My only current complaint is that they don't play nice with dimmers. I use them everywhere else.
We've got a big light over our dining room table that's run from a dimmer... Made the mistake of trying to put a CFL in there. It doesn't dim, it strobes and flickers instead - very annoying. Had to replace it with a regular incandescent bulb.
I see some other folks mentioning that you can get dimmable CFLs now... I'll have to check out the local Lowe's again and see what they've got.
At 6AM in the morning, the delay is a welcome "feature".
Agreed. We recently bought a new house and we've been slowly switching everything over to CFLs as the old bulbs burn out. We've replaced about half the bulbs now, and we're already noticing the savings on our monthly electric bills.
There does seem to be quite a bit of difference in the quality of CFLs. We've got some that came from Wal-Mart that do indeed take a few seconds to ramp up to full brightness, but the ones we bought at Lowe's are pretty much instantly bright.
We've got some of the lower-quality, slower to brighten bulbs in our bedroom, and it really is very nice in the mornings. You get a soft light that gradually ramps up to full brightness over the course of 5 seconds or so...much easier on the eyes first thing in the morning. We'll actually be looking for the exact same "defect" when it's eventually time to replace the CFLs in our bedroom - I don't want instantly bright bulbs in there.
I used to work at EB. We had display kiosks of all the major consoles. The various vendors each had their own method to keep people from playing on the kiosks all day... I remember the XBox demo discs we ran in the kiosk all re-set back to the main menu every 10 minutes or so. The PlayStation 2 kiosk had some sort of timer that would interrupt the power and force the console to hard reset every 20 minutes or so. The GameCube demo discs generally just had very small snippets of gameplay...less than a single full level... The GameCube kiosk never forced a re-set of any kind, but there just wasn't that much to occupy your time on it.
If Sony was, in fact, concerned about people playing on the kiosk all day long there are plenty of ways they could have re-set or rebooted the system that didn't require employee intervention. These machines aren't rebooting, they're locking up, and it requires an employee to physically re-set the system. That, to me, screams of poor design. Either it's a poorly designed re-set system that doesn't work as it should...or it's broken software that isn't actually supposed to be locking up. It isn't terribly encouraging either way.
A few months back I got completely fed up with Windows. My son managed to download something he shouldn't have and got a virus on his PC despite my best efforts to secure it (and considering the fact that I administer Windows networks professionally, those are fairly good efforts). The virus spread through our home network overnight, and by morning I was looking at a complete reload of every PC in my house.
So I decided to install Xubuntu for myself and switch over to that...no more Windows headaches, at least not at home. It worked very well for the first few weeks. I had no trouble with any of the Internet or productivity software. I liked the amount of choice available and had no trouble finding software that met my needs. I really liked the GUI as well. WINE worked like a charm and I was running the few Win32 programs I need.
The problem came when I had a long weekend and wanted to do some gaming. I'd been playing WoW through WINE with little trouble...but it was too laggy in large raids. So over the long weekend I wound up installing Windows on a spare HDD and playing WoW through it. The first day or two wasn't too bad...but I quickly grew tired of constantly rebooting my computer - Windows for WoW, Xubuntu for useful stuff - back and forth, back and forth. Towards the end of the weekend I found myself moving some basic stuff (contacts, Firefox bookmarks) back into Windows so I wouldn't have to reboot quite so much. The deathblow was when I realized that I hadn't booted into Xubuntu long enough to check my email in days, and it seemed like a chore to reboot just for my email - that's when I realized that Xubuntu just wasn't actually making my life easier.
Here at work we've actually got Ubuntu installed on a couple machines and it works quite well. We have no trouble with them, they're integrated nicely into our domain. They do their job and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Ubuntu (or some flavor there-of) for a business/professional PC. For your average home user though...I just don't think it's quite ready. The problem continues to be mainstream software support... Until your average user can go buy a copy of WoW or Sims 2 for Ubuntu, or load up the software for their new Kodak digital camera under Ubuntu...I just don't think it's going to catch on.
And forcing users to rely on the Zune application to move data onto or off the device is infuriating
Though very frustrating, doesn't the iPod do this too? (Or do you mean ANY data and not just songs?)
