Slashdot Mirror
NYT on World of Warcraft
The New York Times (registration required) has a piece on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, discussing the game's popularity and high sales. The article also examines the design processes that go into the game, and the artistic outlook of the WoW live team. From the article: "From around a dark, windowless room, nine young men peered into the unfinished virtual interior of Karazhan, a haunted tower set in a forlorn mountain pass that will open later this year. 'As you can see, the architecture is a little ornate, a little Gothicky,' said Aaron Keller, a 29-year-old designer, gesturing to the 3-D model on the computer screen before him. 'We're thinking about turning these arches into horse heads.'
And to beat the inevitable rush of complaints, the Hardware issues are much improved over release. When speaking about the World of Warcraft everyone seems to have selective memory. There hasn't been a majorly anticipated MMORPG launch in the history of internet gaming that didn't have bottlenecks.
What have they done that they are good again?
They released World of Warcraft.
w00t! They must be talking about Medivh's Tower in Deadwind Pass! A lot of us old beta hands have been waiting to get in there. Given Medivh's prominence in the history of Azeroth, it promises to be an absolute bounty of Warcraftian lore!
Plus, Deadwind pass is just spooky. I mean, it just reeks with atmosphere =) How can the big instance in that not be cool?
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
Bnetd are your friends? They publish a public server to bypass the copy protection on Blizzard games and they're your friends? Maybe some people like software pirates as friends, but I don't get it. Why was Slashdot moved by the plight of BnetD? I used BnetD when I couldn't get into beta, and I actually later bought a beta and with the knowledge I gained helped Blizzard directly with War3(if you saw war3 early beta, you laugh at the imbalances). So in a way BnetD was good there. But when Blizzard released War3, the only way the pirates could play would be to use BnetD. You can't log into BattleNet with a pirated CDkey, its pretty good copy protection.
God spoke to me.
Actually, I see this as the "next big thing" in litigation.
.mp3's but it's no where near as easy as it was with Napster.
First we had the RIAA going after Napster and Kaaza and others...can still get
Now we have the MPAA going after P2P bittorrent sites...fight not as easy as it was with Napster...but they're still throwing out lawsuits as fast as their little junior associates can print them off.
Next I belive the game companies are going to not only go after pirated games (already been doing this to mediocre success) but also going after IGE type companies and game cheaters and hackers like on Steam.
Will it work...probably as well as the others have done...meaning making a small dent yet not really doing much.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Just because someone decided to use the software for that purpose doesn't mean that the sole intention of the developers of the software was to pirate games. Give me a break. I've used it to play StarCraft games with a legitimately purchsed copy, so don't try and say that it was soley for pirates. I guess nobody remembers the times when the chances of getting a decent game on the actual battlenet servers was crappy at best. That is why it was written and used.
I haven't purchased or played a Blizzard game since and I own all of their titles previous to the incident. They lost a lot of repect from me that day.
"Bnetd are your friends? They publish a public server to bypass the copy protection on Blizzard games and they're your friends?"
The Bnetd people are like your friends that always bail you out of attending your 6-year-old niece's terrible birthday party to instead film a car chase on the interstate and then all go to an action movie with Samuel L. Jackson followed by Steak n' Shake.
Here's a list of the online gaming communities that are stupider than battle.net:
While it would be unfair to say Blizzard's art department doesn't receive enough acclaim, I think they deserve every ounce of good press and more besides, Blizzard is one of the few developpers out there that uses the quality of their art to act as a central element of their game engines. While the game does sport some noteworthy techical specifcations (pixel shaded post-processing, dynamic distance polymorphic (no pun entended) LOD, and some very sharp specular lighting effects) it is far and beyond their unique art style that makes it such a beautiful game. And style needs no hardware requirements, only taste =)
"You directly helped Blizzard with balance issues in Warcraft 3? I thought you designed the game......"
No way man, I had no hand in designing it. I just pointed out a ton of imbalances, and was rewarded with Blizzard friend status from my frequent feedback. It was barely a game at beginning of beta, just a bunch of units with semi-random statistics. Its fun for me when a game doesn't choose to balance their game because I can find imbalances like no other. I was winning close to 100% of my games at start and as things became more balanced and everyone started learning strats, my winning % dropped down to like 85%. I definately would like to design games though, or do more beta testing. I like to be in the development process because I think thats where all the fun is. Once a game's strategies are known by all, the game either becomes paper rock scissors, a twitch fest or a fun psychological battle of wits. I think a psychological game is the best, but they're hard to achieve.
