Well, any measure you are going to use is going to be arbitrary and easy to criticize. Really, the thing is over when we declare it a victory and pull out (whether or not victory occurred, as long as we declare it to make the populace feel good - victory is as arbitrary as success). The supposed reason we are still in there though is to give the new government security until we can get out. That is why I selected that as a measure for success. Oh, also fighting terrorism, but that is just as impossible to measure. Just because troops aren't dieing in Iraq doesn't mean that it isn't growing somewhere else and just sitting back and trying to solidify power in some other reason.
I guess what I am trying to say is every measure that they give us of success is a load of crap. I just think we need to stop spending so much money on war and get people home so that if a legitimate threat pops up, we actually have the military to handle that. Right now the "war" is just a political game which I find fairly pathetic.
Great link! That was just forwarded out to all my friends. But my question is, wouldn't a flip flop mean that you changed your view, and then changed them back? I think people are just flipping their views...not so much flopping!
Thank you so much for saying that. I agree so much. Why is the only measure of success how many soldiers are dieing? What kind of stupid measure is that? My measure would be how quickly we can get security in place so we can get the hell out of there.
So a group of people who were brought in to this country as slaves, then fought for freedom, then battled severe racism is finally seeing someone who is half their race actually have a shot at the presidency. I an not voting for a person on that, but if you don't see how that is significant growth for our country, then I fail to see how you have any sort of sophistication about you. Yes, if people are just voting for him based on his race, they are stupid. But you can't deny that what he has done is impressive considering there still exists so much racism in this country.
And no one tried to threaten us with weapons of mass destruction. Well, North Korea did but they would be tough to fight so we chose diplomacy. Iraq didn't and we chose to blow them up for--well, no one really knows what the heck was going through Bush/Cheny's minds but it wasn't in America's interest, that's for damn sure.
I agree that the US needs a president for the US. We also need to understand that are actions effect and influence the whole world. Being an isolationist or an arrogant prick on the world stage isn't in our own best interest. So it isn't so unreasonable to want someone who is decent in foreign relations.
Basically, you just wanted to point by point tear this guy apart rather than actually think about what he wrote and how it makes sense. Yeah, he went too far on some parts but he had good points on others that you seem extremely ignorant about. But you said you were impressed with having a candidate just because he was libertarian so +5 insightful.
Those are just statistic numbers. It is pretty easy for a billionaire to pay the same amount of taxes as thousands and thousands of people who are in poverty. The thing is, once they pay all those taxes they are still billionaire and the other people are still starving. I don't know why people don't get this.
Do not feel sorry for the rich. The rich in this nation have CPAs that figure out how they can pay the minimum amount of taxes. They find loopholes so billionaires can claim losses on their taxes and thus not pay their "fair" share. Do the poor or lower middle class have people doing this for them?
So yeah, it sounds dramatic when you say 5% pay half of the taxes. But why is this surprising where 5% of the people have 70% of the US's total wealth? Freaking think.
Umm, sorry, but you do realize how skewed what you just said was. Democrats don't vary from Republicans on drugs, prostitution, and have to be Christians to become president. Democrats don't oppose guns, but they do want rational gun laws. Socialism is looked down upon a lot (understandably considering the inefficiency of government). But we don't complain about having to pay for public education, police, or fire crews. We just don't like socialism in things we don't already have socialized.
But if that post was to prove how un-Republican you are, it really failed. You sure spin stuff like one. I really don't care if you are one or not, just if you wonder why people think you are one, look at what you write.
Voting for third parties is how we ended up in the mess we are in now. No, I don't think we can afford to put Bush v2 in to office. But then again, I wouldn't vote for Ron Paul (or a Libertarian candidate) anyways. While I think Ron Paul is right on a lot of things and I am extremely impressed with the way he votes against his own pay raises, I still think they are too far from center to ever be elected. They just come off as too extreme to the general populace and that is why the third party candidates won't gain traction. They are no willing to move towards the center.
In any case, I can't stand the thought of the Republicans holding office again. I sincerely hope most people agree and understand that the only way that he isn't is by voting for Obama. I'm sorry, no third party candidate has a shot in hell this time no matter how much you like them or wish things were different.
Umm, you are aware that it is trivially easy to defeat CD checks on install, right? That is essentially no different than what they did assuming most people are going to want to try multiplayer. So you thought THAT was copy protection. Wow, man. That is kinda messed up but now I understand why you say that. To me "copy protection" is whatever method a company uses to protect themselves from pirated copies. The way they chose to do this was through the multi-player. People would be forced to buy the game if they wanted to play multiplayer, thus protecting themselves from pirated copies. So part of this is that we have a different concept of what copy protection is. I think mine is the correct definition, but at least I know where you are coming from.
