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'At the end of the day, we don't play games for social interaction ... We play games to escape.' Microsoft's strategy is 'absolutely flawed,' he added.""

Yeah, if you focus on online play you'll only end up with an itty-bitty niche market. An online game might have to struggle with a measely 5 million players. Truly online gaming is doomed.

One can make many reasonable arguments against Microsofts investment. I do agree that single player games will continue to be a major force. But online play can create new an interesting ideas. While I don't like playing online with random people because there are too many asshats, I'm looking forward to more cooperative games.

You mean 5 million?

Another World Event that will be appearing in WoW soon is The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj.

I'm sure there are other reasons that the Draenai wouldn't make sense as the new race, too.

The article doesn't link to Blizzards full press release http://www.blizzard.com/press/051219.shtml which states the following:

"World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules."

So those 5 million customers are based on anyone who has a current paid-for account.

World of Warcraft offers Game Cards, which give you 2 months at a time. You can let your account expire when you want and pick it back up when you want. Not quite the flexibility you're looking for, but it's an improvement over the hard line subscription model. Check here.

If we slashdot them, maybe Blizzard will take notice? Everyone start clicking here, and don't stop!

At any given time there are about seven active GMs who spend most of their time dealing with "HE'S TOUCHING ME!" and "OMGWTF! I just gave all my money to someone who promised he'd give it back! I forget his name! Give me my money back!" complaints. Blizzard has so far refused to answer my queries regarding the suicide rate among their GM staff but I can point out that they are always hiring.

The last thing these people need to do is go out looking for more work to do. If an infringing name is brought to their attention then they will apply the rules to it. If nobody reports it, nothing is going to happen. If it is so emotionally costly to have a character name changed, then perhaps it is worth spending two minutes becoming familiar with the rules before breaking them.

Seriously, read the naming policy before you choose your silly, titled, out of genre, Internet-famous name if you don't want to have to deal with the consequences of violating their rules.

Though you can deride Blizzard for providing poor customer service with their World of Warcraft product (and I'd agree that this is often the case), all you have to do is read the naming policy to see that titles are against their rules, so why it would be necessary to send even one e-mail or make one phone call to Blizzard asking why your name was changed is unclear to me, especially for a web/techno-savvy, presumably at least semi-intelligent person like Taco, who should have no problem deducing that the name change was the result of a naming policy violation and should have no problem finding the previously linked URL with less than a minute or two of searching. A quick scan of that policy would make it very clear that in at least one way it was a clear violation. I wouldn't expect Taco or anybody else forced to have their name changed to be happy about it, as it certainly is a considerable pain in the ass, but they really have nobody to blame but themselves.

Simply put, it is your responsibility to know their terms of service and rules, and it doesn't take a dozen inquiries through Blizzard reps to figure out what their rules are. It only takes one inquiry through information posted publicly on their web site.

Although I generally agree that when action such as this is taken (banning, suspension, forced name change, or any other disciplinary action) the GM should spell out explicitly exactly what aspect of what policy (or policies) was violated ... so people who may have been unjustly penalized have an idea of what they need to attempt to disprove to establish their innocence, and so what scant CS resources Blizzard seems to have available aren't wasted answering the e-mails of confused or belligerant individuals who are seem unable or unwilling to read the rules (not that I really think this would stop most people).

Anyway, s far as I'm concerned, Taco, you were part of the whole CS nightmare that is the reality of most MMOs. You didn't read the rules, didn't follow the rules and instead of accepting the consequences for your poor behavior, you went on to waste more of limited time and resources that the Blizzard staff has at its disposal. You contributed to a clogging of the (I agree, sometimes unnecessarily convoluted) lines of communications for those who have legitimate issues that can't be addressed simply by reading the FAQ, TOS or knowledge base articles.

Put simply: RTFM next time.

Blizzard certainly is to blame as well, and the seeming unaccountability of GMs can possibly be troublesome, too ... but customers are often a big part of the problem with customer service, I think.

You agreed to follow a set of rules. You violated those rules and got taken to task for it. Just becuase you seem to not have read or known the rules you agreed to follow is not an excuse.

Titles
Fantasy titles should be earned through the mechanics of the game, and should not be recreated through character naming. This category includes names which:

        * Consist of any title prefix attached to a character's name be it fantasy-based or not (i.e. Kingmike, Presidentsanchez)

There is a faceless bittwiddler from Blizzard out there giving people a hard time for using names they have used everywhere else, and no way to reign him in.

