Eve drama comes to WoW?

[Ingmar]

Behold the saga of the Martin Fury shirt:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16474315027&sid=1&pageNo=1

TLDR version: some guild gets a debugging/GM item that kills everything in 30 yards, uses it to one shot a bunch of stuff in Ulduar. They claim it was given to them by a GM to make up for some screw up on a support ticket. Most threads about it have been deleted but this one has lasted a while. Truth of what really happened = ?

[kildorn]

They won the BPO lottery fair and square! Everyone in charge was out of town this week! We can't not punish the GM twice!

[Fordel]

Meh, all that's going to happen here is some achievements get rolled back, some players banned and some GM's fired.

[Sheepherder]

Maybe not even the last.  There are a few mistakes that could have resulted in this, most notable being that item 117 is "tough jerky" while this item is 17.  There's an "interview" on wowinsider claiming the guy got it on a lowbie alt warlock.  Then again, I don't know how heavy-handed Blizzard is when dealing with it's own and their foibles.

[gryeyes]

Blizzard will harshly punish the dipshit who did this. Why can a normal account even use a GM flagged item?

[Musashi]

I don't think they use flags like that on GM items.  There really is no reason for GM items in WoW, as the GM's are invisible.  I don't know why this item was even in the DB, as most like items got removed long ago.  Clearly they just blew it.  Unfortuantely, and I think maybe a little harshly, they have always taken the stance that such abuses are bannable.  I guess they feel like examples must be made.  I can't say I agree, but that's they way they've always been.  I remember entire guilds getting banned in classic for stupid sploits.

[Sheepherder]

Story is it was mailed to his restored characters after his account was hacked.  As I said, a single mis-type on the GM's part could have resulted in this item popping up rather than tough jerky in that mailbox (if WoW uses a numeric identifier for indexing / data storage purposes, and if WoW Armory uses the correct indexes when linking rather than obfuscated ones), and the legend is that he got this shirt on an alt, as it is not bound to a character how it got to his main is easily answered.

EDIT: Should have been removed from the database, and the item shouldn't have been assigned to an index easily mistyped when restoring an account, true.  But it's hardly the GM's fault insofar as they may not have been cognizant of their caffeine-induced twitching, or whatever.

[gryeyes]

Unfortuantely, and I think maybe a little harshly, they have always taken the stance that such abuses are bannable.  I guess they feel like examples must be made. 

Getting caught using a GM item seems pretty fair grounds to be banned. Unless they reported the item before they used it which i highly doubt.

[Fordel]

That's pretty much my thoughts. Maybe if they just dicked around on some old world dragons or AQ 40 etc.


They went straight to Ulduar though, for the 'lulz' 

[Ironwood]

At this stage of the game, I probably would too.

Getting totally burned out with it.  Last expansion and couple of patches have been totally underwhelming.

Give me a GM item and I'd go straight for the unbeatable shit too.  May as well go down in flames.

[Fordel]

If you were to do that, it would've been best to save it for IceCrown.


World First Lichking kill fuckers!

[Ironwood]

Fair point, but I'd also be struggling with 'They're going to find this and take it off me soon' thoughts.

 

[Dren]

I'm with Ironwood.  Go out in flames.  You know that is what they did.

If they were truly trying to do something nefarious with this, they could have farmed lower instances under the radar for a very long time.

[Paelos]

Yep, at this point I wouldn't mind being banned if I could go out in epic fashion and post it to the forums.

[LK]

The problem is that his actions reflected on more than just himself. If he had just reported the mistake and saved the item, it would still have been an awesome story but at least there wouldn't have been any collateral damage. He probably would have gotten a nice thank you letter.

Then again if he didn't give a shit...

[Righ]

Yep, at this point I wouldn't mind being banned if I could go out in epic fashion and post it to the forums.

Most of the terrain problems still exist, and you can snipe people in both Orgrimmar and Ironforge from the safety of being underneath the city. Kill one person that way and you'll get a warning. Kill the whole fucking city and you'll get a ban. And a nice video.

Hey, I forgot to test if DKs can pull people through the scenery if you have only one-way line-of-sight.

[Musashi]

Yep, at this point I wouldn't mind being banned if I could go out in epic fashion and post it to the forums.

Most of the terrain problems still exist, and you can snipe people in both Orgrimmar and Ironforge from the safety of being underneath the city. Kill one person that way and you'll get a warning. Kill the whole fucking city and you'll get a ban. And a nice video.

Hey, I forgot to test if DKs can pull people through the scenery if you have only one-way line-of-sight.

Haha, it would be awesome for DK's to grab noobs under the city if we could figure out how to translate "WORM PEOPLE ARE KILLING YOU" cross faction.

[dusematic]

If that dude was smart he would have used it solo and told nobody.  A newb guild all of a sudden clearing out Ulduar in record time is going to get exposed a hell of a lot quicker than a single guy clearing dungeons and keeping his fucking mouth shut.  I bet he could have kept that charade going for a long time.  Especially if he wasn't just farming night and day like a greedy tool.

[Ingmar]

I think he probably would have been caught relatively fast. I am pretty sure there are crawler apps that go through the armory looking for biggest hit, etc., to populate census sites and the like. The 300+ million damage hit on Flame Leviathan was one of the things that gave him away, and even using it on old raid content or whatever would have left a trail in his Armory statistics.

[SurfD]

Also, i think i remember someone on one of the threads about it saying the item had a limited number of charges on it (about 100 or so), so he couldnt use it as his own personal gold mine to solo clear stuff for easy gold for very long.