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."

Comments

Poor Users

[laffer1]

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.

Of course letters to Blizzard go unanswered ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Of course letters to Blizzard go unanswered ...

[MeanderingMind]

Nintendo ignores any mail complaining that someone couldn't get Halo or God of War working on their Gamecube. The same applies here.

Blizzard does not support Linux. It was great that some enterprising people got WoW working, but that doesn't mean you can complain when Blizzard does something that unintentionally breaks it.

My experience has been that Blizzard is extremely customer friendly. I've had a number of issues resolved cocerning game glitches, account errors and more in a timely and respectful manner. Many people complain that "blue" doesn't respond enough in the forums. Given the huge amount of traffic there, and the additional traffic and focus any blue response gives a thread, it would be both impossible (time constraints) and unfair (any thread with a blue response implodes, leaving other worthy threads unread) to increase their interaction.

When Blizzard releases an expansion for WoW which does nothing but raise the level cap by X and doesn't even feature new content but the promise of new content claiming "You'll buy it because it's WoW", when they discontinue the in game ticket system and shut down the forums, when they "have built a line of equity and we intend on spending it", then they will be about as customer-friendly as Sony. As it stands, I don't think you can claim that Blizzard's service is anywhere near as hellish as what SW:G and EQ players have had to deal with.

Re:Of course letters to Blizzard go unanswered ...

[Volante3192]

Blizzard does not support Linux. It was great that some enterprising people got WoW working, but that doesn't mean you can complain when Blizzard does something that unintentionally breaks it.

They don't support it, fine. That's their prerogative. But there's a difference between breaking and banning. This is denial of a paid service when the customer was likely adhering to their end of the contract.

The Only Winning Move

[Anonymous Coward]

>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!

Re:The Only Winning Move

[lewp]

Right now you could conceivably, with a piece of outside hardware/software to generate keyboard press events (WoW ties spell casting, movement, and most other combat-useful actions to keyboard events), do most or all of a bot's scripting in Lua. This is, however, not how current WoW bots work (I'm familiar with the code underlying a couple of them, and know the details of more). Moreover, this capability will be removed forever when WoW's 2.0 patch (in a few weeks) greatly restricts the ability for scripts to decide who to cast what spells on.

Re:The Only Winning Move

[Jekler]

One of the keys to avoiding cheats is that the game must be composed of mostly non-trivial, non-repetitive decisions.

Almost every MMORPG is composed of completely trivial decisions. During a fight, at any given point in time there is a definite "right" decision to make, a definite order in which the character's abilities should be used, and a definite opponent that is optimal to attack. Buttering toast requires more difficult decisions than World of Warcraft has ever presented.

Starsiege: Tribes never had a very successful bot created for it because the game requires the player to make decisions that a bot simply couldn't make quickly or predict accurately. In almost any scenario, there wasn't a dominant choice. You frequently had to choose among a range of equally attractive options, drawing only on past experience, intuitive knowledge of how physics works, and common sense about how people behave.

Cheating is bad for their community

[erroneus]

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.

Not at all surprised...

[Svartalf]

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.

Shouldn't there be a real Linux port by now?

[NekoXP]

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.

Re:No Wai !!

[91degrees]

No. People have every right to complain. Blizzard are behaving reprehensibly. They're banning a load of users and accusing them of cheating for no reason other than their decision not to use Windows.

Their customers want to use Linux. If they are not going to take account of thios then they will be publicly criticised. The affected users have ewvery right to complain.

Re:No Wait !!

[rpdillon]

"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.

there is always an exception to the rule

[way2trivial]

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.....)

Re:who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of people who play Wow >= 7 million
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/07/world-of-warcraf t-hits-7-million-subscribers/

Number of people who watched The Sapranos premier = 9.5 million
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseac tion=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=40982)

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.

Re:My Guesses & Opinions

[jrockway]

> 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.

Re:Strong AI and the WoW Turing Test

[vertinox]

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? ;)

Re:Lets try some logic.

[Rakarra]

My theory is that on Fri Oct 27 Blizzard made a change serverside to their warden program. At that point every user using cedega had the game crash.. over and over until Transgaming fixed the issue. I have a feeling that during those Warden-related crashes (Blizzard reps have said that game crashes like that are often a symptom of bots and software that tries to hack the game) a number of accounts were incorrectly flagged.

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.

Re:No Wai !!

[Ephemeriis]

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.

You're missing the point.

This isn't a problem with support. It isn't a matter of whether WoW.exe will run or not - it does run under WINE/Cedega. The issue is that Blizzard is closing game accounts. You can still run the program, you just can't log in to your account. Doesn't matter if you reformat and reload your machine with Windows or MacOS to appease Blizzard, you can still run the program, you still can't log in to your account. Worse, the account is being closed because of cheating. That's what it'll say in your account details - hacking/cheating. Not "didn't pay his bill", but "caught running cheat/hack program". Much harder (impossible?) to get such an account re-activated.

My bank doesn't support Firefox on Linux for viewing my balance on-line. They have a list of supported browsers and operating systems and Firefox/Linux just isn't on it. Because of that I will not be surprised if I cannot view my balance on their website...I will not be surprised if the page renders incorrectly or isn't functional - it isn't a supported platform. That's fine. I'll go view my balance on an IE6/Windows machine instead. But I most certainly will complain if they close my bank account because I tried to view my balance with Firefox/Linux.