I guess by now many of you are in a Cataclysm frenzy.

I wish I could say the same… unfortunately, the store where I pre-purchased my copy closes at 6pm… and it wasn’t allowed to be released until 7pm.

I might have hung around a couple of hours after work to pick it up… but no point waiting outside their door all night.

Of course some shops were releasing it earlier… but my shop was following the rules.

Stupid rules.

Enjoy the crush folks!

Gnomer and Out!

I guess I will just download the Cataclysm client, then whack my rego code in tomorrow…  Two letters away from Cataclysm …thanks for the tip Aurdon! At least that way I wont spend a couple of hours staring at a download screen.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/12/07/no-cataclysm-for-me/

PS: and yes of course you can still learn from, or give to Movember!

You can give via Visa, Mastercard, Amex or Paypal.

Paypal, perfect for those abstained coffee donations

Go on.. wouldn’t you buy a coffee to keep someone alive?

Please!

I know there are only two ways of gauging strangers, via GearSnore or Achievements. To be honest I’m ok with this. I don’t care that much.

Sure it drives me a little crazy that people are asking for achievements for VoA. I think the 1st four bosses of ICC don’t really warrant it either, on normal at least.

But to get to the heart of the problem, I just don’t think it is worth spending an hour trying to get a group together, checking achievements only to blow 10-15 minutes wasting buffs away while the most basic of the boss mechanics get explained to people who theoretically have already done it before, more likely than not, have done it more times than the raid leader.

It’s at the point now where I think we should wear the 1st wipe.

Just ready check and GO!

By the end of that 1st fight you will know if people were on follow to get their achievement.

They will either do what they have to do, or still be standing by the front door.

Scrape the corpses up, kick them from the raid and fill the raid with people that do know what they are doing so we can reserve vent for it’s intended purpose.

Jokes!

Running ICC on two characters on both 10 & 25 has really worn down my patience for the pre encounter kindergarten chat.

It is quicker to recover from the wipe than to go through the explanation.

For craps sake, the fights themselves barely extend past 5 minutes, why in the name of all that is holy in Gnomeregan do we have to spend 3 times the length of the fight describing what a bone spike is, that Fester is going to give you a slime pet that will eat your heart out, where on your task bar the polymorph spell has to be.

State once at the beginning of the raid.

We have seen your achievements, in theory you know the encounters

When we reach each boss you will get asked once…

Do you know this fight?

If there is no response, there will be a ready check and we will engage with the boss 10 seconds later!

Yes, yes. I know some encounters require a little organization. Rotface is a good example. Yet, people know what they are doing don’t they?

As soon as I get to Rotface I get into position. If the raid leader changes that, fine, otherwise I am just waiting to hear about the fucking spores for the 100th time.

I don’t know… An hour to get the raid together… an hour and a half to explain the bosses… 30 minutes to actually do the bosses with an additional hour for trash.

Why the hell people say “must be available till 12.30pm”, when they could just say…

Raiding for 2 hours. Don’t fuck up, don’t fuck around, when we have 6 done we will decide if we extend in 30 minute segments

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and I’m not stupid dammit, just engage the boss and I will heal your arse!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/09/10/stop-asking-for-achievements/

First Australians vodcasts from SBS

Right, let me state right up front this isn’t a WoW post, it’s a post about hatred and my hatred of people that are depicted in this series that were in the best cases misguided to the point of hatred, but in the worst were hatred incarnate.

If you thought Australia’s history was about convicts, the poor deported, you are wrong. the history is about the disposed.

To think that I was proud that my great-grandmother went and marked out a selection for my grandfather.

I know the truth now.

It wasn’t his land.

When I was in South Africa I visited the Apartheid Museum and was disgusted, yet, I had no understanding of the atrocities committed in my “own” land.

Unhealthy government experiment

I think this series is the 1st time I have seen Godwin’s law invoked and it mean something, the argument isn’t lost, it just strengthens the hypocrisy of the Australian people.

I was born in the year that the First Australians were first given some initial recognition, the right to be counted in a census.  No I am not old, but it appears I live in a country that is still backward. (At the time, students from Sydney were fighting for the rights of American Blacks, until it was suggested they look closer to home)

There is no other law

Coming from an English/Irish ancestry, I struggle after watching the videos I link below, to honor the white fella blood in my son.  It feels much better to honor the Indian blood, the Indian culture.

The stories are not pretty, they discuss the fate of the traditional owners of the land I call home, owners for some 40,000+ years that were disposed by people that have been here for little over 200 years.  They discuss the  stories of people, that for all that things have changed, really aren’t in a significantly better position than they were 43 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago.

The history depicted in these stories is not the history that I was taught at school and to be honest, I doubt it is taught now.  Considering it took until 2 years ago for the Australian government to utter one simple word…

Sorry

I doubt that even this current government has changed the “noble” white fella history taught in schools, to reveal the brutal black fella history.

