064: RIP Meepmeep

On May 20th, in the late evening (European time), Blizzard took the names and credit cards numbers that they had obtained and compared it to their database of accounts. The names and numbers were those of people who had purchased the well-known Warcraft bot Glider. They were all perma-banned.

We were in Sunwell, progressing on Brutallus. Since we got him down a few weeks back we haven't been able to repeat it. We lost a few of our strong DPSers to burnout and Age of Conan and exams, and while we've filled in the ranks again, they haven't had the gear to provide sufficient DPS until now. Our first attempt went really well, even without flasks we had enough raid DPS to bring him down.

"Did anyone else just get disconnected?", our raid leader says on vent. He was the only one. Then the disbelief when he tried to log back in. The cries of "You're kidding me, you've got to be kidding me." I was whispered shortly after by a friend asking if anyone in Kamuflasjefylla had just been suspended. Three characters in my friends guild had, only minutes before.

We speculated at first if there was something wrong, since none of them had gotten emails stating why. It became obvious soon enough when the forum threads began popping up.

I first met Dave back in my old guild, when Tieryn was around level fifty-something. He and I got dragged along on a fun-run of ZG and all I remember is that he played a Hunter then, and that he'd given his pet cat his own name. After that I'd bump into him from time to time - sometimes he'd merely be mentioned by my guildmates, other times he'd come with us on an instance run or a heroic run. I grew to like him, an alright fellow that laughed a lot and had so much more experience with BC raiding than us. At some point his Hunter was hacked and destroyed and he switched to playing a Priest. I looked up to him, as he was the only one I really knew who played hardcore and had raided all the instances I secretly dreamed of some day seeing myself. As time passed, he would be the one to invite me into Kamuflasjefylla and give me the chance to fulfill that dream.

He's a nice guy. He doesn't seek to hurt anyone and he isn't the kind of person that would break the law or deliberatly try to mess things up for others. He didn't use the bot to farm for gold, he merely wanted to skip the boring leveling on his new baby hunter, wanting it to get to 70 faster so that he could have his lost Locutus back. He'd talk about his plans to get a pet Scorpion called Bob again and go back onto the barricades, promoting the use of Scoprion pets in high-end raids. He didn't mean any harm. Few people who use bots do. He's a nice guy. Most people who use bots are.

I'm not saying what he did was okay or that his banning was unfair, because it isn't and it wasn't. I'm saying that the people who bot are people like you and me. It might not actually be you and me, but it might be your friend or your guildie. I'm saying that in an instant he was disconnected from the servers forever. His Shadow Priest with five or six pieces of tier 6, Skull of Gul'dan and the Spectral Tiger mount was gone. All because he wanted to speed up the boring leveling process a bit. Most people don't see that as a big deal. It is a big deal.

No matter your reason to use a bot, it is against the Terms of Service. It's not a big thing - it's not like stealing from a store or hurting another person - but it is against the rules you agreed to follow, and thus punishable as per the terms.

Realise what you're risking. Realise it can all be taken away from you in a heartbeat. Everything you've worked so hard for. If you're an end-game raider - realise what you're risking for not just yourself but your entire guild.




When he first logged on, after having namechanged from Cascada to Meepmeep.




The Shadow Council won't ever be the same :/




Goodbye Meepmeep, we had some great times ♥