Banned From WoW For WINE & Programmable Keyboard

An anonymous reader writes "Player gets banned for playing World of Warcraft under WINE and using a Logitech Gaming keyboard. "I am an experienced network engineer for an ISP and I am often running World of Warcraft on Linux through the use of WINE..."" Although the e-mails exchanged are unclear my guess is that the programmable keyboard was more the problem then WINE. Not that you'd ever know that given that Blizzard communicates with their users seemingly almost exclusively with form letters.

Anonymous?

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

Slashdot profile [slashdot.org]

The keyboard he is using sounds quite cool though :)
I shall have to look into getting one.

Re:Anonymous?

[Juliusz (905365)]

Yeah, cool, but it got him banned. He should have used one of those little, swinging, water-drinking, wooden birds with the funny hats, they're harder to detect.

Favor

[by Anonymous Coward]

He should consider it a favor. Now he can go back to living his life.

He's better off.

[GundamFan (848341)]

It stings to get banned... but realy any MMO is a waste of time, WoW being one of the worst in my opinion.

if this is Blizzards new attitiude towards it's customers, maybe I can get all of my friends to stop playing WoW and spend some time in the real world interacting with people in person.

Mod me a troll if you want it won't change the fact that I am siclk of Fantasy MMOs.

And I think all FPSs are a Wate of Time

[brunes69 (86786)]

It's called a gamesupposed to be a waste of time. If it wasn't a waste of time then it would be called "work" or "chores", because other than work, chores, eating, and sleeping, everything you do in life is a "waste of time", since it's only purpose is to entertain you.

To each his own, I don't care if you don't like MMORPGs, but you don't have to try to belittle those who do.

Re:He's better off.

[maxwell demon (590494)]

but there's really no such thing as an offline MMORPG is there?

Yes there is. It's called business.

Re:He's better off.

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

Good analogy. Business has lots of grinding, low level mobs, and elitist guilds.

Re:He's better off.

[Cat_Byte (621676)]

Ugh. I just had visions of the IT department getting a raid party together and heading down to payroll.

Not a Suprise

[Herkum01 (592704)]

In any situation which one party has vastly superior authority and little chance of penalized. Don't expect them to act in a reasonable manner.

Re:Not a Suprise

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

I'm actually amazed that the company acted so responsibly. It would have been easy to just backtrack and forgive and forget, but they forged ahead, making an enemy and losing a customer, to try to maintain the "rules of the land". Good for them.

You have a funny definition of "responsible". If you read TFA, he went through great lengths to attempt to resolve the issue with Blizzard, keeping his emails polite at all times. He pointed out that both Logitech and Blizzard had advertised the keyboard as being good for WoW, and even offered to accept a temporary ban to make up for any accidental infractions.

Blizzard ignored all his correspondance, and went for a permanent ban, apparently in direct violation of their own terms of service. [blizzard.com]

Blizzard was WRONG, and paid no attention to a reasonable customer. I find it perfectly acceptable if he was currently considering either legal or grass roots responses to their gross negligence in the matter. If that is the best they can do for loyal customers who attempted civil resolutions, then they deserve to end up in a media circus of bad press and class action suits.

It's the keyboard, stupid.

[JasonUCF (601670)]

They have stated repeatedly that programmable keyboards like the Logitech one violate the EULA for WoW. While the current iteration of hacks -- sending the keyboard the mana/HP, are benign, the possibilty exists for there to be future mods that become harmful to the game or allow for some form of hacking.

Source:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-interface-customization&t=330798&tmp=1#post3307 98 [worldofwarcraft.com]

Re:It's the keyboard, stupid. - And he was BOTTING

[JasonUCF (601670)]

OMG! I wanted to get the link in, but I read through the rest of the email:

At the time of the suspension I was playing WoW on Linux. I was training my weapon skills because I recently turned to level 60. I had programmed the switching of weapons (I use Wardrobe for that) to my programmable keyboard and was fighting a low-level healing mob to upgrade all my weapon skills to 300. As you might very well know, this takes hours, and while I was training my different weapon skills by pressing the macro keys and healing myself every now and then, I watched some movies on my TV, because fighting a level 25 healing mob doesn't require much attention if you're a level 60 priest.

It's not a matter of WINE, he was fucking botting! He took his programmable keyboard and built macros for fighting mobs and then left it unattendend.

When you a grinding, if a GM suspects botting they will whisper you looking for you to respond. If you don't respond within a reasonable amount of time you get nailed for botting.

Yawn..

Re:It's the keyboard, stupid. - And he was BOTTING

[Arathrael (742381)]

It's not a matter of WINE, he was fucking botting! He took his programmable keyboard and built macros for fighting mobs and then left it unattendend.

As I understand it, he didn't actually leave it unattended. On the contrary, he couldn't leave it unattended, he still had to be sitting there pressing the programmed keys. He just wasn't paying attention while he was doing that. You can argue not paying attention is equivalent to leaving it unattended, but a simple macro on a programmable keyboard that you can't leave unattended does not make a bot, let along a fucking one.

