"Actually, public schools are generally local government institutions - and so should be completely unaffected by the constitutional ban on federal laws restricting the freedom of speach.
Incorrect. As the parent stated, the first ammendment was extended by the fourteenth to include state and local government. Just how the 14'th extends things has been a matter of much legal debate and lots of rulings but it has generally been held up by the courts as meaning the entire bill of rights applies as much to state and local governments as to federal."
Actually, the 14th Amendment was written to reinforce the fact that State and Local governents and laws are superseded by the Constitution when they conflict, and to guarantee the right to "due process" and of "equal protection" under the law. Such rights already existed, but they were codified there.
For example, a state can't force you into a trial without jury. A state can't burst down your door and search your home without a warrant, etc.
And, a government school cannot pass a "law" abridging the freedom of speech, any more than they can expel a student for practicing a religion they don't like off school grounds outside school hours.
"In Chicago, Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action."
Such a "contract" would be as illegal as the paper that it was written on. No goverment entity (and public schools are government entities) can make you sign away your right to free speech, petition, etc on your own time on your own property. Also, without defining with specificity what "inappropriate" is, the thing would be too broad even if it were a contract between PRIVATE citizens.
That would be the same as if your state passed a law requiring you to, when you renewed your drivers license that you refrained from "inappropriate" behavior on the internet, with the intent to sue people who criticize the idiots at the DMV...
After the rootkit fiasco, and the downright abuse of players and Mad Magazine worthy mis-management of SWG by SOE, I wouldn't buy a dollar for a nickel from them.
Sony and SOE both are collapsing from incompetent management and their complete disregard for their customers.
Of course, I quit using Yahoo when I started using only Google. Yahoo's website went from being the cleanest and least laden with trickery and pervasive ads to one of the worst.
Google ads at least are text and off to the side. Whether or not they are promoting typosquatting or not they are easy to ignore.
I like the idea of reviving the original characters in some way. That was what was really lacking from the later iterations of Star Trek, was the strength of characters. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were the perfect balance of differing personalities, one of the best sets of characters ever in TV or film.
Press reports back in November `05 (when the New Gawfaful Experience was revealed) had SWG's subs at 200K. That was down from 250K during the CU era, and 300K during the pre-CU era.
I estimate that SWG lost 50-60% of it's sub base as subscriptions expired after the NGE bombshell. There are servers that almost completely lack population now, and even the "large" servers have declined.
There is NO WAY SWG still has over 250K subscribers. Someone recently used a packet sniffer and discovered that the number of people logged in was sent in the clear to the client (this has since been patched), and that it had only 10,400 concurrent logins among all servers in prime time (friday evening).
We've also seen server populations dwindle, including the server I play on, which is still one of the 5 most active. Used to be you would see 100 people PvP'ing on any given evening, now you are lucky to have 20 total.
SWG is lucky to have 50-75,000 subscribers left AT MOST.
AVOID SOE AT ALL COSTS... They are so ethically challenged they make Enron executives look like saints. Yes, they are that bad...
They release stuff half finished, make earth shattering changes to games overnight (right after charging you for the expansion of course), and have managed to revamp and nerf SWG to the point where it has barely 50,000 subscribers.
The guy has lost it. They took a game that was succesful by the standards of the time of it's release that had 300K subs, and revamped it twice and lost tens of thousands of subs each time, the last one lost 100K subs.
They ignore the player in any SUBSTANTIVE way and wonder why they now have a game that should have at least a million subs and have 50,000
1982.. 5K of RAM, casette tape drive, 22 colum screen!
My 2nd of course was a Commodore 64, then a 128, then it pained me greatly (because I saw Commodore was going down the tubes) to not replace with with an Amiga, but instead, I went with a `286 clone as my first PC...
Commodore was a computer company that was easy to love. They were innovative and made powerful machines that they sold far cheaper than the other guys.
"The original incarnation of SWG was universally panned. All the game journals give it a thumbs down, and it had a poor subscriber rate. What we're seeing now is the work of the vocal minority who actually liked the original product. Unfortunately, their devotion doesn't make the game any more profitable. I really don't see the problem with a massive revamp of SWG. The game would have been cancelled if not for the retooling. The only other route would have been to scrap SWG entirely and try with a new incarnation."
