By this reasoning, McDonalds must make the best [fast food] in the world, based on their corporate success.
While my kids would agree with your original sentiment, I think the modification I made makes it otherwise true.
Comparing McDonalds to (whatever place makes actual hamburgers) isn't precisely fair. Nor would be comparing WoW to American Idol, even while both are entertainment and have wide audiences.
I assume I'm not European and meant December 14th (or verbally: 'twelve fourteen'). Of course, I also explained how I arrived at that figure, so why are either of us assuming anything?
I'm with you, I do think that the 'less painful' casual experience is a good thing. I'd rather see a ramp at the end of it, instead of a wall, but otherwise we seem to agree.
Yeah, those people are ruining the game, in my opinion. They're not yet done with Heroics, but they're unwilling to carry the casuals, so they just vote kick or harass them out.
What about the reports of the three-hybrid groups queuing (instantly) as tank/heal/dps but then refusing to actually do those jobs? The group falls apart, but they're still at the top of the queue when they requeue as all dps...
For that, I blame the people. But the wall is what they're trying to avoid.
While you might have actually run enough Heroics in a 'sub-two-hours-each' time frame and/or might have been lucky enough to get all the right drops in short order, I'd suggest you pause to reflect on any who are in a guild without exclusive access to a tank/healer. Clicks are nifty, that's true, but this doesn't necessarily mean that you can safely gauge the game's true difficulty without ever stepping outside of yours.
I find it interesting that 'linedancing practice' is presented here as a pejorative. You do realize that people have been practicing group dancing since some short while after the invention of fire and or music, yes?
Well, it's even worse, since the only high score table that matters is the World Of Pacman one, that all your friends play.
If Old Republic actually launches as free to download, free to play, then it stands an outside chance of getting the required numbers. Making a profit will have to be step 3. If they try launch as a $50 box with a $15 subscription fee, well, at least it'll save them the expense of buying many servers.
Rumor had it that they were already sunk up to the 300 million mark back in October. If this game launches as anything BUT a 50/15 game, I'll be stunned. In fact, I'm betting on more like 70/20. They think they're making something profoundly better, have sunk a lot of money, AND they have Lucas to pay in perpetuity. 'Cheap' isn't going to factor in, I don't think.
Either you stopped paying attention around 12/14 or so, or you're repeating something you've heard somewhere else.
Yes, all the FP's and whatnot made the leveling experience easier, and yes there were mutterings about that before Cata launched.
Also the 80-85 experience was modeled this same way, and is super, super easy to complete, so I could see that continuing for about another week (thus the 14).
But eventually those hardcore players got done leveling and experienced the extreme content wall that Heroics have presently become. If ANY of them are still complaining about things being 'too easy', call them out on it. Heroics are hard. And there are, indeed, pointless and boring hours required now in PUGs (and if you have to PUG, triple the expected amount of hours required) in order to get geared enough to set foot in a raid. In fact, you'd need an entire set of Heroic dungeon gear now just to get hit capped. It would take a minimum of, say, 80 hours of play to get that done. And that's not even the end-game.
So yeah, leveling to 85 is still pretty easy. But everything 85+ is so hard that I'm doubting you've followed up with anyone who has discovered this fact.
Look at D&D (P&P version). They have almost 30 years of experience balancing PvE and PvP. Steal their talents, skills and abilities, file the serial numbers off them, reskin and rename them and there you go.
Unfortunately for your position, not even Hasbro agrees with you. While you'd think that they have rafts of experience, they basically just went and copied WoW rather than relying on any of it.
-Make PVE more interesting. There has been some progress with giving players skill combos or allowing them to take cover, which gives more tactical options. But ultimately this approach needs better NPC AI, which is a difficult field.
Cata has taken a shot at this, by the way. The sorts of things that one used to only find occasionally on a new boss have crept into the trash mobs themselves. Every single pull requires at least some degree of tactics now, and with the introduction of 'get out of the fire, but get into the green' they're really pulling a mind job on their playerbase.
Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced
Isn't it, though? Games are made to entertain their customers and sustain their backers. WoW has done both to a degree that no other MMO ever has before - for years and years running. If your image of the 'ultimate game' doesn't include success then I humbly submit that your game wouldn't live very long.
which is coincidentally as addicting as heroine and makes you very subjective
Ah yes, I haven't seen the 'no true Scotsman' argument in quite a while. It's good to see the old tropes trotted out from time to time...
