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The Daily Grind: What have you taken for granted to your detriment?
For better or worse, human beings have a tendency to assume that things will stay more or less the same from day to day. We figure that all else being equal, the electricity will stay on, there will be food in the fridge, and the people we play games with will play fair. But these things aren't natural states -- the electricity goes off if you don't pay for it, the fridge will run out of food as you eat it, and the only way to find out a player is a cheater is to be cheated. MMOs are no different, and with the nature of each game being so mutable, it's very possible that we take something for granted that is easy to lose. You assume that your game's mechanics will stay largely the same until a patch comes along and changes many of them, a la Star Wars Galaxies. You assume that your endgame tank friend will still be in World of Warcraft no matter what, only to find out he doesn't like the latest expansion and is quitting. When have you taken something for granted in a game only to find out you were wrong to do so? Did you think a player wouldn't leave when he eventually did after all? Were you expecting mechanics or classes to remain unchanged when they weren't quite so permanent? Had you counted on having all the time in the world to achieve something only to have the criteria changed or outright removed? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Bornakk tries to clarify fair play in Arena PvP
Bornakk has laid down a "clarification" on what's fair in the Arenas over on the forums -- he says that there's been a lot of questions lately over what constitutes fair play in Arena PvP, especially in terms of win trading.Unfortunately, his clarification isn't all that clear -- he reiterates that win trading (the act of exploiting the queue in some way to face a chosen opponent, or face the same team multiple times) is against the spirit of the game and against Blizzard's wishes (though his wording gets a little strange when he brings the Terms of Service into it -- we think that by "these actions all fall in line with our fair use clause," he actually means that they violate the clause). He does, however, go on to say that there are certain places in the system where facing an opponent multiple times will happen, and that that's obviously not the fault of players. So that, it seems, is the confusion: players were worried that because of the lack of population in the queue or other factors, that they would be accused of win trading, and Bornakk is saying that's not the case.Not that Blizzard hasn't been cracking down on win trading as much as possible lately, but the fact is that if there's a way to exploit the system, players will find it and do it. Blizzard says they're working on squashing "agreements" between players, but even then, Arenas may never end up being completely fair.
iTunes 7 supports 'reverse syncing'
iTunes 7 introduces a new feature called 'reverse syncing.' What's that all about? Well, let's say you have two Macs; one at home and one at work. You have all your music on your home Mac, but you sure would like to get it onto your work computer. Past iterations of iPod/iTunes would only allow you to sync with that home Mac and nothing else. Now you can sync with that home computer, and then hook your iPod up to another machine and get your content from the iPod onto the second machine.There is one catch. This only works with videos/audio that were purchased from the iTunes Store, and all the computers that you are syncing with have to be authorized to play the content (so that's up to 5 computers, either Mac or PC).This feature is still cool, and I am sure the RIAA didn't want Apple to make it easy to 'reverse sync' stolen music, but what about all those MP3's that I ripped from my CD's? Those are mine, fair and square.Baby steps, I suppose.
