Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Clown Dragons, Data Goblins, and the Tomatoverse
Transcript
- 0:00Hello everybody, welcome back to another another bling bing dang dong, there it goes, see?
- 0:27I just can't do it right. Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast.
- 0:32We are not potatoes. Well, maybe a little bit. Thank you for joining us today.
- 0:38If you like us, give us a thumbs up. If you don't, give us a thumbs down.
- 0:41Leave a comment. Be interactive. Engage. Do something. I don't know.
- 0:46I'm your host, Havoc. I can't even talk. What is wrong with me?
- 0:51I'm your host, Havoc. And with us, we have our other host, LX.
- 0:55Hello.
- 0:56Hi, LX.
- 0:57And today we have a special guest on Tyrex from the War Dragons community.
- 1:03See, I got to do a lot of editing already.
- 1:05Just roll with it. It's all good. You're human.
- 1:08Right. From the War Dragons community.
- 1:11He not only plays the game, but also has worked with the API to develop a website for some player stats, etc.
- 1:19And we'll get into that, as well as being the author of a book, an actual book.
- 1:24Welcome to the show, Tyrex.
- 1:26Welcome.
- 1:27Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- 1:31Absolutely.
- 1:31Our first accomplished author. I'm impressed.
- 1:36Yeah.
- 1:37Even to me, it's still new.
- 1:39Every time I hear that, like, published author, I get, oh, yeah, me, I am.
- 1:43Yeah, yeah, still new, but you didn't forget, so, yeah, great stuff.
- 1:48How long ago did you write the book? When was it released?
- 1:52I started writing it three years ago.
- 1:55it was published two years ago and the reviews have been not bad okay now i'm being cocky sorry
- 2:02but really the reviews have been not bad so happy with that all right well very cool and then so you
- 2:11play war dragons how long have you been playing war dragons i started playing war dragons on the
- 2:188th of February
- 2:192016
- 2:21at 14.27pm
- 2:24and I'm going to
- 2:26tell you why I know that
- 2:27please do, I'm curious
- 2:29I would like to know
- 2:31I've always loved dragons
- 2:36I have another website
- 2:38about dragons
- 2:40and not gaming dragons
- 2:42about the, I'm going to say
- 2:44the real dragons that we all
- 2:46on one stories and legends i've had that site for like 15 years now time does fly and um like i said
- 2:55dragons who doesn't love dragons um so every every game that i see that has dragons i'm i'm drawn to
- 3:04it i'll give you an example brother of warcraft something like 20 years ago i started playing and
- 3:10i said i need to have all the dragons i never kind of accomplished that but i was very close
- 3:15very very close uh so yeah as soon as i saw world dragons which was in february 2016
- 3:22i just of course of course oh and i get to fly the dragons not just click a button and
- 3:28as you know at the time everything was manual even though you have auto right now which is
- 3:33a love hate thing that i have with auto as i'm sure many people do it it was all manual it was
- 3:39good so i started collecting dragons here simple i mean not simple it's been what nine years now
- 3:45Yeah, not simple.
- 3:48Yeah, for sure.
- 3:49For sure.
- 3:50And so currently you're actually on my old team, Yan Yan Warriors.
- 3:56Welcome to that team.
- 3:58Hopefully you're liking that team.
- 4:01It was my home for a very long time.
- 4:04I actually ended up in an officer role.
- 4:07It was a very temporary thing.
- 4:09I was going to fill a spot for someone that was, you know, maybe a week, two weeks, I don't know, whatever.
- 4:21And suddenly time does fly.
- 4:23Yep.
- 4:24I'm enjoying it.
- 4:26It's a good team.
- 4:27The leader's a little sketchy, but besides that.
- 4:31To be quite honest, if I'm playing a game and some people are not sketchy, I run away.
- 4:37I have to be in the middle of characters.
- 4:41So, yeah.
- 4:43Well, that's a good thing.
- 4:45So what's your favorite dragon of all time?
- 4:49That is a tough question.
- 4:52However, I did think about it.
- 4:54And I do have a favorite dragon that is not even a recent dragon.
- 4:57It's not even a good dragon.
- 4:59But it was my favorite.
- 5:01Sage, the green thing.
- 5:04And I'm going to tell you why it was my favorite dragon.
- 5:06most of the dragons you play you play play them for like 20 30 50 levels and they're all you know
- 5:12disposable when i played sage i think i was something like level 80 ish and sage was my
- 5:20best dragon until i was level 250 so it was a lot of time uh eventually of course it started sucking
- 5:28and i had to get rid of him her but it stayed with me for such a long time that i have a deep
- 5:36connection to sage so even today every time i see bo hi yeah it's it become a friend so many hours
- 5:44you know oh yeah for sure i think uh as far as the dragons go what's interesting about this is
- 5:51we we talked about this quite a long time ago years and years ago and in a hunter hunter chat
- 5:58everyone refers to it as scary hunter chat because if you went off topic even a little bit
- 6:04boot you're gone so um yeah it was 100 on topic all the time hunters only but we were talking
- 6:13about the whole gender of dragons right like oh you know this one's a boy this one's a girl
- 6:18whatever there are i know one i there may be one other but there is to my knowledge one for sure
- 6:26and only one dragon that actually has any gender description in it and that is how is that and it
- 6:33does say it's a her and it shouldn't have in my opinion with all the with all the stories of
- 6:41dragons i compiled to my website there should never be a gender because as far as i know
- 6:49gender in a dragon is not correct because dragons can be whatever sex they want you have you can
- 6:55have men laying eggs you can have females doing men okay so it is wrong i don't know if it's wrong
- 7:04right i just feel it's wrong it's not a he it's not a she it's a beautiful entity it's a it's a
- 7:10thing it's not a but yeah yeah only one the lore is is certainly all over the place on that yes i
- 7:18I mean, we now have clowns, but I didn't want to talk about it.
- 7:22But it's irritating to look at a screen and see a dragon defaced with a clown's head.
- 7:33That's just the word I can find for it.
- 7:36Defaced.
- 7:38But okay, moving on.
- 7:39This is a recent edition of the game, I'm guessing.
- 7:44The new season, the theme is Carnival.
- 7:48So you have clowns, you have dragon clowns.
- 7:52Sorry, I think it's an insult to the dragon lore.
- 7:55Putting a face of a dragon with a clown,
- 7:58or a clown on the face of a dragon,
- 8:00I'm just looking at it and like, no.
- 8:02More so than like pumpkin heads and pirate hats
- 8:05and all that other nonsense that you put in there a while back?
- 8:10A little bit more.
- 8:11And this comes from a discussion that
- 8:15was on Discord last week, of course.
- 8:17Everything in Discord ends up in a row.
- 8:21There are a lot of people that have fear of clowns.
- 8:24I don't have fear of clowns.
- 8:26My wife does.
- 8:27And I know that it's one of those things that it strikes hard.
- 8:31Someone on Discord said, okay, but then you have to think about fear of heights, fear of...
- 8:36I get it.
- 8:38People can have fears of basically everything.
- 8:41but putting a clown on a dragon's face and on the loading screen i'm sorry i've seen weird stuff
- 8:50this come on my i was playing on my ipad and the wifey looked at it and she looked at me and i said
- 8:57okay i can't play near her now i have to spend the full season hiding from her because it affects her
- 9:04it disturbs her yeah i know some people have fear of other things but fear of clowns is is bad
- 9:11and dragons with clowns it's also bad so i have nothing good to say about this that's it
- 9:18and rent over yeah i suppose supposedly could have made it more carnival like and less
- 9:24you know big time big top you know tent type of a carnival thing you can have the carnival theme
- 9:33without making dragons look as scary as this.
- 9:38I said scary.
- 9:39I wanted to say fogly,
- 9:41but let's go with scary for the people who fear clones.
- 9:44But yeah, don't like it.
- 9:46Yeah.
- 9:47We should do an episode where we dress up in clown suits, Alex.
- 9:51Just go for it.
- 9:53Alex doesn't.
- 9:55Come on.
- 9:55A little honky nose.
- 9:58I'm good.
- 9:58No?
- 10:00Come on.
- 10:02Maybe next year.
- 10:03Yeah, maybe tomorrow.
