While polar bears merit some attention, from the sounds of it we're doing quite well at keeping them around. Even if all the ice melts on the surface of the poles it sounds like there are plenty of other places the polar bears are alive and well and will do fine.
As an interesting aside, mormons believe that God does have to follow his own rules. Or rather, that if he defied his own laws he would no longer be God. It mentions this a number of times in the Book of Mormon, Alma chapter 42. (Check out the scriptures online from lds.org) It's an interesting concept and I believe one that scares the crap out of most christians, as it has a number of implications attached.
in the city where I live the city has organized it's own ISP because none of the larger ISP's would come into our area even though asked by the city. They run their own electric and water as well, so it's treated like just another utility. It's $35 flat rate, cable modem included at very good speeds. They are continuously increasing bandwidth and redundancy to make sure outages (that very rarely happen) are avoided at all costs.
check out sfcn.org for more information, and the tech blog for some of the grittier details.
That's like saying that all white americans are racist because there were segregation laws in the U.S. in the last 50 years or so. Os, sorry, those 20 years difference there make a difference?
what ever happened to judging people on... well, being people, rather than judging them on what organizations they belong to? Oh right, not only what organizations they belong to, but what these organizations did over 30 years ago that these organizations don't do any longer?
No offense, I respect your concern over the issue. But to label mitt romney as a racist just because of what his religion has done before many slashdotters were born is a pretty big assumption.
I could maybe see a case if he belonged to the KKK or another organization that still upheld those kinds of values, but the mormons do not. At least none of them that I've ever met, and I've met a lot of them throughout my life.
I have 3 daughters, 6, 4 and 2. What I've found is that by age 3 my oldest was navigating web sites like pbs.com, disney.com (which has now changed for the worse unfortunately), parts of hasbro.com, etc. Our 4 year old prefers watching to actually doing and the 2 year old isn't quite there yet, she doesn't have the attention span.
There's not a lot out there at the moment that's new. Even the wii doesn't have much, though all our girls love racing cows from wii play.
I understand what you are saying. You are saying that we are aware, but not a different part of the whole. Kind of an interesting spin on navel gazing. =) I suppose it could be contrasted with the concept that God is everything and we are all a part of God. Not exact, but it's getting there.
I know that what I am saying is dualistic -- because I believe that fundamentally there is a part of me that is... apart, so to speak. It's not a part of anything else. Sure, the majority of what makes myself me is just the "stuff" that everything else is made of. However, there is a part that won't lie down in the earth with me when I die. That awareness, that piece of intelligence, will remain as independent.
I will concede that it's possible this awareness is the one thing that keeps people going, that perpetuates the species, that ultimately means nothing. If that's the case then none of any of this really matters, I may as well be dust floating in space. I believe this not to be the case.
I posted mainly to let you know that there are others out there that understand what you're saying without believing it themselves. I appreciate the perspective. Too many don't look even this far for answers.
That's certainly very interesting and there's a lot of merit to what you say. I've never quite looked at it that way before. We as a species are arrogant beyond belief, but I'm not sure I'm going to go so far as to say we don't really exist.
I personally choose to believe something similar, but fundamentally different. That sense of self as you call it, is me. I've always existed and will always exist. Under this assumption I also have no reason to fear death. As you imply, death is just a changing of state.
However, with that assumption, the questions you pose are very relevant. I have choice, albeit to a limited degree, but I still have choice. That's what religion is all about -- how to make choices. (Or how to not, based on what religious text you're referring to)
Yes, there are a lot of people out there who don't "get it". That's okay. But that doesn't mean that there aren't extremes on both sides. We're all looking for truth to one degree or another. The same concepts can be described in many different ways, it's just where we're standing when we understand them that gives us specific ideas.
I agree, this "game" is trash. However, I can't agree that it should be available to anyone who wants to play it.
If you have ever witnessed a loss of innocence by a child, especially an untimely loss of innocence, I'm not sure you'd be such a proponent of no regulation. I'm not speaking specifically of violence... There's lots about "real" life that isn't particularly happy. There's nothing wrong with people (especially parents trying to raise kids) wanting to take things a step at a time before certain kinds of knowledge are attained.
I don't think it's about control. Any adult will be able to get this game, it will just take slightly more effort to do so. Probably kids as well. It's like... locking a car door. It may deter crime, but if the criminal really wants in they break the window, and the lock is rendered useless. Yet most people still lock their cars. Why?
