Here's something to think about. I'm using the same computer that I built in 1998. Not a single original part remains, but it's still "the same computer" in that I never actually up and replaced it. It's been incrementally upgraded such that no single original part remains. The operating system has been upgraded, but every time, all the data from the old system was copied into the new system.
Is it really the same computer any more? At what point did it become a "new" computer? When the last original part was replaced? Except that it was still the same computer - the same OS, the same data that made it up.
Assume that we could replace organs or even entire bodies. That would solve (most of) the super-structure problems. But would we still be the same person? The future may involve people living forever, just not in the same body. Instead of preventing the body from aging, we may just replace it every 10 years.
Heh, for some reason, that reminds me of someone in the LUG back at college who apparently was running Debian Testing and had apt-get update or whatever in his crontab.
He stopped that after some upgrade killed his shell. (Which, as I recall, was "also his window manager." Apparently he thought only having a single xterm in his.xinit made bash his window manager.)
I have no idea what beta was like, but I doubt they had anything near the current number of accounts playing the game.
I believe they capped it at 100,000 accounts, although it's unclear how many actually played. However, they only had something like 40 servers, whereas they now have 88 servers. So if we assume that all 100,000 people actually played during the beta and 300,000 people currently are playing (based on the MMOG chart figures), the server load now is higher than it was during the beta.
And I agree that I expect that Blizzard will eventually fix the problems, but we shouldn't just pretend they don't exist. They do exist. World of Warcraft hasn't been experiencing anywhere near a "perfect launch" as some people seem to believe. The problems need to be acknowledged, instead of just brushed off as things related to the launch. The game was launched almost two months ago and, while the servers are more stable than they were at launch, things seem to have recently been getting worse, not better.
I was originally going to try and make a write-up of this story on my own, but then I saw that Tycho had posted a much better version that said basically exactly what I wanted to say. I figured that people would be more likely to respect what Gabe and Tycho have to say on the matter than some random Slashdotter.:)
I really intended this as a counter-point to what appears to be the prevailing opinion that EverQuest 2's release was plagued with flaws and World of Warcraft's wasn't. Blizzard has been having problems since launch. The problems may be perfectly understandable, but they shouldn't just be ignored or written off as "launch instability" - they exist and Blizzard needs to do something to convince people that they understand there are problems and that they're working to fix them. Having a server go down for "emergency maintanence" three times in two days suggests that there's something seriously wrong with the way the servers are running.
I'm beginning to think they're running the servers on Windows 2003 Server - they seem to simply reboot the servers fairly frequently. >:)
Just tried it - no, it won't work. You can get to the "checking for updates" page but then it won't go any further. At some later point I might check to see if I can figure out what's not working, but for now: no, it doesn't work.
It's worth noting that if you use Windows XP with Automatic Updates enabled, you do not need to use Internet Explorer to install updates. (Well, except that I'm fairly sure the dialog box it displays while installing turns out to contain an embedded IE control.)
Not to try and be an ass, but it looks like only three MMORPGs received new datapoints since the last time this was on Slashdot - EverQuest II, World of Warcraft, and Runescape. So this isn't really much of an update.
Not to mention that the author of the page (and article submitter) mentions that the EQ2 and WoW numbers are "preliminary and subject to change." All in all, this is really a non-story and not really worth a Slashdot story. Even if it is only a Games section story.
I'd be much more interested in seeing the numbers in a couple of months, to see how the release of new MMORPGs effected other MMORPGs.
Maybe we should make these MMOG subscription chart stories quarterly instead of monthly, is all I'm saying.:)
If you post anonymously while logged in, it records your user account as having posted it but doesn't mark it publically. They also record the IP address that every post was made from.
You can test the first part if you ever get moderator points. Find a discussion and post AC to it. You won't be allowed to moderate the post you made.
You know what, you're right - I think the NIPRNET changed (relatively) recently. (Where by "relatively" I mean like five to ten years ago.) At one point I'm fairly sure it was completely separate from the Internet but I think at some point they changed it to run over the Internet.
I know the SIPRNET is completely separate. The SIPRNET terminals where I work are in a giant safe that I don't have access to...
