Warcraft Wins First Round Of Bot Battle

World of Warcraft had won part one in a copyright battle against the maker of software that automates play in the game, allowing then to grow richer.

If you want to get rich quickly in World of Warcraft, you can be like many others and use MMOglider, a program from MDY Industries that automates killing and looting. But you might not be able to do it for much longer, because an Arizona judge has decreed that MMOglider infringes on World of Warcraft’s copyright.

However, it’s not in the way that Blizzard, WoW’s maker, claimed when they brought the case to court. According to US District Judge David Campbell, using MMOglider breaks the terms players agree to abide by when the use World of Warcraft. But he didn’t find for Blizzard in the claim that the software violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Created by MDY founder Michael Donelly, MMOglider retails for $25, and is believed to have sold over 100,000 copies.

According to the BBC, Blizzard first took on MDY Industries in 2006, when a lawyer from the publisher of WoW, Vivendi, took a private investigator to Donnelly’s home and told him to stop selling the software and give the profits to Blizzard.

Threatened that way, Donnelly vowed to take on WoW in court. The case is set to come to trial later this year unless the parties settle.