In that vein, it's worth checking out a new report released by McAfee called Mapping the Mal Web Report Revisited. It tested 9.9 Million websites in 265 domains to find out which ones had a higher risk of exposing visitors to malware, spam, and malicious attacks via a red, yellow, and green system.
PvP in its purest form is a beautiful thing. Amanda Dean, always obsessed with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat brings you news you can use in the Arena.
The World (of Warcraft) seems to be full of arena lovers and arena haters.I suppose somewhere out there you might find some folks that are completely indifferent to the arena.The recent changes to the Personal Rating system seems to have brought out a furor in both camps. Suince the dawn of the Burning Crusade Blizzard has made many attempts to balance the arenas, now I find that the arenas are still broken, just broken differently.
In a sarcastically titled thread "New PR system is cool" Camelvendor of Korgath explained his situation.He played on his 2200 rated team with his old partner, who obviously had a lower rating for 33 games.Boasting a record of 29 wins and 4 losses for the day, the end result was a rating change of 56 points lost.Since the team rating was considerably higher than one of the personal ratings on the team, they found themselves playing in the 1500 bracket.
I was scanning the internets for my nefarious purposes (I was bored. Yes, nefarious boredom.) when I came upon this thread in the Dungeons and Raids forum. While the discussion is not particularly polite, it seems poster Selenae of Mannoroth would like to know if a particular method of killing Archimonde is considered an exploit or not. From watching the video and reading the various posts, it seems that the method in question is to cluster on a hilltop in order to avoid having to deal with Doomfires. Now, I'm not sure if it means that they get Air Bursted more this way or not... to be honest, I could barely watch the video, the cluttered UI made my eyes hurt.
Some posters seem to be of the opinion that this is 'cheesing' the encounter, while others compare it to ducking behind the pillars on Talon King Ikiss or ducking below the water to avoid spouts on The Lurker Below. So i put it to you, dear readers: when is terrain use 'creative use of game mechanics' and when is it an exploit? In the case of the Archimonde encounter, is not having to worry about the fear/doomfire combination really that big a deal? Or is the exploit inherent in the removal of the doomfire from the encounter entirely? Go ahead, discuss, mix it up, the comments await you.
The arenas have been a nearly constant source of conflict for many players. It seems that many creative schemes have been used to inflate ratings in the pursuit of gear and glory. The developers implemented personal ratings to combat ill-gotten gains from a single slot buyouts and high-rated team sales. It seems that the latest fad for ratings boost may be queue dodging.
Recently, Kenjiwing of Korgath brought this phenomenon to the attention of the official forums. There is currently no penalty for a team that fails to join an arena battle once the queue pops. The team that actually does show receives no reward and the match is recoded as a draw, which does not count toward the requisite games for the week. They are left to wait for another battle in hopes that the other team will show.
Thanks to tipster Enaress, we have a short video of an amusing (albeit potentially annoying) exploit ingame that allows you to summon an unlimited number of noncombat pets. From the date on the video, it looks as if this has been live since at least patch 2.3.0,and a few of the commenters have successfully tried it for themselves. A note of warning: be careful if you do this, as dropping out of sync with Blizzard's servers can definitely be considered an exploit, and, at Blizzard's discretion, could get you banned from the game. Odds are a fix is already en route.
I have to admit, I was amused at the prospect of having my small army of pets out and about, but from what Enaress has observed, doing this does have a tendency to contribute to the lag in Shattrath (which seems to be especially noticeable with complicated pets like Lil' Smoky). I don't think I'd try it for myself; Shatt can be bad enough during server high time. But there's something about the notion of my Druid as a dedicated cat-herder or, say, an Undead being followed by a swarm of cockroaches, that just made me laugh.
On Saturday night I noticed a guildie acting strangely. He kept switching between characters and wouldn't respond to tells from even his closest friends in the guild. Concerned about him, we gave him a call... on the phone, to see what was up. You guessed it, he was nowhere near his computer at the time. He went to log in and found his password was changed. Unfortunately, he had also forgotten the correct response to his secret question "What is your favorite activity?"
