Any DRM is going to be cracked. So I agree that spending a lot of time and resources to come up with DRM is a waste of time. But some simple, non-obtrusive DRM is fine since it will prevent a lay-person from going and downloading a game from some warez site.
Any justification you give for piracy is fairly lame. Stardock is a perfect example of how pirates can cause damage to online experience and degrade paying customer performance. It is true that not all piracy is a lost sale. But to think that none of them are lost sales is ridiculous.
DRM right now is a very broad term. It can mean something simple like a cd key, or something more onerous like a root kit or install limits. There is a balance of protecting your work and pissing off your customers. I really am glad the Stardock thing happened. It just shows that when a company tries to do what the Slashdot crowd suggest they do (DRM free software), the pirates still will step up to the plate and screw them over. I hope everyone on here who says they only support DRM free games is buying up every game they come out with. But I am sure most of the piracy apologists are still not paying them a dime.
I really don't see where you are coming from. The cost of pressing, boxing them with manuals, shipping them to stores all over the world, and then letting the stores take part of the profit is not going to be cheaper than selling direct to the consumer. On top of that, it eliminates the used market. And when Valve already has the infrastructure that you can use, I don't see how the traditional method of software distribution is going to last.
Give me a break. You are stretching so hard to make piracy seem like a good thing. These guys had servers prepared to handle the initial load. But Gamestop and the pirates forced them to work a weekend to scrap together a solution. This caused many legitimate users to have a degraded experience. How is upsetting your legitimate customers a good thing? How many aren't going to buy the game because a friend said they couldn't log in? How many customers won't bother buying another game because of this? This is a perfect example of how piracy is bad for a company and yet there are still so many people on here arguing that it is a good thing. These guys have no DRM and you are still screwing them over. What do you guys want? Obviously you just don't want to pay for software.
You have a company willing to listen to the crazies on Slashdot and not put any DRM in their games. And what do people do? They go out and pirate the game in numbers that interfere with legitimate customers. And then you have the nerve to question the numbers they put out? Seriously, what is wrong with you? I am so sick of hearing the piracy deniers on here. You finally have a game company giving you what you want and you all still act like juvenile little pricks.
I think that is naive. As the market share for Macs increase, they will be an increasingly attractive target. And you set all these people up thinking they were safe. It's this attitude that is going to bite Mac users hard soon. You should always teach people how to use AV/firewalls/anti-spyware and let them know what kind of activities are bad ideas. Even if you are under the illusion that Macs are more secure, you don't know what other computers they interact with.
Let me understand your logic. He says that they are not talking about planned routes across the whole of the U.S. but short ones in specific areas. You say that the argument still holds because the U.S. is very large. What?
Exactly. Concentrated wealth is a detriment to an economy. Economies do well when wealth is distributed. It's fairly obvious if you think about it. If the lower and middle classes have more expendable income, they buy more stuff. Buying stuff increases the demand for stuff so more people are employed to make and distribute the stuff and new companies are formed to make new stuff. If wealth is concentrated, then the middle and lower classes don't have as much money to spend. Meaning that no one is buying stuff. So even if you are one of the rich, you can't create a profitable business because no one is going to buy what you are selling.
The rich always have more influence and have more opportunities to dodge taxes making the pay a much lower effective tax rate than the normal working slob. The great trick they are playing is that they actually have convinced gullible people in the lower and middle classes to fight for them. It actually amazes me how many people vote against their own best interests in this country. Wake up. Rush Limbaugh and the rest are all about themselves and their own profit. They don't care about small businesses or the middle class. They are tricking you to believe that wealth concentration is a good thing when it will only cause many to suffer and damage the economy.
I actually really liked FF8's story and thought it was fun. The ones since haven't had as much impact, but all solid titles that I have finished (except x-2 which I try not to remember). I am looking forward to the next one apart from the fact it will force be to buy a PS3.
They were just trying to find a law, any law to prosecute this sick woman for. If she pretended to be a boy and didn't do anything harmful, then it would not have been an issue. But this woman screwed with a teenage girls head to the point that she took her life. It is a sad story and bizarre to me that you would trivialize it as trolling.
