Week in gaming: Cataclysmic edition
Shattering does a world of good: Ars reviews WoW: Cataclysm: Old Azeroth has undergone a massive siege on both its landscape and quest structure. Ars takes at look at whether the changes work for the game, as well as how the new high-level content compares to past expansions.What Gran Turismo and Forza can learn from one another: We've had a little more time to play with GT5, and with the release of DLC for its rival Forza Motorsport 3 this week, we thought we'd revisit this grudge match to see where each version shines.
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Siemens Science Competition: the pull of a good project
Doing a research project requires some serious inspiration. You have to be willing to put in the time involved and deal with setbacks and frustration. It could be easy to quit, but the students who made the finals at the Siemens Science Competition managed to keep going even as they juggled a regular school schedule and some other extracurricular activities. So, we asked them what it was about their projects that drew them into the work in the first place. Read the comments on this post
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Mozilla improves sync setup and WebGL in Firefox 4 beta 8
Mozilla has announced the availability of Firefox 4 beta 8, a new pre-release milestone build of the open source Web browser. Beta 8 brings better support for WebGL and introduces an improved setup process for Firefox Sync that simplifies the steps for configuring the synchronization service across multiple devices.
Alongside the new Firefox 4 beta, Mozilla has also released a new beta of Firefox Mobile, a smartphone version of the Firefox browser that runs on Android handsets and Nokia's Maemo-based N900. Android integration has improved substantially in Firefox Mobile, leading to a much more native feel for the application.
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Android Market carrier billing comes to AT&T
Google announced this week that carrier billing in the Android Market is now available to AT&T customers. This means that Android users can charge their app purchases to an AT&T subscriber account and have the cost added to their monthly network bill rather than using a credit card.Google initially launched carrier billing with T-Mobile last year. AT&T is the second US carrier to participate in the program. Google hopes that carrier billing will lower the barrier of complexity for Android Market transactions, thus simplifying app purchases for some users.
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Microsoft BPOS configuration screw up causes data disclosure
Customers of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite—a cloud-based suite including Exchange, SharePoint, LiveMeeting, and Office Communicator—may have had certain data leaked after a configuration error left their contact information exposed.The configuration problem left information in customers' Offline Address Books exposed to other customers. The Offline Address Book is an Exchange feature that allows Outlook users to download a copy of all the e-mail addresses and mailing list aliases that an organization uses, so that they can be used even when disconnected from Exchange. It's e-mail addresses on those lists that could have been made available.
Microsoft says that it fixed the configuration problem within two hours of discovering the problem, and that only a small number of illegitimate downloads occurred. However, the company didn't say when the faulty configuration was pushed to its servers, so it's not known how long the problem has existed. The company says it has notified all affected customers.
As data breaches go, this one was quite limited. No e-mails or documents were disclosed, nor were any personal contacts. Still, the disclosure of corporate address books is something of an unfortunate black eye for the company as it strives to expand its cloud services market. Microsoft is positioning the next version of BPOS, named Office 365, as a complete package to compete with the likes of Google Apps.
This setback is unlikely to impede the growth of cloud services—but they do highlight one of the risks that they bring. A similar configuration problem on a private Exchange server is unlikely to have any consequences—the sharing of infrastructure can bring with it risks that don't exist on private installations.
As the use of cloud services proliferates, this kind of issue is likely to be a regular occurrence. Cloud services bring many conveniences—freedom from having to administer an Exchange server is no small thing—but those upsides will have to be balanced against the unique downsides that cloud systems bring.
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Comcast + NBCU approval likely in January with some strings attached
The Federal Communications Commission has told the press that it will circulate a draft decision approving the union of Comcast and NBC Universal. The Wall Street Journal reports that the order will require the merged entity to make Comcast/NBCU video fare available to competitors at reasonable rates, and will also attach open Internet rules to the marriage—Comcast will agree to not prioritize its own network traffic over competitors like Netflix. That second provision would presumably supplement the across-the-board net neutrality rules that the FCC released on Tuesday, for which Comcast offered cautious support. "While we look forward to reviewing the final order, the rules as described generally appear intended to strike a workable balance between the needs of the marketplace for certainty and everyone's desire that Internet openness be preserved," Comcast Vice President David Cohen declared in response to the announcement.
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Porn site: publicizing takedown notices is copyright infringement
Perfect 10, the porn website that bills itself as displaying “the world’s most beautiful natural women,” claims that disclosing its copyright takedown notices is a little too revealing.The copyright-infringement allegations are part of Perfect 10’s ongoing lawsuit against Google, a suit with a tortured procedural history. In 2007, a federal appeals court rendered a far-reaching decision, saying search engines like Google were not infringing copyrights by displaying thumbnails and hyperlinking to Perfect 10’s perfect babes.
