Somebody...find out which congressman/senator's wife/retired general has a major stake in Softmart. There's got to be collusion SOMEWHERE. This move is too boneheaded and expensive for this not to be an insider deal.
I think this needs empahsis. This should be quite obvious...
Though your post is quite anti-negative, if we distill it down, most of it is true.
There were a lot of unconstructive negative posts in the Beta forums. And many of them were quite insignificant gripes in the larger context of beta testing.
I think one large issue that many people are missing with SWG is that it's balance in bartle spectrum is much better than most other MMO games. This means the socializers and explorers will enjoy this game a lot more than most games, since that aspect of MMO games is usually left at the very end of the priority list.
I think a lot of the frustration many MMO veterans have with SWG is that the bartle-defined killer type players do not get an overwhelming portion of the attention of the developers. In this game they do get a fair share of attention, but this game is certianly not going to cater to the FFA PvP type of crowd.
People who enjoy socializing, crafting, exploring, and the non-hardcore PvP types will probably find this game enjoyable, since a lot more time has been invested in these kinds of activities than most other MMO games.
I do, however, I share the disclaimer with many other beta testers, that new players who have little patience for bugs should probably not jump right into the game in the first month or two...
The box costs in MMOGs is set based on quite a few factors.
- It pays for initial development, with a nice ROI, just as the sale of expansion pack boxes pays for each of their development costs.
- It keeps people playing, since they already paid a large amount of cash, and later it's only a small fraction of that amount to keep playing.
- People are used to paying $50 for a game
- (cynically) It's a good way to get cash out of people who only will play one month.
A year or two after release, usually the price on MMO games falls pretty low yet still stays on the shelf.. At that point, they've already got the most fanatic players in the game, so they will start with the "gilette" marketing model where they sell the box cheap to more casual gamers, and make most of their money on the subscriptions. By this time, though, they've more than likely recovered all their initial development costs (and then some).
So far, it's been plagued by the same kinds of problems Everquest had, including the same lack of customer support
Huh? Customer support starts today.
They've had several patches that were nothing but nerf-fests and introduced more bugs than they fixed
There have been just as many nerfs as de-nerfs, and some really nasty exploits have been fixed in the past two weeks. There were times of instability, but I've seen the game go from completely unstable to rock solid in one patch.
When I first started beta, the game was running like a dog, and had major stability problems. I thought it had months to go before release. Then they did a patch, and it was as if I could take several months off my estimate, just from the results of one patch.
I'll admit this game is probably going to have a very rough start in the first month or two, but your exaggerations are quite outside the range of reality.
There are times when it gets a bit annoying -- for example, when I'm watching a movie on my computer, and it hits a quiet part where the dialog is all whispers.
But for the most part, the noise my computer makes helps block out noise from my neighbors, traffic, the airport nearby, etc while I'm sleeping. It's sort of inadvertently like a white noise generator; though I doubt it's actually strictly 'white' noise.
I really don't know where we are going from here though. I can't imagine the average consumer being able to stand much more noise than what we're getting these days on non-overclocked systems...
I've been programming for about 9 years now and over the past two years or so I've really been starting to burn out.
Several things happened around that time, so any one of them or a combination of them could have been the cause.
- I started taking a perscription for social anxiety, and started to do more with my life socially, and a lot of new interests opened up to me that were not related to technology.
- I had my first serious relationship, and shortly after, my first serious breakup. I think I might have burned out a few brain circuits on this. =)
- My workplace laid off a lot of people, who were good friends of mine. Many have moved across the country, and we don't keep in touch as well as we did. There used to be over 75 people working here, but now we're down to less than a dozen. It's VERY quiet here.
- We redeveloped our main application in a new language, which I'm still not nearly as comfortable with as I was with our original language. I understand why we've moved to it (easier to hire contractors for it), but it's not as warm & fuzzy as my "native" language.
- I moved more from a position of designer to programmer as our application became more focused on a niche market which I'm not quite familiar with, so I am needing to rely more on specifications from management, which are quite fuzzy at best.
And it's not that I'm burned out from working a lot of hours. I probably work no more than 45-50 hours a week.
I'll admit I'm no superstar programmer. I am not in the same league as people who have the knowledge or patience to hack away at kernel code, write device drivers, or implement the latest buzzword technology.
