Most of the time, when I'm making a character in DAoC, I'll try to make it culture specific. My Midgard characters I steal names from sagas. Hibernian I look for Irish names, or names from Celtic mythology. British/Scottish/Arab names for my Albion characters.
Then sometimes I'll get a bug up my ass and name a character with speed boost "Delivery" and give a last name as whatever race it is. My bonedancer (summons skeleton pets) I called "Dry Bones".
I may not always make it "appropriate", but I try to at least make it witty.
Actually, I think that the NOLF series wasn't enough like Austin Powers to be truly commercially successful. A lot of the humor was really high brow, and at least half of it was aimed at hard core game players. Most people just playing around don't stick around to hear all the funny conversations, or notice the "Obligatory FPS Sewer Sequence" signs. Not enough hot chicks showing skin. Not enough in-your-face obvious comedy to please the Austin Powers fans. I personally hated the first Austin Powers movie and haven't seen the rest of them, and loved NOLF.
Monolith, also, doesn't get a hell of a lot of respect, and I think that's part of it. Aside from AvP2, there hasn't been anything they've done that's gotten much spotlight. Blood 2 and Shogo were both underground successes (though Shogo's hellacious bugginess in the beginning was part of the reason it didn't succeed as much as it could have). The Lithtech engine doesn't have the name recognition that the various engine iterations that id has come out with, or the Unreal engine, despite the fact that NOLF 2 is still one of the best looking, best playing, and most original PC FPSes I've ever played. With all the games I've collected that I haven't beaten yet, I still have it installed and play it often.
I'm not sure that making it a more hardcore action game will make it any better or more successful. It will probably just push the series even more into the background, and kill it off.
I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some kind of watermarking in the audio files that hasn't been announced, specifically so they can track this kind of thing. Least that's what I would do if I were doing this.
Imagine a game as chaotic and infinitely fun as Super Smash Brothers or Goldeneye 007 in a MMO scene and tell me that wouldn't be badass.
OK. It wouldn't be badass. It would be a failure of staggering proportions, and Nintendo knows this. Microsoft has the money to put a rocket on the "online console" brick and make it fly. Nintendo does not, they know this, and they're not stupid enough to try.
Last I checked, Quake3 didn't have a monthly fee.
You can't run a Quake 3 server onyour console, you have to rely on the console make to do this. Hence, you're going to run into monthly fees, because no one is going to repeat Sega's fatal mistake with the Dreamcast.
These are the kinds of games people want.
If you've got some magic 8-ball that tells you what people _really_ want, you get your ass into the gaming industry RIGHT NOW, because you'll make yourself a hell of a lot of money. However, I doubt that you really have any particular insight into what people at large really want and what they're willing to pay for it. You probably are very aware of what you and your circle of friends and aquaintances will buy, but here's a hint, that ain't everyone.
Computers have a future. Consoles do not.
You could not be more wrong if you tried. If anything, the general purpose computer is well on it's way out as the primary gaming platform. No, it will never go away, but even a home-built $500 machine can't compete on price with the consoles, and that's what really matters. The profits in PC gaming are so ephemeral, Nintendo would be insane to bet any kind of money on such a wild enterprise as porting everything to Windows. Nintendo is making a profit on everything GameCube that they sell. AFAIK, they're the only one making a profit on the console, though Sony may be making a very very slim profit on PS2s now. Microsoft is losing over $100 on every Xbox sold.
Nintendo knows exactly what they're doing. They certainly don't do everything the "experts" think they should, but I don't trust "experts" to be able to wipe their own ass, never mind stuff like this.
Also, while Nintendo isn't raging along in the US market, they're doing FAR better here than Microsoft is doing in Japan. MS has sold what, under 250,000 Xboxes TOTAL in Japan? They aren't idiots. Give them some credit.
I play DAoC, and there are a hell of a lot of people who I WISH would leave and go play Galaxies instead.
