WG exploit

[Multibocks]

Don't know if you have seen this one, but it makes me angry. We were ahead of alliance in that they had ZERO walls down and we had just destroyed all their towers. Suddenly with 3mins left we lose, everyone is yelling, "WTF!???" Apparently demolishers can ghost through walls, I'm not aware of the exact details. However when we lost I was near keep and I turned around to see 3 alliance destroyers fall apart on the steps of the keep(which they do once battle is over.) It's interesting how they cannot implement a catch code that verifies position of the vehicle. If its in the keep and there are no walls down, then destroy it(better yet, ban the player... ok, I kid.) I was pissed, my guys are close to getting an upgrade =(

[Dominian]

Its known and been around for awhile!

There is also a exploit that allows you to fire over the walls from certain positions and at the keep door.

Both are reported to blizzard so lets hope theyr doing something with it in 3.1!

[Nirthal]

You can 'Drive' the demolishers through the gap in the walls for un-vehicle'd players to go through if you aim for the gap and keep moving forward till you fit through... it looks quite comical actually.

[Lyonheart]

Its not an exploit. You can only drive through the inner court walls.. you HAVE to break down an outer wall first. It is a BUG that needs to be fixed. why is it NOT an exploit? because there is no way NOT to do it. you HAVE to attack the inner court yard walls to get to the orb door. Its not the players fault that the wall lets you drive right by. to NOT "exploit" it would mean to not use demos at all. Sorry, its not an exploit. Blizzard needs to fix it, it has been like this for over a month.

Firing over the walls and "aiming" for the door is a perfect use of strategy, not an exploit in any way.

[KvdM]

Eh.. exploiting is defined as abusing a bug to gain an advantage.

Its for Blizzard to decide whether these particular exploits give the player an unfair advantage and are thus considered cheating. It might very well be that they will consider firing over the wall to be a tactic, because it is counterable. However, it is just as likely that they will consider it as cheating, since those walls are there to stop the attacking team from directly attacking the doors.

[Multibocks]

Its not an exploit. You can only drive through the inner court walls.. you HAVE to break down an outer wall first. It is a BUG that needs to be fixed. why is it NOT an exploit? because there is no way NOT to do it. you HAVE to attack the inner court yard walls to get to the orb door. Its not the players fault that the wall lets you drive right by. to NOT "exploit" it would mean to not use demos at all. Sorry, its not an exploit. Blizzard needs to fix it, it has been like this for over a month.

Firing over the walls and "aiming" for the door is a perfect use of strategy, not an exploit in any way.

Are you high? Knowing that driving vehicles at the wall gets you through and you dont have to destroy the wall is the DEFINITION of exploiting. Blizzard expects you to destroy those walls and you know that. Alliance on my server specifically takes the main raid to the east side and then sends 4 rogue demolishers to the opposite side. I realize we should leave someone over there, but come on this is BG pvp not premades.

The bottom line is Blizzard wants you to destroy the walls to win, we all know an EXPLOIT to get past that and do it everytime. The reason I say "we" is I'm sure that horde uses it too, I just never enter the Keep to reduce lag.

[Souca]

Ugg. I've also heard of people who creatively log out log back in to cap without ever using a vehicle. Not sure if it still happens, but I have a friend who lost when the other team had no vehicles.

One thing I would love to see is more battle grounds. I'd love to have something like AV or AB using vehicles and maybe even no raid limits, except maybe 120 per side. Hell an AB style zone where there wasn't even a win condition would be great. I want something that lasts forever and calls for full scale slaughter like the stories I hear about old AVs.

WG is too short and one sided. If the attacker had to defend as well, or their were multiple goals, it would be so much more dynamic.

- Souca -

[Lyonheart]

I know they WANT you to destroy the walls, but get this.. the demolishers are made to smash the walls down with rams right? well guess what? When you try to drive up close enough to use the ram, you go right through. YES it can "technically" be defined as an exploit. But its not the type that you have to do some special thing to make it work. Its a bug that lets people, knowingly or not, drive through the wall when they "try" and ram it down. So if they didn't want it being used, they would have fixed it or disabled demolishers LONG AGO! You name me one person who has been banned for driving through the wall. I can tell you I have been reported driving all 5 of my demos through and killing the orb wall and winning for us. More than once. They are obviously allowing it until they find a way to fix it. ( i reported the bug myself the first time it happend to me, weeks ago )

[Multibocks]

You can stop your vehicle in front of the wall and still bring it down. You are talking semantics and we all know Blizzard doesn't give a crap about semantics. Are you supposed to destroy the wall? Yes. Did you? No. Case closed.

