The XP potion drama is a byproduct of Blizzard's inability to communicate properly

[Thetruth1400]

Anyone who thinks that a bug that allowed potions to stack to upwards of 700% bonus exp "may be working as intended" is either lying or stupid.

"But they could have communicated better!" Maybe, but don't kid yourself into thinking that anyone seriously thought this bug/exploit was okay to use.

This, 100%. "Hmm, if I just separate these potions I can stack them. That's clearly intended!"

Yes, Blizzard communicated poorly (probably because they fired a lot of their community staff.) but it was clearly a bug, and the people that abused it deserve what they got. Just do your time and accept that, as of now, they're not rolling those characters back too and that you abused a bug but come out ahead at the end of the day.

[vashe9]

The people banned deserved it because of their stupidity. It takes a few hours to get from 110 to 120 in a "legit" way... they got banned for leveling a stupid alt they'll probably never play.

[Toby451]

Lore was always a useless piece of shit going back to his Maintankadin/Tankspot days. The fact Activision jettisoned 800 people and that waste of life wasn't one of them tells you all you need to know about the state of that company

.

I dont usually comment on posts but this is just so far beyond stupid I couldn't help myself. You don't have to like the guy but calling him a waste of life and useless piece of shit is laughably ignorant.


And if hes a 'waste of life', I wonder what that says about you. Posting away on MMO champion about how much you hate a guy you have never even met in person because of something you believe he may, or may not, actually be doing at Blizzard.

[pinelakias]

More likely, it was the result of bad/slow "leveling" methods. I got a 1month sub just to level fast. Now I got my ban and I'm happy since I won't rejoin again for BFA and IM gonna have 2 characters at level 120 to move to 60 (dreams never die). A lot of people already knew it was a great exploit, only a few cared enough not to do it. I know for sure if the exploit was still active after my ban period was over, I would do it all over again :P

[Kazuchika]

I dont usually comment on posts but this is just so far beyond stupid I couldn't help myself. You don't have to like the guy but calling him a waste of life and useless piece of shit is laughably ignorant.


And if hes a 'waste of life', I wonder what that says about you. Posting away on MMO champion about how much you hate a guy you have never even met in person because of something you believe he may, or may not, actually be doing at Blizzard.

Hi Josh! Glad you could take time out of your busy schedule of calling players assholes, doing bad GTA V RP and cosplaying as a homeless person to comment on my post!

It's good though that you don't usually comment on posts because honestly no one cares about you or your opinions.

[pinelakias]

i believe situations like this irl would be surrounded by comments like "natural selection at its finest". If it smells of exploit and seems stupid, dont do it

Why wouldn't someone do it? Leveling is horribly awful nowadays. BfA is a pretty "empty" expansion. Just do the reasonable thing. Re-subscribe for a month, rush to 120, get another alt to 120 with the exploit and then get your ban and return for the next expansion :P

[Garymorilix]

Well you could level even faster pre-7.3.5 and that wasn't considered an exploit.

So what does this have to do with anything? It's still an exploit that is a bannable offense. Much defense such wow.

This exploit didnt effect other Players/the Economy. You got your chars faster to max, that's it. And since Blizzard didnt responded for days it looked Like they didnt Care too much.
The couldron Bug e.g. had a huge Impact on the Economy and resulted in no bans.

Alrite, you are completely and utterly wrong but here I'm gonna mention a few parts it has an effect on: leveling enchants (pretty expensive), heirlooms, gold boosters, 60 eur character boosts, wow tokens. These all effect the in-game economy whether you like them or not. Don't be a hypocrite.

But I guess you think that gold doesn't circulate and every single player only farms mobs for gold. And in the end, when you see that shit costs 4 times as much even tho you don't make more gold, you would feel it too.

Coming to this a bit late, so forgive me if this has been said.

First things first, I agree with you 100%. It was obviously a bug and not intended and people should be banned for it, though I do understand the points of this not really hurting anyone. This exact same bug occurred when the new Darkmoon Firewater was introduced, splitting stacks gave you a stacking size increase and you could throw on a tauren illusion and have a mammoth nearly the size of stormwind, or mount on some drakes and have a wing span larger than stormwind. Anyone feel free to check youtube, there are some really funny videos of it.

