Yes, and they break that too, only it takes the crackers a bit longer. I don't know much about these things, but I think in most of these elaborate protection schemes, the legit user suffers a lot too as performance drops, usability goes down, etc. And in the end there are still fanatics that break and release it.
So okay, maybe not three minutes more, but the "end-user" is still not gonna notice a significant difference in the available of the illegal cracked release.
Ha, actually it was a bit difficult, but I made it (using the 'q' and 'e' keys as I remember) by rolling about as you say. It somehow reminded me of old space simulators like Wing Commander.:)
It's strange, I don't expect PC games to support a gamepad out of the box. I usually have to map it using software to keyboard/mouse commands. Strange, because so many PC games play a lot better with a gamepad (can't say anything about joysticks-- that one goes back to the old C-64 days:)).
Ack, I *don't have the free time, of course. Also, yeah, about the restriction to the newbie zone, that sucks! I hated this in the EQ2 trial. How can I truly try it out this way? The EQ2 trial sucked balls, so my impression of that game is pretty low. I'll stick with WoW for now.
The tutorial kept telling me to fly using the mouse, but I couldn't change the ships pitch with the mouse. Finally I figured out that the game had auto-detected my gamepad and wanted to use that for flying."
Ah, so *that* was the problem! I played two sessions from the 10-day trial and I still hadn't figured it out. It drove me crazy! I couldn't use the mouse to steer the ship up and down! I'll try my gamepad this week. Thanks!:)
In any case, apart from some small bugs, I enjoyed it so far, but I don't think I'm gonna subscribe (mainly because I have the free time).
Surely you are in the minority here. I think your "substantial" group of people who think like you is not as substantial as you think. This is a MMORPG first and foremost, it's the genre. It has RPG elements, and it's not Quake. It has leveling, it will always have leveling and no amount of complaining will stop WoW from having leveling. You can buy gold all you want, but most people will not. It's not "only the ex-EQ" group who plays to achieve "arbitrary" goals. I think somewhere along the line, you got your perspective warped.
In the end, you're just a whiner. Paying monthly for a game does not give you any right to shape the game. It's a service from Blizzard that they actually listen to their customer base (and they do, whatever you say). There's just no talking to your kind of people, so I will stop here. I just thought I'd add this to the (pretty amusing) conversation.
My opinion on this. I've only played FF7 and FF9 to some extend, and yes, compared to other RPG's the gameplay is sort of superficial. What's impressive about Square's games is the way they draw you into the game world through the world design and character development. Of course, that's all very subjective, but it seems that most people have grown deep attachments to the different characters in these games. It is sort of addictive, playing to see what will happen next. The stats and monster killing is just icing on the cake.
This is why I personally like FF9 better, because I liked the world and the characters better.
Okay, I'll take your word for it. I don't actually own a console.;)
But of course it's a lot easier for console developers, as they only have to take one architecture into consideration instead of countless combinations of hardware. I guess that's the biggest source of bugs right there.
I have heard of hideous bugs in console games, though. Yes, most of those were for Xbox games, so maybe they're more lax over there indeed. Still, I imagine console games do still get pushed out early sometimes to meet some marketing deadline...
You really think a publisher is gonna give a shit about that? It's not like *they* get all the heat when a buggy game is released. They want to maximize sales and most sales happen right after release. Just look at the buggy console games that go around now. Are console games really that much more stable than PC games?
With PC games, at least you can easily patch your game. That's done in 5 minutes instead of actually going out to buy/order/wait for a CD. You know how gamers hate the sunlight.
Nonsense. There are things you can do in a single-player game that are impossible in multi-player games. There are more genres than first-person shooters, RPG's, real-time strategy games and MMO's. After a while in a massively online game, I start to miss deep story-driven single-player games. Playing a game used to be like being deeply immersed in a book for me, not just beating an opponent.
And, believe it or not, some people actually don't like playing against human opponents.
So what's different from other MMORPG's? Take DAoC. Here you stand in one spot with a group and kill mobs over and over until you reach next level. Repeat until you're high enough to go to the next area and do the same. When you hit level cap, you go for equipment and level *that* up. Granted, PvP is great, but you'd need *many* hours more of level treadmill to be competative than WoW.
How is WoW any different in this respect? The difference is the relatively fast level treadmill, but as you say, you continue to grind instances when you hit the cap to max out your equipment. This can take a considerable time and doesn't seem like anything worse than camping spawn points to me.
I want to understand. Why do people complain about grinding instances, threatening they will leave for another MMORPG, when all they will get there is more grinding?
Can I have your stuff? Seriously, do us all a favour and keep your sentiments to yourself. Everyone else is perfectly capable of forming their own opinions. Never tell us what we should be doing.
I didn't mean to bring up.NET first, or anything-- point is, that.NET is pretty good. It's no use denying it just because it's from Microsoft.
I'll readily agree that Sun's first implementation left a lot to be desired. They shaped up nicely and added a lot over time. Their JVM is pretty nice these days and should be competitive with.NET. Still,.NET does most things right, as well.
