Wowglider forced landing

[Mrbloodworth]

Another classic example of Abagadro coming in and dominating with a clear synopsis of the issue, and everyone else ignoring him and continuing to rabble rabble rabble. 

Yeah, but he uses all those big words. 

[HaemishM]

If you can prop up your bad design in court why would anyone make anything other than a Shiny Diku?  Unless it, like mob XYZ coordinates and gold pieces are the sole property of Blizzard (long history of making shiny clones for the mass market).  If this ruling stands it curtails the natural market forces of innovation and investment for the industry in general.  But that's ok, we like Diku.  Alot.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we're getting that anyway. We were getting that before this ruling, and we're going to be getting it for a while still.

Diku sells... because people are fucking idiots and most MMOG developers are clueless halfwits with fuckfinger design skills and delusions of grandeur. Present company excluded of course.

[Lightstalker]

Alternatively, how much would it have cost for Blizzard to buy this program and release their own, more beneficial-to-WoW version? Draconian enforcement isn't the only way to deal with these kind of issues.

A lot less now that they've won this case.

[Triforcer]

Bleh.  Why don't I ever get to write fun cases like this?  I guaranteed the judge here had no fucking idea what WoW was.  It was probably written by a clerk that was keylogged 

[UnSub]

If a third party is meeting demand for your game, look at what demand they are meeting and offer the same services.

WoWGlider allowed players to bot their characters to where they wanted to be. If WoW offered the same service - instant powerleveling for $2 per level, say - that was officially sanctioned while also cracking down on the competition, there would not be the same problem.

Alternatively, how much would it have cost for Blizzard to buy this program and release their own, more beneficial-to-WoW version? Draconian enforcement isn't the only way to deal with these kind of issues.

Do you have an idea of how many "pure souls" would quit WoW on the spot if something like that should ever happen? On the contrary, same pure souls are so happy that the Blizzard Tank steamrolled what they see as cheaters and cheat producing companies. That's the reason why Blizz sued in the first place, not because they felt "hurt" in their pride/copyright by the bots. If selling bots or levels could earn Blizz more money than forbidding it, they would have followed your suggestion ages ago.

I've got no idea how many 'pure souls' WoW has. I've also go no idea how many people used WoWGlider, but I'm guessing a lot.

Please don't rise to defend poor innocent Blizzard here. They have in the past launched lawsuits at anyone they see as stepping on their turf. Gold famers / external RMTers who used bots to maximise their returns are the target here, which is exactly where Blizzard feels 'hurt'.

That WoWGlider potentially does have some legitimate uses - such as by the handicapped - is overshadowed by its gold farming use. That Blizzard has shut that door to those players means very little to them.

At the moment Blizzard is very happy with the sub model. Moving to a combined sub+micro trans model would take some internal changes, but why bother for a MMO that's brining in $1.2 billion per year?

I wonder what impact this finding is going to have on third-party apps further down the line. It would seem that any RAM-accessing third party app that a company sees as violating the license of their game is now open for legal action on these grounds.

[Murgos]

Meh, as I alluded to earlier, there are lots of legitimate reasons why one parties data may be read off a disk, manipulated and written somewhere else without the data creator ever being asked for permission.  If the crux of the case is that some segment of Blizzard code got read and manipulated into a second set of code without Blizzards permission then the whole thing is a sham.

Go ahead, Zip a file, I dare you.

Is Blizzard supposed to annotate the EULA with every exception to their copyright?  How is that even a reasonable concept?

Maybe I don't understand the ruling, judges tend to be fairly clever, but I don't like the way this smells.

[lamaros]

Have any of you people actually been to court?

I'm just speculating seeing how I live in a different country with a different legal system, but I've been to court, read about different cases from here and the US, and I can assure you that expecting some sort of fair or reasonably ruling in every case is just stupid. Which is not to say that this ruling was or was not reasonable, I have no idea on that score.

