I understand where you're coming from, and I think that you're right to look at the world in terms of equality vs discrimination. That's commendable. Sometimes, however, the discrimination is so inconsequential and stupid, that it doesn't even warrant any real attention, and I agree that some feminists are obsessed with finding tiny detail in society that isn't perfect -- but those same people are usually young, full of righteous anger, and looking to "stick it to the man" (much like the punk movement in the late 70s and early 80s). For an angry, young woman (16-21), who can't really affect much real change in the world, harping on stupid shit is pretty much all she's got. Remember how dumb you were when you were that age, and how much of what you said was stupid, ignorant shit? Give her a break. Much like the punks, her heart is in the right place, even if she is a bit loud, overzealous, and obnoxious. If you're talking about mature adults, then I'd probably say that it comes down to differences in experience and values. Slashdot is full of such deadly earnest people who care way too much about minor, inconsequential shit. You'd think that they'd recognize that quality in others and be more tolerant about it, but it's just the opposite. Try to explain to a radical feminist how important software freedom is, and she'll probably think you're a raving loon. That same radical feminist probably sounds like a loon to you, because she's so devoted to her beliefs. In the end, you're cut from the same cloth, and it's a shame that you can't find any common ground. In fact, I'd say that this is why many political/social movements never gain any real traction in the mainstream: they're obsessed with shit that "normal" people couldn't care less about, and when confronted with that apathy, the most common response is to call the mainstream "sheeple". It is actually one of my stronger beliefs that you can find a deadly earnest, humorless, Aspie faction in almost every movement, including feminism, Libertarianism/Objectivistism, free software, etc.
Ladies' Night is, on the face, discriminatory toward men. Yes, that much is a given. However, is very different from the institutionalized sexism that women have historically faced, such as not being able to vote, own property, or go to college. Even today, there are still many issues that women face that men don't. Some of them might seem inconsequential to you, but, obviously, they don't seem that way to the feminists. By any objective scale, Ladies' Night is inconsequential, stupid shit, and the end result is arguably beneficial to men, anyway. That's why feminists are not screaming about how unfair it is: they recognize that the cheap/free drinks are only available to them because 1) a man (in most cases, but obviously not all) has made them available to her (as opposed to the institutionalized sexism of males making laws that forbid women from voting) and 2) in the end, it's a cynical attempt to appeal to (or exploit, if you prefer) males, and it's not done give special rights or privileges to females. In the end, feminists are more interested in levelling the power distribution of society, such that men and women wield equal amounts of power, rather than trying to wipe out all sexism in society, no matter how inconsequential. If they were only interested in sexism, yes, you're right, they'd be more obsessed with fighting stupid shit like Ladies' Night or dating sites that allow women to sign up for free, while men have to pay money.
I think that you've misunderstood the basic tenets of feminism, at least to some extent, and maybe once you understand it better, you might find that the fights that feminists wage might make more sense to you. Unfortunately, like any insular movement full of groupthink and sick of being marginalized by the mainstream, it's very common to ridicule and insult the "sheeple" who aren't true believers, rather than attempt to explain yourself to them in patient, non-confrontational terms. Just look at all the people
Since the summary doesn't tell you, I will: it's a huge, useless clock being built in the desert. It's called the "10,000 year clock" because the hands of the clock move glacially slowly. It will truly be a wonder to behold, unless it stops working after 100 years and people forget that it's even there.
Dude, anyone who takes advantage of a drunk person is wrong, regardless of the gender. If a woman gets you drunk, for the purposes of reducing your inhibitions, then, yes, she's taken advantage of you and is no better than the douchebags who do so to women. Does that make you feel better? Do you feel vindicated now? Ugh.
You're being silly. The whole point of ladies night is to get more women into a bar, so that the men have available women to hit on. It's most beneficial to the bar owners (who are cynically seeking to draw in lonely men with the lure of drunk women), but the whole concept is done for the benefit of male customers, not because the bar owners want to give women "special privileges". But, yes, you're right that it's unfair to men to price the drinks lower for women. The trade-off is that the bar ends up not being a sausage fest, which directly benefits men. As for why feminists are not complaining about it, it's because they generally find the whole concept to be stupid beyond belief, patronizing, and avoid it. If you do a google search, you'll probably find a few contemptuous essays about the practice, written from a feminist point of view, like this article.
Why would a feminist go to a bar during ladies' night, when she knows she's basically just a product being advertised to men? That's why you don't hear about feminists decrying the horrible sexism of ladies' night.
If you still think that ladies' night is unfair to men, then I'd say that you're not really seeing the big picture here. If there were a Men's Night, you'd be a product being sold to women, and I doubt that you'd really enjoy being treated like that, even if there were some side benefits (such as cheaper drinks). Being constantly harassed by the opposite sex, who feel they are entitled to your attention, when you were just looking to have a drink in peace would be a bit annoying.
