It’s only February, but we have already a good candidate for the Pink Pigtail Inn award Guild drama of the year of 2010.
In less than 24 hours Ensidia didn’t just get the world first kill of the Lich King, they also got their achievement removed and a 72 hour ban, since it was judged to be the result of an exploit.
One of their prominent members, Muqq, wrote a rather agitated blog post about it.
When I first saw the title, “I just got banned and I liked it”, I actually assumed that he took the whole thing as a gentleman. Maybe this would be a humble confession, where he made clear that they had no idea that this bug was an exploit, but where he also expressed his understanding, since it’s important to keep the game fair, with strict rules? Ensidia might be a victim in this situation, but for a good reason.
However, when I finally could read it, it turned out to be a classic, angry rant, as a matter of fact a complete rage quit. He’s done with the game, and takes this incident as an opportunity to quit altogether. It remains to see if more will follow his example or if he’ll reconsider once the 72 hours are gone and he’s had some time to chill down a bit.
Should they have known?
I can definitely understand his disappointment. The thing is that the ban doesn’t only deprive them of the title and achievement, which they've worked insanely long and hard to get. The bigger problem is that they’re locked out from the instance and the heroic modes for yet another week, and will fall behind their competitors that are going for world firsts.
The question is if they had any reason to think that their use of bombs was an exploit. I’ve been told that any engineer will use those things as a part of their rotation, and if that’s the case it sounds a bit harsh to me. How were they supposed to know that the frozen platform or whatever it was, shouldn’t rebuild? It’s not as if Blizzard hands out a leaflet on beforehand telling us every detail about the mechanics, asking us to report any deviation from it.
As one of my more outspoken guildies put it:
On the other hand: if you’re in the position of Ensidia, you’ve got a reputation to protect and every reason in the world to be cautious. Didn’t they hear any warning bells ringing: isn’t this a little bit too easy?
In our guild we always pay attention to those bells. We’re not fighting for any world or even server first kills, nevertheless we want to do this right. No one should ever be able to come and claim that we didn’t get our kills using fair play. In the Northrend beasts encounter in ToC some guilds used to put levitate on every player to make it easier to avoid the fire bombs. We never did. Our guild leader was very clear on that point. Even if it had never been stated anywhere officially that this wasn’t allowed, we’d rather be safe than sorry. The strategy wore the smell of exploit, so we wouldn’t use it. Period. And I’m honestly glad about this very strict non-exploit policy.
I’m sorry Ensidia weren’t as cautious as we are. For believe it or not, I’ve taken a liking in those cocky, ûber skilled elitist jerks of players. I guess I’m a bit biased because of their Swedish and European origin, but they're sort of “our guys”. One reason is probably their website. Reading the blog of Kungen, you can see that those guys are more lighthearted than you would expect. They seem to be in it not only for the money. And they’re serving the community, generously posting guides and answering questions from Average Joe who asks their class leaders to have a look at him in armory and tell him how to gear and spec. This kind of commitment is impressive.
I sincerely hope they’ll pull themselves together and make an effort to grab the world first heroic clearance, even if the odds now are against them.
And yeah, deep down I think I feel sorry for them. A little bit.
In less than 24 hours Ensidia didn’t just get the world first kill of the Lich King, they also got their achievement removed and a 72 hour ban, since it was judged to be the result of an exploit.
One of their prominent members, Muqq, wrote a rather agitated blog post about it.
When I first saw the title, “I just got banned and I liked it”, I actually assumed that he took the whole thing as a gentleman. Maybe this would be a humble confession, where he made clear that they had no idea that this bug was an exploit, but where he also expressed his understanding, since it’s important to keep the game fair, with strict rules? Ensidia might be a victim in this situation, but for a good reason.
However, when I finally could read it, it turned out to be a classic, angry rant, as a matter of fact a complete rage quit. He’s done with the game, and takes this incident as an opportunity to quit altogether. It remains to see if more will follow his example or if he’ll reconsider once the 72 hours are gone and he’s had some time to chill down a bit.
Should they have known?
I can definitely understand his disappointment. The thing is that the ban doesn’t only deprive them of the title and achievement, which they've worked insanely long and hard to get. The bigger problem is that they’re locked out from the instance and the heroic modes for yet another week, and will fall behind their competitors that are going for world firsts.