The unfortunate thing is that too few of them actually are. Else it'd be a much more civil atmosphere to actually play the game as opposed to getting lectured for not supporting your realm, or not falling in line behind some self-styled gestapo.
"It will work" doesn't mean "It will look exactly like you see here". Quake 3 works on a range of systems, but it doesn't look the same across all those systems.
...you obviously don't live on the same planet as I do.
Not only that, it's likely to take a lot from Everquest, as so far as I've seen, it's designed to be the single most addictive thing on the planet next to crack and refined sugar. Everything seems to be designed to make it harder than ever to put the thing down for a few hours and go to sleep, never mind holding down a job.
Staying WELL away from this bugger. I am SO not interested.
The upkeep and the unit limitation are and will continue to be one of the strong points of Warcraft III. It's the best way I've found to penalize the mass early zerging, and give a tangible benefit to those who economize.
There are dozens of RTSes out there that don't have upkeep or unit limits built in. Good old Total Annihilation/TA: Kingdoms. C&C Generals. SW:GB lets you set the limit up to 250 (though prepare to get swarmed by the computer, even on easy). Or you could try to adapt your strategy to a new situation. A challenge other than just trying to build the most units before the other guy.
...as I've never seen any better digital representation of an utterly decayed New England town. I've lived most of my life on the North Shore of MA, and aside from the dam (there aren't a hell of a lot of dams out here) the familliarity of the locations (like the bowling alley and the decrepit museum/old prison *shiver*) Whoever did the art direction for that game deserves a medal.
...or a completely new game? The implication in the article is that it's a completely seperate game with a completely seperate engine. If it is, why on earth would someone do that? I can understand more action-oriented styles getting their own new seperate game (like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and the upcoming Heroes) but if it's for PC...who's going to pay $50 for a Temple of Elemental Evil game that the same number of people could remake in half the time as a Neverwinter module, and for less cost? And even if it has better graphics than Neverwinter, I doubt I'm going to be able to make my own modules with the engine they give anywhere near as easily, if they even give people modding tools.
I know I won't buy it. I know a lot of people who won't. Doesn't make an awful lot of sense.
OK, here's the real unvarnished truth. Your games suck ass. Really. If you picked 20 random postal workers from the thousands that the USPS employs, they could figure out a better way to make the "games" you call Postal and Postal 2. They're crap. Get over yourselves.
You're right about you guys and gals being everything the USPS isn't. They do a job you whiny, pasty faced, losers wouldn't EVER want to do, and do it better than just about every other organization on the PLANET that does what they do. Get a life, get a clue, and get over yourselves.
Either of those for PS2 are great cooperative games. Not exactly tons of thought needed, but great for a couple people to play cooperatively. Whenever I bring it over for the weekend hang-out sessions, it always ends up being in there most of the night and with people fighting for the controller. It's even more fun when you use the unlock codes to unlock all the characters that you normally can't get without playing an insane number of times through. Yeah, there are lots of cool things that unlocking doesn't do, but having zillions of characters to choose from makes it more fun.
Yeah, it rules so much that most anyone who is exposed to this "ad campaign", either in description or whatever, wouldn't go near Virtua Tennis 2. That's great advertising.
As others have posted, and I have posted in the past, there is another viable option. Used and bargain bin games. the only thing forcing anyone to pay prices they consider inflated is their own idiocy, believing that they have to get whatever game they're interested on the day of release. If it's too expensive for you, wait until someone is offering it at a price you can afford.
If you don't have the self control to not buy a game for more than you feel it's worth, seek counseling. If you just want them and are pissed they cost too much, you're more the fool, and who cares about what you want?
I'm not in the beta, but a close friend is, and I've watched him play Releasing it this soon, there is no way in hell that I, and likely he, will buy this game. It's buggy and laggy well beyond what either of us are willing to accept.
