Blizzard Lawyers Visit Creator of WoW Glider

Rick Hamell writes "On October 25th, Blizzard/Vivendi payed a personal visit to Michael Donnelly, creator of WoW Glider and accused him of violating the DMCA. Their demands were unclear, but come in the wake of recent player bannings for using bots in the popular MMORPG. It looks like he's going to fight it, but I think it'll be an interesting case if it ever reaches the courts." From the post: "The visitors from Vivendi / Blizzard made demands of Michael and stated that if the demands were not met that they would file a complaint in court if he did not meet them. I asked Michael what the demands were. He was unable to comment at the time to the exact details. But I do know they handed him a copy to very briefly 'Look at'. He was not given a copy. I think I could make a good guess and say that they asked for Glider to be shut down and if they feel that they have been harmed they may have asked for a financial settlement."

Comments

Pwned

[Jeian]

And about time, too.

Re:Pwned

[__aaclcg7560]

I thought it was only in South Park that the Blizzard folks pays a personal visit. Nice to see outstanding customer support in real life. ;)

Re:Pwned

[slughead]

Part of having rights is excepting that some people aren't going to use them for what you want them to.

The rights taken by the DMCA may well include this site's right to let people 'cheat' on WoW.

If you believe that this site should be shut down, you believe in the same principles that the DMCA was based on. Private technology, even when licensed, can be used by customers in only methods sanctioned by the company they bought it from.

I don't believe in that, no matter how much disdain I hold towards cheaters.

Re:Pwned

[Dachannien]

If you believe that this site should be shut down, you believe in the same principles that the DMCA was based on.

I'll take False Generalizations for $200, Alex. I believe that this guy should be put out of business, but not because of the DMCA.

Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Audigy]

I'm glad to hear of this.

Sure, it's an independent software developer, who cares? He's charging money for a program that explicitly violates the TOS that a user agrees to when signing up for World of Warcraft.

It's just one bot program out of many, but maybe the others will get the picture and GTFO also. I'm tired of trying to play legitimately, having bots always stealing my kills. :(

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[daeg]

Just because his product violates a TOS it doesn't mean he did anything illegal. A TOS is a civil agreement, and not a very strong one, at that.

I'm all for shutting this guy down (I play WoW and hate bots, too), but I don't want shutting him down to clog our already congested legal system.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[belmolis]

Selling a program that has no use other than violating the TOS may be actionable as tortious interference with a contract or something along those lines, but I fail to see how copyright is involved here. What copyrighted work is copied by the bot? Similarly, I don't see how it violates the DMCA.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Jack9]

In other news SpiderCo was sued by Black & Decker under the DMCA for facilitating the cutting of small pipes. I'm sorry, I got nothin.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Anonymous Coward]

You think the guy should be sued because he makes the game less fun for you? While they're suing that guy, someone should get around to suing all the ~13-year-olds on Xbox live that seem to only be able to use sentences that have the words "fag" or "noob" in them.

It's a game. Live with it or move on.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[GodInHell]

1) He's not interfering with the sale of their product or the collection of profits, so tortious interfence is unlikely. (no money to be made in trial.)

2) Even if he were a participant in the contract, the contract is an adhession contract, which means that it's ability to bind the user is limited, let alone a third party.

3) It could violate the DCMA if he intercepts and interprets the signal from the wow server to drive his software. I'm out of my element here, but I believe the DCMA covers most efforts to reverse engineer thier software if the intent is to break through their security measures protecting the game data (player location, weapon stats, etc).

Meh,
-GiH

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Anonymous Coward]

"He's charging money for a program that explicitly violates the TOS that a user agrees to when signing up for World of Warcraft."

The law doesn't work that way, thankfully. I'm not liable for the contracts you make with other people, and you're not liable for the contracts I make with other people.

That's why there isn't a case against the software creator for "violating a TOS," unless he also agreed to the TOS (and even then, the legitimacy of such a TOS is subject to debate).

Yeah, it sucks when people cheat, but I'd rather deal with the cheaters than be unable to write any code that some corporation somewhere dislikes.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[belmolis]

I agree that a suit for tortious interference isn't likely to make much money, but it seems like a better legal theory than copyright. I'm not sure that the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are applicable here. The DMCA only forbids circumvention of measures taken to protect copyrighted material. Even if the bot bypasses security measures, it isn't doing so for the purpose of violating copyright. The bot does not, for example, extract the images from the game. Furthermore, the DMCA expressly permits reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Sparr0]

it doesnt violate the TOS for people who never agreed to them. i amended my wow TOS before launching the game, and i guarantee the version i agreed to has no such provisions.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Flentil]

1) He's not interfering with the sale of their product or the collection of profits, so tortious interfence is unlikely. (no money to be made in trial.)

I disagree. You only have to look at some of the above comments to see that bots annoy thier customers, and thus might hurt thier profits due to cancellations. They could sue for damages from lost revenue.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[reanjr]

And by violating the TOS, he is no longer licensed to play the game. Doesn't mean he can't produce software to do so. Blizzard and other companies should wake up. If a bit can play their game, it is a fault of Blizzard making a repetitive game for dullards, not the person who likes aspects of the game and is trying to avoid all the poor design decisions Blizzard made for it.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[westlake]

A TOS is a civil agreement, and not a very strong one, at that.

The TOS is a contract. It's strength or weakness is for a judge to decide. But protecting the integrity of a service with 7.5 million paying subscribers sounds to me like a perfectly good reason for going to court.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[dangitman]

tortious interference

If he has tortious interference, he should probably go see a Doctor ASAP, not a lawyer. That shit is itchy as hell.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Brandee07]

In addition to the accounts the customers canceled due to the irritating presence of farmbots like this, there's also the lost revenue from the thousands of accounts Blizzard shut down for using this program.

Obviously it was Blizzard's choice to stop taking money from the second group, but they're just adhering to their own policy, and it's this guy's fault that they're being forced to do that.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[honkycat]

I take it you took that amended copy and had it reviewed by Blizzard personnel duly authorized to accept your changes on the company's behalf, right? Otherwise, I'll take any bet you'd care to make that you are legally bound by the original ToS to the extent that such agreements are enforceable in the first place.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Anonymous Coward]

The TOS is a contract.

SO, you signed it, and Blizzard signed it?

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[evolseven]

the two prior posts have horribly flawed logic.. you can't just sue someone because they deprive you of revenue.. If that was the case comcast would sue sbc because sbc deprives comcast of revenue from potential customers.... there has to be a violation of some agreement here for there to be any legal standing in my opinion, but IANAL

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[MindStalker]

Either way as he is effectivly using Blizzards service without permission (using it under a different ToS) they can kick ban him at any time without a need for explanation.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Captain Jack Taylor]

You don't have to sign it for it to be a contract, in most countries. You simply have to have acknowledged your agreement to the other party. This is usually as simple as saying (or clicking) "okay". The trick is, as soon as a contract stipulates something unlawful, it is null and void. If you go over most EULAs these days, they usually have some means of arbitrary enforcement, penalty, or other crap that's questionably legal at best, if it doesn't constitute a criminal offence. As usual, IANAL, but this isn't a difficult legal concept for anyone who's taken a bit of law. :)

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[DanielNS84]

I think they should fix the vulnerability instead of going after him in court.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[GodInHell]

Problem 1) Causation. Prove that it was this fellow and his activities that caused you that harm. Prove that it was not some other bot application, or that the customer could not have easily used another piece of software that was easily attainable, etc. They could try to get all the producers of this kind of software together and sue them collectively for tortious interference, but, in a game that releases new bugs on patch-day, good luck connecting terminated accounts to frustration with bot-players. Further - Blizz would have a VERY hard time proving that these guys did not in fact ENHANCE their revenue vis-a-vis the accounts Blizzard cancels for non-compliance. Many of those accounts may have been purchased specifically for the purpose of leveling and selling (not un-common), or may have cancelled long ago without the software. No clear line of effect between action and loss of value, There/4 lack of causality.

Problem 2) Damages. How much? The amount of cancelled accounts? Which ones, certainly not all the accounts cancelled since the game released.. those in which clients have specifically stated a reason for leaving that includes bots (might get a few there), at what cost - would a player who quit over this issue have otherwise continued to pay monthly fees until the next generation game was released? Forever? Make them pay for one month? Two? Even if they manage to link causation to 20,000 users, how much will court fees run? Lawyers? Experts (they'll need alot to talk about the techincal issues and to prove causation)?

Problem 3) Deep Pockets (lack thereof). These guys (the alleged tortfeasors) do not likely have that kind of money in bank accounts lying around to be taken in suit. That means that even if you win, even if the court assigns all legal expenses to the defendant, even if everything goes your way through the appeals which will probably follow - the defendant declares bankruptcy, and walks away. You still have to pay your lawyer.

It's not a perfect system, but it does more of the little guy than people think. Here's hoping they don't hit the lottery anytime soon :).

-GiH

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never played the game, and have no intention to. I made my mind up not to play it even before the bots. Who are they gonna sue for lost revenue now? MileHighComics? I do read comic books occasionally.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Wolfkin]

Of course, they do that anyway...

Seriously, the terms of service is a unilateral statement by the service provider of the terms under which they choose to accept your business. Nothing says you have to accept, but then, they don't have to do business with you, either.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[modecx]

violating the TOS may be actionable as tortious interference

Don't you just hate that?

Mother fuckin' tutles, always in the goddamned way. Apparently they didn't get the memo that said they had to die with the rest of the dinosaurs? The gall!

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[C0R1D4N]

The only beef with that bull is that the EULA isn't printed on the box (and has likely changed multiple times since the game went gold anyway). Good luck returning it to the store if you don't like the EULA. And looking at how well bnetd went, a Free-WoW is going to face some harsh troubles 5 years from now.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[name*censored*]

Wasn't there recently a /. article about how an employee who had misused a company laptop (and would have had to have signed a TOS contract) got reinstated because he had signed the contract without reading through it? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/06/12 1246

Granted, it was in Australia and not the US of A, so laws might be different...?

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[GodInHell]

Actually, it's called an adhesion contract:

adhesion contract

n.(contract of adhesion) a contract (often a signed form) so imbalanced in favor of one party over the other that there is a strong implication it was not freely bargained. Example: a rich landlord dealing with a poor tenant who has no choice and must accept all terms of a lease, no matter how restrictive or burdensome, since the tenant cannot afford to move. An adhesion contract can give the little guy the opportunity to claim in court that the contract with the big shot is invalid. This doctrine should be used and applied more often, but the same big guy-little guy inequity may apply in the ability to afford a trial or find and pay a resourceful lawyer.

A class as large as the WoW player-base could roll that contract aside and claim damages (actual and punative) for loss of in game wealth and resources including their characters. Oh.. did I mention that Blizzard tends not to return your cash when they ban you half-way through a six-month subscription? This suit is almost inevitable.. once some lawyer gets banned and desides to form the class (on a health 10-30% commission of course).

-GiH

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Sparr0]

Why would I? NOT having their agreement to my amended version is a perfectly acceptable outcome.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of what you're saying. You're willing to put someone IN JAIL because it makes your VIDEO GAME less fun to play. That's not just extremism, that's a disturbing obsession, and a sad comment on society.

What an embarrassing post to make.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[mqduck]

I'm all for shutting this guy down (I play WoW and hate bots, too), but I don't want shutting him down to clog our already congested legal system.

I propose a new catchphrase: "Think of the already congested legal system! Won't somebody please think of the already congested legal system?!"

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Samari711]

IANAL but I'm guessing it's a trademark/copyright suit. He's making money off selling something related to their trademarked content and is potentially using pieces of their copyrighted code in it. The TOS isn't really relevant here, the only remedy for violating it is account termination. There is still a license for the game that you agree to at the same time as the TOS though, and that's probably got the bits about reverse engineering and things of that nature.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Lonewolf666]

If a bit can play their game, it is a fault of Blizzard making a repetitive game for dullards

You mean "If a bot can play their game"?
Damn right, and if Blizzard wasn't already on my boycott list, this would be a warning against buying WOW by itself.
I've recently beta-tested a game that might be playable by a bot as well:
Rappelz(http://rappelz.gpotato.com/). Nice graphics, but after two weeks I can't bring myself to log in anymore. It's just too boring.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[GuyverDH]

You should see the SPIA (Software Publisher's Installation Agreement) that's pasted on the front of my Computer.

It clearly states, that by allowing their software to be installed on this computer, that they agree to the following terms.

#1 All EULAs are null and void.
#2 They WILL be held accountable if their software causes a problem.
#3 I can do whatever the hell I want with their software once it's installed on MY computer.
#4 They can NOT install anything *extra* without my explicit permission.
    4a) Any attempts to do so will result in fines no less than 1 Million USD, and no more than (whatever they have in liquid assets)
#5 Any updates or changes to the software's EULA must be approved by me before they can be sent out to anyone else.

I'm currently sitting at around 4.5 billion in fines. I'm waiting until I hit the "Trillion Dollar" mark, before I move forward with my lawsuits for SPIA violations.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Toridas]

What vulnerability would that be? The one that lets people control their characters with keyboard and mouse input?

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't play WoW or know the TOS for it, but is there any clause when signing on, that states a 'human' must be commanding the persona in the game exclusively?

If not, I fail to see how any violation has occurred. Is this necessarily a bot also? Seems to me that this is more of an exclusive program with a specific purpose. Not a conditional arbitrator...

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[bradkittenbrink]

Correct, you can't simply sue someone because they deprive you of potential revenue. But that's not what we're talking about here, we're talking about malicious interference that causes lost revenue. To extend your analogy further, it would be more like if sbc tapped in to comcast's cable lines and started broadcasting static over top of the video, degrading all of comcast's users experiences slightly. You'd better believe that comcast would have a right to sue sbc in that case.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[honkycat]

Well, I don't see the point of what you've done in that case. You were presented with their ToS before you began using the service and you used the service. Regardless of what you may have deleted in the installer, you are probably responsible for adhering to the T's or they'll be happy to stop providing you the S. My point is that, legally, you might as well just cross your fingers when you click "I Accept." I don't think you get any protection by monkeying with the installer files.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[xero314]

once some lawyer gets banned and desides to form the class (on a health 10-30% commission of course).

