I would argue that it is not acceptable. Why? Because the cheaters/botters are still in the game. Right now. They're in there. Takes 10 minutes of play time, tops, to find one. There are droves of them.
And it takes you 10 minutes to find one, how long will it take you to find 1000? Also, are you positive that you would NEVER EVER be wrong at all?
Blizzard's anti-cheat system is not keeping them out - and if it's not keeping them out why should it be acceptable that innocent people are banned?
Do you know the definition of acceptable losses? Removing or even setting back thousands of cheaters and botters at the expense of a few "innocent" people is ok according to them apparently. It is regrettable, but it can and will happen. Yes, I know that you feel helpless when it is you, and there is nothign you can do about it, but that is not a good enough reason to have them do nothing at all. If you feel so strongly about their policies, I would suggest you speak with your wallet against them.
Then, even IF they did get a working non-detected bot for it to really hurt the gaming community in WoW it would have to be publicly available - at which point Blizzard could, with nearly no effort, adjust their cheat detection to detect the new bot. Even if it were not publicly available players in the game would report the bot - and Blizzard could then work off of that. The greater burden would be on the cheater, not Blizzard
Again, you seem to think that it is very easy to spot every botter and cheater in the game and you could never ever possibly be wrong. Friends keep it secret and only tell a few hundred people, as long as it's not published on the web, how is Blizzard supposed to find this info out?
And if you ban them every time they are caught the cheating community never gets a chance to grow. So, why let a cheating community foster for months - when you could stop the community from being created to begin with?
To start with, you do not know what those cheat programs are. You have to find them first, and to find them they have to exist. You cannot find and stop a cheat program before it is even known about. That would be at day 1 when the game is started. Now, there may be flags that ban a low level player very early on, I do not use any so I do not know. But you seem to think that every cheat program is detected. You are going to stop many more cheaters by performing a "sting" type setup than you would by stopping the level 1 chracters. You have to acknowledge that. There will be accounts that are tied to credit cards and addresses that they can ban. New trial accounts may or may not have this (never made a trial account in WoW).
And again, I would like to point out - those who botted and got banned are for a large part already back in the game, right now, botting away - building up another charector.
They don't care. To them, it's just a mild inconvenience now.
We need to get things straight though, there is a big difference between unattended botting, hacking, gold farming and other things. Some things are allowed during normal play and some things are not. Gold farming is completely legitimate up until they sell that gold for real cash. There is no way to honestly differentiate just some poor Joe trying to make some gold for his mount and Gold_Farmer_3242 working for their paycheck. Those things take time to find out. The hacks are easier to find out, but to say that people are in the game levelling back up definately did stop them for a time because they have to level those characters back up.
I understand that it is very personal to you, but you have to look at the larger picture. There simply will be some situations where an innocent person gets banned and while is sucks, there is really nothing that can be done about it as you have already pointed out.
The wow forums have been a hunting ground for people to post and flame each other on since it's very beginnings. That some folks get attacked on there is the norm, not an exception. The only way the forums will change is to flat out shut them down and do away with them.
Yes, this was very public because of the sheer amount of "innocent" bannings, people did go berzerk about it. As they should have. And yes, when they ban 2000 people and 1800 of them come to the forums and scream bloody murder they will look to see what is wrong. When you ban 2000 people and 2 people come to the forums screaming, then maybe you won't get enough information to know what is going on.
Create cheat, log in. Game warns you, log out, adjust cheat, repeat until banned or until the cheat is not detected. If you get banned, sign up with one of the trial accounts and repeat. By allowing cheats that have been detected to go on for a bit of time, you are able to gain information on all other things that the known cheater is doing to help you nail other cheaters. You see who they interact with, and by banning them all at once you can remove a lot more of the operation than simply a test account that has nothing more than a level 1 on it.
As to "some" false positives, you do have to look at the bigger picture, there are acceptable losses in this situation. To expect there not to be out of over 5 million accounts is simply not realistic. As to the appeal process if any, yes, to thhonest person that is falsely banned it sucks. I wish there was some better way for them to "prove" that they were nto cheating. But all in all, I think it is doing more good than bad.
