This is a history page dedicated specifically to the SWBF2 (Classic) competition we had at Global Warfighter League. For a more in depth History of GWL as a whole, please visit the Global Warfighter League History page.
Related: SWBF2 Anti-Cheat History Page
SWBF1
Competition for SWBF2 at GWL actually started with SWBF1. Ladders were setup and there was a small community here but an active one that populated the ladders. We had members and admin specifically dedicated to the game Star Wars Battlefront 1 Classic and we had forums that helped organize the community.
At the time there were a couple online competition websites and the SWBF1 community as a whole was sort of spread out among them all. However, our community was relatively more active than observed at others.
The Global Warfighter League website was relatively young at the time, so the SWBF1 Classic community along with the other games that had been supported here helped to work out the kinks in our competitive system. While we didn’t actually have seasonal leagues, we did have ladders and challenging was active and improving. Shortly after we got the initial SWBF1 game settled here at the site, SWBF2 was released.
SWBF2 Supported at GWL
Much like SWBF1, the SWBF2 Classic community was scattered across several competitive websites trying to get their own leagues off the ground. Spellbinder and the SWBF1 admin here tried to focus in on the individual clans and groups that were actively competing in the game and started approaching individual clans and players. They were trying to at least get them to GWL and see what we had here in comparison to what was available somewhere else.
Many players didn’t want to leave where they were already competing and many of their friends were competing in these other places too. Through a combination of creating tournaments here at GWL and disenchantment from other gaming leagues, SpellBinder and the SWBF1 admin here were finally starting to see their hard work pay off. While there were still players playing at other gaming websites, slowly but surely, the majority of SWBF2 Classic players were competing here and eventually we would win over the majority of the SWBF2 community as a whole.
Ladders were being created per requests from players and teams that included all modes of play within the game. There were Conquest, Heroes v Villains, and Space ladders. However these were all team ladders. We hadn’t implemented solo ladders for the individual players as of yet. Our site was focused on teams and it was our thinking that bringing teams in would not only get more of a competitive mindset but also bring in groups of people to join us instead of one at a time.
This soon changed. We started trying out solo ladders for 1v1 competition. While initially this seemed like a good idea for conquest players, it ended up being a fantastic idea for Heroes v Villains. Heroes v Villains duels took off and was soon very active here. Among any of the 1v1 ladders we were to implement here at the Global Warfighter League, NONE were as successful as the 1v1 HvV ladders.
Activity started picking up for all the ladders and we were able to hold several successful tournaments for conquest and Heroes v Villains. Space was still lacking but that too would change eventually for both teams and solo players. It started to become clear to the SWBF2 community as a whole that if you wanted to compete in SWBF2, Global Warfighter League was the place to do it.
GWL regions
Playing SWBF2 competitively began a problem for many living in different regions. There’s a certain amount of latency in the game or lag, for players that play in with a huge difference in ping. Some players were willing to put up with a certain amount while still others didn’t want to put up with it at all.
A player in the US had a problem playing with another player in Australia because of the lag involved. While initially this was handled through matchcoms before the match started by agreeing to a mutual server, we started trying to implement ladders for people in different regions (Europe and Australia). When introduced this was a good idea with a burst of activity and players.
However, in practice, most players wanted to play with players in the US and the activity for these regional ladders dropped quickly. We removed them after a few months because of lack of support.
Additional Staff for SWBF2
As the SWBF2 competitive community started to grow, we needed more admins to manage the community and competitions. ~FL~Triphamm3r was still running the league and the SWBF2 community with [SL]Sprite, and the new ladders, tournaments, and now new seasonal leagues meant both their duties had been expanded. New staff was needed. The “Star Wars Battlefront 2” community was still growing and was now divided up into three separate communities (Conquest, Space, and Heroes/Villains)
The time had come to have admin staff for each of these communities as each game mode was vastly different. “)G(Mawk” was brought on board to handle the SWBF2 Heroes/Villains community. [SL]Sprite would handle the SWBF2 Space Community, with “~FL~Triphamm3r” managing the SWBF2 Conquest community. The three of them would handle competitive events and tournaments as a whole and as needed.
Eventually we would add -=WGO=-Rancor and [GFAQ]Stinger to the staff for SWBF2 (Classic), and we would also add [SL]FeanorGem to help in coding for the site and potential web applications. Along the way, we also brought on board some probationary GWL staff that ended up being questionable regarding their seriousness, responsibility and maturity. These probationary admin recruits never made it past the probationary phase.
We started offering prizes as incentives for competition and this was received very well. We saw an uptick in competition and moral among staff and players. We were offering MP3 players, recorders, gaming keyboards and mice along with other rewards for keeping competition active and kickin’.