So now you are telling me what Blizzard was feeling and their intentions which you can't honestly say you have any idea about. You think the big corporate heads were all concerned about control rather than piracy. Really. Listen, companies are out there to make money. When people don't pay for their game, they don't make money. bnetd allowed people to play their game and bypass their copy protection scheme thus not paying them. You see, when your copy protection scheme revolves around people needing to log in to battle.net, you can't let something like bnetd exist and actually be doing due diligence to your investors. Does that make any sense now? When you think of battle.net as their form of copy protection doesn't it make sense that they would try to stop bnetd?
Your wish for my non-existence is a failure within yourself for not being able to form an argument that can persuade someone as open minded as me to your side. You wish to suppress my freedom of speech which is ironic since your argument on why you would protect Glider has a rough relation. In other words, you are a hypocrite.
The problem, which you continue to fail to address, is that Glider is profiting from damaging Blizzard's service. Glider is using a hack (i.e. sand boxing WoW's Warden anti-cheating tool) to circumvent the ToS. That is what I mean by hack. How in the world have I been misinterpreting Glider's usage?
I understand what you are saying conceptually. You are a firm believer in individual rights and are upset when the government takes those rights away. I simply don't think that any rights of yours are actually being taken away (or will be taken away) and this is bringing down an illegitimate company which was most likely the intention of the law. I am sure if Blizzard was a company you owned and someone was doing this to you, you would feel differently. Since you probably don't contribute anything to society that can be harmed in this way, you have some sort of inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. You have fallen in to the trap that everything is black and white and can't see that there are shades of gray.
Ooh, yeah, that was FFX-2. I think that is the only FF game I never played all the way through. I don't think it was bad...I just couldn't really get in to it. Actually, I think what really stopped me was it had this completion gauge. I wanted to hit 100% completion the first time through and somehow missed something. It pissed me off so I just stopped playing. I really hate the whole multiple endings completion things with the exception of games like Disgaea.
To add what other people have mentioned...you really need to play the games when they came out. When 7 came out, the graphics were stunning and it really introduced a whole load of people to the RPG genre. Going back and playing it after isn't going to impress you as much. I am one of the weird ones that liked 8 a whole lot more than 7, but I liked 7 about the same as 6 which probably pisses off a whole huge mass of fanboys...be gentle with me.
Actually, I think he means "mature gamer" in the sense of people who are older with money end up buying all three systems. I would say the Wii appeals to a broad range of gamers and capitalizes on the casual gamer more than the other consoles as opposed to the mature gamer. The Wii appeals to the "immature" gamer as well, so I wouldn't say the Wii holds the mature audience captive. Actually, most of the 20/30 somethings I know have 360s and not Wiis. I know a girl who owns a Wii though...but she is immature and is going to vote for McCain. I won't hold that against Nintendo though:)
For me, the 360 had more exclusives that I wanted to play. Blue Dragon, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo, etc. If none of the exclusive games appeal to you, there is no reason to pick the 360 over the PS3.
This is purely anecdotal, but I have had no failures or scratched discs on my 360. Just make sure you don't move the thing when the disc is spinning inside of it and you should be fine.
I disagree. Nintendo went with cheap and innovative new controller. Innovative controller != gameplay. It allows some games to be fresh again, but gameplay is still up to the game and that can be done with any controller. Despite how many they have sold, very few games other than what Nintendo produces have been crap. Fortunately for the casual gamers, they only buy 1 or 2 games a year, they can just get the Nintendo releases. If it weren't for the controller and Wii Sports (and the price), I think they would have repeated the gamecube's performance as far as sales go. They still only have first party titles while third parties tend to not sell very well (despite the huge number of people who own the console). Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to put them down. I just think they gambled and lucked out this round. Saying their success is due to gameplay is just wrong. Nintendo first party titles had just as much gameplay value on the cube and that was a failure (yes yes, I know they made tons of profit but they were last worldwide in sales).
Yes, because playing on servers in another country makes it a much better user experience. Listen, I get it, hackers can always find a way around all but the most brutal copy protections. Blizzard just has to make it hard enough. Your "article" says nothing about how many subscribers were gained or lost during that time, just that there still exists a way for people to cheat.
Actually, if you think about it for a second, if bnetd is still alive and well, why is everyone so bitter? Obviously bnetd had to be shut down for long enough that people had to stop using it...so development must have stopped for a time otherwise they would have just kept on playing. I guarantee you that some people had to and did buy legitimate copies. How much, I don't know. But Blizzard has a right to protect itself. You are acting as if Blizzard was some girl who got raped and she should just accept it because she was dressed too slutty.
