The Queue: Will I get banned for raiding as a ret paladin last night?

There has been a fury of concerned players over the problems with the paladin bug discovered last night. I'll provide some historical perspective.
Many people asked:
My DPS was really high due to the bug. Am I going to be banned for exploiting the game, I didn't try to take advantage of it; the bug just happened?
No.
If you were just one of countless other paladins raiding last night, then you're not going to be banned. You did absolutely nothing wrong, and you have no reason to worry. Blizzard would never ban you over a problem in its system.
However ...
If after learning about the bug, you decided to take nine other paladins into Firelands and clear it all, you've probably gotten yourself a long suspension from the game or an outright perma-ban. This has happened often, and Blizzard will ban those players in cases where it has clear evidence of active and legitimate exploitation of bugs. It's happened in every tier of raiding for a long time, and it'll continue to happen, because players are really smart and there are so many of us that eventually, we'll find a bug.
But the ones who continually take advantage of bugs and actively seek them out -- those are the ones who get suspended or banned. Not the guys and gals raiding or questing.
Remember that this is in the Terms of Service, and you agreed to it when signing up to play WoW. And really, all the news sites and community sites talk about this enough that it shouldn't really be a surprise. It's also common sense.
C. Rules Related to Game Play.
(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.
(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.
Many people asked:
How long until the paladin bug is fixed?
We've gotten reports that it's fixed on some realms but still broken on others. Once we know for sure or once Blizzard posts about it, we'll get the word out.
Incoming asked:
Why does night time in game not look like if its night time at all? I remember playing a free mmo before playing wow and when it was night real time it was night server time. The game actually looked like the setting was in the middle of the night. Most of Azeroth in server night time looks just as bright as day.
Sometimes it's hard for folks to see in low-light situations, and given that so many people play at night, it really doesn't make sense from a gameplay perspective to limit visibility. So Blizzard darkens the sky to a deep shade of blue. That's really enough. Suspend your disbelief, and it's night time!
Puntable commented:
Can we get a new class of water mounts, such as rowboats, canoes, kayaks, and surfboards? And of course, the ability to fish while mounted on them.
That's actually a crazy-good idea. I doubt it'll happen, since Blizzard has said it's not going to do another under water zone ... but a surfboard? That takes me back to my Anarchy Online days of water mounts. Damn, those were totally useless (and totally awesome).
Maybe engineers will make a hoverboard, since human scientists have dropped the ball on that one.
Filed under: The Queue






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
Hal Feb 2nd 2012 11:02AM
In light of the recent paladin bug, what constitutes an exploit? There’s the obvious case of steam-rolling current content or stepping into PvP for kicks, but how far does it extend?
Would soloing Cataclysm heroic dungeons qualify? What about older content? Say I ran out to Ulduar and took down Heroic Yogg alone . . . exploit or harmless? What about ICC? What if I was able to finish Shadowmourne and obtain the quest items by myself?
I’m just curious where the line is. Is playing at all with the bug active going to qualify?
Adam Holisky Feb 2nd 2012 11:09AM
If you did something outrageous, like take 10 ret paladins to firelands to clear it -- that's exploiting.
If you just raided like normal and were "huh, bosses are going down faster." or "odd, my DPS is way up" or "my meters must be broken, but wtf, stuff is dying quick tonight." -- those cases are not active exploitation and you'll be fine.
Blizzard doesn't ban over problems in their game. They ban over people actively being idiots.
Soloing heroic cataclysm dungeons? Yeah, that's exploiting. You might get away with it, you might not.
Older content? Maybe. Since you could do it alone Blizz might turn a blind eye, but then again, they might not. I wouldn't take the chance here.
Solo Ulduard on Heroic Yogg, or ICC, or finishing Shadowmourne where you'd normally need other players? Yup. Exploiting.
It's pretty obvious when you're actively looking to use a bug. I hear all the time about these things, and I have never ran into a case where someone "mistakenly" cleared Ulduar by themselves.
