LoD Guilds Exploits

Aplologies to Lynea, I know exactly what your trying to say and Im with you on every level, But posting things that isnt true like Valks can be slowed while quoting me applying I was lying, It sure made me thought you where just out to start an arguement on purpose with the quoting from earlier too, I misinterpreted that whole thing.
Again, Im sorry for that, I thought you were some kid who just wanted to piss me off intentionally.

Removing the stupid rage thread.

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Originally Posted by kataproof

It seems like everyother post contaims the phrase "missed the point" so let's go through the progression of the thread real quick. It went from a respectable and generalized post about the mass exploit of lod and what should / will be done to the offenders to the guilds who exploit it trying to cover their asses vs. the guilds who to it properly to warmane standards to specific people calling each there ******ed because they can't quite grasp the point that yes, the server has bugs and yes, the bugs require work arounds to get the boss down. There is a difference between a work around to a bug that makes the boss unkillable and an unnecessary exploit of a bug to make the bosses easier because the work arounds are to hard for some people. There are a few guilds that have not used any frowned upon exploits on LK, I won't name them. Saying that if they ban guilds for using cyclone and JoJ they will end up banning the entire server is completely ludicrous, as I said above there are a few of us who don't use these bugs to make the LK encounter easier besides the ones that molten has allowed in the past. Just because the warmane staff has not said that they are undecided on the consequences of JoJ and cyclone doesn't mean it isn/should be allowed to do. Regardless of whose side I am on, the guilds who messed up big time and in my opinion the staff is even more messed up for rewarding exploiting guilds with 150&23 coin gear with exploits. I personally want to see a small punishment for the Raiders and a bigger punishment on raid leaders who allowed it to happen without saying "wipe the raid we exploited." Everyone slips up at sometimes or has a bad apple in the raid, but continuing the fight after it being said out loud that it is going on is bad leading. I have already gotten more personal than I wanted to but whatever. If Warmane wants to call themselves blizzlike and allow these non work around exploits to happen then so be it, it just makes them look bad and it's players look even worse. Remember what happened to the first guild to kill LK with saronite bombs? Banned and achievements removed. Even though they had no idea what caused the platform to appear still punished. Maybe the same should be done here maybe not. Stop trying to defend wrong doings because you are scared of the consequences that may or may not come. And get back on topic for the love of god, you are all missing the point here.

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Spot on. I coulden't say it better. Lets do get back on topic, This thread bring up so much emotions due to all the time and effort some of ous actually put out on this game it goes way overhand very easely.

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Originally Posted by kataproof

There are a few guilds that have not used any frowned upon exploits on LK, I won't name them. Saying that if they ban guilds for using cyclone and JoJ they will end up banning the entire server is completely ludicrous, as I said above there are a few of us who don't use these bugs to make the LK encounter easier besides the ones that molten has allowed in the past. Just because the warmane staff has said that they are undecided on the consequences of JoJ and cyclone doesn't mean it is/should be allowed to do.

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Exactly!

I love how some self proclamed "top guilds" state that if they get banned the whole server will get banned. They're so wrong. I don't know in what kind of reality those people live in but there are players that don't need those kind of broken mechanics to look good or decent. There are guilds and players that DON'T need to do it. I've personally seen several guilds that rather not doing LoD every week and do it properly than doing it every week through exploits. Also other point that is giving me a huge itch;

I've seen several player from other guilds being banned (since this thread has been done) for other exploits such as a Warrior exploit (great!) but, sadly, the deafening silence about this subject continues and I still didn't see any kind of punishment being applied. Are the priorities turned, a little bit, upside down?

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Originally Posted by magaginho

I've seen several player from other guilds being banned (since this thread has been done) for other exploits such as a Warrior exploit (great!) but, sadly, the deafening silence about this subject continues and I still didn't see any kind of punishment being applied. Are the priorities turned, a little bit, upside down?

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Either that or the issues the player community has brought forward isn't worth giving a proper response which makes me feel a sense of disappointment in the GM staff but so be it.

The head GM is free to run his staff as he sees fit regardless of how several players in the community feel.

I figured a rough timeline might help, so here's one from my own point of view and it starts shortly after the wipe.

In the last week of February 2015 Radiance was banned on a 25hc LK kill due to a member GCD hacking (who was gkicked after we gathered evidence). The whole raid was banned because we benefited from a single person.

