Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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. ;)