That's not the fun of Linux though. The best bit about Linux is the home car-kit type vibe. This modularity is why it can be so secure, even though say Windows has a better fundamental design(but a pisspoor implementation).
OpenOffice is pretty good with MS formats. It's not terrific, but it's more than good enough for most uses. I use it instead of MS Office now on all platforms just for the consistant interface.
Anyway, if you wanted to switch to Linux you're looking at really digging in and piecing together a completely custom system to get everything you want. And you can get it to within about 99% of perfect for you. But it takes a heck of a lot of time. I'd start fiddling around with it on an older machine for like an hour or two a week, and gradually replacing your windows apps with cross-platform apps as you find ones you like.
If you want PC gaming though, forget it, you're stuck in Windows land.
Well, you went from being rather blaise about Live and the XBox to being really enthuisastic about it shortly after getting the admin job at Microsoft. Are you SURE they didn't put some mind-control serum in your hair dye?;-)
Because I seem to recall you being more of a PC/Nintendo girl... Mario Kart: DD with your non-gamer SO and such.
Oh, and didn't you just nab your XBox because you got a pretty good discount on it and the games and figured what the hell? Or am I remembering this wrong?
I know it's not popular to believe it here on Slashdot, but we're people too.
Marketing department employees and executives aren't people! But that's not confined to Microsoft.
In all seriousness I think the change is more because you get to interact with the people doing the work in the XBox department, and all of these people are collegues you now share common ground with. So it's like getting excited and hyping up any friend's project. I still don't see anything special about or worth paying for in Live though.;-P
Well on the PC we use a combination of programs that ends up equaling or surpassing live. X-Fire for the friends/now-playing list and messaging, built in voice-chat in many games or private moderated ventrillo/TS servers, etc. etc.
Build your community of gamers and play on.
MS got about 90% of what's great about PC gaming in live, and simplified it. But I still can't see why I should have to pay for it.
Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
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· Score: 1
Bear in mind this is coming from someone who has been told many times to get a life thus far in the conversation due to his addictive gaming tendencies.
If you honestly think Blizzard isn't making a ridiculious amount of profit off of their revenue, you're insane. Because honestly I haven't seen *NEAR* enough content to suck up the kind of cash Blizz is making. With the amount of money they are pulling in, we should be seeing a significant content patch every month if they were spending even a fraction of it on that.
We're talking enough money to pay for server costs, a dozen programmers, a big-name special effects studio, and a mainstream writer's services for a month, every month, with plenty leftover.
Don't forget, self-regulation has given us Standards and Practices for network(and cable) television, the comic book code(which killed things such as tales from the crypt), the MPAA(which routinely causes things to be cut), etc., etc.
Self-regulation is oooohhh so much better than government regulation thus far.
SS1 was incredibly ahead of it's time(The terminal story-telling method was also used in Marathon btw). But I wouldn't call SS2 a straight rip-off of SS1. With SS2 a number of things, audio and graphics advances mainly, finally coalesced to really amp up the immersion factor. It's a different and better kind of creepiness to what you found in SS1, while still having the same spirit. Bioshock will hopefully follow in that pattern, just amping up the gameplay and dispensing a new story.
And if you played SS1, then finding out *who* has been sending you on happy-fun missions and cybering you out is incredibly disconcerting.
Ehh I fucked up my math, and me and my roommate played each other's alts. I put in about 3-4 hours a day on a typical day, not counting the two weeks straight of 18 hour WoW days I put in for my "vacation." It took me 20 days to hit 60 on my first character, 15 on my other-side char, and around 9 a pop of playtime per alt. Average is around 5 hours a day, not all of it put in by me.
And yea, only one of my characters, my initial one, is effectively geared up with anything other than BoEs.
SoC seems to do it less often than Windfury does. But yea, they're *about* equivalent.
Anyway, druids, the problem I have with that concept is, why would I play something other than a druid now? I can fill in for any of 3 roles. What do those 3 core-classes get that puts them above and beyond a druid? So far, nothing. By elevating the druid class, they've demeaned all the classes the druid can fill in for. Priests(which is my main and original character) especially are pretty pissed off about it, because we feel if we go raidspec we should make a druid healer look like a sick joke, and their big thing in a raid(if they go that way) is supporting us via innervate.
Re:You got to be kidding me
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Not really, I put in about 3-4 hours a day since release(it's been almost a year). It's what I do on weeknights and early mornings/afternoons on weekends now instead of watching TV or playing around on the internet. WoW is easy to level in. Takes about 20 days of playtime for your first 60 and you can get additional 60s in 9-10 days of playtime. Plus me and my roommate(a chef, keeps insane hours) played each other's alts. Oh and I took two weeks off work to powerlevel characters, because I know how I get with these games(It's not pretty, I'm a sick, sick individual).
I have fought shamans, as alliance(on a pally) and as horde via duels. I've played both sides of the fence. Try playing the other side, you'll see how balanced things actually are.
