What people surely love the most about RPS is not our lengthy cleverthinks, wibbling retrospectives, bewildering references to bear-based religions, or refreshingly honest buy/don’t buy game verdicts, but rather the way we sometimes read a news story, then write about that news story in our own words. It’s journalism at its most pioneering. So, to make you respect us all the more, let’s have an experiment. Yes, voting! Ooh, it’s like the internet circa 1999.
Still, it’s a spot of moral deliberation that could only apply to videogames.
Blizzard have been trying for some time to take the folks behind an application called Glider to court. Why? Because Glider is a botting program – it automates a certain amount of World of Warcraft gubbins to enable climbing up the level ladder without having to actually play the thing (”It grinds, it loots, it skins, it heals, it even farms soul shards”). Glider charges $20 for the privilege, and Blizzard claim it EULA-bothers by copying portions of WoW into RAM in order to hide from the game’s anti-cheat software. Speculation, meanwhile, has it that this has something to do with cracking down on gold farmers.
Michael Donnelly, the dude behind Glider, is fighting back, and now both parties have filed motions that, if either proves successful, would see one of ‘em granted victory, but without that messy court business. In Blizzard’s case, victory involves the closure of Glider. In Donnelly’s case, victory involves continuing to sell the app, which Blizzard claim has earned him $2.8m so far. Man! Clearly I’m wasting my time installing Wordpress poll plugins. I need to write me a bot program.
Anyway:
The case for the defence:
“Getting a bunch of characters to 70 is a pain. Getting money to equip them is a pain. Doing big instances, battlegrounds, raids, and generally socializing in the game is fun. We use the Glider to skip the painful parts and have more fun. Someone suggested we sell it, so…”
The case for the prosecution:
“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… Bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time. ”
You may note I’m resisting my usual tendency towards ill-advised ranting here, and there’s a reason for that. The judgement, in this instance, is yours. I’ve tried to distill the arguments down into the key effects on players (as opposed to the claimed interests of the two companies involved). You’ll probably complain they’re somehow unfair, because that’s what you People On The Internet do, but honestly, it’s just intended to encourage your own conclusions.
So, there should be some buttons below. You should probably click one.
Should Blizzard crush Glider?
Maybe we’ll all learn something.
(And yes, I stole the title gag from The Daily Show. Thanks, Daily Show. Thaily Show).
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DigitalSignalX,
But it’s not Blizzard’s world. It’s the American people’s world, and I find Blizzard’s attempt to use copyright to enforce non-copyright terms in their EULA offensive.
Those who are willing to trade essential liberty to purchase a non-bottable MMORPG deserve neither liberty nor MMORPGs.
Dean –
I suppose the point I was trying to make (in a long-winded, half-formed sort of way) is that a bot can’t kill mobs any faster than a player. So what’s the difference whether it’s me grinding Yetis for six hours or an autonomaton?
I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that I’m against bots on principle, because I am one of those silly people who plays the game primarily to interact with others. Bots cheapen that. That’s why I picked the “legalize drugs” choice on the poll. If Blizzard offered some kind of first party leveling service, then they could test and implement it themselves, and ensure there was some kind of balancing penalty for those who chose to use it (For example, you pay twenty bucks to get bumped up to forty, but you still start off with your level one gear).
The idea of a first-party leveling service, to me at least, is ludicrous. I can’t believe people are suggesting it, doesn’t it defeat the object somewhat?
Gold seller ad on the right bar!
Blizzard has the right to sue but any MMO with a labrynthine levelling system automatically loses my sympathies when someone finds ways around the levelling.
When all is said and done WoW has 10 million honest subscribers and maybe a few hundred thousand dishonest ones. Blizzard owes it to its honest customers to go after the dishonest ones in whatever way possible including suing them.
They are doing it for me and in my name. I approve.
Sweet jebus there’s a lot of taking the point to it’s extreme going on here. Everyone who has said “Why bother to pay for the game if you don’t want to play it”, stop being so ridiculously reductionist. You know damn well they actually DO want to play, it’s just the part they want to play is the END game. They want to play with their friends who are lvl 70, or they already totally into endgame content but want to build a specific character for that without the tedium of getting all the way back there. In either case, the game they want to play exists, it’s just not available to them despite paying their money to Blizzard.
Comparing it to an FPS and saying it’s like getting someone else to play it for you is stupid. Imagine, for example, that… say… Team Fortress 2, you were only allowed to play Dustbowl once you’d spent 100 hours playing. All your friends are playing on Dustbowl now, and everyone is going “wow I love this” but you can’t do it… I know most people would log on to other servers and then just go AFK.
