If the hardware/load balancing issues simply can't be resolved in a timely fashion, my solution would be pretty simple. I'd give all the guilds (their leaders, obviously) on the most populous servers one week to decide if they're willing to move or not. Once the week was up, I'd start moving the guilds that reported being willing (hopefully two at a time with similar average levels - enhancing the chance that folks would still know a few out-of-guild people) and, if there weren't enough volunteers, I would decide semi-randomly ("semi" meaning based on most people in fewest guilds in order to get the numbers "right") which guilds were going to move regardless of their wishes. It would be somewhat draconian (the plan would be laid out in advance so that people would have about two weeks' warning) but it would get the job done. If folks tried to evade the move by dropping out of their guilds, I'd start picking on higher level (30+) characters who quit their guild after the announcement and move them (I'd even be nice and try to do it according to the guild they quit which, of course, would also be moved).
As a further measure, I would suspend new character creation on the affected servers (if that hasn't been done already).
Of course, the whole while I'd be kicking my collective self for having failed to take these more drastic steps earlier.
The bottom line is that Blizzard is making, and is going to make, money hand over first on this game. Players don't need to be sympathetic to them (poor Blizzard, they're making millions of dollars...oh, the humanity). If they think the players should have taken the action recommended earlier, they should have taken steps to ENFORCE that need. Then again, PLAYERS shouldn't have to be the ones responsible for solving technical problems - that's what the f***ing monthly subscription fee is supposed, in part, to be paying for.
The problem is that morons like Gabe and Tycho won't use the servers that are working, instead insisting to stay on the overcrowded servers. Now they've got characters they don't want to part with - but if they'd just parted with those characters months ago when the overcrowding issue became apparent, there would be absolutely no problem.
Wow, what a BS argument. Those guys, along with many others, were playing from day one. A MMORPG, theoretically, is supposed to be about meeting people and developing online relationships (more "working" relationships than romantic, before I'm misinterpreted). That being the case, why should they be expected to go to a new server (where, under present conditions, they would have to start from scratch) in order to play the game? It's certainly not their fault that they started playing before Blizzard added more servers, and it's certainly not their fault that Blizzard can't maintain a playable game on the server they started out on.
I'm convinced that this anti-complaining backlash has to do with a) the fact that there are people out there who think Blizzard can do no wrong (like those who defend Valve's Steam authorization requirements for HL2) and b) the fact that Tycho is a popular web personality and calling him out on Slashdot registers high on the cool meter to some of the dorks here.
Despite the fact that I've actually had direct "issues" with one of the guys, I'd certainly never criticize someone for complaining that they can't properly play the game WHICH THEY ARE PAYING FOR. Anyone who WOULD do so is an asshat.
Yeah, I haven't kept track of the series in a long time (I got kind of bored taking the time required to play through those kinds of RPGs). Hence, my "perhaps.":)
I'm pushing this post down to 1 because, frankly, I don't want to encourage anyone else, but I use Outlook Express (out of sheer laziness) for my e-mail and I don't have a single problem. Of course, the fact that I run an e-mail virus scanner that activates before the mail even reaches the inbox, the fact that I don't open any message from an unknown source, the fact that I would never open an attachment (or even a.jpeg) unless I've been notified in advance that it's coming), AND the fact that I turned off the preview pane makes OE plenty secure enough for me.
Oh yeah, and I get about 10 legitimate e-mails per week which makes it easy to determine what's right and what's wrong at a glance.
Bottom line is that for a lazy, but reasonably smart, computer user who just doesn't deal with e-mail that much, OE works fine after it's been crippled up. That being said, I wouldn't use IE more than once a month on my home PC if somebody paid me.:)
Since you're going to parse and "correct" a bloody PRESS RELEASE (I expect they get put up on Slashdot for their troll value), I'll inform you that "Dragon Warrior 7" has sold exactly ZERO copies in Japan. Perhaps "Dragon Quest 7" has done as well as you describe?
