Right, right. That's why three-star Marine general James Mattis stated:
"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot, It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling."
To deny that warfare can be exciting is just stupid. When we entered the war with Iraq, I read a number of G.I. blogs which were quite gung-ho. Sure the prospect of getting killed sucks, but a lot of soldiers honestly feel that they are defending freedom and fighting the good fight. They feel good about doing their jobs and take pride in doing it well. Part of that is getting excited when you put the bad guy down. Career Military folks tend to be a bit different in perspective from drafted Vietnam era vets.
The stereotype on Dungeons and Dragons players is really, really out of date. Hell, I don't know ANY young kids that play the games. I DO know several groups of 30 year old players, most of whom wouldn't be considered "nerds". In fact for some reason, I've seen a lot of active military playing the game. Nothing like watching a marine veteran playing a elf priest. These people are older, a lot of them have families, they have good jobs. They just enjoy playing an RPG more than a game of poker on the weekends.
"For casters (and in my case feral druids) there is a major lack of equipment at that point which makes any additinal advancment hard."
Equipment sucks for Druids in general, because unless you are going to carry a couple sets around you will be forced to specialize one way or the other. If you want to get groups at level 60, respec your Druid to a restoration build and get used to staring at little green bars move up and down. If you don't want to heal, you're gonna have trouble getting groups. I find feral spec druids are most useful in a smaller (2-3 man) group. The Blizzard devs have stated that the Druid feral tree is going to be revised, but who knows what that means.
And if your old computer was a PC, there's a good chance you had a PS2 mouse and or keyboard.
Re:Black Wing's Lair
on
Massive Quickies
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"Oh and for some reason they're telling people not to use custom UI mods... very weird."
I installed the updated CTMOD before connecting yesterday and haven't run into problems. I have seen problems noted with using mods that haven't been updated. In particular the popular Atlas mod supposedly has problems. I don't really see any difference between this patch and any other when it comes to UI mods - disable them until your mod is updated or expect possible weirdness and crashiness.
I think a lot of it stems from parents (and grandparents) that aren't gamers or don't play games even casually. The perception is that games are for kids where as movies, books etc. are perfectly acceptable adult fare. The same stupid stigma applies to cartoons or comics where an adult oriented anime is considered somehow "perverse" even though the sex and violence content may be no higher than in a typical R-rated movie. As a 32 year old parent of two kids who has been gaming since I was seven years old, games are not a weird thing just for kids. Although there are more and more 30+ gamers now, even among peers my age it is still sometimes looked down on as a "kiddie thing". Like it's weird to want to play an active game rather than passively watching hours of TV a week. The other day on my World of Warcraft guild's team speak, one of the teenager members had his mic open and we got to hear his father rant at him about "playing that fairy tale game again". That type of talk implies that the game is a kiddie thing that maybe a teenager shouldn't be doing. Nevermind that there are a lot worse things a teenager could be doing. With time hopefully as the Nintendo generation grows up these complaints about the evils of video games will die down. It seems to me a lot of kids raised on Atari quit playing after the video game crash, and video games aren't something they've done since they were kids playing Atari. The Nintendo kids seem to have kept playing in larger numbers.
"Movies and video games are approaching very similar levels of audio/visual quality, so just because games have realistic sex and violence doesn't mean that they are the scapegoat for lazy parenting. It's still up to parents to make use of the ratings system and their OWN DISCRETION. It's still the parents that are paying for or buying most of the games themselves."
