I guess that depends. I've been raiding two nights a week for three hours a raid this expansion and killed everything except the heroic version of the Lich King encounter. It's certainly a hobby but six hours a week doesn't seem like a huge investment.
And no I don't spend hours farming for materials. A good guild where everyone contributes means no one individual has to spend hours and hours getting mats for raid consumables.
Patch 4.01 is going to hit soon (estimated within two weeks). This patch overhauls the game mechanics in preparation for the Cataclysm release. If I were in your shoes I would at least wait until 4.01 so you don't have to bother with learning LK mechanics only to find your spells have changed two weeks later.
After Cataclysm hits the LK expansion is likely to drop in price. If you haven't hit level 70 yet just play the Burning Crusade content for now and upgrade later, IMO.
Pushed back by a year and a half? The only date information given was that it was on track for 2010. Based on the release times of Burning Crusade and Lich King the best guess was that Cataclysm would be released around two years after LK. The December 7th date is less than a month off of two years since LK came out - 11/13/08.
"The formula that you'll wipe lots and presumably only dare play with people you personally know has been tried in other games before, and it was a major failure."
This is exactly what progression raiding in WoW is like. You need good players both in terms of their skills and in terms of their ability to work through learning the fights. Learning new fights when you don't have a gear advantage (or the ICC raid wide nerf), takes time and wipes.
Much for the same reason I wouldn't call an Xbox 360 or PS3 or Wii a general purpose computer. Unless hacked/jail broken you can't install software that hasn't been approved by the company that creates the device (Sony, MS, Nintendo, Apple). Nor can you program it and install your own programs.
The one thing that separates these products from general purpose computers is the limitations imposed on the devices through DRM and their company policies.
You can say that you can get around the DRM and make them general purpose but that still carries potential problems such as voided warranties and no support from the companies that make them.
Re:The Amiga was a blast to program
on
The Amiga Turns 25
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I was one of those 50k.:)
Props to you and Cinemaware. Not always 100% successful, I appreciated trying to push the computer game further. A long time since I still see the influence in current games. Thanks for your work.
Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas
on
The Amiga Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
This is absolutely true.
The OS innovated for it's era (especially in terms of multitasking) but memory protection didn't exist and modern concepts of OS security were non-existent.
Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas
on
The Amiga Turns 25
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's impressive to find a post with so much BS in it.
"Even if you managed to attach a hard disk to the stupid edge connector it still needed a floppy disk to bootstrap it"
You didn't need a floppy to boot off a hard drive with an Amiga. I had a Amiga 500 that booted straight off the HD attached. I also had a 2000 that did the same. This is with 1.3 of the ROM not 2.0 or higher.
Graphic modes in 320x200 (320x256 PAL) were 32 color base, 64 color with ECS due to half bright mode. And there was HAM (up to 4096) for (mostly) static graphic scans. 16 color was for the 640x200 (640x256 PAL). And yes you could interlace the modes for 320x400 or 640x400. There would be flicker however unless you had a flicker fixer.
The ST by comparison had 16 colors in 320x200 mode out of a palette of 512 instead of 4096.
A good PC in '87 had EGA graphics. Animation on PCs at the time as poor vs the Amiga's blitter.
The only way in '87 you could call the PC as being superior to the Amiga was in terms of business market penetration.
The Amiga 2000, 3000 and 4000 had multiple internal expansion slots. I'm not sure on the 3000, but the 2000 (which I owned) and the 4000 had both CPU and video slots as well as multiple general expansion slots.
I agree with you in that saying the Amiga was "as expandable" is incorrect. However, no third party developer managed to creat an Amiga video card upgrade that was an accepted standard (at least not until the PC was well on it's way).
PC clones gave the platform marketplace penetration. Third party hardware rallied around standard like CGA, EGA and most importantly VGA. Later on Windows created the DirectX layer which gave a target for third party products. These things didn't happen to the Amiga.
What was initially superior in the Amiga became surpassed in the PC world.
