Have you actually played the game? (I haven't either - yet)
I would highly doubt that their business model is simply focused on having players buy +5 swords of vorpal disembowelment so that they can esily triumph against the poor newb with a +1 dagger of dweebishness. I would guess (100% speculation here) that having a competitive "character" requires you to spend some cash and that having a versatile "character" requires spending more and having a "win 1000 ways character" requires even more cash outlay. I would imagine that all three types are still well balanced against each other.
Just like MTG - buying a competitive deck costs x$ and buying three different competitive decks costs 3*x$ and collecting every fricking card because you are a collectoholic costs 3000*x$
I dropped off the RIAA's radar 10years ago.
Here is the order of events:
1. Started buying used CDs only
2. Traded burned CDs with friends
3. Downloaded MP3s from websites/ftps
4. Downloaded MP3s from p2p services
5. Downloaded MP3s from torrents
6. Now I buy them from a russian website - why? Because the pricepoint is right.
Instead of voting for "representatives" who participate in the decision making process of where our tax priorities go, why not eliminate these middlemen and allow voting citizens to make those priorities themselves?
Yes, I know, god forbid we try to evolve our political system...
Trying to draw a parallel between Pearl Harbor and 9/11 is rediculous. Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack by a world superpower - reacting to that with force was the only thing we could have done. 9/11 was provoked by over 50 years of oil hungry meddling in the Middle East and was perpetrated by an underdog with box cutters. Our insane reaction to that - Iraq - is futile and counter productive.
ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY man. I was hoping that this article would be how they actually made the game and would illustrate their server architecture and netcode so the/. communtiy could rip it up.
Tonight, my guild will enter BlackWing Lair and spend 2hrs of lag-induced death resulting in huge repair bills. This Fri night lag has been going on for a year now and it still isn't fixed.
Bah - I'd pay much more for a better managed game!
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 1
Compared to the time I spend playing WoW -15$ a month makes it a damn cheap hobby. The level of service that Bizz provides is appalling. If someone comes along with a botique MMOG that provides a better level of service, the hardcore raiders/PVPers will jump to that and never look back at Blizz's sorry ass.
Your responses clearly indicate that you do not understand the basic level structure of WoW, which is, by far, the most popular MMOG out there. Being level 60 means nothing - you are defined by the quality of your gear, the best of which can only be obtained by long hours of raiding, which requires (relative to the game's parameters) a large degree of skill. When you inspect my level 60 rogue decked out in Tier1/2 epics, it doesn't matter if I paid a powerlevelling service to get there or not (I didn't). Certainly it would be lame for a newb to go buy a decked out char on ebay - no question that is problematic, but I have a level 60 char - I do not want to suffer through the levelling process again because I want to play a different character type. Powerlevlling has its place...
lol - I didn't buy the game because there was no way I could figure out if a 3rd person mode was included. So, now the question is: can you really play the game 100% of the way in 3rd person mode? Does anyone have experience with this?
This mod seems to imply that the game can be played in 3rd person? If thatr is true, I might actually check it out since I get headaches from playing FPS games, but I can play 3rd person with no ill effects. When the game came out I tried to figure out if there was a 3rd person mode, but it was not mentioned in any reviews or on the official website - all the screenshots are in 1st person so I assumed that was all you could do. Can some kind soul enlighten me? Is 3rd person mode just a gimmick and the game is only truly playable in 1st person?
You know the kind I am talking about - it would be fine if you could just pull it apart, but it is "welded" together. So you pull out a heavy duty utility knife 'cause not even a pocket knife will do it. Then you have to figure out where to pull your cut through this incredibly tough plastic - better hope you don't go through the manual cause it is hard to RTFM when it has been shredded. I can't tell you how many times I have come close to my nifty new mp3 player (or whatever) with the knife. After you have made one cut through this stuff, you try to pull it apart - it still won't budge, but you manage to slice your finger open on the now sharp plastic. With the blood dripping on your new toy, you make that second cut and squeeze it out and as you hold the bittersweet prize for your efforts you raise your blooded hands to the sky and scream "WHY THE FUCK DO THEY USE THIS SHIT???" Lucky for "them," the shiny new toy inside comforts your rage that might have made you litigious or postal and soon you are back on Amazon ordering some new toy oblious to the fack that it too will come packaged in that crap.
