Especially in games where most gear is player made. The more stuff thats made by players, for players, the more you NEED high level, hardcore players (see: FFXI). The less stuff thats made by players, for players, the less high level, hardcore players (see: WoW). Simple as that. Where do you think that Plated Armor come from? That Robe of Intelligence? That Sword of Stabbyness +1? Theres a reason why crafting systems are almost always implemented into MMO games.
To be fair though, I'll admit casual gamers also cause a growth in the economy. Those basic rocks, roots and monster eyeballs you bought had to have been collected by someone.
The XP boost you gain in WoW (I haven't played Eq2 so I'm commenting on WoW only) is minor at most. The XP boost you gain only affects the XP you gain from killing monsters and at higher levels you quest for XP rather than kill. After a while, killing for XP just isn't worth it, quests either give too little rewards (read: low level quest), or are too hard to be done solo.
Throw in high level raids (which implies teamwork), instanced dungeons (normally done with multiple people) and a weak economic system (crafting has almost no risk involved and costs little) and the game just feels like it tried to achieve too much all at once. At lower levels, everyone solos and theres nearly no reason to team up with others for any reason. At higher levels, everyone teams up and soloing is near impossible. Top off the fact that most players end up reaching the 'end game' content with very little cooperation with other players and you have players that simply do not know how to play their job well at all.
Its simple as that. Its "try before you buy". Don't like it? Return the game. Like it? Write down the name, return it, and go buy a retail copy of it. You can't lose!
Or for example you play a 4X genre game, where the technology level of the opponents are hidden from the player. Then, immediately after you make a technology breakthrough the AI hits you with 'give technology X or we declare war'. When this happens consistently, it is a certain indication of the AI having access to information that a normal player would not have.
Actually, this only happens in certain games and in different degrees. In Master of Orion 2 (MOO2), the AI generally 'knew' what technologies you had because they spied on you rampantly. On the hardest difficulty and on a huge galaxy, it was common to have over 30 spies sent against you by ONE opponent. On top of that, the only way to 'kill' enemy spies was to have your own spy army on defense and hope your spies went on a counter-intelligence purge.
Vice versa, if you had a technology the enemy did not have and the enemy had technology you did not have, you couldn't trade the technology simply because neither side knew what the other had.
Whereas in other games such as in Civ 2 and 3, no the AI did not 'cheat'. It just used the embassy system. A lot. The game never gave you notices, but if you kept track and kept checking every turn, you could figure out exactly what was being researched, their average rate of research, and even roughly guess whether they were plotting to team up against you.
Anyhow, I've never used this information for any malevolent purposes myself (or any purpose at all, really), but I let the password "slip" to, I'd say, a good half-dozen people. Unfortunately, it spread, as all good and meaty information does, to several students less-imbued with morals than I.
Lets face it. If you know a REALLY good secret that you SHOULDN'T know, its going to leak out. And when information leaks, theres no telling who learns about it. For every one of those 'good half-dozen people' you told the password to, there was probably 10 other jerks who went around screwing up the school computers.
I'm not saying 'hackers' (if you can call them that in such cases) should charged as a felony, but you've got admit there is a line. We all know students will install and download whatever crap they want onto computers and theres nothing teachers can do about it, so accept it. But when students start changing grades, breaking computers, or wasting bandwidth on something they'll probably never get to use or move off the computer (anything large than a.mp3 file and the kid shouldn't even be on the computer that long); you draw a line and punish those who cross it. The ultimate question, however is, where do you draw the line? Too close and you get pointless cases such as the parent news report. Too far and you get kids hacking into school computers to change grades and get let off with a 'slap on the wrist' type punishment (in-school suspension? Some schools outright flunk you for the year or expel you for that. Hell, most colleges fail you for the course just for plagiarism, imagine how they would react to a hacking attempt to change grades.)
As anyone who plays console video games can tell you, any change in hardware, software or even the controllers can result in serious and unexpected changes in the long run.
