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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard 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 2 of 4)
MackFearson Aug 1st 2009 7:53PM
Not having anything to hide is not a valid reason to allow your privacy invaded. People like you are the same morons who supported the Patriot Act because "you have nothing to hide". Congrats on greasing the slippery slope, idiot.
usagizero Aug 1st 2009 8:51PM
Comparing this to the patriot act is a huge stretch. Blizzard isn't the government, no one is forcing you to submit the info (you agreed to it when you clicked the agreement in the terms and conditions). Don't like it, don't play.
chipersoft Aug 2nd 2009 12:47AM
There's a HUGE difference between knowing how much memory a computer has and getting a complete report on all your individual spending habits and putting wiretaps on your phone lines.
mibluvr13 Aug 2nd 2009 1:46AM
Wow, Mack, way to freak out about something perfectly reasonable. Blizzard is not recording all your porn folders. OH BUT THEY COULD. Yes, it could happen, but in this world, they would most likely be caught and exposed. We have to assume they do what they say they do and for the most part, you can rest assured that they are. What benefit would it be to them to violate your privacy?
OH NOES THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU.
Honestly, I think the majority of privacy fears falsely assumes that someone other than you cares at all what you do with your life.
Endless Aug 2nd 2009 5:19AM
@mibluvr13
Of course, nobody cares about your life. They'll let you do your petty things, solve your petty affairs and stuff... while patiently recording everything. Then, one day, you'll stop keeping low profile - for instance, you decide to stand for a mayor, or you start complaining too vocally about some new law that concerns you. And all of sudden, you're in spotlight. All those petty things they've been recording may - and will - be used against you.
Doesn't matter if your conscience is clean. They -will- dig something in their records. That's why the modern laws are so complex: to make sure that -nobody- is innocent and that -everybody- can be persecuted if the need arises.
airman_dopey Aug 2nd 2009 7:37AM
Wow, am I the only one that realizes what MackFearson was getting at? No, he was not comparing Blizzard's choice to read your system info to the Patriot Act. And no, it has nothing to do with them "recording everything so that when you do whatever they may and will" use the information against you. It's about setting a precedent. You don't want to give someone the authority to do something, because it is not easy to undo it when you don't want them to do it anymore.
I fully realize that this is starting to go off-topic, and down-rank it if you want, but don't talk about something you don't understand. It just makes you look stupid.
Amaxe Aug 2nd 2009 9:11AM
@MackFearson
You do realize that "The Slippery Slope" as an argument is a logical fallacy, don't you?
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html
@All
Blizz' spying is nothing new. As I recall according to the EULA they run a program ("Warden") to check if you are using cheat programs. They've run it in the past. I've seen it in Vanilla and TBC: a box saying they are checking "non-personal" information.
So while I can understand the concern over what they are going to do with it, concern *NOW* is a little late, isn't it?
Alex Aug 1st 2009 6:45PM
Maybe a slight incremental update just like Wrath and TBC, but i think it's more likely to be testing for the unnanounced MMO. If they're hoping for as wide an adoption rate, it'd make sense to poll their existing customers. Diablo III and SC2's graphics engines are too far along now. The new MMO is probably just now in the blueprint stages. Identifying the exact specs of their target audience is an incredibly useful tool.
Daniel Aug 1st 2009 7:27PM
I will never, for the life of me, comprehend why so many people think that Blizzard employees are a herd of cannibals. If Blizzard has more than a scintilla of brains in their heads (and they do) they will make sure the their next MMO does everything possible to not draw players from WoW. Why would you kill the golden goose just for a chance on getting lightening in the bottle twice? It is pure stupid.
In short, I cannot imagine why, under any conceivable set of circumstances, Blizzard would want a high adoption rate from the current player base. Whatever their reasons for doing this test, that is most implausible explanation out there.
theRaptor Aug 1st 2009 7:45PM
@Daniel
Blizzards target audience is "people with computers that can play games more complex than flash". The current player base is a fairly good sampling of them.
