I detect some serious EQ/SOE fanboyism in that statement.
I loath SOE just as much as you sound like you do. But I love Verant, I love the game they made. It's my belief that games...just like technology...should improve over time. While WoW made many improvements over EQ it dropped the ball huge on some major gameplay issues...such as alternate advancement points allowing players to still have something to spend XP on even if they reach an artificial level cap.
The last thing I want to see any MMOG ever do again is pump out mandatory expansions every 4-6 months, what I was hoping for was that Blizzard would fix some of the glaring gameplay holes in the next expansion...I've been waiting over a year now for that to happen and it looks like it won't.
I know most of the Slashdot editors from Malda on down are big WoW fanboys...and that's ok...but I'm not sure you guys are aware of how many people find WoW to be a huge letdown. The lvl 60 skill cap comes to mind...the taking a whole year to release an expansion also comes to mind...oh and the lack of an alternate advancement system...and...well the list goes on and on.
Maybe you guys could hire an independant consultant to keep you in touch with the millions of gamers who find WoW to be one big wasted opportunity. Because trust me, they're out there and they read SD too.
Save the Public Domain!
on
Abandoned Games
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"The people of Exiled Gamers have put together an Abandonware Campaign with which they hope to be able to convince game publishers to rescue titles from their current 'Abandonware' status, and make them available for the public to play (legally) once again. They have made mention of quite a few titles that have slipped into the status of Abandonware (titles that it's no longer possible to buy at retail, and that are near impossible to locate on sites such as eBay), which includes System Shock 2, Freespace 2, as well as older titles, such as The Chaos Engine, Alien Breed and Flashback."
Woah woah woah, hold the phone.
Abandonware is a godsend for gamers. It allows you to download your old favorites for free if you can spare the 5 minutes to Google for them. Licensing these games back from abandonware status does nothing to help consumers! The public domain is an endangered public right...music , games, movies...even our very childhoods...are being made illegal to re-visit unless we pay a tax to the information slave masters. When you revoke abandonware status you make it illegal to download games for free, and you end up paying $39.99 on amazon for M.U.L.E. or Space Quest.
STOP ADVOCATING THE PILLAGING OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WE NEED MORE PUBLIC DOMAIN RIGHTS NOT LESS.
The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.
Yes, but does it create a nice black-body spectrum curve like conventional light bulbs?
Most people like warm cross-spectrum light because it resembles sunlight, I didn't RTA but 'a brilliant white light' sounds like fluorescent to me. Not a very 'natural' alternative.
Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
I don't lose sleep knowing corporate advocates are being suppressed. I wish every corporate advocate would drown in a lake of their own vomit actually.
As far as legitimate scientists being falsely labelled as corporate stooges, there's really no justification for claiming that global warming isn't a sound theory. Flatly dismissing the impact of human polutants on global warming is like driving the Titanic into icebergs because some tool labelled her 'unsinkable'.
Remember when people used to play online games on PC, and there was thousands of Maps, Models, and complete game Mods available for free on the internet. Oh, and you could play for free, as long as you could find someone who wanted to run the server. Yeah, those were the days.
They still are the days...at least for people who have enough sense not to buy an Xbox.
Yep, and I forgot quite a few more according to wiki:
"It was originally released for the Apple II, and was also ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIgs, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, Apple Macintosh, and NES platforms."
The Bard's Tale is available for DOS, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga, and Apple IIgs.
That photo is from the worst graphical version available(Apple II), and doesn't do it justice. The Bard's Tale was a wonderful game, and in many ways still is. Trying to play that game without the internet and without a clue book is extremely challenging. Games like The Bard's Tale, Wasteland, etc. deserve respect...they are the shakespearean classics of computer games.
I've played and loved dozens of pc and console rpgs over the last 20 years and I'm amazed that I can't recall a single 'quest' I enjoyed. I guess I always thought of quests as a chore separating me from a better sword or more xp.
I do however have many fond memories of 'quests' from pen and paper RPGs like AD&D, or Shadowrun, or Star Wars. Actually I can't remember any that were boring!
I wonder if I'm the only one who feels this way...and if I'm not...why then are pen and paper 'quests' so much more memorable than their pc counterparts? Maybe 'quests' were one of the things that never succesfully transitioned from the table top to the screen?
