Ensidia temporarily banned for exploits
by Eliah Hecht 
Feb 4th 2010 at 10:40AM
The story is that Ensidia made use of Saronite Bombs to "bypass The Lich King fight mechanics" (Saronite Bombs and similar items were disabled in a hotfix last night). In addition to the temporary ban, all items and achievements they gained from downing Arthas have been revoked. Before the ban (but after the hotfix), Ensidia put up a post claiming that they didn't think the bombs were an exploit; Blizzard obviously isn't buying it.
Meanwhile, Muqq, the Ensidia player who posted about the ban, has taken this as an opportunity to quit WoW (and rant a bit at Blizzard about "half-assed encounters"), saying "to ban people when they do not know what's causing the bugs is just a [expletive] joke."
Update: It's worth a mention that the language Muqq used at the end of his post is identical (save places and names) to this post by Tigole (scroll to the bottom -- it's the last thing on the page), written of EverQuest in 2002. Be warned, neither of these are safe for work.
Filed under: Guilds, News items, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 20)
wesleyshawn Feb 4th 2010 10:45AM
FAIL
Knob Feb 4th 2010 10:50AM
I don't care about the suspension either way since I'm not in Ensidia and it doesn't affect me in any way, but the way Muqq has ranted doesn't put Ensidia or himself in a good light. He seems to think he's the end-all and be-all of WoW and that him quitting will end this game. I'm sorry chester, but you're a nobody outside the game and you're not a puppetmaster. He could have taken the high road and at least constructively posted something when he didn't agree with the suspension, but this rant is embarrassing.
Oh well, like I said above, doesn't affect me or my guild and am personally looking forward to the encounter on Sunday.
BigBadGooz Feb 4th 2010 11:16AM
How much I believe encidia did not intentionaly meand to bug out the fight however....
It seems most(not all) of thier world firsts have one way or another have been bug/exploit related. Everyone knows they were world first regardless of the outcome but they are under the microscope since I remeber another guild getting perma banned for useing a exploit for yogg saron no lights in the dark while ensidia had used similar bugs for other bosses and recived no punnishment. As for mugg saying people will /ragequitwowkthxbye sry bud you are not my god get over yourself. Anyrate good hunting world 2nd arthas kill.
B Feb 4th 2010 11:19AM
Compare Muqq's post to the bottom post on this page: http://www.legacyofsteel.net/oldsite/arc27.html
and you'll all get the joke. You all just got trolled.
Chris Anthony Feb 4th 2010 11:30AM
Just because he's consciously quoting Tigole doesn't mean he's trolling - just means he decided to toss out a call-out to a famous rant.
Sky Feb 4th 2010 11:37AM
Muqq's post was not QQ as most misinformed readers here believe. The post was a mockery, almost an exact word per word copy, of a similar rant made by Blizzard's lead developer Jeff Kaplan when he was playing EQ over a poorly designed fight. So for all the misinformed haters out there who think that this was classless, consider the context in which the rant was used and you would find that it is actually very hilarious and a spit in the face of Jeff Kaplan. I don't think Jeff Kaplan or any of the Blizzard developers are very happy though. I wouldn't be surprised to see a perma-ban on Muqq or any Ensidia players who associate themselves with the rant. Blizzard got their arses handed to them and retribution will be swift.
Heres a link to the original Tigole Post: http://www.legacyofsteel.net/oldsite/arc27.html
Scroll down to the bottom and you will see it
Chris Anthony Feb 4th 2010 11:49AM
@Sky, it's still QQ. It's just well-informed QQ.
mtsadowski Feb 4th 2010 12:00PM
NO ONE would be screaming for a ban had Blizzard NOT banned Exodus for doing something similar on the Yogg Saron fight.
I feel that the problem is NOT with Ensidia or any other player, but with the way Blizzard handles these matters.
WE do NOT work for Blizzard. We PAY them to play the game.
KronosIII Feb 4th 2010 12:02PM
I actually agree Blizzard is fail
Fail that they don't actually test the damn encounter.
Now did they use actual hacks or cheats from outside the game? No they did not
They only used the tools given to them on the encounter. I fail to see any reason to ban them for 3 days for blizzards poor excuse to test encounters correctly.
