I'll get straight to it. I wanna talk about this SMM (and their moves), flying spaghetti monster and license actually. Is "flying spaghetti monster" discussion allowed now? As you know flying spaghetti monster isn't 'quite yet' a free server anymore, it's been acquired by SMM, license holder for blizzard. Am I allowed to make this discussion? Not gonna discuss dota, merely license-related only.

This is exactly what I'd like to discuss. I mean this SMM uhm.. acquired this flying spaghetti monster and they also run smmdota, which I believe utilizes PvPGN. Yet, they distribute this blizzard games and claim they hold the rights to whatever blizzard... yet from what I've read ages ago, Blizzard shut down these pvpgn servers where they can.

Now, as far as I know, SMM is commercializing blue, and they are gonna make it usable to ONLY cybercafes that pay. Now, this don't sound right at all. if its gonna be free, that's not that bad... since it's an open-source server. Yeah, still illegal as blizzard claims. But now, they wanna earn money off this 'illegal' server, and yet they hold the rights to blizzard.. Someone tell me, is this even ethical... I called up one of the smm agents.... they tell me "How can you say that... as in, how can you play for free? you need to pay to play" bla bla bla. It just didn't feel right at all.

But that brings another issue. Player control. Dota is full of leavers and I sure would love to hell know why these leavers exist. What's the answer? How do we control leavers? Playing on uswest-- they can just keep recreating new accounts.

I feel a lot of these issues also has to do with blizzard, they should allow 3rd party servers unless they themselves are able to control leavers, which they definitely won't. If i were them i won't either. It'd be so nice if its like counter-strike. You can make your own server, but yet it connects and authenticates your cdkey.

I do hope that, if they wanna do something, might as well close down all pvpgn servers running in malaysia, rather than earning money off it. With all due respect to SMM... I don't mind paying for WC3 license, but I seriously don't know what I'm doing with all the titles they've been giving us, it all just seem to cost a lot.

I really wonder if Blizzard is aware of their actions... oh well.. Life sure is hard.

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Added on June 18, 2007, 3:57 pm

since when and where did you receive these? Where are you from? got msn? or something? pm me

Last I heard PvPGN is legit. Loader's that modify the game aren't.... but earning off pvpgn should be illegal.

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/archive/index.php/t-36621.html

thru google they say its legal? :/

I am sure that Blizzard are aware of what is going on. And they will always be. But probably they are making too much money to even care bout the servers. Its probably peanuts to them. Some Private servers are dedicate towards ethical gaming and provide a wonderfull past time for a lot of the younger generation, people who don earn their own living and probably end up doing drugs and other stuff without them. Just a food for thought.... Not a lot of people can spare a couple of hundred to bucks to buy games when then only get a couple of dollars a day for pocket money!

And FYI, I am not an arrogant bum as you mentioned... I can afford to buy my ORI softwares ( Games in this matter ) and will do so... Depends on the software and the satisfaction it provides...

Imagine telling a 10 year old kid this " Son, you go the the national libary to read ok? I cannot buy DOTA for you? Too expensive la son "

Good luck in explaining to your son... And nobody was talking bout any gaming pc, even a pentium 3 could run games and a decent Pc, even the one which is being advertised in the landing page of this portal costs what? RM290? And Warcraft 3 costs what? Rm 200? DUH!!! Go figure dude...

Its all bout learning curve, if you don try, you can never learn.. Even playing games helps in developing your reflex and keeps your mind sharp.. and this is a proven study... If you wanna go and play football, go ahead... even that is pretty expensive nowadays dude..

i support legal games. i do not think paying monthly for legal games for cc operation is very ethical. i heard theres no such nonsense in europe.. at least in france. in fact, they get sponsored by software companies to promote their games in cc.

blizzard does care about earning money only. so they dont really bother making operators happy.. malaysia is probably a small market to them, they probably happy with what smm is doing?

I don't see this being perfectly fine since many other countries don't have such payment scheme for cc operations. Googled blizzard monthly fee cybercafe don't show me much results except...

Some stuff Rathishiva said is pretty true..... like the learning curve part
altho i couldn't really get what he's trying to imply by saying this.... unless he means he doesn't own legal wc3 =/

Agreed with strace, plus, in US and Taiwan, if they were to have these monthly subscription thing, they'd be screaming, but anyway, they or at least in USA, they earn a lot more than we do.

In any case, I made this topic is more concerning earning $ off these rogue servers.

H@H@: Learning curve, not sure if its the wrong term, but anyway it does develop your mind and reflex in certain ways.

Funny thing also, I heard they didn't approve DotA for WCG.... but they approved Wc3... I thought DotA is a free custom map?

DotA is a free custom map, that is partially why it wasn't approve for WCG lol

ggc basically is just helping u to create a lan-like network for games. this is not illegal. if the users are using pirated games then they use ggc, then its their fault not ggc. ggc is also faster and less lag compare to battlenet.