Only accounts for North America and European servers pay the regular subscription price. Blizzard licenses out WoW to local companies in the Asian markets. Typical subscription plans there are for X amount of hours per month, and in the case of China the average price is $3-4 USD/month. Of which I assume Blizzard only sees a small royalty from.
This reminds me of the episode of Venture Brothers where they go to the space station and it has a single red light labeled "Trouble" that blinks when any problem occurs...:)
If this type of technology were to really take off, it would quickly obsolete the need for traditional gas stations. Virtually any business that requires at least 5-10 minutes of your time and has their own parking could install charging meters. Assuming these batteries don't easily take on a memory for partial charging, widespread use of charging stations could mean you top off every time you park your vehicle if you want.
Parking garages, parking meters, grocery stores, malls, etc.
Besides long trips, I don't even think most consumers would feel constrained by only a 150 mile range if that were true.
I worked there for like 15 months back in the 96-97 period. Software sales was probably the most pleasant area to work since you just got to stand around helping answer questions. Made the day fly by generally. Hardware sales also wasn't too bad, but you had the added pressure of being forced to offer those replacement warranties on everything you sold.
Cashiering was the worst because you stand in one place, and they make you double check that warranties were offered, and you get yelled at by the managers if you don't try to sell a $5 replacement warranty on a $10 mouse, etc.
My guess is they had stores like Best Buy and Walmart diversify into the computers and other products CompUSA was known for, while the CompUSA stores tend to be fairly small, so trying to offer more stuff lead to a cramped and overfilled store that wasn't pleasant to navigate for customers.
Humanity doesn't have enough resources to work on both at once? We're not going to solve our energy problem from one source. It's going to take many different types of alternative sources to offset our dependence on fossil fuels.
I do find it ironic that computing started out with large mainframes, and now it seems more and more likely that the majority of computing needs in the future will be met by terminals connected to mainframes via virtualization.
I personally love how XP and 2003 Server are still completely unhelpful in identifying what exactly you are supposed to be installing a driver for. I still have like 5 things that say "Unknown" under my Hardware manager that I have no idea what they are. They don't find any compatible drivers from any of my driver CDs or updates from their associated websites, and "Unknown" is patently unhelpful in discerning what they are.
This is a sad reality in most places in the US as well. A county highway with 45mph limit has a 2 mile stretch of 25mph at one point for the assumed reason that there is a school in that section. Except the school is a good 200 yards off the road, with a fence, and the sidewalks along that stretch of road are all 30 yards from the road as well. Yet the state highway going past another school is still 55mph.
Guess how many tickets are in that stretch?
I think most people just aren't going to bother taking the time to try calling customer support and sit on hold and go through CS purgatory scripts.
When I bought Brothers in Arms when it came out, I spent 6 hours trying to legitimately play the game. Reading up all the info on the official forums and otherwise. Eventually I just downloaded the No-Disk crack to play my own game...
I shouldn't HAVE to be subjected to hell just to play a game I legitimately purchased. The copy protection does nothing but drive customers away from your product and want to warez your future products in spite. As we all know, the stuff comes out cracked within days as it is, so what's the point? And it's trivially easy to obtain now compared to trying to track legitimate warez links in the past. Let alone virus-free.
As was mentioned in another post here: It really saddens me that EA uses the truckloads of cash from the mainstream mindless sheep that buy Madden and Sims to buy creative quality game studios. They then take their properties known for quality and brilliant design, and pigeon-hole them into sequel factories that do nothing but churn out shovelware for the masses.
And of course they force them into unrealistic release schedules with little post-release support.
What was the last company EA bought that produced anything original or good afterwards?
Because you know how expensive it is to roll out an "expansion" in a Space sim. Don't get me wrong, I played EVE for a year and just don't have the time/money for it atm. But it doesn't exactly require 3D mapping and texturing to add more SPACE to a space sim;p At most they add maybe a few new ship models/textures. WoW's art department requirements are probably 20x greater.
What exactly do you think an MMO is about? Nearly all of them are about exactly that -- leveling your character and improving their equipment.
Of course you could always be disillusioned and quit. I'm sure you could start another MMO, leveling your character up and getting them new equipment...
I went there a few years ago and I wasn't impressed. It's basically a skinny island a few miles long, but only wide enough for 2 streets N/S. It was extremely crowded and the beaches were full of garbage. Jazzing it up with high-tech frills that you go on vacation to get away from won't make it a good place to vacation.
I recommend Rehoboth Beach, Delaware instead. 1/10th the people, but it's clean and still has a nice boardwalk as well.
I always love these statements that claim companies lost millions or billions of dollars due to the piracy. Because as we all know -- without piracy, every single one of those people would have gone out and legitimately purchased the product in question...
I'm sure companies do lose revenue to piracy, but the amount lost is only a small percentage compared to how many download total. How many people were likely to legitimately purchase Photoshop for $500, for example, among how many copies are downloaded each year?
