The tainted race to world first
by Mathew McCurley 
Dec 9th 2011 at 9:00AM
Possibly the hottest story over the last few days has been the suspensions and bans Blizzard handed down after the rampant cheating through the Raid Finder, introduced with patch 4.3. Using a loot exploit, guilds were heading in to the Raid Finder in a premade group, killing bosses 20 to 30 times, and distributing the loot amongst raiders well in excess of what the game had hoped to allow for in both mechanics and spirit of the system.
Cheating and MMOs go together as well as peanut butter and chocolate. The top MMO players have been cheating, exploiting, and creatively using game mechanics since the dawn of the modern massively multiplayer, always butting heads up against developers. When, most notably, DREAM Paragon was caught using this Raid Finder loot exploit and apologized publicly, I didn't understand the shock and awe. Back in the EverQuest days, guilds exploited like crazy to get bosses down and gear up for encounters that had so many gates you'd think you were attending a Microsoft cosplay event.
I know, I totally promised a Lawbringer about licensing and Star Wars: The Old Republic and the WoW Law Enforcement Guide this week. Wait another week. I've banned you all from these topics for seven days.
Much like the universe we live in, the world we inhabit, and the reality we hopelessly cling to, it all started with an email:
Hey Mat, love the wowinsider podcast.As I said before, cheating and MMOs have gone hand-in-hand for years, as players have been finding, testing, and skirting the rules of online worlds in ways that rule skirting would get you in big trouble in everyday life. That's half the fun, right? Escape your world into a new one where the rules are more fluid. To Blizzard, the rules need to be a tenable bastion of conduct, complete with vague language to protect against the unknown.
I really don't know if you'd be willing to do answer on this but I got a question of sorts
The race for world first in 4.3 has been tainted with the allegations of cheating by several of the top guilds across the world. Reading into the code of conduct of the ToU, you find that they possibly did violate Section C.
Now, several of these top guilds have been posting on their own websites several rationalizations regarding on why they did what they did regarding the exploit, but at the same time they also made comments regarding blizzard and their enforcement of their rules and also sounding somewhat unrepentant about their actions.
Do you believe that Blizz has been looking at these guilds' statements out there and will consider them when deciding what action they will ultimately take on people that exploited a bug?
Thanks.
Klaudandus of Feathermoon
A competitive atmosphere
The problem with an apology from a top world-first guild about cheating is that it is ultimately meaningless. The ramifications exist within a virtual world owned and operated by a company, not the governing body of men who believe in many rights that fundamentally exist for people. You cheat in a game, you get to deal with the ramifications of that cheating. It has become apparent over the years that top guild status in MMOs has many benefits, but there is never a true immunity to bans for breaking the rules.
So we all know that cheating is wrong and breaking the rules is wrong. The Raid Finder, from day one, was built to mimic the loot drops of the 10- and 25-man normal- and heroic-mode dungeons that they were emulating. Blizzard never intended or insinuated that loot was supposed to drop multiple times on multiple runs of the Dragon Soul raid through the Raid Finder. Never. When the bug was discovered and players took advantage of it, they were in direct conflict with the stated purposes of the Raid Finder's essence. One of the fundamental tenets of the Raid Finder was being broken.
World-first guilds live in a competitive world where tons of other people are vying for the top spot, taking down heroic bosses faster than others, fighting for gaming sponsorships, and proving to the world that they are the best of the best. Some world-first guilds even appear at BlizzCon and participate in the live raids during the convention. These guilds understand the game to such a high degree, you wonder why the cheating in Raid Finder was so widespread. Wouldn't a rational human, with the necessary understanding of gear tracking, punishment, and the essence of the rules, move away from cheating?
