Here's a thought: Talk about what you are sure of.
If you are developing a two-player third-person shooter for the PS2 based on a license from Gilmore Girls, you know for a fact that the game will feature Lorelai and Rory fighting their way through the streets of a quaint little Northwest town. They will consume coffee for power-ups, and will use the local diner as a base of operations. You can tell them all about the back-story you are using for the game ("Stars Hallow is being attacked by zombies") without too much fear that you will end up looking like an idiot.
On the other hand, if you choose to brag about some outrageous new feature when you are not sure you will be able to pull it off (as in "The cool thing about our trees is that every single leaf will be individually rendered as 3D ojects based on a random leaf-generation system that we are carefully modeling on real trees! We are taking similar care to make sure the leaves change color every autumn, but differently every time you play the game, based on what the weather has been like!"), you deserve all the scorn and hatred you eventually get when you fail to deliver as promised.
"Obviously - I am not concerned about the welfare of balls of cells roughly a millimeter in diameter."
Pardon me for asking, but why is it obvious that an athiest/humanist would hold that position? I would think that there are probably a lot of athiests out there who feel very strongly that all human life, which faces total annihilation upon the moment of its death, should be cherished and protected. In fact, abortion might be seen as far worse than murder to a person who does not believe in the existence of some kind of eternal "soul" or "spirit", because the aborted person is not even being allowed to live long enough to even actualize their existence.
Likewise, there are probably a lot of religious people who believe in some "better place" that the unborn fetus is going to, who figure that some people are better off going straight to the Promised Land anyway, and aborting them may very well be doing them a favor.
Far be it from me to start a flame war here. I've seen the futility which is an on-line abortion debate, and I'm one of those "between" people that the grandparent post was talking about anyway, but I'm just curious why you seem to believe there's an automatic correlation of atheism/humanism and the opinion that the fate of a zygote doesn't matter.
Well, I'm not calling for RPG story-text writers like you to be fired off. I'm just saying that not every frikken game has to take the exact same approach to making their content richer.
Also, forcing the other 95% of players to follow the path of that 5% is not the way to make your MMORPG a richer experience. The reason why most people don't bother with it when it's "optional" is because most people don't find it all that much fun.
Remember how flipped out we all were when Quake added 360 movement to the FPS? When EverQuest added graphics and movement to the concept of a MUD? When Descent divorced flight-sim physics from space combat gaming? When Warcraft liberated computer strategy games from "waiting for the other players to go," in favor or RTS? The mid-90's were chock full of interesting new ways to play games on a computer. I miss that. I just can't get excited about SWG, because there really isn't anything new there. There hasn't been a FPS that turned my head since Jedi Knight.
I even miss the failed experiments from those days. "Die by the Sword" was a combat game in which you swung your weapon by using a complex set of key strokes to specifically "move the sword from upper-right to middle-left, while extending the arm."
Now days, it seems like PC game developers would rather chase after duplicating past successes than come out with anything new. All the really interesting gambles are happening in the console gaming world, which has it's share of stagnant "me too" games, but also seems to have plenty of room for new ideas. "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball," for the X-Box, as an example, is a delightfully weird hybrid of Japanese dating sims, a simple sports game, cartoon pin-ups, and cut-out dolls. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's certainly a lot more interesting to discuss than the whatever next iteration of "Left vs. RIght fighting" will be.
Anyway, I'm starting to stray way off-topic. My original point was that, before I spend my hard-earned money on yet another MMORPG, I want to see some real innovation from somebody. The current favored approach to making them more interesting ("let's slap some 'missions' content on that thing!") is not going to cut it with me. Nor, I suspect, with a lot of other people.
Mudding harbors a very different gaming culture than the mainstream gaming scene. I know, because like a lot of geeks, I ruined myself academically for a semester upon discovering MUD's and forfeiting lots of sleep and study time. It's a whole different crowd.
Like I said before, a lot of people find enjoyment in power-leveling... for a while. Some get a kick out of quests and interesting story elements... for a while. However, what's keeping people on the EverQuest servers long after far more interesting MMORPG's with superior engines and graphics have come along is the social community. (Disclaimer: I no longer play EQ. I am only passing along what those who do still play have told me about why they are still at it.)
A lot of game designers look at the ruts that EQ and AC players complain about, and think "monster camping is no fun... what we need are more quests/missions!"
The problem with that is, if monster farming is a treadmill, most single-player quests (and their MMORPG equivalents) are monorails.
Sure, there are some people who really get off on reading all that carefully-scripted NPC chatter, paragraph after paragraph of it, like you find in a lot of NWN modules, but most of us don't fire up a High Fantasy Adventure game so we can read pre-generated text. If we wanted that, we could re-read our LOTR books, including all of Tom Bombadil's meandering poetry, a copy of which is probably sitting in the immediate vicinity of each of our computers.
Here's a little secret for you "let's make lots of missions" guys: Everquest if chock full of quests, but the vast majority of players find it less boring to "kite" wandering guards, "farm" bandits, or "camp" the minotaur caves than to perform them. The only popular quests are the ones which drop some coveted piece of l00t that you could not get any other way. In other words, most of the players don't find the quests all that much fun, and only bother with them for the rewards, so that they really just end up being an even-more tedious form of The Treadmill. Plus, questing limits both the options of behavior and possibilities of outcome.