Wow, you have really gone off the deep end. I am going to break this down slowly for you because you don't seem to get it. I might be stating things you already know but I can't assume any that you have any logical premises.
Glider, or WoWGlider/MMOGlider, is a program that allows you to cheat. By cheat, I mean it will play a character in WoW without you have to be at your machine. This is, as you say, against Blizzard's ToS. This program isn't like a crow bar. A crow bar has both legal and illegal purposes. This program has one and only one purpose and that is to break Blizzard's ToS. What's worse is that they are doing this for profit.
Actually, we don't know if the person who created Glider is a cheater or not. He probably is since he would have to test his software between patches. In any case, that isn't the real thrust of the argument, is it? So what would you rather do, sue the people who are cheating or sue the people that are profiting off of enabling that cheating? They have a way to punish cheaters already, they ban their accounts. There is no need to sue them so that part of your argument is irrelevant. The problem with Glider is that is a tool expressly made to hack Blizzard's software. It is damaging to their customers because I am sure some people bought this not even knowing they are breaking the rules. Then they find they are banned. Only if you navigate to the FAQ page does it even start mentioning the risk involved in using this software.
Listen, I am all for people's individual rights to do what they want with the software they purchased. Hack the crap out of your single player starcraft III, that's great. But WoW's whole business is providing a service. Glider is damaging its business and reputation by allowing bots in to the game.
Just think if you created subscription based software. I wrote some code that hacked your software allowing people to do all kinds of things that you have expressly forbidden. It causes people to cancel their subscription because it ruins their experience with your software. Wouldn't you want to prevent me from distributing that software? Wouldn't you be mad I am profiting off of it while damaging your reputation with your customers?
Listen, if the result of this case allows other entities to "trample on the rights of everyone", I will be the first to admit my mistake. But it just isn't going to happen. Blizzard has every right to protect itself and an evil company will hopefully be shut down.
And again, WoW is a service based product, you do not own the service. If you do not appreciate that you can't hack their service, do not buy the game. You do not have the right to create software for the express purpose of damaging their service...that is just freaking common sense.
No one will ever listen to you seriously in the "real world" because you have unrealistic explanations. You expect to have unlimited rights and want the corporations to have none. I 100% agree that groups like the RIAA have gone way too far and need to be destroyed. I think that corporations have way too much control over the government and corruption is running rampant. However, I don't think that is the case with Blizzard in this instance or in bnetd. And I don't think this case will be abused in the future to do a single thing any of you tin foil hat folks are coming up with.
Hey, congratulations on making a whole post without hoping for my death. I think you are growing.
Oh, you play Eve. That explains the attitude about WoW.
Let me explain to you the point of an analogy. Analogies are used when something is difficult to understand. So if someone is having trouble understanding a complex quantum physics problem, someone might use an everyday example to simplify it. You are trying to explain something with an analogy that isn't hard to understand. And it is very easy to point out how your analogies are flawed since the problem is not one that requires an analogy.
Your argument is dumb because you are saying that everything that is more popular is worse than things that are less popular.
Innovation != good. Seriously, I don't see where this myth comes from. Some innovation can be fantastic and spawn a new genre. Most innovations are colossal failures that die a deserving death. So yeah, Blizzard isn't innovative in the field of MMOs. But their ability to polish everything is how they choose to be innovative. The game isn't dumbed down. The game decides to put the major challenge in the end game allowing leveling to be a more fun, casual process compared to its predecessors.
I played Eve awhile back. It is enjoyable at first but it falls short in so many aspects (mainly that it is nearly devoid of fun unless you PvP). The single player experience in Eve is one of the worst out there. One great thing about Eve is the leveling system. It is very cool that you can level stuff while not being online. But the level grind is replaced with the ISK grind. Unless you have a rich corp then can just buy you ships, you are going to be doing something horribly boring and repetitive. The fighting in the game is by far inferior to WoW. You click some orbit button, start shooting and jamming. PvP consists of either waiting outside of gates in a large group to gang rape some poor guy flying around. The large battles can be interesting but generally result in server problems where the side who comes out of lag first is the one that wins. Their refusal to have different shards means that they can't grow customers much more without causing horrible lag (the had around 30k when I was playing and the lag was awful in many areas and it took forever to get in on top of many crashes). Their devs are involved in the game and cheated on such a scale that one group will never be toppled since they were given such a huge advantage in information and ISK generation abilities.
But like I said, it is telling that you are an Eve player. I spent a lot of time in the Eve forums and came to realize that Eve players have some sort of penis envy of WoW players. They feel smaller since they have so few players so they have to make themselves feel better by telling themselves they are more intelligent or hardcore. The WoW forums is full of idiots and whiners, but at least they aren't constantly bashing Eve. Most probably don't even know it exists or cares.
