Griefing Under the Old Regime
by Alphaville Herald on 22/04/08 at 10:50 pm
part 1: Reminiscing about days soon to be past
by d3adlyc0d3c, ex-griefer
Plastic Duck – a metaverse pioneer
I still stand by my belief that Philip cannot be blamed for all of the Chaos in Second Life. Linden Labs has had so much to do in the last few years trying to fix so many of the problems that naturally plague such a complex platform.
I think that any computer programmer can appreciate just how complex it would be to program an online world where millions of users can create content with a built in expansive and highly useful scripting language, a world where users can buy or rent land, sell items and have a permissions system, a world with decent graphics, so large that it runs on thousands of servers.
So here I’m not blaming Philip or the Lab for the griefing in Second Life. Here I am reminiscing about what it was like to grief in Second Life over the last few years, beginning with the history of the PN, W-hat, Plastic Duck and then ending with my own experiences. How griefing has evolved since Second Life was first established will be one of the main focuses of these pieces.
Because SL’s history of griefing is so incredibly extensive we are introducing Griefing Under the Old Regime as a series instead of a single article.
There has been so many instances of griefing that one could write a book on the exploits of Plastic Duck alone, not to mention W-Hat as a whole, Woodbury University and The PN.
No one knows for sure when the first griefer emerged but the first widely known griefer group in SL were the W-Hats. W-Hat was established on April 27 2004 in Second Life where they migrated from the Something Awful forums. Today they claim that their intention was to “to get away from the bad reputation of the original SA Goons group” and that “W-Hat is for people who actually want to play the game, not people who want to grief and get themselves banned.”
two recent W-HATs
Today that holds true, but when they were established many feel that it was not. On their site they have a FAQ where they address the communities concerns over their rather colorful history. Surprisingly, they quoted one of the few intelligent statements that N3X15 of the PN ever made. It’s hard to capture those things, you know.
Despite the fact that W-hat was a griefer group, there are still alot of misconceptions being spread about them. Even when they were actively griefing statements like the one below were retarded.
“It’s fairly common knowledge that to join W-Hat you sign on as a ‘throw-away character’, do some big ‘exploits’ as part of the admission process, and if it works and is generally approved of, log on as a new avatar and new W-Hat member. I bet you cant even join W-Hat without being banned or warned at least once.” — Dianne Mechanique
To date the W-Hats are still some of the most talented builders and scripters on the entire grid. In fact, they are generally very tech saavy. The W-Hats, now reformed, make their home in the what sim where they use their creative energies to make awe-inspiring builds rather than harrassing everyone like they had in days of old.
W-Hat was the first publicized griefer group in Second Life. Unlike the griefers we see today they were vibrant, creative and original. Much of their weaponry and the memes they used exist today in the PN where a bunch of juveniles continue to use them mindlessly and without any originality. Unlike the PN, W-Hat’s were not so much blatant griefers, they actually denied their involvement in griefing and attempted to mask it. One of the first articles about W-Hat focused on an interview between Herald editor Urizenus Sklar and an internet tough guy by the name of ‘One Song’.
An enraged One Song spent the interview spouting idle threats towards W-Hat members, upset at all of the anti semitic memes being used and a few anti semitic grief builds on display in their sim. At some point before the article was published W-Hat members experienced some of the first permanent bans of many yet to come since the group had been established.
When they weren’t building and scripting W-Hats tended to infuriate day to day SLers by using words like ‘teh interweb’ back when it was actually cool to do. See logs from the interview below:
excerpt from article by Urizenus Sklar:
One Song: for sure, and in fact they encourage behaviour like that from their member’s; these guys are dysfunctional uber fu*king geeks with no evident lives — I hear rumours that they have secret forums and shit on “teh interweb” One Song: and the “teh” wasn’t misspelled that’s how those geeks spell it because its apparently cool to spell it that way One Song: and call the internet “interweb”
On July 19th of 2005 news broke of one of the first instances of an exploit being used by griefers (W-Hat members) to steal scripts for which they did not have permissions.Of course as with any major exploit in Second Life the infamous Plastic Duck was involved in it’s discovery. In the history of Second Life there have only been a handful of instances in where stealing scripts has been possible. Thankfully the lab acted quickly to fix the problem, but not before it had been used to compromise the assets of some of SL’s biggest businesses at the time.
