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WoW Archivist: A raid exploit compendium, part 2
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? If you missed last week's Archivist, I recounted some of WoW's earliest raid exploits. Guilds have been pushing for ways to make raids easier since Molten Core went live, whether for the glory of a first kill or simple convenience. This week, I'll continue our tour through this sordid side of raiding with more recent exploits. Many of them ended with suspensions. Shadow Word: World First In her heyday, Serpentshrine Cavern's Lady Vashj was considered one of the hardest raid bosses that the game had ever seen. In March 2007, more than two months since Serpentshrine went live with the release of The Burning Crusade, EU guild Nihilum posted screenshots of Vashj's loot and claimed the world-first kill. Nihilum was the dominant progression guild at the time, earning 20 world firsts throughout the expansion -- more than three times that of their closest competitor. There was only one problem: An ex-member named Lewt claimed that Nihilum exploited a bug to kill Vashj. As with Razorgore and other bosses, the mechanism seemed to revolve around that troublesome spell Divine Intervention. Using the spell despawned the pillars that are connected to Vashj's health, leaving her with 1 HP. Lewt popped a Soulstone and killed her with Shadow Word: Death. He even provided a screenshot to prove it. He also went on to badmouth the guild about exploits in Blackwing Lair, gold buying practices, and even an unlikely situation where an officer was paying the guild leader's real-life bills.
WoW Archivist: A raid exploit compendium
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? One week after Mists of Pandaria goes live, the expansion's first raid will become available and the race to world first will officially begin. To the most dedicated progression raiders, a world-first kill is a dream come true, the ultimate achievement in raiding. Other raiders are just as excited to get a regional or a realm first. To realize those dreams, however, some guilds bend the rules. Whether you call it cheating or a "creative use of game mechanics," it's been happening throughout WoW's long raiding history. The myriad methods have been as varied and creative as the bosses themselves. Let's take a look back!
Watch Kungen's level 60 hardcore Diablo 3 character die unceremoniously
In Diablo III's hardcore mode, when you die in the game, you die in real life. Wait, no, that's not right. When you die in the game, you lose your character forever. Kungen, another former World of Warcraft raider turned competitive Diablo player, was known for his ... exploits in the world of Azeroth for years. He recently retired from the game and, since the release of the new Diablo title, has been playing that game nearly as much as he once played WoW. Kungen made it to level 60, began working his way through Inferno Hardcore, and met his untimely demise in the silliest possible way. His death screen states that he has spent a little over 175 hours on his hardcore barbarian, but how much of that was spent playing and how much was spent AFK or tabbed out while still logged in to the game, we don't really know. Judging by his death, maybe he should have spent a little less time tabbed out. "The good thing," Kungen remarked, "is that I'm going to be back at the same spot in like 30 hours."
Race to World First documentary releasing soon
Looking for Group Productions has been hard at work on its documentary Race to World First for a good long while now, capturing many top-tier World of Warcraft guilds' attempts at claiming coveted world firsts in the raiding game as well as following Blood Legion's race to a top spot. Set to release in a few weeks, Race to World First looks like it's going to be an introspective look at the time and energy that many of these guilds put into the raiding game, as well as an examination of the multicultural nature of the game and the general excitement that goes along with MMO accomplishments. Each week, Race to World First looks at clips from players in guilds that have been fighting for or actually achieved world firsts. Looking back a bit, this clip with Narilka of Ensidia chronicles her time spent with the guild downing Kil'jaeden at the end of The Burning Crusade when she was still just 16 years old. We loved having the Race to World First production team at the WoW Insider reader meetup at BlizzCon in 2010 -- they were some of the nicest guys and had a blast talking to real players and real fans. I am excited to see this documentary. Check out the trailer -- you might even see some familiar faces!
Ensidia's Muqq talks progression, fun
As far as 'I quit' posts go, we've all seen worse than this one from Ensidia's Muqq. The blog entry, which takes a calm, reasoned approach when laying out his decision to quit World of Warcraft, also compares Blizzard's MMORPG behemoth to smaller titles like Final Fantasy XI in an attempt to illustrate why the author feels that the fun has left the Azeroth building. "I've kept asking myself the question, dating back to early WotlK, 'is this fun?' The conclusion was always the same. No. For me personally, I felt like things always stood still. The lack of difficulty throughout most of the game, coupled with having only some gear progression as the only form of character progression left a sour taste in my mouth," he writes. While some will no doubt perceive Muqq's observations as stating the obvious, it's worth noting when a major player in one of WoW's elite PvE squads finally burns out. "The game philosophy has shifted, maybe due to the large turnover of players, or perhaps it might have been the reason causing it. Regardless, here we are today, playing a game with some of the best gameplay features any MMO has to offer, yet lacking the depth and character progression to go with it," he concludes. Check out the blog entry over at the official Ensidia website.
