With each MMO in existence confined in its own world, it’s unsurprising for each player’s MMORPG experience to be different depending on the game they try to play. However, while most MMOs end up becoming micro-universes with their own stories and metagame experiences, specific MMOs end up breaking past their identities as “just a game” and ending up crossing over to the real world.
In fact, certain events in the MMO scene have rocked the lives of some players so much that they have become iconic phenomena, with some events even reaching the news. For MMO fans looking for events considered a legendary part of MMORPG history, just which iconic instances became etched in the annals of gaming history forever?
8 Leeroy Jenkins (World Of Warcraft)
With only a year on its belt back in 2005, World of Warcraft remains fresh in the eyes of players for its more intense take on player progression and active raiding scene. Such was the lack of wikis and guides back then that players took time preparing battle formations and strategies. So when Ben Schulz, player of “Leeroy Jenkins” went AFK to prepare a plate of chicken, he missed quite a lot of preparation from his fellow guildmates in “Pals for Life.” Being the adventurer he always was, Ben just screamed his character’s name as a battlecry and ran into the instance. Everyone else shook at their core, just forgot everything else and followed suit.
The original video, named Leeroy!!, was uploaded to Warcraftmovies, a WoW-focused film-sharing site, back in 2005 and has become a meme ever since. Such became the popularity of the meme that Ben Schulz was even invited to 2007’s BlizzCon, and an NPC named Leeroy Jenkins was added into both the main game and spinoff card game Hearthstone.
7 The Assassination Of Lord British (Ultima Online)
While many consider EverQuest as the precursor to modern MMOs, it was Ultima Online that is likely the genre’s grandfather. Characterized as a fully open world where players can engage in adventures, Ultima Online was a breath of fresh air for players who used to get locked inside ordinary fantasy worlds. Considering the impact Ultima Online had in the scene, it was natural for Richard Garriott, the game’s creator, to be the “grandfather of MMOs.”
He actively engaged in both the development and play of Ultima Online, with his character Lord Cantabrigian British serving as the ruler of the in-game kingdom of Sosaria. His main role in the series is to provide aid to player characters from his throne in Castle Britannia, a place he never leaves except for story reasons. In Ultima Online, he’s characterized to be nigh-invincible - with “nigh” being discovered only when player character Rainz had killed Lord British during UO’s beta test in 1997. Although this was mainly due to human error (Garriott forgetting to set his invulnerability tag), this event had such an impact to the current world back then that it even created the “Lord British Postulate” that states, if something exists as a living creature in an MMORPG, someone will always try to kill it.
6 The Destruction Of Eorzea (Final Fantasy 14)
Fans of Final Fantasy would likely remember Final Fantasy 14 as being one of the most disastrous video game launches of all time. Such were the bugs and gameplay errors that affected the MMO’s playability that not only did Square Enix release an official apology, they actually purged the entire game and relaunched it as A Realm Reborn. This became a great move in hindsight, as Final Fantasy 14 in its current iteration remains one of the most popular MMOs of all time. However, what made this shutdown all the more impressive wasn’t just how Square Enix managed to turn things around. Rather, it’s how the devs turned this shutdown into an event in the game.
When the only way to fix the game’s critical errors was for a full reboot, new director Naoki Yoshida decided to create the “Seventh Umbral Era” storyline as a way to officially “cap” the present story and pave the way for a reset. In this event, the planet’s second moon Dalamud was predicted to engage the planet in a world-ending impact event. While the players manage to summon the game’s deities known as the Twelve to intervene, the moon is revealed to be a prison to Bahamut, the most powerful elder primal. In a last-ditch effort to ensure the world’s salvation, players - who can choose any Class - are transported into the future to a time when Eorzea has recovered from the incident.
5 The Bloodbath Of B-R5RB (EVE Online)
Compared to other sci-fi MMOs like Phantasy Star Online and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, EVE Online gives a more realistic look into the far future of interstellar travel: lots and lots of screens. With economist Eyjo Guðmundsson being hired to helm the development of the in-game market, and with almost no intervention from devs CCP, EVE Online players can go crazy with endless mining, hunting and pillaging, and even programming bots to do the job. However, perhaps more notorious about the MMO is how its freeform system allows players to do almost anything to earn money - to the point of hiring in-game assassins to get the job done.
Such was the case of the Bloodbath of B-R5RB, considered as the biggest PVP battle in gaming history at the time. Back in 2014, this battle lasted for 21 whole hours that had the N3 Coalition and Pandemic Legion alliance fight the opposing Clusterfuck Coalition - with the conflict accumulating around 11 trillion in damages, which theoretically could total around USD 300,000. Apparently, the conflict began due to a player missing a scheduled maintenance payment, leaving an N3/PL-controlled satellite in the B-R5RB region ripe for capture. The impact of this event was so large that it got documented in the game’s fan-made historical compendium, Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online, which also compiled a lot of the larger conflicts in the game.
