My server’s farmers are the worst. I swear, they’re always three weeks behind all the other Warcraft servers in finding dupes, exploits, cheats and other (ahem) clever tactics. Shameful.
Yesterday, hapless Blizzard Community Manager Caydiem posted a reminder to obey the TERMS OF USE and gave vague assurances that Blizzard, in all its wisdom and omnipotence, was working to investigate reported violations, yadda yadda yadda:
While we are for security reasons unable to give specifics on the actions we are taking against players who attempt to undermine the economy of the World of Warcraft realms, as well as those who attempt to use exploits or cheats to gain an unfair advantage over other players, we would like to make the following clear:
We take such issues extremely seriously, and we have dedicated teams working to combat these issues actively and aggressively. We will continue to do everything possible to prevent this type of activity by taking the strongest action against those in violation of our Terms of Use. Please rest assured that we will leave no stone unturned in our quest to remove these undesirable elements from the game, and we encourage and appreciate your vigilance in regard to any activity that you believe represents such an incident.
Duh? Why say anything at all? We know all that. Unless … unless something has happened to precipitate this friendly reminder.
Something like a problem with DIRE MAUL’S KING GORDOK???
Back on November 3rd, a quiet little thread was born, inquiring if other server’s were noticing unusual levels of primo Dire Maul loot. (As WoW forum threads have a nasty habit of disappearing into the Internet trash bin, I’ll quote relevant material. If you want to read in its full glory, explore that link FAST.)
Draketh of the Stormrage realm asked:
There is a farmer on my server that has AT LEAST 10 of every class book for sale, including 1 forors compendium that I know about. This same farmer also has two tarnished elven rings and two counterattack lodestones, and 5 yes, FIVE, aces of warlords for sale on the AH. People on my server know this person to be a farmer and would NOT allow this person on any DM tribute runs let alone let them take all that loot, books, and aces. Now my question is just what the heck is going on here? Is there a new bug that lets you solo the tribute pile? Has he found a way to dupe? I have been monitoring DM activity and he is the only farmer spending time there. Its not possible for him to be grouping with other farmers to do it because I would see them there and recognize them and their guilds as non legit players. Is anyone else seeing this happen on their server? I’ve submitted a ticket but GM’s will do nothing about it. I’d like to know just what the hell this is about. Being a fully MC/BWL equipped rogue I know sure as hell that there is nothing in DM that I could solo, even with my gear. This guy is a rogue wearing AH greens and blues from dire maul.
(Omg, paragraphs?) There’s a bunch of reponses with legit reasons that a solo farmer rogue might have a collection of primo loot available at once. Legit reasons that make no sense at all. The farmer saved up a bunch of loot to unload in one week? Like, he didn’t need to eat for the last month? He wanted to depress his own market?
Post #34, Kunark (© Sony Online Entertainment and EverQuest©) of Gurubashi reports similar results on his server:
Something has been found out in DM. The same exact thing is happening on my server. There is this one rog that speaks no english. He has every
DM book for sale
6 Ace of warlords
3 Forors books for saleyes I said THREE FORORS!
I’ll believe one farmer might give up eating for a month, but two fasting farmers stretches credulity. For context, he’s referring to Foror’s Compendium of Dragon Slaying. Highly prized, very expensive, a Loot Ninja’s dream.
Few pages of idiots saying that the farmer is just playing the Crack House, buying low, selling high. Couple of clueless jagbags saying that Foror and Ace of Warlords farming is ez 4 a rouge, nub!!11! I’ll tell you what’s easy for a rogue: getting a wedgie from King Gordok is easy for a rogue.
Few other servers’ reps chime in that they’re seeing the same thing with Dire Maul loot. Post #161 has some AH screenshots (bandwidth not exceeded YET) of multiple DM items offered from the same seller. (Another SS of a soon-to-be rich seller.) I always love responses like Post #269: he knows the strat, it can be done without exploits, but he doesn’t detail the strat. He knows it, though. Bzzzzzzzzt! I’m sorry, but thank you for playing.