So, why is the OP resorting to piracy? Why not just boycott the content producers and ISPs who are engaging in this behavior? It reeks of an entitlement complex -- I deserve to have everything for free, damn it, and you have no right to tell me that I can't pirate to my heart's content!
Yes, there are other issues here, such as potentially losing your internet access because some minimum wage worker fingered your IP address, instead of the actual IP address of a pirate, but that's not what the OP was raging about -- or, at least, it was secondary to his justifications of his entitlement complex.
Your freedom to have an entitlement complex is being infringed? My God, call the waaaaaaambulance immediately! This is truly an emergency of epic proportions. What will you do if you can't gorge yourself on pop culture? That truly must be a life not worth living.
if you are spending an extra $20 a month just to let you secretly pirate stuff so that your ISP can't detect you, why not just buy the stuff legitimately?
First, you're talking about obsessive hoarders here. These are the kinds of people who download dozens of music tracks every day, with no intention of ever listening to them... just because they can. It's there, so they pirate it. If it weren't there, they probably wouldn't ever miss it.
Second, it's the principle of the matter. To them, paying for something that you can get for free is more than just stupid, it's morally wrong, regardless of the costs to society. Now, I'm not saying that there's something wrong with being cheap, but there's a difference between pestering your friend to provide free law advice and trying to find the cheapest lawyer.
Third, it's an entitlement complex of epic proportions, and they're not going to suddenly stop acting like the world owes them everything for free, when they've been able to easily pirate whatever they wanted, in the past. Once people get used to getting something for free, they'll riot if you try to sell it to them. It's human nature, really.
Fourth, it seems to be some kind of bizarre psychological trait that you'll commonly find in people. For example, an overclocking enthusiast will spend an extra $50 on CPU cooling, so they can overclock their CPU by 100 MHz, instead of just buying a CPU that's 100 MHz faster, for $25. People like feeling that they got something extra, for free, even if the reality of the situation is that they only cost themselves more money. Some people are more ideological than pragmatic.
While it's true that you purchase adventure packs in DDO, those adventure packs are the only way to craft the most powerful weapons and armor. I have the same problem that the anon does: in most games of this type, the more money you spend, the better your character becomes. I think that DDO does it in a way that's more tolerable than most other games of its ilk (especially since it's possible to grind Turbine Points and get those adventure packs for free), but it's still something that bothers me somewhat.
In Hellgate: London, subscribers got very little in the way of benefits for their money. That was probably one of the biggest reasons that it died (among numerous reasons), but it was also kind of nice knowing that all the characters were generally equal to each other, without vastly overpowered items or classes being available only to subscribers. In the end, the way that Turbine does it is clearly the better way, from a financial standpoint (what incentive did people have to subscribe to HGL?), but I wish that free-to-play didn't also mean pay-to-win. I'm pretty sure there's a middle ground, and, admittedly, DDO is actually a lot closer to that middle ground than most free-to-play games that I've seen, but once you buy a few adventure packs, the game effectively turns into a boring grindfest, where you slowly plow through the content, wielding overpowered weapons and wearing overpowered armor. I'd prefer that the adventure packs merely opened up more quests, rather than giving out such overpowered items. It makes the game a bit too easy and causes non-subscribers to effectively become useless gimps, since they can't keep up with your uber-character. A subscriber decked out with at-level gear is probably worth three or four non-subscribers, especially once you reach level 12 (with access to greensteel weapons).
That non-subscriber can grind Turbine Points to get access to Vale of Twilight, where greensteel weapons are made, which mitigates some of the issues, but the problem (if you see it as a problem) still exists. One could obviously argue that it's merely an entitlement complex, and the non-subscribers are just jealous of the equipment that subscribers have access to, but I -- like the anon -- see it as more of a game balance issue than anything else. On one hand, the inner loot-whore in me loves the fact that the loot is so crazy overpowered in those adventure packs, but I'm also kind of annoyed at how much of a Monty Haul experience it is, too. The game becomes a joke once you acquire sufficiently powerful equipment, like the aforementioned bruiser who wields greensteel weapons at level 12, alongside his gimpy friends, who are still using +1 longswords and such.
The best way to fill up a server is to allow in free-to-play people. The problem is converting them into paying customers. If you open up too much of the game, people will never subscribe, leaving you with sluggish, overloaded servers that you can't afford to upgrade. If you don't open up enough of the world, people will get bored and move on to a different game, leaving your servers perpetually empty. It's a difficult game to master.
