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I wasn’t a fan of many decisions Blizzard made back in ‘06, which is why I stopped playing World of Warcraft (WoW) for eight months. Admittedly, Blizzard’s track record in ‘07 was much better, as they did a better job of balancing classes, fixing issues, and bettering the overall game experience. That’s why when I read about Blizzard’s declaration that an ingenious “trick” in Arena is an “exploit”, I had a sudden flashback.

In summary, the “exploit” is an example of Hunters giving one of their Arena teammate’s names to their pet. This way, when a member of the opposing team writes a macro to target “JohnDoe” (e.g. the name of the Hunter’s Priest friend), the Hunter’s pet may be targeted instead, since targeting rules dictate that the closest unit with the matching name is targeted in cases where more than one unit has the same name.

In reality, all this “exploit” does is break macros customized for the current Arena game. I would be more prone to argue that this type of macro is an exploit, rather than the method for getting around it. In fact, I would prefer to see targeting of enemy units in Arenas by name, via macros, disabled entirely. At the very least, renaming a Hunter’s pet re-establishes a fairer playing field, and yet only helps one ally, not the whole team (unless we’re talking 2v2 games).

I’m not convinced that most WoW Arena players are even all that macro savvy, and I’m not sure those that are should have this large of an advantage, when unencumbered by Hunter hijinks.

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