As the semester's end finally hit, I realized something. I was going to need a job, and I hadn't even started looking.
As far as I'm concerned, since he put NO effort into looking for a job, researching companies and talking to people about the company, he has little right to complain about the way things turned out.
There are plenty of students in their senior years who put some effort into their job hunts. Depending on your school, you may have a quality Career Services department that can be a lot of help. Or they may be idiots who don't know a thing about it.
If he got a job by doing nothing and waiting for a phone call, he should thank his guardian angel that he had the opportunity to work for a year.
Great post. Sometimes I get upset with over-patriotic fellow Americans, but patriotism is nothing compared to nationalism, and the Chinese have cornered the market on nationalism.
I was probably a little unclear about WoW in my post. I played WoW and enjoyed it immensely, got up to lvl 60 and found that my computer (G4 933 mhz w/ ATI Radeon 9000) wasn't up to the task for instances. The lag was unbearable and unplayable (like 5 fps LOL); that coupled with increasing demands on my time caused me to give up the game.
I was part of a guild that was overall disappointing, but I know that good, mature guilds existed on other servers. Maybe I'll come back one day and look you up!
who is wondering about why someone would ever join a guild in the first place. It's nice to see something that makes an attempt at intelligent discourse.
I came to the MMOG world as an adult, starting with EQ for the Mac. A lot of the guilds seemed pretty immature and I was reluctant to join one, but as it happened I became friends with someone who brought me into a great guild. When I look back at the gaming experience, the guild was an integral part of my enjoyment.
I think an adult trying out WoW, for example, would be even more reluctant to join a guild because, at least in the beginning, there were so many pseudo-guilds that turned out to be ego-driven. The PvP element in WoW makes that worse, I think.
The basic reason that a guild can be a fundamental part of the MMOG experience is that it gives you an opportunity to spend most of your gaming time with people who take a similar approach to the game that you do, assuming you find the right guild.
I'm not saying your post is flamebait (although you bring that possibility up yourself in the original post) but obviously you realized that by saying that the SOE consumers deserve this mess because they've put up with it, you're being provocative.
The flaw in your argument is that you're assuming that everyone who becomes a SOE consumer is a forum poster-type who realizes from the get-go that SOE bungles everything it gets its hands on. There are a lot of fantasy/sci-fi fans who become subscribers to a MMOG and don't know SOE's reputation.
It's not like, for example, a cellular provider, where you could fairly easily give up on a sub-standard provider and switch: when you give up on something like Star Wars Galaxies, there is no "exact" alternative. You can pick another sci-fi game or another fantasy game, but if you are specifically a fan of Star Wars, it's that or nothing.
Another way to look at it: these days most people who buy a car do some research, including Consumer Reports-type reliability statistics. So by your reasoning if I buy a car that has less than great stats, I deserve my fate and have no right to complain. However, keep in mind that nowhere along the line did the car company tell me, "Hey, you're probably going to have some electrical problems in a year or two." Quite the opposite--they present their car as a great product and want you to buy it. Likewise, SOE doesn't mention in their TOS that they are likely to make really bad gameplay decisions and not follow through on promises made months earlier. So since they are selling a hyped-up, exciting and quality game experience, they should be held accountable to that, and the only people who can hold them accountable are paying customers.
RTFA. The reviewer plugged it into a Windows box and noted that "[b]oth operating systems also allowed me to immediately use the right-click and scrolling functions as well without installing the software, which was a nice bonus."
She goes on to note that the squeeze and scroll ball buttons require drivers and no drivers have been made available for windows.
The second one fits, with a caveat: my opinion matters because I voiced it as my own opinion in a space designed for that.
Pretty silly to think that fame is a prerequisite for opinions mattering.
I didn't mean to suggest that they would "fold"; I meant to suggest that if they intend to continue, it wouldn't hurt to take a wee bit time and make the page a little more presentable.
If it were a book and that were the layout, it would be an embarassment. It's a school--they've got hundreds of people who would be glad to donate their time to make it a little more reader-friendly. They're known as "students."
