Forgot to add that FFXI doesn't allow players to choose their server until they reach a certain level or something (so I heard, I haven't actually played it...).
The 88 servers argument isn't entirely valid, because, first of all, the server name lists were leaked and a ton of guilds all decided ahead of time to end up on the same servers. Secondly, the East/Central servers came up BEFORE the Mountain/West, and so EVERYONE who bought the game at midnight ended up on an East/Central server. Compound this with that at release there were about a quarter as many servers, and they didn't add new ones for at least a week.
So what you have is way too many people on way too few servers, who don't want to start from scratch on a new server and try to convince their entire guild to do the same, only to end up on a server with so few people it's impossible to get an instance group, and raid content will be unplayable (lack of players).
If it weren't for the human factor, and all the players were more equally distributed amongst the servers, I don't think they'd have NEARLY as many problems keeping them up.
I don't believe they intended to control the number of copies released until after they got the initial hit and saw their servers couldn't handle it. I believe they are currently restricting the number of copies available while they try to get their servers and GM numbers up to speed.
Have you actually played the game? Resource and mob spawns rates are proportional to the number of people harvesting/killing them. The only time there has been a problem getting something that I've seen was on release day in the newbie zones. And even then, with a few hundred people in the newbie zone with you, it was possible to complete the "kill 10 of monster X" quests without too much trouble.
If your role playing buddies do not forgive you for skipping out to play HL2 then they are not true geeks and you should stop playing with them immediately.
If there was ever a cause to use this acronym, this is it. The article explicitly states by Gabe himself that the source leak had nothing to do with the delay and that the game simply could not have been finished and even without the source leak would not have been finished until now.
What a suprise, a conservative being moderated both troll and flamebait on slashdot simply for stating his beliefs. Much love from your conservative brother in Florida.
You're forgetting that it may be fraud on the part of the voter. Sadly many counties still do not even require a photo ID to vote. I'd rather have people who make mistakes have their votes thrown away than have people who are not citizens or are intentionally frauding the system have their vote count.
Only 23% of people are "angry" at the Bush administration according to the (reportedly dubious) exit poll. I bet if you extended that to the stronger word "hate" it would be even lower.
Who said the Mac binaries would not be available for download, and when? They certainly sold Quake3 for Mac and Linux in stores and that didn't prevent them from also making the binaries available online.
Knowing Id, the Mac binary will be available for free on their FTP, and the binary will probably be updated to check for either a Mac or PC play disc, and, naturally, as long as you have a valid cd key (either from the Mac or PC box) you can play online.
I see NO reason to believe that just because the Mac version will ALSO be available on store shelves, that the binary will not be available online for free to those who already purchased the PC version.
progs.dat is NOT engine code. It's game logic code. That just means you don't have to recompile MODS, it has nothing to do with the engine. Quake2 moved to dlls/so's and mods had to be compiled seperately for both, Quake3 moved to virtual machine sort of system to prevent cheating and make the game more consistent across platforms, and it seems Doom3 is once again going back to the dll/so system (with merged client/server code into one dll and a seperate pk4 file for code for purity checks).
Once again, progs.dat/qwprogs.dat is GAME LOGIC ONLY and only used by the server (the clients were dumb). The only reprecussions (for this argument) were that it made MODS automatically cross-platform (which wasn't even the primary intention iirc).
Sadly, I don't think Sierra adventure games for GBA could sell well enough to overcome the costs of manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and shelf space, let alone make any money. Those NES Classics aren't exactly flying off the shelves, and they have a much broader appeal.