They do - the SIPRNET and the NIPRNET. They are basically Internets created by the government using a completely separate physical network. No computer on either of those networks can be on the public Internet.
Remember how the Internet started as a DARPA project? That would be why - because the government wanted a way to send information between offices all over the world.
Notice the article said "sensitive" information, but never "classified" information - that means that any information that the hacker found wasn't considered extremely important to keep safe.
I have a feeling that most of the email read would be of the "really boring" variety. Government workers are people too - so he probably got a load of "I'm stuck in traffic, hopefully be there in 30 minutes" and "Joe's Retirement Party" style emails. Stuff that's basically really boring and not very useful to outsiders. Of course, even information like that could still be considered sensitive, because figuring out where Joe had been in the past six months could help determine what his activities for the past several months are.
Not having ever played EQ, I can't help but say that the new features sound surprisingly like Diablo II. Potion belt? Check. Switching weapon setups? Check. (It sounds more like switching between any weapon setup to any other with a hotkey, not just switching between one-handed and two-handed. I'd hope you could have macroed that ahead of time.)
It seems like they're ripping features from Diablo II, for some reason...
I have to wonder why they're announcing a new expansion pack too. You'd think they'd be pushing for players to migrate to EverQuest II, but apparently they're trying to keep people on EverQuest also. It sounds to me like all they're going to do is hurt the market for EverQuest II - but since they make money regardless, I guess it doesn't really matter.
My favorite misquote from the article: "Players can now buy items!" You mean they couldn't before? (It sounds like they're adding a system to allow players to set prices on items and then other players could buy them off the player without any interaction. Like the bazaar system that Final Fantasy XI has.)
Yes - I know - the "refusing" accidently got dropped in an edit and I missed it before hitting Submit. (Always remember to preview - not that it helps, since "margins" remained "vargins" through like three edits - although I got all the references to CVS.) I already replied to myself explaining that, though, so you're late.:P
Of course, it appears that CBS is somehow managing to refuse to admit that the documents were forgeries while still disciplining people based on them. Oh well.
And now CBS is paying the price for admitting that they made a mistake.
Whoops, that's supposed to read "refusing to admit." If they had just admitted it was a forgery, there would likely be much less of a backlash and people wouldn't be paying the price now. And, if the claims turned out to be true, people might be more willing to listen to them. "Fool me once" and all that. (Someone else can dredge up the Bush quote.)
This isn't really a Democrat vs Republican thing. I would like to hope that if a news organization published similar obviously forged documents showing that Kerry had received Purple Hearts for superficial wounds, that they would be suffering the same fate. Even if the claims did turn out to be "likely true."
How about this: some of the documents were an insanely bad forgery. Humorously bad. They were easily recreated in Microsoft Word with the default settings. No settings need to be changed - the default margins, tab-stops, and font all matched up perfectly. Pixel-perfectly.
Some people have suggested that it might be possible to duplicate the memos on equipment available at the time. Well, it's 100% possible to duplicate the memos using Word without changing any settings, to a pixel-perfect degree. Which is more likely?
Even if the documents were true, they were so obviously fake that there's just no way any journalist with integrity could possibly accept them as legit. They may indeed be copies of real reports, but they were obviously not originals.
And when this was pointed out (because it was so freaking obvious), CBS refused to back down on the story, insisting that the documents were real primary sources. Well - they weren't. And now CBS is paying the price for admitting that they made a mistake.
Yeah, it is kinda sad that it took this long for CBS to finally take action on that story. But even if you do support the Democrats, there's no way you should be able to support CBS's action. Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this. There's a difference between being biased in reporting (which both arguably are) and using obviously false sources as primary sources.
I've played both. WoW is set up so that you can make some amount of progress on any amount of time. If you get a group together, you'll make more progress. If not, then you can still make progress, just at a slower rate.
The thing that WoW has down that a lot of other MMORPGs - and RPGs in general - lack is that they worked real hard to give you a sense of progress. While a quest in FFXI might be "hunt monster until you finally get a single rare drop" a similar quest in WoW might be "hunt monster until you get 6 of an uncommon drop" where "uncommon" means that it drops 10% of the time. So while it might take just as long to complete, you're slowly making progress, instead of slowly getting more and more frusterated. (On that note, my brother finally completed Genkai 1 and can stop bugging me about it...)
