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World of Warcraft Duping Bug Found
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:11 AM
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Over the course of this morning several people have sent me tidbits talking about an exploit on WoW that allows duping of items. Apparently forum posts are being removed on official channels, but there are a few places where you can learn about the exploit and see
screenshot evidence. In equally exciting news, my Rogue on Azjol-nerub is probably 2 hours away from 60 and since Blizzard will undoubtedly fix this bug soon, I'll have to finance my epic mount the old fashioned way!
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Noone posting? (Score:5, Funny)
Taco...can't you afford to just buy your gold? (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, if you're just going to do an exploit to get your gold what's the difference? Hell, just buy an account with a couple of level 60 characters.
Re:Noone posting? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Noone posting? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Noone posting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Noone posting? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is why I like Guild Wars so much. Lvl 20 max so you don't have to play constantly to reach max lvl. There is still months and months of playtime after reaching max as well as more item drops, etc. I love being able to just jump on any time i want knowing people aren't a couple of weeks ahead of me in lvls now.
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Re:Noone posting? (Score:4, Informative)
Here are some while they last...
Tutorial: (WoW) World of Warcraft Duping Bug and Cheat [tech-recipes.com]
Who knows what will happen to all this gold tomorrow?
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Doubt it.. (Score:5, Funny)
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In Other News (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Other News (Score:3, Interesting)
FFXI has hyperinflation at the moment due to gillsellers, plus there are key items which are *only* available from them via IGE, not in-game, since the mobs that drop them are camped 24/7 by gill sellers.
Fun game while it lasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah well, it is just a game after all.
Re:Fun game while it lasted. (Score:3, Insightful)
If there is a rollback, I feel sorry for the people that got elite items from some of the high level instances.
Re:Fun game while it lasted. (Score:3, Insightful)
But, as others have mentioned, there will be no rollback. The WoW economy is surprisingly stable, and often reacts according to the rules of demand and offer, and there are as many outputs for currency as inputs. Most of my friends in-game (who play a lot) are not so rich as to be able to afford anything they want. It will shake the game economy for
Re:Fun game while it lasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fun game while it lasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fun game while it lasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fun game while it lasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fun game while it lasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
MMORPGs such as Asheron's Call and EQ and UO have had rollbacks of up to 3 days worth of gameplay at great frustration to the user.
The consequences? Elimination of "most" of the bug's after effects and basically no drop is subscribers logged on. Most gamers of games such as MMORPGs aren't casual gamers due to the amount of time necessary to level, obtain items, complete quests and acquire the necessary in-game knowledge to actually enjoy these games. Therefore, the word addiction comes to mind and you won't leave no matter how much you bitch about rollbacks.
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Addiction is right. (Score:3, Insightful)
If anyone deserves to be modded up in this thread, it's you. I can't imagine playing these games as an adult. I grew up playing D&D-style games on my Commodore 64 (Ultima 4, Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance, etc), but I can't even imagine playing these MMORPG games.
1. I'm an adult. My serious computer game playing days should be behind me.
2. Is there an end to these things? My only savin
Re:Addiction is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Do you stop having fun once you reach a given age?
" 2. Is there an end to these things? My only saving grace that let me return to a normal eating/sleeping pattern with games of the past is that they freakin' ended at some point. I don't think I ever would've seen the light of day if I played a game that never ended. Especially if it gave me a poor facsimile of social interaction by being able to communicate with real people inside the game."Ok, if your an obsessive compulsive type you should avoid these games. However many people such as myself are able to spend a few hours a week playing without getting the shakes.
" 3. How in the world could anyone with a job compete with the people that play this 24x7?"
You cant. So what? Does it make the game less fun for you when the no lifers have better gear or can gain levels faster?
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Re:Addiction is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
2. I spend more than $10 a month on coffee. Hell, I spend more than $10 a month on almost *everything*. If you read a paper with breakfast, you're probably spending about $10 a month. If you're an adult with the wife and the career and everything, $10 a month for an hour a day of entertainment is *cheap*. 3. The "winner" at any sort of game is always going to be the dedicated individual. It's true in sports, it's true in games like chess or poker or backgammon, and it's true in MMORPGs. You're going to feel like a loser if you compare yourself to those people. If the game involves directly competing with them (see online poker) you're going to feel *really* bad. You will probably compensate for your feeling of inferiority (because thats what happens when you lose) by bitching about how they must have no life and yadda yadda. The solution is to play on your own terms and define your enjoyment by your own accomplishments rather than comparing them to someone elses. This is good advice for happiness in general.