Nine Years and Counting
After about 9 years of healthy competition at Global Warfighter League, cracks were starting to show in the SWBF2 community. We never posted publicly about most of the issues being experienced online, but as admin we were seeing the online experience getting hacked within multiplayer gameplay and ruining the gameplay for legitimate players just looking to have fun.
In fact, not just us at GWL but any admin who was using the SWBF2 Server and Remote Server Admin tool to manage their server(s) could see something was going on within their server and chat logs.
This hacking behavior was literally impossible up until this point while in multiplayer mode of SWBF2 (Classic). Pandemic had created a great system that allowed multiplayer competition for a very long time. This recent uptake in activity was endangering the competitive element to the game and in turn Global Warfighter League if we were to remain credible and an ongoing competitive league in the overall SWBF2 Classic community.
Hacking the SWBF2 (Classic) Game
Besides SWBF2 (Classic) having more than several wall hacks (getting behind the game environment walls), we were seeing people reverse engineer the game. Out of the box, the game already allowed LUA script injection while playing. Anyone who was familiar with LUA coding could start causing problems if they had malicious intent by simply opening the player console. However, it went farther than that.
While we’re not going to get into all the hacks we were seeing online or how to do each of these things we are mentioning, we’re mentioning them so everyone will realize how big of a problem this can be for a competitive online gaming league.
Wall Hacking and Exploits
Wall hacking meant more than just getting behind the map environment walls. We were seeing this in all three modes of the game (ground, Heroes vs Villains, and Space). Initially, this was squeezing yourself into a map wall at certain designated points where you knew where the walls weren’t joined well or if another player (or droid) could force you in.
Wall Hacking could be done on virtually every map in the game. This included the original game maps and consequent mod maps. For instance, some spots in the maps, had droids close to the walls and in corners. If you wedged yourself between the droid and moved around enough or another player pushed you, the end result would be being moved into the wall through the corner joint.
It wasn’t just conquest maps either. Wall hacking could be done with Heroes v Villains Mode on Mos Eisley and other mod maps. A hero or villain could get into the buildings and hide to use there force powers or throw a saber.
On SWBF2 space maps it was possible to get within the larger ships walls with your character AND with your ship if you knew how to get in and where, you could get your ship below the decks underneath and no one could see you. Wallhacking was becoming a serious issue for all modes of the game.
Generally speaking, if a player could legitimately get to a place on the maps via climbing or using a route less well known, it was allowed during competitive play. With infantry, getting on top of the Cantina on Mos Eisley, getting on the dome on Mygeeto, or getting into the cliffs and rocks on Geonosis, along with other areas and maps not listed here, they were all allowed because a player could get there by simply following a certain route.
Our rule of thumb was that if the game mechanics allowed it, we allowed it for competition. However, getting in behind the walls because of an exploit was not allowed and that’s where we drew the line for competitive play. As a competing player, you would need to take a screenshot while playing or while spectating the player for evidence of a legitimate accusation of cheating in this way.
Certain players would lower their graphic resolution for the game to take advantage of poorer resolution on long distance targets which made it easier for a sniper to take you out or vice versa.
Not to mention that you could hack the game so that a sniper reticle was visible at all times. The reticle was only supposed to show when a player was zoomed in. There had been a long standing bug where this kind of behavior with the reticle would show up sporadically (and was rare), but now had became prevalent for hacking players and players who knew how to trigger the bug.
Blankname Players, ASCII Characters, Chat Hacking, and Player Hacking
BlankName players started showing up online and were becoming more common on servers. Depending on the hack a player was using to achieve this, meant you could influence the chat and/or the server log and even the statistics.csv file in some cases. If we ran the server chat logs and statistics.csv file through a filtering process on our end, we could get an IP and game hash for these players. We could match the IP to a KNOWN player with their installation hash and in turn track it through the logs.
Frequently, we’d use SWBF2stats.net and their admin search tools to identify them. This site also had a separate private section for contributing server admin that allowed the sharing of players and hashes that were exploiting the game with corresponding server and chat logs.
The SWBF2 Remote Server Manager allowed for banning players through their online hash. While SWBF2stats.net also allowed for blacklisting players through compiled lists (compiled by contributing admins and servers), GWL never took advantage of these lists. If a player was banned on our SWBF2 online servers it was because of the behavior on our servers not someone else’s.
Players started using ASCII characters in their name and were also using international languages in their name to play online and this was causing significant problems on the server logs and server chat. In some cases, it was not showing any information in the server or online chat log for players that were doing this.
The installation hash would usually give these players away. As time went by this became more difficult when players were able to change their installation hash and could literally match another player if they wanted or they would match to no one at all with a newly generated hash.
