Thank you for the Godwin. I dont think that has ever happened to one of my post before.
This also points out some irony. People preach about trying to be good and helping people, however it is the truly Evil people who's names will be remembered long after the good people's names have faded.
Personally I think that such argument is for people without willing to fight, to do real things.
How do you find more entertaining a (virtual) world where all is designed to (easily) have success for everyone?
Because WoW is designed to be fun >50% of the time. Whereas, as far as I can tell, real life is only fun ~10% of the time. The most fun I ever had was going to school for a summer in Japan. I met new people, learned a new language, explored a new country. But that was only for 3 months. At the time I was 20. So those 3 months was 1.25% of my life at that time. Currently those 3 months are 1.04% of my life thus far and will only decrease.
As far as I can tell, life is a lot of boring time with momentary burst of enjoyment. Those burst are fleeting and you can never predict when one will happen.
WoW, on the other hand, may not have as fun of burst moments. However you can somewhat predict when those fun moments will come (raid times) and the time between those moments may be dull you can at least find some way to occupy your mind (like grinding dailies, helping random nubs). In real life you have to stare at the wall of your work box waiting for the clock to hit quitting time just to wake up and do it again for the next 4 days. When you finally get to the weekend your realize that you only have 2 days to get everything done that you could not do during the week.
When I was working I found it hard to focus on one task during the weekend because I had thought of like 4 or 5 other things I wanted to do during the week but was unable to due to time constraints or unable to think after a day of work.
WoW is good to play with friends just because you can have a chat (on TS/Ventri) while doing stupid things. Without friends to chat with WoW is the worst game ever.
But maybe wouldn't be better to go and play some real games (football, basketball,...) at the park with your friends or have a laugh at the pub?
I, however, was not gifted with great social skills. Therefore I have no "RL" friends and find them almost impossible to make. The only friends I have are the people I have met in Final Fantasy 11 or WoW.
Even if I do finish Uldar I really dont care for running the same raid over and over again. Also, all this raiding stuff is made kinda pointless because the next patch regular heroics (that me and some friends have been 4 manning for the past 3 months) will start dropping emblems of conquest. That fact alone makes grinding Naxx and early Uldar kinda pointless.
Come 3.2 I can go back to doing 5 heroics in a evening and I'll be able to get 2+ pieces of Uldar class gear a week. And that's not counting the next tier with the Argent Tournament instance.
It is nice to know what is coming in the next patch but sometimes I wish it was more like Final Fantasy 11 and not knowing 90% of what is in the patch until everything has been.dat mined the day of the patch.
* You might be able to burn ISOs, but you still can't mount them. Loopback device anyone? Do I really need to pay $XX, or install some spyware-infested freeware crap, just to mount ISOs?
As far as I know Daemon Tools is not spyware-infested.
Now get out there, do some job quests, pickup some sweet loot, treat yourself to some sweet gear every so often and keep on leveling that RL character.
I had a decently well paying "engineering" job after college. You know what I realized, that I'd rather be running naxx for the 100th time then doing the same boring job every fucking day. At least I can watch tv while raiding.
Either way it is all pointless. Just a way to waste time till you die.
Why does anyone play a game? To have fun. To some people playing a game is alot more fun then dealing with awkward social situations. My best friends are people I have met through MMOs. When you met someone in a MMO you at least know that they also enjoy the game, so you have that much in common. When I met a random person in the "real world" I have no idea if I'll have anything in common besides the need to breath, eat, and sleep.
Believe it or not, there IS hope. I have a buddy who gave up WoW entirely. Now he has a life, a job, and GASP - even a girlfriend. He is actually winning at life and says that he can't believe how much time he was wasting on such a stupid game.
You can't win at life either. All you can do is attempt to pass your DNA on to the next generation and figure out a comfortable way to live until you die. I have come to realize that 90% of life is just trying to pass the time until you die. The other 10% is in pursuit of some "legacy" that will never matter or even be recorded in history.
Playing life is just as pointless as playing WoW. They are both treadmills and neither mater when all is said and done. However, life is 10000x more boring then WoW could ever be.
Heck, I'm falling into this cycle while waiting for patches. I'v done Uldar a few times, I know I'll never finish it. So now I'm bored and waiting for the next patch to come out and give those raids a try.
