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

Gotta give 'em credit

[ubrgeek]

The response was a lot more classy than some companies would have done (*coughSonycough*)

Re:Gotta give 'em credit

[SilentChris]

It was said from the getgo (by me and many other people) that Blizzard would retract the bans. Many negative things can be said about Blizzard: they take forever to make changes, most of their games are evolutionary not revolutionary (although they're fun and have a lot of polish). The one thing that no one questions: Blizzard takes the relationship with their fans very seriously.

It was pretty much a few people overreacting. As also has been said, Blizzard uses Linux to run World of Warcraft (http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206732& cid=16855900). So saying this was a targeted affront against Linux users (instead of a targeted affront against cheaters) was misguided.

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:Gotta give 'em credit

[compro01]

a lot of games also use what i think is a rather similar thing (not sure about specifics, but the entire concept seems nearly identical) called Gameguard, made by INCA.

Well, that's good.

[Mysticalfruit]

It's good to see Blizzard actually take the time to investigate their mistake and make things right.

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: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:Well, that's good.

[mrchaotica]

They didn't ship it due to legal reasons.

Could you be more specific?

In other news...

[copponex]

The linux community reversed it's announcement last week concerning the early release of 2.6. Now they have pushed back the release date by three years, and possibly four depending on "how awesome the Blood Elf race is."

Amazing...

[Vrallis]

It's amazing to see Blizzard actually re-instate these accounts, and I'm damned glad they did. I've been avoiding trying to get WoW going under Cedega lately due to the looming threat of Warden and how people thought it was react to Cedega.

This certainly isn't the first time they've mass banned people due to "mistakes" in their detection programs. Almost my entire guild was banned last year when one of their programs to check for cascaded raid timers was set for 7 days instead of 6; even then it would have been wrong due to Blizzard resetting all raid timers during a patch the week before. After raising a stink on the forums plus a number of calls to Blizzard, they reversed all our bans with a measly 24 hour credit.

Great News

[CalSolt]

Finally, we can sleep at night knowing that the 15 people who play WoW on Linux can once again have their freedom.

Re:Great News

[rbochan]

Who needs sleep?

Linux not working on the desktop

[antirelic]

Its amazing that this hasnt happened more often. I would imagine that running a "Windows Game" on linux isnt in violation of most EULA's that come with todays games. Of course, it would seem pointless to alienate a customer base that solves this technical problem on their own (without having to spend time and money porting your product to another platform), but stranger things have happened. I wonder if it would be legal to revoke someones liscence or CD-KEY for playing a game developed and liscenced for Windows on a Linux platform (therefore violating the EULA)?

20 days free? Thats it?

[CarnivoreMan]

They should give a better comp than just a few free weeks of play. Something like an ingame penguin pet... Ya, that'd be sweet!

One company that (sort of) gets it?

[fallen1]

I have to give them credit as well, they heard about the problem, acknowledged there was a problem, teamed up with Cedega and then FIXED the problem (reinstated locked accounts) and then gave them 20 days credit as well.

Would I be pissed if I played and had an account locked/banned by this? Hell yeah. Would I be somewhat mollified by 20 days of play tacked onto my account and an e-mail apology with an admission of "We screwed up, sorry" to boot? Hell yeah!

A lot of companies these days don't listen to their "base" and ignore the customer as nothing more than a $ and a number. Blizzard isn't perfect on this account, but they're better than a lot of the major playors out there. Kudos to Blizzard for realizing their cash cow was supported by multiple _people_/players and not just a bunch of $$$ and random numbers called credit cards - and willing to work to fix the problem! Keep up the good work.

Re:One company that (sort of) gets it?

[TheLinuxSRC]

"Would I be somewhat mollified by 20 days of play tacked onto my account and an e-mail apology with an admission of "We screwed up, sorry" to boot?"

I played SWG for over 2 years, at times with as many as 3 accounts. I *never* saw sony act with as much class with regards to the multitudes of bugs and screwups they produced. I never even saw sony admit to any wrongdoing or mistakes on their part. Having had that experience with a game publisher, I would say that Blizzard reacted in the best manner possible. Not only did they admit to a mistake, they went ahead and fixed it (for an unsupported platform nonetheless) and gave away some free play time to boot.

Re:One company that (sort of) gets it?

