Er, forgive my leap to conclusions here, but isn't this basically gambling?
For fuck's sake SHUT UP.
When you log on to a MMORPG you are putting at stake your character and all his equipment. You may, by skill and luck, gain levels and acquire better equipment, and increase the value of your character, or you may suffer the misfortune of being devoured by a terrible dragon and have to start afresh (or at least be considerably set back - depends on local rules.)
The moment MMORPG characters and equipment have real-world monetary value, you're staking real value in a game of skill and luck, in the hope of winning more real value. Yes, you are gambling. And the MMORPG server is indeed a casino. Now, given that the United States has some really weird ideas about gambling, legality of, and why it isn't... just keep bloody quiet and don't give the buggers any ideas, OK?
However, I was under the impression that only the US Federal Reserve had the authority and responsibility to coin (or print) money. How is it they can do this?
To issue money which will be legal tender in the US - i.e. which a creditor legally has to accept in payment of debts - you need to be the US Federal Reserve. But the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank all issue currencies which are not dollars, are not legal tender within the USA, but which will surely be recognised by Americans as having value.
In general, to issue money, you don't need to be a government. You just need to be a bank. If I want to start my own currency, I might gather together a huge pile of gold, and issue vouchers good for exchange for One Gram of Gold at the Bank of Meringuoid. If my promise is good, then those vouchers are as good as gold, and are effectively money.
If I'm running an online game, I am issuing in-game currency for use by the fighters and rogues and mages who populate my world. What value has this currency? It can be exchanged for powerful weapons and tough armour and spells of mighty devastation, which are greatly prized by players of my game. Useless in the real world, but no more irrational than traditional money - I mean, what bloody use is a great big heap of heavy yellow metal?
Once virtual money, backed by the notional value created by the players of the game in which it exists, becomes freely convertible at market rates into real money, backed by the notional value created by the people of the country in which it exists... then why NOT issue a charge-card? It's no different in concept from buying goods in Ireland on my British bank card. The currency conversion is handled by the bank, which debits my account of pounds, pays the vendor in euros, and takes a commission for the service. Why shouldn't they take it from my account on World of Warcraft instead?
It's easy to figure out how the spammers got my email address, they already had it. They simply backed up their address book, cleaned their list with Blue Security's tool, then "diffed" the database to figure out who was BlueSecurity member.
Why should such a tool exist? What do BlueSecurity want to help spammers for? If the spammer wants to be sure he's not hitting any of their subscribers, he can trash his old list and build a new one by confirmed opt-in. Anything less just allows - and indeed helps - spammers to continue spamming.
Not sure that only Bluefrog users getting the message proves anything. The spammers can get the list from Bluefrog themselves by agreeing to not spam its users.
WHAAAAAT?
Bluefrog HELPS SPAMMERS LISTWASH?
Holy fuck. They should say to spammers, 'No, we won't tell you who our users are. Just stop spamming everyone for whom you don't have a confirmed opt-in, and you won't have any more trouble from us.'
If they're helping spammers listwash, then they're firmly on the Dark Side. Fuck 'em.
And how. They couldn't even pronounce it consistently in the dub. The title song says 'poe-kay-mon' while all the characters say 'poker-mon'...
Re:Funny you should mention Laputa.
on
Both Sides of Wii
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· Score: 1
Actually, Laputa is the name of the advanced civilization in Gulliver's Travels. It's debatable whether or not Smith actually new this meaning and intended it as a double entendre. The Japense aparently have no idea about this because the movie Castle in the Sky was named Laputa: Castle in the Sky in Japan.
I imagine Swift probably did know... IIRC the Spanish were still rivals of the expanding British empire at the time, although they were in decline. And it's quite reasonable that a sailor like Gulliver would pick up some gutter Spanish. La puta, the whore: it's not a bad name for such a completely rotten society.
As for Miyazaki... well, why, when translating back into English, need they keep the Gulliver's Travels spelling? The Japanese name of the film was 'Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta': would 'Raputa' be any problem in Spanish-speaking countries?
