You and TFA are talking about completely different things when you say "beginner programmer". You mean someone with maybe 6 months university-level tuition - hell, in my course we didn't cover Dijkstra's algorithm and A* until I think third year. TFA is talking about 'beginner' as in 'a program is a series of instructions'. Speaking as someone who wanted to learn to program since I was about 12, I made several attempts to get started and found it way too boring each time. Once I typed some old games into our BBC Micro from a magazine but I had no idea what the code meant. It wasn't until I was about 16 that it 'clicked' and I started understanding how to code.
As for teaching yourself to program as a teenager, that's the one common aspect among all the people I know who are truly good, 'natural' programmers. We all taught ourselves. And that's what I'd say to TFA: Don't try to 'make him interested', let him develop his own interest. Don't stress if he's not writing FPS games at 12. The absolute best way to make anyone hate ANYTHING is to nag them into doing it.
Because if you had blueprints to a car from the '70s that blows modern cars away in even one or two respects, you'd totally burn them "to protect the status quo" instead of using them to give you a massive commercial advantage and let you retire on a fat mattress stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
You jest, but while "water burning carburetors" are up there with "magnetic ley-line energy", water injection is actually real and practical especially in forced-induction engines. It essentially converts your car engine partially into a steam engine, using the latent heat of vaporisation to cool the high-pressure intake air (increasing thermodynamic efficiency) without lowering the pressure (increasing overall boost and forced induction mechanical efficiency).
Don't worry, the Apple fanboys woke up and logged on. It's not hateful nonsensical rubbish, though - read it more carefully. I never deny that Apple has very nice (albeit expensive) hardware, and that their mobile user interfaces are excellent. I simply point out the obvious workings of their marketing department. I'm so so sick of hearing "look it's a table with three and a half legs, that's an innovation!"
Not true, Just tested some andrioid based gadget and I'm not impressed. Yes the iPhone OS has it's down sides. But Andriod isn't close yet. I'm not sure what the problem is though. Is it the software that makes andriod fail? personally I doubt that would be the reason. Is it the hardware that the andriod gagets have that sux?
Just out of curiosity, what device were you trying? A friend of mine recently got an HTC Desire and it is SO FUCKING SHINY. I want one badly (although I've still got a year and a half on my current phone contract so I'll hold off). Everything was smooth and responsive and from what little time I played with it, I thought it was awesome. Very similar feel to an iPhone but with a few extra interface features.
I guess this is a pitfall of Android (and Windows and Linux) - because they run on such a wide range of hardware, some people will try them on underpowered hardware and end up going "meh this sucks". Apple stuff, since the whole platform is so tightly controlled, is a lot more consistent. It's kind of like going to an exclusive club vs. going to a house party. In the club you're going to pay through the nose but they'll have exotic beer and hot socialite girls (eew). At the house party it's much cheaper, you're going to see more fat chicks but there'll be hotties there too and if you have the know-how there's even a chance of a threesome...;)
Someone more clever than me wrote: "I couldn't figure out what would be the killer application for the iPad. Now I know: The killer feature is: It is _no computer_". People don't want a "real tablet computer". 70 percent of all people who bought a netbook or laptop never wanted a "computer" in the first place.
Actually, you're right, that person is insightful. That is one thing that Apple did with the iPad which makes it exceptional. They continued their fine tradition of making computers into appliances. It's a computer for people who don't want a computer. It's an appliance that you turn on and poke at things to look at them. And that does fill a definite (and potentially huge) market niche.
It's just a pity that they had to so completely destroy its ability to be a computer in order to do it.
'The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed.
No the fuck it didn't. The iPad proved that people will buy anything if it's had enough Apple hype ladled onto it. I think the new wave of Windows 7 and Android tablets will show that in short order. Sadly, breathless hype is a speciality of Apple disciples, and so we'll be hearing about how revolutionary the iPad is long after everyone who actually wanted a real tablet computer has bought one and is happily at home using it.