I am sick of the "vocal minority" argument.
That "vocal minority" was enough to give the game 300K subs pre-CU
That "vocal minority" still amounted to 200K subs by the time of the NGE announcement (CU cost the game 100K subs).
That "vocal minority" apparently amounted to more than half those who were left at that time.
The "vocal minority" is actually the 50-70K that are REMAINING in the game now, who didn't leave out of disgust over the CU then the NGE in the past year.
There never was anything wrong with the original play system. What WAS wrong was the devs never did make an obvious path for those who were too dumb to "learn" the skill system. A tutorial and a directed set of quests could have done that. Indeed, that is what they HAVE done with the NGE, but for this system.
SOE/LEC have never listened to those who only gave them money. Pre-CU all we wanted them to do was fix the system we had and add content. CU all we wanted them to do was fix the system we had and add content. Their solution every time has been two rewrites of everything, the second far more radical than the first, and plunging the game back to beta quality (at best) twice in one year.
THAT is why SWG has lost subs and hasn't grown. Had they spent all the time, money, and resources refining and adding content (including noob content to teach them the system) to the original system, they have MISUSED their resources on rewriting it twice.
"Yeah, it's farfetched. But I believe that was indicative of the outburst when Star Wars Galaxies was changed for the betterment of the game in the eyes of Sony Entertainment Online and Lucasfilm."
Changed for the better?
Look at all the empty servers. SWG probably doesn't even have 100K paying subs left. It had 300K a little more than a year ago.
It doesn't matter if the game is "better" if the paying customers don't agree and quit giving them money.
Oh, and there are at least 3 pre-CU (SWG Publish 14.1 or earlier) private servers that I know of that are in the works. I bet there ends up being far more intrest in those than in the NGE.
"Similarly, there is a LOT of time between Ep 3 and 4. This is when SWG is suppose to occur. And I think it works as a time/place/theme. Trying to turn the game into a non-Sand Box is where they have a problem."
SWG takes place between EP4 and EP5.
Not that you'd know it by the fact that the last two expansions have been adding EP3 content to the game, and the fact that you can't throw a rock without hitting a Jedi, in the open, with saber glowing.
Actually, this is the crux of the problem... SWG is THE test that will set the course of the future of the MMO industry:
Do you remain loyal to your customers, listen to them, make the game for them?
Or...
Do you commit yourself to those who ARENT your customers, listen to them, try to make a game for them, and ignore those who have paid for 2.5 years of development?
Most MMO's do not do radical change for fear of alienating their base and closing down.
If SOE gets away with what they have done to us, prepare to see EVERY MMO vendor, including Blizzard, walking all over their base.
Of course, I believe that SOE has no chance at all of making this a go. I lived through the original radical (it seemed so at the time) change, the Combat Upgrade of April `05, and that reaction was a mild protest compared to what I have seen with the NGE.
John Smedley is obviously getting his crack from the same source that supplies Darl McBride.
I have played WoW. It's an ok game, but I didn't like it all that much. It's not my style. I consider WoW to be a game that appeals to the lowest common denominator. It's pure hack and slash play with cartoony graphics and shallow, repetitive "kill foozle" gameplay. Star Wars never has been lowest common denominator, and neither should SWG be.
I have played SWG for a year and a half now. I have FOUR accounts. I have mastered almost every combat profession that the game ever had, including full template Jedi, which prior to the NGE, took months to do, and rewarded you with a character that, if played right was the most powerful in the game.
SWG is the only game that I have EVER played constantly for a very long period., mainly because there was always SOMETHING ELSE to go do!
And SWG never was a failure. We have (had) 200-300K subs, which made us a solid top 10 US MMO, a number 90% of the MMO's out there would die for.
Instead they chose to nuke the game, because they decided that those who made it what it was are now undesirable and they want the lowest common denominator crowd.
For the good of the industry, and for everyone who is a customer of MMO's, I hope SWG fails so horribly that it closes by Feb. For SOE/LA to do what they have done to everyone who ever gave them a red cent and get away with it, and to be REWARDED with larger sub numbers for it would be the doom of EVERYONE who is a customer of a MMO. They will ALL start doing the exact same thing TO YOU.
