General Discussion

BBC News is reporting that Blizzard is suing the creator of MMO Glider, a bot program which automates a number of actions in World of Warcraft.

The makers of World of Warcraft are locked in a legal battle with a firm that has produced a tool to automate many actions in the virtual world.

Blizzard is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically, such as fighting.

Both sides have submitted legal summaries to a court in Arizona.

Blizzard says Glide is a software bot which infringes the company's copyright and potentially damages the game.

In its legal submission to the court last week, the firm said: "Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time."

Read more here.

Go Go Blizzard, you guys really care about the quality of the game world unlike SOE.

Many thanks Blizzard!

Blizzard FTW.

Maybe the economy can get closer to how it should be if there weren't these bots and farmers around screwing everything up for everybody else.

Good stuff.

Originally posted by dalestaines1

Blizzard FTW.

Maybe the economy can get closer to how it should be if there weren't these bots and farmers around screwing everything up for everybody else.

Good stuff.

 

First, lemme say GO GO BLIZZ for stepping up and spending some of those billions on ensuring the game is clean.  Bots have never really been prevalent in that game, and its because of things like this.  I do not hope that they actually get money from this guy...but I do hope they shut him down.  For many reasons, actually...one of which is that the many people who were so bored with the game that they botted can quit and Blizzard can actually focus on making FUN stuff again...rather than all these grinds.

That said...

Dude, if you honestly think that taking all the botters and farmer out will "fix" the economy of the game then you have no clue what an economy even is or how it works.  Nothing can save your game economy because there never WAS one.  Its  a self defeating system, and has been proven to be full of bad math since the system was invented.

To put it simply, anytime there is no control over the INFLOW of currency....the economy implodes.  For most MMO's...this is the case.  Currency appears from thin air, and from repeatable sources.  To make an example.....

Imagine the US economy if it was legal to print your own money anytime you wanted.  How much do you think the dollar would be worth in a single year once everyone started making money all the time?  Not much, if anything.  In fact, it would render the dollar worthless almost immediately.  This is exactly what is happening in your stupid MMO economy.  Every time someone kills a mob that drops money, he just "printed" his own dollar and injected it into the economy.  Every time someone does a daily quest...he just "printed" another one.  There is no decisive control over either the INFLOW of money or the OUTFLOW of it to compensate.

Summary:  You are boned bub.  Your game never HAD an economy.  Your game had a pre-school bartering system...in which you had a loosely defined "worth" assigned to items which is based on what people are willing to pay.  What they are willing to pay is based on what they are capable of paying...and that is an ever increasing number.  Deal with it.

why don't they make it so the game can't be automated then? unless this is a hack of course.

Bots and farmers deflate the market. If this goes through and the majority of botters are stopped, then supply will go down and the prices will inflate. In the end you need to look at it this way: The game mechanics are broken if people would rather have a bot play the game rather than play it themselves. Games are supposed to be fun, not a chore.

Originally posted by nomadian

why don't they make it so the game can't be automated then? unless this is a hack of course.

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I'm guessing the more technical aspects of this whole thing are kinda foreign to ya.  Don't take that too hard, its not something I'm even the most educated in.  You aren't alone.  I'll help explain it to you as best I can.

Anything that uses input controls can be automated.  They don't actually hack the game.  They have a program in the back which simulates input controls from the keyboard and mouse in a predetermined way.  The bot program literally pushes the buttons for you...in a technical sense.  It simulates the controls your keyboard uses (which also operates in the background, and is then tied into the game).  Basically, they open the bot program, set up their path and keystrokes, and the bot repeats that set up indefinitely.  Glider actually even notes when other players are near and changes up its pattern or even sits down and logs out to avoid being caught.  It also runs the path you set it in reverse sometimes...or just alters the route a little so as not to be noticed.

Its REALLY detailed for a bot.  Matter of fact, its the bot all bots wanna be.  It has contingencies for lots of problems that MIGHT come up (not just those that DO come up).

You may ask "Why not just have WoW stop working if any other program is running in the background?"

Because everything that makes your computer work is a program that runs in the background.  Shutting down everything that isn't WoW running shuts down the PC.  Never you mind that doing such a thing ALSO kills Vent, Teamspeak, ect...ect...

"Why not set up a scan for THIS program?"

They have, several times.  All the bot guys have to do is change a few strings of code and the program appears as something else instead.  Hell, they can program the bot to do that FOR them every couple hours if they wanted to.  With as much money as they've made off the bot...its certainly possible to have enough programmers on hand to do this kind of work all the time anyway.  It only takes one, after all.  An automated bot patcher would apply the changes to everyone who had the bot.

They can't do much about preventing the program from being used on a technical level.  They can slow it, and even provide plenty of STRONG reasons not to use it.  Right now, they are doing the best thing they CAN do.  Shut the bot down at its source.  Nail the guy at the head.

Originally posted by Gishgeron

 

Originally posted by nomadian

why don't they make it so the game can't be automated then? unless this is a hack of course.

  

 

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I'm guessing the more technical aspects of this whole thing are kinda foreign to ya.  Don't take that too hard, its not something I'm even the most educated in.  You aren't alone.  I'll help explain it to you as best I can.

 

Anything that uses input controls can be automated.  They don't actually hack the game.  They have a program in the back which simulates input controls from the keyboard and mouse in a predetermined way.  The bot program literally pushes the buttons for you...in a technical sense.  It simulates the controls your keyboard uses (which also operates in the background, and is then tied into the game).  Basically, they open the bot program, set up their path and keystrokes, and the bot repeats that set up indefinitely.  Glider actually even notes when other players are near and changes up its pattern or even sits down and logs out to avoid being caught.  It also runs the path you set it in reverse sometimes...or just alters the route a little so as not to be noticed.

Its REALLY detailed for a bot.  Matter of fact, its the bot all bots wanna be.  It has conti