The gist of the story is that the house has been going in perpetuity for an indeterminate time with no people, preparing breakfast, turning on lights, and something short-circuits and it burns down.
That's the one. 'There Will Come Soft Rains' is right. It's from The Martian Chronicles, and was indeed very good. It was from after all the colonists had abandoned Mars and gone back to Earth for the war.
I never quite got why they did that, mind. If it had been me, it would have been 'oh, they're blowing each other up back home? Wow. Glad we're well out of that, eh?'
Well, the Davros-brand original Kaled travel machines were a bit iffy. The whole stairs thing. There've been a few design iterations since then.
If I were to be crippled by some accident, I'd take a modern travel machine over a regular ol' wheelchair any day. The manipulator arm still looks suspiciously like a sink plunger, granted, but I'm betting there've got to be some seriously fine-grained fingers / tentacles / levers / probes / whatever underneath - look how it hacked that combination lock. The death ray - well, 'nuff said. Dalekanium armour is legendary, and these days there's also a force field that disintegrates incoming bullets. Disintegrates them! Add independently rotating sensor stalk and weapons turrets, and all that's left is the killer app: hover!
The all-new Imperial brand Dalek Travel Machine Plus. Came through everything the Time War could throw at it and bounced right back. Reviewers have never seen anything like it, far surpassing anything from Davrosworks of Skaro. Only CR4,999,999.99 from our official business partners, the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfor! Just call 223-9653, and quote 'EXTERMINATE' for a special discount!
I got so sick and tired of seeing the EXACT same setting for every RPG, is there some rule when it comes to making a good RPG that says "You MUST set this in times of dragons and dungeons!"? I understand that they are all based off the D&D games but come on, do they ALL have to take place in the same time frame?
Well, let's see...
* checks RPGs on game shelf *
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights: Forgotten Realms, D&D
Morrowind: Vvardenfell, Mournhold and Solstheim, magic mediaeval
Fallout 1 and 2: radioactive future California
Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines: contemporary California
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2: a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
Four mediaeval D&D style, four futuristic, one present-day. It's not THAT overwhelming. I'm guessing that the tendency among RPGs to mediaevalism is largely due to the established D&D market and game worlds, which save a lot of work in design.
Ultimately the labor movement will have to organize workers in those countries. At some point in the far, far future, all workers will enjoy protection from employers who agree to one policy but enact another.
Your ideas interest me, and I wish to order a copy of your Manifesto.
Unfortunately, the cheap non-unionised labour that's causing all the trouble is in China, where they've already had a Communist revolution. Rather hard to go to a Communist country, preach 'workers, unite', and not feel a bit of a prat, to be honest with you.
True, but there were some times that having the Sommerswerd was more harmful than good. In The Cauldron of Fear, having the Sommerswerd would put you into a near-unbeatable fight with the Darklord at the end, whereas *not* having it would make the battle much easier.
I don't recall that at all. I remember when I went to the Darklords' city I had to keep the Sommerswerd in a special scabbard to prevent its blazing aura of uber good power from giving me away, but regarding Darklords themselves, so far as I can remember the Sommerswerd always used to just blast 'em.
That said, I've been introduced from elsewhere in this discussion to this little marvel, so I may be replaying the lot quite soon. In which case, the fewer spoilers I have to ruin my rediscovery of my half-remembered youth, the better. Don't correct me, I'll find out:-)
There's another book that has almost the same thing happen at the end (Prisoner of Time I think, but don't quote me on that), and in Castle Death it was entirely possible to lose the Sommerswerd forever.
Don't remind me. I remember that. Got captured, locked up, all equipment taken. I was livid. But I'd gone through God knows how many books without cheating and I wasn't going to start now... thankfully I found my gear in some lockup and got the sword back, but I was so damn close to tears at that one.
Also, it was a nice touch to have the ability to bring over your character from previous books. Sometimes, it felt like a necessity, since some parts were easier if you were in possession of certain items that were acquired in previous books, like the Sommerswerd.
IIRC, Dever made a point of having every Lone Wolf adventure be at least possible to win for a fresh character, using only powers and items acquired within that volume.