I'd love to see a crafting system than was complex and open-ended. Hell, make it so that you have some sort of skill-based mini game (like Tetris?) that effects the quality of things you're trying to craft, so it's not just about the level of grinding you've done on the skill, but also on actual skill.
SWG (before it went to crap) had something simular. You had points that you could spend at different stages of the crafting process that would influence the end product.
For example: Say you are crafting a blaster. Well to make the blaster you need a barrel, grip and energy cell. You make the energy cell. It has durability, energy capacity (power of each shot), and energy discharge rate (weapon speed).
For starters the base materials you put into the energy cell have their own properties (durability, conductivity, reactance, etc.) The properties of each material would affect the base 3 stats of the energy cell. When you did the initial crafting of the energy cell you would see the starting stats, you could then experiment with each stat to tune the result. You had a limited amount of experiment points and there was a chance that you would fail and make that aspect worst.
You do this for the barrel and grip of the blaster. Now, you take all 3 components and some additional raw materials to make the actual blaster. You get to experiment again.
As you would "level" crafting you would get more experiment points and better chances of having a critical success, however that does not mean you would be able to make the best gun around. Some of the best crafters in SWG would spend weeks trying to find the best materials then spend hours trying to get the experiment just right.
Crafting is the biggest thing I miss from SWG and I wish another MMO would come around with the balls to make a complex crafting system.
What would you recommend instead? I am really looking for suggestions so once I finish my tetris clone I can move on to something else, but I think a multiplayer fps clone might be a few steps too far.
Thank you Clovis42! To me, Mass Effect is the next natural progression of the RPG genre. RPGs are all about telling a interactive story. Until recently that story has just been passive thing that makes you kill the next boss so you can continue it, Final Fantasy games are a prime example of this (but I still love them).
Games like KOTOR, Deus EX, and Neverwinter Nights gave you some flexibility in what happened between the chapters but the end story was basically the same (with perhaps 2 or 3 slightly different endings).
Mass Effect took this one step further. Making even the most mundane conversation into a cinematic event. Having some choices directly influence how the game plays out, not only in Mass Effect 1 but those choices will also affect how your game plays out in ME2 and ME3.
We are not quite there yet, but I think by the end of the Mass Effect Trilogy we will have seen a true 'next gen' RPG.
Some of the game play may not have been the best in ME, but please do not lump it in the same category as Assassin's Creed, Halo, Gears, Final Fantasy.
Did you even watch the first season?! While I agree the middle half of the second season sucked (whoo 3 red dots) the start and end of season 2 was insane.
I don't know if it's due to a generally depressed demeanour, but most people prefer to look down, at their feet, rather than up at the sky. I've even had arguments with people who were so uncaring about their surroundings that they didn't know the moon was visible during the day.
When I was a kid, if I did not look down while playing I would step in dog shit and then get yelled at by my parents when I went inside.
Demigod's *retail* version ships without DRM because *all* Stardock games ship that way. It's notable that once you update the game through Impulse, though, the game is 'infected' with online activation DRM (but there are no limits on the number of activations from what I can tell).
There are no limits, just that the CD key is locked to your Impulse account so it acts alot like Steam in that you can download the game to any computer you want as long as you log in with your account. It is alot UNLIKE steam in that you can install the retail CD in a computer that is not connected to the internet and still play the game (whereas steam games force you to connect to the internet once).
If you have ever used a video conferencing program you will notice that the other person's eyes are always looking off to one side trying to make contact with your eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're bored, then you're boring.
And people don't like to be around boring people. Now you can see my proublem.
Thank you for the Godwin. I dont think that has ever happened to one of my post before.
This also points out some irony. People preach about trying to be good and helping people, however it is the truly Evil people who's names will be remembered long after the good people's names have faded.
Perhaps you feel life is pointless because you're not actually playing it, just watching the teaser trailers?
Or, because like teaser trailers, life is only really exciting for a few moments after months and months of nothingness.
How long did it take you to save up for and plan that trip to France?
This makes me sad...
Personally I think that such argument is for people without willing to fight, to do real things.
How do you find more entertaining a (virtual) world where all is designed to (easily) have success for everyone?