- 10:06Stormtroopers?
- 10:07Darth Vader?
- 10:08I mean, come on.
- 10:09No?
- 10:10Maybe.
- 10:10Just no.
- 10:11Just no.
- 10:12Not after hearing the story about how Ark was sweating his butt off underneath his mask there.
- 10:18So, nah, I'm good.
- 10:20Yeah.
- 10:22Yeah, no doubt.
- 10:24All right.
- 10:25Yeah, so, yeah, I don't know.
- 10:28You know, no dressing up for the podcast?
- 10:31No mask?
- 10:32I'll wear a bandana or something.
- 10:33nah that's lame i'm too old to hide my face man yeah if you if you wear a bat okay well we could
- 10:41do this we could do the uh what was that that uh movie where they they wore blindfolds because if
- 10:49you didn't have your blindfold on then they would get you or something like that bird box we'll just
- 10:55blindfold ourselves bird box that thing with sandra bullock maybe that was it yeah i don't know but we
- 11:02can do that we'll just do a blindfolded podcast a movie with sandra bullock that i haven't seen
- 11:08i think it was no excuse no i think it was a netflix original thing that's back when i
- 11:14still watched movies i haven't watched movies in a while i just kind of yeah i don't know not
- 11:19interested all right all right well anyway sorry for the delusion there i just thought it might be
- 11:27fun whatever um okay so you you have a website developed right yes website my main website with
- 11:37all the stories and legends about dragons is called allaboutdragons.com and when i started
- 11:44doing this that we're going to talk about i decided to put the water dragon statistics
- 11:49as part of the allaboutdragons.com website so now the statistics are publicly available
- 11:55they have no ads i don't want any money from this and it's stats.allaboutdragons.com
- 12:01because the domain is mine for 15 years so i just use stats and it has some i think interesting
- 12:09tidbits of information because when i started playing the game i know that the pg war dragons
- 12:14website had some data boards and i kind of enjoyed looking at the leaderboards like one day i will
- 12:20be on the top 1,000.
- 12:22And suddenly there's nothing.
- 12:24After a couple of years, they abandoned it.
- 12:28And the catalyst of all this that I've done,
- 12:33roughly one month ago, I was waking up.
- 12:36I had my coffee.
- 12:38I started playing.
- 12:39I saw that I was attacked.
- 12:41The usual stuff.
- 12:41I click revenge.
- 12:43500 billion defense.
- 12:45And I thought, is this the best defense in the game?
- 12:49There was no way of knowing.
- 12:51I had no way of knowing.
- 12:53And so after the coffee I said there must be a way If there is a way I find a way I even went to line and i asked in the channel does anyone think that leaderboards no one gave a damn people told me oh the bots already have that
- 13:11no the bots don't have this the bots have information about atlas movements there is
- 13:18nothing that tells you
- 13:19the top 10 defenses in game
- 13:22from the 41,000 players.
- 13:24There's nothing that tells
- 13:26you top attacks
- 13:27from the 41,000 players.
- 13:30There is not even a...
- 13:32Who are the oldest teams?
- 13:34Which teams have won the most number of
- 13:36wars? Who is doing
- 13:38the best on the weekly...
- 13:40That's me. I shouldn't talk about that.
- 13:42But, you know, things like that.
- 13:44So I started compiling
- 13:45data, raw data.
- 13:48from my iPad to the PG servers,
- 13:52there's information going back and forth, right?
- 13:54Yeah.
- 13:55Is it encrypted?
- 13:55Yes, it is encrypted.
- 13:57Is it encrypted in a way that I can't access it?
- 14:01No.
- 14:02I didn't even need to do anything illegal
- 14:04because I would never.
- 14:06Let's not talk about the level 80s with maxed out places again
- 14:09because we know they exist and it bloody sucks.
- 14:13I found a legal way to
- 14:15between my iPad and PG servers
- 14:18start analyzing the traffic
- 14:20the data
- 14:21because you know
- 14:24you have raw data
- 14:25it just means numbers
- 14:27and then when you massage the data
- 14:30to information
- 14:32and information is power
- 14:34so I was able to
- 14:35two weeks
- 14:36I was able to start getting data
- 14:39all the players, all the teams
- 14:40even all the atlas coordinates but i don't want anything to do with atlas because there's too many
- 14:46politics so right now it's just the statistics of everything i can even tell you that the three
- 14:53best years regarding new players uh in world dragons were 2016 17 and 18 however 2025 is
- 15:01looking like it's going to be the fourth or third best year ever in new players so the game's not
- 15:08that. You guys need to un-retire.
- 15:11I'm trying to
- 15:12convince you.
- 15:14You're able to actually go back historically and look
- 15:16at the numbers then of how many
- 15:18people were playing at the time?
- 15:21I don't even need
- 15:22to do that because in every
- 15:24player's account,
- 15:26there is a column there that
- 15:28says, when did you start playing?
- 15:30When was the last time you played?
- 15:32So, like I said, I started
- 15:34gathering data. And as
- 15:36soon as I have all this data,
- 15:37let me see what I can do with this data.
- 15:40I can tell you that from the 41,000 players total,
- 15:45players that have played in June, like recently, 33,000.
- 15:52So you can immediately see, oh, 8,000 people never came back.
- 15:57Things like this.
- 15:58I love information.
- 15:59Information is power kind of thing.
- 16:03The difficulty was to, okay, I have all this data.
- 16:06What can I get from it?
- 16:07probably nothing.
- 16:09I got leaderboards.
- 16:10I got top 10s, top 20s.
- 16:12I like charts.
- 16:15Sue me.
- 16:16So I started compiling everything that I could
- 16:19with the data that was available
- 16:21without doing anything that would piss PG off.
- 16:27In the beginning, I didn't know how they would react to me
- 16:31checking the information for all the players
- 16:35every 90 minutes,
- 16:36which I am doing.
- 16:39But I try not to affect the servers.
- 16:42I've tried to gentle caress the data
- 16:44without just barging in like a stampede.
- 16:48But in the beginning,
- 16:50I was afraid that they might not like it.
- 16:52So I even left my previous team
- 16:54and I said, look,
- 16:55I don't want to do anything
- 16:56that might affect the team.
- 16:57I'm going to leave
- 16:58and then if everything is okay,
- 16:59I'll come back.
- 17:01I never did.
- 17:02But it doesn't matter.
- 17:03I was trying to do the right thing.
- 17:07Simple as that.
- 17:08Now, I know a lot of things about the API
- 17:12because I created an API on the developer's portal.
- 17:17Oh, what can I get with this?
- 17:18Almost nothing.
- 17:20This API is slow.
- 17:23It's not in real time.
- 17:25It's really, really outdated as soon as you look at it.
- 17:29So I found ways.
- 17:30There are ways to get the data more reliable.
- 17:33PG is caching the data.
- 17:36So if you ask for the information of, you know, 200 players,
- 17:39it will give you things from three hours ago.
- 17:42Is it enough?
- 17:44Probably.
- 17:46I wanted more.
- 17:47So I found a way to disable the cache and get live data.
- 17:51But I can't do 200 at once.
- 17:54The server explodes.
- 17:55I can only get 10.
- 17:57So instead of taking 10 minutes, it takes two hours.
- 18:00You know, PG never did the game for this data gathering.
- 18:06I get it.
- 18:07Some of the things, like the example I just gave,
- 18:09I'm doing things at 200 players, everything works.
- 18:14Oh, I want real data, new data.
- 18:16Boom, server explodes, and it keeps exploding.
- 18:19Now, we all know, we all geeks know that PG is using Google Cloud.
- 18:26Google Cloud doesn't explode like that.
- 18:27pg didn't want to do a resilient api if it explodes it's because one they don't care
- 18:35one they don't want to do anything about it i'm fine with that that gives me a challenge
- 18:40how can i get the data for 200 people without exploding the server fine it doesn't take two
- 18:48seconds it takes five minutes fine i'll do it anyway and that's what i've been doing trying to
- 18:54caress the data in a way that I'm happy with the data without pissing PG.
- 19:01I have a question about that data a little bit.
- 19:04In perusing that data, is it easy to spot cheaters in there?