There is also the fact that "parents" is becoming more and more a relative term, what with divorce rates and single/unwed parent families abound. It's not as simple as saying "the parents are responsible" because in many cases the parents are unavailable for a myriad of reasons. (Which granted, is a whole 'nuther topic of conversation...)
Now that said, I agree that we shouldn't be portraying things as an unrealistic utopia, but that doesn't mean we need to be encouraging the rougher side of things either. It doesn't take me breaking my arm to know it's a bad idea to get my arm broken.
Anyhow, point is, there are legitimate reasons for having people stand up and say "not in my store". Rockstar will lose out on availability and some publicity, but that doesn't mean the game is really "banned", just that it's more difficult to get. Well, at least in the U.S.
The trouble I have with this is that it cuts both ways.
At work in our closed source application we are allowed to do a "secret about box" where we can pretty much code whatever we want. I had some cool ideas and knew of some "open source" code that would get things done the way that I want... however it's difficult if not impossible to legally use anything GPL'd in this case as the entire product would then need to be GPL'd.
In this case I'd love to use someone else's code to make something cool, yet I am not "free" to do so because the entire body of code I am working with is not also GPL'd.
I felt pretty restricted in my freedom in this case, and there are other (probably better) examples of this out there. There is probably some license out there that would do what I'm looking for here (requiring the code I actually modified from someone else to be re-released without requiring the entire codebase to be released), but if so I've not seen it yet.
Using MySQL GUI interfaces (mysqlcc for example) is absolutely intuitive to somebody with theoretical knowledge of relational databases. It gets more and more complicated the less the user knows about databases! Same with VB(.NET). I'm sick ranting about this piece of shit language to ppl who just want it "easy and only know VB".
And this is the exact point for the success of Microsoft. PPl with no knowledge at all can set up SQL servers and LDAP directories (for the mcses : ADS) without any knowledge of this stuff. They learn they can insert data and create user accounts, delete tables and organize in "organizational units". They think of this as "MS features" and have no clue about the matter at all.
This discussion is coming up from time to tim when ppl defend Outlook/Exchange as being a groupware and rant about Notes/Domino. Linux ppl want it easy too, but we have to have a point, where we can distinct the 2% ppl with skill out of the 100% with a certificate. "Administrating" an SQL Server makes you nothing, you would not even get a DB2 Process up running! I think what you're ranting about is part of the point of the GP. It doesn't take artisan carpenters to manufacture all of the kitchen tables that wal-mart sells.
Good software will allow a user to be less knowledgeable. It will also (of necessity) limit some functionality unless you know what you're doing. And if it's truly good software, it will allow access to all those things "under the hood" that you may need access to. This doesn't particularly have anything to do with open source, but you can see some obvious pros with adding that into the mix.
The bottom line is that your general, run of the mill application developer doesn't know (and arguably shouldn't need to know) the underpinnings of the OS or need to make all sorts of tool/API/package/whatever decisions to make a basic application. The learning curve is a bit steep for most developers that have a casual interest in the alternative OSes.
I've got to disagree here, as much as I hate to do so.
It's the same idea as the mac really -- it will be more expensive for a "quality" product. Even if you have only 1-2% of the market, if your markup is correct and your demographics are right, that's all you need to make boatloads of cash.
Their current machines will continue to work just fine with MacOS 10.4 and 4 months of delay won't matter much as long as they continue to be aggressive with their hardware upgrades.
I was sure looking forward to the new xcode tools here soon though.:/
For what it's worth, after tha game was released the developers said they wanted to completely change the atmosphere on the way back, after you found the flood. it would be the same corridors, but look a lot more like the rooms where you found the flood initially.
Too bad, it would have really been better that way.
I've been using desktop manager (http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/) for a few years. I can't wait for space.
I would suspect that you can have multiple application windows on multiple desktops, due to the nature of application design on OSX. It's windows based, not app based. i.e. you can have multiple layers of applications and windows. I'd feel a bit cheated if I couldn't do this kind of thing with spaces.
How many times do you have to do the "pray for person X" before you accept that it doesn't work?
which made me want to comment.