Priest and Mage shields are: A. Dispellable, and B. Do not scale with gear progression. While Power Word Shield used to be great, it's now taken out in less than a hit in the end game, and you can't chain cast it(even multiple targets, as it has a cooldown). Mage shields, AKA mana shield, drain mana for each hit, quickly, and are comparably weak. Mana is the very thing a mage needs to be useful, and if you're considering mana shield, mana shield probably isn't going to save you(it sucks, bad). There is also no gear in the game that improves either of these abilities. Pally shields are time based, and thus DO SCALE. They always protect the pally for the same amount of time regardless of how much damage that pally is taking and regardless of a paladin's gear. They're also, in the case of Divine Shield, reactive. They can break magic-based CC. They are equally effective against 1 person and 40 epic-geared people. The two classes of shields are not comparable in utility.
I can tell that if you even play the game, you're evidentally part of the teeming horde of incredibly shitty paladins, and I have no desire to educate you on how to be effective. I'll just say that the actual problems with the paladin class are not the ones bitched about by your ilk.
Shaman lottery burst DPS is insane(a series of windfury procs is like the hand of god coming down). And their ability to control-burst DPS is pretty decent via shocks, but all in all their consistant DPS isn't *that* much higher than a paladin's.
Judgements do suck, and they should really be fixed. So do blessings(inconvienant as hell), totems(party only and cost a lot of mana), inner fire for priests(3 min duration and provides attack power!?), and shards not stacking for warlocks(which is because of soulfire, but still sucks).
The problem with druids, is they've been buffed too far now. A feral druid in mainly blues now hits for 400, critting for 800, with higher AC than most warriors. They can out-MT-heal a priest and have a decent mana pool in caster gear. They can break CC via shapeshifting. They have access to the most powerful ability in the game, stealth, by default, and now, via feral, can effectively dish out almost as much damage as a rogue. It's really starting to get very, very silly as they've almost become a priest/rogue/warrior all rolled into one. IMO, a pure-class should blow a hybrid out of the water when it comes to what they specialize in(since they do little else) and specced appropriately. Warriors for tanking, Rogues for melee DPS, priests for healing.
I still don't think Blizz knows what they're doing with the Pally class, or hybrids in general(buffing individual aspects of them to close to pure-class levels, which is getting really insane for classes like druids).
I would've started on the judgement system(which is mostly busted), and then started to play up the sheer annoyance and confusion a pally can inflict on massed horde in large scale PvP. Give em an on-death ability like priests have, which either does a heal or an AoE short-duration stun. Stuff like that.
Re:You got to be kidding me
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Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually that's only about 1/2 an hour a day to get 6 characters to 60 over the almost year since release. I probably put in an average of 3-4 a day. It's what I do instead of watching TV.
But, yea, I am sick. MMOs are the devil.
You got to be kidding me
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Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
What!? They can't buff paladins DPS because of those infernal bubbles. So long as they have them, and can stand up to a full 40-man assist train for their duration, allowing them to deal significant damage is so overpowered it's retarded. It's already bordering on the stupid that a damage-immune character can nail you with what amounts to a ranged execute(Hammer of Wrath), and the only way to get rid of it(which barely works), is to have a protection specced warrior hit em with a shield slam and pray for the lottery.
I can't believe blizz keeps listening to the hordes(pun-intended) of alliance whiners(like the Will of the Forsaken nerf that happened even though they swore up and down they would never nerf it). Half of whom have no understanding of group dynamics. And to make it worse they listen to the worst crop of the worst side, the suckiest of the suck, the Paladin players. Most of whom get confused if they try out any class with more than 2 buttons. The Paladin class doesn't suck, you do.
The only people who think Paladins are weak atm are people who don't have to fight them in BGs. Their lack of DPS is more than made up for with their utility(best debuff remover in game) and survivability(only healer that can survive an assist train). A single paladin can hold a position long enough for his entire team to respawn. Sure, they're incredibly boring to play at later levels, but so is a raidspec priest. The blessing change is a convienance thing, no problem there. But they should also change totems to affect the entire raid to close the PvE alliance/horde gap that's just going to worsen all that much more from the change. Paladins affect the tide of a battle not by killing, but rather by tying up opposing resources. And they're damn good at it even if that's not what they're shooting for.
What blizz SHOULD have done and SHOULD do, is open up Paladins to horde(maybe under a different name/ability names), and Shamans to alliance. Or at the minimum work on both classes at the same time and be DAMN sure they're balanced against each other in total, as they are now(Shamans better PvP, Pally's better PvE, an offensive hybrid and a defensive one). Because this side-specific class shit is both incredibly tricky and has the possibility of causing a whole side to pull out of PvP until balance is reestablished, in effect ruining it for everyone. Blizz in doing this, fell into one of the biggest pitfalls in multiplayer game design, and I still say it's been a mistake.
I for one will NOT enter a BG if Paladins can deal damage while immune. I will more than likely suspend my account or withdraw into bluebie land until that abortion of an idea is fixed, and a bunch of other primary horde players will too, worstening the side discrepancy even more(there's what, an average of 2-3 alliance to every horde across all servers, with only 2 servers having a large horde->alliance discrepancy) and ensuring the alliance doesn't get a chance to PvP.