When the A1200 came out I had a A2000 with a superior processor (68030 vs 68020 in the A1200) but there was no path for A2000, A500, A600, A1000 or A3000 owners to upgrade to the newer AGA graphics. You had to either suck up the loss in CPU power to get a lower performing A1200 with AGA or pay through the nose for a A4000. This was happening concurrently with prices dropping on PC clones featuring VGA graphics.
The consume value proposition that Amiga once held was overturned. It was cheaper to get a PC clone with a VGA card than invest in Amiga and there was more software for the PC.
Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas
on
The Amiga Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
You really think this?
The Amiga was tied to the custom chip set. Even ROM revisions broke software.
Only the more expensive Amigas allowed for video expansion and that was commonly used for flicker fixers or toasters.
There was never a method to upgrade an ECS Amiga to an AGA one, either from Commodore or from a third party.
The majority of Amiga sales were of the lower end 500 series which only had the side expansion bus.
Later on post-Commodore there were certainly a number of expansions made to the architecture but they were nothing like the concept of a hardware abstraction layer. You still need base custom chips either real ones or via emulation to run a lot of Amiga software.
The architecture and the code that ran on it was tied to those beautiful custom chips. The thing that gave Amiga it's early advantage became it's Achilles' heel as the platform aged.
Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas
on
The Amiga Turns 25
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The innovations in the PC came mostly from external development outside of IBM to the open PC architecture. If you were there in the old days you would remember the competing video and audio standards, memory specifications etc. 3rd party hardware was instrumental in creating the PC we know today. When Jobs came back he leveraged the established PC standards to move the the Mac forward. Apple used to be a company that used only internally developed hardware (stuff like Nubus and Appletalk). Jobs pushed the company to use standards such as USB and eventually transitioned Mac to commodity processors and busses (Intel and PCI/PCI express). A single company can't compete with unique hardware vs commodity hardware, that's the story of the PC platforms domination and the transformation of Apple.
You could also have rented it for less than the cost of purchase. You do now own the set however and can resell it to recoup some of the cost if you decide you won't watch it again.
Not saying that Hulu isn't an option, just that there are other options cost wise as well.
It's a wireless camera installed in a false eye. He doesn't see out of that eye with it. It isn't connected to his retina or optic nerve or any other sensory mechanism. If he was drunk it would record exactly what it would record if he was sober. He can't see the feed in real time unless he watches his own video stream (in which case it would be a video stream of him staring at a monitor).
Sonic is a CGA relic? Really? Considering he was developed initially on SEGA consoles that didn't suffer from PC's CGA graphic limitations I find that hard to believe.
You could play Doom over the Internet by 1995 via Kali which allows IPX network games to work over TCP/IP. Apparently there were earlier precursors to Kali that also enabled Doom over the Internet. Nowadays you would probably just use a port like ZDoom which has Internet play built in.
I'm not saying reattaching a head will not be possible someday but the big difference between the head and an arm or leg is that you are dealing with a severed spinal cord.
Peter Jackson was hardly a household name before Lord of the RIngs. His previous movies like Frighteners and Dead Alive (Braindead) were popular with fans of the genre but not exactly big hits. I'm sure Hollywood felt it was worth a shot to screw some relatively no-name director from New Zealand who's credits included "Meet the Feebles" and "Bad Taste".
Which is useful in what way? If the goal is to acquire a ship in a bottle you can save your time and buy one already assembled. Clearly the point of making a ship in a bottle is the challenge of the task and enjoyment one derives through the process. The only real value of the resulting ship in a bottle is as a memento to remind you of the process you went through to make it.
Do you think if you removed the pot they would become full of ambition? I agree that weed can lead to a desire to do know more than eat junk food and play video games (or watch cartoons) but I not sure that chronic lack of ambition solely comes from the use of weed.
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I guess that depends. I've been raiding two nights a week for three hours a raid this expansion and killed everything except the heroic version of the Lich King encounter. It's certainly a hobby but six hours a week doesn't seem like a huge investment.
