Linux player booted from WoW

[newbie2]

Hitting Wine is illegal :evil:


A WOW player has been booted from the online game World of Warcraft for using the Wine emulator over the Linux operating system and a macro programmable keyboard.

The bloke, who is a network network engineer for an ISP, reports his experiences with the Blizzard administrators here. He thinks that the use of Wine might affect the software Blizzard use to detect third party programs designed to cheat the game.

However, just in case, he said sorry to Blizzard because he also used a programmable keyboard. He pointed out that the Terms of Service do not say anything that such keyboards are not allowed and Logitech has even been advertising them as useful for WoW players.

None of this seemed to impress Blizzard who banned him anyway, without really saying why and any emails he send them seem to be getting an automatic reply.

The bloke is a bit miffed as he has played WoW for about a year and have a 60th level Mage who will die if he doesn’t get enough attention. µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30346
http://infernix.net/wowban/
ok...that does it for me...Blizzard can stick it up their **** :twisted:

[theh0g]

Read what I just posted in gaming forum: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=830888&postcount=11

[newbie2]

Read what I just posted in gaming forum: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=830888&postcount=11

Blizzard sux anyway :evil: -->
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=462391&postcount=62

[red_Marvin]

That revelation of mentality just about seals my hopes for a native scII port when it comes...:-x

[Lord Illidan]

I agree. Blizzard makes great games but their anti-linux mentality sucks. They should take a leaf out of ID's book.

[Kerberos]

He was banned because he was botting. Linux has nothing to do with it.

[bjweeks]

Why are we bashing Blizzard? There a company, there job is to make MONEY not please a bunch of linux nerds. This guy was useing macros and was unrespontive ... Nothing todo with wine.

[fuscia]

this might be the best thing that's ever happened to him.

[mstlyevil]

Here is how I look at it myself. If Blizzard refuses to support native Linux gaming and this is a issue to you then quit spending your hard earned dollars on Blizzard games. Buy games from companies that support native Linux versions even if you have to sacrifice the games you love. Companies only understand one thing and that is it's bottom line. You have to vote with your dollars to make an impact. Petitions are useless since they have no affect on the bottom line whatsoever.

[woedend]

if you read the full story, it had nothing to do with linux and this guy is looking for a scapegoat. This is the response that explains what they found, has nothing to do with running wine.

Greetings,

Thank you for explaining your situation further, however the fact still remains; your character was found interacting with the surroundings unattended and the advantage gained from this is a clear violation to both our Term of Use and a common sense of fair play.

The details of this case was reviewed a second time and we can confirm that the evidence presented is entirely correct, and that the subsequent action taken is appropriate. We would not look to enter into any further communications on this issue as the matter is now considered closed.

Regards,


Fjosky
Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/support/

[BoyOfDestiny]

Actually I've wondered if their "warden" still works in WINE. My guess is no.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004076.php

Yes, WoW has spyware. :P

[mstlyevil]

Actually I've wondered if their "warden" still works in WINE. My guess is no.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004076.php

Yes, WoW has spyware. :P

To be precise, they have a root kit.

[GreyFox503]

if you read the full story, it had nothing to do with linux and this guy is looking for a scapegoat. This is the response that explains what they found, has nothing to do with running wine.

Thank you, voice of reason.

The inquirer's article is very misleading. Even infernix needlessly mentions his usage of WINE, probably to get a bunch of linux geeks to defend. If you read the article, he was banned for using a programmable keyboard and acting in a manner which suggested he was botting (not responding to messages from admin). He just happened to be running the game under WINE.

The headline might as well have said "Florida resident booted from WoW", because it makes just about as much sense.

[htinn]

Perm-ban for using a keyboard macro is pretty extreme, though. I mean, you wouldn't kick someone out of a tennis club because they were using spaghetti strings on their raquet.

I guess I just don't get that ban-happy mentality some people have.

[Kerberos]

Perm-ban for using a keyboard macro is pretty extreme, though. I mean, you wouldn't kick someone out of a tennis club because they were using spaghetti strings on their raquet.

I guess I just don't get that ban-happy mentality some people have.
Thats a crap analogy. I'd say its more akin to (using this forum as an example) making a program to post dozens of crap posts to get your post count up.

The person in question was using programmed macros to control his character to get his weapon skills up. Unattended play is banned and its known that the admins tried to contact him ingame via messages which he didn't reply to as he was AFK watching a DVD at the time.

Also, on the same subject, there are several N vs N battlegrounds in the game e.g. ( 20 vs 20 ) and you quite often see people standing about, occasionally moving slightly (due to bots/macros/whatever) to stop themselves getting automatically disconnected for being idle. They dont do anything worthwhile and leave you technically down several players, they are simply there to leech honour points for their owner.

The line has to be drawn somewhere or there wouldn't be any point anyone playing at all as you could download a bot to do it. This guy stepped over the line and got himself banned, and unless he was a newbie (which I doubt) he knew what he was doing was illegal - he even argued he'd be happy with a temp ban so he must realise he was in the wrong.

I gave up playing CS (as well as quite a few other games) as its just totally pointless with all the script kiddies out there. You might as well play single player games instead because they at least have different levels and plot developments. Fair play is the essence of online gaming, as soon as you lose that you lose customers in droves. Blizzard are just protecting their business as they have every right to.

[mrgnash]

WoW sucks anyway. Blizzard did him a favour.

If you want to recreate the WoW experience for Linux, you could write a bash script to emulate the gameplay quite easily, since all it consists of is:


#!/bin/bash

if [ ($##npc) = "kill" ]
then
raise $level/+1

else
echo "omg lfg sfk!!!!!!!"

Or something like that :P