[geekoid]

"Would I be somewhat mollified by 20 days of play tacked onto my account and an e-mail apology with an admission of "We screwed up, sorry" to boot? Hell yeah!"

unless you lost yout battle ground rank becasue you weren't active, then you would still be pissed.

For those not in the know, a.k.a. people with a life, to maintain high rank in the battle grounds you must always be playing, because your rank is in constent compitition with others who play. This means you loose ranks when not playing.

Re:One company that (sort of) gets it?

[Sage Gaspar]

That's because SWG was a series of fuckups, each bigger than the last, and if they reimbursed anyone for that they would've had everyone playing for free. It's actually pretty standard MMO procedure for companies to give shit away after they've screwed something up.

Re:One company that (sort of) gets it?

[Tridus]

Those ranks will become meaningless in the next patch anyway, so its not much of a problem.

Apology AND free play time

[Apocalypse111]

The summary also failed to mention that the people who were blocked got 20 days free play time - 2 weeks more than the time they were blocked. Basically, compensation for time lost plus some insane interest. They got some flak for this initially, but now, not so long after the incident in question, they admit to being wrong, reimburse those wronged, and told us they worked with the Cedega folks to get this resolved, thus supporting the Linux community. I don't see that they could have handled this much better after the initial screw-up, and with that last bit, they now come off smelling like roses (or at least a lot less like shit) to a majority of the /. community. Well played, Bliz, and bravo.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[GoMMiX]

Yeah, a little credit for doing the right thing - but look at what it took for Blizzard to admit it was wrong. How many other people are wrongfully banned and Blizzard won't fess to it?

I've seen a multitude of people post on the forums saying they were banned as a Linux user and then posted the confirmation from Blizzard that they *re-investigated* it and confirmed they were using a 3rd party bot program.

If it were not for the overwhelming support of the Linux community I have no doubt there would be no admission and all of those people would be banned.

I hate bots in WoW as much as anyone, but Blizzard needs to WARN people that a 3rd party program is running on their system. WARN them. Every time it's detected.

Imagine when someone makes a virus/spyware/malware/whatever that runs as a process with the sole intent of appearing to be a bot to WoW. It most certainly would not be the first time someone did something for the sole purpose of being malicious and causing innocent web users/gamers harm.

Blizzard needs to do something to make it's customers feel safe - I sure as heck don't. Every time I get in game I do my best to close out ALL my running processes - IM's, VoIP, AV, et al - for fear one of them might do something to cause Blizzard to flag me as a cheater.

Why would a company treat it's customers like that?

Re:Apology AND free play time

[Apocalypse111]

While I agree that they need to have some system in place to inform users that they may have some kind of bot running so as to avoid false positives like this, I also think that if they were softer on their anti-bot and anti-cheating measures then we might have an even worse situation. I don't advocate this kind of approach in real life, but as far as WoW is concerned, I think it works out alright, since Bliz seems to be going about it in a pretty fair and even-handed way. I mean, as it stands now, its either deal with a game made impossible by cheaters and a lax anti-cheating program, or occasionally get false positives from a largely-automated system that suspends your account for a time and which, 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. Neither solution is ideal, but I think I'd take the latter over the former, as it keeps the game playable and inconveniences the fewest number of people (although those inconvenienced are, admittedly, affected worse). Again, having a system in place to warn users that it appears that they are running a bot would be a great addition to that system for fairness's sake (although it would also give those trying to circumvent the anti-cheating system a red-light/green-light system as to whether or not their cheats are up to date).

Re:Apology AND free play time

[Jahz]

Do you think warnings are a good deterant for something like cheating in WoW? Would you be hestant to cheat if you knew that getting caught would just result in a series of warnings? Blizzards tough, zero tolerance stance on cheating is the primary reason the game is still fairly pure. Sure some small number of people have and will always try to cheat, but the risks are huge... when you play for 1-2,000 hours a year (as many do), you DON'T risk a ban.

As for closing IM, VoIP and other programs: better safe than sorry. Though, its really unlikely that any third-party program that is NOT a wow cheat program will cause a problem. From what I understand, the game scans memory to see if unauthorized programs are reading/writing WoW's memory space. So just the mere fact that Blizzard has put such fear into you regarding cheating means that their system is working :-)

Re:Apology AND free play time

[GoMMiX]

I read your rational for taking "the latter", however - that's an easy stance to take until you are one of the latter.

