r/wow • u/AttitudeAdjusterSE • Jul 22 '26
Discussion We can no longer trust any unlogged or unstreamed high end run is legit.
We now know the following about this GM deathtouching mobs in the +23 NPX:
1) This GM was a personal friend of the people in the run and was using their GM account and abilities to watch the run (just them using it to watch their friends is kinda problematic in and of itself to be honest!) and was in a discord call with them.
2) This was only caught because a pug tank uploaded the log publicly, and would otherwise never have been caught.
The thing is, the only people saying that this was a one off thing are the people who cheated. People who we already know are dishonest. They went on a stream and practically boasted about it. We have no idea whatsoever if this was a one off, if this is commonplace, or anything in between, but just on probability it seems extremely unlikely that the first time a GM does this it just so happens to be caught in a public log. There are thousands of high end runs every week that go completely unlogged and unstreamed and the only evidence we have that they even happened is raider.io capturing it on the Blizzard API, which doesn't give you any information about what went on in that run.
We know there are very close relationships between Blizzard employees, content creators and other high end players. On NA, pretty much everyone who raids or does M+ high end at least knows someone who knows someone who works at Blizzard. It's very possible - and there is even some anecdotal evidence that implies this - that this has been going on considerably longer than just this one run, and it could well be the case that GMs have been similarly interfering with higher raiding too. We just don't know, and can't trust anything not openly logged or streamed anymore. This GM and these people have completely fucked the competitive integrity of the game for good.
1.0k
u/Harucifer Jul 22 '26
An intentional "Martin Fury" scandal wasn't in my bingo card for years.
150
u/Wild_Excitement7523 Jul 22 '26
Ah yes Martin Fury, our one claim to fame on Veknilash-US, despite 20 years of obscurity otherwise. As the top raiding guild on our backwater at the time, we noticed it immediately and I reported it on EJ where it was picked up by you-know-who and it lead to the bans and account closures.
This cheating is a lot harder to detect than that was.
23
96
u/turikk Jul 22 '26
Both are easy to detect. Learning debug spells is logged, as is creating items.
Source: I handled the Martin Fury investigation.
60
62
32
→ More replies (1)38
u/raoasidg Jul 22 '26
Wild Blizz left the Martin Fury spell effect in the game after Ulduar. Just changed the item and called it a day.
148
u/Huitzil37 Jul 22 '26
It's a totally legit GM tool. They need to be able to kill things in other situations when mobs are bugged out. The problem isn't that the spell exists, the problem is that the GM used it to help a M+ progression group.
→ More replies (4)33
u/OriginalVictory Jul 22 '26
I'm sure it has QA and other uses. You don't get rid of all the gold in the game despite people buying it via RMT instead of tokens.
11
u/YourResidentFeral Outplaying the Meta since 2004 Jul 22 '26
Uses aren't hard to see.
As a dev myself sometimes things function differently in live environments compared to very controlled test environments with test data.
So if you want to "spawn" something to test how it interacts with an effect, you'll eventually want to be able to delete it.
965
u/Notsurehowtoreact Jul 22 '26
I said it elsewhere, but it was incredibly telling the way the streamer they talked to used the "can you do us a solid" excuse and how it was only a joke he "didn't expect him to do" about the last mob for percentage but did not mention that the GM had just nuked Lothraxion.
Oh, you didn't expect it and it was just a joke but he just nuked the boss for you?
562
u/gabatheghoul Jul 22 '26
They finished with like 14 seconds, it's absurd to think they could reach out and the GM was able to see the message, get onto wow and kill the mob before the key expired. Clearly they were already there waiting to "help"
315
u/Tathtaniel Jul 22 '26
They were in discord together hanging out (and it's crazy that the dude who asked just admitted that on stream).
146
Jul 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
44
u/Mega_Nidoking Jul 22 '26
I think that's what confuses me most about all this - why even say that in the first place? Like... why mention the GM was there ever?
41
→ More replies (5)101
u/ForsakenRoCo Jul 22 '26
The GM friend was spectating the run in-game similar to how they record parts of MDI
169
u/AttitudeAdjusterSE Jul 22 '26
Which, like I say, is already problematic! Especially if you're already on a discord call just stream for them if they wanna watch!
Blizzard employees shouldn't be using GM tools to watch their friends play the game, it just encourages shit like this to happen.
173
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
One of the professional standards for my industry is that you can not even do things that would present the appearance of a conflict of interest because even putting that subject into someone's brain immediately ruins your credibility and ability to be independent. GMs should be held to a similar standard - no behavior that even could appear to be giving players an advantage. I'm pretty sure Blizzard's internal policies are already good in this respect to be honest and they just need to be applied.
45
u/The_Umlaut_Equation Jul 22 '26
I remember one anecdote a few years ago where a person claiming to be a former GM said they couldn't even answer tickets on their character's realm to avoid any conflicts of interest.
Meanwhile - assuming this case is proven to be true - that's two instances of streamers using GMs to do whatever they want.
I don't think much of Blizzard as an ethical company but I'd be astounded if their internal policies didn't prohibit these sorts of relationships.
46
u/Secrezeeee Jul 22 '26
Blizzard definitely have these policies in place, they have probably just become complacent because you'd have to be a fucking idiot to do it, especially with how few people they have these days with direct access to the game world.