A bit misleading, as Id tried to make it very clear that Doom3's purpose and intention was single player, with multiplayer only being a little side benefit like it was in the original Doom games. Single player games by their very nature do not produce many post-release sales. People play it once or steal it and are done. Add to that the fact that Doom 3 (apparently) does not appeal to a very broad audience. Most of the old Doom players were looking for something more like Doom/Quake (action shooter) and most of the new FPS players were looking for something like Half-Life (slow paced story driven shooter), and it was neither. Oh and it has very high system requirements (which is something that also hurt Quake3 when it came out). Counter-Strike is a sort of its own seperate animal. I think part of the reason it's so big is BECAUSE it's on a 5 year old engine. I don't know if CS:S will be enough to get the entire CS base (and face it 95% of all HL servers are CS, NOT HL) to buy HL2. It will be very hard to determine what percentage of HL2 purchasers are truly ONLY looking for the HL2 single player experience versus those looking for CS:S, TFC:S, DoD:S, NS:S, etc. etc. Yes I realize there were some Doom 3 purchasers thinking there would be a bevy of mods for it or that it would be a great DM game, but they were certainly in the minority, I think.
I seem to remember an interview or something with Matt Stone and Trey Parker in which they say that if South Park were not on basic cable, but on HBO or something, that it would not have been fun (for them) and most likely would not have been successful, because there would have been no challenge to push the limits of what was acceptable. No reaction of "I can't believe they're doing that on TV". Opie and Anthony said something similar in an interview on the Sean Hannity show regarding their move to XM Radio.
Howard Stern has been pushing the limits his entire career. That's what made him popular, and that's what made him famous. If he's on satellite radio, what limits will he be pushing exactly? What will be the point of his show? Personally, I think it's career suicide. Then again, I also don't find his show funny or interesting, so maybe I'm missing something.
I don't understand how posters like you just totally ignore context as if it didn't exist. Take the word "fuck". If i were to give you a detailed history of the word's origin and evolution in language and usage over time, and display it in a forum where people who wanted to learn about the history of language had access to it, it would be in good context and much more likely to be "ok" than if I just played the South Park movie uncut on broadcast television at 3 PM, the time when children are most likely to be watching television.
It's not simply the word or phrase or image that is obscene, but its context, usage, and purpose. That same history of the word "fuck", if shown in a way that was intentionally flaunting the word's usage in a forum where people would not welcome it, done in bad faith, would be bad context.
You don't censor the word nigger from Huckleberry Finn, but you don't let your children call their black classmates niggers.
Since when is a 7.2 share (that's 7.2% of the entire listening population [I couldn't be bothered to find a more updated number but based on how ratings usually go I doubt it'd be more than 30% higher]) the majority? Being the largest minority does not make you the majority.
It's wonderful how ignorance rewards ignorance on slashdot.
You know, for me Doom 3 was exactly what I expected. The only real hype I saw from it was about the graphics, sound, and about it being scary. And it had all these things at or above the level I expected. I think players themselves were putting too much on Id due to their past success, putting their own expectations on the game without any cue from Id or Activision.
I expected an action-horror FPS, and that's what I got. You may have been looking for a Quake1-style action-arcade FPS, or a Half-Life-style "wtf is going on?" plot and story progression, but that's not really what Doom 3 was meant to be. Id went out and did something different, and you either enjoyed it or you didn't.
After the Doom3 E3 demo leak, they moved to dongles. It really only prevents leaks of alpha/beta versions of the game, as the final, naturally, has the dongle check disabled.
By commiting a felony you are showing that you are not interested in the positive progression of society which is why you felt the need to violate its rules. That is why they are incarcerated. They broke the trust between the government and the governed. If they cannot follow our simple laws to the point of committing a crime as agregious as a felony, then obviously their interests are not for the common good and therefore why should they be allowed to have a stake in said society? That's also where the amnesty part comes in. If they truly have changed their ways they will apply for amnesty. It's unfortunate that the system is backlogged etc., but they shouldn't have committed the crime in the first place.
Disallowing felons to vote, like the death penalty and prison, is another deterrent to crime. If you want to retain your right to vote, don't commit a felony. It's a very simple concept, and very easy to follow. It's actually HARD to commit a felony, in my opinion. You have to go out of your way to kill, maim, rape, or steal. No one "accidentally" commits a felony.
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Forgot to add that FFXI doesn't allow players to choose their server until they reach a certain level or something (so I heard, I haven't actually played it...).
