Ensidia suspended for 72 Hours

[Aktavite]

...That is, they've been controversed without evidence supporting the claims before.
Yes, they "admitted" their game mechanics usage on Hodir, however whether or not this counts as an exploit in your eyes, it would still have been the first time they had ever been proven to exploit anything.

The only thing that has ever or will ever put a "lingering doubt of legitimacy in anything they do" is the relentless onslaught of jealous people and other random haters who have nothing better to do than spend part of their free time randomly flaming other people over the internet because they have some sort of complex against said people.

They're not sponsored by anyone, yet we see this news post: http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/t...wn-as-ensidia/

They don't record their kills, yet we've got footage of their world first kills elsewhere?

We've got ex-members saying one thing, and the guild saying another.

Small things that eat away at credibility.

[ocajavati]

It's a pretty major bug. I'm absolutely certain Ensidia did not continue onward without knowing about the bug.

The problem here is not if they meant to cause the exploit. It's that they noticed the exploit, acknowledged its effect, and kept at it regardless. That, in itself, warrants a temporary ban.

Regardless, Blizzard has more information/logs than any of you scrubs can possibly have. Ensidia members are obviously biased in this matter. The decision does not lie with us, a bunch of uninformed individuals and/or tainted jury pool.

The mod sums it up very well: the matter is not up for discussion. It's the same as a judge does not have to answer to every scrutiny, especially not to an uninformed public.

End of the line is that Ensidia abused a glitch KNOWING it is there. It made the encounter easier, and they knew it. Yet, they pushed onward. The penalty might have been too severe, but it is an otherwise sound decision by Blizzard. Ensidia is at fault here. The penalty itself is not exactly up to questioning.

[Zedius]

Ensidia deserved the banning. Blizzard let them off lightly. Should have been a permanent ban.

Them admitting they knew the encounter was bugged and did not report it immediately is ban worthy already.

There is nothing wrong with saronite bombs being in the rogue rotation for dps, however they weren't using the bombs to dps but to bring back the missing platforms intentionally. We know this is done intentionally because the bombs need to be placed on/near the edge of the map where the platforms break during the valkyr phase. The lich king would logically be tanked near the center so that the raid will have the most amount of time to dps the valkyr as it travels the furthest distance in order to drop the raid member. Therefore there is no need to drop saronite bombs near the edge of the platform since there are no mobs there to hurt with it. This is how we know they intentionally used an exploit to make the encounter easier.

To further substantiate this claim we see that Ensidia is unwilling to release full logs or a video of the encounter. Also there are gaps in the log that show saronite bombs did not hit any mobs during a 7 minute gap that coincides with the valkyr phase. This is odd since the rogue should still be using the saronite bombs to dps when he is energy tapped but does not. Rebuttals that maybe he ran out of bombs are dismissed since we know he layed one near the end of the fight that hit fordring. Rebuttals that perhaps he was dead are also dismissed because we see that he takes damage during that phase. The gaps in the log can only mean he was laying saronite bombs away from the fight on the invisible platforms and since they hit no mobs were not logged. Or that they logs picked up that he was laying bombs on the invisible platforms and were manually deleted by human hands afterward to destroy evidence of their exploitations. Although speculative, they have an option of clearing their name by showing a video of their kill and the logs along with it but do not. Why would you choose not to redeem your name and honor if you could? The answer is they can't because they knowingly exploited the encounter.

As for the claims that Blizzard banned Ensidia out of spite for beating their encounter so quickly. That is absurd. The whole reason Blizzard made normal and hardmodes was so that both casual and hardcore raiders could enjoy the content. Lich King normal-mode is not meant to take weeks for a hardcore guild to defeat. If that were the case a casual guild would not be able to beat the encounter for many months. Blizzard designed normal-mode lich king with the intent that hardcore guilds will be able to beat him easily while it will offer a challenge to casual guilds. Hard-mode lich king is where Blizzard will design an encounter to stump the hardcore guilds for many weeks and where the casual gamer may never beat it within the current content patch. So again, Blizzard has no problems with hardcore guilds beating the encounter easily because it is designed to be easy for hardcore guilds. What they do have a problem with is people that find bugs within the game and try to exploit them instead of reporting them immediately.

