Hey what can I say, I just know I'm better than you... my virtual avatar say that I'm kewler than you, sexier than you, and it's why your sister wants to play video games... just so she can get closer to a guy like me.
I think Eve Online is just so different from what you or I might consider an MMO... Eve really has done a lot of innovation in the MMO field. It's hard to compare them to other MMOs. In most MMOs, I doubt people even have the means or will to find the corruption. It just doesn't matter as much there as it does in EVE.
Another point would be to say this is really silly isn't much different than SOE's community summits. Where they pay everything for community leaders, major guild leaders, etc. to come out to San Diego and talk to them about the direction of the MMO. I know that have done this for EQ1 and EQ2.
With your extensive resume... I don't see EVE listed.
I should probably let you know now that there is a saying among fellow EVE players... All MMOs before and after EVE are just the training grounds for the real MMO, Eve Online.
EVE is way beyond the grindfest of the hardcore EQ days. We are talking about a game that has PVP wars where if the victors were to sell their spoils on ebay, we would be talking about 100,000 dollars... We are talking about ships that if blown up are worth 5-10,000 dollars to replace. Eve isn't a game played for casual fun... it's the definition of hardcore gaming...
And to anybody who wants to reply to this post saying 'get a life d00d', that's what they like to do with their life... When the hell did having a live mean playing with a Frisbee outside... I say go live in a 3rd world country ya backward ass fooks if you don't care to embrace technology.
I know it's way to early to throw out such phrases... but Fallout is such a break from the normal video game. I was completely drawn in by the first and second one... and cannot wait for another =)
I thought half-life 2 and doom 3 were outstanding games! And I think it's bullshit some want to lump them into the sequel category. I think what you are forgetting is how long it takes for these sequels to come out compared to others.
A company who is milking a franchise releases the sequels relatively quickly, not 5-10 years down the road... When a sequel is released 5 years after the first one... I'd say those are typically going to be amazing games, because it took so long because they were trying to make it right, not milk it.
If you want to milk a title, you release it ASAP and patch content later... along with sell them tons of expansion packs. Look at the MMO genre. Blizzard has put out 1 expansion in the time their competitors will put out 3-5 expansions. Is it no wonder why the other games suck? It's obvious the 3-5 expansion guys are trying to milk the customers. Blizzard is all about quality, and their games can last for many years for an expansion or sequel release.
gotcha thanks for the help guys, I didn't realize once I finally setup my account the settings would be there... lol. I was starting to think I needed to put in HTML... I'll switch to plain text.
Here's my first spaced out text on my/. account, hehe.
Since when does Christianity say that the world is only 4000 years old? I don't know if anybody has thrown out an exact date but people in the old testament lived to be 800 years... There were a lot of generations before Christ. You, my friend may not be as far off fundamentally as you think. The fundamental Christian just believes the world became only shortly before the existence of humanity. It's incredibly hard to grasp 100s of millions of years, this is where Fundamental Christianity differs on the age of the world... not running around ignorant acting like it's only 4,000 years old... Just that it's not 100s of millions of years old.
Why the hell when I post does it not maintain my breaks? Is it because I'm not hitting preview and just hitting submit? this is pissing me off because my posts look totally disorganized.
Well that pretty much says it.
Yes I'm the/.'er who continually finds himself slamming the company he used to love over and over here lately... but I have decided they deserve it.
Best Buy works on the entire notion of 'plausible denial'. The corporate level is the face of Best Buy and really makes Best Buy out to be one hell of an awesome company. However, Best Buy is very goal oriented... but these goals have one major flaw, it is not enough to meet or exceed a goal. Best Buy stores compete against other stores. What this means is if the worst store in the company were to hit 110% of their goals (effectively exceeding expectations right?) then that store is still considered the worse... How? Because all the stores are lined up in a ranking system and if 110% is the lowest but some other stores got on avg 125% of their goals, what the hell are you doing wrong at your store then?
