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  1. #161
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    Quote Originally Posted by shamental View Post
    At the end of the day, no matter how much time have you invested in the game, no matter if you earn just 1 gold exploiting, no matter if you were "just trying out" the exploit. If you cheat you can get banned and you clicked "I accept" to terms of use, which include: (not the exact same words) "Blizzard can end your account for no reason, whenever they want to"
    Yes, they absolutely can ban your account for no reason whatsoever. But that would just be bad business. At the end of the day they want to keep as many subs as possible but they also want to get rid of people who make the game environment less fun (because when the game is less fun, other people leave).

    So the reality is Blizzard aren't interested in permanently mass banning everyone who has made a few gold from exploiting a bug. They are after the big fish. For the smaller fries, if they can give them enough of a fright to deter them from trying anything like that ever again, that is perfect.

    Which is not to say one should ever be complacent about these things. Making an example out of a few relatively minor transgressors is also an effective deterrent against others trying the same thing.

  2. #162
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    I've known plenty of people (myself included) who have "used" a bug and thought "huh, neat, that was cool" and then never did it again and didn't have any serious repercussions to our accounts. At worst I got a 1 day ban once.

    Then there are the people who exploited bugs (i.e. used them over and over again, not just for fun but to gain an advantage/items/money) and then cry afterwards that "they just did it once for fun".
    2014 Gamergate: "If you want games without hyper sexualized female characters and representation, then learn to code!"
    2023: "What's with all these massively successful games with ugly (realistic) women? How could this have happened?!"

  3. #163
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    Quote Originally Posted by kenlongjr View Post
    Myself - 100% nothing but a few disconnects, 100% banned
    Don't care if you believe me or not, but you're wrong.
    I absolutely believe that there are people out there who inadvertently triggered the bug and had absolutely no idea that it could even be used to exploit the game.

    I also believe that this could likely have resulted in a perma-ban being issued automatically by the system.

    If this is the case, especially based on the OP's story, you should get your account back if you appeal. If somehow you are genuinely innocent but they refuse to reinstate your account (and it is likely that this will happen to someone out there - or that some people simply won't have it in them to fight it enough) you have my sympathy

  4. #164
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    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    Exploiting, major or otherwise, is exploiting. Doing it for fun or because you're curious doesn't make it something else.
    I call bullshit on this. Humans are inherently curious and have been since the dawn of time. We didn't have to go to the moon but we did. Not just because we could, but because we were curious. Curiosity is a base part of human nature and denying that makes you no better than an animal.

    Defending Blizzard's retarded policies and unwarranted bannings also isn't doing you any favors. You cannot sit there and tell me that thirty thousand people.. THIRTY THOUSAND. Just think about that number for a moment. You cannot tell me that thirty thousand people ALL exploited this glitch to gain any sort of meaningful monetary gain or otherwise on purpose. Whenever a mass ban happens in any game there's always at least a handful of accounts that fall through the cracks and for a ban this size, that handful is considerably larger just as the number of unwarranted bans surely is. Don't be stupid.

  5. #165
    1) They probably did a ban on anybody who did as you described above. Get them out of the game now.
    2) They went back through the list (probably using complaints like yours as a basis) and restored anybody they couldn't find directly using this to exploit the game world.
    3) To avoid 1 in the future, don't do something just for kicks.

  6. #166
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    Quote Originally Posted by muchtoohigh View Post
    I wouldn't have bought another account after being treated that way.
    He did DC himself, Blizz can't know how or why he did it. Could be that his account was under investigation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Freeasacar View Post
    I call bullshit on this. Humans are inherently curious and have been since the dawn of time. We didn't have to go to the moon but we did. Not just because we could, but because we were curious. Curiosity is a base part of human nature and denying that makes you no better than an animal.

    Defending Blizzard's retarded policies and unwarranted bannings also isn't doing you any favors. You cannot sit there and tell me that thirty thousand people.. THIRTY THOUSAND. Just think about that number for a moment. You cannot tell me that thirty thousand people ALL exploited this glitch to gain any sort of meaningful monetary gain or otherwise on purpose. Whenever a mass ban happens in any game there's always at least a handful of accounts that fall through the cracks and for a ban this size, that handful is considerably larger just as the number of unwarranted bans surely is. Don't be stupid.
    Just because we are curious doesn't make it right, hence we have laws. Humans are violent and selfish creatures as well...without rules our world that we know now would not be around.

    Blizz was protecting it's playerbase...if they wrongfully bann 1 out of 10k people by accident than I'd say they have still done a good job.
    Last edited by mmoc6f961e454e; 2013-01-10 at 02:20 PM.

