when i upgrade from 512MB to a gig, it made a HUGE difference
I've seen this mentioned before. All of my machines are 512m, which is more than adequate for everything else they do.
It is interesting though considering WoW was heralded as a game with low system requirements. I guess that's only when it's compared to EQ2 and Doom3.
All of my systems at least double all of the official system requirements. Yet I see lots of lag around the IF auction house. Kind of like running Windows with it's minimum specs, you can do it if you're desperate enough.
Windows® System 98/ME/2000/XP OS:
* 800 MHz or higher CPU
* 256 MB or more of RAM
* 32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better
* 4 GB or more of available hard drive space
* DirectX® 9.0c or above
* A 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection
MSSQL is truly case insensitive. Postgres converts the SQL statement to lowercase and then does a case-sensitive compare to the tables/fields, and possibly data.
Changing the SQL statements on the MSSQL side isn't an option, unless you are planning on migratine FROM Postgres. The problem is that you have to modify current production SQL/entities to move from MSSQL to Postgres. And the required regression testing will remove any cost advantage for existing MSSQL customers after about a week.
It's very hard to argue OS semantics with management. Once you take the cost advantage out of the equation, you've pretty much lost the battle.
Even more important than being a replacement for MySQL, in many situations it can be a replacement for MSSQL!
Case sensitivity is one of the big factors why Postgres won't be replacing MSSQL any time soon. That little annoyance requires restructuring tables or changing all your queries. Take the sample Northwind database as an example:
Tablename: Orders
Fields: OrderID, CustomerID, EmployeID, etc.
Now, a MSSQL SQL statement of:
Select OrderID From Orders Where CustomerID = 'xxxxx'
Works fine under MSSQL. Under Postgres you either have to change it to:
Select "OrderID" From "Orders" Where "CustomerID" = 'xxxxx'
or change the table structure
Tablename: orders
Fields: orderid, customerid, employeid, etc.
Once you've done that and recertified all of your apps, any savings from Postgres are long gone.
Firebird is a much more reasonable OS alternative to MSSQL.
I don't get your point. Are you saying you would be unreasonable about cutting them some slack after a natural disaster? People have complained throughout the stress tests, open beta, and launch about problems with the game, but everyone understood when their datacenter got flooded.
My point is that the people who are complaining are reasonable. They have a reasonable expectation that those game servers will be available when they want to play. There was no clause in the EULA that said "game servers are available when we have nothing better to do". Too many people are dismissing the problems with "these things happen during a launch." They shouldn't happen, at least not to this degree.
But those things happen sometimes. Sometimes projecters die. Sometimes cable goes down. This is the reality of the world. Furthermore, this type of thing happens with just about every new MMO, and should be expected.
All of this is based on customer expectations. Having telephone service 364 days a year means nothing if it's down when you need to call 911. We expect utilities to have at least 5 9s. Cable service has become a utility, particularly with their push to offer VOIP. Naturally, expectations for a MMORPG are considerably lower, but they already schedule 4 hours a week of down time. (and on at least one occasion it stretched to 16) Nobody screamed when Blizzard's datacenter was down after a hurricane.
Are we not allowed to expect progress? Or should we continue to pay $15 a month and hope it will be fixed someday?
Oh, and yes, I would expect a theater to have spare projectors, particularly with the multiplexs they are building now. It's an essential to their business.
There simply is no comparison between the stability of SWG and the stability of WoW. From what I have been reading WoW is like a rickety bailing wire and spit Wright Brother's airplane that can't stay off the ground for very long and crashes continually.
What you are reading on WoW is frustration. Small problems become big ones because Blizzard's customer service can't seem to communicate. Players have problems and they feel like they are speaking into a vacuum. So we continue to talk about problems that we don't feel are being addressed. Honestly, the game is pretty good, and other than lag (or being on one of the 'special' servers) it's pretty solid. But get one problem that gets under your skin, and Blizzard won't address it (they won't repond to messages in their tech support forum, instead they lock the messages or delete them. If you report them in game, they delete the petition), then you have a bunch of players running around telling everyone about their unresolved problem.