How long do you think it took Windows to reach the state its in now? If you looking at just the major changes there have been a LOT compared to other software. (Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, not counting updates, ME, or versions older than 95 and the unreleased Longhorn). Has there EVER been a major serious of software changes in history on this scale? The answer is a simple, no way.
Throw in the fact that nearly 90-something% of all computer software is designed to fit into a Windows environment, the billions of users who have accustomed themselves to Windows' own quirks and the ever present threat of losing marketshare to Apple or Linux and what you're asking is impossible. There is no magical development wand that can be waved and all of Microsoft's problems would be solved. This isn't a Linux project where every user personally works on and personally customizes their OS either. The most obvious solution for Windows to take is simple, 'if it isn't broken (enough), don't fix it (yet)'
Either way, I play them because I can shut my brain off and see the pretty things blow up and splatter!
Wasn't the point of HL1 supposed to revolve around the player outsmarting and outthinking enemies when faced with overwhelming odds? In HL1 the most powerful guns were either obtained late or lacked a good source of ammo to be used often. (By the time you got the Gauss Cannon or Gluon Gun, you pretty much fought everything and weapons such as the Rocket Launcher and Crossbow had rare amounts of ammo throughout the entire game.)
In HL2, its possible to go through entire segments using only the SMG because its so plentiful between the easy Combine kills and unlimited ammo crates. The Gravity Gun is obtained less than halfway through the game. The Magnum, Crossbow and unlimited Grenade crates begin appearing too early and are overpowered even on Hard mode. The whole 2 spare clips for most weapons didn't help either since people just turned to the overpowered Gravity Gun as a result.
One on one PvP is over-rated. There will always be one "best" class for it.
True in one-on-one PVP, there can pretty much be no balance but it also depends on the kind of PVP is implemented. If you get a slow paced PVP such as yeah, one-on-one fights don't matter much cause other team members/players (assuming you have some teamwork going on) will generally be able to react and respond quickly and effectively enough to a bumrush against support class players. If you get a FAST paced PVP, one-on-one fights DO matter. Set up your macros well and you catch a target unprepared (read: casting a spell), you can usually take him out with just one macro.
Just look at FPSs. In Quake 3, a good player can single-handedly dominate a CTF match even though he uses the same weapons, armor and limitations as the other players. While in Unreal Tournament or Doom 3, due to the slower movement even a newbie can take out the number one player on the server just by ambushing them with a weaker weapon.
Microsoft invents Microsoft Excel. Microsoft invents Microsoft Access. Guatamalan inventor patents method of transferring data between the two programs.
Does that make any sense to you? Guy didn't invent either program. He's not some disgruntled ex-Microsoft programmer out to get his just dues. He's not some super, uber-leet programmer who came out with "Carlos's Excel" or "Carlos's Access" years before Microsoft did and simply didn't succeed due to lack of marketing. This is some Joe Nobody who filed a broad, vague patent that the courts were stupid enough to uphold.
But the game came out before/during/at the same time as Reloaded and since the game was leaked to the public early/illegally, I find it easier to simply consider the game to be the beginning of the downfall.
Movie studio makes huge hit yet when they try to convert it into a video game, it bombs. Badly. Sure the game was a financial success but lets face it, the entire Matrix series never fully recovered from the shock.
Screw the movie studios. They screwed up The Matrix when they went from movie to video game. They screwed up Tomb Raider when they went video game to movie. They screwed up Starship Troopers when they went from book to movie. They can't seem to do anything right anymore so let Bungie and Microsoft do it. Worst case scenario, if it bombs you blame Bungie and Microsoft for being 'too strict.'
Thats just huge set of IF, THEN commands based on the original quest. IF you are spotted, THEN (A)ssassinate quest on the (E)nemy side and the (P)rotect scout quest on the (F)riendly side is unlocked. That would be a series of triggers. Almost all games already use such systems. (IF player crosses X mark, THEN Y enemies come out of Z area.)
Throw in the whole 'well what if there were no other players to escort the original scout player to the city?' issue or the ever-present 'what about balancing the two sides? can't have one side have 10 level 20 guys and the other having 5 level 5 guys' and you've got an unbalanced, arguably buggy MMO game.