I've actually seen prayer work a number of times. Whether the person/event/whatever would have gotten well/worked out/whatever regardless of prayer (which could be argued), I've seen one too many "uncanny coincidences" to discount prayer. So I'm in the opposite boat. Once you've seen someone NOT fall from that cliff you have a number of other questions to answer that are hard to deny if you're into not lying to yourself. Just because I've seen someone not fall doesn't mean I want to test it... but at that point I have seen that the "current theory" isn't a hard line, and isn't always true as well.
I'd love to see some more basis for the obsenity isn't protected speech argument as well.
To the above poster which I am replying, I will have to disagree with you. There will likely never be consensus as to what is obscene and what isn't -- it's all a matter of perspective.
I disagree that "Obscenity laws do nothing but protect people from being offended". There are reasons why this stuff isn't (supposed to be) available to minors. Unfortunately we as a country seem to be moving further and further away from our roots -- nothing is based on a set standard of principles anymore, just one opinion versus another.
As an example... my wife used to smoke. When she smoked she thought many of the smoking laws were ridiculus, that these laws were infringing on her personal rights. Now that she's quit for a while she thinks exactly the opposite -- that it's quite intrusive to have smokers smoking around people who don't want/like smoking. It goes both ways. I believe the same is the case with most obscenity issues, and both sides have to be reasonable. Currently I think that the "religous right" has been fairly tolerable while the "liberal left" hasn't particularly been tolerant of the opposite side. But then that may just be my personal perspective.
Thanks for the links, I hadn't found the actual legislation yet.
I live in Utah and this is the first I've heard of this.
The slashdot summary is a bit misleading. I found this nice sum-up description after following the "previous coverage" link in the article. You can also confirm this using the links the parent poster has supplied.
"The bill states that "inappropriate violence" would include video games with material patently offensive to the prevailing standards in the adult community, as long as it didn't have "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors." Those that legitimately used violence to further a game's plot (such as games based on historical wars) would be exempt, however."
This appears to also only be for interactive video and video games after the ammendment, originally it was for just about any violent material.
After reading up, I can understand (I think) their reasons why they are trying to pass this law. While they seem to have a reasonable basis, I can't think of any reasonable implementation that wouldn't be misused. Not that my opinion matters much.
But then, Orrin Hatch actually is supposed to represent me, and I disagree with most of what he does nowadays. (And yes, I voted) Sucks to be me.
Maybe I was ruined by playing the last beta where all the skills were unlocked. I played guildwars for 2 months solid when it came out. The end-game content is quite refreshing, but I felt that the PvE system wasn't as good as world of warcraft. (I played WoW for a trial month when it came out then my wife convinced me to quit due to time issues) I absolutely LOVED the PvP aspect. Unfortunately the time it would take to unlock all of the skills completely killed it for me. I was spending all of my time re-playing the PvE content so that I could be viable in PvP. Not exactly what I had in mind. They have a fantastic system, but it's not fully utilizable without spending a ton of time unlocking it.
I was sad to let it go. I'm playing WoW again (since last july) and still have yet to reach 60. I have numerous alts and there's still a ton of teh world I haven't seen. Much of the game has to offer is still new to me and should continue to be for a good long time. For me, it's worth paying for.
End game concept is very nice in GW, and they pull it off well. But there's still more of a grind (IMO) for unlocking skills than anything if you want to PvP.
I by and large agree, though I sure hope that it's not as incentive/fear (read: heaven/hell) based for most people as you seem to imply. Though I do believe in heaven, I doubt it is the cartoony clouds and angels with harps that gets presented all over. Or pearly gates or what have you.
In my (christian) religion we believe that we existed before we were born and that we will continue to exist after death, indefinitely. This faith actually helped me a number of times in my life to have a bit of backbone. As a suicidal teenager, for example, knowing that death isn't going to make it all go away can actually help.
I think it's funny though, our whole existence is based on faith. Whether you believe in God or not doesn't particulary change that. It just changes what you have faith in. It could be argued that all of it is about perspective and what perspective we choose to make our reality around. I say this more as a musing than anything -- I'm certainly not trying to change your views. Thanks for the thought.
People want to pay for what something's worth. If the price is too low it hits the "too good to be true" category and people are turned off of it. For example, my wife helped startup a sign company a few years ago. They worked a ton of hours, had a quality product and had the lowest price out there. Problem was getting interested people to buy. People called for a quote for different sign jobs. Most people actually went for a quote somewhere in the middle (in this case from other companies), NOT the lowest price, which is what they were offering. The lowest price often means the cheapest/most unreliable to many people who are trying to make their money count. Once they started jacking up their prices to "average" they got a lot more business.