The fact that they havent banned anyone is it's a well known bug and they will take care of it at some point. Does that make it ok? No. However, they arent going to ban all of their subscribers. Will I use it now? You bet, it's bullshit, but I am not going to be on the receiving end of it all the time. I know I am exploiting, but I also know they are not going to ban everyone using it.

The whole point of this conversation was to point out that it pissed me off, and YES it is an exploit. It is unintended behavior of the vehicle, but like I said they are not going to ban everyone. I'll use it until they fix it so I know I am playing a level field. I hope that the more people know about this the faster it will get fixed. I want WG to be fair and it's not.

[Multibocks]

sigh so sick of this exploit, alliance on my server are particularly good at it. WG at noon today was over in 5 minutes, no that is not an exaggeration. No one wants to stay and guard the keep, because they need rank to get the WG marks, so alliance just sneak in =(

[Stealthy]

It's happening on Mag as well...it's reportable btw. Offenders will most likely have thier gear stripped, so get those reports in!

[Farleito]

Simply by the definition of an exploit, it's not an exploit. Why? Well, Blizzard wants to prevent people from getting an unfair advantage. The fact that everyone can do it means there is no unfair advantage. If you currently own WG and you lose because a bunch of demolishers squeezed thru the doorways...come back in 2.5 hours and do it to them. I'm not saying that it doesn't ruin the WG experience. I'm sure they'll prevent this from happening in the future.

To be an exploit, there needs to fundamental flaw in the design. This is a mistake made by the clipping/collision/size parametrics of the demolisher object. Ever notice how close you need to be to melee a demolisher? You can't hit it if you're standing at the wheels, but you can hit a catapult from a distance. Fixing these parameters will probably break something else (most likely in Strands of the Ancients).

This is an exploit:

Warlocks using their teleport circle to port themselves back up to the top of the Dalaran Arena. Why? Only Warlocks can do this and it prevents melee classes from attacking them. This gives them an unfair advantage.

[Dorffo]

Farleito ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=User&userID=9318') - sorry but I would respectfully disagree with this:

Simply by the definition of an exploit, it's not an exploit. Why? Well, Blizzard wants to prevent people from getting an unfair advantage. The fact that everyone can do it means there is no unfair advantage. Even though both sides are able to do it equally does not mean that each side is not exploiting a flaw in game design/implementation.

[Farleito]

Even though both sides are able to do it equally does not mean that each side is not exploiting a flaw in game design/implementation.
Then you would agree that there is no unfair advantage. Like I said, I'm not arguing that it doesn't ruin the BG.

Are they going to do anything about shaman knockbacks in EoTS? Is it considered an exploit to use Thunderstorm in EoTS to knock people off of a cliff? If you answer no, then how come you don't get a kill point and why do you take durability loss when you die this way? If you answer yes, then why haven't they fixed it? By your standards, it's taking advantage of a flaw in the game design/implementation. If they purposely wanted you to do this, then you should get a kill point and the opponent should not take a durability loss. It's not too far off from this WG issue. It sucks when it happens to your team, but your team can just as easily do it to them. The simple fix would be to increase the object size of the demolisher so it can not pass thru the door, and to put up some false walls around the sides of the flag in EoTS at the right height, so if you run off it doesn't save you. Will they do this? No, because they don't consider them as exploits.

[Alemi]

Even though both sides are able to do it equally does not mean that each side is not exploiting a flaw in game design/implementation.No, because they don't consider them as exploits.It's an exploit. The error in your logic is your definition of an exploit. "Using an UNINTENDED game mechanic." Thunderstorm knocking people off a cliff is an intended mechanic, just as mind controlling someone off a cliff is a valid strategy. Driving a vehicle through a crack in a wall that it cannot possibly fit? An exploit.

Regardless, GMs confirmed it's not intended. Just because both teams can do it and that makes it ok: inane at best.

[Farleito]

Driving a vehicle through a crack in a wall that it cannot possibly fit? An exploit.

It's a doorway, not a crack and apparently, yes, it can fit...cause if it couldn't fit, it wouldn't go thru. The argument is that they should not fit, not if it's an exploit.

Does it make sense to leave it this way? No. Are people getting banned for doing this? No. This has been an issue for some time now and it was not addressed in the recent patches. If it was truely an exploit, they would have hot-fixed it like they did w/ the endless mob "exploit" that I had posted a few months ago.

