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Blizzard Says World of Warcraft Bot Creator Earned $2.8 Million
by Nick Breckon, Mar 26, 2008 8:00pm PDTBlizzard is now claiming that World of Warcraft bot author Michael Donnelly has made $2.8 million by selling his controversial Glider software, according to recent motions filed in court and mirrored on GamePolitics.
Donnelly, the author of popular World of Warcraft bot Glider--a downloadable tool that automatically plays the massively multiplayer game for users--was sued by Blizzard in February of 2007. Both sides have since been locked in a legal battle, with Blizzard claiming that Donnelly knowingly infringed on its copyright, in addition to breaking World of Warcraft's End User License Agreement. "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," said Blizzard in a legal statement filed last week.
Donnelly claims that his program does not violate Blizzard's copyright because it never makes a true copy of the game client.
"Blizzard permits its licensees to load the WoW game client software into RAM to play WoW. As such, Blizzard's licensees cannot violate Blizzard's exclusive rights under the Copyright Act to make copies simply by loading a copy of the program into RAM to play WoW," reads one section of Donnelly's retort.
The MMO Glider program sells for $25, with an optional $5 subscription available that provides additional functionality.
"We are fans of the game that want to try out a lot of different things," reads a section of the MMO Glider website.
"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.."
Comments
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Initially I created a buffbot that I parked outside of our Guild house. I found it rather fun and engaging to constantly make adjustments to the program. In Asherons Call you can cast buffs on individual pieces of equipment so it was always a challenge finding the best way to create an in game, text response based way to buff peoples gear for them. Then there was spell reagent management etc., being able to accept donations. All in all it helped me find more enjoyment from the game and had little, if any, impact on the larger game world.
I also played with an advanced money making bot for a bit because the complexity amazed me. The bot would go to three different geographic locations via spells, interact with 2 different npc vendors and basically buy ingredients low and sell the end product for more than the cost of buying the materials. However, even though I ended up with more money then I'd ever need I never spent it. Just didn't feel right inflating the economy. It was fun to glance over once in awhile and see my buffbot doing its thing for a group of guildies getting ready to go out hunting.
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From a strictly grinding standpoint: It sucks. It is not gameplay and it does not a community make. Sorry but when 80% of a game is grinding you have a poor design. Grinding isn't just collecting materials for progression, it is collecting gear to move on.
It is incredibly poor design that I should run the same static instance more then a couple times to progress. If you don't think that is boring, then props to you. But I do. It is called a grind to do it more.
Heck, even look at factions. To get exalted with any faction you have to grind your but off.
Now, here is a story of grinding: when TBC first came out, I saw the Consortium Rep exalted dagger: Guile of Korazzi. It was awesome. I manually did the grind in Netherstorm. Doing the exact same circle of killing over and over again.
Not 3 weeks after acquiring the dagger, it was nerfed to be as good as a blue. That is when the lightswitch clicked. I had real-life botted my way to getting that thing and spent my RL time to do it.
That's when i started and that is exactly when I realized how much of WoW is a grind that doesn't include people at all. Sorry, but it's true.
I have many other stories of botting, but you (should) get the gist. I bot to get to the fun stuff. I like seeing new things. But when it isn't new any more, it fails.
And please, don't even try to project botting into RL. Botting has given my RL back.
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Doing the same ol quest over and over again gets old fast.... the game doesn't get interesting until 70 after you lvl your first toon. Some may disagree but after you go through all the quest/areas a few times it gets boring as hell. ATM i want to lvl my mage but I can't bare doing the same boring quest a 6th time. Glider here I come :D
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that is all.
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Seriously? When am I going to play an MMO where the first quest I come across doesn't tell me to kill 10 little fantasy world equivlant of a cross bread rat person.
What if they allowed everyone to get max level and max armor/weapons with a cheat code in WoW?
I think all this botting happens because people want to feel special or looked at like the cool guy in these online games
Take away the people and have a cool single player oblivioin style game but people won't even bother botting because there's nobody to show off to in a single player game
So since competition and gratification for all the virtual accomplishments is the main reason people play even as pointless as it might seem you gotta uphold the rules or people will feel cheated for their viirtual accomplishments being less cool or something
and thats why i play guild wars...actually title farming is really bad now to in Guild Wars, to get a special cool name displayed below your character is the current cool factor...we don't really have levels, I don't even bother with it just because its so boring and after you spend like 3 months working (not having fun) for some cool title below your character...bleh throwup
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For the first 30 minutes of doing something, give the person full whack, and each 30 minute period thereafter should halve the rate at which you earn (so the drop rate, xp rate, gold rate etc all decrease)
Though with MMO's being what they are, grinding at the same area is par for the course. Which is just shitty game design. Variety is fun :(
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