I've been playing a lot of the mainstream US-based MMOG's over the past few years. And every time a gamer doesn't get their way, they yell "I'M GONNA SUE VERANT/MYTHIC/ORIGIN/TURBINE/SOE!" But they never do, and then wonder why noone else does.
"OMG The server has been down for 10 minutes I'M GONNA SUE!!! Why hasn't someone started a Class Action Lawsuit yet???"
Because EVERYONE who wants to start one always says the same thing. "Why doesn't someone else start one?"
It's good to now see that someone actually had the balls to back up their words with a lawyer, and possibly players can be pointed to the outcome of this...Because I'm pretty sure it's gonna be thrown out of court really really fast. (Yes, I realize this is not a US or even North American lawsuit. I'm just commenting on the principal of actually doing what you threaten...Soemthing we rarely see gamers do, anywhere.)
Please mod parent down for being a lame ass plagarist. Thanks.
Actually, no, I don't read Penny Arcade. I personally can't stand their style of humor. However, feel free to mod my post down.
When I was at E3 and actually asked them "how do you change the games?" they, very reluctantly, told me. Hence why I was able to make this post. Considering that this is "public" knowledge, as long as you know to ask, I am not surprised that other sources have also used the information.
...Is to change the game, you have to open up the back of the N-Gage, take out the battery, and change the chip that's underneath, then replace the battery...
I think I'll stick with my "Cartridges that only a 10-year old would play", thank you. At least then I can play them on airplanes.
I don't see this the same way that you see it. I've been playing MMO's for a while (and, for the record, I do NOT consider PSO as an MMOG...4 players in a game is NOT massive) and I have seen that the people I come into contact with aren't interested in any type of relationship with others outside of the game. They want their character to marry another character. In fact, I know a husband and wife who played and each person got married to someone else in-game!
For situations like yours, I'd hit the handy-dandy/ignore feature on the person. If your wife doesn't want to deal with the sexual harrassment from Random_d00d_04,/ignore them and boom, you don't have to hear them anymore. (You can mute someone in PSO to achieve the same effect.)
I've actually been proposed to by women (who were women IRL!) in games, because they knew that I had a fiancee in RL, and that I was "safe" in that respect. (They knew I wouldn't actually try to find them and take the relationship outside of what it was - two "actors" on a virtual stage.) I guess maybe I hung out with an older, more mature crowd than you did, and that was luck on my part.
I'm not saying what happens to you and your wife didn't happen, and I DEFINATELY am not saying that what people are saying to you and your wife is okay. But, there are tools that are available (/ignore, muting) that take the frustration away very, very quickly, and are at your disposal if you choose to utilize them.
Meanwhile, those of us who are mature and understand that it's just a game will welcome this addition.:>
I really hope it lives up to what they say it does. I enjoy these type of games personally. One of my favorite games in the early 90's was Disney's Stunt Island, where you were a stunt pilot that starred in movies. Of course, that was the campaign portion of the game. There was also a "free mode" where you were able to create your OWN stunts, set scripts on objects, set the cameras, etc. And then, you could go into the editing room and piece together the movie with music, sound effects, and subtitles.
There were some communities online that had 20+ minute movies made, and others even had full voice audio to go with the story. You could either view these in the game or via a standalone player.
This teaches me to try to recall an incident from 2000 from memory.:> (And considering I haven't been in EQ for over a year, I don't remember which zones come with which expansion - a little reading could have helped there too.)
WEEKLY UPDATE: 11/22/00 - The Guide of Veeshan's Peak
I wanted to post yesterday, about the guide who went bananas on the TT server. I wanted to, I really did. But what's the point in posting if the sum total of your reaction is:
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Put the unlicensed handguns away, it's not that I don't feel sorry for the innocent victims. There were probably several harmless bystanders who got whooshed into a really BIG dragon's ass, and those people didn't deserve to lose the three weeks that it took them to earn their four lousy pixels of experience. I hope that Verant has as promised checked the logs and restored all the folks involved to their previous levels of exp. If they don't, well, don't bother calling the paramedics because I sure won't have a heart attack over the shock of Verant being too pathetic to touch their testicles AND provide customer service.
