Really now? I didn't even know there was a company called Square Enix which developed for Nintendo before the Gamecube..
Get your facts straight. Nintendo and Squaresoft used to get along just fine during the NES and SNES days. (FF1-6, plus a couple more on the Gameboy) Nintendo and Enix also got along fine (Dragon Warrior/Quest 1-6, plus a couple side games on the Gameboy). The only reason Squaresoft didn't make FF7 on the N64 was because of the limitations of the old cartrages. Course in hindsight, they paid for it in inferior hardware.
In a 'leveling-grind' MMORPG system, yeah permadeath would suck flat-out. But in some games it COULD work. Games like Planetside or Guild Wars could do it. For example, in Planetside everytime you started a new character you would get two certificates to start off your character. Well, if you had only ten lives before your character permadied I'd say it fit the context of the storyline, and it's make players more aggressive and more teamwork orientated (instead of having worthless mavericks, awe-inspiring guilds/clans, and rouge mercenaries running around).
Same with Guild Wars. Simply disable permadeath in the PvP arena, and turn it on when XPing out in the wild. As long as you develop a good team or you're not reckless, chances are your not gonna die. Obviously someone is gonna die in the PvP arena but theres no loss! Lets go wild!
A permadeath DOES work (Diablo 2's hardcore system was insanely fun since people banded together in intense fear of death), the only problem is current MMORPG systems don't support it. Take away the leveling grind part of MMORPGs and I'd say hell yeah.
No offense, but you'd be surprised how many reports and calls are made due to pranks like this are made to tech support people. I hate to say this, but your 'fake hack' actually hurts thousands, even millions. If you wrote something like this as a kid and distributed it from floppy disk to computer, imagine what kind of varients of this are running around the internet right now.
Imagine how many terrorist cells are there out in the world you simply haven't heard of. Al-Qaeda is simply the most known one, but that doesn't mean its the only one. Theres still Sinn Fein in Ireland, neo-nazi groups in America, and small armies of miscellaneous guerillas running around in southeast Asia, South America and Africa.
Even IF we turned the whole world into a complete police state, terrorist groups would still be around. So for a more direct answer, I'd imagine less than 10% cells being taken down. You can smoke ants out of an anthill, but you still won't be able to kill them all before they run away, hide and live again to annoy you another day.
Do big wig execs think they can continue to get away with this for long? The PS2 is an ancient piece of hardware by computer hardware standards with the Gamecube laughing at it and the Xbox not even acknowledging it in terms of hardware power. In the next generation of consoles, theres no way third-party developers can get away with this if the PS3 doesn't kill Nintendo or Microsoft hardware-wise.
In the U.S. there are free AA clubs and free anonymous help for those who wish to get information and help regarding drug issues, yet drug usage and alcohol abuse is still an issue in the U.S. Can't ban them, we all remember prohibition. Legalizing it won't solve it either, alcohol is legal. So what do you do?
You're right, the government -should- not take responsibility, but the people often times are too lazy or too ignorant to do anything about it.
I mean, it's a console - Kids play with it, and the thing is subject to a few bumps and drops.
Considering hardcore gamers are willing to move their $2000+ PC gaming rigs just to SHOW OFF, taking the chance of damaging a $200 console is nothing. Oh my friend works tech support at a university, you should some of the stupidest things people do to their laptops. (Drops and scratches? Please, I've seenen people use their laptop cases as weapons while the laptops were inside and then wonder why the screen got knocked out of place.)
Just to point something out about FFXI, there IS a job/class that is specifically geared towards soloing. The Beastmaster/BST class. The only problem is that its an advanced job and you need to be a minimum of level 30 to unlock it. After that, you could level up to 75 (the max in the game) solo.
People always seem to forget that when games are in beta, the servers are typically running debug versions of the software. Thus the game is going to be much more laggy and slow than it will be when it is running optimized (release) code. MMO's are not some sort of ground-breaking network technology, they don't have to invent new ways to handle the traffic.
You're not thinking on the macro level. Tell me this, if the game is laggy for you and your beta friends, how laggy do you think its gonna get when you throw in a couple extra hundred users? You can't justify a problem that exists with a 200 person test with an 'optimized' version with 2,000 people. MMO's MUST develop new forms of handling large amounts of data packets being sent and recieved hence the whole 'Massive' part of MMO. I have yet to see someone run a dedicated BF1942/Vietnam server above 64 players and not have it grind to a halt due to lag.
As for the video card price, check pricewatch.com . The price is currently $131 with shipping.
