Slashdot Mirror
Warcraft III Gone Gold
0x00 writes "Shacknews seems to be the first to report that Warcraft III has gone gold. The press release is here. Blizzard have announced that the game will be available July 3rd around the world - just in time for my mid-year University break (great timing!)." Update: 06/13 15:16 GMT by M : Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game.
I've been waiting a long while for this one to come out. Now I'll start waiting for the expansion set to be released... :P
Like my productivity didn't suck enough already...
"Jesus saves sinners...and redeems them for valuable coupons"
that no matter what it is that we're protesting at the moment, that it doesn't really matter because we're not serious about the boycotts.
Say what you like about Blizzard, they make some pretty damn good games.
I have been pwned because my
Call me silly but I choose not to play it because it won't run on my computer. It requires Doors or something like that.
Honestly though the only computer I have powerful enough to run it has never had Windows installed on it. My laptop has no hope of being able to play games (without branding the HP logo on my legs.) That in combination with confusing legal moves, I have mixed emotions about it.
Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game because nono of us buy games to actually play them, right?
I want 2D games back.
It's $64.95 list and $79.99 for the collector's edition.
Head to http://www.eff.org and give them the money, then send a letter to Blizzard telling them about it, and why.
"Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game."
How about:
Don't support Blizzard's dirty tactics, download the game on your local p2p network !
Who cares if they're suing people. I'm sorry, just because they don't exactly follow the mores of the Slashdot Community, doesn't make them evil. Certain things are forgivable when you makes games as well as they do.
Some people just like to have a cause.
Better idea.
Don't send the money to the EFF, but mail Blizzard saying you did.
Then treat yourself to a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts for being crafty (War Crafty!)
I have been pwned because my
It's still objective. He didn't say: ...."
...."
"No one should buy this game because Blizzard X
Nor did he say:
"Everyone should buy this game because Blizzard X
All he asked was that you keep it in mind when making your own decision. Geez, even the whining is sub-par on slashdot...
Justin Dubs
...in that regard. Games are not so important to me to sacrifice my principles over them.
If it doesn't run on Linux, I'm not terribly interested in buying it. If a company's going to pull the stunts Blizzard has went at lengths to do, I'm definitely not going to buy it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Kindly post a link, excerpt, or anecdote where anyone affiliated with this site has made it out to be an objective and unbiased source of news. Thanks.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
2. it's questionable just how much they apply to traditional news outlets. Most newspapers and TV news shows are quite free with the editorializing, and usually far less honestly than above. And besides,
3. No specific course of action is advised by the comment. It's just an objective piece of information: a reminder that Blizzard is currently suing the authors of bnetd. Insofar as any product announcement implies an imperative to go out and buy the product (what, you think it's world news?) they are simply providing more information about the product - that the company making it is engaged in a lawsuit against open source developers.
Objective? On Slashdot? If you're looking for an objective report, maybe you should counsider other news sources. But if you're just looking for news for nerds, you're at the right place.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
i just lost $50 to a guy. I told him Duke Nukem 4Eva would come out before this...
I got a chance to see the beta at a friend's house.
Yes, it's 3d, but compared to a 3d engine like Dungeon Seige, Warcraft 3's engine and it's camera control scheme sucks.
And the gameplay isn't a heck of a lot different than Warcraft 2. You now have heroes, which are pretty cool, and you can queue your production. You can set a rallying point that new units will move to automatically. But the basics of building as much as you can as fast as you can still stand.
Maybe I'm just tired of the RTS genre...
And now we see the true reason NWN's Gold announcement was rushed out the door earlier this week (including barely any beta process and no Linux support in the box).
They just had to get it out before people started getting their WarcraftIII addiction going!
Derek
Blizzard is exercising its right to not allow anybody except for Blizzard to use the gaming technology that it built! Panic, panic, boycott, boycott!
I think Michael is forgetting one crucial bit of information -- BLIZZARD GAMES ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE. Blizzard built it, people play it; Blizzard has the legal right to choose who they allow to interact with their game at any level. Not to say that interop software would be a bad thing -- id Software and Valve have proven that a game or gaming engine's longevity is closely tied to how accessable it is to the modding community. But if Blizzard has no desire to venture down that path, so be it.