Hal Feb 2nd 2012 11:13AM
Too bad. It'd amuse me greatly to destroy Flame Leviathan on foot.
sr.chimo Feb 2nd 2012 11:12AM
Exploit is when u find a bug, and instead of reporting it you use it for and advantage.
If you CANT solo a dungeon/raid with out that bug, but with the bug you can, and you start to do it, then u are using the bug, so it is an exploit. No matter if is old content...
Sorro Feb 2nd 2012 11:24AM
So where is the line? If my 10-man brings two pallies and gets its first heroic kill, is that exploiting, if they wouldn't have gotten it otherwise?
Obvious cases like 10 pallies are easy to classify as exploiting. But what about less obvious ones?
Vivimord Feb 2nd 2012 11:27AM
Honestly, clearing Firelands like that, just the one time, is amusing. It's not worth a ban, in my opinion. Now if you used it to progress in Dragon Soul, that'd be a different story. But normal Firelands? Eh.
A 15 second Lord Rhyo kill would be an awesome thing to catch on video.
loop_not_defined Feb 2nd 2012 11:30AM
Probably not exploiting (mostly just hilarious), but Matticus pointed this out on Twitter. Check out the LFR tab:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Dragon_Soul/dps/
Revynn Feb 2nd 2012 11:36AM
I doubt anyone is going to get banned for soloing heroics, especially since people have been soloing them -without- the Ret bug for several months. It is technically an exploit, but using it in that fashion doesn't provide any significant rewards or competitive advantage. Whoopty-do. Some justice points and outdated gear.
Even if you were to take 10 Ret Paladins into Firelands and steamroll the place, it's still a nerfed and outdated raid that provides rewards inferior to what's available in normal DS.
The thing that's most likely to get you banned, is doing things like rated Arena's or Heroic-DS progression. If your 1/8H guild stacks 8 Ret Paladins and clears out 5 new hard modes in one night, yeah. You'll get banned for that.
clundgren Feb 2nd 2012 11:57AM
It was incredibly fun for a short time, but then it sucked because I benched myself out of fear of getting actioned.
I was doing a bg and it actually took a few minutes for me to realize something was up. I charged into a huge scrum of allies in the Battle for Gilneas; it was about 7 allies at WW versus only 3 of us, so I assumed we were going to get crushed. The allies started going down like flies, but I am in almost full conquest gear so my first thought was, "Wow, a lot of these guys must be quest greens." I even typed something like "These guys are in crap gear, time to roll face" into BG chat.
Then I judged a healer just so I could close the gap with Long Arm of the Law, and he died, from 100%-0%, in seconds.
The BG ended pretty damned quickly after that. Sadly, they had no ret paladin, so I was basically Godzilla versus Tokyo.
I checked the forums, saw what was up, thought about it for a bit, and finally erred on the side of caution. I figured that I couldn't be held responsible for the first BG, but if I went back in it would be a lot harder to defend my innocence. I'd like to say that I held back purely out of a sense of altruism and fair play, but I'd be lying.
Grovinofdarkhour Feb 2nd 2012 12:08PM
Maybe it's just me, but I would think the concept of the permaban - which, if I'm wrong about this someone PLEASE tell me, but I assume it means that user account is essentially gone and those toons can never be used again - should be reserved for only the most extreme circumstances (genuinely harming another person or engaging in actual criminal behavior in some form). Some 13-year old gathering his buddies so they can laugh hysterically while steamrolling Firelands? Sure, I can see how they'd want to discourage it, seems perfect for a 3-day ban, but the perma variety? I'm not arguing with anyone here about whether Blizzard would do this, I certainly don't know if they would; I'm just saying, if they're seriously going to take all that kid's toons away forever and break his heart, they've got something seriously wrong with them. It'd be like instituting the death penalty for jaywalking.
