@ Manatank

Yes. Yes I am asserting that, in my opinion, exploiting in an MMO is wrong. Does that really put me in the minority here?

The measure of something's ethicality is not the harm that it does. It is whether it was right or wrong. You can try and justify it by saying, "Who was hurt?" But that strikes me as a hollow rationalization. It was still, to me, very obviously the wrong thing to do and Karatechop and those who knowingly went along with him received just punishment for their actions.

As to the arguement that it wasn't cheating because it was not a competition... that's just silly. WoW is built on competition. Most of it is incredibly silly bickering about who slew which virtual dragon before who and who's armor makes them hurt things more efficiently, but the competition is there. Putting that aside, its still cheating by most definitions of the word. He was given an unfair advantage over the rest of the players in the game and used it. As such, it is by definition cheating. Whether cheating is morally wrong is up to the reader to decide, I suppose.

Maybe I'm wrong. But ethics are a funny thing like that. Everyone has their own code, and one person's wrong isn't another person's wrong. And that's part of why I really enjoy this kind of discussion.