I finally saw Zombieland on pay per view. I wasn’t able to catch it when it was at the cinema, none of the pieces really came together at the time and it just slipped away.
Anyway, ninety minutes of zombie slashing goodness while eating dinner. Thank goodness goreishness doesn’t intefere with my appetite.
Overall, I quite enjoyed it. Zombieland wasn’t as uproarishly funny as I expected from the trailers. In fact I think the trailers raised my expectations a bit too much. Most of the sight gags in the trailers were presented fairly early on in the film and actually weren’t the features I thought they’d be. No matter it was worth the $6.95 cost of a PPV viewing.
Downsides, perhaps a bit short at 90 minutes. The Bill Murray cameo, while good, was entirely predictable from the first wiggle of his fingers.
And the source of the zombie virus this time? Forget the evil corporations testing man-made virii. Whatever you do, don’t eat the burgers at roadside diners. You don’t know where they’ve been.
With the latest patch 3.3.5, Blizzard introduced what could have been one of the best gamer friendly features that they have released so far. Namely, a way for in-game friends to keep in touch with others across realms and different games. But I won’t be using it. Here’s why…
I currently don’t play World of Warcraft.
Okay, a little facetious, I know. I’m quietly enjoying myself in Everquest 2, dungeon crawling and even doing a little raiding with my guild, The Halasian Empire. When Starcraft 2 comes out I’m not sure I’ll be buying it straight away anyway. However, even then I’ve gone on record as saying that I’ll be creating a separate Battle Net account for SC2.
But… I do intend to have a go at Cataclysm at some point. I expect that to release around November, so the Christmas break (not that running my own business affords break time, even over the holidays) might give me some time to whip up a Worgen. But even then I won’t be using Real ID, and these are the reasons.
I don’t have any real life friends playing WoW. Blizzard themselves do not recommend Real IDing anyone who is not known to you in real life, from the Real ID FAQ. Real ID is a system designed to be used with people you know and trust in real life – friends, co-workers and family — though it’s ultimately up to you to determine who you wish to interact with in this fashion.
The identifier for Real ID is the email address used for my BattleNet account. Okay… not really secure and something Blizzard also doesn’t recommend. This is from a Blizzard Support article, A leading cause of accounts being compromised is from players willingly sharing their account information, such as with personal acquaintances… Okay, to be fair they’re talking about login information here. Oh wait, your Real ID *is* one half of your account login info. Once they have your username, all they have to do is guess your password. BTW, you should also note from the same article, Please note that not being aware of the fact that sharing account information is a violation of the game’s Terms of Use does not result in leniency in the enforcement of the policy. The results of sharing account information can be severely detrimental for everyone involved, and Blizzard must enforce this policy consistently in all cases. So not only is giving someone your Real ID sharing half your account login info, it’s also violating Blizzard’s own terms of service. Now there’s a Catch 22 for you. (I love that book!)
I want to maintain my privacy, or at least the illusion of privacy. I simply want to be known as Stropp, or Bargearse, or Phlebas or any one of the number of monikers I’ve chosen for myself over the years. (I’d probably choose the Stropp alias seeing as it has been the one I’ve given the most effort to ‘branding’ due to this blog.) While I have no illusions of the fact that anyone could probably find my real name out very quickly, I’d prefer to keep some boundaries between my gaming and ‘real’ lives even if a Google of my name shows no information about me, except for a couple of programming forum posts from years back and the fact that I share my name with a couple of actors and the inventor of a Formula One racing car engine.
I also like, from time to time, to have some alone time. I want to be able to flip a switch on Real ID and become invisible to the rest of the gaming world. If I decide to devote several hours to a Horde character on a different server without being available to my guild for whatever, I want to be able to do that. That doesn’t seem to be something that Blizzard wants me to be able to do, even though other IM services offer that facility. In real life I can let my phone go to the answering machine if I’m eating dinner or watching a movie, and the caller doesn’t know if I’m home or not, so no offence. Let me do the same with Real ID Blizzard, let me choose to which characters and games that Real ID will apply.
