Do you interview people at all? I'm a programmer, and I do. (We do mostly technical interviews.) There are people coming out of colleges with masters degrees that can't write a stack. In Java. Using anything but java.util.Stack. Who screw up, badly, a simple array-reversal coding question. I know my company pays very well. We are lenient on experience and knowing all the latest whizz-bang technologies if someone can show they can think and solve problems and possess some basic skills. The vast majority fail at this, hard.
Except the payoff for time invested is exponential, not linear. So even though you can't catch up, being a year behind means you're just 5% behind. Or not as diversified.
Example: a corp member, at about 6 months old in account age, had over twice the kills as anyone else in the corp, 4 year veterans included. It's not all about your in-game skills.
The fact that you've been playing with your head in a hole notwithstanding, Veto _is_ one of the best known pirate corps out there. (They did mercenary work for a while too, don't know if they're still into it.)
"in 100 years, your nice house in the suburbs and your fancy bmw will be rust and rotting floorboards, and you will be a bunch of ash or bones. all that will live on is your name. what will you do with your time, who will you serve?"
On the other hand, names mean nothing to the dead. But right now I can enjoy the benefits of money.
... and surprise. Our three watchwords are inconsistency, incompetence and surprise. And fear. Four! Four. Amongst our weaponry are diverse... I'll come in again.
Uh, they used the 15 counties already on DST as a weather-control, since if they shot up 15% in energy cost over the year, then it probably wasn't DST's fault. This is mentioned in the article.
Mm, I dunno about that really. I have a new machine running Vista, decent video card (8800gt 512mb), lots of ram, and I can run LOTRO ultra high quality, 4x AA, 1900x1200 and get good performance. It never slows down to the point that it's noticeable. And the dx10 graphics look really nice. Vista's security features drive me nuts (I disabled them), but the gigantic performance impact I'm just not seeing.
The multiplayer was/is actually a pretty serious improvement. Being able to set up a team/party of friends that sticks together automatically on a console was new, and is seriously handy. I don't want to sit down and play server lookups and team administration, I want to shoot shit.
Plus, Halo has a different feel from a lot of other shooters. It's slower and less instantly deadly. It sounds minor, but it's not. It allows some friends of mine who get queasy easily to play with us. A lot of people who were turned off by Quake/Half-life uber-speedy take-3-steps-die gameplay really like Halo.
Does that make it worth all the hype? Well, probably not. But I've never really run into another shooter that plays quite like it (aside from Marathon, naturally...) and rather than trying to get a group of friends to all migrate to Death Hell FPS Satan Shooter and waste my money buying FPS after FPS trying them out until I find just the right one, it's nice to just say 'oh cool, next version of Halo is coming out, my friends will get it, we'll very very likely enjoy playing it, can't wait'.
I think it's more about inertia now, but that doesn't make it a bad game.
Honestly, we were dying laughing as my friend piloted Superman through hoops, ran up to a villain and blew on him, then flew threw _yet more hoops_. Even today referring to flying through hoops cracks us up. It was probably funnier since he had only rented it, instead of blowing $50 on that pile of crap. The blockbuster employee even tried to talk him out of it.
Oh man, they should make a sequel to Carmageddon. I mean, a good one. That game was such a blast. It had just the right mix of humor and violence, and was just plain fun to pick up and play. Maybe I can find it on an emulator somewhere. Thanks for bringing it up!
I think the mistake in the logic here is assuming that Pluto was kept a planet because it had a certain mass, or orbit, or whatever. Pluto was kept a planet because of tradition, in essence. If it were found today, I don't think it would be considered one. So no opening of the floodgates for every hunk of rock that has some number that measures larger than Pluto.
"And this is why console price is a stupid thing to debate"
I'm not sure about that. It is stupid to say one console is better than another because of price. But price does factor into the potential popularity and success of a console. And the PS3 is on the wrong side.
It is simply too expensive right now. Because right now, I get a $600 brick, because none of the purchased or rented games and online fees I would have payed exist yet. Looking back in 5 years, it might have been a smart buy. In advance, not knowing what will come out for it that won't be out for the PC or Xbox360, it may not be such a wise purchase. And if everyone thinks like me, no one buys it, it gets no games, and our fear is fulfilled. That's why the price does matter.
"2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity."
