I'm a casual player...and i'm sure i'm Blizzards target demographic - sorry, but if all the elitists left tommorow, WOW and Blizzard would still be here and very viable based on our casual subscriptions.
To tell you the truth about Timeless isle, I honestly appreciate being able to mail 496 tokens to my other toons and get them up to speed instead of having to log in and grind them in dungeons or whatever else - I simply DON'T HAVE THE TIME to spend in game getting everything leveled up. Some of us have real jobs with families and just can't commit to the time requirements anymore. Who cares if they're purple and "epic" tokens.
Don't forget that if your done the Legendary questline, you'd have your cape and be grinding Ordos for 559 Warforged gear every week, plus killing a celestial every week for your 553 normal PVE/PVP gear drop.
Right now that's all my toon is doing - daily grinds for the Shaohao reputation gain (for the mount that costs 100,000 timeless coins), a dungeon and scenario here and there for the 80+50 daily valor and the quest weeklies. I valor cap by Sunday normally, and spend about 2-4 hours a week in game. Anything more and i'd sound like all the haters in here and act all burnt out, but i still love the game and will be there on day one, ready to level my three 90's to 100's.
Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?
Eve Online
You've got to be kidding. Unless your running around space in a pod, how do you gain the skills to get a decent ship? How you do get ISK to afford such a ship? Completing quests or mining ore or begging in newcomer channels is a grind in itself.
Man could I ever plan a city.... railroads for streets and super high density self enclosed terrariums with a fire and police on every block. Just watch the paycheques just keep coming in....
Must be nice to be a douchebag manager. Clearly, you missed the HR portions of management class. What makes a great manager is someone who can balance the team to offset the lower performing people until they get back on their feet. Have you tried everything in your power to empower the person with the difficulty? Any HR options like short term disability, maybe unpaid vacation or giving an extra day off per week, will it give you the ROI in that person? Teams have no problem with covering the slack for someone who might be going through a hard time - you of course would know that because you have that kind of rapport with your team - err wait - no you don't. So instead of investing in people, you invest in the bottom line and force a whole new expenditure cycle of recruiting, hiring and training someone brand new that you have no clue who will eventually "roll with it".
Easy, lazy and expensive decision. You sound new to management.
These are people (including myself) who don't want my interface played around with BY DEFAULT. I would rather have the option to OPT IN rather than OPT OUT of any new changes. I would even go so far as to check an actual setting that forbids new changes and makes it a default OPT IN requirement. Amazing that NO ONE has ever figured this out - it would be very popular.
There's always EVE Online, which is about as far from a WoW clone as one can get. It's not an alternative to WoW, but a successful, different MMO model, and I think there's a lot to learn from the differences between the two of them. For the record, I've played both extensively.
Except that the EVE Online player community is not very helpful at all to newcomers and generally push them away. Just as braindead as most of the McWow players but a hell of a lot more meaner and nasty.
Exactly... tried EVE Online as a complete newbie. The learning curve is unbelievable, took me two days to figure out how "quests" work. Warping to another system through jumpgates took another half day to figure out - and don't get me started on how skills work. All of this with NO HELP from anyone in game (Yes - I did sign up to all the "newbie" friendly corporations and none accepted my application - most likely because i'm not a paid player). So I deleted my character and quit - I don't have time to piss around and re-learn a whole new game from scratch, not to mention the free trial only gets you so far then you can't train skills for a better ship which they DO NOT MENTION. That ultimately pissed me off.
Protesting weed laws doesn't make you a drug dealer.
No, but it makes it more likely that you could be, and considering the law of averages, i'll put real money that there are more people carrying weed in their pockets (and breaking the law) at those protests than anything else. The only reason police don't bother is it would become a PR nightmare, and generally not worth the paperwork, but make no mistake - they could round them all up in a heartbeat and be completely justified in doing so.
Spoken like someone who doesn't have kids. Mine are now old enough to understand how to "click OK", but i'm not around when they generally use the computer and my wife definitely doesn't understand it like I do.
I've removed several malware programs from the computer, and I know that it's coming from those free kids game sites which my kids use on a regular basis. They're not stupid, but naive to these sorts of things. Like most things I can explain it to them a thousand times, but when you hold a shiny in front of a kid, they're going to go for it every time.
The default may be easy to change, but don't underestimate how lazy people can be. Care to remember how many people you know who had 12:00 blinking on the VCR back in the day?
