It seems like MMORPG sequels have a rough time. Ultima Online's sequel died in the womb, Asheron's Call 2 had a rough time getting customers and is now dying, and Everquest 2 is near the bottom of the population statistics charts.
Meanwhile, the original games continue to chug along, not gaining new users but also not hemorraging their core fans.
Sequels rarely live up to originals in any medium, but I suppose that effect is amplified in a genre where titles are considered a billable service and "persistence" is the main attraction.
If the game never ends, why would a player pull up the stakes in a game where so much time and effort is invested just to move into a newer, shinier world and start all over? On the other side of things, why would a new player going to join a game that already has the history and culture associated with it?
It's a shame though. Turbine got a lot right with Asheron's Call 1 that hasn't been seen in other MMORPG's since. AC2 was supposed to be the update that filled in all the cracks of that flawed masterpiece. And the next we can expect from Turbine are derivative medival fantasy franchise titles like Dungeons and Dragons and Middle Earth Online.
1. The AvP predator had a FPS released as recently as two years ago... hardly a forgotten franchise. And frankly, considering how terrible the movie was you'd have a hard time trying to convince a marketing department that this is a good idea.
2. Freespace was easily the best space combat sim of its time. The latter X-Wing games couldn't compare and by that time Wing Commander had bit the dust. It was Freespace that continued to innovate the genre when the other two lost their way.
3. Let Ultima be continue to be officially dead, because I shudder to think what a company like EA would do to it these days. Meanwhile, the Ultima fan community can continue to fly under the official radar and continue to maintain what was good about the original games.
What position would that be? The Nintendo Revolution is the very definition of vaporware.
Mod me down as a troll or flamebait all you want, but I'll never understand why everyone here on Slashdot gives Nintendo a free pass whenever there's a chink in the armor of their competitors.
You're willing to accept price points and game libraries that haven't been announced yet! You're willing to accept that the controller is going to "REVOLUTIONIZE" gaming, despite the lack of photos or even a reliable description of its qualities!
Fools part with money no sooner than fanboys, unfortunately. Being a gamer over the years has taught me two very important things: -Cynicism saves you money and heartache. -No company, no matter what their record, is infallible.
Libraries are notoriously easy to steal from, and popular (and expensive) technical manuals are among the most commonly stolen, and the most quickly obsolete.
Many libraries can't or don't want to bother with the costs associated with these kinds of materials, so they either don't carry them, have them scanned for online e-book checkout, or have them only on a limited access basis.
Public libraries in particular are usually founded with a mandate to promote community literacy and are less likely to carry highly technical specialized materials. They tend to focus their collections on best-sellers (which is also commonly stolen) and recreational reading programs, not only to keep illiteracy rates low but also to make sure that their services are used enough to justify their existence.
If you want to see more technical books at your public library, and you have the means to do so, I highly recommend offering a donation of up-to-date books (or just cold hard cash). Don't give them the outdated stuff, they're more likely to toss it than actually get it processed and shelved. Better yet, convince a publisher like O'Reilly to make the donation.
Also, don't bother with request forms or suggestion boxes- speak to a real live librarian and make your case known.
Most of the handicap hardware I mentioned is in my library, and unfortunately on a lowerlevel (basement) floor. Though there are three reliable elevators to it, and there are suitable fire exits, I can still see how it could be a problem.
This game is truly one of the best I've ever played. It sat unplayed on my shelf since 1999. Maybe I had some growing up to do, but playing it now has been a sublime experience. The Baldur's Gate series was one of my favorite of all time, so I guess Planescape's adventure-game puzzles and heavy dialogue with the Infinity Engine caught me off guard.
There's also still a fairly responsive community for the game on Planetbaldursgate.com
Check out Platter's Planescape-torment.org for good stuff like fan patches and story analysis.
If you like Planescape, I also highly reccommend Arcanum. It's not nearly as high quality, but the world and storytelling are still quite good and off the beaten path.