A better, simpler example would be if the NPCs gave chase to you DEPENDING on where, when, how and who/which NPC saw you. If you got spotted by NPC Rookie level 1, in the dark, late at night and only saw you for 2 seconds the AI might not even give chase to you. On the other hand if NPC Commander level 50 saw you, in broad daylight, during an important tactical mission for about 15 minutes but didn't say anything to avoid 'spooking' you, the AI SHOULD go berserk sending troops at you with enough man and firepower to rival some player guilds/clans.
for each PSP unit sold. The general rule of thumb in the video game industry (with Nintendo being an exception and Sega totally failing at this) is to sell the system at a loss (see: Xbox and the gaping hole of lost money) and make it all back and more with the software SOLD. (see: PS1 and PS2's insanely huge and lucrative libraries.)
Hacks, homebrewed games and utilities make NO profit for any company unless the system is sold at a profit. There is no 'well its a victory in marketing' because Sega tried the same thing and was crushed utterly by Sony with the Dreamcast.
I'd be interested if Sony announced this a few weeks/months after launching, but now? This just says cheap last minute marketing attempt. Run the numbers and Nintendo is killing Sony in the handheld industry. Sony hasn't dented the GBA, the DS is outselling the PSP, DS games are outselling PSP games, and Nintendo isn't taking a huge loss for each DS unit sold. Throw in PSP defects and the fact that they delayed the European launch (read : STILL hasn't launched) and Sony is getting burned worse than Microsoft did when it launched the Xbox.
FFXI doesn't have all the things you're asking for (such as kill stealing) but it is pretty hardcore compared to WoW. There are tons of hidden stats and figures within the combat system (theres +accurate equipment but no +acc stats listed..), the crafting system (there are players who believe you get better results depending on which way your character is facing...) and the chance of certain items to drop (moon phase, time of day, day of week, how long you've been in the zone, etc).
As anyone whos played the game will tell you, the death penalty is PAINFUL. XP loss can range from 200 to 2400 per death, so two or three deaths and you can lose 1/5 of your level's exp. Throw in the whole "I don't wanna/can't find a XP party" issue and deleveling is a common thing (you can begin delevel starting at level 4 so the training wheels come off early).
As long as you avoid the popular XPing spots, you spend hours or even days in certain areas without seeing another person. Hell if you hid yourself in a really empty corner you could go unnoticed for weeks.
Theres no instancing either. The closest thing to an instanced area is a special ultra-high level players only area which requires no less than 18 people, comes with a 1 million gil (FFXI money) fee just to enter, a TIME LIMIT (3 hours maximum assuming you get all the time extenders) and a 3 day waiting period before you can do it again. Oh and only one group can go in at a time. Most players die there between 3~7 times each, with many players joking about the area being Square's solution to all the xp maxed out players. Is that hardcore enough for you?
Oh and FFXI has a cute little munchkin like race which has a tendency to teased on by everyone (including npcs).
To inform. Think about it, how many countries in the WORLD has an education system which requires, or for the sake of argument encourages, the reading of Karl Marx's original Das Capital? Sure Russia probably has students read The Communist Manifesto but do you really think they're unabridged? Unless you major in political science chances are you'll never pick the books up in your life, let alone know whats said within them.
Did Marx say capitalism was bad? No, he simply said that as the number of rich elites shrunk and poor workers grew eventually there would be a revolution which ultimately led to Communism or Marxism. Is Russia Marxist? No, because history as well as real world examples show that only small percentage of Russia was capitalist before the government was shifted to Leninism/Stalinism/Communism. You can go on and on and on on this from arguing about 'what Marx meant' to whether Russia had become capitalist enough to whether Marxism is simply outdated due to government shifting from pro-rich industrialist to pro-union workers in the late-1800's.
When it comes to history, 'facts' becomes more black and white as time goes on. You take what is known AND proven and you connect it to how reality played itself out. Any attempt without an new signficant evidence is nothing more than revisionist history by special interest groups or people. (See: Neo-nazis, conspiracy theorists, etc). The list of reasons goes on.
