Blizzard Sues Creator of WoW Bot

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, are suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically. Blizzard says the software bot infringes the company's copyright and potentially damages the game. 'Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time,' Blizzard wrote in its legal submission to the court. More than 100,000 copies of the tool have been sold while more than 10 million people around the world play Warcraft. Donnelly says his tool does not infringe Blizzard's copyright because no 'copy' of the Warcraft game client software is ever made. The two parties are now awaiting a summary judgment in the case."

Comments

Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Keen Anthony]

Don't really see how it infringes on the Warcraft copyright; but maybe it infringes on the trademark somehow if it's being marketed as something official to Blizzard and WoW, and giving customers the perception that this is an extension of the WoW service. As for damaging WoW by taking up more resources than the normal player would; what if I were an abnormal player who is on nearly 24/7; is there some provision in the agreement where I am charged more for the subscription or something?

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Brian Gordon]

If you're creating some legitimate program that requires WoW, you think you should have to request Blizzard's permission just to say on the packaging that you require World of Warcraft? Definitely not.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Itninja]

From TFA:

Blizzard has said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software.

That's pretty freakin' weak. Are they gonna sue me because I remembered stuff about the game and told it to a friend? Am I then using my brain to illegally copy game data?

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[h4rm0ny]

Agreed. From the sounds of it, this bot tool may impair the game, and they may have some moral or legal cause to try and stop it, but copyright and trademark infringment it is not.I think they need to find some other charge.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[qoncept]

what if I were an abnormal player who is on nearly 24/7;

I don't think that's so abnormal..

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Naughty Bob]

At most it might infringe upon the terms and conditions of WoW. But that would need to be taken up with the users, not the author.

Just another example of a company aiming its litigation at the wrong target.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard is in over its head if they lose the suit; their employees admitted in sworn statements that Glider cannot be detected by any anti-cheat methods they use. There's a lot of little easter eggs hidden away in the legal filings, for example:

• Donnelly made more than $2.8 million in revenue from Glider
• Blizzard spends $970K fighting bots each year
• Blizzard claims Glider costs them $18 million in lost revenue per year

Some of the legal filings have been uploaded here, they make for an interesting read: http://gameactivist.blogspot.com/2008/03/update-blizzard-vs-mdy.html

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Akaihiryuu]

Blizzard DOES need to do something about WOW glider, it's very disruptive to the game environment, but they are arguing the wrong legal angle entirely. They SHOULD be using an argument that the program in question is disruptive to the game environment (and "encouraging" players to violate the contract that lets them use the online service) rather than trying to claim some sort of copyright violation. The legal angle they are using in this case is extremely lame, and they definitely need better laywers. Surely the fact that this product is sold promoting and encouraging people to disrupt the game environment would be enough for a court without having to drag some crazy half brained copyright argument into it.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Nullav]

"Police are stupid anyway. I can wave around whatever I want in my hand in whatever direction I want to." Perhaps a poor analogy, but god damnit, you're not just running it in your memory. You're also wasting CPU time, memory, and storage space on their machines for a character that you're not even playing with most of the time you're on. You're going against the rules of the game (the ToS), you're automating exactly what the game's centered around because you find it boring and, most importantly, you're just being an ass.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[JesseMcDonald]

WoW Glider works by copying the entire game into memory.

However, as received by the player, it does not contain any of the WoW code. If there is any derivative work here it isn't created until the player uses this WoW Glider program, in combination with the player's own copy of the game, to create a combined in-memory executable. Ergo, if Blizzard wants to sue someone over creating an unauthorized derivative work they should be suing the players that use this mod -- not that I think they would succeed, given a competent judge, since the combined work is not being distributed. Likewise, any ToS violation should be the player's responsibility, since it was the player, not the maker of this program, who agreed to abide by the terms of service.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[FreshOuttaMaps]

By your logic Blizzard is suing the wrong party. To continue your analogy, they are suing the gun manufacturer. To win outright they have to prove the Glider software violates the law.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[totally bogus dude]

If the extra resources used are such a problem for them, why don't they just do the sensible thing and have a tiered pricing structure? If bots really use a lot more time than real players do, then it should be pretty easy for them to pick a number of hours per month which is sufficient for 99% of their actual players, and then charge anyone who uses more time a higher fee. It's a bit like all the ISPs crying foul over P2P users using "too much" data on their "unlimited" plans. If their pricing structure is untenable, then they should fix the pricing structure.

Also, if the bot doesn't do anything a player couldn't do anyway (if they were sufficiently skilled) then what does it matter? If it does do things the client doesn't allow, then it's reasonable to pursue him over that, but it seems like it'd be more straightforward to fix their server to not allow it.

The game already has to deal with a large range of players, from casual gamers who maybe get in a few hours a week to the obsessive teens who spend their every waking moment in the game levelling their character. A bot that does the tedious work gives casual players a chance to experience the game as a high level character that they probably wouldn't get otherwise. If Blizzard doesn't want people doing this, maybe they should make the game less tedious.

On the other hand, if Blizzard is successful at pursuing anyone using bots to make the game less of a chore, hopefully it'll result in a few less WoW addicts. Possibly they don't want people to experience the "end game", as then they might realise how boring and pointless the whole thing is and stop paying the monthly subscription fee.

On the whole, it does seem that they don't have a very strong case against the program's author, only against its users as they're the ones violating the ToS and so on. Possibly they could get him for reverse engineering the game code, which I presume he would've needed to do in order to write the program; but proving that could be difficult.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Moridin42]

Actually.. that's not Nullav's logic at all. Thats Brian Gordon's logic turned back on him. Twice, even.

Nullav was pointing out that bots consume resources on Blizzard's machines and are indicative of asshattery.