That being said, as a complete aside of player culpability, Preach does have a point in that Blizz does have a responsibility to not only communicate with people but also to enforce their rules in as unbiased manner as possible. I can't comment on Preach's statements that a guildy of his abused it more than him and did not receive a ban, but I can confirm this example of weird and unfair application of bans. Of the people I know who abused the bug one friend had every race at 110, minus Zandalari, Kul Tiran and Highmountain Tauren. He levelled every other race to 120 using the potions and multi-clienting his other accounts through island expeditions and some dungeons with pugs. He was not banned, however everyone else who levelled 2-5 characters from 110 to 120 were banned from 3 days to 15 days. None of them streamed so this couldn't affect their ban time.

In banning people Blizz should ban everyone who abused the bug fairly but the bans themselves and the ban lengths are haphazard and seemingly random. As if it was done by an algorithm written by an intern with a hangover or something.

The other part is that Blizz took days to fix it and never answered any of the hundreds of people asking about it on twitter and various forums. Given this was happening at literal prime time for Blizz they could have had a warning posted in minutes warning people off and the problem would never have occurred. As it was people were sharing how the bug was done on forums, in game chat, and in party chat when a pug ran into someone dinging so fast. It caused a massive snowball effect needlessly. The same bug only with size was fixed in hours, and nowhere near the amount of people

BFA has had not only more bugs, but far more impactful bugs than any expansion by a large margin. 8.1.5 destroyed entire server economies with the tools of the trade bugs, tens of thousands of potions, flasks and mats flooding servers. People who have enough consumables for the entire expansion and then some sitting in the bank, and yet people who abused these weren't banned even though they had a far larger impact on the community as a whole.

Blizzards actions aren't great with this, probably the worst I've ever seen. Hard not to be jaded and see the profit benefits of large resubbs, though I think it's backfired somewhat given so many people who've posted they are moving to other games over this. Some of those people are full of shit of course, but I do know several people who've unsubbed and moved on over this.

Really not a good day/week/month/expansion for wow and blizz in many ways, its a bit sad.

Blizzard does NOT need to make any big statement about any exploit ever. The stuff you had to do was pretty obviously an exploit. Blizzards policy is this since the inception: you abuse an exploit you're banned. You are the one who complicates this not them.

I don't care how much you like Preach or what truth he has in the matter, when his basic stance is WRONG and therefore his whole argument doesn't matter. "But muuuum, Timmy did that thing too and he didn't get punished" Who the hell cares really. When you simply can't own up to your failure you don't deserve sympathy. Why would you, you literally cheated and exploited the game.

As for Blizzard's communication: They still don't have to. You can call their communication bad or whatever regarding other subjects, yet you CANNOT treat them the same. If blizzard fails at communicating that Zandalari can't be warlocks it has ZERO RELEVANCE to whether people should be banned for an obvious exploit or not. Which they should, they did, and MY OPINION is that they should get a roll-back on those characters too BUT not get back their honor tokens. Simple.

People being like "I got banned for X days for exploiting, this game sucks anyway, I'ma play apex instead" then they come back after the X days expired. Hypocrites got caught red handed and acting up like an allergy. Do you honestly think the game will die because people got banned for EXPLOITING IT? WoW. The delusions are real man.

A professional community manager in the making here.

In your dream world cheaters/hackers/exploiters don't get banned for their wrongdoings, and also communism works somehow too I guess.

[Theoris]

While I'm not trying to downplay the lack of communication on Blizzard's part in this (goodness knows there's been a lack of it in BfA), it's still hard to sympathize with the people who got banned; agreeing to not exploit any bugs is in the ToS, after all.

Still, no level rollbacks and fresh 110s characters get to keep their heritage armors, so it looks like they get off easy.

[sam86]

People who got banned knew very well what they did. I am honestly shocked there are people defending this shit even.

let's make it more clear, if u are standing at a bus station, i walk nearby, i find a 100$ bill, i ask if it urs, u look at me and refuse to answer, and a video cam recorded that, then i find another 100$, and another, and each time i find a new bill, i ask u, and u look silent and refuse to answer
then next day u go to police station and ask i go to jail for taking money that isn't my own because it was 'urs' even if u refused to say a single word AND there is recorded footage from city surveillance that show u clearly 100% silent refusing to answer me every single time i ask if that bill is urs or not, what u think the cop would do? at best they will ask i return it only, at worst they may even refuse to acknowledge ur request in first place
Blizz was asked officially and publicly and refused to answer for 1.5 day about this bug, even I if i was playing if i know ppl ASKED blizzard and blizzard didn't answer i'd use it because how the f8ck it should be a bug that we shouldn't use, if they already know since hours or even a day and still not saying anything ?

