[WoRBot]

This has certainly been a controversial day so far. Unfortunately the latest news is about Exodus admitting to exploiting Yogg-Saron for their world first completion of Heroic: Alone in the Darkness. Exodus has been suspended for 72 hours for the exploit, and there's a very good chance the loot / achievements / titles from the kill will be stripped as well. On the bright side, this means that the world first is still up for grabs once the encounter is made a bit more realistic.

The rumors are indeed true. We have been suspended for 72 hours for:

Offense: Abuse of Game Mechanics
Details: Circumvention of normal combat mechanics to defeat the Yogg-Saron encounter inside the Ulduar raid instance.

In our many attempts at trying to figure out a way to defeat Yogg zero watcher, we found a way to use bugged game mechanics to make phase 3 easier in zero watcher then one watcher.

Yogg-Saron Hotfixes

Quote from: Daelo (Source)

Immortal Guardians are now able to target players in the "illusion room" of Yogg-Saron with their summoning ability. This hotfix has been fully deployed to all regions.

We're also in the process of deploying a hotfix for an issue with Immortal Guardians that could cause them to pause their movement before reaching melee range. This fix will also prevent the Immortal Guardian from running away if their target is stunned.

[lora]

oh well serves em right

[Promethean]

I honestly think that it's better off that they did it and let Blizzard KNOW that it existed then let bugs float around the game completely unchecked. Even telling Blizzard HOW to do it wouldn't be enough since some things literally come down to code breaking/restructuring. But still, exploit is exploiting, and honestly to think that Ensidia (or any other "super topend guild" really) is COMPLETELY innocent of exploiting is naive at best.

[Rohs]

Rofl 72 hours ban for playing the game? Blizzard say exploit, i say Working as intended. They didnt use any 3rd party addons or change anything, they just played the game.

[fizyx]

Rohs said:

Rofl 72 hours ban for playing the game? Blizzard say exploit, i say Working as intended. They didnt use any 3rd party addons or change anything, they just played the game.

Yeah.... that's retarded. Any strat that uses evading mobs to kill the boss is clearly an exploit. An exploit doesn't have to change anything, or use 3rd part addons/software, it just has to EXPLOIT a flaw in the game. 1. Evasion is intended to make things like LoS wall hacking a mob impossible. 2. Any mob evading in the fight will reset the fight for that mob. 3. Using evasion intentionally to avoid mob damage/abilities is clearly exploiting both of the first 2 statements.

Also, I read the whole Exodus statement, and I'm rather disgusted. I hadn't heard of some of these supposed Ensidia exploits, but all I see are unverifiable ad. hom. attacks, allegations about things that were obviously out of Ensidia's control, and attacks against methods that EVERY top tier raiding guild used at some point in the game. (To me, using flower power wasn't an exploit at all. Perhaps this is because when I started playing, stacking buffs from odd sources was par for the course. What's the difference between using the FR buff from BRS in MC, and using Flower Power on Hodir? There is none. Blizzard doesn't want raids to HAVE to use buffs, and so buffs like flower power will be removed.... but calling them an exploit is pure self serving BS in my opinion)

I don't care who wins, I just like seeing world firsts... but Exodus needs to grow up. Perhaps Ensidia needs to grow up too ( I haven't been following the drama except for this post), but either way, man up, admit you blatantly exploited clear game mechanics, and let it go.

[Rohs]

Well blizzard designed the game to work the way they made it so they can't blame their fuckups on someone else. It would be another thing if they just removed the loot, titles and achievments because blizzard failed to make the encounter, but instead they ban people who makes their tactics work.

[Jilor]

fizyx said:

Yeah.... that's retarded. Any strat that uses evading mobs to kill the boss is clearly an exploit. An exploit doesn't have to change anything, or use 3rd part addons/software, it just has to EXPLOIT a flaw in the game. 1. Evasion is intended to make things like LoS wall hacking a mob impossible. 2. Any mob evading in the fight will reset the fight for that mob. 3. Using evasion intentionally to avoid mob damage/abilities is clearly exploiting both of the first 2 statements.

Also, I read the whole Exodus statement, and I'm rather disgusted. I hadn't heard of some of these supposed Ensidia exploits, but all I see are unverifiable ad. hom. attacks, allegations about things that were obviously out of Ensidia's control, and attacks against methods that EVERY top tier raiding guild used at some point in the game. (To me, using flower power wasn't an exploit at all. Perhaps this is because when I started playing, stacking buffs from odd sources was par for the course. What's the difference between using the FR buff from BRS in MC, and using Flower Power on Hodir? There is none. Blizzard doesn't want raids to HAVE to use buffs, and so buffs like flower power will be removed.... but calling them an exploit is pure self serving BS in my opinion)

I don't care who wins, I just like seeing world firsts... but Exodus needs to grow up. Perhaps Ensidia needs to grow up too ( I haven't been following the drama except for this post), but either way, man up, admit you blatantly exploited clear game mechanics, and let it go.

