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Blizzard Seeks to Block User Rights, Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "In the overlooked case between Blizzard and MDY Industries, the creator of the WoWGlider bot, Blizzard is arguing that using any programs in conjunction with the World of Warcraft constitutes copyright violation. Apparently accessing the copy of the game client in RAM using another program infringes upon their rights. Under that logic, users do not even have the right to use anti-virus software in the event that the game becomes infected. Furthermore, Blizzard's legal filings downplay the role of their Warden software, which actively scans users' RAM, CPU, and storage devices (and potentially sensitive data) and sends information back to Blizzard to be processed."
If I want to do something to my copy of the game, I can do so just as I can make any 'mods' I want to a cookbook or one of my C++ library tomes which are also copyrighted. I haven't affected anybody else's copy nor have I affected the master copy so Blizzard needs to quit bitching.
There are many programs that (programatically) do what the glidebot does. Like Spyware protection, antivirus, etc. There are "add-ons" to popular programs that make them more userfriendly by interacting with them.
I think Blizzard is approaching this case wrong. The bottom line is that they consider people using the glidebot to be cheating the system. Personally, I don't use it mainly for fear of having my account canceled. I'd much rather have something else go thru the grind for me than have me sitting in front of the game for hours on end. While such programs are prohibited by their AUP, I think they're going too far on this one.
--- http://www.keything.com
Including grossly abusing the law?
Sorry, but if we have to pick between expansion of copyrights and some people cheating at a stupid game, I'm going to side with the cheaters. Preventing cheating in an online game is not a cause worthy of limiting access to general purpose computing for.
WoW !> Civil Liberties.
-Hmm...I got a G+ invite, better remember to remove the request from my sig...-
"Waaaah! Blizzard won't let me cheat!"
Drug tests for athletes aren't invasions of privacy. Cheat programs in online games are the same thing. You want to cheat? Play "Oblivion" and use all the mods you want. In any kind of multiplayer environment, the use of third-party programs must be verboten. Don't like it? No one is forcing you to play.
The problem is that Blizzard (and their legal department have always been MUCH less cool than their coders, sadly) has decided to try to use the law to force people to not cheat. This is dubious at best, the way they're trying to do it, and sets frightening legal precident if they win.
If they win, then any attempt to analyze and modify a running program would constitute copyright violation. That means that programs which debug, dissassemble and tweak performance of running programs would no longer be allowed on 3rd party software. It would also bring into question the relationship between emulators and the software they run. Mame, Wine and a number of other projects might be useless if this becomes precident.
Cheating in WoW is one thing. Setting precident that hurts consumers is another.
Everyone complains about Warden, but noone knows really how it works. Heres the basic gist:
Warden uses something similiar to a HASH function to get information about the processes run on your computer. Warden sends the HASH home. The HASH is compared against a list of known hacking processes, like WoWGlider, and if theres a match, you're being very naughty!
Is that REALLY the end of the world? NO! Blizzard can NOT discern any information from a HASH.
Heres an MD5 HASH of a file on my desktop, what is it? Quick, get my personal informationz!
070A3B2AF0070DE30B1931B9F2590510
Maybe so. But copyright doesn't apply here.
Here's a thought: what if I run WoW in a VM? We should be able to do that soon, the hardware and software are certainly getting to that point. Now that would impose a whole slew of issues to WoW, since they'd have no control outside of their sandbox. They really don't have that control now, honestly, but it's more work than most are willing to put in to make it happen.
The real answer is for Blizzard to make the game enjoyable to play, instead of rewarding "face time grinding".
Disclaimer: No, I don't play WoW, and never have. It didn't interest me in the least. I did play EQ, and tired of its mindless grind. None of the other MMOs seemed any different, not even Eve. I used to play and code for a mud (pre EQ, way way pre) which was quite a bit more fun as being an imp (GM would be the closest thing in MMOs these days) allowed you quite a bit of freedom and create spontaneous changes. Usually that was in concert with players - it gave them a new challenge or two, and kept things fresh. Things like surprise trap door mobs was one of my favorites.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
No matter how the suit comes out (and I'm all for sticking to "the man") using a bot in an online game where other people are involved is cheating, and it kills the very nature of what the game should be all about for everyone: fun.