I don't think blizzard is worried about that since any lawyer that could actually win that case probably doesn't have the time to be playing WoW.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Pofy]

>This is usually as simple as saying (or clicking) "okay".

Not nessecarilly, that does not mean your acknowledgement has reached or come to the party that made the offer. It needs, as it certainly do in WoW, also be sent or otherwise notified to the one making the offer of a contract. In addition, for most countries there is further rules on how you might tie that acceptance to other ativities. You can't make a proposal and claim that if the pther person (for example) leave his hous, it shows acceptance. That is, you can't in many cases decided HOW the acceptance should be made if it is tied to other activities.

>The trick is, as soon as a contract stipulates something unlawful, it is null and void.

That depends a lot on country and type of contract. In many cases only the term itself is void, not the rest of the contract.

As others have said, a contract is also only affecting the ones that have agreed to it. It can never bind someone else.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[robnauta]

I disagree. You only have to look at some of the above comments to see that bots annoy thier customers, and thus might hurt thier profits due to cancellations. They could sue for damages from lost revenue.

First of all, annoying others doesn't seem to be an offense. If it was then PVP servers (where the sole purpose is to try to ruin the game for others) wouldn't exist. It would also mean they would have to ban all the LFG spammers and the 'lol ure gay' kids.
Second, any sane lawyer would just point out that Blizzard themselves chose not to do business with a customer when they cancel their account for cheating, so the loss of revenue is voluntarily and cannot be blamed on a third party.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Snaller]

Sure, it's an independent software developer, who cares? He's charging money for a program that explicitly violates the TOS that a user agrees to when signing up for World of Warcraft.

Clicking a button does not constitute an agreement of the user. And unless they can prove that he is playing the game (and has agreed to their terms) what should that be to him?

It's just one bot program out of many, but maybe the others will get the picture and GTFO also. I'm tired of trying to play legitimately, having bots always stealing my kills. :(

Clearly an annoyance, born out of non nerds do not want to grind forever like the old addics of evercrack did - if blizzard doesn't start handing out items and gold much easier this is not going to stop.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[roseblood]

The TOS applies to the party playing the game. The developer of WOW Glider isn't logging on as a level 25 wizard (or whatever is in Wow) and level grinding. The developer of WoW is checking his paypal account and smiling.

Blizzard will nuke this guy by burying him in legal fees.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[DDX_2002]

Another definition of 'contract of adhesion' is 'unilateral contract'. I don't recall my contracts prof or my contracts texts calling them one-sided in terms of fairness, just one-sided in terms of it being one person's contract *with the world*. It's not bargained at all, it's a take it or leave it offer to the world at large, that is accepted by carrying out the terms. Instead of being a contract between known persons A and B, negotiated between them, it's an offer by A to whoever does what A wants. The ubiquitous example is the reward poster - "LOST DOG! REWARD $100" - this is a binding and enforceable contract of adhesion with *any person* to pay $100 if they return the lost dog to the creator of the poster. It's called adhesion because if you adhere to the terms, you are a party to the contract. For example, by entering onto the parking lot with the big sign posted about 'park at own risk', you accept the terms of the contract allowing the public to park but excluding liability of the lot owner for contents of vehicles.

I would love to see someone try to set aside a EULA for a product with monthly fees and an upfront purchase price on the basis that it's one sided or unfair or merely for being a contract of adhesion. Your chances of showing a EULA, particularly on a *game*, is so unfair as to be unenforceable are zip - you have the option to not buy it or cancel, and its a wholly discretionary entertainment purchase. You're going to get NO sympathy from the bench, since if you didn't find it $X/month entertaining, you'd have cancelled already. Trying to argue that an online game service is unreasonable for inserting a term allowing them to cancel service to those using cheating programs isn't going to look good either.

And as to claiming damages for lost in game wealth, that's EXPLICITLY prohibited by the EULA, without which license you have no right to access WOW's servers in the first place. No class action lawyer would touch that with a ten foot pole.

blizzard is..

[Anonymous Coward]

wasting their time. this wont even hit court and is useless. They can not stop user side macro's. sorry blizzard you cant do anything about it.

Once the WOW game is loaded into memory on 'your' computer the contents that are in memory is part of your system running on your hardware, blizzard has no claim to it and you are not 'renting' your hardware from them. Your character interactions with blizzards game servers are well within the defined terms that blizzard has provided. nuff said lets move on.

Re:blizzard is..

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Having a character controlled by automation of any type is a clear violation of the terms of service. From a simple fishing bot, to a bot that has the spawn time for every thorium vein recorded, you are cheating. You are not the only player on the server, and your preprogrammed bot can ruin the game for a casual player who doesn't have the time, knowledge or gear that is essential to disrupt your bot and/or compete with it.

As a more hard-core player, I've taken the time to disrupt several bots. I've also successfully gotten several botters banned from my server.

While I don't know that this consitutes a lawsuit, anyone using this guy's program deserves to be banned.

Re:blizzard is..

[Anonymous Coward]

This just proves that the game is flawed. They should have just called it World of Grind: Get to Level 60 as Fast as You Can, Because Levels 1-59 Are Just Boring Shit!

Re:blizzard is..

[VoidWraith]

WoW grind is a LOT more enjoyable than for instance EQ grind. Leveling in WoW is always fun. It was the most enjoyable MMORPG I ever played.

Re:blizzard is..

[fitten]

Actually... it's exactly opposite of that. 1-59 is fun (the first few times you do it). After you hit 60, it's nothing but grinding raids.

Re:blizzard is..

[Anonymous Coward]

-------------
No.

Having a character controlled by automation of any type is a clear violation of the terms of service. From a simple fishing bot, to a bot that has the spawn time for every thorium vein recorded, you are cheating. You are not the only player on the server, and your preprogrammed bot can ruin the game for a casual player who doesn't have the time, knowledge or gear that is essential to disrupt your bot and/or compete with it.

As a more hard-core player, I've taken the time to disrupt several bots. I've also successfully gotten several botters banned from my server.

While I don't know that this consitutes a lawsuit, anyone using this guy's program deserves to be banned.
--------------

you clearly have no concept of software loaded on a system, blizzard does not own anything that is loaded into system memory. good luck in fantasy land fruit loop.

Won't someone please think of the bots?

[MrFlannel]

I mean, they just want to play WoW and have a little fun. Is that too much to ask?

Or are you too afraid you'll be replaced? Too afraid you might have to try a little harder playing against someone a little bit better than you?

Fight for machine rights!

Re:Won't someone please think of the bots?

[jon_joy_1999]

of course it's too much. because, first it's WoW, then it's EQ and other MMORPGS, and then all of a sudden you have bots running the streets with laser guns and infrared sights shooting people, yelling "I'LL BE BACK!", and running for California Governer

Re:Won't someone please think of the bots?

[drapeau06]

Are you saying that each of the Terminator films was a documentary? 'Cos I thought they were only mockumentaries.

Re:Won't someone please think of the bots?

[rpdillon]

Ah, yes. Things can sometimes get out of hand...

Other plaintiffs. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . .the entire country of China who's economy crashed with the release of glider. Millions were left unemployed.

>wash wa ping wa
>china?
>yes!

What's next?-@#$% on parade.

[Anonymous Coward]

"In other news, E.A. has started a series of lawsuits against people who use cheat codes in their games."

*sigh* Slashdot is doomed.

Cheat codes are built into the programs by the original programmers. Bots aren't. Would you like to finish up your news report with an explanation about why you can't tell the difference?

Re:What's next?-@#$% on parade.

[ParraCida]

You are ofcourse, completely correct.

I regret that my attempt to blow up and exaggerate pieces of gameplay that do not fall within the realm of 'normal gameplay', and the fictional reactions of gaming companies towards those instances to point out how gaming companies are dictating the terms of our consumption of their products and how we are all falling in line like the good little consumers that we are, was lost on you.

There is ofcourse a slight chance I included cheat codes not only to simply adress the word 'cheat', but also to point out that perhaps, blizzard might not have a leg to stand on, as they would have when sueing people for using build in cheat codes. Perhaps, I also used these hyperboles to point out that not keeping to the terms of the agreement when it comes to playing games, does in fact not constitute a breach of any actual 'law' and therefore is not 'illegal' and might not have a place in any court of law.

But yeah, you are probably correct. I am ignorant, have no idea what I'm talking about and am just another sucker without a clue. Whereas you are the greatest and smartest person I have ever met and after reading your short but oh so subtle comment I already want to join your fan club.

If anyone is an actual legal expert btw, which I am not, I would like to know if there is any 'real' grounds for blizzard to pursue this case on.

Re:What's next?-@#$% on parade.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheat codes are built into the programs by the original programmers.

Depends on the cheat code. Cheat codes used with external devices like Action Replay or Game Genie certainly aren't built into the programs.

OK, so those devices probably don't actually exist any more, but you get the point.

Bliz will most likly not win

[edizzles]

I fail to see the law broken here. I agree the software in question makes the game a bit boring but if the maker has not agreed to the TOS then where does blizard get the right to tell him what he can an cannot code. Also there is no precedence for somthing of this nature. Also good luck finding a jugde in the contry that will have a clue what Bliz is complaining about.

Re:Bliz will most likly not win

[sumdumass]

How about the WoW initials that are synonymous with the name _W_orld _o_f _W_arcraft. Outside that, unless the code uses something Blizzard owns to work, there doesn't appear to be anything. But only one appears to be a DMCA issue.

Unfortunately, finding a judge won't be as hard as you think. The idea of this type of DMCA suite is to say you believe something is happening that isn't obvious because you have taken step to hide or protect it. By default, there will most likely be a hearing just for the purpose of Blizzard to educate the judge on how their claims are accurate. So they don't even need to find a judge that ever heard of WoW, they just need to find one willing to listen.

Re:Bliz will most likly not win

[Anonymous Coward]

the purpose of Blizzard to educate the judge on how their claims are accurate

What claims? Blizzard won't even let the target of their harassment have a copy of their claims.

they just need to find one willing to listen

Again, what claims? What about the DMCA says a software author cannot make software to play an online game for you?

Blizzard is going to be out in the cold for using the intimidation tactics employed here. Waving some papers at a person at their home and dropping the D word to cow them into submission just does not fly. If Blizzard has a valid DMCA claim, they need to air it. Otherwise, they can pound dirt and cut out this intimidation bullshit. I have found another franchise I will not be giving my money to.

Re:Bliz will most likly not win

[sumdumass]

What claims? Blizzard won't even let the target of their harassment have a copy of their claims.

I just named two possible claims. Only one had something to do with the DMCA and would be some what of a stretch at best i think. But it seems that is what law is about nowadays. Who can convolute a law into their favor and use it against some one else.

Again, what claims? What about the DMCA says a software author cannot make software to play an online game for you?

Well first, They don't have to make their "legal" claims available until they decide to file a suite. They can say they claims all they want and suggest that you do something to avoid it. They showed the documents containing their claims to the person being asked to stop doing something and he hasn't repeated them. Just because we don't know what the claims are or that the claims havn't been made public doesn't mean they don't exist. But I would think the reasons for not making them public as of now would include the whole world attempting to discredit them and help in a defense against them.

Now about an programer making software to play a game. The DMCA doesn't address that unless he does something it does address in order to make it work. My guess would be something to the control API were the robot uses that directly instead of just automating keyboard commands which might interfere with other programs. I don't this to be how it works but it is one possible scenario.

Blizzard is going to be out in the cold for using the intimidation tactics employed here. Waving some papers at a person at their home and dropping the D word to cow them into submission just does not fly. If Blizzard has a valid DMCA claim, they need to air it. Otherwise, they can pound dirt and cut out this intimidation bullshit. I have found another franchise I will not be giving my money to.

I could not agree with you more. Except mayby the reaction from users. Very few people will protest in the same way you have and take their business elsewhere. It isn't a matter of them not caring or being too lazy, It is a combination of the two and maybe an "addictive" response added in. I asked a friend who plays at least 5 hours a day (most likely more) and his attitude was against the automation software not the way Blizzard is doing things. You will find people who think if you don't spend 80 hours a week yourself on the game, you don't deserve playing it like they do. Or that you don't deserve the rewards they have. This and my friend's attitude is probably why I never picked the game up. Blizzard's action is probably a reason why I won't ever play it.

Bots

[HappySqurriel]

I love WoW but think that the ability to be remarkably successful by using a bot demonstrates one of the biggest design flaws of the game (and the entire MMORPG genre as a whole). MMORPGs require very little thought or skill and most of the content is not worth seeing; killing 100,000 monsters that react in (pretty much) the exact same way in order to get to the point were you have 'Finished the game' only to have to kill 100,000 mosters that react in exactly the same way to get all the leet loot. I recognize the technical difficulty of producing intelligent (or atleast different) mobs, but until you have to be reasonably intelligent to survive these encounters a bot will be successful.

Re:Bots

[Reason58]

I agree with what you are saying, but the root of the problem does not lie with the game, rather the players.

For an MMO to be successful it must play to the lower common denominator. If a game requires any significant amount of player skill in order to succeed then it will crash and burn, as the average player simply isn't that good when you are talking about games with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and especially millions of players.

Re:Bots

[1.000.000]

I completely disagree. Aimbots play first person shooters (FPS) far better then most people, but that doenst mean that FPS require no skills or thought.

Name me just 1 popular game, where its impossible to make a bot play it reasonably well!?

Re:Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

Nethack

Re:Bots

[GodInHell]

Tic-Tac-Toe :) They always quit when they realize they can't win, and then they stop killing the world like I wanted them to.