It amazes me how people buy into the rationale that says the longer a game's release is delayed, the better, more finished it will be on release. Pretty much every +5 on this story is patting Nintendo on the back for "taking their time to make a great game".
Does it ever occur to anyone that these delays might negatively affect the production quality of the title? Or perhaps delays have more to do with marketing than development?
Sure, releasing early is a bad idea. But that doesn't mean releasing later guarantees a good game. (Nor does having the word Nintendo on the box)
I work in a university library, the largest in my state, and by far the most important technology we've provided (beyond internet accessibility and an online catalog system) has been in the handicap accessibility areas.
-Get at least one video magnification machine. I think they're called "MERLIN" or something similar. You hold a book under the machine's camera and an enlarged image of the text appears on the monitor for seeing-impaired patrons. Failing that, have a well-maintained collection of magnifying glasses.
-Get some good, rugged headphones and equip all the computers with some good text-to-speech software. This is also good if your library has a literacy program so your non-reading patrons can actually use the internet.
-On the non-technical side of things: Use automatic doors, elevators and low shelving, or at least have the librarians offer a free paging service for handicapped patrons. A good collection of braile books is a good idea too.
The other very useful tech for libraries is a good up-to-date station for printing services. Copiers of all shapes and sizes, a fax machine, networked printers, scanners, memory-card readers and above all people with the know-how to maintain them (they'll break more than anything else). Also a typewriter would be a good purchase if you don't already have one available for public use.
If there's ever the technology to remotely shut down other people's cell phones- get that too.
Yeah they malfunction every now and then, but it's not the end of the world.
Your reservations about the doors in this article are the same that you would have about automatic doors, which we've been using quite successfully for decades.
We grow and tend to vegetables the way a shepherd tends to his flock. The sexual reproduction can be guided, but the system still allows for diversity, giving us a little protection from blight and disease that could easily destroy or contaminate a homogenous population of cloned food sources.
This is changing as more and more crops are genetically modified. Articles like this make me think that meat production is heading in the same direction.
Spector is sitting here telling us that Hollywood is bending over backwards to give him lucrative big budget liscensed projects. He's telling developers not to shy away from them and that they provide "cool sandboxes to play in" and that they working within the boundaries of a liscense is a rewarding experience. And yet...
Warren Spector has never once made a liscensed game.
Everyone here is talking about the expenses of composition and orchestration of original work, but much of the article is actually about the big bucks that developers are spending to license popular music. Advertising synergy and whatnot...
Everyone had high hopes for Escapist magazine, and it's been at least stimulating to read over the past month or so. This article is a low point.
Not only is it their second article about Second Life (no punnery meant) in the last few weeks, they trot out the same "Sandbox vs. Theme Park" theory of online gaming that we've been hearing for 10 years. On top of that- the navel gazing of this article comes to no satisfactory conclusion or new revelations on the subject.
But for all the anti-Zonk sentiments these days, at least there are fewer dupes than the beginning of Summer. The post-E3 Summer season is usually a dry spell for gaming, so I guess this is all we get.
Final Fantasy- every Final Fantasy from 1 to 10 (I dunno about X-2), relys on the same fundamental formula that hasn't changed for nearly 20 years. A team of no more than five adventurers, likely the holy trinity of fighter mage and healer (yeah yeah character customization...), fight in hundreds to thousands of random encounters in a turn based (ABT), more detailed view. Personal inventory is limited to what is equipped at the time, everything else is managed via a party inventory screen. There's likely to be a mog, a chocobo, and an airship somewhere in there too.
The only differences between games are: the graphics, number of cutscenes, the caracter development system, and the minor differences to the formulaic plot. The fundamental gameplay stays the same.
