So...Blizzard suffers $18 million loss per annum....and the 'guilty party' is worth 2.8.

Looks like he's going to have to be melted down for Yak Fat to get much more than that....

What are you talking about?  I play multiplayer games all the time without paying a monthly fee! In fact I play MMOs alot without a monthly fee (won't play one with a fee) such as Guild Wars, Archlord, Runescape, Fury, 9 Dragons and those are the ones I have played there is a long list of other free MMOs and more release all the time, but either way you are flat out wrong multiplayer is alive and well and still free, cheaters (oh my) or not.   At least this is true on the planet I call Earth!

This has to be the worst of all, total speculation how someone can claim this is beyond me.  So they are assuming that all these subscribers that were to damn lazy to play the game and cheated would have played it for seven more months with out Glider?  I somehow find that unlikly some yes but not all.  Unless you can prove it sorry Blizzard no money for you!

Wow several thousand users complained about Glider out of over 10 Million seems like proof to me.  No mention of whether these were all unique or the same users.  So let me see a well known bot gets all the complaints wow, sounds to me like another bot could be seen as Glider by a player, again no proof just cojecture.

Well I would believe that if I couldn't do a google search and find loads of cheats and bots for WOW.  Some expert that guy was must not have heard of Google.  Also correlation does not equal causation, I saw nothing in there where Blizzard showed anything other than wild speculation in regard to this point.  Sounds like they are trying to get all there losses covered by this guy whether or not he caused them.

"The particular cheat in question, as I understand it, doesn't modify anything. It basically just plays the game for you."

What..what...wait....this cheater is a pretty smart dude. Getting a program to do WoW for you, meaning, he doesn't have to be in front of the thing for grind fest. I say that is pretty good deal. I think whomever the judge that hand out the judgement should try his/her hand on WoW for a few months, maybe then, that judge will change the ruling in the cheater's favor

I thought the whole idea of playing a game was to play the game    Must have missed something somewhere... 

They may not have disclosed the exact methods for obtaining the numbers to the public, but I'm sure that in court they did indeed show that their methods are not "mere speculation."



I don't know. I don't seem to have access to the "Castronova Supplemental" referred to by Blizzard, which would contain the exact methods and reasoning for the numbers. It's probably sealed information.

In a court of law, however, I would say that this is not assumed without reason, and the supplemental they referred to likely contains all of the reasons for this being a valid assumption.

Sorry, but I only have access to the documentation that is available to the public.



I seriously doubt it. I've been playing WoW for several months, and I still hate cheaters with a passion.

It's not a good deal: It gives the owner of the bot an unfair advantage.



Several hundred thousand. You're off by a rather large factor. That's about 5% of their entire consumer base. If 5% of my users complained about something, you'd bet I wouldn't ignore them!



Again, the precise figures and methodologies for obtaining them do not seem to be available to the general public. It's very well possible they have all of the proof they need. You are only assuming they don't.

In addition, the judge hasn't ruled on the damages yet, so we don't know how much he is accepting. We probably won't see much more about this case until September.

WIlly,

What on earth does the EULA have to do with the copyright? Maybe I'm missing something; honestly, I don't read EULAs very much. Nevertheless, I don't see how a violation of a ToS or EULA constitutes a breach of copyright law, and that was my original point regarding the question of copyright law.

Fuzzy,

I think, questions of legality aside, this is the main argument for not using bots. If you don't like playing WoW, why are you ponying up the $15 US a month for the privilege of doing so?

I've played a number of games that tout replayability as a feature, but there are very few games that I've actually replayed all the way through (mostly older single-player RPGs). So if the argument is that you want to replay it without "replaying" it, then that says to me that you must not have enjoyed it that much the first time through.

That $18 million is only what they estimate from people quitting in disgust. If you add in lost revenue from banned players and money spent combatting Glider, it's closer to $30 million.



That number was based on the average amount of time to get a level 50 character. By Blizzard's estimate, it takes a typical player 8 months to reach level 50, compared to the bot doing it for you in less than one month.

This seems inflated to me, as well - simply because it doesn't account for what percentage of those banned bought another copy and got right back into it.



First, not all data is being released to the public.

Second, the expert was commenting on USABLE bots - ones that are nearly undetectable.

Third, MDY agrees that Glider is responsible for most of Blizzard's bot-related expenses. When even the offender admits they're causing the problem, the facts aren't really in dispute any more.



Legally, the act of loading a game from your hard drive into RAM constitutes copying the game. Under normal playing conditions, the user has the company's permission to do this, so the copying does not constitute infringement.

However, if the EULA has been broken the user no longer has the company's permission to copy the game in this manner. Once the user's EULA-granted privledges have been revoked, loading the game becomes an act of illegal copying. This is not new to this decision, there are several precedents on exactly this issue.

Started a new character 1 month ago. Hit level 50 this week.
To take 8 months would be weekend playing only and then only a few short hours at a time.
Still, that's 8 months of subscription regardless.




You bet your ass they would have! Do YOU have a WoW account? If so, you would understand.

I know a few people that have got busted using a bot. They got banned and went out and purchased another copy of the game and had to start from square 1 again. You can bet that they will not be using any bots again too.
Not all people would go to that extreme though.

WoW has become much more than the average MMORPG. I know of entire families from Great Grandma on down that play. It's much larger and deeper than you realize, almost to a sick extreme.
Blizzard has alway had problems with asswipes trying to cheat the system since Warcraft I. I certainly don't blame them at all for putting this guys family jewels in the legal vise either. Perhaps it will motivate other crack developers to think twice (or at least not be so stupid as to charge people for the crack).

Its times like this that I REALLY appreciate CCP(makers of EVE). Dont they fly up selected players to discuss policy with?

IIRC, they based the 8 months on 480 hours of gameplay to get a brand new character to level 50 without outside assistance (gear, money, etc from another player/character), playing about 2 hours a day. The bot can do the same in 3 weeks, assuming uninterrupted play.

On the contrary, since WoW is a subscription game, damage to other players means canceled subscriptions, which means damage to Blizzard.

That's why Blizzard's case includes complaints from 400,000 accounts about this. If damage to players was irrelevant, those complaints would be irrelevant.



Figure that for every customer that complains, approximately ten do not. 465,000 complaints means 4,650,000 people aren't complaining, but are unhappy. I think the total number of players in the US and EU comes to approximately 5-6 million, so odds are good that the majority is unhappy with this.

Also, the average WoW player subscribes for 7 months. A lot of players who would play normally otherwise give glider a try and get banned.

Sorry but without the same documentation you are saying I am missing you are only assuming also.  Which is what this whole thread is about!

Sorry I think you need to reread or read for the first time, as even the court doc says in the footnotes "While not all complaints specifically reference Glider, several thousand do, reflecting Glider’s status as the most well-known bot in the WoW universe.  (SOF ¶ 226)." so again it was not several hundered thousand it was only several thousand!  Large difference.  Also I never said Blizzard shoud ignore them I just said they should continue to ban user not sue.

First that means you are assuming just like me!

Second I thought all bots were harmful sounds like they are using this one to gain back for the ones that aren't as well known also.

Third the key word is most!  that means there are others, and you say that this is the only one and should pay for everything is wrong!

Not only that but how do they know these subscribers would have continued playing if they couldn't cheat?  I am sure some would but come on you can't know that for sure period.