Method was the top European guild in PvE for a long time in World of Warcraft. However, following a scandal involving one of their raiders, the guild is currently dissolving. One of the top German players from Method, the mage Fleks, describes on Twitch how he feels. You can hear that a life is collapsing.
This is the scandal: Since 2019, there have been allegations against the player MethodJosh, a healer, that he sexually harassed women. He was banned from Twitch. There was even a police investigation against the player, which, however, ended without results.
A week ago, 8 women published their accounts of their experiences with MethodJosh. The allegations in the women’s social media posts even extended to rape.
As a result, the guild leadership was accused of ignoring many warnings against the player for too long. Method broke apart over this scandal: Many guild members, raiders, partners, and streamers have distanced themselves from the guild, although the allegations are only out there for now.
“I thought I knew the guy”
This is what the raiders say: The scandal surrounding Method has stirred the WoW community in recent days. Two of the top raiders from Method described in a stream how they felt after the allegations became known. Both have now announced their resignation from Method. Both were part of the raid group that managed to achieve many “World First Kills” in WoW :
- the Norwegian Narcolies plays a Blood Elf Paladin
- the player Fleks plays a Troll Mage – he is one of 8 Germans who is part of Method’s raid roster
The German player Fleks is clearly overwhelmed. He says he can hardly eat or drink anything for the past 3 days. He has only been surviving on a few beans. In the stream, he says, emotionally moved:
“I thought I knew the guy. I believed his side of the story and then I was totally wrong. Now it turns out that I knew this person who did so much wrong and caused so much pain. It feels so bad. I don’t know what to say about it.
Everyone in the guild, every time we questioned him in Teamspeak, he had the perfect answer. […] Every time we said: “Maybe there is more to it? Maybe there is something?”, he brought a screenshot that showed he was right and we should believe and trust him. And everyone in the guild did just that.”
The WoW raider Fleks
Fleks chastises himself for not listening to the voices of the victims and for trusting the man he once considered his friend.
Later he says: “He deceived us all.”
Fleks describes how Method raiders came under fire for supporting their comrade because they were convinced of his innocence.
One of the raiders, the Greek officer “RogerBrown”, publicly defended the player with the words: “Please don’t judge yet, you don’t know everything.”
Fleks says, tearfully: “But in reality, we were the ones who didn’t know everything. We thought we knew everything, but that wasn’t the case.”
„We only play WoW, we don’t even go outside”
This is the life of a raider at that level: As Narcolies says, he has been raiding for 15 years and has given up his “real life” to play WoW:
The whole guild feels manipulated. We just play World of Warcraft, I don’t even go outside. I wake up, I shower, I eat something, and then I log in and … farm fucking mounts and transmogs.
Narcolies
Narcolies seems overwhelmed by the situation; he could hardly imagine what was now being accused of the guild member. Such things happen only in movies or series, but not in his WoW guild.
As Narcolies says a few days later in a stream, there is no longer a Method: The Method that you know is gone.
What many are currently feeling about the collapse of the guild Method is that the guild is breaking apart, even though a police investigation against the player ended without results. The allegations have been raised on social media and not in a court of law.
Nevertheless, the guild leader takes responsibility for having “buried his head in the sand.” He now believes that they should have conducted their own investigations:
WoW: Top guild breaks apart after 15 years because they “buried their heads in the sand”
