Not to mention script kiddies issuing themselves Flaming Swords of Pwnhood. EverQuest learned the hard way to remove every bit of decision making from the client side, turning it into an extremely complex 3D "dumb terminal". I recall stories of people hacking the running speed of Spirit of Wolf, cranking it up to 255, since the server didn't care what speed you actually ran at with the spell on you, only that you had the spell on you.
Re:Current MMORPGs are doing just fine
on
MMORPG Evolution
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· Score: 1
Well, you can build whole ghost towns.
In fact, there's a profession called politician, where the higher you get, as mayor you can authorize placement of a repair garage, a city hall, ultimately even a shuttle port, and with additional "levels", you can place your city on the global map.
A town is just an area with one of these politicians and something like at least 10 houses in it. Never was a politician so I don't know the details, but I did help form two towns by placing houses. Owned my own cantina once, too, as the star dancer....in that GHOSTTOWN.:(
You could actually be doing 3 windows at the same time. When one pops up, categorize it and hit OK, move on to the next one while the other two are submitting or reloading.
It reminds me of when my daughter came in and said "My friend surfs the way you do." Which is to say, in pre-broadband days, you open a link in a new window, alt-tab back to the original, open another link in a new window, alt-tab back, and read while the new stuff loads.
I dunno, it just seemed obvious to me. Rather than staring at one window while it loads, be multi-task surfing.
> Can anyone become a Jedi? > > Yes, anyone can follow the path of the Jedi but > like all professions mastery will require time and > experience. The new Jedi profession will be equal > in combat effectiveness with the other professions. > It will still however deliver on the promise of the > Star Wars Jedi mystique and will allow players to "live" > as Jedi in the world of Star Wars Galaxies.
They may be adding the "Wars" back to "Star Wars", but they are, evidently, also removing the "Star" from "Star Wars".
In any case, it's still not clear if you must unlock being a "force sensitive". Probably not, as I'd hate to go through all that work only to get a plain old, unspecial melee class with a pretty sword.
> VI. No More Item Decay > > Item decay has been completely removed from the game.
It's sheer buffoonery that adds it in the first place. It never much affects the 24/7 players, who are the primary reason it's needed in the first place, and irritates the hell out of casual players.
> The new character advancement paths are based on professions of 9 legendary Star Wars heroes: > > Jedi (Based on Luke Skywalker)
Very loosly, evidently. Somewhere between his first and second attempt with the target practice droid aboard the Falcon in the original film, from the sound of it.
> What's happening to my Jedi character? > > Jedi will be able to choose any of the nine iconic > new professions, including the Jedi profession...the character > will gain items and abilities that will represent the original > accomplishments achieved by that character. These include...a > special Robe that is endowed with protective properties, > and an exclusive new lightsaber with a unique color that > deals more damage. All of these new items are being given > to existing Jedi characters in recognition for their past achievements.
Yeah, after grinding for a year, then fighting through more excruciating grinding hiding from main players, then finally maxxing out this character where, in theory, it could take on any 2-3 other maxxed non-Jedi, nothing says "caring" like nerfing it more than an old-school EQ necromancer + a current City of Heroes character with ED nerf combined, x3.
I bought a high-end Alienware almost 2 years ago to the day. I had done a price analysis, and found out that if I bought all the pieces and put it together myself, I'd save about $300.00. As I am not a starving college student, that wasn't worth the hassles I knew I'd face chasing down drivers, bootstrapping, etc.
City of Heroes had a nice Halloween event, with door knocking "tricks or treats" (monsters pop out mostly, but sometimes nice little bonus inspirations), and giant pumpkin-head guys invading.
This year: Nothing, with people running around trying not to get their empty-scrotum stitches infected owing to a new world-record, and global, nerfing. 1.5 years after release.
And, although the game and it's immediate predicessor, WC III, sucked, and I'll never understand why they're so hot, I, for one, would like to welcome our new Orc overlords.