Yep. Because I lock my kids up in the cellar until they hit 18 so as they won't be exposed to these sort of things. Look seriously, you CANNOT control as a parent whether or not your kid is going to be exposed to this stuff. If you run your household like a dictatorship you will absolutely lose the trust that is so important when raising a kid through their teenage years. I wouldn't buy my kid the game, I would talk to them about why it's not designed to be played by kids. But what happens when my kid goes to his friends house and they have the game there? This is no different than snaking dad's porn magazines or sneaking out to watch R-rated movies on cable when the parents are asleep. Not to mention that kids are capable of saving up money and buying the games themselves. Good retailers won't sell GTA to a minor, but it's not the law. It's just store policy. There are plenty of stores who don't care and will either sell to a minor or not tell a parent that the game they are purchasing continues adult material. Everytime I see a retail clerk deny a 12 year old an M-rated game or educate a parent about the content of the game their kid is trying to purchase on the sly, I smile. All a parent can do is try to educate a kid about why this stuff in inappropriate so they will react to it within a proper context when they are exposed to it. And they will be exposed to it, just as much as most kids are going to be offered a joint at some point. The pointing the finger at video games is stupid however. I would imagine the same "concerned parents" have a stack of R-rated DVDs sitting around the house and think nothing of it.
The Saturn V was also used to place the Skylab Space Station in orbit. The Saturn V was also intended to be used to do the "heavy lifting" for future space station work, with the Space Shuttle handling logistics and assembly of components. Funding was cut for the Saturn V program leaving the U.S. without a launch vehicle capable of the Saturn V's tremendous capacity. In comparison the Saturn V had a lift capacity of 118,000 kg to low Earth orbit vs. 28,800 kg for the Space Shuttle. I agree the shuttle and Saturn V were made for different purposes, but I do believe if you are strictly dealing with putting stuff in orbit the Saturn had lower cost per kilogram. That comparison isn't really worth much because it ignores the flexibility of the Space Shuttle and its uses beyond just shuttling cargo.
"Three people per shift work in the NOC, and there are three shifts per day. During each shift, NOC staff monitor game activity, responding to players in remote locations and working with a custom suite of software tools to fix problems along the way."
Maybe this is why the GM didn't answer your call. There were only 3 of them. I seriously hope and imagine that there are more (maybe 10) but the article totally implies that 3 people handle problems with players in remote locations. Which would totally explain SOE's tech support.
That's hilarious. At least from a City of Heroes and World of Warcraft (the 2 mmos I've played) pathfinding on npcs can be described as:
1. Walk mob between predetermined points A and B when not fighting. 2. Chase after player who is running away in a straight line path. Maybe move around small obstacle to continue chasing player. On the other hand, maybe get stuck and decide following player is too much trouble, so return to path outlined in number 1 above.
Yeah total bullshit. How about you take out a woman and give her what she really wants, a stiff drink, two lines of blow and your dick up her ass. Rar! Rar! Thump! Thump! That's what a REAL man would do.
364 |/* "I am sometimes shocked by... the nuns who never take a bath without 365 | * wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, 366 | * they reply 'Oh, but you forget the good God'. Apparently they conceive of 367 | * the Deity as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through 368 | * bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes." --Bertrand Russell, 1943 369 | * Divine wrath, dungeon walls, and armor follow the same principle. 370 | */
Yeah, I had to buy the CDROM one since DVD was sold out. Got the last copy of the CDROM. I purchase DVD versions whenever I can. Pirates and Battle for Middle Earth were two recent ones. I wish the Unreal Tournament DVD edition had been out when I bought it - as the 5 disk install is painful.
Well for the last 3 months my computer interface experience has improved since I switched to World of Warcraft. Admittedly the email app is a little slow, and the 3D effects can be a bit laggy when running that Iron Forge option. Overall though I'm much happier using it then either Windows XP or Mac OS X's interface. It's even customizable with XML! It's also cross platform and installs right on top of your regular desktop. Ok, so my productivity has diminished since I installed it, but that's a worthy trade off for a better end user experience.
If Apple made a decent x86 Mac which I could dual-boot with Windows, then I would consider purchasing one. I use Windows at home for gaming, so even though I like OS X well enough, I'm not going to give up Windows. The thing that would worry me is that Apple doesn't give you a lot of options as far as computer models. Either you get the lower cost unupgradeable model, the mid range all in one (too bad if you already own a monitor) model or the higher end expandable PowerMac. As it stands today, last time I priced upgrades (almost a year ago), the PowerMac I speccecd was almost $1000 over the PC I specced.