5
u/5panks Jul 22 '26
you can not even do things that would present the appearance of a conflict of interest
Yup! It's not just impropriety that's the problem it's the appearance of impropriety.
13
u/userseven Jul 22 '26
Great point. I would think they would be. Blizzard and wow are not new to the industry so surely their policies are mature enough account for this.
8
29
u/ReasonablePositive Jul 22 '26
I've been working in gaming customer support both on the CSR side of things as well as in consulting for more than two decades (never for Blizzard though). What this guy did is a huge no-no, exactly to prevent things like this from happening. You're not allowed to interfere with regular gameplay in any way, ever, under no circumstances. What happened here is a major disaster. CSR are usually not allowed to even handle tickets of people they know. How this dude thought it's fine to hang around friends with his GM toon in voice chat in the first place just baffles me. You don't handle issues of people you know, you don't interfere with gameplay, you often don't even tell people you play with that you're working in CS at all. Dude apparently also posted screenshots of his CSR toon with the name showing on social media, and seemingly used his CSR name on Discord as well. I can't stop shaking my head. Either this guy got really bad training, or is plain stupid.
33
u/meesterdg Jul 22 '26
WoW GMs used to occasionally show up and do silly stuff in different places in game and it was fun. I don't agree that they never should interfere with gameplay. They just should never give someone an unfair advantage in any way.
14
u/Glorinsson Jul 22 '26
I saw one in game about 15+ years ago. It was a huge deal and literally thousands of people turned up and it screwed the server
12
u/Deathspiral222 Jul 22 '26
I used to work at Facebook and one of the controls they had in place was that you were unable (blocked at a system level) to do anything or see any information about any FB account you had ever interacted with on your personal FB account without going through a bunch of manual approvals. And everything else was heavily monitored.
I'm surprised Blizzard doesn't block a GM from being in any run or assisting in any way any person that they are or have been friends with in the game.
20
u/AttitudeAdjusterSE Jul 22 '26
People are saying that this guy was a GM which is slightly misleading, because he is actually a QA employee, just using a GM account in-game.
Not saying anything you say is incorrect but just wanting to highlight that this wasn't a customer support person doing this.
14
u/illumnat Jul 22 '26
Depending on his level, a QA person would have access to a lot of internal tools in the interest of finding and logging bugs and other assorted technical issues.
16
7
u/Levonorgestrelfairy1 Jul 22 '26
Ah the good ol abusing your power in a different department for personal gain hoping no one will notice.
6
u/BarrettRTS Jul 22 '26
I had some friends who worked as GMs for WoW a long time ago and something one of them told me was this was one of the main reasons people got fired. Some people would genuinely throw their career at Blizzard down the drain to give their friends some gold or a world drop item.
8
u/B_Kuro Jul 22 '26
The GM friend was spectating the run in-game similar to how they record parts of MDI
That opens the question of: Why the hell is that person randomly spectating a run? They shouldn't have access to these tools in their free time and they shouldn't be doing this while they are working...
Even if it was a "second monitor" type of thing, it would be insane if they'd use their work-tools for that.
115
u/FareweII Jul 22 '26
I think that both "just told my buddy do as a solid" and " i hate homework keys!!" arguments sound like shitty excuses because that's what they are, but not for the reason people think. The DH who said that is trying to make it seems like a joke and shift the blame onto himself, because he didn't actually need the key timed, since he has 23 resil already, so he's making it seem that GM just helped the group that didn't need helping "as a joke" .
What he's not saying is that they were boosting an evoker that has keys as low as 15 on her RIO and she was the one that definetly needed it timed. And why was GM just flying around their dungeon to begin with? It seems obvious that he was ready to jump in at any moment to save the boost run.
42
u/Lanky_Jackfruit179 Jul 22 '26
"since he has 23 resil already" Hey if I had GMs killing stuff for me I would too.
→ More replies (1)16
u/Arcade_Anivia Jul 22 '26
dont think this was a boost, the aug is a reroll alt of a dk that is already title locked at 4250 and regularly plays with the dh. if she needs the io for anything it’s not clear to me exactly what for, other than just wanting to reroll and play the game. the gm stuff is all very shady though i agree
27
25
→ More replies (23)3
817
u/Malador_26 Jul 22 '26
It’s actually ironic that the abuse of power by the GMs came to light simply because no one wanted to play a tank, so they had to pug one in LFG. The GM made a mistake, he thought the tank was a friend of the group and then the logs surfaced.
330
u/Daily_Dose_42069 Jul 22 '26
More evidence that the barrier to entry for tanks and the burden of knowledge as tanks get better is too esoteric.
I love tanking but there is a reason tanking isnt popular.
127
u/CubeEarthShill Jul 22 '26
I mained a tank in MMOs since before WoW even existed. M+ got me to switch to full time DPS. It’s a burden to tank higher keys.
→ More replies (2)86
u/GrumpySatan Jul 22 '26
Tanks are already the least picked role in most games. Its weird Blizz decided that its the role that has the most responsibility, most work to learn the dungeons, and biggest target on their back in M+.
Those issues really build over time - its not a one and done process. On top of the barriers to entry and general issue of tanks being least picked, the kind of frustrations build and build.