In March 2015 a few guilds were banned for exploiting on Halion, these bans were later lifted due to it being a script's fault.

In June or July, I believe, these newer exploits on LK appeared, which the whole raid will benefit from a single or more players using abilities that should not even be on your bars in PvE. Nothing happens.

Months later guilds are debating if this is really bannable, nothing has happened yet. Most of them have decided it's not bannable because of a lack of action by the GMs.

More months go by, nothing happens, more guilds are abusing these abilities and more illegitimate kills are happening.

Now it's been over a year since raids have been banned for benefiting from exploits. Warriors get banned for a couple of things but anything else is labeled under guild drama and discredited.

I'm not going to sit here and demand a fix, obviously the fixes are coming, the problem is a lack of action. Sure this new core will fix the existing exploits and new ones may appear, but are they going to be labeled as guild drama and ignored like they are now? So is a relevant staff member going to come here and confirm this isn't an exploit? If not then I really can't help but question the reasoning behind no longer punishing anyone. I mean you've banned entire raids for less. Maybe if the dev team finds a way to write an anti-cheat which can replace a human then we can use the current course of action, but I'm not expecting that from them nor Blizzard.

Edit: For clarification, if anyone is wondering what I actually want. What I want is for the GM team to regain control of the realms because it's already out of hand and is getting out of control. There's a massive lack of respect/fear, people are blatantly cheating because they know there's a 90% chance of nothing happening.

Btw, what happened to the anti cheat system on Ragnaros?
I see hitchhiker heroes flying around everywhere.
Why was the anti cheat removed when it was already working?

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Originally Posted by Jakkre

Btw, what happened to the anti cheat system on Ragnaros?
I see hitchhiker heroes flying around everywhere.
Why was the anti cheat removed when it was already working?

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just because its not working, obviously. there are at least 2 more hacking/cheating programs out there in web, which sentinel system cant rekognize

First of all making threads/posts complaining about decisions of GM team will not change our decisions regarding who to ban or not. If we decide to not ban for something then there's a good reasoning for it.
Secondly I'm unaware of "other guilds avoiding ban" that you mention now. I only know of one recent example of guild where some pug used JoJ and guild streamed it, probably completely unaware of it happening. Who with brain would stream their exploit run knowing there's a lot of eyes watching and just waiting for them to make a mistake, then get them all banned? Yes that could rarely happen but it's doubtful to me. Nothing else that was recently reported comes to my mind however and claiming that there were no bans for months at all is flat out lie.
Thirdly I'm well aware that LK has tons of issues and probably good chunk of DW/Rag exploits that fact, but coming to forum and saying that without pointing in right direction does not help us. We can't just send GMs to every ICC run to babysit players. We have a small team to deal with tickets, reports, monitoring realms for different issues and some other misc things. Now imagine that most of reports are "player x did y" with no evidence, do you think it takes split second to investigate such report that has no evidence attatched to it? No it takes time.
Taking away achievements is also not going to happen, most of exploiters were not reported to begin with so it would be completely useless and still unfair.
Lastly I'm sure that new core will receive proper dev support in terms of ICC scripting so that we won't face situation when bug is left out for a long time without being fixed (unless it won't be known to staff).

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Originally Posted by Aldtharios

First of all making threads/posts complaining about decisions of GM team will not change our decisions regarding who to ban or not. If we decide to not ban for something then there's a good reasoning for it.
Secondly I'm unaware of "other guilds avoiding ban" that you mention now. I only know of one recent example of guild where some pug used JoJ and guild streamed it, probably completely unaware of it happening. Who with brain would stream their exploit run knowing there's a lot of eyes watching and just waiting for them to make a mistake, then get them all banned? Yes that could rarely happen but it's doubtful to me. Nothing else that was recently reported comes to my mind however and claiming that there were no bans for months at all is flat out lie.
Thirdly I'm well aware that LK has tons of issues and probably good chunk of DW/Rag exploits that fact, but coming to forum and saying that without pointing in right direction does not help us. We can't just send GMs to every ICC run to babysit players. We have a small team to deal with tickets, reports, monitoring realms for different issues and some other misc things. Now imagine that most of reports are "player x did y" with no evidence, do you think it takes split second to investigate such report that has no evidence attatched to it? No it takes time.
Taking away achievements is also not going to happen, most of exploiters were not reported to begin with so it would be completely useless and still unfair.
Lastly I'm sure that new core will receive proper dev support in terms of ICC scripting so that we won't face situation when bug is left out for a long time without being fixed (unless it won't be known to staff).