First Australians from SBS

The 3rd episode, Freedom for our lifetime, is set primarily in my state, and my city, in the very suburbs that I have lived in for all of my life. My land, My house, My home, is on their land.  Taken long ago to be sure, yet still their land. To think we reduced the black fella’s numbers in Victoria from 60,000+ to 300.  Thank god they survived, against the odds, against the white fella’s wishes.

Too many words of my own, when they can tell their tale better than I ever will.

Each episode is about an hour – so…

7 hours worth of hard viewing.

They can be downloaded onto you iPhones, iPods your whatevers.

I don’t recommend them if you are in a poor emotional state.

I do recommend it if you are Australian, or care about atrocities that humans can commit in the name of civilization.

You can get the vodcasts by clicking on any of the images in this post:

First Australians vodcasts

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/23/im-sorry/

I need to point out that I don’t mind the concept of AnID, I’m just not all that keen on RealID, still, in it’s current form.

This comes from the “optional” part of RealID.

• It’s an option to use it or not.
• It’s an option to apply parental controls to your (maybe adult) account, or not.

Which really comes down to:

a). use it, or

b). not.

Currently I choose option b).

There are other options in the game that don’t effect gameplay in the same way.

• You can choose to purchase trading card in game novelty items – or not.
• You can choose to buy ingame pets – or not.
• You can choose to buy a 310% speed mount – or not.
• You can choose to pay $2.99 per month to additional features of the remote auction house – or not.

These are all options and while the mount and the AH feature DO impact on the game, do give an advantage for people with real world $$ to spend out of game, neither require relinquishing personal liberties or privacy.

The now revoked changes to the forums gave an option:

Use them with your REAL name (because although you could fake your account name, that is against the ToS, so no law abiding person would do that… Right?), or not.

To me this is either:

1. Not a (good) option, or
2. Not enough options.

Options, Options, Options.

At the root is the lack of options of RealID itself, whatever is built on top of this needs to have its options at this level.

Let’s step through the privacy options as I see could work.

1a) Don’t use AnID features
1b) Do use AnID features

If using AnID:

2a) Use AnID features with RealName
2b) Use AnID features with AliasName

3a) Allow FriendsOfFriends
3b) Don’t allow FriendsOfFriends

If using FriendsOfFriends:

4a) Use FriendsOfFriends features with RealName
4b) Use FriendsOfFriends features with AliasName

When using AnID:
5a) Choose to appear offline at login
5b) Choose to appear online at login
5c) Choose to appear online/offline at any point of your choice to your (groups of) friends.

With respect to characters:
Choose which characters participate in AnID, so you can maintain your getaway zone, the place just for you.

FriendlyGroups

Privacy settings should be controlled via groups. You may have your:

• Family group – your choice to be always online
• Guild group
• People I’ve met group
• Roleplaying group
• Nasty nasty PvP group
• etc

I know it can be complicated, but I believe it should be optional to make it as complicated as YOU wish.

It should be optional to turn on, not off

By this I mean that when a new feature is introduced that uses AnID, it should be optional to use AnID, whether RealName or AliasName.

It should be optional to relax privacy, rather than increase it.

By this I mean that when you first activate AnID, and when you first accept a friend request they should automatically be in the tightest privacy group, which you can choose to reduce for as long as you feel comfortable.

It should be optional for a feature in the first place.

None of the “you can’t have this wonderful, exciting, maybe game changing feature” unless you revoke your rights to privacy.

Yes you can use it, but you have the choice of whether you use it as Gnomeaggedon, Snowy, or Bob Rhubarb.

Parental Options <> Privacy Settings

I know I have splattered this around in comments, including a comment to my own post, but Parental Options are NOT Privacy Settings – They are CENSORSHIP settings.

They are settings that you as a parent choose to censor the big bad Internet from your young impressionable charges.

It’s incoming censorship.

I want outgoing censorship, where I can choose what other people see of me.

Just because I don’t want other people to know my RL identity, doesn’t mean I want to have a profanity filter imposed on me, channels of communication restricted to me, Beta participation removed from me.

By using parental controls as privacy controls important parts of the game are made… Optional?

Needless to say I still feel very strongly about this and as things stand, where AnID is still my Real(How stupid and I to follow the ToS and use my real-real legal name)ID, then I figure if I have to use my RealID, I am left with only two options.

1. Give up my privacy and use RealID, or
2. Leave the game, and all games using RealID, forever.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/14/its-optional/

Of course this week has been unusual, filled with high drama and not of the guild variety. Mind you, the only drama in my guild these days is when the guild leader /ragequits, which of course means there is no guild.