As an English major from way back, I have been aware of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for some time but never looked into the complete results.
My first reaction after seeing the 2005 results pages is that if the people who run this thing want to keep it going, they might invest a little more design thought into their work. Yes, even though they only do it out of love and don't get a nickel for it.
My second feeling is, despite the burden of reading a lot more bad prose, they should go back to a paragraph rather than a sentence. Many of the entries of note were more silly than really horrible and I think requiring the writer to write a coherent paragraph would produce better (erm, I mean worse) results.
I'm surprised you think a "save" button on a toolbar is an idea with any merit.
"Print" and "save" are two commands so basic and so identified with keystrokes that I consider any iconic representation of them on screen real estate to be a complete waste of space.
Only complete beginners would have to hunt around in menus for these two commands--anyone else uses a keystroke.
In a way, I realize that logic argues for their existence on toolbars, to serve the beginner; but once someone gets comfortable with an application, the space they take up can be put to better use.
"Traditional Oriental ink painting is more easily done with real brushes than with a computer program because you need to model how the ink is flowing into an absorbent surface such as paper".
Uh, duh, so are you saying that now that someone has come up with a solution, we won't have to use messy brushes and ink anymore?
I think what you're trying to say is that previously computer programs have had problems modelling the physics of "ink painting," and now someone has come up with a better mathematical model.
"Easy" is not the operative word here--"realistic" is.
By the way, if you're going to host a technology review site, why don't you enter the 21st century and stop calling it "Oriental"? Traditional Chinese painting is one thing, Japan has more than one style of ink painting and then there's Korea, etc. etc. People "in the know" call the area "East Asia."
You've mistaken me for something who doesn't know anything about linguistics and doesn't realize that all language is completely arbitrary and constantly changing.
My point was that people think the dark, hot Italian drink is "expresso" just like they think "I should've" is "I should of." It sounds similar but when you write it out, you realize it is wrong. That beverage is actually currently called "espresso" and it will be until we assimilate all the Italians.
"Should of" falls apart the minute we write it down.
Your poetry argument was nice to read but is largely irrelevant. Ever hear of the term "poetic license"?
"Should of" may one day enter written and spoken English as a standard phrase, but I hope not, because it doesn't enrich the language, nor does it simplify it. At least "ain't" provides us with a contraction for "am not."
People think it's hip to point out how language is a random set of rules and standards and are bullshit forced on us by the man and anyone who thinks otherwise is a grammar pedant. Try to read some of the shit people write these days and you'll run to the classified to hire a few pedants to help fix things.
Linguists study a lot of speech patterns that strike them as interesting and find a lot of rules that govern non-standard usage but that doesn't mean we should adopt their studies for our own speech patterns.
"Should of" is only heard more in spoken English because people mishear "should've" and so few people read anything of substance to any appreciable extent that they don't know any better.
"Should of" is not meaningful in itself; it does not "mean" what "should have" means...it doesn't MEAN anything. It is the linguistic equivalent of people who say "expresso."
So it's really easy to say that "should of" is wrong because "should have" is an adverbial expression and "should of" is not.
If someone asked you "Have you eaten?" would you reply "I of eaten."? Maybe, but you would be wrong.
You're a few months late with this kind of post...players have already had to deal for some time with growing pains. When you typed "I've never played the game..." you should have caught onto the problem with your post and deleted it right then.
Wait queues aren't standard in WoW and no one at Blizzard expected them to be crowd favorites or an innovation: at times they are a necessary evil because of the unexpected numbers. Yeah they suck when you get stuck in one and yeah I wish Blizzard had been ready for the massive number of players, but since they weren't, I'll take the queue rather than a crashed server, if I have that choice.
Some people think Blizzard lowered the level of service, some people don't; but in any event since you have no experience with it, what is the value of your post?
From the point of view of a Mac player, I can tell you that Blizzard's response to problems was superior to that I received from Mac EQ and Sony On-Line.