Don't be fooled, just because Blizzard reinstated those accounts using Linux doesn't mean it reinstated all accounts that were wrongfully banned. This is an extreme rarity, and I sincerely doubt anything would have been admitted by Blizzard were it not for the overwhelming support from the Linux community.

I mean, really - if you were wrongfully banned and Blizzard *re-investigated* your case and confirmed you were a cheater - even though you know you were not - and the ban stayed, do you think you would feel the same way about taking the latter? Not if it were someone else, if it were YOU?

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.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[Gabrill]

You're a dork. They didn't even have to look into this. Linux isn't even a platform that they support or endorse. Apologizing to Linux users actually goes way beyond their realm of responsibility.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[TrilateralRegression]

And how do you propose to sell closed-source software that runs on all versions of 'Nux, and barring that, how do you propose Blizzard make, let alone sell, an open-source version of WoW that would run on all versions of Linux? (p.s. - not trying to flamebait, I would make hot, sweaty man-love the being(s) that can answer these questions)

Re:Apology AND free play time

[GoMMiX]

Ahh, this is great portion of the problem. You see, you actually can not provide ANY information to prove you did not cheat.

What you can do is email wow-accountadmin@worldofwarcraft.com with your account name.

That's it. Precisely.

When you do this, Blizzard claims to *re-investigate* the ban. Which essentially means they are going to review the data they have that was originally used to diagnose your account as having cheated.

Therein lies a great portion of the problem - you truly have no means by which to defend yourself.

This is exactly why I say the Linux users would, without question, still be banned if it were not for the overwhelming support, demand, and publicity that the Linux community provided.

Blizzard DID re-investigate those people, and DID respond to their pleas of innocence - informing them they DID re-review their case and DID find they cheated. That is the process ALL banned accounts go through. The ONLY reason the Linux people got their bans lifted was the publicity and volume of complaints. A mere one guy with some weird program that somehow made them think he was cheating is flat out SCREWED.

Therein lies one of the biggest problems with how Blizzard handles this.

Giving people the opportunity to prove their innocence isn't really going to work well. Most people have problems with their own email, let alone proving they didn't cheat. I mean, I know a lot about IT - been working in the field for a decade - I wouldn't even know where to start. I could make up fictitious data all day to try and prove I was innocent but how could Blizzard possibly verify this short of physically having my computer?

Obviously no one wants Blizzard to lax up on cheaters, so the only solution I see is for Blizzard to at least give some warning - and give people a chance to correct/ remove the problem application before they ban them.

Granted, no one should get unlimited warnings - and you'll still likely end up with some level of false positives from the *impossible* users who somehow manage to contract every virus known to man just by visiting eBay, but it would drastically reduce both false positives and the use of cheats overall.

But at least they would have some semblance of a chance.

This would also provide Blizzard with a wealth of information - when people themselves are actually able to somewhat identify other possible instances when a false positive is identified.

I'm not saying I know the right way, or the best way to handle how WoW deals with cheats and cheaters - but I am definitely saying the way it is handled now is wrong and unfair.

That aside, the botters still bot. The reason? Because Blizzard doesn't ban them when they are caught - they wait months and months then do a mass ban. What is the point of even BOTHERING to ban these accounts when Blizzard allows them to continue cheating for MONTHS before banning them. Then the cheaters come RIGHT back - and in a week have a level 60 created by a bot - then get to use that level 60 for several months before it's banned. Rinse, repeat -- so to speak.

My idea of a better solution would be that users get a couple of warnings - with specific information listed so they can contact technical support and try to remove the offending program or provides Blizzard a chance to identify legitimate software giving false positives. To complement that - they need to ban repeat offenders WHEN they are identified as such - not wait several months.

I know that is a lot to absorb, but if you play WoW it will make sense. Essentially, what I am getting at is the true cheaters get to cheat anyway - they are merely inconvenienced by the bans - whereas legitimate players lose an account they dedicated actual time to.

To complement this all, they need to start banning credit cards also. After say a couple of account bans it's time to just say this credit card can no longer create another account.

Anyway, the point is there is a lot Blizzard could do to clear out

Re:Apology AND free play time

[Al Dimond]

Actually if you link some of the more pesky libraries statically and don't use any kernel functionality that's too new you can get very wide binary compatibility. This is more or less how things work on Windows and Mac, right? You certainly can't claim that GNU/Linux systems have the kind of backwards (or sideways, for that matter) compatibility that Windows does, but it's possible to make statically-linked binaries that run across a wide range of kernels.

