Do you have an opinion on a good flash cart to use? I was looking at the ones that allow you to insert a cf or sd flash card, since they seem to offer more space and the flexibility of swapping out cards. If you want to do this on the DS rather than the GBA, are there any special considerations? Are there any reliable online stores to order them from? I would really like to try out some GB homebrew stuff, I just am a bit unsure of how to proceed with getting a flash cart.
I know you mention the high end game sucking. It really is a repetetive loot grind, granted. However, I found in City of Heroes, that outside of Hamidon there wasn't really anything to do once you hit level cap. Considering the only gear was enhancements and the only special enhancement is the hami-o, all you can really do to power up character after you hit 50 is run the Hamidon raid over and over. I would say that while the majority of the high level content is a grind in WoW, there is more things to grind on than in CoH (if you are inclined to grinding). Ultimately though, if you get bored and there isn't enough new content or you don't have a bunch of guildies you enjoy playing with, or you are sick of the grind. Put the game down. You can always come back later when there is an expansion.
Although it was staged, the unfortunately reality is that what it depicts happens all too frequently in pickup groups. I'd like to think all the real life "Leeroys" are ten year olds, but I've come to the realization that some percentage are just idiots. As a healer I frequently get to enjoy this sort of scenario:
Me: "OOM - please let me drink before next mob." Groups Leeroy: "Why is this taking so long? Can we get going!" - proceeds to run off from the group Me: "drinking" Leeroy: Aggros everything in the next area "Can I get a damn heal here!" Leeroy dies. Leeroy: "WTF? Why didn't you heal me? Where the hell was the rest of the group? This group sucks!"
"But the promise of transhumanism defies the english language to come up with superlatives. There really are no words for it."
Uh, yes actually there is one word. Religion. Transhumanism is just taking common concepts of transcendence and giving it a sci-fi edge. Hell, "the singularity" is like the rapture for geeks. I'm not saying that these things aren't possible, I just think it's so completely naive to think that it is inevitable. Reminds me of a man named Marx and his inevitable rise of the proletariat.
Well then maybe "hang out with a healer" is the escape option. As in he sacrifices and runs and I get killed. Probably because people try to kill the healers in PVP first to keep them from healing.
But in Korea it is very common for players to access Lineage at a cybercafe rather than a typical MMO monthly account that we are used to. So just because they are accessing the game through a different mechanism, it doesn't mean they aren't players. So what is a more important number to count if you want to find the biggest mmo in the world? The number of monthly accounts, or the number of active players?
This discussion completely reminds me of my experiences with playing a druid. While there are completely valid gripes with the class, on the whole it's not bad and can be played well. Yet on the forums you see druid after druid complaining about how terrible they are. And then you see post complaining about druids and how they are impossible to kill in pvp and need to be nerfed. Not all classes are equal against each other in PVP, which I think some people fail to understand. I thought the comment about escaping was odd. Sacrificing the void walker seems to work well for my warlock friend.
"Once you hit 60, the end-game content is only accessible to groups of 40 players."
True that Molten Core and that new dungeon (I forget the name) are limited to pretty serious players. Most uber-guilds won't keep you around unless you can commit to raiding at particular times. The average player hitting level 60 does not have all of their set gear, so you can do runs through Stratholme, Sholomance and the like. If you have aspirations of running MC, it's a good idea to get your gear up. Unless you've been saving gold constantly, you probably don't have the 1000 gold for your mount. The higher level crafting recipes and materials take time to farm. Also, you can do PVP in Warsong and Alterac. I've seen a lot of lvl 60s doing this and going for the items you can only get at higher ranks. One point though, at level 60 - even if you are in an uber guild - there is not really much that you can do. Your XP isn't going up. All you can really do is work on getting "teh uber l00t". Considering the low percentage on drop rates for specific items, and the need to roll with multiple people on the item IF it drops - you will be running the same battles over and over again. Some of my guildies run MC constantly, and while they link all the nice purples that drop, I think between the two of them, they've won a single roll on a purple drop. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that once you've reached 60, you really have seen the majority of the content. So if you don't get to run MC over and over with a bunch of psycho uber guilders, you aren't missing out on that much.
