Came across a video of a method probably similar to what was used, in case anyone was wondering what it looks like.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...73161089723869

This is where I go against the popular "rarrgh cheaters!" opinion:

Personally, I love exploring using similar methods to what overrated used. It's become much more enjoyable to make nightslayer look like dreadnaught, or float from SFK out to silverpine forest than spend countless hours farming dreamfoil or whatnot. Until blizzard finally stops external mpq files from being parsed, I'll continue to make cosmetic changes. (dammit gloves of enforcement are hideous on me)

Also, I think it's terrible that the entire guild got such a harsh punishment. To me anyway, it seems that blizzard skipped over much of their own Penalty Volcano to give a quick permaban, most likely because of their status/progress.

I would contest that skipping to C'Thun is neither negatively affecting other players, nor harming the WoW service. A 72 hour ban would've achieved the exact same result as a permaban: the "O shit!" reaction from the community, the loss of respect from many people, and the almost certain guarantee that a repeat offense would be out of the question.

I'm curious to find out how so many pubs know exactly what happened, and exactly why each player was banned, and how Blizzard would be in the worst possible position when it comes to deciding how to handle everything. Curious indeed.

/shrug, they violated the first rule of MMO's. If a game exploit exists in the code, exploit it early, and often since the worst you'll get is a slap on the wrist, but thou shalt not modify game files or use 3rd party programs. Eventually you're going to get caught, and it's going to be ugly.

Just like everything else they do Blizzard's MO is to use a rocket launcher to try and deal with cancer.

Theres always the chance some unlucky person just showed up to kill Skeram and left, only to return to a nice perma ban on the account. Frankly i do understand a punishment must be had.. but this is extreme.

Erm, skiping to C'Thun clearly falls under the excessive / gross violation part of their policy. They hacked the MPQ files to skill the entire instance. Anything *less* than a permanent ban would be seen as weak and ineffectual, and to be honest, I'm sure that their members knew that's what would happen if they were caught. Of course, with the instancing thing that's been mentioned previously as well, you now have to wonder about how "fair" all their past achievements were. That's the legacy of a cheater - no-one is ever sure if anything you ever did was fair.

Also, given that you confess to enjoying hacking the game yourself, I'm not entirely sure what your argument is. It makes no sense BTW - under the same logic, my level 1 warlock should be able to get Kel'Thuzad loot, because it is neither affecting other players nor harming the WoW service. Saying that just because this action didn't lead to 3 tragic deaths in another guild doesn't mean they shouldn't get punished for it. Rules exist for a reason, and if you don't like them, don't play.

Oh come on.

You're exploting to get from Skeram straight to C'Thun, and you leave after Skeram without knowing a thing about what is about to happen? Does anyone here actually think that this happened to even *one* person in that raid?

This wasn;t one memebr of a guild doing something naughty in the back of Orgrimmar. This was an entire raiding force exploiting to bypass content, in one of the most extreme examples in game so far. Every account with that raid ID should be permanent banned.

If there were innocents -- people who didn't partake in any of the exploited C'Thun kills over the past several weeks -- who were indeed banned, then they shouldn't be. As of yet I haven't seen any actual evidence that Blizzard banned an uninvolved person.

My view is abit more sympathetic simply due to the fact Blizzard GMs have dropped the ball in the past. Speaking mostly from experience i highly doubt much investigation was done on GMs part before bans were sent out.

Such a shame that Guilds can exploit-farm Heigan for 6 weeks and get away with it on the EU realms.

It's a testament to the power of a first impression and our society-wide distrust of authority. Especially authority that releases buggy patches. <_<

Rahaan posted some falsehoods in her "Overrated Recruiting" thread on the WoW forums. She claimed that 80% of the guild had been banned for no reason, with no explanation. Obviously that wasn't true, but it has left the lasting impression in people's minds that there were innocents caught in a widely-thrown net, despite the fact that no one has been able to name a single member that was unfairly banned. Hence the discussion and the assumption of knowledge on the part of people who know little. Edit: ESPECIALLY those people who love to criticize Blizzard for any and all reasons, insipid and vacuous reasons though they might be.