Here's what Blizzard had to say about the bans:
Bashiok discusses Raid Finder exploit bans/suspensions
Shortly after patch 4.3 was released, we became aware that some players were abusing an exploit to obtain loot from the same Raid Finder bosses multiple times in a single raid lockout period (one week). The Raid Finder loot mechanic is of course intended to only allow a person to roll on boss loot drops once per raid lockout period. The raid lockout mechanic has been a mainstay of the World of Warcraft rules since Onyxia and Molten Core, ensuring that no one can obtain loot from a boss more than once per lockout. Due to the nature of the exploit and the clear intent of those who abused it, they've been issued notices and given temporary suspensions from the game. We're also working to remove all Raid Finder items from those who used the exploit.
A justification for cheating?
A popular train of thought that has percolated through the community is that the competitive nature of the world-first paradigm justified the rampant Raid Finder cheating. The logic works thusly: If one raid team exploits the Raid Finder to such a gross degree, every other raid team is at a huge disadvantage. Therefore, if the Raid Finder nonsense is done by all guilds competing for the top spot, everyone is back on a level playing field.
What this notion fails to account for is the fact that while it would be nice to make the race for world first a level playing field, breaking rules for the supposed notion of fairness across the board is still breaking rules. It's not as if DREAM Paragon and Blood Legion both were using some boss strategy that they weren't telling anyone about that was fine by the rules, and the other guilds were crying foul because they weren't on the same page with the prevailing strategy. This was a deep abuse of an exploit clearly not intended to be a part of the game.
Justifications for cheating come about in every competitive sport and activity we do as humans. We're always looking to get ahead and create opportunities to use the cunning, planning, and deviousness we all can possess to get ahead. You can see why a raid team would want to abuse the Raid Finder -- it worked and it provided some pretty deep benefits, especially with the two- and four-piece bonuses from the new gear.
Promoting the competition
The rebuttal to "cheating is cheating" has been varied, but one specific line of reasoning caught my eye. Some say that because Blizzard fosters the competitive environment for a race to world first, they should be aware and be more lenient of those guilds who exploit and fight for the top spots. Besides inviting top guilds to BlizzCon, Blizzard itself does not sponsor any world-first top guilds or create competitions for world-first events.
I can't disagree more. Shouldn't those at the top vying for their just rewards be the excuse, the pun, paragons of us all? We deride baseball players for steroid usage, point fingers at the e-sports players who swap teams after their original team is ousted from competition, and scream imbalance in even the slightest PvP matchups. We should expect more from the champions, not less. It is also quite ironic that many players who are not playing at the top game derided the Raid Finder as "not real raiding" or as the easy mode, when the top guilds themselves saw and still see value in learning fights, gearing up, and experiencing the Raid Finder.
Here's the relevant text from the Terms of Use:
C. Rules Related to Game Play. Game play is what World of Warcraft is all about, and Blizzard strictly enforces the rules that govern game play. Blizzard considers most conduct to be part of the Game, and not harassment, so player-killing the enemies of your race and/or alliance, including gravestone and/or corpse camping, is considered a part of the Game. Because the Game is a "player vs. player" game, you should always remember to protect yourself in areas where the members of hostile races can attack you, rather than contacting Blizzard's in-game customer service representatives for help when you have been killed by an enemy of your race. Nonetheless, certain acts go beyond what is "fair" and are considered serious violations of these Terms of Use. Those acts include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:The rules in any given MMO have to be vague because of the nature of an expansive and unknown world that has been created. While Blizzard may have created the World of Warcraft, it certainly cannot account for everything and anything that happens within the virtual walls of Warcraft time and space. Computers are computers. Coding is coding. People find ways around everything. Unintended mistakes happen. Without a comprehensive rule set and some room to grow, virtual worlds would crumble under the weight of insane specificity or lawless, godforsaken lands like Shadowbane. Don't get me wrong, I love a lawless, godforsaken land more than anyone -- but it isn't World of Warcraft.
(i) Using or exploiting errors in design, features which have not been documented, and/or "program bugs" to gain access that is otherwise not available, or to obtain a competitive advantage over other players;
(ii) Conduct prohibited by the EULA or elsewhere in these Terms of Use; and
(iii) Anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the "essence" of the Game.