The iPod does integrate very nicely with iTunes, and plays the iTunes DRMed stuff with no trouble. But the iPod still shows up as a generic removable HDD just like your average USB flash drive does. You can simply drag & drop files onto the device just like you would to any other USB storage device - not just songs (though that does work) but anything else you'd like to store on it. Movies, pictures, spreadsheets, PDF's, programs, even an entire OS. You can actually boot off an iPod.
Around here, it seems a lot of people are afraid to use self checkout lines, where you scan and bag the items yourself. So, they all line up at the cashiers, meanwhile, I can get through the self checkout in record time.
You're lucky. Around here it seems that most of the people using the self checkout lines are the folks who should be farthest from them.
They go to the self checkout line which is market very clearly as "20 items or less" with two or three shopping carts piled high with items. Then they start randomly passing things over the scanner with absolutely no attention to where the barcode is located on the item or what piece of information the machine may be asking for. They look around in bewilderment when the machine asks them to remove something from the scale, or to scan something again, or to type in the produce code on a banana or apple.
Ultimately some employee has to come over and void out the entire transaction and then ring them up again. At that point it is no longer self checkout but rather a cashier checking you out at a self checkout machine. And all the while I'm standing there with a single box of cereal and cash in my hand...a transaction that would take less than a minute if it weren't for the folks in front of me.
You people have NOTHING to whine about. nada. zero. zip.
You are using it on a non-supported platform. Deal with it. Blizzard has no responsibility to take how Cedega does things into account. You can whine all you want about it not being fair, or how you have some 'right' to play it on your Linux enabled toaster, but you don't.
Blizzard makes the game for Windows. If you get it to work in Linux, power to you. But if it stops working, tough luck, it was never intended to work anyway. You may as well complain to Nintendo about the quality of Snes9x.
You're missing the point.
This isn't a problem with support. It isn't a matter of whether WoW.exe will run or not - it does run under WINE/Cedega. The issue is that Blizzard is closing game accounts. You can still run the program, you just can't log in to your account. Doesn't matter if you reformat and reload your machine with Windows or MacOS to appease Blizzard, you can still run the program, you still can't log in to your account. Worse, the account is being closed because of cheating. That's what it'll say in your account details - hacking/cheating. Not "didn't pay his bill", but "caught running cheat/hack program". Much harder (impossible?) to get such an account re-activated.
My bank doesn't support Firefox on Linux for viewing my balance on-line. They have a list of supported browsers and operating systems and Firefox/Linux just isn't on it. Because of that I will not be surprised if I cannot view my balance on their website...I will not be surprised if the page renders incorrectly or isn't functional - it isn't a supported platform. That's fine. I'll go view my balance on an IE6/Windows machine instead. But I most certainly will complain if they close my bank account because I tried to view my balance with Firefox/Linux.
You toss out a lot of prices in your post, but you don't really indicate what the price is for.
One example you use is a comparison of RedHat Workstation for $299 versus Windows XP Professional for $140. That RedHat Workstation you're buying comes with a fairly nice support contract... According to the website you get unlimited incidents and a 4 hour response time. That Windows price is just the license to use their software, no implied support contract at all...and Microsoft charges $245 per incident if you don't have a support contract...
A more accurate comparison of prices might be Fedora Core for $0 (just the license to use the software, no implied support contract) versus $140 for Windows XP Professional. Or Redhat Workstation for $299 (with unlimited support) versus $8,299 for "up to 10 hours of proactive support assistance" from Microsoft.
Software is cheap, support is expensive - and with OSS products you are generally buying support, since the software is usually available for free.
I'm looking at my keyboard right now, and I really can't see that many useless keys... Yeah, I've got a couple duplicate keys (L & R shift, L & R ctrl, etc.) but I just don't see THAT many useless keys. This new keyboard only has 53? What did they strip out? I didn't see any function keys...and I didn't see a numeric keypad...I guess that accounts for a lot of them... But I USE those keys! I really can't see how this is going to be much of an improvement if you wind up missing a bunch of useful keys...
