Seems fair to me. I've heard/read that Punishment is 1 to 6 month bans and removed items+gold. All is fair in the game of War.
Everyone who willingly exploited this system should be permabanned. The ONLY purpose of layering was to reduce zone overcrowding in the low-level zones. Players were never supposed to have control over any aspect of the layering system or how it affected them - not when they got moved to a new layer, not which layer they got moved to, nothing.
I don't particularly give a shit who exploited layering because in contrast to what some might think, it has not been done by the majority of the playerbase, not even close. Less than 5% of the playerbase is at 60, which is really the only place that the abuse matters. Trying to pretend like you weren't cheating is a bit idiotic imo, but honestly what the <5% of ultra-hardcore players does has no effect on me.
All the same I hope blizz wrecks you lol.
...how can they be expected to know when they have crossed the line?
...how are they supposed to know that they are not allowed to kill a group of mobs then hop layer and kill them again?
This is probably a controversial opinion, but I don't think exploiting layering should be a bannable offense.
You feel this way because you're being reasonable. By setting the precedent that Blizz intends to exclusively ban players who have used layering to gain an edge within the context of dungeons, they have essentially said that all other forms of layer abuse are totally fine. So for many of us who have abused layering since day 1, this has justified the way that we played the game up to this point. Some will get banned during this ban wave, most wont as usual and we can go right back to abusing layering in the ways that we were and finding new ways to abuse layering tomorrow so long as we avoid doing this within dungeons.
most wont as usual and we can go right back to abusing layering in the ways that we were and finding new ways to abuse layering tomorrow so long as we avoid doing this within dungeons.
I guess then you just run the risk of getting banned for having 1100 Devilsaur within a week of hitting 60 (as you self proclaimed). I wonder if they have considered these outside of dungeon exploits, as they would be quite easily be identified by Blizzard, are quite obviously intentional abuse of layering.
I wonder if the wave has finished, or if they are going through in order of worst offenders first then heading down the list from there? I guess it doesn't really matter to me, I still haven't tried, noticed, or felt the need to layer hop while being a filthy casual playing the game for the fun rather than the competition of being in the top x%. Did some RFK runs last night which was pretty fun. Although pure fury warriors trying to dual wield fury tank in str/agi greens does not work well, at least in the example I saw last night.
I guess then you just run the risk of getting banned for having 1100 Devilsaur within a week of hitting 60 (as you self proclaimed). I wonder if they have considered these outside of dungeon exploits, as they would be quite easily be identified by Blizzard, are quite obviously intentional abuse of layering.
I havent heard of any instances of bans being warranted for anyone outside of dungeons. And I can assure you that not everyone who abused the dungeon system got banned. In fact with the current ban wave directed exclusively at the worst dungeon farmers, they have essentially okay'd our abuse to get devilsaur, so we did a few laps last night and plan to do a few more tonight.
But remember, everyone has exaggerated their claims and layering is fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.
I wonder if the wave has finished, or if they are going through in order of worst offenders first then heading down the list from there?
Its probably done.
Its probably done.
Interesting, did Skarm get banned? I saw the clip linked elsewhere of him layer abusing Gnomeregan to farm MCPs for his Druid. He looks to be a perfect banning candidate: high profile player, content creator, streamer, publicly acknowledging and demonstrating layer abuse in dungeons.
You would think he would be a good choice to 'make an example of' by banning him. Although maybe farming MCPs is too minor in comparison to worse offenders?
It's a funny little subset of the community and their little war with Blizzard, I tend to agree with some other commenters here that it just doesn't get noticed or felt as a casual player. We have our guilds and our buddies and we do quests and dungeons and slowly plod along. It's almost surreal to see this other drama playing out on what almost seems like a different game!
It's a funny little subset of the community and their little war with Blizzard, I tend to agree with some other commenters here that it just doesn't get noticed or felt as a casual player.
It does, you just arent aware. That guy that hit you hard in PvP with gear he farmed using layering? It matters. That guy that catches or escapes you with his epic mount due to layer abuse? It matters. The server economy that impacts every single one of your sales, matters. You're right, it doesnt get noticed by casuals, but that doesnt mean that it isnt there.
