Here we go again...

I remember when Blizzard Warden first came out. Everyone went insane over the fact that Blizzard dare install a program that scans their system! After all, a program that scans your computer could pick up your credit card information, right? Let's ignore the fact that... It doesn't, didn't and won't. The mere thought of something capable of doing that is worth the freaking-out-itude. Especially when said scanners "call home". Ah, such a powerful phrase. Call home. Anyway, people freak out that Blizzard was listening to their complaints and developed a program that scans for cheatware and keyloggers. (Cheatware: applications used willingly by players to achieve an unearthly amount of automation in an effort to... well... cheat! Keylogger: applications unknowingly installed on your system by poking around in warez or by social engineering that monitors what you type in to your accounts!) Basically, Warden made sure you weren't cheating and made sure you weren't getting taken advantage of. Prevention and protection.

Guess what? It worked. Accounts are banned at an almost alarming rate with a very, very low rating of false positives. Warden works, that much is clear. Eventually, the whining died off. They either canceled their account or they got smart and figured out that less cheaters and spammers in the game was better than whining about what the scanning software COULD be used for, but wasn't. (Honestly, who stores their banking information in plain-text in the first place? Only idiots. There is not a single reason for you to have your credit card information in scannable form on your hard drive.) People whined about the polymorphist nature of Warden, but, uhm. Yeah. If the program didn't change, hackers would learn how to bypass it. So Blizzard changes it a lot to prevent that. It works. Yes, it's the nature of a virus, but it isn't a viral feature.

Well, now Blizzard has strengthened Warden once again. I'm not even sure what the huge deal is. The article just spouted complicated phrases like "random hash algorithms" without actually talking about what they were used for, so I'm going to decipher it as much as I can, based on the general resulting outcry.

Either Warden has been beefed up in its searching (I know it uses a list of known hashes to detect cheating and keylogging applications) or its own checksum has been changed so that it could essentially be impossible to determine if it's really Warden or not. I don't know, but whatever it is, Blizzard can change this algorithm at their will. Apparently, this is given rise to a new batch of whiners who claim that a "rogue Blizzard operative" could use Warden to "harvest bank information" without anyone knowing. (As if the majority of WoW subscribers haven't already given Blizzard their bank and contact information, haha.) Warden is known to scan your registry and active processes and compare what it finds to the hash database it has and then transmit anything it finds to Blizzard. The key here is that it doesn't transmit everything it finds, only the problems it thinks it's found.

I don't even clearly understand HOW or WHY this is a bad thing, but the post I linked to is convinced that this makes it impossible to tell if Warden has been compromised... by someone at Blizzard... who somehow had total unmonitored access to Warden's code... and managed to push the new, malicious Warden out to all 7 million subscribers... and have no other employees notice. Somehow. That's the idea they're going for. That's all they have. Let's forget the fact that Blizzard has not done this and is not doing this and has absolutely no compelling reason to do this in the future. But that 1 in a 1000000 chance is enough to make people go "OH MY GOSH IT'S THE END OF OUR PRIVACY AS WE KNOW IT."

Fine. If that's what you think it is, and you think the chance of an evil Blizzard employee stealing your credit card information (stored in plain text) from your computer and receiving it via Warden is an all too real danger? Stop playing World of Warcraft. It's actually quite simple. You can even tell them  WHY you quit. Just say "I quit because I think that Warden is compromising my privacy" and be done with it... Because out of the 10 loudly outspoken people who think this is an issue, there are 6,999,990 people who think Warden is perfectly safe and who think Warden is an essential tool in stopping cheaters and keyloggers and we LIKE IT. Some of us have played other MMOs before that didn't give a hoot about who was cheating. Blizzard cares enough to hunt out these lowlifes and it WORKS. If there were people being banned left and right for false positives, I think they wouldn't hesitate to scream about it. We might get one or two people banned for some weird circumstances, like the guy who macro'd all kinds of moves into a single keyboard key (cheating) or the guy emulating WoW in Linux and Warden wasn't operating correctly. I think 2 out of 7 million in the entire time since it's been released is pretty good odds.

So in the end, yes. We know Warden scans our systems. Thanks, we already know that. Yes, we know it reports anything bad it finds to Blizzard. Thanks, we already know that. Yes, we know that Warden could, in some unimaginable circumstance, be used to harvest personal information. Thanks, we already know that. If it's bothering you that much, feel free to uninstall WoW. If you're not willing to do that, please, for the love of all that is good in this world, STOP TELLING US WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW.

