Internet-only limited player games = Arcade games. They can't be owned.
I stopped dumping quarters on this sort of thing in the 80s in favor of the ability to OWN the game.
"The new law is based on a novel definition of what constitutes a presence in the state: It includes any Web site based in the state that earns a referral fee for sending customers to an online retailer."
So New York is saying everyone signed up for Internet advertising on content publisher sites is also based in New York.
CD/DVDs introduced a problem. The ability to create perfect copies.
The RIAA/MPAA rely on consumers purchasing copies when theirs break. They don't want consumers to have the ability to make an exact copy of the data because this destroys their enforced rarity of the medium.
DRM in digital (lossless) media, such as in Blu-Ray, has progressed to the point that the BD-ROM is essentially analog -- Thanks to many artificial/legal restrictions, you "cannot" make a perfect copy of the data. I've consoled myself with such DRM by thinking, "Well, now it's like we're back to vinyl again. One copy, and if it breaks I need to buy a new one." This way of thinking has actually made DRM much easier to swallow.
3 years ago, my brother (19 at the time), an Army Ranger, got caught drinking when he was home on leave in California. He went before a judge and was fined and had his license revoked for a year. Usually stationed in Germany, he was used to drinking legally.
There is no such law that you suggest. Under 21 is under 21.
He quickly went back to Germany and continued to drive with his German license, never once missing his US one:)
Heat and airflow will be wonderful along with an HMD.
But color, light and sound are pretty well covered with virtual reality HMDs already, considering you're fully immersed.
I did a lot of research before buying one a few months back. Here's the current "best one" (according to various metrics and studies) based on quality/price among stereoscopy fanatics:
Starting at age 8, when I got a NES, I bought every single one of my games by myself with my own money, excluding a few for Christmas.
Getting to the store was easy. Just ask a parent to drop you off with your friends while you browse the games. They can go to the bank or wait in the car. It doesn't really matter. Or you can just ride your bike or walk to the store assuming it's within a mile or two, as I did most of the time.
Getting the money ($35-40) was a little more difficult. I would go door-to-door, trying to do chores for people to make money. Often, I'd do work for relatives for a few bucks here or there. Sometimes I'd make things like puzzle books or some kind of food, and sell it while my parents would have a garage sale. I got much of my money for Christmas and my birthday from relatives, and the rest came from a meager allowance. Depending on how much money we had, what normally ended up happening is that my games were actually 1/2 mine, split between me and a random friend or my brother. I remember one game, Renegade for NES, we split 4 ways.
I boggle when I hear people ask where children get money because they must have had a much different childhood than me. Buying my own games taught me the value of a dollar and hard work. Obviously a parent isn't going to sit back and let their little kid watch hardcore porn or play something horrifically, emotionally violent, and as long as the kid understands this when buying a game, they will make the right decision; Clearly, the last thing a child wants is for the fruit of all that hard work to be confiscated when they get home and turn it on.
One thing you often find with publisher funded sequels is the desire to grow the market share of the game. This usually takes the form of a marketing-driven attempt to make the game more "broadly appealing" or more "mass-market". Given the size and dedication of our fanbase, we knew that the last thing we wanted to do was a make a follow up to Freedom Force that tried to expand the market to casual gamers. To do so would have meant alienating our core fan base, something we refused to do. Freedom Force is always going to be a PC game for people who love strategy, RPG and heroes. It's not going to be for everybody.
Though, all of their games are "keepers" and are typically priced less, so they don't have to worry about much of a second-hand market anyway.
Unfortunately, Google Talk Beta does not yet even create chat logs, let alone time-stamped chat logs, or even an integrated history search tool. When messaging people, it does not even show when messages were sent.
Among other issues with Google Talk Beta, sending paragraphed messages is a pain (SHIFT+ENTER), since there is no way to remap to be "RETURN" rather than "SEND". Also, there is currently no offline messaging.
Google has totally won me over with every tool they've released, but Google Talk Beta is quite a letdown. Old ICQ is the only IM program I've found with all of these features, and I'll sadly be sticking with that until Google Talk beefs up.
I'm not sure what colleges you are talking about, but the vast majority of CS majors at the two separate universities I've attended in California (undergrad and grad) are Asian.
White people are a tiny minority in CS here. Sometimes I'm the only white person in the entire classroom of 40 students.
And among the non-Asians, the Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, Indians etc, are all fairly uniform.
This is a black market with respect to the rules in many games.