God spoke to me.
The RIAA/MPAA wranglings are about them making money. They sue people because they're greedy and afraid, but fileswapping affects them in no negative way beyond lost (imaginary) sales. The same argument can be applied to game piracy, but not to game companies aggressively fighting against cheaters and the sale of in-game resources.
Cheating reduces the value of the game service, and leads people who were or would have actively played the game stop doing so because its feels noticeably broken by the inequities caused by the cheaters. It's in their long-term interest to minimize cheating using whatever means possible (although, ideally, technical means), particularly when the game is a pay-per-month sort of thing.
Regarding the real-world sales of in-game items, by not aggressively fighting against this, they could be said to tacitly allow it, encouraging the view that things in-game have real-world value. This opens the company to an insane world of liability (or even regulation) and is something they want to avoid at all costs. World of Warcraft, as far as I know, has a number of game-design aspects in place to help avoid this; their crafting and looting systems are tailored to more personal use (rather than a wide open market system) such that a player can be quite successful and satisfied using only items he has looted or crafted himself or purchased cheaply from an NPC merchant. The "soul-bound" thing avoids item reuse. Whereas SWG prided itself on its open, player-driven market economy, WOW aims to mostly avoid this to improve casual, personal play.
Amazing how somebody brings this up on every WoW post. You've missed it several times obviously.
Most people don't care. An obviously large chunk of slashdot doesn't care.
As soon as you get off this idea that slashdot is one giant mob as opposed to a collection of people who MIGHT have their own opinions that differ from yours, you will be a lot better off.
Let's see.. The whole bnetd thing started in early 2002, so it should be at least 5 games and 3 Blizzard-produced expansions (assuming the poster uses a PC):
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994)
Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness
Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal
Starcraft
Starcraft: Broodwar
Diablo
Diablo II
Diablo II: Lords of Darkness (a mid-2001 release)
(and maybe some of the console games, like Lost Vikings)
The poster did not purchase:
Warcraft III (mid-2002)
Warcraft III: Frozen Throne
World of Warcraft
present day... present time... hahahaha...
I've heard that Microsoft is the most secure OS. I've heard that Iraq has WMD. I've heard that there's nothing wrong with Diebold voting machines. I've heard that IBM ripped off code from SCO.
I've heard that in Soviet Russia, other people think for YOU.
Just look at the forums. What few complaint/leaving letters there are, you will see blizzard people replying and trying to help the situation. This is opposite other games where they just delete the posts (EQ and AO to name a few). The support for this game is incredible. Major notices at login, good forums, etc. Not only that, the game runs great so support is barely needed.
actually with bit torrent its even easier to get mp3s, because now you can just download one compressed .rar or .zip file containing the entire cd. with Napster, etc., you have to seek out each song by title. so now you can have 4-5 downloads to get 4-5 cds instead of 10-15 to get each song
No sig for you!!
has a piece on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, discussing the game's popularity and high sales.
:)
A few of the things I like about World of Warcraft.
1. It's not a real 'grind'. You get an experence bonus for being offline, so you don't have to feel like you need to play all the time to 'keep up' if you are the keep up type.
2. There is a good questing system, that offers rewards that are at least as good as the rewards (ie drops) you would get from just farming mobs.
3. Decent PvP system. Those who want PvP join PvP servers, and PvP combat is limited enough to not scare off newbies, but prevalent enough to be enjoyed at higher levels.
4. Things aren't too hard. Most of the professions (ie crafting) aren't too comlicated which is nice for a casual player like myself who has a full time job.
I think WoW is the first MMORPG to really reach out to and reward casual players, and it's succeeding.
People tend to get confused and think that what IGE is doing is illegal, when it is not. What IGE does is against the Terms that you agree to when you play the game. From the terms I have read from a few MMORPGs that I have played, the only way they will/can do to you is cancel your account. And it is rare that they will even do this.
It is rather hard to prove that any single player is involved in the sale of in-game money. The only for sure way I've ever heard of would be to have the company (Like Blizzard), buying money from a site like IGE, then when the money is delivered, they cancel the account of the person who sent them the money. I don't see many game developers doing this.