Beta testing auto-assault this weekend leaves me feeling the exact same way as the article describes, I'm jumping from one mission to the next without even reading what they are about =(...and I couldn't care less. It's a far cry from the glory days of pen and paper...the progenitor of all computer RPGs.
Movie theaters do the same thing, you pay $8 for the movie and if you get there before the show you end up watching 25 minutes commercials, not to mention all the product shots inside said movie.
Yep, this is why noone goes to movies anymore. Advertisers are almost as loathsome as lawyers.
People pay $5000US for a hi-def set, plus approximately $80/month for HiDef satellite and/or cable service, and are served ads without complaint.
Most people I know loath advertisements. I mute commercials whenever I can and switch channels as soon as they pop. One of the main reasons Tivo gained in popularity was to avoid advertisements. One of Mozilla's main selling points is a popup blocker and its user base is growing rapidly. I think most americans and most people around the world dislike advertisements to differing degrees but can't do anything about them.
Honestly, when you say 'without complaint' how are these people supposed to complain? If I could switch to a cable company that provided progamming without advertisements I would switch in a heartbeat.
I hope this project falls flat on its face and serves as a lesson that online, people don't want to pay to be marketed to like everywhere else where they had no choice.
I wanted to know how other people would feel paying $50US for a game, plus approximately $15/month in subscription fees, and in addition be served with in-game advertising as well?
Hey cockmonkey, I'm glad you asked! Here's what I think:
I betad auto-assault for the first time this weekend and was very impressed with what I saw. As of yesterday I had full intention of pre-ordering AA and playing it as soon as possible.
AFter reading this article I now have zero intention of ordering AA. I won't pay $15/month (an already high figure for MMOGs) to see ads in-game. I'll just find another game. This is probably the stupidist idea I've seen for an MMOG in a long time. And it's not just the money, or the insult to the intelligence of the players, it's the fact that you guys are willing to sacrifice the game's immersion by crap flooding modern advertisements onto a futuristic and post-apocalyptic landscape. It's nauseating to see you guys patting yourselves on the back over this idea, as if you just invented something of merit.
If we could play AA for free by voluntarily opting into this advertisement program then maybe you would have something. As usual you money grubbing marketers/advertisers/accountants are polluting a promising game into obsolescence. Absolutely retarded idea. I hope Net Devil goes bankrupt and burns for caving to this ass backwards idea.
I vote Democrat and I would like to see Clinton in office by 2008 but stuff like this really gives me pause...I wish she would focus more on the relevant issues. Maybe she's trying to secure the soccer mom vote with stuff like this, but she's also alienating dem geeks around the country.
That is the most absurd commment about WoW I've heard.
Even over on the WoW boards, there's a huge argument over why the poeple who have tons of time to invest get the better rewards, and how WoW is allowing the people who don't have the time to acquire rewards differently.
Rather than flame me why don't you include a link or at least a quote that explains your point?
My post was about experience points having no value at level 60. Gaining levels through xp is a huge part of the MMORPG experience. If you're the type of guy that enjoys spending two weeks crawling through the same dungeon over and over again to find a shoulder pad that increases your stamina by 3 points then WoW is your game. For sophisticated players who remember how much fun an MMORPG can be I'd say WoW's high-end game is a joke.
1. Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill. If you invest more time than someone else, you "deserve" rewards."
2. However, when you reach Level 60 none of your efforts are rewarded anymore.
Nothing is more retarded than designing a game based on one paradigm, only to have it come to a grinding halt at some arbitrary point(level 60). Even the Everquest designers were bright enough to implement an alternate-advancement system, and that was years ago. If anything WoW took a step backwards in MMORPG design.
Sure I don't miss the corpse runs and XP loss on death, but at least I always had some character development to look forward to while playing EQ.
Slashdot Mirror
So much for european countries being more socially evolved than america
I detect some serious EQ/SOE fanboyism in that statement.
I loath SOE just as much as you sound like you do. But I love Verant, I love the game they made. It's my belief that games...just like technology...should improve over time. While WoW made many improvements over EQ it dropped the ball huge on some major gameplay issues...such as alternate advancement points allowing players to still have something to spend XP on even if they reach an artificial level cap.
The last thing I want to see any MMOG ever do again is pump out mandatory expansions every 4-6 months, what I was hoping for was that Blizzard would fix some of the glaring gameplay holes in the next expansion...I've been waiting over a year now for that to happen and it looks like it won't.