That, and if you thought EQ required you to sell your soul to the game for success, Galaxies will be even worse. I already spend far too much time playing games. Unless I withdraw completely from the world at large and work a shit job in a pizza place and live in a shit apartment, I'll never have the time to play Galaxies alone, never mind the other stuff I do. The power gamers will power game, there's nothing Verant, or any other company can do to stop them. The eBayers will have tons of never coming back materials loot to sell for an insane amount of cash once they hoard it for awhile. It's the worst MMORPG nightmare ever. Everything bad about them elsewhere can only be worse here.
Yeah, it appears to be the same kind of crap that I heard stories about from ex-Everquest junkies, about Verant/Sony Online's policy of "deny deny deny" on just about every problem with the game.
I don't expect Galaxies to be any better, which is why I'm sticking with Neverwinter Nights for a while.
The most amusing part of it, is that David Boies, the attourney for SCO in this charade, isn't exactly on the best of terms with the Bush administration. You know, the whole Microsoft anti-trust thing Bush killed, and Boies represented Al Gore in the Presidency fight. Not exactly the first lawyer I'd bring to the White House to try and get some help.
This weekend, me and my friends are going to have a nice little LAN party and play through the whole Unrentide campaign. I'm glad that they're doing a new campaign, as I just wasn't impressed with the original one. I'm glad the mod community is getting it's act together and putting out some real high quality stuff. The single player campaign was never really the reason to get NWN. The toolset and all the possibilities it brings, are. Hopefully some of these new modules will help keep me playing it longer.
On that note, does anyone have any favorite NWN modules I should check out? I've already played the Penultima series, and am going to download the other one he mentioned, but I was wondering if anyone else had some advice out there....
Or is everyone here waiting for the Mac and Linux clients?;)
(which did use some special hardware... and the price of the Devkit was high... No games (in USA)... pattern?)
Ah, so the 53 games I have (not burned copies...the actual discs) don't exist! As well as the hundred or so others I haven't gotten my hands on yet, or just don't want. These are USA released games. Last count I made, the Dreamcast had more than twice the number of US releases as the Nintendo 64.
I use Safari at my bank's website and i've never had a problem logging in, ever. Never fiddled around with it to make it present itself as IE, or anything. *shrugs* Go fig.
You should always be wary of how much of your time is being skewed toward ANYTHING. MMORPGs, work, hanging out with friends, clubbing, reading, sports, whatever.
A varied existance is a healthy existance. However, we're all human, and we all are going to devote more time to things that we like to do rather than those we don't enjoy. For some people, school just isn't enjoyable. Mathematically prove to them how going to school and getting a degree would be a billion trillion times better than spending their time gaming online, or whatever their avocation is, and they'll tell you to shove it, because they don't enjoy school. Wasting your free time doing things you hate doesn't make anything better for anyone.
Me, I work to game. It's a passion like basketball, football (American and otherwise), baseball, reading, movies, are to other people. I plan my life around my gaming much like rabid sports fans will plan their lives around their season tickets and SportsCenter. If you want to call me an addict, that's your call. I hold down a job. My clients appreciate my work. I keep myself fed well. I've got a girlfriend that thankfully likes games almost as much as I do. Any passion not kept in check turns into an obsession, and that's when it's dangerous. Be it gaming, books (they don't call academia the Ivory Tower for nothing), basketball (street ball kids who drop out of school to play more ball), gambling, or whatever.
Now that I think of it, obsession is probably a better word than "addiction" for the "gaming addiction."
...and the expectations are so high, that 3DRealms cannot possible live up to the expectations.
I don't know anyone who expect it to do anything but be completely horrible. I'm sure it will live up to that expectation, assuming this isn't the final death rasp of 3D Realms right here.
Their contracts are kept. I guarantee you that any service contract you clicked through gave them the right to change whatever they wanted. If you want real binding contracts on even terms, hire a lawyer. That or call your state legislator and demand passage of UCITA, and you'd better read every EULA damn close. Then you might have something.
otherwise you just want everything your way with no responsbility to check out what you're signing before you sign it.
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Most of the time, when I'm making a character in DAoC, I'll try to make it culture specific. My Midgard characters I steal names from sagas. Hibernian I look for Irish names, or names from Celtic mythology. British/Scottish/Arab names for my Albion characters.
