Blizzard Officially Files Against WoW Glider

Marcus Eikenberry writes "Blizzard and Vivendi today filed against MDY Industries, the makers of the 'WoW Glider' software. Glider allows World of Warcraft players to 'play' while away from the keyboard; the software moves the player's avatar along a set path, following a complex set of instructions dictated in advance. Blizzard is seeking injunctive relief and money damages against MDY. What that means is they want him to stop the production of WoW Glider and they want him to pay them damages. Blizzard believes that Glider infringes on their intellectual property. They believe Glider allows players to cheat, giving them an unfair advantage and that they believe Glider encourages Blizzard customers to breach their contracts for playing the game. Last they claim that Glider is designed to circumvent copyright protections."

Comments

Thanks for clearing that up

[Fozzyuw]

Blizzard is seeking injunctive relief and money damages against MDY. What that means is they want him to stop the production of WoW Glider and they want him to pay them damages.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Thanks for clearing that up

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard usually makes money on bannings since a lot of people buy new accounts... Also, they're system is completely draconic to the point of not divulging any information to defend yourself (I know a fair amount of people that have gotten their accounts hacked) and you just have to pray that someone said "THIS IS A HACKER", and that a number cruncher isn't around; maybe then you have a chance at getting your account back. Otherwise... navigate to the blizzard website, access the DB and unban/level/itemize/(w/e) your account to how you like it. A little customization never hurt anybody.

Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[fotbr]

I'm not a lawyer, but to me it seems like a tacked on item "because they can".

As for the rest of their claims...I guess I can see the point, but if you look at the glider forums it would appear that Blizzard is being fairly strict on banning accounts. If Blizzard is able to utilize the ban-hammer effectivly enough, the problem will solve itself. And then people will move on to the next bot.

The ONLY way for blizzard to make the problem go away is to remove the requirement to grind every character up to lvl 60 or 70. My suggestion would be to give people the ability to create alternate characters starting at any level UP TO the level of their highest character. So if you've got a level 52 mage and you've decided mages suck and want to play a warrior, you could create a new warrior character at any level between 1 and 52.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[LehiNephi]

That doesn't sound like a bad idea, except that the devil's in the details. How do you handle equipment that gets picked up along the way? Also, don't forget that players learn how to effectively play their characters while they level up. If they suddenly create a new character of a different class, they won't necessarily know how to use that character, which would cause all sorts of grief for any group that player joins. How much gold does that character get? Also, different people level up different skills at different rates and/or take slightly different paths. How do you handle those as well?

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[carterhawk001]

You dont play many MMO's do you? Have you stopped to consider the suck that would come from teaming with someone who has never played a warrior before and all of sudden has all these abilities and powers and no idea how to use them effectively?

Bad. Idea.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Atlantis-Rising]

Except that grinding is Blizzard's main money earner, and therefore they have absolutely no desire to give people the ability to work less than is possible. In fact, the opposite is true- Blizzard wants to make it harder to get to level 70.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Lithdren]

Or you could simply go find another game.

Seriously, such a thing would be pointless. your new character would start with what? beginner equipment? Might work for a mage, but a warrior type is only as good as his weapon in most cases.

Then there's the whole issue that you're not playing the game anymore. I'd be fine with it if you could start a new character at level 10 or so. Before that you cant do anything, but its low enough that even beginner equipment is usable to make a little change, to buy something useable for your level.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Dan Slotman]

I think the issue is that Blizzard has effectively created two games. The first game is the quests and missions performed while leveling up—unfortunately, they didn't provide enough quests to actually level all the way, so people are forced to kill random monsters to make up the difference. The second game they've created is the item-farming game. A "naked" character without gear is only a fraction as effective as a character with good gear. Blizzard did the same thing with Diablo II, but the difference between the playstyles of the two games was less pronounced.

The problem is that some people only like one of the two games. Unfortunately, if you like the item game, you are forced to play the leveling game first.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[gregtron]

While that sounds really good to casual players, it would probably destroy the WoW economy and turn the Battlegrounds into a Twink nightmare. Besides, why would they change the current model when so many people are apparently cool with grinding?

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[dc29A]

You dont play many MMO's do you? Have you stopped to consider the suck that would come from teaming with someone who has never played a warrior before and all of sudden has all these abilities and powers and no idea how to use them effectively?

Bad. Idea.

You make the assumption that playing an MMO requires a PhD in quantum physics. Playing MMOs revolve around a few basic ideas. Healers, tanks and DPS classes and some crowd control thrown in. It's not rocket science. Everyone remotely competent can switch classes easy.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[rob1980]

Mythic did this with Dark Age Of Camelot, giving you the option to start at level 20 and implementing NPCs to give you starter equipment, etc.. However hindsight being 20/20, they stated that starting a character at level 20 did more harm than good due to it killing the 1-20 crowd. The bottom line is, the easiest thing you can do to kill your incoming customer base is to give them nobody to play with.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[profplump]

You'd get the standard level-1 equipment and gold. If you want the stuff that comes from level 1-50 you have to go get it. You'd get talent points to match your level with none of them spent, so you can choose whatever skillset you want. And you'd learn to use the character by, um, playing, just like you would if you started at level 1 -- if you've already got a level 50 character you can probably skip a lot of the "learning" parts, as you only need to learn how the new character is different, not all the mechanics of the game.

I'm not sure it's a great idea to let new characters start at any level, since it is a game and grinding is part of that game, but I also don't see huge problems with the plan. A useful compromise might be something like (at user choice) double-experience point awards to new characters in accounts that already have a top-level character; accelerated leveling would make it easier to start new characters but would still force players though the entire skill tree, if you think that's important.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, don't forget that players learn how to effectively play their characters while they level up. If they suddenly create a new character of a different class, they won't necessarily know how to use that character, which would cause all sorts of grief for any group that player joins.

It takes about 20 minutes to learn how to play any class in WoW. WoW isn't exactly challenging and in general there are only 5-6 skills that are regularly used by each class. I quit playing WoW a little while ago, but the guild I was in had all of Naxx on farm status and we'd regularly play each others characters, with little or no experience with that class, in an attempt to make the end game more enjoyable. I've seen people who've never played a warrior before tank Kel'Thuzad without any problems.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[I!heartU]

They're doing it to farm money/items to sell. Leveling is easy enough, although it can get boring going through the same content with different characters.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[theckhd]

unfortunately, they didn't provide enough quests to actually level all the way, so people are forced to kill random monsters to make up the difference.

Have you ever even played the game? There are more than enough quests to level you from 1-60 without having to level grind. If you run out of quests in your current locale, there are at least one or two other areas (possibly on another continent, mind you) where there are quests appropriate for your level. If you can't be bothered to take 10 minutes to travel to another continent to keep questing, that's your own fault, not Blizzard's.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Andy Dodd]

They did come up with a good solution to the problem (although only for all new classes, not the existing ones that still can /free) - New classes not eligible for /free get a hefty XP bonus from 1-20 if they have a Lv50 on their account.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[The MAZZTer]

You dont play many MMO's do you? Have you stopped to consider the suck that would come from teaming with someone who has never played a warrior before and all of sudden has all these abilities and powers and no idea how to use them effectively?

Bad. Idea. Not really, since once you've figured this out you can kill them easy and take their stuff. They should think twice about making a character they don't know how to use in the future. ;)

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Riff10111]

I think the issue is that Blizzard has effectively created two games. The first game is the quests and missions performed while leveling up--unfortunately, they didn't provide enough quests to actually level all the way, so people are forced to kill random monsters to make up the difference.

Are you playing the same WoW I am? I've recently finished levelling a druid to 60, and not once did I run out of quests to do. In fact, I was offered more quests than I could do, and frequently ended up dumping or skipping some because I'd advanced past the point where the rewards were worthwhile.

Not to say that there's no grinding in the game -- if you want to get in good with the firbolg at the north end of Felwood, or get the good prizes from the Argent Dawn, there's an unbelievable amount of grinding. And of course, some would say that collecting 25 goblin femurs or whatever is inherently grinding. But if your goal is to level a character only by doing quests, it's certainly possible.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone remotely competent can switch classes easy.

"Easy" is an adjective. You're modifying "switch," which is sometimes a noun but in this case is a verb. The adverb you're looking for is "easily." Good grammar doesn't require a PhD in quantum physics or even a solid grasp of using warrior forms correctly.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[benfinkel]

But there is a point at which is doesn't benefit Blizzard to make it harder. It's a parabola, not a liner graph. At a certain point it's too hard and players begin to stop playing/paying. Blizzard has to find that sweet spot between hard enough and too hard.

Not to make too fine a point on it, but they appear to have been successful in that venture.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[ravenshrike]

Only when you count quests that involve killing x type of monters to get y number of baubles, and ironically enough you tend to get more xp killing the monsters than from completing the quest.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[zippthorne]

Many of the quests are little more than glorified grinding themselves. There's only ever one or two fairly obvious ways to accomplish a quest and the vast majority of time is spent on *kill monsters to get x amount of y kind of loot where the percent of monsters which drop that loot is small.*

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[fotbr]

I know farming is why most people are using Glider. But having run several characters up to 60 and working them up towards 70 is STILL extremely boring.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[tbannist]

I've done it, it's no worse than the people who did level up to 60 and never learned how to play either. In fact it can be quite a bit better... Having said that most competent players will pick up their new class very quickly even without having levelled it, it's the incompetent players that are trouble, and it takes great amounts of practice to make them passable at any class.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[milkman_matt]

One other thing, I'm not a WoW player, but I have played games of the like before. In the games I used to play, people would level at different rates. Like you could use a character that levels at a much faster rate, to reroll to the same level of a different (much slower advancing) class. So you'd have to account for that, maybe just reroll to half the current experience, that may be a better compromise I'd think. That way you still get smacked for doing it and lose half of your experience, but you still don't have to start from nothing.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Austerity Empowers]

Regardless of how the game mechanics work, it strikes me as the epitome of wrong for them to sue someone for a 3rd party app. It's not interacting with their servers any differently than the client (because it uses the client) and itself is not hurting their player base. Sure, players get annoyed by glider-farmers, but it was the concious decision of a person to use that tool. If anyone is responsible, it is the person using it on their account ("guns don't kill people, people kill people"). Next, most players assume the person who runs in and kills stuff and doesn't talk is a bot, but it could easily be people like myself or my wife. We don't keep public chat up (emote/say/tell/yell/any general chat), and we play pretty...aggressively. Tag it or we take it. The point of all this being, it's impossible to figure out what the actual damages from bots are, opposed to just assholes like us. Finally, do we want bliz to be able to sue anyone who doesn't play the game a certain way to be able to sue? Is that even reasonable? Hard-core raider? Feel my lawsuit.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[MeanderingMind]

It takes about 20 minutes to learn how to play any class in WoW. WoW isn't exactly challenging and in general there are only 5-6 skills that are regularly used by each class. I quit playing WoW a little while ago, but the guild I was in had all of Naxx on farm status and we'd regularly play each others characters, with little or no experience with that class, in an attempt to make the end game more enjoyable. I've seen people who've never played a warrior before tank Kel'Thuzad without any problems.

If by "learn" you mean in the same sense as Othello.

There's a difference between learning what does what and learning how to use every skill you have effectively. A lot of players fail at the first step, only learning what 5-6 skills they'll use the most and ignoring the rest. The result is Paladins who don't heal others, Warriors who tank in Berzerker Stance with a 2H, and Druids who aren't aware they're different from Rogues.

It's true that there are typically 5-6 skills each class will use far more than the others. However, the difference between your average player and a good one is the use of the dozen or so others. You may not use Blessing of Protection, Intimidating Shout or Remove Lesser Curse constantly, but knowing you have them and also when to use them makes as big difference.

Some people are capable of getting the basics and some intermediate concepts of a class down in a very short time. More often than not, there are factors which separate these people from others.

1) Experience. These people may not have played the class, but their general game experience is vast.
2) Observation. These people have had the opportunity to observe the class at work whether in game or in videos, and have the sense to remember this information.
3) Adaptation. Even with the previous two, the ability to adapt and fill in knowledge gaps quickly is a notable contributor.

The vast majority of players are lacking in one or more of these categories. For them, it is entirely imperative that they have 60+ levels where skills are slowly added into their repertoire and dungeons slowly progress in role difficulty. Even veteran players can benefit, as extensive exposure to a class allows insights that a 20 minute glance does not typically afford.