... that is, a current PC-based FPS. Xbox live? Sure. No cheating there (yet) and that's good.
This is why I will never, ever, play another FPS, online
I have admined many game servers (q1, q2, cs) and worked hard to stop cheating with all the tools (punk busters, etc.). I even ran an anti-cheating game site years ago (anyone remember slipgate central? no I didn't run that, but one of my little sites was listed).
I also did an write-up on the zbot in q2. I installed and used it. I pwned players effortlessly. It was disgusting. I ran around gathering health and power-ups and the bot did all the work while the whole server tried to kill me. It was sick fun, but it's lame.
Showeq was the first big exploit for mmorpgs. It was lame. With it, the punk could get any unique mob in a zone before anyone else. How is that fair? How was it fair for the people without a 2nd computer, or without linux knowledge to set it up?
This article may be all about the legal ins and outs of who has access to what in ram, but the bottom line is, cheaters blow. If you cheat you blow. You're feeding a primal part of the human psyche at the expense of others and undermining the entire event. When it all crumbles and dies, you are to blame.
Using a bot to lvl or farm in wow is lame. Don't do it. Let this guy's work die on the vine....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
He's ruining the game so he can make some profit out of it. I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever, even if what Blizzard is doing is dubious. He certainly doesn't have clean hands himself.
Oh whatever. A lot of people get enjoyment out of the game already...in those terms its a great success; you'll never be able to make it so exquisitely enjoyable that no one will want to cheat.
The whole idea that cheaters are a game flaw is absurd; if a game has goals, there are people who will want to take a shortcut. They'll do it for greed, they'll do it because they're lazy, and they'll do it because they want recognition that they haven't earned.
What's the solution? To have a game with no goals? It'd be like Tetris but you couldn't have a score, because then people might want to cheat for a higher score. Couldn't even have levels, because people might want to cheat to say they got to a higher level!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Anti-virus software is a special case. It has always been against the law to reverse engineer software protected by copyrights. Yet anti-virus writers are allowed to reverse engineer viruses and malware. Why? Because viruses themselves are illegal, and therefore can't be defended in court by a copyright. That would be like person A calling the police because person B stole his crack.
If these bots are accessing memory inside WoW while it is running, then someone has reverse engineered WoW, and that is against the law. WoW is not a virus, and it is protected by copyright laws. This isn't about expanding copyright law. This has been illegal since before many Slashdot readers were born.
You don't have to play WoW. Really. You lived without it before and you'll live without it after. Politely tell Blizzard why you are leaving them, and then leave.
If you're not willing to do that, this obviously isn't THAT important to you.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Seriously, there's no reason to get the law involved and set bad legal precedent.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
It's already in there, don't worry. Apparently, Blizzard is just looking for a bigger stick to wave at potentian cheaters.
A good friend of mine is "addicted" to this game. He has been playing for over a year now, and has leveled up 2 characters to level 70.
Only ?
So he uses a bot, to gather some experience. If it wasnt for the bot, he probably wouldn't be playing anymore.
If he finds the game tedious, why doesn't he play something that's actually fun ? I dunno, but seeing "Level 70" on the screen doesn't really sound like fun. So he wants to make a third character, but he doesn't want to play through all the lower missions.
I doubt he's seen all of them with just two characters.
is he interfering with other peoples play? no., so wtf?
Heck yes he is. Maybe some legit players want to farm, too. Having to compete against dozens of farm-bots in addition to the Chinese farmers sucks big time.
WoW is a cash cow, and they are just trying to milk it to the Max...those bastards...
If they were trying to milk anything, they'd have the game mechanics set up so that having a second account with a buffbot (which is different from a real active bot, because its only purpose is to be parked in a safe spot) is a must, and be running an items-for-cash service.
Right now, Blizzard is far from being in the "milking" phase, in contrast to some other MMOs.
It is a really interesting theory you propose: those who cheat in a game should be subject to a different set of laws than others.
I know that in the USA it's a popular opinion in certain circles that suspects of terrorism should be stripped of all of their rights, but to extend it to cheaters is something really new.
Seriously: a groundless lawsuit is a groundless lawsuit even when the defendant is a slimeball. In the USA's precedent based-system this is even more important since the precedent set by this lawsuit will apply to non-slimeballs, too.
Real life is overrated.