So if your neighborhood is getting worse, you should just move? No point in trying to fund the police better to up patrols, etc? Moving is not always an option. If my friends and I all like playing a game together, and that game becomes popular and flooded with asshats that we can't do a thing about, we just have to give up and quit?
"3) For games with voice chat, turn it off. Seriously, I would not make people suffer through hearing my voice, even for helpful communication. Please do not torture us with yours. Of course, it is muted whenever I do play an online FPS, so I guess I am saving my own ears."
Good luck with that. Unless you only like running around solo and blasting everything that moves, you need voice to communicate and coordinate. Turning off voice in, say, Halo 2 == losing.
The difference is, in a basketball if someone mouths off nonstop for 15 minutes about how you are a giant fag for stealing the ball and getting two points, you can go break their nose. The implied threat of such an action generally keeps the taunting and trash-talking on a level that is feather-ruffling, and insulting if you are thin-skinned, but not 'fighting words'.
Online, there are no 'fighting words'. There is no barrier, no repercussions for actions, no tarnishing of your actual name by your behavior in game.
Saying 'it's just trash talk, it's your own fault for caring' misses the point.
Well... I play it, I love it, but it's not one of the biggest. In mindshare yes, in population no. But the reason it's probably not mentioned is that it is utterly unlike WoW. It isn't beating WoW at it's own game, it's making an entirely, completely, massively different game, and saying 'people might like this too'. And they do, for the most part. It's a niche, but it's an ever growing, profitable niche, so hey.
See eve-online. A small pack of week-old newbs in frigates that cost about 250k each can take down a 3 year old player in a battleship costing 250m. Now, hopefully after 3 years the older player would know to avoid wolfpacks, but that's the thing. It's about your knowledge, not the invincibility you get from having played longer. People who buy accounts are generally very obvious: they get ganked in expensive ships in situations they should've known to avoid, often by people in ridiculously cheap setups.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you interview people at all? I'm a programmer, and I do. (We do mostly technical interviews.) There are people coming out of colleges with masters degrees that can't write a stack. In Java. Using anything but java.util.Stack. Who screw up, badly, a simple array-reversal coding question. I know my company pays very well. We are lenient on experience and knowing all the latest whizz-bang technologies if someone can show they can think and solve problems and possess some basic skills. The vast majority fail at this, hard.
Except the payoff for time invested is exponential, not linear. So even though you can't catch up, being a year behind means you're just 5% behind. Or not as diversified.
Example: a corp member, at about 6 months old in account age, had over twice the kills as anyone else in the corp, 4 year veterans included. It's not all about your in-game skills.
The fact that you've been playing with your head in a hole notwithstanding, Veto _is_ one of the best known pirate corps out there. (They did mercenary work for a while too, don't know if they're still into it.)
"in 100 years, your nice house in the suburbs and your fancy bmw will be rust and rotting floorboards, and you will be a bunch of ash or bones. all that will live on is your name. what will you do with your time, who will you serve?"
On the other hand, names mean nothing to the dead. But right now I can enjoy the benefits of money.
C'est la vie, I suppose.
He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious.
... and surprise. Our three watchwords are inconsistency, incompetence and surprise. And fear. Four! Four. Amongst our weaponry are diverse ... I'll come in again.
Uh, they used the 15 counties already on DST as a weather-control, since if they shot up 15% in energy cost over the year, then it probably wasn't DST's fault. This is mentioned in the article.
Mm, I dunno about that really. I have a new machine running Vista, decent video card (8800gt 512mb), lots of ram, and I can run LOTRO ultra high quality, 4x AA, 1900x1200 and get good performance. It never slows down to the point that it's noticeable. And the dx10 graphics look really nice. Vista's security features drive me nuts (I disabled them), but the gigantic performance impact I'm just not seeing.
Kind of like dismissing all arguments for or against an issue, regardless of their validity, to support your own pet theory? Hmm...
That was horrible. If you want to end bad games and stuff you got to sing loud.
Your honor, I would like to present exhibit A of Male Geek Stupidity...
The multiplayer was/is actually a pretty serious improvement. Being able to set up a team/party of friends that sticks together automatically on a console was new, and is seriously handy. I don't want to sit down and play server lookups and team administration, I want to shoot shit.
Plus, Halo has a different feel from a lot of other shooters. It's slower and less instantly deadly. It sounds minor, but it's not. It allows some friends of mine who get queasy easily to play with us. A lot of people who were turned off by Quake/Half-life uber-speedy take-3-steps-die gameplay really like Halo.