So, as I and presumably you noticed, if your character had at some point in his past gone through Fire on the Water, it was... different. I got to the point where I looked at the monster, and just thought: 'Skeletons = undead = double damage from Sommerswerd = I can't be arsed statting out the fight. I win.'
One other series I rather liked was the three Knightmare books. A TV tie-in. There was an adventure at the back of each one, generally in the style of the TV series, and a mini-novel at the front. Pretty bloody dark stuff. Mediaeval, violent, and occult in a very non-New-Age sort of way. I had nightmares about the Gruagach and the Eye...
The author of the Lone Wolf series has generously allowed many of them to be published on line, free of charge.
This makes me very happy indeed.
However, reading through... I must have missed that rule about only ever carrying two weapons. I seem to remember having been a bit of a pack rat with those things. Not that I ever used any of them except the Sommerswerd, but I always had them. I feel I have dishonoured the Order and must do it properly this time. It's as good an excuse as any to do so, after all...:-)
I wonder if that annoying C3PO is still on Kobra Station, still being chased down and killed by players who've finally had enough.
Not sure, but you've got _me_ wondering now. Is the creature known as The Lag still lurking in the streets of Ankh-Morpork, there to be slain by players frustrated with network latency?
... it's been six years, dammit. Do NOT get back into that habit!
I've never managed to find a MUD that had any other human players in them. I mean, I'm sure some humans are present in some of them, but divide that number by the number of rooms and it seems to explain why it's such a quiet experience.
I used to play on Discworld MUD quite a lot. Huge, but there are plenty of people around, especially in Ankh-Morpork.
Also, all MUDS seem to require that you use telnet or some wretched dos box or whatever. Are there any MUDS out there that don't stink like they're 20 years old?
Um, they're text-based games. That's the point. Something wrong with telnet for that? If you want automapping or macros or something there are specialised MUD clients which provide those, but if it's fancy 3D graphics you're after then I suggest you try World of Warcraft, and enjoy your gold farming.
So far these tests are not very consistent and are not truly standardized or normalized. I personally have done very well and poorly just taking the same test twice. They seem to be more of random-number generators than anything.
The CYOA books themselves were pretty poor, I found. I liked Jackson and Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy series, at least early on; later, they succumbed to serious monster inflation. It was possible to complete Citadel of Chaos with hardly any fighting at all, if you were smart about it. Later books threw monsters at you non-stop.
I was a huge fan of the Lone Wolf series. Stomped through like twenty of those things. No magical weapon I ever had in any game ever came close to the Sommerswerd. It should have stopped after you took down the chief Sauron-type villain, though; after that, 'what, even MORE Kai levels we never heard of before? What is this, Dragonball Z?'
And there was one I played which was D&D Dragonlance-based. Raistlin's trial in some tower or other to become a wizard. Great plot, particularly the flashback to childhood where you can nail all the kids in your home village who used to bully you with a Burning Hands spell. And the ending. Erm, you're going to steal HOW much of my life-force, Mr Supposedly Helpful Wizard Guy? Yikes. Pretty dark. No 'hooray, you win', more 'hooray, you survived, albeit horribly drained and crippled'...
I am convinced that this started life as a bug. The 'no tea' joke was great, but the 'no tea' item led to weirdness. Then they added the 'common sense' line to cover for the workaround to stop people doing things like dropping the no tea. Then someone did some really bad acid and decided to incorporate it into the plot as a puzzle...
Every guy who has an active pink-shirt cell then gets neutered
Fine, fine. Good idea. The first patient for the treatment is here now. Says his name's Bejita, though I might not have taken that down quite right; I hear he's a Bad Man.
Do you want to tell him what you have in mind with those shears you have there, or shall I? You will? Right. OK. I'll just stand over here while you do. WAAAAY over here.
I own System Shock 2, it wasn't that good. It had good audio, but the plot line was so boring.
Seriously? The plot was damn good, as I recall; not as good as the original System Shock, but still top stuff. I had guessed well ahead of time about Polito, but that didn't stop me flipping out in panic when I got to her office and all the walls changed... FUCK FUCK FUCK IT'S SHODAN QUICK QUICK SHIELDS UP AND WHERE THE HELL'S MY LIGHTSABER?
