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Blizzard Wins Legal Battle Against WoW Bot Company
New submitter gamersunited writes with news of Blizzard Entertainment's defeat of another company that created bot software to automate World of Warcraft characters. Ceiling Fan Software faces a judgment of $7 million, and must disable any active licenses for the software. They're also forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing the bot software, and from facilitating its continued use in any way. The court order (PDF) follows more than two years of legal wrangling. Blizzard won a similar judgment a few years ago against another bot company called MDY Industries, which created the popular Glider bot.
Only in the US where the ruling was made surely.
Is it enforceable elsewhere in the world?
What, and expect people to think while playing?
is label it an aid for disabled players. Get ADA, Blizzard won't stand a chance.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Blizzard sued my company in Germany and we are still trading. The reason is that Americans can't avoid the broad restrictions of the DMCA while Europeans are able to work within existing copyright and trademark law. The DMCA is simply a way of closing creative American companies so the business is done from overseas.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
The bots aren't necessarily playing the game in the way a human would. They're more likely doing some monotonous activity that can be used to get gold or items or whatever.
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me. Studies have shown NP-hard problems are more fun, because they benefit from our natural ability to quickly choose a good path even if it isn't the absolute best. These kinds of challenges are harder to write bots for. So stop make your games less mindlessly boring and it's a win win for everyone.
As someone who used to play WoW. I can say that WoW, as most MMORPG's, has many difficult problems to solve in the game. Bots do simple mindless farming, they do not play every aspect of the game or compete against other players in PvP. I ran across a few bots while playing and I can say that they were easy to screw with. You could kill them or you could just kill what they were going to kill, and confuse the software a quite bit.
Why is this insightful?
Botting is almost exclusively used for currency/rep/etc farming. It has nothing to do with "gameplay". And whether you personally think WOW end game content is complex enough is irrelevant because botters cannot run end game raids or many other forms of content undermining your whole argument.
And why do bots exist? Because "grinding" is the only way to gain large amounts of currency in a short amount of time. Gold farmers do it for cash. Players do it to shortcut themselves to the top and to avoid grinding.
This small part of the game content IS simplistic and CAN be botted. It is a hurdle/challenge/time sink/test of your endurance to overcome to advance your character. I, like most, HATE grinding with a vengeance. But I NEVER played WOW for the grind, I played in spite of it.
As a side note:
I multibox WOW (5 chars) for the additional challenge. (and believe me it is a LOT more of a challenge) I would now never play another MMO without being able to multibox because they are all too easy.
So I even agree with the idea of MMOs being way too easy to play - but still disagree with your post.
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me.
Ever played Fallout, Morrowind, or Skyrim on Xbox/PS3? You level up the sneak attribute by sneaking around which is basically crouching around and walking. People exploited this by putting rubber bands around the controller so the character would continuously crouch walk into a corner. That gameplay mechanic is pretty simplistic yet those games are amazing to play.
Their game relies on an ever growing "grind" of repetitive and simplistic tasks to progress.
No it does not. Repetitive simplistic tasks are one way of obtaining the resources (gold, experience, item tokens, ...), but they are far from being the primary way. In fact the only reason WoW is still as popular as it is, is because unlike almost every other MMO released since 2004, it is NOT a grindfest.
Experience points come from quest chains in the open world and in instanced dungeons, and those quest chains have an actual story that unfolds as you play. Gold is obtained as reward from quests, and looted from monsters, same as gear. Item tokens are rewarded by defeating dungeon and raid bosses, which require a team, and a strategy.
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
now that's messed up. although the source code could always be "stolen"...
Rich
An example of a very bottable aspect of WoW is resource farming.
Design a bot that goes between known ore nodes and mines them. When bags are full go to the auction house and put it up for auction. Sell the gold for real money. This can go on 24/7 with a bot. This can be done with any gatherable resource in WoW.
The problems are as follows;
1. Node are unavailable for players actually playing the game
2. Auction house prices are driven down due to the abundance of auctions so it is not useful for real players to farm.
3. Auction house prices for rare items are driven up because rich/stupid people can buy gold for read money.
Economics are a small but important part of WoW and most other MORPGs.
Another possibility is a healer bot. Make a bot that follows another character that heals them when they are hurt. You play one character but are basically vulnerable.
There are also leveling bots for those who want to sell high level characters or just don't want to play low level characters.
If you think World of Warcraft is a grindfest you obviously never played Final Fantasy XI.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Actually this isn't true of a good many private bots, I've seen PVP, BG, Coordinated Raids, Raid Assist, Chat AI integration, Shopping, Loot Management, Auction House Automation, and REALLY good nav built from reverse engineering the world geometry + applying dynamic pathing for Dynamic Game Objects (like boats). The ubiquitous high profile bots sucked in general, the really good ones people horde the source and binaries to.
- Source: Former WoW bot developer from the Pre-WotLK days leveraging the now-defunct ISXWOW innerspace extensions.
Only slightly harder. There are free (libre and gratis) SAT and QBF solvers that make mincemeat out of the kinds of structured NP-hard problems that humans find enjoyable to solve. Humans are way outclassed in the PSPACE arena. We're still better at some kinds of pattern matching, but don't bet on us staying in the lead there for much longer, either.
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
But you can argue that reward per hour, grinding is more efficient than doing challenging content in terms of the in game rewards.
I used to play EQ1, you could go and do a real dungeon crawl with a group, and fight yellows and low reds. And it was genuinely fun. Lose control of aggro, or run into someone elses train though and you died. The necro would summon our corpes out, and our cleric would rez us... we'd re-equip and go in for another run. It was great fun.