When I talk to people who continued to play EQ long after the Level Treadmill got boring for them, they almost always say the same thing: They continued to play for the social aspect of the game. That's right, those "EQ Weddings" we all snickered at when they first started happening, along with silly player-organized events (such as the infamous Naked Troll Run) are what keep people paying their subscription fees for a game that it now very long in the tooth.
Why not develop a game which throws the D&D/MUD convention of levelling out the window entirely? A sort of Tolkein-esque version of The Sims Online, if you will. Create a world that's full of fun things for your avatar to do... really fun things, not just reward-driven things. Interesting game-within-the-game diversions that players can get involved in while making small-talk. Give out meaningless medals or something to show off to others when difficult challenges are met, rather than ramping up character powers in ways that can actually interfere with the social interaction which is the true drive behind the game.
Before somebody has a cow about my suggestion being less appealing than good ol' hack-n-slash RPG's, those games will still be out there. Go play EQ and see how fast you can level that Iksar Necromancer, and be sure to use the EQVault and Caster's Realm web sites to find the phattest quests, so you don't waste your time actually talking to NPC's.
All I'm talking about is the possibility of just one MMO game out there for those of us that just don't care about that sort of bullshit anymore.
I was commenting more on the "slippery slope" argument being less than valad, rather than on this particular case, which I am not very familiar with (nor are most of the people in this thread, truth be told.)
But since I have that "catastrophic-only" insurance from a medical insurance company who negotiates the same way places like Blue Cross/Blue Shield does, I get those insurance-company adjustments, even for the money I pay (because that money is considered a "deductible"), so the end result for me is win-win. I have only the coverage I want, and I don't pay single-buyer prices for what I pay for.
I think everyone has to admit that there is a slippery slope for freedom of speech
I am always suspicious of "slippery slope" arguments, because they are almost always used to defend radical positions. The "slippery slope" argument usually says "we can not allow these modest, sensible, and moderate restrictions to $FREEDOM, because they will surely lead to fascist, insane, extreme limitations of $FREEDOM," and is applied to gun control ("take away our rocket launchers, and our hunting rifles will be next!"), abortion ("require that abortions be performed by medical doctors, and soon nobody will be allowed to perform them!"), religion ("look, any government with the power to say that I can't perform ritual sex acts on children can turn arround and say you can't drink sacramental wine!"), and speech ("once they are done rounding up all the people trying to incite violent revolt against the government, the publishers of Reason magazine had better watch their ass!")
It is also frequently used by the big-government extremists to hold on to powers they should not have; such as with drug laws, "If we legalize marajuana, then it's just a matter of time before they will have crack cocaine in convenience stores!" environmental protection, "If the people who want to log these 200 acres are allowed to win, soon they will be strip-mining Yellowstone Park!" and again, with abortion, "if you allow abortions in cases of rape and incest, then every woman who wants an abortion will just claim she was raped, so it will be the same as allowing all abortions!" You get the idea.
My point is, you almost never hear the "slippery slope" argument applied to defend a position which can stand on it's own merits, removed from the political ideology for which it was chosen as a battleground.
As a self-employed and reasonably healthy person, I get catastrphic-only insurance.
For about $100 per month, I am not covered for piddly little expenses like antibiotics or doctor visits, but once my expenses exceed my deductible, I stop paying, and full coverage kicks in.
This way, I know for a fact that I will never need to pay more than $1500 in any given year for health care. I pay the first 1000, and half of the next 1000. If I have a $100,000 medical problem, it only costs me $1500 (plus the $1200 I spent that year on premiums.)
In other words, catastrophic-only coverage is what insurance is supposed to be: insurance. If you don't have any serious ongoing health problems, it's a much better deal than the uber-plans which cover everything from prescription drugs to marriage councilling.
Incorrect. I pulled that statistic out of my ass. I made a wild guess, because the actual number is not that important, the fact remains that most of the music moving arround on Napster was big-label pop.
People dont buy records anymore, what good is a record label?
Record sales are down, due to several factors, including a crappy economy and a very bland pop-music landscape. That does not translate to "People don't buy records anymore." Not everybody has an Internet connection at home, and only a small fraction of those people have the broadband connections that a typical slashdotter enjoys. Most music listeners still buy albums.
Offer free music to get a fanbase, and then sell the music to the fans. You can offer promotions by letting people have free music, you can also promote your music by web radio which you keep ignoring.
I keep ignoring web radio? It wasn't mentioned in the thread I was commenting in, but okay. Here's a clue: Almost everybody is ignoring web radio. You know what the biggest problem with web radio is? You can't listen to it in your car, which is where most people listen to the radio. The only people who are booting up PC's to listen to web radio are the sort of people who were already seeking out indie bands anyway. You will never reach the kind of mass market the big labels access if you rely on computer-based streaming to reach your audience.
Most bands and musicians arent asking to be celebrities.
Are you joking? Most pop bands aren't looking for anything other than to be celebrities.
getting a record deal is like getting into the NBA, so lets be realistic.
