A number of World of Warcraft bans have been issued due to players abusing an exploit involving a leveling potion. The Draught of Ten Lands is a potion sold by Provisioner Mukra in Dazar’alor that makes players a little bit stronger and increases their leveling for an hour. In total, all of a player’s stats are increased by 10 and the amount of experience gained is increased by ten percent. However, a number of players have abused an exploit allowing them to use the potion multiple times. These players have found themselves banned for as long as a month as a result of using this exploit.
The buff granted by the Draught of Ten Lands was supposed to only stack once; that is to say, drinking a second potion should just reset the cooldown. Unfortunately, a bug unintentionally allowed players to stack multiple buffs from the Draught of Ten Lands: two potions would give a twenty percent experience bonus, three would give a 30 percent bonus, and so on. Quite a few players took advantage of this exploit and some World of Warcraft bans have been issued to balance the scales as reported by Wowhead.
Players on the /r/wow subreddit are reporting bans from 2–31 days due to abusing the Draught of Ten Lands. The two or three-day bans aren’t a big deal, but the longer bans will have unfortunate consequences for the affected players. Many (if not most) of the banned players will be unable to participate in this weekend’s Mythic Dungeon International event. Somewhat ironically, this weekend’s leg of the event is focused on a series of time trials. Players with more severe bans are liable to miss the first week of the Crucible of Storms raid.
Gamers are always looking for an edge (especially in a grindy MMORPG), but these World of Warcraft bans show the consequences of exploiting a bug to make that happen. If you stumble across a similar exploit in World of Warcraft yourself, it’s probably best not to use it lest the same thing happens to you.