Blizzard makes good games, period. If you don't want to buy them, that's your beef. But don't try to turn this into an open-source crusade -- you're wrong, they're right, end of story. Deal with it.
you must be new here. or ignorant. or both.
slashdot does not report the news. slashdot points you in the direction of OTHERS reporting the news, and they do it with their own style and flair. if you don't like it, read another site.
Will I have more fun playing this game than I did and still do playing Starcraft or is it just prettier. I think Blizzard games are great but I think they're about due for a flop (not in sales, just in longevity). It's clear that this game will sell.
The price is getting STEEP for these highly hyped titles. No way.
And I haven't liked an RTS since Total Annihilation, mostly because it's the only one which got the interface right and had units which are reasonably intelligent in responding to the enemy without user intervention.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Blizzard isn't all that rich, in fact they don't even own themselves.
They are owned by a larger company, a french company I believe. Blizzard does make a few of the most popular games, but that doesn't mean they are the most successful.
Id is sucessful because of the work of one man, Carmack. Without him there would be no Doom and thus no Id. (Don't want to knock the artists, but they needed his engine) Quake was the first game where he didn't do all the work on the engine. So there is a large personal investment in the projects that Id does, while Blizzard is run by managers and lawyers. I'm sure that the programmers that worked at Blizzard would love to see bnetd succeed. Unlike at Id, the programmers can't speak their minds.
While Id is one of the few successful gaming companies to realease the code to their old engines, Blizzard is still selling Diablo 1 in stores. Without an engine available for mass use.
Blizzard is more hard core about protecting their property.
BTW, a few thousand geeks boy-cotting this game won't do anything to the sales, they are expecting the mothers of the world to pick this up for their little johnny or jane to play. Blizzard games sell millions of copies.
There are so many posts about how "i am going to get even by pirating the game"...
guys (or gals), please do not sink yourself to that level. While we agree on the fact that Blizzard sueing bnet.d is questionable (okay, dead wrong and full of malicious intent), we also all know that copyright infringement is wrong. not necessarily as wrong as MS and BSA make it appear to be, but still wrong non-the-less. copying their software will not make things any better. in the end they will just come back with the statistic and say -- look, of COURSE we need to take these legal actions.
the future rests in each of our hands (gosh that sounds lame), that may seem to be insignificant at first, but i really believe that it's an important responsibility.
think it through -- i mean, it IS just a game you know.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'm so turned off by the lawsuit against bnetd that I just can't bring myself to support Blizzard anymore.
Nows the time to make our feelings known by NOT making a purchase.
Sorry Blizzard, great looking game but I'm passing.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
So...if we can't buy it because we're "boycotting" Blizzard, then would it be morally wrong to pirate it? ;^)
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
"Update: 06/13 15:16 GMT by M: Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game."
You're right! Boycott everything!
Duping/hacking/cheating isn't friggin' BAD ENOUGH on battle.net. Go ahead and let them COMPLETELY ruin any semblance of order by allowing people to interoperate and "write their own apps" for it.
Give me a break. I'd fight it too.
If that doesn't smack of corporate calleousness I don't know what does.
I'm going to support the eff. I won't be buying Warcraft III. There are TONS of excellent games out there to buy folks, so if you support the eff, show it by not buying Warcraft III and spend your money on another game.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Right. I'm not going to buy it, and I'm not going to play it, partly because I don't want to, but mostly because I don't have a machine that can play it. Are we clear on that? I am not going to give Blizzard $55.
But given Blizzard's treatement of bnetd, I'm damn well going to download a warez rip of the information that comprises it (which to my Linux machines look like a bunch of gibberish). Because that will reduce Blizzard's bank balance by $55, right? I mean, it does actually remove money from their account and puts it in, er, /dev/null, doesn't it? Because making unauthorised copies costs money, right? Maybe if enough of us do this (be sure to delete the information then download it again and again) we can leave Blizzard owing several billion dollars to... err... wait... isn't there a flaw in this argument?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game.
Somehow I don't think that a game publisher needs to be held to quite the same interoperatibility standards as an operating systems publisher ... because it's a game. Odds are, no matter how much they sue or how inoperable they are, they're not going to push all other games out of the market.
Am I going to buy it? I'll wait for the reviews on the single player campaign. I never liked warcraft I or II multiplayer - it seemed to be the simple art of running exploding suicide troops at the enemy.
