I quit after the overhyped Unreal Tournament successor came out, which turned UT from a competitive team game into soulless eye candy. E-Sports on the other hand thrived and became mainstream eventually.

BlizzTV is an all-in one E-Sports news app. The desktop application pulls news and media from various sources on the Internet and displays those in the application interface.

Listed in the last beta version are Feeds, Videos, Events, Podcasts, BlizzBlues and Streams. The name indicates it already, most of the pre-configured streams are linked to Blizzard and its popular franchises Warcraft and Starcraft. The application is on the other hand customizable, more about that after the break.

The software updates its information regularly, and indicates additions and news with a small mail icon and a system sound.

Lets take a look at the categories before we delve into the options.

• Events – List today’s, upcoming and past Blizzard game events. This includes Battlenet games, leagues and cups.
• Feeds – News feeds from Blizzard sites and third party sites, only titles are readable, articles open in the default web browser.
• Videos – Youtube videos of
  Blizzard games, play directly in the application.
• Blizzblues – Blues are official Blizzard employees in the Blizzard game forums. Their latest posts are listed here.
• Podcasts – Audio news and reports that play directly in the application window.
• Streams – Live game streams are linked here.

You are probably thinking right now why you should bother with the application if you do not play any Blizzard games. The answer is customization. Several news streams can be customized to suite your gaming preferences.

The categories Videos, Podcasts, Streams and Feeds can be customized. Video providers can be added from Youtube or BlipTV. A click on Catalog displays a list of available options including the World Cyber Games, Intel Extreme Masters or ESL.tv. These providers are then added to the video listing and you will be informed about updates via the application’s notification system.

It is similarly possible to add feeds, podcasts or streams to the program. All sections offer a catalog button that lists pre-selected items and options to add custom feeds, streams and podcasts manually.

Events and the BlizzBlues category cannot be modified but disabled if they are not needed.

BlizzTV is a godsend for Blizzard gamers, especially those who follow E-Sports or play actively in clans and teams that compete in leagues or events.

Gamers who do not play Blizzard games on the other hand need to customize the program before it becomes useful. It still has some strong points, but most feed readers and news applications can handle those as well.

BlizzTV is currently offered as a beta version for Windows. The program requires the Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft .NET Framework to be installed on the system. It will launch the installers if those programs are missing on the system.

Death Star Designer is your change to make it better. Create the meanest Death Star of them all for the Emperor. You receive lots of credits and have to make all the choices. Install Defense systems, firepower, naval facilities and much more. Just make sure you stay in the limit or the Emperor will not be pleased. Once you are done your design is reviewed and you will face criticism about all the design flaws of your Death Star. You may then redesign the Death Star or submit the design anyway.

The second game is called Tower Defense. Buy and Upgrade Towers that attack the waves of monsters that try to storm your castle and kill your citizens. You receive money for every monster that your towers kill and you can use the money to build new towers or upgrade existing ones to make them stronger. Great game, lots of fun.

The second game was recommend by a veteran reader of my blog, Thinker. It is also a Tower Defense game, this time in the well known Starcraft universe. Instead of building towers you build structures known from the game to beat waves of enemies that try to destroy your hive. Yeah that’s right, you play the Zerg. A bit more complicated than the first Tower Defense game but still lots of fun.

You can try the following two methods to join the irc server. The first would be to use a java client running on the site that gives out the beta keys. Just head over to worldofwar and the chat will try to auto connect to the server. The second method would be to either use the chatzilla add-on for firefox or a regular client for irc like mirc.

You will have to do the following if you choose the latter methods or the auto connect fails. Type in the following command and hit enter:

• /server irc.incgamers.com

Once connected you have to enter the channel where the contest takes place:

• /join #wow

Sometimes you get a message that your nickname is in use, to change your nickname type

• /nick anothername

The last command that makes you join the contest would be:

• /msg bc enter

Substitute with your email, with your wow account name and select either US or EU depending where you play the game.

You do not have to be present after you have done this few steps, just stay connected and hope that you are chosen by the channel bot.

The server seems to be flooding with people at the moment, I had troubles connecting, just try again if that happens to you. You will eventually make it. Remember the contest runs for 5 days.

Link to the contest announcement

According to Greg a software know as the “warden client” is executed every 15 seconds on all World of Warcraft clients that are currently playing the game. Here is what Greg found out about it:

• The warden dumps all the DLL’s using a ToolHelp API call. It reads information from every DLL loaded in the ‘world of warcraft’ executable process space. No big deal.
• The warden then uses the GetWindowTextA function to read the window text in the titlebar of every window. These are windows that are not in the WoW process, but any program running on your computer.
• I watched the warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on MSN, the URL of several websites that I had open at the time, and the names of all my running programs, including those that were minimized or in the toolbar. These strings can easily contain social security numbers or credit card numbers, for example, if I have Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks open w/ my personal finances at the time.

  Once these strings are obtained, they are passed through a hashing function and compared against a list of ‘banning hashes’

• Next, warden opens every process running on your computer. When each program is opened, warden then calls ReadProcessMemory and reads a series of addresses – usually in the 0x0040xxxx or 0x0041xxxx range – this is the range that most executable programs on windows will place their code. Warden reads about 10-20 bytes for each test, and again hashes this and compares against a list of banning hashes.

Gregs conclusion is that the warden client can be declared to belong to the category of spyware. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) calls it a massive invasion of privacy.

According to the EFF Blizzard has come up with three responses:

Warden doesn’t collect personal information, so what’s the problem?

The thing is, warden does at least scan personal information and process these findings. In other words, a privacy invasion takes place even though Blizzard claims that no data is saved.

Everyone’s doing it. Blizzard points out that many companies use hack-scanning programs

Thats no excuse, is it ?

Read the EULA. Blizzard advises gamers of its intent to invade in its terms of service. “People should read contracts, says Blizzard rep John Lagrave.

Well, I don´t know a lot of Gamers who actually read the EULA of a game and Blizzard surely knows this.

Hoglund released a tool called The Governor that watches the activities of World of Warcraft, and clearly reports which data is being read from other processes. You can download it at Greg Hoglunds site