I do have almost a decade of experience with web-based application technologies, but I don't have a BSCS or anything on paper that companies all seem to require these days. Sometimes I'm a little behind on the terminology and the latest and greatest developments in computer science, but I always find a solution to any problem that comes along.
For that reason, I'm sure I've re-invented the wheel more than a few times (ever try doing CGI in C? - talk about masochistic). I guess this is the reason why I don't feel comfortable with job searching.
I've probably developed a bit of dysthymia to go with my burnout. I often don't even bother turning on my home PC anymore. I usually get home from work and I just go to sleep or just lie in bed until it's time to get up and go back into work. This cycle has been especially nasty for me lately. It seems the more rushed and stressed out things get at work, the more dysthymic I get.
I really wish I could find a way to enjoy programming (and life in general) again. But I fear that as long as this company stays in business, I'll probably be stuck here since the pay is good.
I've taken on collecting LEGO blocks, but I have yet to build anything with them.
I've amassed a collection of well over 25,000 pieces (probably even exceeding 30,000 if I also count the unsorted cardboard boxes full of used LEGO), but I still am drawing a blank on what my first big project should be.
I think nearly all of Acclaim's recent marketing stunts are deliberately designed to trigger some sort of "WTF?" response from reporters, who take the bait every single time.
My question is, do they ever follow through with any of their stunts?
Some scientist with too much funding and driven by greedy food corporations (Hi Monsanto!) simply is not going to improve on what we evolved to consume.
Oh you mean the same type of scientists who suddenly decided that eggs and butter are ok?
BTW, what is this pot noodle which you speak of? =)
I agree that email spam is terrible, but SMS ads are free for the receiver and not very annoying.
Commercials and ads are here to stay, better get used to it.
They are not free everywhere. My friend/roommate has a super-cheap plan, with no included SMS messages included, but she can still send or recieve SMS messages for ten cents each.
So tell me... If SMS spam gets out of control, who the hell is going to pay for all that junk?
Pay everyone $13 once, which will be re-absorbed over the cost of a few still-overpriced CDs over the next few months.
If they were forced to actually make their prices competitive, they would lose in the long term. This way they not only win in the long term, but they probably can't get sued twice now for the same thing, so if that's the case, expect prices to slowly keep creeping up...
I wonder if they even have the equipment and/or skilled people available to multi-task shuttles. For example, does mission control even have the capability to monitor two shuttles at once?
The cost was insignificant to anyone who is/was floored by this picture. Anyone who looked at that image for the first time and did not feel the hair stand up on the back of his/her neck (or some equivalent response) probably does not possess adequate intelligence to express a rational opinion on federal spending.
This is an excellent post. I've had some experience with low-carb diets as well, and their effect can be quite remarkable. The key is to find a balance which you can sustain for the long term...
I think the best balance seems to be doing some kind of activity after indulging in high-carb foods, so that the starches are used up instead of stored away...
I find it too difficult to avoid high carb foods altogether, as they are *everywhere*, so I find that this is a good method to keep the pounds off without going having any crazy limitations on what I can eat...
I wrote the first AREXX mailto: and news: handlers for Aweb... They were even commercially distributed with the software for some time. I remember the publishers asking me what I would like in return for use of my scripts and I just asked to be able to recieve the beta copies as they were developed, which was a great position to be in as Aweb was all the rage at the time. =)
I miss AREXX... It wasn't really the language itself that was so fantastic as much as the availability of AREXX hooks in nearly all the applications. It was cool to be able to not only script the actions of a single application, but also tie an application together with another... so you could easily toss together batch scripts to automate a bunch of functions even though GUI-based applications.
I remember writing tons of IRC client functions in AREXX as well as a ton of code for the C-Net BBS system. I have yet to see anything which so elegantly tied together the internal capabilities of such a large variety of applications.
I think the point of the parent post was to be able to initially read in the entire disc at once.
Imagine putting a music CD on a very high resolution flatbed scanner, and then after a relatively quick scan, being able to play the music from the scan.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody...find out which congressman/senator's wife/retired general has a major stake in Softmart. There's got to be collusion SOMEWHERE. This move is too boneheaded and expensive for this not to be an insider deal.
I think this needs empahsis. This should be quite obvious...
Yeah, but if you don't get in *now*, you won't get a chance to play while there's still tons of exploits =P
Though your post is quite anti-negative, if we distill it down, most of it is true.
There were a lot of unconstructive negative posts in the Beta forums. And many of them were quite insignificant gripes in the larger context of beta testing.
