I wouldn't like it if they all left, but to me the game was in an un-playable state and I could imagine it being playable without the non-combat people, although it wouldn't be as good as it could be.
Just to give you an idea of the state the game was in when I left: smugglers couldn't smuggle. Anything. They could only make drugs, pretty much, or upgrade weapons. There was absolutely no relationship between a smuggler in game and smuggling.
I even tried my hand at crafting, but that was a hard market to break into because there were so many masters that were just dominant in the field.
I just wish they would take Knights of the Old republic and turn it into a MMORPG.
I'm not big into massive rpgs, but I've been an avid star wars fan and gamer for about 10 years. The tragegdy of the prequel trilogy was off-putting, but there are still plenty of cool star wars experiences if you ignore the new movies (I'll admit EP3 was pretty decent) Anyone who is into RPGs should definately checkout knights of the old republic 1, it has an incredible story.
I started playing SWG. I built up my character from 0 to master smuggler. Then as it turned out, master smuggler sucked, so I went master commando. To get to master, it required weeks of killing NPCs. Player vs. player combat didn't get you anywhere. I quickly found out that the jedi in the game were so powerful it took a team of bounty hunters to take them down, and they all had the maturity of 13 year olds, which I'm sure they were. Jedi sucked. Then I tried the galactic civil war, I joined the rebels. I quickly found out that having a flamethrower, rocket launcher, composite armor, and grenades were no match for a wooden stick with a poison tip that does "damage over time" In fact, such weapons were all looted, and could sell for hundreds on ebay. So here I am fighting a stormtrooper who kills me with a wooden stick. And I had armor. It was rediculous. The problem is they built an RPG with a dungeons and dragons mentality instead of a star wars game.
They could have set the time period in the prequels to have the jedi thing make sense. They could have made the galactic civil war make sense. It was a good RPG, but it wasn't "star wars" It reminded me of a quake 3 star wars skin. It looked like it, but it wasn't. I was even starting to wonder what other RPG they took the source code from, because from the ground up, it did not have the feel of star wars.
Jump to lightspeed wasn't even as much fun as the 5 year old "x-wing alliance" title, which was great, and the graphics weren't much better. The ground game had no connection to the space game.
So I quit. Now that the game has changed, I'll probably try it out again. It sounds like it might finally be fixed. Of course, the players that were lucky enough to own a poison stick are going to be very upset, but frankly, if every one of them left, and all the 13 year old jedi, the game will be much more fun.
By the way, I'm not sure if the revamps will even put an end to the poison stick thing, but I'm willing to have a look.
I've been using monowall for probably almost a year now, for a couple different routers. Here's why I like it. Put 3 net cards in a computer. 1 for the diesel modem, 1 for the LAN, and one for the wireless access point. Block all traffic from wireless to LAN, and then allow only VPN traffic in. You have free unencrypted wi-fi for friends and neighbors, and encryption for yourself far superior to WEP.
I've been using Windows Media Center edition and I'm going to drop it. First off, it's unstable, having to reboot your TV once or twice a week isn't fun especially when if you don't do it you come home to find it missed your shows. Second, the DRM is really a pain in the neck. MS-DVR isn't hard to convert to a better format but it is time consuming because there's always that extra step of making it into mpeg-2. Saving a show off windows media center is actually harder than ripping a CSS encrypted DVD. (I hate to do the typical MS-bashing but I really have been having a lot of trouble with my media center recently.)
I have been planning on buying one of the plextor units for a while, I like the idea of hardware encoding directly to mpeg-4, and I like plextor products, the have made the most reliable CD burners I've ever owned. I like the linux option, that seems like a good idea, but whatever I do I simply want it to be as versatile as possible, and Windows MCE is not versatile.
Is anyone following the investigation of the UN's Oil for Food program and the honest millions that Kofi's son made off the suffering of iraqis? (this is not a defense of the bush administration, just an attack on Kofi Annan's crooked kid.)
