Start with www.pricewatch.com then check the sites that have the best prices against www.resellerratings.com. You should be able to find the best prices at the most honest reseller for your money. Be aware however that the better the price often times means that you're taking a bigger risk. Sometimes paying a little bit more for that comfortable feeling is worth it.
Do you even play games? It doesn't matter the platform, new innovations can and will appear anywhere.
PC - Recently Deus Ex, Black and White and The Sims but it just about started every fucking video game genre there is! FPS, RTS, Space combat games, RPGs, you name it and it probably was first seen on the PC.
PS2 - ICO
GameCube -Pikmin
Dreamcast - Jet Set Radio
Xbox - Halo
All systems have their sequels and clones but somewhere burried underneath are a few shining gems. To say that any platform is incapable of gameplay innovations is ludicrous.
Re:Perhaps OSS Zealots shouldn't piss off Blizzard
on
Warcraft III Gone Gold
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· Score: 1
"...in order to get something they legally own to work the way they think it should."
Then maybe they should just write their own game. Porting over something doesn't show vision, or even creative thought.
I know I'm going to get flamed to the pits of hell for saying this but I don't really see a problem with Blizzard running their CD check process off their own servers. It's their game and it's their way of cutting down on piracy. Being an avid gamer who sees people playing burned games all the time I can say that I believe their process works. I have yet to see someone playing a burned Blizzard game as opposed to the dozens of burned Half-Life CD's or Quake 3's I've seen. Besides last time I checked they could set up the multiplayer process however they wanted to. It's their game if they want to set it up that way it's their prerogative.
While I don't believe that Blizzard should have pulled the DMCA card and all for better lag during multiplayer games I think that Blizzard does have the right to protect their bottom line and a platform that will allow unchecked usage of it's games will effect that. I really don't think that they will be the only ones to utilize this process in the future. Look at the MMORPG's (Star Wars Galaxies, Earth and Beyond, even Ultima Online) coming up, do you really think you will be able create your own server? No, you will have to log on. And every time you log on it will go through the exact same process that Bnet does right now.
It has everything to do with bnetd when they're allowing people to circumvent their CD-Key detection thereby letting pirated copies of their game be played illegally. While they may not be intending for that to happen they are doing nothing to insure that it does not.
It does no good for Blizzard to have people playing on other servers when the reasons for the beta test are:
A) To modify in game advantages/disadvantages between races and weed out bugs.
B) To determine how to optimize the game so that it doesn't end up like Tribes 2 where you need a 1.4GHz Tbird w/ GeForce3ti500 to play it.
C) To observe how much of a hit the game is going to administer to their already busy Battlenet servers, monitor traffic and decide if they need to increase/upgrade the amount of servers.
D) To be able to close the beta test when they're finished.
The whole point of the beta test is that they are trying to pinpoint and modify these problems in as close to a normal gaming environment as possible. If the game is run on outside servers where support is slim and no one is monitoring anything what good does it do Blizzard to have people testing the game at all? Any gamer will tell you that Blizzard is known for their finely tuned balancing of game play and units. They're asking for help from the outside community to help in doing so. They could be like 95% of the rest of the gaming community and just do it all in house but they are giving us a chance to take hand in the game that many of us have waited years for and perhaps help make the finished product better.
These other servers allow unauthorized people to play multiplayer games online and while that's not what their intended for it's what it will be used for. In a way these rouge servers represent the Napster threat to Blizzard. How many of you - myself included - think that downloading a whole CD is wrong but still have quite a collection of burned CD's at home? It's kind of the same thing. It's giving people a way to circumvent their CD-Key detection and people will use that.
