Glitch King

Ensidia became the first guild to defeat the Lich King in a 25-person raid, and within 24 hours received a three-day ban on all their accounts for exploiting a glitch in order to defeat him. Of course, this is exploding into all sorts of drama on the Warcraft forums.

Ensidia is a European guild of semi-professional players. They are sponsored players, and their benefits are said to include account payments and hardware is provided for them. They are in the business of being the world's best guild in the world's largest game, and they have a track record of being the very best.

The specifics of this crime are simple. During the fight with the Lich King part of the floor gives way. This gives less room to fight and occasionally players are dropped to their death. What the guild did was to use saronite bombs during the battle (not unheard of for engineering rogues to add in to their rotation). Unfortunately, using the bombs in the manner they did caused the floor to not fully collapse, bypassing the difficulty of this content. By no means was the remainder of the fight easy, but it gave them a tremendous advantage over everyone else attempting the fight.

Blizzard's response was to issue a three-day ban to every member of the raid. Blizzard has total control over the game, can see every message sent by every player, keeps extremely detailed time-synced combat logs, and is more or less omnipotent (including being able to check your local PC to make sure you aren't running banned programs in conjunction with the Warcraft client). They would not have done this unless they were sure that Ensidia was purposely using the exploit.

So there's a lot of screaming, laughing, crying, shouting, and electronic nonsense going on right now on the forums. Lots of people are rushing to their defense, lots of people are laughing at Ensidia for being greedy cheaters. Their defenders point to the long list of "firsts" Ensidia has achieved for several years, their accusers cite previous times that Ensidia has used exploits to clear content, apologized, and been forgiven.

And there's the rest of us, many of whom don't know or care who Ensidia is, and will never play this game at their level. Frankly, many of us will never fight the Lich King at all before the next expansion is released, so we don't really have a stake in this at all.

But we think we do, because this is the game that we play to the best of our ability, and we are bound by the rules that Blizzard sets forth for play. If me and the guys down at the X&Y Factory had a guild and we exploited this fight to kill the Lich King before Ensidia did, our accounts would probably get deleted, and nobody would ever hear from us again. But because this is a guild with - for lack of a better word - fame, they get a suspension and a warning, and let off.

I can see the reasoning. No one cares if me and Fred lose our accounts, but the superstar at the top of the bragging pyramid is untouchable by us, so we start to expect that they are untouchable by Blizzard. This is not the case. This is not Major League Baseball and Mark McGwire - the steroid abusers had a players' union to negotiate with, this is just a video game with an EULA that states all of your data and input becomes property of Blizzard. Fair or not, Blizzard can empty your account just because they don't like you. Seriously, it's in the user agreement. Your only recourse is to choose not to play.

So right now Ensidia is the Mark McGwire of Warcraft. There is an accusation of cheating, and at least one member of Ensidia has posted on his blog that he's quitting (we'll see). There's no absolute ban, there's no one stopping play yet, but there is a huge cloud hanging over their LK kill - and everything else they have ever done - because of their approach to this suspension. Ensidia's response is to blame Warcraft for allowing the glitch to appear in the game to begin with, and they are proclaiming their innocence.

Which brings me to the part where I express my opinion on the whole thing.

Anyone who wanted a respected kill would have seen that the fight was glitched and called for a wipe - give up, let everyone die, start over. Ensidia and their defenders say that it shouldn't be necessary, but I argue that it is. If you want to be the first and the best, you must also be completely honest in your approach. Their defenders say that it shouldn't matter, a kill is a kill, and they shouldn't be held to a higher standard.

Oh yes, they should. They should be held to the highest standard possible.

This is a guild that is semiprofessional in nature, and is not shy about claiming to be the best guild in the world, and is completely self-promoting. They want the attention. They want the admiration. They want people to visit their website and see their bosskills and revere their ability. So if they want to be the best and hold that banner, they need to hold up a banner that anyone can carry. It needs to be a banner gained without the use of exploits, without cheating.

Blizz would punish us, they should punish you. Just admit it, move on, and kill that boss again next week without taking short cuts that others can't follow.