Furthermore, you can only have so many zombies and security systems freak out at you while you are trying to quickly switch necessary items in a lousy designed heads up display before you just get bored.
I wasn't so much bothered by the HUD interface, apart from the irritation of playing Inventory Tetris with it. What pissed me off was the rate at which weapons wore out and broke down, and the scarcity of ammo. Back on Citadel Station, my flechette rifle was a reliable standby throughout with no mechanical worries, and as for ammo I never really ran very short - and that was on a civilian research station. Here I am now on a military expedition and the weapons are cheap shite and there's no bloody bullets to be had?
I wouldn't be skeptical that reason it isn't readily available on ebay is that hardly anyone bought it to begin with.
True enough. Like the original, it was never a commercial hit. SS1 was totally overshadowed by Doom, and I think SS2 was roughly contemporaneous with Half-Life.
Slashdot Mirror
For fuck's sake SHUT UP.
When you log on to a MMORPG you are putting at stake your character and all his equipment. You may, by skill and luck, gain levels and acquire better equipment, and increase the value of your character, or you may suffer the misfortune of being devoured by a terrible dragon and have to start afresh (or at least be considerably set back - depends on local rules.)
The moment MMORPG characters and equipment have real-world monetary value, you're staking real value in a game of skill and luck, in the hope of winning more real value. Yes, you are gambling. And the MMORPG server is indeed a casino. Now, given that the United States has some really weird ideas about gambling, legality of, and why it isn't... just keep bloody quiet and don't give the buggers any ideas, OK?
To issue money which will be legal tender in the US - i.e. which a creditor legally has to accept in payment of debts - you need to be the US Federal Reserve. But the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank all issue currencies which are not dollars, are not legal tender within the USA, but which will surely be recognised by Americans as having value.
In general, to issue money, you don't need to be a government. You just need to be a bank. If I want to start my own currency, I might gather together a huge pile of gold, and issue vouchers good for exchange for One Gram of Gold at the Bank of Meringuoid. If my promise is good, then those vouchers are as good as gold, and are effectively money.
If I'm running an online game, I am issuing in-game currency for use by the fighters and rogues and mages who populate my world. What value has this currency? It can be exchanged for powerful weapons and tough armour and spells of mighty devastation, which are greatly prized by players of my game. Useless in the real world, but no more irrational than traditional money - I mean, what bloody use is a great big heap of heavy yellow metal?
Once virtual money, backed by the notional value created by the players of the game in which it exists, becomes freely convertible at market rates into real money, backed by the notional value created by the people of the country in which it exists... then why NOT issue a charge-card? It's no different in concept from buying goods in Ireland on my British bank card. The currency conversion is handled by the bank, which debits my account of pounds, pays the vendor in euros, and takes a commission for the service. Why shouldn't they take it from my account on World of Warcraft instead?
Why should such a tool exist? What do BlueSecurity want to help spammers for? If the spammer wants to be sure he's not hitting any of their subscribers, he can trash his old list and build a new one by confirmed opt-in. Anything less just allows - and indeed helps - spammers to continue spamming.
WHAAAAAT?
Bluefrog HELPS SPAMMERS LISTWASH?
Holy fuck. They should say to spammers, 'No, we won't tell you who our users are. Just stop spamming everyone for whom you don't have a confirmed opt-in, and you won't have any more trouble from us.'
If they're helping spammers listwash, then they're firmly on the Dark Side. Fuck 'em.
And if that's not bad enough, you're not going to believe what the Mexican spammers have been planning...
And how. They couldn't even pronounce it consistently in the dub. The title song says 'poe-kay-mon' while all the characters say 'poker-mon'...
I imagine Swift probably did know... IIRC the Spanish were still rivals of the expanding British empire at the time, although they were in decline. And it's quite reasonable that a sailor like Gulliver would pick up some gutter Spanish. La puta, the whore: it's not a bad name for such a completely rotten society.