- 19:09And if so, has PG just been ignoring that fact for years and years
- 19:15just because they don't want to deal with it?
- 19:16Yes.
- 19:18Regarding the level 80s with maxed out bases,
- 19:21we've all seen them.
- 19:24They might be cheaters that PG knows about and doesn't care, cheaters that PG doesn't want to investigate, which means they don't care, or they might be internal PG test accounts.
- 19:42I've been a developer in the past life.
- 19:44I had many accounts for myself to do things that people didn't want me to do.
- 19:48So I thought when I saw a level 80, whoa, what is this?
- 19:51This is a PG account.
- 19:52or a pg's family account oh you give the account to your niece oh i'll go play here's a boom boom
- 20:00level 80 max uh 205 yeah go have fun it might be that i'm not saying that it's a cheater 100
- 20:10right it looks like it but one thing i can tell you it's pretty easy to spot i have
- 20:16the information on everyone's defense and attack and their level and their xp i have everything if
- 20:24i have everything of course pg has it for way over 10 years doesn't necessarily mean that they pay
- 20:34much attention to it and in their defense actually in their defense they probably don't have a trust
- 20:40and safety team they have all the people in support that we already know about because all
- 20:44the tickets are from two or three people for the past years.
- 20:49And I'm guessing that they don't have a trust and safety team.
- 20:52There was some guy two months ago that told me, oh, give me money and I'll give you rubies.
- 20:57And this is fishy.
- 20:59I'm going to report this person.
- 21:01I reported him or her.
- 21:04And the template answer I got from PG was, oh, we're going to look into it.
- 21:09He's still there.
- 21:10And you know how I know he's still there?
- 21:11Because I can see all the accounts.
- 21:13He's active.
- 21:14kiyoshi oh yeah but you know i know that there wasn't a ban here i know there wasn't so what are
- 21:21they doing regarding trust i don't know not much yeah i think so you've got there are a couple
- 21:29right i i was fortunate to go to the dragon summit um which pg you know this was more heyday
- 21:38kind of pg time um they flew a crud load of players out to san francisco and you know put
- 21:46us up in a hotel and we had you know um basically you know um i don't know a conference if you will
- 21:56with different breakout sessions amazing swag yep only there was there was a lot more to it than
- 22:03just that right we got face time with the developers with product managers with you know
- 22:11the the uh you know community uh folks that they had um so we got a lot of a lot of good
- 22:19information and things of that nature um it was all of course nda etc but the the thing that that
- 22:28really came to is they wanted they wanted more flexibility in the game they wanted to be able to
- 22:35make changes in the game however you have to remember they purchased this game from someone
- 22:40else the game is fairly old and when it was developed it was developed in one of the oldest
- 22:48uis available for gaming at the time and so it is terribly coded it's impossible to unweave
- 22:57everything and make it so it could be stably modified and um i think as part of that api
- 23:06is a an afterthought it's an it's a complete and total afterthought so you're bolting an api
- 23:13onto something that you know i mean what 2015 apis were kind of like yeah right so what did
- 23:25you do with an API in 2015?
- 23:27Not a whole lot.
- 23:28For those of us that aren't
- 23:29like supercomputer literate,
- 23:30what is API actually?
- 23:32Because I have no idea
- 23:33what it stands for.
- 23:35API stands for,
- 23:37let me put this
- 23:38in the simplest way I can.
- 23:41If you have data in your server
- 23:42that you want to
- 23:44make available for other people,
- 23:47you create a communications layer
- 23:50that allows for everyone
- 23:51to query your data
- 23:54and in the simplest way possible.
- 23:58I'm not going to say, oh, it's a programming interface.
- 24:01Yeah, that's the fancy wording for it.
- 24:03But it's just that you have data here.
- 24:06You have people here.
- 24:07People make questions and you give them answers.
- 24:10That's what an API does.
- 24:14APIs can be simple.
- 24:16This one is pretty simple.
- 24:18Like Havoc said, this was done like with Band-Aids.
- 24:22And I still see a lot of data that refers to ship skill, sailors.
- 24:30I mean, there's stuff there that it was either for Atlas, the original game, or it was done for something else.
- 24:37But it bled through the years and it's still there.
- 24:41It's unused.
- 24:43A lot of things are unused on the API, which is a shame.
- 24:47They could have used it for new stuff, new features.
- 24:49but i think that they made a couple of updates to the api two years ago and they just left
- 24:55fine if if it works well does it really work i would say that it kind of works it's just a little
- 25:02bit uh 2010 it feels like 2010. i still love dragons i still play the game of course but
- 25:10could be better i also know that pg had like 150 to 200 people five or six years ago and now they're
- 25:17barely 100.
- 25:19I'm not going to mess with the politics
- 25:21and whatever. I know that
- 25:23War Dragons was making $1 million
- 25:25per month in Revan.
- 25:28Probably not now.
- 25:30So you have to deal
- 25:31with all of that. It's popular
- 25:33and now it isn't.
- 25:36Actually, like I said, this year has been
- 25:37good, but
- 25:39you never know. I think the whole Game of
- 25:41Thrones thing helped push it
- 25:43at that period of time.
- 25:45They just kind of hit upon
- 25:47the lightning in a bottle thing.
- 25:48And, you know, once people found out about it, that's, you know,
- 25:51everybody was watching that show at the time.
- 25:53I think that had a lot to do with it.
- 25:56Yeah.
- 25:57Who doesn want to hatch an egg of a dragon I mean well why wouldn you sitting there you know what is it you know 10 years now um i played starting i think in 2016 might have been 2017 but you know
- 26:14a good amount of time and and you know like lx likes to say it's two left turns two right
- 26:20right turns in your home you know what i mean they're they're i think they had the opportunity
- 26:27to really make this something that would have kept that traction.
- 26:35But the cost of unraveling the code and putting it into a new UI
- 26:40that will allow flexibility was something that they just didn't want to invest in.
- 26:47It's an interesting thing because I loved the game.
- 26:51I really did.
- 26:52But it just got boring.
- 26:55You know, it's the same events on the same schedule.
- 26:59It's just constant, the same thing every day.
- 27:04And yeah, the opponents change, but, you know, the feature functionality is, you know, what's new, right?
- 27:13I mean, the dragons are essentially the same wireframes with just different skins on them.
- 27:19So it's the same thing.
- 27:21the spells are largely
- 27:23just recycled, tweaked,
- 27:25tuned, modified slightly,
- 27:27and there you go. It's a new spell.
- 27:29No, it's the same this,
- 27:31but it's called this now.
- 27:33But it's easier to do everything now
- 27:35because you have auto attacks.
- 27:37And remember back in the day
- 27:39where you had blue, red,
- 27:41red, blue. Oh, mage
- 27:43he has blue, so I have
- 27:45now everything is white.
- 27:47It's not even hard.
- 27:48it's just everything can be oh come on i mean it's it's not everything like a hundred percent
- 27:55but it's so easy white white white white they shouldn't have had the necessity to dump it down
- 28:05to make it last you make things last with new features that attract new players or bring back
- 28:11old players just continuing
- 28:13the same thing it's just
- 28:14yeah and then clowns
- 28:17I need to stop talking
- 28:19about clowns what do you mean
- 28:21they don't put new content in it they've had new
- 28:23currencies like every season so far
- 28:25haven't they
- 28:26it's the same mechanic
- 28:29of the game you don't even need to
- 28:31change the code that much
- 28:33it's just put a new graphic you call
- 28:35it something else and it's already
- 28:37done so it's
- 28:39really not new
- 28:41and one thing that I need to
- 28:43whine about is
- 28:45the randomness of the game
- 28:47I love a game where you have to
- 28:49grind
- 28:50let's go back to World of Warcraft
- 28:52there was a very specific dragon, the time lost
- 28:55Protodrake, that was so random
- 28:57it appeared in a random
- 28:59place at random times
- 29:00four days that I barely slept
- 29:03I wanted that thing
- 29:04and lo and behold
- 29:07one day, 4am
- 29:08boom, I got the dragon
- 29:10You know, that is grinding, but as soon as I had it, I was showing it off.
- 29:16Everywhere I went, oh, man, I got this.
