A word of caution for those using instance reset method

[Drakhoun]

Hi all,

I just watched this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9z6DjWcgIU

Its so disheartening seeing this happening. I have been wondering why prices are so low and there are so many epics in AH. Now I know why. Seems like a massive ban hammer is coming. Th economy is in ruin. I hope the damage is not irreversible. Apparently people have been farming raid boses/dungeon BIS over and over again!

My suggestion is, dont reset instances by inviting another toon , converting to raid and reloging. Just in case. I'm worried that we may be flagged for abusing the layering system. I just dont think its worth it to risk it at the moment.

[MiRai]

No need to watch a 16-minute video—link to the reddit thread for easy reading.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/d4qumy/instance_layeringexploit/

Also:

https://classic.wowhead.com/news=295114/repeat-instance-exploit-to-be-fixed-and-blizzard-issuing-punishments

[Drakhoun]

No need to watch a 16-minute video—link to the reddit thread for easy reading.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/d4qumy/instance_layeringexploit/

Thanks for the link Mirai!

[Hardcore Scape]

The reset method has nothing to do with layering. I wouldn't worry about that since literally everyone does that. The people that will be punished will be people who blatantly abused it, especially the people killing multiple MC bosses within a day.

[Apatheist]

It doesn't seem to me like using this method to reset dungeons would be ban-worthy but who knows? Not worth risking your accounts over until you see how Blizzard handles it. They'll probably just issue a hotfix and then ban the people who intentionally abused it to farm raids.

Personally, I think banning anybody over this would be pretty lame from Blizzards part. Blizzard should have tested this stuff before implementing a mechanic that none of the players wanted in the first place. Using layering to farm/quest was so commonplace they had to add a cooldown. Why is it a surprise that people would also used it to farm raids? If it's not bannable to use to your advantage in the open world, it shouldn't be bannable in raids. Blizzard only have themselves to blame for their own poor quality control and lack of beta testing at 60.

Apparently Blizzard have already issued a statement/fix.


We’ve recently become aware of a bug that could be exploited to allow instanced encounters to be completed repeatedly. We have developed a fix for the issue, and we are in the process of deploying it worldwide.

Realm restarts are scheduled for 3:00 a.m. PDT (6:00 a.m. EDT) in order to apply this fix.

As soon as possible, we will identify those who knowingly abused this bug in exploitative manner. We will then take appropriate punitive measures.

As a reminder, Blizzard’s End User License Agreement 2 defines cheats as “methods not expressly authorized by Blizzard, influencing and/or facilitating the gameplay, including exploits of any in-game bugs, and thereby granting you and/or any other user an advantage over other players not using such methods.”

As always, thank you for your feedback on this matter.
https://classic.wowhead.com/news=295114/repeat-instance-exploit-to-be-fixed-and-blizzard-issuing-punishments?webhook

Unsure if the fix will prevent resetting instances in dungeons or if they've only fixed raids resetting? Somebody will have to test.

[The Crowd]

It doesn't seem to me like using this method to reset dungeons would be ban-worthy but who knows? Not worth risking your accounts over until you see how Blizzard handles it. They'll probably just issue a hotfix and then ban the people who intentionally abused it to farm raids.

Personally, I think banning anybody over this would be pretty lame from Blizzards part. Blizzard should have tested this stuff before implementing a mechanic that none of the players wanted in the first place. Using layering to farm/quest was so commonplace they had to add a cooldown. Why is it a surprise that people would also used it to farm raids? If it's not bannable to use to your advantage in the open world, it shouldn't be bannable in raids. Blizzard only have themselves to blame for their own poor quality control and lack of beta testing at 60.

Apparently Blizzard have already issued a statement/fix.


https://classic.wowhead.com/news=295114/repeat-instance-exploit-to-be-fixed-and-blizzard-issuing-punishments?webhook

Unsure if the fix will prevent resetting instances in dungeons or if they've only fixed raids resetting? Somebody will have to test.

Do a quick mental exercise there... What’s the difference between an exploit and clever use of game mechanics.

And to further that, saying blizzard shouldn’t ban people because they didn’t fix it... is like saying... I know it was yours but if you didn’t want me to steal it you should have locked it in the bank.

An exploit is a straight up game breaking mechanic that you have instigate yourself, clever use of game mechanics is stacking up in a dead zone that wasn’t intended to be a dead zone in order to avoid a boss mechanic.
if you by your actions have to cause an event through your manipulation, ya... that ban hammer is coming hard and fast.

look at what they did to guilds who used to go into MC and try to call up if a loot item to see if it was going to drop in the same raid. And all they were doing was looking.

[MiRai]

Personally, I think banning anybody over this would be pretty lame from Blizzards part. Blizzard should have tested this stuff before implementing a mechanic that none of the players wanted in the first place.
If you found a bug in the website of a bank, and then proceeded to take advantage of it to further increase your wealth, should they not punish you after finding out, or should you get to keep the money because it was their fault and they "should have tested this stuff?"

