tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19947264812202017552024-03-14T07:51:01.570+11:00Word of ShadowA blog about MMORPG games and MMO design theory. Contains a lot of opinionated articles about whats good in the MMO industry.Crimson Starfirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03764422983380987864noreply@blogger.comBlogger228125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-8042143504009937922012-10-24T16:43:00.000+11:002012-10-24T16:44:14.814+11:00The fate of SC2Regarding StarCraft II:
<blockquote>Yeah, in a dream world we all want this ULTRA CUT-THROAT COMPETITIVE FUCK YOUR FACE game where OH MY FUCKING GOD SKILL CEILING SO HIGH NO MULTIPLE BILDING SIELECT FUK AUTO-MICRO OH MY GOD SO COMPETITIVEEE!1111...But in the real world, no one wants to play that game except competitive people.</blockquote>
In the past I have always been first to throw the carebears out with the noobwater, but I never considered the perspective put forth by this <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft_2_will_be_dead_before_legacy_of_the/">lengthy diatribe</a>: If you want a competitive game to be supported, it's the scrubs, the noobs, yes the freaking carebears, that need to love the game as well. Otherwise there can be no time and money to support professional competitive play.
I don't think I've ever read something this long on the internet that held the opposite of my pre-determined viewpoint. This is some sort of personal internet moment in history for me.
Vive la carebear!Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-9575120409539190452012-10-13T12:27:00.002+11:002012-10-13T12:27:40.091+11:00LoL infographic<a href="http://majorleagueoflegends.s3.amazonaws.com/lol_infographic.png">75 Teemos die every second</a>. This makes me happy.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-7417832696630233292012-06-20T21:34:00.001+10:002012-06-20T21:34:14.047+10:00Then why does it still feel like WoW?<a href="http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success">Then why does it still feel like WoW?</a>Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-46548015900792835442012-04-10T14:07:00.003+10:002012-04-10T14:10:54.168+10:00DotA 2 thoughtsI was accepted into the Dota 2 beta recently. As a no-time Dota 1 player, but a long-time League of Legends player and long-time Valve fan, I was really excited to see what they’d come up with. I’m disappointed to say that I really didn’t enjoy playing the game at all. It felt full of design decisions intended to make the game “harder” and so more “hardcore”, but actually (to me) just made the game not fun to play.<br /><br />To wit:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Vision:</span> Vision is a lot more restricted, theoretically making it harder to spot ganks and such. Perspective is zoomed in, visibility on the map is less, you can’t see up a flight of like 3 stairs, etc. Because of the zoomed perspective, half the skills in the game can hit you from practically right across the screen. Do you have to be more “pro” to play because of all this? Uh, maybe. Is it more fun? Nah. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Burst:</span> Characters are squishy. I tried picking heros from the “strength” category which seemed like they were supposed to be more tanky. You still get burst-fucked in the face so easily. Couple with the zoomed in perspective, ridiculous skill range and lack of “emergency button” skills (see below), if you put a foot wrong in lane you get completely dominated instantly. More hardcore? Yes. Fun? Nah.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">CC duration:</span> CC lasts forever. Stuns can last for like 4 seconds. I played one character with an area of effect skill that silences for 6 seconds. Wtf?? Given the amount of burst in this game, that’s enough time to wipe the entire enemy team. More hardcore? Errr I guess. Fun? Uhhh… are we detecting a pattern yet?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Simplicity:</span> Despite all the more “hardcore” design features, the game is a lot simpler than LoL.<br />- First, there are no summoner skills (for the uneducated: in LoL you get 2 long-cooldown “emergency button” skills that basically allow you to make a mistake every 5 minutes or so and not lose the game for your team). LoL champs have 5 additional skills (one is always a passive, many have one other passive), while most characters in DotA 2 have 4 skills, 2 of which are usually passives. So you get…. 2 active skills. Compared with 3 in LoL, +2 emergency skills.<br />- I didn’t see any heroes with what are called “skillshots” in LoL – shots that you aim, that can miss, and importantly can be dodged by the enemy. This adds a fun fake-out element. Your options just overall feel more extensive in LoL.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tuning issues:</span> Some of these might be a carry-over from my LoL lineage, but there are a lot of seemingly innocent differences that change the flow of the game a lot.<br />- Your character will automatically run to attack the closest minion, which is a death sentence when you’re a melee hero.<br />- Mana costs in the early game for many champs are unbelievably prohibitive, taking half your mana pool.<br />- Towers have ridiculous range, and there is no indicator of where the range ends.<br />- Towers don’t kill minions first, they kill whatever is closest… Good luck trying to push a tower with a melee champ (melee champs in general just seem pretty useless to me).<br />- Unbelievably, towers don’t switch targets to defend you when you’re being dived by enemy heroes, they just placidly keep whittling away at the minions. Hardcore? No, just different. And fun? No. Getting dived is not fun at all in LoL, but I never realised how much less fun it could be if the tower refuses to help you at all.<br />- It’s even worse getting dived in your base, there doesn’t seem to be a base laser so you can just be spawn-camped in the face. Oh, and the base recharges your health really slowly.<br />- This is frustrating because there’s no “blue pill” that allows you to get back there quickly, which means a lot of long and boring trips back and forth because the maps are so big (you can spend money to do teleport to a building, but the cost is prohibitive to do it all the time. And you will be doing it all the time because health recharges in lane so slowly. This leads to trying to stay in lane as much as possible, and dying, and guess what? The respawn timer is almost double that in LoL. And you can’t buy items while you’re dead (actually you can, but they go into a useless storage area that doesn’t move with you. Dota 2 is so hardcore! You have to remember to transfer stuff out of storage when you leave town! Rawr!!).<br />- Oh, and once you start to die, you may as well leave the game (which everybody seems to do because there’s no penalty) because when somebody gets fed they steamroll to such a ridiculous degree that there’s no stopping them… or you could go afk, which is also easy because there’s no reporting option for afk’s.