I'd say that it probably has something to do with the incredible importance of the Internet in the modern world.
Seriously, imagine how disadvantaged you'd be without internet these days. Should you be forced to use snail mail or drive an hour to be able to communicate with someone just because you live outside of where an ISP has decided to offer service? What other motivations can the government provide to private companies to expand their networks? While I really have no idea, I'd doubt that their government isn't going to help pay for the cost of these expansions.
Being denied internet essentially cuts you off from the rest of the world. While some people don't care, there are plenty of others that can't move to a place where it IS available, yet need a somewhat accessible connection to be able to function.
Come on now, there's no point to having a term "art" when you use it as a synonym for "almost everything that anybody does." When you refuse to define art specifically you're really just saying "oh look, EVERYTHING is beautiful, ART is beautiful, thus EVERYTHING is ART!" It's a very feel-good definition... but what's the point of having the term in the first place?
I tend to think of art as something that is purposefully created with the intent to express some aspect of the human experience. Art should invoke emotion... and that emotion should match (somewhat) up to what the artist intended. I say somewhat because the interpretation of art is subjective, and not everybody can get at the artist's intention... but they still form a seemingly close reaction.
I think that the motion/intention matching is important in order to distinguish art that succeeds, art that fails, and everyday objects created. Yes, a pencil is beautiful and it allows us to do so very much... but was its creator's intent to move us? Not likely, they were probably just a factory worker (and even the designer of the first pencil probably was doing it for a functional purpose). Similarly, the movie "Date Movie" is not something I would consider art... the creators intended it to be funny, and all I could feel is disgust. My emotion and the author's (probable) intention happened to be polar opposites.
This "definition" has issues... yes. How do we know the author's intended meaning? How close should an audience's reaction be to the intent? Obviously interpretations of famous pieces have changed in some ways... and a lot of the time we interpret art in relation to current times and subjective feelings... and it's hard to account for that in a "definition" of art. I think that that's why people have such a hard time defining art and want to state it as broadly as your cited Scott McCloud. Maybe art is something that has a definition, but that definition is undefinable or incomprehensible. However, there has to be a distinction between "art" and "everything else", otherwise the term is meaningless.
On a side note - I have NOT studied art... only thought about it:).
Of course, everybody seems to be terribly against that for any game that also has a initial purchase fee. I myself have no problem with unobtrusive ads that can help get the developers the money that they deserve.
It's fair to say that players today have become conditioned to what the truly hardcore PC gamers would consider to be almost unacceptably high levels of latency
The average videogame runs at 30fps, and appears to have an average lag in the region of 133ms. On top of that is additional delay from the display itself, bringing the overall latency to around 166ms. Assuming that the most ultra-PC gaming set-up has a latency less than one third of that
I feel like you didn't read the entire post, and it seems like you're missing the point.
I clearly stated that I was talking about mouse lag. Your examples are clearly things that are expected... when I press a button to swing my sword, it should take time for my character to swing the sword.
However, there shouldn't be a delay (as little delay as hardware will allow) between the time you press the button and the time that your character STARTS to swing the sword.
"Realistic" is NOT the same as "laggy." We're trying to represent view rotation with a mouse... a movement of the mouse should equate to movement of the head. You're not supposed to be instructing the character, you're supposed to BE the character.
If you're supposed to be controlling the character, then the "natural" lag should be all that I have to deal with. We don't need the character emulating input lag when my own real life body already takes care of it.
And if you were confused, I'm talking about mouse lag. If it takes a little bit to accelerate to a speed when moving, that's fine and to be expected. If it takes time to draw my sword I will, of course, accept that. However, if moving my mouse a little bit to the left has noticeable delay, why would that be a "feature?" The lag between me deciding to move my neck and it moving is *NOT* 133 milliseconds.
On an unrelated note (and somewhat pointless/rantlike), why couldn't they have been bothered to animate an up+strafe animation? It's incredible that holding W and D at the same time in Third Person Mode has the same animation as running forward, but you're magically sliding sideways. Obviously first person is better, but it's a silly lack of detail.
Only in the ports that the PC gets from the consoles (or even ones that happen to be released on both systems) do I notice the horrible latency. It's awful in Oblivion, Fallout 3, Bioshock, and plenty of others. Part of it has to do with V-Sync, but turning that off doesn't eliminate all of it. I can't believe that 133ms is the norm. I've grown up a PC gamer, and that's definitely one of the top reasons I *hate* console FPS games.