No, no there isn't. The GMs in WoW don't proactively enforce the naming policy, they only do it reactively. If CmdrTaco had his name changed, that means someone reported him to a GM. Which probably means he did something to annoy someone, who decided to take revenge by doing the virtual equivilent of running to tell mommy on you for some minor thing you did.

Plus, "Cmdrtaco" is pretty blatantly against the naming policies you have to agree to when you sign up for the game. I dunno if CmdrTaco actually read them, but I did, they're not exactly secret. His name clearly violates the titles restriction. This isn't new, either, this is the same naming policy they had in open beta.

There is a faceless bittwiddler from Blizzard out there giving people a hard time for using names they have used everywhere else, and no way to reign him in.

No, no there isn't. The GMs in WoW don't proactively enforce the naming policy, they only do it reactively. If CmdrTaco had his name changed, that means someone reported him to a GM. Which probably means he did something to annoy someone, who decided to take revenge by doing the virtual equivilent of running to tell mommy on you for some minor thing you did.

Plus, "Cmdrtaco" is pretty blatantly against the naming policies you have to agree to when you sign up for the game. I dunno if CmdrTaco actually read them, but I did, they're not exactly secret. His name clearly violates the titles restriction. This isn't new, either, this is the same naming policy they had in open beta.

As it happens "Commander" is one of their titles, and a pretty high one at that. "Cmdr" is not only a string of consonants which makes native speakers of Slovenian give up all hope of pronouncing it, it is very similar to an in-game rank.

You violated the naming policy. It is unpronounceable, contains a masked title, and is even a clear reference to a well known person, character, place or icon.

You agreed to these rules before you ever created the character "Cmdrtaco" and broke all of them. What exactly is the lesson that needs to be learned here?

As it happens "Commander" is one of their titles, and a pretty high one at that. "Cmdr" is not only a string of consonants which makes native speakers of Slovenian give up all hope of pronouncing it, it is very similar to an in-game rank.

You violated the naming policy. It is unpronounceable, contains a masked title, and is even a clear reference to a well known person, character, place or icon.

You agreed to these rules before you ever created the character "Cmdrtaco" and broke all of them. What exactly is the lesson that needs to be learned here?

As it happens "Commander" is one of their titles, and a pretty high one at that. "Cmdr" is not only a string of consonants which makes native speakers of Slovenian give up all hope of pronouncing it, it is very similar to an in-game rank.

You violated the naming policy. It is unpronounceable, contains a masked title, and is even a clear reference to a well known person, character, place or icon.

You agreed to these rules before you ever created the character "Cmdrtaco" and broke all of them. What exactly is the lesson that needs to be learned here?

Ah, so he descends the throne to post among the proletariat. ;)

I will say, though.... Back in the day, I was a senior guide in EverQuest. One of the things that senior guides did was enforce the naming policy. Mostly this consisted of changing obvious troll names containing misspelled profanity or an off-color reference. But it also included rules such as "no title prefixes" (this was long before EQ added AA and tradeskill titles, way back in 1999) and "no non-fantasy names". And yes, there were times that I changed character names despite the pleadings of their owners and their friends. Made me feel like a turd doing it, too. These characters had gotten well into the 30s or 40s (50 was the limit at the time) with no problem, and in a way, their being able to get to that point without having a GM or SG talk to them was almost tacit acceptance of their name - and by that point it had in some fashion become their identity.

However, I am lawful neutral at heart, and when a name fairly obviously violated a rule, I had no qualms about changing it - in many cases where the violation was obvious (even if it wasn't vulgar), the person would laugh and say, "You finally got me. ;)" In the case of "CmdrTaco", yeah, it's pretty much spelled out right there, and even though your online identity in general revolves around using that name, once you get into the game, that identity has to fit through the "Carry-On Baggage Size Checker of Justice". The GMs should try to help you maintain that identity while conforming to the rules (suggesting "Taco" as an alternative, for example, assuming you're not on a RP server), but they can't treat you any differently than anyone else whose name they've changed.

Of course, you probably already know all this, but I think it's important to drive home the point that the society of World of Warcraft or any other MMOG isn't the same as society IRL. There are different rules in this society that go right down to the essence of one's identity. But they're there at the outset, and the decision is ultimately up to the player as to whether they want to participate in a society where the rules might not grant them the freedom to choose or make use of a particular online identity.

