Say what you will...at least they did the right thing and said they would repair it for 3 years. Not even Nintendo is doing that. And I didn't choose Nintendo because they don't really have a very good game line-up other than their first party titles (which has been a common them for awhile with them).
My second console with be a PS3 because it is a cheap blu-ray player. I think the only way I would have gotten a Wii is if I had small children.
And I don't know what game you were playing, but when I played a few months ago there were plenty of things to buy...particularly enchants and gems. But raw materials for crafting sold very well. I always was buying and selling items on the market...so not sure what you are talking about.
Whatever market you have cornered I can take over and not have to gain a single skill point in herbalism or making healing potions. I have lots of money, I just buy everything you sell and then sell it for 200% what you sold it for. As long as it is a market without an incredible supply, I can do this for awhile until people catch on and see what a great profit it is. Then I move on to the next item.
I actually don't do this, but saw it done all the time when I played the game (like for enchantment materials). This doesn't happen as much in the real world. You don't go to the movie theater to see the premiere of the newest Harry Potter...find out it is sold out...and then go buy it from a scalper that bought up the whole theater for double the ticket price.
Interesting? Sure. Applicable necessarily to the real world. Maybe not so much.
It depends on your perspective. It is going to one person, and to one person, that is not pocket change.
Obviously, applying it to upgrade infrastructure on a global scale, and it seems like a small amount. But the point is still valid. These companies are sitting on their profits instead of really pushing to upgrade their infrastructures in meaningful ways. This culture we have where it is ok to pay some useless twat millions of dollars to play golf with congressmen needs to change. Maybe if these companies would pay their CEOs less, hire more people to upgrade the infrastructure (and the purchases involved with that), our economy and the global economy would be in a lot better shape.
You are making me feel a little sick. Seriously, repeat what you are saying and apply that to the Internet. You can make the same argument.
It's supply and demand. Your customers are demanding more bandwidth because these devices are being used differently. This is where this market is going....it is no longer just texts and phone calls. Instead of screwing your customers over, maybe you should be upgrading your networks as fast as possible.
If I were a game company, and I was going to do housing, I would do it such a way that was tightly controlled (in the sense that the user has freedom to do what they want, but the software strictly limits what you can place and where you can place it. Letting anyone do whatever they want, like you said, would require a review. There are millions of people that multiple characters. Do I really want to devote resources to be checking up for all the stupid stuff users will try to slip in? Hell no. That's why you don't and won't see this.
I don't really think MUDs show anything relevant to today's gaming. When all you need is a server and someone who is capable of writing text and a little code, it isn't too hard to make something decent/interesting. Now games require talent that draw from a wide range of disciplines, so one type of person can't just do it all.
And while you can find coders easy enough, people to work on the art are a lot more difficult to find. At least ones who don't expect to be compensated well.
A game is an experience. The bar has been raised way above MUDs as far as what a user expects out of the experience. Even if some of the fundamentals are similar, it isn't as simple as it was back in the day.
Where is Nintendo suing people for modifying the box? If you don't want the update, keep it off the network. For a typical user, these updates are good as they add features and (usually) fix bugs.
Typically, what homebrew means is there are a group of enthusiasts who want to write their own software for a cool piece of hardware. This is a good thing. Of course, many people use this to allow them to run pirated games on the console. Game companies don't like that. Unfortunately for legitimate enthusiasts, the majority of the people use it for unethical purposes. So it makes sense that a company wants to break that functionality.
Slashdotter hate this, because they believe in fair use and other consumer protections. But they tend to forget that these things wouldn't exist if people can not make a profit off of them and companies should be able to protect themselves from illegal activities. For Nintendo, it seems less of an issue since they profit off of their console sales. Despite this, Nintendo (for some strange reason) has the most Slashdot support even though they have a track record as messed up as Sony or MS. Other consoles are sold at a loss expecting to make it up in software sales. Piracy is much more of a threat to that model.
What I am trying to say is that we should try to be more fair minded about this. Freaking out and saying what Nintendo is doing should be illegal is a bit ridiculous. They are just trying to protect their investment. If you want to mod your box and run your own software, don't update the firmware. And even if you do update the firmware, it won't be long before it will be hacked so that you can run homebrew again anyways.
But seriously, we all want games that cater to what we are looking for. Right now we have diversity enough to have something appeal to almost everyone. I don't see that changing for awhile.
haha, you are so funny. The only difference between "options" and "removing features to charge more" is your state of mind. It sounds better to say collateral damage then it does to say innocents have died. It sounds better to say you have the option of more channels than it does to say they took channels away so they could charge you more.
