f13.net

One of the guys in my guild just posted some info on a bit of forum drama.

Seems that the only current US based Horde Guild capable of a full Naxx clear, <Overrated> just got something like 90% of their memebers perma banned for, of all things, being retarded enough to to use a blatant Data file hack to allow wall walking in AQ 40 to skip their entire raid past everything after Skeram to go directly to C'thun.  I mean, I realise the trash clear to cthun sucks, but hell, it only takes 5 hours of effort for my guild (not a catass guild by any means) to clear through to him.  Was it REALLY worth the banstick slapdown to get the easy C'thun loot every week?

Couple of relevant posts on the forums:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=43425267&sid=1

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=35975655&sid=1

A video of the actual hack in action (origionally the thing was used to skip directly to the Quest people for the Regalia / Armaments turn in quests.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8633973161089723869&q=Aq+quest+Exploit&hl=en

I mean, all that work, and any reputation of being a "legetimate" top end guild, flushed, cause you were caught exploiting on old content......

Their excuse? They were bored.

As always.

More hilarity from their server board:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=43884822&sid=1 (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=43884822&sid=1)



Yes.  It's just like lava jumping.  Just like it.  Only it's not.  At all.

Don't really feel like digging up the post but one of the overrated guys sounded rather relieved.  Had something like 220 days played on 1 character.

Is naturally dropping to a lower level in BRD really forbidden (or was it)?  That seems stupid.  YOu might as well ban people for jumping off the zep before it reaches the official designated landing point.

At one stage it was, yeah. Blizzard learnt, though.

Lava hopping was bannable until they added a bunch of fire elementals on the path to make it more of a challenge instead of a complete "Skip half the instance" thing.

Using the same lava jumping logic, it should be a bannable offense to take a level 60 into any level 40 or lower instance and bypass all the mobs to go strait to the bosses, just because you can due to aggro range mechanics.

Ooh, only 5 hours!

How the hell do you hack a client-side data file to allow you to walk through walls anyway?

First off you have to realize AQ40 is a downard spiral shaped instance.  That is to say a bit past the first boss is almost directly above the last boss.

Since all the bosses are spawned at once all they did was use model replacement to hop down through the platform the first boss stands on with a slow fall and land in an area near the last boss.

Since all the collision detection is done client side, and since the client uses data in patch-#.mpq files in it its possible to replace models in this way, many people have done it for things like herbalism nodes (turning them so they're easier to see), and occasionally campfires (various exploits for getting into a BG early have been because of this).

Really blizzard's options for fixing this problem should be to just have the warden sniff out anyone with more patch-# files than they should have.  I honestly donno why they just went this route instead, but it reinforces the point that blizz dosen't fuck around when it comes to banning huge numbers of people.

They're not looking to fix it, per se, but as of 1.11 or 1.12 the Warden does notice if you've got altered files.  They patched it to stop folks farming DM from the sky, and prevent stuff like these wall hacks. As a side-effect Hunters who used to patch-out the Lhok'delar staff model for something better looking and replace the dragonstalker purple with a black or red set can't do it anymore.

 If you find a 'work around' and still get the client to run, I imagine it notifies Blizzard. Their strategy has always been "let folks cheat for a bit and pass it around, then ban.  You catch more cheaters that way and sell more new boxes."  I recall folks saying the same thing about Diablo/ WC/ SC on Battle.Net.

Have I replied in this thread yet ?

LOL.

Yeah, that'll do it.

Cheating scumbuckets who have a misplaced sense of entitlement.  Wipe them out.  All of them.

Plus that way every couple of months blizz can say "Oh yea we banned over 40,000 accounts, so don't cheat okay"

Five Hours for content you've already done versus 2 minutes to get to the inevitable end result is the definition of fun. I'm not saying cheat, I'm saying This Is The Reason I Don't Play MMOGs (much, at all, anymore). Bullshit timesinks.

Edit: Though, this cheat does make my point louder than I ever could. It's positively disgusting to cheat in a game built around wasting time, but that point remains. Even then, I'm such a jaded dick that the logging in and out makes it too much work. In that time I can load up a demo of something I've never played and experience something new or judge a good 5-10 flash games built by indie folks.

Not really appropriate tho.  They were skipping 'the fun' so that they would have an easier time skipping 'the fun' on the next level.  It's just fucking stupid whichever way you slice it.  Cheating for the sake of it.


Don't get me wrong :  I think five hours to do ANYTHING 40 man is the very textbook definition of unfun.  Indeed, I think that would probably even go in the American definition of torture.  I personally can't imagine doing such mindless levels of trash for a shiny purple.  But they were after the shiny purple to make the next shiny purple easier to get to.   That's broken thinking.

