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Blizzard Tries To Forbid Open Sourcing Glider
ruphus13 notes a new development in Blizzard's case against MDY, which we discussed last week. Blizzard, the maker of World of Warcraft, has now requested another injunction — to prevent the open sourcing of Glider code. Quoting: "Blizzard has asked the court for a relatively unconventional order prohibiting MDY from making the source code for its MMO Glider software available to the public, and prohibiting MDY from helping people develop other World of Warcraft automation software. Blizzard had previously asked the court to shut down MDY's WoW operations in its motion for summary judgment, but the court's summary judgment order did not address Blizzard's request. Blizzard's requests to prohibit open-source release of MDY's software and prohibit MDY's assistance in development of independent WoW bots are new to this motion — and seem likely to raise eyebrows in the open source and digital rights advocacy camps."
OOPS! we were hacked! our source code was stolen!
OMG!! It's all over pirate bay! sorry!
In other words, legally say "Blizzard.... Go To Hell."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just do it. Just release it.
www.piratebay.org
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
This should be very amusing. Was there any indication that MDY intended to Open up Glider?
If the Glider software doesn't contain any copyright infringement (which MDY may be hard-pressed to prove - really, dunno), can Blizzard legally prevent them from Open Sourcing the software? It would seem to me that that's really not going to fly that well.
Informatus Technologicus
Is still illegal software. Closed or open source.
As I've delved into Diablo 2 once again (after watching the imho downright fantastic gameplay video of Diablo 3) over the last few days, I've seen with some amazement that some of the most widely used Battle.net cheats are actually licensed under the GNU GPL - there's even some kind of application framework for interacting with the game programmatically floating around on the web... :)
It's really interesting to see such development, because back in the days when I really was into all that gaming stuff, there was hardly ever a way to take a look how some trainer's/cheat's author does thing XY. Cool, in a way.
That said, I really, really despise cheating in multiplayer games.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
You prefer this to exist with closed source so you can't read the code and see what they do to hook into your game.
Yeeeeeah, smart move!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Blizzard doesn't really doesn't really want th EFF to get involved in this fight. Ok, the EFF may not actively take part in such a fight, but the OpenSource community will. The enemy of my enemy...
Blizzard needs to work on there hack detection code.
I just got banned and i've never run any of these hacks as a matter of fact i was playing on a mac
I think perhaps blizzard takes the whole bann thing a tad to seriously to the point of banning false positives.
In WoW, maybe you don't have a right to speak freely, if Blizzard says no.
In the Real World, we have that right. We'll see which world these courts are playing their games in.
--
make install -not war
its not a gaming company anymore eh ?
lets see, they want to BAN an automation software. on grounds that they may be used to automate their game.
im sure they are aware that normal windows macroing programs can also be used to automatize wow. but for some *obscure* reason, they are not disclosing that information to court, and ask the court to ban macro programs worldwide.
Read radical news here
Unfortunately, a lot of people will be stricken with, "The Enemy of my Enemy is... the maker of the game that I'm addicted to."
I feel a strange disturbance in the force... as if thousands of WoW-addicts/programmers cried out in pain, and were silenced.
Been well over a year since I played WoW, so how has the bot trouble been? They were always more annoying than anything else, and adversely affected some of the economy, but that was about it. Massive bot use would seriously affect gameplay, though...Blizzard may be better off getting some people to corrupt the stuff coming out of pirate bay or something. Distribute bad bots to people who are trying...or they could reduce the grind. Or something. I dunno.
Of course, I could rag on how WoW needs to release its source code and everyone's info because INFORMATION WANTZEZ TO BEEZ FREE, dawg.
it doesnt infringe on anyone's copyrights.
the STUPID, the OVERLY MORONIC argument blizzard is using is that the program 'modifies the wow software running in THE MEMORY'.
of course, that is trying to fool the old, senile court judges. everyone who has used computers a bit knows that when a program runs in memory, MANY aspects of it are modified on constant basis, and a few million times a second or more. windows kernel code modifies the wow software running in the memory, wow software ITSELF modifies itself in the memory, its memory footprint changes, it reads and writes data from disk, and to network and modifies itself accordingly.
a computer's memory is something too complicated for a lawyer to fathom. they shouldnt sweat it.
Read radical news here
This can not help Blizzard in any way what so ever.
A) Glider isn't exactly hard to create.
B) Makes Blizzard look like bullies..again.
C) Now there are several people who are going to create a clone.
D) It's impact on the game, emotional views aside, isn't really that great.
Stopping Glider is a bandage on a bigger issue they refuse to actually address, farming.
Now, farming isn't nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. In MMO's that allowed groups to control areas, it was horrible, but you can't really do that in WoW.
Here are some thing they could do:
1) Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray to them.
2) put some random drift into movement.
3) limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay
4) don't allow the transfer of more then 100GP a time. Maybe a one time unlimited amount per month.
All of these would be pretty trivial to implement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...it is another example of the Man trying to keep us down...