Remember my little rant entitled "Try Being a Guide"? The ONLY reason I typed a rant instead of hauling some d00ds into VP was because I'm just a big mush ball at heart. I kept thinking that maybe Mr. 58th Level Douchebag had just had a bad day when he was ripping into me. Maybe he didn't really MEAN to call me names and tell me how stupid I was. Remember, I'm the big fan of thinking of the fellow behind the keyboard when it comes to actual interaction - I try to always keep in mind that I don't know the kind of day the other guy is having.
I was also afraid that if I tried that summoning trick, I'd accidentally summon "Pimps," who hadn't ever talked to me, instead of "Pimpz," the intended recipient. Mistakes like that happen, and I didn't want to make one.
But I'll bet you a million dollars that at least half the people still picking dragon teeth out of their asses were the sort of people who said, "fuk you d00d, Ive done this 4 ever, its not an xpl0it" and "wtf u mean u wont rezz me, it's a fucking bug, you stupid twat."
Oh, and yes, it does sound EXACTLY like a normal "event," except that the guide should have convinced someone to let him become a dragon to prevent the players from losing exp (clue alert - a guide-controlled NPC NEVER takes experience from you when he kills you). That's what good little guides do when they want to kill players.
As I said in another reply, I fucked up my expansions and timelines. The event occured in Veeshan's Peak, not ToV (as Luclin was not out at the time) and it was in front of whoever the end dragon in VP is.
And, as I told the other poster who pointed me out as wrong, you are free not to believe a word I said - because I don't believe everything I read on the Internet either, I can't expect anyone else to believe me.
I'm surprised nobody picked up on the fact I typed "persecution" instead of "prosecution" either.
And you know, shit. I wish I could edit my comments. The zone was Veeshan's Peak, not ToV. I got the Luclin and Velious expansions confused. Shows how long ago it was (this was in 2001.)
Yes, now it seems like I'm full of shit. I won't sit here and say "But it's true and you must believe me!" because hell, I don't believe everything I read on the Internet.
The event occured. It wasn't Veeshan, but whomever the uber dragon in Veeshan's Peak (NOT ToV, I was wrong) was. No, I don't have links because everything I read about it was on the internal Guide server, and so people are free to not believe me as they will.
I was a Guide (volunteer CS rep, like an Advisor in Anarchy Online or a Counselor in Ultima Online) for two years in EverQuest, and during that time, one of the other Guides on one of the other servers decided that it would be cool to go out with a bang.
So, she zoned into the Temple of Veeshan (at that time, the highest level zone in the game) and went right in front of Veeshan herself (the uber dragon.)
And then she did a "/who all 50-60" to get all of the high level players on the server.
Then she started/summoning them to her location, and then binding them to that location when they appeared.
Well, when they appeared, Veeshan struck them down with about 2 or 3 blows. And since they were just bound there, they respawned, naked, right in front of Veeshan.
Whack, boom, dead. Reappear, whack, boom, dead.
In EverQuest, when you die, you lose experience. And in EverQuest, you can lose levels if your experience dips down too low.
Some people got deleveled from level 58 to level 53 before the GM staff came in to clear the carnage, and ban the Guide. I know they were considering persecution against this Guide, but I'm not sure if they really went through with it or not.
I believe about 25-30 high-level characters with months of/played time were affected.
I thought it was funny, but it sure made my job as a Guide harder because the playerbase no longer trusted us to keep our cool, and they were calling for the entire Guide program to be disbanded since we were now "too powerful" all of a sudden.
Not the same as hacking the server, but it had the same effect of destroying the games of a segment of the playerbase.
Technically, the game happens alongside the movie. Just because Trinity/Neo/Morpheous didn't hack the Matrix in the movie, doesn't mean that Niobe or Ghost can't in the game.
Sports games make absolutely no sense to me. People play FPS games because it's illegal or too expensive to shoot people in real life, or RPG's because there's no such thing as magic. But sports? Someone please explain this to me.
Because it's too time consuming to actually go to the gym, train for years just to make a sports team and play the real thing. It's a lot easier to plop Madden into your PS2 and play it for an hour.
That and gamers are too lazy to go outside and play sports!
This was my 7th E3. That being said, I'm pretty much immune to the hype and lights, the smoke and mirrors. And I guess this is why each E3 seems to get a little bit less impressive each year.
I'm not a big FPS gamer. I could care less about the Big Three (Doom 3, Halo 2, Half-Life 2) so those are automatically out of my Favorite Thing at E3 list.
But I will say what I WAS impressed with - the GBA->GCN Connectivity games.
Yeah, you heard me.
