Actually, I would suspect that a majority of players do want those things.
The trick with WoW is that it's community that keeps many people playing WoW and the character designs are appealing to most people (even if some armor sets are incredibly ugly). In general the prettyness of the game, and the newness of it got a large audience to try it out. Now they're kind of stuck playing it, because they don't really want to start over in a new game if it's only better in a few ways, or only marginally better in every way. They're invested in their current characters and their current friends. However, if Blizzard managed to colossally screw something up, then you might see more migrations away from it.
On the one hand, you should actually be "thanking" Bruce Lehman for the DMCA, and even he knows (now) that it is a terrible failure.
On the other, I'm glad that your right to copy songs is so much more important to you than your right to Habeas Corpus. We can clearly see where your priorities lie!
Actually they caved for a number of different reasons: 1) Progressive Democrats didn't like the bill because it wasn't strict enough. 2) Conservative Democrats didn't like the bill because it was too strict. 3) Republicans didn't like the bill because they could end up in jail.
In the end, spite didn't win out, and a couple of the conservative Dems were convinced that it could hinder the performance of the foreign espionage and, more importantly, their personal re-election campaigns.
1) Winning is everything. 2) Cheating is ok as long as you win. 3) Getting caught cheating is ok as long as you still win. 4) Cheating is wrong if you get caught and have to forfeit your victory.
Many people don't care that Microsoft is a predatory monopolist because 1) they're incredibly rich, and 2) they escaped their big anti-trust trial with an insignificant punishment. Many people love Microsoft simply because Microsoft wins. To them, by definition the most popular thing is always the best. Rich people are good people because they are successful. After all, God would only reward good people and always punishes the bad people. That's why, by definition, all poor people are lazy and evil.
To some extent I agree with you, but on the flip side, I know that some rules are inherently more resistant to corruption than others. It's best to have a clear spirit of the rules, in addition to rules that are designed to resist corruption as best as possible.
True, but it's also a bit disgraceful that they never saw something like this coming. Now that's it's happened once, they're going to need to reform the JCT rules to prevent it from happening again.
Have a purchasable level of membership that requires a majority of those members to vote yes on every matter of business just seems unbelievably ripe for exploitation.
Maybe it's just me, but I thought the whole "New Testament" thing was to replace the "Old Testament" with a kinder, gentler religion. I think it's been deliberately changed to "Thou Shalt Not Kill" because it's more in line with the teachings of Jesus.
Specifically while the Old Testament clearly approves of warfare, I don't think the New Testament does. Many people seem to forget that to be "Christian" you're supposed to follow the New Testament first and foremost.
But then again, I'm not Christian so maybe I just don't get it.
No, it's definitely not a fluff piece. It's overanalyzing a trend of 3 items. And the point isn't that Bioware and Bizarre were owned by MS, but that they had close partnerships with MS and were making the games that sell 360s.
If they go platform neutral that's a large blow to Microsoft's Third Party development and the release of Bungie is a huge blow to Microsoft's internall developed games. Overwall it reflects poorly on the 360s continued success. It might be a blip or it might be the first signs of major trouble in Microsoft's games department.
To put it more bluntly, the idea is that if Microsoft were on the ball and interested in developing first part titles for the 360, they would have kept Bungie and bought both Bioware and Bizarre. As it is now, they are leaving themselves very much at the mercy of their third party games developers. Hoping that they will stick with the Xbox line of products. If the PS3 ever surpasses the Xbox in sales (I know, not terribly likely at this time), they could end up royally screwed.
It's even worse than that, he actually find 9 inaccuracies, he found 9 instances where there wasn't explicit proof that the comment was true. If you look at the issues it's a case of "there's not enough evidence to prove this yet", "while the sea level will rise to that level, it will probably take longer than indicated", and other such comments. I think that puts an Inconvenient Truth as a substancially higher credibility rate than an Encyclopedia, which we should all remember from the Wikipedi vs Britanica articles.
If some game companies end up having over-extended themselves banking on big sales for the Wii and they never appear there could be bankrupcies and cancelled games for everyone. Other than that, it's just more games related navel gazing.
If you expect that to go uncovered... Welcome to Slashdot, you must be new here.