I'll Change it, and then rebrand it.
I ahve a plan that would stop Blizzard in it's tracks.
tbiddy123@yahoo.com
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the program itself is ruled as illegal in a court of law, then it is, even if the arguments therefore and the verdict itself seem stupid.
If it's overturned in court, not illegal anymore, but I'd hate to see the release and use of this software taint legit FOSS projects.
They really need to just open source the Warcraft client. If the user interface is reducing the fun of the game by forcing people to repeat pointless activities, let the open source community fix the interface... and implement security at the server.
So Blizzard is trying to hinder the creation of bots in its MMORPG? Bots in MMORPG's suck anyway! It's not really nice as regular player to see bots playing.
Sure, you can ban bots and you can void licenses when you catch someone, but bottom line: People won't stop as long as two criterions are not matched
1. The game is interesting enough to be played instead of botted.
2. The game is complicated enough to make botting pointless.
Why do people bot? Two reasons. First, they're goldfarmers and want to make as much gold as possible without having to do it themselves. And second, some parts of the game are just boring tedium nobody wants to do but has to.
So what all comes down is time sinks. People want to avoid time sinks. They don't want to sit in one spot and farm the same crapmobs for hours to get their $number $item for $quest. That's boring and tedious. They don't want to farm $mob for gold to buy their mount, that's boring and tedious.
Give people what they want to play and you have no problem with bots. Simple as that. When you have a problem with people botting through your game, all it says is that you installed something in the game that should keep the people occupied but they generally hate to do it (aka time sink).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm the ideal customer. Rarely play, but every 30 days my account is debited.
Blizzard has crossed an ethical line. Maybe they don't like the guy's software, but asking a court to restrict his freedom of speech is simply wrong.
Yes, publication of source code is a free speech right:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-225508.html&st.ne.fd.tohhed.ni?hhTest=1
It's bnetd all over again. \o/
I don't see what all the fuss is about ... the source code for Glider is 9 bits:
- # -
- - #
# # #
It's a risk you take, of course one can try to develop the game in a way which makes it harder, but if someone is intelligent enough they may find a way anyway.
Though I think cheating is a bigger issue in NDS games for instance where the developers didn't expect anyone to be able to change the code and therefor took no protective measures, and therefor for instance let the client decide which blocks comes next in Tetris DS which makes some people play with all long ones ... Good work!
with your logic, even leave aside blizzard's, it constitutes a copyright violation if i hit ctrl alt del and end the Wow client by terminating it in task manager.
Read radical news here
How do you rule on how someone licenses their own code? Is there some precedent?
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Blizzard is stance on that Glider contains copyrighted and protected property. One can't declare something open source if one doesn't own it to begin with.
Of course all of this maneuvering hinges on whether or not Glider did their work cleanly. I personally don't favor this approach where it seems to be easier just to continually combat the thing better technology.
If you want to open-source Glider DO IT NOW. Don't wait for the court to tell you not to or you'll be in serious trouble. Once it's out the door onto the Internet the question is moot.
And for Blzzard to tell you what your future employment can, and can't, be in coding is the Overreach of the Year.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...that except for a *single* post above, not a single person took offense with the fact that using this software to hack Blizzard's WoW client is CHEATING. Anybody still thing cheating is wrong or do we all think that we are entitled to be the best without actually putting in the effort and earning it? Yeah, its just a game, still doesn't change anything... and no, just because somebody else it doing, doesn't justify you doing it.
... being made into a fun game?
I hate to be "that guy", but I hate WoW. There are a few fun parts and endless hours of pointless toil in between them. If I could let a robot play through the endless grind of killing and collecting trash to get to the next entertaining portion of the game, I'd be thrilled.
I don't know, maybe MMOs can't be fun. Maybe it's not possible to put up enough unique and entertaining content to keep people hooked on it for years at a time. Maybe the only way to keep people playing is to endlessly hold a carrot in front of them and hope they chase it for as long as it's there.
Weird slashbug #455
Farming may have been an issue initially with the game, and people profiting from the game, without Blizzard getting their share of it. However, since Burning Crusades, people who play at 70 can "grind" up gold easily...
Blizzard has to address the real underlining issue, keeping the game interesting and challenging. The reason you would use glide is because you are tired of "grinding and questing" the same things over and over, killing the same mobs over and over, either for a new character or for a glimpse of some "better gear" (which is the biggest farce of the game). The user has already done it once why make it the same painful process over and over, it's an absolute turn off...
Blizzard absolutely have a right to control what happens on their servers. Notice though that this injunction is not about their servers. It's about what code is released on the internet - which Blizzard doesn't own.
It's within their right to say "you can't use that code on our servers" - and they have a right to enforce that rule however they please (delete violating accounts or whatever). However, it's clearly not within their right to say "you can't use that code anywhere, or even have it, or even look at it."
...about making a bot program that would be completely unstoppable. Also, it could be modified to allow for remote play, which is something I'd truly love - particularly for remote AH interaction.