In the event they did actually create an undetected bot, it would be at nearly no expense at all for Blizzard to update Warden to identify the new program and the bot creator would then be back at square 1
If they made an undetectable bot, how would Blizzard know to update Warden?
Again, you are comparing this student to peaceful sit in protests. That is absolutely not the case. He did not peacefully sit on the floor. He went limp when they attempted to "escort" him out and he continued to scream and be abusive. "here's your patriot act" "Here's your abuse of power" "I got tazed for nothing" "Here's your justice at work" "F*** off" and after repeated warnings, where he refused to comply he was tazed.
Those are the facts. He was not being peaceful, he was not complying. This has nothing to do with any other group no matter what comparison you are trying to form. This has to do with a student that felt they did not have to obey the rules. They were wrong.
You do not call attempting to incite others into a riot combative? Screaming to "get your hands off me" and jerking away from the officers to drop to the floor screaming is not the same as people that are sitting in one place, not raising their voices or making fast movements. You are comparing apples to oranges. Why does this have to have anything to do with his race and everything to do with someone that would not comply with the rules?
Is everyone in the world supposed to go, Oh, sorry, you have some sort of Ethnicity, go ahead and do whatever you want because heaven forbid someone think that we would be picking on you because you have something that makes you look different and not that we are doing something because you are actually breaking the law.
Oh, and you do not hear about regular white folk getting tazered because no one cares, not because it does not happen. But let someone zap/arrest/shoot/point/sneeze at someone of another race/economic background/sex/age/height/religion and suddenly that person is being singled out!
Abuse of power! RALLY THE TROOPS! Get the pitchforks! Rabble rabble rabble!!!!!
At the point where the students started to form a ring around the cops and started edging in getting more vocal and shouting at them, yes, they had the right to tell them to get back or they would get tazered also. Please will people stop saying he was tazered for not having/showing his ID that has NOTHING to do with this. He was tazered for not leaving when asked and after he became combative and disruptive.
His not having/showing his ID was the beginning of the event, but it was not the cause of the "tazering".
You are making several assumptions, which is all we can do at this point, but to just hit a couple of them... What was the time period between when he was told to leave for not having his card and the police arrived? If he was leaving, I would assume that it would take him less time to simply walk accross the libraby than it woudl take to call the officers, have them arrive and come in. Again, I am making assumptions also, not meaning to be argumentative, but he was absolutely NOT cooperating. If he was, the officers would not have needed to have been called. I know it is nice and neat to assume that the instant that he was found to not have his card the officers rushed in linebacker style and tazered him immediately while the poor defenseless student was trying to exit the hall in an orderly fashion, but that simply is not the case. And as to the "threat" by one officer to another student as they were all gathering around him, you have a "gang" of people all crowding around and the mob mentality will take over. Just by listening to the other students they were close to rushing those officers. All it would have taken was one stupid kid to make the first move and things would have turned even worse.
As to the student lying on lieing on the floor shoting that he was trying to leave not being a threat, everyone is a threat until proven otherwise. You have no idea if he is a threat or not, all that you know is that for some unknown reason, this person is not cooperating, and is here "illegally". As soon as you take things for granted and let down your guard as an officer is when you get shot by someone that you pulled over for having a tail light out.
Oh, so he is breaking the rules being abusive and causing a disturbance so everyone should just leave him alone?
You have no idea what their orders and policy are when dealing with someone that is combative and confrontational. Also, how are they top know that he is not armed? Do yo uknow that he was searched before hand? Are you certain he had no weapons at all or anything that could be used as a weapon? Would you bet your life on it? Putting aside the "You do not know anything about what it's like to put your life in danger" argument, the facts remain, the student was in violation of the rules, they did not comply with the requests to leave and they decided to make a scene. The officers then used their tazer to encourage the person to comply with their orders. You may say that they went about it the wrong way, and that will be decided by a judge in he ensuing lawsuit (I am positive that it will happen if it has not already).