Naw, I had a government contractor in my family. Here's the truth. If you want to sell the government a $20 hammer, you have to spend about $100 in campaign contributions to the politicians that will never pass that law you suggest. So then you charge $150 for the hammer in order to make a modest 20% profit. People blame crooked contractors a lot of the time but not the political types that show up to shake them down. Same family member just had to pay a $7000 bribe to a court reporter in order not to loose a court case. This court reporter shows up with a bill for services they never performed, and if he didn't pay, he knew he would loose a $350,000 lawsuit.
Gas tax, property tax, federal income tax, state income tax, social security tax, sales tax, tarrifs on goods we purchase, capital gains tax, federal telephone fees, vehicle registration (buy a nice car and now I can't even afford the plates on it) and the thousand other taxes that I cannot afford to pay.
I don't pay enough taxes. 50% of my income just isn't enough. Add it up folks. The government has $150 hammers to buy. Don't try and pawn the blame off on one political party, either. They're both guilty.
Most people have no clue what they're paying in taxes. The pump thier gas and wonder why it's so expensive but don't even see the 50 cent a gallon tax. They pay their mortgage and don't see the thousands of dollars they're paying in property tax because it's rolled into the payment. Their taxes are deducted right out of thier paycheck. I'm self employed, wait until you have to write out all these checks, it works. Are they going to tax motherboards when I build computers? This will be really good for the struggling IT economy.
I'm a Christian, and I think I'm the only Christian to read Slashdot. I seem to be the only one who has posted on this topic. I'm a network technician at a fairly large church. I installed linux on a server for our missions org this weekend. I have written some articles for a decent sized hardware site, and I have had one of those articles plagurized by perhaps the biggest hardware site (the one that's constantly in hot water and photoshops fake pictures of "confidential" high end computer parts) I read slashdot several times a day. I am one of you.
I've read every post on this, up until now, I'm sure a few hundred more will pour in by the time I'm done typing. I've seen some very accurate sentiments, and some fairly childish ideas.
I hate censorship. I hate the DMCA. The same people that are suing clean flicks are the same basic people who are pushing congress to move towards "secure" computing. These are the people who are pushing for DRM. I have GBs of mp3s that I legally own the copyrights for. I built a car computer for playing them. When I like a movie, I buy the DVD, and then I copy it to my hard drive. I don't want to be some jamoco who carries around a case of 2000 CDs and DVDs everywhere I go. That's what they want. They want total control.
As a network administrator, I see DRM as something that's going to cause so many headaches. Every program will have it's own dumb code and I will not be able to ghost a hard drive over to another computer.
And this is just more of the same. I'm trying to have a clean mind. This is between me and God. I don't seek to impose my standards on anyone else. If some of the ultra-right wingers got thier way, they would create a police state where alcohol, cigarettes, swearing, and non-marital sex were non-existant. But this would not lead one more person to Christ. In fact, such unbiblical heavy handedness would drive people away.
I don't watch movies much anymore. Lord of the Rings, Spider Man, Star Wars, they were decent enough. I've never watched a censored movie, except the 3 billion censored movies I've seen on TV. (hipocrytes) If I want to censor a movie, or have someone else do it, there's nothing morally wrong with it, and I can prove it.
1. The artists behind the work have been properly compensated for thier time. (thou shalt not steal) 2. The artists have been properly credited for their work. Credits remain unchanged.(not like when that site plagurized my article) 3. The media is clearly marked as being censored. (no attempt to impose belifs on others, no deception) 4. It is not uncommon for a middleman to make a profit on something. 5. If the directors tolerate censorship for time constraints, language, violence, and nudity when their movies are on TV, why won't they tolerate it on video? Any director of any movie who has allowed censorship in that media has no right to deny the same censorship on another.
