Our friends over at VirtuallyBlind have reported that Blizzard has won the ongoing lawsuit against MDY Industries, the makers of the most popular World of Warcraft bot: Glider. I’ll leave the legal commentary to Mr. Duranske, because what we’re interested in here are the long-term effects of the World of Warcraft economy. As I said in another thread, a round of banning on Blizzard’s part caused a dramatic rise in the real-money value of virtual WoW gold. Could a similar increase in prices be on the rise?
While no official statistics could be found, I’d be willing to bet that the majority of botters use Glider. After all, it’s the most widely used bot that has sold a few hundred thousand copies (according to information that came up in court). On the other hand, many of the gold farming operations in Asia do everything by hand with extremely cheap labor (see this preview of an interesting documentary). So, if Glider has been deemed to be infringing upon Blizzard’s copyright whenever it’s in use, does this give Blizzard a right to shut down the sale of Glider? If so, would this drive supply of gold down and shoot prices up? Or will the hard-working Chinese prevail and keep prices down for us lazy players?
Botman
/ January 10, 2009Glider is sold and marketed to primarily the USA and EU. That is why it is known by people in the west.
Most of the complaints about bots that bliz presented in the case do not refer to glider
One does however wonder how those that did complain and mention glider could have know it was a Glider aided char they observed.
Whilst the RMT business is primarilty driven from China amd it was widely reported that much of the labour used there to fule the rmt supplyside economy, it is the western demandside economy that provides their operations wit hthe $ that motivate the industry.
It is somewhaht likely that non botters (Glider) in the west are those tht a drive that demand and hence the the RMT business – it isnt the Gliders that are the “problem” it is the player that buys gold/accounts etc.
Bliz ha s easy methods of detecting the buyers but since they are also “nice” customers and probably make up at least 50% of the customerbase, it is far easier to call botters the cheats and ignore them.
It is incorrect to say that Glider is the biggest nbot (either globally or in the USA/EU markets) there are many bots and “hacks” available. The RMT suppliers in China are well known to use various hacks and cheats to produce game goods (primarily gold) and they do so because their methods are far more productive than using glider.
This copyright ruling = break a term in the EULA and you are automatically infringing Blizs copyright. Many have comented that breaking the naming rules eg calling a char roflcopter etc = the player is infringing blizs copyright, but lying, misleading, insulting etc other players is also against ythe all encompassing EULA.
Every one of those 10million purchasers of the game is a copyright infringer under Blizs EULA.
If that is how as consumers we want the future to go – by all means support this action/ruling.
A Norliss
/ January 28, 2009Gliders constitute a tiny % of the warcraft gold production industry and indeed the vast majority of gliders do no gold Farming at all.
A substantial % of the chinese mmog workforce both hand gring gold and also use a variety of hacks and bots.
Any Glider ban will have no effect on gold supply or prices
thomas soden
/ April 11, 2009the only thing wow owns is the rule book to the game
the notion that botting is done to farm the game is inaccurate many that i know used it because the are self employed and cannot sit in front of the screen for hours like most of the players my 5 kids play for hours and personally would rather them bot and go outside and play…it would be interesting to see the wow statistics for player online time vrs exp average best case and worst case i bet that botting customers do not effect the average less than 1 tenth of 1 percent and I would also bet that the amount of gold achieved by botting effect the in game money supply by the same this is all about wow being embarrassed that someone made something there software engineers cannot beat, they should allow glider and hire the quy. WOW karma is Changing