Anyway, the real culprit here is the game design. If Blizzard want their players to worship at the altar of the great Time Sink, then they can expect them to use things like this to make it less mind-numbingly tedious.

Re:It's the keyboard, stupid. - And he was BOTTING

[kcurtis (311610)]

A GM will specifically identify himself/herself as a GM -- not just any random player name. This guy was botting, and I for one cheer his being nuked. He cheated.

The game has has a built-in macro system that does not permit you to do multiple battle actions at once (you can swap multiple items, and perform multiples of other non-combat actions) because casting multiple spells/performing multiple combat skills all with the press of a single button is botting. This guy bypassed the in-game restricions with a hardware/software combination. The rules exists for a reason, and he broke them.

Funny thing is that if he had just been paying attention to the window he would have been fine.

And your comment about English is just flamebait (not that the rest is not).

But that is not the point

[geddes (533463)]

1. He wasn't using the LCD functioning of his programmable keyboard, he was using macros, it is far less clear if that is against the WoW tos, since programmable macro-keys do not involve "intercepting data" being sent from the WoW application.

2. But you are right, it was the Keyboard that brought this on. He was wathing movies and just casually pressing his macro key every now and then. Since he wasn't paying attention and doing the same thing over and over again, it looked like he was botting. Blizzard may have been right to ban him. Though I tend to think that since they have no clear programmable keyboard policy, they should have warned him.

3. Nonetheless, after reading his website, I have sympathy for the guy. Blizzard's communication with him really sucked. Getting sent those form letters must have been so frustrating. He asked specific questions to his accuser and they were replied to by generic form letters. He went into great detail explaining what his (somewhat unique) situation was. Even if Blizzard had replied and said "We have no problem with your running Wine, but using those programmable keyboards are against our ToS." Then that would be fine. But Blizzard was vague in their responses, which is unfair, and if they were a government (which they sort of are in this online world) for a developed, democratic, nation, this guy would have the right to at least SEE the evidence against him. It sounds like here somebody reported him as not responding to messages. They should tell him WHEN and WHERE it happened. Explain what showed up in their logs for them to conclude that he was botting.

The true problem here isn't lack of Wine support or Programmable Keyboards. The problem is that Blizzard makes decisions behind a closed curtain and doesn't tell you what evidence they used to support their decision.

Uhm, no.

[Syberghost (10557)]

Banned for violating the rules with his programmable keyboard. They outright told him that; he was interacting with his environment in an unattended manner. That's a violation of the TOS for every MMORPG I've ever read the TOS for, which admittedly isn't many.

However, it is telling that he knows that bot programs won't work on Wine under Linux; I'm not buying the story that he tested them all subsequently.

Summation: Cheated. Got caught. Got banned. Whined and told his buddies an "edited" version of the story, so they all rallied behind him. Tough noogies.

Re:Uhm, no.

[EddieBurkett (614927)]

Banned for violating the rules with his programmable keyboard. They outright told him that; he was interacting with his environment in an unattended manner. That's a violation of the TOS for every MMORPG I've ever read the TOS for, which admittedly isn't many.

The best part is that the guy wraps himself in the I'm-being-persecuted-for-running-Linux flag, which he knows will raise the ire of many the WoW player. If he was playing the game unattended and got caught, he deserves to be banned, and if he finds fighting low level mobs to raise his skills so boring, maybe he should find another way to spend his time.

Its been a while since I've played WoW. Can Trolls be Priests?

all that time leveling lost because of a keyboard?

[Neologic (48268)]

Incidents like this remind me that when you play WoW or other mmorpg's, you don't own your character, despite the often thousand of man-hours people put into them. It seems to me that if there was a similar real-world analogue, the account holder would be able to get some sort of redress to his losses in a court of law, or at least reinstatement. In these virtual worlds, the game company is able to rule by diktat and is able to twist the TOS to suit their needs. Indeed, they can change the TOS at will and if you don't agree to the new terms, then you forfeit your right to your account. Eventually, the legalities of virtual worlds will need to be addressed.

Definitely the keyboard

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

It seems like it was definitely the programmable keyboard and not WINE that set off their bot detectors.

Apparently the macros on the keyboard were making him do repeated actions, and somehow this was interpreted by Blizzard as "unattended" operation. (Why they think it was unattended I don't know, TFA doesn't say exactly ... why didn't they just message him when they saw the odd behavior? Or do something else to verify it's a human on the other end?)

Anyway, a quote from TFA:
"So it seems that if I use a programmable keyboard I am botting. However I suspect their 3rd party detection software saw a very strange enviroinment in which WoW was running; that combined with the repetitive task of healing myself, switching weapons, and casting Hex of Weakness programmed in my keyboard, I am viewed as a bot."

So it seems other people using WoW under WINE are safe, you'd just better not get too trigger-happy with the keyboard macros.

What's really the problem here is that there seems to be a huge disconnect between official Blizzard policy (programmable keyboards are okay, this has been explicitly said by one of their reps in the forums, according to the article) and what the GMs did. And after the guy got banned, they seem to just be just stonewalling him and hoping he'll go away, giving him a lot of "the matter is closed" crap. I have to salute his perserverence, though, in spite of this.