Things can be fun without being really grindy. WoW keeps you addicted with stuff, good games keep you addicted with fun.
While I'm inclined to agree with you, the developers at WoW clearly do not. They are resolute that without enough effort the successes are meaningless.
The force of your swing measured by the increase in speed at which your hand,foot,bodypart approaches the sensor.
Holding something defeats the whole purpose of the Kinect, it's about not needing anything other than yourself. For fucks sake, my 2 year old can use it, enjoy it, and figure out what it means to "hit it harder".
Why does a 6 digit User here in Slashdot land not have the same mental reasoning as a TWO YEAR OLD?
Dumb ass.
People adapt differently to different applications of technology because a lot if it simply didn't exist when they grew up. You'd think someone calling someone else a 'dumb ass' would know such things.
One thing that the Kinect already does, though, is adapt for the size of the person doing the gestures. It sees my son's reach as equivalent to my own, even though I have three feet on him. This would seem to lend towards more comfort from the 'one-size-fits-all' perspective wherein it is actually true.
I use one at home; MythTV. I still won't use motion gestures for that kind of thing; Picking up a drink from the table could end up pausing recording, or swapping channel, or anything.
As others have said, you 'd use an unlock. Voice commands are an option not mentioned for this - clapping hands or snapping fingers would work as well.
I could readily see this for modifying the volume. Since Myth never found the motivation to implement SmartSound, you could save finding where the remote actually got placed with gestures. Kind of like a concert conductor for your TV. Raise one hand up in the air, snap your fingers and the volume would track your hand's elevation. Snap again and it stops tracking you. Something like that.
In fact, the only gesture I would have programmed in for such a device is standing / sitting, and that would pause / resume whatever was being watched at the time. That would still irritate the hell out of anyone you were watching a film with, though.
It seems trivial for such a system to detect how many others are in the room and only auto-pause when everyone gets up...
Right, but wouldn't the very behavior of such a system betray what THEY were using to communicate? It seems like it would only take a few minutes to find out which parts of the spectrum DARPA's machine had whitelisted, and then you could simply jam only THAT.
If you're eating meat, you should question how your bowels look and smell, how much meat is stuck inside there undigested and foul.
Just as an FYI, from this side of the planet, this is really, really, really, really, really low on the list of what's important to me. If you're unhappy about how my bowels smell, kindly stop smelling them.
Also, I question the diligence of the ethical position that prohibits eating the flesh of animals while still exploiting their reproductive material. "We love chickens so much that we only eat their unborn babies." Something tells me that they wouldn't be super happy about that, if you could ask them. Also, chicken farms are one of the very worst examples of the way humans farm animals, and milk production is a close second. Think of all the hormones, confinement, and pain used to produce these products. And unlike the steer or hog about to be slaughtered, these cows and chickens live out there ENTIRE LIVES in servitude.
To me either animals are resources to be used (for things like tasty meat and spiffy leather) or they're not. Oh, and if you're against leather, by the way, please stop all uses of any form of plastic. Where do you think THAT stuff comes from? Dead animals...
This thing sounds more synthetic than a lot of synthesizers.
This is what I came to say - but to me 'more synthetic' could be replaced with 'worse'. For something that can 'really shred', I still think even a first-year student could out play it. And that's bizarre to me. It hits every note, I'd guess, but it sounds like crap. Why? Can we see from the video what's wrong with the technique?
Even implementing basic string muting would make a huge difference here.
I thought it was rather embarrassing for the republicans when they tried these tactics against Obama. It saddens me that apparently some democrats are sinking to their level. Really, I can't imagine this being successful anyway.
Have you considered that it might not really be democrats behind it? If Palin runs, the republican primaries are going to be vicious. One of the other republican contenders could easily be behind this knowing full well it probably won't help palin but news of it may mobilize the saner parts of the republican party.
What's really going to blow your mind later is - what if Palin's camp did it? I mean there have been accusations in the past of this type of genuinely un-american behavior, but was there a website? Was there actual PROOF that it happened, or just speculation? Because here we have those vile evil Democrats trying to bring Sarah down. But what if her supporters are only strengthened by the thought that their enemy would sink so low? I mean, so early in the race, they must be really worried to pull a stunt like this, right?
