Critical thinking, the scientific method, problem solving skills, the confidence to question things, and an awe and curiosity about the world...
These are the things I would want to leave my child with. Along with love, of course, but from your post it is very clear you already have that covered.
Unfortunately for me, I come from a long line of people who like to drop dead from Cardiovascular Disease. So, I've taken a particular interest in the science behind prevention involving drugs, diet, and lifestyle.
When it comes to diet, to the best of my knowledge, there are only two long term scientific studies that have shown that diet can slow and even halt the progress of CVD. Those are research studies by Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn. The study by the latter actually showed that you could not only halt the progress of cardiovascular disease but also reverse it! Those are pretty incredible findings, as that is something that was not thought possible before.
Both of those studies involved strict plant based diets that avoid all animal proteins/fats and cholesterol. They also avoid a lot of other things, like sugars and refined carbs and processed foods, etc. So I suppose these incredible results could be from the omission of any of those things, or some combination of them, or all of them. But until they tease out of these studies exactly what was producing the results, in my opinion it is best to just follow them as is. Assuming, of course, you are worried about heart disease.
This claim: "So far studies of foragers like the Tsimane, Arctic Inuit, and Hadza have found that these peoples traditionally didn't develop high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, or cardiovascular disease."
Is based on studies that have been called into question recently. One researcher went so far as to call them "deeply flawed" and wondered if anyone had actually read the original studies.
"The 2014 study has found that Inuit do have similar rates of heart disease compared to non-Inuit populations, and that death rates due to stroke are "very high."
"Most of the researchers never read [the original 1970s] papers. They just took it at face value that what they said is so,"
Who decides when these "very specific circumstances" of yours have been met? Who gets to decide that? The south sure thought ending slavery was a circumstance worthy of a violent conflict. Do you agree with their decision?
I am guessing no, of course you don't.
In a civilized, mature, democracy... you fight your battles with debate and ideas and elections. Not intimidation, not violence.
What you are suggesting should be an option here is very similar to the situation we see happening in a country like Afghanistan. The majority of citizens in that country elected a government. But a group over there, you may have heard of them, they call themselves the Taliban, is in the political minority and has been unable to win influence through debate or elections. So in turn the Taliban believes it should use violence to overthrow that democratically elected government. Congratulations on sharing this vile, brutish opinion with the likes of them.
Of course the majority can be wrong. Here in America the majority has often been wrong. For example, the majority was wrong for a very long time about slavery. Eventually, via the democratic process of debate and ideas and elections, that majority opinion changed and we moved to get rid of it.
Then, the people who still supported slavery, and who suddenly found themselves in the minority, took up arms against that new majority... they called them tyrants and said they were infringing on their basic rights and used all the same hysterical language you read throughout these comments here... and it led to the worst bloodshed in our history.
See, that first sentence is an example of the way democracy is supposed to work. Ideas, debate, elections. That second sentence is an example of what people who spout this "take up arms" nonsense are supporting.
If you believe in violence as a means to a political end, instead of elections, then you clearly do not support democracy.
I am under no such delusion. In fact, where I live I am almost always in the political minority. However, that is what democracy is. Everyone votes. The majority rules.
If you don't like that system and think that you should be armed in order to protect yourself from it, then what you are saying is that you do not like the democratic system that our founders created and that is outlined in our Constitution.
In a democracy, violence and intimidation are not acceptable. If you lose an election, then your ideas were rejected by the people. You either need to work on convincing others that your ideas are right, or you need new ideas.
Enact this, and as a former serviceman who swore an oath, I am obligated to stop you at all costs.
The Constitution... that you swore an oath to uphold... has, built into it, a process for changing what is written within it. If you were to actually try to stop that process, you would indeed be violating your oath.
We are a stable, mature, modern democratic state. We have an operable court system and the rule of law. All of this - ALL of it - comes from us.
We elect people. They represent us. If we don't like the way they are representing us, we elect someone else.
That is how government works in a democracy.
So when you suggest that we need to be armed in order to protect ourselves against our government, what you are doing is suggesting possible violence against the people that WE elected. This line of thinking can be called a lot of things. But for sure, it is Anti-Democracy.