Not that I'm exactly sure that those are necessarily going to be actionable in court.. especially the asshattery bit.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[revery]

But you have to ask how he developed the bot without using a client and violating the terms of Blizzard's license? If he doesn't abide by the terms, he doesn't have a right to have a copy and if he doesn't have a right to a copy, he's infringing...

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Z34107]

Possibly they don't want people to experience the "end game", as then they might realise how boring and pointless the whole thing is and stop paying the monthly subscription fee.

So - Blizzard doesn't get their day in court because you think their game is "boring and pointless."

But, contrary to your assertion, they want everyone to experience the end-game. Two patches ago, they greatly reduced the amount of experience points you need to get to level at every level between 20 and 60. (Getting to 20 only takes a week or so of casual play anyway.) In addition, the same quests between levels 30 and 60 reward more XP.

Up to level 60, it takes less XP to level and you get it faster. Why? Because at around 55, you can experience the new content in the "Burning Crusade" expansion. They've also made instanced dungeons less tedious to run - needing only 25 people instead of 40 - so that more people can experience these areas. They also made PvP loot more powerful, so people who don't want to be raiding for hours every night can pick up and play, and still get comparable loot.

Their goal is to have even casual players at level 70, so that they can move their next expansion that'll let you go from 70 to 80. They make more money and sell more expansions if more people can reach the "end game" - so they've been making it easier to get there.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[revery]

I think it's always been technically true that a company can sue you for violating a license agreement. The issue is that penalty for infringement is always based on damages, and in most cases, the amount of financial damage done is insufficient to warrant a lawsuit (or for a court to award anything). In this case though, the bot maker is violating Blizzard's license in order to make money for himself. He is also encouraging others to violate their license. Blizzard may not win, but they have a better case than if they sued someone who just wrote a bot for their own amusement.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Z34107]

Just another example of a company aiming its litigation at the wrong target.

Or... the right target. They could cut off every individual botting user... and they've tried that. But, these users are impossible to find because of this one individual millionaire who managed to make his program (currently) undetectable.

So... they could sue every individual user. But, we run into the "finding them" problem again.

So... they could sue the one person making it all possible, and profiting handsomely for it. This is the logical target - go for the one person responsible rather than lots of individuals - but also, apparently, the most difficult. Going for WoW Glider's maker solves the problem; going for his customers doesn't. So, you can't fault them for trying.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[zippthorne]

No, it's still boring. Or rather, It's full of interesting content and brilliant visuals, and quests from humorous to dramatic.

Only, to get to that interesting content, you have to wade through a lot of boring crap like, "collect 10 livers from undead dire boars" And when you get there, you discover that they drop livers 2.5% of the time (so you need to kill 400 boars), and at least one of the following is true:

1) the boars are too powerful for you to take on easily, so you have to wait between them while you restore health and mana and/or burn through potions at a rate that the quest reward + the loot will not support (and therefore necessitating further farming...)

2) The boars are powerful, but you find other player(s) to help you, but you have to split the loot up, so factoring in the extra boars you need to kill, it takes just as long as if you solo'd.

3) there aren't enough boars, so there are a dozen people just standing around waiting for one to spawn, hoping to get the first shot in to claim the loot.

And you need those livers to make the soup to give to the informant to get the trinket to give to the other informant to get the key to enter the dungeon where the monster lives that drops half of the amulet that you need to be holding when you kill the elementals that drop the ingredient that you need ten of to bribe the wizard to give you the cure for the children of the village's mysterious plague.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Walkingshark]

I wonder if they'll try and force him to give up his source during discovery. That might very well be the angle they're looking at in this whole thing.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Sapphon]

The article says that 100'000 copies of this tool have been sold, which implies ~100'000 users. While it is strictly speaking the fault of the user that Blizzard is suffering damage, the root cause is the creator and vendor of the tool.

As such it certainly makes sense for the Blizzard to go after Donnelly, since
a) if they stop him, they stop further sales of the bot
b) it's lot easier to litigate against one person than 100'000
c) you get much less bad press for litigating against one person than 100'000
d) the 100'000 are still bringing in income (as paying customers), just less of it. Blizzard probably doesn't want to scare them off with litigation. Donnelly, on the other hand, just costs them money.

Blizzard's in a lose-lose situation: litigation against Donnelly is legally unclear, but litigation against 100'000 users would cause an uproar.

The choice of target is in fact quite rational from a game-theoretic perspective. And from an emotive perspective, you could always compare it to going after the crack dealer rather than the addict :-)

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Teancum]

This is one of those cases where the "end user license" is able to (supposedly) enforce a contract that can't be proven that the user has in fact agreed to.

I, for one, consider anything in a license agreement that goes beyond the strict authority to copy the software and attempts to ascribe "rights" to the publisher that are not granted in copyright law to be illegal.

For instance, I can purchase a "license" that would allow me to re-publish major excepts from a book, or in the case of computer software I can buy a license that would allow me to incorporate a major subroutine library into a computer software product that I am in turn re-selling. These kind of licenses are quite common, and are entirely within the purview of the concept of who has "the right to copy" the copyrighted product. They can have some restrictions, and there are even "regional" licenses that you can offer a "right" to distribute a product in a certain region of the world, like separate licenses for distribution to North America vs. Europe.

If I violate the license terms, my "rights" to republish and sell that software then also terminate. But customers I've sold the software to previously under the license terms still have legal software.

The problem here is that the publisher, in this case Blizzard, is attempting to retroactively revoke the previously granted authority to copy the contents of the game from the CD-ROM (or via network download) to the hard drive of the computer after the copy has been made. Furthermore, it is presuming that the first sale doctrine doesn't apply to electronic media. Yes, I know that is currently disputed, but it hasn't been proven to be invalid either.