Fast forward to today.
Part of the case, originally filed in 2005, is back before the San Francisco-based appeals court. Among other things, Perfect 10 alleges Google’s forwarding of Perfect 10’s takedown notices to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse website constitutes copyright infringement.
Chilling Effects is a repository of takedown notices and has published thousands of them for scholarly research. Perfect 10 claims Google’s actions amount to copyright infringement because Perfect 10’s takedown notices include the nude pics.
The takedown notice was born in 1998 under the the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA allows websites to host user-generated content free of being liable for copyright infringement if the website promptly responds to takedown notices from the rightsholders by removing the content. Viacom, in an unrelated case against Google, is challenging that process—one that it says will “destroy copyright.”
Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy, started the Chilling Effects site about eight years ago “to educate the public and to provide transparency around the notice-and-takedown process,” she said in a telephone interview Thursday.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also gotten involved, telling the appeals court in a filing this week that “Chilling Effects serves the purposes of the DMCA by facilitating research and education about online copyright policy, and by making possible an evaluation of the extent to which Congress’ goals for the DMCA are being met in practice.”
No court date has been set.
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Viacom loses beat, sells off rhythm giant Harmonix
Viacom has found a new home for Harmonix Music Systems, the creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. On Thursday, the company announced that Harmonix will be sold to Columbus Nova, a private investment firm in New York. Viacom announced that it was trying to offload Harmonix back in November, but gave no reasons at the time. The Los Angeles Times speculates that the problem has been profitability: while Harmonix was soaring on the wings of Guitar Hero I and II when Viacom picked it up in 2006, Harmonix didn't earn Viacom any money on its Rock Band releases between 2007 and 2009.
Viacom paid $175 million for Harmonix and promised more money based on Harmonix's 2007 and 2008 performance. While the details of the deal with Columbus Nova haven't been disclosed, analysts estimated that Viacom wouldn't be able to get much more than $100 million for the company.
Both of this year's Harmonix titles, Rock Band 3 and Dance Central, really impressed us, despite how played out rhythm games have been lately. Viacom is calling this the end of the line for their rhythm section, but Harmonix will carry on: they are working on an untitled music game for Nintendo's soon-to-be-released 3DS handheld.
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MasterCard may cut off file sharing sites over piracy
File-sharing sites like Megaupload and RapidShare could find themselves cut off from MasterCard payments due to their users' propensity to use them for file-sharing. Though these sites have many legitimate users, as they provide a convenient way of transferring files too large to be conveniently sent by e-mail, they are also commonly used to distribute music, videos, and games without the permission of the rightsholders.This piracy link means that the sites in question could fall foul of the proposed—but essentially dead—Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). COICA would allow judges to force service providers, including credit card companies, to block payments to websites "dedicated to infringing activities." However, the bill was blocked by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who described it as a "bunker-busting cluster bomb," when what was needed was "a precision-guided missile."
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New GT5 uberwheel comes with uberprice tag
One thing about Gran Turismo 5 is clear: you'll want a wheel. Sure, you can play it with the Sixaxis controller if you want, but you really need a wheel to get the full experience. The PS3 platform has quite a lot of these already available; unlike Microsoft's Xbox 360, USB wheels that work with PC games will work, and Logitech has an array of offerings at different price points. Logitech also used to have the official GT franchise, but that's history now. Now things have gone way upmarket with Thrustmaster's new T 500 RS, a hefty-looking thing with an equally hefty price tag.
Coming in at $599, the wheel itself weighs more than 10 lbs, and Thrustmaster claims the motor is twice the power of its rivals. Like other leading wheels (Fanatec's new GT2, the Logitech G27), it's belt driven. The flappy paddles are large, although it's unclear from the promo shots whether or not they're attached to (and therefore rotate with) the wheel or not. The T 500 RS offers gamers 1080° of steering lock, with the ability to tailor this; that's a good thing and hopefully easy to do on the fly (like it is with the Fanatec), because the first thing you notice about real racing cars is they don't have three turns lock to lock! I'd like to be able to tell you if it's wireless, but those details weren't in the announcement.
The pedals are an even more massive affair, weighing 16 lbs. They claim to be fully adjustable, and can be set up like your road car (hinging from above) or like a VW Beetle, Porsche 911, or F1 car (hinged at the bottom). The Thrustmaster PR mentions technology I don't pretend to understand, like "magnetic sensor-based H.E.A.R.T HallEffect AccuRate Technologyâ„¢," but nothing about what kind mechanism the pedals use as pressure sensors. For the money you'd hope something similar to Fanatec's Clubsport set.
