Her Pet Should Be Named, “Chico”
Tchann is a mainstay on the World of Warcraft customer service forums and has communicated with us his her thoughts on the ban-wave. His Her writing is clear, concise, and bereft of warlock-bashing. In spite of these short-comings, we asked if we could reprint some of his her conversations with us. He She relented, and thus, please quit your yapping and pay attention as Substitute BRK Day presents: Lessons From Tchann.
“The recent banwave focused on automation within the game. There are several degrees of automation that Blizzard finds bannable, ranging from delay mechanisms (/in) to third-party programmed gameplay (Glider). All of these are at the very least potentially actionable.
“Blizzard requires that we play based on what is possible through their .lua scripting code. When they find something possible through that code that they deem inappropriate, they will change the mechanics of the game to disallow that code from working. Bans do not usually result from exploiting code that wasn’t meant to work, although sometimes they might slap people with a warning - something I expect to see with the /in command, since Blues have cautioned us against using it.
“The next step up from that contains the special keyboards and keypress software. The keyboards themselves are perfectly okay to use, as is the software that makes them work. What can get a user actioned is when they use the macro software to include delays, since that bypasses Blizzard’s .lua code in order to automatically perform an extra action. The same goes for the keypress software in which you constantly hold down one key to spam a single action. This is the level of automation that Blizzard begins banning at.
“Then comes the botting programs. There are multiple kinds, not just Glider, and this latest banwave occurred after Blizzard included new Warden code to detect Glider in patch 2.4.2. Here is where things can get really tricky. Some botting programs will continually run in the background of the system, even if they are not currently being used, and Warden will pick up on that.
“There has been a slew of posts on the Customer Service Forum from players pleading innocence to have their accounts restored. As some of the threads progressed, the posters began to confess what might have gotten them banned - either they were sudden realizations of mistakes made, or admissions of guilt.
“Some of the things we’ve seen so far include:
- usage of keypress software
- afk botting
- downloading botting software out of curiosity for the code
- playing on a computer that has botting software installed
- botting
- hacked accounts
“It is also possible that some software out there is returning a false positive for a botting program. As with the Cedega issue, it took players discussing the problem en masse with Blizzard and Cedega to spur a resolution, one which culminated in overturnings of bans and an official apology. Nothing of that sort has yet to crop up, but as I said, it is possible.
“In the end, there is absolutely nothing to be lost by contesting the ban. If the player has an idea of what might have gone wrong - hacking, using the computer of someone who bots - then that is a firm standing ground to start from when contacting Account Administration.
“The one thing that should be kept in mind when contesting a ban is that your hands *must* be clean. A closer look at your account can bring things to light that may be unrelated but still actionable. But if someone is truly innocent, the odds are definitely in their favor. Blizzard does not want to drive away honest players, but they do take a hard stance on the activities they deem illegal, and the banwaves represent that.
“Your guildmate mentions having called Billing. Billing and Customer Service are unable to aid with overturning bans. That all rests with Account Administration, which is only reachable through email. Since the banwave hit, AA is going to be flooded with emails, so it will take a while to receive a response. Repeatedly emailing them is unnecessary - just one that calmly (that part is crucial) explains the argument against the account action. And then, unfortunately, patience is required.
“Please let me know if there’s anything I can explain further, or if I did not state something clearly, Tchann”
Ragar on 23 May 2008 at 7:34 pm #
I can vouch for his comment about AA and e-mail. When my account got hacked a year ago, I spent an hour on hold with them because I figured that was the best way to resolve things. Truth be told, the lady on the other end was quite polite and tried to help, but she said that anything like this has to go through their Account Administration e-mail page. It’s slow and cumbersome (why I can’t just e-mail from my actual mail client is beyond me…), but it worked and I got a response after a few days. The problem itself took about a month to resolve, but that was more due to the nature of the problem; it apparently took them another week or two to figure out that it was rather unlikely that I would log on at 3am my time, shard and sell all my gear, then transfer four characters to four different realms on four separate accounts with four different payment methods.
