if it is something the average american joe can buy, it is something the average iranian jamal can buy. nothing to be done about it except accept. nonissue, nonstory
Absolutely, positively true. My stroll down Tehran while visiting there taught me one thing. All of the U.S. commercial bans against Iran may stop American companies from selling stuff to them, but it sure doesn't stop a European middle-man from buying in bulk and selling to Iran.
Because MTV only cares about demographics, and the average viewer of MTV would not be searching under Black Metal, Death Metal, or Doom Metal. Would I love to see videos by Woods of Belial, Deathspell Omega, Judas Iscariot, and Nargaroth? Hell Yes. Would MTV ever show them, if such videos even exist? Nope.
MTV Europe, on the other hand, apparently shows videos by bands like Burzum, Bathory, and Immortal. Go figure.
Microsoft is essentially handing control of the Device Stage screen to the hardware manufacturers, allowing them to embed links to their online services and client software. A printer manufacturer, for example, might include a direct link to buy new ink cartridges for that specific printer from their website, or a link to a PDF of the deviceâ(TM)s manual.
Phone manufacturers could include a facility to record your own ringtone, synchronise contacts, or perform specific tasks using their dedicated PC software.
Essentially, it'll be a very convenient feature, but they better be damn sure that they lock it down, else people may start seeing "cheap c1alis,/i@gra" ads when they hook up their phone or printer.
Unfortunately, it seems like all that developers have been able to do with the PS3 is create a bunch of crappy first person shooters where the only point seems to be to fire guns in random directions and hope you hit something.
I don't understand why you drag the PS3 into the discussion when the parent poster was only talking about the Wii. Also, the Wii has as many first-person shooters as the PS3, so again, I fail to see your point.
I have a Wii and a PS3. Guess which one I play more? Yup, you guessed correctly. The PC.:-)
All I could think of was that I really wish they called micro black holes that exist for minute fractions of a second something other than "black holes." It scares people unnaturally
Not in the weeks immediately following 9/11. On September 13th, the UN Security Council passed yet another resolution against Iraq, even though Iraq hadn't done anything new, but members of the council were drawing conclusions because Saddam publicly praised the terrorists.
I'm just curious, which resolution are we talking about? This site lists all U.N. Security Council resolutions against Iraq prior to 2004. I don't see anything on September 13, except one drafted in 1990 regarding foodstuffs.
Perhaps this link doesn't have everything, but it seems comprehensive.
Many suggested the security council was immediately ready to approve military action against Iraq if the US wanted to pursue it.
Many? MANY?? Who would this 'many' be? Think tanks? Newspaper Op-Eds? National Security experts?
Your article suggests people were against the war in 2003, which is true. What I'm suggesting is that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, several leaders were vocally drawing links to Iraq, even though they had no proof.
Cool, I agree with this. Several "leaders" were drawing links to Iraq and they were wrong because they had zero proof.
The sentiments changed greatly because we pursued diplomacy instead of immediately charging in on trumped up charges when support was higher.
We pursued diplomacy? When? As far as I can recall, the U.S. kicked out the weapons inspectors in 2003 before the bombs dropped, because they weren't finding anything. The fact that they were on the verge of announcing that there were no WMD's in Iraq scared the crap out of the Bush administration, as it destroyed any case they had for war. This is further shown when the Bush administration changed their reasoning for war, going from finding WMD's to "ridding the world of a tyrant."
The Bush Administration tried their hardest to make it seem like they exhausted all of their options, but in reality, they sent in a group of weapons inspectors, Saddam let them in, they couldn't find anything, and so Bush immediately called them ineffective and declared war.
After 9/11, there was a huge outcry of public support for the U.S., in Iran, even in Palestine, where they held candlelight vigils. Unfortunately, the media never bothered to cover it. Why should they? So long as someone out there can be painted as an evil enemy, it sells!
Anyway, this link was posted by an A/C in this thread, and it is a compilation of what seems to be some of the outpouring of grief and the separation from such acts from many Muslim nations.
I've seen Moryath post this crap before every chance that he gets, and while he's entitled to his own opinion, he needs to realize that he's not an expert of Islam because he can cherry-pick out verses without putting them into context and without realizing WHEN it was written.
I'm an Atheist and while I don't like any religion, I have enough sense to know that the actions of a minority should not reflect poorly on the whole. Catholicism was especially brutal, and even today, some of its points seem backwards to me, but I would never paint every Catholic as being backwards.