I still don't agree. Consider, if someone is buying an eMac or Mac Mini because it's the cheapest Mac they can get, then they are also likely to want to save money by not paying for the software. This is what I have seen, for example with designers just entering the business. They don't make a lot of money, but they need a Mac to do work at home. I believe piracy has more to do with convenience and an individuals income. The more disposable income you have, the less you are going to care about piracy. On the other hand most people will take a free copy of software if it's given to them. A good example would be Mac OS X Tiger, which I've seen pirated extensively. Another example would be the student discounts that Apple gives out. At least four times in the last two months I've talked to someone who purchased a Mac for themselves but took a student in with them to the store to get the discounts or free ipod. And everyone seems to buy the student/teacher version of MS Office. They don't care that the license is supposed to be for use in education. They just see $150$400 for the same program.
If you'd like to define "core users" I would be happy to hear what you mean. Given that the users I'm talking about are Mac loving, Mac breathing, Mac owning and using both at home and a work for their entire lives. I'm talking about people that consistently buy Apple and consistently use Apple. People that would never consider doing otherwise. I should note that many of the ones I know have eMacs at home because their budgets could not afford PowerMac G5s. Oh and the other ones mostly have lower cost iBooks. A few have iMacs and only one I know of has a G5 at home (he does video work on the side). Price is an issue to Mac users - that's why Jobs offers lower cost options and has for years.
Boy you sure are generalizing. I guess it's because you only jumped on the Mac bandwagon a little while ago. There is TONS of piracy on the Mac. I have worked with Macs in the design and printing industries for 15 years and can't count how many pirated copies of Mac applications I've seen. It really isn't any wonder that Adobe and Quark both moved to software activation schemes similar to what Windows XP uses. The piracy of core design and printing applications is severe. Claiming that Mac users sit up on some moral high ground when it comes to piracy is just as much crap as saying all Windows users are "w4r3z d00dz". The fact is, most general computer users (Mac or Windows) don't really think about the issue at all. They don't go out of their way to pirate, they buy software, but if someone says "oh here have this cd" they don't tend evaluate it morally - they most likely just take it and install it.
It didn't start with Cool Spot. Have you ever heard of Chase the Chuck Wagon? This was a game created for the Atari 2600? This game was based on the Purina dog food commercials featuring a weird little chuck wagon being chased around the kitchen by a dog. This game was never sold in stores, it was a giveaway promo item you got when you sent in proofs of purchase from Purina products.
This is pretty much the same thing as product placement in a movie. It can be done subtly and doesn't hurt the movie, but sometimes it is so obvious it can jar you out of enjoying the film. Like an unecessary close up shot of the logo on a can of soda - or cell phones with big provider logos on them (what everyone in this movie uses AT&T?).
"But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay good money to be barraged with advertising."
Do you pay for TV service? Not a flame, just a question. I pay for TV because the family wants it, but sometimes even fast forwarding through commercials with Tivo is irritating. I stopped Tivo'ing BattleStar Galactica because it was less hassle to just download it off alt.binaries.multimedia.battlestargalactica than it was to deal with the commercials. I would be really pissed if Blizzard started to do this with World of Warcraft. I kind of think that they wouldn't because it would be so out of context.
Judging from the amount of beggers in Iron Forge, I'd say World of Warcraft has quite a bit of poverty. It certainly has money. You can't get your own mansion. Having an Horde undead character kill you and then cannibalize your corpse sure FEELS like having your body corrupted.
Alternately, proclaim that something is "a fad", "doomed to failure" and that in 5 years no one will even remember it ever existed. And there you have it. The two polar extremes of the industry pundit. And yes... you too can play!
