There's an icon that appears in the toolbar when updates are available. If you're still on 1.0.1 and you haven't disabled that feature in the settings, then I bet that icon's been lit for a long time, just waiting for you to click on it!
The biggest weakness of firefox is that most users will never patch it. For example, I've never been aware of a firefox patch, nor have I applied one. Windows on the other hand harasses me relentlessly now to install patches IMMEDIATELY even if I'm in the middle of a game or something.
I'm uncertain has to how you speak to what 'most users' will or will not do. Just because you're lazy doesn't mean everyone else is. I patch my Firefox whenever it tells me to, or when I see that a patch has been released. Everyone I know who uses Firefox does the exact same thing.
Stop making general statements as to the habits of millions of other users based solely on your activities:)
I can take the code as it exists today, not change a single line other than the comments which state the license, and re-release it as non-GPL code. How is that not retrospectively changing the license on that code? I can even dig up previous versions and re-release them under a different license.
I guess the point is, you can always relicense code, but that never removes from existence the previous versions. And so, any change in license tends to only increase the freedoms available to users.
Of course, that last point is not strictly true: If license A lets you do "X but not Y" and license B lets you to "Y but not X", code offered under a dual license allows you to do "X or Y, but not both, depending on which license you accept." (When code gets offered under a dual license, the end users essentially get to pick which one they accept. Only one license affects a given user at a time.) Adding a second license did not strictly increase the total freedom available to the user, but it did increase their choices among restrictions.
I think what he was trying to say is that while you can make only that minor change and re-release your code, that change does not affect any already existing copies of your software. Those that have copies already are bound by the license at the time the license / software was acquired, not by the new license packaged with your re-releases. Thus your changes are not retrospective. That's how I understood it, anyways.
I hear that there are some World of Warcraft personal servers that host some small number of players. Maybe it doesn't suck so much if you had your whole guild on a single server, or something like that.
As far as I'm aware, these were illegally reverse-engineered servers. From the same group that duplicated Battle.net. (Their name escapes me at the moment). There's been a long legal battle between this group and Blizzard.
No, I rejected those terms, thats why I'm not getting a free trial.:) I read the EULA, and ToS. Trial is Quite obviously limited TIME, not limited scope. 14 days of trial does not equate to no access to chat, and key game features.
Well, despite what you say, the trial does exist in reality. Just because you don't like the terms of it doesn't mean it's not a trial. It just means you don't like the terms of it. No one's forcing it on you. And a trial is not limited to time, it's limited in any shape they please. Many game companies do this. Many game trials only allow you to play one level, using only certain weapons or skills, and other restrictions. Some trials have no time limit at all, but you just can't get past a certain point. This trial is no different. You're just reacting because you don't like the restrictions and therefore it's "wrong".
Now, from other comments I understand why they don't want someone to be exposed to the POS that is the Trading hall and the cesspool that is chat, but since those are factors that will have bearing on whether I'm going to want to pay them money.
Awfully judgemental for someone who hasn't experienced it themselves. If you don't like the terms of that particular trial, find someone who owns it and try it. Or find one of the less restricted trials. Hell, I have a friend trial key from my Collector's Edition I never used. (all my friends all bought the game). As I understand it, the only chat that's limited is what's called "General chat" in which everyone in the zone you're currently in hears you. You can still speak locally, in parties and guilds if you join one, and you can still send and receive private messages. And, unless I'm mistaken, you can still see the General chat, you just can't respond in it, so you're not really missing anything. General chat is far from necessary, and most people who have played the game for more than a few months turn it off because there's so much spam in it. And you won't need the Auction House (Trading Hall?) when you're just starting out. You have no money. Even if you had money, there's nothing to buy for a character so low. So really, aside from the time restriction, the other two restrictions are barely noticable; that's my opinion as a person who's been playing since early beta.
Note, that blizzard does NOT have my credit card information because I elected NOT to give it to them. You don't need access to my credit card to give me free beer or apples or software.
They don't need your business either. No one needs anything within scope of this discussion. They want for multiple reasons, some benign (age verification, if under age, adult consent, address verification, etc), others not so much so (market profiling).
Giving my credit card information is the same as giving them authorization to keep it around, and the terms say they can charge it.
This is simply not true. Allowing a company to pre-auth your card does not give them the right to charge your card. Pre-auths are done for a myraid of reasons, many of them obvious: card validity, card owner verification, account verification, funds availability, to name a few. You have to agree to any and all charges at the time that they are made. While they may store the information, they can not charge you without your explicit consent. A pre-auth, to my knowledge, does not constitute this.
I'm going to continue paying for 3 accounts because 2 of them cost me nothing, yes. Funny how that works.
Free trial ought to mean free trial. Evidently it doesn't mean that to blizzard. Free ought to mean without cost, obligation, etc. Trial ought to mean test, evaluation, examination.
Giving up my credit card makes it NOT-FREE. Not being able to progress past level 20, not having access to chat features, not having access to trading hall, not being able to accumulate wealth make it NOT-TRIAL.
Not sure what dictionary you look at. The context of 'free trial' is important. It doesn't not mean "I can do whatever I want for as long as I want without any repercussions to me."
The free part means that they will not charge you money to use it (taking your credit card number is not the same as charging your credit card number. ) They didn't charge you to try it.
The trial part means 'limited time'. No where does it say that it means it's unrestricted. Notice also that they don't call it an 'unrestricted free trial -- NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED". Just because you wish it to be so doesn't translate into their responsibility to make it so, and your indignation at Blizzard for not fulfilling your misinterpretation is unwarranted.
Lastly, you agreed to these restrictions when you started the trial. They give you information to read, and an EULA and ToS to sign. Perhaps you should try reading these before just clicking by them.