Like I said earlier, what I'm interested in is hearing from some Overrated members how such a thing comes about, and what the risk/benefit calculus was that could have justified such behavior even outside of the moral elements.

This thread brings to mind a question I'd been meaning to ask on here previously, but had slipped my mind.

How do guild leaders in the top raiding guilds deal with exploiting. I dont mean in the sense of people in your guild exploiting, obviously you just tell them to sort it out or fo. I mean more in the sense of other guilds exploiting and bypassing content (for example heigan).

Do you

a) Ignore it, and hope it will catch up to them eventually?
b) Report it, and hope a GM actually cares?
c) Make a scene on the realm forums about it? (Always struck me as fairly pointless)

I know that as raid leader/officer for one of our servers top guilds I'm privy to alot of information about this sort of thing that the general server populus is ignorant of (mainly because i know alot of people who come and tell me stuff), but i never really know what to do with it.

If someone had told me Overrated were exploiting in this fashion I still wouldnt have been sure what the correct 'etiquette' is for dealing with it, if you were in that situation, what would YOU do?

If you had the ability to get KT loot, I'd say go for it. It would be both funny and technically awesome. :science:

Make no mistake about it, I have been banned for hacking in the past. I received a 72 hour ban for doing much much worse than skipping bosses in an instance, which is partly why I am flabbergasted at why they received the punishment that they did. It just seems so....harsh in comparison.

Of course there are innocents -- innocents in their own mind. There are always people who break the rules or law in the worst kind of ways and still whine when they get prosecuted and sentenced.

Still I feel there's a reason for this thread. As a reminder for people: cheat blatantly and your char with hundreds of days of /played will get banned. (I almost wrote "toon" but Firefox 2.0 spell checker reminded me not to do that with a red dotted line. Best feature in this browser yet! :-P)

I doubt you did anything worse, in Blizzard's eyes at least, than modifying your client to allow an entire group of people to bypass content. This time it was C'thun, a boss who's been on farm for a while. But if you give a 3 day ban to them, how does that play when someone runs through the walls, and starts working on Illidan as soon as Black Citadel is open.

Squeal like a pig on a honeymoon.

Certainly after this latest affiar, if a guild member is exploiting you better report them asap and ring fence the offenders. Otherwise Blizzard's shotgun banning might perma-ban your entire guild.

I don't think it's harsh at all, it's the absolute obvious and correct answer. Keep in mind it's not, as it's been said heh, something you do in the back of Orgrimmar, this is organized hacking. And as such the punishment should damn be more harsh than a slap on the wrist.

Your right, this would ruin the fair play of raid progression. The situation just seems silly, C'tun being the death of a Kel farming guild.

Having been both temporarily and perma-banned, I can tell you now that their communication is minimal and poorly constructed, that they give very sketchy details as reasons for banning, will enter into no communication regarding specifics, and if you try to argue with them in the slightest, they send you an email saying "We would not seek to enter into any further correspondence regarding this issue".

Not saying people didn't deserve it, just saying that Blizzard are about as effective in this area as they are in any other aspect of customer service, i.e. pretty lousy.

This is also true. While I was banned justly, my roommate was also banned, despite being on a separate computer (which I don't use) and uses no nothing; not even normal addons.

When contacted about it, blizzard's people said "we know you cheated, we can tell. tough luck" and that was that.

It's not so much C'thun as hubris, really.

And i think you are mistaking it for a sight seeing tour in Mt Hyjal.
They bypassed content to puposefully get items. And they did that in an organized fashion (how many raidmemebers does a guild like Overrated need to kill Cthun? I suppose, even them need more than 30) and by hacking stuff. This is not simple climbing to "old Ironforge" we are talking about.

How much harsher does it need to be ... considering that the Client Server Architecture of most newer MMORPGs does invalidate possible stats and item hacking. AFAIK
Movement exploits (and as such local geometry exploits) happen to be the "only" real big loophole left. Performance and Playbility being good reasons to that (i'm not knowledgeable about this, but validating every movement serverside would be unpractical with current internet technology ... at least thats my opinion).

regards

The fact that it's high profile makes a difference too i'm sure, the whole 'setting an example' thing.