Darryl Woodford

I have a couple of more personal entries, plus some thoughts on the Eve PLEX changes to come, but for now some quick items that I added to my ‘To Blog’ list, but never actually got around to:

From CNN, ‘Want to sound like a world cup expert?’, confirming everything we ever thought about Americans This article included such gems as:

Phrases to impress your boss

“The referee’s blind!”
An excellent phrase to insert when those around you lament a goal that “never was,” a clear handball or a murderous foul not spotted by the official.

“There’s a case for video technology”
Following your previous observation about the referee’s eyesight, join the calls for video replays to help him make the right decision.

“He’s got two left feet”
As frustration grows with one hapless player in particular, make sure you aren’t left out.

via CNN

Fangraphs, which is one of a growing number of sabermetric (mathematical/statistical study of baseball) sites around the web, picked up on a MLB plan to sell what amount to Playoff Ticket Futures — you pay a fee now to have the right to buy a ticket to playoff games down the road. The Math looks a little like this:

Ok, so should you take part in this program? First, answer these questions: would you like to see a playoff game? Is it worth it to pay above the face value of the ticket to ensure you can go? If so, by how much? That is how much more than face value would you be willing to pay for a given game, assuming that game were to take place. Let’s call that amount, x. Now assuming the probability of the game taking place is p, the the value of the option is:

Value = (1-p)*0 + p*x

Say you are thinking of buying the option to see Game One of the Rangers’ potential ALDS. If they make the playoffs at all this game will happen, and using BPro’s playoff odds they are 82.9% to make the playoffs. So you should buy the option if:

0.829x > 10

x > $12.06

Would you pay the face value of the ticket plus $12.06 to see the Rangers play Games One or Three in Arlington of a ALDS? If so, and you have faith in BPro’s playoff odds, you should buy this $10 option now. Seventeen percent of the time it will be worthless, but 83% of the time you will have something you value at over $12.06.

via Fangraphs.com

The highlight is that the break-even price to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series is somewhere in the region of $400 million, yet you can be sure somebody will buy that option. For the Angels it’s about $400, which is probably only indicative of the fact we are struggling with an outside shot this year.

And a couple of randoms from Richard Bartle’s blog, who seems to have fallen for the same airline fail as was inflicted upon me on my journey from London to Singapore earlier this year, getting this as a seat:

via QBlog

Also worth visiting is his photo gallery from Leipzig, where he was speaking at Games Convention Online (where I was speaking this time last year), some good memories there, but what sparked my memory was this one of the station (where I caught trains to/from Berlin):

via QBlog

There’s a really awesome sausage shop below that station, where I stocked up on a ton of Saucisson and Black Pudding to take back to Denmark, where the only thing that resembled a sausage was bright red and revolting.

Blizzard have reconsidered, unsurprisingly. Though they are still sticking with, and don’t address, the in-game concerns discussed here previously.

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. 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.

via World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> Open Letter: Real Names on Blizzard Forums

Oh, and the Cleveland Cavs owner committed one other faux pas I didn’t pick up on last night; via CNN:

Dear computer users: If you’re ever going to write a fuming letter, think twice before setting the font to the oh-so-mockable Comic Sans.

Take it from Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the NBA team that lost its star basketball player, LeBron James, on Thursday night.

After Gilbert posted a rant — in the cutesy Comic Sans typeface — about James’ departure on NBA.com, bloggers, newspaper writers and Twitter pundits lashed back with a collective message that essentially said this:

Unless you’re a fourth-grader, or being ironic, or the author of a comic book, or on vacation from the 1990s, never use that typeface.

via Cavs owner’s letter mocked for Comic Sans font – CNN.com.

Sorry, but this is simply unprofessional, and my guarantee is it will come back to haunt him…

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his “decision” unlike anything ever “witnessed” in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

[...]

You simply don’t deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.

You have given so much and deserve so much more.

In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:

“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”

via Cavaliers: Open Letter to Fans from Cavaliers Majority Owner Dan Gilbert.

This update brought to you from my travels, so I apologise for any typos in advance.

So Blizzard are now making it so instead of showing your character on those forums, it’ll instead show your real name with the option of attaching your char name too it (no option of not showing your real name).

Now I think it’s fairly safe to say that this is perhaps the dumbest idea that anyone has ever had ever.

To alleviate people’s concerns, Blizzard employee Bashiok decided to say his real name on the forums, his real name is Micah Whipple

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374892&sid=1&pageNo=1 Post #16

So say hi to Micah Whipple

via WoW Riot | WotLK, Wrath of the Lich King, WoW, World of Warcraft, Arena Season 5.

I’m not going to publish his details here, but suffice to say just about every detail of his (and several other Micah Whipple’s) life was made public.

The background issue here though is one of privacy. From what I understand in addition to this implementation on the forums, they also have an in-game/in-world implementation of RealID, which allows you to see the real names of your game friends, and (importantly) friends of friends. Now we all know how well that went down with facebook users.

It seems the idea behind this, and one that Eve have also championed with EveGate, is a desire to create a social network around their player base. This is an attempt to compete with the social element of facebook games, and presumably to keep their players tied to paying a subscription to maintain their social network, rather than using something like Facebook which, for all its faults, is currently free. I happen to think it’s a futile attempt for much the same reasons as I have discussed here before, there’s too much social capital invested in Facebook even for somebody of the budget of Blizzard to compete. Even Google is a long shot I think..

Blizzard responded thus:

“I should point out that showing a real first and last name doesn’t provide any one the right to then seek out additional information on that name and post it here. That has been and will continue to be a violation of the forum code of conduct, and so bans and what have you are incoming. Fair warning. 

That’s just a blanket rule that applies to everyone.”

Which is all well and good, but doesn’t excuse them from the initial privacy violation. What is to stop somebody engaged in an in-game or forum dispute with another player looking up their personal information and then publishing it on their blog, on a guild forum (for harassment purposes) or on one of the many unofficial WoW sites. In all those examples, Blizzard are enabling the harassment, and at the very least are opening themselves up to bad press.

The initial idea of allowing players to connect with each other isn’t horrible (a friend offered the example of connecting with people he used to play with that are now on different servers etc), but why they are relying on real name, as opposed to some non-character tied username I don’t understand.