I've been in beta tests before, and its very easy to tell if a person either goes around just playing in the beta for fun, of if hes trying to find bugs, break the game, and then reporting it.
there are a few lag issues in key zones, but they've taken care of that in a way that i'm happy with.
In a beta, if YOU the beta tester experience a 'few' lag issues, upon release the THOUSANDS of users will take lag issues like a bulldozer to a sand castle. Less than 20 people? Pfft, try 2000 people suddenly entering the area to see whats new.
i'm certain that you can expect a not-insignificant patch the first time you launch the client.
See, now thats a BAD thing. Betas are supposed to fix these things BEFORE the game gets released.
Those are higher-level things and they'll have those fixed by the time anyone gets up to that level i'm sure.
Most beta testers are generally hardcore gamers who will push and shove their way through a game in order to find every bug and balance issue. If you're still considered to be low level this late in the beta, chances are you haven't seenen much.
on my pc (which is kinda wimpy -athlon 3000 @ 2.1ghz, 1.5gb ram, ati radeon 9800 pro 128mb) it runs at about 30fps, at 1600x1200, running at the setting just above "balanced." I forget what that setting is called now, but that's where I'm running. I have also turned on a few things like specular highlighting that aren't turned on in that performance profile.
So its the Doom 3 of MMORPGs? I skipped Doom 3 due to its system requirements, sounds like I skipping this game too. (30 FPS with that kind of rig is horrible, especially since you're not dealing with the thousands of users who will join when the game is released.)
This is a pretty bad report from a beta tester. You've basicly said what 1 hardcore gamer could find out about a game in 1 week. You've found little/no bugs (its a MMORPG beta I doubt that), you don't seem to have seenen much in the world, and you don't seem to consider your framerate from the perspective of your gaming rig. (Athlon 3000 ~= $100. 1 gig stick of RAM ~= $150. Radeon 9800 Pro ~= $150. Total = $400, not including motherboard, hard drive, or monitor which would come out to about $600-800 not including anything non-essential.)
will the benefit of launching early exceed the costs?
Yes in the case of the Doom 3 vs Half-Life 2 argument. Doom 3 lacked polish when it went beyond single-player which hurt it badly (deathmatch only? fun, but lacks variety). But in anyway you look at it, Doom 3 put a dent in Half-Life 2's fanfare. Fancy graphics and physics? Doom 3 did that, so Half-Life 2 only has storyline and gameplay (arguably the two hardest things to implement in a game).
No in the case of EA Games's style of releasing buggy games. We KNOW they're pretty much the Microsoft of developing games, we KNOW they have a stranglehold on developers, we KNOW not to play a version 1.0 of any EA game now. In the case of EA Games, they need to stop putting these games out so quickly and just polish them up. We don't need a BF1942/Vietnam clone/sequel/expansion only to have it even more buggy than the previous one.
Games that try to create their own races generally don't do well. (Horizons let you play as a dragon, but didn't do well) Games that create their own races and do well, generally end up with players that don't play the 'unique' races for X reasons. (Morrowind lets you play as a cat-like and a lizard-like races but they're underplayed) Games that create their own races, do well, and have a number of player using them are generally niche games. (NES/SNES/Genesis era games where the player would range from a Mechwarrior pilot, to a tank commander, to a sentient blob, to a dragon commander, to an ant)
Yeah Serious Sam did a good job with online co-op, except for the fact that it lacked cutscenes, during battles you were effectively locked in, the AI was nothing more a basic 'attack/charge player' system, and while the graphics were nice and powerful they really weren't used too effectively used (shiny surfaces, fire effects, and shadows, yet used maybe once or twice.)
The moment a game engine that can support an AI as good as Halo and more than 4 players online is developed, I'd go buy stock in the company that made it even if the graphics are budgetware. Hell just look at Battlefield 1942/Vietnam. Theres 64 player online co-op mode supported, but the AI is a retarded piece of shit in everything but flying airplanes, the graphics have aged horribly, and theres no real 'wow' factor that hasn't been done better by someone else. You want 64 player online co-op, play that game(s) and tell me its a better experience than 2 player co-op Halo.
World of Warcraft is a sequel to Warcraft 3. As for original, from what I've gather from friends playing in the beta and previews, it looks like World of Warcraft will be another MMORPG with tons of polish.
have online co-op? Based on the original Doom 3, having two people gun down some of the monsters might be too easy, but if the game engine can support large numbers of enemies at a time then I say get it in there.