Rather a disappointing showing from Blizzard.

geez that guy's a trooper

[WormholeFiend (674934)]

The way Blizzard replies to the guy's emails, if I had been him, I would have emailed them a large high rez uncompressed photo of my middle finger with the caption "this is the finger I used to press my final macro key in WoW".

let me get this straight

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

First off, I've never played WoW (nor any other MMORPG). Now, let me get this straight. The entire WINE aspect seems incidental, so we'll ignore that. Otherwise, he set up some macros on his Logitech keyboard to perform some repetitive tasks. He set those in motion, put up a 'Do Not Disturb' message, and then proceeded to go off and do something else (which admittedly was watching the movie on the other monitor). While this is not a bot program, per se, how is this not running a bot? It's unattended automated actions performed repeatedly. To the best of my knowledge, that's what a bot is. In which case, a banning is what you get.

Why was it WINE or keyboard?

[fleck_99_99 (223900)]

From reading the linked explanation, it sounds to me like the playing really WAS essentially unattended. If a GM sent a tell while this guy was watching TV, and he didn't answer, but his character kept performing actions -- well, if it looks like a bot and quacks like a bot...

Player TOS

[Bonewalker (631203)]

You know, the real irony here is that while Blizzard won't allow players to 'bot' their way through the game, the only responses you get from them are bots. Standard form letters that are automatically activated when you contact them.

There should be a Player TOS that the company agrees to before selling their games. It would read like so:

17. In the event you, the player, are ever in need of technical assistance, customer support, account maintenance, or in the event you are banned from the game and your account closed, you have the right to expect that a human Blizzard employee will examine your situation and respond without the use of bots, form letters, or automated responses to make certain that your situation is fully resolved. Furthermore, while the resolution may not always be to your liking, the details will be explained in full using simple, standard language showing the logic we used to make our decisions. Once we have made every effort to explain our decisions, if you still feel that Blizzard has errored in some way, you will have one appeal effort to escalate your situation. This will mean that a team of three Blizzard employees will examine your case in full, reaching a decision. You will only be notified that either Blizzard's previous decision has been upheld, or that there is sufficient evidence to reverse the previous Blizzard decision.

What's this botter's problem??

[Jugalator (259273)]

... "while I was training my different weapon skills by pressing the macro keys and healing myself every now and then, I watched some movies on my TV, because fighting a level 25 healing mob doesn't require much attention if you're a level 60 priest. "

That is the key problem in what he did. If he used macros while watching TV, I can only guess at how long these repeated actions went on.

This isn't about Linux, not about WINE, not even about programmable Logitech keyboards! This is about: watching TV while letting your computer play the game. And... "playing" the game unattended is most certainly against most MMO agreements, and usually equalled with botting, much like Blizzard indeed told him.

I can only guess at why the Blizzard Boards once told him that it was OK to use keyboards with basic programmability, but a guess was that Blizzard didn't mean it was OK to fucking abuse them to play WoW while watching TV. Yeah, maybe that's why.

If it in his eyes "doesn't require much attention" or not is completely irrelevant, and an "excuse" stupid enough to just worsen his case. It's the very same excuse used by "true" botters. Blizzard has most likely monitored his account over some period of time and seen, "hey, this guy is doing identical actions all over". The follow up reply from Blizzard shows they were listening to his complaints and clarified the problem once again.

He then went on saying:

"I have also apoligised in advance if using a programmable keyboard violates the TOS - but your TOS does not say anything about using such keyboards."

No, but a TOS doesn't detail every individual piece of hardware or software disallowed either. That would be impossible. Instead, they try to explain what's allowed or not. Not that Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboards are disallowed when used to exploit game mechanics. Whether Logitech says they're OK or not is also irrelevant as they don't have a say in the WOW ToS anyway.

And I'm sure they are right too that using their keyboard is allowed, but do Logitech say "using our keyboards to 'play' WoW with during TV watching is in agreement with Blizzard ToS"?

So that's flaw number two in his argument, after trying to excuse himself with "but *I* thought it was OK to play the game in an unattended way, because ... my level 60 char is so powerful anyway!"

Come on, just because he's using WINE and this stupid keyboard doesn't excuse his actions.

"However I suspect their 3rd party detection software saw a very strange enviroinment in which WoW was running"

Nah, that's just him trying to find ways of blaming his behavior on Linux and WINE.

"that combined with the repetitive task of healing myself, switching weapons, and casting Hex of Weakness programmed in my keyboard"

Yes! That's why though! You know, stuff botters write Windows software to do Does it really matter that much how you do it? This guy need to understand what botting implies (= tools to enable game play automation) and that botting isn't allowed.

"Now to the advantage gained. What exactly did I gain? All I did is train my weapon skills. I did not gain any gold, did not gain any experience at level 60, no honor, not even any loot whatsoever."

This argument is beyond comprehension for me. He gained trained skills! That's what he gained. Gee.

Re:Getting banned from recreational sites

[Otter (3800)]

I suppose it's a bad sign when BadAnalogyGuy beats me to exactly the analogy I was going to make...