If you are in the minority and you are losing elections and you do not like the way those elected officials are governing... if you think arming yourself is the answer... then you clearly do not understand or support democracy.
Overthrowing, fighting against, or threatening a democratically elected government is not patriotic. It is not constitutional. And sure as heck is not what the founders envisioned.
They were worried about monarchies and kings. Not properly elected officials you happen to disagree with.
What may not be obvious, and I do not point this out in my article, is that this design is not under serious consideration at the moment. To the best of my knowledge, no one from the state or the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund has talked seriously with the Architect about his design... despite it winning 2 awards (one from a New Jersey architectural association, and one in New Hampshire) for best "unbuilt project". This lack of consideration, in and of itself, is a bit of an interesting story that I would love to explore if I had more time. Apparently a state senator also proposed a statue-esque replica (in copper, I believe) soon after the collapse and was similarly Tar and Feathered for his idea.
Further adding to the story is the fact that, again to my knowledge, there has been no economic study done to determine the impact (if any) the demise of this attraction and state symbol has had.
Anyway, the design that IS being considered, and I think may already have some funding, is a monument at the base of the mountain that involves several monoliths that when viewed at the right angle approximate the original Old Man. You can get more info at their site here: Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund
I'm honestly not sure how I personally feel about any of these ideas. I do sympathize with the local businesses who claim they are hurting in the wake of its collapse. Doing something to bring visitor dollars back isn't such a bad thing is it? And the geek in me can't help but get excited when I see plans for a project like the glass sculpture - I see that as much more Statue of Liberty-ish and Mt. Rushmore-ish in scope than that of just a statue or replica. It is cool, if you ask me. And I also do not buy into the "this was natural and so you can't replace it with something man made" argument all that much. As some have pointed out, the 'natural' Old Man was being held together by cables and epoxy for some time now.
But still, the outdoorsman and naturalist in me has hard time budging from my original conclusion about this area... It might just be time to move on. Fascinating issue regardless.
The way I handled this when I arrived as the first "IT Guy" at my company was to fight for and then implement a "From this point forward" policy. I explained to the executives what was going on, why it was bad, and why I thought going forward it needed to change.
That meant that I ignored what was already there. I know some might not feel comfortable doing this, but in my opinion the wrong had already been committed and I wasn't accomplishing a whole heck of a lot by shutting down operations to pull all of the software.
The other part of my plan was to fight for and justify an accelerated upgrade schedule. I argued for this based on the value of the new software, but in the back my head I knew the other benefit was that it would get rid of the illegal software faster.
This ended up being a win-win-win situation. I won because I didn't personally install illegal software. The company won because they didn't have to shut themselves down while it was sorted out. And the software vendors ended up winning in the end too because since then we have budgeted and purchased, and re-purchased, their products as new versions become available... something I can all but guarantee you we wouldn't have been in a position to do had I shut them down and forced them to go legal all in one blow. The company would have either folded, or fired me. And in both of those cases it would have meant no transition to legal software.
Now, that said. I was in a bit of a unique situation in that the company I worked for was a non-profit. And thus subject to non-profit discounts that they were unaware of. So the sticker shock when it came time to license new version of products was less than if we were a for profit. But all in all, I still look back at that experience as one of the most reasonable ways to take an organization from non-compliant to compliant.
Ignore the people who are over reacting here. A lawyer is not needed, and your CC company is also probably not needed. You just need to work this out with an real person, in real time, over the phone.
Email is a tough medium to use to try to resolve things like this.
You need to call them and get a straight answer, or get the contact information for people within the company who can give you a straight answer. Should take no more than 1 call.
I deal with Dell on a weekly basis and while misunderstandings and accidents happen, I rarely have problems.
If you are unable to call them from your location, have a friend or family member do it for you. I am more than confident that Dell will resolve something like this.
Re:Just treat them like folders, and they will be
on
Email-only Providers?
·
· Score: 1
We did try it. Our users hated it.
It was a year ago, so my memory is foggy, but one of the main issues with it was that in IMAP mode the folders did not sync in a recognizable way. There was no "inbox" with mail folders underneath it.
I want to say that gmail created its own gmail inbox within the folder structure and the 'labels' were within that. And that the gmail inbox was a catch all sort of thing. Could be off on that, my memory is foggy, but needless to say it was a departure from the norm and seemed to unnecessarily confuse some.