I think that Bnetd handled this wrong. This whole thing might have been different if Bnetd had come up to Blizzard from the beginning and outlined why they wanted to setup their own servers and that it was indeed in Blizzard's own interests. Perhaps then an agreement might have been reached more easily. As it is, the game's progress is probably going to get lost in the midst of a legal battle that shouldn't need to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Start with www.pricewatch.com then check the sites that have the best prices against www.resellerratings.com. You should be able to find the best prices at the most honest reseller for your money. Be aware however that the better the price often times means that you're taking a bigger risk. Sometimes paying a little bit more for that comfortable feeling is worth it.
Do you even play games? It doesn't matter the platform, new innovations can and will appear anywhere. PC - Recently Deus Ex, Black and White and The Sims but it just about started every fucking video game genre there is! FPS, RTS, Space combat games, RPGs, you name it and it probably was first seen on the PC. PS2 - ICO GameCube -Pikmin Dreamcast - Jet Set Radio Xbox - Halo All systems have their sequels and clones but somewhere burried underneath are a few shining gems. To say that any platform is incapable of gameplay innovations is ludicrous.
"...in order to get something they legally own to work the way they think it should." Then maybe they should just write their own game. Porting over something doesn't show vision, or even creative thought.
It's just like hearing.. "Why did they shut down Napster? They never did anything to anyone!"
I know I'm going to get flamed to the pits of hell for saying this but I don't really see a problem with Blizzard running their CD check process off their own servers. It's their game and it's their way of cutting down on piracy. Being an avid gamer who sees people playing burned games all the time I can say that I believe their process works. I have yet to see someone playing a burned Blizzard game as opposed to the dozens of burned Half-Life CD's or Quake 3's I've seen. Besides last time I checked they could set up the multiplayer process however they wanted to. It's their game if they want to set it up that way it's their prerogative. While I don't believe that Blizzard should have pulled the DMCA card and all for better lag during multiplayer games I think that Blizzard does have the right to protect their bottom line and a platform that will allow unchecked usage of it's games will effect that. I really don't think that they will be the only ones to utilize this process in the future. Look at the MMORPG's (Star Wars Galaxies, Earth and Beyond, even Ultima Online) coming up, do you really think you will be able create your own server? No, you will have to log on. And every time you log on it will go through the exact same process that Bnet does right now.
It has everything to do with bnetd when they're allowing people to circumvent their CD-Key detection thereby letting pirated copies of their game be played illegally. While they may not be intending for that to happen they are doing nothing to insure that it does not.
It does no good for Blizzard to have people playing on other servers when the reasons for the beta test are: A) To modify in game advantages/disadvantages between races and weed out bugs. B) To determine how to optimize the game so that it doesn't end up like Tribes 2 where you need a 1.4GHz Tbird w/ GeForce3ti500 to play it. C) To observe how much of a hit the game is going to administer to their already busy Battlenet servers, monitor traffic and decide if they need to increase/upgrade the amount of servers. D) To be able to close the beta test when they're finished. The whole point of the beta test is that they are trying to pinpoint and modify these problems in as close to a normal gaming environment as possible. If the game is run on outside servers where support is slim and no one is monitoring anything what good does it do Blizzard to have people testing the game at all? Any gamer will tell you that Blizzard is known for their finely tuned balancing of game play and units. They're asking for help from the outside community to help in doing so. They could be like 95% of the rest of the gaming community and just do it all in house but they are giving us a chance to take hand in the game that many of us have waited years for and perhaps help make the finished product better. These other servers allow unauthorized people to play multiplayer games online and while that's not what their intended for it's what it will be used for. In a way these rouge servers represent the Napster threat to Blizzard. How many of you - myself included - think that downloading a whole CD is wrong but still have quite a collection of burned CD's at home? It's kind of the same thing. It's giving people a way to circumvent their CD-Key detection and people will use that. I think that Bnetd handled this wrong. This whole thing might have been different if Bnetd had come up to Blizzard from the beginning and outlined why they wanted to setup their own servers and that it was indeed in Blizzard's own interests. Perhaps then an agreement might have been reached more easily. As it is, the game's progress is probably going to get lost in the midst of a legal battle that shouldn't need to happen.