I'm sure some of this depends on what you're selling, who's buying, etc. but I don' think it's flat out wrong for him to say something like this.
For what it's worth, i quit guild wars because of this end level cap. I naievely assumed that since you could unlock skills along the way playing the game, you should (realistically) be able to unlock them all. I put in over 250 hours into my main character in guild wars and still didn't unlock 35-40% of my warrior/paladin skills. It's an exponential curve towards the end. Guild wars' PvP itself is excellent (and the best fantasy - relatime hybrid I've played to date) but actually getting to a point that you can do so on a reasonably competitive level is insane time-wise.
Reminds me of this quote, but more specifically this movie in general.
"What if what they really want is for us to herd children into stadiums like we're doing? And put soldiers on the street and - and have Americans looking over their shoulders? Bend the law, shred the Constitution just a little bit? Because if we torture him, General, we do that, and everything that we have bled and fought and died for is over, and they've won. They've already won!" - Denzel Washington in "The Siege" (1998)
There is an increasing rift between PvE and PvP players. It all seems to boil down to unlocking skills, and to a lesser degree, superior modifier items. ArenaSoft has tried to blunt the farming for superior runes by allowing them to be bought as well as making them unlockable with "faction points" after countless hours of (winning) PvP. That's all fine and good... but here's the real stickler. NOTHING starts out unlocked.
Many people bought guild wars based on their PvP word of mouth from the betas and their promise to be casual player friendly. I personally have spent days of the last two months playing this game and have only about 15% of the total skills unlocked and a very small amount of the runes unlocked. I should say here that I have finished the single player campaign and am itching to get into more guild vs guild play and such. Anyhow, in order to get the majority (~65-70%) of the skills and items unlocked I wuill be expected to go through the PvE campaign no less than 3 times to get this far. That's a pretty big grind, and at ~75 hours per character give or take, I won't be doing this any time soon. The PvP players feel a bit cheated because it has as so many other MMO's before it become time > skill, which was specifically advertised as not being the case. My box says, just inside the front cover "You'll prove your worth with every battle as skill, not hours played, decides your fate. Whether battling horrific monsters or competing at the highest levels of tournament play, it will always be your skill that earns you victory or defeat." Now, I'm not one to take advertising literally... but it... feels like they have put (or maybe are just keeping) this grind here for a reason. The PvP aspect above is jsut plain false.
The devs seem to be paying attention though, so there's hope that this may change. We'll see. Sorry about the rant. It has nothing particular to do with your post. (I liked it). =)
Slashdot Mirror
Check this link.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/
While polar bears merit some attention, from the sounds of it we're doing quite well at keeping them around. Even if all the ice melts on the surface of the poles it sounds like there are plenty of other places the polar bears are alive and well and will do fine.
As an interesting aside, mormons believe that God does have to follow his own rules. Or rather, that if he defied his own laws he would no longer be God. It mentions this a number of times in the Book of Mormon, Alma chapter 42. (Check out the scriptures online from lds.org) It's an interesting concept and I believe one that scares the crap out of most christians, as it has a number of implications attached.
Just a comment about $50...
in the city where I live the city has organized it's own ISP because none of the larger ISP's would come into our area even though asked by the city. They run their own electric and water as well, so it's treated like just another utility. It's $35 flat rate, cable modem included at very good speeds. They are continuously increasing bandwidth and redundancy to make sure outages (that very rarely happen) are avoided at all costs.
check out sfcn.org for more information, and the tech blog for some of the grittier details.
$50 is more than enough for a baseline out there.
You're making some massive assumptions there.
That's like saying that all white americans are racist because there were segregation laws in the U.S. in the last 50 years or so. Os, sorry, those 20 years difference there make a difference?
what ever happened to judging people on... well, being people, rather than judging them on what organizations they belong to? Oh right, not only what organizations they belong to, but what these organizations did over 30 years ago that these organizations don't do any longer?
No offense, I respect your concern over the issue. But to label mitt romney as a racist just because of what his religion has done before many slashdotters were born is a pretty big assumption.
I could maybe see a case if he belonged to the KKK or another organization that still upheld those kinds of values, but the mormons do not. At least none of them that I've ever met, and I've met a lot of them throughout my life.
