Addenda Provided

Just a quick post to say thank you to all GamerFM listeners from this evening, as I breached the 100 listener mark for the first time. I feel warm and fuzzy. OK, it was by one listener, but I don’t care, I did it

I lol’d. Apparently, this is the third instance of him doing something similar to this, for which he had to apologize for – insulting several regions in a broadcast, as well as an unfortunate mispronunciation on a radio broadcast and then proceeding to laugh throughout the whole broadcast. As much as I find these funny and honestly not a big deal, I think this guy needs to be sacked – it’s becoming a recurring theme for several years and it won’t get better if the below is his idea of professional behavior on TV.

Many news sources have reported that Favre is returning to Minnesota this very second in order to announce a return for his 20th NFL season.

Excerpt from NFL.com article at 2054 GMT:

Brett Favre is on a plane heading north, a source told NFL Network’s Scott Hanson. Could it be bringing Favre back to Minnesota? Signs point to yes.

The Biloxi Sun Herald cited a “highly placed source” in reporting that the plane is taking Favre and his wife, Deanna, to Minnesota so the quarterback can announce his return for a 20th NFL season.

Also on board are three of Favre’s closest friends on the Vikings — defensive end Jared Allen, guard Steve Hutchinson and kicker Ryan Longwell — who traveled to Hattiesburg, Miss., to try to convince the quarterback to come back, “The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

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The Star Tribune confirmed that Allen, Hutchinson and Longwell didn’t attend practice Tuesday, nor were they at morning team meetings. None of the three has battled injuries during training camp or missed any practices.

Minutes after Hanson’s report, Favre’s official Web site sent an e-mail to members of the media, saying: “Stay tuned for breaking news from the Minnesota Vikings today on Brett Favre’s possible return.”

I will have a full article on this sometime tomorrow afternoon when more details are announced. But SKOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL VIKINGS!!!!

When I woke up this morning, I discovered that the owner of a WoW private server company, Alyson Reeves (also known by in-game handle Payton), had been successfully sued by Blizzard Entertainment for copyright infringement, along with the extra money she made from micropayments. Whether this was to keep the venture going or to fund her own lifestyle, we may never know. But the final judgement is below (taking from RFC Express):

ORDER RE DAMAGES by Judge Stephen V. Wilson,Based on Plaintiffs evidentiary submissions, the Court concludes that Plaintiff is entitled to default judgment in the amount of $3,052,339 in disgorged profits, $85,478,600 in statutory damages, and $63,600 inattorneys fees. The Court will file a separate judgment accordingly. (pj) (Entered: 08/11/2010)

FINAL JUDGMENT by Judge Stephen V. Wilson,Pursuant to the Courts July 22, 2010 and August 10, 2010 Orders Granting Plaintiffs Motion for Default Judgment, it is hereby ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that Plaintiff Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. shall recover $88,594,539.00, and post-judgment interest thereon at the rate provided by law until paid in full, from Defendant Alyson Reeves, d/b/aScapegaming. 24 . ( MD JS-6. Case Terminated ) (pj) (Entered: 08/11/2010)

Yes, you read those numbers right. All in all the judgement came to just over $88.5 million. Most of that for the actual rights infringement (other than one server altering drop rates and experience rewards, they were all identical in the code to actual wow servers), although $3 million came from the profits made on the ventue, but only $63k in attorney fees, although it was a default judgement, so that was likely to be the case, but I suspect the actual lawyer cost for Blizzard internally was quite a bit larger than that.

I’m in two minds about this. My normal, logical train of thought mind that believes believes that this is a very fine move on the part of Blizzard, and this go a long way to remove the private server ‘plague’. However, I must stop and think with feelings for a sec. I’ve never used the ScapeGaming site, but I did visit a couple of times, and each time I read through it, I got the feeling that they were simply there as an overflow for WoW players who simply couldn’t afford the retail subscription fee.

Most of the posts regarding future updates said it would be several weeks before they caught up to Blizzard, although it was so that it didn’t become an alternative to the retail servers. In fact, a source of mine for this story (who did play on the Scape servers for quite a while after he lost his career and struggled for rent) said that when Wrath came out early last year, they actually held off updating the Scape servers for several months and were directing people to retail in order to play the new content.

As I weigh it up, I think Blizzard were right to do this in terms of protecting their intelectual property, along with the fact that, even though it’s intentions were good, Scape was harbouring plenty of free riders who were perfectly able to pay the retail. That said, I do sympathise with the ScapeGaming community regarding it’s obvious collapse, and hope that Payton can get the penalty reduced upon an appeal, because even I with my ‘strict punishment for all crimes’ stance believe this is way too high.

Go See It!

That is all.

OK, so I’ve been lax with posts lately, so here’s a quick compendium of stories that caught my eye in sports as it pertains to me;

- I may have been a bit premature in saying the Toby Gerhardt Pick was the wrong one. It appears he is integrating very well, and whilst learning is still needed, the rookie seems to be picking up the system very well – LINK (Vikings.com)

- Percy Harvin is still away from training camp due to migranes, suspected to stem from the stress caused after the death of his grandmother. As I’m sure everyone knows, people grieve in different ways, and I have no problem with him taking extra time out to ensure the migrane problem is resolved as soon as possible, if it means he can be ready for the start of the season, even if it means missing some preseason action – LINK (Vikings.com)

- The Chicago Fire are prepping to take on the New England Revolution on the 18th August.

- Madden NFL 11 comes out in the UK tomorrow. And if I didn’t have a radio show between 7-8 tomorrow, I know what I would be doing the whole evening…setting up my Vikes franchise and winning the Super Bowl, then switching to the worst team that year, and building them to a Super Bowl as well.

OK, I’ve been out of the blog world for about a month, but what with running a company, starting at a new WoW Raiding guild (The Phoenix Guard on The Maelstrom EU Alliance) and my twice weekly internet radio show on GamerFM (Weds/Fri @ 7-8pm). Oh, and I’ve been raging about the fact that that wreck of a person Lohan got out after 10 days of here 30 day sentence because she’s famous, and I didn’t want to give that useless asshat any more space on my website. All I will say is that courts over the world need to set a sentence and then get these people to serve it, and not make it easy on them in terms of length or early release.

But I’m happy now, because it’s time for some FOOTBALL!!!! Madden 11 comes out the end of the week, and the preseason gets into full swing this coming weekend, with my Minnesota Vikings taking on the St. Louis Rams. And since I haven’t done a post about it, it’s time for my season predictions. It’s worth saying I haven’t done any in-depth analysis as I like to do, so these may change in a future post, in some cases, by quite a lot, but the general gist will be the same.

We start with the AFC East after the jump

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OK, so I have been stupidly inactive (reasons in the next post), but I have decided to setup a twitter feed. Please follow it up and make me feel wanted.

https://twitter.com/BrokenMC