Apologies for the late update of stories. I've been rather busy, but that's no excuse! I'll post another story very shortly to make up for the lost time! - Love, GM Wint :)

Some of you may know of somebody who has experienced a GM event. Others of you will have experienced this first-hand. Those of you who don't know, however, may not know what this is about. Let me explain.

Blizzard devised a system some time back called ECCO - which I can only imagine came from the loveable SEGA character, Ecco the Dolphin - to help strengthen Blizzard-to-player relationships. It was a way for everyone to see the fun side of Blizzard GMs and get some one on one interaction in a slightly different way to conventional tickets. To the GMs, however, it was an excuse to do very few tickets throughout the working day and still hit our quota by the end of the shift.

The most memorable issue I dealt with was a little while after The Burning Crusade was released, when most people were starting to get to Level 70 and running raids into Karazhan. As most of you who have entered Karazhan in the early stages will likely know, Prince Malchezaar was forever breaking for one reason or another. Most likely he wasn't happy with being paid very little money to die repeatedly each week, so he went on strike. Whatever the reason, the fix soon become a common thing for us GMs to do.

I thought it would be fun to join the raid once this problem was resolved so I equipped my Tauren GM Character with some basic gear of varying quality and colour, giving me the patchwork look of most characters in the game who were fresh to level 70 and equipped a mining pick as my weapon to finish off the look of a normal player. I blended in well.

I like to make a grand entrance when appearing in-game so I queued up some special effects and threw around visual effects as if I were directing a Hollywood movie, and dropped in from a great height to land in front of the raid. It must have looked awe-inspiring from the raid group's perspective, but what I didn't know was that they were all AFK so my efforts were not fully appreciated.

Fail.

Finally the group roused back to life and excitement grew as they realised the problem had been fixed and they were able to continue. I was met with a little less enthusiasm that I'd hoped for when I publically informed the raid group I was to be joining them, but I thought that was probably because they were awestruck at seeing me looking as mighty as I did in my technicolour armour, brandishing a pickaxe.

After a long period of buffing and ready checks the group began their encounter with Prince Malchezaar for the second time that evening. The tank, who was only slightly better geared than my character, charged in head-first towards Malchezaar's legs hacking at his shins while the healers fought furiously to keep him alive. The damage dealers, accompanied by myself and a Mage who didn't fully understand the concept of ranged damage, ran in shortly after and circled around the back to try and attack Malchezaar's weakest point; his achiles tendon. It worked on Achiles, so why not Malchezaar?

Then came something horrifying, something the raid were clearly not prepared for. The tank died. Followed by the damage dealers. Then the healers. Even the Rogue who tried to vanish got a face full of pain. I was in a tricky situation here. I cannot die with God Mode turned on, and the encounter would break again if I simple vanished. Then an idea came to me. The group missed my grand entrance, but they could witness my exit. Firing out several special effects and screaming my wrath at Malchezaar, I set a massive explosion and killed my GM Character. The raid laughed and were generally happy to see this. Mission accomplished, despite a failed raid.

That is just one of the things we can do as ECCO GMs, and it brings a smile to my face everytime I see happy players. :)

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