Early hybrid games, such as Flagship's Hellgate: London (HGL), suffered from these issues rather acutely. To their credit, I think that Turbine has actually pulled off a rather impressive balancing act in Dungeon & Dragons Online (DDO). When you killed a boss in HGL, sometimes you got subscriber-only weapons. If you weren't a subscriber, it felt a slap in the face. "Ha ha! You can't use this! Sucks to be you," the game's developers seemed to be saying. That doesn't happen in DDO; in fact, loot that drops in subscriber-only areas can be put on the auction house or traded to non-subscribers. In HGL, you'd have rather dubious benefits as a subscriber, seeing as how almost everything in the game was available to non-subscribers. Flagship was very slow to add new content, and what little new content they did add just highlighted the lack of content on launch. Turbine, on the other hand, regularly adds new content, some of which is usually available to non-subscribers.
Obviously, HGL had many, many problems beyond their subscription model (such as being launched way too early), but I think that Turbine has shown how you can make something like a hybrid subscription model work, when other, prominent games using that model died fiery, public deaths.
This isn't to say that I'm a Turbine fanboy, because I think Turbine has done nearly as much wrong as they've done right, but they've really done a lot to win me over in the past few months. I've even spent some real-world money in their store, which is something that I never thought I'd do. The biggest problem with Turbine's method, I think, is that subscribers end up with ridiculously overpowered items, while non-subscribers scrape by with rather bland loot from the free-to-play adventures. With access to those items, the game becomes a simplistic (and even somewhat boring) grind, where you are never in any real danger of dying. Still, a simplistic, boring grind is exactly what most MMORPG fans want, so it's possibly another time when Turbine is more in tune with their audience than failed companies, such as Flagship, who tried to make their game challenging (such as adding hardcore mode).
In his defense, he had done all the work, but he hadn't gone through with the paperwork -- but this is just from memory.
I never bothered to finish my studies, either. I don't go around claiming to have gotten degrees that I don't have, but I can understand how one might feel entitled to a degree that one technically doesn't own, because of bureaucracy and/or circumstance. Obviously, the problem is the "entitled" aspect, and that's why I don't do what he did.
Don't underestimate gamers or the gaming industry.
If every gamer switched to Linux, you'd see Windows become as irrelevant as OS/2, which also had a sizeable installed base in the corporate world, or Mac OS, which had a huge installed base in education. Corporate users hardly ever upgrade, and many of their biggest apps have already been ported to at least one other OS, if not more. In the corporate world, they cater to the customer's needs and desires. In the home market, they dictate to the market.
I think it would be hilarious for LulzSec to hack Slashdot and post every single username and password, along with any financial details that they found on Thinkgeek.. Come on. Slashdot is so buggy, their security simply must be a joke. I'd be curious to see what the reaction is. My guess is that some people would still support LulzSec, even saying that they're glad that such a fine group of principled and honorable white hat hackers took the time to demonstrate the flaws of Slashdot's security.
Back when I was in college, I had a friend who used to break into cars that used The Club. He wouldn't steal anything but The Club itself, to demonstrate to them the uselessness of the product. I found it hilarious. Much like these web site hacks, it was just a harmless prank by some punk kid. But it was also pretty fucking antisocial. Did those people learn a valuable lesson? I don't know. Maybe. That doesn't change the fact that it was wrong to break into those cars.
By the way, I'm not saying that I'm some paragon of virtue, because, obviously, I'm not (I found the whole thing rather amusing and probably indirectly encouraged his activities by laughing). I don't think you need to be virtuous in order to speak about virtue, however.
Yeah, that's pretty much my point. I was being sarcastic and uncharitably narrow-minded when I said racing games hadn't evolved since the very first generation. Obviously, they have, but in ways that non-fans would discount, since the essential concept remains the same. Crashes are modelled on real-world physics now, instead of everyone driving bumper cars made of flubber, for example. Trackmania combined the unlikely genres of racing and platform games. Car Wars (the old 8 bit video game, not the table top game), and Death Track (a personal favorite, and obviously inspired by SJG's Car Wars franchise) combined games with racing games.
I love the SimCity series, too. But, to be honest, the gameplay seemingly hasn't changed much at all, from the POV of someone who's not a fan of the series. You zone industrial, commercial, and residential. You place power plants. You put down an airport when commercial demand requires one. They got steadily more and more complicated, to the point at which they became more complex than your average Avalon Hill board game. Can't see any of the progression of gameplay, over the decades? Maybe you're not a fan. Is there room for a revolution in gameplay? Most definitely. Much like the latest Bioware or Bethesda RPG, it can be infuriating to be trapped inside the straitjacket of rigid genre conformity, but if you're a fan of that genre, it's not so bad. It's just that the basic gameplay elements and genre trappings change so little over time, most people write them off as continual retreads, rather than small evolutions over time. Compare the first and latest SimCity games: they're pretty damn different, even though the basic gameplay elements are exactly the same.