I wasn't writing about an individual band's chances of making a living, which are horrible with or without a big-label contract. I was writing about the odds of one of these schemes toppling the mighty labels, which is probably even longer odds. Your point that the labels only "choose the top 1%" underscores what I was saying, which is that, for all their abuses, the big record labels will continue to lock up all the most marketable talent in exclusive contracts.
Like I was saying before, the greatest strength the big, evil record labels have is their wealth. They can out-promote any other business model for selling music currently out there, as well as all of the ones that have been suggested in Cringely's articles and these threads. Snapster will not kill them. P2P pyramid schemes will not kill them. Only a media empire equally able to influence mass media entertainment has a prayer of even running side-by-side with them.
The new Radio will be web radio
No it won't. The new Radio probably won't be XM either, unless it starts getting bundled free with digital TV subscriptions.
the new MTV will be streaming videos
Notice how MTV hardly ever plays music videos anymore? It's almost all reality shows and crap. The reason for that simple: most people don't sit around watching music videos the way they did when the concept was new and fresh in the mid-80's. The "music video" is no longer a very effective means of promoting an album, unless you're using soft-core pronography to sell the albums of teen princesses (i.e. Brittney in that disheveled school uniform, tATu making out in the rain, Chrintina Aguilara rolling around in the sand, etc.) If people are unwilling to sit on their couch for 3.5 minutes watching the latest video from some power-trio, why would they bother to browse to their web site, click on the link to stream it, wait for the player to fill the buffer, and watch the same video in a desk chair in front of their PC?
you may need to work hard to make your site popular, but people have done it. Laim Lynch for example.
Liam Lynch!? He's a big-time TV producer, personally tutored in music performance by Paul McCartney, who parlayed the success of his hit MTV show (and his connections to m
99% of the files that were on napster were recordings that were owned and therefore promoted by the major labels. All Napster did was step in with a system do redistribute them illegally. Napster didn't need anybody promoting Metallica or Britney Spears because those acts had already been marketed, very effectively, to the general public.
This brings us to the main problem with Cringely's idea, as well as most of the other ideas being suggested here. From the article:
What about the artists? Aren't they hurt by Snapster in either form? Frankly, they were already hurting and Snapster actually offers a way out of a bad situation. [snip] Snapster does little to hurt the musicians if we look back at their earlier work. Looking toward future music, the thing to do is not produce a CD at all, but instead do a direct distribution deal with Snapster. This would be a deal that isn't based on the subjective opinion of some record exec, but rather, allows all music in and pays royalties based on downloads or streams played. If musicians want marketing under this new system, let them pay for it or do it themselves.
The thing is, you don't need a Snapster, or a P2P pyramid, or anything else along those lines for that to happen. Just start your own record label, one which does not fuck over the artists.
This has, of course, been tried thousands of times over. It's called the indie market.
What keeps the big labels big is not their structure, or their jealous guarding of IP. It's their money.
What can a small label (or an Internet distribution scheme) offer a band who wants to become popular? They can make the music available to those who've heard of it, but that's about it. If you want promotion, you will have to pay for it yourself.
A big, evil company can offer radio play, MTV promotion, a chance to play in huge stadiums as an opening act for an already established band, your single shoe-horned into the soundtrack of the latest teen-sex comedy, an invitation to be heard playing a track on the latest pointless "tribute album" to some act that was big 20 years ago, your songs in the background of the latest Mountain Dew commercial. If your lead singer is a good-looking female, she can do ads for cosmetics or something. (Have you seen those hair-color ads with Natalie Imbruglia and Beyonce? Notice how they both get an on-screen credit, in a comercial! This is what corporate marketing schmucks call "synergy.")
Now, you are a 20-year old dumbfuck from Portland. You've got a band that sounds pretty good, and local bar-goers are getting into it, but you hardly have enough money for food, let alone promoting your album. You dream of someday playing your music huge crowds and living like Eddie Van Halen. One day, three sales reps call you with three very different offers: 1. An indie label offers to press 2,000 CD's for you, mostly at your expense, paid up front with money from your gigs. They offer no real advertising, but promise to work hard as local promoters. They can even get the head shop on the corner to put it next to the water bongs on the impulse rack! 2.An Internet start-up offers a way to get your stuff on-line, where people will browse over your name without recognition while looking for the latest U2 single, and maybe, just maybe some of them will double-click your MP3 sample to check you out. All your income will come via PayPal, which you have never heard of, at a rate of $0.50 per song. Also no advertising in this deal, but it's an Internet company, with all the prestige that comes with being a.com in 2003! 3. V2 Records wants to sign you to a 5-record deal, and plans to have you opening for The White Stripes next year. They will front you the money to record your album in Jimmy Jam's uber-studio in Minneapolis, and will spend about $2 Million promoting your first single. Okay, guitar-playing kid from Portland, which path will you choose? 3? Thought so.
Actually, a better use for my money just occurred to me.
Buying the next two years of coverage for my iBook 700MHz w/DVD/CDRW Combo will cost me what, $300?
If I can manage sell that iBook for $900 (which is not far off the going rate for that particular configuration,) I could turn around and buy a new 12" iBook 900MHz, which not only buys me another year of warranty, but sports a faster CPU, twice the video memory, and twice HD space. Total net cost: about $400.