The question is if they had any reason to think that their use of bombs was an exploit. I’ve been told that any engineer will use those things as a part of their rotation, and if that’s the case it sounds a bit harsh to me. How were they supposed to know that the frozen platform or whatever it was, shouldn’t rebuild? It’s not as if Blizzard hands out a leaflet on beforehand telling us every detail about the mechanics, asking us to report any deviation from it.
As one of my more outspoken guildies put it:
“There are no exploits in the game. Full stop. Period. End of discussion. There's only retard designers and good players. If retard designs a building and good player uses bomb which does siege dmg, who in this case should get the "ban"? Any person with any common sense would fire that stupid designer so fast he'll be doing mcdonals free games for the rest of his life.”Warning bells
On the other hand: if you’re in the position of Ensidia, you’ve got a reputation to protect and every reason in the world to be cautious. Didn’t they hear any warning bells ringing: isn’t this a little bit too easy?
In our guild we always pay attention to those bells. We’re not fighting for any world or even server first kills, nevertheless we want to do this right. No one should ever be able to come and claim that we didn’t get our kills using fair play. In the Northrend beasts encounter in ToC some guilds used to put levitate on every player to make it easier to avoid the fire bombs. We never did. Our guild leader was very clear on that point. Even if it had never been stated anywhere officially that this wasn’t allowed, we’d rather be safe than sorry. The strategy wore the smell of exploit, so we wouldn’t use it. Period. And I’m honestly glad about this very strict non-exploit policy.
I’m sorry Ensidia weren’t as cautious as we are. For believe it or not, I’ve taken a liking in those cocky, ûber skilled elitist jerks of players. I guess I’m a bit biased because of their Swedish and European origin, but they're sort of “our guys”. One reason is probably their website. Reading the blog of Kungen, you can see that those guys are more lighthearted than you would expect. They seem to be in it not only for the money. And they’re serving the community, generously posting guides and answering questions from Average Joe who asks their class leaders to have a look at him in armory and tell him how to gear and spec. This kind of commitment is impressive.
I sincerely hope they’ll pull themselves together and make an effort to grab the world first heroic clearance, even if the odds now are against them.
And yeah, deep down I think I feel sorry for them. A little bit.
46 comments:
Hiya!! lurker on your blog for sometime, decided to put in my 2 cents for this post :)
I think it's really not fair to Ensidia in this case. Exploit? it's a designer flaw that should have been tested before being pushed out to the market. To suddenly declare it an exploit when the rules of the game have not even been explained clearly is a very obvious sign of bad GMing. It's a bad habit in table top RPGs as well :(
If so, then stars should also have their title and achievement stripped as well, wasn't it part of an exploit to use game mechanics to stun the mobs permanently?
TLDR; it's not fair to Ensidia :(
“There are no exploits in the game. Full stop. Period. End of discussion. There's only retard designers and good players. If retard designs a building and good player uses bomb which does siege dmg, who in this case should get the "ban"? Any person with any common sense would fire that stupid designer so fast he'll be doing mcdonals free games for the rest of his life.”
This.... This, a hundred times.
Its really a bitter irony that we have gotten into a place where a game company bans someone because of not playing the game the way they "meant" to make it playable...
Transpose this into any other RL situation and you'll get an even bitterer taste in your mouth.
It all spells lack of professionalism from Blizzards part. And its not the only place they screw things up. Think of all the overkill hit-fix class nerfs they do, after the new patch was on the PTR for months.
Ya know ... if you've been playing the game for a long time, and are part of an elite raiding guild with a worldwide reputation ... Ima gonna say you know an exploit when you see it. To claim otherwise seems ... disingenuous.
And to use it in a situation that has such big implications ... reckless.
Nevertheless, the ban seems a little harsh. Take back the achievement and reset the instance, give them a chance to prove they're worthy of the achievement for realsies. But if they miss out on the chance to reclaim it, it's a bit of a shame.
Ensidia was playing to win. This I respect.
And yes engineers have the saronite bomb in their normal rotation (at least our shaman dps engineer has or had as he switched guild).
There were no warnings "do this and you will be banned" beforehand. And saronite bombs are part of the game, of course people will use them, especially top players who care about even the slightest dps increase.
This reeks of bad testing on the part of blizzard (don't know for sure, but I think the encounter was not tested on the PTR) and blizzard decides to shift the blame to the players.