Everyone who willingly exploited this system should be permabanned. The ONLY purpose of layering was to reduce zone overcrowding in the low-level zones. Players were never supposed to have control over any aspect of the layering system or how it affected them - not when they got moved to a new layer, not which layer they got moved to, nothing.
You have no clue what you are talking about.
Layering was not used for population control in low level zones. That is what sharding does, and sharding is not in classic.
Players did have some control over layering, unlike your assertions. They could move layers by joining the group of a player on another layer.
Layering was used to maintain healthy realm populations after the tourists leave. With it blizzard could release less servers and put extra people on each one, and when they leave, the server isnt trashed population wise. That is the only reason it is being used.
Let me use numbers to make this easier.
Lets say 75% of the population of classic are tourists (only there to see what its about).
Lets say there is 400k people playing classic, and each world/realm can hold,10k comfortably.
Without layering blizzard has to release 40 servers. But after the tourists leave you only have 100k left and you have 40 realms with roughly 1/4 of the space in use.
Now heres the thing. The realm itself can only hold 10k, but the actual server can hold 40k people.
With layering blizzard can release 10 servers, each holding 4 layers of a single realm. Meaning 40k people on each realm. Once the tourists leave, blizzard is left with 10 full healthy realms.
The ONLY purpose of layering was to reduce zone overcrowding in the low-level zones. Players were never supposed to have control over any aspect of the layering system or how it affected them - not when they got moved to a new layer, not which layer they got moved to, nothing.
Players did have some control over layering, unlike your assertions.
To be fair I think he's talking about the intent of the system. Layering only exists as a form of population capacity management. Blizz didn't intend for us to be able to control what layers we're on. We obviously do because the whole system of layering is flawed and we have to have this control in order for the system to even work. But strictly speaking using the layering system for anything is abuse. The ability to go to another copy of the server on demand was not the intent behind the system so intentionally swapping layers for any reason other to play with a friend who is on another layer is technically abuse of the system. We're just talking about differing degrees of abuse. You could abuse layering if you don't like the weather in the zone, or you could use it to farm the final boss in a dungeon 5 times in a row. Different levels of abuse; but both are technically abuses of the system.
Separate point, but I disagree with permanent bans. A month seems harsh but just I suppose if we're talking about people farming raids arbitrary numbers of time in a week.
It does, you just arent aware. That guy that hit you hard in PvP with gear he farmed using layering? It matters. That guy that catches or escapes you with his epic mount due to layer abuse? It matters. The server economy that impacts every single one of your sales, matters. You're right, it doesnt get noticed by casuals, but that doesnt mean that it isnt there.
Like I said, I'm lvl 29 and 28 on my characters. I have not been smacked by pvpers, I've been buying and selling low lvl gear on auction like normal, and I have certainly never seen an epic mount in the wild, or people escaping via layering. Again, like I said, to the casual player it's just not a real impact. It's an impact for a subset of the community which raced to 60 and continues to push the envelope. I can tell you that this is also the experience of the 5 workmates who are playing classic and also some of my RL friends in my guild. Slow leveling casual players really aren't seeing the impact at lower levels. This will likely change when we get to 50-60 and are forced to interact with the subset in question.
To be fair I think he's talking about the intent of the system. Layering only exists as a form of population capacity management. Blizz didn't intend for us to be able to control what layers we're on. We obviously do because the whole system of layering is flawed and we have to have this control in order for the system to even work. But strictly speaking using the layering system for anything is abuse. The ability to go to another copy of the server on demand was not the intent behind the system so intentionally swapping layers for any reason other to play with a friend who is on another layer is technically abuse of the system. We're just talking about differing degrees of abuse. You could abuse layering if you don't like the weather in the zone, or you could use it to farm the final boss in a dungeon 5 times in a row. Different levels of abuse; but both are technically abuses of the system.
I think this is a fairly reasonable assessment of layering, it's intent, and the intentional abuse of the system. The levels of abuse vary dramatically, but the intent to abuse it is the players choice and their risk.
The people who REALLY abused it and planned it properly though made sure to leave no traces behind. (AH/Trade/Delete toon)
Wouldn't be surprised if Blizz banned a bunch of empty throwaway accounts.
