I wrote a paper in school about 12 years ago pointing out that piracy would be solved by customer service... make it easy for people to find and pay for your product and most of the people whose piracy constitutes a lost sale will pay you for the product. The people who continue to pirate when there's a really easy alternative (like iTunes, or Netflix, or Youtube) were never going to pay for your product. So it makes little sense to spend much money or effort on preventing piracy of media. What you want to do is provide numerous options for paid consumption of content.

I think it makes sense to target large-scale piraters with legal suits, but most DRM and copy protection only hurts the honest, legal customers.

Ultimately, the service they would provide would be content before any of the knock offs. Plenty of companies have tried to make knockoffs of wow, some even with otherwise very compelling universes in the baggage (lord of the rings online, warhammer online), but no one has come close yet. Star Wars the Old Republic might, but I doubt it. A rose by any other name is still WoW. And right now they have a critical mass of users, which is all they need. They could shit in a shoebox and call it Mist of Pandaria and millions will buy it on the release day.

Sure, there exists private servers of Wow at this point too, and some people like to play on them, but for me? I wouldn't even want to. There's no challenge when everything is possible. I'm certain that even if a joint effort between developers of all sorts banded together to copy and create an MMO like wow, it would likely be crap, because they have no other incentive to make it than "because we can". Design decisions based on that are not good - look at linux. Even Mozilla is a company nowadays. A command structure is essential in creating a massive work of art in a reasonable time.

Making a copy of WoW isn't "just" making a copy of WoW, it's enormous. By the time someone has copied it to the finer details, the game will have moved on to something else; systems change all the time.

A good example of something happening like you say is Vampires: Bloodlines where the community made a huge amount of "community patches" to fix the game, after the developer went bankrupt. I like that, but they could do it because the things they were fixing were straight forward. If they wanted to make entirely new things, who decides which things are good and bad? Like wikipedia, they would need custodians. A private company like Blizzard does not have that problem.

I was certainly a little too broad when I said all intellectual property is bunk. First of all I have a problem with the umbrella term of IP. I don't think it's helpful. Different types of IP have different solutions and problems. Some are more bunk than others. (Wtf is with they way rights to music works? What is it now, 100 years after the artist dies? Crazy.)

Like you I am philosophically on the "you can't own ideas, man"-wagon, but practically I'm more loose with my morals - hell, morals are fluid baby.

I'll say this. I would rather have 50000 people playing my game and 50 people paying for it, than I would have 50 people playing my game and paying for it any day.

>> ^NetRunner:

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.
Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.
The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.
But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.
I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).
I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.
It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.
You know, people like you and me.
>> ^gwiz665:
Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.

Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.

The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.

But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.

I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).

I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.

It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.

You know, people like you and me.

>> ^gwiz665:

Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

It's a false choice between what you're saying and what Romney is saying. I recently "fired" Comcast and switched to Verizon for internet and cable. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Do I want to see Comcast employees get fired per se? No. Messing with their livelihoods? No. But they did have crap customer service, and they screwed with me on my bill.

That's what Romney is talking about. He's talking about the freedom to fire those who aren't providing adequate service.

This is the posterchild of why these kinds of quotes piss me off. He never intended it to be that he gets kicks by firing the average person. He was talking about liking to have the ability to fire his health care provider if they don't provide adequate service. The ONLY ways that interpretation can be made is if you're partisan, or hear it being taken completely out of context. Meanwhile, what's missed is honestly a potentially good point made by Romney that there are advantages to keeping health care in the private sector that's worth discussing further. Why not actually talk about that idea more in depth?! No, let's just plaster Romney's big gaffe, talk about it being a gaffe, why it's a gaffe, blah blah blah. It's idiotic.

Look, I'm not pro-Romney, and I know the Romney camp does the same thing to Obama. I just hate it when anyone does it because it impedes an honest exchange of ideas. I very very sincerely doubt Romney wants to fire people for record profits strictly. The simple fact of the matter is a business can't exist long term unless they're profitable. I get really sick and tired of people throwing his time at Bain as a job liquidator as if it's a bad thing. Did he accomplish what the business plan was very well? Yes. That's an asset because he clearly is competent in that regard. Does that mean he'll be a good President? Not necessarily because gov't doesn't and shouldn't run like a business, because it's chief goal isn't profit. I'd look more at his record as Governor of MA for more about that.