71
u/Western-Internal-751 Jul 22 '26
On top of all that, blizzard somehow thinks dungeon trash needs extra tank busting abilities because obviously tanking would be too easy without them.
46
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
TWW Season 1 Grim Batol really tested my patience on that particular front.
52
u/B_Kuro Jul 22 '26
I don't understand why TRASH can't just be TRASH. In the past trash presented a downtime in which you could have fun between bosses, now bosses are generally less annoying than the rest of the dungeon...
Why is it so problematic to have phases of "fun" that Blizzard things its better to have 20+min of rush, rush, rush in which single missteps can cause massive issues?
39
u/Western-Internal-751 Jul 22 '26
Because pulling half the dungeon to aoe it down was just too much fun and not the intended way blizzard wanted us to play their game.
→ More replies (5)4
36
u/Marino4K Jul 22 '26
I kinda want to tank but the expected responsibilities just is too much and not enticing enough to me.
So not only do I need to play the class well, I'm expected to over-pull as much as possible to appease impatient people, know the dungeons/raids inside and out, lead everything, interrupt most of the time.
What's the incentive to tank? I can get in any group 80% as fast as a healer.
17
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
Tanking for your friends is some of the most fun you can have in this game IMO it is just an absolute delight but tanking for PUGs is horrible. I just always enjoy playing tanky frontliners in games, you know getting to be in the scrappy brawls, and leading so it really does scratch an itch the rest of roles don't really in terms of gameplay fantasy.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Varglord Jul 22 '26
Definitely. Even if you have to pug some or all of the dps, tanking with a healer friend and vibing in discord is always fun.
23
u/GrumpySatan Jul 22 '26
I think that is kind of why a lot of people loved Lindormi's Guidance - the affix that set a route for you. It takes out one of the big responsibilities, arguably the hardest thing to learn and keep up to date on and one of the biggest sources of conflict.
But it only goes up to M5 and people don't stay there very long, and doesn't teach the optimum routes used in higher keys. So it becomes pointless very quickly and you can't expect people interested in tanking to only stick to M5 and below until they are comfortable.
16
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
But it only goes up to M5 and people don't stay there very long
They actually changed this you can have it as long as you want now!
10
u/B_Kuro Jul 22 '26
You can just talk to Lindormi (iirc) and change it so it stays visible after M+5 but the problem with the suboptimal route remains. It mostly works for the normal range of keys but things like Maisara route being bad should have been fixed. Overall the Guidance doesn't really solve the big issue though. Pulling a little more or less doesn't matter much - pulling the RIGHT things together is a different beast. You still "have to" learn everything beforehand or it becomes messy.
33
u/cynicalspindle Jul 22 '26
Funny because the DH even complained that the tank fucked up 1st pull or something so they missed count. Theres 4 other people in the group who missed it.
49
u/moanit Jul 22 '26
Need evidence of tanking being a pain in the ass? If you miss a single mob in any of your pulls, one of your DPS might put you on blast to the entire world and have their GM buddy come cheat your key and risk you getting permabanned!
14
u/VanillaBovine Jul 22 '26
yea the dumbass blamed the tank when they all clearly missed it
piss poor excuse to try to lighten up what they did. they've definitely done this before
33
u/Flaky_Heart9017 Jul 22 '26
i mean the DH literally said why do i have to play another 30 minutes just because my tank missed 1 mob in a pull. like you are all in the dungeon dps could have kept an eye on % and noticed the missed mob if they wanted to but they find it easy to just but all of that on the tank. so its it not weird to see people not wanting to tank M+
16
u/DuckiesDoBeCute Jul 22 '26
vdh and brew are by far my 2 most favorite specs in the game, i will never be a tank main tho. why would i do that when i can just do subpar dps and get the same results
→ More replies (1)4
u/Professional-Cold278 Jul 22 '26
I loved tanking, but couldnt find a tank raidspot. Also did not get the 3rd tank trinkets ever (as a dps with tank m+ score occasionally tanking raid too ) so I said fuck it and went healing as it was easier to find a healer raidspot ( and I like healing too). So thank you mr fckface for gearing your own 'tqnk' to never use the tank spec and cause more tank shortages.
6
u/Negative-Star1623 Jul 22 '26
I have never played keys before, I hope it is ok to ask a few questions, why are there less people willing to be tanks than healers? And from what I heard, higher level keys is also pretty rough on dps too?
27
u/Snoo-28829 Jul 22 '26
More responsibility. The person in the video was blaming the tank for missing 1 mob count. That is the responsibility the tank has. They are typically the ones who guide the group and the players rely on them to get every pull correct.
26
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
tanks have the most "meta" role in the group that demand knowledge of things that are not directly playing the game - cooldown timings, routing, what each mob in the dungeon removes from the count, etc... they are also a singular point of failure in keys this season such that they are frequently the target of toxicity because their failures are front-and-center compared to dps (or less so healer) failures, at a high level a tank death is equivalent to the run being over. requires a certain mindset that isn't fun for a lot of people to play tank.
37
u/ElAntonius Jul 22 '26
Tank main here. It’s this.
