The LFR discussion

[Elviah]

Account Action: 8 Day Suspension
Reason for Action: Bug Exploitation
Details: Raid Finder Loot Abuse

Guess you guys in paragon got atleast the same?

[xenophics]

Yeah, we got the same.

[DiamondTear]

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.

A child needs hard and fast rules to make sensible decisions. Adults can use their intelligence and experience to weigh the risk/reward of their actions.

I often read about kids getting run over while crossing the street because the driver of the car makes a mistake and runs a red light. Still, we teach our kids to always wait for the green light, because we can't expect them to check whether it's safe to cross the street. I, however, am much more safer crossing the street after checking if any cars could run me over, regardless of whether the light is red or green for me.

Playing by some moral code is taking the easy way out to avoid thinking or taking responsibility. It doesn't always lead to the best result.

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.

Justice always wins? That's only true in Hollywood movies. In real life doing the wrong thing might be best for you.

You also speak of experience. We have that. We made a ticked asking if we can kite Magmaw adds out of its room. Blizzard said we can't. Others did and got the world first. Therefore, in our experience, we couldn't count on Blizzard.

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.

Since we had confirmed that our only competitor had used this exploit before we even considered it, using it was the only chance for a fair race. We're not racing against those US guilds that didn't exploit. What they do doesn't matter when it comes to the race. What matters is what EU guilds do and we already knew what they did, which made the decision a foregone conclusion.

We can't afford to consider what the community thinks, either. A large part of it thinks we exploited on Nefarian, even though we played 100 % by the rules. Trying the please the community is impossible as long as you are in the top 5.

[Elviah]

Did any of the top US guilds even do this? Or are they gonna have an advantage of 8days hc progression?

[zYN]

From my perspective.

I'll start with a small bit of very recent history. STARS exploited the Faction Change lockout reset just during the previous tier, Firelands. They got a World First kill on Shannox and got to practice other bosses. They got loot. Punishment for this? The heroic mode was closed for rest of the reset. A few other guilds abused the FC to hoard as much gear as possible for the upcoming Heroic Ragnaros kill. Punishment for this? None. This is a bug that was fixed with the server transfer service already, and one that I've personally reported - so it's not like Blizzard didn't know it existed.

When Cataclysm rolled out, we had a pretty tough situation to face at Magmaw. We paged a multitude of GMs to ask whether or not it would be OK to actually kite the adds instead of killing them. The answer we got back was a resounding "No, you can not. That would be exploiting the game mechanics and would lead to a ban." Okay, fine, we drop it and work on other stuff. What happens next? Guilds kill Magmaw using the kiting tactics. The punishment for doing so? Nothing, despite Game Masters explicitly telling us it was against the rules. So we're screwed out of a few World Firsts as a result.

Atramedes is yet another one of those sad chapters. It's the single hardest boss that I can think of that has existed in the game pre-nerf. Yet hundreds of guilds killed him. Not a single one of those was a legit kill. The punishment for this? Absolutely nothing. Unless you count free loot as a punishment.

I could go on for quite a while, but that would be absolutely unnecessary. The only exception that stands out is the ban that Ensidia received for exploiting Lich King on normal mode. Even so, the ban they received was very short in duration and didn't really impact the Heroic race in any meaningful way.

What can we gather from this? Two guilds of equal skill level. One that would always opt out to cheat and exploit in every way possible, one that decides to play fair. The guild that would exploit would've been much better off, when the criteria is WoW PvE progress. Let that just sink in for you. Up until now, you would've been always better off cheating.


Imagine you're in a 100-meter sprint. Usain Bolt next to you decides to grab a 5-meter head start, moving his starting line there. Others move their line up foward as well. Take into account the fact that this is rarely punished. There's a chubby white kid with a tiara on his head diligently standing at the original starting line. Which of the contestants do you worry about beating you in the race? If you move your line forwards, worst thing that can happen is that you're on equal footing with Bolt and the chubby kid would get a small head start. However, if the judges of the contest are as erratic as usual, there's a good chance no punishments will be handed out and the cheaters will once more prevail.


To me, the choice is obvious when you do everything in your power to win the race. I'm sure some high school graduate who's taken one course in philosophy and ethics will start pointing out the stuff that's painfully obvious to anyone with a brain and even a remote sense of what's right and wrong.

I'm obviously only expressing my own opinion here. I'm sorry for the fact that this whole debacle has had an impact on the whole WoW PvE-raiding scene.