What they're basically saying is 'Playing with my 40 mates for Five hours is too much.  I hate those guys.'

:)


After all, Schild, are you really saying that you want an online game to only provide you with 2 minutes fun ?  That's a little silly.  Your OCD problem does not translate to my fun.

I shouldn't have to put in a days worth of work to get the best loot in the game. The Diablo style of nearly random is far more fun than....that shit. I don't even know what to call it. Raiding just doesn't do it justice. Maybe "raping" does though.

No, I agree with that.  Everyone knows my feelings on 40 man hardcore raiding.  I'm just not sure that taking that to its logical conclusion is what happened here at all.  Timesinks are important for the genre for too many reasons to go back into (and you know them all anyway.)

The whole idea of 'The Best Loot In The Game' is what breaks the thinking anyway.  These guys were chasing Naxx Epics.  They saw AQ40 as nothing more than a stepping stone and it's that that's the problem.

Personally, these encounters SHOULD be their own reward and All the bosses SHOULD drop comparable loot.  They should be being done because they're there, not as a Goal.

Random Loot Would Not Work, tho, and I think you know why.

Well, therein lies the big problem. In these games - all of them (that I know of, please someone prove me wrong) - there's always something better. And you always know what that something is...

By the time you get there (not counting the ultimate hardcore catass guilders), they've released the next bit of shiny, and due to the internet, you know what that is also.

It's a disgusting vicious cycle. It's prat of the reason MMOGs suck in general. Someone, somewhere needs to come up with a system for creating loot. My opinion, Bandai/Cyber Connect's .Hack random dungeon generator perfected a system for generating content (the content sucks a lot, but that's not the point), now someone needs to generate a loot system that is nearly infinitely random. I want a fun, fast, hack and slash where the amount of loot is so huge and the dungeon possibilities so vast that making a strategy guide would be near impossible (it'd be thousands of pages if they showed stats...). I know I'm just being ridiculous here, but I would except a game with that sort of randomization with any one of the following play styles Diablo/Phantasy Star, FFXII, Infinity Engine Stuff, Hellgate: London style, or EVEN SRPG/TBS style.

Why am I even posting this shit?

Nevermind, /derail, go back to talking about WoW. For a moment I almost got glossy eyed at the possibility of fun if someone who wanted to make a difference got some money. My bad, I should know better.

Heh.


All that loot.  Now try and balance it all.  Now react when the Internet community realises the CodPiece of Thrusting Might is overpowered and everyone is trying to get one and can't because, hey, it's random.

And who's getting them ?  The Gold Farmers.  And you too can have one for real dollars please.

Sigh.  Same as it ever was.

Oh and where the hell has Hellgate gone anyway ?

Fuck balance.

There, I said it. You don't like what someone has, avoid him. Life isn't fair. Get a helmet. Leave balance to this diku nonsense.

Edit: On a more serious note, you balance the attributes that make up the tiers of weapons that contribute to the whole. I'd still be ok with fucking balance though. Oh, and there would be no 40 man raids. There would however, be a 40 man free for all arena called The Bucket of Blood. Your goal? Not to die. Fuck the # of people you kill. The goal is to get out with your equipment. And just for good measure, offer a hardcore mode so people can lose their characters. At the end of the day, it seems like Blizzard north needs to make Diablo Online and Flagship needs to offer out of box persistant servers for small groups of people (2 to 30 concurrent or something) so communities could have their own loot lovefest.

Raiding should be it's own reward, but in the case of AQ it isn't because the zone itself is poorly designed piece of garbage, vastly inferior to Naxx (or BWL for that matter) in every way. The first half of the zone was a joke even when it was released, most guilds at Overrated's level cleared that the first night it opened. The second half carries a truely insane trash to boss ratio, far worse than anything in MC. Except for the Emps and C'Thun encounters the whole zone is just shit. Add to that the fact that these guys probably cleared the zone 20+ times already and its hardly surprising they dreaded running this crap yet again just to get the shineys off the last boss.

None of that excuses what they did in the least, however. They didn't really bitch about it, they knew full well they throughly deserved a banning.

Can't argue with that either.





I am interested in your views and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.  Oh wait, ingame, you mean ?  Nah.

Actually, no, I meant here in Phoenix. Everyone knows we have enough people. Hell, we have enough real estate types to start a gladiator tournament. Last man standing gets another strip of highway IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DESERT.

