There are still Game Masters in World of Warcraft. But they cheat for their friends. Unpleasant when it gets noticed.
When WoW fans think back to the past, they long for a time when they could meet Game Masters in the open world. Today there are no more Game Masters, just AI responses – at least that’s the claim often read.
That there are indeed GMs was shown by an incident recently. However, he was not serving the community, but rather his friends: he killed a boss with a GM spell so the team would receive a particularly good rating.
Death Skill can only be used by Game Masters – immediately gets found out
What happened? The streamer YaraByte was with a group in a Mythic+ dungeon in World of Warcraft at level +23. That’s already extremely high and basically only accessible to the best of professionals. Usually, she streams her dungeon runs, but that wasn’t the case this time. However, the visit to Nexus Point: Xenas was logged by the tank and is therefore viewable on the Warcraftlogs page.
Anyone taking a close look at the logs will notice a curiosity in the combat data. For some time in the game, a 6th player appears in the combat logs – these dungeons can only be entered with 5 players. The 6th player uses a spell that does not even exist for players: “Area Death (TEST)”
A skill that instantly kills all enemies within a 30-meter radius and was temporarily accessible to a player many years ago.
The accusation: A Game Master was apparently a friend or fan of the streamer and helped her and her group to achieve a particularly high rating.
Unfortunately, someone logged the dungeon visit, causing the cheating to be discovered immediately.
Why would a GM do that? Those who complete Mythic+ dungeons with particularly high ratings receive unique rewards at the end of the season. Therefore, it is lucrative in the final weeks of a season to try to push one’s rating higher in the “Mythic+” area.
How did Blizzard respond? After some WoW fans pointed out this very clear incident and the Reddit forums were already “on fire”, Blizzard announced in a brief statement (on reddit) that they would look more closely at the incident and take appropriate action. Fraud will not be tolerated in the games.
This is how the community is reacting: The incident is being loudly discussed in the WoW community. A post in the game’s subreddit with over 5,600 upvotes has already been closed, but many other posts keep popping up. Some even integrate the incident into their own search for a group, writing in their search for example: “+22, looking for a GM to help me with my key”.
The community’s demand is clear: The streamer should lose her account completely, and the involved Game Master should be fired immediately.
While there is still a slight chance that the help came not from a Game Master but from a hacker, the nature of the incident makes it very likely that someone with GM rights intervened. Because usually, hackers and cheaters cannot bypass the limitation of 5 players within a dungeon – only Game Masters and other Blizzard employees can do that.
If this is confirmed, it may be one of the dumbest methods to lose your job. And that at a time,when many Blizzard employees are already worried about their future due to Xbox cutting over 3,600 jobs.
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