With the latest World of Warcraft patch to 2.2.0, everyone was surprised (some, like me, pleasantly surprised) to see that Blizzard had decided to completely rework the audio engine for the game! Now, instead of hardware acceleration, they're using FModEX to provide a new software-level engine.

This, of course, reached the ears of Creative Labs. According to a very biased article at a place called WoWInsider.com (I mean, look: "So it seems Blizzard treats other hardware vendors the same way they treat their own players..." What's that supposed to mean? You think Blizzard treats their players poorly? Well, 8 million subscribers say you're entirely wrong, my friend.)... Creative had very little advanced warning in the matter (as if Creative thinks they need to be told about something like this) and they're hopping mad, trying to incite all the Creative sound card owners to riot against Blizzard for daring to do such a thing! (Okay, maybe not riot, but they're still trying to get players to speak out.)

As a not so proud owner of an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook sound card, I can honestly say that I think Blizzard is doing the best thing they could've done. Vista has been out for what, almost a year now, and Creative's drivers are still the horribly stripped drivers they are. You can barely get the microphone working. I was okay with some drivers acting up when Vista was released, but this is 12 months later, people. Everyone else has flawlessly working drivers... Everyone except Creative, who has been known to drag their feet on drivers. Now, they're complaining that Blizzard didn't consult them when Blizzard decided to rework the game engine in Blizzard's own game. Creative thinks they need to be consulted before anyone touches their sound card engines. Hmm...

Basically, it's this... FMod is new to Blizzard and there are some bugs, naturally. These bugs aren't huge, but they're annoying to some people. So far, the major issue is that the channels of sound have been cut down for the time being, so people are noticing some sounds cutting out when they're in an area with lots of sounds. Somehow, this is worth getting angry over. There are some other issues, sure, but Blizzard is trying to answer, correct and update any and all problems.

Some short-sighted players are asking why in the heck Blizzard decided to strip out a perfectly working engine for one that doesn't work anymore. To which Blizzard replied: "Understand that we have the source to all parts of our sound engine now, and will be working with the developer to continue to find improvements, a handful of which were checked in here just today for an upcoming patch (probably not the first patch to 2.2.0 as that one is already in mid testing, but very likely the one after that)."

Meaning, the engine they used to use did NOT give them access to all source code for it. Meaning what, exactly? Well... Clearly they couldn't do what they wanted to do, so they thought it was cost-effective enough to start using a NEW engine. One that they can change to their heart's desire... One that they can fix, by themselves, all the issues they may or may not run into! So, wait... What's this? Blizzard is trying to do something GOOD in the long run?

This is what humanity doesn't get... patience. Good things come to those who wait, but most people want everything RIGHT NOW, NOW, NOW! They complain when games are delayed, they complain when games are released with bugs, they complain the bug fixes are delayed, they complain about other bugs when old bugs are fixed. This new sound engine is for the better. Even now, on Vista, the OS that doesn't allow hardware acceleration because Creative hasn't bothered to fix that for Audigy cards, I've noticed a positive difference.

But, in short, only Creative sound cards are broken... Hmm. What does that mean? Does it mean that Blizzard is an idiot for changing sound card engines and breaking Creative cards, or possibly... just maybe... it means that Creative's drivers are crappy and don't work with software that other cards have no problem with? Hmm.

Think of it this way. If, say, a web browser decided to interpret things on it's own, disregarding what other browsers handle the same way, and you expect everyone else to cater to your programming anomalies... What would you, as a web programmer, do? Would you program for the web browser that interprets things non-standard, or would you program for the browsers that display pages properly and in a predictable and standard way? Hmm... I think I recall a massive amount of people NOT wanting to cater to Internet Explorer for this very reason.

But it's bad that Blizzard is inconveniencing you in the present, in an effort to make things perfect in the future, for this very reason? That Creative isn't good enough to just make their cards work? Kinda got some raging double-standards there, if you ask me.

I enjoy Creative. They're good cards. I'll probably buy Creative cards in the future. The drivers? Not so good... They'll get fixed, sure, but not very quickly at all. For those of you with Creative cards, don't bug Blizzard... Do what Creative is asking you and apply that force to CREATIVE. Make them fix their drivers! They have plenty of money... I think they can handle churning drivers as stable and as quickly as nVidia can.