The Jaina Proudmoore incident
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Jan 18th 2007 at 12:00AM
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A sad tale of a mass suspension floated in from the Akama server today. According to several quickly deleted posts on the WoW forums, about 100 members of the Horde were suspended for 72 hours for farming Jaina Proudmoore in Theramore. This is where the story gets split in two. On one hand, many people are saying that Proudmoore had a bug where she dropped 900 gold and respawned in two minutes. The banned Hordies from Akama stated that this wasn't accurate, at least for them, and that she only dropped 50-90 gold -- but the respawn timer was correct.
Do you know anything about the Jaina bug? Whether or not she was bugged (and right now it sounds like the 900g was just a cleverly edited screenshot), is it right to ban guilds for farming her for gold? Can killing NPCs on a PVP server be considered griefing if the NPC is a questgiver?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
twiggles Mar 9th 2008 7:21PM
Considering what everyone just posted about....
They didn't get a suspension for killing an NPC that dropped too much gold. Hell they probably would have gotten away with it if they did it once or twice (hell 5 times). But the accusation is that they FARMED the npc. And the NPC was bugged. So farming a bug would be considered exploitation.
I agree that suspensions should be handed out when this occurs. Not because it's the players fault that the bug was there, but that they choose to exploit bugs that give them an unfair advantage in comparison to everyone else.
thingy Jan 18th 2007 12:31AM
Aren't there quests both horde and alliance that require killing questgiving NPC's of the opposite faction? Blightcaller is one, there's another just on the western edge of WPL, and I've seen horde hanging around Chillwind Camp in WPL to find out later it was to kill one of the NPC's as part of their quests.
paul Jan 18th 2007 1:07AM
last barrov quest.
John Morton Jan 18th 2007 2:11AM
I have a confession to make.
I'm Horde on a PVE server. Late one night, around 3am, I was doing the Borrov quest. Me and 3 friends camped across the road overlooking the Alliance camp. A dozen Alliance were everywhere, and I just knew as soon as we were flagged they'd attack. I went ahead, kited him across the road into the hills where we pummeled the crap out of him. To my amazement no Alliance came over to kill us. Wow, they didn't take advantage of the situation!
When I got back to The Bulwark there was flagged Gnome standing next to two players who weren't flagged. By then it was 4am, I was half asleep, and the non-flagged looked like undead, and it looked like the Ally was taunting them. My instant reaction was kill on sight. As I let my first shot go off I realized they were all Alliance here to do their version of the Barrov quest, but by then it was too late - I was flagged, everyone started fighting. Over the next hour a bunch of us fought it out, dying, rezzing, killing, dying... A few times they tried desperately killing Barrov while we fought, which of course was way too much. In the end more Horde stopped to help, and the Alliance gave up with a half dozen of us surrounding Barrov like body guards.
I felt kind of bad since the Alliance didn't bother us, and in return I screwed up their quest. But once the fighting started, we couldn't stop. Sorry guys.
Luclan Jan 18th 2007 2:03AM
since world pvp is now back, and DK's are gone, why does it matter if some horde go and kill an npc? I don't think it is very fair to say "hey you disorganized group of people can kill npc's all you want bcuz you do it inneffectively, but you big organized group how dare you even think about it" thats kinda crap
Amalah Jan 19th 2007 12:04PM
and here i thought Jaina was a world boss like Thrall or the other city leaders.
FadedReality Jan 30th 2007 11:27AM
@4. Today I had Alliance steal quest mobs out from under me left and right. So what if you messed them up? On a PVE they seem to have no qualms with interfering.
Bet Jan 18th 2007 3:17AM
And ALL the time my Defias Traitor was killed everytime I got to Moonbrooke was an inconvienence for me, I hope they got all the gold they wanted.
awender Jan 18th 2007 3:21AM
The problem is not, that they killed an NPC, or farmed an NPC. The problem lies in that, that a low level NPC drops so much gold, as a BWL boss.
Anybody noticing this should report that immediately to the GM. Exploiting a bug may lead to suspension of the account, according to the rules Blizzard defined.
Sånguinius Jan 18th 2007 6:24AM
thats crap, if Blizz cant get thigns right and people find these funny errors and takes advantage of them then tough titties.
Now with the guild who got ban becuz of the AQ bug for goin through walls straight to the last boss well banning them is kinda harsh but Blizz needs to look at things carefully and make sure thigns are done right the first time instead of doing half ass jobs..hence 2.0.5 patch
Bartholemues Jan 18th 2007 5:02AM
Exactly. They can claim ignorance all they like but clearly they were exploiting a bug and therefore should be banned. IMO they were lucky to get away with only a 72 hour ban. If it had been only 1 or 2 people doing this I'm sure they would have been perma-banned.
