But Slashdot does the opposite stupid assumption; that piracy is positive for the company. I'm sorry, but companies are really good at figuring out what is going to maximize their profit. Piracy cuts in to their profit, I have no doubt. But since some companies (like EA) put really awful/intrusive DRM in their games, it has created a backlash, so that a company like Stardock can say, "hey! look, I am giving you what you want, no DRM" and can gain some sales and positive publicity. Is it more sales than if they released it on something like Steam? Who knows. But I flat out reject the assumption that piracy is a good thing. It is just people justifying their immoral behavior.
It's easy to oppose something but have no rational alternative. If copyright does not exist, it would destroy pretty much every large game company out there. What do you propose as an alternative to make sure that companies are protected from people using their product and not compensating them for it?
Because people wanted it to be here. This is about games. Not about saving the world with free software. I wouldn't come to this site if it was that one dimensional.
No, it hasn't. If it jumped the shark people would be leaving in droves to one of the other options out there. It is just a better game. If it only mattered what other people played, everyone would still be playing EQ and WoW would have never been able to get off the ground.
When did making a profit equate with evil? It isn't like they are selling games to people and the repossessing their house. I think you should work for free since you have this attitude.
No. You are wrong. Games can be used for fun, a tool to train, to solve complex problems, etc. Games are just a medium like books and movies. What you do with it is the choice of whoever is creating the game. Just like it as the author of a book or script or the director of the film.
I am not the OP, so I wasn't really thinking your comments were specifically meant towards me. He might not have tried other games.
I agree that there are a lot of people who love Blizzard games and that helped them get that initial fan base. But Blizzard has actually earned their fans by consistently putting out very good, very polished games.
I think there is a huge market for a WoW-killer. A lot of people are tired of it. AoC is a great example. People flocked to the game but it was incomplete and not very well thought out. So people ran right back to WoW because it is flat out a better game. The trick is that WoW has been getting better and better with each patch. How is a game at release going to compare with a game that has been polished so hard that even the polish has polish? The game out of the gate has to be near perfect or people will just run back to WoW. I don't know how anyone could do that. Even if Blizzard came up with World of Starcraft, I don't think it could compete. I know someday WoW will have to be dethroned or wither away. I just can't see it happening in the near future.
I get what you are saying, and I think I misunderstood a bit about your first post. I can understand how people get sick of WoW. My argument is that really it is just a fundamentally better game than the others and that is why it does so well. And because MMOs are so hard to create, I can't see anything being able to take its place unless they do something really weird like completely change every aspect of the game (like SWG did).
First, I completely disagree with your black and white view of the world. There is not only two options to anything you are talking about. We can be the top of certain technologies and not of others. We can be second but be working with other countries to accomplish our goals (e.g. energy independence). As for your other binary option, we could develop products that the rest of the world wants to buy thus boosting our economy and wealth. At the same time we could develop techs that save people's lives (like an AIDS cure) that can improve our relations. I'd rather be a country that funds science and develops the citizens to have high tech jobs rather than to simply depend on other people to try to solve things for us.
Second, you arguments are completely irrational. Again you go back to saying there are only two options (leeching and competition). If we are taking the lead on something and they are falling behind, that certainly could cause them to try to be MORE competitive. When the U.S. developed the ev1, did Japan sit back and leech off of us? No, they developed the Prius to compete and now look brilliant for doing so. You don't seem to understand cause and effect nor the complexity of all of this. How anyone can argue AGAINST a reasonable amount of funding for science is beyond me. It seems some people will do anything they can to come up with a reason to disagree with everything Obama does.
