Virtually Blind has the initial round of motions filed in the MDY v. Blizzard case posted. (I’ve gone ahead and mirrored them here in case bandwidth becomes an issue; a list of all the docs is at the end of this post.) As you might expect, they live in mutually antagonistic realities. MDY’s pacific “levels want to be free” version:
When Blizzard released WoW in late 2004, Donnelly became an avid player of WoW. Like many others who play WoW, Donnelly became frustrated with the amount of time it took to advance his character in WoW. Inspired by his desire to advance his character‘s level to the same level several of his friends had reached, Donnelly searched online for any available programs that would help him speed up the time it took to level his character up to where his friends were. After searching and being unsuccessful in locating a software program to meet his needs, Donnelly decided to write software code to assist him in catching up with his friends in the game without having to be physically playing WoW. Between March 2005 and May, 2005, Donnelly developed a software program that became known as WoWGlider (“Glider”)…
…MDY has only marketed the game as an alternate method to reduce the time it takes to level a character to 60 or 70. Although a person can use Glider (inefficiently) as a tool to help WoW licensees to “farm gold” within the WoW game, MDY has never marketed the program for that purpose and actively discourages persons from using Glider as a gold farming tool…
…Although Blizzard‘s acts of detecting Glider and banning Glider users‘ accounts led Donnelly to believe that Blizzard considered Glider an unauthorized third-party software program under its EULA and TOU, Donnelly did not agree with how Blizzard interpreted its agreements. Donnelly believed that Blizzard had no right to control MDY’s efforts to sell Glider because he had no contractual relationship with Blizzard. In addition, Blizzard‘s EULA did not originally prohibit “bots.”
Well, since it didn’t say the word “bot” anywhere, it must be OK! Allow Blizzard to retort:
While legitimate players eat, sleep, and attend school or work, MDY’s customers use Glider to shortcut the advancement of their in-game characters and loot scarce game assets. As shown herein, Glider use severely harms he WoW gaming experience for other players by altering the balance of play, disrupting the social and immersive aspects of the game, and undermining the in-game economy…
…Perhaps most significantly, MDY invests great effort to prevent Blizzard from enforcing its rights against Glider users by enabling them to circumvent Blizzard’s technological access controls and conceal their infringements from Blizzard and other players determined to report them. MDY has willfully persisted in this endeavor despite knowing that the overwhelming majority of WoW players despise the presence of Glider bots in WoW, and that Blizzard is being forced to divert significant human and financial resources from game development and support to efforts to stop Glider. Indeed, MDY’s stated goal is to drive up Blizzard’s cost of combating Glider to the point it ultimately abandons efforts to block it, an option that Blizzard’s rule-abiding customers, who have filed over 465,000 formal complaints and voiced their continued displeasure with Glider on Blizzard’s forums, have made clear is unacceptable.
Of special interest is the ‘expert report’ filed in support of Blizzard’s case by Terra Novan Dr. Edward Castronova. He takes the controversial position that cheating is bad.
Glider bots destroy this design, distorting the economy for the average player in two specific ways. When a Glider bot “farms” an area, it picks up not only experience points for its owner, discussed above, but also the “loot” that is dropped by the mobs killed by the bot. Because Glider can run constantly, it kills far more mobs than anticipated by WoW’s designers, thus creating a large surplus of goods and currency, flooding the economy with gold pieces and loot like the Essence of Water. This surplus distorts the economy in a specific way.
When bots gather key resources, they gather them in abundance. Owners of bots usually sell these resources to other players for gold, which inevitably deflates their price. Blizzard’s design intent is for the resources to command a certain high value, so that average players, who might get one or two of the resources in an average amount of play time, may obtain a decent amount of gold from selling them. But because characters controlled by bots flood the market with those resources, the market value of these resources is far less than Blizzard intended, and the average player realizes only a fraction of the intended value from the resources s/he finds. The deflated value of key resources presents a critical problem for ordinary players trying to enjoy the game. Blizzard’s game systems assume that players will be earning a certain amount of gold per hour, and many systems, such as repairs and travel, force players to make fixed payments of gold into WoW’s systems. Buying a horse, for example, costs a certain amount of gold. That pnce IS set by the game designers based on the assumption that normal players will accumulate gold at a certain rate, and that some of their gold will come from the value of resources that they harvest and sell. When the value of those resources plummets because of Glider, the amount of time it takes to accumulate the gold required for in-game expenditures like the horse skyrockets. This skews the economy, frustrates players, and, as a result of a less-satisfied user base, damages Blizzard.