On a side note, I don't know why you would want to name a character "CmdrTaco" anyway. Seems like an invitation for constant spam tells to me ;)

http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01723 p#titles Titles Fantasy titles should be earned through the mechanics of the game, and should not be recreated through character naming. This category includes names which: * Consist of any title prefix attached to a character's name be it fantasy-based or not (i.e. Kingmike, Presidentsanchez) If a player is found to have such a name for their character he/she may: * Be prompted to select a new name for the character upon next login

Fantasy titles should be earned through the mechanics of the game, and should not be recreated through character naming. This category includes names which:

• Consist of any title prefix attached to a character's name be it fantasy-based or not (i.e. Kingmike, Presidentsanchez)

Fantasy titles should be earned through the mechanics of the game, and should not be recreated through character naming. This category includes names which:

• Consist of any title prefix attached to a character's name be it fantasy-based or not (i.e. Kingmike, Presidentsanchez)

Fantasy titles should be earned through the mechanics of the game, and should not be recreated through character naming. This category includes names which:

• Consist of any title prefix attached to a character's name be it fantasy-based or not (i.e. Kingmike, Presidentsanchez)

There's got to be better game material out there for a movie. I personally think that Warcraft or Starcraft could each make a fantastic special effects film... I always loved watching the cut-scenes in the game. Why HALO? While DOOM might end up being a turkey, there is good video game material out there. I would love for Tim Burton to make the LucasArts title Grim Fandango into a film... it would certainly be entertaining.

2 or 3 hours max while playing something like WoW?

Well... for WoW there're A/C power adapters. I suppose that would be annoying if you wanted to play WoW at a picnic down by the lake. For me, however, when I was moving and had no phone line (let alone an Internet connection), I was mooching off of Panera and friends for a couple weeks. I was very pleased to find that Panera does provide access to the power grid.

I know that the percentage of Americans who own computers crossed the half-way mark in 2000 -- I don't know what the number is now. But I sure as heckfire know that nowhere near 50% of Americans play WoW (only 1.5M worldwide). It's almost as if there are other things to do with a computer...

Ant Slayer

Actually they added UDP in 1.09

http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=msc0473p

From the actual press release:

The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or canceled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards.

So it's people that have bought the game and haven't cancelled, which seems like a pretty good definition to me.

The standard "rule" is that there are 5 times the number of accounts as there are people online at any one time.

In June they had over 500,000 concurrent users outside of China.

"... in China, with peak concurrency during the open beta test topping 500,000 players, nearly equal to World of Warcraft's peak concurrency in all three current markets combined ..."
http://www.blizzard.com/press/050614-2million.shtm l

My reply that I finally got around to writing:

Dear sirs or madams:

This is, for lack of a better phrase, complete bullshit.

I find it flat out offensive that you can ban me for a mundane thing like "Fukinshaman" while cheating, exploiting, instance cascading, and terrain bypasses continue to go unpunished by your GM team. It is blatant two-faced favoritism.

First, "Fukinshaman" was banned for:

Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
This category includes both clear and masked names which:
. Are inappropriate references to human anatomy or bodily functions
. Are pornographic in nature

This is wrong. Fukinshaman has nothing to do with the act of fucking, the act of sex, the act of intercourse, the act of sticking a penis into a vagina, or any other bodily or pornographic function. It is a merely a testament to your design team's inability to balance a class that is so blatantly overpowered. It is an exclamatory remark. It has nothing to do with the offense listed. The ban should be lifted on basic principle. Police can't just write tickets for crimes that never happened and, in my opinion, your GM staff (as incompetent and unhelpful as they are) should be held to the same standards.

My guild and I have brought in more customers to WoW than any other company or organization that you aren't paying. The fact that you would turn on your customers that contribute to the community like this while you leave others who have more serious offenses untouched speaks a great deal about why your customer service is rated as horrible.

I speak for the entire WoW community when I say your customer service is unsatisfactory, horrendous, incompetent, and more corrupt than a Bangkok prostitution ring.

Please don't message me with insulting and condescending hypocritical crap like "The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players." This is not your bottom line otherwise you'd be dealing with the other exploiters instead of banning people over things that are slightly offensive.

Sincerely,

Abduhl
Banned Rogue
PALS FOR LIFE
http://www.thepalsforlife.com

PS - I'd like my account to have its ban removed.
- Hide quoted text -

On 8/15/05, wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com <wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com > wrote:
***Notice of Account Closure***

Hello Jacob,

Account Name: G0TNWA
Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
Details: Old Character Name: Fukinshaman

The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of Warcraft by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. This World of Warcraft account has now been closed by the Account Administration staff based on review of all account infractions incurred. This action has been taken in accordance to our Terms of Use ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.ht ml) and our game policies (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm0171 2p ). The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players.