I'm not an Ensidia or Exodus fan. But that's just pure fanboy loving for Ensidia there. Dragging flowers halfway across an instance to fight a boss with them chilling out there...and comparing that with MIND CONTROLLING mobs in BRS to use a buff? I mean, seriously? There's no comparison. There's a reason Blizzard changed the flowers and then changed the Hodir encounter. Why? They didn't want people exploiting like that.

And just because you "hadn't heard" of their former exploitative ways doesn't make them untrue. Face it, people do whatever it takes to be the best in all aspects of life, even in a video game. There has always been questionable tactics in play in various kills world first and other wise. I don't think it makes Exodus or Ensidia wrong. But blindly choosing one side over the other is just sad. And overwriting their exploits as perfectly fine is just biased.

[Inirit]

Rohs, your logic is horribly flawed. Blizzard did not design the game to have exploits in it. Exodus knew it was an exploit, they abused it and did not even announce it, and they deserve their punishment.

[Futeko]

Read their post, felt sorry for the guys, up until their "anti-europeans and yay America" propaganda. I don't care wether or not other guilds have been exploiting, it's just so wrong to go nationalist on that. Feel so narrow-minded. 72hr ban ? Serves 'em right.

[Rohs]

From the post on their forum:

We discovered this mechanic on a wipe, and decided to see if we could actually get it to work. The first attempt after that wipe, we realized it worked, and went with it and killed it on that attempt. WE ALSO FILED A FORMAL BUG REPORT ON BLIZZARD'S WEBSITE.

They find out it worked, killed it, told blizzard its bugged. Fine if they remove loot and achievments, but banned is just retarded.

And they get banned for using game mecanics? Did Nihilum/Ensidia get banned for "using game mecanics"? Noo, just read the post for reasons why.

[Crusherix]

Read here: http://ensidia.com/c...nity/post/2265/

Before you infect World of Raids any further pls read all the posts made in that url... pretty sums everything anyone would ever be able to say

[koenigsegg]

Oh, so THAT's how you become world first. "Hi, I robbed a bank and now I'm calling you to admit that I was the one that robbed your bank. Can you please not put me in jail? I noticed that there was no guards. You need to have guards!"

What happends then? Yeah, they get a penalty for it, and all money goes back to the bank. Doubt they keep their loot.

[Theik]

Using flower buffs isn't the same as exploiting mobs into evade mode.
One is exploiting (if you're purposely making mobs evade, you're exploiting, no matter if you're simply 'standing on an edge so they can't reach you' or 'standing in another room and trying to draw their attention'.)

Flower buffs were just clever use of world buffs. Back in the old days, it was what made the hardcore guilds stand out. You'd fly all over Azeroth gathering up as many world buffs as you could get before going in to loot and pillage. That isn't doing something that is fundamentally cheating. Blizzard doesn't like it because they're trying to get rid of the timesink behind raiding, so they remove things like that, but it's not exploiting.

[Sparkledoom]

Theik said:

Using flower buffs isn't the same as exploiting mobs into evade mode.
One is exploiting (if you're purposely making mobs evade, you're exploiting, no matter if you're simply 'standing on an edge so they can't reach you' or 'standing in another room and trying to draw their attention'.)

Flower buffs were just clever use of world buffs. Back in the old days, it was what made the hardcore guilds stand out. You'd fly all over Azeroth gathering up as many world buffs as you could get before going in to loot and pillage. That isn't doing something that is fundamentally cheating. Blizzard doesn't like it because they're trying to get rid of the timesink behind raiding, so they remove things like that, but it's not exploiting.

No, it's really essentially the same. They used mechanics for that fight that are not supposed to be used in it in order to complete it. There is no difference. If Blizzard knew ahead of time that a guild would go in and use Freya trash mob buffs to exploit an encounter, do you honestly think they would've allowed it? No. It's the same thing. I'm not a fan of any of these top end guilds. However, I'm also not a fan of injustices either. The same rules that apply to Exodus seem to not apply to their European counterparts in Ensidia. Punishment for all or punishment for none.