Religion is and should be a private thing, unless we're talking about the worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.:)
I had a coworker at my last place of employment who said that she was going to vote for Bush for two reasons.
1.) He was going to save marriage. 2.) He looked better than Kerry.
Kerry, in her opinion, was ugly to look at. Oh, and she said that other than those two points, she didn't know anything about politics or either of the two candidates. On one hand, I believe that everyone should vote, on the other hand, I believe that everyone should vote responsibly.
Maybe it's just my overactive imagination, but in picture 10, it almost looks like there is a figure standing there with its arm outstretched. Totally cool! Thanks for pointing these pictures out.
Asking it the square root of minus two (odd, since last year one of the judges asked questions like this to all of the bots).
Just out of curiosity, what was the response that you received from this question, if you can remember? And what did you expect the response to be if it were human?
Google calculator, for instance, would give you this answer: 1.41421356 i. But any human with knowledge of math would say that no two real numbers multiplied together, negative or positive, gives you (-2), thus the imaginary number.
I guess a human who knew the answer would give you a similar response, and if they didn't know the answer, they would say something like "uh, no clue man, I barely know the square root of +2..."
Anyway, I just thought you asking it a math question was somewhat interesting. And I assume that it would choke on a word problem, since that involves deeper comprehension.
Of course the US might just decide to go to war over such a thing, but the military is stretched pretty thin already, and they'll have to be paid in something other than US dollars...
USA: Hello, China? China: Yes? USA: We declare war! China: Okay.... USA: Oh, can we borrow $2 trillion dollars for war?...
Um, you are wrong and he is right. Non-citizens don't have the same level of rights as citizens and most likely never will. We generally treat illegal aliens, illegal immigrants and citizens without any id that they are citizens exactly the same. It's easier for the police or whoever the arresting agency is to treat everyone the same and assume that they have rights when they may not. It also causes less trouble when a recent immigrant is arrested and is treated decently.
The Bill of Rights isn't basic human rights; it's a citizens only thing. You as a basic human or foreign national don't just have the right to bear arms in the US because of our Bill of Rights.
Reread the Bill of Rights and tell me where it says that these rights are reserved for citizens only? It doesn't.
* First Amendment - Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to petition
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
* Second Amendment - Right to keep and bear arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
* Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
So why use a general term, such as "person", and not citizen? Because this keeps the Government from circumventing the system by stripping someone of their citizenship, and then doing anything they want to them.
Whether you like it or not, every PERSON in the U.S. is afforded the same rights, not every CITIZEN.
You're right that many computers do come with built-in card readers. I haven't purchased a pre-built PC in a long time, but saw the current selection at a local Microcenter, and almost all of their pre-builds had the card readers.
Newegg is also selling a $150 Blu-ray DVD ROM, but I don't see the average PC user buying and installing one of these.
The entertainment industry still uses optical because it costs them only pennies to press optical media. Relatively speaking, it would cost them a lot more to distribute hard drives and flash memories that came pre-loaded with something I could watch or listen to.
For the average consumer, it's easier to stick a CD inside your car for music, assuming your vehicle has a CD player. Most cars do not have an auxiliary port, iPod jack, or USB slot. Only cars that have been made in the last few years might actually come with these options. Keep in mind, I'm speaking as someone that lives in the U.S., I'm not sure how different the options are in other countries.
Most computers and television sets still do not have built-in flash memory card readers. So other than USB sticks, having CF, xD, MMC, or any of those other formats might be useless if your destination cannot support it.
I think the issue isn't really the media format, but the availability of something that would support such formats. I would prefer flash memory over optical, simply because of its ease of use. And perhaps my perception of time is different, but to me it has always been faster to write to flash than to optical.
Precisely! You know those membership savings cards grocery stores give you? It's a trade-off. They give you a small discount in the name of "member's savings", and in turn, you give them your shopping habits. So every item you ever buy through them with that card gets recorded. It lets them pinpoint what consumers like buying, so they stock up more on the hot sellers.
And I'm pretty sure that the grocery stores do not keep this information to themselves...
Soon, the only thing that will be able to read a CAPTCHA will be automated spam bots. The new CAPTCHA test will be: "If you can read this CAPTCHA, you are a spammer."
Those that get the CAPTCHA wrong will get in. Brilliant! Anyone want to subscribe to my newsletter?
The problem was that these services were being advertised as "Always On" and "Unlimited". In reality, there was some fine print that said "Oh yeah, there really is a cap, but we won't tell you how much it is because it's arbitrary."