Welfare for people who don't want to work? I'm sorry, but with unemployment as high as it is, there are a lot of people who want to work and can't find it out there. I am lucky and have a nice career, but others not so much. Taxes are low right now compared to spending. But the wealthiest get to take advantage of all the loopholes to keep their effective tax rate lower than the majority of us. People who complain about taxes being too high seem to have no idea what they are talking about because they over-simplify to the point of it being a meaningless conversation. Other countries have government health care so they have to pay higher taxes. We can't have that here, no one wants to pay higher taxes! Which is completely stupid since we have a system right now that specifically is trying to make a profit rather than caring a damn if people are suffering or die. It's this selfish, unrealistic attitude that people have that the world is all about them. Sorry, we live in a society. You can find your little groupthink areas where you can all nod your head and complain about taxes and socialism while the grown ups get together and actually talk about ways to try to improve the quality of life of as many people as possible.
No, but they did spend thousands of hours grinding the same game over and over again so they could take down someone else's king. A chess master most likely played chess a lot to get there. Are they addicted? What's the difference other than you look down on one person and not the other? WoW is a lot more complicated and diverse than chess. What is wrong with that statement?
Um, it is extremely easy to solo to 80. I have no idea what you are talking about. The 70-80 levels have some of the best/most interesting quests in the game. The guy was saying if you are on a quest, and you are all competing, you can group up to do the quest. This doesn't require scheduling or raiding, it requires you to/say hi, want to group up for this quest?
The instances (5 man) are very easy to find groups for and most take 30-60 minutes. No need to schedule times. Even raids can be done in pick ups. One takes about 20 minutes. Another less than an hour. Yeah, you probably aren't going to do the longer raids, but you really don't have to to enjoy it. It's fine to quit because you are tired of the game, but you are criticizing it based on false assumptions or some other strange issues that you have.
I don't see how that is better. The problem that Udular hopefully solves is having a difficult new raid. Naxx would have been fairly difficult if people didn't know all the strategies from when it had came out previously. It is more interesting to have to figure out a new area than run the same one over and over again. Tweaking the difficulty doesn't really matter.
New, difficult content is what is important. It is nice that they have added extra levels of difficulties to bosses. That gives the best guilds something to strive for while still being accessible to those who don't have as dedicated/skilled group.
Your method has many issues. Whose counter do you go by to set the difficulty? What if they fail to complete it? Is difficult reduced then? Upping difficult through boss damage and hp doesn't really give a new experience, just requires better gear. People seem to forget this game has over 12 million people. Despite the flack Slashdotters like to give it, I do think Blizzard knows a little about making games. No one is going to be entertained forever by one piece of software. And you can't please everyone. The people who talk about quitting are just more visible because everyone who plays WoW is playing it right now instead of posting to forums.
Considering that when I logged in last night and found a queue over 10,000 on my server, I think you are 100% wrong. Interesting how you judge this Ghostcrawler guy as being out of touch when you make completely stupid predictions showing your inability to make simple, logical conclusions.
Considering that there are 25 Second Life articles to every WoW article, I really don't see what the big deal is. Barely anyone even "plays" that game yet it is on here all the time. One WoW article when a major content patch is dropped is news worthy and I would think any site that has a games section to at least mention it or it really is out of touch with gaming. The article makes sense to be here, what I can't understand is why people who say they don't care actually bother clicking in her to comment on it.
Yes, I am sure Blizzard is relieved that this is behind them. I mean, with the subscription numbers of CoH being so high, they were running a serious risk of losing the #1 spot. How will CoH responds? Maybe they will steal some of WoW's ideas...like making a game that is fun. I can't wait to see what they do! (I kid, I kid!)
Um, what the heck does 20% down have anything to do with capitalism? That has to do with regulations. Were you trying to prove me right or yourself a little slow?
You are more of a problem than the judge. Try reading the actual warrant and you see that this seems fairly legitimate. I don't blame you that much since the title and summary were awful. So in reality, we should blame the editor for letting this get through.
And that editor is....(face palm)....really CmdrTaco?? Come on.
Slashdot Mirror
Any DRM is going to be cracked. So I agree that spending a lot of time and resources to come up with DRM is a waste of time. But some simple, non-obtrusive DRM is fine since it will prevent a lay-person from going and downloading a game from some warez site.
