The Newton was a PDA. A dockable iMac would be closer to a tablet PC than anyone else, as it is meant to be taken on the road, and write directly on the display surface.
I think you are getting too caught up in the specific technologies. In general terms, such a beast would come closest to being classified as a tablet PC. Whether it uses a stylus or not as the control mechanism is a bit beside the point. (and "graphics tablet" is a different thing than a "tablet pc" -- graphics tablets are designed as a high-resolution input device for graphics creation, whereas tablet pcs are computers where the primary input device allows the user to interact directly with the screen, and hence, the OS itself)
The reason that it seems likely to me that the iMac would make a transition to a tablet-esque, removeable device is because sales trends show that the laptop market continue to outpace desktop sales. Having a device with portable capabilities, but also with easy docking functionality, would be a boon for creatives. Maybe it is far-fetched, but I do think that we'll see multi-touch technology seep into the Mac lineup.
Wow, okay. Let me see. I am PREDICTING what the iMac will have, not what TFA rumors will happen. Apple has done magic before with weight issues -- I have no doubt that they could make a lightweight, detachable iMac if they wanted.
As for your comment about tablet PCs not being touchscreen -- okay Mr. Literal. Come up with a new name for them then. The iTablet. There you go. The iTablet will use a multi-touch screen with pressure sensitivity. I am so sorry Bill Gates for intruding upon your divine creation.
I believe multi-touch touchscreen monitors are coming to OS X for the desktop. The iPhone is Apple's brand leader right now, similar to certain car marquees have one model that represents that brand's state of the art and future design cues. So, we'll see future iPods sporting the new iPhone interface with tossable CoverFlow, as well as wi-fi to enable buy-on-the-go from the iTunes Store. But we'll also see the multi-touch capabilities come to the Mac. And I think we'll see it in the iMac first, then possibly in revamped Cinema Displays and Macbook Pro screens.
I would imagine the iMac will be detachable from its base, allowing you to carry anywhere and do all of the iPhone-esque multi-touches without needing a mouse to navigate. As you said, a tablet pc, but without all the moving parts. When detached from the base, the iMac will have a soft keyboard like the iPhone, and the multi-touch screen for navigation.
But don't fret too much about the graphics cards. I think we'll see some beefy cards in the updated Mac Pros (all rumor points in that direction). And who knows, they might finally introduce a midrange tower system as a nod to the gamers.
Flex is a framework which sits on top of Flash. It is written in Actionscript 3. It provides a set of visual and data components that help to shorten the development time of RIAs (Rich Internet Apps). The data components provide support for XML, AMF, and RPC data protocols, which can be fed into Flex's UI components via data binding. The UI components are a robust set of widgets for building form-based interfaces quickly.
Flex also offers an enterprise-level Data Services module which provides support for real-time database update propagation (think: Joe orders a pizza. Mary's pizza order list immediately pops up a new order. This took place transparently.), dynamic data paging (think: User scrolls through a list of 2000 database records. As user stops/starts scrolling, Flex automatically fills the UI with pertinent entries from the DB.)
It sounds more like you just *want* to believe that Flex is failing.
Flex is starting to become a de facto for "web 2.0" apps that require a richer experience than can be provided by HTML alone. Yes, the framework has its share of problems. It is great for MXML-based forms apps, but doing more complex apps with custom components and heavy use of Actionscript can be a headache. I know from personal experience because I'm working on such a beast. However, the benefits that it provides in terms of data services, data binding, paging, etc. make it a great option for RIAs.
But yes, Flex is also being used in intranets a lot -- a lot of Java programmers are realizing that Flex delivers what Java was supposed to deliver.
Regarding your #2, I'm sure there are some strategic motivations for open-sourcing parts of Flex, but Adobe has already released their Tamarin joint-collaboration with Mozilla under the MPL license, so there is some precedent there in supporting the open source movement.
I don't know why I was modded down as Troll. Although I had my tongue firmly in cheek, this is the basic reason why you'd buy the AppleTV. It's certainly not for the featureset. You buy it because it's sexy and slick in that way only Apple can provide. Yes, it does integrate with iTunes better than any other media center, but it's shortcomings far outweigh the technical benefits. So the main course of rationalization for actually purchasing such a product would have to be, "Will this thing help get me laid?" And the answer is, probably more than the Xbox 360 would. Girls who are stylish know and appreciate what Apple is. But your own shortcomings may also far outweigh the AppleTV's benefits in that area. YMMV.
