3v3 team gets a 4th member... during a match!
by Zach Yonzon 
Nov 14th 2007 at 6:00PM
Weird things are afoot. According to this post over at the PvP forums, this 3v3 Arena Alliance team got a helping hand during one of their rated matches when they found themselves with a fourth member -- a Horde Paladin! Much to their surprise, and to the chagrin of the opposing team who happened to be Horde, the Paladin went on to heal the Alliance team on to an 18 point win. This is an interesting glitch on a couple of levels... it's interesting enough to have a fourth member on a 3v3 match, but this is one of the rare times that Horde and Alliance are even in the same party. It's even more interesting that the Horde Paladin got to heal his strange bedfellows. There's only one screenshot linked in the forums and the quality's not very good; but if it's an elaborate Photoshop hoax, it's a pretty thorough one. Arenas pit same-faction members against each other, but having Alliance and Horde on the same team seems just ridiculous. What do you guys think? Have you ever seen a glitch like this? Have you ever found yourselves with an unexpected helping hand, particularly in Arenas? Since Arenas allow members of the same faction to duke it out, is it too much of a stretch to team up with sworn enemies?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ranking, Bugs, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Zeplar Nov 14th 2007 6:08PM
It's very strange that the paladin could heal his team mates... I thought the game ran a check for same-alliance before it ever sent the data to the main server.
Flippie Nov 14th 2007 6:14PM
That is so funny. Its a same they we can be on a team with the other faction. And some how speak with each other. Oh will looks like Blizz will have sothing else they need to fix with the new patch.
Jp Nov 14th 2007 6:26PM
The best part is the other side, "OMFG! HAX! TCKT A FIN GM!"
hpavc Nov 14th 2007 6:28PM
Again, the game does have factionless co-op play in it. You can see this clearly in blizzard's own 'play' videos. Likely just a replication error to be blamed on a vendor most likely
The huge amount of data that these games generate is staggering. All the quests you have ever completed rewards selected and what not.
God bless them for not requiring a specialized program on the client side to instance with or multiples of them for raid, group, pvp, arena and what not like other games do.
Replex Nov 14th 2007 6:31PM
Actually, the arena flag overrides the faction flag.
So when you are arena flagged, the only check for being able to heal another arena flagged player is that they are in the same party.
Wierd bug, though.
Dan Nov 14th 2007 6:33PM
Maybe it's actually a 5v5 (accounts for the number of players) and Martay is Alliance, wearing one of the disguises from the Shadowmoon Valley quests? Haven't bothered looking on Armory to find out though.
Argall Nov 14th 2007 6:50PM
If it did happen it's kind of strange. I would think there'd be safeguards to prevent hacking in these kind of situations to prevent horde from teaming with alliance characters or allowing a party more than the set number in an arena.. not allowing more than 3 in a 3v3 for example.
Angelus Nov 14th 2007 6:58PM
That screen shot doesnt look shopped. The whole convo, general chat, alliance speaking in common. Looks pretty legit to me.
Isnt there a conspiracy theory going around that Blizz wants to see cross faction teaming?
RogueJedi86 Nov 14th 2007 7:01PM
Since arena overrides faction(which makes sense, if Faction had top priority, there's be no Alliance vs. Alliance/Horde vs. Horde matches), wouldn't be able to talk in party? *checks link*
RogueJedi86 Nov 14th 2007 7:12PM
@6/Dan
Looking at the screenshot, he is definitely Horde. Bottom right, he has the Horde flying mount on a bar. And the buttons above 4 and 5 on his action bars are the Blood Elf Racials. So it's legit, at least his race/class/faction are.
agentaero Nov 14th 2007 7:15PM
this is similar to the cross faction black temple raid that accidently happened a little while ago due to raid ID mix ups in the server, id imagine itsa more severe instance of that, and that happened pre 2.3, so this may only be partially due to 2.3
Jalis Nov 14th 2007 7:31PM
Lol once when my group was in stromgarde we tried to get a blood elf to attack us and we tried to spam emotes on them. Then all of a sudden she started talking in our party chat and was laughing at the guy who switched to his horde to apologize lol.
Aeraphiel Nov 15th 2007 12:22AM
@6/Dan and 12/RogueJedi86
I did a bit on snooping around and in case you're interested I came up with these links:
The 3v3 team: http://www.wowarmory.com/team-info.xml?r=Tichondrius&ts=3&t=Lawgivers&select=Lawgivers
Martay (the Bloodelf): http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Barthilas&n=Martay
(Hope those links work propperly)
Neythas Nov 14th 2007 7:53PM
They're all horde. The other three guys are using orbs of deception and the other team is horde also hence they can talk amongst themselves. It's probably a 5x5 and they're all just messing around because either people didn't accept the queue or were afk along with deaths coupled into there.
GamerJunkie Nov 14th 2007 7:56PM
I can attest this bug has happened to us in 3v3 before. I believe it has something to do with once a player is dead, their slot becomes available.
We played 3v3, we killed the 1st player, then in the middle of ganking the last 2 player, we lost 1 player.
It became 2v2, then suddenly came out of nowhere a Belf Priest. I believe he is completely confused so he stood there looking at us before starting to heal but by that time we already got the last player down to 1/2 HP before we CC'ed the Priest and went on to down both player.
Rerolled Nov 14th 2007 7:59PM
It's not orbs of deception, when you use one of those it makes you look like you're wearing low level greens, the friendly alliance priest in that SS is clearly wearing season 2.
Matthew Rossi Nov 14th 2007 8:10PM
Also, you can look the players up in Armory. I found http://wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tichondrius&n=Kaibaa, he's certainly not Horde.
eodon Nov 15th 2007 2:36AM
If you look at the armory you see that it must have actualy happened since the names actualy match up to an alliance or horde and the horde is on a different server then the alliance. Only way it could be fake is if someone desided to play with photo shop and was realy good with it.
wruwaest Nov 14th 2007 9:19PM
> but if it's an elaborate Photoshop hoax,
> it's a pretty thorough one.
You do know that community made (more or less functional) software exists to run your own WoW server, right? Such software has been made for many of the major MMORPGs, they are commonly known as "server emulators". It would be fairly trivial to setup such a server, invite your friends over, stage any kind of strange situations and take screenshots.
For this reason I always find it amusing to see someone wondering if a screenshot of WoW has been photoshopped or not. The truth is, Photoshop is not needed. There's no way you can tell if the screenshot has been taken while on official server or while on your own private server.
I'm not saying that this picture is a fake, but just by looking for clues of photoshopping is not enough to determine whether it is one or not.
Zach Nov 14th 2007 9:38PM
@17 While true, it seems to me that setting up your own WoW server, getting friends with the same names and classes as existing characters, emulating a realistic chat, and setting it up in an Arena is a bit more complex than just digitally manipulating ONE.
I'm not saying that getting your own private server isn't a possibility, but by considering what all of that entails, it just seemed a more reasonable alternative to propose.