I learn quickly, but I remember when I seredipitously discovered my typical opener as a hunter was less efficient than one that was somewhat less intuitive. Even after 30 levels worth of play, there are still things to learn.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[MeanderingMind]

Actually, that's not accurate.

The grind is a point of balance for the game. It, along with training costs, loot tables, and quest objectives, determines the rate at which you progress through the largely stand alone content of the game. If they lowered the experience grind, you might be completely incapable of finishing half the quests in a zone before you'd outleveled them.

Even if they upped the grind, the hardcore players would still be level 70 in no time. The number of level 60-70 Blood Elves and Draenei should be indication enough of this. It's been barely a month and already they're a common sight.

The grind that Blizzard really wants to keep steep is end-game equipment/dungeons. That's what keeps hardcore players in the game, raiding for hours every week.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Swift(void)]

In fact, the opposite is true- Blizzard wants to make it harder to get to level 70.

Either you don't play the game or you don't own the expansion. Level 60-70 is an absolute breeze, without any of the tough spots people would run into in 1-60 if they quested the majority of the time. No, Blizzard want you at the cap so that they can focus their efforts on the end game raids.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Dan Slotman]

Well, I only played for a couple months, but as far as I could tell, a huge number of the quests are just kill-and-collect quests which feels like grinding. After level 20, an increasing number of quests are instance-based, meaning that you can't just hop in and complete a quest in an hour or so. (Perhaps Blizzard has since implemented a better group-finding system than a mere chat channel.) Plus, instance-based quests are necessarily kill-based, since you can't just run around collecting mushrooms or what-have-you without fighting the monsters.

However, whereas I like Diablo a lot, in WoW killing all those monsters feels like a chore since it is slow-paced, with a lot of downtime for healing and mana-restoration.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Dan Slotman]

See my reply to another response below.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[PopeRatzo]

I'm going to make a fairly extreme suggestion:

It may be that any given MMORPG is only "good" for a certain amount of time. After that, you should just move on to something else. Another game, perhaps, or something...different.

Maybe after playing a game for a certain amount of time and leveling up to whatever top level the game offers, the games provider needs to "graduate" the player. Maybe give him an account on another game with certain benefits, or just a little certificate saying "You have achieved the highest possible level", and then...goodbye.

Or maybe, just maybe mind you, by the time 'bots and cheats and gliders and other ways of subverting the game have reached a certain level of saturation you just "call" the game and shut it down. Get creative and put out a new game. Maybe make the code open source and give it away, Mozilla-style.

Where does it say that Blizzard has to squeeze every last cent out of their flagship property? What has the success of WoW done to the creative climate at Blizzard? What does the world lose if Blizzard shuts down WoW? Is it possible that by giving a MMORPG a definite ending you create an "event", and by ending it you maintain its charm rather than just letting it keep running, keep trying to fox new players into ponying up that monthly charge and watching it get old until the day comes when you have to pull the plug because there's just not that much interest any more? Is WoW supposed to last forever? Maybe it would be better to just let it ascend to RPG heaven. Maybe Blizzard should have pulled the plug about a year ago.

It's pandemic in the entertainment industry, the disease of grinding every cent out of a product until you've created a culture of disgust and disdain. I guess the ultimate question that arises when cheats like Glider start showing up and lawsuits like this one is "how much is "enough"?".

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Atlantis-Rising]

I haven't played the expansion- I quit when I was about level 40 in the original game. It was terrifically boring, and I had to force myself to play- "If I get another level today, then I'll go out and get a hamburger and ice cream for dinner."

Eventually, I figured, "why am I wasting money on this crap?" and quit.

So no.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[ADRA]

I think you're missing the big picture. Blizzard will never address your grievances on this issue because in the end it makes them money to not implement your change.

As a wow player, here's how I see it. Most people will fall into two camps:
1. Will make one character and play them all the way to level cap
2. Will muddle around with a whole bunch of characters not really advancing quickly with any particular character

The second group isn't a problem for Blizzard at all, because the creation of content is reused over and over for every one of that player's characters. It is the group 1's that causes Blizzard so much angst.

To keep group 1's happy, Blizzard has:
    - Added more content. Most of it was better gear and not so much story driven, though the caverns of time looks promising (haven't been yet)
    - Extended the level cap simply extending the period of time before there's nothing left to do
    - Introduced end-game PvP as an incentive to keep playing instead of just a small pastime from grinding, item hunting, raiding dungeons

The one thing they never needed to add was the drive for people (once level capped) to roll new characters. Because of the large amount of time to get to the high levels, thats a large amount of time that you're not 'bored' at max level with nothing to do. Bored players are unhappy players, and if they're so unhappy playing the game, they're more likely to quit.

Personally, I really enjoy playing through the entire content over again. It isn't so 'griding' back up to with new chars since after the first or second character, you should know the best, most fun ways to level up. I don't grind levels often because I play new characters to -enjoy- the content, not to be king-o-the-hill.

--rant--
My biggest pet peeve is people in game talking about how bored they are. This is supposed to be entertaining. If it isn't entertaining anymore please quit and find something else to do!

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[passthecrackpipe]

I agree - +1 great answer. I played a Summoner for a long time in EQ2, took a break from MMO's and cracked (heh) open the WoW box. Dallied with some classes, then settled on a Hunter. I found both classes to be very similar in playstyle, especially in terms of strategies. Although the Summoner, mainly DoT based, is also a lot like a Warlock with a pet that can tank. I am, however, continuously learning to play the class better (long way to go heh), and will most certainly not apply whatever WoW skills I have to another character real quick.

So what was you opening shot, and what is it now?

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[XxtraLarGe]

(Perhaps Blizzard has since implemented a better group-finding system than a mere chat channel.) Yeah, they've created a "Looking For Group" system, which almost nobody uses. I know this because it takes me about half an hour to find somebody, and then typically another half hour before the rest of the group gets filled in. Chatting "/1 LVL x LGF " works much faster...

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

...and sadly I still see plenty of level 65+ warriors that can't tank more than 1 mob.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want to do is PvP. I PvP'd for levels. I couldn't PvP for money. Therefore I botted for money.

I was happy to pay my $15/month, have my char grind monkies and bears all night, and be able to PvP when I wanted to without having to go grind toads and fairies for a few hours or negotiate with 4 people who have a combined intellect of a 5 year old and wipe on ud strat 5x in a row.

Can't be bothered to take 10 minutes? How many times do you think I had to 'take ten minutes' over the course of two years. Sorry but I don't believe anyone was hurt when I bought a mount with botted gold. Or when I bought potions with botted gold. I did whatever I had to do to get the pre-requisites to buy said things. I leveled characters up manually and bought things with gold I grinded or played the AH to get myself. You can assume that I have the ability to sit in front of my computer and kill NPC's for hours, so it really doesn't matter if I'm playing, my brother is playing, my cat is playing, or my computer is playing.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

"If Blizzard is able to utilize the ban-hammer effectivly enough, the problem will solve itself. And then people will move on to the next bot."

I disagree. If blizzard wins this battle in court it will enable them (and other MMO publishers) to win any law suit they fill against anyone who makes this sort of thing for WoW (or any other MMO.) Blizzard is doing this for the same reasons the police don't try to arrest all of the drug users and instead go after the source, which are the dealers or producers. Blizzard is just going one more step down the line in their fight to protect their game.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Chris Burke]

After level 20, an increasing number of quests are instance-based, meaning that you can't just hop in and complete a quest in an hour or so. (Perhaps Blizzard has since implemented a better group-finding system than a mere chat channel.)

Let me clue you in on what you missed.

First, Blizzard changed the Looking For Group channel to be world-wide. Obviously, this instantly became General Chat World Wide, or more accurately Barrens Chat World Wide. It worked for finding groups, but ugh.

Then they decided to go the other way, and get rid of the LFG channel entirely. Now they have a "LFG Interface", and it sucks. You can pick what instance/quest you want to do, and then it automatically adds you to a group. It is rarely used, at least in part because it's hard to control who joins the group so you can end up with a group of 5, with no tank or healer.

So now we're back to using general chat in the capital cities/zones near instances to try to find groups. Combine the substantial difficulty in setting up a group with the fact that most people are cruising around in the 60+ zones of the expansion, and finding groups for leveling is obnoxious.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[electrosoccertux]

Or you could simply go find another game.

Seriously, such a thing would be pointless. your new character would start with what? beginner equipment? Might work for a mage, but a warrior type is only as good as his weapon in most cases. Well it's not like your old character couldn't send some gold to the new character through the mail, and the new character could just buy some greens (cheap item but definitely will get you through a fight) off the auction house.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[jlarocco]

Never going to happen. Last I heard, there were several million people paying Blizzard quite a bit of money to play WoW. Blizzard isn't about to say "We know you want to keep paying us, but we're not going to let you." They will never, ever, do that.

It's pandemic in the entertainment industry, the disease of grinding every cent out of a product until you've created a culture of disgust and disdain. I guess the ultimate question that arises when cheats like Glider start showing up and lawsuits like this one is "how much is "enough"?".

It'll be enough when it costs more than they make in monthly fees. In all likelyhood, there will be a handful of people playing WoW in ten years. The WoW server will be running in VMWare, using left over bandwidth on a Diablo 5 server, but as long as that costs less than they're making, it'll happen.

Blizzard is a company. That's what companies do. They didn't spend a ton of money designing, programming, creating artwork, and buying a ton of servers because it'd be a cool thing to do. They did it hoping to make butt loads of cash. The entire point of WoW, Starcraft, Diablo and WarCraft 2 was to make a ton of money. Now that they're making tons of money on WoW, they're not going to stop until they've made all the money they can. That's just how businesses work.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[renegadesx]

You forgot to mention that a mage doesn't put out on the first date

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Alchemar]

Very well written post, but you forgot one major detail -- it's a game. I am not saying it is "only" a game, but a game none the less. On top of that, it is a game that has no clear cut way to win. The only purpose of playing a game you can't win, is to have fun playing. If you just jump to the highest level, you are not playing. The closest thing I could think of would be to have the local print shop print you out a Bachlor degree to hang on your wall when you never finished High School. I don't like many online games, because I don't have the time to invest. WoW is a lot easier to get the levels than most other MMORPGs. If you really must be high level without doing the trivial amount of work involved, then just pay someone else to level your character and be done with it, let the rest of us play our charaters, and enjoy watching them grow.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[mgiuca]

The ONLY way for blizzard to make the problem go away is to remove the requirement to grind every character up to lvl 60 or 70.

Maybe they could, oh I don't know, stop releasing expansions with 98% of the new content available after level 58?

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[mgiuca]

What about the game where you want to play through an adventure, to see an epic story unfold, of great heroes and villains, of empires rising and falling, historic alliances being forged and dark threats coming to destroy the world?

Oh I forgot... they left all of that behind in WC3, before they sold out.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[dghcasp]

As compared to all the warriors who has leveled themselves and still doesn't know how to hold aggro?

Bad warrior! No heal for you!

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

The quest exp is a freebie ON TOP of the exp you get for killing the mobs. In fact, kill x of y quests are the cream of the quest grinding crop. There is no worry about the RNG hosing your time investment by suddenly deciding that Plump Buzzard Wings should drop in the same amounts as random world epics. The only worry is whether the run back to the turn-in spot is close enough to make it worth your time to run there. Even if it's not, chances are that when you are about to camp for the night it's on your way back before you hearth to the inn and sell or somewhere in your path in the next couple of days...it's free exp!

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[rasmusneckelmann]

There's a difference between learning what does what and learning how to use every skill you have effectively. A lot of players fail at the first step, only learning what 5-6 skills they'll use the most and ignoring the rest. The result is Paladins who don't heal others, Warriors who tank in Berzerker Stance with a 2H, and Druids who aren't aware they're different from Rogues.

