What part of "Samsung's stance was that it was an "open source" problem, but the fact is, with a privilege escalation exploit, any malware could permanently destroy many of Samsung's devices to the point where a motherboard replacement (instead of mere JTAG) was required."
Exynos-abuse is a perfect example of such an exploit. ANY application could get root access with ZERO user interaction. The very article we are discussing is talking about privilege escalation exploits.
Yup. And look at the eMMC "Superbrick" defect on many of the GS2 family. Many of those devices had a defect in the eMMC wear leveller such that the chip could be unrecoverably corrupted if you issued a secure erase command to the chip. (Probably about a 5% chance of it happening, it's similar if not identical to the defect that hit some of their desktop SSDs in late 2012). Not even JTAG could bring a "Superbricked" device back to life.
After discovery of exynos-abuse, the only thing standing between Samsung and permanent damage to thousands of devices was the fact that modern blackhats care more about obtaining information (money) than doing damage. Samsung knew about this bug for many months - they were aware of the defect in the eMMC chips as early as Galaxy Nexus prototype development in 2011. Yet they released updates for devices in 2012 with kernels that allowed secure erase through to the eMMC chip. The only safe device was the I9100 - which had MMC_CAP_ERASE removed from the kernel to protect the chip. In June 2012, Samsung publically acknowledged the bug and claimed to be "working hard" on it - in July 2012 they released updates for the I9100 that turned the MMC_CAP_ERASE flag ON, putting those devices in danger.
They had an official fix that blocked only secure erase merged into the mainline Linux kernel in September 2012, but not a single affected device had the fix deployed until 2013. Their "stuff takes time to get through carrier testing" line is bullshit. Sprint FI27 was *built* (as in, testing STARTED not ended) on September 27, 2012 (nearly a month after the official fix had been mainlined), and deployed to customers in early-mid October.
As to the I9100 XWLPM MMC_CAP_ERASE fiasco, Samsung's answer was that the lack of MMC_CAP_ERASE in earlier source code was a mistake and that the source code did not match binaries running on devices (yes, that's right, Samsung's defense was "yeah bitches, we violated the GPL"). The strange thing is, this was one of the cases where Samsung's source actually DID match binaries - not a single I9100 ICS kernel prior to XWLPM and XXLQ5 had MMC_CAP_ERASE turned on. (This was obvious by the fact that no one experienced "Superbrick" on such devices.)
Samsung's stance was that it was an "open source" problem, but the fact is, with a privilege escalation exploit, any malware could permanently destroy many of Samsung's devices to the point where a motherboard replacement (instead of mere JTAG) was required.
In short, Samsung's "SAFE" marketing crap is bullshit. "Samsung Approved for Enterprise" - who did the approval? Samsung! Hardly an independent certification authority.
I think it's subjective, but IMO, something that qualifies as a UAV has at least some degree of automation to reduce pilot workload, and also IMO, if it's not able to operate without the operator in constant direct visual contact with the aircraft, it isn't a UAV.
e.g. FPV R/C operation is right on what I personally consider the border between R/C and UAV. If the aircraft can automatically fly between a few waypoints but can't land/take off without pilot interaction, I firmly believe it's in UAV territory.
Again, this is all personal opinion, and things are pretty subjective here.
There are two major variants of the Galaxy S4 - Qualcomm and Exynos based. Similarly there are two major subvariants of the GS3 - again, Qualcomm vs. Exynos.
The Qualcomm-based GS3s were very well supported thanks to Qualcomm having excellent reference source at CodeAurora.
The Qualcomm-based GS4s will probably be OK because many of the Qualcomm GS3 maintainers aren't as pissed off at Samsung as the Exynos guys (including myself) are.
The four primary Exynos4 maintainers (myself, Daniel Hillenbrand, Guillaume Lesniak, and Espen Fjallvar Olson - I may have missppelled thos slightly as we usually just go by IRC nicks) have all decided that we won't be touching any further Samsungs. We're all working with Nexus or Sony devices now. (Sony has done a MAJOR turnaround in terms of opensource support over the past year, or at least the Mobile division has.)
This probably has little impact on the Qualcomm-based GS4s, but right now, the Exynos-based GS4s are without any prospective maintainers.
Will a new maintainer step up? Possibly. Will they succeed without just saying "fuck this shit" and selling the phone for a different one? I personlly don't think so.
