• I actually managed to sit through the entire 01x05 Terra Nova episode. Very family and touchy feely, and I don't think it's going to get any more interesting than it has already been. I going to place my bets on the mole to be that adult female actor pretending to be a teenager who lives with Taylor and is Josh's new love interest. I have no idea what her name or character's name is, nor do I care to learn..


• Once Blizzcon is over (and they announce ticket sales and virtual attendee numbers at their next shareholders meeting), I'll write something up along the lines of that old "Blizzcon Revenue and Costs" post. Should be rather interesting considering the price hikes.


• Blizzard is entering into a new agreement with AsiaSoft (in Thailand) to distribute their games in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. This is sort of a weird Gamasutra post too. They make it sound like Blizzard games weren't already available in those countries: "AsiaSoft will make these titles available in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, although the company did not indicate when the first games will be available." However, World of Warcraft is already played by many people in those countries (as well as other Blizzard titles.) Most of the players just connect to the Philippines servers for reduced lag, so this agreement might be mostly beneficial in that it would be bringing servers closer to the players. I don't think these new territories are going to have a major boost to subscriber numbers though, but I think it will encourage some new gamers to start playing.


• Those Blizzard Blade Servers just went up for auction. Apparently, there are a lot of folks who seem to think there's something of value they can extract from the servers.. I guess they're not aware that these don't have any hard drives in them, and it just has a plaque instead. These are the same ones that Blizzard had a silent auction for last year at Blizzcon 2010. But, they're even much older than that. I guess they've been pretty much sitting on a shelf for years now, and they have added the new plaques within the past few months.


• And finally, here are some classic reads from Blizzard that you might find entertaining. I guess some things change.. belief systems, morality, apparently laws...
  
  Selling In-Game Content for Real Money | 1/12/2005
  

  Not only do we believe that it is illegal, but it also has the potential to damage the game economy and overall experience for the many thousands of others who play World of Warcraft for fun.
  
  If you are found to be selling in-game property (such as coins, items, or characters), for real money, you will lose your characters and accounts, and Blizzard Entertainment reserves its right to pursue legal action against you as well.

  So, back then it was:
  
  "If you buy an item, that's ILLEGAL. You're breaking the law and it damages the economy and overall experience! If you do this, we'll call the cyber police on you.. consequences will never be the same!"
  
  Nothing has really changed, but now the attitude is:
  
  "Well, TCG Loot card mounts have been sold for a long time now, and we've been able to tell it hasn't had any adverse impacts to the game or economy - despite them selling sometimes for astronomical amounts of gold.
  
  It's no big deal. We're just providing alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money on these items."
  
  I'm disappointed that they would change so radically and even try to justify it.
  
  And there was also these old posts:
  
  The difference in patch types
  
  "For World of Warcraft, we will also be adding new content on a regular basis, thus ensuring that there will always be new adventures, new locations, new creatures, and new items to discover."
  
  Content patches were officially supposed to be delivered on a monthly basis (like what Sony announced for DCUO). Within a 6 month period, Blizzard had already delivered 4 major updates and 9 minor (content) updates.
  
  What is contained in a regular content patch?
  
  "Each content update will also bring new quests, items, professions recipes, and continued class improvements."
  
  Just broken promises.. no big deal.

• I entered another Path of Exile beta key contest where I had a 90% chance of winning. I still lost. :)


• Apparently, it looks like those stupid Blogspot.com issues have been going on for possibly over a month now. I never noticed it until just last week though.
  
  Some comments had vanished, and there are certain pages/posts where users can leave comments on. There's no way to even tell that though as there's no mechanism that really monitors this sort of stuff.
  
  For the most part they're not that intrusive, but it's annoying that some of the comment conversations are gone. I have no idea when they're going to be resolved either.


• I've added a couple other service providers to my "do not trust" list. XS.TO is up at the top, and now I'm adding Pastebin.com and Pastehtml.com. I had put up some stuff on them a few months ago, but I guess someone clicked "Report Abuse" even though they weren't spam and just 2 letter words. I had set them to "Never Expire", but I guess they don't even review complaints, and just go ahead and delete them.


• And, you know prescription medication where there's an extremely rare probability (less than 1% chance) to get certain unwelcome side effects? Yeah, I got the side effects.


• Oh, I just got a jury summons too.

I'm finding that investigating new information on the net is getting pretty hard to come by. Unfortunately, there are a lot of tighter controls and internal policies now on how employees are allowed to act or what they are allowed to publish online (small things that they didn't consider before). It wasn't like this 2+ years ago. :)

With all of the exclusive Google sleuthing, I'm also seeing ways in which the search engine can be significantly improved so that casual searchers can get better information. I might write something up on that subject sometime in the future.

Anyways, with most gaming leak information drying up, I'm creating a new post all about finding gaming leaks yourself. And, how anyone can do it themselves with just some simple automated tools.

I'm also trying to finish up a bunch of other stuff, since we'll all be pretty busy this entire weekend and I probably won't be able to post anything new until after the weekend. Other than Blizzcon, I also have a ton of other real life stuff going on this weekend (so I'm going to be missing the second half of the Blizzcon streams on both days unfortunately).

I'm not really expecting much, though. We all pretty much know by now what's going to be happening at Blizzcon:

• Mists of Pandaria video during the opening ceremonies part providing all of the expansion pack details, the non-hero class, and a playable demo. (I can already hear that same Cataclysm narrator saying: "Azeroth has been shattered, but meanwhile within the MISTS there lurks a new evil..")
• SC2: Heart of the Swarm video and game details (players will see new units, gameplay sequences, and be able to play the HOTS expansion pack)
• Diablo 3 (stations setup for playing, new details, more Beta Keys given away)
• I'm hoping for a little surprise though, like the new D3 release date. After all, the original Blizzcon 2011 plan was to have a big Christmas surprise (i.e. late November D3 release date) announcement.
• I can see the whole event almost being identical to Blizzcon 2009 actually. Metzen introducing SC2 units, talk about rumor and speculation, and then the big MoP reveal.
• Mike Morhaime making nervous and unfunny jokes in the beginning before Metzen is brought in. Recap of the "amazing" Blizzcon 2010, and then a recap of Blizzcon 2011 during the closing ceremonies (ugh).

So yeah.. it's all pretty quiet.

But, you know.. there is this little thing that kind of started a little while ago. Enjoy. :)