The LFR discussion

[Natobob]

Gl anyway in the race

Atleast you acted mature with the apologize - for sponsors and fans I guess

[Kuratorn]

Banning alot of top guilds shouldn't be the solution to this problem, or any simular problem. Blizzard should have tested every aspect of the LFR system before they serve it on a plate for the entire world to eat from...

OFC some1 will discover the bug and then others will follow! Using something like this to get new gear for new content just to get world firsts are a part of the game... Discovering stuff and using them to get the kills are what it's all about.


Another scenario could be talking about the 10m (or to keep the discussion within reasonable lvl... 25m guilds that went 10m hm Baleroc) guilds that climbed in world ranks during Firelands.
Alot of guilds had made world 200 kills and was ranked 200ish during t11 content, suddenly 10m guilds killed Baleroc 10m hm and got some rly high ranks...

I know... Not the same situation. BUT, some guilds did whatever was necessary to climb a fue ranks! In my eyes this was a way to "cheat".


Another good example that just was posted as a blue on MMO is the Geyser on Raggy hc p4. Guilds discovered a awesome way to handle it, and now it's been confirmed that it wasn't the way Blizzard wanted it to be!
Same situation as with LFR, except that some people got some loot 1 week earlier then others.
ALSO, don't forget that they've spent a HELL lot of time in there, so they actually earned it more then most others!


Finally, thanks for posting an appollogy, mature behaviour! Don't care if it's after the consequences was posted or not...
Just you guys reaching out saying sorry should be enough for most people! GL in Dragon Soul

[padrearnhand]

Good luck with the race

A good number of you held your hand up last week said it was wrong and would take the punishment.

[Littlegreg]

I'm so sorry for you guys.
Jhazrun literraly reveals me so many things about how playing my priest. Some of you could be considered as grandmasters of their classes.
Grandmasters aren't allow to cheat. It destroys the myth. More than that. If you had refuse to bug exploit, you would have become more than the best guild but a legendary one, the only white one that refused to cheat !!
A great opportunity missed there for what ? A trinket, a bonus set ? I can't believe it... It's too sad.
Shadow is growing everywhere...

To be more realistic, I undesrtand perfectly what happended. Other guilds where doing that since one or two days and they were unpunished. So you thought, it's known and tolerated by Blizzard and that it will confer your concurrents a too strong advantage in the race, so you did it too.
Just a question. Why didn'ty you ask first to blizzard if it is really authorized ? You probably have a direct way to contact them easier than we all have. Why didn't you contact them first ?

[achaeon]

I logged in 30 minutes ago to unequip some items from my character for general amusement. Great success.

It's posts like these that angered the community to begin with and made me glad you're all getting what you are, where as I wouldn't have cared before.

[achaeon]

I'm so sorry for you guys.
Jhazrun literraly reveals me so many things about how playing my priest. Some of you could be considered as grandmasters of their classes.
Grandmasters aren't allow to cheat. It destroys the myth. More than that. If you had refuse to bug exploit, you would have become more than the best guild but a legendary one, the only white one that refused to cheat !!
A great opportunity missed there for what ? A trinket, a bonus set ? I can't believe it... It's too sad.
Shadow is growing everywhere...

To be more realistic, I undesrtand perfectly what happended. Other guilds where doing that since one or two days and they were unpunished. So you thought, it's known and tolerated by Blizzard and that it will confer your concurrents a too strong advantage in the race, so you did it too.
Just a question. Why didn'ty you ask first to blizzard if it is really authorized ? You probably have a direct way to contact them easier than we all have. Why didn't you contact them first ?

Because they knew it wasn't authorized. They knew it wasn't okay. The patch was barely out, so they knew exploiting the bug in that way wasn't going to fly in the long run but did it anyway. That's what confuses me the most. You HAD to know it was going to be squashed, why would you even participate? Report it to Blizzard, be vocal about it in their forums, enough so that anyone who might have gotten away with it, wouldn't, make it known to the community, be the better people.

You not only chose the other route, but you chose to mock some of the player base after the fact. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the brazen arrogance shown by many of the people who exploited (not specifically talking about Paragon) lead to Blizzard HAVING to make the decision to ban to make an example to show it was not acceptable. It's not coincidence they waited until now to issue bans, either.

[Omirr]

Hi,

I must say I'm disappointed you made the choice to exploit. This will ban more than a few chars for a couple of days and may cost you some World Firsts. But I'm leaving it at that. No point in raging or name calling.

When you race for the #1 spot, you want to min-max everything to increase your odds on the race. I can see why you felt it was needed to use exploit but I wouldn't have done that. I felt that maybe you could have taken more time to think it through and did more research first. For example, you could have gone through all the top guilds and collected info on how many guilds used this exploit to estimate if Blizzard would respond the way they did now. Based on that you could have chosen not to exploit.