Which borders on unpatriotic these days, now that I think about it.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
P.S. What another boycott? Jeez! If I followed all of these boycotts, I wouldn't be able to turn on my computer. Sorry guys, Blizzard supporting Mac at the same level of Windows is more important to me than open source game servers.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
We've play Starcraft at work, with 2 legit copies (and 6 people play) with a Battlenet clone.
I know that the BN clones have offered to put the same security into their servers as Battlenet offers so that people can't pirate, but perhaps it's just not an option for Blizzard to give up that info, and then test BNetD (etc) to make sure they conform.
When Warcraft2 came out, Blizzard added the ability for multiple installs off one CD, as "spawns" so that several people could play the game at once. Was a great idea, as everyone who played it, bought it. Even the women in the office (they liked the voices of the peons, etc). I thought that that was pretty cool.
I don't think Blizzard is going over the deep end on this.
Lets see here ..
.. and will appeal to many people out there. But the style of game has been so badly abused over the past 10 years that it turns out to be the Same #$^@ Different Day.
Warcraft, Warcraft II, Command and Conquer, Red Alert, Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, Start Craft, Galatic Battlegrounds, etc, etc, etc.
Its to the point that you have played so many of these that they all seem to be same game.
Build a base
build units
enhance units
smash enemy
Wash
rinse
repeat
I played a friend of mines SWGB. After about 3 or 4 games, I removed it from my box, packaged it back up again, and gave it back to him.
Warcraft III is prob a great game
Just a ramble.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
after considering everything, I believe Blizzard is justified in suing BnetD, considering how bnetd opened the door to piracy of the beta versions of Warcraft III(because BnetD didn't authenticate whether or not the version was stolen or not). On the other hand, I think they should have done more to co-operate with the BnetD project leads, who would likely have jumped at the chance to give Blizzard a hand.
The lawsuit just seems like a miscalculation on blizzards part, and they can't easily retract something like that without losing some measure of credibility.
It's been a long time.
M: Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game.
Ok, I thought about it.
I don't care.
Great idea! But If Blizzard gives you a counter-offer of Warcraft III Collector's Edition for just $49.99, should you accept it?
Well, if your relationship with Blizzard is good and you really feel like part of the team, I'd say go for it! If you think they're just stringing you along, I'd reject the counter-offer.
It really boils down to how much you think you can trust them.
I have been pwned because my
Then the whole free market system pretty much goes right down the drain. The only accountability will be to guberment regulations, and businesses can screw customers any which way they want because they know if they make an enticing product people will shell out the cash anyway. Use your brains before you go out buying things made by companies who sue your friends and peers for beating them at their own game. Feh. Fanboys.
I can't look into the exact details of the lawsuit since it's /.ed, but I think Blizzard is well within their rights to sue for this.
When Diablo came out, there was a lot of cheating going on. So much so that I didn't even bother playing online, there were too many PK's and people with hacked inventories and levels. Blizzard tried to fix that in Diablo II, but unfortunately my computer kept crashing whenever I played it online, so I was unable to verify it myself. But their solution to prevent hacking was partially handled by the servers, and partially by he clients. If they were to allow others to make their own versions of the Battle.net servers, then this level of protection from cheating would be gone. There could theoretically be cheats in these other versions, which in turn could lead to the same problems with cheating found in the original Diablo. Blizzard is probably afraid they would get blamed for this.
Also, if users log into an unauthorized Battle.net server, they could have "patches" downloaded to their computers which could theoretically wipe out their hard drives. I'm not saying that it is likely, but it is possible and Blizzard does not want that kind of risk associated with their products.
Besides, what exactly is the benefit of playing on a rogue server instead of one of the official Battle.net servers? Is it because people don't want to rely on Blizzard staying in business or keeping the service free? I admit I don't know the whole story behind it, but it seems pointless to me to work on an alternate battle.net server.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
hey man,
how can you be #541585 and talk about other folks being new??