That’s exactly the same as botting, and it’s completely understandable that in a game where the subscriber base is probably 80% comprised of people who got the game because their friends already had it, people actually want to experience the game with their friends. Blizzard are providing a game where as a new player, your only way to enjoy it with your friend is to persuade them to start new characters (unlikey) or grind grind grind your way to their level over hours and hours. Let the botters bot, it’s not like they are doing anything they couldn’t do if it was human controlled anyway, and the damage to the economy is barely different to the human gold farmers anyway.
1-70 isn’t boring or a grind though. I don’t even know what people are using the word ‘grind’ to mean here – it’s being used as a pejorative but in the context of Wow it’s being used to dismiss 90% of the game.
Now, new players not being able to play meaningfully with level 70 friends *is* an issue, but it’s a different issue. There are a lot of better ways to get around that than legitimising levelling services – CoH’s sidekick system comes to mind.
Once upon a time in Warcraft
Lazy bastard Danny Pott
Couldn’t get to level twenty
And so he installed a bot
Danny wanted loot and levels
But he didn’t want to play
Plus he wasn’t very honest
So he broke EULA
Bot was only twenty dollars
And it looted, skinned and killed
Danced on mailboxes for coins
Joined Chinese farmers’ guild
All was good while it lasted
But one day it came to halt
Players noticed Danny botting
And decided to revolt
No one grouped with lazy Danny
Some ignored him outright
Others /spit and /snub and /threaten
All considered him a blight
And the worst was yet to follow
With his bot he won a ban
All because the silly doofus
Couldn’t get past level ten
Once upon a time in Warcraft
Lazy bastard Danny Pott
Got deleted from his server
Because he installed a bot
@Butler, way back up there when he replied to me the first time:
(Reposted for clarity: @Noc, that’s a really nasty comparison, and best countered with:
In Counter-Strike I can enter a game with the worlds best clan and I’ve got a viable chance of killing one or two of them.
In Call of Duty 4 I can go in a public match as a rank 1 with base equipment and dominate a game full of rank 55s.
In WoW you can’t take down even the worst of level 70s with a 100 skilled level 1s. Equally so, an under geared but highly skilled level 70 can’t hope to take a full epic but poorly played level 70.)
Exactly. That’s because in an FPS, the “currency,” if you will, that determines success is skill. You’re a good shot, you’re aware of what’s going on around you, so even with subpar weapons you can dominate an arena of better-equipped but lesser-skilled players.
You can’t expect someone who’s never played a video game in their life to take on the world’s best CS players. That’s the equivalent of the Level 1 vs. Level 70 comparison.
In the level-based RPG model, all of that reflex and skill that you have as a shooter takes the form of stats. These stats increase as you level. In the same way as you were rubbish at FPSs when you first started playing, but after years of playing and honing your skills you’ve gotten considerably better, so does your character start out piss-weak but grow into a relative juggernaut.
So the “currency” that determines success in a level-based RPG is time spent leveling. Player skill is still important, but it takes the relative importance that equipment does in an FPS; it can help swing an otherwise even fight one way or the other, but it won’t make a difference if there’s a significant gap between the player’s respective “currency” levels.
So, to answer Lu-Tze’s point, it’s not a matter of getting someone else to play for you. It’s a matter of finding a way to put Autoaim into your game so you consistently get headshots without actually having to be any good. It’s a matter of artificially inflating the “currency” that determines your success in the game. Yes, unlocking content IS part of the issue . . . but there’s lots of content that’s not Endgame. Lots of content that’s being skipped over when you bot through 70 levels.
The issue clearly isn’t “I want to run this particular instance, but I’m X levels away.” It’s “Raiding is what all the cool kids are doing! I want in on that! But 70 is a big number . . . ”
And the reason botting is different then playing through yourself:
A) You aren’t actually doing the work. Yes, it’s your client that’s running the bot program, but it’s also your client that’s doing the shooting if your FPS has an auto-aim hack. The issue isn’t the effectiveness of your program as a client, it’s the effectiveness of YOU as PLAYER.
And since this is a game, everything hinges on the perceived value of things to the player. If players are cheating to achieve things they don’t deserve, it cheapens things for the other players.
B) Here’s the point people seem to be missing: Bots run 24-7. Player habits can vary tremendously, but it’s usually a matter of a few hours a day. So the level advancement isn’t necessarily more efficient, but it IS tremendously faster.
Figure you play a good three hours a day, in the afternoon. On average. You can leave your client up and your bot working 24/7, so you’re leveling eight times faster.