Seriously though.. Bots do a BAD job of playing in these enviroments. That's why they don't workin in games like City of Heroes that have a death peanlty. The operative term in wow for leveling is "grind." I ground my way to 60 with a druid.. and a rogue.. and a mage.. and then I stopped one day when my butt hurt and I had nothing to show for all my hours and realized I was performing a robotic repetative act and calling it "fun." If someone has to behave like a robot, let it be a computer.

-GiH

Re:Bots

[Cookie3]

until you have to be reasonably intelligent to survive these encounters a bot will be successful.

This is why the bots only focus on the mobs that have little or no scripting, no special abilities, and generally are vulnerable to any sort of attack.

Re:Bots

[cbhacking]

While I don't personally play WoW, a lot of my friends do and I've seen exactly this kind of behavior (repetitive, predictable mob fights, etc.) PvP adds a different element, but a bot could do a lot of grinding in relative safety.

What I'm curious about is what do you think of EVE in this context? Sure, mining asteroids is both boring as hell and easily scriptable (and, left for a few hours, racks up amazing levels of cash) but there tends to be a bit more variation in the fights. Okay, you can stick to one particular TYPE of fight (staying away from missile-armed enemies, visiting deadspace rats where you know their fighting style, etc.) but in general it would seem very different. Also, the real valueable stuff in EVE is all in the low security space, and in lowsec you are ALWAYS at risk of getting jumped by a PVPer. Short of making a best attempt to flee (tricky if the first thing the enemy does is scramble your warp drive and perhaps web your sublight). I don't really think I'd trust a bot to be adaptable enough in a PvP fight.

Re:Bots

[oddfox]

Exactly, WoW bot programs, and Glider is the only one that I've even looked into before out of curiosity (A friend of mine was using it for a very short time to grind overnight while sleeping, stopped after a couple days because he decided it wasn't worth losing his account over), do nothing complicated. From what I remember reading before about Glider specifically, you set up an area to be patrolled with your character and outline basic actions that your character is to take as it does its patrols. These bots can resurrect themselves and pick up where they left off should they die (And they do, a lot. Especially if someone goes PvP on you. No bots react to PvP). Tell your botted character to run around the zone picking herbs or mining ore, or to kill the same mob over and over in an attempt to get its prized loot, they do stuff like that IIRC.

It's not like people are using bots to run raids or instances, they use them for the grunt work. :) Oh, and it sure has taken long enough for Blizz to do something.

P.S. -- Nice low number Cookie3. I r jealous. :(

Re:Bots

[zippthorne]

But this only raises the most important question of all:

Why is there so much "grunt work" in what is ostensibly a game?

Re:Bots

[oddfox]

I didn't realize that every game was supposed to be as instantly gratifying as, say, Duck Hunt. You're looking for the wrong thing in a game if you dislike it because of "grunt work" that you have to do. Would you rather that reagents and tradeskill items were simply rationed out to people? Or that every mob in the game dropped, to use an EQ term, phat lewtz? There's grunt work in everything, and depending on my mood I could turn the question around and ask it of real life.

In any case, anyone who's played a pen-and-paper RPG, and didn't have a DM/whatever just make life a breeze for them, is quite familiar with trudging through the average stuff in order to get to the goodies. World of Warcraft and for the most part every other MMORPG emulates this as best they can.

Re:Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is true (that WoW is quite repetitive), the bot is much simpler than the OP assumes. You actually assign it a path to follow with way points, and it follows the path fairly blindly, killing mobs hugely less powerful than your own character in a very inefficient way, then automatically looting them. It is not used to go to instances and kill raid bosses, or do anything that useful, other than to farm items and money (or slowly grind EXP to level without you having to be there). Even if you used it for auto-levelling, you'd have to come back every few hours to take the bot to a new area, as it would quickly level too far above the mobs it was killing to gain any EXP from killing them. The auto-levelling would be kinda pointless anyway, as an experienced power-leveller can get pretty much any class from 1-60 in around 4 days playtime. The bot would probably take in the region of 10-15, and would need a significant amount of hand-holding.

It would be next to useless in WoW PvP, and cannot kill any hard mobs for end-game items. I have played both Eve and WoW, and they are both exploitable in this way, the only difference is, on a WoW PvE server, players cannot kill the bot (unless they use one of a few exploits themselves to flag the bot for PvP combat), whereas in Eve, anyone can come along and blow the bot away (although death in Eve is a lot more painful than death in WoW).

The reason WoW glider is such a thorn in Blizzard's side is a) it sends key presses and mouse events to the actual WoW client, making it look (more like) someone is actually playing the game, rather than hacking the protocol (which actually would against the DMCA); and b) it is regularly updated to prevent detection by the warden anti-hacking software.

Re:Bots

[vadim_t]

Realtime Strategy games.

I've yet to see a RTS where the AI can manage being even moderately difficult without resorting to cheating. The Starcraft AI for example, cheats badly by getting periodic resource injections. From what I heard, Civilization also cheats.

Re:Bots

[WilliamSChips]

Go, Hex, and similar games.

Re:Bots

[Whip]

WoW has _plenty_ of encounters that require quite a bit of intelligence and brainpower to overcome. No, they're not all like that, and I wouldn't want them to be.

The bots just exploit the simple mindless things, the things that no sane person would do over and over again for months on end. There's plenty else out there, the bots just don't touch it.

Re:Bots

[644bd346996]

Civilization, on the harder levels, does cheat. On the easier difficulty levels, though, the AIs are penalized to keep them from getting too strong too quickly. I'm not sure about Civ4, but in Civ3 it is possible to set up the game such that the only meaningful advantage the AIs have is that they know all the terrain before exploring.

Freeciv is also notorious for having a ruthless warmongering AI, but once you get used to it, the game is pretty easy, and the beginner levels have been tamed.

Re:Bots

[Lonewolf666]

Yes, Civilisation (II) cheats, at least on the higher levels. Play as Emperor or Deity and the computer gets a significant productivity bonus. Other games simply give the AI more ressources to start with, and the player has to find a way to compensate.

Re:Bots

[brkello]

Look at your life and think about how much of it could be automated by bots. Your expectations are unrealistic if you think a game could be so dynamic that people can not come up with a bot for certain aspects of the game.

Re:Bots

[Toridas]

In Civ 4 when you choose a difficulty, the game tells you when the AI starts cheating. I believe around the 4th difficulty level is the "fair game" where they get no bonuses over the player.

Re:Bots

[Anonymous Coward]

"Name me just 1 popular game, where its impossible to make a bot play it reasonably well!?"

Charades.

Re:Bots

[Morphine007]

Exactly! If only blizzard would make this kind of thing a part of the game, or at least legal, I'd probably start playing WoW again. It's just silly that, as fun as WoW is, it's got such boring repetitive grinding in it. It's really quite annoying.

Re:Bots

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The thing is, you rarely HAVE to spend hours fighting the same enemies over and over in WoW.

It's very possible to enjoy every aspect of the game, from PvP combat to end-game raiding, with very little "grinding" or "farming." Those who do grind or farm a lot are usually after marginal benefits or "prestige" items with no major functional advantage. Even in the most "endgame" raid guilds, those basement-nerd collectives you've heard about filled with people who play 30+ hours a week, most of those people only spend a couple of those hours a week or less doing things that a bot could do for them. The rest of the time they're actually having fun killing stuff that requires effort and intelligence.

Re:Bots

[permawired]

One small problem with your idea.... The general public doesn't want to play a game that is overly difficult. They want something they can relax and unwind with at the end of a day. That and MMORPGs are meant to be rather social vs complex thought invoking game play.

Re:Bots

[lazyl]

I completely disagree. Aimbots play first person shooters (FPS) far better then most people, but that doenst mean that FPS require no skills or thought.

You're impling causation in his argument where there is none. He didn't say that the game requires no skill because you can write a bot to play it. I can write a program to play chess and I can write a program to play tic-tac-toe and that has nothing to do with the level of skill required in the game. He didn't suggest otherwise.

What he is saying is that the tasks that this specific bot is designed to automate are monotonous and the fact that this type of bot is so popular and useful reflects how monotonous the game is overall.

Re:Bots

[XiaoGirl]

"For an MMO to be successful it must play to the lower common denominator. If a game requires any significant amount of player skill in order to succeed then it will crash and burn, as the average player simply isn't that good when you are talking about games with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and especially millions of players."

Umm... it's called EvE Online and it's all but entirely player-driven content. I'm an admitted ex-WoW addict myself and EvE really is a breath of fresh air. I'm not forced to abide by whatever content the manufacturer shoves down my throat... with EvE the game is what you make of it. Hell even gaining FACTION is easier! (No more killing 100000 Furblogs to get faction with someone). EvE has taken the grind aspect out of the MMO experience.

Re:Bots

[the_raptor]

Play EvE for over six months and say there is no grind. The only way to make money is to either be incredibly skilled, incredibly lucky, or grind your little heart out. At least in warcraft if all you want to do is PVP then you have to touch very little PVE content (and semi-decent gear is easier to get in PVP), but in EvE if you die you lose your ship and everything on it. Which means you either have to be so good you die very little, or spend significant amounts of time grinding to buy new ships. I played in high end PVP corps and we spent the majority of our time doing PVE content so that we could afford to PVP. EvE is a game of logistics, not of tactics and strategy.

Re:What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[Jeian]

What Blizzard is saying with this statement is "using cheats is illegal in our game but also creating them is too". So when that baseball pitcher who's hitting his 40's and lost alot of speed on his fast ball starts using hair gel, ben-gay etc to get a little extra speed on his throws, does Major League Baseball punish him and the companies that make those products?

But there's a key difference there. The products you mentioned have a legitimate everyday use, while WoWGlider exists for the sole purpose of breaking a legal agreement.

Clever Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. I bet this guy was never visited and is making up this story for two purposes:

i) To raise awareness of this 'product', hoping that by making news on Slashdot et al, people will be tempted to purchase the product.

ii) To show how 'safe' it is to run his macro tool. Most WoW players wouldn't risk having their account banned by running a tool like this, but IF Blizzard have to visit the author to shut down the distibution, that must mean that they can't detect you using it, and you can't be banned - it must be safe!

1) Write WoW bot
2) Convince world it's undetectable
3) Profit!

Re:Clever Marketing

[Jarnis]

And it most definitely is not undetectable. His own boards have dozens of pages of posts from his customers who got their accounts banned for using WOWGlider.

Funniest are the morons who whine how their other accounts got banned too - stuff like 'I only glided on one (farming) account, they wtfpwned my main account too!!!' (duh, TOS says Blizzard can nuke all your accounts if you violate it)

Anyway, WOWGlider dev is a lowlife who profits from runing the game for those who actually belive in playing by the rules. So props to Blizzard if they actually try to bury him in legal crap - he'd deserve something much worse, but sadly judges don't toss people into jail for hacking game clients with the intent of ruining the game for all players.

Re:Clever Marketing

[Technician]

I bet this guy was never visited

Read the article, then follow the link to the lawsuit.

It would be very foolish to file a lawsuit and make a false claim that is easly proven. He was visited. It is part of the complaint in the court document. A false statement here would be disaster at a jury trial.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dude" DID charge for the program, but I guess it was too much to click on the link to check? Want to revise your comment?

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[Sinryc]

Um, the demo is free. He charges 25 dollars for full functionality.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[Ash-Fox]

But dude doesn't charge money for it does he?

He does.

I think it says a lot about WoW

[3dWarlord]

If people are willing to pay for a program to play the game for you.

Re:I think it says a lot about WoW

[rob1980]

Says a lot about the people paying for the program, you mean.

Re:I think it says a lot about WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

There's money involved in many cases... gold farming.

Description?

[TravisW]

Some of us here (me included) are interested in legal issues but don't play WoW. A better summary would have included a description of the program, so that those of us who don't keep up with this niche have to fish around through links.

From the (admittedly linked) WoW Glider Homepage. "WoW Glider is a tool that plays your World of Warcraft character for you, the way you want it. It grinds, it loots, it skins, it heals, it even farms soul shards... without you."

I don't need the karma, but Glider FAQ

-T

What's illegal about cheating in a game?

[grimJester]

It would be nice to get some more details on this. There are a couple of things that could be illegal about WoWGlider. The first is the name: using a trademark of Blizzard is probably not legal. The other, the DMCA thing would likely be something-or-other related to hacking.

Selling tools that interact with other software is not illegal. You can sell software that automates eBay auctions, for example. As long as it doesn't act as a denial of service attack or contain material copyrighted by someone else (shipping a hacked WoW client w. all the graphics, for example) everything should be fine. Cheating in a game is not illegal.

Re:What's illegal about cheating in a game?

[murphyje]

While "World of Warcraft" is certainly a registered trademark of Blizzard, Inc., to my knowledge "WoW" has never even been claimed as a trademark by Blizzard.

Re:What's illegal about cheating in a game?

[reanjr]

I may be mistaken, but I dont't think WoW is a trademark. World of Warcraft, yes; WoW, no. I don't know how they would get a registered trademark on such a short, ubiquitous word that is also the name of a common MS software compatibility layer. And I think they would have a hard time protecting an unregistered trademark like that.

The bot gave itself away..

[Channard]

.. by not emoting 'HAY GUYZ I NEED A HEAL' or 'WANNA JOIN MY GUILD' every five seconds. Actually I guess Blizzard are worried not so much by the DMCA stuff as the fact this takes away human interaction from the game. Which is, after all, the only real reason to play an MMORPG and not an offline RPG.

Unfair

[Swordless Samurai]

I do believe that it is unfair for bot's to be used. yes, it does underlie the flaw that this game is repetitive, but it still violates the TOS that you agree to when you play the game. No matter if you feel that using the bot is right or wrong, you have broken a legally binding contract that you informally made with the creators(suppliers), so yes, you should be punished. It is not fair to the ones who can barely pay the $15 a month to play to only have someone who has more money to pay for other services to be better. In all honesty, it cheapens the game to know that everything someone who has played 1000 hours on can just be achieved in 10 hours by a bot. It's almost like buying a new game, just to use the cheats to get to the end.

