On the MMO topic, I actually agree to a point. And the grand scale MMO's generaly benefit from a wider audience and vast variance in player skill levels. There should, however, be content within MMO's that requries a higher commitment of skill level to conquer. That, to me, is just a risk vs. reward equation, and further embracing that vast varriance in player skill.
On the single player front, I still don't see your point. You're suggesting that the majority of games (if not all) be designed in a way that they can be scaled back and accessible to pretty much anyone. I disagree. In an economy of skill, I would embrace the design of some games that inherently price some people out of the market. Perhaps many people. I don't see how that's a negative thing. You provide a product to a group of people who desire it. If it's a game you don't want, don't buy it. If the design is compelling and just too hard for some, the market will correct with a new title (perhaps from the same developer) that follows the same design principles but scales back the difficulty. If there is just not enough of a market for that level of difficulty, again the market corrects by proving that such a title cannot be successful financially.
So your argument is that the money would have been more wisely spent to develop technologies to overcome challenges we didnt know existed until we met them in the space program?
In case you're missing my point (and you are) you won't purposefully develop tech to overcome challenges you havent faced. And further advances in that tech are less likely (and often impossible) if you dont have a compelling reason to face them to begin with.
Saying that your argument was disengenuous was perfectly valid and accurate. You suggest that the logic behind the space program was a deliberate measure to advance polymer tech, or some reusable method of sticking one thing to another (velcro). You and I both know that's a misleading argument and that it is not sincere. People needed to find methods of overcoming obsticles to manned space flight, not that they needed an excuse to come up with new crap. That's the definition of disengenuous. I appologize if my accurate vocabulary has offended you. Would using 'deceitful' or 'b***s***' be better recieved? They are synonomous with 'disengenuous', yet no more or less accurate.
Your premise is sound; The point of the game is to have fun. Your logic is flawed.
How does one have fun doing what they find fun, if no one makes a product they find fun because the majority (and that's an assumption) demand ease of access and nearly garuanteed progress.
Quite often the people saying that they dislike the 'easy mode' games or the gimme skill levels are vilified as "telling others that they're doing it wrong", when the reality is those being vilified are just desperate for someone, -anyone- to make a game that they find fun themselves.
It's easy to get pissed at a group who are telling you that what you're doing is wrong when you have what you want. But consider the frustration of that group who have little they find fun because every developer seems dead-set to make what you want. Consider that it's largely the whining about things being too difficult (i.e. - telling someone that what they find fun is wrong...) that has curbed the industry's practice of presenting challenges on any notable scale.
I don't think it's been suggested that you make a game that's just hard. If one were to design a game with that single premise (or any single premise) in mind they would most certainly find themselves in the same boat as so many failed designers; a protracted development cycle that eventualy (maybe) produces a cobble of mis-matched concepts into a craptastic POS.
Obviously a rounded game design is essential to a successful and interesting title. But designers for years have become convinced that if the public cannot easily and quickly 'achieve' they will throw down their controllers and keyboards in disgust. That, to me, shows a rather low opinion of game players in general. While there are certainly the instant-gratification hordes (*cough*) out there , there are also certainly those who find near-certain and zombie-like success far more tiresome and disgusting than regularly getting their asses whooped till they get better and overcome.
Did someone argue that we went to the moon with the intention of developing some easy and reusable method of sticking one thing to another? I certainly didn't.
Your argument is disingenuous at best.
My statement was meant to point out that because of the space program there are many advances in science that we enjoy today that quite possibly wouldn't have been reality if not for the unique challenges of spaceflight. Why develop a pen that can write in space if no one is going to write in space? Do you have any idea how many residual things have been advanced because of that one simple requirement of manned space travel?
From the article "It has long been established that cells and tissue growing in microgravity - the weightless conditions obtained in space - can grow and mutate in ways different than on Earth."
To quote myself, "... manned space flight present(s) unique obsticles."
The point being, that if those challenges are -unique-, then we are forced to present -unique- solutions. If they are unique, then the probability that the solution (ie. technology) would otherwise be developed is greatly diminished.
You use technology every day that may not have, and many cases would not have, come to fruition if not for either the space program or the military of the US or some other nation. The benefits of the US Space Program alone are very difficult to quantify with certainty, and discounting it because you don't happen to know the origin of the technologies is an easy trap to fall into.
Consider the advances in computer tech and communications alone necessary for the moon missions. Do you think you and I are having this conversation at least in part because of it?
And the upside for the Administration is that as soon as the private sector succeeds here, and starts earning profits for their risk and success, the Feds can sweep in and tax the everliving hell out of those FatCat Capitalist Pigs. And then nationalize it.
I'd like to see calculations on the BILLIONS of dollars that have been generated in the last 45 years in the private sector and in taxes to the federal govt as direct results of the science developed to go to the moon.
If it cost us 6% of the GDP every year from 1958-1972 (the bulk of the moon mission years) , then it cost ~$735billion.