I don't know if this is worthy of man-love, but it is one way to do it.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[JackieBrown]

The same way ID software and Unreal do I imagine.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[Rix]

No, there have been a few false bans in the past that were reversed. The only reason it doesn't appear that way is that most cheaters immediately go to the forums to profess their innocence when they're banned.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Whats the difference between a guy who was hacked and all of his items were stolen and a guy who gave away all his items (possibly in exchange for money) and more importantly, how can your friend prove which one he is?

They can't just do a per-character rollback because then you'll be able to easily dupe all your items by just giving it all away to a laundering account before contacting blizzard. You can't just take all the items back because they could have been legitly given away, not to mention disenchanted, enchanted with something new, or otherwise modified.

Re:Apology AND free play time

[Jesus_666]

I think Transgaming pestered and/or paid them until they agreed that Cedega is not a bot. This is not a story about Blizzard suddenly becoming Linux-friendly, this is a story about Transgaming convincing Blizzard that their product is legit.

Blizzard is good about these things

[moore.dustin]

Blizzard has always been good with communicating bugs, errors, and others issues to and with its customers. Pre World of Warcraft Blizzard saw numerous bugs, hacks and errors posted and discussed on their forums where open communication with the actual developers was the norm. Sure, many game companies do the same now, but Blizzard was a huge company before WoW and you would often see discussions with the top dogs of the company. Rob Pardo use to reply to balance issues in a discussion format(forum) instead of just a static post. While Blizzard has grown and changed, many would still agree they still prize a good product for their customers and making sure it remains good.

I have my issues with the new Blizzard that made WoW, but deep down I know they still care about making a quality product for their customers.

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.

Blizzard "supports" an unsupported environment ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

No anti-cheating effort will be 100% error free 100% of the time. I think judgement should be made on how often errors occur and how a company handles reports of errors. The statements before and after indicate a pretty decent handling of the situation. Especially for an unsupported OS. Apparently not all Cedega users were banned, the problem must have been intermittent. This is consistent with what many Cedega users were saying, that they have been playing and everything was fine.

So, they test in an unsupported environment and promptly investigate problems and address them. IMHO Blizzard is showing Linux some respect, as they did many years ago for Macintosh when most people laughed at it. Hopefully history will repeat itself.

What they said before the investigation when the report of problem first came in:

"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."

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi cId=47009071&sid=1&pageNo=3

What they said after investigating:

"Greetings,

As you know, Blizzard Entertainment traditionally makes a serious commitment to protect the World of Warcraft community from players who gain unfair advantage through hacks and exploits. Last week, our administrators implemented bans on a large number of accounts that were identified acting against the terms and the spirit of the game.

However, it has since come to our attention that a very small percentage of those accounts should not have been banned. This case of mistaken identity seems to be isolated to users of an unsupported, Linux-based Windows emulator called Cedega.

Once this pattern was brought to Blizzard's attention, our staff worked directly in conjunction with the Cedega development team in a rigorous and thorough review of the situation. We have since determined that your account was one of those accidentally flagged, and as such we are immediately reinstating your account to fully playable status.

Blizzard Entertainment deeply regrets the error, as we understand that this brief account closure presented you with an inconvenient and highly frustrating experience. We remain firmly committed to enforcing our regulations and suspensions for those exploiting our game, in the interest of ensuring that our legitimate customers have the best possible play experience. In this case, however, we regretfully caught a handful of innocent customers in the process, and for that we offer you our genuine apology.

In consideration of our error, we are applying a credit of two weeks play time onto your account, in addition to crediting back the time that your account was locked. This comes to a total of twenty (2O) days credit, which should be visible on your account within the end of the week.

If you have any other questions or concerns regarding this account, please do not hesitate to let us know. We appreciate your extraordinary patience in this matter and hope you will continue to enjoy your time in World of Warcraft.

Regards,

World of Warcraft Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment"

http://www.linuxlookup.com/2006/nov/22/blizzard_un bans_linux_world_of_warcraft_players

Nobody caught the error before the bans?