Time to activate that eBay seller's account, I think.:)
I think he means the interest you could be making if you held that $300 in a savings or investment account instead of spending it on a warranty, and he has a point.
In the case of powerbooks it might be worth it, because:
1. They are expensive. 2. They are expensive to fix. 3. They hold their value a lot longer than desktop computers, or even Windows laptops.
That third point is an important one. A three year-old PC is considered so obsolete that most people have already sold it off and replaced it before then. Paying for a warranty that extends beyond the time that the laptop costs less than the warranty is silly.
However my first Mac laptop (a Duo) was eight years old before I finally moved up to my iBook last year. After a year, the used iBook still goes on the street for more than 80% of what I paid for it new, and even the original iBooks from three years ago tend to sell for about $600, which is about half of their original value.
It looks like my iBook will support OS X 10.3, but even if it fails to run 10.4 or 10.5, I will continue to use it for as long as it meets my needs, while socking away for that G7-based mind-reading Powerbook that comes out in 2009, or whatever.
I have an iBook that I love, but I fried the video card in the 11th month of the 1-year warranty. Apple replaced the motherboard with no questions asked. My year-old iBook is still worth about $800-$900 on the open market, and I am seriously considering spending the money to extend the warranty with AppleCare.
The only downside is that I am considering swapping a 60GB HD into it, and that sort of thing might void their warranty.
I also need to consider this: It has a brand-new motherboard in it. Assuming, pessimistically, that it only lasts another year or two, my iBook might already be worth a lot less by the time it needs servicing again. If there are entire iBooks going on eBay for $500 by that time, it would be pretty silly to have spent $250 on a maintenance program. The more frugal move might be to gamble on it lasting long enough that the cost of any replacement parts I end up actually needing will cost less than AppleCare.
Anyway, I have another week or so to decide. I'm going to chat with the geeks at the Megamall Apple Store in Bloomington, MN before I decide.
The other major "rogue" skill, besides thievery, is scouting. In large-scale campaigns, they are pretty good at sneaking behind enemy lines for recon.
As for the backstab, it does a lot of damage, but the intention is that you avoid melee one way or another so the enemy will ignore you, then you sneak in to the flank and jab them, especially if it looks like that +10d6 will probably be enough to finish them off.
If any monster lets a rogue just hang around on their flank for an entire melee confrontation without repositioning themselves, they deserve the quick death that will surely follow.
Unless multiclassed as a fighter, the clever rogue avoids danger whenever possible, looking out first for their own safety before helping those heavily armed and armored thugs chop up the monsters. Giving the rogue a lower HP serves to motivate the player to adhere to this mentality.
By the way, the Rogue hit die is really not so pathetic as you make it sound. Monsters, clerics, monks, druids, and now rangers all average 4.5 HP per level. Rogues average 3.5 per level, meaning that a level 10 rogue will only have an average 10 HP less that a cleric with the same constitution at tenth level. That's a difference of one good sword blow from a strong level 10 fighter. Add to that the fact that mid-level Rogues tend to have fantastic dodge bonuses, and can never be caught flat-footed, and I would insist that they are really well-balanced, if not a bit munchkiny. Sure, they don't melee as well as a fighter or barbarian, but they are not supposed to. Be creative and sneaky, and your rogue will be absolutely murderous.
I started the work for my own use, so I didn't really care about the legal issues at the time.
I might share the love eventually, but I only did it for 3.0, and somebody out there with more ambition than me will probably beat me to passing out an HTML-converted 3.5 version, complete with indexed linking.
I've found that it's totally worth doing, whether you are a player of DM. Especially if you index-link the spells from the class lists and such.
Does the OGL let us share this sort of work, I wonder? (I probably can't share mine anyway, as I removed all the license information and stuff from most of the pages while I was editing them.)
My "DM screen" is an LCD. The iBook takes care of all of my roles, as well as holding all my notes and maps. I also have HTML-ized some of the core rules so I can look up spells, monsters and items quickly.
Paperless, bookless DMing rocks! I no longer need to lug around 60 pounds of 2nd Edition books and notebooks when DMing away from home.
If your rogue was going into melee a lot, then you were playing him wrong. Rogues do not get many extra hit points because they make it their business to almost never need them.
The Rogue Way is to let the foolish Paladins keep the monsters busy, while you sneak off and help yourself to the best gems in the treasure horde. They might resent your "cowardice," but what are they going to do about it? Kick you out of the trap-filled dungeon for not joining the fight?
Insist that you are a pacifist by nature, and can't stand the sight of blood. They might not know about that noble Duke you once stabbed between the ribs in order to liberate the deeds to his properties in the East, which you later sold for a tidy sum.
If you really want to help the party, buy items with your ill-gotten gains that enhance your sneakiness, such as a ring of invisibility. Then you can silently slip around to the enemies flank, use magic items to confound them from a hidden alcove, and finally emerge to backstab the poor bastard at just the right moment.
If that kind of play does not appeal to you, then maybe you should play a fighter... or a rogue on EverQuest.
+2 dipolomacy? I thought one of the traits of the race is that they never feel at home with either human or elves. Why would an outcast get a diplomacy bonus in neither parent race seems them as "one of us"?