Wow, I had no idea this was getting so much attention. I was in a guild with a lot of these guys 3 or 4 years ago when we all played Planetside and then Lineage 2 together, but we kind of fell out of touch when they moved on to WoW. Anyway, I got some IMs from some of them back on the night that it happened, and just to prove that they're almost kind of sorry about what they did:


But then again, when we played Planetside we got bored one day and killed an entire army of our own team by waiting for a base to be taken, then taking down our own generator so no one could buy a vehicle (inevitably leading to everyone standing around the vehicle station waiting for it to come up instead of fixing it themselves), followed by orbital striking the mass of people crowding the vehicle station.

About 6 times.

And we made a movie of it.

And we posted it on the official forums.

But yeah, maybe this'll set them straight. it wont

That conversation is bullshit.  There are no women on the internet or in MMOs.

Who says it's a woman ?  Jessica is a nice manly name.

To the Name My Son Thread with thee.

Hmph, you don't need to spend 5 hours to progress.  The instance timers save intermittent progress for the week!  Remember?  You'd have to find a lot of like-minded people of course, but that's about half the game from any perspective.

This is a rather silly thing to have done.  My guild skips to C'thun by taking another guild's instance- one that can only clear to Huhuran or the Emps. (3/4's through)  That's quite a bit easier, and you don't get banned!  I guess some servers don't have very many guilds that are capable of this, so that's the only reason I can think of for not being very intelligent, other than hacking for "the thrill".

She's a girl.

And an elitist.

And was a rampant PKer in Lineage 2, and a pretty damn good pilot in Planetside. Her hobbies include making grown men cry and spamming forums.

edit: talked to a few of my other friends too. they're kind of dissapointed that no one has bothered to really publish WHY they did it. It wasn't because they had to it was because they're all powergamers and they believed that as a guild they had already "beat" the game. They then decided that AQ40 was stupidly designed and proceded to exploit it in a very blatantly obvious way. Even recording the boss deaths on their public DKP charts to make it more obvious to anyone paying attention.

I dont know how long they did it for, but they're all fairly proud of themsleves for getting this much attention. Most of them plan on rerolling to another server and prepping for Burning Crusade content. They also made the snide remark that Blizzard had left enough members of the clan active that they could actually exploit it again in a week or two if they really wanted to~

I refer you to the 'Misplaced Sense of Entitlement' I mentioned some moments ago.

I see a lot of that going around...

You know if I had completeled most of the content and was sick of wasting time on boring instance design each week, and was going to reroll again for TBC I wouldn't really see much of a problem with it either.

Afterall, I can get a copy of WoW over here for cheaper than the monthly cost.

That's as bad an excuse as the guy I saw on the WoW boards who claimed that his reason for constantly going afk in BG's was to show Blizzard how much of a problem it is that people can do it.  Your friends were lazy and stupid and they got caught cheating.  It's a little late now to try and make a cause out of it or to pretend to be proud that they got banned from a computer game.

Swell.  Rumor has it they're now on my server.

At least they're on the other side.  I feel like going camping.

I'm not going to defend cheating, but I will defend my friend's as people. They didn't do it for some greater cause to prove something to Blizzard, and I didn't say they did.

They did it because they felt they had "beat the game", and they thought that doing so much work for that instance was dumb, they wanted to "go out with a bang" as one of them put it, and judging by the amount of people talking about it, they did. They entirely expected to be banned. That same person said he wanted to be banned in some ways, because the amount of time he was spending to help the guild maintain it's top position was draining him. He told me he pretty much had to play at leat 6 to 8 hours per day, 6 or 7 days per week, strictly raiding, and raiding all content that he's already done several times. So he found it to be a relief in many ways. I know these guys, and while their values may not make sense to the average casual gamer, they're not in the same category as a hacker who gets caught on a CS server and goes "oh crap, you got me, I actually suck and i was cheating to be better."

They're more like myg0t in some ways, where you're supposed to catch them, but the only reason they did it was to make people talk in the first place. Also, they're pretty damn awesome players at anything I've seen them play, so I have no doubt that they'll legitly decimate the Burning Crusade content, and perhaps pull stunts similar to this one when they're ready to actually leave the game.

That's how they are. Destructive elitists as far as the overall community is concerned, but certainly not lazy or stupid.

(P.S. I know computer games may not mean much to you, they're simply a part of your life. One piece to it. But for some of these guys,  games are the majority of their life. It's a very, very, real and major part. So honestly, yes, they do get "proud" over things that happen in the game.)

Myg0t? You're comparing them to THAT bunch of faggots? You're not doing them any favors.