To be honest the whole ICC raid seems to be bug-ridden (rogues not seeing the traps on their mini-maps, saurfang bug of yesterday, rotface slime bug to name a few) and somehow this has been made the players fault.
It's like giving people a rule book to some live-action game. Discovering that people are doing something the designers of the rules hadn't thought of and winning as a result and then saying to these people they are disqualified for breaking a rule that wasn't in the rulebook in the first place.
Ensida had a blueprint for how the fight should go. They killed it once on ten man without abusing this exploit, and had access to Blood Legion's kill vid for further confirmation.
Between the cropping of their 10 man kill shot to black out the chat log, and their refusal to release a video, plus their claims that they didn't really affect anything that made the fight difficult, they sound almost exactly the same as Exodus did when they exploited their way to Yogg no lights. And Ensidia wound up getting the exact same punishment. Blizzard's email to muqq was very clear that the exploit was done with the intent to cheese the encounter, which leads me to believe that someone said something stupid inside the game client, where communication can be tracked by Blizz.
Also, Lifedeathsoul, Stars did not cheese the encounter to get their title. They didn't perma stun the mobs on Alone in the Dark. You're probably thinking of Paragon, who chained Holy Wraths on heroic Anub'Arak. however, Paragon did not recieve a title for their efforts.
I feel bad for them on this one, if they went in with their usual rotation and only found out later that it was considered an exploit.
I wonder how many other guilds had been trying the 25 man fight using the same bombs -- most of them I'd guess.
It does feel as though Blizzard is making an example of them.
Not sure if this is true or not, but apparently Muqq's post is a parody of a Tigole EQ post.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22748963498&sid=1
Love the blog, disagree with the ban. At least reset it and let them attempt it again with the knowledge that using the bombs is an exploit.
“There are no exploits in the game. Full stop. Period. End of discussion. There's only retard designers and good players. If retard designs a building and good player uses bomb which does siege dmg, who in this case should get the "ban"? Any person with any common sense would fire that stupid designer so fast he'll be doing mcdonals free games for the rest of his life.”
Obviously written by an individual who has never worked in the IT field or written any code of significance.
If you want to play a game which cannot be exploited at all, you will end up playing a game with a limited number of options, say Tetris. But even for Tetris, I am confident I could edit my score while playing the game.
Hugmenot
I disagree with the ban, and achievement removal. This smacks of the Four man Leviathan incident. I don't like it.
The main thing here is that they had already killed him in 10 man. They KNEW the Throne wasn't supposed to regrow. Maybe they didn't know what was causing it (they aren't the coders afterall), but they could have stopped attempts when they realized it.
They chose to continue, then kill Arthas, then announce he was dead...
And never mention that the fight was bugged.
No sympathy here.
@Okraine -
"Transpose this into any other RL situation and you'll get an even bitterer taste in your mouth. "
People have found bad coding in many places, and have paid the consequences for taking advantage of them. Mostly I'm thinking of banking transactions where funds appear larger than they should.
People taking money in that situation have been hunted down and imprisoned.
Now, maybe the bankers responsible for those errors were fired, I don't know. But then, maybe the Blizzard programmer who made this error was also fired, we don't know.
It is impossible to have an exploit in client server game if you dont modify the client. Sorry. they did something legit - used saronite bombs. It had (un)intended consequences - so they achieve something. Stripping them of the achievement and reseting the raid id is the best solution.
So yeah - I feel sorry for them.
Larisa:
Thanks for taking this to the light. It really does suck for Ensidia.
I agree with you, and we run our raids similar to yours. If it smells like an exploit - it is.
A couple of my guildies wanted to try 25M FL back when the exploit was still in game. All thee of us Co-GM's agreed, and told them as much - if they got punished (either a perma or temp ban), they were out of the guild. No questions asked. We dont tolerate that sort of stuff.
However, that being said, *if* and only *if* ensidia did not know it was happening (read - chat logs), then I really do feel bad for them. 25man encounters are extremely chaotic - EXTREMELY - and especially on a new fight it is easy to miss something. But its hard to say that Ensidia, one of *the* top guilds missed something.
I have a sinking feeling that they did know what was going on, and they continued using it. And that being the case - they get no sympathy for me.
I think the piece of the puzzle we are missing is HOW the Saronite Bombs repair the floor. Does it come back whenever a Bomb is thrown, or do you actually have to throw it onto the broken part of the floor?