<br />- You can be ‘denied’ in lane (the enemy gets the last hit on your minions, robbing you of gold) – the one character in LoL that could do this was rebalanced so that he couldn’t do it, because it was a really unfun mechanic to be on the receiving end of.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lack of communication of information:</span><br />- LoL has a very clean cut, cartoony style. All the characters look very distinctive (which is supposed to be a trademark Valve move!). Valve has a more gloomy style, which is fine, but the heroes seem to kind of look the same, and a lot of them are easily confused with the minions. This is not fine, it’s game design 101 fail.<br />- It’s very difficult to tell wtf is going on with the skills – who is casting them, at what times, what you can do about it. You just lose a chunk of HP and go… Cool, I have no idea wtf that was.<br />- You can’t see the items (or mana) of the enemy. Completely removes a massive strategy element from the game.<br />- You can’t tell what attributes are used by what skills, compared with LoL where colour-coded numbers tell you exactly how each skill is buffed by your stats.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pedantism:</span> The characters in DotA 2 are named in the most unimaginative way possible. Eg “Drow Ranger”, or “Anti Mage”. Wtf? LoL has “Gangplank”, “Blitzcrank” and “Fiddlesticks”. Creativity fail, Valve.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lack of polish:</span> Maybe expected for a beta. Sometimes when running away and spam-clicking (as you do), it will move you in the complete opposite direction, right back into the enemy. There are no pre-bound keys to use your consumable items, e.g. health potions. Diablo 1 had this, wtf? Ridiculous. Escape doesn’t cancel menus. The minimap has no portraits, so you can’t tell which champion is coming. Beta I know, but where is the Valve polish?<br /><br />So with all of THAT, <span style="font-weight:bold;">did Valve get anything right</span>?<br /><br />Most people point to the fact that in DotA 2 you can play any champ immediately, which is totes more balanced for a hardcore PvP crowd. This sounds nice theoretically. In practice, you have no idea what any of the champs do, which ones are any good, etc. The 10 free champs PER WEEK that get cycled in LoL, coupled with the very cheap (in terms of grind points required for unlock) cost of the older champs mean that in practice, there really wouldn’t be much point to having all the champs available from the beginning. So I don’t really care much about this ‘advantage’.<br /><br />What else?<br />- The graphics are higher res.<br />- The base sinks into lava and stuff at the end. Cool.<br />- There is a day/night cycle which changes some character’s skills, and changes visibility.<br />- There is a flying donkey that can take your items to you (neat).<br />- The AI bots are much more competitive (I’m not sure if this is just because bots are just cheating and do more damage – they were MUCH harder than going up against other beginner players).<br />- There is a live replay feature (you can see top games being played and observe them, a la Guild Wars 1.<br />- Oh and you can eat trees.<br /><br />But overall? There’s really no contest. I feel like Valve have let the ex-DotA guy that they recruited to develop this just “do his thing” because they didn’t want to interfere with his creative genius. But, well, his thing kinda sucks.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-72811254899094236152012-03-10T10:27:00.002+11:002012-03-10T10:32:04.353+11:00Rock Paper SpamDue to business at work I haven't checked my Google Reader for 1 week.<br /><br />There were 76 posts unread from the traditionally awesome <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com">Rock, Paper, Shotgun</a>. This would typically have taken me a long time to read through. However lately there has been a concerted effort to... increase the number of posts RPS are making, and the quality is not increasing with it. I clicked on only 14/76 = 18% of posts after reading the opening text.<br /><br />Signal to noise.... fail. Maybe I should just subscribe to Kotaku and be done with it.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-42142513089844926502012-02-29T22:43:00.001+11:002012-02-29T22:43:17.915+11:00There is a God.<a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/29/new-baldurs-gate-website-suggests-remake-sequel/">YES</a>Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-52315118692171378512012-02-26T09:50:00.002+11:002012-02-26T09:54:02.665+11:00Dat 2004 technology"Some folks were curious if we would start a new WvW instance if a map fills up. Due to how the game is structured, this is not really something we can do."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-takes-your-wvw-questions-here-and-on-reddit">Wut?</a><br /><br />Are we too busy copying WoW to remember why Guild Wars is better than it? I have to enter a queue like it's the FREAKING STONE AGE?Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-75642361082881139072012-01-02T10:44:00.003+11:002012-01-02T10:49:35.401+11:00Coming Late to Early Guild Wars<a href="http://www.killtenrats.com/2011/12/30/coming-late-to-early-guild-wars">Zubon</a> is currently playing through Guild Wars for the first time - a move composed of much win. I wanted to re-post a reply I made to one of the commenters.<br /><br />“That is a common misconception about GW. In it’s first months, the devs intended PvP to be the endgame content, but since most of the players didn’t care about their intentions and stayed in PvE, the game got more and more PvE-heavy.”<br /><br />I disagree with this quite a bit. In the first few years of the game’s life, PvP was extremely popular and a massive focus, both for the casual and hardcore players. Random Arenas and then Alliance Battles were extremely popular with the former, while Guild vs Guild and Hall of Heroes offered a more competitive slant for the latter.<br /><br />The pioneering ideas they had gave the game very strong appeal in the “super hardcore” competitive e-sports scene, eg<br />- mechanics that require active use of skills to prevent damage<br />- co-ordination of the team to “spike” down a target<br />- observer mode for all high-level games<br />- no reliance on grinding to achieve power<br />More prize money was up for grabs at the high point of this than had previously been offered in any competitive game.<br /><br />But you are right that PvP is not as big of a focus now. Interest died off with each expansion because more and more skills and classes that did not fit with the fantastic balance of the original campaign devolved the metagame into “Build Wars”. Eventually all the high profile players moved on.<br /><br />Hopefully they can get back to the core principles in GW2 and create another fantastic PvP experience.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-53783065851716010442011-09-22T16:24:00.002+10:002011-09-22T16:31:19.096+10:00Customer service 101<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-syNbtuyjpD4/TnrUzIaTpUI/AAAAAAAAAD4/HFVH0znm6hE/s1600/niceGuys.