What's bad is the people are worked 12 hours a day, so some asshole in America/Canada can make 90% of the profit out of the scheme. Also, the game was not designed to employ people inside the world. The gold farmers camp mobs that players need for quests, rare drops, leveling, or crafting, etc. They ruin the gameplay, inflate the economy, and require you to spend more time in the game.
Or in the case of FF11 -- basically every single Notorious Monster spawn in the game was camped 24/7 by Chinese farmers. Your only sane way of ever getting one of these items was to pay the outrageous marked up prices on the AH that these farmers set for them. They controlled the economy.
The irony being that Soviet Russia had no qualms about copying and making unlicensed production runs of British jet engines shortly after WW2. Among many other things, I'm sure.
Do they really have any IP rights to the AK-47 design anymore after so many years? I could see how the revisions like the AK-74 or whatever could still be under patent though.
Terrible? You would actually use the word terrible for the graphics? FF7 would be "terrible" graphics by today's standards. This... not so terrible. Possibly not *cutting edge* but...
The problem with your statement is that you will not be pleased with ANY game. Games like Vanguard and EQ2 are griped on because the graphics are so demanding that the performance is poor. Then a game like LOTR comes along that gives good performance with nominal graphics, and the complaints go the other way...
World of Warcraft is super popular in part *because* the graphics are not demanding, and the game is playable on machines 4-5 years old.
I find many of the gripes people seem to be having here of little merit. Not that there aren't valid complaints, but many of them are either commonalities to the MMO genre, or stuff like "the orange is bad because it's not an apple."
Someone mentioned a quest sending them to kill boars "12 levels under them" for example. That quest was either well under their level, or there were boars his level in the area he just wasn't aware of. Nearly all of the kill quests allow you to kill any boar in the zone for them.
Things like Deeds and a lot of the kill quests aren't even meant to be "grinded out." They can/will be completed just by killing things while traveling around doing the talk or delivery quests.
I have to agree with the OP that LOTR Online is the most promising MMO to come out since WoW. There are some issues, but by and large the presentation is polished, and you can tell that effort was put in to learn from the good and the bad of previous games. The graphics maxed out are extremely good, and if someone is saying they aren't, then I honestly don't know what game does have good graphics. Graphics aren't good until the game becomes unplayable in framerate?
Slashdot Mirror
How much space do the off-line versions of Wikipedia take up in text-only format? That would seem like a good thing to put on a USB drive.
So we're remaking the movie Space Cowboys, then? :)
Game companies sign deals all the time to make certain games exclusive to a certain console. I guess they are in collusion as well?
Only accounts for North America and European servers pay the regular subscription price. Blizzard licenses out WoW to local companies in the Asian markets. Typical subscription plans there are for X amount of hours per month, and in the case of China the average price is $3-4 USD/month. Of which I assume Blizzard only sees a small royalty from.
I have no idea what they plan to do with 1000 gnomes, but I can only guess that whatever it is will end in a giant explosion.
This reminds me of the episode of Venture Brothers where they go to the space station and it has a single red light labeled "Trouble" that blinks when any problem occurs... :)
If this type of technology were to really take off, it would quickly obsolete the need for traditional gas stations. Virtually any business that requires at least 5-10 minutes of your time and has their own parking could install charging meters. Assuming these batteries don't easily take on a memory for partial charging, widespread use of charging stations could mean you top off every time you park your vehicle if you want. Parking garages, parking meters, grocery stores, malls, etc. Besides long trips, I don't even think most consumers would feel constrained by only a 150 mile range if that were true.
I worked there for like 15 months back in the 96-97 period. Software sales was probably the most pleasant area to work since you just got to stand around helping answer questions. Made the day fly by generally. Hardware sales also wasn't too bad, but you had the added pressure of being forced to offer those replacement warranties on everything you sold. Cashiering was the worst because you stand in one place, and they make you double check that warranties were offered, and you get yelled at by the managers if you don't try to sell a $5 replacement warranty on a $10 mouse, etc. My guess is they had stores like Best Buy and Walmart diversify into the computers and other products CompUSA was known for, while the CompUSA stores tend to be fairly small, so trying to offer more stuff lead to a cramped and overfilled store that wasn't pleasant to navigate for customers.
True, but the PC first came into "mainstream" use with the corporate mainframes in the 50s and 60s I believe.
Humanity doesn't have enough resources to work on both at once? We're not going to solve our energy problem from one source. It's going to take many different types of alternative sources to offset our dependence on fossil fuels.
I do find it ironic that computing started out with large mainframes, and now it seems more and more likely that the majority of computing needs in the future will be met by terminals connected to mainframes via virtualization.
I personally love how XP and 2003 Server are still completely unhelpful in identifying what exactly you are supposed to be installing a driver for. I still have like 5 things that say "Unknown" under my Hardware manager that I have no idea what they are. They don't find any compatible drivers from any of my driver CDs or updates from their associated websites, and "Unknown" is patently unhelpful in discerning what they are.