One has to assume that part of the costs of purchasing the retail version of WoW are the retail packaging itself. In the case of the free trial I used, that cost had already been paid for the media I used (by my friend). After I had installed the game and tried it, I should have been able to simply activate a subscription without buying a retail box (which was already obsolete due to patches).
Most of the cost of purchasing software is to pay for the license of using the software. The very words 'free trial' give all the indication that:
A) Its free B) Its a trial (limited time!)
If you want to be able to play the full version, you have to pay for the software license, just like everyone else.
This format is accepted for all software, online or off, why should MMO's be any different? Simply because they are pay-to-play? It still requires software and thus it falls into the realm of software sales.
You may think that's silly, but I think its pretty strange that you would think it would be any other way. If I borrow a car from my friend and then he wants to sell it, that doesn't mean I should just get it for free because I already used it. Semi-poor analogy, but it still illustrates the point.
For all the people on here who bitch about Blizzard's past games that were exploitable, that blow off about 'how bad WoW is', try it yourself sometime. Sit down, write an MMO that breaks 2 million subscribers, that has over 480 (I think?) global servers, and oh, it has to be flawless and contain absolutely no bugs, and no chance of exploit ever.
Seem impossible? Because it is. Someone will always find a new way in, a new way to break the system. And before you start flaming me as a fanboy, I've done a lot of work on RDBMS, application programming and network / systems administration. I may not be informed about Blizzard's in house detail specifically, but I can venture to guess a few things. It disgusts me to see people who have no idea what they're actually talking about spewing off uneducated opinion as fact and passing judgement on things that they do not know, and I challenge them to do it better or shut up.
There is a point where it stops being acceptable to DDoS and otherwise bring down servers. I've said that repeatably. When are you going to realize that I have?
I read all your comments (3) in this particular thread, and I didn't see you say that anywhere:)
So by saying that DDoSing warez servers is a bad thing? Or are you saying that they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities?
I'm not saying that I like the idea of DDoS attacks; at the same time I'm not going to allow my personal dislike of them to keep from saying that it may or may not be a good thing for bringing down servers.
Ultimately, any manner of dealing with spam can be seen as a gateway for heavy handed squashing other things that major corporations don't like and carry enough influence to accomplish their own ends. If you're willing to dismiss one of them, you might as well give up on fighting netcrime in all its' forms.
Your context certainly makes it sound as though you support DDoS'ing with little regard for the collateral damage that doesn't affect you directly. You can't blame people for reaching this conclusion after reading what you wrote.
But, if you wish to focus on your last revision, the problem with what you're saying is that where you draw the line and where a corporation with million (or billions) of dollars draws the lines are two completely different places. Do you think they care about upsetting a few neighbors? I bet they don't.
Lastly, since when does eliminating one option as a potential solution mean that you must eliminate all options? By your statement, if I want a sandwich and I choose the turkey coldcut because the ham might be bad for me, I should just not have a sandwich and be content to be hungry.
You'll also see on eBay that the descriptions are carefully worded so as to avoid the appearance of selling ingame items (or characters) but really I don't think that's a defense.
I'd imagine its more of a defense then one thinks. Quoted from one auction:
We only provide service to help new players or players who are limited by time constraint to avoid the endless routine process. You are bidding on our time and effort.
The last section in bold is the important part. Whether you view this practice as a whole as good or bad, moral or immoral is basically unimportant. This person, whomever they may be, is technically not breaking the EULA or ToS. They are, by their own free will, trading you an item by their own choice. What you are paying for is exactly what they've stated, their investment of time, which no one owns, and no one has claim over except themselves.
I'm sure that many of you will flame me for this, and I want to be clear that I neither agree nor disagree with this practice of selling items in a virtual world, I'm simply speaking of the reality of the general situation and ways that are employed to get around it. Blizzard can not restrict people from selling their time and effort. No one can. And it is honestly extremely hard to determine what was done for what reason. A good example of this would by my guild. My guild is small and filled with close, real life, personal friends. I give my guildmates expensive items and money all the time, and they do the same for me. Am I going to get flagged and banned one day because I'm being generous? I gave my mage friend who was starting out a few blue(rare) items and about 10g to help him get caught up with us so we could play together. Am I breaking Blizzard's EULA / ToS? The currency that they paid in was friendship and fun, but it was currency nonetheless. It just wasn't direct monetary compensation.
To bring the point around to my original start, the same holds true for the people who label their auctions in that manner. It may be devious, and everyone knows the intention, but, unfortunately, it also neatly sidesteps the protection that the companies that own the IP put into place. And yes, the companies do own the items created in their virtual world, because they created it. But they do not own you, your time, or your effort.
Personally, I think the whole situation is interesting. People want a simulated world but they don't. You want free trade and an economy that ebbs and flows and acts like a real economy, but you really don't. Because that's exactly what this really is. Economies and such are all concepts, ideas that describe how events happen in an environment and what influences those events. For better or for worse, people selling things outside of the game influences the economy and changes it. People reject it out of a sense of fairness or because they are limited or feel that they are being somehow oppressed by this. Just because the world isn't real doesn't mean it should be a utopia. It wouldn't be an accurately simulated world if it didn't reflect the real world (in the sense of how the world works, not the people, places and species of the world). Unfortunately, the world isn't fair, real or virtual, and you have to deal with it one way or another, and that is truly what adds the flavor to MMO's. So, I wouldn't change a thing. Let it be and see where it goes and have fun on the way.
It makes me want to scream, "Turn on the fucking lights you retards!"
I always got the impression that this is done intentionally, for a variety of reasons:
Colors are more vibrant and details stand out better when thrown into sharp contrast.
