Still battling it out

Despite my lack of updating yesterday, I managed to get more hits than usual. Maybe I shouldn't update so often, then again, what else would I do to pass the time at work?

If you take a look at the comment on my last post, somebody actually wants to advertise on my site. It's a site that sells MMO items and accounts for money, so I won't be taking them up on the offer, but it's nice to know I might be getting enough hits to warrant advertising.

I'm still using my free time to play Warcraft II rather than WoW. I'm not sure if I'm burnt out or just bitter about not getting a beta key. I don't feel burnt out, but I also don't feel bitter. Maybe my need for variety in WoW has transformed into a need for variety in Warcraft gaming in general.

I do want to stick to my goal of getting my hunter and shammy to 60 before the expansion hits, and since I'm chugging along through Warcraft II, I might still be able to make it happen. I had thought Spore would keep me occupied, but after reading about all the DRM issues and the fact that it apparently installs some kind of malware on your system, I'm thinking I'll pass on it.

The nice thing about WoW, and about Blizzard's games in general, is they already figured out how to keep people from pirating, or at least how to keep those pirates from clogging up their servers. Because the games tend to focus more on the online aspects (WoW is all online), they really don't care if you install the game on another system, they just only want one particular CD-key online at a time.

I'm not really sure why other companies can't figure this out. Apparently Spore can only be installed 3 times total, no matter if you reinstall it on the same machine or not. I know when my hard drive crashed I had to reinstall everything, and I assume I will be getting a new computer in a year or two and need to do it all again. Kind of stupid to not be able to install a game because I upgraded my system.

When I first got Warcraft III it was a pirated version (I know, I'm bad). Sure the campaign was cool, but after finishing that I wanted to play online. Well guess what? I couldn't. See, with the system checking your CD-key every time you log into the servers, when a pirated version tries to go online, chances are one of the hundreds of other people with the same pirated copy is already on and you can't log in.

It's really a very simple, yet almost fullproof way to ensure people can't pirate your game. I suppose with the older games that didn't have online capabilities it was a big issue, but most games now are made mainly, if not completely, to be played online, meaning people won't bother pirating it if they can't play it online.

Being limited to 3 installs and then having to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to convince them that you are, in fact, installing the game legally just seems silly.

I actually find that whenever I decide to download a hacked copy of a game (which isn't very often), it's because I want to try it out, and without that pirated copy I wouldn't have bothered with it. Not only that, but this sometimes leads me to buy the game if I like it enough. I know this isn't how everybody thinks, but they are losing money on me by doing this.

I guess this post ended up turning into a rant about greedy game developers. The funny thing is that there are already pirated copies of Spore out there with the DRM removed, meaning they didn't really deter anything, although I'm sure you can't play those copies online. They really should have stuck with the system that has been proven to work. Nobody complains about Blizzard's CD-key system.