I know most of the Slashdot editors from Malda on down are big WoW fanboys...and that's ok...but I'm not sure you guys are aware of how many people find WoW to be a huge letdown. The lvl 60 skill cap comes to mind...the taking a whole year to release an expansion also comes to mind...oh and the lack of an alternate advancement system...and...well the list goes on and on.
Maybe you guys could hire an independant consultant to keep you in touch with the millions of gamers who find WoW to be one big wasted opportunity. Because trust me, they're out there and they read SD too.
"The people of Exiled Gamers have put together an Abandonware Campaign with which they hope to be able to convince game publishers to rescue titles from their current 'Abandonware' status, and make them available for the public to play (legally) once again. They have made mention of quite a few titles that have slipped into the status of Abandonware (titles that it's no longer possible to buy at retail, and that are near impossible to locate on sites such as eBay), which includes System Shock 2, Freespace 2, as well as older titles, such as The Chaos Engine, Alien Breed and Flashback."
Woah woah woah, hold the phone.
Abandonware is a godsend for gamers. It allows you to download your old favorites for free if you can spare the 5 minutes to Google for them. Licensing these games back from abandonware status does nothing to help consumers! The public domain is an endangered public right...music , games, movies...even our very childhoods...are being made illegal to re-visit unless we pay a tax to the information slave masters. When you revoke abandonware status you make it illegal to download games for free, and you end up paying $39.99 on amazon for M.U.L.E. or Space Quest.
STOP ADVOCATING THE PILLAGING OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WE NEED MORE PUBLIC DOMAIN RIGHTS NOT LESS.
In-Game Advertising Poised for Explosive Growth
And gamers are just as poised to 'explode' away from any game with ads in it.
The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.
Yes, but does it create a nice black-body spectrum curve like conventional light bulbs?
Most people like warm cross-spectrum light because it resembles sunlight, I didn't RTA but 'a brilliant white light' sounds like fluorescent to me. Not a very 'natural' alternative.
Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
I don't lose sleep knowing corporate advocates are being suppressed. I wish every corporate advocate would drown in a lake of their own vomit actually.
As far as legitimate scientists being falsely labelled as corporate stooges, there's really no justification for claiming that global warming isn't a sound theory. Flatly dismissing the impact of human polutants on global warming is like driving the Titanic into icebergs because some tool labelled her 'unsinkable'.
Remember when people used to play online games on PC, and there was thousands of Maps, Models, and complete game Mods available for free on the internet. Oh, and you could play for free, as long as you could find someone who wanted to run the server. Yeah, those were the days.
They still are the days...at least for people who have enough sense not to buy an Xbox.
Yep, and I forgot quite a few more according to wiki:
"It was originally released for the Apple II, and was also ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIgs, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, Apple Macintosh, and NES platforms."
The Bard's Tale is available for DOS, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga, and Apple IIgs.
That photo is from the worst graphical version available(Apple II), and doesn't do it justice. The Bard's Tale was a wonderful game, and in many ways still is. Trying to play that game without the internet and without a clue book is extremely challenging. Games like The Bard's Tale, Wasteland, etc. deserve respect...they are the shakespearean classics of computer games.
110 hours a week? Are you serious?
That's 16hrs a day, 7 days a week. He's serious, but he's also exaggerating.
I've played and loved dozens of pc and console rpgs over the last 20 years and I'm amazed that I can't recall a single 'quest' I enjoyed. I guess I always thought of quests as a chore separating me from a better sword or more xp.
I do however have many fond memories of 'quests' from pen and paper RPGs like AD&D, or Shadowrun, or Star Wars. Actually I can't remember any that were boring!
I wonder if I'm the only one who feels this way...and if I'm not...why then are pen and paper 'quests' so much more memorable than their pc counterparts? Maybe 'quests' were one of the things that never succesfully transitioned from the table top to the screen?
Beta testing auto-assault this weekend leaves me feeling the exact same way as the article describes, I'm jumping from one mission to the next without even reading what they are about =(...and I couldn't care less. It's a far cry from the glory days of pen and paper...the progenitor of all computer RPGs.