Because it'd be LONG. If you need a refresher, heres a quickie from start to when they first enter the underworld. Highlights or parts you cannot skip.
1. Cecil and Kain deliever the package/fire ring to the summoner town. Got the whole guilt trip here. 2. Meets Yang, fights Kain, meet Golbez for the first time, fails to defend the crystal, gets seperated after the boat sinks. Way too much here, cannot be skipped considering you can do this in less than 30 minutes if you know exactly who to talk to and what to do. 3. Becomes a Paladin. Need, self-explanatory. 4. Fights Golbez, first time. Need, good versus evil battle. 5. Enter the underworld. Need, haven't even gotten to the dwarves, Yang getting blown up, human experiments, summoned creatures and Kain betraying Cecil by stealing the crystal.
This doesn't even include what happens on the moon or the cliffhanger ending let alone the whole Golbez and Cecil are brothers thing. Assuming just 20 minutes for each on of these and you got a one hour movie and you're not even half way through.
devices such as aircraft- and satellite-mounted motion sensors, heat detectors, as well as image and communications eavesdroppers
In the past a bigger bomb or a better gun had clear understandable benefits and results in a war. However in modern times, people seem to have this belief that better technology will result in better results. Aircraft and satellite motion sensors? Gee, wow like thats helpful in a dense urban area like Baghdad when you have to worry about ambushs, which means your opponents are staying still waiting. Heat detectors? Again, useless in a dense area (is that red blob holding 'something' a policeman or an insurgent preparing to launch an ambush?) Eavesdropping gear? Nice, but we're not talking about spying on the Soviet Union anymore, we're talking about trying to spy on Casual Muhammad while he talks to his next door neighbor.
Sometimes the most basic solution is the best one, having men on the ground handing these situations face to face. Having two or three extra billion dollars worth of aircraft in the air won't do you any good when you're too scare to open fire in fear of killing civilians.
Who do you expect to write a report that exposes Microsoft's claims for the cherry-picking they are? A Microsoft fan?
Why not? Linux supporters often times admit that the lack of a consistent, easy to use, not-Windows-mimic GUI is one of the things that keeps it from becoming mainstream. Why not have Microsoft supporters admit that the over simplity to use Windows in effect makes it too easy for their system to be hacked into (from downloading viruses and spyware to turning their system into spam creating systems.)
Kids today. Never played a real (paper & pencil) RPG. I used to play a character that was always shooting off racial slurs at Dwarves. In fact, once he was at quite a high level, he engaged in a campaign of Dwarficide. THAT'S NOT REAL.
Thats nothing. When I was still in high school my role-playing friends and I decided to create a new characters that existed during a war. We even threw in a twist: for every 'order' we followed no matter how cruel, mean, evil, indecent and even unnecessary act it was we would gain extra attribute points towards our next characters (we planned to have them die at the end, but hey thats war). At the end we all had a huge blast about it (I think my character was killed after falling to fatigue and was beaten to death by an angry mob) and even extended it. We took one of our characters and made him the 'bad guy' of our next campaign who was wanted for 'mass murder' and 'crimes against humanity'. Kinda makes you think doesn't it? Good thing it was only fictional. (Oh and we 'lost' the guy in a 'discontented crowd'.)
Hacking isn't the issue, its what potential follow-ups that come along with it. Turn your Xbox into a media center? Chances are Microsoft says, 'Fine whatever, but we're gonna parade you around with the millions of others saying "hey look at how many systems we sold! We have a huge market share!"'
What Microsoft doesn't like its the possibility of you creating a cheating program and taking it onto Xbox Live. You cannot ban someone 'by instance of hacking, not potential to hack' because it sets up a bad example. By this logic, we shouldn't go after terrorists until they actually do something. We shouldn't arrest people who try to hire gunmen for hire because the person hasn't been killed yet. If I had a program which could bring down the entire Xbox Live network and I announced it beforehand, should Microsoft bring law enforcement down on me before I use it? Of course!
No offense to female gamers who play as female characters, but seriously, without going into a player's account information/credit card information, how do you know that X female character is REALLY a female in real life? I played Final Fantasy XI and tried Ultima Online, Asheron's Call 1 and 2 and I can tell you honestly that male players who use female characters are not uncommon. Hell, some players I talk to even joke about female characters really being played by males because 'they don't ask like a girl'. Throw in games where certain character races/jobs can ONLY be played by a certain gender and you've got a whole gender confusion mess.
