GuildCom

First thing first, ladies and gentlemen: you must all be aware of the fact that his honor the Reverend Bishop of CenCom owns not one…

Not two…

Not three…

Not. Even. Four.

Five.

The honorable Reverend Bishop of CenCom owns now five copies of Tom Clancy’s Raven Shield,not counting the expansion packs he may or may not admit to having purchased—or any of the copies that have been stolen and/or permanently borrowed by his immediate blood relatives. These were all published, sometime near the beginning of the millennium, by Ubisoft, a publisher which has now achieved a tie for first place on the Reverend Bishop’s shit list, right up there with Activision-Blizzard.

Now hear this, Ubisoft: I used to buy your products in unreasonable quantities—but no more.

R.U.S.E. (from hereon called just Ruse) is a very fun little strategy game. Quick to learn. Dare I say “easy”? But with a lot of potential for depth that, to be quite honest, I was excited to explore as I first began playing when the public beta opened on Steam on March 9, 2010, just a day ago now. It reminded me of another game with a similar spirit, which I have long wanted to see remade (but my love affair with Ruthless.com is a story for another day—and, oddly, I own only a single copy of that /tears).

But it isn’t all just a bed of roses. As my comrade in the East dutifully pointed out after some of our initial enchantment had worn off, Ubisoft intends to publish this little gem with the same sort of [censored] DRM as Assassin’s Creed II, which has recently become famous for being unplayable whenever Ubisoft’s DRM servers happen to be unavailable. This might be an important note, actually: the honorable Reverend Bishop knows nothing at all about Assassin’s Creed II other than the fact that it doesn’t work when the retarded servers are down. Is this really the sort of publicity a publisher is looking for?

…At any rate, those of you who follow the teachings of the Bishop are aware that I recently decided that I would never, for any system, purchase Modern Warfare 2, as the price tag for the PC version of that game is simply beyond the pale and I am not ready to start plunking down that kind of change for a game, no matter how well hyped. It was a painful decision, most especially as some of my good friends play that game and I felt I might have been missing out on something. This decision, however, is less so:

Unless they mend their evil ways, I will never purchase another game published by Ubisoft.

I reserve the right to purchase games with retarded digital rights mechanisms should the desire take me. However, when April 9, 2010 rolls around and the Ruse beta closes, I will uninstall the game, happy for the diversion it offered, forget about it entirely. “Voting with my money” may not have sent Activision-Blizzard quite the message I intended when Modern Warfare 2 broke all kinds of sales records, but hopefully, eventually, enough people will follow along that these giants of the gaming industry will start to leave the PC out of their plans in the future. These publishers assert that PC gaming is dying a little every day anyway, and I would just as soon be dead to them.

Lord knows, these assholes are already dead to me.

Thus sayeth the honorable Reverend Bishop. As it has been written, let it be done. And I hope you moneygrubbing dicks rot in Hell in the same hot tub with Janet Reno and the guy who invented instant breakfast.

Afterword:

My Eastern comrade and I have remarked more than once in recent times that it is a sad day when Electronic Arts can garner more appreciation from gamers than… Well, anybody, actually. With a tradition of yearly sports game rebuys franchises and a habit of committing obscene evils on the DRM front, Electronic Arts once represented all that we hated about the people whose children we unwittingly, sometimes unwillingly, and almost always unfailingly, feed.

In light of recent reversals in the industry, by the power invested in me by the State of Texas and the Guild Investing Committee, I hereby declare that EA being less evil than the competition is the norm rather than the exception. You may now rejoice.

I found this while looking for something else altogether, and thought I’d share.  Microsoft crafted a quality product guide for Windows 7 that discusses (in pretty good detail) many of the new features and such of Microsoft’s shiny new OS.  Quite handy if you’re new to Windows 7 and haven’t been using beta versions of it for the last 6+ months like Bishop and I have.  The overview on the download page sums it up nicely:

The Windows 7 Product Guide provides a detailed look at the many new and improved features in Windows 7. The guide is designed as an accurate source of information that can help you to understand how Windows 7 Simplifies Everyday Tasks, Works the Way You Want, and Makes New Things Possible. The guide is also designed to provide IT Professionals with information about how to Make People Productive Anywhere, Manage Risk Through Enhanced Security and Control, and Reduce Costs by Streamlining PC Management. This is not a help and how to guide. Rather, it provides an overview of the many exciting features in Windows 7 and pointers to more information. The Windows 7 Product Guide is available in both XPS and PDF formats.

About two years and nine months ago, Microsoft released the much-maligned Windows Vista.  I didn’t start using it until nearly a year after it’s release (just a couple of months before Service Pack 1 was released, in fact), and didn’t go to using it full-time until a few months after.  For the most part, Vista ran problem-free for me, and I generally liked Microsoft’s newest OS.  I did have a few problems scattered throughout my year of full-time use (and some before I started using Vista full-time).  in fact, I’ve probably written about some of them here (just checked:  I have, namely the infamous The Long Week & The Longer Post article, which detailed many days of frustration of Games for Windows Live not working…and leading me to discover my .Net Framework was borked.).  There was also the time when Service Pack 1 was first released, I couldn’t get it to install (that was finally fixed by a reformat).  And there’s always little things like video drivers going apeshit and such, but that’s not unique to Vista anyways. 

