Martin Fury

Martin Fury is a shirt that was formerly of quality before it was changed to its current status and removed from the World of Warcraft Armory database. Given its (original) description, the shirt is likely a weapon used by Game Masters for testing purposes. It is not accessible to regular players.

In April 2009, the player Karatechop from the guild The Marvel Family on Vek'nilash (US) received this item, which could be used to instantly kill all enemies in the vicinity of the user, from a guild member (Leroyspeltz) who had been granted it by mistake from a Game Master. The mistake was caused by the Game Master trying to restore Leroyspeltz's account which had previously been hacked. Both Leroyspeltz and Karatechop believed the item had been purposefully given as it came from Blizzard Entertainment.

The guild used it 14 times to one-shot raid bosses, mostly in Ulduar but also in Eye of Eternity and Obsidian Sanctum, earning the participants several achievements for killing bosses. The rapid progress was claimed to have given them some "world firsts" even though it wasn't their intention to do so. The guild's usage of Martin Fury was eventually discovered by Blizzard Entertainment who chose to ban every online guild member for 24 hours - regardless of whether they had been participating in the raids or not. Some of them were not even aware of the item. Most (if not all) of the players considered this to be a rather impolite and a poor solution from Blizzard Entertainment's side, given how they had been unaware of the fact that using it was illegal. Karatechop's account was permanently banned, causing him to consider quitting World of Warcraft and try "something else" instead.

WoW Insider, which documented the story, later got to interview Karatechop about it, revealing some of this information. It is likely that Blizzard changed the attributes to make sure that this sort of thing never happened again.

• Martin Thunder

Martin Fury