Imagine that you wake up one day, go to a subreddit for a fantasy game, and unexpectedly get greeted by one shitpost after another, an abundance of NASA mentions, and a general atmosphere resembling Troy bringing pizza to a burning room.
What happened? Well, let me explain.

Necessary Glossary

What is FFXIV?

It's a subscription-based MMORPG that was developed and published by Square Enix with the story set in a fantasy world. Initially released in 2010, re-released in 2013 as a remake "A Realm Reborn", counting four major expansions by now, and still kicking. The introduction is often done by memetic copypasta "Have you heard about the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which includes a free trial that includes the entirety of "A Realm Reborn" AND the award-winning "Heavensward" expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime".

World First?

You see, (some) people are competitive. And what is the better way to show off than to be the very first person (or group) in the whole world to do something, be it solving riddles and puzzles in Destiny 2 or getting the new shiny mount in World of Warcraft. But in MMOs, it's most often applied to the race of finishing new difficult content.
Unlike similar dramas from the aforementioned WoW, World First in FFXIV usually barely have any official recognition (you will see why soon enough) and doesn't include much developers' participation. So, no hastily cutting bosses' health in halves. The dramas are brewed by the very same thing that created and maintained the whole race event: the game's community.

How hard could it be?

In total there are six levels of difficulties in the group content in FFXIV: Normal -> Hard -> Extreme -> Unreal -> Savage -> Ultimate. The combinations are depending on the type of content: for example, dungeons (instanced fight with three bosses and tons of mobs that is designed for a group of 4 people) have Normal and Hard difficulties, while alliance raids (instanced fight with four bosses and a handful of mobs that is designed for 24 players) have only Normal difficulty. Usually, the world first race happens only in the two last tiers: Savage difficulty level for raids and Ultimates that are their own thing. And while Savage has its share of smaller dramas like when your sanity dies with each bite of the boss or 1% nerf accompanied with "git gud" in business writing, today we are spinning the tale of Ultimates.
True to its name, Ultimate is the hardest challenge that requires 8 players to defeat 1 boss to get the shiniest weapon to show off, unique achievements, titles, and maybe some things for in-game portraits. Posed as a "but what if?" scenario story-wise, Ultimates take the already existing fight of the Savage difficulty and then floor the pedal, adding more complicated mechanics, unforgiving DPS/healing checks, tight timers, and dramatic turns of the story.
At the moment, there are 5 Ultimates, with the latest being added to the game merely a month ago:

1. The Weapon's Refrain (Ultimate) (a.k.a. Ultima Weapon (Ultimate) due to the name of the original fight, and yes, it's abbreviated as UWU);
2. The Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate) (abbreviated as TUCoB);
3. The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) (a.k.a. TEA);
4. Dragonsong's Reprise (Ultimate) (a.k.a. DSR, where a typo could cause a bit of confusion due to existsance of the raid Delibrum Reginae (Savage) that was abbreviated as DRS);
5. The Omega Protocol (Ultimate) (TOP and the star of today's show).

TOP is dropped

The day is January 24, 2023. The newest Ultimate is released: The Omega Protocol, the new step in the story of the mechanical lifeform Omega who is trying to comprehend the power of an anime protagonist through the series of battles. And just like that, the race begins.
The start was rough. The previous Ultimate was considered to be the toughest fight in the entire game, and many people expected traditional series escalation. The developers tried their best to reassure that TOP won't be designed to have higher difficulty, however, in the end, the battle turned to be just as hard if not even worse, with its clear time surpassing that of the previous Ultimate.

