The market has a bit of a safety net against crashes now. Back in the 80's when the first crash hit, not that many people bought games, and due to hardware limitation, gameplay and fun were really the only reason to buy most games. It certainly wasn't for the beautiful graphics. Now, games regularly try (and succeed) to sell themselves purely on graphics, sometimes with nothing else going for them, so even a major dip in quality still yeilds games that sell.
Most importantly, though, a lot more people buy games than ever before. Losing 100 thousand customers when you have a million is deadly, but losing ten million when you have 100 million may mean a lot more dollars lost, but you've still got 90 million customers. The way the industry is now, it can afford to lose customers. That would be bad for gamers, and in the long run it may end up severely hurting the industry, if it happens the people in charge will be off sipping rum in Tahitti by the time we figure out what hit us.
Back when the battery life issue was bouncing around, somebody posted a link to an article (the same one where they basically said battery life was the developers' problem and not theirs) that said they were planning a second iteration of the PSP that would address battery and screen issues. Probably won't be a fully new system like the Ngage QD, just an internal change like they did with the set-top playstations.
They allowed it on th FDS, and it did appear on two SNES games that I know of (One was Japan-only release, the other was European-only), though I don't know if it was approved or not. There's one H game on the GBA as far as I know, and it was approved, and it was also a graphical update of an H game from the GBC.
Lastly, Sony has allowed pornographic content on their system. The PS1 and PS2 have both had several H releases, with pornographic content in non-pornographic games aside from that.
It's also got H rated games for it in Japan. Doubt any of them are comming to the US, though, the genre doesn't even register over here. A friend of mine who rarely talks about anything except the DS said that one of the dating sims for it will be released in the US this spring, but it's been censored down to a T rating, whereas the Japanese version was hardcore, behind-the-beaded-curtain-in-the-brown-wrapper-on- the-top-shelf material.
It's on the server that hosts advertisements, it's a 1x1 invisible placeholder. Apple most likely did not name it that, the ad people (Avenue A, atdmt.com) did.
Once, about three years ago, I noticed one of these images on my ISP's web page with a file name something like XXXLESBIANPORNROMGAYWAREZMP3NAPSTERDOWNLOADZ.gif. I didn't assume that SBC was going to get into the internet porn or fileswapping business, I assumed that an ad agency used a few key words for one reason or another.
The point they're trying to make in the article is NOT to ignore the problem. RTFA, mayhap? Meh, what was I thinking?
Anyway, the point they're trying to make is that the leading reason people who don't shop online give for not shoping online is that they're credit card will be stolen. Consumer's Power says that the reason few people use their online payment system is that they're afraid their credit cards will get stolen. The reason so many people say they won't use online banking is that - suprise suprise - their information will get stolen.
Those same people, however, have no compunction against handing their cards over to some random guy in a restaraunt and having it taken into another room and then brought back a couple minutes later. They don't think twice when the lady at the grocery store writes their driver's license number on the sheet with the check number. Doesn't worry them at all any time that the credit card is physically in another person's control during a transaction, and worst of all, they never even think that it might be a bad idea to throw away their bank statements.
The article is about perspective. You can do far more (and there is far more you SHOULD do) offline to protect your identity than you can and should do online.
Online: Don't fall for stupid phish scams. Offline: Write ASK FOR ID on the back of the card. Shred your statements. Don't use your credit card at restaraunts. Make sure your grocery store has one of the credit card scanners where YOU run it through the machine, and not the cashier.
Most of these come down to the whole thing where all the firewalls and encryption in the world is useless when somebody steals your computer. The weakest points are physical, not digital.
Fossils can't be carbon dated, as pointed out above. Only organic material can be carbon dated, and in fact, you DO know the starting point. All life on earth (while it's alive anyway) has a carbon-14 content within extremely narrow confines. Bacteria collected in the upper atmosphere, locked up in rocks two miles down, worms off the bottom of the ocean, or just skin scraped off some guy on the street has a c-14 content within narrower confines than could be tested until relatively recently. It's just about the only constant thing accross terestrial life. Dead material with the date of origin known to a high degree of certainty (murder vicims being the most common) show that once the cells have stopped functioning, the carbon level stays pretty much constant, but the c-14 level decreases as c-14 atoms decay into lower mass carbon atoms (c-12 IIRC).