Calling it an exploit is a matter of opinion. In the end, our opinions don't really matter. Like it or hate it, Blizzard will do what they think is fair. If you want to call it an exploit, then so should the following, but they're not:


Tanks unbleedable, lowering the dps of certain classes, but diseases and curses are supposedly ok? All disease/curse classess are exploiting this.

The ability to parachute into the fortress, completely negating the walls, even without the gnomish planes. *Made even worse by having an extra second allowed on flying before dismounting in a later patch* People do this all day long and nobody complains.

Occasionally misplaced siege engine shots damage your own workshops/walls/towers -or- Vehicles left alone for too long, despawn but don't release the vehicles resource. (I could make an opposite faction toon and do these things on purpose to help my other toons win)

Widely fluctuating values of Tenacity during the first 5 minutes of the BG because of the huge amount of arrivals. I can go on a killing spree w/ this temporary tenacity buff and 1-shot everybody.

Design of the fortress, The GY spilling out onto the right hand area of the fortress, this makes assaulting that right hand side HARDER then the left. As the Alliance favor attacking the right and the horde the left, this gives the Horde an advantage when attacking albiet a small one. Horde players are exploiting this.

[Stealthy]

Driving a vehicle through a crack in a wall that it cannot possibly fit? An exploit.

It's a doorway, not a crack and apparently, yes, it can fit...cause if it couldn't fit, it wouldn't go thru. The argument is that they should not fit, not if it's an exploit.

Does it make sense to leave it this way? No. Are people getting banned for doing this? No. This has been an issue for some time now and it was not addressed in the recent patches. If it was truely an exploit, they would have hot-fixed it like they did w/ the endless mob "exploit" that I had posted a few months ago.

Calling it an exploit is a matter of opinion. In the end, our opinions don't really matter. Like it or hate it, Blizzard will do what they think is fair. If you want to call it an exploit, then so should the following, but they're not:


Tanks unbleedable, lowering the dps of certain classes, but diseases and curses are supposedly ok? All disease/curse classess are exploiting this.

The ability to parachute into the fortress, completely negating the walls, even without the gnomish planes. *Made even worse by having an extra second allowed on flying before dismounting in a later patch* People do this all day long and nobody complains.

Occasionally misplaced siege engine shots damage your own workshops/walls/towers -or- Vehicles left alone for too long, despawn but don't release the vehicles resource. (I could make an opposite faction toon and do these things on purpose to help my other toons win)

Widely fluctuating values of Tenacity during the first 5 minutes of the BG because of the huge amount of arrivals. I can go on a killing spree w/ this temporary tenacity buff and 1-shot everybody.

Design of the fortress, The GY spilling out onto the right hand area of the fortress, this makes assaulting that right hand side HARDER then the left. As the Alliance favor attacking the right and the horde the left, this gives the Horde an advantage when attacking albiet a small one. Horde players are exploiting this.

It sounds like you need to read this link:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20224

Specifically this part:

Bug Exploitation

We have a top notch Quality Assurance team who tirelessly stamp out bugs and design inconsistencies within World of Warcraft. However, a handful of trained professionals can never isolate and resolve each and every bug in such a deep and complex game accessed simultaneously by thousands of players. You may come across the occasional bug during your adventures. Some bugs are minor and do not affect gameplay, but sometimes these bugs can be used to provide an unfair advantage to certain players or affect the service itself. Factors included in determining the appropriate penalty:


Whether or not the exploit is performed intentionally, maliciously, and/or repeatedly Whether or not the exploit damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy Whether or not an attempt has been made to conceal the exploit's use
If a player is found to have abused/distributed an exploit, he/she may:


Be given a verbal warning if exploitation is unintentional and no attempt has been made to hide its occurrence Be temporarily suspended from the game In extreme cases the account will be closed outright
Bug exploitation that we consider extreme includes, but is not limited to:


Any exploit that has a severe negative impact on a realm's economy Causing disruption in service or intentionally crashing a realm/server


While these repercussions may seem harsh, we feel very strongly that this type of abuse has no place within Azeroth due to its negative effect on other players or the service itself.


The design intent of WG is obvious - the walls are supposed to be destroyed before players can proceed to the next area. Driving a vehicle through an undamaged section of a wall circumvents the design of WG, and is by the definition above, a bug exploit as it cleary gives an unintended advantage to the attacking team.

Don't make the mistake of thinking just becuase Blizzard isnt hotfixing it, that people who continue to use the epxloit won't be punished in the end. Blizzard let win trading in the arena continue for months before stripping gear and banning accounts.