Has anyone made a hate website about this packaging?
How many times have I heard "honey get me that CD with that song on it - you know, the one that goes naa na naa naa naa - no, not the one that goes na naa naa na" - the fricking RIAA should be praising lyrics sites. They probably think that they can come up with some way to make money off a copycat site. Boy, I'll give them money for that - not.
(OK, so the preceeding was a bit of a fabrication to prove a point - my wife is a librarian and can find stuff better than I can and I buy my music fome a russian website to prove a point to the RIAA that all they need to do is hit a resonable price point)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/video/ps187 0/index.html (cisco.com)
Business travel is a major reason why we have so much air traffic. IMO, it is a huge waste of money/resources/time for all involved. I telecommute and, due to cost saving travel restrictions, haven't been on a plane for over a year - it has not affected my ability to do my job ONE BIT.
Of course, the majority of business travel is carting salespeople around and the only way to eliminate that nonsense is to change the way corporations buy stuff, but would it be so bad to eliminate the human salesperson from the process? We have done it effectively for consumer products, why not take it futher?
"A basic element of learning-teaching is the teacher, who just can't be replaced, the kids need far more than data, need also affection, support, guidance and motivation"
Oh yeah! I got so much of this in public school! I am 100% certain that someone will eventually come up with virtual teacher software that will replace all of k-12 learning and do a much better job than a human teacher dealing with 20-30 kids at once. I'd rather my kids get their fake "affection, support, guidance and motivation" from a computer than someone on salary to provide it.
"'You can't sit a child in front of a computer and expect him to learn things he needs to succeed in society"
So what?? There are plenty of other more appropriate arenas for kids to be socialized. Learning and Socialization are two different things - combining them IMO is a bad mistake.
Yes, I realize that allofmp3 is very greymarket and that the money I have spent with them (around 200$ in the last three months) is probably going to the Russian mafia, but I think that legal services should start looking at how much business they are doing. Every legal download service is a joke IMHO - no fricking way am I going to pay 1$ for a single poor quality MP3 song that has DRM crap to boot.
The bottom line is that I have the cash to spend on music and the desire to be experimental, but I am not going to pay the label's price - it is just not worth it. At Allofmp3.com, I pay between 1.50 - 2.50 for a full CD encoded with 192bps Lame VBR all properly tagged and with no DRM. I figure that 2$ is the right pricepoint for a slightly obscure band, and I would pay up to 4$ for a band with the quality of something like Radiohead.
I could get all of this music for free without too much hassle (I got a few FTP connections or I could always go the annoying P2P route), but why bother at these pricepoints. 2-4$ for a CD is the magic pricepoint and if the labels were selling DRM-free high quality MP3s for this price, they would be making twice as much money as they are now because people would be buying 10x as much music.
Instead, the labels don't want to accept the realities of a changing market - the solution to which, in America, is to seek legislative solutions.
What I really hope for is that the bands themselves will seek a legislative solution and dissolve all of their contracts with these fucked up labels and start their own non-profit collective "labels." I would sure rather be sending my 2$ to the band directly rather than the Russian mafia...
You are smoking crack if you think that fallout was solid - the first few patches invalidated your saved games - pretty much a hanging offense for any RPG... While the publishers might be at fault for pushing ToEE out early, the real fault lies with programmers who are unable to push out relatively- bugfree code in a committed timeframe.
I am a geek with six computers at home that I use for different purposes, most of them are obviously minor tasks (a few winamp only machines, a print/mp3 server and a machine that I use for testing an ASP site that I run on a work computer). I have the same copied version of Win2k installed on all but my main which has a legit version of XP.
If MS tries to force me into license compliance, I will suddenly have the extra motivation I need to figure out how switch all but my main over to Linux. Once I do this, I will have some degree of comfortableness with Linux (comfort being the main barrier to switching) and maybe I'll switch my work site over to Apache/PHP. And gee, we really don't need MS SQL server for the web site backend, I just went with it because it was comfortable and it wasn't my money. And on and on...
I was once consulting for a company had a need to do some 3d viz, I recommended they use 3D Studio Max. Why? Because I had been playing with a warez version and was comfortable with it.
So, the simple point is: warez in the hands of a geek = legit versions purchased by businesses that I interact with.
I keep talking about treatment of women, because that is one of my main measuresments for male maturity.
