An Ohio teenager has been arrested after threatening suicide when he could not get his World of Warcraft account reinstated.

According to The Middletown Journal , the 17-year-old was banned from the game and rang up a help desk to beg to be reinstated. He told the Blizzard helpdesk that he was suicidal, and the game was the only thing that he had to live for.

While Blizzard did not reinstate the account, it did track down his address and call the emergency services. Police and paramedics swarmed around to the lad's place on the assumption he was going to kill himself.

However the teen told the police that he was frustrated by the fact that his account had been cancelled, and that the threat had been a joke "to try to get what [he] wanted." Local police were not amused, and charged the teen with a first-degree misdemeanour.

This is not the first time that people on the Blizzard helpdesk have called the police to prevent what might have been a suicide.  If the boy had been serious the publicity would have been appalling, and since he wasn't, it sends a message to others who think that they can control help desks by threatening to kill themselves that the strategy will not work. X