[6% of $875billion/year over 14 years, (~521billionGDP in 1960 and ~$1.23trillionGDP in 1972 avgs to about $875billion/year)]
I'd like to see you convince me that we havent produced $735billion in private funds and taxes in the 38years since 1972 based on the science garnered by NASA in those 14 moonshot years.... To say nothing of the advances that have allowed for cleaner and more efficient technologies that we use each and every day, saving money and reducing polutants.
Oustide the financial outlay, how would they be hurt?
That aside, here are some answers:
1) A collective goal: Mankind rarely succeeds on a scale comparable to when they have a common goal. Build hope and cooperation between nations and you can bring them closer to understanding of one another.
2) Residual Science: Like the military (much to any hardcore liberal's chagrin), the Space Program has produce many quite notable and beneficial advancements as residuals to the space program itself. Examples of advancement can be found in Medicine, Chemistry, Biology, Genetics, Propulsion, Aerodynamics, Physics, Thermal Dynamics, Magnetism,.... The point being that the challenges of manned space flight present unique obsticles. And solutions there have benefited mankind on Earth in a myriad of ways. Very often those benefits manifest in leaps forwared in Enviromentalism and our understanding of Earth's systems.
A dozen or so avid gamers among a few thousand equates to less than 1% of that community. Quite possibly far less than 1%, depending on how many a 'few thousand' is.
Which brings us back to an eariler point: Is it smart business for Bliz to open their product to more piracy, and make it more ripe for abuse on BNet, to satisfy the less than 1% of gamers in rural towns that dont have broadband? Especially when you consider that the less than 1% only applies to those computer gamers who are in rural America without access to broadband, and that it does not apply to virtually every urban area of the nation that contains all the concentrations of population?
Now I will grant you that this does not address the arguments that the proposed policy is intrusive. But it goes a long way to squashing the case some are trying to make that there are millions upon millions of 'avid computer gamers' out there who just wont be able to play because they can't get 'any internet connection', including dial-up. The numbers of 'avid gamers' in this situation, statistically, are insignificant, using your own estimates as evidence. They're less than the margin for error in a poll.
Do I have sympathy for those people? Of course. Do I believe Blizzard should change the policy based on these extreme cases? Absolutely not.
Wow.
Well my question about the populations was how you "knew" them. It was a jab at your wording, and apparently a jab that went over your head completely.
On the topic of rural Mississippi, I'd find it very difficult to believe that people who can't get anything more than dial-up, and crappy dial-up at that, have a widespread fondness for computer games. That opinion is based on the area in which I live (rural midwest) where even the people that have broadband mostly use their computers to do some online banking, shopping, and keep up on news and weather. It's not because they are stupid, or technologically deficient, or more interested in Nascar. It's because they live tough hard-working lives and have better shit to worry about.
I wasn't propogating any stereotype of rural Mississippi. The fact that you mistook my meaning and took offense is understandable and for that I appologize. But congrats on propogating a stereotype that some appreciable portion of those in rural Mississippi like nothing but nascar, drugs and getting knocked up, even though "a lot" dont....
I'd like to underscore the fact that everything you just said was phrased as past tense...
From there I'd like to point out that you're eluding to a "rural mississippi" community of "a few thousand" having a large representation of computer gamers. Yeah. Right.
And last I'd like to hear the circumstances that gave rise to the fact that you "knew 1/5th of the entire population of the US with the same circumstance.".
Apparently a laundry list of real-world correlations and areas of development focus currently being pursued is being "utterly unglued". Where I've voiced specifics, rebutted your opinions with realities, and applied some historical relavencies, you've supplied the audience with "THEY'LL JUST TURN OFF THE SERVERS AND WE'RE ALL SCREWED!"....
I actually despise the subscription model. I hate it. I dont like having to log into a server to play a single player game -at all-. I like even less having to repay for something I feel that I've already paid for (McAfee). But I'm also a creator of intellectual property, and I hate theives even more. I also understand that with ongoing service to a customer there's ongoing cost.
After going on the same tyrade so many people right here are going on, I've chosen to try a couple of models out there for games. EADownloader (BF2 and BF2142) and Steam (HL2). I have to admit that I find it very handy to just click and download a game I had already purchased, install it, and supply my login. I still dont really like it, but even with EA (who I can barely stomach) I have no evidence that they cannot be trusted. There's nothing suggesting that they will just take my money and arbitrarily end their service and sever my ability to play entirely. Could it happen? Of course. Will it? I doubt it. Not anytime soon. And Certainly not if they hope for anyone to ever buy their products again. THAT is the thing that does get under my skin. It's the knee-jerk, "they're going to screw you the first chance they get" hysteria that is predominant here.
This is, unequivocally, why they removed LAN play.
I would certainly agree it's -a- reason. I would not concede that its -the- reason.