Hey, Chronicshank, even though you'll probably never read this (although there is a chance, because I used to have a page up of a sort of Warcraft hitlist where I listed some people and I was getting hits from Google searching those names), I'm going to write this post to you. If anything, you'll serve as an example to everyone else!

I was leveling Kittari today. A 52 Druid... about halfway to 53. Rested experience, for the win! I could get to 54 in a day if I wanted. I was poking around Western Plaguelands, testing the waters for the quest levels. I was doing pretty good... That is, until I started seeing extra numbers popping up on my combat window. Lots of numbers. "That's an awful lot of output for a druid fighting a ghoul," I say to myself. There was a mage next to me, but he wasn't fighting at the time. Then I go, "ohh, look! there's an undead rogue behind this ghoul!" So I take the time to flee out of range while I determined your strength. Ouch. A 56 rogue. 4 levels above me, geez. Might as well kiss my druid kitty tail goodbye, right? Well, hold on... You attacked the mage! Alliance treaties dictate that all Alliance members should aid each other in time of need... So I rush to the aid of the mage... And we both completely overpower you in a matter of seconds and you die. Hooray! Disaster averted! Mage runs away and I never see him again. But then I see a passing 54 Alliance rogue. "Lovely!" I think. "Now I have some backup in case that rogue comes back!"

Well, come back you did... This time you resorted to killing us off with single blows in the middle of combating a mob. That is some really high Horde class right there. I don't mind PvP in the least bit, but sniping someone after a battle with an NPC is pretty low, even for an undead rogue. Maybe you were just angry and needed to kill someone. I understand that, because I do it all the time, myself. I get killed by someone who totally pwns me, and I go munch a nearby lowbie for revenge. But you didn't stop there. Which is also admirable! But you kept one-shotting everyone from the shadows while they were fighting NPCs. That is not so admirable.

A few of us got on the Local Defense channel to discuss the situation. General response: "Warning, lame-butt rogue in Sorrow Hill. 56, but must attack weak players. Will lose one on one." I must say that such a response was accurate. Not only did you keep killing me over and over while I was a) fighting a mob or b) healing after a resurrection, but when I actually decided to fight back, I murdered you. You stood absolutely no chance. Me! A 52 druid! Killing a 56 rogue! Such an impossibility is, in fact, quite possible after all! It was easy enough, in fact, that the first time, I thought you were merely 54. But the second time I killed you, one on one, with fresh health, I saw that, yes! You were 56. Such elation! Not only was a druid killing a rogue, but it was a 52 druid killing a 56 rogue!

Anyway, I just wanted to brag.

Well, except for that one time after I killed the rogue the first time and some doped up Troll mage with such a high level that he was ?? to me and a water elemental got me while I was fighting. Honestly. I'm very nearly convinced that all horde kill people in two ways. First is when their targets are so far below them, they're gray, meaning they give no honor. (As was the case with this mage. If it was ?? to me, then I was gray to him.) Second is killing a clearly superior enemy while he's already fighting. Either way is honorless, and if that's what it takes to make the Horde the most PvP-capable half of the game, then so be it. An honorless war-faring faction! Hey! At least you're living up to the roleplaying aspect of the realm, eh?

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.

In what is being coined as "The Jaina Proudmoore Incident", nearly 100 Horde players have been temporarily suspended for 72 hours for exploiting. Apparently, Blizzard saw the same group of people repeatedly killing the game character Jaina Proudmoore for money, and saw fit to dish out some discipline. Harsh? Maybe.

The way I see it, repeatedly killing something isn't my idea of a fun time. I don't repeatedly kill monsters, unless a quest orders it, and I don't repeatedly kill Horde players, unless they simply don't know when to quit throwing their lives into the claws of an angry Druid.

But this is akin to repeatedly killing Thrall, or repeatedly killing the Archdruid, or repeatedly killing the King of Stormwind. Jaina is a high-level quest giver. People actually need her to finish tasks. An instance of "griefing" would be repeatedly killing a quest-giver for whatever reason. Granted, the suspension is reportedly because of "exploitation" instead of "griefing", the end result is still the same. Players were repeatedly killing a high-level quest-giver. Killing her once wouldn't have been much of a problem... Killing her twice? Not so much, either. But they were obviously killing her enough times to warrant an investigation by Blizzard. Someone reported the activity or Blizzard themselves noticed the events.