The idea: run the bot on a separate PC.
Requirements:
1) Find/devise a way to send USB inputs from one PC to another. Make it look like plain-Jane USB keyboard and mouse input.
2) Find/devise a way to capture VGA data and parse it. Provide a 'Generic Monitor' PNP ID to prevent detection.
3) Optionally, find/devise a way to capture audio data, as above. Would be great for a fishing bot, along with 'fishping'.
4) Optionally, find/devise a way to interact with bot program via the web, cell phone, or other means. Again, Auction House comes to mind, but also imagine getting a text message when you get whispered by a GM. Log into the web interface and input your replies, clicking the 'send' button.
In general, all of this would be ran on a second PC using only the human methods of interacting with the game - HID, video, audio. With enough of an interface, this could be very difficult to track and/or prevent.
You could even secure the network channel via SSH to prevent Warden from sniffing the traffic.
Another appeal to this approach is that it would be modular and would scale to other games using the same technology: EQ3, Warhammer, whatever.
I could see an enterprising company selling appliances, pre-built and ready to rock.
I wonder how creative the copyright complaint would have to be to bring such an enterprise to court, as well. Again, we're talking about a program that does not interact with the game's data in any way. All that's being done is capture/parse of data being provided to the end-user. Sounds like 'fair use' or even 'time shifting' to me...
Oh crap! I think I may have just 'solved' it myself...
Funny how writing an idea down makes it more tangible.
What if we ran WoW in a Virtual Machine?
Wouldn't that make the hooks a lot more available?
As for 3d acceleration, would you really NEED awesome graphics on your web portal? Just use the crappy-fake method of getting it to run, and viola.
Another idea, what about Wine?
The real problem is the fact that World of Warcraft (and every MMO released to date) is designed with such shoddy gameplay mechanics that people would rather have a computer play most of the game for them. The problem isn't that some people automate their characters, the problem is that a large percentage of the game is so mind-numbingly boring and repetitive that people would go to any length to avoid it and just play the good stuff. Is there anything wrong with this? Absolutely not, these developers (again, this applies to ALL MMOs) need to learn to design games that are fun the entire time you're playing them.
Put it another way, consider what would be the case if WoW were a single player game. The immediate conclusion everybody would draw was that the gameplay is substandard, because they are so tempted to automate it. Make it multiplayer and all of a sudden this is different? No. What's really going on here? Blizzard puts as many artificual, tedious roadblocks as they can get away with into the game, and the reason they do so is to extend the duration of their subscriptions as long as possible. When somebody decides to automate the process, Blizzard isn't protecting their player base, they're protecting their profit margins. They're saying, "You'll play this game OUR way so we can milk you for as much money as possible." So I say to Blizzard, cure the disease, not the symptom. Make a game that people don't want to have a computer play most of it for them and you won't have these problems.
Can't figure out how to make a game that's both fun and takes a long time to get tired of? Hire some actually talented game designers. We know you can take a design somebody else came up with and polish the mechanics to to a shiny gleam (see: every Blizzard game to date). Now's the time to innovate.
If Blizzard is selling a user interface (the client) then they shouldn't care who's improving the user interface.
If Blizzard is selling a service, then they shouldn't be implementing the security in the client: you can't stop anyone breaking in to their own computer.
What costs more, the service or the client?
Open source the part that you're not making money from, and quit worrying about Glider.
> If a game had no grind, players would lose interest quickly
That is incorrect.
Guild Wars is an example of an online game that has (almost) no grind, and yet is massively popular (millions), and growing.
And GW has (almost) no bots, since there is almost no boring grinding for bots to replace. As a result, the only reason left to run bots in GW is for farming for drops, but it's very rarely done.
So no, you're wrong. WoW (and EverQuest and others) did not need to be designed as time sinks, but they were, simply because that extends the companies' monthly revenues. And now Blizzard deserves to be overrun with Glider-type bots, because the grinding problem is of their own design and making.
The need for grinding is a sign of a very badly designed game. Repetition has no redeeming aspects at all.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Seriously, just let the code out. This world needs to understand that they need a new tool set for dealing with certain issues. It's no longer acceptable to take everything to court where typically, he-who-has-the-most-money wins. A court or faux-legal order will take a while. Just let the code out and be done with it. It's the speed of information that's going to be a force for this change. Also, if he wrote the code and hasn't sold it or the rights to it, I'm pretty sure he can give it away.
I can't see this as being anything more than a very minor problem for Blizzard. But their actions seem to be begging someone to create a major problem for them; like creating an open source version of their game that runs over a p2p network, that anyone can modify in whatever way they would like to.
Have you ever noticed that whenever someone starts a post saying that an analogy is bad, they then try to add more convolutions to that same analogy as if that will improve it?
Why, that kind of analogy is just like when someone puts a rocket on their neighbor's car and doesn't tell the neighbor, then fires it up when the neighbor leaves for work in the morning.