Cheers,

S.

[Farleito]

Perhaps you should have posted the rest of that site...

Specifically the part about abusing game mechanics:

Abuse of Game Mechanics

The distinction between exploiting bugs and abusing game mechanics is a fine one. While bug exploitation involves the abuse of what is essentially a programming mistake, the abuse of game mechanics is the act of taking advantage of the limitations of the World of Warcraft game systems. Since the line between the sanctioned use and the abuse of game mechanics is sometimes unclear, we prefer to educate players before taking any action against the account being used.


They are NOT the same thing. The WG issue does not involve a programming mistake. This would be considered abusing the game mechanics, not an exploit.

[Alemi]

They are NOT the same thing. The WG issue does not involve a programming mistake. This would be considered abusing the game mechanics, not an exploit.This is getting ridiculous. I'll leave you with this.

It's a crack in the wall that is CLEARLY meant for a mounted player to get through. No matter what physics you describe, no item on that size can fit through that "doorway" as you call it. The doors are made of stone, not rubber - period. You can rationalize it to yourself however you want; tanks are bleedable - physics doesn't work! Common sense should tell you that even in a video game a square peg cannot fit in a round hole.

It's a programming error that a vehicle can turn sideways and have its z axis negated to fit through the doorway. Which is exactly what's happening. Seige vehicles had their z axis removed because they were getting hung up on certain objects. Using terrain tactics to manuever a vehicle so that it's y-axis is 0 (i.e. a 90 degree switch) isn't exactly an "intended" bug. You want to play word games, but it is a bug exploit of the programming mistake. Regardless, this conversation is going no where as our versions of reality and semantics seem based in different places. I see no further value in continuing a conversation on this topic.

It'll be fixed soon enough. Just as getting on top of the horde roof in WSG was fixed using "creative" terrain tactics - which was also considered an "exploit" by Blizzard.

[Farleito]

It's a crack in the wall that is CLEARLY meant for a mounted player to get through. No matter what physics you describe, no item on that size can fit through that "doorway" as you call it.
..and big mounts can't fit thru most doorways...cause this totally makes sense. You expect a videogame's physics to be entirely accurate with the physics outside of the game? You must be living in a World of Warcraft.


Common sense should tell you that even in a video game...
Really? Sorry, I must have missed that class in college. Perhaps you can enlighten me on how they get all of those sensible magic spells to work. Start w/ my favorite, Slow Fall. You seem to have this notion that all of the x,y,z parameters for every object in the game are hard-coded and can only change w/ a recompile. Maybe you can explain how the software recompiles itself to shrink my toon (and my mount) when I drink a noggenfogger elixir.


It's a programming error that a vehicle can turn sideways and have its z axis negated to fit through the doorway. Which is exactly what's happening.
I'll agree that what you point out here would be a programming error but I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I can set my vehicle to "auto-run" foward, right thru the doorway. I don't have to turn in any fashion to fit. Just go forward. Maybe the z-axis was removed from the demolishers...I still think the argument is that it's too wide to fit, not to tall. The size of the demolisher was obvisouly set to its current dimensions because something else was broken (in SotA). They did not need to fix any lines of code to do this. It's a limitation. You can fit thru places that they intended you to fit thru, and as a side effect, you can fit thru places they wouldn't want you to go thru. You can't have both until they fix the game mechanics. Until they fix the game mechanics, people will abuse the game mechanics.


tanks are bleedable - physics doesn't work!
Cut the oil lines. Let it bleed out, like how you bleed the brakes on your car. Good thing you can curse and disease these things though, cause the physics work there.

What am I trying to prove here? That just because something does not work in your favor all the time, it does not mean it's an exploit. Like I said in all of my replies in this thread. I am not saying that it does not ruin the fun and the experience. I discovered this by trying to auto-run forward into a wall so I can spam attacks on it. When I made it up to the wall, I happened to pass thru it. Did I do anything special? No. Who in their right mind is going to say "gee.. that doesn't make any sense. I should put this bad boy in reverse and get back on that other side." Nonsense! Go knock down the next wall. It's no different than discovering, after a patch, that your lightning bolt randomly does 4000% more damage. Are you going to stop using it? Are you exploiting anything here? Clearly it is unintentional, but you can't go and call it an exploit. You don't have to do anything special to make it happen. It just happens.

Just trying to call it what it is.

[Dorffo]

but you can't go and call it an exploit.Because the players doing that are not exploiting a programming error to avoid a game mechanic?

exploiting =/= gaining advantage over other team...