I'm not sure that entirely true. What we're seeing is a natural result of capitalism. It's easier for corporations to "give it" to their customers than it is for customers to avoid "getting it". A corporation only needs to hire 1 lawyer to write an abusive EULA, but then every customer of their's needs to read, understand and act upon the EULA. Similarly a corporation with a vested interest in copyrights only needs to hire 1 lobbying firm to change laws in their favour. Most customers do not have a similar incentive to protect themselves from that abuse. Heck, capitalism working at its best dictates that it's probably better for consumers to get routinely screwed by corporations as long as the screwing doesn't become more expensive than what you'd have to pay to avoid it.
Consumers roll over and take it up the rear because it's generally cheaper than fighting it. It's exactly what economics predicts they'll do.
Novels - No, really. Novels were ruining the youth of America in the late 1800s Pinball - In the 1930s pinball machines were turning children into muggers. Rock'n'Rolle - This is the classic one. Rock'n'Roll was responsible for all kinds of things like devil worship! Comics - I think it was the 60s when comic books were turning children into deranged killers. Rap - We should all be able to remember that Rap was turning children into thugs in the 90s.
Obviously, Video Games are just the latest in a series of assaults on decency, and must be banned just like all that other stuff.
The problems with Karazhan are many-fold: 1) It's got a raid timer. 2) It's got a 1-week raid timer. 3) There's only 1 ten man instance, and it's Kharazan. 4) It's actually difficult.
These are all problems which could probably be solved with a few minor changes. If you reduce the length of the raid timer, you increase the opportunities to run it. Zul'Gurub and AQ20 had 4 day raid timers, that made it much easier to have mixed groups. UBRS was 10 man and had no raid timer at all. The only similar content in BC is 5 man heroics. There's no larger group instances that don't have a raid timer. Raid timers suck because they are used as both a tool for progression and as a punishment. If you kill a boss in Khara you can only return to Khara with the people you killed the boss with or as the leader of a group of people who haven't come to it yet (and the bossses that you killed are then dead). It's good that you can do a night of Kara and then come back to finish it at another time without having to restart from the beginning, but the mechanism for doing makes coordination and cooperation a pain in the ass if you have more than 10 players interested in running it in your guild and you want to have more than 10 because the content aftersward is geared for 25 players.
Honestly I think if they had done something smart and put 3-4 10 mans like Khara in to start for the expansion it wouldn't be as big an issue. You'd have 3 different paths of progression to get to the first 25 man and it'd be much easier to make sure all 25 members of your eventual end-game raiding crew get opportunities to do the 10 mans without quitting your guild and going somewhere else until your finished with Kara.
If they reduced the raid timer, you'd be able to do about 2 Khara runs a week, giving more opportunities to gear up other players in the guild. If Khara was easier the you could split your A team to get the B team players through it.
I think if you fix any of the issues, the others become less important. I think Kara is, over all, a colossal implementation screw up on Blizzard's part. And they're being stupid about it too a Blizzard rep said (paraphrased) "More player time is spent in Kara than any other raiding instance, we don't think that would happen unless players really, really enjoyed it". Really? You can't think of any other reason why people might spend lots and lots of time on the introductory raiding instances than because they like it?
There's a couple of issues that might help illuminate why MMOs pretty much universally fall into this trap:
1) It's usually cheaper to keep a current player than to recruit a new one.
2) "Hardcore" players are evangelical players. They recruit new players.
3) When a player "completes" all existing content, there's a very high likelyhood they'll quit the game to play something else.
4) Large-group raiding makes most players less likely to quit paying for the game, it also reduces the average amount of time they play even though they continue paying the same amount as more active players.
5) Expansions are sold to players to generate an extra cash bump.
I think you're correct, though, in that the MMO designers tend to put too much focus on the end-game raiders. They forget that end game people still leave, and therefore you still need to put some effort in to attracting new players to replace them.
Slashdot Mirror
Forty-two, naturally.
Actually, I would suspect that a majority of players do want those things.
The trick with WoW is that it's community that keeps many people playing WoW and the character designs are appealing to most people (even if some armor sets are incredibly ugly). In general the prettyness of the game, and the newness of it got a large audience to try it out. Now they're kind of stuck playing it, because they don't really want to start over in a new game if it's only better in a few ways, or only marginally better in every way. They're invested in their current characters and their current friends. However, if Blizzard managed to colossally screw something up, then you might see more migrations away from it.
But will it be as good as Gundam Dodgeball? ...
