That's probably because no one can find it to buy, except at Verizon stores-- where service is mandatory. Google's online store has gotten them in over the months, but their notification system hasn't been notifying people on the wait list (like me, been on since November, 0 notifications, despite there being stock coming and going), and they're apparently getting in about 3/4 of a phone each time, because the shipments sell out in a matter of minutes. They appear to be sending over 99% of the shipments to Verizon, and keep fuck all for those people who want to buy it completely unlocked and outright.
I read the PDF, you dumb fuck. Death threats are illegal.
Yes, they are. Non-credible threats, however, have about as much of a chance of being prosecuted and achieving jail time for the person making the non-credible threat as Wu has of winning that seat in 2018.
If I threaten you by telling you some outrageous bullshit, like "I'll rip your head off like Sub-Zero!" the FBI is going to look at that and know it isn't actionable. Now, if I threaten with something much more credible, like having taken pictures of you going in and out of your house, and saying "watch your back, you never know when I'll attack", then the FBI (or local law enforcement) will see that as a much more credible threat, especially since it appears I'm already stalking you, and know where you live.
Those differences are what separate SJW logic from real logic. SJW logic dictates that even the most outrageous thing said to them ("I'll shove a nuclear bomb up your ass and detonate it!") is a real and credible threat to their special snowflake lives; and that they now deserve money from strangers because they're a victim. Real logic says: yeah, that threat is so toooooootally real. Like, fer sure, dude. *laughs and walks away knowing the threat is a fake*.
I don't own any handheld. Just saying this now. I do have a GameBoy Player for my GC, but I have a total of 2 games for it.
But, I checked out some of the PSP titles last night. And I was appalled to see that some of the prices for them were $50.
$50 for a HANDHELD game? No thank you. $40 is a bit much for a hand held game, IMHO. $25-$30 I can deal with, maybe an occasional $35 here and there-- were I to be a handheld game player. But the PSP games all started around $40 with few exceptions (some older games were down to $30), and some of the newest games were $50.
Sorry, if the pricing on PSP games stays like this, I can't see the PSP gaining much of a lead, if any, over the coming years. Handheld games are generally shorter than their console counterparts/cousins. They generally as not as fully featured as their console cousins. But I'd be God damned if I was going to spend as much on a hand held game as I am spending for a full console game if I owned a handheld system.
The system is $250. Start adding in games at $50 a pop, and I'd rather just wait for all the next gen consoles to come out and get the game there. The handheld gaming market is driven from pick up and play games, and some long RPGs, that you don't spend a lot of money on but get tons of enjoyment out of. $50 for handheld games, no matter what publisher put them out, is simply too much money.
With all the added risk you take with your handheld systems (dropping/breaking, losing, etc.) and the games, the price of the PSP and its games is just too high to keep it viable in the handheld market for too long. Consoles generally sit in one place, and don't move, so they don't have the same risk factors associated with them. And we've been paying $50 for those games for years. Until the PSP, no one was paying $50 for a handheld game... and, frankly, it's a gamble I think Sony and the publishers attempting to milk the handheld market buyers are going to lose.
In ZG there were multiple reports of fear being bugged
Actually, it was a problem noted with the Zerkers. If they feared or thunderclapped you, your client simply CRASHED. Always fun.
Also, Venoxis in ZG had a glitch wherein he could not be reset, and his AoE chain lightning ended up getting an unlimited range.
And, of course, polymorph got FUBARed as well. Now the sheep just wander and wander far away, potentially aggroing other mobs of their type when they unsheep.
Interesting tidbit, most farmers farm at either tyr's hand in the EPL or Sitilus (sp). tyr's hand actually got hit with a nerf on how fast the guys respawn to prevent farming there.
Which, actually, hurts me, too. Now that I have a 60, I seriously want to get myself up the money for an epic mount and don't feel like spending the rest of my life in BG queues to get my rank up to the point where I can get the PvP epic mount.
Tyr's Hand was a good source of income for me, especially since the mobs sometimes dropped over 20s at a time, and drop a lot of runecloth so I can get the price of my epic mount down in Darnassus.
Though, now with my feral buff, I might be able to survive a bit more inside the wall, instead of just farming the ones outside the wall.
