Fake Casting is exploiting, it's abusing latency to cause a correct action to fail. That some players are now exploiting to counter this exploiting is justice in my mind.

Blizzard should fix this by breaking fake casting and the exploit mod. If the casting bar is on your screen, and you get the interrupt off while the bar is there, it should interrupt. If having that makes some classes too powerful, then that needs to be addressed, but latency exploiting shouldn't be encouraged or accepted.

It's only exploiting in the same sense that using sw:d to break a cc is. I doubt the game was designed to be played in a way that uses latency to your favour, but people have been playing that way for so long now that the playstyle is certainly taken into consideration when it comes to balance. Besides, the only way to possibly apply your fix would be to have interrupts determined client-side, which as I'm sure you can imagine would open the door for some more thorough cheating to take place.

Even if you play with zero latency or your proposed fix were implemented, you can still be juked btw. Most people effectively have about 200-250ms latency in their hand-eye coordination alone. Running a bot that reacts faster than humanly possible isn't justice, it's cheating.

The cast bar is shown, the interrupt button is hit while the bar is shown, the cast should be interrupted, the player correctly hit his/her button when it should have been hit, the player did everything correctly, but the cast doesn't get interrupted, because the opposing player stopped their cast fast enough to cause the latency to make the interrupt miss.

Fake Casting is exploiting, it's abusing latency to cause a correct action to fail. That some players are now exploiting to counter this exploiting is justice in my mind.

Blizzard should fix this by breaking fake casting and the exploit mod. If the casting bar is on your screen, and you get the interrupt off while the bar is there, it should interrupt. If having that makes some classes too powerful, then that needs to be addressed, but latency exploiting shouldn't be encouraged or accepted.

Except fake casting isn't exploiting. It's not using third-party tools, and it's not exploiting. It's using the game mechanics to your advantage. Moving cancels casting. How do you propose they 'fix' that?
Make everything instant cast? But then you'd be bitching about healers and casters being OP.
Make everything castable while moving? But then you'd be bitching that healers and casters have too much mobility.
Make it so that interrupts use some form of prediction? Then you'd be complaining that your interrupt triggered when you didn't even press it.
Do a fucking magic trick and somehow make the game have 0 latency? Now you're being silly.

Computers are good at repetition. They're also fantastic at precision. Signals from the brain to the limbs travel in nanoseconds. However, signals from the eye, to the brain, to the limbs take several milliseconds. This is simply down to the processing. This isn't applied for repetitive tasks (such as walking), but is for the times when something interrupts that repetitiveness. When something interrupts it, the brain has to do extra work by 'cancelling' what it was already 'told' to do, and then deal with the interruption appropriately. Unfortunately, due to the speed at which this happens, the brain doesn't have time to create an adequate response. If it's given time, it produces something suitable.

How does this apply to interrupts in game? Well, if you're fighting, you're generally going to be spamming a predictable set of keys. When someone starts casting, your brain takes that as an interruption, and makes it stop doing whatever it was doing prior (i.e. spamming those attacks) in order to press the key in-game to interrupt. This interruption is generated in response to a visual signal (the cast bar). On average, it'll take 0.4 seconds before you'll even realise that you need to interrupt. Then, it's another 0.2-0.6 seconds to press the interrupt key (dependant entirely on if you've got something like a keypad or MMO mouse where you've always got a finger or thumb on the interrupt key/button). Long story short, it'll take 0.6-1.0 seconds before you manage an interrupt. This isn't accounting for the inherent latency in the game, so it could be another 0.3-0.4 seconds on top (but the game does take some accountability with that).

Computers however, they work in nanoseconds at all levels. There's a few ways they might be able to auto-interrupt;
- Watch for pixel changes on screen (e.g. place a pure black panel, then put the cast bar over the top, and monitor the area where the castbar is for changes in the pixels)
- Monitor the memory

Monitoring the memory is more risky, and could lead to bans from anticheat systems (it's quite easy to check what's monitoring memory - at least in the scope of things).