Expecting some kind of fairness when breaking the rules in those games is simply ludicrous.
You're not actually saying that there has been precedent to determine that these points will fail, are you? If so, what was it? This is what pisses me off -- people coming around and assuming it will fail because the game is not a fucking watered down piece of shit.
The reason many recent MMORPGs have failed is for presuming there is something wrong with these and *not* implementing them. I know, because that's why I usually quit them along with my friends -- it is plainly obvious that many of these games consequently lack any real long-term future.
This was appended to the EULA about 6 months down the road, but you bring up another interesting point:
It is unfortunate when a rule must be explained in a rulebook in a video game. Most of us grew up playing our single-player NES games, doing whatever it took to win, even if the game were glitchy. Many times, "Do Nots" are listed in a EULA as a way to save programming, putting the burdern on the players to know their limitations based on an external rule.
Fortunately, many companies who are serious about kill-stealing have gone on to code the rule into the game itself. Unfortunately, the rule exists primarily to minimize the tremendous burden kill-stealing complaints generate for the GM's, not to enhance the game experience. It is not the best way to handle competing parties attacking the same mob. When people complain to GM's about other people, they're not complaining about the game itself. If players had mechanisms (more freedom is a good thing) to handle kill-stealers, there would be nobody to blame but themselves.
And realistically, everyone has at least some ability to handle kill-stealers, namely by doing more damage, training it away, calling on friends, etc. In addition, people who kill-steal lose reputation. In a longterm game, this is the most important item a player can earn.
Despite the widespread, casual, watering-down of the industry, there are *many* people who I know personally who want a long, lasting, hardcore MMORPG again. Everquest got a lot of things right, many of which have been lost in translation to later games. Please consider this list of design items for Vanguard:
Hidden stats and formulas -- Not knowing precisely what everything does keeps players hypothesizing and experimenting to try to figure things out. It kept people from truly "mastering" the game because they could not be 100% sure they were correct. It also helped maintain a decent level of suspense and curiosity.
Original EQ-style models -- I don't know why they felt the need to change them, but it was definitely for the worse. The original EQ models were the best I've seen in a fantasy-based MMORPG because they had personality. City of Heroes and AO character models also had personality, for example.
Kill stealing -- I want to be able to kill steal and I want others to kill steal from me. I want the rush of "who's going to be the winner" when some total jackass comes along. The contention of spawns was a huge part of EQ drama.
Death penalty in original EQ/beta EQ (prior to the 2 halvings of the exp loss -- it went down to 25% loss) was SPOT ON! It *should* take me 3 months to reach level 25. You SHOULD lose levels! The set of people who are MAX_LEVEL should *not* only increase. Absolutely superb job on that. Later on with cleric resurrections, it got a little out of hand, but it still maintained a degree of fear and sense of danger! Fear of losing a corpse (even though it almost never happened beyond the newbie levels) is another MUST. Even if it there is just 0.001% chance of losing a corpse, it is on the back of your mind as a motivation to play well and avoid death!
Runs through desolation -- While everyone likes areas with remarkable, and awesome features and attractions, we also enjoy wilderness such as the Karanas or Burning Wood in EQ. Running for 15-20 min through a forest or a plain that seemingly never ends *IS* part of the adventure and fun on its own. What I don't want to see is one point-of-interest after the other, like a George Lucas movie. You need great untouched outdoor areas to contrast with the occasional castle or dungeon entrance!
Looting an item in PvP -- This added a tremendous amount of fear and intensity to the PvP servers/Priest of Discord players. When it was reduced to coin, or less than that, it pretty much killed the desire to entertain the idea of PvP at all. I never played on the PvP servers, but I did go PvP via a Priest of Discord during EQ Beta, and I can tell you that the immersion-factor jumped through the roof when I could suddenly risk LOSING an item to another player. Give PvP meaning again, not just some pansy points system or ladder the MMORPG-of-the-week implemented.
Don't test every single possible scenario with new areas/spells/items. Test enough to know there is nothing totally unbalanced on the surface. This allows you to pump out content without getting hung up. Little unintended sideffects/randomity added a *lot* to my enjoyment of EQ, because it made me feel like *I* was thinking of a particular use. If I could name just one bad trend that started after EQ, it was the insane pre-testing of content that began with DAOC -- a tradition that has passed on to WoW. INCREDIBLY boring.
