A guild has secured one of the coveted first kills in World of Warcraft. They clearly show what they think of Blizzard.
The “World First Race” in World of Warcraft is in full swing, as today European guilds also set off and can venture into the mythic versions of the two raids “Dream Rift” and “The Nether Pinnacle”. However, at least the Dream Rift has already been cleared – by a well-known exploiting group that has struck again this time.
The curious thing: They defeated the boss despite only wearing green and blue gear. The suspicion: There was some serious cheating involved.
What happened? Although the pro guilds mainly try their hand at The Nether Pinnacle, there was one guild of “pros” that immediately went into the Dream Rift to fight the solo boss Chimaerus, who fell pretty quickly. The characters were only wearing green and blue gear, meaning just quest rewards they had gained on their way to level 90. That is far too weak gear to actually defeat the boss on mythic difficulty – it is simply mathematically impossible.
The pretty obvious suspicion: Some exploit or bug was exploited, or game data was manipulated. This is especially likely since the guild once again had “RaoV QA” in its name – a well-known group that has repeatedly caused chaos in WoW in the past.
What kind of guild is this? The guild “RAoV QA Strikes Back” is by no means a blank slate, as they have already caused problems in the past under a similar name. During the liberation of Lorenhall, the raid from patch 11.2, they managed to secure the “World First Kill” of Gallywix – and in quite a curious way.
As they only defeated the first boss of the raid and then straight away “flew” to the final boss to defeat it within seconds.
In the past, the guild has appeared repeatedly under different names. They have also been known as “RaoV Quality Assurance” or “ecnarussAeR ytilauQ VoAR” – the name written backwards.
The first kill back then was made possible by manipulated macro commands that allowed them to use special abilities that player characters shouldn’t have. They acted almost like a Game Master and were able to achieve things that were not intended.
How does Blizzard respond? Back then, the kill was revoked as there was clearly cheating involved. All participants received account penalties of several months afterwards. This time as well, Blizzard reversed the achievement within a few hours and banned the guild from the Hall of Fame again.
Whether the cheaters will be deterred long-term remains to be seen. After all, it is easy to simply create a new account and prepare new characters until the start of the next raid tier. Whether they will find a method to cheat another first kill… remains to be seen.
To prevent the bosses from falling so quickly, Blizzard even significantly reinforced them at the last minute – some abilities were improved by up to 260%.