So what this does is drive a very common ideology at the store-level. Do whatever it takes to make sure you are in the top half of the company. At Best Buy, 25% of all stores are on the verge of having their managers and supervisors fired (which means they will try and fire the part-timers and full-timers to save their own jobs first). 26-50% range however are not having picnic's either. If they don't get their act together before the next month, they will likely be in the hot seat too.
What does all this mean? It means corporate says these are our high quality customer oriented policy... but they said if you don't make these goals, we are going to fire you. Believe me, it's a lot easier to fook customers in the @$$ to make sure you win by doing shady as shit than it is to win by following the policies. But, Best Buy corporate has to know this is how their company runs... so they go on letting it happen, because as I said... it's plausible denial.
BBY Corp: What do you mean people are being unknowingly signed up for MSN accounts?
BBY Store Management: How the hell are you supposed to sign up 75% of all PCs sold with MSN accounts?
Here's one for all your/.'s
BBY Corp: GeekSquad needs to make this much money from RAM installs...
BBY GeekSquad: How the hell do we get 10 ram installs in a day... Oh here's an idea, let's charge the installation fee for multiple sticks! w00t! Yes, at $29 per stick, once we had a guy go to 4GB and he had 2 512's pre-installed. It cost him 156 dollars installation fee. Best Buy R0x0rs!
It would be foolish for me to say that sales figures in my region represent your own, but I do agree with you. But my point is that in my region, our CompUSA has a daily budget of around 15-20k... where as the budget for Best Buy is more around 100-125k for the store and 25k-35k for the PC department. Also I should note that CompUSA also has a wide variety of items too, so that dilutes their actual PC revenue, more in line with 8-14k for a day... so in my area, all other retailers add up to about what Best Buy generates, which is why, and even Best Buy discounts their competition as no serious threat and we compete against other Best Buy stores for a challenge.
Well to be frank with you, the point is to have the cream of the crop customers. On a more basic level we could maybe look at a luxury car dealership. If you don't come in dressed to the nine's, their not going to help you because they don't want to waste their time, in their opinion. But what this really gets as is Best Buy has 2 very high rankings when they look at their business, both are equal in their eyes, Revenue and Profit Margin. Having a high revenue is of no desire if you have a low profit margin. What the ideal goal for any business is to make the most profit they can on the least investment. The only time you will see really big doorbuster type savings are going to be Black Friday (day after thanksgiving sales) and that is ONLY because that metric is very important. Wall Street views the retailer who grabs the highest revenue amount while controlling their loses (mean it's okay to lose a little bit of money on Black Friday) will generally win the holiday season... So they have killer Black Friday Ads to draw in the people which sell out in the first few hours but they will go on to generate another 60-70% of the day's revenues beyond those huge lose leaders.
Anyways, this gets long and complicated as you can see. Let me try and find the wall street article:
http://www.pandecta.com/fire-bad-customers.htmlhttp://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_arc hive/2006/04/03/8373034/
The problem with finding data on the centricity push now is that it worked. We have elminated a lot of the bad customers and Best Buy has become more profitable. Basically it's been spinned as a good thing because it is for them as a company =)
As I said, you don't get the coupon's =) If you like this is well-documented by the Wall Street Journal. I don't have the link handy, but Best Buy is the first and only major retailer to actively push for a particular customer base and has many tactics to discourage a certain segment of their base.
Like did you know how they knew to not send you the coupons? Because of two things. They data mine your BBY credit card account and the reward zone. Reward zone is the most awesome thing to come along for Best Buy and it completely throws customers for a loop. You would think it's to encourage you to shop there more... but it's entire purpose (you would have to be on the manager level or higher to know this) was to data mine customers and actively target customers who are NOT profitable. With the Best Buy database, if you have shopped there a few times, I could probably tell you everywhere you have lived for the past 10-15 years plus I can also show you a lot of things regarding your lifestyle. The Best Buy database is designed to link and relink customers as much as possible. People move, get new addresses and stuff, but we data mine so many outside sources, that we are able to link you as the John Doe piss ass customer from Denver to the John Doe who just moved to Salt Lake City. I guess I shouldn't be disclosing this sort of information... but I love to secretly tell people how bad we are fookin them in the @$$ =) It's one of our thrills. Have a nice day!
