Reddit users campaign to have top World of Warcraft mod replaced

Reddit users are looking to replace the moderator who closed the website's primary World of Warcraft subreddit in protest of the recently released Warlords of Draenor expansion.

A new thread on the website is now aiming to see this Subreddit moderator replaced by user Aphoenix, with over 400 messages supporting the change in rank.

"/u/aphoenix is an active and highly respected moderator. His community involvement is second-to-none. Due to /r/wow closing its doors by the decision of one person, nearly 200k people are without their subreddit. It would be in good hands with aphoenix," reads a comment from user Deviouskat89.

Redditer Nila_FE added: "I'm with you on this one. /u/aphoenix would be best fit for the new top moderator. Hopefully the reddit admins will be able to intervene on this issue.

"200,000+ subscribers shouldn't have to migrate because of one moderator's ragequit. Put /u/aphoenix in, bring things back to normal."

The original top moderator, Nitesmoke, made waves on Saturday after taking the private forum offline "until I am able to log into the game." Nitesmoke faced a furious response on Twitter, calling the action childish and spiteful.

"As a form of consumer advocacy and protest, the subreddit was taken offline as a way to send a message to Blizzard that this wasn't acceptable," said moderator Aphoenix at the time - while also apologizing to the community and saying that such reasoning "doesn't work."

"Being that we typically log a million hits per day, /r/wow has a significant claim as a fan website," Aphoenix added. "'Going dark' in protest has worked for a variety of other protests, and it could work for this as well."

A Blizzard community manager even got involved. "I've always appreciated what you've done," tweeted Jonathan Brown, a senior community representative, "but r/WoW shouldn't be a hostage. It should always be there for the community."

Nitesmoke has mentioned he had been a moderator on r/Diablo when Diablo 3 faced extended login problems after its 2012 launch. "It's part of the reason I'm so annoyed. This is the second time I've had to deal with angry masses during one of Blizz's botched launches," he wrote.

Eventually, Nitesmoke was able to log in to World of Warcraft and restored r/WoW as promised, but the outrage lingers into today.

r/WoW has as of this writing has more than 190,000 subscribers. This listing shows it as the seventh-most subscribed gaming subreddit, though its subscription figure is old and about 60,000 fewer.