It's a volunteer project so nothing is ever a surefire given, and collective decisions are rarely made - so far, they have only been made in regards to outdated hardware and newer versions of Android. (Such as Snapdragon S1-based phones ending at CM7).
That said, if you look at the attitudes of developers, you can "get a feel" for how likely a phone is going to be well supported by CM. DISCLAIMER: THE BELOW IS MY PERSONAL OPINION AND NOT IN ANY WAY AN OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE PROJECT: Will the Qualcomm-based GS4s receive maintainer attention and continued support including M and stable builds? I'd be surprised if they didn't. Will the Exynos-based GS4s receive maintainer attention and M/stable CM builds? I'd be very surprised if they do.
The US SGS3 variants have a dual Qualcomm Krait. The international SGS3 variant is quad Cortex-A9.
Krait is capable of significantly higher performance at a given clock speed than Cortex-A9 - it's capable of close to the speeds of a Cortex-A15 core at a given clock speed.
Buy a Nexus or a Sony. Their older devices (from the S2 era) weren't so hot, but their newer devices are incredibly well built and the software is the most polished manufacturer skin I've ever used. (Fortunately, Sony Mobile seems to have a good deal of independence from their evil parent company...)
If you stick with Samsung, you'll be stuck with Touchwizz (poorly implemented gimmicky features on top of a bugridden poorly maintained core), you'll continue to be an alpha tester for their eMMC firmware (You know the secure erase problems encountered in their desktop SSDs in October? The eMMC chips put into nearly every GS2, which went on sale a year and a half earlier, have the same problems). Every GalaxyS generation has suffered from critical eMMC flaws - "encryption unavailable" (total chip failure for unknown reasons) in the GS1, Superbrick (wear leveller going into la-la-land if you issued a secure erase to the chip) in the GS2, Sudden Death Syndrome (wear leveller crashing on a null pointer leaving the chip totally unresponsive) in the GS3...
I was a loyal Samsung user for a year and a half, and also developed on their devices (I'm the CyanogenMod maintainer for the N7000, I777, and N8013) - I'm sick of dealing with their poor software quality control and their refusal to ever fix any bug in their device in a timely manner (such as the MAX17042 fuel_alerted wakelocks, which took one year and three months for them to finally fix...)
I have an Xperia Z now and it's an amazing device.
Let's say that there are enough people in the office that this person services 10 requests per hour.
Assume they make minimum wage - $7.25/hour.
So that's 72.5 cents per transaction.
Yeah, you can potentially also fill that employee's spare time up with other tasks - but once they start multitasking, their productivity is compromised and they might not service replacement hardware requests as quickly.
"Do they sometime get stuck requiring quickly looking around to make sure no one is looking then banging the machine a few times?" Weak. Where I work, no one looks around any more. They just do it. There are frequent exchanges of "get it to give up the goods" strategy at the vending machines, which are in a relatively high-traffic area.
One machine (candy) just needs the simple "push machine backward and release" technique. The soda machine is evil. The only way to win is to NOT choose anything from the top two rows. These manage to get wedged in a way that requires 5 minutes of banging on the front plastic window to dislodge. (Each row in the machine is slightly forward of the one below it, I'm assuming to prevent items from hitting lower rows - but it means the top row is too close to the window.)
No, I did my research - The Sony Mobile team has been given the latitude by the parent company to do what is right, including some of the best developer relations guys I've ever encountered and more contributions to Android Open Source Project upstream than any other handset manufacturer.
Yup. Older non-Nexus Android devices were crap, and unfortunately, many still are.
Nexus devices Just Work, and also, Sony's newer devices have the most polished manufacturer skins I've ever seen. The Xperia T's stock firmware was one of the most solid packages I'd ever used (blew Touchwizz out of the water with a nuclear-tipped torpedo...) The Xperia Z's firmware is simply amazing. They've come a long way since the X10.
AT&T provides you with a $300 discount at most on a phone. If you compare their plans to a similar Straight Talk plan, you are paying a MINIMUM of $300/year penalty for the subsidy. A typical replacement period is 2 years, early upgrades start for many at 18 months.
So you are paying a minimum of $150 extra for an inferior device.
Even if NK has nuclear capability, they don't have enough nukes for an effective preemptive strike.