For instance, finding a small piece of something in a rug with a light on can be fairly hard since your brain has to interpret all that visual information. However, if the area is dark, and you shine light around, the object is much more visible due to the sharp contrast. You'll notice this is why they use flashlights even in well-lit areas at times.
Turning on the lights may disturb the crime scene.
Who knows what's happening when they first get there. All clues and evidence are important, and for all one knows, turning on the lights might disturb something. Granted, this is reaching, buut that's the point. They try not to change the environment as much as possible so they don't contaminate anything. Again, reaching, but what if said killer left a blood spot on the bulb of the lamp in a room with the victim and Joe Schmoe Crime Lab Investigator comes in and snaps on the light... oops.. there goes the DNA sample that just burned up from the heat of the lighting coil in the lamp.
Each one of those reasons alone would be enough for me not to just turn on the light.
I'll assume you're speaking about the NPC hunting in EQ2. In the beta, they guards didn't know where anyone was (specifically quest-related NPC's). I understand that was to be their functionality eventually. I assume they do it now in the retail.
Having been in the beta for both, I would have to say that there are particular things about both that I like and dislike:
World of Warcraft
* Like: Graphics, they are bubbly and cartoony and match all the predecessors perfectly.
* Like: Gameplay, as always, Blizzard has reduced the normal 'level-grinding' down to almost nothing.
* Like: Mobs are rated accurately. Finally a game where if the mob is rated as "even" to me, it doesn't actually kick my butt.
* Like: Raiding! PvP and raiding with a group of people who actually listen and pay attention can be extremely fun!
* Like: Guilds, they're easy to create and control.
* Like: Instancing.
* Dislike: Method of selling crafts. Currently, as far as I know, there's only 1 auction house on each continent, and no method for players to 'display' their wares.
* Dislike: The auction house. While it is pretty and easy to use, it's barely adequate for doing any real amounts of selling. Auction times are not displayed, no history of items, or how much they sold for, etc etc, all make it hard to determine what the 'going rate' is.
* Dislike: Lack of control over raid groups. At least give the ability for the raid leader to mute/moderate the damn raid chat channel!
Everquest II
* Like: Graphics, very sharp looking game, especially when you turn up the juice in the settings.
* Like: Crafting, crafting, crafting. I love the crafting in this game. You actually have to pay attention and it is worthwhile to do it!
* Like: Class subsets. I really enjoyed knowing that I could reach major leveling milestones and still have choices about the development of my character beyond the original class choice.
* Like: Boat travel, I loved being able to go to a lot of different places via boat, instanteously.
* Dislike: Flying travel. The griffons, when they were working, looked terrible, had terrible clipping, and seemed slow.
* Dislike: Inventory control. I know you need to get bags for inventory space, but sheesh.
* Dislike: NPC hunting. WoW has this too, but somehow it wasn't so bad in WoW for me. In EQII, it really annoyed me.
There's a few a put together. Ultimately, being a long time Blizzardite, I'll play WoW. I'm a big time crafter, so the decision was actually hard, but ultimately I have more fun playing WoW, and I've been waiting a long time to play it. Plus the extras in the collector's edition are going to be a real treat!
The install is easy, but you'll need to read the forums to get it work with the current patch level. (There's a number to change in a few files). I'm sure the guys over there will release an updated version when retail ships.
This mod is fantastic, it adds many hot bars which you can turn on and off, several features, and a quest text fading enable/disable feature. Turn it off, and bang, quest text appears in it's completeness, instantaneously:)
I prefer: "What goes around comes around";)
Seriously though, when are we going to overhaul these amazingly archaic patent laws? It's like watching a bunch of kids in a sandbox playing tag... eventually one of them punches another and they all start crying and peeing in the sand...
I'm playing the beta, and I have to admit, before I started playing, I wasn't really interested myself. But, since I have time on my hands waiting for WoW, I figured I'd give it a shot. I am also a veteran MMORPG addict;)
Surprisingly, it's a lot better than I thought it would be. I have to say, I really like the combat system. I can't really talk too much about it, since it's under NDA still, but I will say that I won't be surprised if they ends up being a contender at some point. Mainly because it breaks out from the traditional areas of the MMO's. The Matrix Online is one of the few that isn't set in a typical fantasy time period. Aside from space-based MMO's like Eve and Earth & Beyond, these are few and far between. With the title and the trademark, and the addition of these voice actors, I think it'll be quick to grab a piece of the cake that is the current MMO market.
Tell me this, if the game is laggy for you and your beta friends, how laggy do you think its gonna get when you throw in a couple extra hundred users? You can't justify a problem that exists with a 200 person test with an 'optimized' version with 2,000 people.
You've made the same point again.:) The beta is running debug code, which causes more overhead on the server, which induces lag into the client. Let's be clear here and say that lag is a slang word that is typically defined as slowdowns experienced during gameplay, which may also be issues client-side with overzealous graphics settings, server side with overloaded servers, etc. True network "lag" is really latency, and people tend to think that lag is latency (all network based) when it's really not. The only part that the company can control directly is the server side and the to a lesser degree, the network side. The can recommend certain things to me as a client, but ultimately it's my perogative how I want to handle it. If I choose to jack my graphics settings all the way up, and download files in the background, and play mp3's and login to the game and get 2 fps, I can't really blame them for that, I'm the one who's sucking up all my bandwidth, processor, memory and disk i/o with other tasks. So, we can sit here and complain about these companies, their software and their lag, but really, how much of that is caused by our own actions? I play EQ2 and WoW with my graphics set to mid levels, I don't run any programs in the background and I suffer slim to no lag at all, even on the beta servers. I don't have a powerhouse computer, as I've stated before.
