Warden upgraded to Matrix 2.3, Neo unhappy with sudden inability to stop Agent Smith

Another undocumented change in World of Warcraft’s new kooler than Jesus 2.3 patch: all your bots are belong to Blizzard.

You had better get an idea what we are talking about. ISXWarden and ISXWoW may never work again, and if you are using InnerSpace for WoW, this affects you.

The amount of life I have saved through the enabling of such a wonderful anti-warden program can never be payed back. I have tried my hardest not to annoy you fellows with needless and stupid questions and have enjoyed being a part of isxwarden/wow. I can only hope that you defeat warden once again…

Lax, the author of ISXWarden (a detector/blocker of Blizzard’s anti-hack Warden software) and InnerSpace (the non-free DirectX host for the free ISXWoW bot software) responded by… blogging! That’ll show the evil empire. Blogs fix everything.

In this case, Lax goes straight for the Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt effect – “OMG, we can’t stop, er, don’t know what Blizzard is doing any more – they could be sending anything from your PC! Anything! Demographic data! Financial data! Pictures of your dog! PICTURES OF YOUR MOM!”

Blizzard, I strongly urge you to promote transparency in your policing efforts. The public cannot be expected to trust a corporation that is hiding information from its own customers. You are governing several million people across the globe, and even though you do not like some of them, you should not attempt to hide your software or the functionality of your software on your customers’ personal computers. There is absolutely no excuse for doing so, and I do believe that this is now, without a doubt in my mind, an ethical issue.

Of course, the Internet being what it is, Slashdot is ON THE CASE, y0. Not on the case to explicitly note Lax’s somewhat obvious conflict of interest, of course. Reading’s hard when all your software yearns to be free.

Now Blizzard has a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer. That can’t be right.

If i had a WoW account i would be cancelling it this second, no videogame has the right to violate the privacy of my computer (Score: 5, Insightful)

You’ve already given up your life when you start playing WoW. What do you have to keep private? (Score: 5, Funny)

Seriously, if this is the worst that Blizzard does, I’m a happy camper. They really do have serious problems with their users being exploited, and detecting these problems early is all good. In my case, they’ll see everything that’s in my virtual Windows environment under Wine. (Score: -3, Embrace The Many)

My thoughts: here’s how I break this down. The usual arguments against Warden:

  • Warden scans the user’s process list and sends it back to the server without the user’s explicit consent (Blizzard’s response is that agreeing to the WoW EULA and playing WoW is implicit consent).
  • Warden logs when the user is found to be using third party programs Blizzard disallows, and then bans the user from WoW. This is seen as a violation of the user’s right to run whatever they want.
  • World of Warcraft has many functions hosted client-side (which is how teleport hacks and the like happen) to improve game performance. This is seen as bad coding.
  • Thanks to the arms race of hackers vs game developers and all of the above, Warden essentially behaves as a virus itself (using polymorphic code cloaking) to block users from stopping it from functioning. This is seen as hijacking the user’s computer.

I disagree with all of the above complaints (aside from perhaps the thing about client side coding – and it’s a compromise every developer eventually looks at, because it’s impossible from a cost/benefit perspective to keep everything on the server) for obvious (and, like Lax, obvious conflict-of-interest) reasons.

But the real bottom line: if you don’t like Warden and find it an invasion of privacy, vote with your pocketbook and don’t pay for WoW. It’s really that simple. Histrionics on message boards aside, playing WoW is not some kind of constitutional right, it’s a contract between you and Blizzard. As part of that contract, Blizzard is going to be looking over your shoulder while you’re playing. If you’re not OK with that, there are, believe it or not, other online games out there, some of which have been rumored to resemble WoW to varying degrees.

Game developers have not only the right, but the expected duty, to enforce a clean and open playing field. As black hats get better at breaking them, white hats are going to get sneakier (and sometimes overbearing) in protecting them. The arms race will never end.

(Until we have an OS with a sane user and application access administration policy. But that’s another subject.)

Edit: further discussion raging here as well.

Newer Comments →
  • Matthew

    I love it!