Then sometimes I'll get a bug up my ass and name a character with speed boost "Delivery" and give a last name as whatever race it is. My bonedancer (summons skeleton pets) I called "Dry Bones".
I may not always make it "appropriate", but I try to at least make it witty.
Actually, I think that the NOLF series wasn't enough like Austin Powers to be truly commercially successful. A lot of the humor was really high brow, and at least half of it was aimed at hard core game players. Most people just playing around don't stick around to hear all the funny conversations, or notice the "Obligatory FPS Sewer Sequence" signs. Not enough hot chicks showing skin. Not enough in-your-face obvious comedy to please the Austin Powers fans. I personally hated the first Austin Powers movie and haven't seen the rest of them, and loved NOLF.
Monolith, also, doesn't get a hell of a lot of respect, and I think that's part of it. Aside from AvP2, there hasn't been anything they've done that's gotten much spotlight. Blood 2 and Shogo were both underground successes (though Shogo's hellacious bugginess in the beginning was part of the reason it didn't succeed as much as it could have). The Lithtech engine doesn't have the name recognition that the various engine iterations that id has come out with, or the Unreal engine, despite the fact that NOLF 2 is still one of the best looking, best playing, and most original PC FPSes I've ever played. With all the games I've collected that I haven't beaten yet, I still have it installed and play it often.
I'm not sure that making it a more hardcore action game will make it any better or more successful. It will probably just push the series even more into the background, and kill it off.
I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some kind of watermarking in the audio files that hasn't been announced, specifically so they can track this kind of thing. Least that's what I would do if I were doing this.
Imagine a game as chaotic and infinitely fun as Super Smash Brothers or Goldeneye 007 in a MMO scene and tell me that wouldn't be badass.
OK. It wouldn't be badass. It would be a failure of staggering proportions, and Nintendo knows this. Microsoft has the money to put a rocket on the "online console" brick and make it fly. Nintendo does not, they know this, and they're not stupid enough to try.
Last I checked, Quake3 didn't have a monthly fee.
You can't run a Quake 3 server onyour console, you have to rely on the console make to do this. Hence, you're going to run into monthly fees, because no one is going to repeat Sega's fatal mistake with the Dreamcast.
These are the kinds of games people want.
If you've got some magic 8-ball that tells you what people _really_ want, you get your ass into the gaming industry RIGHT NOW, because you'll make yourself a hell of a lot of money. However, I doubt that you really have any particular insight into what people at large really want and what they're willing to pay for it. You probably are very aware of what you and your circle of friends and aquaintances will buy, but here's a hint, that ain't everyone.
Computers have a future. Consoles do not.
You could not be more wrong if you tried. If anything, the general purpose computer is well on it's way out as the primary gaming platform. No, it will never go away, but even a home-built $500 machine can't compete on price with the consoles, and that's what really matters. The profits in PC gaming are so ephemeral, Nintendo would be insane to bet any kind of money on such a wild enterprise as porting everything to Windows. Nintendo is making a profit on everything GameCube that they sell. AFAIK, they're the only one making a profit on the console, though Sony may be making a very very slim profit on PS2s now. Microsoft is losing over $100 on every Xbox sold.
Nintendo knows exactly what they're doing. They certainly don't do everything the "experts" think they should, but I don't trust "experts" to be able to wipe their own ass, never mind stuff like this.
Also, while Nintendo isn't raging along in the US market, they're doing FAR better here than Microsoft is doing in Japan. MS has sold what, under 250,000 Xboxes TOTAL in Japan? They aren't idiots. Give them some credit.
I play DAoC, and there are a hell of a lot of people who I WISH would leave and go play Galaxies instead.
The unfortunate thing is that too few of them actually are. Else it'd be a much more civil atmosphere to actually play the game as opposed to getting lectured for not supporting your realm, or not falling in line behind some self-styled gestapo.
"It will work" doesn't mean "It will look exactly like you see here". Quake 3 works on a range of systems, but it doesn't look the same across all those systems.