Actually, spending was getting us out of the depression. The president at the time caved to conservatives and stopped spending thus prolonging the depression. When you are headed towards a depression it is a really awful spiral. People get scared so they don't spend. Less people spending means that there is less profit and jobs are lost. Less people working means less people are spending and it becomes a vicious cycle. The government is able to spend to create jobs and put some more demand in the markets. Thus with more people working, they spend more, creating more jobs, etc. Just lowering taxes doesn't solve the problem (otherwise Bush's tax cuts should have been more than enough to keep the economy stimulated). I really wish I could remember the correct terminology, but they have a tool they use to measure how effective spending on certain things or tax cuts effect the economy. Tax cuts scored really low on the scale because most people (particularly at the top) are just going to horde that money. Something like foodstamps showed huge returns since it was a necessity for people and it was going to be spent. Pretty interesting stuff. But I have conversations every day with a PhD economist over lunch, so I am kind of lucky that I get to ask how things work since it is extremely complex.
That's just your opinion. I don't worship Blizzard. I was very resistant to even trying WoW since I was playing another MMO at the time. In any case, WoW being a grind makes me think that you haven't played other MMOs. Compared to EQ, FFXI, and the other MMOs from the time, it pretty much blew them away for reducing the grind. You could now level to max level in a reasonable amount of time without having to get a party to help you level.
As far as other MMOs, it is purely a matter of taste. I tried Eve. If you like PvE combat, that game is a total grind. You fly in to a mission, make your ship fly towards somewhere you can dock in case you get in trouble, and hit f1-f6. Then fly for a long time until things are dead. Then fly to a gate to do the next part. When you are done, get in to another ship and fly around a long time to pick up the loot. PvP would be great if you didn't have to find other people to group with to survive and then sit at gates for hours. Warhammer is fun, but the PvE is severely lacking compared to WoW. It was more like playing TF2 with a subscription fee. After running the same BGs over and over to level, it gets boring. World PvE is a little better but still wasn't exciting.
Obviously, these are my opinions. Other people might love these games. But I do think WoW is a better MMO than the rest because it has the best PvE which is what I enjoy. But just because you don't think WoW is better, doesn't mean that the 12 million playing don't have that opinion or haven't tried other games.
So it is wrong to make a game in that era, but okay to write books and make movies? If people make games about that time, that means people will still remember and (some of them will) care. Would you rather everyone just forget it ever happened? Do you have any logic behind why you are trying to stop people from playing these games? I didn't really see you give any in your post.
Are you a moron? Gah, why do I ask that, obviously you are a moron and so are the mods who modded you up. How is trying to take a lead in R&D going to damage our relationship with foreign countries? If we are doing something good, other countries will look up to us and be impressed by us. That's a positive thing. If we take the lead in attacking countries based on bull shit and leading the way in torture, then that is bad and other countries will not cooperate with us.
Obama isn't going to other countries to apologize because we were too awesome. He is going to other countries to try to repair the damage the last administration has caused by its lies and flat out incompetence. It's in our best interest to have at least some allies.
The spending is to avoid going in to a depression. Both liberal and conservative economists agree that spending is how to avoid that. But I understand how that would scare the living crap out of Libertarian. Is it the right thing to do? I'm not sure, but I am willing to give the economists the benefit of the doubt for a few years. Besides, it isn't like we are blowing money on an illegal war. We are spending money on our own country. So yeah, we are spending a lot, but we are spending it on us, not the middle east.
Umm, why aren't conservatives afraid of pedophiles? And why should Dems be afraid of rednecks? They should be voting Democrat anyways if they weren't tricked in to voting against their best interests. I think you did a good job on the conservatives, though. I'd say your Democrat should be you must fear Republicans, global warming, low IQ U.S. presidents, and terrorists.
I'm confused, people on Slashdot complain about games not needing to be 3D to be fun and that gets modded up. Now people on Slashdot complain because a game isn't 3d and is top-down. Can we please make up our mind? Or do we just hate everything (except Linux, Apple, and Nintendo)?
Play along on the laptop? But seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about. What does that have anything to do with PC gaming being stillborn. You need to present a logical argument otherwise you are only going to make sense to yourself and not learn anything.
Nope, you thought wrong. It is about countries not letting armed men dock at their ports. But don't worry, it seems like most the posters today are spouting off about that without actually knowing the reasons they can't have guns. I'm not new here so this is not surprising to me.