That led to a lot of accusations of deceptive business practices. The announcement of a cap is because companies such as Comcast were having their cake and eating it too. They were advertising unlimited services, but cutting people off when they started using too much. To be fair, it sounds like only those that were extreme users were cut off, and that happened rarely. But announcing a real cap is a good thing, as it gives customers a real number and not some arbitrary value.
Of course it would be helpful if ISPs would release a bandwidth monitoring tool, but I don't see people hitting 250 GB. 250 GB, in my opinion, is a generous amount for today. You can pretty much get 8 GB a day for a full month, and that's a lot of pR0n!
Very true, but they just changed that to two tiers lower. So a tier 2 player can go back into a tier 1 zone now. The reasoning was that many people complained that they didn't have enough time to explore the zones.
I know this holds true for the Open RvR server ruleset. I'm not sure if this affects the core server ruleset.
The Open RvR servers feature RvR flagging everywhere except for the Tier 1 Chapter area and the surrounding PvE content. Once players leave this area, they will be flagged for RvR anywhere in the game. Open RvR servers are perfect for those who want to add an extra challenge to their gaming experience. Players must constantly watch their backs or risk attack by enemies everywhere they go! Only members of opposing realms may attack each other; the Open RvR server still focuses on Order versus Destruction.
Rules:
- Players are always RvR flagged from the moment they log in
- Chapter 1 hubs and capital cities are safe
- There is no bolster buff in RvR lakes - Players will be chickened when entering an area that is two tiers below their level (ex. A Tier 3 player entering a Tier 1 area.)
The beauty of an MMORPG is that there is an end, and the end is when you decide it is so. Some get too engrossed with the social interaction. Others have an abundance of pent up imagination that they would like to release, granted, there are better ways to release imagination.
Other typical games tell you when it's done and over with. You'll finish the last level, kill the final boss, and see some cut-scenes and credits. With an MMORPG, it takes a lot of discipline to determine when you want it to end.
Games with PvE interaction do typically have a "last boss" and end-game content. Then there are games like Counterstrike that will never end, because there is no real story behind it.
Meanwhile, terrorists will just encrypt their data on thumbdrives and shove 'em up their ass.
Even easier (and less painful...)
My cell phone takes a microSD card. These cards go up to 16 GB currently, and SanDisk is producing a 32 GB version. Most of the time, cell phones are not checked, and even if they were, the cards are small enough to hide pretty much anywhere. They measure about 15 mm x 11 mm x 1 mm.
If you're just a random member of the public and would like to take a sneak peek at how this new game is going to play out, the beta remains quite closed. This is a closed beta, period. "Open" means that anyone, regardless of whether they have already fronted $50 for the game, would be able to play.
Well, it's sort of open. I pre-ordered the game and I haven't paid a dime towards it yet until it ships out. If, at any point during open beta I decide that I hate the game, I can cancel my pre-order and not pay anything.
But you don't have to pay $50 to pre-order. Many retailers will not charge you if you pre-order online. I know EBGames doesn't. In-store, you probably have to pay a $5-$10 reservation fee.
Frankly it's enough to make me think that they have something to hide, and they can bet that I won't be going anywhere near this game until the proper reviews are out.
Many people have been involved with the closed and open betas of this game. If there was something to hide, it would already be out. Massively, as well as many other online magazines, blogs, and journals, have already covered this game almost daily and extensively - with ALL of the good and bad features reviewed.
There have also been several people on the Warhammer public forums that have expressed both good and bad opinions. Believe me, they're not trying to bait-and-switch the public.
Is this how they were hoping to capture WoW's audience, or is it an indication that they've abandoned hope of that possibility?
They were never hoping to capture WoW's audience. This game is very different from WoW, both in a good way and in a bad way. Mythic has repeatedly stated that they are not attempting to compete with WoW. They already know that people who are familiar with the tabletop version will be interested, and there will also be some people who have played WoW and want to try something different.
I do agree that their version of an open beta, which means that anyone with a pre-order can play, is different than the traditional open beta other game companies have put out. But you're still not paying a CENT (Euro / AUD or whatever your local currency is) until the game ships out or you go to the store to pick up a copy.
Slashdot Mirror
A sign of what's to come if Vanilla Ice ever tries to resurrect his career.
if it is something the average american joe can buy, it is something the average iranian jamal can buy. nothing to be done about it except accept. nonissue, nonstory
Absolutely, positively true. My stroll down Tehran while visiting there taught me one thing. All of the U.S. commercial bans against Iran may stop American companies from selling stuff to them, but it sure doesn't stop a European middle-man from buying in bulk and selling to Iran.
