Smiley's Life

UPDATE: Due to the request of a user on Destructoid, I’ve looked for a reliable source to all this and found a post by Blizzard Entertainment themselves. Here it is:

In addition to all the other benefits that we believe ultimately come from having everyone online such as an active, centralized community, a popular arena system, accessible character storage, etc. etc. Diablo III is built on a client/server architecture, which means not all the data for the game or mechanics reside on the client (your computer). 

This is not too unlike World of Warcraft where the world itself, the art, the sounds, etc. are on your machine, but all of the NPC’s and enemies are controlled by the server. Diablo III doesn’t function in all of the exact same ways, but things like monster randomization, dungeon randomization, item drops, the outcomes of combat, among others, are all handled and verified by the client talking to the server, and vice versa. 

We’ve learned a lot from this type of architecture from World of Warcraft, and the added security and oversight it provides. It allows a great deal of control over the game at all times for all players, so if we know there’s an issue or bug we can usually address it right then and there through a live hotfix. Hotfixes can’t be used for everything, we’re still going to have client patches, but we’re definitely looking forward to being able to deliver a consistently high quality experience to all players simultaneously through processes like hotfixes. 

In addition there are some pretty intense security concerns. While there’s never a fool proof solution to stopping hack and cheats, we’ve found that a strict client/server architecture is a huge barrier for their development and use. 

Ultimately we made the decision to make the game client/server based because of the security and quality it can provide to those playing, and as a bonus it reinforces a lot of our ideals for a thriving online community.

Source: A post by Bashiok, a Blizzard employee, on the Battle.NET forums.

Diablo III requires a permanent internet connection to play. However, what it doesn’t tell you is that the requirement is not just forced — it is actually required.

Diablo III servers don’t just keep a constant connection with your computer, they do the number crunching. They calculate damage, AI, loot, actions, the whole thing. You are playing one-user multiplayer, not single-player. Unlike previous Diablo games, your computer does nothing but create the scene. Sure, sometimes it compensates for missing data and lag — just as any online game does — but just like World of Warcraft, you are playing on a server no matter what.

This is more than digital rights management. You are sold an incomplete product. Blizzard market Diablo III is an RPG with online features, implying offline is possible and not the main focus. This is false. Instead, you are buying a MMORPG in which you are playing alone. When Blizzard pull the plug on Diablo III servers, you will have a digital or physical paperweight. (You might question that statement considering Diablo II servers are still up. But that is directed at such products in general, which are only usable as long as the developer or publisher feels like it.)

Unlike Ubisoft’s Online Services Platform, your games are non-functional if you don’t maintain a connection. If your connection is flaky or if the server is far away, you will experience game issues: rubberbanding, lag, errors and maybe even discarded actions — in situations of extreme network congestion your “click” may not register in time or register at all. This is one example of it. (And this is another)

One example of discarded actions prevalent in online gaming is Minecraft multiplayer. If you own a network card made by Atheros or Realtek, you cannot play Survival Multiplayer. Despite efforts made by Mojang to cut back on traffic, Minecraft sends an immense amount of data back and forth that these brand cards simply can’t cope with. The result is lag, changes that aren’t seen until later and sometimes even having the server undo your actions because your network card didn’t send the actions to the server on time. The server thus determined your actions to be impossible and reverted them.

That’s why Diablo III’s online-only requirement is a real requirement and not just DRM, and why it is actually worse than online-only DRM. I’d have less of a problem with it if Blizzard didn’t market the game for what it’s not: a single-player RPG with online features, but instead marketed it as a multi-player RPG with a one-user option.

A week ago, I finished playing Mass Effect. I liked the game very much, and tried the demo for Mass Effect 2 afterwards. I couldn’t wait to play Mass Effect 2, and looked it up on Steam. “Still at $49.99?” - A month or two ago, Mass Effect 2 was dropped to $39.99, but not in Steam’s Israeli region, and it annoyed me. But this time, I checked again, and what do you know - it’s now $29.99 in Steam’s US region!

