Archive for July, 2010
Episode 105 is up
Lindyen rejoins us as the new co-host of the show.
- Our podcast feed URL is fixed! Thanks @askbuxley!
- Insane in the Membrane
- Making money using jewelcrafting
- Starcraft 2 is released!
- Future topics on Warcast
- Razer Naga vs. the Logitech G13
Lindyen (re)joins Warcast
What a long, strange trip it’s been. As some of you may know, the direction of the show had veered from the hardcore topics we had in the past. At first this seemed like a good idea considering that the playstyle of the game seemed to have changed. However, over time, we started getting lots of emails from people stating that they were unhappy with the show’s new direction. The comments on iTunes reflected that as well. It was disheartening since I put over five years of work into this show (where were you people when we needed five-star reviews?).
Things were getting bad. The positive emails stopped coming in and were replaced with “WTF?” emails about the direction the show was going in. I expressed my feelings about this to Alachia and to make a long story short, she gracefully and respectfully decided to step down as co-host. She hasn’t played WoW in months, so it was difficult to talk about topics when our interests in the game were diverging greatly, especially when I was still playing daily. It was sad to read that, but understandable. There’s still a mic open for Alachia anytime. She still remains my inspiration for looking at the game differently, and is still one of my good friends.
One common thread amongst the emails I got was to bring back Lindyen. He hasn’t been on the show regularly in almost five years, but people keep asking for him to come back. I now announce that starting today, Lindyen will be the new co-host of Warcast…again. We hope to bring the hardcore discussions back to the show that were left behind.
Thanks to everyone for your support, and let your friends know that the show is back, baby! Lindy will be here in about two hours and we’ll be recording then.
Podcast URL feed fixed!
This morning, I wrote a polite email to Steve Jobs asking for some kind of help in getting my podcast URL fixed. I spent weeks trying to get it done from the outside, so I figured I’d try and get the URL fixed from the top down. I didn’t expect an immediate response, but as time ticked on today, I realized that the feed was never going to get fixed. I never heard back from Steve, nor did I expect to. I was that desperate, though.
Just when I was about to give up and add a new podcast feed to iTunes, @askbuxley came to the rescue and got in touch with a friend of his at Apple that fixed the podcast URL for me. Thanks so much to Buxley for that.
You may need to unsubscribe and resubscribe to fix the URL if you were only able to see up to episode 103, but if you have 104 in your feed list, you’re golden.
Feed and site updates
Hi all,
You’re probably wondering why the site has reverted to what it looked like 18 months ago, and why the XML feed is borked. We moved to Blogspot because Alachia was familiar with it and she did more writing than I did. I put in a redirect into index.html so that the only thing that would happen is that visitors to the main site would get redirected, and it wouldn’t affect any of the site’s subdomains. If I were to do an entire site redirect (eg: forwarding all of worldofwarcast.com to blogspot.com), then it would break everything.
About a week ago, iTunes somehow took that redirect and used it internally. I have no idea how or why.
So, it’s like this:
http://www.worldofwarcast.com got changed to http://warcastpodcast.blogspot.com/
Please note the / at the end of the blogspot URL.
iTunes then replaced the one URL with the other, so the feed URL:
http://www.worldofwarcast.com/podcast.xml
became
http://warcastpodcast.blogspot.com//podcast.xml
The blogspot URL had a / at the end of it, whereas the warcast URL did not, so an extra / got added before podcast.xml.
The reason why we’re getting Error 400′s from that URL is because Google/Blogspot treats the // before podcast.xml as a badly formed URL. Also, Blogspot no longer allows users to manage a .htaccess file, so I have no way of fixing this on my end. If Blogspot didn’t treat the // as bad form, I could set up a missing files table to point to the right file on worldofwarcast.com (and I did), but I have to fix it on Blogspot’s servers.
So this is where I am now: iTunes has an internal bad URL that I can’t fix. I have no control over that file inside iTunes, and I can’t fix the Error 400 because Blogspot doesn’t allow you to. That means the XML URL in iTunes is in limbo.
I’ve written up two tickets to Apple, and posted on both Google’s and Apple’s support forums asking for help from someone. I know that there are times when Apple employees have fixed URLs for people, but if this doesn’t get fixed properly, that means I’ll have to scream at Apple a little louder, or email Steve (and yes, I will do that to get this fixed). The worst case scenario is I create a new podcast on iTunes with a slightly different title. I shouldn’t have to do this. iTunes has a “delete my podcast” form, why don’t they have a “fix my podcast” form?