Because WoW is designed to be fun >50% of the time. Whereas, as far as I can tell, real life is only fun ~10% of the time.
The most fun I ever had was going to school for a summer in Japan. I met new people, learned a new language, explored a new country. But that was only for 3 months. At the time I was 20. So those 3 months was 1.25% of my life at that time. Currently those 3 months are 1.04% of my life thus far and will only decrease.
As far as I can tell, life is a lot of boring time with momentary burst of enjoyment. Those burst are fleeting and you can never predict when one will happen.
WoW, on the other hand, may not have as fun of burst moments. However you can somewhat predict when those fun moments will come (raid times) and the time between those moments may be dull you can at least find some way to occupy your mind (like grinding dailies, helping random nubs). In real life you have to stare at the wall of your work box waiting for the clock to hit quitting time just to wake up and do it again for the next 4 days. When you finally get to the weekend your realize that you only have 2 days to get everything done that you could not do during the week.
When I was working I found it hard to focus on one task during the weekend because I had thought of like 4 or 5 other things I wanted to do during the week but was unable to due to time constraints or unable to think after a day of work.
WoW is good to play with friends just because you can have a chat (on TS/Ventri) while doing stupid things. Without friends to chat with WoW is the worst game ever.
But maybe wouldn't be better to go and play some real games (football, basketball, ...) at the park with your friends or have a laugh at the pub?
I, however, was not gifted with great social skills. Therefore I have no "RL" friends and find them almost impossible to make. The only friends I have are the people I have met in Final Fantasy 11 or WoW.
You should look on the sunny side of life.
Maybe get a new hobby? Bike riding? Fishing?
How are those anything other then a way to waste time just like WoW is?
Even if I do finish Uldar I really dont care for running the same raid over and over again. Also, all this raiding stuff is made kinda pointless because the next patch regular heroics (that me and some friends have been 4 manning for the past 3 months) will start dropping emblems of conquest. That fact alone makes grinding Naxx and early Uldar kinda pointless.
Come 3.2 I can go back to doing 5 heroics in a evening and I'll be able to get 2+ pieces of Uldar class gear a week. And that's not counting the next tier with the Argent Tournament instance.
It is nice to know what is coming in the next patch but sometimes I wish it was more like Final Fantasy 11 and not knowing 90% of what is in the patch until everything has been .dat mined the day of the patch.
* You might be able to burn ISOs, but you still can't mount them. Loopback device anyone? Do I really need to pay $XX, or install some spyware-infested freeware crap, just to mount ISOs?
As far as I know Daemon Tools is not spyware-infested.
Now get out there, do some job quests, pickup some sweet loot, treat yourself to some sweet gear every so often and keep on leveling that RL character.
I had a decently well paying "engineering" job after college. You know what I realized, that I'd rather be running naxx for the 100th time then doing the same boring job every fucking day. At least I can watch tv while raiding.
Either way it is all pointless. Just a way to waste time till you die.
Why does anyone play a game? To have fun. To some people playing a game is alot more fun then dealing with awkward social situations. My best friends are people I have met through MMOs. When you met someone in a MMO you at least know that they also enjoy the game, so you have that much in common. When I met a random person in the "real world" I have no idea if I'll have anything in common besides the need to breath, eat, and sleep.
Believe it or not, there IS hope. I have a buddy who gave up WoW entirely. Now he has a life, a job, and GASP - even a girlfriend. He is actually winning at life and says that he can't believe how much time he was wasting on such a stupid game.
You can't win at life either. All you can do is attempt to pass your DNA on to the next generation and figure out a comfortable way to live until you die. I have come to realize that 90% of life is just trying to pass the time until you die. The other 10% is in pursuit of some "legacy" that will never matter or even be recorded in history.
Playing life is just as pointless as playing WoW. They are both treadmills and neither mater when all is said and done. However, life is 10000x more boring then WoW could ever be.
Heck, I'm falling into this cycle while waiting for patches. I'v done Uldar a few times, I know I'll never finish it. So now I'm bored and waiting for the next patch to come out and give those raids a try.
You might even find some +12 Real Pussy...
In my experience, not only is +1 Real Pussy extremely hard to obtain, it is often not worth the effort.
Actualy, in Lord of the Rings Online it is not health but Morale. Healing is based on improving your spirit so you can fight harder and longer.