I can't understand gamers' "I will not budge" on in-game advertising. The "I've already paid money for it, why should I have to see advertisements" argument pops up EVERYWHERE. Consider that maybe the cost of making the game outweighs the amount made from 1-time sales? Games are becoming increasingly expensive to produce, with everyone expecting beautiful art, a well-made story, good voice acting, good music/sounds, an amazing graphics engine... etc. Yet the normal cost of a new game ($50) has been pretty static, at least for the last 5 years. Regardless of whether you think that the products that these people are producing are worth even that, it doesn't change the fact that they're expensive little things that the people in charge are trying to turn into a profit.
You pay for *some* TV (HBO) yet there's lots of subtle in-show advertisements there. You pay for magazine subscriptions, and those are practically 90% ads. I'm not saying that those advertisements aren't obnoxious, just that there's nothing "sacred" about advertising in game.
The biggest point that I'd like to make is the potential for in-game advertising to be both there AND non-obtrusive. In a game where I'm driving through a city, I don't care if a billboard has an actual company or a fake company. A game would be MORE believable if you could include real-world advertisements. Obviously the "you have to watch this 30 second clip before you play" bit would be too much. There's also the problem fo tracking advertisements, updating them, and the conflict of those two things and privacy. All are solvable... but advertisements are coming to games whether you like it or not.
When the trilogy was first announced, I had been under the impression that they were going to release all 3 games, but they'd be standalone and I'd get to pick which one I wanted to buy/play. Maybe I'd misunderstood, or I'd extrapolated that out of facts that weren't there, but now it seems even more like a blatant "we're GOING to make you play lots of money for these games" than it did back then.
Based on my past experience with "expansion sets," I also wonder if each new chapter in the trilogy is going to be full priced. Starcraft 2's site says:
The StarCraft II Trilogy will consist of the base StarCraft II game and two expansion sets. Pricing on these games hasn't been determined at this early stage; however, we've always charged an appropriate price for the content the player receives, and we will continue to release high-quality games that offer great value.
I won't go into the current price of video games at this point, and I'm sure that I'll enjoy Starcraft 2 quite a bit when it finally ships, but I'm starting to sway away from the "Blizzard is amazing and can do no wrong" crowd and towards the "Activision merging thingy means more attempts to get our money" crowd. They've even said that they're looking into monetizing some Battle.net features. I just really, really hope they don't turn into EA.
They're basically stating that each game will be an "expansion pack." From the FAQ:
The expansion sets will add new content to each race for use in multiplayer matches. This could include additions such as new units, abilities, and structures, along with new maps and Battle.net updates.
Annnnnnd
This will work similarly to Warcraft III and the original StarCraft, which maintained separate online gaming lobbies and ladders for expansion set players and players with the base Warcraft III or StarCraft.
I've been defending Blizzard's no LAN support decision, but this is getting ridiculous.
Ok, ok, jumping (aka platforming) isn't what the game is "about." I should be focusing on other things like "combat" and "immersive storyline." Jumping also isn't what WoW is about, but it makes it a HELL of a lot more entertaining to run around.
I have absolutely NO clue why, but something about being about to hit a key and see my character bounce around on the screen adds TONS of entertainment value. Call me a silly person for being easily entertained... I know that most people I've talked to agree.
Not including jumping not only ruins immersion, but it seems like a developer who's too lazy to add a 3rd dimension to his 3D game.
You clearly have no understanding of how evolution works.
Evolution isn't some "magic memory" passed on magically from one cow that dies to all other cows that are born after that. Evolution is the result of tiny mutations that for one reason or another have been continuously passed down from generation to generation. All of the cows that have "realized" that they were about to be slaughtered (not that they would be capable of that kind of realization in the first place) have also been... well, slaughtered.
Not that this study had much to do with evolution. It just has to do with dog's current levels of intelligence.
I'm glad you attack the 99% number (which is clearly not a real statistic) right after you state that "most people" abandoned it to go back to Starcraft. While I'd like to pretend that that's enough to disregard your reply, I'll go a bit further.
"The game proved to be one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month. Warcraft III won many awards including "Game of the Year" from more than six different publications.
