EVERY west-bound portion is a curved line.

This is the correct answer. As long as you don't switch what you consider the north pole during your cold-ass journey, it's correct.

The bigger missing part here is the initial "one mile south". This walk is undefined- there are literally infinite ways to walk one mile south from the north pole. If you view a walk as a request to go from point A to point B, and point B is actually a 3ish mile circumference circle, you would definitely want clarification.

The other problem here is trying to quantify by "deaths" is silly.

An obese person who dies of a heart attack (and I assume we're using the bro-narrative that obesity is entirely self caused, by willpower which pretend isn't genetic, and a bad metabolism which we'll pretend is based on lack of exercise and not largely genetic) still lives a life. That person still accomplishes a lot for society, contributes, makes people happy, has kids, etc. And dies at 50 instead of 80, or something.

It's unfair to qualify that "death" as the same as something that kills via an entirely different manner- because everyone (so far) dies. Once we are in some future where death is optional and rare and aging is long cured, discussing "death" in this manner will be valid. But we aren't in that hypothetical world.

The metrics that everyone uses (and are rarely discussed) seem to be: we want less human suffering, and longer lives. We want much more human pleasure. We want more people, many more people, to be enjoying reality all the time. People who argue against these things (especially those who stop with the first one) are usually doing so from a philosophical perspective that, at least temporarily or in their own heads, has some merit (ex: people who want a lot less humans on the planet for sustainability), but isn't a root motivator for humans in general. If we reproduce too fast for our natural resources, humans will war over the remaining resources and try very hard to make more, just as any creature would.

By those metrics, which people actually use but don't normally talk about, dying slightly earlier after having lived an almost full life, is vastly better than dying violently or unexpectedly when young, and something that prevents future humans from enjoying life (by killing all humanity, such that they are never born) is the greatest abomination of all.

So obesity isn't even in the same discussion as an extinction level asteroid. There's literally no comparison, as they don't result in the same effects, at all.

If an extinction event kills everyone but is so rare so its average deaths per year is low (100), then that's a great argument that looking at the "average deaths per year" statistic is absolute horse-shit.

You can only meaningfully quantify "deaths" as long as the greater backdrop of society is around. Something that results in humans huddled in caves for two thousand years before finally coming back to prominence, or eliminates humanity completely, is almost the worst conceivable thing that can can happen (only events that involve the extinction of entire other hypothesized alien races would be worse).

Obviously, an event that could kill all of humanity is not one we can just put up with or tolerate. Stating that even with that nightmare scenario, the odds are too low to be worth trying to mitigate, is fine- but it sure as shit is not related to "average deaths per year".

How about, they are his fucking pictures, he can charge whatever he wants for them- from free to a hojillion dollars, if he can find a buyer.

This is written by someone without even the vaguest since of how World of Warcraft works, or gaming at all?

1 real worldified: "The should pass a law saying every car could only be driven 20 hours a month. That will reduce the amount of time people spend travelling."
-> See the problems with this? They all apply to WoW. Alternate transportation, owning five cars, etc. All apply. Solves nothing, shits on everyone.

2 real worldified: "Instead of the google, we can all search with our own search engines that we run locally, on our smartphones"
-> All the scaling problems apply.

3 real worldified: "Instead of making everyone get a phd in physics, math, stats, philosophy, journalism, and computer science, maybe we could offer individual degrees. I will propose this as a solution to the problem of everyone in the whole world needing to get all of those things, because that entirely represents reality as it is now"

1)- You can't regulate hours played. If you did this, it would mean that the only people with alts were ones who could buy multiple accounts. It would also completely destroy the play experience, which involves a great deal of relaxing and talking. If you had to watch a clock super hard... just awful.

2)- You have no conception of the value provided by the servers. There are people who (against the ToS and in some cases copyright law) host world of warcraft (and other games) servers. These are known as "private servers", and you can google them. While a real server can have thousands (and interact seamlessly with OTHER servers with also thousands), these servers struggle mightily with tens, and implement almost none of the actual server side scripting that takes up so very much computational power.

3)- The game already offers a great deal of this, and importantly, the bots were almost all alt characters to begin with. This means that they were grinding to get access to more play styles. This is also monumentally stupid because the entire concept of "the grind" is not really being understood as something to even complain about properly.

Let me say this: in every game I have played, there are cheaters. What non-mmo games normally have is, is a pool of non-gamers who understand that cheaters are the problem. The solution isn't "there outta be a law" (to limit play time, to prevent you from accessing your client RAM, to ensure that the giant data centers are somehow freely available to you), the solution isn't "reduce the grind" because the "cheaters are justified because I don't even play so I totally get this". It's to ban cheaters, and keep banning.

Ban cheaters.

Keep banning cheaters.

That's the answer. In all the games. You just. Fucking. Ban. Cheaters.

Here's some context:

WoW has a bunch of things you can do.

Level: You have to level to participate in most content. Bots that automate this are often ignored, because they aren't that much better at it. This is not about one of those bots at all.

Raiding, an organized pve (player versus environment, in other games pvm for player versus monster)- an experience at max level versus challenging encounters. If you fail on one "boss", he "resets", and you have to try that boss again from the start. Each boss encounter is 3-10 minutes, and raiding guilds normally meet at specified times when everyone can be available, and clear multiple bosses (ideally all of them) in one or more difficulty levels. The hardest levels are almost unbeatable except for the top few thousand players out of millions, and it normally takes some time for even the professional players to get down the hardest bosses on the hardest difficulties whenever a new raid is released. When you do beat a boss, he drops random loot- potential upgrades, hopefully, to make you and your friends more powerful. The gear dropped from the toughest bosses is the best currently in the game for pve.
No bot can raid. A few bots can automate certain tasks, but these are rarely employed- the tasks needed for automation are so dynamic, and the risks so great, that it's almost unheard of.