The most they have is an "ensure that the US is justified in turning your entire country into a parking lot" strike.
Especially since to "strike the headquarters of the aggressor" they would have to sneak a nuke into DC, at which point the US response would be "die terrorist fuckers DIE".
Or even better - PARTICIPATE. The Android Open Source project is there for a reason.
Manufacturers who want to guide the direction Android goes technologically will work with Google - for example, Sony is a heavy contributor to AOSP. The results of this show with their newer devices, which are far more well integrated than older ones. It's a win-win situation for Sony, Google, and users in general.
But Chinese manufacturers just want to steal and not do any work. Seriously, they have stealing refined to such an art that IF YOU GIVE IT TO THEM FOR FREE THEY STILL MANAGE TO FIGURE OUT A WAY TO STEAL IT! (Note that nearly every Chinese handset is in noncompliance with the GPL under which the kernel is licensed. Not just halfassed pseudo-compliance like HTC and Samsung with source code that obviously doesn't match what shipped, but full on complete noncompliance with zero kernel source whatsoever.)
i never understood nikon fans, because everyone else just shoots what they shoot without having any allegiance in particular.
in the age of lens adaptors, brand loyalty becomes a little bit weird.
Um... In most cases, where it IS possible to adapt lenses from one system to another, major functionality loss is encountered.
You simply cannot achieve full functionality when using a Nikon SLR lens on a Canon SLR or vice versa. Also, going in one of those directions (not sure which), you won't even be able to focus to infinity. (Most MILCs have shorter flange focal distances so can mount any SLR lens and focus to infinity with it, but of course again with a potential loss of functionality.)
Issues with this: 1) Readout speed. I'm guessing that the 18MP sensor's readout speed is not fast enough to do 3x3 binning - instead there's a good chance that it only selectively reads pixels. 2) There's always a little bit of gap between pixels. As the pixel size gets smaller, this gap becomes a larger percentage of area.
A native 2.1MP sensor greatly reduces readout speed challenges and wasted intra-pixel space.
AT&T version is totally different, Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 instead of Exynos 4210.
I'm fairly certain both quincy variants received CM10 stable.
10.1 is quite a bit behind as Qualcomm took a while to work on 4.2 for MSM8660, and nearly everyone who was working on 8660 devices also had 8960 devices that took priority.:)
Don't forget that the most advanced and capable signal processing system on the planet (most difficult to jam reliably) can only be used with one sensor in an aircraft: Mk I Eyeball (which still has much higher dynamic range than any other imaging sensor I know of).
"once we can prove that they can not be taken over by an enemy and that they could operate autonomously when conditions warrant"
Which can never be proven.
Full autonomy is highly unlikely to ever occur. Right now, weapons release must ALWAYS have a human in the loop, and in fact, there are quite a few rules on WHO is allowed to release weapons.
Partial autonomy (with command and control datalinks) has a major flaw - that communications link. It can be jammed/disrupted, or simply tracked.
Only a manned aircraft can autonomously enter hostile airspace and release weapons without any active communications links that could give its position away, and it is always going to be this way.
Yeah. DAoC was the only potential viable competitor when WoW came out.
However, Mythic completely destroyed the game with the ToA expansion. By the time they fixed ToA - it was WAY too late. WoW had already killed them. If WoW had gone up against a "ToA-fixed" DAoC they would have faced FAR stiffer competition.
WAR had the potential to be a DAoC 2, but Mythic fucked it up: 1) Tons of bugs on launch 2) Massive faction imbalances - DAoC always had various faction imbalance issues that went back and forth, but overall, the three-realm RvR system was well executed AND the three-realm system meant that if balance favored one realm too much, the other two realms would usually cooperate against them. Imbalances with just two factions in a "RvR-oriented" game = bad news.
Aion had potential but, again, was a total fucking disaster on launch. Brutal level-delta rules for grouping made levelling hell if you fell even a level or two behind friends - which happened easily if you logged in at the wrong time for just one day at launch.
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bah, preview fail. Meant, "what part of that didn't you understand?"
What part of "Samsung's stance was that it was an "open source" problem, but the fact is, with a privilege escalation exploit, any malware could permanently destroy many of Samsung's devices to the point where a motherboard replacement (instead of mere JTAG) was required."
Exynos-abuse is a perfect example of such an exploit. ANY application could get root access with ZERO user interaction. The very article we are discussing is talking about privilege escalation exploits.
