The online virtual world of Azeroth has been getting a lot of buzz lately. This Friday in Las Vegas, in a conference where guys from Blizzard and hackers from the World of Warcraft gaming community were supposed to resolve security matters, the highlight seemed to be more of an issue about attendance.
“Botting” has been a recurring concern among massively multiplayer online role playing games such as WoW. It is the use of a third party program that enables an online character to automatically perform simple tasks inside the game: cast spells, pick up items, navigate through the map, etc. Botting programs are especially useful to those players who want to level up or gain experience points even without them actually controlling their “avatars”. In the said meeting, two hackers have tried to legalize the use of a similar application disguising it as a mere “help” tool for WoW players.
The program in question is said to make life easier for the hardcore types to maintain a presence in the cyber world while not neglecting their “real world”. But experience would tell us that it could be, in fact, too efficient. Yes, players will still be paying for the subscription fee and for the first few months, Blizzard will still be able to get as much profit from the game. Bot users will occasionally go back to manual playing to take care of much bigger tasks like fighting other players or completing certain quests. Later on, however, WoW will start to lose players one by one because the game would cease to be interesting. It’s an adventure type of game and most of the adventure is in the long hours of exploring the terrain. If a computer program is going to experience it for you, then that defeats the purpose.
Of course, players pride themselves with having a high level or finding a rare item and it will be very easy to do while in auto pilot. But what really keeps them hooked to the game is not the number of achievements but rather the fulfillment of completing challenges after sacrificing a lot — lost hours of sleep, skipped meals, social alienation and carpal tunnel.
MMORPGs offer an alternative fantasy world. But it is not only the fantasy that they are selling, there’s also interactivity. Players will always want to compare their progress with others just to see how they’re doing. But without real players and only drones around, the fantasy world will just become a twilight zone. Like the Agent Smiths in The Matrix Trilogy, the increasing number of bots would slowly suck the life out of Azeroth.
But this is not to encourage game addiction. This is just to prove that allowing bots in MMORPGs is like deliberately downloading a potent virus into a computer. Several online worlds have already crumbled because of bot invasion. That is why it is only understandable that Blizzard is so strict in enforcing its rules against third party hack programs. They have already deleted accounts that are proven to use such applications. And they would even go as far as taking legal actions. In fact, they have done it once before, and the court ruled in their favor.
Nonetheless, we have to hand it to the two hackers for actually stepping up and taking a shot at legalizing the use of their little “helper”. It’s always good to see conflicts being resolved in a diplomatic way. It’s just unfortunate (for the hackers) that the game’s publisher had decided that the citizens of Azeroth do not need their “help”.
It seems like escapism still doesn’t save one from having problems and issues, eh?
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