...you obviously don't live on the same planet as I do.
Not only that, it's likely to take a lot from Everquest, as so far as I've seen, it's designed to be the single most addictive thing on the planet next to crack and refined sugar. Everything seems to be designed to make it harder than ever to put the thing down for a few hours and go to sleep, never mind holding down a job.
Staying WELL away from this bugger. I am SO not interested.
The upkeep and the unit limitation are and will continue to be one of the strong points of Warcraft III. It's the best way I've found to penalize the mass early zerging, and give a tangible benefit to those who economize.
There are dozens of RTSes out there that don't have upkeep or unit limits built in. Good old Total Annihilation/TA: Kingdoms. C&C Generals. SW:GB lets you set the limit up to 250 (though prepare to get swarmed by the computer, even on easy). Or you could try to adapt your strategy to a new situation. A challenge other than just trying to build the most units before the other guy.
...as I've never seen any better digital representation of an utterly decayed New England town. I've lived most of my life on the North Shore of MA, and aside from the dam (there aren't a hell of a lot of dams out here) the familliarity of the locations (like the bowling alley and the decrepit museum/old prison *shiver*) Whoever did the art direction for that game deserves a medal.
...or a completely new game? The implication in the article is that it's a completely seperate game with a completely seperate engine. If it is, why on earth would someone do that? I can understand more action-oriented styles getting their own new seperate game (like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and the upcoming Heroes) but if it's for PC...who's going to pay $50 for a Temple of Elemental Evil game that the same number of people could remake in half the time as a Neverwinter module, and for less cost? And even if it has better graphics than Neverwinter, I doubt I'm going to be able to make my own modules with the engine they give anywhere near as easily, if they even give people modding tools.
I know I won't buy it. I know a lot of people who won't. Doesn't make an awful lot of sense.
Running With Scissors...
OK, here's the real unvarnished truth. Your games suck ass. Really. If you picked 20 random postal workers from the thousands that the USPS employs, they could figure out a better way to make the "games" you call Postal and Postal 2. They're crap. Get over yourselves.
You're right about you guys and gals being everything the USPS isn't. They do a job you whiny, pasty faced, losers wouldn't EVER want to do, and do it better than just about every other organization on the PLANET that does what they do. Get a life, get a clue, and get over yourselves.
No one likes you. Go home.
And who's fault is that?
That would be yours. Someone putting a gun to your head to make you buy that shit-hot game? Didn't think so.
Either of those for PS2 are great cooperative games. Not exactly tons of thought needed, but great for a couple people to play cooperatively. Whenever I bring it over for the weekend hang-out sessions, it always ends up being in there most of the night and with people fighting for the controller. It's even more fun when you use the unlock codes to unlock all the characters that you normally can't get without playing an insane number of times through. Yeah, there are lots of cool things that unlocking doesn't do, but having zillions of characters to choose from makes it more fun.
Yeah, it rules so much that most anyone who is exposed to this "ad campaign", either in description or whatever, wouldn't go near Virtua Tennis 2. That's great advertising.
People are not forced to pay them.
As others have posted, and I have posted in the past, there is another viable option. Used and bargain bin games. the only thing forcing anyone to pay prices they consider inflated is their own idiocy, believing that they have to get whatever game they're interested on the day of release. If it's too expensive for you, wait until someone is offering it at a price you can afford.
If you don't have the self control to not buy a game for more than you feel it's worth, seek counseling. If you just want them and are pissed they cost too much, you're more the fool, and who cares about what you want?
I'm not in the beta, but a close friend is, and I've watched him play Releasing it this soon, there is no way in hell that I, and likely he, will buy this game. It's buggy and laggy well beyond what either of us are willing to accept.
