World of Warcraft has been carefully crafted to provide a level playing field for all players. Any activities not intended by game design which affect the economy, the client, player characters or the world itself have a tremendous negative impact on the potential enjoyment for all players. The effects of these activities take many forms including a bloated game economy, server instability, and allowing unauthorized access to accounts, computers, and player data. As such, we take the following issues very seriously and take swift and appropriate action on all players involved in these malicious activities related to World of Warcraft.

• Abuse/distribution of unintended design flaws (bug exploitation)
• Abuse of Game Mechanics
• Use of unapproved Third Party software
• Use of malicious user interface (UI) modifications
• Data stream manipulation and data mining

Below are guidelines detailing what repercussions to expect when we discover evidence of these activities. We reserve the right to evaluate each incident on a case by case basis, and in extreme cases, take action beyond what is detailed here.

Bug Exploitation

We have a top notch Quality Assurance team who tirelessly stamp out bugs and design inconsistencies within World of Warcraft. However, a handful of trained professionals can never isolate and resolve each and every bug in such a deep and complex game accessed simultaneously by thousands of players. You may come across the occasional bug during your adventures. Some bugs are minor and do not affect gameplay, but sometimes these bugs can be used to provide an unfair advantage to certain players or affect the service itself.

Factors included in determining the appropriate penalty:

• Whether or not the exploit is performed intentionally, maliciously, and/or repeatedly
• Whether or not the exploit damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy
• Whether or not an attempt has been made to conceal the exploit's use

If a player is found to have abused/distributed an exploit, he/she may:

• Be given a verbal warning if exploitation is unintentional and no attempt has been made to hide its occurrence
• Be temporarily suspended from the game
• In extreme cases the account will be closed outright

Bug exploitation that we consider extreme includes, but is not limited to:

• Any exploit that has a severe negative impact on a realm's economy
• Causing disruption in service or intentionally crashing a realm/server

While these repercussions may seem harsh, we feel very strongly that this type of abuse has no place within Azeroth due to its negative effect on other players or the service itself.

Abuse of Game Mechanics

The distinction between exploiting bugs and abusing game mechanics is a fine one. While bug exploitation involves the abuse of what is essentially a programming mistake, the abuse of game mechanics is the act of taking advantage of the limitations of the World of Warcraft game systems. Since the line between the sanctioned use and the abuse of game mechanics is sometimes unclear, we prefer to educate players before taking any action against the account being used.

This category includes using/distributing game mechanics in a manner unintended by their design that:

• Damages another character, their gameplay, the service itself and/or its economy

If a player is found to have abused/distributed such game mechanics, he/she may:

• Be given a verbal warning
• Be temporary or permanently suspended from the game in very specific cases

Unapproved Third Party Software

A third party program is any file or program that is not a part of the World of Warcraft software, but is used to gain an advantage in the game, such as increasing your movement speed or teleporting from one place to another beyond what is allowed by game design. It also includes any programs that obtain information from the game that is not normally available to the regular player or that transmit or modify any of the game files. Normally, this classification does not include UI modifications, except those UIs that require an external application to function.

Any external applications that are used in conjunction with World of Warcraft can cause quite a few unwanted side effects. Some of the major possible results of the use of third party programs can be instability of the game to the point that a player "crashes" from the game quite often. External programs can also be used to transmit viruses, spyware, and other unwanted programs into a player's computer. Third party programs can also be used to obtain information from the player's computer, such as account, password, and personal information.

• Be temporarily suspended from the game
• Have further action taken, up to and including account closure, based on the intent of the program

Malicious UI Modifications

We definitely want people to create their own UIs utilizing custom menu configurations, graphics, and even sounds. Anything that can be coded to modify the style and the look of the UI is fair game, as long as the modifications are done to the sanctioned internal files of the game. However, anything done to the UI to gain any sort of an unfair advantage over other players is unacceptable.

If a player is found to have modified a UI so that they gain an unfair advantage in the game over others, he/she may:

• Be temporarily suspended from the game
• Have further action taken, up to and including account closure, based on the intent of the modification

Data Stream Manipulation and Data Mining

Manipulation of the data stream involves a player altering the flow of information between the World of Warcraft servers and his/her computer while data mining involves a player extracting information from said information that is not intended to be public. Data stream manipulation can be the alteration of either the incoming information or the outgoing information, and can be as minor as the manipulation of one byte of a packet, or the "sniffing" of packets for any reason.

If a player is found to have altered the data stream or performed any data mining, he/she may:

• Be temporarily suspended from the game
• Have further action taken, up to and including account closure, based on the intent of the data manipulation

IMPORTANT

• Repeatedly violating any area of the Terms Of Use, including the areas detailed above, will often result in temporary suspension from the game.
• A violation of any of these categories could potentially overlap with another. In situations where this is the case, we will default to the most severe infraction and take action appropriate to that category.

The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG, and the key words are "Massively Multiplayer." Abusing exploits upsets the game balance we have worked so hard to achieve and unfairly affects those players who do not to perform such exploits. We look to you, the players, to help us make exploring Azeroth enjoyable for everyone involved.