It was also unusual in the sense that I didn’t pick up one Frost Emblem. No VoA, no Weekly, no ICC, not even a random heroic. Two toons, zero emblems.

Mind you, I haven’t really been in the mood to raid. Not even to take down Internet Dragons. I think in part it’s because I’m tired of the mechanics, they are new and exciting replications of the old ones.

You know immediately what it means when someone says:

Don’t stand in the bad!

The thing is the bad is of a different color this week.

• It’s not red
• It’s not black
• It is green, but a different shade of green.

It’s the shade of green that money is made out of.

Forever more when someone says “don’t stand in the bad”, I will be thinking of a different boss mechanic, the corporate boss mechanic rather than the raid boss mechanic.

I have been playing a bit of Arena. We noted last night it’s a bit like a casino.

• We win some, we lose some.
• We get an awesome run, then we lose it all.
• When the time comes to log off, we won’t until we get one more win. We need to taste that victory.

It was during a couple of matches last night that my friend and I started cursing about our latency. We were sitting on 400-700, good fps, but buttons weren’t firing when we pressed them.

It wasn’t even 3 second instant casts that were killing us, it was complete lack of response.

• Press button – nothing.
• Press button – nothing.
• Press – button – Target not in LoS.

Well at least it registered on the 3rd attempt, even if I couldn’t use it any more.

Which got me thinking about one of the oldest QQ’s in the game – from an Oceanic perspective anyway.

No local servers.

Just in case you didn’t know, those of us in the Oceanic regions don’t have our own servers locally. We play on rebranded US servers. By the time our keypress has hopped it’s way across the Pacific our opponent has gone, we’ve been standing in the bad for too long, the safety dance would be shut down for health and safety reasons.

When we do Frogger, we aim to hit the slime, hopefully that way we will miss it. Of course usually that coincides with one of those rare drops in latency and we are outed for noobs.

The RealID threads over the last few days certainly overshadow any threads previously. But only in size in quantity over a short period of time. I expect for quality of posts the “give us a server of our own” posts probably have more entries, just over several years.

It got to the point that even those that wanted the servers got sick of the QQ. They just gave up. We all gave up.

Why would we care, it’s not like Blizzard would ever suggest they put servers in Australia right?

Except they did.

Back in Alpha, or Alpha Alpha, or Vanilla Alpha – right at the beginning. Of course as time went on people started to accept that it would never happen, it wouldn’t be worth Blizzards time. Who can honestly, hand on heart, say that WoW will last longer than 2 years?

I guess we were standing in the bad.

I guess we believed that Blizzard would follow through.

I guess we thought we mattered to Blizzard.

I guess we should have learned our lesson 5 years ago.

A lesson for Blizzard/Activision.

Banking in Australia is a strange creature. We fundamentally only have 4 banks (the 4 pillars as they are refered to).

Over the years there have been lots of suggestions of collision. Occasionally they prove it, but generally they operate independently, just doing the same thing at the same time.

For years now they have been value adding. By this I mean increasing their value, not so much the services they provide.

Fees were the winner. They were getting more money out of fees than anything else. What kind of fees?

• Fees for being overdrawn
• Fees for not having enough in your account.
• Fees for taking money out
• Fees for putting money in
• Fees for having a credit card (whether you used it or not)
• Overdraft charges for the overdraft you never asked for, never wanted, couldn’t remove, plus of course the fee for being overdrawn.
• More fees than you can imagine.

They rarely introduced more than one fee at any time and the info was there in the product disclosure booklet, the 30 pages of fine print they would mail out occasionally, or these days they just stick on the website.

Something changed a while back, one of the banks (just one) did the unthinkable… They removed fees, lots of them.

For some reason their share price didn’t really suffer. Sure there was an initial dip, but then as the news of the extra customers, the increase in mortgage sales etc took off, the shares rose again.

They had more customers, happier customers that brought their friends and businesses with them. Those customers brought their funds with them, which meant greater capital for investment by the bank, which means… (the potential for) greater profits.

Wrong Blue Posts

One of the things I have realized with the ReaIID fiasco is that we, as players, as customers, have been reading the wrong blue posts.

We read the “your talent got nerfed/buffed” posts, but we don’t read the shareholder statements.

We read the exciting new feature blue posts, but we don’t read the boring grey ToS and EULA posts, looking for the word, line, paragraph that has changed.

We accept the changes by virtue of dragging that slider as fast as possible so we can get to the login fields behind it.

• Read it? No
• Understood it? No
• Care about it? About what? Ohhh the conditions under which I have paid my money.

I really hope that Blizzard thinks along the lines of the bank. Happy customers will bring happy customers.

I’m tired of standing in the big bad green, especially since the green seems to get constant buffs and the playing conditions constant nerfs.