Half-Life was an obvious evolution of FPS gameplay, but it took years to show up on the scene. Likewise, it'll probably be a good long time before someone takes the obvious leap and designs an RPG where quests are dynamic and NPCs are proactive, instead of standing around, waiting for you to solve their every problem. Radiant AI could eventually be that evolution, but given how incredibly underwhelming it was in TES 4: Oblivion, I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the next SimCity game will have some equally big gameplay change(s), but I'm not holding my breath there, either. Revolutionary games often don't sell, because they can't find a big enough market. People want to play the same game over and over again, with minor updates, instead of having to learn a completely new style of gameplay and rules, every time they buy a new game. A big enough evolutionary change is where the smart money is, rather than outright revolutionary changes. When was the last time you played a video game that was revolutionary? And would you truly want every single game to be that way? Personally, I'm looking forward anxiously to Diablo 3, even though it's probably just going to be Diablo 2 with better graphics... because I loved the minimalist gameplay in Diablo 1 and 2! If Dialbo 3 is revolutionary, I'll be somewhat disappointed, because that's not what I look to the Diablo franchise for. When it comes to Diablo, I actively desire the same old game, but with better graphics and more loot. The action RPG genre revolves around being simplistic, minimalistic, and easy to learn. Complicating the formula would remove quite a bit of the charm. It's like buying a chess game and discovering that it's got some new, revolutionary rules added to it; you wanted chess, not Bob's Home Rules Chess.
So, try to keep an open mind about game design: for every game that seems like it's just a simplistic rehash of every game that came before it, there's a genre fanboy who rejoices that his favorite franchise just got a new sequel, and it's got some vaguely evolutionary feature that excites him more than sex. For the rest of us, we can wait for the more revolutionary games, which might simply end up confusing and annoying the genre fanboy, who can't understand why you would even want to have a racing game with machine guns or a real-life physics model.
As opposed to what? The latest Bioware RPG, where you have three dialogue options (Angelic, Satanic, and Snarky), act as a glorified FedEx courier, and use extreme violence to solve every problem you face? Or maybe you prefer the latest indie puzzle game, which is a direct ripoff of either Tetris or Sokoban (apparently the only two puzzle games to ever exist, although there are rumors of a third archetype called "breakout"). Or maybe you prefer Civilization X, which is just like Civilization IX, except it has Morocco as a playable civilization this time! Or there's always SimCity, where you build a city. Again. Just like the rest of the SimCity games. Let's not even get into racing games, which haven't evolved since the very first generation.
I like Bioware, Firaxis, and Maxis as much as the next guy, but... seriously... what are expecting? You can tear down any genre, and in those genres there are always going to be the complicated/innovative and the streamlined/derivative games. id makes mindless, uncomplicated action games, where you kill everything that moves. Don't like that? Don't play it. Some of us like that kind of gameplay. It sounds like you're more demanding, and that's fine. I love complex, deep games, but when I play an FPS, I generally just want to blow shit up and/or shoot people in the face. I don't want to deal with any complexity beyond that, when I'm playing an FPS, because it just draws time away from blowing shit up... and, frankly, the idea of someone begging for his life or limping around sounds disturbing to me. I like shooting at pixels, not humans. Anyway, why would I want wide open worlds to explore, enemies that beg for their life or limp, or AI when I'm going to be playing multiplayer deathmatches 99% of the time? Scratch that. 100% of the time. It sounds to me like you want a wholly different genre... some kind of console game, where you play solo, solve puzzles, and explore the world. That sounds boring as fuck to me, but, then again, I like FPS games.
That joke is rapidly losing all relevance, unfortunately. I used to bring it out pretty regularly, too, but there are too few people who remember Peter Noone.
Ha. I've had nightmares like what you described, but they weren't quite that bad.
This study also makes me curious what effect emotional and neurological disorders might have on the results. Being bipolar, I've experienced quite lot of emotional turmoil in my life (some of it my own fault, admittedly), and what you describe is sometimes how my life feels. Later on, I can see my perceptions and reactions were irrational, but it always feels normal, at the time. I can be philosophical and resilient about an emotionally traumatic event, yet fall to pieces because a friend didn't call me back at the set time. It's weird.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for your insightful comment. I feel smarter for having read it. Do you have any other nuanced, intellectual essays to share with us?