(I know, it's a bit long, but give it a try.)
Okay, so here's how I see it all unfolding. Blizzard comes out with World of Warcraft, which immediately becomes a hugely successful MMORPG. And not only is it hugely successful, it happens to come into being at the same time that the real-world economy starts interfacing directly with the virtual economy of the MMO world. As a result, there are services that offer gold for cash, leveling services, etc...all of which incur unintended (and even destabilizing) economic effects on the virtual world. A rough analogy would be if people could sell their souls for sudden wealth or fame here, in a very literal sense of the world; something not of this world is being traded in return for something of this world, and giving those people a leg up over everyone else.
So, Blizzard has to figure out how to fix this. Obviously, they've done things to make it harder to goldfarm, in some respects. Fishing, which is an obvious activity that requires little input, is made harder to automate based on the requirement that you click on the fishing lure (which lands in a random location in front of you every time) when and only when it has a fish on it (which happens at a random interval after the time you cast the lure, or not at all). Combat is set so that if you're at a higher level than the thing you're killing, you get less credit for it; if there's such a difference that it's a ridiculously easy kill, you get nothing at all for your trouble.
But still, there are ways that something watching variables in memory could help a cheater. All you have to do is watch for the change in a variable, or the triggering of a function, when the fishing lure makes that splashy noise, and read (direct from RAM) the coordinates where the lure is, and you can have a piece of software click on it for you. I'm something of a WoW noob, so I'm sure there are other ways as well, including manipulation involving mining, auction house market manipulation, etc. Heck, if you had computers work together in concert, you could have a whole group of low-level characters team up on one larger-level NPC and kill it for a big bounty in both XP (for sale as a leveling service) and silver/gold (for sale as gold). The reason the maximum party size that can do quests/gain XP is 5 is just this, and it's not at all hard to imagine circumventing it by coordinating the systems to work together, where one online character is human-operated and the others just follow him automatically, attacking whatever attacks him.
So, Blizzard has a problem to fight. Since pretty much all of these techniques require a lot of manpower (which adds significantly to the labor cost of the goldfarming/leveling service and eats the profit) or reading variables from RAM, Blizzard decides to prohibit this tactic. But it's the same old situation in computer security, when it comes to things with tangible economic gain in the real world; the bad guys will evolve at least as fast as the good guys. So there needs to be a way to gather intel, to find out what the latest tricks are which are being used. And so Blizzard has Warden.
Now, a lot of people get up in arms about private corporations and privacy, and rightly so. There are numerous companies that maintain databases of our information, selling it to whoever wants it. Even worse, the organization that can harm us the most by invading privacy...our government...has been purchasing that information, conveniently skirting around the limits placed on them by law. But Blizzard isn't keeping a database of our personal information. We may happen to be doing online banking while WoW is idling in the background, but they're not culling/recording that information. And unlike the metaphor used in the article on Warden, no human being will ever see it. It's more like the person behind me at the checkout, or the cashier, being able to see my credit card when I take it out of my wallet to swipe it. I don't have a problem with that; I'm one of millions of people who d
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
So, like... did you not read the EULA they force you to agree to every time there's an update?
The one that basically says, "You're paying us a monthly fee for a license to access the game, but in reality we own your characters, all the gold they have, and all their equipment". They told you up front that you have no rights and that they'll come after you (at worst) or shut down your account (at best) if you do anything they don't like. If you don't like it, stop giving them money.
At risk of being repetitive here, the issue at hand is not that accessing WoW in RAM is a violation of copyright. The argument Blizzard is presenting is that:
- Loading WoW into RAM is creation of a copy.
- Your right as a user to create this RAM copy is pursuant to the ToS and EULA.
- Using cheating software violates the ToS/EULA.
- Therefore, a user no longer has the right to create the RAM copy of WoW while running WoWGlider.
Therefore, the DMCA/copyright slant is:
- WoWGlider is a tool that is defeating The Warden access control scheme with the sole use of creating a copy of WoW that infringes upon Blizzard's copyright.
This may or may not be a valid claim; the status of RAM copies of software is not entirely settled, but tends towards "it can be an infringing copy."
All of this would probably not have led to a lawsuit, except for the fact that WoWGlider is sold, for real money. Blizzard is trying to both destroy that particular cheating mechanism, and attach all of the profits made from it -- assuming the behavior is in fact ruled to be infringing.