Ohhh Blizzard, if you really do want to get the Facebook generation from the Oceanic region, give us some local servers and give us back 1/7 th of our sub.

I’ll settle for the servers of course.

Nothing to Lose, Everything to gain.

On one final note, the Oceanic Server issue is another example of the “White Middleclass Male” ignoring the needs of the less fortunate. Of course in this case we aren’t talking about White Middleclass men, we are talking about US based players on US realms shutting down discussion by Oceanic based players about the need for Oceanic servers.

Those forums were always well trolled, by people with nothing to lose (except a 400ms advantage in PvP) and everything to gain (Raid mates actually know they are standing in the bad!).

Meanwhile, the marginalized (in this case the Oceanic players) don’t just have to get their voice heard by Blizzard, but they have to shout above the noise made by people with no real stake in the issue.

Why is it that human beings can’t be happy with just the happiness of others?

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/13/another-week-down-not-one-frosty/

What would a washed up Gnome Mage do after years to plucking Moonkin, burning Trees to the ground, roasting Trolls, dismembering Forsaken, BBQ’ing Tauren and drooling over Blood Elves?

I thought I’d turn away from Fire, from destruction, from turning things into carbon to growing things, lovingly, patiently.

I never thought there could be anything more beautiful than the glare of the Fireball roaring across the horizon to king hit the healer at the back of the pack, but I was prepared to try.

So, starting with a few seeds, a can of water and some appropriately fertile soil, I began my new adventures in gardening.

I can’t go wrong can I?

I’m a Gnome, and there are all the legends of Garden Gnome.

I have green hair… which isn’t quite a green thumb, but being a Mage, it makes sense that the green taint would move from my thumb to my ultimate source of power, my mind (Yes I looked elsewhere, but I’m afraid you girls might be disappointed.. although for the bachelor Gnome, a lack of fertility in other digits may be a Darwinian advantage).

So everything in place, I waited… and waited… and you know how people carry on about watching grass grow… yeah, well, waiting for seeds to germinate is bad for a Gnome with Battleground PTSD. As soon as I saw something out of the corner of my eye FIREBLAST! Oh damn…

After a good 15 minutes, I got bored of waiting for the seeds to sprout and realized that I’m not much of a traditional gardener, I’m a Mage, therefore I should be exploring the groundbreaking new field of Magically Engineered plant crops.

It meant I had to dip into my non-specialty Trees (Ohh how Ironic that they call them Trees), into Arcane and Frost.. not so much for the Frost mind you, more for the water behind it. Very soon I had my pot full of flowers, but something was not quite right.

They were all kind of… lacking in life.

Determined I tried again and again, each time with the same level of success.

That was when the feeling of horror descended upon my spiky, but balding pate. I tried to dispose of my abhorrent creations in the only way I know how… Fire, BURN THEM TO THE GROUND! I said.

But, the fire wasn’t there… so where could I possibly be getting this power from?

OHHHHH NOOOOOOO

I may be a Mage in game, but I’m an Affliction Warlock in real life.

Every living thing I touch dies.  Not in a bit fiery flash, but in a slow draining of life… a DOT… DOT… DEAD fashion.

This cannot be true, yet the results speak for themselves.

I have put gardening and flower arranging behind me.  I’m back in game doing what I do best, blasting noobs with my Pyroblasts and letting my “little boys” dance all over their faces.

Of Bolting Horses and Open Gates

Not unlike many, I have been enjoying what felt like a hollow victory.

I know there are many that felt this was never an issue.

I know that many feel that others, myself included I am sure, are being ungracious in our dancing in the streets and conditional praise of Blizzard and Mike the Man.

I know I am still unsettled, but after a weekend of calm quiet reflection (that’s Arenas folks), the pieces came together for me.

Conspiracy theories etc aside… well I guess not aside, we are all pretty certain that the partnership with Facebook was not just for fun, that the change in the ToS from we will protect your personal data, to we will share your personal data, that the careful business wording of Mike’s “GOOD NEWS EVERYONE” announcement does nothing to dispel our fears, but rather leaves all the doors open (Like any good Business statement should of course).

Anyway, all that aside, we already have Facebook for WoW, or WoWbook, or FaceWow or whatever it is.

We have RealID, we have a non-server, non-faction based friends list which allows us to see and request friend status, not just with our immediate “I already know your deep dark personal secrets” friends, but their friends as well – all using our Real (your privacy was once protected) Name.

We may have stopped them introducing this to the forums, but we have allowed them to share our personal names already, a base on which many other things will come.

The best we may see of this is that they do allow use to display an alias instead, but that is the best that I can see happening.

It’s all OK if you just treat yourself like a kid!

Of course you could, as many have already done, go down the route of limiting your social interaction (The Social being the important part of this right?) with the world by imposing Parental Controls on yourself.