Because MTV only cares about demographics, and the average viewer of MTV would not be searching under Black Metal, Death Metal, or Doom Metal. Would I love to see videos by Woods of Belial, Deathspell Omega, Judas Iscariot, and Nargaroth? Hell Yes. Would MTV ever show them, if such videos even exist? Nope.
MTV Europe, on the other hand, apparently shows videos by bands like Burzum, Bathory, and Immortal. Go figure.
Ah, that makes more sense. I should have seen it that way. My mistake!
From the Device Stage link:
Microsoft is essentially handing control of the Device Stage screen to the hardware manufacturers, allowing them to embed links to their online services and client software. A printer manufacturer, for example, might include a direct link to buy new ink cartridges for that specific printer from their website, or a link to a PDF of the deviceâ(TM)s manual.
Phone manufacturers could include a facility to record your own ringtone, synchronise contacts, or perform specific tasks using their dedicated PC software.
Essentially, it'll be a very convenient feature, but they better be damn sure that they lock it down, else people may start seeing "cheap c1alis, /i@gra" ads when they hook up their phone or printer.
Unfortunately, it seems like all that developers have been able to do with the PS3 is create a bunch of crappy first person shooters where the only point seems to be to fire guns in random directions and hope you hit something.
I don't understand why you drag the PS3 into the discussion when the parent poster was only talking about the Wii. Also, the Wii has as many first-person shooters as the PS3, so again, I fail to see your point.
I have a Wii and a PS3. Guess which one I play more? Yup, you guessed correctly. The PC. :-)
All I could think of was that I really wish they called micro black holes that exist for minute fractions of a second something other than "black holes." It scares people unnaturally
What scares me unnaturally is the uncanny resemblance. We're doomed!
Me too! ;)
Not in the weeks immediately following 9/11. On September 13th, the UN Security Council passed yet another resolution against Iraq, even though Iraq hadn't done anything new, but members of the council were drawing conclusions because Saddam publicly praised the terrorists.
I'm just curious, which resolution are we talking about? This site lists all U.N. Security Council resolutions against Iraq prior to 2004. I don't see anything on September 13, except one drafted in 1990 regarding foodstuffs.
Perhaps this link doesn't have everything, but it seems comprehensive.
Many suggested the security council was immediately ready to approve military action against Iraq if the US wanted to pursue it.
Many? MANY?? Who would this 'many' be? Think tanks? Newspaper Op-Eds? National Security experts?
Your article suggests people were against the war in 2003, which is true. What I'm suggesting is that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, several leaders were vocally drawing links to Iraq, even though they had no proof.
Cool, I agree with this. Several "leaders" were drawing links to Iraq and they were wrong because they had zero proof.
The sentiments changed greatly because we pursued diplomacy instead of immediately charging in on trumped up charges when support was higher.
We pursued diplomacy? When? As far as I can recall, the U.S. kicked out the weapons inspectors in 2003 before the bombs dropped, because they weren't finding anything. The fact that they were on the verge of announcing that there were no WMD's in Iraq scared the crap out of the Bush administration, as it destroyed any case they had for war. This is further shown when the Bush administration changed their reasoning for war, going from finding WMD's to "ridding the world of a tyrant."
Also, while the 9/11 Panel, President Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz have publicly denied or questioned that there was any link between Iraq and 9/11, Dick Cheney is still TO THIS DAY spreading this lie in some shape or form.
The Bush Administration tried their hardest to make it seem like they exhausted all of their options, but in reality, they sent in a group of weapons inspectors, Saddam let them in, they couldn't find anything, and so Bush immediately called them ineffective and declared war.
After 9/11, there was a huge outcry of public support for the U.S., in Iran, even in Palestine, where they held candlelight vigils. Unfortunately, the media never bothered to cover it. Why should they? So long as someone out there can be painted as an evil enemy, it sells!
Anyway, this link was posted by an A/C in this thread, and it is a compilation of what seems to be some of the outpouring of grief and the separation from such acts from many Muslim nations.
http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm
A search on google yields this as well:
http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php
I've seen Moryath post this crap before every chance that he gets, and while he's entitled to his own opinion, he needs to realize that he's not an expert of Islam because he can cherry-pick out verses without putting them into context and without realizing WHEN it was written.
I'm an Atheist and while I don't like any religion, I have enough sense to know that the actions of a minority should not reflect poorly on the whole. Catholicism was especially brutal, and even today, some of its points seem backwards to me, but I would never paint every Catholic as being backwards.