Then again all the smart Devs went to the new mmo in progress. Not like any important Dev's are left for WoW.
To continue GhostCrawler is maybe the most childish Dev I have seen based on his answers to the threads. He needs to do some massive growing up and treat the game like a job. It is our game to play not his.
His responses sometimes are just flat out insulting to players. And it is sad that he is really one of the only main Devs left on WoW. I never remember this treatment pre lich king on the forums.
Superthrust Feb 4th 2010 12:25PM
@Knob -
He is prolly really pissed right now cause now that he got banned and since the exploit, they have gotten some HUGE MEGA bad PR, They prolly lost their sponserships...
But still. Finally, JUSTICE.
His posting proves he was only in it for whatever money and freebies and "public image" he had, and that he cared NOTHING about the fans. How he told all us that we were noobs and to go $*^# ourselves? Hrm. Yep, he really appreciated the support of "GO ENSIDIA!" back when i used to root for them.
Finally...Justice.
kabshiel Feb 4th 2010 12:38PM
I don't think Ensidia intentionally bugged the fight. However, they obviously knew that the fight was bugged in such a way that a whole phase of it was trivialized and decided to take down the Lich King anyway. They knew there was something majorly broken about the fight and they decided to take advantage of it. That's the exploit.
KronosIII Feb 4th 2010 12:40PM
Sure go ahead and downrate my post for it actually making sense.
I am just going to use an example now.
Imagine Blizzard is a mother and the players are little kids.
The mother leaves around a big open fire in the house. But does not tell the child of what will happen if he/she touches the fire. She just leaves it there and tells the child nothing about fire.
Is it the childs fault for touching the fire? He did not know he was going to be burned. Is it his fault?
Yet this is exactly how blizzard is dealing with the issue. There was no "DON'T USE THE BOMBS " sign anywhere on the encounter. How can you blame them?
Imagine the Anub fight in Toc. Imagine that the tank will not freeze if it had the cozy fire buff. And they found out by accident. Wouldn't you use this to your advantage? And imagine if you used it and got banned for using it.
This is blizzards fault all over it for not doing their job correctly. They need to actually test encounters, because you know that is their job.
my2cents Feb 4th 2010 12:56PM
Yes, we pay Blizzard to play their game and that's exactly why it's important for them to discourage and curb cheating. We all deserve a relatively even playing field. That explains and (imo) completely justifies the general policy of banning/suspending exploiters. As for when to ban and when to let it slide, it has to be a case by case basis of course.
Generally, Blizzard is pretty lenient about this stuff. Unless it's obvious (to Blizz, not us necessarily) that the exploit was intentional, they tend to just let it go or at worst take away loot gained from the exploited boss, etc. The fact that they banned Ensidia indicates to me that there's *probably* more to the story than we know.
Remember, Blizzard has a LOT more information available to them about the behaviors of players than we do. For all we know, the rogue in question may have whispered someone after one of the encounters saying "I found out how to bug the throne out!" But we can only speculate.
Daedalus Feb 4th 2010 1:07PM
@KronosIII:
Sorry, the example doesn't hold up. Ensidia aren't kids. Ensidia aren't even metaphorical kids in the realm of WoW. They are literally professional players.
Besides, if they were just using bombs as usual, it wouldn't be an issue. The only way they could have been exploiting is if they were deliberately throwing them at the edges of the platform to rebuild it. That's what gives the lie to their claim that they were "just doing the encounter normally."
As far as it being Blizzard's fault for "not doing their job" I'd argue against that, too. Everyone here is assuming that Blizzard didn't know about this bug. I'd be very surprised if that was the case. My guess is they knew it existed, (as others have said, Saronite bombs are not exactly an obscure feature...) but that they couldn't do anything about it. Obviously, they're not just going to put it in the patch notes: "Known issue: using Saronite bombs makes the Lich King encounter much easier. Please don't do that." They also apparently only have a very drastic fix: removing siege damage, as they now have. It makes sense they wouldn't do that without it being absolutely necessary. It's also clear they didn't want to delay the patch until a better fix could be found. My guess is Blizzard decided to let the bug go live, and were hoping that any guilds capable of getting that far would be smart enough to know that there would be consequences for exploiting it. (Which, based on their past actions, shouldn't have been too much of a leap.)