Parental Controls ARE NOT privacy settings, they are setting designed to reduce the access the player has to aspects of the game, which as a by product, reduce your visibility.

I’m not a kid, I don’t want to be treated like a kid, I don’t want to treat myself like a kid.  I just want control over my personal information and who I share it with.

It’s a crying shame really

Over the last week, I have realized that I would like to add a bunch of you to my friends list.  I know it would end up being insane, there would be no downtime.  Once you stick a pile of bloggers and blog readers in one chat channel, Trade chat seems relatively sedate.

Still, I would love to know what you are doing, I’d love to know how Horde side Aman’Thul are hurting during WG, I’d love to share how I am hurting during WSG, but…

I’m not ready to extend our relationship to the next level.  I’m more than happy for you to refer to me as Snowy, or Gnomer or Nutsack, whatever Alias would be available, but if my friends of 20 years don’t get my real name without need, neither do you.

Us & Them

I realise now why some people don’t mind.

I realise now why Blizzard thought there would be no issues with the Forums.

It’s because there are a lot of people for whom sharing this personal information is 2nd nature, they do it and have been doing it for a while.

I’m cool with that, with them happy to share, but I’m don’t want to join that group.

I want to be able to control how much of me you get to see… Hell, even Facebook lets to select privacy settings for different parts of your Facebook world.

It’s not the Next Change you need to fear.

Many of us are suspicious waiting for the next Blizzard announcement, wondering how they will slip RealID into it, gank us like that mongrel of a Rogue in Arenas last night, Dot us up like those stinking Warlocks, so by the time we realise we are in trouble, we are so cursed we can’t take any action anyway.

But the reality is we don’t need to fear the next change, so much as the previous one.

RealID is here.

We didn’t see the full picture then and while many of us had misgivings, it wasn’t easy to articulate them.  The Forums gave us a tangible target and we have stopped that, but the question is whether they will roll privacy controls and aliases into all things RealID, or just the forums.

The game is not just changing, it has changed.

The forums was a no-brainer for Blizzard, the infrastructure is already present, we are already friending our best buddies and it wont be long before we are friending our best buddies buddies.

I’m no longer angry, I’m just resigned.

I’m still a key press away from returning to flower arranging, but I just need to weigh up the pros and cons…

• Mage in a privacy free WoW, or
• Warlock IRL

Which of course reminds me of TBC, when Mages were fodder and Warlocks were kings (or queens).  A time when Mages across the world were asking whether Blizzard rolled Warlocks and deleted Mages.

The answer now is clear, Blizzard didn’t just roll Warlocks…

THEY ARE  A WARLOCK! a Stinking Affliction Warlock… DOT… DOT…

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/12/my-life-after-wow/

Image borrowed from http://blogs.elsitech.com/?tag=/encryption

I fear I smell sleight of hand.

However, the resub is as clear a sign as the cancel, so yes, I will resubscribe, but as many, many people have pointed out, there is more to this change that simply a forum ID change.

So the backdown is announced here (thank you to all of you that sent it to me while I slept and dreamed of Internet Dragons):

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1

The sleight of hand I speak of, comes from the fact that over the last few days we have learned that Blizzard didn’t/doesn’t intend to stop with the forums, however there no real admission of this yet.

Image borrowed from http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/26/fallows-part-2-boiling-brainless-frogs-and-the-ooda-loop/

Definite:

As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

Not so definite:

I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

This is still where my issue lies.

If you want to participate fully in our games in the future, you will have to hand your balls to the wall on a plate

Ohh yeah, that’s my interpretation…

Why can’t they just pull their finger out at let us have a single sign on “Handle”, then all the problems in the world will go away.

As Achtung Panzercow puts it:

But rest assured that I will never take anything they say at simple face value ever again, and nor should you.  With their claim that “this is just to de-troll the forums!”, they insulted my intelligence.  I don’t like that.

Make the optional part:

I can choose to use my real name, or my handle.

You see one of the things that has pissed me off about this whole debate is, that it will be easier for Blizzard to shut down the trolls… why, because they have our real name?  The already know what account the trolls have posted from – CLOSE THE TROLL’S ACCOUNT! They don’t need real names anywhere to shut down a players account, THEY are BLIZZARD, THEY have the account details.

The Carrot and the Stick

I used the biggest sticks I possess over the last few days, I know many of you did so too.

The thing about sticks, is they lose their effectiveness unless balanced with carrots, so I am resubscribing, and I encourage those of you that joined me in a /ragequit to do the same – because just as the account cancellation was the clearest signal of your displeasure, so will the resubscription be the clearest indication of your approval of the change in policy.

I can assure you I will not be reactivating 6 month subscription – I don’t trust them that much, I don’t trust them any longer. I refuse to be the frog in the pot.