Religion is and should be a private thing, unless we're talking about the worship of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. :)
I had a coworker at my last place of employment who said that she was going to vote for Bush for two reasons.
1.) He was going to save marriage.
2.) He looked better than Kerry.
Kerry, in her opinion, was ugly to look at. Oh, and she said that other than those two points, she didn't know anything about politics or either of the two candidates. On one hand, I believe that everyone should vote, on the other hand, I believe that everyone should vote responsibly.
But who am I to judge how people vote? *Sigh*
Maybe it's just my overactive imagination, but in picture 10, it almost looks like there is a figure standing there with its arm outstretched. Totally cool! Thanks for pointing these pictures out.
Asking it the square root of minus two (odd, since last year one of the judges asked questions like this to all of the bots).
Just out of curiosity, what was the response that you received from this question, if you can remember? And what did you expect the response to be if it were human?
Google calculator, for instance, would give you this answer: 1.41421356 i. But any human with knowledge of math would say that no two real numbers multiplied together, negative or positive, gives you (-2), thus the imaginary number.
sqrt(-2) = sqrt(2)* sqrt(-1) = 1.41421356 * sqrt(-1) = 1.41421356 i
I guess a human who knew the answer would give you a similar response, and if they didn't know the answer, they would say something like "uh, no clue man, I barely know the square root of +2..."
Anyway, I just thought you asking it a math question was somewhat interesting. And I assume that it would choke on a word problem, since that involves deeper comprehension.
Of course the US might just decide to go to war over such a thing, but the military is stretched pretty thin already, and they'll have to be paid in something other than US dollars...
USA: Hello, China? ...
China: Yes?
USA: We declare war!
China: Okay....
USA: Oh, can we borrow $2 trillion dollars for war?
Um, you are wrong and he is right. Non-citizens don't have the same level of rights as citizens and most likely never will. We generally treat illegal aliens, illegal immigrants and citizens without any id that they are citizens exactly the same. It's easier for the police or whoever the arresting agency is to treat everyone the same and assume that they have rights when they may not. It also causes less trouble when a recent immigrant is arrested and is treated decently.
The Bill of Rights isn't basic human rights; it's a citizens only thing. You as a basic human or foreign national don't just have the right to bear arms in the US because of our Bill of Rights.
Reread the Bill of Rights and tell me where it says that these rights are reserved for citizens only? It doesn't.
* First Amendment - Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to petition
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
* Second Amendment - Right to keep and bear arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
* Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
So why use a general term, such as "person", and not citizen? Because this keeps the Government from circumventing the system by stripping someone of their citizenship, and then doing anything they want to them.
Whether you like it or not, every PERSON in the U.S. is afforded the same rights, not every CITIZEN.
You're right that many computers do come with built-in card readers. I haven't purchased a pre-built PC in a long time, but saw the current selection at a local Microcenter, and almost all of their pre-builds had the card readers.
Newegg is also selling a $150 Blu-ray DVD ROM, but I don't see the average PC user buying and installing one of these.
The entertainment industry still uses optical because it costs them only pennies to press optical media. Relatively speaking, it would cost them a lot more to distribute hard drives and flash memories that came pre-loaded with something I could watch or listen to.
For the average consumer, it's easier to stick a CD inside your car for music, assuming your vehicle has a CD player. Most cars do not have an auxiliary port, iPod jack, or USB slot. Only cars that have been made in the last few years might actually come with these options. Keep in mind, I'm speaking as someone that lives in the U.S., I'm not sure how different the options are in other countries.
Most computers and television sets still do not have built-in flash memory card readers. So other than USB sticks, having CF, xD, MMC, or any of those other formats might be useless if your destination cannot support it.
I think the issue isn't really the media format, but the availability of something that would support such formats. I would prefer flash memory over optical, simply because of its ease of use. And perhaps my perception of time is different, but to me it has always been faster to write to flash than to optical.
Precisely! You know those membership savings cards grocery stores give you? It's a trade-off. They give you a small discount in the name of "member's savings", and in turn, you give them your shopping habits. So every item you ever buy through them with that card gets recorded. It lets them pinpoint what consumers like buying, so they stock up more on the hot sellers.
And I'm pretty sure that the grocery stores do not keep this information to themselves...
Soon, the only thing that will be able to read a CAPTCHA will be automated spam bots. The new CAPTCHA test will be: "If you can read this CAPTCHA, you are a spammer."