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 365px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-syNbtuyjpD4/TnrUzIaTpUI/AAAAAAAAAD4/HFVH0znm6hE/s400/niceGuys.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5655066257013318978" /></a><br /><br />For those unfamiliar with the game's pricing system, the points I was refunded would usually take a few nights worth of playing to earn . They can be used to buy new champions or runes (which allow you to customize your loadout). Since I can spend these points in lieu of paying money to buy things, Riot are trading a little bit of cash in the immediate future for my long term goodwill. They also really made an effort to do this by searching their sales logs, because I purchased this champion at least a couple of months ago.<br /><br />This kind of thing is ALWAYS a good investment in my book (see: Valve).Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-14665434397465759722011-09-15T17:36:00.002+10:002011-09-15T17:38:51.130+10:00Diablo III skill calculator outThis is not usually a headline that would grab my attention. However this is not one of those pansy-arsed skill systems where you toss up between a +0.5% critical strike chance or a +2.3 damage increase. The skills, and especially the runes that you can customize them with, all sound massive and nutballs enough for me to be enjoying playing with this at least as much as I will the actual game itself:<br /><br />http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monkMelf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-61870420046417266622011-08-02T15:41:00.002+10:002011-08-02T15:54:01.024+10:00Diablo 3 to be quite similar to Diablo 2Probably about 50% of my unread posts today were about <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/01/diablo-iii-no-mods-online-only-cash-trades/">the latest Diablo 3 announcnements</a>.<br /><br />First, you must always be online to play, even in single player. This is of course absolute fail-train, because inevitably there will be server issues and at-home internet issues. I had several relatively high level single player characters in Diablo II that I used to play when the servers were down. Also, sometimes you just want to use cheats and run around wtf-pwning everything. But no longer.<br /><br />Second, the in-game auction house will allow you to earn/spend real life cash. I actually APPLAUD this decision, because it will keep the dirty gold seller spam out of the game (if you own a copy of Diablo 2, make a public game for the lols. At least one bot will enter within about 10 seconds).<br /><br />Third, mods will be super frowned upon. They were super frowned upon in Diablo II as well, and for multiplayer, that's fine (of course, people will still come up with a MapHack mod, and people will use it. I will personally risk the account ban when I get sufficiently tired enough of losing hardcore characters to ridiculous random extra fast boss spawns). It's annoying that people won't be able to use the engine to create neat-o new single player stuff, but I never bothered much with that stuff in the other Diablo games.<br /><br />Verdict? <a href="http://www.heartlessgamer.com/2011/08/shut-up-about-diablo-iii-and-blizzard.html">Yes, heartless, we will still buy it.</a> The fact that it's looking like an awesomely fun game dampens my outrage when they make announcements like this. Compared with the announcements for oh, say, SW:TOR, which just give me the lols because it looks awful <a href="http://www.heartlessgamer.com/2011/08/shut-up-about-diablo-iii-and-blizzard.html">(and no, I will NOT still buy that).</a>Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-59550444480321027542011-08-01T11:45:00.002+10:002011-08-01T11:48:34.389+10:00Sweatshop work<a href="http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2011/07/the-frightening-real-world-strength-of-channel-4s-sweatshop-game207.html">PBS </a>via <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/07/31/the-sundays-papers/">RPS</a>: "The fact is that you can't really convey the extent of the hardships faced during a long, underpaying shift on a factory line in any medium. (You could craft a time-accurate simulation, but it would be difficult to rope many into playing it.)"<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft">I lol'd</a>.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-13300030696898667122011-06-28T20:57:00.004+10:002011-06-28T21:14:57.235+10:00Security 101With the recent spate of hacking sweeping everything from government agencies to online gaming services, security is very topical right now. Many are shaking their heads at the compromised companies and saying ‘Lol, noobs. Need moar firewallz’. Even companies whose defenses remain intact are vulnerable to Distributed Denial of Service attacks carried out by millions of ‘zombie’ computers scattered across the globe.<br /><br />The root of both problems is the same: innocent users clicking things they shouldn’t. Whether you’re a CEO with admin access to your company’s network or some random Joe surfing the web, trying to view those naked pictures of Justin Bieber is going to compromise your computer and everything connected to it, unless you have the right protection in place.<br /><br />I’ve done a bit (a lot) of research into this in recent times due to a ridiculous virus that took over my system, offering to clean the multitude of infections it ‘found’ if I would wire money to some smug bastard in Russia. This research has involved trawling forums and collating disparate information from individuals of a wide range of technical knowledge and experience, and distilling it into a refined depiction of the truth. In other words, exactly what you or I would go through every time we get stuck into a new RPG. However if you are not inclined to go through all this research yourself, allow me to share some things with you:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/probably-best-free-security-list-world.htm">Here’s a reasonably up to date list of all manner of free security software</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Most forums are shit:</span> <a href="http://www.wilderssecurity.com/">Wilder’s security</a> is a big exception, and where I obtain most of my info.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Anti-virus is shit:</span> Anti-virus uses signature-based technology to compare processes that want to run on your computer to a database. The problem with this is that querying massive databases introduces lag to everything that you do, and that new threats require time to become incorporated to the database. Having said that, having one on hand to scan particularly suspect files can be a useful back-up. PrevX and Avast! are two examples that I’ve tried and found to be neat (the former uses cloud technology, minimizing system resources and ensuring the most up-to-date database).