-earl
Send blizzard a letter with all your credit card information and tell them that they can process it and send you a copy as soon as the lawsuit is dropped.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Collectors Edition Base Prices:
67.91 buy.com
74.95 amazon.com
74.99 compusa.com
74.99 ebgames.com
74.99 gamestop.com
79.99 chipsbits.com
79.99 worstbuy (aka bestbuy.com)
Regular Edition Base Prices:
47.95 chipsbits.com
52.88 buy.com
59.95 amazon.com
59.95 staples.com
59.99 ebgames.com
59.99 gamestop.com
59.99 worstbuy (aka bestbuy.com)
//m
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sk u_id=0665000FS10004633
Price: $89.99
And that's NOT including the ungodly 7% PST (Provincial Sales Tax) and 7% GST (Goods and Services Tax) which get tacked on to the sticker price.
$89.99 + 14% = $102.59
And that isn't even for the collector's edition. No wonder piracy is so rampant. Screw you, Blizzard. I'm going to wait until the title drops to AFFORDABLE levels.
Of course, we know that Blizzard just inflated the price because they know people will pay it. Grr.
Of course, the Sun is actually white, almost by definition. People think it's yellow because they usually see it when it's low in the sky near the horizon, which causes its color to be significantly reddened
by its long path length through the gas and dust of our atmosphere.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Let me see
:(
World Cup Soccer (so far i've only missed 3 matches)
Neverwinter nights.
Warcraft III.
Where does work fit in?
still reading?
Ok, so it's bad enough to know that my productivity will be shot to hell by Neverwinter Nights next week. Now, I only have 2 weeks to get a module running DM-less? Argh!
Just go out and buy Neverwinter Nights (in a week or two when it hits stores) and forget all about WC3. If Blizzard's tactics don't appeal to you, support the competition instead! You get a great game, and that should make it a lot easier to let go of your pain and get on with your life.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That's a nice little bogus viewpoint. Committing wrongs for free doesn't make them right... and would open up the door for companies funding neat little non-profits for mangling other companies. Hell, they're already willing to legally relocate to Bermuda to cut their taxes via some interesting financial manuevers...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
How's about Neverwinter Nights?
Mac version this fall, two months later than the PC version.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Have you played Warcraft III? I have...
"next idle worker button" - has been in the game for months now.
"queue up non-movement orders" - Shift Clicking works for me.
"units lost behind trees" - Trees go transparent whenever units are behind them.
"off the edge of the view space" - You can't send units off the view space.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
No less authority than Radio Hanoi said so, in fact. My carrier (USS Midway CV-41) helped evacuate Saigon as it was falling in April 1975. Many helicopters landed on us with evacuees, and we later picked up many planes flown out to Thailand. Radio Hanoi said these planes and helicopters were legitimate war booty, and they wanted them back. Since we refused, we were nothing but a bunch of pirates. Our captain flew the Jolly Roger in acknowledgement.
To get serial for a moment, complaining about the new meaning of "piracy" is about as useful as complaining of "hacker" being abused by the press. Words mean what people want them to mean (c.f. Humpty Dumpty), meanings change over time and by region, and it does no good to get snippety about it.
Infuriate left and right
For a number of reasons.
For starters, I bought Warcraft 1 and 2 (and Starcraft). The first one was ok, the second one was more of the same and bored me. More importantly, I play Diablo 2 on a bnetd server because battle.net sucks big time. Too many cheaters and scammers, and too much lag. I paid for Diablo 2 so I am not a software pirate. Being called one is an insult. Max Schaefer of Blizzard said anyone who plays on a bnetd server is a pirate. I demanded an apology and he denied making the statement (this was on irc). The majority of people in the chatroom sided with me (agreeing that Max did in fact call me a pirate in a roundabout fashion).
Because NWN will be natively supported on Linux and because they are making it possible to host your own server, they get my money (already preordered the game).
Yes, it sucks that the Linux support will be delayed. Shit happens. 90% of client machines are Windows based. If you had a deadline fast approaching, which OS would you give priority? The OS that 90% of your customers use or the other one? Answer this question as the department manager, not as a Linux geek. Don't forget your bonus is based on company revenue.
So next week, (oh, please! oh, please! oh, please!), I will play NWN on my Windows partition and look forward to the Linux release (both client and server).
-- Will program for bandwidth
www.merriamwebster.com lists, as a definition of piracy, unauthorized copying of copyrighted works; and, i'm sure the OED does, too.
i know it's annoying to obey laws, but, until they're changed, the only other option is to break them - as in "Breaking The Law".
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game.
Michael, what would the harm have been in posting this as a comment?
