Official EU Mod Stance – Which Modes are Forbidden?

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Source: http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/378578-official-statement-on-game-modifications/

Hello everyone,

after months and months of requests and discussion, Wargaming EU has issued its stance on forbidden/allowed mods. Unlike the US server and RU server, both of which went with taxative lists of banned mod functions, Wargaming EU took a… different approach.

mods

This has to be perhaps the most useless post I have ever seen, hands down (well, at least it doesn’t say mods destroy your hardware, like that idiot from support department). Let’s analyze this piece of text a bit. There is not a single sentence, saying that ANY mods are forbidden, including really nasty stuff. Obviously, this is a very destructive line of thinking and obviously, that much is not true, some mods are clearly forbidden. Which ones are forbidden for the EU server?

The developer room documentation gives us good hints:

No modifications shall be created which, according to Wargaming.net, bring undesirable changes to the gameplay of Wargaming.net Games. The list includes, but is not limited to:

  1. Transparent textures on game objects penetrated by game armament.
  2. Replacement of game models with collision models.
  3. Explicit highlighting of game objects that may seem dangerous as non-hazardous (e.g., white textures on destroyed tanks).
  4. Any changes to auto-aim (e.g., leading targets, automatic targeting of vulnerable areas).
  5. Fixing for the player the position of the other players that are not visible by the rules of the game visibility (locking the position of the player that disappeared from sight on map by tracer flares, display of the name of an enemy player that inflicted a non-critical hit remaining out of sight, etc.).
  6. Fixing the destruction of destructible objects on the minimap.
  7. Camera which is not attached to the position of a player, a “free” camera, able to move in three dimensions, and the use of artillery mode for other types of vehicles.
  8. Using keyboard macros in game situations (e.g., automation of work of “manual fire extinguisher”, except for an automatic shot from a reloaded weapon).
  9. Indication of an aiming point of other players which is different from its visual representation based on the position of a standard, unmodified 3D vehicle model operated by the player.
  10. Full or partial automation sending a vehicle to battle, its operating and firing (use of bots).

The points above are considered illegal on EU server and will generally be punished by ban, which is something the useless post doesn’t tell you. Back to the post. There is very nasty ambiguity in this post as well.

If we were to use the “rule of thumb” and “common sense” as to which mods are illegal (“those, that give an unfair advantage in battle”), we would get possibly strange results.

Let’s say I am facing two tanks – which do I focus on first – certainly, tactical situation has to be considered, but what about seeing the players’ quality and winrates? So – seeing someone’s winrate is illegal, eg. XVM and other such “noobmeter-type” clones DO give me an advantage, right? But they are not banned.

This is not a call to ban XVM, this is just an example of how the reality of mod banning differs from common sense. There are other such mods as well – for example, various “super zooms” allow you to aim very pricisely over the entire El Halluf, yet they are not banned either (at least according to EU support).

So yea… just be careful with what you are using and once again, don’t trust Wargaming to tell you what you are allowed to use. They won’t. They will just punish.

70 thoughts on “Official EU Mod Stance – Which Modes are Forbidden?”

  1. There’s to say, that the german translation by the CM nRicochet is a total fail.
    Currently the discussion in the WOT forum is about how funny and not understandable the german translation is – some say it isn’t even german than about the message of this statement.

    But the message as I got it is: Everything is allowed if we don’t catch you.

    • And how big is the chance they catch you? I have no idea. For example that superzoom-in mod. I dont use it , but I might try it. If I know they might ban me at any random moment, Im not going to use it ofcourse.

      • Well I use a modpack (Oldskool) and I guess I’m safe with it as it’s promotoded even in official forum.

        But I was told that there’s no mechanism to check your installation. The only way WG can detect the bots you are using is when you send them the python log file.
        So just don’t send it when they ask for it and you are fine.

        On the other hand there have also players been banned with no evidence – so at the end, WG makes what they want whenever they want and I guess it’s the same for us.