That’s right. Bots DO level you faster than doing things manually. Because your bot doesn’t have to eat, sleep, maintain it’s relationships with other human beings, or vary it’s routine to live a happy and fulfilling life.
Oh, and @twb:
It IS Blizzard’s world. You’re agreeing to play in Blizzard’s world, by Blizzard’s rules, when you log on to the server. And agree to the EULA.
And the EULA is a legal document in OUR world. (”The American People’s world,” apparently. It’s only a matter of time, imperialist tendencies and all.) The EULA is the legal device that links Blizzard’s virtual world to the product you buy from them and install on your computer.
. . .
I WILL make the concession that players who’re already Level 70, and want to use other characters at their current level of functionality, need some sort of device to help them do that which doesn’t involve effectively replaying the game. Is there any statistic on what percentage of botters are using them for secondary characters?
Also, a note: I fully endorse powerleveling and whatever game-mechanic twisting methods people have devised for trying to speed up the leveling process. Since that boils down to attempting to play the game intelligently, instead of cheating. It’s the difference between munchkining your way through a PnP game and fudging your dice rolls.
And I THINK that’s everything. Apologies to anyone who I’m repeating or ignoring in the fifty-odd posts I read through to write this.
Great poem, Micheal, or a good choice of copy-pasting, if that’s what it was.
Anyway, my inner argumentation went as follows: If people want to skip the leveling process, which I agree is very long, then it’s clearly a design fault from the developers part. But if people don’t enjoy such a big part of the game, design flaw or not, then they should consider if they want to play at all and let those who enjoy it play instead. Vote: Yay!
I don’t really see how it’s a design flaw if millions upon millions of people have paid out plenty of good money to quite cheerfully plug along through all that levelling process. Sure, some people don’t want to do that. That just means that they’re not part of Blizzard’s market.
It’s kind of like saying that a roguelike is flawed because people don’t like losing their characters to perma-death. Well…those people don’t like roguelikes. So what?
sorry for bolding this but there have been a shitload of comments about bots and the subsequent consequences, no one is talking about the DANGERS of the lawsuit
Maybe I agree with the bot-hate, I can understand either party, I have a level 70 rogue and I spent 3hundredsomethinghours on getting there myself.
PROBLEM = LAWSUIT IS BASED ON COPYRIGHT ISSUES, COPYING A GAME TO RAM WOULD BE COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT = BULLSHIT -> if blizzard wins this on MORAL GROUNDS, the problem is that this suit will become a tested case for a lot of seemingly unrelated cases on copyright issues. The road of copyright infringement is DIRTY, your browser would no longer be able to load pictures from the internet (saved in RAM) and you wouldn’t be able to copy files from one drive to another (backup anyone? COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!!).
Please look past the issue of ‘bots’ in this case, really, STOP THINKING ABOUT YOURSE.. ehh THE CHILDREN!! (I meant to say your pathetic little annoyances, and look at the big picture. I am next in line with the Bot-Haahte but damn, the grounds of this case are way too serious)
must give kudos to one other person
The funny thing about all this for me, is that the worst parts of “grinding” in WoW come AFTER you hit lvl 70. Grinding as you level up has more immediate and tangible rewards. (New levels, new abilities, new gear.) At 70, you find yourself grinding gold and materials for your next raid/battleground/arena match far more often than doing anything fun.
It’s like skipping to the last few maps/missions in a FPS or RTS; Sure, you’re powerfull in that part of the game, but you missed a good portion of the fun in getting there.
Dean -
I’m no expert on such things, and I’m more than willing to admit that I haven’t given the topic much serious thought (tacitly: that you’re right). More important, I think, is what Alexander and, tWB (with considerably less vitriol) pointed out.
The biggest thing about this case is that ALL other MMOs will be unable to do anything about bots and third party programs in general if the defense wins.
Also the defense is technically stealing profit from Blizzard because the people getting the bots are going to hit max level faster and thus quit the game sooner because they will have done everything and grow bored of it.
Legal ramifications make my brain hurt.
I agree with Zato on his first point. Cases like these set a precedence. Even if you dislike World of Warcraft; later down the line if any MMO you want to play comes out there is nothing that the developer can do to prevent the use of bots.
Bots are not simply used to circumvent the leveling grind or the rep grind. I’ve seen bots used in nearly all areas of the game such as Arenas and Battlegrounds. Nothing like having a 10 man team when 2 of them are bots and being forced to play a handicapped side.