Now look at variation in the Zelda games. 1 was overhead, built almost entirely around exploration. 2 was a side scroller that had more elements of plot. 3 was much like 1, but the exploration was guided by the storyline. Ocarina of Time brought it all into 3d and is very much a completely different experience. Majora's Mask built on that fundamental gameplay by giving the player special powers, focusing gameplay on puzzles and limiting exploration with a time requirement. Four Swords returned to gameplay much like 3, but the addition of cooperative multiplayer once again proved to be a dramatic departure from the original games- at least in terms of gameplay. Say what you will about the story.
The Ultima series was all overhead exploration and "slay the evil wizard" until the second trilogy. Though the gameplay stayed fundamentally the same, the continuous storyline took front and center, providing goals and character development that had never been seen before. The third trilogy continued that trend, but completely reimagined the gameplay for each game. Ultima 7 was a fully realized and interactive living world with real-time combat, Ultima 8 was an isometric platformer and Ultima 9 was a 3rd person action-rpg.
The Final Fantasy series are some great games, but I stand by my claim that they are not an example of originality in a series. For that to be the case, Square would have made FF: Tactics, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy games. (Crystal Chronicles and Mystic Quest on the other hand are unworthy of the title.)
I don't play NCAA, but all of my friends do. The players, numbered not named, are all fairly accurate portrayals from what I understand, and you can name them.
In fact, there's some decent money to be made out there on Ebay selling memory cards with the full player names on them.
I live in a college town for a football school in a state with no professional team, that's another deal-breaker.
Final Fantasy has changed significantly since FF1... in that it has more cutscenes of a formulaic anime melodrama these days, but it is hardly something to be held as an example of originality in a series. FFX had just as many tired cliches as every other interactive Japanese soap opera.
I would say Ultima is a better example of a long series that had maintained originality (no pun intended), with the last three games in the series being dramatically different from the previous games- in story as well as gameplay. If you shoehorn the Underworld titles into what is considered the series, there's even more originality and fresh gameplay.
Also, though I tend to pan Nintendo for whoring their 20 year old franchises, they have a pretty good track record of making good games out of said franchises. Look at the variety in the Zelda, Metroid and Mario games through the years. Okay, so the stories are all pretty much the same, but the gameplay is almost always fresh.
I personally know at least 5 people who either bought or upgraded PC's primarily to play World of Warcraft. It was sick.
I know three or four who bought a PS2 for the Grand Theft Auto Games, myself included.
I know two who bought XBoxes, one for Halo, one for Fable.
I don't know anyone who bought a PC to play Snood, or a Gamecube to play WarioWare (minigames or not, it's still not a mainstream title). I'm obviously not aware of the "true sales numbers", but I know what drives hardware sales, and Snood ain't it.
Your point about grandparents buying hardware for their grandchildren has nothing to do with mass market appeal, as those grandchildren are the core gaming market you've discounted in every one of your posts. Show me a grandfather who's buying a Revolution to play it and then you'll start to make some sense.
I guarantee no one ever bought a PC to play snood (being that console dominance and viability is the topic of discussion). The market Nintendo is trying to reach out to is not the same as the flash/minigame/minesweeper market, and even if it is, it isn't going to drive console sales. The people who play those smaller independently developed games tend to purchase them for hardware they already own.
Is your grandfather planning on buying a Revolution? Is a soccer mom going to go out and buy junior a Revolution over a 360 or PS3 because she can play Bejeweled on it? I doubt that's even going to remotely be a factor in the overwhelming majority of sales.
Because that verbal blowjob you just gave Nintendo looked messy. You take a lot on faith ("IT'S CALLED REVOLUTION SO IT MUST BE REVOLUTIONARY!!!OMG!!") and insult the people you disagree with.
You're living in a fantasy world if you think Nintendo's 20 year old franchises somehow reach into this casual demographic where the big franchises like GTA, WoW and Madden fear to tread.
Newsflash: the "casual gamer" market isn't soccer moms or nascar dads. It's the immature teens and early 20's that you so smugly dismiss, the boys who were raised on NES, SNES and Genesis. They are the US gaming market's bread and butter and Nintendo moves further and further away from them with nearly every release, whether you accept it or not.