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Sir Aldtharios; Take my reply with a full respect to you and I'm GLAD we finally had a member of the staff joining this topic. Thank you for that.

Now let me touch several points that you approached and share with you my point of view in this topic in a detailed manner.
The first point that you touch, you're missing the point of the thread already. As far as I'm aware of, the thread was made with the intention of calling the attention of your team to the several hacks, bugs and exploits that have been abused in the past months. We're not here to discuss who you ban, how you ban and when you ban them. That's not our job, that's your and your team job. We're not part of the staff for some reason, right?

On the second point that you approached I'll gladly upload you videos of three different guilds exploiting several LK fights. The sad part is; Whenever I've seen those videos submitted they're usually erased or completely ignored. Now, if you ask me, as a community member, would I bother reuploading it when my first effort was completely ignored? No. I give it as a lost cause and I completely lose credibility on my evidences. It won't make any kind of sense, reuploading something that, apparently, won't be worth. Look at the case of this last video that showed up, for example. Also - We didn't state that there weren't bans going out. We did state that bans for this specific kind of exploits weren't going out. And they AREN'T. I have been tracking those kind of punishments and following the players that I do know by a fact that abuse the system of exploitation. Nothing has happened to them in the last three months. Also, I'll remind this subject;

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In the last week of February 2015 Radiance was banned on a 25hc LK kill due to a member GCD hacking (who was gkicked after we gathered evidence). The whole raid was banned because we benefited from a single person.

In March 2015 a few guilds were banned for exploiting on Halion, these bans were later lifted due to it being a script's fault.

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I'm my job when I take an action and I raise the level of authority and consequences to this level - I must stick with it to keep my method, responsability, policy and credibility. My main question here is; Why did the standard action change? Why did a guild like Radiance get banned as a group instead of an invididual person only? 'Cause now, the thing that I see, is that neither the group or the individual player gets punished 'cause the statements given are:

a) New core is comming up.
b) JoJ is a "Core" ability.

Well - B) doesn't even make sense if you actually played the game and if you know what you're talking about in PvE aspects. So we both know that you're forcing a mechanic to be even more broken. A) - could be a really solid point but there's a question that I will raise. What kind of actions will be taken as soon a new exploit shows up in the new core? I do believe that several issues will be fixed. But I also believe that a random person will find a new exploit and abuse it. What kind of punishment will that person get (if there is one)?

About your third point;
I would GLADLY point out names and directions but then I would be accused of guild drama. We're not asking for the GM's to go to every ICC run and babysit players (at least I ain't. You guys are humans and have all the right to live your life as well - You're not a machine.) but we do ask to pay more attention to clear evidences of exploits and take actions. Personally I think that it is quite unfair to several players that do everything properly and then an ***** shows up and uses exploits to obtain what they chased for months or even years. Stating that there's nothing you guys can do about it doesn't convince me, specially, when I've seen several perfect evidences in this same forums. With all the respect to your work, though.

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Lastly I'm sure that new core will receive proper dev support in terms of ICC scripting so that we won't face situation when bug is left out for a long time without being fixed (unless it won't be known to staff).

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I hope so. But personally? You just took away my will of bothering farming content in a legit way since it's actually worth to exploit and force bugs in certain fights.

Also, I would like to remind that the new core doesn't excuse (in my point of view) the fact that guilds have been using exploits for almost over a year to benefit themselves and stomp some guilds that are still chasing content. Not only guilds themselves but also players that have to chase progression in order to become BiS or near BiS. Remember that Blizzard, as a reference, would revoke those titles (and loot obviously) immediatly and the ban wouldn't even happen. Consequences would happen though. Counting that we're on a private server that is a Blizzlike server - This kind of situations could happen as well, I assume?

EDIT: Also to make it really clear. I was not part of Radiance but it does bother me to see the level of punishment being completely irregular. It bothers me, as a community member, to see a full guild being punished and then see other guilds going around the system. As I stated above - Is it really fair? [with this I'm saying that I'm not here for guild drama as some might insinuate. I'm here looking for concrete answers, if possible, and fairness.]

