I'd question if StarCraft really is losing them money. People are still purchasing the game, either replacing old disks or buying it for the first time, and the related paraphernalia associated with StarCraft still sells quite well. There's still a huge following for StarCraft in Korea, which is why they announced SC2 there. StarCraft was released in 1998, and as of a few years ago, it still had branded Doritos being distributed (cannot verify if they still are, sorry). So far as I can tell, no other game (MMO or not) has managed to have that kind of staying power a marketplace outside of its own industry.
I won't argue that WoW is Blizzard's bread and butter, they've got a ton of subscribers (myself included) pouring a lot of money into their coffers, but I heavily disagree that SC is a negative drain on their resources. A moneysink would be what is left of the game originally known as SWG, if Blizzard had that steamy pile of poodoo instead of SOE. Running battle.net servers for something with as rabid a following as SC, however, is far from a moneysink. It maintains a status quo, and probably breaks even when cost is weighed against revenue.
Finally, the decision to not pursue an MMO is actually a good one, imho. It avoids cutting into Blizzard's current revenue stream...WoW. When you have something that works, especially something that works as well as WoW does for making money, why jeopardize that? What would happen if they made a World of StarCraft, and users found they hated that game? Some would gravitate back to WoW, others would swear off Blizzard games entirely. Personally, that's what I did with SOE's handling of SWG. SOE may very well come out with the best WoW killer ever, but myself and a ton of other old-style SWG players would snub the game just because SOE is involved with it. The same could happen to Blizzard with a competing MMO that doesn't live up to the hype it's given before release. They know SC2 will generate a great return on investment, simply because of the hype associated and the loyal fans they have already. They have no need to top WoW, they only need to satiate as much of the playerbase for SC2 as possible.
Just remember, to live here in Florida, you must be physically and mentally unable to punch a complete hole through a punchcard. Oddly enough, I wonder how many of my fellow FL voters who had hanging chad issues programmed with punch cards back in the day...
I'm a programmer for a Community College. Before I was hired, I was told I would be going through a fingerprint screening should I take the position. It's part of working for a place that deals with the government quite a bit and has to cover its arse as much as possible. It just wouldn't do to hire a sexual predator for a counseling position at a high school, now, would it? Like someone said earlier, if it requires latex gloves, then the screening went way too far. But unless your sister has something to hide, then there should be no problem with a fingerprint screening.
It wasn't LucasArts, well, not directly by changing game elements. Their mistake was picking SOE to develop and maintain the game. SOE did NOT listen to the user community. I played SWG from its inception until WoW came out. I buried myself in SWG, at one point paying for 6 accounts by myself. I absolutely loved it, even with all of its bugs. But with every bug that surfaced, the mentality SOE employed was not a bugfix but a complete re-write of the system. The community did not want the NGE, the community wanted long-standing bugs fixed. Instead, SOE decided to completely change the premise of the game. Why was it so hard for them to realize that, through this change, they were going to lose (and alienate) a vast majority of their playerbase?
Blizzard's success hinges upon one fact that many people debate but is essentially true. The developers DO listen to the community. A good chunk of the changes made to the game, or at least proposed and then refined, were driven by the player community. Since the player has a direct impact on the direction the game takes, the loyal playerbase stays with the game. Indeed, for the first year and a half to two years of WoW, I played almost non-stop, every day, all day. I have since made an entrance into the "real world" where there big yellow LED light source we call the sun exists, and have cut back on my WoWcrack addiction by quite a bit.
Perhaps the most laughable piece of the entire article is the claim that SWG was "one of the first" MMOs. It was, by no means, one of the first. It was, however, one of the first MMOs that managed to gain the biggest following, and subsequently lose it because of inept management.
Yep, I personally responded to a few emails this morning as well. Never mind the fact that they were forwarded to the proper departments, who actually answered the people who emailed in. I personally handled the situation, you insensitive clods!
I was wondering why there was an inordinate amount of men in black suits with sunglasses and little pens with red caps that take pictures running around and taking a picture of anyone who had OpenOffice running in the taskbar. Could explain all the recent cases of work amnesia, too. I better lock my office door so they don't see my taskbar...