This column is for entertainment only; if you need legal advice, contact a lawyer. For comments or general questions about law or for The Lawbringer, contact Mat at mat@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Lawbringer
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
jasonablackburn Dec 9th 2011 9:24AM
Shadowbane was awesome!! But there was a lot of exploiting in that game, and pretty much zero policing by the devs. Fortunately everyone knew how it worked so that it was relatively easily combated by the player base. Man, wish they would bring that game back!!
cuda Dec 9th 2011 3:48PM
sorry but they should be banned as they admitted they cheated .
a suspension aint nothing as they'll do it again if they can.
they willingly exploited the game, and did so numerous times. Blizzard bans for gold buying or buying boe's. so why not cheating. no sympathy here at all
Imnick Dec 9th 2011 9:25AM
I just think it's a shame that if a guild that wasn't banned wins the race, people will forever question the legitimacy of their victory despite the fact that they won fair and square.
If an athlete in a race shoots himself in the foot at the starting line, the rest don't sit there and wait for him to regain full control of his legs, they keep going. If a guild shoots themselves in the collective feet by cheating and getting themselves banned then they too cannot expect anyone else to wait for them.
But regardless of this, because some guilds decided to award themselves a handicap people won't take the actual winners seriously.
Nyarlathotep Dec 9th 2011 9:45AM
It's not the same as someone shooting themself in the foot, tho. It's the same as someone shooting steroids.
Nobody sees someone banned for steroid use and thinks "Well, he might have been a legitimate contender if he hadn't done that." We kick him from the game he participates in and that's that. He's considered a villain and a cheater.
Instead, I think the use of exploits calls into question ALL of a teams previous victories because now we don't know if they maybe used exploits that just didn't get detected. They've tarnished their overall reputation as true elites.
Lissanna Dec 9th 2011 10:08AM
Every raid tier has exploits that people do - some of which get punished (ie. the stripping of achievements & the ban for people who expoited mechanics on the Lich King), and some of which go unpunished (and further then reinforce the idea that if everyone else is doing something, they need to do it to keep up as well). The line between creative use of mechanics and exploiting is also very thin. We know pretty much every exploit and "creative use of mechanics" people have done on any boss, or whatever they've gamed to benefit in an encounter (such as people going in lower blackrock spire with a mind control priest to buff the raid with the fire buff and then take the fire buff into raids). None of them are secrets, and the collective memory of the player base tends to be pretty fast at forgetting whatever X guild did during Y raid tier.
s.scott.staten Dec 9th 2011 10:17AM
I think it's a shame that the cheating accounts were not banned.
Dante2006 Dec 9th 2011 10:18AM
It will be a completely legitimate win. Think of it this way: Paragon, Ensidia and all the other guilds that exploited simply used a "high risk, high reward" gearing strategy. They knew that there was the possibility of a banning, but if it didn't go through, they'd have a huge advantage. Blood Legion and Vodka chose to use a gearing strategy that wasn't an exploit, but wasn't as effective. In other words, BL and Vodka used the right gearing strat, and will probably get world first for it.
Zack S Dec 9th 2011 10:41AM
@Dante
Yeah, but Paragon, Method and Ensidia have been going around saying that the real race doesn't start until they're in the mix. In other words, the banned guilds have been trying to devalue the accomplishments of those that are currently in the race.
Yes, it's a legitimate win, it should be, but the european guilds are going "Well, you can't call yourself the best if you didn't beat the previous champion"
Blessthemartyrguild Dec 9th 2011 11:38AM
It is 100%you irrelevant what the banned guilds are saying they got themselves banned and they knew they most likely would be. They cheated and that is all that matters they are crying this and using it as an excuse because Blood Legion and Vodka stepped it up to their level this tier running 6 and 4 raids to gear the mains faster. This is the first time US guilds have stepped up to that level and the Europeans are scared knowing the gear advantage they have had for the last two xpacs is gone.