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The trouble is, people have been expanding the DMCA to cover things like ink cartridges and garage door openers when it actually is very limited in scope. The DMCA prevents you from making or distributing technological means of circumventing a copyright protection schema. This specifically means that it would cover the case of someone trying to duplicate the client CD's. It does not cover cheating.
Blizzard / Vivendi is trying to extend the DMCA to mean that any application scripting and macroing is illegal. This means that not only would you be banned for doing something the game developer doesn't like, but that their decrees would have a jail sentence behind it. This seems wrong to me, both morally and legally.
Now, as a game developer, I think WoW cheaters should be hit hard and fast with the banstick, and think that MMO's should consider gathering together to create clustered bans... I.E. get banned from one MMO, and you're out of most of them. I hate online cheaters with a passion reserved for those who have to deal with them. But I don't think that constitutes legal grounds to send people to jail for the DMCA-specified term of 10 years.
You have the right to script your computer. And they have the right to never let you play their game again. But they don't have the right to incarcerate you for years for it. So guard your rights, or any time any company asks you not to do something they'll be able to throw you in jail for it.
The ______ Agenda
Remember all the crap the creators of the first x86 clone had to go through to prove that they hadn't reverse engineered it?
Can someone elaborate for the ignorant: aren't you supposed to prove that you *did* reverse engineer it, not that you didn't? Since the copyright only covers duplication of code, not duplication of functionality?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
WoW allows mods, hell, it encourages them. However, any mod that makes it so you can "play the game" without being at your PC is explicitly forbidden. They've banned users of fishing bots before. You're supposed to be playing the game by sitting at your computer, and actively killing things. Yes, it's a time sink. All recreation is. If you're not having fun with it, go and do something else.
Glider bots/farmer bots do harm those who aren't using them. They consume server resources, making the game less responsive for everyone. They tag rare mobs, denying that kill and the resulting loot to "honest" players. They mine rare resources, again denying them to "honest" players. And the effects they have on the marketplace are demonstrable. For example, about a year ago, a botter discovered a speed/teleportation hack that made it possible to farm 16-slot bags (the largest bag in the game at the time). Instantly, the auction house price on those dropped from 30-40 gold to 5 gold. And there was no longer any market for any smaller size bag, which made it difficult for aspiring tailors to sell product (their bags). Similar hacks were found for other items.
Ban em all, find the people running them, and execute kill -9's on them. I don't mean their process, I mean them.
Fortunately, Blizzard isn't suing teenagers, they're suing a company that produces a piece of software, which it sells to permit said teenagers to cheat.
If you're going to go to war against a company like Blizzard, you should make sure you've paid your lawyers' retainer first. I have no pity for the folks that produce WoWGlider. They've brought this on themselves.
--AC
It's sad that people can't just either play and enjoy the game the way it's intended or simply not play. That they have to cheat, and then when Blizzard tries to protect the integrity of their game, come up with bullshit like this to try and justify their cheating. It's just a game. If you really feel you have to cheat at it, you should simply not play, because it defeats the purpose of the game. You destroy the experience not only for yourself, but you cheapen it for those around you.
It's one thing to cheat, but then to turn around and try to morally justify it like this, is just pathetic. This has nothing to do with software freedom. Blizzard is simply using the tools before them to try and protect the integrity of their game.
As you log in, you are given some text to read, and than you click Accept. The text includes this:
5. Consent to Monitor. WHEN RUNNING, THE GAME MAY MONITOR YOUR COMPUTER'S RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS RUNNING CONCURRENTLY WITH THE GAME... http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html
That constitutes authorization.
to distribute the derivative work you've just created, which is why Blizzard is suing (among other reasons). The logic Blizzard is using is almost exactly the same logic that the FSF uses in the GPL when it comes to linking. WoWglider is useless without WoW. It has specific knowledge of what WoW.exe looks like in memory and feeds it input based on the state of the game. Anti-Virus software applies the same generic algorithm to wow.exe as it does to firefox.exe.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
Let me be clear in this. I'm involved heavily in banning people that "cheat" the system, "hack" the game, or try to sell me gold for US$$. Why do you play the game if you instantly want a lvl 70 character. What's the point? The fact that it takes time to get to 70 instantly means that you have better skilled players at higher levels. You want an easy game go play diablo 2.
