Last month I saw this article in Technology Review about all of the Hacking going on in World of Warcraft. To be honest, I almost didn’t read the whole thing because none of the answers were “officially” from Blizzard, and like most articles, are just some guy’s opinion. To my surprise, I was checking out my RSS feeds and along comes an article by the same guy with the same questions, only this time it’s pre-faced with “The company answers questions on it’s view of in-game hacking.” So I shook off my disbelief in journalism and read on. Apparently this writer had enough integrity to actually ask the horses mouth. He typed off his questions that appeared in his previous article and sent them to Blizzard directly for official comment. While I find the “research” question ridiculous in the first place (like Blizzard would open up World of Warcraft to any third party in the name of “research” or anything else they weren’t earning subscription fee’s off), I found the answers interesting (in their own corporate-speak kind of way). Blizzard has some very serious methods of dealing with hackers. What you’re your official comments on your policies about in-game helpers/bots? Blizzard Entertainment strictly forbids any use of a "bot" or in-game helper designed to play World of Warcraft automatically with little or no player. Any violations of this policy are immediately dealt with. As a development company we have consistently worked to identify the use of bots in the World of Warcraft game and instantly suspend or close the associated accounts. Doesn’t Blizzard consider this action to be against the EULA? If so, what parts? We as a company feel that such automated play to be cheating. The use of such devices not only goes against the spirit of the game it gives an unfair advantages over other honest players. We have clearly defined this practice as a violation and expressly forbidden the use of bots in the World of Warcraft Terms of Use (ToU), which all players are required to agree to before playing. Many programmers have requested that Blizzard offer third-party developers a separate set of servers to allow them to program their bots. Specking strictly from a technology point of view, WoW could give such researchers a good environment in which to advance AI programming. Is Blizzard considering advancing research in this area in this way? No, we definitely don't intend to offer separate realms for cheating. To assist in the development of bots, automated software, or in-game helpers, would violate our Terms of Use. World of Warcraft is strictly intended to offer a high-quality entertainment environment for players. It is not in existence for the purposes of a lab for AI researchers. (Yeah, and they don’t make any money helping advance AI research). Blizzard will continue to make decisions to protect the player experience over other concerns. We remain vigilant in defending our games against cheaters and unauthorized third-party hack programs, and to that end, we will continue to take any measure necessary to protect our games and our intellectual property rights.
