if you thought SE was bad......

neophytal

neophytal

nowai.
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in your ffxi, sc
Linkshell
kaizen
gg Blizzard (WoW):

"Many Cedega (formerly WINEX) users claim to have been mistakenly caught up in a security sweep of the U.S. game servers performed by Blizzard's World of Warcraft Game Master (GM) staff. Affected users received the same strongly-worded 'Notice of Account Closure' email messages that true bot users did, in which they were accused of the 'Use of Third Party Automation Software.' While diagnosis of this event continues early speculation points to Blizzard's use of the Warden anti-cheating spyware application that is bundled with World of Warcraft, and the odd things that may have been produced by it when it was run via Cedega. Emails to World of Warcraft's Account Administration staff continue to go unanswered while the list of affected people continues to grow."
 
So.. people running a Windows and Mac only game on an unsupported Linux Windows emulator are complaining that something went wrong, causing them to be falsely detected as botters?

Personally, I think keeping them banned would be a lesson learned. If you want to run a game, get the operating system it's designed for. It's not like you can't have multiple operating system boot options. No one tries to modify their Playstations to play Halo.
 
Skaw said:
No one tries to modify their Playstations to play Halo.
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No, they mod their playstations to play NES, Genesis, SNES, GBA.... people always try to do things like this. I mean look at the PSP, all it is is a portable emulator. But back on topic, I hardly think someone wanting to run a windows emulator on linux is hurting anyone and they certainly shouldn't lose their characters that they worked just as hard on to make as any other legit player.
 
Alot of people got banned for farming too.

At least they put effort into wiping RMT out.

Basically, if you farmed the same items in the same place for X amount of hours X amount of days a week, you got banned.

Thankfully, a email to their staff proving your innocence got you unbanned withina few hours or a day, at the least.

If you get banned by SE, you aint comin' back, lol
 
They put effort into it, but note that the number of legit players getting the ban axe is way higher than it is in FFXI. They're using a shotgun to shoot a swarm of flies hovering around the legit players.

It's either live with RMT or run the risk of getting banned at any time for seemingly no reason or on a very shaky basis.
 
Tagrineth said:
They put effort into it, but note that the number of legit players getting the ban axe is way higher than it is in FFXI.
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Yeah, but how higher. Also, what's the ratio? Remember, WoW has atleast ten times as many subscribers than FFXI. The amount of people getting banned because of the problem with the Windows Emulator hiccuping Warden is also abysmally low compared to the total amount of players.

Also, you're assuming the "legit players" banned from FFXI are as innocent as they claim they are.
 
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Tagrineth said:
They put effort into it, but note that the number of legit players getting the ban axe is way higher than it is in FFXI. They're using a shotgun to shoot a swarm of flies hovering around the legit players.

It's either live with RMT or run the risk of getting banned at any time for seemingly no reason or on a very shaky basis.
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Yet the RMT in WoW are harmless.Yet to see anyone having problems with em concenring their game play
 
My only question is the legality of their spyware... I wonder if anyone looked into that and if that could be considered hacking by Blizzard.
 
Tsavi said:
My only question is the legality of their spyware... I wonder if anyone looked into that and if that could be considered hacking by Blizzard.
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It's not spyware. You're skewing the definition. Warden isn't installed without your permission. It doesn't collect any information aside from processes being ran. If it detects a cheat, it flags Blizzards security team with your account ID. To play WoW, you consent to their EULA/ToS, which states that you give them permission to allow Warden to collect that information. Don't agree? Don't play. Personally, I'd love for SE to adopt a similiar program if it means I can run windowed mode without breaking any rules. The only thing they'd detect running most of the time would be FFXI, Winamp, mirc, AIM, and IE.
 
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SE'd start banning people using FFXI and AIM at the same time.
 
Claxton said:
SE'd start banning people using FFXI and AIM at the same time.
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What if you have AIM up in the background with your away message on?

I'd post more but I got to go laugh at an irl friend that got banned from WoW for botting. Kids these days....
 
Skaw said:
It's not spyware. You're skewing the definition. Warden isn't installed without your permission. It doesn't collect any information aside from processes being ran. If it detects a cheat, it flags Blizzards security team with your account ID. To play WoW, you consent to their EULA/ToS, which states that you give them permission to allow Warden to collect that information. Don't agree? Don't play. Personally, I'd love for SE to adopt a similiar program if it means I can run windowed mode without breaking any rules. The only thing they'd detect running most of the time would be FFXI, Winamp, mirc, AIM, and IE.
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More specifically their ToS. EULAs hold very little weight in court, but an actual agreement with Blizzard to use their servers certainly holds more meaning.

Anyway, the Warden, from what I recall, collected running process information, window titles, and things like that. Now before people start getting into "zomgwtfprivacy"... Warden then hashes this information. This is basically a form of one-way compression which cannot be reversed, ever. This string of information is what is in turn sent to Blizzard. If the hash matches some known cheating program, a flag goes up, the account gets watched.

I remember reading a lot of people going "waah waah, my privacy", but it simply doesn't apply here, given that you're allowing it, and the information is compressed beyond reconstruction.

Edit: One last thing: Despite its flaws (rootkit can/could hide things from warden -_-) I feel that Blizzard's Warden is a rather good system, and do wish SE would update their ToS and add something similar for FFXI. Hopefully it will happen with the new team, but we'll see.
 
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Skaw said:
I'd love for SE to adopt a similiar program if it means I can run windowed mode without breaking any rules.
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Totally agree. Even if they didn't window the game, I wish they would adopt a similar tactic. I can put a little trust in SE if it means data collection for the sole purpose of combating cheats.

I haven't heard of Cedega before, I've only looked at WINE, which doesn't support ffxi yet. Cedega looks pretty good but has a steep $5 per month fee. Directx is the only thing holding me back from blacklisting Mircroshaft. Time to brush up on Debian.

ed: spelling
 
The sad part is all the ffxi servers run a unix type operating system and all ps2 games are developped on Linux based system the reason I know this is because one of my friends from back in Hawaii did graphics for FFVIII and all let me see there office and all the systems Sony sent them. The Windows version of FFXI runs a emulator of the PS2 so FFXI will run on the PC. So my question is ya don't they just let out a version of FFXI that will run in the Linux BSD or other unix type OS.
 
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