Loyal customers who pre-ordered and created their characters on launch day are on those servers. Blizzard didn't have enough servers to begin with, and didn't add more for two days. By that time, characters were created and guilds were started.
Now here is the really moronic part... character names are available on each and every server, but guild names are unique for the entire WoW game. If you create your guild on server A, you cannot create it on server B (or even join it). I've seen frustrated players ask to move their guild to a less populated server, the request falls on deaf ears. What does it tell you when people are ready to abandon level 30 and 40 characters to move to a different server? Those same players then get blamed for staying on overloaded servers.
BTW, I'm not on an overcrowded server, and I only have one character in a guild, with a bunch of people I don't know.
The stress tests were capped at 100,000. They told us, when their beta registration server melted, that they accepted 500,000 open beta applicants. Of course, with their silly hacked BT client, some of those open betas probably only had 2-3 days to play.
I didn't expect a perfect launch, but I do expect them to work hard at making problems go away. They released a patch right before christmas to fix some bugs, and introduced some new ones. And nothing has been fixed since. I personally am debating whether or not I should suspend my subscription until they have some of their problems worked out.
Ask a lefty presented with one of those Microsoft contoured mice if the Apple designers were right or not.
I'm a lefty, and I'm not sure about a one button mouse. Personally, my wrist bothers me much less and I spend less time uncluttering my desk when I use my trackball. The only thing that I get pissed about is Logitech keeps dropping the trackballs that are actually worth buying.
Of course, if there was a left handed trackball, I'd certainly give it a try.
BTW, there are plusses for lefties. We can write with our left while we control our PCs with our write. Those lowly righties have trouble multitasking.
I'm not convinced we aren't part of the demographic they are targeting. You want to compare to white-box no OS machines, and we are definately the target there. We are the ones that recommend systems to friends and relatives. We help them set them up and keep them running.
If you want to get right down to low priced computing, take a look at the deals Dell offers on their Poweredge 420 SCs. I've purchased 3 of the previous model 400 SC for an average price of $300. (home server, desktop, and PVR) And they run Linux just fine while contributing no $$$ to Microsoft. Although you can put Windows on them if you really want to.
But I'm not looking at this Mac as a low priced entry machine. And I seriously doubt that I would ever upgrade it (after kicking the ram to 512) any more than I will consider upgrading my laptop. I'm looking at it as a way to get exposure to OS X and the Apple way of doing things. And if it's low maintenance, it might be the right type of system to recommend to some of my relatives. FWIW, my mom has a 75 Mhz Pentium running OS/2 and a 2.8g Compaq laptop. Both get used equally, and the new laptop was my idea because I know that old OS/2 box is way past due to die. Her toughest requirements are AOL and Colonization (DOS). If this is an out-of-the-box, just-plain-works machine it would be ideal for people like her. (I just need to get her hooked on a newer game.) I can't say I'm looking forward to spending half a day updating her laptop (XP) when she finally installs broadband in the next month or so. Hmmm, I wonder if AOL runs under Wine....
I don't use my mouse to turn. And I've checked it on my desktop machine as well, it's not limited to my laptop. Plus, I've had other player verify that they experience the same problem.
An alternate fix to the mining bug is to find another mining spot and mine it. The game will acknowledge that you've finally stopped mining, and get you out of loot mode.
That doesn't work for me. I also can't loot any mob that I kill. I have heard some people carry crab shells with them to open when they have the problem, but since my inventory is pretty full I haven't tried that one yet.
In my opinion, if they have time to dick around with name filters, they can put some effort into fixing some really annoying bugs.
Something else I have found is the degrees of rotation are limited. I don't like having to zig-zag back and forth roads because the turn increments are too high. I don't remember that problem during beta, and it's definately no where near this severe in Asheron's Call.
At some point your existing architecture gets so crufty that you need to throw it out in order to continue.
I'd put it that at some point the developers think the architecture is crufty and want to replace it. Maintenance programming sucks, even when it's your own code. I've used the excuse that it's easier to start over than redesign an app, and if the business model supports it, fine. There is a certain 'stickiness' to MMORPGs. Players don't leave because they don't want to lose their toons. So you use a business model that throws that away?
