of real fear that someone hacked his account and found it funny afterward.” – Fandise
Stories like this stay in the memory of many for a long time. Can you also remember any funny or curious encounters with a Game Master in World of Warcraft?
Some time ago, another former GM from Blizzard opened up and shared some juicy details about the job: The Game Master had to explain how to tie shoes during the hiring process.
