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

[FelPlague]

Everquest if I recall had only rolled back players or they just fixed the exploit without banning anyone. But we can only hope that with the next round of layoffs. That Activ will hire some new devs that actually pay attention before letting something go live.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/...banned.225763/

nah
"We are actively tracking and banning exploiters or dupers of items/plat and will continue to."
is pretty obvious they banned dupers and stuff

[tripleh]

Talking about back when Sony still owned it not daybreak games. I haven't played it since the switch.

[M1r4g3]

blizzard does not need to communicate exploits, nor should they, because making it mainstream knowlege while yes "stopping people from doing it" cause they know it is an exploit
will also inform people ABOUT IT meaning MORE will exploit it.
we have seen blizzard talk about these in the past, and people still do them, because people dont care.

if blizzard said "hey dont do this, you will get banned for awhile" you think people wouldnt have gone "oh shit, a month ban i can get like ALL of my chars to 120 in a day? yeah worth it!"

no, if you are too stupid to obviously know it was an exploit, you have now learned and will be more careful in the future.

no company would talk about an exploit in their system till AFTER it is fixed, because they do not want it being well known, because then people will just do that.. exploit it.


if you were too stupid to know "yeah 1000% increased exp is an obvious exploit" then that is your fault
if you did it and knew the risks, blizzard saying "hey dont do this" wont stop you
all them saying "dont do this" will inform EVERYONER about it, to the point more people will do it, yes it will stop some people from "accidently" doing it, but those who only used a few potions got no punishment, it is those who went above and beyond.

it is noy blizzards job to babysit us

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Wow i cant beleive im agreeing with zyky, but hyeah, it was very obvious, did people really think THIS

looked normal... yah naaah

its a FACT that less people would have exploited if blizzard said anything regarding it, 99% of the people that did it only did it because its harmless and thought blizzard didn't care that they got a char or two up to max level faster, saying more people would use it is actually retarded.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Thing is Blizz does not and should not have to say "do not use xxxx in this way", its reported, and they work on a fix, your assuming this was a quick fix, it make have not been hence the delay. So no there not incompetent. I am ofc giving players credit here for some form of intelligence, were not talking here about some obscure bug that's mega hard to reproduce, it's obvious, and the benefits it gives is blatantly a bug, you can't deflect blame here by says "but Blizz didn't hold my hand and tell me it was a not ok to use".

It would have been polite to say "yes we acknowledge the bug and are working on a fix" but there under no obligation to, and being honest I can't think of many developers that would do this outside of a hotfix release note when a patch or fix has been found.

People do not need a post to say "WARNING THIS IS A BUG" .... as Blizz have said many times, if the something seems to not be working as intended, reported it and carry on playing, you will not be banned for finding these things, but if you then go on and repeatedly use the bug you found like with these pots then that a different matter your exploiting a bug.

Its rather black and white really and people do just seem like to blame Blizz for everything even there own short sightedness.

We are all entitled to opinions. But my point stands. If they had just communicated a lot of the issue wouldn't exist. Sure some people would still have abused it but clearly that happened anyway. But if they had many people wouldn't have which is my point. Meaning less drama on a "return to WoW" weekend (great PR btw, just how Blizzard wanted it to go down I am sure) and fewer bans. I mean unless you think Blizzard wanted it to go down the way that it did it is hard to argue that they should have done it differently.

One tweet. We have discovered a bug. Many of you are reporting it on PUBLIC forums and PUBLICALLY in tweets. We advice people not to abuse these items in this manner. 20 second tweet. For none of this. But I guess you are right.. all of this.. was way way worth not posting that.

[KaPe]

its a FACT that less people would have exploited if blizzard said anything regarding it, 99% of the people that did it only did it because its harmless and thought blizzard didn't care that they got a char or two up to max level faster, saying more people would use it is actually retarded.

And how exactly do you know it's a fact? You must have some pretty solid evidence to type it in all caps. You could just as easily have people try it out of sheer curiosity - especially since others players would likely be saying "nah, they don't really ban for stuff like that." It's pretty obvious there's a lot of people doing the latter, including well known streamers. Plenty of players knew it was a gamble - it's just that the odds were usually in their favour. Not this time though.

If anything, it could lead to "everything is legit until there's a Twitter message" and turn "exploit early, exploit often" from meme into reality.