[Farleito]

exploiting =/= gaining advantage over other team...
I think that's where you and I would have to agree to disagree.

Main article: Wikipedia: Exploit (online gaming) ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_online_games#Exploits') ...yes.. it's from a Wiki and anyone can write whatever they want on the topic, but it proves that I'm not the only one who thinks an exploit is based off of gaining an advantage.

Exploiting is the application of an unintended use or bug that gives the player an advantage. Not all gamers view exploits as cheating, some view it as another skill because certain exploits take a significant amount of time to find and/or dexterity/timing to use. Example dexterity/timing exploits include bunny hopping and texture-climbing in Quake. Even an official part of the series such as "skiing" in Tribes is considered an exploit by some. However, exploits are considered cheating when they have an unbalancing effect, are used in an unintended manner or not intended to be feature.

[Dorffo]

So Wikipedia entry trumps Blizzard definition in Blizzard's game?

Let's revisit Vyndree's quote from earlier -

It sounds like you need to read this link:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20224

Specifically this part:

Bug Exploitation

We have a top notch Quality Assurance team who tirelessly stamp out bugs and design inconsistencies within World of Warcraft. However, a handful of trained professionals can never isolate and resolve each and every bug in such a deep and complex game accessed simultaneously by thousands of players. You may come across the occasional bug during your adventures. Some bugs are minor and do not affect gameplay, but sometimes these bugs can be used to provide an unfair advantage to certain players or affect the service itself. Factors included in determining the appropriate penalty:


Whether or not the exploit is performed intentionally, maliciously, and/or repeatedly Whether or not the exploit damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy Whether or not an attempt has been made to conceal the exploit's use
If a player is found to have abused/distributed an exploit, he/she may:


Be given a verbal warning if exploitation is unintentional and no attempt has been made to hide its occurrence Be temporarily suspended from the game In extreme cases the account will be closed outright
Bug exploitation that we consider extreme includes, but is not limited to:


Any exploit that has a severe negative impact on a realm's economy Causing disruption in service or intentionally crashing a realm/server
I am not at all disagreeing with you about the availability to both sides or anything like that... I just can't wrap my head around how you keep saying that actions that are clearing exploiting a flaw in game design is not an exploit because it's available to both sides.

Calling an exploit not an exploit just to justify your actions is fine by me, until you start trying to post that logic on a forum for a community which prides itself on playing within the rules...

[Farleito]

Whatever.. I'm over it... Call it an exploit. It does me no good to try to explain the technical differences between an exploit and abusing the game mechanics. Blizzard has stated that there is a fine line between abusing game mechanics and exploiting. You seem too dense to understand this.

I never said it was legitimate. I never tried to justify doing it. I was just trying to point out that if you were to compare actual exploits vs abuses of the game mechanics, you could see that this is not an exploit (by the definition of the word "exploit").

I'm not sure what you are trying to revisit there. You highlighted the "Factors included in determining the appropriate penalty: ", under the "Bug Exploitation" section. Keep reading below that... the part about "Abusing the Game Mechanics".

Let me use two different words here to see if I can clear up what I'm trying to say....

Murder and Manslaughter. I bet you would argue that they mean the same thing.
Manslaughter : Murder
Abuse Game Mechanic: Exploit

There is a difference. Call it what it is.

You probably call installing a key logger to steal someones password, hacking.

[Gomotron]

You probably call installing a key logger to steal someones password, hacking.And you probably call finding a wallet with someone's ID in it on the ground and taking the money inside "finder's keepers."

[Stealthy]

Out of interest - I posted this question in the WoW CS forums as to whether it was a bug or an abuse of game mechanics.....

And my post was moved to the Bug Report forum! Guess that answers that question then.... :P

Post here for those interested:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15443453541&sid=1

There's also this post containing a request from Blue for more info:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14656815805&sid=1&pageNo=1



Cheers,

S.

[Multibocks]

differences between an exploit and abusing the game mechanics. Blizzard has stated that there is a fine line between abusing game mechanics and exploiting. You seem too dense to understand this.



So once you are painted into a corner and realize there is no way out you resort to name calling to divert attention from your inability to split hairs. Im sure when blizzard made WG they thought, "Ooooh, I know! Let's make it so ONLY demos can ghost through walls. Let's see how long before anyone figures it out." Why the hell even have secondary walls if they are useless? It's an exploit, plain and simple.

[Gomotron]

Let's just call it "Exploiting Game Mechanics"! It's like a hybrid of the two.