Have you ever had to work as a CSR? Have you ever had to take multiple calls per hour assisting users with various computing tasks? Have you ever had to spend hours out in the field diagnosing a problem with someone's machine, only to have them point out (once you finally find the problem) that they "tried doing this or that" with the computer? I spent 8 years as a CSR at a small ISP. We had a saying around the office. "The customer is always right, and the source of 95% of the problems." While the court system may describe someone as innocent until proven guilty, it's futile to apply that to a real-world application. No matter how an application "should" work (it bears noting that "should" is a curse word in the industry), there will always be a user that finds a way to royally screw something up and then blame it on the software (or hardware) not doing what the user thinks it "should" do. Remember the old adage, "make something idiot proof and God will make a better idiot".
Web Apps can certainly supplement Desktop Apps for most functionality (or even greater functionality), but total replacement will not happen. I love the features that Google has added, and I'm slowly, but surely, becoming a frequent user of all their myriad of web applications. However, come hurricane season, I cannot guarantee I will be able to get to what I need. Living in the Sunshine State (also known as the Lightning Capital of the World, Hanging Chad, and the #1 target of hurricanes) I understand and accept that my Internet access is not governed by net neutrality, but rather Mother Nature. When cable and phone lines are down, web apps become inaccessible (wireless in a hurricane is an exercise in futility), forcing me back to my desktop apps. Unless we can start controlling weather and end the hurricane season, desktop apps are here to stay.
Better not tell our 8 or so desktop-only developers. Those poor people are more overworked than the 4 web developers 9including myself), simply because there's a HIGHER demand for desktop apps over web apps. Desktop apps = control, which is something the customer craves.
So my federal student aid, which I amazingly want to use to actually finish my education, can now be used to sue one of my classmates to the point that they are forced to drop out of school, which reduces job income, and eventually works through the cycle into the fact that I get even less student aid than I got before. Self-perpetuating destruction of the college education system...brought to you by the RIAA/MPAA/MAFIAA!
If you're a customer, you have a prior business relationship with that company, and you had to have signed a contract at some point. Force them to give you a copy of it. Read the thing very, very carefully, paying attention to anything that remotely refers to bandwidth in any way. A lot of the high-speed providers will state something along the lines of "failure to abide by the bandwidth guidelines set forth in ". If they do, ask for a copy of that document. Keep on going until you see physical numbers that state your limits. If no limits are in there, and they threaten to shut you off for violation of your contract, well, IANAL but it seems to me that you have a nice little batch of short hair to hold them by. And if all else fails, have the press sensationalize a story for you for those slow news weeks. The press is out to make money, and controversy of any kind makes money, so put them journalists and reporters to work.
I can honestly say the term paper killed itself. We have legislation which requires all students complete a certain amount of writing in each college course. We have courses that have a mandatory "do this paper or fail" requirement laid down by a school administration that never had to write that paper. And we have a vastly higher number of people in college or college-level courses than we did in ages past. There's only so many ways you can write a paper before, inevitably, you come close or even exactly like a previous incarnation someone else already wrote. It's not plagiarism, it's a lack of options.
To extend this to another popular source of tension, let's look at the coding world. Those of us who have taken programming classes, or, like me, program for a living, can tell you that there's only a certain number of ways to program something to achieve the same end. Given a project of "code a Linked List of 10 randomly generated integers", chances are that in a class of 100 students, you'll see a lot of programs that look a LOT, if not exactly, alike. There's just really no other option. Sure, you can change the variable names slightly, but even then, you're eventually going to get duplicates.
Term papers didn't die because of "copy and paste an A paper" websites. Term papers died because of overuse and over reliance.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd question if StarCraft really is losing them money. People are still purchasing the game, either replacing old disks or buying it for the first time, and the related paraphernalia associated with StarCraft still sells quite well. There's still a huge following for StarCraft in Korea, which is why they announced SC2 there. StarCraft was released in 1998, and as of a few years ago, it still had branded Doritos being distributed (cannot verify if they still are, sorry). So far as I can tell, no other game (MMO or not) has managed to have that kind of staying power a marketplace outside of its own industry.