I have 3 daughters, 6, 4 and 2. What I've found is that by age 3 my oldest was navigating web sites like pbs.com, disney.com (which has now changed for the worse unfortunately), parts of hasbro.com, etc. Our 4 year old prefers watching to actually doing and the 2 year old isn't quite there yet, she doesn't have the attention span.
There's not a lot out there at the moment that's new. Even the wii doesn't have much, though all our girls love racing cows from wii play.
Best of luck.
You should check out this website:
https://www.optoutprescreen.com/
I understand what you are saying. You are saying that we are aware, but not a different part of the whole. Kind of an interesting spin on navel gazing. =) I suppose it could be contrasted with the concept that God is everything and we are all a part of God. Not exact, but it's getting there.
I know that what I am saying is dualistic -- because I believe that fundamentally there is a part of me that is... apart, so to speak. It's not a part of anything else. Sure, the majority of what makes myself me is just the "stuff" that everything else is made of. However, there is a part that won't lie down in the earth with me when I die. That awareness, that piece of intelligence, will remain as independent.
I will concede that it's possible this awareness is the one thing that keeps people going, that perpetuates the species, that ultimately means nothing. If that's the case then none of any of this really matters, I may as well be dust floating in space. I believe this not to be the case.
I posted mainly to let you know that there are others out there that understand what you're saying without believing it themselves. I appreciate the perspective. Too many don't look even this far for answers.
Thanks for your thoughts.
That's certainly very interesting and there's a lot of merit to what you say. I've never quite looked at it that way before. We as a species are arrogant beyond belief, but I'm not sure I'm going to go so far as to say we don't really exist.
I personally choose to believe something similar, but fundamentally different. That sense of self as you call it, is me. I've always existed and will always exist. Under this assumption I also have no reason to fear death. As you imply, death is just a changing of state.
However, with that assumption, the questions you pose are very relevant. I have choice, albeit to a limited degree, but I still have choice. That's what religion is all about -- how to make choices. (Or how to not, based on what religious text you're referring to)
Yes, there are a lot of people out there who don't "get it". That's okay. But that doesn't mean that there aren't extremes on both sides. We're all looking for truth to one degree or another. The same concepts can be described in many different ways, it's just where we're standing when we understand them that gives us specific ideas.
Good post.
You mean basically a fantasy themed Team fortress 2?
I agree, this "game" is trash. However, I can't agree that it should be available to anyone who wants to play it.
If you have ever witnessed a loss of innocence by a child, especially an untimely loss of innocence, I'm not sure you'd be such a proponent of no regulation. I'm not speaking specifically of violence... There's lots about "real" life that isn't particularly happy. There's nothing wrong with people (especially parents trying to raise kids) wanting to take things a step at a time before certain kinds of knowledge are attained.
I don't think it's about control. Any adult will be able to get this game, it will just take slightly more effort to do so. Probably kids as well. It's like... locking a car door. It may deter crime, but if the criminal really wants in they break the window, and the lock is rendered useless. Yet most people still lock their cars. Why?
There is also the fact that "parents" is becoming more and more a relative term, what with divorce rates and single/unwed parent families abound. It's not as simple as saying "the parents are responsible" because in many cases the parents are unavailable for a myriad of reasons. (Which granted, is a whole 'nuther topic of conversation...)
Now that said, I agree that we shouldn't be portraying things as an unrealistic utopia, but that doesn't mean we need to be encouraging the rougher side of things either. It doesn't take me breaking my arm to know it's a bad idea to get my arm broken.
Anyhow, point is, there are legitimate reasons for having people stand up and say "not in my store". Rockstar will lose out on availability and some publicity, but that doesn't mean the game is really "banned", just that it's more difficult to get. Well, at least in the U.S.
The trouble I have with this is that it cuts both ways.
At work in our closed source application we are allowed to do a "secret about box" where we can pretty much code whatever we want. I had some cool ideas and knew of some "open source" code that would get things done the way that I want... however it's difficult if not impossible to legally use anything GPL'd in this case as the entire product would then need to be GPL'd.
In this case I'd love to use someone else's code to make something cool, yet I am not "free" to do so because the entire body of code I am working with is not also GPL'd.