The first solution is easy. The technical details of 2 methods;
- Take a screenshot of the specified area
- Save it into memory as a file (i.e. the file isn't written to disk due to latency differences between disk and memory)
- Calculate a hash based upon the file (this is VERY easy to do)
- If the hash has changed, send the commands to press the interrupt key

The other method;
- Take a screenshot of an individual pixel (e.g. from one at the far left of the cast bar)
- Calculate the color of the pixel into either it's RGB or Hex value (exceptionally easy to do)
- If the color has changed, send the commands to press the interrupt key
- Execute this loop every 1 milliseconds

Realistically, the fastest timer is approx. 17 milliseconds per tick. This is the basic timer though. With something such as "GetTickCount", it's possible to tune it down to 1 millisecond. With dedicated high performance timer code, it's possible to tune it down to mere nanoseconds. Processing the color of the pixel would add some overhead, but we'd be talking less than a millisecond if using the second method.

With WoW, I believe it's a little more complex as it only accepts hardware keys (i.e. commands sent through the Windows API aren't accepted), but getting hold of a keyboard driver isn't all too difficult. It's probably even possible to use the one that's currently installed, perhaps even so far as setting up a macro on the keyboard itself (assuming it's a programmable one), and then interacting with that.

Fake Casting is exploiting, it's abusing latency to cause a correct action to fail. That some players are now exploiting to counter this exploiting is justice in my mind.

Blizzard should fix this by breaking fake casting and the exploit mod. If the casting bar is on your screen, and you get the interrupt off while the bar is there, it should interrupt. If having that makes some classes too powerful, then that needs to be addressed, but latency exploiting shouldn't be encouraged or accepted.

This is why I could never run a website like this. People who make these claims are either trying to troll or are just down right ignorant. So you claim that fake casting is an exploit now link a blue post that confirms this. This just in, using a blanket silence on a healer when he isn't healing is now an exploit, more on this at 5.

I have footage of a 3v3 match against a warrior who was using a teleport hack from earlier this season - because apparently KFC wasn't strong enough for him after the Stampede hotfix finally went live :/ (It was super blatant, when we would get him low he teleported out of line of sight around a pillar, for example).

The only enforcement related to cheating I have ever seen is that "name and shame" is forbidden. Even in this very thread, on this non-official forum, we can't name and shame cheaters who destroy the game actively. Meanwhile, they happily share their tips and hacks on both open and closed forums out of sight. But if you posted that footage on the official forums, it would be removed. The cheater MIGHT be caught, and MIGHT be actioned, but we honestly don't even know. We'll never know unless we stalk him to see if he gets his unearned stuff taken away. Since many of these guys don't give a hoot anyway they'll be back on another account in a week, or often the same account because there are documented ways (also shared on said forums) to talk your way out of justified temp and permabans, that work with at least a moderate degree of success.

It happens, it sucks, and Blizzard should really take a ban approach to these sorts of things - but they don't. Their forum moderators ban people for life for trivial offenses like mentioning other MMO's and speaking hyperbolically

- but their in-game concept of "ban" is 1 day. It's like when parents say "GO TO YOUR ROOM!" to kids nowadays - seemingly unaware that the room is full of video games and cable tv - if anything their lax policy encourages further bad behaviour.

The GMs do ban people for cheating. But it takes a long goddamned time for such a ban to stick. I think Blizzard relies FAR too much on technical superiority, such that when teleport hacks and dupes get out of control, they have a shitty and terrible pipeline for fixing it. They also are absolutely unwilling to fix exploits that have "gone live" with the economy- you'd be surprised how some people you know actually bought the Shadowmourne mount from a known dupe hacker. None of THEM dupe hacked, and Blizzard won't punish people who benefit in that way, but you would expect Blizzard to go and remove all the duped Shadowmourne mounts.. But because they were bought in good faith (at least arguably) they will not- the pain involved in chasing counterfeits could lose them subs in a real way, but you and I aren't going to quit just because some clown has a mediocre mount that was intended to be rare, but if someone drops 50k gold and has it removed by Blizzard, that would create ill will. So they don't. Just the same as they would prefer to 3 day ban a teleporting warrior, while defending his cheating name at all costs and then hope they fixed the teleport fix AND get to keep him as a customer.

