Don’t grief Asmongold in WoW Classic Hardcore or you’ll get banned

pcgamesn.com:

Don’t grief Asmongold in WoW Classic Hardcore. That appears to be the message from Blizzard as it hands out seemingly permanent bans to griefers – although the warning presumably extends beyond the biggest World of Warcraft streamers. The viral fan-created mode has breathed new life into one of the biggest MMORPGs, but it leaves players, especially those streaming their adventures live, vulnerable to potential troublemakers.

If you haven’t been following the trend, WoW Classic Hardcore is an opt-in challenge created by the community that has been steadily growing in popularity over the past months. Essentially, it boils down to one thing: die even once, and your character is deleted. There’s not yet an official implementation – instead players use an add-on to notify other players when one dies, and those taking on the challenge accept the responsibility of manually deleting their character should they fail.

The mode’s popularity hasn’t escaped Blizzard’s notice, with two major WoW Classic servers – Bloodsail Buccaneers in North America and Hydraxian Waterlords in Europe – being unofficially treated as “hardcore” servers by Classic players and both seeing large population boosts as a result.

As you might expect, however, the extreme nature of this playstyle only exacerbates trolls and griefers. Many streamers playing Hardcore have had to deal with people attempting to end their runs, but the biggest among them have suffered the worst. Twitch streamer Zack ‘Asmongold’ is a name that almost every WoW player will have heard, so of course his recent attempt to finally give WoW Classic Hardcore a shot was met with all manner of trouble.

Asmon was already contemplating giving up on the mode when his travels were accompanied by