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Comment Re:Ubisofts DRM (Score 5, Informative) 233

"When it works" isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is this disclaimer at the bottom of the steam page:

> A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME AT ALL TIMES AND TO UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. SUCH CONTENT MAY ONLY BE UNLOCKED ONE SINGLE TIME WITH A UNIQUE KEY. YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 13 TO CREATE A UBISOFT ACCOUNT WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE PUBLISHED AT http://assassinscreed.com/ ... which to me says, "we can nuke your access to the game at any point in time, provided we give you 30 days notice on a website you're never going to check."

I own AC1, but I don't own AC2 or HAWX 2 for this very reason.

DRM is likely here to stay, at least to some degree, but this frightens the ever living crap out of me. Why would I throw money at a game where they can cut off access to it at any point in time for ALL of their customers, just because they don't want to pay the bill on those servers anymore?

Comment Re:WTF is wrong with you people? (Score 1) 606

I voted never not because I think the things you listed won't happen, but rather, that they could be put the more effective uses on things other than multiple-ton flying hunks of metal.

What is a car? A large, heavy, hunk of metal with some number of wheels and a navigation method, that navigates the world.

So what happens when you have a small, lightweight object with no wheels that gets you from point A to point B? Is it still a car?

And second, we don't really need it to fly... it serves no purpose other than looking neat.

Comment Re:Blizzard? (Score 1) 356

Region locks

Just like WoW, with a net benefit in terms of latency. I don't want to hit the ladder button and get get a minimum of 400ms+ of latency (but I would like to be able to at least join a custom game with them).

"connectivity" with social networking sites

Given the SC2 playerbase, there are more people who have a facebook account than otherwise. I hate it personally, but generally speaking, it wasn't a stupid decision on their part.

no chat/clans/channels

All of which are coming in a future patch..

a single character name

While I do wish they had an option to reset your account and generate a new name, I really only see this as a positive change. A massive cut down on trolling, and bans meaning something.

Not that it matters much, SC2 ladder is compromised already due to rampant maphacking.

Sure there are indeed maphacks already, but calling their usage rampant is a bit of a stretch. Blizzard has never instantly banned people for "hacking." It comes in waves, like you know, these banning sprees of 7,700, 350,000, and then 320,000.




Just to reiterate:

Activision has nothing to do with anything they've done recently, and anyone who says otherwise is blaming something they don't like on a company of convinence.

Comment Re:Blizzard? (Score 5, Insightful) 356

Oh they cared before. Remember BnetD?

That was WAY before Activision. They report their income on different balance sheets; the only effective change in Blizzard mindset was the part where they went public.

Activision has nothing to do with anything they've done recently, and anyone who says otherwise is blaming something they don't like on a company of convinence.

Comment Re:Unlimited already means 5G (Score 4, Interesting) 319

Sorry to reply to myself, but I thought I linked this.

http://www.intomobile.com/2007/11/03/verizon-wireless-when-we-say-unlimited-data-we-mean-5gb-worth-of-unlimited-data.html

While that article is just as good at trolling a subject line as the OP is, the part we care about is this:

And, should you exceed the 5GB/month limit on your “unlimited” plan, Verizon will “reduce throughput speeds of any application that would otherwise exceed such speed to a maximum of approximately 200Kbps” – with actual speeds “subject to change.

It remains functionally unlimited, and the same type of cap pre-5GB applies: connection speed. Just a different speed.

Comment Re:Unlimited already means 5G (Score 4, Informative) 319

It isn't a 5GB cap. You're free to transfer as much as you please.

Anything over 5GB gets rate limited to 56k speeds, though.

They're giving you unlimited data, and past 5GB, you still have unlimited data. It just isn't fast, and nothing in their terms of use prohibits this. You can't really drop a class-action lawsuit against them doing that either.

You're not fined for going over 5GB, just throttled.

Comment Re:Lost my interest (Score 1) 268

Who says that's only 1/3 of the story? When/if they announce SC3 proper, that number changes to 1/4. If you count the original and the expansion, 1/6. The N64 version had extra content that was only on the N64, so 1/7. Then they'll announce the next expansion to SC3, and that will be 1/8.

Saying "I'm getting a fixed portion of the story, where that portion is less than one -- and I don't like paying to get the rest" is meaningless when we don't know what the denominator on that fraction is, when it stops, or if it will stop any time soon.

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