Now, anyway, anything old enough to be fossilized is useless for carbon dating. There are a lot of other ways to date them, but carbon isn't used except by creationists, for reasons that will be obvious in a second. After a fairly short period of time (less than 100k years), the carbon-14 in the material effectively vanishes (there is still some, but it's unmeasureable). Anything older than that will date to the same age.
Fossiles are far older than that. There isn't even any organic material left in them, it's mineral. There are ways to date when the fossil formed based on the materials involved, there are a number of different procedures, and each one has a different resolution (both a maximum age and a +/- margin of error). I'm not an archeologist, so somebody else can cover those.
Anyway, as for this... you obviously didn't read the article. They can produce petrified wood in a few days, but that involves being bathed in acid under pressure and baked at over a thousand degrees in an argon-filled chamber.
Now, as for the flood deposits, books have been writtin on it. Flood deposits stay wet for a long time. The surface dries quickly, and usually collapses destroying the lower layers. It also sorts things very differently than natural rock layers and with a substantial amount of blending to the point that there's no real boundary between layers. Take a shovel and go dig in your back yard. Once your past the topsoil layer (which in most parts of the US is laid down to better support lawns, and not natural), you'll find a mottled material. There'll likely be a number of different colors, but try to lay down boundaries between them. There aren't any, because it's very well blended with a gradual change in density of one soil type or another. That's the sort of stuff that floods lay down.
It's also likely, depending on how much plant and animal life was in your area before it was developed, that it's been very well blended and you won't be able to find any distinctions. That's because flood deposits are unstable, and they shift under weight. They're also very rich soil that gets torn up by roots very quickly. You can see layers in my area, and see that they're very different than the geological column, because mid-Michigan was deforested in the mid 1800's, and my particular area was hit by a 1000-year flood shortly thereafter, and within a few months of the flood, foundations were being poured for the buildings that are here now, so the flood deposits are in generally good condition due to lack of old trees and large animals.
I don't find the ESRB ratings nearly as one-dimensional as movie ratings. Movies are G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC17/X. The best reason you ever get is, "this feature is not suitable for younger viewers."
Games have a slew of secondary ratings: Cartoon violence, fantasy violence, blood and gore, partial nudity, obscured nudity, drugs and alcohol, extreme violence, crude sexual references, graphic sexual content, slapstick violence, animated blood, realistic blood. And that's just looking down my CD rack, there are more.
Another thing that gets on my nerves (although not related to your post really) is that people complain that the ESRB doesn't have a PG-13 rating. It DOES. It's called T. PG-13 movies are suitable for teenage or older audiences. T games are suitable for - gasp - teenage or older audiences.
Thank god it wasn't my job. I was a player, not a dev. They asked me to be a GM once and a forum admin a couple other times, but I respectfully declined. I was too afraid I would go berzerk with madness and spawn thousands of demon spires in major cities.
I don't think it was ever intended to rehabilitate them. It was meant to keep them occupied. Sort of like how you give your dog toys so he doesn't chew your leg.
Did I mention I live in Saginaw? The prison out by the airport has a lower rate of violence than the schools. When I was in 8th grade, Heritage High School was closed for two weeks due to riot damage.
Learning is pretty cheap. My school district uses more uncertified teachers than certified. Their average salary is $22,000 a year, and each one either teaches an average of 35 students all subjects (elementary school), or around 350 students one subject (middle/high school).
Each student costs the district around $4000, however, most of this is textbooks, which are purchased at worse prices than prescription drugs, and are replaced far more often than they need it (Except for the computer books, which hadn't been replaced since 1985 when I graduated), and various other supplies (Science classes are most expensive, math and literiture following close behind due to calculators and additional books).
However, most of this can be cut out. Hard science? Drop it, it's expensive or because it could give convicts access to chemicals they could use as drugs (or worse, not use as drugs but try anyway) if that's the kind of politician you are. Math? Cut most of that, and teach them a business math class. They'll find far more use for it anyway. Literiture? Screw it, stick some books in the library and if they want to read, have at it.
Limit the classes to basic skills: Language, business math, computer use, communication. It's not a well rounded education, but it will give them a good shot at a far better life than most of them were in that got them in prison to begin with.
As for books, don't burn $200 per student on new books every year. Get throwaways from the local high school or university, and stock the library out of the public library's anual $1 book sale. By limiting the class offering to the above, most of those books will be good for as long as they last, and shouldn't need constant updating.