Don't know how Vista's going to be from a usability standpoint (obviously), but at least it's not ass ugly like XP. That's at least one improvement.
I find their use of transparencies quite ugly, actually. But, at least the giant Fischer Price red X to close button seems to be gone.
Then again, I'm on OS X, so I find having menu bars on the program windows ugly, anymore. It took me a while to get used to the menu is always at the top of the screen that OS X uses, but I find it is less clutter, more use of space for the app now, though. Least the drop shadows look good... though, that's not a hard aspect to do, really.
Application level audio control! You will be able to raise the volume for the movie you are watching (that was no doubt ripped from a DVD and has low volume) and not go deaf when someone IM's you.
So, since I stopped using Windows for OS X they still haven't fixed this?
I've gotten so used to it on OS X, I figured MS might have fixed that on Windows by now...
Nothing worse than watching/listening to something and suddenly AIM/MSN messenger/Yahoo! IM going off and scaring the shit out of me... Well, yes there is, but not in the context of what we speak of here.
There are still hundreds of thousands of people that play Halo 2 over live every week, and it's been nearly a year. While that doesn't make it the best game ever, it does suggest that it's definitely a really good game.
Or, that the rest of what's on Xbox Live doesn't have the mass draw appeal of Halo 2, nor the already tried and true strategies and other such that people have built up over the past 10 months.
This seems to be more of the case. Other games come out, they get a little XBL hype... then people go back to what they know and can pwn at: Halo 2.
Halo 2 is a very simple FPS to get into. This is good. It has a slow pace to it. This is not good to me. It had exploits that people used ALL THE TIME, many of which Bungie knew about a year before release (hey, some of these walls aren't solid!), and it took them until 8 freaking months after release to fix them (and maybe brought about new exploits, who knows... I haven't played it since, oh, around February). This is BAD. They had to release a quick patch to fix a 480p HUD problem and unlock the hidden map because they made the way to unlock it so screwed up that people would rather break the game than do it. This is good that they released that patch early... but bad that they let that ship.
Halo 2 is certainly not the best single player, nor multiplayer game on the Xbox. It is just the one that has so many idiotic people behind it 24/7, that it remains the most popular game on the Xbox and XBL.
It's not the buying and selling of virtual goods that's the problem. It's the buying and selling of virtual MONEY that's the problem.
The people that work for places like IGE and such, many of them Chinese workers who just watch macro-controlled characters getting paid a pittance for their time, are the problem.
They farm all the good items in the game, especially patterns/recipies/etc. needed to learn professions, and then sell what they can in the games for outrageous prices.
You can see stuff going for 10s or 100s of gold in WoW auction houses.
Now, when you see the same name auctioning off the exact same things all the time, you can start to see the farmers.
The problem becomes that new players look at the prices in the AH, and just assume that those prices are the normal prices for items. Hell, I see people trying to sell low level stuff for over 10 gold now, and it's tons of the same item from the same seller... first thing that pops in my mind is "Chinese farmer." And the sad part is, someone who buys the gold that these people farm, will just buy that stuff at those prices, and the cycle continues.
For reference, on my main server (Alliance side), stuff like light leather or linen cloth goes for about 25 silver for a complete stack. On my alt server (Horde side), the prices are about half that. Maybe it can be chalked up to there simply being more Alliance chars on the servers, or maybe it is because the Alliance players, in general, are more willing to go out and spend real world money to buy virtual gold.
Granted, not all farming is bad. I'm currently in farming mode for my characters so I can buy my mounts and other such... but, I'm farming for me, because my characters need the money; and I refuse to spend extra real life money for the virtual money I can make for my characters in game. I'm not selling the gold I make for real world cash; I barely make enough for myself anyway.
I also prefer AppleWorks... however, my AppleWorks decided to stop working, completely. Trashed the preferences and everything, still won't boot up. I just get the spinning beach ball of death and have to force quit the app.
A lot of people say this happened to them when they went to 10.3.9, but this happened to me the night before I went to 10.3.9.
* I can't get my most importat apps (the MS and Adobe bunch) to run under this OS. Classic is not an option.
Microsoft Office, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, and others, are all available on Mac OS X, as well as Adobe's suite of graphics applications. I use Photoshop CS on my iBook all the time...