Galey on 23 May 2008 at 8:10 pm #
Tchann’s a woman, by the way. ^.^
I’m also glad she explained that. *hugs her G15 keyboard*
Adrus/Redhunt on 23 May 2008 at 9:17 pm #
I was baned for 3 days a wile back for botting and I never had anything to do with it. I found out about a month later my nephew(witch I was nice enough to let have a toon on my account)downloaded glider on his computer….
I pick choice #3 on the poll. You should take pitty on lesser guilds and let there 70s run kara and stuff with you =P
Just kidding we will get there…….
ratshag on 23 May 2008 at 10:07 pm #
This sounds encouraging. Is nice to have access to buggers with contacts.
Anivyl on 23 May 2008 at 11:09 pm #
i am just abit slow on commenting/reading all this. first, i understand how your mate feels and i feel sorry for him. There were many a time that NCSoft (owner of lineage 2) wield a ban hammer and it landed on the wrong-est of people, aka people who were very much against botting and stuff. Unfortunately, unlike Blizzard, they are just a little cold and hard to deal with. Once closed, they rarely consider re-opening an account. So far, in the 4 years that i have played, there were only 2 instances that i know of.
Blizzard though, sounds like they are willing to negotiate from all directions. So hopefully this works your way.
Felandra on 23 May 2008 at 11:27 pm #
Well well well…
It seems the G15 is indeed the core of the issue after all. Your guildmate might have created a repeated-press macro to allow him to chat while casting. That is a common enough macro but obviously within the stated parameter for banning if what she says is true.
I have long wondered if such macros weren’t against the rules, and apparently they are. Now I wonder how many of the posters at EJ have been banned because if the G15. A lot of them are confessed users of such macros. But at teh same time the wideness of the use of these macros, the lack of ‘official’ comments on their usage and the calm until now marks bans for these macros as a decidedly unfair action. That means that people banned for it might have a good chance of getting back. I hope they do as they didn’t know it was wrong (especially since those macros are old), and the majority would gladly drop them if they had been informed.
Nick S. on 23 May 2008 at 11:52 pm #
after being banned, my initial reaction of “i’m confused, what happened?” probably hurt my chances of getting a sincere evaluation of my case, so i’ve sent in a second email that more clearly explains my case. every indication is that they will disregard or at least treat with hostility repeated emails, but i have to try…
For the Pie on 24 May 2008 at 1:32 am #
So looks like folks better stop using the press code on the N52.
FWIW on 24 May 2008 at 3:19 am #
“Blizzard requires that we play based on what is possible through their .lua scripting code.”
This troubles me. No one told me I needed to be a programmer to play this game. I have have no idea what .lua scripting code is and what its “possibilities” may or may not be.
I think it would be obvious to the average user that downloading and using Glider would be a violation of the ToS. But having to comply with .lua scripting code possibilities? I mean, really.
If someone showed me how to take an “off-the-shelf” popular keyboard made specifically for gaming that allowed me to chat while I casted…hell, I’d do it. The fact that I could get banned for this, is well…ludicrous.
Felandra on 24 May 2008 at 6:01 am #
“If someone showed me how to take an “off-the-shelf” popular keyboard made specifically for gaming that allowed me to chat while I casted…hell, I’d do it. The fact that I could get banned for this, is well…ludicrous.”
This is in itself not the bad part, Blizz can make a rule to exclude such stuff, but it is the lack of official information on this. All we have is an UNoffcial comment AFTER the fact. What kind of bull is that?
Having allowed G15 and similar external macroscripting for years, and not once commented on them, is plain stupid if you don’t want people to use that. Threaten, yell, scream… Anything. Just don’t ninjaban people. It is bad form and it drives honest people away.