Instancing does not belong in a MMORPG trying to maintain consistency within its own context. Don't even go anywhere near it. It's the king of all immersion-killers. If you want to lock VERY rare mobs with encounter-routes, that is at least almost *tolerable*, but in no way shape or form will I play another game with instancing or a weak death penalty. And no, context doesn't start at the login, it starts at the server level. Even so, UO painstakingly referred to servers in-game as magical "shards" just to cover their bases. We have devol
You are applying a general concept to a much more complex, conscious experience. In this case, abstracting the problem entirely to random stimulus is incorrect.
While I don't speak for everyone who plays Everquest, the vast majority of people are painfully aware of the normal drop rate percentages for items, and spawn rates for mobs. Weighing the probability that a particular mob will drop a particular item occurs commonly in many decisions made in the game. The game is played with a much more objective, gaming mindset.
The bulk of the "addiction" is primarily due to the constant adrenaline rush of being in a eternal race with your peers. Social interactions build drama and politics, which causes the game to take on much more depth than many games. The harsh death penalties (of early Everquest) added a level of fear and suspense, further stimulating the player.
Over time, constantly reflecting on past experiences, people who you'll never see again, and things which were patched out of existence yields an intricate web of compulsion to try to "make things like they were", which brings players back every single day.
No, the compulsion to play Everquest is much more complex than you make it out to be. Perhaps you were responding to what makes World of Warcraft "addictive" since the different gameplay is more easily compared to a pellet dropper.
To save it locally, you need to download:
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-2.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-2i.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-3i.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-4i.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-5i.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-6i.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-7i.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-8i.swf
http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-9i.swf
and "The Man in Green" is the best. attack. ever.
...because Gamefaqs is *always* right.
on
Genre-Defining Games?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Though the date you provided is eerily close to Everquest's release date -- Which should have been your first indication that maybe they had made a mistake.
VR goggles are the "next big thing" or a future "next big thing" in video gaming. As soon as they are mass marketted to coincide with some popular new MMOG and they are combined with gyroscopes to correspond head movement to camera movement, they are going to take off. The tech is there, but prices just keep it from becoming mainstream.
LCD technology is ready. 3D gaming is ready. Immersive MMOG's are ready.
They didn't even offer a free month during their 6th anniversary this year, unlike the previous 3 years. Along with EQ2, this is just another sign that they don't have faith in their own game anymore.
So when will they stop being dicks about releasing unpatched, old-school server/rules...
Slashdot Mirror
Internet-only limited player games = Arcade games. They can't be owned. I stopped dumping quarters on this sort of thing in the 80s in favor of the ability to OWN the game.
Where real money is involved, the only way to win is not to play.
So New York is saying everyone signed up for Internet advertising on content publisher sites is also based in New York.
I wonder if this means I can relocate?
CD/DVDs introduced a problem. The ability to create perfect copies.
The RIAA/MPAA rely on consumers purchasing copies when theirs break. They don't want consumers to have the ability to make an exact copy of the data because this destroys their enforced rarity of the medium.
DRM in digital (lossless) media, such as in Blu-Ray, has progressed to the point that the BD-ROM is essentially analog -- Thanks to many artificial/legal restrictions, you "cannot" make a perfect copy of the data. I've consoled myself with such DRM by thinking, "Well, now it's like we're back to vinyl again. One copy, and if it breaks I need to buy a new one." This way of thinking has actually made DRM much easier to swallow.
The culmination of DRM is analog.
3 years ago, my brother (19 at the time), an Army Ranger, got caught drinking when he was home on leave in California. He went before a judge and was fined and had his license revoked for a year. Usually stationed in Germany, he was used to drinking legally.
There is no such law that you suggest. Under 21 is under 21.
He quickly went back to Germany and continued to drive with his German license, never once missing his US one :)
But color, light and sound are pretty well covered with virtual reality HMDs already, considering you're fully immersed.
I did a lot of research before buying one a few months back. Here's the current "best one" (according to various metrics and studies) based on quality/price among stereoscopy fanatics:
http://www.emagin.com/html/consumer_products_produ ct.htm
Now all we need is smellovision!
There is a distinct need for more of them, and the pet is not necessary. Molyneux really needs to go back and make a big-budget Populous 4.
Getting to the store was easy. Just ask a parent to drop you off with your friends while you browse the games. They can go to the bank or wait in the car. It doesn't really matter. Or you can just ride your bike or walk to the store assuming it's within a mile or two, as I did most of the time.