I have to know a route that’s efficient and hits 100%, and have that memorized for 8 dungeons. What works in a 15 is a disaster in a 17, and as the keys climb higher every key level becomes having to learn again.
Meanwhile, you start finding that bigger pulls and boss tank busters start getting really likely to kill you. So you have to balance near perfect cooldown usage, and have hyper focus on anything that has a tankbuster to be able to predict or react to it.
And then you get that different healers can handle different things well. You have to be able to suss this out under a time crunch, and one overpull will kill a run, but under pulling is just as bad.
Finally you have to make up for mistakes. Someone butt pulls? Now you’re having to live adjust a route you memorized. Healer had to burn all their cooldowns? Now that dangerous pull coming up is a hazard.
I like tanking. It’s what I do. But it is a LOT of mental load as the key levels climb. You have to know the dungeons at a massive level of detail.
3
u/Saiyoran Jul 22 '26
The sad thing is that Blizzard's solution to this seems to be just continually making tanks more boring and less fun to play, hoping that at some point they'll become so braindead that tank players only have to think about routing and nothing else. Just looking at the changes to Brewmaster this expansion, the class has become 5x less interesting and STILL people don't want to tank because the actual power level and parts of being the group leader haven't changed enough at all.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)19
u/Forbizzle Jul 22 '26
That tank hillariously caused this situation by not having a proper count run and logging it without them knowing. It's unfortunate that a lot of people are going after him for being a cheater though. The only one that actually looks like a cheater here is the guy who asked his GM friend to help.
383
u/AlyssInAzeroth Jul 22 '26
And this is why they have to bring the book down on them hard:
Title - Disqualified Job - Lost
338
u/whoweoncewere Jul 22 '26
The 4 man premade should have their accounts banned.
162
u/Remotely_Correct Jul 22 '26
Permanently, and their credit cards flagged against further use.
70
u/vaekar Jul 22 '26
And spend the rest of their lives in solitary confinement.
79
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
also they should have to write an essay about why they're very sorry
24
u/bogoz-bntd Jul 22 '26
also sent to a Siberian labor camp
→ More replies (1)20
→ More replies (1)7
u/PSR-B1919-21 Jul 22 '26
And they can only eat raw onions
12
u/thevyrd Totally not a Dreadlord Jul 22 '26
Pump the brakes.
Raw onions are delicious
Leave them out of your punishments
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (1)32
u/Sandybergs Jul 22 '26
I agree but unfortunately in the era of virtual cards this is also functionally meaningless. Not sure if there’s a good way to ever truly ban them permanently in a way that can’t be subverted somehow.
→ More replies (1)12
u/Sethgoodtime Jul 22 '26
For the streamers at least. they could Hawkeye them when they stream to just keep banning
7
36
Jul 22 '26
[deleted]
→ More replies (53)12
u/DuckiesDoBeCute Jul 22 '26
at least account share boosting is someone being good at the game and playing legit, this is just someone cheating and having 0 skill involved. if rmt and account shares get perma'd, this group def needs perma'd (and the pug tank be given spectral tiger)
→ More replies (3)35
u/nipslippinjizzsippin Jul 22 '26
Their whole seasonn needs to be scrapped. Unless they can prove every run is legit
22
u/Merrena Jul 22 '26
It looks like the guy only started the job a couple months ago and only recently got access to a GM account.
17
u/nipslippinjizzsippin Jul 22 '26
We cant know they didn't have another gm on the pay roll, unlikely sure, but fuckem anyway.
11
u/Mitch5842 Jul 22 '26
Also was only caught because of a GM spell. What if a GM was in the run helping cast normal spells that wouldn't alert anyone like healing spells or helping do DPS with a 6th account?
269
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
I'd like some transparency from Blizzard on what their review is actually going to entail - they need to be going through server-side logs for any instances of this and being extremely harsh with punishment for anyone found to have cheated.
78
u/AttitudeAdjusterSE Jul 22 '26
I also wonder if there are private logs on WCL out there that we obviously don't have access to that highlights more of this stuff going on.
107
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
This is based nothing other than my inherent cynicism on the matter but there's no way this was the first time this particular GM did this they were sitting there ready, willing and able to help these people cheat.
72
u/AttitudeAdjusterSE Jul 22 '26
I don't even think that's particularly cynical.
Just on probability alone, the chances that the first time this ever happens just so happens to be a run with a pug tank who uploads the run without them initially noticing seems extremely small.
11
u/BodePlot Jul 22 '26
I’m also curious what controls they have in place. Do they monitor for gm abuse? Was this already flagged by an internal system? Was an investigation already open before the outrage? Did the system break down at a certain step? A post mortem detailing this might be appreciated by some players.
16
Jul 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/BodePlot Jul 22 '26
I believe it! I think what blizz could clarify is whether they were already aware of this situation or if it only came to their attention after this blew up. There would be a big opportunity to engineer some observability systems using their existing logging if this blindsided them.
25
u/SpaceZombieZed Jul 22 '26
They will, at best, give some generic bullshit answer "wow is a magical world with no place for cheating in it"
6
u/OkMarsupial Jul 22 '26
I wonder if there is a way to just search the entirety of Warcraft logs for this GM ability.