With SWG being rumored to close down in Feb (due to a miscalculation about how many cancellations NGE would cause) I'd love to see someone impliment a pre-CU server somewhere.:)
The interface sucks, melee combat (which Jedi is the only melee class now) is horribly unblanced.
You can't even tell which direction you are pointed thanks to the idiotic UI.
Not to mention, mouse movement, which used to be so fluid and a strength of this game, is gone.
And, if you were an existing vet (who respec not full template, CL80 and have to grind 5 million XP to get to CL90), the ONLY place you can get decent XP is on Mustafar, doing THREE quests that are located ONLY there.
Mustafar? Yes, Trials of Obiwan expansion. The expansion they charged us for a day before announcing the NGE changes. If we get our refunds, we CANNOT LEVEL.
I had 4. All cancelled now. Two of them have already gone inactive, my Jedi dies on 11/15 (when the game dies) and the last one on 12/06.
I will never patronize Sony ever again. DDO for me, I can use a 2-3 month break from MMO'ing anyway until it comes out.
Given what I've been told by people who have sources, the game was near death anyway, and this is a DESPERATE last gasp attempt. It is the wrong attempt, they should have done what we, the community have asked for REPEATEDLY:
FIX what we have
BALANCE what we have
Their response to this has been two new combat systems and now a completely new profession system.
SOE listens to their customers by holding their hands over their ears and yelling LA LALALAL LA LA LA LALALA!!!
Slashdot Mirror
"Actually, public schools are generally local government institutions - and so should be completely unaffected by the constitutional ban on federal laws restricting the freedom of speach.
Incorrect. As the parent stated, the first ammendment was extended by the fourteenth to include state and local government. Just how the 14'th extends things has been a matter of much legal debate and lots of rulings but it has generally been held up by the courts as meaning the entire bill of rights applies as much to state and local governments as to federal."
Actually, the 14th Amendment was written to reinforce the fact that State and Local governents and laws are superseded by the Constitution when they conflict, and to guarantee the right to "due process" and of "equal protection" under the law. Such rights already existed, but they were codified there.
For example, a state can't force you into a trial without jury. A state can't burst down your door and search your home without a warrant, etc.
And, a government school cannot pass a "law" abridging the freedom of speech, any more than they can expel a student for practicing a religion they don't like off school grounds outside school hours.
"In Chicago, Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action."
Such a "contract" would be as illegal as the paper that it was written on. No goverment entity (and public schools are government entities) can make you sign away your right to free speech, petition, etc on your own time on your own property. Also, without defining with specificity what "inappropriate" is, the thing would be too broad even if it were a contract between PRIVATE citizens.
That would be the same as if your state passed a law requiring you to, when you renewed your drivers license that you refrained from "inappropriate" behavior on the internet, with the intent to sue people who criticize the idiots at the DMV...
After the rootkit fiasco, and the downright abuse of players and Mad Magazine worthy mis-management of SWG by SOE, I wouldn't buy a dollar for a nickel from them.
Sony and SOE both are collapsing from incompetent management and their complete disregard for their customers.
About all you'd have to do to get the French to surrender would be to send a squad of girl scouts to Paris and have them say "BOO!". :)
Of course, I quit using Yahoo when I started using only Google. Yahoo's website went from being the cleanest and least laden with trickery and pervasive ads to one of the worst.
Google ads at least are text and off to the side. Whether or not they are promoting typosquatting or not they are easy to ignore.
I like the idea of reviving the original characters in some way. That was what was really lacking from the later iterations of Star Trek, was the strength of characters. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were the perfect balance of differing personalities, one of the best sets of characters ever in TV or film.
Press reports back in November `05 (when the New Gawfaful Experience was revealed) had SWG's subs at 200K. That was down from 250K during the CU era, and 300K during the pre-CU era.
I estimate that SWG lost 50-60% of it's sub base as subscriptions expired after the NGE bombshell. There are servers that almost completely lack population now, and even the "large" servers have declined.
There is NO WAY SWG still has over 250K subscribers. Someone recently used a packet sniffer and discovered that the number of people logged in was sent in the clear to the client (this has since been patched), and that it had only 10,400 concurrent logins among all servers in prime time (friday evening).
