Archives for February 7th, 2006

The World of Warcraft Map knows no Slovenia. (source)

The Slovenian WoW enthusiast Erunno claims he recently tried to participate in the World of Warcraft Movie Contest, sponsored by Xfire. Basically, players of the game in the U.S. and EU were invited to make in-game movies in the categories of dance, comedy and drama. The deadline was yesterday, and the entrants are competing for thousands of dollars worth of prizes. (Why weren’t there things like this when I was wasting countless hours in front of the NES?)

According to Erunno, when he submitted his movie he got this harsh response:

"World of Warcraft Movie Contest

We are sorry but the following rules need to be followed:
Article 2: The competition is opened to anyone aged 15 or more residing in France, in Belgium, in the United Kingdom or in Luxemburg, or anyone aged 18 or more residing in Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, or in other European States, except Vivendi Universal Games International personnel and their family, affiliates or business partners or Xfire, Inc. personnel and their family, affiliates or business partners. The contest is also be co-organized in the United States (see above for US rules.)

More over the rules on: http://www.xfire.com/xf/modules.php?name=XFire&file=cmspage&body=xf_wow_contest_rules

The send movie named: Mug of Ale: Old Member will not take part on the XFire Movie contest. Why? Slovenia is not in the European Union or even in Europe.

We thank you for Understanding,
XFire entertaiment "

Now that’s hardcore. I first thought it might be faked because the English is so poor. (In the last part alone: "Send" instead of "sent," "on" instead of "in," there’s no "your" in front of Understanding, which is also needlessly capitalized) However, the official contest rules are full of similar errors. Since Erunno blames "the French" for the reply, this could have explained the imperfect language.

Some Slovenian WoW gamers have raided the official forums in response, but so far I haven’t seen any official response or apology and admins at Xfire have kindly replied. See the updates below and the comment from Wyndairn!

(Thanks freddie!)

UPDATE: A siteadmin at Xfire has posted this in response:

"Obviously someone is just trying to paint a bad picture of us here at Xfire. I am the only who responds to WoW movie entries and I did not write that letter. Ask anyone that got a rejection letter and they will tell you that it is done in much better taste. We respect all of our users here at Xfire. Here is some logic that might help clear things up:

1. No one here would never spell Xfire "XFire"
2. We are not and have never referred to ourselves as "XFire entertainment"
3. Slovenia is allowed to enter our contest

I hope this clears things up.

–emmbeegee"

UPDATE2: (Sorry, can’t stop myself.) After reading some replies by people at Xfire, it seems that Erunno is probably the victim (or perpetrator) of a hoax. I’ve cleaned up this post a bit to reflect that. Thanks to people at Xfire for taking the time to step in and comment!