The point, in my laymans position: This case is not a big deal, it's just some small fry getting smashed by a big company and inevitably losing. Don't bother trying to break down if he should or shouldn't have lost. There is a lot more money to be earned by lawyers before any position on the "legitimate reasons why one parties data may be read off a disk" is determined.

[UnSub]

The point, in my laymans position: This case is not a big deal, it's just some small fry getting smashed by a big company and inevitably losing.

The problem is that such things create precedent. Afaik, the area of third party apps, EULAs, TOSs and how they interact is a bit of a grey area. Well, some of that grey has been stripped away in favour of saying "The vendor sets the license". It has a much wider potential impact that just stopping gold farming for RL cash (which the industry could do a lot to stamp out if it was willing to take a more pragmatic view over an ideological one).

[lamaros]

The point, in my laymans position: This case is not a big deal, it's just some small fry getting smashed by a big company and inevitably losing.

The problem is that such things create precedent. Afaik, the area of third party apps, EULAs, TOSs and how they interact is a bit of a grey area. Well, some of that grey has been stripped away in favour of saying "The vendor sets the license". It has a much wider potential impact that just stopping gold farming for RL cash (which the industry could do a lot to stamp out if it was willing to take a more pragmatic view over an ideological one).

From my limited reading around the place this thing sets jack all precedent.

[robusticus]

If you can prop up your bad design in court why would anyone make anything other than a Shiny Diku?  Unless it, like mob XYZ coordinates and gold pieces are the sole property of Blizzard (long history of making shiny clones for the mass market).  If this ruling stands it curtails the natural market forces of innovation and investment for the industry in general.  But that's ok, we like Diku.  Alot.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we're getting that anyway. We were getting that before this ruling, and we're going to be getting it for a while still.

Diku sells... because people are fucking idiots and most MMOG developers are clueless halfwits with fuckfinger design skills and delusions of grandeur. Present company excluded of course.

I have.  But now instead of them scratching their heads going "huh, maybe we should come up with something people don't hate so bad they automate it" they just transfer the blame to the "exploiters" and the "cheaters", calling their lawyers, suing 30% of their market and neglecting the rest of the potential market.

Just sayin', people who think this is any kind of good are just rationalizing in a bad way.

[Falconeer]

Please don't rise to defend poor innocent Blizzard here.

I wasn't, I won't. I don't like Blizzard.

[Merusk]

I have.  But now instead of them scratching their heads going "huh, maybe we should come up with something people don't hate so bad they automate it" they just transfer the blame to the "exploiters" and the "cheaters", calling their lawyers, suing 30% of their market and neglecting the rest of the potential market.

Just sayin', people who think this is any kind of good are just rationalizing in a bad way.

Your position holds if the majority are botting, like L2.  The majority aren't botting in WoW, it's not even your fantastic 30%.  Again, some people LIKE DIKU. Just because you don't, doesn't mean everything about it is shit. 

[IainC]

I have.  But now instead of them scratching their heads going "huh, maybe we should come up with something people don't hate so bad they automate it" they just transfer the blame to the "exploiters" and the "cheaters", calling their lawyers, suing 30% of their market and neglecting the rest of the potential market.

Just sayin', people who think this is any kind of good are just rationalizing in a bad way.

It doesn't matter how fun it was or how super-awesome the gameplay was, there will always be people who will automate it regardless. WoW is designed around a reasonably long haul to max level and sequentially shinier equipment sets after that. Apparently 12 million people just love that model. The 'if people want it then the developers should offer it themselves' argument is a very weak one because doing what the players want regardless of whether it's good for the game is never a great idea. Even if a lot of players want something it doesn't automatically make it a good idea. In this case completely turning the design decisions that underpin WoW would be a very odd call to make.

I'm not going to argue that games should be more fun, of course they should, I'm just saying that for some people it won't matter, they'll cheat anyway and for a game like WoW, 'some people' becomes 'a fuckton of people' when you're scaling up to the sorts of numbers they deal with.