Calling the inclusion of ads in the Auto Assault gameworld "a great fit," NCsoft's VP of sales and marketing, Dorothy Ferguson
Eat shit and die Dorothy.
Movie theaters do the same thing, you pay $8 for the movie and if you get there before the show you end up watching 25 minutes commercials, not to mention all the product shots inside said movie.
Yep, this is why noone goes to movies anymore. Advertisers are almost as loathsome as lawyers.
People pay $5000US for a hi-def set, plus approximately $80/month for HiDef satellite and/or cable service, and are served ads without complaint.
Most people I know loath advertisements. I mute commercials whenever I can and switch channels as soon as they pop. One of the main reasons Tivo gained in popularity was to avoid advertisements. One of Mozilla's main selling points is a popup blocker and its user base is growing rapidly. I think most americans and most people around the world dislike advertisements to differing degrees but can't do anything about them.
Honestly, when you say 'without complaint' how are these people supposed to complain? If I could switch to a cable company that provided progamming without advertisements I would switch in a heartbeat.
I hope this project falls flat on its face and serves as a lesson that online, people don't want to pay to be marketed to like everywhere else where they had no choice.
Couldn't have said it better.
In a game like Auto Assault, ads could be counted as the immersion experience.
You are 100% wrong.
AA is set in a post-apocalyptic future, any modern advertisement would be completely out of place.
I wanted to know how other people would feel paying $50US for a game, plus approximately $15/month in subscription fees, and in addition be served with in-game advertising as well?
Hey cockmonkey, I'm glad you asked! Here's what I think:
I betad auto-assault for the first time this weekend and was very impressed with what I saw. As of yesterday I had full intention of pre-ordering AA and playing it as soon as possible.
AFter reading this article I now have zero intention of ordering AA. I won't pay $15/month (an already high figure for MMOGs) to see ads in-game. I'll just find another game. This is probably the stupidist idea I've seen for an MMOG in a long time. And it's not just the money, or the insult to the intelligence of the players, it's the fact that you guys are willing to sacrifice the game's immersion by crap flooding modern advertisements onto a futuristic and post-apocalyptic landscape. It's nauseating to see you guys patting yourselves on the back over this idea, as if you just invented something of merit.
If we could play AA for free by voluntarily opting into this advertisement program then maybe you would have something. As usual you money grubbing marketers/advertisers/accountants are polluting a promising game into obsolescence. Absolutely retarded idea. I hope Net Devil goes bankrupt and burns for caving to this ass backwards idea.
Very Sincerely,
One of the many customers you just lost.
I vote Democrat and I would like to see Clinton in office by 2008 but stuff like this really gives me pause...I wish she would focus more on the relevant issues. Maybe she's trying to secure the soccer mom vote with stuff like this, but she's also alienating dem geeks around the country.
The latest cordless gaming mice from Logitech are horrible too...a catcher's mitt has better ergonomics.
SOE makes trash, or buys good games and then runs them into the ground.
They have negative creativity.
I'm aware they designed it that way, and my point is that it's crap design.
That is the most absurd commment about WoW I've heard.
Even over on the WoW boards, there's a huge argument over why the poeple who have tons of time to invest get the better rewards, and how WoW is allowing the people who don't have the time to acquire rewards differently.
Rather than flame me why don't you include a link or at least a quote that explains your point?
My post was about experience points having no value at level 60. Gaining levels through xp is a huge part of the MMORPG experience. If you're the type of guy that enjoys spending two weeks crawling through the same dungeon over and over again to find a shoulder pad that increases your stamina by 3 points then WoW is your game. For sophisticated players who remember how much fun an MMORPG can be I'd say WoW's high-end game is a joke.
1. Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill. If you invest more time than someone else, you "deserve" rewards."
2. However, when you reach Level 60 none of your efforts are rewarded anymore.
Nothing is more retarded than designing a game based on one paradigm, only to have it come to a grinding halt at some arbitrary point(level 60). Even the Everquest designers were bright enough to implement an alternate-advancement system, and that was years ago. If anything WoW took a step backwards in MMORPG design.
Sure I don't miss the corpse runs and XP loss on death, but at least I always had some character development to look forward to while playing EQ.
They have quite lovely medication now a days for mental illness. I suggest you look into it.
As someone who's been taking said medication for the last 2 years, I can assure you it's not lovely. Lots of very nasty side-effects.