I admit I still need to return my Nexus7, headphone jack is busted. Other than that it's perfect.
My Nexus 4 has no issues, but I was not one of the people who joined in on the launch day zerg - mine was ordered sometime in Jan or Feb.
First few batches of any device are almost always problematic.
Currently - LG and Asus.
The problem is, even Samsung's unlocked devices purchased at direct retail without subsidy take forever to see security/bug fixes.
Yup. And look at the eMMC "Superbrick" defect on many of the GS2 family. Many of those devices had a defect in the eMMC wear leveller such that the chip could be unrecoverably corrupted if you issued a secure erase command to the chip. (Probably about a 5% chance of it happening, it's similar if not identical to the defect that hit some of their desktop SSDs in late 2012). Not even JTAG could bring a "Superbricked" device back to life.
After discovery of exynos-abuse, the only thing standing between Samsung and permanent damage to thousands of devices was the fact that modern blackhats care more about obtaining information (money) than doing damage. Samsung knew about this bug for many months - they were aware of the defect in the eMMC chips as early as Galaxy Nexus prototype development in 2011. Yet they released updates for devices in 2012 with kernels that allowed secure erase through to the eMMC chip. The only safe device was the I9100 - which had MMC_CAP_ERASE removed from the kernel to protect the chip. In June 2012, Samsung publically acknowledged the bug and claimed to be "working hard" on it - in July 2012 they released updates for the I9100 that turned the MMC_CAP_ERASE flag ON, putting those devices in danger.
They had an official fix that blocked only secure erase merged into the mainline Linux kernel in September 2012, but not a single affected device had the fix deployed until 2013. Their "stuff takes time to get through carrier testing" line is bullshit. Sprint FI27 was *built* (as in, testing STARTED not ended) on September 27, 2012 (nearly a month after the official fix had been mainlined), and deployed to customers in early-mid October.
As to the I9100 XWLPM MMC_CAP_ERASE fiasco, Samsung's answer was that the lack of MMC_CAP_ERASE in earlier source code was a mistake and that the source code did not match binaries running on devices (yes, that's right, Samsung's defense was "yeah bitches, we violated the GPL"). The strange thing is, this was one of the cases where Samsung's source actually DID match binaries - not a single I9100 ICS kernel prior to XWLPM and XXLQ5 had MMC_CAP_ERASE turned on. (This was obvious by the fact that no one experienced "Superbrick" on such devices.)
Samsung's stance was that it was an "open source" problem, but the fact is, with a privilege escalation exploit, any malware could permanently destroy many of Samsung's devices to the point where a motherboard replacement (instead of mere JTAG) was required.
In short, Samsung's "SAFE" marketing crap is bullshit. "Samsung Approved for Enterprise" - who did the approval? Samsung! Hardly an independent certification authority.
I think it's subjective, but IMO, something that qualifies as a UAV has at least some degree of automation to reduce pilot workload, and also IMO, if it's not able to operate without the operator in constant direct visual contact with the aircraft, it isn't a UAV.
e.g. FPV R/C operation is right on what I personally consider the border between R/C and UAV. If the aircraft can automatically fly between a few waypoints but can't land/take off without pilot interaction, I firmly believe it's in UAV territory.
Again, this is all personal opinion, and things are pretty subjective here.
Not entirely true.
There are two major variants of the Galaxy S4 - Qualcomm and Exynos based. Similarly there are two major subvariants of the GS3 - again, Qualcomm vs. Exynos.
The Qualcomm-based GS3s were very well supported thanks to Qualcomm having excellent reference source at CodeAurora.
The Qualcomm-based GS4s will probably be OK because many of the Qualcomm GS3 maintainers aren't as pissed off at Samsung as the Exynos guys (including myself) are.
The four primary Exynos4 maintainers (myself, Daniel Hillenbrand, Guillaume Lesniak, and Espen Fjallvar Olson - I may have missppelled thos slightly as we usually just go by IRC nicks) have all decided that we won't be touching any further Samsungs. We're all working with Nexus or Sony devices now. (Sony has done a MAJOR turnaround in terms of opensource support over the past year, or at least the Mobile division has.)
This probably has little impact on the Qualcomm-based GS4s, but right now, the Exynos-based GS4s are without any prospective maintainers.