/ 4150/spamsentry-anti-goldspam/). Two clicks and GM's don't. They LOVE IT. On average if get 15 a DAY and I play at most for 6 hours if at all.
/reply. Couldn't ask for more.
Blizzard isn't really after you guys though. It's after all the botters that farm gold and sell it for $$. It's after the people who use the speed hacks. I have mods that instantly tell me (http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details
It's a huge war and people are making profit off of things that diberately violate the EULA, and makes the game shitty for those of us who follow the rules. Nothing pisses me off more than watching some guy attack me and when he's about to die he zooms off at ungodly speed.
WoW has embraced the mod community like EQ2 should have. At the same time they are trying to defend everyone and while this case is stupid on their part because they won't win from the point they are taking. They are making it clear they aren't taking it lying down.
Hell they banned what 110,000 chinese farmer accounts now?
You have to look at the problems they face
1) They cannot ban IP's. You can use anonymous proxies
2) You cannot ban anonymous proxies as some of us use them without knowing
3) You cannot ban ISP's because they'll switch.
4) You cannot ban subnets because like #1... they can spoof their IP
5) Because of the above, you cannot ban "chinese" players from playing on US servers as it wouldn't stop the problem, only innocent people.
6) You cannot just ban accounts that spam out websites because many times they are compromised accounts. They spam on average 1000 people. If 1... and I mean 1 person buys gold out of that thousand... they made their money back.
7) You cannot set a server side filtering system for messages because that would be a tremendous resource hog.
So far the only solutions are client side mods. Like the one I listed above. I never see the message. Only a quick warning and it doesn't even affect my
They are fighting a very difficult war and are fighting it well. While this battle may be a lost cause it opens the door for legal action in the future and costs the defendent money. I wouldn't say RIAA tactics, but close to it done with good morality based decisions.
Let's look at it this way: Why are people cheating? Why are they using those programs? Generally, I've run across a lot of cheaters, and there are generally 3 kinds of cheaters.
First the "I wanna win" cheater. You find that kind usually in shooters, using aimbots, wallhacks and other tools to balance their lack of skill. Now, a cheat like that would be of little use in MMORPGs. Your toon hits or misses based on some mathematical probabilities, not your aim. At best, it could be used as some kind of "radar" to find some mobs faster, which is (unless we're talking PvP here) more something that I'll discuss with the third kind.
Then there's the item and money grabber. The person using bots to get money or items. Which basically is quite pointless in WoW, because any item you could farm alone is pretty much worthless in the long run. At best, this would be interesting for plat farmers, but not for "normal" players who'd actually like to play the game.
Which gets us to group 3, which is IMO also the group using glidebot mostly: The "get me outta the grind hell and let me finally play the game" players. And that is not only the player's fault. If a game only offers you interesting and sensible content after 2-3 months of mindless grinding, I wonder if it's worth playing.
So the suit of Blizzard is understandable: That bot "costs" them 20-30 bucks per toon a player levels, since that much longer they'd play without Blizzard having to offer them any new bones to chew on.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
WOW, has literally changed our society. I see so many people addicted to the game and investing hundereds and hundereds of dollars into it. I wouldn't be suprised if it dropped the national IQ by 15 points and medical expenses for people with butt blisters from playing it so much. I think its time for people to realize the extent of what WOW is doing to thier lives. I've seen it breakup relationships and even prevent them from starting. People just don't leave the damn computer. Save the people, End the WOW.
Telling people not to cheat because it's lame is tantamount to telling thieves not to steal because "it's wrong".
They know it harms other people and they do NOT care. No amount of words is going to change that and there is no point bothering. Cheating is a fundamental part of human nature. Maybe it's a good thing. A small amount of cheaters forces the rest of us to create protections, increase security, be more vigilant and "arm up". It makes us as a society more resilient and better prepared just as germs made us develop an immune system.
Diversity is vital to the survival of a species as anyone who's taken a biology course knows. Some of that diversity means cheaters, psychopaths, rapists and lawyers. They are a necessary evil and their contributions are vital to the very survival of the human race. They day everybody stops cheating, we should all be scared, very scared.