<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Anti-virus vs anti-malware vs anti-spyware:</span> Sometimes the distinctions between these are meaningful, but often they are pure marketing hype. Having said that, an example of non-hype is the free <a href="http://www.malwarebytes.org/">Malware Bytes Anti-Malware</a> (the paid version offers real-time protection – not necessary as discussed above). MBAM also relies on signature-based detection, but the focus is apparently on finding infections missed by other anti-viruses. In other words, the infections that are actually going to make it through to most people’s computers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Admin mode is shit, but you will probably use it anyway:</span> In admin mode, malware can do whatever it wants to your computer. If you run as a limited user on the other hand, you will greatly limit the impact that malware can have. The problem is that if something tries to run that needs admin privileges, you will receive a vague prompt that authorizes it do all the high-privilege things that it wants to. It can be difficult to know whether you have a legitimate program or not here.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Windows 7 is more secure, but less secure:</span> Compared to Windows XP (let’s not discuss Vista), Windows 7 has some improved security measures, such as Adress Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) which prevents buffer overflow attacks. In Windows 7 Microsoft have also beefed up protection of any attempted patching of the core Windows goodies (the kernel), with their technology known as Patch Guard. This makes it harder for malware to do nasty things, but also makes it harder for security vendors to ensure that their software has sufficient privileges to completely stop malware. So if you are running the latest and greatest operating system together with some of the security software discussed below, you may be more at risk than if you were operating under XP.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Chrome is the most secure browser:</span> Firefox can come close if you install the ‘NoScript’ extension (and is woefully inadequate if you don’t). But it says something that at the yearly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn2Own">Pwn2Own</a> hacker contest, the hackers have been unable to break Chrome (in fact, they don’t even bother trying).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Answering an endless series of questions is shit:</span> <a href="http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/hips-explained.htm">HIPS</a> programs (no, not that <a href="http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Hide_in_plain_sight">HIPS</a>) establish a set of actions that each process is allowed to take. Can it alter the registry? Can it add itself to Windows start-up? Can it inject itself into Windows processes? Etc. This does not require an up-to-date database, nor does it need to be particularly taxing to the system. And they are extremely powerful. The problem is that the many questions can be difficult to answer for novice users, and a pain in the ass for all users. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Firewalls are good:</span> If you are not behind a router, i.e. connected directly to the net, most experts estimate that without an inbound firewall you’ll become infected in ~10-15 minutes (!). Hackers have automated routines constantly scanning random IP addresses for vulnerabilities. Preferably get behind a router (which will reject unsolicited incoming connections for you), or get some software-based inbound protection.<br /><br />The default Windows firewall offers completely fine inbound protection for this purpose. However what if our system becomes infected by a process actually initiated by us with an unwitting click? For this we need outbound protection. Most free and paid software firewall packages these days come with both this technology and with HIPS functionality as described above.<br /><br />Decent free examples, bearing in mind the drawbacks of HIPS software, include Online Armor, Comodo, and Private Firewall.<br /><br />Alternatives to classical HIPS - if you’re like me and don’t want to answer an endless stream of chat from your security software, there are actually not that many options available:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Policy-based HIPS:</span> The idea here is to maintain a set of ‘Trusted’ and ‘Untrusted’ applications. Anything coming from a ‘threat gate’ – i.e. your browser, peer to peer programs, a USB stick, etc – are automatically untrusted. These processes run with reduced rights, i.e. are denied the ability to make any nasty changes to the registry, add themselves to start-up, capture the keyboard, etc. In this way we avoid answering a bunch of irritating questions. The drawback is that when we have something legitimate that does need to do these special activities to work properly, we have to remember to run it as ‘Trusted’ or it will not work properly. This is a small drawback for me given how powerful, light and unobtrusive these programs are.<br /><br />The only options that I’m currently aware of with this type of functionality are DefenseWall, GesWall, and AppGuard. The latter is still in development but seems the most far along in terms of overcoming the Patch Guard protection of Windows 7 discussed above.<br /><br />I’m still on Windows XP 32-bit and am happily using <a href="http://www.softsphere.com/">DefenseWall</a>, which comes highly recommended from many independent, expert sources. It also passes every security test I’ve thrown at it with flying colours, operates very smoothly with no hitch to system resources as far as I can tell, and requires no set-up to do all this (this is good, because the UI is not user-friendly at all – it’s a good thing I never have to use it). DefenseWall is also not free, but does come with a lifetime license for ~$30 and you can evaluate it for 30 days before buying.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sandboxing:</span> Let programs do whatever they want to do – just run all threat sources in a virtual environment that does not get to make changes to the real system. When your session is finished, flush the sandbox and ‘poof’, any changes made by malware are gone. Of course, sometimes you’ll want to promote things from the virtual sandbox to become ‘real’ – it’s up to the user to decide when this is appropriate.<br /><br />The best application to recommend here is <a href="http://www.sandboxie.com/">SandboxIE</a>. It’s free for a single sandbox (adequate for most users), but for more convenient functionality you can get the paid version and maintain multiple sandboxes.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Behaviour-blockers:</span> These programs analyze collectively what each process is trying to do, assigning it some internal threat score. Do too many suspect actions, and you will automatically be flagged as malware. The good thing about this is that the user rarely hears from the application unless there’s a problem. The disadvantage is the slightly greater lag introduced (not as bad as for anti-viruses) and that the protection offered is theoretically not quite as high as for the above options.