When the game goes live, the debug server software will be removed, and replaced with optimized server software. This will produce drastically less overhead, and therefore will not induce nearly as much lag, which is to say that the server will more resources available to handle the transactions between the client and server instead of wasting resources logging extreme amounts of data to disk, or however else it may be recording it. Because it induces less lag, it will be able to handle more clients, not mention that there will probably be more servers and other load balancing techniques that may or may not exist in the beta environment.
I have yet to see someone run a dedicated BF1942/Vietnam server above 64 players and not have it grind to a halt due to lag.
A comparison between an MMO an FPS wouldn't really be considered valid; it's apples to oranges. The dynamics of the game, and how that information is transferred between clients and server are completely different.
There is not much innovation here, when it comes to client/server data transfer & processing, this has all been done before. There are many MMORPG's that have done this: EQ, DoAC, FFXI, WoW, Eve to name a few. They probably all do it differently, and I'm sure they all strive to do it better, but it's not new, it's simply improvement on something that already works.
Thanks for the link to pricewatch:) I was aware of the prices there, but generally I have problems actually purchasing from some of the sites listed there.
3) Blizzard has the weird advantage that it seems like, at least from my perspective, that every gamer knows a few WoW beta testers. They are already totally hooked and play it basically as if it were a released game. There is this huge existing sentiment that EQ2 is going to suck relative to WoW no matter what, so what difference does it make if they wait to make it better?
I'm a tester for both, and I have 2 strong biases:
I love Blizzard
I hated EQ
Those having been stated, I was extremely surprised at EQ2. I went into it expecting to have the same reaction I had to the original EQ. On the other side of the coin, having been a Blizzardite since the original Warcraft, which many would say, defined the RTS world, I've had WoW on preorder since... late 2001/early 2002 I think. Now, sadly, I am confused and ashamed to admit that I am so. EQ2 is much better than I expected it to be, and I do feel that is it as production-ready as it's going to get. WoW is just as fantastic, but in a different way, which leads me to my point:
Having played both extensively, it's my opinion that the demographic that each targets is a tad different. There is most certainly a large amount of overlap, but in my opinion, WoW is easier to play, while EQ2 is more involved. Don't mistake involved for engrossing. They are both extremely engrossing and very fun to play. But I feel that if someone weren't a hardcore gamer, like myself, and they wanted to get into an MMORPG, then WoW would be what I would recommend if asked. On the other hand, if a hardcore gamer came to me and wanted suggestions on something they could put into an IV and attach to their arm, I would probably say EQ2 (though, I love WoW enough to say both >;)
I won't say that one is going to suck compared to the other, because I think if one were to look at it objectively, you'd see that while they are both MMORPG's and they have similar playstyles (quests, crafting, yadda yadda), the approaches that each uses to accomplish these tasks are vastly different, and therefore affect different people differently, and I think that's an important distinction.
In a beta, if YOU the beta tester experience a 'few' lag issues, upon release the THOUSANDS of users will take lag issues like a bulldozer to a sand castle. Less than 20 people? Pfft, try 2000 people suddenly entering the area to see whats new.
I have been involved in several MMO betas, along with several non-MMO betas and this particular comment really makes me wonder. People always seem to forget that when games are in beta, the servers are typically running debug versions of the software. Thus the game is going to be much more laggy and slow than it will be when it is running optimized (release) code. MMO's are not some sort of ground-breaking network technology, they don't have to invent new ways to handle the traffic. Its slow and laggy because the software running on the servers is logging everything to an extreme amount, and any programmer will tell you that running debug code is guaranteed to cause tremendous overhead. You can rest assured that when the game releases they will be prepared. They may be big software companies and money grubbing bastards, but they're not stupid, well, not totally anyways.;)
So its the Doom 3 of MMORPGs? I skipped Doom 3 due to its system requirements,
I myself have a midrange system, and I did some investigating of EQ2 (I am also in the beta). The game was designed to support a wide range of computers. The minimum requirements for EQ2 are not that high, but that's exactly what they are, _minimum_ requirements. Running the game in High Performance mode turns off a lot of the visual aspects and as expected, the game runs extremely fast and smooth. So, the comparison to Doom III isn't particularly valid, because the minimum specs on that were very high. EQ2's are much less so, but if you want to run the game with all the visual options, then they've certainly added some really beautiful stuff into the game. Of course, you need the hardware to support it. But, that's how the world works. You want big guns? You need big arms to carry them.
Radeon 9800 Pro ~= $150
Can you tell me where you found that price? That's a lot cheaper than any price I can find, so if you can point me, I'd love to buy a few:)
I don't see how this is differant than people not being able to load some web pages because of their choice to use Firefox.
Aside from not being a question of human rights...;)
But, generally I agree. It's a game, set within a specific time period. People should be able to deal with it, realizing that their not personally being targetted. However, once you start identifying your character as yourself and start reacting accordingly, you need to take a break.
The main thing that separates Blizzard from their competitors isn't being innovative (they aren't),
I don't know if I'd agree with THAT part of the statement. Having been a Blizzard follower since the beginning, many things they have done have been innovative. Certainly not everything, but some things. Warcraft (the original;), for instance, was a fantastic game, and up until that point, all the RTS's I had played (what few there were) left a bit to be desired when it came to things like UI.
They're trying to break through again with innovation with World of Warcraft, doing things that no MMORPG has done, or at least hadn't done until very recently. I remember back in 2002 when I worked for Electronics Boutique, I was reading an article about how they developers at Blizzard were working on "loadless" worlds in WoW, and being in beta, they've largely done this. There are periods of loading, but only at infrequent intervals, (like when I 'teleport' several zones away) which is to be expected.
but their consistent attention to detail.