Think of it this way: when you're having your special lady friend over for a hot dinner date, would you rather have the slick AppleTV serving up your media, or a D-Link product? Or even a Xbox 360?
I think that's what this all comes down to. If you like sex, buy the Apple.
All they have to do is run the text through their English -> Arabic translator and then back to English. (for some reason the Arabic translator does a better job of keeping the general meaning of the original phrase better than their other language translators) That will be enough to make the story partially readable, but moderately different.
For instance I put in a current headline: "US Troops Raid Shiite Areas of Baghdad"
And got back: "American forces raid Shiite areas of Baghdad"
Of course, it's not always that intelligible, but hey..it's a start.
Hmm, sounds like the site maintainers are just idiots then.
You could always just download the Flash games your son likes and play them locally. Using the Page Info menu command on Firefox, you can pretty much download any Flash SWF file. Then just drag the file into your browser when you want to run it.
I'll be the first to agree that Adobe doesn't have the most efficient means of updating the Flash plug-in. It's getting better, but slowly.
I would even agree with you that the difference between Flash 6 and Flash 8 is not groundbreaking, except for video where it has made "video-on-demand" mainstream with YouTube. Flash 8 did add some interesting things like per-pixel bitmap editing and creation, but the performance of the runtime engine hindered more advanced applications of this.
However, Flash 9/ActionScript 3.0 is truly a whole new deal. Both the language and the runtime engine have been rewritten from the ground up. The language is more akin to Java (ECMAScript 3) than what you remember as ActionScript. The performance of the Flash 9 engine is orders of magnitude faster than, the caveat being that the performance gains are only realized with ActionScript 3 content. There's also a lot more flexibility with handling binary data. You can pretty much create and export any binary file you want. Want to zip up assets and send them to a server? No problem, just write a zip encoder. TIFF files? PDF? If you know the format, you can write it. You can also create custom network protocols. Telnet client, IRC, whatever. You can do it.
For non-coders, Flash 9 also includes better ways to hand-off animation content to coders. If you create a tween-based animation in the Flash IDE, you can convert this data to XML which a coder can use to recreate it programmatically. Photoshop and Illustrator imports have been vastly improved also. While these features doesn't affect end-users, it is a pretty great workflow improvement.
The merger of Adobe and Macromedia really caused a systemic change within the organization, and Flash 9 is a promising first result.
Don't judge the technology based on ancient history.
Sad, sad, sad state of affairs, where a company is required by law to do what many consider to be immoral.
It's not like Google was forced into that position. It was their *choice* to become a publically-traded corporation, and thus submit themselves to the scrutiny and direction of the public at large.
The confusion of "Wi-Fi" is not limited to Zonk; it's everywhere. Game rags, game software stores, even game publishers all interchangeably use "Wi-Fi" with any kind of multiplayer, even though Nintendo has set up the "Wi-Fi" term to very narrowly apply on the DS to multiplayer games which use Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection Service. Unfortunately I don't have enough money to buy all these people a ticket on the clue train.
Most likely the best post I've ever read on slashdot.
Do you secretly write for McSweeney's? Because that was a brilliant piece of monologue. And I mean that not in a detached way. I mean that yours is a piece of passionate intellectualism. It moved my head and my heart. So Bravo, sir or madam. Don't give up the fight.
[quote]Now the important part about the price: if you're a gamer that can't easily afford a PS3, what's your reaction? Is it going to be to buckle down, work more hours and save up extra? What if you could work the same amount or less and get the 360 and some games? Would you spend more hours at work based on what Sony's shown us?[/quote]
For some people, price is certainly a deciding factor. For people that are professionals who are buying a system for themselves, this is less about coming up with the bills, and more of an emotional response. The difference in price between the PS3, 360, and Rev is negligible to my overall finances, but the psychological impact of a $600 console is huge. I don't want to live in Kutaragi's bukkake fantasy world. I didn't buy the NeoGeo, and I won't buy this. At least the NeoGeo had better-looking games than everyone else.