But despite my hatred of Eve, I understand that some people find the risk in Eve fun. I think it is fine that you enjoy Eve and I have nothing against the people who enjoy playing Eve. I can't stand their attitude towards WoW, though, and have no problem bashing the people (and you) on Eve's forums who are like that. Stop telling other people what to play. Stop worrying that WoW has more players than you. And stop assuming that WoW appeals to only the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of intelligent, kind, and fun people who play that game. That is what Blizzard did, they built a game that can be enjoyed by all types of games rather than catering to a small niche (like Eve).
WoW has come out with one expansion so far that added a huge, huge amount of content. More than probably all the Eve upgrades combined. All those expansions add are a few new ships, some graphics, and new features like scrapping ships. That is equivalent to the free upgrades WoW puts out as well.
The reason why other companies fail is because they are not as good as WoW. The reason why Eve is small i
So now do we praise Sony for being smart enough to put Blu-Ray in their system?;) It is just interesting, maybe if it didn't have Blu-Ray it would have been able to sell for a lot cheaper and thus more people would have bought it. Then FF would have stayed exclusive. But I guess we could play what-ifs all day. But it is cool you are happy with the system despite the lack of game exclusives. Personally, I would have bought the PS3 for FF, so this saves me the expense so I am not complaining.
Like it or not, cd keys are a form of copy protection. People love to play multi-player and many people bought the game so that they could play on these servers. bnetd allowed people to circumvent this. It's very simple. Can you honestly say that shutting down bnetd didn't cause a lot of people who were pirating the game to go get a legitimate copy? If so, I imagine you would have no problem working for the Bush administration. cd keys for single player games can always be cracked. But you combine this with checks on their free online service and it is actually fairly effective. They know exactly what they are doing.
I don't think you understand what I mean. Let me spell it out for you. The fallout from something are the secondary effects. bnetd being shut down is a primary effect. So you are saying it is part of case law...what has been the fallout from that? Anything? Oh yeah, nothing happened because of it. So the crazy conspiracies you nut bags come up with never happened and thus a company that deserved to be shut down was.
What's that? They aren't circumventing copy protection? The PRIMARY reason for bnetd was to provide multi-player to people who did not want to pay for the game. Some people on this site, like yourself, have this strange ability to lose their ability to rationally think when the work copyright appears. You think Blizzard should allow a company other than themselves create software that allows people to not pay for their game. How is this reasonable? What do you do for a living? How would you like it if whatever you created or service you provided was given away? Would you enjoy watching all the people use what you have put your blood and sweat in to without paying you a dime? If you had investors in your company, do you think they would be fine with this? I mean, come on. If you guys aren't going to be reasonable about allowing companies protect their work, then people aren't going to make games anymore. Blizzard is one of the few studios left that make decent games. Let them try to protect their games. When they actually shut down something legitimate or go crazy (e.g. RIAA), then get up in arms. If you can't have a rational discussion about it, people are just never going to listen to you. You have to know what battles to fight.
So you preface your argument by stating that I should die. Classy. Love for you to say that to people to your face when you have a debate with them.
Your interpretation of what the law states is different than the interpretation of the judge and what many other people have already stated in other highly moderated posts. Basically, it is protecting software from being used in ways that it is not intended. Why is this important? Because another company is manipulating their software which damages their ability to do business. That's really at the heart of what is going on. You are freaking out over something that will not do anything that will directly effect you (unless you run WoW bots).
I can go on and elaborate but I find it hard to even bother to reply. I find you to be a very sad little person. I really hope you grow up and don't want people to die for having a differing opinion. Really, whatever evil you imagine will come from what Blizzard did, what you just said was thousands of times worse.
I got a 360 since it had more games that interested me. I figured I would get a PS3 once FF came out. Now, Sony won't get my money. I wonder how many other people feel the same.
I am betting each console will have exclusive content. That may lure some people, but not me. I'll be just fine missing out on a small part of the game and just play it on the 360.
I feel a bit bad for Sony, though. I want all the consoles to be successful to keep competition high and prices down. This is really going to hurt them in the NA markets. Then again, with how weak the dollar is, we may not be the market the world cares as much about now.
Congratulations. Your main purpose for buying your game console was to not play games on it. So now I guess it is a good thing Sony pushed Blu-Ray on this console. If they didn't, there would be almost no reason to buy it. (This sounds harsh, but it just seems like people are desperate to justify dropping all that money on the PS3 now)
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You're lucky! Mine got my girl friend pregnant when I went out of town. On the plus side, I'll get a bunch of Ipod nanos in 9 months.