Will a single cd key tied to a single account go a long long long way to preventing piracy? Damn right. There's really no arguing it. Unless you'd like to convince me that there are numerous players in WoW playing on pirated accounts? How do you pirate something that precludes the possibilty of a game cd, tied to a game account, being used at more than one time by anyone in the world? The only real method would be to create spoofed authentication servers and hack the client code. Is that possible? Yes. Is it going to happen anywhere -nearly- as often as piracy that involves a cd copy? Not even in the most conspiracy theory-riddled paranoid mind.
You claim that they could just 'turn off servers' to force you to buy a sequel? Seriously? You're going to go there?
Blizzard has hosted the Bnet servers FOR FREE for OVER A DECADE.
They have spent untold millions of dollars to continue BNet support for a game that is over a decade old, that they are under absolutely no obligation to support. And they know that there are tons of pirated copies playing on those free servers. What do they get out of it? Warm fuzzies?
And you make it sound like this is an absolutely irreversible path to take. You yourself make the case that this wont prevent piracy, which inherently means you understand a patch would eliminate the need for the BNet authentication. So the sky-is-falling approach fails. And of all the companies out there that would rightly deserve claims of abusive marketing techniques Blizzard is quite low on the list. Their history has been pretty damn clean in that regard, and even if you dont like their games or their methods you have to concede that they are not historically deceptive or corrupt.
I will not buy a broken product, and what is more I will avoid buying a product that can be broken on the creator's whim. I know that nothing lasts forever... but some things do last a lifetime, and digital products CAN be one of those things, if you don't let these companies convince you that they are somehow in danger if they don't have total control of when and how you play the game YOU purchased.
I hate to tell you this, but you're going to start seeing this kind of paradigm more and more. And you are perfectly free to stick to you guns, and just refuse to buy products on this paradigm. But the fact is that in today's market building a game that does not have protections against piracy such as single account/key, the companies simply cant make the money back and unless they have a breakaway smash hit. There's not actually all that much money in game dev unless you're at the top of the curve. But the industry requires all the little companies that are right on the cusp to infuse new ideas, train new people, and to challenge the norm. Those little companies cant exist and certainly cant thrive if they can't firmly control their goods.
If you think you're opressed today, you havent any idea what's coming down the pipe. Just wait until more cloud computing comes into play. Just wait until browser-based gameplay becomes more and more mainstream, and you quite often dont have the game client bits on your pc at all. Wait till the most common methodology is to purchase access to remote code rather than purcahse an installable product. And we're not even limited to games in these discussions. They are driven much more by the most common applications like anti-virus, word-processing and email applications. Hell, OS licensing are not far removed from being a yearly renewal rather than a one-time purchase. Dont agree? Hold on to your rainbows and bunnies while you can.
You don't have to like it. But if you think you're going to cripple a game company like Bliz by not buying their mildly intrusive product you're very very wrong. And if you think you're going to make some statement by refusing to support anyone that works that way, fine. You can continue running WindowsXP on a P4 with 2gb ram for the next century while the rest of the world actually keeps up with technology and enjoys it's benefits.
I lived without broadband until 2005. Oddly enough, dial-up worked just fine, even for Everquest and WoW. Hell, we shared a connection for 3 pc's over dial-up and played Everquest in a raiding guild. Do you seriously want me to believe that the traffic for Starcraft II is going to be greater than that for Everquest in a 75 person raid?
GO READ THE FACTS about BNET2!!!!
You can play SCII at a single location just like any garage LAN party you ever went to. All it takes is one hub with internet connection to authenticate.
Ok, I don't live in a situation where clear telephone signal is a luxury. But do you honestly want to try to convince me that someone living so far off the grid that they can't get a decent hardline telephone signal is snuggling up to their gaming PC?
Give me a break.
I'm sure it's happening... really. In about 1/10000th of 1% of the potential Blizzard customer's homes. How many of those people know who Blizzard is or play -any- computer games is another story entirely.
And even the bulk of the people whining about having nothing available do have something. I'm 40 miles from the closest town of population greater than 1500. I have RF broadband, and aside from some unpredictable throughput during storms its pretty darn solid. (And I'm getting 3mb sustained and up to 7mb bursts.) There's also line of sight Microwave, and if there's cell reception there's Mobile broadband. Hell, in a real pinch there's satelite with the latency now down in the ~1sec range.
Yes, with satelite the latency would discourage you competing in the championships. Yes, you would probably get whooped and latency would be the cause. But again, how many farm boys with an outhouse and a exposed copper wire grounded to their tractor as a telephone line are hardcore uber gamers? How many of the people they've ever met want to go to that environment for a LAN party? The point being, you CAN connect to authenticate the systems and play multiplayer. You just have to stop bitching and do it. And if you cant, the chances of you owning a PC that will actually run SCII are only slightly better than the chance that you give a crap that SCII exists - both being only slightly more likely that being struck by a meteor.
Want to complain about the cost? Yeah, mobile broadband (the most expensive of these) might be as high as $75/month. If you're so short on money that any internet connection at all is a burden, then maybe you should consider your money spent in better places than a computer game!
Do you think we can give up the strawman crap that might apply to one in 5million people and actually deal with some realistic scenarios?