I imagine that its not a stretch to go to some urban, isolated area in the world like Africa or one of the many islands in the Pacific Ocean and find a culture that still holds this 'sexist' view. Push comes to shove, anyway you look at it, any biologist will tell you that males are naturally stronger in nature and therefore are naturally considered superior without making exceptions to humans. For those who want to flame me, I'll take the initiative:
1. The women's rights movement in the US isn't even a century old and is considered to be 'on going' by some. 2. Some religions (I'm not naming any) still require women to be hidden or masked in public. 3. China allows abortions of babies if they turn out to be female.
I'd say we've got a long way to go before we start judging 2000+ year old cultures, especially one which was formed in 'the cradle of civilization' (as some historians refer to it).
Nicholas Petreley's former lives include editorial director of LinuxWorld, executive editorial of InfoWorld Test Center, and columns on InfoWorld and ComputerWorld. He is the author of the Official Fedora Companion and is co-writing Linux Desktop Hacks for O'Reilly. He is also a part-time Evans Data Analyst and a freelance writer.
Sorry, but as long as something like 90% of all the 'reports' about Linux being more secure and 'mythbusting' reports are writen by Linux supporters or have some business in seeing Linux succeed, I'm going to take this with a grain of salt. I'm not trying to say Windows is safe, but you can't expect me to believe this when a 'report' like this comes out every other week. If this guy was an ex-Windows programmer I'd be more understanding, but "former lives include editorial director of LinuxWorld"? Somehow I doubt they ran Windows on their machines.
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Na, that would mean making a presentable argument and not simply drowning the programmer(s) in lawsuits.
Get your facts straight. Nintendo and Squaresoft used to get along just fine during the NES and SNES days. (FF1-6, plus a couple more on the Gameboy) Nintendo and Enix also got along fine (Dragon Warrior/Quest 1-6, plus a couple side games on the Gameboy). The only reason Squaresoft didn't make FF7 on the N64 was because of the limitations of the old cartrages. Course in hindsight, they paid for it in inferior hardware.
In a 'leveling-grind' MMORPG system, yeah permadeath would suck flat-out. But in some games it COULD work. Games like Planetside or Guild Wars could do it. For example, in Planetside everytime you started a new character you would get two certificates to start off your character. Well, if you had only ten lives before your character permadied I'd say it fit the context of the storyline, and it's make players more aggressive and more teamwork orientated (instead of having worthless mavericks, awe-inspiring guilds/clans, and rouge mercenaries running around).
Same with Guild Wars. Simply disable permadeath in the PvP arena, and turn it on when XPing out in the wild. As long as you develop a good team or you're not reckless, chances are your not gonna die. Obviously someone is gonna die in the PvP arena but theres no loss! Lets go wild!
A permadeath DOES work (Diablo 2's hardcore system was insanely fun since people banded together in intense fear of death), the only problem is current MMORPG systems don't support it. Take away the leveling grind part of MMORPGs and I'd say hell yeah.
No offense, but you'd be surprised how many reports and calls are made due to pranks like this are made to tech support people. I hate to say this, but your 'fake hack' actually hurts thousands, even millions. If you wrote something like this as a kid and distributed it from floppy disk to computer, imagine what kind of varients of this are running around the internet right now.
Even IF we turned the whole world into a complete police state, terrorist groups would still be around. So for a more direct answer, I'd imagine less than 10% cells being taken down. You can smoke ants out of an anthill, but you still won't be able to kill them all before they run away, hide and live again to annoy you another day.
Do big wig execs think they can continue to get away with this for long? The PS2 is an ancient piece of hardware by computer hardware standards with the Gamecube laughing at it and the Xbox not even acknowledging it in terms of hardware power. In the next generation of consoles, theres no way third-party developers can get away with this if the PS3 doesn't kill Nintendo or Microsoft hardware-wise.
You're right, the government -should- not take responsibility, but the people often times are too lazy or too ignorant to do anything about it.
Considering hardcore gamers are willing to move their $2000+ PC gaming rigs just to SHOW OFF, taking the chance of damaging a $200 console is nothing. Oh my friend works tech support at a university, you should some of the stupidest things people do to their laptops. (Drops and scratches? Please, I've seenen people use their laptop cases as weapons while the laptops were inside and then wonder why the screen got knocked out of place.)
If you got the extended warranty, yes a store will take it back AND give you a replacement. (Though it'll be a 'refurbished' one.)
Just to point something out about FFXI, there IS a job/class that is specifically geared towards soloing. The Beastmaster/BST class. The only problem is that its an advanced job and you need to be a minimum of level 30 to unlock it. After that, you could level up to 75 (the max in the game) solo.