The hacker kept running in and out of the Shadow Labyrinth. I checked the customer service forums and found that this was common behavior among hackers. Either there is an exploit in that instance, or hackers just really enjoy hanging out with Blackheart the Inciter. I'm leaning toward the latter.
Jagoex over at Warlock Therapy dropped us a note that Blizzard says they'll crack down on Arena fighting Hunters who name their pets after their Arena partners. Apparently some of the higher end Arena players will create macros to target certain opponents in the Arena (though I'm not sure if this is just because they constantly face the same people or because they create the macros quick while waiting for the match to start). And if a sneaky Arena Hunter names his or her pet the same name as the priest on their team, the macro will target the closest target with that name (usually the pet).
Blizzard says no dice to that-- though Jago isn't clear how they'll enforce it (and we're not, either), they say that if they find a Hunter naming his pet the same thing as an Arena team member, the pet's name will be forcibly changed. Of course, using macros in the first place is pretty wily-- I could see an argument that if you choose to use macros, then you also choose to realize that they might not work all the time. But Blizzard has spoken, thus it shall be.
Tried summoning within Zul'Aman lately? If you have, you may have noticed that since yesterday's maintenance, it's a no go. Tigole confirms that summoning within Zul'Aman has been disabled due to an exploit (although we haven't heard what the exploit was-- it may have been something to do with the timer quests). It should be re-enabled soon.
And he says something else that summoners everywhere will be extremely happy to hear. Blizzard is planning to enable summoning from within instances to anywhere else in the world. No longer will you have to wait for that extra healer or that battleground PvPer to make it all the way into the instance before you can summon them and the get the raid started-- after this gets implemented, you'll be able to summon people to the instance (with a Warlock, of course), directly from anywhere else they are in Azeroth.
Huge change, and definitely will help not only raids to get started on time, but substitutions to join raids quickly as well. Not summoning in Zul'Aman now is a small price to pay for that update, which may come (Tigole says they're still working out the kinks) as soon as patch 2.4.
Word's flying around about a Void Reaver exploit that involved mind-controlling a Tempest-Smith, and then blasting the heck out of him with the bomb ability. One guild, as seen above, has brought VR down within a minute-- apparently the ability has no cooldown, so VR can come down as fast as your mind-controlling Priest can click. However, Blizzard has said this is an exploit, and it is not recommended that you do this on the live realms. Blizzard will definitely be watching VR raids-- avoid the banhammer!
But still, a fix has got to be incoming as fast as possible. The question is: how? The most obvious answer is that they have to simply make the Tempest-Smiths not be mind-controllable, but I'm not sure how it works-- in order for the groups to go down right, most raids will sheep or trap these guys, so they do have to still be vulnerable to some kind of CC. The other option is to put the bomb on a cooldown, but even then, that kind of DPS will still help the raid against VR.
At any rate, Blizzard will think of something, and probably sooner than later. Interesting exploit, but an exploit just the same, and a definite no-no.
While Robin and I think it's a great idea, some people are in an outcry about the upcoming name-change service that Blizzard is offering. As Monsoon tells Blizzard on the forums: This is probably the worst ever decision ever made. How are we supposed to track ninjas and retards who may apply to our guild if there is no way to track their name changes?"
Perhaps putting them on an ignore list might help.
The ignore list will be automatically updated once that character's name change gets activated. Of course no system is fool proof, and there will always be someone looking to exploit things, but realistically, is it a terribly big problem if people you consider "ninjas" and "retards" yet are still unwilling to put on your ignore list can change their names once every 90 days?
In my experience, the kind of person who likes to call others "retards" generally isn't very nice themselves, and tends to find new "retards" all the time (with no offense meant to Monsoon here). I don't think it would be possible, even if the ignore list were extended to include a potential thousands of names, for some people to be satisfied that all the "ninjas" and "retards" were sufficiently dealt with and removed from the system
Before you ask, no, I'm not going to reveal how to crash a realm in just a few simple steps. It would be chaos. However, there is, in fact, just such a technique making the rounds of the internet. Hopefully it will be fixed very soon -- one commenter I've seen says that his realm went down four times in 20 minutes. I'd say that qualifies as a serious problem. If you've been having realm stability issues lately, perhaps some jerks performing this exploit are to blame. And Blizzard? Please get this fixed ASAP.