It is nice to see that they're pulling an inverse of release with the expansion and finishing/polishing the horde first as opposed to as an afterthought. My initial characters were horde, and we really got the short end of the stick for a very long time.
I have, btw, a 60 shaman, 60 pally, 60 priest, 60 mage, and a 60 warlock all on PvP servers(all but the pally horde on the same server). I have access to(and have played via character swap with guildies) a 60 rogue, a 60 warrior, and a 60 druid. The only class I can't stand is the hunter.
To a limited extent. The two most recent frightening experiences were the "We don't go to Ravenholm" level in Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil 4. Doom 3, not so much scary, I mean, it's doom, monster-in-a-closet is old hat, and it's cheap.
Going back further though, we have System Shock 1&2, which were both excellent.
System Shock 2 had me sitting wide-eyed the whole time.
Ding ding ding. My problem with WoW atm is that it's great from 1-60. Then it goes EQ-lite. Fuck that. If you want to restrict stuff, make it about skill not about organizing a bluebie raid. Make you have to do a hardcore solo mission, test the player, make it an accomplishment, not a time sink. Anyone in the right guild, with enough people around them, given enough time can hit High Warlord and get completely epiced out. They can be functionally retarded and still pull it off. There is no skill, no accomplishment in doing this from an individual perspective, only a group accomplishment. And, well, screw that. Epiced out? You're no better than us blue folks, and I'll gladly beat you down if you'll put on some blues, because you know damn well I did it before, and I CAN do it again.
The most hardcore PvP players on my server are forced... FORCED... to go through the 40 man raid instances atm in order to keep up with the bluebies. They went from spanking them like red-headed step-children to never winning, entirely because they refused to take part in that type of content.
And that's why WoW is broken. It started off as an MMO for non-eq people, and it's quickly heading towards being just like EQ.
It's as if thousands of e-peens cried out and were suddenly silenced. It's just gear, it's deprecated every time a new raid instance comes out. BWL and ZG loot negates MC loot. The upcoming Silithus dungeon loot will negate the BWL/ZG loot. Another dungeon will negate that. And the expansion will negate all of it. Typical MMO progression. No real shocker.
And it's not like people are somehow better just because they can get 40 people together to do the high end content every week. That attitude blizz has of catering to the EQ bluebie crowd is really grating on the casual/small FPS crossover guild people that make up the vast majority of WoW's playerbase. If you wanted EQ, you should've stuck to EQ.
There's never been any doubt that the level cap was going to be raised. We've been expecting it sometime this year or early next year. They were hinting at it being likely as far back as beta.
Well the question was one of style. Tomb Raider certainly ripped it's style straight out of older platformers, it even says so in your own link. And for the 2D->3D transition, Mario 64 predated Tomb Raider's release here stateside by almost a month.
It's shaman, plural, shamans. And they're no more overpowered than the paladin is. One hybrid is defensive, the other offensive. In BGs a paladin can survive and hold a position long enough for his team to respawn because they're the only class that can reliably survive focus fire and still act. They're incredibly overpowered vs. the Shaman in PvE because totems only count for the current party, are restricted by range, and thus are tough to stack(as opposed to blessings). They have, by default, the best debuff remover in the game. And Paladins also recently got a ranged execute they can cast while their immune shield is up. Their sustained DPS is also about equivalent, the shaman just has a greater ability to burst DPS. SoC roughly equals Windfury in terms of lottery-style kills.
In terms of racials, WotF is the hordes one innate reactive fear-countering ability. While the alliance gets dwarf priests with fear ward as a proactive ability. Humans have a pretty nice package of racials, perception is situationally useful, the spirit bonus is nice for priests, the rep bonus is great for anyone grinding rep to get crafting recipes, and the + to swords is ok. Gnomes are the ultimate mage class, and are tiny. Dwarves get reactive poison immunity, just need to remember to cancel it. Night Elves get an innate stealth. Orcs get stun/fear resist and + to axes. Trolls get crap. Tauren get an HP bonus and an AoE stun. Undead get the grand-daddy combo of WotF, underwater breathx3, and cannibalize(now that it's useful).
They were supposed to buff the other racials up to the level of WotF but instead decided to nerf it again(yes, it's old form was a nerfed form, it used to be passive) after tons of alliance whining. So if you think you're racials suck, you shouldn't have complained endlessly and instead gotten them buffed to be comparable, as was Blizzard's initial plan.
Or the inclination to be in a huge serious guild that can get the attendance numbers to do the 40-man high-end content. Which tend to invariably splinter and be full of "da drama." Nothing sucks worse than spending all that time and effort only to get jack for it when the guild splits.
My guild is gradually getting there by absorbing like-minded casual people, and we've successfully avoided things like DKP and the like thus far, but I wish they'd plug in more content for well-coordinated 5-20 man groups that can be done in multiple short stretches as opposed to catering to the EQ bluebie crowd.