I understand where you're coming from, and I think that you're right to look at the world in terms of equality vs discrimination. That's commendable. Sometimes, however, the discrimination is so inconsequential and stupid, that it doesn't even warrant any real attention, and I agree that some feminists are obsessed with finding tiny detail in society that isn't perfect -- but those same people are usually young, full of righteous anger, and looking to "stick it to the man" (much like the punk movement in the late 70s and early 80s). For an angry, young woman (16-21), who can't really affect much real change in the world, harping on stupid shit is pretty much all she's got. Remember how dumb you were when you were that age, and how much of what you said was stupid, ignorant shit? Give her a break. Much like the punks, her heart is in the right place, even if she is a bit loud, overzealous, and obnoxious. If you're talking about mature adults, then I'd probably say that it comes down to differences in experience and values. Slashdot is full of such deadly earnest people who care way too much about minor, inconsequential shit. You'd think that they'd recognize that quality in others and be more tolerant about it, but it's just the opposite. Try to explain to a radical feminist how important software freedom is, and she'll probably think you're a raving loon. That same radical feminist probably sounds like a loon to you, because she's so devoted to her beliefs. In the end, you're cut from the same cloth, and it's a shame that you can't find any common ground. In fact, I'd say that this is why many political/social movements never gain any real traction in the mainstream: they're obsessed with shit that "normal" people couldn't care less about, and when confronted with that apathy, the most common response is to call the mainstream "sheeple". It is actually one of my stronger beliefs that you can find a deadly earnest, humorless, Aspie faction in almost every movement, including feminism, Libertarianism/Objectivistism, free software, etc.
Ladies' Night is, on the face, discriminatory toward men. Yes, that much is a given. However, is very different from the institutionalized sexism that women have historically faced, such as not being able to vote, own property, or go to college. Even today, there are still many issues that women face that men don't. Some of them might seem inconsequential to you, but, obviously, they don't seem that way to the feminists. By any objective scale, Ladies' Night is inconsequential, stupid shit, and the end result is arguably beneficial to men, anyway. That's why feminists are not screaming about how unfair it is: they recognize that the cheap/free drinks are only available to them because 1) a man (in most cases, but obviously not all) has made them available to her (as opposed to the institutionalized sexism of males making laws that forbid women from voting) and 2) in the end, it's a cynical attempt to appeal to (or exploit, if you prefer) males, and it's not done give special rights or privileges to females. In the end, feminists are more interested in levelling the power distribution of society, such that men and women wield equal amounts of power, rather than trying to wipe out all sexism in society, no matter how inconsequential. If they were only interested in sexism, yes, you're right, they'd be more obsessed with fighting stupid shit like Ladies' Night or dating sites that allow women to sign up for free, while men have to pay money.
I think that you've misunderstood the basic tenets of feminism, at least to some extent, and maybe once you understand it better, you might find that the fights that feminists wage might make more sense to you. Unfortunately, like any insular movement full of groupthink and sick of being marginalized by the mainstream, it's very common to ridicule and insult the "sheeple" who aren't true believers, rather than attempt to explain yourself to them in patient, non-confrontational terms. Just look at all the people
Since the summary doesn't tell you, I will: it's a huge, useless clock being built in the desert. It's called the "10,000 year clock" because the hands of the clock move glacially slowly. It will truly be a wonder to behold, unless it stops working after 100 years and people forget that it's even there.
tl;dr version: big, useless clock.
Public domain.
You really do dislike women, don't you? Wow.
Dude, anyone who takes advantage of a drunk person is wrong, regardless of the gender. If a woman gets you drunk, for the purposes of reducing your inhibitions, then, yes, she's taken advantage of you and is no better than the douchebags who do so to women. Does that make you feel better? Do you feel vindicated now? Ugh.
You're being silly. The whole point of ladies night is to get more women into a bar, so that the men have available women to hit on. It's most beneficial to the bar owners (who are cynically seeking to draw in lonely men with the lure of drunk women), but the whole concept is done for the benefit of male customers, not because the bar owners want to give women "special privileges". But, yes, you're right that it's unfair to men to price the drinks lower for women. The trade-off is that the bar ends up not being a sausage fest, which directly benefits men. As for why feminists are not complaining about it, it's because they generally find the whole concept to be stupid beyond belief, patronizing, and avoid it. If you do a google search, you'll probably find a few contemptuous essays about the practice, written from a feminist point of view, like this article.
Why would a feminist go to a bar during ladies' night, when she knows she's basically just a product being advertised to men? That's why you don't hear about feminists decrying the horrible sexism of ladies' night.
If you still think that ladies' night is unfair to men, then I'd say that you're not really seeing the big picture here. If there were a Men's Night, you'd be a product being sold to women, and I doubt that you'd really enjoy being treated like that, even if there were some side benefits (such as cheaper drinks). Being constantly harassed by the opposite sex, who feel they are entitled to your attention, when you were just looking to have a drink in peace would be a bit annoying.