> it's much easier to sell virtual goods to script kiddies > that want a OMGWTF Sword +10000 of "pwning"
Make sure you demand it be the best Sword of Pwning for at least 12 months before you plunk down your cash.
Nothing says FOO! quite like spending $30.00 for that +5 flaming vorpal sword, only to have it be superceded by a +6 electrical vorpal sword three days later...
Reminds me of the $5 cars people were buying, because the forms to buy cars first put on the Internet in a browser allowed people to edit the source to change the price, then submit it, and the computers of course had no clue...
Like City of Heroes, which just underwent an effective 44% nerfing to all powers of all classes a few days ago (and net result are that scrappers, tankers, blasters are about 0.4 of what they were since this 44% is cumulative across damage output, defense, healing, etc.
Purpose: To let PvP vs. City of Villains be viable, since having scrappers 1-shotting blasters, or tankers being unkillable, is not "with the vision".
So everyone has basically been hit as if they were an old-school EverQuest necromancer. Everyone. Go buy that CoV, kids, and reward this behavior...
> Recent events include putting out an expansion for > AC2 and then cancelling the game less than 3 months > later. This is nearly a classic case of milking the > existing playerbase for all the money you can get.
Reminds me of Crowley's Department Stores, a Detroit-based chain, closing a few years ago. They knew they were gonna go into bankruptcy, but sold $100 and $200 gift cards anyway. The day after Christmas, they went into Bankruptcy, and stayed open for awhile, [b]but refused to honor the gift cards, saying they were not actually "good as cash", but were legally a contract now broken via bankruptcy.[/b]
Unfortunately, no one went to jail for selling Christmas gift cards, even though they knew they were not gonna be valid after Christmas.
The local Detroit TV news stations put up a graphic for "Free Shuttle Bus Rides" to take you from various places down to the museum (!) where Rosa Parks' body will be displayed today. The announcer: "Only one dollar."
Thatcher: This little enterprise of yours gave out a billion dollars last year!
Kane: Yes, Mr. Thatcher, I gave out a billion dollars last year. I expect to give out a billion dollars this year. I expect to give out a billion dollars next year. You know what, Mr. Thatcher? At this rate, I'll have to close this shop...in sixty years!
Yes, but see, it was his own money and not other people's money. We need to take money from others and give it out as charity because only then can we feel good about ourselves. They have money, and are evil, and we need to take their money via taxation and use it for something we think is good, instead of letting them, and their evil hearts, use it for evil things.
Actually, it's more like someone banning you from taking Extra Strength Tylenol because some birds might be mildly reduced in population.
Actually, it's even more like someone banning you from taking a cure for cancer because some birds might be mildly reduced in population. Easy for them, way up in that city in the sky, to tell you not to take the cancer cure.
> In fact, if you choose to discard Christianity > on the basis of a lack of documentary evidence, > you'd have to discard the life of Julius Caesar > and many others, because Christ's life (and David's > life, etc.) is MUCH better documented than his!
Not true at all. We have coins with various Roman emperors on them. No such evidence exists for Jesus whatsoever. Also, written histories do not involve supernatural superpowers.
> Consider the odds: if each prophecy in the Bible had > a 1 in 100 chance of occuring (and the odds are actually > much worst), the odds of a mere 5 prophecies coming > true randomly are 1 in 10 billion. As I stated earlier, > there are HUNDREDS of prophecies in the Bible.
This statistical evidence evaporates when you consider that the prophesies were either written after the fact (ruination of the Temple in Jerusalem), or are Nostradamus-like things that can be reinterpreted, in a strained fashion, to fit modern events. And the prophesies "of Jesus" referred to in the New Testament, of the Old Testament, are deliberate misinterpretations of those prophesies, shoehorned to fit Jesus.
> There's a decent amount of evidence that Yahweh > had a wife at one point but she got edited out later.
And even earlier, Yaweh was just part of a larger pantheon.
