After watching the race at Bristol this past weekend and seeing the reactions on social media and various television shows from fans, media, and drivers over the past couple days, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the matter.

In short, the racing at Bristol is not what it used to be, and I do miss it. A combination of the track reconfiguration, newer cars (the CoT), and changes in tire compounds have changed the complexion of racing there. The racing there is fine, but it’s not what fans, including myself, had become accustomed to and had grown to expect when they went there or watched on TV. Now, it’s a multi-groove track that allows side-by-side racing with the ability to pass someone that doesn’t require as much bumping and grinding. However, it seems as if NASCAR and the media continued to hype and promote the race as if it were still the crazy, nutso, bump’n'run, caution-fest, helmet-throwing tempers Bristol of old, when, in fact, it just isn’t anymore. Now, it’s just a smaller version of many of the other tracks out there. (Yes, every track is unique, but I think you know what I mean.) The reasons for going to a race there that had been present for so long, just aren’t there now. That in combination with the current state of the economy causing those that could only afford to go to one race opting for just the night race were contributing factors in the less than stellar crowd.

It does seem that Bruton Smith has seemed to recognize this and is looking at reconfiguring the track again. We’ll have to wait and see how this will affect the racing there, if it happens, and our reactions to it. Regardless, I think the key for the future is for NASCAR to set a reasonable level of expectation and stop promoting it like it’s still the old Bristol and for all of us to stop expecting it to be. I think this article from Sports@Work mirrors my thoughts pretty well.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents on the subject.

My main browser is Firefox (version 10.0.2 as of this writing) within Windows XP Home/SP3 and this is what I did: After poking around in the source code for the page, I found a JavaScript file being loaded that most likely handled the chat widget. Using Adblock Plus, I added a custom Ad Blocking filter to block ||cdn.gigya.com/JS/socialize.js from loading. This is what the Adblock Plus Filter Preferences dialog should look like after adding the filter:

Success! No more chat widget on those pages and the video was much smoother afterwards. Note: this will affect any webpage that uses the same script to display a similar chat widget.

I haven’t tried it yet but I suspect adding an entry to the Windows’ HOSTS file for cdn.gigya.com to point to 127.0.0.1 would have the same effect and would prevent all browsers from showing the chat widget (or anything else associated with that sub-domain).

The problem is that when using the game’s built-in browser (which is more or less Mozilla Firefox 1.X) it chokes on websites that have Flash (usually ads) in them, such as the popular ZAM EverQuest II site. The newer versions of Adobe Flash just do not play well with this browser causing it to lock up or just simply crash the game. After much discussion in the support forums, I think the following two workarounds are probably the best:

1. Batch File to Disable/Enable Flash

The first is a batch file that you run before starting the game to disable flash and then re-run to enable Flash when you are done playing. The credit for this goes to Tatwi in this post:

@echo off
 
CD C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash
IF "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%" == "AMD64" CD C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\
 
IF EXIST NPSWF32._ll GOTO :turn_on
IF EXIST NPSWF32.dll GOTO :turn_off
 
:turn_on
ren NPSWF32._ll NPSWF32.dll
CLS
echo -----------------
echo Flash is now ON!
echo -----------------
pause
GOTO :desktop
 
:turn_off
ren NPSWF32.dll NPSWF32._ll
CLS
echo -----------------
echo Flash is now OFF!
echo -----------------
pause
GOTO :desktop
 
:desktop
CD %USERPROFILE%\desktop
 
:eof

Of course, you have to remember to run the batch file every time before you start the game and after you stop playing because this affects all plug-in type browsers such as Firefox and Google’s Chrome. It will not affect Internet Explorer. If you’re not familiar with batch files, Batch File Help is pretty good at explaining what they are and how to create them.

2. Add user.js file to game’s mozilla folder

This is probably the best work-around and is the one I use as it disables the plug-ins that are most likely to cause problems from loading in the in-game browser. You’ll want to add the user.js file to the mozilla folder in the game’s installation directory. Credit goes to Jrral in this post.

pref("security.enable_java", false);
pref("plugin.scan.plid.all", false);
pref("plugin.scan.4xPluginFolder", false);
pref("plugin.scan.SunJRE", "20.0");
pref("plugin.scan.Acrobat", "20.0");
pref("plugin.scan.Quicktime", "20.0");
pref("plugin.scan.WindowsMediaPlayer", "20.0");

Since this appears to be a file that is not part of the game’s installation and is, therefore, not checked during the patching process, you don’t have to worry about it being replaced. I have not had the in-game browser cause a crash since making this change.

For your convenience, you can download both files in this ZIP file: eq2-userjs-flashbatch.zip. Hope this helps!

Update March 8th, 2012: It figures that not long after I write this post, they fix the problem according this March 6th Update. It looks like the \mozilla\greprefs\all.js file was updated with the following change:

// Locate plugins by the directories specified in the Windows registry for PLIDs
// Which is currently HKLM\Software\MozillaPlugins\xxxPLIDxxx\Path
pref("plugin.scan.plid.all", false);

If you’ll notice, this is the same as the second line in the user.js shown above. Even though they did correct the issue as it relates to Flash, I will still use the user.js file so it doesn’t load the other plug-ins as well.