Kotaku has listed a story on their website about a kid who was playing World of Warcraft and started spouting off that he was going to hijack a plane and attempt to kill as many Americans as he could. He is now under investigation of the FBI. The kid said he did it because he didn't expect the police to be called.I know first hand how Blizzard deal with these cases. I worked as a GM for a few months leading up to the release of the Burning Crusade so I'm well aware of what happens.
We never dealt with "terrorist" threats, but suicide was a major thing and as I found out a lot of people who play WoW are very depressed. The rules were, if when dealing with a ticket and the player either gives the impression or outright says he is going to kill himself, you immediately call a senior GM, show them the chat log and then decide between the two of us if it was a serious threat.
If it was, we continued to talk to the player and try keep them happy or more importantly, keep them occupied. While that was happening the senior GM would look up his account information, find where they live and call the local police, who would go to their house and make sure everything was ok.
With the way national security is dealt with in the states after 9-11 I have no problem believing that the FBI kicked this kids door in thinking he was a terrorist.
Kotaku's original article
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