The Nexus Times: WildStar Exploiters Banned .

In an interesting turn of events, Carbine decided to ban a number of WildStar players for abusing a bug that caused Medic DPS to skyrocket last week. There have been numerous bugs in WildStar since launch, and there have been relatively few, if any, bans for exploiting them so far. Most of the skill-related bugs are caused using a series of macros that either effect the global cooldown, resource cost, or cooldown of a specific skill. In this case it appears that the level 1 Medic assault skill Discharge can be used multiple times without triggering the global cooldown, which means that Medics have access to “free damage” that other classes can’t because of how the game is coded. This has nothing to do with player skill or gear, but instead knowing the sequence of keys to push and binding certain actions to macros that cause the bug to happen.

To Exploit Or Not To Exploit, That is the Question

Carbine has openly acknowledged this bug, but most discussion regarding it on the official forums has either been deleted or the threads are currently locked. However, there has been no official discussion about the bans and who Carbine is specifically targeting with them. Some rumors have been floating around that the only WildStar players who are being banned are the ones using the exploit for raid progression. Players from my guild have informed me that it’s safe to use the exploit on raid “farm bosses” and practice arenas/battlegrounds, but any use of an exploit is still potentially risky.

IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER

Members of the Reddit WildStar subforum seem rather split on the decision of Carbine to ban its players for a bug that they essentially put into the game. On one side, players think that because Carbine unintentionally put the bug in that it’s fair game for anyone to exploit it. The players are the customers and any fault by the producers is their own problem. The contrary opinion is that exploiters are vile, scum of the Earth that deserve more than the meager 7-day ban that they’ve been receiving; using bugs to get ahead ruins the fun for everyone else and puts the exploiters at an advantage that only Medics have access to right now.

Regardless of which side you’re on, it’s definitely obvious that the Discharge bug is giving Medics a huge damage advantage. A few logs of abusers have been posted online and a certain Medic was able to obtain 11,540 damage per second on Experiment X-89 with 77.38 percent of their damage coming from Discharge alone. Another Medic in the same raid group obtained 8,554 DPS with 91.23 percent of it coming from Discharge. For those of you not familiar with Discharge, it’s the equivalent to auto attacking in World of Warcraft. Now imagine being the top damage in your raid, by a fair margin, with only using your auto attack. Seems fair, doesn’t it?

Top Guild Leaves Wildstar, Another Stays Put

Voodoo, one of the top Exile progression guilds in WildStar, decided to throw in the towel last week. They were the number 2 North American guild to clear Genetic Archives and had world achievements in Datascape Progression. There had been rumors circulating earlier this month that the guild would in fact quit the game, or at least the hardcore aspects, but they were finally confirmed on September 17^th. While they don’t have any plans to reform, they also said that their disbandment wasn’t necessarily permanent either.

This message was posted on their homepage:

“We love WildStar. Many of us have been playing it for over a year, since early beta. We played so much in beta that even Carbine thanks us in the credits of the game. We are very sad that we have to make this decision, but we feel as though it isn’t worth our continued efforts. WildStar may be the most fun MMO on the market, but not even that is enough to overcome the glaring negatives that continue to plague the game. We hope that the next drop addresses many of those issues and we wish only luck and success upon the other guilds continuing their progression. We wanted Avatus badly, but not this badly.”

In response to Voodoo quitting, Fraya, the Guild Leader for Enigma and current number 1 WildStar progression guild, said that they’ll be sticking around. Fraya admitted that class designs, the leveling system and stats need a complete overhaul, but WildStar brings enough to the table that can’t be found anywhere else. Even with the flaws, he said that Wildstar has the best combat system in MMO history and there are no other games out right now that can rival its depth.

The DPS is real.

He’s also a fan of the dungeons, “this game has, absolutely, unequivocally, the best raid and dungeon team of any MMO ever. I have worked with people like Daelo (WoW), and there is no comparison to be made. The level of competence displayed by these guys is staggering. The fact that despite all the flaws of this game, TT and his team have managed to produce PvE content that is a serious competitor for ‘best raid content ever made’, against content that took Blizzard 5+ years to refine, is goddamn amazing.”

Amongst all the bugs, and how stagnant WildStar has started to become lately, it’s all the more important that the top progression guilds show stability. There hasn’t been a substantial amount of new content released recently and most players are either just logging in to raid Genetic Archives or hoping that Carbine fixes PvP. There’s not a whole lot for players who aren’t involved in either of the aforementioned, which could explain the decrease in subscriptions, but hopefully content drop 3 will fix that issue. I agree with Fraya and that WildStar really does have a lot to offer, but there are a lot of major problems with the game that still need to be fixed. Adding in more casual content and making Warplots more accessible would greatly open up the game to two more demographics. As of right now, all we can do is wait around and hope that Carbine can pull a miracle out of their ass.