While I agree Glider is a symptom, not a cause, I don't think many of your ideas would work very well.
Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray tothem.
It would feel ridiculous to a high level not to be able to create items they could 10 levels ago without buying reagents off a lower level. Considering how fast WoW levels are, it would likely also lead to shortages. And the "professional" farmers would just end up having toons of "just the right level" left right and center and might effectively end up controlling the market.
put some random drift into movement
Ok... This one could have some potential. Not sure how it would be implemented without annoying players. And futile if Glider can access WoW or display memory to pick out world coordinates.
limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay
This would also skew the economy. Vendors offer pocket change for even exceptionally rare drops. Virtually all prices would suddenly be way below price/demand market pricing.
don't allow the transfer of more then 100GP a time. Maybe a one time unlimited amount per month.
Not sure what this would fix. Ok it would take 10 seconds instead of 1 to transfer sizeable amounts of cash, but that wouldn't have much of an effect other than to annoy everybody.
Bottom line is, any change to the economical system would take a *lot* of thinking to ensure it won't tip everything out of balance. There is no quick fix.
Personally, the farmers rarely bother me. Spam filter means I never see the sellers, and the farmers seem to rarely be farming quest areas anymore, so I don't have to fight them for my kill quota.
Which two operating systems did the one I replied to state he was running?
Sorry if I'm coming across as acerbic. This just happens all the freakin time. People don't *read*, they just reply. It's like sending a detailed mail to some support department, and getting back a reply based on the single first sentence of that mail. It can be infuriating.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I didn't have to elaborate every time I leave out something obvious.
The article specifically talks about dual booting Linux and Windows as the issue at hand. The poster stated he's running XP + Vista.
I was pretty much telling him to RTFA or at the very least the summary before throwing himself at the keyboard. I *know* there are tons of reasons to have a different MBR, but that wasn't the point.
if you are not running the Microsoft-approved Microsoft-trusted boot loader
Unless you're some oddball that decided to install another boot loader over Vista's, I think it's a fair bet you're not running a non-trusted boot loader.
I'll admit, the summary isn't exactly unambiguous. But the first line of TFA being Are you currently running Windows and Linux in a dual-boot setup? is a pretty strong hint.
I would also love a reliable and legal way to download content. Unfortunately, I peeked at the article and couldn't see any mention about establishing a new distribution channel. They're talking about redirecting people to the channels that already exist.
If there was a way for me to buy virtually any release as a 1080p mkv or DVD image, for a handful of dollars, I would be all over that service.
The problem is, it doesn't exist. And it won't. These are the same guys that ensure your Blu-Ray player is designed to install a software payload bundled with any new movie title, enabling them to do whatever they want with your player and your access to the content on your discs, at their discretion. And that won't let you view your HD movies at full resolution if you happened to have bought your TV a week before some HDCP revision was finalized (I'm not sure it's enabled on current discs, but it will be, oh yes it will be). I am willing to pay the premium for a Blu-Ray player at current prices, as well as the higher initial cost for movies. Heck, there are even quite a few movies I already own on DVD that I would pony up fresh cash to get in HD. What I am not willing to do is accept the DRM that turns a purchase into an uncertain rental. So I download the mkv, watch, and delete instead.
An online offering that will challenge the quality and convenience of illegal downloads? They're not even thinking the thought. God forbid, if they did they would actually get some of my money. It doesn't seem they want it that bad though.
You seem to be mixing the terms. Screeners are not cam jobs.
That nitpick besides, I totally agree. I'd never ruin a movie by watching a cam. These days I don't bother with anything below DVD quality and 5.1 sound.
Since I loath going to the cinema, this usually means having to wait a bit. But I don't mind.
How much would you be willing to pay for Google's search service?
That depends. Given a hundred other almost-as-good search engines. Or none?
I remember predictions from way back then that stated the web was bound to fail. There was so much out there and no way to find anything. Remove the search engines, and that becomes true.
It's like our corporate intranet before R&D finally realized they were inept and implemented an external search engine in place of their own. It had "all the information you need", but good luck finding the one person that actually knew where the piece of information you needed was located.
While the web without a search engine would not be useless, it would definitely be a lot less useful than it is today.
I think some have misunderstood my suggestion. I did not mean to suggest a recompression after the initial decompression.
DRMed File -> Decomp -> S/PDIF Output -> S/PDIF Input -> Uncompressed File -> Burn to CD / Output to Speakers
That's how I understood you. The reason I replied was, I don't get why you'd bother jumping through hoops like that.
If the Yahoo software allows you to burn it to CD, wouldn't you get pretty much the same result? DRMed File -> CD PCM -> FLAC should turn out pretty much the same as DRMed File -> PCM over S/PDIF -> FLAC.