This was something new that nobody had seen before, and that nobody expected. The Pac-Man game was great, great fun. It was a game of tag - three people used the Gamecube controllers and played as ghosts on the screen, while one person used the GBA and played the arcade version of Pac-Man. If a ghost caught Pac-Man, the two switched controllers - that ghost became "It" with Pac-Man and the old Pac-Man became a ghost. It ran on a timer and then at the end, the scores were tallied up.
Tetra's Trackers and Four Swords (both Zelda titles) were fun too, but required a GBA for each person. I'm not sure how many times you'll find people with 4 GBA's with the Link Cables, but if you can find them these are really great party games. In Tetra's Trackers (at least in the demo we played - the training level) you raced the other three people to collect stamps from pirates in numerical order. On the Gamecube would have an overhead map showing the location of the other players and circles representing the pirates. At times, they would how the number of the pirates (so if you needed Pirate #3, you could see which one he was on the map.)
Four Swords plays the same as the GBA version, except the main board is on the Gamecube - you use the GBA as your controller, unless you fall into a pit. If you fall into a pit, you fall into your Gameboy, where you have to climb back up into the Gamecube.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles used the connectivity, but it wasn't required. If you used a GBA as your controller, you could see a map and your status without flipping to another screen. It was a real-time 4-player battle game, much like a Gauntlet Legends type of thing.
And Splinter Cell used it for a map of some kind - I never really looked at it closely, but it was a cool feature. You basically kept the GBA next to you and looked at it when you needed it (such as in Wind Waker with Tingle.)
I was also impressed with the GBA Camera Tech Demo they were showing. They took a picture of your face, uploaded it to the Gamecube, and it mapped your face onto a polyginal naked person. Then, it asked you a series of questions, and determined who you were by your answers. (It actually pegged me correctly - said I was a programmer) So, it had my face, with long hair, glasses, and tshirt and shorts dancing around with other Mario characters. It even blinked the eyes and changed the expression of the face, too. Very, very cool technology that was in it's early stages.
Everyone else pretty much seemed like...eh...But Nintendo blew me away this year. Let's hope they actually do this stuff right - because I was impressed with the E-Reader last year, and the lack of software for it made it stumble in my eyes.
I bought this thing, hoping that it would get better as it has gone along - and it hasn't. While the prospect of playing old NES games by swiping cards is a great idea, it is poorly executed by the fact that the ONLY games that you can play are Donkey Kong, Pinball, Tennis, and other FIRST generation NES games. Where's Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus?
It's a handly tool if you play Pokemon (as you can swipe your card and it will give you tips and strategies on how to defeat your opponent) and it will give you even MORE stuff in Animal Crossing, but that's about it. Not really worth a purchase just yet.
Now, if The Big N actually puts some decent stuff out for the sucker, I'd be able to reccomend it. But I just can't in it's current form.
What does this mean? Is this about understanding accents, or xenophobia? Would they have a problem with, say, a Canadian citizen, or an Irish, British, or Australian one? All of these (and many others) can safely be assumed to speak English natively.
It's because they have contracts with the US Department of Defense. Sure, a non-US Citizen can be on site, but they have to be escorted 100% of the time. A US Citizen can get a Contractor badge and nobody has to escort him to the restroom. So, for THEM, it's easier just to have someone who can qualify for a badge than to have someone they have to babysit.
Not the lawsuits, but the hiring of H1B's over US Citizens. I work in a small company (no, not the one linked to in my URL) and there are maybe 15 coders in our office.
Three of them are US Citizens. I am one of them.
We will see job postings go up in our break room, and submit the resume's of people we know who need jobs, but the job listings are basically a reprint of the resume of the H1B that the company has selected. So, they have all this extraneous stuff that you wouldn't use in that job, but they are considered "job requirements" and THAT is how they can tell the INS that "We can't find an equally qualified citizen."
I guess it wouldn't be so bad if we didn't work for clients and have to travel on site, and many of our clients will ONLY want US Citizens. So, that leaves the three of us to do ALL of the travelling, even if there has been a personal tragedy in our life. (And one of us has a newborn child, so she's not travelling either...)
I guess I can look at this a few ways. A) My life is a wreck right now because I can't stay home, but B) I have insane job security, something that is a very good thing to have in today's economy.
I'm not gonna sit here and "defend" Sony or Verant or Absor or any of them, even though I have had the pleasure of meeting with them personally and sharing beers with them. This article is obviously by a bitter gamer who wants to smear EQ's reputation through the mud, and that's fine. This is the age of the Internet, and it's his right to do that.
