We live in an increasingly harsh world, with much of the globe subject to an almost arbitrary threat of violence and death from Terrorists, Jihadist state builders, or even the State, and things are often much the same in the worlds of the web. Many of the best selling games involve killing monsters, game constructs, and or other players in combat of some sort.
But in a move that may have crossed some sort of virtual reality
Rubicon, the web has witnessed its first
'state' organised execution. It occurred in the world of '
Guild Wars 2', a game of which I have no playing knowledge, but which professes to be an immersive role playing world, in which combat is just one of the possibilities, although admittedly its the most likely of them.
However mayhem was brought to this land of combat, when a rather successful character turned out to be controlled by a hacker. The character, called 'DarkSide' was made virtually invincible, and over the course of three weeks in April and May 2015, used a series of 'code exploits', in which the character was able to teleport, deal
out massive damage, and survive either co-ordinated attacks by other players, or
win all player-versus-player single combats.
Needless to say, this caused chaos, as people who really should get out more, found that their own characters, often with skills and powers carefully honed over hours of game play, were wiped from the world map. These disgruntled players gathered evidence about the trouble this hacker had caused and many posted videos of DarkSide's antics on YouTube. Finally the games creators, ArenaNet, were forced to react, and this is where a geeky tale turns creepy, they organised the rogue characters
'execution'.
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| RIP Darkside ... Justice Will Be Served |