Yep, just like it. :D
I think this lawsuite was really filed due to pressure from the chineses farmers union. They told blizzard "Don't make me give you a 50 DKP minus!!"
How is open sourcing this software bad for Blizzard? Sure, it might lead to a rise in the amount of people attempting to use it in the short term, but last time I played WoW I wasn't aware that a huge percentage of the players were botting anyway. In the long term, I would think that having the source code for glider would better enable Blizzard to provide a technical solution, as opposed to a legal solution, to their little problem. Beyond that, perhaps they could take some initiative and analyze how glider does what it does in order to improve their NPC movement/AI or something. I'm sure it must have some nice path finding algorithms designed to work specifically with WoW.
I still hadn't forgotten the bnetd debacle so there's no way I'm ever forgiving Blizzard now.
Put identity in the browser.
How is the bot cheating any more than cruise control? Do cops claim you're cheating by using a system to keep your vehicle at a set speed? You set it to maintain a specific speed, but then you take control again (using the terms suitable to WoW) during "the interesting parts", like when you come upon other traffic, when you enter a town, or when you simply want to take full control for a while.
The big difference I see is using bots like this to gold farm or do other things for profit. If you are just wanting to start a new character and get past a lot of the grind that is so repetitive and lame (especially after you've manually leveled up a character or two), then I say go ahead.
Blizzard needs to decide which action will ultimately preserve their player base--allowing or disallowing the bots--and then live with the consequences. While WoW has a legendary reputation in the MMO field, if they start losing veteran players who are tired of the grind, they will need to reassess their business model and their terms of service.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Make leveling actually fun instead of a "grind". If there is such a huge demand for Glider maybe they need to re-think some of their game's design. Other MMO games have dynamic updates as you play, the WoW world feels static, and they have to take the servers down completely to apply updates.
-Skeeterbug
they can ban people from THEIR SERVERS..
They have overreached in this case. Under this ruling ford can sue third party "pimp your ride" services because they fabricate parts which interact with patented ford parts.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If a developer writes an application, it it doesn't infringe any copyrights....
But RUNNING the application DOES. Is the application still infringing?
This is why you should be afraid.
What about thinking about writing the application? After all, you have to think about the code before you write it. Isn't that, in effect, Thoughcrime? (I think I owe royalties to Orwell now)
There is still the hardware work-around: Hook up the video out to a video capture card on a second computer, make a hardware widget that takes goes from the second computers USB port to keyboard in on the first computer.
You jest, yet they are worrying about similar kinds of things wrt video. (See Trusted Computing)
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Why oh why doesn't Blizzard simply buy the code (along with some NDA clauses) in the first place?
We call such characters Politicians around here.
Interesting. I, on the other hand, loved Doom (Yes, that's how long it's been since I've done much gaming) but I'm just terrible at it. Really. Got killed immediately, consistently. I tried some settings that removed enemies, all the way down to none, iirc. That didn't help; it was boring to walk around in empty or near-empty spaces. Then I tried just flat-out cheating. I gave myself infinite ammo and invulnerability.
Oh, my, what a change. Previously, I'd start to play and quit in frustration after a few minutes or an hour. As much as I liked the game and always returned to it, I never played it consistently. After I got the ammo and invulnerability, however, I played and played and played, hours upon hours, for months. It became a wonderful obsession.
I don't think what I did was cheating, really. I got far more satisfaction from changing the nature of the game. I set different goals, mostly seeing how fast I could get through. I changed the game-type from "kill the baddies" to "run through this maze faster."
Oddly enough, I don't like racing games. I suck at those, too. :-)
Take Mass Effect. The puzzle game to unlock containers, scan deposits and break into computers. Decent enough little mini-game but by the end weren't you sick to death of it?
And ME only takes 30 or so hours to complete.
A MMORPG has to last for months if not years. Just how are you going to create anything that is fun to do for so long?
Age of Conan tried to update combat to make it less boring, so instead of pressing a button to execute a skill you now press a button to execute a skill followed by a number of other buttons a bit like DDR except that the pattern is always the same. So Skill A is followed by 312 for instance. In PvP combat it was tricky because you need to be in range when the final button is pressed but in PvE (fighting against the computer) it adds NOTHING! In fact players with a macro keyboard just macro the combo's and find themselves playing yet another Everquest clone.
Vanguard has a diplomacy mini-game. Intresting enough until you start doing some math about how many games you need to play to actually achieve anything and loose all hope.
Same with crafting mini-games. Fun enough in their own right the 100th time they loose all appeal.
I think Star Wars Galaxies still did it the best. It had a mini-game for crafting but if you had a good result you could safe it as a recipe and use it over and over again in a factory. So mini-game that put in a bit of challenge but without hammering the player to death with it.
But then SWG was a game that required players to make their own fun and we all know how that ended.