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Ensidia never knew what was causing the floor to repair until the hotfix announcement. I think it quite possible, for example, that in their attempts to work out a strategy, they found that when they tanked Arthas next to a broken part of the floor it mysteriously came back, and, while they couldn't really figure out why, they decided to tank him next to the broken parts of the floor anyway.
"There are no exploits in the game"
Sometimes there are very clear mistakes. One time me and a friend found perma-spawning mobs on the road in Stonetalon Mountains - we killed the mobs and there they were again, you hardly even broke your rotation. We killed them about 5 times then realised it was kinda a cheesy way to level so we reported it to the GMs and moved off.
Sometimes the bugs are game-breaking. In Diablo 2 you could exploit the game system if you did something then crashed your client. So people crashed their clients over and over in order to cheat. And that wasn't really stupid design, just something that's inevitable with games that store data client-side.
Regarding Ensidia I think each case needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. If someone was dumb enough to say in the in-game client that they could cheese it and the rest agreed to do it that way then yes, they deserve a ban.
If you believe you're cheating but still cheat you can't act martyred after.
There are not exploits in a client server? Do you know what an exploit is? Exploiting is taking a glitch or a bug of some sort and using it to your own advantage.
What they did was an exlpoit.
Whether they knew it was is the question. Blizzard was the one who implemented the ability for this happen and they never realized it would. The use of Saronite bombs are in your average rotation to anyone who wants the DPS increase. To not tell them to remove it from their rotation is not their fault. If Blizzard really has a problem, unbann them, and reset the raid. Let them do it again, this time with out the exploit. If they really are worthy of the achievement then they can do it with out tue use of the bombs. If not, well, too bad for them.
I don't feel too bad for them. As many have said, it's a little unbelievable that they did this encounter without realising that something was off.
World first kills tend to be heavily scrutinized. They should have known better.
Using a Warlock's Imp to teleport almost straight to the Underbog's Black Stalker was clearly an exploit, and yet until it was fixed I frequently saw players in Trade and/or City chat announcing that they were getting a group together with the intention of doing just that.
Using Wall hacks to get to Bosses is also clearly an exploit, but even the top Guilds have been known to resort to such tactics to get World Firsts.
Using Saronite Bombs to rebuild the floor after (I assume) Arthas destroys it (didn't Ganondorf use this tactic in A Link to the Past?) could hardly be called an exploit.
Was buffing up with all manners of Pots and Scrolls (until the change where you can only use one of each type) an exploit? No, it was a creative use of game mechanics that Blizzard clamped down on without issuing bans.
Forcing your Imp to attack the Black Stalker so you got teleported through a wall bypassing almost every Mob in the Instance? Exploit.
Using a readily available in-game item (an expensive item, but readily available nonetheless) to rebuild a shattered floor? Not an exploit, but rather a prime example of poor coding and testing.
Should Ensidia have known that using Saronite Bombs to regrow the floor was an exploit? Hell no! Considering Saronite Bombs are a staple item in any top Guild's Engineer's rotation, my initial thoughts would have been along the lines of "What an awesome way to make Engineering useful during a Boss fight, rather than just more DPS."
Now if Blizzard's Testers had done their job properly and tested the encounter using the same techniques a top Guild would have used (or actually used a top Guild to test the encounter), then the mystery of the regrowing floor would have been noticed and resolved prior to going Live. But Blizzard didn't do that.
Blizzard's programmers erred when they coded this encounter, and Blizzard's testers messed up by not discovering that the programmers messed up.
Ensidia are being punished for what is clearly a huge Fail on Blizzard's behalf.
A better 'punishment' would have been stripping them of their loot, achievement, World First title, etc, resetting their Raid timer, while pulling the encounter until it could be fixed.
Essentially resetting Ensidia to where they were before they went in.
Alas this is Blizzard's game and Blizzard's rules, and what they say goes.
It might have been strange if they did not realize that the encounter was a bit too easy. Sure. You and some commenters are right about that.
But stop and think for a moment. Even if they did think it was strange, what could they have done? They have 25 players they would have to scrutinize if they did something wrong.
Is it really reasonable they should look over every spell, every item, every food, every buff the entire raid has (perhaps even rotations) just because Blizzard fucked up and created a buggy encounter in the world's largest game? Ensidia doesn't know how Blizzard programs things. And neither do we.
Honestly, this all seems like a retroactive punishment. Ensidia admitted to using exploits in the past, and despite general outcry, they were never banned. Blizzard drew the line here.
