If you're the kind of gamer who's only got a couple of friends and you always just play on pub servers, I suppose what you listed might be somewhat beneficial. But if you're a gamer who's part of a clan, or are part of a group of gamers that you always play with and have gamed with for years, then the Live system actually hinders more than it helps.
The PC, until now, doesn't have the Xbox Live model. There is no persistent identity from game to game, no gamer profile that sticks with people that allows you to look at someone else and see what games they play. The idea of a "friends list" is either per game, or you're talking about IM. If you're in the middle of one PC game, and your friends want you to come play with them in another, is there a simple way for them to send you a game invite that you can accept that will end the current game, start the new one, and go right into the game they're in? What about playing cross platform between the PC and the Xbox? It's called Xfire. No, you can't jump from one game right into another, but it's going to be a few years yet before PCs can do that anyway, Vista Live or not.
Oh no, you caught me. Nope, I've never actually played on Live.
And guess what. I'm never going to.
It's not really that hard to figure out what it does and does not do without actually using it. There's plenty of information out there about it, and there's plenty of free online gaming services (not to mention MMORPGs where your money actually gets you someone hosting a game server for you as well) that are similar enough to figure out what advantages and disadvantages Live might have.
There's nothing Live has to offer that I need/want that's not available in a free program that works better already than Live ever will. I'm sure it's nice for some people to have that all centralized in one clunky interface, but personally I just don't see a reason to pay a fee for something like that.
I think you missed the point... On Xbox Live if someone is being rude or obnoxious I can block them, they're not only blocked in that game but every other game I might ever play on the service, they'll be excluded from games I host and the automatic match making will avoid putting us in the same room.
If they're causing more serious problems and I report them, and 9 other people report them as well, then they'll get their account reviewed and banned. They've lost all of their achievements, they've lost their friends list, and all of their other account details but most importantly they'll have to pay another $50 to sign back up. How much do you think the "riff-raff" would be willing to lose before they just go bother people on some free service where they can create new accounts to their hearts content? Not really. I just assumed (obviously incorrectly) that pretty much everyone who's played online games already knows that these types of blocking and banning do very little to stop these kinds of people. If they get banned, they buy another game/account/etc. and keep right on doing what they were doing. (No, most of these kinds of "players" really don't care about achievements and friends lists.) And for every one you block, there's five more ready to take his place. And how big is your global ignore list anyway? 50? 100? 500? Because you'll need enough space to block thousands to get rid of every annoying but unbannable player you ever come across.
Or, you could just play a game that allows your clan to host your own dedicated server and split the cost between you. Then you've got full control over it. No need to report anyone - someone's being an asshat, you ban his IP. If he gets another IP and comes back, do it again. Thirty seconds of your time wasted, and he's got to find away to get another IP address every time he wants to come back. Proxies may work well for anonymous web browsing, but they really don't cut it for online gaming.
Even if this service ever does pick up and become popular, it's not going to happen right away and any game that includes DirectX9 (or Win2K/XP) support will most certainly not have a "Windows Live" requirement. This means most games coming out for at least the next year or two might not support this new service at all, let alone require it. So no, UT3 will still be as free to play online as any UT has ever been.:)
My guess is that as the number of players dwindle, they'll start combining servers, until eventually they get down to one. And then once the number of players drops below a certain point, to where it becomes much too cost-prohibitive to keep that last server running they'll shut that down too. This is of course assuming a company that's still active and working on new games, as opposed to a game that got shut down because the company went bankrupt.
Not even close. Remember, with Live in most games it's a client that does the hosting. I can't think of even one PC game where you can't put a password on your game when you host it online.
Your analogy might fit somewhat with MMORPGs, (ie. you may find somewhat more riff-raff in free MMO's) but not at all when comparing Live with regular online gaming.
Also, most games that are not client hosted give you some means to create your own private passworded game (ie. Battle.net). Payment not required.
And furthermore, they intentionally make the bar of entry low enough so that everyone who might be interested in online gaming will still be there. The only people this eliminates are some of the more mature who just don't see the sense in paying for something like this. All the griefers and the kids will still be there.
If there's any advantage to a service like this, it's that it centralizes online gaming. You only have one server to log on to, and from there you can see who's online, and who's playing what.
Actually, most of the multiplayer FPS's I've played had official servers hosted by the developers/publishers. Granted, these handful of servers aren't nearly enough for everyone when you've got tens of thousands of players, but they do exist. And it does mean that during stages where the game isn't as popular, you've still got those servers to play on when player-made servers are scarce.
And don't forget Blizzard with their Battle.net. That's existed since Warcraft 2 back in the Windows98 days, and it's always been hosted by Blizzard and free.