Learning's only expensive for students because they're taught just about everything, so they can do just about everything. Convicts are another matter. Just the fact that they're convicts alone is going to severely limit their job options, regardless of how they are personally. What they need is a targeted education with a narrow set of useful skills that will let them get decent jobs and even continue their education after they're released.
The newly open culture of male gay sex of the 70's was followed by the AIDS epidemic in the 80's
The first victim that HIV was identified in (in the US, the virus was known overseas well earlier) was gay, but he was not the first person with HIV in the US and certainly not in the world. It should be noted that it was actually spreading in the straight population FIRST, and jumped (probably by a bisexual victim) to the gay population. Studies in my college health course even suggested based on symptoms leading to "death by unknown cause" that AIDS may have first came to the US as early as the late 1950's, and almost definitely starting to spread in the early 70's, with no probable cases in the gay population until after 1980's. After the virus was identified, there were already people dying from it, who were then tested for the same virus. Lo and behold, they had it too, and had had it for a long time, it was just that the cause of their illness was unknown (some even believed it was a genetic immune difficiency when tests failed to turn up anything better).
The only country in the world where the spread of HIV can be linked to some evil behavior is Russia, where it first appeared in drug users and was primarily spread by shared needles and not by sexual contact.
Having been an MMO play for a long time, they won't have to find something new to complain about. A few examples (Copy/pastes from the Ashen Empires forums, mind you):
Example 1 (Context: SoE is the Staff of Enervation, the most powerful mage staff in the game. It's magical wood, meaning it can be repaired by a Mind based repair spell. A database error during the shift from TKO Software back to private ownership made it Nature repair - which is for magic wood - a few weeks ago, and that was corrected shortly tehreafter. This post came a while after that)
WTF SOE IS MIND REPAIR NOW??? by (removed) YESTERDA YIT WAS NATURE REPAIR WTF U CHANGE IT FOR?
by (removed) I sure hope not that's gay I don't want to have another skill. Well not really I have 100 in all mage skills but its gay because I need to use my mind runes now.
by (removed) WTF FIX THE FUCKING BUGS BEFORE YOU POST A NEW UPDATE
Another example:(Context: New land area was added recently, which is only suitable for parties of high level characters. A level 15 should not be there for any reason. The area is open, and is accessible from both lawful and criminal cities, although the walk from Desprail or Redwake makes it hard on criminals, but just about anybody can get there if they want)
Re: WHY do i see CRIMINALS running free in the new lands? by (removed) what city? there's no city, just a lot of grass and big ogre things that kill me. why the hell do the monsters so fucking high level? hows a level 15 supposed to bow in there geeze its not fare nemore
The following posts are by the same person, less than four hours apart: (Context: the update was scheduled for the day before, but was delayed due to a bug)
Where's the UPDATE???? by (removed) Just put it on the servers so we can play it and we'll find the bugs stop slacking we pay your salary.
Wtf's with the fucking BUGS!? by (removed) FIX THE FUCKING BUGS before you post a patch. you should NEVER post any update unless it is ONE HUNDRED PERSENT BUG FREE goddamn incompetents. you can't run a fucking game. We pay your salary now do your jobs.
Frankly, in this game, I consider this sort of brattyness worse. The game is fairly small, and has been struggling to pay the bills its whole existence. Twice, they licensed larger firms (most recently TKO Software), and both times they got screwed. The first time, the developers broke the contract, gave up ALL the money the game had made for nearly a year, and went without a lot (Lead developer even sold his car) to keep the game alive. The second time, it was a bit worse. They all got canned by the new owner of the game, and the game was going to be shut down. They stepped in and paid - out of their own money - to license the game back and keep it alive. For more than half of the last two years, the game has been free for one reason or another, and for the rest, it was only $8 a month.
Granted Blizzard doesn't have these woes, but people will still complain about the exact same things. Even if they're shown that the problems are being fixed, it won't be enough, because it's not being fixed instantaneously.
Once, AE had a very strange bug. It was very difficult to reproduce, and the circumstances that caused it were never properly pinned down. Less than three hours after it was found (At 4 AM yet, the devs were probably asleep), people were already complaining about why there hadn't been an update to fix it. When there was an update, they complained that the server was down for almost "FIFTEEN MINUTES OMG I R WANT MI MONIE BAK."
I had a quantum physics professor who said that antimatter was normal matter traveling "backwards" in time. However, it doesn't travel faster than the speed of light, so if that is litterally true and not just functionally true, then there's something else involved.