Which programs from these vendors were you speaking of when you said they don't run on OS X?
Ok then you have NE 1% dodge > 10% regen in combat.
With how many times I've died and had my enemy just a few hp away from death themselves, I think you over estimate how much better that 1% bonus to dodging is. If I was regenerating a few hp every tick, I'd have lived through at least some of those encounters.
I try and pelt my foe from afar with spells, especially trying to keep them entangled as much as possible... but you can't keep them away from you forever at all times (especially when they suddenly teleport right in front of you, still entangled, for some reason-- when they were 20 yards away half a second before hand). 1% better dodge is nothing. I don't know what controls your dodging ability in WoW (assuming agility), but my base percentage must not be very high, even with that extra 1%, because I don't dodge and avoid damage as much as you might think.
If we say that the base dodge percent for everyone is 5%, then Night Elves get 6%. Woooo! That means a whole one more time out of 100 attempts made, the Night Elf will dodge when the others fail. Statistically, it's still essentially a 1 in 20 chance to dodge using these numbers; the chance to roll a 6 out out of 100 is not substantially higher than rolling a 5 out of 100.
Meanwhile, the troll is regenerating his HP, 100% of the time, even if it is only 10% of his normal regen [(spirit regen+10%)/10]. If he has a high spirit, that can still be substantial. With the right equipment and buffs, at high levels, the troll could be regenerating as much as 10 hp or more each time he regens during combat. 10 hp at certain times can mean the difference between life and death.
Hell, I regenerate like 30-40 HP out of battle, or somewhere around there... I'd have to log in to check... and getting 3-4 hp back a tick during battle could have saved my life more than a few times.
Besides, I'd say the Night Elf 25% faster ghost is better than their 1% to dodge, being as if the foe dies anyway (say from Thorns, or residual MoonFire effects), and the graveyard isn't half the land away, you can normally get back to your body before the enemy respawns.
Gnome 5% int > Tauren 5% hp, bigger mana pool and higher crit rate with spells that completely ignore armor vs taking one extra melee hit from a non-leet.
For a spell caster, like me, I would agree. And for PvP, I could see this as extremely useful. But in PvE, they balance out. In PvE, the spell caster has to worry about casting and being interrupted... but in PvP the spell caster can try and sit back if in a group (and in PvE as well, but aggro seems to draw the enemies to the spell casters) and let the warriors tank up front.
And, in reality, this part of the discussion is about PvE, not PvP.
BTW I did say "actually usefull" traits.
I think a 10% regen rate during combat is actually useful. Have a troll warrior tanking up front, with a druid able to cast Regrowth or Rejuvenation on him, and he's nigh near un-killable, both in PvP and PvE.
I play on a low pop server, and find that my only real problem is Iron Forge. Other than that, I can seem to lag while flying, as my 1GHz iBook only has a Radeon 9200 Mobility with 32 MB VRAM and 640 MB system memory, so it's more my machine than the game. My ping has never been over 190, and normally is between 29-35... but I get little spurts of choppiness in highly crowded areas, which I assume is my system trying to keep up.
And, since I'm a n00b at WoW, I don't go and do battlegrounds.
As for the "stronger racial abilities" Horde have, as of last patch which fixed Orc passive, three out of the eight traits are actually usefull (WotF, War Stomp, Stun Resist), Alliance's only really good racials are on their least popular races, gnomes (Escape Artist) and dwarves (Stoneform), both of which are good for pvp. So yeah 3:2 for the horde when it comes to racial traits, everything else: Alliance ftw.
And let's not forget that trolls get a 10% health regeneration bonus outside of combat, and 10% of their health regen while in combat; undead can breathe underwater 4x as long as other races; and Tauren have 5% higher hit points than anybody else of the same class at the same level.
Even if you say that longer breath holding under water isn't an advantage (because it can be overcome depending on situations), or that a 5% hp bonus isn't that much (5 hp for every 100)... the fact that trolls can regen in combat and have a better regen outside of combat makes your 3:2 ratio become 2:1 in favor of the Horde. If we have the others, then it's 3:1 for racial bonuses favoring the Horde (well, 5:2 because Gnomes get a 5% increase to intelligence if we count the 5% hp bonus of the Taurens).
