Nonsense. Don't just throw meaningless "don't rock the boat" and "can't fight city hall" and "it was a fun ride, but" statements at Google based on hype and buzz, just because you can't understand how they succeed without conforming. No one ever did anything great by sticking to the "rules" that are propped up by people riding on the coattails of the last person who did something great. Your can't-do attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy of self-doubt that has killed more dreams in the history of humanity than any real obstacle.
The next-quarter-result mentality comes from the top. It would require Google's management to cave to this Wall Street whining, which, as powerful as the "Wall Street community" thinks it is, doesn't mean squat to them. Larry Page and Sergey Brin own controlling stock in Google, and they're interested in long-term benefits (assuming they don't sell out). The only power the analysts have over them is a measure of influence on the most fickle of Google's investors, and any negativity resulting from that will blow over and balance out in a relatively short period of time. Google's got a good long-term plan, and if they stay the path there's no reason they can't prove you utterly wrong.
Couldn't have said it better myself (so I won't). This is precisely why Google's business model has been working so well, in my opinion. Investors calling for Google to go the traditional route (and thus open the ugly, ugly door to input from impatient and fidgety Wall Street suits) are a threat to the long term success of the company. I'm convinced it's in Google's long-term interest to stay the path and let the stock price reflect investments that benefit the future of the company.
It's not a list made by experts analyzing the merit of the games. It was a poll: "Which game did you like best?" Clearly, there is a broader range of people (at least in their poll cross-section) that liked certain Final Fantasy style games best, unless they asked the question a certain way or skewed the results to make them look better for some reason.
You're not listening. I don't play the game that much. I have a job, a girlfriend I live with, 2 businesses on the side, volunteer stuff and a social life. I'm starting my Master's in electrical engineering soon. I've never played more than 6 hours in a week. And the game is still fun.
For #1: You missed my point. Skill is relevant to level up. A level 12 character won't beat a level 60 character, but skill is more important than time to get from level 12 to level 60. If the game was so moronic that all it took was a time investment and no skill whatsoever, who would play it? Not me.
For #2: That makes no sense. If you play 5 hours a week for 4 weeks, and some kid of comparable skill plays 10 hours a day for 2 days, you'll be at more or less the same level (within reason - you do have to be able to play in chunks of at least half an hour or so). It's not like you go down levels if you don't play. There's always going to be ample amounts of players below you, at your level and above you. You can be crushed just as easily by someone who slowly leveled to 60 over two years as someone who blitzed through it in a month. I fail to see how someone reaching high levels more rapidly than you (in real-life time) affects your game experience.
For #3: See #2. There's nothing stopping WoW from being just as rewarding to a casual player (which I am, so quit telling me how I value time) as to a hardcore one. The only disadvantage is that you're paying the same monthly fee.
OMFG! 7 of 10 games in the list are Square-Enix! They must have like totally biased the results somehow!
Or maybe Square-Enix just made some really good games?
Recall Blizzard in the PC world... every title in the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series is in the top 20 sellers of all time, and most won Game of the Year awards across the board.
Even if I'm smarter and a better gamer, even if I have more talent for the game it doesn't matter: the game gives preferential skills/stats/etc to people with an extreme excess of time on their hands (or no time management skills).
This is where most of the arguments in this thread fail. Yes, ceteris paribus, spending more time equals better character stats and better items. However:
Having more talent for the game, in my experience with WoW, is far more important. If you disagree, you probably just suck at the game.
Who cares? If it takes me three weeks of real-life time to level and some kid does it in two days, what difference does it make?
Fair enough, there are some things that flat out require a lot of patience to do. So don't do it! I know for a fact you can play to level 60 without doing anything ridiculously tedious.
I can't comment on other MMORPGs, but World of Warcraft does reward good playing. It also rewards more playing by design, but everyone seems to assume that grinding and tradeskills are the only way to make money, and that money is the only way to be rewarded.
Good players are far more likely to:
Complete quests and instances in reasonable time
Be invited into groups and guilds
Win in the Battlegrounds
Be efficient at collecting materials for tradeskills
Figure out how to gain reputation quickly
Roleplaying is rewarded (at least on RP servers) by higher-level characters probably more than any other thing you can do, and it is characteristic of good playing (after all, you play to have fun, and the more fun you have the better you're playing). Getting into a good guild can get you items from raids. You can trade services for gold or items. And finally, I'll say it again: you don't have to have all the best items all the time to have fun playing.
Seems to me you guys have all lost the spirit of playing games for fun.
If someone wants to allocate more money (resources) to the game how is that any different from them allocating more time?
