It makes it a cheap plane to produce with good numbers that really reflect on paper only. Zerglings are cheap, too. Sometimes more cheap things is better than fewer strong things.
The offline XP bonus may have contributed somewhat to the success of WoW, but I sincerely doubt that most of the new vict.. er, new gamers took much advantage of it (other than during sleep/work), or that it contributed in any meaningful way to keeping up with their "more dedicated" friends. Actually it IS good if you're playing more than one character concurrently. My gf is one of those many-alts people, so I end up having to have about 10 different lowbies scattered around various servers to keep her company. Rest XP lets me spend an hour questing/grinding here and there to keep my alts up with her characters, while still playing my main(s).
I'm convinced the main reason WoW has taken off like it has is simply branding. Hell no. I was Blizzard's bitch from my first game of Lost Vikings all the way through to WC3:TFT. I saw them making an MMO and thought "god that's a stupid idea, who'd want to make this awesome game into an everquest ripoff" and went back to my X-Hero-Siege and Enfos Team Survival.
Then a friend of mine finally convinced me to try WoW out, by actually buying me the game. With another friend we rolled a trio of undead, and two and a half years later... *sigh* I'm still Blizzard's bitch.:/ Their games last, because they put the effort into the artwork, and the story lines (up to level 30, on the Alliance side, at least. Horde side it's "kill 12 baby raptors for their heads" "kill 7 bigger raptors for their feathers" "kill 20 jungle raptors for no reason" "kill 30 freakin ungoro raptors don't ask why" "kill 40 fuckin blades edge raptors because they're evil". I wonder what kind of raptors WotLK will have?), but most of all the community they build.
However for most players the honor requirements are met long before the mark requirements, but the players shoot for honor anyway because they cannot do mathematics. Or maybe because the players are at the level cap instead of in the 20-29 bracket? Early on, rewards cost fuck all honour and plenty of marks. Later on they cost exponentially more honour and few more marks. At 500 honour/game (AV weekend, your once-a-month epix-from-heaven event) that's still 36 winning games (at 20-30 min a pop) which will give you over 100 marks, all for one piece that costs 30 tokens. There's a reason that most people spend their marks on combat pots.
Agreed on the server transfers. Get your ass to a high pop server and it's a whole new game. I spent my first 9 months ingame on Crushridge. Being based in Australia, when I logged on there were probably 20-30 others logged on, max. I remember one UBRS being cancelled because there were no level 60 healers online. None. Zero. That's not an MMO, it's an expensive single-player game. Moved to Frostmourne and wow, 30 minute queues at peak time are a small price to pay for not having to wait up until 1:30am for the first WSG to pop.
I'm a level 64 pally, and in the last two days, I've pwned 2 70 'locks. You must be an Orc pally, the racial stun resist just rapes warlocks. Try it without your cookie cutter spec and see how you go.
Two words: Friends. List. Add every member of every good/successful PUG you're in and soon you can stay the hell away from LFG for the most part.
Agreed about the grind time for heroics though - if you "do it right" (ie. if it's not your first character to 70) you might only have to run the level 70 instances 10 times each for your heroic keys, but that's still a total of 80 hours of play just to *unlock* your next piece of progression, assuming you get groups instantly and that none of them suck. More realistically you're looking at maybe 10-20 hours of fun first-second-third runs and then 100-150 hours of "LF1M Tank" and "oh god not another tank I have to teach how to use shield block and sunder".
Then again, wait til you get to heroic instances. Why should killing the same 5 retards 10 times in a row give you gear? Repetition is not fun. Seeing new places and doing new things is fun, doing them 5 times is sorta fun, doing them 10s to 100s of times is not fun. Here's hoping they realise this for the next expansion - there's enough content in the game now that they can take out the mindlessly boring timesink bits.
This set to end next patch with built-in voice chat.
LonelyHumanWarrior22: Hey there, pretty elf lady! Want to team up and slay some dragons?;)
ElfPriestess13: <texan-trucker-voice>howdy there, pard'ner! I was just thinkin' that there same thing mah self! wanna cy-barr?</texan-trucker-voice>
LonelyHumanWarrior22: OH GOD NO
Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it - particularly, people paying for purely aesthetic differences. Erm... you do realise that the limited edition [Murky the Murloc] vanity pets that Blizzard gave out to Blizzcon-goers a couple of years ago sold on ebay for up to US$100 immediately after the convention? There's one on ebay now with current bid of US$200. See it yet?