"We're usually pushed to upgrade our PCs sooner due to newer software and OSes that slow them down. Mac's don't seem to have this problem, which is nice."
To a degree that's true. However, we have a bunch of early iMacs that won't handle OS X, that while fully funtional are radiply becoming useless. In particular, I'm getting complaints from users about web pages not displaying properly. For OS 9, the last Internet Explorer version is 5.1, Mozilla is 1.2.1 - no Safari, no Firefox. Admittedly these are old machines (5+ years) so I'm not exactly complaining, but I do have PCs running Windows 2000 that are also 5+ years old and work decently with updated software. Keep in mind these are computer that are generally just running Word, Excel, an email program and web browser.
I agree that the ratings system is retarded. The last Leisure Suit Larry game actually had to be toned down for the US market (gogamer.com was selling an uncut import version). Considering how tame Leisure Larry is, that's kind of sad. As with X-rated movies, of course no mass retailer will stock AO games, making it the kiss of death for a games sales. I think it's pretty amusing that even Railroad Tycoon has to note "use of tobacco and alcohol" on its box. Nationally there is a way more knee jerk reaction over nudity and sex. The reaction to Janet Jackson's tit during the airing of the Superbowl - an afternoon of an inherently violent sport - pretty much makes it clear. I think this is pretty nuts considering a tit is hopefully the first thing all lucky kids attach themselves to after birth. I think one of the reasons for the tit and violence reaction (keep in mind GTA has already angered plenty of people based on the violence, is that there is no trust that the rating system is helping to prevent these games from getting to kids under 18. Of course the reality is that these parents probably have a stack of R-rated DVDs which are locked in the secret box. As a gamer and a parent, I am aware of what my kid plays. BUT I cannot control his every action. I can't say that my son won't play GTA at his friends house. Or watch a violent R-rated movie, or watch bukkake porn on the Internet. The best a parent can do is try to educate a kid about violence, sex and fantasy versus reality. The bottom line is that your kids will at sometime be exposed to a violent or sexually charged or just plain sick piece of media that you might not want them to see. The stuff is so pervasive that short of locking your kid in a room with no connection to the outside world until they turn 18 is about the only way to avoid it. God knows I snuck out of by bedroom at night to watch skinemax when the parents were asleep.
"So argueing that sex bears responsibilities and they need to show it in the media and at the same time violence there is a very frequent event where they never show the aftermath or show a highly unlike outcome (a little scar for example) makes me wonder what You have been smoking lately"
I'm not arguing the issue of sex is worse than violence and yada yada. If you read my post, I am merely addressing the question of why some parents get upset over sex in video games in the response to the grandparent post. As for smoking, just a cigerette. Hopefully the next video game that features smoking will have realistically modelled lung cancer too./i jest
"That exact situation happens in the first Liesure Suit Larry game if you have unprotected sex with a prostitute (day-glow crotch and everything). But I bet it would be a cold day in hell before, if that game were presented to the ESRB, it'd get anything but an Ao."
Interestingly enough the last Leisure Suit Larry game did have to be censored in the U.S. to get the M rating. Gogamer.com was selling a seperate European import for those who wanted the "uncut" version. Which is really hilarious when you consider how tame Leisure Suit Larry really is. I think you'd be hard pressed to titilate a 13 year old with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, right. That's why three-star Marine general James Mattis stated:
"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot, It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling."
General: It's 'fun to shoot some people'
To deny that warfare can be exciting is just stupid. When we entered the war with Iraq, I read a number of G.I. blogs which were quite gung-ho. Sure the prospect of getting killed sucks, but a lot of soldiers honestly feel that they are defending freedom and fighting the good fight. They feel good about doing their jobs and take pride in doing it well. Part of that is getting excited when you put the bad guy down.