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying that unusual builds can't be useful. What I am saying is that while a feral druid build is good for some things, it will never work for healing effectively. If I'm the leader of a guild, and my guild needs some more healers, and in particular resto druids, (Note that I'm just using healing druids as an example as they're generally rare and in demand.) I'm going to be looking for a resto-spec druid. If you're playing a feral druid (and refuse to re-spec) while your build may be a good build, and work very well for tanking, you're not what I'm looking for. As a guild leader, this new information is an invaluable tool to see if someone really is what they claim they are, and not just someone claiming to be using the talents that I need.
Or in other words, if you're going to be a druid healer there's about 2 or 3 slight variations of talents that you can use and still be effective. No matter how skilled a player you are, you cannot heal effectively with any spec that deviates much from a pure resto spec.
Contrast this with Guild wars, in which there are dozens of skills and combinations of skills that can be used to heal effectively, some of them quite bizarre and unusual. Every once in a while you'll happen on someone using a combination you've never seen before, even if you've been playing since release.
I would consider your post insightful, except that WoW just isn't very flexible in that way. Maybe you can scrape by at lower levels filling a role that your build is not designed for, but at 50+ not a chance. This is not to say that any given solid (though non-conventional) build is not useful in its own way. For example, lets say you were playing a druid. And then lets suppose that you liked your own personal variation of a balance talent spec. Now your build may be good in its own right, but if you're running this build at level 62 and your group needs you as a primary healer, you will not be able to function that role in anything of any real difficulty. You'll run out of mana too fast, if your heals are even powerful enough to begin with. Or if you're playing a warrior - a fury build may work ok for tanking at the deadmines, but it sure won't cut it as the main tank build for Naxxaramus.
Now if we were talking about Guild Wars it would be a different story. GW is made for people like you who like to come up with their own builds. WoW sadly is not.
I'm a WoW player, just back & very casual in my playstyle. Do I give a crap if anyone can see my Character's build/gear/etc? Not one bit.
I can see where some of the hardcore types might want to conceal their information, but IMHO its not a true "Your rights" issue - they are not revealing any information about YOU, just your character.
The only "risk" here is if someone has some "secret" character build that kicks ass, its now exposed to the world - but on the same token, its not just about the build, but the player behind the keyboard.
So a long-winded post to say "No I don't give a crap":) I gotta agree with you. But on the "secret character build that kicks ass"... well, there really is no such thing in WoW. There's about five different ways any class can spend their talent points that actually work well, and everybody who's been playing a while knows all of them and how to fight against all of them. Sure, the added talents and points due to the expansion might have temporarily muddied the waters a bit, but that won't last long.
As for gear.. most gear doesn't drastically alter your playstyle. WoW gear is just not that diverse. Mostly what it does is alter how powerful you are, and there's not a whole lot another player can do in changing their tactics to compensate for that. And on top of that, most experienced players (and by "experienced" I mean pretty much everyone who's leveled their own character to 60+) know what just about every piece of gear looks like, and can tell at a glance what an enemy is wearing and how powerful he might be.
I know I'm taking this too seriously Yes. Yes you are.:)
And BTW, my post is talking about the same post as the one I quoted. Not about the post I quoted. I think that should be sufficiently confusing for both of us. It certainly is for me anyway.:)
And now someone with mod points can mod us all Offtopic and serve us our just deserts.
Would you call the video game industry a niche market, then? Ironically, video games (!) have some of the highest quality around for consumer-oriented software products. The hard fact that manufactuers understand is: buggy games are simply not accepted by the market. Period. Nobody would download version 1.0.1 of any game. That's odd. Apparently the top five selling video game developers didn't get your memo. Perhaps you could please contact them again and let them know that we do not accept their shoddy quality in software?
P.S. Please make sure to send at least a dozen couriers to EA. Hopefully then one will get through.
That's the refutation to the argument that cell companies shouldn't play because they built the infrastructure. The deal is, they built the infrastructure on a property we all own. It reminds me of something I once heard Utah Phillips complain about (paraphrasing here): the federal government leases our assets to companies who then turn around and sell back to us the stuff we already own at a profit to themselves. He said it much better and more humurously. Not entirely true. I don't have the exact figures, but I know a pretty significant percentage of cell towers are built on land leased from private land owners.
So, wait, his off-duty speeding is somehow more legitimate than when I speed? Explain the reasoning there. Is it somehow safer for him to speed? Do the laws of physics bend a little for cops and make a car driven by a cop at 75 MPH do the same damage as a car crashing at 55 MPH with a civvie behind the wheel? Actually yes, it probably is somewhat more legitimate for a police officer to speed than the rest of us. In Indiana, state troopers at least must pass some fairly intensive driving classes to become a trooper, and I would assume most city departments also have some sort of advanced driving test that must be passed, although perhaps not as intensive as for a state trooper. I'd be surprised if most states didn't have similar requirements.
