A View From The Road: Fail to the King

[TechNoFear]

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[Ultrajoe]

I feel your pain at that last bit, Funk, my guild is filled with only pure hatred for the sight of Festergut's grinning, disgusting head. And don't get me started on Rotface...

 

[viciouspen]

Hmm in the end it wasn't legit enough though.
I can't completely buy that they didn't know to the point of being totally innocent. Gamers that operate on that level are not stupid and are built to find the tiniest little exploit that can be had.
Why do I say this?
Because I know myself, being a very nice and upstanding helpful member of an MMO community has still "innocently" been part of taking part in exploits in game.

Everybody loves to act like they have no idea what's going on, everybody is awfully surprised when someone points out it's an exploit and there's always lots of incredibly reasonable excuses, but, everyone isn't "that" innocent.

So yeah, I really don't buy that Ensidia is innocent in this, and I'd say if anything it's good that it was caught. It lends some legitimacy to this kind of endeavor in MMOs since someone is making the effort to enforce it.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I blame Blizzard, do they even have a QA department anymore or do they just randomly type out a bunch of code and hope it works as they want it to. And writing bug tickets during an actual fight can be very distracting.

 

[Chakanus]

I never really got into WoW (partially because I saw what it did to people), so I'll have to see if I got this straight. 25 people were fighting the uber-last boss, and somehow the battle had a clunky mechanism. Now, since they finished the battle, with the said clunky mechanism, and only then reported, they are considered evil.

What did anyone expect them to do? To phone in and say they were having a problem? Would Blizzard immediately fix the issue, so they could still win the race? I can't understand how this is their fault. They wanted to be first, they got there, there was a bug (which is Blizzard's fault) they finished it and reported it.

I would call this a trap. No one in the world would just hit the pause button to send a message about a possible error during the last encounter of a game, so, eventually any a team would have to be punished for an error that was Blizzard's. Congrats!, you got the BAN-ticket. May the 2nd best team win???

 

[jamesworkshop]

Thats bull no way before that fight could they have known that would happen are 25 people just supposed to stop playing because of a developers lazy bit of code why not ban the programmers its not like the guild hacked the game to make something possible

 

[VanBasten]

In preliminary attempts, Ensidia discovered that the Saronite Bombs that their Engineers were using had an unforeseen effect

Okay, do you have any evidence to support this claim other than...

To suggest that they couldn't realize what was going on and figure out what was causing it is absolutely absurd.

This seems be the basis of your article, you find it absurd they didn't figure out what was going on, but don't you think that it also might be reasonable to assume they were busy, you know, actually trying to get the World First to stop to investigate what was causing the bug out of a hundred things they were doing at the time?

This article is basically lynching that guild, and branding them as cheaters without any bloody evidence. I thought tar and feathering was frowned upon these days, guess i was wrong...

 

[Dogstile]

In all fairness, Ensidia did report the bug so that it could be fixed ... but only after they'd gotten the kill

What do you expect them to do, stop fighting the lich king and casually wait for a fix?

 

[blarghmoomoo]

What do you expect them to do, stop fighting the lich king and casually wait for a fix?

I would have expected them to stop using the bombs, easy enough to do.

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

A View From The Road: Fail to the King

Last week, top WoW raiders killed the Lich King - but at what cost?

Read Full Article

In all honesty Funkman.

They did deserve it, but it doesnt count anyway. No-ones downed Hard-mode yet. The true raid

 

[Slavik_91]

lol a 3-day ban it's pathetically nothing

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

This is one of the reasons I've become annoyed with Blizzard as of late. Here's a snippet from an article by David Sirlin at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml that pretty much sums up my feelings.

Spoiler

6) The Terms of Service. The very idea of using the terms of service as the de facto way to enforce a certain player-behavior goes against everything I've learned. A game should be a system of rules that allow the player to explore. If the player finds loopholes, then the game developer should fix them. It's never, ever the player's fault: it's the game developer's fault. People who currently make deals with enemy faction (Horde or Alliance ) to trade wins in battleground games are not really at fault. They are playing in a system that forces anyone who wants to be rank 14 to do exactly that. A line in the Terms of Service saying that you shouldn't behave this way changes nothing, and teaches nothing.