The exploit was used to gain access to popular scripts, including all of the major ATM machines, the Nexcom phones, Seburo, ROAM, and others. The source was made publicly available in IRC and through the web. Hazim Gazov, another griefer who would also be involved in the discovery of several newer exploits later was said to be involved as well. Scripts to the following products among others were said to have been stolen and made public:
Cubey Terra Flight WARP
Gigas Server
Ginko ATM
Gravity Gun
Hug script
LCC Vendor
Nexcom 3
Roam
Scan Foo
Seburo Compact-eXploder v.1.3.47i
SL Boutique Vendor 0.7
SLBoutique (old vendor code; deprecated)
SL Exchange Terminals
Splashable Water
W-Hat leaders gave the typical response, adamantly denying involvement attributing the hack to a few ‘bad apples’.
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Of course one of the fundamental griefer pastimes is to harrass Prokofy Neva. One of the most memorable articles I read was written by him here where Prok tells us an amusing tale of Philip Linden, SL game god himself greeting a freshly registered alt named ‘Griefer Overlord’.
Prok goes on to tell us about W-Hat shenanigans harassing him at a job fair he was holding on his sim. It seems that w-hat began the trend of harassing Prokofy, a tradition still carried on today by the Patriotic Nigras.
Here is an excerpt from the article which I found to be particularly humorous:
“W-Hat is back, I immediately said to myself. Zooming in on the avatars, and seeing one named Groovenstein Korvin clinched it for me. Groovenstein I had last seen in Ross, griefing my event. I had tried to hold a job fair for would-be employers and job-seekers, and a posse of W-Hat fresh alts and old hands like Operating Thetan showed up the heckle, fly around, intimidate, and generally make a nuisance of themselves to prevent people from functioning. I was puzzled why they singled me out, but I guess it’s because I challenged their event griefing in the past. They kept piping up with fake resumes like, “I’m looking for a job as the World Trade Center,” a reference to their infamous stalking of me in Baileya with a huge WTC replica – something they’d offensively deployed in world earlier to many people’s dismay, with the nauseating slogan, “I’m falling for you.” Um, no we’re not. Not this time, assholes.
Looking over the bunch, I spotted one very new days-old fellow in coat and tails with a monacle, with the lovely evocative name of Griefer Overlord. My word, we’re starting to slack in the imagination department, as usually the names are like…um…Lulu Lulu, was one of them griefing me in Ross, now no longer in the list.
Now, you ask, how could I be sure that the seeming innocent groovily named Groovenstein was anything related to W-Hat? Because he was with the group that said cried “Plastic Duck says ‘hi,’” when they griefed in Ross. And the signature is there — please, spare me. [Groovenstein is in fact dr_groovenstein from the Something Awful Forums -- Undercover Hat]
One of them cried the faux-Islamicist chant that this alt Rotten Thatch, now gone from the list, cried as he crashed first an airplane, then a building into me and my restaurant in Baileya.”
Perhaps the griefers like Prok so well because he interacts with them, it almost like a rehearsed stand up comedy act. They harass Prok, and predictably he writes an article about them filled with sarcastic funny stuff. Granted he has gotten far better at not acknowledging them since (I think this may have resulted in less griefing for him too)
Towards the end of 2005 Plastic Duck, a griefer with known W-Hat ties had become so infamous that he was actually interviewed on live TV and he was awarded 3rd place for Avatar of the Year award by the Herald. Some of the least of his accomplishments included:
- Stolen scripts and republished them on the web
- Hired residents to negative rate other residents
- Dropped the infamous Goatse image all over Second Life
- Harassed the furry community
- Sexually harassed female residents
- Spammed other with Penis images
- Was part of the group that recreated a flaming World Trade Center in Second Life with a smashed plane smashed and falling bodies.
Besides alleged grid crashing, Plastic also discovered tons of very serious exploits in Second Life during this time, many of which he reported directly to CEO Philip Rosedale. I have had the pleasure of speaking with him in both email and IRC on several occasions. He is well liked by many a resident and linden alike.
Rumors of Plastic Duck sightings were circulating wildly by April of 06, long after Plastic had been permabanned, when someone believed to be him trashed a Sudanese refugee camp in a sim called betterworld. No one was ever able to confirm the identity of the attacker.