Stack Overflow

The complexity of the fight aside, there was one minor but important detail that caused a lot of brick walls for players to crash into. Hear, hear, an old issue reared its ugly head from the depths of the 10-year-old code: buffs limit.
From ye olden times there was a limitation of how many buffs (positive status effects) and debuffs (negative status effects) can be applied to an entity, being it a playable character or non-playable entity, from non-hostile creatures roaming around in the open world to bosses in dungeons and raids. Which is 30 status effects per entity at once.
The limit was reasonably high and couldn't be achieved under normal circumstances... or so the developers thought. In fact, the limit was easily achievable even during the earliest stages of the game. All you had to do was either go to the alliance raid for 24 players or hunt a world boss (no limitations for the number of participants whatsoever). 5 or even more players with DoT-centered class ("Damage over time" - a debuff that actively damages the target over a few seconds and may have additional effects like slowness, vulnerability, etc.), various debuffs from the rest, boss's own buffs, and voila, the limit is reached. And once the limit is hit, it prevents any other status effects from being applied to the target, as there are simply no available slots for them.
Eventually, part of this issue was patched out: the limit has been increased for bosses, now including 30 status effects that are both active and visible under the entity's HP bar, and 30 more slots for the status effects that are active but not visible. Unfortunately, the limit was fixed only for the non-playable entities. It was never changed for playable characters.
The leveling progression added new abilities, class reworks reduced the number of applicable debuffs but increased the number of self or party-wide buffs, a new 2-minute meta that required pouring every single beneficial effect at once to achieve the damage output burst, status effects from food and potions, additional content-specific statuses like "Lost Actions" in Bozja, debuffs from enemies... it was a question of time when the limit could be reached on playable characters. And it did pose a problem serious enough to be included in the guides as the players had to periodically run a macro or manually get rid of some buffs to get space for something more useful or necessary at the moment.
Naturally, the playerbase found a way to use the inconvenience to their advantage: hit the limit of buffs on the character so that the instant-kill debuff won't be applied due to a lack of slots. It was patched out by giving the statuses applied by the boss the highest priority. However, in the end, the limit itself still remained the same for the playable characters, rediscovered from time to time when the tank's invulnerability status suddenly doesn't apply right after their health drops to 1.
To see this old issue reappearing in Ultimate was unexpected at best, as the developers usually spend a lot of time balancing and polishing these high-end fights. Even the mentioned 1% nerf in Savage was something of an aberration. Such an oversight in Ultimate raised quite a number of brows with the players questioning the quality of the test group or memeing about the fight being a secret buff for Machinists (a class rarely seen in high-end content due to lack of party-wide buffs that is not compensated by higher base damage). Some also joked about the issue weirdly making sense: the buff limit was reached primarily because of the sheer number of status effects applied by the boss, and Omega, being a quite petty machine, wouldn't be above using loopholes in game mechanics to break the fourth wall and cheese the fight.
As of today, the issue of the buff limit still remains untouched. Teams in Ultimate had to adjust their strategies and group compositions, while the community speculates on the technical aspects of the fix complexity and hopes for changes with the next expansion.

Divine Retribution

Days go by. The Omega Protocol stands undefeated. The progress time now exceeds that of DSR, the hardest Ultimate.
The day is January 30, 2023. Over 5 pm UTC. Japanese team UNNAMED_ tweets about finally finishing the battle and emerging the World First conquerors of TOP, attaching their victory screenshot. They didn't stream, and the video with the victorious attempt is not published yet, but it hardly raises any questions. Streaming is not mandatory after all, as the race event is not supported officially, and it's considered to be a good sport to wait for the second and third teams to finish before publishing your video. The credibility of the team isn't doubted either: they are well-known raiders and were the world first to finish Abyssos, the latest Savage raid series.
Alas, the tweet, congratulations, and victory fanfare aged like milk.
Merely a couple of hours after the announcement, the video of UNNAMED_'s gameplay is suddenly published and starts to circulate. (Original is deleted by now, see the mirror or one of the reuploads)
The video is labeled "Zoom Hack Omega Ultimate", and, well, the name speaks for itself. With help of some third-party plugins, the team zoomed the camera view of one of its members way past the limits available in the unmodded game. Not to mention the huge parser window in the bottom left corner, visible hitboxes, team cooldowns tracker (not to be confused with buff timers), additional timer, and who knows what else. Quite obviously, none of the listed features are available in the game itself.
And as a cherry on top of the drama: the video description lists in-game names of all participants, and the video itself was posted on the new YouTube account whose name translates as "Divine Punishment". According to the account description, it was created on January 28, while the video was initially uploaded and hidden on January 29. The timing and other details lead to an avalanche of theories regarding the nature of this leak. The most popular assumption was about the video being the result of a quarrel inside the team: one of the helpers (additional members of the team who don't participate in clearing 8-men content directly but help by coordinating the team, analyzing the fight mechanics or by other means in exchange for the help with their own clear at the later date) felt wronged by UNNAMED_'s decisions and decided to have their revenge by exposing the entire team.