[FelPlague]

its a FACT that less people would have exploited if blizzard said anything regarding it, 99% of the people that did it only did it because its harmless and thought blizzard didn't care that they got a char or two up to max level faster, saying more people would use it is actually retarded.

How is it a fact?
because more people would have known about it, and many people like josh KNEW it was an exploit

99% of people did not do it "because it was harmless" josh is the perfect example, he knew it was an exploit, he just did it cause he could and didnt think they would crack down that hard on him

[Very Tired]

We are all entitled to opinions. But my point stands. If they had just communicated a lot of the issue wouldn't exist. Sure some people would still have abused it but clearly that happened anyway. But if they had many people wouldn't have which is my point. Meaning less drama on a "return to WoW" weekend (great PR btw, just how Blizzard wanted it to go down I am sure) and fewer bans. I mean unless you think Blizzard wanted it to go down the way that it did it is hard to argue that they should have done it differently.

One tweet. We have discovered a bug. Many of you are reporting it on PUBLIC forums and PUBLICALLY in tweets. We advice people not to abuse these items in this manner. 20 second tweet. For none of this. But I guess you are right.. all of this.. was way way worth not posting that.

I'd much rather they stay silent and lure out all the players who are actively looking for ways to cheat in the game for punishment. The entire thing could have just been a sting operation.

[Lazuli]

Obvious exploit is obvious.

Retards who used it deserve the ban, nothing more needs to be said.

[Soon-TM]

Blizzard's communication is terribad, more news at 11.

[Zyrosis]

Now, I'm By no means one of the big shots in any exploit community, i merely know of their existence and get linked some shit once in a blue moon, but ima list some shit for you, since u're obviously talking about something you have no knowledge about what so ever, but just imagine what some of the big bois could list you, cuz i know less than 1% of what they do.

Heirloom sword exploit in MoP - Infinite DPS, could crash everyone within 200 yards game and bring down the server, basically bladeflurry could procc the extra hit on the heirloom pvp one handed sword, creating infinite swings, personally one shot Shamans Heroic with the exploit for shits and giggles. literally had a 2 second kill timer. no bans
Xp rework in MoP - could summon lvl 1's to MoP and just kill mobs for them, we boosted 4 ppl at a time and got them from 1-90 in about 30-45 minutes. no bans.
Timeless isle XP exploit - No Bans
Timewalking dungeon Currency exploit - No bans
Timewalking Dungeon XP exploit - No Bans
Bugged Trinkets in PVP (too many to list) Cata, MoP, and even now in BFA - No Bans.
Disconnect macro glitch Wotlk (DK's) - No Bans
Insta kill by sending the player through the floor macro Wotlk (DK's) - No Bans
Duping exploit in Vanilla involving trading an item as u use a mailbox with a vendor within range - No bans.
Windwalker Earth wind and Fire Damage exploit increasing their dmg to 100% instead of 33% for the entire of BFA up untill last patch - No Bans
Rogue Exploit on Mythic jaina that was recently fixed, which made them take 0 Damage from the stacking debuffs for the entirety of Phase 3 - No Bans (even exorsus used it)
I could personally make the list a lot longer, but i think i got my point across at this point. just because u don't know any of the exploits cuz u are a random no body and no one wants to share them with you, does not mean they don't exist, and it doesn't mean that blizzard ban the people using them, they are inconsistent as all hell. and while i did not expect a ban from the xp pot exploit what so ever, u always run the risk whenever u use exploits, and ill take my ban a happy man, heres hoping they wont rollback my characters, but even if they do, i only missed out on doing a few hours of M+ key boosting, ill be unbanned before my mythic raid, i lost nothing of value. this is a major fuck up on blizzards behalf, they handled it poorly, left the exploit up for 3 days after it was posted on Public forums, and they are taking a huge monitary hit from all the bans, overall blizzard once again shows the world just how incompetent they have become. gg

I just have to say how much I just LOVE that the people who are so for this ban, calling all those who used it as scumbags, just keep ignoring comments like this. Where they show evidence of SOOOOOO many other exploits that never had any actions taken against the exploiters. Especially the very recent Alchemy Tools of the Trade item that destroyed the Flask economy. Never see one of those people ever respond to that point when brought up, because it doesn't fit their narrative that Blizz 100% bans for every exploit ever...