Jennifer Dec 9th 2011 1:34PM
@ Lissanna
There is a HUGE difference between "creative use of game mechanics" and what these guilds did.
A creative use of game mechanics might be...if everyone stands behind this tree here, we can follow Arthas up the hill rather than being chased by him. Obviously Blizzard didn't intend this - but they didn't ban anyone, they simply fixed it so it didn't work.
On the other hand, getting essentially unlimited gear in the raid finder, IN THE FIRST WEEK - that's obviously plain and simple cheating. There's NO way these guilds couldn't have known this was a huge exploit. They didn't start playing the game yesterday, they know how gear works.
The ban was justified.
Snuzzle Dec 9th 2011 4:19PM
Absolutely not. The HOR ledge trick was an exploit, not a "creative use of game mechanics". It trivialized the main challenge in the fight. Just like the saronite bombs on LK. It was an exploit, plain and simple. But the difference is, it was just a five man boss, and it became a widely used "strat" (I can't count how many groups I had to drop because I refused to use the exploit and they refused not to). Banning or actioning those who did it would have left them with almost no playerbase.
Generally, if you exploit a five man boss no one cares. It's fixed, sometimes hotfixed, but no account actions are taken. This was a huge exploit, and a majorly timely one at that (giving those in the running for world firsts a very large advantage) so the accounts are rightly being actioned.
A creative use of game mechanics is usually Blizz's way of saying "we didn't think of anyone doing that, but it doesn't trivialize anything. Ok." These are almost always allowed to stay. An exploit trivializes the encounter and is always fixed.
Skyburnone Dec 9th 2011 9:28AM
I gotta try the peanut and chocolate thing you mentioned.
In all seriousness, the guilds who exploited knew what they are doing and know, despite whatever they say, that they deserve this.
Wales Dec 9th 2011 9:30AM
cheating is cheating - if you need to do it to win you should try a new game like checkers or parcheesi you pussies
pez Dec 9th 2011 12:08PM
Please teach me how to cheat at checkers.
Boobah Dec 9th 2011 12:31PM
"Look! Behind you! A three-headed monkey!"
sotton_knite Dec 9th 2011 9:59AM
"We should expect more from the champions, not less."
/Salute
Sinthar Dec 9th 2011 10:05AM
Cheating is cheating - pure and simple. If I know a guild got a world first, and then I found out they 'used an exploit' then in my mind it NOT a world first. Its a cheat. Personally I would be MORE harsh on top guilds than normal guilds, say in this case I would have removed any and all gear SUSPECTED of being obtained via cheating, given them at least a months ban and told if you deliberately cheat again, tis a permaban.
I would wield the largest BAN hammer ever seen or known. And I would use it at full force.
If cheating is allowed to determine world firsts, then I would expect the lvl 90 taurans with DM only items (such as the insta kill items) to walk in kill the boss - collect the world first and they walk away.
Cheating kills games. If world firsts cause cheating too much - I would remove the achievement.
Smashbolt Dec 9th 2011 10:15AM
You CAN'T remove the achievement for world first. There isn't one to remove. Unless I'm mistaken, the highest-level achievement for first anything is server-level.
The notion of world first competitions in PvE is 100% player-driven.
Amaxe Dec 9th 2011 11:00AM
"The notion of world first competitions in PvE is 100% player-driven."
I've never been a first in anything so I don't know if my info is wrong.
I seem to recall when WOLK came out there were realm/server firsts and world firsts that would be announced: First [Race] to 80, First [Class] to 80, first to level [skill] to 450.
Is this something Blizz yanked out of the game or am I simply misunderstanding your point?
Snuzzle Dec 9th 2011 4:32PM
You can indeed remove server first achievments though, as was done with the guild who used the saronite bomb trick on LK. I don't know if there is a world first in-game achievment for downing bosses.
I thought the "first" class/race to level cap achievments were server-only too.