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Blizzard Bans Speed Hackers from WoW
Voodoo Extreme has the world that Blizzard has already banned several accounts for Speed Hacking, a type of cheat that allows a character to move far faster than it should. From the article: "Those individuals who were caught using the speed hack have been banned from the game and have had their accounts closed. We must stress once again that we are opposed to hacking and cheating of any kind and are dedicated to maintaining a fair environment in our games." Adios, punks
One of the complaints I heard frequently on various forums was people claiming that they'd "never play World of Warcraft because Blizzard games always get hacked and Blizzard never does anything about it." Hopefully this will convince them that Blizzard is indeed being proactive about preventing cheaters.
Unfortunately, I expect that instead they'll just take it as evidence that World of Warcraft is easily hacked and use that as a reason why they refuse to play.
But I'm glad Blizzard is announcing this, rather than the approach a certain other MMORPG took of saying "oh, there's nothing wrong, there are no bots anymore, we took care of them all" despite groups of players who seem not to mind doing the same thing repeatedly 24/7 and never respond when you try and talk with them...
Whats the point of cheating in a online game. It justs fucks with the Balance for everyone. And why the hell cheat in a gane you have to pay to play for!. If just wanted to let a bot run around Id just run something like progress quest since it pretty much amounts to the same thing.
that doesn't really solve anything, as the code is still run on the client side.
easy solution, if one had infinite network bandwith and speed, would be to make the clients as dumb terminals as possible - with all possible game logic on the servers - so that you would be able to trust the data coming from the client blindly, simply because the client would be only sending stuff like 'button a pressed'.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Um, no, the hackers would just patch the downloaded program in memory or on disk or however it is stored. They could use some magic algorithm to decide what and where to hack. Child's play.
The only real solution to stop hacking is to run _everything_ on the server and only let the client render what he sees. The only thing that can not be stopped using that method is bots.
Until someone finds a buffer overflow in the server to change stats, or they fake the server into thinking they re-downloaded the app when really they didn't. Banning cheaters is the best approach, at least for the forseeable future. Though you don't get them all, you get their social network to warn them, which is probably a stronger deterrant then simply trying to keep the cheaters out from a technical standpoint. Sadly, as long as games exist, there will probably be a way for someone to cheat.
I think it has to do with a deep-seatesx psychological perception of self-inadequacy. Such people perhaps have never had the chance to be in charge or to be in a position of power and so instead of playing the game like everyone else, they feel the need to cheat to obtain a position of power. Doing stupid things that piss everyone off give such persons a feeling of power and importance based upon the attention they receive, even though it is negative. This syndrome does not just appear in cheaters, but in the kind of people who steal planes just to steal planes in Battlefield and who flashbang their team every chance they get in CounterStrike. It is rooted in a deep need for attention which they most like receive little or none of in real life. This problem, to use Freudian terms, would be called a "Smacktard Complex" driving people to do rude, annoying and stupid things just to anger those around them. It gives them feelings of power and supplies them with attention as they deeply desire. So, everytime you ignored that idiot at school or at work, a cheating smacktard was born.
Well, it's the first time since the game went live that Blizzard has taken some action regarding cheaters, for one thing. As popular as WoW is (far more than EQ2, from what I understand), the stance Blizzard takes on cheaters is actually important to a significant portion of the game community. For another thing, the article indicates that speed hacks are already being used in WoW.
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Now, six months down the road, if Blizzard is still banning people for cheating, then it's probably not worthy of another
Of course, considering that new developments don't actually have to occur for a story to be revisited on
What scares me is when I wonder what that kind of people do in real life -- and how many are in my social groups. :-(
Shudder...
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
I remember when UO was out people were using all kind of hacks such as the speed hack until they implemented server side checks.
So using the speed hack for example, if some took a step the server would have to send an acknowledgement back to the client that the move was accepted. There was a small buffer to compensate for lag. This worked well except when you bumped into a dymanic object during high periods of lag in which case you would see yourself walk through the object only to get "bounced back" because the server had denied your request to move.
Hacking the client to remove the check for the server response was pointless since the server kept your actual location so while you appeared to be one place on your client, the server had you somewhere else.
Since UO is over 8 years old and they solved the problem, how come current games still have this problem?
And there are how many users at any one time? How many for WoW at any given time? It might work for a small community, but at the moment, its not going to work for WoW, EQ2 or any of the extremely large MMO games.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I participated in beta and I got sick of spending all my time taking damage in fights. Probably 100% of the fights I was in damaged me. It's the primary reason I didn't bother buying the game.
You know you have a problem with people start using invincible hacks to save themselves from getting damaged. But instead of fixing the problem, Blizzard banned anybody who cheated. Good job listening to your customers, Blizzard.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Incase you miss the point, which you probably will... it's against the rules (ie: LAWS) set down by Blizzard. When you install WoW, you are agreeing to play by the rules/obey the laws that Blizzard has put down for the game.
Understand now?
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
Okay, so they have done nothing software-wise to prevent people from doing this? Just their usual 'no mods' rule? So, do they have any way of detecting moderate use of this? For example, someone who runs just that _little_ bit faster than everyone else. This seems to me like it would be indistinguishable from legitimate lag, if correctly implemented. Although this does downgrade it from a game-breaking bug to a pretty small tweak. I suppose Blizzard will be watching _very_ closely for lag-hopping past certain bottlenecks :P
Playing poker with a joker and some Uno cards
I dunno about you guys, but I read /. to get new information. So, the first time a hack gets used on a new game, I want to hear about it. Next time someone SpeedHacks, keep it to yourselves. But as soon as someone XP hacks, or InstaGib hacks or whatever, I'd like to see a new /. post. Information is king ;)
Playing poker with a joker and some Uno cards
I remember when ppl were doing speed hacks on Final Fantasy XI. It was so unfair to see them run by your charcter at 80MPH while you jog at a jumpy 5. It really tips the balance of the game. So I belive ban-mation is sutable punshiment. If you commit a crime, you must be punshed. In this case. They were speeding.
It is just that 99% of them give the others a bad name.
Can you even imagine trying to fit a whole computer in just one room, it' have to be a small stadium at least.
At least that's what they said circa 1960. Think about how much more powerfull todays desktop pc's are over 1970's mainframes. I've got a 64bit processor with more cache memory than many mainframes had total in the early days.
So right now, yes the server cluster that could handle that for just a few dozen users would probably need a small nuclear reactor and put out more heat than a small city, but how about in 20 years?
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
That would be the ideal case, only trust the client for input, and render everything on the server, then send the image to the client (the client is nothing more than a glorified utility which takes keystrokes and displays images).
However, on the Internet, nothing is ideal, and lag is a major thing to account for. One must also care about the server load. Sure, it's possible to make a client adhering to the above demands, however:
a) it would not be playable, with the possible exception of a high-speed LAN - where ping times are low and bandwidth is high
b) the server load will skyrocket with the number of active players
Therefore, some tradeoffs must be added - such as making the client render the world, handling some tasks (such as basic movement prediction and interpolation, for laggy environments - this is what causes "rubber bounding" in laggy times)
No, I was being a smartass and saying that everybody has something they don't like, and that doesn't give them the right to CHEAT.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.