Exorsus, aka Экзорсус, are one of the best WoW guilds in the world. They took down Mythic Xavius, Legion’s hardest boss during its launch period, before anyone else. They were in the top five to take down Helya, the final boss of the Trial of Valor raid that released just last week. It was discovered by Blizzard that they exploited their way into that kill on Helya and they, along with all but two of the other guilds that took her down, had large numbers of their members banned short-term. In a lengthy Reddit post, they explain their decision to exploit, as well as lay out the problems high-end WoW raiders face in pursuit of world firsts.
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The full post is worth a read, though likely only if you have ten years of WoW knowledge under your belt or a lot of patience for googling obscure raiding terms and boss names. In some semi-simpler terms, here are Exorsus’ points:
They exploited Helya, but don’t particularly understand why this was a punishable situation and other, similar ones weren’t. As explained in this reply, things are a little different from the comparisons given.
The Legendary system of incredibly powerful loot that is rarely dropped is hurting high-end raiding, due to optimal items being incredibly rare. There are a lot of complaints about this system from the hardcore and not alike, though it does provide more interesting loot than a pile of stats. Exorsus suggest some sort of system to allow them to target legendaries they want, or moving all legendaries to utility uses that don’t have a massive impact on damage, healing or tanking ability.
They feel that the progress race of each new tier of bosses should be covered more thoroughly by Blizzard, and treated as an eSport. This would help cover the personal cost of the long hours of raiding it takes to master the game, though given it’s twenty folks to a guild it’s unlikely it would be too lucrative for anyone.
TOS Violations, like selling in-game services for real-world money, are the only current way guilds can incentivise players to play the hours needed. This, among other things that are technically against the rules but go unpunished, create a toxic environment.
There’s loads more in there, like the practice of split raiding where every player is required to have a number of well-geared alternate characters so that he guild can spend time rotating players and funnelling all loot drops from easier dungeons to main characters. It’s a fascinating look into what the best WoW players in the world go through for relatively little gain.
Also of note is the breadth of replies. There’s some folks fully in agreement, others ready to dismiss it as problems that don’t affect the vast majority of the playerbase. It’s unlikely we’ll see an official response from Blizzard, but of note is that designing around players like this is almost impossible. A system like legendaries, or the well-received Mythic+ difficulty of dungeons, or the vast amount of stuff to do in Legion is a massive boon to the average player – but for the hardcore, it’s sucking up even more of their time, multiplied by the aforementioned number of alts. Exorsus’ suggestions try their best to avoid this, but the complaints themselves come from players doing obscene things to achieve their goals, without much real incentive.