Needless to say, the suspended players are in an uproar about how unfair Blizzard is since they are being temporarily barred from playing a game that they pay for. Boo hoo. Are you saying that none of the 100 Horde players involved ever even momentarily thought that what they're doing might be a little excessive?

Well, I guess you have 3 days to reflect on what you did, eh? 3 days. Wow. Blizzard is a demon for robbing you of your game time for 3 whole days because you were breaking rules. Oh my. 3 whole days! What ARE you going to do during this time? Oh, probably whine about it the entire time, am I right? Then, once the suspension is up, you're going to go right back to playing. You might even quit in an effort to show Blizzard the error of their ways! Well, good riddence. Blizzard now has only 6,999,999 active players. Nobody will miss you. So I suggest that you stop making such a huge deal about this and just patiently serve your time in the brig. Who knows? You might even walk outside in those 3 days!

http://www.twitchguru.com/2006/08/08/world_of_warcraft_players_addicted/

This Doctor Orzack person has a lot to say about games these days. She's sort of a tamer version of Jack Thompson, repeatedly saying that "it's the game's fault" for them being so addicting. As in, clinically addicting. Like drugs and drinks addicting. I think it's a complete load of bologna.

Let's take a look at what she, herself, described as a typical case:

I was talking with a patient, a young man, the other day. He was a heavy World of Warcraft player, and I asked him what happens when he plays the game: was he simply playing a virtual character or did he feel like he was actually in the game? He told me when he plays, he is in the game completely. He had become immersed in World of Warcraft and had trouble removing himself from that virtual world. I also asked what he expected to find each time he turned on the game, and his answer was a sense of belonging. This individual came from a family that was unfortunately breaking up, and World of Warcraft was his way to escape that. This 18-year-old individual was miserable. He didn't get along with any of his family members and kept withdrawing into the game.

So this guy's family life is a total disaster, according to her, which is sad... and he wants to escape, so he plays games. To be blunt, he wouldn't need to escape if his parents thought about someone other than themselves and tried to keep the house together. But, no, the parents are causing chaos and the kids' lives are demolished in the process.

Of course it's not the parents' fault for causing this mayhem... it's certainly not lack of self-control and willpower on the part of the players. Nope, it's the game. The game makes an effort to enslave it's players into constantly playing. Yeah, whatever. She says these games are "inherently addictive" but could be "tied into other things, like family issues". Gee, ya'think? So it's fine that the guy has to escape the world of his family drama, but that he chose a videogame is bad and suddenly a serious problem. Yeah, well, I suppose he should be escaping his world with a bottle of beer in one hand and a bag of cocaine in the other?

According to her own research, 40% of World of Warcraft players are addicted. Now, the subscription database was nearing 7 million users, so 40% would be about 2.8 million addicted players. But that's all she says. "40% are addicted." ...and I should just take your word for it? Hmm. Oh! You're a psychologist? That's why? Oh, now I trust you completely.

She continues her diatribe to say that it isn't at all about willpower and restraint. No, those things would never be of any use. The games themselves are actively ensnaring people. Like, they have invisible arms that come out of the monitor and grab on peoples' heads so they can't leave, or something. I don't know what she's saying here, but it's the typical "they can't help themselves" attitude that you see everywhere. I get the feeling she's saying something like "you're too weak to fight it, so don't try without help". Right, okay. I suppose that's what you have to say to keep your job.

The solution? Well, she says, you have to WANT to stop. Well, duh. She goes on to prattle about how "videogame addiction" isn't in the uber book of mental disorders and, until it is, insurance companies won't cover treatment. Treatment... like a cigarette patch? A pill? "Here, take this pill twice every two hours." Hooray! An anti-videogame medicine! We're all saved.

