To space
On spaceship
Million Gnome March
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During the final stage of beta testing, the warrior class received a significant nerf (weakening). Players' appeals to Blizzard were ignored. In January 2005, the developers announced that warriors would be weakened even further in an upcoming patch. In response, players planned a protest on the Argent Dawn realm for the night of Friday, January 29, 2005.. The protesters created level 1 dwarves and marched to Stalgorn. Due to the large number of players in Stalgorn at the same time, the server began to lag (delays). After ignoring the demands from the administration to disperse - the server was shut down for a few minutes. After repeated demands began bans (blocking accounts). As a consequence of the bans, the protest ended. Later bans also punished discussions of the protest on forums.

After that protest marches became traditional. The next major march was Druids United.
Chronology
January 27, 2005
A blogger with the nickname Foton published an appeal calling for a protest.
January 28, 2005
  • A special guild was created, probably due to the large number of people wanting to join, the interface broke and the invite button didn't work.
  • Arrival of the procession to Ironforge. Due to the large number of characters began lags on the server. The crashing of players.
  • Blogger Foton reported on the event live: "They are about to begin the march to Ironforge. It is a sea of naked gnomery, and I cannot adequately describe how horrifying a vision that is." (Link contains NSFW language.)
  • Game master under the nickname Xanan asked the protesters to leave the area: "This is severely impacting other players' gaming experiences. Please be advised failure to disperse can result in disciplinary action." Most players refused.
  • Blizzard shut down the server manually. Some took it as Blizzard trying to kill the protest with a technological solution. But a few minutes later, Argent Dawn came back online.
  • Repeated warning from Xanan «Attention: Gathering on a realm with intent to hinder gameplay is considered griefing and will not be tolerated. If you are here for the Warrior protest, please log off and return to playing on your usual realm. We appreciate your opinion, but protesting in game is not a valid way to give us feedback. Please post your feedback on the forums instead. If you do not comply, we will begin taking action against accounts. Please leave this area if you are here to disrupt game play (sic) as we are suspending all accounts.».
  • Players who remained after Xanan's warnings did indeed receive account suspensions. Blogger Abalieno, who was there merely to observe, received a three-hour suspension. The accompanying email read "Offense: Harassment - Zone Disruption. Details: Zone disruption for Ironforge during warrior protest, player would not disperse after many warnings."
  • Players leave the protest area. Ban (blocking of accounts) players.
January 31, 2005
Blogger Foton publishes a post with the results of the march and screenshots of the chat room

2006
Attempt to organise another protest when they discovered that the class would be hit with further nerfs in The Burning Crusade. Myxilydian on Burning Blade-H posted on the official forums to call for a new gnome march on Ironforge on the Thunderlord realm. Blizzard preemptively put the kibosh on this plan. They announced that "anyone caught participating in this event or any event with the sole purpose of disrupting the game play for others will be punished."

Timeline from engadget.com
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