Or consider the humorous example of Lord Kazzak. He is an "outdoor raid boss." That means he's a big monster that wanders round the world, and you need 40 people to kill him. You don't get to go into your own instanced dungeon to fight your own personal copy of this guy; there is one wandering around the server and you all compete to kill him so you can get his good loot. When Lord Kazzak was added to the game, Blizzard also added a list of Terms of Service rules that would make your head spin. None of these rules were hard-coded; they were all "squishy" rules added on top of the actual game rules. And now for your reading enjoyment, the Lord Kazzak Official Rules of Engagement (I did not make these up; they are real!):

This policy is an extension of the current in-game harassment policies.

PvE Ruleset.

When a group of players has engaged Lord Kazzak, any other players interfering in the encounter may be given a warning, regardless of faction, as in the examples below:

A group of Alliance characters has legitimately engaged Lord Kazzak and a Horde character engages Lord Kazzak as well (Horde player receives a warning).

A group of Horde characters has legitimately engaged Lord Kazzak and a Horde character engages Lord Kazzak as well (the second Horde player receives a warning).

PvP Ruleset.

When a group of players has engaged Lord Kazzak, any same-faction players interfering in the encounter may be given a warning as in the examples below.

All other possibilities to join the battle are allowed.

A group of Alliance characters has legitimately engaged Lord Kazzak and Alliance character engages Lord Kazzak as well to disrupt this raid without any PvP solution for the Alliance group (the second Alliance player receives warning).

Here's some more things that will get you banned:

?Playing too much," using a rogue/warlock combo to lure bosses too far from their spawn points, fighting on rooftops, entering unfinished areas (why are they accessible at all?), buying gold or items on eBay (eventually the courts will probably overrule them on this), collaborating with the other faction in battlegrounds, "using terrain exploits to your advantage," player-created casinos (that merely use the in-game "/random" command), player-created bingo games, profanity (even though there is an in-game language filter, to say nothing of free speech), posting on forums about whether a guild is full of Blizzard employees, posting on the forums about why you were banned for posting about something seemingly constructive, advertising a gay and lesbian friendly guild that's a safe haven from the endless use of the words ?gay? and ?fag? in the general chat channels, having a name such as "JustKidding," "CmdrTaco," "TheAthiest," or "roflcopter"... and a whole lot more things, too.

These examples go on and on, but the basic idea here is that Blizzard treats the players like little children who need a babysitter. There are mountains of rules in the terms of service that tell you that you shouldn't do things that you totally can do in the game if you want. Why they don't just alter their design and code so you can't do these things is beyond me. But this mentality is drilled into the players to the point that they start believing that it's ok. They start believing that it's not ok to experiment, to try out anything the game allows in a non-threatening environment. Well?that's a dangerous thing. That's the point at which the game stops being "fun" by Raph Koster's definition, and it's also the point at which the game can no longer teach. The power of games is that they empower a player to try all the possibilities that he can think of that the game rules allow, not that they have pages of "rules of conduct" that prevent you from creative thinking.

The problem is, this "exploiting" is a part of human nature, and one of the reasons the human race has become so advanced. You can't tell me you wouldn't feel the least bit strange for deciding to ditch the bombs due to the glitch. If you did.

Wow, that's pathetic. And I 100% agree that if a developer can't fix their bugs, they shouldn't whine if players (accidentally or not, it hardly matters) make use of them. Especially not after the fact. Not to mention that, as people mentioned before, noone -no one- in their right minds would break off a world-first attempt to beat a dungeon during the final boss fight just because there just might be some sort of little bug in the environment. Blizzard should thank that guild for telling them about what happened, rather than punishing them for using something they fucked up.