I won't argue that WoW is Blizzard's bread and butter, they've got a ton of subscribers (myself included) pouring a lot of money into their coffers, but I heavily disagree that SC is a negative drain on their resources. A moneysink would be what is left of the game originally known as SWG, if Blizzard had that steamy pile of poodoo instead of SOE. Running battle.net servers for something with as rabid a following as SC, however, is far from a moneysink. It maintains a status quo, and probably breaks even when cost is weighed against revenue.
Finally, the decision to not pursue an MMO is actually a good one, imho. It avoids cutting into Blizzard's current revenue stream...WoW. When you have something that works, especially something that works as well as WoW does for making money, why jeopardize that? What would happen if they made a World of StarCraft, and users found they hated that game? Some would gravitate back to WoW, others would swear off Blizzard games entirely. Personally, that's what I did with SOE's handling of SWG. SOE may very well come out with the best WoW killer ever, but myself and a ton of other old-style SWG players would snub the game just because SOE is involved with it. The same could happen to Blizzard with a competing MMO that doesn't live up to the hype it's given before release. They know SC2 will generate a great return on investment, simply because of the hype associated and the loyal fans they have already. They have no need to top WoW, they only need to satiate as much of the playerbase for SC2 as possible.
Just remember, to live here in Florida, you must be physically and mentally unable to punch a complete hole through a punchcard. Oddly enough, I wonder how many of my fellow FL voters who had hanging chad issues programmed with punch cards back in the day...
Is it just me, or do you like utters?
We call it the ignore button. It...ignores people. And amazingly enough...it works!
And why were you looking for Natalie Portman images, hmmmm?
I'm a programmer for a Community College. Before I was hired, I was told I would be going through a fingerprint screening should I take the position. It's part of working for a place that deals with the government quite a bit and has to cover its arse as much as possible. It just wouldn't do to hire a sexual predator for a counseling position at a high school, now, would it? Like someone said earlier, if it requires latex gloves, then the screening went way too far. But unless your sister has something to hide, then there should be no problem with a fingerprint screening.
The place where MMOs go to die.
the iRack and the iRan?
The fact that we know our every word is recorded sure hasn't stopped George Bush from providing the late night talk shows with plenty of "Bushisms".
It wasn't LucasArts, well, not directly by changing game elements. Their mistake was picking SOE to develop and maintain the game. SOE did NOT listen to the user community. I played SWG from its inception until WoW came out. I buried myself in SWG, at one point paying for 6 accounts by myself. I absolutely loved it, even with all of its bugs. But with every bug that surfaced, the mentality SOE employed was not a bugfix but a complete re-write of the system. The community did not want the NGE, the community wanted long-standing bugs fixed. Instead, SOE decided to completely change the premise of the game. Why was it so hard for them to realize that, through this change, they were going to lose (and alienate) a vast majority of their playerbase?
Blizzard's success hinges upon one fact that many people debate but is essentially true. The developers DO listen to the community. A good chunk of the changes made to the game, or at least proposed and then refined, were driven by the player community. Since the player has a direct impact on the direction the game takes, the loyal playerbase stays with the game. Indeed, for the first year and a half to two years of WoW, I played almost non-stop, every day, all day. I have since made an entrance into the "real world" where there big yellow LED light source we call the sun exists, and have cut back on my WoWcrack addiction by quite a bit.
Perhaps the most laughable piece of the entire article is the claim that SWG was "one of the first" MMOs. It was, by no means, one of the first. It was, however, one of the first MMOs that managed to gain the biggest following, and subsequently lose it because of inept management.
You assume that people will stick with Yahoo! after M$ takes it over.
Yep, I personally responded to a few emails this morning as well. Never mind the fact that they were forwarded to the proper departments, who actually answered the people who emailed in. I personally handled the situation, you insensitive clods!
Every evening, I go home and start up my work laptop, and can easily see 5 or 6 "free hotspots" that customers of Bright House offer.
Did they ever do any pirate games? One would think that would be a conflict of interest.
One of the mounted police wants to censor the Internet?! For shame!
