welcome to 1997, mr. curmudgeon. you still making jokes about windows '95 crashing all the time too? hey have you seen this mahir guy on the interweb? he kiss you!
actually my band has a bunch of songs about intellectual property law. download them from free, along with all of the songs from our albums, from our website...
look, we're not talking about pac-man anymore. every year the games and the systems involved get more and more complex, and the potential for bugs increases geometrically. consoles have been able to keep major bugs from becoming common by limiting the variables -- that is, using a standard system to play the game on -- but the system is getting very complex. it used to be, a game developer team had to write all their own code. nowadays, they use drivers and game engines that may or may not have major bugs or incompatibilities built in, even on the consoles they were written for.
show-stopping bugs like crashes or even just annoying gameplay bugs should never make it to the final product, to be sure, but crappy games based on a movie license are certainly not a NEW phenomenon. anyone remember E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial for the 2600? of course you do.
there are plenty of console games out there that are basically (major) bug free, and economic darwinism is still at work weeding out the crappy titles from the stellar ones, except where an established license gets in the way.
i've got this game also, it's really great in it's flexibility. you can play "classic" risk with all the old rules, or you can play with all the new rules, the moonbase, the sea colonies, etc, or any combination thereof. we usually leave the moon alone (it complicates things a little too much for casual play) but many other features are fun.
all the territories are the same location and size, but they have new names, some of them very amusing (like "the amazon desert"). also, New York and Neo Tokyo are now sea colonies. heh.
the best feature is the random nuking of territories at the beginning of the game. like the original poster pointed out, this makes for entirely new strategic maneuvers.
another thing the article fails to consider is that, in a game with more than two players, what the attacker is doing is strengthening everyone in the game besides himself and the defender by removing armies from both sides from the board. in large games isolationism is the best strategy, not aggression.
the advice that it's better to be more aggressive (than what?) is only relevant to a two player game, and is wrong anyway. in reading the article, i noticed it appears they got a basic fundament of the rules wrong anyway! you need four armies to attack with three dice, not 3 as the article claims.
well i know when i play tekken with my wife, she instantly gravitates towards those characters!
i dont know if they're necessarily insulted by that as much as we think they are. probably depends on the person.
i think the main problem is that they cant relate to the protagonist in 99% of the games out there. the female urge is not "questing", it's not "me vs the entire world".
they also like cute stuff, as opposed to gory. that's why Super Mario Bros had pretty hefty cross-gender numbers, while, say, Diablo / Quake / etc didn't.
have you seen the features list? the 1.10 patch is virtually an expansion pack. they dont post on "every tiny patch" either. in fact, this is the first patch in well over a year for this game.
you're not completely off-base, but hunts ARE an utter waste against spellcasters and especially tier 3 melee, even if i do "throw in some support". AOE eats them up as well (which, as a tier one unit, is i suppose as it should be).
my original point, though, was that the undead can come after the night elf with either ghouls or fiends or both, using either the DL or DK or CF and have a pretty decent chance of dominating the night elves early unless the night elves *specifically* counter what the undead is doing. night elf, on the other hand, have only one viable way of rushing an undead player (some combination of ballistae, hunts and archers with KotG) that has any hope of success. the fact that Night Elf is in serious danger if they don't scout while the Undead aren't necessarilly required to do so is an indicator of imbalance.
oh come on, this gets posted 20 times every time something related to Blizzard comes up. fact is, slashdot readers aren't a single entity, and therefore don't require a consistent philosophy that we all adhere to. i like Blizzard. you don't have to.
the point was to make it more strategic and tactical. it's not supposed to be like starcraft or C&C where you just grab everyone and htrow them at the enemy base. individual units are more important.
having said that, yeah, they raised the food limit from 90 to 100 and raised the thresholds of low, medium, and high upkeep.
the problem is hunts only counter ONE unit -- ghouls, and after that they are worthless. archers are adaquate against, but not really a "counter" to fiends.
