Blizzard Wins Legal Battle Against WoW Bot Company 285
New submitter gamersunited writes with news of Blizzard Entertainment's defeat of another company that created bot software to automate World of Warcraft characters. Ceiling Fan Software faces a judgment of $7 million, and must disable any active licenses for the software. They're also forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing the bot software, and from facilitating its continued use in any way. The court order (PDF) follows more than two years of legal wrangling. Blizzard won a similar judgment a few years ago against another bot company called MDY Industries, which created the popular Glider bot.
forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Only in the US where the ruling was made surely.
Is it enforceable elsewhere in the world?
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If they detect it, they can disable or delete the account using it. That doesn't completely stop its use, but it does mean that a lot of effort has been for naught for that player.
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Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't want to ban users. It drives away paying customers.
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"They don't want to ban users. It drives away paying customers."
And THIS doesn't???
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Botting is evil incarnate, and anyone that quits because they can't bot anymore is a welcome loss.
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Put it this way: Blizzard is an entertainment company. They have a lot of paying customers who play their game 'by the rules' and enjoy doing so. It is less entertaining for their players/customers if there are other people manipulating the game with automated functionality.
If someone showed up at a bowling alley, entered in a tournament, and just ran down the lane and kicked over the pins, a bowling alley operator would be similarly justified in throwing them out.
People who actually play WoW find bots annoying.
If your form of enjoyment is hacking other people's games, why not show up at golf courses with All Terrain Vehicles? It's certainly more extreme. If you like cheating and coding, perhaps write a solitaire game that cheats for you.
Bad analogy is bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I accept that Blizzard is an entertainment company. I like that they put effort into protecting the game experience of their customers. I don't even play and I appreciate that a company will go to court and fight to ensure that the service they offer be as fair as they can make it. If I was at a golf course and someone was messing up the carefully maintained surface with ATVs, I'd be happy when the course owners banned them. If I was playing competitive online solitarie and someone found a way to have a computer make their moves for them rather than play fairly, I'd be happy when they were banned.
I'm okay with a judge saying that you cannot break the terms of service (which I assume they did.) Up to that point, I feel like we're in agreement.
However, the software I build myself on my own computer is mine and I believe I have a right to use it on my computer, or sell it or open source it as a basic free speech right. So long as what I do on my machine or contracts I enter into that allow other people to use the software doesn't interact with Blizzard, my rights should be protected. I haven't read the TOS of WoW, but I doubt there is any clause that says anything like "by agreeing to this, you also give us rights to anything you create which might be related to the service we offer."
That's where the ATV and solitare analogies don't make sense. If you wanted those analogies to be fair, you'd have to say that the ATVs were custom built for golf and those ATVs should be banned everywhere forever by law because they were used on one golf course. If I made a cheat friendly solitaire program, and used it to cheat, it is reasonable to ban me from using it on specific systems where the TOS disallow it, but to say that the program I wrote is itself illegal and can never be used, sold or given to anyone because it broke the rules on one system; that's just wrong.
I honestly hope that this judgement gets thrown out on an appeal or someone "hacks" into the computers of the developers and makes it open source, distributed from a server not under the jurisdiction of this court. I don't say that because I think the bots shouldn't be banned by Blizzard, I think they should be. I think the court would be reasonable to say that using them is breaking the TOS and anyone doing so is subject to the terms they've agreed to in order to use Blizzard's servers. However, I think that banning the sale or open sourcing of software that someone creates which is an original work is morally and ethically wrong and I hope that for that reason, that part of the judgment will be overturned or clearly demonstrated to be worthless.
Re:Bad analogy is bad (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't read the TOS of WoW, but I doubt there is any clause that says anything like "by agreeing to this, you also give us rights to anything you create which might be related to the service we offer."
I'm pretty sure it says precisely that. Or at least 'You agree to only interact with our software in approved ways". Which, for a multiplayer game, seems like a pretty reasonable restriction.
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:4, Funny)
...If someone showed up at a bowling alley, entered in a tournament, and just ran down the lane and kicked over the pins...
I love your analogy, may I improve it?
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This is basically PVP stuff. Ie, competitions. Most players won't care, but the majority of PVP players strongly dislike anyone using software to essentially cheat. (just as with sports, the definition of "cheat" is variable and doesn't always follow logical rules but instead generally tries to create the least outrage from players and/or fans)
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I heard glider was good for leveling up too. Spend 30 minutes setting it up, and farm mobs for exp. Come back a couple
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I don't know really, I haven't been in WoW for years, I was just making a general observation about what I had seen in other games where people had used bots or accused others of it. And I have seen it accused of being used in PvP contexts.
