A stealth change to the Gnomish Universal Remote on Tuesday broke the hearts of a select few engineers who had realized the full power of the device. Before the fix, engineers could control fel reavers, mechanical mobs in Tempest Keep, and even -- if they were lucky -- the giant mechanical boss Doomwalker who roams outside of the Black Temple and kills you if you try to sneak into the area.

I talked to a warrior on my realm that had successfully controlled Doomwalker and asked him a couple questions about his experience. He said that his control of Doomwalker lasted about a minute, during which he was rooted to the spot. Doomwalker had three abilities: A chain lightning that bounced up to ten times, a 10 percent sunder armor, and Earthquake, a channeled AOE that does 2000 damage a tick and killed me a ton of times while I was trying to farm herbs. Unfortunately, he said, Doomwalker was chained within 30 yards, so he couldn't go ravage the Alliance (or Horde) city. He said no one came to the Black Temple in the minute he had control, which was too bad. In the past, he had controlled Fel Reavers and used them to kill Alliance in Hellfire Peninsula.

While he considered himself "very, very, very, very sad" that the ability to control Doomwalker was gone, he admitted that it was overpowered. "When were you ever allowed to control a raid boss? Besides Razorgore."

Do you think that things like this are an innovative use of game mechanics, or a cheap way to be a jerk with a bug? Do you think they were right to fix it?

Filed under: Engineering, Bugs, The Burning Crusade, Bosses