(who appears to have lost the keys to this place)
"World of Warcraft UI Add-On Development Policy Blizzard announced a WoW UI Add-On Development Policy for World of Warcraft addons today. Among other things, the policy that all addons be distributed free, unobfuscated, and it bans them from advertising in-game.
In a few short hours, a very lengthy -- and sometimes overheated -- discussion (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15864747207&sid=1) has started to take place on the game's UI forums about everything from the causes that prompted Blizzard to take this action, to legal and moral issues surrounding such a policy, to the real-world mechanics of how some mod authors make the transfer from for-fun to for-profit addon development.
Eric Nickell"
After less than 24 hours, we're now at 30 pages on the UI forum thread and counting.
Posted by: Eric Nickell | Mar 21, 2009 at 16:59
Somehow I think the community has gotten to big to have a good old fashioned naked monk protest outside Freeport.
My guess is that a few mod-makers will quit out of spite (or because they are literally supporting their work through ads or donations). Users will find new mod-makers who are apathetic or enthusiastic toward the change. the rest of the gamers out there (myself included) will feel that this is a heavy-handed but unavoidable (viewing Blizz as a benign dictator of sorts) change and get on with out lives. Or, more precisely, people will be split a few ways:
*They will blame carbonite for 'provoking' the blizzard change--reading the change it seems very much like it was written to primarily disallow carbonite.
*They will distance themselves from the action or broadly justify it ("It is blizz's software anyways...")
*They will rant and rave about liberty, though in the same sense that people have been ranting about liberty re: AIG bonuses. Lots of appeals to first principles, little discussion of the facts on the ground.
Maybe I'm a cynic.
It is interesting from a governance standpoint, as blizzard is flexing its muscles with a community which has been...instrumental in their continuing success. The modding community isn't as important to blizzard as they were to Valve (counterstrike), but the flexibility of the interface has gone a long way toward ensuring that WoW isn't dated for players. There is a non-trivial community of modders, mod users, and contributors who also happen to be predominantly end-game users (the overlap between the LUA forums and the EJ forums is large).
From that sense it is fascinating. But I don't expect much out of the user response.
Posted by: Adam Hyland | Mar 21, 2009 at 21:36
Quoted from Adam Hyland above:
*They will blame carbonite for 'provoking' the blizzard change--reading the change it seems very much like it was written to primarily disallow carbonite.
*They will distance themselves from the action or broadly justify it ("It is blizz's software anyways...")
*They will rant and rave about liberty, though in the same sense that people have been ranting about liberty re: AIG bonuses. Lots of appeals to first principles, little discussion of the facts on the ground.
Replace the word carbonite with "other residents", "bots", or "griefers" and you've just described every change thats been made to the Second Life terms of use.
Governance is definitely far from perfect in virtual worlds, although one could certainly argue that this is something they share with the big blue room.
One thing that is desperately needed is something akin to the concept of the rule of law as a guiding principle. Particularly now that so many people rely on virtual worlds for at least part of their real life income. At present, the people that run businesses can have their hard work eradicated with the stroke of a pen.
The flip side of this is adherence to the terms of use by the people that create those businesses. Often, it seems like changes to the terms of use occur as reactions to violations of existing terms of use. Ideally, there would be better ways to enforce existing "laws" rather than creating new ones, often only punishing the people that were playing by the rules in the first place.
Posted by: Nexus Burbclave | Mar 22, 2009 at 11:21
From the Carbonite website:
"In response to the recently announced User Interface Add-On Policy we will no longer be selling a subscription to Carbonite. We are in the process of converting Carbonite to be fully compliant with this new policy and will provide more details when we can.
"We would like to thank all our customers for their support and hope we can continue to deliver the product and service that you have come to expect.
"2.59 is now available on the downloads page and 3.00 should be out next week.
"The Carbonite Team."
Posted by: Eric Nickell | Mar 28, 2009 at 12:59