We thank you in advance for your time and for respecting our position.


Regards,

Khedris
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support




Customer satisfaction is a top priority here at Blizzard Entertainment, and we would like your feedback on the level of service you have received. Please feel free to provide such feedback at the following web address:

My reply that I finally got around to writing:

Dear sirs or madams:

This is, for lack of a better phrase, complete bullshit.

I find it flat out offensive that you can ban me for a mundane thing like "Fukinshaman" while cheating, exploiting, instance cascading, and terrain bypasses continue to go unpunished by your GM team. It is blatant two-faced favoritism.

First, "Fukinshaman" was banned for:

Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
This category includes both clear and masked names which:
. Are inappropriate references to human anatomy or bodily functions
. Are pornographic in nature

This is wrong. Fukinshaman has nothing to do with the act of fucking, the act of sex, the act of intercourse, the act of sticking a penis into a vagina, or any other bodily or pornographic function. It is a merely a testament to your design team's inability to balance a class that is so blatantly overpowered. It is an exclamatory remark. It has nothing to do with the offense listed. The ban should be lifted on basic principle. Police can't just write tickets for crimes that never happened and, in my opinion, your GM staff (as incompetent and unhelpful as they are) should be held to the same standards.

My guild and I have brought in more customers to WoW than any other company or organization that you aren't paying. The fact that you would turn on your customers that contribute to the community like this while you leave others who have more serious offenses untouched speaks a great deal about why your customer service is rated as horrible.

I speak for the entire WoW community when I say your customer service is unsatisfactory, horrendous, incompetent, and more corrupt than a Bangkok prostitution ring.

Please don't message me with insulting and condescending hypocritical crap like "The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players." This is not your bottom line otherwise you'd be dealing with the other exploiters instead of banning people over things that are slightly offensive.

Sincerely,

Abduhl
Banned Rogue
PALS FOR LIFE
http://www.thepalsforlife.com

PS - I'd like my account to have its ban removed.
- Hide quoted text -

On 8/15/05, wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com <wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com > wrote:
***Notice of Account Closure***

Hello Jacob,

Account Name: G0TNWA
Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
Details: Old Character Name: Fukinshaman

The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of Warcraft by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. This World of Warcraft account has now been closed by the Account Administration staff based on review of all account infractions incurred. This action has been taken in accordance to our Terms of Use ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.ht ml) and our game policies (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm0171 2p ). The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players.

We thank you in advance for your time and for respecting our position.


Regards,

Khedris
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support




Customer satisfaction is a top priority here at Blizzard Entertainment, and we would like your feedback on the level of service you have received. Please feel free to provide such feedback at the following web address:

My reply that I finally got around to writing:

Dear sirs or madams:

This is, for lack of a better phrase, complete bullshit.

I find it flat out offensive that you can ban me for a mundane thing like "Fukinshaman" while cheating, exploiting, instance cascading, and terrain bypasses continue to go unpunished by your GM team. It is blatant two-faced favoritism.

First, "Fukinshaman" was banned for:

Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
This category includes both clear and masked names which:
. Are inappropriate references to human anatomy or bodily functions
. Are pornographic in nature

This is wrong. Fukinshaman has nothing to do with the act of fucking, the act of sex, the act of intercourse, the act of sticking a penis into a vagina, or any other bodily or pornographic function. It is a merely a testament to your design team's inability to balance a class that is so blatantly overpowered. It is an exclamatory remark. It has nothing to do with the offense listed. The ban should be lifted on basic principle. Police can't just write tickets for crimes that never happened and, in my opinion, your GM staff (as incompetent and unhelpful as they are) should be held to the same standards.

My guild and I have brought in more customers to WoW than any other company or organization that you aren't paying. The fact that you would turn on your customers that contribute to the community like this while you leave others who have more serious offenses untouched speaks a great deal about why your customer service is rated as horrible.

I speak for the entire WoW community when I say your customer service is unsatisfactory, horrendous, incompetent, and more corrupt than a Bangkok prostitution ring.

Please don't message me with insulting and condescending hypocritical crap like "The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players." This is not your bottom line otherwise you'd be dealing with the other exploiters instead of banning people over things that are slightly offensive.