Since I've yet to play a Horde, I can't say for areas of leveling or quests and quest rewards. But, I've leveled my char pretty fast (level 24 Night Elf Druid in my 10 day trial, which expires tonight, I'll re-up when I get a little extra money)-- but being on long term disability means I was able to power game it, with about 10 hours a day, sometimes more, of playing.
I gotta agree to a point about them needing to be toned down, though. My 23rd level Night Elf Druid went up against a 23rd level Tauren Shaman tonight... In the time it took me to cast 1 spell (and not even something that takes forever to cast, like StarFire, we're talking Wrath with.3 seconds taken off the casting time, and he didn't hit me while I was casting it) and then change to bear from, he had at least 3 totems on the ground... and promptly proceeded to take almost no damage from my bear form and whittled away the over 1k hit points I had (Gift of Wild Stamina bonus, armor stat boosts, Bear Form bonus) in under 30 seconds. I think I took off maybe 1/3 his health.
Theoretically, a 23rd level anything should hold their own against a 23rd level anything else, right? At least to the point of not feeling like they just go their ass handed to them because they went weak character class against strong character class. Against that Tauren Shaman, I had no chance. Even in D&D a 23rd level mage can actually go against a 23rd level fighter, if played right, and have a chance at winning.
I'm not saying nerf them to the point of making them unplayable, but fer God's sake, make some of those totems take some time to throw down. Otherwise, the only way my druid can ever hope to beat one is to spam MoonFire the whole battle (which defeats the purpose of a spell that continues to do damage over time, but has an instant cast), and even then that's only if I crit each MoonFire spell.
And, before you say "well stay away before fighting him so you can hit him with spells," he was in alliance territory, and wouldn't get more than a foot away from me until I finally went PvP on him. Sure, he goaded me into attacking him, but I still should have had a better chance than none against him when we are the same level.
You now, far be it from me to call myself a MS fanboi... but the PS3 winning Critics Choice Award for best hardware? Come on! There were no PS3's there. There were no playable games on it. etc.
At least MS had demos (playable in some cases, others were played by MS people as demos) running on Apple G5 towers (development kits) to show what the games were supposed to be like.
The PS3 was all hype and fluff. The Revolution (which I am looking forward to), was a no show, basically. At least MS had Xbox 360 (worst console name EVAR) specs down, demos running, etc. As far as the next gen of consoles is concerned, MS was the only player ready to step up to the plate.
Now, if this gamble of launching early will pay off for them, well, only time will tell.
The fact that your opinions are so self-righteous does not make them correct.
Self-righteous opinions are not automatically correct, true.
It is completely feasible that the tone and flavor of the cell shaded graphics in Wind Waker did not really tickle some gamers fancy.
This is true. However, to simply refuse to play a game based on its graphical style is akin to judging a book by its cover, is it not? Most of the arguments you will ever hear about people refusing to play Wind Waker are based off of the "kiddy" graphics.
Yet, these same people will jump and grab the newest Jak game, or Ratchet and Clank game, even though the graphics, in all honesty, are no less "kiddy" in design, but they aren't cell shaded graphics in those games.
And that's the point I believe the grandparent is trying to make. Those who simply refuse to play a game based off of its graphical style alone, are not true gamers. Those that refuse to play a game because it doesn't "look" the way they feel games "should look;" they aren't real gamers. They'll, instead, be blown away by the "OMGZ l00k at th0$3 grafx!!!!!!!!!" and never care that the game could either be the best thing ever made, or the biggest piece of shit ever made, they'll make their mind up based off of graphical style alone-- which is not a real gamer.
It would be akin to me hating Frank Miller's drawing style, and thus never picking up The Dark Knight Returns, or Sin City, or any other book he has written and drawn simply for the fact that I didn't like his art style-- and thus claiming the books were "teh suck" simply because of the art style. This exact same thing is what these "gamers" are doing to Wind Waker, and other games (JGR/JSR and JSRF would spring to mind here)-- claiming they are "teh suck" based solely on graphics alone, and never playing the game to find out if the game is good or not. Yet, they're out playing Madden every waking moment...