So, it probably comes as no surprise that I come down on Blizzard’s side in all this, being that I work on MMOs, dislike cheating, and all that entails. Still, no matter which way the rulings go in this case, the repercussions are going to be interesting:
- WowGlider/MDY is arguing, essentially, that they have a right to run a business based on third party tools for automating World of Warcraft because the EULA didn’t expressly forbid it, and anyway, who reads EULAs, ya know? It’s just another form of playing the game. Also, Blizzard’s a bunch of Nazis who came knocking on a poor bot writer’s door. With lawyers. (For some reason, I don’t see this argument holding a lot of water in court, but who knows.) So if MDY’s case is taken as written, we’ll have legal precedent that botting is an accepted part of MMO play. Also, EULAs will suffer a serious challenge. This will result in, to put it mildly, quite a few more court cases (“Were YOU banned for gold farming? Take it to court!”)
- Blizzard is arguing that WowGlider harms the gameplay of WoW players, is explicity forbidden in the clickthrough TOS/EULA, and thus they have a right and duty to stop WowGlider and similar programs by any means necessary, up to and including polymorphic rootkit-style access control programs and lawyering bot writers TO DEATH. If Blizzard gets a ruling in their favor, that will give them a strong leg to stand on vs. other legal challenges to Warden, their EULA, and will also have a precedent vs. botting/exploiting on the books.
I strongly suspect that, like most lawsuits, this will eventually settle out of court. But even if it doesn’t, we certainly live in interesting times when a game design discussion doc ends up as a court filing.
Paperwork for your own backyard unfrozen caveman lawyering:
MDY’s Motion for Summary Judgment (MDY v Blizzard)
MDY’s Statement of Facts (MDY v Blizzard)
Blizzard’s Motion for Summary Judgement (MDY v Blizzard)
Blizzard’s Statement of Facts (MDY v Blizzard)
Effects of Botting on World of Warcraft, Edward Castronova, PhD. (MDY v Blizzard)
#1 by Bonedead on March 24th, 2008
I’m going with the bot writing dude loses. It may not be expressed in the EULA, but look at every other MMO and how they dealt with such an issue. Macroing in UO and SWG are two good examples. The act of AFK macroing was always forbidden (certain kinds of afk macroing were recently “allowed” in SWG). But, maybe these lawyer people don’t care about our little worlds and maybe they’ll be able to make everything suck, never under estimate shit that seems so obvious like this, because being surprised sucks.
#2 by Matt Mihaly on March 24th, 2008
I don’t think it goes without saying that because you dislike cheating and because you work on MMOs you’re with Blizzard on this. I also dislike cheating and I also work on MMOs, and I’m on MDY’s side on this one.
Nail the players who are using it, not the maker of the tool. They’re the ones cheating, not MDY, and they’re the ones doing any damage to WoW, not MDY. I’m equally opposed to suing automakers when drivers ram into pedestrians in their vehicles or suing gun makers when someone uses the guns to shoot bystanders. Nail the people actually doing the harm.
#3 by Scott Jennings on March 24th, 2008
> Nail the players who are using it, not the maker of the tool.
If there was a legitimate use for Wowglider I’d agree with you.
#4 by Matt Mihaly on March 24th, 2008
That argument falls down for me. It’s essentially saying that if he made his tool MORE competent, such that it could bot on multiple games (including games that allow botting, thus removing any concern about legitimacy), then you’d be ok with it despite the fact that it’s being used in exactly the same way on WoW.
#5 by robusticus on March 24th, 2008
“Nazis who came knocking…”
In a contract dispute if both parties are found to be in the wrong the court rules in favor of the defendant. Who is the defendant in this case? Plus, that group included a private investigator.
Nintendo lost against Game Genie, but they did end up changing their system to prevent it. Seems if you design a system for 2 hours per day of play you would enforce that and change your business model accordingly.
But I don’t work on MMOs and like my games on Noob Mode.
#6 by Scott Jennings on March 24th, 2008
From a philisophical standpoint, yes, if they made a generic “DirectX Scripting Tool” (which I think is the approach Lavish Software takes with their WoW bot), that does give them a legal out, I think. Note that Blizzard isn’t directly suing Lavish, even though I’m pretty sure more people use ISXWoW than WoWGlider.