The money. Yes, might as well come out and say it: $599 is a lot of cash for a console peripheral, and again there's no indication whether you'll be able to use the wheel with a PC or an Xbox 360. The former is probable, the latter much more unlikely. There's also no stick shift yet—that will likely come later and presumably cost more money.
I've obviously not set hands on a T 500 RS so I can't tell you if it's any good or not. The same money will definitely buy you Fanatec's new GT2, Clubsport pedals, a gear shifter, and their wheel stand, and that will work across platforms. However, I've found my Fanatec is quite buggy when used with the PS3, even on the latest firmware (still works flawlessly with the Xbox 360). The T 500 RS was designed specifically for GT5, and the game has tuning options coded in, giving it a level of official support that neither the G27 or Fanatec can access. If GT5 is your game of choice and you have the means, the T 500 RS might be your first port of call.
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Siemens Science Competition: doing science in a community
People outside the research community tend not to recognize that it really is a community—science is a social activity, and you tend to spend your days interacting with the other members of your research group, other members of your institution, and collaborators from around the world. The youngest of the people around is typically a grad student, meaning that might be a tough place for a high school student to feel comfortable. But, talking with the students, we found that most had a fantastic experience interacting with their fellow scientists. Read the comments on this post
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New hardware uses concentrated solar to produce hydrogen
When it comes to the available sources of renewable energy, most of the focus is on the Sun, since all the other sources, like wind and biomass, are ultimately derived from it. But solar presents its own challenges, since it's most easily converted into heat or electricity, and we can't store either of these at a high enough density for uses like transportation. This explains why there's a lot of effort going into things like biofuels and using electricity to produce hydrogen. Each additional step, however, involves a potential inefficiency. These problems are what makes a system described in today's issue of Science very appealing. The authors demonstrate a device that is capable of taking solar energy and using it directly to split water, releasing oxygen and hydrogen. It can also perform a similar conversion on carbon dioxide, converting it to carbon monoxide and oxygen. Better yet, it doesn't need an exotic catalyst; instead, its catalyst is based on cerium, an element that's about as abundant as copper, and is stable for hundreds of cycles.
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iPad 2 may arrive with flatter shape, better speakers
Apple's next generation iPad hardware likely won't appear before late March or early April, but production will probably begin early next year. This has resulted in a spate of rumored leaks about the device as Chinese suppliers ostensibly have early details about different parts of the device. An anonymous source from China has said that the next-gen iPad will have a smaller, slimmer, flatter case while incorporating rear-facing, improved speakers.According to the Japanese Kanteidan Blog, an anonymous Chinese source revealed that the new case shaves 3mm from the length and width, resulting in a slightly smaller bezel. However, the 9.7" LCD display will reportedly remain the same. The casing is also said to be flat on the back, "like the iPod touch," though the iPod touch isn't exactly flat. However, a flattened back would make the iPad easier to use when placed on a table or other flat surface.
Previous rumors suggested that a revised iPad would include a USB port, or possibly an SD card slot. However, Kanteidan's source says the opening on the rear of the case suspected to be a USB port is actually a new position for improved, wider-dynamic range speakers.
The report also mentions that the updated iPad will be equipped with a front-facing FaceTime camera, as well as a rear-facing camera that is "the same quality as iPhone 4" and capable of shooting video. We're not convinced, though Apple could always surprise us with imaging hardware on par with the iPhone 4.
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Science's breakthrough of 2010: A visible quantum device
At what point does a mechanical system—governed by classical dynamics—become a quantum system, or vice-versa? In 1920, Neils Bohr argued that quantum systems became describable with classical mechanics when the correspondence (or classical) limit had been reached. He described this as occurring "when the quantum numbers describing the system are large." The exact interpretation of "large" has been left to the reader as a 90-year-old take-home exercise.The broad implications of Bohr's correspondence principle is that (as Bohr himself argued) one cannot derive classical mechanics from quantum mechanics; classical systems in the every-day world will be governed by classical laws, and the very small quantum systems by quantum laws. There are examples of macroscopic systems that obey quantum mechanics—Bose-Einstein condensates for example—but they are inherently quantum systems. However, in March of this year, a research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara reported on the first ever classical system—a vibrating mechanical resonator—where the behavior could be described and manipulated through quantum mechanical means.
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Honeycomb ahoy: Motorola to unveil Android 3 tablet at CES?