I also find it quite strange that people continuosly bash WoW for being so incredibly easy, and how everybody can learn to play it in a matter of minutes. How can it be then, that a very large percentage of random groups you do instances with, fail miserably because someone don't know how to play? Even if the instance run is successful, it could always have been done faster and more smooth. I think many people believe they play perfectly, even though that's not the case. And unfortunately most people are reluctant to point out these people's weaknesses - the most contructive criticism that usually comes accross is in the style of "OMG L2P noob, WTFBBQ!!? LOL LOL you suck!!1". Which of course not is taken seriously by anyone. And no, it's not just about having good gear. A player with good gear can still go total pew pew on some mobs, outaggroing the tank by miles, and maybe think he's the best player in the world because he's on the top of the damage meter. Etc, etc.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe nobody got hurt, but that doesn't stop you from being a cunt.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Vaakku]

The ONLY way for blizzard to make the problem go away is to remove the requirement to grind every character up to lvl 60 or 70. My suggestion would be to give people the ability to create alternate characters starting at any level UP TO the level of their highest character. So if you've got a level 52 mage and you've decided mages suck and want to play a warrior, you could create a new warrior character at any level between 1 and 52.


That wouldnt help a bit since 99% of bot users are using it to farm gold and materials. Havent seen any bot's in lowbie areas but areas with low drop rate materials used to be full of bots.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[packeteer]

WoW starts at 70. I dont know why so many epople think the game is about leveling. I have spent at least 10 times as much time in WoW at max level than leveling. WoW is nota game you can graduate at, that is the beauty of it. Many people are upset with blizzard becuase they keep adding content forever. If you want to beat a game go play a console and be done with it, i personally enjoy how WoW never ends, the only goal is really to compete with other guilds and players in raid progression and pvp smack talking.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[Korvar]

Yes, you hurt people.

You contributed to the breaking of the in-game economy. You made it harder for other people, who don't happen to share your particular play style, to gain gold playing as the game designers intended. You made it profitable for the gold-selling ****tards to spam players' in-game mail and chat. You have made that game a worse place.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[MeanderingMind]

Thus was relatively low in level. I would open with Concussive Shot, followed by Arcane and then Serpent Sting. However, Arcane Shot's cooldown wouldn't return before the enemy came into my dead zone. I figured out completely by accident that starting with Arcane and following with concussive allowed me to get another Arcane in before the enemy reached me.

Later, Aimed Shot replaced the initial Arcane, but I still was surprised by my discovery as insignificant as it was.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[cspariah]

"they didn't provide enough quests to actually level all the way" I don't understand this statement. I leveled to 60 and never did any grinding. On further thought, this is probably due to heavy use of rested state. I don't play every day and I play lots of alts, so my main typically had almost a full level's worth of rested whenever I took him out.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[pod]

It's not that there are any damages, a claim I disagree with, or that botters are making other players' game experience much worse. They're just annoying. And obvious. Fighting all the mobs the same way. Taking the same path over and over, obviously avoiding areas with obstacles, or getting stuck on various geometry each and every pass. Killing mob A for hours and hours, then walking right by mob A heading to an area which is obviously devoid of mob A, because that's how their path is programmed. Bots are just plain obvious, if you spend 5 minutes watching them, and that is easy to do.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[murdocj]

My biggest pet peeve is people in game talking about how bored they are. This is supposed to be entertaining. If it isn't entertaining anymore please quit and find something else to do!

Please please please mod this up as insightful!!!!! I'd do it if I had any mod points.

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[murdocj]

You make the assumption that playing an MMO requires a PhD in quantum physics. Playing MMOs revolve around a few basic ideas. Healers, tanks and DPS classes and some crowd control thrown in. It's not rocket science. Everyone remotely competent can switch classes easy.

Wrong.

You can play, in the sense that you can press the buttons. You may even know what some of the buttons do. But there are things you learn only by playing. Like when to "pre-shield" your mage, because if you wait till after the mage is hit to shield, you won't have a mage. When you can use fear w/o aggro-ing the dungeon. When to down shift and use a lesser heal to preserve mana. Etc. Yeah, a priest is easy, just press the right button... :)

Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch

[murdocj]

Only when you count quests that involve killing x type of monters to get y number of baubles, and ironically enough you tend to get more xp killing the monsters than from completing the quest.

So you can either kill random mobs and get x experience... or you can get a quest, kill the quest mobs, and get 2*x experience (I found that the quest exp seemed to be about equal to the mob exp, but if you want to discount this to 1.5*x, feel free).

So what's the problem with doing quests?

Strength of their argument

[Fozzyuw]

Blizzard believes that Glider infringes on their intellectual property.

This point can seem to be a strong suit.

They believe Glider allows players to cheat, giving them an unfair advantage

This is really a legal issue? Can I be put in jail for taking a few 100 extra monopoly dollars when no one is looking? The first thing I can think of is Insider Trading, which is punishable, but is a video game = the stock market?

... and that they believe Glider encourages Blizzard customers to breach their contracts for playing the game.

Can the company be held responsible, even if it's the users choice? If I tell my friend that if he drives really fast when a police offer wants to pull him over, am I responsible when he runs from the cops the next time he might be asked to pull over while driving?

Last they claim that Glider is designed to circumvent copyright protections.

This seems laughable, but IANAL. Copy protection? I guess all users are circumventing such protection. One could draw a stern defense that a person playing WoW becomes little more than an automated computer program. Though, I'm not familiar with Glide or how it interacts with the WoW programming, but I imagine it just a program that interacts with the WoW client or the packets it sends to automate processes.

What's Blizzards strength for their argument besides "they're breaking our EULA or TOS"? Are they saying that "Hey, we've had to ban 100,000's of accounts because people are using your products and we want you to pay us back for those 100,000 accounts. Lets see, that's 100,000 accounts at $15 / month and the average account is active for 1 year. So, pay us $18,000,000."

Hmmm... could local governments sue nitrous and 'after market' car parts manufacturers that encourage people to drive over the speed limits? Or maybe a better analogy would be those who cause accidents and injure other people. Could those injured parties sue the manufacturers of such products?

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Strength of their argument

[RabidJackal]

Can I be put in jail for taking a few 100 extra monopoly dollars when no one is looking?

Not only that, but I hear you aren't allowed to pass Go OR collect $200. Talk about harsh.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Rydia]

There is a cause of action called "tortious interference with contract." The thrust of it is that if you actively try to get someone to breach their contract, they actually breach the contract, and the other contracting party suffers damage because of it, then the interferer is liable for the damages they should have reasonably foreseen due to their enticement.

Re:Strength of their argument

[benfinkel]

To answer your legal questions about Glider's liability the answer is very broadly yes.

First of all, these are civil issues not criminal, so it gets a little trickier. If Blizzard can prove that by allowing players to cheat Blizzard is being "injured" (in this case fiscally) then they have a strong argument that Glider is liable for the "injuries". Glider would need to prove to the court's satisfaction that their software had significant use and/or purpose other than circumventing Blizzard's TOS and causing this "injury". It's similar to the problems that the P2P software manufacturers face.

As a counter-point to your "suing nitrous manufacturers" example, try this analogy. You tell your violent friend the man his wife is sleeping with is in the other room and then give him a loaded gun which he uses to go kill that man. In civil court you could almost certainly be found partially responsible in a wrongful death suit.

I'm being rather vague here since I don't know the law particularly well, and a lot depends on what state this all happens in.

Re:Strength of their argument

[iceph03nix]

while I see your point it's still quite a stretch. However, all glider did was provide a way for people to cheat, the user has to chose to use the program. It would be difficult for Blizzard, that is if they weren't a huge corporation, to prove that there was malicious intent in the creation of this program. Also, I'm not sure what Blizzard hopes to accomplish with this. It is well known that bots are parasites that will attach themselves to just about any MMO w/ heavy grinding. Even if the makers of Glide stop making there program, it will simply be replaced within a month by a new program. On top of that, with the ease of adding mods to WoW hacks, and bots are never going away.

Re:Strength of their argument

[tbannist]

This is really a legal issue? Can I be put in jail for taking a few 100 extra monopoly dollars when no one is looking? The first thing I can think of is Insider Trading, which is punishable, but is a video game = the stock market?

I think this is a case of technicality. Because the players are required to agree to a contract that stipulates they will follow the rules of the game which prohibit bots, then by providing the bots to break those rules means you are encouraging others to break a contract. Furthermore, to develop the WoW Glider, they obviously had to have a WoW account to test it on, and therefore are themselves guilty of breaking the ToS.

I have no idea where encouraging others to break a contract can be actionable under those conditions, but it's a little less cut and dried than making counterfeit monopoly money, because of the contract that you have to agree to to play. A big problem for Vivendi could be that click-through contracts are not real contracts. No one bothers to read them because they're a waste of time and probably not legally binding in any way.

Re:Strength of their argument

[arkanes]

I don't think you really got the point.

A) Use of Glider is a violation of the TOS.
B) The creators of Glider actively promote it's use (by selling and marketing it). C) People who use Glider have their accounts banned for TOS violation, which harms blizzard financially.

That looks like enough to get the case into court to me. Your arguments are a combination of "it's the users choice", which ignores the very existence of this category of law, and "another one will pop up anyway", which misses the point entirely - suing bot creators is how Blizzard is attempting to keep these bots down to a minimal level.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Dachannien]

Can the company be held responsible, even if it's the users choice? If I tell my friend that if he drives really fast when a police offer wants to pull him over, am I responsible when he runs from the cops the next time he might be asked to pull over while driving?

The legal concept is called "tortious contract interference". Usually it's a charge levied against one company by another if the second company has an employment contract with someone, but the first company attempts to hire that person out from under them. It could conceivably be applied more broadly, although this is probably the first time it's been used in this specific context. (I've been hoping that MMOG companies would use it against gold sellers, which they quite possibly might if this case works out.)

As for your analogy, there are a few things that make it not very apt for this situation. First off, are you talking about criminal or civil liability? I'm pretty sure (I ANAL, though) that you wouldn't be criminally liable, but I have no idea about civil liability if actual damages arise. Second, you're talking about a different sort of case. Contract interference is a specific tort that's different from the damage to property or person that might arise in a car accident.

Analogies usually fall short of their intent, but I'll try to come up with one anyway: Suppose I'm contracted to fix the roof on your house, and you need me to finish the job by the weekend because it's supposed to rain. In fact, the finish date is in the contract. Now suppose that CowboyNeal (hey, why not) wants me to do some work on his house, and he pays me extra to do the work for him ahead of all the other work I'm supposed to do. As a result, I don't even get started on your house before the weekend gets here, and the rain causes a bunch of damage to the inside of your house.

Now, you could sue me and probably win, not only for any money that you paid me already (because I broke the contract) but for the water damage that was caused to the rest of your house as a foreseeable consequence of not honoring the contract. But you could also sue CowboyNeal for interfering with the contract that you and I had, and there's at least a possibility that you could claim damages against either or both of us (jointly and severally, meaning you can claim your pound of flesh from whichever of us you choose, as long as you get exactly one pound of flesh total).

In the WoW/Glider case, the idea is that the folks making Glider are interfering with the contract between Blizzard and the player, because the player (every player) has contracted with Blizzard not to cheat while playing the game (among other things). The Glider folks permit the player to violate the contract by providing a tool that allows the average person to do things they ordinarily would lack the proficiency to do (i.e., hack the game). What's more, they actually charge money for their software, meaning that they enter into their own contract with the player, which probably makes them more culpable than if they merely posted their software on the Internet for anyone to use.

(Again, I ANAL, so take what I just said with a big ol' lick of salt.)

Re:Strength of their argument

[benfinkel]

Also remember civil cases are different than criminal. They don't have to "prove malicious intent". This isn't a beyond a reasonable doubt kind of thing. Glider has to convince the court that their software has a perfectly reasonable use that isn't meant to encourage users to violate the TOS and cause Blizzard damages. In fact, they'd have to convince the court that using Glider to violate the TOS is a complete misappropriation of the intent of the software. Anything less is liability that Glider has.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Planesdragon]

However, all glider did was provide a way for people to cheat

And that's a tort against the game company. ("tort" is "something that you can be sued over." Not necessarily a crime, but still something that's a bad idea.)

It's almost the exact same tort as, oh, a P2P company that encourages sharing of copyrighted music. And it's the same legal principle that applies to, oh, hiring someone else to kill your mother.

Re:Strength of their argument

[rblancarte]

Just because you don't read the contract doesn't mean they are not real. I mean, I may not read every word on a loan application, but if I sign it, you better believe that I am on the hook for the consequences if I don't pay the loan.

Enforceability? There are cases that go both ways on that. I would not use that as something to stand on, if I am facing the prospect of legal action.