Career Military folks tend to be a bit different in perspective from drafted Vietnam era vets.
The stereotype on Dungeons and Dragons players is really, really out of date. Hell, I don't know ANY young kids that play the games. I DO know several groups of 30 year old players, most of whom wouldn't be considered "nerds". In fact for some reason, I've seen a lot of active military playing the game. Nothing like watching a marine veteran playing a elf priest.
These people are older, a lot of them have families, they have good jobs. They just enjoy playing an RPG more than a game of poker on the weekends.
"For casters (and in my case feral druids) there is a major lack of equipment at that point which makes any additinal advancment hard."
Equipment sucks for Druids in general, because unless you are going to carry a couple sets around you will be forced to specialize one way or the other.
If you want to get groups at level 60, respec your Druid to a restoration build and get used to staring at little green bars move up and down. If you don't want to heal, you're gonna have trouble getting groups.
I find feral spec druids are most useful in a smaller (2-3 man) group.
The Blizzard devs have stated that the Druid feral tree is going to be revised, but who knows what that means.
And if your old computer was a PC, there's a good chance you had a PS2 mouse and or keyboard.
"Oh and for some reason they're telling people not to use custom UI mods... very weird."
I installed the updated CTMOD before connecting yesterday and haven't run into problems. I have seen problems noted with using mods that haven't been updated. In particular the popular Atlas mod supposedly has problems.
I don't really see any difference between this patch and any other when it comes to UI mods - disable them until your mod is updated or expect possible weirdness and crashiness.
I think a lot of it stems from parents (and grandparents) that aren't gamers or don't play games even casually. The perception is that games are for kids where as movies, books etc. are perfectly acceptable adult fare. The same stupid stigma applies to cartoons or comics where an adult oriented anime is considered somehow "perverse" even though the sex and violence content may be no higher than in a typical R-rated movie.
As a 32 year old parent of two kids who has been gaming since I was seven years old, games are not a weird thing just for kids. Although there are more and more 30+ gamers now, even among peers my age it is still sometimes looked down on as a "kiddie thing". Like it's weird to want to play an active game rather than passively watching hours of TV a week.
The other day on my World of Warcraft guild's team speak, one of the teenager members had his mic open and we got to hear his father rant at him about "playing that fairy tale game again". That type of talk implies that the game is a kiddie thing that maybe a teenager shouldn't be doing. Nevermind that there are a lot worse things a teenager could be doing.
With time hopefully as the Nintendo generation grows up these complaints about the evils of video games will die down. It seems to me a lot of kids raised on Atari quit playing after the video game crash, and video games aren't something they've done since they were kids playing Atari. The Nintendo kids seem to have kept playing in larger numbers.
"Movies and video games are approaching very similar levels of audio/visual quality, so just because games have realistic sex and violence doesn't mean that they are the scapegoat for lazy parenting. It's still up to parents to make use of the ratings system and their OWN DISCRETION. It's still the parents that are paying for or buying most of the games themselves."
Yep. Because I lock my kids up in the cellar until they hit 18 so as they won't be exposed to these sort of things.
Look seriously, you CANNOT control as a parent whether or not your kid is going to be exposed to this stuff. If you run your household like a dictatorship you will absolutely lose the trust that is so important when raising a kid through their teenage years.
I wouldn't buy my kid the game, I would talk to them about why it's not designed to be played by kids. But what happens when my kid goes to his friends house and they have the game there? This is no different than snaking dad's porn magazines or sneaking out to watch R-rated movies on cable when the parents are asleep.
Not to mention that kids are capable of saving up money and buying the games themselves. Good retailers won't sell GTA to a minor, but it's not the law. It's just store policy. There are plenty of stores who don't care and will either sell to a minor or not tell a parent that the game they are purchasing continues adult material. Everytime I see a retail clerk deny a 12 year old an M-rated game or educate a parent about the content of the game their kid is trying to purchase on the sly, I smile.
