Exploit: Summoning infernal on non-flagged players in Cenarion Hold causes guards to attack non-flagged players

There is a massive exploit going on now.

Inside Cenarion Hold, If a Warlock summons an infernal onto a spot of opposing faction players, upon the infernal appearing, guards will attack NOT the Warlock but instead guards attack any player the Infernals initial aoe damage hit.

Those victims have not aggrod guards, not fighting back, can be completely AFK, yet guards will attack them.

Has been tested and confirmed numerous times, absolutely works exactly as mentioned.

This exploit is going rampant and needs fixing ASAP.

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Types: “Massive exploit”

Actually describes: Hilarity

Don’t AFK in CH.

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This isn’t an issue about AFKing.

This is an issue about the mechanics of how guards aggro being bugged out, and this bug enables exploits which harm people in-game.

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So PVP happened on a PVE server? That’s…actually a problem.

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But it is, Infernals are bad things that do bad things and the guards don’t favor anyone.

The guards aren’t bugged out. They’re only responding to “player took damage and is fighting” which is why they don’t really care who starts a fight, they murder anyone. The damage from Infernal summons likely logs uniquely and doesn’t attribute it to the Warlock.

So what you actually need to look at is the Infernal behavior itself. The guards are doing just fine.

Yea, I’ve noticed this as well. Its an obvious bug, not really sure why the usual trolls are flocking here. Standing near a summoned infernal isnt a hostile act and shouldnt be aggroing CH guards.

I played a warlock in vanilla and this was not how CH guards behaved.

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Guards are supposed to go after the aggressive party in nuetral areas. It sounds like they’re not doing that in this case which is a bug.

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The guards in CH go after everyone. Plenty of people suicide by guard while naked to kill others.

Not sure this actually causes issue. Also, aren’t Infernals initially hostile? That is when they arrive, they aren’t actually linked to any player but rather are just yet another hostile mob? That’s what the OP was talking about, the initial “meteor” damage.

They’re initially bound to the warlock and are supposed to damage any hostile targets.

And no the guards do not just go after everyone or noone would be able to walk around CH. They’re supposed to work like nuetral guards and go after anyone intiating an aggressive act(which is how they behave for other sources of damage). For whatever reason it sounds like they’re not doing that for the initial infernal damage and going after the target.

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Interesting. I guess the Doom Guard needs Enslaving. Still, how is the “Inferno” damage credited in the Combat Log? This still sounds like an Infernal related bug rather than a guard bug. Probably happens in Booty Bay as well.

That’s not what I said.

When people engage in PvP combat near the guards, whether they are the attacker or the attacked, the guards murder indiscriminately. The guards in Light’s Hope do the same thing, as I’ve witnessed people running TO the guards for help having been attacked by Horde, only for the guards to dismount and murder the fleeing person.

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Depends on the situation in theory the guards should go for whoever attacked first but if the person tried to defend themselves yes the guards will go for both of them.

And either way it sounds like what’s happening is the guards are ignoring the infernal and the warlock which is definitely not right even if they might have also killed the person who got the infernal dropped on them.

To the Warlock who cast the spell.

Edit: I misspoke. My MOD was attributing it to me as the caster since the pet belonged to me. The combatlog attributes it to the infernal itself.

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That’s definitely not how I’ve seen both LH and CH guards behave.

Weird that it would ignore the Infernal itself. Again, I wonder if this works in LH or BB?

Fair enough then.

Is it because it is a “summoning” spell that is otherwise neutral?

If I had to take a guess as to what is going on, I would say its probably because the infernal comes down labeled as a neutral but pvp flagged mob. Damage is applied combat flags are set, then the infernal is set to be enslaved by the warlock and things are categorized.

From the player’s perspective this is all instantaneous. From the server’s perspective, the guards probably see the victims engaged in pvp the instant damage is applied but before the infernal is set tied to the Warlock.

Because that’s what the spell does. It summons an infernal and then auto applies an enslave to it. So there must be some gap where something is being processed before the enslave effect because it has higher priority. Just a thing where order of processing matters to the outcome.

It should not happen. The spell is clearly a direct damage hostile one from the players perspective. It’s just rigged mechanics making it turn out this way.

If its what I think it is, it probably does work in LHC/Gadgetzan/Winterspring. It wouldn’t work in BB since BB is not tagged outdoors so Infernal can’t be casted there.

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This sounds plausible.

Ah yes, good catch.

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The only reason I would think it doesn’t work there is because it’s not being used there and there’s been plenty of time to find out if it did and classic players have shown the lengths they’ll go to to grief already.

See the problem is the Warlock who summoned the infernal never gets attacked or even noticed by the guards, just the victim who did nothing but exist.

This means any Warlock can go around attacking people at will and the guards will only aggro on the victims, not the attacking Warlocks.

This is an exploit.

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Sounds like typical Vanilla mechanics to me, and since it relates to a seldom used Warlock summon spell, I’m not at all surprised.

Petition to change the Infernal spell, but that’s probably unlikely if what Dot explained is accurate.

Eh, I doubt this somewhat. Weird “let’s try this” comes from needing to do it. In Light’s Hope, there are oodles of ways to tag and kill people while avoiding the guards. Gadget and Everlook both have safe-spotting issues and a limited range. No guards exist that are as aggressive as CH, or as numerous, or with the leash range they have.

But I have a mid-level Warlock, might be worth it to screw around and check, but I’m also on a PvP server, not sure if the flagging/no-flagging issue interacts with this oddly.

Why is it always dwarf women

Indeed. An order of operations issue is the most likely cause. As for why no one has noticed it before now, well, Booty Bay is not outdoors, so no infernals. And Gadgetzan, Winterspring, and Light’s Hope are all far more contested on PvP servers, so there just might have been too much PvP going on for anyone to notice it. Cenarion Hold is the first time you really have Horde and Alliance in one place with lots of very active guards and everyone is high level, where there isn’t already tons of PvP going on.

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