Blizzard nerfed this WoW item, but players found an even better loophole that allowed them to travel across the planet every 2 minutes

I'm pretty sure it was World of Warcraft where I learned the phrase "exploit early, exploit often" whenever players discovered something Blizzard probably didn't want them to. Buying items for cheaper than they sell for was a common one, but there have been worse things, like slaying hundreds of frogs for a shortcut to godhood.

Usually these things get fixed, players cry about Blizzard "detecting fun" and removing it, and everyone moves on. But things don't always go as smoothly, like what just happened with this new item that was introduced with the recent expansion launch.

Blizzard must've thought it solved the problem when it first dropped a hotfix for the Personal Key to the Arcantina item on March 6, but players quickly figured out a loophole that made it even more useful than before.

Article continues below

By its description, the Personal Key to the Arcantina is supposed to teleport you to the new social hub in Silvermoon City and then back to where you came from. The intention, I think, was to give players an easy way to visit the new area regardless of where their hearthstone is set to return them to. This backfired as soon as players realized the key was effectively a unique hearthstone to Silvermoon City with a 1.5 minute cooldown timer (as opposed to the regular hearthstone's 30 minute cooldown). All you had to do was use it and then walk out the door into the city.

This is what a WoW player would consider overpowered: The ability to travel to the main city of the expansion every few minutes. Silvermoon has portals to every other major city in the game, and almost every new activity in Midnight starts there. And this is exactly why Blizzard swooped in with a hotfix to change how the key works. Instead of letting you just exit into the city, Blizzard made it so you're teleported back to where you came from as soon as you walk out the door.

This did not go over well with all the players who had been hopping across Azeroth using the new key technology during Midnight early access. A lot of the usual comments about Blizzard nerfing fun came up in response, and some players were convinced it was changed right as full Midnight access opened up to punish people who couldn't play earlier.

Meanwhile, clever players figured out the fix was actually a mistaken buff. The key went from being a pseudo-heathstone to Silvermoon City to a teleportation device that could take you almost anywhere in the game. The trick was to queue up for a dungeon (with NPC allies), enter it, use the key to teleport to the Arcantina, and then walk out and get teleported to the outside entrance of the dungeon in whatever zone it was located in. Any area where a follower dungeon existed could be teleported to in a few seconds, saving you loads of travel time and opening up a ton of possibilities.

A couple of days later, Blizzard came back with one final hotfix. This time, there seems to have been a compromise for all the players who were upset over their magical key being taken away. The key still teleports you directly to the Arcantina, but now when you leave you're taken back to the Silvermoon City inn. Blizzard also increased the cooldown from 1.5 minutes to 15 minutes, effectively giving everyone a free teleport to the city that's roughly equivalent to a regular hearthstone (with a buff from your guild). Anyone with the key can freely set their hearthstone to teleport them somewhere else now that they have a reliable way to get back to Silvermoon.

The Arcantina key saga is finally over and the note it ended on was more positive than I anticipated. I didn't expect Blizzard to turn it into a second hearthstone, especially given how quickly it got rid of that functionality with the first fix. The final solution gave players what they wanted in the first place without making it too powerful of an option.

Now I just need Blizzard to reconsider how it's handling housing items and the premium shop—a place where a compromise, like being able to buy duplicate decor with gold instead of real money, would alleviate a lot of the frustration players have at the moment.