Can you balance everyone so that they are roughly equal in PVE while still making them balanced in PVP?
That's a really important question. On many occasions a perfectly reasonable discussion on class balance in regards to PVP is completely subverted when someone starts bringing PVE issues in. Or vice-versa.
The paying audience for a lot of MMO's seems to be demanding PVP play in addition to the PVE challenges but I frankly don't know if you can achieve class balance in both realms.
Your comment on balance is a good observation, too. For me, a good definition of class balance in PVP means that for two equally skilled players of different classes, win/lose is a random outcome--you won't consistently win or lose against a given class. The frustration with balance is when you know how to play your class well and another class can, with little trouble, use a few class-specific tricks to render you powerless.
The problem with this kind of definition is, when do you decide that your inability to defeat a certain class is a result of your abilities or of the class set-up?
This extremely short piece notes that class balancing is a real problem but it's pretty lame to call it the "Lost Art" if the author doesn't bother to go into some detail about examples of class balancing done well. Something so "lite" really shouldn't have been accepted on/.
Funky Zealot seems to be suggesting that the key is beta-testing. This may be right...could it be that perhaps developers are making the primary use of beta testing the detection of technical problems, rather than gameplay issues evolving from class problems?
What Blizzard did with the paladin class really seems inexplicable--not any particular changes per se but the fact that they made such overwhelming changes without giving beta ample time to check the effect of the revisions.
I suppose it is all pretty easily explained by the financial forces at work: it's a definite problem if you start selling the game and it doesn't work, but working out class balance issues is seen as something you can live with and work out over time.
I wonder how long it will be until games like WOW are required by control-crazy governments like the PRC to alter content. Something that commands the attention of youth for multiple hours per day is likely to come under attack eventually, just like books, music and film have in the past. But in the case of a movie, the officially released version can simply have some edits. It will be harder to "edit" WOW content, I think.
There are laws to protect whistleblowers, but in order to prove that you were fired for whistleblowing and not for other reasons, you had better keep detailed records refuting any claims made by management during performance reviews and the like.
My girlfriend has made a sexual harassment claim against her boss in the past; not only did the claim go nowhere (because said boss is worshipped by his superiors), but now that more than a year has passed, she has received a poor performance review, on the basis of dubious yet difficult-to-refute statements. She too has decided to move on to another company rather than try to fight.
I've retired my WoW account because my machine/video card is a little outdated and the lag was impossible to live with in high-level instances.
But while I was playing, interfering with known gold farmers was quite a bit of fun. I always felt that it would be great to be part of a guild whose mission statement included anti-gold farmer activities.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I'm concerned, since he put NO effort into looking for a job, researching companies and talking to people about the company, he has little right to complain about the way things turned out.
There are plenty of students in their senior years who put some effort into their job hunts. Depending on your school, you may have a quality Career Services department that can be a lot of help. Or they may be idiots who don't know a thing about it.
If he got a job by doing nothing and waiting for a phone call, he should thank his guardian angel that he had the opportunity to work for a year.
Great post. Sometimes I get upset with over-patriotic fellow Americans, but patriotism is nothing compared to nationalism, and the Chinese have cornered the market on nationalism.
I was part of a guild that was overall disappointing, but I know that good, mature guilds existed on other servers. Maybe I'll come back one day and look you up!
Don't South Londoners also say "I were..."? Or is that characteristic of another region?
I came to the MMOG world as an adult, starting with EQ for the Mac. A lot of the guilds seemed pretty immature and I was reluctant to join one, but as it happened I became friends with someone who brought me into a great guild. When I look back at the gaming experience, the guild was an integral part of my enjoyment.
I think an adult trying out WoW, for example, would be even more reluctant to join a guild because, at least in the beginning, there were so many pseudo-guilds that turned out to be ego-driven. The PvP element in WoW makes that worse, I think.
The basic reason that a guild can be a fundamental part of the MMOG experience is that it gives you an opportunity to spend most of your gaming time with people who take a similar approach to the game that you do, assuming you find the right guild.
