Ultima Online and Tibia were MMOs with persistent worlds with thousands of players at the same time and no monthly fee as well :)But I already addressed it here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/61742119/23805954
Poor analogy, Blizzard didn't pay my internet bill, and all previous games you could play online just by buying the game. Diablo II had a single player but it was created for online multiplayer, and you didn't need to pay a monthly fee.
Yeah, I used to play Diablo II online and Ultima Online as well (other friends would play Tibia), all of these were created for online multiplayer as well, that's why I thought WoW was bullshit... nowadays I understand the difference in server costs (Diablo II they basically just hosted a lobby and your character data, the game instance would run on the player's computer and not their server, but the other two games hosted all their realms 24/7 with thousands of players simultaneously, the difference is that WoW were hundreds of thousands to millions).
Diablo II was the last time I bought something by Blizzard. When they launched WoW I found it absurd that you had to buy the game and still pay a monthly fee to play.
Other Brazilian here: Although they don't care much about piracy at individual level, there were local servers seized and from time to time they take down some locally hosted sites, so although it's safe for you to download and even p2p share stuff, you can get unlucky hosting - if it's near elections and some politician needs to pretend he is having the police working.
I felt like there was something missing so I picked some chives from my garden.
The pasta I'm making is an Italian Paganini "trafilata al bronzo", might not be a big deal for Europeans, but is way better than anything local I have in my third world country.
Well, I'm making a mushroom pasta right now... chopped some garlic, leek, shiitake, white button, portobello. Gonna sauté the mushrooms a bit with butter, sauté the garlic and leek with olive oil separately because the mushroom releases too much water, then make a béchamel (butter, flour, milk, and I also use heavy cream), mix them when they are ready, add salt, black pepper and perhaps paprika and voilà.
"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
You can buy a game license on Steam. Your only access to it is through them, you can only install and play it through their store. You need to have their program running to check your license and also probing your system to see what you are running and logging your activity. If the company so decides, they can remove your access to the game because you never bought it, they only gave you a license. This market model removes player's autonomy and keep everything locked out of players control.
Or you can buy a game on GOG. After you buy the game you don't need GOG for anything, you have full control of the installation file and can back it up however you want and install wherever you want. You can use their launcher if you want to log your activity for social features but that's optional. You bought the game and have your copy, publisher and distributor can fuck off forever.
Yet, people believe not owning and controlling the games you paid for is "better"...(not knowing how games used to be, and what online stores have taken from you, is a tragedy)
Oh, the game is not available on GOG? That's because the publisher doesn't want consumers to have any control over the game, they want to control how, when and where you can play it, including revoking licenses if your own self-hosted private servers don't follow the moderation rules the company wants, and if you still buy it you are just keeping this anti-consumer market model viable - just like consumers made lootboxes, pay-to-win, battle passes, single player games requiring online verification, and everything that enshitified gaming viable. Market share is no metric for service quality.
There are better things, just like modular phones are better than iPhones, but consumers are driven by propaganda and herd mentality and they don't care the least if the product they are buying denies them autonomy. If consumers were smart, pay-to-win features and battle passes would have never become a thing.
"This might be my favorite debloat tool since you can create a quick script online and it has tons of options, however, if you don't know what you are doing, don't go messing around, because they go overboard with options and let you uninstall tons of packages that break Windows functionality and I have no idea why the option is even there. It's like, "For a lighter experience, how about deactivating upper limbic appendages?" and just like that you agreed to removing your arms.Privacy Cleanup - all options pretty cool. Disable OS Data Collection - all pretty cool, but I'd be careful with Application Compatibility Framework, and only select Application Impact Telemetry there. Configure Programs - all pretty cool, but I'd skip browsers unless you are planning to use any of them. Secure Improvements - now, it's all very well documented there what each option does, but do you really understand what they do? Do you trust their info is updated to any other change Windows might have made? If you don't know what those options are about, I don't recommend touching them - some even disable convenient stuff, like AutoPlay and AutoRun for when you connect something to your USB port. Block Tracking Hosts - all cool too. Privacy Over Security, UI For Privacy, Advanced Settings - don't touch it if you don't know what you are doing. Remove Bloatware - mostly very cool, but a lot of stuff on the Windows App list you should be very careful about removing. Rule of thumb: If you don't know what it is, don't touch it.After having your script ready and downloading, you run as administrator, and it will take a long time to complete. After manually clearing what you could and running a debloat script, it's also always good to run Get-AppxPackage on PowerShell to see what was left behind and then use Get-AppxPackage -Name "PackageName" | Remove-AppxPackage to get rid of it. There is always some Bing, Yahoo, Zune, Skype, Edge, Xbox, Teams, Weather, Maps, crap still lurking...I always used to remove Windows Store, but Microsoft has removed your access to its utilities directly through browsers. Even trying to install through PowerShell will fail without it. So, yeah, it's bloatware, but be careful about removing it now." https://fuckbigtech.neocities.org/#06-01
Last privacy.sexy update is March 2025, and Microsoft has been rolling out a lot of updates that have been changing a lot of stuff, so probably there will be broken scripts.Just keep in mind that, despite the script's name, there is no privacy on Windows ever. It's just a debloat tool that will help your performance and battery runtime.
So, have you guys watched that The Outer Limits episode The Architects of Fear?
edit: I guess not. It's about creating a monster that can unite the world [against it]