Tachyons travel faster than the speed of light, if they exist. However, you can't decellerate them to the speed of light for the same reason that you can't accellerate matter to the speed of light.
Earned monopolies don't come from making the best product. The former US steel monopoly was built on hostile takeover bids and control of associated industry (for example: buy the railroad, major truck fleets, and even freight ships, then charge yoru competitors a massive fee to transport their steel), despite the fact that some manufacturers complained that Rockafeller steel was of inferior quality to United or Bethlehem.
I'm with you on that. I've been wishing ever since FFVII that Square would do the same thing with FF games that they do with so many of their others, and barely make enough US copies to cover the preorders (Can you say Valkyrie Profile?)
But your RESONANT ANTI BARONITE IDENTITY ENTANGLEMNT SYSTEM (RABIES, derisively called a tin foil hat by GOVERNMENT COLLABORATORS) will not and CAN NOT focus the rays of EVIL SUN BLASTS into your brain!!! These are GOVERNMENT LIES and PROPOGANDA!!! Your RABIES is made of TIN which is REFLECTIVE!!! Relfective tin REFLECTS and thus PROTECTS YOUR BRAIN from EVIL SUN BLASTS just as well as it protects you from EVIL LIZARD PEOPLE and EVIL GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACIES!!! NEVER remove your RABIES under any conditions!!! Anybody telling you to is a GOVERNMENT CONSPIRATOR and probably a REPTILE and/or GIANT SQUID disguised as a human and should be KILLED ON SIGHT.
Ok, I'm sorry. I should stop reading conspiracy websites while drunk.
Considering the sheer amount of solar activity the past year or so, I don't find that suprising at all. Heck, there were a couple weeks that a day didn't go by without something happening up there.
I called up Media Play (only place in my town that actually kept the game in-stock regularly), and they still have over 30 copies in. If every RPG player in Saginaw buys two, that'll still leave... um... like 20 copies.
Slashdot Mirror
The market has a bit of a safety net against crashes now. Back in the 80's when the first crash hit, not that many people bought games, and due to hardware limitation, gameplay and fun were really the only reason to buy most games. It certainly wasn't for the beautiful graphics. Now, games regularly try (and succeed) to sell themselves purely on graphics, sometimes with nothing else going for them, so even a major dip in quality still yeilds games that sell.
Most importantly, though, a lot more people buy games than ever before. Losing 100 thousand customers when you have a million is deadly, but losing ten million when you have 100 million may mean a lot more dollars lost, but you've still got 90 million customers. The way the industry is now, it can afford to lose customers. That would be bad for gamers, and in the long run it may end up severely hurting the industry, if it happens the people in charge will be off sipping rum in Tahitti by the time we figure out what hit us.
Back when the battery life issue was bouncing around, somebody posted a link to an article (the same one where they basically said battery life was the developers' problem and not theirs) that said they were planning a second iteration of the PSP that would address battery and screen issues. Probably won't be a fully new system like the Ngage QD, just an internal change like they did with the set-top playstations.
They allowed it on th FDS, and it did appear on two SNES games that I know of (One was Japan-only release, the other was European-only), though I don't know if it was approved or not. There's one H game on the GBA as far as I know, and it was approved, and it was also a graphical update of an H game from the GBC.
Lastly, Sony has allowed pornographic content on their system. The PS1 and PS2 have both had several H releases, with pornographic content in non-pornographic games aside from that.
It's also got H rated games for it in Japan. Doubt any of them are comming to the US, though, the genre doesn't even register over here. A friend of mine who rarely talks about anything except the DS said that one of the dating sims for it will be released in the US this spring, but it's been censored down to a T rating, whereas the Japanese version was hardcore, behind-the-beaded-curtain-in-the-brown-wrapper-on- the-top-shelf material.
He's not admitting the system has a problem the way I see it. He's basically saying the system is fine, but there's a problem with the users.
It doesn't invalidate your card. Do you have citibank? Read their little flyer about ways to avoid identity theft.
It's on the server that hosts advertisements, it's a 1x1 invisible placeholder. Apple most likely did not name it that, the ad people (Avenue A, atdmt.com) did.
Once, about three years ago, I noticed one of these images on my ISP's web page with a file name something like XXXLESBIANPORNROMGAYWAREZMP3NAPSTERDOWNLOADZ.gif. I didn't assume that SBC was going to get into the internet porn or fileswapping business, I assumed that an ad agency used a few key words for one reason or another.
