04-07-2003, 01:41 AM
You're all blind!
...(replying to Bolty but addressed to no one in particular) -- the plot is obviously to get most of battle.net posting here, which would relieve the burden on their servers considerably.
My view on the subject of legitimate accounts being banned: as of a few moments ago 4908 people have viewed this thread (not sure though how many of those views are unique). Not one person has said "I abided by Blizzard's battle.net terms of service, my account was closed."
If someone were to say that, I would hope Blizzard would investigate.
Bugs happen. Bugs happen in Mars landings, bugs happen in medical equipment. Bugs happen in Blizzard code. Not all bugs have equal consequences. My observation over the last four or five years is that Blizzard makes a reasonable effort to fix bugs. Could they do better? Obviously.
One moral gray area for me: I'm not comfortable with reverse engineering Blizzard's code, but I have benefited from the work of numerous people who have done so. I think Blizzard has benefitted too.
I play in private games, so I am not as much affected by the cheating as some others. I trade only with friends and family. However there are a number of issues that spoil my game experience. I think these issues are preventible.
Herewith are my top ten annoyances:
1.) Player Not Found -- there could be some warning given before a character is deleted. Have the avatar turn green or something. Better, display the date when the character was last played, or the number of days since the character last was played. Maybe even after a character has been played a thousand hours or so, grant him or her some kind of immortality. This should not eat up that much server space.
2.) Assertions -- assertions do not belong in production code (in my opinion). Every couple of weeks my client locks up because of an assertion failure. Some may say having a 0.000000374291 chance of dying randomly lends interest to the game. The last time baal was casting his yellow nova just as my polearm barbarian was connecting with concentrate -- quite a dramatic picture, too bad I couldn't save it as a screen shot. (In truth, that time the barbarian had a sliver of life left, but all too often the result is death.)
3.) Timeout delay -- I don't know what else to call it, but I cannot understand why the server waits however long it takes for a character to die (or so it seems) after the client stops responding. Maybe some people play with 15000 ms ping? Ever have your modem drop while facing lister? It may be only a game, but I lost a week's worth of experience. Pity those who play hardcore. Making the timeout shorter (or a user selection) would possibly also solve the drop hack issue, if I understand it.
4.) Delay in reconnecting to battle.net after a interruption (i.e. after an assertion failure) -- granted that Blizzard cannot control all interruptions. Last night, as frequently happens, my modem dropped. "Why, yes, thank you -- I am aware my CD key is in use by me." "Please wait five minutes before reconnecting, so that your game has time to go away." Five minutes would almost be tolerable, but too often it is more like half an hour before a character can reconnect.
...(replying to Bolty but addressed to no one in particular) -- the plot is obviously to get most of battle.net posting here, which would relieve the burden on their servers considerably.
My view on the subject of legitimate accounts being banned: as of a few moments ago 4908 people have viewed this thread (not sure though how many of those views are unique). Not one person has said "I abided by Blizzard's battle.net terms of service, my account was closed."
If someone were to say that, I would hope Blizzard would investigate.
Bugs happen. Bugs happen in Mars landings, bugs happen in medical equipment. Bugs happen in Blizzard code. Not all bugs have equal consequences. My observation over the last four or five years is that Blizzard makes a reasonable effort to fix bugs. Could they do better? Obviously.
One moral gray area for me: I'm not comfortable with reverse engineering Blizzard's code, but I have benefited from the work of numerous people who have done so. I think Blizzard has benefitted too.
I play in private games, so I am not as much affected by the cheating as some others. I trade only with friends and family. However there are a number of issues that spoil my game experience. I think these issues are preventible.
Herewith are my top ten annoyances:
1.) Player Not Found -- there could be some warning given before a character is deleted. Have the avatar turn green or something. Better, display the date when the character was last played, or the number of days since the character last was played. Maybe even after a character has been played a thousand hours or so, grant him or her some kind of immortality. This should not eat up that much server space.
2.) Assertions -- assertions do not belong in production code (in my opinion). Every couple of weeks my client locks up because of an assertion failure. Some may say having a 0.000000374291 chance of dying randomly lends interest to the game. The last time baal was casting his yellow nova just as my polearm barbarian was connecting with concentrate -- quite a dramatic picture, too bad I couldn't save it as a screen shot. (In truth, that time the barbarian had a sliver of life left, but all too often the result is death.)
3.) Timeout delay -- I don't know what else to call it, but I cannot understand why the server waits however long it takes for a character to die (or so it seems) after the client stops responding. Maybe some people play with 15000 ms ping? Ever have your modem drop while facing lister? It may be only a game, but I lost a week's worth of experience. Pity those who play hardcore. Making the timeout shorter (or a user selection) would possibly also solve the drop hack issue, if I understand it.
4.) Delay in reconnecting to battle.net after a interruption (i.e. after an assertion failure) -- granted that Blizzard cannot control all interruptions. Last night, as frequently happens, my modem dropped. "Why, yes, thank you -- I am aware my CD key is in use by me." "Please wait five minutes before reconnecting, so that your game has time to go away." Five minutes would almost be tolerable, but too often it is more like half an hour before a character can reconnect.