And to make that identical game for the 360 you'd have to pay microsoft to run your game through certification and pay for licensing ON TOP of your game engine license.
Slashdot isn't charging $60 per ID like Blizzard does. The game splits up your win/loss ratio by race when displaying your statistics so people can easily see that if, for example, you're 10-3 as Terran but 1-11 as Zerg, that maybe you're just not very good at Zerg. It's not a "cheating" issue in that case. The "cheating" issue comes when someone creates multiple dummy accounts to purposefully lose to their buddy to artificially inflate their buddies ranking, or some other more clever system that I can't think of (since that would be pretty difficult with random matchmaking etc.)
As for coming up with a dumb name for offline before going online, a lot of people thought the same thing. A day or so after the game went on sale, Blizzard put in the "breaking news" window in the login screen a message to warn players that their name was "permanent". Later, they announced that all players will be allowed a one time free name change to make up for the confusion, and after that players will be able to change their name at any time for a small fee similar to WoW characters. Your stats, rank, and friends list etc. are retained, you just change your handle.
Think about it though: why would you need "characters" in SC2? The only purposes multiple characters would really serve is trolling people in-game or attempting to exploit the ladder rankings. You can have multiple single player progressions by simply having multiple save game files, if that's the issue.
Really, the only thing your "character" in SC2 does is obfuscate your login from random people in game (which is a good thing).
This is not correct at all. That's why you have a character name and code after the hash. You can add friends either from within lobbies or by giving them your friend code hash. In my example, if you played a 2v2 with some random person and thought they were good you could send them a message and give them "Slayer#123" and could add you as a SC2 friend (NOT a Real ID friend). They would never know your real name unless you told them and not be able to see when you were playing WoW or any other Blizzard game. Only SC2 on that exact account. It's pretty much exactly the same as WoW except you only get one character name.
Your SC2 character name is not your Real ID. There's no way anyone can associate you with "Slayer#123" unless you explicitly add them as Real ID friends, the same way in WoW they can't associate you with "Legollaz" unless you explicitly add them.
I do think it's kind of funny that they put your real name in the menu interface, but if that concerns you, no one's making you post screenshots/videos on youtube, either.
As for worrying about the smoking... really? Quit trolling.
I played TF in various incarnations for 7 years. I tried to get into TF2 but I guess I just got as tired of the genre as the originator of this thread got tired of MMO's. Not being able to put the time in to get good enough to play in a competitive clan, and the general lack of a strong clan scene to begin with, probably didn't help. Valve chose to balance the game around public servers rather than clan matches, to the detriment of clan matches. Granted, it makes good business and gameplay sense, since no matter what pubbies were going to account for 90%+ of their users.
It's an opt in system already. You opt-in by adding Real ID friends to your friend list. If you have no Real ID friends you're already opted out. The hard disable on the website is just to make idiots feel better about their inability to avoid clicking "confirm" on every pop-up they ever see.
Have you even used the Real ID friends list? First of all, someone has to know the email you use for your WoW account (granted, this is probably easily guessed in a lot of cases). Second, they send a friend request which you must manually accept before they can see anything.
In other words, Real ID has been opt out from the start by design. If you never add anyone or confirm anyone, no one can see your real name or track you, and your WoW experience is no different than before they added this feature.
This isn't something they added 3 days ago with the web based controls, this is how it has worked since it was originally implemented. Also, from the very beginning, if you wanted to go through the hassle of setting up the parental control system you could have completely disabled Real ID if you were super paranoid about it for some reason.
Basically, the main addition they added a few days ago was the option to disable the display of friends of friends, and made the method of totally disabling Real ID less complex. While I think the ability to hide yourself on the friend of friend list should have been in from the start, the simple solution beforehand was to simply not add any Real ID friends. Any method of "totally disabling" Real ID is just paranoia by people who apparently lack the self control to not click "accept" every time some random stranger sends them a friend request in a video game (other than the pre-existing parental controls method, which was the specific case of a parent of a minor child exercising their right to control their child's online engagement level).
You're an idiot. Pro gamers account for like 0.01% of people who bought SC1/SC2. SC was already a massive success as far as PC game sales were concerned before Koreans even knew what it was. And the majority of people who bought SC2 played through the single player campaign on medium or easier and then played maybe 10 ladder games before moving on to custom maps (which, by the way, accounted for like 90% of the people playing BW on battle.net last time I check like 6 years ago) or going back to playing WoW, MW2, etc.
Certainly professional gaming helped keep Starcraft in people's minds the past 10 years, but Diablo 2 doesn't have anything even resembling a "professional" class, yet its sequel just as anticipated as SC2 was, if not more so.
Professional SC/SC2 could end tomorrow and its impact on the popularity of the game (outside of Korea) would barely even be a noticeable.
Real ID in-game has always been 100% optional. You never had to give anyone your email or if someone randomly knew your email, all you had to do was deny their friend requests.