Even if a "formal contract" was entered into the mix between the customer and the software publisher that goes well above and beyond conventional copyright licensing terms, you still have to prove who signed the contract in the first place. Were the terms to the contract understood and legible? Was the contract even valid? Can anti-reverse engineering clauses even be added to such a contract of any kind, much less introduced as a mere copyright license arrangement?

This isn't unique even to the software industry, as I got involved with a technical specification contract that had some similar kinds of clauses that involved a physical dead-tree book. But in that case I had to physically sign my name as the recipient of the book and there was a documentation trail in terms of even legal custody of the material. I'm certain that Blizzard can't prove that sort of documentation at all.

Another issue to be raised by the defense is the issue of being able to understand what some other individual has done which is impacting the operation of the computer which you own. Blizzard doesn't own the PC that the defendant is using, and a legitimate use of reverse engineering is to understand how a piece of software may cause harm to the operations of other software or the general performance of their equipment.

This is a weak case for Blizzard, even though I sympathize deeply with their wanting to keep 'bot makers off of their servers. I personally think that invoking copyright law is entirely the wrong way to do it, particularly license agreements that are shaky to begin with. Real harm can be claimed by Blizzard in terms of the impact of the software upon their servers, but that is something similar to a denial of service attack and something more along the lines of vandalism, not necessarily anything that has to do with contract or copyright law. I'm sure criminal law statues could be read to apply here, but that is something else entirely different.

Re:Copyright? Maybe not, but maybe trademark?

[Teancum]

This is presuming that the defendant has actually used Blizzard source code in the creation of his software.

Blizzard doesn't own or even have any legal right to any software that has been independently created and developed outside of its own software code base. If this developer had any brains at all, he would have been using a compiler and development tool set for a "non-standard" software development language like Object Pascal, Smalltalk, or Lisp. By doing that, it would be incredibly hard to suggest that the defendant has "copied" software when the structures look so much different.... certainly you could create some considerable doubt to a jury of even professional software developers much less twelve random "citizens" who know nothing about computer software development.

Demanding source code during discovery might backfire just as awfully as the "glove test" that happened during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and if I were a consultant to the plaintiff I would strongly discourage even trying this approach unless there was some strong evidence that the defendant had in fact broken into the Blizard HQ (electronically of physically) and stolen actual source code which was later incorporated into his software. Based on what Michael Donnelly is trying to say, this seems like a rather dubious possibility when there are so many other possible approaches that could be done.

Also, Blizzard may not want to obtain the source code at all due to future copyright conflicts that could arise. If any, and I mean any, Blizzard software engineer took a look at Mr. Donnelly's software and later incorporated the concepts (even but one algorithm) into Blizzard's software.... the tables could turn very easily and have Mr. Donnelly sue Blizzard for copyright infringement. I can't believe that a software attorney would even want to touch such an explosive legal bomb like that.

As demonstrated with the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit, fighting copyright infringement via source code is not always a good strategy... and SCO had a much stronger case than Blizzard.

Who cares?

[Hubbell]

This is only a problem in a game like WoW where you can't lose items on death (specifically to other players) and are built around a constant grind to get that next tier of armor or those next few points in the battlegrounds to get that next tier of weapons. Darkfall, while long in development, is a game that offers complete freedom to the players to run their world as they see fit. If they wish to just be in chaos all the time and killing each other willy nilly, then so be it! If they wish to form a world full with alliances throwing blows at each other here and there to capture more resources (which is the hope/intent of the game) and build more cities, then they can! You can be a roving assassin picking off lone targets who venture too far from a town by themselves, or you can join a massive player army to raid enemy towns and fortresses.

Re:Who cares?

[lgw]

No free-for-all PvP RPG server or game has ever been successfuly long term (compared to other MMOs or servers in the same year/game).

Griefers always dominate - it's John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory proven every day. Griefers are far worse than any amount of bots.

Eve Online is the first potential counter-example, and they've been very careful about the rules.

Re:Who cares?

[nuzak]

The winding road up the mountain of money that Blizzard sits atop of is littered with the corpses of games that "will be" X or Y while WoW delivers a game experience that people want. Not some grand artistic or social vision, a game with just enough (and I would even say only enough) depth to keep you coming back. Hell, they're down every tuesday morning and they're still regarded as the smoothest MMO experience around.

Darkfall wants to make your items lootable, they're welcome to try it. Whether people actually enjoy this level of realism is a reality they're going to face on their balance sheet.

Me, I'm looking forward to Warhammer Online, but I don't hold any illusions that it will radically change the mechanics or culture of the MMO genre. I will throw my money at what's fun.

Re:Who cares?

[admdrew]

The reason people dislike griefers stems from the fact that it's essentially an infringement on their ability to enjoy the game. It's not necessarily an emotional attachment that causes others to be unhappy with you.
- first, getting killed in that fashion is frustrating, as it's often impossible to have a fighting chance against a griefer (they're high enough level to safely grief others).
- second, it can render a large amount of time to be completely wasted - in Eve, losing your ship is a huge deal for a new player, and can set them back hours or days.
- third, it can go against the spirit of the game - when you grief someone in WoW or Eve or any other similar MMO, you're not doing it primarily for experience, money, honor, etc, you're doing it because it's cheap and easy entertainment for you at the expense of someone else.

Copyright infringement?

[The Analog Kid]

How? Unless he stole source code and used it in his program, I don't see how. Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't think this program infringes on their copyrights, it may violate other things like their TOS, but this seems to be merely and intimidation act to make him shut down.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[clampolo]

How? Unless he stole source code and used it in his program, I don't see how.

