Some of the posters here really worry me from an ethics stand point. "It's Blizzard's fault. They're the ones who sent him the item. Obviously he was supposed to use it." And so on.

No. It takes a warped view of the world to see this as anything except someone exploiting a GM's mistake. Blizzard, nor any MMO-producing video game company on the planet that gives a crap about their game, will NEVER send you an "I Win" button as an apology to people who got hacked. Blizzard does not give players artifact-quality developer-only items with the power to kill all enemies within 30 yards. And as tongue-in-cheek as the "cheater" at the end of the item's use command is, it is also a very accurate description of what using the item makes you. A cheater.

Karatechop did wrong. As did his guild member who received the item. The second he saw that item, he should have paged a GM. He should not have taken it to Ulduar. He should not have even taken it to Goldshire and killed wolves with it. Its an item that quite obviously should not have been in the hands of a player. And by using it, knowing what it did, Karatechop managed to bring his guild down with him. Honestly, the second they insta-killed Flame Leviathan, one of the guild members should have had the guts to send a ticket to a GM to report the egregious use of an exploit, whether they knew how it'd been pulled off or not.

The entire situation could make an interesting case study for a college ethics class. What happens when you give power to someone with the mentality of a 12-year-old (Whether Karatechop actually is 12 or not, he certainly acted like a child.) Will they do the right thing or will they abuse the power? In this case, as with so many people who have posted comments in articles like this, the answer is to exploit for all their worth and damn the consequences.

There is a clear right and a clear wrong in this situation. Its not some morally ambiguous gray area as some have suggested. It doesn't matter if he'd taken it to Molten Core or Ulduar. Its cheating. Its an exploit. And it is wrong. And Karatechop and anyone in that raid who saw Flame Leviathan instantly turn into a heap of scrap metal and didn't immediately page a GM about it deserved what they got.