Does that make it worth all the hype? Well, probably not. But I've never really run into another shooter that plays quite like it (aside from Marathon, naturally...) and rather than trying to get a group of friends to all migrate to Death Hell FPS Satan Shooter and waste my money buying FPS after FPS trying them out until I find just the right one, it's nice to just say 'oh cool, next version of Halo is coming out, my friends will get it, we'll very very likely enjoy playing it, can't wait'.
I think it's more about inertia now, but that doesn't make it a bad game.
Yeah, clearly it was their bandwidth commoditization scheme that ruined them. Not the massive corruption, embezzling and outright theft that went on.
You could always, you know, not go?
'You're ruining my childhood memories! Here's $11.50, can I have a jumbo popcorn with that too?'
Crow, practically yelling: "No fair. You can't flashback to things we saw ten seconds ago"
Honestly, we were dying laughing as my friend piloted Superman through hoops, ran up to a villain and blew on him, then flew threw _yet more hoops_. Even today referring to flying through hoops cracks us up. It was probably funnier since he had only rented it, instead of blowing $50 on that pile of crap. The blockbuster employee even tried to talk him out of it.
Baldur's Gate II. One of the few games I _still_ replay.
Oh man, they should make a sequel to Carmageddon. I mean, a good one. That game was such a blast. It had just the right mix of humor and violence, and was just plain fun to pick up and play. Maybe I can find it on an emulator somewhere. Thanks for bringing it up!
I think the mistake in the logic here is assuming that Pluto was kept a planet because it had a certain mass, or orbit, or whatever. Pluto was kept a planet because of tradition, in essence. If it were found today, I don't think it would be considered one. So no opening of the floodgates for every hunk of rock that has some number that measures larger than Pluto.
"And this is why console price is a stupid thing to debate"
I'm not sure about that. It is stupid to say one console is better than another because of price. But price does factor into the potential popularity and success of a console. And the PS3 is on the wrong side.
It is simply too expensive right now. Because right now, I get a $600 brick, because none of the purchased or rented games and online fees I would have payed exist yet. Looking back in 5 years, it might have been a smart buy. In advance, not knowing what will come out for it that won't be out for the PC or Xbox360, it may not be such a wise purchase. And if everyone thinks like me, no one buys it, it gets no games, and our fear is fulfilled. That's why the price does matter.
"2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity."
So if your neighborhood is getting worse, you should just move? No point in trying to fund the police better to up patrols, etc? Moving is not always an option. If my friends and I all like playing a game together, and that game becomes popular and flooded with asshats that we can't do a thing about, we just have to give up and quit?
"3) For games with voice chat, turn it off. Seriously, I would not make people suffer through hearing my voice, even for helpful communication. Please do not torture us with yours. Of course, it is muted whenever I do play an online FPS, so I guess I am saving my own ears."
Good luck with that. Unless you only like running around solo and blasting everything that moves, you need voice to communicate and coordinate. Turning off voice in, say, Halo 2 == losing.
The difference is, in a basketball if someone mouths off nonstop for 15 minutes about how you are a giant fag for stealing the ball and getting two points, you can go break their nose. The implied threat of such an action generally keeps the taunting and trash-talking on a level that is feather-ruffling, and insulting if you are thin-skinned, but not 'fighting words'.
Online, there are no 'fighting words'. There is no barrier, no repercussions for actions, no tarnishing of your actual name by your behavior in game.
Saying 'it's just trash talk, it's your own fault for caring' misses the point.
Except that ATI as far as I know doesn't have a dx10 card out, which is the main allure of upgrading to vista, as far as I'm concerned.
Well... I play it, I love it, but it's not one of the biggest. In mindshare yes, in population no. But the reason it's probably not mentioned is that it is utterly unlike WoW. It isn't beating WoW at it's own game, it's making an entirely, completely, massively different game, and saying 'people might like this too'. And they do, for the most part. It's a niche, but it's an ever growing, profitable niche, so hey.
See eve-online. A small pack of week-old newbs in frigates that cost about 250k each can take down a 3 year old player in a battleship costing 250m. Now, hopefully after 3 years the older player would know to avoid wolfpacks, but that's the thing. It's about your knowledge, not the invincibility you get from having played longer. People who buy accounts are generally very obvious: they get ganked in expensive ships in situations they should've known to avoid, often by people in ridiculously cheap setups.