This is all nice, but how the fuck is it done?
Apparently the Chinese players know how. (gee, ya think?) Post #287:
To give you an idea what kind of stuff the Chinese are discussing in their forum on how to solo stuff, here are what I found last week on their forum about DM.
– How to *solo* DM East key quest
– How and where to *solo* farm DM books
– How to *solo* DM nameds (14min per run)
– How to *solo* DM North Tribute (40-60min per run)So get a grip, stop crying boohoo. Go out there and figure out how they do it.
Lots of talk and lots of bullshit walk.
Here’s the problem with the legit theory: the drop rate on these things are so insanely low (and I think we all know who to blame for that), you have to churn through many, many, many bosses to accumulate that much DM primo loot. For some perspective, when my guild doesn’t have scheduled raids, most of us run Dire Maul several times a night. I’ve seen primo loot maybe a handful of times — definitely not two handfuls — in my groups.
A legit rogue run, even with sneak, dodging the dogs that aren’t fooled by sneak, blowing your specials to get the King solo, getting your ass beat and surviving the King wedgie, we’re talking at least 30 minutes per run. That’s 30 minutes per run AFTER you learn what the hell you’re doing. (And no, I won’t be farming DM for the warriors in my guild. That’s what the professionals are for. Learn 2 buy gold.)
My opinion.
There’s something rotten in Dire Maul and it’s not the cheese.
Definitely something up. I noticed the increase on our auction house and started sifting through the official forums trying to figure out if something was up. Somebody did post something about the exploit, and how it was possible to (through a series of who-knows-what) attack Gordok without being attacked back. I have no idea, I’m not conniving enough to figure this stuff out for myself.
Nice article Foton. It would be interesting to see how this is being done. Not that I would ever do such a thing myself…
You’ve got to love how this guy makes a clear and well thought out post on the forums (albeit without any paragraphs) about what could be a serious issue, and the only thing people have to say in response is “Cry more noob!” and “It’s fine L2P”. Damn you internet, you win again!
Can shaman get a Gordok wedgie, or is that rogue specific?
damn… i wanna know so i can go get my rogue book
Elbows — haha, I know. I liked the one response, about midway through the thread, ‘there’s a lot of ostriches in this thread’. Walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, dammit, it’s not a goose.
Billy — I dunno, I’m alliance, so never played a shaman or played alongside one. Word on our side is that you guys have invincible mode. Plus, you can walk on water. 😉
shaman = jesus
walk on water… self rez…
could they make it anymore obvious??
What’s funny is I finally broke down a week and a half ago and bought my rogue book. Price was good (barely over 100 gold) and I needed the additional FR for Molten Core runs. A couple of days later I realized how many books were on the market. I now assume I bought it from a farmer.
Post #294, and I will quote this because post-apocalyptic humanity should understand what we had to deal with (italics are mine):
Well it’s all so clear now. Your lack of information was most helpful.
I was wondering what was up with the AH, everyonemust have been into the Blue Rares and caused the Green market to crash.
And I thought Lineage2 was bad for farmers, yeesh.
You China?
a quick check on google shows that this “exploit” has been around since August 2005, and was nerfed by Blizz in the 1.7 patch. this is an old one as far as i can tell. i even matched exact text of the cited post to an old post elsewhere.
i’m at least as wary about dupes, exploits, and the instability of MMO economies as the next guy. but i think we can honestly attribute the rise in rare items to the maturing of the player base on a given server. indeed, blue drops are as rare as the original poster noted from his multiple runs of DM. but his dozen or more runs are statistically small in comparison to the 1000s of instance runs that occur from other players on teh same server. the more 60s you have, the more rares you are going to see.
Googleboy, are you ignoring everything you’ve read? Solo rogues, in Dire Maul, walking out with multiple rare drops including multiple epic drops. The same epic drops which some warriors run Dire Maul 300+ times hoping to see. And you’re attributing this to the maturing player base?
