July 7th, 2009 | 
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We reported last week in our newsletter that US guild Exodus earned world first honors for the Alone in the Darkness achievement. They have been stripped of this accomplishment, suspended and had all rewards removed for using an exploit to earn this “mathematically impossible” title.
Mere hours after their world first was announced, US guild Exodus was under the microscope for the possible use of an exploit in the Yogg +0 hard mode encounter. It was determined by Blizzard that they were guilty of “abuse of game mechanics” and the participants were all banned for 72 hours, stripped of their titles, achievements and loot and ridiculed in much of the gaming community.
OK, so the way the bug works is when someone is left inside the brain room of Yogg-Saron, they can still get aggro on the adds that spawn in phase 3. That means if you have someone getting healing aggro in the brain room, they will get aggro on the adds, which causes them to evade in place and allows for all of your raid dps to be focused on Yogg which turns the “impossible” into a simple tank and spank fight.
Exodus discovered the flawed game mechanic during a wipe and decided to see if they could use it to defeat the encounter…it worked. Once they had completed the task, they sent a bug report to Blizzard to report the problem, which has since been hot fixed.
Now, the issue I have is that this seems like very much the same as what Ensidia did to get their world first on the Hodir hard mode fight (think “flower power”) and yet they get to keep their titles, achievements, and loot. It simply does not make sense.
For those of you unsure what I am referring to, Ensidia was able to spell-steal a buff from the Freya trash (that was not intended to be spell-stolen) and stack it multiple times to increase the raid’s DPS to astronomical levels during the hard mode Hodir fight which made this fight infinitely less difficult. They claimed their titles, loot and achievements, reported the bug to Blizzard who almost immediately hotfixed it and everyone went on about their business. No suspension, no stripping of titles, loot or achievements. Something seems unbalanced to me here.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to Blizzard doling out punishment when people exploit obviously unintentional game flaws, but I just think we need to be fair and dole out those same punishments regardless of which guild manages the task. Tell us what you think!
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Why were they banned if they reported the bug? Why not just remove the title and take the loot?
To be clear, they were not banned, they were suspended for 72 hours.
But, the problem is that they did not even take the title or loot from Ensidia for doing primarily the same thing…exploiting and unintended flaw in the game’s mechanics. They (Ensidia) were allowed to keep it all…that is what I think is so unfair about the whole thing!
Exodus are a bunch of goofs. Ensidia are pro. There is the only reason Exodus was given the suspension. Plus, Ensidia’s fix did not put them permanently in front of all the other guilds, whereas Exodus cut the line in a big way.
Plus you know this is a title that is reserved for future content, and nerfs. Blizzard was pretty mad that someone got that title when nobody was supposed to be able to do it till September — or probably much later.
What I want to know is why people don’t see the wrong in the whole thing.
Bliz creates a game.
There is no winning the game.
Ie: they put into place something in game that is matimatically impossible to do? Okay I’m of old school thinking. So please someone tell me how this is in anyway right in the first place!
I say so what! These folks got the achievement despite Blizzards dictator mentality. That,in and of itself, is an achievment.
I tire of seeing people just fall inline on the dictator mentality of Blizz.
What’s next! They see a paying customer that was/is cabable of leveling five toons to 80, so they are going to ban thier account! You think I jest! They’ll do nothing more than use thier EULA to do it. Saying the person exploited or somehow cheated to do it.
Kudos to the group that did this and sorry that you folks got to taste the dictator hand of Blizz.
There is a lot of things wrong with what is going on here. I posted some references to this in the Wow forums under suggestions and my post was deleted in a day. Guess I struck a nerve. Don’t dare question Blizzard or their policies or get banned, deleted, or in some way penalized. They have absolutely NO right or reason to take any disciplinary action against this guild. In fact if you want to place blame for exploits, other than those created by game modifying software, it’s the programmers. They allowed the glitch to be in there. Suspend them for 72 hours. Players cannot and should not be held accountable for something that is entirely out of their control. If they find a way to get over an obstacle, retrieve an object, or complete a quest that is not the way Blizzard thinks it should be, they get suspended or banned. What kind of reasoning is going on there? “We screwed up when we created this part of the game, you found the problem now we’re banning/suspending you. Thank you for playing and your patience”
All Exodus did was find a way to overcome an obstacle using the game as it was designed! If Blizzard doesn’t like it, too bad for them. Exodus did not rewrite the software. They used what was put up there by Blizzard. Suspend the programmers. Chalk it up to “creative thinking” on the part of the guild, fix the problem, and move on! There 11 million chances to find an exploit in the software. It is not the players fault if they discover it.
Why was Ensidia given a free pass and Exodus suspended for basically the same thing? As I understand it, Ensidia is a European guild, Exodus is a US guild. Blizzard is a FRENCH owned company. I think it was purely prejudicial. Not much of a secret that France is not on our side. They should think back 50 years or so.
There are too many Blizzard apologists and “Blind Followers”. Maybe they need to get out more.