In fact, I would posit to you the idea that Nintendo caters mostly non-casual gamers, people who are willing and able to see past the cuetsy character designs for the great gameplay.
The fact of the matter is that Nintendo has been flogging their 20 year old franchises for years, and given nothing new to appeal to adults since. If they're going to survive in America they better come up with a franchise that doesn't have flowers, fairies or metroids. Good gameplay can hold up sales only for so long, as more and more companies manage to come up with good gameplay and relevant themes.
And the surest sign of acute fanboism is when they finish a post like that:
"You have no basis to even try to argue your paper thin case, I'd love for you to keep trying though as it gives me great pleasure to pick apart your fallacies and attempts. Next."
Get over yourself. I don't think anyone on Slashdot wants to live in a world where Nintendo isn't making videogames, but let's be realistic.
I remember years ago Richard Garriot ("Lord British") giving the Exult (Ultima 7 Remake project) a thumbs up, and a few of the other original devs gave the Exult team some insights to the game engine. How EA feels about Exult is another story...
The thing to remember with Morrowind is that the Mod community really didn't come into its own until at least a year after the games release, and many months after the two expansions. There were some early mods, but the Morrowind modding community that we know today is only a little over a year old.
The #1 reason to get Oblivion on the XBox 360 is that it will likely run flawlessly upon release, and there won't really be any mods for it at that point. Maybe a year down the road the PC version's mod community will have had a chance to blossom, expansions will have come out, and at then you can probably upgrade your computer to run it well without breaking the bank.
While it's true that Shakespeare, Van Gogh and other great masters were panned by the critics at the time, there is still criticism of their works that takes place today. The criticism of the present may have more bias and more deconstructive ego, but the critical analysis of past works is what helps them endure for future generations and encourages the creation of new masterpieces.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like MMORPG sequels have a rough time. Ultima Online's sequel died in the womb, Asheron's Call 2 had a rough time getting customers and is now dying, and Everquest 2 is near the bottom of the population statistics charts.
Meanwhile, the original games continue to chug along, not gaining new users but also not hemorraging their core fans.
Sequels rarely live up to originals in any medium, but I suppose that effect is amplified in a genre where titles are considered a billable service and "persistence" is the main attraction.
If the game never ends, why would a player pull up the stakes in a game where so much time and effort is invested just to move into a newer, shinier world and start all over? On the other side of things, why would a new player going to join a game that already has the history and culture associated with it?
It's a shame though. Turbine got a lot right with Asheron's Call 1 that hasn't been seen in other MMORPG's since. AC2 was supposed to be the update that filled in all the cracks of that flawed masterpiece. And the next we can expect from Turbine are derivative medival fantasy franchise titles like Dungeons and Dragons and Middle Earth Online.
1. The AvP predator had a FPS released as recently as two years ago... hardly a forgotten franchise. And frankly, considering how terrible the movie was you'd have a hard time trying to convince a marketing department that this is a good idea.
2. Freespace was easily the best space combat sim of its time. The latter X-Wing games couldn't compare and by that time Wing Commander had bit the dust. It was Freespace that continued to innovate the genre when the other two lost their way.
3. Let Ultima be continue to be officially dead, because I shudder to think what a company like EA would do to it these days. Meanwhile, the Ultima fan community can continue to fly under the official radar and continue to maintain what was good about the original games.
What position would that be? The Nintendo Revolution is the very definition of vaporware.
Mod me down as a troll or flamebait all you want, but I'll never understand why everyone here on Slashdot gives Nintendo a free pass whenever there's a chink in the armor of their competitors.
You're willing to accept price points and game libraries that haven't been announced yet! You're willing to accept that the controller is going to "REVOLUTIONIZE" gaming, despite the lack of photos or even a reliable description of its qualities!
Fools part with money no sooner than fanboys, unfortunately. Being a gamer over the years has taught me two very important things:
-Cynicism saves you money and heartache.