I left the Guide program due to hardware issues about a year ago - after about two years of service. This was back when we had our own GM on the server, but it was difficult to get in touch with him during his work hours. Why? Because of kids. Because he had to clean up after scammers and recover lost items...He was insanely busy for his entire shift, and he wouldn't really be on server all that much.
When I was a Guide, I can safely say that out of every 20 petitions I fielded, I was able to help about 17 or 18 of them. I was able to help the majority of the players I conversed with during my shift. But you don't hear about them. You don't hear about the people that had the volunteer CS staff help them in a quick and expedient manner. They don't come out and say "Thank you." You only heat about people like the author of this article, who feels he has been wronged. The ones that say that we didn't care.
And then, there are the people who petition and won't let you help them. Even if you do exactly what they ask, they will still curse you out and and call you incompetent. Or, if you inquire more information about the problem, they demand that you stop asking questions and just fix it. (As if we had access to the source code and could just recompile it on the fly...) Yes, I know. This is reality. This is how I was treated working in Retail, too. But luckily, people like this were very, very, VERY few and far between.
We did care about every situation, every petition. I was a Guide on one of the two Teams-PvP servers, so not only did we have to deal with training and kill stealing, but we also had corpse campers, bind rushers, and immortal healing. Some of these were no-nos, and some of these (like immortal healing, where someone outside of PvP range would heal someone who's killing you) were deemed "Okay" by Sony. Did I agree with the ruling? Not really, but there's really not much Guides could do. The author of the article is right - we pretty much had our hands and feet tied. We were the eyes and ears of the GM's - nothing more. We could unstick players from walls and document warnings for behavior if they were dumb enough to still do it while we were staring at them. (We could be invisible.)
I don't know how things are now inside the program, but I can say that when I was in it, we actually were helping many people and people enjoyed their time in EQ because of the ways we helped them. There are far more of those type of people than the type of people like the author of this article. However, everybody that will reply to my message here will be the bitter types that will tell me that I'm just a Sony PR person that believes the kool-aid fed to me by Michelle Butler for two years. (Just you watch, some AC will just cut and paste that exact sentence, or change a word or two.):>
I stopped playing EverQuest because all my friends did - and there was no reason to stick around. However, we're all waiting for Star Wars: Galaxies. And you guessed it, it's by the same guys who made EQ.
For the bitter ones, you might want to stay away from all online games, because it will just be "Wash, Rinse, Repeat" for you.
If you're still open to an enjoyable experience, we're in for one helluva ride.
I think the moral of this whole topic is: EQ in moderation is awesome. But don't let yourself get bitter. That only brings you down.
That's how I use my PS2 Linux Kit. I have all my MP3's on my main Linux box, and connect to it using SAMBA (since I have Windows machines that connect on the network too.) I can then just telnet into the PS2 and tell it what songs to play next.
And, the vector system coding is only for heavy duty graphics. For normal apps, it uses the same gcc compiler we're all used to, just for a MIPS processor instead of an ix86 one.
Since I was in the playtest of the game, I can safely say the following things about this.
I never saw a McDonalds kiosk anywhere I played. The deal was announced several months ago, and I saw it in the game, but it was too expensive for me to put in my house.
There ARE other places to eat. You don't have to eat at the McDonalds, and you don't have to put one on your property. A generic buffet table is just as good and much cheaper.
INTEL IS DOING THE SAME THING. You can buy a computer with Intel Inside and it gives you much better stats than a lower-end computer. Your "fun" goes up quicker when you play games on it and your "Logic" goes up quicker when you're studying on it.
So, if you're gonna go after McDonalds for being available, might as well go after Intel for the very same reasons.
They announced the McDonalds advertising several months ago when the deal was struck.
They also announced that you can buy INTEL computers in the same vein that you can buy McDonalds hamburgers. Computers powered by Intel processors give you better stats as well.
Perhaps we should also boycott them for advertising Intel?
This basically converts all the files from DOS to Linux after you have installed them. I forgot this step too, until I reread the directions very carefully. It's step 4 in their 5 step process.
What this case is about is selling Mythic's intellectual property on eBay. Actually, no, they're selling an item on Mythic's database on eBay. That's the programmers term for it. They are selling the right to that symbolic link on Mythic's server. The SERVICE EULA forbids this.