[1.Local]: An Ensidia-free zone
Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week. Grab a cushion, flop down and give your weary dogs (puppies?) a rest. The photo above notwithstanding, rest assured that the rest of [1.Local] this week is an Ensidia-free zone. (So is the world-first 25-man Lich King kill, for that matter.) Can you imagine having to hash that out yet again? What a relief that [1.Local] isn't merely a tally sheet for comments from stories with the most views -- or even the stories with the most comments, or the most positive comments, or (as comment trolls hold fast to believing) the most negative comments ... We can follow our own little quirky path through the conversation of the past week. Let's bite into the rest of this week's goodies just like we all like it: nice and meaty, with a little bit of hot, runny juices from the odd little beasts we discovered just down yonder, off the beaten track...
Editorial: Thoughts on the Ensidia ban
Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.
Paragon scores world-first legitimate 25-man Lich King kill
GuildOx reports that Paragon, from the European Lightning's Blade realm, has defeated the Lich King and acquired the Frozen Throne achievement. While well-known guild Ensidia had defeated him yesterday on 25-man difficulty, they also employed some dubious techniques to win and later paid the price for it by having their loot and achievements removed. Paragon, on the other hand, appears to have completed the encounter in an exploit-free manner and, according to MMO-Champion's Boubouille, did it on their first try. Congratulations go out to Paragon on their clean kill. Now let's see some of those heroic achievements!
Ensidia temporarily banned for exploits
It looks like Ensidia's 25-man world first on the Lich King will go down with an asterisk next to it, because they've all just received a three-day ban for "Abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." The Ensidia blog post reporting this is down as of this writing due to traffic, but you can still view the Google cache. The story is that Ensidia made use of Saronite Bombs to "bypass The Lich King fight mechanics" (Saronite Bombs and similar items were disabled in a hotfix last night). In addition to the temporary ban, all items and achievements they gained from downing Arthas have been revoked. Before the ban (but after the hotfix), Ensidia put up a post claiming that they didn't think the bombs were an exploit; Blizzard obviously isn't buying it. Meanwhile, Muqq, the Ensidia player who posted about the ban, has taken this as an opportunity to quit WoW (and rant a bit at Blizzard about "half-assed encounters"), saying "to ban people when they do not know what's causing the bugs is just a [expletive] joke." Update: It's worth a mention that the language Muqq used at the end of his post is identical (save places and names) to this post by Tigole (scroll to the bottom -- it's the last thing on the page), written of EverQuest in 2002. Be warned, neither of these are safe for work.
Ensidia scores world first 25-man Lich King kill [Updated]
Last night was the world first 10-man kill, tonight it's the world first 25-man kill. The infamous Ensidia of Tarren Mill-EU has scored the kill, and there's a news post on their website confirming it. (Ensidia's site seems to have fallen offline, but you can still read their story via Google cache.) They walked away with Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand and Fal'inrush, Defender of Quel'thalas. Well done, crew! WoW raiding is a bit strange these days, because this kill is actually just the beginning of the road. Now we get to watch the hard modes, which is likely to take quite a bit longer. That's our hope, at least. Will Ensidia walk away with hard mode Lich King as well, or will a group of underdogs come from behind? Will Stars show up in the spotlight again? Only time will tell. Update: Ensidia's raiders have received a 72-hour ban from the game for "abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." A hotfix was applied last night to prevent the use of Saronite Bombs (which Ensidia used) in the encounter and Ensidia's loot and achievements have been removed. So that world first? Still up for grabs.
Ensidia snags world-first Tribute to Immortality
Ensidia, now of Tarren Mill-EU, reported today that they have captured the world-first A Tribute to Immortality. Considered to be one of the most difficult, if not most difficult, raiding achievements currently in the game, A Tribute to Immortality requires a perfect run of heroic Trial of the Crusader-25 with no player deaths and all 50 attempts remaining. The reward for pulling this off is the Crusader's Black Warhorse (Alliance version here), but I wouldn't expect to see too many of these running around in the near future. I'm most impressed that they managed to get through the heroic version of Faction Champs without losing anyone, although -- as Mackzter acknowledges on the news release -- the achievement "involves a bit of luck." Congratulations to Ensidia, and best of luck to all the guilds out there working on this as well!