IMHO, I don't get a package like glider, because what is the point of paying for a game to allow the computer to play by itself.

And I would also agree, cheating by players, is something that keeps me away from games, like WOW (which I have also avoided for it's crack-like consistency).

RonB

Re:Strength of their argument

[Dachannien]

A big problem for Vivendi could be that click-through contracts are not real contracts.

Not true. I don't have the references handy, but EULAs have been found valid on many occasions. The two big problems are when (a) you don't actually have to have seen the agreement before installing the software, and (b) when you pay for the software (or can't get your money back for it) before agreeing to the EULA. In WoW's case specifically, Blizzard provides a way for you to get your money back for the boxed game if you decide not to agree with the EULA, and they also ask you to agree to their TOS when you contract with them for a game account as well as when you first run the game (and after some game patches as well). Their specific EULA hasn't been challenged in court AFAIK, but agreements which haven't caused problems as mentioned in (a) and (b) above have generally been upheld the few times they've been tested.

Re:Strength of their argument

[tbannist]

There's two problems with the click-through contracts:
1) They're too damned long for what they're protecting and usually written in legal jargin that makes them difficult for the layman to understand.

2) They're presented after offer and acceptance has already been completed. Even if you provide a way for someone to return the software for a full refund if they choose not to agree to the EULA, it's not actual a binding agreement according to the legal code. The problem, you can't modify an agreement after it's been reached without providing something for both parties in the agreement. Click through licenses, generally, only offer additional duties to the purchaser without providing any additional value to the purchaser and since they generally block usage of the software unless you agree to the click-through they are largely uneforceable, the provider is simply not allowed to change the nature of the contract once you've agreed to purchase the software.

Now Vivendi might be able to get away with it since technically the box only gives you 1 month of playing time and most people purchase their 2nd and subsequent months directly from the WoW web site and thus the offer and acceptance problem could be resolved by having people agree to the conditions at purchase time. This, however, might not apply to anyone purchasing time cards as the original offer and acceptance problem applies to them as well.

So the point is they're not real contracts because:
1) There is no actual agent on the other end of the contract to provide for modifications if you disagree with any provisions of the contract.
2) The contract is provided at a point where it is no longer legally allowed to impose additional conditions on the agreement.
3) The contract is deliberately written in a way to make it's provisions inaccessible to the people it's supposedly to apply to.
4) The contract is agreed to by clicking a single button, not signed on paper as is standard procedure for important contracts.
5) The contract is at it's most basic level simply unimportant it covers a transaction so small that if the contract had to actually be written for the transaction specifically the cost of the contract would far, far outweigh the cost of the transaction.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer so this is just my limited understanding of some of the basic legal issues that the defence will likely raise. The plaintiff might right just say "we published the rules of the game, and the defendents refuse to adhere to those rules, we'd like an injuction preventing them from playing the game or helping others cheat at the game". That's a pretty basic and compelling argument for granting the injunction.

On the other hand the reason why people cheat at WoW is patently obvious, Vivendi has substituted killing the same monster 3,200 times for actual content. They call it reputation grinding and it's generic friend money grinding. It's a way to slow down character progression and drag out the length of player subscriptions.

I think Vivendi has entered the "rape the dead body of Blizzard for cash" section of the buyout process, and I don't see good things in store for the World of Warcraft as they tighten the screws ever harder.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Breakfast Pants]

If Blizzard can prove that by allowing players to cheat Blizzard is being "injured" (in this case fiscally) then they have a strong argument that Glider is liable for the "injuries".

No they don't. If that was the case, you could sue for competitiveness. "Oh ouch your honor, we just can't compete with Burger King, it is killing McDonalds! Give us their money!"

The damages will rely on how much injury Blizzard suffers, but the whether they are liable or not will not be based on how much the actions 'damage' Blizzard. It will be based almost solely on the tortuous interference with a contract bit of the whole thing.

Re:Strength of their argument

[91degrees]

Certainly an interesting point, but surely you would have to prove damage of some sort for them to claim.

Re:Strength of their argument

[benfinkel]

Often time people do sue over competitiveness. Thats what anti-trust suits are all about.

My very very summarized counter-point is if Blizzard can't come up with some pretty concrete numbers their case becomes more difficult. It's not a tort if there are no damages.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Anonymous Coward]

| Blizzard believes that Glider infringes on their intellectual property.
| This point can seem to be a strong suit.
| They believe Glider allows players to cheat, giving them an unfair advantage

Since Blizzard still owns the rights to the game and the users are more renting the game then owning it. They are free to do all kinds of stuff. However, I do not think they have the right to take you to jail over it, but they can suspend your rights to play like a parent does a child. Be good and play nice.

|... and that they believe Glider encourages Blizzard customers to breach their contracts
| for playing the game.

How much time and money is being spent to regulate the problem? If a lot of money is being wasted on it, then why not fix the problem at the source? After all, most gamers would not build their own Glider. Hence, stopping this practice makes some logical sense.

| Last they claim that Glider is designed to circumvent copyright protections.

This seems like a sticky argument, but I can see a couple of ways it could be handled. After all, in order to create the Glider you have to know how the game operates; most likely a very in-depth understanding of the game which might require looking/reading/understand game code, packets, and other information. If the Glider modifies Blizzard's code, in anyway, then you have circumvented the copyright protection that protects the code as well as trying to make a profit off these modifications; which by the way is illegal. The trying to make a profit off of it is very bad.

On the other hand, if the Glider operates passively, then only an understanding of the code/game needs to exists. So, depending on how the Glider was created and where that information came from, could land that person(s) into a lot of trouble. For example: If it was through a decompiler, then again you have circumvented the copyright protections as well as tried to make profit of it. While Blizzard may not be sure how the creator(s) obtain their information, I am sure they know how to go about obtaining the information to create such a program; hence the charge.

In closing, just because you do not agree with what someone is doing, does not make that person(s) wrong. Perhaps, instead we could come up with better solutions for Blizzard to help improve their game or find a better answer to this argument. After all, it is the democratic approach. However, if a law(s) was broken in this case, then we all need to agree on an appropriate penalty.

Cheers,
The Fuzzy-Wuzzies

Re:Strength of their argument

[Sancho]

Alternatively, they could claim that that part of the TOS isn't a valid contract. They can also argue that there are no real damages because the choice to ban is Blizzard's, and thus the choice to lose the money was theirs as well.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Breakfast Pants]

But look at your original statement:

If Blizzard can prove that by allowing players to cheat Blizzard is being "injured" (in this case fiscally) then they have a strong argument that Glider is liable for the "injuries". Glider would need to prove to the court's satisfaction that their software had significant use and/or purpose other than circumventing Blizzard's TOS and causing this "injury". It's similar to the problems that the P2P software manufacturers face. Let's say I post a bad review on Amazon.com of some crappy product:

If [maker of said product] can prove that by having customers read this review [maker of said product] is being "injured" (in this case fiscally) then they have a strong argument that [I am] liable for the "injuries". I would need to prove to the court's satisfaction that my review had significant use other than [causing "fiscal" injury]. It's similar to the problems that the P2P software manufacturers face. Now I'm sure you'll say there was another use: preventing fiscal harm to others who might by said crappy product. Well, in this case Glider has another use: providing cheaters with a cool way to cheat. The product review analogy isn't so crazy either, big companies have put clauses in their EULAs prohibiting 'benchmarking' which is the keystone of a serious review.

Re:Strength of their argument

[sabt-pestnu]

Are they saying that "Hey, we've had to ban 100,000's of accounts because people are using your products and we want you to pay us back for those 100,000 accounts. Lets see, that's 100,000 accounts at $15 / month and the average account is active for 1 year. So, pay us $18,000,000."

Unlikely that a villain would sink a full year's cost into a subscription they're farming (either for gold, or to make an account to sell). Risk management in their business plan.

And those folks who DO subscribe that far in advance are less likely to endanger their accounts.

Re:Strength of their argument

[benfinkel]

Yea, that's kind of exactly what I was saying. "...by allowing players to cheat Blizzard is being injured..." so providing players with a cool way to cheat wouldn't be another use, that's the exact use I was talking about.

As for the product review analogy there are torts such as libel that keep "reviewers" in line with certain rules of conduct. On the flip side, courts have ruled plenty of times protecting free speech to make opinionated reviews which is where I would argue my Amazon.com review lies. The courts could also rule still that Glider is within their rights to make this product as well, that just seems like an unlikely outcome.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Das Modell]

This is really a legal issue? Can I be put in jail for taking a few 100 extra monopoly dollars when no one is looking? The first thing I can think of is Insider Trading, which is punishable, but is a video game = the stock market?

It's their game and they run it, so they make the rules. You don't play it offline or at the dinner table, you play it on Blizzard's servers on the Internet.

I have no tolerance for cheaters. I hope Glider suffers.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Sanglant]

Analogies usually fall short of their intent, but I'll try to come up with one anyway: Suppose I'm contracted to fix the roof on your house, and you need me to finish the job by the weekend because it's supposed to rain. In fact, the finish date is in the contract. Now suppose that CowboyNeal (hey, why not) wants me to do some work on his house, and he pays me extra to do the work for him ahead of all the other work I'm supposed to do. As a result, I don't even get started on your house before the weekend gets here, and the rain causes a bunch of damage to the inside of your house. Now, you could sue me and probably win, not only for any money that you paid me already (because I broke the contract) but for the water damage that was caused to the rest of your house as a foreseeable consequence of not honoring the contract. But you could also sue CowboyNeal for interfering with the contract that you and I had, and there's at least a possibility that you could claim damages against either or both of us (jointly and severally, meaning you can claim your pound of flesh from whichever of us you choose, as long as you get exactly one pound of flesh total). IANALE, but one thing to keep in mind though is the level of Neal's knowledge of your existing contracts. I.e., if it was a

"I'll pay you 15% over your normal fee if you switch to my repairs before all others."
vs.
"I'll pay you 15% over your normal fee if you switch to my repairs before doing those Sang contracted for!"

Then we get into the whole issue of proving knowledge of the contract to the extent that Neal was aware that his offer would interfere with mine, etc.

The interesting part in this, to me at least, is that the defendant's business model is inherently tied to the continued success of Blizzard's game.

In my state we have to prove that the defendant acted "without justification" in these cases. That is, that they had no legal right to screw with the relationship. The interesting quirk is:

An absence of justification will be found where the defendant has no legal right to take the challenged actions, but a party may be justified in interfering if he has a legal right to do so. SSM Health Care, Inc. v. Deen, 890 S.W.2d 343, 346 (Mo. Ct. App. 1994). "One who has an economic interest in a business relationship or expectancy cannot be held liable for inducing a breach thereof even though motivated by self-interest, in the absence of pleading and proof that such self-interested purpose was accomplished by improper means." Id. Improper means are those which are "independently wrongful," including "misrepresentation of fact, threats, violence, defamation, and restraint of trade." Murray, 862 S.W.2d at 935 (quotation omitted).

From the business point, I'd think the defendant was "justified" in the sense that even though interfering with the contract he did so out of an economic interest and, I assume, didn't state you could use the program and still be within the EULA constraints, beat you into using the hack, say you were a noob for not using the hack, nor attempt to somehow monopolize the whole WoW cheat scene.

Re:Strength of their argument

[goldspider]

"Hmmm... could local governments sue nitrous and 'after market' car parts manufacturers that encourage people to drive over the speed limits?"

Doubtful, as there are plenty of legitimate uses of after market car parts that don't encourage or compel their users to break the law or violate a contract.

WoW Glide, on the other hand, has no legitimate use in terms of Blizzard's EULA/TOS. It use alone is a violation of contract.

Re:Strength of their argument

[otopico]

There's two problems with the click-through contracts:
1) They're too damned long for what they're protecting and usually written in legal jargin that makes them difficult for the layman to understand. A reader's laziness doesn't negate the fact they click 'accept' at the end of the text. Besides, the idea that the text is 'too long' or 'hard to understand' doesn't change the fact that the contract is there, and regardless of it's length, the user can choose to accept it or reject it.

If the contract is deceptive you might have an argument, but if a user is too lazy to read what they are in effect signing, then it is their fault if they are ignorant of any rules they are breaking. With Glider it is different, they tell you that you are breaking the rules by using it. Can't claim ignorance there.