From a hard-nosed realistic standpoint, it’s far more cost effective for Blizzard to unleash the hounds of legal war on the supply, through intimidating botmakers like Wowglider than to continue to spend CS money on reducing the demand.
Although I disagree with the legal sledgehammer tactics they’ve taken (refer back to the previous blog post where Blizzard’s lawyers basically tried and failed to go on a fishing expedition of Lavish Software’s accounting records), it’s very difficult to argue that Blizzard should continue to eat the costs of CS enforcement and game damages for philisophical reasons. I like Google’s “Don’t be evil” business model as well, but it doesn’t extend to “Don’t be a doormat”.
#7 by Matt Mihaly on March 24th, 2008
They eat the costs of enforcement only because they choose to make using bots against their rules. They’re free to change that policy. At Iron Realms, we decided that it was pointless to fight against bots except in many situations, and thus we don’t eat the CS costs of enforcement in those situations. That was our choice, just like it’s Blizzard’s choice. I just don’t feel that MDY should have to respect a contract between Blizzard and its users.
#8 by robusticus on March 24th, 2008
I very much liked the dual currency idea, Matt, by the way.
As for legitimate use, in those documents, MDY has specified WoWGlider can be used by handicapped people who would otherwise be unable to play.
#9 by Scott Jennings on March 24th, 2008
> I just don’t feel that MDY should have to respect a contract between Blizzard
> and its users.
That’s an argument MDY’s lawyers make explicitly, so it’ll be interesting to see how the court rules (assuming they ever do).
#10 by DM on March 24th, 2008
“If there was a legitimate use for Wowglider I’d agree with you.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Oy9fOwyr4
#11 by Benjamin Duranske on March 24th, 2008
Thanks for hosting the docs here too. I don’t usually push against my bandwidth limits, but heavy downloads of court docs have made a couple months (including February, thanks to the Peons4Hire thing) a close call.
I’m hoping to get the rest of the exhibits up in the next few days (hundreds of pages of deposition testimony, customer complaints, website printouts, etc.) I suspect there will be some interesting stuff in those, from both sides.
#12 by Harvey Feltersnatch on March 24th, 2008
Make a game that doesn’t suck. If the fun is in playing the game instead of circumventing suck-ass design then the problem solves itself.
#13 by Halibut Barn on March 24th, 2008
By that logic though, no game has ever not sucked in the entire history of gaming, as there have always been cheats, trainers, boosted saves, etc.
#14 by kalain on March 24th, 2008
Wouldn’t MDY’s claims entirely come down to their development methods? If they’re actively using WoW’s client to develop their bot, they’re just running up against breaking the contract directly in addition to the claim of enabling other people to break it. And I can’t see how they’d be doing this in a clean room situation.
#15 by J. on March 24th, 2008
”Were YOU banned for gold farming? Take it to court!”
This is the end consequence of all RMT.
#16 by Yunk on March 24th, 2008
I’ve known 2 disabled people who played WoW with one hand, they used devices like nostromo or the G15, addons and macros, etc. None of them had to resort to using a bot. I don’t see that argument holding up.
#17 by Soulflame on March 24th, 2008
> Nail the players who are using it, not the maker of the tool.
Because this has worked so well in the “War on Drugs”.
#18 by Bonedead on March 24th, 2008
Meh. In Diablo 2 when you would find a gamble hack, map hack (mousepad wut wut), or that panda bot thing, they were usually free (usually = always?). But I’m pretty sure this guy is selling his program, which just really makes me think he’s going to lose.
#19 by John Moore on March 24th, 2008
> Because this has worked so well in the “War on Drugs”
America’s drug problem is not a law enforcement problem. It’s an economic problem. That ANY product, create a market where people can make a 1000% profit on it, and see what happens. You will never stop the trade of that product. The USA, being so big on capitalis, should see that. But it’s easier for politicans to talk tough than make hard and unpopular decisions.
Blizzard is in the same spot. As simplistic as it sounds, if the game was fun to play, then no one would avoid playing it. No one would program a bot to play for them. No one would pay anyone to play for them.
I realize the game designers here may roll their eyes at that, but it is a truth.