In fact, one hack GUI that was developed even allowed a player select menu that would show several keyhashes for selection when a user wanted to play online. These hackers were going “all in” with features for their hack GUI’s and the ways they would troll legitimate gameplay. We were able to get a hold of some of these hacking tools and we knew we had a problem.
Global Warfighter League, being the only league that supported online competition for Star Wars Battlefront 2 (Classic) by this time, had several third party websites and Clan sites we were working with to track these individuals. One such site, SWBF2stats.net, had many online SWBF2 communities with online SWBF2 game servers. SWBF2 Server Admin would upload their “statistics.csv” files to that site along with server chat logs.
We also utilized the tools at StatCounter.com for integration within the game server http and our website. Working in conjunction with SWBF2stats.net we were able to use the info gathered to label and identify players that had decided to become a problem at our website and on our servers.
If you were a contributing SWBF2 community that was uploading your files to SWBF2stats.net, (GWL had more than nine SWBF2 servers at one point), you had access to a “Private” part of the that website that allowed access to the other contributing admins server’s chat logs. You could cross reference yours with all the other chat logs and “statistic.csv” files (which included IP’s and users) submitted.
You could literally see who was causing the issues on everyone else’s servers even if that player wasn’t causing an issue on your own SWBF2 server. This was an underground SWBF2 admin network that allowed many SWBF2 admin to control their online communities by banning trouble makers and creating blacklists.
Competitively for SWBF2, this meant that there were SWBF2 (Classic) players in our player ranks competing that we KNEW were trouble makers online for the SWBF2 at large but didn’t necessarily cause an issue for us or our site. We had no reason to ban these individuals or blacklist them here or on our SWBF2 game servers.
GWL admin that knew what was going on in the overall SWBf2 community, started advocating for an anti-cheat for the SWBF2 game. An issue we had to confront if we were to continue competitively for SWBF2 (Classic).
GWL Competitive Mod
We had approached a mod community at GameToast.com. [SL]Sprite took the lead and approached Teancum there. We were looking to see if they were interested in collaborating on a competitive mod that only allowed loading of original game assets and defined game colors while setting a minimum screen resolution. Basically we were looking for a mod that only allowed for gameplay that was as the game was originally released without modifications to the game files but did allow for the “Addon” folder with approved mod maps for competition.
However, this competition mod never happened. It was well known that a collaboration existed between Global Warfighter League and SWBF2stats.net. The statistics.csv file includes a player’s IP and installation keyhash (32 hash digits that is NOT the user’s CD key for the game). SWBF2stats.net was storing a collection of statistics.csv files through the contributing SWBF2 (Classic) servers as uploaded by their server’s admin. As such, the site had a HUGE list of game keyhashes and IP’s.
SWBF2stats.net had a feature for the site that allowed admin to search and track installation keyhashes as part of a tool that identifies players. This tool wasn’t for tracking players maliciously but was for placement within the site’s leaderboards as some player’s could use the same name but obviously would have a different game installation keyhash. Teancum (and by extension GameToast.com) had a problem with this feature and essentially declined to get involved with helping to develop the competitive mod unless something was done about this feature at SWBF2stats.net. At least, that’s the way we interpreted the conversation with Teancum.
~FL~TripHamm3r had been talking (through other SWBF2 Communities and Dev sites) to [RDH]Zerted, the one behind the SWBF2 1.3 patch and other tools for the SWBF2 (Classic) community including “FreeCam”. Zerted knew TripHamm3r owned SWBF2stats.net and TripHamm3r would frequently bounce ideas off of Zerted for help regarding problems we were seeing throughout the SWBF2 (Classic) community online.
We can’t be sure what the conversations were behind the scenes at GameToast.com (as both Teancum and Zerted were active members of that community) but we always assumed Teancum had known Triphamm3r’s connection to SWBF2stats.net through Zerted or even through Sprite.
Through that knowledge, and knowing Triphamm3r was in charge here at Global Warfighter League, we concluded that TeanCum thought that feature using the keyhashes at SWBF2stats.net could be removed in return for their collective help at GameToast. Unfortunately, the keyhashes were a key feature for online SWBF2 (Classic) admins and critical to maintaining leaderboards at the SWBF2stats.net website.
Not to mention, blacklists at SWBF2stats.net existed for admins that wanted to add problem players to their server manager ban lists. SWBF2stats.net wasn’t the only website keeping blacklists for SWBF2 Battlefront Classic. Other SWBF2 (Classic) communities were doing the same. Elimination of this feature was not even a negotiation on our part and we believed wouldn’t solve any problems for legitimate players anyway. It was a non-starter.