I do the same thing.... but also set AutoArchive and delete options after 30-90 days on the folder depending on importance. Like most people, everything in my inbox is something new, but I use folders because sometimes I need to hone in on a specific project or campaign, and I can't be bothered to wait on search. Besides, isn't there a 2GB limitation for Outlook? I think I hit that limitation once after 9 months of e-mail.... couldn't understand why suddenly, I couldn't delete or do anything with my e-mail and nothing but errors no matter what I tried. Advised by IT to delete some mail with attachments and everything went back to normal.
I've used Lotus Notes and files things in folders there as well.
Exactly.... and that's why after modifying and cleaning up hundred upon hundreds of pages, only to see my revisions reversed by a bot no less, is why I stopped contributing years ago to Wikipedia. Now my time is spent playing mindless games on Facebook to pass the time - oh well. The "thou shalt" attitude doesn't help either. Admins need to learn to be subservient and teach rather than dictate.
Oh well, clearly they are doing just fine without me - won't even miss it if they disappeared tommorow. Seriously.
Also,
Ever been to a bar lately? I'm telling you, people are doing things and dressing down to the point where guessing the g-string color isn't even a challenge anymore. You want some cheap entertainment for an evening and your single and want to get it on (and you half decent looking), then head to the beach or a bar and life will take care of the rest.
Also TV sucks to be honest. If they really wanted to make some cash off "internet porn" they need to be a internet distributer. Broadcasting is old school, if that's the best they can come up with then they deserve to go down the toilet. Where the surfing on your TV option? Your ALREADY providing the internet connectivity to most homes - why is no one even thinking of taking the next logical step? Set it up so it goes to a portal - we have the technology already, but i'll bet egos and old contracts are probably prohibiting this sort of upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
That's awesome! Wish I had your self control. A pack of tic-tacs must last you almost two months!
So?
I'm a casual player...and i'm sure i'm Blizzards target demographic - sorry, but if all the elitists left tommorow, WOW and Blizzard would still be here and very viable based on our casual subscriptions.
To tell you the truth about Timeless isle, I honestly appreciate being able to mail 496 tokens to my other toons and get them up to speed instead of having to log in and grind them in dungeons or whatever else - I simply DON'T HAVE THE TIME to spend in game getting everything leveled up. Some of us have real jobs with families and just can't commit to the time requirements anymore. Who cares if they're purple and "epic" tokens.
Don't forget that if your done the Legendary questline, you'd have your cape and be grinding Ordos for 559 Warforged gear every week, plus killing a celestial every week for your 553 normal PVE/PVP gear drop.
Right now that's all my toon is doing - daily grinds for the Shaohao reputation gain (for the mount that costs 100,000 timeless coins), a dungeon and scenario here and there for the 80+50 daily valor and the quest weeklies. I valor cap by Sunday normally, and spend about 2-4 hours a week in game. Anything more and i'd sound like all the haters in here and act all burnt out, but i still love the game and will be there on day one, ready to level my three 90's to 100's.
Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?
Eve Online
You've got to be kidding. Unless your running around space in a pod, how do you gain the skills to get a decent ship? How you do get ISK to afford such a ship? Completing quests or mining ore or begging in newcomer channels is a grind in itself.
.. they clearly have something to hide. Since all their secrets are hidden in the phone you kind of want to trust the phone to hold your secrets.
I swear it's going to come true in my lifetime.
Pretty hard to game emotions...
Check it out: http://aliteroflight.org/
...and post the reaction when she's doing one of her shows on YouTube.
Man could I ever plan a city.... railroads for streets and super high density self enclosed terrariums with a fire and police on every block. Just watch the paycheques just keep coming in....
Glad you cleared that up in your original post. You must of missed that in business communication.
Must be nice to be a douchebag manager. Clearly, you missed the HR portions of management class. What makes a great manager is someone who can balance the team to offset the lower performing people until they get back on their feet. Have you tried everything in your power to empower the person with the difficulty? Any HR options like short term disability, maybe unpaid vacation or giving an extra day off per week, will it give you the ROI in that person? Teams have no problem with covering the slack for someone who might be going through a hard time - you of course would know that because you have that kind of rapport with your team - err wait - no you don't. So instead of investing in people, you invest in the bottom line and force a whole new expenditure cycle of recruiting, hiring and training someone brand new that you have no clue who will eventually "roll with it".