That said, I do agree with the general idea of your post.
OK, is there a use that does justify halving your MPG? If I haul a couch every three months? 3 weeks? 3 days? Pull a horse trailer? Is it ok to have leather interior if you use it to tow rather than haul? After all, my leather interior isn't going to get fscked up by a trailer.
Who gets to draw the line? And when I've crossed that line from wasteful to justified, how do I tell the rest of the world? Do I need a bumper sticker that says "I usually tow a big freakin' trailer, so it's OK to own this gas hog!" so that you don't curse me when you pass me on the interstate? Maybe a dick measurement sticker to show I'm not compensating for something?
The problem with judging people as you pass them is that you don't really know their story. Sure there are people who have them simply because they see it as a status symbol. Maybe their even in the majority. But you can't usually tell by looking. I would really like to see the statistics on how many people use their Navigator or Escalade to tow horse trailers. Or for that matter, how many of them haul anything that a significantly more economical minivan couldn't handle just fine.
Yeah, there's some very logical and financially sound reasons for buying trucks that aren't economical, but a pretty big percentage of the ones we see on the road today were intended a great deal more as a status symbol than anything practical.
That said, I think there's many things that have a lot more impact on the environment than any number of petroleum-consuming devices, and most of them aren't even within our ability to control.
That's the moral thing to do, yes. Legally required, no. I've had this exact scenario happen to me on more than one occasion, and thus far I have always pointed out any such errors I've found. And almost universally they refuse to accept the extra payment to make up for the error.
But this Amazon scenario is even worse - it's like the b&m store calling you two days after you purchased it, and telling you that they discovered a pricing error, then giving you the choice to either bring it back or be billed. No, they won't pay you for your gas to bring it back. Amazon's not paying your gas to take it to the local post office or UPS drop-off are they?
This is one of those cases where Amazon needs to just man up and accept responsibility for their own mistake, regardless of how many people knowingly took advantage of it. And really, how hard is it to have one guy spend five minutes testing a special promo? And how many people are going to see the error and order it in the first five minutes it's up?
Not true. When players are completely unrestricted (within the context of the game) they generally find a way to solve those PvP problem themselves. It's when the restrictions are unfair that players start to whine. The biggest such example is a direct result of the common leveling (and class) systems coupled with open PvP zones, as in WoW. A level 40 player happens upon a level 20 player questing in a PvP zone, and simply because the one player happened to start playing the game a month or two before the other one, he gets the right to pummel him at will, with the level 20 player unable to do anything but log-off in disgust, and go do something else. When you start adding in things like a system that allows a "level 1" player to team up with three or four of his newb buddies and have a fighting chance against a "level 60" those issues start to resolve themselves fairly quickly. Especially in a full loot system, where the veteran player has a lot more to lose than the new players.
But all that aside, that's not even the type of freedoms that most people refer to when talking about a "sandbox" game/mode/system. A good example of a true sandbox system in an MMORPG would be if you could take random crafting elements and design your own patterns and make your own products, instead of following some limited pre-scripted designs. The real difference between a standard MMORPG and a sandbox MMORPG is in the sandbox type you can progress your character almost any way you choose. In a standard MMORPG, you can do a variety of different things to help progress your character, but in the end if you really want to get somewhere it means going after exactly the same skills/equipment/etc. that everyone else of your class is going after. For example, if you were playing in a sandbox MMO you could be a blacksmith and make a fortune crafting high quality weapons for other people. Eventually you would be able to buy or create the best armor in the game for yourself, and possibly buy huge tracts of land or even cities, without ever fighting a single trash mob or person. Compare this to WoW/EQ/Vanguard/incertrandomcookiecutterMMO where the only way to get the *best* gear is by running the same content over and over again.
Guys, remember... these awards represent the opinions of a handful of judges from one organization. You may or may not agree with them, and your opinion may or may not be better than theirs.. but remember: it's their opinion, they can hand out the awards to whoever they like best.
There's plenty more organizations that have yet to hand out their awards for last year's games. Give them some time, your picks might win some awards as well.
If you provide the funding to set up a weather station in every square mile across the US, I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige, as best they can.