You're being biased! I'm telling Slashdot.
Ok, yeah, I'm bored.
The point they're trying to make in the article is NOT to ignore the problem. RTFA, mayhap? Meh, what was I thinking?
Anyway, the point they're trying to make is that the leading reason people who don't shop online give for not shoping online is that they're credit card will be stolen. Consumer's Power says that the reason few people use their online payment system is that they're afraid their credit cards will get stolen. The reason so many people say they won't use online banking is that - suprise suprise - their information will get stolen.
Those same people, however, have no compunction against handing their cards over to some random guy in a restaraunt and having it taken into another room and then brought back a couple minutes later. They don't think twice when the lady at the grocery store writes their driver's license number on the sheet with the check number. Doesn't worry them at all any time that the credit card is physically in another person's control during a transaction, and worst of all, they never even think that it might be a bad idea to throw away their bank statements.
The article is about perspective. You can do far more (and there is far more you SHOULD do) offline to protect your identity than you can and should do online.
Online: Don't fall for stupid phish scams.
Offline: Write ASK FOR ID on the back of the card.
Shred your statements.
Don't use your credit card at restaraunts.
Make sure your grocery store has one of the credit card scanners where YOU run it through the machine, and not the cashier.
Most of these come down to the whole thing where all the firewalls and encryption in the world is useless when somebody steals your computer. The weakest points are physical, not digital.
Fossils can't be carbon dated, as pointed out above. Only organic material can be carbon dated, and in fact, you DO know the starting point. All life on earth (while it's alive anyway) has a carbon-14 content within extremely narrow confines. Bacteria collected in the upper atmosphere, locked up in rocks two miles down, worms off the bottom of the ocean, or just skin scraped off some guy on the street has a c-14 content within narrower confines than could be tested until relatively recently. It's just about the only constant thing accross terestrial life. Dead material with the date of origin known to a high degree of certainty (murder vicims being the most common) show that once the cells have stopped functioning, the carbon level stays pretty much constant, but the c-14 level decreases as c-14 atoms decay into lower mass carbon atoms (c-12 IIRC). Now, anyway, anything old enough to be fossilized is useless for carbon dating. There are a lot of other ways to date them, but carbon isn't used except by creationists, for reasons that will be obvious in a second. After a fairly short period of time (less than 100k years), the carbon-14 in the material effectively vanishes (there is still some, but it's unmeasureable). Anything older than that will date to the same age. Fossiles are far older than that. There isn't even any organic material left in them, it's mineral. There are ways to date when the fossil formed based on the materials involved, there are a number of different procedures, and each one has a different resolution (both a maximum age and a +/- margin of error). I'm not an archeologist, so somebody else can cover those. Anyway, as for this... you obviously didn't read the article. They can produce petrified wood in a few days, but that involves being bathed in acid under pressure and baked at over a thousand degrees in an argon-filled chamber. Now, as for the flood deposits, books have been writtin on it. Flood deposits stay wet for a long time. The surface dries quickly, and usually collapses destroying the lower layers. It also sorts things very differently than natural rock layers and with a substantial amount of blending to the point that there's no real boundary between layers. Take a shovel and go dig in your back yard. Once your past the topsoil layer (which in most parts of the US is laid down to better support lawns, and not natural), you'll find a mottled material. There'll likely be a number of different colors, but try to lay down boundaries between them. There aren't any, because it's very well blended with a gradual change in density of one soil type or another. That's the sort of stuff that floods lay down. It's also likely, depending on how much plant and animal life was in your area before it was developed, that it's been very well blended and you won't be able to find any distinctions. That's because flood deposits are unstable, and they shift under weight. They're also very rich soil that gets torn up by roots very quickly. You can see layers in my area, and see that they're very different than the geological column, because mid-Michigan was deforested in the mid 1800's, and my particular area was hit by a 1000-year flood shortly thereafter, and within a few months of the flood, foundations were being poured for the buildings that are here now, so the flood deposits are in generally good condition due to lack of old trees and large animals.
I don't find the ESRB ratings nearly as one-dimensional as movie ratings. Movies are G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC17/X. The best reason you ever get is, "this feature is not suitable for younger viewers."
Games have a slew of secondary ratings: Cartoon violence, fantasy violence, blood and gore, partial nudity, obscured nudity, drugs and alcohol, extreme violence, crude sexual references, graphic sexual content, slapstick violence, animated blood, realistic blood. And that's just looking down my CD rack, there are more.