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Re:Addiction is right. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how they could be more dangeous than TV... what's the difference between sitting on your ass for hours on end watching "Must See TV" (or Baseball/Basketball/Football or whatever), and sitting on your ass for hours on end playing a video game with friends?
They way I look at it, with TV, you veg out and passively let this entertainment wash over you. With video games, there is at least some interaction - your mind must be a little more active, at least... make decis
Re:Addiction is right. (Score:5, Funny)
grow the fuck up
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dealing with the culprit (Score:4, Funny)
DELETE FROM user WHERE username LIKE "Gu%en";
Re:dealing with the culprit (Score:3, Funny)
It would have to be something like this:
DELETE FROM usertable WHERE username LIKE "Gu%en";
Re:dealing with the culprit (Score:5, Funny)
My sig is actually usefull for once
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ban them blizzard (Score:3, Interesting)
Too Late (Score:3, Funny)
Common sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Common sense (Score:5, Informative)
It's Tuesday. Every server goes down for maintenance from 9 AM ET to 3 PM ET every Tuesday. Your other question (about how long it'll take to fix) is valid, but the downtime here is planned, expected downtime. If it's not up by 6 PM ET tonight, then I'll start to worry.
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MIRROR HERE (Score:5, Informative)
If this dupefix is anything like in Shadowbane.. (Score:5, Interesting)
In Shadowbane, the dupes didn't quite kill the game like originally thought. Instead, they reinforced the idea that 'rare' items needn't be that rare for a good pvp game. Rare items usually just mean someone spent more time to get them - and better pvp'ers don't necessarily spend more time playing the game.. So in Shadowbane, if your guild is a good experienced guild, you can completely stock your guilds' characters and many alts with the best pvp gear. Then, it all comes down to organization, experience, and how well each character is built to win in pvp.
PVE is lame. Anyone who has pvp'd in any decent pvp mmorpg knows that. Maybe if Wow's economy gets totally fucked, I'll give it a try. But, hell if I'm gonna spend hours and hours to make a perfect character with decked-out gear that doesn't involve pvp.
Re:If this dupefix is anything like in Shadowbane. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that's constructive. Would you care to explain why?
In the meantime; I like PvE, thanks. I've played Planetside, and Guild Wars, and both have good PvP IMHO, but I prefer generally prefer PvE. It may not be as action packed, but maybe when I get home, and I'm tired, stressing myself out isn't what I want to do.
You're right, I'd have to spend countless hours to get the perfect character, but y'know what, I don't mind, because I don't PvP, and therefore just "pretty good" equipment is fine for me and my PvEing.
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DUPE! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:DUPE! (Score:5, Funny)
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Duping in MMORPGs (Score:5, Informative)
It really killed the gold market, everything was incredibly inflated because people would dupe 10 million gold checks (which are what they sound like, just a marker for 10 million gold)
It's not always trackable if you move it into items... trade it away, buy stuff from stores then resell it... it's like virtual money laundering...
Though that all depends on if/how WoW tracks gold, perhaps they've made improvements over UO (as UO is rather old)
Re:Duping in MMORPGs (Score:3, Interesting)
It certainly tracks when you vendor items because if you accidently sell a nice item while selling a bunch of items, you can have them get that item back for you. It isn't the same EXACT item though, since you lose all enchants and whatnot. They pretty much just seem to create a new one for you.
I imagine it tracks a lot more as well.