FWIW, AC has the ability to clean up a lot of old problems since they push a new client every month. (And BTW, their monthly props distribution makes WoW 'downloader' look extremely amatuerish) Right now they are in the process of rolling out a new authentication and launcher system. It's just no fun disciplining yourself to upgrade through small steps. But since AC2 sucked so bad, they're having to do now what they should have been doing 2 years ago. Now they are so far behind the industry that I doubt they can catch up.
I would say a solid $75M per year, plenty of cash to expand their team to create what Diablo 3? Starcraft 3? Warcraft 4? WoW 2?..or something completely original..
I never understood the desire to create sequels to MMORPGs. I mean, it worked so well for Microsoft/Turbine. (AC2) I have to wonder how many EQ2 players were EQ players a couple months ago. It seems like it would be much better to just add monthly content to their existing game. (I don't care for expansion packs either) Focus on monthly revenue, every 3 months the players essentially pay for the game again, and you don't have to give the retailer a cut.
If they really feel the need to create additional MMORPGs, branch out into other genres.
Everytime I mention bugs or lag, I get told that they don't exist. This is from the fanbois of course, you get no response from Blizzard. The bugs must not exist.
Having played since launch, I've had the pleasure of experiencing all the problems. Fortunately, I picked one of the servers added a couple days after launch, so despite having a high population, I haven't seen a queue since November. Even so, bugs that require you to log out before you can stand up and needing to travel through IF from time to time has got me wondering if I shouldn't just stop playing for a few months. I moved my subscription back to monthly, and I think if at least some of the smaller (but extremely annoying, like mining) bugs aren't fixed, I'll just unsubscribe for a while. I have plenty of work I can do around the house to keep busy...
After having played for a while now, IMO WoW is a good game, but it's not great. If you are on one of the busier servers, like most of us that started on retail day 1, system requirements are rather high.
I have noticed that WoW pushes my laptop pretty hard. (2.0g Celery, 512m RAM) There are times in busy areas like IF auction house where other players and NPCs don't show up and the drive thrashes for about 30 seconds. The same happens on my desktop (2.8g P4, 512m RAM), but it's less severe. Also, the fan on my laptop runs full speed starting about 5 minutes into the game , and the only one happy about the heat being produced is my cat. I wouldn't want to play on any of my older systems.
Gameplay wise, I think the original Asheron's Call is nearly as good. At least it would be, if I wasn't burnt out from playing it for three years. (and it doesn't have the Battlenet kiddies) And BTW, my portal bot ran on a dual PII 233 until I shut it down a couple months ago.
Also, it was President Bush's promotion of his Hydrogen initiative that really drove home the fact that he either has NO concern for environmental concerns or he just doesn't get it.
I don't agree with Bush's policies, but it should be mentioned (for balance), that he also passed a tax credit for Biodiesel producers. Up to $1 per gallon.
This is not 100% refined, since they're seeing how little refining they can get away with and still have a viable product.
If it's not refined, it's not biodiesel. There are set standards for biodiesel, just like regular gasoline. What you're describing sounds more like unrefined vegetable oil. A lot of people get them confused.
As far as whether or not there is enough to meet worldwide demand; some parts of the world will probably never change from fossil fuel. The middle east and Russia have huge oil reserves, it will probably always be cheaper for them to use fossil than agricultural fuels. US powerplants are the same way with coal. Iceland is using geothermal energy to produce hydrogen. There is also a lot of research into using agriculture waste to create biodiesel and alcohol.
I've never seen a project fail because of perfectionism.
That's because they are never perfect so they don't get released.
I'm only half joking. Software has a limited shelf life. If you keep working on a project trying to get everything "perfect", chances are your project will get cancelled. Either the money will run out or the market will change.
From a customer standpoint you don't consider Microsoft a success.
From a business standpoint, would you rather be a stakeholder in Microsoft or Netscape? I think your viewpoint is jaded by your opinion of their products.
Slashdot Mirror
when i upgrade from 512MB to a gig, it made a HUGE difference
I've seen this mentioned before. All of my machines are 512m, which is more than adequate for everything else they do.
It is interesting though considering WoW was heralded as a game with low system requirements. I guess that's only when it's compared to EQ2 and Doom3.