Now, before someone argues that breaking the law of the country you live in and breaking the rules of a game you play are, in this analogy, different, I disagree. In my opinion, irregardless of the severity of damage caused and the possible punishment received, you are knowingly exploiting a bug, flaw, loophole, etc. in "the system," and by voluntarily participating in it, you open yourself up for punishment.


If it's not bannable to use to your advantage in the open world, it shouldn't be bannable in raids. Blizzard only have themselves to blame for their own poor quality control and lack of beta testing at 60.
Why are you labeling this as an exploit specific to level 60? In reference to this topic, what would testing at level 60 have revealed that testing at level 20 didn't, since this particular issue can be used in any dungeon, at any level? With thousands of players in the beta, no one who found this exploit stepped forward to report it, because if they had, then this would've been fixed long ago.

So, whose fault is it, really? Is it Blizzard's fault for not inviting more players? Would several more thousand players have found, and publicly shared, this exploit, had they found it? How does Blizzard know which players are not only good bug testers, but also honest people?

The above questions cannot be realistically answered, and because of that, the onus falls upon the player to not be a shitty person. If you are willing to be a shitty person—either in the real world or a virtual game world—you can, and should, expect that there are consequences to your actions.

[Apatheist]

Why are you labeling this as an exploit specific to level 60? In reference to this topic, what would testing at level 60 have revealed that testing at level 20 didn't, since this particular issue can be used in any dungeon, at any level? With thousands of players in the beta, no one who found this exploit stepped forward to report it, because if they had, then this would've been fixed long ago..

As Blizzard has stated, it's the result matters. The fact that you could do this to reset instances was widely known and used during beta and discussed publicly. Blizzard only seemed to have an issue with it when they realized it could be used to reset raids.

I guess I don't have an issue with penalizing people who used this to reset raids. That does seem deliberately exploitative. Myself and many others have been using this method to reset dungeons conveniently so we don't have to hearth or spirit rez. This offers no real gain other than convenience and if my accounts were to be suspended (unlikely, based on Blizzards statement) as part of a blanket ruling I'd be pretty annoyed.

[xandorz]

Since the exploit is basically the same thing as duping (although a little different) I think it should be a perma ban. At first I though a few months ban and all items and gold removed would be enough but it is so severe.

I think they should have to track all interactions with the characters also, someone could have used it to farm 100k gold then stash it on their alt, or stored hundreds of recipes away on some other characters.

The ones that used it to get raid gear should ofcourse be in the biggest trouble, but I think anyone that used it more than once should be severely punished.

[MiRai]

The fact that you could do this to reset instances was widely known and used during beta and discussed publicly.
I don't think we're discussing the same thing here...

There is an exploit where you can "respawn" a boss right in front of you by abusing the layering system, which, from the instructions I've seen floating around the internet, is more involved than resetting a dungeon. You can literally stay locked inside of a boss room and farm them non-stop, without having to re-clear anything leading up to them—just pick the boss that drops the thing you want, farm them endlessly until they do, and then move onto the next.

[Apatheist]

I don't think we're discussing the same thing here...

There is an exploit where you can "respawn" a boss right in front of you by abusing the layering system, which, from the instructions I've seen floating around the internet, is more involved than resetting a dungeon. You can literally stay locked inside of a boss room and farm them non-stop, without having to re-clear anything leading up to them—just pick the boss that drops the thing you want, farm them endlessly until they do, and then move onto the next.

Possibly? The Reddit post I read for the raid reset exploit were pretty much identical how we reset dungeons. Maybe they're different and I just wasn't paying attention.

I hope so, because manually resetting dungeons like Maraudon and BRD is a huge PITA.

[Drakhoun]

I’m not taking any chances and will not be doing any instance resets until the banhammer hits. Im already getting reported by so many people for multiboxing. Just dont want to be auto-flagged by Blizz.
Yup, the method for dungeon reset and last mob reset has some similarities. Why take unnecessary chances? I rather wait and see for now

[The Crowd]

Possibly? The Reddit post I read for the raid reset exploit were pretty much identical how we reset dungeons. Maybe they're different and I just wasn't paying attention.

I hope so, because manually resetting dungeons like Maraudon and BRD is a huge PITA.

BRD isn’t the worst reset... you can go into molten core and drop back out again instantly or just go to the bar, drop down to incendius and run out that way.
and there is a tell tell way to see if you’ve been using the same exploit. When you reset BRD, do you spawn back at the entrance, or do you spawn back at emp? I mean if how you reset the dungeon is portal a mage... log out the other toons while disbanding the group totally... and then relogging them all and inviting them to the mages group before summoning the mage back to the instance... (or just out side, this is vanilla after all) then that’s not layer hopping at a boss.


I don't think we're discussing the same thing here...

There is an exploit where you can "respawn" a boss right in front of you by abusing the layering system, which, from the instructions I've seen floating around the internet, is more involved than resetting a dungeon. You can literally stay locked inside of a boss room and farm them non-stop, without having to re-clear anything leading up to them—just pick the boss that drops the thing you want, farm them endlessly until they do, and then move onto the next.

People were literally using this to stand behind the throne in BRD, reset emp, and kill... rinse and repeat in order to get ironfoe... and such like.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Possibly? The Reddit post I read for the raid reset exploit were pretty much identical how we reset dungeons. Maybe they're different and I just wasn't paying attention.