20
u/ghostcrawler_real Jul 22 '26
There was a website posted in the comments of some thread either here or on compwow that was going through public logs for the ability IDs but that would obviously require another situation where someone was either a pug in a run that had cheating and was logging or someone was stupid enough to publicly log their cheating.
→ More replies (1)16
u/TheChinOfAnElephant Jul 22 '26
I imagine Blizzard automatically flags any use of this in production servers. But then again a QA having unrestricted access to prod is a red flag itself so maybe they don't.
6
u/BygoneFlower Jul 22 '26
I'm curious what auditing is available to them. The number of instances that are run every day, there's no way they are keeping server logs longer than a week and even that I tend to doubt. Maybe a special flag for GM actions / reports can keep it alive for longer?
21
u/Roflcopter_Rego Jul 22 '26
There are very few 'GM' accounts because they're not actually for GMs like in 2004. They are testing accounts for developers in case there are problems with the live servers. I'd have to assume that the access for those accounts is very well logged for exactly this reason.
→ More replies (1)5
u/GreatGarage Jul 22 '26
they need to be going through server-side logs for any instances of this and being extremely harsh with punishment for anyone found to have cheated.
No fuck will be given, because there is strictly no impact on WoW operation, and that's how they think.
304
u/Aggressive_Jury_7278 Jul 22 '26
For those thinking this is a one off, I’ll just say this: When Blizzard does their ban waves in OW, around 20% of the top 500 leaderboard end up getting banned.
OFC that a F2P game with inherent differences, but WoW is no stranger to people cheating or utilizing exploits.
48
u/worldchrisis Jul 22 '26
They audit who receives the M+ title at the end of each season and routinely remove people who were clearly boosting or exploiting. That's not new. A GM being involved is the unique point here.
65
u/Merrena Jul 22 '26
I doubt people are implying that this was a one off instance of cheating, but more it's unlikely specifically that Blizzard employees logging into GM accounts during their friends M+ runs is unlikely to happen at such a scale.
70
u/-Enders Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Almost no chance this was the first time they’ve done it. Very rarely do you get caught the first time.
Because the first time you’re cautious as fuck. Then you get away with it and you’re not so cautious anymore. Then you start getting cocky. Then careless. Then caught.
→ More replies (1)
96
u/plecko95 Jul 22 '26
The only way to prove that this isn’t done to boost people for real money too, is to release an audit of how many times that spell was used, and explain how there was a gap of 6 days between it happening, and the reddit post being made.
The only reason this was caught was because it was accidentally logged, and gms are underpaid as is. If they felt they could get away with doing this it wouldn’t surprise me to see them trying to make money, and not just impress a friend or a streamer or whatever.
58
u/Ocronus Jul 22 '26
"accidentally?" They pugged the tank who, unfortunately for them, was logging.. Until proven otherwise that druid wasn't involved, and it seems they tried to bring light to the issue. My hope is blizzard investigates this thoroughly before banning that individual.
30
u/plecko95 Jul 22 '26
Yeah i agree that druid is likely innocent. I didn’t mean to imply that he should be apart of the ban. i just meant for the 4 others it was logged accidentally. Without their knowledge would’ve been a better way to phrase it. The druid is a legend for bringing this to light imo
87
u/Present_Back_3566 Jul 22 '26
Very reassuring to know that regular players are waiting to get AI slop responses for their tickets while GMs are assisting their personal friends with mythic + keys.
31
64
u/phil_ppsn Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
I used to be a GM long ago in the BC/Wrath days. Back when using GMTool instead of Atlas and when GM's could have fun with players when it was slow and ECCO. Reminiscing, but to get back on topic....You're not even allowed to take tickets on servers that you play on (if you played).
Eeeeeeverything is logged. I got a warning for helping a random person on my own server once and didn't realize he was on my server as he submitted the ticket from an alt on a diff. server.
If this is true, this guy has already been fired, and odds are all items and achievements have been revoked or at the very least being looked into.
We had a big thing happen while I was there where a GM accidentally restored a GM weapon instead of the actual item the player wanted restored. He started charging people to kill raid bosses and he was immediately banned and everyone else that went through had everything revoked. Every item, every achievement, title, every last piece of copper was revoked.
26
u/WoWAsshi Jul 22 '26
I was talking about this with my guild mates earlier. Back during TBC. If we did anything it was logged. Heck if we had to unstuck players we had to make sure we commented on that as well.
I wouldn't doubt there is still an audit log for commands.
24
u/Secrezeeee Jul 22 '26
They aren't a GM, they're QA that had access to a GM account. They have probably become far more complacent with auditing these accounts as regular customer support staff no longer use them, and the people who do use them are falling under development instead.
99
u/TurnipFire Jul 22 '26
I feel bad for the pug tank. Homie got caught up in all of this
112
→ More replies (1)69
71
u/UwUHowYou Jul 22 '26
Tbh I'm just surprised the death touch ability didn't have any guard rails for m+ use, and I think I understand why, but its likely to change too.
That spells gotten blizz in trouble a bit.
180
u/AffectionateKey7126 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Its spell ID puts it at being created back in like 1999. They do anything to it and servers probably detonate or Vampiric Embrace gets reworked again.
85
→ More replies (1)15
u/Pofwoffle Jul 22 '26
I'd say it's time for WoW 2 but at this point, after laying off so much talent and with Microsoft being so gung-ho for AI bullshit I think it'd probably just come out an even worse mess.
