Discordia

Protected: Wondrous Item 1

Drysk — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:00:24 +0000

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Filed under: gaming, Pathfinder Tagged: d&d, gaming, Pathfinder, rpg

Aion open beta is a con

Drysk — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:44:33 +0000

So, the open beta for the new Aion mmo from NCsoft launched today and I was excited to give it a whirl. What a terrible experience. To begin, the website instructs you to download the open beta client. No problem. You also have to create a master account with NCsoft. Again, no problem. After a lengthy download, install, update, patch, etc. process, I’m ready to play. I click launch. I notice a small window pop up in the upper left corner of my screen that reads “nProtect GameGuard”. I don’t remember reading anything about that but figure I’ll look it up later. After GameGuard finished updating I’m at the login screen. I enter my username and password. No luck. I try a few different times. Nada. I check the support page of the website and learn everything is case sensitive. Annoying but not big deal. I get a message saying invalid ID. Back to the support page. Then I read that you have to add a game account to your master account. Again annoying, but not too unreasonable. I go to the Game Accounts page and find that no accounts are listed. All right, how do I add a game? After some searching I find one page that allows you to input a serial number to activate a game account. However, nowhere on the site does it list how to activate the game for the open beta event. I finally decide to ditch the company’s unhelpful site and use my google-fu. I soon discovered that you do indeed need a serial key to participate in the open beta. Funny how the company’s own website doesn’t list that fact (that I found anyway). How does one acquire a beta key? That took some more googling. Finally, I run across a website selling beta keys. That’s right, selling…for an open beta. Surfing some more it seems only a limited number of keys were given away to different sites. It seems some sites operate on a first-come-first-serve registration basis, and others on a key-purchasing basis, such as seen here at mmogarden.com. It costs $5 to for a beta key that will last 1 week. For an unfinished beta. And if the finalized per-month subscription fee breaks down to $5/week, that’s $20/month. Yeah, I don’t think so. I decided to forget playing Aion, or any other NCsoft game after the overly-complex nightmare of trying to play the Aion beta, and just delete my account. Guess what? No info on the website on how to accomplish that–surprise, surprise. I used my google-fu skills, but to no avail. It seems there is no way to deactivate or cancel your account, just to let it linger in limbo for eternity. Lovely. And the final kicker? The GameGuard software is an invasive rootkit-like piece of software that “hides the game application process, monitors the entire memory range, terminates applications defined by the game vendor and INCA Internet to be cheats (QIP for example), blocks certain calls to DirectX functions and Windows APIs, and auto-updates itself to change as new threats surface.” (via Wikipedia) Here’s the rest:

“Because of its method of actuation (very similar to a rootkit^[4]), it is criticized for being extremely invasive, often without knowledge of the end user. The software installs a device driver which is difficult to uninstall; even uninstalling the game will still leave some files hidden on the system^[5], but it stays inactive without the game. Most anti-virus vendors currently exclude nProtect GameGuard from their detection databases due to it being commercial software, however this was initially not the case, leading to system crashes as both the Antivirus and GameGuard attempted to override each other. When installing a game that utilizes GameGuard, this program may be installed onto the client machine without the user’s authorization or permission.”

Screw Aion and screw NCsoft.

Posted in gaming Tagged: gaming, rant

An update

Drysk — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:32:47 +0000

I know no one reads this, but I haven’t updated in awhile so thought I’d post an update if for nothing more than to clear up the cobwebs. Working on a few things. Got a new story in the works, and a movie script after that.

Posted in Uncategorized

Street Fighter review

Drysk — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:45:41 +0000

Wrote up a quick review on the terrible Chun-li movie. Check it out here.

Posted in movie review

Friday the 13th (2009) Review

Drysk — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:47:52 +0000

Here‘s a quick review of the Friday the 13th remake.

Posted in movie review

Ghosts? In My Machine?

Drysk — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:35:35 +0000

Second story from my creative writing class is up. Go check it out here.

Posted in short story

Zombies!

Drysk — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:25:47 +0000

Posted the first short story I wrote for a creative writing class. Check it out here.

Posted in short story

(Eventually) 100 Books To Read Before You Die

Drysk — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:00:17 +0000

This list was inspired by the soul-wrenching Top 100 Books of All Time.

After weeping, I decided to put together my own list of the books that I consider great. A book series is treated as a single novel, as are short story collections. This list only includes books I have personally read. I’ll gradually add books to this list as I read them.

100 Books To Read Before You Die

Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
1984
Gulliver’s Travels
Slaughterhouse-Five
Lolita
Annotated Alice
Dracula
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Ender’s Game
Demon-Haunted World
Welcome to the Monkey House
The Things They Carried
The Great Gatsby
Lord of the Flies
Harry Potter series
It
East of Eden
Invitation to a Beheading
Fahrenheit 451
Cannery Row
Going Postal
Night Watch
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
I, Asimov
Foundation Series
Robot Series
The God Delusion
If Chins Could Kill
The Great and Secret Show
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
High Cotton
Bumper Crop
Flowers for Algernon
Frankenstein
At the Mountains of Madness
Contact
Bridge to Terabithia
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Canterbury Tales
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Crucible
Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The Time Machine
War of the Worlds
Dracula
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Dark Tower series
His Dark Materials
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Dune
Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes
Freakonomics
Collected Poems, 1906-1962
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Crane: Prose and Poetry
The Chronicles of Narnia
H.P. Lovecraft: Tales

Posted in literature