Thanks

• Thanks to all of you that said your farewells. I’d love to go back and reply to you all.. but do you really want a series of “Thank you & bye for nows”
• Thanks to all of you that sent me invitations to join them in other games (or build new communities to enable ex-WoW players to remain together, without Blizzards assistance).
• Thanks to all of that supported me in my rage, whether by comment, blog linkage, or blog post unrelated to mine, that added perspective and kept the fire alive.
• Thanks to all of you that disagreed with me, that made me review my stance.  I still don’t agree with you, but I did listen and think.
• Thanks to Grimmtooth for expressing my /ragequit best…

Gnomageddon /ragequits. We’re almost there ourselves. Someone asked me if I was surprised; after thinking of it, I realized that Gnome’s passionate spirit made this move fall right into his idiom. Our first RealID casualty, and a bitter one it is.

Maintain the rage

As I went to bed last night, I expressed my fear about this weekend to the folk on Twitter. I was concerned that after  a weekend of raiding, after Cataclysm annoucements and Beta announcements, the rage would have subsided.

Gnomeaggedon Unlike other bloggers, I am not sick of RealID posts. Actizzard are waiting for 21st century apathy to step up and claim our rage.

SuicidalZebra @Gnomeaggedon Expect to see a new Beta Build push today simply to get the WoW news sites and blogs to change the subject.

Gnomeaggedon http://bit.ly/aiBBXX and http://bit.ly/cGJILH Maybe I should go PvP to calm down

Gnomeaggedon @antikris77 1st I must take my Battleground rage out on Blizzard.. they trained me in it, time to turn it on my master

Copra @Gnomeaggedon btw. you should be calm to make any real PvP. angry… you just mess around and get frustrated.

Gnomeaggedon @Copra I am a Fire Mage… my PvP is chaos… think Berserker, shrunk to 3 foot then add FIRE!

I am happy that Blizzard have chosen to back down at the beginning of the weekend.  I think if they waited another few days they could have pushed.

Hello for now

So, it’s not goodbye, it’s hello for now. Until the next time, and there will be a next time.

It’s just a shame I didn’t get to share my flower arranging post with you… maybe I still can… let that be a post for another day.

In other great backdown news

Senator (I’m a fuckstick just wont admit it) Conroy has backed down on the Australian internet filter – for now.

Once again, don’t let the rage subside… they just want to win the election.. then as usual will claim an “Mandate”

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/10/as-a-dodgy-old-magician-with-more-illusion-than-power/

Derek Dickwad: OK guys, this is going to be an awesome raid, everyone got their consumables?

Isa Nutta: I got my Jim Beam and piles of peanuts

Mike Hunt: I’m blowing my scooby-doo as we speak

Derek Dickwad: Mike, I’ll get to buffs in a minute, just checking on consumables right now

Ican Be-loony: I got 3 disposable sims, ready to roll.

Nota Badguybut: Can I have an invite plz!

Isa Nutta: Nota, you are such a fag!

Mike Hunt: lol

Ican Be-loony: lol

Derek Dickwad: lol pwned dude

Derek Dickwad: Anyone heard from Davo tonight? He signed up, but no word yet.

Mike Hunt: he’s probably screwing his girlfriend to the wall again.. he’s always going on about it.

Isa Nutta: His girlfriend is probably screwing him to the wall, otherwise he’d be here with the 1337Squad

Derek Dickwad: Right guys, let’s get this fucker, this fag, seriously how ghey is this.

Derek Dickwad: I’ll start with the dogshit bomb on his front door step -I’ll aim my spot light at his door so he can’t see me, but I’ve got good light for the photos of the poofta

Derek Dickwad: Mike, you get the honor of spamming his facebook site and email accounts.  Maybe throw a message or two on his company website about how is such a child fucking poofta.

Derek Dickwad: Isa, you know your job, can you hold it together this time?  When you call his boss and pretend to be a sheriff, don’t burst into laughter while spinning the bullshit about how your investigating him for child porn, prostitution, drug trafficing and, hell throw in that he kicked a nigger once.. though he’s probably a mutha fucking nigger himself.

Derek Dickwad: Ican, phone spam on my call, remember to call his Mum and grandparents at the same time.

Derek Dickwad: Nota, you got the pizza order ready – Super Supreme Ghey with extra anchovies

Derek Dickwad has initiated a Ready Check

Derek Dickwad: Go, Go Goooooooo!

Derek Dickwad: lol, his boyfriend came to the door. rofl, not only are his bare feet covered in dog shit, but his silk pajamas caught fire. Probably burnt him a Brazillian!

Ican Be-loony: OMG, OMG, I think I gave his grandmother a heart attack. lol lol lol lol PWNED!