BUT
You made more ingame currency, and gained more XP by joing to a known camp and grinding.
At 15-20th level ("back in the day") you could walk into Blackburrow and head down to the bottom... and that was challenging and fun. But the gnolls were pretty poor, and the risk of death (and associated "downtime") was high.
Or you could go to Highhold Pass, and fight a particular camping spot there. The drops were reliably better, the stream of creatures to kill was constant, and if things got out of hand you were just steps away from a zone line. You made more money, and gained more xp, easier, and faster, with less risk.
You didn't have to "grind", but most players did. Because the game actively rewarded them better in everything but "fun" by doing so. And it turns out the majority of players will sacrifice "fun" for "progress" for reasons that I truly find baffling.
WoW and other MMORPGs, and even many single player RPGs are the same, hell even stuff like diablo -- how many diablo 2 players just spent hours doing "Hill Runs" repeatedly for xp, over and over again because it was the easiest and safest place to get loot and xp?
American judges seem to think they are gods and give the strangest orders. In more civilised countries the law describes what a judge can and cannot order.
Running repetitive and simplistic quests can be just as much of a grind as any other type of grind.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
So fix the (broken) gameplay mechanic that allows bot users to have an advantage.
Having to 'grind' at mindless / meaningless tasks in game in order to play the interesting parts of the game is just bad game design - it disrespects the player's time and money. It's a transparent attempt to increase subscriber revenue. Get rid of the grind and you eliminate the incentive to use a bot in the first place.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
" Gold farmers do it for cash."
Exactly. And Gold farmers in China are not easily impressed by US law.
I don't think you know what NP-Hard means.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Bots are an awesome addition to the game in my opinion. It allows you to enjoy the fun parts of the game while not having to deal with all the monotonous portions needed to attain said fun. I didn't feel like having a serving l second full time job by playing wow. Bots make that possible.
So... they're playing WoW?
It's a prostate reference, right?
Pull my finger for my public key.
In other words, they don't need to openly publish the source code to release it... they can just openly publish the methods that were utilized, and let other developers write their own bots in the language of their own choosing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I accept that Blizzard is an entertainment company. I like that they put effort into protecting the game experience of their customers. I don't even play and I appreciate that a company will go to court and fight to ensure that the service they offer be as fair as they can make it. If I was at a golf course and someone was messing up the carefully maintained surface with ATVs, I'd be happy when the course owners banned them. If I was playing competitive online solitarie and someone found a way to have a computer make their moves for them rather than play fairly, I'd be happy when they were banned.
I'm okay with a judge saying that you cannot break the terms of service (which I assume they did.) Up to that point, I feel like we're in agreement.
However, the software I build myself on my own computer is mine and I believe I have a right to use it on my computer, or sell it or open source it as a basic free speech right. So long as what I do on my machine or contracts I enter into that allow other people to use the software doesn't interact with Blizzard, my rights should be protected. I haven't read the TOS of WoW, but I doubt there is any clause that says anything like "by agreeing to this, you also give us rights to anything you create which might be related to the service we offer."
That's where the ATV and solitare analogies don't make sense. If you wanted those analogies to be fair, you'd have to say that the ATVs were custom built for golf and those ATVs should be banned everywhere forever by law because they were used on one golf course. If I made a cheat friendly solitaire program, and used it to cheat, it is reasonable to ban me from using it on specific systems where the TOS disallow it, but to say that the program I wrote is itself illegal and can never be used, sold or given to anyone because it broke the rules on one system; that's just wrong.
I honestly hope that this judgement gets thrown out on an appeal or someone "hacks" into the computers of the developers and makes it open source, distributed from a server not under the jurisdiction of this court. I don't say that because I think the bots shouldn't be banned by Blizzard, I think they should be. I think the court would be reasonable to say that using them is breaking the TOS and anyone doing so is subject to the terms they've agreed to in order to use Blizzard's servers. However, I think that banning the sale or open sourcing of software that someone creates which is an original work is morally and ethically wrong and I hope that for that reason, that part of the judgment will be overturned or clearly demonstrated to be worthless.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
It's basically cheap design from MMO makers. They know they need to keep players in the game and paying. Unlike single player games they can not just have an ending to the game, but they also can not just keep churning out new content every week (especially when some of these players chew through new content in less than a week). So the add some monotonous activity that keeps them logging in. Overall MMO game play is very simplistic compared to single player games, but people stick around for other reasons, like chatting with friends, player versus player fights, player and player coop, or sometimes because the simplistic play suits some people.
Monotonous activity might be to earn gold, which you accrue over time by killing things; the reward being better gear you can acquire at an auction house (and if everyone does this the prices go up, which means more farming of gold, which means higher prices, etc).
It can also be earning of faction reputation, which might be required in order to purchase better gear (with all the gold you got elsehwere).
Or it's an instance that has a chance of producing one really great item at the end but only one person gets it based on a random roll, so people keep going back every day even after the novelty of the instance has worn off.
And then players will defend all of that! Only the players who've put in the time are said to have "earned" the rewards, and amazingly if a game reduces the amount of repetition some players will call it unfair that new players have to do less work than the previous players did.
Psychology. Many small "wins" is addictive. Vegas knows this. Also, to keep the "difficulty" high, you must spend in-game money or in-game time to get gear appropriate for the grand battles. If you could win without challenge, nobody would play.
Learn to love Alaska
In the same sense that a computer program that moves a knight back and forth between two squares is playing chess, yes.