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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe 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 2 of 2)
Jake Jan 18th 2007 10:11AM
@ #16
I believe the exploit that allows you to walk through the wall in AQ involves modifying your game files and that's why it's against the TOS. A little common sense goes a long ways, for example if you could walk on the walls to all the bosses without killing any trash mobs and it required you taking advantage of a bug (e.g. bad collision detection with the walls in only on certain point) I would consider that a bug and ask a GM. In the situation with Proudmoore, it's clearly a bug and people were clearly taking advantage of it. People are naturally going to take advantage of the situation, that's why it's against the TOS to exploit bugs in the game. If you have any question about whether or not what your doing constitutes an offense you could be banned for, first it probably is, second submit a ticket and ask.
I can compare this situation to the our laws work. No one individual has every single law memorized but ignorance in the law is no defense. It's up to the individual to determine what is right and what is wrong. If I walk past an open cash register and pull out a couple bucks I can't make an effective defense by saying, "They left it open, what did you expect me to do?".
Ephor Jan 18th 2007 12:19PM
You can't exploit a bug if you don't know it's a bug, and irregardless, playing a game about war as if it actually is one should never get you banned, Blizz should issue an apology for this.
hamsammich Jan 18th 2007 4:44PM
I agree with the posters who state that if something trivial like that falls through the cracks, then it's Blizzard's job to realize it and fix it. If I am happily questing along and I kill an NPC who drops 50g or more, I'm going to kill that NPC again to see if it was a fluke. If not, then let the killing begin.
It's not my fault that bug is there. It's not your fault that bug is there. And, for those who say large amounts of gold dropping from an NPC (being a bug) will "destroy the economy"...what the? It's PRETEND, ARBITRARY MONEY. There is no "set amount" of gold in the world. You can farm mobs for weeks and weeks to get gold, and all that does is make your pockets fatter. It does not inherently "ruin" anything.
Sneakers Jan 18th 2007 12:23PM
I was there as well as i was suspended
it was not 900g!
it was 50-90g per drop. it takes at lease 25 people to kill her which approximates to 3-4g per person per kill
it wasnt every 2 mins!
It takes 6-10 minutes to kill her and 3-6 minutes to prepare for another kill. Great. She respawns every 2 minutes after killed.
people need to get the facts straight.
I really think that Blizzard should have notified the people who they thought were exploiting the game before suspending them.
In the email it didnt say we were banned for greifing, it says we were banned for exploiting.
Tho them making an npc drop 50-90g is considered an exploit.
Anyways, I think Blizzard handled it poorly. I mean we should have been notified, we had no idea that this was an exploit.
Dabura Jan 18th 2007 12:23PM
#9 U bloody idiot! Yes its not their fault the bug is there, but they exploited it for gold, so it is clearly their fault!
umamasyean Jan 18th 2007 12:47PM
That doesn't look like an exploit to me. It just looks like a nice drop. Maybe it wasn't intentional, who knows? Maybe it was a joke by one of the DEVs. And I never knew that killing NPC's was against policy. People farm bosses all the time. What's wrong with that?
Ristic Jan 18th 2007 1:33PM
But.... to give them the benefit of the doubt, what if they didn't realize it was a bug? Obviously common sense dictates that they should know something was up, but a 3 day ban is a little bit harsh. Blizz should have just fixed the bug, not added a ban to the mix. If I found a mob that consistantly dropped a large stack of gold, you bet I'd farm her too.. besides with such a lore-important character with Jaina, you'd think that Blizzard would have spent an extra 5 minutes on designing her loot table and respawn time?
Matt Jan 18th 2007 1:46PM
I don't think it makes sense to have an NPC thats not supposed to be killed drop anything. Youre encouraging farming by giving her a loot table, and then suspending people who take said loot. GG blizz.