Any justification you give for piracy is fairly lame. Stardock is a perfect example of how pirates can cause damage to online experience and degrade paying customer performance. It is true that not all piracy is a lost sale. But to think that none of them are lost sales is ridiculous.
DRM right now is a very broad term. It can mean something simple like a cd key, or something more onerous like a root kit or install limits. There is a balance of protecting your work and pissing off your customers. I really am glad the Stardock thing happened. It just shows that when a company tries to do what the Slashdot crowd suggest they do (DRM free software), the pirates still will step up to the plate and screw them over. I hope everyone on here who says they only support DRM free games is buying up every game they come out with. But I am sure most of the piracy apologists are still not paying them a dime.
I really don't see where you are coming from. The cost of pressing, boxing them with manuals, shipping them to stores all over the world, and then letting the stores take part of the profit is not going to be cheaper than selling direct to the consumer. On top of that, it eliminates the used market. And when Valve already has the infrastructure that you can use, I don't see how the traditional method of software distribution is going to last.
Swords breaking is not realistic. It is something you see in the movies. I know this thanks to mythbusters.
Give me a break. You are stretching so hard to make piracy seem like a good thing. These guys had servers prepared to handle the initial load. But Gamestop and the pirates forced them to work a weekend to scrap together a solution. This caused many legitimate users to have a degraded experience. How is upsetting your legitimate customers a good thing? How many aren't going to buy the game because a friend said they couldn't log in? How many customers won't bother buying another game because of this? This is a perfect example of how piracy is bad for a company and yet there are still so many people on here arguing that it is a good thing. These guys have no DRM and you are still screwing them over. What do you guys want? Obviously you just don't want to pay for software.
You have a company willing to listen to the crazies on Slashdot and not put any DRM in their games. And what do people do? They go out and pirate the game in numbers that interfere with legitimate customers. And then you have the nerve to question the numbers they put out? Seriously, what is wrong with you? I am so sick of hearing the piracy deniers on here. You finally have a game company giving you what you want and you all still act like juvenile little pricks.
So in previous rpgs you had trouble with the non-special mobs?
I think that is naive. As the market share for Macs increase, they will be an increasingly attractive target. And you set all these people up thinking they were safe. It's this attitude that is going to bite Mac users hard soon. You should always teach people how to use AV/firewalls/anti-spyware and let them know what kind of activities are bad ideas. Even if you are under the illusion that Macs are more secure, you don't know what other computers they interact with.
Let me understand your logic. He says that they are not talking about planned routes across the whole of the U.S. but short ones in specific areas. You say that the argument still holds because the U.S. is very large. What?
Exactly. Concentrated wealth is a detriment to an economy. Economies do well when wealth is distributed. It's fairly obvious if you think about it. If the lower and middle classes have more expendable income, they buy more stuff. Buying stuff increases the demand for stuff so more people are employed to make and distribute the stuff and new companies are formed to make new stuff. If wealth is concentrated, then the middle and lower classes don't have as much money to spend. Meaning that no one is buying stuff. So even if you are one of the rich, you can't create a profitable business because no one is going to buy what you are selling.
The rich always have more influence and have more opportunities to dodge taxes making the pay a much lower effective tax rate than the normal working slob. The great trick they are playing is that they actually have convinced gullible people in the lower and middle classes to fight for them. It actually amazes me how many people vote against their own best interests in this country. Wake up. Rush Limbaugh and the rest are all about themselves and their own profit. They don't care about small businesses or the middle class. They are tricking you to believe that wealth concentration is a good thing when it will only cause many to suffer and damage the economy.
I actually really liked FF8's story and thought it was fun. The ones since haven't had as much impact, but all solid titles that I have finished (except x-2 which I try not to remember). I am looking forward to the next one apart from the fact it will force be to buy a PS3.
They were just trying to find a law, any law to prosecute this sick woman for. If she pretended to be a boy and didn't do anything harmful, then it would not have been an issue. But this woman screwed with a teenage girls head to the point that she took her life. It is a sad story and bizarre to me that you would trivialize it as trolling.