Yes, it's a real game... They even made a sequel.
It's what you get for not throwing in the traditional "but Bush is even worse" when you complain about the Clintons.
Indeed, we must ban dihydrogen monoxide! It's the most dangerous of all of the hydrogen compounds!
Heck, those hypocrits at Greenpeace use DHMO every day. When will they learn?
On the one hand, you should actually be "thanking" Bruce Lehman for the DMCA, and even he knows (now) that it is a terrible failure.
On the other, I'm glad that your right to copy songs is so much more important to you than your right to Habeas Corpus. We can clearly see where your priorities lie!
Says who?
Actuaries.
They're in your statistics, calculating your odds.
Actually they do, you just like the taste of their shit better than Nintendo's and Sony.
Isn't your opinion exactly the same type of projection the OP was engaging in?
I know I've tried the Wii and waving a stick around isn't more fun that using a controller. It's more exercise, though.
Actually they caved for a number of different reasons:
1) Progressive Democrats didn't like the bill because it wasn't strict enough.
2) Conservative Democrats didn't like the bill because it was too strict.
3) Republicans didn't like the bill because they could end up in jail.
In the end, spite didn't win out, and a couple of the conservative Dems were convinced that it could hinder the performance of the foreign espionage and, more importantly, their personal re-election campaigns.
They lose more money if you don't buy the 360.
It's American Values:
1) Winning is everything.
2) Cheating is ok as long as you win.
3) Getting caught cheating is ok as long as you still win.
4) Cheating is wrong if you get caught and have to forfeit your victory.
Many people don't care that Microsoft is a predatory monopolist because 1) they're incredibly rich, and 2) they escaped their big anti-trust trial with an insignificant punishment. Many people love Microsoft simply because Microsoft wins. To them, by definition the most popular thing is always the best. Rich people are good people because they are successful. After all, God would only reward good people and always punishes the bad people. That's why, by definition, all poor people are lazy and evil.
To some extent I agree with you, but on the flip side, I know that some rules are inherently more resistant to corruption than others. It's best to have a clear spirit of the rules, in addition to rules that are designed to resist corruption as best as possible.
True, but it's also a bit disgraceful that they never saw something like this coming. Now that's it's happened once, they're going to need to reform the JCT rules to prevent it from happening again.
Have a purchasable level of membership that requires a majority of those members to vote yes on every matter of business just seems unbelievably ripe for exploitation.
Maybe it's just me, but I thought the whole "New Testament" thing was to replace the "Old Testament" with a kinder, gentler religion. I think it's been deliberately changed to "Thou Shalt Not Kill" because it's more in line with the teachings of Jesus.
Specifically while the Old Testament clearly approves of warfare, I don't think the New Testament does. Many people seem to forget that to be "Christian" you're supposed to follow the New Testament first and foremost.
But then again, I'm not Christian so maybe I just don't get it.
No, it's definitely not a fluff piece. It's overanalyzing a trend of 3 items. And the point isn't that Bioware and Bizarre were owned by MS, but that they had close partnerships with MS and were making the games that sell 360s.
If they go platform neutral that's a large blow to Microsoft's Third Party development and the release of Bungie is a huge blow to Microsoft's internall developed games. Overwall it reflects poorly on the 360s continued success. It might be a blip or it might be the first signs of major trouble in Microsoft's games department.
To put it more bluntly, the idea is that if Microsoft were on the ball and interested in developing first part titles for the 360, they would have kept Bungie and bought both Bioware and Bizarre. As it is now, they are leaving themselves very much at the mercy of their third party games developers. Hoping that they will stick with the Xbox line of products. If the PS3 ever surpasses the Xbox in sales (I know, not terribly likely at this time), they could end up royally screwed.
Indeed, that would have been excellent casting.
It's even worse than that, he actually find 9 inaccuracies, he found 9 instances where there wasn't explicit proof that the comment was true. If you look at the issues it's a case of "there's not enough evidence to prove this yet", "while the sea level will rise to that level, it will probably take longer than indicated", and other such comments. I think that puts an Inconvenient Truth as a substancially higher credibility rate than an Encyclopedia, which we should all remember from the Wikipedi vs Britanica articles.
It's simple:
1) Build a Development House
2) Sell Development House to EA for $$$
3) Quit EA
4) Goto step 1
It's the ultimate money making scheme for those in the business.