[Numtini]

But now instead of them scratching their heads going "huh, maybe we should come up with something people don't hate so bad they automate it" they just transfer the blame to the "exploiters" and the "cheaters", calling their lawyers, suing 30% of their market and neglecting the rest of the potential market.

The Hand of God goal clearly shows that FIFA is in the wrong for forcing those poor oppressed football palyers to not use their hands. They need to cater to that market. Likewise Bucky Dent's corked bat, proves that the MLB is a big old nasty bad company for not rethinking their game if the game is so horrible that players resort to cheating.

If there is credit card or other personal information available that hackers can potentially get their hands on through a video game, the government sure as fuck has a responsibility to protect videogames from hackers.

Actually a friend tells me a WOW account is worth more than a credit card number on the hacker market these days.

[Falconeer]

The Hand of God goal clearly shows that FIFA is in the wrong for forcing those poor oppressed football palyers to not use their hands.

 

[robusticus]

I have.  But now instead of them scratching their heads going "huh, maybe we should come up with something people don't hate so bad they automate it" they just transfer the blame to the "exploiters" and the "cheaters", calling their lawyers, suing 30% of their market and neglecting the rest of the potential market.

Just sayin', people who think this is any kind of good are just rationalizing in a bad way.

Your position holds if the majority are botting, like L2.  The majority aren't botting in WoW, it's not even your fantastic 30%.  Again, some people LIKE DIKU. Just because you don't, doesn't mean everything about it is shit. 

The 30% number includes RMT, which, right, it shouldn't, because it's not all about that.  Lumping in the Peons4Hire federal suit and the IGE class action suit.

I did like Diku.  The first 100 days of it.  I would still like it if botting weren't against the ToS.

I think the big problem here is people consider it cheating.  I don't.  It doesn't give you super strength or super speed or perfect aim or anything.  But people want to feel like they are FIFA stars or MLB stars playing with 12 million other stars.  So if it takes a court verdict to make your achievements real, or to make cashing out more lucrative, more power to ya.

[robusticus]

I have.  But now instead of them scratching their heads going "huh, maybe we should come up with something people don't hate so bad they automate it" they just transfer the blame to the "exploiters" and the "cheaters", calling their lawyers, suing 30% of their market and neglecting the rest of the potential market.

Just sayin', people who think this is any kind of good are just rationalizing in a bad way.

Even if a lot of players want something it doesn't automatically make it a good idea. In this case completely turning the design decisions that underpin WoW would be a very odd call to make.

I've heard that before.  But I don't buy it because gamers are the most sophisticated set of users ever.  Game communities far outpower their developers almost immediately when a game is launched.  This problem isn't going to be solved by game companies, it will be solved by the community.  Rulings like this do not encourage anybody to do anything to help.

[Lightstalker]

I have.  But now instead of them scratching their heads going "huh, maybe we should come up with something people don't hate so bad they automate it" they just transfer the blame to the "exploiters" and the "cheaters", calling their lawyers, suing 30% of their market and neglecting the rest of the potential market.

Just sayin', people who think this is any kind of good are just rationalizing in a bad way.

Even if a lot of players want something it doesn't automatically make it a good idea. In this case completely turning the design decisions that underpin WoW would be a very odd call to make.

I've heard that before.  But I don't buy it because gamers are the most sophisticated set of users ever.  Game communities far outpower their developers almost immediately when a game is launched.  This problem isn't going to be solved by game companies, it will be solved by the community.  Rulings like this do not encourage anybody to do anything to help.

 

[HaemishM]

But I don't buy it because gamers are the most sophisticated set of users ever. 

BWAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


*pant pant pant*

This problem isn't going to be solved by game companies, it will be solved by the community. 

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

You slay me. Really, you do. 

[Morat20]

But I don't buy it because gamers are the most sophisticated set of users ever. 