It's not a technical correction, additional information, etc. -- things that are logical as updates.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Yes, they would have.
Vivendi are the real bad guys.
There are even rumors that Blizzard and the Warforge team responsible for the server letting everyone play Warcraft III came to some sort of an agreement.... I know that Blizzard has contacted them at least...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
This is rediculous. The whole point of bnetd is to play Blizzard's games. If nobody buys and plays their games, bnetd has lost its purpose.
Either way, bnetd looses.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
i wish i had mod points to add a +1 funny. no such luck. lol, nonetheless.
go get it
but the pentium is made by the evil intel, remember? Got to be on a home rollded carusoe, where you made the case out of some sort of non aerosole foam, and its running a webserver soon to be slashdotted.
Mod point free since 2001
I'm very tempted to pick up a GBA to relive my Link to the Past experience. There's a port coming soon!
Let me preface that not all Linux or OSS users are total nitwits. I'm talking here of the OSS people who evangelize and generally annoy us along with similar zealots in the Macintosh and Windows camps when it comes to boycotts and pissy attitudes to the businesses that dare cater to "lesser" operating systems (in terms of market share).
If one thing never seems to get through a zealot's head, it's this: Never piss off the people you protest if you want something from them.
Case in point: Mac OS X is essentially BSD, and these users will be able to play the new game at the same time as Windows users. Further: Blizzard knows code, and could easily adapt the Mac OS X for a Linux port. They have proven this with the Diablo II game, of which a Mac version was in stores less than 4 weeks after the Windows version, and even created a version of Diablo II that works natively in Mac OS X. Other companies that love to port, such as Aspyr, could possibly be convinced to license other company's code for porting to Linux as well.
However, certain factions, namely the Linux zealots eager to boycott and bitch and try to steal intellectual property and server code and processes they DON'T OWN are rocking the damn boat for the majority of Linux/non-Windows/non-Mac people who wouldn't mind a Blizzard game.
Don't get me wrong. Protesting is OK. Comments are OK. Being a whiny bastard only annoys those who can help you--namely the people who write the software. I've personally watched the news where some whiny Mac idiot almost singlehandedly fucked us all in the Mac world when trying to gain support or software by writing a libelous, fact-lacking, and generally pin-headed letter that only Pat Robertson would appreciate.
Keep your principles and write nice letters of request for Blizzard. Battle.net is still free for those who buy the software. Battle.net would get stronger for Linux users if the shills would shut the fuck up so that the calm, pleasant requests for support can be heard.
Blizzard CAN write a Linux version of all their products. If you don't want it, OK. But don't do an Al-Queda for the Linux gaming industry by protesting and threatening and screwing around with other's toys (like the bnetd guys are) so much that your actions sabotage a chance at a positive action.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
You mean people who posses unauthorised copies of the game. "Piracy" has to do with armed theft of tangable goods (often involving murder, rape, and other nasty business).
Shut the fuck up! I'm so sick of people's dumbass comments and semantics. As I'm sure you're aware, in practice, language evolves and some words gain new meaning. Does whether or not we should call illegally copying software "piracy" matter?
It has nothing whatsoever to do with sharing fun or useful software with your friends
Sharing? How about next time you park in the parking lot, someone "shares" your car and takes it to the local chop shop to "share" the parts with others. Or someone sticks you up on the street, takes out your wallet and forces you to "share" your money with him. Copying software illegally is THEFT, whether or not that person would have gone out and paid for a copy on his own accord.
There is nothing morally wrong with this activity in and of itself, only the economic argument that some unpaid copies might have been paid copies otherwise.
Oh, sure. I suppose it depends on your morals, but as far as I know, theft is morally wrong to most people. Just because you aren't physically taking software off the shelf of a store, or taking dollar bills out of a company's bank, doesn't make it less of a theft, and definitely doesn't make it morally right. Give me a break!
Mark
It sounds like a fun game.