I felt pretty restricted in my freedom in this case, and there are other (probably better) examples of this out there. There is probably some license out there that would do what I'm looking for here (requiring the code I actually modified from someone else to be re-released without requiring the entire codebase to be released), but if so I've not seen it yet.
The halo books go into much more detail on this kind of thing, assuming you're interested enough you'd get your best answers from them.
I've got to disagree here, as much as I hate to do so.
:/
It's the same idea as the mac really -- it will be more expensive for a "quality" product. Even if you have only 1-2% of the market, if your markup is correct and your demographics are right, that's all you need to make boatloads of cash.
Their current machines will continue to work just fine with MacOS 10.4 and 4 months of delay won't matter much as long as they continue to be aggressive with their hardware upgrades.
I was sure looking forward to the new xcode tools here soon though.
For what it's worth, after tha game was released the developers said they wanted to completely change the atmosphere on the way back, after you found the flood. it would be the same corridors, but look a lot more like the rooms where you found the flood initially.
Too bad, it would have really been better that way.
I've been using desktop manager (http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/) for a few years. I can't wait for space.
I would suspect that you can have multiple application windows on multiple desktops, due to the nature of application design on OSX. It's windows based, not app based. i.e. you can have multiple layers of applications and windows. I'd feel a bit cheated if I couldn't do this kind of thing with spaces.
you said:
How many times do you have to do the "pray for person X" before you accept that it doesn't work?
which made me want to comment.
I've actually seen prayer work a number of times. Whether the person/event/whatever would have gotten well/worked out/whatever regardless of prayer (which could be argued), I've seen one too many "uncanny coincidences" to discount prayer. So I'm in the opposite boat. Once you've seen someone NOT fall from that cliff you have a number of other questions to answer that are hard to deny if you're into not lying to yourself. Just because I've seen someone not fall doesn't mean I want to test it... but at that point I have seen that the "current theory" isn't a hard line, and isn't always true as well.
I'd love to see some more basis for the obsenity isn't protected speech argument as well.
To the above poster which I am replying, I will have to disagree with you. There will likely never be consensus as to what is obscene and what isn't -- it's all a matter of perspective.
I disagree that "Obscenity laws do nothing but protect people from being offended". There are reasons why this stuff isn't (supposed to be) available to minors. Unfortunately we as a country seem to be moving further and further away from our roots -- nothing is based on a set standard of principles anymore, just one opinion versus another.
As an example... my wife used to smoke. When she smoked she thought many of the smoking laws were ridiculus, that these laws were infringing on her personal rights. Now that she's quit for a while she thinks exactly the opposite -- that it's quite intrusive to have smokers smoking around people who don't want/like smoking. It goes both ways. I believe the same is the case with most obscenity issues, and both sides have to be reasonable. Currently I think that the "religous right" has been fairly tolerable while the "liberal left" hasn't particularly been tolerant of the opposite side. But then that may just be my personal perspective.
Thanks for the links, I hadn't found the actual legislation yet.
I live in Utah and this is the first I've heard of this.
The slashdot summary is a bit misleading. I found this nice sum-up description after following the "previous coverage" link in the article. You can also confirm this using the links the parent poster has supplied.
"The bill states that "inappropriate violence" would include video games with material patently offensive to the prevailing standards in the adult community, as long as it didn't have "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors." Those that legitimately used violence to further a game's plot (such as games based on historical wars) would be exempt, however."
This appears to also only be for interactive video and video games after the ammendment, originally it was for just about any violent material.
After reading up, I can understand (I think) their reasons why they are trying to pass this law. While they seem to have a reasonable basis, I can't think of any reasonable implementation that wouldn't be misused. Not that my opinion matters much.
But then, Orrin Hatch actually is supposed to represent me, and I disagree with most of what he does nowadays. (And yes, I voted) Sucks to be me.
I disagree.
Maybe I was ruined by playing the last beta where all the skills were unlocked. I played guildwars for 2 months solid when it came out. The end-game content is quite refreshing, but I felt that the PvE system wasn't as good as world of warcraft. (I played WoW for a trial month when it came out then my wife convinced me to quit due to time issues) I absolutely LOVED the PvP aspect. Unfortunately the time it would take to unlock all of the skills completely killed it for me. I was spending all of my time re-playing the PvE content so that I could be viable in PvP. Not exactly what I had in mind. They have a fantastic system, but it's not fully utilizable without spending a ton of time unlocking it.