Depends. They still crank out their first party titles, which have always been my motivation for buying a system during the first year. And Nintendo seems to be positioning themselves into a place where no one is really competing with them via interface differentation.
They're also cleaning up on the software/hardware sales in the land of the rising sun, have far lower development costs, and seem to have made a lot of headway in undoing the whole N64 debacle with developers and customers(The GCN is, to me, a fairly ok apology for the N64).
The DS is home to some downright odd(and fairly good) games already: Pheonix Wright Trauma Center Kirby Warioware Touched Feel the Magic XX/XY
As well as the non-games Nintendogs, the brain training game, and Animal Crossing. And of course a new Advance Wars that kicks much ass(we've run the charge out on the DS, no mean feat, 6 or 7 times with this game already, just passing it around like a board game).
They're also getting updated N64 ports of the good titles(Mario 64, Mario Kart), the best controlled FPS for a console to date(Metroid Prime - Hunters), newly done classic Nintendo franchises(Zelda, Mario), and updated versions of various games(Probably the best side-scrolling Castlevania came out for the DS recently). Oh and on the RPG front, a new Lunar(disappointing if you weren't a die-hard lunar fan), Mario and Luigi, FF3, Xenosaga 1/2, and supposedly an FF:CC.
Add into all of that, plus that you know there's going to be a holiday bundle of the system with some at least ok game, and you'll be able to pick up a DS + 2 games for about the same amount as 3 PSP games. Not a bad bet at all if there's a few titles in the pipe that are at all interesting to you.
The irony of betting on 3rd party support is that it's largely a self-fufilling prophecy. If you, and others, stick to Sony, then Sony gets the 3rd party support. Neither the DS or the PSP seem to have any dearth of 3rd party support atm, and if anything, it looks like the DS is likely to get more attention from the staple Japanese developers given the situation atm in Japan.
No, it's not censorship unless you dictate content. Children form exceptions to our various rights according to the SCOTUS. They can't drink, drive cars, smoke cigarettes, view pornography, wear what they want, say what they want, have sex with who they want, etc. No one is dictating content outside of the industry(yet). They're dictating what is appropriate for sale to a group of minors. And if you have a problem with that, you should also have a problem with kids NOT being able to buy pornography(at the minimum) because it's the same damn thing at it's heart.
This isn't obscenity laws applying to adults here. We're not talking about the miller test here. So STFU about censorship, it doesn't help your case any.
If you didn't know there wasn't a law regulating theater owners, you'd probably think that there was one.
The games industry already has an MPAA equivalent(probably to the detriment of creativity), but retailers are obviously NOT doing their part. Because there is a perception that they are not. Fix the perception and you fix the problem.
And that's not necessarily a good thing, judging by what's happened every time that's been done in the past.
The CMAA was created BY the comic book industry in response to negative popular perception after Senate hearings on post-war horror and crime comics. The comic book code was imposed by the comic book industry. No nasty big-brother government. They did it to themselves.
And no, there aren't any laws that fine theater owners for allowing children into R or NC-17 movies. Because hollywood and theater-owners not only self-regulated they managed to convince the public that they HAD self-regulated. If you didn't know there wasn't a law, you'd probably think that there was one.
It doesn't matter what the ESRB says, it matters what the stores SAY and DO, and they obviously haven't managed to pull a hollywood if they haven't achieved the same perception as hollywood did. Nor would it. Judging by the self-regulation of network standards and practices, the comic book code, and the mpaa ratings system, self-regulation stifles creativity more so than sane regulation of sale.
Because it creates more than two categories. Not just appropriate for teh kiddies, and not appropriate for teh kiddies, but all sorts of little sub-categories. Which makes everyone go to the widest possible demographic, right on the cusp of what is and what is not acceptable to parents. We'd probably be better off if no-one under 17 was allowed into an R-rated movie, because a heck of a lot of stuff gets cut and mangled to get things @ R because no NC-17 movie does well, and art suffers as a result.
Well they aren't really analog, but that's not a point. The big nintendo thing was shortening the stick, adding a pad on top for comfort, traction from the top, and ease of use(so you manipulate it by resting your thumb on top as opposed to a joystick where you manipulate it from the sides), and positioning it in a location that forced thumb control. It all seems soooo obvious, but they are fundamental tweaks that changed the analog-joystick into the analog stick we know today.
Sorta like the difference between a trackball and a mouse. You're manipulating content the same way(via a ball that spins and moves an on-screen pointer), but the method is a bit different. Or a joystick(as on the 2600) and an analog joystick. They're all related but they are all different.
Was it revolutionary? Ehh.. nah. But it was evolutionary, and I find it hard not to credit nintendo for what was basically the end of a control method family tree.
Well there are issues with so-called obsenity laws that prohibit the sale or display of things not meeting "community standards" but that's a seperate fight and it's a free-speech fight as opposed to a child-rights fight(a fight which has been lost since Fortas left the SCOTUS).
Sorta-like how you can't sell a vibrator as a vibrator in parts of the US south. It's a "back-massager."