Agreed fully on Starbuck. The scene during the miniseries when she saves Apollo demonstrated to me that she was going to be just fine in the role. The combination of being ridiculously brave/skillful and simultaneous scared out of her mind came through brilliantly. It did a lot more for me than her cigar chomping...well, a BIT more...
There's also no "commandment" that a banana has to be a potassium-rich fruit with a yellow peel that comes in bunches...but it IS what it IS.
A cutscene directly integrated into the gameplay where one controls the action is NOT a cutscene. A cutscene where I press particular buttons to advance the scene (a la Shenmue) isn't a cutscene either.
In other words, I'm not saying that game designers can't use other methods BESIDES cutscenes to flesh out the story in their games. In fact, I'm in favor of fresh approaches to game design (assuming they're fun, of course). All I'm saying is that if a game is going to have cutscenes, I don't want to fiddle with them.
For most games, I would expect such interactivity during cutscenes to be pointless and potentially destructive. Using KOTOR as an example, if I had the opportunity to screw around with the camera in cutscenes it could only ruin the cinematic effect the designers are attempting to convey. In Shenmue, I would argue that the interactive scenes weren't cutscenes at all - they were minigames with a cinematic feel, which is an entirely different gameplay tool.
Bottom line: Cutscenes are supposed to be just that - cuts away from the action. They're also usually meant to have the feel of a movie and I, unlike most actors, have no desire to direct. Just give me a button to allow me to skip them on my second playthrough and I'll be happy.
An omnivore who chooses to eat only plants is a vegetarian. A horse is a herbivore. It doesn't have a choice.
And if it did, a horse would eat you AND your children. And believe me, it wouldn't stop until it had eaten EVERYONE you care about! Horses are just biding their evolutionary time, man. It's gonna be game over in about a million years or so.
Not only have the Xbox and PC versions of San Andreas been announced, but they're supposed to hit by the beginning of summer. Thus, the wait is MUCH shorter than previous iterations (particularly in the case of Xbox). It seems that Sony's stranglehold on the GTA series has loosened a touch.
Actually, your "organically grown, chemical and gmo free vegetables" DO cost more to raise than our "normal" vegetables. For example, if you have an infestation of pests in a crop and can't use chemicals to get rid of them, at minimum you lose part of the crop and possibly lose the whole thing. The same would apply to plant diseases. If a harsh season hits an area where gmo-treated vegetables will survive but "organic" (Lord, how I hate that word in this context) vegetables die, then which is going to cost more?
Of course, the myth that somehow genetically altering vegetables is automatically "a bad thing" is tedious, but I'll avoid digressing further since we're already off-topic.
Yes, there are bound to be markups on your special veggies if businesses feel the market will bear them. But even if people were NOT out to make as much profit as possible (they are), growing "pure" vegetables using old-fashioned methods will always end up costing more than growing the same vegetables using modern methods.
Satellite-integrated DVRs (at least in the digital satellite realm) take the MPEG-2 stream and save it directly to disk, so the quality is "perfect" ("perfect" in this case meaning the same quality as live satellite, which some picky folks don't like) every time. This is also the case with new cable DVRs from companies like Comcast and Time Warner. I would imagine that if they're projecting 100 hours, they're referring to a 120GB hard drive storing good ole MPEG 2-encoded NTSC/PAL (drops down significantly if storing HD content) - of course, this is always an approximation since channels like HBO and Showtime are usually transmitted at higher bitrates than, say, HGTV.
Yeah, see, here's the thing. Without US support, the USSR would likely have fallen as well. Through Lend Lease, the USSR received American food, trucks, jeeps, along with myriad other supplies. Admittedly, actual military equipment was shipped mostly to Great Britain - mainly because it was almost a given from a start that any American troops going into Europe would state from Great Britain, partially because of convenience (crossing the Atlantic is a lot less complicated than crossing the Soviet Union) and partially because ole Joe started out having a peace treaty with Germany.
Without US food and materials (most notably the aforementioned trucks and jeeps, along with steel and aluminium), the USSR would likely have fallen. Let's not forget that before Stalingrad, the German army was poised to take Moscow. If they had done so, instead of turning away from Moscow, the outcome would have been very different (Germany would still likely have been eventually defeated, but we might have had a non-communist Russia and no cold war after 1945).
