Blizzard Unbans Linux World of Warcraft Players 300
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."
Gotta give 'em credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Apology AND free play time (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apology AND free play time (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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
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I also don't think it was just the Linux community that caused
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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 d
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However, I would beg to differ that just saying you "never grind, so there is no point to botting" would prove your innocence.
Let's say you dual account - and you have a priest that's a bot that simply follows your main around and healbots him.
What I am getting at, is even though you know and can prove to your friends your innocence - it's really too far from a normal persons grasp to be able to prove their innocence.
Furthermore, someone with the knowledge able to prove the
Re:Apology AND free play time (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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 disenchant
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As for closing IM, VoIP and other programs: better saf
Re:Apology AND free play time (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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You have to contact Account Administration. They are two separate departments. If you contact Billing they will tell you this. In fact, there is actually an automated message when you first call in that tells you this - if I recall.
The initial message is complemented by a multitude of other messages repeating the same information throughout your time on hold - essentially letting you know that if you are calling because your account was closed or "actione
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What you're proposing is like a judicial system for a company. That's not likely to happen. Judicial systems take a lot of people and a lot of work. They even require "volunteer" (ish) labor for juries. They're expensive. Governments have them because in real life justice is worth the cost. To Blizzard, it's only worth the cost if it get
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After all, the majority of WoW's customers are just Joe's - with the basic computer knowledge needed to play a game and send email -- and that's about it.
Should you really need a degree to have the right to play a game without being falsely banned?
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WoW Launcher does warn about 3rd party ... (Score:2)
I believe Blizzard's WoW launcher does so to a degree:
"Automatic Trojan/Cheat-Program Scan"
"If a Trojan or third-party World of Warcraft cheat program is detected on the system on which the Blizzard Launcher is running, a message will appear with additional helpful information. Trojans are hidden programs designed for a number of malicious
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I had no idea.
Sadly, that screen is like the EULA - people just click and go. I'm ecstatic to hear they actually do this - but I would wager less than 1% of WoW players actually know this exists - let alone where to look on that screen for information.
That sucker should pop up it's own window for something so important, one would think. Something to really get the users attention and make sure they understand what is going on.
Additionally, a popup should occur while the player is in
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There's a better motivation than harm for making a virus that spreads around a WoW bot -- money.
If there would be enough false positives to break WoW bot-detection program, someone who used the same bot to farm & ma
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That might EVEN be interesting?
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Sure, if it gave it specific details as to why it was detected as a cheat -- the bot author could then use that information and attempt to adapt the program. However, without that specific information there is no way the author could do this.
Let's say even with the information - hypothetically speaking - the cheat author would only get a couple of chances to attempt adapting his/her p
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Next step (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
No Linux client? (Score:2)
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Are you freaking kidding? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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:Apology AND free play time (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Apology AND free play time (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if this is worthy of man-love, but it is one way to do it.
Re:Gotta give 'em credit (Score:5, Informative)
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
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Meh, Blizz is one of the companies I consider myself a fanboy of (as far back as the wonderful games that are the lost vikings games, who you can find in ULDA btw), so this is no big shock to me.
Re:Gotta give 'em credit (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I don't get how Blizzard is the "good guys" for apologizing when their own snoop program returned a false positive, when they remain completely unrepentant for the fact their process deliberately fishes a
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I havn't been DC'ed from my high pop server in a few weeks
Yeah. A few weeks. Game has been out for 2 years. You think they would have it figured out by now
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Well, that's good. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Well, that's good. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
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Could you be more specific?
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This reminds me of the early days of Ultima Online. UO had a native Linux client too. It was tucked away in their FTP site and, for a time, was kept up to date with the ongoing patch levels of the Windows client. Part of the informal terms of the client was to not mention it - don't even breath a word of it to the UO Helpdesk.
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Give that man a cigar. First and foremost, Blizzard is a business. If releasing a Linux client would generate more income than it cost to produce/support they would do it. There is no grand "anti-penguin" conspircay afoot, just simple numbers people.
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That's funny I seem to remeber a version of Unreal Tournament (2004 maybe) released a linux version along with the windows DVD's.
