The roomba managed to hit a door in such a way that it closed itself in. Somehow you managed to jump to the conclusion that it's going to start plotting against you or something?
I think the point was that the more autonomous devices we add to our homes, the weirder their collective behavior will seem. For instance, if you have five roombas because you want to clean lots of rooms at the same time (and by 2010, who knows, maybe they'll only cost $29.99 each and run for 20 hours or something), and then you add some more autonomous devices, will the effect be the same as having ten dogs or cats in your house, all senselessly moving doors, furniture, and other crap around in your house (as dogs and cats tend to do)?
People who have lots of animals are used to their house essentially being "alive". You learn to expect to see the contents of tables mysteriously shuffled, doors opened or closed that they haven't even gone near all day, and things mysteriously running around and making little noises in the dead of night. But this sort of behavior is expected from animals, while it might just sneak up on unsuspecting autonomous machine owners.
Simply because they have to be related somehow to the previous version, so by definition they cannot be as innovative and original as the first version in the first place, which--aux de counturiarie--had to be different from anything else that came before. Ergho, if anyone says that the sequel is more crea-/innova-tive than one is lieing, simple as that.
So if somebody creates a 30 hour game that stars the same characters and has the same gameplay the whole way through, that's more creative than a game that lasts 15 hours and has a 15 hour sequel that stars the same characters and has the same gameplay, because "first = creative"? Do I have that right?
It's obvious that they are going with a theme here (comics based on video games that already have a story, characters, etc, established) so I'm curious as to how good these comics actually are. I mean, it sure seems like the easy way out. Wouldn't it be much more creative to design your own characters from scratch...or is this just easy money?
Just a small note: The Silent Hill and Castlevania comics both contain (mostly) original characters and storylines. The Silent Hill comic, as far as I know, is all new, with the exception of possible cameos. The Castlevania comic covers a Belmont that was in the original Game Boy games, and thus was basically Generic Randomly Named Belmont with hardly any storyline. The Castlevania Dungeon even says:
"There's not really a whole lot to say about this Belmont, except for the fact that he's yet another one of the family that killed Dracula when he arose again."
How was anything that I listed "internals"? A new game (not graphics) engine means that all of the cars control differently, and I'm not sure how new game modes, new cars, and new tracks are "internals".
OOoh, Gran Turismo 4! Yes, throw in a few new cars and add some newer effects thanks to an expensive new video card and call it "innovative". The people who line up to buy the latest NCAA Football 200x year after year will undoubtedly be impressed by the incremental change.
They rebuilt the game engine from scratch, added tons of new cars and tracks, expanded previous game modes, and added more game modes, such as drift racing and B-Spec. But because it looks like the same game as GT3, you're claiming that there's nothing new about it, and simultaneously calling everyone else a graphics whore.
How someone can be that self-contradictory in a mere two sentences is beyond me.
There are a very few vastly overcrowded servers that are suffering issues. There are 88 servers total. Something like four are having issues. That leaves 84 servers that are working ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY that Tycho and Gabe could be playing on but won't.
According to the average/played, once you reach around level 30 and have your profession suitably leveled-up as well, you've played the game with that character for at least 48 hours. Therefore, moving to a new server is the equivalent of having your memory card save file corrupted in the last hours of Final Fantasy VII. If my save file was corrupted after 48 hours of an RPG, I would be pissed off, and probably so would you.
I don't know about you, but I don't think that the normal operation of one game (an MMORPG, specifically WoW) should be equivalent to a total fucking disaster in another game.
The summary is a bit misleading- the 3C group charges $20 per DVD player, not 50% of the cost. Although $20 may end up being 50% of the cost of a DVD player, a $100 DVD player still only has to pay $20. Their argument of "but everyone else does it this way" sounds like whining that they can't make $5 DVD players.
Shouldn't they be whining about it, though? DVD players have gotten a whole lot cheaper than they were when they were first introduced. They used to be $300 or more, but now they're just $40, and the fee is still $20 per unit. Some things simply get much cheaper to make over time, like DVD players or CD-Rs. Would it make sense if a company was told that they have to pay a $3 fee for every CD-R that they make just because CD-Rs used to be expensive, when now they can be bought in 90 packs for $10?
And who is going to come into a show they haven't been watching if they know it's about to start a year long story? I know I don't get into shows where I think I'll need to see it every week to keep up with it. (While you didn't need to watch every week for the Xindi arc, how would someone know that without watching?)
The 1 year arc was just a bad idea.
Yes, this is exactly why shows that spend at least a year on an entire story arc and generally burden their show with an overly complex plot are suffering so horribly this season. I expect 24 and Lost to be cancelled any moment now.
Seriously, dude. Everyone that doesn't have a TiVo at least has a VCR. TV shows haven't had to be a series of self-contained, pointless episodes that don't advance any sort of plot for years now.
Nintendo? They have some of the most solid first-party support ever, but their first party games either...
A) have absolute SHIT for replayability; many of Nintendo's first-party games are definitely worth a rental, but not worth buying. Or...