So, why is the OP resorting to piracy? Why not just boycott the content producers and ISPs who are engaging in this behavior? It reeks of an entitlement complex -- I deserve to have everything for free, damn it, and you have no right to tell me that I can't pirate to my heart's content!
Yes, there are other issues here, such as potentially losing your internet access because some minimum wage worker fingered your IP address, instead of the actual IP address of a pirate, but that's not what the OP was raging about -- or, at least, it was secondary to his justifications of his entitlement complex.
Your freedom to have an entitlement complex is being infringed? My God, call the waaaaaaambulance immediately! This is truly an emergency of epic proportions. What will you do if you can't gorge yourself on pop culture? That truly must be a life not worth living.
First, you're talking about obsessive hoarders here. These are the kinds of people who download dozens of music tracks every day, with no intention of ever listening to them... just because they can. It's there, so they pirate it. If it weren't there, they probably wouldn't ever miss it.
Second, it's the principle of the matter. To them, paying for something that you can get for free is more than just stupid, it's morally wrong, regardless of the costs to society. Now, I'm not saying that there's something wrong with being cheap, but there's a difference between pestering your friend to provide free law advice and trying to find the cheapest lawyer.
Third, it's an entitlement complex of epic proportions, and they're not going to suddenly stop acting like the world owes them everything for free, when they've been able to easily pirate whatever they wanted, in the past. Once people get used to getting something for free, they'll riot if you try to sell it to them. It's human nature, really.
Fourth, it seems to be some kind of bizarre psychological trait that you'll commonly find in people. For example, an overclocking enthusiast will spend an extra $50 on CPU cooling, so they can overclock their CPU by 100 MHz, instead of just buying a CPU that's 100 MHz faster, for $25. People like feeling that they got something extra, for free, even if the reality of the situation is that they only cost themselves more money. Some people are more ideological than pragmatic.
My God. That's the biggest entitlement complex I've ever seen in my life. I'd nominate you for some kind of award, if it existed.
While it's true that you purchase adventure packs in DDO, those adventure packs are the only way to craft the most powerful weapons and armor. I have the same problem that the anon does: in most games of this type, the more money you spend, the better your character becomes. I think that DDO does it in a way that's more tolerable than most other games of its ilk (especially since it's possible to grind Turbine Points and get those adventure packs for free), but it's still something that bothers me somewhat.
In Hellgate: London, subscribers got very little in the way of benefits for their money. That was probably one of the biggest reasons that it died (among numerous reasons), but it was also kind of nice knowing that all the characters were generally equal to each other, without vastly overpowered items or classes being available only to subscribers. In the end, the way that Turbine does it is clearly the better way, from a financial standpoint (what incentive did people have to subscribe to HGL?), but I wish that free-to-play didn't also mean pay-to-win. I'm pretty sure there's a middle ground, and, admittedly, DDO is actually a lot closer to that middle ground than most free-to-play games that I've seen, but once you buy a few adventure packs, the game effectively turns into a boring grindfest, where you slowly plow through the content, wielding overpowered weapons and wearing overpowered armor. I'd prefer that the adventure packs merely opened up more quests, rather than giving out such overpowered items. It makes the game a bit too easy and causes non-subscribers to effectively become useless gimps, since they can't keep up with your uber-character. A subscriber decked out with at-level gear is probably worth three or four non-subscribers, especially once you reach level 12 (with access to greensteel weapons).
That non-subscriber can grind Turbine Points to get access to Vale of Twilight, where greensteel weapons are made, which mitigates some of the issues, but the problem (if you see it as a problem) still exists. One could obviously argue that it's merely an entitlement complex, and the non-subscribers are just jealous of the equipment that subscribers have access to, but I -- like the anon -- see it as more of a game balance issue than anything else. On one hand, the inner loot-whore in me loves the fact that the loot is so crazy overpowered in those adventure packs, but I'm also kind of annoyed at how much of a Monty Haul experience it is, too. The game becomes a joke once you acquire sufficiently powerful equipment, like the aforementioned bruiser who wields greensteel weapons at level 12, alongside his gimpy friends, who are still using +1 longswords and such.
The best way to fill up a server is to allow in free-to-play people. The problem is converting them into paying customers. If you open up too much of the game, people will never subscribe, leaving you with sluggish, overloaded servers that you can't afford to upgrade. If you don't open up enough of the world, people will get bored and move on to a different game, leaving your servers perpetually empty. It's a difficult game to master.