Those that get the CAPTCHA wrong will get in. Brilliant! Anyone want to subscribe to my newsletter?
The problem was that these services were being advertised as "Always On" and "Unlimited". In reality, there was some fine print that said "Oh yeah, there really is a cap, but we won't tell you how much it is because it's arbitrary."
That led to a lot of accusations of deceptive business practices. The announcement of a cap is because companies such as Comcast were having their cake and eating it too. They were advertising unlimited services, but cutting people off when they started using too much. To be fair, it sounds like only those that were extreme users were cut off, and that happened rarely. But announcing a real cap is a good thing, as it gives customers a real number and not some arbitrary value.
Of course it would be helpful if ISPs would release a bandwidth monitoring tool, but I don't see people hitting 250 GB. 250 GB, in my opinion, is a generous amount for today. You can pretty much get 8 GB a day for a full month, and that's a lot of pR0n!
Very true, but they just changed that to two tiers lower. So a tier 2 player can go back into a tier 1 zone now. The reasoning was that many people complained that they didn't have enough time to explore the zones.
I know this holds true for the Open RvR server ruleset. I'm not sure if this affects the core server ruleset.
Server List Update
Open RvR Ruleset
The Open RvR servers feature RvR flagging everywhere except for the Tier 1 Chapter area and the surrounding PvE content. Once players leave this area, they will be flagged for RvR anywhere in the game. Open RvR servers are perfect for those who want to add an extra challenge to their gaming experience. Players must constantly watch their backs or risk attack by enemies everywhere they go! Only members of opposing realms may attack each other; the Open RvR server still focuses on Order versus Destruction.
Rules:
- Players are always RvR flagged from the moment they log in
- Chapter 1 hubs and capital cities are safe
- There is no bolster buff in RvR lakes
- Players will be chickened when entering an area that is two tiers below their level (ex. A Tier 3 player entering a Tier 1 area.)
Hey this word game is funner!
The beauty of an MMORPG is that there is an end, and the end is when you decide it is so. Some get too engrossed with the social interaction. Others have an abundance of pent up imagination that they would like to release, granted, there are better ways to release imagination.
Other typical games tell you when it's done and over with. You'll finish the last level, kill the final boss, and see some cut-scenes and credits. With an MMORPG, it takes a lot of discipline to determine when you want it to end.
Games with PvE interaction do typically have a "last boss" and end-game content. Then there are games like Counterstrike that will never end, because there is no real story behind it.
Meanwhile, terrorists will just encrypt their data on thumbdrives and shove 'em up their ass.
Even easier (and less painful...)
My cell phone takes a microSD card. These cards go up to 16 GB currently, and SanDisk is producing a 32 GB version. Most of the time, cell phones are not checked, and even if they were, the cards are small enough to hide pretty much anywhere. They measure about 15 mm x 11 mm x 1 mm.
If you're just a random member of the public and would like to take a sneak peek at how this new game is going to play out, the beta remains quite closed. This is a closed beta, period. "Open" means that anyone, regardless of whether they have already fronted $50 for the game, would be able to play.
Well, it's sort of open. I pre-ordered the game and I haven't paid a dime towards it yet until it ships out. If, at any point during open beta I decide that I hate the game, I can cancel my pre-order and not pay anything.
But you don't have to pay $50 to pre-order. Many retailers will not charge you if you pre-order online. I know EBGames doesn't. In-store, you probably have to pay a $5-$10 reservation fee.
Frankly it's enough to make me think that they have something to hide, and they can bet that I won't be going anywhere near this game until the proper reviews are out.
Many people have been involved with the closed and open betas of this game. If there was something to hide, it would already be out. Massively, as well as many other online magazines, blogs, and journals, have already covered this game almost daily and extensively - with ALL of the good and bad features reviewed.
There have also been several people on the Warhammer public forums that have expressed both good and bad opinions. Believe me, they're not trying to bait-and-switch the public.
Is this how they were hoping to capture WoW's audience, or is it an indication that they've abandoned hope of that possibility?
They were never hoping to capture WoW's audience. This game is very different from WoW, both in a good way and in a bad way. Mythic has repeatedly stated that they are not attempting to compete with WoW. They already know that people who are familiar with the tabletop version will be interested, and there will also be some people who have played WoW and want to try something different.
I do agree that their version of an open beta, which means that anyone with a pre-order can play, is different than the traditional open beta other game companies have put out. But you're still not paying a CENT (Euro / AUD or whatever your local currency is) until the game ships out or you go to the store to pick up a copy.