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World of Warcraft Details Announced
An anonymous reader writes "The last of the races and classes for World of Warcraft have been released. Check WorldofWar.Net for a good summary of the details." They've added new classes for rogue, priest, and paladin, as well as hero classes for high-level players. There's a few new races as well, such as trolls and gnomes.
Every dollar you send to Blizzard simply allows them to pull more stunts like that which they pulled with Freecraft. Next they'll be going after Wine and the Starcraft emulator.
Yeah, right.
Hands down, I have never not had fun with one of their games. Regardless of what their legal department does (which they probably have zero control over, since Vivendi most liely makes those decisions) I will always buy their latest and greatest...
WoW, I cant wait!!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
No way interfere with their cashflow? Bollocks. Everyone knows, even though slashdot people are blind to the truth that the freecraft project allowed everyone who did not have a valid serial number to play online outside battle.net. That is the fact. Now if you want to make a huge crusade out of it, fine, but the bottom line is that it WAS hurting the cashflow, whether you accept it or not. I know this kind of reasonable thinking is hugely unpopular in slashdot but I guess you can't please anyone...
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
This article reads like it was written by someone in third grade.
Until WoW, I've never had any desire whatsoever to try out a massively multiplayer game. I might just give WoW a try, though. Why? Because I'm confident that Blizzard will do it right. After all, that's what they do.
DecafJedi
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
The Union of Standard Generic Player Classes scored another victory today when it was announced that World of Warcraft would allow rouges, priests, and paladins.
"This is a great win for us", announced Ulog Beg, President of USGPC. "Could you imagine an RPG without people like fighters, wizards, or thieves? It would be chaos!"
This win represents the largest gain for the union since Morrowind in 2002. Also involved in talks with Blizzard are the Union of Standard Weak Creatures (representing large rats and skeletons) and the Union of 'Ye Ol English' which hopes to make everyone use words like "sire" and "liege". It is unknown whether the Union of Undead has approached Blizzard yet but many industry insiders agree that they will.
Yes, yes, I am just being sarcastic. I'm sure the game will rock. Although I didn't enjoy Warcraft 3 as much as I had hoped I think Blizzard has a great track record so far.
You seem to be confusing freecraft, a RTS pretty similar to Warcraft II, to bnetd, an open-source battle.net server.
It is pretty likely thta bnetd, despite having legit uses, was in some way hurting Vivendi's bottom line. However, I don't see how freecraft can hurt their bottom line at all. What do they gain by killing a Linux freeware game?
"You seem to be confusing freecraft, a RTS pretty similar to Warcraft II, to bnetd, an open-source battle.net server... What do they gain by killing a Linux freeware game?"
Well, i think you said it yourself... it was an RTS pretty similar to WC2, and while i havent played it, I have seen some screen shots... its REMARKABLY similar to WC2. If I were Blizzard, I wouldnt want an almost exact rip off with a similar name floating around. (lets face it, if they called it Free Conflict or something, it could be differentiated better than "freecraft" which SOUNDS like a Blizzard RTS)
Insert lame joke about trolls in WarCraft and trolls on Slashdot here.
Don't forget bnetd, either.
I voted -1, DMCA wielding jackbooted thugs.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Just play DAoC, looks like it's pretty much the same thing.
Well, not that article, but the site:
"Blizzard wanted a MMORPG where the player felt legendary and heroic from the first day."
This is exactly what most MMORPGs currently lack, the feeling that you character serves no purpose in the game, and that you need to do a whole lot of stuff to get higher. If you enter the game feeling like a Level 1 Hero in WC3, and then work up to being a Level 40 Hero... well, thats exactly the kind of game I can see myself playing. The goal of the game should be to ensure that I'm having fun from the start, and that my fun either scales, or changes in perspective/paradigm as I play. It looks like they're aiming for that here.
I didn't think I'd ever pay to play an MMORPG again after Planetside, too.
skye
" The factions in World of Warcraft are set. There is no changing fractions, there is no mixed groups. " If anything has bothered me about previous Blizzard releases, it's been those unpredictable fractions. At last, we can be free of Quarterlings and Third-Orcs!
Exactly. The name and style of the game was a carbon copy of Warcraft.
As for the open source battle.net server, I can understand why they smacked that as well. They had no control over it. I mean Blizzard are very harsh on cheaters. While the CDKEY means you have to own the game to play it online, there's also the fact that that key is associated with a particular player, meaning if they're caught using a maphack, Blizzard can (and do) nuke their account. Not just the account, but if you're caught cheating, they blacklist your CDKEY so you can't play online. I say more power to them!
With bnetd, they had no control. Basically it was a case of shut the project down before it got to big, otherwise it would have been a case of the project growing and COULD have led to a free Battle.net, so Blizzard would lose both their anti-piracy measures, AND the ability to control the online experience for players. With no CDKEY checks, it would be impossible to police cheating because if you ban one account, they'll just sign up again, and blacklisting their IP address wouldn't work because a lot of people still have dynamic IP address assignment.
I'm all for open source, don't get me wrong, but Blizzard shutting down bnetd was the right thing to do as down the line it could have seriously impacted the way they do business, and as far as online play goes, Blizzard are one of the few companies to take cheating seriously, and provide a decent online matchmaking service. (Whereas most rely on Lamespy.)
Sorry, but this is one case where an open source project needed to be shut down.
I have a German copy of the War3 for OSX, and I'm an English speaker. I live in Germany, bought War3 the moment it was released here and was thoroughly disappointed that I couldn't change the language to English...
...
I don't know why (DVD's?) but I expected to be able to.