I never bought DRMed music myself, so obviously don't know Yahoo's solution. But I read elsewhere that Yahoo had recommended burning to CD and ripping as a "solution" to them shutting off the servers, so I assumed that's an option when I wrote my reply.
If you want to save your Yahoo! music, you can re-record it using two S/PDIF interfaces without losing any quality.
This is not something I have researched, so I'm making a good number of assumptions and qualified guesses here. I'm sure someone will set me straight if I'm way off.
I may be missing something, but unless you can manage to get Windows to output the raw unencrypted data stream, I don't see how this would help any.
In my experience Windows will take the audio and make a PCM stream out of it if you tell it to use S/PDIF as default device. Which means you end up with much the same as you would if you burned to CD and used that as a source for further processing. Either way, you end up having to add a lossy step somewhere along the way to make it practically useful.
Speaking from experience I can tell you that an "opt-in" program would never collect enough data to be useful.
Depends. Opt-in to be fed ads? Most likely you are correct. Opt-in as in the Steam hardware survey? Less clear.
I'm quite happy clicking "yes" on a question of whether I am willing to submit anonymous information about my hardware configuration. So are almost two million Steam users, apparently.
What I don't get is this article. Why is the submitter even making a connection between surveys/data collection, and DRM? They are utterly not related. You don't need to collect personal information to enforce crappy activation based DRM, and you don't need DRM to collect other types of information. These issues should be discussed separately.
I disagree. "To take or appropriate". You are not taking anything, you are creating an identical copy.
I'm for bootlegging, given those two alternatives.
But I don't think using piracy as a term is really a problem either. If someone says "he pirated a game", there's not much room for misunderstanding. Nobody is going to think he attacked and plundered a ship to obtain the game, as opposed to copied it.
If, on the other hand, you were to say "he stole a game", most people will think he went into a store and shoplifted.
Dictionary.com has added it to their definition of pirate, I just noticed.
8. to use or reproduce (a book, an invention, etc.) without authorization or legal right: to pirate hit records.
Blizzard will restore all your items and gold to your character in a few days. Unlike with scams that gain access to your bank account, there is no real irreversible damage here
Unless Blizzard has changed policies, they will refund your items, they will not refund your gold.
And even so, it can take Blizzard several weeks to find time to sort you out. A tiny one-time cost of 6 euros is extremely cheap investment. Most make that much while taking a crap at work. Small price to pay to protect hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of in-game effort.
One might argue that with the amount of cash Blizzard makes off of WoW, they should just hire a small country to be able to fix hacked accounts in hours instead of weeks. But, honestly... It's optional. It's 6 euros. My computer is nearly a fortress compared to the average WoW player's security, and I'm still considering getting one of those things.
The article states FF3 is an improvement over FF2, without offering data points for FF2. However, it also mentions Flock is based on FF2, so I'm guessing they've assumed the Flock data is representative for FF2.
Granted, I don't approve of online activation of this type at all. But that really is exceedingly ridiculous.
And, hilariously, the only way those sites managed to review the game early, was because Atari turned on the activation servers. Way to use that DRM you paid good money for to prevent early leaks, Atari.
At least one site (gamer.no) that gave an early review have confirmed they reviewed a store-bought retail version. Granted, the store may have broken the intended street date, but it wasn't some shady downloaded copy that was reviewed.
At least it has gotten Atari and the game some publicity.
Yes, we all know that. But they're not selling each phase individually, unless they've gone completely crazy and the press somehow failed to pick up on that development.
The question was whether they had tried to justify demanding payment for the full version of the creature editor versus the free limited version. Especially since the people creating creatures are in effect working on creating content for the game for free. Any justification beyond "we think we can milk a few more bucks out of people this way".
The consensus appears to be firmly in the camp of the latter theory. And people are falling all over eachother to pay for the thing, so I guess that proves the validity of their decision.
Has anybody seen any logical explanation for charging for the full version? The entire idea of releasing the creature creator is to have a population of creatures ready for when the game is released, as far as I've gathered. If so it makes no sense to limit it.
Is it as simple as "we think we can get a few bucks off of this so let's charge for it", or is there some other reason?
Like the online music stores that sent you the music without DRM when they shut down? Or that movie service that changed their DRM scheme without giving you the same content under the new system? Or that other movie service that shut down?
No, I don't for a second believe they'll bother removing the DRM when they shut down the server. There has been no example, to my knowledge, of DRM encumbered products being liberated on service shutdown.