Additionally in early 06 a number of highly publicized grid attacks took place. One of the first ones was featured in a news article here
It is widely believed that a large number of W-Hat members were involved in many of the grid attacks that would later occur. In those days crashing the SL grid was far simpler than it is today. Some would say that the instances of grid crashing were a blessing. They enabled the lindens to harden the grid, making it far more difficult for griefers to crash it in the future.
Coming next:
More on plastic duck, the W-Hat/Voted 5 mass bannings, a prelude to the establishment of the PN, and other instances of isolated griefing in 2006
Schwartz Gustafson
Apr 26th, 2008
You’re almost as poor at reading comprehension as you are at journalism, d33li3b0pp3rs.
Where did I ever say that’s the part you got wrong? W-Hat griefed. W-Hat griefs. There is nothing controversial about stating that. Everybody can agree with that.
However, and I can’t stress this enough, W-Hat never worked together to crash the grid. Did you use the “widely believed” waffle because you were too lazy to find this out for yourself, or because you just feel like repeating the Herald/Second Thoughts party line on the subject?
Since you’re such a poor historian, how about you move on to being a poor journalist and start making up fearmongering exposes about DiSSENTiON instead? At least they relish the exaggerations.
Schwartz Gustafson
Apr 26th, 2008
Just because I couldn’t fit my revulsion with your terrible scholarship into one comment:
Here’s just one example of how shitty this article is.
‘No one knows for sure when the first griefer emerged but the first widely known griefer group in SL were the W-Hats. W-Hat was established on April 27 2004 in Second Life where they migrated from the Something Awful forums. Today they claim that their intention was to “to get away from the bad reputation of the original SA Goons group”‘
Maybe if you had read the THING YOU QUOTED, THE THING IN QUOTES RIGHT THERE, then perhaps you would have come to the amazingly obscure conclusion that perhaps, just mayhaps, that this aforementioned ‘SA Goons’ group may have been a group of griefers that predates W-Hat, thus invalidating the previous sentence and making you look like a mouthbreathing gasoline-huffer?
d3adlyc0d3c
Apr 26th, 2008
I have not seen any articles about the SA Goons group in SL. Most everything is about w-hat and the PN and voted 5 among others. Please whine some more. I’m bored and I needs the entertainment.
LOLZ
Apr 26th, 2008
Shut the fuck up and go back to your yiffbox whiny w-hat faggot
irony
Apr 26th, 2008
Apparently your comprehension leaves at least as much to be desired, Schwartz. The quote said that w-hat was the first WIDELY known griefer group in SL. This is true. I haven’t seen any articles about the SA goons group but there are tons on the w-hats. Therefore he didn’t nullify his own statement and you are a raged butthurt fake goon. Oh and it IS widely believed that w-hat members were responsible for grid crashing. Everyone believes that. No one said the group did it as a whole they only said that w-hat members had done it. No on specified who presumably because they had no way of knowing.
whatever
Apr 26th, 2008
DOH! I just mistakenly revealed that I am whatever, internets troll extraordinaire and wannabe leet haxxor. I first got butthurt when codec crashed baku repeatedly, caged us, IM spammed us and put self replicating e-peen on my e-lawns over 7 months ago so I started stalking him on SLH like a little bitch. I guess I should prepare to be harassed relentlessly. huuuurrrrrr.
Zac
Apr 26th, 2008
Most of the w-hat articles are stuff like “wahhhh w-hat made fun of furries” or “plastic duck crashed the grid working alone”. This obviously proves Prokofy and all those other believers right that we are a group of griefers.
Atoms
Apr 28th, 2008
Most of the ‘griefers’ ive encountered in SL have come across like kids, taking their RL crap out on people in SL, because lets face it, these people wouldnt be able to get away with this kind of behaviour IRL.
Whatever
Apr 30th, 2008
Sorry, did some call me? Hey, didja ever notice that “W-Hat” is actually right in the word “whatever”? I wonder if that means anything? Nahhhh.
Montana Corleone
Apr 30th, 2008
In case nobody noticed, asset servers have been borked for months, LL have had four attempts to fix them, and transactions have been failing for weeks. Ever since the server code for Windlimp and Havok 4 was implemented in fact, placing even more load on the asset servers. It has nothing to do with the DiSS idiots, who in any case failed miserably in their DDoS against SLX. However, they were reported to the Feds. Their alts are being banned by LL within 10 minutes.