She also says that publishers should put warning labels on games like the kind on boxes of cigarettes. Right, because we all know that cigarette warning labels really help people to quit. She briefly mentions that the game industry would be "up in arms" over it. Another amazing deduction by the good doctor. So there's going to be reviews about which games are addicting? "Yes, I'm from the National Committee of Videogame Addiction Rating. I'm here to test your game for it's addictive properties." Oh, oh! They can be like the ESRB Ratings! They'll pass a game as not-addicting (or a big white label saying NA) and sell it at store like Walmart, but then some user will modify the game to have addictive properties and then the NCVAR makes the publisher recall all the boxes and have it re-rated as very-extremely-incredibly-impossiblely-disproportionately-addictive (or a big white label saying VEIIDA) and then you can only buy the games when you're over 21 and at special game stores.

So, in a nutshell? She says: "Games are addicting on purpose. They're like... an artificial intelligence that keeps ensnaring you. It's impossible to escape. Don't try without help, because it won't work. It doesn't matter if your family life's a wreck! You need to stop playing these dumb games. Go to the bar and get drunk, instead. Just don't play these games. Your insurance doesn't yet recognize "videogame addiction" as a real disease, because it isn't in our special book of mental disorders, yet, but it will be soon! So don't worry about paying me! Oh, and we're trying to raise awareness by putting cigarette warning labels on all addicting videogames. We're really on top of this, so be prepared for a revolution!"

Honestly... I wonder if this happened with books. Think back a few hundred years to when they invented the ink press. People can mass produce books for the public now! Yey! Of course, it's expensive right now, but in a few years, printing shops will be commonplace and EVERYONE can enjoy books! Everyone starts buying books, everyone starts reading books. But, hmm... after a while, people start noticing that they can't put the books down. The book is just that good. You don't WANT to put it down. Oh my gosh! The book is ADDICTING?! Overpaid head shrinkers come up with a plan to limit public exposure to books because they're in danger of being hopelessly ensnared by amazing stories such as Lord of the Rings. "You can't help yourself! But we're here to help! For five easy payments of 1299.99!"

I'm not saying games are the new books, but come on...

People who can't stop playing games? It's not the game's fault! Something is making them WANT to keep playing the game. Family chaos? Parents going insane? All too common in this day and age. They happen to start playing a game that's just really, really fun and they don't want to stop playing, because they're happy. They may be addicted, but I don't believe for an instant that anyone can be hopelessly addicted to something if everything is okay in their lives, and playing videogames is a heck of a lot healthier than getting drunk and driving around the city.

Oh wait, I forgot... that's Grand Theft Auto's fault, isn't it?

I got bored this morning... so I decided to resurrect my old NationStates country "Lupantis". I let it go into archival mode a very long time ago, and, apparently, they let you reactivate old accounts. Some things reverted to default, like my flag (which I found the image of on my harddrive, which was good) and the region I'm a part of, but everything else is exactly how it was when I left... that's pretty cool, y0. Don't know if anyone else plays anymore, but I felt like experimenting with governments.

...what post of mine these days would be complete without some dirt on Sony? Heeheehee. First, it seems Sony's messed up on taxes (Digg) related to the Playstation, in general. Apparently, they owe 243 million US dollars, and Sony's going to attempt to fight it. I just find it ironic that Sony's being plagued by such things after all the craziness in the recent past. (PS3 contradictions, competition accusations, rootkit fiasco, etc...)

Remember when people were making fun of the first Xbox when it was released? How absolutely gargantuan it was? Well, people are starting to notice the same thing with the Playstation 3. Of course, Sony fanboys are now saying that it's big because it does so much. Oh well, they can think that if they want. All the smart people are starting to compare the Nintendo Wii to the Sony Playstation 3 (Digg) in a different way... size. (They're asking how something so small and so cheap can be so fun, and why nobody else can do that, too.)

On a completely different note, Blizzard has finally unveiled Paid Character Transfers (Digg) for World of Warcraft. At first I was overjoyed. Finally, I could move my character from a boring Normal realm to an RP-PVP realm! No more wasted max level character, right? WRONG! You can't move from non-PVP realms to PVP realms... I don't know why I couldn't have figured this out for myself. They don't want people leveling up on easy realms and then just copying over to a PVP realm to kick everyone's butt. I'm disappointed, but it's my own fault. I guess I'll just have to keep leveling up my PVP character.

The following is a rant... it doesn't have to make sense to you, or even really be accurate, but this is how I feel about the situation, and if you don't, well... I don't care!

So everyone thinks they can run Blizzard's World of Warcraft servers better than Blizzard, eh? They think it's down all the time? Authentication errors since beginning of subscription service? These morons are all spoiled brats...