Re:Unfair

[Hubbell]

If you can 'barely' afford $15 a month to play an MMORPG, you shouldn't even be playing one in the first place.

Re:Unfair

[oddfox]

There are plenty of people living paycheck to paycheck who have an outlet like World of Warcraft when they want to relax and play a game or just kill time. There are also plenty of kids whose allowance or money earned from chores/etc doesn't cover a whole lot other than their favorite game. But I guess it certainly was easier to do what you did. Requires less thinking about possible scenarios, or thinking in general, rather.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, where exactly did you pick up the assumption that a bot can play 10 hours and achieve what 1000 man hours can produce?

Ignorance is somewhat innocent of course but I assure you a bot on WoW atleast does not play anywhere near as efficiently as a human operator.

The reason people keep getting caught is because bots are obvious and slower than humans at killing (they don't have the judgement that a human does).

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, the TOS is not a legally binding contract. At best it's an informal one sided agreement, i.e. a stern telling to... "Please do this and not that and if you break these simple rules you are not welcome to play."

Second, the WoW Glider bot typically takes longer than actually playing the character in order to gain it's levels, and it is completely restricted from gaining the high level instance gear and the only PvP it does is a rather silly attempt to fight back if attacked. Meanwhile the people using it are free too actually spend some time outdoors or with family and friends while their character's level up to 60.

They pay to use the game as everyone else, and when banned they typically buy a new copy and continues. Blizzard could quite possibly be making more money from a single banwave than a month of regular sales. I think I'd rather be jealous of Blizzard for raking in the dough instead of be jealous of someone who has found a way to play the game that suits him. My way suits me better.

Re:Unfair

[GodInHell]

Uhm.. remind me how one person rushing to 60 hurts another person who takes their time? It's not like the bot runs PvP for them. Bots don't do the instances where all the prime loot is either. Money? Money in one persons hands drives the economy for the proverbial hard-up player, who, taking their time to play along, will have collection skills to sell the resources those folks interested only in efficency will simply buy from the auction rather than collecting by hand.

It's just a game dude, not the valuation of a man's soul.
-GiH

Re:Unfair

[oddfox]

I have two words for you -- Purchasing power. The people that bot ruin the game economy across all servers through their ill-gotten goods, whether those goods be trade items or raw gold. A person who bots their way to 60 in a week, effectively having no downtime due to the bot, is going to have gained plenty in gold and items by that time. There's plenty of fine loot to be had outside of instances, though without a doubt if you want the best for your level you're going to have to group it in an instance, and most of the money is to be had in trade skills. A miner/herbalist is always a guaranteed way to make a good living on any server. Certainly not a killer unless you devote a lot of time to it (So much so that leveling takes a back seat), and not as big a cash cow as high level enchanting, but it is good money nonetheless.

You might think otherwise, but quite frankly, the facts speak for themselves, and everyone is getting sick of gold farmers and the like being a largely ignored problem. I've been playing since the game was released, on old servers and new, and they all share the same affliction.

P.S. -- The really good loot in any instance is bind on pickup for the most part, so you can't resell it in the first place, so pointing out that bots aren't raiding instances is a little misguided. PvP is not the focus, though it is a point, because of course with easier funds, better equipment is more easily had. And yes, it is just a game. A game that is at high risk of losing a considerable amount of its base through this problem. This can be said of any gaming community -- Cheaters piss off every legit character who feels their time investment is worth a damn. That this is not a valuation of a man's soul is irrelevant and your attempt to minimize the situation by "putting it in perspective" fails, simply because you misunderstand the entire issue at hand.

Re:Unfair

[Hubbell]

If you're living paycheck to paycheck you're doing something wrong and need to focus on either 1. Getting a better job, or 2. Learning how to manage money better.

Re:Unfair

[GodInHell]

you only have so many bag slots.. and the bot does not sell for you. Gold farmers are already 60, and they just cruise around killing critters for hours and hours collecting gold off the corpses for the most part.

Gold farming, however, is not a botting problem. Some use bots, many more use chinese labor.

Yes, the best items are BoP.. they're also in instances. There's not a thing to stop a bot from picking up a BoP item, so I think you're a little off yourself.

The Economy in WoW does have a problem.. but it's the same problem every MMORPG has eventually.. too many capped out players running around in instances grinding for top-loot incedentally picking up HUGE volumes of gold for which they have no purpose but to sell it, or hand it down to lower level alts. This is why the economy will inflate, with, or without bots and gold famers. It's a purely additive system - there is no cap on the amount of gold which exists, therefore there will always be an increasing amount of gold in the economy, therefore inflation. Econ 101 pal. The two sollutions are to:
1) put a cap on the total gold available on a server that rises proprtionate to the average level on the server.
2) create NPC stores that actually have items level 60 players would want... if not useful items, how about unique clothing or armor modding items (Want an all yellow suit of teir 2 epics.. buy this mod for all 8 pieces.), or unique clothing that can only be purchased for 4 weeks before it's gone forever.. housing with a monthly rent is another good money sink.

Until there's somewhere for all that money to go, other than raising prices for 20th level items (useful for the PvPers that like the low level games) you're going to have these issues.

-GiH

Re:Unfair

[oddfox]

Wow, I wish I could live in such a black and white world and not realize it's a fabrication of my mind. Seriously, you appear to have no idea that there are so many variables, more than can be accurately brought up in this reply and keep it at a sane length to myself, that influence one's financial situation. I'll respond directly to the two (predictable) points you mention though:

1. Not always a possibility at any given time, sorry.

2. The best managing of one's money in the world does not modify one's actual income, and your recommendation makes the presumption that the person is spending wastefully in the first place.

But hey, it's cool to talk down to people in a worse situation than you are these days. I won't even go into something like being a single parent, whatever gender you happen to be.

Re:Unfair

[robnauta]

The Economy in WoW does have a problem.. but it's the same problem every MMORPG has eventually.. too many capped out players running around in instances grinding for top-loot incedentally picking up HUGE volumes of gold for which they have no purpose but to sell it, or hand it down to lower level alts. This is why the economy will inflate, with, or without bots and gold famers.

That's strange, everywhere you go and everyone you ask seems to say that raiding is a moneysink for repaircost and potions/consumables. You must be about the only person existing that claims that the top level players raiding or doing instances are gathering massive amounts of gold.

Re:Unfair

[GodInHell]

That's strange, everywhere you go and everyone you ask seems to say that raiding is a moneysink for repaircost and potions/consumables. You must be about the only person existing that claims that the top level players raiding or doing instances are gathering massive amounts of gold.

Oh sorry, of course, you're right.. 60's are going broke everywhere. They can afford nothing, and are constantly begging in the streets to recoup their raiding expenses.
Sorry, but your annecdote is false. Raiding does produce cash, as does all that grinding for reputation that 60's do because there's little better to do between raids. Toss in the value recovered from selling blue BoE items and shards gathered inside raids, and it's very easy to rack up a big bank account. The system is internally flawed... but hey, if you'd rather blame the users, go ahead, I won't try to stop you.

-GiH

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[phantomlord]

if this was like, a program or something there of that was designed to say, DDoS a WoW server, then I'd understand. If it was designed to keylog people's WoW account info or auto delete their in-game characters/items yea.

What if a bug ends up in the program that does DDoS a WoW server? What if it DDoS a WoW zone? What if it denies a legitimate user from completing a quest or working on a tradeskill or something because it consumes all the resources as soon as they become available, faster than a player can react? How do you know for sure it isn't keylogging people or copying their account info? How do you know that they haven't found a way to dupe items and are using it to dupe to give the item to one of their own bots so they can sell it?

But since when is creating a "cheat" for a game, againist the law?

I've never played WoW... that said, depending on how Glider works, it could involve intercepting and decrypting an encrypted stream and that could be a violation of the good old DMCA.

dude doesn't charge money for it does he?

Even though he does charge for it, it doesn't really matter. AFAIK, they aren't distributing any Blizzard copyrighted code so its not a fair use case. Further, if I give away free tshirts that I pressed with the Nike swoosh on them and take a loss on it, Nike can still sue me for violating their trademark.

does Major League Baseball punish him and the companies that make those products?

Ben-gay, Tylenol, etc have legal and non-performing enhancing uses and aren't banned in the various substance abuse policies by any sporting group that I know of. Glider serves one purpose, which is to interact with a server, against its terms of service, to enhance the play above what the terms of service allows.

do the major sport companies go after the steroid manufacturers?

See BALCO and Victor Conte for an example.

it's bullshit. I'm sure they'll pull something out of their ass saying his usage of the WoW client to reverse engineer some kind of program has violated their Copyrights yadda yadda yadda but in terms of fair use, assuming he wasn't making profit off of WoW Glider, I think he could get away with it. WoW Players feel free to mod me down , I don't condone cheating in such a manner but at the same time Blizzard has been real asshatery in the last two years abou cheating (Warden, anybody?).

As I said, profit has absolutely nothing to do with it and irregardless, your assumption about not charging for it is false. I hate the DMCA as much as the next guy but its very possible he violated it to create his program. Someone might argue that WoW players may have standing to sue him and his clients (possibly Blizzard depending on if their disclaimer forbids it and stands up) for using a program which interferes with the ability of non-infringing players to enjoy the game. Finally, if you read the article and/or the filing, it is MDY preemptively suing Blizzard to try to seek a judgment that they aren't breaking the law, not Blizzard suing MDY at this point.

Just a tip... before you try to expose something for idiotic, you might want to actually read whats going on first or else you risk exposing yourself. Then again, this is Slashdot.

Not illegal to read RAM + control mouse/keyboard

[Morgaine]

What's illegal about cheating in a game?

Nothing. But then Blizzard/Vivendi wouldn't be so utterly stupid to try to sue him for cheating in a video game. The worst they could do is ban him from it, which I'm sure they've already done.

However, they might try to sue him for interfering in some way with their software. That would be incredibly hard to do though, since he does not modify anything nor copy anything over which Blizzard have copyright. (Copyright is a protection on works, and not on dynamically created in-core data, under any circumstances.) And he has not stolen any commercial secrets either, as long as he didn't go dumpster diving around the back of Blizzard labs. Reverse engineering for interoperability is certainly perfectly legal, and that's what Glider does, interoperate with WoW.

What's more, he has not circumvented any DMCA protection device either, since he is merely reading system memory which is not protected but in the clear. And it's his own machine's (or user's machine's) memory, so clearly he (or the user) has every right to read it.

Finally, he uses that information to drive the user's keyboard and mouse. Well, I'd like to see anyone challange his right to do that. ;-)

DMCA?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm curious about the details of this. I suppose I should RTFA, but really, what more can they do to this guy other than ban him and anyone using his software?

In what way can they actually sue him for simply developing software?

Don't get me wrong, I'd very much like to see him go down, hard, even though I wish Blizzard would bother to make WoW less of a grind. But not using DMCA tactics, not if this means what I think it means. In general, providing the means to do something illegal should not, by itself, be illegal.

legal issues

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.wowglider.com/legal/Complaint1.pdf

Before you use a program like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please think of the poor Koreans.

Re:What's next?

[no_pets]

I realize that you were being funny but it did bring up a good point - cheat codes in games. The game industry has been providing ways for people to cheat for as long as there have been computer games. So, why now, give cheats such a hard time? Besides, it's not like he was hacking the server. The software just randomly moves your character around and hacks stuff for experience.

That bad of a game, eh?

[pizzach]

If a game is so suckie that you are willing to pay for a computer program to do it for you....wouldn't it be better to just not get the game to begin with?

Re:That bad of a game, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, like chess?

Re:That bad of a game, eh?

[Durrok]

To farm items and gold to sell to people IRL for real cash, to farm for ingredients for items you are going to use in a raid later that night when you are not there, etc.

Re:That bad of a game, eh?

[15Bit]

Exactly. Buying a program to play a game for me seems to render the game pointless - i buy a game for personal entertainment, not to keep my computer busy when i'm not there.

WoW isn't the first game to have bots for it

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of thing isn't new. It's been done for years with online gaming sites like pogo.com. EA (which owns Pogo) tried to scare the bot makers away a while back, but it was all talk. Legally they have no grounds for a lawsuit, except for maybe trademark infringement. Since then they have largely given up the fight and accepted it, which is what I expect Blizzard to do.

DMCA Sucks, Free the Code!!!

[Sage Gaspar]

Unless someone's using it to bot in our favorite MMO, in which case they deserve it up the ass any way Blizzard can hand it out.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[Anonymous Coward]

What if a bug ends up in the program that does DDoS a WoW server? What if it DDoS a WoW zone? What if it denies a legitimate user from completing a quest or working on a tradeskill or something because it consumes all the resources as soon as they become available, faster than a player can react? How do you know for sure it isn't keylogging people or copying their account info? How do you know that they haven't found a way to dupe items and are using it to dupe to give the item to one of their own bots so they can sell it?

I mean what is the point of the above? Any closed source program could do those things, accidentally or intentionally which means jack diddly shit about their legality or whatnot. Until you catch them doing any of it the programs are not doing any of them, it's like saying we should arrest someone, with no evidence at all, simply because they may commit a crime (which applies to everyone).

No, Glider benefits all parties, except demagogues

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, WOWGlider dev is a lowlife who profits from runing the game for those who actually belive in playing by the rules.

Except that what you say is factually incorrect. He profits only from those who wish to have their gaming experience improved by Glider --- they pay him for that improvement, and an exceedingly good improvement it is. After all, to mindlessly repeat grinding or farming actions thousands of times is the ultimate in braindead activity, and completely at odds with fun gameplay.