That's the point where networking is useful. Knowing the right people (and being someone they think of when they're looking for someone with skills) is a much better way to get your foot in the door than resume polishing. Exactly. I got my first full time job at the worst of the post-dot-com slump. I got it because my robotics lecturer forwarded a heads-up that an old friend of his was looking for a multitalented researcher. So I got an interesting full time job for three years while most of my friends stayed on to do their PhDs for lack of other career options. They're only now leaving uni, while I've had time to quit, travel, come back home and ho boy, do they need developers again. Seems that for the last 5 years, no-one's been studying computing...:P
The medium involves coiled wire on a silicon chip and "sliding" magnetic ones and zeros down "notches" in the wire. Yep. It sounds like a nanotech abacus, with one bead on each wire. Relevant quote (for people who haven't R'd TFA):
His research group is able to slide the tiny magnets along notched nanowires at speeds greater than 100 meters a second. Since the tiny magnetic domains have to travel only submolecular distances, it is possible to read and write magnetic regions with different polarization as quickly as a single nanosecond -- far faster than existing storage technologies. One poster mentioned wear problems with nanomachines. I'm fairly sure that well-designed nanotech can work without friction damage. Take DMD displays for example. DLP projector bulbs wear out as normal, but I've never heard of the DMD chips themselves failing.
You know, the individual consumer may be dumb, but collectively they're not so dumb. A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.
Which is why, as you say, they're sticking with what they know: XP. MS shot themselves in the foot by making XP 'good enough'. Short of something major, people just have no motivation to upgrade. I seriously hope that some people do take this opportunity to try Linux again, though - it's much better than it used to be. I'd rate it slightly below Windows XP but (from all accounts) above Vista.
I haven't done the numbers but intuitively this makes sense. In fact, your explanation here seems to imply that power use per capita is purely a function of overall network utilisation and as such is independent from the actual population density.
Of course, this doesn't factor in that currently, phone traffic is minimized because bandwidth is expensive. A peer to peer system will suffer from tragedy of the commons to some degree, as people show less restraint due to the system being 'free'.
Other than the unpredictable reliability of mesh density required to get service, that battery cost is a certain problem. My vision of mesh networks was never so much with the mobile phone system (although they're a good test bed given their ubiquity and feature set) but more like a bunch of wireless routers. With most homes nowadays having internet access and many homes having wireless home networks, it should be easy enough to build a mesh network using these that would eventually replace the internet for local connections. Eventually I'd guess such meshes would share a high-bandwidth pipe, essentially forming their own communal ISP. Of course, mobiles could connect to this net and use it for VoIP, but wouldn't be primary routers unless there were no other option.
Ah, but if Joe wants to call Sandy, but there isn't a party line between Joe's and Sandy's parties, Joe had to call Irma's place and get her to call Fred to pass the message on to Sandy. With this system, not only does the phone automatically call Irma when Joe dials Sandy's number, but Fred can mimic Joe's voice perfectly, and Irma sounds just like Sandy. And best of all, neither Irma nor Fred remember the conversation afterwards because it consists entirely of in-jokes between Joe and Sandy.
"Commercial experience" - they don't give a crap if you're a kernel hacker or a developer on OpenOffice (unless you're one of the very very few big names). They want to know whether you've been hired by a business to do their code.
I finished uni around the time of the.com crash. The situation for software engineers then was similar to the one the GP is talking about, only instead of the 'brown peril' of outsourcing, we were competing fresh out of college with guys who'd spent the last 10+ years in the trade and were now looking for any job they could get to feed their families. Employers all jacked up the experience requirements just because they could. Almost all jobs required 5 years industry experience just to be a freaking junior web programmer. Hell, I remember a job ad in 2002 that listed as essential "5 years experience with Windows 2000".
Make a website for yourself. Right up there with "no-one ever went broke underestimating human intelligence" is "on the internet there's always someone who will pay for the weirdest shit."
Interesting - I guess this shows how much the job titles vary. Here, a 'systems analyst' (my old job title) does the software engineering in addition to the development. Enough experience in that area gets you demoted to project manager, where you do the paperwork. A programmer is more someone who writes code to spec, with much less scope for innovation.
Then again I've been stuck maintaining a dinosaur of a web site for the last 9 months.:/ So they're definitely not set in stone.
Or, I guess, if you wanted to be really sneaky, put a GPS beacon on it and put it in the GPS constellation. Cuz all those things do is send out a radio ping every howevermany ms, amirite?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the size of the weapon, but how you use it. >.>
;)
Then again anecdotal evidence strongly suggests depth of penetration into the other's 'territory' directly influences the results.
Then a friend of mine finally convinced me to try WoW out, by actually buying me the game. With another friend we rolled a trio of undead, and two and a half years later... *sigh* I'm still Blizzard's bitch.
Agreed on the server transfers. Get your ass to a high pop server and it's a whole new game. I spent my first 9 months ingame on Crushridge. Being based in Australia, when I logged on there were probably 20-30 others logged on, max. I remember one UBRS being cancelled because there were no level 60 healers online. None. Zero. That's not an MMO, it's an expensive single-player game. Moved to Frostmourne and wow, 30 minute queues at peak time are a small price to pay for not having to wait up until 1:30am for the first WSG to pop.
And contrary to what the bitter ex-players say, you CAN take them with you when you quit! :D
...