- 29:18In here, you have sequences.
- 29:21Everyone puts the sequence in a spreadsheet so that everyone has the same things.
- 29:27You never get to have anything new or different.
- 29:30Everyone knows exactly what's...
- 29:32Come on.
- 29:32I know that the random number generator is not an easy thing to do for a developer,
- 29:37but I've been a developer and it can be done.
- 29:39It's just not that easy, but it can be.
- 29:42I mean, you could go with a pseudo RNG.
- 29:45Here's the issue.
- 29:47I'm happy with pseudo RNG.
- 29:48The issue with doing a true RNG is this.
- 29:51The drops are largely crap.
- 29:54So if you have a random number generator
- 29:57and out of a thousand of them,
- 30:00four of them are good drops,
- 30:02you are going to have people
- 30:05that literally never, ever, ever get a good drop.
- 30:09ever ever in the game so you have a sequ fixed sequences and people feeling spreadsheets
- 30:17i can't be happy with that because you know it's vulgar everyone has the same i i get it i had to
- 30:25grind in many games to get that one piece of gear and sometimes i didn't have that one piece of gear
- 30:32and I, oh, F this, I'm going to come back next month.
- 30:35I get it.
- 30:37But if a player can't endure that, then don't play.
- 30:41Go play Farmville.
- 30:43Get out of here.
- 30:44You know how to fix all that, right?
- 30:45You just put it in a $100 pack that you can buy for real money.
- 30:50I knew you were good.
- 30:51And now you have a web store, but you can't buy Elite on the web store.
- 30:55You can just buy what they want you to buy,
- 30:56even though it's good for them.
- 30:58They get more money than the app stores.
- 31:00But look, even the web store, now that I spoke about the web store, they give you a free thingy every day.
- 31:08Fine.
- 31:09But, okay, they did that to get more money.
- 31:12So why didn't they put all the packs that they have in game on the web store?
- 31:15For me, that's like project management 101.
- 31:19If you're going to buy here, it's best for you and for us.
- 31:23Go here.
- 31:24But you only get to buy half of what we have there.
- 31:27What?
- 31:28Who thought about this?
- 31:30it's just, you know, silly.
- 31:33You're bringing back bad memories now.
- 31:35Cause like I, I, I remember,
- 31:37cause I had one of the older accounts that I could pay for the,
- 31:40the regular in-game elite with the rubies.
- 31:43And then they changed it.
- 31:45No rubies, just money.
- 31:47Yeah. And then like everybody was angry that, Oh, well,
- 31:49that guy can pay with the rubies.
- 31:51Why can't I pay for the rubies?
- 31:52And they came out with the Atlas, which you have to pay for.
- 31:55They, they never had that option in Atlas.
- 31:57So I guess they were kind of thinking ahead in that, that area.
- 32:00yeah there are caveats
- 32:04yeah so you said you said there were 41 000 players now when it's been like a month or so
- 32:14that it was at 38 000 so it's gone up by 3 000 players this year not even this year in the last
- 32:21couple months or so the total as of not today not yesterday as of 46 minutes ago
- 32:29is 41,350.
- 32:33Like I said, some of these are inactive,
- 32:36but this is the total.
- 32:40And the total for 2025 is now 4,337,
- 32:45which is pretty good.
- 32:47The top three years, 2017, 8,000.
- 32:512016, 7,000.
- 32:52In 2018, 4,500.
- 32:55So we're catching up with 2018, which was...
- 32:58So, mate?
- 33:00Then, you know, you have all the shit years,
- 33:01like 2023, 1,720 players.
- 33:06It's like bad.
- 33:08But this year is going really well.
- 33:09Maybe people are just reinvigorated
- 33:11by listening to our ramblings.
- 33:13So, Pocket Gems, the residual checks
- 33:15can be mailed to our post office box.
- 33:19All 20 of them.
- 33:21All 20 of them.
- 33:23Yeah, so you hear that, retired players,
- 33:25if you're looking for a reason to come back
- 33:27to war dragons first don't but if you if you were there's more players joining now so there's more
- 33:33stuff to do with other players they help them build character
- 33:37you could you could absolutely help them build character
- 33:43it's building character yeah right so so how long can you um actually like have an account
- 33:52inactive because I have not logged on
- 33:54since my team disbanded.
- 33:57It was, what, four years ago
- 33:59now? Is that account still there?
- 34:02You tell me
- 34:03your account and I'll look it up.
- 34:04Because I don't know if they
- 34:07erased your
- 34:09account or if it's still there
- 34:11with the last seen
- 34:12date of 2018. I don't know.
- 34:15But if you tell me, I can
- 34:17look it up.
- 34:20LX460.
- 34:22I'm going to look for all LXs.
- 34:27Probably not.
- 34:29There's LXs galore.
- 34:32There's too many.
- 34:34There can be only one.
- 34:37LX.
- 34:38Is it LX460?
- 34:39460, yeah.
- 34:40460.
- 34:45LX460.
- 34:50Nope.
- 34:51you have been
- 34:53removed
- 34:55eviscerated
- 34:56what about me
- 34:58I've looked at all the Havocs
- 35:01I just don't know which one is you
- 35:02because there's more than one
- 35:05level 693
- 35:07and it's just H-A-V-O-K
- 35:09just that?
- 35:12yep
- 35:12you're gone too
- 35:20yeah
- 35:21yeah my guess is if there's no activity
- 35:25for a period of time like zero
- 35:27activity they age it out
- 35:29and probably six months
- 35:31I would say they just
- 35:32if you read download the game like
- 35:34and go through like the sign in
- 35:36I mean because you can use your email
- 35:38and like forgot passwords I don't know
- 35:40like or do they just purge it completely
- 35:42as of right now it's
- 35:45okay
- 35:46good
- 35:47you could test it
- 35:49No, I'm good.
- 35:51If you still remember your email, you can try it.
- 35:55I've had the same email for 20 years now.
- 36:01Come on now.
- 36:022003.
- 36:03You know you want to know.
- 36:05Nah, I'm good.
- 36:06I can help you with that.
- 36:07We can talk later if you want.
- 36:10We'll talk later.
- 36:11My database is...
- 36:12I'm curious because at the time,
- 36:15I was in a chat with the developers in-game.
- 36:18They were looking for ideas of things.
- 36:19And that's where the idea for the Diamond 1 and Diamond 2 split came from,
- 36:24was that chat.
- 36:26And I asked the developer how many attacks I did,
- 36:31and he could tell me that number.
- 36:32At the time, it was almost 80,000 or something.
- 36:35And that was early in the game.
- 36:36I'm like, no way.
- 36:37How many hours have I spent in this game?
- 36:39And he told me, and I don't remember what it was, but I was amazed.
- 36:44And regarding the attacks and defenses, successful or not,
- 36:49They stopped tracking.
- 36:50Oh, they did.
- 36:51I can see data, but the data is here for like, I don't know how many years.
- 36:56Oh, okay.
- 36:57And it's not continuously updated as it should be.
- 37:00You know, that statistic, I would love that statistic.
- 37:03How many times have I been attacked?
- 37:05How many times have I successfully defended?
- 37:07How many?
- 37:08They have the place for it.
- 37:10They have the code for it because there are some values.
- 37:13But then suddenly, meh, screw this.
- 37:16We're not connected.
- 37:17Like you said, on their website, they used to track that stuff.
- 37:20And it was interesting to me.
- 37:22It was like, how many times has Dodo been used in attacks this week?
- 37:27I don't know why I find that interesting, but I find that interesting.
- 37:32How many chunk waves have actually happened?
- 37:36I mean, it's useless information, but I find it curious.
- 37:39I do have...
- 37:40I like useless information.
- 37:41I do have another question for you.
- 37:43You've been playing it.
- 37:43Do you remember that dragon Pog that just would show up?
- 37:47It was like a cartoon-looking thing.
- 37:49It was purple with polka dots.
- 37:51A small one, yes.
- 37:52It was an avatar.
- 37:54It wasn't actually a dragon.
- 37:56It was just an avatar that they would give you.
- 37:58It was an avatar.
- 37:59Was it pink or something pink-ish?
- 38:00Yeah, it was like purple and pink, I think.
