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Linux Users Banned From World of Warcraft?
Turmoyl writes "Many Cedega (formerly WINEX) users claim to have been mistakenly caught up in a security sweep of the U.S. game servers performed by Blizzard's World of Warcraft Game Master (GM) staff. Affected users received the same strongly-worded 'Notice of Account Closure' email messages that true bot users did, in which they were accused of the 'Use of Third Party Automation Software.' While diagnosis of this event continues early speculation points to Blizzard's use of the Warden anti-cheating spyware application that is bundled with World of Warcraft, and the odd things that may have been produced by it when it was run via Cedega. Emails to World of Warcraft's Account Administration staff continue to go unanswered while the list of affected people continues to grow."
I do hope Blizzard will fix these users accounts. I don't currently play WoW on OSS platforms, but I plan on doing so in the future. It would be even better if they would make a Linux version of the game. Then again, I'd probably get caught "cheating" since I'd run it on BSD.
I've seen this happen with PunkBuster checks in some games when you try to run then in another OS as well.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Blizzard is about as customer-friendly as Sony.
These guys really deserve being knocked down a notch or two. Unfortunately, with WoW being as popular as it is, there's not much chance of that happening for a few years yet.
You people have NOTHING to whine about. nada. zero. zip.
You are using it on a non-supported platform. Deal with it.
Blizzard has no responsibility to take how Cedega does things
into account. You can whine all you want about it not being fair,
or how you have some 'right' to play it on your Linux enabled
toaster, but you don't.
Blizzard makes the game for Windows. If you get it to work in
Linux, power to you. But if it stops working, tough luck, it
was never intended to work anyway. You may as well complain to
Nintendo about the quality of Snes9x.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
>doing his repetitive task
I choose not to play games that hinge on this so much. Aside from the monthly fees, something like Oblivion's fast travel (or even console commands when the gates got boring) is the sign of a better game to me, instead of one which rewards behavior that can be currently emulated by a computer. It's not a job, it's a game!
If cheating were to go on unabated, the WoW community would shift away to something else. They are trying to tend to their interests and I can't blame them.
What should have happened? Well, for one, someone from the Cedega project who also uses WoW (chances are pretty good) should get into communication with the Blizzard people in order to work out any issues. Allowing people to use Linux while playing WoW is certainly in Blizzard's interest and since Cedega is doing the bulk of the work, I can't imagine why Blizzard wouldn't at least come to the table to work it out. Cutting users off is likely the side-effect of an automated process not seeing what it expects to see and not some assault on Linux users.
For anyone that thinks Cedega's (or WINE, for that matter...) anything other than a good short-term solution to
Linux gaming, all I need do is point them to this as a good example of why it's not so hot of an idea. And it's
perfectly within Blizzard's rights to do this action- to the point of ignoring any contact with regards to this
whole affair. Doesn't make it good for PR or customer relations, mind- but it's completely within their rights
to do so. After all, they only support Windows on this title and don't have plans to provide support to other
OS platforms. Again, which is their right.
Native ports wouldn't have as many of these issues.
As for the whole affair... It's Blizzard. They've apparently got a singular attitude about Linux users that
started with the period around Starcraft forward. I wouldn't buy any title from them right now and for some
while to come- you just don't treat customers or potential customers the way they seem wont to do.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Once they get their heads around the next expansion why not start on a real Linux port? Linux is definitely growing in popularity. Blizzard could do well in mindshare alone by creating - even if it is just an authorized version to play through Cedega - a real Linux version, rather than having people run through a relatively unauthorized emulation system which can cause quirks with their weird anti-bot stuff.
People spend too much time on this game...
[%] Cingular Ringtones
It's probably for the better. Now they can go out in the sun and play (in real life).
"Why did this get modded "Troll"?"
Umm, because he's wrong?
Yes, I'm a die hard Linux user and gamer. But I am going to be as completely objective about this as I can be. The accounts are being *banned*. Which is to say: sure, if I try to run EQ2 (what I play instead of WoW) under Linux, and it works for a while and then breaks, all his points are valid. The problem then becomes that I can't go back to my Windows box and play from there. Why?
Because they banned the *account*! It's not like I tried to get F.E.A.R. working and it didn't so "waaaaah, I have to play under Windows!" Rather, I tried to play under Linux and now, even though I paid for the right to play, I cannot play under Linux or Windows at all.
