Thread: Patch 4.3 LFR Exploit - Gear stripping and bans begins

This morning Blizzard began stripping LFR gear from a number of top guilds who exploited a game mechanic the past 48 hours of patch 4.3 release. Some of the guilds effected by this gear stripping are Paragon, Method, and For the Horde. The exploit allowed full guild runs of LFR, running Dragon Soul Raid 20+ times to get everyone in their raid their gear in a span of 48 hours. Essentially giving many guild members their full tier bonus. Rumor has it that they were also issued a 72 hour ban for this particular exploit to end next week. They might be possibly locked out for the rest of this week.

Comments from Blizzard

 Quote from: Bashiok

If you are getting loot off of a boss twice then it is an exploit. This has always been the case in World of Warcraft, and we expect players to know better.

We’re in the process of implementing a hotfix to fix the exploit, and are deciding what steps we'll be taking for the gear that was already obtained.

http://www.paragon.fi/news/dragon-so...day-3-4-update

Yes, the LFR... Looking for Raid... a chance to join up with 24 of your friends/non-friends/acquaintances and clear some raid content on the Baradin Hold difficulty level. You might even get some loots for the trouble! So what happened and why have other popular MMO and WoW forum sites been abuzz with accusations of bugs, creative game mechanics, or exploits in relation to the LFR?

Well, evidently a combination of careful planning by the elite guilds to run LFRs (I did mention yesterday that LFR was factoring into strategies, but I had no idea what was going to happen over the course of the day at that point) and a game bug resulted in something unexpected. But this was something most of the top guilds followed as, like most things buggish during the early days of a new patch, sometimes it's not entirely clear what's a bug versus a new mechanic, what's a creative use of gameplay versus an exploit. I'm not suggesting that all the guilds unwittingly partook in an accidental series of LFRs that resulted in an accidental and magical appearance of available loot, but the way in which the guilds had laid out their plans appeared to expose an actual bug that just made the process less cumbersome than had been originally planned. Were these guys always planning to do a lot of LFRs? Oh yes. Had they expected it to be this easy? Oh no. Were they going to stop for the race because they weren't sure about a bug or no bug? Unlikely. And since it seemed like everyone else was doing it, were they pressured even more to keep doing it? Yes. Whether we like it or not, the race (and how we prepare for it) is often conducted in silos and we rely on hearsay or rumours to actually know what each other is doing. Should they have done it? Probably not, but it's easy for me to sit back and mull over grey areas of the game like this and decide what is or is not ok--these raiding guilds often have to make quick decisions based on what they know their competitors are already doing.

The bug that allowed this faster turnaround has been hotfixed, as I understand it, and while there are still a lot of contested debates out there about what was wrong or right and whether there should be further punitive action, we have yet to know if anything additional will be done. But if something does happen, keep in mind that I checked the top 10-15 guilds alone and found that the majority of them had conducted their LFR runs this way so we may see a different progress race or outcome if those guilds are penalised. And what about the many other guilds throughout the game that did the same thing? Shouldn't we penalise them as well?

I'll probably have more to say as the days continue, but for now, I'll leave it there. Again, keep in mind that these thoughts are my own and do not necessarily reflect what Paragon or its individual members might think.