Easy, lazy and expensive decision. You sound new to management.
Most recently mined blocks in the bitcoin block chain: http://blockchain.info/
These are people (including myself) who don't want my interface played around with BY DEFAULT. I would rather have the option to OPT IN rather than OPT OUT of any new changes. I would even go so far as to check an actual setting that forbids new changes and makes it a default OPT IN requirement. Amazing that NO ONE has ever figured this out - it would be very popular.
There's always EVE Online, which is about as far from a WoW clone as one can get. It's not an alternative to WoW, but a successful, different MMO model, and I think there's a lot to learn from the differences between the two of them. For the record, I've played both extensively.
Except that the EVE Online player community is not very helpful at all to newcomers and generally push them away. Just as braindead as most of the McWow players but a hell of a lot more meaner and nasty.
Exactly... tried EVE Online as a complete newbie. The learning curve is unbelievable, took me two days to figure out how "quests" work. Warping to another system through jumpgates took another half day to figure out - and don't get me started on how skills work. All of this with NO HELP from anyone in game (Yes - I did sign up to all the "newbie" friendly corporations and none accepted my application - most likely because i'm not a paid player). So I deleted my character and quit - I don't have time to piss around and re-learn a whole new game from scratch, not to mention the free trial only gets you so far then you can't train skills for a better ship which they DO NOT MENTION. That ultimately pissed me off.
EVE is for elitists - that will be it's downfall.
Protesting weed laws doesn't make you a drug dealer.
No, but it makes it more likely that you could be, and considering the law of averages, i'll put real money that there are more people carrying weed in their pockets (and breaking the law) at those protests than anything else. The only reason police don't bother is it would become a PR nightmare, and generally not worth the paperwork, but make no mistake - they could round them all up in a heartbeat and be completely justified in doing so.
Spoken like someone who doesn't have kids. Mine are now old enough to understand how to "click OK", but i'm not around when they generally use the computer and my wife definitely doesn't understand it like I do.
I've removed several malware programs from the computer, and I know that it's coming from those free kids game sites which my kids use on a regular basis. They're not stupid, but naive to these sorts of things. Like most things I can explain it to them a thousand times, but when you hold a shiny in front of a kid, they're going to go for it every time.
The default may be easy to change, but don't underestimate how lazy people can be. Care to remember how many people you know who had 12:00 blinking on the VCR back in the day?
... please return their call ASAP. They did not leave a message.
I do the same thing.... but also set AutoArchive and delete options after 30-90 days on the folder depending on importance. Like most people, everything in my inbox is something new, but I use folders because sometimes I need to hone in on a specific project or campaign, and I can't be bothered to wait on search. Besides, isn't there a 2GB limitation for Outlook? I think I hit that limitation once after 9 months of e-mail.... couldn't understand why suddenly, I couldn't delete or do anything with my e-mail and nothing but errors no matter what I tried. Advised by IT to delete some mail with attachments and everything went back to normal.
I've used Lotus Notes and files things in folders there as well.
Exactly.... and that's why after modifying and cleaning up hundred upon hundreds of pages, only to see my revisions reversed by a bot no less, is why I stopped contributing years ago to Wikipedia. Now my time is spent playing mindless games on Facebook to pass the time - oh well. The "thou shalt" attitude doesn't help either. Admins need to learn to be subservient and teach rather than dictate.
Oh well, clearly they are doing just fine without me - won't even miss it if they disappeared tommorow. Seriously.
Err wait....
...and to think it wasn't even a car analogy either!
Don't we all remember banging away on our 300 baud modem thinking it was FAST.... Oh the memories.
Also, Ever been to a bar lately? I'm telling you, people are doing things and dressing down to the point where guessing the g-string color isn't even a challenge anymore. You want some cheap entertainment for an evening and your single and want to get it on (and you half decent looking), then head to the beach or a bar and life will take care of the rest. Also TV sucks to be honest. If they really wanted to make some cash off "internet porn" they need to be a internet distributer. Broadcasting is old school, if that's the best they can come up with then they deserve to go down the toilet. Where the surfing on your TV option? Your ALREADY providing the internet connectivity to most homes - why is no one even thinking of taking the next logical step? Set it up so it goes to a portal - we have the technology already, but i'll bet egos and old contracts are probably prohibiting this sort of upgrade.