Morals imply a higher force that judges you for your conduct. Blizzard has abandoned sc1. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?

jk.



Again, I'd personally rather either try to do something about it myself physically, or else not bitch about it in the meantime.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 7 2011, 3:28 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

Hmm I have yet to see a bot on SC2, so that's interesting...

Who are "they?" The "hackers" harassing you? If so, when did you talk to them to confront them about harassing you on SC2?

How did you fend off the bots? Or are you referring to how you will also leave the game, which isn't so much fending them off?

when im in a game without bot.

i'd leave game before full houe to join back the same with new players.

unless the bot were to reveal itelf it would stay in the game it was in intsead of following me to the next game (this did happen ometimes) another bot would join the next game, then i'd leave repeating the same cycle until i get timing right or they run out of bots

Why are you so convinced they are bots? And why would you leave a game without a bot just to join a new game without a bot?

i dont know if the game has a bot or not. i just have to leave join leave join enough with good timing so by luck i can join a game without bots.

wat is it other than a bot if there's many of it all performing the same tasks?

Well you're talking about having to leave and rejoin in a state of constant paranoia, and again I have never seen a bot on SC2, so it just seems like maybe you have assholes who join and leave games.

Also not sure how they would be abe to follow you into games, as you can't really join a specific custom game unless invited (considering how the SC2 custom games system works).

I think he's talking about SC1. And there are win-bots on sc2 already.

That's why I figured he was talking about SC2.

Don't you think this is a bit far-fetched? A bit unbelievable?

well okay. im more than 100% certain about bots in sc1, but i will keep open the possibility that bots do not exist in sc2.

i dont think it really really matters for sc2 because the amount of damage that's been done on sc2 was limited, especially because I haven't made my own maps (yet).

The worst: long load screen for custom maps (3~ 5 minutes, 15% of time)
Next worst: disconnection from bnet upon leaving a game and beinb unbale to join back for 5 minutes (1% of time)
Next worst: uber laggines (40% of the time)
Worse: randomly being disconnected but being able to join back. (5%of the time)
Bad: always a player or 2 leaves at very beginning of the game, when it just starts. (85% of the time)

.

By leaving and joining just before full house, as well as logging out and logging into bnet, I'm able to reduce the bad to about 50% of the time.

To me it doesn't hurt to operate assumingn the worst case scenarios.

Other people may not experience this unless right combination of their user name as well as their IP address (previously obtained from exploits in sc1) are available to the hackers.

Also I recently started writing down names of people who leave at beginning of the game or follow me to the next game that I join. I should report to Blizzard. I already reported an informal list and I think they actually disappeared. I should go back and check.

Anyways I'd appreciate if people were to give extra attention to my new map on Footmen Frenzy (IV) for sc1 which I hope to finish within a month.

-------

Creating a new user account and playing sc2 with it seemed to help more. Not sure why..

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2011, 10:10 pm by SiberianTiger.

I always get long load screens on custom maps, but that's mostly because the maps take a long time to load.

Also, get a dynamic IP address.

I think me and you are the only ones who actually read his entire huge post. It's completely over the top and insanely paranoid. At first I was like, "HOW CAN ANYONE REALLY BE THIS STUPID!!"
Then I was like, "How can anyone really be this stupid?"

Then I laughed at a successful troll being successful.

HI FIVE

But yeah...

How old are you cosmicagent?

If sc2, this is normal. If sc1, you might just have computer problems, as an alternative to previously said thoughts.
If this is sc1, then yeah, that is a script kiddie hacking you. It basically, to my understanding, is where an individual forces you to appear to be "spamming" battle.net, so you get booted from battle.net (much like flooding) and cannot rejoin.
Computer problems/other users lagging
This could be anything. Like how about the infamous "nooks and crannies" error.
Bad luck, that's all.

I concur. Way over the top and super paranoia overload.

paranoid about what –sc1 or sc2? the whole thing? I might appear that way because I haven’t told you everything. I must admit dealing with hacking on sc1 involved suspecting beyond what I thought was possible and redefining what would be paranoid. Essentially I’d hit an impasse (i.e. unable to join bnet), and I had done everything to fix the computer, including registry fix, virus scans, re-installed starcraft, etc. Initially I’d fret without knowing what to do but with prospect of dealing with the problem forever I would eventually step up to the challenge and think calmly and through process of elimination decide there was nothing going on as what I suspected was possible on sc, and figured out the problems with an attitude that really bordered paranoia and superstition. It’s funny how I had to be like that although I think of the computer as a machine and a rational device.

in sc1, the guy hacking me talked with me several times, on 3 different occasions he specifically told me he will hack me for life (i think it's killer2121 who has commented on this forum). Anyways I'll tell the whole story.