All of my systems at least double all of the official system requirements. Yet I see lots of lag around the IF auction house. Kind of like running Windows with it's minimum specs, you can do it if you're desperate enough.
Windows® System 98/ME/2000/XP OS:
* 800 MHz or higher CPU
* 256 MB or more of RAM
* 32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better
* 4 GB or more of available hard drive space
* DirectX® 9.0c or above
* A 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection
MSSQL is truly case insensitive. Postgres converts the SQL statement to lowercase and then does a case-sensitive compare to the tables/fields, and possibly data.
Changing the SQL statements on the MSSQL side isn't an option, unless you are planning on migratine FROM Postgres. The problem is that you have to modify current production SQL/entities to move from MSSQL to Postgres. And the required regression testing will remove any cost advantage for existing MSSQL customers after about a week.
It's very hard to argue OS semantics with management. Once you take the cost advantage out of the equation, you've pretty much lost the battle.
Even more important than being a replacement for MySQL, in many situations it can be a replacement for MSSQL!
Case sensitivity is one of the big factors why Postgres won't be replacing MSSQL any time soon. That little annoyance requires restructuring tables or changing all your queries. Take the sample Northwind database as an example:
Tablename: Orders
Fields: OrderID, CustomerID, EmployeID, etc.
Now, a MSSQL SQL statement of:
Select OrderID From Orders
Where CustomerID = 'xxxxx'
Works fine under MSSQL. Under Postgres you either have to change it to:
Select "OrderID" From "Orders"
Where "CustomerID" = 'xxxxx'
or change the table structure
Tablename: orders
Fields: orderid, customerid, employeid, etc.
Once you've done that and recertified all of your apps, any savings from Postgres are long gone.
Firebird is a much more reasonable OS alternative to MSSQL.
I don't get your point. Are you saying you would be unreasonable about cutting them some slack after a natural disaster? People have complained throughout the stress tests, open beta, and launch about problems with the game, but everyone understood when their datacenter got flooded.
My point is that the people who are complaining are reasonable. They have a reasonable expectation that those game servers will be available when they want to play. There was no clause in the EULA that said "game servers are available when we have nothing better to do". Too many people are dismissing the problems with "these things happen during a launch." They shouldn't happen, at least not to this degree.
But those things happen sometimes. Sometimes projecters die. Sometimes cable goes down. This is the reality of the world. Furthermore, this type of thing happens with just about every new MMO, and should be expected.
All of this is based on customer expectations. Having telephone service 364 days a year means nothing if it's down when you need to call 911. We expect utilities to have at least 5 9s. Cable service has become a utility, particularly with their push to offer VOIP. Naturally, expectations for a MMORPG are considerably lower, but they already schedule 4 hours a week of down time. (and on at least one occasion it stretched to 16) Nobody screamed when Blizzard's datacenter was down after a hurricane.
Server status forum
Are we not allowed to expect progress? Or should we continue to pay $15 a month and hope it will be fixed someday?
Oh, and yes, I would expect a theater to have spare projectors, particularly with the multiplexs they are building now. It's an essential to their business.
There simply is no comparison between the stability of SWG and the stability of WoW. From what I have been reading WoW is like a rickety bailing wire and spit Wright Brother's airplane that can't stay off the ground for very long and crashes continually.
What you are reading on WoW is frustration. Small problems become big ones because Blizzard's customer service can't seem to communicate. Players have problems and they feel like they are speaking into a vacuum. So we continue to talk about problems that we don't feel are being addressed. Honestly, the game is pretty good, and other than lag (or being on one of the 'special' servers) it's pretty solid. But get one problem that gets under your skin, and Blizzard won't address it (they won't repond to messages in their tech support forum, instead they lock the messages or delete them. If you report them in game, they delete the petition), then you have a bunch of players running around telling everyone about their unresolved problem.
Loyal customers who pre-ordered and created their characters on launch day are on those servers. Blizzard didn't have enough servers to begin with, and didn't add more for two days. By that time, characters were created and guilds were started.
