Ensidia

I woke up today after a really nice sleep since we had managed to knock Arthas over the previous night. When I woke up I noticed that Mackzter had texted and and called me several times during the night. These were calls and texts at 4-6 AM so I got pretty eager to turn my computer screen on to check wtf was going on. Once I got to my computer I was told that everyone in our Arthas raid had been banned. My first thought was "WTF?!!!" I couldn't understand why we had been banned since we hadn't done anything wrong when we killed Arthas. Right after I tried to log on to see if I was banned and yes, I was. Then I checked my mail and saw:

"Type of violation:  Exploitation – Abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft Details:  Use of Saronite Bombs to bypass The Lich King fight mechanics. Consequences for Account: Account suspended for 72 hours, all items and achievements gained removed"

At this point I couldn't understand a single thing. Saronite Bombs and exploting!?! What in the universe are Blizzard talking about. Then I started talking to my guild mates and apparently we were banned because one of our rogues Naihiko had been using Saronite Bombs during the encounter. Something he uses in his normal dps rotation on every single boss and even on trash to maximize his damage. Then I tried to figure out why we got banned for this. We knew there was a bug when we killed Arthas. But the bug did not happen on every try and we never understood whyit happened. We just figured that Blizzard had fucked something up. Before I go on I wanna tell you a short story about Blizzard and every single end boss since Vanilla.

I'm one of the few people, if not the only one that's been among the first people on every single end boss since Vanilla. Not once in my experience has there been a single END BOSS that worked correctly when the first guilds reached it. I'll just make the list right here from start to end. I don't know about every single bug, but I can list at least one on each boss for sure.

Vanilla

Onyxia: It was possible to stand on ledges to avoid getting feared into fires.

Ragnaros: Impossible and got nerfed several times before he was killed.

Nefarian: I didn't know any bugs on Nefarian myself but I was told that you could have more than 40 people logged out in the room and if someone died you could just have another guy log in and take his place. You could also soft reset him to get more tries when you had used up your (1 hour?).

C'thun: Bugs all over the place and impossible.

Kel'Thuzad: Chance to despawn for the whole reset if you left the instance. This happened to us after we had wiped at 1% twice during World first attempts. Yes we weren't exactly happy at that point.

I actually had to struggle to find bugs in Vanilla. I guess it kinda proves that Vanilla was the best and had the most capable people working on it :).

The Burning Crusade

Gruul: You could use Limited Invulnerability Potion to avoid his main ability Shatter.

Magtheridon: Bugs all over the place and fixed a week after our kill (to an easier version)

Lady Vashj: Same deal as Magtheridon, the fight was bugged in more ways than you could possibly imagine and it actually took months for them to fix it.

Kael'Thas: Impossible, adds had no threat among other things. I don't think a single part of the fight was working the first time we reached it. Fixed a week or two later.

Archimonde: Several bugs the first week, it kept resetting among other things. Sk-Gaming even focused on Hyjal since we already were far in Black Temple just to find out that Archimonde was bugged and impossible to kill. Fixed a week or two later.

Illidan: The first version that only Nihilum and SK-Gaming attemped had a few bugs and funny enough Blizzard actually fixed them between tries. Good job there Blizzard!

Kil'Jaden: You could avoid getting add spawns with Bubble and Iceblocks.

A great expansion with bugs on every single end boss and most of the normal bosses as well.

Wrath of the Lich King

Malygos: The first few days he had a couple of bugs such as doing double breaths and a few other bugs I can't remember.

Algalon: The first weeks when only Ensidia had access to him he wouldn't get out of combat so we weren't able to reach his room for another try.

Anub'Arak: Holy Wrath bug which was used on the World first on purpose. WRU bans?

Arthas: A bug in phase 3 that made the room bigger. Which apparently was caused by saronite bombs. Something I'm not exactly sure about since they did 0 Siege damage during all the tries. Wouldn't surprise me if it was something else that caused it.

Same deal as The Burning Crusade. Bugs and more bugs!

What I'm trying to say is that EVERY SINGLE end boss since Vanilla has been bugged. Sometimes it has made the boss harder, sometimes easier. But it's something all the top guilds during these periods have been dealing with the same way. All of us were still pushing to kill it first. We're not the ones who control these things. We play the game to advance and to kill bosses for loot and glory. While Blizzard even have a team that get paid to test these bosses and we get punished because they can't do their job?

I've almost always petitioned or e-mailed Blizzard about every single one of these bugs. Back in the days during Vanilla and The Burning Crusader I would do it instantly also to receive an answer and a hotfix within a few hours. 99.99% of all players never even saw these bugs cause they were fixed before most guilds reached these bosses.

Blizzard know that only 1-2 guilds will reach their end bosses early and they know that we will find bugs. It's these guilds that are the true beta testers. It's also a very smart business decision by Blizzard since only 50 people will know that they can't do their job properly and not 11 million. It's a smart move. But today we got banned for doing them the huge favor we've done for years.

But these days Blizzard don't seem to give a flying fuck about raiding. Most of the time you don't receive an answer at all and if you do it can take up to a week. I just get angry when I think back on Ulduar and the way Blizzard handled it. Just look at Hodir. They made him completely impossible after two guilds had killed him and gotten the Sigil. Wtf is that about? They left two guilds in World of Warcraft able to reach Alagalon while they blocked every other guild. That's just a big freaking joke. Even worse when we were the only guild attemping Algalon for 3 weeks. The first day we found out about the bug on Algalon we e-mailed and petitioned Blizzard and it took 2 weeks for them to fix it. Funny enough they only bothered to fix it when more guilds, other than Ensidia had access to it. At this point I had kinda given up on the new Blizzard team but I would never have thought they would fuck up as much as they did today.


The thing that pisses me off the most is that Blizzard actually watched us kill Arthas yesterday just like they did when we killed Illidan. But on Illidan they actually hotfixed the bug on the spot. Now they watched the fight and decided to ban us after we killed him. I really don't understand the point of that. They also know that we didn't abuse this bug on purpose. They saw us having teams for the Val'kyrs, they also saw us dpsing them like crazy, stunning them, slowing them and also killing them before they reached the edges successfully. But when the bug happened on one of our wipes then we noticed that the Val'kyrs dropped people off on the platform again. So when the bug would accur again there wasn't any reason for us to damage them since they would drop people on the platform again. If it really was the Saronite Bombs that caused this and they knew about it. Then I just can't figure out why they just didn't tell us about it at the spot. We'd just be extremely happy to have that bug removed. We never wanted it, it was just something that happened.

Since the incident we've tried to e-mail Blizzard for an explanation with no luck so far. I'm really curious myself to see their reasons for this cause I can't figure it out myself. 

We have proof in our news and at mmo-champion that we had no clue what caused this bug. Blizzard even know we didn't do this on purpose. The bug didn't even happen on every try and we just kept on pushing just like any other guild would have done when they were close to a kill. The most funny this is that this bug wouldn't even have affected us. We have a working strategy for every part of the fight. With or without Blizzard's bug we would have killed it that night.

Personally I don't care at all about the ban. But if we lose 1 week on hard modes because Blizzard fucked up then I'm gonna get extremely angry. I wouldn't even care if they reset our ID and we had to redo all the bosses since I know that we'll destroy Arthas either way.

Blizzard, this is your fault, not ours and yet you punish us. I really hope you guys aren't too proud to admit that you were wrong this time.