  7. #167
    Got a response from Blizzard

    Thank you for your follow-up contact. An additional review of the previously communicated action taken against the World of Warcraft account (USERNAME) on (battle.net email) has been completed. Unfortunately, we could not find anything you did wrong at all. Allthough we did look back a bit and saw that in 1993, you were playing Contra for the Nintendo Entertainment System and used the "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right b, a, start" code to gain extra lives. We find this to be a great disadvantage to other players and and economic catastrophe on the "coin-op" version.While this is not in direct violation of our policy, we already banned you so we're not going to go back and fix it. Therefore, the account action will not be reversed or amended.

  8. #168
    High Overlord Freeasacar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sarac View Post
    He did DC himself, Blizz can't know how or why he did it. Could be that his account was under investigation.



    Just because we are curious doesn't make it right, hence we have laws. Humans are violent and selfish creatures as well...without rules our world that we know now would not be around.

    Blizz was protecting it's playerbase...if they wrongfully bann 1 out of 10k people by accident than I'd say they have still done a good job.
    Violence and selfishness are done intentionally. Curiosity is done naturally and innocently. Don't lump them into the same category.

  9. #169
    Quote Originally Posted by Freeasacar View Post
    I call bullshit on this. Humans are inherently curious and have been since the dawn of time. We didn't have to go to the moon but we did. Not just because we could, but because we were curious. Curiosity is a base part of human nature and denying that makes you no better than an animal.

    Defending Blizzard's retarded policies and unwarranted bannings also isn't doing you any favors. You cannot sit there and tell me that thirty thousand people.. THIRTY THOUSAND. Just think about that number for a moment. You cannot tell me that thirty thousand people ALL exploited this glitch to gain any sort of meaningful monetary gain or otherwise on purpose. Whenever a mass ban happens in any game there's always at least a handful of accounts that fall through the cracks and for a ban this size, that handful is considerably larger just as the number of unwarranted bans surely is. Don't be stupid.
    if alians from mars clearly told nasa to NOT land on the moon. and nasa still did it. then the alliens are in there right to shoot nasa on sight.
    but ofc compairing the moon/univers to a video game in beyond me.

    ---------- Post added 2013-01-10 at 04:00 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Freeasacar View Post
    Violence and selfishness are done intentionally. Curiosity is done naturally and innocently. Don't lump them into the same category.
    curios or not. he broke the rules. there is a reason i'm not going to hack/exploit sites. and if i do its my own fault.

  10. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by loki504 View Post
    if alians from mars clearly told nasa to NOT land on the moon. and nasa still did it. then the alliens are in there right to shoot nasa on sight.

    curios or not. he broke the rules. there is a reason i'm not going to hack/exploit sites. and if i do its my own fault.
    Wow! We've had this rule breaking compared to murder, embezzlement, assault and now interstellar war! I wonder where the analogies can go next?

  11. #171
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    Quote Originally Posted by Freeasacar View Post
    Defending Blizzard's retarded policies and unwarranted bannings also isn't doing you any favors. You cannot sit there and tell me that thirty thousand people.. THIRTY THOUSAND. Just think about that number for a moment. You cannot tell me that thirty thousand people ALL exploited this glitch to gain any sort of meaningful monetary gain or otherwise on purpose.
    What this tells me is that ban process was automated. They ran a script on the server that checked everyone's account and executed bans automatically. And before you complain about 30K being a "big" number, consider that WoW has 10M subs. In that context 30K is small (0.3%).

    And yes, I do suspect that a large percentage of those bans were warranted, even though you are definitely going to get quite a lot of false positives from such a process.

    I would also not be surprised if that number was far bigger than what Blizzard were expecting, which likely would have strained their Customer Service team trying to rectify the false alarms. In the end though, it is the most expedient method of sorting the problem out. The thing is that the DMF is only out for a week. A lot of players who put in legitimate effort to make decks would have been counting on being able to do business, but all the cheaters have messed things up for them. The choice Blizzard had was to be slow and careful and hurt a bunch of honest players, or to be quick and brutal and hurt another group of players.

    No matter what they did, some people were going to be pissed off which really did put Blizzard in an unenviable position.

    At least this way it hit the real offenders hard, and this kind of action absolutely deters other would be exploiters, reducing the frequency with which similar events will occur in the future.

    Personally I reckon Blizzard made the right call given the situation - with the proviso that they manage to restore the accounts of those unfairly caught up in it all (eg the OP). For those who were negatively affected - yeah it sucks, but the real blame lies with the exploiters, not Blizzard.