Another thing that gets on my nerves (although not related to your post really) is that people complain that the ESRB doesn't have a PG-13 rating. It DOES. It's called T. PG-13 movies are suitable for teenage or older audiences. T games are suitable for - gasp - teenage or older audiences.
Thank god it wasn't my job. I was a player, not a dev. They asked me to be a GM once and a forum admin a couple other times, but I respectfully declined. I was too afraid I would go berzerk with madness and spawn thousands of demon spires in major cities.
I don't think it was ever intended to rehabilitate them. It was meant to keep them occupied. Sort of like how you give your dog toys so he doesn't chew your leg.
Did I mention I live in Saginaw? The prison out by the airport has a lower rate of violence than the schools. When I was in 8th grade, Heritage High School was closed for two weeks due to riot damage.
Learning is pretty cheap. My school district uses more uncertified teachers than certified. Their average salary is $22,000 a year, and each one either teaches an average of 35 students all subjects (elementary school), or around 350 students one subject (middle/high school).
Each student costs the district around $4000, however, most of this is textbooks, which are purchased at worse prices than prescription drugs, and are replaced far more often than they need it (Except for the computer books, which hadn't been replaced since 1985 when I graduated), and various other supplies (Science classes are most expensive, math and literiture following close behind due to calculators and additional books).
However, most of this can be cut out. Hard science? Drop it, it's expensive or because it could give convicts access to chemicals they could use as drugs (or worse, not use as drugs but try anyway) if that's the kind of politician you are. Math? Cut most of that, and teach them a business math class. They'll find far more use for it anyway. Literiture? Screw it, stick some books in the library and if they want to read, have at it.
Limit the classes to basic skills: Language, business math, computer use, communication. It's not a well rounded education, but it will give them a good shot at a far better life than most of them were in that got them in prison to begin with.
As for books, don't burn $200 per student on new books every year. Get throwaways from the local high school or university, and stock the library out of the public library's anual $1 book sale. By limiting the class offering to the above, most of those books will be good for as long as they last, and shouldn't need constant updating.
Learning's only expensive for students because they're taught just about everything, so they can do just about everything. Convicts are another matter. Just the fact that they're convicts alone is going to severely limit their job options, regardless of how they are personally. What they need is a targeted education with a narrow set of useful skills that will let them get decent jobs and even continue their education after they're released.
The newly open culture of male gay sex of the 70's was followed by the AIDS epidemic in the 80's
The first victim that HIV was identified in (in the US, the virus was known overseas well earlier) was gay, but he was not the first person with HIV in the US and certainly not in the world. It should be noted that it was actually spreading in the straight population FIRST, and jumped (probably by a bisexual victim) to the gay population. Studies in my college health course even suggested based on symptoms leading to "death by unknown cause" that AIDS may have first came to the US as early as the late 1950's, and almost definitely starting to spread in the early 70's, with no probable cases in the gay population until after 1980's. After the virus was identified, there were already people dying from it, who were then tested for the same virus. Lo and behold, they had it too, and had had it for a long time, it was just that the cause of their illness was unknown (some even believed it was a genetic immune difficiency when tests failed to turn up anything better).
The only country in the world where the spread of HIV can be linked to some evil behavior is Russia, where it first appeared in drug users and was primarily spread by shared needles and not by sexual contact.
Having been an MMO play for a long time, they won't have to find something new to complain about. A few examples (Copy/pastes from the Ashen Empires forums, mind you):
Example 1 (Context: SoE is the Staff of Enervation, the most powerful mage staff in the game. It's magical wood, meaning it can be repaired by a Mind based repair spell. A database error during the shift from TKO Software back to private ownership made it Nature repair - which is for magic wood - a few weeks ago, and that was corrected shortly tehreafter. This post came a while after that)
WTF SOE IS MIND REPAIR NOW???
by (removed)
YESTERDA YIT WAS NATURE REPAIR WTF U CHANGE IT FOR?
by (removed)
I sure hope not that's gay I don't want to have another skill. Well not really I have 100 in all mage skills but its gay because I need to use my mind runes now.