Will a new maintainer step up? Possibly. Will they succeed without just saying "fuck this shit" and selling the phone for a different one? I personlly don't think so.
It's a volunteer project so nothing is ever a surefire given, and collective decisions are rarely made - so far, they have only been made in regards to outdated hardware and newer versions of Android. (Such as Snapdragon S1-based phones ending at CM7).
That said, if you look at the attitudes of developers, you can "get a feel" for how likely a phone is going to be well supported by CM.
DISCLAIMER: THE BELOW IS MY PERSONAL OPINION AND NOT IN ANY WAY AN OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE PROJECT:
Will the Qualcomm-based GS4s receive maintainer attention and continued support including M and stable builds? I'd be surprised if they didn't.
Will the Exynos-based GS4s receive maintainer attention and M/stable CM builds? I'd be very surprised if they do.
They are very different cores.
The US SGS3 variants have a dual Qualcomm Krait. The international SGS3 variant is quad Cortex-A9.
Krait is capable of significantly higher performance at a given clock speed than Cortex-A9 - it's capable of close to the speeds of a Cortex-A15 core at a given clock speed.
Buy a Nexus or a Sony. Their older devices (from the S2 era) weren't so hot, but their newer devices are incredibly well built and the software is the most polished manufacturer skin I've ever used. (Fortunately, Sony Mobile seems to have a good deal of independence from their evil parent company...)
If you stick with Samsung, you'll be stuck with Touchwizz (poorly implemented gimmicky features on top of a bugridden poorly maintained core), you'll continue to be an alpha tester for their eMMC firmware (You know the secure erase problems encountered in their desktop SSDs in October? The eMMC chips put into nearly every GS2, which went on sale a year and a half earlier, have the same problems). Every GalaxyS generation has suffered from critical eMMC flaws - "encryption unavailable" (total chip failure for unknown reasons) in the GS1, Superbrick (wear leveller going into la-la-land if you issued a secure erase to the chip) in the GS2, Sudden Death Syndrome (wear leveller crashing on a null pointer leaving the chip totally unresponsive) in the GS3...
I was a loyal Samsung user for a year and a half, and also developed on their devices (I'm the CyanogenMod maintainer for the N7000, I777, and N8013) - I'm sick of dealing with their poor software quality control and their refusal to ever fix any bug in their device in a timely manner (such as the MAX17042 fuel_alerted wakelocks, which took one year and three months for them to finally fix...)
I have an Xperia Z now and it's an amazing device.
Let's say that there are enough people in the office that this person services 10 requests per hour.
Assume they make minimum wage - $7.25/hour.
So that's 72.5 cents per transaction.
Yeah, you can potentially also fill that employee's spare time up with other tasks - but once they start multitasking, their productivity is compromised and they might not service replacement hardware requests as quickly.
"Do they sometime get stuck requiring quickly looking around to make sure no one is looking then banging the machine a few times?"
Weak. Where I work, no one looks around any more. They just do it. There are frequent exchanges of "get it to give up the goods" strategy at the vending machines, which are in a relatively high-traffic area.
One machine (candy) just needs the simple "push machine backward and release" technique.
The soda machine is evil. The only way to win is to NOT choose anything from the top two rows. These manage to get wedged in a way that requires 5 minutes of banging on the front plastic window to dislodge. (Each row in the machine is slightly forward of the one below it, I'm assuming to prevent items from hitting lower rows - but it means the top row is too close to the window.)
No, I did my research - The Sony Mobile team has been given the latitude by the parent company to do what is right, including some of the best developer relations guys I've ever encountered and more contributions to Android Open Source Project upstream than any other handset manufacturer.
Yup. Older non-Nexus Android devices were crap, and unfortunately, many still are.
Nexus devices Just Work, and also, Sony's newer devices have the most polished manufacturer skins I've ever seen. The Xperia T's stock firmware was one of the most solid packages I'd ever used (blew Touchwizz out of the water with a nuclear-tipped torpedo...) The Xperia Z's firmware is simply amazing. They've come a long way since the X10.
It isn't even a great rate.
AT&T provides you with a $300 discount at most on a phone. If you compare their plans to a similar Straight Talk plan, you are paying a MINIMUM of $300/year penalty for the subsidy. A typical replacement period is 2 years, early upgrades start for many at 18 months.