Sincerely,

Abduhl
Banned Rogue
PALS FOR LIFE
http://www.thepalsforlife.com

PS - I'd like my account to have its ban removed.
- Hide quoted text -

On 8/15/05, wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com <wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com > wrote:
***Notice of Account Closure***

Hello Jacob,

Account Name: G0TNWA
Offense: Naming Violation: Obscene/Vulgar
Details: Old Character Name: Fukinshaman

The actions detailed above have been deemed inappropriate for World of Warcraft by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment. This World of Warcraft account has now been closed by the Account Administration staff based on review of all account infractions incurred. This action has been taken in accordance to our Terms of Use ( http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.ht ml) and our game policies (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm0171 2p ). The bottom line is that we want World of Warcraft to be a fun and safe environment for all players.

We thank you in advance for your time and for respecting our position.


Regards,

Khedris
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support




Customer satisfaction is a top priority here at Blizzard Entertainment, and we would like your feedback on the level of service you have received. Please feel free to provide such feedback at the following web address:

You might want to take a look here and here to see their official postings about employment opportunities.

I don't know if you knew this or not, but this is just in case you didn't. If you're behind a router, in order for the Blizzard downloader to run efficiently, you need to forward some ports as well as enable connections on those ports in your firewall if you have one enabled. My guess is that, this being Slashdot, you already knew this, but there may be someone here who could make use of this information.

What came first of the chicken and the egg? The vendors won't release games for Linux because the userbase isn't big enough and the userbase won't switch to Linux because the lack of games..

It's called market potential. Whenever your company releases $HARDWARE or $VIDEO_GAME they have to ask the marketing people "who will buy this?" Based on the answers, you get publishers paying for development of Microsoft only hardware drivers and Microsoft only video games.

(Neither video games or hardware are Free as in Beer. Free as in Speech is possible, but discussing price-free drivers and games is beyond the scope of my argument here.)

I was asking around last year about the market potential for Linux kernel GNU systems. The biggest problem is find out just how many people use Linux in the first place (http://counter.li.org./

So, given that it takes a market of at least 100,000 units sold to turn a profit on a top-release $50 game with a $1 million to $3 million budget, are there enough desktop linux users to suppport a Linux game release? Is the market there?

Note that top-release $50 PC games for Windows sell upwards of 200,000 units in their first year, and upwards of 100,000 units for their next few. For example, Blizzard's Wold of Warcraft (http://www.blizzard.com/ cost $5-10million to make but sold 600,000 at $39-50 in its first 6 weeks. But that is on the extreme end of the spectrum.

Assume 50% of home desktop Linux users play computer video games[0].

Using counter.li.org numbers Linux desktops = 0.025% (0.0125% gamers) of all desktops, then a WoW for Linux would have sold 144 copies in it's first 6 weeks[1]. Stats at geek.com (http://www.geek.com/ for 2004 show Linux desktops = 1.12 percent of the market. Assuming the highest number of Linux desktop gamers being 0.56 percent of the total gaming market, then a WoW for Linux would have sold 3,000 copies in it's first 6 weeks at $39-50.

That means between $7,200 and $150,000 could have been spent by Linux desktop users on WoW. While $7k will only pay a Bangladeshi salary, $150,000 would nicely cover one or two interns to make sure WoW compiles and runs on Linux[2][3].

0. Or assume a higher rate of gameplay, but consider less than 100% market penetration of your game, so that 50% market penetration is reached.

1. Note that Transgaming (http://transgaming.com/ needs far more paying customers pending their $5 votes than this to start work on a title, and WoW has been voted #1 priority by transgaming.com customers for several months before being supported.

2. Assuming a baseline Linux is being supported (e.g. SDL $VER + Glib $VER or LSB (http://www.linuxbase.org/) or Distro $FOO) and no additional cost for shipping and delivering the binaries.

3.$15 per month implies $2,160 to $45,000 a month to keep that Linux port updated. Considering Blizzard.com is reporting a 1.11 patch to the 5 year old Diablo II, over a similar 5 years a WoW monthly income could have added $225,000 to Blizzard's coffiers.

Obviously I can't speak for your father's computer habits personally, but I can tell you from direct experience that not one single person I've talked to who's purchased a Mac mini (and we're talking dozens here, speaking as a Mac Specialist) has ever complained about graphics. Nothing like "Hey, where'd that little splash effect go?" or any silly comment like that. You get what you pay for.

And please don't bitch about not being able to play a higher-end computer game on an entry-level computer; that's just idiocy. You couldn't do that on the PC side any more than you could do it on the Mac side; looking at the official WoW specs shows that the requirements are fully comparable, once the differing platform architectures are taken into account.