I don't particularly care about this example because I don't even play WoW, but I'm glad I don't since it's exactly this kind of anti-player attitude that pisses me off the most.

Stupid policy, and a stupid article for blindly agreeing with it and condemning player achievements no matter how trivial they might be.

 

[JugglerPanda]

What do you expect them to do, stop fighting the lich king and casually wait for a fix?

I would have expected them to stop using the bombs, easy enough to do.

"Oh hey guys, something is causing the platform to bug out. I wonder what it could be?" "IT'S THE SARONITE BOMBS MAN!" "Are you sure? Why not the flasks of endless rage or prayer of mending?" "IDK LOL. I SOMEHOW FIGURED OUT THAT SARONITE BOMBS HAVE BEEN CAUSING THIS TO HAPPEN, EVEN THOUGH IT'S INCREDIBLY UNLIKELY FOR ME TO HAVE COME TO THAT CONCLUSION BASED ON THE EVIDENCE AT HAND."

It could have easily been Prayer of Mending or Flask of Endless Rage causing the bug from their point of view. Saying "Oh they should have known!" doesn't apply to this scenario, because there's no way that they could have known.

 

[Christemo]

i personally think that you should never be able to fight someone as important as Arthas. its kinda ruining the story of the Warcraft universe. Illidan, Kaelthas, Arthas, all of them had a reputation as rape machines, and then 10 to 25 random gits come running, smack their heads through the floor and teabags theme.

regardless, Ensidia should stop running around exploiting stuff. if they knew the bombs were regenerating the floor, they should´ve stopped on the spot.

 

[Christemo]

(partially because I saw what it did to people)

i call bullshit on that. i played that game for 4 years without the slightest hint of addiction. the people everyone hears about dieing from playing WoW are either:

1. weak-willed wusses.
2. people who thinks its the best game ever.
3. people with way to much free time.

personally, i´d say i dont fall under any of those categories, having lots of homeworka and a second hobby. but apparrently some people just cant stop accidently pouring glue on their mouse.

the rumor is a lie (just like the cake).

 

[Premonition]

This is complete and utter bullcrap. I can't begin to count the times I was cheated out of loot or titles because of bugs or cheating Horde and NEVER was any attention given to my situation. But now that someone else exploited a bug, they're all over it like zombies on a living. Nothing that they did was cheating or going out of their way to use a bug. They just did normal tactics on a boss in a new dungeon (going from 10 to 25 usually tends to change things up inside the dungeon, so technically it's a new dungeon)

 

[Chakanus]

(partially because I saw what it did to people)

i call bullshit on that. i played that game for 4 years without the slightest hint of addiction. the people everyone hears about dieing from playing WoW are either:

1. weak-willed wusses.
2. people who thinks its the best game ever.
3. people with way to much free time.

personally, i´d say i dont fall under any of those categories, having lots of homeworka and a second hobby. but apparrently some people just cant stop accidently pouring glue on their mouse.

the rumor is a lie (just like the cake).

Hnmmm, when I made that statement I wasn't referring to cases on the news, or in the web, I was thinking of people I knew. Someone who starts sleeping an average of 2 hours a night just so she could play more, and who develops a slight eating disorder (aka, only eating bread and nutella) isn't a myth to me.

Heck I know some folk who enter WoW facts in most casual conversations... If they are weak willed or not, meehhh, I care not. I know it happens.

Still, I do believe this is off-topic, and since I have no other facts beyond what I have seen, I shall leave it at that.

 

[WhiteRat07]

I don't think they did anything wrong here. Can anyone really say that they wouldn't have done the same thing in this situation?

 

[Chipperz]

In all fairness, Ensidia did report the bug so that it could be fixed ... but only after they'd gotten the kill

What do you expect them to do, stop fighting the lich king and casually wait for a fix?

It was the first set of people to fight the hardest boss in the game so far.

Trust me, they all died at least once. There was time to at least send a quick report of "Uhh, Blizzard dudes? The floor's coming back. Is this right?"