They are claiming that the tool makes a copy of the game and stores it to ram to avoid their anti-cheating checks. Interesting to see if it is illegal to make a temporary copy (for your own personal use) of a program you legally purchased.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[Talondel]

I believe the argument would go like this:

You have a right to copy the program into RAM in order to run it, if that copy is going to be used for a purpose that complies with the EULA.

However, here the programmer is using the program in a way that doesn't comply with the EULA. Therefore, he is not only violating the EULA, but also their copyright, because he is making a copy for an unauthorized purpose.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[Chris Burke]

How on earth do you load the program into memory (and once again into CPU cache) to run it if you can't???

Copies performed as an "essential step" of using the program are exempted as not infringing on copyright. So copying the program from disk into memory in order to run it is not infringement, however creating a second copy of the game in-memory to get around the anti-cheating code may not be.

Personally, I've also argued that this clause means that you are not legally required to accept EULAs, or at least that you aren't violating copyright by refusing to accept them since you don't need a copyright license to make the necessary copies to install and run the program.

Here's a link to the relevant section of the law: TITLE 17 - CHAPTER 1 - 117

Re:Copyright infringement?

[Cajun Hell]

How on earth do you load the program into memory (and once again into CPU cache) to run it if you can't???

The pro-EULA faction's argument works like this:

Under copyright law alone, you don't have the right to make the copy(*). You don't have the right to run the software that they sell you.

In order to make their software usable (so that someone would have incentive to buy it), the copyright holder extends additional rights to its customer, rights that copyright law does not grant. One of the additional rights, is the right to copy the software to your hard disk and RAM.

These additional rights are given by a license: the EULA. If you accept the EULA, you gain the right to use the software. If you accept the EULA, you also give up some rights that you otherwise would have had, so read all the fine print. It can get very specific about under what circumstances that you are allowed to copy the program into RAM, and for what purposes. Copying their work to RAM for execution purposes would be something they grant, and copying to RAM to serve checksums to defeat bot detection would be something not granted.

(*) The catch: their claim that you don't have the right (without the EULA) to run the software, is questionable. Since 1) the purpose of the copying is noncommercial 2) the nature of the copyrighted work makes it useless unless copied to RAM, and 4) the effect of the copying has no impact on the market for the copyrighted work, it is arguably Fair Use. (Note I left out the number 3 in the above list.)

Re:Copyright infringement?

[h4rm0ny]

Okay - it's dubious, but I can see how they would at least make a legal argument that it was copyright infringement. That's a good explanation. But I don't quite get why they need to do this to spot bots. Presumably WoW has some sort of chat channel that the admins could use to communicate with players? If they roughly identify bots through their behaviour - e.g. the number of hours played, confinement to one location, repetitive actions or whatever gives the game away, could they not quickly confirm it by sending a message saying "Hey, enjoying the game? Could you just confirm your not a bot by answering this question, please..."

Re:Copyright infringement?

[Breakfast Pants]

That seems totally bogus: music CDs have to be copied to ram (ever had a disc man with 8 second skip protection? Wow, I'm dating myself), but they don't have EULAs.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[Darth]

In the case of an EULA or a subscriber agreement the agreement is with the player, not the bot creator. I don't see any way they can go after him with either of those. They could sue their subscribers with them if they could reliably detect which users are using a bot, which they seem to be asserting they cannot do.

I also like the part where they say it interferes with their design expectations. Who cares? The fact that they didn't accomodate someone playing the game 24/7 doesn't have any bearing on the legality of the bot. The only way i can think that that would be relevant is if the terms of use limited the time a user can play. Even then, they'd have to sue the player, not the bot maker.

I'll be surprised if this doesn't get thrown out of court. I'm a little surprised that after he blew off their legal threat, they didn't try to just buy him out to get rid of it.

I'm not a lawyer though, so i suspect a lot of things happen in court that would surprise me.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[Digital Vomit]

They are claiming that the tool makes a copy of the game and stores it to ram...

It should be illegal for computers to be able do that.

Re:Copyright infringement?

[dAzED1]

"Hey, enjoying the game? Could you just confirm your not a bot by answering this question, please..."

Nope. The biggest bot problem is in battlegrounds, and those that are actually there, at their keyboards, fighting - the real, non-bot players - don't have the time to respond to a message. hell, they probably won't even *see* the message; lots of folks I know direct all chat text to its own dialog box, then hide that box :)

To explain - while what you're saying could potentially work in PvE play (player versus environment), where a player can just press a few buttons now and then and the fight goes on, the real problem is in PvP play (player versus player) in what are called "battlegrounds" - a large group of horde players versus a large group of alliance players. So what the bots do is have a character run around in stupid ways, dying, casting spells at random, whatever - but if their team (alliance/horde) wins, they get a tremendous amount of benefit from that. So the active, real players end up carrying the extra load of those that are afk or bots.

The 2.4 patch (which went live yesterday) seems to have improved this some though - I actually saw bots getting booted in battlegrounds.

Right now in battlegrounds, there is an option for reporting someone as afk. There should also be an option for reporting someone as potentially a bot, so that GMs could check those particular characters with more diligence for suspicious activity, if they are flagged often enough.

Sweet

[InlawBiker]

A program that plays the boring parts of the game. Can he come up with a program that does the boring parts of my life while I'm out having fun?

Re:Sweet

[kcbanner]

World of Chorecraft!

Re:Sweet

[Chyeld]

You laugh but....

Re:Sweet

[ParadoxDruid]

Can he come up with a program that does the boring parts of my life while I'm out having fun?

... you mean, hire a Maid?

Re:Sweet

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Since World of Warcraft is a game where players simulate fighting wars, presumably World of Chorecraft would be a game where players simulate doing chores. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty much what The Sims is ... and yet it's weirdly addictive, unlike doing the same things in real life.

