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Subject: Re: Please never ever play in WWW.WORLDCHESSNETWORK.COM

Author: Johan Hutting

Date: 07:10:22 11/24/02

Go up one level in this thread


On November 23, 2002 at 12:03:35, Uri Blass wrote:

>I think that there should be 2 rating lists.
>
>1)Rating list for players that do not want to play with cheaters
>2)Rating list for cheaters and people who have no problem to play against them.
>
>People who lose on purpose or people who use a computer and pretend to be humans
>should be allowed to play only for the second rating list.
>
>Other players who do not cheat should be allowed to play for both lists.

This doesn't work, Blizzard tried an identical scheme with their Diablo II game.
They installed a 'cheat-proof' server-side system called realms for those who
did not wish to cheat and left their old system open to all.

The people that wished to cheat didn't stay on the 'open' system. Which was to
be expected, they don't cheat to get better, they cheat because people like
those that are the best, have the best, etc.

On a 'cheat-free' server, those that manage to cheat will have an even bigger
benefit simply because there are fewer others that cheat. The system you propose
will hence cause several cheaters to find ways to abuse it. It will only filter
out the idiots.

The only solutions to the cheating problem are people behaving properly (which
is not going to happen) or running _everything_ server-side and securing that
server beyond belief.

Of course, you could trojan your users system and scan it for running chess
programs, but that has some legal issues as well as the following: you should
wonder if the 'cure' isn't worse then the disease...



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