Maybe the game needs a way to speed up play, but until the ToS changes what is allowed, botting is a violation and Glider knowingly sells a product to violate that ToS.

Glider is wrong to encourage people to break the rules, but I can't see how they have any liability. If anything, the users should be, and are being, banned for breaking the rules. These people should be feeling foolish for paying $25 to get their accounts banned.

Blizzard is chasing this because Glider is a commercial interest that is providing a product that has no purpose other than violating the ToS. Blizzard gets loads of complaints from players about bot and gold farmers so it only make sense that Blizzard will attempt to go after the people breaking rules.

The real problem isn't Blizzard v Glider. It is the asshat players cheating, using Glider or not. Glider would not exist if people weren't cheating.

Re:Strength of their argument

[tbannist]

See, I can't agree that it's "laziness" to skip reading the clickthrough contract. You seemed to fail to understand the entire point. Reading the contract provides no benefit to the customer. He can't change it, he's already paid for the product and in all likelyhood it says nothing of importance. I'm sorry but most people value their time more than the maximum potential damage caused by not reading the contract. It's not laziness at all, it's enlightened self-interest.

On the other side, I don't like botters at all. However, I also sympethize with at least some of the players. I used to play WoW. I quite shortly after BC came out, I just realized that Vivendi was making it take longer and longer to do stuff so they could drag memberships out. People bot because they don't want to kill 3200 red orcs to be able to buy the good weapon and 4800 blue orcs to be able to buy the good shield. I hated having quests where you had to collect "12 pieces of sandworm meat" only to have to kill 5 worms to find 1 piece. And since, of course, it's a quest item, it's soul bound thus can't be traded and only drops while you have the quest.

I just became disgusted with how WoW was forcing players to endlessly grind to get anywhere, and with the announcement that they plan reset of the game every year now (by increasing the level cap and releasing a new expansion that makes all previous end game content not worth playing), instead of gradually releasing content patches, I can see all too clearly how Vivendi is exploiting their players.

So yes, it is in fact partially Vivendi's fault that they've turned the game into something that people want to spend less time playing and paying for. I still blame the asshats for cheating, but I can also blame Vivendi for making cheating this way such a tempting choice.

Re:Strength of their argument

[pod]

It violates safeguards put into the game to detect and shut down cheaters. The bot must get past the scanner, which safeguards the integrity of the IP, that is to be accessed by a living breathing person only.

It's a weak argument, like slapping down a plaintext password on some files and suing for copy protection breach when someone "breaks" this top notch security.

Re:Strength of their argument

[Breakfast Pants]

There are specific categories of tort; you don't say 'did you do damage to the person? if yes, does the manner in which the damage was caused fall under a specific exemption?'. Instead, you say 'did you do damage to the person? if yes, does the manner in which the damage was caused fall into a specific category of damage, to which tort law is applicable?' Allowing people to cheat doesn't fall into such a category. Neither does writing a bad review, or out competing a competitor.

Blizzard is upset that.

[dudeX]

Blizzard doesn't like that Glider circumvents their program that monitors processes that hook into WoW. The other charges are so that they can establish precedent against other auxiliary programs that they do not like but are not considered cheating.

It would be scary if Blizzard won.

question from a non-wow player

[Anonymous Coward]

Something doesn't make sense to me.

Why pay to play a game, and then have a computer play it for you?

First, it seems like a waste of your dollars. You might as well just install Progress Quest. It will play for you too, and it's free.

Second, if an RPG has simplistic enough mechanics that it *can* be played automatically, then it seems too simple to be interesting to a human.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Fozzyuw]

Why pay to play a game, and then have a computer play it for you?

Funny because it's true. In actuality, such games are not so much about the 'enjoyment of playing' but the 'enjoyment of collection'. It's like when I was a kid and spend endless money on football cards. Sometimes obsessively so to try and get a special card from a pack, or go to 'specialty stores' to buy it specifically from someone else.

Like that, WoW and other MMO's are about collection or completing 'sets' of things. In this case, leveling your character to the level cap. Maxing out all their abilities. Sure, a Hunter might only use a bow for 99% of his play time, but this person will still max out their sword, 2 hand sword, axe, hand-to-hand, polearm, staff, etc skill.

They might NEVER care about the cooking skill, but they max this out too, because they have it and it's not maxed yet. So, you might say "yeah, but if you're still not playing the game, then you'd still have no interest in the game and therefor no interest in doing it in the first place.". That would be true as well. Most of this maxing out skills would be done for some of the tedious tasks that the person really doesn't want to spend the time doing, but has spent the time maxing out the stats that matter when he was playing.

Otherwise, most uses are simply for those who are trying circumvent the 'boring' process of acquiring wealth to purchase things that would allow them to enjoy the game. For instance, this goes to your second good point...

Second, if an RPG has simplistic enough mechanics that it *can* be played automatically, then it seems too simple to be interesting to a human.

Half of the game is fun, and not necessary for automation. That's the leveling/quest process. There's fun action/story involved in the game. When you reach the level cap, that's when the 'tedium' kicks in. My own example. I've recently hit level 70. Now, I'm doing the 'max out my skills' area or 'finish all the quests in my book' thing. It's the football collector / perfectionist side of me. I want that 100% completion rating kind of thing. Actually, I now find myself not caring to play as much, since I know all that's left is 'grind' with little accomplishment and I'm not looking forward to waisting my time maxing out my fishing or cooking skills again.

However, the parts I am interested in, where I now have to 'grind' out 5,200 gold to afford that epic flying mount, which could take weeks or months, would be a waist of my time as there's no enjoyable benefit for me. I 'could' just keep doing the quests and dungeons until I reach 5,200 gold, but that would take months if I spend no time focusing on making money.

That's when people turn to these automated programs (or for those who use them to sell gold on internet sites). The problem is not the automated program, but that people feel like they need automation to avoid waisting their time and to reach a point they feel comfortable playing again.

So, in your 2nd point, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head and that an game should adjust their development if there are automation problems. However, I think the automation problems are fairly limited to those who are using it to farm in-game gold to sell for real money. So, I think the amount of grind required for 'most' things is fairly reasonable with the latest expansion (I feel it was much worse before the latest expansion pack) and Blizzard has noticed the amount of unpleasant grind on 'some' things, but are keeping others due to the fact that it's just part of the business model to keep people playing and paying.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:question from a non-wow player

[D4rk Fx]

Second, if an RPG has simplistic enough mechanics that it *can* be played automatically, then it seems too simple to be interesting to a human.

I guess that's the same reason humans aren't interested in Sex either... ...Oh wait.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[hotdip]

Maybe the 'non-evil' way of using this software looks something like this: Step 1: Create NELF/BELF female char Step 2: Configure the software for hot cyborz Step 3: ... Step 4: Profit! Whoa! I think I better start working on my business plan. :)

Re:question from a non-wow player

[SydShamino]

I installed this cool game called SETI. It's all about searching for life in the universe or something.

But, I never have time to play. The cool thing is, I got it configured so that my computer can play the game itself. I just let it run whenever I'm not using the machine, and check up to see if I've found anything yet.

No luck so far. You'd think they would put more aliens into a game like this to make it exciting. If I haven't found any by next month, I think I'm going to return it.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Anonymous Coward]

Why pay to play a game, and then have a computer play it for you?

Because most of the time the game is boring shit, and everyone knows it from the players to the designers. Total lack of imagination has moved multiplayer online RPGs from the Holy Grail they seemed in the 80's to pathetic and expensive trudges through meaningless routine actions in order to get to the point where a character can actually play the action parts. And then discover that all the other people who have done likewise are a bunch of tedious, stupid, bastards.

Renting a game is just giving the publishers carte blance to make the game slow and dull.

TWW

Re:question from a non-wow player

[DerekLyons]

Why pay to play a game, and then have a computer play it for you?

Funny because it's true. In actuality, such games are not so much about the 'enjoyment of playing' but the 'enjoyment of collection'. It's like when I was a kid and spend endless money on football cards. Sometimes obsessively so to try and get a special card from a pack, or go to 'specialty stores' to buy it specifically from someone else.
 
Like that, WoW and other MMO's are about collection or completing 'sets' of things. In this case, leveling your character to the level cap.

That's an attitude I've never been able to understand. In game after game I see the same thing: "I've ground my $template to $levelcap and I'm bored! There's nothing to do but $handful of stuff!"
 
Well, duh idiot. You ground yourself right past all the content! WTF did you expect? When you play a console game or PC RPG you don't try and leap right to the boss fight - why do you do that in a MMO?

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!! Nice! I play this one also on three computers! I agree, they need more aliens.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Mattsson]

Blizzard should make their own autopilot-software for WoW.
One of the reasons I stopped playing WoW was all the horribly slow and boring traveling.

When I started playing, my first though was "Argh! He moves too slow! I must reach level 40 and get a mount!"
After ~20 levels I was bored with leveling and the simplistic, repetitive quests.
After reaching level 40 with my main I found that he was *still* horribly slow, and also had to dismount his war-stead to fight! (wtf?)
What? A better mount at level 60? No way!
Deleted my 6 characters, uninstalled the game, canceled my subscription.

An autopilot and faster movement at lower levels might have made the game bearable.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[elhedran]

Not everyone who glides to get past the story.

Some just want to get past the 3 hours collecting a low drop. Others just want to get from x0 to x8 so they can get into battlegrounds again. More have 3 classes at 60 already and have seen all the story/content. Unless you think people haven't read a book or seen a movie unless they have seen/read it four or more times?

Personally, I blame blizzards cookie-cutter ai and monster behavior that exists all the way from 1-60. There is good content in WoW, its just a pity so much of it is hidden behind mind numbing grinds. The rogue quest leading up to ST is a prime example. Three hours grinding, half the items needed. I know someone who cancelled their subscription right there (although not entirely for that reason alone)

For me it was glide or quit. I chose quit, but I have no disrespect for those glide - if thats how the game stays fun for you, go for it. Noobs get to level 60 even without glider.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Anonymous Coward]

My opinion:

PvE isn't fun. The encounters are the same, every, single, time. After you beat it 3-4 times, it's not difficult anymore.

PvP is fun. The teams are almost always different.

In the end I found that I had the most fun playing 20-29. And I played my 29 warlock as a main for three months. I ran around the overworld killing people who were level 40. No guild. No raid requirement. I did what I wanted when I wanted. Lots of fun.

I botted to get gold to support the 20-29 char and my other 60's who I PvP'd with. I had no desire to spend time running ud strat for the ????th time in two years. I had no desire to go out and mindlessly grind for hours in the overworld.

I was content to pay my $15, PvP in the battlegrounds and the overworld, and have my computer kill monkies and bears and kittens while I wasn't playing so that I didn't have to play those parts of the game. That wasn't good enough for Blizzard so they banned me, I cancelled my other account, and I'll never purchase one of their products again.

The most fucked up part is that they know they're going to ban you for a few months before they do, and they let you continue to pay them and invest time into the game during those months.

Blizzard shouldn't win this. No copyright infringement has taken place. If he violated his own EULA/TOS, then they have the right to refuse him service. They can't claim he encouraged people to break the EULA. Everywhere you turn on the forums someone is mentioning that it's against the rules. He has said himself that it's never completely safe to glide and you do risk being banned.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[SanityInAnarchy]

You might as well just install Progress Quest. It will play for you too, and it's free.

Or IdleRPG, but I doubt either of them have particularly good graphics.

Second, if an RPG has simplistic enough mechanics that it *can* be played automatically, then it seems too simple to be interesting to a human.

It's possible. From what I've heard of WoW, it might even be true.

But, I don't think it's really relevant to MMOs in general. Say it was a kickass FPS -- then your statement makes perfect sense. If I can make a bot that plays straight through an FPS, then maybe that FPS was too simple to stay interesting to a human -- although I have to admit, Quake and Doom can still be fun, even though bots could probably play both pretty well.

But in an MMO, it's not linear. You can create a bot which goes and does exactly the same thing, over and over -- basically grinds for you -- but it won't necessarily be as interesting as actually doing it yourself, and doing it right.

In the game I play, one controversy awhile back was "autocutting". Seems people had created scripts to go out into the woods and automatically walk around and chop things. Basically, since "attack" is spacebar, you can just put a rock on your spacebar and let your character keep attacking whatever's in front of it -- and that tree isn't going to move.