Oh god, that's good stuff there.

Have you fucking MET gamers? Apparently not.

Most gamers would make the world's shittiest game developers.

[dusematic]

What a charming idealist. 

[robusticus]

But I don't buy it because gamers are the most sophisticated set of users ever. 

Oh god, that's good stuff there.

Have you fucking MET gamers? Apparently not.

Most gamers would make the world's shittiest game developers.

Yeah, one or two.  You're probably right, we are just a pack of whiny curs that never amounted to anything.

Still, I think amateurs make better games.  Because they don't have the pressure to grub quarters with the same tired boy-band formula they've been using for years.  Wasn't necessarily talking about that, though - more the third party developers.

Idealist?  Nah, I don't think for a minute if you take people's tools away they will "reform" and continue paying you.  It's a strong addiction but it ain't nicotine or heroin we're talking about here.

Happy to have been able to entertain you all for at least today, anyway.

[apocrypha]

*raises hand*

I like good DIKU. Doesn't mean I don't want the genre toe evolve. Doesn't mean I'll happily swallow any old shit in the name of it. But I've been playing WoW on and off for like years now. And I fucking hate botters. I hate trying to level a character in, for instance, Nagrand, and some fuckwank hunter bots are farming the bloody clefthoofs and have been there every single hour of every single day for weeks.

So I'm pleased to see wowglider lose this case. If it means less bots pissing me off damn right I'm pleased. If it means the ores and skins and flowers my girlfriend collects on her lowbie chars (she got a level 60 last week, her first after 2 years of playing) sell on the AH for reasonable money instead of being constantly undercut by bot alts then yeah, damn right I'm happy about it.

Bots probably have the least impact on the hardcore players and the MOST impact on the players that Blizzard have brought into the MMORPG genre that nobody else ever managed to - the first-time gamers and the total newbies. Whatever the specifics of the court case are (insert my usual rabid anti-capitalist rant about just who's courts are they anyway blah blah) I really couldn't care less. If it means less botters infesting the game in the end then I say GOOD.

[El Gallo]

I can't imagine a clearer case of tortious interference.  If "I'll sell you something I designed for the sole purpose of helping you breach your contract with Blizzard" isn't tortious interference, the tort would no longer exist.

I know jack about copyright law, but that ruling seems reasonable to me.  There is some concern about the ease of turning contract breaches into copyright violations, but there are important countervailing interests as well (you wouldn't want to make it impossible to lease a copyright without waiving copyright protection entirely) and it seems sensible to say the latter outweigh the former in this particular case.  On the plus side there's a new way of identifying people who know nothing about law every time an IP issue arises on the Internet. I think "COPY TO RAM" will soon earn a place in the pantheon along with "EULAs aren't contracts" and all the catchphrases that developed during the Napster era.

[MahrinSkel]

Bots probably have the least impact on the hardcore players and the MOST impact on the players that Blizzard have brought into the MMORPG genre that nobody else ever managed to - the first-time gamers and the total newbies.

Everybody keeps saying this, but it's just not true.  The best independant information available indicates that WoW players are pretty much like EQ or DAoC players, what WoW brought in a big way were a lot of single player gamers who were drawn by the Blizzard and Warcraft brands.  If you project overall market growth for the US/European market, WoW-based growth beat the established trend by about 9-12 months.  The simple fact is that it was time for a million-player game, and if WoW had never existed EQ2 would have hit around 2M.

From the survey data, the average age of the WoW player is 28.3 (SD = 8.4). 84% of players are male. 16% are female. Female players are significantly older (M = 32.5, SD = 10.0) than male players (M = 28.0, SD = 8.4). On average, they spend 22.7 (SD = 14.1) hours per week playing WoW. There are no gender differences in hours played per week.

--Dave

[El Gallo]

Bots probably have the least impact on the hardcore players and the MOST impact on the players that Blizzard have brought into the MMORPG genre that nobody else ever managed to - the first-time gamers and the total newbies.