Now here is the really moronic part... character names are available on each and every server, but guild names are unique for the entire WoW game. If you create your guild on server A, you cannot create it on server B (or even join it). I've seen frustrated players ask to move their guild to a less populated server, the request falls on deaf ears. What does it tell you when people are ready to abandon level 30 and 40 characters to move to a different server? Those same players then get blamed for staying on overloaded servers.
BTW, I'm not on an overcrowded server, and I only have one character in a guild, with a bunch of people I don't know.
The stress tests were capped at 100,000. They told us, when their beta registration server melted, that they accepted 500,000 open beta applicants. Of course, with their silly hacked BT client, some of those open betas probably only had 2-3 days to play.
I didn't expect a perfect launch, but I do expect them to work hard at making problems go away. They released a patch right before christmas to fix some bugs, and introduced some new ones. And nothing has been fixed since. I personally am debating whether or not I should suspend my subscription until they have some of their problems worked out.
I paid $130 for 512 MB MuVo, I'll only pay $150 for a 1 GB Shuffle
And as an added bonus, it's not from Creative. The company of abandoned products with half-assed drivers.
Ask a lefty presented with one of those Microsoft contoured mice if the Apple designers were right or not.
I'm a lefty, and I'm not sure about a one button mouse. Personally, my wrist bothers me much less and I spend less time uncluttering my desk when I use my trackball. The only thing that I get pissed about is Logitech keeps dropping the trackballs that are actually worth buying.
Of course, if there was a left handed trackball, I'd certainly give it a try.
BTW, there are plusses for lefties. We can write with our left while we control our PCs with our write. Those lowly righties have trouble multitasking.
I'm not convinced we aren't part of the demographic they are targeting. You want to compare to white-box no OS machines, and we are definately the target there. We are the ones that recommend systems to friends and relatives. We help them set them up and keep them running.
If you want to get right down to low priced computing, take a look at the deals Dell offers on their Poweredge 420 SCs. I've purchased 3 of the previous model 400 SC for an average price of $300. (home server, desktop, and PVR) And they run Linux just fine while contributing no $$$ to Microsoft. Although you can put Windows on them if you really want to.
But I'm not looking at this Mac as a low priced entry machine. And I seriously doubt that I would ever upgrade it (after kicking the ram to 512) any more than I will consider upgrading my laptop. I'm looking at it as a way to get exposure to OS X and the Apple way of doing things. And if it's low maintenance, it might be the right type of system to recommend to some of my relatives. FWIW, my mom has a 75 Mhz Pentium running OS/2 and a 2.8g Compaq laptop. Both get used equally, and the new laptop was my idea because I know that old OS/2 box is way past due to die. Her toughest requirements are AOL and Colonization (DOS). If this is an out-of-the-box, just-plain-works machine it would be ideal for people like her. (I just need to get her hooked on a newer game.) I can't say I'm looking forward to spending half a day updating her laptop (XP) when she finally installs broadband in the next month or so. Hmmm, I wonder if AOL runs under Wine....
I don't use my mouse to turn. And I've checked it on my desktop machine as well, it's not limited to my laptop. Plus, I've had other player verify that they experience the same problem.
The Feds take freedom and democracy seriously!
Shouldn't that be....
The Feds take freedom and democracy, seriously!
They're still waiting for the ethernet connection.
An alternate fix to the mining bug is to find another mining spot and mine it. The game will acknowledge that you've finally stopped mining, and get you out of loot mode.
That doesn't work for me. I also can't loot any mob that I kill. I have heard some people carry crab shells with them to open when they have the problem, but since my inventory is pretty full I haven't tried that one yet.
In my opinion, if they have time to dick around with name filters, they can put some effort into fixing some really annoying bugs.
Something else I have found is the degrees of rotation are limited. I don't like having to zig-zag back and forth roads because the turn increments are too high. I don't remember that problem during beta, and it's definately no where near this severe in Asheron's Call.
At some point your existing architecture gets so crufty that you need to throw it out in order to continue.
I'd put it that at some point the developers think the architecture is crufty and want to replace it. Maintenance programming sucks, even when it's your own code. I've used the excuse that it's easier to start over than redesign an app, and if the business model supports it, fine. There is a certain 'stickiness' to MMORPGs. Players don't leave because they don't want to lose their toons. So you use a business model that throws that away?