The Daily Quest: Back in action
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Big Hit Box gets their hands on a Raging Deathbringer and Stormstrike crits you with math. This doesn't have a whole lot to do with WoW, but Of Teeth and Claws reviews the demo of a pretty slick indie game. AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! Episode 7 of The Hunting Party Podcast is available for download, featuring Munken, one of Ensidia's hunters. Hunters Rhok continues their series on pet control, this time highlighting the art of organizing your pet bar. Runeforge Gossip takes a look at World of Logs. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Ensidia and Method to compete in Ulduar timed run
Live PvP competition is old hat. 2009 appears to be the year of PvE (if you ask me, every year should be that year). At the Games Convention Online, in Leipzig over the weekend of July 31 – August 2, two of the strongest PvE guilds in the world, Ensidia and Method, are competing in a timed run of Ulduar. It's going to be on 10-man, which is kind of strange, given that most people (and especially hardcore raiders) seem to think of the 25-man version as the "real" version of the raid. Maybe they wanted it to be easier for spectators to follow the action. Points will be awarded for killing end bosses of a "zone" faster than the other guild, with points increasing from zone to zone. I'm guessing that by "zone" the press release refers to the Siege, the Antechamber, the Keepers, and the Descent into Madness, but the translation is not perfect - I could be wrong. The Ensidia/Method matchup is going to be on August 2nd; as a prelude, two German guilds (Irae AoD and For the Horde) are going to compete on the same event on August 1st. Apparently the raids will be streaming live on allvatar.com, although I can't really get very far on that site - WTB English translation. Does anyone know if it will be free to watch or not?
WoW Insider Show Episode 98 with special guest Medros
Yes, our friend Medros of All Things Azeroth joined us on the podcast last week for an extra long show, and what we can say? There was just tons of things to talk about. Medros, Turpster, our own Lesley Smith and I answered your emails (including updates on faction changes as well as the big response we got from fans of Ensidia last week), and talked about the most popular stories from the World of Warcraft. Of course we didn't need the chat channel to remind us of the Worgen pet issue (though they reminded us anyway), we talked about Tom Chilton's interview and the chance that WoW may one day go "free to play," and we talked about Bind to Account items twice: how they'll work with faction changes in the future, and what items like the Tome of Cold Weather Flight tell us about Blizzard's plans for the future.Lots of laughs were had, and hopefully we gave out some insight as well. Enjoy the show, and we'll see you next week. I'll still be out of town, so we're not quite sure when it'll be broadcasting live yet, but stay tuned here to WoW.com -- we'll let you know as soon as we do. Or just subscribe up in iTunes, and you'll get every show sent directly to your iPod every week like clockwork. And if you do head over there, be sure to toss us a rating and/or a review -- the more you put in there, the merrier we'll be. Thanks!Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
European first of Heroic: Alone in the Darkness
Word has suddenly started flooding in that the EU-first kill of Heroic Yogg-Saron with no Keepers, a.k.a. Heroic: Alone in the Darkness, has been scored today by... no, not Ensidia. Paragon of Lightning's Blade EU has managed to steal the EU first (and world second) achievement. Hopefully this one will actually stick, unlike Exodus's kill.Paragon is no slouch of a raid, but this still comes as something of a surprise. Prior to this kill, GuildOx listed Paragon as the 10th top raid in the world. Top ten material, but when it comes to firsts, rarely do you even look that low on the charts. It's pretty much the top two or three that dominate across the board. All eyes were on Ensidia and Method, maybe Premonition, Inner Sanctum or Wraith if you were generous, but probably not Paragon. We can probably consider them the underdogs when it comes to this kill.Congratulations, Paragon. If you guys get banned for 'sploits and make me look silly twice in as many weeks, I will be most upset!Update: I've also just been sent a screenshot that proves it, if the Armory wasn't enough.
WoW Insider Show Episode 97: Chasing silhouettes
Good times as always on our podcast this past holiday weekend -- while Turpster was away, we Americans took over the show, and declared our independence the only way we know how: by talking about the most popular stories in the World of Warcraft this past week. Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart, Michael "Belfaire" Sacco and I answered your emails, and then chatted about Blizzard's addition of faction changes to the game (and who'll go for it), patch 3.2 and its extendable raid lockouts and universal armor tokens, Exodus and Ensidia and how Blizzard has dealt with both, and of course, that sneaky Cataclysm trademark and what it might mean for Blizzard's future releases.Whew! If it sounds like a full show, that's because it was. It even went on longer than usual, so you can enjoy the extra-long WoW Insider Show at any of the links below (including clicking on the iTunes link to subscribe directly there). We won't be back next Saturday -- instead, we're setting up for a special Thursday evening show this week at 6pm Eastern, so those of you who can't make it on Saturdays can instead tune in on Thursday night to chat and listen live with us on the Ustream page.Enjoy this past weekend's show, and we'll see you on Thursday.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
Exodus punished for exploiting Yogg-Saron encounter
As previously reported, there were accusations that US guild Exodus used an exploit to obtain the World First of the last unclaimed Hard Mode in Ulduar -- Alone in the Darkness. As it turns out, these accusations were true and blue poster Daelo posted on the official forums that the Yogg-Saron encounter was hotfixed on all servers to prevent this from happening in the future. Owing to this, Exodus' kill is no longer recognized by some achievement trackers.Contrary to some reports, however, Exodus released a statement on their website that members of their guild were not banned, clarifying that Blizzard meted out a 72-hour suspension for their abuse of game mechanics. They argue that the encounter wasn't beatable to begin with, similar to the C'thun fight in Ahn'Qiraj before it was fixed, prompting the exploit. In the same statement, Exodus also points at Ensidia's arguably hypocritical stance of complaining about the abuse considering Ensidia used similar questionable methods to achieve other World Firsts. Serennia mentions this behavior in his column at wowriot, as well, bringing into question Blizzard's apparent double standard when meting out punishment.