You must admit however, that those darn penguins are a hell of a lot cuter than Michael Moore. Although he is somewhat rolly-polly in a similar manner. I don't think I would want to movie about his arduous mating rituals. The politics of Penguin leadership could be interesting though.
Bonobos have some of the most interesting sexual behavior in mammals. An ape closely related to the chimpanzee (and a close relative of man), sex is the cornerstone of the Bonobo's social structure. They engage in sexual behavior in all combination, hetero and homo. They seem to use sex as a means for organizing social structure rather than dominance through violence. Despite all the sex, their birthrate is consistent with chimpanzees.
I just have to ask, how do you feel about bukkake then? And overall would you consider it more or less destructive to society than hot girl on girl action?
Um. I guess you've never met your local Chinese farmer contingent in your MMO? I had never really seen them in World of Warcraft until I hit lvl 50. Now I see them all over the place. They ninja loot, they speak chinese, their characters are on 24 hours a day, they run goofy auctions, they camp chests for hours on end, they repeatedly request raid group invites with the intention on ninja'ing the first good drop and bailing. If you want to see where all this effort ends up, do a search on ebay. ige.com is the most well known currency shop, but there are tons of smaller vendors.
As the WoW server I'm playing on matures, I've noticed a both inflation and deflation as the supply and demand shifts. For example, Kingsblood which is a low level herb usually harvested in the 20s, now goes for 7-10 gold per stack of 20 herbs. This is because late in the game Kingsblood is required for a repeatable quest used to gain reputation with a particular faction.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have an opinion on a good flash cart to use? I was looking at the ones that allow you to insert a cf or sd flash card, since they seem to offer more space and the flexibility of swapping out cards.
If you want to do this on the DS rather than the GBA, are there any special considerations?
Are there any reliable online stores to order them from?
I would really like to try out some GB homebrew stuff, I just am a bit unsure of how to proceed with getting a flash cart.
I know you mention the high end game sucking. It really is a repetetive loot grind, granted. However, I found in City of Heroes, that outside of Hamidon there wasn't really anything to do once you hit level cap. Considering the only gear was enhancements and the only special enhancement is the hami-o, all you can really do to power up character after you hit 50 is run the Hamidon raid over and over.
I would say that while the majority of the high level content is a grind in WoW, there is more things to grind on than in CoH (if you are inclined to grinding).
Ultimately though, if you get bored and there isn't enough new content or you don't have a bunch of guildies you enjoy playing with, or you are sick of the grind. Put the game down. You can always come back later when there is an expansion.
Although it was staged, the unfortunately reality is that what it depicts happens all too frequently in pickup groups.
I'd like to think all the real life "Leeroys" are ten year olds, but I've come to the realization that some percentage are just idiots.
As a healer I frequently get to enjoy this sort of scenario:
Me: "OOM - please let me drink before next mob."
Groups Leeroy: "Why is this taking so long? Can we get going!" - proceeds to run off from the group
Me: "drinking"
Leeroy: Aggros everything in the next area "Can I get a damn heal here!"
Leeroy dies.
Leeroy: "WTF? Why didn't you heal me? Where the hell was the rest of the group? This group sucks!"
"But the promise of transhumanism defies the english language to come up with superlatives. There really are no words for it."
Uh, yes actually there is one word. Religion. Transhumanism is just taking common concepts of transcendence and giving it a sci-fi edge. Hell, "the singularity" is like the rapture for geeks.
I'm not saying that these things aren't possible, I just think it's so completely naive to think that it is inevitable. Reminds me of a man named Marx and his inevitable rise of the proletariat.
Well then maybe "hang out with a healer" is the escape option. As in he sacrifices and runs and I get killed. Probably because people try to kill the healers in PVP first to keep them from healing.
But in Korea it is very common for players to access Lineage at a cybercafe rather than a typical MMO monthly account that we are used to. So just because they are accessing the game through a different mechanism, it doesn't mean they aren't players.