Given their understanding of the fight on 10-man, they knew something was amiss on the 25-man fight. Rather than stop and risk losing that world first, they took the chance and kept going. And why wouldn't they? They've never been punished for exploiting in the past, so the odds were actually in their favor. They gambled on Blizzard turning a blind eye and lost.
I read the post, and then I read the comments by Xanwryn, which pretty much (imo) ripped his arguments to shreds.
I think the tl:dr response was 'get a life'!
Let's not forget that not even a year ago, when another raiding guild (Exodus) for using an exploit on a World-First Yogg-Saron Acheivement, it was Ensidia that called them out & whined until Exodus got the Acheivement removed & the raid members temporarily banned.
So, while one can argue that maybe the circumstances are different, No one should be saying that its just a bad developer, especially members of Ensidia. (On that logic, Exodus would not have been banned & had their Achv removed.)
The are simply getting the same punishment they called for last summer. You reap what you sow.
The ban was unfortunate, but Ensidia's reaction is the sad thing. Given the opportunity to step up to the challenge, prove their excellence and back their statement that the Lich would die with or without the bombs, they (or rather Muqq) choose to act like a child denied a stolen sweet.
Very bad form, imo.
I said it elsewhere that Ensidia brought this on themselves. They set the example previously. They had to know that the encounter was not working as expected, and even if their 15 engineers didn't know what was causing it they could have easily stopped doing the encounter and asked a GM if this was the intended behavior and whether or not they would be banned. It's known that they have contact info for several GMs and devs at Blizzard, and it's known that they were being watched.
So they could have been prudent. They chose risk over safety.
It does suck that there are this many bugs in the game, and that there are grey areas. But it's a known and reasonably well-communicated policy ahead of time.
And honestly? After their crap with C'thun, Hodir, Mimiron, and how they QQed after Exodus's Yogg-0 kill, I don't really mind seeing them get this end of the stick.
It was an exploit and they deserved their ban. The bombs REBUILT the platform, not destroyed it.
I don't know if they did it intentionally, but they must have seen that something is messed up.
The clear thing would be leaving the instance, announcing it on their website that they are not trying until the encounter is fixed.
Every program have bugs. If you use a bug, you are exploiting. This was NOT clever use of game mechanics, as bombs were obviously not made to BUILD anything.
The issue is not that they used the bombs. The whole problem is that they threw the bombs clearly at the collapsible part where no one was fighting. Why would you do that if not to exploit?
I'd have to see what excatcly the bombs did in the encounter to fully understand if it was a noticible bug, or something that was supposed to happen that just got speed up.
(and if it is in anyway possible to tell that it is the bombs that did it)
In regards to Muqqs post. He did take the high-road.
Please read the last post here: http://www.legacyofsteel.net/oldsite/arc27.html
Its Tigoles post on his old mmo complaining about major mistakes in the game he used to play before he left. Almost word for word its a parody of this.
It should really hit BLizz where it hurts to be honest. Back in those days they used to rave on about how they where gonna change things from everquest, and have guys from the other side of the fence make games for players ect ect. It was extremely well-played by Muqq. I loved it.
Ok, here's the issue that the glitch causes with the mechanics of the fight, and why it's not "One of the easier parts of the fight", as Ensidia claimed.
There are two major factors in the third phase of the fight that begins with the destruction of the outer rim of the platform. There are large persistant AoE effects called Defile, which eats up about 30% of the reduced platform, and grows larger everytime someone steps in them. He also spawns waves of 3 Valkyr, which grab a player and drag them to edge of the platform and throws them to their death if not DPSed down.
By not having to deal with the lack of the outer rim, Defile will only take up about 15% of the avaiable space, making it much easier to deal with. More importantly, the valkyr, instead of throwing their victims off the edge, throw them where that edge should be. That space is now occupied by more of the platform. This means that you can completely ignore the adds as nothing more than a temporary annoyance to three players, and burn the boss.
The end result is exactly the same as when Exodus exploited the Immortal Guardians to render Yogg's third phase trivial.
I'm with your outspoken guildie on general principle.
These cutting edge players who break your game are your greatest asset as a game designer. Then you can make it better and fix the problem. You just don't punish these guys. You hire them and get them to test your game, with a harsh NDA if you must.
If they break it *again* when it goes live, it's the dev's fault for not testing it enough.