  12. #172
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jess Day View Post
    Can't really judge anything from one source but if they'd banned people that got challenge mode gear on alts when it was bugged i'd be screwed as well. All you had to do was zone into a dungeon and they mailed you a full set of challenge mode gear. Doesn't matter if you had intentions to or not, zoning into a dungeon triggered it. A blanket banwave is a pretty stupid action regardless.
    In that case, yes, a blanket ban would be unreasonable. Zoning into a dungeon is something that millions of people do daily, and the vast majority of them would likely have never known that that bug was there until it happened.

    Doing something very specific to do with milling/vendoring/whatevering herbs and then DCing yourself is not something that millions of people will do every day, and therefore the people doing it are more likely to have done it due to hearing of the bug by word of mouth and deciding to try it themselves. That means that they intended to exploit, and deserve a ban.

  13. #173
    The Unstoppable Force Orange Joe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Part View Post
    In my case, I used it a few times, only the disconnect, not once did I even craft a single item in the last week or so. You know what Blizzards response was?

    "We have clear evidence that you used this to exploit the daily cooldown of certain profession items" Sometimes I honestly question what blizzard is doing.



    You even admit it so????????

  14. #174
    Some of the "analogies" are seriously flawed here.

    Some people say that it doesn't matter if you cheat for 1 cent or 1 million. Really? In the real world it does make a huge difference, and so does in Blizzard terms if you actually read it, permanent bans are given only in extreme cases, depending on the severity of the act. And the people who only DC themselves did not gain even that 1 cent(or copper). The bug to make you DC doesn't give you any advantages, you need to perform additional steps in order to actually exploit it to create dupe items.

    Really if people would care about consequences of exploiting, why not focus more on the real abusers.

    Quote Originally Posted by Idoru View Post
    The difference is that when I do something wrong, I don't whine about the punishment.
    So if you pee on the street and get thrown to jail for 3 years, you wouldn't whine at all? If everyone who broke some rule (most of these never gets noticed) in the game were given perma bans, there would be less than 10% of players left. And IRL the % would be even less.

  15. #175
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    Quote Originally Posted by impending doom View Post
    So if you pee on the street and get thrown to jail for 3 years, you wouldn't whine at all?
    If you knew the punishment for peeing on the street was three years in jail, then no. You suffer the consequences of your actions, which is something that many people seem unable to do.

  16. #176
    Dreadlord FeedsOnDevTears's Avatar
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    Let that be a lesson. You should've made your money by botting.

  17. #177
    Quote Originally Posted by impending doom View Post
    If everyone who broke some rule (most of these never gets noticed) in the game were given perma bans, there would be less than 10% of players left. And IRL the % would be even less.
    No, some players actually know how to act in a social setting and have at least perused over the ToS well enough to know what not to do. Stop assuming everyone plays with their time invested characters as haphazardly as you.

  18. #178
    Quote Originally Posted by Freeasacar View Post
    I call bullshit on this. Humans are inherently curious and have been since the dawn of time. We didn't have to go to the moon but we did. Not just because we could, but because we were curious. Curiosity is a base part of human nature and denying that makes you no better than an animal.

    Defending Blizzard's retarded policies and unwarranted bannings also isn't doing you any favors. You cannot sit there and tell me that thirty thousand people.. THIRTY THOUSAND. Just think about that number for a moment. You cannot tell me that thirty thousand people ALL exploited this glitch to gain any sort of meaningful monetary gain or otherwise on purpose. Whenever a mass ban happens in any game there's always at least a handful of accounts that fall through the cracks and for a ban this size, that handful is considerably larger just as the number of unwarranted bans surely is. Don't be stupid.
    (I'm going to note first that I don't agree that a permanent ban is necessarily warranted for all of those accounts, but for the people saying no punishment was needed at all, I have to disagree that Blizzard was unjustified for taking action.)

    Your analogy is silly. Going to the moon didn't break any laws (well, except maybe the laws of gravity at the time, LOL... ahem), and was done to better humanity through learning, which is why it was widely approved and celebrated. Clearly Blizzard did not approve nor celebrate the use of creating infinite herbs, whether for amusement or money, and in fact said not to do such things in the ToS people agreed to beforehand. Also, I highly doubt anyone learned anything from it besides "my friend/the forum post that told me about this was right!"... well, that, and that Blizzard really will ban you if you're bad.

    Saying you were curious is not ever a valid excuse to break a law. Every crime in the world would be excusable if that were the case. "I was just curious if I really could get home with a blood alcohol level of .3, I didn't think those people would still be awake and on the road with me at that hour!"