If Sony had come out this year with a real-time demo of Killzone that looked like last year's trailer, or a demo of Tekken that looked like the amazing stuff we saw last year, I would call up Kutaragi and say "I'm your bitch, Ken. Name your price." But instead we our intelligence and perceptiveness is insulted. Ken is now the Wizard of Oz, full of bluster and hyperbole, but it's all smoke and mirrors. Arrogance is only acceptable if it is backed up with results.
This might possibly be the worst marketing failure in the history of games..or anything. All the hype surrounding the Revolution's features have been instantly wasted on a name that no one wants to say, irrespective of what language they speak. Nintendo really likes to give itself a good challenge.
Nintendo as a company don't seem to understand "cool" AT ALL. They can hire talented designers all they want to create sleek, Apple-esque products, nice logos and motion graphics to sell them, but then they sabotage all that with a really forced, amateuristic name. Yes, I GET THAT THE TWO I's REPRESENT YOUR CONTROLLER. YOU'RE SO CLEVER, BIG N. And please spare us the phony manifesto. You insult our intelligence.
Nintendo had better dump their ad/marketing agency PRONTO, or all of their innovation will mean nothing in most gamers' eyes. And that would be truly tragic, because I respect a company that has the cajones to innovate so fearlessly.
While some may think that Mac OS X is still a fringe OS compared to Windows, I have noticed more and more WoW players that I know choosing iBooks and PowerBooks for their "portable" WoW experience. The main reason for this is the price-performance ratio of having a good video card coming standard in the Mac portables. As we have seen as a general trend on slashdot, a lot of techies have migrated to Macs. A lot of these techies also play MMOs and other games.
I think that MMO developers (and other genres) are being very short-sighted by discounting Mac development. While the overall market share of Macs probably hasn't increased much in the past couple years, I wouldn't be surprised if the market share of hardcore gamers using Macs has gone up quite a bit.
The one "excuse" I am seeing from PC game developers over and over when dismissing the possibility of a Mac version is that they coded their game using DirectX. So it would seem that there is a wide-open opportunity for a middleware developer to create a DirectX wrapper for use under OS X. Unless game developers start embracing OpenGL more, this is probably the only way we'll see an increase in Mac development from smaller game studios.
I'm not ignorant of WoW, I have several active characters on it, and I have friends who have many level 60s. Your idea of "casual gaming" must be seriously skewed from the norm to believe you can hit level 60 in a month and a half. You would have to play for several hours each night, and grind through many levels without a rest bonus. That is not the definition of casual gamer. On average it takes around 6 months to get a character to level 60 playing casually.
If you believe the content of WoW is superb, well great for you. I don't think the majority shares that opinion. There is almost no role-playing...you really have to go out of your way to role play. The "story" is weaker than even Neverwinter Nights. The quests rarely venture beyond drop quests or kill X number of Y quests. The only reason people keep playing are the carrots on the stick -- getting to the "real game" at level 60, or getting a rare drop.
Blizzard has finely-tuned the level advancement of the game so that the average player will get to level 60 in 6 months. That is 6 months of payments per customer = lots of cash. The hardcore players will level much quicker, but they are a small percentage of those playing the game. Blizzard has set up the game and its content based on revenue generation, instead of on whether it is "fun" or "innovative". Not to say that there aren't fun moments, but the "fun" is metered out in such a way as to keep your account active as long as possible.
You seem to be splitting hairs and missing my real point.
A "game" created where there is no real "game" until you've logged in hundreds of hours of work is not a game. It is a job. From Blizzard's perspective, the raid dungeons are merely carrots to get you to play through the next drawn-out set of task-rewards expansion pack X.
There are many other games that require many hours of playtime to become competitive at the top level, and games that require intricate levels of teamwork to win, but none of them require "training school", that takes months for the average player, in order to get to the fun part of the game.