Plus, IGE is only the middleman in the deal. IGE doesn't have anyone directly work for them that farms money to be able to sell to other players. IGE pays people as those people sell the money to IGE, then IGE sells that money to some other person. This makes it even harder for them to get caught.
Its not what it is, its something else.
But most of you guys whine and moan on here before logging off to go play WoW on an MS Machine that you paid for with W's tax cut.
Hey Hey Hey...
I play WoW on a Mac.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Here's a list of the online gaming communities that are stupider than battle.net:
--
Obviously sarcasm but battle net still is better then the other match making systems because theres still enough people to find a game even in starcraft (7 years old). Warcraft 3 has a much improved match makign scheme and finding griefers is much rarer. Battle nets match makign for war 3 is better then any other I've used.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Slashdot was supposed to be boycotting Blizzard
According to what crackpot?
Here's the deal: Blizzard is a good company. Period. They treat their employees well. They produce high quailty titles. They allow their designers a lot of artistic freedom.
Vivendi Universal (You remember, the guys that actually sent the lawyers after BNetd?), is a steaming pile of shit. Blizzard has survived under the VU umbrella so long precisely because Blizzard is such a good company.
And, even if that weren't the case: I can think of several justifications for sending C&D letters to BNetd off the top of my head that are perfectly reasonable -- but the Slashdot hive drones like you see that someone is trying to take away their free cookie, and all reason is thrown out the window. So we get to hear the IP argument-equivalent of a 2 year old's temper tantrum.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Yes, you need a copy of the game to play on a BnetD server. Do you need a copy of the game that was purchased by you? Not at all. The BnetD server does not make ANY checks on the serial number that is supposed to validate the game as unique and legitimate. "The "piracy" crap"" is not a "red-herring" when you stop and actually THINK about the situation.
I had just set up a BnetD server for me and some co-workers, that did not make it in the Warcraft 3 beta, when VU sent the BnetD guys the cease and desist letter. I was using BnetD to play the game illegally. When the beta stopped working with the BnetD server I quit playing the game (I suck at RTS games any way). Did I buy a copy of Warcraft 3? No.
Seriously, why wouldn't you want to use Blizzard's servers if you bought the game? Possibly because some of your friends didn't and you still want to play with them? I think that is ever more likely than "allow people to play with each other across the Internet without Blizzard listening in." And hell, why wouldn't you want Blizzard "listening in"? You did buy the game right? What is the big deal?
That being said, World of Warcraft is an excellent game. I enjoy it greatly when I have the time to play.
/me goes back to doing calculus homework.
On a related note, the european version of wow opened today, see http://wow-europe.com/en/.
Everything went smoothly when i registered in the morning, but i hear the servers are totally bogged down now, especially the registration-server.
I think most of the server performance issues are on the first 12 or so servers they put up. Since Many hard-core, die-hard players jumped in on the first day, they're the ones who experienced the most problems.
They're also the ones most likely bitch and moan on bulletin boards.
What makes you think that IGE has agreed to any ToS???
>Bnetd are your friends? They publish a public
>server to bypass the copy protection on Blizzard
>games and they're your friends?
and
> You can't log into BattleNet with a pirated
>CDkey, its pretty good copy protection.
How is that related to copying? It doesn't in ANY way make it easier to copy the game. What you could argue is that it (the protection system) prevents ACCESS to bnet. That is not a copy protection. You could for example not only copy the games, but also install and play them, just not the bnet mode.
What they did was basically to create a competing game server. Can't see the problem with that. Or perhaps you are the same type of guy who would argue that if I buy a VHS player from Sony, I should only be allowed to use it with tapes also from Sony. Or?
Wow, CrazyJim....You had quite the popularity back in those days. I don't recall the details, but somehow Agent911 springs to mind. Did you guys used to partner?
Do you play WoW? If so, which server?
And hell, why wouldn't you want Blizzard "listening in"?
Why wouldn't you want someone to search your house if you're not doing anything illegal? What have you got to hide crimi^H^H^H^H^Hcitizen?
Not to mention the fact someone might like to hack their version and play on a highly modded server... Oh, but I'm sorry, only rich guys in suits and ties have the right to create, and then only if it's for a profit.