While I agree with the general notion to be less vigilante about it, I think the "its just a game, y u heff to be mad" approach heavily downplays the time and emotional investment many people have in this game. Seeing others cheat in such a fashion can be a huge slap in the face.

I think it should have been a permanent ban, they knew what they were doing.
Its against the rules and messes with the integrity of the game.
Isn't fair to the people who play for fun and enjoy the game as it is!
Don't abuse the system!

Its like baseball and PEDs.
Your not suppose to take it/use it to gain an edge.
They know its wrong and think everyone is doing it so why not them...don't want to be left behind...want to be at my best
But when they get caught they get suspended and they deserve it...

I dont get the "they knew it was wrong, therefore every punishment is fair game" logic"

Samaraner wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I dont get the "they knew it was wrong, therefore every punishment is fair game" logic"

So jumping layers to reset Ragnaros to kill him again and again even though it was meant to have a week reset....isnt abusing the system?
They didnt know what they were doing? They clearly did, you dont stumble upon that...same with farming nodes...its there intent to get an edge
Why shouldn't they be punished?

I never said they shouldnt be punished, I said the fact they did something wrong consciously doesnt legitimize every punishment.

Selexin wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Blanket 1 month bans, item removals and peoples opinions on the fallout is probably one of the more interesting and impactful threads on this site post launch.

Right? And exciting! We have people on both sides of the fence. We have the looming threat of my account being banned (it wont be because Blizz will do just enough to appease the masses and only the most notorious offenders will be penalized as usual) and we have a solid point of discussion... I love threads like this. We are having valuable discourse.

Samaraner wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I dont get the "they knew it was wrong, therefore every punishment is fair game" logic"

In a competitive environment, the responsibility does not fall on the competitors to establish a fair rule set. Which is why gaming is monitored by some form of commission or referee in professional gaming or competitive sport. There is a notion of sportsmanship, but in any competitive environment players with push the boundaries of what is acceptable until there is a precedent set. For those of us who pushed the boundaries of layering, we got our answer. And for almost all of those who violated layering, we are walking away without being penalized unless we were one of the worst offenders.

So I agree with both ends of the spectrum here to certain degrees.

I've 100% exploited layering but I will 100% not be banned because my layering exploits have been layer hoping to move layers to less populated zones to make killing quest mobs easier. Is this breaking the rules? Probably, but I'm not really hurting anyone either. But again, where is the line? Is abusing layering fine as long as it is self contained and it's not hurting the economy in any way?

Is layering abuse for farming mining nodes or black lotus' bannable abuse? It probably should be, but I don't think anyone will be banned for this kind of abuse.

Blizz has taken it upon themselves (it seems and I guess time will tell if I am wrong) that the only people being banned are the people that exploited raid and dungeon bosses for loot they would normally have to wait weeks to farm. So it seems like the only REAL bannable offense is gaming the layering system if you intend to farm raids or dungeon bosses. Is this better or worse or the same as farming black lotus or other super expensive mats?

I guess it's not for me to say and it's up to big brother blizzard to figure out. But as far as I can tell, and which has been evident since beta, and hell, even bfa, layering was a terrible decision for classic wow.

I personally don't even know what layering is but if it's being exploited and misused and violates the end user agreement, I'd say whoever is doing it deserves what they get. Some folks can't play any game at all without cheating. It's a mental malfunction they suffer from.

Zacheous wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I personally don't even know what layering is but if it's being exploited and misused and violates the end user agreement, I'd say whoever is doing it deserves what they get. Some folks can't play any game at all without cheating. It's a mental malfunction they suffer from.

Layering in its current state is not outlined specifically by the ToS specifically. We are left to our own ethical interpretation of the ToS and its implications on layering when deciding what should or shouldnt be done with the system. Therefore people will knowingly abuse layering to different degrees. If you have used layering at any time for a layer hop, you have essentially misused the system. The system was not designed for you to manipulate your layer to gain ANY advantage. But what does Blizzard consider misuse? It took over a year, most of which we have heard "everything is fine, people are over exaggerating" to finally come to the conclusion that the line is dungeon layering. Even though people like me have made quite a lot of gold with layering outside of dungeons and used the system to violate a whole lot of other opportunities, Blizz does not consider that misuse as they do not intend to moderate any of those behaviors.

Business probably drove this decision to some extent.

If they banned people who switched layers to avoid PvP, farm nodes, etc. then they would probably end up losing far too many subscriptions. However, if they stuck to banning people who exploited layering in dungeons or raids, which is a smaller number of players but with much higher impact, then they wouldn't lose as many subscriptions. Also, they benefit by discouraging this type of behavior in the future, while also building more trust from the player base at large that they're doing something to deal with the prospect of characters being decked out in unearned epics in such a short amount of time.

Essentially, they picked a middle ground, and it's not unreasonable. I'm fully behind the 1 month bans, but I think that may only be enough for dungeon content. Bans for raid content exploits should be more severe, perhaps 3 months or even permanent depending on how many times the exploit was used.

Its not vague at all. Every active usage of layering is abuse, as the mechanic is supposed to be working in the background only. Now obviously Blizzard cant know your intentions, so whether you just joined a group to layer or layered as a side effect of grouping up is nearly impossible to tell. To avoid false positives they are as lenient as one could possibly be. But anyone who is stupid and/or greedy enough to push beyond the boundaries of what could never ever be reasonably explained by anything else than an intention to exploit layering had it coming.
Thats it.

Yeah they perfectly know who abuses it and who doesn't, they log even when you go to the toilet. I agree with @rijndael that it's a business decission

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.

Still no ban fellas. I'll keep ya posted

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.

JollyResolve6 wrote: ↑

5 years ago

...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.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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.

Selexin wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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.

Selexin wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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!

Selexin wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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.

Black Monarch wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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.

Source

Black Monarch wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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.

Instinctz wrote: ↑

5 years ago

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.