Day: February 13, 2006

Blizzard Apologizes for Warning Over GBLT Guilds

Back in January, Blizzard got a bit of unwelcome publicity after one of its customer service representatives warned a GBLT-friendly guild for advertising itself as such. Of course, inevitably, Blizzard finally got around to apologizing for this boneheaded action.

According to InWeekly, which initially reported Blizzard’s warning against the GLBT guild,

Paul Sams, Blizzard Entertainment’s chief operating officer, contacted In Newsweekly and said, “What we’ve done is decided to add a guild recruitment channel to the game… providing players with a designated area where they can advertise their guilds in an appropriate fashion.”

This would mean that players who wish to find others to associate with will have a channel designated to finding those individuals and will not interfere with the general chat channel.

Blizzard has stated that the original incident with Andrews never should have happened and that they will be reviewing policies and procedures and having “sensitivity training” with their 1,000 GMs on staff in North America, Europe, and Korea in the hopes that something like this doesn’t happen again.

Sensitivity training? Ugh. Just train them to support their players rights to say whatever they want. After all, it is trivially easy to /ignore anyone you disagree with in WoW (I really need that command in real life).

One has to wonder, though, how far this openness in the guild recruiting channel will go. GBLT friendly will presumably be okay, what about a hetero-friendly guild? A Fred Phelps-friendly guild? An Asian-friendly guild? A whites-friendly guild?

Sources:

Blizzard apologizes for ‘GLBT’ policy problem. Alexander Sliwinski, In Newsweekly, February 8, 2006.

Kelly Applegate’s DRM E-Book Horror Story

Via Teleread (the best web site for coverage of e-book and related issues), I came across Kelly Applegate’s DRM horror story which basically recounts how she was screwed by actually bothering to pay for electronic editions of books back when Gemstar was running high,

As the ebooks had the ability to download, I continued
purchasing them. Then I bought a Nuvomedia Rocket EBook Pro. I loved
it. My library climbed to well over 500 purchased books and slowly I
got rid of my paper books except the “keepers”. (I would love to be
able to get those in electronic form because I prefer it but it is
way too expensive at this point.)

I have written to several authors about my delimma and many of them
have sent me unencrypted or in some cases replacement encrypted
ebooks to replace the ones I cannot either load on my ebook reader or
to enable me to read them on my computer with the new drive. The ones
that refused my request, I don’t bother with anymore.

At this point, I have invested a large amount of money in my
electronic library. I have been through the Gemstar fallout and they
still have MY books that I paid for that I can ONLY read on ONE ebook
reader (I have several). Because of the protections that have been
placed on the ebooks I purchased and not being able to read them on
the reader of my choice, I REFUSE to by any ebook that is protected.
And, I REFUSE to buy any ebook that I cannot get to load on my ebook
reader. I will contact a publisher before I purchase from them and
find out exactly what their books are made of. I, also, insist that I
be able to test drive the formats at their site because I have found
that often I order the HTML version of a book to convert to my reader
and it comes out with gibberish. So, I get another version and
convert it to HTML (Most often it is MS Reader converted to HTML)and
it is perfect for the reader. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I
maintain with the publishers and the formats I must purchase from
them to get the best copy readable on my ebook reader. A few
publishers have told me they will not replace ebooks and will not
accomodate me in any way. It’s their loss. I was going to buy 15
books from one of the sites that would not allow this so they lost a
chunk of change.

As I’ve said before it is pointless to buy an e-book unless you are able to convert it, one way or another, to a non-DRMed format such as HTML. Once you’ve got it in HTML, then you can convert it to pretty much any format you want. But if you don’t have it in HTML, you’re completely at the mercy of the DRM provider.

For example, Sony’s upcoming Reader looks like a decent e-book platform, but you’d be crazy to actually buy DRMed books in its native format given Sony’s history. Instead, wait to make sure it has decent tools to convert HTML files to its proprietary format, and then buy MS Reader books which are easily stripped of DRM and converted to HTML where they then should be easily convertible to a format that the Sony Reader can handle.

Yes, that is a bit more convenient, but a lot less convenient than ending up in the position that Applegate has found herself with hundreds of dollars spent on books that she cannot read except on the dead Gemstar platform.

HorrorClix

Although my action figure collecting has grown out of hand in recent months, one of the things I did manage to wean myself off of was collecting WizKids’ HeroClix. Not that I don’t have a few hundred neatly stacked in plastic compartments, but I gave up buying anymore a long time ago largely because I never found the time to play.

And just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water, WizKids announces HorrorClix,

WizKids Inc., who revolutionized miniatures gaming with the Mage Knight, MechWarrior and HeroClix collectible miniatures games (CMGs), announced today the next revolution in miniatures gaming: HorrorClix!

“HorrorClix places players firmly in the action, suspense and excitement of a horror movie,” said Jordan Weisman, WizKids CEO. “Players assemble teams of monsters from across the horror spectrum — including vampires, zombies and werewolves — and then protect the innocent, eat them or both in a delightful, gore-filled romp!” HorrorClix uses plot twist cards, a heavy emphasis on scenario play and new character cards to explode the boundaries of CMGs and the patented Clix system.

HorrorClix raises the bar for all miniatures games by shifting the game focus from hack-and-slash combat to inventive scenario- and story-based play. Additionally, it uses the combat dial to provide literally hundreds of tailor-made supernatural (and super-gruesome!) powers and abilities. Character cards flesh out each monster with fiction and detailed explanations of each creature’s capabilities, including mechanics never before seen in miniatures games!

That’s just not fair. Must. Have. Zombie. Army.

There’s a survey at WizKids’ sites seeking feedback on possible licensed properties for inclusion. Hmmm…Buffy-clix. Drool.