Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Updates and a slight correction

The last post, about WoW 2.4.2 bans, had a mis-statement that is causing some confusion. It says that the bans "hit Inner Space." What it should have said more specifically was that the bans hit ISXWarden and/or ISXWoW users. Inner Space "vanilla" is not something that Warden is actively seeking out and banning for, and this is clearly evidenced by the people (including me) who have been using Inner Space without ISXWarden or ISXWoW for some number of months now. On the flipside, I'm told by people who used ISXWoW without ISXWarden that they were banned within 20 minutes, and people who used ISXWarden were of course banned in waves when detected.

ISXWarden, as many have discovered, is indefinitely shelved, on advice from legal counsel. Without implying anything that I didn't say before, it will be back in the future if conditions allow (or, as previously stated, "as soon as possible"). I can't explain any further at this time, nor can I guarantee that conditions will allow. ISXWarden never was a Lavish Software product -- it is something that I provided personally, for free, and was never advertised or marketed by Lavish Software. And it is not guaranteed by or paid for with a Lavish Software subscription.

On a related note, Inner Space is now enjoying renewed attention from multi-boxers. The excise of ISXWarden has given multi-boxers using Inner Space a sense of safety (ironic?), as they feel less likely to be banned alongside botters. Blizzard could differentiate between the two by detecting ISXWarden or ISXWoW (which they were doing), but this should fix the long-shot case where they might feel the need to ban all Inner Space users. Now the vast majority of people using Inner Space with WoW are sure to be "clean", so there is no reason for that to happen. Blizzard does not take banning lightly, and as multi-boxing is explicitly allowed, they are very unlikely to ban a bunch of multi-boxers who are doing something that shouldn't be considered any different than using other multi-boxing solutions. It's not their prerogative to create problems for good customers -- that would be bad business, and Blizzard is not a bad business.

To that end, multi-boxers are now taking advantage of a number of features they didn't previously have access to from other solutions. Instant picture-in-picture is a big hit. Many are now finding new uses for their G15 or G11 keys, X-keys, or other alternative input devices. Having precise mouse multiplexing (on the same PC or otherwise) is also very beneficial. And to Blizzard's credit, zero Inner Space multi-boxers have been banned, including myself -- my accounts are in my real name, with my real address and phone number, and I pay for my accounts with my own credit cards, so there's nothing stopping them from banning me if they see something wrong with my 5-boxing with Inner Space.