For the most part, though, I liked Windows Vista, Read more…

While looking on Steam yesterday, I saw that LucasArts has *finally* made available the original  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in the Steam store.  And as a reasonable price of $10, no less.  Even though I still have my beloved KotOR disks sitting upon my shelf, I was happy to see the game on Steam. 

Too bad that as of this writing, the old widescreen hacks from the retail version don’t work on the Steam version from what I hear.  Hopefully, that will change soon.  Still, other than that, it seems a pretty solid deal.

Reactions across the web have been mixed at the news that id Software has been purchased by Zenimax, the privately-held company that owns Bethesda Softworks.

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When you bring in a bunch of amateurs to determine the outcome in a case, ok–that’s kind of fair. When you let them determine the punishment, though, with a range from $750 to $80,000 a pop? It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s stupid.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jammie-thomas-retrial-verdict.ars

The jury in the Jammie Thomas retrial just awarded the RIAA 1.92 million dollars in damages. Yeah, “In this world, the bad guys can win!” Impressive, isn’t it? Or just ludicrous. Microsoft isn’t asking that much in its suit against a company that defrauded Microsoft and company of 1.5 million in actual damages (whereas there is debate about whether or not p2p sharing even involves fiscal “damages”).

Given the judicial system’s recent track record when it comes to exasperated commentary online (you know–the repeated attempts to find out who anonymous posters are and then try them for some criminal offense or other as a result of their comments on forums and blogs), I suppose I should be more careful, lest someone with no spine and no sense of humor mistake what I’m about to say for an actual physical threat…

But that jury can go fuck itself. They should be dragged into the streat and beaten, then pilloried for a day while they think about the fact that 1.92 million dollars is more than they’ll make in their entire, miserable lives, unless they actually come up with a for-profit piracy scheme. It’s too bad they can’t take a hint from Thomas in that case; she didn’t make a dime.

I was just re-installing my trusty copy of DOOM Collector’s Edition(the purchase itself was two-thirds redundant, as I already owned Ultimate Doom and Doom II’s Win95 versions…but I wanted Final Doom, damnit!  So anyways…), which does still work on Windows Vista 64-bit amazingly enough, and I saw the minimum requirements for Doom, and it made me laugh as its a reminder of how far we have come.
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My Exalted Lightbringer (I call him that now because of my new commitment to develop a deep and personal relationship with Our Great Black Savior, seeking to become more in touch with him each day) wants to care for all of us, and he will, to, if only we will let him. He can cut taxes and spend more money on health care, at the same time. He shits dollars.

But what if he does?

Dad had another heart-thingy  and had to go down to the Amarillo Heart Group or whatever it’s called. Last time around, we spoke with a Doctor Hadad. No idea where he’s from, but he speaks English with a very thick Indian/Sri Lankan accent. This time around, we talked with a guy from Belgium. He sounded French to me, but what the hell do I know? His name was Moreau.

Mom listed off six doctors who work with NWTHS (the hospital there) from six different countries — and none of those countries was "The United States." All are from countries with socialized health care.I wonder if there might be a pattern here that my Exalted Lightbringer is missing. Maybe this is why our health care is so bad? Other countries send all their worst doctors to us!

I’ll include this in my next fan letter to my Exalted Lightbringer. Maybe he can put it on his Exalted Teleprompter to talk about next time some heathern expresses some doubt about his Exalted Plan. If we implement a national health care system, all the bad doctors will go back home!

Jeezus.

Sources:  http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2727
             http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1006

Despite Microsoft always claiming the target release for Windows 7 was to be “three years after Windows Vista”, which would be Jan. 2010, we all have known it would come out sometime in the second half of 2009.  It had to.  Looking back to when Windows Vista was released, Vista sales suffered from missing the always-lucrative back-to-school and holiday seasons.

Now, Microsoft is saying Windows 7 *will* release in 2009, specifically in time for the holiday season this year.  No specific dates have been given yet, not even a month of release.  And while it remains unclear of whether Windows 7 will release in time for the back-to-school crowd (August/September), having it in time for the holiday shopping season this year is a good thing.  A new version of Windows generally means increased PC sales (particularly during the holiday season), which is something that would be quite welcome in our current economic state.

Personally, I’ll be keeping an eye out for more specific release dates and details, since Windows 7 is the second thing on my computer updates list (trailing a new video card, which is sorely needed…).

There has been significant debate, lately, amongst members of the Triumvirate, about how the Guild’s "defense" (a sure misnomer) budget be spent.

As a matter of fact, there has been some suggestion that we rename the defense budget "War Budget," as — particularly in Central — we almost never employ these funds for defense. We never fight a conventional war, though, either… perhaps "war chest" would be the most sensible moniker?

Following a tragic snafu in the budget process, significant funds earmarked for CenCom were appropriated by East Command to update their weaponry. The official excuse given by Scorpio, long-time member of the Triumvirate and current head of operations in the East Sector, is that they needed the extra money to protect against border incursions from the west, given CenCom’s recent failure to roll out a "critical" software update in our security networks.

In a word: bollocks.

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