EDIT 2: I missed a point and I just realized it.

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Secondly I'm unaware of "other guilds avoiding ban" that you mention now. I only know of one recent example of guild where some pug used JoJ and guild streamed it, probably completely unaware of it happening.

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It was not a pug - It was a guild member that after being busted through a video edit that came into public was kicked out of the guild. Also, keep in mind that your point can be completely debatable right now 'cause I'll also say that when Radiance got banned as a pack they also stated that they didn't realize that one member was GCD hacking while streaming. The ban wasn't lifted. So, in this particular case, why did measures change? It's a time space of one year and the measures that should be taken (following former examples) changed dramatically.

Solid Points made +1

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Originally Posted by Aldtharios

First of all making threads/posts complaining about decisions of GM team will not change our decisions regarding who to ban or not. If we decide to not ban for something then there's a good reasoning for it.

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The complaint is about your team's lack of consistency with issuing punishment for being caught exploiting or hacking

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Originally Posted by Aldtharios

Secondly I'm unaware of "other guilds avoiding ban" that you mention now. I only know of one recent example of guild where some pug used JoJ and guild streamed it, probably completely unaware of it happening. Who with brain would stream their exploit run knowing there's a lot of eyes watching and just waiting for them to make a mistake, then get them all banned? Yes that could rarely happen but it's doubtful to me. Nothing else that was recently reported comes to my mind however and claiming that there were no bans for months at all is flat out lie.

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Try to read in-between the bickering and you'll see that we're not demanding for a guild wide ban just cause of said video. The issue the player community has is that the individual who was caught doing this has been caught abusing before yet remains unbanned. Can you explain the reason for not reprimanding this player for his actions? He's been caught, to my knowledge, a total of 3 different times yet seems to remain unscathed.

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Originally Posted by Aldtharios

Thirdly I'm well aware that LK has tons of issues and probably good chunk of DW/Rag exploits that fact, but coming to forum and saying that without pointing in right direction does not help us. We can't just send GMs to every ICC run to babysit players. We have a small team to deal with tickets, reports, monitoring realms for different issues and some other misc things. Now imagine that most of reports are "player x did y" with no evidence, do you think it takes split second to investigate such report that has no evidence attatched to it? No it takes time.

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How much time does it take to find out the scheduled raid time of a suspected guild so that a member of your team can visit the ICC raid when they're nearing or at LK? Obviously I don't expect you to keep a 24/7 watch on ICC, that's just insane and a waste of time and resources.

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Originally Posted by Aldtharios

Taking away achievements is also not going to happen, most of exploiters were not reported to begin with so it would be completely useless and still unfair.
Lastly I'm sure that new core will receive proper dev support in terms of ICC scripting so that we won't face situation when bug is left out for a long time without being fixed (unless it won't be known to staff).

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You need to clarify why on this matter. Obviously you're against guild wide bans so what's the problem with stripping away achievements? Most of the players in these guilds are BiS or donored for BiS so it's not like removing their loot is going to hurt much. The players shouldn't have a problem with earning their achievement again without the help of a single player who was exploiting. LoD is pretty much a joke on this server now so what's the harm in having to earn it again the right way?

Further, who from your team keeps track of new recent bug changes to determine what is and isn't an exploit? Is this information communicated to your staff so that they're aware? I ask this question because miscommunication seems to be causing them to bounce players back and forth between reporting a problem on the forums or a ticket in game.

Alright, here I come and join this thread. What you find in this reply might not be the best news or suit your personal opinions but keep in mind it's still an opinion of a staff member relevant to the subject at hand and it's an honest one at that, direct and blunt.

Before we continue I wish to familiarize everyone with a concept of an intentional exploit and an accidental exploit. There's an exploit on MoP and Cataclysm realms that involves transmog and it results in transmog sets that are usually absolutely impossible. There's two ways to go about this exploit and one can happen accidentally and one happens intentionally even with use of a third-party program. The latter is way more often.

We do not ban for it. Why? Because we would rather let 10 guilty players be free rather than punish one innocent player.

This case is very similar to this one, there's some foul play but we can't determine if it was intentional or accidental and we can't furthermore attain complete evidence. This is different than reports where we have clear evidence that a player used third-party programs to lower his global cooldown and we can see clear evidence that the raid was aware of it and instances where the raid leader would instruct players in the raid to do exploits. It's very different.