They're using an exploit someone else developed and for some reason they're these way supercool players? Jesus. You have dumb friends and that girl is a cunt.

oh man i am not cool enough to 'get' them and their ways they must be really fukin cool they are WoW rockstars

Therin lies the problem.  In fact, it IS the fucking problem.  Your friend needs to reanalzye his life if he feels he "HAD" to play a game - that is transitory and will get him nowhere - to the point he felt drained.  If you're going to call these folks your friends, get them help.

That aside, they're shitheels.  Thre is no 'greater glory' in this kind of shit.  Sorry.   The only way I'd even buy the half-assed excuse of "hey we were expecting to get banned, lolz" is if there'd been some kind of manifesto/ pre-posting of the 'scheme.'   Something that said "Hey bliz, this instance design sux ass." (It does)

If they're so starved for attention that all the negative chat is 'going out with a bang.'  Then once again I refer you to the first paragraph.  Think this will get mentioned any more than 'zomg Legion of Lloth got banned from EQ' in a few weeks?

Just had to make an exit statement, couldn't just quietly cancel accounts for a few months or permanently, eh?

I don't know which is worse, them getting banned like this or one of my accounts, the 2nd month of final, getting caught as a level 20 mage with two other level 20 mages levitating above the fountain in Shadowfang, AEing every non-ranged monster in the instance.

Our logic was, "it sure would be nice to have a ton of mages when battlegrounds go live."

I compared them to myg0t, not because I like myg0t, but because that's the closest most well-known group that I could compare the mentality to. I can't think of any other way to describe the way we played Planetside when we had decided that we "beat" that game. Purposely getting our own team killed in mass numbers just to see the reaction of people being pissed off at the people who are on top of the leaderboards.

It's not the right way to play, I'll give you that one. And yes, a lot of the problem is for these guys how much the game means to them. They can't simply quit. They haven't even quit now that they were banned. To them, not playing a game is not an option. They have to play something, and they think WoW is the only game out worth two shits right now. They don't like it very much, they dont like the end game, they dont like the instances, but they need to play something and that's how they live their lives.

Theres a lot of people out there like that. A ton. It's not really my place to tell them to go get a job, or find something meaningful to do with their time.

Anyway, they're fun people to play with, and their brain may not rationalize everything in the same way yours does. But that's the thing about MMOs... it takes all kinds!

This is scary. Maybe if they spent just a fraction of the effort they put in to WoW in to working a RL job, they could each buy a nice big TV and a Xbox360, and then they could realize that gaming is for fun again.

That kind of "lol account suicide" crap needs to stay on gamefaqs message boards, especially if they're just going back to make new characters (I assume requiring another purchase of the box in the process).  Anyone planning on playing again just cost themselves $20 so they could have people on the Internet talking about how stupid they are.  Congratulations to them I guess.

Bullshit - they were cheating to make it easier.

Spin it to - "we were making a statement," or "we won" to make them seem like less of idiots all you want, but they lost 3 times in my book.

1. Lost $20 for the next copy of WOW they will buy.
2. Lost their existing characters and all the time they invested.
3. Lost respect.

Now personally #3, I probably don't care one way or another, but someone out there looked up to them and their accomplishments. Now it means nothing to them.

Yea - they sure showed Blizzard.

I hope you never have to defend me at a trial :(

:-o

I know I wish more of MY friends were cheating, grandstanding, attention whores.  Defending your friends "as people"?  What does that even mean?  Everyone is saying they suck for cheating.  They do.

So what if they cheated. It's just a game.

I say that all the time to people at the poker table too.

Troll.

eh, enough people got my point, Furiously not included.

Money doesn't matter to them, they're well off people. That applies to time as well, for many of them. When you have everything you need, and nothing to spend your days on but play games. Starting over isn't that bad. They really did it for the reasons I said, and their values system is very.. em, out of whack. That's all there is to it.

But I do think it's interesting the number of people who play games that way (myself included, in the past), and the impact it has on MMOs. I don't really remember this type of player existing so much back in my MUD days. People exploited bugs, and there were often plenty to exploit. But no one committed "character suicide" when the admins were actual people you could talk to and not some shadowy mass organization of elders known as Blizzard.

(@Threash: I can't bring up their actions without presenting it from a somewhat fair perspective, which is not typically the best way to defend people in court. So yeah, you're right. I wouldn't want me either.)

I can think of heaps of players like this from the MUD days. Heaps.

Your point was it's fair to cheat because they are my friends?

Only.
Takes.
5.
Hours.

Wow.  Just.  Wow.  And not WoW.