But even if they were to do so, that means you'd have to keep track of an extra patch in addition to the original game. And until they released that, you'd still have to screw around with having to ask them permission to install the game you bought, if you, for whatever reason, were to catch the dislike of the activation server. Or it being offline for some other reason. Or you not having net access. Or there being some quarrel between peering partners out there in the land of the internuts preventing you from reaching the activation server. The list goes on.
Is it a huge huge huge impossible horrifying state of affair? Well, let's be honest, no. But then again neither would police standing outside your door taking your picture and getting your signature whenever you left or returned. I think looking at it isolated like you are is way too short sighted.
The transition from buying a game, to leasing it, is a big one and you are choosing to overlook it. I think that's a bad idea. Just my opinion.
Ah okay, I see your point now. It's a pretty good one too. But, still, there are plenty of good games possible without putting a hundred people at work for several years, and hiring Hollywood actors for voice overs.
A few decent games and you're starting to build capital and credibility. Which means higher chance of loans and investors if you need cash for a huge and expensive development.
It's not that I mind the concept of a publisher in itself, I just feel that they skim too much cash for too little added value, just like the recording industry. They also employ the tinheads that feel DRM is a good thing, which was the topic of the thread.
Games obviously means money. Which means good developers would attract investors. If those investors do not actually also stand between you and putting the game on the market, they have much less leverage than the publishers of today. Which I think would be a good thing.
I'm not disagreeing with you. It wasn't meant to be a 100% logical comparison, it was meant to get the point across. And I believe it did.
As long as you can't, technical issues aside, install and play the game for as long as you like whenever you like, you have paid for a lease on the game for as long as they choose to let you use it. You haven't bought it. This I have major issues with accepting.
I can't see that I made any points where the cost of the product is relevant.
Are you arguing direct online distribution does not give a higher amount of money back to the developer compared to traditional publishing? Or are you trying to say something else?
Technically, I would agree. However, there's no way I'm writing "copyright infringement of intellectual property" instead of "piracy" in all these discussions.
Also, at least some dictionary appears to agree with the popular use of piracy these days.
piracy Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pahy-ruh-see] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation â"noun, plural -cies. 1. practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea. 2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.
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Got proof? I've never had it try to force me online and Steam on my laptop is pretty much permanently in offline mode.
While I agree Glider is a symptom, not a cause, I don't think many of your ideas would work very well.
Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray tothem.
It would feel ridiculous to a high level not to be able to create items they could 10 levels ago without buying reagents off a lower level. Considering how fast WoW levels are, it would likely also lead to shortages. And the "professional" farmers would just end up having toons of "just the right level" left right and center and might effectively end up controlling the market.
put some random drift into movement
Ok... This one could have some potential. Not sure how it would be implemented without annoying players. And futile if Glider can access WoW or display memory to pick out world coordinates.
limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay
This would also skew the economy. Vendors offer pocket change for even exceptionally rare drops. Virtually all prices would suddenly be way below price/demand market pricing.
don't allow the transfer of more then 100GP a time. Maybe a one time unlimited amount per month.
Not sure what this would fix. Ok it would take 10 seconds instead of 1 to transfer sizeable amounts of cash, but that wouldn't have much of an effect other than to annoy everybody.
Bottom line is, any change to the economical system would take a *lot* of thinking to ensure it won't tip everything out of balance. There is no quick fix.
Personally, the farmers rarely bother me. Spam filter means I never see the sellers, and the farmers seem to rarely be farming quest areas anymore, so I don't have to fight them for my kill quota.
Read. Think. *Then* reply.
Which two operating systems did the one I replied to state he was running?
Sorry if I'm coming across as acerbic. This just happens all the freakin time. People don't *read*, they just reply. It's like sending a detailed mail to some support department, and getting back a reply based on the single first sentence of that mail. It can be infuriating.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I didn't have to elaborate every time I leave out something obvious.
The article specifically talks about dual booting Linux and Windows as the issue at hand. The poster stated he's running XP + Vista.
I was pretty much telling him to RTFA or at the very least the summary before throwing himself at the keyboard. I *know* there are tons of reasons to have a different MBR, but that wasn't the point.
It also says:
if you are not running the Microsoft-approved Microsoft-trusted boot loader
Unless you're some oddball that decided to install another boot loader over Vista's, I think it's a fair bet you're not running a non-trusted boot loader.
I'll admit, the summary isn't exactly unambiguous. But the first line of TFA being Are you currently running Windows and Linux in a dual-boot setup? is a pretty strong hint.
I would also love a reliable and legal way to download content. Unfortunately, I peeked at the article and couldn't see any mention about establishing a new distribution channel. They're talking about redirecting people to the channels that already exist.