It just so happens that the software cannot be run without the service. Much like how your telephone can't be used without the telephone service. (House phones, not cell phones with the nifty games.)
I fully believe that MMORPG developers have the right to not allow links on their database to be sold on eBay. Now, if the developer gets ROYALTIES for each link sold, then that would be okay. But I don't see any of these people paying Mythic royalties for selling Mythic's property...
For some reason I keep getting a Proxy error on my Cingular phone when I visit a lot of sites...INCLUDING THOSE ON CINGULAR'S SITE!!
"Cannot display malformed content" is one I get on some parts of Cingular's site...
It looks like some of the other sites I visit are okay now, Slashdot's site came up for the first time...I was using it to get an error and I can't get an error on any webpage anymore...(something about upstream content to the proxy)...Looks like it was fixed...Now time to go find some pr0n!
Slashdot Mirror
I've been playing a lot of the mainstream US-based MMOG's over the past few years. And every time a gamer doesn't get their way, they yell "I'M GONNA SUE VERANT/MYTHIC/ORIGIN/TURBINE/SOE!" But they never do, and then wonder why noone else does.
"OMG The server has been down for 10 minutes I'M GONNA SUE!!! Why hasn't someone started a Class Action Lawsuit yet???"
Because EVERYONE who wants to start one always says the same thing. "Why doesn't someone else start one?"
It's good to now see that someone actually had the balls to back up their words with a lawyer, and possibly players can be pointed to the outcome of this...Because I'm pretty sure it's gonna be thrown out of court really really fast. (Yes, I realize this is not a US or even North American lawsuit. I'm just commenting on the principal of actually doing what you threaten...Soemthing we rarely see gamers do, anywhere.)
Actually, no, I don't read Penny Arcade. I personally can't stand their style of humor. However, feel free to mod my post down.
When I was at E3 and actually asked them "how do you change the games?" they, very reluctantly, told me. Hence why I was able to make this post. Considering that this is "public" knowledge, as long as you know to ask, I am not surprised that other sources have also used the information.
Thanks for playing!
...Is to change the game, you have to open up the back of the N-Gage, take out the battery, and change the chip that's underneath, then replace the battery...
I think I'll stick with my "Cartridges that only a 10-year old would play", thank you. At least then I can play them on airplanes.
I don't see this the same way that you see it. I've been playing MMO's for a while (and, for the record, I do NOT consider PSO as an MMOG...4 players in a game is NOT massive) and I have seen that the people I come into contact with aren't interested in any type of relationship with others outside of the game. They want their character to marry another character. In fact, I know a husband and wife who played and each person got married to someone else in-game!
/ignore feature on the person. If your wife doesn't want to deal with the sexual harrassment from Random_d00d_04, /ignore them and boom, you don't have to hear them anymore. (You can mute someone in PSO to achieve the same effect.)
:>
For situations like yours, I'd hit the handy-dandy
I've actually been proposed to by women (who were women IRL!) in games, because they knew that I had a fiancee in RL, and that I was "safe" in that respect. (They knew I wouldn't actually try to find them and take the relationship outside of what it was - two "actors" on a virtual stage.) I guess maybe I hung out with an older, more mature crowd than you did, and that was luck on my part.
I'm not saying what happens to you and your wife didn't happen, and I DEFINATELY am not saying that what people are saying to you and your wife is okay. But, there are tools that are available (/ignore, muting) that take the frustration away very, very quickly, and are at your disposal if you choose to utilize them.
Meanwhile, those of us who are mature and understand that it's just a game will welcome this addition.
I really hope it lives up to what they say it does. I enjoy these type of games personally. One of my favorite games in the early 90's was Disney's Stunt Island, where you were a stunt pilot that starred in movies. Of course, that was the campaign portion of the game. There was also a "free mode" where you were able to create your OWN stunts, set scripts on objects, set the cameras, etc. And then, you could go into the editing room and piece together the movie with music, sound effects, and subtitles.
There were some communities online that had 20+ minute movies made, and others even had full voice audio to go with the story. You could either view these in the game or via a standalone player.
Point taken.
:> (And considering I haven't been in EQ for over a year, I don't remember which zones come with which expansion - a little reading could have helped there too.)
This teaches me to try to recall an incident from 2000 from memory.
Lessons learned, crow eaten.
As several replies have pointed out, I got the wrong zone and the wrong dragon.