I would like buy it when it is released July 3rd.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Below, like, is my machine ;-). Ok my CD-ROM is faster ;-)
Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP:
400 MHz Pentium II or equivalent
128 MB of RAM
8 MB 3D video card (TNT, i810, Voodoo 3, Rage 128 equivalent or better) with DirectX® 8.1 support
700 MB HD space
4X CD-ROM drive
Macintosh® OS 9.0 or higher/ Mac OS X 10.1.3. or higher:
400 MHz G3 processor
128 MB of RAM
16 MB ATI Technologies or nVidia chipset 3D video card
700 MB HD space
4X CD-ROM drive
Recommended:
600 MHz processor
256 MB of RAM
32 MB 3D video card
DirectX® 8.1 compatible sound card
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Not necessarily. Just because it goes gold doesn't mean it will show up in stores within a week.
Often it does, but sometimes companies like to build up marketing hype by setting a clear release date.
It gives rabid gamers a chance to get super-hyped up and totally anticipate the game that they know is coming out really soon...
In many cases sometimes the copies arrive in the store, but the vendor isn't supposed to sell until the "release date." Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, and other companies impose breach of contract fines (or something like that) on vendors who sell early.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Things are not "worth" what you put into them. That is a well established economical fact. If you put 1 million into a software project, the results will not be "worth" 1 million. The real "worth" of all the stuff in the box is how much people are ready to pay for it. If Blizzard can't find custumers who are ready to pay more than 10$ for the package, the the package is only worth 10 dollars.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
A number of people are (in my opinion) being foolish and treating Blizzard, or Havas, like some horrible megacorporation that kicks puppies for fun and pursues legal action only out of sheer greed. To determine whether or not Blizzard is actually doing something wrong, I'd like some answers based on tangible facts. So, if you'd please:
1. Could BNetD have even technically included CD key-checking and otherwise verifying that the users had legit copies?
2. If the answer to #1 is "yes," did the BNetD developer(s) actively take steps to make those checks that WOULDN'T potentially allow for cracks that would bypass those checks on BNetD servers (by exposing how the key checks are made)?
3. People here are talking about how it's Blizzard's fault for this happening, since they hadn't encrypted their Battle.net code in such a way as to make it impossible to reverse-engineer (or to do so legally). Is this not hypocrisy for open-source fans (presumably) to demand a company to close off their code yet further, in order to prevent open-source people from accessing their code without permission?
Honestly - with #3 it's like a thief suing the victims of his robbery for not making the house secure enough. If you want Blizzard to open-source parts of their code, then say as much. Don't accuse them of being hostile to the community and then promptly suggest that the solution is to shut off access to the community. Either ask for greater access, or admit that Blizzard isn't really being hostile (or as hostile as you thought)!
That is not a fair comparison. As a rule, making infringing copies of software requires access to the original. So this is isn't a case of someone random trying to "share" my car or my wallet without my permission. This is my chosing to make something of mine available to others to copy. A better (but less realistic) example would be if I could put my car on the street and invited anyone who wandered by to push a button to create an instant copy. Strangers and friends would be able to get a nice car, and I'd get to keep my original. Totally different. With theft you have taken something from me and I no longer have it. With copyright infringement, I still have my original to enjoy.
Now there are arguments against copyright infringement, most importantly that you make it much harder to fund the creation of new works, but it's a totally different situation.
By labelling copyright infringement as theft, you are make these two very different situations appear to be equally bad. They are not, it's important to keep them different. Labelling it piracy is worse. If people are thinking about copyright laws in the sense of theft and piracy, we're unable to have intelligent discussions about the future of copyright. By demanding a more careful usage of the terms, people hope to keep the two distinct.
Horrid game, icky multiplayer, yuuuck. The game timing is all off, there is NO endgame to it at all, Blizzard pretty much set it up so that you HAVE TO rush. :( :( :(
On their forums when people complained about this they (Blizzard) just told the players that they 'weren't doing it right' which is a pretty f*cked up attitude to have about a game. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
the US copyright laws ensure that an author (not someone else) gets the exclusive right to decide how his works are used. if you take it upon yourself to distribute copyrighted works, you deprive the author of the only thing the copyright laws give him.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Thanks to guys like him, they've already got Q2 working on the PS2 Linux kit. Slowly, but it works.
Why do you want a game that plays for you to watch when you can be playing and competing on your own level?
Two words: potty break.