Until the label system can emulate folders exactly the way an email client already does there will be people who don't want to switch./shrug
The odd "labels" implementation is what has kept me away from gmail. This "label" system carries over into some funkiness with IMAP.
There are still some of us who prefer good ole fashioned email Folders.
What are considered the best corporate alternatives to Symantec's two largest products?
1. Symantec Corporate Antivirus
2. Backup Exec?
I'd love to free myself of this company and their insane licensing process and terrible support... but it is really all I have ever known. What other products do what they do at least as good as they do it?
I get a kick out of people who say that WoW is so ridiculously easy. I really hope you have a rank 14 pvp character, a character with a full set of T3 gear, and have led a guild through encounters in Naxx. Anything short of this and I call FUD on you.
What % of the user base do you even think has seen the inside of Naxx? What % of the user base would you consider top tier PvP players? If it were as easy as all of you old EQ elitists say that number should be pretty damn near 100... right? Well, let me tell you. I am a 33 year old gamer, a vet of EQ, UO and SWG... I ran a guild for casual people 25 years of age and older... and we had a HELL of a time just getting into BWL with our casual playstyle. It was hard, on par with anything I experienced in any of the other games I've played.
Sure, the learning curve is mild in WoW. It is easy to pick up and play and level to 60... but if you think that is all the game had to offer, you seriously missed out. There is more to a game's difficulty than corpse running, slow leveling, and torturous travel.
As for Vanguard, I Beta'd it through 3 and 4... it was a mess. But the bugs aside, the gameplay, character controls and game design decisions didn't fit me. And as a PvP'er the fact that this game is first and foremost a PvE game with PvP slapped on as an afterthought doesn't appeal to me.
Unfortuanetly until he can put it together in a game that is playable, all this will ever be is a good idea. I'll take WoW over SWG any day of the week and twice on Sundays simply because the game is more complete, more polished and more playable. There are no totally broken and useless classes (droid engineers? carbineer? wha?), there is actual content, and things just seem to work. Doing anything in SWG was a chore cause of the unfinished state of the game. The bugs were horrible and affected every single part of the game.
I've always said the ideal game would be to take Koster's theories and pair them up with a development team that could actually get stuff done... cause he doesnt seem to be able to manage that aspect of it on his own.
Of course not everyone thought the game sucked... just like not everyone thinks the changes sucked. You will always find a few people who are happy with anything. Out of my guild of 40 some people I recall one dude and his son who were really pleased with the state of the game. But they were more star wars fans than video game fans.
Anyway, I was very active in the community on my server and on both the official SWG forums and the stratics forums, and one thing was very very clear.... most people were not happy with that game pre-NGE. Everyone was crying out for changes to be made. The events that lead us to this news item stand on their own. This was a disaster of a game from day one.
People wax poetic about the pre-NGE days but they seem to forget that those changes came because the game was a mess and everyone was crying for a change. Just because the changes made the game worse, doesn't mean the game was good to begin with.
I like the idea of a reverse engineered MMORPG emulator from a geek point of view, but this game sucked no matter who hosts or controls it.
I won't go so far as to say that I will not come back as long as Sony has the license...
However, I will say this, the only way I will ever give this game another shot is if I hear that they have totally abandoned the current version and built a new one from scratch. This entire concept of slapping on change after change is just not working (and no except SONY ever thought it would). The problems run deeper than that - they need to admit defeat and start over. If they do, I'd give the new game a try, but nothing short of that will ever make me come back
For starters, on my Server, Rogues are NOT the most played class. In fact, they are not even in the top 3.
So stop making generalizations about the entire game bassed on your experience on one server.
Next, complete stun lock is a myth. It just doesn't happen the way the Nerf Rogue crowd would have you believe. Stun lock is a method of keeping your opponent stunned so you can build up combo points and get off your big damage move. Stun lock ONLY happens if the Rogue gets off the first hit, and is only successful in a one on one environment because any other damage to stunned player will break the key stun in the combo. Even IF the rogue executes his perfect stun lock combo... a player of equal level will not be dead. And of course let us recognize that many classes have stun lock counters... such as the mage Blink.
