Title of post is intended to be inflammatory.
Blizzard just put in the 5.2 patch for World of Warcraft. This patch intentionally broke the “/follow” command, which enables one player’s character to follow another. Supposedly it was used by some botters, but nevermind that won’t be effective as the most common bots are much more sophisticated to be defeated by something that simple.
The /follow command is absolutely critical for the vision impaired and blind players that actually play Warcraft. I didn’t believe vision impaired players could play Warcraft, either, but they do. I play with with one. Here’s a youtube link to one. http://www.youtube.com/user/Refunkiisblind. I have a guildie who is is extremely vision impaired and uses this command to play the game. He isn’t the most effective player in the world, but there are a lot of sighted players who are worse. With ventrilo and solid macros, he’s able to participate and contribute. He is in near tears over this.
Anyway, one of these blind players is a veteran and his success as a player (and his friend that serves as his in-game guide dog) was well known enough to Blizzard that they actually made them some unique gear in honor of being awesome people. http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/09/26/guide-dog-player-and-sightless-guild-mate-honored-with-in-game/
So, yes, they gave this blind player some cool gear and then destroyed his ability to play with it. This isn’t a bug either. Here’s the blue post confirming that this is intentional.http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8088199775.
This is a link to the WoW forums made by another player who serves a a “guide dog” player for the blind. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8087879808?page=1
And one last link to story of a blind player and his guide killing Deathwing. http://wow.mmosite.com/updates/wow_touching_story_guildmates_help_a_blind_player_take_down_deathwing.shtml