That's not really my definition of a "disappointment," at least not in terms of review scores and sales. If we're talking about people playing, currently on US West there are 68807 people playing Warcraft 3 and 52367 on Starcraft. Pretty impressive numbers for Starcraft, but it's still not "most people." Not to mention that Warcraft 3 mods can be MUCH more diverse than Starcraft mods. I've gotten more gameplay time out of Warcraft 3 than I have with any other game.
I never played WotLK (I only played WoW for the first year or so after release), but I've heard bad things. However, I do know that WoW on release was pretty impressive and fun (though the release was a bit bumpy as all MMO releases are). However, I'm willing to forgive *one* questionable release that I've never played.
If enjoying all of the games that a company has released makes me a "fanboy" then yes, that's what I am. However, they've never disappointed me, so I don't expect them to. If it sucks, then maybe I'll be more skeptical of games to come... but if it's good, the lack of LAN support will be a tiny annoyance that will only really matter at LANs where not everybody has bought the game.
So keep playing the originals? Or play any of the thousands of other games that do include LAN support? Being pissed that you can't play one new game is silly.
Point being: you and others who also, for any reason, can't connect to battle.net, represent a tiny portion of their audience. You might even say that you're not even part of their target audience... much like you're not part of World of Warcraft's target audience. This is the direction that games are moving... and for the vast majority of people it's not a problem. You may not buy the game, but there are thousands of others that will. Maybe when you get back, you can be one of them.
Oh really? You know this for a fact? Do you KNOW Blizzard at all? They are notorious for waiting to release a game "when it's done," and when it satisfies them. Warcraft 3 came out 7 years after Warcraft 2. Starcraft was not only bigger than Warcraft 2, but after it Blizzard released expansion packs to current games and World of Warcraft (along with 2 expansions). They have extremely long development times, and are known to never announce a release date unless the game is DONE to THEIR standards.
Maybe you're used to companies that announce the release date when they're halfway done and release a game on time but full of bugs? I daresay that that's the norm these days. Now you want to complain about a company that actually finishes their games?
No LAN may suck, but it's nowhere close to a dealbreaker. If you live in some rural area or a country that has poor internet service, that sucks... but it doesn't apply to me or the other 99% of players. I'll cry for this loss as much as I cried for no IPX support in Warcraft 3.
Current Battle.net games are ALL peer-to-peer. If you play Starcraft 1 with a friend over Battle.net but are on a LAN it works fine without lag.
Why would Blizzard need to receive packets other than those sent in logging onto Battle.net, creating a game, joining it, starting it, and then transmitting the endgame results back to it? There aren't any games out there that make the player host that would need to contact the master server with as much data as it needs to send the actual server (you). I'm sure that 50-100ms latency to Battle.net's server is going to be a dealbreaker when joining a game takes 1/10th of a second longer (even when the game itself is fine)
Regardless, this is all speculation. People need to stop freaking out and wait until the game comes out until you complain. I know you people love to assume that "requiring an online server" is akin to "they want to force you to name your firstborn child Raynor," but nobody actually KNOWS anything except Blizzard. We'll also know soon enough... the Beta will start at least a few months before the game is released.
You're assuming morality is specific and concrete! The lawmakers behind any law obviously thought that their law was morally right.
There's a huge difference between a cop saying "man, it doesn't seem right that a kid has to be arrested for running a business modifying consoles" and the actual debate that happens in a courtroom. Why would we place our definition of "moral right" in the hands of the individual that happens to be there? There's a reason we don't. In a courtroom at least you can make your argument and persuade the judge and jury. If they rule against you, you can appeal and put your case before ANOTHER judge and ANOTHER jury. If a cop thought that it was morally wrong for people wearing green t-shirts to be alive, should the cop have the freedom to act on that belief and start shooting everyone with a green t-shirt?
First of all, the cops were merely arresting him so that he could be brought to trial. They were not deciding the punishment.
Second, laws are created for the sole purpose of eliminating moral relativism (at least in the bounds of our society). We created laws so that we could agree on standards that can be enforced. This doesn't necessarily mean that a law is always morally right... nor does it mean that everybody agrees that the law is morally right. However, it hopefully means that we've agreed that there's a problem with the action the law is restricting, and that law was the solution thought up to deal with that problem. If the law is problematic... well, that's what the courts are for.
Third, this is a technical issue that not everybody has knowledge or experience in. Once again, this is why we have the courts and a justice system... cops aren't supposed to be making decisions on morality, they're there to "protect and serve" the people and the law. If a law told them to gun down 15 year olds with freckles... hell yes they can protest! But if they get a warrant for the arrest of somebody who's broken a law that they don't know or understand... then they leave it to the courts to decide. You really can't expect people to have a moral stance and knowledge of the law on every single possible issue.