If there was a way for me to buy virtually any release as a 1080p mkv or DVD image, for a handful of dollars, I would be all over that service.
The problem is, it doesn't exist. And it won't. These are the same guys that ensure your Blu-Ray player is designed to install a software payload bundled with any new movie title, enabling them to do whatever they want with your player and your access to the content on your discs, at their discretion. And that won't let you view your HD movies at full resolution if you happened to have bought your TV a week before some HDCP revision was finalized (I'm not sure it's enabled on current discs, but it will be, oh yes it will be). I am willing to pay the premium for a Blu-Ray player at current prices, as well as the higher initial cost for movies. Heck, there are even quite a few movies I already own on DVD that I would pony up fresh cash to get in HD. What I am not willing to do is accept the DRM that turns a purchase into an uncertain rental. So I download the mkv, watch, and delete instead.
An online offering that will challenge the quality and convenience of illegal downloads? They're not even thinking the thought. God forbid, if they did they would actually get some of my money. It doesn't seem they want it that bad though.
You seem to be mixing the terms. Screeners are not cam jobs.
That nitpick besides, I totally agree. I'd never ruin a movie by watching a cam. These days I don't bother with anything below DVD quality and 5.1 sound.
Since I loath going to the cinema, this usually means having to wait a bit. But I don't mind.
How much would you be willing to pay for Google's search service?
That depends. Given a hundred other almost-as-good search engines. Or none?
I remember predictions from way back then that stated the web was bound to fail. There was so much out there and no way to find anything. Remove the search engines, and that becomes true.
It's like our corporate intranet before R&D finally realized they were inept and implemented an external search engine in place of their own. It had "all the information you need", but good luck finding the one person that actually knew where the piece of information you needed was located.
While the web without a search engine would not be useless, it would definitely be a lot less useful than it is today.
I think some have misunderstood my suggestion. I did not mean to suggest a recompression after the initial decompression.
DRMed File -> Decomp -> S/PDIF Output -> S/PDIF Input -> Uncompressed File -> Burn to CD / Output to Speakers
That's how I understood you. The reason I replied was, I don't get why you'd bother jumping through hoops like that.
If the Yahoo software allows you to burn it to CD, wouldn't you get pretty much the same result? DRMed File -> CD PCM -> FLAC should turn out pretty much the same as DRMed File -> PCM over S/PDIF -> FLAC.
I never bought DRMed music myself, so obviously don't know Yahoo's solution. But I read elsewhere that Yahoo had recommended burning to CD and ripping as a "solution" to them shutting off the servers, so I assumed that's an option when I wrote my reply.
If you want to save your Yahoo! music, you can re-record it using two S/PDIF interfaces without losing any quality.
This is not something I have researched, so I'm making a good number of assumptions and qualified guesses here. I'm sure someone will set me straight if I'm way off.
I may be missing something, but unless you can manage to get Windows to output the raw unencrypted data stream, I don't see how this would help any.
In my experience Windows will take the audio and make a PCM stream out of it if you tell it to use S/PDIF as default device. Which means you end up with much the same as you would if you burned to CD and used that as a source for further processing. Either way, you end up having to add a lossy step somewhere along the way to make it practically useful.
Speaking from experience I can tell you that an "opt-in" program would never collect enough data to be useful.
Depends. Opt-in to be fed ads? Most likely you are correct. Opt-in as in the Steam hardware survey? Less clear.
I'm quite happy clicking "yes" on a question of whether I am willing to submit anonymous information about my hardware configuration. So are almost two million Steam users, apparently.
What I don't get is this article. Why is the submitter even making a connection between surveys/data collection, and DRM? They are utterly not related. You don't need to collect personal information to enforce crappy activation based DRM, and you don't need DRM to collect other types of information. These issues should be discussed separately.
I disagree. "To take or appropriate". You are not taking anything, you are creating an identical copy.
I'm for bootlegging, given those two alternatives.
But I don't think using piracy as a term is really a problem either. If someone says "he pirated a game", there's not much room for misunderstanding. Nobody is going to think he attacked and plundered a ship to obtain the game, as opposed to copied it.
If, on the other hand, you were to say "he stole a game", most people will think he went into a store and shoplifted.
Dictionary.com has added it to their definition of pirate, I just noticed.
8. to use or reproduce (a book, an invention, etc.) without authorization or legal right: to pirate hit records.
Sounds like an issue where you live. I don't know a single bank that allows online access without token authentication.
I would seriously question the judgement of a bank that would.
Blizzard will restore all your items and gold to your character in a few days. Unlike with scams that gain access to your bank account, there is no real irreversible damage here
Unless Blizzard has changed policies, they will refund your items, they will not refund your gold.