Although, who knows, this still could break WoW. I hope Blizzard isn't going to be so stupid as to let that something lik
Re:Duping in MMORPGs (Score:3, Informative)
The UO one was get near a "server line" hand your buddy some stuff(gold,regs) walk into server line(laggier the better!) while you are momentarily lagged Alt+F4, quick close UO and force logout, when you log back in if you did it right, your character dropped from UO when it was between two servers, so as a failsafe they roll you back to the last known "good spot", which was when you were on the s
Explanation of bug: Ah, a race condition issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
On a heavily loaded server: You give your gold/item to a friend. You then enter an instance area. If you load, fine, no bug. If not, and it kicks you out after 1 minute (due to load), you still have your gold.
So obviously what is happening is that the "Failed to load" instance response is going back to some character checkpoint previously created, with this checkpoint being somewhat older.
The fix (which will probably be put in place by now) is to checkpoint the character when he/she attempts to enter an instance. So you aren't gonna be able to exploit this bug anymore. Sorry, 1AM3 CH3373RZ!
Also, if blizzard DID serial # all items, then it will be a pretty simple script to prune the duplicated items. But as they probably don't serial # gold, it might still have some economic disruption.
Re:Explanation of bug: Ah, a race condition issue. (Score:5, Interesting)
As their machines got faster and they got more hard drive space, they started logging a *lot* more details. I'll go out on a limb and say Blizzard is doing something similar. I don't know how long the bug was being abused, so it's hard to tell whether anyone at Blizzard actually dropped the ball or whether it was just now being abused to the point where it was easily detectable.
In any case, they certainly know about it now
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Re:Explanation of bug: Ah, a race condition issue. (Score:5, Informative)
People are going crazy over this, but I don't think it's the end of the world. I wonder if a rollback is even necessary. If a character is exploiting this for massive gain, it'll be pretty easy to catch them in the act; either their selling 15 copies of [UberPurpleSword] or they've gone from like 50 to 5000 gold in 6 hours. Those characters that get in under the radar or just exploit it for minimal gain aren't really going to hurt the economy that much. Fine, maybe some characters get a lot of gold or a lot of good items, but so what? The gold will eventually be spent one way or the other, and Soulbound ensures that eventually all the items will become worthless as well.
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New jargon word (Score:3, Funny)
I know the guy meant "rubberbanded", but it's still a great word.
rubberbanned v. To be repeatedly banned from and attempt to return to a server or IRC channel.
How to fix? Is a fix needed? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, what can be done to remove this stuff from the environment? Some are suggesting a rollback to the last maintenance spot, making people lose a week of progress (and, presumably, pissing off legitimate people/losing accounts) in order to get the duped stuff out of the economy. Does it even need to be removed?
I, personally, don't really care if it's there or not - the "economy" as it is seems pretty random anyway, and I'm not terribly bothered if some other player has things I don't.
Clearly they need to fix the actual exploit/bug, and hopefully remove the accounts of the people who actually did it (not that that will accomplish anything other than getting rid of a few suburban teens while the people who make real money off this just go buy a few more copies) but is it really that big a deal to the average player?
Well, maintainence has been extended (Score:3, Informative)
(Tyren)
The weekly maintenance has been extended while we investigate the validity of the claims regarding a possible exploit in the game. We remind our players that discussing possible exploits on the official forums is a violation of the Code of Conduct, and such threads will be deleted without prior notice.
(http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?
Re:Am I the only one who thought of... (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder if it was a glitch in the database, a humorous admin, or just the usual dupe getting caught.
Re:What happened to the old Blizzard (Score:3, Funny)
I'd be interested in your numerous publications about how to "program proper code" and/or make a MMORPG bug-free from day one. Actually, a book on how to make a bug-free software, whatever the software would do. But I doubt anyone would risk writing one.
Re:The truth is flamebait!!? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was necessary (Score:4, Interesting)
Secondly, news spreading faster will guarantee a more timely fix. Blizzard has demonstrated numerous times that they'll allow bugs that hinder players to sit around for long periods of time without being addressed, while bugs that are exploitable to help players get hotfixed as quickly as possible.
Similarly, obscure exploitable bugs tend to stay around a lot longer than highly visible common knowledge exploitable bugs.
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Re:PHOTOSHOPPED image! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:PHOTOSHOPPED image! (Score:4, Informative)
It's clearly not that way in the linked image, so it's decidedly a fake.
That doesn't mean that the problem does or doesn't exist, though.
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