Blizzard Unbans Linux World of Warcraft Players

An anonymous reader writes "World of Warcraft players using Cedega (the Linux-based Windows emulator) had their bans lifted after an investigation by Blizzard in cooperation with the Cedega development team revealed that the bans were in fact made in error."

Comments

Cedega OK... What about wine?

[Sylvak]

I recently installed WOW on linux using Wine... It works great. I hope I don't get banned just because I'm using a different emulator. Does anybody know if they can tell the difference? I didn't see any mention of Wine in the article.

If anybody has a clue on this, please reply.

Re:Well, that's good.

[ScytheBlade1]

That they did. Well, no. It was distributed in an early beta over FilePlanet.

$ for a in *; do sha1sum $a; done;
c9affeeaff43d565513c1240c37d51efb61c0ff9 WowClient
dc288d9f7c88c1b0287387c3bb506ef30fd62b1f libSDL-1.3.so.0
a9178bcd629e3db58d9ca565ee75c0ce85373f70 libexpat.so.0
3c457e00bdbd4f39b547ff9ac8f67a76c7eb4a1d libfmod-3.72.so
dd1f45ca3466b2c77e738b54f7b55e858754181e libfreetype.so.6
56e16ad086c592848d1d53f0b4db2570bb60041e libgcc_s.so.1
3c137e3f7e29223f6535e8b61fabcfdb2340bca3 libstdc++.so.5
c8fae34ab919251d0af382f5557ca70ee9c143bf libz.so.1
a8de29b62f05a71b0fa3761f0441c29081e31cc0 uninstall
8a5670bbc67b6cb72805afdf28bc0c69fc573a3a uninstall.bin
cdd47ffc29bc129da0521da5b98a1af23bbb5f4c wow

I've got the binaries, libraries, and even shell scripts to start it around. No joke.

They have a functional WoW Linux client. I have no doubt of that.

They didn't ship it due to legal reasons.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Run World of Warcraft

# Function to find the real directory a program resides in.
FindPath()
{
fullpath="`echo $1 | grep /`"
if [ "$fullpath" = "" ]; then
oIFS="$IFS"
IFS=:
for path in $PATH
do if [ -x "$path/$1" ]; then
if [ "$path" = "" ]; then
path="."
fi
fullpath="$path/$1"
break
fi
done
IFS="$oIFS"
fi
if [ "$fullpath" = "" ]; then
fullpath="$1"
fi
# Is the awk/ls magic portable?
if [ -L "$fullpath" ]; then
fullpath=`ls -l "$fullpath" | awk '{ ORS=" "; i = 11; while ( i fi
dirname "$fullpath"
}

# Unfortunate hack until we figure out why TLS glibc breaks us
if [ -d /lib/tls ]; then
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
fi

cd "`FindPath \"$0\"`"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="`pwd`/lib" exec ./WowClient $*

Apparently, "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 20.9)." Not that I'm surprised, after posting a bit of bash script. Even after adding that line, it's still not enough!

Huh, I'm up to 23.3 and even then that's still not enough. More meaningless text, just to bump it up a tad bit. I should probably drop the punctuation, but hey, oh well. It seems that even 24.5 isn't enough for it... how about 25? Maybe? Please? Okay, more than twenty-five. Time for copy/paste of random text to bump it up. * Please try to keep posts on topic. * Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. * Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. * Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. * Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) I understand based on market share vs. time to develop why Blizzard doesn't have a linux client, but considering that they've got an OSX client I can't imagine the hurdles for porting are that high.

Re:Gotta give 'em credit

[Apocalypse111]

...most of their games are evolutionary not revolutionary (although they're fun and have a lot of polish)

This, in my opinion, is one of the reasons Blizzard enjoys such great success. They may not be very inventive when it comes to new concepts for games, but they will take existing concepts and run the hell out of them. Their games aren't always the best examples of what can be done, but they're always great examples of what should be done.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[deathy_epl ccs]

if you are determined later to have been tossed out unfairly (by a fairly responsive review team, it seems), you get reinstated and compensated for lost time.

I've seen several cases where people were banned for "cheating" where the people were innocent (though I've also known a few that deserved what they got), and this case with Linux is the first time I've ever seen Blizzard's research come back in favour of the player. They are not, as you seem to think, at all responsive - they will not talk to you at all. I was rather shocked to see the Linux thing go the way it did considering their past performance, and the only thing I can figure is they were concerned about the publicity of so many verifiable false positives.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[GoMMiX]

I would imagine there would be a limit to the number of warnings a player should get, certainly.

Do you seriously think the actual cheaters care? Heck no they don't. Log into WoW on Wildhammer US and I'll show you a dozen bots that have been leveling back up since the ban.

The point is, good honest folk deserve a fair chance.

Another point I was making was that without the great support of the Linux community - these bans would have stayed. Wrongfully so, I might add.

How would that be fair?

It's so easy for people to say a few false positives are okay, until they themselves are victims of a false positive.

People do deserve a chance. Blizzard offers the guise of that chance, but it's not real. This has been proven by all the Linux users who received *confirmation* they were cheating and only with mass support from the Linux community was the truth revealed.

People need to stop looking at this from a perspective of "how do I feel as someone who was not wrongfully banned" and see it more as "what if that was me that lost an account I had spent two years on, banned for something I did not do -- with no way to get my account back".

People also need to stop thinking that Blizzard gives each case the thorough check it deserves. They do not. If they did, why were so many Linux users told their case was *re-investigated* and confirmed they used 3rd party programs?

If you are wrongfully banned, you will STAY wrongfully banned. These people had their bans lifted for one reason, and one reason only; overwhelming support and demand from the Linux community.

I had an account banned four months ago - FOUR MONTHS. Reason: Innaccurate or incomplete billing information. WTH? What was I supposed to do to remedy the sitiuation? Fill out a form with a copy of my ID, have it notarized by a notary public, and mail it in. I did. And I received a response that they copy of my photo ID was not legible, and I would have to go through the ENTIRE process again.

I did. It's been almost two months and I've heard nothing back - there is NO PHONE NUMBER TO CALL - no way to check my case status other than email. My emails go in, I receive an auto response, and then nothing.

Not even banned for cheating and I still can't get my account back.

Again, it's nice and easy to sit on the other side of the fence and say all is well.