The huge public outcry was entirely based on the second, and somewhat unrelated, proposal: using Real ID names on the forums. Not about the in game cross server chat function. There was some mild whining by some about having their real name displayed, and how those people didn't feel they could make full use of the promised cross server and cross game chat functionality because they didn't want to share their name, but this was small gripe by a small minority, relatively speaking.
As long as the adult is able to purchase the game no problem, then that question is irrelevant. It doesn't really restrict the freedoms of the adult, just might add a little hassle (they have to be present to purchase it instead of sending the kid into the store on his own while you browse clothes at Sears), and we as a society have already established that minors cannot be trusted with full freedoms on their own, so no harm in restricting theirs further.
This is wrong. You don not "write" in the game base 10. You draw little horizontal and vertical lines across tiles to flip them. That's it. I could do that with my left hand ALL DAY (as a right handed person). Additionally, there's nothing in the game to prevent you from simply holding the DS with your right and and using the stylus in your left. There's almost nothing on the left screen terribly important anyway.
I'm sure there are plenty of DS games for which being left handed could be a much bigger detriment if the developers did not offer a left hand mode. This game is NOT one of them.
I know people who have never even played WoW or have mail accounts that were never associated with WoW who sometimes get onto these phishing mailing lists. You're lucky if your mail accounts are still safe from this spam (or perhaps your ISP or spam filters are just better than mine).
In my experience, the in-game scamming has been greatly reduced to the point where I almost never receive tells. Yet I have one email account that sometimes receives multiple phishing mails per day, including ones for Aion (which I've never even played). Every single one has a different fake domain, and every domain is registered in China.
I'm honestly surprised that battle.net or World of Warcraft didn't make the top 10. Anyone who's been targeted by their phishing mails is probably familiar with domain names like "battle-auth-blizzard.com"
No. He was saying that people cannot be given the opportunity to stand up for their stated ethical principles by rejecting treatments using embryonic stem cell research because no such treatments exist. Therefore, the previous poster's argument was moot. They are not hypocrites because they cannot be hypocrites because they cannot be given the opportunity to be hypocrites (currently).
Slashdot Mirror
And to make that identical game for the 360 you'd have to pay microsoft to run your game through certification and pay for licensing ON TOP of your game engine license.
Slashdot isn't charging $60 per ID like Blizzard does. The game splits up your win/loss ratio by race when displaying your statistics so people can easily see that if, for example, you're 10-3 as Terran but 1-11 as Zerg, that maybe you're just not very good at Zerg. It's not a "cheating" issue in that case. The "cheating" issue comes when someone creates multiple dummy accounts to purposefully lose to their buddy to artificially inflate their buddies ranking, or some other more clever system that I can't think of (since that would be pretty difficult with random matchmaking etc.)
As for coming up with a dumb name for offline before going online, a lot of people thought the same thing. A day or so after the game went on sale, Blizzard put in the "breaking news" window in the login screen a message to warn players that their name was "permanent". Later, they announced that all players will be allowed a one time free name change to make up for the confusion, and after that players will be able to change their name at any time for a small fee similar to WoW characters. Your stats, rank, and friends list etc. are retained, you just change your handle.
Think about it though: why would you need "characters" in SC2? The only purposes multiple characters would really serve is trolling people in-game or attempting to exploit the ladder rankings. You can have multiple single player progressions by simply having multiple save game files, if that's the issue.
Really, the only thing your "character" in SC2 does is obfuscate your login from random people in game (which is a good thing).
This is not correct at all. That's why you have a character name and code after the hash. You can add friends either from within lobbies or by giving them your friend code hash. In my example, if you played a 2v2 with some random person and thought they were good you could send them a message and give them "Slayer#123" and could add you as a SC2 friend (NOT a Real ID friend). They would never know your real name unless you told them and not be able to see when you were playing WoW or any other Blizzard game. Only SC2 on that exact account. It's pretty much exactly the same as WoW except you only get one character name.
Your SC2 character name is not your Real ID. There's no way anyone can associate you with "Slayer#123" unless you explicitly add them as Real ID friends, the same way in WoW they can't associate you with "Legollaz" unless you explicitly add them.
I do think it's kind of funny that they put your real name in the menu interface, but if that concerns you, no one's making you post screenshots/videos on youtube, either.
As for worrying about the smoking... really? Quit trolling.
Thanks for confirming my point.
Right. I meant to say it was "opt in" from the start. Thanks for the correction.
I played TF in various incarnations for 7 years. I tried to get into TF2 but I guess I just got as tired of the genre as the originator of this thread got tired of MMO's. Not being able to put the time in to get good enough to play in a competitive clan, and the general lack of a strong clan scene to begin with, probably didn't help. Valve chose to balance the game around public servers rather than clan matches, to the detriment of clan matches. Granted, it makes good business and gameplay sense, since no matter what pubbies were going to account for 90%+ of their users.