The zone was Veeshan's Peak (the Luclin expansion with ToV was not out) and the dragon was whoever the end of it was.
People can still believe I'm full of shit, but I did find this:
Former Guide Tweety mentioning the incident
As I said in another reply, I fucked up my expansions and timelines. The event occured in Veeshan's Peak, not ToV (as Luclin was not out at the time) and it was in front of whoever the end dragon in VP is.
And, as I told the other poster who pointed me out as wrong, you are free not to believe a word I said - because I don't believe everything I read on the Internet either, I can't expect anyone else to believe me.
Point taken. I, myself, have never been in ToV.
I'm surprised nobody picked up on the fact I typed "persecution" instead of "prosecution" either.
And you know, shit. I wish I could edit my comments. The zone was Veeshan's Peak, not ToV. I got the Luclin and Velious expansions confused. Shows how long ago it was (this was in 2001.)
Yes, now it seems like I'm full of shit. I won't sit here and say "But it's true and you must believe me!" because hell, I don't believe everything I read on the Internet.
The event occured. It wasn't Veeshan, but whomever the uber dragon in Veeshan's Peak (NOT ToV, I was wrong) was. No, I don't have links because everything I read about it was on the internal Guide server, and so people are free to not believe me as they will.
I was a Guide (volunteer CS rep, like an Advisor in Anarchy Online or a Counselor in Ultima Online) for two years in EverQuest, and during that time, one of the other Guides on one of the other servers decided that it would be cool to go out with a bang.
/summoning them to her location, and then binding them to that location when they appeared.
/played time were affected.
So, she zoned into the Temple of Veeshan (at that time, the highest level zone in the game) and went right in front of Veeshan herself (the uber dragon.)
And then she did a "/who all 50-60" to get all of the high level players on the server.
Then she started
Well, when they appeared, Veeshan struck them down with about 2 or 3 blows. And since they were just bound there, they respawned, naked, right in front of Veeshan.
Whack, boom, dead. Reappear, whack, boom, dead.
In EverQuest, when you die, you lose experience. And in EverQuest, you can lose levels if your experience dips down too low.
Some people got deleveled from level 58 to level 53 before the GM staff came in to clear the carnage, and ban the Guide. I know they were considering persecution against this Guide, but I'm not sure if they really went through with it or not.
I believe about 25-30 high-level characters with months of
I thought it was funny, but it sure made my job as a Guide harder because the playerbase no longer trusted us to keep our cool, and they were calling for the entire Guide program to be disbanded since we were now "too powerful" all of a sudden.
Not the same as hacking the server, but it had the same effect of destroying the games of a segment of the playerbase.
Looking at the screenshots, there still is a GUI. You don't have to type "DIR", you can just click on the word DIR and it appears on the screen.
Technically, the game happens alongside the movie. Just because Trinity/Neo/Morpheous didn't hack the Matrix in the movie, doesn't mean that Niobe or Ghost can't in the game.
Because it's too time consuming to actually go to the gym, train for years just to make a sports team and play the real thing. It's a lot easier to plop Madden into your PS2 and play it for an hour.
That and gamers are too lazy to go outside and play sports!
This was my 7th E3. That being said, I'm pretty much immune to the hype and lights, the smoke and mirrors. And I guess this is why each E3 seems to get a little bit less impressive each year.
I'm not a big FPS gamer. I could care less about the Big Three (Doom 3, Halo 2, Half-Life 2) so those are automatically out of my Favorite Thing at E3 list.
But I will say what I WAS impressed with - the GBA->GCN Connectivity games.
Yeah, you heard me.
This was something new that nobody had seen before, and that nobody expected. The Pac-Man game was great, great fun. It was a game of tag - three people used the Gamecube controllers and played as ghosts on the screen, while one person used the GBA and played the arcade version of Pac-Man. If a ghost caught Pac-Man, the two switched controllers - that ghost became "It" with Pac-Man and the old Pac-Man became a ghost. It ran on a timer and then at the end, the scores were tallied up.
Tetra's Trackers and Four Swords (both Zelda titles) were fun too, but required a GBA for each person. I'm not sure how many times you'll find people with 4 GBA's with the Link Cables, but if you can find them these are really great party games. In Tetra's Trackers (at least in the demo we played - the training level) you raced the other three people to collect stamps from pirates in numerical order. On the Gamecube would have an overhead map showing the location of the other players and circles representing the pirates. At times, they would how the number of the pirates (so if you needed Pirate #3, you could see which one he was on the map.)