B) Require that you have multiple friends over to really get the most out of (a design tendancy that obviously favors the younger Hey, come over to my place after school crowd).
I think the problem is that Nintendo isn't aiming at your demographic. They're aiming for the sort of casual gamers and young children that would be put off by something like Metal Gear Solid 3, due to its enormous amount of cutscenes, numerous complex systems, and complicated button controls (Hold Circle + Hold Circle and R1 together + Hold Circle, R1, and Square together = use a guard as a human shield, anyone?). For Nintendo's intended demographic, Nintendo's games ARE a buy, as they're a game that they'll enjoy for a good, long while, and might even be entertained enough to play again.
The problem is that while there's a fairly large niche of casual gamers in Japan, there isn't in America. Games that would seem extremely hardcore to the casual gamer ARE the mainstream, million-selling titles here, to the point where there isn't even any room for games like Nintendo's. Hell, a couple of years ago, the most popular game for a year straight was Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, a complicated, unwieldy racing game with a decidedly user-unfriendly tuning system that required you to actually know a little bit about cars, or at least read an FAQ on it.
Because the companies want to make money, they have to ensure that a majority of players will play their game as long as possible. This inevitably leads to "THE GRIND".
So far, I've only seriously played two characters in World of Warcraft, one Undead Warlock and one Troll Hunter. So far, I've managed to spend over fifty hours with EACH character without spending any real amount of time in the same area with one character that I did with another character. That's already more unique gameplay than I've gotten out of any other game outside of Nippon Ichi's strategy games, and I'm not done with the games yet. On the contrary, my highest level character is only level 27.
If a horrendous grind suddenly kicks in after that 100 hours of fun, that's fine. The game's already more than met my expectations for a $50 game. And if I can get just a few more hours out of that next $15, then that's worth it, too.
Another great thing to do is - buy with your credit card - you get plenty of protection. My mom's fiancee bought a laptop through Dell - didn't use it - but was able to return it two months later for a full refund due to his AMEX card...
Correction: Do not buy with "your credit card". Buy with "your American Express card". American Express is notorious in retail stores because they defend you more than any other credit card company and even let you charge back a transaction to the store and keep the item (even if it's a large one) if you claim that they didn't let you return it. This includes items that are specifically marked "Open Box -- Final Sale" or "Last One -- Final Sale", because American Express apparently doesn't believe in such things.
Unfortunately, that's also why not everyone carries American Express, as well as why many people that I know have told me that they pay a premium for American Express in comparison to their other cards.
If all windows systems were taken offline then almost all viruses and the like would disappear almost immediately along with spambots and other unpleasent creations of the black hat fraternity. I'm not pretending this is feasible but you have to wonder what the net would be like if only relatively secure OS's were allowed to use it.
While a minority of spyware is installed on the user's Windows machine without permission, the majority is still installed because a user clicked "Yes" on the install, and in many cases clicked "Next" over and over when asked "Would you like to install Gator, MyCometCursor, and ThisIsClearlySpywareYouJackass, as well?" No OS is secure enough that it can stop its users from making poor decisions.
Operating systems, in this case, are like cars. You can add seat belts, you can add air bags, you can even add night vision, but you still can't stop the driver from deciding to swerve into oncoming traffic. Even if Linux magically became ubiquitous tomorrow, the problem of users intentionally installing malicious software would not go away.
Second, Could this be to prove that the 3 bullets didnt come from the same gun? No matter what you do, you can't recreate the assignation since the bullets come from different directions?
In order for a video game to "prove" a scenario from any historical event, it would have to have a 100% accurate physics model. The enormous, well-funded teams behind games like Gran Turismo 4 and Half-Life 2 have had a Hell of a time with that, so I seriously doubt that a few guys making a $9.99 game that won't even be released in retail stores accomplished it.
And without the game being open source, how does anyone know that they didn't just find the perfect coordinates for the player to pull off the shot and force the gun to fire slightly off the mark whenever the player finds it?
Surprisingly, a person who works at a sex toy shop called Good Vibrations doesn't agree with the researcher's conclusions!
Surprisingly, an anti-gay organization "dedicated to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality" that posts links to articles like "'Crystal Meth' New Drug Of Choice On Gay Party Circuit" thinks that pornography is bad.
"Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance," Satinover said. "That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can't do, in effect."
I can't believe Wired actually let that slip by without even a mention of what the group actually stands for.
In beta, there was a free respec NPC. The one on your city class trainer that costs 1g, and then increases cost every time after that, is part of the game.
Yes, IN BETA. I'm trying to tell you that in retail, it will not work this way at all. So yes, there's a way to gimp your character, at least until you get toward the endgame and get to respec your character.
At any time you can drop professions. Just highlight it on your skills list, and an icon comes up that lets you drop the profession.
From the comments I saw from Blizzard's devs in the beta forums, I believe that this is also going to be removed for retail, and that that is the reason why you get the big warning box about only having two possible professions whenever you select a new profession. I never saw anything truly definite on it, though.
