MMORPG - MMOCrunch - World of Warcraft

The BBC has just published an article today stating that Blizzard is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically, such as gold farming, crafting and fighting.

Blizzard has stated that such programs damage the game and infringe on the company’s copyrights.

Blizzard’s designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time.

Blizzard further argues that the program also infringes the End User License Agreement that all parties have to agree e to when playing the game.

Mr Donnelly says his tool does not infringe Blizzard’s copyright because no “copy” of the Warcraft game client software is ever made. Blizzard however does not feel the same and said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software.

Both have submitted legal summaries to a court in Arizona and are awaiting a summary judgement in the case.