Bots are overrated

[garylian]

Bots are grossly overrated for MMOs for the most part. Sure, there are some few players that will use them in WoW and other games, but for the most part, people want to experience the game. And many bot users are very easy to spot, as their users don't put in enough to make it believable.

I am kind of surprised that Blizzard is doing this, but I think it's just a publicity thing, and they don't really care if they make any cash off of it. They are just trying to placate the masses on the forums that worry about every single little thing they can.

The reality is, bots make money for Blizzard. Once an account is banned, the player has to purchase a new box of the game to start playing again. And with the expansion, that's 2 boxes. So, Blizzard makes money off of the players that register new accounts/CDs every time they get banned.

Besides, most gold farmers are played by humans, not bots.

Re:Bots are overrated

[VGPowerlord]

Trial accounts can't access the mail or auction systems, probably for this exact reason.

Plus, with a level 20 restriction, you're cut off from the actual money-making part of the game.

Maybe

[FST]

Maybe instead of suing people who run bots to avoid grinding, they should make grinding less boring/time-consuming? Grinding is really the only reason they aren't getting $15/mo from me.

Maybe i should start a WoW account..

[Gideon Fubar]

so i can pay $10/month to have a bot do the boring grinding for me.

Oh wait.. that's why i don't play in the first place. Why the hell would you play an rpg that can be played more effectively by a bot than a human?

</flamebait>

Re:Maybe i should start a WoW account..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell would you play Chess, Checkers, pretty much any card game, Scrabble, Monopoly,....

It turns out that computers are better than humans at just about any game. Does this mean that we can no longer entertain ourselves?

Com-zard

[Bobfrankly1]

I like Blizzard, but this argument smells of Comcast logic.
"We sold you X access, but you are using X access. Even though we promised you X access, we really don't want you using X access, and we don't even want you using almost X access that much. So we're taking action."
-Comcast starts forging packets to kill bittorrent transfers, even though they advertise/sell that bandwidth, they don't want you using it all the time.
-Blizzard starts suing to kill automated clients that are in the game, even though they advertise/sell you that access, they don't want you using it all the time.

I understand there's more lying underneath, but this reasoning doesn't win them any sympathy from me.

Re:Thank God

[alexhard]

The problem is not bots, it's crappy game design. Once your paying customers start wanting to pay in order NOT to play your game, you know your designer is a complete retard. Then again, it seems that making games not very fun is a highly successful business model..Who would've guessed?

This is where EULAs come in

[Sciros]

In Guild Wars (another MMORPG), those using bots are discouraged from doing so by a method different from suing those that write the macros -- ArenaNet (the devs) simply sniff out (using various AI mechanics) those that use bots and ban them from the game. This action is covered by the EULA that users accept before playing.

Whether EULAs hold up in court, etc. is another issue entirely, but in cases such as banning for using bots I'm fairly certain ArenaNet wouldn't have problems defending themselves.

People don't want to use bots in GW because they'll get banned. It takes tweaking the AI bot-sniffing to keep up with macros, but the system works well enough that high-profile lawsuits are unnecessary.

glider

[ZenDragon]

The program does not make a copy of any of the game files, it simply reads the memory space that wow.exe loads into and responds to certain procedure calls and what not in the memory. For example, a monster is on the map and the client loads it in memory to prepare it for rendering. Even if the player cant see it, the program can because wow.exe loaded it into memory. The program can see and interact with the wow.exe executable by reading what wow puts in the memory.

Re:Thank God

[moderatorrater]

Can't you be glad that they're taking action, but not necessarily like the action they're taking?

Re:Thank God

[Trolan]

It's much less fun when the bots are on your team.

Gold farming and grinding are much less needed these days in WoW with the daily quests giving out 8-12g a pop, and being able to do 25 of those a day. Most taking 10mins to complete.

Sue sue

[Sosarian]

Wow, this reminds me of 2006.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/20/blizzard-sued-by-wow-glider-creator/

Except in 2006, he was suing them.

Does WoW have player-killing?

[Cajun Hell]

On some MUDs, if a player was suspected of botting, other players would give them an on-the-spot Turing test. Those who failed would be attacked.

Ummm, so don't grind

[Sycraft-fu]

WoW doesn't mandate it. You can never spend a single day grinding and have plenty of things to do. The problem comes from people who get in to this pissing match of having to have something just because others have it. So they want to automate it.

If people would just play the game to have fun, it wouldn't be a problem. It is a game, you don't "need" anything in it. Just do whatever it is you like to do. If you like to grind (surprisingly some people do) then grind. If you don't, don't. However don't get mad and say that you should get reward X that the grinders get.

More or less, Blizzard has a bunch of different kinds of rewards for different things. You can't get any reward doing any thing. However whatever it is you like doing, there are rewards for it.

The problem is when people aren't playing it to have fun, but playing it because they want to have all the best of everything. Well, that's pretty hard, since you have to do a whole bunch of different things. So they'll get bots to grind and such. That is just stupid. If all you care about is having the best, what's the point? The point should be to do whatever is fun. It is all just a game, none of it matters, other than to have fun.

Re:Ummm, so don't grind

[Cederic]

WoW does mandate it.

The 25 man content in TBC was balanced around having 25 people turn up wearing the best available equipment, using every flask/potion/food buff/weapon buff available to them and also happening to play well.

While learning how to do those encounters it is inevitable that death will occur.

This means that for a group of people to progress through the game and see more of the content within the game, they have to generate substantial income across the group and use it on repairs and consumables.

The introduction of ZA and the new tokens have to an extent reduced the dependency on consumables, as you can now out-gear the content instead of having to use consumable items to boost you. However acquiring the new equipment still requires repetitive activities such as going through the same few instances day after day to 'earn' tokens.