Last, The reason Rogues do not get invited to end content is not because there are so many of them. It is because they are absolutely useless end game. This is readon I ditched mine - a leather wearing aggro whore is not a fun character to be running around with when mobs hit you for 1k damage. (about 1 fourth of a good rogues health)
So please, back off the rogues.... if a lot of people are playing them it is because they are fun to level, and they are relatively easy to play. A poorly played rogue will beat almost any other poorly played class. But with two evenly skilled players at level 50+, a Rogue is almost ALWAYS at a disadvantage.
If you think a Rogues are godly in WoW you have either never played on to 60, or you simply dont know howto play your current character.
Population affets things such as waiting times, and city and auction house lag... it has nothing to do with the uptime problems of late, or the bugs that brought us down from the recent patch.
I am on a low population server - and was not able to play at all last night. I will also be affected - as will all of us - by the ill concieved "compensation" downtime that will hit us on the 31st.
This is not just a High Population vs Low Population issue.
I spent a year playing SWG afer launch. It went from ok, to bad, to unplayable faster than anything I have ever witnessed before.
The affect that hologrinding had on that game, and how bad the combat system was initially planned out, was truly stunning.
WoW is a superior game in almost every aspect, save for maybe crafting. SWG does have a well thought out and complex crafting system.
But the problem with WoW is that they so woefully underplanned their capacity, that it is basically a 6 day a week game right now. They just can not keep their servers up. 2 hour maintenance windows turn into 24 hour down times.
Players are at their breaking point with WoW it seems. What good is a great game when you cant log in to play?
I will be closely watching SWG and this upgrade, if it looks remotely interesting and if WoW is still having troubles... I'm switching back.
I've had zero uptime complaints with WoW. I can not remember a time when I wanted to play and it was unavailable for an extended period of time.
This is most likely a product of luck, the server I am on, and the time I play.... but in the first 6 months of SWG, I had plenty of uptime complaints. None with WoW
Fortunately for me, all of my issues with the game are minor and almost always surface issues.
If they are smart business people, this is exactly what they have been doing. WoW is superior to their product in every way shape and form and the market shares show it... they need to fire the people who led them astray, can the devs who still cant fox the simple annoying bugs that drive people to quite, and re-adjust the game so that it is FUN.
They had the vehicle to make a smash hit of a game (Star Wars) and they blew it.... big time.
Slashdot Mirror
Critical thinking, the scientific method, problem solving skills, the confidence to question things, and an awe and curiosity about the world...
These are the things I would want to leave my child with. Along with love, of course, but from your post it is very clear you already have that covered.
Unfortunately for me, I come from a long line of people who like to drop dead from Cardiovascular Disease. So, I've taken a particular interest in the science behind prevention involving drugs, diet, and lifestyle.
When it comes to diet, to the best of my knowledge, there are only two long term scientific studies that have shown that diet can slow and even halt the progress of CVD. Those are research studies by Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn. The study by the latter actually showed that you could not only halt the progress of cardiovascular disease but also reverse it! Those are pretty incredible findings, as that is something that was not thought possible before.
Both of those studies involved strict plant based diets that avoid all animal proteins/fats and cholesterol. They also avoid a lot of other things, like sugars and refined carbs and processed foods, etc. So I suppose these incredible results could be from the omission of any of those things, or some combination of them, or all of them. But until they tease out of these studies exactly what was producing the results, in my opinion it is best to just follow them as is. Assuming, of course, you are worried about heart disease.
This claim: "So far studies of foragers like the Tsimane, Arctic Inuit, and Hadza have found that these peoples traditionally didn't develop high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, or cardiovascular disease."
Is based on studies that have been called into question recently. One researcher went so far as to call them "deeply flawed" and wondered if anyone had actually read the original studies.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
"The 2014 study has found that Inuit do have similar rates of heart disease compared to non-Inuit populations, and that death rates due to stroke are "very high." "Most of the researchers never read [the original 1970s] papers. They just took it at face value that what they said is so,"
Who decides when these "very specific circumstances" of yours have been met? Who gets to decide that? The south sure thought ending slavery was a circumstance worthy of a violent conflict. Do you agree with their decision?
I am guessing no, of course you don't.
In a civilized, mature, democracy... you fight your battles with debate and ideas and elections. Not intimidation, not violence.