Your argument here is that there are plenty of places that are so issolated that dial-up is the only connection option. Yup, I can buy that.
The implied conclusion then, is that there are untold numbers of people out in the boondocks that are just itchin' for LAN parties..... Sorry, you lost me.
I happen to live out in the middle of nowhere, and I have broadband. But even disregarding that little inconvenient truth, the populace around me wouldn't be able to give a definition for 'LAN'. Lack of ability to host something they mostly dont know exists isn't going to turn them into career software pirates or bankrupt Bliz.
You're talking about a company that has made a mint at least partly by making the system specs for their MMO so much more accessible to so many more people than other companies. And you're suggesting that they didn't consider the market impact of this decision? Sure, it sucks for those people who are actually impacted. But the reality is that the impacted people are such a miniscule market force as to be nearly a non-factor. Who we're hearing from far more are knee-jerk reactions of people who don't want to have to pay for multiple game copies. The internet connection issue is just a tenuous argument to cling to out of desperation.
A game designed for two people to play on a single piece of hardware is not a 1to1 comparison with a piece of software running on two different machines by two different users.
Unless you'd like to convince me that if you play a WII game over the internet you and the person you play against should only have 1 copy of the game between you.
All LAN play does is allow you to play without internet connection. Honestly, how much does this come up? If you cant get an extra machine on your home network to play LAN every once in a while, you're not qualified to invite people over to play LAN. I know everyone is screaming about all the cases where it could come up(airports, lunch hour at work, blahblahblah). But the reality is that it wont impact many people at all, and if it does it wont impact them very freakin often.
On your other points:
Do you and your friend have to buy two computers? How about to copies of Windows? Two copies of MS Office? Or WoW? or pretty much any software that requires a license? How often do you and your friend get into a theater to see a movie with one ticket between you? How often do you impact the outcome of said movie?
I actually agree that the spawn copy idea is potentially a great way for Blizzard to bring in more customers. But if those people only ever play the spawn Blizzard never benefits. In today's market, with the massive piracy and fraud that exist, I fully support a company doing what they have to do to protect their product. If they just pushed crap products out the door and raked us for the price I'd feel differently, but no matter what you're opinion you have to admit that Bliz is at the top of the integrity charts as far as product quality goes.
And no one is begrudging that. They arent preventing it either. The knee-jerk reaction here is insane.
When you and your friends get together to play you all tap into a router/hub. Likely you have that hub on a home network that has internet access. You're done. No one is requiring you to play random people. No one is requiring that you run the tourney ladder. No one is requiring you to join a clan, or anything else.
The only change here is that you log into the BNET service to authenticate, and from there you use your existing friends list (that you can use anytime from home as well...) to start up matches between only those people you want to play with.
This breaks in only 3 cases:
1) You're incapable of hooking machines into a home network and granting internet access to them.
2) You and/or your friends are too cheap to buy multiple copies of the game.
3) You're having your LAN parties in a barn in Nebraska with no internet connection.
In case 1), you arent qualified to host a LAN party.
In case 2), cheap or pirate. Take your pick. No soup for you.
In case 3), shouldnt you be drinking heavily and chasing livestock with a tractor?
Unless you mean to suggest that improving on an existing idea is a bad thing, your argument falls flat. And that assumes what you say is even accurate.
First of all, WoW had a bunch of original ideas at release (flight paths, instancing, battlegrounds, meeting stones, etc.). Second, they've evolved a host of new ideas since (phasing, bind-on-account, flying mounts, etc). Third, they've taken many existing ideas and actually made them work well, as opposed to the duct tape and bailing twine crap many other companies produce.
Steam is a clunky POS. If Bliz wants to produce something better, I'm all for it.
Look, I'm not going to stick with the people that had the original idea for a product just because they came first. I'm going to go with the people that dont screw up the design. A great idea doesn't mean shit without a great follow-up, and Bliz is the company proven to shine on the follow-up.
Actually it was possible before. That's what the 'Spawn an Instance' function was. One person with a legit copy and someone else without a copy could do a LAN against one another.
And, it's still possible now for 2 people to use the same game copy at different times. You just have to share an account.
If you're never going to be playing at the same time, and are in the same house, one would surmise that neither player is hard core, and sharing an account really shouldn't be a factor.
If the value of the reputation on that account is so personal to you that you don't think it appropriate to share, perhaps you might consider investing in something that obvious has such personal value to you.
So your argument is that the honest people who would've bought a legit copy of the game, who could use that legit copy to do -EVERYTHING- they desire to do with it, will now go and pirate the software so that they can... go do all the same shit.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, maybe for 2009 to not be the hottest year in recorded history, or 2000-2009 to be the hottest decade in recorded history, for one.
And all the recorded historical data proves these to be facts, right?
...[delete]
Oh damn... Now where did I put that data...
On the MMO topic, I actually agree to a point. And the grand scale MMO's generaly benefit from a wider audience and vast variance in player skill levels. There should, however, be content within MMO's that requries a higher commitment of skill level to conquer. That, to me, is just a risk vs. reward equation, and further embracing that vast varriance in player skill.
