An exploit in WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria has caused a lot of excitement. But how bad is the problem really?
The launch of the new game mode in World of Warcraft went surprisingly well. After many were only hesitant to try WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria, the feedback after just a few hours was largely positive. It’s simply fun to quest through a world with absurdly powerful effects while receiving rewards at every corner. Whether you are questing, finishing dungeons, grinding mindless mobs, or visiting the old scenarios – everything gives Bronze.
Bronze is the universal currency that essentially determines everything in Remix. With it, you can not only buy countless rewards – mounts, toys, pets, transmog sets – but also upgrade your gear.
Instead of finding progressively better gear at level 70, you need to use Bronze to further increase the item level of your equipment.
This leads to a certain conflict: Do you want to buy all the cosmetic rewards with Bronze? Or do you want to upgrade your character to make them stronger, so they can farm Bronze even more easily afterwards?
Fortunately – or unfortunately – there was a place in Pandaria that solved this dilemma. The Frog Farm
on the Timeless Isle.
What was the “Frog Farm”?
When talking about the “Frog Farm” or “Frog Spawn” in connection with Pandaria, one refers to a location in the south of the Timeless Isle. There were elite enemies, the namesake frogs. For elite enemies, they have relatively low health points, and if you kill them at a rapid pace, you “force” the game to respawn them exceedingly quickly. This “hyperspawn” allows you to kill and loot dozens of frogs per minute.
As a result, there were essentially multiple groups of four players hopping around on every realm, continuously killing frogs. They primarily received three types of rewards:
- Bronze
- Threads for the artifact cloak
- Lesser Charm of Good Fortune
While Bronze and Threads dropped from absolutely all enemies in Remix at a similar frequency, the truly worthwhile aspect here was the “Lesser Charm of Good Fortune,” or simply “Charms” as they are commonly known in the community.
The catch is: The Charms are a secondary resource in Remix that are meant to make the endgame somewhat more rewarding. Because for every 10 Charms, you can gain some reputation with a faction of your choice, while also receiving a reward box and a random jewel.
Each jewel corresponds to another 10 Bronze if you break it down. Each reward box contains between 45 and 90 Bronze as well as another Thread.
Since each frog dropped between 1 and 2 Charms, this meant that every 5-10 frogs granted an additional reward box.
Considering that these groups were capable of killing around 40 to 50 frogs per minute under perfect conditions, this means:
An hour of Frog Farm yielded about 4,000 Charms, equating to 400 boxes, which in turn means up to 40,000 Bronze – and this is still a conservative estimate. The maximum yield would have been significantly higher.
Add to that all the Threads from the boxes that further improved the artifact cloak. This transformed weak characters at the beginning of the farming into demigods within a few hours, capable of defeating raids and world bosses solo.
And all of this in addition to the Bronze and Threads that were already dropping from the frogs.
Degenerative gameplay must be removed
Blizzard fixed the exploit after almost two days. The frogs are no longer counted as elite enemies and therefore no longer drop Charms. While they can still be farmed reasonably well, the yield is significantly lower.
In the past, Blizzard referred to such behavior as “degenerative gameplay.” When there are many options for a particular kind of reward, but one option is objectively the most efficient, players will only see this method and exploit it to the maximum.
The “Frog Farm” is the perfect example of such degenerative gameplay. Because everything in Pandaria, every raid, every quest, every dungeon – absolutely everything is irrelevant compared to the functioning Frog Spawn.
The Frog Spawn was not a “good place to farm” – it was the only place that completely outperformed all others, simply because you could earn 10 to 20 times the yield of all other game content in the same amount of time.
This method had to go in order for Remix to function as what it is supposed to be: a fun event where, essentially, it doesn’t matter what you play: everything brings rewards, everything is worthwhile.
Now, essentially all sides are dissatisfied.
The Frog Farmers are dissatisfied that Blizzard has disabled their farming spot. Their super-fast method of earning all rewards is no longer profitable. They had found what they perceived as a lucrative way to obtain everything as quickly as possible and to become extremely powerful.
On the other side are those people who did not take advantage of the farming spot and now feel as though something has been taken from them. Either because they did not participate in the Frog Spawn in the early days or because there have been no penalties for the exploiters (so far).
I can understand that some players are quite unhappy now. It is frustrating to see that a small group of exploiters is once again being rewarded with the motto “Exploit early, exploit often”. Because those who exploited the bug at the beginning probably earned several hundred thousand, if not millions of Bronze within the first two days.
However, it must also be clearly stated that the actual damage is extremely low.
The fact that a handful of characters on each realm are now demigods who can handle dungeons and raids solo or already possess all rewards may gnaw at some. Those who want to belong to “the best” are now lagging far behind, and even though there are other lucrative farming methods – nothing is even remotely as good as the now non-existent Frog Spawn.
This has created a gap between the exploiters and everyone else that can only be resolved by manual intervention from Blizzard—such as a rollback or manually removing all rewards from the exploiters.
Is Blizzard punishing the exploiters?
Honestly, I don’t believe Blizzard will do that. The strength achieved by the exploiters is still attainable for everyone else. Sure, they now have an advantage – but being “completely overpowered” by the end of Remix is something that is intended and was clear from the start.
However, I firmly believe that the Bronze gain at level 70 will be increased again, even though it just received a buff a few hours ago. Blizzard has already announced that they want to make gameplay at level 70 “more rewarding”. This can be used to reduce the gap between the exploiters and all “normals.”
But to be completely honest, the actual advantage of all who exploited is: “A few people now have all the rewards already, and I don’t yet.”
If you break it down to this circumstance, then this issue is ultimately mostly: Not that bad, and it shouldn’t bother individual players too much.
Because the exploiters, who already have everything and are basically invincible, will probably lose interest in Remix quickly – after all, there is nothing left for them. No rewards, and their characters won’t get any better than “I can defeat raid bosses solo.”
And if you do happen to see one of the more obvious exploiters: Just don’t invite them to your group and they won’t be a problem.
In a few days, you probably won’t be able to notice any difference between those who exploited the Frog Farm and those who just play a lot and intensively. When I look at how strong my warrior has become over the Pentecost without using an exploit, I can easily imagine how strong players are who might just be on vacation or have no other commitments.
It’s annoying that this exploit existed, but I’m sure after thinking about it overnight, most of us can say: I rise above it and enjoy WoW Remix, because the exploiters have very little to do with my enjoyment of the game.
