Blizzard in the news – twice in one day

0Jack • 26th Mar 2008 • Blog • Gaming, world of warcraft

I must admit that I got pretty excited this morning when I tried to log on to World of Warcraft before I went to work. For those who don’t play the game, you won’t know that Wednesday mornings are when Blizzard, the game’s maker, updates the games with patches and new features.

However today is the launch of Patch 2.4 – Fury of the Sunwell – a huge addition to the game that sees new areas, quests and NPCs added to the already vast online world.

This patch is dedicated to Gary Gygax, one of the creators of Dungeons and Dragons, who I read recently passed away and it also includes and number of bug fixes as well, on top of the new content.

However, if you did a Google News search for “Warcraft” today, most of the items aren’t about the new patch, but rather the impending legal battle over the ‘bot’, MMO Glider.

Blizzard are suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the offending program, which can perform key tasks in the game automatically, such as experience and gold farming.

Personally, I’m on Blizzard’s side on this issue. Although bots are less common than the incredibly annoying gold spammers, I have come across them occasionally and it just seems unfair. I can only spend a few hours a week online while some of these bots are racking up 20 hours a day!

So, good luck to Blizzard, and I just can’t wait to get home to try 2.4 tonight!