So you are paying a minimum of $150 extra for an inferior device.
See subject... I'm fairly certain hdhomerun + MythTV has no issues with unencrypted channels. I've been using that combo for year.
Even if NK has nuclear capability, they don't have enough nukes for an effective preemptive strike.
The most they have is an "ensure that the US is justified in turning your entire country into a parking lot" strike.
Especially since to "strike the headquarters of the aggressor" they would have to sneak a nuke into DC, at which point the US response would be "die terrorist fuckers DIE".
Or even better - PARTICIPATE. The Android Open Source project is there for a reason.
Manufacturers who want to guide the direction Android goes technologically will work with Google - for example, Sony is a heavy contributor to AOSP. The results of this show with their newer devices, which are far more well integrated than older ones. It's a win-win situation for Sony, Google, and users in general.
But Chinese manufacturers just want to steal and not do any work. Seriously, they have stealing refined to such an art that IF YOU GIVE IT TO THEM FOR FREE THEY STILL MANAGE TO FIGURE OUT A WAY TO STEAL IT! (Note that nearly every Chinese handset is in noncompliance with the GPL under which the kernel is licensed. Not just halfassed pseudo-compliance like HTC and Samsung with source code that obviously doesn't match what shipped, but full on complete noncompliance with zero kernel source whatsoever.)
i never understood nikon fans, because everyone else just shoots what they shoot without having any allegiance in particular.
in the age of lens adaptors, brand loyalty becomes a little bit weird.
Um... In most cases, where it IS possible to adapt lenses from one system to another, major functionality loss is encountered.
You simply cannot achieve full functionality when using a Nikon SLR lens on a Canon SLR or vice versa. Also, going in one of those directions (not sure which), you won't even be able to focus to infinity. (Most MILCs have shorter flange focal distances so can mount any SLR lens and focus to infinity with it, but of course again with a potential loss of functionality.)
Issues with this:
1) Readout speed. I'm guessing that the 18MP sensor's readout speed is not fast enough to do 3x3 binning - instead there's a good chance that it only selectively reads pixels.
2) There's always a little bit of gap between pixels. As the pixel size gets smaller, this gap becomes a larger percentage of area.
A native 2.1MP sensor greatly reduces readout speed challenges and wasted intra-pixel space.
In addition, the fact that making a GOOD large-aperture lens is difficult and expensive - moreso than making a good high-sensitivity sensor.
AT&T version is totally different, Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 instead of Exynos 4210.
I'm fairly certain both quincy variants received CM10 stable.
10.1 is quite a bit behind as Qualcomm took a while to work on 4.2 for MSM8660, and nearly everyone who was working on 8660 devices also had 8960 devices that took priority. :)
Don't forget that the most advanced and capable signal processing system on the planet (most difficult to jam reliably) can only be used with one sensor in an aircraft: Mk I Eyeball (which still has much higher dynamic range than any other imaging sensor I know of).
"once we can prove that they can not be taken over by an enemy and that they could operate autonomously when conditions warrant"
Which can never be proven.
Full autonomy is highly unlikely to ever occur. Right now, weapons release must ALWAYS have a human in the loop, and in fact, there are quite a few rules on WHO is allowed to release weapons.
Partial autonomy (with command and control datalinks) has a major flaw - that communications link. It can be jammed/disrupted, or simply tracked.
Only a manned aircraft can autonomously enter hostile airspace and release weapons without any active communications links that could give its position away, and it is always going to be this way.
Yeah. DAoC was the only potential viable competitor when WoW came out.
However, Mythic completely destroyed the game with the ToA expansion. By the time they fixed ToA - it was WAY too late. WoW had already killed them. If WoW had gone up against a "ToA-fixed" DAoC they would have faced FAR stiffer competition.
WAR had the potential to be a DAoC 2, but Mythic fucked it up:
1) Tons of bugs on launch
2) Massive faction imbalances - DAoC always had various faction imbalance issues that went back and forth, but overall, the three-realm RvR system was well executed AND the three-realm system meant that if balance favored one realm too much, the other two realms would usually cooperate against them. Imbalances with just two factions in a "RvR-oriented" game = bad news.
Aion had potential but, again, was a total fucking disaster on launch. Brutal level-delta rules for grouping made levelling hell if you fell even a level or two behind friends - which happened easily if you logged in at the wrong time for just one day at launch.