But then doesn't that mean the innovator is handicapping himself from innovating in the first place? By taking the time to learn and memorize these modern 'innovations' aren't they grounding their thoughts into the same kind of mentality they are trying to break free of in the first place?
Electronics are EXTREMELY embedded within modern American society. Sure it may seem like it doesn't extend beyond the internet, but it all depends on how far and deep you want to look into it...
Socially: An electronics crash would result in mass social disorder. Loss of school records would mean weeks of paperwork sifting, confirming, checking and double checking to make sure people didn't make counterfeit diplomas. Throw in messed up court cases, work schedule mix ups and just general confusion and you've got a cripped country. Sure, on the local level things will continue to run acceptably, but above the state level? You've basicly gone into a time warp ~50 years backwards.
Economically: You could make a career by being a consultant here. Messed up business deals, incorrect shipping orders, loss of time, loss of material, loss of product, loss of production, corporate sabotage, lost research, and again general 'wth is going on here?!' You could probably cause the stock market to crash a couple thousand points if you manage to hit enough of the big name corporations.
Militarilly: A no-brainer. If terrorists knew that on X day and Y time, B soldiers in C country would lose all communications with their HQ (remember we use computer encrypted radio satellites now just in case the enemy overhears our troops talking over the radio saying that they've run out of toilet paper) the damage would be impossible to believe. No air or artillery support because you can't call in coordinates without your unsecure radio, lest the enemy triangulates onto the direction/location of the support fire and move to avoid/counter-attack it. No reinforcements because HQ is blind and don't want to send troops into an ambush. No extraction because you don't know if the area is secure or if the radio/camp/person calling in is compromised or not. Classic military nightmare scenario. No eyes, no ears, can't take risks, no guarantees, no intel.
Thats not even going into diplomatic dangers (was a nuke suddenly launched and/or by who?), health care (how many people die each year because the 911 call center was too busy to respond to their call fast enough?) or simple electrical issues (sure there are generators, but lets be realistic, how many people/buildings having generators and how long do they last on average?) The list goes on.
Granted, the whole sex thing always earns money in the eyes of execs and the masses, but E3 is supposed to be a media only trade show. Joe Average is supposed to be kept out (I say supposedly because we all know people manage to sneak in) and only the 'professional' video game reporters are supposed to get in. Several days after the show ends...
The mass media mocks and laughs at the video game industry. Booth babes in a 'media only' show? What kind of -professional- reporter fall for that kind of trick? (Bribes? Future blackmail?) Its this kind of attitude that created this news report in the first place. We have video game reporters posing for pictures with no-name, "I don't a damned clue what the hell this company is trying to sell but I'm all dressed up/down" women and the public is supposed to take us seriously?
IF E3 was an open to the public show, fine I could see this happening. Say its a bunch of overzealous fanboys cosplaying. But companies hiring these obviously uninterested women to stand around looking pretty doesn't do very much towards video game development.
The issue isn't about making women into sex objects this way, the issue is WHY here in video gaming? This isn't the movie industry where the females are always the 'damsel in distress', no this is the video game industry where the women can sometimes kick ass better than the males (Samus from Metroid? MMO games? Garnet/Dagger from FFIX who runs away from home/gets 'kidnapped'?)
If this was a car show I could see booth babes being around, but video games? Wtf? If this is the kind of perception gaming developers and producers have of gamers its no wonder Nintendo is constantly cranking out award winning games and capturing a loyal audience. Kids don't care about booth babes. Casual gamers don't care about booth babes. Hardcore gamers may stare for a little bit but even they know that it all comes down to gameplay. What kind of jobless losers are these developers try to attract with booth babes?
If I can't download Chrono Trigger and FF6 I'll be pissed...
To be fair, Chrono Trigger and FF6 (as well as FF4, 5, Secret of Mana, etc) are owned by Squaresoft/SquareEnix so at least in the case of these two examples it depends on what SE decides. If SE jumps on the bandwagon you're looking at about 5~10 of the best selling/known SNES games made. If not, Nintendo could always go after only ROM sites that DON'T have SE owned games.