#20 by John Moore on March 24th, 2008
And I wish I could edit. I used “That” instead of “Take”. I suck at typing. Srry.
#21 by Brask Mumei on March 24th, 2008
I find myself aligned with Matt on this issue.
I’m opposed to cheating. I fully endorse Blizzard’s right to ban people from botting. I don’t, however, like the implication that they can control third parties in this manner.
We are really looking at third-party integration here. The automotive industry would have loved it if they could have prevented third party parts being used on their cars, but as far as I know their attempts are routinely defeated in courts. And, if we value third party support higher than *people’s lives*, I don’t see why we should abandon the right to reverse engineer to preserve something as measly as the integrity of video games. (I’m pretty sure Ford would argue that third party parts endanger innocent consumers if they felt it could justify the abolishment of the after market)
This is not to say that Blizzard won’t win. The courts sided with them on the Diablo server emulator, after all. It just means that I don’t think they should win, and I think in the long term (20 years?) the idea of Blizzard being able to make such a claim would seem as ridiculous as Ford demanding I use Ford tires.
I’m sure someone will now point out that since it is a game, and you voluntarily decide to play the game, you should accept whatever happens to be in the EULA, even if that prohibits using after market components. First, owning a car is voluntary. Second, I really, really, don’t like the idea that we enable people to hand over their rights in this manner. If I had my druthers, we would have stronger consumer protection laws which make such one-sided contracts inadmissible. This is not without precedent – I’m sure you have all seen the “THIS LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY IN SOME JURISDICTIONS…”, implying that there exist jurisdictions where you are simply unable to give up your right to a warranty.
People should not be required to install a root-kit to play a video game, any more than they should to play some music. This might seem unfair – how can one ensure a trusted play environment without Warden? Well, that, I thought, is what we were paying the Game Designers for. There are certain “laws of physics” associated with online worlds. I mean, no matter how cool http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/19/led-lamp-uses-grandf.html would be, it’s like saying “Communism would be great if it only worked”.
The hard fact that if people are sitting in their own living rooms, you can’t provide a trusted environment. Professional sports should make it clear that even when you own the field, you still can’t provide a trusted environment.
I should be able to play your game on any equipment, and with any equipment. I don’t want you banning my mouse because it is “too high precision”, or “has too many buttons”. There is room in my world for a “stock” game system where people compete on standardized equipment. To claim WoW is anywhere remotely near that world is laughable.
UO macroing is always an entertaining example to bring up. About the only reason why that mattered one iota (rather than the load on the servers) was the feedback mechanism left in place to determine skill gain. That turned the relatively harmless fast-advancement into a prisoner’s dilemma requiring everyone to macro.
#22 by Richard Scott on March 24th, 2008
The problem here is not that Blizzard thinks Glider is bad, or that cheating should be allowed. It’s that Blizzard thinks they are allowed via a EULA to limit external PC programs whatsoever. They are not. A EULA is limited in scope. Blizzard doesn’t grasp this.
In reality, this lawsuit should not have a snowballs chance in hell because this is an external program not affiliated with Blizzard. That doesn’t mean glider is good or bad, this is just that small thing called the law that game people like Lum seem to be ignoring in their desire to fight those evil hackers.
If glider is such a large problem, it is Blizzard’s job to stop it with their coders and their ingame measures, a la Warden. The fact they are upset that a person can masquerade processes on their own computer that Blizzard should not be seeing in the first place is appalling and really makes one wonder how some supporters can really be so blind about this.
Regardless, this coverage solely gives glider more clients, probably and exacerbates a very small issue that does not seem to be hurting WOWs bottom line.
Succinct and to the chase point: Fix your game, and quit trying to leverage the courts in a bullying and immoral way. I hope MDY wins court costs and Blizzard gets slammed for this.
#23 by Samadhi on March 24th, 2008
If MDY wants to sell their bot program, I think he should permitted to do so. If Blizzard wants to drop the banhammer on anyone who uses it, I think they should be permitted to do so. I think where Glider gets itself in trouble is the extent to which they go in order to hide from Warden.
Force MDY to stop making Glider hidden, and both parties can get what they’re asking for. It’s win-win, right?
#24 by kalain on March 24th, 2008
I don’t find it immoral or bullying to attack a product that only has a single purpose to interfere with your data stream in a client/server application. You lose the defense of “it’s just me modifying bits on my computer!” when you’re dealing with client/server technology.
