Erik Estavillo has struck again. You’ll know him as the guy who tried to sue Sony for banning him from PSN. He also filed suit against Microsoft and Nintendo, the latter for not allowing him to continue pirating Wii games. This time, the lawsuit troll has targeted Blizzard and World of Warcraft.
Estavillo claims that Blizzard “continues to maintain a harmful virtual environment to many of its customers by forcing them to follow the game’s sneaky and deceitful practices.” A sample of his claims is that Blizzard designed characters to “walk or run at a calculated slow pace, resulting in the player taking longer to get where he or she needs to go in the game,” and thus drive subscriptions.
He then brings up his list of ailments once again (OCD, Agoraphobia, Panic Disorder, major depression and Crohn’s Disease) and likens himself to Everquest player Shawn Woolley, claiming that he “doesn’t want to end up like Shawn did as he [Estavillo] relies on videogames heavily for the little ongoing happiness he can achieve in this life.” Wooley took his own life.
Even more astoundingly, Estavillo has subpoenaed Depeche Mode founder Martin Lee Gore and actress Winona Ryder. He chose gore because he’s “sad, lonely, and alienated as can be seen in the songs he writes.” He chose Ryder because she can “explain the significance of alienation in Catcher in the Rye and will also testify to how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real live/video games such as World of Warcraft.”
I am beginning to wonder if this man is even real, or just some sort of weird Tyler Durden figure.