Everybody keeps saying this, but it's just not true.  The best independant information available indicates that WoW players are pretty much like EQ or DAoC players, what WoW brought in a big way were a lot of single player gamers who were drawn by the Blizzard and Warcraft brands.  If you project overall market growth for the US/European market, WoW-based growth beat the established trend by about 9-12 months.  The simple fact is that it was time for a million-player game, and if WoW had never existed EQ2 would have hit around 2M.

From the survey data, the average age of the WoW player is 28.3 (SD = 8.4). 84% of players are male. 16% are female. Female players are significantly older (M = 32.5, SD = 10.0) than male players (M = 28.0, SD = 8.4). On average, they spend 22.7 (SD = 14.1) hours per week playing WoW. There are no gender differences in hours played per week.

--Dave

I have trouble believing that's true. It's a counterfactual, so we'll never know for sure. But one of the reasons WoW won over so many single-player gamers is that WoW is comparable in production values (and even in gameplay) to a decent single-player game even when evaluated as a single-player game.  That might be true of EQ2 now, but it sure wasn't on launch day.  EQ2 had shit word-of-mouth because it was a shitty game when it was released.  Given the lack of any evidence (that I'm aware) that a MMO of any significant size can recover from a launch like that, I don't think it's likely that EQ2 would have.

[sam, an eggplant]

So it was just "time for a million player game"? What do you base this on? Saying that EQ2 could have reached 2M is laughable. EQ2 was a deeply flawed game upon initial release.

There's no need to invent an invisible hand of the market to explain WoW's success. WoW succeeded and expanded the market as a whole because it's a great game. EQ2 didn't because it isn't.

[Merusk]

So it was just "time for a million player game"? What do you base this on? Saying that EQ2 could have reached 2M is laughable. EQ2 was a deeply flawed game upon initial release.

There's no need to invent an invisible hand of the market to explain WoW's success. WoW succeeded and expanded the market as a whole because it's a great game. EQ2 didn't because it isn't.

This is just what Devs say to make themselves feel better. It's been happening since '04, along with "Nobody can compete with Blizzard. They're just too good at what they do!"

 

[MahrinSkel]

So it was just "time for a million player game"? What do you base this on? Saying that EQ2 could have reached 2M is laughable. EQ2 was a deeply flawed game upon initial release.

There's no need to invent an invisible hand of the market to explain WoW's success. WoW succeeded and expanded the market as a whole because it's a great game. EQ2 didn't because it isn't.

The US/European MMO market has had 60% year over year growth at least as far back as UO (before that, you have discontinuity of business models, plus nobody was really keeping track).  Some games would beat the trend for a while, but this would be followed by plateaus.  This includes WoW, it beat the trend by a *lot*, but the plateau afterwards was also longer.  At the time of EQ2 and WoW's launch, the trend called for a 2M player game (US/Europe).  WoW doubled that, making a 4M player game (just counting US and European subs), followed by a 3 year plateau.

When you consider that the last 3 major US/European MMO launches have all had 1M+ people signed up for beta, it's obvious that the market is ready for another big game.  The game has to clear the competitive bar, and WoW does set the bar, but the first game that does so will clean up.

If EQ2 had not launched in the same window with WoW, it would not have been considered a failure even if the lack of competition had done *nothing* to increase its playerbase.  It did, after all, reach 250K paying pubs in the first quarter, something no other game had ever done, and although it was woefully short of content and unpolished compared to WoW, it did not compare badly with every other game on the market at the time.  What size a particular game reaches is indeed the result of the quality of that game, but only as evaluated in the context of the market it launches into (overall size, unsatisfied growth, and competition).