Mike Hunt: Man, this poof is never going to work in his town ever again, I got a few of his noob mates as well… all their shit on their facebook sites!

Derek Dickwad: Isa, how’s it going with his boss?

Derek Dickwad: Oh shit, here comes the pizza. lol the pizza driver is going to rip the poofta a new arsehole!

Isa Nutta: Oh man… that was priceless, the boss shat himself, says he’s going to the office now to lock down the nubs PC and change his access… this guys life is now officially shit!

Derek Dickwad: Alright guys, let’s wipe it up… we’ll have another attempt tomorrow night.

Derek Dickwad: As soon as I get home I’ll post the photos on the guild site.

Derek Dickwad: Buggers me why we pay $15 a month for WoW now.  It’s shit compared to this, and we can just grab the next target off the forums without playing.

Derek Dickwad has gone offline

…

…

…

…

…

Innocent Dave has come online

Isa Nutta: Yo!

Mike Hunt: Dude, where ya been?

Innocent Dave: Hey guys, fucker of a night

Ican Be-loony: Man you just missed out on an awesome raid, we pwned that fucker defending gays in the realm forums

Nota Badguybut: I kinda feel bad now, but man it was a laugh

Isa Nutta: Nota, you are such a fag!

Innocent Dave: Where’s Dickwad?

Nota Badguybut: whys your night been a fucker?

Innocent Dave: My brother is in hospital from burns to his legs.

Innocent Dave: My Grandma is in the same hospital – heart attack

Innocent Dave: My boss called, as did some of my clients.  Apparently I’m being investigated for all sorts of bad shit. Whatever the case, I’ve lost my job and I’m getting hate calls from all over the place.

Innocent Dave: I’ve got a black eye and a broken rib from some arsehole pizza delivery driver that told me I ordered a super gay pizza.

Innocent Dave: There was also this nutta outside the house, with this spotlight on, taking photos.

Innocent Dave: He woke the whole neighborhood with his chants of poofta and pedophile… looks like I’m going to have to move now too

Derek Dickwad has come online

Derek Dickwad: Yo Dawg! Got the photos of that faggot up on the website guys.. check him out!

Isa Nutta: …

Mike Hunt: …

Innocent Dave: WTF!

Ican Be-loony: …

Nota Badguybut: Oh Shit…

Isa Nutta: PWNED!

Derek Dickwad: What’s up guys?

Gnomer and Out!

PS: The Point of RealID and How to Stop It.

PPS: Joy at RealID

PPPS: Don’t panic

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/09/realid-raiding-the-future-of-wow/

HowManyOfMe.com

There are people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I know there are a few more in my state, of my country, but really, how many phone calls, or just comparing details will it take (see below)?

Cancellation.

I know a quite a few people are contacting me to tell me you are canceling.

I wont lie, I am proud of you for taking a stand.

I will also say, that if the game means enough to you that you don’t care (let’s face it, how many people care when their guild bank gets pillaged due to no authenticators), then you don’t have to follow my path.

I love this game!

let me repeat this…

I LOVE THIS GAME!

and have enjoyed other Blizzard products.

It’s true that as long as I don’t participate on the forums (and Blizzard doesn’t go any further.. yeah right), that personally I could live with this.  However, this just shits me and I know that there are an incredible number of people that will be disadvantaged and threatened by this change.

Blizzard is prepared to protect their staff by now stating they don’t have to have a RealID – they know how dangerous it is 1st hand… but you.. you are barely a statistic, you don’t even form a column in their monthly report, let alone a yearly shareholder statement.

YOU AREN’T WORTH THE MONEY YOU PAY BLIZZARD!

So, in answer to those who believe I am sick of the game and this is a great excuse.. sod off.. you are looking in the wrong place.  I’m an overworked single father who loves to get online and chat and play with his mates that know me as Gnomeaggeon (or Squidly if I must).

What else can you do?

There is a petition. Yes it’s in it’s early days, but it started with one signature.  If you don’t want to cancel your account, why the hell not add your signature?

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-wow-realid.html

You can read and think

Is this for me, or is this for Blizzard?

• Shareholder statements (as in, we are joining with Facebook)
• Articles about how Blizzard are crawling up the Korean governments arse.
• Stalker Stories…
• The “good” and
• The “bad“.. at least Blizzard learned a partial lesson…
• Or read something that will make your heart sink, start with Chastity’s excellent post, then read through the comments until you get to this one and feel your heart sink.
• You could even read why most of us DO play WoW.

Whatever you do, it’s your choice.

I may never return to WoW, but I don’t want to read in the international media about someone stalked and killed.

How many will it take for you?

10,000?

1,000?

100?

10?

For me, it is ONE!

One person harmed by this foolish policy is too much.

Blizzard will hide behind their EULA, and they will be fine… but…

Will you?