They all say "well THIS MMO doesn't have problems" and "well THAT MMO is running just fine"... yeah. They also only have about 10,000 paying users. City of Heroes? EVE Online? I've heard WoW compared to them... WoW has, can you remember? If you're a whiny-butt troll, you probably conveniently forgot... WoW has 6 million users. 6 MILLION. Let's see how your servers hold up under 6 MILLION connections. Over and over again.

They say how realms keep going down unexpectedly for hours and hour... funny how I never see this happen. I play WoW, too, people, and I hardly ever see a "Urgent News" bulletin on the login screen unless it's Maintenence Day. Hey... scheduled Maintenence Day. Do you realize how lucky you are to have a scheduled downtime you can plan around? Most other MMOs will just go POOF!! until they're suddenly back up... and that evening of gaming you had planned was suddenly ruined.

Naturally, there will be unforseen problems that crop up in any computer system. That's all part of the universe we live in, unfortunately. Things decay over time. Nothing keeps running in the same perfect state. Servers crash... some more often than others. That's what happens when you build a computer using hundreds of different parts from different manufacturers. One flaw in one part will cause the whole thing some serious instability.

Lately, authentication problems have been cropping up, too. You provide your username and password and it kinda sits there saying "authenticating". I've only noticed this happening in the last 3 months or so... That's also when they were saying that they were well on their way to 6 million users. Of course, not all 6 million people are logging in at the same time, but potentially hundreds of thousands ARE. So yes, I think they need to replace that... but, oh hey, guess what? They have been!

One thing users tend to forget when things are going wrong... fixing things takes time. Yes, it also takes money, and you guys don't seem to forget that. "Blizzard has 15x6,000,000 dollars every month! This should be fixed!" Hahaha... no. It takes time, people... and it always takes more time than everyone thinks it should. You can't just rip out a server and replace it with a faster one in a couple hours and go "tada! All better!"

Remember that Blizzard is new to this, relatively speaking. They've made some mistakes, yep... they've fixed some mistakes, yep. They make new one, too. But ya'know what? I've noticed that... well... everyone does. If it's seriously bothering you so much, just pull your subscription and take it to your uber-popular little single-shard MMO that's always up.

But I'm going to go out on a limb and say... they can't stop. They're addicted to WoW and can't stop even if they wanted to... and they're resorting to ripping Blizzard over these "realm issues"... ouy.

Three words for you people.

STAR... WARS... GALAXIES...

People who've played it know what I'm talking about... I've seen other SW:G'ers say how awful it was compared to Blizzard's problems, so I'm not the only one who's noticed. People who whine about Blizzard have obviously never experienced a TRUE monstrocity.

Here, I'm going to log in right now, and I'm pretty sure I'll get through Authentication like a hot knife through butter...

...tada! 10 seconds. No lag. On, GASP!!! Maintenence Day!!! You mean to tell me that the realms are up at 12:22PM EDT?!! ZOMG!!! Er... ahem. But you see what I mean? Some days are understandably worse than others. Some days are so awesome that there's no complaining... but see, people take that for granted. So when the system is flawless, Blizzard gets no praise.

BTW, Maintenence Day doesn't mean... Maintenence DAY. It's only for about 6 hours. In the extreme early morning for Blizzard... when nobody's on. Sometimes they'll hit problems in a patch and it'll be extended an hour or two. Patch 1.10 was especially difficult for them, and the Maintenence lasted all day.

People were irate. "This always happens! FIX IT, STUPID BLIZZARD!" Good heavens, you ignorant whiners... a Maintenence Day has NEVER been so bad... and everyone's ready to yank their subscriptions. Welp... so long to you dorks. It'll be that much more pleasant without you going ballistic whenever there's an accident. Dangit, we were even given an extra day on our subscriptions. Were people grateful? Heck no... "Good, now if they'd only done this all along." or "Well, they needed to do this anyway."

Okay, I think I'm done... Since I wanna go do something else now, though I could probably go on and on and on. But you know, I think you all get the picture. I know I have:

The human race is, pretty much as a whole, an ungrateful bunch of people who expect to get the best when they want it, and take it for granted when they do, thinking they've deserved it all along.

(Ick... good thing I'm a dog... yey! Woof...)