However, with all that said, I'm really fucking disappointed at Blizzard for letting a shit ton of much, much worse crap and exploitation fly for several years. It's absolute garbage that we have to even consider doing something that's as shit and blatantly wrong as we did. Then simply roll the dice on whether or not Blizzard will take action.

[Krm]

Since we had confirmed that our only competitor had used this exploit before we even considered it, using it was the only chance for a fair race. We're not racing against those US guilds that didn't exploit. What they do doesn't matter when it comes to the race. What matters is what EU guilds do and we already knew what they did, which made the decision a foregone conclusion.

So you are 100% sure that Vodka and Premonition don't have a chance at world first hc Deathwing with a 8 day headstart?

There's a chubby white kid with a tiara on his head diligently standing at the original starting line.

World 5th guild is a chubby white kid? hmk

[hiski]

One problem as I see it is that right now there is no real incentive to report any of these exploits/bugs when the chances that they will be fixed are minimal. There is no real way to get in touch with blizzard. Sure handing out bans is a start to making the game better but as long as there is no certainty that exploits will be fixed after they are reported reporting them will only hurt you.

And lets be honest noone gives a shit if something is right or wrong in this game.

[Rayvik]

To be quite honest, in my opinion, the whole "STARS abused the faction change bug" argument is getting tired. I've seen more than one Paragon member reference it multiple times now, and I think it's a red herring. STARS may have abused the bug to get world first Shannox, but here's the kicker:

DESPITE STARS ABUSING THE FACTION CHANGE BUG, PARAGON STILL GOT WORLD FIRST HEROIC RAGNAROS. You know, the kill that actually matters? The one that anyone cares about when they think about the Firelands race? Look, bottom line, I think the only people who care about the fact that STARS cheated their way to that Shannox kill are members of Paragon. No one else cares. Let it go. The only thing people remember about the Firelands race is that you guys won it.

It's the same with Magmaw and Atramedes. Paragon still got world first heroic Nefarian, and anyone with half a brain knows that you didn't stack Feral Druids to abuse the mechanic. The only people who really care about those Magmaw and Atramedes kills are you guys because you're still bitter about the situation surrounding them.

Neither the Shannox situation nor the Magmaw/Atramedes situation ultimately mattered in the end. You guys won the race in both instances. Continuing to hold up those scenarios as any sort of justification for the decision-making process that led Paragon to choose to exploit the LFR system is accomplishing nothing but creating strawman and red herring arguments.

The bottom line is you always have a choice, even when past experience indicates that taking the morally-questionable path will lead to the most gain. You guys chose not to kite Magmaw adds out of the room, but still got the first kill that mattered in that instance. You guys chose not to abuse the faction change bug like STARS, yet still got the world first kill of what is arguably the most difficult boss in the history of WoW (pre-nerf Atramedes notwithstanding). In both of those scenarios, Paragon chose to do the right thing and won out in the end. In the LFR scenario, Paragon chose to do the wrong thing and will now suffer the consequences. When Paragon was weighing past experience in the decision-making process of whether or not to exploit the LFR, you guys clearly forgot something very important: You had chosen the virtuous path before and still won out in the end. Hopefully this will serve as a lesson to a lot of people out there that you can still play legit and beat those who chose to cheat in the end.

[ashpeeberson]

One problem as I see it is that right now there is no real incentive to report any of these exploits/bugs when the chances that they will be fixed are minimal. There is no real way to get in touch with blizzard. Sure handing out bans is a start to making the game better but as long as there is no certainty that exploits will be fixed after they are reported reporting them will only hurt you.

And lets be honest noone gives a shit if something is right or wrong in this game.

As much as I don't support exploits, I'm going to play devils advocate here. I honestly doubt the majority of you flaming them for exploiting this wouldn't have done the same given the opportunity. Truth is, these guilds are world first contenders for a reason. Although their tactics may not always be "fair" they're clever enough to even think of them in the first place. Because they understand the slight edge could make the difference. The majority of players in this game and I'll even include myself in this are striving to be nothing more than mediocre.


I DO wish they would have taken the road less traveled, as it would have eliminated their competition and left it wide open for a victory, but I can't disrespect the reason that they did.

[Ryethe]

It's mildly amusing considering that verbal lashing you gave other exploiters in the past before you were the top guild in the world.

All I'm getting from this is that once you're at the top, anything goes. Your only principle now is to come out as number 1. Keep those site views and add clicks high and those sponsorships intact. From an outsider's perspective this looks like a clear case of selling out previous morals, standards, principles and ethics you previously had.

Remember what you had at the start of Wrath. Remember what happened to Ensidia. Don't become yet another guild to fall off the top of WoW (at least not yet).