What’s the esports scene without a little drama?
Jokerd, an extremely prolific World of Warcraft professional player and (now former) member of the legendary WoW guild/esports titan, Method, earned himself a swift suspension from the guild. This suspension is pending investigations into his offensive, unsportsmanlike behavior, and could see him banned from the guild on the whole.
The offensive, unsportsmanlike behavior was brought to light by Reddit user u/Returnoftruth, who shared the story of a raid group organized by Jokerd. During a raid on Molten Core, an epic staff called the Staff of Dominance dropped. The staff is one of the best possible weapons for most caster classes, and many raid just for that.
Being a good guy, Jokerd stole it for no reason other than to be a bad person. This led to his Twitch chat, who watched this live, both flaming and applauding him for his actions.
On Reddit, there was no applause, and the thread swiftly became one of the most popular of all time on the WoW Classic subreddit. It currently is approaching 16,000 upvotes and is still rapidly climbing.
Once it went viral like that, Method had no choice but to respond. Their response can be read in the tweet below, but essentially states that they’ve suspended him while they investigate his actions. The author, Shanna “Darrie” Roberts (the general manager of Method), apologizes to the community and admits that all of Method is let down by how Jokerd represented them with his actions.
Some decent memes have already come out of it, though. Classic players are joking that Jokerd managed to speedrun his career, as he was only announced as having joined Method as recently as the end of October. In fact, from his announcement to his suspension, Jokerd has only been in Method for two weeks — and that’s counting the day he was announced and suspended!
Overall, it’s nice to see an influencer get punished in the proper way for such reprehensible behavior. While it likely won’t hurt his streaming audience too much, losing the support of Method costs him several extremely valuable sponsorships, as well as the opportunity to be a part of such a massive support group and brand. It’s still possible for him to be accepted back into Method, but an investigation into a player that streams every playing session won’t be too complicated, and his negative actions will be impossible to ignore.