Now, their nazi-EULA probably says they can terminate your *paid* account for whatever reason they want, but if you want to talk about whether there is something to "whine" about, there absolutely is. People's accounts should not be banned because they attempted to get their software working under an unsupported OS. That really is unfair.
I cannot address whether or not any of this is FUD, however, since I don't play WoW and I stopped paying for Cedega. It seems odd that only some of the Cedega users are affected, but not all.
My wife, it kills me, she'll grind through the same thing on D2:LOD 50 times an evening.
I accuse her of being a bot- it's the most mechanical thing you've ever seen.
she writes down many EXP points she got per baal run, then does it again,
then does it again, then does it again, then does it again, then does it again, then does it again, then does it again, then does it again, then does it again, ad infinity..
to a 'gamebandwidth' counter, that'll look VERY suspicious
(BTW some of the repetions above I typed by hand, some I did by cut and paste- can you see where I switched to cut & paste above?---riiiight.....)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Number of people who play Wow >= 7 millionf t-hits-7-million-subscribers/
c tion=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=40982)
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/07/world-of-warcra
Number of people who watched The Sapranos premier = 9.5 million
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fusea
So I wouldn't say that the game is unpopular.
Of those that play using Linux, Cedega is a probably method-- the most popular so far as the anecdotal evidence I've come across. Let's say for the sake of argument assume half are using something else though.
If 1% of World of Warcraft subscribers use Linux to play then there are about 35,000 people playing under Cedega.
At $15 USD per month that's $7,000,000 per year in subscription fees.
GG Troll, L2P.
> And how do you protect Warden from it itself being hacked? You design it kind of like a root kit--that is the user shouldn't be able to alter or disable Warden & they lose the domain over that tiny bit of functionality of their hard drive.
That's trivial to get around. Run it under VMWare or qemu. Now the control of the user's machine is back in the hands of the user. When will people understand that you can't control software that's not entirely in your own hands?
Anyway, the solution to this problem of being banned is trivial. Chargeback. As soon as they start losing money and their credit card processor starts asking questions, they'll start addressing their customer's complaints. If chargebacks don't work, take Blizzard to small claims court. Even if you lose, they'll still waste time and money sending their lawyers to defend themselves. Eventually they'll get the idea.
Summary: You own your computer, not Blizzard. Money talks, letters don't.
My other car is first.
You chargeback. Blizzard says it's a monthly service fee, and that you logged in during that month.
You take them to small claims court. You win a default judgement.
What do you do now? You will never... ever... collect the judgement.
Which brings me to one last point I'd like to make on this topic. I think that this cat n' mouse game of Blizzard versus the cheaters is good for AI. The last possible domain we have is people writing applications that extract data from video memory and use computer vision algorithms to write if-then-case bots.
;)
Correct, in 10-20 or so odd years the technology maybe available that is undetectable nor traceable by any server to find if a person is an AI or human.
Lets say in 15 years you have on computer with WoW2 installed on it.
On a second one that isn't even hooked up to the network you simply take the VGA/DVI output to it and then OCR the text states and by able to recognize objects in the virtual world much like Stanley's robot car is able to recognize objects on the road.
Then your AI could simply feed the other computer commands through a USB keyboard.
If the WoW client had sufficient DRM and rootkit abilities then perhaps it could detect such a hardware setup.
But even then perhaps if you had a robotic arm and a camera giving the input making it impossible for another program to detect an AI.
Suffice to say... It will be something Blizzard or any other game company can defeat unless they require game players to physically come to game centers.
Even then... How would you know if the player didn't have an AI chip implanted in his skull?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Two of my coworkers were banned. Again, no pirated or hacked software, no dodgy addons. These were innocents.
A disturbing trend during this whole thing has been the attitude from those who weren't banned that if you were accused of something.. well, obviously you must be guilty of the accusation.
How would running WoW under Cedega look like Glider or any other botting software? Maybe it's just Warden working funky, but something just seems very off here. It doesn't surprise me, Blizzard acting first and thinking later. If it's any consolation to those banned, you'll probably get your accounts back in a couple weeks...
Might help to make a big stink about it in the meantime though.
Don't buy WoW Gold! Make it yourself!