There are references to the great chaos dragon Leviathan that Yaweh slew in Psalms (also called Rahab), which harkens from earlier versions of that and similar religions, wherein god kills Leviathan, and uses the two halves of its body to create the earth by holding back the great sea of chaos, above and below. This is the great "combat" myth shared by many religions of the area. The later editors, in making Yaweh the one and only god who created reality ex nihilo thus got rid of the slaying of Leviathan in Genesis, but left it in in those pretty psalms.
Also, there are references to demigods (half men/half gods), the offspring of angels or gods coming down to mate with mortal women. "These are the mighty men of old, men of reknown." These are the remains of fuller stories that detail what said mighty men did, also prevalent in religions of the area hundreds of years earlier.
Also, Pharoah's Egyptian gods, via Pharoah's priest, turned a stick into two snakes. Moses, showing off how tough Yaweh is, has Yaweh turn a stick into one snake, that eats the other two. Yaweh is tougher than the Egyptian gods!
But...ooops! That acknowledges the existence of other gods. Fundamentalist apologists claim it was Satan who did this, but that is a completely unjustified interpretation of it. Or that Pharoah's priest used sleight-of-hand (but of course, honest Moses didn't.)
Robert Heinlein's wife re-released "Stranger in a Strange Land", with 70,000 additional words that the original publication left out, and Heinlein was upset they made him leave out.
It's still an awesome read, but of course that was the original work, not the first publication.
(And IMHO, that is two books, the way Full Metal Jacket is two movies. Like that, the first half is vastly the better portion, before Michael goes all new-agey and hipster)
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Not to mention script kiddies issuing themselves Flaming Swords of Pwnhood. EverQuest learned the hard way to remove every bit of decision making from the client side, turning it into an extremely complex 3D "dumb terminal". I recall stories of people hacking the running speed of Spirit of Wolf, cranking it up to 255, since the server didn't care what speed you actually ran at with the spell on you, only that you had the spell on you.
Well, you can build whole ghost towns.
...in that GHOSTTOWN. :(
In fact, there's a profession called politician, where the higher you get, as mayor you can authorize placement of a repair garage, a city hall, ultimately even a shuttle port, and with additional "levels", you can place your city on the global map.
A town is just an area with one of these politicians and something like at least 10 houses in it. Never was a politician so I don't know the details, but I did help form two towns by placing houses. Owned my own cantina once, too, as the star dancer.
You could actually be doing 3 windows at the same time. When one pops up, categorize it and hit OK, move on to the next one while the other two are submitting or reloading.
It reminds me of when my daughter came in and said "My friend surfs the way you do." Which is to say, in pre-broadband days, you open a link in a new window, alt-tab back to the original, open another link in a new window, alt-tab back, and read while the new stuff loads.
I dunno, it just seemed obvious to me. Rather than staring at one window while it loads, be multi-task surfing.
You shoot purple lightning bolts out your fingertips, just like the emperor of the entire galaxy!
You damage a bounty hunter for 3 points of damage!
** A bounty hunter flamethrowers YOU for 1273 points of damage!
** You have died!
> Can anyone become a Jedi?
>
> Yes, anyone can follow the path of the Jedi but
> like all professions mastery will require time and
> experience. The new Jedi profession will be equal
> in combat effectiveness with the other professions.
> It will still however deliver on the promise of the
> Star Wars Jedi mystique and will allow players to "live"
> as Jedi in the world of Star Wars Galaxies.
They may be adding the "Wars" back to "Star Wars", but they are, evidently, also removing the "Star" from "Star Wars".
In any case, it's still not clear if you must unlock being a "force sensitive". Probably not, as I'd hate to go through all that work only to get a plain old, unspecial melee class with a pretty sword.
> VI. No More Item Decay
>
> Item decay has been completely removed from the game.
It's sheer buffoonery that adds it in the first place. It never much affects the 24/7 players, who are the primary reason it's needed in the first place, and irritates the hell out of casual players.
