Exploit or Creative Use of Game Mechanics?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Mar 8th 2006 at 11:30AM
When new content is opened to a player-base
6 million strong, it's obvious that some will come up with interesting tactics that Blizzard never considered.
However, whenever someone finds a new trick, debate rages as to whether it's an exploit or a legitimate tactic - a
debate Blizzard rarely involves itself in. Usually, when players find an unintended loophole in an encounter,
Blizzard will eventually patch it, but this may be weeks or months after the tactic was originally discovered.
Currently a hot topic is the ability to use the paladin ability Divine Intervention (a 3-minute protective shield) on Blackwing Lair's first boss, Razorgore the Untamed. This tactic allows the raid to effectively skip the first phase of the fight - by most considered the only hard part. But, in the time Blackwing Lair has been available, Blizzard has neither commented on this nor implemented a patch to prevent this behavior, which, for many, is as good a stamp of acceptance as needed. Is this working as intended, and just allowing creative players easier access to loot? Or is it an exploit Blizzard simply hasn't taken the time to fix?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
L'Emmerdeur Mar 8th 2006 12:55PM
DI is NOT a protective shield:
"The paladin sacrifices himself to remove the targeted party member from harms way. Enemies will stop attacking the protected party member, who will be immune to all harmful attacks but cannot take any action for 3 min."
PodMonkeys Mar 8th 2006 1:17PM
By the sound of DI's usage description, it sounds like a perfectly viable method of entry. The Pally still has to rez and is not themself invulnerable to atack.
elizabeth Mar 8th 2006 2:12PM
L'Emmerdeur, you are correct - something as simple as Power Word: Shield (which is nothing but a protective shield) would not make this possible. Describing DI this way is a simplification of its functionality, and I had wanted to be simple on the mechanics and talk about the question of exploits/creativity as a larger issue.
Of course, I'm about to get into a more in-depth discussion of what's happening here, because based on PodMonkeys' comment, I didn't manage to make what's happening very clear.
Warning, there are spoilers of the Razorgore fight to follow.
Phase 1 of the fight requires you to break a number of dragon eggs while fighting off large numbers of orc and dragonkin, which spawn and try to stop you. Whichever method you use to approach this, it takes time and coordination. If you attempt to kill Razorgore without breaking the eggs, he will cast an AOE that is instant-death for the entire raid.
However, a paladin can throw divine intervention on Razorgore, the rest of the raid can die, and then they have three minutes to resurrect and be ready to fight - this skips the messy business with the eggs and the dragonkin and the orcs.
Anthony Mar 8th 2006 2:13PM
Blizzard probably won't let this one fly because it's an alliance only tactic.
Acceptable Risk Mar 8th 2006 11:29PM
One of my favorite exploits/creative uses as a Warlock is to use Demonic Sacrifice on the Succubus and then revive her with Goblin Jumper Cables to get both the 15% damage bonus from DS and the 10% bonus from Master Demonologist for having the Succubus active. So far Blizzard has called this "creative use" but I don't see it sticking around for long.
boneyard Mar 9th 2006 5:32AM
if blizzard would say it is an exploit they would also have to punish people for it and it would cause major flaming on the board of people who still do it. blizzard is wise to just be silent about it and fix it once they have to the time for it.
Pete Mar 9th 2006 12:30PM
DI allows you to skip phase 1 thus skipping content. Blizz has always said that skipping content is exploiting. I would assume eventually they will fix this problem.