So once they get their huge ransoms and can feed their family, why do they still pirate? I have no doubt these people have been screwed, and that should stop. But there is still more to it than just what you are saying. Pirating is more profitable than fishing. Why would they go back?
I don't even know what you are talking about. Pretty much everyone has computers these days. It is how business is done and how many people socialize or are entertained. Since you already have a PC, why not play games on it? Saying how much it costs isn't even relevant. Yeah, if your only goal in life is gaming, and you are poor, then console gaming is the way to go. It is a lot simpler to get together with friends at your place and play a game in the same room. But PC gaming is going to always exist. PCs are ubiquitous. The model may shift, but to say it is dead or is still born is just ignoring reality.
Why does this get modded up? Seriously, if you wrote software, wouldn't you be at least slightly irritated that people were pirating your work? My friend's husband just wrote a game for the iPhone. Within hours of its release there were already 4 different pirate copies on the web. But piracy isn't a problem, right? Are you guys all 12 year olds downloading MP3s? Why are discussions on piracy here always so immature?
I think you are biased because you can write a whole post completely normal yet have issues when it comes to "computar gamez". Clearly, you hate computer games so much you are forced to subconsciously spell it wrong.
Generally, things with the word "Family" in it are politically or religiously motivated. His assumption was that it was one of these groups and that they are biased which could effect the outcome. You are no better. You assume that it isn't biased yet don't bother to check either.
I think it is natural for us to like articles that agree with what we think. With things that seem incorrect to us, we then would go check the source to see if that is why the opinion in the article differs so much from ours. It's too bad we don't do that for stuff we agree with because that just reinforces our ideas that may be wrong. Then something that is horrible biased just becomes "right". See Fox News for an example.
Slashdot Mirror
But Slashdot does the opposite stupid assumption; that piracy is positive for the company. I'm sorry, but companies are really good at figuring out what is going to maximize their profit. Piracy cuts in to their profit, I have no doubt. But since some companies (like EA) put really awful/intrusive DRM in their games, it has created a backlash, so that a company like Stardock can say, "hey! look, I am giving you what you want, no DRM" and can gain some sales and positive publicity. Is it more sales than if they released it on something like Steam? Who knows. But I flat out reject the assumption that piracy is a good thing. It is just people justifying their immoral behavior.
It's easy to oppose something but have no rational alternative. If copyright does not exist, it would destroy pretty much every large game company out there. What do you propose as an alternative to make sure that companies are protected from people using their product and not compensating them for it?
Because people wanted it to be here. This is about games. Not about saving the world with free software. I wouldn't come to this site if it was that one dimensional.
Is an updated version of Shattered Galaxies. That game was really great fun. Hmm, maybe I should see if anyone is still playing that old thing.
No, it hasn't. If it jumped the shark people would be leaving in droves to one of the other options out there. It is just a better game. If it only mattered what other people played, everyone would still be playing EQ and WoW would have never been able to get off the ground.
When did making a profit equate with evil? It isn't like they are selling games to people and the repossessing their house. I think you should work for free since you have this attitude.
It works for Eve. But then again, your points still stand ;)
No. You are wrong. Games can be used for fun, a tool to train, to solve complex problems, etc. Games are just a medium like books and movies. What you do with it is the choice of whoever is creating the game. Just like it as the author of a book or script or the director of the film.
I am not the OP, so I wasn't really thinking your comments were specifically meant towards me. He might not have tried other games.
I agree that there are a lot of people who love Blizzard games and that helped them get that initial fan base. But Blizzard has actually earned their fans by consistently putting out very good, very polished games.
