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

[Seranthor]

As I said, the people deserve there bans. I'm not against the banning. Blizzard just failed to communicate anything here.

What did you want them to say 'Hey guys, you know you shouldn't do XYZ because its an exploit'? Maybe you aren't aware, but silence IS a form of communication.

[therealbowser]

It was such an obvious exploit that the email should just have said "you know what you did buddy". Blizzard has pretty much always responded with bans to such exploiting, to think even for a second it wouldn't be punished is ridiculous.

I'm not defending the players that did it (any longer, now that I know the facts). I am just saying that Blizzard could have just said "it's an exploit, don't to it" and tons of players wouldn't have done it. Silence shouldn't be taken as affirmation that something is okay, but for a case like this, Blizzard knew fully well that the exploit was obviously an exploit and could have simply said so.

Again, it doesn't justify what the players did, but it would have been pretty easy for Blizzard to tell the people asking that it wasn't allowed. Why they didn't is a question I'd genuinely like to know the answer to.

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What did you want them to say 'Hey guys, you know you shouldn't do XYZ because its an exploit'? Maybe you aren't aware, but silence IS a form of communication.

Yeah, actually, that would have been nice if they had said it was an exploit instead of leaving it up to imagination. Silence as a form of communication implies nothing. Often times, it means they don't care; i.e., that they aren't going to punish players in this case regardless of whether or not it is allowed.

I think they should have known better (again, now that I know the facts) but given how easily Blizzard could have responded, that they didn't is ridiculous.

[arcaneshot]

It's easy to point fingers at players for abusing a system that they think may or may not be working as intended. It's absolutely insane that Blizzard didn't respond and hasn't responded. Days before the bans came in, people were bombarding Blizzard with tweets telling them of the bug, and if they were allowed to do it or not. They were met with complete silence as they watched streamers for hours, and hours use this exact same bug and Blizzard still chose to be silent on the matter. It seems as though the team is preferring inaction rather than action. I believe most of the bans could've been avoided if the team was more communicative.

People are bending over backwards trying to spin this into Blizzard's fault.

This is a failure of peoples' consciences.

Remember, these are the same streamers that went around actively encouraging their viewers to do this.

[Gaidax]

https://youtu.be/fdSkV-X2icc?t=556

I am not Preach fan, but this IS how this should be taken and not this usual meme parade we have going on here.

You fucked up, you know what you did, so take it like a bro and move on. But nooo we have to have these derpy threads filled with tears and rage about how big bad Blizz punished innocent, white as snow saints here.

[Free]

Ya but that's just expecting too much out of people. The age of personal responsibility is dead sadly.

There never was an age of personality responsibility

draft dodgers existed before you were born

[Seranthor]

I'm not defending the players that did it (any longer, now that I know the facts). I am just saying that Blizzard could have just said "it's an exploit, don't to it" and tons of players wouldn't have done it. Silence shouldn't be taken as affirmation that something is okay, but for a case like this, Blizzard knew fully well that the exploit was obviously an exploit and could have simply said so.

Again, it doesn't justify what the players did, but it would have been pretty easy for Blizzard to tell the people asking that it wasn't allowed. Why they didn't is a question I'd genuinely like to know the answer to.

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Yeah, actually, that would have been nice if they had said it was an exploit instead of leaving it up to imagination. Silence as a form of communication implies nothing. Often times, it means they don't care; i.e., that they aren't going to punish players in this case regardless of whether or not it is allowed.

I think they should have known better (again, now that I know the facts) but given how easily Blizzard could have responded, that they didn't is ridiculous.

Folks knew it was wrong, they did it anyway, fuck them. The only wrong that Blizzard did was not permabanning those accounts.

[Very Tired]

I'm not defending the players that did it (any longer, now that I know the facts). I am just saying that Blizzard could have just said "it's an exploit, don't to it" and tons of players wouldn't have done it. Silence shouldn't be taken as affirmation that something is okay, but for a case like this, Blizzard knew fully well that the exploit was obviously an exploit and could have simply said so.