The other thing is that NE has the best Tier 1 unit in the Huntress
this isn't the place for a debate on balance, but you, sir, are smoking some serious crack. in classic, yes, Huntresses were great, but with their current armor and HP status, the ONLY things they are effective against are foots and ghouls.
first of all, as with all Blizzard products, the production value is very high. Not only does the gameplay feel tight and sturdy, but even the menus are in the exact right place and have the exact right options.
graphics: for their first 3D engine, it certainly is pretty. i can even play it on my laptop, with it's pseudo-3d graphics card. the individual models are stylistic -- bright, and cartoonish -- although very polygonal. that's understandable, though, seeing as there are often several dozen units on the screen at one time. i have noticed virtually no slowdown even during enormous battles wit multiple spell effects flying around on top of all the twitching polygons. that amazes me.
the new units are fun, and the single player campaign is more interesting and engaging than the original WarCraft III campaign was. Voice acting is, as is typical for Blizzard, somewhat above average for a video game... but still not exactly feature film quality. the story's top-notch though. great characters.
multiplayer is really the only thing i can complain about. i played literally hundreds of games online during the beta, and was ranked in the top 500 (of 30,000 participants). my reaction is that online play is actually LESS varied and strategic than WarCraft III classic. yes, there are more units, but because of changes to how armor and damage works (and other tweaks), there are actually fewer viable strategies. in addition, although no one race is overpowered, some matchups are are a foregone conclusion -- night elves are at an undeniable disadvantage vs the undead, for example. even with all the new units available, the average game at the highest levels of competition in The Frozen Throne actually features less unit variety than classic WarCraft III.
i suppose that's a gripe that is not likely to effect the majority of players very heavily, however. it's still a great game, just not the home run that Brood War was.
i tried this program too and got the same results - 64 tiny bmp files that weren't even properly created -- no software would open them. it even dumped them in my root directory, for no apparent reason. defective.
look, this game is over 3 years old and Blizzard is still working hard to add value to it! how can you complain? they're fixing and improving so much, it's, well, it's like a free expansion pack really. Blizzard once again asserts itself as the number one game company in the world. this patch shows why. this patch will generate virtually NO new revenue for them. all it will do is improve their game. kudos to you, blizzard, don't ever change!
yeah, Undying is definitely the most frightening game i've ever played, with the possible exception of Doom. THe first half especially does an absolutely fanastic job of building suspense and scaring the crap out of you, like when you're walking down a hallway and a ghost appears in the mirror right behind you, or you hear disturbing voices... that Scrying skill was creepy.
too bad it turned into a mediocre shooter at the end.
seems like every movie nowadays is a reflection of our end-of-the-world fear, exactly like what happened during the cold war hype of the 50's with all those radiation-induced monster movies. then of course there's our obsession with sex -- not surprised at all to see a female terminator, of course she's hot, and of course she's running around in her skivvies. i'll still probably go see it, but it just seems to me that our entire culture has this undercurrent of fear right now.
over the last few years, a tiny number of gigantic companies have locked up all our aural culture tighter than a drum. they hold a monopoly on the ears of the general public. radio stations are almost universally owned by Clear Channel. concert venues of course belong to Ticketmaster. there's pseudo-competition in the record industry, but all the competitors there are equally soulless.
there has always been those who reject this hierarchy, but until now we've relied on word of mouth, dubbed tapes, lamppost posters and flyers to reach our audience. musicians are slow adopters, but we are catching on. CD-R's and MP3's are mainstream now. can enough like-minded musicians -- musicians who reject the whole corporate machine, and don't mind sacrificing money and fame to operate outside of it -- can enough of us band together to form a cohesive movement, or will we remain isolated and disparate?
geography is less of a barrier than ever. the music industry has never been in greater need of revolution. and independant musicians have never been as well armed as we are now... but DAMN, do we like to fight amongst ourselves, and so many woul rather go with the status quo, too afraid to find our own way.