People have different criteria for what they consider a good game, and simply because their set does not correspond with yours does not make them wrong.
This is true. But if the only criteria for a game being "good" to these gamers is how it looks, then yes, they are wrong. Graphics are not the be all and end all of games, and anyone who thinks they are is completely in the wrong.
From their Fiscal 2003 report (I had that direct linked from something earlier, don't feel like searching the SEC website right now):
"Sony's sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003 decreased approximately 2 percent and operating income decreased approximately 5 percent compared with the previous fiscal year."
From the same report regarding fiscal 2002:
"Sony's sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2002 decreased approximately 4 percent compared with the previous fiscal year, and an operating loss was recorded compared to operating income recorded in the previous fiscal year."
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but operating loss is the exact opposite of profit (operating income). So fiscal 2002 had an operating loss, and fiscal 2003 had seen sales and income slump beyond what it had slumped to in fiscal 2002.
Although, it seems fiscal 2004 they made a profit, which I was unaware of. But your "LONG LONG time" seems a bit off the mark, being as 2002 and 2003 are not a long long time ago, nor in a galaxy far far away.
The really annoying thing is that it hasn't locked up in the same way twice. A few different ways it has died: light-blue screen with the little circle-of-lines indicator going as it does on bootup; frozen screen with applications visible including the last tooltip I hovered over with the same circle indicator going; colored-pinwheel mouse cursor with no ability to switch applications or force-quit anything; dark background with white message "You need to restart your Mac"; etc.
Almost everything you are describing sounds hardware related. It could be something as simple as bad RAM, or you might need a new logic board. The fact it is locking up in different ways points me to the RAM or logic board problem.
Mine had the same types of problems, a few times. Each time it turned out to be hardware problems. Thankfully, I opted for AppleCare when I bought my iBook, and now that my initial 1 year parts/labor warranty is over, I still have 1 year 10 months left for free warranty repairs if my hardware goes bad, again. And, being as I am on my 4th logic board, I am glad I bought the AppleCare.
Plus, let's say that in 1 year 9 months, I get a horrid problem and they can't replace my current logic board (due to not having the parts anymore), I'll get upgraded, for free, to the current 14" iBook at the time. So, if this means I get a faster CPU, better video card, bigger HDD, etc. then that's all part of my AppleCare warranty. I'll just have a backup of my hard drive to keep all my data if that happens. i know someone who had his nearly 3 year old PowerBook upgraded to a much better one through AppleCare for just this reason... they no longer had the parts to repair it, so he got upgraded for free. And Apple states you will never be downgraded if you require a replacement; the replacement will be at least equal to, or better than the stock computer you bought (screen size, CPU, RAM, HDD, video card, optical media drive, etc.).
And, yet, there is not one single PS2 game that looks as good as the FFVIII dance scene in game... None. No GC or Xbox games that look that good, either, but the GC and Xbox do have games that come closer to that quality in game than the PS2 does.
Sony has a theoretical advantage in floating point math.
Until you look at their tech specs from their press release.
Sony says 2 TFLOPS of floating point calculations... but the Cell is doing 218 GFLOPS, and the RSX is supposed to be handling the other 1.8 TFLOPS. The Xbox 360's triple cored dual threaded CPU does 1 TFLOP. As far as the CPUs are concerned, the Xbox 360's is more powerful, at least according to the floating point operations per second it can do.
GPUS are a bit of a different story. Even though the PS3 GPU is supposed to be based off of the GeForce 6800 Ultra (and be equivalent to 2 of them combined), my friends who are game developers said they know jack shit about the RSX chip, yet. But they've been working with the Xbox 360 dev kits for 8 months, and only got their PS3 dev kit in the last 3 weeks (and the dev kit has 1 Cell running at 2 GHz, not 3.2 GHz).
And I'm not particularly convinced that (based on the cell architecture) cells can be used efficiently in a useful manner (syncronization between main memory, the cpu/cpu cache, and their small working cache sucks up a lot of cycles).
Neither are my game developer friends, especially since the Cell itself can't access any main memory, and has to go through the 7 SPEs to access main memory.
