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October 21, 2005 9:24 PM

A Picture is Worth 1000 Brains. Tonight, an event took place on one of the new Role Playing Player Versus Player servers for World Of Warcraft. One of the more eccentric guilds on the server decided to hold an event in honor of the game's official seasonal holiday "Hallow's Eve." Trading in their regular characters for level 1 zombies, they named themselves unpronounceable names (seeing as zombies lack proper tongue and jaw), gathered by the hundreds, and descended on the human fortress of Stormwind. More pics can be found in the official WoW forums. Happy Hallow's Eve, everyone! Brains!
posted by thanotopsis (21 comments total)

WoW. (hah! Get it?)
posted by TwelveTwo at 9:41 PM on October 21, 2005

My wife and I finally broke away from a 4 1/2 year addiction to Everquest (I&II) when all our friends we played with moved over to WoW. It's nice to have a life again. I even go outside sometimes. Now once I break my Metafilter habit, I may really be able to shelve this computer away for a while and really get some stuff done.

I'm sure this would be much cooler if I still played.
posted by Balisong at 10:18 PM on October 21, 2005

Nice.

I've resisted playing WoW because I know how addicted I could become. This article on Warden makes it less tempting, though.
posted by homunculus at 10:38 PM on October 21, 2005

I don't think I've ever seen so many zombies in bikinis.
posted by cali at 11:27 PM on October 21, 2005

I've resisted playing WoW because I know how addicted I could become. This article on Warden makes it less tempting, though.

Wow. (pun definitely not intended) How can they get away with that?
posted by kosher_jenny at 11:32 PM on October 21, 2005

This article on Warden makes it less tempting, though.

As a WoW player, I've heard of this long ago and been through it being beaten to death hundreds of times over. My understanding of the Warden program is not that it scans your hard drive for files but it scans through your running processes. Which is virtually the same as a spyware detection/removal program.

I have no problem at all with this. I'd rather have an enjoyable gaming experience than suffer through the 'cheaters' crashing servers in order to duplicate items and money. As many people have said on this topic, it says so in the EULA, if you don't like it don't play it.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 12:40 AM on October 22, 2005

I agreed JakeEXTREME. The hysteria over Warden is absurd. Even Bruce Schnier, who I usually have great respect for, jumped on that bandwagon.
posted by joegester at 12:52 AM on October 22, 2005

I don't think I've ever seen so many zombies in bikinis.

You need to watch more late night cable TV.
posted by I Love Tacos at 3:16 AM on October 22, 2005

Heh, reminds me of the zombies storming American Idol.

I'm a little put off at how... fugly, to be honest, WoW looks. Guess I was spoiled by CoH and now GW.
posted by Talanvor at 4:07 AM on October 22, 2005

I'm a little put off at how... fugly, to be honest, WoW looks. Guess I was spoiled by CoH and now GW.

You can blame it on a bad video card. That card is representative of how good things looked ...3 years ago?

In addition, in order to save space and bandwidth costs, those images are reduced to JPG 25% compression. Originals are 1.2MB TGA files.
posted by thanotopsis at 4:49 AM on October 22, 2005

Agreed Jake.

What that darned link (+Schnier +Doctorow +EFF) cant seem to wrap their heads around is its a reverse-FUD. The "expose" writer was a freakin bot writer whose bot was being caught by Warden! He didnt release the bot for free, he sold it, so he was trying to start a fear campaign so they would be forced to lay down on the Warden and he could sell his bot again. All it does essentially is run a hash against running proc's in memory and compares those hashes against known 'bad programs'. That's it. Yet the article talks about copying your social security number.. hellloooo!!

I usually think the freedom-security-fighting-type-folks are smart and in the know, but this whole incident painted for me how they are truly such blinded ideologues and are just as guilty if not more guilty then the systems they purpotedly rally against. oh well another fp for another day..
posted by cavalier at 5:47 AM on October 22, 2005

I wrote a note to the lawyer responsible for the EFF article, and he has yet to respond. I noted at least 3 outright lies in his article, and a number of other implied falsehoods. I mentioned that no one has to take Blizzard's word for it, as "The Governor" (a monitoring program created by the rootkit guy) monitors everything Warden does.

Of course, he ignored everything in my email except my note about "The Governor". That's what he amended his article with.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:27 AM on October 22, 2005

A WoW guild becomes a mob of zombies?

Repost.
posted by dgaicun at 6:41 AM on October 22, 2005

dgaicun: Repost.

Oh, way to make my heart skip a beat. :P
posted by thanotopsis at 7:54 AM on October 22, 2005

Warden vs. Tivo data gathering vs. Onstar etc. It all boils down to just how much surveillance you have stomach for, what you are comfortable sharing and exposing. The risks now with Warden may seem low, but can you really be sure. We count on smart guys to write this stuff and other smart guys to notice if it's too invasive. There's really nobody watching the watchers and that's the fundamental problem with all of this. I'm not suggesting that allowing enforcement of anti-cheating provisions is a bad idea, just that there's realistically no way to be absolutley sure that things are behaving as advertised and not looking deeper and further than you might be ok with.
posted by shagoth at 8:25 AM on October 22, 2005

Can I interest you in some breathalyzer source code?
posted by Captaintripps at 8:43 AM on October 22, 2005

this is amazing. I wish stuff like this would happen on my server. nothing EVER happens on my server.
posted by shmegegge at 10:56 AM on October 22, 2005

For those of us addicted to WoW, the idea that Blizzard might be monitoring our running processes isn't important enough to even raise an eyebrow over. It's like telling a crack addict that crack kills. Yeah..... so......

Given Blizzard's response to the article, and the many lies and hysteria that make up the meat of the whole argument, I'm having a real hard time getting upset. The article is 50% bullshit, and the 50% that's real seems pretty reasonable given the context.

And if you really feel the need to explore this in depth you should go to the user forums at worldofwarcraft.com. There are thousands of threads there on this topic, including many insightful comments by security and privacy folks.

So -

Subverting MMO content creatively = Good.
FUD security agendas = Bad.

"The thing that really pisses me off is that this is all being done in the name of having fun and playing games. I'm supposed to give up my Fourth Amendment rights in order to ax a bunch of warriors controlled by teenagers in Milwaukee? No thanks. I'd rather go back to playing Dungeons and Dragons, where at least I could roll the dice without the DM reading all my fucking e-mail."

One wonders whether the author needs to seek professional counseling. Or maybe just find a new line of work, since she doesn't understand MMO games, the Fourth Amendment, or Warden.

Cry more noob. gg kk
posted by y6y6y6 at 11:16 AM on October 22, 2005

I oughta know better, but I can't resist...

O RLY?

It's ok, learn 2 play.
posted by nightchrome at 11:36 AM on October 22, 2005

O RLY?

YA RLY!




wow addict signing off on it's awesomeness.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:50 AM on October 22, 2005

For those of us addicted to WoW, the idea that Blizzard might be monitoring our running processes isn't important enough to even raise an eyebrow over. It's like telling a crack addict that crack kills. Yeah..... so......

"Kills" is way exaggerated - it's more like telling a crack addict that crack gives you a bit of a fuzzy feeling when you wake up in the morning. And an unpleasant taste in your mouth, too!
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:01 PM on October 22, 2005