A good friend of mine own's an Apple store... An avg Best Buy stores does approximately 25-30k revenue per day in their PC department. During Christmas and drive times this number jumps up to 125k-200k per day. I know it sounds ridiculous, but those who aren't in the know... just don't know...
Oh and my friends Apple Store avg's about 2-5k per day, and close 15k during Christmas and drive times.
That's what I mean... when all PC retailers in a general area don't even equal up to the BBY's sales, they just isn't competition.
Yea I really think all the Linux freaks lost out on the Dell deal. They wanted to get away with not paying for an operating system and therefore getting an even cheaper deal that dell already is. Now, since it costs the same, nobody will buy them and it will just prove even further how futile linux is outside of the server and workstation environment... as if it's usage rates didn't already show that =)
Yea, I'm glad somebody will have the opportunity of taking on Best Buy. I mean outside of Best Buy, are there really any PC retailers worth mentioning? It almost seems like you either buy your PC over the internet or from Best Buy...
Now you can buy it from Wal-mart or Sam's Club. And if this works out well, you can probably seem some configure to order kiosks placed into these stores as well to add a better variety.
Maybe some of you guys like Best Buy more than Wal-mart... But I don't think you understand just how evil Best Buy is on the actual level... Have you ever received Best Buy coupon's in the mail? Have you received them lately? If you haven't received them lately or you find your Best Buy credit account closed and told it's because you haven't purchased anything in a while.... realize these are all roadblocks used to slow move you away from using Best Buy because they have data mined you and determined you are not at the profit level they desire, no coupons for you!
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Hey what can I say, I just know I'm better than you... my virtual avatar say that I'm kewler than you, sexier than you, and it's why your sister wants to play video games... just so she can get closer to a guy like me.
I think Eve Online is just so different from what you or I might consider an MMO... Eve really has done a lot of innovation in the MMO field. It's hard to compare them to other MMOs. In most MMOs, I doubt people even have the means or will to find the corruption. It just doesn't matter as much there as it does in EVE. Another point would be to say this is really silly isn't much different than SOE's community summits. Where they pay everything for community leaders, major guild leaders, etc. to come out to San Diego and talk to them about the direction of the MMO. I know that have done this for EQ1 and EQ2.
I guess your list of MMOs would be summed up with just about WoW, many alts (all below lvl38), and you have never raided in WoW.
With your extensive resume... I don't see EVE listed.
I should probably let you know now that there is a saying among fellow EVE players... All MMOs before and after EVE are just the training grounds for the real MMO, Eve Online.
EVE is way beyond the grindfest of the hardcore EQ days. We are talking about a game that has PVP wars where if the victors were to sell their spoils on ebay, we would be talking about 100,000 dollars... We are talking about ships that if blown up are worth 5-10,000 dollars to replace. Eve isn't a game played for casual fun... it's the definition of hardcore gaming...
And to anybody who wants to reply to this post saying 'get a life d00d', that's what they like to do with their life... When the hell did having a live mean playing with a Frisbee outside... I say go live in a 3rd world country ya backward ass fooks if you don't care to embrace technology.
I know it's way to early to throw out such phrases... but Fallout is such a break from the normal video game. I was completely drawn in by the first and second one... and cannot wait for another =)
I thought half-life 2 and doom 3 were outstanding games! And I think it's bullshit some want to lump them into the sequel category. I think what you are forgetting is how long it takes for these sequels to come out compared to others.
A company who is milking a franchise releases the sequels relatively quickly, not 5-10 years down the road... When a sequel is released 5 years after the first one... I'd say those are typically going to be amazing games, because it took so long because they were trying to make it right, not milk it.