- 38:02So it would just pop up in somebody's game,
- 38:06and they would tell you that you have to do some kind of in-game action
- 38:10to make it appear, but they would never tell you what it was.
- 38:13And I never got it.
- 38:14I don't know what it was that made it appear.
- 38:18I think players became frustrated because no one knew what to do.
- 38:22And then one day they just...
- 38:23Yeah, and then it was gone.
- 38:26Because it wasn't that funny.
- 38:29I mean, it was funny, but no one knew what to do.
- 38:30So, yeah.
- 38:32That was the right decision.
- 38:35Yeah.
- 38:37I always wanted flimp, though.
- 38:39I did have that one.
- 38:40I did do all that garbage.
- 38:42that you had to refer 20 people or something.
- 38:47And they had to get to level 50 or something.
- 38:50Exactly.
- 38:51I started creating alts for myself, but I stopped at like five or six,
- 38:56because you have to do a lot of levels.
- 38:58It a chore I be curious to know how many people actually had that stupid thing I mean it was pretty much useless but It was cute though Really cute
- 39:10No, it was just like
- 39:11I like the grinding
- 39:13ass. For whatever reason, I just
- 39:15enjoyed that.
- 39:18I figured not many people
- 39:19are going to have this thing because it's a pain in the neck
- 39:21and it's not worth it at all
- 39:23except to say
- 39:24I suffered through that garbage.
- 39:27That's why I barely slept for four days to get one single dragon.
- 39:32Exactly.
- 39:32Rare.
- 39:33No, the grinding is what separates the really hardcore.
- 39:38It's not the money.
- 39:39It's not what you buy in store.
- 39:41It's how much you grind.
- 39:43That's my take on it.
- 39:46Again, my opinion, my two cents.
- 39:48I enjoyed that part for whatever reason.
- 39:51I'm not really sure what that reason was, but that part appealed to me.
- 39:57because i wasn't like a super good flyer so probably that's why i excelled at that part of
- 40:05the game you were really good at flying warriors come on now i was better at that evoker the first
- 40:13one yeah dude i was great with that thing yeah a lot of people got that thing down now that's
- 40:21the whole thing of a good
- 40:23player needs to be able
- 40:24to fly a hunter. If you only
- 40:27fly sorcerers or
- 40:29warriors, you're shit.
- 40:31Come on. A dragon is
- 40:33a dragon is a dragon. It flies.
- 40:36You pilot it.
- 40:37If you do what you're supposed
- 40:39to do in my book, you're good.
- 40:41Not in my book, my book, but
- 40:42the expression in my book.
- 40:45Yeah, we got to talk about your book.
- 40:47But what you will find,
- 40:49and this is a truism right is all of the top flyers the people that are the best in the game
- 40:55every single one of them without question flies hunters almost almost exclusively not you're not
- 41:03biased no it's not it's not a biased thing i mean just look when you get someone that comes in and
- 41:10smokes your base and just just gone right i mean literally when you see like the most devastating
- 41:17thing come into a, you know, your loading screen, it's going to be a hunter. It just is. Now you
- 41:25have to be good at that. You know, you have to have timing down perfectly. You have to understand,
- 41:31you know, your ammo, you know, clip, right? Your magazine, whatever you want to call it.
- 41:37You have to understand which spell to use when you have, and placement is key. So this is where
- 41:44a lot of people get frustrated with hunters and it is frustrating getting placement and shot
- 41:50placement is one of the most key components of a hunter right and once you get that shot placement
- 41:57down it's really hard to go to any other dragon class it really is because you're just like i'm
- 42:03you know i'm waiting i'm waiting i'm waiting whereas with a hunter you just go in and like
- 42:09you know 20 shots go and the tower's gone it's instantaneous you know what i mean
- 42:14um so yes a little bit of bias no question about it um they're they're warriors are fine
- 42:23sorcerers are fine invokers are fine if you can fly them well then that's great however
- 42:31the top flyers will always be flying hunters as their their primary right um now again this is not
- 42:40exclusive sometimes a warrior comes out that just is a tank and just goes through everything
- 42:46yeah you know at that point sure they'll probably bring out warriors too but they're still flying
- 42:53hunters you know if i'm doing something really really important and difficult i'll fly a
- 43:01hunter but if i'm just attacking a beast by some pve to make some gold i'll just put a warrior on
- 43:08hotto and just go and kill stuff oh yeah just tank it tank it let it do its job it you know
- 43:15they no in no way shape or form am i belittling anything hunters are extremely frustrating
- 43:23i would argue less so now than they were in the past in the past the learning curve is is deep
- 43:30yeah but for a good hunter the learning curve is it's it's incredibly steep you have to have
- 43:37some dexterity going on with your hands you have some carpal tunnel yeah yeah exactly able to count
- 43:43you know all those all those highly uh fry skills you have to be able to count yeah and simple math
- 43:51which you know i mean i don't know how i got away with this but i i managed to sometimes you know
- 43:57But yeah, it's a different beast.
- 44:01And the thing about them is they don't handle getting shot
- 44:05or they didn't used to.
- 44:06Nowadays, they're way more capable of that.
- 44:09In the past, you'd take one super shot,
- 44:12maybe a regular and a super shot.
- 44:14You're dead. You're gone. It's done.
- 44:17There's no, let me just take this to the face
- 44:19so I can kill this other tower.
- 44:22You're done. Dead.
- 44:24Now you have some good shields
- 44:25and you have good energy recovery yeah it's it's more accessible to fly a hunter now yeah
- 44:33yeah but they they are frustrating they they really are you you can really just lose your mind
- 44:39you're flying a dragon it shouldn't be easy that's that's my take on i'm i'm biased look dragons you
- 44:47want to fly it take your time the dragon should should take its time to know you and you should
- 44:53no you're a dragon yeah it takes time it should take time yeah i like that lore part you shouldn't
- 44:58just oh that's good no it doesn't work like that yeah so on on your book so your book is called
- 45:06hacking through time it's by the i'm assuming a nom de plume pedro b correct okay um and some people
- 45:18actually online i shared the cover of my book and they just went to mental oh hacking we can't talk
- 45:26about look you you you ignorant piece of just because the word hacking is there i'm not condoning
- 45:35it i'm not teaching it hacking historically wasn't what people see it as today right
- 45:42hacking from the bsd the berkeley system design universe did you read my book because i speak
- 45:49about that and the book is about 40 years ago and i started my career as a unix sysadmin so
- 45:57hacking was what we all did yes you had to course of action in our daily lives yeah you know four
- 46:06years ago a hacker was a thinker and i say a tinkerer because you wanted a hacker in your team
- 46:14geek now you say the word hacker and people online are like oh this shit is illegal no
- 46:22dumbass i'm talking about the evolution of society and what was 40 years ago it's not the same thing
- 46:29now you have state-sponsored actors and hackers this didn't this didn't exist for years ago there
- 46:36was no criminal mindset 40 years ago but that's when the words originated so the same word
- 46:43evolves its context in society evolves and now it's it's a different thing so this is not even a
- 46:50fiction this is my story about my professional career and even before that hacker then hacker
- 46:59now what the hell happened and what might or might not happen in the future let's not talk about ai
- 47:05I don't want to hear about AI.
- 47:07I work in cybersecurity, so I would never condone hacking.
- 47:12So I'm talking to the guy that said online that I can't talk.
- 47:16Yes, I can.
- 47:17It's what I do for a bloody living.
- 47:19It's to defend the companies I work for from these people.
- 47:23So, yes, I can talk about it.
- 47:25But, yeah, lots of things changed.
- 47:28Well, and there's a vast difference between, you know, in the world of, you know, what today's terminology terms, hackers, there are two very distinct and separate factions, right? And they're known as the black hats and the white hats. And you can probably guess, but just in case, the black hats, bad guys, the ones everyone thinks of when they hear the word hacker.
- 47:52White hats are the ethical hackers.
- 47:54They're the ones on the security teams at large organizations that do things like penetration testing.
- 48:01How can I get in? Can I get in?
- 48:03If I can, how do I fix this so the black hats cannot get in?