A truly worthwhile "quest system" should come close to what people expect from a pen-and-paper RPG. True adventures with adventure hooks, clues, the thrill of the chase, and a real reward at the end. After all, in my pen-and-paper days, I don't remember a DM ever telling me that such-and-such NPC needed 8 wolf meats, and that other guy wanted me to deliver someone's beer for 7 coppers. Even my most-hard-up D&D character would never stoop to being someone's barmaid.
I think that you either didn't play the game long enough, or whichever race you picked must have really crappy quests. As a level 15-20 Undead, I did a lot of fetch quests, but I also did a lot of quests like Pyrewood Village.
Pyrewood Village is a cursed town that is populated by armed humans between sun up (6:00AM) and sun down (6:00PM), and vicious werewolves during the night, which creates a very different play experience depending on when you do the quest. In order to complete my quest, which was to bring back the journal of Berard, a mage who had been turned into a mindless minion of the sorcerer who took over the town, I had to sneak my party over a ten foot wall, sneak between houses until I got to the back of the village, quietly kill off a few guards to get through the well-guarded courtyard and into the inn, kill all the guards in the inn, slay Berard (who is now an eight foot tall werewolf) on the second floor, get the journal, and then run the Hell out when they inevitably discover us escaping the inn. And during all of that, there's an optional quest in City Hall to help an Undead Deathstalker ambush the eleven town council members who've been helping the sorcerer just as they're returning from a recess.
Seriously, the only thing that's missing from a night of D&D, or even an offline video game RPG, is that the town is still cursed after you've completed the quest. The fact that the quest still has to be there for the next person, or even for your next character, is the only thing that draws you out of the game's excellent fiction. So while it's more like Dungeons & Dragons: The Ride ("Thanks for saving our village! Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to get back into place for the next group in line...") than Dungeons & Dragons, it still has most of the elements of a great non-MMO RPG.
Talk to your class trainer in a capital city. They'll let you respec for 1g the first time, and I believe it's 10g each additional time.
That was for beta only, so that people would have the time to test multiple specs. Instead of wanting the limited playbase to test out one spec with each character, they intended, for instance, for level 40+ priests to test both the Holy and Shadow specs on one character. In order to respec your talents, you'll have to go through a high-level respec quest that is intended to be very, very hard, and I think they're intending to limit you to one time through that quest. So you can only respec ONCE, and you do it at great hardship.
But secondly, I don't think that's what the parent poster was talking about. I think he meant things like professions, which are sort of ridiculous right now in WoW. When you're a n00b, how are you supposed to decide early on which two professions you want, especially when most professions require another profession, such as blacksmithing and mining or alchemy and herbalism? Unless they decide to let you respec those later on as well, I think a lot of people are going to end up with gimped characters because they didn't know that certain professions require other professions, or that some professions, like tailoring, don't really fit with any of the others.
Um, guys? those BT shows marked HD aren't true HD, or at least not the level of HD that was broadcast (1080i for most, 720p for some) most BT shows are 480i, *SOME* might be 480p, but that can be argued if it's HD or not. Basically, if your download is less then a gig for an hour, it aint HD. There are *SOME* HD offerings, but those are fairly large, and won't play on an Xbox;-)
It's worth noting that the idea that those downloaded files are true HD is a misconception on the part of the downloaders. The "hdtv" part of the file name tells you that the SOURCE of the file is an HDTV feed, just like the ones marked "dvd.screener" tell you that the source is a screener DVD that was sent out by the production company, most likely in a press kit.
Do the G4 suits really think they purchased the eyeballs of TechTV viewers along with TechTV itself and that TechTV viewers will watch anything on that channel now that it's a completely different channel? Very strange logic.
Actually, I think their logic was a little different. They probably wanted the wide availability that TechTV had struggled for over the course of many years, moving up from making an occasional two week appearance as a "possible new channel" on channel 98 or so on Comcast Cable to being a widely viewed channel available on every cable and satellite network in North America (and, to some extent, beyond). But if they just bought out TechTV for their availability, fired everyone, and welcomed all of TechTV's former viewers to the wonderful new channel that fucked them over, no one would ever watch it.
So they merged with TechTV, kept the old shows around for a little while to try to retain some portion of the audience, and then fired everyone, months later. Which is why your reaction is "fascinating media logic" instead of "what a bunch of total fucking assholes".
Another trick Best Buy has is the extended warranty. It sounds like a great idea, and it is. Extended two year warranty, no questions asked, for a few extra dollars. However, you need the warranty receipt. Most people lose it after a few months, usually sooner, or totally forget about it. Two years is a long time. Only a small percentage of those who get the warranty actually cash it in so to speak. That's where a lot of their profits are coming from.
Yeah, or you could ask the store you bought it from to look up their receipt in their database. Best Buy and CompUSA both do this for you. If they refuse, call the corporate office. That store is violating the rules set down by the corporate office.