Five hours a week is not really all that much... i don't see why people are making such a huge deal of it.  Specially when naxx is a lot bigger time commitment than that.  Five hours a week is chump change, i seriously doubt aq/naxx guilds bother with MC or bwl so its not like they gotta clear all four instances.

All I can say is, if I can't tell someone, "Hey, fuckstick.  It's a Game, stop letting it run your life.  Here's a number for some psychiatric help. Please call them before you hang yourself the next time your account gets deletes or hacked or some shit."  they're not REALLY a friend.  An an acquaintance, an online social touchstone, a random collection of idiots I'm forced to hang with to get shit done, maybe.  But labeling someone as a "friend" when you can't point out the things that are problems seems wildly incorrect.

 Anyway, yes 5 hours.  It's a shithole of an instance and I wouldn't even label it as "required."   Most stuff is just sidegrades from BWL.  People run it because they want some particular shiny, without realizing that shiny isn't an 'I win" button by any means, so not required.  At this stage they're running it because 'that's just how it's done.' (And that phrase being a complete explaination should ALWAYS be a red-flag for thinking people.)  I say fuck the whole place and just run BWL/ Naxx, save yourself some sanity.

OR not bother since you'll be throwing that shit away at about level 65 at the latest in the expansion.

Depends on your reasons for playing the end game.

  Why's my guild bothering with BWL when it'll be pointless in less than 2 months?  To see the content & say we did it.  We paid for it, we want to fight the bosses and kill us some badguys.  We all know we're not going to get full, or even near full T2, but that's not the point of it.  It's not about the shiny, it's about the journey.  The gear's just there to help get to the next plateau, it's not the reason for doing it; nor should it be.   I know, however, we're a rare bunch -- and even then there's enough members who ARE just about the shiny, but they don't stick around long.

Makes it easier?

It's a fucking MMORPG.

The only thing hard about it is finding the time.

Actually, I think there's a certain aspect of putting up with 39 other people every week too.

I don't like a lot of people, I just can't do it. Finding 20 people i can spend time with each week and not get tired of them is bad enough.

Oh and putting up with doing the same thing over and over again.

It takes a certain mindset, not just free time.

I'm not really about the shiny, I'm just not about coordinating 40 people. That just doesn't feel fun. When we had an alliance and were doing 20-mans it seemed to be about the point where I started getting annoyed due to the clusterfucky nature of fights and coordinating, even with the pretty good players we had.

I feel the need to put in a quick qualifier or two here so people may see things in a bit different perspective:

I said it only takes us 5 or so hours to clear through to C'thun.  This wasnt entirely accurate.

In that 5 hour mark, I was also including the fact that C'thun would be dead (not just starting the encounter for the first time), that we spend a bit of extra time arranging groups and takeing bathroom breaks and whatnot, and that we ALSO kill the Bug Family and Ouro first, and occasionally Viscidous too.

If we decided to skip the Bug Family and Ouro, and head strait for C'thun with all haste, he would easily be dead at around the 4 hour mark (provided we 1 shot him, and didnt have to make multiple re attempts).

I fully understand and agree, however, that the Twin Emps -> C'Thun trash is ENTIRELY too much.   On our last attempt (we ran AQ so we could sell some of the item drops to someone from another guild), took us approximately 2.5 hours to kill everything up to Twin Emps (we did the Bug Family, but skipped Viscidous).  The C'thun trash, however, is HORRIBLE.  nearly an hour of trash clearing just to get to the last boss is really unacceptable.  I wouldnt put it on the order of worth the effort of getting banned to skip it horrible, but it is a pain in the ass none the less.

Also, keep in mind, that it still takes competent pug groups 4 hours or sometimes longer to clear to and kill Ragnaros (I know, because I occasionally pug MC to finish my shaman's Earthfury set)

Perhaps a better analogy would be cheating in blackjack when you are playing in your own place with play money.

I find it funny that "it's just a game" is a valid excuse when the developers nerf a class but not when the players nerf an encounter. Or otherwise adversely affect the gameplay experience, for you nitpickers.

Maybe because it's their fucking game? Jesus.

This smells like some dickwit ninjalooting Nefarian. I don't really get it, is it the ultimate nerdness?

Guild-Leader: "Hey guys! Let's go out with a BANG! Let's hack the game and get banned! We just used half our teen-young adult life to get here, we played 6+ hours a day every day just to get here! Let's go FUCK IT UP!"

Mass of 40+: "YEAH!!!!!! SO FUCKING FUNNY!"

Uhm... I doubt it, I really do believe it was greed. And only GREED, they didn't want to do the boring stuff for the shiny and found an uber-exploit they thought they'd get away with. So they got caught with their hand in the jar, twist the story and play proud.