The problem is simple, the more thightly scripted content is the longer it takes to design but the shorter it lasts. If a single player game like ME takes years to develop for 30 hours of gameplay then just how many decades does a game have to spend in production to give 30 months of gameplay?
Perhaps the answer lies in making the game focus on strategy, FPS games like the famous counterstrike were played for years with only limited content. Perhaps if MMORPG's battles were less like puzzles (do the right thing with the right class at the right time and WIN) but more like strategy, (okay, we have no class X but we got skill Z, how can we use that?) people would play the game differently and enjoy the gameplay. Could you imagine a MMORPG where not every LFG message has people begging for a healer?
Lotro does that in the beginning. If you want and try you can survive almost until till the end game with odd groups lacking "essential" classes. How about an all hunter party, dragons don't stand a chance. Guardians protecting each other? Takes a while but near invulnerable.
Sadly, I fear that many people just don't have the mindset to play in a game that would focus on challgenging gameplay over memorisation.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here are some thing they could do:
1) Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray to them.
2) put some random drift into movement.
3) limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay
4) don't allow the transfer of more then 100GP a time. Maybe a one time unlimited amount per month.
1. Makes having the mining/crafting skill trivial and severely limits players from gathering low or mid level resources. Want to mine that iron? Tough, drop your mining skill and level it back up. In turn, that will increase prices on the Auction house to ridiculous levels.
2. Node drifts underground, no one can harvest it.
3. Vendors pay very little compared to what demand will bring for an item. Plus, putting artificial boundaries on prices can easily destabilize the economy.
4. It's been a couple years since I've played WoW, but even then, there were a lot of items/services that would gross well over 100 gold. Now that the level cap is 70 and flying mounts cost a bagilion gold, I'm sure the value of gold in WoW has only gone down (meaning higher prices all around).
I liked the ideas at first, but as I thought about the game mechanics, realized they would only frustrate Blizzard's customers.
From my experience as a MMO designer, battling automated play is actually a huge design problem.
I am a professional programmer, and I would say that it is more than that. I would say that it is fundamentally impossible to prevent botting on remote clients without a client being completely locked down with DRM. And as Microsoft has already discovered, that is a hard sell.
You have the same fundamental problem that media creators do: You have to give people information, but prevent them from using it in ways you don't approve of. This problem will not go away any time soon.
The simpler problem of stopping WoW botting is easy. People bot in WoW because 'the grind' to level or gain faction rep is long and boring. Change the game so that people aren't rewarded for sinking so much time into the game. Problem solved.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The MMO Asheron's Call, a contemporary of better-known Everquest, has had a framework like this for years, known as Decal.
Interestingly, the developers of asheron's call (Turbine) chose to embrace the 3rd party development community. As a result, players have used the framework to extend and improve the game client; many community improvements have eventually been rolled into the official client (e.g., showing the health/mana of your party members in a single panel, and allegiance-wide chat). Turbine even went as far as to hire several of the top decal plugin developers.
This has lead to a fairly unique game, with player-run bots running unattended trades, offering trade-skill services, and help new players with magical enhancements.
Of course, with all the positive contributions that enhance gameplay, there have been negative ones as well. Combat macroing became commonplace, allowing characters to advance without human intervention; at first this was more or less endorsed by Turbine, but a few years ago they finally ruled against running combat macros while away from the keyboard. To enforce this, they started giving basic Turing tests to players that were suspected of violating this rule.
It's been an interesting experiment. I definitely respect Turbine for *not* taking the Blizzard route, and banning players by the tens of thousands, and suing third party developers. Their philosophy that it's the developer's responsibility for creating exploitable bugs, and not the players' fault for exploiting them is certainly player friendly.
But at the end of the day, it's hard to say if it was all for the better, as the game slowly fades into obscurity, with subscription numbers a tenth of what they were at the game's peak. Those of us who played during the game's heyday certainly enjoyed the ride, but blizzard's aggressive anti-cheating stance may be necessary to building a billion-dollar a year revenue stream.
U.S. Disctrict Court
District of Arizona
Civil Docket For Case #: 2:06-cv-02555-DGC
Docket #83 is an Order from the Court stating that MDY is granting judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to Blizzard's Tortious Interference with Contract Claim. This is because MDY fufilled all seven of Arizona's factors used to determine this. (Page 23, Lines 13 - 22)
The court will set a final pretrial conference by seperate order. Trial will concern the claims that remain unresolved - portions of the DMCA claim, the trademark claim, and the unjust enrichment claim - and damages or other remdies.
Go pull up the document yourselves and read what the judge has written. Its 27 pages. You can find Blizzard's Motion for Permanent Injuntion as well. That is 11 pages and docket #84.
http://www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
Why they exist? It's part of the conditioning.
One reason why Blizzard might not like such bots is these bots could break Blizzard's control over players in Blizzard's "operant conditioning chamber"[1] aka "skinner box".
When a primate can get the reward without having to press your levers, you lose some control over that primate.