    Show what you’re doing because that’s right and ethical…so we can hack your system!

    My new favorite person is Lax, the man of very huge balls and little brains.

  • http://games.slashdot.org Zonk

    *grumble*grumble*

    They always post stuff like this when I’m at the grocery store, or something.

  • Luckton

    I agree with “If you don’t like it, don’t play it.”

    The only valid argument I can see is if some black hat managed to hack the Warden program and actually get it do to all these things that the techno-hippies say they’re doing with regards to sending privite information other than my running process list, only instead of sending it to Bliz it sends the info to (insert evil/whitty name/corporation/douche-bag here).

    If that can’t be done, then the people donning their tin-foil hats can do/say what they want in their basement/trailer/Second-Life-pseudo-area-designed-just-like-their-basement-in-real-life.

  • zabuni

    One of the more lucid comments on Slashdot made the following point:

    If you don’t trust Blizzard enough that they can’t run arbitrary software on your system, why did you A)Install 4 CDs worth of arbitrary code on your system B)Install 4 more CDs worth of arbitrary code on your system C) regularly download and install arbitrary patches to the code D)Give them your credit card #, expiration date, street address, and security code.

    Exactly what are they going to do now that would further degrade one’s privacy between a person and Blizzard?

  • tannenburg

    I think that an aspect of the paranoia is the “what if someone FIGURES OUT THEIR SYSTEM AND HACKS INTO MY COMPUTER USING THEIR BACK DOOR?” fear. Suffice it to say that if Blizzard enabled a hack they would be in serious liability trouble. Nonetheless, the majority of hacking is user-enabled – they clicked the phishing email, went to the Naughty WoW Nurses Website, or surfed the Web without virus-checkers or firewalls in the Internet equivalent of running around with one’s wallet bulging with $100 bills taped to one’s forehead.

  • http://ambernight.org Amber

    I do agree in principle that players should vote with their purses and wallets but I don’t much care for the argument in general. For starters it’s just too easy to slide down that slippery slope of logic (whee!). Don’t like the new crafting patch? Hey, don’t play. They nerfed your class AGAIN? Shut up about it already and just don’t play the game, there’s plenty of ‘em out there. I think players voices need to be heard and not so easily dismissed, and Blizzard needs to do a better job of listening to their players.

    Having said that, I do agree that Blizzard is perfectly within their prerogative and that Lax is a douche. Lax (and his kind) is the reason this software exists. To play the goddamned civil rights card is just beyond the pale.

    All hail Warden, bitches!

  • nwithers

    I don’t see a problem with warden, it’s really the only answer to “the client is in the hands of the enemy” problem that people have come out with. And at 8, 9? million players, letting hackers run amok by not scanning for 3rd party applications would make the game unplayable, especially in PvP.

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless_

    Zonk you need to keep your fellow dotters in check. That is two fear-mongering “OMFG rootkit” postings that /. has helped propagate. Ah well, at least /. isn’t Digg, where fear mongering becomes truth in about 30 clicks.

    I argue a lot about EA’s software that sifts data to serve dynamic advertisements in some of their games. I strongly don’t support such software, but I have given up the “it is a risk to your computer” argument. It’s not a risk, or I should say, anymore of a risk than sticking that shiny install CD into your drive. The problem with EA’s little program is that it is not something enhancing or protecting the integrity of the game, but just a means for EA to make money off of unsuspecting gamers. And while making the extra money, they offer NO DISCOUNT to the people paying full price for the game or helping to pay and support gaming servers where the advertisements will be shown.

    Warden on the other hand is performing a service for me, the honest player. Sure, a Blizzard employee could sneak something and cause all sorts of trouble, but then so could Microsoft. Or even a Linux distribution (which is a lot more likely than a Microsoft sabotage). The point that we accept a lot of risk every time we install something on our computers is very valid and trumps every argument this Lax guy could make.

  • http://wftm.diaryland.com Gawain

    Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing?

    Crap, for a second there I considered playing WoW again. You know. for a second. And then I punched myself in the dick.