It's an opt in system already. You opt-in by adding Real ID friends to your friend list. If you have no Real ID friends you're already opted out. The hard disable on the website is just to make idiots feel better about their inability to avoid clicking "confirm" on every pop-up they ever see.
Have you even used the Real ID friends list? First of all, someone has to know the email you use for your WoW account (granted, this is probably easily guessed in a lot of cases). Second, they send a friend request which you must manually accept before they can see anything.
In other words, Real ID has been opt out from the start by design. If you never add anyone or confirm anyone, no one can see your real name or track you, and your WoW experience is no different than before they added this feature.
This isn't something they added 3 days ago with the web based controls, this is how it has worked since it was originally implemented. Also, from the very beginning, if you wanted to go through the hassle of setting up the parental control system you could have completely disabled Real ID if you were super paranoid about it for some reason.
Basically, the main addition they added a few days ago was the option to disable the display of friends of friends, and made the method of totally disabling Real ID less complex. While I think the ability to hide yourself on the friend of friend list should have been in from the start, the simple solution beforehand was to simply not add any Real ID friends. Any method of "totally disabling" Real ID is just paranoia by people who apparently lack the self control to not click "accept" every time some random stranger sends them a friend request in a video game (other than the pre-existing parental controls method, which was the specific case of a parent of a minor child exercising their right to control their child's online engagement level).
When planes are illegal, only criminals will have planes.
You're an idiot. Pro gamers account for like 0.01% of people who bought SC1/SC2. SC was already a massive success as far as PC game sales were concerned before Koreans even knew what it was. And the majority of people who bought SC2 played through the single player campaign on medium or easier and then played maybe 10 ladder games before moving on to custom maps (which, by the way, accounted for like 90% of the people playing BW on battle.net last time I check like 6 years ago) or going back to playing WoW, MW2, etc.
Certainly professional gaming helped keep Starcraft in people's minds the past 10 years, but Diablo 2 doesn't have anything even resembling a "professional" class, yet its sequel just as anticipated as SC2 was, if not more so.
Professional SC/SC2 could end tomorrow and its impact on the popularity of the game (outside of Korea) would barely even be a noticeable.
Also when can everyone play with each other on the GLOBAL INTERNET in all regions?
When I can have a sub 50ms ping to a player in Taiwan from here in Florida.
Real ID in-game has always been 100% optional. You never had to give anyone your email or if someone randomly knew your email, all you had to do was deny their friend requests.
The huge public outcry was entirely based on the second, and somewhat unrelated, proposal: using Real ID names on the forums. Not about the in game cross server chat function. There was some mild whining by some about having their real name displayed, and how those people didn't feel they could make full use of the promised cross server and cross game chat functionality because they didn't want to share their name, but this was small gripe by a small minority, relatively speaking.
Uh, ok, don't add people as Real ID friends. It's optional. PROBLEM SOLVED.
By that convention, we would be .sol, not .erth.
I'd vote for the Decepticons. Starscream for president!
As long as the adult is able to purchase the game no problem, then that question is irrelevant. It doesn't really restrict the freedoms of the adult, just might add a little hassle (they have to be present to purchase it instead of sending the kid into the store on his own while you browse clothes at Sears), and we as a society have already established that minors cannot be trusted with full freedoms on their own, so no harm in restricting theirs further.
This is wrong. You don not "write" in the game base 10. You draw little horizontal and vertical lines across tiles to flip them. That's it. I could do that with my left hand ALL DAY (as a right handed person). Additionally, there's nothing in the game to prevent you from simply holding the DS with your right and and using the stylus in your left. There's almost nothing on the left screen terribly important anyway.
I'm sure there are plenty of DS games for which being left handed could be a much bigger detriment if the developers did not offer a left hand mode. This game is NOT one of them.
What, is he going to lob the shurikens from the open window of his plane at other planes?
I know people who have never even played WoW or have mail accounts that were never associated with WoW who sometimes get onto these phishing mailing lists. You're lucky if your mail accounts are still safe from this spam (or perhaps your ISP or spam filters are just better than mine).
In my experience, the in-game scamming has been greatly reduced to the point where I almost never receive tells. Yet I have one email account that sometimes receives multiple phishing mails per day, including ones for Aion (which I've never even played). Every single one has a different fake domain, and every domain is registered in China.
I'm honestly surprised that battle.net or World of Warcraft didn't make the top 10. Anyone who's been targeted by their phishing mails is probably familiar with domain names like "battle-auth-blizzard.com"
A sequel that's like the original? Get out.
No. He was saying that people cannot be given the opportunity to stand up for their stated ethical principles by rejecting treatments using embryonic stem cell research because no such treatments exist. Therefore, the previous poster's argument was moot. They are not hypocrites because they cannot be hypocrites because they cannot be given the opportunity to be hypocrites (currently).
It's not silent anymore after you say it.