And if other primates are smart enough and see that primate getting the reward, they may choose to "cheat" the same way given that option or give up cooperating and not press the levers when they're expected to or even totally "not play the game" anymore.
That outcome might affect Blizzard's income ;).
But what do I know.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
Blizzard is really pushing it... I've already decided not to buy or play another Blizzard game, but now I'm tempted to start stealing copies I see at walmart and start burning them, but I'm going to be the bigger person and not hurt the environment by doing that.
See? Through similar logical fallacy to that that Blizzard has exercised in their cases, I've proven to be over 1,000,000 times better than them. I also deserve money. Give me money.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
So people using Glider are paying a monthly fee to Blizzard to let their computer play WOW?
Is it just me or does that seem really stupid? If you are not going to play the game (and occasional grinding is part of the game) why pay?
Get a keyboard that allows on board programming. Problem solved.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
U.S. District Court District of Arizona (Phoenix Division) Civil Docket For Case #: 2:06-cv-02555-DGC Assigned to: Judge David G. Campbell http://www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/ Pull up the legal documents for yourselves. Blizzard's Motion for Permanent Injunction is Docket #84 and the Judge's Order that found in favor of Blizzard's tortious interference with contract claim (as well as 2 copyright claims).
with that logic, anyone has the right to file a case in any court to ban distribution of particular brands of automobiles, guns, fireworks. for there are sure brands that are being used for malicious ends more than their competitors.
basically preventing glider mean that they will be obliged to do the same to other macro programs as well.
Read radical news here
How does that board retrieve information from the game?
What if MDY sells its code to an european company?
lernu.net
So when i look at this i am alittle perplexed at why Bilzz is so concerned w/ bots. Botting brings more raw materials into the economy and lowers prices for real players. They remove the tedious leveling process and get more players to experience end game content. Bots increase player satisfaction by removing the limiting time factor. I guess i dont understand why Blizz wants to shoot themselves in the foot. If blizzard really thinks that leveling 1-70 is where they get all the revenue, I suggest they look at player data and note most players spend their time at end game. 1-70 10 days, playing 70 40 days. This still leaves the issue that botting is actually SLOWER to level. Selling gold/selling accounts - this is all good. It brings GDP to developing countries. There was a special on gold farmers actually moving out of poverty level in third world countries, although I cannot recall the name...Anyway - more active accounts equals more money, obviously. Now on the other hand, if this is more of an issue w/ copy right infringement, I have no idea - not a programmer.
You know, I always thought that the RIAA and MPAA would destroy
the software industry. I figured that they would push through
laws that suited them and to hell with everyone else. I figured
that they would create laws that burden everyone else that does
something with a microprocessor. I figured that million dollar
Oracle databases would eventually be burdened down with anti-piracy
nonsense to prevent pirates from using old IBMs or Suns.
I didn't think it would be the likes of Blizzard to trash the
industry with really stupid laws or heinously egregious precedents.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Essentially they said "Since the court has found that this program only has criminal uses, could you please write a note which says that it will also be illegal if other people start using it or compile the source"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Hello Aphoxema!
We are besieged by the Blizzard corporation. You must help us by finding and destroying 30 copies of WOW. You can find them in the wilds of Wal-Mart. Go now, and do not return until you have brought them to their knees!
Return to Aklephlub the Guardian of Cfgluggbubby when you have destroyed 30 copies of WOW.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"the STUPID, the OVERLY MORONIC argument blizzard is using is that the program 'modifies the wow software running in THE MEMORY'. "
No it isn't. Its just some bullshit which retards (like you probably) have made up and which other stupid uneducated morons keep repeating over and over and over instead of actually finding out what the fuck was ruled in the court.
It has nothing to do with what is "in the memory". And the recent ruling didn't say anything about copying it to memory. But then why let the facts get in the way of hysterical ranting.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I have to thank you for such a good afternoon laugh. I don't care if you are serious or playing dumb. I got misty eyed.
i would hate to see how bad it gets when you have people with Down Syndrome download the open source client and then calling blizzard saying "I download the source but i can't get wow to run, what? what do you mean i have to compile it. whats that? why doesnt this work right now, blizzard help plz!!"
Helpdesk: "Dude, you're only a level 0 hacker, if you try and use the open source client before you're at LEAST level 7 and have the Visual Studio skill it's gonna aggro your compiler. You don't want to do that, it's not pretty."
...but if a game makes automation attractive, it's not a fun game.
Every single time I've seen people playing this game, it makes me think of work.
You should get paid for work, not pay for work.
I see only two basic game functions : problem solving and competition. MMORPGs are 100% about competition, never problem solving. Indeed problem solving simply doesn't make sense in a normal MMORPG context.
Now competition has about two forms : social (status) and skill (pvp). So you basically want a 100% pvp game. I obviously exaggerate here, second life has non-pvp skill essential for social success.