<br /><br />If you go this route, Mamutu and ThreatFire come highly recommended.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Nothing’s 100%. What happens when I get an infection?</span> There is only one known cure for this. You can’t rely on booting into Windows – once you’ve got malware, you have to assume that it’s the very worst kind, a rootkit. This is something that, in essence, becomes part of your Windows. <span style="font-style:italic;">The only way you can remove it is booting into a different operating system using trusted removable media</span>. A good way to achieve this is using a <a href="http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/">BartPE</a> disc such as <a href="http://www.ubcd4win.com/">UBCD4WIN</a>, which draws from your own Windows files to create a ‘Windows lite’ that you can boot into and cleanse the little bastard out. Obviously, you need to have this disc prepared on a trusted computer.<br /><br />From here you can run as many anti-virus scanners as you like until you find the culprit. (Most commonly recommended: <a href="http://www.malwarebytes.org/">MBAM</a>, <a href="http://www.superantispyware.com/">SAS</a>). Alternately, you can use imaging software to restore a last known safe backup. The free version of Macrium comes highly recommended for this (as does the paid version – other recommended paid software includes Image for Windows and Drive Snapshot). These imaging suites typically allow you to create a rescue disc, which follows the same philosophy above of booting using a clean operating system. I like the sound of Macrium because it uses a BartPE environment, meaning that I can include all other manner of useful Windows security applications to run there as well, and because it comes highly recommended.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">But I might not know if I have an infection. How can I tell that I don’t have some key-logger sending my banking info to Russia, without booting from a rescue CD and scanning periodically:</span> Ok, we’re starting to get into paranoia DefCon level 5 here. But for this purpose you should look into anti-keylogger software such as Zemana or SpyShelter. Both have some decent HIPS functionality as well. DefenseWall provides good key-logger protection, but if I’ve unwittingly ‘Trusted’ some malware that logs key-strokes, I wouldn’t know about it. Zemana and SpyShelter have nice logging features that make sure you can discover things that have gotten past the net.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">So, um, TLDR. Wtf are you running again?</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">I’m running DefenseWall on Windows XP 32-bit. It comes with a firewall as well, neat. I use Chrome. That’s all.</span><br /><br />With DefenseWall, malware can’t do anything to my system. But it could sit dormant on my system and infect somebody else if I were to email it to them. For this purpose and for any suspect files that I am considering running as ‘Trusted’, I keep MBAM on hand.<br /><br />If I needed a firewall alternative I’d probably go for something like Privatefirewall. If I was to switch to Windows 7 64-bit, I would switch to SandboxIE because the developer has managed to ‘crack’ the Microsoft Patch Guard feature and so retain maximum protection. AppGuard looks to be developing in a promising manner here too.<br /><br />So, that’s about it. If you take on even 10% of the above advice, you too can avoid becoming a member of the zombie bot-net horde (or, if you’ve been running with no protection, extricate yourself from the horde).Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-14692699047233760482011-06-25T12:03:00.003+10:002011-06-25T13:43:42.001+10:00Who spends wins<a href="http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2011/06/useful-or-useless-what-would-you-buy.html">Tobold</a> wants to be able to purchase 'performance enhancing' items from in-game stores. The easy argument against this is that it turns an otherwise competitive game into 'who spends wins'. Tobold counters this argument by saying that these people don't actually want to buy ANYthing. Therefore their vote shouldn't count with the developers<br /><br />Tobold is right in a sense. I certainly would't buy any items in such a game. Of course, I would just leave and go and play some better designed game.<br /><br />I understand Tobold's mindset. He works hard and has money to spare. He wants to come home, sit down, and have a game tell him that he is super powerful and important. This is understandable. It's also what single player is for.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-13415426195625473512011-06-24T10:15:00.001+10:002011-06-24T10:16:51.140+10:00This applies to just about every conversation on the internet<a href="http://xkcd.com/915/">Clicky.</a>Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-85550176851638887842011-06-13T10:10:00.001+10:002011-06-13T10:12:05.673+10:00New WoW expansion announced<a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/10/the-old-republic-tatooine/">Please, just make it stop.</a>Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-78627100456101889672011-06-07T15:57:00.003+10:002011-06-07T16:09:16.254+10:00Lol no ty kthxbai<a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/06/swtor-gameplay-trailer/">Apparently </a>The Old Republic is going to only be available through EA's equivalent of Steam:<br /><br />"We still don’t know exactly when SWTOR will launch or what the payment model will be, but we do now know that it will be exclusive to EA’s newly-revealed Steam/GoG rival Origin."<br /><br />Steam is practically a part of my operating system. It is always on. It's earnt its place by being<br /><br />a) Timely<br />b) Offering (mostly) much cheaper prices than retail<br />c) Coming from a popular, do-no evil company<br /><br />GoG is not the same, but there is zero DRM on the games I buy. So I don't have to run an extra program. That's fine.<br /><br />EA's new Steam clone is the opposite of these things to me. It is several years late, offers prices equivalent to what you'd pay in the store even though they didn't have to pay for any boxing/shipping etc, and EA are evil. On top of that, if I start pandering to this, I'm going to end up needing a clone client from every single publisher that wants to get in on the action.<br /><br />Fair enough if they want to try and promote their new client, but to not make it available through the competition? Lol. There is no way I'm going to install that shite on my hard drive. I was on the fence about The Old Republic. I mean on the one hand it's a new Star Wars game, and therefore I consider it my nerd duty to play it. But on the other hand, everything I've seen and read about the game (CG trailers aside) looks awful. I was going to suck it up and try it out anyway, but now I won't need to put myself through the pain - thanks EA!<br /><br />Oh and as a bonus, <a href="http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=5003">Keen has the opposite opinion</a>, which means that I must be right.