It varies by community too. Some have zero tolerance for gold spam or farmers while other games have it rampant and the players aren't complaining.
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Why on earth would you do that? If you don't enjoy playing WoW, don't play it. Don't mess it up for other people.
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Getting rid of cheats makes normal customers applaud.
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I really hate this mentality. An account I had since the game launched became very loosely associated with botters a few months back (I was buying large quantities of herbs for a discount from someone who could have been a botter) and my account was permanently banned a couple weeks later for being associated with botting accounts. There were no blemishes on my account prior, but Blizzard didn't want my money enough to keep my account alive.
Clearly they do ban users for being in the botting scene (and apparently even those who buy unspecified quantities of materials from bots knowingly or not [guess we're just supposed to know deals are too good to be true or not, even though in retrospect I don't think the deal was that great at all])
The email they sent me sounded like a joke, at first, or a poor phishing attempt, because it basically seemed to allude to the idea that I didn't personally do anything wrong, but because I was, quote, "associated with World of Warcraft licenses that were closed for participating in exploitative activities", I was a threat that had to be put down as well. At the end they state "Engaging in or associating with exploitative activity violates the World of Warcraft Terms of Use." which means they can and will ban people who simply buy things from bots. I guess I just bought enough herbs from one that finally tripped Blizzard's threshold on my reasonable disbelief that the person wasn't a botter.
Whatever the case, I no longer have an account I had for 9 years and have spent a great deal of money on the service and supplemental services. If they didn't care about losing my business, I really doubt they care about losing others.
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Thats the point. Not a lot of effort for that player at all. :P
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Physically prevent it? They can't. However, releasing or transferring the software would be blatant and deliberate violation of a court order. That can carry jail time.
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Depends how big the company is I suppose, but honestly if it was just one or two guys who really own it, for $7mil I'd seriously consider just moving to China. You are not going to get arrested trying to flee the country from a civil suit, and China or some other country that won't care about that type of business. Moving could very well be more cost effective than losing $7mil and your income.
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:4, Informative)
Corporate personhood does not shield employers or employees from legal liability pertaining to their own actions. It simply shields investors from liability beyond their investment.
Point in case, Jeffrey Skilling is currently serving a 24 year prison sentence for actions that he took as the CEO of Enron.
ALl you need to do (Score:5, Interesting)
is label it an aid for disabled players. Get ADA, Blizzard won't stand a chance.
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is label it an aid for disabled players
People with the total locked-in syndrome also want to play!
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People with one arm, or Parkinson, or..well a great many.
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Except that the LUA system that blizzard uses already allows people with disabilities to play easily. In fact, there's no shortage of mods that make it easy to play for those who are colour blind, or can only use one arm. And not forgetting that you can buy no shortage of mice, or keyboards that are fully programmable to do everything you want.
There's no way that an automated gameplay element would stand on the ADA.
We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:5, Informative)
Blizzard sued my company in Germany and we are still trading. The reason is that Americans can't avoid the broad restrictions of the DMCA while Europeans are able to work within existing copyright and trademark law. The DMCA is simply a way of closing creative American companies so the business is done from overseas.
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Blizzard originally sued bot companies based on copyright. Now, they're suing based on violations of the EULA (end user license agreement) and TOS (terms of service). Bots violate both, plain and simple. Your company might get sued again, if Europeans laws support EULAs and TOSs.
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What if you use the clean room approach where the developers of the software never play the game and therefore need not agree to the EULA/TOS?
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Just add a disclaimer:
"This software is sold for educational purposes and its use on Blizzard's servers is strictly forbidden."
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably because Blizzard's ToS is written specifically to make such software difficult to write.
To be blunt, they don't like competition.
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:2)
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
"Your botting software is nothing but run-of-the-mill malware"
Umm, no. Run of the mill malware by definition is acting without the informed consent of the user. This botting software is running at the will of the user. So the comparison is utterly specious.
"Why is it so hard to write addon software that conforms to Blizz's ToS?"
Why is it so hard for Blizzard to write a system that does not effectively penalise those who obey their rules?
Now I have years of experience running multiplayer online games and I appreciate as you may not that the answer is actually quite complicated. It's not a trivial thing to do, but then again, Blizzard has raked in enormous sums of cash on this game, more than enough to have done it right and many times over. It's an enormous profit-centre and like all the big companies these days it seems to believe that it has a divine right to maintain that profit without working for it. They would rather write unenforceable rules and invoke state force as a bandaid than try to fix the problem because it's cheaper - at least for them, at least in the short term.
