The best WoW exploiter of all time? See who Advanta chose in this 1-on-1 interview

[Kenneth]

I have been a member of this website since 2012 specifically to exploit in World of Warcraft. One name that always came up over and over with quality exploits was a user named advanta. If you saw a post by this person you knew you would be able to make some gold, get somewhere really cool, or just do some wonky stuff that is a ton of fun. Fast forward to two weeks ago where I got a chance to interview the man himself one on one. It was an honor and before I continue with the questions and answers I wanted to give him a big thank you for his time and effort in this!

What attracted you to OwnedCore in the very beginning?

I was trying some exploration techniques in-game and I think I started searching for information on the edge of the world and GM island. I must have come across the exploration forum here, probably something WizardTrokair did.

Without looking do you remember what your first exploit submission was?

I think it was a trick you can still use in the Battle for Gilneas. You can blink through the barrier into the mine itself, and mind control people using the engineering belt. They come in with you once you've MC-ed them, and can't get out. They remain trapped there for the whole bg. No one took much notice of that, the first one where I started getting any rep was a trick to use remote quests to get to level 22 in a 10-19 bracket bg. That rocked.

What would you consider your biggest exploit submission to OC? (Fixed or Not)

The mage Icicles exploit in MOP. Basically you spellsteal a bunch of buffs off the valkyrion aspirants in the storm peaks in Northrend. That allows you to do millions of damage. The thing the buff fades if you leave the zone. I found that mage icicles could be built up the millions and these did NOT fade when you left the zone. So you could port to raid boss and one-shot them. A bunch of teams had a lot of fun with that one. It lasted several weeks as I posted it to elite. A lot of people got banned.

How does somebody, like yourself, start finding so many quality exploits? In other words what makes you see something & go "I can probably exploit this by doing this, this, and that."?

Mostly through an insane amount of work. I'm talking about thousands of hours of testing. There are tricks which help obviously. You need to know a lot about searching databases and have a good memory for classes of exploits. Generally speaking exploits are more likely to occur when something changes, so I always screw around with anything Blizzard introduced recently. I'm always very interested in items/abilities which have some physical effect, particularly those which allow players to gain height somehow. New items/abilities so often have gamebreaking applications I suspect Blizzard may allow it deliberately to some extent to gain publicity.
It gets much easier as you develop more and more plays because you have an existing body of knowledge to work from. There are specific things I look for-for example I'm forever looking for things where the effects persist through zones, debuffs with positive effects are always worth a look, non-soulbound and non-stackable items often produce interesting effects. Currently the class trial system can be exploited with almost any limited supply or cooldown per toon restriction.

Do you play any games besides World of Warcraft?

Not any more. I have literally zero time left for other games. I've toyed with the idea of doing Overwatch because the game appeals to me and a lot of my Youtube audience have it.

Do you have any hobbies outside gaming?

The usual stuff, like to read, exercise, music, watch films. You need to do at least two hours of exercise daily and a decent amount of non-internet time to focus properly.

How did you come up with your name?

advanta is derived from advantageplayer. An advantageplayer is a gambler who uses scientifically valid methods (eg card counting) to get an edge in casino games. Archvaldor (my youtube name and how many know me on ownedcore) is just a name I came up with because I wanted a ridiculously pompous self-important name for my tiny gnome mage. I sort of imagine gnome mages as having a napoleon complex.

What does the future hold for advanta?

I'm focusing a lot more on gold-making exploits as it gets serious traffic. In the longer term I'm not sure. I started exploiting mainly as a perverse way of getting myself banned permanently from warcraft. Blizzard have punished me by not doing that, though I'm on a final ban. It could happen tomorrow. Then I'm not sure whether I want to level up my toons again. I probably would.Exploiting is very time-consuming and does dramatically cut down on my income through lost productivity. I'm thinking of ways to monetize my Youtube channel. I'm very reluctant to charge for any content. I'm not a fan of things like Patreon. Some people have suggested starting a forum, but that would put me in direct competition with OC which would just be wrong given how much it has helped me.I may write an e-book and see how that goes.

Even though you say you are not a fan of Patreon it is definitely not a bad idea for a smaller to medium sized Youtube channel. As far as exploits go you could release them early to your Patreon pledges or something like that. Are these things that have crossed your mind? If so what about Patreon makes you stray away from it?

I should rephrase what I said. Patreon feels weird to me. It works well for other people. Being a bit older and coming from a culture where tipping isn't particularly commonplace, I have a problem with asking people without offering them anything in return directly, which is a lot of what Patreon is about.

Your idea is actually a rather good one, I don't want to cut people out of the loop who can't afford it, but there may be a case for releasing information I would not currently release at all to Patreon pledges. Some exploits would be fixed instantly if I release them publicly, so if I start releasing them to Patreon pledges
the content on my main channel would be the same.
Even with this I'm very concerned all those people who supported me in the early stages and don't have cash to burn would feel left out in some way.

