While it may seem simple on the surface, only allowing players to play with the same version would prohibit you from playing with your friends on the console anyways, as the console versions would inevitably always be at least one revision behind. In the time it takes for Sony or Microsoft to "bless" Version 1.X, 1.X.0001 will already be installed on all PCs. The cost to constantly pay for Microsoft or Sony's blessing with every intermediate version would be prohibitive.
But if there is no permanent death concept, eventually everybody becomes the same level and you all sit around saying "You want to go kill X over in Y?" "Nah, we killed them yesterday and everybody knows that you have to kill them 13.5 times in order to get a good drop."
If you had to spend some time and actually risk something, i.e. your character to progress in the game, then the reward seems a lot larger. If you can just run around anywhere with no risk or consequence, then how does that represent any "world" situation. You wouldn't run through Harlem at age 10 screaming racial obscenities. Now at 30, having grown-up and bulked up you would slowly go through picking off people one at a time and running away when things got too harried.
Napster I can understand, somewhat... But going after companies that serve up mp3's on their local network (Not public domain) is just wrong. If I bring a CD to work and tell my co-worker that it's really good and to listen to it for a while is the RIAA going to come after me for copyright infringement. If so, why not shut down all the radio stations out there, I mean there could be somebody recording the broadcast and the radio station should take that into account.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why I eat so much beef. We should prevent the cows from causing another Ice Age. Take that vegetarians!
While it may seem simple on the surface, only allowing players to play with the same version would prohibit you from playing with your friends on the console anyways, as the console versions would inevitably always be at least one revision behind. In the time it takes for Sony or Microsoft to "bless" Version 1.X, 1.X.0001 will already be installed on all PCs. The cost to constantly pay for Microsoft or Sony's blessing with every intermediate version would be prohibitive.
But if there is no permanent death concept, eventually everybody becomes the same level and you all sit around saying "You want to go kill X over in Y?" "Nah, we killed them yesterday and everybody knows that you have to kill them 13.5 times in order to get a good drop."
If you had to spend some time and actually risk something, i.e. your character to progress in the game, then the reward seems a lot larger. If you can just run around anywhere with no risk or consequence, then how does that represent any "world" situation. You wouldn't run through Harlem at age 10 screaming racial obscenities. Now at 30, having grown-up and bulked up you would slowly go through picking off people one at a time and running away when things got too harried.
Napster I can understand, somewhat...
But going after companies that serve up mp3's on their local network (Not public domain) is just wrong. If I bring a CD to work and tell my co-worker that it's really good and to listen to it for a while is the RIAA going to come after me for copyright infringement. If so, why not shut down all the radio stations out there, I mean there could be somebody recording the broadcast and the radio station should take that into account.