This part is definitely true. The biggest complaint I tend to hear from people when they talk about Blizzard is development time and pushing dates back. I can't say that I don't agree that it's frustrating to continually have a date pushed back on a game that I've been waiting for, but with Blizzard, I've long since learned that patience is rewarded. I don't care how long they push a date back, because I know that once that game releases, my wife's not going to see me for at least a month.;)
For these reasons, Blizzard will always have my respect as a company and game maker.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an icon that appears in the toolbar when updates are available. If you're still on 1.0.1 and you haven't disabled that feature in the settings, then I bet that icon's been lit for a long time, just waiting for you to click on it!
The biggest weakness of firefox is that most users will never patch it. For example, I've never been aware of a firefox patch, nor have I applied one. Windows on the other hand harasses me relentlessly now to install patches IMMEDIATELY even if I'm in the middle of a game or something.
:)
I'm uncertain has to how you speak to what 'most users' will or will not do. Just because you're lazy doesn't mean everyone else is. I patch my Firefox whenever it tells me to, or when I see that a patch has been released. Everyone I know who uses Firefox does the exact same thing.
Stop making general statements as to the habits of millions of other users based solely on your activities
I can take the code as it exists today, not change a single line other than the comments which state the license, and re-release it as non-GPL code. How is that not retrospectively changing the license on that code? I can even dig up previous versions and re-release them under a different license.
I guess the point is, you can always relicense code, but that never removes from existence the previous versions. And so, any change in license tends to only increase the freedoms available to users.
Of course, that last point is not strictly true: If license A lets you do "X but not Y" and license B lets you to "Y but not X", code offered under a dual license allows you to do "X or Y, but not both, depending on which license you accept." (When code gets offered under a dual license, the end users essentially get to pick which one they accept. Only one license affects a given user at a time.) Adding a second license did not strictly increase the total freedom available to the user, but it did increase their choices among restrictions.
I think what he was trying to say is that while you can make only that minor change and re-release your code, that change does not affect any already existing copies of your software. Those that have copies already are bound by the license at the time the license / software was acquired, not by the new license packaged with your re-releases. Thus your changes are not retrospective. That's how I understood it, anyways.
I hear that there are some World of Warcraft personal servers that host some small number of players. Maybe it doesn't suck so much if you had your whole guild on a single server, or something like that.
As far as I'm aware, these were illegally reverse-engineered servers. From the same group that duplicated Battle.net. (Their name escapes me at the moment). There's been a long legal battle between this group and Blizzard.
Looked up the name: BnetD
Damn you HTML Formatted! Should be:
WTS ~ Preview Button -- LOWER THAN AH!!
Preview Button ftw~!
No, I rejected those terms, thats why I'm not getting a free trial. :) I read the EULA, and ToS. Trial is Quite obviously limited TIME, not limited scope. 14 days of trial does not equate to no access to chat, and key game features.
Well, despite what you say, the trial does exist in reality. Just because you don't like the terms of it doesn't mean it's not a trial. It just means you don't like the terms of it. No one's forcing it on you. And a trial is not limited to time, it's limited in any shape they please. Many game companies do this. Many game trials only allow you to play one level, using only certain weapons or skills, and other restrictions. Some trials have no time limit at all, but you just can't get past a certain point. This trial is no different. You're just reacting because you don't like the restrictions and therefore it's "wrong".
Now, from other comments I understand why they don't want someone to be exposed to the POS that is the Trading hall and the cesspool that is chat, but since those are factors that will have bearing on whether I'm going to want to pay them money.
Awfully judgemental for someone who hasn't experienced it themselves. If you don't like the terms of that particular trial, find someone who owns it and try it. Or find one of the less restricted trials. Hell, I have a friend trial key from my Collector's Edition I never used. (all my friends all bought the game). As I understand it, the only chat that's limited is what's called "General chat" in which everyone in the zone you're currently in hears you. You can still speak locally, in parties and guilds if you join one, and you can still send and receive private messages. And, unless I'm mistaken, you can still see the General chat, you just can't respond in it, so you're not really missing anything. General chat is far from necessary, and most people who have played the game for more than a few months turn it off because there's so much spam in it. And you won't need the Auction House (Trading Hall?) when you're just starting out. You have no money. Even if you had money, there's nothing to buy for a character so low. So really, aside from the time restriction, the other two restrictions are barely noticable; that's my opinion as a person who's been playing since early beta.
Note, that blizzard does NOT have my credit card information because I elected NOT to give it to them. You don't need access to my credit card to give me free beer or apples or software.
They don't need your business either. No one needs anything within scope of this discussion. They want for multiple reasons, some benign (age verification, if under age, adult consent, address verification, etc), others not so much so (market profiling).
Giving my credit card information is the same as giving them authorization to keep it around, and the terms say they can charge it.
This is simply not true. Allowing a company to pre-auth your card does not give them the right to charge your card. Pre-auths are done for a myraid of reasons, many of them obvious: card validity, card owner verification, account verification, funds availability, to name a few. You have to agree to any and all charges at the time that they are made. While they may store the information, they can not charge you without your explicit consent. A pre-auth, to my knowledge, does not constitute this.
I'm going to continue paying for 3 accounts because 2 of them cost me nothing, yes. Funny how that works.
Free trial ought to mean free trial. Evidently it doesn't mean that to blizzard. Free ought to mean without cost, obligation, etc. Trial ought to mean test, evaluation, examination.
Giving up my credit card makes it NOT-FREE. Not being able to progress past level 20, not having access to chat features, not having access to trading hall, not being able to accumulate wealth make it NOT-TRIAL.
Not sure what dictionary you look at. The context of 'free trial' is important. It doesn't not mean "I can do whatever I want for as long as I want without any repercussions to me."
The free part means that they will not charge you money to use it (taking your credit card number is not the same as charging your credit card number. ) They didn't charge you to try it.