If you still count the flower buff kill as clever use of game mechanics, though. Here's a thought. Healing aggro is generated by effective healing done. The healer in Exodus was gaining tons of threat on those mobs through healing. Normal mechanic. Is it not clever to be in such a position where the extra mobs can not reach you? Does that not make it a clever use of game mechanics as well?

[Endless]

Sparkledoom said:

No, it's really essentially the same. They used mechanics for that fight that are not supposed to be used in it in order to complete it. There is no difference. If Blizzard knew ahead of time that a guild would go in and use Freya trash mob buffs to exploit an encounter, do you honestly think they would've allowed it? No. It's the same thing. I'm not a fan of any of these top end guilds. However, I'm also not a fan of injustices either. The same rules that apply to Exodus seem to not apply to their European counterparts in Ensidia. Punishment for all or punishment for none.

There's a huuuuge difference between spellstealing a buff that's here to be spellstolen and using gamebreaking tricks to skip a third of the fight. With the pollinate buff, you do more dps, but you still need to tank Hodir and heal the tank and the raid, avoid the shards, flash freezes, stand in the buffs etc... Obviously the devs hadn't thought pollinate through and hadn't marked it as unstealable, and it was questionable for them to use it, but then, they hadn't thought Hodir through and had made it impossible (it had just been patched to be harder). By evading the guardians on the other hand, you just have to nuke Yogg without having to worry about placement, healing, life drains, empowering shadows... There's just remembering to turn to not lose sanity.

Quote

If you still count the flower buff kill as clever use of game mechanics, though. Here's a thought. Healing aggro is generated by effective healing done. The healer in Exodus was gaining tons of threat on those mobs through healing. Normal mechanic. Is it not clever to be in such a position where the extra mobs can not reach you? Does that not make it a clever use of game mechanics as well?

Evading mobs has NEVER and will NEVER be a mechanic you use to beat a boss. Using it isn't clever, it's stupid at best, malicious at worst.

The other big difference is that on Hodir, Ensidia flat out said they used pollinate to beat an encounter that was simply impossible to do at that point. After their revealing it, both pollinate and Hodir got patched so that you can't spellsteal pollinate anymore AND so you can beat Hodir without needing 40k dps from your mages. Exodus on the other hand took their sweet time admitting they exploited. "We got lucky" was what they first said.


And for the record, I didin't like it that Ensidia used pollinate, but they came clean about it. Exodus tried to pass it as legit.

[Geschan]

I just want to know what would happened, if Ensidia found the exploit first

[Jilor]

I'm not going to lie. It's ridiculously amusing to me that everyone who defends Ensidia's Hodir exploit is like...it's ok, because they admitted to it. Really? Jesus, go play the game for yourself sometime. You're not in Ensidia. Why so much pride to protect them? If they are the bad guys, will your world end? Both guilds were wrong. No matter if all of Ensidia stopped playing today or Exodus or any other top end guild. Someone would come replace them.

Remember when DnT died? Admittedly, they finally announced most of their retirement from the game once the guild was far beyond life support and had been hemorrhaging for months. But still, the guild fell off somewhere. No one cried or killed themselves or awoke to realize, omg, DnT doesn't think WoW is fun, I must quit now. Other guilds took their place. I just will never understand all these people who have to sit here and bask in the glory of someone else's accomplishment. What point does it serve? But go ahead, keep defending Ensidia. Maybe Kungen will send you an autographed picture one day you can hang on your wall.

[Crump]

So, did nihilum got banned for exploiting the bug with Vashj in TBC? Did ensidia got banned for exploiting Hodir in WotLK? No!
Clearly blizzard has some sort of contract with these guys, or maybe now that a prince is in the guild, maybe blizzard is even on his payroll. There's no chance for another guild to become #1 in this game until the same rules will apply to everybody.

Quote

Maybe Kungen will send you an autographed picture one day you can hang on your wall.

They probably already have one, lol

[Mogrin]

I havent read all about this, but from what i understood, they tried this encounter alot of times and found out there was a bug and they used it? Might be wrong, but thats what i got out from what i read.

Buutch

[Mogrin]

Jilor said:

I'm not going to lie. It's ridiculously amusing to me that everyone who defends Ensidia's Hodir exploit is like...it's ok, because they admitted to it.

I dunno what kind of exploit Exodus used, but I cant say Ensidia used an ''exploit'' they were undergeared at that time and wanted a world first, they spellstealed a mobb and downed him? Thats exploiting? When Nihilum downed KT in vanilla, they used all the buffs they could get (onyxia, ZG etc etc) is that exploiting? Come up with the idea of spellstealing a mob to boost ur dmg or w/e it was is just smart tbh.

P.S Im not a Fanboi.