I guess WoW *IS* good for something after all!

Billions of dollars in profit later, World of Warcraft finally does something for the public. But I bet Blizzard charged the police to start an account to catch the guy.

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/warcraft-helps-catch-a-crook/1383804

Headline: Warcraft helps catch a crook!

 

All I can say is WoW (pun probably not intended)

 

Doesn't this kind of go against their policy that they will not share personal information with ANYBODY? How do they expect people to trust them anymore? It's like a breaking the "patient-doctor confidentiality" thing.

 

It's funny how both a drug dealer and a deputy seemed to play it a lot.

Oh. We should make game that's a direct competitor to World of WarCraft. We'll call it...

Warlocks and Witches. Long live WaW.

(And considering the aside at the end of the article, are PS3s that powerful?)

 

their mutli-cell processors might make them a cheap high-cpu power alternative to a PC, especially since they can run linux.

 

Blizzard has every right to share ANY of your personal details as long as its used for police work.

 

More like Grind and Go. Long live GaG.

 

I don't really agree with this. Besides, when you first start up or install the game don't they say in their EULA or somewhere similar where you'd have to put in personal information (and especially for this game since you have to pay every month so they would have personal info) something along the lines of "We will not distribute any of your personal information."?

Personally, I'm not impressed with Blizzard for doing this.

EDIT: My bad, I take back what I've been saying. Just found out this is in Blizzard's Terms of Service:

So they did nothing wrong

 

Only if they were subpoenaed or issued a warrant, then they'd be forced to by law. Otherwise, yeah, that is their breach of contract.

 

Read about this same story a few days ago on Kotaku [ http://kotaku.com/5437861/blizzard-helps-cops-track-down-wow-fan-suspected-drug-dealer]. They seemed to have a more detailed story there, and said that Blizzard was indeed subpoenaed.

 

I mean don't get me wrong, another drug dealer where he belongs, but I'd be asking for the warrant that the police served Blizzard. If they didn't have one, then I believe he can't be held for that, and I've never read the EULA for WoW, but I believe it's a violation of the client's confidentiality. In which case if it is, then he could be a rich man.

EDIT... while I was typing a response, someone beat me to the Subpoena info.

 

Epic, this was a nice read , nice find man +rep .

 

And I think pretty much any company would have to do this, right? Otherwise it would be obstruction of justice.

(Considering, of course, everything is nice and legal)

 

I wonder if the same thing will ever work outside of the North American continent.

 

WoW also props up the economies of many eastern countries via gold selling.

 

Wouldn't it be great if they used to group up together! :O

Does anyone actually read any EULA before cracking open a game?

 

For the dollar, they certainly are. It's under $300 for a complete computer with a pretty fast processor. And you can rig up multiple ps3's just like graphics cards in SLI to do distributed computation even faster.

If you had a task that modern computers weren't yet fast enough to handle, and you had to rig multiple computers together to get a CPU farm going, i think you would be hard pressed to get a better solution for the dollar, if the type of problem was conducive to running on the cell processor, since it is kind of limited in scope.

For a desktop, you need a case, a power supply, a motherboard, memory, and then, with whatever budget is left over, a processor.

Well, now I am reconsidering it. You could spend $50 on a case w/ a power supply, $50 on a motherboard, $50 on a hdd, and $50 on memory... leaving you $100 for a quad core amd processor... you could probably build a computing farm like that... it's probably a wash right now but it almost certainly made sense a year or two ago.


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As far as blizzard, their hands were tied, and regardless, I bet you a buck that in that EULA they even mentioned such a situation to cover themselves, just for kicks.

 

With a court Subpoena they can request the information on anyone. Granted to get a subpoena you have to have tons of supporting evidence and meet with a judge or something so it isn't too easy.