Yeah, duping items is an exploit too, yet nobody will ever say itâs okay (hopefully)
Delete all their possessions and money, reset to level 1, but all quests still flagged complete, hearthstone unbound and flightpaths unlearned, drop them in Moonglade.
Lawl. What idiot said this?
oh they were saying this stuff like 2 weeks ago. talk about being freakin delusional.
If it looks like they were also exploiting group grind mechanics Iâd go with two month ban and roll their toons back to level 1, 1copper, no bank slots, nothing bigger than 1x 4slot bag, and remove all items you normally wouldnât have at any level.
Fixed that for ya
Reduce all xp/rep gain going forward by an irrational number in the range of 14% without notifying them
Soooooo since Iâm seeing a lot of confusion (here and elsewhere), hereâs some insight into how we draw the line between what makes something a punishable exploit versus a âhappy little accident.â
The key factor here is intent. Did the player do something with the specific intention of causing a glitch to occur, and did they do it order to exploit said glitch for their own benefit?
This recent glitch makes a pretty clean example. The players who were abusing it had to do some Very Weird Stuff to cause it to occur, and then did so repeatedly. No reasonable person would expect that this behavior was intended, and the players involved had to go out of their way to cause it. Itâs obviously unintended, itâs obviously a glitch, and the people who abused it were obviously exploiting said glitch for their own benefit. Thatâs pretty open and shut.
Someone mentioned Esfandâs random MC reset in this thread, which is a pretty clean example of the other end of the spectrum. In that case, they just turned up to raid and the instance had been reset. They didnât do anything intentional to cause it or go looking for reproduction steps so they could abuse it - in fact, they reported it to us and didnât continue until they got confirmation that it was out of their control (and that we wouldnât consider it an exploit if they cleared).
Side note for the curious: that was a completely separate bug that has existed since 2004, and actually happened several times back then, it just wasnât being broadcast to thousands of viewers at the time.
Obviously, neither situation is ideal - we try our best to provide a fair playing field for everyone - but thereâs a pretty massive difference between âthe instance is reset and we donât know whyâ and âif we do this One Weird Trick we can infinitely farm this dungeon boss.â Thatâs the key factor that turns something from an accident into an exploit.
This ended up being longer than I expected so Iâll wrap it up with one last caveat: there is a lot of context and nuance that goes into these situations, and theyâre not usually as cut and dry as these two examples. We end up making a lot of judgement calls based on the specifics of each exploit as well as their overall impact on the game (the phrase âclever use of game mechanicsâ originally came from one such convoluted situation). These two cases just happen to be pretty obvious.
Boom.
Delete their loot, or allow EVERYONE to get double loot.
But what about the people who literally advertise that they are exploiting? Like people who are in general chat all day saying âcan someone layer me for mobs please.â That literally translates to âcan someone help me exploit.â Why arenât they being banned?
They will though? What part of âthe people who abused it were obviously exploiting said glitch for their own benefit.â didnât you get?
Can we please get some rough estimation on the number of accounts youâve taken action against as well as a description of what is happening to their exploited gains?
The last major exploit in bfa a bunch of streamers got 3 month bans and it wasnât as bad as this one which allows you to farm gear.
Lore Iâm sure the Classic team has a solution for dealing with the fallout of this. If you need a case study of another MMO that had this happen check out the boss farming for Neverwinter (the online MMO).
A forum post discussing the issue. It was a big deal at the time for the players and economy.
https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/neverwinter-online-s-exploit-disaster-continues-1437576/
These exploits have been possible since head start allowing exploiters to easily farm and sell high level drops from bosses. Most of these have been fixed but the damage is already done with innocent players purchasing the flood of farmed items and incredibly rich exploiters hiding their loot among mules and friends.
Take up your noble ban hammer my lord.
honestly doubt theyâll ever do anything about that.
They should have not taken the loot.
PERIOD.
Delete their items.
As I donât watch streamers or associate with their ilk, I was unaware of it until the warning yesterday 4 hrs prior to the server restarts for the hotfix.
We can only hope that Blizzard recognizes the seriousness of a streamer publicizing this exploit, and punishes those who did with an appropriate severity.
If we come to the forums and just post about an exploit and how to do it, it incurs both forum and game bans, why should it be any different for streamers who have actually used the exploit as well as publicized it. Sounds like there should be a punishment for the exploit, and a further separate punishment for using the streaming services to publicize it.
Heâs a poster boy for Blizzard which is why the example was used to exempt him.
They didâŠthose items were deleted.