        • Sry typo. instead of “The only way WG can detect the bots…. ” should be “The only way WG can detect the mods…”

          WG staff is not smart enough to identify bots – official statement from nRicochet (german CM) is: there are no bots or cheats at all :)

        • Whitedead and damage panels that show who shot you are both available from official forum and banned according to that list.

          • According to the current announcement? No, then it is not forbidden. In the english comment the crucial statement is: “Mods that totally alter *how* you play the game, are the types of mods we would recommend players to reconsider and exercise caution when you think about using them”
            It’s not forbidden, they just ask to reconsider a decision, but not to don’t make the decision to use it.

            In the worse german translation is the message: It’s up the decision every player makes for himself.

            • Did you even read the list? It says right there:

              “3. Explicit highlighting of game objects that may seem dangerous as non-hazardous (e.g., white textures on destroyed tanks).

              5. Fixing for the player the position of the other players that are not visible by the rules of the game visibility (locking the position of the player that disappeared from sight on map by tracer flares, display of the name of an enemy player that inflicted a non-critical hit remaining out of sight, etc.).”

              • You are correct about the whitedeath textures on destroyed tanks but the damage panel saying who shot you is okay.

                Damage Panel is okay because it does not “fix” the player position. The game already tells you what angle you were shot from and (if you are crit) who shot you. If the damage panel were to mark the spot they fired from, that would be illegal.

                • Apparently it’s still not ‘OK’ to receive any kind of information about unspotted targets, except for critical hits as that information is given to you.

                  However, I received this information from an indirect pm of the NA servers.

              • The list isn’t what they just posted though. So does the post supersede the list previously published? YMMV. It’s just your account on the line, why worry about vague and ambiguous wording?

                Personally I’d stick to the official list from the dev room thingamabob and give this post, and it’s writers (not the poor schlub conned into posting it), the proper respect it’s due. To whit –

                “Pttttthhhhhbbbbbbtttttttt – your post is bad and you should feel bad.”

      • It gives a very little advantage: You can know which engine the enemy is using. If you played a lots of battles using gnomefather’s engine, you will notice the difference. For example the ST-I is quite easily noticable, the T-34 is also, plus Leo PT A, E-75, Lorr 40t, etc.

        But please dont fuck up the zoom in mod. It’s so hard aiming without it after using for 4-5 patches. Back in the old days, I was also playing without it (I always wanted a mod like this), but it’s much easier play.

    • My tank remodels strongly disagree with you(it’s the only way to make e50m not look like shit for example). Same goes for sound and other non game-play changing mods. Now tell me in what way are these “stupid” as you put it? Next time think before writing something please.

      • Fun fact, I am currently chat banned till tomorrow, and im not a troll…im to good looking for that

        • well i can beat that!! i have a 14 day chat ban for the following tirade!
          http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/376720-wot-tournament-achieved-greatness/page__findpost__7736207

          what in the actual f u c k are you going on about, if you hate the game so much go and play CoD and f u c k off making whiney threads about absolutelyf f u c k all…………as you can see im sick to f u c k i n g death of[s h i t h e a d idiots whining about crap game….ohh mm is so fucked….ahhh people are using gold shells…..that player has a shinier tank than me………..now f u c k off get a life and stop wasting my f u c k i n g time with your stupid s p u n k y whining…………..i already know im going to get a forum ban for this post, but im not bothered if it means i can vent my bile against you and all the other s h i t h e a d whiney twats who are complaining about a game that is essentially F2P and no one holds a gun against your head to play it! i put about £25 a month into this game, i actually love playing it because im driving tanks and blowing crapup, i work very f u c k i n g hard for my pay and if i didnt like the game i wouldn’t expend my hard earned cash on it, now u c k off with your whining and go play f u c k i n g tetris!!!!

          funnily enough that started about people complaining about gold ammo!!

          • You’re actually THAT big of a child that you use spaces the circumvent the word filter? Wow.. Just wow..