Alright, now that we have everything figured out in terms of incidental and intentional exploit let's go further with a little thing called honour. I'm no longer a GameMaster but I've been member of the GM team for many years and I will never forget the words that were said to me in the first days of me performing that duty. I would like to share them with you.

"We are not here to ban as many people as we can but rather to remove the possibility of players of being banned in the first place."

The GM team first serves the community, in terms of customer support, general knowledge and assistance and then serves the greater good in terms of removing players from the servers. This is not an act that any GM looks forward to, it's something that has to be done for the well being of the server. Over the years, we have done many steps to prevent any form of rule-breaking rather than to issue punishments after it. In our opinion, this is an unique approach in the private server. The latest iteration of this concept and this desire to prevent rather than punish is our new Anti-Cheat that prevents hacking rather than punishes for it, as opposed to Sentinel Anti-Cheat in the past. It's important to note that this system will come to Deathwing/Ragnaros in a few days.

What does honour have to do with this? It has to do everything with this, especially with this specific case. We were aware of these exploits and we wanted them to be fixed months ago but unfortunately due to priority level of the Lordaeron Core we haven't been able to apply them and frankly it went off our mind.

We believe that we are responsible why these exploits remained and it would be not honourable to punish players for our own flaws and especially when we would punish such a small percentage of actual exploiters. Nearly every single achievement related to ICC was illegitimate in the last few months and we have nobody to blame but ourselves due to lack of development support.

Keeping in mind the level of difficulty to perform this exploit is ridiculously low (using a spell that any paladin has) and the easiest out of all 5 current critical to do by mistake we hope you can understand why we're doing the way we're doing it.

On another note, we just want to say that we've been looking forward, perhaps even more than the community, to implementing this core on Deathwing and Ragnaros. Many old, ancient issues that remained and plagued the realms, that we had to battle daily, are going away and full-fledged support is tuning back in.

Now to specifically respond to the gentleman above who put a lot of effort in writing his post.

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Originally Posted by magaginho

On the second point that you approached I'll gladly upload you videos of three different guilds exploiting several LK fights. The sad part is; Whenever I've seen those videos submitted they're usually erased or completely ignored. Now, if you ask me, as a community member, would I bother reuploading it when my first effort was completely ignored? No. I give it as a lost cause and I completely lose credibility on my evidences. It won't make any kind of point reuploading something that, apparently, will not be worth. Look at the case of this last video that showed up, for example. Also - We didn't state that there weren't bans going out. We did state that bans for this specific kind of exploits weren't going out. And they AREN'T. I have been tracking those kind of punishments and following the players that I do know by a fact that abuse the system of exploitation. Nothing has happened to them in the last three months.

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Either the evidence was not enough, as in not having the full guild roster or the exploit could have been used by a mistake. As I have mentioned in this very same reply above, there's also a matter of principle and honour that we had to follow due to lack of development support (rightfully so as we have been conserving all man power to make the best WoTLK realm we can).

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Originally Posted by magaginho

In the last week of February 2015 Radiance was banned on a 25hc LK kill due to a member GCD hacking (who was gkicked after we gathered evidence). The whole raid was banned because we benefited from a single person.

In March 2015 a few guilds were banned for exploiting on Halion, these bans were later lifted due to it being a script's fault.

Why did the standard action change? Why did a guild like Radiance get banned as a group instead of an invididual person only?

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We remember this clearly, members of the raid were aware of the person using a third-party program. Furthermore, it was obvious from various sources such as the DPS meter, raid chat and et cetera. This is a different case. A player using a third-party program is very different than a player simply using a spell that is available to them as part of their class and the spec. This has nothing to do with the entirety of the raid, does it though? It does. The use of this program was pointed out during the raid and many raid members admitted in the investigation of the case that they purposefully did not want to stop the raid. An entire raid continued and decided to allow a player to hack, despite multiple warnings, multiple people being aware of it and even some hiding the fact and admitted to doing so.

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Originally Posted by magaginho

A) - could be a really solid point but there's a question that I will raise. What kind of actions will be taken as soon a new exploit shows up in the new core? I do believe that several issues will be fixed. But I also believe that a random person will find a new exploit and abuse it. What kind of punishment will that person get (if there is one)?