As for Miyazaki... well, why, when translating back into English, need they keep the Gulliver's Travels spelling? The Japanese name of the film was 'Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta': would 'Raputa' be any problem in Spanish-speaking countries?
That's the one. 'There Will Come Soft Rains' is right. It's from The Martian Chronicles, and was indeed very good. It was from after all the colonists had abandoned Mars and gone back to Earth for the war.
I never quite got why they did that, mind. If it had been me, it would have been 'oh, they're blowing each other up back home? Wow. Glad we're well out of that, eh?'
Well, the Davros-brand original Kaled travel machines were a bit iffy. The whole stairs thing. There've been a few design iterations since then.
If I were to be crippled by some accident, I'd take a modern travel machine over a regular ol' wheelchair any day. The manipulator arm still looks suspiciously like a sink plunger, granted, but I'm betting there've got to be some seriously fine-grained fingers / tentacles / levers / probes / whatever underneath - look how it hacked that combination lock. The death ray - well, 'nuff said. Dalekanium armour is legendary, and these days there's also a force field that disintegrates incoming bullets. Disintegrates them! Add independently rotating sensor stalk and weapons turrets, and all that's left is the killer app: hover!
The all-new Imperial brand Dalek Travel Machine Plus. Came through everything the Time War could throw at it and bounced right back. Reviewers have never seen anything like it, far surpassing anything from Davrosworks of Skaro. Only CR4,999,999.99 from our official business partners, the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfor! Just call 223-9653, and quote 'EXTERMINATE' for a special discount!
I've never seen one with a rating other than 18. Any examples?
Well, let's see...
* checks RPGs on game shelf *
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights: Forgotten Realms, D&D
Morrowind: Vvardenfell, Mournhold and Solstheim, magic mediaeval
Fallout 1 and 2: radioactive future California
Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines: contemporary California
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2: a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
Four mediaeval D&D style, four futuristic, one present-day. It's not THAT overwhelming. I'm guessing that the tendency among RPGs to mediaevalism is largely due to the established D&D market and game worlds, which save a lot of work in design.
Your ideas interest me, and I wish to order a copy of your Manifesto.
Unfortunately, the cheap non-unionised labour that's causing all the trouble is in China, where they've already had a Communist revolution. Rather hard to go to a Communist country, preach 'workers, unite', and not feel a bit of a prat, to be honest with you.
I don't recall that at all. I remember when I went to the Darklords' city I had to keep the Sommerswerd in a special scabbard to prevent its blazing aura of uber good power from giving me away, but regarding Darklords themselves, so far as I can remember the Sommerswerd always used to just blast 'em.
That said, I've been introduced from elsewhere in this discussion to this little marvel, so I may be replaying the lot quite soon. In which case, the fewer spoilers I have to ruin my rediscovery of my half-remembered youth, the better. Don't correct me, I'll find out :-)
There's another book that has almost the same thing happen at the end (Prisoner of Time I think, but don't quote me on that), and in Castle Death it was entirely possible to lose the Sommerswerd forever.
Don't remind me. I remember that. Got captured, locked up, all equipment taken. I was livid. But I'd gone through God knows how many books without cheating and I wasn't going to start now... thankfully I found my gear in some lockup and got the sword back, but I was so damn close to tears at that one.
IIRC, Dever made a point of having every Lone Wolf adventure be at least possible to win for a fresh character, using only powers and items acquired within that volume.
So, as I and presumably you noticed, if your character had at some point in his past gone through Fire on the Water, it was... different. I got to the point where I looked at the monster, and just thought: 'Skeletons = undead = double damage from Sommerswerd = I can't be arsed statting out the fight. I win.'
One other series I rather liked was the three Knightmare books. A TV tie-in. There was an adventure at the back of each one, generally in the style of the TV series, and a mini-novel at the front. Pretty bloody dark stuff. Mediaeval, violent, and occult in a very non-New-Age sort of way. I had nightmares about the Gruagach and the Eye...
But surely automappers would take all of the fun out of exploring a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?
This makes me very happy indeed.