Whatever man - you and I both know that you "keep talking about the treatment of women" because you are a whimpy sand-in-the-face dude and being "sensitive ponytail guy" is your best hope of getting laid. The true mesurement of male maturity is simply not talking about women in this context at all. When little dudes go on about "bizitches and b00bs," you ignore them and do not participate in the discussion. Do you think that proselytizing makes you mature?
Blizzard (and every other fricking MMOG co) just needs to allow you to transfer chars from one server to another. There are so many fricking people like me who have no real attachment to the l33tspeaking population of our existing servers and there are plenty of people who want to switch to their friend's server. I am sure that the added "risks" of allowing this are minor compared to the bad PR from being down like this...
The downtime doesn't bother me - gives me time to play my almost 40 Katana/Regen scrapper on CoH...
I have been playing CoH since it came out and was eager to try WoW because I dig the fantasy genre more than generic comics and I want to be a badass sword wielding warrior type. I have to say that the combat feel of WoW is very boring and not very epic when compared to playing my Katana-wielding, Combat Jumping regen scrapper in CoH. CoH has a much better arcade feel. I also like the fact that I can take on packs of even-leveled badguys (actually, up to +4) and a boss - it just feels more epic. Going to warcraft from this just felt boring. Warcraft also has the graphic look and feel of a kiddie game. Beyond combat, CoH is lacking a lot of things, but these things will come eventually, as the devs have proven that they are willing to kick in well tested, free updates.
I sure wish I wouldn't have paid for a 6month WoW subscription...
Not talking about the MMOG mechanics here - all I care about is immersion. WoW seems like a game that my 5 year old would play on a gamecube. Not just the goofy look (Drow look like rabbits!!!), but also the controls and the general feel of the game. Blaa. Give me the costume customization of CoH. Give me the feeling that I am an epic character. Maybe I should try corpsequest 2?
Here they come
here come the bastards
Bury your head deep in the sand
Anonyminity is a virtue
in this day and age
Amazing hand dexterity
Flagrant misuse of security
Better run, run, run, run, run
Run Run Run Run, here they come.
I seem to remember that there was some watership down-ish PNP Bunny game from way back in the early days of D&D. Bunnis and Burrows? Anybody remember it or know of a modern incarnation?
Slashdot Mirror
Have you actually played the game? (I haven't either - yet) I would highly doubt that their business model is simply focused on having players buy +5 swords of vorpal disembowelment so that they can esily triumph against the poor newb with a +1 dagger of dweebishness. I would guess (100% speculation here) that having a competitive "character" requires you to spend some cash and that having a versatile "character" requires spending more and having a "win 1000 ways character" requires even more cash outlay. I would imagine that all three types are still well balanced against each other. Just like MTG - buying a competitive deck costs x$ and buying three different competitive decks costs 3*x$ and collecting every fricking card because you are a collectoholic costs 3000*x$
I dropped off the RIAA's radar 10years ago. Here is the order of events: 1. Started buying used CDs only 2. Traded burned CDs with friends 3. Downloaded MP3s from websites/ftps 4. Downloaded MP3s from p2p services 5. Downloaded MP3s from torrents 6. Now I buy them from a russian website - why? Because the pricepoint is right.
Instead of voting for "representatives" who participate in the decision making process of where our tax priorities go, why not eliminate these middlemen and allow voting citizens to make those priorities themselves?
Yes, I know, god forbid we try to evolve our political system...
Trying to draw a parallel between Pearl Harbor and 9/11 is rediculous. Pearl Harbor was an unprovoked attack by a world superpower - reacting to that with force was the only thing we could have done. 9/11 was provoked by over 50 years of oil hungry meddling in the Middle East and was perpetrated by an underdog with box cutters. Our insane reaction to that - Iraq - is futile and counter productive.
Why don't you go wave a flag or something?
ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY man. I was hoping that this article would be how they actually made the game and would illustrate their server architecture and netcode so the /. communtiy could rip it up.
Tonight, my guild will enter BlackWing Lair and spend 2hrs of lag-induced death resulting in huge repair bills. This Fri night lag has been going on for a year now and it still isn't fixed.
Compared to the time I spend playing WoW -15$ a month makes it a damn cheap hobby. The level of service that Bizz provides is appalling. If someone comes along with a botique MMOG that provides a better level of service, the hardcore raiders/PVPers will jump to that and never look back at Blizz's sorry ass.