Think about this a little bit. Do you think cable has to charge you so much to give you channels that have advertisements on them? Do you think car companies have to limit the features on the car? No, they all hold back stuff to make money.
DLC is just doing the same thing in the game industry. You can still play the game, but if you want more features, you have the "option" to get more. What you are failing to see is that all businesses are doing this. It sucks for us as a consumer, but that is the way it is. All we can do is support games as much as possible that give us free DLC. That pretty much guarantees you will only be playing PC games though.
Your post is hilarious. Tv doesn't come with all the channels...you have to pay for cable. Cable doesn't come with all the channels, you have to pay extra for HBO.
When you buy a car, you don't get all the options. You have to pay extra for leather seats, heated steering wheel, dual ac, etc.
You still are able to watch TV without the other options, you still can drive the car without the options, and you still can play the game without the addons. Your experience may be enhanced if you have the options though.
You may be right that some companies purposely hold back some material to be in DLC...that sucks. But that is pretty much true in any industry. Your examples only prove the opposite of the point you are trying to make and that games are maturing as a business and to expect more of it.
I guess I don't understand why people have that opinion on the 360. To me it seems to have the most diverse lineup. It has the most of what I care about (RPGs). The Wii falls short on pretty much any game category other than their well done first party games. But really, I still feel the wiimote is a gimmick...one that worked, mind you, but still a gimmick. I'd rather just have another button than have to waggle.
Is it a surprise that there are more games made for cell phones since they tend to be smaller, easier to make, and a lower barrier of entry for developers? I really don't feel like playing games on a cell phone when I am at home. The great thing is that they are portable and I can play them to kill time waiting at in line or something like that.
I think the companies should watch what is going on. But do they need to radically change how they are now to compete with cell phones? Heck no. I hope the people who control these companies think the same as me.
But you really don't know that. There are more things than just subscriptions. There are also charges for other various things like the ability to change servers or factions. Also, I have seen the numbers more near 12 million but maybe it has gone down since the expansion.
I disagree. Just you have to change it for the better. Every little change you make is going to piss of at least a few of your customers, no matter how good you are. They just managed to make things worse.
I totally agree with your post. It is like the people who are against gay marriage because it diminishes their marriage. Like since Bob and Tom down the street are married, you are suddenly going to stop loving your wife.
Like you, I am impressed how they have had made content available to more people but have added in challenges that give better rewards to those who really want to go for it. They know what they are doing. If the people ranting in here had their way, WoW would be much worse off.
You are my favorite type of WoW player. The type who says "God, I hate that game! I played it for 3 years and it sucks now!" I think any game you have played for a long period of time is naturally going to be a bit boring. I call that healthy.
The problem is you can't show that the placebo pill did anything. The people could have gotten better even if they didn't take the sugar pill. A lot of "alternative medicine" really do take advantage of people. I have a personal story about this that I really don't care to share...so I feel just as passionately the opposite of you. The just of it is they gave medical advice to someone I cared about. Of course, it was the wrong advice that they have no business giving and it really caused a lot of damage.
If people are healers, they should have data that actually proves what they did helped and how it helped. Otherwise it is all just voodoo. You have no idea if your dad got better on his own and some of the crap they did actually shortened his life.
Interactive video games could be a very useful tool for education if done correctly.
I think you read a little too much Ayn Rand or something. No child left behind certainly sucks, but I don't see it advocating policies of punishing children for being too smart.
Does it say that God created the earth 5000 years ago and created us? Does it show that there is no such thing as evolution? No? Then it isn't creationist.
Just because it allows you to design different creatures doesn't mean it advocates an ideology. That's just way off the deep end retarded.
Same thing that I thought. People hate paying more but love a discount. Just market it as paying less if you opt out of paper delivery. I'm kind of surprised they weren't smart enough to do this in the first place.
Huh, your post makes it seem like you know what you are talking about but I don't really think you do. There are multiple ways to exploit OS's. Just having privilege escalation doesn't solve every security problem. ASLR is a technique that addresses a specific vulnerability that allows you to get arbitrary code execution. This is just one of many techniques to gain root and ASLR (as far as I know) is the most effective way of addressing this issue. There are some issues with it but it isn't really a performance thing, more of a compatability thing and being used uniformly by the applications.
Should Apple implement it? If they want to be secure, then yes.