Two words: handicapped people. Some people can't type on those classic keypads. Now they can make simple hand gestures to call somebody. For the rest of us, it's just another phone with totally useless features.
I dunno... Doesn't seem that handy to me, really, even for the handicapped. I mean, if you've got the motor skills necessary to grasp a phone and draw shapes/figures/numbers in the air...I'd think there are probably plenty of other things you could already be using to dial a phone - like a keyboard, or voice recognition, or a wand. Seems to me that this new motion sensing phone would be harder to use than a normal one...
But what I find truly amazing is the fact that people don't try to fix it, they just throw the thing out.
I've seen people get infested with spyware or viruses...and rather than fix the computer they just throw it away and get a new one.
Imagine if your car was running poorly... Had a flat tire, or the alternator was going... Rather than take the car to the mechanic (or fix it yourself) you just throw the thing away and buy a new one.
Problem is, apathy doesn't do you any good. If you're tired of the same old bullshit, but don't do anything about it and rely on your failure to vote to send a message, nothing is going to change. You need to actually do something to make the same old bullshit go away.
Doing nothing, being apathetic, refusing to vote in some form of protest just isn't going to get you anywhere.
I have a hard time believing that someone would be motivated enough by an ad to actually get out and vote...but not motivated enough to even find out who they are voting for. I mean, if I'm motivated enough to register and then show up on election day then I'm certainly motivated enough to fire up a web browser for 10 minutes and read the candidates' websites.
These adds aren't going to bring out the truly apathetic, those folks don't care enough to be influenced. These adds are going to bring out the people who've been paying enough attention to think something ought to be done, but haven't been feeling motivated enough to do something themselves.
Personally, I want people to vote because that makes it more likely we'll have a government that actually represents the people it is governing.
I constantly hear people complain about the current government. They don't like this new law, or that new war, or some guy in office...but when you ask them if they voted they reply with something along the lines of "of course not, it doesn't do any good."
Yes, I would like it if more people who thought like I do went out and voted...then maybe we'd get a government that works the way I think it should. However, even if the folks I want don't get elected, I'd still be happier if it was a government that more accurately represented the vast majority of the nation.
I've noticed lately that Mythic seems to be aiming DAoC more and more at PvP gameplay. PvE is less and less important with every patch.
It seems that Mythic got a surprise when they released ToA. Players had been complaining that the PvE content was too shallow, too easy, too simple. They wanted interesting quests, challenging encounters, something new and different. Mythic tried to deliver this with ToA, and I think they succeeded. ToA was very different from what DAoC had to offer before then. But players had a fit. It took too much time away from their PvP to get their character up to ML10 to be competitive in PvP. Folks just wanted to go out and kill things.
There were a series of nerfs and adjustments shortly after ToA came out, all of them fairly drastic in regards to PvE. Many abilities were removed, made PvP-only, or dramatically reduced in their effectiveness... I'm a big PvE'er, and I really thought there's be some outcry, but there wasn't. The PvP'ers were happy to see these abilities balanced.
Then all the active developers were pulled off of Catacombs (DAoC's next retail, PvE expansion) and put on New Frontiers (DAoC's most recent free, PvP expansion). New Frontiers was in testing for several months for the normal servers...but the co-op server got a few hours of testing with very short notice. That testing revealed lots of bugs for the co-op server, but New Frontiers launched anyway, and the co-op server still isn't working right again.
Just look at the adjustments being made for PvP: Battlegrounds for all levels, increased XP from PvP, XP rewards for capturing keeps, and now free XP/levels/items/gold from your trainer so you don't need to spend so much time out of PvP trying to get your character equipped.
I would not be terribly surprised to see PvE slowly disappear from DAoC. To see it become a truly PvP-centered game where you simply log in and kill eachother, much like Tribes or Unreal Tournament.
It is odd... People complain about expansion packs adding more grinding as if it was a bad thing. When ToA came out I had finally hit 50 with a couple of my characters and I was starting to run out of challenges. I was ready for something more - raise the level cap, give me new dungeons, more quests, SOMETHING. ToA came out and it was basically levels 51-60, though they claimed it was optional and wouldn't affect RvR. Well, anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed ToA and the "grinding" it involved. Now I'm running out of things to do again...and looking forward to more "grinding" in Catacombs.
