This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
There's nothing illegal about exploiting a loophole. It's Blizz's mistake, why should the players pay for it? Take away the gear earned dishonestly, but Blizz shouldn't ban paying customers because of their own mistakes.
Good for them to speak up about it, shame on them for knowing it would be an exploit and still using. I could understand if it was a random, casual person who doesn't read this or any other WoW site making an honest mistake... but this is Paragon. No excuses and they owned up to it. Shows over folks, lets move on and let it go.
The way I see it, Blizzard published the code in a way so that things like that can be done. If that's the case then this is a feature, not a bug. Now that my trolling has been fulfilled for this post, I can now continue on to the real post.It's a bug, plain and simple. The patch notes said how this was supposed to work and if no one in the guilds reported it then they are at fault. Now if they reported it, then that's a totally different matter. Once a bug has been reported it is now on the developers to decide if it's a bug or a feature. Ignoring the fact that something is broken makes it no longer a bug and it is totally on the developers to repair something that is broken like that, especially if they are planning on banning accounts because of the issue. The simplest response would be:
it was well deserved, and if anything, an 8-day ban is actually a slap in the wrist.I'd consider a higher one but whatever, its not up to me.
Kudos to Paragon for manning up and taking responsibility for their actions. Much respect for that.
Competition often brings out the worst in people. This story proves it. Hopefully the ban sticks and blizzard doesn't go soft, the way celebrities and pro athletes can get away with more than the average citizen.
Exploit the system, take a suspension. I'm surprised people continue to fall into this trap over and over. Ensidia last time, Paragon and Method this time.Stop doing the dumb thing, folks.
8 days is enough to guarantee that they won't hit world first heroic deathwing, which is what they were cheating so hard to get in the first place.
If they knowingly exploited it this time, it's only a matter of time before they do it again. How many exploits went unbanned/unnoticed and got them to the top?
Honestly? While the 8 day ban is fine for the short term as punishment for the exploit, there's also the issue that these top guilds colluded to prevent said exploit from being reported while in the PTR. For that, the 8 day ban is not sufficient. I propose an additional penalty for them: A lifetime ban from the PTR and future betas to ensure they can't do this collusion again. These top guilds are given preferential treatment for the sake of data gathering but are using it to get an additional edge and to find and secret away exploits to use on live. Maybe when they realize that using an exploit can have long term consequences will they realize it's not worth the effort to keep it secret.As for Paragon's statement, yes, they handled being caught with more class than most (Ensidia's exploit on the LK fight and their stamping of feet response to being suspended springs to mind), but they're not sorry they cheated, they're sorry they got caught. Honestly, if they felt so bad about cheating in the first place, they would not have colluded to keep the exploit a secret. If the bug wasn't caught, not only would they not have reported it, but they would still be using it. So yes, classy, but a classy token apology.
8 days wasn't long enough and Blizzard need to stop kowtowing to these 'top' guilds. How often have they done this? How many other players, doing the right thing, have ben pipped for firsts and progression because of these? How many other Guilds have equally been abusing these loopholes and not getting caught?The unbalance it creates in the game is amazing. I have no problem in rewarding hard work, but you know there's issues when a very top percentile of Guilds manage to keep on streaking ahead and the general populace can't even get close. Should've been a month and knocked them out of the equation all together!
Should have been longer, but at least Blizzard took some kind of action.
Doesn't seem like enough, personally. Using an exploit once (even just to "check it out") is worth a slap on the wrist, but several high-profile groups abusing it multiple times? That's a conspiracy to systematically commit abuse.