I think there is a huge market for a WoW-killer. A lot of people are tired of it. AoC is a great example. People flocked to the game but it was incomplete and not very well thought out. So people ran right back to WoW because it is flat out a better game. The trick is that WoW has been getting better and better with each patch. How is a game at release going to compare with a game that has been polished so hard that even the polish has polish? The game out of the gate has to be near perfect or people will just run back to WoW. I don't know how anyone could do that. Even if Blizzard came up with World of Starcraft, I don't think it could compete. I know someday WoW will have to be dethroned or wither away. I just can't see it happening in the near future.
I get what you are saying, and I think I misunderstood a bit about your first post. I can understand how people get sick of WoW. My argument is that really it is just a fundamentally better game than the others and that is why it does so well. And because MMOs are so hard to create, I can't see anything being able to take its place unless they do something really weird like completely change every aspect of the game (like SWG did).
First, I completely disagree with your black and white view of the world. There is not only two options to anything you are talking about. We can be the top of certain technologies and not of others. We can be second but be working with other countries to accomplish our goals (e.g. energy independence). As for your other binary option, we could develop products that the rest of the world wants to buy thus boosting our economy and wealth. At the same time we could develop techs that save people's lives (like an AIDS cure) that can improve our relations. I'd rather be a country that funds science and develops the citizens to have high tech jobs rather than to simply depend on other people to try to solve things for us.
Second, you arguments are completely irrational. Again you go back to saying there are only two options (leeching and competition). If we are taking the lead on something and they are falling behind, that certainly could cause them to try to be MORE competitive. When the U.S. developed the ev1, did Japan sit back and leech off of us? No, they developed the Prius to compete and now look brilliant for doing so. You don't seem to understand cause and effect nor the complexity of all of this. How anyone can argue AGAINST a reasonable amount of funding for science is beyond me. It seems some people will do anything they can to come up with a reason to disagree with everything Obama does.
Actually, spending was getting us out of the depression. The president at the time caved to conservatives and stopped spending thus prolonging the depression. When you are headed towards a depression it is a really awful spiral. People get scared so they don't spend. Less people spending means that there is less profit and jobs are lost. Less people working means less people are spending and it becomes a vicious cycle. The government is able to spend to create jobs and put some more demand in the markets. Thus with more people working, they spend more, creating more jobs, etc. Just lowering taxes doesn't solve the problem (otherwise Bush's tax cuts should have been more than enough to keep the economy stimulated). I really wish I could remember the correct terminology, but they have a tool they use to measure how effective spending on certain things or tax cuts effect the economy. Tax cuts scored really low on the scale because most people (particularly at the top) are just going to horde that money. Something like foodstamps showed huge returns since it was a necessity for people and it was going to be spent. Pretty interesting stuff. But I have conversations every day with a PhD economist over lunch, so I am kind of lucky that I get to ask how things work since it is extremely complex.
That's just your opinion. I don't worship Blizzard. I was very resistant to even trying WoW since I was playing another MMO at the time. In any case, WoW being a grind makes me think that you haven't played other MMOs. Compared to EQ, FFXI, and the other MMOs from the time, it pretty much blew them away for reducing the grind. You could now level to max level in a reasonable amount of time without having to get a party to help you level.
As far as other MMOs, it is purely a matter of taste. I tried Eve. If you like PvE combat, that game is a total grind. You fly in to a mission, make your ship fly towards somewhere you can dock in case you get in trouble, and hit f1-f6. Then fly for a long time until things are dead. Then fly to a gate to do the next part. When you are done, get in to another ship and fly around a long time to pick up the loot. PvP would be great if you didn't have to find other people to group with to survive and then sit at gates for hours. Warhammer is fun, but the PvE is severely lacking compared to WoW. It was more like playing TF2 with a subscription fee. After running the same BGs over and over to level, it gets boring. World PvE is a little better but still wasn't exciting.
Obviously, these are my opinions. Other people might love these games. But I do think WoW is a better MMO than the rest because it has the best PvE which is what I enjoy. But just because you don't think WoW is better, doesn't mean that the 12 million playing don't have that opinion or haven't tried other games.
