MS Zone Users Must Use Passport Accounts

pathos writes: "CNet reports in this article that Microsoft, in its continued obsession to get everyone and his/her mother to be a registered Passport user, forced all of it's MS Zone gaming site users (including players of 'Asheron's Call') to open accounts in Passport in order to keep using the service... too bad that a bug with their .NET deployment kept many users not being able to access the service..." Of course, if you run the hotel, you get to say who uses the pool ...

Same as hotmail

[interiot]

Why can't users just act the same as they do with Hotmail? Open up separate accounts for different uses, most with false information that can't be tied back to you without a search warrant?

Re:Same as hotmail

[Blackwulf]

Why can't users just act the same as they do with Hotmail? Open up separate accounts for different uses, most with false information that can't be tied back to you without a search warrant?

Probably because, in the case of Asheron's Call, they have to have credit card information to bill you with (or they want to use the Passport to bill you instead?) and they need your real information.

For the free stuff, sure, I understand completely making a different account. But some Zone games are subscription based, so this solution won't work.

Thank god I don't play any subscription-based Zone games. :>

Re:Wouldn't it be amusing if...?

[generic-man]

If two users try to log in to the Zone using the same username and password, the earlier login is booted off. My brothers tried to share an Asheron's Call account across two computers, but quickly ran into this limitation. Sorry, but it just can't be done. You'll have to pay Microsoft another $9 or so per month to play games such as the Asheron's Call on-line.

Re:Resist!

[reaper20]

No it doesn't ... I just installed it and it works fine. Sure, it asks you to sign up for passport every 30 seconds, but I can connect to my bank and get my stuff just fine without passport.

Re:Resist!

[SpaceHamster]

How long will it be before every Windows user is required to have a Passport account before they can log into their workstation?

Not long I imagine. Have you used WinXP? The very first thing it asks when you log in the first time is, "Would you like to associate a .NET Passport account with this user?". Yup, scary.

Re:Asheron's Call?

[SiliconJesus]

Actually, Asheron's Call is the only reason that I still have a Windows Partition anymore on my main box at home. All joking aside, its a GREAT game. It wasn't developed my Microsoft, nor is it managed by them, but by a company called Turbine [turbinegames.com]. If you'd like to learn more about this addiction, feel free to browse some of my favorite fan sites, Crossroads of Dereth [xrgaming.net] or Asheron's Call Stratics [stratics.com]. Of course you can also check my guilds site which I administer, called Strife [strife-ac.net].

Re:Same as hotmail

[interiot]

Are they really completely separate from the rest of your info?

Basically, no... TOS [visabuxx.com]:

• XII. Disclosure of account information to third parties.

  As a part of establishing this Card account, you will receive with your Card a copy of the Bank of America Privacy Policy for Consumers, which generally addresses Bank of America's policy for handling and disclosing information. You may view this policy at www.bankofamerica.com/privacy. With respect to Your Card account, from time to time, subject to any applicable financial privacy laws or other laws or regulations, We may provide information about You and the Card account: (1) to Chex Systems, Inc. or other account information services; (2) to anyone who We reasonably believe is conducting a legitimate credit inquiry, including, without limitation, inquiries to verify the existence or condition of an account for a third party such as a lender, merchant or credit bureau; (3) in response to any subpoena, summons, court or administrative order, or other legal process which We believe requires Our compliance; (4) in connection with collection of indebtedness or to report losses incurred by Us; (5) in compliance with any agreement between Us and a professional, regulatory or disciplinary body; (6) in connection with potential sales of business; and (7) to carefully selected service providers who help Us meet Your needs by providing or offering Our services. In addition, if You or the Teen agree to provide an electronic mail address for purposes of receiving information regarding possible special merchant offers, We will consider that Your consent to provide that address to such merchants.

This is scary...

[Deltan]

Being a former manager at the Zone, I can honestly say this is a scary concept. While I was there, we desperately tried to resist even becoming a part of MSN, alas the powers that be just wheeled the Zone like any other product and made us a part of MSN.

Microsoft already tracks user information through the use of their Zone software. So much information, that it's almost like the Windows XP product activation. They ban users from their service based on a unique key generated by the Zone software that analyzes your hardware.

Slap this in with the fact that you use a credit card to access Asheron's Call and other premium services, they've got a good start on a personal profile for you.

They know what your system is made up of, they know your credit card number, they know your visiting habits, and if you use hotmail, they have your email by the proverbial balls. Short of owning your home, they own your online presence indefinitely. In the future if they integrate Passport with XBox, they'll be able to track your game habits, how many wins, losses even your game chats.

