In an earlier post, I had mentioned "crazy Gold Making exploits" were also being heavily utilized (other than Remote AH bots) since the 4.0.1 patch but didn't provide any examples.

Well, here they are. These exploits have been working since the 4.0.1 initial patch, but they probably won't be working after today (there will be a lot of hot fixes I'm assuming).

#1 Argent Tournament Pets & Infinite Champion Seals

The Champion's Purse from the Argent Tournament can also be looted for infinite Champion Seals in the same manner as the Unlimited Justice Points exploit. It is currently being exploited heavily to purchase and sell Argent Pets for 700-2000G a piece (post cross-faction to make more gold). You just open the bag, grab the Seals only, leave the gold alone, reset the bag contents (several methods as mentioned previously), and loot the Champion Seals again.

#2 Karazhan Exalted Rings & Infinite Void Crystals

Those special Quest rings you can get outside of the Kara instance can now be disenchanted into Void Crystals. Just D/E the ring, talk to her again and tell her you "lost your ring" and she'll give you a new one. You can also create a macro to talk to the NPC, D/E the ring, talk to her again.

Previously those special Kara rings could not be disenchanted or sold. But, I think it was a mistake since Blizzard made a change so that PVP gear could be sold or disenchanted now (I'm assuming it's an intended change.) I'm not sure if the earlier rings (ie, Friendly, Honored, etc) can be disenchanted as well however.

#3 PvP Gear - New Intended Changes?

It appears that all unused PVP gear can now (finally) be disenchanted or sold. So if you just want to make gold, or you're discarding older PVP gear, you no longer have to destroy the items and can now make some profit from them. From what I can tell by disenchanting results, you'll be making roughly 1G for every 1 Honor Point you spend. But, it's all server dependent (ie, D/E mat prices).

* Moved from my previous post "A whole lot of cheating going on.."

Blizzard's gaze is currently upon those Battle.net (SC2) hack developers, but much like Sauron's gaze - it shifts frequently. I'm expecting the same swift and decisive actions on these recent WoW cheaters in the same manner. These exploits and cheats completely DESTROY the gold markets, fairness, and ruin the enjoyment and participation of a competitive online experience (just like what Blizzard claimed in their lawsuit.)

"When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II."

"The harm to Blizzard from Defendants' conduct is immediate, massive and irreparable."

"By distributing the Hacks to the public, Defendants cause serious harm to the value of StarCraft II. Among other things, Defendants irreparably harm the ability of Blizzard's legitimate customers (i.e. those who purchase and use unmodified games) to enjoy and participate in the competitive online experience. That, in turn, causes users to grow dissatisfied with the game, lose interest in the game, and communicate that dissatisfaction, thereby resulting in lost sales of the game or 'add-on' packs and expansions thereto."

So if Blizzard actually believes this statement to be true, they'll definitely action this exploitive behavior within a week minimum. If they don't stand by their beliefs, however, they'll probably just hotfix the issue, leave the players alone, and then ban them much later when it suits their purpose.

After all, these exploits are truly game breaking and completely destroying the economy (while also ruining a legitimate player's experience.) So, I'm really interested to see how quickly they'll action this, especially after preaching about SC2 cheaters and the serious harm they have caused to the value of their games and their legitimate customers.

How long will it take to action? SC2 cheaters were banned on Oct 1 and then Blizzard launched their lawsuit by Oct 16. Will Blizzard fix this customer-impacting issue and practice what they preach, or will they instead use this as a strategy to improve revenue? It will be a good example of whether they stand by their "stated beliefs" or not.

The Global Cooldown (GDC) Hack also comes to mind. This has been exploited for not just days, weeks, or months but rather YEARS. Even in the most recent Ladder Arena Tournaments it has been estimated that almost 3/4 of all players have cheated using the GCD hack and obtained their Gladiator titles unfairly. Blizzard banned very few people and there are probably tens-of-thousands (if not hundreds-of-thousands) of players who have used the GDC hack without any fear or action by Blizzard.

It's scary to think of all of the cheaters out there. From all of the various official announcements, Blizzard has banned millions of players for online cheating. MILLIONS! I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of all online players have knowingly cheated or have exploited bugs.

On a side note,

Their new lawsuit actually worries me a bit. I don't care that Blizzard is going after cheaters and the developers of these applications (like BnetD), but I am concerned about the repercussions. If successful, it will set a legal precedent that single-player or multi-player cheats or addons/mods (even when acceptable) would be completely illegal. Virus scanners, operating systems, performance apps, tools for impaired users, etc all fit within Blizzard's classification, and it would make it very easy for them to be able to sue any software developer or users of these tools (harsh charges, prison time, etc). Blizzard probably wouldn't do that of course (bad for PR), but the case would be available for other (less savory lawyers) to reference and many people could suffer badly as a result.

The thing is, Blizzard claims that these hacks cause irreparable harm. But that's not actually true: the harm CAN be repaired by hotfixes, patches, player bans, and resetting Ladders & Seasons - all of which they already do quite frequently. All of the players cheating to get Honor Gear for example will lose it all next season.

Blizzard also knew about the map hack tool the minute it was released (they even stated that they were following it's initial development), and there have always been tons of Starcraft 1 maphacks available. Warden uses hash values to determine whether a user is running a Maphack or not, so SC2 could have easily prevented users from even launching SC2 if a hack was running. It was easily detected by Warden, and they could have done something about it right away - but instead they waited months to ban the users, allowed them to cheat, and it seemed like they wanted "damage" to occur so that they could sue the developers on purpose. They've done insta-bans before, why did they wait so long for "damages" to occur? Was it on purpose for a planned lawsuit?