Even though technical components are shared between the Mac OS and the iPhone OS, the irrelevant Mac OS functions aren't gumming up the iPhone OS, and Apple's development environment doesn't let you pull through desktop approaches into your mobile applications. You're forced to go touch-native,'
Apple's marketing strategy could be best described as "less is more, more is more than that". They build a device without crucial features, and tell the drooling fanboys that it's better without them. Then the rest of us have to put up with months of "but the (iPod Shuffle / iPhone / iPad) is a technical revolution because it (can't just play the track you want / doesn't have 3G / can't multitask)". Then, once all the fanboys have brainwashed themselves into thinking it's the best thing ever because it's only got one leg and half a testis, Apple announces to a wave of fanatical joy that they've re-added the very features they stripped out in the first place! You see? Innovation! So the iPhone gets 3G, iPhone 4 has multitasking, blah blah, and AGAIN we get the "oh my god LOOK AT THIS my phone can run a web browser WHILE I'M TEXTING". Gah. Puke.
I'm sorry, but there's no nit I prefer to pick than a nit in a nitpick.;) The ignition system ignites the fuel-air mixture, it's true, but the ignition cycle could well be defined as the process of starting the engine, given that the switch that is started by the key is referred to as the ignition switch.
Dear IBM,
I have a Greddy Turbo Timer in my car. If you turn the car off, it takes 30 seconds to power down. What if the light changes first? What if you turn my car off when I've been racing around irresponsibly and seize up my $6000.00 turbo because you didn't give my car enough time to cool down before you turned it off?
Dear incubbus13,
If you have an aftermarket turbo timer fitted, which you do, then you know enough about cars to simply not install this system, or to disable it if it IS installed.
OK, here's the way to fix that: Get a turbo timer. Set it for, say, 5 minutes. That way you can lock the car, arm the alarm etc. while leaving it running. If someone does go to the extent of breaking in by smashing a window or whatever, then they'll only be able to get a mile or two before it shuts off anyway.
Though I dont know about the OP, I have delivered pizzas in areas, that though not "slums" or "crime ridden" it still would be a bad idea to leave a car running while running into a townhouse/small apartment complex to deliver a pizza; if only for the simple fact that some delinquent may decide to take it for a joy ride.
Leave the car running and lock the doors? If you're a pizza guy using your own car, then your car is likely to be old enough that you can just slip the key out while it's running (I do this because I don't have a turbo timer) and lock the doors. Problem solvered!
So, when you try to beat a yellow, you lose power steering and brakes? Lucky.
Yeah, that was my point. Unless they've got the inertial brakes from Bessie, simply cutting the engine is going to do more harm than good. It looks like this is just another reason on the huge pile of reasons that I'll keep driving my 21-year-old car for as long as humanly possible.
My mistake on the version of Windows 7 that we were talking about. As you inferred, I meant the desktop version.
Like you, I run Ubuntu at home, have done on and off for about three years. During the open beta, I ran the Windows 7 RC, and I liked it better than Ubuntu. Let's address your complaints:
UAC prompts - exactly the same as the 'Authenticate' sudo popups
Circular menu system - not sure what you're on about
Constant popups for programs - that's annoying programs, not the OS. Stop installing annoying programs.
Whining from the security center - tell it once to STFU when you install and it shuts up
WGA - while I like getting my software for free as much as you do, I've never had WGA accuse me of thievery on a legit Windows install.
Now let's look at the points where Windows wins:
Better compatibility for gaming etc. I run WoW under Wine and it's OK but I don't get the DX9+ renderer and it crashes from time to time. I can't get some Steam games working.
Eye candy. Yes, I know about compiz, but Windows 7 gets less slowdown on my hardware.
So yeah, not an MS fanboy, just a guy who uses computers a lot, knows both sides of the fence, and tells it like I see it. I liked Windows 7 more than Ubuntu, but I didn't like it enough more to pay actual money for it, so I went back to Ubuntu when the free RC license ran out.
Good call. Generally the grind is what differentiates the haves from the have-nots, but you're right - it's being different and better which is valuable.
I read an eloquent post on the WoW forums once (no, really!) detailing how the equal availability of gear was a bad thing, and I quite agreed with it. Back in Vanilla, you'd see someone decked out in Naxx gear and you'd think "wow, that's amazing!" Now you can get decked out in Icecrown gear and it's like "meh, just another character in the same gear".
To me MMO suicide is server mergers. Your admitting as a company your game isn't successful - its a death knell as your game slowely loses interest the playerbase get smaller and smaller and to keep the game going you have to make the server pool smaller.