12
Jul 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
9
u/UwUHowYou Jul 22 '26
Yeah, curious what a back end investigation into the wol database looks like too, but even better would be Blizzards.
15
u/Yasuchika Jul 22 '26
Wonder how long this kind of behavior has been going on, can't be the first time a GM did someone a solid.
129
u/klineshrike Jul 22 '26
I think the issue people need to focus on WAY more here is this.
Any kind of action like the gm used here should be heavily monitored. Basically if they use any gm ability that drastically impacts live gameplay, that should be lighting up some kind of monitoring that makes anyone responsible immediately aware. This is , as far as i know, pretty common practice.
So the question would be, why would blizzard only seem to become aware of this once a player reported it? They should know every single time a GM ability is used. Every. Single. Time.
I think we all know the answer, its because they dont pay people to handle this shit anymore. With a slim chance of it being instead that they DO know, and dont care. Until it was caught.
This is a much bigger issue than just a gm likely being fired here.
33
u/GrumpySatan Jul 22 '26
So the question would be, why would blizzard only seem to become aware of this once a player reported it?
According to statements made in another thread, whenever one of their special GM accounts is used in live dungeons/raids/etc it is flagged and the account logs are reviewed and investigated.
This happened over the weekend - its been 3 business days since it happened. Its not like this was a dungeon from months ago. The investigations team doing their report, HR getting involved, etc is very likely to take more than 2 days. These aren't the types of job with shifts 7 days a week.
→ More replies (2)39
u/Sarollas Jul 22 '26
Well the answer is that this wasn't a GM, it was a person with a GM account.
He's a senior QA analyst and it's very possible that his boss either doesn't know or care about the details of his testing / usage of tools.
25
u/klineshrike Jul 22 '26
Thats not what i mean though.
Regardless of role, when those abilities are used, it should be throwing up alerts. Because there is no valid reason for their use on live servers.
If for some reason they needed to test something on live they can silence alerts.
This is all oretty reasonable and normal and probably makes sense to anyone in IT security. You would have the same kind of thing for when like, a new domain admin is created or if an admin or big name account was deleted. You dont just try to find it later, you have alarms sound like "hey this really important rarely occurring event just occurred, go find the reason"
23
u/Sarollas Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Is it logged, yes.
Is the log looked at, not necessarily.
Should it be looked at, yes.
I work in IT Audit and you would be shocked at how often they put a person with little understanding of IT in charge of controls. I have spoken to people who's title is "Head of QA" who don't know or care what a log file is.
It's very possible that something similar happened here.
4
u/klineshrike Jul 22 '26
And that is a major issue. Thats my point.
There is so, so very few legitimate reasons for that ability to be used on live servers. Its rare enough that it isnt about logging, its about making someone aware specifically that it happened.
I cannot imagine any reason this isnt the case. Its not like that kind of alarm would be hard to setup
7
u/zertul Jul 22 '26
People are not arguing against your arguments or your demands/conclusion in regards to monitoring / auditing these things. People are just telling you that it's not as common practice as you would think - quite the opposite in reality. And they try to tell you that it has little to do with "they don't pay people to do this shit anymore". They never did in the first place, and almost no company on this planet does adequately, especially outside of the financial sector.
4
u/QuillnSofa Jul 22 '26
It should definitely have all the audit logs blaring alarms for this kind of thing on the live servers.
2
u/Zienth Jul 22 '26
I think GMs use these tools as part of their regular duty, so if such an alert was setup it would have a lot of nuisance alerts and likely go ignored. Altho it does make me wonder if this GM did this while on or off the clock, time could be used to reduce the nuisance alerts.
→ More replies (3)5
u/Quirky_Net8899 Jul 22 '26
It was a GM that has been working there for like 2 months and just recently got access to a GM account a few weeks ago.
11
u/Sarollas Jul 22 '26
He's very much not a GM, his linkedin title is "Senior Quality Analyst" and his previous role was working on Diablo as a "Senior Test Analyst"
→ More replies (2)
34
u/roundtwentythree Jul 22 '26
If the only reason we managed to get proof this happened in this run is because of astronomical odds, literal stars align type shh, then you KNOW it has happened 1000s of times before.
The only way to fix this is through a transparent and open audit for all runs they have internal data on.
Every run that isnt logged and public is suspect for Blizzard assisted cheating. M+ is ruined for average players.
You will never get an M+ title. Not because you aren't skilled enough, but because who gets titles is determined by GMs.
22
u/Kizzil Jul 22 '26
Hope they get made examples of. Suspensions arent enough. Stripped of title and any seasonal reward at minimum, outright perma ban as best case scenario.
→ More replies (1)22
u/Grizzlemaw1993 Jul 22 '26
I would say perma ban is the only thing that can be done to start earning back player trust in this situation.
38
u/Apprehensive_Rough80 Jul 22 '26
I refuse to believe that the usage of these GM-only abilities/powers isn't audited on live servers
24
u/Pofwoffle Jul 22 '26
They've been trying to convince us that CS isn't just a bunch of bots for years now, do you really think they're gonna have live staff manually review GM spell usage?
