Diablo II & Privacy

There's a post on PlanetDiablo from Blizzard Entertainment, describing plans for a patch that includes a feature that "is likely become quite controversial despite the company's efforts to explain exactly why it is being implemented." Here's the word:
This week, Blizzard will be releasing Diablo II patch 1.09c. The patch adds a new feature to the program that is important, but also has the potential to be misunderstood [...].

Included in the patch is a .dll file that will relay non-personal, non-identifying information about a user's computer to Blizzard. Specifically: CPU, RAM, operating system, video card and sound card information.

Historically, the best customers for Blizzard games are players of previous Blizzard games, and while it's tempting to go for high-end specifications with our upcoming Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos to get the maximum amount of bells and whistles out of it, we also want it to be playable by as many of our current customers as we can, and so we're going to compile this information for that purpose.

Two important things to note [...]: 1) this is only taking place in North America, and 2) users can opt out of participating in this hardware specification survey when they download the patch.

We understand that user privacy is an important matter to our customers, and are attempting to balance privacy needs with the best means possible of accurately ascertaining current users' hardware information.
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12.
 
Blizzard: Help us keep our games simple
Nov 7, 2001, 11:38
12.
Blizzard: Help us keep our games simple Nov 7, 2001, 11:38
Nov 7, 2001, 11:38
 
The development of Warcraft III has been a slow, steady progression from an innovative and ambitious title to what now appears to be little more than Warcraft II with a 3D engine tossed in but used to no great effect. This seems to be an attempt by Blizzard to justify the continued paring down of the game. "Well, look at all the people playing Starcraft running 450 mhz systems."

If they don't want "bells and whistles" in the game, they just shouldn't bother. At this late stage of development, I don't see how a survey is going to help. The feature set of the game should have been locked down already.

Date
Subject
Author
1.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@209.251
3.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@130.18
5.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
7.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@24.27
15.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
17.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@24.18
6.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@198.60
8.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@24.104
11.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@194.205
26.
Nov 12, 2001Nov 12 2001
anon@216.231
27.
Nov 12, 2001Nov 12 2001
anon@130.18
28.
Nov 13, 2001Nov 13 2001
anon@137.229
29.
Nov 13, 2001Nov 13 2001
anon@209.179
30.
Nov 13, 2001Nov 13 2001
anon@130.18
2.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@209.96
4.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@213.162
9.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@24.159
10.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@24.159
 12.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
Blizzard: Help us keep our games simple
13.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@194.205
14.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@63.142
16.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
19.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
20.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@132.156
21.
Nov 7, 2001Nov 7 2001
anon@24.12
22.
Nov 8, 2001Nov 8 2001
anon@206.246
23.
Nov 8, 2001Nov 8 2001
anon@206.246
24.
Nov 8, 2001Nov 8 2001
anon@207.51
25.
Nov 12, 2001Nov 12 2001
anon@64.166
31.
Nov 14, 2001Nov 14 2001
anon@24.67
32.
Nov 14, 2001Nov 14 2001
anon@213.59
34.
Nov 14, 2001Nov 14 2001
anon@164.58
35.
Nov 14, 2001Nov 14 2001
36.
Nov 14, 2001Nov 14 2001
anon@24.69
37.
Nov 14, 2001Nov 14 2001
anon@194.128