            • The reply from the Mod is hilarious though…

              ..
              ——————————————————————————–

              iScending #31
              Posted 07 April 2014 – 12:24 PM

              English Community Coordinator

              .
              WG Staff
              4047 battles
              2,677
              [WG] WG
              Member since:
              05-08-2013

              OP if you would like to elaborate even further on this “feedback post” please do so but keep the following in mind:

              1. “OMG THIS IS FAIL OMG OMG OMG” is not feedback we consider useful

              2. Random rambling threads (like this) isn’t useful to anyone

              3. If you have constructive feedback please share it on the relevant section

              4. IF YOU FEEL YOU COULD DO SO MUCH BETTER CONSIDER APPYING FOR A JOB (no, seriously, we have lots of openings! – http://wargaming.com/en/careers/)

              Thread locked.

              ^^^^^^^^
              That post made my day.

          • You should read that out loud in front of the mirror, whilst adressing the person you see.

  5. Again banning stat module of XVM. Ok
    Banning XVM as a whole? No. Because it gives players the opportunity to customize their interface, which is good. These features that should be in the vanilla game, imho.
    Concerning hyper zoom and stat i agree this should be banned in near future because of the edge it gives you on other players (focus).

    • The whole XVM provides an “unfair” advantage argument is silly. XVM merely provides a convenient display of stats in game. There is no information provided that someone couldn’t find out during the 30s count down. I often can tab out and look up a player or 2 during that time (usually to see if I may have put someone on ignore because they were bad or annoying in chat). If I had a dual monitor setup and already had the player search or noobmeter already open I’m sure I could run a search on all 15 enemies before the match started.

      This argument also applies to the 2D hit skins (not the transparent ones). The “painted on” skins merely show a player the approximate location of the module, which you can learn and memorize using common knowledge on the forums and tank inspector. (3D transparent skins tell you the exact location, and allow you to aim directly at the module)

  6. “…don’t trust Wargaming to tell you what you are allowed to use. They won’t. They will just punish.”

    So insanely sad but true.

  7. So minimap mods are restricted aswell? I still don’t get it if it’s still forbidden or not. The last known position of an enemy is not really an advantage but on the other side it is, because others don’t have it. So is this banable aswell or is it still not decided?

    • Most minimap mods are still a grey area. They are an advantage over the guy with no mods but they are not giving you information you can’t get with the standard client, a good memory and a head for figures.
      If you hold CTRL and run down the team lists with your cursor it shows you which tanks are where.
      You can get your view range and draw range from the grid on the minimap.

      Well done WG EU on clarifying nothing.

  8. I use XVM for UI reasons, not that I didn’t tried out the stats mod, but I disabled it again because it simply made me sad/inactive when I got on a tomato team. I rather not know my team or enemy’s stats because it makes me believe that everyone can have a good/bad day, good or bad player alike.
    I don’t know if the minimapmod that comes with XVM gives me a unfair advantage, (last known spotted enemy position and positions of destroyed teammates), because not many players remain in the same position the whole round. In other words, it has never made me kill someone just for knowing their last position on the minimap.

    • I’ve killed plenty of enemies as artillery, just by looking their last know position and blind shotting closest bush/rock.

      • I do that too.

        But I don’t see it as an unfair advantage as I used to do it without the last know position marker. It’s the “blind shotting closest bush/rock.” part that’s important. Knowing where people like to hide is far more important than knowing the exact spot they were 30s earlier. That’s how counter battery works for me. I look where I know arty usually sits, wait 10s for the tracer to appear, shoot the spot I was looking at and the arty dies.

        edit: It also works on regular tanks: Point at bush that usually is home to a TD, shoot, look for a puff of dirt or explosion. If the round vanishes fire more (doesn’t work at too long a distance as the game doesn’t draw the puff of dirt.)

    • I remember getting some shots from that, but very rarely. It’s better for deciding on where to move after you finish some guy you were focused on, missing all those new guys on the map (that disappeared in the meantime, ofc)

      • Blind-shotting tanks that just got unspotted camping or driving in a straight line is the most satisfying thing ! And it gives out full credits and xp for damage like you were the guy spotting it. Yes this matters a lot for arty…

  9. “Installing a mod and checking for what it does ultimately is your responsibility as a player.”

