wow World Quests Exploit Suspensions Coming Soon

[Stan 5,025]

Players who recently abused an exploit on live servers that caused world quests to become repeatable will be suspended soon. The exploit was hotfixed and allowed players to quickly reach Exalted reputation with the new factions.

Blizzard (Source)

It seems that the frenzy of this WQ exploit is propagating a ton of misinformation, like 3 day bans going out and whatnot.

Here's a real rundown:

A WQ exploit was discovered (since hotfixed) that allowed one to get the rewards for completing a WQ, yet flag it has having not been completed, creating a cycle where one could gain the rewards over and over again, be it raw gold, gear, resources or most commonly, reputation.

As far as I can tell, no official action has been taken yet against anyone, and that is likely due to the scale of damage done. 

This exploit undermined gearing (repeating gear quests for titanforges), economy (Raw gold, materials/expulsom from scrapping gear), and reputation gates (jumping to exalted on every rep in a day versus the intended few weeks). It's a massive amount of damage. Thousands of gold and reputation, tons of ilvls, resources, etc.

Action will be taken. Unlike the cooking spices exploit that simply allowed people to powerlevel cooking, or the early Legion AP exploit that saw people get their AP reset that were fairly contained in scale, this exploit was effectively an item and gold dupe with far reaching impact.

It's my personal opinion that anyone who abused this should be given a permenant ban, as it's clear this exploit circumvented and undermined multiple game systems for unfair benefit.

Please stop spreading rumors that this was only a reputation exploit and that people are only getting 3 day temp bans for it. It's false information and the issue is much more serious than that.

EDIT: As this thread lit up after Ythisens replied, I've continued to see misinformation. This exploit was a series of very intentional steps to prevent a WQ from registering as complete. It's almost impossible to do on accident or through normal play.

Finishing a particular WQ a second time in a day, that has popped up again for you normally, does not constitute exploiting.

We are indeed aware of this exploit and have been working on a fix. We are also taking action against those who are abusing it.

[tkioz 229]

Huh. Didn't even know this was a thing, but honestly if you did this you deserve a ban/suspension simply because it was an obvious exploit and you had to know the hammer would drop.

[Prnullgramm 1]

3 minutes ago, tkioz said:

Huh. Didn't even know this was a thing, but honestly if you did this you deserve a ban/suspension simply because it was an obvious exploit and you had to know the hammer would drop.

Honestly, 3 Days Ban?

Permaban pls.

[kakodaimonos 5]

I wonder if "Mr. Exalted First" was actually abusing this.

Anyway I hope for some permanent bans and no server resets. Because tracking gold is pretty much an impossible thing to do, if duping was actually a thing.

[Seksi 208]

Perma ban seems too harsh, especially as Blizz would be losing some of the most hardcore / commited players. But 3 day suspension is way too low as it won't even prevent those people from doing the raid when it comes out. Maybe 1 month is a good mid-term? By then everyone who cares will also be exalted and have higher ilvl gear anyway.

Or, if its possible to do so, just roll those characters back to where they were before they exploited, then you don't even need any bans at all as you have effectively destroyed everything they did since then which is a pretty big penalty by itself.

[dartbodman 64]

Intended few weeks for exalted reputation? Does that mean anyone who unlocked Dark dwarves and Brown orcs is getting banned?

[multiboxing 71]

permaban is a little bit harsh but I say give them a 6 month ban! let them fall behind everyone else in the game!

 

and also make them walk naked through the streets of stormwind while some mean ass lady rings a bell and shouts " shame  shame shame" repeatedly !

 

[Seksi 208]

1 hour ago, dartbodman said:

Intended few weeks for exalted reputation? Does that mean anyone who unlocked Dark dwarves and Brown orcs is getting banned?

Only if you did it through the WQ bug abuse.

[soultank 0]

either ban suspend or worse strip them of there reward{if possible} and if they get ban make it where they cant x-fer to a diffent account "striping thier rewards"

[Keioshin 15]

They should be banned up until 2 weeks after Mythic Raids unlock, that'll hurt most of them more then resetting their rep, gold, and gear. 

[Slam 40]

50 minutes ago, multiboxing said:

permaban is a little bit harsh but I say give them a 6 month ban! let them fall behind everyone else in the game!

 

and also make them walk naked through the streets of stormwind while some mean ass lady rings a bell and shouts " shame  shame shame" repeatedly !

 

 

As far as I understood from reading the now gone QQbudy forum (great place to laugh at all the QQ "I got ban" before it went dead), Blizzard was doing it by increment. 1st time is a gentle "stop", second is X time more suspension, etc. so ultimately a guy being dumb once get what he deserve a gentle "don't do it again" + lost a gain. The guy abusing every time he can get his 3,6,perma ban.

 

sound like a good way to do it for me!

[Sombra 28]

2 hours ago, Prnullgramm said:

Honestly, 3 Days Ban?

Permaban pls.

its blizz....

exploit the wq´s and fuck the whole community and you get 3 days...

drop some mean words out of anger and they perma ban you...

[Demenzel 29]

6 hours ago, Prnullgramm said:

Honestly, 3 Days Ban?

Permaban pls.

did you readed the note?

They clearly says that there's no action decided yet (but they will do something)....

i don't think taht they will do a permaban... I think that, with a 2 month should be fine

[geofferson 33]

3 Day ban is the most people should be given.

Someone getting to exalted early and getting an allied race a few days before other people is not game breaking.

FFS, asking for a permaban or a month long ban because some people found a way to get rep faster is absurd.