Slashdot Mirror
That's not the fun of Linux though. The best bit about Linux is the home car-kit type vibe. This modularity is why it can be so secure, even though say Windows has a better fundamental design(but a pisspoor implementation).
OpenOffice is pretty good with MS formats. It's not terrific, but it's more than good enough for most uses. I use it instead of MS Office now on all platforms just for the consistant interface.
Anyway, if you wanted to switch to Linux you're looking at really digging in and piecing together a completely custom system to get everything you want. And you can get it to within about 99% of perfect for you. But it takes a heck of a lot of time. I'd start fiddling around with it on an older machine for like an hour or two a week, and gradually replacing your windows apps with cross-platform apps as you find ones you like.
If you want PC gaming though, forget it, you're stuck in Windows land.
Well, you went from being rather blaise about Live and the XBox to being really enthuisastic about it shortly after getting the admin job at Microsoft. Are you SURE they didn't put some mind-control serum in your hair dye? ;-)
;-P
Because I seem to recall you being more of a PC/Nintendo girl... Mario Kart: DD with your non-gamer SO and such.
Oh, and didn't you just nab your XBox because you got a pretty good discount on it and the games and figured what the hell? Or am I remembering this wrong?
I know it's not popular to believe it here on Slashdot, but we're people too.
Marketing department employees and executives aren't people! But that's not confined to Microsoft.
In all seriousness I think the change is more because you get to interact with the people doing the work in the XBox department, and all of these people are collegues you now share common ground with. So it's like getting excited and hyping up any friend's project. I still don't see anything special about or worth paying for in Live though.
Well on the PC we use a combination of programs that ends up equaling or surpassing live. X-Fire for the friends/now-playing list and messaging, built in voice-chat in many games or private moderated ventrillo/TS servers, etc. etc.
Build your community of gamers and play on.
MS got about 90% of what's great about PC gaming in live, and simplified it. But I still can't see why I should have to pay for it.
Bear in mind this is coming from someone who has been told many times to get a life thus far in the conversation due to his addictive gaming tendencies.
If you honestly think Blizzard isn't making a ridiculious amount of profit off of their revenue, you're insane. Because honestly I haven't seen *NEAR* enough content to suck up the kind of cash Blizz is making. With the amount of money they are pulling in, we should be seeing a significant content patch every month if they were spending even a fraction of it on that.
We're talking enough money to pay for server costs, a dozen programmers, a big-name special effects studio, and a mainstream writer's services for a month, every month, with plenty leftover.
Don't forget, self-regulation has given us Standards and Practices for network(and cable) television, the comic book code(which killed things such as tales from the crypt), the MPAA(which routinely causes things to be cut), etc., etc.
Self-regulation is oooohhh so much better than government regulation thus far.
SS1 was incredibly ahead of it's time(The terminal story-telling method was also used in Marathon btw). But I wouldn't call SS2 a straight rip-off of SS1. With SS2 a number of things, audio and graphics advances mainly, finally coalesced to really amp up the immersion factor. It's a different and better kind of creepiness to what you found in SS1, while still having the same spirit. Bioshock will hopefully follow in that pattern, just amping up the gameplay and dispensing a new story.
And if you played SS1, then finding out *who* has been sending you on happy-fun missions and cybering you out is incredibly disconcerting.
Ehh I fucked up my math, and me and my roommate played each other's alts. I put in about 3-4 hours a day on a typical day, not counting the two weeks straight of 18 hour WoW days I put in for my "vacation." It took me 20 days to hit 60 on my first character, 15 on my other-side char, and around 9 a pop of playtime per alt. Average is around 5 hours a day, not all of it put in by me.
And yea, only one of my characters, my initial one, is effectively geared up with anything other than BoEs.
SoC seems to do it less often than Windfury does. But yea, they're *about* equivalent.
Anyway, druids, the problem I have with that concept is, why would I play something other than a druid now? I can fill in for any of 3 roles. What do those 3 core-classes get that puts them above and beyond a druid? So far, nothing. By elevating the druid class, they've demeaned all the classes the druid can fill in for. Priests(which is my main and original character) especially are pretty pissed off about it, because we feel if we go raidspec we should make a druid healer look like a sick joke, and their big thing in a raid(if they go that way) is supporting us via innervate.
Not really, I put in about 3-4 hours a day since release(it's been almost a year). It's what I do on weeknights and early mornings/afternoons on weekends now instead of watching TV or playing around on the internet. WoW is easy to level in. Takes about 20 days of playtime for your first 60 and you can get additional 60s in 9-10 days of playtime. Plus me and my roommate(a chef, keeps insane hours) played each other's alts. Oh and I took two weeks off work to powerlevel characters, because I know how I get with these games(It's not pretty, I'm a sick, sick individual).
I have fought shamans, as alliance(on a pally) and as horde via duels. I've played both sides of the fence. Try playing the other side, you'll see how balanced things actually are.
