Enterprising World of Warcraft fans took it upon themselves last week to demonstrate that AI is actually AS—that is, absolutely stupid—by making up a new (and, for the record, not real) character named Glorbo, and then posting about it in the WoW subreddit. This had the effect of tricking AI article generators that were trawling the subreddit into "thinking" the character was real, and then creating and posting stories about players who "eagerly anticipate the changes Glorbo will bring to the game."
It was all very funny and stupid, and a clear demonstration of the inherent weaknesses of AI and fallacy of over-reliance on automated systems. And if you think any lessons were learned, think again, because Glorbo is back, baby, this time as a Destiny 2 secret boss.
Destiny 2's Glorbo fake-out was virtually identical to the WoW stunt: A couple days ago, redditor Rasputin_the_Warmind posted a thread entitled "I just want to say the new Glorbo secret boss has been the best content I’ve played in a while," in which he enthused about the enemy's mechanics and called on Bungie to add "more secrets like this and the quacken boss from the duck pond Easter egg."
Others quickly chimed in: Some shared similar praise, others complained about spoilers, a few asked how to access Glorbo, and some just piled on their own ridiculous bullshit: Sam_Kablam expressed surprise that it took this long to find Glorbo, writing, "Ever since we found the first secret boss, Glubglub, back in Season of the Tokyo Drifter, there have been more hints that he had a brother."
It was a remarkable and absolutely hilarious community effort, and in no time at all at least one website had hoovered it all up and spit it out into a guide on finding Glorbo, complete with Rasputin_the_Warmind's breathless quote. The guide is very thorough, explaining how you'll need to uncover both elbows and the left thigh before starting the Summumah encounter and then submerge each vestige with deepsight before earning the deepsight tier 3 buff that you can use to platform down to Glorbo's battlefield, and of course it's all nonsense too.
No link because I don't want to reward this kind of nonsense, but it's easy to find if you want to see for yourself—at least until it's taken down.
AI will probably be the death of all of us, but I have to admit that the thread that faked out the machines might have caught me in its trap too. For anyone not in the know, some of the commentary is genuinely confusing, and borrows from elements which are in the game. There's even some beef between Glorbo fans and Quacken backers, which is about as real as it gets.
It would be reasonable to assume that after appearances in WoW and Destiny 2, the secret of Glorbo is now fully out there, and something like this is unlikely to happen again. Personally, I would not make that assumption at all—if anything, my guess is that we'll be hearing about a Glorbo: Nephew of Terror encounter in a secret Diablo 4 dungeon beneath the ruins of the Arcane Sanctuary any day now.
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