Two more: Progress Quest.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hmm, seems to me that spending $65 on the WarCraft 2 Graphics Upgrade Pack would be like buying an expensive gift for a way-too-spolied child. Let's think about this for a minute. A company offers a product, gives us a date for it, lists a ton of features. Sounds like a good deal. Until they start pushing the date back. Still no big deal. Then they start cutting features...like mad. Now if this was any other company, we'd all be panning their product and despising him, but for some reason everyone LOVES Blizzard for it
I read earlier in this list of posts "I don't think anyone would argue that Blizzard makes good games" (paraphrased, but something to that effect). I am standing up right here and preparing to argue it soundly. This is not a troll, it's a statement of belief. Warcraft 2 was a great game. Since that point, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them. Why would I want to play StarCraft or WarCraft 3 when I could play larger, richer games with far more depth (ohh...say...Total Annihilation comes to mind).
Now, to be fair, these comments relate to WarCraft 3 only through my experiance with the beta version. I honestly do not know if the game has changed since then, and if it has my opinions might change as well. But here is what I saw. The game was very pretty, it looks quite nice. However, the game mechanic hasn't changed or evolved at all since WC2. Same extremely limited unit selection, same "rock-paper-scissors" unit balance that makes "strategy" equal to "Just build some of each and run at each other". The "Hero" units were unimpressive and seemed to only be more powerful normal units that could somehow use Town Portal. The "Unaligned NPCs" were just weak units you killed to get at some resources. Games were fast and pointless, the races were unbalanced at that point, there was no strategy at all as you could never have enough units to enact a given strategy.
Maybe TA has spoiled me. I'm used to massive 2000-unit battles where you actually USE all 9 unit hotkeys, feint and probe, battle across a massive map. Strategy and production were vital tools as you pushed forward to conquer territory. Admittedly, maybe such things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I don't understand how the RTS genre has remained the exact same game since the original C+C. Many people have tried to innovate somewhat, but where's the evolution? Shouldn't we demand MORE instead of eating up what's only vaguely satisfactory??
First, comparing bnetd developers to Al-Qaeda terrorists pretty much puts you on the losing side of Godwin's law.
Blizzard's harrassment of the bnetd project has nothing to do with Linux or open source. It's an abuse of the legal system. Likewise, Adobe's abuse of the DMCA should offend you, even if you're not interested in cracking eBooks.
Reverse engineering is legal. Blizzard never patented their protocol. Not patenting = not owning. This is really very simple. No one stole anything from Blizzard. They thought that their Battle.net protocol was too secret for someone else to reproduce, rendering the patent process unnecessary. Whoops. They were wrong. Are you beginning to smell your own ignorance yet?
Well, there are more, but that's 18 games right there that didn't bankrupt their creators by allowing people to run servers at a LAN party.
/. crowd, I don't think Blizzard is too happy about losing 90% of their sales (assuming WC3 gets pirated at 2/3'rds the rate of the Dynamix figures) so that Joe Slashdot can meet up with his friends in an empty room rather than in Battle.Net.)
Well, actually, Dynamix *did* go bankrupt, partly due to the fact that virtually no-one actually bought Tribes 1. Why? Because people didn't need CD checks to play online, so they just warez'd it and played.
I remember talking to one of the ex-Dynamix staff, and they were saying that the figures for pirated people playing through their master server vs legal copies was something like 15-to-1.
Also, quite a few titles in that list *do* have centralised key auth'ing systems. Half-Life has WONID's based off serials, Tribes 2 did, Quake 3 did, and MoH:AA did. I don't think you can seriously count Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, since they were pre-internet gaming.
So before you go "Hey, it's not going to bankrupt them", it does.
(and as a side note: I'm going against the flow and supporting Blizzard here. It doesn't matter if bnetd heals a dying swan and fixes every bug in the game, it still gets around CD protection.
While that might be fine for the "Any use of the DMCA is evil, even if it means shooting off our feet"
The subjective definition is the only one that matters. The neutral object is simply a tool which allows you to look at sunlight without blinding yourself, and without changing its color.
Take a neutral object that reflects light of all colors equally well (snow is a good candidate). Expose this object to sunlight around noon.
Now. Does this neutral object: (a) "contain equal amounts of all colors", or (b) contain the same uneven mix of colors as the Sun?
The answer is (b), since the object is a perfect reflector (scatterer actually) of whatever light hits it. The apparent color of this object when exposed to sunlight is then, by definition, the color of the Sun.