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-87945511112171460832011-05-27T17:57:00.004+10:002011-05-27T18:05:43.062+10:00WoW has PvP only chars now?I nearly fell off my chair backwards when I saw this:<br /><br /><a href="http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/arena/">World of Warcraft 2011 Arena Pass</a><br /><br />Blizzard have created a PvP environment where items are 'negated' and you win matches through skill? Is it possible they are finally getting it?<br /><br />I'd like to know which one of their game designers decided to play Guild Wars :P<br /><br/>Crimson Starfirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03764422983380987864noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-68931504069027378362011-05-26T18:43:00.001+10:002011-05-26T18:43:40.542+10:00The ultimate torture<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam">And some of you are paying for this.</a>Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-75391811033239738742011-04-15T16:24:00.003+10:002011-04-15T16:44:32.229+10:00The Name of the WindFantasy books are typically designed to be a kind of literary nerd porn, throwing around goblins, dragons and dual-wielding dark elves with nary a care for the reader's intellect. Either that or they are interminably, unnecessarily long. With fantasy we're resigned to getting either the dragon or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time">drag on</a>.<br /><br />A couple of years ago, <a href="http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/content/author.asp">some unknown, struggling teacher</a> wrote one of <a href="http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/content/books.asp">the greatest books that I have ever read</a>. Not one of the greatest <span style="font-style:italic;">fantasy</span> stories - one of the greatest of <span style="font-style:italic;">any</span> story. Honestly a literary masterpiece. Beautiful turns of phrase, deep characters, fantastic twists and bends in the narrative all told from a refreshing perspective. As soon as I finished it I rushed out (ok, to Google) to see what else the author had written.<br /><br />It was the fellow's first book. I wailed, gnashed my teeth, and went back to reading the usual pointless drivel.<br /><br />Until now. I just discovered that the second book, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wise_Man's_Fear">The Wise Man's Fear</a>, came out in March. I literally dropped what I was doing at work and marched straight down to the local book shop. They charge ridiculous prices to the point where I usually just torrent books that I want to read and put them on my e-reader.<br /><br />But not this one. Some things just deserve the hard copy. And I wasn't alone - the cashier had sold two copies in the last half an hour. I'll be gobbling this up over the next few days - if you haven't read the first book, I highly recommend that you go and pick yourself up a copy, and treat your mind to something special. You can go back to the nerd porn afterwards, but you might not look at it the same way.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-49554368813526413882011-04-10T08:52:00.009+10:002011-04-10T12:12:46.758+10:00League of Legends 101 - part 1League of Legends is a free to play PvP arena game in the style of DotA, otherwise known as a 'MOBA' if you're keeping up with the acronyms the kids are using nowadays. Being free to play, the major barrier to entry is the crippling fear of entering a game and having no idea what to do, resulting in some 12 year old kid hurling various expletives in your direction and causing your e-peen to shrivel up into a ball and cry.<br /><br />Luckily though, I am here to tell you how to not make a complete embarrassment of yourself.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Character selection:</span> When you play solo queue (unranked matches - you will not earn the privilege to play ranked matches until you've got a couple of hundred games under your belt) you will find that most people instantly lock in whichever character they feel like playing with no regard for what may help the team towards victory. So, you can dramatically increase your odds of winning by plugging up holes in the lineup.<br /><br />The most important thing is to make sure your team has a "<span style="font-weight:bold;">tank</span>". I use quotes because this is just a label - the other team is not going to actually be beating on the "tank" unless they are stupid. Rather, the tank has enough survivability to deter being beaten on, allowing him to get up close and use skills that soften up or disable key characters on the other team.<br /><br />An easy tank to play that is considered very effective even in top ranked PvP is Rammus, the armordillo (has naturally high armor as you can imagine). For a dirt-cheap option you can try Nunu the Yeti. My personal favourite is Cho'Gath, who can eat things to grow ginormous (including other players).<br /><br />The next most important thing that I see commonly left out of team lineups is a <span style="font-weight:bold;">ranged physical</span> character. This character's main job is to let the team push down turrets, the automated defense towers that regularly dot the path towards the enemy's base. Without a ranged physical character, your team will end up milling around just outside tower range, scratching their heads and wondering why they can't push anything down, until the enemy gets their act together and wipes them. Your secondary job playing this character is to farm up an enormous amount of minions, getting you enough gold so that if the game goes long you will become an unstoppable DPS machine.<br /><br />The best ranged physical character to recommend is Ashe. She's considered 'top tier', is cheap, you get to try her in the tutorial, she has one of the best initiating skills in the game, and she's pretty easy to play.<br /><br />Next, the team will need to have a magical caster. These have high burst damage and are important for drilling down squishy types on the other team. These seem not to be in short supply in the general population. A popular past-time for the common or garden variety noobs is to lock in as many of these squishy characters as possible within the first two seconds of loading into the lobby screen. But if by chance nobody locks one in, you should go right ahead.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Laning vs jungling:</span> The characters mentioned above will often be 'laning'. The most commonly played map is a 5v5 setting, with 3 lanes. An endless army of minions spawn from each base and stroll down one of these 3 lanes, striving to reach the enemy base, but inevitably being converted into gold/XP by hungrily waiting players on the other team. But the maths doesn't quite add up - with only 3 lanes, we will have one person soloing and two people in each of the other lanes.