Anroth Jan 18th 2007 7:24AM
that is so stupid...
so, if i kill an npc and he drops what could be percieved as too much gold, i'm elligible for banning or suspension?
blizzard is wrong in this!
if they screw up and exploitable bugs are send into production systems then they should ban their testers, not players that take advantage of it.
it's wrong to exploit such bugs, of course, but is also wrong to leave your wallet on the floor and expect no one to take it, so to speak...
BlizzardSucks! Jan 18th 2007 7:13AM
I'm so sick of the fact that the game companies continue to blame their own subscriber base for their own ineptitude. Like the SOE ilks before them, Blizzard is becoming more and more of fascists of late. This is a prime example of how players SHOULD NOT be banned. Bugs are inevitable; finding and fixing them is the game developer's responsibility. If players find an exploitable bug; it's not the player's fault that the bug is there. They didn't hire the inept developer to write that code; nor, did they hire the clueless testers who missed that bug! Why make it the customers fault!?!? Instead, they should apologize for allow the bug to affect everyone else and implement a fix as soon as possible. It's absolutely retarded that game companies to insist on banning players for reasons like thesee.
Blizzard, in terms of customer server, you really suck. But you know, that's what happens when you try to be like SOE (where are they these days? putting out expansion after expansion that no one cares abound??)
BlizzardSucks! Jan 18th 2007 7:14AM
Doh! customer service*
samba Jan 18th 2007 7:57AM
Come on. I don't think they were banned because of exploiting a bug, they were banned because of griefing. They camped a quest npc for a frigging three days!
GnomeLogic Jan 18th 2007 8:44AM
@8. While I don't in general agree with the basic attitude of "your tough luck, my good luck" as a rationale, it IS Blizzard's responsibility to regulate what is supposed to be dropped. What the NPC drops is purely subjective... there are no published rules to my knowledge on what to even expect on a drop from an NPC at a given level. Blizz then punishing people for taking advantage of something they put in the game is absurd. If an 60th level epic drops off a 5th level Murloc am I supposed to call a GM and ask permission to keep it? Change the drop yes, but to punish the players for not contacting Blizz... that is a bit much. Personally I'd rather see some of the folks who insist on going onto an RP server named "Gankzilla" or something else obviously disruptive to the tone of the game get bumped, but blizz won't hold any standard there despite the "agreements" about playing on RP.
Bartholemues Jan 18th 2007 8:48AM
/rolleyes
They were banned because they repeatedly exploited an obvious bug. If you found the bug then reported it or just left there would obviously be no suspensions. 100 people don't camp Jaina for days on end to grief, they do it to exploit.
50 gold every two minutes for a day = 36000g a day, over time that is enough to ruin a servers economy, there by destroying the gameplay for thousands of other paying customers.
In my opinion this is a example of good customer service.
Bartholemues Jan 18th 2007 9:01AM
@13
While I agree that it is Blizzard's job to keep the game bug free, the example you give is not the same as what these people did. If you killed the same murloc again and again and it dropped an epic every time that would be the same and in that case yes I believe you should contact a GM or be banned if you keep exploiting it.
Crooth Jan 18th 2007 9:15AM
In general, I agree that exploiting a bug for huge personal gain is a problem - even if she dropped a mere 50g she's soloable and that was obviously a problem. But suspensions? Seems excessive. Of course, the idiot player who didn't keep this to themselve is really to blame. When I find exploits like this I make sure to never share it - if it stays a secret these sort of things don't happen.
There are grey areas though - is walking on the top of the walls in Zul Furak an exploit? It lets you skip the trash mobs - but it's so easy to get there it seems like a design choice. According to GamingSteve's podcast, that level was intentionally designed to allow it, but as a player how am I supposed to then know that wall walking is OK, but a wall hole in AQ is a bug and not a secret door?
I watched a video of a mage soloing the elite dragon that used to guard the entrance to the Cavern of Time by taking advantage of pathing issues on the beach nearby - is that an exploit, or just smart?
It seems wrong to me that the company expects the players to know inherently what was intentional by them and what is a bug / exploit. It puts me in the position of having to intuit what the developer intended, and that just seems a bit unfair.
Matt Jan 18th 2007 11:33AM
@ 4
WTF. They let you do your quest without interfering, and you return the favor by ganking them mercilessly. GG.