Blizzard Officially Files Against WoW Glider 179
Marcus Eikenberry writes "Blizzard and Vivendi today filed against MDY
Industries, the makers of the 'WoW Glider' software. Glider allows World of Warcraft players to 'play' while away from the keyboard; the software moves the player's avatar along a set path, following a complex set of instructions dictated in advance. Blizzard is seeking injunctive relief and money damages against MDY. What that means is they want him to stop the production of WoW Glider and they want him to pay them damages. Blizzard believes that Glider infringes on their intellectual property. They believe Glider allows players to cheat, giving them an unfair advantage and that they believe Glider encourages Blizzard customers to breach their contracts for playing the game. Last they claim that Glider is designed to circumvent copyright protections."
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad. Idea.
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, such a thing would be pointless. your new character would start with what? beginner equipment? Might work for a mage, but a warrior type is only as good as his weapon in most cases.
Then there's the whole issue that you're not playing the game anymore. I'd be fine with it if you could start a new character at level 10 or so. Before that you cant do anything, but its low enough that even beginner equipment is usable to make a little change, to buy something useable for your level.
Strength of their argument (Score:3, Insightful)
This point can seem to be a strong suit.
This is really a legal issue? Can I be put in jail for taking a few 100 extra monopoly dollars when no one is looking? The first thing I can think of is Insider Trading, which is punishable, but is a video game = the stock market?
Can the company be held responsible, even if it's the users choice? If I tell my friend that if he drives really fast when a police offer wants to pull him over, am I responsible when he runs from the cops the next time he might be asked to pull over while driving?
This seems laughable, but IANAL. Copy protection? I guess all users are circumventing such protection. One could draw a stern defense that a person playing WoW becomes little more than an automated computer program. Though, I'm not familiar with Glide or how it interacts with the WoW programming, but I imagine it just a program that interacts with the WoW client or the packets it sends to automate processes.
What's Blizzards strength for their argument besides "they're breaking our EULA or TOS"? Are they saying that "Hey, we've had to ban 100,000's of accounts because people are using your products and we want you to pay us back for those 100,000 accounts. Lets see, that's 100,000 accounts at $15 / month and the average account is active for 1 year. So, pay us $18,000,000."
Hmmm... could local governments sue nitrous and 'after market' car parts manufacturers that encourage people to drive over the speed limits? Or maybe a better analogy would be those who cause accidents and injure other people. Could those injured parties sue the manufacturers of such products?
Cheers,
Fozzy
question from a non-wow player (Score:4, Insightful)
Why pay to play a game, and then have a computer play it for you?
First, it seems like a waste of your dollars. You might as well just install Progress Quest. It will play for you too, and it's free.
Second, if an RPG has simplistic enough mechanics that it *can* be played automatically, then it seems too simple to be interesting to a human.
Automatons (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean seriously, who wants to play a game where you must repeat the same mind-numbing tasks over and over again to progress in the game? (Let alone pay for the privilege...) I am amazed that these games are successful at all.
This is a game design issue.
That's a big no... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a big "no," if ever I heard one.
sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm also not a big fan of their anti-cheating tactics, and I applaud these people for circumventing them, even if it may have been for a bad cause.
Re:question from a non-wow player (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny because it's true. In actuality, such games are not so much about the 'enjoyment of playing' but the 'enjoyment of collection'. It's like when I was a kid and spend endless money on football cards. Sometimes obsessively so to try and get a special card from a pack, or go to 'specialty stores' to buy it specifically from someone else.
Like that, WoW and other MMO's are about collection or completing 'sets' of things. In this case, leveling your character to the level cap. Maxing out all their abilities. Sure, a Hunter might only use a bow for 99% of his play time, but this person will still max out their sword, 2 hand sword, axe, hand-to-hand, polearm, staff, etc skill.
They might NEVER care about the cooking skill, but they max this out too, because they have it and it's not maxed yet. So, you might say "yeah, but if you're still not playing the game, then you'd still have no interest in the game and therefor no interest in doing it in the first place.". That would be true as well. Most of this maxing out skills would be done for some of the tedious tasks that the person really doesn't want to spend the time doing, but has spent the time maxing out the stats that matter when he was playing.
Otherwise, most uses are simply for those who are trying circumvent the 'boring' process of acquiring wealth to purchase things that would allow them to enjoy the game. For instance, this goes to your second good point...
Half of the game is fun, and not necessary for automation. That's the leveling/quest process. There's fun action/story involved in the game. When you reach the level cap, that's when the 'tedium' kicks in. My own example. I've recently hit level 70. Now, I'm doing the 'max out my skills' area or 'finish all the quests in my book' thing. It's the football collector / perfectionist side of me. I want that 100% completion rating kind of thing. Actually, I now find myself not caring to play as much, since I know all that's left is 'grind' with little accomplishment and I'm not looking forward to waisting my time maxing out my fishing or cooking skills again.