Single player app? Nobody’s going to sue you. Mucking with multi user environments? Different ballpark.
#25 by Chris on March 24th, 2008
Why not use an ingame sort of solution for the botting? If you detect someone is using a bot and confirm using whatever means they currently use why not put a big fat title on the character or change their name permanently to reflect their bot using? They catch C3PO botting and change his name to C3PO-Bot or somesuch.
I understand this is tangent to the whole legal case here, but I’ve always been curious as to why companies didn’t use some sort of ingame peer pressure to cut down on stuff like this.
#26 by Paul on March 24th, 2008
I’m not sure I really understand what’s going on but it seems Blizzard is making 2 claims:
1. MDY is liable for facilitating copyright infringement. In this case the COPY is literally the act of Glider copying the WoW client from disk to ram via it’s special launcher. They basically make the claim that this copy is in violation of their copyright.
2. MDY violates the DMCA by circumventing 2 access control mechanisms: Warden and scann.dll.
I read both motions and I agree with MDY. In the case of copyright infringement Blizzard has granted users a license to load the game into ram and play it, how they make that copy or how they interact isn’t part of copyright law from what I understand( I could be wrong though).
To me this is like buying a CD or DVD and told I can only watch it with my left eye and listen with my right ear.
In the case of the DMCA claim neither warden and scan.dll, as MDY points out in their motion, are involved access control. They are purely involved in detection and feedback.
I would hope MDY wins as this looks like legal harassment more than anything else. At the same time MDY is clearly helping people violate the EULA and TOA which while not illegal doesn’t really strike me as a good business model.
I don’t really care either way; however I don’t like the implications of a ruling in favor of Blizzard. Seems like they are really pushing copyright law to the limits and totally reinterpreting the DMCA for their own purposes.
If the financial cost is so overwhelming Blizzard should implement a challenge/response system to detect bots. I’ve seen some other games do this in different ways. You could do this very easily with a CAPTCHA system like most registration forms have theses days.
CAPTCHA is an acronym for ‘Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart’.
Just allow GMs to force a CAPTCHA dialog on the client screen and give them 30 seconds to enter the correct answer.
I’ve seen some games perform this for all clients every 1-2 hours, except they use a mini game with images.
#27 by Bonedead on March 24th, 2008
All of the people arguing that it’s Blizzard’s fault should think about Battle.net, remember, Open B.net and Closed B.net
What do you think would happen to WoW if they had to do something like this? Could be interesting.
#28 by Benjamin Duranske on March 24th, 2008
If I were designing an in-game response, I’d make it fun and profitable for the non-botters. Go back to original UO Red/Blue — flag any botting character (via periodic image, CAPTCHA, repeat movement software detection, or whatever) as freely PvP attackable/lootable. You could probably create yourself a little vigilante force and minimize GM intervention.
#29 by Matt Franklin on March 24th, 2008
Paul: thanks for the summary. I always like to know what the core legal arguments are, outside of all the fluff like “players don’t like it”.
Speaking of which, anyone know why they add all that crap? Does the outcome of the case depend at all on the claim that WoWGlider disrupts the immersive aspect of the game?
“Just allow GMs to force a CAPTCHA dialog on the client screen and give them 30 seconds to enter the correct answer.”
I routinely fail these.
#30 by Lightstalker on March 24th, 2008
The argument snippet attributed to Dr. Edward Castronova is built on a false or misleading premise. Loot collected in game cannot be deflated since NPC vendors in game are not impacted by market saturation. His assertions seem to be based on Auction House values being deflated and I don’t think Blizzard’s data will support a claim that deflating the auction house value of loot will depress the earning power of the typical WoW player.
Even if it could be shown that the typical player will see a detrimental impact from AH resource flooding, Blizzard has the power to set the minimum buyer of last resort in their game system. Anyone who looks will realize they have, the vendors previously mentioned, and the impact of any resource dumping cannot disrupt the game economy any more than that economy is designed to be disrupted.
“Undermining the in game economy” is a spurious claim. Next they’ll tell us they must control it for the children, or something. I don’t think the typical player uses the auction house regularly, and certainly doesn’t expect a significant income from using the auction house. Stick to railing against violations of terms of service, social disruption and cost to enforce related policies, but don’t blame other people for one’s own poor design decisions (namely the economic model – or better lack thereof).
