Blizzard will lose some serious money, just look at the amount of botters, i knew a dude that had 32 bots on :p Many ppl bot for cash or lvl because they have work to do and they still want to be able to catch up to their friends, others to do it profit.

Seduced

@y2julio: When warden runs it hashes the ram finger print of all programs running, if there was a adequately tech illiterate judge this may constitute "reverse engineering" and modification of other people software like Anti-virus or things like outlook. I think most judges who deal with tech issues are more knowledgeable these days but you never know, the law moves slowly.

kingmanic

@Hiero: Driving it underground means less people will use it. D2 runes are more often dupes then legit but their pressure on botting and such has resulted in most items for trade being legit and botting has become less common. Or at least uncommon after a round of bans. In D1 where they didn't take steps to prevent botting or cheating every item is duped, every character hacked. So for D3/WoW the harder they push it underground the less widespread it is and ironically the more profitable for those who figure ways around the system.

Technology has come a ways and with more computing power available server side, they can reduce the amount of cheating going on which helps your play experience. You can't prevent people from farming and selling but things like bind on equip reduced the market as well as item inflation.

It's unrealistic to expect no cheaters but I think blizzards strategy of driving it under ground and frequent rounds of bans are a good policy. They don't want a situation like in China where it's harder to find a legit copy of Warcraft 3 then it is to find a naturally green eyed Chinese girl.

kingmanic

If you don't like the time it takes levelling play another game, i don't know why that's so hard to understand.
These hacks will always be patched out and cheaters get kicked. all the hacks demonstrate is that the hackers have good programming skills which isn't worth much after they get sued.

Ryuujin1024

"Ironically, it would seem that Blizzard's own security program, Warden, would be imperiled by this notion of copyright." Huh??? How can you break copyright to something you own already??

y2julio

Indeed the grind to level 70 is boring. That's why I chose to stop playing the game instead of wasting my money to have someone else play a game for me I wasn't interested in playing in the first place.

Diesel_Power

@September: The ruling still has the net effect of making Blizzard seem like a giant monster, forcing other companies to be very, VERY careful about their automation programs and, as a result, probably making them less widespread. That's the only reason I imagine Blizz went after it.

Evdor

Pointless victory for Blizzard. This kind of thing will never change as long as there are good crackers/hackers/whatever in the scene.

@September: Pirox would be a good exemple of new third party stuff.

Cmon Blizz, who wants to expend 8 hours fishing? Create your own "power leveling service" already.

Hiero

Heh, as much as I hate hacking, botting, and any other third party program or modification that gives other players an edge, I just can't see stuff like this going away. I feel this is similar to trying to combat piracy, you put one away, and two more sprout up to take its place. I'm sure there are plenty of other similar programs that exploit WoW in the same manner as Glider. A court victory isn't going to do anything. Security updates won't do anything (because anything that is done can be undone). It's a bit senseless. I can see why Blizzard would want to do this, but in the overall scheme of things, they're hardly making a dent much less a scratch on combating these third party programs.

September

What happened to point #2? Maybe it's too dangerous for the common man to know!

JokesJokes

@Seduced: Both those reasons are hardly justifiable.

If you need or want to bot in WoW, then you're playing the wrong game. Stop playing.

It's very difficult to quantify the net positive effect this will have on Blizzard's bottom line. A lot of people are trying to use the argument that they're basically kicking out a lot of paying customers, but how many customers choose to play a Blizzard game because of their overall incredible support and quality? Part of that polish includes playing in a relatively cheat-free environment. If you don't think that has won them longer term subscribers, just look at games in which cheating was left unchecked: no one plays them anymore.

cowondinosaur

@SpiritBoy: Valid point.

cZEAL

@cZEAL: These guys are probably socialists.
Damn socialists, stealing mah flowers.

SpiritBoy

So this is bad news ? If it was any other company than blizzard I might think about the decision but Blizzard always take care of the customers and support their own fans for decades after the game is out (W2, SC D2). So I am happy glider creators got their asses served.

Exactly who made that "analysis" ? The guy who wrote that gibberish has clearly no clue what he is talking about, hell he tries to use some fancy words without even knowing the meaning.

This is not related but on china servers there are tons of botting programs like glider glider that nobody seems to care about.

I really do not know what xbox users have to say after sitting for about 100 hours to get THAT particular achievement out of how many ? 100 ? 1000 ? and then come here and complain about the grinding in WoW.