So there is considerable pressure on people to grind in order to ensure that when they turn up on a 25 man raid they are able to contribute fully. If half the raid don't grind, and thus don't turn up fully equipped with potions, flasks, oils, food and the like, the raid will not progress through new content.

This isn't people playing to get the best of everything. It's people playing to have fun: The raiding and teamwork and social elements of the game are significant factors in its success and longevity.

Sadly the game design mandates grinding to participate in these aspects of the game. I know a lot of people that want to take part in raids, and enjoy the social side of the game, and explore new content, but lack the time or inclination to spend tedious hours grinding for the resources to do so.

This is why there is a market for people selling in-game gold for real-life money, and one reason automated bots such as Glider are attractive.

You can, but why would you?

[Cajun Hell]

It turns out that computers are better than humans at just about any game. Does this mean that we can no longer entertain ourselves?

Of course we can, but wouldn't it be more efficient to have a computer entertain itself, on our behalf? Your recreation could be taken care of, for you by proxy, freeing you to pursue other more fulfilling endeavors, such as laboring.

This is just a step toward the ideals mankind has dreamt of for ages. Someday, computers will be able to drink beer for us, have sex for us, and enjoy books,music, and movies for us. Perhaps they could even sleep for us. This would make us free to perform menial tasks.

You need only look at history

[Sycraft-fu]

To see that this is what is always likely to happen. Looking at human history, it has historically been the strong dominating the weak, the few privileged exploiting the poor many. You come to realise that the relative stability and equality we enjoy in some nations is an anomaly of history, and took some incredible circumstances and efforts to create. For all that, they still aren't perfect.

So it should be ho surprise at all that is what happens in unrestricted games. Perhaps if some great leaders played the game they could inspire the masses to band together and overthrow the griefers. A George Washington of the gaming world. However, that isn't real likely since the masses can simply take their money to another game. There's no reason to put up with crap and try to make it better, there's other companies who'll be happy to do that.

My response to all the people who claim what a "problem" the design of WoW is and how much better their pet game is is the same one another poster made in this thread: 10 million users. They are doing something right.

As a long time gamer, I have to say WoW is the first MMORPG that has held my attention for more than about 6 months. Everquest was just awful, I quit that one after a month. DAoC was fun for awhile, I played for a few months, quit for a year, came back for a few months, quit again. Eve Online was... Well... Really boring. Tried it in beta, never signed up. Starwars Galaxies had a lot of promise, but it seemed as though Sony had a team dedicated to tracking down and eliminating anything fun. Lasted about 4 months.

WoW, however, I've been playing since a month after it came out, and I still play to this day. Is it perfect? No, of course not. However it seems to be able to keep things fun. I continue to be amused by it, and find that it is enough amusement to justify $15/month.

It seems to me that the people who primarily have a problem with WoW are the asshole griefers, who are mad that they can't become infinitely more powerful than everyone else, that they can't totally dominate. Well, I'm ok with that. If that segment has to be excluded, that's fine, because a whole lot of the rest of us find it fun.

And that is really what matters. Games are not about some magical standard of purity, they are not about perfect realism, they are not about testing you as a person. They are entertainment, pure and simple. So if they are good amusement for the money to you, then your money is well spent on them. If they are not, then your money is better spent elsewhere.

So a good game is quite simply one that people find fun. If people find it fun, they'll buy it and play it, and that is success.

Re:You need only look at history

[JSBiff]

"Perhaps if some great leaders played the game they could inspire the masses to band together and overthrow the griefers. A George Washington of the gaming world."

You know, I've thought about that before. The problem is, I've never seen a game where the game mechanics lend themselves to player-policing. I mean, what are you gonna do to the griefers? Hunt them down and kill them? Ok, so they respawn in a couple seconds and start all over. Throw them in jail? What jail? In games, where death is usually meaningless, and even what you can lose is rather limited, there can really be no 'punishment'. At the same time, if a game developer *did* put something like that in, it would just be a tool for griefers to make your life even more miserable.

Ultimately, there is nothing you can do to griefers. They might log out for a little while if they are getting ganked non-stop. Then log back in after a while, when the angry mob has moved and, and start griefing weaker players again.

Most game developers, instead of trying to rely on player-policing, just design the games to limit how much one player can grief another. One one end of the spectrum, you have games like City of Heroes / Villains where you have nothing to lose when dieing from enemy players, and PvP is completely concensual (you have to either go to special zones, or else to an 'arena'). On the other end of the spectrum, with something like, say Eve Online, PvP is still, at least, partially consensual (different zones are ranked differently, and if you are going to a zone where you think you might be griefed because of low security rating, you can at least prepare for it by maybe taking a ship you don't care about losing, and storing all your valuables in vaults in secure space stations).

Honestly, I don't mind that. The truth is, it's just a game and, just like I can't ultimately do anything to the griefer, griefers, ultimately, can't do anything to me. Of course, if you can potentially lose stuff that someone else can sell for real cash (like Entropia Universe), it becomes a little bit more worrisome.

Re:You need only look at history

[statemachine]

So it should be ho surprise at all that is what happens in unrestricted games. Perhaps if some great leaders played the game they could inspire the masses to band together and overthrow the griefers. A George Washington of the gaming world. However, that isn't real likely since the masses can simply take their money to another game. There's no reason to put up with crap and try to make it better, there's other companies who'll be happy to do that.

With unrestricted games, it's the "griefers" who suffer no consequence for their actions. The original MUDs used to have a little bit of built-in protection for this that dynamically rated players at good and evil, and this was used to keep players out of certain areas. However, most of the areas had no restrictions, which frustrated those who didn't like PvP. A long-term casual player wants to be Good, spends a lot of time, then gets offed by a griefer or a band of griefers, and is thus reset at a great loss to that player. A griefer doesn't care about the game, but about causing misery to other people, so getting killed and reset every now and then doesn't matter. They're sociopaths. Having "leaders" won't matter without some type of justice system and enforcement.

