World of Warcraft guild uses exploits to get world ‘first’ on the game’s new raid, gets banned, puts its name backwards and does it again

WoW’s new patch, Undermine(d), opened the gates to its new raid recently. Which means, as is tradition, a race to Mythic world first has begun. While guilds have been wearing their keyboards and MMO mouses to the bone to have the honour of being the first to punch Gallywix and his dumb tophat into the stratosphere on the raid’s hardest difficulty, there’s been a jester doing a silly little jig in the hardcore raider’s court.

Introducing RAoV (Random Acts of Violation) Quality Assurance: A guild who, around five days ago at the time of writing, somehow beat Mythic Gallywix in gray (the lowest quality possible) gear. Obviously, given how the game works, this was an exploit. Blizzard very quickly stamped things out, as community manager Kaivax explained:

“We immediately began an investigation into these unusual kills, and we detected a group of new accounts using an exploit to cast an internal spell to kill Mythic raid bosses, including Chrome King Gallywix. Our security engineers quickly moved to put a stop to the cheat and [took] action against the accounts involved, and we have cleared the Hall of Fame to await the rightful winner of the [race to world first]. Thank you to everyone who reported this. We will continue to employ the utmost vigilance about fair play in World of Warcraft.”

Then, yesterday, they did it again, on a fresh batch of accounts and a guild named “ecnarussAeR ytilauQ VoAR” which, as you might have surmised, is their guild name backwards. In an act of bold-faced smartassery that’s almost impressive, one rules violator by the name of BadLuckMax wrote on their RaiderIO (a popular website used to track raid stats): “[Quality assurance] is really hard”, before quoting Kaivax’s post on the forums.

Congratulations RAoV Quality Assurance on world SECOND Gallywix! from r/wow

While players on the game’s subreddit have spotted the profile of a one BadLuckMax, considering it proof of an illicit third clear, what’s more likely is there’s been some confusion over the character’s home realm—being of a different one to the clear that popped up in the Hall of Fame yesterday.

However, since The War Within, cross-realm guilds have been available, so it’s entirely possible we’re looking at an echo of a cheater, here. Lingering around Blizzard’s systems, yet to be scrubbed.

What his profile does tell us, however, is that RAoV (or VoAR, I should say) managed to slay all eight bosses of the raid with the exploit. BadLuckMax also snagged several pieces of ill-gotten Mythic gear, including the unfortunately named Rushed Beta Launchers boots which, being leather (and thus useless on a Paladin) feels like a brutal jab at Blizzard.

And, look—responsibility says I should tut tut and wag my finger, and I feel bad for Blizzard’s besieged devs (and QA department) but there’s something about this entire saga that’s quintessentially World of Warcraft. Nevermind that the guild’s namesake, RAoV, is dubbed after an exploit and hacking group that was shut down six years ago. WoW has always had an incredibly organised base of trolls ready to stir the pot for kicks, and the tradition endures here.