Real ID, as I said at the start of this post, is a really promising feature to add to Blizzard’s stable of games. The whole social networking thing is going to be a big part of the future, not just of games, but communication and even business and government. However it has to be managed properly in order to win trust. It seems to me that someone at Blizzard, or perhaps above them in the Activision management chain, had the idea that some kind of social networking feature would be good and demanded it be implemented without giving thought as to the ramifications. Unfortunately, that gives us this half-arsed implementation of Real ID.
So come Cataclysm, or perhaps before if I get the urge to play World of Warcraft, if you see me in game and ask me to do the Real ID thing with you, please don’t be offended at a polite no. At least, until Blizzard addresses my concerns. Then I’ll reconsider my stance.
(BTW, during my research I noticed that there is an incredibly unpopular US government law called the Real ID Act. Why did Blizzard choose to name their social networking system after something that has generated such bad feelings? Like I said half-arsed, and badly thought out.)
From WoW-Europe: As part of the upcoming Cataclysm expansion, Blizzard is adding a new Battleground to World of Warcraft called Twin Peaks.
It’s a Warsong Gulch, capture the flag style area for 10×10 players. I’m not sure what level we’re talking about, but given the area is the Twilight Highlands, players will probably need to be a higher level before Twin Peaks kicks in.
Given Blizzards penchant for peppering World of Warcraft with pop culture references there’s bound to be a few referencing the 1980′s TV show of the same name. At some point we’ll simply have to hear, “She’s dead… wrapped in plastic.” Will there be a diner that sells great coffee and cherry pie, or a wierd red velvet room with a dancing backwards talking dwarf?
I’ve got that series on DVD. I might have to have another look.
Okay, I’m not really that much of an Apple fan. I honestly don’t see much of a difference between Apple and Microsoft, Jobs and Gates, but if there is one thing Apple is good at, it’s coming up with some coolish tech. The iPhone is no exception.
I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while now, kinda umming and ahhing between buying one and saving my money for a bit longer.
But what clinched it, was that I was talking to someone at a networking event, that I was at for my business, who strongly hinted that if I were to look into iPhone App development that I might find myself with some work. Well, with that kind of encouragement to a techead teetering on the edge of a buying decision, there’s not much arm-twisting necessary. That, and the fact that I needed to upgrade my phone plan to an unlimited (calls not data) plan anyway which had the additional benefit of a free iPhone. Sold!
The thing that impressed me was the ease-of-use factor. All the apps are pretty much intuitive to use, although I did do some to-and-froing trying to work a couple of things out, but not much.
There are a couple of things that don’t work all that well. I was able to initially connect the eMail client to my eMail server and download my eMail, but that’s now stopped working. It also appears that the iPhone will shut down and require a hard reset if I use the eMail client. That’s not all the time, but it hasn’t happened if I haven’t used eMail beforehand.
The App Store is cool. I’m not a big spender though, I’ve downloaded Seesmic, a Twitter client that is free, and Bejeweled 2 which cost a couple of dollars.
I know, I probably should hand in my MMO card for admitting to playing Bejeweled, but hey I like it. It seems to have that just-one-more-go quality that makes the hours fly. On the first night I bought it I actually got to Level 17, my highest ever score. I’ve never got over 9 in the past.
One thing that I’ll be looking into, other than the boring business apps you don’t want to hear about here, is the apps that are being put out for MMORPGs. The Fallen Earth guys have announced their App recently; there are a couple for WoW, as well as an App for Eve if I’m not mistaken. I’m wondering if anyone (SOE perhaps) are going to do an App for Everquest 2, or EQ1 for that matter.
I think one of the biggest things that I love about the iPhone in particular, and smartphones in general, is that they are taking human interaction to a whole new level. I recently finished reading Halting State by Charles Stross, which depicted a near future technological society and what could be one of the directions that phone technology could go. I’ll do a quick review soon since it’s not only SciFi, but also hands down depicts massive online gaming more accurately than I’ve seen in a story before.
I’m still not an Apple fanboi, I won’t be getting the iPad anytime soon unless there’s a business reason to do so; I’ll be waiting a few generations I think; but I do so love my new iPhone.
I finally saw Zombieland on pay per view. I wasn’t able to catch it when it was at the cinema, none of the pieces really came together at the time and it just slipped away.