  • Andy

    I don’t know, back in the day I used to love using ShowEQ with EverQuest, fun little program, sniffs packets from a computer between the client and server and makes nice little maps with skittles representing mobs, etc. Was great fun. Usefulness ran the gambit from, OMG dragon, level 70, stay away! Too, ok, now when we pull this mob these 3 other mobs seem to react, and if were gonna kill Xegony with 3 wizards vs. the normal 72 man raid we just need to stand under this rock and nuke her to death. (we couldn’t do that)

    Ah, good times. Problem with mainstream games, harder to cheat. ShowEQ was targetted and SoE took measures to stop it, but hackers have this way of figuring out something. This Warden sounds like a pain though. Best of luck to ya all.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com/ wowpanda

    LOL why everyone is so pissed? You cans top Blizzard spying on you quick and easy.

    I been have a day job/wife/life and can only play WOW for short times, and eventually wrote my own bot and has been using it for over a year now, never got caught. I even made it public.

    My solution? Run the stupid program as guest! As guest WOW has only so much access, it can’t scan your codes freely (except other programs running as guest, usually is none), it can’t do a lot of things, and if your files folders has right permissions, it can’t open your files etc. Safe! And if WOW can break that, windows got a security hole so big it will fill the headlines (so impossible).

    Why everyone is spending so much time doing anti warden stuff? Just do what I did and all you need to do is set your title bar to empty string.

    I believe this method is suitable to all bots, except the ones that uses injection, because nothing can prevent WOW from scanning itself.

  • http://www.mmorpg-info.org/ Taymar

    I’m with Amber; the “don’t like it, don’t play” argument doesn’t hold a lot of weight with me. Don’t like Bush? Leave the country. It’s the same attitude.

    Shame.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    “Don’t like Bush? Leave the country. It’s the same attitude.”

    This is what MMOGs do to your brain, folks.

  • Brask Mumei

    An OS with a sane admin/application space won’t help. Unless you mean by “sane” that I don’t have root on my own box any more. I really don’t call that sane.

    I’m afraid I’m in the no-sympathy-for-blizzard camp. This is just proof that warden was the wrong idea. They keep sinking farther and farther into building this barricade, wasting resources better spent on.. well, anything really.

    You want to get rid of bots? Answer is simple. Open the gold faucets so people don’t have to grind.

    There is something sadistic about demanding to audit the players actions to make sure they really suffered as much as they are supposed to.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    And there’s something masochistic about playing through your suffering.
    Sounds like a consensual relationship.

  • Corwin Loa

    “This is just proof that warden was the wrong idea.”

    I’d say this is actually proof that warden is a great idea. Not only that, but now they’ve obviously got a good enough solution that those who’d prefer to cheat are trying to appeal to the community through fear, rather then by developing a counter to it.

    If you’ve already trusted Blizzard with your address and credit card number I don’t see why you wouldn’t trust Warden.

  • kalain

    “Warden logs when the user is found to be using third party programs Blizzard disallows, and then bans the user from WoW. This is seen as a violation of the user’s right to run whatever they want. ”

    IIRC from looking at the older version, it actually doesn’t go that far. It checks a hashed list of running programs/few memory bits against a local copy of “BAD THINGS” that gets updated and checked constantly. If you fail this check, it sends back a signal that flags your account.

    At that point, a GM ghosts you or checks logs or whatever, and remains a human element before any actual action against the account.

    But anyways, yeah. The idea against warden is that it COULD be up to no good. But then again, any closed source application COULD be up to no good (and quite a few open source ones, yay code obscuring contests). At some point you need to trust the people you do business with. If you think Blizzard has reason to completely screw a multi million player money tree by looking at your porn collection… you’re insane, but aside from that you shouldn’t be paying them money in the first place.

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    Well it is Blizz’s right to ban you and it is your right to use bots. Cry doesn’t help. There are simple and effective ways to hide from warden (see my previous post), and no other bot writers complained anything. It is their right to make warden as complex as possible, it is your duty to hide your bot.