Blizzard was already going to sue SC2 hackers, but then they suddenly decided to drop the charges. If I, for example, was interested only in profits from court settlements, I would wait until significant damages were incurred so that I could sue for a larger amount of money. That's what the patent trolls do too.. they wait until businesses become successful before they sue. Patent Trolls are not interested in protecting their Intellectual Property, but rather the revenue they can generate from settlements. Based on what I've seen, it seems that these lawsuits are just another alternative revenue stream for Blizzard, and there's little emphasis on actually protecting the legit players (although public statements make it look like users are their top priority). If there were concerns for the legit players, users would be prevented from even launching SC2 (or other Blizzard games) if they have a maphack running. Hash files are very unique signatures too, so Warden would not be triggered by a false positive.

With all of the balancing issues, client issues, crashes, melting video cards, account thefts, and bugs (all of which were complained about for months during PTR/beta, but were STILL released live) wouldn't Blizzard themselves actually be causing even more irreparable harm to their players?

Anyhow - I've been tracking a lot of players on my own server who have been cheating like crazy. Still no ban as of today, even though many of them have probably accumulated 15,000 to 30,000 JPs in one day without running any raids. Yeah, definitely suspicious having all brand new high-level raid gear without having run any raids.

With the new 4.0.1 patch came a whole ton of bugs, exploits and opportunities. =]

We're talking infinite Justice Points exploits, unlimited Honor Points, crazy Gold Making exploits, and Remote Auction House exploitation.

Most of them are easily detectable by Blizzard and these exploits have worked for the past 5 days - but players haven't been banned yet. I'm interested to see how long it will take Blizzard to crack down on these cheaters and exploiters. As mentioned in a previous post, if Blizzard is having concerns regarding Cataclysm (or worried about financial figures) they'll have a ban wave in Q4 (ending Dec 31). Otherwise, they'll save up the ban wave until Q1 next year (Jan/Feb/Mar) so that they can pad their revenue numbers even higher.

Here are some of the many cheats & exploits going on:

1. Infinite Justice Points Exploit

Containers that used to drop Emblems of Frost now drop Justice Points, however they are bugged and you can loot them over and over. 1000-1500 Justice Points in under 10 minutes is easily possible.

Here are the specific items, and you needed to have the ones from before the 4.0.1 patch. I'm not sure if NEW drops work as well.

For the [Sack of Frosty Treasures] for example: just open the bag, pull out JPs, enter Blasted Lands portal, pull out again, keep going back and forth. Each time you go through the portal it resets the JP contents. Don't loot all though, just the JPs.

[Brewfest Kegs] work too and provide 24 Justice Points each time. You can also logout and log back in again, and the items reset. It doesn't work with all zoning methods, however you can use the Undercity/Silvermoon Translocator to also reset the bag contents. There are other ways too.

2. Infinite Justice Points Exploit #2

You can kill the end boss of Hellfire Ramparts over-and-over for Justice Points. He's not supposed to drop them by the way. =] Clear the Heroic Instance to the last boss, kill his guards and he'll dismount, kill Vazruden only (not the Drake), jump off the bridge and exit the portal. Go back in, kill him again. Each kill gives 250 rep and 5 Justice Points.

Apparently, a couple other 70 Heroics are bugged as well. Anzu (Raven Lord Mount) doesn't need to be summoned anymore, so anyone can farm the mount without a Druid present. I hear that it's working on some realms, but not others - so I don't know if it's intentional or not.

3. Remote Auction House

A bunch of new web-based Remote AH bot applications have hit the market (the developers are profiting from it, just like the SC2 hack developers), and I'm seeing them in use on my own server. It makes Glyph selling fairly difficult.

One individual in particular that exploits heavily (he's logged in 24/7 making transactions - cancelling auctions and undercutting automatically) is actually the GM of one of the biggest PVE guilds on my server. He's fully geared in 277 and the guild is well progressed. For the past week though, he hasn't been raiding but rather running a bot to exploit Glyph sales. Players using Quick Auctions 3 (Auction Profit Master) is easily noticeable, but his activities are obviously automated. I chatted with a member of his guild, and apparently they're aware of his "exploits" and how he shares his account with others for heavy raiding which is why the account is logged in so much.

In regards to the other exploits, I'll post some more once I get confirmation from other players. Some methods involve gold making related to the 4.0.1 Undocumented Changes (ie, how everyone can get Wrath gear for honor now which can be sold back.) They removing Tailoring Specializations FYI, and apparently some other Profession Specializations might be impacted currently (Blizzard might be removing them later) such as LW Elemental, Blacksmithing, Alchemy Transmutation nerfs, etc.

*UPDATE:

I'm moving the lengthy SC2 hacks post (that was originally in this post) to a new entry to keep this post short.

I've also confirmed that other loot bags are bugged as well, some of them have been hot-fixed however.

Here are more bags that also provide infinite amounts of Justice Points and can be reset:

[Cache of the Ley-Guardian]
[Large Sack of Ulduar Spoils]
[Sack of Ulduar Spoils]
[Stachel of Spoils]
[Large Satchel of Spoils]