Anyone reading this, start the change by putting down some places where you've felt like you got an AWESOME deal without any tricks, from a sales guy that you trusted and who didn't try to sell you with a bunch of technobabble (that you know is false). The list of Cool places to shop starts here --> (you reply)
The problem with a list of "Cool Places To Shop" is that the cool stores vary from area to area. Most of what you experience at virtually ANY retail store is determined by the manager of that store and just that store. The pricing, hiring practices, refund policy, and to some degree the items that are stocked are all chosen by the general manager who effectively "owns" the store, having almost the same degree of control that the owner of the local Mom & Pop Electronics Store has. So even if almost every Best Buy in the nation sucks, yours could be a fantastic place to shop. Or vice-versa.
No offense man, but companies like Best Buy and CompUSA don't WANT people like you as a customer. That was the whole point of the article! They aren't making much of a profit selling you that copy of WC3 for only $30 to begin with, and they probably LOST money on the sale once you factored in the time that you spent nagging the sales clerk and manager for your discount.
CompUSA and Best Buy cater to rich gadget freaks and clueless newbies because THEY are the kinds of people who will pay retail price and leave the store without thinking twice about it. The math is simple here... Higher product profit margins plus lower sales staffing costs equals MORE MONEY FOR THEM. By ignoring savvy shoppers like you, they're actually increasing their profits in the long run.
All of this would make sense if it weren't for the facts that:
1) The majority of sale items are sold either at or below what they cost the store.
2) Sale items cater directly to the savvy shoppers who specifically look in the newspaper every week to find the best deal between all of the major retailers in the area.
Therefore, yes, they do want the savvy shopper. Specifically, they want to savvy shopper to come in, buy a game at cost, hopefully think that that A) the store is clean, B) the prices are good, and C) the sales staff are nice, and then choose to buy a laptop from CompUSA instead of Best Buy, Circuit City, or Fry's. That's the entire idea behind "low prices". They're just a form of advertising to get you into the store and make you comfortable enough with them to buy something that's NOT on sale, or at the very least isn't the best deal you could get.
Too black and white. I do believe in the concept of personal accountability, but I also believe that the media is partially responsible for shaping our behaviour. They contribute to our personal knowledge (through both information and misinformation) and that affects how we react to events and other people.
If that were true, wouldn't there be many, many more crimes in developed nations than there currently are? Millions of people have seen the thousands of violent movies that have been available in the United States over the last fifty years, and violent video games regularly sell millions of copies there, and that's just in one country alone. If Counter-Strike made people crazy, wouldn't, at the very least, HUNDREDS (if not thousands or millions) of people be dressing up in military fatigues and "killing the hostages" in their neighborhoods all across the world, rather than just a couple of nutjobs in Australia?
There are a lot of crazy whackjobs out there who will kill people, regardless of whether you give them a Grand Theft Auto game, a copy of Mein Kampf, or just Curious George Goes To The Hospital. This is as true now as it was before the discovery of electricity and its subsequent gifts of TV, movies, and video games.
SoT was T rated, and the violence was on a level that I wouldn't be terribly worried if younger kids played it. Now explain to me, how do they expect to gain bigger sales by limiting their audience to "M"ature gamers? Don't give me the "average gamer is 28 years" shit, that's were most people stop playing games, and start worrying about families and mortgages.
That depends on what your idea of "M-rated Gamers" is. From what I've seen, the ESRB concept of an M-rated game seems to be some sort of weird amalgamation of PG-13 and R. In a single category, we have Dante beating up puppets in Devil May Cry (a game which has only a couple of actually gory scenes), the over-the-top "Itchy & Scratchy Show"-like Mortal Kombat games that were always more funny than cool when I was a kid, and GTA's lovely process of screwing hookers, killing them, and taking your money back. Three completely different tiers of objectionable content, all in one rating.
To me, Prince of Persia 2 looks more like Devil May Cry than GTA, or even Mortal Kombat. And since most of the parents I've seen that pay attention to their kids' gaming habits seem to rely more on word of mouth from other parents than on the shiny black letters on the game box, I don't think it's really restricting its audience. Besides, as far as I know, the only people that bought the original are the same hardcore gamers who bought Ico, Rez, and other "critically acclaimed" titles. Its core audience is shared with Katamari Damacy, not Tak: The Power of Juju.
Those who think that minors might not have the decision-making abilities of adults and may need guidance, or that school systems should make any effort at all to compensate for deficiencies in parenting, are generally not well regarded.
I think the real point that most/.ers are trying to make is that automatic systems should not be used to keep children from misbehaving. When most of us were growing up (and for many of us, this was not long ago at all), there wasn't an automatic system that physically kept us from screwing around during class. We had a teacher who was there to teach us that we shouldn't (rather than can't) screw around, and eventually most of us realized that even though we wanted to play with our Gameboys or trading cards or whatever else in class, we would get in trouble for it, and our homework would take a Hell of a lot longer without instruction.
Nowadays, when all kids want to do is visit gaming websites and that action can just be stopped with a proxy, that lesson isn't taught. The kids don't learn the lesson of "I want to, but I shouldn't", they're just taught "I want to, but I physically can't", which is not a lesson which will serve them in adulthood. In the real world, you almost always CAN do the wrong thing, and it's very rare that anything physically stops you.