Well, any measure you are going to use is going to be arbitrary and easy to criticize. Really, the thing is over when we declare it a victory and pull out (whether or not victory occurred, as long as we declare it to make the populace feel good - victory is as arbitrary as success). The supposed reason we are still in there though is to give the new government security until we can get out. That is why I selected that as a measure for success. Oh, also fighting terrorism, but that is just as impossible to measure. Just because troops aren't dieing in Iraq doesn't mean that it isn't growing somewhere else and just sitting back and trying to solidify power in some other reason.
I guess what I am trying to say is every measure that they give us of success is a load of crap. I just think we need to stop spending so much money on war and get people home so that if a legitimate threat pops up, we actually have the military to handle that. Right now the "war" is just a political game which I find fairly pathetic.
Great link! That was just forwarded out to all my friends. But my question is, wouldn't a flip flop mean that you changed your view, and then changed them back? I think people are just flipping their views...not so much flopping!
Thank you so much for saying that. I agree so much. Why is the only measure of success how many soldiers are dieing? What kind of stupid measure is that? My measure would be how quickly we can get security in place so we can get the hell out of there.
So a group of people who were brought in to this country as slaves, then fought for freedom, then battled severe racism is finally seeing someone who is half their race actually have a shot at the presidency. I an not voting for a person on that, but if you don't see how that is significant growth for our country, then I fail to see how you have any sort of sophistication about you. Yes, if people are just voting for him based on his race, they are stupid. But you can't deny that what he has done is impressive considering there still exists so much racism in this country.
And no one tried to threaten us with weapons of mass destruction. Well, North Korea did but they would be tough to fight so we chose diplomacy. Iraq didn't and we chose to blow them up for--well, no one really knows what the heck was going through Bush/Cheny's minds but it wasn't in America's interest, that's for damn sure.
I agree that the US needs a president for the US. We also need to understand that are actions effect and influence the whole world. Being an isolationist or an arrogant prick on the world stage isn't in our own best interest. So it isn't so unreasonable to want someone who is decent in foreign relations.
Basically, you just wanted to point by point tear this guy apart rather than actually think about what he wrote and how it makes sense. Yeah, he went too far on some parts but he had good points on others that you seem extremely ignorant about. But you said you were impressed with having a candidate just because he was libertarian so +5 insightful.
Those are just statistic numbers. It is pretty easy for a billionaire to pay the same amount of taxes as thousands and thousands of people who are in poverty. The thing is, once they pay all those taxes they are still billionaire and the other people are still starving. I don't know why people don't get this.
Do not feel sorry for the rich. The rich in this nation have CPAs that figure out how they can pay the minimum amount of taxes. They find loopholes so billionaires can claim losses on their taxes and thus not pay their "fair" share. Do the poor or lower middle class have people doing this for them?
So yeah, it sounds dramatic when you say 5% pay half of the taxes. But why is this surprising where 5% of the people have 70% of the US's total wealth? Freaking think.
Umm, sorry, but you do realize how skewed what you just said was. Democrats don't vary from Republicans on drugs, prostitution, and have to be Christians to become president. Democrats don't oppose guns, but they do want rational gun laws. Socialism is looked down upon a lot (understandably considering the inefficiency of government). But we don't complain about having to pay for public education, police, or fire crews. We just don't like socialism in things we don't already have socialized.
But if that post was to prove how un-Republican you are, it really failed. You sure spin stuff like one. I really don't care if you are one or not, just if you wonder why people think you are one, look at what you write.
Voting for third parties is how we ended up in the mess we are in now. No, I don't think we can afford to put Bush v2 in to office. But then again, I wouldn't vote for Ron Paul (or a Libertarian candidate) anyways. While I think Ron Paul is right on a lot of things and I am extremely impressed with the way he votes against his own pay raises, I still think they are too far from center to ever be elected. They just come off as too extreme to the general populace and that is why the third party candidates won't gain traction. They are no willing to move towards the center.
In any case, I can't stand the thought of the Republicans holding office again. I sincerely hope most people agree and understand that the only way that he isn't is by voting for Obama. I'm sorry, no third party candidate has a shot in hell this time no matter how much you like them or wish things were different.
You don't need to emphasize random words to get your point across.
Umm, you are aware that it is trivially easy to defeat CD checks on install, right? That is essentially no different than what they did assuming most people are going to want to try multiplayer. So you thought THAT was copy protection. Wow, man. That is kinda messed up but now I understand why you say that. To me "copy protection" is whatever method a company uses to protect themselves from pirated copies. The way they chose to do this was through the multi-player. People would be forced to buy the game if they wanted to play multiplayer, thus protecting themselves from pirated copies. So part of this is that we have a different concept of what copy protection is. I think mine is the correct definition, but at least I know where you are coming from.