<br /><br />The solo player levels up a lot faster because they don't have to share XP. So it's desirable to maximize the number of people soloing. To gain an additional solo spot, one player often levels up instead in the 'jungle'. This is imaginatively referred to as 'jungling'. This player moves around farming a gradually respawning series of neutral mobs that stand around in between the 3 lanes. You will note the positions of these mobs by little skull and crossbones symbols on the minimap. This player will periodically emerge from the jungle to gank unsuspecting players.<br /><br />I don't recommend jungling in your first few games because it's quite easy to die and thus defeat the purpose of this post, which is to prevent you from embarrassing yourself. So wait until you've seen somebody else do it. When starting out I'd recommend that the easiest/fastest character to jungle with is Warwick, the werewolf, because of his combination of damage, healing, and gank-oriented skills. Whoever you jungle with, bring Smite from the collection of summoner skills to ensure that you remain high enough in level to succeed in ganks. Typical starting items are Cloth armor and 5 health potions.<br /><br />If your team composition has one of each of the above when in solo queue, it will be a small miracle and you will be well on your way to a cruisy win.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Carrys:</span> The players who are given solo lanes will level up faster and get more gold from minions. These players then become your most valuable assets - help them, protect them, and they will "carry" the team to victory.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Summoner skills:</span> Every player chooses 2 from a pool of common skills regardless of your character. For mana-hungry characters I often take Ghost (run buff) and Clarity (mana recharge). Ignite or Exhaust are good on offensive characters. Flash is a nice escape skill on any character. Teleport is useful if you have a solo lane and can't afford to return to base to heal and then run all the way back (since you'll probably lose your tower if you do).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Communication:</span> When you are fighting against the enemy and they disappear from your view, they might be running off to go and surprise your unsuspecting team mates in another lane. If you type 'mia' (Missing In Action) into the chat when they disappear, you will absolve yourself of your minimal obligations, preventing people from raging at you when they die (actually they will still rage at you, but at least you'll know it's not your fault). You can give additional warning by clicking on the minimap ('pinging'). When the player you thought was missing in action returns, type 're'.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Items:</span> There are recommended items for each champion which will get you by in your first couple of games. If you want to stray from these, take note of items that particularly effective players on either team seem to dominate with. You can view items on members of both teams by pressing TAB (this only updates for enemies when someone on your team has seen their character since their last purchase). You'll pretty soon build up a good idea of which sorts of items are good for which sorts of characters.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Brush:</span> Maps are dotted with brush that you can hide in. When in the brush, players outside the brush can not see you. This can lead to comical ambushes where the entire enemy team comes charging out of the brush like clowns from a tiny car. Some skills are able to be aimed at brush and will make an audible sound if they connect with another player. If you don't have a brush-checking skill such as this and you are not sure where the players in your lane have gotten to, they are probably hiding in the brush.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Important neutral monsters:</span> Several monsters around the map give very useful benefits when you kill them. These monsters always spawn in the same location. 'Blue' or 'Golem' refers to a buff that gives huge mana regeneration and cooldown duration. 'Red' or 'Lizard' adds damage and slowdown to attacks. The Dragon gives a nice bonus in gold to the entire team. The Baron is the most difficult and is generally not attempted until your team is level 15+ - it gives a massive bonus to damage and stats, and is usually taken by the winning team to allow them to steamroll and win the game.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Wards:</span> Wards are cheap and ridiculously effective. New players never buy them because they don't know where to place them. Useful places include the Dragon and Baron mentioned above. Generally if you want to push a tower, placing a ward in the most likely place that a gank will come from is a good idea too. Pink wards can see other wards, and they can see invisible players.<br /><br />Alright, that oughta do for now. Off with ye, go forth and perhaps now avoid complete and utter failure :DMelf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-80321037959575393372011-02-01T22:48:00.002+11:002011-02-01T22:53:05.650+11:00Sad pandaCourtesy of <a href="http://www.killtenrats.com/2011/01/31/gw2-guardian-sanctuary/">Ravious</a> I see that <a href="http://www.onlinewelten.com/games/guild-wars-2/specials/exklusives-interview-guild-wars-2-lead-designer-7330/seite-10/">there are no ally targeted skills in GW2.</a><br /><br />Ergh.<br /><br />Remember how we've <a href="http://word-of-shadow.blogspot.com/2008/08/guild-wars-revolution.html">talked about</a> the revolutionary things that Guild Wars brought to the MMO combat table? I shall quote myself:<br /><br />"Guild Wars introduced the concept of "Protection" skills, which are cast on allies before damage is inflicted on them, with the goal of avoiding said damage. These types of skills are much more efficient than healing skills, and are really good for the game because they add an extra layer of depth and skill in terms of reading the play of the other team."<br /><br />On the plus side my rapidly plummeting hopes will minimize my disappointment on release.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-77214047907653760112011-01-08T12:02:00.004+11:002011-01-19T19:08:00.532+11:00Stopped playing, now playingIt's been about 2 months since my last post. Have I been too busy with work, family and friends? Did real life get in the way? Pfff, hell no! Crimson and I have been gaming it up as per usual. <br /><br />StarCraft II has been put on the backburner for the moment. As much as my inner Achiever wanted to reach diamond ranking across all categories (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4), it was starting to get a little stressful. I prefer team settings, where the multitude of failures I make have less of an impact on the game :) I will come back to it in a couple of months as it's still great fun, but a break was in order. With the equivalent of "rest XP" in the ranking system, I know that I'll be able to fly up the ranks fairly quickly when I do (after sucking horribly for my first 10 games or so, I'm sure).