No, you are full of crap. Blizzard has designed the game so well that they allow user created add-ons through a well defined interface. In fact, the game wouldn't be as popular if it wasn't for the all the user created addons. This isn't an addon to help players, this is software that allows people to bot.
Blizzard is only going after software that allows people to cheat. They do not or will not do any of the other things you are suggesting. You guys really like to exaggerate things and get your panties in a bunch for no reason. This is like reading that it is now allowed that kids play soccer in a park by your house. Oh, no, next they will let the kids play in your backyard, then inside your house, then they will even make you pay child support! Some serious disconnect is going on here.
I am assume you are referring to bnetd. So what was the fallout from that? There wasn't any. What plausible (not made up conspiracy theory on Slashdot) repercussions will this have? My guess: absolutely none. But people are still going to whine about it for years from now because they object to it conceptually rather than how it was actually applied.
Glider is a program that's only purpose is to interfere with Blizzard's program. This is being used to PREVENT exactly what you are saying. You guys read copyright violation and then your brains just completely shut down. The way this was applied is reasonable...stop jumping to ridiculous conspiracy theories.
What the heck is wrong with you people? Seriously, of all the tin foil hat retarded things I have read...
I mean, what's next? Making cars require keys with the car company's logo to start so they can enforce "you're not going to transport Toyota parts with our Dodge truck"?
No, that is not next. Not even close. Look at what this is being applied to. It is completely freaking reasonable to expect Blizzard to take issue with software that damages its business.
And seriously, grow up with the whole US bashing. I know that is in style in here, but enough. I may not be proud of our president (didn't vote for him) but I am proud of a lot about our country. I guarantee your country is just as screwed up in some different way.
I sort of understand where all you guys are coming from...but Blizzard isn't going after grandmas for file sharing, they are just trying to knock cheaters off of their game servers. Cheaters that can harm their reputation and cause them to lose customers. I am glad they are going after them.
What Glider was charged with may be a little funky (I am not going to pretend like I understand it completely like most people here, even though I probably am more qualified to talk about it), but not buying D3 because they are shutting down a program that allows people to cheat? That's just stupid. They are not suing some poor college student for tens of thousands for sharing some horrible music, they are trying to shut down a program that ruins the game experience of their customers. This is reasonable. start crying about not buying D3 when they start suing random people for stupid things and then maybe you can make some sort of RIAA analogy.
Your analogy fails. MMORPGs, for the most part, cost about the same. McD hamburgers are extremely cheap and that is why they have sold so many. Since price is not a variable in this equation, we have to analyze what makes the difference.
The parent post was simply stating that Blizzard does not release a ton of lame expansions. The have released much fewer expansions, and the expansions tend to be very large. They release plenty of content updates for free. This model works for them, so you would be stupid if you went in to the MMORPG market and didn't look to WoW to see what to do to get a large player-base.
Nothing is ever going to be "best" to everyone. But to the majority of people out there, WoW is the best MMORPG to date. you may not like it, but you have to be fairly daft not to respect what they have done.
I play many PC games and don't have all the issues you claim. In general, I install a game, it runs, I enjoy it, the end. You guys really like to try to exaggerate to get your point across. I've even played games with a lot of the evil DRM (eg Bioshock) that scare people so much and didn't have any issues with them. It depends on what games I have whether I play on my PC or my consoles more. I enjoy both. Windows (XP) is great for gaming and anyone who can't see it is just being biased by the hatred for MS or their need to justify their console purchase.
And software has physical representation on a cd and in a box. Also, when it is sold, it causes that bank balance to be higher. Thus pirating deprives the bank account of the money (which you claim is physical) that should be there. This argument is beyond stupid. Stop trying to justify taking things without paying for it.
There is like, what, one, two banners that are displayed and only in an area that you see for two seconds before you join a game. Oh yes, I am giving up my mind! How they control us!