So now you are telling me what Blizzard was feeling and their intentions which you can't honestly say you have any idea about. You think the big corporate heads were all concerned about control rather than piracy. Really. Listen, companies are out there to make money. When people don't pay for their game, they don't make money. bnetd allowed people to play their game and bypass their copy protection scheme thus not paying them. You see, when your copy protection scheme revolves around people needing to log in to battle.net, you can't let something like bnetd exist and actually be doing due diligence to your investors. Does that make any sense now? When you think of battle.net as their form of copy protection doesn't it make sense that they would try to stop bnetd?
Your wish for my non-existence is a failure within yourself for not being able to form an argument that can persuade someone as open minded as me to your side. You wish to suppress my freedom of speech which is ironic since your argument on why you would protect Glider has a rough relation. In other words, you are a hypocrite.
The problem, which you continue to fail to address, is that Glider is profiting from damaging Blizzard's service. Glider is using a hack (i.e. sand boxing WoW's Warden anti-cheating tool) to circumvent the ToS. That is what I mean by hack. How in the world have I been misinterpreting Glider's usage?
I understand what you are saying conceptually. You are a firm believer in individual rights and are upset when the government takes those rights away. I simply don't think that any rights of yours are actually being taken away (or will be taken away) and this is bringing down an illegitimate company which was most likely the intention of the law. I am sure if Blizzard was a company you owned and someone was doing this to you, you would feel differently. Since you probably don't contribute anything to society that can be harmed in this way, you have some sort of inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. You have fallen in to the trap that everything is black and white and can't see that there are shades of gray.
Ooh, yeah, that was FFX-2. I think that is the only FF game I never played all the way through. I don't think it was bad...I just couldn't really get in to it. Actually, I think what really stopped me was it had this completion gauge. I wanted to hit 100% completion the first time through and somehow missed something. It pissed me off so I just stopped playing. I really hate the whole multiple endings completion things with the exception of games like Disgaea.
To add what other people have mentioned...you really need to play the games when they came out. When 7 came out, the graphics were stunning and it really introduced a whole load of people to the RPG genre. Going back and playing it after isn't going to impress you as much. I am one of the weird ones that liked 8 a whole lot more than 7, but I liked 7 about the same as 6 which probably pisses off a whole huge mass of fanboys...be gentle with me.
Actually, I think he means "mature gamer" in the sense of people who are older with money end up buying all three systems. I would say the Wii appeals to a broad range of gamers and capitalizes on the casual gamer more than the other consoles as opposed to the mature gamer. The Wii appeals to the "immature" gamer as well, so I wouldn't say the Wii holds the mature audience captive. Actually, most of the 20/30 somethings I know have 360s and not Wiis. I know a girl who owns a Wii though...but she is immature and is going to vote for McCain. I won't hold that against Nintendo though :)
For me, the 360 had more exclusives that I wanted to play. Blue Dragon, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Halo, etc. If none of the exclusive games appeal to you, there is no reason to pick the 360 over the PS3.
This is purely anecdotal, but I have had no failures or scratched discs on my 360. Just make sure you don't move the thing when the disc is spinning inside of it and you should be fine.
I disagree. Nintendo went with cheap and innovative new controller. Innovative controller != gameplay. It allows some games to be fresh again, but gameplay is still up to the game and that can be done with any controller. Despite how many they have sold, very few games other than what Nintendo produces have been crap. Fortunately for the casual gamers, they only buy 1 or 2 games a year, they can just get the Nintendo releases. If it weren't for the controller and Wii Sports (and the price), I think they would have repeated the gamecube's performance as far as sales go. They still only have first party titles while third parties tend to not sell very well (despite the huge number of people who own the console). Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to put them down. I just think they gambled and lucked out this round. Saying their success is due to gameplay is just wrong. Nintendo first party titles had just as much gameplay value on the cube and that was a failure (yes yes, I know they made tons of profit but they were last worldwide in sales).
Yes, because playing on servers in another country makes it a much better user experience. Listen, I get it, hackers can always find a way around all but the most brutal copy protections. Blizzard just has to make it hard enough. Your "article" says nothing about how many subscribers were gained or lost during that time, just that there still exists a way for people to cheat.
Actually, if you think about it for a second, if bnetd is still alive and well, why is everyone so bitter? Obviously bnetd had to be shut down for long enough that people had to stop using it...so development must have stopped for a time otherwise they would have just kept on playing. I guarantee you that some people had to and did buy legitimate copies. How much, I don't know. But Blizzard has a right to protect itself. You are acting as if Blizzard was some girl who got raped and she should just accept it because she was dressed too slutty.
