It seems Blizzard are going for some bans this week ahead of the raid opening!
What Exploit?
Certain players seem to have been exploiting the Severed Threads Renown and are now getting suspended for it. The bans are reportedly at least 4 days and there are rumblings of certain players even getting 10-day suspensions. It seems the exploits, at least in part, revolved around getting extra pacts for the week:
This was primarily used by Race to World First raiders, but others were caught in the crossfire as well:
While we’re still a week off from the Nerub-ar Palace RWF, Heroic week starts tomorrow/Wednesday. This means the suspensions will have a more limited effect, but the Renown roll-back will work well.
Consequences
We don’t know exactly which raiders were suspended, but there are reports of Method getting heavily hit, and this interesting tweet from Echo raid leader Scripe, as well as Maevy from Liquid potentially getting a suspension as well.
And here’s an explanation from Echo’s Gingi:
There was also a message from Blizzard on the private Race to World First discord explaining the suspensions. There are more than just RWF raiders getting suspended, but Blizzard felt they wanted to explain in more detail to the racers as well, so it’s safe to assume a lot of the top guild players got the suspension.
It also seems at least some of the RWF guilds may be moving their many, many split Normal and Heroic raids back to the weekend, as they wait for the suspensions to clear.