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Ouch. I do understand the reluctance though. Linux seems to change so much that it's hard to follow, not only that, but every distribution has its own idiosyncracies. That does not help entice commercial developers.
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In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Amazing... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I agree - I'm shocked. The language they use in their account banning messages is rather severe:
How do I know? I was (un)fortunate enough to receive an arbitrary banning in the past few weeks. Why the "un" in parentheses? Well, the quasi-amusing thing is that I hadn't actually logged in for a few weeks and was seriously contemplat
Great News (Score:5, Funny)
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First of all, it shows that a big player in the game biz takes its Linux clients serious. I think you can call the company running the biggest MMORPG a big player. They could've shrugged it off, they have millions of subscribers, why would those 15 (even if it were 100) matter? Bad press? Sure, on
But is WoW a geek game? I mean, sure, a lot of geek prolly play it. But the "masses" of players are far from any kind of geekdom.
I do
Linux not working on the desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
potential modification (Score:2)
Blizzard probably allowed it because such a tiny percentage use linux to ru
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Blizzard say Linux not a EULA/TOS violation ... (Score:3, Interesting)
"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 wi
20 days free? Thats it? (Score:5, Funny)
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One company that (sort of) gets it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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Network effects magnify bad PR (Score:2)
Blizzard is good about these things (Score:3, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
If anybody has a clue on this, please reply.
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Blizzard "supports" an unsupported environment ... (Score:5, Informative)
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?top
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_u
Re:Blizzard "supports" an unsupported environment (Score:2)
Any word on whether their anti-cheat software detects use of Linux-based tools that can enable cheats, like /dev/kmem? I would guess they do not.
If they don't have the ability to check whether cheat are being used on Linux, then cheaters will flock to it at some point. And the only thing Blizzard can do is observe behavior on their end and try to divine whether someone appears to be cheating, and try to guess if this is the oncoming wave of cheaters. And that's pretty much what happened, and how they d
Nobody caught the error before the bans? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry for the r
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When dealing with a private corp, yes. They do not need to investigate and can ban you from their service at any time with no cause, you have no right to use it. This is not the police or branch of the government, there is no burden of proof that has to be met. If your client matches a fingerprint that looks like you're cheating, you're gone and usually that's it.
Mass bannin
Now.. (Score:2)
Bannings based on flimsy faulty evidence (Score:2)
I've been paying attention to this latest wave of bannings because my guild's main tank got hit and he has no idea why. I
Short Memory... (Score:2)
This is the same "Teh Evil" company that fought bnetd.
Yes I am sure that after needing a shovel to move the mountains of money out of their way just so they can get to their desks, the Blizzard Execs are quaking in fear at my protest, I take pride in this stand.
In many battles the soldiers hope that the effort is not in vein.
Lest we forget.
One more group that will
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And I believe it was a forum ban, not an account ban. They were *warned* in game, banned on forums.
Personally, I agreed with Blizzard on that one - sexual orientation should not be part of the game - and certainly not advertised in chat channels and o
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If you are correct, and I'm not, that's peachy. However, it's not blatently misleading - I clearly stated "as it was put, I believe" - indicating I think but am not sure.
It seems to me you are just a hurtful, vindictive person.
You further inquire my opinion on a few things, which I will respond to accordingly:
1) Do I object to in-game marriages
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I don't have everybody. I think the Wine/Cedaga team is pretty cool. I think the standalone Blizzard games were fun to play. I think WoW was a great game... when I played it in 1992. When it was called "DikuMUD". But static classes, continual grind and trivially automatable gaming (But banned if you do!)? That's hardly 'fun'.
If we're trying to see who's the best at something a computer can trivially do, let's have a game where you just get two numbers
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If you think you think you have been wronged and payed for it with a credit card then you can do a charge back.
Blizard will have to prove they provided the service, which they admit they didn't when they suspended you and then reinstated with an "oops", or the charge gets refunded.
Think Blizzard is a big company that always gets what it wants? Guess what Bliz, VISA is bigger and has your revenue stream by the short hairs. Oh, and VISA has a reputation to protect as being worth the interest they
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According to the terms of service, he cheated.
The slashdot headline was very misleading, since WINE had nothing to do with his banning.