On the single player front, I still don't see your point. You're suggesting that the majority of games (if not all) be designed in a way that they can be scaled back and accessible to pretty much anyone. I disagree. In an economy of skill, I would embrace the design of some games that inherently price some people out of the market. Perhaps many people. I don't see how that's a negative thing. You provide a product to a group of people who desire it. If it's a game you don't want, don't buy it. If the design is compelling and just too hard for some, the market will correct with a new title (perhaps from the same developer) that follows the same design principles but scales back the difficulty. If there is just not enough of a market for that level of difficulty, again the market corrects by proving that such a title cannot be successful financially.
More games, more choices. Who loses?
So your argument is that the money would have been more wisely spent to develop technologies to overcome challenges we didnt know existed until we met them in the space program?
In case you're missing my point (and you are) you won't purposefully develop tech to overcome challenges you havent faced. And further advances in that tech are less likely (and often impossible) if you dont have a compelling reason to face them to begin with.
Saying that your argument was disengenuous was perfectly valid and accurate. You suggest that the logic behind the space program was a deliberate measure to advance polymer tech, or some reusable method of sticking one thing to another (velcro). You and I both know that's a misleading argument and that it is not sincere. People needed to find methods of overcoming obsticles to manned space flight, not that they needed an excuse to come up with new crap. That's the definition of disengenuous. I appologize if my accurate vocabulary has offended you. Would using 'deceitful' or 'b***s***' be better recieved? They are synonomous with 'disengenuous', yet no more or less accurate.
And people should have choices.
Your premise is sound; The point of the game is to have fun. Your logic is flawed.
How does one have fun doing what they find fun, if no one makes a product they find fun because the majority (and that's an assumption) demand ease of access and nearly garuanteed progress.
Quite often the people saying that they dislike the 'easy mode' games or the gimme skill levels are vilified as "telling others that they're doing it wrong", when the reality is those being vilified are just desperate for someone, -anyone- to make a game that they find fun themselves.
It's easy to get pissed at a group who are telling you that what you're doing is wrong when you have what you want. But consider the frustration of that group who have little they find fun because every developer seems dead-set to make what you want. Consider that it's largely the whining about things being too difficult (i.e. - telling someone that what they find fun is wrong...) that has curbed the industry's practice of presenting challenges on any notable scale.
I don't think it's been suggested that you make a game that's just hard. If one were to design a game with that single premise (or any single premise) in mind they would most certainly find themselves in the same boat as so many failed designers; a protracted development cycle that eventualy (maybe) produces a cobble of mis-matched concepts into a craptastic POS.
Obviously a rounded game design is essential to a successful and interesting title. But designers for years have become convinced that if the public cannot easily and quickly 'achieve' they will throw down their controllers and keyboards in disgust. That, to me, shows a rather low opinion of game players in general. While there are certainly the instant-gratification hordes (*cough*) out there , there are also certainly those who find near-certain and zombie-like success far more tiresome and disgusting than regularly getting their asses whooped till they get better and overcome.
Did someone argue that we went to the moon with the intention of developing some easy and reusable method of sticking one thing to another? I certainly didn't.
Your argument is disingenuous at best.
My statement was meant to point out that because of the space program there are many advances in science that we enjoy today that quite possibly wouldn't have been reality if not for the unique challenges of spaceflight. Why develop a pen that can write in space if no one is going to write in space? Do you have any idea how many residual things have been advanced because of that one simple requirement of manned space travel?
Just as an aside: Here's a link to an article at NASA.gov about a project to incubate breast cancer cells in the zero-gravity of space to better understand how they grow. http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad01oct98_1.htm
From the article "It has long been established that cells and tissue growing in microgravity - the weightless conditions obtained in space - can grow and mutate in ways different than on Earth."
Holy crap, I wonder how they figured that out....
To quote myself, "... manned space flight present(s) unique obsticles."
The point being, that if those challenges are -unique-, then we are forced to present -unique- solutions. If they are unique, then the probability that the solution (ie. technology) would otherwise be developed is greatly diminished.
You use technology every day that may not have, and many cases would not have, come to fruition if not for either the space program or the military of the US or some other nation. The benefits of the US Space Program alone are very difficult to quantify with certainty, and discounting it because you don't happen to know the origin of the technologies is an easy trap to fall into.
Consider the advances in computer tech and communications alone necessary for the moon missions. Do you think you and I are having this conversation at least in part because of it?
And the upside for the Administration is that as soon as the private sector succeeds here, and starts earning profits for their risk and success, the Feds can sweep in and tax the everliving hell out of those FatCat Capitalist Pigs. And then nationalize it.
I'd like to see calculations on the BILLIONS of dollars that have been generated in the last 45 years in the private sector and in taxes to the federal govt as direct results of the science developed to go to the moon.
If it cost us 6% of the GDP every year from 1958-1972 (the bulk of the moon mission years) , then it cost ~$735billion.