That, and if you thought EQ required you to sell your soul to the game for success, Galaxies will be even worse. I already spend far too much time playing games. Unless I withdraw completely from the world at large and work a shit job in a pizza place and live in a shit apartment, I'll never have the time to play Galaxies alone, never mind the other stuff I do. The power gamers will power game, there's nothing Verant, or any other company can do to stop them. The eBayers will have tons of never coming back materials loot to sell for an insane amount of cash once they hoard it for awhile. It's the worst MMORPG nightmare ever. Everything bad about them elsewhere can only be worse here.
Yeah, it appears to be the same kind of crap that I heard stories about from ex-Everquest junkies, about Verant/Sony Online's policy of "deny deny deny" on just about every problem with the game.
I don't expect Galaxies to be any better, which is why I'm sticking with Neverwinter Nights for a while.
The most amusing part of it, is that David Boies, the attourney for SCO in this charade, isn't exactly on the best of terms with the Bush administration. You know, the whole Microsoft anti-trust thing Bush killed, and Boies represented Al Gore in the Presidency fight. Not exactly the first lawyer I'd bring to the White House to try and get some help.
This weekend, me and my friends are going to have a nice little LAN party and play through the whole Unrentide campaign. I'm glad that they're doing a new campaign, as I just wasn't impressed with the original one. I'm glad the mod community is getting it's act together and putting out some real high quality stuff. The single player campaign was never really the reason to get NWN. The toolset and all the possibilities it brings, are. Hopefully some of these new modules will help keep me playing it longer.
;)
On that note, does anyone have any favorite NWN modules I should check out? I've already played the Penultima series, and am going to download the other one he mentioned, but I was wondering if anyone else had some advice out there....
Or is everyone here waiting for the Mac and Linux clients?
(which did use some special hardware... and the price of the Devkit was high... No games (in USA)... pattern?)
Ah, so the 53 games I have (not burned copies...the actual discs) don't exist! As well as the hundred or so others I haven't gotten my hands on yet, or just don't want. These are USA released games. Last count I made, the Dreamcast had more than twice the number of US releases as the Nintendo 64.
I use Safari at my bank's website and i've never had a problem logging in, ever. Never fiddled around with it to make it present itself as IE, or anything. *shrugs* Go fig.
There's money, power, romance, derring-do...
My friend, you need to stop watching those movies. You're losing your grip on reality here. Think we may have to perform an intervention here.
You should always be wary of how much of your time is being skewed toward ANYTHING. MMORPGs, work, hanging out with friends, clubbing, reading, sports, whatever.
A varied existance is a healthy existance. However, we're all human, and we all are going to devote more time to things that we like to do rather than those we don't enjoy. For some people, school just isn't enjoyable. Mathematically prove to them how going to school and getting a degree would be a billion trillion times better than spending their time gaming online, or whatever their avocation is, and they'll tell you to shove it, because they don't enjoy school. Wasting your free time doing things you hate doesn't make anything better for anyone.
Me, I work to game. It's a passion like basketball, football (American and otherwise), baseball, reading, movies, are to other people. I plan my life around my gaming much like rabid sports fans will plan their lives around their season tickets and SportsCenter. If you want to call me an addict, that's your call. I hold down a job. My clients appreciate my work. I keep myself fed well. I've got a girlfriend that thankfully likes games almost as much as I do. Any passion not kept in check turns into an obsession, and that's when it's dangerous. Be it gaming, books (they don't call academia the Ivory Tower for nothing), basketball (street ball kids who drop out of school to play more ball), gambling, or whatever.
Now that I think of it, obsession is probably a better word than "addiction" for the "gaming addiction."
...and the expectations are so high, that 3DRealms cannot possible live up to the expectations.
I don't know anyone who expect it to do anything but be completely horrible. I'm sure it will live up to that expectation, assuming this isn't the final death rasp of 3D Realms right here.
Their contracts are kept. I guarantee you that any service contract you clicked through gave them the right to change whatever they wanted. If you want real binding contracts on even terms, hire a lawyer. That or call your state legislator and demand passage of UCITA, and you'd better read every EULA damn close. Then you might have something.
otherwise you just want everything your way with no responsbility to check out what you're signing before you sign it.