A World of Warcraft deviant has effectively murdered 90% of their hardcore guild, with a collective play time of roughly 10,000 hours going down the drain.
As first reported by PC Gamer, HC Elite is a guild composed of some of the most dedicated World of Warcraft players in the entire world. They're the sort of folks who live dangerously by playing on a community-created 'hardcore' difficulty, meaning if their WoW character dies even once, it's so long and goodbye to them forever, as they have to be voluntarily deleted in accordance with community guidelines.
The HC Elite guild was recently staring down the barrel of the final bosses of the Naxxramas Raid, the final Raid in WoW. All they had to do was beat The Four Horsemen, Sapphiron, and Kel'Thuzad bosses and victory would be theirs, finally overcoming one of the hardest challenges in WoW while on the community's self-imposed hardcore ruleset.
Enter TeenyViolin. The player took on the mantle of a tank for the group, drawing the focus of Sir Zeliek, one of the Four Horsemen. As you can see on the Twitch video archive from TeenyViolin, they were meant to lure Sir Zeliek into one specific corner of the arena, but instead turned tail and began leading the boss into the opposite corner instead.
You can probably guess what happened next. Sir Zeliek unleashed his Holy Wrath ability, a devastating lightning-based damage that chains between players if they're standing too close together, and ravaged half the raiding party, killing them on the spot, all because of the trolling antics of TeenyViolin.
Guild members tried in vain to flee, but only four of the 40-man raiding party made it out alive, decimating the ranks of HC Elite. Just 10% of the entire guild survived the ordeal, with the combined play time of the slain players exceeding a staggering 10,000 hours.
As PC Gamer rightly points out, WoW players can actually appeal their deaths and possibly have them overruled in hardcore sessions if they're deemed to have fallen at the hands of a troll. But in an interview with Asmongold, one of the few remaining survivors, Calamity, revealed that the slain players didn't even want to go for this option, and have already deleted their slain hardcore characters out of respect for the system.
TeenyViolin got this lot real good, there's no two ways about it. For what it's worth, Blizzard's own official hardcore ruleset is going through the testing stages right now, and is said to be launching in WoW in full later this summer. We imagine there's going to be a lot more instances of trolling like this once the official mode arrives.
Blizzard's most recent release, Diablo 4, already has its own Hardcore mode. The first 1,000 Hardcore players to reach the level cap will have their name etched into a giant statue of Lilith, the game's big bad, but some players are convinced they've been passed over for the elite final list.
Diablo 4 Season 1 kicks off later this week on July 20, just in case you're a WoW player looking to put some distance between yourself and the MMO after instances like this.