> The new character advancement paths are based on professions of 9 legendary Star Wars heroes:
>
> Jedi (Based on Luke Skywalker)
Very loosly, evidently. Somewhere between his first and second attempt with the target practice droid aboard the Falcon in the original film, from the sound of it.
> What's happening to my Jedi character?
>
> Jedi will be able to choose any of the nine iconic
> new professions, including the Jedi profession...the character
> will gain items and abilities that will represent the original
> accomplishments achieved by that character. These include...a
> special Robe that is endowed with protective properties,
> and an exclusive new lightsaber with a unique color that
> deals more damage. All of these new items are being given
> to existing Jedi characters in recognition for their past achievements.
Yeah, after grinding for a year, then fighting through more excruciating grinding hiding from main players, then finally maxxing out this character where, in theory, it could take on any 2-3 other maxxed non-Jedi, nothing says "caring" like nerfing it more than an old-school EQ necromancer + a current City of Heroes character with ED nerf combined, x3.
Hmmmm...next time someone claims the Democrats are all about protecting the Trial Lawyers, maybe people will pay attention.
Yes, this is flippant. No, it is not a troll or flamebait.
I bought a high-end Alienware almost 2 years ago to the day. I had done a price analysis, and found out that if I bought all the pieces and put it together myself, I'd save about $300.00. As I am not a starving college student, that wasn't worth the hassles I knew I'd face chasing down drivers, bootstrapping, etc.
City of Heroes had a nice Halloween event, with door knocking "tricks or treats" (monsters pop out mostly, but sometimes nice little bonus inspirations), and giant pumpkin-head guys invading.
This year: Nothing, with people running around trying not to get their empty-scrotum stitches infected owing to a new world-record, and global, nerfing. 1.5 years after release.
And, although the game and it's immediate predicessor, WC III, sucked, and I'll never understand why they're so hot, I, for one, would like to welcome our new Orc overlords.
> it's much easier to sell virtual goods to script kiddies
> that want a OMGWTF Sword +10000 of "pwning"
Make sure you demand it be the best Sword of Pwning for at least 12 months before you plunk down your cash.
Nothing says FOO! quite like spending $30.00 for that +5 flaming vorpal sword, only to have it be superceded by a +6 electrical vorpal sword three days later...
Reminds me of the $5 cars people were buying, because the forms to buy cars first put on the Internet in a browser allowed people to edit the source to change the price, then submit it, and the computers of course had no clue...
> because once the shine wears off the new toy,
Like City of Heroes, which just underwent an effective 44% nerfing to all powers of all classes a few days ago (and net result are that scrappers, tankers, blasters are about 0.4 of what they were since this 44% is cumulative across damage output, defense, healing, etc.
Purpose: To let PvP vs. City of Villains be viable, since having scrappers 1-shotting blasters, or tankers being unkillable, is not "with the vision".
So everyone has basically been hit as if they were an old-school EverQuest necromancer. Everyone. Go buy that CoV, kids, and reward this behavior...
> Recent events include putting out an expansion for
> AC2 and then cancelling the game less than 3 months
> later. This is nearly a classic case of milking the
> existing playerbase for all the money you can get.
Reminds me of Crowley's Department Stores, a Detroit-based chain, closing a few years ago. They knew they were gonna go into bankruptcy, but sold $100 and $200 gift cards anyway. The day after Christmas, they went into Bankruptcy, and stayed open for awhile, [b]but refused to honor the gift cards, saying they were not actually "good as cash", but were legally a contract now broken via bankruptcy.[/b]
Unfortunately, no one went to jail for selling Christmas gift cards, even though they knew they were not gonna be valid after Christmas.
The local Detroit TV news stations put up a graphic for "Free Shuttle Bus Rides" to take you from various places down to the museum (!) where Rosa Parks' body will be displayed today. The announcer: "Only one dollar."
Great. Another kiosk a pizza face has to tell a slightly younget pizza face to get away from...
> "When you support Free software, you support malaria!" -- jjeffries (17675)
Hehehehe, +1 Krikes!