Part of understanding copyright is that it is (or was) media independant. You own the right to listen to a song if it's on tape, record, or CD. So if editing for TV is ok, but doing it on tape isn't, then they've crossed the line into areas of SECURE media and DRM. And to say it's different because Clean Flicks is making money on it is invalid, because ABC makes money when they show a cleaned up version of a movie.
I feel that the same people who are against clean flicks are the same people who would jump up and defend The Phantom Edit, and the same people who would jump to defend Dirty Flick's right to insert sex scenes into clean movies featuring celebrity look alikes and edit in swearing into disney films. When some group goes after TIVO, they will stand up and shout "you can't do that"
How long will we give away our rights? Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion are all fading away. Even if you hate Christians and you want to see Clean Flicks burned down, one more incursion by "big media" (AOL/Timewarner ABC/Disney RIAA MPAA Microsoft/NBC Intel/DRM) will not help you in any way, but it can certainly hurt you. There's no telling what kind of precedent this case can establish. Some judges are so goofy they will say "well, it's illegle to edit copyrighted movies, so it's illegle to edit copyrighted network protocols." (say goodbye to SAMBA)
When a people HAVE a right, it's theirs until they let someone take it. But when a people try to get back a right that was taken from them, there is usually a lot of bloodshed.
How far is too far? Let them take our clean movies and TIVOs. We don't need them. One day we'll be slashdotting talking about how cool the net used to be. Before Microsoft's EULA required all PCs to be welded shut to prevent tampering with the DRM. Before all movies and music would only play on the disc that we bought them on. Before the entire net was filtered and your ISP reported evey action to AOL/Timewarner so they can send you spam and junkmail. Before E-wallet monitors every dollar you make and spend and reports it to the IRS and AOL/Timewarner so they can direct proper advertising at you?
Slashdot Mirror
Costco has cases of Monster green and blue at somewhat more reasonable prices. Still not cheap by any means but the cheapest place I've found.
I wouldn't like it if they all left, but to me the game was in an un-playable state and I could imagine it being playable without the non-combat people, although it wouldn't be as good as it could be.
Just to give you an idea of the state the game was in when I left: smugglers couldn't smuggle. Anything. They could only make drugs, pretty much, or upgrade weapons. There was absolutely no relationship between a smuggler in game and smuggling.
I even tried my hand at crafting, but that was a hard market to break into because there were so many masters that were just dominant in the field.
I just wish they would take Knights of the Old republic and turn it into a MMORPG.
I'm not big into massive rpgs, but I've been an avid star wars fan and gamer for about 10 years. The tragegdy of the prequel trilogy was off-putting, but there are still plenty of cool star wars experiences if you ignore the new movies (I'll admit EP3 was pretty decent) Anyone who is into RPGs should definately checkout knights of the old republic 1, it has an incredible story.
I started playing SWG. I built up my character from 0 to master smuggler. Then as it turned out, master smuggler sucked, so I went master commando. To get to master, it required weeks of killing NPCs. Player vs. player combat didn't get you anywhere. I quickly found out that the jedi in the game were so powerful it took a team of bounty hunters to take them down, and they all had the maturity of 13 year olds, which I'm sure they were. Jedi sucked. Then I tried the galactic civil war, I joined the rebels. I quickly found out that having a flamethrower, rocket launcher, composite armor, and grenades were no match for a wooden stick with a poison tip that does "damage over time" In fact, such weapons were all looted, and could sell for hundreds on ebay. So here I am fighting a stormtrooper who kills me with a wooden stick. And I had armor. It was rediculous. The problem is they built an RPG with a dungeons and dragons mentality instead of a star wars game.
They could have set the time period in the prequels to have the jedi thing make sense. They could have made the galactic civil war make sense. It was a good RPG, but it wasn't "star wars" It reminded me of a quake 3 star wars skin. It looked like it, but it wasn't. I was even starting to wonder what other RPG they took the source code from, because from the ground up, it did not have the feel of star wars.
