Further Details On the Star Wars MMO

Now that the recent announcement about Star Wars: The Old Republic has had time to sink in, specific details about the game are beginning to come to light. Massively, in particular, has a variety of interviews and in-depth looks at the classes, the combat, and the setting of the game. "When you play like a Jedi from 1 to max, and then decide to start as a Sith, you won't see any content that will be the same." They also discuss the leveling, questing and companion characters. "We want you to think of them as actual companions on your journeys throughout the game. Your actions are going to change how your companion characters develop." Eurogamer is running a preview of the game, and a wiki has sprung up to catalog all of the new information. Other tidbits: support for Star Wars Galaxies will continue; the new game will be PC only; and LucasArts is hoping to snipe some of the World of Warcraft customer base.

Comments

You might be a Republican if...

[Anonymous Coward]

* You think debasing currency strengthens it.
* You start fires only to put them out and proclaim yourself a hero.
* Changing your mind when presented new information is considered flip-flopping.
* You think Ron Paul is a better candidate than the guy who won the Republican primary, but you're voting straight Rep anyhow.
* You think bolstering the economy at any cost is more important than treating other people the way you'd treat yourself.
* You are considering buying a personal tank or a fighter jet to protect yourself should the little people rise up against you.
* You took advantage of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make yourself some dough and it's, of course, their fault this all happened.
* You think there's an Osama around every corner.
* You think your wealth is soley due to your Ayn Randian self-sufficient everyman philosophy of life.
* Socialism is only for your cronies.
* You think electing Obama as President will end in Armageddon.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:
* You think we'll miss you when you leave the country for having imposed regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and capital gains taxes. Have fun wrecking the economies and societies of other people's countries! In other countries where you think you'll have free reign without oversight, you will almost certainly be hunted down and executed without a jury without a bailout should fuck up.

Re:You might be a Republican if...

[PunkOfLinux]

You do realize that the top 10% of America gets something on the order of 30-40%, right?

Serious question though probably OT

[Anonymous Coward]

You think your wealth is soley due to your Ayn Randian self-sufficient everyman philosophy of life.

I would appreciate it very much if someone could explain or outline the reasons why this fails to explain the many examples of wealth that is neither inherited or gained by winning the lottery. I am not so familiar with Ayn Rand so just generally I'd like to know why a realistic degree of self-sufficiency coupled with good decision-making on the part of an individual does not, alone, explain why that individual is wealthy. Assume for the sake of argument that we are talking about people who started from a relatively poor to lower-middle class backgrounds and worked to pay for their own education, etc. Serious question -- I am more ignorant about this than I would like to be and I need exposure to different views before I can decide what I believe.

I'll also add that unlike the parent post, I am not interested in whether my question has anything to do with Republicans, Democrats, or what any political party believes or does not believe, so responses along those lines won't really answer my question. Likewise, if you read "realistic degree of self-sufficiency" and tell me that you can't very well expect someone to get a car by first mining and smelting ore and other raw materials and eventually making the whole thing himself start-to-finish, you will have succeeded in babbling inanities that have nothing to do with my question. It's a shame I feel a need to point that out but at least the person or the people who can give me a good answer won't need to have that pointed out.

Re:Serious question though probably OT

[MBraynard]

If you really want to know, the best answers are found in reading her novels.

Re:Serious question though probably OT

[Anonymous Coward]

We are brought into this world by our parents and our lives shaped by the people around us. None of us lives alone in a vacuum. Some of us can overcome our environment and become the stereotypical poor boy who grows into an influential business man. Some people perish trying to escape from their conditions. Regardless, there is no way we could survive all by ourselves.

The Randian ideal of a man alone with a loaded semi-automatic weapon, with food supplies, and fighting skills ready to protect himself at a moment's notice is a bit overblown. It is good to be prepared, but we cannot be expected to overcome all the problems we face by ourselves.

Even rich people like Michael Dell and McCain's financial adviser Carly Fiorina, owe their worth to the people underneath them. Without employees they're worth nothing.