I think one large issue that many people are missing with SWG is that it's balance in bartle spectrum is much better than most other MMO games. This means the socializers and explorers will enjoy this game a lot more than most games, since that aspect of MMO games is usually left at the very end of the priority list.
I think a lot of the frustration many MMO veterans have with SWG is that the bartle-defined killer type players do not get an overwhelming portion of the attention of the developers. In this game they do get a fair share of attention, but this game is certianly not going to cater to the FFA PvP type of crowd.
People who enjoy socializing, crafting, exploring, and the non-hardcore PvP types will probably find this game enjoyable, since a lot more time has been invested in these kinds of activities than most other MMO games.
I do, however, I share the disclaimer with many other beta testers, that new players who have little patience for bugs should probably not jump right into the game in the first month or two...
The box costs in MMOGs is set based on quite a few factors.
- It pays for initial development, with a nice ROI, just as the sale of expansion pack boxes pays for each of their development costs.
- It keeps people playing, since they already paid a large amount of cash, and later it's only a small fraction of that amount to keep playing.
- People are used to paying $50 for a game
- (cynically) It's a good way to get cash out of people who only will play one month.
A year or two after release, usually the price on MMO games falls pretty low yet still stays on the shelf.. At that point, they've already got the most fanatic players in the game, so they will start with the "gilette" marketing model where they sell the box cheap to more casual gamers, and make most of their money on the subscriptions. By this time, though, they've more than likely recovered all their initial development costs (and then some).
So far, it's been plagued by the same kinds of problems Everquest had, including the same lack of customer support
Huh? Customer support starts today.
They've had several patches that were nothing but nerf-fests and introduced more bugs than they fixed
There have been just as many nerfs as de-nerfs, and some really nasty exploits have been fixed in the past two weeks. There were times of instability, but I've seen the game go from completely unstable to rock solid in one patch.
When I first started beta, the game was running like a dog, and had major stability problems. I thought it had months to go before release. Then they did a patch, and it was as if I could take several months off my estimate, just from the results of one patch.
I'll admit this game is probably going to have a very rough start in the first month or two, but your exaggerations are quite outside the range of reality.
Just a game? How about a big budget movie? =)
This is hardly news. Linux is running on cell phones, VCRs, microwave ovens, and vacuum cleaners these days...
Give me something really geeky, like someone hacked their cat to run linux, or the mars rover, or a dill pickle or something...
There are times when it gets a bit annoying -- for example, when I'm watching a movie on my computer, and it hits a quiet part where the dialog is all whispers.
But for the most part, the noise my computer makes helps block out noise from my neighbors, traffic, the airport nearby, etc while I'm sleeping. It's sort of inadvertently like a white noise generator; though I doubt it's actually strictly 'white' noise.
I really don't know where we are going from here though. I can't imagine the average consumer being able to stand much more noise than what we're getting these days on non-overclocked systems...
I've been programming for about 9 years now and over the past two years or so I've really been starting to burn out.
Several things happened around that time, so any one of them or a combination of them could have been the cause.
- I started taking a perscription for social anxiety, and started to do more with my life socially, and a lot of new interests opened up to me that were not related to technology.
- I had my first serious relationship, and shortly after, my first serious breakup. I think I might have burned out a few brain circuits on this. =)
- My workplace laid off a lot of people, who were good friends of mine. Many have moved across the country, and we don't keep in touch as well as we did. There used to be over 75 people working here, but now we're down to less than a dozen. It's VERY quiet here.
- We redeveloped our main application in a new language, which I'm still not nearly as comfortable with as I was with our original language. I understand why we've moved to it (easier to hire contractors for it), but it's not as warm & fuzzy as my "native" language.
- I moved more from a position of designer to programmer as our application became more focused on a niche market which I'm not quite familiar with, so I am needing to rely more on specifications from management, which are quite fuzzy at best.
And it's not that I'm burned out from working a lot of hours. I probably work no more than 45-50 hours a week.
I'll admit I'm no superstar programmer. I am not in the same league as people who have the knowledge or patience to hack away at kernel code, write device drivers, or implement the latest buzzword technology.
I do have almost a decade of experience with web-based application technologies, but I don't have a BSCS or anything on paper that companies all seem to require these days. Sometimes I'm a little behind on the terminology and the latest and greatest developments in computer science, but I always find a solution to any problem that comes along.