I just wonder... what happened to honesty?

>> ^VoodooV:

Why do they have to cover up what they really think?
When your policies simply don't reflect reality and you have to obfuscate and sugercoat what you really want in order to not be laughed out of the campaign. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that what you want isn't what the rest of the world wants.
So yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and say:
- I DON'T like to fire people.
- I DON'T like fucking with people's livelihoods.
- I DON'T like dangling the threat of poverty and throwing people out onto the streets as a method making them conform to what I want.
- I DON'T like seeing people get more and more worse off while I see record profits.

This fella really cocked this one up, didn't he? Reading his response to the backlash against him, his excuses are pathetic - saying he's been victimised by the Internet, that he "could have been a bit nicer" and doesn't deserve the badmouthing he's getting, but he's gone way beyond just not being nice. His customer service response is jaw-dropping. If I talked to my customers like that, I'd expect the door to be hitting me on the arse on the way out. The fact that he actually blames Mike Krahulik for being hostile and unprofessional (pot, kettle) and therefore triggering a more hostile reaction from him just takes my breath away. I don't know why he was so surprised that it went public, because if I received such atrociously rude customer service I'd certainly be telling people about it.

PR Paul's been at this for a long time:

http://www.natesnetwork.com/Poor-customer-service

And he definitely doesn't give a damn about anything except being held responsible for his actions. He ain't changing his asshole ways. He doesn't even understand he's an asshole.

Was the manager within his rights to close early? Sure, it's not like he's breaking any laws. Was that good customer service? Nope. The store is advertised as open and he's not letting people in. If he wanted to close sooner, he could have simply put a sign on the door. This shit is not rocket science. He also could have offered to resolve the situation by having an employee go grab the items the customers wanted and then had the customers pay at the door. This has nothing to do with his employees. He wasn't doing them any favors by misrepresenting the hours that his store was open.

Believe me, every other day the retail workers smile and say 'yes, you are right, how can we help you?' to all the asshole customers. But ON CHRISTMAS EVE! Just ONE day of the year, just frigging think about the retail workers! Since they already work 364 days a year now, after Thanksgiving was taken too. Is it too much to say 'On Xmas Eve, PLEASE let them leave work on time! JUST Do your shopping before 7:30pm on Christmas EVE!

Yes, the store hours might be untilo 8pm, but do you HAVE TO BE THE ASSHOLE WHO SHOWS UP AT 7:59???? Show some respect to the people who already are working their butts off and get no respect, no thank yous, no holidays off!

Thank God I am not working retail any more, but my best friend is, and so are lots of my other friends. They are the hardest working people, and still, they are the ones that worst of everything.

And things like this last minute shopping not just Walmart. I never worked for Walmart, but I salute this manager for standing up to the employees. I am sure the other money-hungry retailers were still ushering people out around 8:50pm and having cashiers stay there, just because the elite wanted to have their last minute leisure shopping 'when it is finally quiet in the store'.



>> ^Darkhand:

>> ^mintbbb:
>> ^VoodooV:
The guy's a douchebag but he is right. There is no inherent right to shop. They have the right to refuse service.
That said. It's a stupid policy. Deny entry at 8. Sure it takes longer to close because you have to get the people out..but so what. It doesn't take THAT long to get people out vs the bad PR incidents like this generates.
Let the consumer whores shop. that standoff was completely unnecessary.

It does take that long to get people out. When a store closes at 10pm, you have to pretty much try to wrestle some people out by 10:30. Turning off the lights and announcing that the store is closed does not help. On a normal night, people have to be scheduled at least that extra 30 minutes late. So, even now, I am sure nobody gets to go home before 8:30.
It is frigging Christmas eve! Retail workers are people too (surprise!), and they might want to get out of the store and to their families, and not stay extra late because some idiots want to do LAST MINUTE SHOPPING.