We've also seen server populations dwindle, including the server I play on, which is still one of the 5 most active. Used to be you would see 100 people PvP'ing on any given evening, now you are lucky to have 20 total.
SWG is lucky to have 50-75,000 subscribers left AT MOST.
AVOID SOE AT ALL COSTS... They are so ethically challenged they make Enron executives look like saints. Yes, they are that bad...
They release stuff half finished, make earth shattering changes to games overnight (right after charging you for the expansion of course), and have managed to revamp and nerf SWG to the point where it has barely 50,000 subscribers.
The guy has lost it. They took a game that was succesful by the standards of the time of it's release that had 300K subs, and revamped it twice and lost tens of thousands of subs each time, the last one lost 100K subs.
They ignore the player in any SUBSTANTIVE way and wonder why they now have a game that should have at least a million subs and have 50,000
Arrogance.
1982.. 5K of RAM, casette tape drive, 22 colum screen!
My 2nd of course was a Commodore 64, then a 128, then it pained me greatly (because I saw Commodore was going down the tubes) to not replace with with an Amiga, but instead, I went with a `286 clone as my first PC...
Commodore was a computer company that was easy to love. They were innovative and made powerful machines that they sold far cheaper than the other guys.
A Deloreon, a flux capacitor, 1.21 gigawatts of power, and enough road to get up to 88 miles per hour.
www.nrepguild.com/light.jpg
SS taken of the galaxy population screen just a few minutes ago.
"The original incarnation of SWG was universally panned. All the game journals give it a thumbs down, and it had a poor subscriber rate. What we're seeing now is the work of the vocal minority who actually liked the original product. Unfortunately, their devotion doesn't make the game any more profitable. I really don't see the problem with a massive revamp of SWG. The game would have been cancelled if not for the retooling. The only other route would have been to scrap SWG entirely and try with a new incarnation."
I am sick of the "vocal minority" argument.
That "vocal minority" was enough to give the game 300K subs pre-CU
That "vocal minority" still amounted to 200K subs by the time of the NGE announcement (CU cost the game 100K subs).
That "vocal minority" apparently amounted to more than half those who were left at that time.
The "vocal minority" is actually the 50-70K that are REMAINING in the game now, who didn't leave out of disgust over the CU then the NGE in the past year.
There never was anything wrong with the original play system. What WAS wrong was the devs never did make an obvious path for those who were too dumb to "learn" the skill system. A tutorial and a directed set of quests could have done that. Indeed, that is what they HAVE done with the NGE, but for this system.
SOE/LEC have never listened to those who only gave them money. Pre-CU all we wanted them to do was fix the system we had and add content. CU all we wanted them to do was fix the system we had and add content. Their solution every time has been two rewrites of everything, the second far more radical than the first, and plunging the game back to beta quality (at best) twice in one year.
THAT is why SWG has lost subs and hasn't grown. Had they spent all the time, money, and resources refining and adding content (including noob content to teach them the system) to the original system, they have MISUSED their resources on rewriting it twice.
The result is they've managed to kill the game.
"Yeah, it's farfetched. But I believe that was indicative of the outburst when Star Wars Galaxies was changed for the betterment of the game in the eyes of Sony Entertainment Online and Lucasfilm."
Changed for the better?
Look at all the empty servers. SWG probably doesn't even have 100K paying subs left. It had 300K a little more than a year ago.
It doesn't matter if the game is "better" if the paying customers don't agree and quit giving them money.
Oh, and there are at least 3 pre-CU (SWG Publish 14.1 or earlier) private servers that I know of that are in the works. I bet there ends up being far more intrest in those than in the NGE.
"Does he even have jurisdiction for this? Isn't this a federal matter?"
Sure he does. So long as ONE person in his state has been victimized by RIAA price fixing.
Why?
;)
:)
Because anyone who would "decline" a EULA is obviously a PIRATE and thus, Sony was justified in pushing their malware through anyway
It's an argument only a SCO lawyer could make, but the RIAA seems full of them
"Similarly, there is a LOT of time between Ep 3 and 4. This is when SWG is suppose to occur. And I think it works as a time/place/theme. Trying to turn the game into a non-Sand Box is where they have a problem."