[6% of $875billion/year over 14 years, (~521billionGDP in 1960 and ~$1.23trillionGDP in 1972 avgs to about $875billion/year)]
I'd like to see you convince me that we havent produced $735billion in private funds and taxes in the 38years since 1972 based on the science garnered by NASA in those 14 moonshot years.... To say nothing of the advances that have allowed for cleaner and more efficient technologies that we use each and every day, saving money and reducing polutants.
Oustide the financial outlay, how would they be hurt?
.... The point being that the challenges of manned space flight present unique obsticles. And solutions there have benefited mankind on Earth in a myriad of ways. Very often those benefits manifest in leaps forwared in Enviromentalism and our understanding of Earth's systems.
That aside, here are some answers: 1) A collective goal: Mankind rarely succeeds on a scale comparable to when they have a common goal. Build hope and cooperation between nations and you can bring them closer to understanding of one another.
2) Residual Science: Like the military (much to any hardcore liberal's chagrin), the Space Program has produce many quite notable and beneficial advancements as residuals to the space program itself. Examples of advancement can be found in Medicine, Chemistry, Biology, Genetics, Propulsion, Aerodynamics, Physics, Thermal Dynamics, Magnetism,
A dozen or so avid gamers among a few thousand equates to less than 1% of that community. Quite possibly far less than 1%, depending on how many a 'few thousand' is.
Which brings us back to an eariler point: Is it smart business for Bliz to open their product to more piracy, and make it more ripe for abuse on BNet, to satisfy the less than 1% of gamers in rural towns that dont have broadband? Especially when you consider that the less than 1% only applies to those computer gamers who are in rural America without access to broadband, and that it does not apply to virtually every urban area of the nation that contains all the concentrations of population?
Now I will grant you that this does not address the arguments that the proposed policy is intrusive. But it goes a long way to squashing the case some are trying to make that there are millions upon millions of 'avid computer gamers' out there who just wont be able to play because they can't get 'any internet connection', including dial-up. The numbers of 'avid gamers' in this situation, statistically, are insignificant, using your own estimates as evidence. They're less than the margin for error in a poll.
Do I have sympathy for those people? Of course. Do I believe Blizzard should change the policy based on these extreme cases? Absolutely not.
Wow. Well my question about the populations was how you "knew" them. It was a jab at your wording, and apparently a jab that went over your head completely. On the topic of rural Mississippi, I'd find it very difficult to believe that people who can't get anything more than dial-up, and crappy dial-up at that, have a widespread fondness for computer games. That opinion is based on the area in which I live (rural midwest) where even the people that have broadband mostly use their computers to do some online banking, shopping, and keep up on news and weather. It's not because they are stupid, or technologically deficient, or more interested in Nascar. It's because they live tough hard-working lives and have better shit to worry about. I wasn't propogating any stereotype of rural Mississippi. The fact that you mistook my meaning and took offense is understandable and for that I appologize. But congrats on propogating a stereotype that some appreciable portion of those in rural Mississippi like nothing but nascar, drugs and getting knocked up, even though "a lot" dont....
I'd like to underscore the fact that everything you just said was phrased as past tense...
From there I'd like to point out that you're eluding to a "rural mississippi" community of "a few thousand" having a large representation of computer gamers. Yeah. Right.
And last I'd like to hear the circumstances that gave rise to the fact that you "knew 1/5th of the entire population of the US with the same circumstance.".
Apparently a laundry list of real-world correlations and areas of development focus currently being pursued is being "utterly unglued". Where I've voiced specifics, rebutted your opinions with realities, and applied some historical relavencies, you've supplied the audience with "THEY'LL JUST TURN OFF THE SERVERS AND WE'RE ALL SCREWED!"....
I actually despise the subscription model. I hate it. I dont like having to log into a server to play a single player game -at all-. I like even less having to repay for something I feel that I've already paid for (McAfee). But I'm also a creator of intellectual property, and I hate theives even more. I also understand that with ongoing service to a customer there's ongoing cost.
After going on the same tyrade so many people right here are going on, I've chosen to try a couple of models out there for games. EADownloader (BF2 and BF2142) and Steam (HL2). I have to admit that I find it very handy to just click and download a game I had already purchased, install it, and supply my login. I still dont really like it, but even with EA (who I can barely stomach) I have no evidence that they cannot be trusted. There's nothing suggesting that they will just take my money and arbitrarily end their service and sever my ability to play entirely. Could it happen? Of course. Will it? I doubt it. Not anytime soon. And Certainly not if they hope for anyone to ever buy their products again. THAT is the thing that does get under my skin. It's the knee-jerk, "they're going to screw you the first chance they get" hysteria that is predominant here.
This is, unequivocally, why they removed LAN play.
I would certainly agree it's -a- reason. I would not concede that its -the- reason.
