It seems simple enough, though Blizzard has worded it badly. Artificially tampering with the natual process of how blizzard intended and build the game to interact with the memory banks is wrong. They just need to get a better legal team who know what charges to press. Then again, the likelyhood that Donnelly will be able to afford a legal representative to contest that is slim, which is probably upon what Blizzard is gambling on, that he'll drop out and be unable to defend himself appropriately. A little dishonest and underhand, I wish they had thought of a better way of doing it.

Its not as slim as you might think since he did make quite a bit of money on his program.

I think Blizzard has no case with their current charges and I think they shouldn't have one with this set of arguments. This does not mean I am in favour of bots in Wow by any means ;)

I concur. I am very much on Blizzard's side when it comes to the bot question as well as Glider-specific, but I just think they are doing a few wrong things with the details in this case. If you read the whole article from Public Knowledge, it gives you a lot clearer picture about what the "shadier" parts of this thing is about.

Please kill Glider, but in a smart way?

Another Puritanical News Piece!

The sites stand on gold selling and farming has always been clear and I have no problem with that but things like "The overwhelming majority of WoW-players would probably like to see Donnelly's software rot somewhere unpleasant," really do throw the idea of you being a news site straight out the window.

Where's the lack of bias? You guys have become more and more polemic over the last six months and your objectivity has simply dissappeared. You "woot" over everything Blizzard say and "Yah Boo Sucks to You" over anything that Blizzard disagrees with.

It's as transparent as reading the Sun and getting smacked in the face with Editorial Policy every sentance.

I've been coming here since I started playing WoW three or so years ago and I've just realised why I don't get my mods and things from here anymore.

Why don't you drop your pious, overbearing, sanctimonius opinions from your news and just get back to actually reporting the WoW news?

/signed a non bot using non gold buying WoW player.

You read the Sun? God help us ;) Seriously though, every news author (that could be you or anyone else who submits news) is entitled to their opinion on any matter. In my opinion, this case does not warrant objectivity in the fact Glider is a pain in the ass for the whole community without any debate on the matter.

I don't think Leord is being pious or sanctimonius, in fact he's laid out the facts pretty nicely for readers to make up their own mind and decide which side of the fence to sit on. The quote "The overwhelming majority of WoW-players would probably like to see Donnelly's software rot somewhere unpleasant" is more than true based on the people we talk to and the players feedback we receive. Let's face it , to disagree with this statement would surely mean you condone in-game cheating would it not?

What a news authors have to do with mods is anyone's guess but I guess you have your reasons to avoid using the services provided to the WoW community.

Bottom line, if you don't like the news and think you can do a better job then write the news like the rest of us, anyone can submit and it's open to all.

Just so you know, we don't 'big up blizzard' at every turn, in fact we often get phone calls from Blizzard asking us to ammend news items ot delete them completely. This is something we have never in our 10 years of Blizzard reporting actually done despite personal requests. Our service is to our community and the WoW commnity as a whole.

I pointed out the legal rammifications of this when blizz published thier claim :)

This was filed at the same time the MPAA filed against torrents bay claiming that all contents of ram on a server were written records and must be preserved and the RIAA claimed that playing audio cds on a pc was copyright infringement since they were copied to ram (which in most cases isnt actually true).

P.S.
As to the above I remember you pulling BC beta leak stories (yes the people who leaked broke NDA but you didnt) as well as in the past stating that your editorial policy was not to publish anything detrimental of blizzard so as to be given access to exclusives, interviews and behind the scenes.

Editorial policy has never been stated as not posting anything detrimental to Blizzard. If a story was pulled, it would have been pulled by the author for whatever reason, they may feel something is fake or incorrect for example after further reading, not becuase they were put under any pressure. Sometimes it is up to the author's better judgment as to post something or not.

Blizzard don't work along the lines of "be nice and we'll give you stuff". It doesn't work like that. Blizzard give you stuff if they feel you are contributing to the community for whatever game you may be covering.

Don't count on the scumbag bot author having to foot the legal bill himself if Blizzard tries to play free and loose with copyright law. For decades, there have existed organizations (ACLU ring a bell?) that have been willing to go to the defense of people - even confessed murderers - that they see as being prosecuted under an interpretation of existing law that they see as being contrary to their agenda.

It's not entirely out of good will - a poorly defended defendant that gets a judgment in a case like this can set a precedent that will make advancing their organization's agenda that much more difficult. I would not be surprised at all if any number of organizations including the EFF step in to provide pro bono legal assistance for this guy. Not because they support what he was doing, but because they object to the manner in which Blizzard is trying to prosecute.

As a software developer I feel that what the guy is doing is legal but immoral. All he does is read information available in the RAM. Based on it he triggers key events. He changes nothing in Blizzard's software. It's like suing ZIP for users that use it for pirated software.
I am against this product but also against the law-suit.