And no, it doesn't ruin the game for those who enjoy grinding or farming. In fact, they may have to do it even longer because of Glider, so he has extended the gaming experience which they enjoy.

See, you can't have it both ways. The only way in which you could validly complain that he does you a disservice is by admitting that you dislike WoW's grinding but that you want everyone to suffer it equally. And if you do that, then (i) you don't like WoW so why play it, and (ii) you are basically coercive towards your fellow players, which is not nice.

What's next?-Online ethics.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well first of all most games disable cheat codes in multiplayer mode. Second cheat codes aren't ment for player cheating but ease of development for the programmer, Just like a back-door password isn't so the programmer can rob the place.

Third you and the guy above in this age of "flexible morality" seem to forget that intent and ethics are important. Do you really like playing a game against someone who cheats be it with a bot or an exploit of the code?

Re:What's next?

[Flentil]

Cheat codes are a ompletely different issue. They are used almost excusively in single player games that don't effect anyone else's gameplay. If you want to cheat against other people (and make them unhappy in the process) you have to turn to an outside source. A bot program. I don't know of any games that include cheat codes designed to work in multiplayer, spoiling the fun of your opponents. I know that many are working hard to detect and ban bot programs because they ruin the game for honest players, spending money to avoid losing customers. Going after the bot writers is just the next step.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[phantomlord]

The grandparent specifically said that it would be different if the program did those things. All I did was point out that we don't know if it does those things so implied assumptions about facts we don't know is asinine. Blizzard would certainly have standing to sue if the instability of the servers in the past was related to people using this program, would they not? Blizzard has no legal obligation to disclose the reasons the servers were down to their player base.

And once again, I repeat, Blizzard did not sue MDY, MDY sued Blizzard. There is absolutely no legal filing of a crime or civil infringement having taken place at this point.

Sure

[umbrellasd]

Glider is bot software, but you cannot win a settlement against the creator of such software. It is the player that uses the software that is violating the Terms, and for doing that, they can be banned. If Blizzard could credibly argue that this single player is damaging their revenue in a noticeable way (very difficult, since the truth is that almost no other player is walking away from WoW because of this one player botting, and more likely, the botter would quit if forced to play without the bot, which implies the bot program actually increases WoW revenue), they have no case for a damage settlement.

It is Blizzard's failing in creating a game which is so repetitive as to be easily susceptible to automated play. Even if they can make some legal point on this issue, it is still pathetic that one person can write a little program, the game is so tiresome to enough people that he actually makes money selling it, and that this so worries Blizzard that they show up at his door and threaten legal action which is actually an act of intimidation rather than one of true litigious substance.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[neoscsi]

I've never played WoW... that said, depending on how Glider works, it could involve intercepting and decrypting an encrypted stream and that could be a violation of the good old DMCA.

Glider does everything by reading the combat log (which WoW will output to a text file automatically), screen scrapping, and sending key sequences. It doesn't doing anything to the game that a person couldn't do themselves.

No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[petrus4]

Personally, I hope they legally/economically bury him.

The reality is that Blizzard have had to do battle with people like Michael Donnelly since the days of the first Diablo game. Such people amount to destructive, sociopathic adolescents. They don't contribute anything positive, while in the case of Diablo 1 and 2 anyway, managing to degrade gameplay for pretty much everyone.

People can call me a shill as much as they want, but Blizzard are one company that I feel very positive about. I know there are a lot of companies where this isn't the case, but in my experience anyway with Blizz in particular it's pretty simple...be square with them, and they will be square with you. Be a subversive, anarchic 14 year old, (as in the case of bnetd, WoWGlider, and the D1/D2 hacks) and you'll get what you deserve...the proverbial legal takedown. While I normally don't condone the existence of the DMCA, I'm glad it's there in cases like this, since it gives them some legal framework to exact justice.

(Note to any of the abovementioned subversive types who may feel like responding to this and attempting to refute me; please don't bother. You don't agree with me, I don't agree with you...let's just leave it at that. I've spent more than enough time arguing with Slashdot's more anarchic (read: pro-FSF) residents in the past...I really don't want to know that you exist any more, to be honest)

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Lord Kano]

People can call me a shill as much as they want,

That, you are.

but Blizzard are one company that I feel very positive about.

And quite obviously a fanboy.

Be a subversive, anarchic 14 year old, (as in the case of bnetd, WoWGlider, and the D1/D2 hacks) and you'll get what you deserve...the proverbial legal takedown.

What precisely was the problem with bnetd? Other than the technical DMCA infraction, that is. It wasn't used to cheat or to degrade anyone else's experience with online games.

LK

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[IpalindromeI]

My understanding is that WoWGlider works by reading the memory WoW writes to, using that to determine what's going on, and sending keypresses and mouse movements to control the character. Please explain how this is a copyright violation or circumventing an authentication measure.

Would you like all macro programs, even ones that aren't used for cheating in games, to be illegal? Because this is how they all work. In fact, this is how almost every piece of software works. Programs need to read from and write to memory, and to be useful, they need to produce output. This program's output is keystrokes and mouse movements. I realize you don't like cheaters, but how about focus on them instead? They are the ones violating the terms of service.

It would be pretty disappointing if developing software became illegal because corporations don't like some of the things that are produced. This guy has done nothing illegal. It seems rather dangerous to set a precedent for punishing people that haven't broken the law. Please stop being so short-sighted.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is the purpose of a law court: To make sure cheaters in videogames are brought to justice.

Moron.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[petrus4]

And quite obviously a fanboy.

A question...why is being a fanboy necessarily a bad thing? Do you advocate approaching everything from a perspective of jaded cynicism? I've noticed the marked tendency towards general negativity on Slashdot...and when people deviate from that, the assumption is made that the person in question is either hopelessly naive, or a nut.

What precisely was the problem with bnetd? Other than the technical DMCA infraction, that is. It wasn't used to cheat or to degrade anyone else's experience with online games.

Apart from anything else, I simply found myself wondering why the people in question couldn't simply develop their own game, rather than spending time back engineering Blizzard's games. Plenty of FOSS games exist, or they could have made something with WorldForge, as another example. Yet another thing they could have done was to create a FOSS D1 or 2 clone (with enough difference that they could avoid prosecution, a la FreeCiv) with all the multiplayer capabilities they wanted. I have to believe that given the technical requirements of bnetd itself, they would have had the skill necessary to do such a thing, as well.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Pootie Tang]

While I normally don't condone the existence of the DMCA, I'm glad it's there in cases like this, since it gives them some legal framework to exact justice.

I agree with you in part (don't like hacks, though I feel bnetd has legitimate uses), but not to this conclusion. A legal framework which can exact justice in some cases and pervert justice in others is a bad legal framework. It's ripe for abuse.

The United States of America is a country that I feel very positive about. I know there are a lot of countries where this isn't the case, but in my experience anyway with the USA in particular it's pretty simple...be square with them and they will be square with you. Nonetheless the idea that the president can waive the right to trial for anyone he, in his sole discretion, wants to is a horrible idea. If the system is setup in such a way that you just have to hope the people in power don't abuse it, it will be abused. The system must at least attempt to be fair and constrained, even if that means some shithead will sometimes get away with something.

Whether we're talking about the DMCA or the 6th amendment, the idea that laws should allow fucking everybody just to ensure you can fuck the fuckers is a bad theory. I personally don't see how the DMCA applies here, but if it does, I have a problem with that even if the outcome is one I'd like to see otherwise.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Lord Kano]

A question...why is being a fanboy necessarily a bad thing? Do you advocate approaching everything from a perspective of jaded cynicism?

To be completely honest, no. When my biases influence my objectivity, then there's nothing wrong with pointing that out.

Apart from anything else, I simply found myself wondering why the people in question couldn't simply develop their own game, rather than spending time back engineering Blizzard's games.

Because they liked Blizzard's games and wanted to be able to host servers on their own LANs.

I have to believe that given the technical requirements of bnetd itself, they would have had the skill necessary to do such a thing, as well.

They most likely could have, but why reinvent the wheel? What's wrong with them fixing the one thing that they did not like?

LK

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[petrus4]

My understanding is that WoWGlider works by reading the memory WoW writes to, using that to determine what's going on, and sending keypresses and mouse movements to control the character. Please explain how this is a copyright violation or circumventing an authentication measure.

They could get him under Section 1201 (a); "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

The game's Lua subsystem allows for macroing and automation of game elements, but also disallows access to the automation of a number of other elements of the game as well. As such, WoWGlider circumvents the Lua subsystem's prohibition of access to said game elements (such as commands allowing automation of movement and so on)

I myself use a number of scripts utilising the Lua subsystem, some of which automate quite complex series' of actions. The system is more flexible than it is given credit for.

I'm also curious...Did you ever play Ultima Online? The botting scenario got so bad with that game in the end that at times it was impossible to tell who was a live player at the keyboard and who wasn't. It wrecked the game, from the point of view of being multiplayer...if you're going to play something on your own with a heap of AI running around, that by definition isn't a multiplayer game...it's single player.

Would you like all macro programs, even ones that aren't used for cheating in games, to be illegal? Because this is how they all work.

You're keeping your argument centred on macro programs in general terms, rather than talking about WoWGlider specifically, because I think you know that that is the only area where you've got a solid argument. It probably couldn't *quite* be classified as a straw man...but it's close. ;-)

There are two points here:-
a) WoWGlider is being used exclusively to perform action/s that Blizzard are opposed to. Macroing itself *is* allowed within the game via the Lua subsystem; I myself use a number of scripts within this system, some of which perform quite complex series of actions.

b) Use of *any* programs which run outside WoW and interact with it are specifically prohibited in the Terms of Service. What that means is that it doesn't in fact matter what WoWGlider does; as a third party program it is in violation of the ToS.

The bottom line quite simply is this:- Blizzard own and run the server network that WoW is hosted on. Any offline establishment (restaurants, gaming houses and so on) on the planet has the ability to set its' own house rules with regards to dress, behaviour, and sometimes other things, and generally also has bouncers to enforce said rules. The only reason why there's a difference to that in this case in your and other people's heads is because the WoW client runs on your local machine.

Following on from that analogy, though...if you have a problem with the house rules of a given establishment, go somewhere else. There are that many other both open and closed source games around (both on and offline, and single and multiplayer) that it should not be a problem.

I think the major problem here is the attitude (perpetuated, as usual, by Richard Stallman) that says that purely because you're handing over money, any given vendor is both legally and morally obligated to give you whatever you want. They are not. They are obligated to give you exactly what has been negotiated by you and them; no more, and no less. Blizzard's ToS is very specific as to what you are being given in exchange for your money, as well as outlining what your remedy is if you're unhappy with that; to walk away, after which you're entirely free to either play a game produced by someone else, join a FOSS project creating a game which may have a scenario more to your liking, or start a project to do so. Blizzard do not (and could not) try to forbid you from playing a competing game if you are unhappy with their terms.

Yet another common a

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[BJH]

Please don't lump bnetd in with those other pieces of shit - it had a legitimate reason for existing (hosting networked games outside Battlenet), didn't interfere with the operation of Blizzard's servers, and used only reverse engineering to determine the format of on-the-wire messages. If you're saying a company should have the right to shut down any little guy they don't like, then I hope one day you get buried by some freewheeling corp.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[discord5]

Following on from that analogy, though...if you have a problem with the house rules of a given establishment, go somewhere else.

Ah, flawed analogy time (my favourite part of slashdot comments):

• Hey, I invented this thing called a gun, it's really harmful to other human beings, good thing I'm getting sued by the government for every murder someone else commits
• 10000 years ago, Ugh and Moort invented fire. Good thing they didn't have lawyers back then, as fire can be used to destroy other peoples property
• The designers of the SMTP protocol are still working to pay the damages caused by spammers world wide

Did you ever play Ultima Online? The botting scenario got so bad with that game in the end that at times it was impossible to tell who was a live player at the keyboard and who wasn't.

Seriously, if a game is that easily bottable, isn't a sign that the game is flawed? Yes, it's in their TOS (or rather "the agreement nobody reads when they patched") that you're not allowed to cheat, but truth be told, the cheater is violating the TOS, not the guy who wrote the software. The DMCA has very little to do with this, especially the piece you quoted.

I think the major problem here is the attitude (perpetuated, as usual, by Richard Stallman)

I'm guessing you've developed this attitude of the FSF's yourself;

Did RMS ever insult you at a linux convention or something? (I hear he does that sometimes) There's several posts here from you ranting about the FSF, and they've got nothing to do with this entire mess. Sure, RMS is an extremist in his stand on closed source software, patents and what not, but getting him, the FSF and the "mindset" of that community involved is just trolling.

The nVidia binary Linux drivers are a good example of this

The whole nvidia issue had to do with the GPL, and not the DMCA. IMHO, nvidia can distribute their drivers however they see fit, I don't need their drivers for my servers.

Ditto with a Linux port of WoW. People are currently complaining that there isn't a native Linux port of the game. Fine...but if one *does* get developed, said complaining will then simply move on to it being closed source...and so on, and so on.

That's what people do, they complain... Sun is shining? Too hot. It's snowing? Too cold. It's cloudy? Looks like it might rain. The original NWN client and server were ported to linux, and lo and behold, no masses of open sauce fanboys gathering on their forums yelling "Free the source!". Everybody who plays WoW either does it on windows or uses some version Wine. Who really needs a native linux client?

You're a fanboy, and when people point it out to you, you start ranting about RMS and the FSF. Blizzard can make some really nice games, but they're not that great a company when it comes to their customers. Do a little googling, and ignore the 14 year olds. Being a fanboy is one thing, blindly putting people or companies on pedestals and worshipping them like gods is another.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Jack9]

People can call me a shill as much as they want

Surprising you bring that up, since nobody has mentioned it. If that's what you were going for, you got it. Shill. Although it's more likely you're just deluded into thinking that what Blizzard wants equates to a definition of their rights. Their rights are not defined by some ambiguous and immature "be square with them, and they will be square with you." mentality. THAT'S being childish and unrealistic.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[ClamIAm]

Your arguments are pretty hilarious, dude.