The 88 servers argument isn't entirely valid, because, first of all, the server name lists were leaked and a ton of guilds all decided ahead of time to end up on the same servers. Secondly, the East/Central servers came up BEFORE the Mountain/West, and so EVERYONE who bought the game at midnight ended up on an East/Central server. Compound this with that at release there were about a quarter as many servers, and they didn't add new ones for at least a week.
So what you have is way too many people on way too few servers, who don't want to start from scratch on a new server and try to convince their entire guild to do the same, only to end up on a server with so few people it's impossible to get an instance group, and raid content will be unplayable (lack of players).
If it weren't for the human factor, and all the players were more equally distributed amongst the servers, I don't think they'd have NEARLY as many problems keeping them up.
I don't believe they intended to control the number of copies released until after they got the initial hit and saw their servers couldn't handle it. I believe they are currently restricting the number of copies available while they try to get their servers and GM numbers up to speed.
Have you actually played the game? Resource and mob spawns rates are proportional to the number of people harvesting/killing them. The only time there has been a problem getting something that I've seen was on release day in the newbie zones. And even then, with a few hundred people in the newbie zone with you, it was possible to complete the "kill 10 of monster X" quests without too much trouble.
It IS included with the DVD version, but not the CD version.
would have used the console FTP program to download it rather than open IE.
If your role playing buddies do not forgive you for skipping out to play HL2 then they are not true geeks and you should stop playing with them immediately.
If HL1 is any measure it's more like 8 years.
You would rather be forced to switch out CD's all the time and be forced to disable all your CD emulation software or download a crack instead?
If there was ever a cause to use this acronym, this is it. The article explicitly states by Gabe himself that the source leak had nothing to do with the delay and that the game simply could not have been finished and even without the source leak would not have been finished until now.
What a suprise, a conservative being moderated both troll and flamebait on slashdot simply for stating his beliefs. Much love from your conservative brother in Florida.
You're forgetting that it may be fraud on the part of the voter. Sadly many counties still do not even require a photo ID to vote. I'd rather have people who make mistakes have their votes thrown away than have people who are not citizens or are intentionally frauding the system have their vote count.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/sta tes/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
Only 23% of people are "angry" at the Bush administration according to the (reportedly dubious) exit poll. I bet if you extended that to the stronger word "hate" it would be even lower.
Who said the Mac binaries would not be available for download, and when? They certainly sold Quake3 for Mac and Linux in stores and that didn't prevent them from also making the binaries available online.
Knowing Id, the Mac binary will be available for free on their FTP, and the binary will probably be updated to check for either a Mac or PC play disc, and, naturally, as long as you have a valid cd key (either from the Mac or PC box) you can play online.
I see NO reason to believe that just because the Mac version will ALSO be available on store shelves, that the binary will not be available online for free to those who already purchased the PC version.
progs.dat is NOT engine code. It's game logic code. That just means you don't have to recompile MODS, it has nothing to do with the engine. Quake2 moved to dlls/so's and mods had to be compiled seperately for both, Quake3 moved to virtual machine sort of system to prevent cheating and make the game more consistent across platforms, and it seems Doom3 is once again going back to the dll/so system (with merged client/server code into one dll and a seperate pk4 file for code for purity checks).
Once again, progs.dat/qwprogs.dat is GAME LOGIC ONLY and only used by the server (the clients were dumb). The only reprecussions (for this argument) were that it made MODS automatically cross-platform (which wasn't even the primary intention iirc).
Too bad the DS is their fourth entry (GB->GBC->GBA->DS).
Sadly, I don't think Sierra adventure games for GBA could sell well enough to overcome the costs of manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and shelf space, let alone make any money. Those NES Classics aren't exactly flying off the shelves, and they have a much broader appeal.
A bit misleading, as Id tried to make it very clear that Doom3's purpose and intention was single player, with multiplayer only being a little side benefit like it was in the original Doom games. Single player games by their very nature do not produce many post-release sales. People play it once or steal it and are done. Add to that the fact that Doom 3 (apparently) does not appeal to a very broad audience. Most of the old Doom players were looking for something more like Doom/Quake (action shooter) and most of the new FPS players were looking for something like Half-Life (slow paced story driven shooter), and it was neither. Oh and it has very high system requirements (which is something that also hurt Quake3 when it came out).