Early hybrid games, such as Flagship's Hellgate: London (HGL), suffered from these issues rather acutely. To their credit, I think that Turbine has actually pulled off a rather impressive balancing act in Dungeon & Dragons Online (DDO). When you killed a boss in HGL, sometimes you got subscriber-only weapons. If you weren't a subscriber, it felt a slap in the face. "Ha ha! You can't use this! Sucks to be you," the game's developers seemed to be saying. That doesn't happen in DDO; in fact, loot that drops in subscriber-only areas can be put on the auction house or traded to non-subscribers. In HGL, you'd have rather dubious benefits as a subscriber, seeing as how almost everything in the game was available to non-subscribers. Flagship was very slow to add new content, and what little new content they did add just highlighted the lack of content on launch. Turbine, on the other hand, regularly adds new content, some of which is usually available to non-subscribers.
Obviously, HGL had many, many problems beyond their subscription model (such as being launched way too early), but I think that Turbine has shown how you can make something like a hybrid subscription model work, when other, prominent games using that model died fiery, public deaths.
This isn't to say that I'm a Turbine fanboy, because I think Turbine has done nearly as much wrong as they've done right, but they've really done a lot to win me over in the past few months. I've even spent some real-world money in their store, which is something that I never thought I'd do. The biggest problem with Turbine's method, I think, is that subscribers end up with ridiculously overpowered items, while non-subscribers scrape by with rather bland loot from the free-to-play adventures. With access to those items, the game becomes a simplistic (and even somewhat boring) grind, where you are never in any real danger of dying. Still, a simplistic, boring grind is exactly what most MMORPG fans want, so it's possibly another time when Turbine is more in tune with their audience than failed companies, such as Flagship, who tried to make their game challenging (such as adding hardcore mode).
So, just like I thought. You pirate huge amounts of data, while pretending that you don't.
Wow. You're a huge asshole. That must be why I added you as a friend. Ha.
I totally agree.
What the fuck are you downloading that takes 200-300GB/month? Do you stream multiple Bluray movies per day over the web or something?
In his defense, he had done all the work, but he hadn't gone through with the paperwork -- but this is just from memory.
I never bothered to finish my studies, either. I don't go around claiming to have gotten degrees that I don't have, but I can understand how one might feel entitled to a degree that one technically doesn't own, because of bureaucracy and/or circumstance. Obviously, the problem is the "entitled" aspect, and that's why I don't do what he did.
Don't underestimate gamers or the gaming industry.
If every gamer switched to Linux, you'd see Windows become as irrelevant as OS/2, which also had a sizeable installed base in the corporate world, or Mac OS, which had a huge installed base in education. Corporate users hardly ever upgrade, and many of their biggest apps have already been ported to at least one other OS, if not more. In the corporate world, they cater to the customer's needs and desires. In the home market, they dictate to the market.
I think it would be hilarious for LulzSec to hack Slashdot and post every single username and password, along with any financial details that they found on Thinkgeek.. Come on. Slashdot is so buggy, their security simply must be a joke. I'd be curious to see what the reaction is. My guess is that some people would still support LulzSec, even saying that they're glad that such a fine group of principled and honorable white hat hackers took the time to demonstrate the flaws of Slashdot's security.
Back when I was in college, I had a friend who used to break into cars that used The Club. He wouldn't steal anything but The Club itself, to demonstrate to them the uselessness of the product. I found it hilarious. Much like these web site hacks, it was just a harmless prank by some punk kid. But it was also pretty fucking antisocial. Did those people learn a valuable lesson? I don't know. Maybe. That doesn't change the fact that it was wrong to break into those cars.
By the way, I'm not saying that I'm some paragon of virtue, because, obviously, I'm not (I found the whole thing rather amusing and probably indirectly encouraged his activities by laughing). I don't think you need to be virtuous in order to speak about virtue, however.
Because everyone who is smart and competent must think exactly like him.
Because being a script kiddie is achieving something noble.
And people take you seriously, apk?
You have two topics that you post about: hosts files and drinkypoo. And, frankly, I'm sick of hearing you go on about them both.
Yeah, that's pretty much my point. I was being sarcastic and uncharitably narrow-minded when I said racing games hadn't evolved since the very first generation. Obviously, they have, but in ways that non-fans would discount, since the essential concept remains the same. Crashes are modelled on real-world physics now, instead of everyone driving bumper cars made of flubber, for example. Trackmania combined the unlikely genres of racing and platform games. Car Wars (the old 8 bit video game, not the table top game), and Death Track (a personal favorite, and obviously inspired by SJG's Car Wars franchise) combined games with racing games.