Chalk one up to MS for squeaking this one in on the Zone. I bet they resisted it with their very last bit of will power.

Rants and Rants

[Alien54]

Jerry Pournelle [jerrypournelle.com] has a nice rant about his experience on his personal site (Semiblog/daybook) which is just too priceless to leave just there:

Wednesday 12 December 2001

Microsoft .NET Passport may not be a killer app, but it looks good to kill internet commerce.

For a thoroughly frustrating and miserable experience, try logging on to Microsoft .NET Passport with a 28.8 dialup system. I have yet to manage it and I have wasted the better part of an hour in two half-hour attempts, one in the middle of the night, the other at about noon, PST.

It takes many screens, and each screen is full of ads calling to another server; the result is interminable waits. If this is the future for Microsoft, that company is in REAL trouble.

Five attempts to log on to Asheron's Call have yet to get me past the .NET passport login attempt, and only one of them got me that far. The rest is a tangle of page errors. My system is an XP Pentium IV so I doubt that it is my hardware that's at fault. Microsoft had better stick to something it understands, because as a consumer service company it really sucks.

If there is anyone from Microsoft paying attention to this, I'd sure like some advice. HOW do you manage to work with this? Sometimes I get "cannot find server" errors. Other times it looks to find things, but all it returns is a blank page. Once, one glorious time, it offered to log me in! But then when I did, I got a 'cannot find server' error as a return. Earth calling Microsoft: if this is your idea of ecommerce, you would do better to invest in sanitary landfills.

Now I have a login screen -- it says "done" at the bottom -- and the screen is entirely blank. It is clear that Asheron's Call is unplayable for me with my 28.8 dialup. I can't even manage to get to the .NET Passport login. Ah well. Thank you Microsoft.

The problem here seems to be the Casino ads and another such things: they take so long to load that you never actually see the screen you are trying to load, and eventually it all times out. This is as stupid a design as I have ever seen. Thank you, Microsoft, for as miserable an hour as I have spent with the Web.

Meanwhile Everquest may be working again. At least they try. But I think the Microsoft thing is unusable until I have fast enough connections that I can live with those stupid animated advertisements that Microsoft makes you endure just to get to the log-in (which I have yet to manage).

[...]

Still trying to get to Asheron's Call. When you click "PLAY" there is a 3 minute download, that often results in a page error. It is a very busy page but it wants you to connect to .NET Passport before you can start a ZONE.COM account. That never works. Each attempt takes several minutes, most of the time being spent waiting for animated ads to download from busy servers.

Microsoft is clearly interested only in those with LOTS of bandwidth. No others need apply.

Everquest, on the other hand, takes about 45 seconds to connect to the main server and about 3 minutes to get logged on, at 28.8, and plays quite well once there.

So much for .NET

[...] Eric says Microsoft just went to the .NET Passport business for their ZONE games, and things are really fouled up, but it ought to be temporary Fine. But with the satellite or without, I cannot manage to SIGN IN TO THE .NET so I cannot sign up for a zone passport so I cannot play Asheron's Call. I presume that applies to everyone else trying to get into the game. Those who previously were set up apparently can mange. The rest of us can wait for Microsoft to get its act together.

They had something working, so they decided to fix it. Brilliant of them. One day they will get it fixed, but my confidence in .NET has been reset to VERY LOW. If they can't manage games, why would I believe they can make things easy for software developers? Can't find the login servers. Well, well, well.

And some of the mail he has received is not much better.

Microsoft woes: Seems to be yet another application of Sturgeon's Law and Hanlon's Razor. I doubt there are people sitting in Redmond going "how can we lose more customers today?" :)

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Sturg eon's-Law.html
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Hanlo n's-Razor.html

[...]

Subject: Passport.

"Microsoft .NET Passport may not be a killer app, but it looks good to kill internet commerce."

Currently Passport cannot talk to me. I have had a particular primary email address for three years. Sometime in those three years, I set up a passport account tied to it, but obviously no longer remember my password. Microsoft cannot reset the account and reissue a new password to that address. They cannot set up a new passport account because they only allow one account tied to a particular email address. Their only suggestion was that I ditch my long-standing email account and create a new hotmail for the purposes of talking to passport. I don't *WANT* a new email address. I've had three email addresses in twelve years and I like to present stability in the internet maelstrom.

Until Passport comes up with a WORKING way to reset a password on an account, or to build a new account at an email address that they've already heard of, I cannot use them for any internet commerce.

It is impossible to ascribe any of this to malice, but can anyone be this incompetent?

Of Course. this is not a bug, but a feature.

Reminds me of websites I have found that were optimized for 1600x1200 resolution.