Apparently in the future rocket launchers, "gravity guns" and experimental laser weapons will be ineffective against wooden walls, piles of rocks and souped up hummers. In addition, a mute lab assistant with no military training and armed with only a crowbar will magicly turn into a super puzzle solving hero who will save humanity from an interdimensional invading army after arming himself with pistols, SMGs, shotguns, machine guns, a laser rifle, rocket launchers, laser trip mines and alien weaponry. Oh and the government will send between a company or battalion of marines in order to kill him... and fail.
I'd take aircraft grade aluminum walls if it meant getting a slightly more acceptable atmosphere. (Trained military marine or untrained lab assistant? Who's the more likely hero?)
The correct thing to do is probably to inform the school, hopefully get them to let you demonstrate the flaw under supervision from theirr network people, and if they still don't do anything abotu it... move on.
This is the stem of all security problems.
If you DO blow the whistle, unless you have some SERIOUS clout behind you, chances are most people aren't going to listen to you. (See: Microsoft). If you DON'T blow the whistle, do nothing and have a vested interest in the company/school then you risk having your money/time lost due to SOMEONE ELSE taking advantage of a flaw you knew about. If you DO blow the whistle and try to gather attention to it by TAKING ADVANTAGE of the exploit, you SERIOUSLY risk being arrested yourself. (White hackers, black hackers, its all the same in the eyes of the uneducated masses!)
Etc, etc, etc. The list of what you can do and how ineffective it will ultimately be goes on. You can't go public or they slam you for trying to ruin their reputation. You can't go directly to the people cause they ignore you. You can't 'white hacker' them cause they slam you anyway. You can't ask for advice on Slashdot cause Slashdot is a wide, niche audience and is largely ineffective due to city/state/nation/international law differences. Its damned if you do, damned if you don't, damned if you ask for help and damned if you do nothing about it.
This isnt that surprising. With the only other exceptions being the hugely unproven and newcomer to the handheld market, the PSP, and the largely written off as a failure NGage, the DS is the only logical choice. SE has been working on handhelds for a while now (FF Dawn of Souls, FF: Crystal Chronicals, FF:Before Crisis...) so going from the GBA and cell phones to the DS isn't very hard to accept.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair though, I'll admit casual gamers also cause a growth in the economy. Those basic rocks, roots and monster eyeballs you bought had to have been collected by someone.
Throw in high level raids (which implies teamwork), instanced dungeons (normally done with multiple people) and a weak economic system (crafting has almost no risk involved and costs little) and the game just feels like it tried to achieve too much all at once. At lower levels, everyone solos and theres nearly no reason to team up with others for any reason. At higher levels, everyone teams up and soloing is near impossible. Top off the fact that most players end up reaching the 'end game' content with very little cooperation with other players and you have players that simply do not know how to play their job well at all.
Its simple as that. Its "try before you buy". Don't like it? Return the game. Like it? Write down the name, return it, and go buy a retail copy of it. You can't lose!
Actually, this only happens in certain games and in different degrees. In Master of Orion 2 (MOO2), the AI generally 'knew' what technologies you had because they spied on you rampantly. On the hardest difficulty and on a huge galaxy, it was common to have over 30 spies sent against you by ONE opponent. On top of that, the only way to 'kill' enemy spies was to have your own spy army on defense and hope your spies went on a counter-intelligence purge.
Vice versa, if you had a technology the enemy did not have and the enemy had technology you did not have, you couldn't trade the technology simply because neither side knew what the other had.
Whereas in other games such as in Civ 2 and 3, no the AI did not 'cheat'. It just used the embassy system. A lot. The game never gave you notices, but if you kept track and kept checking every turn, you could figure out exactly what was being researched, their average rate of research, and even roughly guess whether they were plotting to team up against you.
Lets face it. If you know a REALLY good secret that you SHOULDN'T know, its going to leak out. And when information leaks, theres no telling who learns about it. For every one of those 'good half-dozen people' you told the password to, there was probably 10 other jerks who went around screwing up the school computers.