    This will end well. *facepalm

  10. And that’s why I use only very light modding (I don’t count models, because I use only GuP ones) – tank carousel, J1mb0′s aiming, XVM w/o stats.

    After all, there’s a reason why they used unmodded clients at WGL Finals. You want to see who’s the best? Give them the same starting point. I wouldn’t want to be the one to suck after they remove some mod I am dependent upon. Train hard, perform harder.

  11. “This is not a call to ban XVM,” – actually: XVM should be banned. I understand how much work was put into in, never the less: It does deserve ban more than many other mods do.

    • Mad because someone called you out for being bad at the game, and a literal hindrance to a team’s chance to win?
      Mad because someone is actually putting store in the XVM CTW calculation?
      Mad because they’re using it to target a higher stat player ahead of pubs?

      Get good, there’s no reason to ban what only gives you what’s available from WG itself (player stats) in game with a WN8 rating.

  12. Don’t use mods. Problem solved. Especially now, after the new reload timers they’ve implemented, there really is no need whatsoever for any kind of mods.

  13. nice BS !
    I now an example of a player that was using aimbot that aimed at crucial tank weak spots, it was clearly seen in his replays. And what happened ? WG EU give him 2 weeks ban, ill say again TWO WEEK BAN !
    And to get catch one need to send replay or ss, they have NO way to check if you using what is considered an illegal mod.

        • no I dont, I got banned for faulty replay and being good, many, including WG support, thought I was using an aimbot
          therfor you must be talking about someone else

          • I honestly don’t care if you was using rigged aimbot or not, probably not but the point is when one uses rigged aimbot and get caught, one gets only 2 week ban for that which is not hard punishment.

  14. SS is right. This is the most jibberish bullshit i ever seen posted on EU forums. That iScending guy is getting annoying.

  15. i wrote this before in the Eu forums…

    They should just start to moderate the mod section of the official forum.
    Advertising illegal mods is against the forum rules.
    so either all mods there are allowed(which is actually a quite reasonable assumption considering the players responsibility) or there are illegal mods advertised on the official forum, which is an absolutely unbearable situation.

  16. This is really weird. Hope Oldskool reads this and digs a little deeper into it. Might just as well get rid of the mod to be safe. Putting up a list of what is definitely illegal could have cost WG EU a working hour after all…..

    • calm yo tits sir, nothing much special… (like how i got killed by tanthita in a vk3001h(tier6 ver.) in another one…

  18. Well as a Player paricipating in WoT-Proleague i have a specific point of view on this subject:

    In every Wargaming offlineevent like Gamescom/WPL Grandfinals Warsaw etc. you will have to play on a vanilla client, besides zoomout(no zoom in X only zoomout) which will be preinstalled.
    So for “Pro-Players” it seems to be common to play with the same setup at home – so you as good prepared as possible for any offline WoT-Events.

    Nevertheless this Zoomout gives you clearly an advantage over a vanilla version of the game, as stated in the forums. So i wonder if this statement of communityteam is only true for the communityteam and not the rest of wargaming

  19. What’s the point in banning white dead tanks when WG has fixed highlighting of the tanks nearby destroyed tanks which white dead tanks “fixed” in the first place

  20. omg, please more bullshit from wg, one says something, then another says something totally different, kinda like putin and putin :/

  21. I dont get why white skins of dead tanks should be banned? (And I didnt get that out of his post)
    I mean if you give all non dead tanks a black cammo it would have the same effect.
    Also for people that have problems seeing colors (that have problems seeing the fire/smoke from a dead tank) this is basically a must to even know if it is dead or not. (posibility to change the color of the fire would be ok I guess, but that is just a stupid way to get around it)

    Also it helps a lot for people that have slow computers, since it laggs a lot everytime something dies if you dont use the white skin, since it has to load in the texture of the dead tank in to the memory, and that gives a small (but oh so important) freeze.