[TheSecretArts]

Ensidia deserved the banning. Blizzard let them off lightly. Should have been a permanent ban.

Them admitting they knew the encounter was bugged and did not report it immediately is ban worthy already.

There is nothing wrong with saronite bombs being in the rogue rotation for dps, however they weren't using the bombs to dps but to bring back the missing platforms intentionally. We know this is done intentionally because the bombs need to be placed on/near the edge of the map where the platforms break during the valkyr phase. The lich king would logically be tanked near the center so that the raid will have the most amount of time to dps the valkyr as it travels the furthest distance in order to drop the raid member. Therefore there is no need to drop saronite bombs near the edge of the platform since there are no mobs there to hurt with it. This is how we know they intentionally used an exploit to make the encounter easier.

To further substantiate this claim we see that Ensidia is unwilling to release full logs or a video of the encounter. Also there are gaps in the log that show saronite bombs did not hit any mobs during a 7 minute gap that coincides with the valkyr phase. This is odd since the rogue should still be using the saronite bombs to dps when he is energy tapped but does not. Rebuttals that maybe he ran out of bombs are dismissed since we know he layed one near the end of the fight that hit fordring. Rebuttals that perhaps he was dead are also dismissed because we see that he takes damage during that phase. The gaps in the log can only mean he was laying saronite bombs away from the fight on the invisible platforms and since they hit no mobs were not logged. Or that they logs picked up that he was laying bombs on the invisible platforms and were manually deleted by human hands afterward to destroy evidence of their exploitations. Although speculative, they have an option of clearing their name by showing a video of their kill and the logs along with it but do not. Why would you choose not to redeem your name and honor if you could? The answer is they can't because they knowingly exploited the encounter.

As for the claims that Blizzard banned Ensidia out of spite for beating their encounter so quickly. That is absurd. The whole reason Blizzard made normal and hardmodes was so that both casual and hardcore raiders could enjoy the content. Lich King normal-mode is not meant to take weeks for a hardcore guild to defeat. If that were the case a casual guild would not be able to beat the encounter for many months. Blizzard designed normal-mode lich king with the intent that hardcore guilds will be able to beat him easily while it will offer a challenge to casual guilds. Hard-mode lich king is where Blizzard will design an encounter to stump the hardcore guilds for many weeks and where the casual gamer may never beat it within the current content patch. So again, Blizzard has no problems with hardcore guilds beating the encounter easily because it is designed to be easy for hardcore guilds. What they do have a problem with is people that find bugs within the game and try to exploit them instead of reporting them immediately.

TL;DR, first line made you seem like a troll so I didn't bother to read.

[Regazozo]

The question is not really if they knew that they bugged the encounter or not with the Saronite Bombs.

What is interesting is if they took advantage of that and ignored the Valkyries..... If they did ignore them then it is a exploit of the game. They said themself that they made 10 man so they knew how the encounter was suppose to be like. So if they ignored the Valks then I would call it a exploit. Lets hope a video gets up.

[jamie141999]

Lol, Ensidia doesn't get to compete for Heroic Kills next week?

Ohhhh man, this feels so good.

1,000 pages of fanboi tears.

Except they do.

[Onomarl]

Lol, Ensidia doesn't get to compete for Heroic Kills next week?

Ohhhh man, this feels so good.

1,000 pages of fanboi tears.

QFT man QFT.

What I think is even more awesome is how they can't stop trashing the people who make a game they devote their lives to.

[Aerts]

Did anyone happen to save the picture of Ensidia's overall damage done on the Lich King before MMO took it down?