Haven't we discussed this enough?
But leave the damn consumers alone.
I was wondering why there was an inordinate amount of men in black suits with sunglasses and little pens with red caps that take pictures running around and taking a picture of anyone who had OpenOffice running in the taskbar. Could explain all the recent cases of work amnesia, too. I better lock my office door so they don't see my taskbar...
Have you ever had to work as a CSR? Have you ever had to take multiple calls per hour assisting users with various computing tasks? Have you ever had to spend hours out in the field diagnosing a problem with someone's machine, only to have them point out (once you finally find the problem) that they "tried doing this or that" with the computer? I spent 8 years as a CSR at a small ISP. We had a saying around the office. "The customer is always right, and the source of 95% of the problems." While the court system may describe someone as innocent until proven guilty, it's futile to apply that to a real-world application. No matter how an application "should" work (it bears noting that "should" is a curse word in the industry), there will always be a user that finds a way to royally screw something up and then blame it on the software (or hardware) not doing what the user thinks it "should" do. Remember the old adage, "make something idiot proof and God will make a better idiot".
Web Apps can certainly supplement Desktop Apps for most functionality (or even greater functionality), but total replacement will not happen. I love the features that Google has added, and I'm slowly, but surely, becoming a frequent user of all their myriad of web applications. However, come hurricane season, I cannot guarantee I will be able to get to what I need. Living in the Sunshine State (also known as the Lightning Capital of the World, Hanging Chad, and the #1 target of hurricanes) I understand and accept that my Internet access is not governed by net neutrality, but rather Mother Nature. When cable and phone lines are down, web apps become inaccessible (wireless in a hurricane is an exercise in futility), forcing me back to my desktop apps. Unless we can start controlling weather and end the hurricane season, desktop apps are here to stay.
Better not tell our 8 or so desktop-only developers. Those poor people are more overworked than the 4 web developers 9including myself), simply because there's a HIGHER demand for desktop apps over web apps. Desktop apps = control, which is something the customer craves.
So my federal student aid, which I amazingly want to use to actually finish my education, can now be used to sue one of my classmates to the point that they are forced to drop out of school, which reduces job income, and eventually works through the cycle into the fact that I get even less student aid than I got before. Self-perpetuating destruction of the college education system...brought to you by the RIAA/MPAA/MAFIAA!
Picture it: The future, our sun is getting ready to explode, and then a massive mission is sent to the sun to infuse it with...antacid?
If you're a customer, you have a prior business relationship with that company, and you had to have signed a contract at some point. Force them to give you a copy of it. Read the thing very, very carefully, paying attention to anything that remotely refers to bandwidth in any way. A lot of the high-speed providers will state something along the lines of "failure to abide by the bandwidth guidelines set forth in ". If they do, ask for a copy of that document. Keep on going until you see physical numbers that state your limits. If no limits are in there, and they threaten to shut you off for violation of your contract, well, IANAL but it seems to me that you have a nice little batch of short hair to hold them by. And if all else fails, have the press sensationalize a story for you for those slow news weeks. The press is out to make money, and controversy of any kind makes money, so put them journalists and reporters to work.
I can honestly say the term paper killed itself. We have legislation which requires all students complete a certain amount of writing in each college course. We have courses that have a mandatory "do this paper or fail" requirement laid down by a school administration that never had to write that paper. And we have a vastly higher number of people in college or college-level courses than we did in ages past. There's only so many ways you can write a paper before, inevitably, you come close or even exactly like a previous incarnation someone else already wrote. It's not plagiarism, it's a lack of options.
To extend this to another popular source of tension, let's look at the coding world. Those of us who have taken programming classes, or, like me, program for a living, can tell you that there's only a certain number of ways to program something to achieve the same end. Given a project of "code a Linked List of 10 randomly generated integers", chances are that in a class of 100 students, you'll see a lot of programs that look a LOT, if not exactly, alike. There's just really no other option. Sure, you can change the variable names slightly, but even then, you're eventually going to get duplicates.
Term papers didn't die because of "copy and paste an A paper" websites. Term papers died because of overuse and over reliance.