    My only question to Blizzard is, instead of wasting money on warden and baning players, why not make effort to make the game easily enjoyable by casual gamers like me? I will ditch the bot immediately if that happens. It is not easy to come home at 8 and have to update the offsets.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    Is there a more casual friendly fantasy MMOG than WoW in existence right now?

    Name some. How casual does it need to be? What sorts of things do you want to do in WoW?

    Maybe you’re more hardcore than you think, but you just want things to be faster.

  • http://socialistgamerreview.com Jeremy Williams

    That is so evil and horrible Blizzard! How dare you prevent people from… cheating…

    There is no “Right to bot” botting, hacking, etc. Is cheating. Cheating, is against the rules, and thusly you get banned. The point of playing the game is to actually play the game. Yes, people who have less time in their day are going to be playing less. Welcome to… everything. There’s this really weird thing, called time. By investing it in some things (hereby call “Life”) You have less of it to invest in other things (Lets call them “Games”)
    It’s you choice which you’re going to spend your time doing, but you can’t pick both.
    If you want a game that plays itself while you’re gone, there are some out there, go find one of those.
    But don’t screw up every else’s menial grinding by having your robo slave do yours for you.

  • Aufero

    Keeping people out of your code is a balancing act. Go too far, and your software package (be it an MMO, an OS, a blogging platform or magic screen candy) won’t sell because your anti-hacking measures become too obtrusive to the users. Don’t go far enough, and your software will become widely known as unusable (or at least unenjoyable to use) due to hacks and bots. The middle ground is pretty narrow for MMOs – dupers, farmers, PvP speed hackers and gold sellers have repeatedly demonstrated that if any loophole exists, it will be heavily exploited.

    Blizzard seems to feel they’re likely to lose more customers over obvious hacks than they will by scanning your system. They’re probably right. They’ve been reasonably open about it, (unlike some of their competitors) so it doesn’t bother me much.

  • VPellen

    I’m not sure where I stand on this one.

    On one hand, I believe everything happens for a reason. If somebody is running interface hacks, then maybe your interface is inefficient. If somebody is botting your game, then maybe that’s because it’s an agonizing experience to actually play until you hit the endgame. If somebody is hacking your client and letting themselves do things that the game rules don’t allow, maybe your client-side programming is just a tad sloppy.

    On the other hand, some of it is unavoidable. Interface choices can be deliberate in that you don’t want players to see some things. If you have a game where it takes any kind of time to advance, somebody, somewhere, is going to automate that process. There are some situations in which you simply can’t do a damned thing on the server side and you have to offload things to the client.

    That said, I believe that there are lines. When I play WoW (Just FYI: I -don’t- play WoW, I find the experience mind-numbing) I install software with the implicit understanding that there’s going to be code on my computer that will be used to communicate with a server for gameplay purposes and put pretty pictures on my screen. I understand that I have to give Blizzard my personal information for them to distinguish me from other users and make sure I’m not committing credit card fraud. I understand that I’m in a contract with them that either of us can terminate at any time.

    But there are two things that bug me. The first is somewhat trivial; I don’t give implicit consent for a company to start arbitrarily poking around my system on the off-chance that I may be cheating in their game. But this is minor, and I would understand if they were desperately looking for a solution. I don’t think they’re so desperate.

    No, what bugs me about the idea of Warden is that it’s -lazy-. I don’t care what the deal with your game is, if it’s got some major client-side exploit which ruins play for a ton of other people when they cheat, your client is programmed sloppily. And I’m not an idiot; I understand that it’s all about compromise, and I understand the difficulty of actually programming a game that runs with latency over a network, but if there are any huge major client-side exploits which can’t mostly be dealt with by a little intelligent server-side cross-checking, then you really should be firing your programmers and bringing in some new ones in. Preferably ones that know their head from their ass.

    I believe that Warden is a quick fix. It’s quicker, cheaper, and easier than refining security within the server and client overall. It’s the most economic solution. It’s also incredibly sloppy, and for that reason alone, I can’t support it.