I'm not saying 'hackers' (if you can call them that in such cases) should charged as a felony, but you've got admit there is a line. We all know students will install and download whatever crap they want onto computers and theres nothing teachers can do about it, so accept it. But when students start changing grades, breaking computers, or wasting bandwidth on something they'll probably never get to use or move off the computer (anything large than a .mp3 file and the kid shouldn't even be on the computer that long); you draw a line and punish those who cross it. The ultimate question, however is, where do you draw the line? Too close and you get pointless cases such as the parent news report. Too far and you get kids hacking into school computers to change grades and get let off with a 'slap on the wrist' type punishment (in-school suspension? Some schools outright flunk you for the year or expel you for that. Hell, most colleges fail you for the course just for plagiarism, imagine how they would react to a hacking attempt to change grades.)
How long do you think it took Windows to reach the state its in now? If you looking at just the major changes there have been a LOT compared to other software. (Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, not counting updates, ME, or versions older than 95 and the unreleased Longhorn). Has there EVER been a major serious of software changes in history on this scale? The answer is a simple, no way.
Throw in the fact that nearly 90-something% of all computer software is designed to fit into a Windows environment, the billions of users who have accustomed themselves to Windows' own quirks and the ever present threat of losing marketshare to Apple or Linux and what you're asking is impossible. There is no magical development wand that can be waved and all of Microsoft's problems would be solved. This isn't a Linux project where every user personally works on and personally customizes their OS either. The most obvious solution for Windows to take is simple, 'if it isn't broken (enough), don't fix it (yet)'
Wasn't the point of HL1 supposed to revolve around the player outsmarting and outthinking enemies when faced with overwhelming odds? In HL1 the most powerful guns were either obtained late or lacked a good source of ammo to be used often. (By the time you got the Gauss Cannon or Gluon Gun, you pretty much fought everything and weapons such as the Rocket Launcher and Crossbow had rare amounts of ammo throughout the entire game.)
In HL2, its possible to go through entire segments using only the SMG because its so plentiful between the easy Combine kills and unlimited ammo crates. The Gravity Gun is obtained less than halfway through the game. The Magnum, Crossbow and unlimited Grenade crates begin appearing too early and are overpowered even on Hard mode. The whole 2 spare clips for most weapons didn't help either since people just turned to the overpowered Gravity Gun as a result.
True in one-on-one PVP, there can pretty much be no balance but it also depends on the kind of PVP is implemented. If you get a slow paced PVP such as yeah, one-on-one fights don't matter much cause other team members/players (assuming you have some teamwork going on) will generally be able to react and respond quickly and effectively enough to a bumrush against support class players. If you get a FAST paced PVP, one-on-one fights DO matter. Set up your macros well and you catch a target unprepared (read: casting a spell), you can usually take him out with just one macro.
Just look at FPSs. In Quake 3, a good player can single-handedly dominate a CTF match even though he uses the same weapons, armor and limitations as the other players. While in Unreal Tournament or Doom 3, due to the slower movement even a newbie can take out the number one player on the server just by ambushing them with a weaker weapon.
Microsoft invents Microsoft Access.
Guatamalan inventor patents method of transferring data between the two programs.
Does that make any sense to you? Guy didn't invent either program. He's not some disgruntled ex-Microsoft programmer out to get his just dues. He's not some super, uber-leet programmer who came out with "Carlos's Excel" or "Carlos's Access" years before Microsoft did and simply didn't succeed due to lack of marketing. This is some Joe Nobody who filed a broad, vague patent that the courts were stupid enough to uphold.
But the game came out before/during/at the same time as Reloaded and since the game was leaked to the public early/illegally, I find it easier to simply consider the game to be the beginning of the downfall.
Screw the movie studios. They screwed up The Matrix when they went from movie to video game. They screwed up Tomb Raider when they went video game to movie. They screwed up Starship Troopers when they went from book to movie. They can't seem to do anything right anymore so let Bungie and Microsoft do it. Worst case scenario, if it bombs you blame Bungie and Microsoft for being 'too strict.'