Your responses clearly indicate that you do not understand the basic level structure of WoW, which is, by far, the most popular MMOG out there. Being level 60 means nothing - you are defined by the quality of your gear, the best of which can only be obtained by long hours of raiding, which requires (relative to the game's parameters) a large degree of skill. When you inspect my level 60 rogue decked out in Tier1/2 epics, it doesn't matter if I paid a powerlevelling service to get there or not (I didn't). Certainly it would be lame for a newb to go buy a decked out char on ebay - no question that is problematic, but I have a level 60 char - I do not want to suffer through the levelling process again because I want to play a different character type. Powerlevlling has its place...
lol - I didn't buy the game because there was no way I could figure out if a 3rd person mode was included. So, now the question is: can you really play the game 100% of the way in 3rd person mode? Does anyone have experience with this?
This mod seems to imply that the game can be played in 3rd person? If thatr is true, I might actually check it out since I get headaches from playing FPS games, but I can play 3rd person with no ill effects. When the game came out I tried to figure out if there was a 3rd person mode, but it was not mentioned in any reviews or on the official website - all the screenshots are in 1st person so I assumed that was all you could do. Can some kind soul enlighten me? Is 3rd person mode just a gimmick and the game is only truly playable in 1st person?
You know the kind I am talking about - it would be fine if you could just pull it apart, but it is "welded" together. So you pull out a heavy duty utility knife 'cause not even a pocket knife will do it. Then you have to figure out where to pull your cut through this incredibly tough plastic - better hope you don't go through the manual cause it is hard to RTFM when it has been shredded. I can't tell you how many times I have come close to my nifty new mp3 player (or whatever) with the knife. After you have made one cut through this stuff, you try to pull it apart - it still won't budge, but you manage to slice your finger open on the now sharp plastic. With the blood dripping on your new toy, you make that second cut and squeeze it out and as you hold the bittersweet prize for your efforts you raise your blooded hands to the sky and scream "WHY THE FUCK DO THEY USE THIS SHIT???" Lucky for "them," the shiny new toy inside comforts your rage that might have made you litigious or postal and soon you are back on Amazon ordering some new toy oblious to the fack that it too will come packaged in that crap.
Has anyone made a hate website about this packaging?
How many times have I heard "honey get me that CD with that song on it - you know, the one that goes naa na naa naa naa - no, not the one that goes na naa naa na" - the fricking RIAA should be praising lyrics sites. They probably think that they can come up with some way to make money off a copycat site. Boy, I'll give them money for that - not.
(OK, so the preceeding was a bit of a fabrication to prove a point - my wife is a librarian and can find stuff better than I can and I buy my music fome a russian website to prove a point to the RIAA that all they need to do is hit a resonable price point)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/video/ps187 0/index.html (cisco.com)
Business travel is a major reason why we have so much air traffic. IMO, it is a huge waste of money/resources/time for all involved. I telecommute and, due to cost saving travel restrictions, haven't been on a plane for over a year - it has not affected my ability to do my job ONE BIT.
Of course, the majority of business travel is carting salespeople around and the only way to eliminate that nonsense is to change the way corporations buy stuff, but would it be so bad to eliminate the human salesperson from the process? We have done it effectively for consumer products, why not take it futher?
"A basic element of learning-teaching is the teacher, who just can't be replaced, the kids need far more than data, need also affection, support, guidance and motivation" Oh yeah! I got so much of this in public school! I am 100% certain that someone will eventually come up with virtual teacher software that will replace all of k-12 learning and do a much better job than a human teacher dealing with 20-30 kids at once. I'd rather my kids get their fake "affection, support, guidance and motivation" from a computer than someone on salary to provide it.
"'You can't sit a child in front of a computer and expect him to learn things he needs to succeed in society" So what?? There are plenty of other more appropriate arenas for kids to be socialized. Learning and Socialization are two different things - combining them IMO is a bad mistake.
The bottom line is that I have the cash to spend on music and the desire to be experimental, but I am not going to pay the label's price - it is just not worth it. At Allofmp3.com, I pay between 1.50 - 2.50 for a full CD encoded with 192bps Lame VBR all properly tagged and with no DRM. I figure that 2$ is the right pricepoint for a slightly obscure band, and I would pay up to 4$ for a band with the quality of something like Radiohead.