<br /><br />Next was Minecraft. I haven't written anything about Minecraft yet because I didn't want to jump on the "me too" bandwagon. But Minecraft, in all its blocky, low-res glory, is probably the best game that I saw in 2010. Even a cold-hearted PvP addict such as I was able to revel in the sheer beauty of exploration, the desperation of survival (and claustrophobia), and the opportunity to realize anything that my feeble imagination could concoct (somebody made a <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/11/17/get-the-minecraft-cpu-map/">COMPUTER </a>in the game, for crying out loud. A freaking computer!). Some of you may have tried the multiplayer and seen that it was a buggy mess (for example, you couldn't die). The major bugs there seem to have been fixed as of around the end of November, and together with Crimson and the Melfette the three of us have whiled away some merry hours in our own private sandbox.<br /><br />At the moment though, the game du jour is League of Legends, one of the ever growing number of Defense of the Ancients clones out there. I had tried to play the oh-so-wittily acronymed "LoL" a few months ago, but an atrocious account registration process that kept forgetting my details drove me away. Crimson, ever the glutton for punishment, picked it up again a month ago and insisted that it was good fun, and so I gave it one more shot.<br /><br />League of Legends is absolutely nutty fun thanks to the ridiculous freedom that the artists seem to have been given with the character design. There are ~70 different characters currently in the game. Despite a lot of overlap in function they each have a really unique personality or "feel" to them... from the little boy riding a giant yeti, to little orphan Annie and her ferocious teddy bear come to life named Tibbers, to the giant demon that eats other players and grows ridiculously huge, to the psychotic homicidal maniacally giggling clown, to the freaky fricking scarecrow, there is really something to tickle everybody's fancy.<br /><br />I'll write some more about LoL in coming posts, but for now suffice it to say that if you enjoy DotA style games or are curious about them, this is a good starting point. There are a lot of gameplay design features that I preferred about Demigod, but at the end of the day League of Legends has two important advantages over Demigod:<br />1) There are actually people playing it because they did not botch their launch<br />2) There is a match-making system, meaning that you are actually allowed to learn how to play the game without people raging at you (any more than they do in any other PvP game, anyway :D)<br /><br />The game itself is free so really is worth checking out. The characters are unlockable through either money or a form of in-game experience points that you receive for playing games (bonuses for winning). You will be given enough points to unlock one of the cheaper (and easier to use) characters right from the get-go, but most importantly there are 10 free champions that get rotated each week so that you can try always be trying somebody new. You'll develop your favourites though, and I'm not ashamed to say that I've now plonked down about $70 on the thing, and consider them pennies well spent.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-50514053362703738602010-11-06T18:08:00.006+11:002010-11-06T18:41:01.481+11:00We're #1, We're #1!!So what have Crimson and I been playing these last few weeks, with nary a posting between us? Two things:<br /><br />1) MineCraft for a while - we're waiting on the multiplayer to becomes patched so that you aren't invulnerable to being poked at by zombies (much less atmospheric than the single player to me).<br /><br />2) StarCraft II:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dYk2dw7RJ1A/TNUALRvyydI/AAAAAAAAADc/-AzdGAgagMk/s1600/diamond+2v2c.PNG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 257px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dYk2dw7RJ1A/TNUALRvyydI/AAAAAAAAADc/-AzdGAgagMk/s400/diamond+2v2c.PNG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5536331510664317394" /></a><br /><br />As you can see, we have climbed our way up through the ranks and made it to #1 of some Diamond league. There are many Diamond leagues so it's not like we're #1 in the world. It would be disappointing if we were, because we have gotten here through the use of the following build:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dYk2dw7RJ1A/TNUDJPkmulI/AAAAAAAAADk/nVjR2Q7C3gg/s1600/cheese_oh_cheese.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 280px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dYk2dw7RJ1A/TNUDJPkmulI/AAAAAAAAADk/nVjR2Q7C3gg/s320/cheese_oh_cheese.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5536334774255663698" /></a><br /><br />Yes, cheese. We have tried many flavors of cheese in our ruthless quest for the top. Such cheap tactics will only get you so far as silver-gold league if you're playing in 1v1, but in 2v2 it seems that the combined might of focused cheese is nigh on unstoppable.<br /><br />So what is our favourite flavour of cheese? It's not very complicated. Crimson is a Protoss, and very sneakily lays a pylon near an enemy. He then lays down Gateways and starts pumping out Zealots. I am a Zerg and follow a "9 pool" Zergling pump with a Queen and Zergling speed boost as soon as possible.<br /><br />Frequently, our early aggression is scouted by the enemy. Usually, this makes little difference, as we proceed to focus fire one of them down and then the other.<br /><br />Fear the might of our 30 APM (actions per minute - a common metric of measuring how Korean somebody is.... pro 1v1 players have somewhere in the vicinity of 200 APM)... fear our hotkeyed production buildings, and our pushing of 1-A-click. Rawr.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1994726481220201755.post-52498924199848588492010-10-05T19:51:00.002+11:002010-10-05T20:03:04.069+11:00Langdell's comeuppanceCourtesy of <a href="http://chaosedge.wordpress.com/">Chaos Edge</a>, <a href="http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2010cv02614/228647/67/">this little gem</a> should please anybody following the professional patent troll saga that is "Dr" Tim Langdell.<br /><br />Quoth the judge:<br /><br />"...given the suspect nature of Dr. Langdell’s representations to both the USPTO and the Court concerning plaintiff’s current and future sales and business activities, it is an open question whether plaintiff’s business activities legitimately extend beyond trolling various gaming-related industries for licensing opportunities."<br /><br />First use of the word 'trolling' in a legal document? Fantastic.<br /><br />It's a shame that it took the bottomless coffers of EA's legal team to shut this fool up, and that an <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-edge-of-reason">innocent and talented indie was powerless to fight it</a>. I'm not sure how "Dr." Langdell could have been so stupid as to take on EA, but I'm glad that the bigger bully in the playground ROTFL-stomped him.<br /><br />Hopefully now somebody will follow up all the fraud allegations and put this gentleman out of commission permanently.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.com1