What you are suggesting should be an option here is very similar to the situation we see happening in a country like Afghanistan. The majority of citizens in that country elected a government. But a group over there, you may have heard of them, they call themselves the Taliban, is in the political minority and has been unable to win influence through debate or elections. So in turn the Taliban believes it should use violence to overthrow that democratically elected government. Congratulations on sharing this vile, brutish opinion with the likes of them.
Of course the majority can be wrong. Here in America the majority has often been wrong. For example, the majority was wrong for a very long time about slavery. Eventually, via the democratic process of debate and ideas and elections, that majority opinion changed and we moved to get rid of it.
Then, the people who still supported slavery, and who suddenly found themselves in the minority, took up arms against that new majority... they called them tyrants and said they were infringing on their basic rights and used all the same hysterical language you read throughout these comments here... and it led to the worst bloodshed in our history.
See, that first sentence is an example of the way democracy is supposed to work. Ideas, debate, elections. That second sentence is an example of what people who spout this "take up arms" nonsense are supporting.
If you believe in violence as a means to a political end, instead of elections, then you clearly do not support democracy.
I am under no such delusion. In fact, where I live I am almost always in the political minority. However, that is what democracy is. Everyone votes. The majority rules.
If you don't like that system and think that you should be armed in order to protect yourself from it, then what you are saying is that you do not like the democratic system that our founders created and that is outlined in our Constitution.
In a democracy, violence and intimidation are not acceptable. If you lose an election, then your ideas were rejected by the people. You either need to work on convincing others that your ideas are right, or you need new ideas.
Enact this, and as a former serviceman who swore an oath, I am obligated to stop you at all costs.
The Constitution... that you swore an oath to uphold... has, built into it, a process for changing what is written within it. If you were to actually try to stop that process, you would indeed be violating your oath.
We are a stable, mature, modern democratic state. We have an operable court system and the rule of law. All of this - ALL of it - comes from us.
We elect people. They represent us. If we don't like the way they are representing us, we elect someone else.
That is how government works in a democracy.
So when you suggest that we need to be armed in order to protect ourselves against our government, what you are doing is suggesting possible violence against the people that WE elected. This line of thinking can be called a lot of things. But for sure, it is Anti-Democracy.
If you are in the minority and you are losing elections and you do not like the way those elected officials are governing... if you think arming yourself is the answer... then you clearly do not understand or support democracy.
Overthrowing, fighting against, or threatening a democratically elected government is not patriotic. It is not constitutional. And sure as heck is not what the founders envisioned.
They were worried about monarchies and kings. Not properly elected officials you happen to disagree with.
What may not be obvious, and I do not point this out in my article, is that this design is not under serious consideration at the moment. To the best of my knowledge, no one from the state or the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund has talked seriously with the Architect about his design... despite it winning 2 awards (one from a New Jersey architectural association, and one in New Hampshire) for best "unbuilt project". This lack of consideration, in and of itself, is a bit of an interesting story that I would love to explore if I had more time. Apparently a state senator also proposed a statue-esque replica (in copper, I believe) soon after the collapse and was similarly Tar and Feathered for his idea.
Further adding to the story is the fact that, again to my knowledge, there has been no economic study done to determine the impact (if any) the demise of this attraction and state symbol has had.
Anyway, the design that IS being considered, and I think may already have some funding, is a monument at the base of the mountain that involves several monoliths that when viewed at the right angle approximate the original Old Man. You can get more info at their site here: Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund
I'm honestly not sure how I personally feel about any of these ideas. I do sympathize with the local businesses who claim they are hurting in the wake of its collapse. Doing something to bring visitor dollars back isn't such a bad thing is it? And the geek in me can't help but get excited when I see plans for a project like the glass sculpture - I see that as much more Statue of Liberty-ish and Mt. Rushmore-ish in scope than that of just a statue or replica. It is cool, if you ask me. And I also do not buy into the "this was natural and so you can't replace it with something man made" argument all that much. As some have pointed out, the 'natural' Old Man was being held together by cables and epoxy for some time now.
But still, the outdoorsman and naturalist in me has hard time budging from my original conclusion about this area... It might just be time to move on. Fascinating issue regardless.