Being the biggest company in a particular business segment does not make one a monopoly, nor does having a lot of money. While companies like Activision, Vivendi, Nintendo, Take Two, etc. are still selling plenty of videogames, EA can't be considered a monopoly.
Actually, I was responding to someone who said that nobody should go to jail for "property crimes." That is indeed a horse of an entirely different color than copyright infringement.
So, a burglar who comes into my house and steals my PC shouldn't get any time? What happens when he does it again? And again? I get an expensive security system and he manages to disable it and does it again?
We're not living in a hippified property-free utopia. Someone who steals my assets is preventing me from living my life the way I want. Hell, when he steals my PC the burglar is preventing me from earning money to STAY alive.
I'd rather have a guy on the street who, in the heat of passion, shot his wife when he caught her in bed with another man than somebody who is a habitual thief.
You insist on missing the point. You suggested in your post that the object of Halo/Halo 2 was not to sell games - they sold over 2 million in one day. That's selling games.
Further, if Bungie were NOT a part of Microsoft but knew that making Halo/Halo 2 first for the Xbox while delaying a PC/Mac release would give them million-plus first-day sales of their Xbox game they would do it EVERY DAMN TIME. If they wouldn't, then they deserve to go out of business.
As for being a "conspiracy nut," well, no. You're describing a BUSINESS DECISION. What the hell is wrong about a company releasing exclusive software for their game console? Sony does it all the time. For Nintendo, it's ALL they have to recommend their system. I suppose if playing Bungie games was something required, like air or water, I'd see a problem. Since, however, it's just a game, then Microsoft should do whatever they can to make that game as profitable on its own, and as beneficial to their console business overall, as they can.
Finally, I would note that if Microsoft had not come along and bought Bungie then Electronic Arts (or perhaps Vivendi at that time) almost surely would have. How would that situation be any better - well, apart from the fact that they would develop for PS2 first and send a LCD port to the Xbox, which might be your preference.
Microsoft/Bungie sold 2.4 million copies (over $125 million gross) of Halo 2 on the first day. For perspective (from same article), GTA: San Andreas, sold around 2 million copies in October. Now, what PC game (apart from solitaire or other Windows-bundled games) has ever reached those kinds of numbers in a month, let alone a DAY?
I know it's really hard for some PC people to accept, but the bottom line is that console games sell more copies than PC games. Even "disappointments" like Fable outsell similar games on PCs and Macs.
The problem is that people STILL complain about the complexity of the PC even with the distance it's come in terms of usability. Taken per function, specialized devices are less complicated by default - you don't have to think about multitasking on an iPod and if you stick a game disc in a [functioning] Xbox it goes straight to the game and works with neither installation nor OS modification.
The flexibility and expandibility of a desktop PC are primarily attractions for people who want to "do it themselves." Most people, though, would probably prefer to have a simple PC-type device to do word processing, taxes, etc. while having the more specialized devices to play music, play videogames and the rest. Given an HDTV monitor and properly formatted web pages, I expect that most people would even prefer browsing the Internet from the couch on a set-top box (WebTV and the other services like it just came too early to be properly functional).
Heck, even in the geek community people buy Xboxes to use as media centers, presumably because it would be inconvenient to simply hook up their PC to a TV and use an RF keyboard/remote.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem berry, berry cranky.
As a further measure, I would suspend new character creation on the affected servers (if that hasn't been done already).
Of course, the whole while I'd be kicking my collective self for having failed to take these more drastic steps earlier.
The bottom line is that Blizzard is making, and is going to make, money hand over first on this game. Players don't need to be sympathetic to them (poor Blizzard, they're making millions of dollars...oh, the humanity). If they think the players should have taken the action recommended earlier, they should have taken steps to ENFORCE that need. Then again, PLAYERS shouldn't have to be the ones responsible for solving technical problems - that's what the f***ing monthly subscription fee is supposed, in part, to be paying for.