-No company, no matter what their record, is infallible.
Libraries are notoriously easy to steal from, and popular (and expensive) technical manuals are among the most commonly stolen, and the most quickly obsolete.
Many libraries can't or don't want to bother with the costs associated with these kinds of materials, so they either don't carry them, have them scanned for online e-book checkout, or have them only on a limited access basis.
Public libraries in particular are usually founded with a mandate to promote community literacy and are less likely to carry highly technical specialized materials. They tend to focus their collections on best-sellers (which is also commonly stolen) and recreational reading programs, not only to keep illiteracy rates low but also to make sure that their services are used enough to justify their existence.
If you want to see more technical books at your public library, and you have the means to do so, I highly recommend offering a donation of up-to-date books (or just cold hard cash). Don't give them the outdated stuff, they're more likely to toss it than actually get it processed and shelved. Better yet, convince a publisher like O'Reilly to make the donation.
Also, don't bother with request forms or suggestion boxes- speak to a real live librarian and make your case known.
Most of the handicap hardware I mentioned is in my library, and unfortunately on a lowerlevel (basement) floor. Though there are three reliable elevators to it, and there are suitable fire exits, I can still see how it could be a problem.
This game is truly one of the best I've ever played. It sat unplayed on my shelf since 1999. Maybe I had some growing up to do, but playing it now has been a sublime experience. The Baldur's Gate series was one of my favorite of all time, so I guess Planescape's adventure-game puzzles and heavy dialogue with the Infinity Engine caught me off guard.
There's also still a fairly responsive community for the game on Planetbaldursgate.com
Check out Platter's Planescape-torment.org for good stuff like fan patches and story analysis.
If you like Planescape, I also highly reccommend Arcanum. It's not nearly as high quality, but the world and storytelling are still quite good and off the beaten path.
It amazes me how people buy into the rationale that says the longer a game's release is delayed, the better, more finished it will be on release. Pretty much every +5 on this story is patting Nintendo on the back for "taking their time to make a great game".
Does it ever occur to anyone that these delays might negatively affect the production quality of the title? Or perhaps delays have more to do with marketing than development?
Sure, releasing early is a bad idea. But that doesn't mean releasing later guarantees a good game. (Nor does having the word Nintendo on the box)
I work in a university library, the largest in my state, and by far the most important technology we've provided (beyond internet accessibility and an online catalog system) has been in the handicap accessibility areas.
-Get at least one video magnification machine. I think they're called "MERLIN" or something similar. You hold a book under the machine's camera and an enlarged image of the text appears on the monitor for seeing-impaired patrons. Failing that, have a well-maintained collection of magnifying glasses.
-Get some good, rugged headphones and equip all the computers with some good text-to-speech software. This is also good if your library has a literacy program so your non-reading patrons can actually use the internet.
-On the non-technical side of things: Use automatic doors, elevators and low shelving, or at least have the librarians offer a free paging service for handicapped patrons. A good collection of braile books is a good idea too.
The other very useful tech for libraries is a good up-to-date station for printing services. Copiers of all shapes and sizes, a fax machine, networked printers, scanners, memory-card readers and above all people with the know-how to maintain them (they'll break more than anything else). Also a typewriter would be a good purchase if you don't already have one available for public use.
If there's ever the technology to remotely shut down other people's cell phones- get that too.
Just a theory, my ass- the missing link has been FOUND!
Yeah they malfunction every now and then, but it's not the end of the world.
Your reservations about the doors in this article are the same that you would have about automatic doors, which we've been using quite successfully for decades.
We grow and tend to vegetables the way a shepherd tends to his flock. The sexual reproduction can be guided, but the system still allows for diversity, giving us a little protection from blight and disease that could easily destroy or contaminate a homogenous population of cloned food sources.
This is changing as more and more crops are genetically modified. Articles like this make me think that meat production is heading in the same direction.