[zhaozhou]

It's a pretty major bug. I'm absolutely certain Ensidia did not continue onward without knowing about the bug.

The problem here is not if they meant to cause the exploit. It's that they noticed the exploit, acknowledged its effect, and kept at it regardless. That, in itself, warrants a temporary ban.

Regardless, Blizzard has more information/logs than any of you scrubs can possibly have. Ensidia members are obviously biased in this matter. The decision does not lie with us, a bunch of uninformed individuals and/or tainted jury pool.

The mod sums it up very well: the matter is not up for discussion. It's the same as a judge does not have to answer to every scrutiny, especially not to an uninformed public.

End of the line is that Ensidia abused a glitch KNOWING it is there. It made the encounter easier, and they knew it. Yet, they pushed onward. The penalty might have been too severe, but it is an otherwise sound decision by Blizzard. Ensidia is at fault here. The penalty itself is not exactly up to questioning.

But they didn't know it was there. It didn't happen every time he threw bombs.
They knew it was glitching, but not what was causing it.

What should they have done, just quit fighting?

[Mithrilina]

I love all the people who blatantly DO NOT understand what programming and testing entail.

LK was never tested publicly, which means that only a handful of QA testers (depending on the size of Blizzard's QA team), got to see the encounter pre-release. Firstly, QA testers' jobs are to find bugs in a game, but that's hard to do when you don't know what you're looking for. Secondly, a QA team is a relatively small number of people working a finite amount of time. When LK goes live, you suddenly go from MAYBE a team of a few dozen, to a mass of several thousand, if not more, people playing the game.

As I've said before:
QA Testing = Playing Roulette
Public Release = Playing Roulette with all but one of the number's changed to match yours.

Fair point, to some degree... QA testing is not easy, and it is impossible for a few people to stress encounter mechanics the way a whole community of raiders would. Still, there is clearly a problem with the way the LK encounter was QA tested, especially given that this is a high-profile encounter and - importantly - Blizzard's stated intention that more people should be clearing this kind of content (given that the encounter "bested" by Ensidia was merely the encounter that opens hard modes). QA on this encounter should have been near-paranoid.

Blizzard knew which guilds had the highest likelihood of achieving first and/or early kills, and a sensible QA approach would have been to test the encounter thoroughly using the specs, rotations, abilities and general playstyle typical of the raiders in those guilds.

That being said, if Ensidia raiders and/or raid leaders were aware of a bug that could have made the encounter any easier, they should have halted and reported the bug. I understand that there is enormous competition for world firsts nowadays, but when playing the game we need to stay within the rules... right? (Admittedly, if I were in that raid group and we decided to report the bug rather than exploit it, I probably would have soaked my keyboard in tears - and if the decision were up to me, I cannot guarantee that I would not have taken the kill. Such is human nature.)

Blame? ??? 50% Blizzard, 50% Ensidia? Dunno, really... The math may not work so nicely, but I tend to think it goes 100% to Blizzard for their part in it (failed QA) and 100% to Ensidia for theirs (exploited a bug), but the 72-hour ban is a bit harsh.

[Mascotte]

Except they do.

Their main raid id still has a killed LK in it.
Just because the loot/achievements got deleted doesn't mean the boss is back up.
Doubt blizzard would re-spawn it for em.
So unless they plan to do hardmodes on their ghostteam they will need next week for their normal LK kill and thus cant start HM's before the following week.

[Mr. Casual]

I think they can live with 3 days without WoW =P

i been thinking the same thing even if blizz made a mistake its just 3 days

[ocajavati]

But they didn't know it was there. It didn't happen every time he threw bombs.
They knew it was glitching, but not what was causing it.

What should they have done, just quit fighting?

In Blizzard's perspective? Yeah, probably.

The point is that they KNOW it was glitching. They did the human thing to do: take advantage of the situation and kept going. In Blizzard's perspective, Ensidia should have filed a bug report and wait for green light.

