Indeed, while the community was divided over Karatechop, they were united in their anger against blizzard.
It’s easy to be very holier-than-thou and say YOU wouldn’t have used it, but I think past history shows that a vast majority of players would have not only used it, but used it to a much greater degree.
Blizzard screwed up.
Blizzard got embarrassed by their screwup
Blizzard overreacted by blanket-banning an entire guild, most of which had nothing to do with the screwup
Blizzard tried to cover up their over-reaction by purging all references to it from every site that they have sway over.
Karatechop didn’t seem to mind the condemnation. In another interview, he said this:
"We never meant to upset people, anyone, by personal gain of loot or achievements. That’s never how TMF rolled. It was simply a ridiculous amount of fun. That’s all.
"I cheated. I know this. The item said ‘Cheater.’ I justified it, to be sure, and it was an easy thing to find justification for.
However, it didn’t stop at condemnation. You probably know enough about the WoW forums by now – it never stops there. Karatechop received enormous amounts of abuse online, personal attacks, and threats.
Martin Fury is still visible on a number of wow databases. It’s the lowest-numbered item in the game. Its use has been changed to instantly kill the wearer, to prevent the same mistake from ever happening again.
On 8 December 2009, Blizzard released the final patch of the expansion: Fall of the Lich King. The day approached with frantic excitement, as the first players entered Icecrown Citadel. Its spire had loomed in the distance for the entire expansion, and loomed large in the lore of Warcraft going back a decade. Its final boss was the titular Lich King himself.
When they first come out, bosses can take days or sometimes weeks for the best players in the world to take down. But once they do, the encounters are gradually toned down to give more causal players a chance. The Lich King first fell on 3rd February 2010, and the coveted world-first title went to a guild called Ensidia.
And then it was taken away again.
Blizzard’s design team would often watch (invisible and from afar) as guilds took down bosses for the first time, to make sure everything went to plan. Whatever they saw with Ensidia, it clearly upset them. They come to the conclusion that the guild had cheated. All of the members of the group were banned for three days, and they were stripped of the achievements and loot from the fight. Since they couldn’t complete the Raid that week, they were unable to unlock the Heroic (hard mode) version of the raid the following week, putting them firmly behind their competition. The decision proved immediately controversial.
So what had Ensidia done wrong?
Blizzard’s official reason for the ban was, “Abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft.” If that seems vague, let me explain.
The problem came down to a Rogue named Naihiko, who used Saronite Bombs throughout the fight. Saronite Bombs were a kind of grenade item that helped guilds do little more damage. However in this case, the bombs caused the fight to glitch. As you progressed through the Lich King’s stages, the arena was meant to get gradually smaller, giving players less and less room to move. If you watch this tutorial, you’ll see the platform shrink around 3:05, and again at 5:15. During the final phase, the Saronite Bombs caused the stage to glitch back to its larger size, making the fight easier.
Blizzard claimed that the raid group knew about this glitch and exploited it. They deliberately brought the Lich King to the edge of the platform to make him easier to defeat. And that once the platform glitched, they should have stopped their playthrough and reported it.
The members of Ensidia spoke out extensively about the perceived unfairness of this ban. Their website is long gone now, but I’ve dug up a copy here. Almost all of the banned members made their own responses, some more polite than others. Here they are, from Poptisse, Ekyu, Muqq. Kungen, Tjani, Jinxarn, and Eoy.
Ekyo’s post is the longest and most coherent of the bunch, and reads a lot like a HobbyDrama post itself.
The entire progress on this was pretty chaotic due to 10 people actually knowing what to do and the others going with the flow.
Ekyo said “…we realized something was actually wrong with the floor respawning. […] We didn’t actually know what was causing it and we actually had one […] try without it.
Now some will say that seeing this bug we should have stopped and wait for an hotfix before proceeding for a kill. But would anyone actually have done that really ? Not only would you waste tries in the meantime, but what if another guild killed it before you. We are talking about a race against other people there after all. And what proof do we have that the dev team didn’t actually find out this bug BECAUSE we happened to trigger it
Muqq was kind enough to include a full copy of the letter he received from Blizzard. Among other things, it said, “It is with regret that we take this type of action, but it is in the best interests of the World of Warcraft community as a whole, and for the integrity of the game. The use of these items bypassed a major portion of the encounter, significantly reducing the difficulty in a clear abuse of game mechanics.”
The rest of Muqq’s post is a ‘leaving note’ of sorts, in which he promises to quit World of Warcraft when his month’s subscription runs out. “Anyway, back to the subject. This was as good time as any to drop this game and move on. Had been considering it for a while, and I always said to Buzzkill and the gang that I was just waiting for the sign. A sign from heaven to guide me on my way. Today, I received it.” It gradually gets angrier and angrier from there. It’s quite a read, honestly. And it caused a stir of its own.
“the way Muqq has ranted doesn’t put Ensidia or himself in a good light.” One player commented. “He seems to think he’s the end-all and be-all of WoW and that him quitting will end this game. I’m sorry chester, but you’re a nobody outside the game and you’re not a puppetmaster. He could have taken the high road and at least constructively posted something when he didn’t agree with the suspension, but this rant is embarrassing.
Finally, Dear Blizzard.
Fix your goddamn buggy bullshit half-assed encounters. The amount of time and effort we dedicated to get through Wrath of the Lich king and Icecrown to see this guy die and take a turn at Arthas is just sick. To finally see him die only to have the ENTIRE raid banned is simply an insult. It’s cheap enough to make a bugged fucking encounter, but to ban people when they do not know what’s causing the bugs is just a fucking joke.
Tjani claimed, “ I have never before felt so brutally insulted without being able to defend myself.” Most of his post is bullet-pointed dismissals of the points held against him.
Kungen’s contribution was a list of all the bugs from WoW’s raid bosses, and how they could be exploited. His point was that these were the rule in WoW, not the exception.
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 recommend going through the pages I linked, especially if you enjoy seeing some vintage, finely aged rageposting.
The question of Ensidia’s guilt or innocence became public discourse. Numerous sites debated the scandal.