So you expect Blizzard to give their mechanism to validate keys to anyone that wants to reverse engineer their products? Do you know how stupid and unreasonable it sounds?
bnetd was a tool that people used to run illegitimate copies of Blizzard software yet still enjoy the benefits of online play. If you were a stockholder in Blizzard, you would want this shut down. If you were a developer of SC/WC, you would want this shut down. If you were a reasonable person, you would understand why any business would want to prevent this. It has nothing to do with anti free market, it has to do with people breaking the law so that they don't have to pay a good company what they should. This isn't a company that created their own RTS and is competing against blizzard.
Really, you bnetd supporters need to wake up. You all seem to have the inability to put yourself in the shoes of people who develop software. You come off as arrogant and selfish. How dare a company make profit on a quality product! I really hope some day people damage your income illegally. I am sure you will just sit by and let them do it, right?
All you are doing is justifying your illegal actions (as is popular on this site). Don't get me wrong, I have pirated in the past so it isn't like I am sitting on some moral high horse. So feel free to pirate all you want, just don't come on here and tell me it is good for the game companies. It isn't. It is the people like you and the people that pirate everything that makes DRM exist.
If you don't want to get stuck with a bad game, find a reviewer that has similar tastes and stick with what they recommend. Demos aren't always as bad as you say. Word of mouth and watching posts on Slashdot isn't bad either. There are plenty of alternatives to pirating now. So pirate all you want, but don't try to make it seem like you are doing a good thing.
It's unreasonable to expect a politician running for president to take a position that is against the general majority. Nice way to twist it around, though.
From what I understand, his position on FISA is that it has a lot of problems. This bill didn't change it as much as he would like but it had enough in it that he felt he should vote for it. At least he showed up to vote. McCain was off somewhere else doing who knows what. At least Obama has the nuts to vote (as long as we can keep Jesse Jackson away from him).
Important note: he isn't president yet so going against the majority of the people would be a bad idea at this point. The guy needs to get elected. He may have lost your support, but I think you are being naive. The Republicans have shown in past elections they will do anything to get elected. We need to get them out of office to show them that they need to come back to the center.
Another important note: there is no one in the whole world other than yourself is that going to agree with you on everything. So just crying that he is a politician because he made one vote you didn't agree with is just dumb. I swear, I can't believe anyone gets elected with how unreasonable people's expectations are.
Yeah, people started doing that and look who got elected because of it. Sorry, it would be great if we had more choices, but it isn't going to happen until someone really amazing appears. Ron Paul isn't it either. I know he appeals to a lot of Slashdotters, but his views are too extreme to be electable (even if he does make a lot of sense). I might have agreed with you 8 years ago, but I have learned my lesson. We can't let this Bush mess continue with McCain. It's sad too, 6 years ago I really thought he was something different.
Yeah, that worked out really well. I don't see how anyone could have done a worse job internationally and domestically. In retrospect, it is clear your ability to classify the bigger moron is lacking.
Even after following your link to a conservative website I fail to see how what he said is so unreasonable. He is basically saying that we should be like the rest of the world and have our children learn multiple languages early on. Spanish would be fairly useful since there are many people in the US that speak Spanish.
This is my problem with conservative personalities these days. They try to take these things out of context to make it seem like what Obama says is horrible. But every time I look at the full transcript of what he says, he comes off extremely reasonable. This link didn't even hide the context. So really, what's the big deal?
What makes you think the brain can't work on its own? The rest of the body is either there to provide input (sight, touch, smell, taste) or allow you to manipulate your environment. The only other thing the body provides is the nutrients to keep the brain alive. Replace those artificially (i.e. give it a little help) and I see no issues on existing separately.
That seems logical but it really doesn't make any sense. So yeah, now you have 900 cores as opposed to two. That must mean it goes so much faster! Not really, assuming the cores are the same speed, there would probably be very little noticeable speed increase because current program are not going to take advantage of 98% of those cores. Unless programming and OS's change significantly, this is not going to result in faster computers. Generally, you only have 1 or 2 active applications up at one time (with a bunch of other ones sitting idle). It's not like you are able to play WoW and LotRO at the same time. So really, it isn't going to help the desktop market much.