You're not thinking on the macro level. Tell me this, if the game is laggy for you and your beta friends, how laggy do you think its gonna get when you throw in a couple extra hundred users? You can't justify a problem that exists with a 200 person test with an 'optimized' version with 2,000 people. MMO's MUST develop new forms of handling large amounts of data packets being sent and recieved hence the whole 'Massive' part of MMO. I have yet to see someone run a dedicated BF1942/Vietnam server above 64 players and not have it grind to a halt due to lag.
As for the video card price, check pricewatch.com . The price is currently $131 with shipping.
there are a few lag issues in key zones, but they've taken care of that in a way that i'm happy with.
In a beta, if YOU the beta tester experience a 'few' lag issues, upon release the THOUSANDS of users will take lag issues like a bulldozer to a sand castle. Less than 20 people? Pfft, try 2000 people suddenly entering the area to see whats new.
i'm certain that you can expect a not-insignificant patch the first time you launch the client.
See, now thats a BAD thing. Betas are supposed to fix these things BEFORE the game gets released.
Those are higher-level things and they'll have those fixed by the time anyone gets up to that level i'm sure.
Most beta testers are generally hardcore gamers who will push and shove their way through a game in order to find every bug and balance issue. If you're still considered to be low level this late in the beta, chances are you haven't seenen much.
on my pc (which is kinda wimpy -athlon 3000 @ 2.1ghz, 1.5gb ram, ati radeon 9800 pro 128mb) it runs at about 30fps, at 1600x1200, running at the setting just above "balanced." I forget what that setting is called now, but that's where I'm running. I have also turned on a few things like specular highlighting that aren't turned on in that performance profile.
So its the Doom 3 of MMORPGs? I skipped Doom 3 due to its system requirements, sounds like I skipping this game too. (30 FPS with that kind of rig is horrible, especially since you're not dealing with the thousands of users who will join when the game is released.)
This is a pretty bad report from a beta tester. You've basicly said what 1 hardcore gamer could find out about a game in 1 week. You've found little/no bugs (its a MMORPG beta I doubt that), you don't seem to have seenen much in the world, and you don't seem to consider your framerate from the perspective of your gaming rig. (Athlon 3000 ~= $100. 1 gig stick of RAM ~= $150. Radeon 9800 Pro ~= $150. Total = $400, not including motherboard, hard drive, or monitor which would come out to about $600-800 not including anything non-essential.)
Yes in the case of the Doom 3 vs Half-Life 2 argument. Doom 3 lacked polish when it went beyond single-player which hurt it badly (deathmatch only? fun, but lacks variety). But in anyway you look at it, Doom 3 put a dent in Half-Life 2's fanfare. Fancy graphics and physics? Doom 3 did that, so Half-Life 2 only has storyline and gameplay (arguably the two hardest things to implement in a game).
No in the case of EA Games's style of releasing buggy games. We KNOW they're pretty much the Microsoft of developing games, we KNOW they have a stranglehold on developers, we KNOW not to play a version 1.0 of any EA game now. In the case of EA Games, they need to stop putting these games out so quickly and just polish them up. We don't need a BF1942/Vietnam clone/sequel/expansion only to have it even more buggy than the previous one.
Games that try to create their own races generally don't do well. (Horizons let you play as a dragon, but didn't do well) Games that create their own races and do well, generally end up with players that don't play the 'unique' races for X reasons. (Morrowind lets you play as a cat-like and a lizard-like races but they're underplayed) Games that create their own races, do well, and have a number of player using them are generally niche games. (NES/SNES/Genesis era games where the player would range from a Mechwarrior pilot, to a tank commander, to a sentient blob, to a dragon commander, to an ant)
The moment a game engine that can support an AI as good as Halo and more than 4 players online is developed, I'd go buy stock in the company that made it even if the graphics are budgetware. Hell just look at Battlefield 1942/Vietnam. Theres 64 player online co-op mode supported, but the AI is a retarded piece of shit in everything but flying airplanes, the graphics have aged horribly, and theres no real 'wow' factor that hasn't been done better by someone else. You want 64 player online co-op, play that game(s) and tell me its a better experience than 2 player co-op Halo.
World of Warcraft is a sequel to Warcraft 3. As for original, from what I've gather from friends playing in the beta and previews, it looks like World of Warcraft will be another MMORPG with tons of polish.
have online co-op? Based on the original Doom 3, having two people gun down some of the monsters might be too easy, but if the game engine can support large numbers of enemies at a time then I say get it in there.