Autocutting has been made less practical over the years, but someone actually created a way to auto-level himself, fairly similarly. There is an area -- the Thirsty Ogres -- which just about anyone can kill. Worst case, it'll take you two hits. This is the best experience you can get through about level 12. They're also aggro. So, the guy put a rock on his spacebar and left himself there -- presumably at level one -- and we caught him at level 38.

Now, it's true, if you just stand in one place and kill the same ogre over and over, it's pretty damned boring. But that's NOT what a normal player does. There are all kinds of things to do, some of which help you level up, some of which don't. There are quests to do, there are all kinds of caves to hunt in and explore, and there are PVP events and RP events.

Pretty much the only thing for which a mind-numbing grind is inescapable is crafting skills, but that's entirely optional -- while there are some items which can only be attained through crafting, there are enough people crafting already that most of these are reasonably cheap. The only other thing that requires crafting is the Ee San Culture trial, but there are alternatives to that -- you could win Story Contests or Poetry Revels.

But even crafting isn't bad, considering I can listen to the radio (podcasts, music) while I craft, and no one's forcing you to do it all at once -- I could craft for half an hour every day, then go actually play for an hour or two.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[dbIII]

Some just want to get past the 3 hours collecting a low drop.

Think how you would feel if you are there trying to do the same thing and the place is filled up with bots you can't talk to or make deals with.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[fbjon]

Your should try Progress Quest then.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but I think you are confused. SETI@home is not actually a game. The program uses your computer to analyze real data collected from radio telescopes. You can compare the amount of units you have processed with other users, but there is no game component to this project.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[LingNoi]

I believe the objective is to automate gold collecting so you can then sell it at various gold auction sites for real money.

Why pay for an Asian and a computer when you can just use the computer.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Mascot]

However, the parts I am interested in, where I now have to 'grind' out 5,200 gold to afford that epic flying mount, which could take weeks or months, would be a waist of my time as there's no enjoyable benefit for me. I 'could' just keep doing the quests and dungeons until I reach 5,200 gold, but that would take months if I spend no time focusing on making money.

I'm sorry. But what is it you are interested in that requires the epic flying mount? Blizzard designed levels 60-70 to throw enough money at you to afford the non-epic flying mount when you reach 70. This will get you anywhere you need to go if you wish to explore the end-game content. Having an epic flying mount won't change anything except your flight speed. So if you aren't interested in the end-game content, then it won't change that. If you are, then the regular flying mount will get you where you need to go.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[otopico]

Because most of the time the game is boring shit, and everyone knows it from the players to the designers Then don't play.

If it is so dull and boring, then explain how Blizzard is making money on this. Are they using mind control to force people into paying?

You might find it boring, fine, don't play. But a lot of people think its fun enough to pay for. Maybe the problem isn't the game, maybe it's you.

Go find a game you enjoy and stop playing the ones you don't enjoy.

Just an idea.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Anonymous Coward]

This question is asked a lot, and I've never understood why it doesn't get a better answer.

It's *not* "Because I want to be 1337 haxxor".

It's because I want to enjoy the game, and that means different things to different people. Some people enjoy killing literally thousands of similar mobs, and some don't, but there's a lot more to the game than that.

My personal example - I have a friend who is level 60 and playing the expansion. I'd be very interested in playing through the new content with him, but in the month it would take me to level to 60 (I have a job and a wife), he's lost interest. We both have exactly zero interest in raid content. Personally, I looked at glider and decided not to. Not to play at all that is.

PvP is also interesting to me, especially the arena. The arena is level 70 only (if you want to play with people you know), so according to blizzard that's two months of "play"(quotes because I wouldn't enjoy it) to get to the bit that I would enjoy.

I don't see anything wrong or difficult to understand about using a tool to bypass those bits of the *game* I'm not interested in. My reticence to use such a tool because it is against the EULA effectively bars me from the game, and from the bits that I would enjoy.

It always makes me think of cars - you use a car to skip the travel to get to the bit you're interested in (work, a friends house, a club). People would look at you very stangely if you suggested that, somehow, they didn't really want to come over if they were going to drive instead of walking.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Aceticon]

Why pay to play a game, and then have a computer play it for you?

        Funny because it's true. In actuality, such games are not so much about the 'enjoyment of playing' but the 'enjoyment of collection'. It's like when I was a kid and spend endless money on football cards. Sometimes obsessively so to try and get a special card from a pack, or go to 'specialty stores' to buy it specifically from someone else.

        Like that, WoW and other MMO's are about collection or completing 'sets' of things. In this case, leveling your character to the level cap.

That's an attitude I've never been able to understand. In game after game I see the same thing: "I've ground my $template to $levelcap and I'm bored! There's nothing to do but $handful of stuff!"

Well, duh idiot. You ground yourself right past all the content! WTF did you expect? When you play a console game or PC RPG you don't try and leap right to the boss fight - why do you do that in a MMO?

That's because you're an "Explorer" type player while he's a "Collector" type player - to put thing another way, you mostly enjoy the trip, he mostly enjoys arriving at the finish.

Both are perfectly valid ways of enjoying a MMORPG though quite diferent and somewhat at odds with each other: "Collectors" will moan all the way to max level about the grind they have to go through to get to the finish while "Explorers" will complain loudly about the how there's no more fun to the game after reaching the last level and how there's no point in maxing most of your skills.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[murdocj]

Having "insta-travel" is one of the things that killed Everquest. You completely lose any concept of the size of the world(s) when you can just click on a stone and get to where you are going. Requiring travel immerses you in the virtual world.

Travel in WoW is actually pretty reasonable. I suspect that once you have flight paths and a mount, the worst case is probably about 20 minutes to get anywhere. Which is enough to make you think about "the world" and how where you are going is related to where you are starting from, but not enough to make the game unplayable.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[Mattsson]

Instant movement between places isn't what I meant either. That wouldn't fix the problem of the characters moving dead-slow while moving short distances.
Towards the end of my ~6 months long WoW period, I didn't even train my characters anymore. To slow running around the cities...
I would log in, start running, for an example, from the inn to the flight-tower in orgrimmar and halfway there I would stop and log out.
Stopped doing quests, instances, leveling, etc, etc. Simply gave up on the boring parts and then there was nothing left to do, so I deleted my characters...

But, of course, I'm one of those who continuously got more and more bored with WoW instead for becoming more and more fixated, like most WoW-playing people I know.

Re:question from a non-wow player

[NTesla]

I get what you are saying but I also somewhat agree with these "cheaters". Here's my analogy:
Some people love building sports kit cars that they may drive some day; They spend months (or years) building the car, dynamo the engine at a facility, then fine-tune based on data collected, buy better upgrades, choose paint jobs, leather, chrome, etc. Then they FINALLY take it to the track or race it on the street. They enjoyed building process as much, if not more, than driving the car. They take prive in what they have accomplished. (even though there are others who may have the same kit car that looks just like theirs)
Then there are others, who just buy a fully-loaded sports car (Porsche Carrera 4S, for example) and enjoy driving it from day one. They won't even change oil or wash the car by themselves.
BOTH kinds drive on the same roads and while they may not respect or appreciate how the other guy got there, neither one is right or wrong.
However, in the real world it's a little easier to tell them apart and in virtual world there should be a way to do the same. Perhaps a flag or description once you "examine" their avatar. Label them "spoon-fed-until-60" or sleepwalking or something funnier.
As far as I know, Blizzard doesn't sue Chinese players who charge $200 to level-up your char to 60, so why sue someone who's pretty much doing the same via software? (except taking a "job" away from someone in China?)
Someone should sue Blizzard because you have to have arms and/or legs to play the game. WOW cannot be played telepathically...YET.

Misleading title...

[__aaclcg7560]

Looks like "death from above" is not a supported WoW feature.

Boycott Blizzard

[jspayne]

Warcraft II was good, Kali made it groundbreaking. So much so, Blizzard was shipping Kali on the Warcraft II CD, and ultimately it inspired Blizzard to create Battle.net. Battle.net was good, but not great - and Bnetd was created. Did Blizzard embrace this new contribution from their loyal fanbase? Of course not, they sued them into oblivion. I owned every Blizzard title and expansion up to Warcraft 3. They haven't gotten a nickel of my money since.

Re:Boycott Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen brother. Blizzard Entertainment have demonstrated over the years, right up to Mike Mornahime, that they are complete assholes concerning certain things as far as consumer rights go...JUST LIKE A LOT OF CONTENT PUBLISHERS!

Hopefully, this will go down in flames like the "Nintendo Game Genie" incident more than 15 years ago.

Re:Boycott Blizzard

[Senjutsu]

I owned every Blizzard title and expansion up to Warcraft 3. They haven't gotten a nickel of my money since. Congrats, your boycott seems to really be hurting their World of Warcraft product.

Re:Boycott Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Blizzard's target market knows about this boycott.

Automatons

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if WoW did not require its players to be automatons, then this kind of automation would not be a problem?

I mean seriously, who wants to play a game where you must repeat the same mind-numbing tasks over and over again to progress in the game? (Let alone pay for the privilege...) I am amazed that these games are successful at all.

This is a game design issue.

Re:Automatons

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything in life can be distilled down to "mind-numbing tasks over and over again." I am amazed that people want to live at all.

Re:Automatons

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything in life can be distilled down to "mind-numbing tasks over and over again." I am amazed that people want to live at all.

I feel for you. Try going outside, you'll be amazed at the variety of activities available and the infinite possibilities.

Break out of the cage of capitalist society and you'll find many reasons to live.

Why do people keep hosting this stuff in the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not like its hard to get hosting and domain registration in Canada or Europe. Why do it in the US when you know Vivendi Universal are scum sucking buttwipes who will try to use their money to push you around in the US court system? I'm suprised Vivendi hasn't asked Godaddy to shut down their domain already, since Godaddy seems to have no issues with doing that for big companies.

That's a big no...

[KingSkippus]

You dont play many MMO's do you?

It's not rocket science. Everyone remotely competent can switch classes easy.

That's a big "no," if ever I heard one.

sigh

[spykemail]

I still play Diablo II, and I have to say that I've seen a pattern of unreasonable behavior on Blizzard's part. Preventing cheating is one thing, but who defines cheating? They do, and their definition is pretty much "regardless of whether the program is completely harmless and improves a crappy aspect of our game, it's still cheating if it allows a player to play our game in any way that wasn't determined solely by us." The one that really gets to me is the map thing for Diablo II. For the love of God, nobody that still plays Diablo II enjoys exploring the same levels over and over and over again.

I'm also not a big fan of their anti-cheating tactics, and I applaud these people for circumventing them, even if it may have been for a bad cause.

Re:sigh

[brkello]

I am trying to refrain from putting you down, but it is really hard. How in the heck is this unreasonable behavior? I know the whole bnted thing...and I agree that Blizzard was right to shut that down because its primary reason to exist was to allow people to play their game online without paying for it. I don't know of your Diablo example, so I can't really comment on that...but you really can't comment on WoW.

The program allows a person to leave their computer and let the script play for them. It is cheating...period. Blizzard has done an amazing job with their interface...allowing tons of user created AddOns that enhance your ability to play the game. But making something like this is unacceptable to everyone who plays the game. Stopping cheaters and gold sellers is why a lot of people support Blizzard. There was rampant cheating in FFXI that turned so many away. Blizzard has to fight to keep their game cheat free and I say good for them for doing it.

And then there are people like you that applaud people who find ways to allow people to cheat. Seriously, what is wrong with you? If you don't like the way Blizzard runs their games, then don't buy them. Don't encourage people to find ways of screwing over others.

Re:sigh

[Tim C]

They do, and their definition is pretty much "regardless of whether the program is completely harmless and improves a crappy aspect of our game, it's still cheating if it allows a player to play our game in any way that wasn't determined solely by us."

Another way of saying "playing our game in the way that was determined solely by us" is "playing by the rules". Playing in a way not allowed by the rules is generally called "cheating".

Re:sigh

[Sancho]

Actually, you don't have to pay for Battlenet Diablo/Diablo II games. I'm pretty sure that WoW is the first Blizzard game to require a monthly payment. The whole bnetd thing was completely about control, not money.

The program allows a person to leave their computer and let the script play for them. It is cheating...period.