I could get all of this music for free without too much hassle (I got a few FTP connections or I could always go the annoying P2P route), but why bother at these pricepoints. 2-4$ for a CD is the magic pricepoint and if the labels were selling DRM-free high quality MP3s for this price, they would be making twice as much money as they are now because people would be buying 10x as much music.
Instead, the labels don't want to accept the realities of a changing market - the solution to which, in America, is to seek legislative solutions.
What I really hope for is that the bands themselves will seek a legislative solution and dissolve all of their contracts with these fucked up labels and start their own non-profit collective "labels." I would sure rather be sending my 2$ to the band directly rather than the Russian mafia...
You are smoking crack if you think that fallout was solid - the first few patches invalidated your saved games - pretty much a hanging offense for any RPG...
While the publishers might be at fault for pushing ToEE out early, the real fault lies with programmers who are unable to push out relatively- bugfree code in a committed timeframe.
I am a geek with six computers at home that I use for different purposes, most of them are obviously minor tasks (a few winamp only machines, a print/mp3 server and a machine that I use for testing an ASP site that I run on a work computer). I have the same copied version of Win2k installed on all but my main which has a legit version of XP.
If MS tries to force me into license compliance, I will suddenly have the extra motivation I need to figure out how switch all but my main over to Linux. Once I do this, I will have some degree of comfortableness with Linux (comfort being the main barrier to switching) and maybe I'll switch my work site over to Apache/PHP. And gee, we really don't need MS SQL server for the web site backend, I just went with it because it was comfortable and it wasn't my money. And on and on...
I was once consulting for a company had a need to do some 3d viz, I recommended they use 3D Studio Max. Why? Because I had been playing with a warez version and was comfortable with it.
So, the simple point is: warez in the hands of a geek = legit versions purchased by businesses that I interact with.
How long will it take this game to be as big a flop as the last two movies in the trilogy were...
I keep talking about treatment of women, because that is one of my main measuresments for male maturity.
Whatever man - you and I both know that you "keep talking about the treatment of women" because you are a whimpy sand-in-the-face dude and being "sensitive ponytail guy" is your best hope of getting laid. The true mesurement of male maturity is simply not talking about women in this context at all. When little dudes go on about "bizitches and b00bs," you ignore them and do not participate in the discussion. Do you think that proselytizing makes you mature?
Unless it is a blatant lie, I think that it is pretty interesting...
Blizzard (and every other fricking MMOG co) just needs to allow you to transfer chars from one server to another. There are so many fricking people like me who have no real attachment to the l33tspeaking population of our existing servers and there are plenty of people who want to switch to their friend's server. I am sure that the added "risks" of allowing this are minor compared to the bad PR from being down like this... The downtime doesn't bother me - gives me time to play my almost 40 Katana/Regen scrapper on CoH...
I have been playing CoH since it came out and was eager to try WoW because I dig the fantasy genre more than generic comics and I want to be a badass sword wielding warrior type. I have to say that the combat feel of WoW is very boring and not very epic when compared to playing my Katana-wielding, Combat Jumping regen scrapper in CoH. CoH has a much better arcade feel. I also like the fact that I can take on packs of even-leveled badguys (actually, up to +4) and a boss - it just feels more epic. Going to warcraft from this just felt boring. Warcraft also has the graphic look and feel of a kiddie game. Beyond combat, CoH is lacking a lot of things, but these things will come eventually, as the devs have proven that they are willing to kick in well tested, free updates. I sure wish I wouldn't have paid for a 6month WoW subscription...
Not talking about the MMOG mechanics here - all I care about is immersion. WoW seems like a game that my 5 year old would play on a gamecube. Not just the goofy look (Drow look like rabbits!!!), but also the controls and the general feel of the game. Blaa. Give me the costume customization of CoH. Give me the feeling that I am an epic character. Maybe I should try corpsequest 2?
Here they come here come the bastards Bury your head deep in the sand Anonyminity is a virtue in this day and age Amazing hand dexterity Flagrant misuse of security Better run, run, run, run, run Run Run Run Run, here they come.
I seem to remember that there was some watership down-ish PNP Bunny game from way back in the early days of D&D. Bunnis and Burrows? Anybody remember it or know of a modern incarnation?