Looking back on the Ensidia Saronite Bomb Ban:

[koimagheul]

the one thing that bothers me about this is how blizzard did act only after someone killed LK.
bombs were part of the rogue setup at the time.
they were supposedly having a "close" watch on every lk attemps.
you won't make anyone believe ensidia were the only ones to encounter the bug.
you won't make anyone believe blizzard did not know what happened (especially when they hotfix it so soon after).
if blizzard had been properly testing the fight, they would have noticed the bug and it would never have made it live.

I don't say blizzard did this to purposefully catch someone red handed, but...
one happening is fortuitous.
two is a coincidence.
three times, you push the red button, stop the servers, do your job and fix the mess.
it happened more than three times.
ensidia guys were guilty as charged, but blizzard was at least as much. if not more.

[Devildeer]

Wow how can you don't remember? They KNEW what was causing the bug, and they powerleveled engeneering in 7 or 8 of the raiders (can't remember), the powerleveling was done just after one or two tries. So they noticed the damage on the plataform, tought it "could" be exploited, leveled 7 engeneers in 20 minutes and got the thing done.

[Breccia]

Yes, I'm sure Paragon was laughing it up saying "you guys lost World First because you got caught cheating! Hah hah hah hah!"

Yeah...they laughed about that then...then DS came out.

There's a saying about people who don't remember their history are doomed to look up the details on Google and enjoy some poetic justice.

[wariofan1]

Nihilum is still progressing on Normal Mogu'shan Vaults today. I occasionally see Kungen around, he isn't getting flocked by fanboys anymore, which is good for him I guess. Thing is that Nihilum isn't a top guild atm, no wonder since they've just reformed, but they're also accepting casuals now, so it's more of a laid back raiding guild compared to Ensidia and how they were pre-Ensidia.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The bombs were a normal part of rogue optimal DPS rotation, since they had free GCDs to chuck bombs, throwing saronite bombs was a small but in the case of world first kills, significant increase. Coming upon the platform respawning from the bombs was a mistake, but after it was found, it was exploited by the guild. I could see if they didn't ignore the mechanics even if the platform kept respawning, but they deliberately ignored mechanics since they were made trivial by the bug.

[Coldpro]

tbh, im fine with the fact they got banned. What I dislike, is Paragon cheated on Nefarian by using a blatant druid exploit and no action was taken.

but, its old news now

[Merie]

It's kind of like that guy that after being hacked recieved random loot of tons of junk in ingame mail from Blizzard including various greens and other things, in addition to a GM item that killed everything in sight with use. Even bosses. So he kept using it and using it, killing big bosses that had not yet been beaten and was eventually caught and banned. He wasn't banned for having been mistakenly sent a gm item, he was banned for abusing it repeatedly to plow through content instead of notifying a game master of the mailing mistake.

Just because it was Blizzard's technical mishap in bugging a boon your raid's way doesn't mean you are blameless for taking advantage of that bug over and over again for personal gain.

[Deleted]

Blizzard are idiots for banning people who did nothing wrong.

Taking advantage of unintended effects isn't a violation of service. You can never know when something is intended and when not. So the consumer shouldn't be constantly questioning his own actions, it's Blizzard's job to make sure the consumer can't exploit something. If Blizzard doesn't want people to use something, they shouldn't put it in the game. Simple as that. They themselves are the only ones to be blamed. If they leave something in, that's their mistake and it's not the player's fault for using it.

I can understand taking an achievement away and hotfixing things to make it fair on everyone else.
But banning people who did nothing wrong? That's just stupid.

[afkranker]

Wow how can you don't remember? They KNEW what was causing the bug, and they powerleveled engeneering in 7 or 8 of the raiders (can't remember), the powerleveling was done just after one or two tries. So they noticed the damage on the plataform, tought it "could" be exploited, leveled 7 engeneers in 20 minutes and got the thing done.

Can you back this up with evidence? There was clearly only one rogue (not seven) using this. You say anything you want and look good, but it doesn't mean it's the truth (Flip-flopper 47% Mitt Romney in the debates for example).

[rayden54]

I can't back up their claim, but this is from the WoW Archivist at the WoW Insider:

Ensidia claimed that they couldn't figure out what was causing the bug because their rogues regularly used bombs for a small DPS boost. Another member contradicted those statements and said that Ensidia had identified the bombs as the source of the bug and continued to use them.

