Computer Science student with a question regarding how wow communicates with my PC

[yigh]

I am curious about how WoW relays info to and from your PC. I understand it is with packets, as is used with most MMORPGs, but do the packets change with every update of WoW?

For example, some MMORPGs download a rcvpacket.txt file as a key used to the game to decrypt packets. With every patch, there would be a new packet key. Is this why every time WoW updates, a new Honorbuddy has to come out? That also means honorbuddy for 3.3x does not work for 4.x.x and vice versa, right?

Thanks for your time.

 

[Possien]

Totally wrong

 

[Sevenshoot]

For the communication wiki IPv4, wow uses their own application layer over TC/IP.

And why HB update "took so long" is because the bot needs to get adapted to the new engine of wow which came with the patch 4.0, and ALOT changed in that patch. Also all the default CC needed to be adapted to the new classes system.

You should know better as a computer science student

 

[Nab]

Honorbuddy needs to be updated with each patch because the memory locations where the WoW functions are stored (called offsets) , usually change with each patch.

 

[Sevenshoot]

This remembers me to the time I memwrite flashgames to cheat

 

[chinajade]

There *are* games--such as Dark Ages of Camelot--that do what you suggest. DAoC encrypts not only the IP traffic to and from its servers, but it also encrypts the memory it uses to prevent injection techniques. These techniques introduced a substantial performance hit to the client; however, the client was robust enough to absorb the performance hit without the user community squealing too much.

DAoC had to do something, because people were using proxy machines as packet sniffers to create radars. This is a serious problem in a game designed to be completely PvP.

Fortunately, WoW does not do this. I seriously doubt an Honorbuddy could be written for DAoC. If WoW went this direction, HB would be in trouble. However, I doubt the WoWclient could be written in such a way without causing all kinds of problems for the user community. WoW is one of the 'lighter weight' of the modern gaming engines; however, it is considerably 'heavier' than the DAoC client.

cheers,
CJ

 

[exfelon]

lol i bet it does. it remembers me the time when i subbed as a teacher in the 3rd grade.

 

[Hi on Helium]

the reason HB has to update is because the offsets which show the char's health, mana, level, x position, y position, z position, etc... change so the have to look through all the new offsets for the new version of wow, then fix their code. That's my understanding at least.

-HoHv2

 

[Kickazz006]

There *are* games--such as Dark Ages of Camelot--that do what you suggest. DAoC encrypts not only the IP traffic to and from its servers, but it also encrypts the memory it uses to prevent injection techniques. These techniques introduced a substantial performance hit to the client; however, the client was robust enough to absorb the performance hit without the user community squealing too much.

DAoC had to do something, because people were using proxy machines as packet sniffers to create radars. This is a serious problem in a game designed to be completely PvP.

Fortunately, WoW does not do this. I seriously doubt an Honorbuddy could be written for DAoC. If WoW went this direction, HB would be in trouble. However, I doubt the WoWclient could be written in such a way without causing all kinds of problems for the user community. WoW is one of the 'lighter weight' of the modern gaming engines; however, it is considerably 'heavier' than the DAoC client.

cheers,
CJ

i loved daoc... but radar existed ...and it worked. i quit in 2005

 

[xpl0itz]

Whenever a new patch is released, code is added or removed from the WoW client. This causes the locations of certain procedures (such as the one called to cast a spell) and data (such as player health) to change.

The locations pre-specified in the bot's code will therefore no longer work. If the bot expects the procedure to cast a spell is at location A, but instead it's at location B, it's not going to work. The bot will then have to be updated to know the new location.

Furthermore, with each new patch there could be an update to Warden, and it will need to be verified if the bot is still safe to use in its current state.

@chinajade: Botting WoW will always be possible, no matter what kind of encryption they use. Encrypting the game binary, for example, won't help, because anything that's encrypted will have to be decrypted again in order to use it. The only way in which WoW could possibly stop botting is by implementing some form of the Turing test, like CAPTCHA, but that would be really annoying to human players as well.