Quite frankly, Macs are more secure against certain classes of attacks. Making a global statement about it being more secure is wrong, though. Macs enjoy being less of a target since they are a small number of them out there. To think they are safe is pretty naive. The guy has proved multiple times he can hack them without much trouble.
Particularly since if we did have government run health care, no one would be denied. You should be more worried that we don't get a health care bill passes and some how insurance companies would get this data. Then they would for sure not cover your child since it had a pre-existing condition.
I have to disagree with you. While certain classes in WoW are less twitchy than others, I found playing PvP to be very twitchy (and I have played competitively in FPS's). I played a rogue and maybe that had something to do with it, but positioning mattered and being able to not only move to the right spot mattered just as much as knowing what skill to use next. And, of course, how good your gear is.
I think the main issues with MMOs is how do you balance classes for PvP and PvE? It seems difficult to do because any change you make to balance it for one can have an unintended effect on the other.
Also, gear matters way too much in WoW. They have done a better job of giving PvP rewards for people who do PvP (rather than forcing you in to PvE dungeons to get them). But what I would love to see is a "fair" battlegrounds option. Everyone who goes in to the battleground will have the best (or at least equal) tiered pvp equipment regardless of what they have in game. It would make it fun for people levelling since they wouldn't have to worry about twinks ruining the fun and make the game based more on skill. The twinks would hate that option because only twinks would play in the normal battle grounds, but I think overall it would be more healthy for the game in the long term.
I think the big problem for game companies making MMOs now that want to beat WoW is that WoW keeps getting better. It was decent when it came out but was still buggy as hell. Now, after years of development, it is much less buggy. So people forget how WoW was and compare the WoW of today to games just trying to launch. There is no way they can compete. There is just too much code and too many players for anyone to nail a release and be better. On top of that, WoW's new expansion is going to re-do the original world so that it will be up to date with all the cool stuff they added in the expansions. How do you beat that?
WoW really has all the cards right now. If they are smart, they will never need a WoW 2. They can just keep the story going in this world and update graphics, engine, etc as necessary to keep it fresh. No one will be able to deliver the experience Blizzard can because it is a game that has been refined for so many years. The only way they can lose is if they fail to keep the vision they have in the company. I don't see that happening for a long time. But who knows, history has shown us plenty of examples of people on top making mistakes.
Slashdot Mirror
Say what you will...at least they did the right thing and said they would repair it for 3 years. Not even Nintendo is doing that. And I didn't choose Nintendo because they don't really have a very good game line-up other than their first party titles (which has been a common them for awhile with them).
My second console with be a PS3 because it is a cheap blu-ray player. I think the only way I would have gotten a Wii is if I had small children.
From the summary, they were looking at EQ2.
And I don't know what game you were playing, but when I played a few months ago there were plenty of things to buy...particularly enchants and gems. But raw materials for crafting sold very well. I always was buying and selling items on the market...so not sure what you are talking about.
Whatever market you have cornered I can take over and not have to gain a single skill point in herbalism or making healing potions. I have lots of money, I just buy everything you sell and then sell it for 200% what you sold it for. As long as it is a market without an incredible supply, I can do this for awhile until people catch on and see what a great profit it is. Then I move on to the next item.
I actually don't do this, but saw it done all the time when I played the game (like for enchantment materials). This doesn't happen as much in the real world. You don't go to the movie theater to see the premiere of the newest Harry Potter...find out it is sold out...and then go buy it from a scalper that bought up the whole theater for double the ticket price.
Interesting? Sure. Applicable necessarily to the real world. Maybe not so much.
It depends on your perspective. It is going to one person, and to one person, that is not pocket change.
Obviously, applying it to upgrade infrastructure on a global scale, and it seems like a small amount. But the point is still valid. These companies are sitting on their profits instead of really pushing to upgrade their infrastructures in meaningful ways. This culture we have where it is ok to pay some useless twat millions of dollars to play golf with congressmen needs to change. Maybe if these companies would pay their CEOs less, hire more people to upgrade the infrastructure (and the purchases involved with that), our economy and the global economy would be in a lot better shape.
You are making me feel a little sick. Seriously, repeat what you are saying and apply that to the Internet. You can make the same argument.
It's supply and demand. Your customers are demanding more bandwidth because these devices are being used differently. This is where this market is going....it is no longer just texts and phone calls. Instead of screwing your customers over, maybe you should be upgrading your networks as fast as possible.
If I were a game company, and I was going to do housing, I would do it such a way that was tightly controlled (in the sense that the user has freedom to do what they want, but the software strictly limits what you can place and where you can place it. Letting anyone do whatever they want, like you said, would require a review. There are millions of people that multiple characters. Do I really want to devote resources to be checking up for all the stupid stuff users will try to slip in? Hell no. That's why you don't and won't see this.