I'm not condemning Ensidia for their action, but I believe Blizzard's response is not unjustified. With the data and facts they have at hand, a temporary ban is not an unreasonable conclusion.

[Nythiz]

This is so obviously set up that it's laughable.

I kind of feel sorry for the Ensidia fanboys.

-------

I read some of Bergg's replies (beginning of the topic and on his website) and they totally make sense and so far haven't been countered.

They either:
a) Tanked the lich king on the edge of the platform, which would be suicide (due to the val'kyrs) UNLESS YOU KNOW THE PLATFORM IS THERE TO STOP IT.
b) Tanked the Lich King in the middle, and then the question arises. WHY did they bomb the outer part of the platform.

They show no proof that they dps'ed the Val'kyrs. There are gaps and inconsistencies in their combat logs. They had several of their guild members drop professions and powerlevel engineering on the same day they did the lich king.

Ensidia isn't stupid. They knew they were doing the wrong thing.

Blizzard isn't stupid either, if they turn to banning they must have some solid evidence.

If this all adds up and it turns out Ensidia knowingly and purposefully exploited on the Lich King encounter, then IMO a 3 day ban is going soft on them.

Say what you want about blizzard not fully testing. If you know how much code goes into a fight like that, and how many different variables affect such a fight (hint: several hundreds of thousands, if not millions). You know they can't forsee everything. Especially on a fight that isn't publicly tested (because they can't do that for obvious reasons).

Not gonna say if the ban is deserved or not at the moment. IMO people are innocent until proven otherwise, but so far I'm seeing a dead body and Ensidia has blood stains all over their shirts.

[Fuzzzie]

lol

sums it up nicely.

[TheSecretArts]

I think that the important thing to realize is:
What would you do in their situation?

I would've abused that bug without as much as a second thought. I would've thought, "Awesome" and treated it like a godsend.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm assuming you would've done something similiar. Therefore: Get off your high horse and condemn them, saying that "they should've stopped" unless you would actually have stopped in their position, which I highly doubt. I'm not defending Ensidia, I'm just saying that a lot of people have no right to talk down to them for abusing a bug.

[noahjam326]

Blizzard has more evidence and proof than any player has access to. They see things you can't. They have no obligation to share any of it with you.

[bondgirl]

what should i say.

im a wow player since over 4 years (more casual than hardcore) and was always suprised about those top guilds killing stuff in such insanely "short" periods after release.

i was reading about buggy encounters and even had some myself in the past lich king days.

but this time i think blizzard fucked smth totaly up. i just read some blogs from those guys and i can only say they kicked their best beta testers and bug finders in the nuts.

i think those guys can live 3 days w/o playing but think about the time they spent to discover new stuff and even report bugs (ofc sucks for others) after discovered. blizzard should have think twice about this decision.

cant care less about those ppl but i think its simply unfair towards the work those guys made for them.

but in the end. link a vid plox. exodus had the guts. so now its your turn

my 2cents and inb4 fanboy alert

rgds and gn8

[Mascotte]

Ensidia isn't stupid. They knew they were doing the wrong thing.


Not gonna say if the ban is deserved or not at the moment. IMO people are guilty unless proven otherwise, but so far I'm seeing a dead body and Ensidia has blood stains all over their shirts.

They also knew they where being watched by several game designers (Thats always the case when topguilds reach a new boss, so guess how much attention they got in the office when they reached the final boss of this expansion?)
Whats the gain for them to abuse anything even close to an exploit just to get a world first on a normal mode boss?
Next week when the first LK HM kills start rolling in no-one will care who got WF normal LK.
Would you still rob a store if the person standing behind you was an armed cop?
Dont think so.

Its not the fact if they exploited, its why on earth would they?

[VileMethoD]

Not like it's the first time time Ensidia has cheesed their way through an encounter. Only difference is this time there were consequences.