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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
Generally speed hacks work by sending packets in such a way as to simulate periods of extreme latency between the client and the server. This leads to a bit of a bad fork for Blizzard...The two most likely ways that they banned people were checking for constant extreme latency (which could occur) in which case they may have banned people who were not cheating, or they tested for programs running on the user's machine, which is a slippery road towards privacy invasion.
The lag wasn't the game going slowly, it was just everyone going faster then I was. Damn kids and their speed hacks... and makeout parties...
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...
Several people used FRAPS to record people that were using SpeedHacks in the game. So they were not banning people who had not visibly evidenced this behavior several times and been reported by users.
And they were not faking a Gryphon flight while on the ground, they were faking lag to the client making the server lag-o-port them great distances. This is using a method posted on the BlizzHackers website forums.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Yeah, speed hackers are impossible to kill. If they get in trouble, they run, and you'll never catch 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.
That would lead to fairly humorous role-playing:
...
"F4llenAng3l has entered the store. You may buy:
A ring - 54 GP
A Fire Arrow Quiver - 68 GP
F4llenAng3l has selected to buy a ring. Please type the text from the image below to complete the purchase, to ensure that you are not a script."
---
she won't let you fly, but she might let you sing
Why is this news, again? Every MMoRPG has a few cheaters, who get caught and banned. It's like reporting that a 14 year old kid was caught stealing candy at the local corner store and was grounded for it. Whee... It would be news if Blizzard said 'we marvel at the intelligence of these cheaters. We consider them magical beings and will do all we can to accomodate them'
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
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.
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...:-( )
there's cash money to be made selling virtual stuff.
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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."
1) Every server is PvP. The "PvE" servers are just consentual instead of automatic.
2) Speedhack means that someone can beat you to every single important monster/chest/whatever.
3) Customers want a button they can click to win the game. Should Blizzard provide it?
Yeah, speed hackers are impossible to kill. If they get in trouble, they run, and you'll never catch them.
Especially when they start bunnyhopping... god I hate that...
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