The trial part means 'limited time'. No where does it say that it means it's unrestricted. Notice also that they don't call it an 'unrestricted free trial -- NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED". Just because you wish it to be so doesn't translate into their responsibility to make it so, and your indignation at Blizzard for not fulfilling your misinterpretation is unwarranted.
Lastly, you agreed to these restrictions when you started the trial. They give you information to read, and an EULA and ToS to sign. Perhaps you should try reading these before just clicking by them.
One has to assume that part of the costs of purchasing the retail version of WoW are the retail packaging itself. In the case of the free trial I used, that cost had already been paid for the media I used (by my friend). After I had installed the game and tried it, I should have been able to simply activate a subscription without buying a retail box (which was already obsolete due to patches).
Most of the cost of purchasing software is to pay for the license of using the software. The very words 'free trial' give all the indication that:
A) Its free
B) Its a trial (limited time!)
If you want to be able to play the full version, you have to pay for the software license, just like everyone else.
This format is accepted for all software, online or off, why should MMO's be any different? Simply because they are pay-to-play? It still requires software and thus it falls into the realm of software sales.
You may think that's silly, but I think its pretty strange that you would think it would be any other way. If I borrow a car from my friend and then he wants to sell it, that doesn't mean I should just get it for free because I already used it. Semi-poor analogy, but it still illustrates the point.
Thank you. I totally agree.
For all the people on here who bitch about Blizzard's past games that were exploitable, that blow off about 'how bad WoW is', try it yourself sometime. Sit down, write an MMO that breaks 2 million subscribers, that has over 480 (I think?) global servers, and oh, it has to be flawless and contain absolutely no bugs, and no chance of exploit ever.
Seem impossible? Because it is. Someone will always find a new way in, a new way to break the system. And before you start flaming me as a fanboy, I've done a lot of work on RDBMS, application programming and network / systems administration. I may not be informed about Blizzard's in house detail specifically, but I can venture to guess a few things. It disgusts me to see people who have no idea what they're actually talking about spewing off uneducated opinion as fact and passing judgement on things that they do not know, and I challenge them to do it better or shut up.
There is a point where it stops being acceptable to DDoS and otherwise bring down servers. I've said that repeatably. When are you going to realize that I have?
:)
I read all your comments (3) in this particular thread, and I didn't see you say that anywhere
So by saying that DDoSing warez servers is a bad thing? Or are you saying that they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities?
I'm not saying that I like the idea of DDoS attacks; at the same time I'm not going to allow my personal dislike of them to keep from saying that it may or may not be a good thing for bringing down servers.
Ultimately, any manner of dealing with spam can be seen as a gateway for heavy handed squashing other things that major corporations don't like and carry enough influence to accomplish their own ends. If you're willing to dismiss one of them, you might as well give up on fighting netcrime in all its' forms.
Your context certainly makes it sound as though you support DDoS'ing with little regard for the collateral damage that doesn't affect you directly. You can't blame people for reaching this conclusion after reading what you wrote.
But, if you wish to focus on your last revision, the problem with what you're saying is that where you draw the line and where a corporation with million (or billions) of dollars draws the lines are two completely different places. Do you think they care about upsetting a few neighbors? I bet they don't.
Lastly, since when does eliminating one option as a potential solution mean that you must eliminate all options? By your statement, if I want a sandwich and I choose the turkey coldcut because the ham might be bad for me, I should just not have a sandwich and be content to be hungry.
I'd imagine its more of a defense then one thinks. Quoted from one auction:
We only provide service to help new players or players who are limited by time constraint to avoid the endless routine process. You are bidding on our time and effort.
The last section in bold is the important part. Whether you view this practice as a whole as good or bad, moral or immoral is basically unimportant. This person, whomever they may be, is technically not breaking the EULA or ToS. They are, by their own free will, trading you an item by their own choice. What you are paying for is exactly what they've stated, their investment of time, which no one owns, and no one has claim over except themselves.
I'm sure that many of you will flame me for this, and I want to be clear that I neither agree nor disagree with this practice of selling items in a virtual world, I'm simply speaking of the reality of the general situation and ways that are employed to get around it. Blizzard can not restrict people from selling their time and effort. No one can. And it is honestly extremely hard to determine what was done for what reason. A good example of this would by my guild. My guild is small and filled with close, real life, personal friends. I give my guildmates expensive items and money all the time, and they do the same for me. Am I going to get flagged and banned one day because I'm being generous? I gave my mage friend who was starting out a few blue(rare) items and about 10g to help him get caught up with us so we could play together. Am I breaking Blizzard's EULA / ToS? The currency that they paid in was friendship and fun, but it was currency nonetheless. It just wasn't direct monetary compensation.
To bring the point around to my original start, the same holds true for the people who label their auctions in that manner. It may be devious, and everyone knows the intention, but, unfortunately, it also neatly sidesteps the protection that the companies that own the IP put into place. And yes, the companies do own the items created in their virtual world, because they created it. But they do not own you, your time, or your effort.
Personally, I think the whole situation is interesting. People want a simulated world but they don't. You want free trade and an economy that ebbs and flows and acts like a real economy, but you really don't. Because that's exactly what this really is. Economies and such are all concepts, ideas that describe how events happen in an environment and what influences those events. For better or for worse, people selling things outside of the game influences the economy and changes it. People reject it out of a sense of fairness or because they are limited or feel that they are being somehow oppressed by this. Just because the world isn't real doesn't mean it should be a utopia. It wouldn't be an accurately simulated world if it didn't reflect the real world (in the sense of how the world works, not the people, places and species of the world). Unfortunately, the world isn't fair, real or virtual, and you have to deal with it one way or another, and that is truly what adds the flavor to MMO's. So, I wouldn't change a thing. Let it be and see where it goes and have fun on the way.