4 The Destruction Of The Shard (Asheron’s Call)
Despite its nature as a rather typical fantasy MMO, Asheron’s Call 1999 release marked it as the third major MMORPG to ever grace the market. Set in various worlds, the magician Asheron has called for adventurers to come to Dereth to save the universe, with monthly updates not just containing bug fixes but actual progression in the game’s evolving story. Such was the case of the Shard of the Herald, a crystal with more importance than what had players realized. As per Andrew Ross, the game’s initial content updates eventually spawned various crystals around the world that players, excited for new material, carelessly destroyed. Because why else would the crystals be there?
When players realized (after a couple of towns got destroyed) that the Shard of the Herald was the final piece that would summon Hopeslayer Bael’Zharon, members of the Thistledown server had banded together to save the Shard. And while GMs observing the event were able to finally defeat the player’s defenses after days of conflict, the game continues to celebrate the valorous efforts of these defenders. Such was the unity shown by the player base that not only did players have coordinated defenders and resource-gatherers on shifts, but they also cleverly exploited the game’s “death also levels up enemies” mechanics to level up the Shard so it’s able to defend itself.
3 The Falador Massacre (RuneScape)
Back in the early days of RuneScape in 2006, the game was still exploring new RuneScape skills that could improve immersion of players in the world of Gielinor, with Construction - the ability to create structures like houses - being its most recent addition. When RuneScape user Curse You became the first player to achieve Level 99 Construction, he invited others to his player-owned house for celebration. However, trouble started as soon as he kicked players who engaged in PVP inside his house.
Due to server lag, the game wasn’t able to remove the PVP privileges of Curse You’s former visitors, allowing them to engage in combat in safe zones such as towns. It was only after an hour of killing that game mods were able to intervene, and even then it was too late for players who had died or lost their items. Players who killed a lot of others during this event were banned, and Curse You himself was banned although for engaging in illegal real-world RuneScape transactions. Such was the impact of the incident that this event, now known as the Falador Massacre, celebrated its tenth year in 2016. Not only that, the incident was also added to the game’s lore.
2 The Twice-Killing Of Kerafyrm (EverQuest)
Whereas players can revisit historic moments in an MMO’s history through mechanics such as World of Warcraft’s Chromie Time, EverQuest back in the time of pre-microtransactions had the luxury of creating one-time scripted events. Such was the case of Kerafyrm the Sleeper, a boss so powerful that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was sure it couldn't be defeated. The idea was for Kerfyrm to simply go on a rampage before disappearing forever in order to move the story forward. However, what SOE didn’t expect was for the Rallos Zek PVP server’s characters to be so far ahead of the pack that they actually stood a chance at defeating Kerafyrm - breaking the game’s script.
To avoid potential crashes, SOE despawned Kerafyrm at 26% Health, hours after engaging players. This had caused an uproar across the server, forcing GMs to respawn Kerafyrm days later for a good ol’ proper defeat - and everyone's stories finally moved forward. Such was the sacredness of Kerafyrm’s “sleeping” status that even folks from Project 1999 Green, a fan server who locked their version of the game at two (2) expansions (of the game’s existing 29), didn’t dare break tradition. That is, until May 2022 when detractors from top guild “Seal Team” moved incognito against their main counterparts (and the rest of the server) and woke the sleeping dragon for yet another round of killing.
1 Corrupted Blood Incident (World Of Warcraft)
While the impact of gaming to its player base has led to studies concerning influences on violence and gambling, none had thought video games could contribute to health studies. That is, until 2005 when World of Warcraft had just introduced the jungle Zul’Gurub region with the god-like Loa Hakkar the Soulflayer as its raid boss. Prior to its removal in Cataclysm, Hakkar can inflict the Corrupted Blood debuff to players that continuously deal damage not just to them but also everyone in close proximity. The debuff stops in 10 seconds or when Hakkar was defeated, whichever came first. For players who realized the “infectious” nature of the debuff, it’s natural for panic to set in - to the point that others left the instance prematurely.
This is where everything went wrong, as not only had World of Warcraft recently introduced fast travel, programmers forgot to place an off-switch that disabled the debuff after the instance. Things spiraled into chaos quickly, with good-natured WoW players warning others of contaminated zones to avoid, whereas some griefers intentionally got infected precisely to spread the disease. It took World of Warcraft a hard reset and a patch to fix the “plague.” Despite the faulty programming, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still approached Blizzard to study the incident and check how it could help develop better responses to fast-acting diseases. This Corrupted Blood incident even became a comparison point for disease transmissions via air travel during the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, which a study had compared with WoW’s fast travel.