On the other hand, if you look at changing home computing completely where 1 server is a system that serves the whole neighborhood using vm's to server up the OS and apps for each person, then it is more interesting. But it isn't really going to increase speed at all. That will still be done using traditional methods.
That's just not how it works. People don't make things that aren't in demand. It isn't a "create it, and they will come" sort of market. Home users really won't need more than 4 cores with the types of apps they use. Servers can take advantage of more. The only market for 1000s of cores are going to be in super computing which just isn't a driver of the market. Video gamers have a larger effect than these guys.
So you make HD videos...is that going to need 1000s of cores? No, it doesn't. You aren't going to improve home user performance by just throwing more cores at it. The biggest jump you will get is from going from one core to two. After that the difference sharply declines and then you will see more benefit from faster processor speeds, memory bandwidth, and the more traditional things we think of as increasing system performance.
Of course there are health issues with getting older. If there wasn't, we would live forever. Also, I don't know what you are watching, but younger candidates have to deal with the media saying they are inexperienced.
When you have an older candidate, it is more likely they will die in office. So whoever they pick as VP is very important to a lot of people.
The concerns for McCain are valid. He would be the oldest first term president in our history (and does have a huge history of medical problems).
Maybe the country is tired of being ruled by old, white men...but I don't think we are victims of this "cult of youth" you speak of. Age is certainly more of a factor than the fact that Obama's name is close to Osama, that his middle name is Hussein, and that he didn't wear a flag pin since birth.
Just because you don't like this game, it doesn't mean "Times have changed". Really, what people are you talking about? There are plenty of people out there who are going to buy and enjoy the game (myself included). Please don't tell other people what games they should enjoy.
And Linux has serious usability problems that existed in 2003 and still exist today. What's your point? Maybe some of these problems are harder to fix than a bunch of morons posting on a forum care to understand. The real failure of MS is creating a product that is inferior to its previous product. XP was/is a very good OS.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you are full of crap. Blizzard has designed the game so well that they allow user created add-ons through a well defined interface. In fact, the game wouldn't be as popular if it wasn't for the all the user created addons. This isn't an addon to help players, this is software that allows people to bot.
Blizzard is only going after software that allows people to cheat. They do not or will not do any of the other things you are suggesting. You guys really like to exaggerate things and get your panties in a bunch for no reason. This is like reading that it is now allowed that kids play soccer in a park by your house. Oh, no, next they will let the kids play in your backyard, then inside your house, then they will even make you pay child support! Some serious disconnect is going on here.
I am assume you are referring to bnetd. So what was the fallout from that? There wasn't any. What plausible (not made up conspiracy theory on Slashdot) repercussions will this have? My guess: absolutely none. But people are still going to whine about it for years from now because they object to it conceptually rather than how it was actually applied.
Glider is a program that's only purpose is to interfere with Blizzard's program. This is being used to PREVENT exactly what you are saying. You guys read copyright violation and then your brains just completely shut down. The way this was applied is reasonable...stop jumping to ridiculous conspiracy theories.
What the heck is wrong with you people? Seriously, of all the tin foil hat retarded things I have read...
I mean, what's next? Making cars require keys with the car company's logo to start so they can enforce "you're not going to transport Toyota parts with our Dodge truck"?
No, that is not next. Not even close. Look at what this is being applied to. It is completely freaking reasonable to expect Blizzard to take issue with software that damages its business.
And seriously, grow up with the whole US bashing. I know that is in style in here, but enough. I may not be proud of our president (didn't vote for him) but I am proud of a lot about our country. I guarantee your country is just as screwed up in some different way.
I sort of understand where all you guys are coming from...but Blizzard isn't going after grandmas for file sharing, they are just trying to knock cheaters off of their game servers. Cheaters that can harm their reputation and cause them to lose customers. I am glad they are going after them.