M on 24 May 2008 at 6:50 am #
With things like the G15 keyboard, and similar software solutions, the problem is that trying to distinguish someone doing something to ease the playing of the game, or to abuse it (and all the levels of grey in between) requires you to have to draw fairly arbitray lines in the sand - so to avoid this problem rules have to be applied that can not take into account any subtleties, as when you scale that up to 10m people using the system you get a lot of grey.
For example, a lot of the previous argument for the keyboard macro situation was that if you coded one which repeat pressed a key while you held the key down then you are not botting as you had to be at the keyboard, so was it really unfair compared to having to continually mash the keyboard - what you were saving was your hardware cost, your hands, and you weren’t particularly inconveniencing people. You would then get people that would code their system to send the commands once every ms using this argument, which can be argued to be really quite detrimental.
Is that fair compared to someone with RSI that makes their keyboard send the command as fast as they would have been able to if they didn’t have RSI and is simply trying to compensate? No. Is there any way of telling? Potentially, but it needs that arbitrary line in the sand. Would you then get people saying ‘but you allowed person X to send the commands 5 times a second, I am only doing it 20 times, you are being unfair to me…’, and we are back to the keeping the rules simple point. All of which is especially unfair to the person with RSI and no macro system.
However, it sounds like the answer to this one is now ‘yes, it is unfair, and so against the rules’, which at least clarifies things slightly, and chops a certain percentage of people out of the equation.
In the end though, from a Hunter perspective, I find it sad that we are simply fighting to work around what is a fairly broken combat model, and look at the combat logs for a frost spec mage and almost weep at the apparent simplicity. Respec’ing from MM to BM was something of a revelation, as for the first time in a long time I could watch the fights without worrying that I wasn’t weaving my shots efficiently using a huge Quartz display, and actually enjoy the effort Blizzard had put into the encounters.
At which point it suddenly seems so wrong to be actively fighting against the entire mechanic, just to be end up not enjoying it… sadly the cost for enjoying it is a broken wrist/hand after rotating a scroll wheel continually for 5-10m
Bloodtrip on 24 May 2008 at 6:56 am #
Well, to be honest, with all this banning going on, especially if the the bans have a G15 involved (which i have, but not programmed) i wont even contest to the ban, i will just walk away from the game and go take on a new game, like War Hammer or Conan. I do see Blizz feels under attack from botters/spammers/and dumb ol cheaters, and causes people to get sucked into the mix that just dont belong. Last i looked it is 2008, and with the BILLIONS of dollars they so easily rake in (even from the gold farmer accounts) they should hire extra outside IT’ers/white hat hackers or what not, to “investigate” more efficiently and narrow the cause with some human emotion. The bot they use to scan us is just not cutting it!!
Thankfully i love WoW enough now to just up and walk away if i was ever to get accidentally banned… because quite frankly, i see it more as a miss management of our $15 a month/$50 a game, to sit back and not get better server security for both them and the players… HUMAN SECURITY!!
Send me a security job offer Blizz, i get out of the Army in 2 years!!
Tchann on 24 May 2008 at 10:31 am #
@FWIW:
You don’t have to be a coder in order to play the game. But if you want to create mods for WoW, you have to use their .lua scripting code in order to do so.
The rule of thumb is that if all an add-on requires is to be placed in the add-on folder (no .exe, etc…) in order to work, then it’s okay. The only reason you need to know the code is if you’re planning on making your own mod.
Xoshe on 24 May 2008 at 11:03 am #
While yes, it’s true that a “holding down repeater” macro is not technically “botting” as you sorta have to be at the keyboard, how does WoW know? There is no distinctive difference between a botting program continually repeating the same macro over and over and a person using a holding down repeater that can be determined by the anti-cheating software. The only way they could possibly know the difference would be to have cameras mounted at your computer and watching you while you play.
Like Tchann said, it’s true that you don’t need to be a programmer to play. All the built-in stuff doesn’t let you do anything that could be considered against the TOS. If you use WoW’s macro writer, or install an addon, then you’re fine. If you used an outside program, though, like the G15’s built-in macro editor, then you are going to get into trouble.
Teldra & Oni on 24 May 2008 at 3:06 pm #
Does that actionable key press thing include something like the hunter spam macro?
Felandra on 24 May 2008 at 5:37 pm #
“If you used an outside program, though, like the G15’s built-in macro editor, then you are going to get into trouble.”
Exactly. And that is the problem as I see it. For four years Blizz has let the G15esque macro go on. They have even included G15 patchnotes. Then one day those same macros are wrong. Nothing wrong with suddenly deciding that that style of macros is against the TOS, I don’t mind it for several reasons. One being that I don’t have any. Two being that we should be able to get along without it.
But it is wrong to suddenly hit with a hammer like that. For crying out loud let the honest users get a chance to get rid of them. State that from now on those macros are wrong and people should refrain from using them, if they persist they could potentially end up banned as a result of bot-hunting… yada yada yada… we are terribly sorry that it has come to this… This is forthe better… you should be able to work witohut it.
I’m sure you see my point.
Changing the rules, not informing people AND banning as a result of this, is a very good way to drive people away.
yunk on 25 May 2008 at 12:25 am #
Felandra i think you are oversimplifying things. They did not ban everyone who used macros, but only certain types of macros. The only two specified are ones that had timing code in them, or ones that spammed keys so you didn’t have to. Their patch notes never said either of those types of macros are ok. You’d have to point specifically to where they said “these types of macros are ok” to really prove your point
I always thought the opposite: that Blizzard has been quite plain that those types of macros were not allowed and so I avoided them for that very reason. And quite frankly I’m mystified why anyone would think they’d be allowed by Blizzard to use such a macro.
The AutoHotKey Thread - Page 2 - Elitist Jerks on 26 May 2008 at 7:05 pm #
[...] spam a single action. This is the level of automation that Blizzard begins banning at. (source: BigRedKitty Her Pet Should Be Named, “Chico”) This makes me skeptical that just repeating a key is okay… which is rather annoying as a [...]
Twisted Nether Blogcast » Blog Archive » Episode 1-Jumping on the Nethertrain (Finally) on 27 May 2008 at 11:36 am #
[...] belongs with a guildie of TJ and a “call to arms” for better response from Blizzard. BRK received a response from a frequent commenter on the customer [...]
PhillipeDalaran on 28 May 2008 at 12:28 pm #
So, if I bought the n52te for the sole purpose of being able to hit one button and have it repeatedly spam my shot macro, then should I just return it?
c0ke on 28 May 2008 at 12:37 pm #
I’m so glad Blizzard is looking through my computer without me knowing about it. I love the government also. <33333
M on 29 May 2008 at 7:21 am #
With reference to button spamming, it depends on what you feel about this thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=6762551711&postId=68334902593&sid=1#0
(from the EJ UI AHK thread)
[Shaman] How to Heal like a Pro - Page 54 - Elitist Jerks on 29 May 2008 at 11:02 am #
[...] off topic, as i see it mentioned above hasn’t Blizz cautioned about the use of /in command? I have this reference from BRK and will update with more from the official forums when i can find them. However with the recent [...]
[Shaman] How to Heal like a Pro - Page 55 - Elitist Jerks on 29 May 2008 at 12:52 pm #
[...] off topic, as i see it mentioned above hasn’t Blizz cautioned about the use of /in command? I have this reference from BRK and will update with more from the official forums when i can find them. However with the recent [...]
annoyed on 07 Jun 2008 at 4:46 am #
All of you guys whining about the G15 ban need to reconsider.
Yes, they should instead give you a warning and or tell you “No”…
rather than actioning you.
For those saying /cry… blizz let it go on for 4 years.
This is Burning Crusade… Which along with that expansion came Arenas and hard core pvp.. Newly Tournament Realms.
If these G15’s are giving you rank advantage over a regular keyboard.. your in the wrong. Especially with these rewards ppl are recieving for being the best. IRL rewards.