I don't really think MUDs show anything relevant to today's gaming. When all you need is a server and someone who is capable of writing text and a little code, it isn't too hard to make something decent/interesting. Now games require talent that draw from a wide range of disciplines, so one type of person can't just do it all.
And while you can find coders easy enough, people to work on the art are a lot more difficult to find. At least ones who don't expect to be compensated well.
A game is an experience. The bar has been raised way above MUDs as far as what a user expects out of the experience. Even if some of the fundamentals are similar, it isn't as simple as it was back in the day.
Where is Nintendo suing people for modifying the box? If you don't want the update, keep it off the network. For a typical user, these updates are good as they add features and (usually) fix bugs.
Typically, what homebrew means is there are a group of enthusiasts who want to write their own software for a cool piece of hardware. This is a good thing. Of course, many people use this to allow them to run pirated games on the console. Game companies don't like that. Unfortunately for legitimate enthusiasts, the majority of the people use it for unethical purposes. So it makes sense that a company wants to break that functionality.
Slashdotter hate this, because they believe in fair use and other consumer protections. But they tend to forget that these things wouldn't exist if people can not make a profit off of them and companies should be able to protect themselves from illegal activities. For Nintendo, it seems less of an issue since they profit off of their console sales. Despite this, Nintendo (for some strange reason) has the most Slashdot support even though they have a track record as messed up as Sony or MS. Other consoles are sold at a loss expecting to make it up in software sales. Piracy is much more of a threat to that model.
What I am trying to say is that we should try to be more fair minded about this. Freaking out and saying what Nintendo is doing should be illegal is a bit ridiculous. They are just trying to protect their investment. If you want to mod your box and run your own software, don't update the firmware. And even if you do update the firmware, it won't be long before it will be hacked so that you can run homebrew again anyways.
You forgot to add....now get off my lawn!
But seriously, we all want games that cater to what we are looking for. Right now we have diversity enough to have something appeal to almost everyone. I don't see that changing for awhile.
haha, you are so funny. The only difference between "options" and "removing features to charge more" is your state of mind. It sounds better to say collateral damage then it does to say innocents have died. It sounds better to say you have the option of more channels than it does to say they took channels away so they could charge you more.
Think about this a little bit. Do you think cable has to charge you so much to give you channels that have advertisements on them? Do you think car companies have to limit the features on the car? No, they all hold back stuff to make money.
DLC is just doing the same thing in the game industry. You can still play the game, but if you want more features, you have the "option" to get more. What you are failing to see is that all businesses are doing this. It sucks for us as a consumer, but that is the way it is. All we can do is support games as much as possible that give us free DLC. That pretty much guarantees you will only be playing PC games though.
Your post is hilarious. Tv doesn't come with all the channels...you have to pay for cable. Cable doesn't come with all the channels, you have to pay extra for HBO.
When you buy a car, you don't get all the options. You have to pay extra for leather seats, heated steering wheel, dual ac, etc.
You still are able to watch TV without the other options, you still can drive the car without the options, and you still can play the game without the addons. Your experience may be enhanced if you have the options though.
You may be right that some companies purposely hold back some material to be in DLC...that sucks. But that is pretty much true in any industry. Your examples only prove the opposite of the point you are trying to make and that games are maturing as a business and to expect more of it.
I guess I don't understand why people have that opinion on the 360. To me it seems to have the most diverse lineup. It has the most of what I care about (RPGs). The Wii falls short on pretty much any game category other than their well done first party games. But really, I still feel the wiimote is a gimmick...one that worked, mind you, but still a gimmick. I'd rather just have another button than have to waggle.
Is it a surprise that there are more games made for cell phones since they tend to be smaller, easier to make, and a lower barrier of entry for developers? I really don't feel like playing games on a cell phone when I am at home. The great thing is that they are portable and I can play them to kill time waiting at in line or something like that.
I think the companies should watch what is going on. But do they need to radically change how they are now to compete with cell phones? Heck no. I hope the people who control these companies think the same as me.
But you really don't know that. There are more things than just subscriptions. There are also charges for other various things like the ability to change servers or factions. Also, I have seen the numbers more near 12 million but maybe it has gone down since the expansion.
I disagree. Just you have to change it for the better. Every little change you make is going to piss of at least a few of your customers, no matter how good you are. They just managed to make things worse.