Ensidia just thought they could get away with it; they were flouting the rules, (as others have suggested they have done before) and basically daring Blizzard to do something about it. Unfortunately for them, Blizzard didn't flinch this time.
tabardsrock Feb 4th 2010 1:08PM
fail for blizz or ensidia?
i realize many peeps are upset at both sides of this situation, but, as i read on the MMO-champ comments, blizz probably has a LOT more info than we know about that would lead them to doing this
of course, the folks from ensidia claim innocence, but i doubt blizz would have temp-banned one of the top guilds in the game for frivolous or seemingly incomplete reasons... there's more to this story that isn't known at the moment
KronosIII Feb 4th 2010 1:15PM
To my2cents
Thats great, do you really agree with what you said?
Ok all the people that used the glitch on the 5man HOR are getting a perma ban.
Do you agree that everyone who glitched that fight should be banned for doing so?
If you do and if you did beat the encounter with the glitch then please cancel your WoW account.
Because what they did and what everyone else did on the 5 man encounter is the same exact thing. Only difference is that its the 10/25 man lich king encounter.
Don't blame players for the devs poor excuse for doing their job. Another example
A kid spit on the right side of an ancient statue. He is now going to die and suffer in hell because hes not supposed to do that. Even thou he had no idea that would happen if he did that.
If you agree with what blizzard has done I guess that little kid got what was coming right? ITS THE SAME THING
mycents Feb 4th 2010 1:50PM
Actually, I only "cheated" the HoR LK encounter once, and it was simply guilt by association. Someone said they had a strat and to stand in a certain spot. No one explained what it was. But guess what? As soon as I realized we were exploiting I immediately thought "Oh crap, I hope I don't get suspended for this."
But if I had gotten suspended, I wouldn't have bitched and moaned. It would've been well within Blizz' rights to do so. Would it have sucked that it happened? Yes. But that's life. And 72 hours of suspension isn't exactly the same as having your account deleted. As for saying that by my logic everyone who exploits that encounter should get banned, please refer to my statement of these things needing to be on a case by case basis.
It's not practical for Blizz to ban a couple thousand accounts when the exploit was first discovered. Furthermore, in a VERY high profile (amonst WoWers) case like the one with Ensidia, Blizz knows that tons and tons of players are waiting to see what will happen. Thus, when this incident occured, they were faced with a tough decision knowing that it would be disected by all of us ad nausiem. So again, these things need to be considered in the context of the specific case.
Bananacup Feb 4th 2010 1:51PM
That rant is simply brilliant. Tigole is becoming all he has ever hated. It's an interesting look at how different the viewpoints of a gamer and a developer are.
Jorges Feb 4th 2010 2:03PM
At the end of the day, this will pass, all of us will get back to our raid schedules and will try to down the 2 or 3 bosses before the LK, which is were the majority of us are atm.
So Muqq, I'm sorry dude. Even if your rant was a great way to mock Blizz by quoting Tigole's words, it's still QQ. And wow doesn't revolve around your e-peen or any top end guild. WoW won't end because of this, nor will Blizzard redesign how they make encounters and what they consider an exploit or not.
Swallow it and move on.
jrizutko Feb 4th 2010 2:16PM
@Kronosill
Your metaphors are not accurate or useful in framing the issue. You keep trying to portray Ensidia members as innocent or ignorant kids, but they are adults that accepted end user agreements this past Tuesday. A better metaphor would be a caravan of licensed drivers entering a newly constructed highway and noticing a speed limit sign posted as 750 miles per hour. As reasonable adults, they have every reason to believe the sign is an error, and obey normal speed limits, BUT for personal gain they decide to behave as if the ridiculous speed limit is accurate, and then get heavily fined for reckless driving when they are caught.
They claim plausible deniability, but clearly as a group they had to communicate about the issue and make a decision on whether or not to treat the case as an error or as appropriate, and rather than act responsibly chose to gamble and test the consequences.
Well, here are the consequences.