This is a sad reality in most places in the US as well. A county highway with 45mph limit has a 2 mile stretch of 25mph at one point for the assumed reason that there is a school in that section. Except the school is a good 200 yards off the road, with a fence, and the sidewalks along that stretch of road are all 30 yards from the road as well. Yet the state highway going past another school is still 55mph. Guess how many tickets are in that stretch?
I think most people just aren't going to bother taking the time to try calling customer support and sit on hold and go through CS purgatory scripts. When I bought Brothers in Arms when it came out, I spent 6 hours trying to legitimately play the game. Reading up all the info on the official forums and otherwise. Eventually I just downloaded the No-Disk crack to play my own game... I shouldn't HAVE to be subjected to hell just to play a game I legitimately purchased. The copy protection does nothing but drive customers away from your product and want to warez your future products in spite. As we all know, the stuff comes out cracked within days as it is, so what's the point? And it's trivially easy to obtain now compared to trying to track legitimate warez links in the past. Let alone virus-free.
As was mentioned in another post here: It really saddens me that EA uses the truckloads of cash from the mainstream mindless sheep that buy Madden and Sims to buy creative quality game studios. They then take their properties known for quality and brilliant design, and pigeon-hole them into sequel factories that do nothing but churn out shovelware for the masses. And of course they force them into unrealistic release schedules with little post-release support. What was the last company EA bought that produced anything original or good afterwards?
No, it's laid by a few guys digging periodic holes while a pneumatic hammer worms its way underground :)
Because you know how expensive it is to roll out an "expansion" in a Space sim. Don't get me wrong, I played EVE for a year and just don't have the time/money for it atm. But it doesn't exactly require 3D mapping and texturing to add more SPACE to a space sim ;p At most they add maybe a few new ship models/textures. WoW's art department requirements are probably 20x greater.
What exactly do you think an MMO is about? Nearly all of them are about exactly that -- leveling your character and improving their equipment. Of course you could always be disillusioned and quit. I'm sure you could start another MMO, leveling your character up and getting them new equipment...
I went there a few years ago and I wasn't impressed. It's basically a skinny island a few miles long, but only wide enough for 2 streets N/S. It was extremely crowded and the beaches were full of garbage. Jazzing it up with high-tech frills that you go on vacation to get away from won't make it a good place to vacation. I recommend Rehoboth Beach, Delaware instead. 1/10th the people, but it's clean and still has a nice boardwalk as well.
I always love these statements that claim companies lost millions or billions of dollars due to the piracy. Because as we all know -- without piracy, every single one of those people would have gone out and legitimately purchased the product in question... I'm sure companies do lose revenue to piracy, but the amount lost is only a small percentage compared to how many download total. How many people were likely to legitimately purchase Photoshop for $500, for example, among how many copies are downloaded each year?
Great, now you're going to get yourself sued by the MPAA for randomly guessing their new encryption key!
What's bad is the people are worked 12 hours a day, so some asshole in America/Canada can make 90% of the profit out of the scheme. Also, the game was not designed to employ people inside the world. The gold farmers camp mobs that players need for quests, rare drops, leveling, or crafting, etc. They ruin the gameplay, inflate the economy, and require you to spend more time in the game. Or in the case of FF11 -- basically every single Notorious Monster spawn in the game was camped 24/7 by Chinese farmers. Your only sane way of ever getting one of these items was to pay the outrageous marked up prices on the AH that these farmers set for them. They controlled the economy.
The irony being that Soviet Russia had no qualms about copying and making unlicensed production runs of British jet engines shortly after WW2. Among many other things, I'm sure. Do they really have any IP rights to the AK-47 design anymore after so many years? I could see how the revisions like the AK-74 or whatever could still be under patent though.
Terrible? You would actually use the word terrible for the graphics? FF7 would be "terrible" graphics by today's standards. This ... not so terrible. Possibly not *cutting edge* but...
The problem with your statement is that you will not be pleased with ANY game. Games like Vanguard and EQ2 are griped on because the graphics are so demanding that the performance is poor. Then a game like LOTR comes along that gives good performance with nominal graphics, and the complaints go the other way...
World of Warcraft is super popular in part *because* the graphics are not demanding, and the game is playable on machines 4-5 years old.
I find many of the gripes people seem to be having here of little merit. Not that there aren't valid complaints, but many of them are either commonalities to the MMO genre, or stuff like "the orange is bad because it's not an apple." Someone mentioned a quest sending them to kill boars "12 levels under them" for example. That quest was either well under their level, or there were boars his level in the area he just wasn't aware of. Nearly all of the kill quests allow you to kill any boar in the zone for them. Things like Deeds and a lot of the kill quests aren't even meant to be "grinded out." They can/will be completed just by killing things while traveling around doing the talk or delivery quests. I have to agree with the OP that LOTR Online is the most promising MMO to come out since WoW. There are some issues, but by and large the presentation is polished, and you can tell that effort was put in to learn from the good and the bad of previous games. The graphics maxed out are extremely good, and if someone is saying they aren't, then I honestly don't know what game does have good graphics. Graphics aren't good until the game becomes unplayable in framerate?