Because years of practice at dealing with awkward social situations has honed their skills at smoothing out relations in tense situations. Also, their mixed lineage makes them perceived obvious choices when you need a neutral adjudicator in a dispute. "The king wants to clear out a forrest for more farm land, the elves say no... let's get a half-elf to help settle the dispute."
Half-elves are the most shafted race by 3rd Edition. They lack the bonus feat and skills of humans, but do not gain most of the elven advantages either. Adding diplomacy almost makes them an interesting race to play again.
Well, if we are indeed going to be getting pedantic, the mouse occupied the only DB-9 connector on the 128, so you would still be out of luck, unless you were to load a CLI-based OS on it (which I suppose you would need, if you were going to hook up terminals to it.)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh well, you can't win 'em all.
I just might cave in and buy one of those, sooner or later. Thanks for the link, Q-K.
If you are developing a two-player third-person shooter for the PS2 based on a license from Gilmore Girls, you know for a fact that the game will feature Lorelai and Rory fighting their way through the streets of a quaint little Northwest town. They will consume coffee for power-ups, and will use the local diner as a base of operations. You can tell them all about the back-story you are using for the game ("Stars Hallow is being attacked by zombies") without too much fear that you will end up looking like an idiot.
On the other hand, if you choose to brag about some outrageous new feature when you are not sure you will be able to pull it off (as in "The cool thing about our trees is that every single leaf will be individually rendered as 3D ojects based on a random leaf-generation system that we are carefully modeling on real trees! We are taking similar care to make sure the leaves change color every autumn, but differently every time you play the game, based on what the weather has been like!"), you deserve all the scorn and hatred you eventually get when you fail to deliver as promised.
Pardon me for asking, but why is it obvious that an athiest/humanist would hold that position? I would think that there are probably a lot of athiests out there who feel very strongly that all human life, which faces total annihilation upon the moment of its death, should be cherished and protected. In fact, abortion might be seen as far worse than murder to a person who does not believe in the existence of some kind of eternal "soul" or "spirit", because the aborted person is not even being allowed to live long enough to even actualize their existence.
Likewise, there are probably a lot of religious people who believe in some "better place" that the unborn fetus is going to, who figure that some people are better off going straight to the Promised Land anyway, and aborting them may very well be doing them a favor.
Far be it from me to start a flame war here. I've seen the futility which is an on-line abortion debate, and I'm one of those "between" people that the grandparent post was talking about anyway, but I'm just curious why you seem to believe there's an automatic correlation of atheism/humanism and the opinion that the fate of a zygote doesn't matter.
Gawd, where are my mod points when somebody says something really funny?
Also, forcing the other 95% of players to follow the path of that 5% is not the way to make your MMORPG a richer experience. The reason why most people don't bother with it when it's "optional" is because most people don't find it all that much fun.
Remember how flipped out we all were when Quake added 360 movement to the FPS? When EverQuest added graphics and movement to the concept of a MUD? When Descent divorced flight-sim physics from space combat gaming? When Warcraft liberated computer strategy games from "waiting for the other players to go," in favor or RTS? The mid-90's were chock full of interesting new ways to play games on a computer. I miss that. I just can't get excited about SWG, because there really isn't anything new there. There hasn't been a FPS that turned my head since Jedi Knight.
I even miss the failed experiments from those days. "Die by the Sword" was a combat game in which you swung your weapon by using a complex set of key strokes to specifically "move the sword from upper-right to middle-left, while extending the arm."
Now days, it seems like PC game developers would rather chase after duplicating past successes than come out with anything new. All the really interesting gambles are happening in the console gaming world, which has it's share of stagnant "me too" games, but also seems to have plenty of room for new ideas. "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball," for the X-Box, as an example, is a delightfully weird hybrid of Japanese dating sims, a simple sports game, cartoon pin-ups, and cut-out dolls. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's certainly a lot more interesting to discuss than the whatever next iteration of "Left vs. RIght fighting" will be.
Anyway, I'm starting to stray way off-topic. My original point was that, before I spend my hard-earned money on yet another MMORPG, I want to see some real innovation from somebody. The current favored approach to making them more interesting ("let's slap some 'missions' content on that thing!") is not going to cut it with me. Nor, I suspect, with a lot of other people.
Like I said before, a lot of people find enjoyment in power-leveling... for a while. Some get a kick out of quests and interesting story elements... for a while. However, what's keeping people on the EverQuest servers long after far more interesting MMORPG's with superior engines and graphics have come along is the social community. (Disclaimer: I no longer play EQ. I am only passing along what those who do still play have told me about why they are still at it.)
The problem with that is, if monster farming is a treadmill, most single-player quests (and their MMORPG equivalents) are monorails.
Sure, there are some people who really get off on reading all that carefully-scripted NPC chatter, paragraph after paragraph of it, like you find in a lot of NWN modules, but most of us don't fire up a High Fantasy Adventure game so we can read pre-generated text. If we wanted that, we could re-read our LOTR books, including all of Tom Bombadil's meandering poetry, a copy of which is probably sitting in the immediate vicinity of each of our computers.