Shadowhaxor Jan 18th 2007 4:32PM
Exactly. The first time, fine... they didn't know. Everytime after that, they realized it was a bug and they exploited it. Its their own fault. Exploits are found and reported and taken care of (mostly) so people don't have to exploit them. Not everyone can test everything and not have issues. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
umamasyean Jan 18th 2007 2:39PM
Well according to Sneakers, you organized a raid to make 3-4g in 15 minutes. I used to make that in 5 minutes back in the days when gold was like "wtf you freakin ripoff! I ain't paying you no 50s to for that stupid enchant when I got mats"...while in windowed mode surfing and watching TV. Why didn't I ever get suspended? lol! Wow that kinda sucked!
umamasyean Jan 18th 2007 3:10PM
I actually think that they SHOULD give faction NPCs a loot table and good coin drops. AND All players who aggro it shall have coin drops too! This way you have more town seiges and world PVP invovling cities. I mean, why is this game called WARcraft??? WAR against the computer??? BG's are lame grinding excuses for PVP and you all know it. They are designed to make you spend endless hours grinding eachother and pay your $15 a month for that next "reward". That's not fun! I vote for mass world PVP. PPL only attack towns when they are bored to death.
Deusirae Jan 18th 2007 4:33PM
While I agree that the players should not have taken as great advantage of this, as they did. I don't know that they should have been punished though. Pure and simple, Blizzard had to code a drop amount (random or otherwise) on a mob or NPC. Blizzard is at fault and it was their responsibility to fix it. It does screw things up quite a bit as far as the economy, but there are better ways to solve the issue. I personally would have had fun fixing this. I would have coded Jaina as the absolute hardest fight ever. Let the poor unsuspecting players learn it would be difficult to earn that 50+ gold, even with a 40-man raid. Let her be an all-powerful UBER magic-wielding NPC. Problem fixed and fun to watch the first guy go in…
Someguy Jan 18th 2007 4:43PM
She drops 50-99g, is a boss city npc, summons water elementals, blizzards, and teleports the tanks out of her tower to the docks. All the while alliance are trying to stop us. (Take's atleast a 20 man raid.)
And they waited until we bought the Xpac to suspend us.
No warnings, nothing.
This is total crap by Blizzard.
umamasyean Jan 18th 2007 6:47PM
I don't want to sound like I'm putting down the "poor" players, but 4g per 15 minutes is NOT gonna destroy the economy. Good farming players can get more than that from coins and vendor (not counting player sales). Now if she was soloable and 1 player gets 90g...then I understand. But 4g??? No way! Especially with the 20s coin alone drops from level 70's... 4g??? Peanuts!!!
umamasyean Jan 19th 2007 10:57AM
What Blizzard considers "ruining" the economy is when too much gold is "created" in the realm. This causes massive inflation and devalues the gold. There needs to be a balance. Gold enters the economy by coin drops, vendor trash, and quests. Gold leaves the economy by vendor goods, AH, and repairs. Ideally it should be "checked and balanced" and shouldn't grow abnormally fast. Thats why they limit character transfers to 5000g because they figure that's reasonable for a 60 to carry into a realm. Now when you have professionals start transfering many 60s with 5k each just to sell it to players on sites, blizzard doesn't like it. That also "ruins" the economy and hence is bad. So hence they give transfers a "cooldown". But all in all, 4g per 15 minutes per palyer is NOT even close to ruining the economy! Either these raiders are not telling us something else they did...or the GM's are just being pompous jerks woth a GOD COMPLEX. I remeber unix admins in school used to be like that back in the days. Bogus!!!
Krianna Jan 24th 2007 12:10AM
Does a single one of you think that a 50-90g drop is normal? I'm guessing that this wasn't the first time that ALL of that raid had killed her, either-- thus, they should have known it was a bug, especially after a few kills.
They agreed to the TOS. If they didn't like the TOS, they shouldn't have agreed, and thus should not have been playing.
/agree with the cash box post.
Blaise Jan 27th 2007 7:35PM
I dont have a problem with someone taking advantage of a bug or camping a high level npc its just when people are jerks and camp low level npc or tell their friends about bugs and set up a whole operation with their guild. Besides imo if its a lvl 60 type thing i dont care because 60s have time to kill. the person to blame is the one who discovered it then told everyone. And as for the guy who said in a game about war its inaccurate to not act like war, think about that with bugs. is it dishonorable in the old chivalric sense to take advantage of terrain and weather for an advantage. And theres always stuff thats not suposed to be there. learn to write code for goodness sake.