I can assure you that deleting a toon doesn't delete it from their database, that you don't see the character doesn't mean the data isn't there. If you did something in the game, there is a log for it.
But yeah, it seems pretty clear by now that the only people who are going to get banned are those who abused layering in lvl 60 dungeons and raids. People farming Gnomeregan or resources on the open are not gonna get banned if no one has been banned by now.
I'm just pretty amazed by the fact that most of the people abusing it are just ruining the game for themselves in the first place... I mean, we always say that the purpose of this game is the journey yadda yadda, and by cheating in this way you are skipping a big portion of it. I understand that Blizzard could have developed the system better (as a software developer, a bug like the dungeon one is pretty huge to not have been spotted during QA, moreover because it involves layering, a feature I hope they tested throughly).
This being said I'm very happy about the ban wave, and I hope it will also descourage future behaviors like these ones. Community is a pillar of this game, and having a portion of players (especially all those high level guild) proceeding along a dark path like this one is very scary: someone suggested an in-game prison for players caught cheating, where they have to spend in game time doing nothing. It would be great to just pass by and /spit on them :D
But yeah, it seems pretty clear by now that the only people who are going to get banned are those who abused layering in lvl 60 dungeons and raids. People farming Gnomeregan or resources on the open are not gonna get banned if no one has been banned by now.
Yep. Only the WORST case scenarios for farming dungeons at max level. The guys who did this hundreds of times. I can speak for a lot of guys I know on my server who participated and none have been banned. Most of them used this to get their HoJ farming done quickly or for a few minor pieces. Dont get me wrong, this saved some of them dozens of hours of farming, but only the guys who were stacking bricks of cash got punished.
Layering is fine by the way, totally fine.
Like I said, I'm lvl 29 and 28 on my characters. I have not been smacked by pvpers, I've been buying and selling low lvl gear on auction like normal, and I have certainly never seen an epic mount in the wild, or people escaping via layering. Again, like I said, to the casual player it's just not a real impact. It's an impact for a subset of the community which raced to 60 and continues to push the envelope. I can tell you that this is also the experience of the 5 workmates who are playing classic and also some of my RL friends in my guild. Slow leveling casual players really aren't seeing the impact at lower levels. This will likely change when we get to 50-60 and are forced to interact with the subset in question.
I like this man, aka Selexin! :mrgreen:
I am in the same boat with you!
I am also level 28 but only 1 character and absolutely loving my experience.
I clearly done layer hoping per say when i am questing and my friend logs on and adds me to his group and I accept lol
So working as intended.
I know I will see these exploiters more when I hit 60...not gonna partake in the shenanigans and hope this doesnt screw up my experience when I do hit 60
not gonna partake in the shenanigans and hope this doesnt screw up my experience when I do hit 60
I know it will take me a while to hit 60 on my two characters, who knows maybe layering wont exist when I hit 60? Time will reveal all.
A guildie just brought this to my attention, posted a day ago by Blizzard Community Manager Lore:
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
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.
Everyone who willingly exploited this system should be permabanned. The ONLY purpose of layering was to reduce zone overcrowding in the low-level zones. Players were never supposed to have control over any aspect of the layering system or how it affected them - not when they got moved to a new layer, not which layer they got moved to, nothing.
You have no clue what you are talking about.
You can't read. I know exactly what I'm talking about. 90% of your post was telling me shit I already know and the other 10% was attacking strawman arguments.
Learn to read.
So do we know for sure anybody has actually been banned for this? I mean I see people talking about 'people getting banned for a month!' and 'I heard somebody got a year!' and I've seen this repeated all over the place making it seem like many people have been banned. But every time I try to find out the source, they all go back to the same couple of questionable screenshots that I saw on Reddit, and neither of them seemed to be proven or even definitively tied back to abusing layers in dungeons and raids. I mean I see it all the time in guild chat, I see it in world chat, I see it on forums... People are getting banned for a month! And some are getting banned for a year! But it all leads back to the same two screenshots I saw on Reddit.
I know a large handful of people who abused this in dungeons and they did it a lot. None of them have been banned. Nobody else seems to personally know anybody who has been banned.
Has anybody really even been banned or are we all circle jerking around a couple of unproven screenshots from Reddit?