- 48:08right but historically hacking was typically a a you know a star x right um asterisk what's
- 48:17star x right a unix linux bsd type of a term that you know you would hack through stuff and i remember
- 48:25at one point working for a company i won't say the name but uh in the comments in one of the codes
- 48:34one of the code bases one of the engineers had wrote in the comments you know this is here to
- 48:41hack this particular feature function for this reason and we were working with a company that
- 48:50was going to oem things and they saw this code and they're like oh you have to take that out
- 48:55that can't be in there it's a literal comment about you know we're hacking this feature to
- 49:03to make it work and and but yeah the term had become so you know uh so bad or viewed so poorly
- 49:12that even a comment and a piece of code gave people you know you know
- 49:18yeah i just hope that all the people that see the word hacker or hacking and throw a fit
- 49:30are as secure with their passwords and information as they like to be aggressive towards people that
- 49:39openly talk about hacking because i talk openly about hacking was i ever a hacker no then i did
- 49:47some things that were considered gray hat maybe just out of curiosity um but i never did anything
- 49:53illegal except on diablo one in 98 i was banned permanently but that was just me being stupid
- 50:01i deserved it and you know it was bloody hell 27 years ago um what did you do wrong besides get
- 50:07caught uh uh-huh you just said it yeah i got caught shooting people on the city on top where
- 50:16you can't have a gun i had a gun and i was shooting people yeah everyone knew about it
- 50:21There's a guy shooting.
- 50:22You can't even.
- 50:23Yeah.
- 50:24I found a way.
- 50:26But yeah, nowadays, and I think that you can't just hide the hacking discussion under the rug.
- 50:33That's not good for everyone.
- 50:35The first ransomware attack, I wrote about it on my book.
- 50:40I ask people, when do you think the first ransomware attack happened?
- 50:43People tell me 2005, 2010.
- 50:46No, it was 1989.
- 50:48It was done with floppy disks.
- 50:49it was the AIDS virus
- 50:51some bullshit
- 50:5236 years in
- 50:55we are still vulnerable to ransomware
- 50:57so we're not doing that great
- 51:00so talk about it
- 51:02I tell everyone
- 51:03talk about it, know what it is
- 51:04the best way to defend against
- 51:07all of this is to know what it is
- 51:09don't hide it, don't think it's taboo
- 51:11it's happening
- 51:13every day, every time
- 51:14so I'm not going to say embrace it
- 51:17I was that close but I didn't
- 51:18but there needs to be an open conversation.
- 51:21It's about the shit.
- 51:23It's like the shit API.
- 51:24It needs to be discussed.
- 51:26It shouldn't be hidden.
- 51:28The API, okay, we discussed some of the reasons.
- 51:31That explains a lot.
- 51:33I wish they had the time and resources to do better.
- 51:36Probably not going to happen, but yeah, it is what it is.
- 51:40And I still made the statistics website with the shit API.
- 51:43I think wherever there's a system in place,
- 51:45people are inherently going to,
- 51:47Well, certain people are going to try to find a way to exploit that system.
- 51:51I mean, it started back even in the late 70s.
- 51:54They used to put a whistles and Captain Crunch cereal and people would blow the whistle into a telephone and get free long distance calls.
- 52:02So, I mean, blue box, you know, that.
- 52:05hacking too i would think freaking i also talk about that okay i'm i'm not telling everyone to
- 52:12but yeah all of that you know the 70s the 80s they were so so foundational in what is today
- 52:19hacking but you know those little things yes i i made a couple of free phone calls back kevin
- 52:26mitnick man the legend i had a free kevin t-shirt you know shout out of course shout out to mitnick
- 52:32my my old sub to uh 1600 i miss those days those were those were fun i mean all the people from
- 52:41all the bbs's i ever logged in with yeah yeah yeah we're talking about really old technology
- 52:48by the way for anyone younger we didn't the internet was was
- 52:52bear i mean it was there but it was more of a project at that point and what we would do is
- 53:00log on to bulletin board systems which were kind of like ascii forums if you will you can you could
- 53:08have mail and you go into a group and you can chat with other people more akin to an irc server
- 53:13really if you think about it um but yeah i mean those days were great and the tone man that modem
- 53:21tone yeah and the modem commands because you had to fine tune the modem i mean nowadays when people
- 53:30tell me oh the internet is slow shut up you don't know what slow is okay 300 characters per second
- 53:38which was my first modem that was slow oh yeah this this is not slow but don't even don't even
- 53:44think about it so yeah of course the api is not fast but again i'm biased yeah i worked i worked
- 53:52for a company that that did some of that somewhere around here i have a lexan coded chip uh from a 9600
- 54:00mod modem i remember those days that was that was you know smoking fast it was fun you had to fight
- 54:07for stuff yeah didn't just get you know tick tock and youtube and facebook and all that no you had
- 54:13to when i first logged in on what is now called the internet you had like a list of sites there
- 54:22was no google there was no nothing in the beginning there was a list and it was like a two-page list
- 54:27of websites and then we know what happened but it started like this and you know i kind of miss it
- 54:36i'm not gonna lie i miss it yeah it was fun you you did a lot more thinking about what you wanted
- 54:42or what you needed before you went to go get it.
- 54:45Nowadays, it's kind of like instantaneous.
- 54:48Let me just go grab a few images,
- 54:50this video, and it's all there.
- 54:52Back then, you would really have to think
- 54:55because an image, just a picture,
- 54:58could take 10, 20, 30 minutes, an hour,
- 55:03two hours just to download.
- 55:05And all the while, you're watching it
- 55:06kind of like appear on your screen,
- 55:09just line by line by line.
- 55:12and so you know there was a lot more i think a lot more thought given to your activities uh when
- 55:20when you know your your uh ability download was your your scarce resource you know
- 55:26and then the resolution wasn't that great either
- 55:28it was great man come on we had like you know i think it was fun that's that's it
- 55:37like almost as fun as 28 pixels and stuff i mean it was just insane i feel like i missed out on a
- 55:44lot of that computer stuff because i never really got into the computers the closest i did the
- 55:48hacking was uh i had one of those uh oh um game genies for the nintendo oh yeah yeah you hacker
- 55:58or the they're the up up down down left right left right code that was you know
- 56:02most hacking i did if you try that in war dragons maybe your your dragon just just
- 56:08i should yeah i should have tried it you guys know what you're doing maybe you guys should
- 56:15develop like war dragons 2 and put put the original one out of business yeah like actually
- 56:22just start from the ground up and build one i mean you can use the information and everything
- 56:27contained in the existing game but start from the ground up and build one on a new ui
- 56:32if you're seeing this kind of resurgence
- 56:35of players and it's literally
- 56:36turning out to be the third best
- 56:38year for player adoption
- 56:40that's a pretty clear
- 56:42sign that it would be maybe
- 56:44a good time to update
- 56:47you know
- 56:48there's a market for it
- 56:51absolutely
- 56:51and I know a lot of developers and you're
- 56:54giving me ideas. If you need anybody to handle your
- 56:57public relations on your
- 56:58game forum, I know a guy
- 57:00do you yeah
- 57:03does it start with a j no me
- 57:08oh yeah i don't know if that's a big yeah i'm good i'm good at public relations i promise
- 57:20guaranteed money back guarantee
- 57:24so so your book uh hacking through time is really just and i apologize we did talk about reading the
- 57:33book but i'm already behind on one book that i've been promising to read for a year now well this
- 57:40podcast was supposed to start out as a book club and uh it didn't really work out yeah well not a
- 57:47book club but we were going to start with a book and we will do that episode one day
- 57:53and you know hey many people told me that people don't handle physical books anymore okay fine
- 58:01there's an e-book version too extremely cheap so cheap that amazon almost didn't let me
- 58:08sell it at that price because you know amazon gets a 40 really and i wanted it yeah and i wanted it cheap And they said yeah it can be cheaper than this because yeah we have our i like i i wrote the book i selling the book you getting the cut
- 58:26you're getting everything ah but we print it we do the logistics yeah the ip is mine you sell it
- 58:3440%
- 58:36I prefer the physical copy myself
- 58:40e-readers hurt my eyes
- 58:41maybe it's just a matter
- 58:44of finding the right whatever
- 58:45but I like a book
- 58:47one of my favorite things about books
- 58:49honestly the very first time I get
- 58:52a brand new book is to open it
- 58:53I stick my nose in it
- 58:56I like the smell of the books
- 58:58they smell good
- 58:58smells like Amazon printed
- 59:01do you have on your website can you buy the book that cut out the middleman or do you have to like
- 59:09exclusively go through amazon unfortunately yeah self-publishing is expensive
- 59:18if you talk me online or on discord and don't say anything stupid i can just give you a copy
- 59:28because i i didn't write the book to to become rich really and i don't even know how writers do it
- 59:35i wrote the book to dedicate it to my mother she died two years ago three years ago and you know
- 59:41i took a year just at home write the book for my mom that's it so if you say something on this word
- 59:49i'll give well i can't give you a physical copy but i can share you a copy of the
- 59:53well that's nice yeah i'm not gonna get rich not like this well to get rich you're gonna develop
- 1:00:01the game and then in a couple years you can sell it to a chinese investment company and then just
- 1:00:06bail out and then we can uh do the whole aircraft carrier uh farm thing there you go there you go
- 1:00:13i like i like plans right yeah they they won't sell us an aircraft carrier which is sad
- 1:00:21I have Tissads.