However, reading through... I must have missed that rule about only ever carrying two weapons. I seem to remember having been a bit of a pack rat with those things. Not that I ever used any of them except the Sommerswerd, but I always had them. I feel I have dishonoured the Order and must do it properly this time. It's as good an excuse as any to do so, after all... :-)
Not sure, but you've got _me_ wondering now. Is the creature known as The Lag still lurking in the streets of Ankh-Morpork, there to be slain by players frustrated with network latency?
... it's been six years, dammit. Do NOT get back into that habit!
... aaarrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhhhtelnet discworld.imaginary.com
I used to play on Discworld MUD quite a lot. Huge, but there are plenty of people around, especially in Ankh-Morpork. Also, all MUDS seem to require that you use telnet or some wretched dos box or whatever. Are there any MUDS out there that don't stink like they're 20 years old?
Um, they're text-based games. That's the point. Something wrong with telnet for that? If you want automapping or macros or something there are specialised MUD clients which provide those, but if it's fancy 3D graphics you're after then I suggest you try World of Warcraft, and enjoy your gold farming.
> make post in comments section
First post - YOU WIN!
[Your blood pressure has gone up.]
I was a huge fan of the Lone Wolf series. Stomped through like twenty of those things. No magical weapon I ever had in any game ever came close to the Sommerswerd. It should have stopped after you took down the chief Sauron-type villain, though; after that, 'what, even MORE Kai levels we never heard of before? What is this, Dragonball Z?'
And there was one I played which was D&D Dragonlance-based. Raistlin's trial in some tower or other to become a wizard. Great plot, particularly the flashback to childhood where you can nail all the kids in your home village who used to bully you with a Burning Hands spell. And the ending. Erm, you're going to steal HOW much of my life-force, Mr Supposedly Helpful Wizard Guy? Yikes. Pretty dark. No 'hooray, you win', more 'hooray, you survived, albeit horribly drained and crippled'...
... sigh, the nostalgia :-)
I downloaded LSL1 last year.
It started asking the age verification questions. I stare blankly. My answers convince it that I'm three years old.
No, I'm TWENTY-THREE you stupid game. It's 2005! You have to be like forty to know about all that crap these days!
You'd think they'd have it phone home over the net to get updated questions each year. Lack of foresight, huh?
You have:
no tea
tea
I am convinced that this started life as a bug. The 'no tea' joke was great, but the 'no tea' item led to weirdness. Then they added the 'common sense' line to cover for the workaround to stop people doing things like dropping the no tea. Then someone did some really bad acid and decided to incorporate it into the plot as a puzzle...
Fine, fine. Good idea. The first patient for the treatment is here now. Says his name's Bejita, though I might not have taken that down quite right; I hear he's a Bad Man.
Do you want to tell him what you have in mind with those shears you have there, or shall I? You will? Right. OK. I'll just stand over here while you do. WAAAAY over here.
Seriously? The plot was damn good, as I recall; not as good as the original System Shock, but still top stuff. I had guessed well ahead of time about Polito, but that didn't stop me flipping out in panic when I got to her office and all the walls changed... FUCK FUCK FUCK IT'S SHODAN QUICK QUICK SHIELDS UP AND WHERE THE HELL'S MY LIGHTSABER?
Furthermore, you can only have so many zombies and security systems freak out at you while you are trying to quickly switch necessary items in a lousy designed heads up display before you just get bored.
I wasn't so much bothered by the HUD interface, apart from the irritation of playing Inventory Tetris with it. What pissed me off was the rate at which weapons wore out and broke down, and the scarcity of ammo. Back on Citadel Station, my flechette rifle was a reliable standby throughout with no mechanical worries, and as for ammo I never really ran very short - and that was on a civilian research station. Here I am now on a military expedition and the weapons are cheap shite and there's no bloody bullets to be had?
I wouldn't be skeptical that reason it isn't readily available on ebay is that hardly anyone bought it to begin with.
True enough. Like the original, it was never a commercial hit. SS1 was totally overshadowed by Doom, and I think SS2 was roughly contemporaneous with Half-Life.