Priest and Mage shields are: A. Dispellable, and B. Do not scale with gear progression. While Power Word Shield used to be great, it's now taken out in less than a hit in the end game, and you can't chain cast it(even multiple targets, as it has a cooldown). Mage shields, AKA mana shield, drain mana for each hit, quickly, and are comparably weak. Mana is the very thing a mage needs to be useful, and if you're considering mana shield, mana shield probably isn't going to save you(it sucks, bad). There is also no gear in the game that improves either of these abilities. Pally shields are time based, and thus DO SCALE. They always protect the pally for the same amount of time regardless of how much damage that pally is taking and regardless of a paladin's gear. They're also, in the case of Divine Shield, reactive. They can break magic-based CC. They are equally effective against 1 person and 40 epic-geared people. The two classes of shields are not comparable in utility.
I can tell that if you even play the game, you're evidentally part of the teeming horde of incredibly shitty paladins, and I have no desire to educate you on how to be effective. I'll just say that the actual problems with the paladin class are not the ones bitched about by your ilk.
Shaman lottery burst DPS is insane(a series of windfury procs is like the hand of god coming down). And their ability to control-burst DPS is pretty decent via shocks, but all in all their consistant DPS isn't *that* much higher than a paladin's.
Judgements do suck, and they should really be fixed. So do blessings(inconvienant as hell), totems(party only and cost a lot of mana), inner fire for priests(3 min duration and provides attack power!?), and shards not stacking for warlocks(which is because of soulfire, but still sucks).
The problem with druids, is they've been buffed too far now. A feral druid in mainly blues now hits for 400, critting for 800, with higher AC than most warriors. They can out-MT-heal a priest and have a decent mana pool in caster gear. They can break CC via shapeshifting. They have access to the most powerful ability in the game, stealth, by default, and now, via feral, can effectively dish out almost as much damage as a rogue. It's really starting to get very, very silly as they've almost become a priest/rogue/warrior all rolled into one. IMO, a pure-class should blow a hybrid out of the water when it comes to what they specialize in(since they do little else) and specced appropriately. Warriors for tanking, Rogues for melee DPS, priests for healing.
I still don't think Blizz knows what they're doing with the Pally class, or hybrids in general(buffing individual aspects of them to close to pure-class levels, which is getting really insane for classes like druids).
I would've started on the judgement system(which is mostly busted), and then started to play up the sheer annoyance and confusion a pally can inflict on massed horde in large scale PvP. Give em an on-death ability like priests have, which either does a heal or an AoE short-duration stun. Stuff like that.
Actually that's only about 1/2 an hour a day to get 6 characters to 60 over the almost year since release. I probably put in an average of 3-4 a day. It's what I do instead of watching TV.
But, yea, I am sick. MMOs are the devil.
What!? They can't buff paladins DPS because of those infernal bubbles. So long as they have them, and can stand up to a full 40-man assist train for their duration, allowing them to deal significant damage is so overpowered it's retarded. It's already bordering on the stupid that a damage-immune character can nail you with what amounts to a ranged execute(Hammer of Wrath), and the only way to get rid of it(which barely works), is to have a protection specced warrior hit em with a shield slam and pray for the lottery.
I can't believe blizz keeps listening to the hordes(pun-intended) of alliance whiners(like the Will of the Forsaken nerf that happened even though they swore up and down they would never nerf it). Half of whom have no understanding of group dynamics. And to make it worse they listen to the worst crop of the worst side, the suckiest of the suck, the Paladin players. Most of whom get confused if they try out any class with more than 2 buttons. The Paladin class doesn't suck, you do.
The only people who think Paladins are weak atm are people who don't have to fight them in BGs. Their lack of DPS is more than made up for with their utility(best debuff remover in game) and survivability(only healer that can survive an assist train). A single paladin can hold a position long enough for his entire team to respawn. Sure, they're incredibly boring to play at later levels, but so is a raidspec priest. The blessing change is a convienance thing, no problem there. But they should also change totems to affect the entire raid to close the PvE alliance/horde gap that's just going to worsen all that much more from the change. Paladins affect the tide of a battle not by killing, but rather by tying up opposing resources. And they're damn good at it even if that's not what they're shooting for.
What blizz SHOULD have done and SHOULD do, is open up Paladins to horde(maybe under a different name/ability names), and Shamans to alliance. Or at the minimum work on both classes at the same time and be DAMN sure they're balanced against each other in total, as they are now(Shamans better PvP, Pally's better PvE, an offensive hybrid and a defensive one). Because this side-specific class shit is both incredibly tricky and has the possibility of causing a whole side to pull out of PvP until balance is reestablished, in effect ruining it for everyone. Blizz in doing this, fell into one of the biggest pitfalls in multiplayer game design, and I still say it's been a mistake.
I for one will NOT enter a BG if Paladins can deal damage while immune. I will more than likely suspend my account or withdraw into bluebie land until that abortion of an idea is fixed, and a bunch of other primary horde players will too, worstening the side discrepancy even more(there's what, an average of 2-3 alliance to every horde across all servers, with only 2 servers having a large horde->alliance discrepancy) and ensuring the alliance doesn't get a chance to PvP.