Kuro Feb 2nd 2012 12:20PM
Hyperbole. If we were to ban folks for the behavior on this list we'd have to ban the soloing DK community.
How is taking 10 paladins with a bug different than taking 10 blood DK tanks into Firelands? Same with solo'ing Yogg-10. DK's done it before. Soloing Cata heroic dungeon bosses? Been done by DK's -- two at once, even. No bans.
Soloing ICC-25 to get a shadowmourne quest items would be improbable as it requires multiple weeks of 25 man raids to complete and no bug would last long.
Old content is old content.
slim1256 Feb 2nd 2012 12:24PM
@ Loop -
I'm not sure what's sadder - all of those ret pallies showing up at the top, or the fact that a couple of fire mages still eked in there (on Spine, admittedly, where you have to throttle your damage a lot, but still)...
Pyromelter Feb 2nd 2012 12:38PM
That's probably smart clundgren. It's one thing to do some old content with a temporary overpowered bug. It's another thing altogether to use that bug to just destroy people in PvP, as well as not really being fun.
I think it's more of a gray area on current PvE encounters. I don't think it matters much in LFR dragon soul since most pugs are clearing it, and anyone doing farm normal DS no biggie. But I'd have to imagine a guild utilizing it on heroic modes, like Spine, it would really trivialize the burst needed on those burning tendons. Or if a guild was no where close on heroic ultraxion and then they stack a few pallies and just roflstomp it.
Then again, all of DS heroic has been cleared for like a month now. I dunno, PvE is so gray to me with bugs like this. Can you have a "competitive edge" in PvE when there really isn't any current competition going on for PvE kills? PvP on the other hand, it's pretty black and white, if you realized you were OP and exploited arenas or BG's, that's just not right.
So clundgren, I think you did the right move by refraining from PvP'ing in godmode.
clundgren Feb 2nd 2012 1:26PM
@ Pyromelter,
While I agree with you in principle, I have to disagree with you on one key point: it was fun.
It was really, really fun.
It was FUCKING AWESOME!
Kakume Feb 2nd 2012 1:39PM
I'm looking forward to this story being told in future, appended with "this is back when 100,000 was a lot of dps."
Xayíde Feb 2nd 2012 2:12PM
What about this?
I know about the bug but don't have a replacement for my ret pally that has a fixed spot in my team. Do I stop raiding or just go and make progress on my heroic raiding nonetheless?
It seems farfetched that Blizzard would punish a raiding group/player because they are doing what they would be doing anyway on that night, even if they do know about the bug.
On the other hand, groups that don't usually have a ret pally just get screwed in the world rank while many have progressed far more easily than they would have otherwise yesterday...
brain314 Feb 2nd 2012 3:16PM
This one is pretty tricky because no real tricks are involved. It's not like that loot bug that got a number of top guilds suspended a while back where you had to disconnect to make it work. With this ret bug, you just had to play normally. Sure, gathering 10 rets to stomp content probably shows intent, but then you're punishing people just for grouping all paladins? It's sort of like that recent story on 10 DK's taking on Firelands.
IMHO, Blizzard should rollback achievements rated BGs and arenas and such, but outright banning and suspending people seems too much. Especially at how hilarious this one was.
terph Feb 2nd 2012 3:25PM
My ret pally wasn't bugged when I tried today. Darn. I didn't want to do anything that would cause bannination, but it would be really funny to play with. Some of the parses show people spiking at 1 million DPS. WTF? That is pretty hilarious.
Although now the ret rankings are super-boned. I am pretty bummed because I don't think I'll *ever* beat 300k DPS on a fight with my current gear, even if I procced TVs until the cows came home. First it was not having Gurth until after the nerf, now this. (sighs)
mibu.work1 Feb 2nd 2012 11:04AM
Screw saving the wildlife in Hyjal, I want my Jetsurfboard!
Puntable Feb 2nd 2012 11:31AM
The animations for riding a surfboard are already in the game. It's used for the flying carpets