Jump to lightspeed wasn't even as much fun as the 5 year old "x-wing alliance" title, which was great, and the graphics weren't much better. The ground game had no connection to the space game.
So I quit. Now that the game has changed, I'll probably try it out again. It sounds like it might finally be fixed. Of course, the players that were lucky enough to own a poison stick are going to be very upset, but frankly, if every one of them left, and all the 13 year old jedi, the game will be much more fun.
By the way, I'm not sure if the revamps will even put an end to the poison stick thing, but I'm willing to have a look.
I've been using monowall for probably almost a year now, for a couple different routers. Here's why I like it. Put 3 net cards in a computer. 1 for the diesel modem, 1 for the LAN, and one for the wireless access point. Block all traffic from wireless to LAN, and then allow only VPN traffic in. You have free unencrypted wi-fi for friends and neighbors, and encryption for yourself far superior to WEP.
I've been using Windows Media Center edition and I'm going to drop it. First off, it's unstable, having to reboot your TV once or twice a week isn't fun especially when if you don't do it you come home to find it missed your shows. Second, the DRM is really a pain in the neck. MS-DVR isn't hard to convert to a better format but it is time consuming because there's always that extra step of making it into mpeg-2. Saving a show off windows media center is actually harder than ripping a CSS encrypted DVD. (I hate to do the typical MS-bashing but I really have been having a lot of trouble with my media center recently.)
I have been planning on buying one of the plextor units for a while, I like the idea of hardware encoding directly to mpeg-4, and I like plextor products, the have made the most reliable CD burners I've ever owned. I like the linux option, that seems like a good idea, but whatever I do I simply want it to be as versatile as possible, and Windows MCE is not versatile.
Is anyone following the investigation of the UN's Oil for Food program and the honest millions that Kofi's son made off the suffering of iraqis? (this is not a defense of the bush administration, just an attack on Kofi Annan's crooked kid.)
Naw, I had a government contractor in my family. Here's the truth. If you want to sell the government a $20 hammer, you have to spend about $100 in campaign contributions to the politicians that will never pass that law you suggest. So then you charge $150 for the hammer in order to make a modest 20% profit. People blame crooked contractors a lot of the time but not the political types that show up to shake them down. Same family member just had to pay a $7000 bribe to a court reporter in order not to loose a court case. This court reporter shows up with a bill for services they never performed, and if he didn't pay, he knew he would loose a $350,000 lawsuit.
Gas tax, property tax, federal income tax, state income tax, social security tax, sales tax, tarrifs on goods we purchase, capital gains tax, federal telephone fees, vehicle registration (buy a nice car and now I can't even afford the plates on it) and the thousand other taxes that I cannot afford to pay.
I don't pay enough taxes. 50% of my income just isn't enough. Add it up folks. The government has $150 hammers to buy. Don't try and pawn the blame off on one political party, either. They're both guilty.
Most people have no clue what they're paying in taxes. The pump thier gas and wonder why it's so expensive but don't even see the 50 cent a gallon tax. They pay their mortgage and don't see the thousands of dollars they're paying in property tax because it's rolled into the payment. Their taxes are deducted right out of thier paycheck. I'm self employed, wait until you have to write out all these checks, it works. Are they going to tax motherboards when I build computers? This will be really good for the struggling IT economy.
How come NASA can shoot mice into orbit, but if I launch one up in a model rocket, it's a crime?
This is the type of regulation that makes independant space travel impossible!
I'm gonna go fire up a hampster right now.
Pulling on his tail is cruel, yelling in his ears is cruel, launching him in a rocket is cruel! EVERYTHING IS CRUEL! Well excuse me if I'm cruel.
I'm a Christian, and I think I'm the only Christian to read Slashdot. I seem to be the only one who has posted on this topic. I'm a network technician at a fairly large church. I installed linux on a server for our missions org this weekend. I have written some articles for a decent sized hardware site, and I have had one of those articles plagurized by perhaps the biggest hardware site (the one that's constantly in hot water and photoshops fake pictures of "confidential" high end computer parts) I read slashdot several times a day. I am one of you.