World first of "Alone in the Darkness" a possible exploit
We reported last week that a guild named Exodus on the US realm of Ysondre had come out of nowhere to topple the world first of the Heroic: Alone in the Darkness achievement, which requires that you bring down the biggest bad currently in the game, Yogg-Saron, with no help from any of the Keepers in Ulduar. But not so fast, says Serennia over at WoWRiot -- over on their forums Ensidia is claiming that Exodus used an exploit, and that their kill doesn't count at all. Apparently, having Thorim help on the fight keeps the "Immortal Guardians" in the last phase of the fight from being a problem, and without Thorim, you have to not only do the fight without his extra 10% damage bonus (each Keeper ups your DPS that much), but you have to deal with the Guardians messing up your melee classes, and oh yeah: they both heal and get healed by Yogg. Not that it's impossible to do it, but it's definitely not easy, and Ensidia claims that Exodus found a known exploit that allows you to evade the Guardians out completely, thus turning the last phase into a straight tank-and-spank, obviously much easier.After that, it gets into some guild back and forth (Ensidia apparently did something that might have been an exploit on Hodir, and when people call them out on that, they say that the exploits were different -- Ensidia's tactic was just an interesting use of game mechanics, while the exploit Exodus is suspected of using is more of a cheat), but the fact remains that Exodus is clearly not a guild that anyone expected to clear what might be the toughest raiding achievement in the game before anyone else, and yet that's exactly what they did. Ensidia says they won't be killing Yogg for the achievement using the exploit, and that they've reported the Exodus kill to the devs, so we'll have to see if the devs decide that Exodus did cheat, or if they let Exodus keep their achievements and mounts. We're not sure how much it all matters, with world first kills not being all that important any more (and that's exactly what the devs might say as well), but Ensidia is claiming that an exploit took place -- we'll have to see if that turns out to be true.Thanks, Nimrod!
More Algalon firsts from around the world
The last couple of days have seen a few more 'firsts' around the world for Algalon, the supposed Destroyer of Raids. Premonition of the Sen'jin server scored the US first, roughly a week after Ensidia's world first. Their kill revealed two brand new drops from the boss, both of which you can see in the little gallery just below. Good work, guys.In another part of the world, the infamous Chinese guild Stars (the one that moved to Taiwan servers to play Wrath of the Lich King) has downed Algalon as well. This is extremely impressive. Why? Well, Taiwan got their hands on patch 3.1 a full week after North American and European realms did. That means Stars killed Algalon in the same amount of time it took Ensidia to do it. If both regions received the patch on the same day, the two kills would have happened at very nearly the same time.Congratulations to both guilds, and we look forward to watching the next raiding race when patch 3.2 rolls around![via MMO-Champion]%Gallery-65692%
WoW Insider Show Episode 93: Avoiding the scam
Our podcast was so much fun last Saturday that we went even longer than usual -- this week instead of the usual hour, you get nearly an hour and ten minutes for your download (and all for the same low, low price of free!). Robin Torres and Lesley Smith joined Turpster and me to talk about what I did at E3 last week (meeting Michele Boyd was definitely a highlight), the new Druid forms and how they look, what's new in the game with 3.1.3, and some recent player achievements, including Ensidia's big win, and the no-deaths character. Plus, we talked with Robin about her recent scam experience, and how you can avoid having something like that happen to you in the future. One quick note: during the show, we guessed that Blizzard would never ask you for your Authenticator passcode, but that's not true: they do require you to give it to them when you sign in on their site. But our other tips are valid: if you make sure that you're the one typing the URL in to "blizzard.com" or "WorldofWarcraft.com," then you'll never have to worry about any sneaky sites grabbing your name and password.And of course we answered your emails as usual -- if you have any movie posters to send in to us this week, you can send them along to theshow@wow.com. Enjoy the show, we'll see you next weekend.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