    Curiosity is natural and innocent - knowingly breaking a rule purely for fun or personal gain is not innocent in the slightest. If you know you're forbidden to do something, but do it anyway, it's intentional, and it's not curiosity anymore - it's mischief. Wondering what a view looks like from the top of a building under construction is curiosity. Pushing past the signs saying 'Do Not Enter' and crawling through a hole in the fence so you can climb it is mischief, no matter what you don't disturb and how pretty the view is.

    I can't tell you that thirty thousand people did this all for profit, but I can definitely tell you that not one of them who didn't report it actually thought they were doing something allowable. They may have thought that Blizzard would turn a blind eye or not notice, but I guarantee none of them thought that a method to create infinite herbs was legitimate or okay. That people like the OP only did it to test it, but not profit from it, shows that they knew it was morally wrong to use it, or else they would've gone to town with it. They knowingly dangled their toes over the yellow line hoping they were safe as long as they didn't put an entire foot over it, but this time they happened to be punished for it.

    And no, just because you think it's good clean fun doesn't mean it's harmless. You're essentially slapping Blizzard or any lawmaker in the face by thinking you're above the law because you can do things that you personally don't think effect anyone else, which just opens the door to doing more things that you think are in good fun, until stuff hits the fan. If you're going to do something irresponsibly, you know by its very nature that there are multiple outcomes, but still have to take responsibility for all of them. Just because no one knows doesn't mean a minor can legally get drunk in their own home and that they're guilt-free the one time the police or an ambulance is called. Poking the items in the 'do not touch' display case is all well and good until you break something. Even something simple that doesn't seem to have any unfavorable results can still go horribly wrong - being able to walk through walls to explore in WoW is all well and good, until you have to explain to the GM how your character is completely stuck, naked and upside-down on the spectral sandbox tiger on GM Island. Finding a way to transmog Thunderfury won't hurt anyone (and would be awesome!), until the one day you forget to take it off in town or an LFG and it spreads like wildfire. It's only a matter of time, and for these people, this was that time.

    Besides, Warcraft already has a red button in Ulduar that says you should not push it, exhaust your curiosity on that if you must.
    Last edited by Forumchibi; 2013-01-10 at 09:34 PM.

  19. #179
    Im going to pop back in and throw in the towel that my "unban" was a mistake on their part and I was rebanned only a short hour later. I even phone customer support who said the penalty is a little harsh and even put in his own note on the ticket to have the ban lifted. It was denied again for a 3rd time.

    Yes, i disconnected myself out of sheer boredom and "oh look cool i can mill herbs and DC myself" .. I didn't DC myself in order to find a way to dupe or take advantage. AND i am an inscriptionist.

    But again, exploiting is exploiting, many guilds and people have PURPOSEFULLY exploited with the intent in mind to gain an advantage. Mine was not. There is a difference.

    This is straight from blizzards website

    Bug Exploitation
    We have a top notch Quality Assurance team who work tirelessly to stamp out bugs in the World of Warcraft. However, they face a constant uphill struggle with a game as large and complex as World of Warcraft. Some bugs are minor and do not affect gameplay, but sometimes these bugs can be used to provide an unfair advantage to certain players or to negatively affect the service itself. Factors included in determining an appropriate penalty for knowing exploitation of a bug include:

    Whether or not the exploit is performed intentionally, maliciously, and/or repeatedly.

    If a player is found to have abused an exploit, they may:

    Be given a verbal warning if exploitation is unintentional and no attempt has been made to hide its occurrence. (I actually submitted a bug report AND tweet about it)
    Be temporarily suspended from the game.
    In extreme cases the account will be closed outright.

    =============


    Regardless what the white knights, a simple disconnect is NOT an extreme case. People have done far worse in this game and get 3 hour bans. I would even take a 72hr ban for causing a disconnect to myself. But permanent closure? gimmme a break

  20. #180
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    If I read correctly on certain exploiter website this dupe method wasn't just DCing yourself, it was involving a lot of steps that had to be done in very specific order to work.
    And if anyone got caught doing this - there is almost 0 chance of a person performing THIS EXACT SEQUENCE without intent. It's like one in a billion. So low it's irrelevant.
    So if they ran a script that caught people doing this - they KNEW bout this methid and tried it intentionally. Scale doesnt actually matter - when you rob a bank with a gun, you rob a bank with a gun, taking 1 dollar or a million doesn't matter

    Account closures for someone who only tried this without any monetary gain is bit harsh but it's a deterrent for others.
    If I knew that I'll only get 72h ban for botting/duping for my first offense - i'd abused the shit out of it, exploit out millions of gold, got banned for 3 days and be set.
    Game would be garbage if such system existed.

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