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.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 lengthy diatribe: 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!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The fate of SC2
Regarding StarCraft II:
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
DotA 2 thoughts
I 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.
To wit:
Vision: 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.
Burst: 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.
CC duration: 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?
Simplicity: Despite all the more “hardcore” design features, the game is a lot simpler than LoL.
- 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.
- 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.
Tuning issues: 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.
- Your character will automatically run to attack the closest minion, which is a death sentence when you’re a melee hero.
- Mana costs in the early game for many champs are unbelievably prohibitive, taking half your mana pool.
- Towers have ridiculous range, and there is no indicator of where the range ends.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!!).
- 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.
- 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.
Lack of communication of information:
- 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.
- 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.
- You can’t see the items (or mana) of the enemy. Completely removes a massive strategy element from the game.
- 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.
Pedantism: 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.
Lack of polish: 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?
So with all of THAT, did Valve get anything right?
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’.
What else?
- The graphics are higher res.
- The base sinks into lava and stuff at the end. Cool.
- There is a day/night cycle which changes some character’s skills, and changes visibility.
- There is a flying donkey that can take your items to you (neat).
- 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).
- There is a live replay feature (you can see top games being played and observe them, a la Guild Wars 1.
- Oh and you can eat trees.
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.
To wit:
Vision: 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.
Burst: 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.
CC duration: 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?
Simplicity: Despite all the more “hardcore” design features, the game is a lot simpler than LoL.
- 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.
- 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.
Tuning issues: 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.
- Your character will automatically run to attack the closest minion, which is a death sentence when you’re a melee hero.
- Mana costs in the early game for many champs are unbelievably prohibitive, taking half your mana pool.
- Towers have ridiculous range, and there is no indicator of where the range ends.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!!).
- 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.
- 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.
Lack of communication of information:
- 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.
- 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.
- You can’t see the items (or mana) of the enemy. Completely removes a massive strategy element from the game.
- 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.
Pedantism: 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.
Lack of polish: 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?
So with all of THAT, did Valve get anything right?
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’.
What else?
- The graphics are higher res.
- The base sinks into lava and stuff at the end. Cool.
- There is a day/night cycle which changes some character’s skills, and changes visibility.
- There is a flying donkey that can take your items to you (neat).
- 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).
- There is a live replay feature (you can see top games being played and observe them, a la Guild Wars 1.
- Oh and you can eat trees.
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.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Rock Paper Spam
Due to business at work I haven't checked my Google Reader for 1 week.
There were 76 posts unread from the traditionally awesome Rock, Paper, Shotgun. 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.
Signal to noise.... fail. Maybe I should just subscribe to Kotaku and be done with it.
There were 76 posts unread from the traditionally awesome Rock, Paper, Shotgun. 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.
Signal to noise.... fail. Maybe I should just subscribe to Kotaku and be done with it.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Dat 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."
Wut?
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?
Wut?
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?
Monday, January 2, 2012
Coming Late to Early Guild Wars
Zubon 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.
“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.”
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.
The pioneering ideas they had gave the game very strong appeal in the “super hardcore” competitive e-sports scene, eg
- mechanics that require active use of skills to prevent damage
- co-ordination of the team to “spike” down a target
- observer mode for all high-level games
- no reliance on grinding to achieve power
More prize money was up for grabs at the high point of this than had previously been offered in any competitive game.
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.
Hopefully they can get back to the core principles in GW2 and create another fantastic PvP experience.
“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.”
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.
The pioneering ideas they had gave the game very strong appeal in the “super hardcore” competitive e-sports scene, eg
- mechanics that require active use of skills to prevent damage
- co-ordination of the team to “spike” down a target
- observer mode for all high-level games
- no reliance on grinding to achieve power
More prize money was up for grabs at the high point of this than had previously been offered in any competitive game.
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.
Hopefully they can get back to the core principles in GW2 and create another fantastic PvP experience.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Customer service 101
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.
This kind of thing is ALWAYS a good investment in my book (see: Valve).
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Diablo III skill calculator out
This 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:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Diablo 3 to be quite similar to Diablo 2
Probably about 50% of my unread posts today were about the latest Diablo 3 announcnements.
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.
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).
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.
Verdict? Yes, heartless, we will still buy it. 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 (and no, I will NOT still buy that).
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.
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).
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.
Verdict? Yes, heartless, we will still buy it. 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 (and no, I will NOT still buy that).
Monday, August 1, 2011
Sweatshop work
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Security 101
With 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.
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.
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:
Here’s a reasonably up to date list of all manner of free security software.
Most forums are shit: Wilder’s security is a big exception, and where I obtain most of my info.
Anti-virus is shit: 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).
Anti-virus vs anti-malware vs anti-spyware: 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 Malware Bytes Anti-Malware (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.
Admin mode is shit, but you will probably use it anyway: 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.
Windows 7 is more secure, but less secure: 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.