It costs ~0.055USD an hour to play. (http://www.blizzard.com/press/chinapatch.shtml)

From blizzard:
"Only players who have purchased an authorized CD key will be able to activate their accounts and enter the game. Each CD key costs 30 Yuan/RMB and can be purchased with a World of Warcraft Points Card. Point Cards also cost 30 Yuan/RMB and can be used at a rate of 9 points per hour (0.45 Yuan/hour) to play World of Warcraft."

• MacSoft
  
• Aspry (Scroll Down to find list)
  
• Feral Interactive
  
• Freeverse
  
• Ambrosia
  
• Pangea
  
• Blizzard
  
• United States Army

• MacGameFiles
  
• Apple: Games

Broodcraft.. thats an interesting name for StarCraft: Brood War .

But yeah, just throwing that out there..

I don't know how they managed to screw it up so badly, but the only way of being sure to get the patch in less than a couple of hours is to use a mirror.

Their servers are overloaded, but I usually get it in about 30-45 min on release day. Two days after (for my other computer)? 5 min. I do have the recommended ports forwarded, though.

Blizzard does seem to have some infrastructure issues, but please don't hold that against BitTorrent.

Indeed, Blizzard uses Bittorrent to distribute patches for World of Warcraft.

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2/wallpapers/hellfro zenover/HellFrozenOver-text-1024x.jpg yes, it is work safe and family friendly.

When you buy a game, you could get an extra "LAN party" CD that can be passed around and copied however you want.

Blizzard used to do this, at least in the era of Starcraft. They called it a Spawn install, and it was an installed copy that could only be used in network games against someone running the same CD which made this install.

Speaking of archaic, lets redo tags, eh? My links from my post:
http://linux.mybookmarkmanager.com
http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=mww000p&v= 49

This time I used preview! =/ sorry everyone.

The Ghost trailers on the Blizzard site are windows executables... anyone going to post a torrent of the actual videos?

Trailers here.

It's sad but true that most games nowadays are packaged like you describe. However, not all of them. I'm a happy owner of the World of Warcraft Collector's Edition. It comes with a ton of extra stuff besides the game (too lazy to list them all, see for yourself), and yes, it includes a cloth map :)

The absolutely amazing hard-cover art book was alone well worth the price difference.

Well... I guess you have 2 less reasons for sticking with Windows...

• Unreal Tournament 2004: 2004 Apple Design Awards - Best Entertainment Product
• Starcraft: Brood War - Also available (check sys. requirements)

Most good games do make it to the Mac, though it usually take a few months for a port. I imagine, as the market share increases, this will be less of a problem. As less serious gamers switch over and pick up a game or two a year from what's available, game developers will shift their emphasis to account for the changing market. The Mac going up from three to six percent in computer marketshare will be a great start.

The game may change too radically for some and this might force some of the more reticent players on PVP servers to consider how much griefing they will allow in their online experience. When you are paying upwards of 50 bucks for the game and 15 bucks a month for the game the casual player who plays an hour or two a night is not going to be too pleased to not be able to meaningfully interact with the virtual world as he has done for the past 6 months there might be the addition of dishonor points for player kills. Which is what even a lot of us more hardcore folk would consider the minimal insurance that we will not be /spit on , ganked and griefed for the entierity of our online time.

what are the odds Rockstar sues?

Just because some companies always sue doesn't mean it's correct. They mostly do it because they know the people they sue has no chance of defending themselves. Well, SCO may have picked the wrong target.

that's version 1.12.

version 1.12b readme is here. Curiosly the readme says nothing about the aforementioned "extra features" other than the Korean language patch.

-zr

Blizzard's selection of real-time strategy games (warcraft series) and role-playing games (Diablo series) are fully playable using a mouse... You can play most strategy games and lots of RPG by solely using your mouse. Most of these games simply support a keyboard to map shortcut keys for the actions you can perform with the mouse. Other games include: Dungeon Siege I & II (RPG) Rise of Nations (RTS) Rome - TotaWar (RTS) etc... Hope you enjoy these games!

Even after I stopped playing, I still havn't worked up the courage to cancel my account yet because I don't want to lose my character.

Blizzard doesn't delete characters from cancelled accounts. You can cancel, not pay for a year, and then reactivate your account and have all your characters still there.

This is great for hardcore gamers. Cap in a couple months then cancel until a significant content patch comes out.

http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowbilling/?id=abl 01115p

This might fix your problems, however if I read correctly, if you dont have a receipt you pay an extra 10USD

The Blizzard online store has copies avaliable again.

There are restrictions from buying from the store depending on where you live, however.

Also, they did note that they are slowly releasing copies again in this forum post.