Because time spent playing (by the player, in real life) equals time spent by the character -- thus, the character is actually doing something to earn his or her money or items. Money spent in real life to buy gold or items is disjoint from the game (what did your character do to earn that gold or item?).
Says you. So play a game where the designer encourages rather than discourages real-world trade in items. They've been designed so that in-game mechanics make the game balanced taking into account the influence of real-world trade.
On the other hand, for various reasons I consider legitimate and important, I would rather play a game where I know that real-world wealth has no effect on status in-game. A large proportion of MMORPG players share my desire. Thus, Blizzard and other designers have opted to discourage real-world trade in items using whatever means are at their disposal, and designed the game mechanics assuming that no real-world trade exists. Thus, in theory, the game meets my desires. Real-world trade in items for a game that has been designed to work better without the practice can only detract from the experience for players like me, who would rather play under the assumption that none exists.
Cheating. Let's examine the primary arguments that attempt to legitimize the practice of buying gold rather than earning it in-game:
"I don't have time in real life to spend hours doing repetitive stuff to earn gold." Sounds like impatient instant-gratification whining. There are lots of fun and non-repetitive ways to earn gold in most MMORPGs -- try to be imaginative (in WoW, try playing the Auction House or using roleplaying to sell goods or services). I have a full-time job as an engineer, a girlfriend I live with, and plenty of other commitments, and I earn enough in-game money in WoW to keep me interested. If you can't have fun without having the absolute best items all the time, then don't play.
"The real world is a free market and the gold had to come from somewhere." Blizzard (and other companies) purposely didn't account for this when they designed the balancing mechanics of the game. Yes, the gold had to come from somewhere, but realize that when creatures and resources respawn infinitely, dedicated gold farmers can theoretically rack up infinite amounts of gold. The only difference between that and duping is the investment of time.
That's a pretty small market, considering there are only 1.75 million XBOX 360s sold, and the original XBOX sold 25 million units. Knock off the vast majority of that already slim market if the expectation is that they will pay for XBOX 360 Live and Blizzard's monthly fee (I'm sure they wouldn't do this, but how else would it work?). Complete waste of Blizzard's resources.
You missed my point. I agree with you entirely. The "moral standards" comment was a sarcastic one directed at the parent post. I don't ascribe any intrinsic superiority to humans or any quality of being unnatural to, well, anything in the universe. So I am speaking to what is evolutionarily desirable and beneficial to our species. The way we affect our environment is clearly self-destructive. It's not about what's right and what's wrong, it's about what is good and bad for our species.
Our intellect is by far our main biological advantage. By other animals' standards, we're slow, weak, vulnerable to disease and the elements, and not particularly perceptive. I don't understand how you can question the validity of assuming that intelligence is evolutionarily desirable. Sure, good eyesight, manual dexterity and bipedal locomotion are other big ones, but in the past couple millennia they've been eating intellect's dust as far as directly resulting in the proliferation of humankind.
All I'm saying is that our biggest advantage has recently become our biggest peril. It's allowed us to learn to make obscene amounts of pollution and nuclear weapons and other things that could easily cause our extinction within a few generations.
Your general idea is very correct, there is no difference between us and animals in that regard (and I'm quite aware that we are animals, I'm referring to non-human animals). And yes, only people who want the war should participate in the war. Why the fuck would I go to war if I didn't want the war? If you go to war of free will to benefit others, you're still doing it because you want to benefit others. As for the draft and joining the guard, they're still choices made by people (voting for the former and a conscious risk to join for the latter). I live in Canada.
Does a dog have the same choice? Did dogs get to vote on whether they were "draftable"? Can a dog pack up and move out of a state that uses dogs for military purposes? Can a dog decline to join the military training program on the basis that it might result in ending up in a war?
The only thing in the military that compares to the way non-human animals are used is equipment. Soldiers take pretty good care of their M-16s and their boots too.
Correlation does not imply causation in most circumstances.
Correlation alone never ever ever implies causation. A lot of people seem to be having trouble with the word imply. One postulate either implies or does not imply another, there is no "sometimes". Saying that A = true does not imply B = true does not mean that A = true implies B = false, it just means that you can't say what B is based solely on A.
If a flag is Canadian, then it is red and white. But if a flag is red and white, it is not necessarily Canadian. Flag = Canadian implies Flag = Red and White, but Flag = Red and White does not imply Flag = Canadian (even though sometimes Flag = Red and White and Flag = Canadian will both be true). In other words, you need only know the country to tell what colors are on a flag, but you need more information than the colors of the flag to tell what country it represents.