I used to play 2 UMS games most frequently, which were Custom Hero Wars by it-over- and Diplo or War 1939 NV2. Some people became so involved and zealous with CHW that they formed official CHW clans (which was not official because it did not include the game’s creator) and began churning out their own screwed up versions CHW 3.0 (at the time CHW was 2.#), then following up with 4.0 when it-over- responded to the hacked version by releasing CHW Final, then following up with CHW 5.0 and 6.0 based on release of CHW F-3b. 3.0 and 4.0 were horrible, and 5.0 and 6.0 were okay, but anyways I didn’t want to play them. It-over- decided to respond to this copying without his permission by producing 3v3 Footmen Frenzy type map with hyper triggered spells, which was thought to be impossible for the hackers to handle based on their evident lack of mapmaking skills with the unofficial CHW versions. But something didn’t click with Footmen Frenzy like Custom Hero Wars, and it wasn’t fun despite its better triggering. It-over- then returned to Custom Hero Wars, to create a new series called Neo CHW, separate from the original tainted by the hacked versions which were masquerading as the official sequel to the CHW Final (they said Neo and F-3b were hacked because you can’t have vers after Final…. Oh wait, then you also can’t have CHW 4.0~7.1. herrrrrr) and gaining ground. He applied the same spells he made for the Footmen Frenzy to Neo CHW. Neo CHW competed for popularity with the unofficial CHW’s. This is when I first experienced blacklisting although I did not really believe it and was told by everyone such thing did not exist. Essentially what happened was when I was hosting Neo CHW one of my CHW buddies came and told me to play the unofficial version. I told them they were hacked and I would never play them. Then they shrugged with some emoticons and left. I waited for 10 minutes, and no one joined, even if I open/closed slots. I tried rejoining bnet, which helped sometimes. Occasionally I got 3 players to join, who strongly insisted that I start the game 2v2. At first I played these 2v2 games, and the people were unenthusiastic or afk and would always rage about how terrible the game was just because it was different from the original and complain that it was so slow paced, and I tried to explain to them it was because it was 2v2, that it would be much better with 3v3. So from then on I tried to wait for 3v3 games. The people who joined would suggest 2v2, and when I told them I was going for 3v3, they would leave, as if I were being rudely inconvenient by wasting their time. And somehow no one would join again as if I was hit with divine retribution affirming their dissatisfaction, and I would have to rm. Occasionally I found myself dealing with familiar names like daggoth or !@#[Rome] who would join and leave before game started or caused intense lag in the lobby. When I booted them they’d join back instantaneously, so I banned them. Within a moment, someone else would join and crash sc, after which I would be unable to join bnet for 5 minutes.

Over time I came to think that Neo CHW was a bit stale compared to the original CHW, yet I was bored of the original, so I searched for something else to play, which was Diplo or War 1939. Diplo 1939 was very popular at the time, so I never had to host, and the problems seemed to go away. But then killer2121 who was obsessed with 1939 began making his own crappy better xtremer versions and asking me to help beta test. When I refused he’d join with weird names like “iwillkillu” “iamyourlord” or “assassin” “cerealkilla” “mp)fire” “shadowtemplar” and be really awkward not saying anything. If I booted him, he’d come back with another account and sound really crazy and lat hack before leaving. Again same problem occurred when I hosted 1939 NV2 to compete with 1939 BX. At first he came in randomly and dropped everyone, then typed some profanity, and left really awkwardly. Sometimes I was unable to get anyone to join, but that could be solved by making game public, which was a new feature at the time. When I along with others got bored of NV2, I began making my own diplo maps, first diplo asia, and then diplo east. When I beta tested diplo asia, I received suggestions as well as baseless criticisms which continued to be spammed, which I felt was a bit too coincidental that such opinions would be shared by more than one eccentric person. Occasionally I also had players who banded together and abused diplo rules as well as messing up the game to stubbornly echo the criticisms that they had spammed before (on 2 occasions I followed their suggestions, then I was criticized the other way…). And more than often I would observe several “noob” players who were either afk or didn’t do much then left shortly after. Deciding the map covered too small of a geographic area, I started over on a new terrain set to make Diplo East and included revised diplo rules to prevent it from being abused. This caused a huge outcry among the diplo “pros” who called Diplo East a noob version and abused diplo rules on purpose (i.e. 2v1) to prompt me to respond (i.e. 2v2) then hitting back (i.e. 3v2). Even if I was winning 2v3 they’d up the ante to 4v2, which just seemed pointless and silly. I think I actually won 4v2 once, and they just left. They kept complaining that the map contained too little expansions, but I couldn’t do anything about it because it was 256 x 256 and squeezed in the most amount of geographic area possible without seriously distorting the map. Their response was to somehow prevent a full house game, which would open more expansions on the empty country, by either preventing the game to start full house (that one additional player would never join), or making someone drop or leave at beginning of the game, or making a player afk then leave after about 10 to 15 minutes when most expansions are gone (which would be same as starting the game with 1 less player..). Yes I seem to be overthinking this, but the pattern was so consistent for over a month (and until present, without exception) that I took a step back from my obsessive concern that a hacker was dropping someone and made connection with the lack of enough expansions that was consistently observed. They’d come to lobby and start trashing about the map, then say how much more awesome BX is and conclude saying “ok i’ll host bx” “alright let’s go” “gogo” and empty out the lobby, and after then no one would join. All this made me to think it was way too coincidental how my map was disparaged so uniformly and these critics’ behavior was so homogeneous. Plus the fact that a lot of times, at least 2~3 players were afk or complete noobs, making a couple of marines and grouping them together, then leaving after about 15 minutes made me suspect that perhaps these were bots that could come under control of the human owner if needed.