So what is a more important number to count if you want to find the biggest mmo in the world? The number of monthly accounts, or the number of active players?
This discussion completely reminds me of my experiences with playing a druid. While there are completely valid gripes with the class, on the whole it's not bad and can be played well. Yet on the forums you see druid after druid complaining about how terrible they are. And then you see post complaining about druids and how they are impossible to kill in pvp and need to be nerfed.
Not all classes are equal against each other in PVP, which I think some people fail to understand.
I thought the comment about escaping was odd. Sacrificing the void walker seems to work well for my warlock friend.
"Once you hit 60, the end-game content is only accessible to groups of 40 players."
True that Molten Core and that new dungeon (I forget the name) are limited to pretty serious players. Most uber-guilds won't keep you around unless you can commit to raiding at particular times.
The average player hitting level 60 does not have all of their set gear, so you can do runs through Stratholme, Sholomance and the like. If you have aspirations of running MC, it's a good idea to get your gear up. Unless you've been saving gold constantly, you probably don't have the 1000 gold for your mount. The higher level crafting recipes and materials take time to farm.
Also, you can do PVP in Warsong and Alterac. I've seen a lot of lvl 60s doing this and going for the items you can only get at higher ranks.
One point though, at level 60 - even if you are in an uber guild - there is not really much that you can do. Your XP isn't going up. All you can really do is work on getting "teh uber l00t". Considering the low percentage on drop rates for specific items, and the need to roll with multiple people on the item IF it drops - you will be running the same battles over and over again. Some of my guildies run MC constantly, and while they link all the nice purples that drop, I think between the two of them, they've won a single roll on a purple drop.
I guess what I'm trying to say, is that once you've reached 60, you really have seen the majority of the content. So if you don't get to run MC over and over with a bunch of psycho uber guilders, you aren't missing out on that much.
I still don't agree. Consider, if someone is buying an eMac or Mac Mini because it's the cheapest Mac they can get, then they are also likely to want to save money by not paying for the software. This is what I have seen, for example with designers just entering the business. They don't make a lot of money, but they need a Mac to do work at home.
I believe piracy has more to do with convenience and an individuals income. The more disposable income you have, the less you are going to care about piracy. On the other hand most people will take a free copy of software if it's given to them. A good example would be Mac OS X Tiger, which I've seen pirated extensively.
Another example would be the student discounts that Apple gives out. At least four times in the last two months I've talked to someone who purchased a Mac for themselves but took a student in with them to the store to get the discounts or free ipod. And everyone seems to buy the student/teacher version of MS Office. They don't care that the license is supposed to be for use in education. They just see $150$400 for the same program.
If you'd like to define "core users" I would be happy to hear what you mean. Given that the users I'm talking about are Mac loving, Mac breathing, Mac owning and using both at home and a work for their entire lives. I'm talking about people that consistently buy Apple and consistently use Apple. People that would never consider doing otherwise.
I should note that many of the ones I know have eMacs at home because their budgets could not afford PowerMac G5s. Oh and the other ones mostly have lower cost iBooks. A few have iMacs and only one I know of has a G5 at home (he does video work on the side). Price is an issue to Mac users - that's why Jobs offers lower cost options and has for years.
"Apple's core users don't need or want Warez."
Boy you sure are generalizing. I guess it's because you only jumped on the Mac bandwagon a little while ago. There is TONS of piracy on the Mac. I have worked with Macs in the design and printing industries for 15 years and can't count how many pirated copies of Mac applications I've seen. It really isn't any wonder that Adobe and Quark both moved to software activation schemes similar to what Windows XP uses. The piracy of core design and printing applications is severe.