- 1:00:24There are other options.
- 1:00:26You can make a floating
- 1:00:28beer can island
- 1:00:30or something.
- 1:00:32Yeah, apparently all the
- 1:00:34warships they send to
- 1:00:36they send to
- 1:00:38like I think there's
- 1:00:40two companies that they
- 1:00:42send these things to
- 1:00:44and they are mandated for
- 1:00:46salvage.
- 1:00:47Nothing else. Can't even make
- 1:00:50reef.
- 1:00:52Almost as bad as FedEx trucks. They destroy
- 1:00:54all them too.
- 1:00:56Do they really? Not from FedEx.
- 1:00:59You can buy a FedEx ground
- 1:01:00truck, but you can't buy a FedEx
- 1:01:01regular truck. They destroy
- 1:01:04them all. Same with UPS.
- 1:01:06You can't buy one of them either. I did not know that.
- 1:01:11I wonder why.
- 1:01:12Because they don't want people running around
- 1:01:14impersonating the company, I guess.
- 1:01:16I don't know.
- 1:01:20since we've been chatting,
- 1:01:23three new players.
- 1:01:25Yay.
- 1:01:26I know it's not much.
- 1:01:28I also have a chart with the players
- 1:01:31yesterday, for example,
- 1:01:3426 players.
- 1:01:35It's not much, really.
- 1:01:3910th of May,
- 1:01:4179 players.
- 1:01:42It's not much, but it's one of the best years.
- 1:01:45Just because
- 1:01:46I'm nosy,
- 1:01:47is there any way to see
- 1:01:49a revenue stream going to a company
- 1:01:52like that? Or is that just private
- 1:01:53information they don't want you to have?
- 1:01:55I mean, whether they want you to have it or not, can you
- 1:01:58get it?
- 1:02:00I know that
- 1:02:01War Dragons was making $1 million per month.
- 1:02:04But I never
- 1:02:05saw the data. It was just a news
- 1:02:07article that I read, so I believe
- 1:02:10it. And even if
- 1:02:12they had that data, they wouldn't
- 1:02:13put it in a place
- 1:02:16that would be accessible.
- 1:02:17And I wouldn't hack anything to do it.
- 1:02:19You can probably get a fairly good idea of that through a number of business analytics sites.
- 1:02:29Yes.
- 1:02:29You can check the company and then you can check all the data that they are mandated to send, taxes.
- 1:02:38You can do the math.
- 1:02:40You can get the reporting.
- 1:02:42And there are sites that do analytics on them, but they're business sites.
- 1:02:46So you're going to spend a lot of money to have a subscription to be able to figure that out, unless you already have one.
- 1:02:54So, yeah, unfortunately, there it is.
- 1:02:58I don't think they're publicly, are they publicly traded?
- 1:03:01Because if they are, that number will be in there.
- 1:03:04But PG is owned by...
- 1:03:06Tencent.
- 1:03:07Which one is it?
- 1:03:08They're owned by Tencent now.
- 1:03:11Tencent.
- 1:03:11So you would get Tencent's reporting, which probably would not break it out by division,
- 1:03:18and PG would probably be a division of Tencent.
- 1:03:21Correct.
- 1:03:23I'm looking at the Tencent holding stock share, which is pretty healthy in the past.
- 1:03:29Tencent bought up a lot of stuff, didn't they?
- 1:03:31But they don't separate.
- 1:03:34Yeah, they've bought up a ton of small gaming companies.
- 1:03:38it's at 24.84 percent in the past five years so wow props to them they're doing well but
- 1:03:48they're not going to tell us which is the pg part yeah which are the winners and which are the losers
- 1:03:54they're not going to not going to put that out there i i do i do miss the early days because like
- 1:04:00um i remember when the very first season they had like if you finish the season they would
- 1:04:04actually give you a code to get a t-shirt like i mean it ain't a big thing but that was pretty cool
- 1:04:10that is yeah and then like there was a bunch of people that uh because i was doing the podcast
- 1:04:15at the time and they're like hey i don't want this shirt and they'd give me the code and i had like
- 1:04:19half a dozen t-shirts i started giving them away as prizes and people enjoyed that
- 1:04:24you can wear those no way they don come they didn come in my color I like this green It nice He has a thing for green shirts
- 1:04:36although he does wear desert camo tan as well.
- 1:04:39It's not camo, it's coyote tan.
- 1:04:43Okay, but it's the same color.
- 1:04:45It's basically the same color.
- 1:04:47It's a different name for the green color.
- 1:04:52Yeah, it's a green tan.
- 1:04:54It makes it super easy reaching the closet
- 1:04:56if everything's the same, right?
- 1:04:59I hear you.
- 1:05:00Make sure the neighbors think,
- 1:05:01man, that guy wears the same clothes every day.
- 1:05:05They can think what they want.
- 1:05:09Yeah, there you go.
- 1:05:11There you go.
- 1:05:11I want to read this book now.
- 1:05:13I might go on Amazon and get one.
- 1:05:16It would be good.
- 1:05:18I can share the e-book.
- 1:05:20I don't do e-books.
- 1:05:22I don't even have a phone.
- 1:05:24I have an iPad and that's it.
- 1:05:27But I really don't like reading on it.
- 1:05:30It's like $12 on Amazon.
- 1:05:32I think I can handle $12 on Amazon.
- 1:05:35Yeah.
- 1:05:36I've wasted money on other stuff more than that, I'm sure, over the years.
- 1:05:43Happened to me all.
- 1:05:44You played War Dragon, right?
- 1:05:46Yeah, dude, I even bought a couple packs over time.
- 1:05:49And every time I did, I'm like, man, that was stupid.
- 1:05:52yeah i mean i've known people to spend a lot more like of that one million per month i think i hung
- 1:05:59out with a couple people that are probably provided about half of that nice guys though
- 1:06:05really nice guys yeah between between jl and harv you remember harv between those two i can't even
- 1:06:13imagine what that total bill looks like over over their career i i just it's probably mind-blowing
- 1:06:23most people would just be like it's it's impressive i think i'd rather just have the
- 1:06:27cash but you know like hey if that makes them happy yeah yeah yeah i'd take the cash too if
- 1:06:34you have the income money spend money on farmville really i've seen people spend money on farm oh
- 1:06:42I actually played Farmville
- 1:06:47when it was on the computer
- 1:06:50way back.
- 1:06:52But then one day I was just sitting there and I'm like,
- 1:06:55why am I doing this? This is stupid. There's absolutely no point to this
- 1:06:59whatsoever. And then that was the end of that.
- 1:07:06I mean, what is the real point of anything?
- 1:07:09No, there is none.