For that reason, I'm sure I've re-invented the wheel more than a few times (ever try doing CGI in C? - talk about masochistic). I guess this is the reason why I don't feel comfortable with job searching.
I've probably developed a bit of dysthymia to go with my burnout. I often don't even bother turning on my home PC anymore. I usually get home from work and I just go to sleep or just lie in bed until it's time to get up and go back into work. This cycle has been especially nasty for me lately. It seems the more rushed and stressed out things get at work, the more dysthymic I get.
I really wish I could find a way to enjoy programming (and life in general) again. But I fear that as long as this company stays in business, I'll probably be stuck here since the pay is good.
I've taken on collecting LEGO blocks, but I have yet to build anything with them.
I've amassed a collection of well over 25,000 pieces (probably even exceeding 30,000 if I also count the unsorted cardboard boxes full of used LEGO), but I still am drawing a blank on what my first big project should be.
You are correct.
I think nearly all of Acclaim's recent marketing stunts are deliberately designed to trigger some sort of "WTF?" response from reporters, who take the bait every single time.
My question is, do they ever follow through with any of their stunts?
Just curious.. wouldn't it be more efficient if it were closer to a perfect circle?
Aaargh! I got stuck reading this post! Fortunately, a co-worker created an interrupt...
How about they get working on super-caffeinated coffee?
Even better -- they should start working on genetically engineering ephedrine into coffee... Now that would kick some ass... =)
Some scientist with too much funding and driven by greedy food corporations (Hi Monsanto!) simply is not going to improve on what we evolved to consume.
Oh you mean the same type of scientists who suddenly decided that eggs and butter are ok?
BTW, what is this pot noodle which you speak of? =)
Why not just pop a couple of these with your morning brew?
What's scary is I ordered three bottles of these a few months ago becuase there was a quantity discount. =)
I agree that email spam is terrible, but SMS ads are free for the receiver and not very annoying.
Commercials and ads are here to stay, better get used to it.
They are not free everywhere. My friend/roommate has a super-cheap plan, with no included SMS messages included, but she can still send or recieve SMS messages for ten cents each.
So tell me... If SMS spam gets out of control, who the hell is going to pay for all that junk?
Wow, so they made out like bandits then...
Pay everyone $13 once, which will be re-absorbed over the cost of a few still-overpriced CDs over the next few months.
If they were forced to actually make their prices competitive, they would lose in the long term. This way they not only win in the long term, but they probably can't get sued twice now for the same thing, so if that's the case, expect prices to slowly keep creeping up...
I wonder if they even have the equipment and/or skilled people available to multi-task shuttles. For example, does mission control even have the capability to monitor two shuttles at once?
The cost was insignificant to anyone who is/was floored by this picture. Anyone who looked at that image for the first time and did not feel the hair stand up on the back of his/her neck (or some equivalent response) probably does not possess adequate intelligence to express a rational opinion on federal spending.
This is an excellent post. I've had some experience with low-carb diets as well, and their effect can be quite remarkable. The key is to find a balance which you can sustain for the long term...
I think the best balance seems to be doing some kind of activity after indulging in high-carb foods, so that the starches are used up instead of stored away...
I find it too difficult to avoid high carb foods altogether, as they are *everywhere*, so I find that this is a good method to keep the pounds off without going having any crazy limitations on what I can eat...
Whee Aweb...
I wrote the first AREXX mailto: and news: handlers for Aweb... They were even commercially distributed with the software for some time. I remember the publishers asking me what I would like in return for use of my scripts and I just asked to be able to recieve the beta copies as they were developed, which was a great position to be in as Aweb was all the rage at the time. =)
I miss AREXX... It wasn't really the language itself that was so fantastic as much as the availability of AREXX hooks in nearly all the applications. It was cool to be able to not only script the actions of a single application, but also tie an application together with another... so you could easily toss together batch scripts to automate a bunch of functions even though GUI-based applications.
I remember writing tons of IRC client functions in AREXX as well as a ton of code for the C-Net BBS system. I have yet to see anything which so elegantly tied together the internal capabilities of such a large variety of applications.
to get a somewhat working version of Mozilla to kickstart the development.
Was this an intentional Amiga pun?
I think the point of the parent post was to be able to initially read in the entire disc at once.
Imagine putting a music CD on a very high resolution flatbed scanner, and then after a relatively quick scan, being able to play the music from the scan.
While you're at it, why not try this or this perhaps?