[niztheundead87]

let's make it more clear, if u are standing at a bus station, i walk nearby, i find a 100$ bill, i ask if it urs, u look at me and refuse to answer, and a video cam recorded that, then i find another 100$, and another, and each time i find a new bill, i ask u, and u look silent and refuse to answer
then next day u go to police station and ask i go to jail for taking money that isn't my own because it was 'urs' even if u refused to say a single word AND there is recorded footage from city surveillance that show u clearly 100% silent refusing to answer me every single time i ask if that bill is urs or not, what u think the cop would do? at best they will ask i return it only, at worst they may even refuse to acknowledge ur request in first place
Blizz was asked officially and publicly and refused to answer for 1.5 day about this bug, even I if i was playing if i know ppl ASKED blizzard and blizzard didn't answer i'd use it because how the f8ck it should be a bug that we shouldn't use, if they already know since hours or even a day and still not saying anything ?

what a bunch of nonsense

Years ago when mount hyjal was off limits i remember me and some other guy trying to get in to see what was in there.
After hours o trying we got in and then we got contacted by a gm that we shouldnt be there and we got off with a warning.
I knew it was all my responsibility and i deserved it.
In conclusion if you exploit a bug you deserve to be punished by it ( the pot has to be bough and be unstacked ,every person that did it knew it was wrong)

[sam86]

what a bunch of nonsense

Years ago when mount hyjal was off limits i remember me and some other guy trying to get in to see what was in there.
After hours o trying we got in and then we got contacted by a gm that we shouldnt be there and we got off with a warning.
I knew it was all my responsibility and i deserved it.
In conclusion if you exploit a bug you deserve to be punished by it ( the pot has to be bough and be unstacked ,every person that did it knew it was wrong)

did u ignore the part that ppl reported to blizz and asked and checked if it was bug or not and didn't get any answer or something ?
ur example is confirming me even more, that they contacted u immediately and still no ban, also exploit closed zones is not like buying a potion sold by vendor provided in-game

[Metta World Peace]

This XP potion exploit was competing against Blizzard's $60 leveling service.

The only thing they'll listen to is whatever is hurting their pocket books - such as this.

[Eleccybubb]

This XP potion exploit was competing against Blizzard's $60 leveling service.

The only thing they'll listen to is whatever is hurting their pocket books - such as this.

Exactly.

The boost is pathetically overpriced and the fact people are ok with shelling out more than some AAA games for it just shows the state of the gaming industry for companies like Blizzard.

[Rustykeyboard]

banning people for 3-31 days because someone lvled faster than intended is laughable. blizz should have made a post to why the lvling pot was disabled and then moved on. there are worse exploits in this expansion that has been done and those people havent been banned. this just damaged the game even more.

[Eleccybubb]

banning people for 3-31 days because someone lvled faster than intended is laughable. blizz should have made a post to why the lvling pot was disabled and then moved on. there are worse exploits in this expansion that has been done and those people havent been banned. this just damaged the game even more.

I mean the game is already damaged.

It is factually haemorrhaging subs at an alarming rate. The signs are there.

MTX being thrown on the store faster than ever and other games getting a noticeable population surge.

[Dahij]

This XP potion exploit was competing against Blizzard's $60 leveling service.

The only thing they'll listen to is whatever is hurting their pocket books - such as this.

Indeed, just like the people getting banned for exploiting Ivus, made Blizzard sell less epics from their store ...oh wait, they don't sell those.

They're banning people because they exploited a bug and they've been doing that since forever. Just suck it up and don't exploit bugs if you don't want to be banned.

[Traveler Voltin]

so if blizzard said something and it caused more people to do it then more people got banned how would you feel then?

[Eleccybubb]

Indeed, just like the people getting banned for exploiting Ivus, made Blizzard sell less epics from their store ...oh wait, they don't sell those.

They're banning people because they exploited a bug and they've been doing that since forever. Just suck it up and don't exploit bugs if you don't want to be banned.

I mean you can buy a WoW token and use the gold to buy BoEs/carries off the AH so pretty close.

[Kyanion]

It is factually haemorrhaging subs at an alarming rate. The signs are there.

FACTUALLY does not mean "the signs are there". You jump on people for making claims about subs and wanted proof yet you make a claim like this? Come on man, you are getting pulled too deep into this one and are grasping at a few straws there. Just because people are leaving WoW also does not mean they are jumping ship to other MMOs. No one has the true sub numbers of WoW except Blizz and they don't share that information anymore. Sure we can GUESS about what the population is at but none of us know for sure. We sure can't say it is 'factually hemorrhaging subs' though.

[munkeyinorbit]

The only way to solve this is if people can come up with a few times that blizzard communicated an exploit before handing out bans. Until then, shut up.