A wide-reaching series of WoW Dragonflight tailoring suspensions handed out by Blizzard have now been overturned by the developer of the fantasy MMORPG, as it admits that many players may not have even realised they were taking advantage of a tailoring exploit. The WoW Dragonflight profession offered people a way to craft certain items much more frequently than initially intended, but with little indication that this crafting bug was actually an exploit.
Many players on the WoW Reddit and Blizzard forums shared emails from Blizzard stating that they had been banned, in most cases for one or two weeks, for “exploitation of game mechanics.” After some digging, it became apparent that the issue was with Chronocloth Bolts and Azureweave Bolts – items that were supposed to have long daily cooldown timers to prevent players from making more than a handful of them each day.
However, the cooldown was being reset early – seemingly triggered by numerous random activities, with some reporting that simply joining a group could cause it to come off cooldown. Players noted that there was no clear indication in the crafting menus and tooltips as to what the intended cooldown period was, so players seeing it off cooldown may have, in many cases, just assumed that it was ready to use again.
In some cases, players who did realise that the cooldown was bugged said that they had reported it as such to Blizzard, and yet they were still hit with bans for using it before they noticed. Others were simply perplexed why they had been banned at all, in many cases not even realising that there was a potential problem.
Fortunately, it appears that Blizzard has accepted culpability for this particular confusion and says it has “reversed most of these suspensions, so that only the most egregious cases remain penalised.” So if you were actively going out of your way to farm as many of the items as possible, you may find that your account is still temporarily locked out – but most players who were affected should be okay to resume playing.
WoW community manager ‘Kaivax’ explains, “After further investigation, we came to understand that some of those we suspended likely didn’t have a deliberate intent to exploit and were simply doing something that appeared to be naturally available.” They add that “As a result of this, we’ve heard a lot of feedback about the crafting UI and tooltips therein, and we’re looking into improvements that we can make there in a future patch.”
Getting dinged for an exploit you used by accident is already a slightly touchy subject, but when it becomes clear that the game’s menus don’t even make it clear that something was amiss, reversing those suspensions seems like the correct move.
The WoW Dragonflight quest log just got its first big buff since the launch of Burning Crusade. If you’re traveling to Azeroth’s Dragon Isles, be sure to check our pick of the best WoW addons for Dragonflight to ensure you’re having the best time. You can also take a look at our WoW Dragonflight tier list for the best classes right now, along with a guide to WoW Dragonflight talents to better understand the new systems.