# So, have any of you WoW players bumped into the alleged Canadian spy on-line? (Baron Mordegan) **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [April 1, 2012, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-have-any-of-you-wow-players-bumped-into-the-alleged-canadian-spy-on-line-baron-mordegan/617433 "2012-04-01T02:54:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2012, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-have-any-of-you-wow-players-bumped-into-the-alleged-canadian-spy-on-line-baron-mordegan/617433/1 "2012-04-01T02:54:54Z")
A member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Delisle, naval intelligence, is facing charges of passing classified information to a foreign country, contrary to Canada’s _Security of Intelligence Act_. His ex-wife has been quoted in the Globe & mail as saying that SLt Delisle was extremely active on World of Warcraft and other online games, posting as “Baron Mordegan”: [Delisle Led Second Life Online](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/delisle-led-second-life-online/article2388020/). > [@](#): > > Ms. Delisle said her ex-husband was already hooked on medieval and military history when she met him at age 15. > > The Canadian Forces member devoted hours of free time to the immersive online fare, she recalled. > > “He played a lot of games like Ultimate Online, World of Warcraft, and Star Wars, and he actually let our kids play a lot of video games like that too,” she said. > > SLt. Delisle, she said, would also spend large amounts of money on his medieval fantasy games. > > “I remember he would trade weapons online, like a virtual sword for 300 bucks or something. I never really understood it,” she said. > > In one 2008 online post that Ms. Delisle said sounds as if it was written by her ex-husband, a player using the name “Baron Mordegan” writes of returning to online games after a break and eagerly anticipating new friendships with other players. > > “I plan on being a major combatant and leader eventually. … I hope to get to know all of you over time and definitely look forward to raising swords in victory over our enemies.” So, any of you gamers run into the Baron on-line? And, how do you spend $300 for a virtual sword? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2012, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-have-any-of-you-wow-players-bumped-into-the-alleged-canadian-spy-on-line-baron-mordegan/617433/2 "2012-04-01T05:47:26Z")
There are only 2 maximum level characters in World of Warcraft named “Mordegan”. (You can’t just give yourself a noble title in WoW.) Neither of them seem to be the person in question since they were both active as of 10 days ago and the Canadian guy is in prison. The way to buy a virtual sword or other other gear or just in game gold for real money is simple. Despite the fact that this is against the rules. There are plenty of sites that sell them and they advertise constantly in the game by creating level 1 characters to broadcast their websites for a few hours or so before that account is banned. You go to one of these websites and pay them somehow and they trade the items you purchased in game to you. Essentially this is a time saver for the buyer. The sellers “farm mats” (gather the necessary materials to create the craftable items) or join groups and win items that drop from killing difficult to kill monsters. Most of those items cannot be traded but the ones that can be are worth a lot. Or the sellers gain items to sell for real cash by trading the resources they have gathered for in game gold to trade for the items with other players who have won them. There is quite a market for these items and in game gold. To the extent that apparently there are businesses in China that employ people to log in to earn gold and items to sell to wealthy gamers around the world. These are known as “gold farmers”. Players disagree about how hard Blizzard (which runs WoW) works to eliminate this sort of thing. Even worse than the farmers are the hackers. There is a lot of phishing for passwords so that hackers can access player’s accounts and trade away the gold and items players have legitimately earned. This happened to me once. Not fun. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2012, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-have-any-of-you-wow-players-bumped-into-the-alleged-canadian-spy-on-line-baron-mordegan/617433/3 "2012-04-01T08:04:13Z")
“Ultimate Online”? I get the impression that Mrs. Delisle wasn’t paying much attention at all to her husband’s hobbies. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2012, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-have-any-of-you-wow-players-bumped-into-the-alleged-canadian-spy-on-line-baron-mordegan/617433/4 "2012-04-01T12:20:02Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > There are only 2 maximum level characters in World of Warcraft named “Mordegan”. (You can’t just give yourself a noble title in WoW.) Neither of them seem to be the person in question since they were both active as of 10 days ago and the Canadian guy is in prison. Yeah, that just sounds like his login name for whatever message board he was posting on. I used to play WoW and none of my characters are named Ferret Herder. 🙂 Plus WoW has dozens of servers, millions of players, so it’d be a real shot in the dark for one of us here to know him. Now I will admit, I do happen to know through WoW (and continue to talk with them on Facebook or in other online games) a few members of the Canadian military, but none of them have gone mysteriously silent or mentioned they might be “quitting” the game again. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2012, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-have-any-of-you-wow-players-bumped-into-the-alleged-canadian-spy-on-line-baron-mordegan/617433/5 "2012-04-01T13:02:18Z")
Moved from … oh, god, let’s just say from a forum not about games to a forum about games.