They could get him under Section 1201 (a); "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

The game's Lua subsystem allows for macroing and automation of game elements, but also disallows access to the automation of a number of other elements of the game as well. As such, WoWGlider circumvents the Lua subsystem's prohibition of access to said game elements (such as commands allowing automation of movement and so on)

So you're claiming that memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title"? Good luck with that. ..

Also, way to throw in a big non-sequitur at the end there. Don't let those evil Free Software zealots poison your mind, because anyone who defines freedom differently than you is an evil anti-market pink commie.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Lemmy Caution]

...why is being a fanboy necessarily a bad thing?

Because:

1. it is an entirely dependent relationship. Your loyalty is going to a brand.

1a. and that brand is managed for the market and the market alone. Genuine aesthetic decisions come in second at best, always. Those brands will be managed to generate the optimal revenue stream, always.

1b. this dependent relationship makes you rather powerless. Most fans will engage in a lot of apologetics for the franchise, brand, or producer that has earned their loyalty, and sometimes it even leads to advocacy of questionable policy if it is in the interest of their brand.

2. It puts your role as "consumer" in front of an identity as "citizen," "thinker," "producer," or "critic." The "fan" is a very strange post-modern creation: it joins consumption with a kind of religious or spiritual devotion, or loyalty. It isn't exactly religion per se, but if consumer goods are the most dynamic and visible things in our environment - and I think they often are - then it isn't surprising that they can generate these kind of feelings. I find that troubling.

3. While one may have become a fan due to a positive experience of a product, the transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand. An investment into the brand is made that is disproportionate to the value of that experience. An example: fans going to see, repeatedly, Star Wars films that they know and admit are bad, while independent films of substantially higher quality (like Gattaca) are neglected.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[petrus4]

You're a fanboy, and when people point it out to you

I don't see it so much as fanboyishness as feeling as though I can relate in my own head to why Blizzard possibly has zero tolerance towards certain demographics of gamers with script kiddie tendencies.

But maybe I am a fanboy; I hadn't actually heard it put like that before, so it's a new concept. One thing that annoys me about that somewhat though is that a lot of people on Slashdot are irrationally worshipful about a whole lot of things, and somehow that's ok...I happen to be about one particular thing, and there's something wrong with it. I suspect however that what is really wrong with it is the fact that Blizzard are a corporation...and in the Marxist groupthink that Slashdot is renowned for, there aren't too many worse things than corporations. ;-)

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[petrus4]

So you're claiming that memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title"? Good luck with that. ..

No...I'm claiming that what's being stored at memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title." Pedantry, I know...but that is what law is generally based on.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[petrus4]

Did RMS ever insult you at a linux convention or something?

My main problem with Stallman/the FSF, generally speaking, is fourfold:-

• They try to tell people in very specific terms how to think, including attempting to dictate choice of vocabulary. The latter is one of the elements of thought reform (read: mind control) as documented by Robert Jay Lifton and other psychologists. This is one area where the FSF shows signs of having begun to follow the pattern of a fairly conventional cult.
  
• They have zero tolerance for perspectives other than their own, and believe that they can and should force everyone else on the planet to conform to their dictates if they simply engage in enough belligerent activism. (Although that again is another customary element of cultism)
  
• Stallman is able to rely on his followers to enforce conformity with his dogma, both here and in other places. They bully people, shout them down, and attempt to perpetuate the hive mentality without Stallman himself needing to be directly involved. In this way, they do the less than pleasant work of advancing "the movement," forward, while Stallman himself gets to remain relatively blameless. (Wow, three for three on the cult checklist...and I hadn't even realised before I wrote this!)
  
• Bradley Kuhn has openly stated that a goal of the FSF is to deny software developers the right to use any license, FOSS or otherwise, other than the GPL. It thus follows that they also seek the erradication of the BSDs.
  

In other words I basically saw the FSF as relevant to this topic purely from the point of view that I saw someone else who seemed to believe that they had the right to force Blizzard to conform to their wishes. Since I've observed that such a belief system is in line with the FSF's "mindset," as you put it, I saw the association.

A lot of the people who post to Slashdot show indications on a regular basis of being afflicted with the FSF's mind control, so it isn't necessarily unrealistic to assume that said mind control is going to influence the perspective of a person affected by it in general terms, rather than just in one or two areas. Hence, it's likely to be of at least peripheral relevance to pretty much any topic we might mention here, because it's an integral part of the ideological model of a large number of Slashdot readers.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[xutopia]

They are not circumventing the LUA subsystem as you say they do. Their work is in C# and doesn't even use LUA. It uses their own system that reads their own computer memory which is something that Blizzard doesn't own. The DMCA is there to prevent people from accessing stuff which they do not own like the source code to WoW. In this case the DMCA does not apply.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[ClamIAm]

I'm claiming that what's being stored at memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title."

I'm not so sure this is true. Even assuming that it is, your claim of anti-circumvention requires that there be something in place to prevent things like WoW Glider from working. This is where I'm pretty sure there's no way to prove your claim. You say that the Lua system counts for this, however the Lua system does not have any mechanism to prevent people simply peeking and poking memory addresses (which is what I assume the program does).

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Pofy]

>No...I'm claiming that what's being stored at memory
>address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title."

And were do you find any "technological measure that effectively CONTROLS access" to it?

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[petrus4]

They are not circumventing the LUA subsystem as you say they do. Their work is in C# and doesn't even use LUA.

What they are circumventing is the prohibition of the automation of certain actions. (And yes, that element of the WoW client *is* governed by Lua)

If you try and write scripts using the Lua subsystem which attempt to automate certain actions, (such as movement) you will get a message saying that that function is reserved for Blizzard's element of the UI, and to reload the UI with said script removed. WoWGlider allows you to circumvent this from outside the program; hence, the DMCA's prohibition of circumvention applies.

Whether WoWGlider itself is written in Lua or not is irrelevant.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[__aamkky7574]

Seriously, if a game is that easily bottable, isn't a sign that the game is flawed?

I presume you haven't heard of aimbots then? Honestly, this inanity has been repeated too many time in this thread.

P.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[IpalindromeI]

You're keeping your argument centred on macro programs in general terms, rather than talking about WoWGlider specifically, because I think you know that that is the only area where you've got a solid argument. It probably couldn't *quite* be classified as a straw man...but it's close. ;-)

No, I'm trying to point out how this case, if successful, could be used to target any general piece of software that a corporation doesn't like. "Your honor, in Blizzard v. WoWGlider, it was found that examining the contents of RAM on one's own computer is a delinquent act. The defendent in this case has done so in a way that hurts our bottom line/image and/or reveals sneaky things we are doing to exploit the public. We hereby move that the defendent be jailed, along with any other developers suspicious of our actions."

b) Use of *any* programs which run outside WoW and interact with it are specifically prohibited in the Terms of Service. What that means is that it doesn't in fact matter what WoWGlider does; as a third party program it is in violation of the ToS.

Look, I agreed with you on this point. Blizzard has the right to ban anyone they want for breaking the TOS. I don't care about those people. They knew they were breaking the rules, and they should be banned.

What I'm arguing against is suing the developer. The most Blizzard should be able to do in this case is ban people that use his software, including him. They shouldn't be able to sue him just for developing it.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[crabpeople]

"I'm also curious...Did you ever play Ultima Online? The botting scenario got so bad with that game in the end that at times it was impossible to tell who was a live player at the keyboard and who wasn't. It wrecked the game."

Did you? IF you did, you would know that UOAssist was at MINIMUM required to be an effective player. Are you saying you never set up a macro to sail the oceans, find lines, and gain skill? At the high levels there was no other way to go from say 115 to 120 magery other than doing it that way. And thats bs about bots ruining UO. EA ruined uo not bots.

The only reason you are upset by this is that you haven't yet realized how pointless wow is (aquiring items infinitely ftw) and are upset that a bot can do the only thing that the game is focused around - gathering and pimping items, as good or better than you can.

News flash: wow sucks, not people who game the system.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Snaller]

They could get him under Section 1201 (a); "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."


Yeah, there is no technological measure which protects anything to get around - the people who use it have paid for access to the work.

Use of *any* programs which run outside WoW and interact with it are specifically prohibited in the Terms of Service. What that means is that it doesn't in fact matter what WoWGlider does; as a third party program it is in violation of the ToS.

And even if that Tos was legal and an agreenwith the player, it would be the player who should be taken to task - not the programmer of the program.

Blizzard's ToS is very specific as

Which nobody cares about because its not a contract (If you reply to this message you own me a million dollars. Do you feel bound by that? No. People click an annoying button and they still haven't made any kind of agreement)

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Anonymous Coward]

What they are circumventing is the prohibition of the automation of certain actions. (And yes, that element of the WoW client *is* governed by Lua)

Whether WoWGlider itself is written in Lua or not is irrelevant. Ok so if software is missing some functionality, then adding this externally is illegal ? Say I make a DVD player with the reverse play option disabled, does this automatically make software players which do have this functionality illegal ? I don't think so.

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[goof21]

"1. it is an entirely dependent relationship. Your loyalty is going to a brand.

1a. and that brand is managed for the market and the market alone. Genuine aesthetic decisions come in second at best, always. Those brands will be managed to generate the optimal revenue stream, always.

1b. this dependent relationship makes you rather powerless. Most fans will engage in a lot of apologetics for the franchise, brand, or producer that has earned their loyalty, and sometimes it even leads to advocacy of questionable policy if it is in the interest of their brand."

WTF? You're seriously trying to intellectualize someone's taste in geek entertainment and make a case for it as a bad thing?

Response to 1: What's the dependency you're refering to? Seems to me unless we're talking brand loyalty to a smack dealer, he's free to walk away from the relationship at anytime - namely, when something better comes along. He's no slave to anything, the brand needs him, and not the other way around.

1a: a product is absolutely managed for the market, you're 100% correct. Beyond that, the statement you're trying to make here is oversimplified to the point of being absurd. Every product has a market they're trying to reach, and every product wants to appeal to that market. Whether the revenue stream is measured in paid subscriptions (in the case of WoW) or increased community support (in the case of FSF projects), it doesn't matter. As for "genuine aesthetic decisions" not driven by market demand, well, unless we're discussing pure art, they're best left second to function. Again, it puzzles me why you say all these things as if they're bad.

1b: on the contrary, the consumer has all the power. As I said, the marketer needs you more than you need it. As for questionable policy, that's all about personal values, isn't it? I like Oreos and am willing to share when I have some. Some eat my Oreos, others don't because Nabisco uses animal products in production of Oreos. This is objectional to some, but not to me, because I am not a vegetarian. Does this mean I deserve to be slapped with some kind of label with negative conotations, such as neanderthal carnivore, because I don't share these beliefs? Or should I be free to call the vegetarians a bunch of hippy-dippy nut jobs because they don't think like I do? Neither, I think.

"2. It puts your role as "consumer" in front of an identity as "citizen," "thinker," "producer," or "critic." The "fan" is a very strange post-modern creation: it joins consumption with a kind of religious or spiritual devotion, or loyalty. It isn't exactly religion per se, but if consumer goods are the most dynamic and visible things in our environment - and I think they often are - then it isn't surprising that they can generate these kind of feelings. I find that troubling."

2: It sounds to me like you've spent waaaaay too much time in a graduate Humanities program. It's extremely presumptous (not to mention arrogant) of you to assume you know this person's motivations for purchasing and enjoying a video game. Personally, I fail to see how someone being a "fanboy" of Blizzard makes any kind of statement on their ability to think, reason, or act responsibly as a member of society. Even in the sole context of making a purchasing decision regarding a MMO video game, you assume this person hasn't played any other MMO games, read any reviews of other MMOs, or done any introspective thinking into what he actually enjoys spending his leisure time playing. He simply must've heard "Blizzard!" whispered to him in a dream, and out of pure compulsion, gave in to the irresistable urge to buy their products, and play their game!

"3. While one may have become a fan due to a positive experience of a product, the transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand. An investment into the brand is made that is disproportionate to the value of that expe

Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author

[Lemmy Caution]

The criticism I'm making is based on a fanboy being something other than having geek tastes. I have geek tastes, and I play WoW.

The poster was described as a fanboy because he defends the practices and products of Blizzard, just because they are Blizzard. (That was the accusation thrown against him to begin with.) It's fine to like any given Blizzard product as such, and my own tastes are rich with geeky goodness. But I think it's important to resist turning that into anything more than a marginally higher expectation of quality from the producer. Apple fans, Blizzard fans, Nintendo fans, Sony fans, etc. have transferred their dedication to the producer. They'll justify the legal maneuvers of those producers, because they liked the products.

Your entire post is a response to a critique of taste that I'm not making.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[Zupkuck]

Thank you for this intelligent reply. Relativism doesn't fly, nor does any sense of 'sticking it to the man.' This guy acted as an enabler to the gold sellers and farmbots that detracted from thousands of customers' gaming experience.

Here is how it works.

[EvilCabbage]

It's pretty straight forward.

You generate your WoW character. You then fire up Glider, and enter the game.

You then set waypoints and alter variables that will determine how your character will respond to threats, bad guys, etc. How far it will pull a target in from, how often it will heal, will it skin corpses, so on and so forth.

Once the characterics are set, and the waypoints are all selected, you kick it off and the character will wander between your waypoints, killing enemies in the manner you suggested, until it's all looted out.

Personally, I got no problem with it, if I still bothered to play WoW (dropped my subscription a week ago).

Re:Here is how it works.

[Echo5ive]

It does, however, become a problem when there are five bots literally cleaning out entire areas making it impossible for the ordinary players to do their own quests there. And that's not exaggerating; I've seen it myself. If I wasn't on an RP server I'd attack them on sight if they were of the opposing faction.