The way I handled this when I arrived as the first "IT Guy" at my company was to fight for and then implement a "From this point forward" policy. I explained to the executives what was going on, why it was bad, and why I thought going forward it needed to change.
That meant that I ignored what was already there. I know some might not feel comfortable doing this, but in my opinion the wrong had already been committed and I wasn't accomplishing a whole heck of a lot by shutting down operations to pull all of the software.
The other part of my plan was to fight for and justify an accelerated upgrade schedule. I argued for this based on the value of the new software, but in the back my head I knew the other benefit was that it would get rid of the illegal software faster.
This ended up being a win-win-win situation. I won because I didn't personally install illegal software. The company won because they didn't have to shut themselves down while it was sorted out. And the software vendors ended up winning in the end too because since then we have budgeted and purchased, and re-purchased, their products as new versions become available... something I can all but guarantee you we wouldn't have been in a position to do had I shut them down and forced them to go legal all in one blow. The company would have either folded, or fired me. And in both of those cases it would have meant no transition to legal software.
Now, that said. I was in a bit of a unique situation in that the company I worked for was a non-profit. And thus subject to non-profit discounts that they were unaware of. So the sticker shock when it came time to license new version of products was less than if we were a for profit. But all in all, I still look back at that experience as one of the most reasonable ways to take an organization from non-compliant to compliant.
I'd like to see this debunking... can you point me toward any evidence of it?
Ignore the people who are over reacting here. A lawyer is not needed, and your CC company is also probably not needed. You just need to work this out with an real person, in real time, over the phone.
Email is a tough medium to use to try to resolve things like this.
You need to call them and get a straight answer, or get the contact information for people within the company who can give you a straight answer. Should take no more than 1 call.
I deal with Dell on a weekly basis and while misunderstandings and accidents happen, I rarely have problems.
If you are unable to call them from your location, have a friend or family member do it for you. I am more than confident that Dell will resolve something like this.
We did try it. Our users hated it.
It was a year ago, so my memory is foggy, but one of the main issues with it was that in IMAP mode the folders did not sync in a recognizable way. There was no "inbox" with mail folders underneath it.
I want to say that gmail created its own gmail inbox within the folder structure and the 'labels' were within that. And that the gmail inbox was a catch all sort of thing. Could be off on that, my memory is foggy, but needless to say it was a departure from the norm and seemed to unnecessarily confuse some.
Until the label system can emulate folders exactly the way an email client already does there will be people who don't want to switch. /shrug
The odd "labels" implementation is what has kept me away from gmail. This "label" system carries over into some funkiness with IMAP. There are still some of us who prefer good ole fashioned email Folders.
What are considered the best corporate alternatives to Symantec's two largest products?
1. Symantec Corporate Antivirus
2. Backup Exec?
I'd love to free myself of this company and their insane licensing process and terrible support... but it is really all I have ever known. What other products do what they do at least as good as they do it?
I get a kick out of people who say that WoW is so ridiculously easy. I really hope you have a rank 14 pvp character, a character with a full set of T3 gear, and have led a guild through encounters in Naxx. Anything short of this and I call FUD on you.
What % of the user base do you even think has seen the inside of Naxx? What % of the user base would you consider top tier PvP players? If it were as easy as all of you old EQ elitists say that number should be pretty damn near 100... right? Well, let me tell you. I am a 33 year old gamer, a vet of EQ, UO and SWG... I ran a guild for casual people 25 years of age and older... and we had a HELL of a time just getting into BWL with our casual playstyle. It was hard, on par with anything I experienced in any of the other games I've played.
Sure, the learning curve is mild in WoW. It is easy to pick up and play and level to 60... but if you think that is all the game had to offer, you seriously missed out. There is more to a game's difficulty than corpse running, slow leveling, and torturous travel.
As for Vanguard, I Beta'd it through 3 and 4... it was a mess. But the bugs aside, the gameplay, character controls and game design decisions didn't fit me. And as a PvP'er the fact that this game is first and foremost a PvE game with PvP slapped on as an afterthought doesn't appeal to me.
So would I.... in concept.