But how could zoom help?

All teams run the Ultimate "blind" - meaning that they don't know the mechanics of the fight beforehand and have to learn them in the process. This may be quite tricky with many things happening at once, colorful splashes of character abilities and other effects, glowing waypoint markers on the arena, a giant boss model in your face, and other things obfuscating the view. Moving your camera far away negates these flaws and gives the watching helper an opportunity to properly analyze the ongoing fight and to come up with a fitting strategy more quickly.
In TLDR suggested on FFXIV subreddit: imagine having a race through a labyrinth, but you have a friend who helps you navigate with the info from a drone soaring above the maze.

But what's wrong with third-party tools?

Strictly speaking, everything.
Since the game is playable on PC, it's technically possible to install modifications, plugins, or other third-party tools that alter various game aspects however you wish. The term includes everything from outright cheats to harmless client-side changes like texture replacement.
Every single modification goes against the User Agreement, and their usage is not encouraged by Square Enix. However, the developers also tend to hold on to a compromise: as long as the modification is harmless, client-sided (the result of it are visible only to you), and doesn't give you an unfair advantage over other players, they tend to stick to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. This gave some sort of leeway for players to the usage of more decorative modifications like changing the text font in the in-game dialogues, replacing the 10-year-old hairstyle model with a more elaborate one, or simply placing the giant JUICY label on Zenos's ass. As long, as you don't openly show off your modded game, you are not caught and therefore not bannable. And with each new drama even loosely related to modifications of the game, the modding community has +1 to their fear of this equilibrium going off the rails and all mods being banned regardless of details.
In the more grey-ish area are the modifications related to gameplay. Over the years the community came up with many tools to cover the issues and user-unfriendly parts of the gameplay way before they are patched by the developers. The developers usually watch these mods more closely, as they do affect the gameplay and give an advantage over other players. However, they also pay more attention to the issues covered by those mods. For example, there was an issue with the waypoint markers in the new Savage raid: during the fight the arena circles between two shapes, but since the second shape doesn't exist at the start of the fight, you can't place waypoint markers on it. And due to the difference in sizes, the markers can't be automatically transferred from the first arena shape. A special waypoint layout was distributed among the players that somehow placed markers on both arena shapes. Later, in the official letter, it was revealed that the layout was created with third-party tools. However, due to the nature of the issue and the fact that many users may have downloaded this layout without knowing what's wrong with it, only the original creator of the layout met penalties, and the arena shapes were fixed in the game to allow a legitimate way of placing the waymarks.
All of that put Square Enix in a tough position regarding the Ultimate race: the modifications are very widespread, and some of them like the parser (a tool providing the analysis of all fight data such as the amount of damage, healing, shields, etc.) are considered to be a must-have for high-end content. However, they are also officially prohibited. It led to some outbreaks like the official statement after the World First in DSR where the winner published a video of their clear with a third-party tool in plain sight. And as a result of that, Square Enix now refrains from any official recognition of World First race and doesn't congratulate the winners.