I feel we're best off improving the compromise between "realism" (ala WoW) and pvp balance (ala Battel.net's ladder). Imagine a pure pvp game with little money & economy and an experience points system that penalized you for excessive repetition. Say for example your gain drops off rapidly if your opponents level is lower and defeating opponents of lower level "typecasts" you, say forcing your later progressing into merely more powerful versions of the same things you could do at their level. So while others players are throwing solid ice walls you are stuck throwing fire walls that do more damage but don't stop anyone down. Or your area of effect healing is significantly less powerful while your single target heals are slightly better. etc.
Another approach is simply add real problem solving components by supporting bots in-game.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
How about simply diminishing returns for slaying the same kind of mob over and over? Kill 30 and for a day they won't give you any xp anymore. Adjust number of enemies killed and time according to necessity.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
First of all, tag all items with the name of the initial owner/creator.
Create a second server. Fully playable, fine server--except it's only for people who choose to go there and people who cheat.
Watch players and identify bots (as usual--ongoing process) but don't kick them immediately (So that you don't let on that you know or how you figured out).
After a while, just transfer every character owned by the person over to the new server, and eliminate every item tagged with the cheaters name from the original server. No warning whatsoever, just a little notice after the fact--you belong on this server instead.
The person may either stay on the new server with his great character and all the other cheaters, or he can buy a new serial number and go back to the "non-cheating" server.
On the cheating server, there is little attempt to identify cheaters except in the most blatant cases. If people really enjoy cheating more--they should be able to! Just don't interact with people who don't want to be on the same server as cheaters.
It would also have a serious dampening effect on ebay item sales--items purchased may disappear at any time! You'd be more careful with in-game trades/purchases too.
You would not be harming the cheaters by moving them to a different server--they should be happier! If their guild thinks cheating is okay, maybe the whole guild should go over and they can remain together. If not--well you were in the wrong guild and shouldn't miss them too much.
Problem solved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
Several exclusive rights typically attach to the holder of a copyright:
* to produce copies or reproductions of the work and to sell those copies (mechanical rights; including, sometimes, electronic copies: distribution rights) * to import or export the work * to create derivative works (works that adapt the original work) * to perform or display the work publicly (performance rights) * to sell or assign these rights to others * to transmit or display by radio or video (broadcasting rights)
The phrase "exclusive right" means that only the copyright holder is free to exercise those rights, and others are prohibited from using the work without the holders permission. Copyright is sometimes called a "negative right", as it serves to prohibit certain people (e.g., readers, viewers, or listeners, and primarily publishers and would be publishers) from doing something they would otherwise be able to do, rather than permitting people (e.g., authors) to do something they would otherwise be unable to do. In this way it is similar to the unregistered design right in English law and European law. The rights of the copyright holder also permit him/her to not use or exploit their copyright, for some or all of the term. There is, however, a critique which rejects this assertion as being based on a philosophical interpretation of copyright law that is not universally shared. There is also debate on whether copyright should be considered a property right or a moral right.[citation needed] Many argue that copyright does not exist merely to restrict third parties from publishing ideas and information, and that defining copyright purely as a negative right is incompatible with the public policy objective of encouraging authors to create new works and enrich the public domain.[weasel words] The right to adapt a work means to transform the way in which the work is expressed. Examples include developing a stage play or film script from a novel, translating a short story, and making a new arrangement of a musical work.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Code can be free speech whenever you want it to be. On a computer? You can restrict its use and export. But they could always do the PGP trick. (Google is your friend, but you should all know what I'm talking about)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Actually, Blizzard has also embraced the 3rd party development community. The UI is written in LUA and XML, and that's completely open. Some operations are restricted to avoid completely automating gameplay, but WoW is far more open than most other games. I just run fairly minor enhancements but some people run UIs that are completely different, such that you wouldn't recognize the game as being the same.
> I've seen with some amazement that some of the most widely used Battle.net cheats are actually licensed under the GNU GPL
Like what? The bots?
Blizzard has done jack about removing spammers and bots from bnet. You'll even be in a private game and get messaged.
You can always automate killing different sorts of mobs, but you simply can't automate climbing the ladder in Warcraft or Starcraft.
But sure how about you only ever gain the experience for any particular monster type the first 3 time you kill it (and only if it's nearly your level or higher). So again most xp is gained by pvp.
Alternatively most table top RPGs don't depend on radical advancement like DnD. Why not follow them?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
If they change the source code of Glider slightly enough for it to be different AND THEN release the source code... can it be said that Glider's code is out? It could be argued yes that NewCode is essentially Glider, however as compared to core GLider code when it was frozen it is different. Thus they can still release technically Glider as open source. Just not as Glider. Though I'll have to agree with the 5 million other posts. I hate bots, however it should be BLizzards problem to control them. They should be the ones that make their server better so it's no bottable. If Blizzard is losing money to bots then ban the bots and make sure they stay banned! I've played various MMOs, mostly the free ones, and it's ALWAYS up to the company to make it hard for the bots to work. I know in Granado Espada they put in a report bot feature (that doesn't work half the time however that's because they haven't fixed it). Now it seems that they can sue people for THIER IP. If they sue the GLider people they have to sue everyone else that made ANY form of content for WoW, all those widgets and gadgets..since it OBVOUSLY violates their own copyright by reading what's you items, you MP and all that stuff. Also they have to go after that one program that allows you to make movies from the models as that is "hacking" or whatever silly word they want to use the model files to set them up to make those movies. Since it is a third party program doing it. Oh..but those aren't malicious now are they..... >_>
Indeed. I'm completely against botting in online games, but not through such blatant abuse of copyright laws.