1. Cecil and Kain deliever the package/fire ring to the summoner town. Got the whole guilt trip here.
2. Meets Yang, fights Kain, meet Golbez for the first time, fails to defend the crystal, gets seperated after the boat sinks. Way too much here, cannot be skipped considering you can do this in less than 30 minutes if you know exactly who to talk to and what to do.
3. Becomes a Paladin. Need, self-explanatory.
4. Fights Golbez, first time. Need, good versus evil battle.
5. Enter the underworld. Need, haven't even gotten to the dwarves, Yang getting blown up, human experiments, summoned creatures and Kain betraying Cecil by stealing the crystal.
This doesn't even include what happens on the moon or the cliffhanger ending let alone the whole Golbez and Cecil are brothers thing. Assuming just 20 minutes for each on of these and you got a one hour movie and you're not even half way through.
In the past a bigger bomb or a better gun had clear understandable benefits and results in a war. However in modern times, people seem to have this belief that better technology will result in better results. Aircraft and satellite motion sensors? Gee, wow like thats helpful in a dense urban area like Baghdad when you have to worry about ambushs, which means your opponents are staying still waiting. Heat detectors? Again, useless in a dense area (is that red blob holding 'something' a policeman or an insurgent preparing to launch an ambush?) Eavesdropping gear? Nice, but we're not talking about spying on the Soviet Union anymore, we're talking about trying to spy on Casual Muhammad while he talks to his next door neighbor.
Sometimes the most basic solution is the best one, having men on the ground handing these situations face to face. Having two or three extra billion dollars worth of aircraft in the air won't do you any good when you're too scare to open fire in fear of killing civilians.
Why not? Linux supporters often times admit that the lack of a consistent, easy to use, not-Windows-mimic GUI is one of the things that keeps it from becoming mainstream. Why not have Microsoft supporters admit that the over simplity to use Windows in effect makes it too easy for their system to be hacked into (from downloading viruses and spyware to turning their system into spam creating systems.)
Thats nothing. When I was still in high school my role-playing friends and I decided to create a new characters that existed during a war. We even threw in a twist: for every 'order' we followed no matter how cruel, mean, evil, indecent and even unnecessary act it was we would gain extra attribute points towards our next characters (we planned to have them die at the end, but hey thats war). At the end we all had a huge blast about it (I think my character was killed after falling to fatigue and was beaten to death by an angry mob) and even extended it. We took one of our characters and made him the 'bad guy' of our next campaign who was wanted for 'mass murder' and 'crimes against humanity'. Kinda makes you think doesn't it? Good thing it was only fictional. (Oh and we 'lost' the guy in a 'discontented crowd'.)
What Microsoft doesn't like its the possibility of you creating a cheating program and taking it onto Xbox Live. You cannot ban someone 'by instance of hacking, not potential to hack' because it sets up a bad example. By this logic, we shouldn't go after terrorists until they actually do something. We shouldn't arrest people who try to hire gunmen for hire because the person hasn't been killed yet. If I had a program which could bring down the entire Xbox Live network and I announced it beforehand, should Microsoft bring law enforcement down on me before I use it? Of course!
No offense to female gamers who play as female characters, but seriously, without going into a player's account information/credit card information, how do you know that X female character is REALLY a female in real life? I played Final Fantasy XI and tried Ultima Online, Asheron's Call 1 and 2 and I can tell you honestly that male players who use female characters are not uncommon. Hell, some players I talk to even joke about female characters really being played by males because 'they don't ask like a girl'. Throw in games where certain character races/jobs can ONLY be played by a certain gender and you've got a whole gender confusion mess.
1. The women's rights movement in the US isn't even a century old and is considered to be 'on going' by some.
2. Some religions (I'm not naming any) still require women to be hidden or masked in public.
3. China allows abortions of babies if they turn out to be female.
I'd say we've got a long way to go before we start judging 2000+ year old cultures, especially one which was formed in 'the cradle of civilization' (as some historians refer to it).
Sorry, but as long as something like 90% of all the 'reports' about Linux being more secure and 'mythbusting' reports are writen by Linux supporters or have some business in seeing Linux succeed, I'm going to take this with a grain of salt. I'm not trying to say Windows is safe, but you can't expect me to believe this when a 'report' like this comes out every other week. If this guy was an ex-Windows programmer I'd be more understanding, but "former lives include editorial director of LinuxWorld"? Somehow I doubt they ran Windows on their machines.