SWG takes place between EP4 and EP5.
Not that you'd know it by the fact that the last two expansions have been adding EP3 content to the game, and the fact that you can't throw a rock without hitting a Jedi, in the open, with saber glowing.
Actually, this is the crux of the problem... SWG is THE test that will set the course of the future of the MMO industry:
Do you remain loyal to your customers, listen to them, make the game for them?
Or...
Do you commit yourself to those who ARENT your customers, listen to them, try to make a game for them, and ignore those who have paid for 2.5 years of development?
Most MMO's do not do radical change for fear of alienating their base and closing down.
If SOE gets away with what they have done to us, prepare to see EVERY MMO vendor, including Blizzard, walking all over their base.
Of course, I believe that SOE has no chance at all of making this a go. I lived through the original radical (it seemed so at the time) change, the Combat Upgrade of April `05, and that reaction was a mild protest compared to what I have seen with the NGE.
John Smedley is obviously getting his crack from the same source that supplies Darl McBride.
I have played WoW. It's an ok game, but I didn't like it all that much. It's not my style. I consider WoW to be a game that appeals to the lowest common denominator. It's pure hack and slash play with cartoony graphics and shallow, repetitive "kill foozle" gameplay. Star Wars never has been lowest common denominator, and neither should SWG be.
I have played SWG for a year and a half now. I have FOUR accounts. I have mastered almost every combat profession that the game ever had, including full template Jedi, which prior to the NGE, took months to do, and rewarded you with a character that, if played right was the most powerful in the game.
SWG is the only game that I have EVER played constantly for a very long period., mainly because there was always SOMETHING ELSE to go do!
And SWG never was a failure. We have (had) 200-300K subs, which made us a solid top 10 US MMO, a number 90% of the MMO's out there would die for.
Instead they chose to nuke the game, because they decided that those who made it what it was are now undesirable and they want the lowest common denominator crowd.
For the good of the industry, and for everyone who is a customer of MMO's, I hope SWG fails so horribly that it closes by Feb. For SOE/LA to do what they have done to everyone who ever gave them a red cent and get away with it, and to be REWARDED with larger sub numbers for it would be the doom of EVERYONE who is a customer of a MMO. They will ALL start doing the exact same thing TO YOU.
Even WoW...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/arts/10star.html ?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1134234111-qM+OBZTgCE9+jbFl687Dv g
Must read.
Smedley is a liar and a thief. I'd normally never say that, but in his case, it's true.
With SWG being rumored to close down in Feb (due to a miscalculation about how many cancellations NGE would cause) I'd love to see someone impliment a pre-CU server somewhere. :)
That is the NGE.
The interface sucks, melee combat (which Jedi is the only melee class now) is horribly unblanced.
You can't even tell which direction you are pointed thanks to the idiotic UI.
Not to mention, mouse movement, which used to be so fluid and a strength of this game, is gone.
And, if you were an existing vet (who respec not full template, CL80 and have to grind 5 million XP to get to CL90), the ONLY place you can get decent XP is on Mustafar, doing THREE quests that are located ONLY there.
Mustafar? Yes, Trials of Obiwan expansion. The expansion they charged us for a day before announcing the NGE changes. If we get our refunds, we CANNOT LEVEL.
Mr Smedley, you have made ONE post on the SWG forum. Why won't you make a greater presence there and answer your customer's questions there?
"How many accounts did you have? Criminy."
I had 4. All cancelled now. Two of them have already gone inactive, my Jedi dies on 11/15 (when the game dies) and the last one on 12/06.
I will never patronize Sony ever again. DDO for me, I can use a 2-3 month break from MMO'ing anyway until it comes out.
Given what I've been told by people who have sources, the game was near death anyway, and this is a DESPERATE last gasp attempt. It is the wrong attempt, they should have done what we, the community have asked for REPEATEDLY:
FIX what we have
BALANCE what we have
Their response to this has been two new combat systems and now a completely new profession system.
SOE listens to their customers by holding their hands over their ears and yelling LA LALALAL LA LA LA LALALA!!!