It is nice to see that they're pulling an inverse of release with the expansion and finishing/polishing the horde first as opposed to as an afterthought. My initial characters were horde, and we really got the short end of the stick for a very long time.
I have, btw, a 60 shaman, 60 pally, 60 priest, 60 mage, and a 60 warlock all on PvP servers(all but the pally horde on the same server). I have access to(and have played via character swap with guildies) a 60 rogue, a 60 warrior, and a 60 druid. The only class I can't stand is the hunter.
To a limited extent. The two most recent frightening experiences were the "We don't go to Ravenholm" level in Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil 4. Doom 3, not so much scary, I mean, it's doom, monster-in-a-closet is old hat, and it's cheap.
Going back further though, we have System Shock 1&2, which were both excellent.
System Shock 2 had me sitting wide-eyed the whole time.
So, I'll have to go with System Shock 2.
Ding ding ding. My problem with WoW atm is that it's great from 1-60. Then it goes EQ-lite. Fuck that. If you want to restrict stuff, make it about skill not about organizing a bluebie raid. Make you have to do a hardcore solo mission, test the player, make it an accomplishment, not a time sink. Anyone in the right guild, with enough people around them, given enough time can hit High Warlord and get completely epiced out. They can be functionally retarded and still pull it off. There is no skill, no accomplishment in doing this from an individual perspective, only a group accomplishment. And, well, screw that. Epiced out? You're no better than us blue folks, and I'll gladly beat you down if you'll put on some blues, because you know damn well I did it before, and I CAN do it again.
The most hardcore PvP players on my server are forced... FORCED... to go through the 40 man raid instances atm in order to keep up with the bluebies. They went from spanking them like red-headed step-children to never winning, entirely because they refused to take part in that type of content.
And that's why WoW is broken. It started off as an MMO for non-eq people, and it's quickly heading towards being just like EQ.
It's as if thousands of e-peens cried out and were suddenly silenced. It's just gear, it's deprecated every time a new raid instance comes out. BWL and ZG loot negates MC loot. The upcoming Silithus dungeon loot will negate the BWL/ZG loot. Another dungeon will negate that. And the expansion will negate all of it. Typical MMO progression. No real shocker.
And it's not like people are somehow better just because they can get 40 people together to do the high end content every week. That attitude blizz has of catering to the EQ bluebie crowd is really grating on the casual/small FPS crossover guild people that make up the vast majority of WoW's playerbase. If you wanted EQ, you should've stuck to EQ.
There's never been any doubt that the level cap was going to be raised. We've been expecting it sometime this year or early next year. They were hinting at it being likely as far back as beta.
Well the question was one of style. Tomb Raider certainly ripped it's style straight out of older platformers, it even says so in your own link. And for the 2D->3D transition, Mario 64 predated Tomb Raider's release here stateside by almost a month.
Prince of Persia, duh. Do I win?
It's shaman, plural, shamans. And they're no more overpowered than the paladin is. One hybrid is defensive, the other offensive. In BGs a paladin can survive and hold a position long enough for his team to respawn because they're the only class that can reliably survive focus fire and still act. They're incredibly overpowered vs. the Shaman in PvE because totems only count for the current party, are restricted by range, and thus are tough to stack(as opposed to blessings). They have, by default, the best debuff remover in the game. And Paladins also recently got a ranged execute they can cast while their immune shield is up. Their sustained DPS is also about equivalent, the shaman just has a greater ability to burst DPS. SoC roughly equals Windfury in terms of lottery-style kills.
In terms of racials, WotF is the hordes one innate reactive fear-countering ability. While the alliance gets dwarf priests with fear ward as a proactive ability. Humans have a pretty nice package of racials, perception is situationally useful, the spirit bonus is nice for priests, the rep bonus is great for anyone grinding rep to get crafting recipes, and the + to swords is ok. Gnomes are the ultimate mage class, and are tiny. Dwarves get reactive poison immunity, just need to remember to cancel it. Night Elves get an innate stealth. Orcs get stun/fear resist and + to axes. Trolls get crap. Tauren get an HP bonus and an AoE stun. Undead get the grand-daddy combo of WotF, underwater breathx3, and cannibalize(now that it's useful).
They were supposed to buff the other racials up to the level of WotF but instead decided to nerf it again(yes, it's old form was a nerfed form, it used to be passive) after tons of alliance whining. So if you think you're racials suck, you shouldn't have complained endlessly and instead gotten them buffed to be comparable, as was Blizzard's initial plan.
Or the inclination to be in a huge serious guild that can get the attendance numbers to do the 40-man high-end content. Which tend to invariably splinter and be full of "da drama." Nothing sucks worse than spending all that time and effort only to get jack for it when the guild splits.
My guild is gradually getting there by absorbing like-minded casual people, and we've successfully avoided things like DKP and the like thus far, but I wish they'd plug in more content for well-coordinated 5-20 man groups that can be done in multiple short stretches as opposed to catering to the EQ bluebie crowd.