If the latter statement is true, then they did deserve the ban.

[Deleted]

They used saronite bombs. They claimed it was "accidentally", but they never show any actual proof:
- no video - they said no one frapsed world first kill of lich king, yeah right,
- no logs - they show some screenshots of wol parse. It's hard to edit html code in notepad and screenshot edited page .

[Tinykong]

I'll never understand Blizzard's customer service ideology. They ban people for something, then don't ban another person for doing the same thing. People exploit something, keep the rewards, then Blizzard nerfs the exploited item/process into absolute oblivion so that the average player will never ever see it again.

You submit a ticket to a GM about something, it gets denied. You resubmit it again, and get an entirely different result. Seems to me that customer service needs to follow a flow chart, so that customer expectations are always met.

[Imnick]

It's all a bit odd, people on both sides of this are arguing as if they know what actually happened.
The only people who know what actually happened are Blizzard and Ensidia, and only one of those groups has a vested interest in lying about it.

Trust who you want but Blizzard don't really have any reason to make things up just so they can ban a world first guild. The guild had plenty of reasons to pretend they didn't know what was going on.

[BicycleMafioso]

Personal opinion, not speaking as a mod or for MMO-Champion, whom would likely disagree.

Ensidia got the world first legitimately.
People have been using grenades and bombs since Vanilla for the slight dps increase; So have I.
They got banned completely arbitrarily, and most likely because it was a poster-child and franchise-child that got killed.
Customer reps and GMs are people and individuals, too. Just because they work there and took a decision, doesn't mean that it necessarily comes from the highest-in-command.

[sam86]

Our Rogues and Warriors were using Saronite bombs back then to deal most dps possible, and I helped our rogue - Smashy - to get engineer maxed for (back then) Ulduar fights
Old wound open here, but I'll say it, Blizzard is the one to blame, it is EXACTLY leaving your money in street, then kill someone who try to take it, it is their fault in first place, they create a bugged boss, fix the bug but don't ban people who found your error, you screwed your job why other people pay for it?
But they have blind legion of followers so I don't see them punished in anyway

---------- Post added 2012-10-11 at 03:19 AM ----------

Wow how can you don't remember? They KNEW what was causing the bug, and they powerleveled engeneering in 7 or 8 of the raiders (can't remember), the powerleveling was done just after one or two tries. So they noticed the damage on the plataform, tought it "could" be exploited, leveled 7 engeneers in 20 minutes and got the thing done.

We power lvld engineering to 1 rogue 2 warriors dps in my guild and we had no idea of the bug for server first fights, we weren't near world first but we were competing for server firsts and we needed that push

---------- Post added 2012-10-11 at 03:25 AM ----------

It's kind of like that guy that after being hacked recieved random loot of tons of junk in ingame mail from Blizzard including various greens and other things, in addition to a GM item that killed everything in sight with use. Even bosses. So he kept using it and using it, killing big bosses that had not yet been beaten and was eventually caught and banned. He wasn't banned for having been mistakenly sent a gm item, he was banned for abusing it repeatedly to plow through content instead of notifying a game master of the mailing mistake.

Just because it was Blizzard's technical mishap in bugging a boon your raid's way doesn't mean you are blameless for taking advantage of that bug over and over again for personal gain.

Not even close, people who competed to realm firsts will feel a lot more what Ensidia was doing than others, saronite bombs were optimal dps for warrior/rogues back then, and as I said we helped our guild mates to lvl engineering to compete for server firsts

[afkranker]

It's all a bit odd, people on both sides of this are arguing as if they know what actually happened.
The only people who know what actually happened are Blizzard and Ensidia, and only one of those groups has a vested interest in lying about it.

Trust who you want but Blizzard don't really have any reason to make things up just so they can ban a world first guild. The guild had plenty of reasons to pretend they didn't know what was going on.

