http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/battleground-exploits/

Part of the problem with this discussion is Ensidia themselves. Another part is that this is about bragging rights and ego. But the deeper, more fundamental question that Cass goes after is the important one: why can we do things in a computer program that are “not allowed”?

Very thought provoking stuff, Cass. Good work.
Cynwise’s last blog … Destro Warlock AoE Grinding

Also, Arcane Missles are terrific for taking down flag carriers in WSG, especially in the 19 bracket. Start them just as the FC is about to lose LoS and you can kill them outside your flag room.
Cynwise’s last blog … Destro Warlock AoE Grinding

My personal, *moral*, choice is that learning how to beat an encounter the hard way is more rewarding. That doesn’t make me right. And them wrong.

@The Renaissance Man You’re saying that Blizzard new about the Saronite Bombs/Contruct problem in ToC? That just makes me even more disappointed that Blizzard didn’t test this part of the encounter prior to releasing it. I still think Ensidia are being taken to task for being, well, gamers.

As far as that subject, you’ve said all I could say, but better. But, here’s something to muse about:

When talking about it in guild chat, one of the guild members became incredibly defensive when speaking about Blizzard and Ensidia, though there were no personal attacks toward either party, just a discussion of the “bug” itself. I had no idea we were arguing until she declared she was done yelling back and forth with me.

a) How trivial does your tactic make the fight? Let’s say you wiped 10x on all bosses before boss C and with your new tactic you oneshot boss X with everyona alive?

b) How creative is your tactic? Remember Mennu the Betrayer, the first boss in Slave Pens? You could kill his Fire totem and be blasted, or you could ignore it and get mediocre AoE damage. Or you could kite him away from the totem. These are all valid ideas, but what if a single spell of one class would have let his totem explode and take him damage? Like… bring a Frost Mage, he does 2 Ice Lances and boss drops dead. According to your logic: Woohoo, we creatively beat the game. Always take a Frost Mage, instant Badge. It’s SO different from a normal fight, this can’t be intended.
And yes, I’d suggest they better hotfix it instead of banning people.

But in this case, it’s a clear bug (or so I heard). If you, in HoR, could blast the Ice Wall away with Saronite Bombs – ok, bring an Engineer to make the encounter easier, it makes sense. But, on The Lich King, using Saronite Bombs *restores a crumbled platform* by bombing it – this has to be a bug.

Still saying I’m not sure if the ban was ok, but not seeing this as a bug, and not reporting it is just very weird.
Armagon’s last blog … No news is good news? Why yes…

A lot has been said on the use of exploits and what is one. How can you know for sure that something wasn’t left to be used? By some of the nay-sayers definitions the use of a geared 80 to run a lower lvl toon thru a dungeon is an exploit. I doubt the developers meant for people to get a “freeride” thru the dungeon by a character that can single-handedly defeat all the mobs and bosses.

What about being able to run up the ramp in PoS after Ick and Frick to avoid two rows of mobs?

Ensidia put in the time and effort and used resources that exsisted within the game itself to beat the Lich King. Period! They didn’t modify code, use a bot or anything else.

What about addon’s? We all use them, but Blizz developers didn’t build them into the game. They allow them, but encounters are made “easier” with them. So to follow the nay-sayers opinion anyone who uses them is using an “exploit”. So time for you to purge them and play the game “as the designers intended”. Have fun with the UI raidframes!

Before you claim that Ensidia had no way of knowing about the interaction between terrain constructs, you should look at this post, by one of Ensidia’s officers.

http://www.ensidia.com/mek/blog/567/

In that blog post, Mek tells about the last time terrain constructs were used in a raid. That was the floor in ToC, which the Lich King smashes to send you down to Anub. The same rogue who used the grenades in ICC found out that he could smash the floor before the Lich King could in ToC by throwing a Saronite Grenade. To make sure it was the grenade, they repeated it seven times.

The root of the issue is that the established rules of the game, the ToS and EULA, specify that it is against those rules to knowingly use any sort of glitch in the coding of the game to circumvent aspects of an encounter. So the question is not weather or not Ensidia glitched the fight, the question is if they knew they did. Blizzard stated in the email sent to Muqq that they thought it was certain that they knew what was causing it, and that they were using it with the intent of cheesing the encounter.

Keep in mind that GMs can monitor any thing said in game. So it’s likely that the GMs noticed somebody saying something in game to indicate that. This is reinforced by the shifty behavior and outright lies that Ensidia has been throwing out since the incident.

If you look at Ensidia’s ten man kill shot, they intentionally blacked out the chat log.

They did not bring up the exploit until it was already reported and hotfixed by Daelo, at which point they claimed that it did not significantly affect the difficulty of the fight, when in reality, it trivializes the most difficult phase of the encounter.

When asked to provide a video of the kill to show that they didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, like throw bombs at the ledge away from the boss, they refused. A member of the guild, Tuns, showed up on mmo-champion and said that they didn’t release a video because there was no one frapsing the fight. The notion that a guild of Ensidia’s ability does not fraps every progression attempt is, to be perfectly frank, insulting. He then compounded the issue by lying outright, claiming that the guild never frapsed any of their first kills, not yogg, not algalon, not anything.

Currently, the fraps of their first Yogg kill, and first Algalon kill are sitting on youtube at this moment, along with many other of their first kills. The nice thing about the achievment system is that when “Realm First: Celestial Defender” pops up on the screen, you can’t claim it was a later kill.

They tried to claim ignorance of the encounter mechanics, a claim that would hold some merit, were it not for the fact that they had already killed the encounter as intended on ten man, and had access to Blood Legion’s ten man kill vid, which provided third party confirmation of the fight mechanics.

Add all this up, and it makes Ensidia look very guilty.
The Renaissance Man’s last blog … Fail of the Lich King