Slashdot Mirror
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Commissioner Pravin Lal, UN Declaration of Rights.
awesome.
flash is standard equipment for the internet, you elitist moron.
welcome to 1997, mr. curmudgeon. you still making jokes about windows '95 crashing all the time too? hey have you seen this mahir guy on the interweb? he kiss you!
actually my band has a bunch of songs about intellectual property law. download them from free, along with all of the songs from our albums, from our website ...
http://www.theoverprivileged.com
we're called The Overprivileged and we sing about intellectual property law.
look, we're not talking about pac-man anymore. every year the games and the systems involved get more and more complex, and the potential for bugs increases geometrically. consoles have been able to keep major bugs from becoming common by limiting the variables -- that is, using a standard system to play the game on -- but the system is getting very complex. it used to be, a game developer team had to write all their own code. nowadays, they use drivers and game engines that may or may not have major bugs or incompatibilities built in, even on the consoles they were written for.
show-stopping bugs like crashes or even just annoying gameplay bugs should never make it to the final product, to be sure, but crappy games based on a movie license are certainly not a NEW phenomenon. anyone remember E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial for the 2600? of course you do.
there are plenty of console games out there that are basically (major) bug free, and economic darwinism is still at work weeding out the crappy titles from the stellar ones, except where an established license gets in the way.
i've got this game also, it's really great in it's flexibility. you can play "classic" risk with all the old rules, or you can play with all the new rules, the moonbase, the sea colonies, etc, or any combination thereof. we usually leave the moon alone (it complicates things a little too much for casual play) but many other features are fun.
all the territories are the same location and size, but they have new names, some of them very amusing (like "the amazon desert"). also, New York and Neo Tokyo are now sea colonies. heh.
the best feature is the random nuking of territories at the beginning of the game. like the original poster pointed out, this makes for entirely new strategic maneuvers.
another thing the article fails to consider is that, in a game with more than two players, what the attacker is doing is strengthening everyone in the game besides himself and the defender by removing armies from both sides from the board. in large games isolationism is the best strategy, not aggression.
the advice that it's better to be more aggressive (than what?) is only relevant to a two player game, and is wrong anyway. in reading the article, i noticed it appears they got a basic fundament of the rules wrong anyway! you need four armies to attack with three dice, not 3 as the article claims.
well i know when i play tekken with my wife, she instantly gravitates towards those characters!
i dont know if they're necessarily insulted by that as much as we think they are. probably depends on the person.
i think the main problem is that they cant relate to the protagonist in 99% of the games out there. the female urge is not "questing", it's not "me vs the entire world".
they also like cute stuff, as opposed to gory. that's why Super Mario Bros had pretty hefty cross-gender numbers, while, say, Diablo / Quake / etc didn't.
have you seen the features list? the 1.10 patch is virtually an expansion pack. they dont post on "every tiny patch" either. in fact, this is the first patch in well over a year for this game.
you're not completely off-base, but hunts ARE an utter waste against spellcasters and especially tier 3 melee, even if i do "throw in some support". AOE eats them up as well (which, as a tier one unit, is i suppose as it should be).
my original point, though, was that the undead can come after the night elf with either ghouls or fiends or both, using either the DL or DK or CF and have a pretty decent chance of dominating the night elves early unless the night elves *specifically* counter what the undead is doing. night elf, on the other hand, have only one viable way of rushing an undead player (some combination of ballistae, hunts and archers with KotG) that has any hope of success. the fact that Night Elf is in serious danger if they don't scout while the Undead aren't necessarilly required to do so is an indicator of imbalance.
oh come on, this gets posted 20 times every time something related to Blizzard comes up. fact is, slashdot readers aren't a single entity, and therefore don't require a consistent philosophy that we all adhere to. i like Blizzard. you don't have to.
the point was to make it more strategic and tactical. it's not supposed to be like starcraft or C&C where you just grab everyone and htrow them at the enemy base. individual units are more important.
having said that, yeah, they raised the food limit from 90 to 100 and raised the thresholds of low, medium, and high upkeep.
the problem is hunts only counter ONE unit -- ghouls, and after that they are worthless. archers are adaquate against, but not really a "counter" to fiends.
The other thing is that NE has the best Tier 1 unit in the Huntress
this isn't the place for a debate on balance, but you, sir, are smoking some serious crack. in classic, yes, Huntresses were great, but with their current armor and HP status, the ONLY things they are effective against are foots and ghouls.
first of all, as with all Blizzard products, the production value is very high. Not only does the gameplay feel tight and sturdy, but even the menus are in the exact right place and have the exact right options.
... but still not exactly feature film quality. the story's top-notch though. great characters.
