I've tried several MMORPGs and could sustain my interest no longer than 3 weeks on any of them. In the text-based realm, though, when I combine my time on each MUD, MUX, MOO and MUSH I've played over the years, I've clocked well over a couple of decades.
The generally smaller playerbase of a text-based game provides a number of advantages (when viewed through the lens of my personal tastes): greater attention from GMs, greater opportunity for non-combat roleplay, greater visibility as a player and a stronger sense of common interest among the players. With a smaller base of players, a text game relies more on each individual member of the game, driving up each individual's "screen time" (no pun intended) in the stories and their value to the game, those running it and their fellow players.
When playing M** games I've formed and strengthened what I felt were genuine friendships, both offline and on (some RL friends would join the same games and some fellow players would turn out to be local and become RL friends as well). When playing MMORPGs, I felt lost in an immense crowd. Even when I had friends playing DAoC, it seemed to take impossible acts just to get together to group. For my money, they're too much a pain and leave me too much another face in the oversized crowd.
I get why people enjoy MMORPGs, and that not everyone has the same difficulty trying to navigate the B1ff-screaming tweens to find friends, but the more ascetic environment of your average M** seems to do a lot of that weeding out for me.
I hate it for the folks who are paying two bills to be unable to play a game, and the very least that should happen is getting credit on their FFXI accounts for the days they're locked out.
On the other hand, I'm forced to consider that the spin on this particular "feature" might be that it's not an outage, it's a one-step recovery program for MMORPG addicts. Were I on their tech support staff, I'd be tempted to try it at least once.;)
The most telling indicator that this is true is that none of the major retailers will let you pre-order a Phantom through their site. Sony only confirmed the new PStwo today and you can already pre-order one on EBgames.com. However, neither they nor GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, nor any other site I can find will let you pre-order the Phantom, officially coming out well within the pre-order window of most games & consoles. If the stores don't think it's going to happen, it's not going to happen.
I'd be most comfortable knowing that the machine doesn't actually count the vote - it produces a ballot which is clearly marked, easy to read and is, in turn, fed into a ballot box. This makes voting easy, the immediate user audit of the ballot easy, and a trusted recount of those clearly marked, paper ballots easy.
On the other hand, that's a good point - Nevada probably has the expertise ready at hand.
I bought my Dreamcast the day the PS2 came out. I walked into my fave store, fought my way past screaming children to get to the counter and said to the guy, "I'm the only person who's going to say this all day, but I'd like to buy a Dreamcast." I will never regret it - I got the "sports" model, so it's all sexy black and it still sees regular use.
Favorites:
Shenmue (aka DeskDrawerCheck3000), for being the most immersive experience I'd had yet, and a good fighting game to boot. Plus, how can I turn down a game with dialogue like, "Do you know where I can find some sailors? I'd like to find some sailors."
Typing of the Dead, for simply being a freakin' brilliant idea well-implemented. I played this game nonstop. I still have it, still play it. I like to pretend the zombies are saying the words & phrases that pop up. BRAINS! APPLE PIE! ZIETGEIST!
Skies of Arcadia, for giving me a great RPG and my roommate a fun mini-game. He'd sit there and play the mini-game on VMU, get stuff, then hand off to me to let me collect. Brilliant.
So, what's it going to do to recognize when, say, an ambulance, a firetruck, a cop car responding to a call, etc., are speeding up to pass through the intersection on their way to an emergency?
Yes, I know, they already "run" red lights to respond to emergencies, but they are slowed down by virtue of pulling to the intersection, making sure other vehicles have recognized that they're about to pass through and then continuing towards the emergency.
Still, do we need to complicate the jobs of first-responders by making sure every stop-light between them and someone in need of immediate assistance will turn RED?
This is tangential at best. 9 years ago, I was on a college trip to Moscow that included a several-hour layover in Frankfurt. To get to the food areas, we had to go through customs. Absolutely starved and desperate to try a McDonald's that sold beer, several of us went through Customs together.
As the agent patted me down, which he did to everyone, he actually grabbed my crotch. Apparently this was a standard part of the pat-down, but it was news to me. Shocked, I blurted out the first word of German which came to mind: "Danke!" I turned eight shades of purple and we all laughed, then they let me through.
I gladly work the holidays -- volunteered for them three years running, for three reasons:
--Holiday pay is twice my regular pay, but there's zero work (no one is in their offices to screw up their networks on Christmas or Thanksgiving, so no work for me). I get paid double-time to play my GBA for ten hours.
--Quiet time. Do you know how blessedly quiet my office is when there's no one in it but me? The phone doesn't ring, nothing demands my attention. I get to just be here with myself.
--I'm not a Christian anyway, so no big deal on working Christmas. With the money I make from working a couple of days of holidays, I can buy myself something nice later as my own little present.
My nephew is a young man in his 2nd year of junior high here in North Carolina (I only graduated from high school 8 years ago, though -- big difference in ages between his mother and myself). He's smart, slightly hyperactive, writes, loves computers, has remarkably mature tastes in film and reading materials, and is (from what I can tell) sadly fast on his way to being an outcast, because his brain is simply so much more active than those of the adults around him, myself included. He gets in trouble at school and has difficulties maintaining friendships sometimes because he doesn't settle down and accept the rules applied to his behavior, whether they make sense or not. When WAVE America is unrolled, my nephew -will- be identified by it; of this I am 99% certain.