Exactly what I was trying to get at with the last bit of my post. As soon as players start getting the *illusion* that people are leaving the game (which is the message that server mergers send) they're much more likely to leave themselves... which starts a nasty vicious cycle.
That's funny, because I thought 7 was great. It just shuts up and sits in the background making all of the bits of your computer work, without you having to even notice it. That's what an operating system should be like - the best OS is one you never even think about because it just does what you want.
Maybe it's time to stop being so angry about something that, if you'd only stop using it, wouldn't even affect you?
Actually I'd have thought so but I met him years later, he was still fit, healthy, and basically much better off for it. I asked and he said he'd kept up the clubbing for about 3 months before getting bored and giving it up.
Then again he said something about his girlfriend leaving when he bought a Glowing Brightwood Staff in WoW, so I know he was a noob. Any fool would get the Rod of the Ogre Magi at 60 and save themselves 500g...
You say this like it contradicts what I said. Why do you think MMO players complain so much? It's that they're seeking one experience (be the hero that they can't be in real life) but getting a different one (be just another schlub trying to gear up their rogue). You really think that ANY of the current crop of MMOs have interesting enough gameplay to work as single player games?
I thought they'd decided to just shelve the whole official carbon credit trading thing until the next election because they failed so many times to get it through the senate? I've been noticing a lot of advertising here for rooftop solar power, too. You pay some of the cost up-front, they keep or on-sell the carbon credits, you get to resell any bonus power back to the grid. Maybe that's where the surplus is coming from?
Basically because everyone knows that nuclear plants kill people.
Exactly. If there's one thing the hippies love to protest about more than carbon emissions or the extinction of cute fuzzy-wuzzies, it's the Evils of Nucular Power. There was some girl on the radio recently here who made me want to gag her for being so stupid. The reporter asked her, quite rightly, what her stance on nuclear power was, given that it was a readily available, safe, clean source of power that could, right now, replace most of our fossil fuel power stations. Her answer? "Well, fossil fuels create carbon but so do nuclear power plants because the mining process creates carbon. We really need wind and solar power." The sheer naivety makes me want to bite a kitten. No carbon's being "created", and wind and solar together can't replace current baseline power needs. Hippies are so scared of the word 'nuclear' that they refuse to see that it's the best possible solution for short- to medium-term power production. They're like a little kid who you ask "do you want icecream or cake?" and they say "BOTH!" And no matter how many times you say to them "We only have a dollar, and icecream costs a dollar and cake costs a dollar, you can't have both!" they will still scream "I WANNA BOFE! ISEKWEEM AAAAND CAKE!"
Actually, WoW has exactly the same amount of 'grind' now as it had in Vanilla. My first ever character hit 60 in around 12 days of play time. My rogue (who I started levelling late in Burning Crusade) took around 12 days to hit 70. My paladin (who hit 70 a couple of weeks before Wrath was released) took roughly that amount of time as well. Blizzard has simply disguised the levelling grind with a huge network of quests. The timesink is still there, it's just that instead of kill 500 boars, you have to do 50 quests, each of which involves killing 10 boars. It's less monotonous but it's still there.
As for server merges - when has WoW ever had a server merge? They've used an ongoing series of free transfers to try and balance out realm populations, but I don't recall servers ever merging or being shut down even when this would have been the sensible technical solution. As long as you maintain the illusion of a stable population, the population is likely to stay stable, but any hint of a sudden population drop can easily trigger a wave of fickle players to quit, making the rumoured ghost town a reality.
Exp. boosting weekends? Making the game easier? These things sound good on the surface but they're ultimately MMO suicide. This is because MMOs live and die by the perceived value of in-game achievements and items, and that perceived value is dictated by two major factors: how difficult they are to achieve in game, and how valuable you perceive in-game achievement to be to other people. This is fundamental to why people play MMOs at all: Players play MMOs to feel powerful and special.
Firstly, nerfing 'the grind'. Players bitch and moan about it but in the end, if there's no grind and no other challenge, then levelling up becomes meaningless. If the best items are trivial to obtain, then why would players care about getting them? Players only value what took time and effort to acquire.
Secondly, server mergers are THE death knell of any MMO. Why? Because no matter how it's presented, a server merger is always interpreted by the players as "lots of people are leaving the game". The main reason you play an MMO is that everyone else is playing it. If everyone leaves, who is going to admire your shiny epic gear? Players only value things that set them apart from others. If there're no others to admire their achievements, why bother?