So it is wrong to make a game in that era, but okay to write books and make movies? If people make games about that time, that means people will still remember and (some of them will) care. Would you rather everyone just forget it ever happened? Do you have any logic behind why you are trying to stop people from playing these games? I didn't really see you give any in your post.
Are you a moron? Gah, why do I ask that, obviously you are a moron and so are the mods who modded you up. How is trying to take a lead in R&D going to damage our relationship with foreign countries? If we are doing something good, other countries will look up to us and be impressed by us. That's a positive thing. If we take the lead in attacking countries based on bull shit and leading the way in torture, then that is bad and other countries will not cooperate with us.
Obama isn't going to other countries to apologize because we were too awesome. He is going to other countries to try to repair the damage the last administration has caused by its lies and flat out incompetence. It's in our best interest to have at least some allies.
So it is better to go to private industry where 2/3rds of the money goes to the CEO and management salaries?
The spending is to avoid going in to a depression. Both liberal and conservative economists agree that spending is how to avoid that. But I understand how that would scare the living crap out of Libertarian. Is it the right thing to do? I'm not sure, but I am willing to give the economists the benefit of the doubt for a few years. Besides, it isn't like we are blowing money on an illegal war. We are spending money on our own country. So yeah, we are spending a lot, but we are spending it on us, not the middle east.
Umm, why aren't conservatives afraid of pedophiles? And why should Dems be afraid of rednecks? They should be voting Democrat anyways if they weren't tricked in to voting against their best interests. I think you did a good job on the conservatives, though. I'd say your Democrat should be you must fear Republicans, global warming, low IQ U.S. presidents, and terrorists.
I'm confused, people on Slashdot complain about games not needing to be 3D to be fun and that gets modded up. Now people on Slashdot complain because a game isn't 3d and is top-down. Can we please make up our mind? Or do we just hate everything (except Linux, Apple, and Nintendo)?
Play along on the laptop? But seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about. What does that have anything to do with PC gaming being stillborn. You need to present a logical argument otherwise you are only going to make sense to yourself and not learn anything.
For the ransoms they are getting, they could probably feed the whole country.
Nope, you thought wrong. It is about countries not letting armed men dock at their ports. But don't worry, it seems like most the posters today are spouting off about that without actually knowing the reasons they can't have guns. I'm not new here so this is not surprising to me.
So once they get their huge ransoms and can feed their family, why do they still pirate? I have no doubt these people have been screwed, and that should stop. But there is still more to it than just what you are saying. Pirating is more profitable than fishing. Why would they go back?
It was stillborn.
I don't even know what you are talking about. Pretty much everyone has computers these days. It is how business is done and how many people socialize or are entertained. Since you already have a PC, why not play games on it? Saying how much it costs isn't even relevant. Yeah, if your only goal in life is gaming, and you are poor, then console gaming is the way to go. It is a lot simpler to get together with friends at your place and play a game in the same room. But PC gaming is going to always exist. PCs are ubiquitous. The model may shift, but to say it is dead or is still born is just ignoring reality.
Why does this get modded up? Seriously, if you wrote software, wouldn't you be at least slightly irritated that people were pirating your work? My friend's husband just wrote a game for the iPhone. Within hours of its release there were already 4 different pirate copies on the web. But piracy isn't a problem, right? Are you guys all 12 year olds downloading MP3s? Why are discussions on piracy here always so immature?
I think you are biased because you can write a whole post completely normal yet have issues when it comes to "computar gamez". Clearly, you hate computer games so much you are forced to subconsciously spell it wrong.
Generally, things with the word "Family" in it are politically or religiously motivated. His assumption was that it was one of these groups and that they are biased which could effect the outcome. You are no better. You assume that it isn't biased yet don't bother to check either.
I think it is natural for us to like articles that agree with what we think. With things that seem incorrect to us, we then would go check the source to see if that is why the opinion in the article differs so much from ours. It's too bad we don't do that for stuff we agree with because that just reinforces our ideas that may be wrong. Then something that is horrible biased just becomes "right". See Fox News for an example.