Here's a little secret for you "let's make lots of missions" guys: Everquest if chock full of quests, but the vast majority of players find it less boring to "kite" wandering guards, "farm" bandits, or "camp" the minotaur caves than to perform them. The only popular quests are the ones which drop some coveted piece of l00t that you could not get any other way. In other words, most of the players don't find the quests all that much fun, and only bother with them for the rewards, so that they really just end up being an even-more tedious form of The Treadmill. Plus, questing limits both the options of behavior and possibilities of outcome.
When I talk to people who continued to play EQ long after the Level Treadmill got boring for them, they almost always say the same thing: They continued to play for the social aspect of the game. That's right, those "EQ Weddings" we all snickered at when they first started happening, along with silly player-organized events (such as the infamous Naked Troll Run) are what keep people paying their subscription fees for a game that it now very long in the tooth.
Why not develop a game which throws the D&D/MUD convention of levelling out the window entirely? A sort of Tolkein-esque version of The Sims Online, if you will. Create a world that's full of fun things for your avatar to do... really fun things, not just reward-driven things. Interesting game-within-the-game diversions that players can get involved in while making small-talk. Give out meaningless medals or something to show off to others when difficult challenges are met, rather than ramping up character powers in ways that can actually interfere with the social interaction which is the true drive behind the game.
Before somebody has a cow about my suggestion being less appealing than good ol' hack-n-slash RPG's, those games will still be out there. Go play EQ and see how fast you can level that Iksar Necromancer, and be sure to use the EQVault and Caster's Realm web sites to find the phattest quests, so you don't waste your time actually talking to NPC's.
All I'm talking about is the possibility of just one MMO game out there for those of us that just don't care about that sort of bullshit anymore.
Not that I'm putting you on my "Friends" list or anything... I stopped monkeying with that /. feature months ago.
I was commenting more on the "slippery slope" argument being less than valad, rather than on this particular case, which I am not very familiar with (nor are most of the people in this thread, truth be told.)
But since I have that "catastrophic-only" insurance from a medical insurance company who negotiates the same way places like Blue Cross/Blue Shield does, I get those insurance-company adjustments, even for the money I pay (because that money is considered a "deductible"), so the end result for me is win-win. I have only the coverage I want, and I don't pay single-buyer prices for what I pay for.
I am always suspicious of "slippery slope" arguments, because they are almost always used to defend radical positions. The "slippery slope" argument usually says "we can not allow these modest, sensible, and moderate restrictions to $FREEDOM, because they will surely lead to fascist, insane, extreme limitations of $FREEDOM," and is applied to gun control ("take away our rocket launchers, and our hunting rifles will be next!"), abortion ("require that abortions be performed by medical doctors, and soon nobody will be allowed to perform them!"), religion ("look, any government with the power to say that I can't perform ritual sex acts on children can turn arround and say you can't drink sacramental wine!"), and speech ("once they are done rounding up all the people trying to incite violent revolt against the government, the publishers of Reason magazine had better watch their ass!")
It is also frequently used by the big-government extremists to hold on to powers they should not have; such as with drug laws, "If we legalize marajuana, then it's just a matter of time before they will have crack cocaine in convenience stores!" environmental protection, "If the people who want to log these 200 acres are allowed to win, soon they will be strip-mining Yellowstone Park!" and again, with abortion, "if you allow abortions in cases of rape and incest, then every woman who wants an abortion will just claim she was raped, so it will be the same as allowing all abortions!" You get the idea.
My point is, you almost never hear the "slippery slope" argument applied to defend a position which can stand on it's own merits, removed from the political ideology for which it was chosen as a battleground.
For about $100 per month, I am not covered for piddly little expenses like antibiotics or doctor visits, but once my expenses exceed my deductible, I stop paying, and full coverage kicks in.
This way, I know for a fact that I will never need to pay more than $1500 in any given year for health care. I pay the first 1000, and half of the next 1000. If I have a $100,000 medical problem, it only costs me $1500 (plus the $1200 I spent that year on premiums.)
In other words, catastrophic-only coverage is what insurance is supposed to be: insurance. If you don't have any serious ongoing health problems, it's a much better deal than the uber-plans which cover everything from prescription drugs to marriage councilling.
Incorrect. I pulled that statistic out of my ass. I made a wild guess, because the actual number is not that important, the fact remains that most of the music moving arround on Napster was big-label pop.
People dont buy records anymore, what good is a record label?
Record sales are down, due to several factors, including a crappy economy and a very bland pop-music landscape. That does not translate to "People don't buy records anymore." Not everybody has an Internet connection at home, and only a small fraction of those people have the broadband connections that a typical slashdotter enjoys. Most music listeners still buy albums.
Offer free music to get a fanbase, and then sell the music to the fans. You can offer promotions by letting people have free music, you can also promote your music by web radio which you keep ignoring.
I keep ignoring web radio? It wasn't mentioned in the thread I was commenting in, but okay. Here's a clue: Almost everybody is ignoring web radio. You know what the biggest problem with web radio is? You can't listen to it in your car, which is where most people listen to the radio. The only people who are booting up PC's to listen to web radio are the sort of people who were already seeking out indie bands anyway. You will never reach the kind of mass market the big labels access if you rely on computer-based streaming to reach your audience.