Anyway, who ever is behind it, it is obviously a sham. There's zero participation on the site. Maybe, MAYBE one comment per blog item. It's been up since '17 Nov 2010'. Not much traffic for something that just got posted to slashdot. Google right now is showing 'About 435 results'. I can get more than that out of 'fat kid loves to exercise'.
If you really wanted to get to the bottom of it, identify SharpieMarker. From what I can see they're the only human alive who knew the site existed until it got slashvertised. The user account here is brand-new, too. Nothing but this one submission. And yet it got posted so quickly? Eeeeenteresting...
I don't want to see that insane woman anywhere near the white house, ever. We've already seen the damage a village idiot for president can do, why the hell would anyone want to elect another one? I don't want a president I can have a beer with. I want someone competent enough to run a country without demolishing the constitution or looting the middle class.
I thought this was a ruse to elect Obama? Does W even drink beer??
As far as I know, after the 1984 fiasco and per court settlement, Amazon no longer removes books from Kindles remotely without user permission. They will remove access from buying the book via the Amazon store or redownloading from your "archive" in their cloud.
That was my belief as well, but people are saying that their books are being deleted and Amazon is denying them refunds.
C) Are the wielders of this power applying it fairly and with the same value system as their customers?
Do not care.
Well, hell man, if you do not care, kindly butt out and let those of us who do care discuss it?? What kind of a ass-backwards slant is that? "I don't care, but here's my opinion anyway..."
Someone will always sell these books if there is demand unless they are illegal (and probably then too).
Not on paper, and likely not in an easily-available format. We're not looking at a scenario where mp3's are new and being traded via Napster. This DRM situation is more perilous because it is younger and benefits from the experience of the music industry's failures.
I don't think Amazon should have removed the two specific books from the article from their store but I also feel that, as a corporation and not a government, they have a right to sell what they want to sell.
I almost always agree with this sentiment, but I think that communications media are different. Just as a think it is wrong for a web provider to delete a site due to it's content, so is Amazon wrong to delete a book. Free speech isn't just an amendment, it is a principle. People that practice it should be applauded and those that abuse it only for their own gain should be decried.
Would you force a bookseller to buy copies of books from every publisher that exists so that the threat of censoring doesn't exist?
Yes, by way of your double-edged and entirely straw-tastic question, I can still say yes. If you want to sell books then you should be required to sell any books you can reasonably obtain by special order from your customer. Also, would I stop the Nazis from burning books? Yes.
If books aren't special to you, then I kindly ask you forget how to read.
In any case, the barrier to entry for ebook marketing and distribution is so low that I can't even see that a market share monopoly matters.
And how many widely-accepted ebook readers are there to date? How many vendors of such books? Do you know anyone who owns a reader? Are they happy with it? This market is super, super new. To claim that it has low barriers is superfluous at best.
Because these people/governments lack the ability to intercept your copper/GSM/other types of calls?
People do not labor under the delusion that those are safely encrypted.
[rant] Sometimes I really hate the pedantry of this particular website. You guys are GOD DAMNED LAZY in your arguments. [/rant]
While I understand that relatively few people believe that there is some degree of encryption on Skype and that it may or may not be inferior or superior to other internet-driven alternatives, I would simply hope to point out that the vast majority of their daily communications and/or of their communication alternatives has even less protection.
If you work for the DOD, they've probably given you a phone to use. If you're anybody else, you probably don't give two craps whether or not you're being intercepted.
[rant] If only I didn't have to use so many GOD DAMNED KEYSTROKES to make a point around here!!! I honestly think it may be time to find another place to have a conversation. This has been home to some of the most stimulating thought of my lifetime, but our standards seem to have become really, really low. Five seconds of thought, if that, and a snarky one-liner are what constitute good conversation now? Really?? [/rant]
Slashdot Mirror
Years (two) plus years (two) does still equal four?
I stand by the notion that six years for a (successful) MMO is a very long time. It would be a long time for nearly any internet-connected technology.
By this reasoning, McDonalds must make the best [fast food] in the world, based on their corporate success.
While my kids would agree with your original sentiment, I think the modification I made makes it otherwise true.