I was sad to let it go. I'm playing WoW again (since last july) and still have yet to reach 60. I have numerous alts and there's still a ton of teh world I haven't seen. Much of the game has to offer is still new to me and should continue to be for a good long time. For me, it's worth paying for.
End game concept is very nice in GW, and they pull it off well. But there's still more of a grind (IMO) for unlocking skills than anything if you want to PvP.
I by and large agree, though I sure hope that it's not as incentive/fear (read: heaven/hell) based for most people as you seem to imply. Though I do believe in heaven, I doubt it is the cartoony clouds and angels with harps that gets presented all over. Or pearly gates or what have you.
In my (christian) religion we believe that we existed before we were born and that we will continue to exist after death, indefinitely. This faith actually helped me a number of times in my life to have a bit of backbone. As a suicidal teenager, for example, knowing that death isn't going to make it all go away can actually help.
I think it's funny though, our whole existence is based on faith. Whether you believe in God or not doesn't particulary change that. It just changes what you have faith in. It could be argued that all of it is about perspective and what perspective we choose to make our reality around. I say this more as a musing than anything -- I'm certainly not trying to change your views. Thanks for the thought.
Not true.
People want to pay for what something's worth. If the price is too low it hits the "too good to be true" category and people are turned off of it. For example, my wife helped startup a sign company a few years ago. They worked a ton of hours, had a quality product and had the lowest price out there. Problem was getting interested people to buy. People called for a quote for different sign jobs. Most people actually went for a quote somewhere in the middle (in this case from other companies), NOT the lowest price, which is what they were offering. The lowest price often means the cheapest/most unreliable to many people who are trying to make their money count. Once they started jacking up their prices to "average" they got a lot more business.
I'm sure some of this depends on what you're selling, who's buying, etc. but I don' think it's flat out wrong for him to say something like this.
For what it's worth, i quit guild wars because of this end level cap. I naievely assumed that since you could unlock skills along the way playing the game, you should (realistically) be able to unlock them all. I put in over 250 hours into my main character in guild wars and still didn't unlock 35-40% of my warrior/paladin skills. It's an exponential curve towards the end. Guild wars' PvP itself is excellent (and the best fantasy - relatime hybrid I've played to date) but actually getting to a point that you can do so on a reasonably competitive level is insane time-wise.
Hope you like it better than I did. Best of luck.
Reminds me of this quote, but more specifically this movie in general.
"What if what they really want is for us to herd children into stadiums like we're doing? And put soldiers on the street and - and have Americans looking over their shoulders? Bend the law, shred the Constitution just a little bit? Because if we torture him, General, we do that, and everything that we have bled and fought and died for is over, and they've won. They've already won!" - Denzel Washington in "The Siege" (1998)
Quick comment on Guild Wars for you.
There is an increasing rift between PvE and PvP players. It all seems to boil down to unlocking skills, and to a lesser degree, superior modifier items. ArenaSoft has tried to blunt the farming for superior runes by allowing them to be bought as well as making them unlockable with "faction points" after countless hours of (winning) PvP. That's all fine and good... but here's the real stickler. NOTHING starts out unlocked.
Many people bought guild wars based on their PvP word of mouth from the betas and their promise to be casual player friendly. I personally have spent days of the last two months playing this game and have only about 15% of the total skills unlocked and a very small amount of the runes unlocked. I should say here that I have finished the single player campaign and am itching to get into more guild vs guild play and such. Anyhow, in order to get the majority (~65-70%) of the skills and items unlocked I wuill be expected to go through the PvE campaign no less than 3 times to get this far. That's a pretty big grind, and at ~75 hours per character give or take, I won't be doing this any time soon. The PvP players feel a bit cheated because it has as so many other MMO's before it become time > skill, which was specifically advertised as not being the case. My box says, just inside the front cover "You'll prove your worth with every battle as skill, not hours played, decides your fate. Whether battling horrific monsters or competing at the highest levels of tournament play, it will always be your skill that earns you victory or defeat." Now, I'm not one to take advertising literally... but it... feels like they have put (or maybe are just keeping) this grind here for a reason. The PvP aspect above is jsut plain false.
The devs seem to be paying attention though, so there's hope that this may change. We'll see. Sorry about the rant. It has nothing particular to do with your post. (I liked it). =)