Will your sister, brother, mother, father, cousin, guild mate, a complete stranger on the other side of the world that did absolutely nothing wrong?

It’s a game.. it’s only a game.

Blizzard don’t have the right to impose war-time identity requirements on me, or you, as players of a game.

YOU WOULDN’T LET YOUR GOVERNMENT CONTROL YOU THIS MUCH, SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU LETTING A GAMES COMPANY?

Remember, Facebook is not a moral standard of internet security.  Their creator has stated multiple times he doesn’t give a shit about the user’s privacy… your privacy.

Still, it’s your choice.

1. Play the game and leave it to others (who may just leave in disgust)… or
2. Shove your fists where the sun doesn’t shine and let Blizzard know you will not accept this.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/09/only-3-of-me/

My name is Snowy.

Of course if you have ever received an email reply from Gnomeaggedon, I have probably already (chosen to) shared that with you.

Snowy isn’t my TrueID, my legal name, though I have considered changing it.

I have known people for 20+ years that only know me only as Snowy, because I am Snowy. Occasionally there is a need to reveal my Clarke Kent true identity and they are stunned, even disbelieving. Yet, 99% of them continue to refer to me as Snowy.

This ReadID goes back a long way, back before I was born in fact. My family has generations of Snowys, not just my immediate family, my extended family.

The only person in my family that wasn’t a Snowy was my mother. She only hated the name because when someone phoned the house, they would ask to speak with “Snowy” – they had no idea which one of us because we were just Snowy.

I remember vividly the day 35 years ago, as I walked down the driveway towards the city centre, that my Mother said to me…

Son, you have an unusual name. Most people on this earth don’t need to know that name. It is yours, keep it close. Once someone knows your name they will know it forever and they can, and sometimes will, use it against you.

Remember, this is in the days when the house was never locked, the car was parked on the street – unlocked, when young kids could roam the streets without fear and when they got lost, or in trouble, could turn to any person on the street and receive help.

I have been Snowy for 35 years. My workmates refer to me as Snowy, my friends refer to me as Snowy, my family reunions are filled with…

Hey Snowy, it’s been a long time, I remember when I used to dangle you on my knee.

If I have chosen to adopt this as my realID for 35 years, why would I permit a game company, A GAME COMPANY, to reveal my TrueID?

National ID

I have opposed on multiple occasions the introduction of a national ID in Oz, quite simply because if you need to know who I am, I will have already told you.

But at least that is in the name of national security and efficiency.

This is for a GAME COMPANY!

Policy Creep (or is that creepy policy)

When I first went to University, education was free and available to all Australians.

Foolishly I quit.

18 months later the government introduced a $400 per semester fee. I protested (even though I wasn’t studying at Uni at the time), but many people argued…

It’s only $400 and it will weed out those that don’t really want an education.

Now, in some cases it’s $5,000 per subject. This didn’t happen overnight, it crept, budget after budget.

Funding for Uni’s didn’t improve – it declined

It weeded people out. If you could afford it (whether you deserved it or not) you could study. If you couldn’t afford it… Well, why would we want to educate those people anyway, right?  They might have non-middleclass views that might jeopardize the rate at which we consume natural resources!

Blizzard’s ReadID is Creepy

1. Blizzard’s RealID is just to facilitate the communications between real friends (and let their friends see who you are) (which, ummm, I did already via “my own” communication network).
2. Now it’s to communicate with Blizzard.
3. Tomorrow it’s to integrate with Facebook
4. What’s next? So I can get a visa to travel to the U.S.A.?

Cancel tomorrow, wasted.
Cancel today, worthwhile.

As I said to Pie:

Why wait?

Do it now.

Let’s examine this.

Don’t cancel now.

• You can play until 20/8 until resubscribing.
• The change goes live
• In an after the fact act of disgust you let your account expire without Blizzard and Activision knowing how you feel.

You cancel now.

• You can play until 20/8 before reactivating your account if you so desire.
• The change goes live – whatever, you have already made your statement to blizzard and it’s shareholders.
• The change doesn’t go live – blizzard and the shareholders know you were serious and won’t accept this in the future AND you reinforce their positive behavior by resubbing.

Your opinion is heard now in the accounts/finance department, in the management reports, in the shareholder reports, or you accept the change by not acting.

If it takes them until cataclysm to change their mind and your account has been inactive, what have you lost?

Nothing!

You are $15 per month better off – go to the movies, play another game, whatever.

Your characters, achievements etc are all there, just waiting for the day that Blizzard wakes up from this nightmare.

Too little, too late

We didn’t protest the introduction of RealID strongly enough.

Now we have the creep.

How much creep can you handle before you quit, or can you stop the creep now and enjoy all of Blizzard products, present and future?

Snowy and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/08/my-realid/