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It will be fixed. Players who reported it will be rewarded as in usual case of exploit reporting and those who abused it without reporting will be sanctioned and dealt with. I'm sure you can differentiate a realm with full development support and a realm without one, allowing exploits to get more known and et cetera.

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Originally Posted by magaginho

I hope so. But personally? You just took away my will of bothering farming content in a legit way since it's actually worth to exploit and force bugs in certain fights.

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There should be no other way. If you have not understood what I meant by 'honour' you should understand now. There should be no other way than the legit way, it was our flaw that there was another way. On the new core, there will be only way to do things and it will be the legitimate, scripted, proper, blizzlike way.

@magaginho

It's true that guilds have been using JoJ to slow bosses cyclone to bug out valkyrs and etc.However there is something else i would like to ask and i would be really grateful if you could answer me.

1.Why no guilds kite the orange ooze and kill the orange ooze on Professor Putricide - This is considerable exploit as well.(They all stack or HoP the players linked to the orange ooze to avoid the impact or rather avoid the orange ooze link.
2.Why do guilds exploit Green Ooze on Professor Putricide by stacking on each other so nobody gets linked to it therefore there is no explosion.
3.Why do guilds stack under the Professor Putricide to avoid malleable goo
4.Sindragosa -Why do healers such a as resto druids continue casting heals even tho they have unchained magic on them - this is considerable exploit since you get no stacks.
5.LoD - every guild is exploiting LoD since every guild has been using necrotic plague to kill the Raging Spirits.

I can give you more examples but i will just give these for now.So i would be really happy if you put everyone under common denominator, since frankly every guild has been exploiting not working bosses mechanics and there are no exceptions.

@magaginho

so i assume pvp players should stop dps because its not retail like in bgs or arenas? smourne wearers should stop using smourne because its broke too? no one should use plauge and we should just dps adds normally because he does not recast plauge like he should? should prolly let sindy kill us because LoS is broken right? no one should ever pass DBS because he does not work at all is what your getting at right? hey no one should be doing VDW either because you need 6 priests and 3 pallies to pass her right? no flying mounts should be able to fly into dalaran should ban for that definitely. No one should do RS at all because its broke? hell according to you guys no one should ever raid or pvp because its not retail like.....

get a ****ing grip.

so your telling me everyone should act like this is retail when there is a bug or mechanic not working correctly we should just die and call the raid or die in a BG because its not retail like because of a bug? i have now seen the most epic *****ic post on this forum ever.

no one would be doing all that crap you mentioned if it worked properly. there is a difference between using and exploit on something that is working correctly vs using an exploit against something that is bugged.

dont worry you butt hurt little people. the PTR stuff will be live soon enough and all your little dreams shall come true. until then...have an awful day.

Finally! Sorry for using that word but god damn finally I get answers that I've been waiting with such hunger. Now, as you took the time to crunch my reply, hope you don't take me in a wrong way and allow me to crunch your answers as well.

I'll requote several of your statements, Mr. Proterean, I'll also ask for an apologize right now for the long wall of text.

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Alright, now that we have everything figured out in terms of incidental and intentional exploit let's go further with a little thing called honour.

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To address myself to this, I'll start by the following: I'm an accountant in real life (one of my jobs) and I had to make a swear once I was signed in the major portuguese entity of accountants (also known as Order of Accountants) where I have to follow a honor code. I know, way too well, what's a conduct to follow and a honour code to respect. Whenever I disrespect that code means that I'm breaking several principles that were built through years and past generations. Do you know what I think about that though? Whatever fits in the justice field and when I'm not being completely irregular on my actions and duties as an accountant I will break the rules (in extreme cases) to make sure that justice is done. Such is the code of honour of my person. Such is the rule that I follow. Credibility, honour and consistency: Three major keys to success and to achieve respect from every single person. I'll link this up with this thread in a bit.

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What does honour have to do with this? It has to do everything with this, especially with this specific case. We were aware of these exploits and we wanted them to be fixed months ago but unfortunately due to priority level of the Lordaeron Core we haven't been able to apply them and frankly it went off our mind.

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Yes, your honour (as close to mine) gets involved in this. Your honour should keep you focused on your main goal that was fixing all the core issues with Lordaeron in order to implement that same core in the rest of the realms. I applaud, salute and agree with that. Now there's a really solid point though; You SHOULDN'T forget the rest of the community. What am I directly saying with this? I'm stating that you opened doors for this situation. With the "distraction" (if you may call it) you allowed this kind of irregular mechanics to become a daily thing that is going UNPUNISHED. I would allow your point to be extremely solid but the actions that happen while we're discussing this - They do point otherwise. Why you might ask?