Again, it doesn't justify what the players did, but it would have been pretty easy for Blizzard to tell the people asking that it wasn't allowed. Why they didn't is a question I'd genuinely like to know the answer to.

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Yeah, actually, that would have been nice if they had said it was an exploit instead of leaving it up to imagination. Silence as a form of communication implies nothing. Often times, it means they don't care; i.e., that they aren't going to punish players in this case regardless of whether or not it is allowed.

I think they should have known better (again, now that I know the facts) but given how easily Blizzard could have responded, that they didn't is ridiculous.

Saying Blizz should have told us it was an exploit implies that it wasn't extremely obvious in the first place. And it was obvious to anyone with half a brain. We're not entitled to hand holding from Blizzard for every single bug in there game. I'm not sure where people are getting that idea other than the mental gymnastics people are doing to anything to convince themselves that Blizzard = bad.

[tangers58]

Acitivion put it in live like that, and completely ignored it when players asked if it was an exploit. Activision has repeatedly nerfed leveling xp to sell more of their pay to win boosts. It takes a special kind of stupid to try and defend Activision at this point

[Gaidax]

Acitivion put it in live like that, and completely ignored it when players asked if it was an exploit. Activision has repeatedly nerfed leveling xp to sell more of their pay to win boosts. It takes a special kind of stupid to try and defend Activision at this point

Paranoid much? It's a bloody exploit and if your evil mastermind Activision would want to sell more boosts, it would have quadrupled XP requirement to get to 110.

You can level pretty damn fast nowadays, so I am not even sure what you are talking about.

[therealbowser]

Folks knew it was wrong, they did it anyway, fuck them. The only wrong that Blizzard did was not permabanning those accounts.

Irrelevant to my response, but thanks anyways, friend. You're welcome to hate on them all you like, but that's not the topic I was responding to and frankly, I really don't care how strongly you hate them.

Point is that Blizzard could have easily communicated, and chose not to. Not that they shouldn't have been punished, which I have already said I agree with.

[Nalorakk]

Given that +300% experience potions used to exist, yes, a lot of people assumed this wasn't an exploit. For Blizzard to royally fuck up on something to this degree (weeks after 8.1 was released), and with players bombarding blizzard with tweets asking if it is an exploit or not, it's totally reasonable to assume they are stackable by intention.

I didn't use this as I didn't want to spend my tokens on them, but I would have if I felt otherwise. And I am extremely cautious to avoid things that might feel like an exploit. This is hardly the first time there has been a buff that is stackable; it's not unreasonable to think this would be the same in the least.

It's a royal fuck up on Blizzard's behalf, and I am amazed they had the gall to actually suspend players over it. This is Blizzard's fault, not the players, and this is rarely something I'll say in cases like these.

The potions could not be stacked by normal means. You had to split them into stacks of one and drink them individually. Trying to drink more than one from a stack wasn't possible.

The 300% potion was also removed and Blizzard gave a reason for it.

And even if someone was totally ignorant to this, and somehow thought they weren't exploiting, so what? They still exploited.

[endersblade]

Witch hunters, the lot of you.

YOU are the reason nobody has fun anymore, I hope you know that.

[shadowmatrix]

The potion has no bufftimer at all for like 3 months now. Not the players fault if you accidentally stack them.
Of course this was a known bug too and they did it on purpose but blizzard is partly to blame here.

Nope, using several potions the normal way only extends the timer.

[thottstation]

Can somone remind me why Swifty's ban was reversed?

It's been a long time. I forget.

[therealbowser]

Saying Blizz should have told us it was an exploit implies that it wasn't extremely obvious in the first place. And it was obvious to anyone with half a brain. We're not entitled to hand holding from Blizzard for every single bug in there game. I'm not sure where people are getting that idea other than the mental gymnastics people are doing to anything to convince themselves that Blizzard = bad.

You're arguing as if I am trying to justify the exploit or saying that people shouldn't have been banned. I'm not. I'm saying that Blizzard could have communicated, and it would have prevented a lot of players from thinking silence meant Blizzard didn't really care, and led to a lot fewer suspensions.