Here, I'm speaking as a developer who wants to make great games. If the game I make are broken, I want to know how and why, so I can fix them.
He can't wear some title above his head to show off to everyone in Dalaran how leet he is, so he quit the game. Now that is hilarious.
Do I care? No.
Tell your guildy he or she is a complete idiot who should think a bit more.
The underground miners, teleporters, bots, item duplicators; they're all just taking advantage of "poor design'. An exploit is an exploit whether you intend to find it and keep using it or stumble across it and keep using it.
People need to stop blaming others for what is ultimately their own choice, their own action.
Blizz screwed up, someone else took the fall. Pretty much sums up this whole thing.
I think they knew if was a break in what is considered normal. They should have known better. However a ban is not right. Take the title and achievement away, but don't stop them from playing on.
Let them prove they can do it the right way.
I like Ensidia. I wish them well and was happy for them when they got their world first. But ... I think Gevlon, a few comments above, put it best, no need for me to re-state it.
The very, very least they should have done - fine, grab your kill, do your screenshot, but then come out immediately and report weird behaviour straight away, to Blizzard and on your website. Instead they waited until the hotfix was announced to throw their hands in the air and exclaim "oops, we had no idea". It smells.
Also, consider the opposite course of action on Blizzard's behalf. The suspension may be debatable (personally I think it's rather exaggerated), but consider the achievements would not have been revoked. What message would that send to the player base? When you find an exploit, use it as long as you can? Would it not have been a spit in the face of guilds like Larisa's, who put an emphasis on doing things the "right" way?
For those of you thinking more along the lines of "we (Blizzard) take responsibility" - well, there is no responsibility to take. Arthas (especially in normal mode) going down one day sooner or later really doesn't change much in their grand scheme of things. The only ones hurt or disadvantaged would have been the competing guilds. And "you can't win unless you find the loophole first" is not a nice message to send.
Yes, in an ideal world there would be no loopholes, bugs or exploits to begin with. But this is not an ideal world. It's our world, the real one. And people who nerdrage and call game designers, programmers and developers "retards" do not tend to get in my good books. In fact, they tend to get into my "has not the faintest idea of the complexity of software systems, and no respect for the work of others to boot" books. Welcome, both to Muqq and Larisa's unnamed guildie, make yourself at home. Not that you care in which of my books you are, but still.
I agree with your guildie. As long as you do not hack away at Blizzards code or intercept your internet messages anything should go.
This is a clear example where Blizzards quality department did not find a bug.
A more proper solution in this case would be to fix the bug and take away their achievement.
@All: thank you all for your very well thought out comments! This really sparked quite a discussion. It’s not like MMO Champion, sporting 1100 comments, but it’s still too many for me to reply to each comment as I normally do. And besides I’m just as torn in this matter as the community is, so I really find it hard to take a clear position. I tend to agree with the one who spoke last. The issue is far from black and white and I can approve of the arguments coming from both sides. I can understand why Gevlon thinks they should have realized something was wrong, but I can also agree with Tesh, saying that the developers didn’t do their job properly and that it’s wrong to punish Ensidia for this.
Either it was just a bug or a clear exploit, I think that there’s a solution that most of the people who care about this sort of stuff would have agreed on. If Blizzard considered this a serious bug, they could have taken away the kill from Ensidia, offering them the possibility to redo the encounter during the same reset, without using the bombs. I don’t think either side would have been particularly upset about such a way to act. Instead they chose to go on with this very harsh punishment, which has far further consequences than a three day absence from the game.
Maybe Ensidia are just cheaters, not worthy our admiration or sympathy as some of the commenters think. But I don’t want them to be that. I want to believe. I want to have icons to look up to or to pity, whatever, but to follow from the distance, amazed and tickled.
The funny thing is that people like the Ensidia players couldn’t care less about me. I wouldn’t say they despise me, but they hardly would know or care about my existence. I guess I’m just a bit softhearted. A slightly sentimental lady, running an inn where we like to hear stories from far away times and places, stories about heroic deeds and sometimes about the extremes. Even if it’s just an illusion.
I wouldn't say that Lar. As a matter of fact, i'm dead certain they know about your site - and do not dispise you ;)
But that is for another time.
If someone leaves their car un-locked, then someone steals that car, it can be said that the car should have been locked. But that does not excuse the thief who stole the car. Yes, the bug should not have been there in the first place, but Ensidia should have known better than to exploit it. "Gee, we didn't know ... " from an uber guild? Sorry, I don't buy it.