Wow, you have really gone off the deep end. I am going to break this down slowly for you because you don't seem to get it. I might be stating things you already know but I can't assume any that you have any logical premises.
Glider, or WoWGlider/MMOGlider, is a program that allows you to cheat. By cheat, I mean it will play a character in WoW without you have to be at your machine. This is, as you say, against Blizzard's ToS. This program isn't like a crow bar. A crow bar has both legal and illegal purposes. This program has one and only one purpose and that is to break Blizzard's ToS. What's worse is that they are doing this for profit.
Actually, we don't know if the person who created Glider is a cheater or not. He probably is since he would have to test his software between patches. In any case, that isn't the real thrust of the argument, is it? So what would you rather do, sue the people who are cheating or sue the people that are profiting off of enabling that cheating? They have a way to punish cheaters already, they ban their accounts. There is no need to sue them so that part of your argument is irrelevant. The problem with Glider is that is a tool expressly made to hack Blizzard's software. It is damaging to their customers because I am sure some people bought this not even knowing they are breaking the rules. Then they find they are banned. Only if you navigate to the FAQ page does it even start mentioning the risk involved in using this software.
Listen, I am all for people's individual rights to do what they want with the software they purchased. Hack the crap out of your single player starcraft III, that's great. But WoW's whole business is providing a service. Glider is damaging its business and reputation by allowing bots in to the game.
Just think if you created subscription based software. I wrote some code that hacked your software allowing people to do all kinds of things that you have expressly forbidden. It causes people to cancel their subscription because it ruins their experience with your software. Wouldn't you want to prevent me from distributing that software? Wouldn't you be mad I am profiting off of it while damaging your reputation with your customers?
Listen, if the result of this case allows other entities to "trample on the rights of everyone", I will be the first to admit my mistake. But it just isn't going to happen. Blizzard has every right to protect itself and an evil company will hopefully be shut down.
And again, WoW is a service based product, you do not own the service. If you do not appreciate that you can't hack their service, do not buy the game. You do not have the right to create software for the express purpose of damaging their service...that is just freaking common sense.
No one will ever listen to you seriously in the "real world" because you have unrealistic explanations. You expect to have unlimited rights and want the corporations to have none. I 100% agree that groups like the RIAA have gone way too far and need to be destroyed. I think that corporations have way too much control over the government and corruption is running rampant. However, I don't think that is the case with Blizzard in this instance or in bnetd. And I don't think this case will be abused in the future to do a single thing any of you tin foil hat folks are coming up with.
Hey, congratulations on making a whole post without hoping for my death. I think you are growing.
Oh, you play Eve. That explains the attitude about WoW.
Let me explain to you the point of an analogy. Analogies are used when something is difficult to understand. So if someone is having trouble understanding a complex quantum physics problem, someone might use an everyday example to simplify it. You are trying to explain something with an analogy that isn't hard to understand. And it is very easy to point out how your analogies are flawed since the problem is not one that requires an analogy.
Your argument is dumb because you are saying that everything that is more popular is worse than things that are less popular.
Innovation != good. Seriously, I don't see where this myth comes from. Some innovation can be fantastic and spawn a new genre. Most innovations are colossal failures that die a deserving death. So yeah, Blizzard isn't innovative in the field of MMOs. But their ability to polish everything is how they choose to be innovative. The game isn't dumbed down. The game decides to put the major challenge in the end game allowing leveling to be a more fun, casual process compared to its predecessors.
I played Eve awhile back. It is enjoyable at first but it falls short in so many aspects (mainly that it is nearly devoid of fun unless you PvP). The single player experience in Eve is one of the worst out there. One great thing about Eve is the leveling system. It is very cool that you can level stuff while not being online. But the level grind is replaced with the ISK grind. Unless you have a rich corp then can just buy you ships, you are going to be doing something horribly boring and repetitive. The fighting in the game is by far inferior to WoW. You click some orbit button, start shooting and jamming. PvP consists of either waiting outside of gates in a large group to gang rape some poor guy flying around. The large battles can be interesting but generally result in server problems where the side who comes out of lag first is the one that wins. Their refusal to have different shards means that they can't grow customers much more without causing horrible lag (the had around 30k when I was playing and the lag was awful in many areas and it took forever to get in on top of many crashes). Their devs are involved in the game and cheated on such a scale that one group will never be toppled since they were given such a huge advantage in information and ISK generation abilities.