If it was 'super obvious', then Blizzard should have been able to respond quickly instead of having a long discussion on how to handle it before acting on it. I agree that it was 'super obvious', and for that reason Blizzard shouldn't have needed to waste time deliberating before outright saying it was an exploit. The only possibilities is that Blizzard (or at least part of their team) was undecided on it at first, or that they didn't care, couldn't be bothered, or simply screwed up by not responding on something that was easy to respond to.

The part about 'hand-holding' is especially cute though, because the bug shouldn't have made it live to begin with. That is another major screw up on Blizzard's part and I hope this situation leads them to hiring a professional testing team for future beta/PTR content, as the amount of bugs in Battle for Azeroth as been astronomical.

[Ozyorkbourne]

I believe most of the bans could've been avoided if the team was more communicative.

No one did this by accident, especially given that since they cost medals you had to mail them to the alts which makes them stack when looted. For each ban, there's one person to blame - the player who exploited. That's what it was, not a bug or a mistake, it was a clear cut exploit. Add in how few people use mmo-champion, reddit and the twitter compared to the amount of players, their communication doesn't have the unending reach you seem to think it does.

Take responsibility and own up to your actions. You are the top of the ladder in regard to your choices. Doesn't matter if you did 2 levels in 30 seconds or multiple characters 1-120, each person who used this very intentional exploit deserves the suspension they get and Blizzard's share in the blame is minimal.

Their communication is poor, that isn't in dispute. Said poor communication isn't responsible for players exploiting.

[FelPlague]

Good thing they didnt bother to call anyone else or idno tweet about it.

Its honestly quite sad seeing people here place full blame on the people using the pots rather than blizzard who created the bug in the first place and didn't bother to fix or at least tweet something about it even tho they KNEW it was a thing for days at least.
One of the least harmful exploits that didn't give any advantage/ruined economy etc. yet people got banned for up to a month, but hey, method can abuse transfers and ruin the economies of multiple servers and that's perfectly fine because they bring in the viewers/potential subs.

And saying it was an obvious exploit isn't exactly right, it could have gone both ways if you think about it, i could see stacking the pot being a thing that blizzard added as an incentive for people to do the shitty invasions but they were bugged and only worked in 1 stacks. Its not like its easy to gather enough of those tokens to buy the pots in those quantities anyway.

They called him after they fixed the bug.

[Seranthor]

Irrelevant to my response, but thanks anyways, friend. You're welcome to hate on them all you like, but that's not the topic I was responding to and frankly, I really don't care how strongly you hate them.

Point is that Blizzard could have easily communicated, and chose not to. Not that they shouldn't have been punished, which I have already said I agree with.

Blizzard DID communicate, they just didn't do it in the way that YOU believe they should have.

[FelPlague]

I am not Preach fan, but this IS how this should be taken and not this usual meme parade we have going on here.

You fucked up, you know what you did, so take it like a bro and move on. But nooo we have to have these derpy threads filled with tears and rage about how big bad Blizz punished innocent, white as snow saints here.

if you watch the full vid he really is sad he did it and regrets it, he had a lapse in judgment and doesent care about the ban, but how he hurt his connection with blizz, he was willing to die by the sword and be the example if it meant they kept on good terms, but was punished as everyone else.

[therealbowser]

The potions could not be stacked by normal means. You had to split them into stacks of one and drink them individually. Trying to drink more than one from a stack wasn't possible.

The 300% potion was also removed and Blizzard gave a reason for it.

And even if someone was totally ignorant to this, and somehow thought they weren't exploiting, so what? They still exploited.

Actually I don't think Blizzard ever gave a reason why the 300% experience potions were removed. It was just implied (obviously) that they removed it since they wanted to make leveling, well, slower and more tedious. If I'm wrong I'd love to see this as it's something I've wondered about in the past.

Either way, I have already elaborated previously that I didn't realize how the exploit was handled and now that I do, I agree that the suspensions were correctly placed, however, Blizzard still had a communication failure that could have potentially avoided a lot of the suspensions tossed about.