Most bands and musicians arent asking to be celebrities.
Are you joking? Most pop bands aren't looking for anything other than to be celebrities.
getting a record deal is like getting into the NBA, so lets be realistic.
I wasn't writing about an individual band's chances of making a living, which are horrible with or without a big-label contract. I was writing about the odds of one of these schemes toppling the mighty labels, which is probably even longer odds. Your point that the labels only "choose the top 1%" underscores what I was saying, which is that, for all their abuses, the big record labels will continue to lock up all the most marketable talent in exclusive contracts.
Like I was saying before, the greatest strength the big, evil record labels have is their wealth. They can out-promote any other business model for selling music currently out there, as well as all of the ones that have been suggested in Cringely's articles and these threads. Snapster will not kill them. P2P pyramid schemes will not kill them. Only a media empire equally able to influence mass media entertainment has a prayer of even running side-by-side with them.
The new Radio will be web radio
No it won't. The new Radio probably won't be XM either, unless it starts getting bundled free with digital TV subscriptions.
the new MTV will be streaming videos
Notice how MTV hardly ever plays music videos anymore? It's almost all reality shows and crap. The reason for that simple: most people don't sit around watching music videos the way they did when the concept was new and fresh in the mid-80's. The "music video" is no longer a very effective means of promoting an album, unless you're using soft-core pronography to sell the albums of teen princesses (i.e. Brittney in that disheveled school uniform, tATu making out in the rain, Chrintina Aguilara rolling around in the sand, etc.) If people are unwilling to sit on their couch for 3.5 minutes watching the latest video from some power-trio, why would they bother to browse to their web site, click on the link to stream it, wait for the player to fill the buffer, and watch the same video in a desk chair in front of their PC?
you may need to work hard to make your site popular, but people have done it.
Laim Lynch for example.
Liam Lynch!? He's a big-time TV producer, personally tutored in music performance by Paul McCartney, who parlayed the success of his hit MTV show (and his connections to m
The RIAA-member record labels.
99% of the files that were on napster were recordings that were owned and therefore promoted by the major labels. All Napster did was step in with a system do redistribute them illegally. Napster didn't need anybody promoting Metallica or Britney Spears because those acts had already been marketed, very effectively, to the general public.
This brings us to the main problem with Cringely's idea, as well as most of the other ideas being suggested here. From the article:
What about the artists? Aren't they hurt by Snapster in either form? Frankly, they were already hurting and Snapster actually offers a way out of a bad situation.
[snip]
Snapster does little to hurt the musicians if we look back at their earlier work. Looking toward future music, the thing to do is not produce a CD at all, but instead do a direct distribution deal with Snapster. This would be a deal that isn't based on the subjective opinion of some record exec, but rather, allows all music in and pays royalties based on downloads or streams played. If musicians want marketing under this new system, let them pay for it or do it themselves.
The thing is, you don't need a Snapster, or a P2P pyramid, or anything else along those lines for that to happen. Just start your own record label, one which does not fuck over the artists.
This has, of course, been tried thousands of times over. It's called the indie market.
What keeps the big labels big is not their structure, or their jealous guarding of IP. It's their money.
What can a small label (or an Internet distribution scheme) offer a band who wants to become popular? They can make the music available to those who've heard of it, but that's about it. If you want promotion, you will have to pay for it yourself.
A big, evil company can offer radio play, MTV promotion, a chance to play in huge stadiums as an opening act for an already established band, your single shoe-horned into the soundtrack of the latest teen-sex comedy, an invitation to be heard playing a track on the latest pointless "tribute album" to some act that was big 20 years ago, your songs in the background of the latest Mountain Dew commercial. If your lead singer is a good-looking female, she can do ads for cosmetics or something. (Have you seen those hair-color ads with Natalie Imbruglia and Beyonce? Notice how they both get an on-screen credit, in a comercial! This is what corporate marketing schmucks call "synergy.")
Now, you are a 20-year old dumbfuck from Portland. You've got a band that sounds pretty good, and local bar-goers are getting into it, but you hardly have enough money for food, let alone promoting your album. You dream of someday playing your music huge crowds and living like Eddie Van Halen. One day, three sales reps call you with three very different offers: .com in 2003!
1. An indie label offers to press 2,000 CD's for you, mostly at your expense, paid up front with money from your gigs. They offer no real advertising, but promise to work hard as local promoters. They can even get the head shop on the corner to put it next to the water bongs on the impulse rack!
2.An Internet start-up offers a way to get your stuff on-line, where people will browse over your name without recognition while looking for the latest U2 single, and maybe, just maybe some of them will double-click your MP3 sample to check you out. All your income will come via PayPal, which you have never heard of, at a rate of $0.50 per song. Also no advertising in this deal, but it's an Internet company, with all the prestige that comes with being a
3. V2 Records wants to sign you to a 5-record deal, and plans to have you opening for The White Stripes next year. They will front you the money to record your album in Jimmy Jam's uber-studio in Minneapolis, and will spend about $2 Million promoting your first single.
Okay, guitar-playing kid from Portland, which path will you choose? 3? Thought so.