Motorola has published a teaser video for a tablet product that will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next year. Although the video offers virtually no details about the planned device, it lends credibility to some of the recent rumors surrounding Motorola's Android tablet roadmap.The company is said to be working on a tablet that runs Android 3.0, codenamed Honeycomb, which is the next major version of Google's mobile operating system. Honeycomb is expected to bring substantial user interface improvements that will boost Android's suitability for adoption on devices with a tablet form-factor.
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OpenBSD code audit uncovers bugs, but no evidence of backdoor
OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt disclosed an e-mail earlier this month in which former NETSEC CTO Gregory Perry claimed that his company was paid by the FBI to plant a "backdoor" in the OpenBSD IPSEC stack. The allegations led to a thorough code review and historical analysis of the relevant code.In a follow-up e-mail published this week, de Raadt outlined his current perspective on the controversy and his interpretation of the findings that have emerged from the ongoing code audit. Reviews are being conducted on the history and provenance of code in the IPSEC stack as well as the current implementation. Reviewers have uncovered several bugs that could have security implications, but the nature of the bugs suggests that they were not intentional, nor were they intended to facilitate a backdoor.
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Republicans on new FCC net neutrality rules: kill!
Media reform groups may think the Federal Communications Commission's new net neutrality rules are toothless. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) may deem them "inadequate to protect consumers or preserve the free and open Internet." But the Republican Party has a very different take on the decision.A "harmful federal government power grab" House GOP leader John Boehner (OH) calls it. The FCC's "hostile actions toward innovation, investment and job creation" must be stopped by any means necessary, warns Fred Upton (R-MI), incoming Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And that includes invoking the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overrule Federal regulations by joint resolution.
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Microsoft may be porting Windows to ARM, but it makes no sense
Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft will announce that it is porting Windows to run on ARM processors at CES next month. The target will be tablets and other battery-operated, low-power devices.Microsoft has two operating system lines. There's the Windows NT-derived operating system now selling as Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. And there's the embedded Windows CE-derived operating system, currently shipping as Windows CE 6.0 R3, which sits at the heart of Windows Phone 7. The Windows CE family is already available and running on ARM processors, and has been for many years, so the assumption is that the rumor is talking about the Windows NT family: Windows (or some derivative) for ARM.
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How to make a blockbuster free: Ars explores Firefall
What do you do when you have a team that features some of the top creative minds behind games like World of Warcraft and Tribes? If you're Red 5 Studios, you create Firefall. The upcoming sci-fi epic is a multiplayer, team-based shooter that looks gorgeous, but won't require a cutting edge gaming rig to play. And it'll be free.Ars spoke with James Macauley, executive producer on the game, to learn more about why the high-end online shooter won't cost a cent.
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Paranoid Android: the worst way to complain about net neutrality
After this week's passage of an open Internet rule at the Federal Communication Commission, some of the Web's pundits had a tough time deciding whether the agency is more stupid than it is corrupt, or more corrupt than it is stupid. Sadly, all the episode really shows is that bloggers often get a bad rap for good reasons.The accusations started after Engadget read the FCC press release issued yesterday after the net neutrality vote. The complete text of the new rules is not yet available, the FCC tells Ars, because the new Order was opposed by two commissioners and thus has to address their objections before being released. Instead, the press office yesterday sent out snippets from the most crucial bits of the Order. One of these gave the FCC's reasons for not applying the same "unreasonable discrimination" standard to wireless that it applied to wired networks.
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CIA's WikiLeaks Task Force: WTF, indeed
It can set up mirrored sites. It can bounce from server to server. But whatever impact WikiLeaks continues to have on the US government after dumping tens of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables, the CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force is watching, studying, learning. It’s literally a WTF operation.Actually, what makes it a WTF operation isn’t just the task force’s acronym. It’s the WTF’s mandate: not to launch any subterfuge against the radical disclosure entity—that would be a job for NSA, most likely, or maybe Saturday Night Live—but rather to study its disclosure’s impact on the CIA’s ability to recruit snitches and retain the trust of spy agencies worldwide.
According to the Washington Post’s Greg Miller, it takes an entire task force to determine that the CIA came out of the WikiLeaks saga with minimal exposure. While WikiLeaks appeared to show CIA operations in Iraq, its most-hyped disclosure was a boring piece of analysis on homegrown terrorism. The Pentagon and the State Department can only wish they had such limited breaches.