If you want to milk a title, you release it ASAP and patch content later... along with sell them tons of expansion packs. Look at the MMO genre. Blizzard has put out 1 expansion in the time their competitors will put out 3-5 expansions. Is it no wonder why the other games suck? It's obvious the 3-5 expansion guys are trying to milk the customers. Blizzard is all about quality, and their games can last for many years for an expansion or sequel release.
gotcha thanks for the help guys, I didn't realize once I finally setup my account the settings would be there... lol. I was starting to think I needed to put in HTML... I'll switch to plain text.
/. account, hehe.
Here's my first spaced out text on my
Since when does Christianity say that the world is only 4000 years old? I don't know if anybody has thrown out an exact date but people in the old testament lived to be 800 years... There were a lot of generations before Christ. You, my friend may not be as far off fundamentally as you think. The fundamental Christian just believes the world became only shortly before the existence of humanity. It's incredibly hard to grasp 100s of millions of years, this is where Fundamental Christianity differs on the age of the world... not running around ignorant acting like it's only 4,000 years old... Just that it's not 100s of millions of years old.
Why the hell when I post does it not maintain my breaks? Is it because I'm not hitting preview and just hitting submit? this is pissing me off because my posts look totally disorganized.
Well that pretty much says it. Yes I'm the /.'er who continually finds himself slamming the company he used to love over and over here lately... but I have decided they deserve it.
Best Buy works on the entire notion of 'plausible denial'. The corporate level is the face of Best Buy and really makes Best Buy out to be one hell of an awesome company. However, Best Buy is very goal oriented... but these goals have one major flaw, it is not enough to meet or exceed a goal. Best Buy stores compete against other stores. What this means is if the worst store in the company were to hit 110% of their goals (effectively exceeding expectations right?) then that store is still considered the worse... How? Because all the stores are lined up in a ranking system and if 110% is the lowest but some other stores got on avg 125% of their goals, what the hell are you doing wrong at your store then?
So what this does is drive a very common ideology at the store-level. Do whatever it takes to make sure you are in the top half of the company. At Best Buy, 25% of all stores are on the verge of having their managers and supervisors fired (which means they will try and fire the part-timers and full-timers to save their own jobs first). 26-50% range however are not having picnic's either. If they don't get their act together before the next month, they will likely be in the hot seat too.
What does all this mean? It means corporate says these are our high quality customer oriented policy... but they said if you don't make these goals, we are going to fire you. Believe me, it's a lot easier to fook customers in the @$$ to make sure you win by doing shady as shit than it is to win by following the policies. But, Best Buy corporate has to know this is how their company runs... so they go on letting it happen, because as I said... it's plausible denial.
BBY Corp: What do you mean people are being unknowingly signed up for MSN accounts?
BBY Store Management: How the hell are you supposed to sign up 75% of all PCs sold with MSN accounts?
Here's one for all your /.'s
BBY Corp: GeekSquad needs to make this much money from RAM installs...
BBY GeekSquad: How the hell do we get 10 ram installs in a day... Oh here's an idea, let's charge the installation fee for multiple sticks! w00t! Yes, at $29 per stick, once we had a guy go to 4GB and he had 2 512's pre-installed. It cost him 156 dollars installation fee. Best Buy R0x0rs!
It would be foolish for me to say that sales figures in my region represent your own, but I do agree with you. But my point is that in my region, our CompUSA has a daily budget of around 15-20k... where as the budget for Best Buy is more around 100-125k for the store and 25k-35k for the PC department. Also I should note that CompUSA also has a wide variety of items too, so that dilutes their actual PC revenue, more in line with 8-14k for a day... so in my area, all other retailers add up to about what Best Buy generates, which is why, and even Best Buy discounts their competition as no serious threat and we compete against other Best Buy stores for a challenge.
