News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

Brazil Government Bans Counterstrike and Everquest. Could World of Warcraft Be Next?

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It seems that the various democratic governments around the world have begun to take an interest in the well being of their citizens. I’m sure most of you are aware of China’s World of Warcraft curfew. There’s about 1.5 million players in China alone, although I would guess 1.4 million play as their full time job [citation needed].

The big news comes last week. Both online gaming giants Counterstrike and Everquest have had their distribution banned from Brazil. As far as I understand, LAN centers and players with existing copies are allowed to keep them. But it is a federal offense for those 2 games to be sold in Brazil either via retail or online.

The federal judge who imposed the ban stated the games were “…[a] subversion of public order, were an attack against the democratic state and the law and against public security.”

So far, World of Warcraft has escaped the banhammer. Seeing as WoW is not showing any signs of slowing down in terms of growth, sales, or subscribers it would be reasonable to expect that the Brazillian government has WoW on their crosshairs. We’ve already seen 1 government take legislative action on WoW. For Brazil to do something like this, it sets a pretty large precedent.

I’ve taken a few political science courses and from what I remember, Governments exist to determine “who gets what, when and how” (Lasswell). You’d suspect that they’d have bigger fish to fry other than games. Can you think of the possible criminal implications? No more will Brazillian drug lords be smuggling cocaine, marijuana or other drugs. The real money now will be in titles such as Call of Duty 4 and World in Conflict. Instead of cash crop farmers, we might see a rise in piracy!

As a law student, one of the fundamental principles we learn is that a crime is what is defined by society (I’ve condensed months of learning into 1 sentence). Gamers will always be gamers and they will want to play what’s up there. We’re consumers after all. Wouldn’t it suck if we had to go into a dark alley somewhere just to get Starcraft 2? It’s almost like the government is playing the role of a parent by deciding what kids can or cannot play.

Canada may have had it’s share of murderers, but thank goodness nothing like this will be in force up here.

Setting Up Dual Ventrilos, What’s Your Client?

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I say this every year on January 1st and this year is no exception.

I will never drink again.

But anyway, yesterday afternoon I was in Karazhan again with several friends (and that one random hunter pickup) and my Guild leader popped down into my Ventrilo channel to ask me if I was talking to myself. I guess from his perspective it looked like I was, but in actual fact I had two separate clients set up: 1 for my guild and 1 for a different guild. It’s not a trick that’s well known, but here’s how it can be done.

1: Right click on the shortcut to your Ventrilo
2: Click Properties
3: In the Target field, add -m to the end of the line

Now you can be connected to multiple vent servers simultaneously. If you’re going to do this, I strongly advise setting up different user profiles. Do that, then you can separate different keybinds for each user. Otherwise, what will end up happening is that pressing your transmit key will see you talking on all servers your connected on.

Then people will get strange ideas such as you talking to yourself.

I also know that teamspeak is a fairly popular voice client that some Guilds use. But I’ve never ran into anyone on Ner’Zuhl asking for people to use it. It’s always been vent. I’m interested to know if you use any 3rd party voice communication at all and if so which ones and why?

What third party voice client do you use?

  • Ventrilo (76%, 82 Votes)
  • Teamspeak (18%, 19 Votes)
  • Skype (6%, 6 Votes)
  • I don't use any (1%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 108

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No One Else’s Fault But My Own

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Masters Leiandra and and Trollin’ have asked the one question that sits in the back of our minds ever since we started playing this game.

Why are you playing this game? What made you get into this game? Who did it?

For me the answer is very easy but lengthy to answer. My first real game was Gizmos and Gadgets. Then I graduated to RTS’s with Warcraft 2. I loved the fantasy universe and I knew I would continue to play Warcraft games for a long time. Fast forward a few years and I met up with some people online in IRC (who happened to be local in my area). They asked me to play and compete with them in Counter-strike (1.5 was the norm back in the day). From that day onwards, we formed our own gaming clique. Whatever the current ‘fad’ in video games was, all of us would participate.

It started with CS
Then we moved to DoD
Warcraft 3 debuted and most of us played that
Back to CS: Source
DoTA
Lineage II Open Beta
Guild Wars
Then World of Warcraft hit

At first I resisted for several long months. I had a good excuse. I was just a poor high school student with no source of income. That summer I got a job and made a decent pile for a student. I decided to give WoW a try and I was hooked immediately. Several months later, most of us split due to some stupid issues. It was all my fault because I failed to heal one of my friends in STV and abandoned the field of battle because I didn’t want to participate in PvP anymore. I killed my subscription for a while and stopped playing. I stopped coming around on vent because I felt I didn’t deserve the flak I took for saving myself in a hopeless cause. It’s a little difficult to engage in combat as Holy and while I would perform well in PvE environments, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do in PvP. I didn’t really know anyone else to play with and it just wasn’t enjoyable without friends. I started nodding off when I did some quests or other things by myself. I got bored of the game, essentially.

Anyways, I started playing the game again because the same guys wanted to form a reroll raiding Guild. I figured why not? I’ve never truly seen the end of the game and I wanted to see what it was like. I picked a Priest to symbolize my dedication and goals: I picked, at the time, the class that was most in demand and underplayed (Dwarf Priests). You know what was stupid? Completely randoming his look. Sheesh, now I’m stuck with a scowl and a glare for the rest of my WoW career.

What I want to say is the only reason I’m playing this game isn’t for the raiding. I’m not here to get all the best loot as possible. I don’t care about progression and epics and the like. I’m not interested in showing my dominance and prowess in PvP. Some people take pride in pressing buttons faster and more accurate than the next guy. I lost that drive after Guild Wars.

Digression: We worked our asses off in Guild Wars to take the Hall of Heroes and get our damn sigil. Then we stopped playing after that.

Anyway, without caring about loot or PvP abilities, what does that leave?

Why then do I continue playing this game?

Because all of my friends are playing it. Truth be told, if my friends all stopped playing WoW, I would stop playing altogether. A lot of people have this idea that all WoW players are addicted to the game.

They’re not.

It’s their choice to play it. If I wanted to quit WoW, I could easily pull it off. I just don’t want to.

They’re not addicted to the game. They’re addicted to the friends and the people they’ve met playing this game. The reason I play WoW is because of the people I play with.

Told you the reason was simple.

Teen Lit on Fire By Self Acclaimed Fire Mage

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After losing a fight in school, a 17 year old boy in Beijing covered his classmate with gasoline and lit him on fire. According to Beijing News the teen claimed that he “had lost himself in World of Warcraft” and “transformed into a Fire Mage.”

Source

I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.

WordPress Slowly Becoming the WoW Blogging Platform of Choice

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Renowned WoW Blogger BigRedKitty has migrated from his home on Blogspot to his own domain. A quick examination of his footer reveals that he too has switched over to the WordPress platform.

Earlier in the week, Gwaendar (of Altitis) switched from Blogger to WordPress. Not far behind him Before that, Ess also moved to WordPress.

From the list of Blogs I follow on Google Reader:

Blogger

WordPress

Blogspot Bloggers: 15 14
Wordpress Bloggers: 15 16

Conclusion: Both platforms perform as intended, but we’ve seen evidence of people switching from Blogger to WordPress. I have yet to encounter a WoW Blogger switching from WordPress to Blogger. Of course, there must be countless of WoW Blogs that have escaped under my radar so those numbers up there could very well be skewed in either direction.

So to all of you young Blogglings out there, I suggest saving yourself a day’s worth of effort and just using WordPress initially instead of signing up for Blogger and then switching to WordPress =).