I always got the impression that this is done intentionally, for a variety of reasons:
For instance, finding a small piece of something in a rug with a light on can be fairly hard since your brain has to interpret all that visual information. However, if the area is dark, and you shine light around, the object is much more visible due to the sharp contrast. You'll notice this is why they use flashlights even in well-lit areas at times.
Who knows what's happening when they first get there. All clues and evidence are important, and for all one knows, turning on the lights might disturb something. Granted, this is reaching, buut that's the point. They try not to change the environment as much as possible so they don't contaminate anything. Again, reaching, but what if said killer left a blood spot on the bulb of the lamp in a room with the victim and Joe Schmoe Crime Lab Investigator comes in and snaps on the light... oops.. there goes the DNA sample that just burned up from the heat of the lighting coil in the lamp.
Each one of those reasons alone would be enough for me not to just turn on the light.
Yep :) As I stated earlier, I specifically mean quest NPC's. Not vendors, trainers, etc.
I'll assume you're speaking about the NPC hunting in EQ2. In the beta, they guards didn't know where anyone was (specifically quest-related NPC's). I understand that was to be their functionality eventually. I assume they do it now in the retail.
World of Warcraft /moderate the damn raid chat channel!
* Like: Graphics, they are bubbly and cartoony and match all the predecessors perfectly.
* Like: Gameplay, as always, Blizzard has reduced the normal 'level-grinding' down to almost nothing.
* Like: Mobs are rated accurately. Finally a game where if the mob is rated as "even" to me, it doesn't actually kick my butt.
* Like: Raiding! PvP and raiding with a group of people who actually listen and pay attention can be extremely fun!
* Like: Guilds, they're easy to create and control.
* Like: Instancing.
* Dislike: Method of selling crafts. Currently, as far as I know, there's only 1 auction house on each continent, and no method for players to 'display' their wares.
* Dislike: The auction house. While it is pretty and easy to use, it's barely adequate for doing any real amounts of selling. Auction times are not displayed, no history of items, or how much they sold for, etc etc, all make it hard to determine what the 'going rate' is.
* Dislike: Lack of control over raid groups. At least give the ability for the raid leader to mute
Everquest II
* Like: Graphics, very sharp looking game, especially when you turn up the juice in the settings.
* Like: Crafting, crafting, crafting. I love the crafting in this game. You actually have to pay attention and it is worthwhile to do it!
* Like: Class subsets. I really enjoyed knowing that I could reach major leveling milestones and still have choices about the development of my character beyond the original class choice.
* Like: Boat travel, I loved being able to go to a lot of different places via boat, instanteously.
* Dislike: Flying travel. The griffons, when they were working, looked terrible, had terrible clipping, and seemed slow.
* Dislike: Inventory control. I know you need to get bags for inventory space, but sheesh.
* Dislike: NPC hunting. WoW has this too, but somehow it wasn't so bad in WoW for me. In EQII, it really annoyed me.
There's a few a put together. Ultimately, being a long time Blizzardite, I'll play WoW. I'm a big time crafter, so the decision was actually hard, but ultimately I have more fun playing WoW, and I've been waiting a long time to play it. Plus the extras in the collector's edition are going to be a real treat!
Lit'l Red: What big eyes you have, Grandma!
Wolf: All the better to see you with, my dear.
Lit'l Red: What big teeth you have, Grandma!
Wolf: Allll the better to eat you with, my dear!
Marketing strategies at their best... ;)
The UI for WoW is completely customizable, including the quest text speed. There are a few mods out there, but only recommend one:
CTMod
The install is easy, but you'll need to read the forums to get it work with the current patch level. (There's a number to change in a few files). I'm sure the guys over there will release an updated version when retail ships.
This mod is fantastic, it adds many hot bars which you can turn on and off, several features, and a quest text fading enable/disable feature. Turn it off, and bang, quest text appears in it's completeness, instantaneously :)
Check it out, I can't play WoW without it :)
I prefer: "What goes around comes around" ;)
Seriously though, when are we going to overhaul these amazingly archaic patent laws? It's like watching a bunch of kids in a sandbox playing tag... eventually one of them punches another and they all start crying and peeing in the sand...
It hadn't been released when I made the post. A few hours later though (13:00 PST) I was downloading, and by 15:00 I was playing WoW (again!)
Surprisingly, it's a lot better than I thought it would be. I have to say, I really like the combat system. I can't really talk too much about it, since it's under NDA still, but I will say that I won't be surprised if they ends up being a contender at some point. Mainly because it breaks out from the traditional areas of the MMO's. The Matrix Online is one of the few that isn't set in a typical fantasy time period. Aside from space-based MMO's like Eve and Earth & Beyond, these are few and far between. With the title and the trademark, and the addition of these voice actors, I think it'll be quick to grab a piece of the cake that is the current MMO market.
You've made the same point again. :) The beta is running debug code, which causes more overhead on the server, which induces lag into the client. Let's be clear here and say that lag is a slang word that is typically defined as slowdowns experienced during gameplay, which may also be issues client-side with overzealous graphics settings, server side with overloaded servers, etc. True network "lag" is really latency, and people tend to think that lag is latency (all network based) when it's really not. The only part that the company can control directly is the server side and the to a lesser degree, the network side. The can recommend certain things to me as a client, but ultimately it's my perogative how I want to handle it. If I choose to jack my graphics settings all the way up, and download files in the background, and play mp3's and login to the game and get 2 fps, I can't really blame them for that, I'm the one who's sucking up all my bandwidth, processor, memory and disk i/o with other tasks. So, we can sit here and complain about these companies, their software and their lag, but really, how much of that is caused by our own actions? I play EQ2 and WoW with my graphics set to mid levels, I don't run any programs in the background and I suffer slim to no lag at all, even on the beta servers. I don't have a powerhouse computer, as I've stated before.