The Backslash

With the drama so fresh (literally an hour or two separated the tweet from UNNAMED_ and the publishing of the exposing video) and for an event that lasted almost a whole week, the community reacted with impressive speed.
On a positive note: everything was buried under tons and tons of memes. People photoshopped the screenshot of zoomed view to astronaut photos, or to a screenshot of an FFXIV character that appeared on the moon once, or to an image of a CSGO player caught hacking on her own stream, or (legitimately) zooming their camera really far in other gameplay activities like a mahjong match, or just cracking one space/moon/NASA/zoom joke after another. Or memeing about Dragoons specifically, because the exposing video was from a Dragoon POV, and the class' gameplay revolves around high jumps that on itself is a butt of many jokes.
On a negative note: 5ch, 8ch, and other parts of the community were on a manhunt. Some forms were less harmful, like creating a new sight-attracting character with a pun name and placing them near AFKing player characters of UNNAMED_ team - a somehow common form of protest on Japanese servers. Other forms were borderline harassment like mass reporting for the usage of mods or outright threats of doxing. On an even worse note: it wasn't the first time. Similar events already happened with DSR World First race, when the winners (European team Neverland) were harassed by Japanese playerbase for posting their clear video with mods on. The fact that UNNAMED_ was a Japanese team only added fuel to the flame.
The speculations about the fallout inside UNNAMED_ team weren't doing them any favors either: the rumors about backtracking on the promise of the clear for helpers were still spreading. Although the statement (translation) from one of the team members rebutted those theories, claiming that there was no conflict inside the team, and the footage was intended to be private but was leaked due to unauthorized access to the player's account.
This statement wasn't received well either. "But everyone else does the same" wasn't a good excuse to begin with, and after the DSR witch hunt, many people took it as an attempt to shift the blame to non-Japanese players. Even as Eis, one of the players who took World First in Abyssos Savage with UNNAMED_, announced deletion of their character as an apology for using mods in the previous race, it was considered to be an overdramatic gesture with little real consequences: change of playable character would help avoid being blacklisted by the raiding community, the story skips are available in the game shop, and most of the in-game items can be either transferred via Intermediary or earned anew without much effort.

Disappointed Dad

With the drama so big, the official verdict was a question of time.
On January 31 the game's Producer and Director, Naoki Yoshida, posted the official letter regarding the whole Ultimate situation. According to the letter, not only the developers' team will conduct their own investigation, but the whole concept of Ultimates is questioned. This type of content is designed to be an ultimate test of players, clearable without any additional tools. Seeing as raider teams use them anyway to make the fight easier, the developers don't see much sense in creating new Ultimates.
The exasperated tone of the letter and notion about Yoshida personally refusing to recognize UNNAMED_ as World First opened the gates to the flood of "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed" dad memes.
Later it was revealed (translation) that the spoils of the clear (including shiny weapon, achievement, in-game title, etc.) are being revoked for the whole UNNAMED_ team, but the accounts of the players not directly responsible for the cheats (i.e. not those whos POV was caught on the video with mods on) will not be suspended.

Aftermatch

The drama raged on all FFXIV subreddits for about a week, but eventually faded away, giving place to a new third-party tool drama.
For the raiding community, it was sort of a regular Tuesday, as modding dramas are happening in nearly every race. Even the old UWU didn't escape that fate when the raiders used a mod to handle one specific mechanic with very harsh timing. Although, this time MogTalk (a fan site dedicated to raiding races in FFXIV) completely erased UNNAMED_'s TOP clear from their logs and announced that all future charity raid-related events will have a mandatory streaming caveat.
And a day after the cheating drama, the race of TOP was won by Neverland with 1032 clear attempts.

Can I join anyone's unmodded SMP realm or server. I use java and my discord is Confused_chan#4554.

I turned up into the stream a little while back today, and WittyWix-goku-chan-senpai-kohai was in the process of purging people, including a mod. He said "I'm unmodding you, banning you too." and the chat went batshit crazy, but I have no idea why lol. What could a mod have done to get that kind of reaction?
I'm just a nosy and curious guy that's all, if this breaks the rulz the feel free to delete it. Just wanted to know what went down because it seemed like some moderately serious shit (pun perhaps intended)
Thanks guize, long live Withorian Wixworth

Just comment here orangereds! Come one come all (but remember the tissues)! I will pm you with the battle chat channel on here when I wake up tomorrow.
The battle is at ~3pm CDT (check to see what time that is for you here ).
Hope to see everyone there! We need all the help we can get! This is super important!
EDIT: I fixed it
EDIT2: ChanServ Unmodded me and modded itself, What the actual fuck? one moment while I fix this.