Glider and the Rising Cost of Gas

If you play WoW and/or read a WoW blog as obscure as mine, there's a good chance you've heard of Glider, the automation program that can play your character for you while you sleep, cook, bump uglies, whatever.

I'm not really here to pick sides, probably because I'm kinda on the fence also.

On the one hand, Blizzard says Glider hurts them financially because they think that Glider makes the game less enjoyable for non-Glider users, since people who do automated farming while they sleep will have lots of gold and other such goodies when they wake up, while the other poor schlumps have to grind that out manually. Or in BG's, an afk Glider player contributes very little to his/her team, so the non-Gliders would suffer because their team would be short by some players. Also, Glider would supposedly allow its users to burn through the content faster since they're not wasting time on the mindless activities, but rather only spending their game time on the activities they find entertaining.

On the other hand, by constructing a game that forces you to do boring mindless stuff that wastes time, all in an effort to be able to do the fun stuff, Blizz has kinda created the market for products like Glider. While not a user myself, I can appreciate the mindset of someone who wants to raid but doesn't have the time to do all the support activities required.

Like I said, I'm on the fence and can understand the motivation on both sides.

But a funny idea popped into my head when thinking of Blizzard's position in the matter.

An analogy....

I drive a car. That car requires gasoline to operate.

I use products and perform maintenance such as fuel injector cleaners, properly balanced and aligned wheels, clean air filters, etc.

Each of those things helps to improve my fuel efficiency, resulting in me purchasing less gas for the same amount of driving.

Should the gas companies put in place an agreement with their customers that they won't use any fuel efficiency improvements because that hurts their financial position?

Maybe car poolers (read: account sharing) should be banned from purchasing gas.

Or, heaven forbid I ride the train into work. That would be akin to getting my hands on a copy of Blizzards SERVER source code and running my own stand-alone WoW in my basement, thus requiring zero monthly fees (*)

The gas companies should be demanding the local Transit Authority to provide names of anybody who bought a train or bus ticket, and ban them.






(*) Disclaimer: dont try to get a copy of Blizzard's source code. That would be naughty.