Re:Here is how it works.

[AnotherBrian]

That is actually a problem with the game. Blizzard is using this as an excuse instead of fixing core elements of game play.

Re:Not illegal to read RAM + control mouse/keyboar

[reanjr]

Speaking along the lines of controlling the keyboard and mouse, he should find a coalition of those who find WoW to be inaccessible and make sure the media knows how Blizzard shits on the handicapped.

Re:What's next?

[dangitman]

Judge rules that entering Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start is a valid legal defense but Down, Right, Left, Left, Start, Select, Down results in Contempt of Court charges.

Do you need a 12 step program?

[deacon]

Are you enraged that some people have automated a mindless task while you are still doing it manually while paying monthly for the privelage?

Do people who use a can opener while you are still bashing your can of beans on a rock make you angry?

Do you hate those who use spell check while you are looking up words in the Un-abridged dictionary?

What about those assholes who use windsheild wipers instead of a squeege while driving? Not to mention those bastards who put gas in their cars instead of pushing their non-running cars down the street like you do?

If so, WOW has an offer for you!

Seriously, some of you need help. Paying a fee to perform mindless, repetative tasks that a program can do for you is idiotic. Gloating that someone who offers a product to automate this task is in trouble is just sad.

Re:Do you need a 12 step program?

[Brandee07]

Seeing someone else use a bot while you do the actual work is merely an irritant. The actual problem is what happens to the server economy once bot use and gold farming become commonplace.

What should happen is that a player finds a random semi-decent loot and puts it up on the Auction House for something vaguely resembling its actual value. However, if people are using farming bots while they sleep and have thousands of gold to through around, the players can put up the items for several times their value, and they will still sell quickly. The buyers who use bots don't care about price since they have more money than they need anyways. The players who DON'T use bots because they like, I dunno, playing the game themselves or something, now can no longer afford to buy regular, mediocre pieces of loot. They are forced to get farming bots themselves, buy gold online, or do without.

It's called mudflation, and it IS a problem on many servers.

What it comes down to is, should Blizzard allow their players to be forced into using 3rd party programs or buy gold from 3rd party dealers, or outlaw this practice? They have chosen the latter.

Re:Do you need a 12 step program?

[Anonymous Coward]

So your claim is basically a botter has so much money around he buys stuff at inflated prices hence inflating the economy? because money doesn't matter to him, right?

How about the fact that the botter picks up a lot of item drops he then proceeds to sell at a price lower than suggested because money doesn't matter? Because I hear a lot more whining about that... "Oh the prices of my rare item is going down so quick, darn botters, now I can not sell this at the inflated price I wanted to sell it for..."

Ever wondered why stuff in world of warcraft is really expensive upon release of the item and then drop like a rock? Yes, that is because at first there is a high demand and a low supply... then when people start farming it (yes, a lot of them might well be botters) the supply increases while the demand is relatively static... the price drops. Then the demand will reach a level where there is too much supplies for it, the price will bottom out... and the botters will move on, leaving yet another mature market behind them with prices fluctuating completely normally based on new uses for materials new population booms in the area and so on.

If there wasn't any botters the finances would work much the same... just slower. And anything you bought from another player would be many times more expensive. Then again anything you sold would be more profitable, so... in the end you'd be still balancing just the same way.

So the server economy might be affected... but it has it's clearly good points. Cheap stuff.
Now if you don't like it - lay off the auction house completely, and never buy anything from anyone but a person you can trust. And pay three times as much as on the auction house, because after all, this is not cheap labour, it is items actually grinded through blood sweat and tears.

Re:Do you need a 12 step program?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no rule (IE TOS) against using a mechanical can opener, spell check, wind shield wipers, or gas. There is a rule against using third party programs that interfere with the World of Warcraft game client. Poor analogy.

Re:Not illegal to read RAM + control mouse/keyboar

[Pootie Tang]

I don't see how there is any copyright or DMCA violation here. Their third claim "interfering with the contractual relationship with World of Warcraft's customers." sounds pretty weak too.

I don't think "control mouse/keyboard" is an adequate defense though. Those mouse/keyboard actions result in something happening and that isn't isolated just to the computer running wowglider. They affect what data gets sent to blizzard's servers and blizzard has a reasonable right to say effectively "you don't have a right to access our servers except under the conditions we allow".

The problem is that people CHOOSE to run this program. The software and/or company behind it doesn't interfere with the contractual relationship. The people who run wowglider intentionally violate that contract themselves.

Really though regardless of whether they might be able to stop this software from being openly sold, I don't think they will accomplish much in doing so. I definitely understand their reasons for wanting to prevent cheating, but the courtroom seems like an ineffective way of doing it.

The wowglider FAQ says that warden (their client side cheating-software detection tool) is "currently" unable to detect it. They are obviously aware of it and there is even a trial version available for free download. They can't just update warden? I realize it's a cat and mouse game, but they chose to pursue that route presumably on the belief that warden is a much more pragmatic approach to finding cheaters.

I think they would be better off spending more money on customer service reps to investigate complaints, as time consuming as that might be, rather than spending the money on lawyers. Personally I have never seen an avatar that appeared to be controlled by a bot. If I did and had a way to report them that would be followed up on, that seems like a much better approach. They need a way to stop the people using cheating programs, trying to stop people from making them via legal means seems pretty unwinnable to me.

Re:What's next?

[Xipher]

Their is a big difference between something the original developers included (built in cheat codes), and the 3rd party developers making applications interacting with the game.

On the subject of Guns

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess we should sue gun manufacturers because criminals who use those guns kill people. And for those who complain about about kill stealing, go f^(% yourselves and buy an offline RPG where there are no other players to steal your kills. If they go after this kid, they should go after anyone who creates custom interfaces too because it can give them an 'unfair' advantage.

Re:On the subject of Guns

[Kurayamino-X]

What we have here is a classic example of a flamebaiting retard that has absolutely no clue about either a) The subject in question. b) The game in the subject. Or c) Reality.

Given how popular bots are...

[daverabbitz]

Has anyone considered writing an MMO where scripting up the client and making bots is part of the game. It seems so many people just play to be the l33t357 (did I spell that right?), and they get to there by botting, so why not have a game where that is the aim.

I don't play MMO's as I don't have time, and I can't really see the point in paying money to Blizzard so my bot can play (It's bad enough having to support my brother), but I think it would be pretty cool to have a game where I can write a bot in perl (or your favourite scripting language) and have it compete against other bots to master the game. The server would need to enforce state, as it seems to be the big problem with a lot of these MMO's that they trust the client. The client says hey, I've just picked up this uber item and moved to the top of this dungeon instantly, and the server says, ok, here you are.

The game would need to have complex economics, and somewhat complex combat/raiding/whatever in order to make ai difficult enough that it was a challenge.

It would probably best suit the space genre as it is more plausible that a space craft/robot/??? operates autonomously, than a Paladin/Wizard/Grue.

Also it would be great for people like me who can't be bothered sitting in front of a computer for hours on end playing MMO, when there's better things to do (like sitting in front of a computer for hours on end playing FPS).

Meh, maybe I'll make something, can't be that hard anyway...

Re:Given how popular bots are...

[mqduck]

How about something more along the lines of an RTS? Each player writes a script that directs how their side will build up, attack and defend, then you load them in the game and start it. After each game, the players can tweak their scripts more and more. I've never written bot or AI scripts, but if a game like this was made, I just might learn. ;)

Re:Given how popular bots are...

[sammyo]

>Has anyone considered writing an MMO where scripting up the client and making bots is part of the game.

Second Life?

Re:Given how popular bots are...

[Cookie3]

Has anyone considered writing an MMO where scripting up the client and making bots is part of the game. It seems so many people just play to be the l33t357 (did I spell that right?), and they get to there by botting, so why not have a game where that is the aim.

But, see... Most people don't want to MAKE bots, they just want to USE them. To that end, I suggest a game that pre-includes everything necessary to fire-and-forget:
http://www.progressquest.com/

Re:Given how popular bots are...

[Alsee]

Has anyone considered writing an MMO where scripting up the client and making bots is part of the game.

There is a rather number of games tracing back at least as far as 1961 where the entire game itself is to program bots. The most famous is almost certainly Core Wars. Those two are more "pure programming" than "bot", but some later games did move to a bot style with a multitude of competing bots in a single arena such as the 1989 multi-platform Omega.

I'm not sure what the latest-greatest games would be in this genre... it is a genre that attracts little to no attention from major modern game publishers for a very simple reason... it has an extremly narrow target audience. Back in the 70's and 80's the majority of people who owned computers had an interest and experience in programming them. Today approximately zero percent of gamers have any skills and interest in scripting and programming.

I don't remember the website or the name of the game, but a while ago I saw an opensource MMORPG development project. The client is to be opensource as well, and fully intened to be open to modification and scripting. All critical game rules would be enforced from the server end, so using a bot would not / could not be cheating. It was in a pre-betatest stage. I think you could walk around teh game world, but not do much yet. I'm sure someone will post it to Slashdot when it does hit a viable betatest stage. If anyone knows the name of this game, post it in a reply.

-

Re:Given how popular bots are...

[miu]

"God games" are a limited form of this, and are a fairly limited niche. Actually scripting or coding the game would be even more limited in appeal.

I've never seen an MMO take either approach and can't really imagine it being commercially successful, MMOs cost a lot of money to develop and publishers have come to consider anything that doesn't make WoW numbers to be a failure.

The roguelike games tend to develop a botting meta-game, but they rely on community norms and honor to keep participants honest, qualities that MMO communities are notoriously short on.

Re:What's next?

[dangitman]

Just like there's a big difference between making a joke and not getting it.

Bots r fun

[CrazyJim1]

I used to write ALOT of bots for other MMORPGS before it became a big thing to do. Bots ruin a game only because people come to the realization that its not really a game, just a repetitive task that a computer can do for you with more determination. There is something of cruel joy when your PK bot pwns newbies screaming,"Peace!" If I wasn't starting to kick but in Texas Holdem, I'd spend my time writing a Tekken style RPG, where you actually have to fight. DDO tried it, but their attacks aren't varied enough, nor do they check where you get hit at.

Re:Bots r fun

[mwvdlee]

Since you're this incredibly talented poker player and bot programmer; why not just code a bot to play poker all day long? That'd leave you with enough spare time to write your Tekken-style WoW-killer.

For those with a WoW account

[smallguy78]

Try posting a link to this site on http://forums.wow-europe.com/ and http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com./ See how fast it gets deleted - I posted a link to it twice and both deleted within a flash. The story they want you to believe: The Warden caught the cheat. It looks the reality is a slightly less sophisticated piece of anti-cheat software.

Re:For those with a WoW account

[smallguy78]

Account Banned
Ban Type: Temporary
Expires: 25/11/2006 16:02:33 PST
Current Time 19/11/2006 03:54:01 PST
Ban Reason: Posting or linking to cheats, hacks, Trojan horses, or malicious programs

For posting a link to slashdot. Unbelievable.

Re:No, Glider benefits all parties, except demagog

[pslam]

Improved???

Nonsense. If you bought a copy of Doom, is the first thing you do when you take it home to type "IDDQD" and quickly complete the whole thing? No. Of Fucking Course Not. You are cheating yourself out of the game.

People who bot are cheating themselves out of the game. Unfortunately, they also cheat OTHER people out of the game too. It cheapens the whole experience of making it to lvl60, which, if you don't listen to trolls and flamers, is actually quite an investment in time and effort. At the end of levelling, you will be skilled in the art of your class and will quite possibly have met a lot of friends and gained reputation. Bots don't. There is a huge influx of blatant eBay/Bot/morons in the game at the moment, and they're ruining it all.

Botting only cheats yourself out of actually playing the game. It's like getting a VCR to record a film for you, never watching it, but talking to friends afterwards as if you had. You are found out fairly soon. The WoWglider guy would never mention stuff like that, of course.

Difficult Situation

[gweihir]

I don't like the DCMA one bit. I think it is something that would have had a place in the former USSR, but not in any free society. I also don't like all these bots that degrade my WoW experience.

Still, I think going after this guy is not required for Blizzard. What would be better is that Blizzard just speeds up the process of banning bot users and their customers. Maybe for people that buy bot-farmed gold, a first ban for a week and having all bought gold removed (in items if they do not have it anymore). Banning gold buyers permanently on first offense would be justified IMO, but this way they can tell their story and scare others away from buying gold, eventually collapsing the market. After all, nobody in their right mind will buy a ticking bomb.

Currently Blizzard has the problem that they have som many bot farmers, that they need to identify and ban them automatically. This leads to banning ''waves'', were first the bots are sought (keep reporting them, people!) , then characterised for automatic identification and then automatically banned. (Blizzard does not comment on their process, but it is pretty obvious what they are doing.) This leads to player dissatisfaction, since a bot may remain active for quite some time after it has been identified. I think Blizzard should hire more bright and competent people to speed this process up. They may also want to do more manual suspensions and bans. They should have enough revenue to do this.

One more thing they should do (and for reasons I do not understand have not done yet) is to very publicly state: Buying Gold will get you banned!

Payed

[Kangburra]

What did he pay? If he payed it then it must be a cable or rope or something!

Did he loose his way with it?

Honestly this is getting rediculous!

Having these in the comments is one thing but what are the so called editors doing letting these things go? Edit the damn summary!

the past tense of pay is paid

[bunions]

NOT PAYED, sheesh.

Re:the past tense of pay is paid

[Anonymous Coward]

and 'rediculous' is not a word.

Because you paid...

[jgoemat]

Apart from anything else, I simply found myself wondering why the people in question couldn't simply develop their own game, rather than spending time back engineering Blizzard's games.