However, the parts I am interested in, where I now have to 'grind' out 5,200 gold to afford that epic flying mount, which could take weeks or months, would be a waist of my time as there's no enjoyable benefit for me. I 'could' just keep doing the quests and dungeons until I reach 5,200 gold, but that would take months if I spend no time focusing on making money.
That's when people turn to these automated programs (or for those who use them to sell gold on internet sites). The problem is not the automated program, but that people feel like they need automation to avoid waisting their time and to reach a point they feel comfortable playing again.
So, in your 2nd point, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head and that an game should adjust their development if there are automation problems. However, I think the automation problems are fairly limited to those who are using it to farm in-game gold to sell for real money. So, I think the amount of grind required for 'most' things is fairly reasonable with the latest expansion (I feel it was much worse before the latest expansion pack) and Blizzard has noticed the amount of unpleasant grind on 'some' things, but are keeping others due to the fact that it's just part of the business model to keep people playing and paying.
Cheers,
Fozzy
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to make too fine a point on it, but they appear to have been successful in that venture.
Author is a moron (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this guy serious? "it is not really a cheat program"? No, it doesn't dupe items. It just gives you a massive competitive advantage, equivalent to a bunch of other ways of cheating (that the author delightfully lists) in violation of the ToS. That's not cheating at all.
What a tool.
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:3, Insightful)
HOW is it illegal, exactly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:3, Insightful)
As a wow player, here's how I see it. Most people will fall into two camps:
1. Will make one character and play them all the way to level cap
2. Will muddle around with a whole bunch of characters not really advancing quickly with any particular character
The second group isn't a problem for Blizzard at all, because the creation of content is reused over and over for every one of that player's characters. It is the group 1's that causes Blizzard so much angst.
To keep group 1's happy, Blizzard has:
- Added more content. Most of it was better gear and not so much story driven, though the caverns of time looks promising (haven't been yet)
- Extended the level cap simply extending the period of time before there's nothing left to do
- Introduced end-game PvP as an incentive to keep playing instead of just a small pastime from grinding, item hunting, raiding dungeons
The one thing they never needed to add was the drive for people (once level capped) to roll new characters. Because of the large amount of time to get to the high levels, thats a large amount of time that you're not 'bored' at max level with nothing to do. Bored players are unhappy players, and if they're so unhappy playing the game, they're more likely to quit.
Personally, I really enjoy playing through the entire content over again. It isn't so 'griding' back up to with new chars since after the first or second character, you should know the best, most fun ways to level up. I don't grind levels often because I play new characters to -enjoy- the content, not to be king-o-the-hill.
--rant--
My biggest pet peeve is people in game talking about how bored they are. This is supposed to be entertaining. If it isn't entertaining anymore please quit and find something else to do!
Re:sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
The program allows a person to leave their computer and let the script play for them. It is cheating...period. Blizzard has done an amazing job with their interface...allowing tons of user created AddOns that enhance your ability to play the game. But making something like this is unacceptable to everyone who plays the game. Stopping cheaters and gold sellers is why a lot of people support Blizzard. There was rampant cheating in FFXI that turned so many away. Blizzard has to fight to keep their game cheat free and I say good for them for doing it.
And then there are people like you that applaud people who find ways to allow people to cheat. Seriously, what is wrong with you? If you don't like the way Blizzard runs their games, then don't buy them. Don't encourage people to find ways of screwing over others.
Re:question from a non-wow player (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an attitude I've never been able to understand. In game after game I see the same thing: "I've ground my $template to $levelcap and I'm bored! There's nothing to do but $handful of stuff!"
Well, duh idiot. You ground yourself right past all the content! WTF did you expect? When you play a console game or PC RPG you don't try and leap right to the boss fight - why do you do that in a MMO?
Re:HOW is it illegal, exactly? (Score:2, Insightful)
What perplexes me is that WoW already includes the hardy anti-cheating monitor nicknamed "The Warden" to watch for programs that do exactly this sort of thing. Wouldn't Blizzard simply modify the Warden so that WoW won't run when Glider is active?
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:4, Insightful)
As compared to all the warriors who has leveled themselves and still doesn't know how to hold aggro?
Bad warrior! No heal for you!
Re:Circumventing Copyright is a bit of a stretch (Score:2, Insightful)
You contributed to the breaking of the in-game economy. You made it harder for other people, who don't happen to share your particular play style, to gain gold playing as the game designers intended. You made it profitable for the gold-selling ****tards to spam players' in-game mail and chat. You have made that game a worse place.