I do not doubt Ensidia knew what was happening. I'm also fairly convinced they used this mechanic intentional. And since the mechanic was a glitch/bug/expliot they do deserved loot and achievement taken away. What I don't really agree on, is the 72h ban. Without any prior knowledge of the fight, how was it possible to know if it was, in fact, the intention that you had an engineer "rebuild" the platform. And that perhaps was one of the things that made the normal and heroic mode different. Given the way it was done, it was relatively easy to conclude that probably wasn't the case. But we've seen odd fight mechanics before, so it's a possibility non the less. Please do not start to compare it to 10man version. in a 25man version, you can expect an engineer to be present - not so much in the 10man.
I do believe they should've had their RaidID reinstated with as many tries left as if they've failed to kill Arthas in their "kill" (i.e. if they killed him with 11 attempts left, they should get an ID with 10 attempts left). This would put everyone on equal stand, and Ensidia just had to bite the bullet with their attempts wasted on the exploit.
Too many people take this game too seriously.
I originally felt sorry for them when I thought they weren't exploiting but now I do so I don't pity them.
@Zaph
I think the car thing is almost a bad analogy. I know where I live, if you leave your keys in your car, it's not grand theft auto if someone takes it, but joyriding, the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor is the keys being left in the vehicle.
I'm not too sure how hard they would have to work to do the bug, how much effort, or how many engineers thety had to take to do it. If they purposely stacked the raid with engineers to exploit it, I think that's a different matter than their one engineer being like 'look, this does this!' and continuing to do it.
If it's the former, that's a lot of work to exploit a bug, if it's the latter, if a single engineer can do it, then I would have to say it's bad design and lay fault with the designers.
Is it still wrong to take the car with the keys in it? Yes. Is it nearly as bad as breaking a car window, hopping in, ripping the steering column apart, hotwiring it, then taking the car? I have to say...no.
Should a punishment have happened in my opinion? Yes Should it have been the rolfstomp they got? I don't believe so. I think stripping the title and kill and loot away was more than fair. A very big slap on the wrist with the 'you should have known better, but we did screw up' Not a 'look what you did?! You took our perfectly good bossfight and found our one bug, and that means you are bad, bad players.'
Just want to remind those morons that call the WoW programmers all kind of names that they are HUMANS. and the fucking HUMANS make MISTAKES. If from thousand of variables somehow the saronite crap was overlooked then we have a BUG. Planes have crashed because of bugs, this incident is nothing.
As for the Ensidia not knowing it's a bug, well, they lie. When you throw a destruction device and something is rebuilding there is a BUG. When you throw an item and an encounter becomes 10x easier there is a BUG. And you really know that after 100000 raids and being no. 1 in the WORLD. So maybe they shouldn't have been banned for the kill, but they are well banned for being damn LIARS
@Claud
I really hope my comment didn't come across as a big dig at designers, I'd hate to look at the dependancy list in WoW. I'd almost rate it at operating system complexity, yes they're human, yes they make mistakes. But it's still a mistake on -their- part. And while the person who took advantage of it is still liable, the person who caused it should be -more- liable. Taking responsibility for ones mistake is far more important than blaming the person who got off better for it.
If a bug caused a plane wreck would they be like 'well the people flying took the chance?' or would the families be prosecuting the crap out of the person who made the mistake? I think I know which would happen in this day and age.
The issue isn't 'that blizzard designers are terrible' it's that 'the blizzard designers screwed up, somebody took advantage of it, and they got both sides worth of punishment so they could save face with the final encounter of wrath.'
@ Holly
I agree that perhaps my analogy was off, due to levels of severity. To clarify my point, for me it boils down to what's right and what's wrong. Playing by the rules = right. Cheating = wrong. Just because an opportunity to cheat is available, doesn't make it right.
Doing what's right has rewards and doing what's wrong has
consequences.
There are those that would not call it cheating, but they would not be the people who DID do it legitimately. They would feel cheated, and rightly so.
This is a 25 man raid.. That means any one of those 25 people could be causing that bug. Now I know they probably did notice the bug, but how the hell would they be able to tell it eas coming from the bombs. If someone had mentioned the bombs I'm certain they would stopped but since they didn't I think Blizz had no right whatsoever.
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