Mintbbb,
I understand what you are saying but I disagree.
Are retail store workers people? Yes. But unfortunately they are people with jobs, and that job is to allow people to shop. I've never heard of a policy where "Yes the store is open until 8:00 but we stop letting people in at 7:30".
I understand these people have homes,families,children,cats,etc to get home too but when you work retail it's part of your job. You (unfortunately) have to service guys like these who wait till the last minute and make you late going home.
As a person who did customer service extensively I've had people plenty of time call up 10 minutes before closing and I don't say to them midway through the call "I'm sorry I was not able to resolve your computer issue, however it is now 6:00 PM and we are closed, please try your call again tomorrow HAVE A NICE DAY click . Nor do we stop picking up at 5:30 because everyone wants to leave at 6:00.
What's happening sucks but the Manager and everyone in the store needs to suck it up and let those people in.

You have honestly never heard of this? Have you lived under a rock your entire life? This happens everywhere. Go to any restaurant tonight and you'll see it easily. Kitchens always close early. Is it posted? No. Is it common sense? Definitely. >> ^Darkhand:

>> ^mintbbb:
>> ^VoodooV:
The guy's a douchebag but he is right. There is no inherent right to shop. They have the right to refuse service.
That said. It's a stupid policy. Deny entry at 8. Sure it takes longer to close because you have to get the people out..but so what. It doesn't take THAT long to get people out vs the bad PR incidents like this generates.
Let the consumer whores shop. that standoff was completely unnecessary.

It does take that long to get people out. When a store closes at 10pm, you have to pretty much try to wrestle some people out by 10:30. Turning off the lights and announcing that the store is closed does not help. On a normal night, people have to be scheduled at least that extra 30 minutes late. So, even now, I am sure nobody gets to go home before 8:30.
It is frigging Christmas eve! Retail workers are people too (surprise!), and they might want to get out of the store and to their families, and not stay extra late because some idiots want to do LAST MINUTE SHOPPING.

Mintbbb,
I understand what you are saying but I disagree.
Are retail store workers people? Yes. But unfortunately they are people with jobs, and that job is to allow people to shop. I've never heard of a policy where "Yes the store is open until 8:00 but we stop letting people in at 7:30".
I understand these people have homes,families,children,cats,etc to get home too but when you work retail it's part of your job. You (unfortunately) have to service guys like these who wait till the last minute and make you late going home.
As a person who did customer service extensively I've had people plenty of time call up 10 minutes before closing and I don't say to them midway through the call "I'm sorry I was not able to resolve your computer issue, however it is now 6:00 PM and we are closed, please try your call again tomorrow HAVE A NICE DAY click . Nor do we stop picking up at 5:30 because everyone wants to leave at 6:00.
What's happening sucks but the Manager and everyone in the store needs to suck it up and let those people in.

>> ^mintbbb:

>> ^VoodooV:
The guy's a douchebag but he is right. There is no inherent right to shop. They have the right to refuse service.
That said. It's a stupid policy. Deny entry at 8. Sure it takes longer to close because you have to get the people out..but so what. It doesn't take THAT long to get people out vs the bad PR incidents like this generates.
Let the consumer whores shop. that standoff was completely unnecessary.

It does take that long to get people out. When a store closes at 10pm, you have to pretty much try to wrestle some people out by 10:30. Turning off the lights and announcing that the store is closed does not help. On a normal night, people have to be scheduled at least that extra 30 minutes late. So, even now, I am sure nobody gets to go home before 8:30.
It is frigging Christmas eve! Retail workers are people too (surprise!), and they might want to get out of the store and to their families, and not stay extra late because some idiots want to do LAST MINUTE SHOPPING.


Mintbbb,

I understand what you are saying but I disagree.

Are retail store workers people? Yes. But unfortunately they are people with jobs, and that job is to allow people to shop. I've never heard of a policy where "Yes the store is open until 8:00 but we stop letting people in at 7:30".

I understand these people have homes,families,children,cats,etc to get home too but when you work retail it's part of your job. You (unfortunately) have to service guys like these who wait till the last minute and make you late going home.

As a person who did customer service extensively I've had people plenty of time call up 10 minutes before closing and I don't say to them midway through the call "I'm sorry I was not able to resolve your computer issue, however it is now 6:00 PM and we are closed, please try your call again tomorrow HAVE A NICE DAY *click*. Nor do we stop picking up at 5:30 because everyone wants to leave at 6:00.

What's happening sucks but the Manager and everyone in the store needs to suck it up and let those people in.