You suggest that Blizzard didnt' have an interest, when they champion Starcraft 1/Starcraft 2 e-sports? Ensidia had a MONOPOLY on world firsts for a few years, Blizzard wanted more Esport competition, they would have found any reason to undermine them. It was first apparent when Algalon (Ulduar) didn't allow us to leave combat after the first attempt for a couple of weeks straight. Blizzard was obviously blocking/gating the encounter so other guilds would have a chance. They didn't even look at the petitions to get out of combat for over 14 days what? Suddenly when other guilds have access to him, they bug is magically gone?

This quote below sums it up quite well (Muqq was the rogue)

i heard that muqq "ragequit" as well

I dont blame them. if its a part of the guys rotation, its a part of his rotation. Granted I think they might have known what was happening, they didnt announce their thing until AFTER blizzard announced that it was a bug, which means potentially they DIDNT know exactly what happened. Why would you stop a natural part of your rotation if you arent 100% sure its doing something. Exodus on the other hand was 100% aware that evade bugging immortal guardians was EXACTLY what they were doing. spellstealing a buff is hardly "exploiting".

If you dont know why its glitching, why would you stop what you are doing. You might as well have all holy pallies stop using holy light cause it might be whats glitching the fight... By the time you cycle through all abilities in the raid to figure out which one it is (limited attempts boss yknow?) youve wasted the week. I -WOULD- qualify this as exploiting... but if your options are to stop the raid completely (cause you dont know what is causing it and dont want to waste attempts) or continue at your own peril...

They made the mistake on Anub25 of slamming their faces into the boss and brute force out the strats and they lost world first. Now you are REQUIRING them to brute force the solution? Thats just dumb, its a lose lose situation for them

[Arbs]

Ensidia is now Envy/Ensidia/SK Gaming/Nihilum

[Windfury]

Rogues were using saronite bombs in their rotation back then (min/max rogues anyways) I didn't play rogue so I don't know the exacts but finding out what the bombs did to the platforms were strictly accidental. As far as what I remember the biggest reason for the ban was that they didn't stop and not use it or wait for blizz to fix it, they continued on business as usual and killed it. Their argument was that they supposedly had a GM watching the entire time and he didn't say/do anything. If I'm wrong, I'm pretty close, going strictly off memory.

Rogues were using the bombs in their rotaion, through that they discovered the bug. Then suddenly all of their DPS mysteriouslly all became engineers, despite it previously not being the optimal profession for anyone but Rogues, which basically puts paid to the whole 'it as an accident/they didn't do it on purpose' thing. From there they got banned for purposefully exploiting a bug. They deserved the ban, they'd made a habit out of bugging encounters to get firsts and generally being dicks about it in the past without being peanalised (Twins, Archimonde, Vashj, Couple in Ulduar as well iirc etc), so I'm sure they were suprised to see action being taken for something that was fairly normal for them, but that doesn't mean it wasn't deserved.

Honestly though it's old news. OP to answer your question they lost a lot of players and eventually merged with Envy in Cata, and are now raiding as Envy. Kungen (Nihilium's former MT/GM) has recently formed an entirely new guild called Nihilum and has been recruiting afaik.

[adelerollsinthedeep]

i wonder if anyone will get banned for spellstealing from trash mobs so their mages can pull 200k dps

i guess it just depends on which guild did it

[afkranker]

i wonder if anyone will get banned for spellstealing from trash mobs so their mages can pull 200k dps

i guess it just depends on which guild did it

Related to this, if you have a coordinated group, you can have them NOT kill the yellow slimes, since they do very little damage. You blow the first set on the first boss with heroism, bringing him in down in under 30 seconds, yes under 30 seconds (160%+ damage buff)

Then you save up all the slimes again, single target dps only one second boss. Keep slimes alive through the second boss. Drag them with you to third boss, kill slimes, pop heroism with your 160%+ damage buff again, bring him down before his shell goes up.

Last boss, get a 300%threat lead as tank, then move to other side of bridge before he flies there, pre-interrupt before wind, blast him down before he flies a second time.

Second boss, with Tar, leaping off the edge, intervening your banner, heroic leap, aggro drop cd's/etc, you can kill second boss with the tank getting hit no more than 5-10 times by regular melee.

Does this make me an exploiter/cheater or smart player? Sure it's 5-man content so no one cares, but if I applied these same conniving tactics to raids (which I do), so long as I don't use them to get world/server firsts, does that make me a cheater/exploiter? (reminds me of Freya buff being used on another boss!)