Counter-Strike is a sort of its own seperate animal. I think part of the reason it's so big is BECAUSE it's on a 5 year old engine. I don't know if CS:S will be enough to get the entire CS base (and face it 95% of all HL servers are CS, NOT HL) to buy HL2. It will be very hard to determine what percentage of HL2 purchasers are truly ONLY looking for the HL2 single player experience versus those looking for CS:S, TFC:S, DoD:S, NS:S, etc. etc. Yes I realize there were some Doom 3 purchasers thinking there would be a bevy of mods for it or that it would be a great DM game, but they were certainly in the minority, I think.
What were we talking about again?
I seem to remember an interview or something with Matt Stone and Trey Parker in which they say that if South Park were not on basic cable, but on HBO or something, that it would not have been fun (for them) and most likely would not have been successful, because there would have been no challenge to push the limits of what was acceptable. No reaction of "I can't believe they're doing that on TV". Opie and Anthony said something similar in an interview on the Sean Hannity show regarding their move to XM Radio.
Howard Stern has been pushing the limits his entire career. That's what made him popular, and that's what made him famous. If he's on satellite radio, what limits will he be pushing exactly? What will be the point of his show? Personally, I think it's career suicide. Then again, I also don't find his show funny or interesting, so maybe I'm missing something.
I don't understand how posters like you just totally ignore context as if it didn't exist. Take the word "fuck". If i were to give you a detailed history of the word's origin and evolution in language and usage over time, and display it in a forum where people who wanted to learn about the history of language had access to it, it would be in good context and much more likely to be "ok" than if I just played the South Park movie uncut on broadcast television at 3 PM, the time when children are most likely to be watching television.
It's not simply the word or phrase or image that is obscene, but its context, usage, and purpose. That same history of the word "fuck", if shown in a way that was intentionally flaunting the word's usage in a forum where people would not welcome it, done in bad faith, would be bad context.
You don't censor the word nigger from Huckleberry Finn, but you don't let your children call their black classmates niggers.
Context DOES matter.
Since when is a 7.2 share (that's 7.2% of the entire listening population [I couldn't be bothered to find a more updated number but based on how ratings usually go I doubt it'd be more than 30% higher]) the majority? Being the largest minority does not make you the majority.
It's wonderful how ignorance rewards ignorance on slashdot.
You know, for me Doom 3 was exactly what I expected. The only real hype I saw from it was about the graphics, sound, and about it being scary. And it had all these things at or above the level I expected. I think players themselves were putting too much on Id due to their past success, putting their own expectations on the game without any cue from Id or Activision.
I expected an action-horror FPS, and that's what I got. You may have been looking for a Quake1-style action-arcade FPS, or a Half-Life-style "wtf is going on?" plot and story progression, but that's not really what Doom 3 was meant to be. Id went out and did something different, and you either enjoyed it or you didn't.
After the Doom3 E3 demo leak, they moved to dongles. It really only prevents leaks of alpha/beta versions of the game, as the final, naturally, has the dongle check disabled.
By commiting a felony you are showing that you are not interested in the positive progression of society which is why you felt the need to violate its rules. That is why they are incarcerated. They broke the trust between the government and the governed. If they cannot follow our simple laws to the point of committing a crime as agregious as a felony, then obviously their interests are not for the common good and therefore why should they be allowed to have a stake in said society? That's also where the amnesty part comes in. If they truly have changed their ways they will apply for amnesty. It's unfortunate that the system is backlogged etc., but they shouldn't have committed the crime in the first place.
Disallowing felons to vote, like the death penalty and prison, is another deterrent to crime. If you want to retain your right to vote, don't commit a felony. It's a very simple concept, and very easy to follow. It's actually HARD to commit a felony, in my opinion. You have to go out of your way to kill, maim, rape, or steal. No one "accidentally" commits a felony.