--Dave

[sam, an eggplant]

I follow your reasoning, but that trend is an artificial construct roughly describing a complex scenario with little context beyond sales figures (probably from SirBruce, right?), it certainly isn't the market itself, and its predictions while interesting are not necessarily accurate. Even without the WoW juggernaut EQ2 wouldn't have hit two million subscribers, because it wasn't a good game. I suppose if you say something like "a good but not great game released at the end of 2004 could have potentially hit 2m subscribers with no competition" I'd have to reply with something like "I guess, sure" but you need so many caveats to get there that it's lost all meaning.

AoC is a good but not great game released in spring 2008, and it only hit 500k subscribers. If your trend requires the game to surpass WoW in quality and polish to have a chance of beating it in subscriptions then... hey, wait uno momento... I think everybody agrees with that, right? And then we're back to "build a great game, there is no 2, profit".

[UnSub]

So it was just "time for a million player game"? What do you base this on? Saying that EQ2 could have reached 2M is laughable. EQ2 was a deeply flawed game upon initial release.

There's no need to invent an invisible hand of the market to explain WoW's success. WoW succeeded and expanded the market as a whole because it's a great game. EQ2 didn't because it isn't.

There were million+ player games in Asia before WoW came along. Are those "great games"?

And the "great game" theory misses out a huge number of factors, like: the publicity blitz Blizzard went on, that broadband in residential areas had hit decent numbers, that the barrier to play WoW was low (in computer specs and in its casual orientation), a solid release and a stack of other factors that include game design but aren't the only thing. WoW had a perfect wave to ride in on and has taken full advantage. Great games flop the same as mediocre games if the circumstances aren't right at release.

It's not the case to say that if WoW hadn't hit 2m players, then EQ2 would have. Something else may have risen to take its place though.

It's too early to say what is going to happen with AoC, but the fact its launch has suffered probably means it is going to have to spend a lot of time rebuilding its reputation and hope that those players come back (and some will). However, 500k subs in the first month isn't really something to sniff at - what sub figures followed WoW's first month, anyway?

[MahrinSkel]

So it was just "time for a million player game"? What do you base this on? Saying that EQ2 could have reached 2M is laughable. EQ2 was a deeply flawed game upon initial release.

There's no need to invent an invisible hand of the market to explain WoW's success. WoW succeeded and expanded the market as a whole because it's a great game. EQ2 didn't because it isn't.

There were million+ player games in Asia before WoW came along. Are those "great games"?

I believe Lineage 1 was the first game to break a million.  If anyone tries to tell me that was a "great game"....

There's a tendency to argue that success implies virtue, that if something is hugely successful, it's because of some inherent superiority of nature.  Well, WoW was a better game than EQ2 in many ways, but what it really had going for it was huge branding and a shitpile of money to spend making it so polished and creating so much content.  Not that the designers at Blizzard weren't good, but they weren't supermen, either.  Without the money, the brand, and the timing, they simply couldn't have done nearly as well.

Admittedly, there's an elitist counter-current that anything that is hugely successful is automatically crap.  That's equally idiotic logic.

--Dave

[sam, an eggplant]

After reading that article about ZT online I feel pretty secure in saying that the asian market is totally alien and I'll never understand it, so for the sake of this thread lets just agree that they don't count.

[Valmorian]

Everybody keeps saying this, but it's just not true.

Maybe not in a statistical sense, but I personally knew about a half dozen people that never played an MMO before that are hooked on WoW.  Of those, half of them never played computer games.  I'm not saying that this is anything other than an anecdote, but to say that it isn't true that WoW brought non-gamers into an MMO is pretty much shot out of the water by my personal experience.

[Alkiera]

Everybody keeps saying this, but it's just not true.

Maybe not in a statistical sense, but  . . .  my personal experience.

Exactly.  Plural of anecdote != data.

I know several people who physically cannot play most modern videogames because they get nauseous watching 3D scenes in close areas (caves, hallways, tunnels, etc).  Statistically, they are insignificant, as the reasons these people don't play games are dwarfed by the numbers of people who are too busy, too serious, or too poor.

--
Alkiera