What Glider was charged with may be a little funky (I am not going to pretend like I understand it completely like most people here, even though I probably am more qualified to talk about it), but not buying D3 because they are shutting down a program that allows people to cheat? That's just stupid. They are not suing some poor college student for tens of thousands for sharing some horrible music, they are trying to shut down a program that ruins the game experience of their customers. This is reasonable. start crying about not buying D3 when they start suing random people for stupid things and then maybe you can make some sort of RIAA analogy.
Your analogy fails. MMORPGs, for the most part, cost about the same. McD hamburgers are extremely cheap and that is why they have sold so many. Since price is not a variable in this equation, we have to analyze what makes the difference.
The parent post was simply stating that Blizzard does not release a ton of lame expansions. The have released much fewer expansions, and the expansions tend to be very large. They release plenty of content updates for free. This model works for them, so you would be stupid if you went in to the MMORPG market and didn't look to WoW to see what to do to get a large player-base.
Nothing is ever going to be "best" to everyone. But to the majority of people out there, WoW is the best MMORPG to date. you may not like it, but you have to be fairly daft not to respect what they have done.
I play many PC games and don't have all the issues you claim. In general, I install a game, it runs, I enjoy it, the end. You guys really like to try to exaggerate to get your point across. I've even played games with a lot of the evil DRM (eg Bioshock) that scare people so much and didn't have any issues with them. It depends on what games I have whether I play on my PC or my consoles more. I enjoy both. Windows (XP) is great for gaming and anyone who can't see it is just being biased by the hatred for MS or their need to justify their console purchase.
I think I prefer spam to reading the word meme. I don't know why, I just find it that annoying.
It is depriving them of money that they should have for the work they have done.
And software has physical representation on a cd and in a box. Also, when it is sold, it causes that bank balance to be higher. Thus pirating deprives the bank account of the money (which you claim is physical) that should be there. This argument is beyond stupid. Stop trying to justify taking things without paying for it.
There is like, what, one, two banners that are displayed and only in an area that you see for two seconds before you join a game. Oh yes, I am giving up my mind! How they control us!
So you expect Blizzard to give their mechanism to validate keys to anyone that wants to reverse engineer their products? Do you know how stupid and unreasonable it sounds?
bnetd was a tool that people used to run illegitimate copies of Blizzard software yet still enjoy the benefits of online play. If you were a stockholder in Blizzard, you would want this shut down. If you were a developer of SC/WC, you would want this shut down. If you were a reasonable person, you would understand why any business would want to prevent this. It has nothing to do with anti free market, it has to do with people breaking the law so that they don't have to pay a good company what they should. This isn't a company that created their own RTS and is competing against blizzard.
Really, you bnetd supporters need to wake up. You all seem to have the inability to put yourself in the shoes of people who develop software. You come off as arrogant and selfish. How dare a company make profit on a quality product! I really hope some day people damage your income illegally. I am sure you will just sit by and let them do it, right?
All you are doing is justifying your illegal actions (as is popular on this site). Don't get me wrong, I have pirated in the past so it isn't like I am sitting on some moral high horse. So feel free to pirate all you want, just don't come on here and tell me it is good for the game companies. It isn't. It is the people like you and the people that pirate everything that makes DRM exist.
If you don't want to get stuck with a bad game, find a reviewer that has similar tastes and stick with what they recommend. Demos aren't always as bad as you say. Word of mouth and watching posts on Slashdot isn't bad either. There are plenty of alternatives to pirating now. So pirate all you want, but don't try to make it seem like you are doing a good thing.
It's unreasonable to expect a politician running for president to take a position that is against the general majority. Nice way to twist it around, though.
From what I understand, his position on FISA is that it has a lot of problems. This bill didn't change it as much as he would like but it had enough in it that he felt he should vote for it. At least he showed up to vote. McCain was off somewhere else doing who knows what. At least Obama has the nuts to vote (as long as we can keep Jesse Jackson away from him).
Important note: he isn't president yet so going against the majority of the people would be a bad idea at this point. The guy needs to get elected. He may have lost your support, but I think you are being naive. The Republicans have shown in past elections they will do anything to get elected. We need to get them out of office to show them that they need to come back to the center.