Comparing McDonalds to (whatever place makes actual hamburgers) isn't precisely fair. Nor would be comparing WoW to American Idol, even while both are entertainment and have wide audiences.
I assume I'm not European and meant December 14th (or verbally: 'twelve fourteen'). Of course, I also explained how I arrived at that figure, so why are either of us assuming anything?
I'm with you, I do think that the 'less painful' casual experience is a good thing. I'd rather see a ramp at the end of it, instead of a wall, but otherwise we seem to agree.
Yeah, those people are ruining the game, in my opinion. They're not yet done with Heroics, but they're unwilling to carry the casuals, so they just vote kick or harass them out.
What about the reports of the three-hybrid groups queuing (instantly) as tank/heal/dps but then refusing to actually do those jobs? The group falls apart, but they're still at the top of the queue when they requeue as all dps...
For that, I blame the people. But the wall is what they're trying to avoid.
While you might have actually run enough Heroics in a 'sub-two-hours-each' time frame and/or might have been lucky enough to get all the right drops in short order, I'd suggest you pause to reflect on any who are in a guild without exclusive access to a tank/healer. Clicks are nifty, that's true, but this doesn't necessarily mean that you can safely gauge the game's true difficulty without ever stepping outside of yours.
I find it interesting that 'linedancing practice' is presented here as a pejorative. You do realize that people have been practicing group dancing since some short while after the invention of fire and or music, yes?
Well, it's even worse, since the only high score table that matters is the World Of Pacman one, that all your friends play.
If Old Republic actually launches as free to download, free to play, then it stands an outside chance of getting the required numbers. Making a profit will have to be step 3. If they try launch as a $50 box with a $15 subscription fee, well, at least it'll save them the expense of buying many servers.
Rumor had it that they were already sunk up to the 300 million mark back in October. If this game launches as anything BUT a 50/15 game, I'll be stunned. In fact, I'm betting on more like 70/20. They think they're making something profoundly better, have sunk a lot of money, AND they have Lucas to pay in perpetuity. 'Cheap' isn't going to factor in, I don't think.
Either you stopped paying attention around 12/14 or so, or you're repeating something you've heard somewhere else.
Yes, all the FP's and whatnot made the leveling experience easier, and yes there were mutterings about that before Cata launched.
Also the 80-85 experience was modeled this same way, and is super, super easy to complete, so I could see that continuing for about another week (thus the 14).
But eventually those hardcore players got done leveling and experienced the extreme content wall that Heroics have presently become. If ANY of them are still complaining about things being 'too easy', call them out on it. Heroics are hard. And there are, indeed, pointless and boring hours required now in PUGs (and if you have to PUG, triple the expected amount of hours required) in order to get geared enough to set foot in a raid. In fact, you'd need an entire set of Heroic dungeon gear now just to get hit capped. It would take a minimum of, say, 80 hours of play to get that done. And that's not even the end-game.
So yeah, leveling to 85 is still pretty easy. But everything 85+ is so hard that I'm doubting you've followed up with anyone who has discovered this fact.
Look at D&D (P&P version). They have almost 30 years of experience balancing PvE and PvP. Steal their talents, skills and abilities, file the serial numbers off them, reskin and rename them and there you go.
Unfortunately for your position, not even Hasbro agrees with you. While you'd think that they have rafts of experience, they basically just went and copied WoW rather than relying on any of it.
-Make PVE more interesting. There has been some progress with giving players skill combos or allowing them to take cover, which gives more tactical options. But ultimately this approach needs better NPC AI, which is a difficult field.
Cata has taken a shot at this, by the way. The sorts of things that one used to only find occasionally on a new boss have crept into the trash mobs themselves. Every single pull requires at least some degree of tactics now, and with the introduction of 'get out of the fire, but get into the green' they're really pulling a mind job on their playerbase.
We'll see how it turns out.
Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced
Isn't it, though? Games are made to entertain their customers and sustain their backers. WoW has done both to a degree that no other MMO ever has before - for years and years running. If your image of the 'ultimate game' doesn't include success then I humbly submit that your game wouldn't live very long.
which is coincidentally as addicting as heroine and makes you very subjective
Ah yes, I haven't seen the 'no true Scotsman' argument in quite a while. It's good to see the old tropes trotted out from time to time...