Welfare for people who don't want to work? I'm sorry, but with unemployment as high as it is, there are a lot of people who want to work and can't find it out there. I am lucky and have a nice career, but others not so much. Taxes are low right now compared to spending. But the wealthiest get to take advantage of all the loopholes to keep their effective tax rate lower than the majority of us. People who complain about taxes being too high seem to have no idea what they are talking about because they over-simplify to the point of it being a meaningless conversation. Other countries have government health care so they have to pay higher taxes. We can't have that here, no one wants to pay higher taxes! Which is completely stupid since we have a system right now that specifically is trying to make a profit rather than caring a damn if people are suffering or die. It's this selfish, unrealistic attitude that people have that the world is all about them. Sorry, we live in a society. You can find your little groupthink areas where you can all nod your head and complain about taxes and socialism while the grown ups get together and actually talk about ways to try to improve the quality of life of as many people as possible.
Yes, work is also more fun than Eve so that works out as well.
But for a society to function, realistically wouldn't you need more followers than leaders?
No, but they did spend thousands of hours grinding the same game over and over again so they could take down someone else's king. A chess master most likely played chess a lot to get there. Are they addicted? What's the difference other than you look down on one person and not the other? WoW is a lot more complicated and diverse than chess. What is wrong with that statement?
Um, it is extremely easy to solo to 80. I have no idea what you are talking about. The 70-80 levels have some of the best/most interesting quests in the game. The guy was saying if you are on a quest, and you are all competing, you can group up to do the quest. This doesn't require scheduling or raiding, it requires you to /say hi, want to group up for this quest?
The instances (5 man) are very easy to find groups for and most take 30-60 minutes. No need to schedule times. Even raids can be done in pick ups. One takes about 20 minutes. Another less than an hour. Yeah, you probably aren't going to do the longer raids, but you really don't have to to enjoy it. It's fine to quit because you are tired of the game, but you are criticizing it based on false assumptions or some other strange issues that you have.
I don't see how that is better. The problem that Udular hopefully solves is having a difficult new raid. Naxx would have been fairly difficult if people didn't know all the strategies from when it had came out previously. It is more interesting to have to figure out a new area than run the same one over and over again. Tweaking the difficulty doesn't really matter.
New, difficult content is what is important. It is nice that they have added extra levels of difficulties to bosses. That gives the best guilds something to strive for while still being accessible to those who don't have as dedicated/skilled group.
Your method has many issues. Whose counter do you go by to set the difficulty? What if they fail to complete it? Is difficult reduced then? Upping difficult through boss damage and hp doesn't really give a new experience, just requires better gear. People seem to forget this game has over 12 million people. Despite the flack Slashdotters like to give it, I do think Blizzard knows a little about making games. No one is going to be entertained forever by one piece of software. And you can't please everyone. The people who talk about quitting are just more visible because everyone who plays WoW is playing it right now instead of posting to forums.
Then your probably shouldn't buy any consoles. Consoles that use discs are going to fail a lot quicker than the old ones that used cartridges.
Considering that when I logged in last night and found a queue over 10,000 on my server, I think you are 100% wrong. Interesting how you judge this Ghostcrawler guy as being out of touch when you make completely stupid predictions showing your inability to make simple, logical conclusions.
Considering that there are 25 Second Life articles to every WoW article, I really don't see what the big deal is. Barely anyone even "plays" that game yet it is on here all the time. One WoW article when a major content patch is dropped is news worthy and I would think any site that has a games section to at least mention it or it really is out of touch with gaming. The article makes sense to be here, what I can't understand is why people who say they don't care actually bother clicking in her to comment on it.
Yes, I am sure Blizzard is relieved that this is behind them. I mean, with the subscription numbers of CoH being so high, they were running a serious risk of losing the #1 spot. How will CoH responds? Maybe they will steal some of WoW's ideas...like making a game that is fun. I can't wait to see what they do! (I kid, I kid!)
Facts only interfere with his outrage. He can not let them get in the way of his quest to bash liberals.
Um, what the heck does 20% down have anything to do with capitalism? That has to do with regulations. Were you trying to prove me right or yourself a little slow?
You are more of a problem than the judge. Try reading the actual warrant and you see that this seems fairly legitimate. I don't blame you that much since the title and summary were awful. So in reality, we should blame the editor for letting this get through.
And that editor is....(face palm)....really CmdrTaco?? Come on.
The systems people really care about are not on the Internet.