I love the SimCity series, too. But, to be honest, the gameplay seemingly hasn't changed much at all, from the POV of someone who's not a fan of the series. You zone industrial, commercial, and residential. You place power plants. You put down an airport when commercial demand requires one. They got steadily more and more complicated, to the point at which they became more complex than your average Avalon Hill board game. Can't see any of the progression of gameplay, over the decades? Maybe you're not a fan. Is there room for a revolution in gameplay? Most definitely. Much like the latest Bioware or Bethesda RPG, it can be infuriating to be trapped inside the straitjacket of rigid genre conformity, but if you're a fan of that genre, it's not so bad. It's just that the basic gameplay elements and genre trappings change so little over time, most people write them off as continual retreads, rather than small evolutions over time. Compare the first and latest SimCity games: they're pretty damn different, even though the basic gameplay elements are exactly the same.
Half-Life was an obvious evolution of FPS gameplay, but it took years to show up on the scene. Likewise, it'll probably be a good long time before someone takes the obvious leap and designs an RPG where quests are dynamic and NPCs are proactive, instead of standing around, waiting for you to solve their every problem. Radiant AI could eventually be that evolution, but given how incredibly underwhelming it was in TES 4: Oblivion, I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the next SimCity game will have some equally big gameplay change(s), but I'm not holding my breath there, either. Revolutionary games often don't sell, because they can't find a big enough market. People want to play the same game over and over again, with minor updates, instead of having to learn a completely new style of gameplay and rules, every time they buy a new game. A big enough evolutionary change is where the smart money is, rather than outright revolutionary changes. When was the last time you played a video game that was revolutionary? And would you truly want every single game to be that way? Personally, I'm looking forward anxiously to Diablo 3, even though it's probably just going to be Diablo 2 with better graphics... because I loved the minimalist gameplay in Diablo 1 and 2! If Dialbo 3 is revolutionary, I'll be somewhat disappointed, because that's not what I look to the Diablo franchise for. When it comes to Diablo, I actively desire the same old game, but with better graphics and more loot. The action RPG genre revolves around being simplistic, minimalistic, and easy to learn. Complicating the formula would remove quite a bit of the charm. It's like buying a chess game and discovering that it's got some new, revolutionary rules added to it; you wanted chess, not Bob's Home Rules Chess.
So, try to keep an open mind about game design: for every game that seems like it's just a simplistic rehash of every game that came before it, there's a genre fanboy who rejoices that his favorite franchise just got a new sequel, and it's got some vaguely evolutionary feature that excites him more than sex. For the rest of us, we can wait for the more revolutionary games, which might simply end up confusing and annoying the genre fanboy, who can't understand why you would even want to have a racing game with machine guns or a real-life physics model.
As opposed to what? The latest Bioware RPG, where you have three dialogue options (Angelic, Satanic, and Snarky), act as a glorified FedEx courier, and use extreme violence to solve every problem you face? Or maybe you prefer the latest indie puzzle game, which is a direct ripoff of either Tetris or Sokoban (apparently the only two puzzle games to ever exist, although there are rumors of a third archetype called "breakout"). Or maybe you prefer Civilization X, which is just like Civilization IX, except it has Morocco as a playable civilization this time! Or there's always SimCity, where you build a city. Again. Just like the rest of the SimCity games. Let's not even get into racing games, which haven't evolved since the very first generation.
I like Bioware, Firaxis, and Maxis as much as the next guy, but... seriously... what are expecting? You can tear down any genre, and in those genres there are always going to be the complicated/innovative and the streamlined/derivative games. id makes mindless, uncomplicated action games, where you kill everything that moves. Don't like that? Don't play it. Some of us like that kind of gameplay. It sounds like you're more demanding, and that's fine. I love complex, deep games, but when I play an FPS, I generally just want to blow shit up and/or shoot people in the face. I don't want to deal with any complexity beyond that, when I'm playing an FPS, because it just draws time away from blowing shit up... and, frankly, the idea of someone begging for his life or limping around sounds disturbing to me. I like shooting at pixels, not humans. Anyway, why would I want wide open worlds to explore, enemies that beg for their life or limp, or AI when I'm going to be playing multiplayer deathmatches 99% of the time? Scratch that. 100% of the time. It sounds to me like you want a wholly different genre... some kind of console game, where you play solo, solve puzzles, and explore the world. That sounds boring as fuck to me, but, then again, I like FPS games.
That joke is rapidly losing all relevance, unfortunately. I used to bring it out pretty regularly, too, but there are too few people who remember Peter Noone.
Ha. I've had nightmares like what you described, but they weren't quite that bad.
This study also makes me curious what effect emotional and neurological disorders might have on the results. Being bipolar, I've experienced quite lot of emotional turmoil in my life (some of it my own fault, admittedly), and what you describe is sometimes how my life feels. Later on, I can see my perceptions and reactions were irrational, but it always feels normal, at the time. I can be philosophical and resilient about an emotionally traumatic event, yet fall to pieces because a friend didn't call me back at the set time. It's weird.