Multiple Bans in Top Guilds

[Kalliope]

It was in a blue post too.

It was definitely deliberate.

[Mychelle]

Here is Paragon's "Apology"
http://www.paragon.fi/news/lfr-apology

Submitted by arx on Tue, 06/12/2011 - 05:02

There has been a lot of misinformation going around, so to clear things up, here is a truthful account of what exactly happened with the LFR and what we have to say about it:

The patch hit EU servers on Wednesday. We started off with our 5x Firelands runs to wrap up legendaries and called it a night. For Thursday, we had an elaborate plan to run a personal LFR raid for every main character to get the maximum amount of loot.

As we were doing the first few runs, we noticed an unrealistic amount of tier pieces on some guilds' armory profiles, which we thought was unattainable through normal means. We started looking into it, and found out that you can loot passed gear from bosses, regardless of save status, if you zone out and back into the instance. This did not provide the raid with any extra loot, but it did eliminate a major portion of the RNG that would have been involved in simply doing personal runs for everyone.

We acknowledge that using this unintended behavior, which was quite clearly a bug, to our gain, was wrong. The fact that others were using it as well is no justification for doing it ourselves. We apologize for doing it, and accept whatever consequences follow.

TLDR:
We noticed other people doing something wrong, "tested" it aka did it ourselves, didnt actually steal any loot, knowingly got around the system anyways. Our bad.

[Lisaara]

They got what they deserved. :/ Honestly I would've done it much harsher...like 3 - 5 week ban.

[zedxrgal]

Personally ........................... they should be permanently banned for this in my opinion. It should have been at least a month if not two and stripped of any gear and titles they received. But really to me the ban should have been permanent. It's not like they didn't know what they were doing was wrong or an exploit then they kept it up multiple times from what I know to get what they wanted for several people. So with only a 8 day ban I say they got off super easy and that was not punishment enough.
They all should have been permanently banned. Period.
Just shows what a horrible example top raiding guild are and their character (real life not game).

[Chimera]

Seeing now that they indeed purposely cheated the system and made formal apologies about it, indicating to all who read it that they knew exactly what they were doing and was going to continue doing so without apparent care for the consequences, i do agree with Zed. I thought they were doing it by mistake and then decided to keep going, i dont know anything about the loot system they have in place for this, all i knew was that if you downed a boss in a raid or heroic, you were saved to it, to know that they found a way to consistently down bosses in a way where everyone participating in some way within in the raid zone and acquire the gear that had dropped, that should be a strong enough reason for a permanent ban. I can only guess that because this was a mistake on Blizzards part when they implemented the patch, they were only given a temporary ban.

[pengupuff]

While it's obvious that the people in question knew exactly what they were doing, "not knowing any better" isn't a valid excuse. New patch notes are posted on the downloader and we are required to accept the Terms of Service each time they are altered. To this end it is our own fault if we choose not to keep up with updates and well within Blizzard's right to punish anyone who exploits a glitch, whether they read the patch notes or not.

[Roxhunt]

Ok, now that I've read how they were actually exploiting, yeah they knew.

I've exploit pets (fire flamingo, etc) so I'm not one to judge another for exploiting something they wanted. I'll just say that Blizz should remove the gear just like they removed my fire pet!

[Kalliope]

The call for permanent bans is a bit extreme. These are EXTREMELY dedicated WoW players and Blizzard would be shooting itself in the foot to ban them for good. Punishing them and their guilds by causing them to miss the opening of heroic modes is more than ample, since those heroic modes and becoming the coveted world first were the entire reason for the cheating in the first place. That's far, far more of a punishment than the number of days indicates.

Oh, and Blizzard IS removing the gear that was obtained in this manner; that's in the links somewhere.

[Sigrah]

The punishment is pretty severe when you consider the following points:

- They lost all the gear they got through their use of the exploit. It's also possible they'll lose their normal mode gear as well depending on if Blizzard decides the LFR gear helped them gain the normal mode stuff.

- The 8 day ban essentially kills their chances of being "World First" in the competition for downing heroic bosses. Being that is what these people live for, it's a pretty severe blow.