What is a Shing Yang?
The flaw in your argument is that you're assuming that everyone who becomes a SOE consumer is a forum poster-type who realizes from the get-go that SOE bungles everything it gets its hands on. There are a lot of fantasy/sci-fi fans who become subscribers to a MMOG and don't know SOE's reputation.
It's not like, for example, a cellular provider, where you could fairly easily give up on a sub-standard provider and switch: when you give up on something like Star Wars Galaxies, there is no "exact" alternative. You can pick another sci-fi game or another fantasy game, but if you are specifically a fan of Star Wars, it's that or nothing.
Another way to look at it: these days most people who buy a car do some research, including Consumer Reports-type reliability statistics. So by your reasoning if I buy a car that has less than great stats, I deserve my fate and have no right to complain. However, keep in mind that nowhere along the line did the car company tell me, "Hey, you're probably going to have some electrical problems in a year or two." Quite the opposite--they present their car as a great product and want you to buy it. Likewise, SOE doesn't mention in their TOS that they are likely to make really bad gameplay decisions and not follow through on promises made months earlier. So since they are selling a hyped-up, exciting and quality game experience, they should be held accountable to that, and the only people who can hold them accountable are paying customers.
It's because we're lazy.
Also, it restricts what else you can do in the car...it's amazing what I see as I drive past them in my manual shift-equipped VW.
Drinking and eating at the same time, phoning and consulting a map, etc. etc. Women and their makeup is pretty scary, but of course men shave, too.
Thanks...I've GOT to start watching The Daily Show again--LMFAO.
I hope when you're 45 you remember this statement...
She goes on to note that the squeeze and scroll ball buttons require drivers and no drivers have been made available for windows.
Pretty silly to think that fame is a prerequisite for opinions mattering.
I didn't mean to suggest that they would "fold"; I meant to suggest that if they intend to continue, it wouldn't hurt to take a wee bit time and make the page a little more presentable.
If it were a book and that were the layout, it would be an embarassment. It's a school--they've got hundreds of people who would be glad to donate their time to make it a little more reader-friendly. They're known as "students."
My first reaction after seeing the 2005 results pages is that if the people who run this thing want to keep it going, they might invest a little more design thought into their work. Yes, even though they only do it out of love and don't get a nickel for it.
My second feeling is, despite the burden of reading a lot more bad prose, they should go back to a paragraph rather than a sentence. Many of the entries of note were more silly than really horrible and I think requiring the writer to write a coherent paragraph would produce better (erm, I mean worse) results.
By the way, if you want more info on the history of the contest, go to the the Bulwer-Lytton home page .
"Print" and "save" are two commands so basic and so identified with keystrokes that I consider any iconic representation of them on screen real estate to be a complete waste of space.
Only complete beginners would have to hunt around in menus for these two commands--anyone else uses a keystroke.
In a way, I realize that logic argues for their existence on toolbars, to serve the beginner; but once someone gets comfortable with an application, the space they take up can be put to better use.
Uh, duh, so are you saying that now that someone has come up with a solution, we won't have to use messy brushes and ink anymore?
I think what you're trying to say is that previously computer programs have had problems modelling the physics of "ink painting," and now someone has come up with a better mathematical model.
"Easy" is not the operative word here--"realistic" is.
By the way, if you're going to host a technology review site, why don't you enter the 21st century and stop calling it "Oriental"? Traditional Chinese painting is one thing, Japan has more than one style of ink painting and then there's Korea, etc. etc. People "in the know" call the area "East Asia."
My point was that people think the dark, hot Italian drink is "expresso" just like they think "I should've" is "I should of." It sounds similar but when you write it out, you realize it is wrong. That beverage is actually currently called "espresso" and it will be until we assimilate all the Italians.
"Should of" falls apart the minute we write it down.
Your poetry argument was nice to read but is largely irrelevant. Ever hear of the term "poetic license"?