Because the OP was taking a shot at the officers arresting the kid and not the people making up the laws, maybe the point then is the ignorance of the officers involved. While everybody (hopefully) knows the "wrongness" of killing people (thus making the "I was just doing my job when I killed 30 people" argument null), it's different here.
Obviously us slashdotters (who are 100% right all the time) know how silly the prescribed punishment is for an offense like this. However, people in other areas of expertise don't really understand the laws they are enforcing (currently modding consoles IS illegal... whether it should be is another story). All the officers know is that a kid was doing something against the law, thus they arrested him for it. They probably don't know what console modding is, nor are they the ones deciding the punishment.
The real question is - should we expect law enforcement officers to be the interpreters of "moral right" and not enforce the law when they take issue with it? Clearly we'd have many issues if each officer were to do this. Should we expect the officers to know and understand every facet of the law, as well as the technicalities of very specific offenses? I'd argue that this is too much. This is why we have the justice system, and not Robocop.
But the comparison is still dumb because of the differences in "moral wrong." It's very clear that what the Nazi's did was wrong, but it's not as clear when it comes to modding consoles (especially since the officers probably didn't even know what "modding xboxes" was).
I played King's Quest 8 and what I believe was the remake of KQ1. While 8 at least entertained me, I never beat 1 because of the ridiculous random objects you had to find and have 5 hours later in the game. I remember a situation where you have to have a boot for some reason, and that boot is in a very specific screen in the middle of the desert. You can't just walk around exploring the desert because you'll get thirsty (after like 3 screens... seriously), so it's almost as if you're just supposed to KNOW where it is. You use that boot like an hour later when you're trapped in a cellar... and if you don't have the boot, you die.
Some may call it "hardcore" adventure gaming... I just call it bad design. You should never be able to get a game into an unbeatable state... especially when you don't know you're in that state until you've sunk more than a few hours into the game.
Space Quest and QfG were great though! Dragon fire was kinda lame, but I really enjoyed the rest of the series and the actually GOOD implementation of rolling a character over from a previous game.
I'm a bit confused as to how you've upgraded your HDs without reinstalling? Unless you're ghosting your computer (which seems dumb and much slower to me than just reformatting), or literally keeping the old HD in and copying all the files onto another one? I have absolutely no idea why you would CHOOSE to never reformat, given the definite speed increases...
Regardless, you're the exception, not the rule. I've seen computers less than 2 years old take 5 minutes to get to the point where you can open a browser, and the users had never installed more than Office. Similarly, I've had people who've had their computer for years and years and it still runs great. These things are somewhat of a mystery... (though bad hardware or malware are probably to blame).
However, I have to mention the fact that the advantages to reformatting outnumber any inconveniences of reinstalling programs (unless you've been careless and lost a CD key, in which case you can either locate it within the program before you reformat or find a way to crack it).
Reformatting for me usually takes about 40 minutes, and then reinstalling everything might take an hour or so (depending on what I'm reinstalling). I have a working computer that's running faster without all of the crap that was on it previously, and it's so incredibly easier to do than manually finding all of the stuff left behind by uninstalled programs, malware, viruses, etc. Plus I have the piece of mind KNOWING about everything that's on my computer, not to mention tons of free space!
Bottom line is that people SHOULD be reformatting if they're upgrading their computer. A fresh install runs MUCH more smoothly than an OS laid on top of another OS. Whether or not upgrading works for some people is moot... reformatting will ALWAYS be faster.
I always thought of art as something that expresses the human experience. While a large bulk of that IS emotion, I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that emotion is the entirety of human experience.
I also don't think that everybody's idea of art is identical. In this way, a person could create something that he himself doesn't consider art, yet another person does. Why should intention be a barrier to what can be considered art?
I remember a Simpons episode where Homer, trying to assemble a fancy grill, ends up completely destroying it in his frustration. A random person sees this and believes it to be art. While in some way you could see this as the Simpsons making fun of art, it also could be considered art because it's almost a concentrated expression of frustration.
You have a very narrow-minded view of games. Games are only about 2 things? Problem solving or competition? Really?