I decided to do something about it, so I started a live chat with EA Support. In it I explained the situation, and they said they would bring my issue to someone higher to look into. During that time, they claimed Steam was a retail store (lie - I left a URL and stated Steam is a digital distribution platform by Valve), that they are not in charge or prices (lie - I stated Steam Support has redirected people to publishers when they complained about prices), that they don’t know what I’m talking about, and even tried to “bribe” me (in a way) with a $20 coupon for the EA Store. Why yes, EA: I’ll take your coupon for a store I never use! Games downloaded from the EA Store contain SecuROM, and on top of that, Steam’s download network is more reliable, so why not buy on Steam? In addition: the coupon does not work. And they’ve yet to activate it yet. (The coupon was sent nearly a week ago.)  [EDIT: A live chat support rep was kind enough to create a new coupon, so at least I have that. Yay!]

Over 12 emails (in total - 6 by EA) later, they quietly admit that they are in charge of the prices, but screw me over by saying EA Support can’t do anything about it:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately this is outside of the realm of customer support, so I won’t be able to give you the specific answer you’re desiring. However, I’ve sent a request for information regarding this, and if I do get word back, I can relay that to you. Thanks!

If you have any further questions or concerns please reply to this email or visit our extensive knowledge base online at http://support.ea.com.

Thank you,

Danny K
EA Online Support

That’s it? I paid EA thousands of shekels, or maybe even over a thousand dollars, over the past 10 years and they treat me this bad? I bought every The Sims expansion pack, all but two expansions for The Sims 2, pre-ordered The Sims 3 and stood in line on the morning of release day and bought The Sims 2 for the full retail price at a pre-release event, and this is the treatment I get?

Some of you might think they will eventually resolve this, since the rep said he sent a request. Well, that’s bullshit. After over 8 different issues with EA Support didn’t get resolved and were treated just as bad, I can guarantee you they will not try to resolve the issue. Even if that request was sent, the executive recipient will not give a damn. The fact the “compensation coupon” didn’t work and wasn’t fixed yet as of this writing is additional proof that EA Support are not going to help me.

[Electronic Arts logo used according to fair use under United States copyright law.]

This is the second time this has happened in 2 days, and I’m sick of it. An unknown person (who I’ve blanked out) has invited me to play a game I’m not even interested in with him, through another app. ngmoco:), if you’re reading this: this is unacceptable. At least I don’t have instantaneous notifications (I’m using an iPod touch), so it’s not that bad, but I’m sick of getting these “invites” which are essentially pop-up ads for your other apps.

I’ve already contacted ngmoco:) through Twitter two days ago, and they’ve yet to respond, so I reported it as an issue on their Get Satisfaction site. If you’re sick of it too, or just play any of ngmoco:)’s games and don’t like this idea help me by voting in favour of removing this “functionality” from GodFinger and others. You can sign up to Get Satisfaction, or just sign in with your Windows Live ID, Facebook account or Open ID account.

EDIT #2: You know how Adobe touted this update as “groundbreaking” (or some other fancy word) for using hardware acceleration? Well, ironically, disabling hardware acceleration makes playing content smoother. 720p runs at one frame more and 1080p runs at two frames more. Wow.

EDIT: After discovering YouTube’s new diagnostics tool, I was able to test this with Lady Gaga’s Alejandro music video (which is a good test candidate - scenes and camera angles keep changing, putting Flash to work) and it got 10-12 frames per second, when sometimes it jumped to 7 and 8. Testing it in 720p resulted in a maximum of 25 frames, when it ran at 23 frames most of the time. Info corrected. (1080p proof (TinyPic resized it to 1600x900), 720p proof)

As of this writing, trying to use the newest version of Flash to play full 1080p HD content from YouTube results in 7-12 frames per second. When the Flash Player 10.1 beta only started, full 1080p HD video worked flawlessly. As it progressed, performance was awfully degraded with every version. Even 720p doesn’t run flawlessly. I mean, it comes close to 30 but it doesn’t actually reach 30, but 23-25 instead. (Not as bad, but this still shouldn’t be happening with 720p video.) I guess I’ll be using Chrome’s native video player for YouTube from now on.