The state shouldnt allow itself to be used in this way, however.
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I'm confused... on the one hand you say that it's a difficult problem:
But then immediately assume because they've made piles of money... they could easily have done it?
While I've never played WoW... no have no opinion of Blizzard... breaking out the lawyers would seem to be a later stage thing to do, and only after taking
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:2)
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They have definitely attempted to tackle it at a technical level. Part of installing Blizzard games is giving consent for it to look for cheating programs. Support for macro keys such as found on Logitech keyboards has been broken numerous times (and I think is broken right now) as they allow a keyboard macro to perform exactly one action that would be performed as a player clicking a button. It can be a keypress combination (such as Alt-Shift-4 or whatever you have it mapped to), but especially for comb
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I never said anything about 'easily.' It's a very difficult problem. I am not saying there is a perfect solution either. But they arent even trying.
There are a lot of inter-related issues here but specifically the article is talking about botting. Basically botting just means automating repetitive tasks in the client. It's a very natural and predictable desire for anyone playing a game that involves a lot of repetitive tasks to find some way to automate them on the client-end, and if the client is a PC then
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That is 100% not malware bro.
If I run a program that makes my life easier at your expense, that is an exploit, a hack, or illegal automation.
Malware is when my dumbass friend got a fishingbot that ALSO hat malware on it, which compromised his account and lead to endless mocking (fishing in WoW is mindless but is not necessary nor highly profitable nor prestigious- he should never have risked his account for such foolery).
But anyway, a bot program isn't inherently malware. You might not like it, but that's
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So anything that can be used to cause adverse effects to other people, can be considered malware? That's a pretty broad definition.
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It is malware, because it adversely affects the gameplay of other players, who never consented to such software being used in the MMO they are playing.
Are WOW macros malware? How about macros in Word or Excel, ones that let person A do something with half the actual effort as person B?
How exactly does them using a bot affect your gameplay, other than frustrating you when others level or gear up faster? Bots aren't interactive, they're for the dull, grindy, repetitive sequences that make moderate amounts of gold or experience. Maybe the player doesn't respond if you try talking to them: does that hurt your feelings that much?
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:2)
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"by distorting the in game economy."
That just shows the WoW econimic model is broken. Also, you don't need to use the auction house to gain anything.
IT doesn't impact your game play at all, and it's AH impact helps you.
The fact that you don't like it does not make it malware. Fuck dude, malware has an actual definition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware [wikipedia.org]
Let me know when it attacks your computer.
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:2)
forbidden to open-source ? (Score:4, Insightful)
now that's messed up. although the source code could always be "stolen"...
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that would be hard, right ? :)
leave unpatched software here, root password in bash history there...
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In which case Blizzard goes to court asking the judge to hold the defendants in contempt for violating his/her order.
Defendant: "But the code was stolen, there was nothing we could have done!"
Judge: "Did you file a police report?'
Defendant: "No, we..."
Judge: "What steps did you take to prevent this kind of theft?"
Defendant: "Um..."
Judge: *gavel bang* "I find you in contempt of this court..."
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Yes.
Firewall security.
Seriously dude, try to think.
Grindfest (Score:4, Funny)
If you think World of Warcraft is a grindfest you obviously never played Final Fantasy XI.
Time for the torrents (Score:2)
Fight back!
I botted hard (Score:2, Insightful)
Bots are an awesome addition to the game in my opinion. It allows you to enjoy the fun parts of the game while not having to deal with all the monotonous portions needed to attain said fun. I didn't feel like having a serving l second full time job by playing wow. Bots make that possible.
They can't publish the source. but.... (Score:3)
In other words, they don't need to openly publish the source code to release it... they can just openly publish the methods that were utilized, and let other developers write their own bots in the language of their own choosing.
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[...]
E. Knowingly assisting, facilitating, or enabling any persons or entities, directly or indirectly, to engage in any of the activities prohibited by the foregoing Paragraphs 2(A) through 2(D); and
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What, and expect people to think while playing?
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What, and expect the kind of people who surrender their lives to MMORPGs like WoW to think while playing?
FTFY, yo.
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All game can be botted.
Studies show game that are a skinners box are the most profitable.
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The bots aren't necessarily playing the game in the way a human would. They're more likely doing some monotonous activity that can be used to get gold or items or whatever.
Re: Bottable == boring IMO (Score:5, Funny)
So... they're playing WoW?
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In the same sense that a computer program that moves a knight back and forth between two squares is playing chess, yes.
Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:5, Interesting)
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me. Studies have shown NP-hard problems are more fun, because they benefit from our natural ability to quickly choose a good path even if it isn't the absolute best. These kinds of challenges are harder to write bots for. So stop make your games less mindlessly boring and it's a win win for everyone.
As someone who used to play WoW. I can say that WoW, as most MMORPG's, has many difficult problems to solve in the game. Bots do simple mindless farming, they do not play every aspect of the game or compete against other players in PvP. I ran across a few bots while playing and I can say that they were easy to screw with. You could kill them or you could just kill what they were going to kill, and confuse the software a quite bit.
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Actually this isn't true of a good many private bots, I've seen PVP, BG, Coordinated Raids, Raid Assist, Chat AI integration, Shopping, Loot Management, Auction House Automation, and REALLY good nav built from reverse engineering the world geometry + applying dynamic pathing for Dynamic Game Objects (like boats). The ubiquitous high profile bots sucked in general, the really good ones people horde the source and binaries to.
- Source: Former WoW bot developer from the Pre-WotLK days leveraging the now-defunc
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It's basically cheap design from MMO makers. They know they need to keep players in the game and paying. Unlike single player games they can not just have an ending to the game, but they also can not just keep churning out new content every week (especially when some of these players chew through new content in less than a week). So the add some monotonous activity that keeps them logging in. Overall MMO game play is very simplistic compared to single player games, but people stick around for other reas
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But that's also the point...
Why make boring parts?
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Because if everything is equally cool, people will do the cool stuff that is easy instead of the cool stuff that is hard.
Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this insightful?
Botting is almost exclusively used for currency/rep/etc farming. It has nothing to do with "gameplay". And whether you personally think WOW end game content is complex enough is irrelevant because botters cannot run end game raids or many other forms of content undermining your whole argument.
And why do bots exist? Because "grinding" is the only way to gain large amounts of currency in a short amount of time. Gold farmers do it for cash. Players do it to shortcut themselves to the top and to avoid grinding.
This small part of the game content IS simplistic and CAN be botted. It is a hurdle/challenge/time sink/test of your endurance to overcome to advance your character. I, like most, HATE grinding with a vengeance. But I NEVER played WOW for the grind, I played in spite of it.
As a side note:
I multibox WOW (5 chars) for the additional challenge. (and believe me it is a LOT more of a challenge) I would now never play another MMO without being able to multibox because they are all too easy.
So I even agree with the idea of MMOs being way too easy to play - but still disagree with your post.
Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:5, Insightful)
" Gold farmers do it for cash."
Exactly. And Gold farmers in China are not easily impressed by US law.
Blizzard, fix your game to not suck. (Score:2)
Amen brother! But more specifically:
Bots exist because blizzard has created a market by writing software that wastes people's time. If they really wanted to put an end to botting, they would fix their crappy game so people don't have to engage in repetitive pointless tasks to max reputat
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They can go lawyer all over anyone who writes this software, but it costs a lot less to write a bot (in terms of time and resources) than it takes to sue someone out of existence. If the authors properly incorporated, then they can file for a new LLC for about $100, and be back in business by Friday. So, Blizzard == a pack of drooling idiots.
Unless the judge writes a clause into the judgement binding any successor companies founded by the same principals. Much like this judge did. So no, that wouldn't work because then they'd be facing charges for willful violation.
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Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:5, Interesting)
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me.
Ever played Fallout, Morrowind, or Skyrim on Xbox/PS3? You level up the sneak attribute by sneaking around which is basically crouching around and walking. People exploited this by putting rubber bands around the controller so the character would continuously crouch walk into a corner. That gameplay mechanic is pretty simplistic yet those games are amazing to play.
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In Daggerfall, I'd level up evocation by fireballing myself. With the magic absorption trait, you don't take any damage and it recharges your mana, so you can just sit there for hours.
And no, that's not the reason why the games are amazing. =)
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An example of a very bottable aspect of WoW is resource farming.
Design a bot that goes between known ore nodes and mines them. When bags are full go to the auction house and put it up for auction. Sell the gold for real money. This can go on 24/7 with a bot. This can be done with any gatherable resource in WoW.
The problems are as follows;
1. Node are unavailable for players actually playing the game
2. Auction house prices are driven down due to the abundance of auctions so it is not useful for real players t
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I got tired of that excuse when I played an MMO. "It's not my fault I've figured out how to cheat/exploit it's the fault of the developers for not being omniscient."
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Also I don't think botting is cheating/exploiting. It is more like getting your friend to play your account. It just happens your friend is a robot.