#31 by Dark Dryad on March 24th, 2008
I like GMs having the ability to use a challenge /pass type thing but 30 seconds is a tad short of a time. im not stopping in the middle of killing a mob to type a password. I can see many feeling the same way. a min to min and a half would be cool though.
#32 by John Arras on March 24th, 2008
This could be interesting. It might have repurcussions for all EULAs for software because if software is sold and not licensed (who actually reads and understands the EULA?) then copyright law allows you to copy a computer program into RAM to use it. I wonder if MDY wants to take on EULAs in general. I doubt that a judge and jury will like hearing that if they go buy a shiny disc and bring it home, they don’t actually own a copy of the bits on the disc.
#33 by Paul on March 24th, 2008
@Captcha:
Seems to me most captcha failures involve the use of I L and one (1) in upper and lower case in conjunction with bad fonts; also zeros and O can be an issue.
Anyway it would not ban you on the spot but it would be a good tool to detect if a bot is playing. If you got 6 of 8 letters/numbers correct that would probably be good enough. If you fail it just means a GM needs to do more work.
The system would have to be non-modal and not steal mouse or keyboard focus as well. Otherwise you’ll have people dying mid-fight trying to enter your stupid captcha.
Also if GMs initiate the challenge they can simply wait for the players to be free. I would never build a system where players initiate the challenge.
I would prefer some kind of mini game. Something that is easy for a kid or adult to perform and hard to automate with AI. You’ll never get a 100% perfect solution so you have to be willing to refine/upgrade it like everything else.
I was think of matching pairs of images or some kind of visual Simon-says type thing (probably want to avoid color and sound though)
@Matt:
From what I read it has nothing to do with “cheating is bad” as cheating isn’t illegal, neither is destroying “game immersion” which is purely subjective anyway. 90% of the names in the game destroying any sense of immersion not to mention the chat channels and their unique player made content…
Anyway one interesting thing is that Blizzard estimates/wants leveling from 1-70 to take the avg. player 480 hours total @ 2hours per day. They claim they lose $105 dollars per glider user just from the leveling to 70. @100,000 glider lisences sold they claim 10.5 million dollars lost.
Of course this assumes once people hit 70 they cancel their account which is a bogus claim.
Blizzard’s motion only states that glider harms/destabilizes the game economy which in turn causes a “loss of customer goodwill”. The bulk of the motion seems to be about copyright and DMCA.
To me this whole issue of botting is a technical challenge and should be solved through game design not the courts. Even if they win it won’t fix their problem in the long term, someone else will do it.
#34 by Damion on March 24th, 2008
The argument snippet attributed to Dr. Edward Castronova is built on a false or misleading premise. Loot collected in game cannot be deflated since NPC vendors in game are not impacted by market saturation. His assertions seem to be based on Auction House values being deflated and I don’t think Blizzard’s data will support a claim that deflating the auction house value of loot will depress the earning power of the typical WoW player.
Bind on Equip blue items.
Still, in my experience, botting tends to raise prices rather than lower them, as it increases the amount of gold in circulation. This makes it harder for new players who are playing ‘honestly’ to get reasonable prices on mechanisms like the Auction House.
#35 by Freakazoid on March 24th, 2008
I cannot possibly find a big enough rolleyes emote for the armchair lawyering going on in here.
#36 by JuJutsu on March 24th, 2008
My first reaction was hoping that MDY win the litigation. Then I went back and reread Dr. Castronova’s part. Now I’m pulling for Blizzard in the hopes that it provides a basis for casual gamers to sue hardcore players.
“Blizzard’s design intent is for the resources to command a certain high value, so that average players, who might get one or two of the resources in an average amount of play time, may obtain a decent amount of gold from selling them. But because characters controlled by bots flood the market with those resources, the market value of these resources is far less than Blizzard intended, and the average player realizes only a fraction of the intended value from the resources s/he finds. The deflated value of key resources presents a critical problem for ordinary players trying to enjoy the game.”
Since the problem with bots is that they’re in the game too much getting loot and skewing the economy, clearly the same can be said for the hard core gamers [although to a lesser degree]. ‘Average players/ordinary players’ suffer from the excesses of the hardcore tail of the playtime distribution.