Do you have any big exploits in the works that we should keep our eyes open for?

Yeah. The warlock has some very interesting plays at the moment.

What keeps you coming back to OwnedCore?

OC has consistently brilliant exploit content posted to it. I would always be curious what was going on even if I left wow altogether. I like to use it as a yardstick for the quality of my own content, you need that feeling of "damn, wish I'd posted that" to keep your motivation up. It is also a great way to get ideas.
I never just re-use other people's ideas-that doesn't interest me, everything I come up with has to be my own, but sometimes you can build on a general principle.

If you could decide the future for OwnedCore what would it be?

I like it the way it is. One thing I like about the exploration forum is its clear tutorial and beginner questions sticky. I imagine it is a little intimidating for newcomers to exploits or possibly other OC from stop work out what is going on, so it might be a good idea to do the same thing there. Another thing I've noticed since my Youtube channel got larger in the past year is that it is apparent lots of people who love the idea of exploits and a site like OwnedCore have no idea it exists. I've got Youtube mail from people saying "Thanks so much for telling me about OC!". Maybe OC needs a social media presence to make people aware of it.

How old are you?

Really, really old. I'll give you a clue. Most people know it as the meaning of life.

You let me know you work from home? Mind sharing some details on what you do for work?

Yeah I work from home. I'm a professional gambler. Mostly nowadays that involves using "exploits" to beat online casinos, bookmakers, even bingo rooms.

The gambling exploit profession. That whole idea is going to get a lot of people intrigued especially here on OwnedCore. Is there anything more about that you can share without jeopardizing your work? (How much you make, what kind of exploits, do you sell these exploits, anything really)

I could write a book on the subject. Actually I wrote two. They sold pretty well at the time, but the info is outdated now.I'd rather not say what they are because I used my real name for those books and have been trying to get my anonymity back.
Basically you find any kind of bet where the payoff is greater than the true odds. Like you get 3-1 on something which happens 50% of the time.

The ways to do this are as numerous as there are exploits.

Online this usually means signing up to multiple casinos and exploiting introductory bonus offers. So, say you sign up to a casino, deposit £100 and receive a £100 bonus. You then to have to wager £3000. I'd bet 1500 each on red and black and roulette, with a small covering stake on 0, and cash out with just under £100
profit. I made a lot of money doing this sort of play in the early years (2000-2005). It got a lot tougher as many people found out how lucrative it was.

The casinos responded by restricting the bonuses to slot games which have a very high house take. Most people quit at that point. I found some tricks to
reduce the risk and increase the profit from slots which are still largely unknown..
For a long while I also did what bookmakers call"correlated parlays". Say an online bookies offers even money on a sports team to win a match, and even money to be leading at half time. You could sometimes make partay bets where the odds of the first event happening are multiplied by the odds of the second event, so in this case if you bet £100 you'd get £300 back. These events aren't actually independent though-the team leading at half-time is much more likely
to win the match, and the bookie will lose a lot money if you keep making bets like this.
One of my favourite plays was a game called texas hold-em bonus poker which had a very complicated optimal strategy. Some elite gamblers figured out you could use a purpose-built computer to beat the game, but there was a problem-it was pretty slow inputting all the data . I managed to train myself to perform
the calculations in my head and could play three times as everyone else-I made a nice score that year with all the bonuses that were being offered for that
game exclusively.
Nowadays, a disturbing amount of money comes from, of all things, bingo. As with warcraft exploits, you do whatever works.

Who do you think is the best wow exploiter or do you yourself claim that title?

I would describe myself as something "hardest working man in the exploit business" or possibly "one of the most all-round knowledgeable exploiters". I don't think there is anybody who spends more time researching than me-you'd have be completely insane. Most people also specialize in say pvp, duping, phase exploits, exploration etc, I don't, I love it all.

In terms of natural talent, no, I'm not the best. Leniox (Imperious on youtube) probably has the most natural talent. Votuus is very gifted. RAOV do some amazing stuff-coding-based hacks I barely understand. Tmanowen, someoneI see as the sort of Godfather of ownedcore always seem to be one step ahead on everything. Jacobskipper produced probably the best pvp exploit videos that will ever be produced. Shiekrunner did some amazing stuff with speed running dungeons. WizardTrokair has been the face of the exploration forum for years. Reznik, who seems to be a model editor now, paved the way for me to some extent by bring exploits to a large number of people. Logan Heath regulary produces exciting content-worth a look at his channel as you'll certainly like it if you like mine.

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

The egg. Some pre-evolved bird that wasn't quite a chicken would have laid the egg that contained the first chicken.

That is all she wrote! Once again I want to say thanks to advanta for answering my questions so thoroughly. He's got a very interesting story and I hope I did it justice with this interview. If you want to check out advanta's work head over to his Youtube channel HERE

If you enjoyed this and want to see more give your thoughts on who should be next!