Of course it's easy to say this after everything played out the way it did, but I think you could have given a clear signal to the community by stating you weren't using the exploit even though you were aware of it, followed by a list of guilds that were using it. So, I think you missed a great opportunity to make a statement, to show you don't need to cheat to win.

But I can't only blame Paragon, or any other exploiting top guild, for everything. Blizzard WAS slow with their response and reactions. When an exploit like this is being reported on my different places, they should have reacted a lot faster and asking players to stop in order to avoid a ban.

Well, Que sera sera. We'll see what happens in the next weeks and if it affects your #1 spot. I'm sure you're already working on alternatives like 10 mans, buying or borrowing chars on alternate accounts etc...

And so I still wish you the best of luck in your race to the World First and may the best guild win !

[Cipbee]

Guys,

If you get banned, you should like get together with the method, ensidia etc guys and ask a guild in EU say like top 2-3 hundred that still have FL HC gear to let you play theyre chars this week and still get the WF's of the yanks hands:)
That would be so trololol i wouldnt of normally thought of it but i hate how BL are gloating atm on theyre stream about EU getting banned.

[mrceej]

Thinking that you have to do something you know is wrong because 'everyone else is doing it' is the most childish reaction to a simple moral dilemma we all face at one point or another in our lives. It's so simple, in fact, that you could probably ask any 6 year old if they would jump off a bridge because their friend did, and they would roll their eyes at you because they're sick of hearing that lame expression.

But, in the end, it's true. It's what separates the adults from the children. If your initial reaction to this problem is to go ahead and do it because you think you are losing out on something if you don't, you are a child. Plain and simple. The correct, and ultimately wise, decision is to always do what you know is right, and let the chips fall as they will. In the end, the smart move is doing the right thing, because experienced people know that "Karma is a Bitch" and simple minds that try to advance their cause by gaming an established system will always get smacked back. Always. It's happened a million times in history, and it's going to happen here.

I'm hoping that there's guilds out there that didn't job the system and did things appropriately. I'm sure there are. And I'm sure there's guilds out there that knew of the exploit, yet refused to use it. To them I wish the best of luck, and I hope something good comes out of it for them. To the rest of the guilds that abused the system knowingly in some misguided effort to gain an advantage in a race to kill a dragon in a video game, I hope you know that the community in general lost a lot of respect for you, and that your integrity from this point on will always be called into question. That's something you can never get back.

I think this is probably one of the best forum posts I have read in 15 years of online gaming.

I like Paragon, and I think they were in a place where they could have not cheated. I think in this case especially the exploit was so widely known and abused that it was going to be remedied, and some very angry people at the top would be wielding the banhammers. A lot of people are mentioning past exploits, but none of them come even remotely close to this. Did Blizz make 3 blue posts and 2 blog posts explaining how Saronite Bombs were supposed to work?

Whilst playing an encounter you are supposed to be creative and come up with interesting ways to kill the boss while mitigating all its abilities. If in the course of that a solution is found that is not the right one (Atrimedes) they will fix it, and outlaw its use until fixed. If you realise that using an item breaks the boss room and would allow for a free kill, you must know you are on very shakey ground if you do not report it and stop doing it. However in the situation where Blizzard have spent the last month outlining the rules and then you go in on day 1 and break them it is just idiotic to think that it will be ignored.

Finally for those who blame Blizz for not fixing the patch before it came out, or telling people not to, you have an unrealistic view of the software development process and procedures. The changes involved allowing people to raid a boss multiple times on the same lockout. This isn't just adding a new breath or whatever, this is hacking the code underlying the whole instance system and is an insanely difficult change to make on a 7 year multi million line of code system. When the exploit was first flagged, someone would have been tasked to have a look. They will estimate that it will take a month or so to find, fix, test, patch etc the change. A senior manager will have accepted that estimate and released the patch. I can not realistically see them delaying the relase of 4.3 and then 5.0 by a month just to fix a bug that is (a) known and (b) obvious when exploited. They know who gets what loot from what boss ID and so can just search their databases for people with duplicates and ban them.

I am just a little surprised that none of the top guilds (to my knowledge) stepped up and said they were not exploiting it.

[Bubblejet]

We can all talk about "what people should have done" etc etc.
What is done is done.

The thing to talk about now is how this will affect the race for world first.
With some (or many) of the top guild unable to raid for a week, will a lower ranked guild end up with world first Deathwing Heroic kill?
If they do, will the kill be worth less because some of these top guilds were not able to participate or were a week behind on gear?
Will being a week behind on gear change some guilds strategies or stop them from attempting a HC DW kill?
Does this mean that it will be longer before we see a kill?

These are the things I'm wondering. Let's stop talking about the exploit please. It's over lets move on.
Hopefully 8 days from now when all the accounts who received a penalty can play again we don't have to talk about people "cheating" and "morals" etc.