    And, yes, I do have to agree that “vote with your wallets” is a poor argument. Just because your customers are willing to be treated like dirt, that doesn’t mean that treating your customers like dirt a good idea.

    But maybe I’m just tired and grumpy, who knows.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Hi, I’m from the NSA and we want everything Blizzard.
    “What do you mean everything?”
    We want it all. We want every last piece of data from every last customer.
    “Oh, ok then.”

  • Merlyn

    Why can I see Raph in the corner rolling on the floor, pointing at Blizzard and laughing, saying “I told you so!”

    The client is in the hands of the enemy, and this proves it. Of course, Blizz knows that, hence Warden. And now the enemy is whining that Blizzard isn’t playing fair.

    Good for Blizz. I’m tired of hackers, cheaters, farmers, etc. Improve Warden, make it harder to detect and stop. Throw more anti-cheat code in Warden so that the client knows if it’s being messed with.

    Yes it’s trite, but it’s true. If you don’t like the game, don’t play it. It’s not like you’re required to play WoW. I love Lax’s FUD bomb. It’s absolutely hilarious to have a hacker tell someone they need to make their system easier to hack. What next, a bank robber telling banks to quit locking up the money because it’s too hard to rob them?

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    What will the response be when every Phone Company, ISP, website, Paid Package Carrier, grocery store, your employer and the US postal service follow such practices?

    If you are using a service that service has a right to know!

    As long as you aren’t doing anything wrong it won’t effect you and if you don’t like it don’t use their services.

  • GearheadX

    I can’t help but laugh, a lot, at the people crying about how horribly violating all of this is.. when really it’s all just a really, really clever Punkbuster.

    The last time Warden hit the news it was a botter crying about it then too.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    Most of you are missing the big picture here.

    Does a service provider have the right to gather information on you and not tell you what information they are gathering and then share that information with whoever they want?

    Congress is in the process of making it legal for the government to gather information from companies without a warrant.

    http://tinyurl.com/2yahl9
    http://tinyurl.com/2huljx
    http://tinyurl.com/ywrdks
    http://tinyurl.com/2a6ov8

    The tree most of you are looking at is the “Stop the cheaters!” tree. You might want to take a step back and look at the forest that tree is in.

  • JuJutsu

    “What will the response be when every Phone Company, ISP, website, Paid Package Carrier, grocery store, your employer and the US postal service follow such practices?”

    Apparently it’s no problem. As a number of sage thinkers that have posted above pointed out, once you’ve trusted them with your credit card info you should trust them carte blanche.

  • blachawk

    Is this why it’s taking so long for my gold to arrive in the mail?

  • Simond

    I’d just like to add that I find the “If only Blizzard made levelling faster/getting gold easier, then nobody would bot!” posts amusing.

    Gold is trivial to get nowadays. I can spend about half an hour running daily quests and I’ll get 11 gold quest reward per quest, plus loot on top. People asked for this, so Blizzard added some repeatable gold sources alongside the optional gold sinks. They also cut back on the “Must farm half a bajillion potions for raiding” with various changes, which *also* made more gold available. (Of course, now people are complaining about the rampant inflation running amuck at the AH. Supply and demand is unfair to some).

    As for levelling…well, TBC made getting from 60 – 70 fairly painless, and 2.3 just sped up 20-60 levelling by at least 50% (and possibly more).

    With all of those changes, does anyone honestly think the macroers, botters and other miscellaneous cheats will turn around with an epiphany and say “Thank you Blizzard! I no longer feel the need to exploit to victory!!!”?

  • Corwin Loa

    “The problem is that I can no longer ensure the safety of other World of Warcraft players, including my own family, and I believe it is important for someone to do that. ”
    -Lax, from follow up post “In Plain English”

    I’ve been following the drama over the new Warden with a bit of interest, but this really caught my eye. Apparently now Lax fears for the safety of his family due to the new Warden…

    I’m not really sure what to say to that.

  • Brask Mumei

    If gold is now trivial, why do you *care* that anyone is botting or macroing?

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    “I’m not really sure what to say to that.”