The grandparent was bringing up the fact that the definition of cheating is highly variable. Semantically, what's the difference if a script does my grinding or if hit the attack button a dozen times while reading a book? Would a complicated OCR+mechanical keypresser setup be cheating? Is it cheating to have something flash on your screen if you're being attacked? Is it cheating to modify UI elements to be more useable?

The line is fine and arbitrarily drawn by Blizzard. That's all he was saying.

Re:sigh

[Kalriath]

Actually, you don't have to pay for Battlenet Diablo/Diablo II games. I'm pretty sure that WoW is the first Blizzard game to require a monthly payment. The whole bnetd thing was completely about control, not money.
Actually, their core argument was that BnetD had no valid way of confirming that the CD key affiliated with any given installation of the game was valid, and not pirated. This was what was upheld, as technically the BnetD team were providing a means of circumventing the copy protection to play online.

Re:sigh

[Qzukk]

Semantically, what's the difference if a script does my grinding or if hit the attack button a dozen times while reading a book? Would a complicated OCR+mechanical keypresser setup be cheating?

Something non-human is playing the game for you.

Is it cheating to have something flash on your screen if you're being attacked? Is it cheating to modify UI elements to be more useable?

You are playing the game for you.

Re:sigh

[Sancho]

Ah, I didn't realize that. It bothers me, because there are already copy-protection measures on the discs (the discs can't be copied under normal circumstances, and a disc is required to be in the drive to play the game) but it definitely changes my interpretation of the case a bit.

Re:sigh

[Stormie]

The one that really gets to me is the map thing for Diablo II. For the love of God, nobody that still plays Diablo II enjoys exploring the same levels over and over and over again.

??? That's the only thing that remains enjoyable once you've been playing Diablo II for a long time. If you want to use Maphack to rush through the levels to the boss, you're not enjoying playing the game, you're in the football card collecting mindset described by an earlier commenter. To mix metaphors, what you're trying to do is minimise the time in between pulls on the fruit machine handle, to maximise the return of rare football cards from the machine.

Re:sigh

[Drantin]

Your parent was unclear. While you didn't have to pay to play online, you were supposed to have a legitimate copy of the game in the first place, which Battle.net checks by verifying your CD-Key vs. their database of keys they have sold (not just the ones that pass the installers verifier..) BnetD didn't (and couldn't) do this, therefore they were shutdown (if you're still interested in bnetd, look up pvpgn, its successor...)

Re:sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's wrong...

I still have hardcore level 90+ chars that I check every two months so they don't disappear. I did never use a maphack. If you don't like playing the game the way it was meant to be played, stop playing it and stop ruining the economy.

Re:sigh

[murdocj]

When you can walk away from your machine and have your character hammer on a gold outcrop, mining that resource and preventing any other character from getting it, for days on end, that's cheating. Period. No fine line, no fancy footwork. Nothing hard to understand, no matter how hard you try to turn it into a moral grey area. If you want to promote this kind of behaviour, don't screw around, just announce that you are a selfish pig and go for it. And then let millions of players applaud as Blizzard bans you.

Author is a moron

[charlesbakerharris]

Blizzard believes that Glider allows players to cheat. Having used Glider myself I would have to say that it is not really a cheat program. It does not allow you to dupe items or create things out of thin air. It does not do anything a real player can do with one exception. It does allow the character to be played 24x7. Humans can't do that. Groups of people could do this though. There are many farm companies that offer powerleveling services that will run your character 24x7. There is not much difference between the two of these. Both of them level up your character as fast as possible. They both can farm for you as well.

Is this guy serious? "it is not really a cheat program"? No, it doesn't dupe items. It just gives you a massive competitive advantage, equivalent to a bunch of other ways of cheating (that the author delightfully lists) in violation of the ToS. That's not cheating at all.

What a tool.

Re:Author is a moron

[Chris Burke]

"It does not do anything a real player can do with one exception. It does allow the character to be played 24x7. Humans can't do that. Groups of people could do this though."

Heh. "Sammy Sosa's new cybernetic brain implant doesn't do anything the athlete would be physically incapable of doing himself, it just does it with an unnerring accuracy and resiliance that Sosa himself could never in practice achieve. Senate hearings as to whether or not this constitues 'cheating' are expected to continue..."

Re:Author is a moron

[Goat of Death]

Slaps forehead. If getting to an arbitrary level cap is somehow a competitive advantage then ouch on the world in general. And even more ouch to the next poster for comparing the skill required to be a professional baseball player with the grinding tedium that is WoW and so many other MMORPGs. Brain numbing dedication to a cause should never be equated with actual skill or talent.

Re:Author is a moron

[Velops]

It has nothing to do with levels. Getting to the level cap in WoW is much easier than many MMORPGs on the market today. The advantage comes from being able to get extremely rare drops with little to no effort. These drops end up flooding the economy. This causes the prices to go haywire and hurts anyone who gets these items legitimately.

Re:Author is a moron

[Stormie]

There are many farm companies that offer powerleveling services that will run your character 24x7. There is not much difference between the two of these. Both of them level up your character as fast as possible. They both can farm for you as well.

And both of them are against Blizzard's TOS and can get your account banned. You're right, this author is a moron. What's his point? Is he under the mistaken impression that Blizzard doesn't mind if you get a team of players to play your character 24/7?

Re:Author is a moron

[charlesbakerharris]

Keep slapping your forehead. It's not about getting to the level cap. It's about money, drops, reputation gains - all of which are simply time sinks. The competitive advantage is in those, not in level.

Besides, nobody ever said anything about talent or skill - I'm not sure why you brought those up. They have nothing to do with what we're discussing in terms of cheating here.

Re:Author is a moron

[charlesbakerharris]

Well, he's trying (in vain, limited by his basic inability to sense morality and his faulty command of the English language) to claim that it's not cheating. It's particularly dumb because you could tell a 5 year old what the Glider does and they'd know it was cheating within seconds.

Re:Author is a moron

[toiletsalmon]

Yes. Because five year olds are the ultimate arbiters of morality... Circumventing the logic in the game is "cheating". Doing things that the people who run the game don't want you to do is violating the TOS. Having a program (or another person for that matter) level your character for you is not cheating. They're doing the exact same things you would be doing. These people are being taken to court for supposedly violating the WoW TOS. They'd be laughed out of the building for taking someone to court for "cheating" in a video game.

Re:Author is a moron

[charlesbakerharris]

/sigh. Learn to read, please. Just because something violates the TOS doesn't mean it's not cheating. In fact, a lot of things that are cheating are in the TOS for that very reason.

And no, they're not being taken to court for violating the TOS. They're being taken to court for all of the reasons listed in the article. It's two separate discussions. Yes, they'd be laughed out of the building for taking someone to court for cheating. Problem is, you're the only person discussing that particular vapid point.

would this be like suing counterstrike?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit I don't know anything about WOW but is this not like say a mod for Halflife, that makes the game more playable? and then suing the other company out of spite because blizzard didn't come up with the idea first?

If counterstrike was sued out of existence I never would have touched or had any interest in halflife. perhaps these are people that would like to play the game now and then but have a difficult time playing because they can't dedicate their lives to playing. Thus making it "unfair" to playing against players that do.

Re:would this be like suing counterstrike?

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit I don't know anything about WOW

ORLY?

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Have you stopped to consider the suck that would come from teaming with someone who has never played a warrior before and all of sudden has all these abilities and powers and no idea how to use them effectively?

Exactly how is that different from the way things are now? :)

Anyone have a link to Vivendi's filing?

[Kaikopere]

The only articles I've been able to find about this aren't exactly objective and haven't provided the actual text of the claims being made by Vivendi. While it's easy to hate the big conglomerate, I've had a number of games ruined for me because of bots/farmers (indirectly and directly) and tend to support action being taken to squash gold and item farming. I'm not sure that I would support action against the third party software providers (since they haven't agreed to the TOS) and I'm interested to see the exact nature of the claims Vivendi is making, uncolored by the bias of supporters of the folks being sued.

Blizzard = nazi

[nanowired]

From Blizzard's filing: MDY's sale of WoWGlider has caused Blizzard great harm in the direct loss of revenue from terminated users, the loss of subscription revenue from WoWGlider users availing themselves of the cheat, and from the severe damage to the goodwill of the non-cheating population of WoW users. If they're going to sue him for loss of revenue, than they better well have refunded the money back to all the people they banned. Otherwise they haven't lost enough, because most of the people who got banned repurchased the game!

Re:Blizzard = nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for once again proving Godwin's Law.

bots

[Anonymous Coward]

The keyboard allows botting. Why are people in support of keeping it on the shelves?

Wire Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably will not use "Insider Trading" but Wire Fraud as the basis for the legal argument. It is written very loose to allow play for all levels. If this actually goes through court, it should set some very good guiding principles on the matter. This will probably be settled out of court. The cost for damages you have will probably be the basis, with the additional costs for man-hours Blizzard Employees charged to finding users, banning accounts, and re-activating accounts that were banned.

They could not ban the sale of software such as Glide if it can be proven there is a reasonable use outside of WoW. If they can prove the only use of Glide is for bots on WoW, then they can ban it. If Glide can show any use outside of WoW (even a simple calculator addition), then they can not ban it outright. That is why it is always useful to keep a simple side-program added into everything.
After-market car parts can be used in Racing where the speed limits are higher or non-existent which is why they are not banned. The injured parties from such crashes usually do end up suing the parts manufacturer, the driver, the state and the car manufacturer (depending on how good of a lawyer you get, could end up with money from all of them).

Just an FYI.

AC

One valid reason for it to exist

[UnknownSoldier]

After you've leveled up a few toons to 60, sorry 70 now, its a PITA to level up the rest of your toons. Same thing happened in D2, where it was a MAJOR PITA to level up to 99 -- Blizzard tried banning a few people, but the bots kept coming, and eventually they gave up.

If the author really wanted to keep WoWGlider going, he would of open-sourced it before got the big take down. I seriously doubt he has the money to win the legal case.

Didn't bnetd teach us anything??

Re:One valid reason for it to exist

[Anonymous Coward]

> After you've leveled up a few toons to 60, sorry 70 now, its a PITA to level up the rest of your toons.

I might humbly suggest playing something you have fun playing, instead of something that's "a PITA".

If you like the game, great! But if not, why not find a game you *do* enjoy? It's not supposed to be a job, it's supposed to be fun.

IMHO, all games eventually have the appeal wear off, and that's a good time to find another one (or go back to play some of the classics from the past that you might have enjoyed. I've recently dusted off Bard's Tale again for another go...)

Re:One valid reason for it to exist

[gigertron]

Only idiots use the term 'toon'. Stop using it. Keep some dignity and say 'alt' instead.

Re:One valid reason for it to exist

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Also, only idiots use the term 'roll' to refer to non-random character generation.

Re:One valid reason for it to exist

[UnknownSoldier]

Alt, Toon, Mule, same diff. There is no official definition of what to call your 2nd, 3rd, etc, characters -- slang is slang.

You say too-mate-o, I say to tow-mat-o. Who the fuck really cares, as long as we understand one another.

Are you really that close minded, and power hungry that you need to control how people communicate???

Re:One valid reason for it to exist

[gigertron]

Slang has it's own purpose - to mark you as a member of a group. Kids want to rebel and show that they're different, so they mask their language by creating new slang terms, many of which have really goofy origins. Do you think MMOs are like cartoons? Or are they like pen-and-paper role playing games? Did you come to MMO gaming through southpark, or everquest fanfic, or from a long history of playing online games, as MUDs and MUSHs and MUCKs? Using the word 'toon' marks you as a young kid, or someone who's trying to sound like one. When you say it, I understand you as being a young kid, or someone who's trying their hardest to sound like one. You can have more dignity than that. You can do better than trying to fit in with the cool junior high school kids.

HOW is it illegal, exactly?

[thepropain]

Glider sounds like nothing more than WinBatch, or VisualBasic's (or any other language's) SendKeys. If software that automates input is truly illegal, how far down does it go? Would this apply to the BIOS (or whatever) that feeds op instructions to the CPU?

Re:HOW is it illegal, exactly?

[geekmansworld]

The issue is not that automating keystrokes illegal. The issue is that the WoW EULA says that you can't use software that does this very thing. If indeed the company that makes Glider is selling it as a WoW autopilot, then they're encouraging users to violate their license agreement. In that aspect, I'm inclined to side with Blizzard. They're trying to create an environment as egalitarian as possible for their players.