I see Warriors being banned for using exploits such as the HoP and Titan's Grip exploit.

I could go on with the list but I won't. This serves to proof one sentence of yours;

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We believe that we are responsible why these exploits remained and it would be not honourable to punish players for our own flaws and especially when we would punish such a small percentage of actual exploiters.

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Is this really fair? Aren't this two things in the same page? I think they are. Still, I'm aware of a significant ammount of players that lost their good standing on their account thanks to a script that, as you stated, it's your own mistake. So you're trying to make me accept the fact that this players deserve that punishment and the ones that exploit through JoJ don't? Maybe my code of honour is way too strict: But damn, that does sound like the same thing doesn't it?

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Keeping in mind the level of difficulty to perform this exploit is ridiculously low (using a spell that any paladin has) and the easiest out of all 5 current critical to do by mistake we hope you can understand why we're doing the way we're doing it.

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We're talking about an ability that is not mandatory. I assume you played PvE. I assume you've been in Lich King fights. I assume you've never seen a proper player using that spell without second intentions. A proper player will not, ever, in any kind of situations, use JoJ in a PvE fight unless he doesn't know his class. Calling it a CORE ability with players that have the suficient capacity to get to Lich King in ICC25 Heroic... I face that as irony.
Resuming this point to a whole sentence:
So you're telling me that, at the moment, I can exploit at FREE WILL since it's your mistake?

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On another note, we just want to say that we've been looking forward, perhaps even more than the community, to implementing this core on Deathwing and Ragnaros. Many old, ancient issues that remained and plagued the realms, that we had to battle daily, are going away and full-fledged support is tuning back in.

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So, with that said, you're telling us that this kind of support will take care of new exploiters as well? Or will we hear the same point that is: It's our fault. We're not bringing down the exploiters?

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Either the evidence was not enough, as in not having the full guild roster or the exploit could have been used by a mistake. As I have mentioned in this very same reply above, there's also a matter of principle and honour that we had to follow due to lack of development support (rightfully so as we have been conserving all man power to make the best WoTLK realm we can).

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A full fight video is not enough as evidence? I've seen several of those videos going around. Me, personally, I have few of them in my hard drive. The only thing you're making me achieve here is that, it is in fact, worth to exploit and bug abuse. If you're trying to state that a full lenght video of an encounter is not a good enough evidence I don't what it is then. I rather close my case.

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We remember this clearly, members of the raid were aware of the person using a third-party program. Furthermore, it was obvious from various sources such as the DPS meter, raid chat and et cetera. This is a different case. A player using a third-party program is very different than a player simply using a spell that is available to them as part of their class and the spec. This has nothing to do with the entirety of the raid, does it though? It does. The use of this program was pointed out during the raid and many raid members admitted in the investigation of the case that they purposefully did not want to stop the raid. An entire raid continued and decided to allow a player to hack, despite multiple warnings, multiple people being aware of it and even some hiding the fact and admitted to doing so.

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I won't get myself too involved in this subject. But I will say that I do remember seeing several players from Radiance presenting proofs to the GM staff and they were completely ignored. I do remember Aurora getting a ban and after a huge fit in the forums - The ban was lifted since it was a scripting issue. Kinda unfair that those players still get the loot and the title through a scripting issue don't you think? Do you really believe deep inside of you that you're making it fair to the new players of this community? Do you really believe that it's even motivating to play in a proper way (legit) when I know that the guild next to me is exploiting everything they can and nothing happens?

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It will be fixed. Players who reported it will be rewarded as in usual case of exploit reporting and those who abused it without reporting will be sanctioned and dealt with. I'm sure you can differentiate a realm with full development support and a realm without one, allowing exploits to get more known and et cetera.

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That's literally the point Proterean! The point here is that those people geared up their toons to the teeth through exploits - They're ready for the merge while others are sweating and going through hell to achieve that status. Don't you really believe that it's kinda ridiculous to have to discuss this exact same point? Personally, if my toons weren't near BiS / BiS (And yes - I did the encounters without exploits and I've reported several exploits to certain people that handled them) I would quit. Seeing others getting UNFAIR advantages to be superior than me - It's a lost cause.