We hold no ill will toward anyone mentioned here or GameToast.com. In fact we had several approved mods for competition here that originated from the GameToast community. They have their reasons for declining to help our community and we can’t be sure what conversations took place behind the scenes at theirs. However, it did mean we were still stuck with competition problems here at the league.
We then approached our own SWBF2 community at GWL to create this same competition mod. While initially we thought we had started to solve our issue, it was clear that anyone in our community who COULD help was a part of the GameToast community as well.
Conversations among our own community in the forums started to take a turn and some players made allegations and accusations mentioning that the only ones who could hack the game were part of the GameToast community anyway (as GameToast was THE mod site for SWBF2 at the time). The questions from our members then became “how could GWL trust these players”. We never made that allegation ourselves but it was a point of distrust made among our community in the forums and essentially shut down the SWBF2 Classic competitive mod project moving forward.
GWL SWBF2 Anti-Cheat Software
This lead to Global Warfighter League developing our own SWBF2 anti-Cheat software. The software was a portable file that a player ran before starting the game. It checked for originally installed SWBF2 game files while also checking for approved mods. It also checked to see if there was more than one instance of the game running on the computer.
There was never an installation. It was a portable file a competing player ran that did checks on their computer and uploaded a “Pass” or “Fail” Boolean status with a reason for the fail if one was detected. All user data was deleted after the determination and was never stored on our end excepting the pass or fail determination for the GWL match and players involved. This data too was deleted after 30 days.
Lucas Arts was always kept in the loop and was given every version of the GWL SWBF2 Anti-cheat public file we were distributing per their TOS for the SWBF2 Classic game. We were in contact with the devs for the game (after Pandemic) at Lucas Arts.
Lucas Arts had never officially endorsed our anti-cheat software files. They explained they couldn’t endorse the files but they wouldn’t raise an issue to stop us either. We always explained what we were doing and why. They stayed true to there word and never raised an issue.
Unfortunately, by the time we had come to the point where we knew an anti-cheat was needed for the game, we were also already coming to the conclusion that the game hadn’t much longer in it’s lifespan here at the league. Not because we didn’t want to support it, but how long could we continue given all the new issues that were popping up within the online multiplayer community constantly and consistently. The signs were there. This proved to be true eventually.
There was a considerable amount of controversy and Drama surrounding this software and more on this can be found on the dedicated page explaining all of it at our SWBF2 Anti-Cheat Software Page.
SWBF2 GameNights
Global Warfighter League would continually host GWL SWBF2 GameNights featuring beefed up servers for the game. We could easily host 32×32 servers without lag and providing them for one night a week was very popular and the server filled up frequently when we started doing these.
Even if a player wasn’t competing in the ladders we always had players joining the servers. The servers ran without bots so it was popular for pitting players against themselves without auto-aim enabled.
We started doing Gamenights half way through the tenure of SWBF2 at our league and continued almost to the end of the game’s support here. However, Gamenights too became a problem with online hackers and players exploiting the game.
There was always a more casual approach to Gamenights. Players were even allowed to get into the walls and wallhack at times. However, some players were pushing the limits of what was allowed and started hacking the servers and chat logs while gameplay was going on.
On occasion, we would run SWBF1 Gamenights and that helped keep interest and players coming to Gamenights. We always tried to mix up the usual map rotation anyway for modes and mods but switching to the SWBF1 game was liked and presented a change.
However, even though our league had supported SWBF1 for competition, most of our player base was playing SWBF2 and couldn’t participate in Gamenights if they didn’t have SWBF1 installed. So while popular among some of the community, it wasn’t enjoyed by all.
We could always track the trouble makers with a little forensic work on the server with some server tools to track player connections. Props to [SL]Sprite and [SL]Andromeda for keeping Gamenights playable for so long.
With Andromeda working in game and Sprite working the server side, they made a good team to keep Gamenights fun and free from clowns trying to ruin it for everyone else.
However, eventually, when server admins are spending more time supervising the server instead of playing, it’s no longer fun anymore for them. As we’ve always maintained, we’re gamers just like our community. We’re here because we loving playing games online with others. When it’s no longer fun, we have to question why we’re putting in the work.
Coming to an END
With Gamenights gone and competition dwindling down, it became blatantly obvious that SWBF2 wasn’t going to last much longer at our league. After the release of EA Star Wars Battlefront, we saw a surge in interest for SWBF2 Classic here at the site because many of the players here didn’t like EA’s new version of the game.
There were hackers in the new game right out of the gate and the gameplay just wasn’t the same. Even though we saw an uptick in traffic for our site and we had setup competition for the new SWBF game, it never translated into decent numbers for competitive ladders and tournaments. Traffic never returned to what it was for SWBF2 Classic.
It was with a heavy heart that we made the decision to take a break shortly after this.
More on the entire history of GWL can be found on our History page.