What perplexes me is that WoW already includes the hardy anti-cheating monitor nicknamed "The Warden" to watch for programs that do exactly this sort of thing. Wouldn't Blizzard simply modify the Warden so that WoW won't run when Glider is active?

Re:HOW is it illegal, exactly?

[crabpeople]

Well it's UNATTENDED macroing. Obviously, no one can make macros illegal as they can perfectly rplicate user input as to be indistinguishable. The issue is probably that a GM comes on, sends you some sort of private message, then another one in like 10 minutes. If you dont respond then they kick/ban.

Its a sensible restriction in most games to ban unnattended macroing. I am against banning tools as well, but it would be different if they were watching the screen while running this app.

Re:HOW is it illegal, exactly?

[Kalriath]

As I understand it, Glider does nasty stuff that prevents the Warden client from seeing it or being able to act upon it. Remember, the Warden is limited in what it can do (it runs in userland, remember? As long as it is not running at Kernel level, other programs are capable of masking themselves). I don't know offhand what that is, but I'll take a look later on when I get home unless someone else gets there first.

Here is an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

...make the game something that people want to play instead of script. And note, I said WANT to play, instead of HAVE to play, putting sometime that force intelegent interaction to fight scripter isn't the answer.

On the copyright and IP claims

[91degrees]

USe a parody as fair use defence.

The argument is that the game is so dull and tedious, that you need to use a computer to play it for you to save you the effort.

Quit being a moron.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not a fucking "toon" jackass. Are you playing a cartoon, or a game? Its a "character", learn to speak nerd or go back to playing madden.

Re:Quit being a moron.

[UnknownSoldier]

Character, Alt., Mule, Toon , Avatar, Alter-Ego, does it _really_ matter what we call it? At the end of the day, its _just_ a game. My wife and I call our other characters 'toons. Not sure why you get bent out shape, when there is no _official_ definition for 2nd, 3rd, etc, characters for MMORPGs. Blizzard decided to call them characters but they don't have a monopoly on the slang usage.

WoW is cartoony -- bright, and colorful palette. Which is one of the reason I like playing it, and one reason we abbrev our Alt's as 'toons. Our main guild calls them Alt's, other guilds call them 'Toons. To each their own!

--
Where is the Bowcrafting skill in WoW?
So let me get this straight, I can make armor, but I can't repair it??
I miss UO ...

Who ruined the game exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who's intelligence is slightly above hamsters and thus are not amused by running in the same wheel forever? Or the people who wrote the game as just a big fucking hamster wheel? If the game can be ruined simply by having people write a script to play it for them, then the game is not worth playing in the first place. Donate your $15 a month to a charity and just run around your yard in circles all day. You and the rest of the world will all be better off for it.

Re:Why do people keep hosting this stuff in the US

[Tim C]

But if they're US residents, running the site from within the US, they're still bound by US laws. The fact that the server they're using is physically located in another country doesn't make any difference - they are physically located in the US, (allegedly) breaking a US law. Look at it this way - I'm in the UK. If I make threatening 'phone calls to someone in the US, I can still be arrested and tried in the UK.

Disclaimer: IANAL, this is not legal advice, if you get your legal advice from slashdot you're a moron, etc.

"Ruined it for me"

[Kaikopere]

I think this vehement support of bots is pretty strange. What's the matter? Did the cost of having to re-purchase keys and replenish your stock because you've been banned cut into your farming profits? If the game bores you, don't play it. I don't play WoW, or EQ 2, or any subscription based game right now, although I've played most of them at on one time or the other until I wasn't getting my $15 worth of enjoyment out of them. Item and gold farming does ruin the game because it fucks up the economy. If nothing is done about it, then you end up with the folks that don't buy gold or bot unable "earn" any of the rewards.

In EQ2 my crafter was unable to harvest the rares needed for some weapons she wanted to make because there were 3 farmers working in tandem cherry picking the nodes that I needed - and they were there every time I had the opportunity to play and went to check. So, after realizing it was more frustrating than fun, I quit and found a different game. This argument that "if a game can be ruined simply by (fill in some anti-social behavior), it's a bad game to start with" is completely fatuous. MMOs are as much about the community as the game mechanic. If a company allows the botters and farmers to chase out the folks that are there to play (cooperatively or competitively), they'll lose money. Blizzard has already lost my money because I didn't buy the expansion and it had nothing to do with game mechanic and everything to do with community. Am I even a blip on Blizzard's WoW radar? Most certainly not, but based on how aggressively they are banning accounts I'd venture a guess that there are other folks out there that feel the same way that I do.

Why the EULA is vital for an MMORPG

[Velops]

The social aspect is one of the most important things for an MMORPG to be successful. It is one of the driving factors that keep people playing the games. Without a strong community, many players would quickly stop playing the game. As a result, developers like Blizzard need to keep the community happy. Nobody cares if people cheat or use 3rd party tools on single player games. That's because the only person affected is a single player. It matters a lot in an MMO because the characters don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in a world populated by other characters that interact with each other. Cheaters can cause serious damage to a game economy by flooding the market with rare items causing rampant inflation. This directly hurts any players who did not cheat. When these problems arise, the community gets unhappy and the devloper must take action or risk having the entire game fall apart.

Well said.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I play a much smaller MMO, but the result is roughly the same. It's possible for any people, of any level or stats, to form a group, and thus, most people nowadays seem to want to be "leeched" to level 99. There are people who specialize in this service, by having a group of high level characters and knowing exactly which areas are best for leveling -- some caves are instanced by level (Mythic Rabbit 1 can be entered at level 25, but Rabbit 2 starts at about 65, thus, you have to be below level 65 to enter Rabbit 1) -- but there are still plenty of areas that can be entered at a very low level, and anyone on up to millions of vitality and mana can still enter the same areas.

So it's possible to actually "buy a leech" with in-game currency, and it's not even particularly expensive if you've got another character.

Someone made a bet, once, that he could get a character to Level 99 in less than 24 hours. I think he did it, too, by bringing in enough high level characters and entering the Wilderness Lobster cave, which he had no business being in -- no group of his level could survive in the last room, so he grouped with people five or ten times as powerful.

I'm a good deal past 99 -- I'm almost Enchanted -- but every one of my other characters, I grind just like everyone else. Actually, it's mostly fun -- if the grind isn't fun, do you really expect things to get more interesting at higher levels? There are certainly aspects of the game that I've found much more challenging -- and much more fun -- at around level 50 or 60 than around level 99. There's also an area I'm about to be able to enter sanely (I'd die too easily now) which sounds like a lot of fun.

Because really, if the game is only fun at level 70 (World of Warcraft), or 75 (Final Fantasy XI), or Sam San (Nexus)... Why are you playing an MMO? Why aren't you just playing, oh, Counter-Strike? If the process (grind?) involved in leveling up isn't fun, you're playing the wrong game, and possibly the wrong genre.

What they really care about...

[AmiMoJo]

All Blizzard really care about is the fact that people using this software are staying logged in to their servers much longer than they otherwise would, thus creating extra load on them. They know normal human beings have to sleep at least 6 hours a day, and some even have jobs that suck up another 8 or 9 hours. Bandwidth and CPU load = costs to them.

Oh, and other WoW players get annoyed because they are forced to manually grind their levels up, and feel they are missing out on maybe 10 hours of grinding a day that this software gets people. The simple solution is a situation like EVE Online, where your charcters level grind is based on real time and not play time.

Re:What they really care about...

[Dachannien]

The simple solution is a situation like EVE Online, where your charcters level grind is based on real time and not play time.

I suppose that would solve their server load problems completely.

Re:What they really care about...

[AlexMax2742]

Anyone who has ever participated in a fleet battle in EvE would probably laugh hysterically...that is, if they're not pissed off over their weapons taking minutes to kick into gear and hardly knowing what happened until after they've been podded (without them knowing wtf just happened, by the way).

And besides, if nothing you do ingame has any reflection of your skill in playing the game, why play? Especially when empire space (newbie space where you're protected from gankers by NPC police) is so soul-crushingly boring and not profitable at all, and you don't have the means to exist in 0.0 space unless you decide it's fun to be a wage slave and be a cog in some 0.0 corperation which is in turn the bitch of some giant mega-conglomerate who got to where they are today by cheating and developer handouts.

Point being that EvE sounds fun as hell on paper, but really it's got it's own fair share of problems as well. Closest to perfect you can probably get is Ultima Online, but due to the nature of the game it's too prone to 7x botting powergamers, with no reason to run around as anything less, plus its interface is archaic as fuck.

Re:What they really care about...

[Mascot]

It sure did get rid of me. After only a week or two I realized I spent more time offline waiting for skilltimers than actually playing. Somehow, that didn't quite feel worth the cash.

Re:What they really care about...

[AmiMoJo]

Yep, it does because the server does 0% processing on their character until they log back in again, at which point it notices which skill times have expired and adds those skills.

Re:What they really care about...

[SupremoMan]

"All Blizzard really care about is the fact that people using this software are staying logged in to their servers much longer than they otherwise would, thus creating extra load on them. They know normal human beings have to sleep at least 6 hours a day, and some even have jobs that suck up another 8 or 9 hours. Bandwidth and CPU load = costs to them." I disagree with this being the only concern. As a veteran of MMORPG's, I can tell you that if I play a game where I see a lot of cheating going on I will be tempted to quit outright. And believe me, people using this glider program are easy as hell to spot by anotehr player. Sure I can camp them being on a pvp server and all, but that just compounds my frustrations. The bot just continues to res every 2 minutes like clockwork FOREVER. I on the other hand have better things to do. If Blizzard decided not to do anything about this it would only do 2 things. 1) Encourage EVERYONE to get glider, makign this fellow a VERY VERY rich man. and 2) Drive players like myself away from the game, causing severe drop in revenue.

One Question

[Easycast]

Read, into this how u want to,I Don't bot etc.. But, What will everyone do if BLizzard Loses ?

Boycott failed, over 2 million sold in 24 hours ..

[AHumbleOpinion]

Uh, the bnetd folks have played the boycot card before, no one cared. Bnetd is a non-issue to the vast majority, even here on slashdot. Burning crusade set a day one sales record, a sell through of over 2 million in US and Europe in the first 24 hours, http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of-warcraft-expansi on/757971p1.html. The preceding bnetd inspired boycott that targeted the original World of Warcraft a couple of years ago met the same fate, record breaking sales.

Copyright violation? ... uh, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously hope that Counts 2 through 4 get thrown out. Paragraph 99 asserts that Warden, which scans memory for modifications to the game as well as scanning running processes to look for hacks/cheats/etc, is protecting the copyright by blocking unauthorized copies of the software from running on the system. First of all, any modifications made by Glider to the World of Warcraft process (i.e. copy of software) are at the OS and/or Kernel levels, not the game itself, and therefore have nothing to do with the copy of the product in the first place. Secondly, regardless of that knowledge or implementation, the copy of the game is made by the OS, not by Glider, even though Glider caused the process to be created (e.g. by calling API to launch the process), AND the copy made *is* authorized. To be unauthorized, the end user must use completely different products and play on an emulated server, instead of using a purchased copy of the game from Blizzard, and frankly, Glider has nothing at all to do with that.

Modifications could then be made to the authorized copy. Modifications to an authorized copy, without distribution of said copy, should be covered by fair use of copyright. Imagine if music companies, instead of preventing the copy be made in the first place, decided to implement a system on the media designed to look for modifications to the copy. Should they really be blocking your ability to write your name on the cover of a CD? If you were to purposefully modify the CD such that something about the original audio is different, and this copy is kept for your own private use (i.e. not distributed, not further copied, etc), should the copyright holder really have the ability to say that you can no longer own the CD? If you purchase a work of art to hang on your wall, and you decide that you don't like a particular color of a particular portion, is it against the law to modify it to your liking? Is that not fair use?

Even if Glider made modifications, Glider is not performing any distribution of the copies. Any copy is for the end user's private, one time use. Glider could be considered a tool for performing said modifications, but is that illegal?

Sorry, but all Warden is doing is protecting the game from harm by cheaters, not protecting the copyright. The copyright is protected by requiring all users to own a copy of the game, which comes with a CD Key, which allows them to create and use a WoW account. Glider is not affecting that process.