The end-game content is different how exactly from the pre-lvl 60 content? You go fight bigger monsters to try to find the super-rare item drops. Oh, you do it in bigger groups? Yeah, that's *way* different. My analysis stands -- from top to bottom, WoW was created to maximize revenue potential, not for gamer enjoyment. People are trained to hunt for the proverbial needle in the haystack by replaying 'instances' over and over to get that rare drop. Or they spend countless hours farming for their guild. Blizzard doesn't really care, as long as you're distracted enough to keep your account active and wait until the expansion pack comes out, which you will buy, and then proceed down the road of more mindless task-reward scenarios.
As I said before, it is not that other games have not had this sort of task-reward setup in the past, but MMORPGs (and WoW more efficiently than any other) have been designed to take advantage of behavioral training more often seen in dog training classes to keep each player paying their monthly fee as long as possible.
Yes, and they are both *work*. WoW is not especially fun; it attracts and keeps players with Pavlovian behaviour training. It attracts certain types of personalities who love completing tasks to get a reward. That task-reward relationship becomes addictive, especially when these people may find similar real-life attainment of goals to not be clear cut, or not "replayable" after failing the first time, or goals that are simply unattainable in real life. These task-reward relationships are in all games, but in MMORPGs this is utilized to extract as much money per customer as possible. Quests and rewards are stretched out just enough that the game player is annoyed, but not so annoyed that they quit the game. WoW players are never truly happy, for once you get to level 60, you suddenly realize there *is* no game. Just a set of repetitive tasks. Then an expansion pack comes out and the task-reward cycle begins again. I would argue that the only people who truly enjoy playing WoW are the people who make money selling items and gold from their labor.
I'm sorry I don't have mod points...your post was was very insightful. It's true, there's a whole new generation of kids whose first FPS game was Half-Life. So that's their evolutionary track. Those of us who started with Wolf3d and DOOM are a little bored of the genre. Game developers/publishers better get their act together...even the new gen of FPS players are going to tire of retreading the same experience each year. And the average age of gamers is ever slanting into the 20s range.
Slashdot Mirror
The Newton was a PDA. A dockable iMac would be closer to a tablet PC than anyone else, as it is meant to be taken on the road, and write directly on the display surface.
I think you are getting too caught up in the specific technologies. In general terms, such a beast would come closest to being classified as a tablet PC. Whether it uses a stylus or not as the control mechanism is a bit beside the point. (and "graphics tablet" is a different thing than a "tablet pc" -- graphics tablets are designed as a high-resolution input device for graphics creation, whereas tablet pcs are computers where the primary input device allows the user to interact directly with the screen, and hence, the OS itself)
The reason that it seems likely to me that the iMac would make a transition to a tablet-esque, removeable device is because sales trends show that the laptop market continue to outpace desktop sales. Having a device with portable capabilities, but also with easy docking functionality, would be a boon for creatives. Maybe it is far-fetched, but I do think that we'll see multi-touch technology seep into the Mac lineup.
Wow, okay. Let me see. I am PREDICTING what the iMac will have, not what TFA rumors will happen. Apple has done magic before with weight issues -- I have no doubt that they could make a lightweight, detachable iMac if they wanted.
As for your comment about tablet PCs not being touchscreen -- okay Mr. Literal. Come up with a new name for them then. The iTablet. There you go. The iTablet will use a multi-touch screen with pressure sensitivity. I am so sorry Bill Gates for intruding upon your divine creation.
I think you've hit upon it.
I believe multi-touch touchscreen monitors are coming to OS X for the desktop. The iPhone is Apple's brand leader right now, similar to certain car marquees have one model that represents that brand's state of the art and future design cues. So, we'll see future iPods sporting the new iPhone interface with tossable CoverFlow, as well as wi-fi to enable buy-on-the-go from the iTunes Store. But we'll also see the multi-touch capabilities come to the Mac. And I think we'll see it in the iMac first, then possibly in revamped Cinema Displays and Macbook Pro screens.
I would imagine the iMac will be detachable from its base, allowing you to carry anywhere and do all of the iPhone-esque multi-touches without needing a mouse to navigate. As you said, a tablet pc, but without all the moving parts. When detached from the base, the iMac will have a soft keyboard like the iPhone, and the multi-touch screen for navigation.