[nschubach]

One wonders if it should have even happened at all? Did they not catch the fact that there were tons of people all getting the beat stick at one time? Couldn't they correlate this with the fact that most of them were on the same OS? Have we moved beyond the stages of "innocent before proven guilty"? Is this how Vista's licensing will be handled as well? "Might as well ban everyone, if they feel they need to get back in the game, they can petition." It seems kind of counter-productive.

Sorry for the rant, but this reflects on the society we are in today. Is it okay to ban someone without first investigating the cause?

Re:The reason: Linux is hell to support

[shawn(at)fsu]

But Linux is just impossible to support (too many distros, too many configurations, too many kernel versions, too many GUI environments, too many ways to fuck up, etc).

That's funny I seem to remeber a version of Unreal Tournament (2004 maybe) released a linux version along with the windows DVD's.

Next step

[mrchaotica]

they worked with the Cedega folks to get this resolved, thus supporting the Linux community

Yeah, now the next step is to release a native Linux version of the game. After all, it must be portable code since it runs on Mac OS already...

Are you freaking kidding?

[Lanoitarus]

How the hell is parent modded Insightful? Gee, if there werent any people using bots, this wouldnt have been a problem in the first place, either.
If they didnt chase after those people in the first place, this wouldnt have been a problem in the first place.
If there wasnt ever a such thing as a computer invented, this wouldnt have been a problem in the first place.

Or perhaps most astutely of all... If Linux users represented enough of a market share to economically JUSTIFY blizard putting the time and effort into making a linux client, this wouldnt have been a problem in the first place.


I dont think i've ever seen a more fitting place for the line "cry more, noob". Yes, linux is great. Yes, it would be nice if there were more major games for it. No, its not a company's fault that they dont waste time catering to a fraction of their market. Blizzard is already unusual enough in fully supporting macs at launch.

Re:Are you freaking kidding?

[TaggartAleslayer]

Which distrobution? Which kernel? Which GUI?

The reason Linux doesn't have full gaming support is that the community simply hasn't chosen a stand-out front-runner. With Ubuntu's rise in popularity, I could see us getting a few "RUNS FINE ON UBUNTU!" stickers on the rare game box, but until we are no longer at a point that every person is running a completely different config, we're not going to get serious gaming attention. Debian, Suse, Slack, Knoppix, Fedora? Gnome, KDE, Xf?

Saying, "Make it work on Linux" is just plain silly, and any real *nix user knows that.

Re:Are you freaking kidding?

[Scott Lockwood]

I have two words for you: NeverWinter Nights

How is it that NWN manages to run on just about every platform I've tried to run it on? I think you're a wii bit too concerned with technical details that are actually not that large a hurdle.

Re:Now The Winers Can Stuff It

[Cauchy]

I broke my addiction. I woke up from a dream about WoW in the middle of the night last week, and I decided it had gone too far. You end up spending every moment not at work playing. I got out of bed, canceled my account, and deleted WoW off all my computers. My wife was very happy. I did have withdrawal though. I was in a game store over the weekend, shivering, trying to find some methadone (a new game) to replace my my heroin (WoW). I settled on ATITD (which has a Linux client). I'll never get addicted to that---it is too boring.

Re:By the Way...

[Il128]

Here is the email: My last just before their last: I'm sorry we seem to not be communicating well. I would like a Refund and to cancel my account. If you can not help me can you please refer me to someone who can? Thank you, XXXXX Blizzard's last email: Dear XXXX, We apologize if you are unsatisfied with our product. If you are in North America and wish to be refunded for your purchase, please contact Vivendi Games' support at 1-800-757-7707 (Dial option 1). Other areas: Please use this link - http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/icontact.shtml to find the game distributor nearest you. Refunds are only available for World of Warcraft if purchased within the last 30 days. If you have already set up an actual game account for World of Warcraft, and would like assistance with account cancellation, please call our Billing & Account Services team Monday through Friday between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm Pacific Time at 800-59-BLIZZARD (800-592-5499) or by emailing Billing@Blizzard.com. Customers in Australia should call 1-800-041-378. Please make sure that you properly cancel any subscription on the Account, if you wish to no longer use it as outlined in the previous emails. Sincerely, XXXX X Billing and Account Service Representative Blizzard Entertainment http://www.blizzard.com/

Blizzard say Linux not a EULA/TOS violation ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

TOS = Terms of Service.

"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."

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi cId=47009071&sid=1&pageNo=3

Re:Mac Client

[monsted]

The poster didn't say anything about being a developer at Blizzard.