“That’s for all the rotten tomatoes, you jerks!”
If you were around yesterday, you may have heard about the Death Knight rebellion that I reported on my Facebook page. Some cheeky folks had discovered a bug which allowed Death Knights to apply their diseases to friendly targets. Chaos ensued, with an outright slaughter of low level character taking place on some realms. Now that the bug has been squashed, debate has sparked over whether or not those Death Knights who took advantage of the bug should be punished. Some people saw the behaviour as harmless fun; I personally thought it was a tribute to the seventh anniversary of the Corrupted Blood Plague, whereas others – most likely those who were on the receiving end of the griefing – are not laughing and are calling for those who participated in the mindless slaughter to be banned.
As a disclaimer, I was not killed by this disease. I did get curious however, and logged on to my retired Death Knight and popped Unholy Blight near an innocent level 43 druid. Nothing happened – Death Knights were only able to place the diseases on friendly players with the aid of a /cast macro – besides said druid spitting on me! I felt utterly terrible for even trying it and I high tailed it out of there. Do I deserve a ban?
Source: MMO Champion
To Ban Or Not To Ban
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 – World of Warcraft Terms of Use
While the Terms of Use are pretty clear on their stance, I would like to believe that game masters will use discretion here. I feel it would be over the top to slap Joethedk with a 24 hour ban when he simply tried it once to see if it was true, had a chuckle/was horrified and went on his merry way. Our example Death Knight received no personal gain from using the macro, but had he used it to kill a friendly player who was mining a node he wanted then that is a different story. He usually would not be able to kill an ally player for control of the node, and so the bug gives him a competitive edge over other farmers. I am no lawyer though!
What about those Death Knights who spent three hours camping and griefing low level players, to the point where they even hunted them down when they tried to run away? They did not receive any competitive advantage by using the macro either, but they were jerks! I think that’s where Blizzard’s report function should come into play. I highly doubt Joethedk would have been reported, however those responsible for the Moonguard Massacre pictured below probably have been! To me, the issue with last night was less about the bug and more about the abhorrent behaviour displayed by some players. I hope Blizzard sees it that way as well.
A different kind of horror story played out at Goldshire Inn last night. Source: @elvinelol
A Final Word
There is perhaps a small chance that I will wake up tomorrow to find myself with a ban. While I may not agree that I deserve it when I didn’t use the macro, the fact is that my intent was to kill a friendly player, and so I will accept my punishment gracefully. With a lack of any world wide pre expansion event that anyone lower than 85 can participate in, it will be a ban well-earned. There are many stories circulating around about the Death Knight shenanigans, and I will remember it for a long time to come. The fact that it was the Death Knight class handing out the carnage is especially fitting. That’s for all those rotten tomatoes, you jerks!
Do you feel that all players who used the macro should be punished, or just those that took it too far? Do you have any cool stories to share about the great Death Knight rebellion of 2012? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
My gut reaction is no. Yes, it would have been annoying for those caught up in it but then I thought the whole Blizz pre Wrath event was terribly tiresome after the novelty wore off.
You can camp the opposing faction for as long as they keep ressing ( I once camped someone called “Ipissonyou” for about four hours without any consequences) and that’s allowable within the rules so given that this was a one off, I don’t see it as being a massive issue. If Blizzard are going to wield bans I’d rather they started with people who use bots and/or are deliberate jerks in groups rather than out in the world.
I’m with you. I recall one commentator on the WoW Insider article saying something along the lines of how Blizzard are yet to really come down on botters, duplicators or any other truly nasty breach in game, so to go after all Death Knights for this seems over the top.
PS. High five on camping such a terrible name! They clearly weren’t pissing on anyone that day
I think bans ought to be applied pragmatically. As a matter of interpreting the terms of service, this was a bug, and people exploited it to their advantage and most importantly to the detriment of others. When I am sitting in Stormwind trying to get something enchanted, I do not expect my enchanter to drop dead because some death knight is spamming everyone he can find with this macro with the intent to kill everyone in Stormwind.
First, let’s imagine it from an immersion scenario. Suppose King Varian Wrynn discovered that you were participating in mass murder of his subjects. What punishment would _he_ impose? Off with their heads, undoubtedly.
Now let’s consider it from a policy perspective. To be absolutely clear, I’m not talking about the sort of person who tried the macro out on a friend just to see for themselves that it worked. I’m not talking about the person who tried it out on a guard or two just for kicks. I’m talking about the sort of person who ran around applying it on everyone he could see with the intent and result of seeing many friendly players drop dead. And then I ask myself a couple related questions: Is this the sort of person who I want to play a game with? Is this the sort of person I will miss if he were gone from the game forever?
My answers to those questions are no. Ban them. They won’t be missed.
I agree. I really can’t put my actions on the same page as the people who literally spent *hours* killing defenceless players who could clearly communicate their displeasure. I imagine that the same people who got enjoyment out the kind of friendly player mass murder that we witnessed at the weekend probably also enjoys deliberately wiping groups in LFR and generally making life a misery for other players.
On my server, Dark Iron, it was a mess. Org was uninhabitable, my guildies were flying to TB just to repair and auction stuff without hassle. Considering it was ruining the experience for many players, I think bans are fully in order. Numerous people were complaining and reporting.
In your case, unless that druid reported you, I wouldn’t expect a ban.
Yikes, that does sound very painful indeed. I have not received any word from Blizzard about being reported, so I think it’s safe to say my stupid trick was just a drop in the very large cesspool of poor behaviour that happened that day. I certainly would never do anything like that again!