In the meantime, if you have a running subscription to the show, you’re golden. If you need to subscribe on a new system, you’ll have to manually subscribe to the link at the bottom of this article. Until this gets fixed, iTunes will continue to show the feed up until the last known good episode which is 103, and episode 104 is out. If you’re looking at the feed from an iPad or an iPhone using iTunes, you won’t see anything past episode 103.
One of the biggest problems I have with Blogspot is that you have no control over anything that resembles running a real site. You can’t upload anything except pictures, and if something odd goes wrong with your site (like what happened to me), there are very limited tools to help fix it. If this happened to something I hosted myself, I could have fixed it in 10 seconds, or called someone at my hosting company. There’s nobody to call at Google. I think the best Google offers is a custom 404 and a 301 redirect, but the 301 doesn’t help fix the Error 400 since it has to get past that first, and can’t.
For now, I’m going to have to leave this site as is. You can still get to the old Blogspot blog from the link at the bottom of this article, but I think that URL redirection in this case is something that’s going to have to go away. I don’t like not having control over the content, and in this case, it’s preventing people from accessing the show.
Feed URL: http://www.worldofwarcast.com/podcast.xml
Blogspot URL: http://warcastpodcast.blogspot.com
Warcast forums have moved
Hi everyone. I have decided to move the Warcast forums into a new location for the simple reason that I have only one vBulletin license, and I didn’t want to either pay for a new license or have to manage two different types of forums. All users that have at least one post still have active accounts. All the forums are there, as well as PMs. Users that had no posts had to be pruned because there were so many spam accounts that I just did a complete wipe of inactive accounts. It was affecting our hosting since all the bounced emails were getting sent to me several times a day, and the best way to combat it was to just wipe all accounts that had no posts.
We hope that you continue to use the forums as before, and join with the Geekistry community there.
Starman’s views on RealID
Yesterday, Blizzard announced that their RealID system was coming to their forums. That means your real name will be used when posting. I cannot think of anything that can make me more angry than this. Why so much anger? Several reasons. First, this is a game. By definition it’s an MMORPG, emphasis here on the “RPG”. It’s a place where I can play the game my way, and separate myself from the real world. I don’t want the real world and my online world to mix unless it’s on my terms. Blizzard is now taking that choice away from me and millions of other people.
This isn’t Farmville, this isn’t a Facebook app, but someone seems to want to turn it into one. When Blizzard made this announcement, my view on the game shifted. I still love and respect the game, but now I have this nagging thought in the back of my head that someone wants it to be more of a social network than an MMORPG. I’ve been asking Blizzard for more tools to communicate with your friends in and out of the game like Everquest does, but this is too much.
Blizzard is also telling people that this is to clean up the forum trolls. Whoever thought of that decision never read Usenet. We’d argue for months at a time on particular topics, all using our real name. Granted, Usenet was unmoderated, but we weren’t afraid of calling people out. I just don’t see this change as being a help. In fact, it will move people towards other forums such as our own, the instance, mmo-champion, tankspot, and elitist jerks.
I also don’t believe that this is just for a forum cleanup. If anything, you’re going to lose a large part of the intelligent community simply because they don’t feel comfortable posting with their real name. I think that there’s something like direct Facebook integration coming. I don’t want Facebook invading a game. It’s a terrible idea because the game stood on its own. The most I ever wanted was the ability to talk to guildies out of the game, not also see their drunk pictures because they happened to be in my guild.
One argument some people have is that the forums are optional. I disagree with that. I’m paying for the ability to post to those forums. It’s where I go to ask about class issues, quest problems, and other things. It’s the first place I go to. I don’t troll the forums, but now I’m going to be punished for those that did. Also, Blizzard requires that you post on the forums when you have a customer service issue and can’t call in which means your real name will be exposed. That, to me, is not “optional”.
The people most at risk are the ones that have the most to lose. People looking for a job are probably the ones that have to worry the most. A potential employer can Google your name and “oh, look, they posted on the WoW forums. Well, we don’t want WoW players working here”. Teachers, women, children (if not blocked), and others that may be ridiculed are all at risk, simply because they posted on a game forum.
Other problems I see:
Gankers / Campers on PvP servers
Gold sellers
Annoying people on the forums (the bigots and racists are the worst IMO)
Stalkers
Professionals that don’t want their name shown in a Google search
Harassment
There are two solutions:
1) Get rid of RealID on the forums altogether.
2) Use RealID on the main forums, but allow character names on the customer service forum.
I would implore Blizzard to rethink this change. Not only does it make over 22,000 people upset, but it puts the game in a different light. Now people will think of it as the world’s biggest Facebook app, and that stings.