Claiming that Mac users sit up on some moral high ground when it comes to piracy is just as much crap as saying all Windows users are "w4r3z d00dz". The fact is, most general computer users (Mac or Windows) don't really think about the issue at all. They don't go out of their way to pirate, they buy software, but if someone says "oh here have this cd" they don't tend evaluate it morally - they most likely just take it and install it.
It didn't start with Cool Spot. Have you ever heard of Chase the Chuck Wagon? This was a game created for the Atari 2600? This game was based on the Purina dog food commercials featuring a weird little chuck wagon being chased around the kitchen by a dog.
This game was never sold in stores, it was a giveaway promo item you got when you sent in proofs of purchase from Purina products.
This is pretty much the same thing as product placement in a movie. It can be done subtly and doesn't hurt the movie, but sometimes it is so obvious it can jar you out of enjoying the film. Like an unecessary close up shot of the logo on a can of soda - or cell phones with big provider logos on them (what everyone in this movie uses AT&T?).
"But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay good money to be barraged with advertising."
Do you pay for TV service?
Not a flame, just a question. I pay for TV because the family wants it, but sometimes even fast forwarding through commercials with Tivo is irritating.
I stopped Tivo'ing BattleStar Galactica because it was less hassle to just download it off alt.binaries.multimedia.battlestargalactica than it was to deal with the commercials.
I would be really pissed if Blizzard started to do this with World of Warcraft. I kind of think that they wouldn't because it would be so out of context.
"Zonk has single-handedly killed the Games section. Not just maimed. Friggin' killed this section."
This is (or was) the GAMES section. Please use proper terminology:
Zonk has single-handedly gibbed the Games section. Not just ganked. Fraggin' gibbed this section.
Trackmania Sunrise and the original Trackmania are pretty fun. You can create your own tracks and distribute them. The tracks are pretty wild too.
I have no idea. But here in Hawaii we had plenty of Japanese, Chinese and other Asians who declated them selves Hispanic on the last census.
Judging from the amount of beggers in Iron Forge, I'd say World of Warcraft has quite a bit of poverty. It certainly has money. You can't get your own mansion. Having an Horde undead character kill you and then cannibalize your corpse sure FEELS like having your body corrupted.
Alternately, proclaim that something is "a fad", "doomed to failure" and that in 5 years no one will even remember it ever existed.
And there you have it. The two polar extremes of the industry pundit. And yes... you too can play!
You must admit however, that those darn penguins are a hell of a lot cuter than Michael Moore. Although he is somewhat rolly-polly in a similar manner.
I don't think I would want to movie about his arduous mating rituals. The politics of Penguin leadership could be interesting though.
Bonobos have some of the most interesting sexual behavior in mammals. An ape closely related to the chimpanzee (and a close relative of man), sex is the cornerstone of the Bonobo's social structure. They engage in sexual behavior in all combination, hetero and homo. They seem to use sex as a means for organizing social structure rather than dominance through violence.
Despite all the sex, their birthrate is consistent with chimpanzees.
"I hate the act of gay/lesbian sex.
I just have to ask, how do you feel about bukkake then? And overall would you consider it more or less destructive to society than hot girl on girl action?
This should give you some insight into this sort of nefarious conspiracy.
Fnord.
Um. I guess you've never met your local Chinese farmer contingent in your MMO?
I had never really seen them in World of Warcraft until I hit lvl 50. Now I see them all over the place. They ninja loot, they speak chinese, their characters are on 24 hours a day, they run goofy auctions, they camp chests for hours on end, they repeatedly request raid group invites with the intention on ninja'ing the first good drop and bailing.
If you want to see where all this effort ends up, do a search on ebay. ige.com is the most well known currency shop, but there are tons of smaller vendors.
As the WoW server I'm playing on matures, I've noticed a both inflation and deflation as the supply and demand shifts. For example, Kingsblood which is a low level herb usually harvested in the 20s, now goes for 7-10 gold per stack of 20 herbs. This is because late in the game Kingsblood is required for a repeatable quest used to gain reputation with a particular faction.