Spector is sitting here telling us that Hollywood is bending over backwards to give him lucrative big budget liscensed projects. He's telling developers not to shy away from them and that they provide "cool sandboxes to play in" and that they working within the boundaries of a liscense is a rewarding experience. And yet...
Warren Spector has never once made a liscensed game.
But am I really the only one who thought the Sims: Sonic the Hedgehog takes on the Giant Firebreathing Turtles was funny?
Snobs.
Everyone here is talking about the expenses of composition and orchestration of original work, but much of the article is actually about the big bucks that developers are spending to license popular music. Advertising synergy and whatnot...
Everyone had high hopes for Escapist magazine, and it's been at least stimulating to read over the past month or so. This article is a low point.
Not only is it their second article about Second Life (no punnery meant) in the last few weeks, they trot out the same "Sandbox vs. Theme Park" theory of online gaming that we've been hearing for 10 years. On top of that- the navel gazing of this article comes to no satisfactory conclusion or new revelations on the subject.
But for all the anti-Zonk sentiments these days, at least there are fewer dupes than the beginning of Summer. The post-E3 Summer season is usually a dry spell for gaming, so I guess this is all we get.
Final Fantasy- every Final Fantasy from 1 to 10 (I dunno about X-2), relys on the same fundamental formula that hasn't changed for nearly 20 years. A team of no more than five adventurers, likely the holy trinity of fighter mage and healer (yeah yeah character customization...), fight in hundreds to thousands of random encounters in a turn based (ABT), more detailed view. Personal inventory is limited to what is equipped at the time, everything else is managed via a party inventory screen. There's likely to be a mog, a chocobo, and an airship somewhere in there too.
The only differences between games are: the graphics, number of cutscenes, the caracter development system, and the minor differences to the formulaic plot. The fundamental gameplay stays the same.
Now look at variation in the Zelda games. 1 was overhead, built almost entirely around exploration. 2 was a side scroller that had more elements of plot. 3 was much like 1, but the exploration was guided by the storyline. Ocarina of Time brought it all into 3d and is very much a completely different experience. Majora's Mask built on that fundamental gameplay by giving the player special powers, focusing gameplay on puzzles and limiting exploration with a time requirement. Four Swords returned to gameplay much like 3, but the addition of cooperative multiplayer once again proved to be a dramatic departure from the original games- at least in terms of gameplay. Say what you will about the story.
The Ultima series was all overhead exploration and "slay the evil wizard" until the second trilogy. Though the gameplay stayed fundamentally the same, the continuous storyline took front and center, providing goals and character development that had never been seen before. The third trilogy continued that trend, but completely reimagined the gameplay for each game. Ultima 7 was a fully realized and interactive living world with real-time combat, Ultima 8 was an isometric platformer and Ultima 9 was a 3rd person action-rpg.
The Final Fantasy series are some great games, but I stand by my claim that they are not an example of originality in a series. For that to be the case, Square would have made FF: Tactics, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy games. (Crystal Chronicles and Mystic Quest on the other hand are unworthy of the title.)
I don't play NCAA, but all of my friends do. The players, numbered not named, are all fairly accurate portrayals from what I understand, and you can name them.
In fact, there's some decent money to be made out there on Ebay selling memory cards with the full player names on them.
I live in a college town for a football school in a state with no professional team, that's another deal-breaker.
Final Fantasy has changed significantly since FF1... in that it has more cutscenes of a formulaic anime melodrama these days, but it is hardly something to be held as an example of originality in a series. FFX had just as many tired cliches as every other interactive Japanese soap opera.
I would say Ultima is a better example of a long series that had maintained originality (no pun intended), with the last three games in the series being dramatically different from the previous games- in story as well as gameplay. If you shoehorn the Underworld titles into what is considered the series, there's even more originality and fresh gameplay.
Also, though I tend to pan Nintendo for whoring their 20 year old franchises, they have a pretty good track record of making good games out of said franchises. Look at the variety in the Zelda, Metroid and Mario games through the years. Okay, so the stories are all pretty much the same, but the gameplay is almost always fresh.