Well to be frank with you, the point is to have the cream of the crop customers. On a more basic level we could maybe look at a luxury car dealership. If you don't come in dressed to the nine's, their not going to help you because they don't want to waste their time, in their opinion. But what this really gets as is Best Buy has 2 very high rankings when they look at their business, both are equal in their eyes, Revenue and Profit Margin. Having a high revenue is of no desire if you have a low profit margin. What the ideal goal for any business is to make the most profit they can on the least investment. The only time you will see really big doorbuster type savings are going to be Black Friday (day after thanksgiving sales) and that is ONLY because that metric is very important. Wall Street views the retailer who grabs the highest revenue amount while controlling their loses (mean it's okay to lose a little bit of money on Black Friday) will generally win the holiday season... So they have killer Black Friday Ads to draw in the people which sell out in the first few hours but they will go on to generate another 60-70% of the day's revenues beyond those huge lose leaders. Anyways, this gets long and complicated as you can see. Let me try and find the wall street article: http://www.pandecta.com/fire-bad-customers.html http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_arc hive/2006/04/03/8373034/
The problem with finding data on the centricity push now is that it worked. We have elminated a lot of the bad customers and Best Buy has become more profitable. Basically it's been spinned as a good thing because it is for them as a company =)
As I said, you don't get the coupon's =) If you like this is well-documented by the Wall Street Journal. I don't have the link handy, but Best Buy is the first and only major retailer to actively push for a particular customer base and has many tactics to discourage a certain segment of their base. Like did you know how they knew to not send you the coupons? Because of two things. They data mine your BBY credit card account and the reward zone. Reward zone is the most awesome thing to come along for Best Buy and it completely throws customers for a loop. You would think it's to encourage you to shop there more... but it's entire purpose (you would have to be on the manager level or higher to know this) was to data mine customers and actively target customers who are NOT profitable. With the Best Buy database, if you have shopped there a few times, I could probably tell you everywhere you have lived for the past 10-15 years plus I can also show you a lot of things regarding your lifestyle. The Best Buy database is designed to link and relink customers as much as possible. People move, get new addresses and stuff, but we data mine so many outside sources, that we are able to link you as the John Doe piss ass customer from Denver to the John Doe who just moved to Salt Lake City. I guess I shouldn't be disclosing this sort of information... but I love to secretly tell people how bad we are fookin them in the @$$ =) It's one of our thrills. Have a nice day!
A good friend of mine own's an Apple store... An avg Best Buy stores does approximately 25-30k revenue per day in their PC department. During Christmas and drive times this number jumps up to 125k-200k per day. I know it sounds ridiculous, but those who aren't in the know... just don't know... Oh and my friends Apple Store avg's about 2-5k per day, and close 15k during Christmas and drive times. That's what I mean... when all PC retailers in a general area don't even equal up to the BBY's sales, they just isn't competition.
Yea I really think all the Linux freaks lost out on the Dell deal. They wanted to get away with not paying for an operating system and therefore getting an even cheaper deal that dell already is. Now, since it costs the same, nobody will buy them and it will just prove even further how futile linux is outside of the server and workstation environment... as if it's usage rates didn't already show that =)
Yea, I'm glad somebody will have the opportunity of taking on Best Buy. I mean outside of Best Buy, are there really any PC retailers worth mentioning? It almost seems like you either buy your PC over the internet or from Best Buy... Now you can buy it from Wal-mart or Sam's Club. And if this works out well, you can probably seem some configure to order kiosks placed into these stores as well to add a better variety. Maybe some of you guys like Best Buy more than Wal-mart... But I don't think you understand just how evil Best Buy is on the actual level... Have you ever received Best Buy coupon's in the mail? Have you received them lately? If you haven't received them lately or you find your Best Buy credit account closed and told it's because you haven't purchased anything in a while.... realize these are all roadblocks used to slow move you away from using Best Buy because they have data mined you and determined you are not at the profit level they desire, no coupons for you!