Have you ever played a sandbox game? I don't think that me driving around in GTA aimlessly is either problem solving or competition. The bottom line is that games are supposed to be FUN. And as you yourself admitted, a person's sense of fun is subjective. If people find that they have fun "playing" some sort of weird autopilot version of a game, then I have no problme with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, imagine how disadvantaged you'd be without internet these days. Should you be forced to use snail mail or drive an hour to be able to communicate with someone just because you live outside of where an ISP has decided to offer service? What other motivations can the government provide to private companies to expand their networks? While I really have no idea, I'd doubt that their government isn't going to help pay for the cost of these expansions.
Being denied internet essentially cuts you off from the rest of the world. While some people don't care, there are plenty of others that can't move to a place where it IS available, yet need a somewhat accessible connection to be able to function.
Come on now, there's no point to having a term "art" when you use it as a synonym for "almost everything that anybody does." When you refuse to define art specifically you're really just saying "oh look, EVERYTHING is beautiful, ART is beautiful, thus EVERYTHING is ART!" It's a very feel-good definition... but what's the point of having the term in the first place?
:).
I tend to think of art as something that is purposefully created with the intent to express some aspect of the human experience. Art should invoke emotion... and that emotion should match (somewhat) up to what the artist intended. I say somewhat because the interpretation of art is subjective, and not everybody can get at the artist's intention... but they still form a seemingly close reaction.
I think that the motion/intention matching is important in order to distinguish art that succeeds, art that fails, and everyday objects created. Yes, a pencil is beautiful and it allows us to do so very much... but was its creator's intent to move us? Not likely, they were probably just a factory worker (and even the designer of the first pencil probably was doing it for a functional purpose). Similarly, the movie "Date Movie" is not something I would consider art... the creators intended it to be funny, and all I could feel is disgust. My emotion and the author's (probable) intention happened to be polar opposites.
This "definition" has issues... yes. How do we know the author's intended meaning? How close should an audience's reaction be to the intent? Obviously interpretations of famous pieces have changed in some ways... and a lot of the time we interpret art in relation to current times and subjective feelings... and it's hard to account for that in a "definition" of art. I think that that's why people have such a hard time defining art and want to state it as broadly as your cited Scott McCloud. Maybe art is something that has a definition, but that definition is undefinable or incomprehensible. However, there has to be a distinction between "art" and "everything else", otherwise the term is meaningless.
On a side note - I have NOT studied art... only thought about it
Another route is advertising in game *GASP!*
Of course, everybody seems to be terribly against that for any game that also has a initial purchase fee. I myself have no problem with unobtrusive ads that can help get the developers the money that they deserve.
It's fair to say that players today have become conditioned to what the truly hardcore PC gamers would consider to be almost unacceptably high levels of latency
The average videogame runs at 30fps, and appears to have an average lag in the region of 133ms. On top of that is additional delay from the display itself, bringing the overall latency to around 166ms. Assuming that the most ultra-PC gaming set-up has a latency less than one third of that
Good thing you're posting as an AC.
I feel like you didn't read the entire post, and it seems like you're missing the point.
I clearly stated that I was talking about mouse lag. Your examples are clearly things that are expected... when I press a button to swing my sword, it should take time for my character to swing the sword.
However, there shouldn't be a delay (as little delay as hardware will allow) between the time you press the button and the time that your character STARTS to swing the sword.
"Realistic" is NOT the same as "laggy." We're trying to represent view rotation with a mouse... a movement of the mouse should equate to movement of the head. You're not supposed to be instructing the character, you're supposed to BE the character.
Cmon, that's silly.
If you're supposed to be controlling the character, then the "natural" lag should be all that I have to deal with. We don't need the character emulating input lag when my own real life body already takes care of it.
And if you were confused, I'm talking about mouse lag. If it takes a little bit to accelerate to a speed when moving, that's fine and to be expected. If it takes time to draw my sword I will, of course, accept that. However, if moving my mouse a little bit to the left has noticeable delay, why would that be a "feature?" The lag between me deciding to move my neck and it moving is *NOT* 133 milliseconds.
On an unrelated note (and somewhat pointless/rantlike), why couldn't they have been bothered to animate an up+strafe animation? It's incredible that holding W and D at the same time in Third Person Mode has the same animation as running forward, but you're magically sliding sideways. Obviously first person is better, but it's a silly lack of detail.