FWIW, AC has the ability to clean up a lot of old problems since they push a new client every month. (And BTW, their monthly props distribution makes WoW 'downloader' look extremely amatuerish) Right now they are in the process of rolling out a new authentication and launcher system. It's just no fun disciplining yourself to upgrade through small steps. But since AC2 sucked so bad, they're having to do now what they should have been doing 2 years ago. Now they are so far behind the industry that I doubt they can catch up.
I would say a solid $75M per year, plenty of cash to expand their team to create what Diablo 3? Starcraft 3? Warcraft 4? WoW 2? ..or something completely original..
I never understood the desire to create sequels to MMORPGs. I mean, it worked so well for Microsoft/Turbine. (AC2) I have to wonder how many EQ2 players were EQ players a couple months ago. It seems like it would be much better to just add monthly content to their existing game. (I don't care for expansion packs either) Focus on monthly revenue, every 3 months the players essentially pay for the game again, and you don't have to give the retailer a cut.
If they really feel the need to create additional MMORPGs, branch out into other genres.
Come on, we know that all you do is log in to see the female elves dance.
Everytime I mention bugs or lag, I get told that they don't exist. This is from the fanbois of course, you get no response from Blizzard. The bugs must not exist.
Having played since launch, I've had the pleasure of experiencing all the problems. Fortunately, I picked one of the servers added a couple days after launch, so despite having a high population, I haven't seen a queue since November. Even so, bugs that require you to log out before you can stand up and needing to travel through IF from time to time has got me wondering if I shouldn't just stop playing for a few months. I moved my subscription back to monthly, and I think if at least some of the smaller (but extremely annoying, like mining) bugs aren't fixed, I'll just unsubscribe for a while. I have plenty of work I can do around the house to keep busy...
After having played for a while now, IMO WoW is a good game, but it's not great. If you are on one of the busier servers, like most of us that started on retail day 1, system requirements are rather high.
I have noticed that WoW pushes my laptop pretty hard. (2.0g Celery, 512m RAM) There are times in busy areas like IF auction house where other players and NPCs don't show up and the drive thrashes for about 30 seconds. The same happens on my desktop (2.8g P4, 512m RAM), but it's less severe. Also, the fan on my laptop runs full speed starting about 5 minutes into the game , and the only one happy about the heat being produced is my cat. I wouldn't want to play on any of my older systems.
Gameplay wise, I think the original Asheron's Call is nearly as good. At least it would be, if I wasn't burnt out from playing it for three years. (and it doesn't have the Battlenet kiddies) And BTW, my portal bot ran on a dual PII 233 until I shut it down a couple months ago.
B100 fuel (100% vegetable oil)
No it isn't. B100 is 100% Biodiesel. Biodiesel is NOT the same as vegtable oil. Biodiesel is manufactured from plant oils.
Also, it was President Bush's promotion of his Hydrogen initiative that really drove home the fact that he either has NO concern for environmental concerns or he just doesn't get it.
I don't agree with Bush's policies, but it should be mentioned (for balance), that he also passed a tax credit for Biodiesel producers. Up to $1 per gallon.
This is not 100% refined, since they're seeing how little refining they can get away with and still have a viable product.
If it's not refined, it's not biodiesel. There are set standards for biodiesel, just like regular gasoline. What you're describing sounds more like unrefined vegetable oil. A lot of people get them confused.
As far as whether or not there is enough to meet worldwide demand; some parts of the world will probably never change from fossil fuel. The middle east and Russia have huge oil reserves, it will probably always be cheaper for them to use fossil than agricultural fuels. US powerplants are the same way with coal. Iceland is using geothermal energy to produce hydrogen. There is also a lot of research into using agriculture waste to create biodiesel and alcohol.
I've never seen a project fail because of perfectionism.
That's because they are never perfect so they don't get released.
I'm only half joking. Software has a limited shelf life. If you keep working on a project trying to get everything "perfect", chances are your project will get cancelled. Either the money will run out or the market will change.
From a customer standpoint you don't consider Microsoft a success.
From a business standpoint, would you rather be a stakeholder in Microsoft or Netscape? I think your viewpoint is jaded by your opinion of their products.