Blizzard decided to take action against Visual Custom Kick

[gh0un]

A controlled situation would help more than having another tool interfere. If you only used VCK we would be able to tell if VCK can get you banned. If you use BL+VCK, it could be either one of those tools.

Which should be enough. If you get banned for Banlist, then you definitely get banned for VCK, as VCK modifies Warcrafts memory, whereas Banlist doesnt if i recall correctly.

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=17367766751&sid=3000

Blizzard is kind of vague in post #4 but I can confidently say that VCK is on the list of applications that are not allowed.

I was already assuming that you would point to that thread, but as i and you pointed out, theres no definitive answer, its just too vague.
Hes even pointing out that "but we've seen some unit revealing/maphacks being associated with quite a few of these bans so it tends to go a bit deeper", which implies what i said many times already: the people being banned are not entirely truthfull about what programs they used.

I for myself wont believe that Blizzard is actually stupid enough to contradict themselves by stating that they want a fair game but then suspend people for creating a fair environment, thus failing their goal. If anyone really believes that the default delay setting of 250ms is fair towards anyone but the host is either retarded or they have plans to implement additional settings, such as lowering the default ms in the warcraft 3 options (which they sadly dont).

I wont believe it until im banned myself.

You are indeed brave, can we trust you in not using ANYTHING but banlist and VCK? I have finals and dont have too much time to play DOTA so I'll lay low and won't use VCK when I do play until I can get a definitive answer that someone did get banned because of banlist/vck and not because of some hack they were running and chose not to tell anyone about.

I really don't want to move to garena to host my games, but it looks like that is where all the games with low latency (NOT default 250) will be hosted.

No you cant trust me, as there is no way for me to prove it. I could even be banned already and lie to you about it, but there wouldnt be any purpose in coming here and doing so, considering that i want to find out myself if VCK is banned or not.

Therefore i can assure you, im just using VCK and Wc3Banlist.


A question came to my mind though: could it be that warden doesnt work properly under certain circumstances? (ie under vista)

[TwilightVoid-Mu]

I have heard that Warden doesn't work under Macs... emulated versions included. Not willing to bet on it though.

[Parrothead]

I have been banned for using VCK for about 2 weeks now.  They only ban your RoC key.

[Adohleas]

A question came to my mind though: could it be that warden doesnt work properly under certain circumstances? (ie under vista)

I'm sure it works properly under windows Vista as I am using Windows 7 64 bit and was banned.

I actually saw the message about them monitoring custom games with warden when I logged in but never thought anything about it because I thought there was no way they would ban me for using Banlist and VCK. I played 6 games that day, 4 of which were full games. Never got disconnected or anything and logged off later that day. The next day which was the first Saturday sometime after their announcement, I logged on and I got the disabled message meaning I was banned. I never used any other program other then VCK and Banlist and all I used was latency check and auto refresh on Banlist, while VCK I used delay reducer.

I have a new WC3 cd-key and have been hosting games without banlist and delay reducer until players kept complaining of movement delay. After frustration and reading many forums on banlist's forums, I finally had faith with banlist and a different program that reduces delay and I have been using those without any bans so far. This is what leads me to believe they banned people for using VCK. I am sure they banned all of VCK because it has custom kick or that health bar feature which I never used any of those. I doubt they would ban it for delay reducer alone because those were very useful in reducing the game delay, in which blizzard should have added a feature for long ago.

[CarnageHeart]

Not sure if I've just been lucky but...

I've been hostin LC games recently for the sake of actually getting people to join a damn game, and have been running VCK and Banlist in conjuction for the simple matter of features, even if I can't kick.

So far, I have yet to be detected by using LC, either I've just been really lucky, or they haven't gotten around to me yet, just thought I'd let you know.

However if this really is the case, maybe it's possible that Listing can make VCK LCish, in that it connects to B.net similar to how LC does, thus maybe circumventing warden and allowing for kicking at the same time?

This is still a pretty big maybe as to I don't know if warden can see what you're running behind LC, or if it even sees LC for that matter.

[customgamer]

I'll rather stop playing wc3 than getting rid of vck or banlist (or similar proggies which are perhaps better & undetectable). so please do whatever possible to release undetectable versions.

I've played with vck & banlist for ages now, but nothing happened so far to me. perhaps just a lot of maphack users got banned which also used vck and/or banlist and then they only thought it's due to vck? I myself have only used mh not more than 5 times in those 5 years of my bnet time.