Crafting is similar - you're guarenteed to raise a level on certain clearly marked recipes, and you'll never fail. So unlike FFXI were you slowly try and repeat the same recipe endlessly without seeing much progress, in WoW you'll repeat the same recipe endlessly but actually see progress.
This is what people really enjoy in WoW - they feel like they're actually accomplishing something instead of just wasting time. There's nothing more annoying in FFXI than going on a coffer hunt for two hours and not getting a single key, or finally grabbing that rare NM and not getting a drop. (Stupid Ose.) WoW is tweaked to reduce the frusteration factor. That's what's really "revolutionary" about it. Other than that, it's really just a rehash of things that other MMORPGs have already done.
Of course, WoW has only really succeeded in making me more excited about what Square might do for a successor to FFXI. What can I say - it's just not fun if you can't get the Red Mage hat.:)
Here's my question: How does the XBox handle someone who wants to grab their saves and a game they own and head off to a friend's house (who already owns an XBox)? With the PS2 or Game Cube, you just grab the memory card and the game and head over.
I assume you can copy save games between XBoxs when they're connected to the LAN too. This doesn't come up too often, but still - it does come up occasionally.
I don't really want to get into a flame war, but I really don't see how using a hard drive to save games is any better than using a memory card - the flaws with the memory card (small storage space, slow write speed) don't seem to be large enough to really offset the flaws with using a hard drive (lack of portability, more fragile). They're just different. I'm just curious if the XBox has a solution to bringing save games over to your friend's.
Carrying the XBox over and being able to connect them without requiring a TV for both XBoxes is only worth half credit (since a memory card is much smaller and less prone to break if you drop it on the floor).
[Bittorrent is a] protocol that makes the internet slightly more efficient, and not much more.
More efficient? He's obviously never been on the same network as someone using it... "Hey, are you downloading something through BitTorrent again? My ping times just jumped from 100ms to five seconds." "Yeah, sorry."
(And yes, I know you can have it rate limit. The option to do so is really well hidden in the "official" version (namely, edit the registry under Windows to add parameters to the default ".torrent" file action) - this is part of the reason I use Azureus for my BitTorrent needs, because it's much easier to rate limit to make sure other people can use the network. And, no, rate limiting through the actual network isn't a solution I can actually use.)
As I recall, the concern was with automated maintance routines that would suddenly think the elevator hadn't been serviced for 100 years and, after dropping the current load of passengers off, enter maintance mode and refuse to operate. Since the maintance cycle was over some cycle like every two months (I dunno), having a full date would make more sense.
Of course, this is second hand through the fear-mongering media, so what do I know.:)
And this might be a reason why, even after finding images of the game on Amazon.com and remembering the ads, I could not have told you anything about it. Those type of marketing campaigns don't work if you don't also provide information about what the product is. It might draw attention to the ad, but that's about it.
Sex alone doesn't sell anything... A sexy girl playing the game might help sell the game (which is probably Ubisoft's hope), but just a sexy girl and nothing else but the title doesn't quite cut it.
It's the Internet. I'm sure you can find something out there to satisfy the need that isn't an ad for an MMORPG. Besides, as I mentioned in another post, other MMORPGs have cuter character models to oggle at anyway.:P
I think the offense comes because it's a rather crude form of "bait and switch." Presumably most ads using scantily clad women aren't actually selling scantily clad women, they're selling some form of product that isn't a scantily clad woman. It's kind of like "ignore all rational thought about our product, and just follow the bouncing boobs."
There's nothing wrong with scantily clad women. There's nothing wrong with scantily clad women in games. There's something wrong with the many advertising campaigns that appear to be "watch the dancing lady!" instead of trying to appeal to some form of rational thought, like "you'll enjoy playing the game." (Or, "you'll enjoy watching a show about a talking meatball, milkshake, and fries" instead of "watch this lady dance in the background while some old guy says the words to the opening song.")
I mean, I don't mind when Leasure Suit Larry advertises with lots of pictures of scantily clad women and little else, because that's a fair representation of the game, but presumably there's something else to do in Anarchy Online than stare at a female character model...