You should learn more about fair use and the public domain. The limited monopoly on copyright was created in order to provide an incentive to create more works and to enrich the public domain. Just because Blizzard made a great game doesn't mean they would run the best online servers for that game for instance. Should Blizzard have the right to control how you play the game after you pay for it? Do you want book authors telling you that you can only read their books certain hours of the day, or that you cannot drink coffee while reading it since you might spill on your pages? These rules and restrictions are already stifling innovation. Tivo Series 3 now supports HD, but it no longer supports viewing shows on a second Tivo in a different room, TiVo2Go, or viewing shows on your computer. HDCP will prevent me from watching high-definition shows on my TV in full resolution if the broadcast flag bill ever gets passed.

Scare Tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice they didn't actually give them anything in writing? The whole thing is just a scare tactic... If Blizzard had any real legal standing they would have given them a Cease and Desist letter, and if they didnt stop stelling the program drag them into court... or they just would have dragged them into court and sued the crap out of them....

All they have now is plausable deniability... or lawyers didnt go there to harass/threaten/etc, we wanted to buy the program, or some other excuse.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[lordsid]

It's not a legal agreement you twit.

And I'll probably get pegged as troll for this, but it is NOT a legal agreement.

Re:Not illegal to read RAM + control mouse/keyboar

[Audigy]

Go out to that graveyard near the flight point in Western Plaguelands.

If you see a hunter with a boar pet, just hang out and watch it for a while. Chances are, it's probably a bot.

Once you know what to look for, you start seeing them EVERYWHERE. I even saw one in Westfall the other day. :\

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[Jeian]

"C. You agree that you will not (i) modify or cause to be modified any files that are a part of a World of Warcraft installation; (ii) create or use cheats, "mods", and/or hacks, or any other third-party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience;"

Well?

Blizzard too huh?

[Endo13]

Man, I am getting so damn sick of seeing yet another BS lawsuit based on the DMCA.

So let me get this straight:

A. They make the game so damn boring and tedious that people resort to using a program to play the game for them.
B. And then on top of that, they can't even code their software good enough to keep the majority of people from cheating.
C. And then, on top of THAT yet, they sue the coder of the cheat program because of their own incompetence?

Congratulations Blizzard, I'm now an ex-WoW player. Canceled both my accounts.

And no, I don't cheat in multiplayer games. For the most part, I despise people who cheat. But this lawsuit is beyond ridiculous. Fix your own damn software instead of wimping out and trying to get the courts to award you for sucking at coding.

Re:Blizzard too huh?

[Ardanwen]

So let me get this straight:

A. They make the game so damn boring and tedious that people resort to using a program to play the game for them.
B. And then on top of that, they can't even code their software good enough to keep the majority of people from cheating.

A: No. Goldfarmers resort to using a program to make money for them, and sell that money. Very few players do.

B: The majority of people doesn't cheat.
----------

I've no facts or figures, just in game experience: I've only once seen a bot that was also a regular player. Usually bots are always bots, and players are always players. Bots are used by IGE and other web companies to make real-life money. As long as there are people buying the gold, this negatively affects people that enjoy playing the game (economy-wise). The game isn't boring if you play it normally. If you play it all-the-time.. learn to stop things when they are becoming boring, and switch to doing something else :)

Re:Blizzard too huh?

[Endo13]

>A: No. Goldfarmers resort to using a program to make money for them, and sell that money. Very few players do.

B: The majority of people doesn't cheat.
----------

I've no facts or figures, just in game experience: I've only once seen a bot that was also a regular player. Usually bots are always bots, and players are always players. Bots are used by IGE and other web companies to make real-life money. As long as there are people buying the gold, this negatively affects people that enjoy playing the game (economy-wise). The game isn't boring if you play it normally. If you play it all-the-time.. learn to stop things when they are becoming boring, and switch to doing something else :)

A. Wrong. Most gold farmers farm instances. That's where the best money is. Chinese gold farmers work in China, not the US. Wages in China are not very good, and gold farmers actually make better money than other laborers. From the employers' perspective, the farmers ARE bots, and they can farm money far more efficiently than a wowglider type of program.

B. The majority of people who used wowglider don't make it public knowledge that they did so. And if you look at my post, I didn't say that the majority of people cheat. I said Blizzard couldn't stop the majority of people from cheating. Meaning they did such a poor job coding their software that if the majority of people wanted to cheat, they couldn't stop them, short of banning their accounts after the fact. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all just go to the courts and complain about someone being able to take advantage of our incompetence, and get awarded money for it? That's exactly what Blizzard is doing.

All of the characters I've seen botting were just regular players who were doing it to avoid the tedium of leveling or farming money.

Re:No, Glider benefits all parties, except demagog

[Jarnis]

Most Gliders use it to farm gold. Using a Bot to farm gold is against the game rules. Rules say if you play, you must play with a sack of meat behind the keyboard, not with a program emulating keystrokes.

So, it's called 'cheating', and cheaters should be strung up to the lampposts by the street for people to mock for being immature pricks.

Should WoW be a single player game, I Couldn't care less - cheating in a single player game is fine - you are cheating only yourself. In a multiplayer game - especially one with a persistent gameworld - cheating should not be tolerated.

And Blizzard can't tolerate them - if cheaters take over, the vast majority (those playing by the rules) give up and cancel their accounts, and blizzard wants the money from the 6M+ honest players rather than few thousand idiots who do anything to 'get ahead' in a game.

Yes, you can argue Blizzard's game has parts that are not fun, and WOWGlider lets you bypass the 'unfun' parts, but thats like arguing that in Chess it's unfun that your opponent also has the Queen piece, and to bypass the 'unfun' part you cheat and toss your opponent's Queen off the board. If you think WoW is not fun, nobody is forcing you to play. You just should not cheat.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[Havenwar]

The TOS is not a legal agreement. It's a monologue.

Re:No, Glider benefits all parties, except demagog

[Technician]

Botting only cheats yourself out of actually playing the game.

For those who work for a living, it gets you past the monoteny into the good parts.

It's like getting a VCR to record a film for you, never watching it, but talking to friends afterwards as if you had.

It's more like a TIVO and skipping the commercials to get back to the program sooner.

There are a few things somepeople would like to skip such as killing your 6,243rd monster and collecting the loot.

The answer to your prayers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, kinda.

http://www.progressquest.com/

Choice of the Players

[louisadkins]

It really depends on how you look at it, and how you play. There is very little required grunt work in WoW; most grunt work is optional. Example: You want that 0.1% drop from a certain mob. You can either (a) get lucky, (b) buy it off the auction house - assuming it is not a bind on pickup item, (c) grind/kill that mob until it drops. The 0.1% drop rate represents rarity, and if you want to find the diamond, then you have to either stumble on it, pay someone for it, or start digging. I know some people that are after Phat Lewtz, and will obsess over these things. I know others that run each instance (at most) a couple times, and if they don't get that nifty shiny, they shrug and move on. The game has been designed that you can make it through "end game" areas with quest rewards, crafted items, and skill... it's just not as easy, or pretty, as some of the rares. It's just a matter of choice, and how you want to play the game.

Re:Choice of the Players

[zippthorne]

I used to play WoW, and I never hunted after *any* specific loot item. But there was still plenty of grunt work involved in completing quite a few quests. Step 2 or 3 in any quest chain was almost always, "Gather 10 of " And the number of items kept going up while the drop rate and respawn rate kept going down.

And don't say I shouldn't have done the quests. Doing the quests was what I played the game for. Even the cheesy ones. Actually, I rather liked the cheesy ones...

That and the weekly fishing competition. That was the one grind I found interesting, briefly, because it wasn't just a grind. The trick was to figure out how to get to the spots quicker than everyone else. IOW, cleverness was rewarded. But as I wasn't interested in grinding, My character never made it up to the level of 60 which is required for the prizes I won at level 46.

I never played any of the endgame areas, but I think I would only have done them a couple of times: once all the way through for myself, and again for others having trouble finding groups.

Re:Choice of the Players

[sgt101]

I have played WOW extensively, and I have done the end game areas, several times.

WOW is my first and so far only MMORPG experience. I have played other video games over the years and I homebrewed a few myself some time ago. I would say that WOW had much less of a grind than a normal game. In fact, knowing what I know now I would say that it is more or less possible to do it with very little or no grind at all.

I guess it all depends what you mean by grind, but for me WOW is more of a social event than anything else, PVP or PVE it's who's in your gang and how much fun they are that counts.

Re:Choice of the Players

[louisadkins]

Hmm.. In part a matter of definition, or scale, I think. "Collect 10 of X" is not a grind to me, that's just a quest. There has to be some challenge, and that's the best way they have of 'hiding' quest items. Rep Grinding, for me, is when it gets really repetitive - kill/collect hundreds/thousands of X.

No sympathy for history.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you know what happens when slashdot argues law by analogy. Problem is, one has to understand the law before they can make up good analogies for it. What I'd like to know as your Ultima example illustrated is why would supposedly smart people ignore history (...those doomed to repeating it) and try to ruin a good experience for others? There's no higher principle being argued here. He wrote a bot and is collecting money for it.

This is pretty straightforward. It's bullshit.

[dfenstrate]

If they had a legal leg to stand on, the Blizz team would have left him with their list of legal complaints, not taken it back after allowing him to briefly look at it. They can afford a few pieces of paper in a legal process.

I don't see any other way to interpret their behavoir. Their complaints wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, so they don't let him scrutinize it.

That being said, there are two reasons people grind: to level a toon they want to actually play, and to gather cash so that they don't have to grind for it to support their raiding habits.

They could eliminate the former reason by giving new characters on an account with one or two max level characters perma double xp, or triple or something along those lines.

If leveling subsequent characters was much faster a good deal of folks would lose interest in bots. That is an old complaint, to be sure, but it's relevant.

Botting and Chinese Farmers effect on the market

[H0mez]

I don''t if anyone cares but bots did do one good thing for servers, they lowered costs of needed items. Like leathers, cloths, and potions. I remember when Blizzard banned tons of people last year, and the prices tripled for Major Mana Pots and everyone in the guilds were like we want the farmers back. Just thought I'd point that out...

Re:No, Glider benefits all parties, except demagog

[nacturation]

He profits only from those who wish to have their gaming experience improved by Glider --- they pay him for that improvement, and an exceedingly good improvement it is.

So people pay Blizzard a monthly fee to pay a dull game. But in order to avoid a portion of the dullness they also pay this Glider dude, thus allowing them to make the game somewhat less dull. Where do I sign up?

Something Similar in City of Heroes.

[forgotten_my_nick]

I had something similar happen in COH. For some unknown reason my TOS came down garbled and could still agree to them. I log a call on it but took 3 months for it to be fixed and never replied to me. In such instances I would probably not be held accountable in game of my actions.

Bring on the Botting Realms

[Anonymous Coward]

If people are so very concerned about "player's rights", why not protect people who don't want bots, while facilitating those that do?

I bet you the bot realms would be very popular - I know I'd resubscribe if I could just play the 3 enjoyable hours buried under 20-50 hours of mindless, boring grinding. Let's go further than just grinding - I'd kill for a instance preist-bot!

I'd like to add 1 more vote to the "If it's mindless enough to bot, then it should be automated" school. I like my games interesting, not soul-numbing, thank you very much.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[AliasN]

"I've never played WoW... that said, depending on how Glider works, it could involve intercepting and decrypting an encrypted stream and that could be a violation of the good old DMCA." It works by injecting key presses into WoW via the Windows clipboard (Glider is windows only), and reading WoW's memory (Glider does not write into WoW's memory). The fact is, it's easy to write a

• very simple

World of Warcraft bot. I'm surprised there aren't more bots like Glider.

The program went beyond mindless grinding...

[A Name Similar to Di]

I know that a lot of these comments are pointing out that the program took over mindless grinding, but it actually did a lot more than that. It also stated a whole free rider problem for groups.

Take PvP as an example. A lot of dynamic content, not a great bot location right? Wrong. Since you accumulate some rewards /just for participating/ in PvP (wins/losses aside), PvP teams started filling up with people botting to get a free ride. See, when your bot just runs you at a wall for 10 minutes, at the end of it, you'll still end up with a reward. On the other hand, your team just went from 15v15 to 15v14 since you're running at a wall. Pretty soon, there's 3-4 bots on each side doing nothing, and games are won/lost by what your player to bot ratio is at.

I just thought I'd toss that out there, this bot wasn't just removing some minor grind here or there, it was ruining a major part of the end game for a lot of folks.

How is this any different from a GameGenie?

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie#Legal_issu es

For the sake of argument, let's just say using botting software
is cheating in the sense that players who use it have an unfair
advantage over players that don't.

The only thing I can think of that makes this any different is
that if you cheat in a single player game you aren't really
harming anyone else. If you use a device like this to cheat
in a multiplayer environment, it could be argued that you are
harming others that play by the rules. For example, someone
trying to collect limited resources in an area populated by bots
is clearly getting less of a game experience then they may be
entitled to.

That said, Blizzard would be irresponsible if they failed to
take steps to ensure everyone has a good game experience I think
they are making a mistake trying to use the legal system to fix
what is actually a design problem in their game.

I was wondering why anyone cared...

[Valdrax]

I'm tired of trying to play legitimately, having bots always stealing my kills. :(

I was wondering why anyone cared before I read that line. It seems to me that a tool that gets you out of the grind so that you can focus on the fun parts of a game is just adding value, but if the bots are engaging in actively anti-social behavior, then that's another thing entirely.

Some games have that licked.

[Kadin2048]

Exactly. I think the creators of Progress Quest would be available as "security consultants" to help them fix this glaring security hole.

Gold farming would also be taken care of, just in case they needed another reason.

Totally wrong.

[SupremoMan]

First you pay for a game, then you pay to play the game, then you pay for a program to play the game for you. Anyone else sees soemthign a bit wrong with this picture?

Yeah...

[Snaller]

... it says Blizzard has wealthy customers ;)

Too much flack

[lacigol]

Blizzard has found a way to detect Michael Donnelly's wowglider.

Cheaters find another way to cheat or find another game.