An error caused a true flood of artifact power in World of Warcraft. But Blizzard is taking direct action.
Currently, Blizzard releases a hotfix for World of Warcraft almost every week to fix various bugs or balance issues with the classes. However, last Wednesday (November 16, 2016), there was an unpleasant incident where numerous players exploited a bug in the system to obtain extreme amounts of artifact power.
What happened?
World quests overlapped, taking up the same area in the world. This led to a bug that allowed players to complete the same quest repeatedly if they switched zones at the right moment. Those who wanted could complete the same quest over and over again and were rewarded with several thousand artifact power every minute.
But Blizzard did not accept this. The corresponding quest was promptly deactivated, and players who completed this quest multiple times were checked. Those who only completed it a few times do not have to fear any penalties. However, those who cheated their way into numerous artifact power bonuses in this way must expect sanctions and bans.
Ion Hazzikostas, the Game Director, addressed this in the official forum:
“Clearly, the existence of this bug is our fault. We should have identified this error during the testing phase. However, the existence of our error is no excuse for the intentional actions of players exploiting this bug. (…)
Today’s account penalties are directly related to the severity of exploiting the bug. Players who innocently completed that quest a few times were not punished. On the other hand, those who completed that quest several hundred times and even formed groups for it were punished much more severely.”
Cortyn says: Just because a bug is possible does not allow players to exploit it. Especially when it is clear that this is apparently a bug in the game. Therefore, I find penalties quite appropriate and am glad that Blizzard is taking a tough stance here.