Throw in the whole 'well what if there were no other players to escort the original scout player to the city?' issue or the ever-present 'what about balancing the two sides? can't have one side have 10 level 20 guys and the other having 5 level 5 guys' and you've got an unbalanced, arguably buggy MMO game.
A better, simpler example would be if the NPCs gave chase to you DEPENDING on where, when, how and who/which NPC saw you. If you got spotted by NPC Rookie level 1, in the dark, late at night and only saw you for 2 seconds the AI might not even give chase to you. On the other hand if NPC Commander level 50 saw you, in broad daylight, during an important tactical mission for about 15 minutes but didn't say anything to avoid 'spooking' you, the AI SHOULD go berserk sending troops at you with enough man and firepower to rival some player guilds/clans.
Hacks, homebrewed games and utilities make NO profit for any company unless the system is sold at a profit. There is no 'well its a victory in marketing' because Sega tried the same thing and was crushed utterly by Sony with the Dreamcast.
Portable Shooting Practice?
Precision Shot Projectile?
Its not hard to come up with something with the initials PSP.
I'd be interested if Sony announced this a few weeks/months after launching, but now? This just says cheap last minute marketing attempt. Run the numbers and Nintendo is killing Sony in the handheld industry. Sony hasn't dented the GBA, the DS is outselling the PSP, DS games are outselling PSP games, and Nintendo isn't taking a huge loss for each DS unit sold. Throw in PSP defects and the fact that they delayed the European launch (read : STILL hasn't launched) and Sony is getting burned worse than Microsoft did when it launched the Xbox.
As anyone whos played the game will tell you, the death penalty is PAINFUL. XP loss can range from 200 to 2400 per death, so two or three deaths and you can lose 1/5 of your level's exp. Throw in the whole "I don't wanna/can't find a XP party" issue and deleveling is a common thing (you can begin delevel starting at level 4 so the training wheels come off early).
As long as you avoid the popular XPing spots, you spend hours or even days in certain areas without seeing another person. Hell if you hid yourself in a really empty corner you could go unnoticed for weeks.
Theres no instancing either. The closest thing to an instanced area is a special ultra-high level players only area which requires no less than 18 people, comes with a 1 million gil (FFXI money) fee just to enter, a TIME LIMIT (3 hours maximum assuming you get all the time extenders) and a 3 day waiting period before you can do it again. Oh and only one group can go in at a time. Most players die there between 3~7 times each, with many players joking about the area being Square's solution to all the xp maxed out players. Is that hardcore enough for you?
Oh and FFXI has a cute little munchkin like race which has a tendency to teased on by everyone (including npcs).
Did Marx say capitalism was bad? No, he simply said that as the number of rich elites shrunk and poor workers grew eventually there would be a revolution which ultimately led to Communism or Marxism. Is Russia Marxist? No, because history as well as real world examples show that only small percentage of Russia was capitalist before the government was shifted to Leninism/Stalinism/Communism. You can go on and on and on on this from arguing about 'what Marx meant' to whether Russia had become capitalist enough to whether Marxism is simply outdated due to government shifting from pro-rich industrialist to pro-union workers in the late-1800's.
When it comes to history, 'facts' becomes more black and white as time goes on. You take what is known AND proven and you connect it to how reality played itself out. Any attempt without an new signficant evidence is nothing more than revisionist history by special interest groups or people. (See: Neo-nazis, conspiracy theorists, etc). The list of reasons goes on.
But then doesn't that mean the innovator is handicapping himself from innovating in the first place? By taking the time to learn and memorize these modern 'innovations' aren't they grounding their thoughts into the same kind of mentality they are trying to break free of in the first place?
Socially: An electronics crash would result in mass social disorder. Loss of school records would mean weeks of paperwork sifting, confirming, checking and double checking to make sure people didn't make counterfeit diplomas. Throw in messed up court cases, work schedule mix ups and just general confusion and you've got a cripped country. Sure, on the local level things will continue to run acceptably, but above the state level? You've basicly gone into a time warp ~50 years backwards.
