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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."
Well, I've talked with someone who does a lot of this sort of stuff and he explained to me that long ago when Blizzard first debuted WoW, it was an instant success. And there were many people that had developed scripts (duping, afk farming, etc) for games like Diablo that wanted to to do the same thing for WoW.
... after all, you don't want a GM messaging your bot as he sits idle doing his repetitive task, do you?
The art of doing this successfully lies in knowing what addresses of memory that your client application is using to store data. You change these memory addresses & your client's state is altered. But there's some things you can't change because they're located on the server. Realistically, the client has to do some of the computation and storing itself (and with WoW being some huge multi-gigabyte client, there's a lot to investigate). Obvious, you want to reduce network traffic and give your servers a break so you design this to have minimal communication.
The problem then becomes that users will write applications to modify the data & memory that their client applications are using. What results is signals sent back to the server which aren't true and give that user an advantage. Solution? Enter Warden to check these memory spaces and files for any potentially unauthorized changes (checksums, whatever method they want to use or seeing which threads are accessing that memory). 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.
My guess is that before, they were checking if there were any known scripting or programs that were unauthorized and changing this data. And they were banning those and only those accounts. I fear that it now does a verification on the memory space, files & system registry to ensure that it is not being molested by another application or tweaked at all. I am guessing that they have changed the ban notice to ban whenever this verification stage fails and that Cedegra does not emulate Windows to the point of their verification satisfaction or to the point of Warden being able to query all other running applications. Worse yet, I fear they may look to integrate this with the WGA with Windows & some other means with Macs--though that is pure speculation on my part.
The irony of it all? The fact that a talented programmer with burp or some other styled network tool and use linux on a routing box to intercept packets and change them to give him position hacks. Unfortunately, if you use this too much, I believe that random server side verification checks will eventually catch up with you but I can't say I've ever implemented this or been caught using it.
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. Yes, bots are bad but this is driving people to a corner where they essentially strive to pass the Turing Test
My work here is dung.
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.
..... Then the terrorists win.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
>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.
Drysc (Blizzard poster) confirmed that "[a]n operating system would not produce a false positive[...]." So, no. This does not appear to be targetting linux/alternate OSes.
You have NOTHING to whine about. nada. zero. zip. People modded him as a troll. Deal with it. We have no responsibility to take how you read things into account. You can whine all you want about it not being fair, or how you have some 'right' to have everyone else read, but you don't. Slashdot moderators make moderations for slashdot readers. If you get it to read it, power to you. But if it stops being read, tough luck, it was never intended to be read anyway. You may as well complain to Nintendo about the quality of Snes9x.
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.
Windows users got banned. Linux users got banned. Not all Windows users got banned. Not all Linux users got banned. Could it be that the banned Linux users where doing somthing byond just using Linux?
Naw, cant be.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I used to play WoW via Cedega, before I just decided I didn't have enough time for games entirely, and I think this is too bad. If they had stopped me from using Cedega, it would have been my subscription.
Actually, using it via Cedega worked really well once you got it working. I can't say it was "better than Windows," because I've never run Windows on that hardware (at least, not as the bare-metal OS, only in VMs), but it was a lot better than I imagined it would be when I started messing around with it.
I think there are quite a few people who only use Cedega because of WoW, so I expect that the Cedega people will fix stuff pretty quickly, if the Blizzard folks will even tell them what the problem is and what Cedega is doing that Warden doesn't like.
I think it's going to get to the point where "anti-cheats" and "copy protection" are the major things tying games to the Windows platform, because they're fundamentally hard (if not impossible) to implement on a Free OS, because the user -- by design -- can basically modify whatever they want, run debuggers, memory editors, etc.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Why did this get modded "Troll"? He has a point. If I had mod points I would upmod this...
Would you rather it get modded Undead, Tauren, or Orc instead?
With the first link, the chain is forged.
The Linux community has pushed up the expected release date of kernel 2.8 by two full years.
Blizzard has worked with the people at Cedega to make the product work properly. One known issue they helped the linux community with was when the mini map used to cause the screen to freak out. The Cedega team worked with the Blizzard developers to come up with the solution to the problem.
Don't say that it isn't supported. No, officially it is not, but it is unofficially.
As for him being modded as a troll--it would seem he is a troll. He is speaking out his arse without any knowledge nor history on the subject.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
"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
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)
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi cId=47009071&pageNo=3&sid=1#40
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi cId=47009071&sid=1&pageNo=3#53
"We have been testing our security software with Cedega. Cedega was used and tested before the security procedures and during the security procedures. From this testing we have yielded no hits, meaning Cedega, by itself, does not incur an account suspension.
We have accounts of several Cedega users who have been playing normally during the time that these processes are running. Again, these people are not being suspended simply because of using Cedega or Linux.
We are in contact with the people at Cedega and following up with them regarding individual accounts.
To answer the OP's question, no it is not against the ToS to use Linux or Cedega. We continue to monitor the situation to prevent cases of false positives and to rectify them if they do occur." - Tseric (Blizzard poster)
Again, less knee-jerk reactions.
There is a long history of folks blaming wine for bannings in WoW, and I would wait to see exactly what happened here, before assuming that Blizzard has gone off the deep-end and started attacking those users who have clearly gone to great lengths to be able to run the game.
PS: If you want to run WoW under Wine, here's what I did on my Fedora Core 5 system using an NVidia card with the binary NVidia drivers:
It now works fine. The only problems that I have are:
On the other hand the benifits are huge:
Overall, I love WoW under Linux. It's a joy compared to some made-for-linux games I've tried to run, and wine really seems to have come along.
This is the site where all the scammers are crying about their bans./
http://forums.wowglider.com/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=16
This is a program that automates warcraft. Blizzard can no doubt just cough up $25 and get themselves a copy. People on this slashdot aren't stupid. If blizzard had access to the program and warden has full access to the operating system then nothing can hide. If it tries to hide, blizzard can reverse engineer the thing and find how it hides. No false positives, no mixing up linux users - they can without doubt target such a program. No need for blizzard to seek out strange memory access or whatever - they can just go straight for the program.
The thing is many people put years of work into their characters and have been caught cheating. Now they're trying to scam their way out of their problems - like theyve scammed their way through the game. Don't beleive these idiot posters.
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.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde