A much overdue mass banning

[Archon_Wing]

http://www.battle.net/

Blizzard did some housecleaning a few days ago, and 350,000 seems like a huge number. While it is true that the hackers will come back next week, it's still worth the moment. Try browsing around d2 community sites around the web and enjoy the whining while it lasts.

[librarian]

Heiho,

by looking at the german board it seems that the dll for using multiple instances of D2 will lead to a ban.
So, regardless how much you may care about that dll, everyone is warned now ;-)

[Taem]

Heiho,

by looking at the german board it seems that the dll for using multiple instances of D2 will lead to a ban.
So, regardless how much you may care about that dll, everyone is warned now ;-)

I haven't played this game since my paladin died, and honestly don't see myself picking it up again anytime soon, but should I find out they decided to ban for d2loader (which only allows you to run multiple LEGIT copies of D2 - a real lifesaver if you don't have more than one computer), wasting their time on this #$%& instead of fixing real problems with the game itself, such as the fire explosion bug that killed several of my melee characters, then I can only assume this is some sort of marketing tactic to get people off of D2 and into the spirit of D3. Dirty games Blizzard is playing, and despite how much this angers me, it won't stop me from purchasing D3 when it comes out, heh.

But this brings up an interesting point, if I purchase software, I am legally licensed to use this software on a computer of my choice. Now in the fine print, there is usually a clause saying only one copy of the software can be used at a time on a single computer, but this makes me wonder, can the software company legally tell me I can only use one copy of their software on my computer at a time when I have multiple licenses telling me they can each be used on a computer of my choice? It's my damn computer and I have the right to use their software on whatever computer I want, how can they legally tell me I am only allowed to use one instance of their software on my computer at a time? I'm surprised there has not been any legal challenges over this yet.

[librarian]

Heiho,

the aforementioned dll allowed multiple instances with multiple keys, so players don't need more than one machine (virtual or hardware) to use multiple licenses.
Nevertheless it is a hack of part of the purchased software. IANAL, but most probably legal finereading is of different results in different countries. Remember the crying when blizz changed the EULA? This is not legal here - but you want to play on bnet, you agree. Disagree and stay away from bnet ...

I don't think blizz people have decided to give a whack to the users of that dll specifically. They have their checking routine, and if some part of the check fails, an invalid checksum will indicate a hack. Hack -> Ban.
So the checking routine which recently run was more rigid this time. This is at least partly marketing for sure, because 350 000 bans are an impressive amount, which indicates blizz actually cares about hacks and cheaters and wants to run a clean bnet.

[Taem]

So the checking routine which recently run was more rigid this time. This is at least partly marketing for sure, because 350 000 bans are an impressive amount, which indicates blizz actually cares about hacks and cheaters and wants to run a clean bnet.

I find it interesting that the last time Blizzard did a mass banning was right before the last WoW game (or was it the expansion) came out. Is it just coincidence that another xpak is comming out for WoW? Personally, it shouldn't bother me because since my wife got her computer, which is sitting right next to mine, I can still mule or do whatever, however why should I have advantage over someone with a single computer when they also own a valid set of CD-Keys? I read on another website that:

Activision Blizzard had a net revenue of $711 000 000, generated from its Activision titles but also had a net operating loss of $190 000 000 in the last fiscal quarter.

that means, basically, that even thought they had $711 000 000 in incoming, they still needed to make $190 000 000 to meet their budget and didn't.

In the end, I suppose using D2loader is the same as using any 3rd party program for D2. I just wonder when they will start banning all the Amazon Basin members for their LagReducer mod to get them to switch over to WoW and pay that monthly fee.

[ShadowHM]

I just wonder when they will start banning all the Amazon Basin members for their LagReducer mod to get them to switch over to WoW and pay that monthly fee.

FoxBat's Lag Reducer mod was a god-send, back in the day. :wub: However, I strongly suspect that there is no one using it anymore. First, it hasn't worked with the past couple of patches. ;) And it hasn't worked because FoxBat declined to do the labour to re-wriite it because most of us now have computers that can cope with Diablo 2 graphics so we don't need it anymore.

I won't speculate on any additional motivation beyond house-cleaning on Blizzard's part.

[Archon_Wing]

I would assume Blizzard to prioritize stuff like bots and dupes and such. I've never known anyone to be banned for third party programs that weren't cheats, such as d2accelerator for d2, wc3banlist for wc3, or chaoslauncher for Starcraft. I do think they discriminate despite the fact that technically any third-party could be a ban. How would they discriminate? Well, there must have been tons of complaint emails about being tppk'd or dupes creating lag. It would take an easy google search to find out about said exploits. Nobody is going to rat on anyone using a lag reducer. But if they are going around town killing people, someone won't be very pleased about it. So maybe all those emails to support did something.:)

I have used third party programs but none of them are cheats by any meanigful definition of the word. Unless somehow auto-copying and pasting the name of the game your friend joins is somehow cheating.;)

And all my accounts and characters are intact.;)And they will stay that way.

[librarian]

Heiho,

I do think they discriminate despite the fact that technically any third-party could be a ban. How would they discriminate?

they most probably discriminate via checksum (for sure not only with that). The aforementioned change of bnet EULA allowed blizz to scan your HDD. Now, with nowadays HDD sizes, scanning all the content would be quite time consumptive (all other aspects aside). What they can rely on are the files they know - those which were installed/patched originally.
Being more rigid means to include more of the original files into checksum-building. This is most probably why the changed dll didn't lead to a ban before.

The point is, 3rd-party-tools corrumping network traffic wouldn't be noticed (I don't say they won't have other means to check those, but a simple checksum of their own stuff wouldn't be enough). OTOH, a simple replacement of the videos with empty video files - which was also used by quite a bunch of players to accelerate the act-switch - will count as hack and lead to a ban as soon as blizz people decide to include the video.mpq into checksum routine.

[Taem]

I won't speculate on any additional motivation beyond house-cleaning on Blizzard's part.

And the house-cleaning I'm perfectly alright with! I just logged into my accounts last night to make sure my newest paladin wasn't expired since I haven't played in quite awhile and really didn't hear that much complaining about it, so hopefully the cheaters have been discouraged. What really jerks my cord is why did Blizzard waste their time doing this mass-banning instead of fixing potentially game-ending bugs in the game? What kind of statement is Blizzard trying to make by this mass-banning? "No more cheating, but we won't fix the bugs in the game either?" I'm sorry, but it's ridiculous, and while I applaud the effort Blizzard has made to better the game, I shun them for their inability to fix these game-ending bugs (especially for us hardcore players). I guess it gets me so mad because Blizzard let those hackers rule the roost for such a long time, that the rest of us learned to adapt and avoid their TPPK's and what-not, to the point where now all I really care about is for Blizzard to fix some of the more serious bugs in the game so I can play again without fear of looing my character to an Extra Fast Fire Enchanted <monster name here> in Nightmare. Bleh, I'm ranting.

[Archon_Wing]

As someone that is anti-cheat but recognizes the difference between third-party and programs that alter gameplay to an unfair advantage, it would be unsettling for them to ban regardless. I mean, I sincerely hope that they just didn't do suspicion= guilt. I have enough faith in Blizzard since such a large number were banned, that it was a large list of tags compiled over time. Otherwise that would seem to reckless. What is Blizzard's policy towards 3rd party in WOW?

And yes, Meat, it's a dead horse by now, but D2 was pretty screwed up due to pure silliness in design.

[Sheep]

re: Third-party programs in WoW

Extensive modifications of the user interface, as well as inclusion of additional features, are entirely acceptable through the use of AddOns. If the AddOns get too good, or are too automated (according to Blizzard, of course), they patch something in that breaks them, but don't ban anyone who used them. The example I'm thinking of was an AddOn that was used to remove debuffs from a raid that only required a single button for target finding and curing. It could mindlessly be pressed continuously and one could keep the raid curse-free.

On the other hand, whenever you run WoW, you're also running Warden, which constantly monitors whatever else you have running on your computer, checking every 15 (I think) seconds and sending the results to Blizzard. Good luck running third-party cheats for long when they even know what Internet site you're Alt+Tabbing to while you play!

[Merlinios]

I spent a small amount of time hunting for Annihili months, perhaps even years ago, and the major problem with this facet of the game were people who would run tens of copies of the game at once and collaborate (between maybe ten of them) to spawn Uberdiablo on a server of their choosing, then take the choice Annihili for themselves, and sell the rest for Stones to sell to Akara.

I almost have a grudging respect for some of these guys (at least those who figured the scheme out--not those who are riding their coattails), but the amount of damage it did to the (USEast) economy was just insane. Of course, even if Blizzard is targeting this fairly small subset of users, the damage is done, and it won't actually do anything without another Ladder reset.

Additionally, it was fairly obvious that at least MOST of them ran bots to find the specific server they were planning on "popping". And beyond that, I'd say at least 80% were running MF bots as well, so it's not an entirely benign segment of the community.

--me

[Taem]

Tell me, if you have two computers and mule items around between characters, or if you have an enchantress or BO barbarian and give your character the benefits of these skills from your other character, do you consider yourself to have an unfair advantage over someone else who has only one computer? Now on top of that, say you not only do you have multiple valid cd-keys, but so does this other person with one computer, why should this person be forced to either beg for help or run their computer in a VRmode so it thinks its two computers to mule or enchant oneself? Ever since I can remember I've used D2loader to do just this and you can believe me when I say that I don't run bots or use any hack or cheats (unless you consider D2loader a hack, in which case so is the LagReduction mod). I have never had any of my accounts or cdkeys get banned or any of that sort. When I heard they were banning for D2loader, I was shocked, but to be on the safe side, I just used my computer and my wife’s to mule and chant. A few people I know who had the same setup I do used loader to play Diablo and got their CD-keys muted, so I know Blizzard is banning for this program. So now I have friends with 4-sets of valid CD-keys that cannot mule to themselves without help from others, unless they decide to buy more computers and set them up side-by-side just for Diablo II. How ridiculous is that when D2loader allowed you to do the same thing.

I say all this because of your claim that the majority of users who ran multiple cd-keys were cheaters, but I beg to differ. I never had any intent to cheat ever! It was also nice when you only knew 2-3 other people on battle.net to be able to fill up a game with 8-bodies for maximum experience with some people you could trust, since most of the people on battle.net would tppk you in a heartbeat. Tell me, is allowing multiple instances of Diablo really so bad? If so, why not stop me from running more than one copy of Diablo II from my IP? Why let me run my wife’s computer, my computer, and my son's laptop to get three characters in a game? How fair is that? I'm sure I'm preaching to the wrong choir, and I know I've said my piece before about this already, but for you to go and claim in your opinion that the majority of people who used D2loader were cheaters just irks me when I think of all the legit players who now cannot do the simplest things in the game.

[Frag]

Wow, MEAT, you channeled GG!

~Frag:lol:

[Luna]

haha meat, you said what i feel. i now have a pvpgn 1.09d server for my home network...

[Merlinios]

I think we have some miscommunication issues here. My claim was that the majority of users in the Annihilus-hunting community were cheaters (and quite open about it).

Blizzard may or may not have made the right decision in this regard. I'm not offering critique; merely a facet of explanation that does not seem to have been discussed yet.

On a somewhat related note, how much collateral damage are you (We? Not YOU specifically.) prepared to deal with in order to keep the game clean (which I am well aware is currently an impossibility).

As a semi-competitive player of several games that have banned, restricted, and rebalancing by functionality elements, I can honestly say that I'm willing to have a facet of my play take a hit for the greater good. I'd rather have a better game that flips me the bird every once in awhile than a worse game that lets abuse run rampant.

--me

edit: Thinking back, I'm not even sure these particular users were using something as innocuous as D2Loader for their purposes, but my memory is a little fuzzy on the program specifics (never had the desire to load multiple copies myself, so I didn't pursue it heavily).

[Hammerskjold]

Excuse my bluntness, but anything we have to say about bliz decision re: D2 means squat now. For what little it's worth, I think the current online, D2 realm game does both. *It flips the bird to players who wants to play legitimately and lets cheating goes on (albeit on bliz terms).

After 1.10 onward, bliz said they are done with any major changes to the game. And for the most part, they've stucked to that. The change to merc hiring in 1.11 is welcomed IMO, but that's not really major like skill changes or game changing new runeword activations etc.

Second, while bliz stance on cheating IMO is at best schizoid, the bottom line for bliz is a cheater's dollar is as good as Johnny Legit's dollar. Good or bad, like it or not, the D2 casino has a revolving door policy.

Perma-banned for caught cheating? Oh well, nothing a new CD key won't fix. Which is conveniently available at the bliz gift shop. A cynical argument can be made cheaters are actually more valuable to Bliz for a game like D2, because they can potentially keep paying, while Johnny Legit paid once for the game, and that's probably the last time he does.

*see various changes like Durance area and Pindle drops that were supposed to counter maphack and bots, but have little impact to cheaters but affects non-cheaters alike. Right, I always liked it when in school some a-hole starts trouble, and the entire class gets detention. All for the greater good. But that's another whole can of dead horse.

[Merlinios]

Excuse my bluntness, but anything we have to say about bliz decision re: D2 means squat now. For what little it's worth, I think the current online, D2 realm game does both. *It flips the bird to players who wants to play legitimately and lets cheating goes on (albeit on bliz terms).

Agreed. I largely stopped playing except for ladder racing, and quit even that when people figured out team strategies would win, as I don't know anyone who would be willing to devote the time to stay in the race. Single player occasionally happens if my roommate forgets the innernet bill (which happens a bit more than I would like).

*see various changes like Durance area and Pindle drops that were supposed to counter maphack and bots, but have little impact to cheaters but affects non-cheaters alike. Right, I always liked it when in school some a-hole starts trouble, and the entire class gets detention. All for the greater good. But that's another whole can of dead horse.

Regardless of medium, legitimate players will be penalized in order to target cheaters (assuming you're targeting cheaters in the first place). I completely agree that Blizzard did a very poor job of keeping the cheating out, and I think a lot of the failure had to do with greatly reduced man-hour input toward the end (the realms were pretty clean in the early, pre-LoD days). It rivals Diablo original now, albeit in a vastly different manner.

Personally, I don't think Blizzard's actions were extreme enough. I'm not sure what I'd have done differently, or what could have been done differently (I'm not quite the codemonkey most of my friends are), but surely they could have used a little more force than the paltry amount of too-little, too-late bannings that did occur (those before the current batch were also too late).

My reference point comes from playing Magic: the Nerdening competitively on a local level. Wizards has implemented some fairly draconian measures to stop cheating (it existed in the past, but you rarely hear about it these days, and you NEVER see it). Random deck checks every round, with a full check after cuts to top8, and game/match losses handed out for anything as innocuous as card sleeves worn in a pattern (and far more serious penalties for anything that looks more sinister--6 month bans and the like). Does it catch legitimate players? You bet. But all the guys who are affected by it will call it a bad beat, shake it off, suck it up, and keep playing, because the game would be a much worse place if these measures weren't there.

For the record, I've been burned by the deck check once (checked the wrong box on a registration sheet) and the sleeve check twice (once laziness, once defective sleeves, which I'd purchased at that very tourney), but fully support both.

--me

edit: grammar fail

[Hammerskjold]

Agreed. I largely stopped playing except for ladder racing, and quit even that when people figured out team strategies would win, as I don't know anyone who would be willing to devote the time to stay in the race.

I could be wrong on the exact chronology, but as best as I could remember it, a team strategy was figured out fairly early (for that first ladder race to 99). Some folks and Bliz (though I kind of doubt that) may have originally thought of it as a single marathon race, but it turned out a relay race was what happened.

Not that it really mattered, because again IIRC, there was no clear set rules against a team relay strategy and the prize wasn't exactly a million dollars. Wasn't it a t-shirt, some collectors autographed edition of the game, and maybe innernet fame? (Was it RUSSBARB team that won or GER-BARB? I remember the 2 names, but not the specific one who won.)

(the realms were pretty clean in the early, pre-LoD days). It rivals Diablo original now, albeit in a vastly different manner.

Excuse my bluntness again, but how early is early? D2 classic online might have been 'clean' at the very early times, but IIRC there was dupes before LoD appeared. A Rare item called Carrion Wind or Carrion Song comes to mind. With LoD, the itamz changed (high runes) but the big cheat remains the same (duping). Edited: It was Carrion Song rare class gothic bow iirc.

Personally, I don't think Blizzard's actions were extreme enough. I'm not sure what I'd have done differently, or what could have been done differently (I'm not quite the codemonkey most of my friends are), but surely they could have used a little more force than the paltry amount of too-little, too-late bannings that did occur (those before the current batch were also too late).

My reference point comes from playing Magic: the Nerdening competitively on a local level.

And that's the kernel of the popcorn. Our reference point. Too close analogies to real life tournaments and events fails, because with real life there really could be a perma-ban. (I mentioned 'D2 as a casino' in a previous post, but I think it's still too clunky of an analogy. A real life casino has higher stakes and must have beefier security measures. )

Approaching online video game cheating solely from the perspective of a real life tournament, or that of a programmer, in my opinion does not work.

You say 'regardless of the medium', I'd say the medium is pretty far from regardless.

How extreme of a measure are you willing to go, in an on-line virtual game medium? Could bliz just do an IP ban as well as a CD key ban? What happens if a cheater switches ISP? Maybe Bliz should asks for a photo ID to be entered into a database when someone buys their game? Maybe DNA samples? And when someone is caught cheating, maybe it could go into court and the offender be issued monitored ankle bracelets that alerts the cops whenever the offender go within 5 ft of a computer?

Aside from legalities issues, the only thing louder that screams out is the practicality and the issue of cost. As in, who the hell will pay for all these things? I've read articles and essays on how the on-line world and the real world have grey areas and convergence, but pardon the pun. Let's get real.

The only time people pay real attention to these things is when there's real consequences like theft of real money\property, or real life abuse\injury and death. We could argue that time might be stolen, rules of fairness might be broken, but dollar to donuts most people's care level would drop when the medium happens to be 'virtual online video game'.

A revolving door policy is probably the only way bliz could choose, or anyone else in their shoes for that matter. At the end of the day D2 is not a casino, and B.net is not a real life tournament that happens in meatspace. It's a video game that can be played on-line, with virtual risks and rewards.

Bliz protects virtual risks and rewards with virtual security and threats of virtual punishment. It's make believe security for a make believe medium. They probably do perk up with real security the second they perceive someone or something threatens their real rewards, but otherwise it's all par for the course.

I'll sum up all my above rambling in one sentence. It's just business, and business is all about the Benjamins. If you don't factor that in, nothing bliz does D2 security wise makes sense. Once you do, the penny will drop and things be a lot clearer. Like say, Bliz probably does count cheaters as part of their customer base in D2. Or at least, count their money.

[Merlinios]

I was not trying to imply that the team-racing to 99 was in any way unfair, simply that when enough people adopted it, there was no point in my trying to keep up. Regardless of how early the team strategy was adopted, I have screenshots of myself <50 on the ladder from at least one of the resets, and not fair behind the leaders. But the most recent reset I played in, I was not even close, so it was no longer worth it for me to put forth the effort without involving a team of my own, which was at that point an impossibility. But that is neither here nor there.

Excuse my bluntness again, but how early is early? D2 classic online might have been 'clean' at the very early times, but IIRC there was dupes before LoD appeared. A Rare item called Carrion Wind or Carrion Song comes to mind. With LoD, the itamz changed (high runes) but the big cheat remains the same (duping). Edited: It was Carrion Song rare class gothic bow iirc.

Perhaps it is nostalgia. Perhaps my memory has become inaccurate due to the amount of time since the event. Whatever the case, I don't remember widespread duping until either just before or just after the release of LoD. I am fully willing to accept that it was there and I was oblivious, or simply do not remember. You are probably right on this point. Do we have an actual timeline for this? How long did it take for the cheats and exploits to come along?

A revolving door policy is probably the only way bliz could choose, or anyone else in their shoes for that matter. At the end of the day D2 is not a casino, and B.net is not a real life tournament that happens in meatspace. It's a video game that can be played on-line, with virtual risks and rewards.

I think this is our fundamental point of disagreement. There is no ideological reason that extreme security standards could not be put in place. In the case of Magic, at least on the local levels, on the lower level local tournaments, people are playing for peanuts. It's a hobby. But rules enforcement does exist. The same applies to virtual games. Just because there is nothing on the line does not imply that the system shouldn't be kept clean.

The crux of the issue is, as you've pointed out, money. I honestly don't know how much it costs Blizzard to run whatever kind of scan they run to ban 30,000 accounts every two or three years. I'd think that since they just ran one on a game that's seven (?) years old and no longer pulling in any real income, that it's relatively cheap. What do you think the state of the game would be if Blizzard ran a banscan once a week? I think a large portion of the cheaters are willing to suck it up and pay another thirty bucks every couple of years if their account gets banned, but how many would be willing to do so monthly or weekly? (And I'm not trying to imply that this would fix everything, simply that there are further extremities that Blizzard could have gone to which were not necessarily out of realistic possibility.)

Breaking down the problems with Diablo II, there are a couple of repeating paradigms that break the game for most of the 'legitimate' players. Botting, duping, and outright breaking items (IE, creating items that should not actually exist).

I'm not sure how to fix botting, particularly in a game that encourages bot-like behavior (killing one monster or set of monsters over and over, in exactly the same fashion, with very little variance, decision-making, or risk of death). Macros will almost always be able to be abused in games that have any kind of menial task. I think the only way to get rid of this facet of "gameplay" is to eliminate the redundancy that allows it to be effective, whether by added randomness or required player decisions (not just input, but actual decisions). The elimination of botting feels like more of a design philosophy than something implementable after the fact, depending, of course, on how invasive the parent company wants to get (which is usually extremely bad PR).

Other games have managed to stay relatively free of the other two for years. I'm not sure how well the parallels can be drawn based on coding, and I find it hard to say with 100% certainty anything about dupes, as if they were only present in small numbers, it is quite possible they would be entirely undetectable, but small numbers should not be felt by the virtual economy anyway. It IS possible for these things to be done. I'm not sure what the cost is. I'm sure someone at Blizzard performed some type of analysis and concluded that it simply wasn't worth it for the game in question, but at the end of the day, I think there is more of a decision to be made here than you're giving the system credit for. It IS possible to quash at least most of the exploitative play.

As I have not played very many online games, the only example I can point to is Guild Wars (which is riddled with its own problems, to be sure). I remember one brief duping exploit that was ruthlessly quashed without hours of its becoming public knowledge. Granted, the game is not based on the same item-hoarding mentality, but it sees its fair share of people whose goal seems to be the accumulation of as much (relatively meaningless) wealth as possible.

Back to the main point, it seems to be possible to keep an online game relatively clean. It's simply a matter of the parent company putting the money and man-hours into the system. The back end here is of course developing a good repertoire with the fans. I have seen firsthand that people will sink more money into a company that they feel will maintain their game better.

--me