Economically: You could make a career by being a consultant here. Messed up business deals, incorrect shipping orders, loss of time, loss of material, loss of product, loss of production, corporate sabotage, lost research, and again general 'wth is going on here?!' You could probably cause the stock market to crash a couple thousand points if you manage to hit enough of the big name corporations.
Militarilly: A no-brainer. If terrorists knew that on X day and Y time, B soldiers in C country would lose all communications with their HQ (remember we use computer encrypted radio satellites now just in case the enemy overhears our troops talking over the radio saying that they've run out of toilet paper) the damage would be impossible to believe. No air or artillery support because you can't call in coordinates without your unsecure radio, lest the enemy triangulates onto the direction/location of the support fire and move to avoid/counter-attack it. No reinforcements because HQ is blind and don't want to send troops into an ambush. No extraction because you don't know if the area is secure or if the radio/camp/person calling in is compromised or not. Classic military nightmare scenario. No eyes, no ears, can't take risks, no guarantees, no intel.
Thats not even going into diplomatic dangers (was a nuke suddenly launched and/or by who?), health care (how many people die each year because the 911 call center was too busy to respond to their call fast enough?) or simple electrical issues (sure there are generators, but lets be realistic, how many people/buildings having generators and how long do they last on average?) The list goes on.
The mass media mocks and laughs at the video game industry. Booth babes in a 'media only' show? What kind of -professional- reporter fall for that kind of trick? (Bribes? Future blackmail?) Its this kind of attitude that created this news report in the first place. We have video game reporters posing for pictures with no-name, "I don't a damned clue what the hell this company is trying to sell but I'm all dressed up/down" women and the public is supposed to take us seriously?
IF E3 was an open to the public show, fine I could see this happening. Say its a bunch of overzealous fanboys cosplaying. But companies hiring these obviously uninterested women to stand around looking pretty doesn't do very much towards video game development.
If this was a car show I could see booth babes being around, but video games? Wtf? If this is the kind of perception gaming developers and producers have of gamers its no wonder Nintendo is constantly cranking out award winning games and capturing a loyal audience. Kids don't care about booth babes. Casual gamers don't care about booth babes. Hardcore gamers may stare for a little bit but even they know that it all comes down to gameplay. What kind of jobless losers are these developers try to attract with booth babes?
To be fair, Chrono Trigger and FF6 (as well as FF4, 5, Secret of Mana, etc) are owned by Squaresoft/SquareEnix so at least in the case of these two examples it depends on what SE decides. If SE jumps on the bandwagon you're looking at about 5~10 of the best selling/known SNES games made. If not, Nintendo could always go after only ROM sites that DON'T have SE owned games.
I'd take aircraft grade aluminum walls if it meant getting a slightly more acceptable atmosphere. (Trained military marine or untrained lab assistant? Who's the more likely hero?)
This is the stem of all security problems.
If you DO blow the whistle, unless you have some SERIOUS clout behind you, chances are most people aren't going to listen to you. (See: Microsoft).
If you DON'T blow the whistle, do nothing and have a vested interest in the company/school then you risk having your money/time lost due to SOMEONE ELSE taking advantage of a flaw you knew about.
If you DO blow the whistle and try to gather attention to it by TAKING ADVANTAGE of the exploit, you SERIOUSLY risk being arrested yourself. (White hackers, black hackers, its all the same in the eyes of the uneducated masses!)
Etc, etc, etc. The list of what you can do and how ineffective it will ultimately be goes on. You can't go public or they slam you for trying to ruin their reputation. You can't go directly to the people cause they ignore you. You can't 'white hacker' them cause they slam you anyway. You can't ask for advice on Slashdot cause Slashdot is a wide, niche audience and is largely ineffective due to city/state/nation/international law differences. Its damned if you do, damned if you don't, damned if you ask for help and damned if you do nothing about it.
This isnt that surprising. With the only other exceptions being the hugely unproven and newcomer to the handheld market, the PSP, and the largely written off as a failure NGage, the DS is the only logical choice. SE has been working on handhelds for a while now (FF Dawn of Souls, FF: Crystal Chronicals, FF:Before Crisis...) so going from the GBA and cell phones to the DS isn't very hard to accept.