Ne ossa quidem...

A few days ago, I participated in a discussion on Wowhead, "Blizzard Haters", in which the OP had rhetorically inquired why people hated Blizzard Entertainment, and I replied "arrogance", then engaged the issues raised in the thread in a thoughtful manner. I thought nothing of it.

The next day, I received a threatening email from Fewyn, Wowhead's content manager, who had claimed that the worthless gold-plated coins sold by the Blizzard store are "similar in value to the raw material":

"Aestu, we have received numerous complaints regarding your poor behavior on the Wowhead Forums. If you don't tone down this kind of behavior we will be forced to take further actions against your account."

You can read his email and my reply here. Fewyn never replied, and did not elaborate on what "poor behavior" he was referring to. I had only one prior infraction against my Wowhead account in the four years I'd been active on the site: a few days ago, also regarding a Blizzard policy criticism.

The next day, my Wowhead account was banned, without any warning. I'd made voluminous contributions to Wowhead since 2007, including highly rated guides to the heroic Halion encounter and Shen'dralar reputation. I again emailed Fewyn, seeking an explanation. Again, he didn't reply. After four years of dedication, I was removed from the community for daring to question Blizzard.

I noticed a series of posts by a new Wowhead contributor, Ashelia, who joined the day before I was banned.

Ashelia is interesting, because although her profile doesn't identify her in any way, those of us who play on Bleeding Hollow Alliance know EXACTLY who she is.

Ashelia was known on Bleeding Hollow as Monique, an officer in a guild called . For reasons that remain unclear, she was very insistent that they transfer from Drak'thul Horde to Bleeding Hollow Alliance.

Ashelia, aka Monique, ordered her guild to make the transfer on the week that the Lich King-25 encounter was initially available and still had an attempt counter. The guild underperformed its rank and was not able to complete the encounter in the attempts allotted them for the week. By faction AND server transferring, reset their attempt encounter, and was able to down the boss the first week. You can read more here about Monique's exploit.

For this blatant abuse of game mechanics (read: exploit), Monique and her guild were singled out and censured by WoWProgress.

In coming to Bleeding Hollow, they dethroned Bleeding Hollow's top guild, Tempest. Tempest's GM, Rbd, is (like me, and also like Iapeto, an officer in Tasty Beverage) an achievement freak, and many of the members of the guild could not accept not having a monopoly on server firsts, so they transferred to the server Twisting Nether ([US:RP/PVE], top guild was 756th US in T9 content), to ensure they would continue to monopolize server firsts.

Both this scandal and Ashelia/Monique's leadership and personal style caused her to lose the respect of her guild. Shortly after Tasty Beverage arrived on Bleeding Hollow, Monique was forced out of her own guild.

Monique transferred to Laughing Skull and flitted around aimlessly. Shortly before she joined Wowhead, Monique again disappeared.

With its GM gone, Tasty Beverage descended into terminal decline. The guild is now dead, and most of the members have transferred off-server or quit.

Monique resurfaced about nine months later as a Wowhead editor. Interestingly, her profile shows pictures of her paladin - which are singularly recognizeable - but she does not associate herself with either her "loved" class or with her in-game history. Nor with her shamelessly pro-Blizzard blog, which consists entirely of post after post of bashing Blizzard's rivals:

Monique bashes Ubisoft
Monique bashes Gearsoft
Monique bashes Bethesda and Flagship Studios, while praising Blizzard

And so it was that Ashelia, a disgraced exploiter and failed GM, was favored by Blizzard Entertainment as a Wowhead contributor.

Wowhead likes to advertise (or conceal, depending on how you look at it) its status as a World of Warcraft fansite. With everything that comes with:

"If we did something [Blizzard] didn’t like...they would take it away."