by (removed)
WTF FIX THE FUCKING BUGS BEFORE YOU POST A NEW UPDATE
Another example:(Context: New land area was added recently, which is only suitable for parties of high level characters. A level 15 should not be there for any reason. The area is open, and is accessible from both lawful and criminal cities, although the walk from Desprail or Redwake makes it hard on criminals, but just about anybody can get there if they want)
Re: WHY do i see CRIMINALS running free in the new lands?
by (removed)
what city? there's no city, just a lot of grass and big ogre things that kill me. why the hell do the monsters so fucking high level? hows a level 15 supposed to bow in there geeze its not fare nemore
The following posts are by the same person, less than four hours apart: (Context: the update was scheduled for the day before, but was delayed due to a bug)
Where's the UPDATE????
by (removed)
Just put it on the servers so we can play it and we'll find the bugs stop slacking we pay your salary.
Wtf's with the fucking BUGS!?
by (removed)
FIX THE FUCKING BUGS before you post a patch. you should NEVER post any update unless it is ONE HUNDRED PERSENT BUG FREE goddamn incompetents. you can't run a fucking game. We pay your salary now do your jobs.
Frankly, in this game, I consider this sort of brattyness worse. The game is fairly small, and has been struggling to pay the bills its whole existence. Twice, they licensed larger firms (most recently TKO Software), and both times they got screwed. The first time, the developers broke the contract, gave up ALL the money the game had made for nearly a year, and went without a lot (Lead developer even sold his car) to keep the game alive. The second time, it was a bit worse. They all got canned by the new owner of the game, and the game was going to be shut down. They stepped in and paid - out of their own money - to license the game back and keep it alive. For more than half of the last two years, the game has been free for one reason or another, and for the rest, it was only $8 a month.
Granted Blizzard doesn't have these woes, but people will still complain about the exact same things. Even if they're shown that the problems are being fixed, it won't be enough, because it's not being fixed instantaneously.
Once, AE had a very strange bug. It was very difficult to reproduce, and the circumstances that caused it were never properly pinned down. Less than three hours after it was found (At 4 AM yet, the devs were probably asleep), people were already complaining about why there hadn't been an update to fix it. When there was an update, they complained that the server was down for almost "FIFTEEN MINUTES OMG I R WANT MI MONIE BAK."
I had a quantum physics professor who said that antimatter was normal matter traveling "backwards" in time. However, it doesn't travel faster than the speed of light, so if that is litterally true and not just functionally true, then there's something else involved. Tachyons travel faster than the speed of light, if they exist. However, you can't decellerate them to the speed of light for the same reason that you can't accellerate matter to the speed of light.
Earned monopolies don't come from making the best product. The former US steel monopoly was built on hostile takeover bids and control of associated industry (for example: buy the railroad, major truck fleets, and even freight ships, then charge yoru competitors a massive fee to transport their steel), despite the fact that some manufacturers complained that Rockafeller steel was of inferior quality to United or Bethlehem.
No, I want them just to not sell them like they've done with all the actual good games they've made in the last nine or ten years.
I'm with you on that. I've been wishing ever since FFVII that Square would do the same thing with FF games that they do with so many of their others, and barely make enough US copies to cover the preorders (Can you say Valkyrie Profile?)
But your RESONANT ANTI BARONITE IDENTITY ENTANGLEMNT SYSTEM (RABIES, derisively called a tin foil hat by GOVERNMENT COLLABORATORS) will not and CAN NOT focus the rays of EVIL SUN BLASTS into your brain!!! These are GOVERNMENT LIES and PROPOGANDA!!! Your RABIES is made of TIN which is REFLECTIVE!!! Relfective tin REFLECTS and thus PROTECTS YOUR BRAIN from EVIL SUN BLASTS just as well as it protects you from EVIL LIZARD PEOPLE and EVIL GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACIES!!! NEVER remove your RABIES under any conditions!!! Anybody telling you to is a GOVERNMENT CONSPIRATOR and probably a REPTILE and/or GIANT SQUID disguised as a human and should be KILLED ON SIGHT.
Ok, I'm sorry. I should stop reading conspiracy websites while drunk.
Considering the sheer amount of solar activity the past year or so, I don't find that suprising at all. Heck, there were a couple weeks that a day didn't go by without something happening up there.
I called up Media Play (only place in my town that actually kept the game in-stock regularly), and they still have over 30 copies in. If every RPG player in Saginaw buys two, that'll still leave... um... like 20 copies.
Wow, so that's why EQ2 is losing players already and WoW is growing faster than a - oh, whoops, misread your post.