    • It’s cheating as you can see the first second you spot a “dead tank” that he is dead, therefor you ignore a possible threat, not shooting your ammo on it the first second you go behind a corner. It was explained some weeks ago by Wargaming and everything made sense actually, I’m bad at explaining it. Since when is having a slow computer the fault of Wargaming? Such whiny typical comment from the younger generation. Work -> Buy New PC or play another game like runescape lol

  22. Normal WG crap… Can they not give a straight answer!?

    The problem is that you will always have some player who is complaining because he thinks another player is ‘hacking’ or are playing with ‘unfair’ advantages, these people will be listened to and WG will then say that this and that mod is banned because it creates an unfair plane.

    As well as this, WG are facing the same problem all MMO’s have, which is that the players always want to change parts of the game. This could be as simple as some simple changes to the UI or a full blow game-breaking hack, which should not be obstructed as it vastly increases player satisfaction.

    Therefore WG have only two real options; continue as is with player complaints, unclear rules and inconsistent punishments that do not make sense or to focus on dealing with hacks and allow full use of mods (obviously there would need to be a clear distinction between a mod and a hack).

    P.S. typo in your title S.S. Mods not Modes :D

  23. If only they were actually enforcing these silly fucking rules. But they are not. They arbitrarily decide on a case by case basis whether a mod is bannable, and they don’t even apply that decision to every case of a player using that mod.

    I’d be fine if they said “anything not cosmetic is not allowed”, but clearly that’s going too far for them. Yet you might be banned at any point for using a mod that isn’t just cosmetic, because their rules say so.

  24. The mods I needed to be implemented on the game are damage dealt/received, tank names on the minimap, reload counter(already implemented), view range or max possible view like locastan red line. I’m using xvm also but not to the point I’m looking always at the stats since when the game started, I usually focused on easier to hit/kill rather than focus to who to kill because of stats.

    • as said, use at your own risk. GM A might consider this banworthy today, GM B might give this a pass tomorrow. No clear policy, just arbitrary enforcing of an unclear rule.

  26. Calling XVM illegal is just as stupid as calling the use of a brain illegal. If anything when people are focusing down the “good” players they perceive as a threat with XVM these players are more capable of taking the damage in a smart way THUS allowing the worse players on their team to survive, have more guns, pew pew /win.

    Knowing someone has 60% Winrate is as much an advantage as knowing whether or not someone is currently driving a Maus or a Waffenträger auf E-100. It’s completely retarded! You know what makes good players good players? They know what they are doing. This includes using cover both physical and camoflage cover to remain concealed in the first place. By all means, suicide rush me! I enjoy those, free kills, free exp, lots of ineffective fire coming my way, and a huge advantage opened up for the rest of my team. Only good players are able to make use of the knowledge who else is a good player, and even then you’re far better off just firing on whatever targets are available rather than going out of your way to try and get shots on a specific target.

    Next thing you know i’m going to get banned from the game outright for being a good player. OBVIOUSLY i must be cheating, i’m using a brain! Seriously SS i like your factual articles and Q&A stuffs but whenever you make comments like these i can’t help but think you still got a long way to go… then again, you did specifically call me a retard for being in EFE, I guess that reflects more upon yourself than it does upon me and this just underlines it.

    This is as much a one-sided argument as the whole discussion about WG and it’s focus on things “historical” even when they aren’t.

  27. Of course those developer doc only indicate that it might be against the rules to create certain mods. Ie they are not rules for the end user.

  29. I didn’t even know many of those even exist. Downloading now, thanks for the list xD

    • .òÓ. Not sure if serious or just a troll.
      __

      Welcome to the internet/online gaming world lil’ one/stupid one.

  31. Here comes the tomato whiners with their ‘Ban XVM’ posts. They should be the ones getting a ban, as those whiny kids are more annoying than anyone using XVM mod.