And yes I do think Blizzard want to capture current and former WoW players. Everything gets stale after a while and by the time the new MMO comes out WoW will probably be looking very sad indeed. Seriously go look at Everquest, even if Blizzard keep doing incremental upgrades one day WoW will be that bad in comparison. And the cost of re-doing all the current graphical content in "modern" standards will cost more than creating them in the first place did.
WoW will peak and people will increasingly drift to other MMO's (though I doubt anything will either be as dominate as WoW has been). Expecting Blizzard to just keep tweaking WoW is like expecting them to just keep tweaking Diablo II and StarCraft instead of releasing new versions (they did that for a lot of years).
Daniel Aug 1st 2009 7:54PM
@theRaptor. There is a huge difference between another MMO and WoW II. Everything I have heard from Blizzard is that there next generation mmo is not WoW II. I agree that one day the graphics will get bad. But there is nothing stopping Blizzard from doing WoW II and just porting characters over. Easy as pie.
Whatever the graphics requirements for WoW II are this survey assuredly has nothing to do with that.
"Everything gets stale" is probably the most stale thinking there is. Companies like GE have been around for 100s of years. The automobile is 100s of years old and still going strong. There is simply no reason that our grandchildren could not be playing our characters in WoW XX. Anybody who thinks differently has a stale mind.
Alex Aug 1st 2009 8:36PM
@Daniel: We know that Bliz is putting out a new MMO. We also know Blizz has (pretty much) unfettered access to the technical specs of the largest MMO out there currently.
Why, again, wouldn't they use that to their advantage?
I'm not saying that they're sitting somewhere going "oh thank god, we can finally end wow and start a new thing." But to have this broad level of data - which I am sure they are tracking against previous collection volleys, to see how the playerbase upgrades over time - gives them a baseline. And they'll do another one next year. and the year after that. And they'll say, "okay, the playerbase we want to get generally has tech that is X old, they upgrade Y pieces year over year, here's what we can do with this engine."
obarthelemy Aug 2nd 2009 4:31AM
I just upgraded from a 6600GT (1024x768, everything a low as it could go, and still iffy for raids @25) to a 4850, on a much bigger screen.
The game is a bit prettier, but pretty much the same. I don't really care about eye candy. The extra FPS come handy though.
max Aug 1st 2009 7:00PM
I would LOVE a free month right now. Lets see what we can do about that?
tom99k Aug 1st 2009 7:08PM
A free month 'ey... surely some genius can come up with a fantastic reason, hopefully involving Jet Ski's and Arthas' hidden pation for baby Panda's (I have proof!)
Attila Aug 1st 2009 7:16PM
WHERE'S MY TIN FOIL HAT??
Viper007Bond Aug 1st 2009 7:20PM
I'm actually REALLY glad they're doing this. Hopefully the results will come back that everyone has upgraded their PC since the game first came out and that it's time to push the engine quite a bit, or maybe even make a backwards compatible new engine that they can plop all the models into or something. Something's gotta be done though as the current engine really shows it's age in terms of FPS and looks.
theRaptor Aug 1st 2009 7:52PM
Do you know what a game engine is? The engine has been upgraded multiple times and has been upgraded in Wrath. But an engine only renders models and textures and can't make a low-poly model from 2004 look like something made for the Unreal 3 engine. They have upgraded the ability of the engine to process textures and do shadows and lots of neat graphical effects, but they can't change the fact that a large chunk of content was developed during the beginning of the decade and it is now the end of the decade (and it wasn't graphically complex at release).
Viper007Bond Aug 1st 2009 9:24PM
Yes, that's my point -- it's been upgraded rather than replaced.
And yes, I realize a new engine wouldn't make Azeroth look awesome, but it could allow the next zone to look badass (there's only so much the current engine can do, upgrades or not).
Clarick Aug 1st 2009 7:25PM
OMG...A software company collecting information. If they didn't do this the game would suck performance wise.