Score one for the CIA’s distaste for sharing information. It didn’t participate in the government-wide SIPRNet secret internet that allowed an Army private like Bradley Manning to allegedly put hundreds of thousands of State Department cables on a Lady Gaga CD. While the Defense Department is rushing to ban thumb drives, an ex-CIA official tells Miller that if he ever put a thumb drive into his work computer, “there would probably be a little trap door under my chair.” For all the carping about CIA’s reluctance to share information from earnest think-tankers and angry congressional panels, here’s an enormous information-security upside.
That’s partially the result of an institutional culture of secrecy. But the CIA has also had a lot of early experience with cyber-insecurity. In 1995, then-Director John Deutch put classified information on his home computer, which his AOL account left vulnerable to cookies, malware or phishing—though a CIA inquiry found no harm was done. More seriously, in what might be the biggest reply-all-FAIL of all time, a CIA agent accidentally emailed the agency’s entire spy network inside Iran in 2004, allowing a double agent to identify and then neutralize all the CIA’s snitches.
And the CIA might not WikiLeak, but it leaks like a sieve. In his first public speech as director of national intelligence, Jim Clapper said that President Obama was pissed at “widely quoted amorphous and anonymous senior intelligence officials who get their jollies from blabbing to the media.” All those are WTF moments—though, as a reporter, I’m not complaining—but chances are they’re not going to merit their own task force.
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Feature: How Uncle Sam invented television
This year has seen two major developments in the TV market: 3D and the Web. TV makers are betting that consumers will flock to stores this holiday season to upgrade their plain old 2D and Web-less panels with models that will let them bring the Internet into their living rooms without requiring them to add another box to their entertainment center. In this four-part series on the Future of TV, Ars takes an in-depth look at the major transition that TV is currently undergoing. In Part 1, we talked with Mozilla's Aza Raskin on the challenges of uniting the Web and TV. In Part 2, we take a look at the past, present, and future of TV ratings. How do networks, advertisers, and agencies measure audience sizes in a world of DVRs and BitTorrent? In this third installment, Ars looks at the history of TV—from the rise of broadcast television, through the introduction of cable TV, to the present day—to show you just how big of a role the government has played in shaping the medium that defined the 20th century.
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Craigslist shuts down "adult services" worldwide
Just months after shuttering access to the "adult services" category on its US classified sites, Craigslist has removed adult services from all 700 of its international sites. Wired noted the global shutdown on Tuesday, and it was confirmed by Craigslist to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Wednesday.Craigslist has had a sordid past with its attempts to offer legitimate listings for "adult services," which first appeared as "erotic services." State attorneys general hammered Craigslist over listings in the category, which they claimed amounted to enabling prostitution. Craigslist began voluntary measures to try and stem illegal activity, including requiring those creating listings to submit a verifiable phone number and use a credit card to pay a listing fee.
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DNA tags let us sequence the genome from a single parent
Sequencing an individual's genome, while not yet exactly trivial, has by now passed into the realm of the feasible. But the results do not yet delineate which copy of a gene came from which parent. This is important not just so you can decide who to blame for your annoying laugh or weird double-jointed elbows; some genes are imprinted, meaning that they are only expressed from either the maternal or paternal chromosome. The gene encoding insulin-like growth factor 2 is the classic example—only the paternal gene is used. So if you have a normal allele from your mom but a mutated allele from your dad, you’re kind of screwed. The "next generation sequencing" methods work by first cutting the DNA into small fragments, amplifying and sequencing those, and then piecing the results back together. These fragments are a mixture of maternal and paternal chromosomes, and there is no way to know which fragments came from which. Imagine finding two mutations in the same gene. Which goes with which copy of it? It's the difference between having one mutation or two.
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Feature: Shattering does a world of good: Ars reviews WoW: Cataclysm
World of Warcraft's newest expansion, Cataclysm, dropped on December 7, and brought a slew of big changes with it. The entirety of the continents in the original game have been altered significantly, creating a completely new leveling experience for players' first many hours (or days) with the game. There are two new races, new starting zones, and there is now more content on the other end of the game as well: new zones let players level to 85, then enter a bunch of new dungeons and raid instances. In the following pages, we'll take a look at parts of the new level 1-60 experience, some of the new high-level zones and instances, and the worgen race to see whether Cataclysm has whipped World of Warcraft into the fresh, engaging shape that current players are looking for and if it can lure new players in.
Before we get into all of the changes that the game has undergone, it's worth doing a rundown of what the 1-60 leveling experience in Azeroth used to be. While the original version of the game was considered a revolution in the MMO genre for diminishing the worst aspects of the grind, it was still pretty bad for players accustomed to more forgiving games. Quests were rarely interesting and usually unimportant; drop rates for quest items were low, graveyard runs were long, and players spent almost as much time traveling between quests as doing the quests themselves.
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