I personally know at least 5 people who either bought or upgraded PC's primarily to play World of Warcraft. It was sick.
I know three or four who bought a PS2 for the Grand Theft Auto Games, myself included.
I know two who bought XBoxes, one for Halo, one for Fable.
I don't know anyone who bought a PC to play Snood, or a Gamecube to play WarioWare (minigames or not, it's still not a mainstream title). I'm obviously not aware of the "true sales numbers", but I know what drives hardware sales, and Snood ain't it.
Your point about grandparents buying hardware for their grandchildren has nothing to do with mass market appeal, as those grandchildren are the core gaming market you've discounted in every one of your posts. Show me a grandfather who's buying a Revolution to play it and then you'll start to make some sense.
I guarantee no one ever bought a PC to play snood (being that console dominance and viability is the topic of discussion). The market Nintendo is trying to reach out to is not the same as the flash/minigame/minesweeper market, and even if it is, it isn't going to drive console sales. The people who play those smaller independently developed games tend to purchase them for hardware they already own.
Is your grandfather planning on buying a Revolution? Is a soccer mom going to go out and buy junior a Revolution over a 360 or PS3 because she can play Bejeweled on it? I doubt that's even going to remotely be a factor in the overwhelming majority of sales.
Because that verbal blowjob you just gave Nintendo looked messy. You take a lot on faith ("IT'S CALLED REVOLUTION SO IT MUST BE REVOLUTIONARY!!!OMG!!") and insult the people you disagree with.
You're living in a fantasy world if you think Nintendo's 20 year old franchises somehow reach into this casual demographic where the big franchises like GTA, WoW and Madden fear to tread.
Newsflash: the "casual gamer" market isn't soccer moms or nascar dads. It's the immature teens and early 20's that you so smugly dismiss, the boys who were raised on NES, SNES and Genesis. They are the US gaming market's bread and butter and Nintendo moves further and further away from them with nearly every release, whether you accept it or not.
In fact, I would posit to you the idea that Nintendo caters mostly non-casual gamers, people who are willing and able to see past the cuetsy character designs for the great gameplay.
The fact of the matter is that Nintendo has been flogging their 20 year old franchises for years, and given nothing new to appeal to adults since. If they're going to survive in America they better come up with a franchise that doesn't have flowers, fairies or metroids. Good gameplay can hold up sales only for so long, as more and more companies manage to come up with good gameplay and relevant themes.
And the surest sign of acute fanboism is when they finish a post like that:
"You have no basis to even try to argue your paper thin case, I'd love for you to keep trying though as it gives me great pleasure to pick apart your fallacies and attempts. Next."
Get over yourself. I don't think anyone on Slashdot wants to live in a world where Nintendo isn't making videogames, but let's be realistic.
It may be offtopic, but an IMDB for videogames is the best idea I've heard in years.
I remember years ago Richard Garriot ("Lord British") giving the Exult (Ultima 7 Remake project) a thumbs up, and a few of the other original devs gave the Exult team some insights to the game engine. How EA feels about Exult is another story...
exult.sourceforge.net
The thing to remember with Morrowind is that the Mod community really didn't come into its own until at least a year after the games release, and many months after the two expansions. There were some early mods, but the Morrowind modding community that we know today is only a little over a year old.
The #1 reason to get Oblivion on the XBox 360 is that it will likely run flawlessly upon release, and there won't really be any mods for it at that point. Maybe a year down the road the PC version's mod community will have had a chance to blossom, expansions will have come out, and at then you can probably upgrade your computer to run it well without breaking the bank.
While it's true that Shakespeare, Van Gogh and other great masters were panned by the critics at the time, there is still criticism of their works that takes place today. The criticism of the present may have more bias and more deconstructive ego, but the critical analysis of past works is what helps them endure for future generations and encourages the creation of new masterpieces.
That's what is meant by "constructive criticism".