Personally, as someone that only has 3 reps at revered and the others at honored, I don't think there should be a ban at all.

Just knock their reps down to 0/21000 Revered.  Banning someone for finding a way to farm rep faster is dumb. 

[PatrickHenry 293]

26 minutes ago, geofferson said:

Just knock their reps down to 0/21000 Revered.  Banning someone for finding a way to farm rep faster is dumb. 

They also farmed gold out of it.  Gear as well.

I dont think it should be permanent but it was clearly unintended on Blizzards part, and intentional on theirs, thus an exploit.

[ThatCat 6]

1 hour ago, geofferson said:

3 Day ban is the most people should be given.

Someone getting to exalted early and getting an allied race a few days before other people is not game breaking.

FFS, asking for a permaban or a month long ban because some people found a way to get rep faster is absurd.

Personally, as someone that only has 3 reps at revered and the others at honored, I don't think there should be a ban at all.

Just knock their reps down to 0/21000 Revered.  Banning someone for finding a way to farm rep faster is dumb. 

3 day ban for getting rewards that would take you a longer time which include gold,items and reputation , plus the fact that it is a sub type game which translates to every day you cheat away from spending on grinding that rep/gold or items is you permissibly quitting  wow before you have to resubscribe and that translates to them losing money with something you are not supposed to be doing in the first place . 

Also, if you want to be so fair about it .

The bare minimum should be the amount of time it would take you to get said gold/items and rep without using that method. This is of course ignoring even that its the wrong thing and you should not do it in the first place , so add that to the time and i am pretty sure that it would take more than 3 days worth of ban time 

Edited August 28, 2018 by ThatCat

[dsc 18]

I didn't exploit although I knew of it looong before the community as a whole knew..

 

/i didn't use it, common sense dictates there will be retribution.

IMO permaban is fine as long as blizz doesn't include people who grouped to complete one time innocently.  I use group finder it would blow to get caught in the mess.

perma ban is fine.   get rid of the 3rd world contracted from India coders too while at it, Blizz.

Edited August 28, 2018 by dsc
speiling

[JJ77 20]

3 hours ago, geofferson said:

Banning someone for finding a way to farm rep faster is dumb. 

It wasn't farming though was it? It was exploiting aka cheating. I don't care how other people play the game generally but cheating is a no-no. It has ramifications for all players.

In this exploit the following is one possible outcome of an unchecked cheat. 

Player A uses exploit, uses time saved from gaining legit rep by farming dungeons for gear and gold for using AH for gear. Player B doesn't and carries on gaining rep legitimately.

Fast forward to raid opening; Player A to Player B 'Can you join my group? Ha noob, with that ilvl, your gear sucks'.

Put simply it isn't fair to players that don['t cheat.

[Cntrl 4]

I agree a 3 day ban is to low I would say to the one that offered a month band would be a great ideal for the fact the raid comes out within that month would give the average joes time to get exalted , over gear and let the people who continued to exploit this fall behind by a huge margin , if it was anyone in a big name guild and it was a core raider(s) then even gives other players a chance to put their name in the ring compared to the top 3 guilds over the course of the past 5 years 

[thurk 52]

5 hours ago, geofferson said:

3 Day ban is the most people should be given.

Someone getting to exalted early and getting an allied race a few days before other people is not game breaking.

FFS, asking for a permaban or a month long ban because some people found a way to get rep faster is absurd.

Personally, as someone that only has 3 reps at revered and the others at honored, I don't think there should be a ban at all.

Just knock their reps down to 0/21000 Revered.  Banning someone for finding a way to farm rep faster is dumb. 

Whatever the punishment, it should just set them behind all the people who *didn't* use the exploit.  I'm not sure how much advantage people used it for - but I'm sure it was more than a 3 day bonus - probably more like a couple of weeks.  So a month-long ban would be enough of a punishment to actually discourage them from doing it again.

[Battlechaser 0]

What is difficult to reverse is the impact to the economy from the exploit. If one got hold of massive gold/items and traded it to the world, Blizz couldn't just roll everything back- the gold was out there already through likely legit means and there would be innocent players not knowing about the dirty money. 

[LestatD 6]

19 hours ago, Seksi said:

Perma ban seems too harsh, especially as Blizz would be losing some of the most hardcore / commited players.

If they were so "Hardcore" and "committed" they wouldn't need to exploit a cheat, they would do it the proper way, and be "Hardcore" and "committed" about it.

[Perak 23]

To use exploid is violating the "term of use" , and if i will dont care about reputacion , then the items and gold they  farm by it and then use it to buy tokens and Exchange them for acc money to use for other games, is just plant thieving/robing.

But there is no room for discusion on this. Using exploits is violateing the term of use and so you can and WILL be punished for it...it just so happens that there are a lot of ppl in a big horizont of time, so blizz take time to get all data They need to came with proper punishment..and if it will be perma..so be it...They have the right to do so and we had to agreed with it if we wanted to play in the first place.

 

PS: it is funny to see ppl talk how these players got 3d ban, when it's clearly writen, that there has been no punishmens yet

so 3 and more days bans had nothing to do with this exploid … most likely

[Sultriest 0]

These people deserve a perma ban imho. Because face it they KNEW what they were doing was against Blizzard policies...and then again do not come with the reaction but it was their fault so I made use of it. It is wrong now and all the dozens of other times people did it...In my opninion...perma ban only good they should get..Reputation: Perma Ban

[Phasmy 0]

Non-Perma-Bans should come with a cursed (not unequipable) Tabard of Shame. Adding a clearly visible effect, marking the wearer as cheater. Already equipped on every char of that account.