When the game goes live, the debug server software will be removed, and replaced with optimized server software. This will produce drastically less overhead, and therefore will not induce nearly as much lag, which is to say that the server will more resources available to handle the transactions between the client and server instead of wasting resources logging extreme amounts of data to disk, or however else it may be recording it. Because it induces less lag, it will be able to handle more clients, not mention that there will probably be more servers and other load balancing techniques that may or may not exist in the beta environment.
I have yet to see someone run a dedicated BF1942/Vietnam server above 64 players and not have it grind to a halt due to lag.
A comparison between an MMO an FPS wouldn't really be considered valid; it's apples to oranges. The dynamics of the game, and how that information is transferred between clients and server are completely different.
There is not much innovation here, when it comes to client/server data transfer & processing, this has all been done before. There are many MMORPG's that have done this: EQ, DoAC, FFXI, WoW, Eve to name a few. They probably all do it differently, and I'm sure they all strive to do it better, but it's not new, it's simply improvement on something that already works.
Thanks for the link to pricewatch :) I was aware of the prices there, but generally I have problems actually purchasing from some of the sites listed there.
I'm a tester for both, and I have 2 strong biases:
- I love Blizzard
- I hated EQ
Those having been stated, I was extremely surprised at EQ2. I went into it expecting to have the same reaction I had to the original EQ. On the other side of the coin, having been a Blizzardite since the original Warcraft, which many would say, defined the RTS world, I've had WoW on preorder since... late 2001/early 2002 I think. Now, sadly, I am confused and ashamed to admit that I am so. EQ2 is much better than I expected it to be, and I do feel that is it as production-ready as it's going to get. WoW is just as fantastic, but in a different way, which leads me to my point:Having played both extensively, it's my opinion that the demographic that each targets is a tad different. There is most certainly a large amount of overlap, but in my opinion, WoW is easier to play, while EQ2 is more involved. Don't mistake involved for engrossing. They are both extremely engrossing and very fun to play. But I feel that if someone weren't a hardcore gamer, like myself, and they wanted to get into an MMORPG, then WoW would be what I would recommend if asked. On the other hand, if a hardcore gamer came to me and wanted suggestions on something they could put into an IV and attach to their arm, I would probably say EQ2 (though, I love WoW enough to say both >;) I won't say that one is going to suck compared to the other, because I think if one were to look at it objectively, you'd see that while they are both MMORPG's and they have similar playstyles (quests, crafting, yadda yadda), the approaches that each uses to accomplish these tasks are vastly different, and therefore affect different people differently, and I think that's an important distinction.
I have been involved in several MMO betas, along with several non-MMO betas and this particular comment really makes me wonder. People always seem to forget that when games are in beta, the servers are typically running debug versions of the software. Thus the game is going to be much more laggy and slow than it will be when it is running optimized (release) code. MMO's are not some sort of ground-breaking network technology, they don't have to invent new ways to handle the traffic. Its slow and laggy because the software running on the servers is logging everything to an extreme amount, and any programmer will tell you that running debug code is guaranteed to cause tremendous overhead. You can rest assured that when the game releases they will be prepared. They may be big software companies and money grubbing bastards, but they're not stupid, well, not totally anyways. ;)
So its the Doom 3 of MMORPGs? I skipped Doom 3 due to its system requirements,
I myself have a midrange system, and I did some investigating of EQ2 (I am also in the beta). The game was designed to support a wide range of computers. The minimum requirements for EQ2 are not that high, but that's exactly what they are, _minimum_ requirements. Running the game in High Performance mode turns off a lot of the visual aspects and as expected, the game runs extremely fast and smooth. So, the comparison to Doom III isn't particularly valid, because the minimum specs on that were very high. EQ2's are much less so, but if you want to run the game with all the visual options, then they've certainly added some really beautiful stuff into the game. Of course, you need the hardware to support it. But, that's how the world works. You want big guns? You need big arms to carry them.
Radeon 9800 Pro ~= $150
Can you tell me where you found that price? That's a lot cheaper than any price I can find, so if you can point me, I'd love to buy a few :)
Aside from not being a question of human rights... ;)
But, generally I agree. It's a game, set within a specific time period. People should be able to deal with it, realizing that their not personally being targetted. However, once you start identifying your character as yourself and start reacting accordingly, you need to take a break.
I don't know if I'd agree with THAT part of the statement. Having been a Blizzard follower since the beginning, many things they have done have been innovative. Certainly not everything, but some things. Warcraft (the original ;), for instance, was a fantastic game, and up until that point, all the RTS's I had played (what few there were) left a bit to be desired when it came to things like UI.
They're trying to break through again with innovation with World of Warcraft, doing things that no MMORPG has done, or at least hadn't done until very recently. I remember back in 2002 when I worked for Electronics Boutique, I was reading an article about how they developers at Blizzard were working on "loadless" worlds in WoW, and being in beta, they've largely done this. There are periods of loading, but only at infrequent intervals, (like when I 'teleport' several zones away) which is to be expected.
but their consistent attention to detail.
This part is definitely true. The biggest complaint I tend to hear from people when they talk about Blizzard is development time and pushing dates back. I can't say that I don't agree that it's frustrating to continually have a date pushed back on a game that I've been waiting for, but with Blizzard, I've long since learned that patience is rewarded. I don't care how long they push a date back, because I know that once that game releases, my wife's not going to see me for at least a month. ;)
For these reasons, Blizzard will always have my respect as a company and game maker.