source:www.wired.com

It's game over for more than 14,000 players of Warcraft III, the PC game megahit.

Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment claimed the gamers were using a hack that enabled them to see into their opponents' territories, giving them a huge advantage in Internet combat. The company reacted by banning the cheaters from online tournament play for two weeks and resetting their accounts, wiping out win-loss records that can take months to assemble.


Gaming experts and players of the country's No. 1 selling PC game generally supported the move.

"Cheating in online games threatens the shared basis of the world," Kurt Squire, senior editor of Joystick101, a gaming site, wrote in an e-mail. "If cheating becomes too rampant, accomplishment loses meaning. Communities like (Blizzard's) run on a shared faith in the system, and threats to it should be taken seriously."

Many gamers felt Blizzard's ban was far too lenient. Suspended players will still be able to play private games on Battle.net, Blizzard's online gaming platform. And they'll still be able to use the single-player version of the game.

Over 63 percent of those responding to a poll on WarcraftIII.net, a fan site, said cheaters should be permanently banned from playing in tournament, or "ladder," games on Battle.net. Only 33.3 percent said the two-week ban was enough.

Paul Sams, a Blizzard vice president, defended the punishment, saying, "If you used a corked bat by yourself in the batting cages, that's not hurting anyone. But if you used it in a Major League game, that negatively impacts the other players, the people in the stands, everyone."

Cheating is rampant in online gaming, and developers have tried many times in the past to ban cheaters. Valve, makers of the popular shoot'em-up Half-Life Counter-Strike, recently suspended cheaters from online play for 24 hours.

Few firms have been hit as hard as Blizzard, however. Cheats granting players near-infinite abilities essentially melted online play of Diablo, the company's 1997 Dungeons-&-Dragonsesque hit. Determined not to repeat the mistake, Blizzard banned 8,500 players of Diablo II earlier this year.

This latest move is Blizzard's most dramatic step to curb cheating. The 14,000 cancellations appear to be the largest mass banning in the history of computer gaming, according to Justin Carmony, founder of Counter Hack, an anti-cheating website.

Still, Blizzard's Sams admitted that the move would do little to stop determined hackers.

"This deters the casual cheaters," Sams said. "No matter what we do, somebody is going to be able to figure out how to negatively impact the game."

Winners don't Cheat...
Cheaters don't Win...