[TwilightVoid-Mu]

This is when people start to use less legal programs, or illegal means of acquiring CD keys, or just flat out leave for something like Garena, which has been using antihacks in custom games for far longer than Blizzard has.

[LordRD]

I personally agree with this new rule. The ban stuff was getting really stupid... if you really have to leave a game, why should you get banned? If you have started playing dota recently why should you get a ban? In my opinion ban should be used only when someone is really really retard (not talking about playing), if someone give you a good explanation for the ban reason why should you ban him? I only disagre when blizzard forbidden hosting tools like VCK, that improves the gameplay (giving more options than the original battle.net system)...

I will keep using VCK (cause i play in eurobattle.net and its allowed there)... Listining we will keep waiting for a new version (with a better ping/country system).

Cumpz

(sorry if you didn't understand something, i'm Portuguese)

[TwilightVoid-Mu]

The Ban stuff was a way to prevent retards from leaving games. If they say nothing all game, then leave the game after a death, then I believe that they ragequit and left to ruin another game. It is my choice, and I share my Banlist only with my friends. There are hundreds of other hosts that they can go on to ruin games in, let alone the fact that they can make a new account to ruin all the host's games that they have all over again. Imo, Blizzard should get a ban system that works via CD key, so that if you ban someone from your game, they STAY banned.

[LordRD]

I have played StarCraft for many years, without any kind of banlist and there were LOTS os good games without leavers and idiots. BanList is a good tool but people can't moderate it's use... people get banning for everthing and for nothing.

[CarnageHeart]

I can only assume that you've been banned from games yourself and that's why you're so against it.

Personally, I only ban people who ruin games like people who leave at the very start of a game, leave right on death, or purposefully ruin the game in another way. I mean seriously, if you had to legitimately leave RIGHT at the start of a game then why the heck did you join it in the first place?

[leadboots5]

Dang. I have been using it, but im on Windows 7, so the visual part doesn't work so it's off. Maybe that's why i have been fine. Who knows.

[CTS_AE]

I assure you that blizzard didn't pin point out this program to attack, its' just that they are looking for specific places in the memory to scan for any differences in, so something simple like a delay reducer could get you banned if they wanted to search for that section, as for external socket moderation that should be plenty fine, but anything that does write to the memory to change the address space is liable to be caught, so it's not that they targeted you, they could have targeting the general audience who uses certain memory changes.

There are ways to get arround warden as stated, it's quite a simple concept.  That you use a computer that has a perfectly fine legit wc3, and you forward the warden packets to that computer, to send back to you so you can return legit warden packets that wont flag you, they may get smart, and they may release a new patch with the d2 patch coming out, aswell as them wanting to introduce their new battlenet system, so we'll see how that goes,  scary thing I've heard is someone getting their wc3 keys banned for hacking in d2, this could be possible since they are starting to stray towards being more like steam by linking one account with multiple games, but normally when they do man expansion users they only ban the orginal keys, which is a nice insentive to not give up, which leads me to believe that they wouldn't ban other games that you have.
Luckly there isn't much for you to loose on WC3 especially if you are a custom map player lol.

I've talked to someone about reading memory, how a virus scanner can do it so why cant I?
He mentioned how virus scanners are driver based and he mentioned ring 0
I dont know if you know what ring 0 is,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(computer_security)
 but it's like the base control of the computer, it's the kernel access, the reason why you dont want to play in ring 0 though, is that you could easily crash the system, but it's above the game process and have more priveledge and surely isn't as intrusive as being on a lower ring when, like you could probally read the memory w/o wc3 even knowing that anything tried to touch it.
I'm no expert, but I've love to say that reading memory is allright, but I dont know... some say yes, some say no, I used to always think reading was completely fine until that was brought up... : \

[LordRD]

I can only assume that you've been banned from games yourself and that's why you're so against it.

Personally, I only ban people who ruin games like people who leave at the very start of a game, leave right on death, or purposefully ruin the game in another way. I mean seriously, if you had to legitimately leave RIGHT at the start of a game then why the heck did you join it in the first place?

Not really... I always keep on the games inutil it finish... I only leave when i really have to leave and I notice it before leaving. I really doesn't like to see my teammates leaving, but i will not ban someone if he say me "I really have to leave. Sorry!".

[TwilightVoid-Mu]

There's a VERY simple way to avoid Warden... but I know how many people love to use maphack, and I would rather this not get out.