WONID Lookup Tool

[Andeh]

this is how I think it works.

your won id stands for how many people play (or have played) online

ie. if your won id is 1299573 then you are the 1299573rd person to register on the won sever to play online.

thats my theory :/

[PuNiShEr]

andeh and alpha are both right

[MikeJ]

Your wonid will not be on there if you have not registered for CAL.

[Serious Sam]

Oh thank you all great one for pointing out what the story did

[KhAoS]

Serious Sam, if the player on your server is any good, ask him if he is in CAL. He will most likely say yes, because this is how cheaters cover up there "1337ness". Then get the key, put it into the searcher, if he's not in, hey we got a hacker!

[MikeJ]

Serious Sam wrote..

Oh thank you all great one for pointing out what the story did

...

Chrisda19 wrote..

Of all WONID's, mine isn't in there. gg

I can't help it that some people only read the news title then head straight for the link.

[kaxman]

For the dumb cock that suggested a universal blacklist of cheaters, its been tried. And its a bad fucking idea.

[NuclearTeddyBear]

kaxman wrote..

For the dumb cock that suggested a universal blacklist of cheaters, its been tried. And its a bad fucking idea.

I didn't see anyone suggest a universal blacklist of cheaters.. not on this thread at least. Unless you're referring to what KhAoS said, which I think is actually a pretty good idea in most cases.

[MikeJ]

kaxman wrote..

For the dumb cock that suggested a universal blacklist of cheaters, its been tried. And its a bad fucking idea.

If you cheat it is yes.

[Serious Sam]

At least we could cross check wonids.



Mikej ....

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Okay, let me clear up the confusion on 2 aspects.



First, CD-Keys and WONID's.



Half-Life uses a formula to determine if the CD-Key you entered is theoretically valid or not. This formula has been cracked, and thus you can download a HL ****** that will spit out a few different random keys, out of which you easily get working ones. To be able to install and play Half-Life (single player only), that is.



However, all CD-keys that have ever been boxed and shipped with a copy of Half-Life, CS, or any other mod are located in a central database. Because there are billions of different possible "working" keys, but only a couple million "official" ones that have been registered as being actually shipped, chances are very, very slim that you will ever randomly generate one that is valid.



What WON does is checks the CD-key you send them against their central database. If you've connected ever before with that CD-key, then it retrieves the WONID that it gave you on your first connection, and assigns it to you while you're online, verifying you as having actually purchased the game.



If you haven't connected with that CD-key, but it is valid, then a new WONID is associated with that key. That WONID will be the next in the sequence from the last one given (kind of like your ICQ number). So, some of us have nice lower numbers for our WONID's (mine's 5 digits), and some of you are now up in the 7 digit range, if you joined later. However, if it determines that the cd-key you installed Half-Life with was not actually in the database of "real cd-keys", then you will not be assigned a WONID, and you can't play online without one.



There's further issues of what happens if two people install with the same CD-key and such, but that's kind of outside of the scope of this for the moment. Regardless, the WONID that you play with is completely irrelevant to the general public -- the most you can do with someone else's WONID is ban them from your own server. Since there's no formula that could translate a CD-key into a WONID, you've got jack.



Now, the usefulness of knowing CAL WONID's.



KhAoS summed that up pretty well. There's several possible uses to this. If you get a regular on your server going by some jackass name, who's owning everyone constantly, you can look them up, and maybe, just maybe find out who they really are. It's not meant for trying to get additional information and blacklisting cheaters and all that. More just determining if someone is playing in the CAL. You get a bunch of guys sticking together every round and find out they're all part of a a CAL-M clan, well... you can treat that as you wish as a server admin, whether it's asking them to not stack the teams, or unmasking their secret ways. :)



And MikeJ, yes, I'm very convinced that half the people who post do not read more than about 3-5 words before clicking on the comments link.



Finally, kaxman, in a sense the VAC implements a universal blacklist, but it's a much less subjective one than the blacklist.de version is, as rogue server admins can't add people they don't like to the VAC blacklist. Downside is that, in the effort to not have any false-positives, they end up not detecting many cheaters either.

[V1P3R]

I really don't like this search. I entered in my Won ID and my name full name appeared.

[Serious Sam]

Full name, but not sin or phone number or state.

[abel]

KhAoS wrote..

Serious Sam, if the player on your server is any good, ask him if he is in CAL. He will most likely say yes, because this is how cheaters cover up there "1337ness". Then get the key, put it into the searcher, if he's not in, hey we got a hacker!

uhm.. did you even stop to think that maybe they wanted to be seen as 1337 by telling people they are in CAL even though they not.. regardless just because someones good and not in CAL doesnt make them a cheater. and even then they possibly still could be cheating, the inverse of that is also true, just because someone is good and in CAL doesnt mean they DONT cheat..

[PK0rZ]

Edited by [user="26841"] @ [time="1041049125"]

nighthawk how come you didn't tell us what happens if more than 1 person is on with the same cdkey like if you're playing some friends with a bunch of spawns or if you just gave your cd key out to people and sold them burned copies of the game.



[Edit: Removed discussion of how to steal working online cd-keys...]

... I just thought that was relevent to ways that people that don't buy the game can get working online cd keys, besides the more obvious scamming and stuff.