It really shouldn't matter who comes with the right technology. As far as I can see, Microsoft's solution is as open as they've ever been. It's all about the level of real implementations that are out there right now that *work*.
I suppose that when Microsoft introduces more of their software on the.NET platform, more software will come to adhere to that frameworm, seeing as how most desktops are still run with Microsoft software. Hopefully the industry will stay competitive and technology will continue to progress.
Well, the memory remains allocated to the application. The thing is, it's a programming bug. The application allocates a piece of memory but never releases it, not even when it's not needed anymore.
In a managed environment like.NET or JVM, a garbage collector periodically checks whether a certain piece of code or memory is still active, and when it's not it gets "collected" (freed).
So how does a managed environment with garbage collection like.NET improve this situation? Memory leaks should really be a thing of the past. Right? RIGHT!?
Except that SATA is pretty new and currently not very reliable. We get lots of problems with SATA in servers here, such as time-outs and such. Weird stuff and for my new desktop machine, I'm gonna go with IDE.
Why is there always at least one comment complaining about "welcoming the overlords" posts? It has to get old at some point. The most satisfying part is that it always gets modded to oblivion.
It will be interesting to see if Dungeons and Dragons Online will ever see the light of day. They say combat will be real-time rather than turn-based. Of course, dungeons will be instanced...
Not that it will happen, but this would be interesting, because:
- Wish utilizes highly advanced server technology that allows all of our players to play in one giant world. We are also the first massively multi player online role playing game that truly tells a story and lets player actions have lasting implications on the world. At launch we employ a dedicated Live Story Team, whose singular purpose is to keep the story moving forward. Players will never see a generic quest repeating over and over for anyone who wants it. In Wish, once something is done, it is actually done.
I have no idea to what extend they succeeded in this (perhaps they failed utterly, judging from their demise), but isn't this what many MMORPG's try to do, or promise, but none ever succeeded to a satisfactory level?
It would be interesting to see how a bunch of rabid open source zealots handled this kind of technology.
The only thing my father did when I ran up a phone bill of $500 or more, was take away the cables needed to connect the modem to the phone line. Of course, it goes without saying that I went out and secretly bought me new ones that I kept hidden. Unfortunately, it was much harder to hide the resulting subsequent phone bills.
Ahh, the sweet nostalgia of dial-up BBS addiction...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and they break that too, only it takes the crackers a bit longer. I don't know much about these things, but I think in most of these elaborate protection schemes, the legit user suffers a lot too as performance drops, usability goes down, etc. And in the end there are still fanatics that break and release it.
So okay, maybe not three minutes more, but the "end-user" is still not gonna notice a significant difference in the available of the illegal cracked release.
Heh, it'd take them 3 more minutes to bypass the check for the unused data and remove it so that they can still release it as a one-DVD game.
Ha, actually it was a bit difficult, but I made it (using the 'q' and 'e' keys as I remember) by rolling about as you say. It somehow reminded me of old space simulators like Wing Commander. :)
:)).
It's strange, I don't expect PC games to support a gamepad out of the box. I usually have to map it using software to keyboard/mouse commands. Strange, because so many PC games play a lot better with a gamepad (can't say anything about joysticks-- that one goes back to the old C-64 days
Ack, I *don't have the free time, of course. Also, yeah, about the restriction to the newbie zone, that sucks! I hated this in the EQ2 trial. How can I truly try it out this way? The EQ2 trial sucked balls, so my impression of that game is pretty low. I'll stick with WoW for now.
The tutorial kept telling me to fly using the mouse, but I couldn't change the ships pitch with the mouse. Finally I figured out that the game had auto-detected my gamepad and wanted to use that for flying."
:)
Ah, so *that* was the problem! I played two sessions from the 10-day trial and I still hadn't figured it out. It drove me crazy! I couldn't use the mouse to steer the ship up and down! I'll try my gamepad this week. Thanks!
In any case, apart from some small bugs, I enjoyed it so far, but I don't think I'm gonna subscribe (mainly because I have the free time).
Surely you are in the minority here. I think your "substantial" group of people who think like you is not as substantial as you think. This is a MMORPG first and foremost, it's the genre. It has RPG elements, and it's not Quake. It has leveling, it will always have leveling and no amount of complaining will stop WoW from having leveling. You can buy gold all you want, but most people will not. It's not "only the ex-EQ" group who plays to achieve "arbitrary" goals. I think somewhere along the line, you got your perspective warped.
In the end, you're just a whiner. Paying monthly for a game does not give you any right to shape the game. It's a service from Blizzard that they actually listen to their customer base (and they do, whatever you say). There's just no talking to your kind of people, so I will stop here. I just thought I'd add this to the (pretty amusing) conversation.