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The roomba managed to hit a door in such a way that it closed itself in. Somehow you managed to jump to the conclusion that it's going to start plotting against you or something?
I think the point was that the more autonomous devices we add to our homes, the weirder their collective behavior will seem. For instance, if you have five roombas because you want to clean lots of rooms at the same time (and by 2010, who knows, maybe they'll only cost $29.99 each and run for 20 hours or something), and then you add some more autonomous devices, will the effect be the same as having ten dogs or cats in your house, all senselessly moving doors, furniture, and other crap around in your house (as dogs and cats tend to do)?
People who have lots of animals are used to their house essentially being "alive". You learn to expect to see the contents of tables mysteriously shuffled, doors opened or closed that they haven't even gone near all day, and things mysteriously running around and making little noises in the dead of night. But this sort of behavior is expected from animals, while it might just sneak up on unsuspecting autonomous machine owners.
Simply because they have to be related somehow to the previous version, so by definition they cannot be as innovative and original as the first version in the first place, which--aux de counturiarie--had to be different from anything else that came before. Ergho, if anyone says that the sequel is more crea-/innova-tive than one is lieing, simple as that.
So if somebody creates a 30 hour game that stars the same characters and has the same gameplay the whole way through, that's more creative than a game that lasts 15 hours and has a 15 hour sequel that stars the same characters and has the same gameplay, because "first = creative"? Do I have that right?
It's obvious that they are going with a theme here (comics based on video games that already have a story, characters, etc, established) so I'm curious as to how good these comics actually are. I mean, it sure seems like the easy way out. Wouldn't it be much more creative to design your own characters from scratch...or is this just easy money?
Just a small note: The Silent Hill and Castlevania comics both contain (mostly) original characters and storylines. The Silent Hill comic, as far as I know, is all new, with the exception of possible cameos. The Castlevania comic covers a Belmont that was in the original Game Boy games, and thus was basically Generic Randomly Named Belmont with hardly any storyline. The Castlevania Dungeon even says:
"There's not really a whole lot to say about this Belmont, except for the fact that he's yet another one of the family that killed Dracula when he arose again."
How was anything that I listed "internals"? A new game (not graphics) engine means that all of the cars control differently, and I'm not sure how new game modes, new cars, and new tracks are "internals".
OOoh, Gran Turismo 4! Yes, throw in a few new cars and add some newer effects thanks to an expensive new video card and call it "innovative". The people who line up to buy the latest NCAA Football 200x year after year will undoubtedly be impressed by the incremental change.
They rebuilt the game engine from scratch, added tons of new cars and tracks, expanded previous game modes, and added more game modes, such as drift racing and B-Spec. But because it looks like the same game as GT3, you're claiming that there's nothing new about it, and simultaneously calling everyone else a graphics whore.
How someone can be that self-contradictory in a mere two sentences is beyond me.
There are a very few vastly overcrowded servers that are suffering issues. There are 88 servers total. Something like four are having issues. That leaves 84 servers that are working ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY that Tycho and Gabe could be playing on but won't.
/played, once you reach around level 30 and have your profession suitably leveled-up as well, you've played the game with that character for at least 48 hours. Therefore, moving to a new server is the equivalent of having your memory card save file corrupted in the last hours of Final Fantasy VII. If my save file was corrupted after 48 hours of an RPG, I would be pissed off, and probably so would you.
According to the average
I don't know about you, but I don't think that the normal operation of one game (an MMORPG, specifically WoW) should be equivalent to a total fucking disaster in another game.
The summary is a bit misleading- the 3C group charges $20 per DVD player, not 50% of the cost. Although $20 may end up being 50% of the cost of a DVD player, a $100 DVD player still only has to pay $20. Their argument of "but everyone else does it this way" sounds like whining that they can't make $5 DVD players.
Shouldn't they be whining about it, though? DVD players have gotten a whole lot cheaper than they were when they were first introduced. They used to be $300 or more, but now they're just $40, and the fee is still $20 per unit. Some things simply get much cheaper to make over time, like DVD players or CD-Rs. Would it make sense if a company was told that they have to pay a $3 fee for every CD-R that they make just because CD-Rs used to be expensive, when now they can be bought in 90 packs for $10?
And who is going to come into a show they haven't been watching if they know it's about to start a year long story? I know I don't get into shows where I think I'll need to see it every week to keep up with it. (While you didn't need to watch every week for the Xindi arc, how would someone know that without watching?)
The 1 year arc was just a bad idea.
Yes, this is exactly why shows that spend at least a year on an entire story arc and generally burden their show with an overly complex plot are suffering so horribly this season. I expect 24 and Lost to be cancelled any moment now.
Seriously, dude. Everyone that doesn't have a TiVo at least has a VCR. TV shows haven't had to be a series of self-contained, pointless episodes that don't advance any sort of plot for years now.
Nintendo? They have some of the most solid first-party support ever, but their first party games either...
A) have absolute SHIT for replayability; many of Nintendo's first-party games are definitely worth a rental, but not worth buying. Or...
B) Require that you have multiple friends over to really get the most out of (a design tendancy that obviously favors the younger Hey, come over to my place after school crowd).