After the tazing is done, you can move and walk to a degree. I know, I have had it done to me. WHILE being tazed, and for a few moments afterward, (depending on the length of time being tazed and the specific device) you can be incapacitated due to shock. But just tazing someone does not immobilize them forever. There are several types of tazer devices, the hand held ones are the weakest and cause the least amount of "damage" mainly due to the fact that they do not get a solid connection to the skin. Clothing can and does lessen the effect considerably. The projectile gun type devices that actually embed barbs into your skin are much more debilitating and deliver a much larger "zap" if you will.
I played ATITD and loved the detailed crafting, but one glaring thing to keep in mind is that ATITD is a tale. You are part of a stry that has a definite ending point. At a certain time, the tale will be over, and all the time you spent building up your compound and your "city" will be gone as it's wiped away. I simply could not put in large amounts of effort into the game once I found that out.
This is a point that needs to be driven home and hammered into the throat of everyone saying how much Wow sucks. I wish I had a product that sucked so much that it was more popular and made more money than all of its other competitors combined. No one is saying it's perfect, no game is, but every game has good and bad points, and to say something is "bad" or "lame" smacks of grandstanding or jealousy from some people.
And your game will have 500 players after 2 years. I've played a game where the entire content and even the skill gains were all handled by the players. I admit it was an awesome game. But having players "run" events only works for so long. There are many more "bad" people that try and give out events, run things and they end up sucking than there e skilled and talented people that can come up with fresh and exciting events. You simply cannot leave the entire game up to the players to create. If they could do that then why would they need you in the first place?
"Has anyone asked what the plaintiff has to hide?"
His reason is irrelevant, it is the request itself that is the point. I used to think that giving up certain things would be finne since I did not have anything to hide. And the more I hear today about botched investigations and crooked cops I have come to realize that no it is not ok to look at someone's stuff in any situation unless there is a massively damn good reason for it and the excuse of "why should you care if you have nothing to hide" is mornoic and nieve.
I had someone in IRC quote this to me...
republicans are saying if you elect democrats, they'll tax you into the poor house and on the way to the poor house you'll see a terrorist on every street corner. While running away from the terrorist you will trip over an illegal immigrant"
So your point is to let more restrictive people decide what should be allowed becaues the less restrictive group in charge now could possibly become more restrictive in the future?
You must have me mistaken for someone who cares what you personally do.
You could say you do anything at all on here and there is no way to prove anything even if anyone wanted to.
The point remains. If you can do it, fine stop whining and do your job. But don't cry like a baby when easy mode healing and curing is removed because you are spoiled and cannot handle it otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
Where do they all go? I take them =) http://www.poseidonguild.com/legos
And it takes you 10 minutes to find one, how long will it take you to find 1000? Also, are you positive that you would NEVER EVER be wrong at all?
Do you know the definition of acceptable losses? Removing or even setting back thousands of cheaters and botters at the expense of a few "innocent" people is ok according to them apparently. It is regrettable, but it can and will happen. Yes, I know that you feel helpless when it is you, and there is nothign you can do about it, but that is not a good enough reason to have them do nothing at all. If you feel so strongly about their policies, I would suggest you speak with your wallet against them.
Again, you seem to think that it is very easy to spot every botter and cheater in the game and you could never ever possibly be wrong. Friends keep it secret and only tell a few hundred people, as long as it's not published on the web, how is Blizzard supposed to find this info out?
To start with, you do not know what those cheat programs are. You have to find them first, and to find them they have to exist. You cannot find and stop a cheat program before it is even known about. That would be at day 1 when the game is started. Now, there may be flags that ban a low level player very early on, I do not use any so I do not know. But you seem to think that every cheat program is detected. You are going to stop many more cheaters by performing a "sting" type setup than you would by stopping the level 1 chracters. You have to acknowledge that. There will be accounts that are tied to credit cards and addresses that they can ban. New trial accounts may or may not have this (never made a trial account in WoW).
We need to get things straight though, there is a big difference between unattended botting, hacking, gold farming and other things. Some things are allowed during normal play and some things are not. Gold farming is completely legitimate up until they sell that gold for real cash. There is no way to honestly differentiate just some poor Joe trying to make some gold for his mount and Gold_Farmer_3242 working for their paycheck. Those things take time to find out. The hacks are easier to find out, but to say that people are in the game levelling back up definately did stop them for a time because they have to level those characters back up.