Problem is though, people seem to LIKE the level grind, no matter how much they may complain about it. Just take a look at how (un)successful Horizons and Shadowbane are in comparison to the more level-driven comptetition.
I do agree that in this day & age, there really isn't a terribly good reason to use a level-based system. It is just as easy to define a character by a set of skills as it is some arbitrary numbering system. But, for some reason, people gravitate towards games with levels. People apparently like to work for their rewards, and like to have a simple way to compare two characters (I'm level 10, you're level 5, I'm better than you).
Isn't this news a bit old? 41.09? The current driver is 53.something. How is this news? Anyone who was going to experience a problem because of this has likely already had their problems...a year ago or more!
You know, I've seen press about these new TLD's several times before... There was.bis (or was it.biz?) for businesses...and.tv for television...and something like.info for informational sites.... I don't know how many of these actually went live or not, but I've never seen them in use. All I typically see is.com and.edu these days...and precious few.org or.net - people really don't seem terribly interested in having a variety of TLDs.
I work at EB, and used games are hell. We'll get a couple hundred traded in every day where I work.
Yes, we're supposed to take down their ID... But then we'll have a little kid come in and want to trade in his games - no ID, no trade - and then his parents get mad at us. The corporate policy is basically to give the customer whatever they want...if they complain loud enough, they get it. So, when people complain loud enough about trading someting in witout ID, they get to trade it in without ID. Which sucks...because then the District Manager comes down on you, wanting to know why you don't have any ID for the transaction. But if you refuse the trade-in, you get an angry phonecall from the District Manager wondering why you wouldn't take their games...
Plus, our trade-in prices are crap, so we get plenty of people complaining about that. Yes, we only give you $25 for a game you bought NEW yesterday for $50. Yes, we are going to sell it to someone else for $45 tomorrow. No, there isn't anything I can do about that.
I don't know about waiting periods... But we really don't have any place to keep the stuff. As has been said, our stockroom is a joke. There's barely enough room to hang your coat when you come in to work... And over the holidays, with the system shipments? Forget it. I don't kow where we'd store the games for the waiting period. There just is not room. Not that it matters... We're supposed to get those games up on the shelf just as quick as we can. Ideally they'll be up on the shelf just as soon as the customer leaves. It isn't at all unusual to take a game in and sell it again the very same day.
Is this good? Is it legal? Is it right? I don't know...I just do what they tell me to, so I get my paycheck, and I can feed my family.
Not entirely true....even in poetry you have to remain within the confines of what defines "poetry". If I just pour some ink on the page, make a big ol' ink blob...that isn't poetry. If I crumple up some paper in a big ball, that isn't poetry. If I cut off my ear and stick it in a plastic box, it isn't poetry. If I run naked through my back yard, it isn't poetry.
All of that could, possibly, be loosely defined as some sort of art...but not poetry. In order for it to be poetry, you need to obey some basic rules - rules such as writing words on paper. Same thing goes for programming, you need to follow basic rules - such as using valid statements that will actually compile.
Just because the basic rules in programming are somewhat more strict than those of poetry, does not mean that you cannot be creative or artistic with it.
Just took a look over there and I didn't see anything I'd call a spoiler. Some concept sketches and the like for various machines...maybe a baby AT-ST? A couple city-scapes... A picture of (I'm assuming) Annakin looking fairly unhealthy... Nothing terribly spoiling or surprising over there. Did I miss something?
I do plenty of online banking...with Mozilla. My bank, my credit cards, my car insurance, most of the bills I pay...all online, and all with Mozilla. The only websites I have encountered in the last year that didn't work with Mozilla were Microsoft's own Windows Update site, and Blizzard's WoW beta signup page. That's it. Absolutely everything else has worked fine with Mozilla.
I'm wondering why exactly you don't want to be on the phone for more than 3 minutes. You just don't like phones? Or don't like talking? Have nothing to say? Aren't interested in what she has to say?
