Project Lore

I don't know about you guys but even though I am a far cry from the hardcore raiding base, I still live through them vicariously.  I follow the MMO-Champion's Hall of Fame, I check up on all the "top guild" websites here and there, and I even report about the major events in the top echelon of raiding.  Instead of freaking out over the conditions surrounding the King of Pop's death this weekend, I was busy reading into the death of an Old God.  None other then Yogg-Saron+0, the last undefeated Ulduar encounter, bit the dust a few days ago.  Like Jackson, as soon as The Beast with a Thousand Maws uttered his last whisper claims of a mysterious death were uttered. Turns out that the cries of shenanigans against Exodus were just, as the guild openly admits to using a newly discovered, by them, exploit after getting banned from the game.  The banhammer notice, details of the exploit and trash talking are all included in the guild's official statement.

In our many attempts at trying to figure out a way to defeat Yogg zero watcher, we found a way to use bugged game mechanics to make phase 3 easier in zero watcher then one watcher. The bug is when someone is left inside the brain room of Yogg-Saron, they can still get aggro on the adds that spawn in phase 3. That means if you have someone getting healing aggro in the brain room, they will get aggro on the adds, which cause them to evade in place and allows for all of your raids dps to be focused on Yogg. We discovered this mechanic on a wipe, and decided to see if we could actually get it to work. The first attempt after that wipe, we realized it worked, and went with it and killed it on that attempt. We also filed a formal bug report on Blizzard's website.

Blizzard's EULA clearly states that using an exploit to gain an unfair advantage is against the rules.  Exodus doesn't deny that they exploited, or complain about the temporary ban, at least not directly.  Nope, Exodus cries foul of favoritism by Blizzard amongst the hardcore raiding guilds.  The team alleges that Ensidia and Nihilum have used "clever game mechanics" before, even citing a few Ulduar examples, but haven't been meet by the same backlash from other hardcore guilds, or, and more importantly, Blizzard.  At the moment the team is riding out a 72 hour ban and it makes me wonder who at Blizzard makes these decisions.  It's obvious that the issues are handled case by case, so does that mean there is a higher up who oversees the GMs?  Or is it at the discretion of a server's lead GM?  Any readers have that much insight? The guild mud slinging really brings me back though.  In the vanilla days of World of Warcraft, whenever a new first kill was announced on Magtheridon (US) everyone would respond that "Feared killed Onyxia first."  The quip was due to a long standing debate between who killed the dastardly dragon first, Horde or Alliance.  I don't see it anymore so it must have died during The Burning Crusade's heyday, as that is when the old guild disappeared. Slap on the wrist and name calling aside, claiming that you have the right to exploit because the fight is unbeatable is an incredibly lame justification.  In case you are wondering, the exploit has already been hotfixed. What's more interesting to you, the temp ban or the possibility of unequal treatment?

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