This is occuring on a PC with a Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz (3MB L2 Cache) processor, 4GB of DDR II 800Mhz RAM, a Nvidia 9600GT GPU and Windows XP. In plain English, this computer is strong enough to play full HD at a smooth 30 frames per second by just using the CPU. The irony is that 10.1 added GPU acceleration support.

Bravo, Adobe. You managed to screw up Flash again.

Recently, the Ning social network Second Life Bloggers was migrated to Grouply by the network’s administrator, Zoe Connolly. Apparently, all 1,500+ members of Second Life Bloggers were registered to Grouply without their consent or any notice. I straightened it all out with Zoe earlier, but I’d still like to state my opinion on this mess-of-a-site called Grouply. You should also read Zoe’s post about this whole mess.

Grouply is a website made to enhance Google and Yahoo! discussion groups, and host its own social groups. Apparently, it allows admins to register all their network’s members on Ning in just a few clicks, without their consent. That’s just one of the many issues this anti-privacy site has.

So that was number one. Number two is even worse. Apparently, once you’re in, Grouply is an opt-out system. Meaning, you’re not asked to join, you’re forced. I found this out by finding a neatly-stacked (Yay Gmail conversations!) pile of Grouply “group” newsletter-ish messages from people I don’t even know on a website I never even heard of. To delete my account, I had to click “Forgot My Password” (I guess it doesn’t transfer passwords?), reset it, log in, accept this “new network” that was “added to my account”, click Settings and finally look for the cancellation option, then confirm that I want to delete my account. And yes, I’m bloody sure, don’t ask me twice.

Number three is interesting. Apparently, Grouply requires your Yahoo! and Google IDs to “enhance” your Google and Yahoo! discussion groups. Yeah, like I’m going to give you my Google account credentials. Might as well just give you my bank account! Anyway, many people have voiced their concerns on whether this is some phishing service and some have said it spams your Yahoo! and Google groups once you give it your accounts. Even if these spamming claims are false, the fact they’re asking for your login info is bad enough.

And last but not least, a surprise twist: Ning is also at fault here! (I bet you didn’t see that one coming, didn’t you?) I deactivated my Ning account on the day paid plans were announced in a global Ning email, and yet I was still transferred. I guess Ning didn’t really delete my account, and still left me in the network.

In conclusion, Grouply should be avoided. At least that’s my opinion. Zoe’s now trying to have our new “network” deleted, since there’s no option on the site whatsoever to do so. I wrote an email to support about this whole incident, and so should you. If you’re a member of Second Life Bloggers that was transferred to this platform without your consent, tell them about it. Together, we can end this issue swiftly.

A while ago, when my satellite TV provider bought several new shows, these promos for “Dollhouse” caught my interest. Fast-forward to tonight, when I had just seen Dollhouse’s 24th episode (season 2, episode 11), and I have only three words to say. Oh. My. GOD. Sorry for sounding like a pre-teen walking out of a screening of Twilight, but OH MY GOD DOLLHOUSE IS THE BEST ACTION SHOW EVAR. That episode just blew my mind wide open, making me question the show’s cancellation one more time.

With all of these unbelievable twists, brilliant plot and exquisite attention to detail, I still don’t get why Fox cancelled the show. When I heard of the news (Thanks to Twitter!) I immediately went online and read a bunch of articles on why it was cancelled, since even at the time the show was great. I read that it was placed at a crappy time slot, with “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” playing before it and “Stargate: Universe” showing on SyFy at the same time. Really, Fox - Fridays at 9pm? I don’t think any of the young audience that’s supposed to like this show would stay home on a Friday night. Plus, it’s a bad move to even try and compete with a Stargate show, or virtually any long-running shows series/format with a very large fanbase. Terminator and Dollhouse were both great shows, and look what happened - they both got axed.

Dollhouse, in my opinion, is the best action show on television these days. Really, I think it surpasses Heroes and other scifi-action shows. The twists in episode 24 actually made me take 10 minutes to digest it all and go over them again in disbelief, keeping my mouth open at the same time (post-gasping). Yes, they were that good. Without spoiling anything, the twists were better and better as they came, with Caroline’s last memory as the climax.