If you're just looking for an alternative to the phone (for whatever reason) there are plenty of things out there. You could write letters, send email, use a webcam, create a shared blog, use IRC or IM eachother... There's plenty of ways to communicate beyond using a phone.
When my wife and I were first getting to know eachother, we lived several states apart. Phonecalls were prohibitively expensive, so most of our communication was done through IRC and email...with occasional cards and snailmail letters.
I'd hesitate to use a game for communication though...because of the added distractions. Its hard to focus on the conversation when you're trying to get a high score, or stay alive, or whatever. When we were chatting on IRC, we used to play around in #vampcafe for fun. But that was play, not conversation. We had our characters that we played, and we interacted with the other patrons, but it wasn't real communication between the two of us. When it came time to tell her about my day, or find out what was going on in her life, we dropped the characters and left #vampcafe.
What you need is a clean, uncluttered medium for communication. There are plenty of those out there...but I don't think online games qualify.
Slashdot Mirror
We've got a big light over our dining room table that's run from a dimmer... Made the mistake of trying to put a CFL in there. It doesn't dim, it strobes and flickers instead - very annoying. Had to replace it with a regular incandescent bulb.
I see some other folks mentioning that you can get dimmable CFLs now... I'll have to check out the local Lowe's again and see what they've got.
Agreed. We recently bought a new house and we've been slowly switching everything over to CFLs as the old bulbs burn out. We've replaced about half the bulbs now, and we're already noticing the savings on our monthly electric bills.
There does seem to be quite a bit of difference in the quality of CFLs. We've got some that came from Wal-Mart that do indeed take a few seconds to ramp up to full brightness, but the ones we bought at Lowe's are pretty much instantly bright.
We've got some of the lower-quality, slower to brighten bulbs in our bedroom, and it really is very nice in the mornings. You get a soft light that gradually ramps up to full brightness over the course of 5 seconds or so...much easier on the eyes first thing in the morning. We'll actually be looking for the exact same "defect" when it's eventually time to replace the CFLs in our bedroom - I don't want instantly bright bulbs in there.
I'd say his statement is complete BS.
I used to work at EB. We had display kiosks of all the major consoles. The various vendors each had their own method to keep people from playing on the kiosks all day... I remember the XBox demo discs we ran in the kiosk all re-set back to the main menu every 10 minutes or so. The PlayStation 2 kiosk had some sort of timer that would interrupt the power and force the console to hard reset every 20 minutes or so. The GameCube demo discs generally just had very small snippets of gameplay...less than a single full level... The GameCube kiosk never forced a re-set of any kind, but there just wasn't that much to occupy your time on it.
If Sony was, in fact, concerned about people playing on the kiosk all day long there are plenty of ways they could have re-set or rebooted the system that didn't require employee intervention. These machines aren't rebooting, they're locking up, and it requires an employee to physically re-set the system. That, to me, screams of poor design. Either it's a poorly designed re-set system that doesn't work as it should...or it's broken software that isn't actually supposed to be locking up. It isn't terribly encouraging either way.
A few months back I got completely fed up with Windows. My son managed to download something he shouldn't have and got a virus on his PC despite my best efforts to secure it (and considering the fact that I administer Windows networks professionally, those are fairly good efforts). The virus spread through our home network overnight, and by morning I was looking at a complete reload of every PC in my house.
So I decided to install Xubuntu for myself and switch over to that...no more Windows headaches, at least not at home. It worked very well for the first few weeks. I had no trouble with any of the Internet or productivity software. I liked the amount of choice available and had no trouble finding software that met my needs. I really liked the GUI as well. WINE worked like a charm and I was running the few Win32 programs I need.
The problem came when I had a long weekend and wanted to do some gaming. I'd been playing WoW through WINE with little trouble...but it was too laggy in large raids. So over the long weekend I wound up installing Windows on a spare HDD and playing WoW through it. The first day or two wasn't too bad...but I quickly grew tired of constantly rebooting my computer - Windows for WoW, Xubuntu for useful stuff - back and forth, back and forth. Towards the end of the weekend I found myself moving some basic stuff (contacts, Firefox bookmarks) back into Windows so I wouldn't have to reboot quite so much. The deathblow was when I realized that I hadn't booted into Xubuntu long enough to check my email in days, and it seemed like a chore to reboot just for my email - that's when I realized that Xubuntu just wasn't actually making my life easier.
