Blizzard just hotfixed the ability to detect layers using /who command

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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See here: Player proves you can determine your layer with /who (proof inside) - #156 by Startuptim-sulfuras

As of today, the ability to detect your layer using /who -z “Some zone name” has been hotfixed by Blizzard.

This technique has widely been used to determine which layer you are on as well as used by addons that automate layer switching.

WHAT WAS CHANGED:

The old, pre-hotfixed method would allow you to do the following 2 commands:

  • /who -z “Orgrimmar” 1
  • /who “Orgrimmar” 1

These 2 commands would show you the specific people in YOUR LAYER, as well as the specific people in ALL LAYERS. You could then use this information to determine which layer you were in as well as communicate this information (via an addon) with others to determine exactly WHICH layer a person was in. You can see many, many examples of this as proof in the above linked post.

WHAT IS NEW:

The hotfix made it so the commands now show the SAME information, thus removing the ability to detect your layer.

WHY THIS MATTERS:

This matters because Blizzard previously stated that detecting your layers was not possible, despite being provided with ample proof. This allowed layering exploits to continue for a large period of time.

Zoom ahead many days, Blizzard has hotfixed this without acknowledging that their understanding of layering exploits was flawed and it allowed exploits to continue more than it should have.

WHAT THE COMMUNITY WANTS:

  1. Acknowledge directly that layering exploits are not the intended functions of layers and, as with all exploits, is against the rules of the game and can result in the same actions as violating other rules of the game (suspensions, bans).

  2. To reverse all gains made with layering exploits.

  3. To suspend/ban those who have gratuitously exploited this flaw for personal gain. This includes popular streamers who provide Blizzard with an immensely valuable free advertising by streaming WoW Classic.

Thanks!

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  1. No they didn’t because 2) your “method” didn’t work.
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So given this you really believe blizzard when they say the exploits were minimal and very little gain was made by only a small group of players?

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Over the past 2 weeks I believe Blizzard has actually hotfixed a bunch of bugs and exploits without admitting to it. The only thing they have admitted so far as the EXP bug.

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We all know it isn’t minimal. For example, Twitch streamers are doing layering exploits constantly for personal gain, and yet the exploits still continue. They have existed at the start, now addons are created to automate this, slight fixes go into place, but still the exploits remain.

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They did “fix” this by breaking the ability to do a layer specific /who.

I disagree that the results were significant. The resources available across all layers was proportional to the number of layers, which was proportional to the number of players, so available resources per player stayed the same. With a larger server, more players, and more resources, farming and other similar activities will naturally be more efficient. This would be true even if layers did not exist, for example if they were replaced with dynamic respawn.

The fact that layers made more resources available per server on a static basis than would have been available in Vanilla is true, but that was always true as soon as they made the decision to have layers.

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Please provide proof. I have yet to see a streamer “abuse” it, let alone automate it.

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This part of the “Community” wants people to stop saying “THE COMMUNITY WANTS!” You dont speak for everyone, just yourself. So replace what the “Community” wants, with what “You” want.

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This is true, but what is also true is that servers are multiple times larger population wise than previous. The question is, does layering increase the proportion of available resources more than they did in vanilla? Maybe, but we don’t exactly know how many people can be on a single layer before a new one is opened.

I would think a layer has less people that a typical vanilla server did back in the day. If we take blizzards word as truth then there were max 9 layers on faerlina and probably 30k concurrent players do something along the lines of 3-4K concurrent players per layer which is probably smaller than the big vanilla servers which I think had 5K+ if i recall.

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The thing that I feel like isn’t being acknowledged very often in all of this is that with all of that being true, and with everything in the Irisse’s post being true, isn’t it still the case that all of the layers still funnel into singular alli/horde/neutral auction houses as economic hubs. So even if the proportion of available resources per player isn’t much different than times past the overall size of the economy on a given server is much larger.

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Yes, that’s true.

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Feel free to go watch any of the VOD’s from Jokerdtv, including the day he got world first classic 60. He has been exploiting layers for xp and gold since day 1.

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There’s a few people in the “higher” raid guilds that have heavily exploited layering.

HOWEVER

It was all used for raid consumables (flasks,potions, etc) as far as I’m aware so the market itself did not really see any significant impact other than this guild perhaps not buying these mats off the AH or spending a huge amount of time farming it themselves which is a very small percentage of the server that wants or will want these mats/consumables when more people hit 60.

Not really an issue for MOST players but I see the justification of getting rid of items or gold gained from this exploit

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100% true. He exploited for personal gain. So did the APES guild. So do many streamers sucj as Asmongold. There are hundreds of hours of it on live video at this point.

Fix the exploit and ban the exploiters.

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None of this matters by phase 2 right> bye bye layering? hopefully

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That’s like saying AIDs/HIV doesn’t matter once your dead. The damage is already done but it’s the sickness that got you there.

In WoW’s case the server economy and xp exploitation will ruin servers long before phase 2.

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maybe then they can release a fresh server after all this crazy stuff.

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4 people on twitch doing something is still minimal.
Your perception is skewed towards believing random players (streamers or not) instead of the company that can see the data.

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I was with you until you called streamers “valuable.”

Rofl.

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Maybe you can actually use one of the 36 US servers that are already up, four of which are new and low pop. We don’t need anymore servers; we need to better redistribute populations across the ones we’ve got.

As for the exploiters (which I am against, and feel should get the banhammer), there will just be more down the line anyway. There always are.