With two major releases coming up, Blizzard may want to consider what they're doing to their image..
Most TTRPGs I play depend on how my players play and not how many monsters they kill. I don't like allowing a game to dictate what I should hand out. But that's a system that obviously doesn't work in automatized environments, and you can't put a GM behind every player to judge and reward their playing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
enter the code as public documents involved in the case, in the most public way possible.
One of the things that amazes me most about this is how many players who bot probably wouldn't be paying their monthly Blizzard payment unless they had the bot to do the boring parts for them. Now, I don't know how many non-cheating players leave the game because of bots, but I have a feeling that it is fewer than those people who only play the game because the bots are available. So, how exactly is Blizzard losing money here? Plus, the other thing I can't figure out, is that Glider is not the only bot available, and arguably, not the best bot either. I'm curious how many subscribers Blizzard would lose if they were able to ban every single botter tomorrow... Ultimately, I don't think that it's right for the botters to play unhindered, but I don't think that the current course of action makes much sense in the long run. I agree with other posters who said that there should be a server (or servers) where botting and other cheating is allowed. If someone is caught cheating on a regular server, than you get transferred. You could even be nice and give people one warning before sending them to Cheatsville. However, I also think Blizzard should make the grind less painful for people who just want to have fun. Personally, I wish that the instances scaled down for smaller groups. What if a friend and I want to get together and play? Well, we can... quest... or we can PvP... or we can farm mats/grind honor... or we can find more people to do an instance. But then you have to deal with the people who you find to do the instance which usually isn't that fun anymore. Why can't we go into a 5-man (or any other) instance with weaker mobs and reduced loot? Heck, why can't we go run Sunwell Plateau just to check it out, since it's doubtful we will ever be well enough geared to get into a 25-man group for it. I think that would make for a more interesting and more varying challenge anyways, probably requring different strategies for varying numbers of players... I can appreciate making each progressive instance basically require more well equipped players, but let's get rid of the whole pre-defined number of players thing, because that's just annoying... And let's fix the whole loot drop thing for instances; just drop tokens for each boss, and after I collect enough tokens, I'll go buy the items I want rather than having to do run after run getting more and more pissed each time that I don't get the loot I'm looking for... I'm sure there are traditionalists out there, so give me a way to toggle between traditional instancing and non-traditional instancing... Another thing that I wish they would change would be to make it progressively easier to level (i.e. faster) the more max level characters you have (or heck, even scaled to total number of characters based on level or based on amount of time spent in-game). Then, if I decide one day out of the blue that I want to try out , I can level it up more quickly based on how much time I've already spent in the game... Anyways, one thing I've noticed the longer I play is that the game gets less and less fun, and more and more like work; hard work that is basically lost as soon as the next expansion comes out...
If the Glider source code makes use of either code or content belonging to Blizzard, they can argue that they own the copyrights (in part if not in whole) to Glider as a result.
If that is the case, than it cannot be open sourced by a 3rd party without Blizzards permission.
A key arguement for the GPL concerns the hypothetical situation of someone trying to withhold their own modifications to the original source. Even if the GPL license is for some reason not valid, than the code falls under traditional copyright, and the original rights holders can hold the GPL Violator in violation of existing copyright laws and pursue a legal remedy based on that.
You cannot make another persons copyrighted materials open source without their co-operation.
END COMMUNICATION
Asheron's Call: Exploit Early, Exploit Often.
Enough said, really.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Submitting the source to the courts ought to put an end to this.
It sounds like you never played the game, because if you did you would never say that Blizzard was lazy with WoW.
I have played wow. I have multiple L70s, one of which is raiding in Black temple and equiped in tier 6 gear. Prior to the expansion, I was raiding MC, BWL and other end game content. I been a programmer and a hardcore gamer for 28 years, so I would like to think I know a bit about computer game design. Am I allowed to say that Blizzard is lazy now?
WoW is a distinctly mediocre game on the whole. WoW is just like most Blizzard games: they take a genre, borrow everything from other titles in the same genre, dumb it down two notches, and give it a visually stunning presentation. WoW is like a hollywood blockbuster: lots of eyecandy resting on tired cliches.
If you think you can create an MMO that will have people renewing their subscription WITHOUT grind, be my guest. It's not as easy as you think.
Actually, I am, and it is. The only thing that is actually hard to do is acquire the time and money to make it all happen.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!