I submit that this neutral object will look white to our eyes when exposed to sunlight, and that therefore to claim that the Sun is a color other than white makes absolutely no sense. The Sun and the object are both emitting the same mixture of colors; the mixture of colors that we have evolved to recognize as "white".
If the Sun was yellow then clouds and snow would look yellow, because they are very close to being perfect neutral light scatterers.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
If the Sun was yellow then clouds and snow would look yellow, because they are very close to being perfect neutral light scatterers.
I don't know how, but somehow you've managed to fit a "yellow snow" joke into this conversation.
Do not eat.
~Will
sig?
... but up here in Canada we've had an ad in the local newspaper for a store which advertised Warcraft 3 with the cluebook coming out on July 3rd. It was about time Blizzard made it official, since it's been known for a week that it was going to ship soon.
If Bnetd were used for any other reason than playing pirated versions of Blizzard software (and don't fool yourself -- that's the sole use, regardless of the original author's intent) then you'd have a point.
BS. There are probably more people out there on Battle.net with "stolen" CD keys than playing on a Bnetd server. Additionally, people can use pirated Blizzard games on a local network without any problems (or over a direct IP game), or at least that is my understanding.
I've used Bnetd before, and I own a legal copy of my Blizzard games. Everyone I was playing with the last time I used it also had a legal copy of the game being played. It is complete nonsense to claim that everyone using Bnetd is using a pirated version of a game, even though this is what Vivendi's lawyers want you to believe.
I firmly believe the only real reason that Bnetd is being sued is because Blizzard wants to scare pirates out there into thinking that they are the next to be sued. Blizzard can't catch the real pirates, so they are using Bnetd as an easy target/scapegoat and are hoping that many people who actually pirate the titles get scared and stop doing it.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Hey, if you were a real beta tester let me get your CD-KEY. I still like the game and a new patch just came out which will take a day or two to crack....
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
If a jewler created a great ring and someone took it, changed it a little, and sold it we'd call that theft. But if a programmer writes a progam and somebody decides to take it, modify it, stamp their name on it **EVEN IF THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR OBJECTS** then that's somehow OK?
:)
I think if you did a random study on Slashdot users you'd find that the same users who decry companies as "evil" for defending thier rights are the same ones who've never had something stolen in this way.
Then again, it's so un-American these days to think that personal rights apply to people other than yourself. Which naturally makes everyone evil because they want rights too.
I couldn't agree with you more. I keep reading that game companies already have more game ideas than they can use. Then why do they keep reusing the same old ones?
The game industry is still in its infancy, still discovering its medium. Gamers still ooh and aah at the latest 3-D engine out of Texas. Simple mechanics are still a differentiator among flight sims and driving games.
From time to time, PC Gamer publishes a list of the best games "of all time." Is anyone really still playing Duke Nukem, Doom, or Wing Commander? Does anyone play WarCraft, instead of its sequels? Strange, because movie sequels are lucky to be considered in the same league as the original.
Maybe we just have to wait out Moore's Law, but I think there will be opportunities for indie developers to show up the big game studios with a new idea, or two. I don't want to take anything away from the 99% perspiration of games like Half-Life and Max Payne. I just want to see that 1% inspiration show up a little more prominently.
Sierra closed the dynamix shop, they didnt go bankrupt. Sierra is still in business last time I checked. Dont spread fud.
And for Tribes, Tribes 1 wasnt advertised like other games. You didnt read about tribes in the PC Mag or Game sites. It should of gotten more press, it was the "Cool" little majority game. It took them over a 2 years to get a demo out for people to play online.
WC3 has been pirated, the beta has been floating around the web, a new bnet version is already out that plays it online. Is that going to stop me from buying the game? No. I will buy the game, and still use a bnet. Just as I can buy DVDs and rip them, Buy cds and make mp3s. See the FUD, understand the FUD, but dont ever try to sell the FUD.
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Now leave those nice RIAA people alone - little old lady somewhere in the USA
I used to play a lot of rts games with my brothers and we liked to play with our own extra rules: we didn't attack eachother the first 45 minutes so we could all make pretty cool defense systems. Usually a harvesting unit would somehow end up to close to the enemies border, this would trigger some build-up agression which ended up at a total war after 30 minutes orso and a fight after the game ended, sometimes someone would shut off the computer when loosing the battle (computer: "it's just you and me now!").
Any of you people use your own extra rules with these kind of games?