- 1:07:10like you know i mean the war dragon thing you know you get your alarm going off at 3 a.m so
- 1:07:16you can get up for three minutes to do the the pvp so your team you know stays in first place but
- 1:07:21then you get that's that's only for the achievers club yeah that's the grinding thing i guess you
- 1:07:28know like you like i don't even know if any of the teams in d1 now still do that i just don't
- 1:07:37know really there's probably there's probably a handful but i i don't think the whole roster of d1
- 1:07:43does that man by any stretch slackers yeah you know it's it's not what it used to be man d1 d1 is
- 1:07:52and no offense to the d1 teams but d1's a lot less scary now than it was in the past
- 1:07:58in the past you just didn't don't you know don't touch the people with nukes that that was the the
- 1:08:04the idea right just don't do it it's bad i did that once so did i ever tell you that story
- 1:08:10like my my old team somehow we ended up getting in the same league uh in d1 for some reason
- 1:08:17i thought it would be funny i declared a war on dread it didn't end well that's awesome
- 1:08:24my team was so mad because like when you declare and you lose you lose like more egg tokens that
- 1:08:33way so they were not happy they're like why would you do that i'm like i don't know can i just ask
- 1:08:38did you know what you were doing uh yeah no i thought you know i just thought i was
- 1:08:44kind of being funny but it was i bet it was fun for them yeah i mean you know it i i enjoyed the
- 1:08:53whole lc talk thing that that was part of the uh appeal for me i i like it i like getting people
- 1:08:58all twisted up and stuff and you know getting you have discord for that now
- 1:09:02right yeah that was before they could block me they had to listen to me back then
- 1:09:08now discord you can you can have block you can have ignore the possibilities are mind-blowing
- 1:09:16i mean i have so many people ignored and blocked i don't even know what to pick oh this guy ignore
- 1:09:22oh you blocked it's amazing you can do a lot of stuff with discord and personally i like the
- 1:09:30forums i've never been a big fan of discord um myself i you know i use a similar app uh i
- 1:09:39personally like the look the feel and the flexibility of it more than discord which is
- 1:09:45telegram but you know that's that's me i i just think it's cleaner it's it's smoother it's
- 1:09:53it's everything discord could have been but never was telegram has bots too
- 1:10:00i kind of ported my bot from discord to telegram just to understand can i do this yeah doodle and
- 1:10:07i also use signal and slack and line because people don't get out of line i don't know why
- 1:10:14it's dead but people are still there so line's one of those things that's just going to hang on
- 1:10:20forever and one of the things that's really nice about line is just super easy you don't have to
- 1:10:26know anything you don't have to be you know conscientious about settings or anything like
- 1:10:32that on the flip side because of that you people can come in and nuke your room and cause problems and you know everything else because they just no permissions but it one of those things just super easy we set up a chat it works everyone can join there
- 1:10:48no hiccups no problems um so i get it but yeah line's definitely not like it used to be it's
- 1:10:56very quiet speaking of the forums um are they out there somewhere like people say once something's
- 1:11:03on the internet it's like out there forever are they archived anywhere or is there any way to
- 1:11:07access those? No, because the time machine
- 1:11:09did not archive the forums
- 1:11:11and if the time machine
- 1:11:13did not archive the forums, the forums are
- 1:11:15lost forever.
- 1:11:16Really, archive.org
- 1:11:19did not archive the forums.
- 1:11:22Probably
- 1:11:23because the logon
- 1:11:25requirement would be it.
- 1:11:27So only pages, well, no, because
- 1:11:29it was all publicly accessible.
- 1:11:30That's interesting. I would have expected
- 1:11:33to see it on archive.org.
- 1:11:35I really would have.
- 1:11:36I think I already
- 1:11:39looked for it and didn't find it.
- 1:11:42I could have been...
- 1:11:43I'm going to check it out.
- 1:11:45Well, hello. Good morning.
- 1:11:48Good morning.
- 1:11:49I do get another question for you.
- 1:11:52So, we've all seen in movies
- 1:11:54where hackers, they just pounded away
- 1:11:56on the keyboard.
- 1:11:57What are they actually doing?
- 1:12:00They're being on a movie,
- 1:12:02pounding away on the keyboard.
- 1:12:04And then they say, zoom, zoom and enhance.
- 1:12:06as much as I love
- 1:12:09Hackers the movie
- 1:12:11from 1995
- 1:12:12because of Angelina Jolie
- 1:12:15that movie
- 1:12:17is so unrealistic
- 1:12:19I mean the things the movie is talking
- 1:12:21about are kind of real
- 1:12:23but the way that they're portrayed
- 1:12:26for the noobs
- 1:12:28out there
- 1:12:28every single movie is bullshit
- 1:12:31every single bloody movie
- 1:12:34is bullshit
- 1:12:34and unfortunately or not i've been in places and i've seen real hackers a real hacker might be a
- 1:12:44guy older than me sitting next to me on the tube the stereotypical hoodie no no i've met dangerous
- 1:12:54people that i would look at them and say this guy could be my uncle he looks normal no they're not
- 1:12:59they're very knowledgeable and very criminal so yeah it's not as easy for example so yeah lots of
- 1:13:07movies lots of hollywood no for example the other guy here he's got that black hat on i don't trust
- 1:13:13him
- 1:13:13he's silent he's guilty
- 1:13:25I can't see any
- 1:13:32wayback machine or archive.org
- 1:13:35for World Dragons.
- 1:13:36Talking about all this hacking, we might actually get our first
- 1:13:38blue box YouTube warning this time.
- 1:13:42And maybe, I don't know.
- 1:13:43Is that one of those keywords you're not allowed to talk about?
- 1:13:47No, I don't think so.
- 1:13:48I think nowadays they're fairly limited to
- 1:13:51things you're not going to say.
- 1:13:55Yeah, physical stuff, I think, is really,
- 1:13:59and that's not something that's a topic for discussion
- 1:14:02on this particular podcast.
- 1:14:04Building seven of the World Trade Center.
- 1:14:07Oh, Jesus.
- 1:14:12That's going to get us one.
- 1:14:13Speaking of things that...
- 1:14:15We're not doing that, dude.
- 1:14:17This is the wrong audience for this particular session.
- 1:14:22Anyway.
- 1:14:23I have a poster of New York there
- 1:14:25because I lived in New York
- 1:14:26so yeah
- 1:14:27very cool
- 1:14:28we can go down that rabbit hole next week
- 1:14:30right we can do that on our own
- 1:14:33we don't need help for that one
- 1:14:35alright well I think we're getting close to time
- 1:14:41to wrap it up
- 1:14:41so I'm going to ask you the same
- 1:14:44one question we ask every guest
- 1:14:46from the War Dragons community
- 1:14:47and I'm going to throw it at you as well
- 1:14:49pick one person
- 1:14:51one person only that you would give a shout out to from the war dragons community
- 1:14:58anyone from the war dragons community yep it would have to be
- 1:15:06because of the art contest that was done last month or two months ago i would have to give a
- 1:15:12shout out to ghost because that music video i had it on repeat i didn't want to but i ended
- 1:15:21up doing the whole oh crap i can't stop looking at this because there it's so complex and so many
- 1:15:29it's amazing but i was so mad i can't stop looking at this i was mad but i'm thankful because it was
- 1:15:37amazing so yeah ghost i couldn't stop humming that song all day it was in my head see yeah don't
- 1:15:47whatever you do if you're on channel uh well i don't want to say that either but i'm gonna say
- 1:15:55it anyway sorry ghost um there's one on there called baby cert if you would really really like
- 1:16:04to to yeah just i don't know if you're really into earworms go click on that video and uh
- 1:16:15You'll have a great day.
- 1:16:17I won't.
- 1:16:18I won't.
- 1:16:19I'm doing it.
- 1:16:19Ghost Rider 419 on YouTube.
- 1:16:23Absolutely.
- 1:16:24And we'll throw a link up for Ghost as well.
- 1:16:28All right.
- 1:16:28Well, hey, thank you so much for joining us for today.
- 1:16:31We really appreciate you having on.
- 1:16:34And like we said at the beginning, folks, give us a thumbs up.
- 1:16:37Give us a thumbs down.
- 1:16:38Leave a comment.
- 1:16:39Engage.
- 1:16:40Be interactive.
- 1:16:41And hit that subscribe button.
- 1:16:44Or don't.
- 1:16:45whatever. And most importantly, wherever you are, whenever you're listening to this,
- 1:16:51have an amazing day. Thanks everybody. See ya.