Things can be fun without being really grindy. WoW keeps you addicted with stuff, good games keep you addicted with fun.
While I'm inclined to agree with you, the developers at WoW clearly do not. They are resolute that without enough effort the successes are meaningless.
The force of your swing measured by the increase in speed at which your hand,foot,bodypart approaches the sensor.
Holding something defeats the whole purpose of the Kinect, it's about not needing anything other than yourself. For fucks sake, my 2 year old can use it, enjoy it, and figure out what it means to "hit it harder".
Why does a 6 digit User here in Slashdot land not have the same mental reasoning as a TWO YEAR OLD?
Dumb ass.
People adapt differently to different applications of technology because a lot if it simply didn't exist when they grew up. You'd think someone calling someone else a 'dumb ass' would know such things.
So your insights are 'new technology is not automatically ubiquitous' and 'things not included are not free'?
One thing that the Kinect already does, though, is adapt for the size of the person doing the gestures. It sees my son's reach as equivalent to my own, even though I have three feet on him. This would seem to lend towards more comfort from the 'one-size-fits-all' perspective wherein it is actually true.
I use one at home; MythTV. I still won't use motion gestures for that kind of thing; Picking up a drink from the table could end up pausing recording, or swapping channel, or anything.
As others have said, you 'd use an unlock. Voice commands are an option not mentioned for this - clapping hands or snapping fingers would work as well.
I could readily see this for modifying the volume. Since Myth never found the motivation to implement SmartSound, you could save finding where the remote actually got placed with gestures. Kind of like a concert conductor for your TV. Raise one hand up in the air, snap your fingers and the volume would track your hand's elevation. Snap again and it stops tracking you. Something like that.
In fact, the only gesture I would have programmed in for such a device is standing / sitting, and that would pause / resume whatever was being watched at the time. That would still irritate the hell out of anyone you were watching a film with, though.
It seems trivial for such a system to detect how many others are in the room and only auto-pause when everyone gets up...
Right, but wouldn't the very behavior of such a system betray what THEY were using to communicate? It seems like it would only take a few minutes to find out which parts of the spectrum DARPA's machine had whitelisted, and then you could simply jam only THAT.
Sounds like a relatively stupid idea to me.
I hear tinfoil looks good on strawmen. Not super durable, though.
So you really, actually find these equally implausible?:
A) Palin hires a web developer
B) Bush engineers 911
Really?
Go fish. I didn't make the claim, Steeltoe did.
If you're eating meat, you should question how your bowels look and smell, how much meat is stuck inside there undigested and foul.
Just as an FYI, from this side of the planet, this is really, really, really, really, really low on the list of what's important to me. If you're unhappy about how my bowels smell, kindly stop smelling them.
Also, I question the diligence of the ethical position that prohibits eating the flesh of animals while still exploiting their reproductive material. "We love chickens so much that we only eat their unborn babies." Something tells me that they wouldn't be super happy about that, if you could ask them. Also, chicken farms are one of the very worst examples of the way humans farm animals, and milk production is a close second. Think of all the hormones, confinement, and pain used to produce these products. And unlike the steer or hog about to be slaughtered, these cows and chickens live out there ENTIRE LIVES in servitude.
To me either animals are resources to be used (for things like tasty meat and spiffy leather) or they're not. Oh, and if you're against leather, by the way, please stop all uses of any form of plastic. Where do you think THAT stuff comes from? Dead animals...
This thing sounds more synthetic than a lot of synthesizers.
This is what I came to say - but to me 'more synthetic' could be replaced with 'worse'. For something that can 'really shred', I still think even a first-year student could out play it. And that's bizarre to me. It hits every note, I'd guess, but it sounds like crap. Why? Can we see from the video what's wrong with the technique?
Even implementing basic string muting would make a huge difference here.
Going to google this, but - 'wha?'
I must have made some kind of a point, otherwise how did you accidentally find that 'reply' button?
I thought it was rather embarrassing for the republicans when they tried these tactics against Obama. It saddens me that apparently some democrats are sinking to their level. Really, I can't imagine this being successful anyway.
Have you considered that it might not really be democrats behind it? If Palin runs, the republican primaries are going to be vicious.
One of the other republican contenders could easily be behind this knowing full well it probably won't help palin but news of it may mobilize the saner parts of the republican party.