Chrome is the most secure browser: 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 Pwn2Own hacker contest, the hackers have been unable to break Chrome (in fact, they don’t even bother trying).
Answering an endless series of questions is shit: HIPS programs (no, not that HIPS) 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.
Firewalls are good: 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.
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.
Decent free examples, bearing in mind the drawbacks of HIPS software, include Online Armor, Comodo, and Private Firewall.
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:
Policy-based HIPS: 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.
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.
I’m still on Windows XP 32-bit and am happily using DefenseWall, 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.
Sandboxing: 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.
The best application to recommend here is SandboxIE. 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.
Behaviour-blockers: 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.
If you go this route, Mamutu and ThreatFire come highly recommended.
Nothing’s 100%. What happens when I get an infection? 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. The only way you can remove it is booting into a different operating system using trusted removable media. A good way to achieve this is using a BartPE disc such as UBCD4WIN, 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.
From here you can run as many anti-virus scanners as you like until you find the culprit. (Most commonly recommended: MBAM, SAS). 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.
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: 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.
So, um, TLDR. Wtf are you running again? I’m running DefenseWall on Windows XP 32-bit. It comes with a firewall as well, neat. I use Chrome. That’s all.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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:
Here’s a reasonably up to date list of all manner of free security software.
Most forums are shit: Wilder’s security is a big exception, and where I obtain most of my info.
Anti-virus is shit: 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).
Anti-virus vs anti-malware vs anti-spyware: 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 Malware Bytes Anti-Malware (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.
Admin mode is shit, but you will probably use it anyway: 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.
Windows 7 is more secure, but less secure: 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.
Chrome is the most secure browser: 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 Pwn2Own hacker contest, the hackers have been unable to break Chrome (in fact, they don’t even bother trying).
Answering an endless series of questions is shit: HIPS programs (no, not that HIPS) 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.
Firewalls are good: 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.
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.
Decent free examples, bearing in mind the drawbacks of HIPS software, include Online Armor, Comodo, and Private Firewall.
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:
Policy-based HIPS: 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.
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.
I’m still on Windows XP 32-bit and am happily using DefenseWall, 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.
Sandboxing: 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.
The best application to recommend here is SandboxIE. 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.
Behaviour-blockers: 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.
If you go this route, Mamutu and ThreatFire come highly recommended.
Nothing’s 100%. What happens when I get an infection? 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. The only way you can remove it is booting into a different operating system using trusted removable media. A good way to achieve this is using a BartPE disc such as UBCD4WIN, 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.
From here you can run as many anti-virus scanners as you like until you find the culprit. (Most commonly recommended: MBAM, SAS). 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.
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: 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.
So, um, TLDR. Wtf are you running again? I’m running DefenseWall on Windows XP 32-bit. It comes with a firewall as well, neat. I use Chrome. That’s all.
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.
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.
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).
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Who spends wins
Tobold 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Lol no ty kthxbai
Apparently The Old Republic is going to only be available through EA's equivalent of Steam:
"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."
Steam is practically a part of my operating system. It is always on. It's earnt its place by being
a) Timely
b) Offering (mostly) much cheaper prices than retail
c) Coming from a popular, do-no evil company
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.
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.
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!
Oh and as a bonus, Keen has the opposite opinion, which means that I must be right.
"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."
Steam is practically a part of my operating system. It is always on. It's earnt its place by being
a) Timely
b) Offering (mostly) much cheaper prices than retail
c) Coming from a popular, do-no evil company
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.
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.
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!
Oh and as a bonus, Keen has the opposite opinion, which means that I must be right.
Friday, May 27, 2011
WoW has PvP only chars now?
I nearly fell off my chair backwards when I saw this:
World of Warcraft 2011 Arena Pass
Blizzard have created a PvP environment where items are 'negated' and you win matches through skill? Is it possible they are finally getting it?
I'd like to know which one of their game designers decided to play Guild Wars :P
World of Warcraft 2011 Arena Pass
Blizzard have created a PvP environment where items are 'negated' and you win matches through skill? Is it possible they are finally getting it?
I'd like to know which one of their game designers decided to play Guild Wars :P
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Name of the Wind
Fantasy 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 drag on.
A couple of years ago, some unknown, struggling teacher wrote one of the greatest books that I have ever read. Not one of the greatest fantasy stories - one of the greatest of any 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.
It was the fellow's first book. I wailed, gnashed my teeth, and went back to reading the usual pointless drivel.
Until now. I just discovered that the second book, The Wise Man's Fear, 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.
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.
A couple of years ago, some unknown, struggling teacher wrote one of the greatest books that I have ever read. Not one of the greatest fantasy stories - one of the greatest of any 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.
It was the fellow's first book. I wailed, gnashed my teeth, and went back to reading the usual pointless drivel.
Until now. I just discovered that the second book, The Wise Man's Fear, 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.
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.
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