Another important note: there is no one in the whole world other than yourself is that going to agree with you on everything. So just crying that he is a politician because he made one vote you didn't agree with is just dumb. I swear, I can't believe anyone gets elected with how unreasonable people's expectations are.
Yeah, people started doing that and look who got elected because of it. Sorry, it would be great if we had more choices, but it isn't going to happen until someone really amazing appears. Ron Paul isn't it either. I know he appeals to a lot of Slashdotters, but his views are too extreme to be electable (even if he does make a lot of sense). I might have agreed with you 8 years ago, but I have learned my lesson. We can't let this Bush mess continue with McCain. It's sad too, 6 years ago I really thought he was something different.
Yeah, that worked out really well. I don't see how anyone could have done a worse job internationally and domestically. In retrospect, it is clear your ability to classify the bigger moron is lacking.
Even after following your link to a conservative website I fail to see how what he said is so unreasonable. He is basically saying that we should be like the rest of the world and have our children learn multiple languages early on. Spanish would be fairly useful since there are many people in the US that speak Spanish.
This is my problem with conservative personalities these days. They try to take these things out of context to make it seem like what Obama says is horrible. But every time I look at the full transcript of what he says, he comes off extremely reasonable. This link didn't even hide the context. So really, what's the big deal?
What makes you think the brain can't work on its own? The rest of the body is either there to provide input (sight, touch, smell, taste) or allow you to manipulate your environment. The only other thing the body provides is the nutrients to keep the brain alive. Replace those artificially (i.e. give it a little help) and I see no issues on existing separately.
That seems logical but it really doesn't make any sense. So yeah, now you have 900 cores as opposed to two. That must mean it goes so much faster! Not really, assuming the cores are the same speed, there would probably be very little noticeable speed increase because current program are not going to take advantage of 98% of those cores. Unless programming and OS's change significantly, this is not going to result in faster computers. Generally, you only have 1 or 2 active applications up at one time (with a bunch of other ones sitting idle). It's not like you are able to play WoW and LotRO at the same time. So really, it isn't going to help the desktop market much.
On the other hand, if you look at changing home computing completely where 1 server is a system that serves the whole neighborhood using vm's to server up the OS and apps for each person, then it is more interesting. But it isn't really going to increase speed at all. That will still be done using traditional methods.
That's just not how it works. People don't make things that aren't in demand. It isn't a "create it, and they will come" sort of market. Home users really won't need more than 4 cores with the types of apps they use. Servers can take advantage of more. The only market for 1000s of cores are going to be in super computing which just isn't a driver of the market. Video gamers have a larger effect than these guys.
So you make HD videos...is that going to need 1000s of cores? No, it doesn't. You aren't going to improve home user performance by just throwing more cores at it. The biggest jump you will get is from going from one core to two. After that the difference sharply declines and then you will see more benefit from faster processor speeds, memory bandwidth, and the more traditional things we think of as increasing system performance.
Of course there are health issues with getting older. If there wasn't, we would live forever. Also, I don't know what you are watching, but younger candidates have to deal with the media saying they are inexperienced.
When you have an older candidate, it is more likely they will die in office. So whoever they pick as VP is very important to a lot of people.
The concerns for McCain are valid. He would be the oldest first term president in our history (and does have a huge history of medical problems).
Maybe the country is tired of being ruled by old, white men...but I don't think we are victims of this "cult of youth" you speak of. Age is certainly more of a factor than the fact that Obama's name is close to Osama, that his middle name is Hussein, and that he didn't wear a flag pin since birth.
Just because you don't like this game, it doesn't mean "Times have changed". Really, what people are you talking about? There are plenty of people out there who are going to buy and enjoy the game (myself included). Please don't tell other people what games they should enjoy.
Wow. So I guess the PS3 is nearly as complicated as a woman.
And Linux has serious usability problems that existed in 2003 and still exist today. What's your point? Maybe some of these problems are harder to fix than a bunch of morons posting on a forum care to understand. The real failure of MS is creating a product that is inferior to its previous product. XP was/is a very good OS.