I've read every post on this, up until now, I'm sure a few hundred more will pour in by the time I'm done typing. I've seen some very accurate sentiments, and some fairly childish ideas.
I hate censorship. I hate the DMCA. The same people that are suing clean flicks are the same basic people who are pushing congress to move towards "secure" computing. These are the people who are pushing for DRM. I have GBs of mp3s that I legally own the copyrights for. I built a car computer for playing them. When I like a movie, I buy the DVD, and then I copy it to my hard drive. I don't want to be some jamoco who carries around a case of 2000 CDs and DVDs everywhere I go. That's what they want. They want total control.
As a network administrator, I see DRM as something that's going to cause so many headaches. Every program will have it's own dumb code and I will not be able to ghost a hard drive over to another computer.
And this is just more of the same. I'm trying to have a clean mind. This is between me and God. I don't seek to impose my standards on anyone else. If some of the ultra-right wingers got thier way, they would create a police state where alcohol, cigarettes, swearing, and non-marital sex were non-existant. But this would not lead one more person to Christ. In fact, such unbiblical heavy handedness would drive people away.
I don't watch movies much anymore. Lord of the Rings, Spider Man, Star Wars, they were decent enough. I've never watched a censored movie, except the 3 billion censored movies I've seen on TV. (hipocrytes) If I want to censor a movie, or have someone else do it, there's nothing morally wrong with it, and I can prove it.
1. The artists behind the work have been properly compensated for thier time. (thou shalt not steal)
2. The artists have been properly credited for their work. Credits remain unchanged.(not like when that site plagurized my article)
3. The media is clearly marked as being censored. (no attempt to impose belifs on others, no deception)
4. It is not uncommon for a middleman to make a profit on something.
5. If the directors tolerate censorship for time constraints, language, violence, and nudity when their movies are on TV, why won't they tolerate it on video? Any director of any movie who has allowed censorship in that media has no right to deny the same censorship on another.
Part of understanding copyright is that it is (or was) media independant. You own the right to listen to a song if it's on tape, record, or CD. So if editing for TV is ok, but doing it on tape isn't, then they've crossed the line into areas of SECURE media and DRM. And to say it's different because Clean Flicks is making money on it is invalid, because ABC makes money when they show a cleaned up version of a movie.
I feel that the same people who are against clean flicks are the same people who would jump up and defend The Phantom Edit, and the same people who would jump to defend Dirty Flick's right to insert sex scenes into clean movies featuring celebrity look alikes and edit in swearing into disney films. When some group goes after TIVO, they will stand up and shout "you can't do that"
How long will we give away our rights? Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion are all fading away. Even if you hate Christians and you want to see Clean Flicks burned down, one more incursion by "big media" (AOL/Timewarner ABC/Disney RIAA MPAA Microsoft/NBC Intel/DRM) will not help you in any way, but it can certainly hurt you. There's no telling what kind of precedent this case can establish. Some judges are so goofy they will say "well, it's illegle to edit copyrighted movies, so it's illegle to edit copyrighted network protocols." (say goodbye to SAMBA)
When a people HAVE a right, it's theirs until they let someone take it. But when a people try to get back a right that was taken from them, there is usually a lot of bloodshed.
How far is too far? Let them take our clean movies and TIVOs. We don't need them. One day we'll be slashdotting talking about how cool the net used to be. Before Microsoft's EULA required all PCs to be welded shut to prevent tampering with the DRM. Before all movies and music would only play on the disc that we bought them on. Before the entire net was filtered and your ISP reported evey action to AOL/Timewarner so they can send you spam and junkmail. Before E-wallet monitors every dollar you make and spend and reports it to the IRS and AOL/Timewarner so they can direct proper advertising at you?