Bots can also destroy economies on servers. Best example of this is to look at final fantasy 11. For most of its early days it was plagued with bots that would fish all day and programmed to sale the fish and go back to fishing. On many servers the economy was completely devestated to the point that you had to bot yourself or play 60 hours a week to be able to afford anything nice.
Bots in MMO do not simply affect the people using them. They affect the global economy and other people’s enjoyment of the game. Whether or not it’s world of warcraft or the next big mmo.
The case won’t prevent Blizzard or anyone else doing anything about bots though. It’ll stop them suing someone for making one, but it doesn’t legitimise them. It certainly won’t prevent them banning the accounts of those who use them, which is how the problem *should* be dealt with.
The perfect analogy is steroid and performance enchancing drug use in sports. Most are legal to take, but obviously thier use in competative sport ruins in. But the sports bodies introduce drug tests and strict rules to prevent this. They don’t sue the guys making the steroids, because it really isn’t the court’s problem.
I bot, but I’ve also hand leveled about 5 characters to 70.
That crap gets OLD. I never bot in areas that are populated. I never bot away from my computer. When people come to my area needing to kill the mobs Im grinding, I usually HELP them.
I enjoy the game, but the damn grind is ridiculous, and Blizzard knew it, which is why in 2.3 they LOWERED the amount of exp needed to level. Its a timesink and a moneysink. They didn’t have to make the grind that painful, so since I’ve done it so many times, of COURSE I’m going to take an opportunity to circumvent it.
Play EVE! Rabble rabble rabble!
(post name = ingame name, btw. ;)
It is Blizzard’s game. They get to choose how much grind there is. NOT YOU, the user.
To get to the point, a bot means that no human is actually playing, and as such, is cheating. If i have to spend countless hours playing in order to get to level 70, yet some kid who buys a program can turn the bot on and then leave, i see that as cheating.
I find it strange that people think botting should be allowed. It takes the experience out of the game. The game took the lore from the first three games and exploded in an online world where you take a journey throughout the world of Azeroth. Botting takes the journey away and gives lazy players a way to be lazy. Blizzard has every right to be upset because it’s their program. People should not be allowed to profit off parts of their code. Also, these lazy players who think that botting is the way to go should not be allowed to get away with diminishing the positive experience of other players.
RE: Cheating to bypass content.
Am I the only one who finds some of the moral outrage expressed above relating to other players “getting-without-earning” a little bizarre, given that what we are talking about is ostensibly a leisure activity?
If you were talking about real-world compensated work then sure, I’d agree that its galling that so many people don’t have to do very much of it and yet still reap bountiful rewards.
But do I worry that some people are cheating their way through an activity that I enjoy as play? Not one bit.
Unless we are talking about directly competitive play ofc, but I don’t think that this kind of cheating is what we are arguing about because this kind of cheating is uncontroversially bad. Also the leveling process in WOW (which accounts for many hundreds of hours of play) is not in the main directly competitive.
I think this particular “problem” isn’t a terribly significant one, is very much specific to the WoW model (as I say, bypassing content is not equivalent to wallhacking in CS) and is more or less designed-in to any leisure activity that is trying too hard to mimic actual work.
Persistent World type games based on the WoW model will probably struggle on with the same old formula for a few more decades, but as soon as some clever developer makes a similar game that is consistently fun enough that people will engage in it for pleasure alone it will make it very hard for developers to sell the old model where time consuming repetitive work yields dubious rewards. Basically I think that when people are given the choice between work and fun, they will pick fun every time. Currently the market does not really offer this kind of choice, particularly not the casual gamer.
That said, I will acknowledge that some people do enjoy gaming that resembles work in the way WoW does. Personally I think that as the gaming $ becomes increasingly dominated by the console\casual market this group will increasingly find themselves on the margins because the requirement of having to put in hundreds of hours to access new content hurts accessibility and the console\casual market demands accessibility. That said the work\reward scheme does mitigate skill requirements which might help sell the model to the casual gaming crowd at least.
For the time being the whole argument will probably end up being moot because Blizzard will no doubt eventually introduce legitimate, bought, pre-levelled characters, probably to milk the last few years out of the game (the arena tournament is just the thin end of the wedge!). At that point I’d like to think that some imaginative developer is sure to wonder if level grinding is really the most fun thing players could be doing in an elaborate online fantasy world, and hopefully the result will be as all the fun without any of the work!
- A flying mount costs 5000g.
- You need to spend about 120k honor just to be able to enter the arena without being cut into tiny little pieces in an instant.
- Flight paths are designed in a way that it takes extra long to come from A to B.
