Blizzard Sues Michael Donnelly Over his WoW Glider Bot

[pt]

bots are quite helpfull to noobs in eve, specially mining bots, they have a bunch of ships dropping ore into a can that i'm stealing

[Azazel]

Lol Eve Is A Little Different Though...if I Remember Correctly You Could Lever You Character To Progress Whilst You Log Off

[Kreij]

It's not about whether this person's bot ruin the game. It's about whether this person broke the law by creating and selling his software.

If not, he should walk. If he did, he should pay.

Your, or anyone elses gaming experience has nothing to do with it.

[a111087]

thats what i was using to bot... until i got banned

[pt]

Originally Posted by azazel

Lol Eve Is A Little Different Though...if I Remember Correctly You Could Lever You Character To Progress Whilst You Log Off

yes, but u could also use scripts to auto-mine while u logged off, the programms are just not fast enough to shoot u in the ass as soon as u steal them

[Morgoth]

i know a lineage 2 server where its legal to use bot's and its great

[Azazel]

Originally Posted by Morgoth

i know a lineage 2 server where its legal to use bot's and its great

lineage 2 dont allow you to use bots...but the ncsoft don't care cos most l2 players use bots...if they banned people for using bots no one would play

[Azazel]

Originally Posted by Kreij

It's not about whether this person's bot ruin the game. It's about whether this person broke the law by creating and selling his software.

If not, he should walk. If he did, he should pay.

Your, or anyone elses gaming experience has nothing to do with it.

using bots is illegal in WoW and will get you banned

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by azazel

using bots is illegal in WoW and will get you banned

BOTS? Heck, I've seen people complain of bans because they used scripts. I thought that was a bit based on using them for macro functions of your character, etc.

But the Glider Bot has been out for a long time now. Many have been banned for using it and made some lame excuse to vent in the forums. That's how I come to know about it. Back then most pointed fingers, laughed then the threads would just die.

In any case the Terms of Use appears to be violated and could lead to civil suit even if no criminal action can be proven. IMO all Blizzard has to do is show that this bot caused harm to the Wow environment or something alone those lines IMO.

[btarunr]

Originally Posted by Solaris17

i hope blizzard fails...this guy may ruin the game experiance to the characters his comes in contact with but WoW ruins lives.

^One guy read my mind.

[nguyenpeter76]

although i dont even play wow, i hope blizzard win this case. hacks, bots, etc. are so annoying. seeing them everyday in games i play (starcraft, counterstrike 1.6, cod4)

[thoughtdisorder]

Regardless of anything else, Blizzard probably will not win this one. Either way, both parties win because of the publicity....

[ex_reven]

Originally Posted by EastCoasthandle

BOTS? Heck, I've seen people complain of bans because they used scripts. I thought that was a bit based on using them for macro functions of your character, etc.

But the Glider Bot has been out for a long time now. Many have been banned for using it and made some lame excuse to vent in the forums. That's how I come to know about it. Back then most pointed fingers, laughed then the threads would just die.

In any case the Terms of Use appears to be violated and could lead to civil suit even if no criminal action can be proven. IMO all Blizzard has to do is show that this bot caused harm to the Wow environment or something alone those lines IMO.

Well said. Also - dont most bots and scripts for cheating in games require the programmer to reverse engineer the game? Further violating terms of service?

[thoughtdisorder]

Originally Posted by ex_reven

Well said. Also - dont most bots and scripts for cheating in games require the programmer to reverse engineer the game? Further violating terms of service?

Yes, pretty much. Excellent point. It will be most interesting to see how this plays out......

[nguyenpeter76]

Originally Posted by thoughtdisorder

Regardless of anything else, Blizzard probably will not win this one. Either way, both parties win because of the publicity....

well if blizzard loses the public will know that bots arent "illegal" so they will be encouraged to buy it...

[tkpenalty]

It is illegal, not only because he is creating this, not only because hes reverse engineering this, its the fact that hes making a profit from intellectual property that he doesnt own.

[Ravenas]

In wow bots are ruining the economy. If anyone here played daoc in the past they remember how almost everyone had a bot following them around giving that player buffs, if you didn't have a bot you were at an unfair disadvantage.

Needless to say i hate bots.

