Monthly Archives: April 2012

Playing many games, casually.

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I’m in that happy state where I get to play many games. World of Warcraft has taken a significant backseat due to real life events, and along with that I’ve chosen to look into the MoP Beta and the Diablo 3 Beta. The odd distracting iphone game gets a look too.

Playing of the big three games very briefly and casually is actually more satisfying in the short term than trying to play one game solidly. Initially I would doubt that to be true. In a nutshell I think being moderate has pushed my expectations, and I now find the small elements of fun amongst a range of games. For now its working. I am looking forward to the official release of Diablo so that I can see the full content and play online with some friends that it is hard to hook up with in other games. I would still like to get SWToR loaded and play that in the future when my PC has been upgraded, as the content was impressive enough that I think it will be a fantastic distraction.

There is also a set of play-by-post tabletop RPG games that distract me, and between them, the healthy posts from the players, and the rest of life short stint gaming is still working. So for now a quick 15 to 30 minute session will do, with much gnashing, power-ups, and gear to be swindled from the nefarious foes.

Happy gaming folks.

Cryptic Accounts Compromised

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cryptic logoCryptic tell me via email today that my password and some user credentials might have been compromised.

Eff’ing what?

“The unauthorized access included user account names, handles, and encrypted passwords for those accounts. Even though the passwords were encrypted, it is apparent that the intruder has been able to crack some portion of the passwords in this database.

All accounts that we believe were present in the database have had the passwords reset, and customers registered to these accounts have been notified via e-mail of this incident.”

I want details, more detail than they supplied. It is a huge concern when the gaming market is going for micro-transactions, and those accounts can store credit cards, especially for inactive games. This event apparently only directly relates to Star Trek Online and Champions Online, but any breach is serious.

Cryptic are doing the right thing by owning up to it, and making channels available to the community affected. They’re doing the minimum right thing. But sheesh Cryptic – how many times has this happened to game companies in the past, and why is it so ungodly difficult to establish a secure database system? Continue reading →

Diablo Beta thoughts

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After completing the Diablo Beta I have some thoughts.

ImageIt is a good game, and feels basically ready. I’m looking forward to it. In the Beta test I played a Barbarian almost through to the end, and a Wizard through to completion. I’ll go back and try the other classes now, but probably not play them right through, as I want to also play them when the game is actually live.

Play-style wise I’d recommend that every player try each class; they really play differently. Music was nice, sound effects, nice, and the few special encounters and scenes I saw (Sword of Leoric) were really nice. Well done Blizzard. Continue reading →