Ranked PvP- At max level, you can join a premade group for arena (2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 death match) or rated batteground (objective based 10v10 play). These modes are very difficult to win at the higher level. Participation grants access to the best pvp gear in the game.
No bot does these things. A few players use bots to automate certain tasks- for instance, one really hard task is to "kick" an opponent when they are casting. Since there is a lot of latency and ability to fail (the opponent will often start a cast, then stop, hoping that you will "kick" when he is not casting, thus wasting your cooldown, and allowing him to cast again, this time without fear of interruption), kickbots are a thing- but they are much harder to get away with. All ranked pvp is very hard to cheat at, because you will generate a series of complaints from your opponents, and get banned permanently for it.
This is not what's being discussed, and a kickbot or other arena program is ultimately trying to provide your character with one or more superhuman responses. These are rare and actioned severely.

Casual PvP- generating the gear needed to play in ranked, this involves being thrown in with mostly random people in an objective based pvp environment. Very popular among those who don't want to coordinate in Skype, or people who just want to play some.

*This is what the bot in question does:* It automates this casual pvp. This allows the players to have alternate accounts that are getting gear on multiple characters. This means that they can play pvp with different classes easier than those who do not cheat. A few fools even botted from their main accounts, which the bot authors always tell you not to do. These bots shit up the game- you'll queue up and notice some of the players are bots, and if your team has too many, you'll lose. If the enemy team has too many, your win will not be fun, because bots are stupid.

I don't play WoW right now, but I'm very glad to see them banning these clowns.

Botters mostly were botting on alt accounts.

What server has empty Stormwind or Org? NONE of them.

WoW is, despite my own personal drop being taken out of the bucket, at 7-10 megasubs. You could fit almost all the lesser MMOs inside there and still have room.

These are pvp botters that shit up the random queue battlegrounds while their owners are asleep. I don't play right now, but I'm very glad they got the boot. Those guys are awful.

Incorrect.

This is a pvp bot that shits up queues with dumb fucking bots while their players sleep, normally on alts. It has nothing to do with the WoW token, nor does Blizzard stand to gain anything from that. Anyone can rebuy WoW, and most banned players will have actually had an alt account ban- even botters aren't universally stupid enough to bot from their main account, by and large.

Their accounts are banned. This means that they cannot log in for a fixed amount of time, possibly permanent. No one has their identity or credit card banned, ever- any one ever banned is always welcome to buy a new copy of WoW, and many do.

But a ban is a very meaningful disincentive in an MMO. Losing all your stuff is the MMO player's apocalypse. It's not about "this guy is a cheater, we blocked his IP", it's "this account cheated, so its player has lost everything".

Blizzard allowing you to skip a solo pve grind is very different from a bunch of botters shitting up your battleground and ruining your team pvp experience.

They have never sold max level characters. Not really.

A few months before the cap pushed up to 100, and after that fact was announced, they sold 90s. What is missing is, to have a decent character towards the end of an expansion requires you be both max level, and have had some time in the different tiers of content. Each expansion raises the cap, meaning that the different tiers of content at the old max level no longer are relevant.

For what it is worth, I hated that, and it's a very small part of why I don't play any more- but lets not pretend that this was some giant grind skip. The levelling game is very streamlined as it is, and the majority of the work to make a powerful character happens once you are AT max level.

I'm sure they will begin selling 100s at some point once there have been enough waves of content at 100, and when 105 or 110 or whatever is announced. But if you take them up on that offer, you'll end up with a character who still needs a decent amount of gear to matter- they are just giving you a fast intro so your friends can help you, or so you can be playing with the majority of the playerbase.

PvP rewards you for playing it. The character progresses from weakish pvp to strongish pvp gear, and then normally has to compete in tough rated combat for the final pieces.

Many players want to skip the first part of that- they essentially want to have gear on all the character classes so they can play whatever is most powerful.

The bots are disgusting. You'll enter a battleground, and it becomes very obvious who is botting immediately. When I started playing, the bots would mostly jump in place to avoid being marked afk (afk removes them from battleground). Then they implemented features to report non contributors. A few years ago, we started seeing bots that were smart enough to acquire enemies, move toward them, and press skills uselessly- thus rendering them unable to be kicked. The last time I played, you would see those bots sometimes, and it was always shitty to load up what looked like a decent battleground only to find your team infested with them.

It looks like Blizzard figured out how to catch those cheaters, which is great.

These are cheaters, plain and simple, and I love that they get banned. They ruin the game for the actual players. They aren't "skipping a grind" by having some guy hit hogs in a field, they are actual players who want gear faster by setting a bot to run a character overnight / when they can't play because of work or school. They just want more than everyone else has, and it's bullshit when it works.

Every MMO wishes they were as dead as WoW. Most wouldn't have had to turn off their servers if they were one seventh as dead as WoW...

WoW is essentially the only MMO, their own genre. Everyone who makes an MMO uses so many similar things to WoW that they are essentially wowlikes. At this point, they've added more things that stuck than everquest, have added more content of more types than most games ever can, all while being around longer than anything else can, and being wildly profitable the whole time.

Also they ban people all the time. What happened here is interesting because of the scale of it.