[ex_reven]

Originally Posted by Ravenas

In wow bots are ruining the economy. If anyone here played daoc in the past they remember how almost everyone had a bot following them around giving that player buffs, if you didn't have a bot you were at an unfair disadvantage.

Needless to say i hate bots.

Its actually amazing as to how far the effect of botting spreads. The effects are so noticible that they did a write up in Time magazine about how the US Government is considering the taxation of revenue earned within the game. lol

[XooM]

ATTENTION READERS OF THIS THREAD:
This lawsuit is old. really really old. a year and a half old.

Guess what it has amounted to so far? nothing.
Guess what it'll continue to amount to? nothing.
Sad that a year and a half old not-particularly-interesting lawsuit is just getting passed off as news. Oh well, free advertising for mmoglider i guess.
Move along...


As far as the illegality of mmoglider: there is effectively none. in fact, all of the illegality is on blizzard's end, due to their use of a tool known as "warden" which actively scans your RAM and potentially elsewhere to view what else is running on your computer. mmoglider in no way reverse engineers warden to subvert it; there is a bot that does that (ISXWarden) but a recent warden update broke that, and i'm not sure if it's been resolved yet. As far as how mmoglider works, it reads some information from the RAM that WoW is using in order to know where you are (it has its own x/y/z system), your health/mana/rage/energy, your target's name and stuff, and generally nearby objects (ie NPCs). From there, it essentially emulates keypresses and mouse usage and sends them to WoW. glider's avoidance of detection consists primarily of a rootkit in which it hides, and a tripwire system that lets it know if its being spied upon (basically keeps an eye on warden and makes sure to stay in the shadows)
While it'd be nice to see Blizzard get countersued for the trojan/spyware that is Warden, MDY Industries doesn't appear to be interested in doing so.

As for bots ruining the economy: not really... without them, prices would be significantly higher across the board for pretty much everything, and fluctuations would be significantly larger due to a smaller supply to the same demand.

In any case, reverse-engineering is legal. Writing software is legal. Violation of a ToS is not illegal.

And to the person that's going to reference the portion of the ToS where it says that you give permission to blizzard to snoop your computer with warden: i don't care. Clicking the accept button does not constitute a legal agreement and warden is still illegal.

[Darknova]

Originally Posted by XooM

Violation of a ToS is not illegal.

Thank you. There is no criminal act accomplished by violating the TOS. It does allow the company to cut you off and refuse to allow you entry to their servers, it does not allow them to take you to court and sue your ass off.

Michael Donnelly just has to appear in court to win. There is no legal ground for Blizz to stand on. All it does is violate TOS, there is no copyrighted info in it's programming, it is his own work, so he can legally sell it, and if people are stupid enough to buy it, well then it's THEIR fault not his.

Circumvention of "Warden" maybe a violation of TOS, so again, NOT illegal.

This will get laughed out of court.

[DanielF50]

Originally Posted by Darknova

Thank you. There is no criminal act accomplished by violating the TOS. It does allow the company to cut you off and refuse to allow you entry to their servers, it does not allow them to take you to court and sue your ass off.

Michael Donnelly just has to appear in court to win. There is no legal ground for Blizz to stand on. All it does is violate TOS, there is no copyrighted info in it's programming, it is his own work, so he can legally sell it, and if people are stupid enough to buy it, well then it's THEIR fault not his.

Circumvention of "Warden" maybe a violation of TOS, so again, NOT illegal.

This will get laughed out of court.

Way too true, a ToS is not a legal obligation. So breaking it, is not illegal...

People just dont understand that -.-

I hope Michael wins tbh, my friend has used this, he HAD 6 accounts (and a uber pc), he had 6 level 70's by the time he stoped using it, and has never been told to stop using it by blizzard (even though hes been reported by goodie goodies? GM's do nothing)

This lawsuit fails.

Daniel

[qwerty_lesh]

WoW is murder

[DanielF50]

Also, http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=25834

Daniel

[Azazel]

why is everyone blaming blizzard for making a good game...its no there fault that some players cant control themselves...WoW is as casual as any mmo can be

Any type of "bot" in any game, unless made/provided by and used only by the server should be considered a cheat.

I have no idéa what so ever as of how the bot works. But if it works like all other "bots", then it is scanning the server to retrieve info. This sort of sick sh*t belongs to people who's clan tag is "MPC|"....