If you didn't train dogs, pigeons, horses, elephants, sharks and what have you in the ways of war in the first place, their deaths wouldn't have to be honored and they wouldn't need to be stuffed and mounted.
Humans go to war for a variety of reasons, all of which benefit humans. Perhaps they're defending their country against invaders, or attacking another country to boost their resources. What do the animals have to gain? They don't give a shit about invaders or resources. If they knew better, would they suddenly come out of the wild and join the military? If I were such an animal, I sure wouldn't trade my normal life in the wild for a life of captivity (well-treated or otherwise) and incomprehensible danger.
...don't talk about how humans compare to animals as if turning the world over to the hyenas would bring about a Utopia.
The difference is that humans have evolved intellectually to the point where we can cause a lot more damage to our environment than a hyena, and also to the point where we should know better but apparently don't. We have the capability and general inclination to mess with nature in ways that make a world run by hyenas look quite utopian by comparison. I don't know whether hyenas generally hold to higher or lower moral standards than we do, but frankly, even a truly evil dumbass makes a less dangerous leader than a moderately evil genius.
RTFA: Getting rid of his vText account would stop the stream of unwanted SMS message problem, but Bubrouski said he enjoys reading the messages he receives, and blocks companies and individuals when the volume of SMS they're sending him gets too high.
There is no question of right or wrong here. Blizzard is not trying to be a moral compass or a public censor, they're just doing what they think will draw and keep customers. Evidently, they reasoned that not disallowing gay guilds would indirectly result in harassment (either by or against such guilds), ultimately losing them customers, and that they would lose fewer customers by simply censoring them out, figuring most gay people can get along just fine without a gay guild. Whether or not it's right or by choice or whatever is irrelevant -- all that matters is the bean counters' bottom line inside a specified time frame.
Although I am absolutely against censorship and whatnot, remember that this is an opt-in, paid service. Your 'rights' are only determined by what Blizzard thinks they have to do in order to continue maximizing profits. If you don't like it, you can stop playing World of Warcraft. Blizzard's only responsibility is to their shareholders, which translates into a responsibility to minimize the number of people who don't like it.
Yes, and yes. The thing in question here is Toyota's Power Split Device, which is a constantly-engaged planetary gear set that acts as a transmission and drives (or is partially driven by) the electric motor/generator. Which appears to be exactly what the patent describes.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense. Don't just throw meaningless "don't rock the boat" and "can't fight city hall" and "it was a fun ride, but" statements at Google based on hype and buzz, just because you can't understand how they succeed without conforming. No one ever did anything great by sticking to the "rules" that are propped up by people riding on the coattails of the last person who did something great. Your can't-do attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy of self-doubt that has killed more dreams in the history of humanity than any real obstacle.
The next-quarter-result mentality comes from the top. It would require Google's management to cave to this Wall Street whining, which, as powerful as the "Wall Street community" thinks it is, doesn't mean squat to them. Larry Page and Sergey Brin own controlling stock in Google, and they're interested in long-term benefits (assuming they don't sell out). The only power the analysts have over them is a measure of influence on the most fickle of Google's investors, and any negativity resulting from that will blow over and balance out in a relatively short period of time. Google's got a good long-term plan, and if they stay the path there's no reason they can't prove you utterly wrong.
So Sergey developed multiple personalities and duped Larry Page into selling him (them?) his stock?
Couldn't have said it better myself (so I won't). This is precisely why Google's business model has been working so well, in my opinion. Investors calling for Google to go the traditional route (and thus open the ugly, ugly door to input from impatient and fidgety Wall Street suits) are a threat to the long term success of the company. I'm convinced it's in Google's long-term interest to stay the path and let the stock price reflect investments that benefit the future of the company.
It's not a list made by experts analyzing the merit of the games. It was a poll: "Which game did you like best?" Clearly, there is a broader range of people (at least in their poll cross-section) that liked certain Final Fantasy style games best, unless they asked the question a certain way or skewed the results to make them look better for some reason.
What a rock-solid scientific argument. I take it back, the list was definitely biased.
Just a slow day at work...
You're not listening. I don't play the game that much. I have a job, a girlfriend I live with, 2 businesses on the side, volunteer stuff and a social life. I'm starting my Master's in electrical engineering soon. I've never played more than 6 hours in a week. And the game is still fun.
For #1: You missed my point. Skill is relevant to level up. A level 12 character won't beat a level 60 character, but skill is more important than time to get from level 12 to level 60. If the game was so moronic that all it took was a time investment and no skill whatsoever, who would play it? Not me.