But carry on guys. The more federal felony offences you commit, the longer will be your time in jail. Then the other prisoners can laugh at your two inch dicks as they give it to you up the arse lol.
anon
Apr 30th, 2008
feds don’t give a shit about your e-game more at 11
LOL
Apr 30th, 2008
We didn’t fail. You started a thread crying about it. We flooded your email with a fuckload of messages. You should learn to keep your mouth shut and then perhaps get left alone eventually but instead you choose to run it so now we continuously attack you while you cry more.
whisper2u
May 1st, 2008
(Exterior establishing shot. Daytime. FBI Building, Quantico Virginia. A light breeze sways the foliage out front as our view drifts through the massive front doors of the building, down several flights of stairwell stairs, along a corridor and finally into a darkly lit cubbyhole office at the end of the hall. Two special agents are seated inside studying a file…)
MULDER: “It looks like we have another Eye Hand case Scully…”
SCULLY: “Do they want us to go in there again Mulder? I don’t know if I…”
MULDER: “Well hold on lets see here… We have a complaint from something called a Furry who builds and sells for play money some realistic looking Military weaponry during the day, and big hairy distended Red Animal penises at night… It seems one night while dining out eating bugs with a friend at something called The Beastial Bukakke Bar our complaining Furry ran into some problems. Apparently someone smoking a cigarette and wearing a giant Afro showed up with one of this Furry’s very own weapons and used it on him to blow off his Furry Prim Head and also his home crafted big red hairy distended furry penis too…”
SCULLY: “Oh my Mulder, what happened then?”
MULDER: “I’m so glad you asked Scully. Robbed of his virtual reproductive organ, the Beastial Bukakke Bar tossed him and his bitch right out of the…
SCULLY: “Mulder!”
MULDER: “What Scully? Thats what you call female dogs. Right? At least I think its a dog. Or maybe a small fox? What does this photo remind you of?”
SCULLY: “Oh yes, talking dogs, I keep forgetting its… Oh they do look like dogs Mulder…”
MULDER: “Even with those tails Scully?”
SCULLY: “Possibly German Shepards. What does it mean when their tails goes straight up like that I wonder? This doesn’t seem right Mulder…”
MULDER: “Exactly. I smell a distinct paranormal bouquet surrounding this case Scully…
SCULLY: “Are you sure that isn’t Furry scat you’re smelling Mulder? The tail IS going straight up in that photo…”
MULDER: “Well here is where it gets weird Scully…”
SCULLY: “Weirder you mean…”
MULDER: “Apparently shortly after this Furry and his companion were ejected from the club for being Furatomically Incorrect, while dejectedly sitting on the curb picking nits out of each other’s manes, he got the bright idea to make his Big Red Distended Animal Penis automatically reproduce itself and re-attach itself whenever someone blew it off…”
SCULLY: “You mean with a gun or something right?”
MULDER: “Scully, now listen to this… The very night after making the changes, this Furry goes out to the club to show it off and guess who shows up again?”
SCULLY: “Smoking Afro Man…”
MULDER: “With…”
SCULLY: “The Furry gun…”
MULDER: “Right you are Scully! Thats why they pay you the big bucks around here… But I bet you can’t guess the next part…”
SCULLY: “Bet I can Mulder. I bet Smoking Afro Man takes his Furry Gun and blows the Furry’s big red distended animal penis off again… Hoist by his own Petard so to speak…”
MULDER: “It gets better Scully… After Smoking Afro Man blows off the Furry’s parts again, this time the new and improved Big Red Animal Penis after being blown off divides into 2 and neither load of junk re-attaches to its original Furry owner. Instead they both fly off to find new targets, and invariably the new unintended owners act quickly to remove the flying Animal reproductive organs from their person… at which time…”
SCULLY: “Its base 2 Mulder. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32767…”
MULDER: “Soon there were so many big red distended animal penises flying around that it ruined things so badly for everyone who lived in that place that the Furry was ejected again, only this time ejected from the Land of the Eye Hand completely.”
SCULLY: “So this Furry who makes virtual weapons and virtual penises in an Entertainment Game world for play money wants us to come in there and avenge his unwarranted ejection for his miscalculations on how to neutralize his arch nemisis: Smoking Afro Man?”
MULDER: “Thats about it Scully… What do you think?”
