Players revolt in WOW

My last WOW related post can be found here:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2010/02/coiled-spring-ntes.html

In the last three days, there is a mini-player revolt for Netease's WOW. Sina's game channel had a special section on this revolt. Sina's section can be found here:
http://games.sina.com.cn/zt/wow100325/index.shtml

I will provide a quick summary of what happened below:

On 3/23/2010, an individual WOW player hook up with a WOW clique to do a raid in WOW. After they kill the in-game monster, the clique took all the in-game reward (gold) from the monster. The individual felt he is victimized by the power clique (at least according to that individual).

Further negotiation results in the clique threaten to "kill" the individual.

That evening, when that WOW player logged on to the game, he is informed that his account is being frozen by NTES (the WOW operator).

That player complained on a popular instant messaging channel. Things like this happens a lot and a lot of individual players had been victimized by the power cliques (or clans).

Thing like this happens all the time and nothing usually happens. But somehow, this time, this player's circumstance somehow draw the attention of a lot of other WOW players.

These players then went to WOW and start to attack that clique. After the angry mob finished off the clique, they start to attack the game operator (NTES). For a while, all of in-game communication channels are dominated by angry players accusing NTES of negligence. That in turn attracted more players' attention.

By the morning of 3/25/2010, several tens of thousands of players were talking about this at various game forums. By the morning of 3/25/2010, NTES contacted that individual player and told the player that his account was frozen not because of any attack by a power clique, but because he had used illegal game point purchased from an illegal source. In addition, his account is only frozen for one day. Three will be no other punishment to that individual player.

Satisfied, that player get on the instant message channel and told the crowd that this issue had been resolved.

But the mob is not satisfied and the mass protest continues.

As of this evening (3/25/2010), accounts of several of leading protesting WOW players have been frozen.

Sina had hired a lawyer to provide legal advice to support the protesting WOW players. Oh, by the way, SINA and NTES are competitors.

While I don't think this thing has any long term affect, it is still interesting to follow this development.