I totally agree with your post. It is like the people who are against gay marriage because it diminishes their marriage. Like since Bob and Tom down the street are married, you are suddenly going to stop loving your wife.
Like you, I am impressed how they have had made content available to more people but have added in challenges that give better rewards to those who really want to go for it. They know what they are doing. If the people ranting in here had their way, WoW would be much worse off.
You are my favorite type of WoW player. The type who says "God, I hate that game! I played it for 3 years and it sucks now!" I think any game you have played for a long period of time is naturally going to be a bit boring. I call that healthy.
The problem is you can't show that the placebo pill did anything. The people could have gotten better even if they didn't take the sugar pill. A lot of "alternative medicine" really do take advantage of people. I have a personal story about this that I really don't care to share...so I feel just as passionately the opposite of you. The just of it is they gave medical advice to someone I cared about. Of course, it was the wrong advice that they have no business giving and it really caused a lot of damage.
If people are healers, they should have data that actually proves what they did helped and how it helped. Otherwise it is all just voodoo. You have no idea if your dad got better on his own and some of the crap they did actually shortened his life.
Interactive video games could be a very useful tool for education if done correctly.
I think you read a little too much Ayn Rand or something. No child left behind certainly sucks, but I don't see it advocating policies of punishing children for being too smart.
Does it say that God created the earth 5000 years ago and created us? Does it show that there is no such thing as evolution? No? Then it isn't creationist.
Just because it allows you to design different creatures doesn't mean it advocates an ideology. That's just way off the deep end retarded.
Same thing that I thought. People hate paying more but love a discount. Just market it as paying less if you opt out of paper delivery. I'm kind of surprised they weren't smart enough to do this in the first place.
Huh, your post makes it seem like you know what you are talking about but I don't really think you do. There are multiple ways to exploit OS's. Just having privilege escalation doesn't solve every security problem. ASLR is a technique that addresses a specific vulnerability that allows you to get arbitrary code execution. This is just one of many techniques to gain root and ASLR (as far as I know) is the most effective way of addressing this issue. There are some issues with it but it isn't really a performance thing, more of a compatability thing and being used uniformly by the applications.
Should Apple implement it? If they want to be secure, then yes.
Quite frankly, Macs are more secure against certain classes of attacks. Making a global statement about it being more secure is wrong, though. Macs enjoy being less of a target since they are a small number of them out there. To think they are safe is pretty naive. The guy has proved multiple times he can hack them without much trouble.
You mean like this? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313118.aspx
Particularly since if we did have government run health care, no one would be denied. You should be more worried that we don't get a health care bill passes and some how insurance companies would get this data. Then they would for sure not cover your child since it had a pre-existing condition.
I have to disagree with you. While certain classes in WoW are less twitchy than others, I found playing PvP to be very twitchy (and I have played competitively in FPS's). I played a rogue and maybe that had something to do with it, but positioning mattered and being able to not only move to the right spot mattered just as much as knowing what skill to use next. And, of course, how good your gear is.
I think the main issues with MMOs is how do you balance classes for PvP and PvE? It seems difficult to do because any change you make to balance it for one can have an unintended effect on the other.
Also, gear matters way too much in WoW. They have done a better job of giving PvP rewards for people who do PvP (rather than forcing you in to PvE dungeons to get them). But what I would love to see is a "fair" battlegrounds option. Everyone who goes in to the battleground will have the best (or at least equal) tiered pvp equipment regardless of what they have in game. It would make it fun for people levelling since they wouldn't have to worry about twinks ruining the fun and make the game based more on skill. The twinks would hate that option because only twinks would play in the normal battle grounds, but I think overall it would be more healthy for the game in the long term.
I think the big problem for game companies making MMOs now that want to beat WoW is that WoW keeps getting better. It was decent when it came out but was still buggy as hell. Now, after years of development, it is much less buggy. So people forget how WoW was and compare the WoW of today to games just trying to launch. There is no way they can compete. There is just too much code and too many players for anyone to nail a release and be better. On top of that, WoW's new expansion is going to re-do the original world so that it will be up to date with all the cool stuff they added in the expansions. How do you beat that?
WoW really has all the cards right now. If they are smart, they will never need a WoW 2. They can just keep the story going in this world and update graphics, engine, etc as necessary to keep it fresh. No one will be able to deliver the experience Blizzard can because it is a game that has been refined for so many years. The only way they can lose is if they fail to keep the vision they have in the company. I don't see that happening for a long time. But who knows, history has shown us plenty of examples of people on top making mistakes.