Four Swords plays the same as the GBA version, except the main board is on the Gamecube - you use the GBA as your controller, unless you fall into a pit. If you fall into a pit, you fall into your Gameboy, where you have to climb back up into the Gamecube.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles used the connectivity, but it wasn't required. If you used a GBA as your controller, you could see a map and your status without flipping to another screen. It was a real-time 4-player battle game, much like a Gauntlet Legends type of thing.
And Splinter Cell used it for a map of some kind - I never really looked at it closely, but it was a cool feature. You basically kept the GBA next to you and looked at it when you needed it (such as in Wind Waker with Tingle.)
I was also impressed with the GBA Camera Tech Demo they were showing. They took a picture of your face, uploaded it to the Gamecube, and it mapped your face onto a polyginal naked person. Then, it asked you a series of questions, and determined who you were by your answers. (It actually pegged me correctly - said I was a programmer) So, it had my face, with long hair, glasses, and tshirt and shorts dancing around with other Mario characters. It even blinked the eyes and changed the expression of the face, too. Very, very cool technology that was in it's early stages.
Everyone else pretty much seemed like...eh...But Nintendo blew me away this year. Let's hope they actually do this stuff right - because I was impressed with the E-Reader last year, and the lack of software for it made it stumble in my eyes.
I bought this thing, hoping that it would get better as it has gone along - and it hasn't. While the prospect of playing old NES games by swiping cards is a great idea, it is poorly executed by the fact that the ONLY games that you can play are Donkey Kong, Pinball, Tennis, and other FIRST generation NES games. Where's Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus?
It's a handly tool if you play Pokemon (as you can swipe your card and it will give you tips and strategies on how to defeat your opponent) and it will give you even MORE stuff in Animal Crossing, but that's about it. Not really worth a purchase just yet.
Now, if The Big N actually puts some decent stuff out for the sucker, I'd be able to reccomend it. But I just can't in it's current form.
It's because they have contracts with the US Department of Defense. Sure, a non-US Citizen can be on site, but they have to be escorted 100% of the time. A US Citizen can get a Contractor badge and nobody has to escort him to the restroom. So, for THEM, it's easier just to have someone who can qualify for a badge than to have someone they have to babysit.
Not the lawsuits, but the hiring of H1B's over US Citizens. I work in a small company (no, not the one linked to in my URL) and there are maybe 15 coders in our office.
Three of them are US Citizens. I am one of them.
We will see job postings go up in our break room, and submit the resume's of people we know who need jobs, but the job listings are basically a reprint of the resume of the H1B that the company has selected. So, they have all this extraneous stuff that you wouldn't use in that job, but they are considered "job requirements" and THAT is how they can tell the INS that "We can't find an equally qualified citizen."
I guess it wouldn't be so bad if we didn't work for clients and have to travel on site, and many of our clients will ONLY want US Citizens. So, that leaves the three of us to do ALL of the travelling, even if there has been a personal tragedy in our life. (And one of us has a newborn child, so she's not travelling either...)
I guess I can look at this a few ways. A) My life is a wreck right now because I can't stay home, but B) I have insane job security, something that is a very good thing to have in today's economy.
I'm not gonna sit here and "defend" Sony or Verant or Absor or any of them, even though I have had the pleasure of meeting with them personally and sharing beers with them. This article is obviously by a bitter gamer who wants to smear EQ's reputation through the mud, and that's fine. This is the age of the Internet, and it's his right to do that.
:>
I left the Guide program due to hardware issues about a year ago - after about two years of service. This was back when we had our own GM on the server, but it was difficult to get in touch with him during his work hours. Why? Because of kids. Because he had to clean up after scammers and recover lost items...He was insanely busy for his entire shift, and he wouldn't really be on server all that much.
When I was a Guide, I can safely say that out of every 20 petitions I fielded, I was able to help about 17 or 18 of them. I was able to help the majority of the players I conversed with during my shift. But you don't hear about them. You don't hear about the people that had the volunteer CS staff help them in a quick and expedient manner. They don't come out and say "Thank you." You only heat about people like the author of this article, who feels he has been wronged. The ones that say that we didn't care.
And then, there are the people who petition and won't let you help them. Even if you do exactly what they ask, they will still curse you out and and call you incompetent. Or, if you inquire more information about the problem, they demand that you stop asking questions and just fix it. (As if we had access to the source code and could just recompile it on the fly...) Yes, I know. This is reality. This is how I was treated working in Retail, too. But luckily, people like this were very, very, VERY few and far between.
