BBC Tells World About The Warden

Anonymous Cowpat writes "The BBC is running a story about the Blizzard title World of Warcraft. Specifically an article about, 'The Warden', Blizzard's highly-invasive anti-cheating software, which some, including The EFF have labelled as spyware. Most of the people around here have probably heard of it by now, but it's interesting to see the story in the mainstream press and (at time of writing) on the front page of the BBC's technology news section, no less." From the article: "The watchdog program, called The Warden by Blizzard, has been known about among players for some time. It makes sure that players are not using cheat software which can, for example, automatically play the game and build up a character's qualities. However, knowledge of it crossed to the mainstream thanks to software engineer Greg Hoglund who disassembled the code of The Warden and watched it in action to get a better idea of what it did."

Comments

ummm..ok

[Anonymous Coward]

so if you dont like it -- DONT PLAY THE FUCKING GAME YOU MORONS. when enough people dont play the game, blizzard will get the message. real good.

Re:ummm..ok

[drinkypoo]

Blizzard built that environment from the ground up. They invested time, money, and countless man hours to make it into something real. They invited players like you to step in and enjoy their creation. Some jackasses feel the need to bend and break the few rules that exist. I feel Blizzard is entitled to end cheating by any means necessary.

This is a stupid, specious argument. If we were talking about something running on their servers, then you would have a point. However, we're talking about software running [and snooping] on the user's computer. Now, if all it sends back is hashes, I'm not worried about it; it might even send less than that (just an all-clear, or a warning flag) but the point is, your computer is your computer, it doesn't belong to blizzard.

Much Like GameGuard ....

[GoodOmens]

Seems to be a growing trend to use spyware based programs by large company's to extract information so they can "prevent" hacks.

GameGuard used by NCSoft in Lineage2 is very similiar when it seems to create more problems then it solves.

In fact GameGuard does not block one single hack I know of for Lineage .....

Torn..

[raeler]

I'm torn between my love for sticking it to cheaters, and my hate for spyware. I suffered through the speedhacks and scripters in UO, and every time the developers thought about a process scanner the players went nuts and the idea was dropped. In WoW you sign the terms of conduct each time there's a new patch, so technically you agree to let this warden thing run in the background. Is WoW a better game because of it? Probably.

There are already some big problems with ebay gold farmers.. I'd rather they had to sit at the computer to make their gold, rather than just running a script.

Oh for pitty's sake.

[GearheadX]

The sad thing is, this whole deal was started because one of the WRITERS for the very programs that the Warden was sniffing around for discovered how he kept getting caught and started to whine loudly and constantly.

Consider the source.

Re:Oh for pitty's sake.

[loose_cannon_gamer]

Well, I have to disagree with you a bit, or at least, what I perceive to be underwriting your comment. I don't think people who write these kinds of tools that Blizzard is trying to stop are necessarily bad.

I've played a few MMO games, and many of them are very repetitive. I myself have considered trying to write some macroing programs, because hey, I'm paying for the time, and I believe in automation. :) Besides, trying to write something to automate such a complicated game system as most MMOs provide is a nontrivial, and tempting, challenge (for me).

Point being, these kinds of tools are in demand, and there is nothing morally wrong with using them, other than a license agreement that says no -- you pay for the bandwidth to their servers, a log on, and the right to interact with their servers according to their well defined, well hidden within a beautiful graphical interface, protocol. The fact that Blizzard expects you to initiate all of those interactions manually with a human interface device is somewhat artificial to maintain some notion of 'fairness' within the game world -- which I certainly understand, by the way.

I think these kinds of 'cheating' tools ruin the games, certainly, they take the fun out of it, and that's one reason I don't use 'em / don't write them. But it is hard for me to get mad at someone who produces and sells these tools, because I think they're using their skills to solve interesting problems to make a dollar, in a perfectly legitimate (meaning 'not against the law') way.

Re:Oh for pitty's sake.

[smashin234]

"I've played a few MMO games, and many of them are very repetitive. I myself have considered trying to write some macroing programs, because hey, I'm paying for the time, and I believe in automation. :) Besides, trying to write something to automate such a complicated game system as most MMOs provide is a nontrivial, and tempting, challenge (for me). "

But, this software also keeps hacks, cheats and duping programs at bay. Those are the true things that ruin games such as diablo 2. You can macro all day and hurt no one at all. But a cheat (or hack) can ruin someone else's game experiance. Duping programs are the worse of the bunch as they will ruin trading completly and that in itself will ruin the game for everyone.

Macroing is only a small part of what this software prevents, and is the lesser of the evils it prevents.

" I don't think people who write these kinds of tools that Blizzard is trying to stop are necessarily bad. "

Some may not be. I would be willing to bet that most people who write programs to macro will also write programs to cheat, hack or dupe. I have no sympathy for them. These items do ruin the game for everyone else, and there is no way anyone can defend those types of programs.

Re:Oh for pitty's sake.

[Toasty981]

I think the OP is saying what Blizzard says is cheating is not really cheating.

OP mentions some repetitive tasks, and I have to agree with him. I used to play Ultima Online, and trying to gain skill points in tasks such as blacksmithing without macroing was extremely annoying, repetitive, and would cause your wrist to hurt.

Origin considered automation of such tasks in any manner to be cheating. After a while, they changed it to "Unattended". So you could run the macros, as long as you were paying attention to the game. They did scan player actions for repetition, and would send GMs out to ask if you're there, etc.

So in this case at least, cheating became redefined. I haven't regularly played a MMO game since UO, but I hope developers are at least willing to listen to the userbase with regards to automating some of the more repetitive tasks and officially approve such behavior.