Depends. They still crank out their first party titles, which have always been my motivation for buying a system during the first year. And Nintendo seems to be positioning themselves into a place where no one is really competing with them via interface differentation.
They're also cleaning up on the software/hardware sales in the land of the rising sun, have far lower development costs, and seem to have made a lot of headway in undoing the whole N64 debacle with developers and customers(The GCN is, to me, a fairly ok apology for the N64).
The DS is home to some downright odd(and fairly good) games already:
Pheonix Wright
Trauma Center
Kirby
Warioware Touched
Feel the Magic XX/XY
As well as the non-games Nintendogs, the brain training game, and Animal Crossing. And of course a new Advance Wars that kicks much ass(we've run the charge out on the DS, no mean feat, 6 or 7 times with this game already, just passing it around like a board game).
They're also getting updated N64 ports of the good titles(Mario 64, Mario Kart), the best controlled FPS for a console to date(Metroid Prime - Hunters), newly done classic Nintendo franchises(Zelda, Mario), and updated versions of various games(Probably the best side-scrolling Castlevania came out for the DS recently). Oh and on the RPG front, a new Lunar(disappointing if you weren't a die-hard lunar fan), Mario and Luigi, FF3, Xenosaga 1/2, and supposedly an FF:CC.
Add into all of that, plus that you know there's going to be a holiday bundle of the system with some at least ok game, and you'll be able to pick up a DS + 2 games for about the same amount as 3 PSP games. Not a bad bet at all if there's a few titles in the pipe that are at all interesting to you.
The irony of betting on 3rd party support is that it's largely a self-fufilling prophecy. If you, and others, stick to Sony, then Sony gets the 3rd party support. Neither the DS or the PSP seem to have any dearth of 3rd party support atm, and if anything, it looks like the DS is likely to get more attention from the staple Japanese developers given the situation atm in Japan.
No, it's not censorship unless you dictate content. Children form exceptions to our various rights according to the SCOTUS. They can't drink, drive cars, smoke cigarettes, view pornography, wear what they want, say what they want, have sex with who they want, etc. No one is dictating content outside of the industry(yet). They're dictating what is appropriate for sale to a group of minors. And if you have a problem with that, you should also have a problem with kids NOT being able to buy pornography(at the minimum) because it's the same damn thing at it's heart.
This isn't obscenity laws applying to adults here. We're not talking about the miller test here. So STFU about censorship, it doesn't help your case any.
If you didn't know there wasn't a law regulating theater owners, you'd probably think that there was one.
The games industry already has an MPAA equivalent(probably to the detriment of creativity), but retailers are obviously NOT doing their part. Because there is a perception that they are not. Fix the perception and you fix the problem.
And that's not necessarily a good thing, judging by what's happened every time that's been done in the past.
The CMAA was created BY the comic book industry in response to negative popular perception after Senate hearings on post-war horror and crime comics. The comic book code was imposed by the comic book industry. No nasty big-brother government. They did it to themselves.
And no, there aren't any laws that fine theater owners for allowing children into R or NC-17 movies. Because hollywood and theater-owners not only self-regulated they managed to convince the public that they HAD self-regulated. If you didn't know there wasn't a law, you'd probably think that there was one.
It doesn't matter what the ESRB says, it matters what the stores SAY and DO, and they obviously haven't managed to pull a hollywood if they haven't achieved the same perception as hollywood did. Nor would it. Judging by the self-regulation of network standards and practices, the comic book code, and the mpaa ratings system, self-regulation stifles creativity more so than sane regulation of sale.
Because it creates more than two categories. Not just appropriate for teh kiddies, and not appropriate for teh kiddies, but all sorts of little sub-categories. Which makes everyone go to the widest possible demographic, right on the cusp of what is and what is not acceptable to parents. We'd probably be better off if no-one under 17 was allowed into an R-rated movie, because a heck of a lot of stuff gets cut and mangled to get things @ R because no NC-17 movie does well, and art suffers as a result.
Well they aren't really analog, but that's not a point. The big nintendo thing was shortening the stick, adding a pad on top for comfort, traction from the top, and ease of use(so you manipulate it by resting your thumb on top as opposed to a joystick where you manipulate it from the sides), and positioning it in a location that forced thumb control. It all seems soooo obvious, but they are fundamental tweaks that changed the analog-joystick into the analog stick we know today.
Sorta like the difference between a trackball and a mouse. You're manipulating content the same way(via a ball that spins and moves an on-screen pointer), but the method is a bit different. Or a joystick(as on the 2600) and an analog joystick. They're all related but they are all different.
Was it revolutionary? Ehh.. nah. But it was evolutionary, and I find it hard not to credit nintendo for what was basically the end of a control method family tree.
Well there are issues with so-called obsenity laws that prohibit the sale or display of things not meeting "community standards" but that's a seperate fight and it's a free-speech fight as opposed to a child-rights fight(a fight which has been lost since Fortas left the SCOTUS).
Sorta-like how you can't sell a vibrator as a vibrator in parts of the US south. It's a "back-massager."