    How about saying, “Lax is an idiot detracting from the real issue at hand as his issue is one of dishonesty and his dishonesty is obscuring the real honest debate.”

    Does a company have the right to gather non-publicly available information about you?

  • xaldin

    More to the point does a company have right to gather non publicly avaliable information about you and not tell you what it is gathering.

    My stance is no and their warden software played a strong part behind why I finally quit and deinstalled the game. The game itself was cute and all but I really despised their armoury system and warden so I said enough and left. I tolerated it for time but it was always in back of my mind bugging me.

    The thing to remember is there is nothing to keep them honest. There are no auditors who’ll verify what they’re gathering is not resold or provided to anyone with money. For that matter NSA/FBI could very well have them add features to gather sweeping information without a warrent then hide behind the ‘its a commerical company gathering the data and handing it to us, we’re not illegally searching X millions of systems’. Works for the phone companies after all.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    It’s gotta be like 1 in a million that a terrorist is playing WoW… Wait, that’s potentially nine terrorists!

    Full body cavity searches for every American WoW player! Hey, if you aren’t doing anything wrong what’s the worry?

  • HitNRun

    The only problem I have with it is that, in the larger time period of The Future, abuse is not just more likely but almost certain.

    The odds of Blizzard misusing their program are a sure thing, nearly 1:1 against. But the odds of some other craphouse publisher misusing (or having an employee misuse) *their* program modeled on Warden are nearly 1:1 in favor.

    Think of the long, dubious line of MMO developers in this country and in this hemisphere. Then realize that all of them- Cornered Rat, Old Verant, hell, maybe even Pure Stroke Golf- are on the whole more stable than the much more widely successful Asian companies.

    D-One: I don’t sign contracts with my grocery store or websites, so for them to check my processes (or whatever you consider comparable in a grocery store) would be against the law. The US Postal service may be allowed to do a molecular scan of the contents of my package or they may not be allowed to even record a guestimate of the size, but “principles” are irrelevant in their case since their limits are directly mandated by the laws that constitute their existence. If we don’t like those limits, we can change them.

    Phone companies and ISPs are a stickier issue. But it sounds like, for these and the previous examples, you’re turning Warden into a kind of analogy for Big Brother or whatever certain fantasists are calling the overseas wiretapping brouhaha. What’s the difference? Simply this. Big Brother puts you in jail and Warden stops doing business with you. If a private company has a reason to refuse to do business with me based on information that is either public or I which I consented to, well, more power to them. I can’t think of any examples, but then again it’s not my analogy ;) (As for public institutions, they’re governed directly by their mandates and if we want to change those there’s a time and place for it called Congress.)

  • http://www.legendary.org/~brent/lolgold.jpg brent

    So, who’s bought a new computer in the last three years?

    Apart from hardware failure reasons, who still has a perfectly fine working previous computer that can still run all the rather-less-intensive Internet/productivity-ish apps that don’t require the kick ass bus speeds and video cards the size of a toaster? A computer that could easily function as a ‘main’ with all the important data alongside your new zippy top-ender that will run your games and do your downloads and not store any critical data or information so it can be easily reformatted in case of drivers going awry or any other sort of splat that is kind of depressingly common with PC games these days?

    I’m just saying, it’s a little hard for Warden to sniff around for data that ain’t there.

  • Fraeg

    yes i play

    as others have noted:

    they have my CC my address etc. there isn’t anything more valuable than what they already have that they could discover on my PC…. my midget fetish is already well known.

    as for the “look at the forest your anti cheating tree is standing in” yeah… they might be in the same forest, but this is still a form of entertainment people choose to play. As a player, and given that they already have my CCard info, I really don’t care what measures they take to stop cheaters.

    If you absolutely must be able to cheat, bot, speed hack etc. there are many many free WoW servers who just don’t care if you are cheating. Wanna go 5 man BT while flying? just track down a free server.

  • Freakazoid

    Remember, the typical WoW player is one that finds that armory thing not a violation of privacy, because it’s a video game dude wtf you’re just being a dick.

