Monthly Archives: February 2006

Vansites at Vanfest

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The World of Warcraft forums were DEAD, no drama to be found in the obvious places, so I stopped by Vanguard to see what they’re up to lately. Maybe it’s time to put down my money (no) or there’s a “TODAY ONLY, FREE BETA ACCESS FOR EVERYONE” type thing (no). The news page is chock full o’ info about their recent Fanguard, however, the latest fan event for a game that isn’t released yet.

I think if you’re a fan of something that isn’t available, that right there is the very definition of fanboi — real similar to buying tickets for the midnight showing of the newest Harry Potter movie.

This project — and it’s just a project until it’s almost go-time as far as I’m concerned — has so much goodwill, even I am amazed. We’re talking more goodwill than pre-release World of Warcraft. Incredible.

Anyways, I saw that The Safehouse has a vansite writeup of the vanfest which includes photos (score!). Crimony, after checking their front page, I think it’s safe to say that they’re fully committed to this Vanguard project: 15 of 20 front page items are vancentric.

That is going to be a shame when the goodwill runs low and people start to turn against the game, as we always do.

I’m keeping my expectations and my goodwill low. Pleasantly surprised is so much better than abysmally disappointed.

World of Warcraft Bot

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Follow the misadventures, the triumphs and the account bannings of the World of Warcraft Bot. The bot is about to begin Round 3, after 2 unfortunate bannings, and you can watch the fun on a live game cam (down as of this writing while they make adjustments to mask the bot’s identity and server). From the intro: “Confessions and exploitations of a World of Warcraft Botter. I show how it’s done, how much gold you can make and how you can powerlevel your own characters.” This is kind of like watching some dude on the freeway in a high-speed chase — will he crash? will he escape? will he /rude the news copters?

You Buy Freedom of Information, 1 G?

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Oh noes! Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, et al are in bed with the Chinese government! I’d say this was shocking, but that’s kinda what whores do — they spend a lot of time in bed for money. That’s not shocking.

New York Times: Online Firms Facing Questions About Censoring Internet Searches in China
CNN: Yahoo! accused of helping Chinese jail dissident
Reuter’s: Fresh US outrage at Yahoo ahead of China hearings
Wired: Tech’s China Policy a ‘Disgrace’

Same material in all of those links, but some might not think the NYT is as esteemed as others do. *cough*

All this got me to thinking, maybe I’m not doing all I can to aid freedom of information. I interact with more than a few Chinese citizens during the week while in World of Warcraft, how can I help them access information they might be denied (thanks to Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, apparently).

So the next time someone hails me in game with “Ni Hao”, instead of replying with my standard “sorry, English only”, I’m going to have a few of the taboo materials handy so I can pass along some fun facts to my Chinese servermate.

Wikipedia’s Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 — Fun fact: Estimated citizen casualties range from the CIA’s 400 (ya, like they’d know) to the Red Cross’s 2,600.

Falun Gong — Fun fact: The Chinese government criminalized Falun Gong after a 10,000 man protest gathered outside the headquarters for the Chinese Communist Party. Man, what is with the Chinese government hating protests so much? Are they that inconvenienced by traffic jams?

Tibet — Fun fact: I know one thing the Chinese government hates more than traffic jams is cocktail party chat about Tibet. Here’s another fun fact, that link is flagged by Wikipedia as possibly not conforming to a neutral point of view. (wtf?) I imagine not many Chinese citizens are participating in that Wikipedia debate so that’s going to be a tough argument to resolve in the name of neutrality.

If you’d like to help your Chinese servermates access the information they desire, I found this article, reprinted from Forbes.com, discussing Chinese censored material, or you can check the entire Google News search, which I WILL ASSUME IS COMPLETE for an American IP.

I could be wrong on that, though.