"Should of" may one day enter written and spoken English as a standard phrase, but I hope not, because it doesn't enrich the language, nor does it simplify it. At least "ain't" provides us with a contraction for "am not."
People think it's hip to point out how language is a random set of rules and standards and are bullshit forced on us by the man and anyone who thinks otherwise is a grammar pedant. Try to read some of the shit people write these days and you'll run to the classified to hire a few pedants to help fix things.
Linguists study a lot of speech patterns that strike them as interesting and find a lot of rules that govern non-standard usage but that doesn't mean we should adopt their studies for our own speech patterns.
"Should of" is only heard more in spoken English because people mishear "should've" and so few people read anything of substance to any appreciable extent that they don't know any better.
"Should of" is not meaningful in itself; it does not "mean" what "should have" means...it doesn't MEAN anything. It is the linguistic equivalent of people who say "expresso."
So it's really easy to say that "should of" is wrong because "should have" is an adverbial expression and "should of" is not.
If someone asked you "Have you eaten?" would you reply "I of eaten."? Maybe, but you would be wrong.
Not likely. American Greetings is too protective of SS and too mismanaged to actually sense and pursue a good idea.
Wait queues aren't standard in WoW and no one at Blizzard expected them to be crowd favorites or an innovation: at times they are a necessary evil because of the unexpected numbers. Yeah they suck when you get stuck in one and yeah I wish Blizzard had been ready for the massive number of players, but since they weren't, I'll take the queue rather than a crashed server, if I have that choice.
Some people think Blizzard lowered the level of service, some people don't; but in any event since you have no experience with it, what is the value of your post?
From the point of view of a Mac player, I can tell you that Blizzard's response to problems was superior to that I received from Mac EQ and Sony On-Line.
That's a really important question. On many occasions a perfectly reasonable discussion on class balance in regards to PVP is completely subverted when someone starts bringing PVE issues in. Or vice-versa.
The paying audience for a lot of MMO's seems to be demanding PVP play in addition to the PVE challenges but I frankly don't know if you can achieve class balance in both realms.
Your comment on balance is a good observation, too. For me, a good definition of class balance in PVP means that for two equally skilled players of different classes, win/lose is a random outcome--you won't consistently win or lose against a given class. The frustration with balance is when you know how to play your class well and another class can, with little trouble, use a few class-specific tricks to render you powerless.
The problem with this kind of definition is, when do you decide that your inability to defeat a certain class is a result of your abilities or of the class set-up?
Funky Zealot seems to be suggesting that the key is beta-testing. This may be right...could it be that perhaps developers are making the primary use of beta testing the detection of technical problems, rather than gameplay issues evolving from class problems?
What Blizzard did with the paladin class really seems inexplicable--not any particular changes per se but the fact that they made such overwhelming changes without giving beta ample time to check the effect of the revisions.
I suppose it is all pretty easily explained by the financial forces at work: it's a definite problem if you start selling the game and it doesn't work, but working out class balance issues is seen as something you can live with and work out over time.
I wonder how long it will be until games like WOW are required by control-crazy governments like the PRC to alter content. Something that commands the attention of youth for multiple hours per day is likely to come under attack eventually, just like books, music and film have in the past. But in the case of a movie, the officially released version can simply have some edits. It will be harder to "edit" WOW content, I think.
My girlfriend has made a sexual harassment claim against her boss in the past; not only did the claim go nowhere (because said boss is worshipped by his superiors), but now that more than a year has passed, she has received a poor performance review, on the basis of dubious yet difficult-to-refute statements. She too has decided to move on to another company rather than try to fight.
I like your last idea. Make it clear that it is against the TOS and that buying farmed gold out of game puts your account in jeopardy.
I've retired my WoW account because my machine/video card is a little outdated and the lag was impossible to live with in high-level instances.
But while I was playing, interfering with known gold farmers was quite a bit of fun. I always felt that it would be great to be part of a guild whose mission statement included anti-gold farmer activities.