But like I said, it is telling that you are an Eve player. I spent a lot of time in the Eve forums and came to realize that Eve players have some sort of penis envy of WoW players. They feel smaller since they have so few players so they have to make themselves feel better by telling themselves they are more intelligent or hardcore. The WoW forums is full of idiots and whiners, but at least they aren't constantly bashing Eve. Most probably don't even know it exists or cares.
But despite my hatred of Eve, I understand that some people find the risk in Eve fun. I think it is fine that you enjoy Eve and I have nothing against the people who enjoy playing Eve. I can't stand their attitude towards WoW, though, and have no problem bashing the people (and you) on Eve's forums who are like that. Stop telling other people what to play. Stop worrying that WoW has more players than you. And stop assuming that WoW appeals to only the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of intelligent, kind, and fun people who play that game. That is what Blizzard did, they built a game that can be enjoyed by all types of games rather than catering to a small niche (like Eve).
WoW has come out with one expansion so far that added a huge, huge amount of content. More than probably all the Eve upgrades combined. All those expansions add are a few new ships, some graphics, and new features like scrapping ships. That is equivalent to the free upgrades WoW puts out as well.
The reason why other companies fail is because they are not as good as WoW. The reason why Eve is small i
So now do we praise Sony for being smart enough to put Blu-Ray in their system? ;) It is just interesting, maybe if it didn't have Blu-Ray it would have been able to sell for a lot cheaper and thus more people would have bought it. Then FF would have stayed exclusive. But I guess we could play what-ifs all day. But it is cool you are happy with the system despite the lack of game exclusives. Personally, I would have bought the PS3 for FF, so this saves me the expense so I am not complaining.
Like it or not, cd keys are a form of copy protection. People love to play multi-player and many people bought the game so that they could play on these servers. bnetd allowed people to circumvent this. It's very simple. Can you honestly say that shutting down bnetd didn't cause a lot of people who were pirating the game to go get a legitimate copy? If so, I imagine you would have no problem working for the Bush administration. cd keys for single player games can always be cracked. But you combine this with checks on their free online service and it is actually fairly effective. They know exactly what they are doing.
I don't think you understand what I mean. Let me spell it out for you. The fallout from something are the secondary effects. bnetd being shut down is a primary effect. So you are saying it is part of case law...what has been the fallout from that? Anything? Oh yeah, nothing happened because of it. So the crazy conspiracies you nut bags come up with never happened and thus a company that deserved to be shut down was.
What's that? They aren't circumventing copy protection? The PRIMARY reason for bnetd was to provide multi-player to people who did not want to pay for the game. Some people on this site, like yourself, have this strange ability to lose their ability to rationally think when the work copyright appears. You think Blizzard should allow a company other than themselves create software that allows people to not pay for their game. How is this reasonable? What do you do for a living? How would you like it if whatever you created or service you provided was given away? Would you enjoy watching all the people use what you have put your blood and sweat in to without paying you a dime? If you had investors in your company, do you think they would be fine with this? I mean, come on. If you guys aren't going to be reasonable about allowing companies protect their work, then people aren't going to make games anymore. Blizzard is one of the few studios left that make decent games. Let them try to protect their games. When they actually shut down something legitimate or go crazy (e.g. RIAA), then get up in arms. If you can't have a rational discussion about it, people are just never going to listen to you. You have to know what battles to fight.
So you preface your argument by stating that I should die. Classy. Love for you to say that to people to your face when you have a debate with them.
Your interpretation of what the law states is different than the interpretation of the judge and what many other people have already stated in other highly moderated posts. Basically, it is protecting software from being used in ways that it is not intended. Why is this important? Because another company is manipulating their software which damages their ability to do business. That's really at the heart of what is going on. You are freaking out over something that will not do anything that will directly effect you (unless you run WoW bots).
I can go on and elaborate but I find it hard to even bother to reply. I find you to be a very sad little person. I really hope you grow up and don't want people to die for having a differing opinion. Really, whatever evil you imagine will come from what Blizzard did, what you just said was thousands of times worse.
I got a 360 since it had more games that interested me. I figured I would get a PS3 once FF came out. Now, Sony won't get my money. I wonder how many other people feel the same.
I am betting each console will have exclusive content. That may lure some people, but not me. I'll be just fine missing out on a small part of the game and just play it on the 360.
I feel a bit bad for Sony, though. I want all the consoles to be successful to keep competition high and prices down. This is really going to hurt them in the NA markets. Then again, with how weak the dollar is, we may not be the market the world cares as much about now.
Congratulations. Your main purpose for buying your game console was to not play games on it. So now I guess it is a good thing Sony pushed Blu-Ray on this console. If they didn't, there would be almost no reason to buy it. (This sounds harsh, but it just seems like people are desperate to justify dropping all that money on the PS3 now)