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You and TFA are talking about completely different things when you say "beginner programmer". You mean someone with maybe 6 months university-level tuition - hell, in my course we didn't cover Dijkstra's algorithm and A* until I think third year. TFA is talking about 'beginner' as in 'a program is a series of instructions'. Speaking as someone who wanted to learn to program since I was about 12, I made several attempts to get started and found it way too boring each time. Once I typed some old games into our BBC Micro from a magazine but I had no idea what the code meant. It wasn't until I was about 16 that it 'clicked' and I started understanding how to code.
As for teaching yourself to program as a teenager, that's the one common aspect among all the people I know who are truly good, 'natural' programmers. We all taught ourselves. And that's what I'd say to TFA: Don't try to 'make him interested', let him develop his own interest. Don't stress if he's not writing FPS games at 12. The absolute best way to make anyone hate ANYTHING is to nag them into doing it.
Because if you had blueprints to a car from the '70s that blows modern cars away in even one or two respects, you'd totally burn them "to protect the status quo" instead of using them to give you a massive commercial advantage and let you retire on a fat mattress stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
You jest, but while "water burning carburetors" are up there with "magnetic ley-line energy", water injection is actually real and practical especially in forced-induction engines. It essentially converts your car engine partially into a steam engine, using the latent heat of vaporisation to cool the high-pressure intake air (increasing thermodynamic efficiency) without lowering the pressure (increasing overall boost and forced induction mechanical efficiency).
Don't worry, the Apple fanboys woke up and logged on. It's not hateful nonsensical rubbish, though - read it more carefully. I never deny that Apple has very nice (albeit expensive) hardware, and that their mobile user interfaces are excellent. I simply point out the obvious workings of their marketing department. I'm so so sick of hearing "look it's a table with three and a half legs, that's an innovation!"
Not true, Just tested some andrioid based gadget and I'm not impressed. Yes the iPhone OS has it's down sides. But Andriod isn't close yet. I'm not sure what the problem is though. Is it the software that makes andriod fail? personally I doubt that would be the reason. Is it the hardware that the andriod gagets have that sux?
Just out of curiosity, what device were you trying? A friend of mine recently got an HTC Desire and it is SO FUCKING SHINY. I want one badly (although I've still got a year and a half on my current phone contract so I'll hold off). Everything was smooth and responsive and from what little time I played with it, I thought it was awesome. Very similar feel to an iPhone but with a few extra interface features.
;)
I guess this is a pitfall of Android (and Windows and Linux) - because they run on such a wide range of hardware, some people will try them on underpowered hardware and end up going "meh this sucks". Apple stuff, since the whole platform is so tightly controlled, is a lot more consistent. It's kind of like going to an exclusive club vs. going to a house party. In the club you're going to pay through the nose but they'll have exotic beer and hot socialite girls (eew). At the house party it's much cheaper, you're going to see more fat chicks but there'll be hotties there too and if you have the know-how there's even a chance of a threesome...
Someone more clever than me wrote: "I couldn't figure out what would be the killer application for the iPad. Now I know: The killer feature is: It is _no computer_". People don't want a "real tablet computer". 70 percent of all people who bought a netbook or laptop never wanted a "computer" in the first place.
Actually, you're right, that person is insightful. That is one thing that Apple did with the iPad which makes it exceptional. They continued their fine tradition of making computers into appliances. It's a computer for people who don't want a computer. It's an appliance that you turn on and poke at things to look at them. And that does fill a definite (and potentially huge) market niche.
It's just a pity that they had to so completely destroy its ability to be a computer in order to do it.
Thanks! It's good to see some backup from someone "who actually wanted a real tablet computer has bought one and is happily at home using it." :)
'The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed.
No the fuck it didn't. The iPad proved that people will buy anything if it's had enough Apple hype ladled onto it. I think the new wave of Windows 7 and Android tablets will show that in short order. Sadly, breathless hype is a speciality of Apple disciples, and so we'll be hearing about how revolutionary the iPad is long after everyone who actually wanted a real tablet computer has bought one and is happily at home using it.