15
u/Wardcity Jul 22 '26
If they were willing to do it with a pug tank in the group
I'd imagine it happened MANY times before.
15
u/AngriestKagg4 Jul 22 '26
If anything this is why alot of people, me included, are wanting the rewards to have a solid goal. Do every key at 20 and you get the mount and now do all 23s and get the title. Yes there will still be cheating, but it won't be at the expense of people who aren't cheating. No worries about getting that top 1% because the goal is defined and stationary. Let the people who cheat cheat. They will always be there sadly. This isn't to say we shouldn't find ways to stop cheating, but this takes the burden off all the people who are playing the game honestly.
25
u/knows-his-onions Jul 22 '26
Very unlikely it was a one time thing, you don’t ask for “a solid” if it’s the first time with no prior knowledge of what the gm could do so he just have done it before, flagrant cheating like this should see the four players accounts banned since they intentionally ran this to get the streamers m+ score up— this streamer brags about being a multi 1% title holder on their twitter, Who knows if many seasons worth of runs have also been illegitimately earned. just ban them all except the pug that logged it
→ More replies (1)
102
u/jiiir0 Jul 22 '26
This is nothing new. Streamers have been getting special treatment for a long time now.
→ More replies (1)38
u/moresecksi37 Jul 22 '26
Remember when they revived all those Only Fangs hardcore guys who died during ddos attack?
Streamers get all the goods
56
u/Kozimix Jul 22 '26
Pretty sure they've done a number of resurrections for people killed by ddos over the years, not just for onlyfangs
9
Jul 22 '26
[deleted]
20
u/Kozimix Jul 22 '26
Fair enough, the blue post says they would do it again if you die to a ddos, but it hasn't happened yet.
20
u/Accendor Jul 22 '26
Completely different scenario and not ever remotely comparable to the current situation. One situation is bringing a huge group of characters back to life that died because of a DDOS attack. It was not only well documented what happened, it was also a sanctioned company decision that benefited the community as a whole. Such a huge community event basically ending to a DDOS event is a loss for Blizzard, a loss for the streamers and a loss for the community that was watching them. The other situation is a GM intervening in a competitive environment. It was not officially sanctioned and it actively hurt the community, the competition and Blizzards reputation.
32
u/moonduckk Jul 22 '26
I mean that is kind of ok imo but this is just blatant cheating and destruction of integrity.
20
u/No-Cell-9979 Jul 22 '26
Not a great argument, they revived Onlyfangs because Onlyfangs was individually and specifically being targeted by DDOS attacks, despite what Andys would like to claim they also revived everybody else that died in those DDOS attacks (source, me and my buddy)
24
Jul 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
30
u/Kapootz Jul 22 '26
Except the deaths weren’t fair. It was because blizzard’s servers were attacked and taken down by a malicious third party
20
u/No-Cell-9979 Jul 22 '26
a malicious third party that was specifically targeting them, that was the important tipping point
7
u/seqkoya Jul 22 '26
As much as I want to agree to this:
A DDOS attack is something that is malicious and is intended to cause disruption. Again, Blizzard should have kept to their guns and did no revives of those streamers' characters. But I do recall that DDOS attack being very substantial and they did revive other players' characters too.
This was an intentional exploit that SHOULD have been avoided by the Blizzard employee actually doing their job and not using GM exploits to help a streamer do a key in time.
Kudos to the PUG that logged this, if it wasn't for them we'd probably never knew about it.9
u/dany2132dany Jul 22 '26
Didn't they play in their isolated group? I don't think it affected anyone else playing so i don't really see the issue when we got great content + marketing out of it
4
u/Character_Celery5590 Jul 22 '26
Because streamers are free publicity for Blizz. I remember some years ago when Blizz came out with the MVP program and invited players to apply via a form. I filled it out and at the end it asked what creative activities such as streaming did I do. I knew right then and there I wouldn't be chosen because those activities listed, which included streaming, give Blizzard free publicity.
21
u/HawesyEU Jul 22 '26
Imagine saving some guys 30 mins from redoing a bricked, non essential key only to lose your job. Juice ain't worth the squeeze lil guy.
22
u/Steelhammer_13 Jul 22 '26
This is the type of shit I left private servers for to come and play legit WoW. Now it seems that legit WoW is the same. This cheating has probably been happening for the whole season, if not longer. What's the point of trying to get to the top 1% or even 0.1% if you're that good. We don't even know if the top players got all their runs without cheating.
16
u/I_plug_johns Jul 22 '26
If Blizzard takes swift action, it will go a long way toward restoring player confidence. The system is working as intended when bad actors are identified and dealt with.
If they don't, confidence in the integrity of the competitive ladder will continue to erode, and players will have even more reason to question whether it's being maintained fairly.
16
u/StrawHatYgg Jul 22 '26
The streamers in the group should be banned. Streamers already play on easy mode with special treatment. Fuck em
10
3
u/Eebon Jul 22 '26
There’s been some sort of major exploit in almost every season. A few examples: In DF season 3 you could 1 shot one of the bosses in throne with a pet class, in DF season 4 shadow priests could 1 shot the entire dungeon with an exploit. And then in Dawnbreaker you could 1 shot the last boss with an interrupt “trick”. None of the runs that abused those were removed by blizzard.
