A Shark among Fish

3.2 is out today!

It's official! Patch 3.2 came out this morning for World of Warcraft. Titanium prospecting, lower levels for mounts, brand new sets of dailies to do, plus a new battleground! I had already read most of the patch notes from the Public Test Realm about a month ago (which are subject to change when the patch goes live on all servers). While the patch was finishing up a few hours ago, the official patch notes were displayed and I scrolled through them. The one item that caught my attention was this: "In addition to the normal requirements, mining deposits in Northrend now requires a minimum character level of at least 65 to mine." My 80 rogue already has her mining maxed out, so you might be wondering why I care about the level requirement.

As it so happens, a few weeks ago I was browsing the forums on the World of Warcraft site. There were a great many posts about speed hackers and gold farmers/sellers in Wintergrasp using exploits to get underneath the Northrend terrain. Now, after they get underneath the terrain, they can run around without being attacked by any player or NPC. Mining nodes and herbs will disappear before your eyes when no one is around you. This video is a great example of how these hackers use the exploits. Also, being that you only need to be level 55 to obtain Grand Master skills, many of these hackers are between level 55 and 60. The addition of the death knights into the game and the little time it takes to level them to 58 adds to the problem.

A few days after reading these on the forums, I was in Wintergrasp trying to get some Saronite for my alt's professions. About 3 or 4 nodes had been targetted on my map during this time. Looking around to make sure no one else was using the node, I would try to mine it. It would say this node is in use, and it would disappear in front of my eyes. After getting tired of this happening to me, I made a comment in general chat about these "hackers". A fellow gamer on my server mentioned to me that if you do a "/who wintergrasp 1-70", there will be at least one person in Wintergrasp that is level 55 or 56 with a 450 mining skill (which you can find out their skill by looking up their name on the World of Warcraft Armory). I had done this, and found a 56 Death Knight called Calrimm. I put him on my friend's list, and payed close attention to his whereabouts while I was playing. He never left Wintergrasp. In my opinion, even if an 80 character is helping a 56, he will have a large aggro range and will be 1-2 shotted. I reported him in a ticket to a Game Master, and he got banned the day after.

It felt good to see that hacker temporarily banned, but not 2 minutes later, another 56 hunter shows up in Wintergrasp by the name Amarin. This hacker was a bit more sneaky then his other gold farmer, as he was also in Icecrown over the course of the next day hoarding mining nodes as well. I also reported him to a Game Master, but am unsure of whether or not he got banned.

Blizzard usually only puts 1-2 day bans on these farmers. I would like to point out that any use of exploit or speed hacking is against the Blizzard Terms of Use, and your account could be permanently banned for it. Being that Blizzard highly disproves of these exploits, I do not understand why these hackers get a day ban and then they come right back. It is nice to see that the new level requirement of 65 will make the gold farmers have to work harder and use different exploits to mine (in addition to the having to queue up for battles, so it will kick the gold farmers out of the zone temporarily), but the problem will still go on. Blizzard should just take all nodes and herbs out of Wintergrasp, and then the Wintergrasp speed hacking problem will go away. Fixing the exploit to get in there in the first place is also a start.