How's your realm been?
P.S. If you know the exploit, please don't post it here. Realm crashing is not cool. If you do post it, your comment will be deleted.
Update: Blue says a fix is on the way, without actually saying they're fixing a player exploit.
First, a word of caution: there is a possibility that Blizz may consider this strategy to be griefing, so employ it at your own risk. It is, however, awesome. Apparently, if you're a Hunter, you can get a beggar killed, in town, if you're near an NPC that you can declare war on. For this example, we'll use a Cenarion Circle NPC (which I think there are in every major city). To summarize the OP:
Beggar asks for gold.
Invite beggar to group.
Set "at war" with Cenarion Circle, put Misdirection on beggar, and shoot the Cenarion Circle NPC.
The NPC will attack and probably kill the beggar.
Pretty sweet, eh? Of course, the more attention this gets, the more likely it'll be fixed, so I had to think for a while before deciding to post it here. However, the forum thread is pretty hot right now, so more than likely Blizz knows about it already. Check the thread for pictures; there's also allegedly a movie here.
[Thanks to Brisk of Eldre'thalas for sending this one in]
Drysc informs us to expect rolling restarts for all US realms starting at 5:00 AM PST to apply a "minor hotfix." Downtime is expected to be minimal (around 15 minutes), and US players probably won't notice any interruption. But a hotfix? Blizzard's not said what they're fixing, which leaves us to guessing games as to the exact nature of the problem. However, poster Tuhljin seems to be on the right track when he points out that "if they won't tell you what the hotfix is for, at least part of it probably involves fixing an exploit." After all, they wouldn't keep us in the dark just for the fun of it... would they?
I had to put lots and lots of text through the Babelfish, but from what I can tell, this guy reached the Caverns by climbing through the mountains (probably an exploit, try it at your own risk) in the pirate area on the east coast of Tanaris. Here's what he actually says, in as good a translation as I could get: "To describe with difficulty. But I am at that time from the rear over the Piratenlager. Then the mountain highly, there in a few certain places down and is one hops sometime in it."
Seems like that's the only way in at this point, because there's four gigantic elite dragons currently guarding the entrance (also along the coast of Tanaris). I know this because I went to visit those dragons, and while I was able to sneak past three of them, the big one (Anachronos) finished me off with one hit. Now, you'd think we'd have to defeat those guys, but Nethaera hinted earlier today that maybe defeating them isn't what we're supposed to do...
At any rate, It seems like the preview and the information already in the game has done exactly what Blizzard planned: get everybody drooling over the prospect of going back throughout the history of Azeroth in a brand new instance. Burning Crusade is still on tap for a Q4 release-- can't wait!
In an era where clicking on the wrong link while browsing the web could mean your account will get hacked, and one of your guild members clicking on the wrong link means your guild bank could get emptied as well, it's always good to protect yourself and keep abreast of web security issues. 
PvP in its purest form is a beautiful thing. 
On Saturday night I noticed a guildie acting strangely. He kept switching between characters and wouldn't respond to tells from even his closest friends in the guild. Concerned about him, we gave him a call... on the phone, to see what was up. You guessed it, he was nowhere near his computer at the time. He went to log in and found his password was changed. Unfortunately, he had also forgotten the correct response to his secret question "What is your favorite activity?" 
Jagoex 
Tried summoning within Zul'Aman lately? If you have, you may have noticed that since yesterday's maintenance, it's a no go. Tigole confirms that summoning within Zul'Aman has been 
While 
Before you ask, no, I'm not going to reveal how to crash a realm in just a few simple steps. It would be chaos. However, there is, in fact, just such a technique making the rounds of the internet. Hopefully it will be fixed very soon -- one commenter I've seen says that his realm went down four times in 20 minutes. I'd say that qualifies as a serious problem. If you've been having realm stability issues lately, perhaps some jerks performing this exploit are to blame. And Blizzard? Please get this fixed ASAP.
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