In conclusion, we really should be thanking cheaters for their invaluable services.
And right after we thank them, we should hang them. Afterall, if they got caught, they're weak and deserve to die.
And it's hard to see how they're wrong in that
Simple - The "access" they wish to block, they don't control.
If they want to test the integrity of their program and its memory, fine. If they want to TOS people for certain behaviors, fine. But they don't own my keyboard, mouse, joystick, or OS. If I want to run a program to stuff my keyboard buffer, Blizzard has NO right to do a goddamned thing about it other than ban my account. They don't have the right to run spyware on my machine, they certainly don't have the right to actively kill processes or delete files, and trying to invoke the DMCA boogeyman, well, I can't wait for that one to get laughed out of court.
Hard to see how they have it wrong? No, hard to see how they can make such claims without bursting into laughter halfway through.
"Blizzard Seeks to Block User Rights, Privacy"
Now that's not a leading headline. Thanks for telling me what to think, Slashdot!
"Sufferin' succotash."
Oh please. I've yet to see any level range or class on WoW that _needs_ to grind at any point. (Outside what used to be the level 60 end-game grind. More about that one later.) Invariably there's some "but I really wanna have everything" type that's creating an imaginary grind trap for himself.
Grind... what? XP? Take it from first hand experience, there are plenty of quests and instances to get you from level 1 to 70. I can't say any of my characters ever had to start mindlessly grinding NPCs for XP.
The ones who grind there, are simply grinding because of their own "I _must_ get to level 70 _fast_" delusions. A lot of people seem to have this crazy idea that the game starts at level 70 (or previously 60), and that everything before it must be skipped as fast as possible. Guess what? That's wrong. Levels 1 to 69 are the actual game. Level 70 is where the game _ends_. That's it. You finished it. You've seen all the content. Go out, do something else, or start a new char.
So all these people who try to skip levels 1 to 69 are really skipping the whole goddamn game and content they've bought. Whether by getting power-levelled or by spending hundreds of hours mindlessly slaughtering wolves and boars, that's what it is: skipping the actual story, quests, everything that was the actual game on that DVD.
That's all that such bots do: allow you to skip the actual game. Congrats. You're now level 70, you skipped the "grind", except there's no more game for you to actually play at that point. That "grind" was the actual game, or rather a piss-poor substitute for it. You just bought a game for your bot to play. I hope you liked that bot a lot, at least, because it had the fun you were supposed to have.
And blaming it on Blizzard just takes brain-damage to whole new levels. Blizzard sure as heck didn't force them to skip 99% of the content in the game.
Grinding for money or equipment? Again, sure as heck noone forced them to. It _is_ possible to play the game without buying a new set of blue-quality equipment every 2 levels. Replacing a sword with one that does 1 DPS more won't really make you T3H UB3R-W4RR10R. Replacing a +10 int robe with a +11 int one won't make you the uber-mage.
Stick with that equipment until the upgrade is really worth the cost. Don't think in terms of "is a +11 int robe worth 10 gold." Think in terms of "do I want to pay 10 gold for a 1 point increase over what I already have?" You'll find your expenses might actually go down a helluva lot.
In fact, if you really want to, you can get to level 70 without using anything more than drops and quest rewards.
Again, people just create that illusionary trap in their own mind, and get stuck in it. They end up enacting a bad case of consumerism in an online world. They think there's some _duty_ to keep up with the Joneses, when most of the time noone will give a damn about whether your robe is 1 point weaker than the Joneses' robes. Cue farming for gold, or buying gold, just to blow it at the AH on stuff they don't even really need.
Again: not because Blizzard somehow forced them to grind, but because of something that exists only in their own head.
The exception to both, as I was saying, was the crap level 60 endgame grind. Guess what? That was after the game had actually ended. It wasn't the meat of the game, it was one last dry bone for people who didn't know when to quit. The actual game had pretty much ended, the content was over, you had already done the quests and seen the zones. All that remained was doing the same pointless raid again and again, just so you can pay Blizzard for another month.
Skipping (by grind, PL, or bot) the levels 1 to 59 just to get stuck into the MC grind was one of the most idiotic things one could do. It was akin to having a bot finish Oblivion for you, just so you can view the endgame credits again and again for 6 months straight. That stupid.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.