Wait, you mean that thing on SpikeTV was a gaming award show? I thought it was one of those reality shows, and they were playing a prank on Snoop Dogg.
You have to understand, that every single ad for Anarchy Online I have every seen online was basically "scantily clad woman with Anarchy Online logo" with absolutely nothing to really sell me to the game except the scantily clad woman.
In fact, I can only guess that it's based on some sort of sci-fi setting soley because there appears to be a spaceship in the background, I actually don't know. The ads have told me nothing about what Anarchy Online is. (I suppose, on looking closer now, that the text "the future in your hands" might also suggest a sci-fi theme, but it's so tiny and under the AO logo, I never actually saw it until now.)
One of the ads says "The Best Online Game", which means nothing. What genre is it? I happen to know it's an MMORPG because I've heard about it before, but other than that, I might as well have assumed it was a first person shooter.
There's a difference between "cute" and "gratuitous." The AO ads have struck me as "gratuitous" since, I would assume, scantily clad women are not the main focus of the game. AO seems to use that as a cruch, rather than selling me on, oh, say, the game itself. It really appears that instead of advertising the game, they decided to advertise the character model.
Having been totally bombarded with those ads on certain websites for completely different MMORPGs, I've gotten really sick of them. It's kind of like this: if your only selling point is scantily clad women, and you're not Hugh Hefner, you need to offer something more. (I'd search for the correct spelling, but I'm at work, and don't want to explain why I'm trying to spell Hugh Hefner correctly.)
It just seems kind of ironic that on an interview involving women gamers who've been in a controversy where they've been accused of being nothing but booth babes, who are using sex to try and attract people to Ubisoft, that there would be ads that involve a campaign that is actively using a "game babe," if you will, to try and attract people to an online game.
Besides, everyone knows that the girls in FFXI were cuter.:P
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, see, the iPod can also sync under MacOS X.
(And, of course, there's also this or this, but it's not Apple-supported so it doesn't really count.)
It's an interesting question.
Here's something to think about. I'm using the same computer that I built in 1998. Not a single original part remains, but it's still "the same computer" in that I never actually up and replaced it. It's been incrementally upgraded such that no single original part remains. The operating system has been upgraded, but every time, all the data from the old system was copied into the new system.
Is it really the same computer any more? At what point did it become a "new" computer? When the last original part was replaced? Except that it was still the same computer - the same OS, the same data that made it up.
Assume that we could replace organs or even entire bodies. That would solve (most of) the super-structure problems. But would we still be the same person? The future may involve people living forever, just not in the same body. Instead of preventing the body from aging, we may just replace it every 10 years.
It's a neat thing to think about.
Heh, for some reason, that reminds me of someone in the LUG back at college who apparently was running Debian Testing and had apt-get update or whatever in his crontab.
He stopped that after some upgrade killed his shell. (Which, as I recall, was "also his window manager." Apparently he thought only having a single xterm in his .xinit made bash his window manager.)
tesing login: user
Password:
Segmentation fault: core dumped.
testing login: root
Password:
Segmentation fault: core dumped.
testing login: dammit
I have no idea what beta was like, but I doubt they had anything near the current number of accounts playing the game.
I believe they capped it at 100,000 accounts, although it's unclear how many actually played. However, they only had something like 40 servers, whereas they now have 88 servers. So if we assume that all 100,000 people actually played during the beta and 300,000 people currently are playing (based on the MMOG chart figures), the server load now is higher than it was during the beta.
And I agree that I expect that Blizzard will eventually fix the problems, but we shouldn't just pretend they don't exist. They do exist. World of Warcraft hasn't been experiencing anywhere near a "perfect launch" as some people seem to believe. The problems need to be acknowledged, instead of just brushed off as things related to the launch. The game was launched almost two months ago and, while the servers are more stable than they were at launch, things seem to have recently been getting worse, not better.