Precipitation predictions are a lot more ambiguous than temperature predictions. If we get a heavy thunderstorm on the north side of Houston that lasts for an hour but totally misses the south side of Houston, did Houston get rain or not? The local weather might have predicted an 80% chance of rain for Houston and they would have been "correct", but the people on the south side of town who rescheduled their barbecue because of the forecast would be somewhat miffed. After all, they didn't have a drop of rain all day. There's many areas across the US where it's not uncommon to get small rain showers or even thunderstorms that seemingly come out of nowhere, last for about half an hour and cover an area of only a square mile or two.
With the technology and equipment we currently have, the best accuracy anyone can reasonably expect for precipitation is "we should be getting a big snowstorm coming through the Houston area sometime early next week".
Trust me, in the end WoW is anything but open-ended. You either get gear or you eventually stop playing. In fact, WoW has about the most static game-world I've ever seen. Nothing you do has an impact for any real length of time. Yeah sure, you can go exploring but truth be told there's really not that much to explore in WoW. You can cover pretty much every nook and cranny in a few months' time.
For those who are interested in a sandbox MMORPG, the one I'm waiting for is called Darkfall. http://www.darkfallonline.com/ Check it out, you might just find it's exactly what you're looking for.
To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs." This reminded me of a joke I heard a few years ago.
This guy and his wife live on a nice lake somewhere in the US. He likes fishing, she doesn't care for it. One day he's out fishing, and when he's done he doesn't have time to put away his fishing gear and leaves it on his boat. Next day, she decides to take a relaxing boat ride out on the lake, and of course she takes his fishing boat with all the gear still in it. Out on the lake as she's taking in some sun, a smart-ass guy from the fish & wildlife department finds her. He asks her if she has a valid fishing license. Of course she doesn't, so he tells her he'll have to arrest her. She protests that she's not even fishing. Whereupon he says "No, but you do have all the equipment." After thinking for a moment she responds, "well I guess I'll have to sue you for rape." He of course protests as well "But I didn't even touch you!" And then (obviously) she says "No, but you do have all the equipment!"
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If you're the kind of gamer who's only got a couple of friends and you always just play on pub servers, I suppose what you listed might be somewhat beneficial. But if you're a gamer who's part of a clan, or are part of a group of gamers that you always play with and have gamed with for years, then the Live system actually hinders more than it helps.
Oh no, you caught me. Nope, I've never actually played on Live.
And guess what. I'm never going to.
It's not really that hard to figure out what it does and does not do without actually using it. There's plenty of information out there about it, and there's plenty of free online gaming services (not to mention MMORPGs where your money actually gets you someone hosting a game server for you as well) that are similar enough to figure out what advantages and disadvantages Live might have.
There's nothing Live has to offer that I need/want that's not available in a free program that works better already than Live ever will. I'm sure it's nice for some people to have that all centralized in one clunky interface, but personally I just don't see a reason to pay a fee for something like that.
If they're causing more serious problems and I report them, and 9 other people report them as well, then they'll get their account reviewed and banned. They've lost all of their achievements, they've lost their friends list, and all of their other account details but most importantly they'll have to pay another $50 to sign back up. How much do you think the "riff-raff" would be willing to lose before they just go bother people on some free service where they can create new accounts to their hearts content? Not really. I just assumed (obviously incorrectly) that pretty much everyone who's played online games already knows that these types of blocking and banning do very little to stop these kinds of people. If they get banned, they buy another game/account/etc. and keep right on doing what they were doing. (No, most of these kinds of "players" really don't care about achievements and friends lists.) And for every one you block, there's five more ready to take his place. And how big is your global ignore list anyway? 50? 100? 500? Because you'll need enough space to block thousands to get rid of every annoying but unbannable player you ever come across.
Or, you could just play a game that allows your clan to host your own dedicated server and split the cost between you. Then you've got full control over it. No need to report anyone - someone's being an asshat, you ban his IP. If he gets another IP and comes back, do it again. Thirty seconds of your time wasted, and he's got to find away to get another IP address every time he wants to come back. Proxies may work well for anonymous web browsing, but they really don't cut it for online gaming.
Even if this service ever does pick up and become popular, it's not going to happen right away and any game that includes DirectX9 (or Win2K/XP) support will most certainly not have a "Windows Live" requirement. This means most games coming out for at least the next year or two might not support this new service at all, let alone require it. So no, UT3 will still be as free to play online as any UT has ever been. :)
I'm sure they'd like to do that, but that's just *begging* for another antitrust suit.
My guess is that as the number of players dwindle, they'll start combining servers, until eventually they get down to one. And then once the number of players drops below a certain point, to where it becomes much too cost-prohibitive to keep that last server running they'll shut that down too. This is of course assuming a company that's still active and working on new games, as opposed to a game that got shut down because the company went bankrupt.
Not even close. Remember, with Live in most games it's a client that does the hosting. I can't think of even one PC game where you can't put a password on your game when you host it online.
