Blizzard Versus Glider Bots: The Latest

Thanks to Kotaku, I've found an article about the latest in the legal battle between Blizzard and the company that created and sold the Glider bots so that players could level their characters automatically.  It covers the key points that Blizzard and MDY Industries each won in the latest round in this court battle.
http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2010/12/thoughts-on-wow-glider-appeal.html

If you are interested in legal issues as they relate to video games, bookmark this site.  It's interesting.

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

My Favorite Phishing Email

The Solo MMO Player got this one today.  It's my favorite to date.  "Hope you can understand."  LOL

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Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 07:24:18 +0800
From: Blizzard Entertainment
Reply-To: noreply@battle.net
Subject: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Christmas gifts £¡

Greetings,
Cataclysm has arrived,, we have to compare World of Warcraft major revision may cause the same to you hope you can understand! 85 new mount coming soon, World of Warcraft players who could be our lucky stars, we will be complimentary seat to the 5,000 new players. You can log Web site application, we will be lucky players randomly. Christmas is about the new mount will be distributed to lucky players.
Look for our registration site:

We will contact you with further instructions once we havein 48 hours of submitting this form, please resend it from the address listed above.
have any questions please contact Billing &
Account Services at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD
(1-800-592-5499 Mon-Fri, 8Am-8PM Pacific Time)

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

[phishing site address removed]

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Yet Another Phishing Scam (the Gawker Hack)

WOW player email boxes are crammed full of phishing emails pretending to be Blizzard warning about last weekend's Gawker hack and asking for a password reset,  but some of those emails are actually from Blizzard.  An example of the real thing is shown at Kotaku.  I imagine a visit to your Battle.net account will help you figure out what's real and what's fake if you used the same email address for Gawker and Blizzard accounts.
http://kotaku.com/5713494/warning-about-world-of-warcraft-phishing-scam

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard Sells 3.3 Million Copies of Cataclysm Dec. 7

Blizzard has announced it sold 3.3 million copies of Cataclysm in the first 24 hours the game was available.  This includes the digital pre-Cataclysm orders.  So what does this mean?  Tobold puts this in context.
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/12/numbers-and-interpretations.html

Here's Blizzard's spin on the figures from their press release.
http://www.1up.com/news/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-sets-pc-sales-record

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard's Guide to WOW

Blizzard has finally done what they should have when vanilla WOW launched-started a beginner's guide to WOW on their website.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/guide/what-is-wow

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard Product Schedule: Leak or Hoax?

WOW Head does the analysis.
http://www.wowhead.com/blog=175487/blizzard-product-schedule-leak-or-hoax

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzards Offers A Free Week to Quitters

Blizzard is sending emails to folks who have left the game offering them a free week of play ending December 1.
http://kotaku.com/5687966/blizzard-offering-a-week-of-free-time-to-warcraft-apostates

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Preview of New Blizzard WOW Community Site

Here's what it will look like.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard About to Sue Korean TV Companies

Blizzard and Korean cable companies are fighting over control of Starcraft match broadcasts and how much is to be paid to show them.
http://kotaku.com/5676092/starcraft-legal-tussle-over-tv-rights-brewing

UPDATE: The PR war starts as Blizzard prepares to sue the Korean e-sports league as well as its former television partners. (Dec. 2010)  Thanks for the tip, Kotaku.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2010/12/133_77381.html

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard To Shut Down Current Forums

Blizzard is going to make the current forums read only and then eventually take them down, which makes sense as most of the information is now outdated.  A new forum system will be set up.
http://www.wowhead.com/blog=172441

More information.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/27/new-blizzard-community-website-forums-begin-testing-in-november/

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

BlizzCon Schedule (October 22-23, 2010)

Here's the schedule of events at this year's BlizzCon (Oct. 22-23).
http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/events/schedule.xml

Many thanks to WOW Insider for pointing this out.

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Mobile Guild Chat and Blizzard's Other New Gizmos

Larisa looks at the new features Blizzard has introduced in the last year or so, tries to decide which are hits (sparkle pony) and which are misses (in-game chat line and the mobile Auction House), and wonders which category the mobile guild chat capability will fall in.  She doesn't mention the mobile Armory, which I've wondered about.  Does anyone pay for this?
http://www.pinkpigtailinn.com/2010/09/mobile-guild-chat-success-or-portal.html

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Laugh of the Day

Let me quote Kotaku's header for this article:  "Activision Blizzard Teams with White House to Develop Smart People".
http://kotaku.com/5646858/activision-blizzard-joins-with-white-house-to-develop-smart-people

Don't miss the comments section.

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Kotick Insults Independent Game Publishers Everywhere

At a Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference last week, Kotick insulted independent game developers by saying Bungie was "probably the last remaining high quality independent developer."  This has sparked some reaction among independent developers, of which Bungie is no longer one since they've taken Activision's money and signed a 10-year publishing deal.
http://kotaku.com/5645940/an-open-letter-from-a-former-bungie-vp-to-bobby-kotick

If you want to hear the whole 45 minute spiel from the conference, the link is in the above.  Thanks, Kotaku!

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard Announces an Online Hacked Account Form

Instead of emailing or calling Blizzard, now you are supposed to fill out a form on this website.  It looks like the personal information they will ask for to restore a hacked account will be even more insecure now.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/09/22/blizzard-announces-automated-account-recovery-form-for-hacked-ac/

More details.
http://www.wowhead.com/blog=169026

I consider this as just another form of cost-cutting on Blizzard's part.  If I were hacked, I'd want a real person to talk to about the problem, not an online form.  Customer service this is not.

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard Prepares to Ban Starcraft 2 Cheaters UPDATED WITH SECOND BAN

Blizzard is threatening to ban Starcraft 2 cheaters (Sept. 2010).
http://www.1up.com/news/blizzard-ban-starcraft-2-cheaters

UPDATE:  More banning of cheaters (Dec. 2010).
http://kotaku.com/5702863/starcraft-2-developers-initiate-ban-rush

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Activision Considers a Cutscene Starcraft Movie

Per quote from Bobby Kotick.  Sigh.
http://kotaku.com/5639929/activision-considers-selling-video-game-cutscenes

UPDATE:  Apparently Fahey didn't dream the above.  1Up reports they are thinking about a digital download movie.
http://www.1up.com/news/activision-in-game-cutscene-movies

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Blizzard Customer Service's Twitter Account

The article isn't sure if outages will be reported here.
http://www.wow.com/2010/09/01/blizzard-customer-service-now-has-its-own-twitter-account/

Here's the direct link.
http://twitter.com/BlizzardCS

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Analyzing Blizzard Financials

This article explains the pitfalls of figuring out Blizzard's financials after the Quarter 2 financials were released August 2.  This is a good introduction to the way businesses account for their expenses.  It mentioned in passing that Activision paid its first dividend ever in the last quarter.  For me that is a warning flag.  ATVI is the stock market abbreviation for Activision, by the way.
http://deuwowlity.blogspot.com/2010/08/blizzard-made-how-much-on-celestial.html

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Cataclysm Interviews at GamesCon 2010

A 15-minute video interview with Tom Chilton, Blizzard's WOW Game Director that touches on Cataclysm topics, patch content, why Facebook will be intergrated into the game, when the new expansion will come out ("a couple of more months"), etc.  In German and English.
http://www.gamona.de/gamonatv/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm,gc-2010-interview-mit-tom-chilton-englisch:video,1798176.html

WOWHead has a transcript of another Blizzard interview at Germany's GamesCon here which adds information about the new archaeology profession.
http://www.wowhead.com/blog=166540

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