Updated Citizen Kane:
Thatcher: This little enterprise of yours gave out a billion dollars last year!
Kane: Yes, Mr. Thatcher, I gave out a billion dollars last year. I expect to give out a billion dollars this year. I expect to give out a billion dollars next year. You know what, Mr. Thatcher? At this rate, I'll have to close this shop...in sixty years!
Cue horn music: Wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaa...
Yes, but see, it was his own money and not other people's money. We need to take money from others and give it out as charity because only then can we feel good about ourselves. They have money, and are evil, and we need to take their money via taxation and use it for something we think is good, instead of letting them, and their evil hearts, use it for evil things.
Actually, it's more like someone banning you from taking Extra Strength Tylenol because some birds might be mildly reduced in population.
Actually, it's even more like someone banning you from taking a cure for cancer because some birds might be mildly reduced in population. Easy for them, way up in that city in the sky, to tell you not to take the cancer cure.
Engineers invented it. Engineers discovered how tough it would be to store this.
You're confusing this with the actions of power hungry politicians.
> BBC News reports that a fire has burnt down a CS
> facility at the University of Southampton
God no! All that pr0n and mp3's!
That's all I need, millions of Koreans clogging up the pr0n distribution systems with gigantic Windows install downloads.
> In fact, if you choose to discard Christianity
> on the basis of a lack of documentary evidence,
> you'd have to discard the life of Julius Caesar
> and many others, because Christ's life (and David's
> life, etc.) is MUCH better documented than his!
Not true at all. We have coins with various Roman emperors on them. No such evidence exists for Jesus whatsoever. Also, written histories do not involve supernatural superpowers.
> Consider the odds: if each prophecy in the Bible had
> a 1 in 100 chance of occuring (and the odds are actually
> much worst), the odds of a mere 5 prophecies coming
> true randomly are 1 in 10 billion. As I stated earlier,
> there are HUNDREDS of prophecies in the Bible.
This statistical evidence evaporates when you consider that the prophesies were either written after the fact (ruination of the Temple in Jerusalem), or are Nostradamus-like things that can be reinterpreted, in a strained fashion, to fit modern events. And the prophesies "of Jesus" referred to in the New Testament, of the Old Testament, are deliberate misinterpretations of those prophesies, shoehorned to fit Jesus.
> There's a decent amount of evidence that Yahweh
> had a wife at one point but she got edited out later.
And even earlier, Yaweh was just part of a larger pantheon.
There are references to the great chaos dragon Leviathan that Yaweh slew in Psalms (also called Rahab), which harkens from earlier versions of that and similar religions, wherein god kills Leviathan, and uses the two halves of its body to create the earth by holding back the great sea of chaos, above and below. This is the great "combat" myth shared by many religions of the area. The later editors, in making Yaweh the one and only god who created reality ex nihilo thus got rid of the slaying of Leviathan in Genesis, but left it in in those pretty psalms.
Also, there are references to demigods (half men/half gods), the offspring of angels or gods coming down to mate with mortal women. "These are the mighty men of old, men of reknown." These are the remains of fuller stories that detail what said mighty men did, also prevalent in religions of the area hundreds of years earlier.
Also, Pharoah's Egyptian gods, via Pharoah's priest, turned a stick into two snakes. Moses, showing off how tough Yaweh is, has Yaweh turn a stick into one snake, that eats the other two. Yaweh is tougher than the Egyptian gods!
But...ooops! That acknowledges the existence of other gods. Fundamentalist apologists claim it was Satan who did this, but that is a completely unjustified interpretation of it. Or that Pharoah's priest used sleight-of-hand (but of course, honest Moses didn't.)
Robert Heinlein's wife re-released "Stranger in a Strange Land", with 70,000 additional words that the original publication left out, and Heinlein was upset they made him leave out.
It's still an awesome read, but of course that was the original work, not the first publication.
(And IMHO, that is two books, the way Full Metal Jacket is two movies. Like that, the first half is vastly the better portion, before Michael goes all new-agey and hipster)