Wow, what a BS argument. Those guys, along with many others, were playing from day one. A MMORPG, theoretically, is supposed to be about meeting people and developing online relationships (more "working" relationships than romantic, before I'm misinterpreted). That being the case, why should they be expected to go to a new server (where, under present conditions, they would have to start from scratch) in order to play the game? It's certainly not their fault that they started playing before Blizzard added more servers, and it's certainly not their fault that Blizzard can't maintain a playable game on the server they started out on.
I'm convinced that this anti-complaining backlash has to do with a) the fact that there are people out there who think Blizzard can do no wrong (like those who defend Valve's Steam authorization requirements for HL2) and b) the fact that Tycho is a popular web personality and calling him out on Slashdot registers high on the cool meter to some of the dorks here.
Despite the fact that I've actually had direct "issues" with one of the guys, I'd certainly never criticize someone for complaining that they can't properly play the game WHICH THEY ARE PAYING FOR. Anyone who WOULD do so is an asshat.
Yeah, I haven't kept track of the series in a long time (I got kind of bored taking the time required to play through those kinds of RPGs). Hence, my "perhaps." :)
Oh yeah, and I get about 10 legitimate e-mails per week which makes it easy to determine what's right and what's wrong at a glance.
Bottom line is that for a lazy, but reasonably smart, computer user who just doesn't deal with e-mail that much, OE works fine after it's been crippled up. That being said, I wouldn't use IE more than once a month on my home PC if somebody paid me. :)
Since you're going to parse and "correct" a bloody PRESS RELEASE (I expect they get put up on Slashdot for their troll value), I'll inform you that "Dragon Warrior 7" has sold exactly ZERO copies in Japan. Perhaps "Dragon Quest 7" has done as well as you describe?
Agreed fully on Starbuck. The scene during the miniseries when she saves Apollo demonstrated to me that she was going to be just fine in the role. The combination of being ridiculously brave/skillful and simultaneous scared out of her mind came through brilliantly. It did a lot more for me than her cigar chomping...well, a BIT more...
They're "ignoring" all of the old Galactica, in the sense that they've started from scratch. Unquestionably a good plan.
A cutscene directly integrated into the gameplay where one controls the action is NOT a cutscene. A cutscene where I press particular buttons to advance the scene (a la Shenmue) isn't a cutscene either.
In other words, I'm not saying that game designers can't use other methods BESIDES cutscenes to flesh out the story in their games. In fact, I'm in favor of fresh approaches to game design (assuming they're fun, of course). All I'm saying is that if a game is going to have cutscenes, I don't want to fiddle with them.
Bottom line: Cutscenes are supposed to be just that - cuts away from the action. They're also usually meant to have the feel of a movie and I, unlike most actors, have no desire to direct. Just give me a button to allow me to skip them on my second playthrough and I'll be happy.
And if it did, a horse would eat you AND your children. And believe me, it wouldn't stop until it had eaten EVERYONE you care about! Horses are just biding their evolutionary time, man. It's gonna be game over in about a million years or so.
horses scare me
Not only have the Xbox and PC versions of San Andreas been announced, but they're supposed to hit by the beginning of summer. Thus, the wait is MUCH shorter than previous iterations (particularly in the case of Xbox). It seems that Sony's stranglehold on the GTA series has loosened a touch.
The answer? Have Paul Harvey say your company's name 5-10 times per every five minutes of radio airtime every weekday for years and years.
Actually, your "organically grown, chemical and gmo free vegetables" DO cost more to raise than our "normal" vegetables. For example, if you have an infestation of pests in a crop and can't use chemicals to get rid of them, at minimum you lose part of the crop and possibly lose the whole thing. The same would apply to plant diseases. If a harsh season hits an area where gmo-treated vegetables will survive but "organic" (Lord, how I hate that word in this context) vegetables die, then which is going to cost more?
Of course, the myth that somehow genetically altering vegetables is automatically "a bad thing" is tedious, but I'll avoid digressing further since we're already off-topic.
Yes, there are bound to be markups on your special veggies if businesses feel the market will bear them. But even if people were NOT out to make as much profit as possible (they are), growing "pure" vegetables using old-fashioned methods will always end up costing more than growing the same vegetables using modern methods.