At the end of the day, it’s on the devs. I see no reason why anyone should be banned because they found a goofy error that allowed them to wreak havoc and simply couldn’t help themselves (they are Death Knights, after all). It would be like banning children from eating the cookies their parents left out on the counter. If they want to hand out bans, they could start with trade chat logs… Oh, and shame on you Neri ;P I’m appalled that you didn’t just go ahead and kill that helpless druid.
But then with logic we shouldn’t ban people who do item duplications since it is “on the devs” for not finding the bug/exploit initially.
At a certain level of abstraction, it’s true, they are the same. However, I do believe there is a meaningful difference between them. Based on my understanding, people discovered the DK bug by accident (i.e. perhaps they hit their cast button accidentally while posting auctions) and chaos/friendly-fun ensued. AFAIK, duping involves directly attacking Blizzard’s code with code of your own. It is, in other words, their intent is to exploit gameplay against the ToS. So on the one hand, something silly happens and children play like it’s a snow day, while on the other people seek an advantage through malicious attacks on account and/or source code. As far as which activity should receive bans, clearly there is a line between the two — but I take your point.
As an associate of players (IRL friends) who I know to have done various unsavoury activities such as exploitation, I can safely say many of the biggest exploits were found by accident …. and then repeated later for various reasons.
The item exploits have not always been the result of code manipulations either but rather an error or an over sight by developers. A good example of this kind of error that was very, very well known was the PvP vendors in late BC selling any and all gear. There are also others which capitalised on latency to trick the server into giving you two or more of an item and others still exist using the mailbox even to “clone items”. Most of these bugs are found by pure accident but then are repeated after the initial discovery is made.
To me this is much the same principle in essence. A bug was found by accident, however people then continued to use it despite the fact they knew it was unintended.
To use the children analogy of yours, ok as a child I have eaten all the cookies/cake/random food on the table. I can not ever recall a time where I was ever let completely off the hook for doing so. Sure it won’t change the fact I ate all the food but my parents would still look to correct the behaviour and avoid a repeat event. The same should really apply here if you don’t curb the behaviour early on then when the next bug comes along the damage may not be so easily fixed.
On a side note I also know of items links that are legitimate in WoW that will crash a players client the moment they click on the link …
The real underlying issue around this whole event is that if they do nothing about it for reason x than reason x will be used as basis to opposed bans for other exploits.
In the case of this issue it involved the use of a macro as the only means to make it work. The development of such a macro for this purpose shows intent and premeditation about the use of this bug. So this is not a matter of encountering a bug which the player has no control over, this is a matter of people using an known bug to exploit an ability to kill other players of their own faction.
The fact that multiple servers and people had suffered great disruption to their ability to play from this bug, has, in previous cases, been classed as something that Blizzard considers “contrary to the “essence” of the Game”.
In the even of such bugs Blizzard has been very clear about how to handle them: “If you think you’ve found a bug at all, you should report it.” Nowhere does this mean that you can then go off and use it a thousand times over. In fact much of how this got spread to such plague like proportions (pun intended
) across the community is because people reporting the bug initially and others teaching others how to use the bug whilst being fully aware it was not likely intended.
Personally I do not find a permanent ban to be the best result but I would certainly support a 3-24 hour ban for it maybe even up to a 72 hour ban in extreme cases.
And just as final thought for those that are squealing about possible bans I think need to revisit the ToU agreement:
“BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF WARCRAFT ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU.”
“Part C of The Code of Conduct. 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;
and
(iii) Anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the “essence” of the Game.”
And remember that you agree to every piece of that before you can play the game. You can throw yourself around when you break the rules and get hit with a ban as a result of it, but it will not change the facts at the end of the day, deal with it.
AFAIK, the macro was just the standard sort many of us already have on our bars:
e.g.:
/cast blood plague
/cast frost fever
If it were more involved than that, 99% of DKs wouldn’t have been able to carry it off… they are DKs, after all…
/duck
In their defense, they certainly upheld the “essence” of the Death Knight. They may even get a congratulatory pet out of it…
I don’t doubt it was a macro that was already used (otherwise how else would someone have found it). But once you have identified this is a likely bug, especially when you couldn’t perform this action “ye ol’d fashioned way”, the procedure given by Blizzard is that you report it and note the steps you used to recreate it.
So sure I could see multiple uses falling under the umbrella of establishing the ways this bug works but to do what many individuals did was nothing short of abuse and a direct intention to harass other players.
Personally I don’t particularly care if they do get banned but I do feel that Blizzard has sufficient grounds to issue bans and if they do so to people that have done this exploit, that these people should man up and take the ban and deal with it. If they feel it was unwarranted then take it up with Blizzard and let them review your case.
If you dont use it to your advantage i would not see any harm, Blizzard cant quality control everything right now before a major patch and that is things we as players must accept. Can understand that people got pissed about it but its still just a game and things like this happens all the time. Its a easy hotfix so why cry about it, a developer probably forgot a 1 where it should have been 0.
I’m of the “oh, hey, this is neat…oh wow, I killed an ally.” mindset. That would be interesting. Alas, with great power comes great responsibility. Had I KNOWN of that bug, I can think of a few people on my server I would have cast it on. I also would have had it keybound and tanked a dungeon and just waited for someone to do something stupid. That right there is taking it too far and I would understand the ban.
So the ones who griefed people, they would get what’s coming. For those who did it just to see if it would work, I have no issue.