Your analogy might fit somewhat with MMORPGs, (ie. you may find somewhat more riff-raff in free MMO's) but not at all when comparing Live with regular online gaming.
Also, most games that are not client hosted give you some means to create your own private passworded game (ie. Battle.net). Payment not required.
And furthermore, they intentionally make the bar of entry low enough so that everyone who might be interested in online gaming will still be there. The only people this eliminates are some of the more mature who just don't see the sense in paying for something like this. All the griefers and the kids will still be there.
If there's any advantage to a service like this, it's that it centralizes online gaming. You only have one server to log on to, and from there you can see who's online, and who's playing what.
Actually, most of the multiplayer FPS's I've played had official servers hosted by the developers/publishers. Granted, these handful of servers aren't nearly enough for everyone when you've got tens of thousands of players, but they do exist. And it does mean that during stages where the game isn't as popular, you've still got those servers to play on when player-made servers are scarce.
And don't forget Blizzard with their Battle.net. That's existed since Warcraft 2 back in the Windows98 days, and it's always been hosted by Blizzard and free.
Or in other words, if you're going to be a druid healer there's about 2 or 3 slight variations of talents that you can use and still be effective. No matter how skilled a player you are, you cannot heal effectively with any spec that deviates much from a pure resto spec.
Contrast this with Guild wars, in which there are dozens of skills and combinations of skills that can be used to heal effectively, some of them quite bizarre and unusual. Every once in a while you'll happen on someone using a combination you've never seen before, even if you've been playing since release.
Now if we were talking about Guild Wars it would be a different story. GW is made for people like you who like to come up with their own builds. WoW sadly is not.
And BTW, my post is talking about the same post as the one I quoted. Not about the post I quoted. I think that should be sufficiently confusing for both of us. It certainly is for me anyway. :)
And now someone with mod points can mod us all Offtopic and serve us our just deserts.
P.S. Please make sure to send at least a dozen couriers to EA. Hopefully then one will get through.
That said, I do agree with the general idea of your post.
But this Amazon scenario is even worse - it's like the b&m store calling you two days after you purchased it, and telling you that they discovered a pricing error, then giving you the choice to either bring it back or be billed. No, they won't pay you for your gas to bring it back. Amazon's not paying your gas to take it to the local post office or UPS drop-off are they?
This is one of those cases where Amazon needs to just man up and accept responsibility for their own mistake, regardless of how many people knowingly took advantage of it. And really, how hard is it to have one guy spend five minutes testing a special promo? And how many people are going to see the error and order it in the first five minutes it's up?
But all that aside, that's not even the type of freedoms that most people refer to when talking about a "sandbox" game/mode/system. A good example of a true sandbox system in an MMORPG would be if you could take random crafting elements and design your own patterns and make your own products, instead of following some limited pre-scripted designs. The real difference between a standard MMORPG and a sandbox MMORPG is in the sandbox type you can progress your character almost any way you choose. In a standard MMORPG, you can do a variety of different things to help progress your character, but in the end if you really want to get somewhere it means going after exactly the same skills/equipment/etc. that everyone else of your class is going after. For example, if you were playing in a sandbox MMO you could be a blacksmith and make a fortune crafting high quality weapons for other people. Eventually you would be able to buy or create the best armor in the game for yourself, and possibly buy huge tracts of land or even cities, without ever fighting a single trash mob or person. Compare this to WoW/EQ/Vanguard/incertrandomcookiecutterMMO where the only way to get the *best* gear is by running the same content over and over again.
There's plenty more organizations that have yet to hand out their awards for last year's games. Give them some time, your picks might win some awards as well.
Precipitation predictions are a lot more ambiguous than temperature predictions. If we get a heavy thunderstorm on the north side of Houston that lasts for an hour but totally misses the south side of Houston, did Houston get rain or not? The local weather might have predicted an 80% chance of rain for Houston and they would have been "correct", but the people on the south side of town who rescheduled their barbecue because of the forecast would be somewhat miffed. After all, they didn't have a drop of rain all day. There's many areas across the US where it's not uncommon to get small rain showers or even thunderstorms that seemingly come out of nowhere, last for about half an hour and cover an area of only a square mile or two.
With the technology and equipment we currently have, the best accuracy anyone can reasonably expect for precipitation is "we should be getting a big snowstorm coming through the Houston area sometime early next week".
Try parsing "aims to compete with the realm's Cisco routers and PBX".
For those who are interested in a sandbox MMORPG, the one I'm waiting for is called Darkfall. http://www.darkfallonline.com/ Check it out, you might just find it's exactly what you're looking for.