#37 by Scott Jennings on March 24th, 2008
For all the folks talking about GM-initiated bot challenges — this happens now (GMs will send /tells to people who are suspected of being bots and expect a human being to respond). The problem is that you cannot seriously expect GMs to be the first line of defense vs. botting. It is far, far too manpower-intensive and your GMs are already busy with the CS needs of players who are not bots. You absolutely have to have a systems-driven tool if you are going to implement something like this, otherwise it’s just another “unfunded mandate” (to use political terminology) on an already overworked GM team.
#38 by =j on March 24th, 2008
People may not quit immediately on reaching 70, but if their journey to 70 is shortened, then (one assumes) that their overall time subscribing is shortened a similar amount.
I do wonder if cheating is so popular, why isn’t there a generic tool for it? I agree that different programs have different requirements. Though, I would expect that these differences could be abstracted far enough. I.e. you would need a WoW extension for UberBot2000 for WoW and a different plugin for EQ.
OTGH, I pay to play my games, not have a machine play them. So I may not be up on the state of the art.
#39 by Sara Jensen Schubert on March 24th, 2008
“You absolutely have to have a systems-driven tool if you are going to implement something like this [...]”
Or you can have players do it for you for free! Yay!
#40 by Paul on March 24th, 2008
@=j
People who are using a bot to level have a specific goal in mind. They aren’t going to just quit the game and I’m not sure why you would assume they would.
If they are interested in farming gold for RMT then they surely aren’t going to cancel. If they are trying to catch up to friends it also doesn’t make any sense that they would suddenly quit at 70.
A large reason for bots and PLing in general is to bypass content you have already played through multiple times. Perhaps you want to try a different class in PVP? but you don’t feel like grinding your 5th 70?
@Scott.
I agree you don’t want your GM’s trying to find bots. Sending a /tell to someone isn’t a good idea either. You have no idea how their interface is configured, they may never even see it depending on the chat tab they are on, or how much text is scrolling by mid fight. Plus there is the fact that lots of people can’t even read English and/or any language because they happen to be 6 years old.
If someone reports a player or the player in question meets some kind of criteria a GM could just fire off an automated challenge.
I only suggested not allowing users to initiate challenges because of the potential to harass/grief another player. But now that I think about it if you just allow a maximum of 1 challenge per hour that would probably be fine.
Bots don’t act like PCs so there are some behavioral clues you can use to pick out high probability characters being played by bots. Then you can automate the challenge and if they fail it then you have a GM look into it.
If you’re feeling really generous, just make it a mini game that pops up once an hour and if you pass you get a reward, perhaps XP, coin, maybe a rested XP bonus(in the case of wow), or you could heal their mana/health/both. No one is going to complain about that
It’s all in the delivery.
#41 by wowpanda on March 24th, 2008
Challenge/pass is not good enough. I often press the fly num lock key (the auto forward) and let my mount carry me toward the destination and run off to do something else. Often result me into running into mountains/lakes/edge of map. The action is perfectly legal, but if a GM try to test me I will definitely not been there.
Matt’s dual currency is the best solution.
#42 by Rae on March 24th, 2008
I’m kind of on the fence with this one. As a gamer, I absolutely think Blizzard has the right to police their game. I don’t think that right extends to using strong arm tactics to try and bully third party developers. Blizzard has no real right to take any action against the developers; but as far as I’m concerned its THEIR game, and if they decide that as a condition to playing all players must have a blizzard appointed thug stand over the player’s shoulder at all time and club them if the player makes any attempt at cheating, well thats their right lol.. I just won’t play.
But I absolutely despise cheating in game; it really is a game breaker for various reasons. To those who keep saying “make games fun and people won’t cheat!”: your retarded. Millions of players enjoy WoW just as it is, and don’t feel the need to cheat. The fact that a minority doesn’t enjoy the game, and cheats, and that that ruins the fun for those who do enjoy simply playing the game, IS a problem that needs to be dealt with.
I really hope Blizzard wins. On one hand, it would be a strong blow to our country’s rights and freedoms – but on the other, I won’t have to deal with club wielding gorillas policing my computer and my gaming in enjoy a fair game in the future lol..
As an aside; I don’t play WoW anymore. It’s boring.
#43 by Paul on March 24th, 2008
Since the whole point is to detect bots that are having a detrimental impact upon other players through excessive farming I would only issue the challenge during or right after combat. Also there isn’t a reason to flag someone from 1 missed challenge, if they miss multiple in a row you could flag them.