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There should be no other way. If you have not understood what I meant by 'honour' you should understand now. There should be no other way than the legit way, it was our flaw that there was another way. On the new core, there will be only way to do things and it will be the legitimate, scripted, proper, blizzlike way.

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There is other way. There's the way that I'm assuming you're not considering or not willing to take: And that's the way of making people face their consequences - If some get banned - Everyone is on the right and risk of getting a punishment as well. If you're not forgiving the exploits that Warriors are using - I won't understand, comprehend or support your position thowards the rest of the exploits. Such is the code of honour: Same treatment and respect to every single player.

To conclude:

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Alright, now that we have everything figured out in terms of incidental and intentional exploit.

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Applying JoJ on a PvE boss is not AN ACCIDENT as much as you're trying to make it sound like. Every player that actually cares is aware of that; And maybe that's the reason why this thread went to or above 6500 views. That can tell you pretty much everything. Have a good day.

First and foremost thank you Proterean for taking the time to provide a more elaborate answer. Most of the clarity you've given I was already aware of in terms of distinguishing the difference. I'm personally against guild wide bans for many of the reasons you mentioned. However a few things do concern me.

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Originally Posted by Proterean

What does honour have to do with this? It has to do everything with this, especially with this specific case. We were aware of these exploits and we wanted them to be fixed months ago but unfortunately due to priority level of the Lordaeron Core we haven't been able to apply them and frankly it went off our mind.

We believe that we are responsible why these exploits remained and it would be not honourable to punish players for our own flaws and especially when we would punish such a small percentage of actual exploiters. Nearly every single achievement related to ICC was illegitimate in the last few months and we have nobody to blame but ourselves due to lack of development support.

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As a fellow coder myself, I can respect the work the developers are doing however as per Sixtyninee's post earlier, this is not a call for fixes but more in regards to the lack of action. Lack of development work on a server is not a legit excuse in my eyes to not punish players for issues that weren't addressed by the dev team. By choosing to ignore this you have unofficially given players a reason to continue doing it in the first place. If the chances for penalty are low then this lack of action actually encourages others to do the same.

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Originally Posted by Proterean

Keeping in mind the level of difficulty to perform this exploit is ridiculously low (using a spell that any paladin has) and the easiest out of all 5 current critical to do by mistake we hope you can understand why we're doing the way we're doing it.

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Keep in mind that some of these abilities that are being used shouldn't even be on a player's bar in a PvE setting. Granted ignorance is a common defense in this regard. However since when has ignorance of rules or laws been an excuse to go against them even if it was accidental? Obviously I'm not saying be ruthless and ban over an accidental exploit that has no effect or impact on a raid boss what so ever but hopefully you see our side of it as well in this regard to some extent (even if you don't completely agree with it).

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Originally Posted by Proterean

On another note, we just want to say that we've been looking forward, perhaps even more than the community, to implementing this core on Deathwing and Ragnaros. Many old, ancient issues that remained and plagued the realms, that we had to battle daily, are going away and full-fledged support is tuning back in.

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That still doesn't mean new bugs or exploits won't be discovered. The overall point of this thread which seems to have gone over a lot of people's head is that our concern is over the player's complete lack of respect/fear in regards to rules about cheating and exploiting.

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Originally Posted by Proterean

It will be fixed. Players who reported it will be rewarded as in usual case of exploit reporting and those who abused it without reporting will be sanctioned and dealt with. I'm sure you can differentiate a realm with full development support and a realm without one, allowing exploits to get more known and et cetera.

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All we ask for as players is better communication and clarity in regards to these standards whenever issues are brought to the attention of the GM staff.

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Originally Posted by Proterean

If you have not understood what I meant by 'honour' you should understand now. There should be no other way than the legit way, it was our flaw that there was another way. On the new core, there will be only way to do things and it will be the legitimate, scripted, proper, blizzlike way.

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The community would have more appreciation for your honor if better clarity and consistency is given / shown by the GM staff in regards to handling server issues. I respect that you took the time to come here and share your thoughts. Hopefully our words also gave you some enlightenment as well in regards to how we're feeling.

To finish off, remember that the new core brings about much needed change however that doesn't mean the work ends in regards to keeping eyes open for people who find new ways of exploiting.