Here at work we've actually got Ubuntu installed on a couple machines and it works quite well. We have no trouble with them, they're integrated nicely into our domain. They do their job and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Ubuntu (or some flavor there-of) for a business/professional PC. For your average home user though...I just don't think it's quite ready. The problem continues to be mainstream software support... Until your average user can go buy a copy of WoW or Sims 2 for Ubuntu, or load up the software for their new Kodak digital camera under Ubuntu...I just don't think it's going to catch on.
The iPod does integrate very nicely with iTunes, and plays the iTunes DRMed stuff with no trouble. But the iPod still shows up as a generic removable HDD just like your average USB flash drive does. You can simply drag & drop files onto the device just like you would to any other USB storage device - not just songs (though that does work) but anything else you'd like to store on it. Movies, pictures, spreadsheets, PDF's, programs, even an entire OS. You can actually boot off an iPod.
You're lucky. Around here it seems that most of the people using the self checkout lines are the folks who should be farthest from them.
They go to the self checkout line which is market very clearly as "20 items or less" with two or three shopping carts piled high with items. Then they start randomly passing things over the scanner with absolutely no attention to where the barcode is located on the item or what piece of information the machine may be asking for. They look around in bewilderment when the machine asks them to remove something from the scale, or to scan something again, or to type in the produce code on a banana or apple.
Ultimately some employee has to come over and void out the entire transaction and then ring them up again. At that point it is no longer self checkout but rather a cashier checking you out at a self checkout machine. And all the while I'm standing there with a single box of cereal and cash in my hand...a transaction that would take less than a minute if it weren't for the folks in front of me.
You're missing the point.
This isn't a problem with support. It isn't a matter of whether WoW.exe will run or not - it does run under WINE/Cedega. The issue is that Blizzard is closing game accounts. You can still run the program, you just can't log in to your account. Doesn't matter if you reformat and reload your machine with Windows or MacOS to appease Blizzard, you can still run the program, you still can't log in to your account. Worse, the account is being closed because of cheating. That's what it'll say in your account details - hacking/cheating. Not "didn't pay his bill", but "caught running cheat/hack program". Much harder (impossible?) to get such an account re-activated.
My bank doesn't support Firefox on Linux for viewing my balance on-line. They have a list of supported browsers and operating systems and Firefox/Linux just isn't on it. Because of that I will not be surprised if I cannot view my balance on their website...I will not be surprised if the page renders incorrectly or isn't functional - it isn't a supported platform. That's fine. I'll go view my balance on an IE6/Windows machine instead. But I most certainly will complain if they close my bank account because I tried to view my balance with Firefox/Linux.
You toss out a lot of prices in your post, but you don't really indicate what the price is for.
One example you use is a comparison of RedHat Workstation for $299 versus Windows XP Professional for $140. That RedHat Workstation you're buying comes with a fairly nice support contract... According to the website you get unlimited incidents and a 4 hour response time. That Windows price is just the license to use their software, no implied support contract at all...and Microsoft charges $245 per incident if you don't have a support contract...
A more accurate comparison of prices might be Fedora Core for $0 (just the license to use the software, no implied support contract) versus $140 for Windows XP Professional. Or Redhat Workstation for $299 (with unlimited support) versus $8,299 for "up to 10 hours of proactive support assistance" from Microsoft.
Software is cheap, support is expensive - and with OSS products you are generally buying support, since the software is usually available for free.
I'm looking at my keyboard right now, and I really can't see that many useless keys... Yeah, I've got a couple duplicate keys (L & R shift, L & R ctrl, etc.) but I just don't see THAT many useless keys. This new keyboard only has 53? What did they strip out? I didn't see any function keys...and I didn't see a numeric keypad...I guess that accounts for a lot of them... But I USE those keys! I really can't see how this is going to be much of an improvement if you wind up missing a bunch of useful keys...