- Any repeat offenders that took part in this exploit may have been perma banned, meaning their respective guilds will now need to find new players to take their places and bring them up to speed.

- Finally, if Blizzard also stripped them of their credit for downing normal mode Dragon Soul, it will set them back *two* weeks from heroics instead of just one because they'll have to do normal mode again. I haven't seen or heard any indication that Blizzard has done that, but it's possible.

All in all, I think their punishment is enough and should send a strong enough message not to be this stupid again. They should know now that they are constantly being watched by not only Blizzard, but their rivals and the rest of the community as well thanks to the Armory. The only thing I want from here on out is to see Blizzard be consistant when this stuff comes up in the future.

[Talaridan]

The punishment is pretty severe when you consider the following points:

- They lost all the gear they got through their use of the exploit. It's also possible they'll lose their normal mode gear as well depending on if Blizzard decides the LFR gear helped them gain the normal mode stuff.

- The 8 day ban essentially kills their chances of being "World First" in the competition for downing heroic bosses. Being that is what these people live for, it's a pretty severe blow.

- Any repeat offenders that took part in this exploit may have been perma banned, meaning their respective guilds will now need to find new players to take their places and bring them up to speed.

- Finally, if Blizzard also stripped them of their credit for downing normal mode Dragon Soul, it will set them back *two* weeks from heroics instead of just one because they'll have to do normal mode again. I haven't seen or heard any indication that Blizzard has done that, but it's possible.

All in all, I think their punishment is enough and should send a strong enough message not to be this stupid again. They should know now that they are constantly being watched by not only Blizzard, but their rivals and the rest of the community as well thanks to the Armory. The only thing I want from here on out is to see Blizzard be consistant when this stuff comes up in the future.

Since apparently it was in many cases deliberate, I agree with this post. I think the punishment was just and should hopefully keep such things from happening in the future.

[Nachtwulf]

You know...what makes it even funnier...

Deathwing is so freaking undertuned right now, they don't even NEED to pull this kind of crap. Seriously... WRA just got a realm first Ragnaros drop three or four days ago and yet Deathwing was getting stomped within a day of the patch dropping. It's like cheating to win at Chutes and Ladders with a ten year old... they should feel seriously ashamed of themselves, but I doubt they will.

[Kalliope]

You know...what makes it even funnier...

Deathwing is so freaking undertuned right now, they don't even NEED to pull this kind of crap. Seriously... WRA just got a realm first Ragnaros drop three or four days ago and yet Deathwing was getting stomped within a day of the patch dropping. It's like cheating to win at Chutes and Ladders with a ten year old... they should feel seriously ashamed of themselves, but I doubt they will.

It had nothing to do with Deathwing or normal modes. They wanted their set bonuses for H Deathwing.

[Nachtwulf]

Yeah, but... if Normal DW is -this- easy... I can't imagine Heroic is going to be leaps and bounds harder. They could probably just blow through it with the gear they have.

[Kalliope]

Yeah, but... if Normal DW is -this- easy... I can't imagine Heroic is going to be leaps and bounds harder. They could probably just blow through it with the gear they have.

Not so. The difference between normal and heroic is greater in this patch.

[Lisaara]

Yeah, but... if Normal DW is -this- easy... I can't imagine Heroic is going to be leaps and bounds harder. They could probably just blow through it with the gear they have.

Not so. The difference between normal and heroic is greater in this patch.

^ This

Hell even the difference between normal and heroic firelands is pretty hefty.

[Querl Dox]

I wonder how their sponsors feel about it, now that the guild's name has been dirtied by this exploit.

[Kayb]

sponsors? they have sponsors? ugh, why on earth would... ugh. i'm sorry that is utterly ridiculous

[Querl Dox]

sponsors? they have sponsors? ugh, why on earth would... ugh. i'm sorry that is utterly ridiculous

Believe me, I was just as suprised when I found out. But... sponsors will sponsor.... I guess?

[Kalliope]

They've had sponsors for years - this isn't a new thing!

Of course it's all ridiculous, but it evidently works, or it wouldn't be happening.

[Kayb]

what do sponsors get out of it though...