Court: No, You Can't Sell Software To Cheat In World Of Warcraft
Really a problem? In court documents, Blizzard says they received 465,000 complaints about automated programs ("bots") like Glider operating inside the game. The antisocial aspects of Warcraft are already pretty bad -- ever suffer a butt-kicking from an obnoxious 12-year-old punk with a +18 sword of newb-slaying, taunting you all the while? An unrestrained arms race of cheating programs could change the online gaming social environment from difficult to intolerable -- something the entire industry needs to prevent if it hopes to appeal to a more mainstream audience.
See also: World Of Warcraft Geeks, Other Gamers Throw Down $1 Billion On Subscriptions
That isn't necessarily true. There is a set of terms and usage agreements in the back of every manual. It is assumed that by playing the game, you are agreeing to obey the contract in the Game Manual.
There may be exceptions, but I have yet to play any online in a game (shooting, racing, etc...) via my Playstation 3 where I did not have to agree to the publisher/developer online terms and conditions of use.
I hope this decision establishes a precedent of successfully bringing legal action against people/businesses who attempt to profit by using or selling bots in MMORPG's.
Blizzard makes claims about all the people upset over glider... How many accounts do you guys have each? 1? most likely. I have 8 accounts. that means I'm paying for 8 game cards every 2 months, that means i purchased 8 copies of wow, and tbc. Most gliders have at least 2 accounts. Not to mention when we get banned, we don't give up, we start again, thus putting EVEN more money into blizzards pocket.
Is blizzard getting screwed by me using glider? Not at all. I'm paying them 240 bucks every 2 months. your paying them 30. Who is contributing more? Ive sold 20ish accounts in the last 3 years. if you say it takes 2 months to get each account to 70 (60 b4 tbc) that is about 1300 bucks I've paid. (happily i can say i have made back close to 8grand from gold/account sales). To this date, my running total of money spent on wow is well over 2.5k bucks.
There is a general agreement among botters that we don't bot mobs that drop quest items, and that we don't bot in common training areas. Yes, occasionally we will be killing a mob you want, but that is rare. Why do we do this? 2 reason. One, we don't want to get spotted, because we don't want to get banned. 2. General politeness. We understand that some people haven't played to 70 4 times already and we don't want to diminish their game play.
Why do we play if all we are going to do is cheat? Few reasons. We like end game, and we like pvp. I hand leveled a rogue, shaman, warlock, warrior to 70. But I wanted to try out a mage.. and a priest... and a pally. I didn't feel like leveling them my self, but I wanted to pvp with them none the less. So I botted them to 70 and now I play them end game. Much more fun than hand leveling. The other reason is because there is a market out there for level 70 accounts and for gold. So, people are willing to pay for these things.... why shouldn't someone give them what they want? They are still going to be paying blizzard once they take over the account. So no one looses. They are happy, I'm happy(and 400 bucks richer) and blizzard is happy with monthly income. No harm no foul IMO.
Cheers.