I've seen people get infested with spyware or viruses...and rather than fix the computer they just throw it away and get a new one.
Imagine if your car was running poorly... Had a flat tire, or the alternator was going... Rather than take the car to the mechanic (or fix it yourself) you just throw the thing away and buy a new one.
Doing nothing, being apathetic, refusing to vote in some form of protest just isn't going to get you anywhere.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
These adds aren't going to bring out the truly apathetic, those folks don't care enough to be influenced. These adds are going to bring out the people who've been paying enough attention to think something ought to be done, but haven't been feeling motivated enough to do something themselves.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
I constantly hear people complain about the current government. They don't like this new law, or that new war, or some guy in office...but when you ask them if they voted they reply with something along the lines of "of course not, it doesn't do any good."
Yes, I would like it if more people who thought like I do went out and voted...then maybe we'd get a government that works the way I think it should. However, even if the folks I want don't get elected, I'd still be happier if it was a government that more accurately represented the vast majority of the nation.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
I've noticed lately that Mythic seems to be aiming DAoC more and more at PvP gameplay. PvE is less and less important with every patch.
It seems that Mythic got a surprise when they released ToA. Players had been complaining that the PvE content was too shallow, too easy, too simple. They wanted interesting quests, challenging encounters, something new and different. Mythic tried to deliver this with ToA, and I think they succeeded. ToA was very different from what DAoC had to offer before then. But players had a fit. It took too much time away from their PvP to get their character up to ML10 to be competitive in PvP. Folks just wanted to go out and kill things.
There were a series of nerfs and adjustments shortly after ToA came out, all of them fairly drastic in regards to PvE. Many abilities were removed, made PvP-only, or dramatically reduced in their effectiveness... I'm a big PvE'er, and I really thought there's be some outcry, but there wasn't. The PvP'ers were happy to see these abilities balanced.
Then all the active developers were pulled off of Catacombs (DAoC's next retail, PvE expansion) and put on New Frontiers (DAoC's most recent free, PvP expansion). New Frontiers was in testing for several months for the normal servers...but the co-op server got a few hours of testing with very short notice. That testing revealed lots of bugs for the co-op server, but New Frontiers launched anyway, and the co-op server still isn't working right again.
Just look at the adjustments being made for PvP: Battlegrounds for all levels, increased XP from PvP, XP rewards for capturing keeps, and now free XP/levels/items/gold from your trainer so you don't need to spend so much time out of PvP trying to get your character equipped.
I would not be terribly surprised to see PvE slowly disappear from DAoC. To see it become a truly PvP-centered game where you simply log in and kill eachother, much like Tribes or Unreal Tournament.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
It is odd... People complain about expansion packs adding more grinding as if it was a bad thing. When ToA came out I had finally hit 50 with a couple of my characters and I was starting to run out of challenges. I was ready for something more - raise the level cap, give me new dungeons, more quests, SOMETHING. ToA came out and it was basically levels 51-60, though they claimed it was optional and wouldn't affect RvR. Well, anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed ToA and the "grinding" it involved. Now I'm running out of things to do again...and looking forward to more "grinding" in Catacombs.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
Problem is though, people seem to LIKE the level grind, no matter how much they may complain about it. Just take a look at how (un)successful Horizons and Shadowbane are in comparison to the more level-driven comptetition.
I do agree that in this day & age, there really isn't a terribly good reason to use a level-based system. It is just as easy to define a character by a set of skills as it is some arbitrary numbering system. But, for some reason, people gravitate towards games with levels. People apparently like to work for their rewards, and like to have a simple way to compare two characters (I'm level 10, you're level 5, I'm better than you).
yrs,
Ephemeriis
Isn't this news a bit old? 41.09? The current driver is 53.something. How is this news? Anyone who was going to experience a problem because of this has likely already had their problems...a year ago or more!
yrs,
Ephemeriis
You know, I've seen press about these new TLD's several times before... There was .bis (or was it .biz?) for businesses...and .tv for television...and something like .info for informational sites.... I don't know how many of these actually went live or not, but I've never seen them in use. All I typically see is .com and .edu these days...and precious few .org or .net - people really don't seem terribly interested in having a variety of TLDs.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
I work at EB, and used games are hell. We'll get a couple hundred traded in every day where I work.