All a parent can do is try to educate a kid about why this stuff in inappropriate so they will react to it within a proper context when they are exposed to it. And they will be exposed to it, just as much as most kids are going to be offered a joint at some point.
The pointing the finger at video games is stupid however. I would imagine the same "concerned parents" have a stack of R-rated DVDs sitting around the house and think nothing of it.
Ted just admit...
Sex is violence!!!!
"You could use that old monitor to set up a dual monitor system."
True. BUT I already own two monitors for doing this on my PC.
The Saturn V was also used to place the Skylab Space Station in orbit. The Saturn V was also intended to be used to do the "heavy lifting" for future space station work, with the Space Shuttle handling logistics and assembly of components. Funding was cut for the Saturn V program leaving the U.S. without a launch vehicle capable of the Saturn V's tremendous capacity.
In comparison the Saturn V had a lift capacity of 118,000 kg to low Earth orbit vs. 28,800 kg for the Space Shuttle.
I agree the shuttle and Saturn V were made for different purposes, but I do believe if you are strictly dealing with putting stuff in orbit the Saturn had lower cost per kilogram. That comparison isn't really worth much because it ignores the flexibility of the Space Shuttle and its uses beyond just shuttling cargo.
From the article:
"Three people per shift work in the NOC, and there are three shifts per day. During each shift, NOC staff monitor game activity, responding to players in remote locations and working with a custom suite of software tools to fix problems along the way."
Maybe this is why the GM didn't answer your call. There were only 3 of them.
I seriously hope and imagine that there are more (maybe 10) but the article totally implies that 3 people handle problems with players in remote locations.
Which would totally explain SOE's tech support.
That's hilarious. At least from a City of Heroes and World of Warcraft (the 2 mmos I've played) pathfinding on npcs can be described as:
1. Walk mob between predetermined points A and B when not fighting.
2. Chase after player who is running away in a straight line path. Maybe move around small obstacle to continue chasing player. On the other hand, maybe get stuck and decide following player is too much trouble, so return to path outlined in number 1 above.
Now why would I do that? :P
Won't make me more money. Won't get me more satisfaction.
arrogant yank fuck all the way then
Yeah total bullshit. How about you take out a woman and give her what she really wants, a stiff drink, two lines of blow and your dick up her ass.
Rar! Rar! Thump! Thump!
That's what a REAL man would do.
You might get some additional satisfaction out of improving your English spelling and writing skills.
"knome"
Is that the unholy offspring of a codebase merger between KDE and Gnome?
Gotta love the comments too:
/* "I am sometimes shocked by... the nuns who never take a bath without
364 |
365 | * wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them,
366 | * they reply 'Oh, but you forget the good God'. Apparently they conceive of
367 | * the Deity as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through
368 | * bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes." --Bertrand Russell, 1943
369 | * Divine wrath, dungeon walls, and armor follow the same principle.
370 | */
Nice try... but we all know IBM is in fact a contraction of an entire sentence. When we decompress it we get:
I BM.
Noun and verb. Subject and predicate. Actor and action. The full enchilada. Or what happens awhile after I become full of enchiladas.
Yeah, I had to buy the CDROM one since DVD was sold out. Got the last copy of the CDROM.
I purchase DVD versions whenever I can. Pirates and Battle for Middle Earth were two recent ones.
I wish the Unreal Tournament DVD edition had been out when I bought it - as the 5 disk install is painful.
Well for the last 3 months my computer interface experience has improved since I switched to World of Warcraft. Admittedly the email app is a little slow, and the 3D effects can be a bit laggy when running that Iron Forge option. Overall though I'm much happier using it then either Windows XP or Mac OS X's interface. It's even customizable with XML!
It's also cross platform and installs right on top of your regular desktop.