I'd love to see a crafting system than was complex and open-ended. Hell, make it so that you have some sort of skill-based mini game (like Tetris?) that effects the quality of things you're trying to craft, so it's not just about the level of grinding you've done on the skill, but also on actual skill.
SWG (before it went to crap) had something simular. You had points that you could spend at different stages of the crafting process that would influence the end product.
For example: Say you are crafting a blaster. Well to make the blaster you need a barrel, grip and energy cell. You make the energy cell. It has durability, energy capacity (power of each shot), and energy discharge rate (weapon speed).
For starters the base materials you put into the energy cell have their own properties (durability, conductivity, reactance, etc.) The properties of each material would affect the base 3 stats of the energy cell. When you did the initial crafting of the energy cell you would see the starting stats, you could then experiment with each stat to tune the result. You had a limited amount of experiment points and there was a chance that you would fail and make that aspect worst.
You do this for the barrel and grip of the blaster. Now, you take all 3 components and some additional raw materials to make the actual blaster. You get to experiment again.
As you would "level" crafting you would get more experiment points and better chances of having a critical success, however that does not mean you would be able to make the best gun around. Some of the best crafters in SWG would spend weeks trying to find the best materials then spend hours trying to get the experiment just right.
Crafting is the biggest thing I miss from SWG and I wish another MMO would come around with the balls to make a complex crafting system.
Any organization capable of launching a payload into space is - by extension - capable of delivering that mass anywhere on the planet.
It dies not have to be nuclear to cause large amounts of damage.
What would you recommend instead? I am really looking for suggestions so once I finish my tetris clone I can move on to something else, but I think a multiplayer fps clone might be a few steps too far.
Thank you Clovis42!
To me, Mass Effect is the next natural progression of the RPG genre. RPGs are all about telling a interactive story. Until recently that story has just been passive thing that makes you kill the next boss so you can continue it, Final Fantasy games are a prime example of this (but I still love them).
Games like KOTOR, Deus EX, and Neverwinter Nights gave you some flexibility in what happened between the chapters but the end story was basically the same (with perhaps 2 or 3 slightly different endings).
Mass Effect took this one step further. Making even the most mundane conversation into a cinematic event. Having some choices directly influence how the game plays out, not only in Mass Effect 1 but those choices will also affect how your game plays out in ME2 and ME3.
We are not quite there yet, but I think by the end of the Mass Effect Trilogy we will have seen a true 'next gen' RPG.
Some of the game play may not have been the best in ME, but please do not lump it in the same category as Assassin's Creed, Halo, Gears, Final Fantasy.
Did you even watch the first season?! While I agree the middle half of the second season sucked (whoo 3 red dots) the start and end of season 2 was insane.
I don't know if it's due to a generally depressed demeanour, but most people prefer to look down, at their feet, rather than up at the sky. I've even had arguments with people who were so uncaring about their surroundings that they didn't know the moon was visible during the day.
When I was a kid, if I did not look down while playing I would step in dog shit and then get yelled at by my parents when I went inside.
Or 2 LCDs stacked on top of one another like the iZ3D monitor, www.iz3d.com . However I would hate to lug a laptop with 2LCDs on it around.
I've been waiting for the electronic "paper" for like 15 years now.
Well then you only got 5 more years to wait.
However if the ESRB rates a game AO then 99% of the brick and mortar retailers will not carry the game. An AO rating is, in effect, a ban.
I will point out that you can buy the AO version of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy via Direct2Drive.
Demigod's *retail* version ships without DRM because *all* Stardock games ship that way. It's notable that once you update the game through Impulse, though, the game is 'infected' with online activation DRM (but there are no limits on the number of activations from what I can tell).
There are no limits, just that the CD key is locked to your Impulse account so it acts alot like Steam in that you can download the game to any computer you want as long as you log in with your account. It is alot UNLIKE steam in that you can install the retail CD in a computer that is not connected to the internet and still play the game (whereas steam games force you to connect to the internet once).
Troll.
If you have ever used a video conferencing program you will notice that the other person's eyes are always looking off to one side trying to make contact with your eyes.
However the other PSPs have ghosting problems and a lower color range which the PSP-3000 lacks.
[Citation Needed]