But don't fret too much about the graphics cards. I think we'll see some beefy cards in the updated Mac Pros (all rumor points in that direction). And who knows, they might finally introduce a midrange tower system as a nod to the gamers.
Flex is a framework which sits on top of Flash. It is written in Actionscript 3. It provides a set of visual and data components that help to shorten the development time of RIAs (Rich Internet Apps). The data components provide support for XML, AMF, and RPC data protocols, which can be fed into Flex's UI components via data binding. The UI components are a robust set of widgets for building form-based interfaces quickly.
Flex also offers an enterprise-level Data Services module which provides support for real-time database update propagation (think: Joe orders a pizza. Mary's pizza order list immediately pops up a new order. This took place transparently.), dynamic data paging (think: User scrolls through a list of 2000 database records. As user stops/starts scrolling, Flex automatically fills the UI with pertinent entries from the DB.)
A good starting place for Flex info is: http://www.flex.org/
It sounds more like you just *want* to believe that Flex is failing.
Flex is starting to become a de facto for "web 2.0" apps that require a richer experience than can be provided by HTML alone.
Yes, the framework has its share of problems. It is great for MXML-based forms apps, but doing more complex apps with custom components and heavy use of Actionscript can be a headache. I know from personal experience because I'm working on such a beast. However, the benefits that it provides in terms of data services, data binding, paging, etc. make it a great option for RIAs.
But yes, Flex is also being used in intranets a lot -- a lot of Java programmers are realizing that Flex delivers what Java was supposed to deliver.
Regarding your #2, I'm sure there are some strategic motivations for open-sourcing parts of Flex, but Adobe has already released their Tamarin joint-collaboration with Mozilla under the MPL license, so there is some precedent there in supporting the open source movement.
I don't know why I was modded down as Troll. Although I had my tongue firmly in cheek, this is the basic reason why you'd buy the AppleTV. It's certainly not for the featureset. You buy it because it's sexy and slick in that way only Apple can provide. Yes, it does integrate with iTunes better than any other media center, but it's shortcomings far outweigh the technical benefits. So the main course of rationalization for actually purchasing such a product would have to be, "Will this thing help get me laid?" And the answer is, probably more than the Xbox 360 would. Girls who are stylish know and appreciate what Apple is. But your own shortcomings may also far outweigh the AppleTV's benefits in that area. YMMV.
Think of it this way: when you're having your special lady friend over for a hot dinner date, would you rather have the slick AppleTV serving up your media, or a D-Link product? Or even a Xbox 360?
I think that's what this all comes down to. If you like sex, buy the Apple.
All they have to do is run the text through their English -> Arabic translator and then back to English. (for some reason the Arabic translator does a better job of keeping the general meaning of the original phrase better than their other language translators)
That will be enough to make the story partially readable, but moderately different.
For instance I put in a current headline: "US Troops Raid Shiite Areas of Baghdad"
And got back: "American forces raid Shiite areas of Baghdad"
Of course, it's not always that intelligible, but hey..it's a start.
Hmm, sounds like the site maintainers are just idiots then.
You could always just download the Flash games your son likes and play them locally. Using the Page Info menu command on Firefox, you can pretty much download any Flash SWF file. Then just drag the file into your browser when you want to run it.
I'll be the first to agree that Adobe doesn't have the most efficient means of updating the Flash plug-in. It's getting better, but slowly.
I would even agree with you that the difference between Flash 6 and Flash 8 is not groundbreaking, except for video where it has made "video-on-demand" mainstream with YouTube. Flash 8 did add some interesting things like per-pixel bitmap editing and creation, but the performance of the runtime engine hindered more advanced applications of this.
However, Flash 9/ActionScript 3.0 is truly a whole new deal. Both the language and the runtime engine have been rewritten from the ground up. The language is more akin to Java (ECMAScript 3) than what you remember as ActionScript. The performance of the Flash 9 engine is orders of magnitude faster than, the caveat being that the performance gains are only realized with ActionScript 3 content. There's also a lot more flexibility with handling binary data. You can pretty much create and export any binary file you want. Want to zip up assets and send them to a server? No problem, just write a zip encoder. TIFF files? PDF? If you know the format, you can write it. You can also create custom network protocols. Telnet client, IRC, whatever. You can do it.