SCULLY: “What do I think Mulder? I think the only reason we should go into that Eye Hand world again would be to see just how many of those Big Red Distended Animal Penises would fit up that Furry’s ass…”
MULDER: “Why Scully, I didn’t think you had it in you…”
SCULLY: “I don’t Mulder, and I’m keeping it that way…”
(Camera pulls back and we see a handy dandy office shreader chewing up the Furry File)
MULDER: “Well thats that. Its quitting time Scully. Want to go get a drink somewhere? Just a quick one to shake off…”
SCULLY: “OK Mulder, but lets make it a No Smoking bar, ok dog?
MULDER: “No LULZ for you tonight Scully. Woof Woof…”
(fade to black)
Whatever
May 1st, 2008
anon said: “feds don’t give a shit about your e-game more at 11″
Really? Didn’t d3adlyc0d3c get out of griefing because he was scared at the thought of the FBI knocking on his door?
(404) 679-9000
The Truth Will Out
May 2nd, 2008
>>DiSSENTiON does not operate inside Second Life. Our communications structure is based outside of the game. We still exist in ever growing numbers.<<
Oh right, so they don’t use SL to grief, I guess the videos must be made up then, let alone using inworld objects to spam email accounts lol. It’s horseshit like the rest of what this moron writes, and his code took others to fix lol. Far from having turned over a new leaf, he’s engaging in very pathetic DDoS attempts again, more lies.
The reality that UndeadlyCodec is a sad fucker who’s useless with it lmao.
And DiSTENTiON DiSSENTiON is one man = d3adlyc0d3c = FrizzleFry101 = Adromor Wierwight = Chaz Pomilio = Tony Costello
The last is his real name he left on a blog he’s that shit hot lmfao. I wonder how his deal with FirstMeta is going on now he’s been b&…
Witness X
May 2nd, 2008
Pretty sure Frizzy’s just doing shit as DiSTENTION to piss off d3adly. Most of the stuff that looks like DiSTENtion is really just Frizz jacking off online again.
Witness X
May 2nd, 2008
And on a side note, IntLibber Brautigan’s ban must be up by now – anybody know if his exchange is back up? If I was as scared of getting caught stealing from people as Minty Inty must be, I’d prolly take down my web site too, LOLOL!
DiSSENT
May 2nd, 2008
No we actually share members with the PN;) While codec is a member, right now the group is comprised of seven members. Oh and Frizzlefry and codec are NOT the same person lamo
FrizzleFry101
May 2nd, 2008
lol, way to fail at internets, sl vigilantes, I’m not some sockpuppet name, just ask the JLU/GLC/Proactive Security/Intlib goons. I’m not the dissention guy either, I couldn’t care less about how LL is run and I’d rather see it smashed.
I love the irony in “Witness X” being apparently butthurt at both PN and the enemies of PN, aka mr “warn lindens about exploits and griefer attacks” intlib.
anon
May 2nd, 2008
>Oh right, so they don’t use SL to grief
gee it sure is reading comprehension around here
>Really? Didn’t d3adlyc0d3c get out of griefing because he was scared at the thought of the FBI knocking on his door?
he’s done a lot worse shit tbh, like I said nobody cares about your e-game, that’s why the bullshit “LOL WE CALLIN TEH FEDS” two years ago on W-HAT never resulted in anything
Shove it up your ass
May 2nd, 2008
Wow, a whole 7 of you? What do you do, meet up and wank each other off when your tard pathetic attempts fall over?
I see the videos are popular NOT! A whole three comments…
You make me laugh.
TrannyPet Barmy
May 3rd, 2008
hello all
TrannyPet Barmy
Stephen
May 25th, 2008
Personally, I think you’re take at journalism is half-hearted and down right pitiful. As someone who graduated with a masters in Journalism and works for a well established journalism firm, you guys should seriously stop re-hashing the same exact story about the w-hat group. It’s sad that you guys at the Herald can’t write a new and original take on the group. They know they are the best builders and scripters in the game. They know they use to grief before the group branched from it’s original purpose. So to keep writing this over and over is beating a dead horse. When you want a lesson in how to write a story and get quotes from actual members of the group instead of sending your journalist-in-training onto the field to get a story and quote people who don’t understand the inner organs of w-hat, hit me up for lunch and I’ll show you how to do it correctly.