For #2: That makes no sense. If you play 5 hours a week for 4 weeks, and some kid of comparable skill plays 10 hours a day for 2 days, you'll be at more or less the same level (within reason - you do have to be able to play in chunks of at least half an hour or so). It's not like you go down levels if you don't play. There's always going to be ample amounts of players below you, at your level and above you. You can be crushed just as easily by someone who slowly leveled to 60 over two years as someone who blitzed through it in a month. I fail to see how someone reaching high levels more rapidly than you (in real-life time) affects your game experience.
For #3: See #2. There's nothing stopping WoW from being just as rewarding to a casual player (which I am, so quit telling me how I value time) as to a hardcore one. The only disadvantage is that you're paying the same monthly fee.
OMFG! 7 of 10 games in the list are Square-Enix! They must have like totally biased the results somehow!
Or maybe Square-Enix just made some really good games?
Recall Blizzard in the PC world... every title in the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series is in the top 20 sellers of all time, and most won Game of the Year awards across the board.
Or maybe they're just good games?
Even if I'm smarter and a better gamer, even if I have more talent for the game it doesn't matter: the game gives preferential skills/stats/etc to people with an extreme excess of time on their hands (or no time management skills).
This is where most of the arguments in this thread fail. Yes, ceteris paribus, spending more time equals better character stats and better items. However:
I can't comment on other MMORPGs, but World of Warcraft does reward good playing. It also rewards more playing by design, but everyone seems to assume that grinding and tradeskills are the only way to make money, and that money is the only way to be rewarded.
Good players are far more likely to:
Roleplaying is rewarded (at least on RP servers) by higher-level characters probably more than any other thing you can do, and it is characteristic of good playing (after all, you play to have fun, and the more fun you have the better you're playing). Getting into a good guild can get you items from raids. You can trade services for gold or items. And finally, I'll say it again: you don't have to have all the best items all the time to have fun playing.
Seems to me you guys have all lost the spirit of playing games for fun.
If someone wants to allocate more money (resources) to the game how is that any different from them allocating more time?
Because time spent playing (by the player, in real life) equals time spent by the character -- thus, the character is actually doing something to earn his or her money or items. Money spent in real life to buy gold or items is disjoint from the game (what did your character do to earn that gold or item?).
Says you. So play a game where the designer encourages rather than discourages real-world trade in items. They've been designed so that in-game mechanics make the game balanced taking into account the influence of real-world trade.
On the other hand, for various reasons I consider legitimate and important, I would rather play a game where I know that real-world wealth has no effect on status in-game. A large proportion of MMORPG players share my desire. Thus, Blizzard and other designers have opted to discourage real-world trade in items using whatever means are at their disposal, and designed the game mechanics assuming that no real-world trade exists. Thus, in theory, the game meets my desires. Real-world trade in items for a game that has been designed to work better without the practice can only detract from the experience for players like me, who would rather play under the assumption that none exists.
Cheating. Let's examine the primary arguments that attempt to legitimize the practice of buying gold rather than earning it in-game:
"I don't have time in real life to spend hours doing repetitive stuff to earn gold."
Sounds like impatient instant-gratification whining. There are lots of fun and non-repetitive ways to earn gold in most MMORPGs -- try to be imaginative (in WoW, try playing the Auction House or using roleplaying to sell goods or services). I have a full-time job as an engineer, a girlfriend I live with, and plenty of other commitments, and I earn enough in-game money in WoW to keep me interested. If you can't have fun without having the absolute best items all the time, then don't play.
"The real world is a free market and the gold had to come from somewhere."
Blizzard (and other companies) purposely didn't account for this when they designed the balancing mechanics of the game. Yes, the gold had to come from somewhere, but realize that when creatures and resources respawn infinitely, dedicated gold farmers can theoretically rack up infinite amounts of gold. The only difference between that and duping is the investment of time.
Here's the potential market -- people who:
That's a pretty small market, considering there are only 1.75 million XBOX 360s sold, and the original XBOX sold 25 million units. Knock off the vast majority of that already slim market if the expectation is that they will pay for XBOX 360 Live and Blizzard's monthly fee (I'm sure they wouldn't do this, but how else would it work?). Complete waste of Blizzard's resources.
In terms of value, a human's life ranks far above an animals.
Says you.
You missed my point. I agree with you entirely. The "moral standards" comment was a sarcastic one directed at the parent post. I don't ascribe any intrinsic superiority to humans or any quality of being unnatural to, well, anything in the universe. So I am speaking to what is evolutionarily desirable and beneficial to our species. The way we affect our environment is clearly self-destructive. It's not about what's right and what's wrong, it's about what is good and bad for our species.