And even so, it can take Blizzard several weeks to find time to sort you out. A tiny one-time cost of 6 euros is extremely cheap investment. Most make that much while taking a crap at work. Small price to pay to protect hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of in-game effort.
One might argue that with the amount of cash Blizzard makes off of WoW, they should just hire a small country to be able to fix hacked accounts in hours instead of weeks. But, honestly... It's optional. It's 6 euros. My computer is nearly a fortress compared to the average WoW player's security, and I'm still considering getting one of those things.
The article states FF3 is an improvement over FF2, without offering data points for FF2. However, it also mentions Flock is based on FF2, so I'm guessing they've assumed the Flock data is representative for FF2.
Granted, I don't approve of online activation of this type at all. But that really is exceedingly ridiculous.
And, hilariously, the only way those sites managed to review the game early, was because Atari turned on the activation servers. Way to use that DRM you paid good money for to prevent early leaks, Atari.
At least one site (gamer.no) that gave an early review have confirmed they reviewed a store-bought retail version. Granted, the store may have broken the intended street date, but it wasn't some shady downloaded copy that was reviewed.
At least it has gotten Atari and the game some publicity.
They're charging them to save EA money on creating the initial content themselves. There's a difference.
Anyhoo, dead horse and all that.
Yes, we all know that. But they're not selling each phase individually, unless they've gone completely crazy and the press somehow failed to pick up on that development.
The question was whether they had tried to justify demanding payment for the full version of the creature editor versus the free limited version. Especially since the people creating creatures are in effect working on creating content for the game for free. Any justification beyond "we think we can milk a few more bucks out of people this way".
The consensus appears to be firmly in the camp of the latter theory. And people are falling all over eachother to pay for the thing, so I guess that proves the validity of their decision.
Has anybody seen any logical explanation for charging for the full version? The entire idea of releasing the creature creator is to have a population of creatures ready for when the game is released, as far as I've gathered. If so it makes no sense to limit it.
Is it as simple as "we think we can get a few bucks off of this so let's charge for it", or is there some other reason?
Like the online music stores that sent you the music without DRM when they shut down? Or that movie service that changed their DRM scheme without giving you the same content under the new system? Or that other movie service that shut down?
No, I don't for a second believe they'll bother removing the DRM when they shut down the server. There has been no example, to my knowledge, of DRM encumbered products being liberated on service shutdown.
But even if they were to do so, that means you'd have to keep track of an extra patch in addition to the original game. And until they released that, you'd still have to screw around with having to ask them permission to install the game you bought, if you, for whatever reason, were to catch the dislike of the activation server. Or it being offline for some other reason. Or you not having net access. Or there being some quarrel between peering partners out there in the land of the internuts preventing you from reaching the activation server. The list goes on.
Is it a huge huge huge impossible horrifying state of affair? Well, let's be honest, no. But then again neither would police standing outside your door taking your picture and getting your signature whenever you left or returned. I think looking at it isolated like you are is way too short sighted.
The transition from buying a game, to leasing it, is a big one and you are choosing to overlook it. I think that's a bad idea. Just my opinion.
Ah okay, I see your point now. It's a pretty good one too. But, still, there are plenty of good games possible without putting a hundred people at work for several years, and hiring Hollywood actors for voice overs.
A few decent games and you're starting to build capital and credibility. Which means higher chance of loans and investors if you need cash for a huge and expensive development.
It's not that I mind the concept of a publisher in itself, I just feel that they skim too much cash for too little added value, just like the recording industry. They also employ the tinheads that feel DRM is a good thing, which was the topic of the thread.
Games obviously means money. Which means good developers would attract investors. If those investors do not actually also stand between you and putting the game on the market, they have much less leverage than the publishers of today. Which I think would be a good thing.
I'm not disagreeing with you. It wasn't meant to be a 100% logical comparison, it was meant to get the point across. And I believe it did.
As long as you can't, technical issues aside, install and play the game for as long as you like whenever you like, you have paid for a lease on the game for as long as they choose to let you use it. You haven't bought it. This I have major issues with accepting.
I can't see that I made any points where the cost of the product is relevant.
Are you arguing direct online distribution does not give a higher amount of money back to the developer compared to traditional publishing? Or are you trying to say something else?
Technically, I would agree. However, there's no way I'm writing "copyright infringement of intellectual property" instead of "piracy" in all these discussions.
Also, at least some dictionary appears to agree with the popular use of piracy these days.
piracy Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pahy-ruh-see] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
â"noun, plural -cies.
1. practice of a pirate; robbery or illegal violence at sea.
2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.: The record industry is beset with piracy.