If some game companies end up having over-extended themselves banking on big sales for the Wii and they never appear there could be bankrupcies and cancelled games for everyone. Other than that, it's just more games related navel gazing.
If you expect that to go uncovered... Welcome to Slashdot, you must be new here.
I'm not sure that entirely true. What we're seeing is a natural result of capitalism. It's easier for corporations to "give it" to their customers than it is for customers to avoid "getting it". A corporation only needs to hire 1 lawyer to write an abusive EULA, but then every customer of their's needs to read, understand and act upon the EULA. Similarly a corporation with a vested interest in copyrights only needs to hire 1 lobbying firm to change laws in their favour. Most customers do not have a similar incentive to protect themselves from that abuse. Heck, capitalism working at its best dictates that it's probably better for consumers to get routinely screwed by corporations as long as the screwing doesn't become more expensive than what you'd have to pay to avoid it.
Consumers roll over and take it up the rear because it's generally cheaper than fighting it. It's exactly what economics predicts they'll do.
Indeed! Past subjects of hysteria include:
Novels - No, really. Novels were ruining the youth of America in the late 1800s
Pinball - In the 1930s pinball machines were turning children into muggers.
Rock'n'Rolle - This is the classic one. Rock'n'Roll was responsible for all kinds of things like devil worship!
Comics - I think it was the 60s when comic books were turning children into deranged killers.
Rap - We should all be able to remember that Rap was turning children into thugs in the 90s.
Obviously, Video Games are just the latest in a series of assaults on decency, and must be banned just like all that other stuff.
And have you completed it on Legendary? Have you collected all the skulls and played the campaign scoring metagame using them?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/09/28There are reasons people might not want to spend that time playing the single player campaign on legendary.
The problems with Karazhan are many-fold:
1) It's got a raid timer.
2) It's got a 1-week raid timer.
3) There's only 1 ten man instance, and it's Kharazan.
4) It's actually difficult.
These are all problems which could probably be solved with a few minor changes. If you reduce the length of the raid timer, you increase the opportunities to run it. Zul'Gurub and AQ20 had 4 day raid timers, that made it much easier to have mixed groups. UBRS was 10 man and had no raid timer at all. The only similar content in BC is 5 man heroics. There's no larger group instances that don't have a raid timer. Raid timers suck because they are used as both a tool for progression and as a punishment. If you kill a boss in Khara you can only return to Khara with the people you killed the boss with or as the leader of a group of people who haven't come to it yet (and the bossses that you killed are then dead). It's good that you can do a night of Kara and then come back to finish it at another time without having to restart from the beginning, but the mechanism for doing makes coordination and cooperation a pain in the ass if you have more than 10 players interested in running it in your guild and you want to have more than 10 because the content aftersward is geared for 25 players.
Honestly I think if they had done something smart and put 3-4 10 mans like Khara in to start for the expansion it wouldn't be as big an issue. You'd have 3 different paths of progression to get to the first 25 man and it'd be much easier to make sure all 25 members of your eventual end-game raiding crew get opportunities to do the 10 mans without quitting your guild and going somewhere else until your finished with Kara.
If they reduced the raid timer, you'd be able to do about 2 Khara runs a week, giving more opportunities to gear up other players in the guild. If Khara was easier the you could split your A team to get the B team players through it.
I think if you fix any of the issues, the others become less important. I think Kara is, over all, a colossal implementation screw up on Blizzard's part. And they're being stupid about it too a Blizzard rep said (paraphrased) "More player time is spent in Kara than any other raiding instance, we don't think that would happen unless players really, really enjoyed it". Really? You can't think of any other reason why people might spend lots and lots of time on the introductory raiding instances than because they like it?
There's a couple of issues that might help illuminate why MMOs pretty much universally fall into this trap:
1) It's usually cheaper to keep a current player than to recruit a new one.
2) "Hardcore" players are evangelical players. They recruit new players.
3) When a player "completes" all existing content, there's a very high likelyhood they'll quit the game to play something else.
4) Large-group raiding makes most players less likely to quit paying for the game, it also reduces the average amount of time they play even though they continue paying the same amount as more active players.
5) Expansions are sold to players to generate an extra cash bump.
I think you're correct, though, in that the MMO designers tend to put too much focus on the end-game raiders. They forget that end game people still leave, and therefore you still need to put some effort in to attracting new players to replace them.