Only in the ports that the PC gets from the consoles (or even ones that happen to be released on both systems) do I notice the horrible latency. It's awful in Oblivion, Fallout 3, Bioshock, and plenty of others. Part of it has to do with V-Sync, but turning that off doesn't eliminate all of it. I can't believe that 133ms is the norm. I've grown up a PC gamer, and that's definitely one of the top reasons I *hate* console FPS games.
I can't understand gamers' "I will not budge" on in-game advertising. The "I've already paid money for it, why should I have to see advertisements" argument pops up EVERYWHERE. Consider that maybe the cost of making the game outweighs the amount made from 1-time sales? Games are becoming increasingly expensive to produce, with everyone expecting beautiful art, a well-made story, good voice acting, good music/sounds, an amazing graphics engine... etc. Yet the normal cost of a new game ($50) has been pretty static, at least for the last 5 years. Regardless of whether you think that the products that these people are producing are worth even that, it doesn't change the fact that they're expensive little things that the people in charge are trying to turn into a profit.
You pay for *some* TV (HBO) yet there's lots of subtle in-show advertisements there. You pay for magazine subscriptions, and those are practically 90% ads. I'm not saying that those advertisements aren't obnoxious, just that there's nothing "sacred" about advertising in game.
The biggest point that I'd like to make is the potential for in-game advertising to be both there AND non-obtrusive. In a game where I'm driving through a city, I don't care if a billboard has an actual company or a fake company. A game would be MORE believable if you could include real-world advertisements. Obviously the "you have to watch this 30 second clip before you play" bit would be too much. There's also the problem fo tracking advertisements, updating them, and the conflict of those two things and privacy. All are solvable... but advertisements are coming to games whether you like it or not.
Based on my past experience with "expansion sets," I also wonder if each new chapter in the trilogy is going to be full priced. Starcraft 2's site says
The StarCraft II Trilogy will consist of the base StarCraft II game and two expansion sets. Pricing on these games hasn't been determined at this early stage; however, we've always charged an appropriate price for the content the player receives, and we will continue to release high-quality games that offer great value.
I won't go into the current price of video games at this point, and I'm sure that I'll enjoy Starcraft 2 quite a bit when it finally ships, but I'm starting to sway away from the "Blizzard is amazing and can do no wrong" crowd and towards the "Activision merging thingy means more attempts to get our money" crowd. They've even said that they're looking into monetizing some Battle.net features. I just really, really hope they don't turn into EA.
The expansion sets will add new content to each race for use in multiplayer matches. This could include additions such as new units, abilities, and structures, along with new maps and Battle.net updates.
Annnnnnd
This will work similarly to Warcraft III and the original StarCraft, which maintained separate online gaming lobbies and ladders for expansion set players and players with the base Warcraft III or StarCraft.
I've been defending Blizzard's no LAN support decision, but this is getting ridiculous.
Can you freaking jump?
Ok, ok, jumping (aka platforming) isn't what the game is "about." I should be focusing on other things like "combat" and "immersive storyline." Jumping also isn't what WoW is about, but it makes it a HELL of a lot more entertaining to run around.
I have absolutely NO clue why, but something about being about to hit a key and see my character bounce around on the screen adds TONS of entertainment value. Call me a silly person for being easily entertained... I know that most people I've talked to agree.
Not including jumping not only ruins immersion, but it seems like a developer who's too lazy to add a 3rd dimension to his 3D game.
You clearly have no understanding of how evolution works.
Evolution isn't some "magic memory" passed on magically from one cow that dies to all other cows that are born after that. Evolution is the result of tiny mutations that for one reason or another have been continuously passed down from generation to generation. All of the cows that have "realized" that they were about to be slaughtered (not that they would be capable of that kind of realization in the first place) have also been... well, slaughtered.
Not that this study had much to do with evolution. It just has to do with dog's current levels of intelligence.
From the wikipedia article:
"The game proved to be one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month. Warcraft III won many awards including "Game of the Year" from more than six different publications.
That's not really my definition of a "disappointment," at least not in terms of review scores and sales. If we're talking about people playing, currently on US West there are 68807 people playing Warcraft 3 and 52367 on Starcraft. Pretty impressive numbers for Starcraft, but it's still not "most people." Not to mention that Warcraft 3 mods can be MUCH more diverse than Starcraft mods. I've gotten more gameplay time out of Warcraft 3 than I have with any other game.
I never played WotLK (I only played WoW for the first year or so after release), but I've heard bad things. However, I do know that WoW on release was pretty impressive and fun (though the release was a bit bumpy as all MMO releases are). However, I'm willing to forgive *one* questionable release that I've never played.
