To those saying "It's Blizzard's fault there are exploits."

[Deleted]

More apt analogy: You hand me your remote control and say, "Hey buddy, give me $15 and I'll set you up to watch a movie on my cable" Then I take the remote and figure out a way to watch 4-5 movies instead of one.

And once again disregarding the rules part. Blizzard has terms of agreement. Let's say the cable company does aswell. Stating that watching a movie costs you 15 dollar. For this money, you are allowed to see 1 movie, you can watch that same movie over and over, in the timespan of one week. Let's say it's the 6th sense, a movie you can only see once due to the plot, and watching it more than once doesn't really get you anything. If, by some strange method you can get more movies out of that 15 dollar (let's say you don't watch the full length of the end credits, disconnect your cable, and get to pick a different movie) you are breaking the terms you agreed to, and therefor, as stated in the terms of agreement, there will be consequences. You get disconnected from your cable company for 8 days.

[Tekloth]

And I believe top guilds are also surprised because they didn't expect any punishment.

I'd say that the top guilds aren't surprised at all, they knew all too well the risk which they took when they used this exploit. Some were even prepared for consequences to follow these actions. Again, it was all about weighing the risk versus the gains, they knew the risk, but decided to act on their benefit to gain an even ground for the start of heroic progress when they saw other guilds use it as well.

[belfpala]

And once again disregarding the rules part. Blizzard has terms of agreement. Let's say the cable company does aswell. Stating that watching a movie costs you 15 dollar. For this money, you are allowed to see 1 movie, you can watch that same movie over and over, in the timespan of one week. Let's say it's the 6th sense, a movie you can only see once due to the plot, and watching it more than once doesn't really get you anything. If, by some strange method you can get more movies out of that 15 dollar (let's say you don't watch the full length of the end credits, disconnect your cable, and get to pick a different movie) you are breaking the terms you agreed to, and therefor, as stated in the terms of agreement, there will be consequences. You get disconnected from your cable company for 8 days.

And that's what I've been saying all along. What is an exploit? The game mechanics allow everything that was done.

Let's take a little time travel...

My name is Belfpala. I have always had a paladin as my main.

Back in TBC, I seal twisted. It was a bug. Yet it was mandatory for ret paladins to be remotely competitive. Nobody got banned.

At the beginning of WotLK, paladins and warriors double dipped on damage multiplying buffs. I knew it, I used it. Hello, Thaddius and Malygos. Nobody got banned.

Define exploit, please.

[Deleted]

IMO; any guild that exploited this bug is plainly put extremely stupid. I'm rather surprised about some comments on Paragons forum by their members.

I don't feel the guilds should end up in situations where they need to make a decision between using an exploit or not.

I mean, really? Really? You know it's an exploit, report it and don't use/abuse it.

And they keep complaining that "LFR gear isn't an upgrade". No, but some 4 sets with raidwide cooldowns are more useful than T12 4 sets. Plus the ability to quicker gear alts and offspecs for possible class stacking. Of course it wasn't just Paragon, a lot of guilds are apparently stupid enough to do it. You'd swear they just started playing yesterday and are unaware you should never ever use exploits. This was clearly not a case of "clever use of game mechanics".

If it was my call, I would award the level of nativity and stupidity with a 14 days ban.

[Deleted]

And that's what I've been saying all along. What is an exploit? The game mechanics allow everything that was done.

Let's take a little time travel...

My name is Belfpala. I have always had a paladin as my main.

Back in TBC, I seal twisted. It was a bug. Yet it was mandatory for ret paladins to be remotely competitive. Nobody got banned.

At the beginning of WotLK, paladins and warriors double dipped on damage multiplying buffs. I knew it, I used it. Hello, Thaddius and Malygos. Nobody got banned.

Define exploit, please.

You must be a master of selective reading..

Once again, just that you are capable of doing something, doesn't mean you are actually allowed to do said thing.
Just that you can rob a store, doesn't mean you are allowed to rob a store.
Just that you can walk over the street naked, doesn't mean you are allowed to do so.

Blizzard states that if you treat the game wrong, if you take misadvantage of bugs/exploits, there can be consequences.

An exploit is simply a loophole which makes someone using it get an advantage over someone else. And as you say yourself "Yet it was mandatory for ret paladins to be remotely competitive." or in other words, paladins needed it to get on par.

I think the type of advantage and the measures taken to get said advantage are what matters here, not the simple statement that X is an exploit and so is Y, so the same repercussions should apply.

[Soxoffender]

I used it *once*, got a huge total of items from that exploit : 1 (which I didn't even wear once).
I contacted a GM the following day about it.

I got banned regardless. Of course everyone knew this was an exploit, of course there's no point defending some people who clearly abused it like morons (19 runs? really? REALLY?), but there's no point in defending blizzard like white knights. they messed up horribly. And these bans are incredibly harsh. It's not just 3 days or 8 days. People have been waiting for this for months and are basically playing the game for no other reason.

Also, without going into "WoW is dead!" themes, let's be honest for a second - this was probably the last interesting PvE race for many guilds. I know a lot of guilds plan on stopping after Deathwing (ours included)

I'm working under the assumption that the bans are due to the scale and obviousness of the problem and are meant to serve as a warning to the wider WOW community (who wouldn't ordinarily know how to spot and take advantage of an exploit if it hit them in the face) that exploiting is not ok. Most people either don't know or really don't care all that much about the amount of stuff that top guilds do in the grey areas between exploiting and clever use of mechanics. They do care that some guild ranked 5 places below them in the realm list (that they routinely refer to as 'those scrubs') has got a suspiciously high amount of 384's though. The LFR exploit was being used on loads of servers by guilds of all abilities and despite what some people may say, I think that Blizzard care a lot more about that sort of thing than a small number of shady actions by the best performing PVE guilds. Bans didn't just go out to Paragon et al, even if that's who we've been talking about on the forums.

[Judge40]

And that's what I've been saying all along. What is an exploit? The game mechanics allow everything that was done.

Let's take a little time travel...

My name is Belfpala. I have always had a paladin as my main.

Back in TBC, I seal twisted. It was a bug. Yet it was mandatory for ret paladins to be remotely competitive. Nobody got banned.

At the beginning of WotLK, paladins and warriors double dipped on damage multiplying buffs. I knew it, I used it. Hello, Thaddius and Malygos. Nobody got banned.

Define exploit, please.

Technically speaking seal/totem twisting were exploits, however they did not really exploit any mechanics. They were doable under normal combat mechanics.
If Judgement suddenly started doing unexpectedly large damage, it is a bug however it would not be an exploit to use it - you have to use common sense.

Abusing the loot system to gain more loot is circumventing a mechanic that has been in place since the start of raiding.

There is a massive difference between changing your talents/rotation to take advantage of a double dip or other quirk like twisting and cheating the loot system.

Things like double dipping are often intended initially but certain encounters or mechanics added later make them better than intended - after which they are fixed.
I don't think anyone, however naive/ignorant could argue that the mechanic abuse used for the LFR exploit has ever an intended mechanic.

[Punisher069]

It was stated you can only get loot from a boss once a week. So getting loot from that same boss again clearly is against what Blizzard stated. Also if you read the Terms of Use and EULA it's clear you're not supposed to sue exploits to go around what rules blizzard has.

[Neteyes]

It's essentially duping, who the fuck wouldn't ban someone that was duping on an MMORPG? You'd be lucky if you only got away with temp bans.

[Deleted]

Is it Blizzard's fault that there are exploits?
Yes.

Does that mean it is okay to use said exploits?
No.

/thread.