Even though technical components are shared between the Mac OS and the iPhone OS, the irrelevant Mac OS functions aren't gumming up the iPhone OS, and Apple's development environment doesn't let you pull through desktop approaches into your mobile applications. You're forced to go touch-native,'
Apple's marketing strategy could be best described as "less is more, more is more than that". They build a device without crucial features, and tell the drooling fanboys that it's better without them. Then the rest of us have to put up with months of "but the (iPod Shuffle / iPhone / iPad) is a technical revolution because it (can't just play the track you want / doesn't have 3G / can't multitask)". Then, once all the fanboys have brainwashed themselves into thinking it's the best thing ever because it's only got one leg and half a testis, Apple announces to a wave of fanatical joy that they've re-added the very features they stripped out in the first place! You see? Innovation! So the iPhone gets 3G, iPhone 4 has multitasking, blah blah, and AGAIN we get the "oh my god LOOK AT THIS my phone can run a web browser WHILE I'M TEXTING". Gah. Puke.
I'm sorry, but there's no nit I prefer to pick than a nit in a nitpick. ;) The ignition system ignites the fuel-air mixture, it's true, but the ignition cycle could well be defined as the process of starting the engine, given that the switch that is started by the key is referred to as the ignition switch.
Dear IBM, I have a Greddy Turbo Timer in my car. If you turn the car off, it takes 30 seconds to power down. What if the light changes first? What if you turn my car off when I've been racing around irresponsibly and seize up my $6000.00 turbo because you didn't give my car enough time to cool down before you turned it off?
Dear incubbus13,
If you have an aftermarket turbo timer fitted, which you do, then you know enough about cars to simply not install this system, or to disable it if it IS installed.
P.S. Racing around irresponsibly is fun.
OK, here's the way to fix that: Get a turbo timer. Set it for, say, 5 minutes. That way you can lock the car, arm the alarm etc. while leaving it running. If someone does go to the extent of breaking in by smashing a window or whatever, then they'll only be able to get a mile or two before it shuts off anyway.
Though I dont know about the OP, I have delivered pizzas in areas, that though not "slums" or "crime ridden" it still would be a bad idea to leave a car running while running into a townhouse/small apartment complex to deliver a pizza; if only for the simple fact that some delinquent may decide to take it for a joy ride.
Leave the car running and lock the doors? If you're a pizza guy using your own car, then your car is likely to be old enough that you can just slip the key out while it's running (I do this because I don't have a turbo timer) and lock the doors. Problem solvered!
So, when you try to beat a yellow, you lose power steering and brakes? Lucky.
Yeah, that was my point. Unless they've got the inertial brakes from Bessie, simply cutting the engine is going to do more harm than good. It looks like this is just another reason on the huge pile of reasons that I'll keep driving my 21-year-old car for as long as humanly possible.
Like you, I run Ubuntu at home, have done on and off for about three years. During the open beta, I ran the Windows 7 RC, and I liked it better than Ubuntu. Let's address your complaints:
Now let's look at the points where Windows wins:
So yeah, not an MS fanboy, just a guy who uses computers a lot, knows both sides of the fence, and tells it like I see it. I liked Windows 7 more than Ubuntu, but I didn't like it enough more to pay actual money for it, so I went back to Ubuntu when the free RC license ran out.
Good call. Generally the grind is what differentiates the haves from the have-nots, but you're right - it's being different and better which is valuable.
I read an eloquent post on the WoW forums once (no, really!) detailing how the equal availability of gear was a bad thing, and I quite agreed with it. Back in Vanilla, you'd see someone decked out in Naxx gear and you'd think "wow, that's amazing!" Now you can get decked out in Icecrown gear and it's like "meh, just another character in the same gear".
To me MMO suicide is server mergers. Your admitting as a company your game isn't successful - its a death knell as your game slowely loses interest the playerbase get smaller and smaller and to keep the game going you have to make the server pool smaller.
Exactly what I was trying to get at with the last bit of my post. As soon as players start getting the *illusion* that people are leaving the game (which is the message that server mergers send) they're much more likely to leave themselves... which starts a nasty vicious cycle.
That's funny, because I thought 7 was great. It just shuts up and sits in the background making all of the bits of your computer work, without you having to even notice it. That's what an operating system should be like - the best OS is one you never even think about because it just does what you want.
Maybe it's time to stop being so angry about something that, if you'd only stop using it, wouldn't even affect you?
Given their history, what's the other hand doing?
