Blizzard is spying on you again
by Eliah Hecht 
Aug 1st 2009 at 6:00PM
People who put way too much energy into watching the flickering messages that scroll past when you log in to WoW, as well as people with slow connections, may be familiar with the message "Submitting non-personal system information." Basically, Blizzard wants to know things like what kind of CPU and GPU you're running on and how much RAM and VRAM you have.
Aguilar (who?) has made a blue post letting us know that they're going to start another round of collecting such data "in the very near future." If you're not on a Battle.net account yet, you'll see that message about non-personal information. Battle.net users, however, won't see the message, but they will be sending info up the line.
Yet another in a long line of injustices for us B.net account holders: no flickering message! I demand a free month of WoW in compensation.
Filed under: Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Bfree380 Aug 1st 2009 6:04PM
I've got a Battle.net account and I am seeing the message :/
Urza Aug 1st 2009 10:56PM
I think he's referring to a message when the data is being sent.
RetPallyJil Aug 1st 2009 6:10PM
Who cares?
The only thing different here is that Blizzard is being honest about it.
Xirifus Aug 1st 2009 7:22PM
This comment deserves one cookie.
Knob Aug 1st 2009 6:13PM
Damn, that spy image brings back memories.
Volaro Aug 1st 2009 6:17PM
Maybe checking the comp data we're running to see how much they can do with the next expansion..?
Sindragosa Aug 1st 2009 6:23PM
Most likely. Or perhaps checking the feasablity(sp?) of overhauling the graphics engine.
Omega2k3 Aug 2nd 2009 7:39AM
These.
Valve does this with all their games, and personally, I think it's awesome. Do you honestly care what Blizz knows about your computer's specs?
GG BLIZZ WAY TO INVAED MY PRVIACY HURR
m_rydelis Aug 1st 2009 6:27PM
i smell x-pack or graphics overhaul
Craig R Aug 1st 2009 6:36PM
god we could use an overhaul.
Krick Aug 1st 2009 7:21PM
I really don't want the graphics to be any better or the requirements to be any higher.
I have a fairly decent machine and I STILL can't turn everything all the way up without having unplayable framerates...
3.4GHz Core2Duo
Nvidia Geforce 9800GT
4GB ram
500GB HDD
XP SP3
...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com/forum
Draenors Aug 1st 2009 7:56PM
I think I'll agree with Krick. I tested my old PC on the site www.SystemRequirementsLab.com (which compares your PC with the Blizzard's official requirement-info) and my PC was as far to the right of the scale as it could possibly be (which means that it was top-notch compared to Blizzard's recommended requirements). However, in the actual game, I still had relatively low fps and in "stressed situations" (raiding!) it was probably about 10-20 and could easily go below 10.My new PC is slightly better, but my fps is still fighting to stay above 30 most of the time, and I'm beginning to put my video-effects to "Lowest" when raiding.
I'm tempted to say that Blizzard's current recommended requirements should be changed to the minimum requirements! But of course, I suppose that they are simply assuming that a PC that can give you a decent amount of fps while standing in Desolace lives up to the requirements. If they had more realistic requirements, I suppose that they would get less customers, as people with mediocre PCs would be afraid to buy the game.
So if the game is getting better graphics, I think they should reduce the current system-requirements in some way. I previously read a comment on this site which argued that the current game-world is not build in a very "system-friendly" way - I believe his argument was that buildings and locations in WoW could have been designed in a way that wouldn't require so much from PCs and that other games used this technology. Another comment argued that the lag in Wintergrasp could be reduced by giving each class a default gear-look in the zone (because you probably don't care if the player you're fighting has Season 7 or Tier 7, at least not in a massive battle). Those, or similar ideas, seems like possibilities to reduce the current system-requirements and still improve the game-graphics.
mibluvr13 Aug 1st 2009 8:02PM
I'm running 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTS, 4 gb ram, and 286 HD on Vista (Win7 when I get around to it)... In other words, slightly worse than your rig and I get a solid 55 FPS with full graphics. That dips to 20-30 during raids, so I usually turn shadows off and get 40, maybe 20 in combat. Don't know what your issue is here.
Narshe Aug 1st 2009 9:24PM
I thought Ram for XP capped out at 2gb and anything over actually slowed it down.
ziggler Aug 1st 2009 10:19PM
xp as a "cap" at 3gb... doesnt really matter if you have more
jbodar Aug 1st 2009 11:06PM
@Narshe and ziggler
32-bit XP can benefit from more than 3 GB of RAM by using the /3gb switch in your boot.ini though that still only gets you 3 and change and poses its own issues. The 2 GB limit refers to 1 application consuming more than 2 GB by itself. More info here:
http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034
chipersoft Aug 2nd 2009 12:42AM
Believe it or not, this isn't a graphics issue. WoW is not a graphics intensive program, it's CPU intensive. All the processing that happens when handling the hundred or so people running around dalaran is a lot for most computers to handle. The same is true in many raid settings. There's a LOT of data being handled when 25 players are wailing on a bunch of targets, just watch your combat log in Everything mode.
Several months back I picked up an nVidia GTX 280, at the time it was one of the best cards available. The game looks absolutely gorgeous and I have the settings turned up to max. In old world content I often get well over 100fps, but in Dalaran it's usually around 15. The hangup is in my two year old Intel C2D E4500 2.2GHz CPU. WoW bends it over its knee and makes it squeal.
James Aug 2nd 2009 1:41AM
A larger issue as well are the shadows. Turn everything up but the shadows to max and you'll notice an immediate difference in dal, when i did that for my buddy his framerates doubled in dal. In org he'd get 18fps and after turning shadows two notches from max he got a constant 60 in all old-world content.
This is definitely just to get some information on the kinds of systems their userbase has so they know how far they can push graphics in the new content. I verywell doubt they'll overhaul old azeroth, at least in full, but for new content they're always trying to push a little more.
conker87 Aug 2nd 2009 9:12AM
I did that systems analysis thing, my computer failed - it seems it hasn't been updated for Windows 7 yet.
On the topic of graphics, it's true the shadows do absolutely kill your system if it's a medium spec one, so I suggest turning them off or just at one notch in.
Procyon Aug 1st 2009 6:43PM
This happens every time that message pops up. A bunch of conspiracy theorists pop out from their bunkers and claim that Blizz is somehow violating our human rights by gathering non identifying system information in order to improve the game that all of us enjoy. I could care less what Blizz gathers from me...I have nothing to hide....most of the nuts who throw a fit over this type of thing do....hence the fit.