If anyone wants to trade a valid German War3 CD for a valid English War3 CD (OSX), please feel free to contact me... I've considered EBay and the like, but its a bit more hassle to go that route
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Note that my idea is not to insult you - unless you consider "raving Blizzard fanboy with no clue whatsoever" to be too insulting. I'm merely dismayed by your misconceptions.
Errrrrm. It was a program that allowed people to play Warcraft II right off the CD, or build games of their own that resembled WC2 using custom data.
I would hardly call Freecraft FCMP free data a "carbon copy" of WC2 - it was more like "relentless, unadulterated blasphemy of the most holy name of Warcraft II". It was the answer to question "what would Warcraft II look and sound like if Blizzard had had $2 budget". It was bloody hilarious =)
Warcraft with Warcraft II data set was a new and improved version of the true classic. But FCMP was a game that belonged to SomethingAwful.com hall of infamy, but it had a decent gameplay so it didn't count.
Freecraft was similar to intent to Exult (for Ultima VII) - allows playing game on non-sucky platforms, probably with UI improvements. That alone was worth it.
Hogwash! You had all the control you wanted.
With Battle.net, you rely on Blizzard to kill the xiit0rz - and while they can and will use the power, they can just as easily abuse it. (In my opinion, permanent ban of CD keys is extremely draconian. Would be a pain in the ass if that thing would be invoked lightly, wouldn't it...)
In bnetd, you're the master of your own server. Yes, in bnetd, you can lock accounts, and ban users from certain IP ranges. Read the feature list next time, please.
And the most lucrative feature, of course, would be to run a small server with small circle of users. You can run the server with people you trust.
And what if there would have been a "free Battle.net"? So what if Blizzard couldn't control it - the people who ran it would need to police the thing themselves. And if not, you'd still be free to start your own server with just as fascist administration as you see fit.
Just keep buying. It's a matter of time until you're paying by the hour for this stuff, and by then you'll have helped bury any of the fledgling alternatives to either the games or the servers they now require to play on. But the games will look REALLY GOOD.
If similar gameplay is a legitimate beef, then Westwood has an excellent case for suing Blizzard over copying Dune 2000. But it's not, so STFU.
I am certainly NOT a raving Blizzard fan boy. In fact I own a grand total of TWO titles they've released. (Starcraft and Warcraft 3).
If you go back and actually READ what I said, I said blocking an IP address or range of IP addresses wouldn't work. If you block a RANGE of addresses, you would most likely take out other legit players. If you block one IP, fine, just reconnect, bingo, new IP, and go back to cheating. To get a new IP address, all I have to do is unplug my DSL modem and reboot.
CDKey banning is not draconian in the least. Blizzard do not ban keys without evidence. You submit replays of the game for them to check, and if they see there was cheating (like in the case of a maphack, the cheater heading straight for you on a large map) they can take whatever measures necessary. Kudos to them I say. In fact I have to wonder if you've used cheats before since the only people I've ever seen complain about banning CDKEYS cheat themselves.
And I fail to see how you can disagree with my comment about Blizzard losing control of the online experience. Did you even READ what I said? With Battle.net as is there is a cohesive online experience. With bnetd, sure you could set up a small server for just your friend... I don't know about you, but I get bored seeing the same strategies over and over again, so that's a not a good enough reason for it to exist. I still maintain Blizzard did the right thing.
Who would I rather see responsible for online play? A well respected, well funded developer, or the open source community? For a great example of how retarded the situation becomes when the servers are policed by the people who run it, just look into what Playmyth has become. Took the source from Bungienet and started their own server, and it was great, for a while. Now they're power tripping and banning anyone who disagrees with their philosophy.
In short, people running their OWN servers for online play is the equivalent of the lunatics taking over the asylum.
Sure, making a profit on anything is "immoral" to a lot of people on Slashdot, but the fact remains that with Blizzard, they rely on their products to make money. They can't start acting like Nazi's and banning people left and right because it will impact their bottom line. Conversely, any open source server is at the whim of the person who runs it.
Just ask those who have been banned from Playmyth.
Westwood is Defunct. Thanks for Playing!
We must know...will the gnomes have little pointy red hats? Will they live in gardens and on lawns?
Most importantly...can they be smashed into thousands of little ceramic pieces when hit with clubs, run over by vehicles, thrown great distances, etc., etc....
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
Who would I rather see responsible for online play? A well respected, well funded developer, or the open source community? For a great example of how retarded the situation becomes when the servers are policed by the people who run it, just look into what Playmyth has become. Took the source from Bungienet and started their own server, and it was great, for a while. Now they're power tripping and banning anyone who disagrees with their philosophy.
In short, people running their OWN servers for online play is the equivalent of the lunatics taking over the asylum.
I come from a different direction about all this, and the above comments left me scratching my head. I play Day of Defeat, a Half-Life mod, online very often. There are no official servers.
Everything is player-policed, and it works often enough to ensure a good time. I learned which servers are good about banning cheaters and stopping team-killers and which weren't. And lest you think that this was a tedious job, it wasn't. It didn't take very long, largely because most of the servers are good, well-run servers by people who care.
Now, this might be because DoD has less cheaters and assholes than say, CS, but I imagine that there still are some well-run servers out there, and that they advertise themselves as such (NO CHEATERS/HACKERS YOU WILL BE BANNED!!).
I feel like you've gotten so used to Blizzard's safe little play environment that you can understand what we in other genres and other games take as the natural order of things: the "lunatics" run the "asylum", and those who do a good job become popular and easy to find.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!