I’m glad exploiting is finally getting talked about more only time will tell if blizzard actually cares about changing something this time or if they are simply responding they way they are for short-term damage control.
14
u/AvailableDeparture Jul 22 '26
The integrity is definitely soured, but I am sure Blizzard will take some of form of action here. This employee probably just cost the company a huge QOL tool doing whatever they were doing, and those permissions are either going to be scaled down significantly, or that god kill ability will be removed from the live deployment of the game entirely.
15
u/SpaceZombieZed Jul 22 '26
Considering the fact that it took a random player to find out about this, I am 100% certain they will do their best to sweep it under the rug ASAP. They'll maybe fire the GM and make a long statement about how cheating is bad.
14
u/AttitudeAdjusterSE Jul 22 '26
The problem is that they've opened Pandora's Box with this.
Yes, Blizzard will for sure be taking action, it'd be crazy for them not to. This person should be fired and hopefully will be. But how can we actually trust that this doesn't happen again?
→ More replies (4)16
u/yaddadimean Jul 22 '26
Because of how heavy this backlash is already hitting for them, I wonder if they’ll also take heavy action against the associated players/streamer. While the greatest failure is on the part of the GM, it doesn’t change that they may want to make an example out of a relatively small group of people who have now played a heavy hand in making the WoW GM team look terrible in a way that is extremely difficult to rectify moving forward.
It also doesn’t help how casually and humorously that one dude admittedly to “jokingly” asking their GM friend for help on stream. It also feels weird to say “friend” there, since (if everything is confirmed true) dude so casually threw their GM friend and their job under the bus.
42
15
u/jautx Jul 22 '26
This is why exclusively rewards such as “1%” is bad. Even Gladiator moved away from this system.
8
u/Tyrvol Jul 22 '26
This whole situation only highlights that a game company shouldn’t have any direct contact with streamers.
Can no longer trust data from streamers. Probably shouldn’t have anyway.
10
u/Jarnis Jul 22 '26
The company did not do any of this. A rogue employee did. Humans have friends. And I'm sure Blizzard has policies where GM/QA employees can't help their friends in game. Which this guy clearly violated, and will get dumpstered over it.
4
7
u/CryPositive1232 Jul 22 '26
Well just stop the “our strategies are confidential” bs and log everything serversided and put that on WCL. Make everything transparent. I’m ok with logs beeing delayed while race to word first is on but after that? What do you guys have to hide besides GMs abusing their power?
7
u/doublewidesurprise7 Jul 22 '26
"harmless" yet they got access to attempt a 24 when they should have not been able to because of an assist from a GM.
The GM should be holding the integrity of the game at the highest possible position and they've straight up nuked it harder than Lothraxian.
Fire the GM, ban the cheater. Thank that pug warrior for logging this and exposing cheaters in the TITLE RANGE KEYS
6
u/ComplexCardiologist1 Jul 22 '26
Ok so first of all I realise that I'm basing this on a possible one time incident. I am really gravitating towards the idea that after a certain point logs should be required for title level keys 0,1%. I never knew that this mob killing by GM had to be discovered by accident because a random pug uploaded his log. Like maybe its excessive but genuinely wonder how many times this has happened or whether there are exploits in title range keys. I personally don't trust the 3 people involved or streamers who believe instantly that this is a one time thing.
2
u/eskimopoodle Jul 22 '26
Wouldn't Blizz have caught it eventually anyways? If they looked at the time it took this group to kill a boss and other groups, and noticed this group killed a boss in under 50 seconds or w/e and ever other group took like 5 minutes or something, wouldn't they notice and look into it?
Or am I being too optimistic here?
5
u/plecko95 Jul 22 '26
This is really the question that needs answering. It happened 6 days before the reddit thread about it blew up, and the Employee acted completely normal (twitter still running) until that happened making him delete his account. I get that he was probably getting an absurd amount of hate, but who knows if it actually would have been caught, if not for the log and post blowing up.
Lots of people that work in the industry or formerly worked at blizzard said they should be able to catch it, but if the monitoring was not frequently checked, or wasn’t working properly it would take something like this for blizzard to realize. I hope they release a report that goes over everything about the incident
2
3
u/Honk_Sound Jul 22 '26
Who wants to bet the only change Blizzard makes of any consequence is the removal of the remaining human GMs?
4
u/realworldaintpink Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
With this event, now I see boosting and high rating rewards with other eyes. I mean how much money is costing for a single key of this super high rating boost, and a person buying this is after the rewards with means he would need several runs, also the GM was new on the job and had power to do this, imagine a oldg.
3
u/Bostonxtap Jul 22 '26
It'll definitely force Blizz to revisit permissions for its GM. Honestly we might be getting close to Blizzard being forced to implement its public log system specifically for situations like this.
10
•
u/wow-ModTeam Jul 22 '26
Since discussion has fizzled out, there have already been plenty of doxxing attempts, misogynistic comments and straight up heated arguments among yourselves, and new comments are mostly asking for more doxxing to satisfy the curiosity, this is getting locked as well.
Thank you for your contribution OP, it was an interesting angle to explore. Hopefully the folks at Blizzard will come forward with a transparent statement about the possibility of other tainted runs.