And no I don't spend hours farming for materials. A good guild where everyone contributes means no one individual has to spend hours and hours getting mats for raid consumables.
Patch 4.01 is going to hit soon (estimated within two weeks). This patch overhauls the game mechanics in preparation for the Cataclysm release. If I were in your shoes I would at least wait until 4.01 so you don't have to bother with learning LK mechanics only to find your spells have changed two weeks later.
After Cataclysm hits the LK expansion is likely to drop in price. If you haven't hit level 70 yet just play the Burning Crusade content for now and upgrade later, IMO.
Pushed back by a year and a half? The only date information given was that it was on track for 2010. Based on the release times of Burning Crusade and Lich King the best guess was that Cataclysm would be released around two years after LK. The December 7th date is less than a month off of two years since LK came out - 11/13/08.
Yes flying is available at level 60 now.
"The formula that you'll wipe lots and presumably only dare play with people you personally know has been tried in other games before, and it was a major failure."
This is exactly what progression raiding in WoW is like. You need good players both in terms of their skills and in terms of their ability to work through learning the fights. Learning new fights when you don't have a gear advantage (or the ICC raid wide nerf), takes time and wipes.
Well you know George Takei did star in an episode of Disney Channel's Suite Life on Deck kids show...
So maybe this would be considered better than Enterprise
Much for the same reason I wouldn't call an Xbox 360 or PS3 or Wii a general purpose computer. Unless hacked/jail broken you can't install software that hasn't been approved by the company that creates the device (Sony, MS, Nintendo, Apple). Nor can you program it and install your own programs.
The one thing that separates these products from general purpose computers is the limitations imposed on the devices through DRM and their company policies.
You can say that you can get around the DRM and make them general purpose but that still carries potential problems such as voided warranties and no support from the companies that make them.
I was one of those 50k. :)
Props to you and Cinemaware. Not always 100% successful, I appreciated trying to push the computer game further. A long time since I still see the influence in current games. Thanks for your work.
This is absolutely true.
The OS innovated for it's era (especially in terms of multitasking) but memory protection didn't exist and modern concepts of OS security were non-existent.
It's impressive to find a post with so much BS in it.
"Even if you managed to attach a hard disk to the stupid edge connector it still needed a floppy disk to bootstrap it"
You didn't need a floppy to boot off a hard drive with an Amiga. I had a Amiga 500 that booted straight off the HD attached. I also had a 2000 that did the same. This is with 1.3 of the ROM not 2.0 or higher.
Graphic modes in 320x200 (320x256 PAL) were 32 color base, 64 color with ECS due to half bright mode. And there was HAM (up to 4096) for (mostly) static graphic scans. 16 color was for the 640x200 (640x256 PAL). And yes you could interlace the modes for 320x400 or 640x400. There would be flicker however unless you had a flicker fixer.
The ST by comparison had 16 colors in 320x200 mode out of a palette of 512 instead of 4096.
A good PC in '87 had EGA graphics. Animation on PCs at the time as poor vs the Amiga's blitter.
The only way in '87 you could call the PC as being superior to the Amiga was in terms of business market penetration.
The Amiga 2000, 3000 and 4000 had multiple internal expansion slots. I'm not sure on the 3000, but the 2000 (which I owned) and the 4000 had both CPU and video slots as well as multiple general expansion slots.
I agree with you in that saying the Amiga was "as expandable" is incorrect. However, no third party developer managed to creat an Amiga video card upgrade that was an accepted standard (at least not until the PC was well on it's way).
PC clones gave the platform marketplace penetration. Third party hardware rallied around standard like CGA, EGA and most importantly VGA. Later on Windows created the DirectX layer which gave a target for third party products. These things didn't happen to the Amiga.
What was initially superior in the Amiga became surpassed in the PC world.
When the A1200 came out I had a A2000 with a superior processor (68030 vs 68020 in the A1200) but there was no path for A2000, A500, A600, A1000 or A3000 owners to upgrade to the newer AGA graphics. You had to either suck up the loss in CPU power to get a lower performing A1200 with AGA or pay through the nose for a A4000. This was happening concurrently with prices dropping on PC clones featuring VGA graphics.