[HunterHero]

Really great interview! Some great questions and amazing detailed answers from advanta! I can actually feel the enthusiasm for exploiting and what else you do by reading this, and it's made me more curious about trying figure out some exploits myself.

[hackerlol]

This was a great read!
Thanks for the interview and advanta for the insight : ).

[WizardTrokair]

Good read... thanks to OC for interviewing Advanta aka Archvaldor. I've always considered him one of the greatest in regards to actual knowledge of WoW exploiting.
And many thanks to Advanta for thinking of me during this interview. It is humbling and appreciated to be mentioned so long after my retirement.

Also for whatever it is worth, in regards to claims of the "greatest exploiter"... I just wanted to mention that at least two of the names that Advanta drops were heavily taught and guided by an old explorer/exploiter that went by the name GATSBY. He wasn't always in the limelight so not often mentioned in these lists... so I wanted to throw it out there.

Finally... whoa... Advanta is older than the Wizard Trokair?! Not by much... but he is! Learn something new every day!
(Truth is I probably learned that before and forgot... us old timers have horrible memory!)

[Nyarly]

If you enjoyed this and want to see more give your thoughts on who should be next!

Seems pretty clear to me that you now have to do trokair

Thanks for the interviews, keep them coming, it's always a nice read!

[Kenneth]

Good read... thanks to OC for interviewing Advanta aka Archvaldor. I've always considered him one of the greatest in regards to actual knowledge of WoW exploiting.
And many thanks to Advanta for thinking of me during this interview. It is humbling and appreciated to be mentioned so long after my retirement.

Also for whatever it is worth, in regards to claims of the "greatest exploiter"... I just wanted to mention that at least two of the names that Advanta drops were heavily taught and guided by an old explorer/exploiter that went by the name GATSBY. He wasn't always in the limelight so not often mentioned in these lists... so I wanted to throw it out there.

Finally... whoa... Advanta is older than the Wizard Trokair?! Not by much... but he is! Learn something new every day!
(Truth is I probably learned that before and forgot... us old timers have horrible memory!)

glad you enjoyed the read! Thanks for popping in. I guess I have to find GATSBY next for the ultimate interview. Or dare I say interview YOU!

[skipper1]

Thanks for the lovely comment Advanta <3

[hackerlol]

Seems pretty clear to me that you now have to do trokair

Thanks for the interviews, keep them coming, it's always a nice read!

I second this!

[Augu]

Besides from beeing the bext exploiter in WoW, Advanta is a pretty nice Person - i only had a brief conversation with him about buying his exploits and he didn't come off as an elitist prick or anything.

Interesting read on an interesting Person 10/10

[WizardTrokair]

glad you enjoyed the read! Thanks for popping in. I guess I have to find GATSBY next for the ultimate interview. Or dare I say interview YOU!

You won't find Gatsby. He was retired before I was, and no longer checks the forums. You all knew of him though, in one form or another...
As for me, any time, my friend. I try to pop in here at least once a week to check on you guys. Just send me a PM.

Just re-read some of this interview... the gambling stuff is rather fascinating. Great to hear that someone out there can game the game, so to speak.

[c172]

Good read this, never paid much attention to the other participants but this I enjoyed.

Interested if you have any materiel or new books on your gambling exploiting, I have been matched betting for a few years and it's a nice easy £3000+ per year, that often involves casino loopholes (eg Monopoly super money I suspect you have heard of). Please let me know any pointers your willing to share, do you have a pool of others who you work or share with?

[Xecis]

This interview gave me more cringe vibes than watching hillary vs trump debate.

[DiamondStarFall]

nice interview and great work there! exploits r cool!

on a side note, in the last para, it should be a he i guess

[advanta]

Good read this, never paid much attention to the other participants but this I enjoyed.

Interested if you have any materiel or new books on your gambling exploiting, I have been matched betting for a few years and it's a nice easy £3000+ per year, that often involves casino loopholes (eg Msm suspect you have heard of). Please let me know any pointers your willing to share, do you have a pool of others who you work or share with?

If you know about MSM I probably couldn't tell you that much. I've been using the same principle for six years or so with other slots - weirdly I kind of missed out on MSM, I was actually doing that at one of the gamesys joints when I read your post (1KGBP for two hours week yay).
I'm curious about what you are doing with matched betting, it just doesn't seem worthwhile any more to hustle the bonuses unless there is some other AP opportunity as well, it has kind of gone sub-minimum wage. Do you do arbs? I hate all the execution risk you get with that.

The most useful thing I could tell you is that cheat engine speedhack works on almost all casino games. That allows you to do a ton of things that wouldn't otherwise be profitable and makes those which are more so. Please do not repeat that on a gambling forum. Additionally-do you know about cassava?

I work to a team bank with a very sharp, competent guy. I used to hang around a lot at beatingbonus.com and still have friends there but I kind of lost my passion for it when I got into exploits.

[bezerker08]

ah, yes dick rubs and back pats all round my bois