Ok, so my productivity has diminished since I installed it, but that's a worthy trade off for a better end user experience.
If Apple made a decent x86 Mac which I could dual-boot with Windows, then I would consider purchasing one. I use Windows at home for gaming, so even though I like OS X well enough, I'm not going to give up Windows.
The thing that would worry me is that Apple doesn't give you a lot of options as far as computer models. Either you get the lower cost unupgradeable model, the mid range all in one (too bad if you already own a monitor) model or the higher end expandable PowerMac.
As it stands today, last time I priced upgrades (almost a year ago), the PowerMac I speccecd was almost $1000 over the PC I specced.
"We're usually pushed to upgrade our PCs sooner due to newer software and OSes that slow them down. Mac's don't seem to have this problem, which is nice."
To a degree that's true. However, we have a bunch of early iMacs that won't handle OS X, that while fully funtional are radiply becoming useless.
In particular, I'm getting complaints from users about web pages not displaying properly. For OS 9, the last Internet Explorer version is 5.1, Mozilla is 1.2.1 - no Safari, no Firefox.
Admittedly these are old machines (5+ years) so I'm not exactly complaining, but I do have PCs running Windows 2000 that are also 5+ years old and work decently with updated software. Keep in mind these are computer that are generally just running Word, Excel, an email program and web browser.
I agree that the ratings system is retarded. The last Leisure Suit Larry game actually had to be toned down for the US market (gogamer.com was selling an uncut import version). Considering how tame Leisure Larry is, that's kind of sad. As with X-rated movies, of course no mass retailer will stock AO games, making it the kiss of death for a games sales.
I think it's pretty amusing that even Railroad Tycoon has to note "use of tobacco and alcohol" on its box.
Nationally there is a way more knee jerk reaction over nudity and sex. The reaction to Janet Jackson's tit during the airing of the Superbowl - an afternoon of an inherently violent sport - pretty much makes it clear. I think this is pretty nuts considering a tit is hopefully the first thing all lucky kids attach themselves to after birth.
I think one of the reasons for the tit and violence reaction (keep in mind GTA has already angered plenty of people based on the violence, is that there is no trust that the rating system is helping to prevent these games from getting to kids under 18. Of course the reality is that these parents probably have a stack of R-rated DVDs which are locked in the secret box.
As a gamer and a parent, I am aware of what my kid plays. BUT I cannot control his every action. I can't say that my son won't play GTA at his friends house. Or watch a violent R-rated movie, or watch bukkake porn on the Internet. The best a parent can do is try to educate a kid about violence, sex and fantasy versus reality. The bottom line is that your kids will at sometime be exposed to a violent or sexually charged or just plain sick piece of media that you might not want them to see. The stuff is so pervasive that short of locking your kid in a room with no connection to the outside world until they turn 18 is about the only way to avoid it. God knows I snuck out of by bedroom at night to watch skinemax when the parents were asleep.
"So argueing that sex bears responsibilities and they need to show it in the media and at the same time violence there is a very frequent event where they never show the aftermath or show a highly unlike outcome (a little scar for example) makes me wonder what You have been smoking lately"
/i jest
I'm not arguing the issue of sex is worse than violence and yada yada. If you read my post, I am merely addressing the question of why some parents get upset over sex in video games in the response to the grandparent post.
As for smoking, just a cigerette. Hopefully the next video game that features smoking will have realistically modelled lung cancer too.
"That exact situation happens in the first Liesure Suit Larry game if you have unprotected sex with a prostitute (day-glow crotch and everything). But I bet it would be a cold day in hell before, if that game were presented to the ESRB, it'd get anything but an Ao."
Interestingly enough the last Leisure Suit Larry game did have to be censored in the U.S. to get the M rating. Gogamer.com was selling a seperate European import for those who wanted the "uncut" version.
Which is really hilarious when you consider how tame Leisure Suit Larry really is. I think you'd be hard pressed to titilate a 13 year old with it.