The consume value proposition that Amiga once held was overturned. It was cheaper to get a PC clone with a VGA card than invest in Amiga and there was more software for the PC.
You really think this?
The Amiga was tied to the custom chip set. Even ROM revisions broke software.
Only the more expensive Amigas allowed for video expansion and that was commonly used for flicker fixers or toasters.
There was never a method to upgrade an ECS Amiga to an AGA one, either from Commodore or from a third party.
The majority of Amiga sales were of the lower end 500 series which only had the side expansion bus.
Later on post-Commodore there were certainly a number of expansions made to the architecture but they were nothing like the concept of a hardware abstraction layer. You still need base custom chips either real ones or via emulation to run a lot of Amiga software.
The architecture and the code that ran on it was tied to those beautiful custom chips. The thing that gave Amiga it's early advantage became it's Achilles' heel as the platform aged.
The innovations in the PC came mostly from external development outside of IBM to the open PC architecture. If you were there in the old days you would remember the competing video and audio standards, memory specifications etc. 3rd party hardware was instrumental in creating the PC we know today.
When Jobs came back he leveraged the established PC standards to move the the Mac forward. Apple used to be a company that used only internally developed hardware (stuff like Nubus and Appletalk). Jobs pushed the company to use standards such as USB and eventually transitioned Mac to commodity processors and busses (Intel and PCI/PCI express).
A single company can't compete with unique hardware vs commodity hardware, that's the story of the PC platforms domination and the transformation of Apple.
Pong isn't a game - it's a piece of minimalist interactive art.
You could also have rented it for less than the cost of purchase. You do now own the set however and can resell it to recoup some of the cost if you decide you won't watch it again.
Not saying that Hulu isn't an option, just that there are other options cost wise as well.
It's a wireless camera installed in a false eye. He doesn't see out of that eye with it. It isn't connected to his retina or optic nerve or any other sensory mechanism. If he was drunk it would record exactly what it would record if he was sober. He can't see the feed in real time unless he watches his own video stream (in which case it would be a video stream of him staring at a monitor).
"art is something that serves no purpose other than being itself"
A a lot of what is commonly considered art exists to present a statement on behalf of the artist.
Sonic is a CGA relic? Really? Considering he was developed initially on SEGA consoles that didn't suffer from PC's CGA graphic limitations I find that hard to believe.
Adding blu ray to your account now costs from $2 extra for the 1 disc at a time plan to $5 extra for the 4 disc at a time plan.
In Windows XP the user folder is usually located in C:\Documents and Settings\username.
In Vista and Win 7 it is usually C:\Users\username.
Files specific to that user's accounts are stored under those directories such as Desktop, Documents etc.
You could play Doom over the Internet by 1995 via Kali which allows IPX network games to work over TCP/IP. Apparently there were earlier precursors to Kali that also enabled Doom over the Internet. Nowadays you would probably just use a port like ZDoom which has Internet play built in.
I'm not saying reattaching a head will not be possible someday but the big difference between the head and an arm or leg is that you are dealing with a severed spinal cord.
Peter Jackson was hardly a household name before Lord of the RIngs. His previous movies like Frighteners and Dead Alive (Braindead) were popular with fans of the genre but not exactly big hits.
I'm sure Hollywood felt it was worth a shot to screw some relatively no-name director from New Zealand who's credits included "Meet the Feebles" and "Bad Taste".
"at least you have a ship in a bottle."
Which is useful in what way? If the goal is to acquire a ship in a bottle you can save your time and buy one already assembled.
Clearly the point of making a ship in a bottle is the challenge of the task and enjoyment one derives through the process.
The only real value of the resulting ship in a bottle is as a memento to remind you of the process you went through to make it.
Do you think if you removed the pot they would become full of ambition? I agree that weed can lead to a desire to do know more than eat junk food and play video games (or watch cartoons) but I not sure that chronic lack of ambition solely comes from the use of weed.