...real tits are better though. D:
Two words: Friends. List. Add every member of every good/successful PUG you're in and soon you can stay the hell away from LFG for the most part.
Agreed about the grind time for heroics though - if you "do it right" (ie. if it's not your first character to 70) you might only have to run the level 70 instances 10 times each for your heroic keys, but that's still a total of 80 hours of play just to *unlock* your next piece of progression, assuming you get groups instantly and that none of them suck. More realistically you're looking at maybe 10-20 hours of fun first-second-third runs and then 100-150 hours of "LF1M Tank" and "oh god not another tank I have to teach how to use shield block and sunder".
Then again, wait til you get to heroic instances. Why should killing the same 5 retards 10 times in a row give you gear? Repetition is not fun. Seeing new places and doing new things is fun, doing them 5 times is sorta fun, doing them 10s to 100s of times is not fun. Here's hoping they realise this for the next expansion - there's enough content in the game now that they can take out the mindlessly boring timesink bits.
This set to end next patch with built-in voice chat.
;)
LonelyHumanWarrior22: Hey there, pretty elf lady! Want to team up and slay some dragons?
ElfPriestess13: <texan-trucker-voice>howdy there, pard'ner! I was just thinkin' that there same thing mah self! wanna cy-barr?</texan-trucker-voice>
LonelyHumanWarrior22: OH GOD NO
If only we could find that sack, we'd be rich! Or even better...
;)
...we could get Helen of Troy in the sack?
Which is why, as you say, they're sticking with what they know: XP. MS shot themselves in the foot by making XP 'good enough'. Short of something major, people just have no motivation to upgrade. I seriously hope that some people do take this opportunity to try Linux again, though - it's much better than it used to be. I'd rate it slightly below Windows XP but (from all accounts) above Vista.
Mesh networks are meant to be better than centralised networks when it comes to scalability. Bandwidth ~ nodes, rather than bandwidth = constant.
I haven't done the numbers but intuitively this makes sense. In fact, your explanation here seems to imply that power use per capita is purely a function of overall network utilisation and as such is independent from the actual population density.
Of course, this doesn't factor in that currently, phone traffic is minimized because bandwidth is expensive. A peer to peer system will suffer from tragedy of the commons to some degree, as people show less restraint due to the system being 'free'.
Ah, but if Joe wants to call Sandy, but there isn't a party line between Joe's and Sandy's parties, Joe had to call Irma's place and get her to call Fred to pass the message on to Sandy. With this system, not only does the phone automatically call Irma when Joe dials Sandy's number, but Fred can mimic Joe's voice perfectly, and Irma sounds just like Sandy. And best of all, neither Irma nor Fred remember the conversation afterwards because it consists entirely of in-jokes between Joe and Sandy.
Ode to a Spell Checker
I have a spelling checker
I disk covered four my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot see.
Eye ran this poem threw it.
Your sure real glad two no.
Its very polished in its weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a blessing.
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.
Each frays comes posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore wee rote with checkers
Hour spelling was inn deck line,
Butt now when wee dew have a laps,
Wee are not maid too wine.
And now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
There are know faults in awl this peace,
Of nun eye am a wear.
To rite with care is quite a feet.
Of witch won should be proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.
That's why eye brake in two averse
Caws Eye dew want too please.
Sow glad eye yam that aye did bye
This soft wear four pea seas.
Author Unknown
"Commercial experience" - they don't give a crap if you're a kernel hacker or a developer on OpenOffice (unless you're one of the very very few big names). They want to know whether you've been hired by a business to do their code.
.com crash. The situation for software engineers then was similar to the one the GP is talking about, only instead of the 'brown peril' of outsourcing, we were competing fresh out of college with guys who'd spent the last 10+ years in the trade and were now looking for any job they could get to feed their families. Employers all jacked up the experience requirements just because they could. Almost all jobs required 5 years industry experience just to be a freaking junior web programmer. Hell, I remember a job ad in 2002 that listed as essential "5 years experience with Windows 2000".
I finished uni around the time of the
Make a website for yourself. Right up there with "no-one ever went broke underestimating human intelligence" is "on the internet there's always someone who will pay for the weirdest shit."
Interesting - I guess this shows how much the job titles vary. Here, a 'systems analyst' (my old job title) does the software engineering in addition to the development. Enough experience in that area gets you demoted to project manager, where you do the paperwork. A programmer is more someone who writes code to spec, with much less scope for innovation.
:/ So they're definitely not set in stone.
Then again I've been stuck maintaining a dinosaur of a web site for the last 9 months.
We have a winner!
I've always wondered why, what with horses going out of fashion, no-one plays moto-polo. That would be awesome.
Or, I guess, if you wanted to be really sneaky, put a GPS beacon on it and put it in the GPS constellation. Cuz all those things do is send out a radio ping every howevermany ms, amirite?