I was originally going to try and make a write-up of this story on my own, but then I saw that Tycho had posted a much better version that said basically exactly what I wanted to say. I figured that people would be more likely to respect what Gabe and Tycho have to say on the matter than some random Slashdotter. :)
I really intended this as a counter-point to what appears to be the prevailing opinion that EverQuest 2's release was plagued with flaws and World of Warcraft's wasn't. Blizzard has been having problems since launch. The problems may be perfectly understandable, but they shouldn't just be ignored or written off as "launch instability" - they exist and Blizzard needs to do something to convince people that they understand there are problems and that they're working to fix them. Having a server go down for "emergency maintanence" three times in two days suggests that there's something seriously wrong with the way the servers are running.
I'm beginning to think they're running the servers on Windows 2003 Server - they seem to simply reboot the servers fairly frequently. >:)
Just tried it - no, it won't work. You can get to the "checking for updates" page but then it won't go any further. At some later point I might check to see if I can figure out what's not working, but for now: no, it doesn't work.
It's worth noting that if you use Windows XP with Automatic Updates enabled, you do not need to use Internet Explorer to install updates. (Well, except that I'm fairly sure the dialog box it displays while installing turns out to contain an embedded IE control.)
Not to try and be an ass, but it looks like only three MMORPGs received new datapoints since the last time this was on Slashdot - EverQuest II, World of Warcraft, and Runescape. So this isn't really much of an update.
Not to mention that the author of the page (and article submitter) mentions that the EQ2 and WoW numbers are "preliminary and subject to change." All in all, this is really a non-story and not really worth a Slashdot story. Even if it is only a Games section story.
I'd be much more interested in seeing the numbers in a couple of months, to see how the release of new MMORPGs effected other MMORPGs.
Maybe we should make these MMOG subscription chart stories quarterly instead of monthly, is all I'm saying. :)
If you post anonymously while logged in, it records your user account as having posted it but doesn't mark it publically. They also record the IP address that every post was made from.
You can test the first part if you ever get moderator points. Find a discussion and post AC to it. You won't be allowed to moderate the post you made.
Anonymous Coward isn't that anonymous.
You know what, you're right - I think the NIPRNET changed (relatively) recently. (Where by "relatively" I mean like five to ten years ago.) At one point I'm fairly sure it was completely separate from the Internet but I think at some point they changed it to run over the Internet.
I know the SIPRNET is completely separate. The SIPRNET terminals where I work are in a giant safe that I don't have access to...
They do - the SIPRNET and the NIPRNET. They are basically Internets created by the government using a completely separate physical network. No computer on either of those networks can be on the public Internet.
Remember how the Internet started as a DARPA project? That would be why - because the government wanted a way to send information between offices all over the world.
Notice the article said "sensitive" information, but never "classified" information - that means that any information that the hacker found wasn't considered extremely important to keep safe.
I have a feeling that most of the email read would be of the "really boring" variety. Government workers are people too - so he probably got a load of "I'm stuck in traffic, hopefully be there in 30 minutes" and "Joe's Retirement Party" style emails. Stuff that's basically really boring and not very useful to outsiders. Of course, even information like that could still be considered sensitive, because figuring out where Joe had been in the past six months could help determine what his activities for the past several months are.
In other words: it works exactly like the bazaar system in Final Fantasy XI, like I said.
Not having ever played EQ, I can't help but say that the new features sound surprisingly like Diablo II. Potion belt? Check. Switching weapon setups? Check. (It sounds more like switching between any weapon setup to any other with a hotkey, not just switching between one-handed and two-handed. I'd hope you could have macroed that ahead of time.)
It seems like they're ripping features from Diablo II, for some reason...
I have to wonder why they're announcing a new expansion pack too. You'd think they'd be pushing for players to migrate to EverQuest II, but apparently they're trying to keep people on EverQuest also. It sounds to me like all they're going to do is hurt the market for EverQuest II - but since they make money regardless, I guess it doesn't really matter.
My favorite misquote from the article: "Players can now buy items!" You mean they couldn't before? (It sounds like they're adding a system to allow players to set prices on items and then other players could buy them off the player without any interaction. Like the bazaar system that Final Fantasy XI has.)
Yes - I know - the "refusing" accidently got dropped in an edit and I missed it before hitting Submit. (Always remember to preview - not that it helps, since "margins" remained "vargins" through like three edits - although I got all the references to CVS.) I already replied to myself explaining that, though, so you're late. :P
Of course, it appears that CBS is somehow managing to refuse to admit that the documents were forgeries while still disciplining people based on them. Oh well.
