Exodus Exploits World First Alone in the Darkness, Ensidia States "We arn't going to kill it like that"

As anyone remotely in touch with the WoW raiding world has heard in the last couple days, or even anyone that has opened WoW Armory, you've probably seen that Exodus seemingly pulled off the impossible of not only defeating Yogg-Saron without the assistance of any Keepers, but also doing it first in the world ahead of Ensidia and every other top tier raiding guild. What not everyone has seen, however, is the enormous drama that has erupted as a result of this kill due to alleged exploitation by Exodus.

To be brief, I'll give a breakdown of "Yogg-Saron super hard mode for dummies." Basically, the encounter is one that is normally done by most casual guilds (casual raiding guilds that can manage to barely clear Ulduar anyway) with the assistance of the 4 Keepers that you defeat prior to Yogg: Freya, Hodir, Mimiron, and Thorim. The easiest way to do this encounter is by speaking with each of the helpers and asking for their assistance, at which point they'll teleport down into Yogg's room and assist you during the fight, with each one giving you not only 10% increased damage per Keeper down, but also giving a unique benefit.

The normal Yogg-Saron hard mode is normally done with no Keepers helping the raid except Thorim. The reason that Thorim is used is because of the last phase of the encounter during which a very large amount (over time) of "Immortal Guardian" adds will spawn and they can't be killed by normal means (only brought to 1% health), but Thorim will slay them for you. Without the assistance of Thorim, not only does the encounter become even more of a DPS race with 10% less damage, but handling the army of Immortal Guardians that drain life, get healed by Yogg-Saron and heal him in return (more detailed than that but you get the point), and also melee incredibly hard when high in health... well it's basically the reason why no guild has ever done Alone in the Darkness up until this point.

After Exodus accomplished the seemingly impossible, Ensidia went to attempt it and supposedly found the exploit that Exodus had used which, without going into too many details, involved evade bugging the Immortal Guardians in the third phase and turns it into a straight DPS burn phase which obviously trivializes the entire encounter. Although no one has factual evidence in the form of screenshots or logs (yet), with all of the information thus far stacking up against Exodus as well as private testimonials of certain guild members implicating guilt, it's basically commonly agreed upon in the raiding world that their kill is invalid.

It gets better, however, when Ensidia states on their forums:

"We found the exploit that makes phase 3 a tank and spank and the easiest phase of the whole fight almost instantly (its so easy to pull off, im suprised it took this long for a guild to use it), of course we arent going to kill it like that" -Zemme of Ensidia

Now, I respect Ensidia as a guild and all but this just reeks of irony considering they blatantly exploited Hodir and attempted to effectively burn the bridge for everyone else by reporting the bug right after; whether they'll admit that this was their angle is another story. Zemme repeatedly attempts to justify this on their guild forums by differentiating the types of exploits and claiming that theirs was much less severe and how spell-stealing the Pollinate buff on each of their mages stacking up to 10 times each for 250% damage bonus resulting in 40k DPS doesn't trivialize an encounter like evading Yogg adds. Good joke.

I give Ensidia a lot of props for their accomplishments, dedication, and for several of their guild members and leadership being genuinely cool people, but I really don't think they have the right to act like Virgin Mary in this case. Yes, I think Exodus should be punished: If they were proven to have exploited the encounter by Blizzard, they should lose their achievements, titles, and mount earned from it. I also personally thought that Ensidia should have lost their Hodir sigil when they exploited the Freya trash mobs, as well. But despite Ensidia's accomplishments, they really don't have the right to take the high road here and make it seem like they would never do something of the sort when Exodus did on Yogg-Saron exactly what Ensidia did on Hodir: exploit an unintended game mechanic to accomplish the impossible.

Europe conceded the throne of having the best RMP's in the English speaking world (congrats to SK for winning regionals btw), so why can't they concede being beat to the last hard mode of Ulduar, exploited or not? So to close, I'm going to put a question on most people's minds to a poll here: Do you think Ensidia would have exploited Alone in the Darkness had they discovered the bug first?





In any case, it will be interesting to see if Exodus gets busted or not and gets to keep their precious 350 WoWProgress ranking points.