If you want to get a foot in the door and eventualy become a developer, then start out as a software tester. Testers are known by the developers and PMs in charge of development. Support personnel, otoh, aren't generally known outside of their cubbies.
I did testing and support for over ten years, starting in the days of Windows 3.1. Back then (which really wasn't that long ago), you couldn't fake kills. There were very few databases of questions and answers, and you had to not only know Windows, you had to know DOS. You'd be surprised at how many applicants got shut out because they didn't know how to edit a config file via the DOS prompt. And that was a good thing, because the people that actually got the jobs were a lot more likely to know how to trouble shoot computers, operating systems and hardware. From my point of view, the worst thing that ever happened to tech support was Windows 95. Suddenly, anyone who could read a script out of an Access database was a Windows expert. If they ran into a problem that they couldn't find in the database, they'd have you format your machine.
It seems that your biggest issue is not knowing what you're doing -- your biggest issue is that you're not on the correct job tract. Get into testing if you want to start a dev career. Hell, even being a web designer/developer is a better choice than support.
Support -> Tech lead -> Management (which is non-tech)
Testing -> Junior dev -> Dev
I use them for OS, gaming and dev discussions. Newgroups are infinitely better than web forums, because posting to 1 news server means you're posting to them all. Plus they're a good way to read content without having to deal with anyone's choice of fonts, colors and animations.
The only big annoyance I've ever has with usenet was back in the day when WebTV posters always posted with wild colors and the obligatory dancing baby. I ended up blocking the entire webtv domain. Try blocking an annoying user on a web forum... not gonna happen anytime soon.
- complexity and depth seem to be missing too. I see no hybrids, yes, no CC, no pet classes, etc. I certainly understand why you'd hate CC in PvP, but in PvE I actually liked doing that shit to monsters. So, if anything, it seems to confirm my long time conjecture that too much focus on PvP is detrimental to PvE.
And that points towards the problem with WoW that a lot of people have: Blizzard took a PvE-centered game and slowly made it into a PvP hybrid.
From what I've noticed, the RPG crowd and PvP crowd doesn't overlap very well. In WoW, people who are fans of one genre are compelled to frequently join in on the other genre. For instance, a level 70 raiding healer has to PvP in order to get a good healing mace for a raid. Or a new 70's best path to begin raiding is to PvP and get the S2 epic set just so that they can have a "starter set" of raiding gear. This type of indecisiveness over PvE vs PvP that Blizzard has programmed into the game over the years has sapped a lot of fun out of both sides.
Blizzard/WoW has become a Jack of all trades, and master of none.
Warhammer addresses this by focussing on PvP. Yeah, you can do plenty of PvE, but end game is currently set to be focussed on PvP. How the game changes over the next couple of years is anyone's guess.
I think that whatever "WoW killer" that pops up over the next couple of years will actually be 2 seperate games -- a PvP game, and a game that sticks mostly to RPG elements.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to get a foot in the door and eventualy become a developer, then start out as a software tester. Testers are known by the developers and PMs in charge of development. Support personnel, otoh, aren't generally known outside of their cubbies.
I did testing and support for over ten years, starting in the days of Windows 3.1. Back then (which really wasn't that long ago), you couldn't fake kills. There were very few databases of questions and answers, and you had to not only know Windows, you had to know DOS. You'd be surprised at how many applicants got shut out because they didn't know how to edit a config file via the DOS prompt. And that was a good thing, because the people that actually got the jobs were a lot more likely to know how to trouble shoot computers, operating systems and hardware. From my point of view, the worst thing that ever happened to tech support was Windows 95. Suddenly, anyone who could read a script out of an Access database was a Windows expert. If they ran into a problem that they couldn't find in the database, they'd have you format your machine.
It seems that your biggest issue is not knowing what you're doing -- your biggest issue is that you're not on the correct job tract. Get into testing if you want to start a dev career. Hell, even being a web designer/developer is a better choice than support.
Support -> Tech lead -> Management (which is non-tech)
Testing -> Junior dev -> Dev
I use them for OS, gaming and dev discussions. Newgroups are infinitely better than web forums, because posting to 1 news server means you're posting to them all. Plus they're a good way to read content without having to deal with anyone's choice of fonts, colors and animations.
The only big annoyance I've ever has with usenet was back in the day when WebTV posters always posted with wild colors and the obligatory dancing baby. I ended up blocking the entire webtv domain. Try blocking an annoying user on a web forum... not gonna happen anytime soon.
- complexity and depth seem to be missing too. I see no hybrids, yes, no CC, no pet classes, etc. I certainly understand why you'd hate CC in PvP, but in PvE I actually liked doing that shit to monsters. So, if anything, it seems to confirm my long time conjecture that too much focus on PvP is detrimental to PvE.
And that points towards the problem with WoW that a lot of people have: Blizzard took a PvE-centered game and slowly made it into a PvP hybrid.
From what I've noticed, the RPG crowd and PvP crowd doesn't overlap very well. In WoW, people who are fans of one genre are compelled to frequently join in on the other genre. For instance, a level 70 raiding healer has to PvP in order to get a good healing mace for a raid. Or a new 70's best path to begin raiding is to PvP and get the S2 epic set just so that they can have a "starter set" of raiding gear. This type of indecisiveness over PvE vs PvP that Blizzard has programmed into the game over the years has sapped a lot of fun out of both sides. Blizzard/WoW has become a Jack of all trades, and master of none.
Warhammer addresses this by focussing on PvP. Yeah, you can do plenty of PvE, but end game is currently set to be focussed on PvP. How the game changes over the next couple of years is anyone's guess.
I think that whatever "WoW killer" that pops up over the next couple of years will actually be 2 seperate games -- a PvP game, and a game that sticks mostly to RPG elements.