Unfortuanetly until he can put it together in a game that is playable, all this will ever be is a good idea. I'll take WoW over SWG any day of the week and twice on Sundays simply because the game is more complete, more polished and more playable. There are no totally broken and useless classes (droid engineers? carbineer? wha?), there is actual content, and things just seem to work. Doing anything in SWG was a chore cause of the unfinished state of the game. The bugs were horrible and affected every single part of the game.
I've always said the ideal game would be to take Koster's theories and pair them up with a development team that could actually get stuff done... cause he doesnt seem to be able to manage that aspect of it on his own.
Of course not everyone thought the game sucked... just like not everyone thinks the changes sucked. You will always find a few people who are happy with anything. Out of my guild of 40 some people I recall one dude and his son who were really pleased with the state of the game. But they were more star wars fans than video game fans.
Anyway, I was very active in the community on my server and on both the official SWG forums and the stratics forums, and one thing was very very clear.... most people were not happy with that game pre-NGE. Everyone was crying out for changes to be made. The events that lead us to this news item stand on their own. This was a disaster of a game from day one.
The original game sucked too.
People wax poetic about the pre-NGE days but they seem to forget that those changes came because the game was a mess and everyone was crying for a change. Just because the changes made the game worse, doesn't mean the game was good to begin with.
I like the idea of a reverse engineered MMORPG emulator from a geek point of view, but this game sucked no matter who hosts or controls it.
I won't go so far as to say that I will not come back as long as Sony has the license...
However, I will say this, the only way I will ever give this game another shot is if I hear that they have totally abandoned the current version and built a new one from scratch. This entire concept of slapping on change after change is just not working (and no except SONY ever thought it would). The problems run deeper than that - they need to admit defeat and start over. If they do, I'd give the new game a try, but nothing short of that will ever make me come back
For starters, on my Server, Rogues are NOT the most played class. In fact, they are not even in the top 3. So stop making generalizations about the entire game bassed on your experience on one server. Next, complete stun lock is a myth. It just doesn't happen the way the Nerf Rogue crowd would have you believe. Stun lock is a method of keeping your opponent stunned so you can build up combo points and get off your big damage move. Stun lock ONLY happens if the Rogue gets off the first hit, and is only successful in a one on one environment because any other damage to stunned player will break the key stun in the combo. Even IF the rogue executes his perfect stun lock combo... a player of equal level will not be dead. And of course let us recognize that many classes have stun lock counters... such as the mage Blink. Last, The reason Rogues do not get invited to end content is not because there are so many of them. It is because they are absolutely useless end game. This is readon I ditched mine - a leather wearing aggro whore is not a fun character to be running around with when mobs hit you for 1k damage. (about 1 fourth of a good rogues health) So please, back off the rogues.... if a lot of people are playing them it is because they are fun to level, and they are relatively easy to play. A poorly played rogue will beat almost any other poorly played class. But with two evenly skilled players at level 50+, a Rogue is almost ALWAYS at a disadvantage. If you think a Rogues are godly in WoW you have either never played on to 60, or you simply dont know howto play your current character.
Population affets things such as waiting times, and city and auction house lag... it has nothing to do with the uptime problems of late, or the bugs that brought us down from the recent patch.
I am on a low population server - and was not able to play at all last night. I will also be affected - as will all of us - by the ill concieved "compensation" downtime that will hit us on the 31st.
This is not just a High Population vs Low Population issue.
I spent a year playing SWG afer launch. It went from ok, to bad, to unplayable faster than anything I have ever witnessed before. The affect that hologrinding had on that game, and how bad the combat system was initially planned out, was truly stunning. WoW is a superior game in almost every aspect, save for maybe crafting. SWG does have a well thought out and complex crafting system. But the problem with WoW is that they so woefully underplanned their capacity, that it is basically a 6 day a week game right now. They just can not keep their servers up. 2 hour maintenance windows turn into 24 hour down times. Players are at their breaking point with WoW it seems. What good is a great game when you cant log in to play? I will be closely watching SWG and this upgrade, if it looks remotely interesting and if WoW is still having troubles... I'm switching back.
This is most likely a product of luck, the server I am on, and the time I play.... but in the first 6 months of SWG, I had plenty of uptime complaints. None with WoW
Fortunately for me, all of my issues with the game are minor and almost always surface issues.
They had the vehicle to make a smash hit of a game (Star Wars) and they blew it.... big time.