    The average WoW player doesn’t know what it’s like to be violated using their own personal information. These are the same people who freely give out their name, address, and schools they went to on myspace and facebook and a bunch of other social connection websites. They’re far too trustworthy, and they’ll go so far as to divulge everything about themselves to anyone that asks so that they can get their next nanosecond of entertainment.

    Blizzard can afford to lose sane people who find warden a possible invasion of privacy, as they’re becoming quite a small minority.

  • Merlyn

    “Does a service provider have the right to gather information on you and not tell you what information they are gathering and then share that information with whoever they want?”

    “5. Consent to Monitor. WHEN RUNNING, THE GAME MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER’S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH THE GAME…IN THE EVENT THAT THE GAME DETECTS AN UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM, THE GAME MAY (a) COMMUNICATE INFORMATION BACK TO BLIZZARD, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR ACCOUNT NAME, DETAILS ABOUT THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM DETECTED, AND THE TIME AND DATE THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM WAS DETECTED”

    Umm…it tells you it’s going to go look for hacks/bots/cheats/etc, and that it’s going to go send that back to Blizzard.

    How much more explicit do you want it to be? Some folks want Blizzard to tell them EXACTLY what it’s looking for so they can hide again. Ain’t gonna happen.

  • kalain

    D-One, if the government wants to snag info on people, Blizzard would not be the first stop. Why go to a game developer when you can do the same thing to the OS developer :P

  • JuJutsu

    @merlin

    I don’t play WoW so excuse the ignorance. Is there a definition of ‘unauthorized third party program’ anywhere on the Blizzard site? Is there list of prohibited programs anywhere on the Blizzard site?

  • Merlyn

    I cut it out in the interests of brevity….

    “AN “UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM” AS USED HEREIN SHALL BE DEFINED AS ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY “ADDON,” “MOD,” “HACK,” “TRAINER,” OR “CHEAT,” THAT IN BLIZZARD’S SOLE DETERMINATION: (i) ENABLES OR FACILITATES CHEATING OF ANY TYPE; (ii) ALLOWS USERS TO MODIFY OR HACK THE GAME INTERFACE, ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR EXPERIENCE IN ANY WAY NOT EXPRESSLY AUTHORIZED BY BLIZZARD; OR (iii) INTERCEPTS, “MINES,” OR OTHERWISE COLLECTS INFORMATION FROM OR THROUGH THE GAME.”

    The weird characters are Blizzard’s not mine.

  • Fraeg

    Freak:
    “Remember, the typical WoW player is one that finds that armory thing not a violation of privacy, because it’s a video game dude wtf you’re just being a dick.”

    -Sorry to hear your super secret spec is now visible. I am sure none of the millions of people playing would ever have stumbled upon your recipe for greatness. Oh, and Dude it’s just a video game.

    “The average WoW player doesn’t know what it’s like to be violated using their own personal information. These are the same people who freely give out their name, address, and schools they went to on myspace and facebook and a bunch of other social connection websites. They’re far too trustworthy, and they’ll go so far as to divulge everything about themselves to anyone that asks so that they can get their next nanosecond of entertainment.”

    -The average person period has not experienced identity theft. Nice sweeping generalizations.

    “Blizzard can afford to lose sane people who find warden a possible invasion of privacy, as they’re becoming quite a small minority.”

    -So should I interpret this as you saying: I don’t play WoW (anymore), anyone who still does is obviously a loser/stupid/moron/insane/etc.

    -You object to Warden, hey that’s fine, in fact I would enjoy reading your opinion on Warden itself. However, making crazy ass statements about anyone who doesn’t share your opinion on this issue is accomplishing just what exactly?

  • ubvman

    “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

    Old Ben Franklin probably played a Paladin…

  • Corwin Loa

    Is Blizzard to blame for this?

    If people weren’t cheat and developing ways to fool the current system, then we wouldn’t have this new, invasive Warden, would we?

    You’ve figured out how to run guns across the border, so now they are stopping and searching you at the border. The honor system seems to have failed, so more drastic measure have been enacted.

    Stop writing better cheats, and we won’t need such an invasive program to deal with people like Lax(and the many others developing cheats/bots).