I hope so, because manually resetting dungeons like Maraudon and BRD is a huge PITA.
Why is manually resetting BRD/Maraudon a PITA?

[flou]

Layering is GAME BREAKING... end of story
Anyone disagreeing has never played or remember the REAL CLASSIC...
The latest bug just reinforces the above stated fact, in addition to the abuse in open world farming and leveling, which are not bugs of course but expected side-effects of layering...

PS: the instance reset method is completely different than the instance layering bug. You start from the beginning of the instance and the limit of 5 clears per hour still remains!

[JohnGabriel]

Layering is GAME BREAKING... end of story
Anyone disagreeing has never played or remember the REAL CLASSIC...
The latest bug just reinforces the above stated fact, in addition to the abuse in open world farming and leveling, which are not bugs of course but expected side-effects of layering...

I'm not sure layering is much of a problem at all.

For one its temporary, until the server login queues are gone.

And while yes you can abuse layers to switch to another when the mobs run out for non-stop farming, Blizzard themselves said this was not much of an issue. I think its the hyper-spawns. If you're in a group and another group is nearby, the mobs you kill instantly respawn. There is no need for layer hopping at all.

So both the layering, and hyper-spawning, will likely be removed once fewer people are playing and neither are needed.

[MiRai]

I'm not sure layering is much of a problem at all.

For one its temporary, until the server login queues are gone.
Layers will be collapsed when the next phase of Classic begins, and queues are expected to stay, or even become worse, as there won't be more than one layer to dump players into.

Also, there was a small update to this from Lore at Blizzard:


Soooooo since I’m seeing a lot of confusion (here and elsewhere), here’s some insight into how we draw the line between what makes something a punishable exploit versus a “happy little accident.”

The key factor here is intent. Did the player do something with the specific intention of causing a glitch to occur, and did they do it order to exploit said glitch for their own benefit?

This recent glitch makes a pretty clean example. The players who were abusing it had to do some Very Weird Stuff to cause it to occur, and then did so repeatedly. No reasonable person would expect that this behavior was intended, and the players involved had to go out of their way to cause it. It’s obviously unintended, it’s obviously a glitch, and the people who abused it were obviously exploiting said glitch for their own benefit. That’s pretty open and shut.
Someone mentioned Esfand’s random MC reset in this thread, which is a pretty clean example of the other end of the spectrum. In that case, they just turned up to raid and the instance had been reset. They didn’t do anything intentional to cause it or go looking for reproduction steps so they could abuse it - in fact, they reported it to us and didn’t continue until they got confirmation that it was out of their control (and that we wouldn’t consider it an exploit if they cleared).

Side note for the curious: that was a completely separate bug that has existed since 2004, and actually happened several times back then, it just wasn’t being broadcast to thousands of viewers at the time.

Obviously, neither situation is ideal - we try our best to provide a fair playing field for everyone - but there’s a pretty massive difference between “the instance is reset and we don’t know why” and “if we do this One Weird Trick we can infinitely farm this dungeon boss.” That’s the key factor that turns something from an accident into an exploit.

This ended up being longer than I expected so I’ll wrap it up with one last caveat: there is a lot of context and nuance that goes into these situations, and they’re not usually as cut and dry as these two examples. We end up making a lot of judgement calls based on the specifics of each exploit as well as their overall impact on the game (the phrase “clever use of game mechanics” originally came from one such convoluted situation). These two cases just happen to be pretty obvious.


https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/its-not-cheating-or-an-exploit-its-a-clever-use-of-game-mechanics-which-blizz-tolerates-and-actually-encourages/301488/82

[southeastbeast]

Looks like bans for layering went out.
https://reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/d56l1c/bans_for_layering_exploits_are_beginning_to_go_out/

if if you didn’t get banned should be good IMO.

[flou]

I'm not sure layering is much of a problem at all.

For one its temporary, until the server login queues are gone.

And while yes you can abuse layers to switch to another when the mobs run out for non-stop farming, Blizzard themselves said this was not much of an issue. I think its the hyper-spawns. If you're in a group and another group is nearby, the mobs you kill instantly respawn. There is no need for layer hopping at all.

So both the layering, and hyper-spawning, will likely be removed once fewer people are playing and neither are needed.

The mats, BOE, recipes etc farmed during phase 1 with layering will negatively impact the game economy permanently, affecting ALL phases!
Why you believe the Blizzard morons ... what do you except, to admit they f@cked up with layering?

[nodoze]

Initially reading this thread I was concerned about using the alt method to reset my team at the start of the instance without leaving the instance.

After getting more details and understanding people were repeatedly farming bosses over and over without clearing to them I agree that is definitely an exploit.

I don't know if the alt resetting my instance while my team is logged out is even using another layer. Usually they come into the same layer as my other team members so I wouldn't think so. Regardless I don't think that the alt reset approach is exploiting (I have to clear the whole dungeon again) and unless/until I hear otherwise I plan to continue using it.

[Marathon]

This makes so much since on how there are so many epics for sale . Thanks for the post .