The Warden for Mac?

[darkCanuck]

When will "The Warden" get released for my iMac?

Actually, in all seriousness, I assume this is built into the Mac version as well? Overall, I don't care. I'm glad there's no (less?) cheating and I don't run anything else when I play anyhow.

Re:The Watcher?

[Stripe7]

It will not be long before M$ "Trusted computing platform" will be used instead of all these spyware. That will be a few years away. For now however the only way I would play WOW is on a seperate boot image. Create a boot image for WOW and keep all your personal stuff in another closed off boot image. It means you have to reboot if you want to do other stuff but given that most guys playing WOW play for hours at a time that will not matter too much. Hmm, anyone try to run WOW in a virtual machine partition?

Emulating WoW on Linux

[ahpx]

What effect would The Warden have when playing WoW via Transgamings Cedega under Linux. Wouldn't it just not show any running processes? What does The Warden do then?

lol CC # in title bar??

[tehwebguy]

"Mr Hoglund noted that the text strings in title bars could easily contain credit card details or social security numbers."

are you joking me? sure title bars COULD contain that data, but i think anyone here would be hard pressed to find an actual example of that happening.

if some company website or program is too ignorant to keep a CC or SSN off the title bar, they probably have a lot more problems on their hands.

ALSO, is it just me or is the EFF going a little nuts here? i'm a firm believer in freeing up information for the benefit of the consumer, but i think this is stupid. maybe they should try playing in a world (of warcraft) where there are no cheat protections.

there have been hacks for games as long as i've played them, and they always ruin the game. well, unless i'm the one doing it! [myg0t]tehwebguy pwnz j00!1

Wine?

[kidcharles]

What about if you play WoW using Wine or Cedega? I assume that "The Warden" would be limited in some way if not totally crippled. Does anyone who knows more than I do have any thoughts? And what about Macs?

Create a World for Hacks

[Nom du Keyboard]

They ought to just develop a World/Server where all the hacks can play against each other and see who hacks best. Even the people with the hacks themselves might find that more interesting.

Fix the core problem(s)

[Gr8Apes]

The real issue is to create a game that has good gameplay, not the rather sordid and boring task of collecting "Super Vampire Slayer Sword +3", only to find out a week later that there's now a "Super Duper Vampire Slayer Sword +4 that also makes coffee in the morning", which, btw, costs 3 times as much. Coincidently, tomorrow, all mobs (mobiles, otherwise known as monsters or nasty things out to kill or abuse you) will only be attackable by +4 weapons....

That's the crap that makes MMORPGs boring and prone to cheating. Well, that and the endless camping (sitting around waiting for a mob to spawn, ie, reappear) so you can kill a mob again and again, ooo - what fun! Or, and these are my favorites, "quests" that involve a minimum of 8 hours of continuous online time so that you can travel from point A to B to retrieve an arbitrary piece of crap to deliver to C to retrieve another arbitrary piece of crap so you can hike back across the entire planet 3 times to get your +1 dagger gilded, so there are now 59,142 +1 gilded daggers in the world.

So, how to fix it? First off, electronic real estate is essentially free. Therefore, why do houses, castles, or Ogre swamps keep going up in value with time? MMORPGs are mostly fantasy worlds, use a little fantasy and fix the core issue. (If I have to explain this, you shouldn't be dabbling in fantasy...)

Secondly, if game play becomes the attractant, and the collection of equipment etc becomes secondary, then you'll have a truly decent world without ebay gold miners, because there won't be any point to it. To make most equipment even less attractive, some breakage rules and such should be instituted. Since it's a fantasy world, make every change of ownership degrade the eq in question, in some way, perhaps raising its "breakability" rating. People would want to get their own eq, as you could never be sure how far down the hand-me down chain the eq has survived.

Lastly, if the game is properly setup, you can't "cheat". RPGs aren't inteded to be FPS's, so server driven play isn't necessarily "bad". The graphics et al can be handled on the client side, with the server controlling all portions of it. For user server networks, using an MD5 routine to generate a hash based on client requested specifics could be used for authentication? (This could also be gotten around, but it gets harder, basically, user controlled servers always put security at greater risk than hosted systems.) A trusted registration system could also be used, with automatic downloads of code snippets that would modify an executables signature to verify that the executable truly is unaltered. This would be harder and not be 100% user based, but is a possibility.

You should note I love the concept of RPGs, but the execution of most games falls far short of what RPGs are meant to be. These are just some rambling thoughts that've gathered over the years.

The real problem is it wont work

[ronjeremysjohnson]

The Warden runs in enemy territory so it can be altered just like WoW can be altered. It will not solve anything. All hacks I know of are warp and dupe which can only truly be fixed on the server. Log scanning can indentify bots.

Blizzard is making tons of money, the least they can do is come up with a real solution. The Warden just provides piece of mind for those who dont realize it too can be hacked. So in the end all the are really doing is installing spyware.

Re:Not Again

[Southpaw018]

Careful when opening mouth. You may be inserting foot. Who said anything about paying for something that's free? They collect your billing info at the beginning, then charge you at the beginning of your first month's normal play. It's a highly common practice, and if you don't like it, I suggest you avoid cable and satellite tv, internet access, and your local gym for starters.

Re:Macs?

[John Muir]

Bingo.

Anyone know what the comparative difficulty involved in making spyware like this is between Win and Mac?

I presume it's possible to make a Mac Warden - but it would probably involve a system password prompt (like people wouldn't fall for that). Software installation gets the privileges it needs...

But for the time being here's to betting there's no Mac version. And surely Mac WoW has a few cracks and trainers of its own, right?