We did care about every situation, every petition. I was a Guide on one of the two Teams-PvP servers, so not only did we have to deal with training and kill stealing, but we also had corpse campers, bind rushers, and immortal healing. Some of these were no-nos, and some of these (like immortal healing, where someone outside of PvP range would heal someone who's killing you) were deemed "Okay" by Sony. Did I agree with the ruling? Not really, but there's really not much Guides could do. The author of the article is right - we pretty much had our hands and feet tied. We were the eyes and ears of the GM's - nothing more. We could unstick players from walls and document warnings for behavior if they were dumb enough to still do it while we were staring at them. (We could be invisible.)
I don't know how things are now inside the program, but I can say that when I was in it, we actually were helping many people and people enjoyed their time in EQ because of the ways we helped them. There are far more of those type of people than the type of people like the author of this article. However, everybody that will reply to my message here will be the bitter types that will tell me that I'm just a Sony PR person that believes the kool-aid fed to me by Michelle Butler for two years. (Just you watch, some AC will just cut and paste that exact sentence, or change a word or two.)
I stopped playing EverQuest because all my friends did - and there was no reason to stick around. However, we're all waiting for Star Wars: Galaxies. And you guessed it, it's by the same guys who made EQ.
For the bitter ones, you might want to stay away from all online games, because it will just be "Wash, Rinse, Repeat" for you.
If you're still open to an enjoyable experience, we're in for one helluva ride.
I think the moral of this whole topic is: EQ in moderation is awesome. But don't let yourself get bitter. That only brings you down.
That's how I use my PS2 Linux Kit. I have all my MP3's on my main Linux box, and connect to it using SAMBA (since I have Windows machines that connect on the network too.) I can then just telnet into the PS2 and tell it what songs to play next.
And, the vector system coding is only for heavy duty graphics. For normal apps, it uses the same gcc compiler we're all used to, just for a MIPS processor instead of an ix86 one.
Since I was in the playtest of the game, I can safely say the following things about this.
I never saw a McDonalds kiosk anywhere I played. The deal was announced several months ago, and I saw it in the game, but it was too expensive for me to put in my house.
There ARE other places to eat. You don't have to eat at the McDonalds, and you don't have to put one on your property. A generic buffet table is just as good and much cheaper.
INTEL IS DOING THE SAME THING. You can buy a computer with Intel Inside and it gives you much better stats than a lower-end computer. Your "fun" goes up quicker when you play games on it and your "Logic" goes up quicker when you're studying on it.
So, if you're gonna go after McDonalds for being available, might as well go after Intel for the very same reasons.
They announced the McDonalds advertising several months ago when the deal was struck.
They also announced that you can buy INTEL computers in the same vein that you can buy McDonalds hamburgers. Computers powered by Intel processors give you better stats as well.
Perhaps we should also boycott them for advertising Intel?
This basically converts all the files from DOS to Linux after you have installed them. I forgot this step too, until I reread the directions very carefully. It's step 4 in their 5 step process.
:>
So...Run fixinstall, and THEN nwserver.
What this case is about is selling Mythic's intellectual property on eBay. Actually, no, they're selling an item on Mythic's database on eBay. That's the programmers term for it. They are selling the right to that symbolic link on Mythic's server. The SERVICE EULA forbids this.
It just so happens that the software cannot be run without the service. Much like how your telephone can't be used without the telephone service. (House phones, not cell phones with the nifty games.)
I fully believe that MMORPG developers have the right to not allow links on their database to be sold on eBay. Now, if the developer gets ROYALTIES for each link sold, then that would be okay. But I don't see any of these people paying Mythic royalties for selling Mythic's property...
For some reason I keep getting a Proxy error on my Cingular phone when I visit a lot of sites...INCLUDING THOSE ON CINGULAR'S SITE!!
"Cannot display malformed content" is one I get on some parts of Cingular's site...
It looks like some of the other sites I visit are okay now, Slashdot's site came up for the first time...I was using it to get an error and I can't get an error on any webpage anymore...(something about upstream content to the proxy)...Looks like it was fixed...Now time to go find some pr0n!
There is a show like this on the network, called "Arena".
One of Slashdot's favorites, Wil Wheaton, is one of the commentators on the show.