Addicts in denial, that's what they are and this just strengthens the point, self-delusion (sp?) is a big part of it. Maybe they should learn something called responsibility?

I'd just like to make the point that it's 5 hours for Trash.  Not bosses, which don't come back, but Trash.  So you can't really stretch that out over a weeklong period.

Ouchie fuck.

NO thank you.

What I simply can't wrap my head around are comments like "They basically finished the game AND..."

Game finished - next game (until new content or expansion). Trying shit to overcome boredom is the ultimate stupidity. You basically pay them to twiddle your thumbs.

Other players are part of the game, those players are not slaves of Blizzard, therefore Blizzard is not the sole owner of all aspects of WoW.

Yes, yes they are.  They do want the players to be happy (mostly for the money, but there is undoubtedly alot of pride involved in making a game that is at the top of the heap in it's category).  They realize that player community is a part (maybe a big part, maybe) of the game, and they don't want to screw with that.

But don't be confused, Blizzard is the sole owner in all aspects of WoW.  The client lists.  The brand.  The intellectual property.  The code.  EVERYTHING.

I find this hilarious.  I can just picture them, gathered in Davos, Switzerland in a series of isolated but luxurious chalets, their Ventrillo chat punctuated by reminiscences about their time in Skull and Bones and discussions about how best to crush the Indonesian economy.  I like that they have reintroduced the concept of a property qualification for membership.

And as regards this "oh, they did it for a hilarious post-modern prank, deconstructing the idea of linearity and critiquing the absurdity of instances through the medium of dadaist 40-manning, not even slightly because they are lazy, cheating smacktards", I have three words for you: post facto rationalisation.  See under foxes that have suddenly lost their tails.

The truly hilarious bit is seeing them all signing up on another server, en masse, having paid up all over again to continue their pathetic addictions.

 :-D

So where, uh, does the horde like to level around 20?

Oh you've won the game at level 20.

Not sure I understand where you are coming from on that.  Its not like EVERYTHING between Skeram and C'Thun is trash.  Like I said, my guild could easily clear to and kill Twin Emps in under 3 hours.  You could easily stop there for the day, come back the next day and do the C'thun trash and Cthun / Ouro and finish the place.

Really, the only suckish timesink in the instance is the C'thun trash, which takes nearly as much time to kill as it does to clear the first half of the instance.  If they removed every 3rd pull or something, it would go a LONG way to making AQ a much faster, less irritating instance to finish.  And thats, i guess, half the problem.  Everything up to Twin Emps is a decent Time: Reward balance.  Its just the painfull clear to C'thun that sucks the life out of the end of the zone (I guess you could count Ouro in there also, but then, I know guilds who can down C'thun who cant killl Ouro OR Viscidous, so meh).

Legally, Blizzard owns all technical aspects of WoW, but do they own the human aspect? And isn't just that human aspect the reason why people choose MMORPGs over single-player games?

Look, if one subscribes to the "it's their game" excuse, then why would one get their panties in a bunch over how other people play Blizzard's game? If and when they get banned and whether they are allowed to adversely affect other people's gameplay is all part of Blizzard's game, so it should matter as little as a nerf to one's favourite class.

If you care then it's your game as well, even if the lawyers disagree.

20$AU for a wow box here. With a free month.

20.44$ for a months subscription.

Buying a new copy is not costing them anymore I'd wager.

Err... how many people don't set themselves limits to find way of enjoying the same content over again?

It's like saying "why level a new character, the content is all the same regardless... just quit".

Not that I'm saying cheating is justified, but just because you're bored with playing a game a certain way doesn't mean you can't get more fun from the game by playing a different way and overcoming that boredom.

I provided them with some content today in Stonetalon.  Tomorrow Hillsbrad?

...

No, you pay your fee to play around in their little fiefdom, as long as you don't pee on the trees or punch grandma in the face, they don't have a problem with anything you do. My cutting to the front of the line at Six Flags, thus altering everyone else's experience there, does not suddenly make me part owner/operator of Riddler's f'ing Revenge. For the analogy to be perfectly fair though, you need to replace the annoying bicycle seat with a dildo sheathed in sandpaper.

In game terms, my using cheat codes to slice through swaths of baddies in an RPG is completely different. I own the game (or at least the license is a completely different model), I don't own WoW. They could turn my character into goat and all I can do is terminate the agreement and stop paying them $15 to be a damn goat.