... THAT looks tasty ...
graphics: for their first 3D engine, it certainly is pretty. i can even play it on my laptop, with it's pseudo-3d graphics card. the individual models are stylistic -- bright, and cartoonish -- although very polygonal. that's understandable, though, seeing as there are often several dozen units on the screen at one time. i have noticed virtually no slowdown even during enormous battles wit multiple spell effects flying around on top of all the twitching polygons. that amazes me.
the new units are fun, and the single player campaign is more interesting and engaging than the original WarCraft III campaign was. Voice acting is, as is typical for Blizzard, somewhat above average for a video game
multiplayer is really the only thing i can complain about. i played literally hundreds of games online during the beta, and was ranked in the top 500 (of 30,000 participants). my reaction is that online play is actually LESS varied and strategic than WarCraft III classic. yes, there are more units, but because of changes to how armor and damage works (and other tweaks), there are actually fewer viable strategies. in addition, although no one race is overpowered, some matchups are are a foregone conclusion -- night elves are at an undeniable disadvantage vs the undead, for example. even with all the new units available, the average game at the highest levels of competition in The Frozen Throne actually features less unit variety than classic WarCraft III.
i suppose that's a gripe that is not likely to effect the majority of players very heavily, however. it's still a great game, just not the home run that Brood War was.
now World of WarCraft
nah man, you are wrong. it's just as bad as duping items yourself. you're using a third party program to cheat, end of story. hope you get banned.
i tried this program too and got the same results - 64 tiny bmp files that weren't even properly created -- no software would open them. it even dumped them in my root directory, for no apparent reason. defective.
look, this game is over 3 years old and Blizzard is still working hard to add value to it! how can you complain? they're fixing and improving so much, it's, well, it's like a free expansion pack really. Blizzard once again asserts itself as the number one game company in the world. this patch shows why. this patch will generate virtually NO new revenue for them. all it will do is improve their game. kudos to you, blizzard, don't ever change!
yeah, Undying is definitely the most frightening game i've ever played, with the possible exception of Doom. THe first half especially does an absolutely fanastic job of building suspense and scaring the crap out of you, like when you're walking down a hallway and a ghost appears in the mirror right behind you, or you hear disturbing voices ... that Scrying skill was creepy.
too bad it turned into a mediocre shooter at the end.
it is totally and completely just you.
things my AthlonXP 2000+ can do significantly better / faster than your 1Ghz processor:
- encoding mp3 / divx / etc
- high quality divx playback
- games games games. War3 at 1280x1024 is beautiful =)
- Windows XP =/
seems like every movie nowadays is a reflection of our end-of-the-world fear, exactly like what happened during the cold war hype of the 50's with all those radiation-induced monster movies. then of course there's our obsession with sex -- not surprised at all to see a female terminator, of course she's hot, and of course she's running around in her skivvies. i'll still probably go see it, but it just seems to me that our entire culture has this undercurrent of fear right now.
this is a short-sighted view only relevant in the aftermath of september 11th. "don't do anything conspicous ... why? ... TERRORISTS!" it's silly.
but unfortunately it's been, well, you know.
you're probably just trying to compensate for a lack of computing power by having an enormous dong.
my sig is a sig ... i just added my name and my website to the message.
glad you liked the show. we palyed pretty horribly hahaha.
over the last few years, a tiny number of gigantic companies have locked up all our aural culture tighter than a drum. they hold a monopoly on the ears of the general public. radio stations are almost universally owned by Clear Channel. concert venues of course belong to Ticketmaster. there's pseudo-competition in the record industry, but all the competitors there are equally soulless.
... but DAMN, do we like to fight amongst ourselves, and so many woul rather go with the status quo, too afraid to find our own way.
there has always been those who reject this hierarchy, but until now we've relied on word of mouth, dubbed tapes, lamppost posters and flyers to reach our audience. musicians are slow adopters, but we are catching on. CD-R's and MP3's are mainstream now. can enough like-minded musicians -- musicians who reject the whole corporate machine, and don't mind sacrificing money and fame to operate outside of it -- can enough of us band together to form a cohesive movement, or will we remain isolated and disparate?
geography is less of a barrier than ever. the music industry has never been in greater need of revolution. and independant musicians have never been as well armed as we are now
i suppose only time will tell.
dan
the overprivileged
http://www.theoverprivileged.com