Building a secret underground army of robotic clone warriors to take over the world.
And who is Komar, King of the Voins? I've wondered that for years...
Actually I'd have thought so but I met him years later, he was still fit, healthy, and basically much better off for it. I asked and he said he'd kept up the clubbing for about 3 months before getting bored and giving it up.
Then again he said something about his girlfriend leaving when he bought a Glowing Brightwood Staff in WoW, so I know he was a noob. Any fool would get the Rod of the Ogre Magi at 60 and save themselves 500g...
You say this like it contradicts what I said. Why do you think MMO players complain so much? It's that they're seeking one experience (be the hero that they can't be in real life) but getting a different one (be just another schlub trying to gear up their rogue). You really think that ANY of the current crop of MMOs have interesting enough gameplay to work as single player games?
I thought they'd decided to just shelve the whole official carbon credit trading thing until the next election because they failed so many times to get it through the senate? I've been noticing a lot of advertising here for rooftop solar power, too. You pay some of the cost up-front, they keep or on-sell the carbon credits, you get to resell any bonus power back to the grid. Maybe that's where the surplus is coming from?
Basically because everyone knows that nuclear plants kill people.
Exactly. If there's one thing the hippies love to protest about more than carbon emissions or the extinction of cute fuzzy-wuzzies, it's the Evils of Nucular Power. There was some girl on the radio recently here who made me want to gag her for being so stupid. The reporter asked her, quite rightly, what her stance on nuclear power was, given that it was a readily available, safe, clean source of power that could, right now, replace most of our fossil fuel power stations. Her answer? "Well, fossil fuels create carbon but so do nuclear power plants because the mining process creates carbon. We really need wind and solar power." The sheer naivety makes me want to bite a kitten. No carbon's being "created", and wind and solar together can't replace current baseline power needs. Hippies are so scared of the word 'nuclear' that they refuse to see that it's the best possible solution for short- to medium-term power production. They're like a little kid who you ask "do you want icecream or cake?" and they say "BOTH!" And no matter how many times you say to them "We only have a dollar, and icecream costs a dollar and cake costs a dollar, you can't have both!" they will still scream "I WANNA BOFE! ISEKWEEM AAAAND CAKE!"
...OK, I'm done with my rant for now. Gah.
Um, not to argue with Mr. Goodwrench or anything, but a lean engine runs hotter than a rich one.
Not to mention that a hotter-running engine is generally more efficient than a cooler-running one, due purely to thermodynamics.
Actually, WoW has exactly the same amount of 'grind' now as it had in Vanilla. My first ever character hit 60 in around 12 days of play time. My rogue (who I started levelling late in Burning Crusade) took around 12 days to hit 70. My paladin (who hit 70 a couple of weeks before Wrath was released) took roughly that amount of time as well. Blizzard has simply disguised the levelling grind with a huge network of quests. The timesink is still there, it's just that instead of kill 500 boars, you have to do 50 quests, each of which involves killing 10 boars. It's less monotonous but it's still there.
As for server merges - when has WoW ever had a server merge? They've used an ongoing series of free transfers to try and balance out realm populations, but I don't recall servers ever merging or being shut down even when this would have been the sensible technical solution. As long as you maintain the illusion of a stable population, the population is likely to stay stable, but any hint of a sudden population drop can easily trigger a wave of fickle players to quit, making the rumoured ghost town a reality.
Exp. boosting weekends? Making the game easier? These things sound good on the surface but they're ultimately MMO suicide. This is because MMOs live and die by the perceived value of in-game achievements and items, and that perceived value is dictated by two major factors: how difficult they are to achieve in game, and how valuable you perceive in-game achievement to be to other people. This is fundamental to why people play MMOs at all: Players play MMOs to feel powerful and special.
Firstly, nerfing 'the grind'. Players bitch and moan about it but in the end, if there's no grind and no other challenge, then levelling up becomes meaningless. If the best items are trivial to obtain, then why would players care about getting them? Players only value what took time and effort to acquire.
Secondly, server mergers are THE death knell of any MMO. Why? Because no matter how it's presented, a server merger is always interpreted by the players as "lots of people are leaving the game". The main reason you play an MMO is that everyone else is playing it. If everyone leaves, who is going to admire your shiny epic gear? Players only value things that set them apart from others. If there're no others to admire their achievements, why bother?