I understand that it is very personal to you, but you have to look at the larger picture. There simply will be some situations where an innocent person gets banned and while is sucks, there is really nothing that can be done about it as you have already pointed out.
The wow forums have been a hunting ground for people to post and flame each other on since it's very beginnings. That some folks get attacked on there is the norm, not an exception. The only way the forums will change is to flat out shut them down and do away with them.
Yes, this was very public because of the sheer amount of "innocent" bannings, people did go berzerk about it. As they should have. And yes, when they ban 2000 people and 1800 of them come to the forums and scream bloody murder they will look to see what is wrong. When you ban 2000 people and 2 people come to the forums screaming, then maybe you won't get enough information to know what is going on.
As to "some" false positives, you do have to look at the bigger picture, there are acceptable losses in this situation. To expect there not to be out of over 5 million accounts is simply not realistic. As to the appeal process if any, yes, to thhonest person that is falsely banned it sucks. I wish there was some better way for them to "prove" that they were nto cheating. But all in all, I think it is doing more good than bad.
If they made an undetectable bot, how would Blizzard know to update Warden?
If you happen to come back to this thread, I would just like to ask what was your "proof" that you were not cheating?
Again, you are comparing this student to peaceful sit in protests. That is absolutely not the case. He did not peacefully sit on the floor. He went limp when they attempted to "escort" him out and he continued to scream and be abusive. "here's your patriot act" "Here's your abuse of power" "I got tazed for nothing" "Here's your justice at work" "F*** off" and after repeated warnings, where he refused to comply he was tazed.
Those are the facts. He was not being peaceful, he was not complying. This has nothing to do with any other group no matter what comparison you are trying to form. This has to do with a student that felt they did not have to obey the rules. They were wrong.
You do not call attempting to incite others into a riot combative? Screaming to "get your hands off me" and jerking away from the officers to drop to the floor screaming is not the same as people that are sitting in one place, not raising their voices or making fast movements. You are comparing apples to oranges. Why does this have to have anything to do with his race and everything to do with someone that would not comply with the rules?
Is everyone in the world supposed to go, Oh, sorry, you have some sort of Ethnicity, go ahead and do whatever you want because heaven forbid someone think that we would be picking on you because you have something that makes you look different and not that we are doing something because you are actually breaking the law.
Oh, and you do not hear about regular white folk getting tazered because no one cares, not because it does not happen. But let someone zap/arrest/shoot/point/sneeze at someone of another race/economic background/sex/age/height/religion and suddenly that person is being singled out!
Abuse of power! RALLY THE TROOPS! Get the pitchforks! Rabble rabble rabble!!!!!
And get someone shot. Congrats.
If you do not comply with the lawful orders of a police officer and become combative and disruptive you will get tazered.
The ID cards played no part in the tazering.
At the point where the students started to form a ring around the cops and started edging in getting more vocal and shouting at them, yes, they had the right to tell them to get back or they would get tazered also. Please will people stop saying he was tazered for not having/showing his ID that has NOTHING to do with this. He was tazered for not leaving when asked and after he became combative and disruptive.
His not having/showing his ID was the beginning of the event, but it was not the cause of the "tazering".
He wasn't tazered for not showing his papers, he was tazered for not leaving and becoming disruptive.
You are making several assumptions, which is all we can do at this point, but to just hit a couple of them... What was the time period between when he was told to leave for not having his card and the police arrived? If he was leaving, I would assume that it would take him less time to simply walk accross the libraby than it woudl take to call the officers, have them arrive and come in. Again, I am making assumptions also, not meaning to be argumentative, but he was absolutely NOT cooperating. If he was, the officers would not have needed to have been called.
I know it is nice and neat to assume that the instant that he was found to not have his card the officers rushed in linebacker style and tazered him immediately while the poor defenseless student was trying to exit the hall in an orderly fashion, but that simply is not the case. And as to the "threat" by one officer to another student as they were all gathering around him, you have a "gang" of people all crowding around and the mob mentality will take over. Just by listening to the other students they were close to rushing those officers. All it would have taken was one stupid kid to make the first move and things would have turned even worse.