When CEOs treat their employees as interchangeable parts to be grinded up and thrown out when used up, it hurts us all. When government officials debase our money system, they hurt the savings of people who worked hard to save up for their old age. These sort of behaviors have been romanticized by the Republican party. They have ceased acting as conservatives and have become apathetic and spiteful against the lower class, much like the late Russian Czar Nicholas II.

The Republican party is for all intents and purposes dead. I say this as a former Republican.

Re:Serious question though probably OT

[bar-agent]

Probably OT? Try definitely.

Here's what you should do, though. Find similarly disenchanted Republicans, hopefully ones that are local party leaders, convince them to secede and form Republican Party B ("the party we used to have").

I would love to see a third party with prospects out there!

Re:Serious question though probably OT

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably OT? Try definitely.

Here's what you should do, though. Find similarly disenchanted Republicans, hopefully ones that are local party leaders, convince them to secede and form Republican Party B ("the party we used to have").

I would love to see a third party with prospects out there!

In my original post I said "I'll also add that unlike the parent post, I am not interested in whether my question has anything to do with Republicans, Democrats, or what any political party believes or does not believe, so responses along those lines won't really answer my question."

Please identify the part of that sentence that was difficult for you to understand.

Re:Serious question though probably OT

[bar-agent]

I think you are confusing yourself with another Anonymous Coward. I was replying to post #25507121. There was no question in that post. It read like a reason why the author abandoned the Republican party, and my response was related to that.

You are quoting yourself from post #25506917. I didn't even read that one, and wasn't trying to answer the question in it.

But having read #25506917, I think I can answer the question you posed. The parent post to #25506917 (#25506777) implied that Republicans are wealthy for reasons other than "an Ayn Randian self-sufficient everyman philosophy of life." You want to know "why a realistic degree of self-sufficiency coupled with good decision-making on the part of an individual does not, alone, explain why that individual is wealthy."

Simple enough. How do people get wealthy? You exclude inheritance and lottery. I bet the author of #25506777 thinks many Republicans are, in fact, wealthy through inheritance or family but believe they are wealthy through self-sufficiency and good sense. But let's set them aside. Other ways to get wealthy are through starting a successful business, owning stock in a successful business, playing the stock market well, making very profitable deals of one sort or another, or by being absolutely the best at what you do and having people pay you obscene sums to do it.

See, the thing is, all those ways depend on partnering with other people, either as customers, co-owners, lenders, or buyers. A person can only get wealthy with the intentional or unintentional assistance of others. No man is an island. In other words, a rich man cannot have gotten that way through self-sufficiency. He must have interacted with and relied on others to hold up their end of the bargain.

You can live a comfortable life without doing much of that. You can build a cabin in the woods and only deal with others for the bare necessities, working just enough to get by, but that obviously won't get you wealthy.

The whole Ayn Rand thing is a red herring. From what I understand, her point is that there is an elite, and the common man either leeches off of them or holds them back from their full potential, and that the elite should really be running things, or at least be left alone to do what they do. Some of her heroes were rich, but not all of them. If they voted at all, they'd probably vote Libertarian.

where, exactly do you work?

[Anonymous Coward]

and do they know you are on some serious, heavy drugs?

gets 40% of what now?

[zippthorne]

In 2005, The top 10% paid a little under 70% of the income tax burden. If they receive only 30-40% of the benefits, then they're getting a raw deal. If they earned only 30-40% of the income, they'd be getting an even raw-er deal, though their actual income share of 47% is not much better.

And, I find it really, really unlikely that they would be getting that much benefit. At least, directly. Sure, schools and such benefit everyone, not just the students, in some way, but it's a bit disingenuous to double-count the benefit that way, don't you think?

And besides, if income tax really was a good proxy for the cost of services, it would make even more sense to just do away with it entirely and charge fees for those services directly.

Re:gets 40% of what now?

[HuguesT]

Income tax is not a proxy for service. The rich pay way more than the poor, but the rich have a lot more control over the whole of society in return. You will never see a poor president of the USA. Obama spent close to a billion dollars in his current campain.

What the rich get as immediate benefit of their financial contribution to society is a much more peaceful society. In past centuries selfish oligarchies mostly ended up in revolutions.