said by CapinPete :

Valve has its own content servers so you never upload anything.

said by CapinPete :

What Blizzard did is BS. The function should have been disabled by default, not the other way around. It's unfortunate that these companies get away with things like this because your average joe doesn't have a clue to what's going on.

said by Grethor :

Have fun watching TV.

said by dadkins :

Don't care if it's this or Steam... It's garbage!

Let *ME* download/upload if *I* choose.
Let me play my games how and when I wish!

Another Lost Sale...

EDIT: Typo

said by bradleym :

You CAN'T disable the piece of shit as indicated in the FAQ from Blizzard. You can uncheck the boxes, but they re-check themselves when you close the app.

said by G_Poobah :

So, one day, some middle level manager, whose not smart enough to code, but not crafty enough to avoid doing work, comes up with this new idea. "Why should Blizzard pay for bandwidth, when we can make our customers do it!"

So he makes up a big fancy excel spreadsheet, calculating the cost savings with this new 'viral' feature they will roll out. The numbers look good, and there could be a bonus in it for this manager! He makes up a big powerpoint presentation, schedules the conference room, gathers up the bean counters and the clueless suits, and makes his pitch. It's a HIT! "Wow, we'll save all this money doing it this way!" shout the bean counters. "Bigger bonuses for us!" cry the suits. "It's a feature" yells the marketing dweeb. And so it is done.

The problem is that none of the customers signed up for this. See, part of the cost of the subscription price includes download the patch. In fact, they aren't even FREE patches, you have to pay every month to get them. So, as the customer, what execatly do I GAIN from having this virus run on my system. It doesn't matter if it's only using 1kb or 10mb or my pipe, I didn't sign up for it, and I don't want it.

Blizzard made the classic mistake of letting a middle manager set policy. Saving money isn't the best way to increase profits, if you piss people off. They can't let 'greed' be the defining force of their company, otherwise they will end up like SOE, and we've all seen how well that works out.

Solution: Fire the manager who came up with the idea, and punish everyone who approved it. Then, make an OFFER to your customers, say, $1.00 off your subscription if you agree to upload 100MB of data or something like that. Make it so the savings of this idea are passed on to customers who WANT the savings, not to the middle managers bonus, or the clueless suits new porshe. Pissing off customers is a bad idea, and unless you are a monopoloy like verizon or comcrap, the net result from the negative publicity far outweighs any savings you may get.

said by Cheese :

1. You are paying a monthly fee for your account, not patches.

said by AthlGrond :

How can you use your account without the patches?

said by Cheese :

Not all patches will prevent you from playing

said by AthlGrond :

LOL, all the MMOs that I've ever seen require you to be on the current version or you don't get to play.

I agree that they are under no obligation to provide the bandwidth to get you the patch, so long as you can get it somehow.

And so far as I know they are operating the only MMO that does NOT provide you with the downloads themselves. I can laugh: I'm not playing.

said by Cheese :

Technically, they are not under any obligation to provide you with a patch. They already provided you with what you paid for which is the game.

said by FiL :

Oh man, your name implies a lot, your a cheesy ass dude! Go home...lol

My question though is, since when did updating a game became so friggin hard?!

Consolidating the update process with the game authentication is BS. Steam is garbage, but they make it seem like "all you gotta do is get Steam, and play ya heart out!" The updates through the client are GARBAGE, so damn slow, I'd love to be able to find MY OWN links to the patches and crap, but cant. Not even having a phone system for a user to authenticate his/her disc is also BS. Lots of people still don't have constant net connections, but EVERYONE'S barraged with Half Life 2 ads/reviews/conversations about how great and revolutionary the game is, and you gotta play it. But without the internet connection, you SOL.

To me, that's just plain and simple, retarded-ness. If it weren't for the crappy download speeds and Steam updating itself constantly without your permission, I'd have no problems!

Internet Authentication servers are a FAD, Steam and a handful of other dev's only use it, its not industry wide- though their are thousands of authentication schemes out there, I'm glad my Doom's, Unreal's, and the such don't force me to log onto to THEIR servers, do what THEY want me to do for em, THEN be able to play. BS altogether.

"Steam is a manager. You can't play the game without it. Screw that"
Very true Dadkins, forgot about that lil kink in the system. I said once and I'll continue saying it again, STEAMS GAHHHHBAGE!

said by dadkins :

Sorry friend, but you just pointed out what I don't like about managers.

If I wanted to, I could purchase a game online without a manager.

quote:

---

Plus, it pre-caches the game so the day it's released, you buy, get your key, unlock it and it's already on your computer, nothing to install.

---

PASS!

No offense intended Cheese, but that's not for me! Steam/Blizzard/whomever... No Thanks.

said by Azio :

People already bitch incessantly about the downtime and lag on WoW -- can you imagine how bad it would be if Blizzard wasn't using BT to distribute their patches? Personally I don't mind if it's using up a little bit more of my bandwidth as I play to make sure everyone gets patched. As long as it doesn't run when WoW is closed and it doesn't use up so much bandwidth that it interferes with the game itself, I don't see what the problem is.