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I don't think you know what NP-Hard means.
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It's a prostate reference, right?
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Depends on what the bots do. Often bots exist merely to earn reputation points while the user is sleeping, or perform other highly repetitive actions. Thus reducing the overall grind necessary to get better gear or better ranks or pass some sort of gating. Then when actually engaging in PvP those players might not use any bot to assist.
Most MMOs are designed to keep players playing and paying and so they've often got some sort of illogical but repetitive action required for advancement (this is not a req
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I'm sorry, but pretty much any game in any genre can be automated for convenience. It doesn't make the game crappy or simplistic.
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I had great fun writing a crafting bot for EQ2, since it required fast matching of icons appearing on screen with actions to take, and a bit of strategy in doing so. Same experience: it kept me playing (and paying) for several more months than I would have otherwise.
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Re:Can't open source it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Their game relies on an ever growing "grind" of repetitive and simplistic tasks to progress.
No it does not. Repetitive simplistic tasks are one way of obtaining the resources (gold, experience, item tokens, ...), but they are far from being the primary way. In fact the only reason WoW is still as popular as it is, is because unlike almost every other MMO released since 2004, it is NOT a grindfest.
Experience points come from quest chains in the open world and in instanced dungeons, and those quest chains have an actual story that unfolds as you play. Gold is obtained as reward from quests, and looted from monsters, same as gear. Item tokens are rewarded by defeating dungeon and raid bosses, which require a team, and a strategy.
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
Re:Can't open source it? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
But you can argue that reward per hour, grinding is more efficient than doing challenging content in terms of the in game rewards.
I used to play EQ1, you could go and do a real dungeon crawl with a group, and fight yellows and low reds. And it was genuinely fun. Lose control of aggro, or run into someone elses train though and you died. The necro would summon our corpes out, and our cleric would rez us... we'd re-equip and go in for another run. It was great fun.
BUT
You made more ingame currency, and gained more XP by joing to a known camp and grinding.
At 15-20th level ("back in the day") you could walk into Blackburrow and head down to the bottom... and that was challenging and fun. But the gnolls were pretty poor, and the risk of death (and associated "downtime") was high.
Or you could go to Highhold Pass, and fight a particular camping spot there. The drops were reliably better, the stream of creatures to kill was constant, and if things got out of hand you were just steps away from a zone line. You made more money, and gained more xp, easier, and faster, with less risk.
You didn't have to "grind", but most players did. Because the game actively rewarded them better in everything but "fun" by doing so. And it turns out the majority of players will sacrifice "fun" for "progress" for reasons that I truly find baffling.
WoW and other MMORPGs, and even many single player RPGs are the same, hell even stuff like diablo -- how many diablo 2 players just spent hours doing "Hill Runs" repeatedly for xp, over and over again because it was the easiest and safest place to get loot and xp?
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Re:Can't open source it? (Score:5, Insightful)
So fix the (broken) gameplay mechanic that allows bot users to have an advantage.
Having to 'grind' at mindless / meaningless tasks in game in order to play the interesting parts of the game is just bad game design - it disrespects the player's time and money. It's a transparent attempt to increase subscriber revenue. Get rid of the grind and you eliminate the incentive to use a bot in the first place.
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American judges seem to think they are gods and give the strangest orders. In more civilised countries the law describes what a judge can and cannot order.
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Then they aren't judges, are they?
Judges, judge based on criteria that can not put put into law. Tying judges to specific and strict rules has turned out very bad for American system.
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I would much prefer they simply ban the bot accounts. Bots are horrible for the game. Last thing I would want is your suggestion coming to pass.
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DDO doesn't really have any mindless grind to automate, and I've never seen a bot in it. Heck, if you choose the run the same content repeatedly, the XP and loot falls off quite rapidly.
There's no need to make an MMO that way. Make the game, from start to the endgame raids, have no need to repeat a quest, no mindless timesyncs. It's just not that hard to make quests if your world designers are given good automation for laying out content.
Sure, you'll need to repeat the endgame raids, but that's not usual
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Just play Progress Quest.
Personally I prefer Cookie Clicker [dashnet.org]. After the first few minutes, once you've bought a farm and a few cursors, most of the stuff is automated, and you only need to look at it once every few minutes.
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Writing your own bot from scratch and watching it play and interact is far more fun than the game itself. If you design it well enough then it's more much rewarding than doing things manually. Or you can write a semi manual bot to assist.
Sitting in front of a computer, doing all the tedious tasks manually...that's really just an insult to the entire history of electronic computer design.