WoW Player Gets Power, Gets Corrupted, Gets Banned

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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WoW Player Gets Power, Gets Corrupted, Gets Banned


A Blizzard [http://www.worldofwarcraft.com]-only item has been banned for using it to kick crazy amounts of butt.

Karatechop, leader of The Marvel Family guild, found himself holding Martin Fury [http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=17], a shirt that adds +34 mana and +34 strength - and also instantly kills all enemies within a 30 yard radius. The item is intended only for the developers, presumably for testing or such things, but when Karatechop found it in his inventory he did what comes naturally: He went out and kicked ass.

People noticed fairly quickly that Karatechop was punching way above his weight and with a great amount of success. He racked up some very impressive Achievements in a very short span of time, including the destruction of Flame Leviathan with four active defense towers on Heroic difficulty. Naturally, rumors swirled, questions were whispered, blog posts were written and ultimately Blizzard cast its baleful eye upon the whole great mess. The end result: Karatechop tried to log in on Tuesday and discovered his account had been banned.

For his part, he claims the item had actually been given to a guildmate when his characters, which had been lost when his account was hacked, were restored. Each of the restored characters came with an in-game mail from Blizzard and random equipment, "tons of low level stuff, stacks of Silverleaf and the link," Karatechop said in an interview with WoW Insider [http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/30/the-martin-fury-scandal-karatechop-reveals-all/]. Included among the items given to his friend's level 13 warlock was Martin Fury. "We didn't think it was real," he said. "I honestly thought it was something Blizzard gave to one of Leroy's alts for four months of ignoring the problems with his account."

After discovering that it was real they used it on various high-level instances, one-shotting everything they saw. Karatechop claims they didn't consider it cheating because the item came from Blizzard directly. "We were laughing about it," he said. "This wasn't, for me anyways, a way to get loot or achievements. This was purely a comedy thing for me. It was funny."

In the end, Karatechop was banned, everyone in The Marvel Family guild who was online at the time had their accounts locked for 24 hours and despite being a long-time World of Warcraft player, he says he probably won't reroll a character. He also stands by his assertion that Blizzard overreacted to something that wasn't really cheating in the first place. "I don't believe banning is fair, especially since this would be my first infraction in the 4+ years I've played the game. But it's Blizzard's game and they are the ones calling the shots, so fair is relative," he said. "We didn't hack the game. We were given a 'You Win' button and it was something we used."

via: Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5235242/some-guy-gets-a-blizzard+only-wow-item-goes-on-wow-rampage]


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sneakypenguin

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Jul 31, 2008
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Wow, so he uses an item they gave him and gets banned for it. Pretty cool though.
 

cainx10a

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May 17, 2008
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Not fair. Blizzard's fault, they should have just removed the item and locked his account for the same amount of time given to his guild mates.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Man, you get Martin Fury and all you do is kill 4T Leviathan? He should have gone straight for Algalon.
 
Nov 14, 2008
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Lets be honest, if you recieve an item that instantly kills everything, the chances are it's not legitemite. I would of repor- CHRIST I'M BORING.
 

level250geek

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Jan 8, 2009
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I'm on this guy's side. If I get an in-game item straight from the Blizz, I'm using it. I'm not returning it, I'm not second-guessing it, I'm using it.

When the boss gives you the keys to the company car, do you say "Thanks, but I don't think I'm privileged to that?" No. You drive the company car.
 

Slycne

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Feb 19, 2006
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cainx10a said:
Not fair. Blizzard's fault, they should have just removed the item and locked his account for the same amount of time given to his guild mates.
If he had sent something to Blizzard asking about the item I would agree with you, but it doesn't sound like this is the case. It would be like finding a million dollars lying on the street, you don't just start spending it. It's pretty apparent that an accident was made and they did not intend to give him an item that instant kills enemies. I don't buy that he thinks they legitimately gave that to him for a second. He got greedy and wanted to use it, and now he is simply enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. He deserved what he got in my opinion.
 

Baby Tea

Just Ask Frankie
Sep 18, 2008
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Was he on a PVP server?
Because running right into the cities would have been top of the list.

"I remember you! You ganked me and camped my body when I was trying to farm leather! And I was 40 levels below you! DIE! MOOHOOHAW!"

Of course, they couldn't read that...but I would feel better.
 

RetiarySword

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Apr 27, 2008
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I don't blame him. I would go mad with that. I would just shout 'I CAST FLARE!' in local and rape everyone and everything, including the random animals in the cities.
 

DeadlyYellow

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Jun 18, 2008
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I can see where they are coming from. Hell, might technically be an exploit. If the items granted as compensation are generated at random (thus by the program,)then it is possible that the generation code for the item could have gotten in unnoticed.

Being in possession of a dev item and not reporting it, then using it is considered an exploit in many games. No different than using glitches in the program can get you banned.
 

Toastngravy

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Jan 19, 2009
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Yeah..It's a general rule of thumb.
If you get something that you generally aren't supposed to have, report it so when the game higher-ups do find out, you won't get banned.

He could have at least used it once or twice to see if it was real. Instead he goes around using it on bigger things and blizzard found out which resulted in his ban.

If he merely used it to try it, the most that would happen is him losing any items he got by using it (assuming this one time use was in an isntance).

Everyone tries the "well because they messed up-" excuse all the time over every game. Now I'm not quite sure of blizzards TOS, but abusing a bug,glitch,etc. is usually against the TOS and results in bans when abused. So if that is the case, well there is that there.

There isn't an arguement to be made if it's slapped in the TOS somewhere, you agree to them before joining anything. If you break it, you broke it, you have no arguement.
 

IrrelevantTangent

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Oct 4, 2008
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So the ones in charge of WoW unknowingly and indirectly caused an extremely powerful item to fall into the hands of a regular WoW player, and then they ban him when he takes advantage of the exploit they allowed to come into existence?

I'd say 'wow', but that would be a bad pun.
 

wordsmith

TF2 Group Admin
May 1, 2008
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Did he hack the game?
No?
Then he's done nothing wrong. Blizzard have the power to access anyone's account, so why didn't they go onto his account, gift the shirt to a mod account and leave him to it.

If he's a hacker, that's another story. Throw the feckin book at him.
 

Liverandbacon

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Nov 27, 2008
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They should give that guy all of his items and achievements back, except for the shirt. It's not his fault they gave him an insanely awesome item, what was he meant to do with it, pretend he didn't have it?
 

WNxSajuukCor

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Oct 31, 2007
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Let's be fair here: whether or not his intentions were just to have mindless fun or to actually circumvent content for items no one can tell. Including Blizzard. Yeah it's a boo boo they made by accidentally giving a restored character a GM Dev item, but it's his fault for not reporting it when it came through.

I've seen Alliance characters accidentally get tagged as GMs and were able to talk to Horde characters back before Burning Crusade. Word got around that he was GM tagged and many people came to see him, but he didn't move an inch as he reported it and waited for Blizzard to come around to fix their mistake. This guy went and one-shot entire instances without reporting it. His own fault I say.
 

duty nco

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May 1, 2009
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Dude in article is head of guild and not original recipient of the item. He knows better and this is why I think he is not fighting the ban. Blizzard has him cold.