Friday, March 4, 2011

Mystery Files - The Glowing Guy

Welcome to another episode of the Twilight Zone! *eerie music* No, but welcome to another post about some weird stuff I found while out and about in WoW. Last time we talked about Floating Cat Heads, this time I am raising my eyebrows at the Mysterious Glowing Guy.

It was a couple of weeks ago now. I was doing my daily business when I ran into this weird guy outside of the Auction House in Orgrimmar. There are of course loads of weird people in WoW so generally I don't care much. Unless it is something new, like a new mount or some new weapon/gear that I haven't seen before, in that case I usually inspect to see what it is (which is exactly what they want of course, epeeners). And this guy definitely looked very peculiar indeed. When trying to target him however, I noticed that I couldn't. He was like any part of the background in WoW, except he looked like a player or npc. He didn't have any kind of nametag, which quickly made me realize that he wasn't a player (before I noticed he was untargettable). At first, I didn't think much of it. It was probably some kind of trinket/spell I hadn't heard of yet, and I would find out sooner or later. I let it be, for the time being.


The next day, I am going about my daily business again, and when running out of the Auction House I see how this guy is still there. In the same position, in the very same spot. Still untargettable and still without a name. Now I am getting more curious. I don't think it is likely that some player would use their trinket/spell so that the guy shows up at the exact same place when I happen to be logged on. In any case that has never happened to me before. Could this be some issue on my side rather than server side? I start asking questions. Can anyone else see this guy? Who/what is he? The usually ever responsive trade chat (although rarely providing a useful response) is strangely silent. No one seems to know much about it or they just can't be bothered to answer. I ask in guild chat and people go "what guy? I haven't seen any guy?". I ask Love and he tells me too he hasn't seen any guy. A friend of mine can however. Turns out, not everyone can see this guy! The thick plottens, as Love says it.

I turn to the allmighty internet. Remember what I told you kids, if its not on the internet it doesn't exist. Strangely enough I only find one forum thread about it and people are generally as confounded as I am. People go;
"who is this guy?" 
"what guy?"
"the glowing guy"
"never seen that guy"
Pretty much as my conversations had gone earlier. I learn that they've popped up on servers all over, but only in major cities (as we know of *more eerie music*).

What is it? No one seems to know. Twixnstix offers a logical solution, one that had crossed my mind as well initially;
"Not to ruin any hopes of extraazerothian phenomena, conspiracy theories, or what have you, but I think I read somewhere that it is a graphic artifact from the Lightbringer's Tabard. Basically someone uses their fancy glowy sparkle tabard, and a frame of the animation gets stuck in the game world until a GM comes and takes it out, or the server resets."

This was my first guess but an even more logical reason for why Twixnstix theory is flawed is provided by Sitta;
"could be but its happening in a several servers in the same spots"

Indeed - could this really be a bug of some sort if it happens in the same spots, in different cities (always major however) and across different servers? That would be some bug.

Just as I am flying around thinking I couldn't be more puzzled about this matter, I find another one. Sitting just outside the jp/vp vendor in Orgrimmar is another glowing guy, that doesn't look exactly like the first glowing guy however, they have slightly different gears. This second guy is also a blood elf (although on other servers and factions he seems to be human sometimes). My mind is officially boggled.



These guys are around for a couple of weeks, and then they're gone like if they were never there. If I hadn't had the screenshots, I wouldn't even be sure about it. I haven't found anymore information about them and no one seems to know anything either. Do you have any idea what this is? Have you seen them yourself?
                              

6 comments:

  1. Oooh how intriguing!! I've never seen this glowing guy but I hope I run into him! Especially if he's at the same spot on different servers...that's just weird! If it really is a remnant from using the Lightbringer's Tabard, can you imagine the chaos someone with the tabard could cause, if they were aware of the side effect?

    (Though at the same time, they could create some fantastic scenes, haha. :D)

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  2. Aw man, I wanna see the weird glowing guys. I gotta start paying more attention, maybe I can stumble across one. Thanks for sharing the screenshots.

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  3. "they could create some fantastic scenes"
    First idea that came to mind was to create a clone army of glowing warriors just outside of Stormwind during the night.
    It would scare the guano out of the first few people that came out of the city that morning :P

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  4. Wicked. now I really wonder if alliance side has them too somewhere - I sure never noticed!

    you have a sharp eye for silly and weird things - keep the mystery files going! I enjoy them very much :)

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  5. I came across a bear druid with a glowing head outside the Stormwind trade district AH. A few of my friends had seen it as well, and as with your glowing guy the druid could not be targetted and had no name tag.

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  6. there was a glowing guy in stormwind-he was kneeling down on one knee and was in btween the bank and ah-no tag, no nothing. this was in feb for me-was there that i noticed for about a week, then was gone-no explanation or anything

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