This doesn't seem to be completely true

[Sebbo]

I have Bejewelled [msn.com] open in another Mozilla window right now, and I don't have a passport account. It would seem that the change is a bit less extensive than CNet (and Slashdot) seems to be saying.

Re:Same as hotmail

[throbbingbrain.com]

I can't remember if they're visa or mastercard. They sell them in a pharmacy next door so I'll read the fine print next time I'm there and post it here.

They're shrink wrapped cards with preset positive balances ($50, $100, like prepaid calling cards). It should be anonymous unless it has to be activated in some way.

I am a Major Zone User

[Buzz_Litebeer]

I have used the zone for a very long time, I have also participated in zone tourneys, and promoted the zone as a gaming environment. The zones move to passport was an incredibly bad move. For one, it does not allow having multiple zone names, the previous one did, and for a gaming environment this is important because many people want to apply unit tags. The old zone system did this very well already and allowed team registration, and changing of names on a whim. This system was better for gaming that the current zone system. I am in a unique position and am able to get in contect with actual zone techs because I know a couple, and the zone was so buggy with the change that I had to get a total of 3 .NET passports before I could get my previous zone name. It took me 2 just to get a zone name, but because of a bug it auto-assigned a random zone name to my account and would not allow me to switch it. many, many, people have had problem, the zone log in has also experienced problems with the very ability to log in. For example when you log into the zone right now, you have a "small" chance of actually being able to log in, and when you do successfully log in, because of errors in the page it will log you out if you hit any links, which kind of hurts the ability to play games, for example when I hit submit after creating this post, instead of posting slashdot logged me out... and not only logged me out, but took 4 minutes of stalling your browser to log out. It gets very old, very quick. The sheer unusable interface, and the fact that all the zone features were previously implemented, and in good working order, the only difference is that you have to have a .NET passport now, there is no added functionality, no added software, just added hassle. I hope that answered your question.

MS giving something back

[ruvreve]

For those of you who are 'forced' to join passport you can go a step further and starting purchasing items using your newly created passport account and microsoft will give you some money back [online.com]. Beware I don't think the amount they give back will be comparable to how much somebody could fraudently bill to your account when they get access to your passport account. Errr....wait nobody would be able to do that to a microsoft product because they enforce security through obscurity and it has never failed them.

Re:This doesn't seem to be completely true

[parliboy]

BJ (double meaning intended) is a free game where you compete against no other humans, and they let anyone wander in for that. But Ash is a pay game. So to play that, they get your info. Which now means in propogates a lot farther than you intended.

I've tried to get an account with mozilla...

[PineGreen]

only to be told:


Unfortunately, Microsoft® .NET Passport does not support the Web browsing software you are using. Please use supported browsing software such as Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.0 or later, or Netscape Navigator versions 4.08-4.82.

If you use Netscape Navigator 6.1: due to possible data security issues, you cannot currently access .NET Passport using Netscape Navigator 6.1. We take security seriously and are working with Netscape to resolve these issues as soon as possible so that .NET Passport can support Netscape Navigator 6.1. Until that time, please use supported browsing software. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience.


Quite amazing.

Re:Ok.. interesting point..

[Nurgster]

Yes, MS does have a competitor in this field, and that competitor is wiping the floor with them (on non-subscription services).

You might have heard of them... GameSpy [gamespy.com]?

Re:Wouldn't it be amusing if...?

[zeno_2]

Actually its a bit different then that.

Lets say I have 5 Asheron Call accounts. With this new passport system, I have 2 choices when it comes to how I can manage those accounts with passport.

Choice 1:
I can create (or use existing) 5 seperate email accounts. I would set each AC account up to a seperate passport account. This will let me log into the game with each account at the same time.

Choice 2:
I can make a single passport account, and link all 5 accounts to the passport account. The problem here is that you can only have 'one' active at a time. So, someone that had 5 accounts, and if they did this, they reclaimed each of their zone names and the last one they did, is the active account. If he wants to change the account, he has to reclaim one of his other names that are in his 'inactive' list.

The problem I see with choice 2 is that they are turning 5 seperate accounts, with x amount of character slots, to 1 single account with x * 5 character slots. If you chose the second choice, you can only log on the account and play the single active account.

Also, most of these people created new hotmail accounts to do this. They are going to have to make sure that they log into that hotmail account once every 60 days (it might be 90) to keep the email account active. If they dont, it will become disabled, and someone else can make another hotmail account with the same name.

Alternatives?

[caudron]

If you don't like MS, there are always alternatives:

http://www.xns.org
http://www.onename.com

If enough people use a competing system, (especially a more open like xns) then the market can't as easily galvanize around Passport.