Because he doesn't do any damage. Think about it... if a person sat at the computer and did the same things a bot does, it would be fine. We'd not argue that the person is doing any damage to Blizzard. Likewise, we would not argue that such a person is damaging other WoW players. Hence, a legal strategy based on that approach might be risky (I'm not a lawyer).

Well, first off, read through the news again, my only own opinion is avoiding naming a character Roflcopter. The rest is experience of reactions of players, and reporting. Still, we are once in a while voicing our opinions as well, but mostly only in an effort to encourage other people to add their opinions in the comments, which is good for other visitor as well.

Personally, I dislike Glider and people using it, and I wish it to stop, but I am not really happy on how this has been handled.

In terms of how he have damaged Blizzard, he is making a living out of cheating, and that cheating has negative impacts on economy and player annoyance, and would in the end make players play less, or to cancel subscriptions. I can't see how it's bad enough for huge damages, but he should definitely not be allowed to continue a (paid) service that is designed to disrupt the subscription service of Blizzard.

Note that I don't bot or condone botting. That out of the way...

cheating... well, yeah but he's breaking the ToS, not a law. In other words, the mere act of cheating isn't a priori damaging. Unethical, not fair, yeah... but damaging...

Player annoyance... again, not really a damage to blizzard and, if they won on this they'd have an uphill battle dealing with damage given the massive annoyance we all face with Trade channel spam etc... which they refuse to clean up. :P

Distrupting economy, people quitting. I doubt any material number of people quit the game because someone else is botting. Almost impossible to prove aside from individual testimonials. Economy being disrupted... that's more interesting. We'd learn a lot about the WoW economy if they tried to prove this.

I find it amusing that we have people on this board second guessing the legel strategy of a multibillion dollar company though... I'm guessing that their lawyers are competent... :P

Honestly, I have no clue what glider is... If it's used to level toons to 70 by grinding hours after hours while you're not on your keyboard or just farm stuff once you're lvl 70.

But I really start to think that with all the game money blizzard is injecting into the game with all the dailies and stuff, to me, that affected a LOT MORE the economy than botters.... When you're at a point where people a wiling to donate money to get a name title...

We always had botters and we probably ever will. But before all the dailies and other easy money things :
Primal Life = 10G max. Now : 20G MIN.
Primal Water = 15G Max Now : 25G MIN.
Same for all crap, enchanting mats, mines, even herbs to some extents...
ETC, ETC.

This, to me, had a FREAKING bigger effect on in-game economy.

The only good thing about this, is that now when I pay my 50-100G respec resto-feral-resto, I know pretty well that I'll make a heck of a lot more than 100G by farming 2 hours of dailies...

Before, you actually had to farm to get money, so fighting against bot to get the resources was a problem. Now, you just do your dailies, and buy whatever you need that you can't farm. Cause once you have your 5k G epic mount, you don't really need the gold for anything else than repairs and maximizing your gear through gems and enchants and stuff...

Again, I don't really support botting, but to some extent, it doesn't have the same impact that it once had on the game, when collecting 100G was tidious if you weren't an expert on playing at AH and if you had to pay 50G then 50G again if you were a healer (so you basically had to earn 200G for it to be beneficial...).

To be honest, I wouldn't care less if someone would use that type of program (if it's possible) to level an alt from 1-70 just by grinding. It won't affect my game, cause the whole 1-60 world is empty anyway, so what difference does it makes. (even the 60-70 content is pretty empty (except the dailies regions)... so...

This is just my 2 C.

MoRRoW

EDIT : Oh yeah.. and I really don't know who affect the game more.. the botters, or the people that puts videos and strategy guides to see and learn and to kill every boss of the game without even having to learn the "hard" way, or the way blizzard actually wanted it to be...

Providing guides and videos gets more people into these instances killing the bosses, getting more loots, getting the demand for mats raise where the offer stay pretty much the same... which in turn raises the prices...

I amay exagerate a little, but still...

And for the casual who only plays 15 hours a week, do we hear them complaint that "hardcore who plays for 40 hours a week ruins the economy by supplying a lot more stuff that the "game was intented to be for casual players???"

There no Copyright infringement here obviously. I really don't know how you would word it becuase the idea of sueing the programmer for his work makes no sense. Thats like people who sue Limewire or Bearshare creators these people created a program that sends files peer-to-peer nothing more. Its the people that steal the music that should be sued. Same thing here why sue the creator he hasnt done anything that i can see wrong but make money on lazy people which is good buisness. Also if they suceeded in stoping him all he would have to do is change is site a little and make portions of the program "Opensource" and says its for "Educational" perpuses. There are many more boting programs such as Openbot, WoWBot, EpicsBot, and many many more.