As to the student lying on lieing on the floor shoting that he was trying to leave not being a threat, everyone is a threat until proven otherwise. You have no idea if he is a threat or not, all that you know is that for some unknown reason, this person is not cooperating, and is here "illegally". As soon as you take things for granted and let down your guard as an officer is when you get shot by someone that you pulled over for having a tail light out.
Oh, so he is breaking the rules being abusive and causing a disturbance so everyone should just leave him alone? You have no idea what their orders and policy are when dealing with someone that is combative and confrontational. Also, how are they top know that he is not armed? Do yo uknow that he was searched before hand? Are you certain he had no weapons at all or anything that could be used as a weapon? Would you bet your life on it? Putting aside the "You do not know anything about what it's like to put your life in danger" argument, the facts remain, the student was in violation of the rules, they did not comply with the requests to leave and they decided to make a scene. The officers then used their tazer to encourage the person to comply with their orders. You may say that they went about it the wrong way, and that will be decided by a judge in he ensuing lawsuit (I am positive that it will happen if it has not already).
After the tazing is done, you can move and walk to a degree. I know, I have had it done to me. WHILE being tazed, and for a few moments afterward, (depending on the length of time being tazed and the specific device) you can be incapacitated due to shock. But just tazing someone does not immobilize them forever. There are several types of tazer devices, the hand held ones are the weakest and cause the least amount of "damage" mainly due to the fact that they do not get a solid connection to the skin. Clothing can and does lessen the effect considerably. The projectile gun type devices that actually embed barbs into your skin are much more debilitating and deliver a much larger "zap" if you will.
There are no Mexicans left, there are only Future Californians.
I played ATITD and loved the detailed crafting, but one glaring thing to keep in mind is that ATITD is a tale. You are part of a stry that has a definite ending point. At a certain time, the tale will be over, and all the time you spent building up your compound and your "city" will be gone as it's wiped away. I simply could not put in large amounts of effort into the game once I found that out.
This is a point that needs to be driven home and hammered into the throat of everyone saying how much Wow sucks. I wish I had a product that sucked so much that it was more popular and made more money than all of its other competitors combined. No one is saying it's perfect, no game is, but every game has good and bad points, and to say something is "bad" or "lame" smacks of grandstanding or jealousy from some people.
And your game will have 500 players after 2 years. I've played a game where the entire content and even the skill gains were all handled by the players. I admit it was an awesome game. But having players "run" events only works for so long. There are many more "bad" people that try and give out events, run things and they end up sucking than there e skilled and talented people that can come up with fresh and exciting events. You simply cannot leave the entire game up to the players to create. If they could do that then why would they need you in the first place?
Sure you can! Grow some trees and shut em up! http://www.zerocarbonfootprint.co.uk/
"Has anyone asked what the plaintiff has to hide?" His reason is irrelevant, it is the request itself that is the point. I used to think that giving up certain things would be finne since I did not have anything to hide. And the more I hear today about botched investigations and crooked cops I have come to realize that no it is not ok to look at someone's stuff in any situation unless there is a massively damn good reason for it and the excuse of "why should you care if you have nothing to hide" is mornoic and nieve.
I had someone in IRC quote this to me... republicans are saying if you elect democrats, they'll tax you into the poor house and on the way to the poor house you'll see a terrorist on every street corner. While running away from the terrorist you will trip over an illegal immigrant"
Sadly, negative stories get more attention than positive ones.
Hackers has a negative connotation that I do not think would be the best choice for a charitable group name.
So your point is to let more restrictive people decide what should be allowed becaues the less restrictive group in charge now could possibly become more restrictive in the future?
You must have me mistaken for someone who cares what you personally do. You could say you do anything at all on here and there is no way to prove anything even if anyone wanted to. The point remains. If you can do it, fine stop whining and do your job. But don't cry like a baby when easy mode healing and curing is removed because you are spoiled and cannot handle it otherwise.