Aeryss

Blizzard CAN afford to do things such as this. If you knew that there were a couple of people stealing from your garden, but you always caught the same person stealing, wouldn't you do something about it? I mean, you can build all of the fence and take every measure you want to prevent them from stealing, but if they still keep stealing it only seems right to go straight to the source.

I see nothing wrong with this.

cZEAL

@GnatB: It's not much, but they HAVE lowered the required level for mounts to 30 rather then 40. I get what you're saying though. I definitely think they need to think about adding in new low-to-mid level quests and content, keep it fresh for everyone.

Jayl3w

@GnatB: I wouldn't figure it'd be easy to add content to the wealth of content already available on your trek to 1-70. If they add more it would give you, and I know this is a stretch, TOO many options.

It's an odd balance but Blizz helped ease the burden of questing to 70 by increasing the experience gain from both monsters and quests. They also made Dustwallow Marsh a pretty fun place to quest.

WoW is showing its age in and I think the only way for Blizz to strike back would be a new game altogether. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on who you are, it doesn't look like this will happen anytime soon.

cZEAL

Easy answer.

add low level content. stop adding high level content. make the road from 0 to 70 more fun than simply being at 70. (which, as far as I'm concerned, is how it should be. I know MMO services don't like to see users leave, which is why they're all always focused on "end game content". but... well.. that's one of the reasons why MMO's suck. They should either accept the fact that players will play through their game and leave, or flatten the system so all there is is "end game" and get rid of the leveling entirely.. 'course, then you're basically playing an FPS or whatever... then so be it if that's what the players actually want)

GnatB

@cZEAL: Too many options?

Giving players dozens progression paths from 1-Max is an excellent move for any game. Especially if they take the time to put Blizzard's signature level of polish on it. The game already does a fantastic job of making sure players don't get lost. The problem is, you only have a few different paths to take.

WoW still has legs. They just need to do what they've always done and steal ideas from EverQuest.

More content for everyone. Know it, love it, live it.

cable83

@kingmanic: ah ok. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

y2julio

It doesn't matter if the lose money by kicking botters. Wouldn't you think they would want to make the real player base happy? Lose that and you just have a game full of bots.

Vash108

This is a huge victory for fans of WoW. I'm glad the court make the sensible decision to not screw over MMORPG's as a whole here. These cheaters should not be tolerated.

Dalren

@Aeryss: Christ man, can you be any more of a Blizzard apologist? Reading through your comment history reads like Jeff Kaplan's resume.

You are quite possibly the greatest example of an obnoxious "Fanboi" that Kotaku offers. Get a grip dude, that's the 5th WoW related article that has resulted in you insulting someone without merit.

If you would like to offer a more indepth and technical analysis explaining the legal and commerical ramifications of the judgment, please go ahead. A word of caution however, you might have to say something negative about Blizzard and be civil towards others at the same time.

Patient

I think the main point of this wasn't to stop all hackers, spammers and cheaters.. thats impossible. I think they mainly just want to send the message that they will take action against it. And they made their point, I think.

Graham

Personally, I have no problem with people botting to 70, as long as they play by hand after they level up. It's an easy way to put a guild together if you want to go exploring the high level instances. But, I also understand Blizzard's point of view, which can be summed up in an old joke:

A man was driving along with the flow of traffic. The flow of traffic was moving at roughly 85 mph in a 60 mph area. A cop pulls the man over and asks for his license and registration. The man is indignant and asks the officer,
"Why was I pulled over if everyone was going 85 in the 60?"
The officer smirks and says, "You ever go fishing?"
The man is confused, and says, "Yeah, what's that got to do with anything?"
The officer's smirk grows into a smile, "Ever catch all of the fish?"

masterdingo

@Patient:

You could not read the news post in the previous piece of news where you attacked basicly everyone, so it would be too much to ask of you to read through mine.
As for your "fanboi" comment, I have not played a blizz game for about 2 years. Besides try to read through your own comments before you start poking the fanboy argument around.

Aeryss

If you're bored with wow, you're playing it wrong. if you're still bored, you belong to the fps people.

kanelstrejf

Oh yeah, well your MOM is a fanboi!

shadow300z2

I actually had fun playing up to level 70, enjoying all the lore and such. I can see the point of people who need a dozen level 70 characters, it might become a bit boring then. On the other hand, the game's been out for almost four years now, so there must be quite a few people at max level looking for new content.

robur