It’s obviously some exploit with the King, as some people were reporting tons of “Ace of Warlords” which drops from the king… and on a pretty shitty drop rate.
And multiple Foror’s… Let me tell you all a story. My GM decided our MT MUST HAVE Quel’Serrar. So as long as we weren’t in MC or Onyxia (at the time there was no Zul Gurub) we had to be in DM Farming. Tribute runs, Prince runs, quick east runs. Every member of the guild (had about 90 accounts at the time, at least 80 active) put everyting else on hold for about two weeks. There were times that we had 10 groups in DM at the same time. Between the whole guild we must’ve had… I don’t know… 700-800 runs, probably more… We didn’t get the book…
On a side note, do you REALLY have such reckognizable farmers in the US? I find it odd, ’cause we don’t have any in EU, I’m pretty sure about it. Everyone I’ve seen in Tyr’s, Deadwind, [insert popular grind spot] have always been legit players.
Jeez Shin, you guys would have been better off farming gold and just buying the damm book at the AH.
And yes, farmers are very recognizable, especially when one is a mage (“food 100=1g”).
Pie.
What a load of pork sword munching life stealing brain wasters you are.
I hope you all one day look back and regret the fact you wasted your lives.
I’m regretting something right now.
Hey! Thanks for posting this on here, just saw your link in the thread, hopefully someone from blizz has taken a look at that thread and something will get hotfixed in a future patch. Sorry for the lack of paragraphs btw, didn’t intend the post to be that long but I kept finding more and more info on the matter and kept adding it without really trying to organize it 😛
Curiosity killed the cat…
I tried running around DM West to see if the rumours were true and got pwnt by some spawning ghosts that can see through stealth.
Along with the roaming patrols of dogs that also see through stealth, I’m pretty sure this place is somewhat Rogue proof :\
Well, there must be some way it’s all getting done.
Easy! its not getting done :P. Dont you guys know about guild banks. if you see the same sale of aces of warlords for like 4 or 5 times, have you ever stopped to think “hmm this 1 lil character could be the guild bank/seller” duuuuuh!
It’s a pathing exploit. There’s a spot where you can fight King Gordok without being hit and without him going into evade mode (gotta love that bug). I haven’t done this, I just know about it. Case closed.
You guys know … you would have been better off not complaining, as more gold farmers did this there would be more in the AH forcing the prices down, making it so everyone could afford them, not just the people that have got lucky and found a epic.
Though the “new” way to make money seems to be farming DM with your guild, and the prices are starting to go down.
Though it was a good read and very well put togeather =)
King Gordok expliot. You can position yourself in a special location where the King can’t hit you, thus allowing you to kill him solo.
well think about it, the lower the price goes. the less someone who got it legitly could make, about 3 days after 1.9 patch was released i bought my ace of warlords for 150g, now they are 19g…. thyat is not good for the economy, plus “normal” playes still wouldn’t get 2000g that easily UNLESS they found an epic, so either way you got screwed.
Look at the last note from the current patch update. Seems Blizzard finally saw this problem as well.
Since 1.9.3
Chests cannot be looted while in combat. Gordok cnanot be seperated from another boss mob.
Can anyone confirm that Gordok and the compendium can no longer be farmed?
Oh I do hope this exploit has been closed I’ve bought about 10 cheap Ace of Warlords from the AH for resale. 😉
Daniel.
It can still be farmed. I invited a farmer into my group and entered the instance with him to see what he was doing (curiosity) anyway we entered about the same time when i got in tho he was gone. I waited and watched his buffs / hp mana (he had full dm tribute buffs) and about 20 minutes later he got gordock king buff. He was the only 1 in the party and didnt talk to me or anything. He was solo farming king for sure.
Might i add, that the farmer did lose hp during the time i was in the instance with him. What mobs he was fighting i couldnt tell but his mana and health were both going down, another thing i noticed was he didnt have a pet.
Hiya, really enjoyed the article Foton.
do you have lineage2 cdk or lineage2 the epic collection?
i want to buy it, can you help me?