- Flights exist instead of a departure / arrival animation
These are just timesinks. The whole damn game is a timesink once you reach level 70.
Instances are fun. Raids are Fun. Arena PvP is Fun.
To do all that you need:
- Flasks, Potions, Time for Raids and instances
- Resilience Equip for Arena PvP
To get from A to B fast you need an epic flying mount. To farm efficiently you need an epic flying mount. To get that you need 5000g. Which equals about 35 – 100 hours of mindnumbing money farming.
Where exactly is the “experience” and “enjoyment” of that ? That gets “taken out of the game” ?
I would love to bot, I just don’t do it because I don’t want my account to get banned.
I am all in favor of Glider. I have been playing WoW for over a year now, using bots AND playing the game. I pay 15 dollars a month for WoW for one reason: Entertainment. I do not give a shit about how “the game feels”, it is all about me. I pay them to have a good time. The exciting part of WoW for me is endgame stuff: raids, heroic dungeons, arena pvp and the such. If I want to spend my hard-earned $20 for a subscription of glider to bypass the “boring” part of WoW so that I can fully enjoy the reason I am paying 15 dollars a month to blizzard, I should damn well be allowed too. I see that I am outnumbered here so I don’t expect anyone to agree with me, but all the same my vote goes to glider. Way to make a program that accomplishes what I want: To have fun!
i’m all in favor o Plaz n his likes. If Blizzard is daft enuff to produce a “fun” MMO game, they should’a known from the beginnin that players r eventually gonna wanna do what THEY wanna do. IT GOES WITH THE EFFIN TERRITORY! I play WoW for FUN n coz my family n friends play it, no other reason. the way Blizzard sees this crap, it’s like as if i were to look at some businessman wrong, he’d nail me for it SIMPLY coz he’s makin more money than me n i’m just the lil shit-turd on the ground that pays him…screw that crap. the $15 a month i pay to Blizzard, NOT the other way around. it’s MY $15, it’s MY investment i’m protectin…i WILL do as i please to make the game more enjoyable. with that said, i’ve never used bots in ANY MMO game, n prolly never will. bots don’t bother me, REAL greedy people behind coporate names DO. on the account bout the gold spammerz, i vote to get rid of em ALL. on the issue between glider n blizzard: blizzard believes they have a right to deploy the game as they see fit regardless o the consequences o their ignorance. i believe that the makers o Glider should have JUST as much space in that alley. But Blizzard has screwed things up with EVERY patch they’ve come out with. i’ve quit the game several times before, but it was my FAMILY n FRIENDS who begged me to come back…NOT Blizzard. they can rot in hell for all i care…greedy bastards r in it for the money. i’ve seen more than enuff proof o that already.
Well if the game is so grindy and awful, why play it?
This is WoW, for better or worse. You have to take the good with the bad, THAT’S THE WAY IT WAS MADE. The game is repetitive BY NATURE. THAT’S WHAT AN MMO IS. Besides, Blizzard owns the game, your characters, everything, and they say “NO BOTTING”. Rules are rules.
The poll options are somehow unfair, so I’ll drop my opinion.
I’d have to stand by Blizzard on this, for certain reasons that I know no one is going to like. But, before that, I should say that botting and assist programs are a boon for MMORPGs for two reasons. One, they add a new dimension for enjoyment. It’s not just about skipping the grind, but skipping the farming. In the few MMOs I’ve played, I find that if you must farm, you’re not playing the game right, but that’s an issue with faulty game design, not necessarily the player. Two, the grind is an ethical dilemma. The player must pay monthly to be subjected to long hours of what we’d call heresy in any other game, and I fear that’s too easily exploitable by the host to keep obsessive players in the game month after month. The best solution is for the host to offer assist programs themselves, even for a fee if they wish, and some do.
But, I side with Blizzard on this, and probably for the same reason they initiated action: Donnelly is selling his botting program. By a stretch, that falls under derivative works and is a copyright infringement, but let’s be reasonable. He’s making money off of Blizzard’s work. I don’t give a shit if Blizzard staff sleep with gold-plated hookers at night and don’t need the money, it’s still based on their work. Part of my ire may be because I’m cheap, and seeing people charge for programs rubs me the wrong way (Windows third-party apps are a joke; open source you jerks), but if I had released a game and found someone else profiting on my hard work, I’d be livid.
None of our opinions matter though. Blizzard may not even give a shit. Their only real courses of action are to either buy out Donnelly or take legal action. It’s a business thing–the fool Donnelly could have just offered his program for free and suggested donations, and probably none of this would have happened.