The cast bar is shown, the interrupt button is hit while the bar is shown, the cast should be interrupted, the player correctly hit his/her button when it should have been hit, the player did everything correctly, but the cast doesn't get interrupted, because the opposing player stopped their cast fast enough to cause the latency to make the interrupt miss.
Fake Casting is exploiting, it's abusing latency to cause a correct action to fail. That some players are now exploiting to counter this exploiting is justice in my mind.

Blizzard should fix this by breaking fake casting and the exploit mod. If the casting bar is on your screen, and you get the interrupt off while the bar is there, it should interrupt. If having that makes some classes too powerful, then that needs to be addressed, but latency exploiting shouldn't be encouraged or accepted.

I wouldn't call it an exploit, but it has always been unintended use of game mechanics- in this case, lag. If I kick an actively casting bar on my screen, I can easily make the case that such a kick should either interrupt or not be on cooldown- because I did nothing "wrong". It's become a well loved glitch, however, because it allows for mind games. I honestly feel it should be supported by something in game other than client-server-client lag- or patched out entirely. It's not even poor design because it was never designed like that. The idea of it is fine- and maybe Blizzard should support that.

I was surrounded by players, shaman totems, even a couple of tauren so if he was mouseovering he was damn good at it.

Dude he made you his focus target and used his /cast [target=focus] Polymorph macro.

He might even have a macro so that the first time he sheeped you it automatically made you his focus target. And probably uses something like Gladius to track the Polymorph so he can refresh it at the last second.

I wouldn't call it an exploit, but it has always been unintended use of game mechanics- in this case, lag. If I kick an actively casting bar on my screen, I can easily make the case that such a kick should either interrupt or not be on cooldown- because I did nothing "wrong". It's become a well loved glitch, however, because it allows for mind games. I honestly feel it should be supported by something in game other than client-server-client lag- or patched out entirely. It's not even poor design because it was never designed like that. The idea of it is fine- and maybe Blizzard should support that.

I'd add that, for people who live on the same continent as their server and have a good internet connection, the bigger latency is not between your computer and the server - but between your brain and your hand - which is about 200-250ms latency. So juking is more about tricking your opponents brain (200-250ms) than it is about tricking your opponents internet latency (30-100ms for a good connection).

Edit: Also, if you think you're special and would like to know your reaction time, you can try here:

I'd add that, for people who live on the same continent as their server and have a good internet connection, the bigger latency is not between your computer and the server - but between your brain and your hand - which is about 200-250ms latency. So juking is more about tricking your opponents brain (200-250ms) than it is about tricking your opponents internet latency (30-100ms for a good connection).

I really don't believe it is that simple. I've had good connections and bad connections but even with a good one there's a plenty big window where you can kick an advancing kick bar which continues to advance, only to figure out that you were faked.

Lets assume the kicker and caster each have 80ms. Caster begins casting at t=0, and stops casting at t=400ms. Kicker sees the cast begin at 160ms (the bar appears with 160ms worth of progression in it), and sees the cast end at 560ms (the bar ends at 560ms worth of progression, even though the kick only ever went to 400ms worth). If he kicks anywhere from 400 to 560, he loses (in this example). He could kick at 450 and see more than an additional 10% of cast on his screen. It isn't about "reaction time'- there's very very few times when I see the bar, kick, and realize I shouldn't have done that because the bar cancelled. If I kick into a casting bar I am playing the lottery.

The actual skill isn't the reaction time, it's knowing if your opponent is going to cancel. In normal play I will simply not kick most casts, as they will be cheesed, instead kicking at times arbitrarily. The coolest ones are when I kick an opponent who is about to cast, and hear "countered".

What I would like to see is the server actually line this stuff up better. For instance, if the caster stops at 400ms and I kick at 500ms, that should either be an interrupt or not by THE RULES OF THE GAME. I kicked an expanding cast bar. How thick that range is depends on two connections and a server, and it just shouldn't. The game knows the timestamps of the kick and the cast start and stop, it should also know the timestamps of the start and stop of the display.