The lawyers are fucking right, Blizzard owns WoW and your soul. Every single bit of both, and you agree to it every single time you log-in.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html)

There it is, read it. In fact, KNOW it before you get into these kind of conversations because it basically explains how they own you in the face.

You know, when you put it like that, they really are inspirational MMOG heroes who deserve our praise.


You've spent a long time telling how these people CAN'T leave the game, how they have nothing else in their lives, so account suicide seems pretty low on their agenda.

But I look forward to a thread on that banning as well, along with further justification as what they did and why they did it.

If you are not bored then anymore and it is within the rules of the game, why not. They didn't do anything different though, the final fight beyond the skipped content was exactly the same as it ever was, just as boring as the last 100 times, and their only thrill was to see the loot table of that particular kill. Thats just sad beyond words, and yes I know that includes most raid guilds, with the added strain of having to waste 5 hours to clear the trash.

I don't get why other raid guilds that have perfected all content carry on, either. All I hear from my old guild is "Boring, we disenchant most of the loot, but you gotta do something until TBC comes out". Really, you do? Why?

So why would you get pissy when players cheat/break/change the rules? It's Blizzard's game and they are allowing the cheating or at least allowing themselves to remain ignorant to it, and that's their EULA-given right.

omg.

I don't think anyone here is getting pissy about that.  It's about people getting pissy when they get b& and trying to justify the behavior with "we're bored" "Blizzard's design sucks" "we wanted to make a splash".  Whatever.  If you are so uncreative about what to do with your short span on this mortal coil that cheating in an online game is all you can think of,  and you get away with it, you're stupid, but enjoy it.  If you cheat and get banned, stfu and carry on with life.

No - it isn't - you have no rights under the EULA. Troll.

I largely believe that you are either trolling, or you have decided that you like your friends, and that it's "just a game", so what's the big deal... but something is bothering you, so you decide to stick up for them a bit.  If either of those points are the truth, my (or anyone else) trying to debate with you is largely a waste of time and you are just here to troll or make yourself feel better.

If you are really here to hear and give arguments I'll play along (it's a slow news day, afterall)...
These arguments are extremely sloppy, and somewhat contradictory.

Game Ownership and Game Community
Blizzard owns this MMO game.  MMO games are created to allow people to play with eachother, which many players find "fun".  Ideally this playing together create a "community", which MMO game creators have noticed help retain customers during those periods of time where a segment of the client base (players) have exhausted all the content.  They also noticed in other games (some of which were created by Blizzard) when cheaters become rampant, it fucks with that player community in ways that eventually contribute to the games demise (or reduced popularity).  So they started this game with a firm promise that they would be firm/strict with cheaters.

Game Communities
Participating in an MMO game community does not give you any ownership of that community, you are simply a participating member.
Participating positively in the community can have a positive impact on the community.  Blizzard does things to try to foster and encourage community members to positively participate in the community (e.g. the comic contest)
Participating negatively in the community can have a negative impact on the community, and Blizzard (who want a large, positive community) should and will do things to limit a community members ability to negatively impact the community through channels that Blizzard controls.
Blizzard doesn't own the community.  Blizzard doesn't own the players.  Blizzard doesn't own the players souls.
Playing Blizzards game doesn't free the player from responsibility for his/her own actions.

Caring about the Game
Caring about an MMO game does not give you any ownership.
Participating in an MMO game does not give you any ownership of the game.  Paying your fees gives you the right to access and play the game according to the terms stated in the EULA.  The player may end this relationship at any time, per the terms of the EULA.
If you care about the game it seems counterproductive to partake in actions that have been shown to cause damage to similar MMO games.  Acitons such as cheating.
Players that try to fuck up a game by cheating "after they won" are very similar to a petulant child that breaks a toy after he is done having fun with it just so other children can't play with it.  Again, and odd/disfunctional way of showing you care.

I don't own the park my kids play in, but sure as hell care if somebody is pissing in the sand.

We need to start a common sense forum.  Preferrably on a different board.  One I'm not a part of.

What is with the world today and everyone having a sense of entitlement?

No idea, but it's really getting on my tits.

You're doing it wrong.  That's supposed to be your wife's job.

There, that convey the the gist more clearly?

Not really - they all got the banstick. I don't see where that is allowing it...

Chance'd be a fine thing.

/howerd

I pretty much agree with all of that. My argument is that "it's their game" is a weak excuse, because the game is not just a serverfarm somewhere and a 3D engine on your harddrive. It's the serverfarm combined with the 3D engine combined with the community. And like you said, Blizzard doesn't own the community.

But being a participant in a community doesn't make you owner of anything but your own participation.