PS for anyone who replies to this (lol yea right, none of you reply to proof of exploits where no bans occurred) I did exploit the XP potion, was banned, and fully accept said ban. It's just hypocritical for Blizzard to ban the XP pot exploiters and not the Cauldron exploiters. One has far more damaging effects to other players.

[Ielenia]

Blizzard's communication is terribad, more news at 11.

How is "their communication is bad" in this instance? Blizzard has penalized players with bans and rollbacks when other exploits were found in the past, what could possibly make you think that this time they wouldn't penalize the players who were partaking (willing and intentionally, I might add) in something that was beyond obvious was an exploit?

[MrExcelion]

So this will probably get lost in this megathread, but I do think when it comes to Blizzard's side of this, I have to question a couple of things:

-The ban lengths were all over the place. Many parameters were checked and it seems to be completely random. Perhaps a different GM was issuing 31 day bans instead of 3 and 7?

-Why did it take over several days to fix when it was being reported and tweeted heavily? The Alchemy thing was fixed the same day. Several "split this into stacks and get tons of buffs" exploits have surfaced in the past, so I don't think QA would have too much issue with it. The only thing I can think of is that they had some priority crunch time project for another game that they assigned the QA to during that timeframe, but I'm taking a stab in the dark here.

Obviously we'll never know the answer to these questions since they don't publicly comment on their procedures on responding to exploits, but it was a bit of a head-scratcher. On the flip side with players, yeah they knew what they were doing, obvious exploit etc etc, but I'm genuinely curious what happened with those two things listed above.

[MoanaLisa]

Players knew this was an exploit. If they want to take the attitude that everything is OK until Blizzard says it isn't then there will be tears. Not much sympathy here.

[Funkyjunky]

people were bombarding Blizzard with tweets telling them of the bug, and if they were allowed to do it or not.

If you have to ask you probably shouldn't be doing it. Common sense.

[Xath]

lol, no they haven't. They suspended people for the WQ rep glitch, they suspended people for the ivus glitch and this is just recent things. If you are doing something that is obviously broken chances are action will be taken against your account. This ain't rocket science.

And they have ignored the flask exploit which is a much bigger deal and has wrecked server economies.

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How is it a fact?
because more people would have known about it, and many people like josh KNEW it was an exploit

99% of people did not do it "because it was harmless" josh is the perfect example, he knew it was an exploit, he just did it cause he could and didnt think they would crack down that hard on him

Because it was harmless unlike the cauldron exploit that they did nothing about.

[Tech614]

And they have ignored

But but but but! This other guy did a bad thing that makes the bad thing I did ok!

Nobody cares about this weak deflection.

[Magicon]

If I make a game, it is my fault if something doesn't work as intended. Also, many games gets more popular when they have some leaks in them. It kinda is advertisement for the game itself.
For example; when people heard you could walk under Stormwind, many people logged in and tried to do that, cuz they thought it was fun. Also, when you could bugjump walls, people logged in to try and do that, cuz it was fun. In MoP beta, when level 1 was the strongest and best level in the game, - people logged in, cuz it was fun.
But ofc stuff like this can't last forever. But giving the players that play your game a ban because Blizzard did something wrong...? They could have avoided bans for their own mistake and let the fun last for a week. Leaks in a game helps the game at times, especially in times like this, where the devs make the games boring and dull.

Now it is more like "FOUND FUN IN OUR GAME?! Let's REMOVE FUN!".

[Jtbrig7390]

The problem with "don't exploit the game" is that there's no list of what counts, and what happens. There can't be a list, because you never know what's going to come up.

Common sense tells you if something is a exploit or intended.

Do you really think stacking pots to get 700% XP and go from level 110-120 in 20mins is something that would be intended? If you do then you got other problems to deal with as well.

Don't abuse a exploit and you won't be banned, Its common sense on what is and isn't a bug.

[chazus]

Not the players fault if you accidentally stack them.

From what I understand, you could not "accidentally" stack them. There was a very specific procedure to do so. It's like saying you 'accidentally' drove your car into your neighbor's garage.

[BananaHandsB]

"I exploited a clear bug, but it's blizzards fault! I'm the victim! QQQQQQQQ"