World of Warcraft‘s latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, has had a rocky launch. Not only did it suffer from a DDoS attack but it has continued to be plagued by server issues with many users not being able to log in. In protest of the server issues, the World of Warcraft subreddit, r/WoW, was taken offline by its top moderator. Nitesmoke, the moderator in question, took to Twitter to explain his actions.

However, many Reddit users were furious about the removal of the subreddit, calling nitesmoke’s actions childish and spiteful. It wasn’t just World of Warcraft fans that were displeased about the whole thing. Blizzard community manager, Jonathan Brown, took to Twitter to respond to nitesmoke.

However, nitesmoke was not to be deterred and responded to Brown saying that “It will be back the moment I am able to log into WoW.“, also adding “That is the fact of the matter and everyone’s opinion on me is irrelevent“. Brown responded once again, stating:

I wholeheartedly agree with Brown, as did many Reddit users. Nitesmoke may have felt he was punishing Blizzard with his actions but in actual fact the people he was hurting were the World of Warcraft fans who were also suffering from the same server issues.

The subreddit r/WoW has since returned, so I am assuming that nitesmoke was finally able to log in. However, the outrage is still stirring amongst Reddit users who want nitesmoke to step down. Further more, another subreddit, r/realWoW, was created in protest of nitesmoke’s actions.

Another moderator of r/WoW, aphoenix, took the time to post an explanation and apology, although many fans were less than thrilled with the excuse of removing the subreddit as a form of protest. Aphoenix emphasized that the reasoning behind removing the subreddit was “not my reasoning.”, also adding “I’m not defending it“.

Have you been experiencing server issues and what is your stance on the removal of the subreddit?

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