For non-coders, Flash 9 also includes better ways to hand-off animation content to coders. If you create a tween-based animation in the Flash IDE, you can convert this data to XML which a coder can use to recreate it programmatically. Photoshop and Illustrator imports have been vastly improved also. While these features doesn't affect end-users, it is a pretty great workflow improvement.
The merger of Adobe and Macromedia really caused a systemic change within the organization, and Flash 9 is a promising first result.
Don't judge the technology based on ancient history.
It was probably a security fix. That's why myspace upgraded to Flash 9.
Latin was fairly rule-based. Of course, it's also dead.
It's not like Google was forced into that position. It was their *choice* to become a publically-traded corporation, and thus submit themselves to the scrutiny and direction of the public at large.
The confusion of "Wi-Fi" is not limited to Zonk; it's everywhere. Game rags, game software stores, even game publishers all interchangeably use "Wi-Fi" with any kind of multiplayer, even though Nintendo has set up the "Wi-Fi" term to very narrowly apply on the DS to multiplayer games which use Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection Service. Unfortunately I don't have enough money to buy all these people a ticket on the clue train.
Most likely the best post I've ever read on slashdot.
Do you secretly write for McSweeney's? Because that was a brilliant piece of monologue. And I mean that not in a detached way. I mean that yours is a piece of passionate intellectualism. It moved my head and my heart. So Bravo, sir or madam. Don't give up the fight.
[quote]Now the important part about the price: if you're a gamer that can't easily afford a PS3, what's your reaction? Is it going to be to buckle down, work more hours and save up extra? What if you could work the same amount or less and get the 360 and some games? Would you spend more hours at work based on what Sony's shown us?[/quote]
For some people, price is certainly a deciding factor. For people that are professionals who are buying a system for themselves, this is less about coming up with the bills, and more of an emotional response. The difference in price between the PS3, 360, and Rev is negligible to my overall finances, but the psychological impact of a $600 console is huge. I don't want to live in Kutaragi's bukkake fantasy world. I didn't buy the NeoGeo, and I won't buy this. At least the NeoGeo had better-looking games than everyone else.
If Sony had come out this year with a real-time demo of Killzone that looked like last year's trailer, or a demo of Tekken that looked like the amazing stuff we saw last year, I would call up Kutaragi and say "I'm your bitch, Ken. Name your price." But instead we our intelligence and perceptiveness is insulted. Ken is now the Wizard of Oz, full of bluster and hyperbole, but it's all smoke and mirrors. Arrogance is only acceptable if it is backed up with results.
This might possibly be the worst marketing failure in the history of games..or anything. All the hype surrounding the Revolution's features have been instantly wasted on a name that no one wants to say, irrespective of what language they speak. Nintendo really likes to give itself a good challenge.
Nintendo as a company don't seem to understand "cool" AT ALL. They can hire talented designers all they want to create sleek, Apple-esque products, nice logos and motion graphics to sell them, but then they sabotage all that with a really forced, amateuristic name. Yes, I GET THAT THE TWO I's REPRESENT YOUR CONTROLLER. YOU'RE SO CLEVER, BIG N. And please spare us the phony manifesto. You insult our intelligence.
Nintendo had better dump their ad/marketing agency PRONTO, or all of their innovation will mean nothing in most gamers' eyes. And that would be truly tragic, because I respect a company that has the cajones to innovate so fearlessly.
Japan's new reprocessing nuclear facility suffered a leakage after being turned on recently. Not exactly the best mascot for safe nuclear power.
As for storage, it's not as much about where the nuclear waste ends up, but how it travels there safely.
While some may think that Mac OS X is still a fringe OS compared to Windows, I have noticed more and more WoW players that I know choosing iBooks and PowerBooks for their "portable" WoW experience. The main reason for this is the price-performance ratio of having a good video card coming standard in the Mac portables. As we have seen as a general trend on slashdot, a lot of techies have migrated to Macs. A lot of these techies also play MMOs and other games.
I think that MMO developers (and other genres) are being very short-sighted by discounting Mac development. While the overall market share of Macs probably hasn't increased much in the past couple years, I wouldn't be surprised if the market share of hardcore gamers using Macs has gone up quite a bit.