Around this time I noticed Temple Siege was becoming popular, so I tried it only to find it too suffocating and hard to figure compared to fast-actioned CHW. Gradually I made up my mind to make my own spell hero map, Footmen Frenzy, which would be 8 players, 2v2v2v2, with 5 spells per hero. This was when I started suspecting there was a host hack, if not an automated blacklisting program, because no one would join. I had thought the reason why I had hard time starting games with Diplo east was because it was unpopular. I don’t think it was the blacklist program then because I did not observe bot-like behavior of 1~2 players joining to dl map then leaving promptly after. I also had other problems I had to deal with, such as random expulsion from bnet in an exile lasting more than 5 minutes. I solved that by not staying in public channels and quickly joining a random private channel. I also suffered really slow log-in time to bnet which was followed by disconnection, which I solved by turning off both port 6112 and permission for sc with zonealarm firewall’s program control before logging in, then enabling port and permission before hosting, then turning off both port and permission before game starts in the mission briefing (or I would be disconnected in-game). Even then I observed weird, laggy behaviors, such that I was not able to join a private channel fast enough after logging in, and iTunes which ran in background started buzzing in conjunction with the lagginess of the pointer and starcraft’s interface in general (not internet). I tried a variety of things, including system mechanic’s registry repair as well as running starcraft as separate copy of in desktop with bncache.dat deleted and not using chaoslauncher or iccup launcher’s window mode. This kinda seemed to work because battle.net’s interface was slightly more responsive. By noting the flag at taskbar and running a disk repair I was able to make in-game lagginess go away, although temporarily, before having to run disk repair again (i think this is caused by scmdraft actually...). I also stopped listening to iTunes while running starcraft. In the mean time I was preoccupied with trying to host my maps because no one seemed to join. I tried toggling with zonealarm as well as router’s port interface, and by luck enabling only UDP (rather than both UDP and TCP) seemed to temporarily mitigate the problems because at least 1~2 joined, even if it was still very difficult to get fh. Soon or later I noticed the browser interface for the wireless router which I frequently used to open and close 6112 port was messed up, although it was still usable. I thought it was primarily due to problems with my browser because it also had trouble with other things like skimming through google images, although it was 64 bit. My priority was still with hosting, and midst of trying to figure out a possible fix I fresh installed starcraft downloaded from blizzard, only to find out that after updating I couldn’t connect to bnet. I suspected that starcraft’s update was being intercepted somehow, so I re-installed zonealarm, but that didn’t help . But when I reset the router and re-installed starcraft again, I could get back on bnet. A few days later, I randomly began disconnecting from bnet after leaving a game, and I also noticed the router’s browser interface was messed up again. Resetting didn’t help because the problem continued despite the normal appearance of the router’s interface. My computer also had acted very fishy for a long time, especially the browser, which had a real hard time scrolling Google images and handling other flash applications. Instead of dully accepting these issues as inconveniences I began to suspect something was wrong with my antivirus as well as firewall programs (whether it was related to hacking in sc or not). If I remember correctly, AVG continued to find something every time I ran a scan, and it would be successfully removed, only to appear on the next scan. I decided to use the remaining family subscription of Norton Internet Security that I had not bothered with before. I also reset the router at the same time. After then the router’s interface was never messed up again like it was before. I was back on bnet, and I triumphantly told the 2 other players in the game I was hosting about how Norton was doing the job very well. But after 2 days, I was disconnected from bnet again. I was utterly lost because the router was fine, even tweaking norton’s program control didn’t do anything, and so was the case with re-installing starcraft as well as running registry clean and virus scan. What was I supposed to do if Norton wasn’t good enough? Anyways Norton was here to stay, so I had to think of something else. I then noted how even though I had re-installed starcraft and completely deleted previous files the settings I had previously remained. I remembered a fish tutorial about changing registry to add fish servers to list, so I went to registry and deleted both contents for battle.net and starcraft. After deleting bncache.dat I was able to join bnet without any problem whatsoever, which responded instantaneously in contrast to its previously laggy performance that I had thought was natural for an old application.