I dunno, that's what makes the Futurama commentary so funny - listening to the writers and producers nitpick their own jokes.
And now CBS is paying the price for admitting that they made a mistake.
Whoops, that's supposed to read "refusing to admit." If they had just admitted it was a forgery, there would likely be much less of a backlash and people wouldn't be paying the price now. And, if the claims turned out to be true, people might be more willing to listen to them. "Fool me once" and all that. (Someone else can dredge up the Bush quote.)
This isn't really a Democrat vs Republican thing. I would like to hope that if a news organization published similar obviously forged documents showing that Kerry had received Purple Hearts for superficial wounds, that they would be suffering the same fate. Even if the claims did turn out to be "likely true."
How about this: some of the documents were an insanely bad forgery. Humorously bad. They were easily recreated in Microsoft Word with the default settings. No settings need to be changed - the default margins, tab-stops, and font all matched up perfectly. Pixel-perfectly.
Some people have suggested that it might be possible to duplicate the memos on equipment available at the time. Well, it's 100% possible to duplicate the memos using Word without changing any settings, to a pixel-perfect degree. Which is more likely?
Even if the documents were true, they were so obviously fake that there's just no way any journalist with integrity could possibly accept them as legit. They may indeed be copies of real reports, but they were obviously not originals.
And when this was pointed out (because it was so freaking obvious), CBS refused to back down on the story, insisting that the documents were real primary sources. Well - they weren't. And now CBS is paying the price for admitting that they made a mistake.
Yeah, it is kinda sad that it took this long for CBS to finally take action on that story. But even if you do support the Democrats, there's no way you should be able to support CBS's action. Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this. There's a difference between being biased in reporting (which both arguably are) and using obviously false sources as primary sources.
I've played both. WoW is set up so that you can make some amount of progress on any amount of time. If you get a group together, you'll make more progress. If not, then you can still make progress, just at a slower rate.
The thing that WoW has down that a lot of other MMORPGs - and RPGs in general - lack is that they worked real hard to give you a sense of progress. While a quest in FFXI might be "hunt monster until you finally get a single rare drop" a similar quest in WoW might be "hunt monster until you get 6 of an uncommon drop" where "uncommon" means that it drops 10% of the time. So while it might take just as long to complete, you're slowly making progress, instead of slowly getting more and more frusterated. (On that note, my brother finally completed Genkai 1 and can stop bugging me about it...)
Crafting is similar - you're guarenteed to raise a level on certain clearly marked recipes, and you'll never fail. So unlike FFXI were you slowly try and repeat the same recipe endlessly without seeing much progress, in WoW you'll repeat the same recipe endlessly but actually see progress.
This is what people really enjoy in WoW - they feel like they're actually accomplishing something instead of just wasting time. There's nothing more annoying in FFXI than going on a coffer hunt for two hours and not getting a single key, or finally grabbing that rare NM and not getting a drop. (Stupid Ose.) WoW is tweaked to reduce the frusteration factor. That's what's really "revolutionary" about it. Other than that, it's really just a rehash of things that other MMORPGs have already done.
Of course, WoW has only really succeeded in making me more excited about what Square might do for a successor to FFXI. What can I say - it's just not fun if you can't get the Red Mage hat. :)
Here's my question: How does the XBox handle someone who wants to grab their saves and a game they own and head off to a friend's house (who already owns an XBox)? With the PS2 or Game Cube, you just grab the memory card and the game and head over.
I assume you can copy save games between XBoxs when they're connected to the LAN too. This doesn't come up too often, but still - it does come up occasionally.
I don't really want to get into a flame war, but I really don't see how using a hard drive to save games is any better than using a memory card - the flaws with the memory card (small storage space, slow write speed) don't seem to be large enough to really offset the flaws with using a hard drive (lack of portability, more fragile). They're just different. I'm just curious if the XBox has a solution to bringing save games over to your friend's.
Carrying the XBox over and being able to connect them without requiring a TV for both XBoxes is only worth half credit (since a memory card is much smaller and less prone to break if you drop it on the floor).
[Bittorrent is a] protocol that makes the internet slightly more efficient, and not much more.