I really don’t get why Fox placed this show in such a bad time on a Friday night, broadcast it at the same time as a Stargate show or even cancelled it after they actually failed it! Forget about ratings - a network should not cancel a new show before giving it a decent chance, let alone one with a well-sized fanbase.

Screw you, Fox. Screw you.

I’ve been using a troublesome ISP for over 6 years. Now, after so many technical issues, so much frustration and a couple months of some new issues, like failed connections and having certain ports blocked, I’ve finally moved to the best ISP (Internet Service Provider) around: 013 NetVision.

My parents are divorced (and it’s perfectly fine) and each use a different ISP: my mom uses 012 Smile and my dad uses 013 NetVision. Using both ISPs over the years made me see how one works very well while the other does not. For as far as I can remember, I’ve used NetVision without any issues at all and don’t recall making any calls to their technical support line. (There was one last week, but that turned out to be the server’s fault - it was busy - and my own, not opening certain ports after reconfiguring my router) However, I do recall making countless calls to 012 and Bezeq (my infrastructure company) to solve technical issues, only calling Bezeq because 012 simply didn’t fix it and I thought it may not be their issue. This made me realize we should switch, and after postponing it for so long - I realized this almost 2 years ago - I finally did it, after new problems popped up with 012. Many connections just failed or froze, mainly on Google. Yes, Google. It took me loads of stops and reloads to get just one search done, which defeated the purpose of Google: Speedy searches. After that, I finally snapped and switched.

Long story short, I’ve had various deals offered to me and ended up picking this one: a combined plan consisting of internet service at 10Mbit/s (1.25MB/s)and getting the infrastructure at the same speed through the same ISP, for just ₪150/month. (Though, my infrastructure provider would still be Bezeq. However, that’s just fine.) Seeing as the infrastructure alone was offered for ₪100/month through Bezeq, and the other deals cost about ₪65-75/month, I figured it was the best one.

And now, after finishing it up and configuring my network, I’ve finally left that bad, old ISP and my connection is already better. Raptr, which was for some reason blocked on 012, now works flawlessly and server connections no longer fail. So now, I’m happy. :-)

About a month after I got my new PC I noticed something: the power supplier was acting odd. Sometimes, out-of-the-blue it would just restart (no Windows BSOD pun intended). About 2 months later (I couldn’t find the time earlier - go figure!) I went to my PC parts supplier and assembler and asked them to replace the power supplier. They did, but then it was another odd-acting one. This time? Whenever a component needed massive power (mainly the graphics card), it would just crash electrically and will not turn back on until I switched off the power supplier, took out the power cable, put it back in, switched it on again and pressed the power button. So I went over there again. On the spot, they replaced it with another weird one. That one would not supply enough power, so whenever I tried to play a game it would run amazingly slow. And they forgot to plug the DVD drive back in when switching the cables all over the place. So this time they sent a tech to me to make it up to me and he installed a new power supplier, this time a GOOD one, (Good as in not faulty, not as in the scale: “bad-ok-good-perfect”.) and connected the drive again. Then it was all good.

Until now.

So, guess what just happened? I’m betting you’re now thinking “Is the power supplier broken again?”. Well, no. But close enough: My DVD drive just broke. It still works electrically but will not read any CDs or DVDs. (Yes, it’s a hardware problem. I ran some tests.)

So now, I have to go all the way to their nearest store, wait in line, give them the PC and do it all over a few days later when it’s replaced. Why? Because they “have to check everything” before they replace something! Right, if you would’ve done that properly, I wouldn’t be here bitching.

If one more thing breaks, I will seriously consider suing them and getting a branded PC (E.g.: HP) or a Mac. Paying more for a computer is a lot better in the long run if I don’t have to take it in for repair every few months!

(P.S.: I had the same problems as with the power supplier but with the motherboard on my previous PC (at the start), which was also from them. It fried in 3 days, then was replaced but with one that wasn’t my previous model, then replaced with a good one that was the correct model.)