Satellite-integrated DVRs (at least in the digital satellite realm) take the MPEG-2 stream and save it directly to disk, so the quality is "perfect" ("perfect" in this case meaning the same quality as live satellite, which some picky folks don't like) every time. This is also the case with new cable DVRs from companies like Comcast and Time Warner. I would imagine that if they're projecting 100 hours, they're referring to a 120GB hard drive storing good ole MPEG 2-encoded NTSC/PAL (drops down significantly if storing HD content) - of course, this is always an approximation since channels like HBO and Showtime are usually transmitted at higher bitrates than, say, HGTV.
I just need to say that I am going to work hard at adding the phrase "moistened tart" to my everday vocabulary. Thank you for that.
Without US food and materials (most notably the aforementioned trucks and jeeps, along with steel and aluminium), the USSR would likely have fallen. Let's not forget that before Stalingrad, the German army was poised to take Moscow. If they had done so, instead of turning away from Moscow, the outcome would have been very different (Germany would still likely have been eventually defeated, but we might have had a non-communist Russia and no cold war after 1945).
Wow, this has gone FAR off-topic. :)
Being the biggest company in a particular business segment does not make one a monopoly, nor does having a lot of money. While companies like Activision, Vivendi, Nintendo, Take Two, etc. are still selling plenty of videogames, EA can't be considered a monopoly.
Actually, I was responding to someone who said that nobody should go to jail for "property crimes." That is indeed a horse of an entirely different color than copyright infringement.
I can see that - make it stealing my car and the point remains the same.
We're not living in a hippified property-free utopia. Someone who steals my assets is preventing me from living my life the way I want. Hell, when he steals my PC the burglar is preventing me from earning money to STAY alive.
I'd rather have a guy on the street who, in the heat of passion, shot his wife when he caught her in bed with another man than somebody who is a habitual thief.
Further, if Bungie were NOT a part of Microsoft but knew that making Halo/Halo 2 first for the Xbox while delaying a PC/Mac release would give them million-plus first-day sales of their Xbox game they would do it EVERY DAMN TIME. If they wouldn't, then they deserve to go out of business.
As for being a "conspiracy nut," well, no. You're describing a BUSINESS DECISION. What the hell is wrong about a company releasing exclusive software for their game console? Sony does it all the time. For Nintendo, it's ALL they have to recommend their system. I suppose if playing Bungie games was something required, like air or water, I'd see a problem. Since, however, it's just a game, then Microsoft should do whatever they can to make that game as profitable on its own, and as beneficial to their console business overall, as they can.
Finally, I would note that if Microsoft had not come along and bought Bungie then Electronic Arts (or perhaps Vivendi at that time) almost surely would have. How would that situation be any better - well, apart from the fact that they would develop for PS2 first and send a LCD port to the Xbox, which might be your preference.
Microsoft/Bungie sold 2.4 million copies (over $125 million gross) of Halo 2 on the first day. For perspective (from same article), GTA: San Andreas, sold around 2 million copies in October. Now, what PC game (apart from solitaire or other Windows-bundled games) has ever reached those kinds of numbers in a month, let alone a DAY?
I know it's really hard for some PC people to accept, but the bottom line is that console games sell more copies than PC games. Even "disappointments" like Fable outsell similar games on PCs and Macs.
The flexibility and expandibility of a desktop PC are primarily attractions for people who want to "do it themselves." Most people, though, would probably prefer to have a simple PC-type device to do word processing, taxes, etc. while having the more specialized devices to play music, play videogames and the rest. Given an HDTV monitor and properly formatted web pages, I expect that most people would even prefer browsing the Internet from the couch on a set-top box (WebTV and the other services like it just came too early to be properly functional).
Heck, even in the geek community people buy Xboxes to use as media centers, presumably because it would be inconvenient to simply hook up their PC to a TV and use an RF keyboard/remote.
"Slightly older generation"? I would certainly hope not for a device that's been out, what, a month? Ouch!