More efficient? He's obviously never been on the same network as someone using it... "Hey, are you downloading something through BitTorrent again? My ping times just jumped from 100ms to five seconds." "Yeah, sorry."
(And yes, I know you can have it rate limit. The option to do so is really well hidden in the "official" version (namely, edit the registry under Windows to add parameters to the default ".torrent" file action) - this is part of the reason I use Azureus for my BitTorrent needs, because it's much easier to rate limit to make sure other people can use the network. And, no, rate limiting through the actual network isn't a solution I can actually use.)
As I recall, the concern was with automated maintance routines that would suddenly think the elevator hadn't been serviced for 100 years and, after dropping the current load of passengers off, enter maintance mode and refuse to operate. Since the maintance cycle was over some cycle like every two months (I dunno), having a full date would make more sense.
Of course, this is second hand through the fear-mongering media, so what do I know. :)
And this might be a reason why, even after finding images of the game on Amazon.com and remembering the ads, I could not have told you anything about it. Those type of marketing campaigns don't work if you don't also provide information about what the product is. It might draw attention to the ad, but that's about it.
Sex alone doesn't sell anything... A sexy girl playing the game might help sell the game (which is probably Ubisoft's hope), but just a sexy girl and nothing else but the title doesn't quite cut it.
It's the Internet. I'm sure you can find something out there to satisfy the need that isn't an ad for an MMORPG. Besides, as I mentioned in another post, other MMORPGs have cuter character models to oggle at anyway. :P
I think the offense comes because it's a rather crude form of "bait and switch." Presumably most ads using scantily clad women aren't actually selling scantily clad women, they're selling some form of product that isn't a scantily clad woman. It's kind of like "ignore all rational thought about our product, and just follow the bouncing boobs."
There's nothing wrong with scantily clad women. There's nothing wrong with scantily clad women in games. There's something wrong with the many advertising campaigns that appear to be "watch the dancing lady!" instead of trying to appeal to some form of rational thought, like "you'll enjoy playing the game." (Or, "you'll enjoy watching a show about a talking meatball, milkshake, and fries" instead of "watch this lady dance in the background while some old guy says the words to the opening song.")
I mean, I don't mind when Leasure Suit Larry advertises with lots of pictures of scantily clad women and little else, because that's a fair representation of the game, but presumably there's something else to do in Anarchy Online than stare at a female character model...
Wait, you mean that thing on SpikeTV was a gaming award show? I thought it was one of those reality shows, and they were playing a prank on Snoop Dogg.
You have to understand, that every single ad for Anarchy Online I have every seen online was basically "scantily clad woman with Anarchy Online logo" with absolutely nothing to really sell me to the game except the scantily clad woman.
In fact, I can only guess that it's based on some sort of sci-fi setting soley because there appears to be a spaceship in the background, I actually don't know. The ads have told me nothing about what Anarchy Online is. (I suppose, on looking closer now, that the text "the future in your hands" might also suggest a sci-fi theme, but it's so tiny and under the AO logo, I never actually saw it until now.)
One of the ads says "The Best Online Game", which means nothing. What genre is it? I happen to know it's an MMORPG because I've heard about it before, but other than that, I might as well have assumed it was a first person shooter.
There's a difference between "cute" and "gratuitous." The AO ads have struck me as "gratuitous" since, I would assume, scantily clad women are not the main focus of the game. AO seems to use that as a cruch, rather than selling me on, oh, say, the game itself. It really appears that instead of advertising the game, they decided to advertise the character model.
Having been totally bombarded with those ads on certain websites for completely different MMORPGs, I've gotten really sick of them. It's kind of like this: if your only selling point is scantily clad women, and you're not Hugh Hefner, you need to offer something more. (I'd search for the correct spelling, but I'm at work, and don't want to explain why I'm trying to spell Hugh Hefner correctly.)
It just seems kind of ironic that on an interview involving women gamers who've been in a controversy where they've been accused of being nothing but booth babes, who are using sex to try and attract people to Ubisoft, that there would be ads that involve a campaign that is actively using a "game babe," if you will, to try and attract people to an online game.
Besides, everyone knows that the girls in FFXI were cuter. :P