I don’t quite know what to make of this.

The Blizzard Collective smote a batch of accounts for using a third-party hack for teleportation. Clearly, a no no. Quoting minion Ordinn, dated 3/1/05:

Over the past few weeks, we have seen an increase in the number of players using third party teleportation hacks. These hacks allowed players to instantly teleport their characters to any location in the world. This exploit is a clear violation of our Terms of Use and End User License agreements, and those accounts using it have been permanently banned from World of Warcraft.

Then, there’s a few player posts claiming that they were unjustly banned in this latest hacker sting. Nothing new there. Every time there’s a hacker sting, we always see at least a couple of players who maintain their innocence — usually they are guilty, but sometimes they are not (post #312 in that link).

I don’t know who’s lying or who’s mistaken … but this thing is gathering steam.

Another player, claiming that he was similarly banned, posted in one of the threads above about how he got his account restored. (post #318 on pg 16, in case I screwed the link.)

I’ve seen enough weird-ass things in this game, and heard enough weird-ass stories from people I’ve known pre-WoW, that I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in Blizzard or, specifically, their ability to code a sting operation. A gaming company nailing a bunch of innocents isn’t unheard of or beyond the realm of possibility. Of course, I’ve met a lot of cheats and liars, too, so who knows.

I do know this: nothing ever gets solved on a message board and no way in hell is Blizzard going to tell the public how they conducted the hacker trap … which means, we will never know unless accounts are restored, the vindicated tell their stories and maybe Blizzard confirms their veracity. (ya, I got a lot of hope.)

There sure is a lot of smoke, though. Whether there is fire, too, or just mirrors …

(More smoke, and even more smoke, and some fuel for any flames … according to that one, Gamespot’s 4 pm PST on the spot webcast will cover the recent bannings.) I couldn’t confirm this topic would be included on the webcast and, to be honest, it’s a bitch trying to flag all these claims.