Our intellect is by far our main biological advantage. By other animals' standards, we're slow, weak, vulnerable to disease and the elements, and not particularly perceptive. I don't understand how you can question the validity of assuming that intelligence is evolutionarily desirable. Sure, good eyesight, manual dexterity and bipedal locomotion are other big ones, but in the past couple millennia they've been eating intellect's dust as far as directly resulting in the proliferation of humankind.
All I'm saying is that our biggest advantage has recently become our biggest peril. It's allowed us to learn to make obscene amounts of pollution and nuclear weapons and other things that could easily cause our extinction within a few generations.
Your general idea is very correct, there is no difference between us and animals in that regard (and I'm quite aware that we are animals, I'm referring to non-human animals). And yes, only people who want the war should participate in the war. Why the fuck would I go to war if I didn't want the war? If you go to war of free will to benefit others, you're still doing it because you want to benefit others. As for the draft and joining the guard, they're still choices made by people (voting for the former and a conscious risk to join for the latter). I live in Canada.
Does a dog have the same choice? Did dogs get to vote on whether they were "draftable"? Can a dog pack up and move out of a state that uses dogs for military purposes? Can a dog decline to join the military training program on the basis that it might result in ending up in a war?
The only thing in the military that compares to the way non-human animals are used is equipment. Soldiers take pretty good care of their M-16s and their boots too.
Correlation does not imply causation in most circumstances.
Correlation alone never ever ever implies causation. A lot of people seem to be having trouble with the word imply. One postulate either implies or does not imply another, there is no "sometimes". Saying that A = true does not imply B = true does not mean that A = true implies B = false, it just means that you can't say what B is based solely on A.
If a flag is Canadian, then it is red and white. But if a flag is red and white, it is not necessarily Canadian. Flag = Canadian implies Flag = Red and White, but Flag = Red and White does not imply Flag = Canadian (even though sometimes Flag = Red and White and Flag = Canadian will both be true). In other words, you need only know the country to tell what colors are on a flag, but you need more information than the colors of the flag to tell what country it represents.
If you didn't train dogs, pigeons, horses, elephants, sharks and what have you in the ways of war in the first place, their deaths wouldn't have to be honored and they wouldn't need to be stuffed and mounted.
Humans go to war for a variety of reasons, all of which benefit humans. Perhaps they're defending their country against invaders, or attacking another country to boost their resources. What do the animals have to gain? They don't give a shit about invaders or resources. If they knew better, would they suddenly come out of the wild and join the military? If I were such an animal, I sure wouldn't trade my normal life in the wild for a life of captivity (well-treated or otherwise) and incomprehensible danger.
The difference is that humans have evolved intellectually to the point where we can cause a lot more damage to our environment than a hyena, and also to the point where we should know better but apparently don't. We have the capability and general inclination to mess with nature in ways that make a world run by hyenas look quite utopian by comparison. I don't know whether hyenas generally hold to higher or lower moral standards than we do, but frankly, even a truly evil dumbass makes a less dangerous leader than a moderately evil genius.
Maybe it took the dialup users a few weeks to download that January patch.
RTFA: Getting rid of his vText account would stop the stream of unwanted SMS message problem, but Bubrouski said he enjoys reading the messages he receives, and blocks companies and individuals when the volume of SMS they're sending him gets too high.
There is no question of right or wrong here. Blizzard is not trying to be a moral compass or a public censor, they're just doing what they think will draw and keep customers. Evidently, they reasoned that not disallowing gay guilds would indirectly result in harassment (either by or against such guilds), ultimately losing them customers, and that they would lose fewer customers by simply censoring them out, figuring most gay people can get along just fine without a gay guild. Whether or not it's right or by choice or whatever is irrelevant -- all that matters is the bean counters' bottom line inside a specified time frame.
Although I am absolutely against censorship and whatnot, remember that this is an opt-in, paid service. Your 'rights' are only determined by what Blizzard thinks they have to do in order to continue maximizing profits. If you don't like it, you can stop playing World of Warcraft. Blizzard's only responsibility is to their shareholders, which translates into a responsibility to minimize the number of people who don't like it.
Do you work for Ford?
Yes, and yes. The thing in question here is Toyota's Power Split Device, which is a constantly-engaged planetary gear set that acts as a transmission and drives (or is partially driven by) the electric motor/generator. Which appears to be exactly what the patent describes.