What's really going to blow your mind later is - what if Palin's camp did it? I mean there have been accusations in the past of this type of genuinely un-american behavior, but was there a website? Was there actual PROOF that it happened, or just speculation? Because here we have those vile evil Democrats trying to bring Sarah down. But what if her supporters are only strengthened by the thought that their enemy would sink so low? I mean, so early in the race, they must be really worried to pull a stunt like this, right?
Anyway, who ever is behind it, it is obviously a sham. There's zero participation on the site. Maybe, MAYBE one comment per blog item. It's been up since '17 Nov 2010'. Not much traffic for something that just got posted to slashdot. Google right now is showing 'About 435 results'. I can get more than that out of 'fat kid loves to exercise'.
If you really wanted to get to the bottom of it, identify SharpieMarker. From what I can see they're the only human alive who knew the site existed until it got slashvertised. The user account here is brand-new, too. Nothing but this one submission. And yet it got posted so quickly? Eeeeenteresting...
I don't want to see that insane woman anywhere near the white house, ever. We've already seen the damage a village idiot for president can do, why the hell would anyone want to elect another one? I don't want a president I can have a beer with. I want someone competent enough to run a country without demolishing the constitution or looting the middle class.
I thought this was a ruse to elect Obama? Does W even drink beer??
As far as I know, after the 1984 fiasco and per court settlement, Amazon no longer removes books from Kindles remotely without user permission. They will remove access from buying the book via the Amazon store or redownloading from your "archive" in their cloud.
That was my belief as well, but people are saying that their books are being deleted and Amazon is denying them refunds.
C) Are the wielders of this power applying it fairly and with the same value system as their customers?
Do not care.
Well, hell man, if you do not care, kindly butt out and let those of us who do care discuss it?? What kind of a ass-backwards slant is that? "I don't care, but here's my opinion anyway..."
Someone will always sell these books if there is demand unless they are illegal (and probably then too).
Not on paper, and likely not in an easily-available format. We're not looking at a scenario where mp3's are new and being traded via Napster. This DRM situation is more perilous because it is younger and benefits from the experience of the music industry's failures.
I don't think Amazon should have removed the two specific books from the article from their store but I also feel that, as a corporation and not a government, they have a right to sell what they want to sell.
I almost always agree with this sentiment, but I think that communications media are different. Just as a think it is wrong for a web provider to delete a site due to it's content, so is Amazon wrong to delete a book. Free speech isn't just an amendment, it is a principle. People that practice it should be applauded and those that abuse it only for their own gain should be decried.
Would you force a bookseller to buy copies of books from every publisher that exists so that the threat of censoring doesn't exist?
Yes, by way of your double-edged and entirely straw-tastic question, I can still say yes. If you want to sell books then you should be required to sell any books you can reasonably obtain by special order from your customer. Also, would I stop the Nazis from burning books? Yes.
If books aren't special to you, then I kindly ask you forget how to read.
In any case, the barrier to entry for ebook marketing and distribution is so low that I can't even see that a market share monopoly matters.
And how many widely-accepted ebook readers are there to date? How many vendors of such books? Do you know anyone who owns a reader? Are they happy with it? This market is super, super new. To claim that it has low barriers is superfluous at best.
It seems like a human is doing it. The results are somewhat sporadic, according to the authors' accounts on the various forums.
People do not labor under the delusion that those are safely encrypted.
[rant]
Sometimes I really hate the pedantry of this particular website. You guys are GOD DAMNED LAZY in your arguments.
[/rant]
While I understand that relatively few people believe that there is some degree of encryption on Skype and that it may or may not be inferior or superior to other internet-driven alternatives, I would simply hope to point out that the vast majority of their daily communications and/or of their communication alternatives has even less protection.
If you work for the DOD, they've probably given you a phone to use. If you're anybody else, you probably don't give two craps whether or not you're being intercepted.
[rant]
If only I didn't have to use so many GOD DAMNED KEYSTROKES to make a point around here!!! I honestly think it may be time to find another place to have a conversation. This has been home to some of the most stimulating thought of my lifetime, but our standards seem to have become really, really low. Five seconds of thought, if that, and a snarky one-liner are what constitute good conversation now? Really??
[/rant]