Yes, we're supposed to take down their ID... But then we'll have a little kid come in and want to trade in his games - no ID, no trade - and then his parents get mad at us. The corporate policy is basically to give the customer whatever they want...if they complain loud enough, they get it. So, when people complain loud enough about trading someting in witout ID, they get to trade it in without ID. Which sucks...because then the District Manager comes down on you, wanting to know why you don't have any ID for the transaction. But if you refuse the trade-in, you get an angry phonecall from the District Manager wondering why you wouldn't take their games...
Plus, our trade-in prices are crap, so we get plenty of people complaining about that. Yes, we only give you $25 for a game you bought NEW yesterday for $50. Yes, we are going to sell it to someone else for $45 tomorrow. No, there isn't anything I can do about that.
I don't know about waiting periods... But we really don't have any place to keep the stuff. As has been said, our stockroom is a joke. There's barely enough room to hang your coat when you come in to work... And over the holidays, with the system shipments? Forget it. I don't kow where we'd store the games for the waiting period. There just is not room. Not that it matters... We're supposed to get those games up on the shelf just as quick as we can. Ideally they'll be up on the shelf just as soon as the customer leaves. It isn't at all unusual to take a game in and sell it again the very same day.
Is this good? Is it legal? Is it right? I don't know...I just do what they tell me to, so I get my paycheck, and I can feed my family.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
Not entirely true....even in poetry you have to remain within the confines of what defines "poetry". If I just pour some ink on the page, make a big ol' ink blob...that isn't poetry. If I crumple up some paper in a big ball, that isn't poetry. If I cut off my ear and stick it in a plastic box, it isn't poetry. If I run naked through my back yard, it isn't poetry.
All of that could, possibly, be loosely defined as some sort of art...but not poetry. In order for it to be poetry, you need to obey some basic rules - rules such as writing words on paper. Same thing goes for programming, you need to follow basic rules - such as using valid statements that will actually compile.
Just because the basic rules in programming are somewhat more strict than those of poetry, does not mean that you cannot be creative or artistic with it.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
Just took a look over there and I didn't see anything I'd call a spoiler. Some concept sketches and the like for various machines...maybe a baby AT-ST? A couple city-scapes... A picture of (I'm assuming) Annakin looking fairly unhealthy... Nothing terribly spoiling or surprising over there. Did I miss something?
yrs,
Ephemeriis
Hrrmm... Is that the original (Han shot first) trilogy, or the "Special Edition"?
yrs,
Ephemeriis
I do plenty of online banking...with Mozilla. My bank, my credit cards, my car insurance, most of the bills I pay...all online, and all with Mozilla. The only websites I have encountered in the last year that didn't work with Mozilla were Microsoft's own Windows Update site, and Blizzard's WoW beta signup page. That's it. Absolutely everything else has worked fine with Mozilla.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
I'm wondering why exactly you don't want to be on the phone for more than 3 minutes. You just don't like phones? Or don't like talking? Have nothing to say? Aren't interested in what she has to say?
If you're just looking for an alternative to the phone (for whatever reason) there are plenty of things out there. You could write letters, send email, use a webcam, create a shared blog, use IRC or IM eachother... There's plenty of ways to communicate beyond using a phone.
When my wife and I were first getting to know eachother, we lived several states apart. Phonecalls were prohibitively expensive, so most of our communication was done through IRC and email...with occasional cards and snailmail letters.
I'd hesitate to use a game for communication though...because of the added distractions. Its hard to focus on the conversation when you're trying to get a high score, or stay alive, or whatever. When we were chatting on IRC, we used to play around in #vampcafe for fun. But that was play, not conversation. We had our characters that we played, and we interacted with the other patrons, but it wasn't real communication between the two of us. When it came time to tell her about my day, or find out what was going on in her life, we dropped the characters and left #vampcafe.
What you need is a clean, uncluttered medium for communication. There are plenty of those out there...but I don't think online games qualify.
yrs,
Ephemeriis