If there were a game that allowed PvP but also allowed players to jail and execute the in-game characters, that might be better, assuming you could actually ban the real person. But, disallowing PvP is just so much simpler.

People don't like real life. That's why there are games. And if the games start emulating the harshness of real life, people will stop playing those games.

neither copyright nor trademark

[poetmatt]

For once, Blizzard has definitely done something wrong...sued for the wrong things all the way around here. Sue for damages? Sure. Copyright? No. Trademark? No.

The guy has disclaimers on his site about using MMOglider that pretty much state "Blizzard doesn't like this", so no, Blizzard can't really do a lot about it.

Unless the guy doesn't have the resources to pay for the lawyer, I would suspect that the odds are in the mmoglider guy's favor.

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[Daengbo]

"For once?" "For once?" You've got to be kidding. Blizzard litigates all the time. They successfully used the DMCA to stop bnetd, a reverse engineering of the protocol. This was the first real test of the DMCA in court on many of the provisions and gave the law so many real teeth that it became the terror it is today. There was even a huge boycott of Blizzard for a short while.

Sheez! Young'uns.

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[lgw]

Some of us are still boycotting Blizzard ...

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[mysidia]

In all fairness, that lawsuit came about because BNETD's servers didn't discriminate over CD-KEYs, thus nullifying Blizzard's copy protection.

In all non-fairness, blizzard made it impossible for BNETD servers to discriminate over CD-KEYs, by utilizing encryption to prevent it.

I.E. blizzard made it impossible for a third-party server interoperable with the battle net client to _not_ circumvent their protections.

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[rossz]

I still won't buy a Blizzard product. We ran a bnetd server because we got sick of the cheating on their servers. Every single person who was allowed on our server was legitimate because we verified them by going onto the blizzard servers. A quick chat to make sure the person logged in and all was cool. The bnetd people would have liked to have verified CD keys, but Blizzard refused to cooperate.

We weren't hurting anyone. We weren't stealing from Blizzard. In fact, we _reduced_ blizzard's costs because they had a lower load on their servers. They are just assholes. I chatted with one of the VPs at blizzard, and the way he spoke at me and my friends verified he was a complete and total asshole.

I was a big buyer of Blizzard products up to that point. I haven't bought a single thing from them since.

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[schon]

that lawsuit came about because BNETD's servers didn't discriminate over CD-KEYs Pure, unmitigated bullshit.

The bnetd authors fell over themselves trying to compromise with Blizzard, up to and including publically saying that they would incorporate key checking if they could.

Blizzard refused, and proceeded with the most trumped-up lawsuit they could.

If the GP thinks *THIS* is bad, what about claiming copyright infringements of Battle.net server code, based soley on "well, it has a similar bug", instead of just looking at the bnetd code (that's the beauty of open source - you can see the code.)

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[Anonymous Cowpat]

I'm not aware that Blizzard offered a free CD-Key validation service to the BNetD project, so that argument is invalidated.

Why is it that anyone who stands up for something worth standing up for (like the right to run a multiplayer game on your own terms) gets called stupid here when they get stamped on?

What were the BNetD team supposed to do? Roll over and throw away hundreds of man-hours of painstaking work when the bullies came along to try and sweep the flaws in their copy-protection scheme under the carpet? No, they stood up for the right to reverse engineer, for your right to enjoy your games how you choose, for the right to get on with their tinkering without interference from corporate bullies. A bunch of bad laws and incompetent judges later and they've lost the case though in defiance of all reason and common sense.

And what do you have to say for it? that they're stupid for fighting the battle. It's not just 'fun to villify' Blizzard for this - they deserve far worse than villification - they've abused the courts to wreck other people's hard work because it exposed the obvious flaw in their copy-protection system, but for a game which was already old enough that it was past the best of its cash-cow days anyway - StarCraft and BroodWar were already in the budget section by the time Blizzard kicked up a fuss, and as for D1 and WarII... there was no legitimate moral reason to object to the project, there was no meaningful business reason, the entire action was, in my opinion, pure spite.

When someone comes along to hurt you out of spite, you don't just cower and crawl away so they'll leave you alone, you stand up to them and you won't be stupid for doing it. That they lost when they stood up is to the eternal shame and humiliation of the whole system of 'justice' which has let down the BNetD team, and every person who thought that it could, just once, find correctly.

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[Cecil]

Actually, bnetd tried to discuss the issue with blizzard so they could authenticate against their CD-key servers. It's not like the effort wasn't made. Blizzard refused, because they would much rather sue them out of existence. And that's exactly what they did.

Re:neither copyright nor trademark

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Actually, bnetd tried to discuss the issue with blizzard so they could authenticate against their CD-key servers. It's not like the effort wasn't made. Blizzard refused, because they would much rather sue them out of existence. And that's exactly what they did."

I remember. But look at this from another perspective: They wanted to be able to send any CD-Key they want to Blizzard and get a yes/no response. Does that really make sense from a copy protection point of view? Did anybody really expect Blizzard to go "well, alright, here's your own way of verifying any CD-Key you run across..."? Personally, for practical reasons or even for greedy ones, I don't see how.

Blizzard chose to sue them out of existence, but they did get a C&D. In other words, they had their opportunity to bow out, too. At least that would have spared us the whole DMCA bullshit that followed. That battle could have been saved for something other than copy protection. Blizzard was greedy, but they did not act unpredictably, here. If, for the noblest of noble reasons, I tried to create my own server to authenticate Windows XP/Vista boxes, could I reaaaaaaaaaaallllllly go crying about how big bad mean ol Microsoft was bullying me with their lawyers?