I think the problem is that Nintendo isn't aiming at your demographic. They're aiming for the sort of casual gamers and young children that would be put off by something like Metal Gear Solid 3, due to its enormous amount of cutscenes, numerous complex systems, and complicated button controls (Hold Circle + Hold Circle and R1 together + Hold Circle, R1, and Square together = use a guard as a human shield, anyone?). For Nintendo's intended demographic, Nintendo's games ARE a buy, as they're a game that they'll enjoy for a good, long while, and might even be entertained enough to play again.
The problem is that while there's a fairly large niche of casual gamers in Japan, there isn't in America. Games that would seem extremely hardcore to the casual gamer ARE the mainstream, million-selling titles here, to the point where there isn't even any room for games like Nintendo's. Hell, a couple of years ago, the most popular game for a year straight was Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, a complicated, unwieldy racing game with a decidedly user-unfriendly tuning system that required you to actually know a little bit about cars, or at least read an FAQ on it.
Because the companies want to make money, they have to ensure that a majority of players will play their game as long as possible. This inevitably leads to "THE GRIND".
So far, I've only seriously played two characters in World of Warcraft, one Undead Warlock and one Troll Hunter. So far, I've managed to spend over fifty hours with EACH character without spending any real amount of time in the same area with one character that I did with another character. That's already more unique gameplay than I've gotten out of any other game outside of Nippon Ichi's strategy games, and I'm not done with the games yet. On the contrary, my highest level character is only level 27.
If a horrendous grind suddenly kicks in after that 100 hours of fun, that's fine. The game's already more than met my expectations for a $50 game. And if I can get just a few more hours out of that next $15, then that's worth it, too.
Another great thing to do is - buy with your credit card - you get plenty of protection. My mom's fiancee bought a laptop through Dell - didn't use it - but was able to return it two months later for a full refund due to his AMEX card...
Correction: Do not buy with "your credit card". Buy with "your American Express card". American Express is notorious in retail stores because they defend you more than any other credit card company and even let you charge back a transaction to the store and keep the item (even if it's a large one) if you claim that they didn't let you return it. This includes items that are specifically marked "Open Box -- Final Sale" or "Last One -- Final Sale", because American Express apparently doesn't believe in such things.
Unfortunately, that's also why not everyone carries American Express, as well as why many people that I know have told me that they pay a premium for American Express in comparison to their other cards.
If all windows systems were taken offline then almost all viruses and the like would disappear almost immediately along with spambots and other unpleasent creations of the black hat fraternity. I'm not pretending this is feasible but you have to wonder what the net would be like if only relatively secure OS's were allowed to use it.
While a minority of spyware is installed on the user's Windows machine without permission, the majority is still installed because a user clicked "Yes" on the install, and in many cases clicked "Next" over and over when asked "Would you like to install Gator, MyCometCursor, and ThisIsClearlySpywareYouJackass, as well?" No OS is secure enough that it can stop its users from making poor decisions.
Operating systems, in this case, are like cars. You can add seat belts, you can add air bags, you can even add night vision, but you still can't stop the driver from deciding to swerve into oncoming traffic. Even if Linux magically became ubiquitous tomorrow, the problem of users intentionally installing malicious software would not go away.
Second, Could this be to prove that the 3 bullets didnt come from the same gun? No matter what you do, you can't recreate the assignation since the bullets come from different directions?
In order for a video game to "prove" a scenario from any historical event, it would have to have a 100% accurate physics model. The enormous, well-funded teams behind games like Gran Turismo 4 and Half-Life 2 have had a Hell of a time with that, so I seriously doubt that a few guys making a $9.99 game that won't even be released in retail stores accomplished it.
And without the game being open source, how does anyone know that they didn't just find the perfect coordinates for the player to pull off the shot and force the gun to fire slightly off the mark whenever the player finds it?
Surprisingly, a person who works at a sex toy shop called Good Vibrations doesn't agree with the researcher's conclusions!
Surprisingly, an anti-gay organization "dedicated to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality" that posts links to articles like "'Crystal Meth' New Drug Of Choice On Gay Party Circuit" thinks that pornography is bad.
Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and advisor to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality echoed Layden's concern about the internet and the somatic effects of pornography.
"Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance," Satinover said. "That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can't do, in effect."
I can't believe Wired actually let that slip by without even a mention of what the group actually stands for.
In beta, there was a free respec NPC. The one on your city class trainer that costs 1g, and then increases cost every time after that, is part of the game.
Yes, IN BETA. I'm trying to tell you that in retail, it will not work this way at all. So yes, there's a way to gimp your character, at least until you get toward the endgame and get to respec your character.
At any time you can drop professions. Just highlight it on your skills list, and an icon comes up that lets you drop the profession.
From the comments I saw from Blizzard's devs in the beta forums, I believe that this is also going to be removed for retail, and that that is the reason why you get the big warning box about only having two possible professions whenever you select a new profession. I never saw anything truly definite on it, though.