Buying the next two years of coverage for my iBook 700MHz w/DVD/CDRW Combo will cost me what, $300?
If I can manage sell that iBook for $900 (which is not far off the going rate for that particular configuration,) I could turn around and buy a new 12" iBook 900MHz, which not only buys me another year of warranty, but sports a faster CPU, twice the video memory, and twice HD space. Total net cost: about $400.
Time to activate that eBay seller's account, I think. :)
In the case of powerbooks it might be worth it, because:
1. They are expensive.
2. They are expensive to fix.
3. They hold their value a lot longer than desktop computers, or even Windows laptops.
That third point is an important one. A three year-old PC is considered so obsolete that most people have already sold it off and replaced it before then. Paying for a warranty that extends beyond the time that the laptop costs less than the warranty is silly.
However my first Mac laptop (a Duo) was eight years old before I finally moved up to my iBook last year. After a year, the used iBook still goes on the street for more than 80% of what I paid for it new, and even the original iBooks from three years ago tend to sell for about $600, which is about half of their original value.
It looks like my iBook will support OS X 10.3, but even if it fails to run 10.4 or 10.5, I will continue to use it for as long as it meets my needs, while socking away for that G7-based mind-reading Powerbook that comes out in 2009, or whatever.
The only downside is that I am considering swapping a 60GB HD into it, and that sort of thing might void their warranty.
I also need to consider this: It has a brand-new motherboard in it. Assuming, pessimistically, that it only lasts another year or two, my iBook might already be worth a lot less by the time it needs servicing again. If there are entire iBooks going on eBay for $500 by that time, it would be pretty silly to have spent $250 on a maintenance program. The more frugal move might be to gamble on it lasting long enough that the cost of any replacement parts I end up actually needing will cost less than AppleCare.
Anyway, I have another week or so to decide. I'm going to chat with the geeks at the Megamall Apple Store in Bloomington, MN before I decide.
But they are shaped differently than what the PC world (and most terminals) use. Round instead of trapezoidal. That means an adapter will be needed.
As for the backstab, it does a lot of damage, but the intention is that you avoid melee one way or another so the enemy will ignore you, then you sneak in to the flank and jab them, especially if it looks like that +10d6 will probably be enough to finish them off.
If any monster lets a rogue just hang around on their flank for an entire melee confrontation without repositioning themselves, they deserve the quick death that will surely follow.
Unless multiclassed as a fighter, the clever rogue avoids danger whenever possible, looking out first for their own safety before helping those heavily armed and armored thugs chop up the monsters. Giving the rogue a lower HP serves to motivate the player to adhere to this mentality.
By the way, the Rogue hit die is really not so pathetic as you make it sound. Monsters, clerics, monks, druids, and now rangers all average 4.5 HP per level. Rogues average 3.5 per level, meaning that a level 10 rogue will only have an average 10 HP less that a cleric with the same constitution at tenth level. That's a difference of one good sword blow from a strong level 10 fighter. Add to that the fact that mid-level Rogues tend to have fantastic dodge bonuses, and can never be caught flat-footed, and I would insist that they are really well-balanced, if not a bit munchkiny. Sure, they don't melee as well as a fighter or barbarian, but they are not supposed to. Be creative and sneaky, and your rogue will be absolutely murderous.
I might share the love eventually, but I only did it for 3.0, and somebody out there with more ambition than me will probably beat me to passing out an HTML-converted 3.5 version, complete with indexed linking.
Does the OGL let us share this sort of work, I wonder? (I probably can't share mine anyway, as I removed all the license information and stuff from most of the pages while I was editing them.)
Paperless, bookless DMing rocks! I no longer need to lug around 60 pounds of 2nd Edition books and notebooks when DMing away from home.
The Rogue Way is to let the foolish Paladins keep the monsters busy, while you sneak off and help yourself to the best gems in the treasure horde. They might resent your "cowardice," but what are they going to do about it? Kick you out of the trap-filled dungeon for not joining the fight?
Insist that you are a pacifist by nature, and can't stand the sight of blood. They might not know about that noble Duke you once stabbed between the ribs in order to liberate the deeds to his properties in the East, which you later sold for a tidy sum.
If you really want to help the party, buy items with your ill-gotten gains that enhance your sneakiness, such as a ring of invisibility. Then you can silently slip around to the enemies flank, use magic items to confound them from a hidden alcove, and finally emerge to backstab the poor bastard at just the right moment.
If that kind of play does not appeal to you, then maybe you should play a fighter... or a rogue on EverQuest.
Because years of practice at dealing with awkward social situations has honed their skills at smoothing out relations in tense situations. Also, their mixed lineage makes them perceived obvious choices when you need a neutral adjudicator in a dispute. "The king wants to clear out a forrest for more farm land, the elves say no... let's get a half-elf to help settle the dispute."
Half-elves are the most shafted race by 3rd Edition. They lack the bonus feat and skills of humans, but do not gain most of the elven advantages either. Adding diplomacy almost makes them an interesting race to play again.
Well, if we are indeed going to be getting pedantic, the mouse occupied the only DB-9 connector on the 128, so you would still be out of luck, unless you were to load a CLI-based OS on it (which I suppose you would need, if you were going to hook up terminals to it.)