I admit to testing this to see if it was accurate, blizzard suspends based on abuse all the time, the xp potion abuse was 2 days for low use, and 30 for high use.
If the game told you that solo tanking should be more difficult AND IT WASNT, Yes, people should have been suspended, not NOTHING indicated that solo tanking wasn’t a viable option or intended. EVERYTHING indicates that gaining the same xp as a 5 man while 10m is wrong, and an exploit. Just to indicate how OBVIOUS this was compared to vanilla, I’m gaining 13xp per mob vs 40xp in a 10m raid. I was literally cut to a THIRD.
It was half of the regular 5 man. Original was a 3rd of that, we get it, but nobody running the dungeons knew that. If you tell me you knew on launch what the xp was, you’re full of it.
You’re aware that everything is heavily documented and any changes are noted right? What patch was it that they reduced xp in raids by 300%, none of them? Right, also private servers with near perfect replication of classic have existed for 10+ years. We knew at launch what xp was SUPPOSED to be, NO ONE IS FULL OF IT FOR KNOWING THIS. You are just IGNORANT.
The XP potion bug required using a specific item in an unusual way. In no real situation would anyone buy a stack of potions, divide the stacks among different slots in an inventory, and chug all of them for a buff that lasts an hour and does not stack beyond an hour.
Discovering the bug could happen during legitimate play for sure. Taking advantage of it requires doing something in a way that was not at all intentional, and provided clear feedback that something was wrong in the form of duplicate buffs. Both methodology and intent of exploitation are obvious.
This is literally doing dungeons in a way that the game supports. Is it unusual to be running 5-player dungeons with 10-man groups? Certainly. That is also a design decision that they deliberately brought back with Classic. The fact that it gave good XP was indeed a bug, but nothing about methodology implies exploitation. You can only argue intent - and even then, if Classic is all about the community like so many people says it is, then it seems like a no-brainer to me that people would want to be packing their groups and guilds full and goofing off in dungeons.
And I still have barely touched on the fact that XP/h may have been advantageous here, but we’re still not even coming remotely close to the same universe of efficiency that the XP potion bug provided, let alone its accessibility.
You are sadly mistaken, how strong an exploit is shouldn’t have bearing on whether or not it is an exploit. How strong an exploit is has bearing on HOW STRONG THE PENALTY FOR DOING IT IS. You will never be able to argue that people thought that 10 manning dungeons was better than 5 manning them, because for the last FIFTEEN YEARS this has NEVER been the case. Claiming that people are ignorant because it’s classic, people would have been spamming for 10m dungeons non stop, they weren’t. The large majority of people didn’t know this existed, only the people that had beta did and they reported it, and it didn’t get fixed. BfA 2.0 QA team here, you cannot argue that this could have been better during vanilla and people didn’t know. The amount of information about vanilla is so excessive that they literally 34 manned onyxia, and more than half the raid was dead when it died. ALL INFO ABOUT CLASSIC HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR YEARS. Claiming IGNORANCE isn’t an excuse for exploiting.
There’s a reason no one 10-manned dungeons back then even though you could bring that many people. There was a steep XP dropoff. This is 100% a bug and I can’t believe people are trying to pretend this is how it worked back then.
People are able to instantly and repeatedly swap layers that allow them to farm rep mobs incredibly fast + level up AOE style incredibly fast + farm nodes over and over.
I even said a few posts ago that I highly doubt this was in Vanilla, in response to someone else who was asking if they were certain it wasn’t. I have no doubt this wasn’t in Vanilla - we would have known even during the stone-ages of this game because looking to expedite leveling was one of the main goals of the community and so many resources pertaining to it came out.
So once again I pose the question - at what point does the transition between “most efficient” and “clearly an exploit” occur? At what point should people be wary of doing content in a way the game actively supports for fear of their perfectly legitimate gameplay being classed as an exploit and they get punished? That’s why I brought up the Za’qul example - there was nothing illegitimate about what they did other than it deviates from the norm. Yet, it was clearly unintended and the fight was adjusted to compensate. That’s exactly what’s happening here - the only blunder was that Blizzard didn’t fix this before it mattered despite being known since Beta and I think we all agree that this should absolutely have been dealt with sooner. But it stops there, players shouldn’t be blamed here.
I could be wrong as I didn’t do this, but from all I’ve seen this “exploit” was the result of some faulty math. Pretty sure you were still getting less XP per kill than under normal circumstances which even by your definition of this exploit fits the criteria of getting less XP in a raid. The only catch was that the factor by which it was reduced wasn’t substantial enough to not have it be the most efficient source of XP/h.
Before the hotfix, RFC, level 11, 10 priests. 30xp per mob, 15xp bonus group exp.
After the hotfix, RFC, level 12, 10 priests, 30xp per mob, 15xp raid penalty.
First case, 45xp, second case 15xp, Literally 3x xp.
5 Man groups, 60xp per mob, 15xp group bonus. 75x5 = 375xp for the group. 1x speed.
7 Man groups, 43xp per mob, 15xp group bonus. 68x7 = 476xp for the group. 7/5ths speed. 666xp for the same time as a 5 man.
10 man groups, 30xp per mob, 15xp group bonus. 45x10 = 450xp for the group. 2x speed. 900xp for the same time as a 5 man.
Take into consideration that people were bringing dps as the extra people, and it is ridiculously more lucrative. 375 vs 900, it’s obviously an exploit. If you found a method on retail to level 3x faster doing the same content with more people that makes it EASIER, you know for a fact it would be considered an exploit, don’t compare this to za’qul, it’s not a fair comparison.