A truly worthwhile "quest system" should come close to what people expect from a pen-and-paper RPG. True adventures with adventure hooks, clues, the thrill of the chase, and a real reward at the end. After all, in my pen-and-paper days, I don't remember a DM ever telling me that such-and-such NPC needed 8 wolf meats, and that other guy wanted me to deliver someone's beer for 7 coppers. Even my most-hard-up D&D character would never stoop to being someone's barmaid.
I think that you either didn't play the game long enough, or whichever race you picked must have really crappy quests. As a level 15-20 Undead, I did a lot of fetch quests, but I also did a lot of quests like Pyrewood Village.
Pyrewood Village is a cursed town that is populated by armed humans between sun up (6:00AM) and sun down (6:00PM), and vicious werewolves during the night, which creates a very different play experience depending on when you do the quest. In order to complete my quest, which was to bring back the journal of Berard, a mage who had been turned into a mindless minion of the sorcerer who took over the town, I had to sneak my party over a ten foot wall, sneak between houses until I got to the back of the village, quietly kill off a few guards to get through the well-guarded courtyard and into the inn, kill all the guards in the inn, slay Berard (who is now an eight foot tall werewolf) on the second floor, get the journal, and then run the Hell out when they inevitably discover us escaping the inn. And during all of that, there's an optional quest in City Hall to help an Undead Deathstalker ambush the eleven town council members who've been helping the sorcerer just as they're returning from a recess.
Seriously, the only thing that's missing from a night of D&D, or even an offline video game RPG, is that the town is still cursed after you've completed the quest. The fact that the quest still has to be there for the next person, or even for your next character, is the only thing that draws you out of the game's excellent fiction. So while it's more like Dungeons & Dragons: The Ride ("Thanks for saving our village! Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to get back into place for the next group in line...") than Dungeons & Dragons, it still has most of the elements of a great non-MMO RPG.
Talk to your class trainer in a capital city.
They'll let you respec for 1g the first time, and I believe it's 10g each additional time.
That was for beta only, so that people would have the time to test multiple specs. Instead of wanting the limited playbase to test out one spec with each character, they intended, for instance, for level 40+ priests to test both the Holy and Shadow specs on one character. In order to respec your talents, you'll have to go through a high-level respec quest that is intended to be very, very hard, and I think they're intending to limit you to one time through that quest. So you can only respec ONCE, and you do it at great hardship.
But secondly, I don't think that's what the parent poster was talking about. I think he meant things like professions, which are sort of ridiculous right now in WoW. When you're a n00b, how are you supposed to decide early on which two professions you want, especially when most professions require another profession, such as blacksmithing and mining or alchemy and herbalism? Unless they decide to let you respec those later on as well, I think a lot of people are going to end up with gimped characters because they didn't know that certain professions require other professions, or that some professions, like tailoring, don't really fit with any of the others.
Um, guys? those BT shows marked HD aren't true HD, or at least not the level of HD that was broadcast (1080i for most, 720p for some) most BT shows are 480i, *SOME* might be 480p, but that can be argued if it's HD or not. Basically, if your download is less then a gig for an hour, it aint HD. There are *SOME* HD offerings, but those are fairly large, and won't play on an Xbox ;-)
It's worth noting that the idea that those downloaded files are true HD is a misconception on the part of the downloaders. The "hdtv" part of the file name tells you that the SOURCE of the file is an HDTV feed, just like the ones marked "dvd.screener" tell you that the source is a screener DVD that was sent out by the production company, most likely in a press kit.
Do the G4 suits really think they purchased the eyeballs of TechTV viewers along with TechTV itself and that TechTV viewers will watch anything on that channel now that it's a completely different channel? Very strange logic.
Actually, I think their logic was a little different. They probably wanted the wide availability that TechTV had struggled for over the course of many years, moving up from making an occasional two week appearance as a "possible new channel" on channel 98 or so on Comcast Cable to being a widely viewed channel available on every cable and satellite network in North America (and, to some extent, beyond). But if they just bought out TechTV for their availability, fired everyone, and welcomed all of TechTV's former viewers to the wonderful new channel that fucked them over, no one would ever watch it.
So they merged with TechTV, kept the old shows around for a little while to try to retain some portion of the audience, and then fired everyone, months later. Which is why your reaction is "fascinating media logic" instead of "what a bunch of total fucking assholes".
Another trick Best Buy has is the extended warranty. It sounds like a great idea, and it is. Extended two year warranty, no questions asked, for a few extra dollars. However, you need the warranty receipt. Most people lose it after a few months, usually sooner, or totally forget about it. Two years is a long time. Only a small percentage of those who get the warranty actually cash it in so to speak. That's where a lot of their profits are coming from.
Yeah, or you could ask the store you bought it from to look up their receipt in their database. Best Buy and CompUSA both do this for you. If they refuse, call the corporate office. That store is violating the rules set down by the corporate office.