My opinion on this. I've only played FF7 and FF9 to some extend, and yes, compared to other RPG's the gameplay is sort of superficial. What's impressive about Square's games is the way they draw you into the game world through the world design and character development. Of course, that's all very subjective, but it seems that most people have grown deep attachments to the different characters in these games. It is sort of addictive, playing to see what will happen next. The stats and monster killing is just icing on the cake.
This is why I personally like FF9 better, because I liked the world and the characters better.
It's satire. Give it a try, you bitter, bitter man.
My quickly hacked together, useless, buggy Eliza addon for World of Warcraft:
:)
http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=1881
Okay, I'll take your word for it. I don't actually own a console. ;)
But of course it's a lot easier for console developers, as they only have to take one architecture into consideration instead of countless combinations of hardware. I guess that's the biggest source of bugs right there.
I have heard of hideous bugs in console games, though. Yes, most of those were for Xbox games, so maybe they're more lax over there indeed. Still, I imagine console games do still get pushed out early sometimes to meet some marketing deadline...
You really think a publisher is gonna give a shit about that? It's not like *they* get all the heat when a buggy game is released. They want to maximize sales and most sales happen right after release. Just look at the buggy console games that go around now. Are console games really that much more stable than PC games?
With PC games, at least you can easily patch your game. That's done in 5 minutes instead of actually going out to buy/order/wait for a CD. You know how gamers hate the sunlight.
Nonsense. There are things you can do in a single-player game that are impossible in multi-player games. There are more genres than first-person shooters, RPG's, real-time strategy games and MMO's. After a while in a massively online game, I start to miss deep story-driven single-player games. Playing a game used to be like being deeply immersed in a book for me, not just beating an opponent.
And, believe it or not, some people actually don't like playing against human opponents.
So what's different from other MMORPG's? Take DAoC. Here you stand in one spot with a group and kill mobs over and over until you reach next level. Repeat until you're high enough to go to the next area and do the same. When you hit level cap, you go for equipment and level *that* up. Granted, PvP is great, but you'd need *many* hours more of level treadmill to be competative than WoW.
How is WoW any different in this respect? The difference is the relatively fast level treadmill, but as you say, you continue to grind instances when you hit the cap to max out your equipment. This can take a considerable time and doesn't seem like anything worse than camping spawn points to me.
I want to understand. Why do people complain about grinding instances, threatening they will leave for another MMORPG, when all they will get there is more grinding?
Can I have your stuff? Seriously, do us all a favour and keep your sentiments to yourself. Everyone else is perfectly capable of forming their own opinions. Never tell us what we should be doing.
:)
kthxbye and all that.
I didn't mean to bring up .NET first, or anything-- point is, that .NET is pretty good. It's no use denying it just because it's from Microsoft.
.NET. Still, .NET does most things right, as well.
.NET platform, more software will come to adhere to that frameworm, seeing as how most desktops are still run with Microsoft software. Hopefully the industry will stay competitive and technology will continue to progress.
I'll readily agree that Sun's first implementation left a lot to be desired. They shaped up nicely and added a lot over time. Their JVM is pretty nice these days and should be competitive with
It really shouldn't matter who comes with the right technology. As far as I can see, Microsoft's solution is as open as they've ever been. It's all about the level of real implementations that are out there right now that *work*.
I suppose that when Microsoft introduces more of their software on the
Well, the memory remains allocated to the application. The thing is, it's a programming bug. The application allocates a piece of memory but never releases it, not even when it's not needed anymore. In a managed environment like .NET or JVM, a garbage collector periodically checks whether a certain piece of code or memory is still active, and when it's not it gets "collected" (freed).
So how does a managed environment with garbage collection like .NET improve this situation? Memory leaks should really be a thing of the past. Right? RIGHT!?
Exactly. However, I'd very much like to know more about those Namco girls. Preferably first hand.
Except that SATA is pretty new and currently not very reliable. We get lots of problems with SATA in servers here, such as time-outs and such. Weird stuff and for my new desktop machine, I'm gonna go with IDE.
*snicker*
Why is there always at least one comment complaining about "welcoming the overlords" posts? It has to get old at some point. The most satisfying part is that it always gets modded to oblivion.
Well, actually, that would be a pleonasm, because 'bogus' and 'patent' aren't the same word type. :)
:)
Flame ahead
It will be interesting to see if Dungeons and Dragons Online will ever see the light of day. They say combat will be real-time rather than turn-based. Of course, dungeons will be instanced...
D&D Online FAQ
I have no idea to what extend they succeeded in this (perhaps they failed utterly, judging from their demise), but isn't this what many MMORPG's try to do, or promise, but none ever succeeded to a satisfactory level?
It would be interesting to see how a bunch of rabid open source zealots handled this kind of technology.
Heheh, I was spoiled.
The only thing my father did when I ran up a phone bill of $500 or more, was take away the cables needed to connect the modem to the phone line. Of course, it goes without saying that I went out and secretly bought me new ones that I kept hidden. Unfortunately, it was much harder to hide the resulting subsequent phone bills.
Ahh, the sweet nostalgia of dial-up BBS addiction...