We knew it had to happen one of these days with a bot program. Bots currently exist for most all Massive Multiplayer games. The biggest MMORPG in North America is World of Warcraft. WoW Glider is a 3rd party application that allows you to control your character in game without having to be present at your computer. It allows you to have your character go out and gain skills hunting monsters and it allows you to loot them. WoW Glider will pick up the items in game and put them in your pack. WoW Glider was launched June 5th 2005. Since that time it has become hugely popular with players of the game.
October 25th 2006 at 8:30 am Michael Donnelly (aka Mercury, creator of WoW Glider) had some unexpected visitors at his Arizona home. His visitors came to personally talk to him about WoW Glider. The visitors were a high ranking official from Vivendi, a lawyer for Vivendi / Blizzard and a private investigator. They accused Michael of violating they rights of World of Warcraft. They also accused him of violating the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and interfering with the contractual relationship with World of Warcraft?s customers.
The visitors from Vivendi / Blizzard made demands of Michael and stated that if the demands were not met that they would file a complaint in court if he did not meet them. I asked Michael what the demands were. He was unable to comment at the time to the exact details. But I do know they handed him a copy to very briefly "Look at". He was not given a copy. I think I could make a good guess and say that they asked for Glider to be shut down and if they feel that they have been harmed they may have asked for a financial settlement.
Michael knowing that they were at least serious enough to send three people to his door reacted by contacting his lawyer. They communicated with Vivendi / Blizzard attempting to come to an agreement. No agreement could be reached. Michael fearing that Vivendi / Blizzard would file decided to protect himself by being the first to file. You can see the original document here that was filed October 25th 2006
The filing shows that Michael believes he has not broken any laws by creating WoW Glider and has not infringed on Vivendi?s or Blizzard?s rights with the application. Michael is demanding Trial by Jury if Vivendi / Blizzard wants to press on.
Now for some of my personal opinion. I believe Blizzard sees WoW Glider as a threat to the game. WoW Glider does not really do anything a player can not do themselves in the game. It just automates it. If this application were specifically designed for people who were disabled it would be seen as a very helpful application. On the flip side it allows you to get up and walk away from your computer while your character continues on playing. This I believe is the whole issue Blizzard has, Can they sue MDY Industries (The company owning WoW Glider) for creating the application? The answer is yes. Anyone can sue for most anything at any time. But can they win?
I think that if Blizzard wants to be a bully they can win if Michael were to give up. I spoke with Michael a few times about this case. He is a very strong willed man. He also is very intelligent. I have found myself impressed with his knowledge programming and with everything he has learned about this case. After talking with him it is my opinion that he has a very strong chance of winning this. There have been some previous cases in the USA with game companies wanting to stock a 3rd party application or device. Some of the cases were resolved with the game companies dropping the case. There were also some cases where the game companies won. But in those cases there was a very clear violation of copyright. I personally do not believe any copyright has been violated with WoW Glider.
We will see how this progresses. Most likely this case will be resolved out of court. Cases like this can cost a lot of money. I think it would be in everyone?s best interest if it was. But if no agreement can be reached it will be very interesting to see the outcome. It could cause a shift in how 3rd party applications for online games are viewed.
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