If enjoying all of the games that a company has released makes me a "fanboy" then yes, that's what I am. However, they've never disappointed me, so I don't expect them to. If it sucks, then maybe I'll be more skeptical of games to come... but if it's good, the lack of LAN support will be a tiny annoyance that will only really matter at LANs where not everybody has bought the game.
So keep playing the originals? Or play any of the thousands of other games that do include LAN support? Being pissed that you can't play one new game is silly.
Point being: you and others who also, for any reason, can't connect to battle.net, represent a tiny portion of their audience. You might even say that you're not even part of their target audience... much like you're not part of World of Warcraft's target audience. This is the direction that games are moving... and for the vast majority of people it's not a problem. You may not buy the game, but there are thousands of others that will. Maybe when you get back, you can be one of them.
Oh really? You know this for a fact? Do you KNOW Blizzard at all? They are notorious for waiting to release a game "when it's done," and when it satisfies them. Warcraft 3 came out 7 years after Warcraft 2. Starcraft was not only bigger than Warcraft 2, but after it Blizzard released expansion packs to current games and World of Warcraft (along with 2 expansions). They have extremely long development times, and are known to never announce a release date unless the game is DONE to THEIR standards.
Maybe you're used to companies that announce the release date when they're halfway done and release a game on time but full of bugs? I daresay that that's the norm these days. Now you want to complain about a company that actually finishes their games?
No LAN may suck, but it's nowhere close to a dealbreaker. If you live in some rural area or a country that has poor internet service, that sucks... but it doesn't apply to me or the other 99% of players. I'll cry for this loss as much as I cried for no IPX support in Warcraft 3.
Current Battle.net games are ALL peer-to-peer. If you play Starcraft 1 with a friend over Battle.net but are on a LAN it works fine without lag.
Why would Blizzard need to receive packets other than those sent in logging onto Battle.net, creating a game, joining it, starting it, and then transmitting the endgame results back to it? There aren't any games out there that make the player host that would need to contact the master server with as much data as it needs to send the actual server (you). I'm sure that 50-100ms latency to Battle.net's server is going to be a dealbreaker when joining a game takes 1/10th of a second longer (even when the game itself is fine)
Regardless, this is all speculation. People need to stop freaking out and wait until the game comes out until you complain. I know you people love to assume that "requiring an online server" is akin to "they want to force you to name your firstborn child Raynor," but nobody actually KNOWS anything except Blizzard. We'll also know soon enough... the Beta will start at least a few months before the game is released.
You're assuming morality is specific and concrete! The lawmakers behind any law obviously thought that their law was morally right.
There's a huge difference between a cop saying "man, it doesn't seem right that a kid has to be arrested for running a business modifying consoles" and the actual debate that happens in a courtroom. Why would we place our definition of "moral right" in the hands of the individual that happens to be there? There's a reason we don't. In a courtroom at least you can make your argument and persuade the judge and jury. If they rule against you, you can appeal and put your case before ANOTHER judge and ANOTHER jury. If a cop thought that it was morally wrong for people wearing green t-shirts to be alive, should the cop have the freedom to act on that belief and start shooting everyone with a green t-shirt?
I still think you're missing the point.
First of all, the cops were merely arresting him so that he could be brought to trial. They were not deciding the punishment.
Second, laws are created for the sole purpose of eliminating moral relativism (at least in the bounds of our society). We created laws so that we could agree on standards that can be enforced. This doesn't necessarily mean that a law is always morally right... nor does it mean that everybody agrees that the law is morally right. However, it hopefully means that we've agreed that there's a problem with the action the law is restricting, and that law was the solution thought up to deal with that problem. If the law is problematic... well, that's what the courts are for.
Third, this is a technical issue that not everybody has knowledge or experience in. Once again, this is why we have the courts and a justice system... cops aren't supposed to be making decisions on morality, they're there to "protect and serve" the people and the law. If a law told them to gun down 15 year olds with freckles... hell yes they can protest! But if they get a warrant for the arrest of somebody who's broken a law that they don't know or understand... then they leave it to the courts to decide. You really can't expect people to have a moral stance and knowledge of the law on every single possible issue.