Anyone reading this, start the change by putting down some places where you've felt like you got an AWESOME deal without any tricks, from a sales guy that you trusted and who didn't try to sell you with a bunch of technobabble (that you know is false). The list of Cool places to shop starts here --> (you reply)
The problem with a list of "Cool Places To Shop" is that the cool stores vary from area to area. Most of what you experience at virtually ANY retail store is determined by the manager of that store and just that store. The pricing, hiring practices, refund policy, and to some degree the items that are stocked are all chosen by the general manager who effectively "owns" the store, having almost the same degree of control that the owner of the local Mom & Pop Electronics Store has. So even if almost every Best Buy in the nation sucks, yours could be a fantastic place to shop. Or vice-versa.
No offense man, but companies like Best Buy and CompUSA don't WANT people like you as a customer. That was the whole point of the article! They aren't making much of a profit selling you that copy of WC3 for only $30 to begin with, and they probably LOST money on the sale once you factored in the time that you spent nagging the sales clerk and manager for your discount.
CompUSA and Best Buy cater to rich gadget freaks and clueless newbies because THEY are the kinds of people who will pay retail price and leave the store without thinking twice about it. The math is simple here... Higher product profit margins plus lower sales staffing costs equals MORE MONEY FOR THEM. By ignoring savvy shoppers like you, they're actually increasing their profits in the long run.
All of this would make sense if it weren't for the facts that:
1) The majority of sale items are sold either at or below what they cost the store.
2) Sale items cater directly to the savvy shoppers who specifically look in the newspaper every week to find the best deal between all of the major retailers in the area.
Therefore, yes, they do want the savvy shopper. Specifically, they want to savvy shopper to come in, buy a game at cost, hopefully think that that A) the store is clean, B) the prices are good, and C) the sales staff are nice, and then choose to buy a laptop from CompUSA instead of Best Buy, Circuit City, or Fry's. That's the entire idea behind "low prices". They're just a form of advertising to get you into the store and make you comfortable enough with them to buy something that's NOT on sale, or at the very least isn't the best deal you could get.
Too black and white. I do believe in the concept of personal accountability, but I also believe that the media is partially responsible for shaping our behaviour. They contribute to our personal knowledge (through both information and misinformation) and that affects how we react to events and other people.
If that were true, wouldn't there be many, many more crimes in developed nations than there currently are? Millions of people have seen the thousands of violent movies that have been available in the United States over the last fifty years, and violent video games regularly sell millions of copies there, and that's just in one country alone. If Counter-Strike made people crazy, wouldn't, at the very least, HUNDREDS (if not thousands or millions) of people be dressing up in military fatigues and "killing the hostages" in their neighborhoods all across the world, rather than just a couple of nutjobs in Australia?
There are a lot of crazy whackjobs out there who will kill people, regardless of whether you give them a Grand Theft Auto game, a copy of Mein Kampf, or just Curious George Goes To The Hospital. This is as true now as it was before the discovery of electricity and its subsequent gifts of TV, movies, and video games.
SoT was T rated, and the violence was on a level that I wouldn't be terribly worried if younger kids played it. Now explain to me, how do they expect to gain bigger sales by limiting their audience to "M"ature gamers?
Don't give me the "average gamer is 28 years" shit, that's were most people stop playing games, and start worrying about families and mortgages.
That depends on what your idea of "M-rated Gamers" is. From what I've seen, the ESRB concept of an M-rated game seems to be some sort of weird amalgamation of PG-13 and R. In a single category, we have Dante beating up puppets in Devil May Cry (a game which has only a couple of actually gory scenes), the over-the-top "Itchy & Scratchy Show"-like Mortal Kombat games that were always more funny than cool when I was a kid, and GTA's lovely process of screwing hookers, killing them, and taking your money back. Three completely different tiers of objectionable content, all in one rating.
To me, Prince of Persia 2 looks more like Devil May Cry than GTA, or even Mortal Kombat. And since most of the parents I've seen that pay attention to their kids' gaming habits seem to rely more on word of mouth from other parents than on the shiny black letters on the game box, I don't think it's really restricting its audience. Besides, as far as I know, the only people that bought the original are the same hardcore gamers who bought Ico, Rez, and other "critically acclaimed" titles. Its core audience is shared with Katamari Damacy, not Tak: The Power of Juju.
Those who think that minors might not have the decision-making abilities of adults and may need guidance, or that school systems should make any effort at all to compensate for deficiencies in parenting, are generally not well regarded.
/.ers are trying to make is that automatic systems should not be used to keep children from misbehaving. When most of us were growing up (and for many of us, this was not long ago at all), there wasn't an automatic system that physically kept us from screwing around during class. We had a teacher who was there to teach us that we shouldn't (rather than can't) screw around, and eventually most of us realized that even though we wanted to play with our Gameboys or trading cards or whatever else in class, we would get in trouble for it, and our homework would take a Hell of a lot longer without instruction.
I think the real point that most
Nowadays, when all kids want to do is visit gaming websites and that action can just be stopped with a proxy, that lesson isn't taught. The kids don't learn the lesson of "I want to, but I shouldn't", they're just taught "I want to, but I physically can't", which is not a lesson which will serve them in adulthood. In the real world, you almost always CAN do the wrong thing, and it's very rare that anything physically stops you.