1)- You could eliminate fake casting by crediting any valid kick into a bar as an interrupt.
2)- You could codify fake casting by having a defined section after the cancel that the bar would be guaranteed to draw. For instance, with 250ms chosen, a kick at 500ms on a spell that stopped casting at 400ms would always be considered a successful fake. Even if both players had no latency at all, the second player's cast bar would continue to draw up until 400ms+250ms=650ms.

The reason reaction time isn't the big deal is because it isn't like every kicker is squatting on the kick button waiting to interrupt. If they were, you could ALWAYS juke them with cast-pause-stopcast, which you could do at ANY timing (aka, you could stopcast 85ms after starting- you don't need to "react" to make that happen). In practice, it's all about mind games and latency, and not much at all about human reaction time.

I agree that the mind game is the true measure and purpose of juking - but when people complain about latency, it's not very accurate - latency is additive to your reaction time obviously - but a lot of people 'see' a spell casting and kick only to find they didn't hit it (and then blame latency). When that occurs, that's not so much a function of latency between your computer and the server - far more likely that if you had instantaneous reactions you'd actually have seen the cast stop before you clicked - instead, our minds actually function a tenth of a second behind Reality, and our hands react a tenth to a fifth of a second behind our minds - so what people see occur isn't what actually occurred.

If they really want to make PVP better they need to get rid of all addons, mods, macros etc. for pvp. These arena target macros that allow you to one button interrupt a target that you aren't looking at simply because you hear gladiatorlosa warning you of a cyclone or a big heal is a joke. The interrupt hacks are just the next step in automated play. Unless and until Blizz starts perma banning botting and automation program users this will only get worse.

Whatever happened to paying attention to the game, seeing a cast bar and manual target switching and then ccing?

I came across a similar thing the other night with a mage in AB playing my rogue.

My character was sheeped and the mage was in combat with other classes. 0.1 sec after it breaks I am hit by an instant cast sheep without him even switching targets, moving, stopping casting or anything to target me.

Having experienced that, I am fairly sure that addons exist to automate interrupts and enable cc renewals for max DR. He reacted way too fast for a human in combination to the other instants he was pumping out when he sheeped me.

Congratulations, you officially do what all other druid do. Target arena 1-3 macros alongside focus 1-3 are indeed good. However I believe that in his case he was in a BG. Unless you have a target macro for 10 million players (minus the few million that aren't on your continent) I think you click your targets in BG's as well. Read what he said, he was surrounded by totems and taurens which further indicated that he probably was in a BG.[COLOR="red"]

And your point? The person he was responding to said he ran into a hacker mage because the mage properly chained his cc. The mage probably put him in his focus frame when he landed the first cc, continued fighting whoever else and then landed the 2nd cc. Not hard and not hacking.

why are people even discussing about fake casting being an expoit or not!?!?!? inb4 people are going to claim that scamming accounts for gold is legit because if they don't they stay behind on gold versus other people who farm gold

why are people even discussing about fake casting being an expoit or not!?!?!? inb4 people are going to claim that scamming accounts for gold is legit because if they don't they stay behind on gold versus other people who farm gold

i got banned for 5 days because i called someone something that rhymed with mediot because they listed not being able to remember which spec they were in as a downside for the ability to move while casting.

Point: they're arguing about juking being an exploit because this is what the general player base is now.

Yes it can. It's a consequence of playing against people from other countries on the European servers and general lag on those. Someone else here reported having accidently stolen blink from another mage. Even while these spells are "instant" they still get queued like any other spell does.

If they really want to make PVP better they need to get rid of all addons, mods, macros etc. for pvp. These arena target macros that allow you to one button interrupt a target that you aren't looking at simply because you hear gladiatorlosa warning you of a cyclone or a big heal is a joke. The interrupt hacks are just the next step in automated play. Unless and until Blizz starts perma banning botting and automation program users this will only get worse.

Whatever happened to paying attention to the game, seeing a cast bar and manual target switching and then ccing?

Wow this post is on so many levels of stupid.

I'm just going to comment on your last sentence. You do realize that when using the bare bones nameplate UI only shows the cast bar of the player you are currently targeting. Back in early BC arena gameplay was extremely slow and boring and casters could get away with a lot of shit because we didn't have the addons and help we do now.

The addition of these addons just make PvP fast-paced, competitive, and a lot more fun all around.