From about late December to beginning of March I stopped playing starcraft on bnet and took a rest from mapmaking due to other priorities. When I came back about a week ago I faced the same problems of being unable to connect to bnet. It took me several trial and errors until I was able to devise the same procedures that I had worked out before but had forgotten. I never have to suffer from much worse problems that I had dealt with before, only that I still observe in very consistent manner 2 players joining my map and then leaving, after which no one else is able to join. I could record this with video cam and upload it onto youtube.

So to you guys I may sound paranoid. My story should sound like made up fantasy. Maybe so. But for me it’s a clear difference between being able to log on to bnet and not. I am firmly aware that without taking these measures which carry the absolutely crazy implication that hacking is not merely working within starcraft but also involves my internet security and router as well among other things… I can’t join bnet and I can’t host. Anyways I still can't host. The last time I hosted was 3 days ago and I had to keep trying for 4 hours to start a fh game (while keeping myself busy and productive by vacuuming and reading a book..). And even then I suspected all the players minus two were "bots" because only two of them were active at the arena at the same time... the rest minus the most active 2 players left shortly after without doing much

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 8 2011, 7:30 am by cosmicagent.

Some of what you describe sounds like the normal behavior of most people on battle.net ("pubbies"). The fact that people always join your games and then leave isn't because they're bots out to get you, but because pubbies have no sense of sportsmanship and will thus leave the game at the slightest whim, whether it's in the lobby, at the beginning of the game, or after several hours. They're also extremely un-curious, so less popular games often have no joiners despite being joinable.

Don't let the above put you off your guard, though, because there are some genuinely nasty hacks out there for SC1. I've experienced some pretty bad attacks...crashes, repeated drops with stalking, even occasional suppression of my internet connection. The people joining/not joining/leaving thing, I'd just call normal behavior. The rest of it...well, at least some of it could be enemy action.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 8 2011, 9:11 am by FoxWolf1.

So you'd think people would want to play the same old games, which aren't many - all of them could be listed in a few lines - over and over again? I think it would be about this time of the year that people would be either out of sc1 or desperately searching for something new.

I'm fine if people were to simply join and leave games. I just don't want my game becoming unjoinable aka being unable to host.

I asked someone from separate location to check (he happened to be there) if my game was listed.

The response was "no... wait it's there, but you can't join."

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 14 2011, 5:26 am by SiberianTiger.

Yes, that's exactly what pubbies do. Not only that, many of them play the same games over and over without even changing their strategy until they see someone of a different type come along and show them something new. The lower levels of pubbie don't have the capacity to come up with new ideas on their own, so old games last longer, but new games are out of the question.


Unjoinability is one of those things that just kind of...happens, thanks to battle.net being fairly primitive. Like the unintelligent pubbies, it's just a general SC problem. Now, if you can never host, it suggests a problem with your connection...but it may well be that you're in the same situation as my Windows virtual machine and lose hosting ability after being connected for a short amount of time.

On the other hand, if your game becomes unjoinable and /whereis gives your location as one of the hacked Frost, etc. games (your friends will get a message saying you have joined the hacked game, despite you still being in your own game from your perspective, and those games actually being unjoinable), then the game has been suppressed by the enemy. I've seen them do this to all of USEast a few times, and the only thing for it is to change gateways until they get bored.

Depending on how old your "story" is, (and might I add that it is four pages long on the second post, 2.6k words) random disconnections from battle.net were very common during the "Warden" era, a faulty security measure by blizzard that inadvertently (?) would drop players from anywhere.

Pubbies almost entirely have similar opinions. Also, if a whole bunch of people agree on a problem, it could be either a sheep mentality or the fact that there is a problem. Or they aren't seeing the solution in a game (like where one sees a certain type of unit as overpowered just because they don't know how to counter it).

Honestly dude, I had some bad problems with my old computer. My graphics would start placing purple and green patterns all over my screen, and when that happened I was unable to sign on to battle.net. Not once did I blame it on hackers. There's a good chance it's just your computer being a piece of crap.

"Blacklisting" a map is unfeasible/infeasible. What would be used to detect when the map is being hosted? Title? You could easily change that. The map itself? You would have to download the map first to be able to tell. As a matter of fact, I'd go as far to say that someone wouldn't bother WASTING their time designing a system to do either of these because they would REALIZE that one cannot practically stop a hoster in this way.

Some maps have aspects that unallow you from joining them in the lobby. Try hosting a different game.
To me, this seems to point to the idea you need a new computer.