Every MMORPG suffers the same problem..

[rahvin112]

Every MMORPG suffers the same problem. How do you keep a game interesting and maintain incentive for people to keep playing the more they play? Every Single MMORPG, that I'm aware of, going all the way back to the very first network MUD's solved the problem with grindage. Grindage is play where all you do is hack and slash for experience/equipment. That the new generation of graphical MMORPG players is becoming aware of this and using the same techniques the text based predecessors used (scripting or bots) is absolutely not unexpected.

If every level is as easy to reach as the last then no one would play because there is no challenge in it. The grindage is a simple function of the game to make the higher levels and stuff more valuable as the time commitment goes up dramatically the higher you go. There are only a couple other tools you can use to keep things interesting and neither are perfect. Quests require massive continuing development of unique entertaining single player experiences (on MUD's this was handled by the volunteer development community of former players), the second solution is forcing everyone above a certain level to automatically accept Player killer status such that moving about in the world is much more dangerous. The only other option is to bring in elements of non killing group interactivity (true role playing), which graphical MMORPG's seem to be unusable for.

Don't blame Blizzard for the game being about grindage, it's a fact of the genre that you would know if you had been around long enough to have played MUD's back in their heyday. As a for profit company Blizzard has a goal of preventing people from cheating at the grindage because it can get people to stop playing because the achievement of working through the grindage means a lot less.

Re:Thank God

[alexhard]

I'm not a game designer, but as a gamer I consider a game being well designed when it rewards me for skill, being smart, thinking strategically, that kind of thing..WoW has only one route to success, and that is grinding ie spending time. Contrast this to TF2: have crazy FPS aim skills? Play a sniper, and the game rewards you for them. Strategic thinking? Play pyro and make creative use of alternative routes. The list goes on..of course you get better with time, but after the first 10-15 hours with the game, it is not a very big factor as you start running in to diminishing returns.

Mixed opinions...

[Myrcutio]

The bot writer might actually be entitled to write his program without regards to how it is used.

It is certainly not illegal for someone to cheat at a video game, even though it violates the EULA. Blizzard would have to prove that this man selling a cheat program causes them damage, and that he is liable for that damage. Currently, cheat programs do not fall under the spam or malware category, they are not malicious code. It will be hard for Blizzard to convince a judge that a paying customer running a bot is costing them money.

On the one hand I root for blizzard to weed out griefers and farmers, they can hurt the gameplay experience. On the other hand though i'm not sure that what this man is selling is actually criminal. It's not very sportsmanlike, but i don't think it's illegal.

Re:Thank God

[__aailob1448]

You're already modded +5 insightful but YES, DAMMIT, YES! If a game forces you to spend hours doing tasks a bot CAN do, then it's crap. Now cheats that mess with the netcode and software or even assistive hackes (like artificial crosshair or playerpainting via hacked drivers in CStrike or automatic targeters with superior reflexes) are wrong. The answer? More quality interactive content and less easily automated tasks (or make them part of the game like Final Fantasy XII's gambit system was used to program your character's actions). If the world is persistent, why can't the ingame characters be left as pseudo-NPCs in an AFK state, doing something that accumulates wealth/XP points for the player? The point is, make the game with no crappy grind so that a bot would have to be an actual human-level AI capable of learning and your problem is solved (or we all get enslaved, in which case it's solved in sort of a bad way). FTR: Played FF online for 6 months and quit because of the grind. One day, Virtual Worlds will be awesome, today, they suck.

How it all works

[tburnelis]

As an Ex-Programmer and user of Macroquest (Glider for Everquest essentially) the act of using active memory to alter game play has been around for a long time.
The automation of simple tasks does not need this memory hacking to work. In my days pre-macroquest, I used to take a nostromo speedpad, or other USB joystick of sorts, and program mini-macro's into them. Just a recorded set of keystrokes to do thing like autofire and such.

The use of Memory alteration, does a lot more then press the same button over and over. It can intercept, and redirect information being sent to and from the server changing what will happen. It can tell the server a new location for your character (warping) it can tell the server your default speed should be "x" so you can run as fast as you want. the list goes on and on.

In the Macroquest world, there are a few levels of "hacking", you have your non invasive macro's, which automate keystrokes, mouse movements, and clicks. Next are plugins, which are a little more difficult, it requires actually writing a program extension (.DLL file) to perform things, some are passive, utilizing the information recieved from the server, but not normally available to the player. Although not available, it's still being sent, so not really against the rules to use it. Lastly using plugins to access your memory, and "hook" game memory addresses, to alter the information and changed it to what you want.

All in all, cheating like this is not a simple task, it requires reverse engineering the programs exe, figuring out memory offsets for each thing you want to change, writing a programs to find and latch onto the memory offset to change it, and then figuring out the value to change it to to get the desired effect. Doing this is what we call an active hack, these are the ones that places like Sony and Blizzard can find using there tracking programs. These are what hurts them, using more resources then a normal player.

The simple automation of button pressing can (and has) be argued to be allowed based on most games EULA, which prohibits the use of 3rd party applications to alter game play. Automating keystroke/mouse click tasks does not alter game play, or change the way the program they wrote works in any way, if anything it may prevent carpal tunnel.

What I'm trying to say is: The user is chosing to use a program to violate the EULA, they should be punished. It's like sueing a company that makes bolt cutters because a customer of theirs bought some bolt cutters and broke into your house, or shed. The person performing the breaking and entering is at fault, not the manufacturer of the tool used to break and enter.

Re:Not the question at hand

[Atario]

is it illegal for third parties to provide players with the means to violate the End User License Agreement and the Terms of Use?

If so, then Microsoft is in trouble for that bot-building tool they sell, "Visual Studio".