I would seriously integrate it as a game play mechanic so that it’s transparent and players don’t realize what it’s there for.
#44 by sid67 on March 24th, 2008
Quote: If there was a legitimate use for Wowglider I’d agree with you.
Interesting. There are plenty of very legitimate uses for Lavish Software’s Innerspace but using it will get you banned unless protected by ISX Warden. For example, you can use extensions to see a HUD for who is talking on Vent or for looking up information on Thottbot, or using the video capturing technology. The piece of the puzzle that allows for the bot writing isn’t even supported or maintained by the author of Innerspace or ISX Warden. I’m not saying he’s innocent, just that his product has legitimate uses outside of botting and he hasn’t exactly been treated better on your blog than MDY.
#45 by bloo on March 24th, 2008
To me, the interesting thing here is Blizzard argument that loading the game into RAM and Glider at the same time creates a copyright violation, which they cite LGS Architects, Inc. v. Concordia Homes of Nev., 434 F. 3d at 1150, 1156 (9th Cir. 2006) for. At a glance, I don’t see that home construction case supporting their argument, but the courts have been confusing copyright law for years so who knows.
http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/434/1150/
#46 by sid67 on March 24th, 2008
On the subject of who wins this case – Blizzard. As I wrote on my blog today, they don’t need to win all points – just the few points that matter.
I think they’ll win based on the strength of the argument they have around the EULA. The one item that I just haven’t seen MDY effectively counter is the claim that they tortiously interfered with the contracts between Blizzard and its licensees.
That being said, I’m irritated about the way Blizzard is poisoning (er.. positioning) the DCMA in this case largely because of the precedent it can set on copyright law with regards to third party products. I hope they lose that point as intellectual property law is just becoming more and more stifling to competition.
#47 by TPRJones on March 24th, 2008
I’m less interested in who wins and more interested in the details of the judgement. Will the judge keep it simple and stick to the specifics of this particular case, or will we see a more firm upholding (or overturn) of the standard MMO TOS in general? There’s lots of opportunity here for juicy implications.
#48 by Holmgang on March 24th, 2008
I haven’t read the entire WOW eula. But if there is anything in there that prohibits reverse engineering, and MDY did so in order to create a bot program to SELL, then all WOW has to really do is demonstrate that glider has caused them financial harm.
“Your honor we have emails from 10,000 ex-players who state that glider was the sole reason they quit. That’s $15k a month in lost revenue as a direct result of this persons’
bot program.”
If Blizzard can do that, mdy is up the proverbial creek. Any altruistic motives he claims for doing this became pure bs the minute he starts making rl $$.
“I’m not in it for the money, just to help the handicapped and others who can’t compete time-wise in game your honor , I swear.”
Good luck with that one in court.
#49 by UnSub on March 25th, 2008
Overall, it appears a key argument is that Glider is damaging the in-game economy, which is just hilarious. Castranova’s article (of which I read only the highlighted section) can be countered with the fact that every single item can be created infinitely. The whole reason that players (and bots) can collect materials in abundance is that creating that new items of loot has no cost to the rest of the world – it just appears.
@Holgang: If Blizzard can product 10k ex-player emails who say they left because of Glider, I don’t think it would be unfair of MDY’s lawyers to ask to cross examine some of these players. Depending on the judge, I’m sure the second players started to mention some nerf that also helped them to leave and suddenly such evidence isn’t as strong as it used to be.
#50 by Snibbs on March 25th, 2008
I would like Blizzard to produce the 100K + forms of people who quit because the game became such a grind. Produce the 10K+ that quit because of glider, then Blizzard can clearly show that they lose more people from their own self imposed grind mechanics than they lose from people being “impacted by bots”. Would be a fun illustration, that Glider probably saves them accounts, instead of causing them to lose them.
If I was MDY, I’d supoena that information, since it is entirely relevant to Blizzard’s claims.
I don’t use glider, and I enjoy WoW, for the record, but like many, I wish they reduced the grind it takes. I know it is their business model to force us to have “second jobs” in game (daily quests) to raise any normal sense of funding to raid or partake in the game, when they simply could have raids the amounts of money that drop off of raid bosses. Instead they created daily quests, which means I have to spend 3 hours of non-fun things in game to be able to remotely participate in 6 hours of VERY fun things in game.