    Until then, its just an arms race :P

  • Corwin Loa

    Err, no edit, that ‘we’ should be ‘they’ in that second to last paragraph. Sorry Lum obviously typing > me.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    http://tinyurl.com/3dqors
    HitNRun,
    You are missing the big picture here. The phone companies/ISPs never were gathering complete information on everyone before the government came in and asked them to.

    It is now legal for the government to gather every last bit of data they want via a private company and any contract you’ve signed is moot. You can’t sue, you have no recourse at all. That’s what all those links of mine were about.

    The debate is far larger than “Warden”. The problem with Warden is that it is a perfect vehicle for what the government is currently doing.

  • Wanderer

    Well it is Blizz’s right to ban you and it is your right to use bots.

    No, it is not your right to use bots.

    In order to play WoW, you enter into a contract with Blizzard. Part of that agreement is that you will not use bots. When you agree to that contract, you give up any right to cheat in the game that you may think you have. No, cheating is not an inalienable God-given right, and yes, you can agree to give up rights. For example, if you sign an NDA as a condition of getting into a closed beta, you give up the right to talk about what’s going on in that beta.

    Also, those of us who play the game without cheating would like to see you give up a few other rights. Like, oh, the right to have un-kicked nads. But don’t mind us … we’re just the people who think our right to play a game fairly and with people who play by the rules of the game has some meaning, too.

    As for Slashdot, well, they jumped the shark years ago. They’ve gone from “news for nerds” to “news for wanna-be nerds and the tinfoil hat crowd.” Too bad, I used to be so active on /. that mod points landed in my lap with depressing regularity; now I read something there maybe once a month, if that. They have swung too far into sensationalism and technically dubious (at best) stories. The real Slashdotters have left, too, by and large. In that particular discussion, I noticed that most of the people who were going hysterical had numbers higher than mine, and the voices of reason were lower. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. A perfect example: Someone suggested having two computers, one for your secure information and one for gaming. A reply was something to the effect of “who can afford that?” The real /. crowd, the original, would have been more like “what kind of lamer has only one computer, and didn’t even build it himself?” (and even if you can’t build your own, one of those $199 Linux boxes from Wal-Mart will handle your email, word processing, Web-surfing, etc., just fine) Somehow people have become convinced that they need a high-end computer with the latest hardware to, um, read their email. Nope, that’s for us gamers. You can — and I do — read your email on something that would have hysterics if you showed it any game written in the past five years.

    You want something to worry about? Worry about your operating system. Specifically, worry about Vista. Vista’s primary goal is not running your applications; it is total, ironclad “protection” of “protected content” — the latter being whatever Microsoft declares it to be. Vista is designed from the ground up like a super-Warden, to prevent you from having either knowledge or control of what is happening in your computer, not just when you’re playing WoW, but all of the time. Now, add to that the fact that Microsoft lost that antitrust case back around the turn of the century — a verdict that was promptly thrown out by the Bush administration. Microsoft is clearly acting “in restraint of trade” and contrary to the interests of the citizens. It is equally clearly not only being given a pass on this by the US government, but the government has also pressured foreign governments to allow Microsoft to operate in violation of the laws of those governments. Is my tinfoil hat on too tight if I see the possibility of some collaboration there? “You sell an OS that will allow us undetectable, unblockable access to anything we want, any time we want it, and we will allow you to have a monopoly on the OS market, and protect you from anyone who challenges it, so that every computer has your OS and our backdoor.” Ten years ago, I would have called that paranoia; today, I have a disturbing feeling that it’s not paranoid enough.

    As for Warden … well, it can see that I play WoW and CivIV and do a lot of Photoshop work. That’s all the gaming computer does. All the rest of it is secure, and elsewhere.

  • Freakazoid

    So should I interpret this as you saying: I don’t play WoW (anymore), anyone who still does is obviously a loser/stupid/moron/insane/etc.

    Exactly. You are a moron for giving up what was your right to some reasonable privacy for entertainment.

Newer Comments →