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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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!

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

[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

[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?

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: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.

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.

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: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.

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.