Getting the money ($35-40) was a little more difficult. I would go door-to-door, trying to do chores for people to make money. Often, I'd do work for relatives for a few bucks here or there. Sometimes I'd make things like puzzle books or some kind of food, and sell it while my parents would have a garage sale. I got much of my money for Christmas and my birthday from relatives, and the rest came from a meager allowance. Depending on how much money we had, what normally ended up happening is that my games were actually 1/2 mine, split between me and a random friend or my brother. I remember one game, Renegade for NES, we split 4 ways.
I boggle when I hear people ask where children get money because they must have had a much different childhood than me. Buying my own games taught me the value of a dollar and hard work. Obviously a parent isn't going to sit back and let their little kid watch hardcore porn or play something horrifically, emotionally violent, and as long as the kid understands this when buying a game, they will make the right decision; Clearly, the last thing a child wants is for the fruit of all that hard work to be confiscated when they get home and turn it on.
This article should make you an Irrational fan for life: http://pc.ign.com/articles/586/586914p1.html.
Though, all of their games are "keepers" and are typically priced less, so they don't have to worry about much of a second-hand market anyway.Unfortunately, Google Talk Beta does not yet even create chat logs, let alone time-stamped chat logs, or even an integrated history search tool. When messaging people, it does not even show when messages were sent.
Among other issues with Google Talk Beta, sending paragraphed messages is a pain (SHIFT+ENTER), since there is no way to remap to be "RETURN" rather than "SEND". Also, there is currently no offline messaging.
Google has totally won me over with every tool they've released, but Google Talk Beta is quite a letdown. Old ICQ is the only IM program I've found with all of these features, and I'll sadly be sticking with that until Google Talk beefs up.
I'm not sure what colleges you are talking about, but the vast majority of CS majors at the two separate universities I've attended in California (undergrad and grad) are Asian.
White people are a tiny minority in CS here. Sometimes I'm the only white person in the entire classroom of 40 students.
And among the non-Asians, the Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, Indians etc, are all fairly uniform.
This is a black market with respect to the rules in many games. Expecting some kind of fairness when breaking the rules in those games is simply ludicrous.
That is 34,644 bytes of data.
He could copy a MIDI file to his head. What is the RIAA going to do about it?
Seriously though. The limits of human memory should be the lower bound for copyright violations.
You're not actually saying that there has been precedent to determine that these points will fail, are you? If so, what was it? This is what pisses me off -- people coming around and assuming it will fail because the game is not a fucking watered down piece of shit.
The reason many recent MMORPGs have failed is for presuming there is something wrong with these and *not* implementing them. I know, because that's why I usually quit them along with my friends -- it is plainly obvious that many of these games consequently lack any real long-term future.
This was appended to the EULA about 6 months down the road, but you bring up another interesting point: It is unfortunate when a rule must be explained in a rulebook in a video game. Most of us grew up playing our single-player NES games, doing whatever it took to win, even if the game were glitchy. Many times, "Do Nots" are listed in a EULA as a way to save programming, putting the burdern on the players to know their limitations based on an external rule. Fortunately, many companies who are serious about kill-stealing have gone on to code the rule into the game itself. Unfortunately, the rule exists primarily to minimize the tremendous burden kill-stealing complaints generate for the GM's, not to enhance the game experience. It is not the best way to handle competing parties attacking the same mob. When people complain to GM's about other people, they're not complaining about the game itself. If players had mechanisms (more freedom is a good thing) to handle kill-stealers, there would be nobody to blame but themselves. And realistically, everyone has at least some ability to handle kill-stealers, namely by doing more damage, training it away, calling on friends, etc. In addition, people who kill-steal lose reputation. In a longterm game, this is the most important item a player can earn.
Hidden stats and formulas -- Not knowing precisely what everything does keeps players hypothesizing and experimenting to try to figure things out. It kept people from truly "mastering" the game because they could not be 100% sure they were correct. It also helped maintain a decent level of suspense and curiosity.
Original EQ-style models -- I don't know why they felt the need to change them, but it was definitely for the worse. The original EQ models were the best I've seen in a fantasy-based MMORPG because they had personality. City of Heroes and AO character models also had personality, for example.
Kill stealing -- I want to be able to kill steal and I want others to kill steal from me. I want the rush of "who's going to be the winner" when some total jackass comes along. The contention of spawns was a huge part of EQ drama.
