Overrated

Overrated was a Horde World of Warcraft guild, based on the US Black Dragonflight Realm. On November 2 2006, the majority of the guild members were indefinitely banned from the game for use of (or directly benefiting from) a third-party "wall-hack", used to bypass content within the game. Before being banned, Overrated was a top Horde guild in the US, having completed all the pre-expansion WOW instance content before any other guilds in their faction and geographic locale, though the legitimacy of any and all of their accomplishments is called into question by their actions.

History
Overrated came about from the merger of two major guilds on the US Shadow Moon Realm, LNC (Late Night Crew) and Bloodsworn. LNC was formed from the most competitive players of two guilds, and Dreamworks Redux. Both guilds merged in order purge "inactive" players from their ranks to allow for faster progression through instances.

Bloodsworn had effectively led the Shadow Moon Realm, and other U.S. Horde guilds over the various realms, in game progression throughout Molten Core and then onto Blackwing Lair, the next "end-game" instance. Bloodsworn disbanded shortly after completing the instance that followed in BlackWing Lair's trail, Ahn'Qiraj. This came as a shock to the gaming community on the Shadow Moon Realm with different reasons for the separation surfacing. It was later clarified that the split was brought about by leadership differences between their Guild Master, Domali and their raid leader Anujit versus the other officers and players. The majority of Bloodsworn players joined Overrated whilst the ousted leaders went onto the Korgath Realm to level new characters with the Alliance guild Death and Taxes.

Once server transfers were allowed by Blizzard, Overrated moved to the Black Dragonflight Realm to avoid some of the hardware issues being experienced by the Shadow Moon Realm at that time. The shift caused them to lose several players for various reasons.

Overrated rapidly progressed, eventually completing the most difficult WOW instance to date, . They were the first US Horde guild to do so.

Exploit
The exploit in question has been referred to as Patch 5. Patch 5 is a third-party data file that can be inserted into the Data folder in the World of Warcraft folder. It removes or alters certain "physical" geography in the (AQ40) instance, allowing game content to be bypassed, giving immediate access to a boss normally well-guarded. Generally, this is known as maphacking or wallhacking.

Reactions
Blizzard

Blizzard systematically banned every account with a RaidID matching either of the two instances spawned where the exploit had been used. When any boss in a spawned instance is killed, players in the instance at that time are locked to that RaidID until such time as the instance resets. All players who participated in either of the raids where the exploit was utilized (whether they had actually installed the Patch 5 exploit or not) had their accounts closed.

Blizzard has made no official comment regarding the incident, but their TOS for World of Warcraft makes it quite clear that the use of (or even directly benefitting from) third party modifications to the WOW client can result in an indefinite, effectively permanent, closure of the account in question.

Overrated
Generally, Overrated has taken their punishment quite maturely. Some players have moved on from the game, others have already created new characters, others decided to wait for the arrival of Burning Crusade to begin playing again. Some are also attempting to work with Blizzard to have their accounts reinstated.

"Let me explain. We are the only US Horde guild that clears Naxx, been like that for a few weeks. People found that the pre-C'thun trash was so painful, that they decided to install some stupid thing that deletes walls or something, and you can just run there after Skeram. I know, we had it coming, blah blah whatever, we know we deserve it...I'm sure they'll try and get it rescinded because it's kind of a steep punishment with no recourse or whatever." - Pantaloons, Overrated member, on the [http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId43425267&sid1 WOW forums]

Community
The response of the WOW community has been varied, ranging from the denunciation of all cheaters, to those who feel the punishment was too harsh, to others who understand why the exploit was used, claiming that the content bypassed was boring, unnecessary and should be removed. There were also plenty of personal attacks and gloating from other guilds and individuals. This also lead to a small meme regarding skipping content as "Overrated".

The Burning Crusade

Many of the players banned from the Patch 5 incident rerolled characters on Korgath, the server with well-known guilds such as Drama and Death and Taxes played on. Overrated lagged in progression compared to other Kel'thuzad-killing guilds, mainly due to players burning out after the level 70 grind. After a large recruitment wave, Overrated reclaimed its spot as one of the top US Horde guilds and top 25 worldwide. Most of their boss kills were within the top 25 and two notable kills were Al'ar and Magtheridon before they were tuned to be killable by the majority of the raiding populace.

On July 25, 2007, Clockwork (http://files.filefront.com/return+of+the+kingavi/;7779188;;/fileinfo.html), Overrated's raid leader, and Shokah, Overrated's guild master, quit World of Warcraft. Most of the raiding members were burnt out and quit as well. While everyone had a different reason for quitting, the main reason Overrated quit raiding was due to Blizzard's lack of testing in their raid content. A thread in the Raid & Dungeons forum briefly discussed this issue while teasing the guild for quitting.

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