Totally agree. It would be interesting to see what brought the AM to the entrance to begin with. He should have let them in, the customers are pushing too hard but it is totally ridiculous these guys did not get in there. The time is posted and they should have compensated for a huge last minute rush. I think what may have happened is the rush was so intense and they were understaffed. That is mismanagement. Let them in.

I hate, hate, hate all big box stores, if I had to go in that piece of shit maze of animals I would know exactly what I wanted and GTFO; woulda taken ten minutes.



>> ^BoneRemake:

I would stop shopping there and write a nasty letter to their boss'.
I would not be so audacious to make a big fluff like that at the door, but I feel that Walmart manager is wrong, one hundred percent in the wrong, advertised hours are such an hour to such an hour, you do not deny customers entry so you can start wrapping up your till's and clearing the store early.

I do not think the guy should be fired or whatnot, maybe demoted as he obviously has no sense of customer service. Walmart is wrong-oh !

I would stop shopping there and write a nasty letter to their boss'.

I would not be so audacious to make a big fluff like that at the door, but I feel that Walmart manager is wrong, one hundred percent in the wrong, advertised hours are such an hour to such an hour, you do not deny customers entry so you can start wrapping up your till's and clearing the store early.


I do not think the guy should be fired or whatnot, maybe demoted as he obviously has no sense of customer service. Walmart is wrong-oh !

It's a logically consistent argument that Corolla makes but there is just one problem that I see with it: it's purely imaginary. It's easy to make a theory consistent when you don't have to incorporate actual details from messy reality.

Oh but how is it imaginary, I hear you Neocons asking? It's all based on a mythical group of trust fund 'self esteem' babies who are adverse to doing a day's work for a day's pay and want to be rewarded like a CEO for their entry level customer service worker position.

If you need evidence why this is so much bullshit, you really need to come out of your gated communities and maybe talk to some of the people formerly known as 'the middle class' but now more accurately referred to as 'the working poor.'

*facepalm*

This video is pure fail.

The premise is great, as EQ was definitely harder 'back in the days', but this is NOT EVEN REMOTELY 'back in the days'. The progression servers were an attempt at nostalgia that didn't quite cut it for me and quite a few others.

BTW, it's pronounced "Toonahhrree".

The following reasons are why EQ was harder back in the days:
1. Lag from the ultra-fast 14.4Kbps modem speeds
2. Holes in the world that have since been patched
3. Ultra-busy GMs and customer service (real fun when you fall through the world and can't get your corpse).
4. Much harsher corpse system, including no ability to drag (only to pull the corpse to you, which everyone macro'd so it was essentially like corpse dragging today), and the almost-guarantee of your own death when trying to recover your own corpse. /consent was a BEEYATCH when you had to trust the corpse dragger not to loot your corpse!
5. NO MONEY! Research the controversy of the plague rat tails that came later in the game. If you weren't a caster-for-money, such as a Shaman, Druid, or Chanter, you had to farm your own cash, which was ULTRA slow. And even for the casters it was often long hours of work, tho with much greater reward.
6. NO GEAR! The gear you could get before the first expansion was minimal at best, often requiring many, many, many hours of crafting or huge wads of plat to get. "Why yes, I would like to pay 100 plat (ie, potentially 30 hours of work) for that +1 to DEX ring!"
7. Camps. Don't even get me started on this. I get so much nerd rage TO THIS DAY about camps.
8. Binding. Nothing like having to pay a caster for where you're going to be resurrected, and then forgetting all about it until you're about to die and you realize you're literally a 30 minute's run away from where you bound.
9. Much harsher death penalties. I remember losing a LOT more XP when I died. I think if you died at 50 you'd lose a whole level, but don't quote me on that.

None of the above would you have experienced much if AT ALL on the progression servers. Gear was better, cash farming easier, corpse retrieval barely needed, never see all camps in a zone taken, etc.

To be honest, the reason it was "more difficult" was that they didn't pander to their players. They made you work for what you got, whether it be your XP, your cash, or your quests. Quest tracker? Yeah, that pen and paper next to your keyboard. Travel? Use autorun and pray you don't get creamed by the level 30 rare monsters in the level 10 zone. Crafting something? Better know your recipes.

Hell yeah, I miss it.