Death penalty in original EQ/beta EQ (prior to the 2 halvings of the exp loss -- it went down to 25% loss) was SPOT ON! It *should* take me 3 months to reach level 25. You SHOULD lose levels! The set of people who are MAX_LEVEL should *not* only increase. Absolutely superb job on that. Later on with cleric resurrections, it got a little out of hand, but it still maintained a degree of fear and sense of danger! Fear of losing a corpse (even though it almost never happened beyond the newbie levels) is another MUST. Even if it there is just 0.001% chance of losing a corpse, it is on the back of your mind as a motivation to play well and avoid death!
Runs through desolation -- While everyone likes areas with remarkable, and awesome features and attractions, we also enjoy wilderness such as the Karanas or Burning Wood in EQ. Running for 15-20 min through a forest or a plain that seemingly never ends *IS* part of the adventure and fun on its own. What I don't want to see is one point-of-interest after the other, like a George Lucas movie. You need great untouched outdoor areas to contrast with the occasional castle or dungeon entrance!
Looting an item in PvP -- This added a tremendous amount of fear and intensity to the PvP servers/Priest of Discord players. When it was reduced to coin, or less than that, it pretty much killed the desire to entertain the idea of PvP at all. I never played on the PvP servers, but I did go PvP via a Priest of Discord during EQ Beta, and I can tell you that the immersion-factor jumped through the roof when I could suddenly risk LOSING an item to another player. Give PvP meaning again, not just some pansy points system or ladder the MMORPG-of-the-week implemented.
Don't test every single possible scenario with new areas/spells/items. Test enough to know there is nothing totally unbalanced on the surface. This allows you to pump out content without getting hung up. Little unintended sideffects/randomity added a *lot* to my enjoyment of EQ, because it made me feel like *I* was thinking of a particular use. If I could name just one bad trend that started after EQ, it was the insane pre-testing of content that began with DAOC -- a tradition that has passed on to WoW. INCREDIBLY boring.
Instancing does not belong in a MMORPG trying to maintain consistency within its own context. Don't even go anywhere near it. It's the king of all immersion-killers. If you want to lock VERY rare mobs with encounter-routes, that is at least almost *tolerable*, but in no way shape or form will I play another game with instancing or a weak death penalty. And no, context doesn't start at the login, it starts at the server level. Even so, UO painstakingly referred to servers in-game as magical "shards" just to cover their bases. We have devol
We have the Metreon Playstation store :)
While I don't speak for everyone who plays Everquest, the vast majority of people are painfully aware of the normal drop rate percentages for items, and spawn rates for mobs. Weighing the probability that a particular mob will drop a particular item occurs commonly in many decisions made in the game. The game is played with a much more objective, gaming mindset.
The bulk of the "addiction" is primarily due to the constant adrenaline rush of being in a eternal race with your peers. Social interactions build drama and politics, which causes the game to take on much more depth than many games. The harsh death penalties (of early Everquest) added a level of fear and suspense, further stimulating the player.
Over time, constantly reflecting on past experiences, people who you'll never see again, and things which were patched out of existence yields an intricate web of compulsion to try to "make things like they were", which brings players back every single day.
No, the compulsion to play Everquest is much more complex than you make it out to be. Perhaps you were responding to what makes World of Warcraft "addictive" since the different gameplay is more easily compared to a pellet dropper.
Tesla was just a cheap immitation.
hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMM
ZOWIE!
*horrifying scream of death*
To save it locally, you need to download: http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-2.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-2i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-3i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-4i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-5i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-6i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-7i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-8i.swf http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/SF6-9i.swf
and "The Man in Green" is the best. attack. ever.
It's a 1994 game.
Though the date you provided is eerily close to Everquest's release date -- Which should have been your first indication that maybe they had made a mistake.
After 25+ pages, it has all but been officially announced over at the 3DRealms forums.
Then why am I paying their programmers on a monthly basis for CS, content, and the occasional upgrade?
VR goggles are the "next big thing" or a future "next big thing" in video gaming. As soon as they are mass marketted to coincide with some popular new MMOG and they are combined with gyroscopes to correspond head movement to camera movement, they are going to take off. The tech is there, but prices just keep it from becoming mainstream.
LCD technology is ready. 3D gaming is ready. Immersive MMOG's are ready.
Put it on and you may never take it off.
They didn't even offer a free month during their 6th anniversary this year, unlike the previous 3 years. Along with EQ2, this is just another sign that they don't have faith in their own game anymore.
So when will they stop being dicks about releasing unpatched, old-school server/rules...