My question is this: when he is (again, not if) identified as dangerous, what resources will the Pinkertons make available to me, a trusted relative to whom he might turn for advice or insight, to aid me in assuring him he's not a freak, and that these people honestly did mean well? How do I explain that someone might have abused this system to be hurtful towards him? How do I explain that when someone is different, they are generally punished for it in our society? How do I reassure him beyond pointing at myself and saying, 'Well, I was a weirdo, too, and -I- survived, didn't I?' when the fact is, when I was in junior high, the worst things the other kids could do had already been explored, and adults hadn't invented bigger, worse and more officially sanctioned methods of harming one another?
In short, I need to know, from the Pinkertons, what safety nets they'll put in place for the false/malicious reporting on kids that aren't actually dangerous, but still match the profile of being unusual?
And how willing are they to admit that this sort of malicious reporting by vengeful fellow students will happen?
Slashdot Mirror
The generally smaller playerbase of a text-based game provides a number of advantages (when viewed through the lens of my personal tastes): greater attention from GMs, greater opportunity for non-combat roleplay, greater visibility as a player and a stronger sense of common interest among the players. With a smaller base of players, a text game relies more on each individual member of the game, driving up each individual's "screen time" (no pun intended) in the stories and their value to the game, those running it and their fellow players.
When playing M** games I've formed and strengthened what I felt were genuine friendships, both offline and on (some RL friends would join the same games and some fellow players would turn out to be local and become RL friends as well). When playing MMORPGs, I felt lost in an immense crowd. Even when I had friends playing DAoC, it seemed to take impossible acts just to get together to group. For my money, they're too much a pain and leave me too much another face in the oversized crowd.
I get why people enjoy MMORPGs, and that not everyone has the same difficulty trying to navigate the B1ff-screaming tweens to find friends, but the more ascetic environment of your average M** seems to do a lot of that weeding out for me.
I hate it for the folks who are paying two bills to be unable to play a game, and the very least that should happen is getting credit on their FFXI accounts for the days they're locked out.
;)
On the other hand, I'm forced to consider that the spin on this particular "feature" might be that it's not an outage, it's a one-step recovery program for MMORPG addicts. Were I on their tech support staff, I'd be tempted to try it at least once.
Not that WIP's continuing work isn't appreciated.
The most telling indicator that this is true is that none of the major retailers will let you pre-order a Phantom through their site. Sony only confirmed the new PStwo today and you can already pre-order one on EBgames.com. However, neither they nor GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, nor any other site I can find will let you pre-order the Phantom, officially coming out well within the pre-order window of most games & consoles. If the stores don't think it's going to happen, it's not going to happen.
I'd be most comfortable knowing that the machine doesn't actually count the vote - it produces a ballot which is clearly marked, easy to read and is, in turn, fed into a ballot box. This makes voting easy, the immediate user audit of the ballot easy, and a trusted recount of those clearly marked, paper ballots easy.
On the other hand, that's a good point - Nevada probably has the expertise ready at hand.
Favorites:
So, what's it going to do to recognize when, say, an ambulance, a firetruck, a cop car responding to a call, etc., are speeding up to pass through the intersection on their way to an emergency?
Yes, I know, they already "run" red lights to respond to emergencies, but they are slowed down by virtue of pulling to the intersection, making sure other vehicles have recognized that they're about to pass through and then continuing towards the emergency.
Still, do we need to complicate the jobs of first-responders by making sure every stop-light between them and someone in need of immediate assistance will turn RED?
This is tangential at best. 9 years ago, I was on a college trip to Moscow that included a several-hour layover in Frankfurt. To get to the food areas, we had to go through customs. Absolutely starved and desperate to try a McDonald's that sold beer, several of us went through Customs together.
As the agent patted me down, which he did to everyone, he actually grabbed my crotch. Apparently this was a standard part of the pat-down, but it was news to me. Shocked, I blurted out the first word of German which came to mind: "Danke!" I turned eight shades of purple and we all laughed, then they let me through.
I gladly work the holidays -- volunteered for them three years running, for three reasons:
--Holiday pay is twice my regular pay, but there's zero work (no one is in their offices to screw up their networks on Christmas or Thanksgiving, so no work for me). I get paid double-time to play my GBA for ten hours.
--Quiet time. Do you know how blessedly quiet my office is when there's no one in it but me? The phone doesn't ring, nothing demands my attention. I get to just be here with myself.
--I'm not a Christian anyway, so no big deal on working Christmas. With the money I make from working a couple of days of holidays, I can buy myself something nice later as my own little present.
My question is this: when he is (again, not if) identified as dangerous, what resources will the Pinkertons make available to me, a trusted relative to whom he might turn for advice or insight, to aid me in assuring him he's not a freak, and that these people honestly did mean well? How do I explain that someone might have abused this system to be hurtful towards him? How do I explain that when someone is different, they are generally punished for it in our society? How do I reassure him beyond pointing at myself and saying, 'Well, I was a weirdo, too, and -I- survived, didn't I?' when the fact is, when I was in junior high, the worst things the other kids could do had already been explored, and adults hadn't invented bigger, worse and more officially sanctioned methods of harming one another?
In short, I need to know, from the Pinkertons, what safety nets they'll put in place for the false/malicious reporting on kids that aren't actually dangerous, but still match the profile of being unusual?
And how willing are they to admit that this sort of malicious reporting by vengeful fellow students will happen?