This has circulated the news channels recently: The U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massively multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence.
The system sounds like a similar software tool developed in the UK, analysing people in the tube stations of London for "suspicious behaviour". This software is intended to profile your behaviour online and then possibly advancing to "automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world." Scary stuff!
Be careful who you frag. Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence.
The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of "automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world."
The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.
If it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its scope to a full project.
Reynard will conduct unclassified research in a public virtual world environment. The research will use publicly available data and will begin with observational studies to establish baseline normative behaviors.
The publicly available report - which was mandated by Congress following earlier concerns over data-mining programs - also mentions several other data-mining initiatives. These include:
Video Analysis and Content Extraction - software to automatically identify faces, events and objects in video
Tangram - A system that wants to create surveillance and threat warning system that evaluates known threats and finds unknown threats to issue warnings ahead of an attack
Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination - This tool is reminiscent of the supposedly-defunct Total Information Awareness program. It seeks to access disparate databases to find patterns of known bad behavior. The program plans to work with domestic law enforcement and Homeland Security.
The report gives no indication why the find-a-terrorist cell in Sims project is called Reynard, though that is a traditional trickster figure in literature.
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I picked this up when adding a news item for StarCraft: IncGamers, it is a snip from Game Developers Convention that is taking place right now.
One lesson that Rob shared that we've heard from numerous designers in the past is that, when a particular unit or strategy seems underpowered, you want to overcorrect it and make it more powerful than you think it should be. That way, you'll actually encourage players to try the new units and strategies and you'll have a better sense of where the true balance should be. What this amazing revelation actually means is that my friend Wuushu was right on with his theories of Blizzard Class Design. They simply let a few classes be overpowered at a time, so people are interested and try them out, then nerfing them and the circle continues. What a devious plan indeed! Still, if you look at it, the system could be fair enough, no class is usually overpowered against ALL other classes, just enough to be "ez mode" enough to draw players to it (*cough* Warlock *cough*). I just wish Ret Paladins could have been OP more than just one month between Patch 2.0 and TBC release...
Besides that, the article talks a lot about game design in general, and has equal focus on StarCraft, WarCraft and WoW. Here is another interesting snip on how a developer can choose to balance; with negative changes or positive, and their result for the players: Rob also revealed that any discussion of balance has to take player psychology into account. The first lesson here is that changes to the game balance are almost universally perceived as a negative thing. We remember all the mail we got from the Barbarian nerf from Diablo II, so we totally get this. So rather than addressing the balance from a purely objective standpoint, it's also worth considering the overall perception of balance in the players' minds which is based more on experience than spreadsheet calculations. The original design for World of Warcraft included an experience penalty that got progressively larger the longer you played in any single session. The players felt that they were being punished for spending time with the game, so the developers simply reversed the process to give a short term XP boost to players who haven't logged in recently. In terms of the math, it's exactly the same thing but it creates an entirely different impression in the player's mind.
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Blizzard have added to the PTR patch notes again, here are the changes:
Druids
Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.
Hunter
Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.
Mages
Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.
Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.
New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.
Paladins
Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to ¡°Turn Evil¡±. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.
Priests
Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.
Rogues
Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.
Shaman
Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
Nature¡¯s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.
Warlocks
Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).
Arenas
Matchmaking: If a queued player has a personal rating higher than their team rating, the matchmaking system will now use the highest personal rating of a queued member of that team for matchmaking purposes, instead of the team rating.
Alterac Valley
There is now a Join as Party option.
Alchemy
Transmute Arcanite no longer has a cooldown.
Fishing
Feltail fishing nodes have been changed to Brackish Mixed Schools; they now produce mostly Golden Darters and some Feltail.
Items
Darkmoon Card: Madness: The buffs from this item will no longer interrupt casting and channeling.
Druid Restoration PvP Sets: The bonus movement speed for Bear, Cat, and Travel Form has been removed and replaced with a new bonus to Regrowth.
Shaman Elemental PvP Sets: The resistance on Lightning Bolt spell pushback has been reduced to 50%.
User Interface
Searching for an item in the tradeskill search box should now hide empty categories.
World Environment
Eye of Culuthas and Hound of Culuthas now drop grey loot.
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