The logical leap you're making is that participation entitles you to something. It doesn't. In legal EULA-speak or in some weird social contract you think you have with Blizzard, it's the same thing, you don't control anything.

Just to stick up for those who are friends of this guild - they're taking their thrashing with good humor and do seem like fun people.  Ok, so they're fun people who cheated. 

I hope they don't cheat and get banned this time around, because I'm amusing myself with them (providing content!) every day.  A group of 5 around 23 took my 60 hunter (sans pet but still) down to half health while I tried to kite them into mobs before I killed them.  My server cries for more world pvp, and these guys will likely provide it, if they stick around long enough.

My Hillsbrad mage (lvl 28 - every alliance should have a Hillsbrad mage in the mid/late-20s) is looking forward to action this weekend.  Some of the best fun I've had has been on that mage.  I don't think I'll ever level her up, in fact.

See... i think it would be much easier for them to justify it, if they were to simply say "We've played this game enough, we really cbf grinding this instance all the way though, so we'll just cheat and get to the good stuff." No grandstanding, no public statements. At least this way, they are cheating, but it's really because the game is crap.

Oh course, this leaves open the question as to why they insist on continuing to play it...

If a player leaves the community, the community still exists.
If _every_ player but the admins leave the community, the community still exists.
If Blizzard shuts down the game, the community ceases to exist.

If that is not ownership, I do not know what is.

You've never been part of a guild that has migrated to another game?

Your gang leaves my town, you are no longer part of my community.

A guild is not a community.

Without WoW there is no WoW community.

You are a simple lad?

Then WoW doesn't have a community either.
It's not really the same community either. Wow doesn't own its playbase.

Okay...

Let me rephrase.

A specific guild playing WoW is not the WoW community.

(http://www.f13.net/grief/lolinternet.gif)

This thread went from slightly interesting to trash.

Is there really any fucking confusion over what is and isn't a community? Seriously?

ONLY?! WoW people are broken.

Heaven forbid people should spend 5 hours at a time enjoying themselves. Crazier things have been known to happen.

I had a really long post here, but it's not worth it.

The moment a game makes me spend more than an hour to get to the real content, I stop playing.

And you people wonder why I don't play MMOGs anymore.

I'll tell you why - they're a goddamn waste of my time. My 3 hour Lumines II session tonight was more fun than I've ever had with designer created content in an MMOG.

And Lumines II sucks.

For some reason, I seem to be getting more patient as I get older, not less.

That's the only reason I can credit as to why I still like WoW after having played it for so long.

BUT I COULD QUIT ANY TIME!!!!?

Seek help, you are trying to justify spending countless hours on a repetitive task just to get to something fun.

5 hours straight, no. 4-5 hours over two days? Sure I do like raiding with my alliance mates and shooting the shit. If you hate the people you raid with, you hate your job in the raid, and you are just there for loot, boy it's going to suck ass.

Speaking of community oriented guilds, one of the best has been put to music:

http://files.filefront.com/More_Dotswav/;5129892;;/fileinfo.html

It wasn't even that good, but between the techno remix of Loituma's song and More Dots I was cracking up.  Thanks.

The funny part of this situation to me is I grew up with the GM of Overrated.

Overrated was basically the hardcore guys that broke off from my WoW guild (I was guild master, and we werent about to raid 6 nights a week). One of the last straws was they secretly did a pull of Broodlord that was considered an exploit (basically putting any acct on that raid ID at risk) and soon after they broke off. In the end they merged with the Elite guild of the server, Bloodsworn,  and they transferred off Shadow Moon to Black Dragonflight due to our horrible hardware.

Here is my understanding of the events. They were the first and only Horde guild to down Kel. Some members decided to try a dumb hack, the GM (my friend) basically looked the other way, and after 2 raids like this they were banned. There was no grand scheme to make a big statement or to go out with a bang (maybe there was but only by a very limited number of people, not all of Overrated). Anyone that had that raid ID or the one from the raid before was banned. Even those that did not hack their clients were banned (and I basically agree with it).

There was prolly 10k worth of accounts in that guild. Whoops!

Anyways, its a small Virtual World of 7.5 million people. I knew like 3/4 of the guild, and a handful of them in RL.

Also, the thing that got them caught was their MT told his E-girlfriend about them hacking it (she happened to be a heavy raider elsewhere) who in turn reported them. The moral of the story:

Don't hack. If you do hack, don't tell people.

North American Horde, yes. A Euro Horde guild actually got the world first. (Pedantic I know, but just wanted to clear that up :P.)


Lol.

Yeah, sorry... Euros rock shit! :)

I already quit, but nice try.