Hi everyone,
You may know me, Perverter, from the initial post “Classic fresh major gold making exploit”.
Since then, a few things have happened:
1 - Battlegrounds have been closed in Fresh
2 - We have recieved word from game masters about two major things
- Server roll backs/individual roll backs are not technically possible
- Blizzard and GMs hold that transparency into actions taken will NOT be occuring until they come to conclusions.
From this the community stands at a cross-roads to make a decision that could potentially safeguard or continue the erosion of the integrity of the world of warcraft and our systems.
First and foremost it is important to remember Blizzard’s precedent and the results from this.
In the past, there have been gold exploits and quick gearing exploits, one that comes to mind would be the MOP remix event where players exploited hyperspawns to get absurd power levels. The action was to nerf one indirect form of power scaling gained, but no currency was reverted, so exploiters bought upgrades and stayed miles ahead of the common hardworking player until the end of the event.
Due to scenarios like the above, the W.o.W community has become increasingly jaded resulting in the “Exploit Early Exploit Often” mentality. Players now believe that they won’t be seriously punished by blizzard, as some ‘innocent’ bystanders may be actioned in the process of holding them accountable. We have created an environment where exploiting gives you a slap on the wrist while providing untold riches and power, akin to intial sentences for white collar and adjacent crime we have seen in life.
There are 3 major categories of outcomes here:
1- Blizzard closes the loophole and nothing further - I would say this is unlikely given the scale and severity of what is happening.
2- Blizzard sets the price of chronoboons to the vendor price we have seen, and creates detection for items outside the scope of classic (upranked ability books, and quest weapons/items). - This would likely be what they consider to be a “fair” option, as it puts people on an even playing field, however those who have benefitted from exploiting continue to laugh all the way to the bank.
3- Blizzard goes nuclear and resets all gold on anyone who has touched boons in the last 24 hours below 30% of the vendor buy price via trade,etc, but not free (if free boons were touched, it was likely someone gifiting to a friend, if sent to an alt, that person would have record for cheap boons on the account). (3g and below (not 0)) have their account gold reset and all boons wiped.
Many people knew what was going on, and boons have already started to reset to normal prices due to how “niche” the exploiting was.
When i say niche it was likely hundreds if not thousands of exploiters, but small in comparison to the population of hardworking common players.
I urge those reading to ask themselves if it is really ok for us to continue to allow exploiters to rake in record yearly profits as hard working players take the hit when farming gear + gold, spending hours to be written off.
I hope we will all stand united and urge blizzard to take strong action and prevent future abuse, or even to simply send a message and set a future precent against exploiting.
Thank you all for reading, and have a great day in Azeroth.
Thoughtfully,
-Perverter
Edit: They have said they would grey out all boons from sod, it looks like the second option out of 3 i listed may be happening, however, it still allows exploiters to make money and go free.