Because the OP was taking a shot at the officers arresting the kid and not the people making up the laws, maybe the point then is the ignorance of the officers involved. While everybody (hopefully) knows the "wrongness" of killing people (thus making the "I was just doing my job when I killed 30 people" argument null), it's different here.
Obviously us slashdotters (who are 100% right all the time) know how silly the prescribed punishment is for an offense like this. However, people in other areas of expertise don't really understand the laws they are enforcing (currently modding consoles IS illegal... whether it should be is another story). All the officers know is that a kid was doing something against the law, thus they arrested him for it. They probably don't know what console modding is, nor are they the ones deciding the punishment.
The real question is - should we expect law enforcement officers to be the interpreters of "moral right" and not enforce the law when they take issue with it? Clearly we'd have many issues if each officer were to do this. Should we expect the officers to know and understand every facet of the law, as well as the technicalities of very specific offenses? I'd argue that this is too much. This is why we have the justice system, and not Robocop.
But the comparison is still dumb because of the differences in "moral wrong." It's very clear that what the Nazi's did was wrong, but it's not as clear when it comes to modding consoles (especially since the officers probably didn't even know what "modding xboxes" was).
We really went to Godwin's law fast, eh?
I played King's Quest 8 and what I believe was the remake of KQ1. While 8 at least entertained me, I never beat 1 because of the ridiculous random objects you had to find and have 5 hours later in the game. I remember a situation where you have to have a boot for some reason, and that boot is in a very specific screen in the middle of the desert. You can't just walk around exploring the desert because you'll get thirsty (after like 3 screens... seriously), so it's almost as if you're just supposed to KNOW where it is. You use that boot like an hour later when you're trapped in a cellar... and if you don't have the boot, you die.
Some may call it "hardcore" adventure gaming... I just call it bad design. You should never be able to get a game into an unbeatable state... especially when you don't know you're in that state until you've sunk more than a few hours into the game.
Space Quest and QfG were great though! Dragon fire was kinda lame, but I really enjoyed the rest of the series and the actually GOOD implementation of rolling a character over from a previous game.
I'm a bit confused as to how you've upgraded your HDs without reinstalling? Unless you're ghosting your computer (which seems dumb and much slower to me than just reformatting), or literally keeping the old HD in and copying all the files onto another one? I have absolutely no idea why you would CHOOSE to never reformat, given the definite speed increases...
Regardless, you're the exception, not the rule. I've seen computers less than 2 years old take 5 minutes to get to the point where you can open a browser, and the users had never installed more than Office. Similarly, I've had people who've had their computer for years and years and it still runs great. These things are somewhat of a mystery... (though bad hardware or malware are probably to blame).
However, I have to mention the fact that the advantages to reformatting outnumber any inconveniences of reinstalling programs (unless you've been careless and lost a CD key, in which case you can either locate it within the program before you reformat or find a way to crack it).
Reformatting for me usually takes about 40 minutes, and then reinstalling everything might take an hour or so (depending on what I'm reinstalling). I have a working computer that's running faster without all of the crap that was on it previously, and it's so incredibly easier to do than manually finding all of the stuff left behind by uninstalled programs, malware, viruses, etc. Plus I have the piece of mind KNOWING about everything that's on my computer, not to mention tons of free space!
Bottom line is that people SHOULD be reformatting if they're upgrading their computer. A fresh install runs MUCH more smoothly than an OS laid on top of another OS. Whether or not upgrading works for some people is moot... reformatting will ALWAYS be faster.
A note - DotA isn't made by Blizzard... but is a Warcraft 3 map/mod made by players.
I always thought of art as something that expresses the human experience. While a large bulk of that IS emotion, I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that emotion is the entirety of human experience.
I also don't think that everybody's idea of art is identical. In this way, a person could create something that he himself doesn't consider art, yet another person does. Why should intention be a barrier to what can be considered art?
I remember a Simpons episode where Homer, trying to assemble a fancy grill, ends up completely destroying it in his frustration. A random person sees this and believes it to be art. While in some way you could see this as the Simpsons making fun of art, it also could be considered art because it's almost a concentrated expression of frustration.
You have a very narrow-minded view of games. Games are only about 2 things? Problem solving or competition? Really?
Have you ever played a sandbox game? I don't think that me driving around in GTA aimlessly is either problem solving or competition. The bottom line is that games are supposed to be FUN. And as you yourself admitted, a person's sense of fun is subjective. If people find that they have fun "playing" some sort of weird autopilot version of a game, then I have no problme with it.