The one "excuse" I am seeing from PC game developers over and over when dismissing the possibility of a Mac version is that they coded their game using DirectX. So it would seem that there is a wide-open opportunity for a middleware developer to create a DirectX wrapper for use under OS X. Unless game developers start embracing OpenGL more, this is probably the only way we'll see an increase in Mac development from smaller game studios.
I think what the parent poster is insinuating is that Apple is doing price fixing too. Not every song is worth $1.
I'm not ignorant of WoW, I have several active characters on it, and I have friends who have many level 60s.
Your idea of "casual gaming" must be seriously skewed from the norm to believe you can hit level 60 in a month and a half. You would have to play for several hours each night, and grind through many levels without a rest bonus. That is not the definition of casual gamer. On average it takes around 6 months to get a character to level 60 playing casually.
If you believe the content of WoW is superb, well great for you. I don't think the majority shares that opinion. There is almost no role-playing...you really have to go out of your way to role play. The "story" is weaker than even Neverwinter Nights. The quests rarely venture beyond drop quests or kill X number of Y quests. The only reason people keep playing are the carrots on the stick -- getting to the "real game" at level 60, or getting a rare drop.
Blizzard has finely-tuned the level advancement of the game so that the average player will get to level 60 in 6 months. That is 6 months of payments per customer = lots of cash. The hardcore players will level much quicker, but they are a small percentage of those playing the game. Blizzard has set up the game and its content based on revenue generation, instead of on whether it is "fun" or "innovative". Not to say that there aren't fun moments, but the "fun" is metered out in such a way as to keep your account active as long as possible.
You seem to be splitting hairs and missing my real point.
A "game" created where there is no real "game" until you've logged in hundreds of hours of work is not a game. It is a job. From Blizzard's perspective, the raid dungeons are merely carrots to get you to play through the next drawn-out set of task-rewards expansion pack X.
There are many other games that require many hours of playtime to become competitive at the top level, and games that require intricate levels of teamwork to win, but none of them require "training school", that takes months for the average player, in order to get to the fun part of the game.
The end-game content is different how exactly from the pre-lvl 60 content? You go fight bigger monsters to try to find the super-rare item drops. Oh, you do it in bigger groups? Yeah, that's *way* different. My analysis stands -- from top to bottom, WoW was created to maximize revenue potential, not for gamer enjoyment. People are trained to hunt for the proverbial needle in the haystack by replaying 'instances' over and over to get that rare drop. Or they spend countless hours farming for their guild. Blizzard doesn't really care, as long as you're distracted enough to keep your account active and wait until the expansion pack comes out, which you will buy, and then proceed down the road of more mindless task-reward scenarios.
As I said before, it is not that other games have not had this sort of task-reward setup in the past, but MMORPGs (and WoW more efficiently than any other) have been designed to take advantage of behavioral training more often seen in dog training classes to keep each player paying their monthly fee as long as possible.
Yes, and they are both *work*. WoW is not especially fun; it attracts and keeps players with Pavlovian behaviour training. It attracts certain types of personalities who love completing tasks to get a reward. That task-reward relationship becomes addictive, especially when these people may find similar real-life attainment of goals to not be clear cut, or not "replayable" after failing the first time, or goals that are simply unattainable in real life. These task-reward relationships are in all games, but in MMORPGs this is utilized to extract as much money per customer as possible. Quests and rewards are stretched out just enough that the game player is annoyed, but not so annoyed that they quit the game. WoW players are never truly happy, for once you get to level 60, you suddenly realize there *is* no game. Just a set of repetitive tasks. Then an expansion pack comes out and the task-reward cycle begins again. I would argue that the only people who truly enjoy playing WoW are the people who make money selling items and gold from their labor.
I'm sorry I don't have mod points...your post was was very insightful. It's true, there's a whole new generation of kids whose first FPS game was Half-Life. So that's their evolutionary track. Those of us who started with Wolf3d and DOOM are a little bored of the genre. Game developers/publishers better get their act together...even the new gen of FPS players are going to tire of retreading the same experience each year. And the average age of gamers is ever slanting into the 20s range.