Will a single cd key tied to a single account go a long long long way to preventing piracy? Damn right. There's really no arguing it. Unless you'd like to convince me that there are numerous players in WoW playing on pirated accounts? How do you pirate something that precludes the possibilty of a game cd, tied to a game account, being used at more than one time by anyone in the world? The only real method would be to create spoofed authentication servers and hack the client code. Is that possible? Yes. Is it going to happen anywhere -nearly- as often as piracy that involves a cd copy? Not even in the most conspiracy theory-riddled paranoid mind.
You claim that they could just 'turn off servers' to force you to buy a sequel? Seriously? You're going to go there?
Blizzard has hosted the Bnet servers FOR FREE for OVER A DECADE.
They have spent untold millions of dollars to continue BNet support for a game that is over a decade old, that they are under absolutely no obligation to support. And they know that there are tons of pirated copies playing on those free servers. What do they get out of it? Warm fuzzies?
And you make it sound like this is an absolutely irreversible path to take. You yourself make the case that this wont prevent piracy, which inherently means you understand a patch would eliminate the need for the BNet authentication. So the sky-is-falling approach fails. And of all the companies out there that would rightly deserve claims of abusive marketing techniques Blizzard is quite low on the list. Their history has been pretty damn clean in that regard, and even if you dont like their games or their methods you have to concede that they are not historically deceptive or corrupt.
I will not buy a broken product, and what is more I will avoid buying a product that can be broken on the creator's whim. I know that nothing lasts forever... but some things do last a lifetime, and digital products CAN be one of those things, if you don't let these companies convince you that they are somehow in danger if they don't have total control of when and how you play the game YOU purchased.
I hate to tell you this, but you're going to start seeing this kind of paradigm more and more. And you are perfectly free to stick to you guns, and just refuse to buy products on this paradigm. But the fact is that in today's market building a game that does not have protections against piracy such as single account/key, the companies simply cant make the money back and unless they have a breakaway smash hit. There's not actually all that much money in game dev unless you're at the top of the curve. But the industry requires all the little companies that are right on the cusp to infuse new ideas, train new people, and to challenge the norm. Those little companies cant exist and certainly cant thrive if they can't firmly control their goods.
If you think you're opressed today, you havent any idea what's coming down the pipe. Just wait until more cloud computing comes into play. Just wait until browser-based gameplay becomes more and more mainstream, and you quite often dont have the game client bits on your pc at all. Wait till the most common methodology is to purchase access to remote code rather than purcahse an installable product. And we're not even limited to games in these discussions. They are driven much more by the most common applications like anti-virus, word-processing and email applications. Hell, OS licensing are not far removed from being a yearly renewal rather than a one-time purchase. Dont agree? Hold on to your rainbows and bunnies while you can.
You don't have to like it. But if you think you're going to cripple a game company like Bliz by not buying their mildly intrusive product you're very very wrong. And if you think you're going to make some statement by refusing to support anyone that works that way, fine. You can continue running WindowsXP on a P4 with 2gb ram for the next century while the rest of the world actually keeps up with technology and enjoys it's benefits.
I lived without broadband until 2005. Oddly enough, dial-up worked just fine, even for Everquest and WoW. Hell, we shared a connection for 3 pc's over dial-up and played Everquest in a raiding guild. Do you seriously want me to believe that the traffic for Starcraft II is going to be greater than that for Everquest in a 75 person raid?
GO READ THE FACTS about BNET2!!!!
You can play SCII at a single location just like any garage LAN party you ever went to. All it takes is one hub with internet connection to authenticate.
Ok, I don't live in a situation where clear telephone signal is a luxury. But do you honestly want to try to convince me that someone living so far off the grid that they can't get a decent hardline telephone signal is snuggling up to their gaming PC?
Give me a break.
I'm sure it's happening... really. In about 1/10000th of 1% of the potential Blizzard customer's homes. How many of those people know who Blizzard is or play -any- computer games is another story entirely.
And even the bulk of the people whining about having nothing available do have something. I'm 40 miles from the closest town of population greater than 1500. I have RF broadband, and aside from some unpredictable throughput during storms its pretty darn solid. (And I'm getting 3mb sustained and up to 7mb bursts.) There's also line of sight Microwave, and if there's cell reception there's Mobile broadband. Hell, in a real pinch there's satelite with the latency now down in the ~1sec range.
Yes, with satelite the latency would discourage you competing in the championships. Yes, you would probably get whooped and latency would be the cause. But again, how many farm boys with an outhouse and a exposed copper wire grounded to their tractor as a telephone line are hardcore uber gamers? How many of the people they've ever met want to go to that environment for a LAN party? The point being, you CAN connect to authenticate the systems and play multiplayer. You just have to stop bitching and do it. And if you cant, the chances of you owning a PC that will actually run SCII are only slightly better than the chance that you give a crap that SCII exists - both being only slightly more likely that being struck by a meteor.
Want to complain about the cost? Yeah, mobile broadband (the most expensive of these) might be as high as $75/month. If you're so short on money that any internet connection at all is a burden, then maybe you should consider your money spent in better places than a computer game!
Do you think we can give up the strawman crap that might apply to one in 5million people and actually deal with some realistic scenarios?
So let me get this straight...
Your argument here is that there are plenty of places that are so issolated that dial-up is the only connection option. Yup, I can buy that.
The implied conclusion then, is that there are untold numbers of people out in the boondocks that are just itchin' for LAN parties..... Sorry, you lost me.
I happen to live out in the middle of nowhere, and I have broadband. But even disregarding that little inconvenient truth, the populace around me wouldn't be able to give a definition for 'LAN'. Lack of ability to host something they mostly dont know exists isn't going to turn them into career software pirates or bankrupt Bliz.
You're talking about a company that has made a mint at least partly by making the system specs for their MMO so much more accessible to so many more people than other companies. And you're suggesting that they didn't consider the market impact of this decision? Sure, it sucks for those people who are actually impacted. But the reality is that the impacted people are such a miniscule market force as to be nearly a non-factor. Who we're hearing from far more are knee-jerk reactions of people who don't want to have to pay for multiple game copies. The internet connection issue is just a tenuous argument to cling to out of desperation.
No, not at all like a WII game.
A game designed for two people to play on a single piece of hardware is not a 1to1 comparison with a piece of software running on two different machines by two different users.
Unless you'd like to convince me that if you play a WII game over the internet you and the person you play against should only have 1 copy of the game between you.
All LAN play does is allow you to play without internet connection. Honestly, how much does this come up? If you cant get an extra machine on your home network to play LAN every once in a while, you're not qualified to invite people over to play LAN. I know everyone is screaming about all the cases where it could come up(airports, lunch hour at work, blahblahblah). But the reality is that it wont impact many people at all, and if it does it wont impact them very freakin often.
On your other points:
Do you and your friend have to buy two computers? How about to copies of Windows? Two copies of MS Office? Or WoW? or pretty much any software that requires a license? How often do you and your friend get into a theater to see a movie with one ticket between you? How often do you impact the outcome of said movie?
I actually agree that the spawn copy idea is potentially a great way for Blizzard to bring in more customers. But if those people only ever play the spawn Blizzard never benefits. In today's market, with the massive piracy and fraud that exist, I fully support a company doing what they have to do to protect their product. If they just pushed crap products out the door and raked us for the price I'd feel differently, but no matter what you're opinion you have to admit that Bliz is at the top of the integrity charts as far as product quality goes.
And no one is begrudging that. They arent preventing it either. The knee-jerk reaction here is insane.
When you and your friends get together to play you all tap into a router/hub. Likely you have that hub on a home network that has internet access. You're done. No one is requiring you to play random people. No one is requiring that you run the tourney ladder. No one is requiring you to join a clan, or anything else.
The only change here is that you log into the BNET service to authenticate, and from there you use your existing friends list (that you can use anytime from home as well...) to start up matches between only those people you want to play with.
This breaks in only 3 cases:
1) You're incapable of hooking machines into a home network and granting internet access to them. 2) You and/or your friends are too cheap to buy multiple copies of the game. 3) You're having your LAN parties in a barn in Nebraska with no internet connection.
In case 1), you arent qualified to host a LAN party. In case 2), cheap or pirate. Take your pick. No soup for you. In case 3), shouldnt you be drinking heavily and chasing livestock with a tractor?
Unless you mean to suggest that improving on an existing idea is a bad thing, your argument falls flat. And that assumes what you say is even accurate.
First of all, WoW had a bunch of original ideas at release (flight paths, instancing, battlegrounds, meeting stones, etc.). Second, they've evolved a host of new ideas since (phasing, bind-on-account, flying mounts, etc). Third, they've taken many existing ideas and actually made them work well, as opposed to the duct tape and bailing twine crap many other companies produce.
Steam is a clunky POS. If Bliz wants to produce something better, I'm all for it.
Look, I'm not going to stick with the people that had the original idea for a product just because they came first. I'm going to go with the people that dont screw up the design. A great idea doesn't mean shit without a great follow-up, and Bliz is the company proven to shine on the follow-up.
Actually it was possible before. That's what the 'Spawn an Instance' function was. One person with a legit copy and someone else without a copy could do a LAN against one another.
And, it's still possible now for 2 people to use the same game copy at different times. You just have to share an account.
If you're never going to be playing at the same time, and are in the same house, one would surmise that neither player is hard core, and sharing an account really shouldn't be a factor.
If the value of the reputation on that account is so personal to you that you don't think it appropriate to share, perhaps you might consider investing in something that obvious has such personal value to you.
So your argument is that the honest people who would've bought a legit copy of the game, who could use that legit copy to do -EVERYTHING- they desire to do with it, will now go and pirate the software so that they can... go do all the same shit.
Dude, run for Congress. You're a shoe-in.
You mean if you have 2 people that want to use the same software product at the same time you have to actually pay for it?
AAAaaaGHhH!!!
Avert your eyes! Take the children from the room!
Oh, the brutality!