In short, they're saying that the Xbox 360 is easy as hell to work with, and takes about 1/6 the manpower to develop for as the PS2 currently does... but they're pulling their hair out at the PS3 specs and dev kit wondering just how long it will take for them to get around its hard to develop for architecture and get good games out for it.
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That's probably because no one can find it to buy, except at Verizon stores-- where service is mandatory. Google's online store has gotten them in over the months, but their notification system hasn't been notifying people on the wait list (like me, been on since November, 0 notifications, despite there being stock coming and going), and they're apparently getting in about 3/4 of a phone each time, because the shipments sell out in a matter of minutes. They appear to be sending over 99% of the shipments to Verizon, and keep fuck all for those people who want to buy it completely unlocked and outright.
I read the PDF, you dumb fuck. Death threats are illegal.
Yes, they are. Non-credible threats, however, have about as much of a chance of being prosecuted and achieving jail time for the person making the non-credible threat as Wu has of winning that seat in 2018.
If I threaten you by telling you some outrageous bullshit, like "I'll rip your head off like Sub-Zero!" the FBI is going to look at that and know it isn't actionable. Now, if I threaten with something much more credible, like having taken pictures of you going in and out of your house, and saying "watch your back, you never know when I'll attack", then the FBI (or local law enforcement) will see that as a much more credible threat, especially since it appears I'm already stalking you, and know where you live.
Those differences are what separate SJW logic from real logic. SJW logic dictates that even the most outrageous thing said to them ("I'll shove a nuclear bomb up your ass and detonate it!") is a real and credible threat to their special snowflake lives; and that they now deserve money from strangers because they're a victim. Real logic says: yeah, that threat is so toooooootally real. Like, fer sure, dude. *laughs and walks away knowing the threat is a fake*.
But, I checked out some of the PSP titles last night. And I was appalled to see that some of the prices for them were $50.
$50 for a HANDHELD game? No thank you. $40 is a bit much for a hand held game, IMHO. $25-$30 I can deal with, maybe an occasional $35 here and there-- were I to be a handheld game player. But the PSP games all started around $40 with few exceptions (some older games were down to $30), and some of the newest games were $50.
Sorry, if the pricing on PSP games stays like this, I can't see the PSP gaining much of a lead, if any, over the coming years. Handheld games are generally shorter than their console counterparts/cousins. They generally as not as fully featured as their console cousins. But I'd be God damned if I was going to spend as much on a hand held game as I am spending for a full console game if I owned a handheld system.
The system is $250. Start adding in games at $50 a pop, and I'd rather just wait for all the next gen consoles to come out and get the game there. The handheld gaming market is driven from pick up and play games, and some long RPGs, that you don't spend a lot of money on but get tons of enjoyment out of. $50 for handheld games, no matter what publisher put them out, is simply too much money.
With all the added risk you take with your handheld systems (dropping/breaking, losing, etc.) and the games, the price of the PSP and its games is just too high to keep it viable in the handheld market for too long. Consoles generally sit in one place, and don't move, so they don't have the same risk factors associated with them. And we've been paying $50 for those games for years. Until the PSP, no one was paying $50 for a handheld game... and, frankly, it's a gamble I think Sony and the publishers attempting to milk the handheld market buyers are going to lose.
Actually, it was a problem noted with the Zerkers. If they feared or thunderclapped you, your client simply CRASHED. Always fun.
Also, Venoxis in ZG had a glitch wherein he could not be reset, and his AoE chain lightning ended up getting an unlimited range.
And, of course, polymorph got FUBARed as well. Now the sheep just wander and wander far away, potentially aggroing other mobs of their type when they unsheep.
Which, actually, hurts me, too. Now that I have a 60, I seriously want to get myself up the money for an epic mount and don't feel like spending the rest of my life in BG queues to get my rank up to the point where I can get the PvP epic mount.
Tyr's Hand was a good source of income for me, especially since the mobs sometimes dropped over 20s at a time, and drop a lot of runecloth so I can get the price of my epic mount down in Darnassus.
Though, now with my feral buff, I might be able to survive a bit more inside the wall, instead of just farming the ones outside the wall.
I find their use of transparencies quite ugly, actually. But, at least the giant Fischer Price red X to close button seems to be gone.
Then again, I'm on OS X, so I find having menu bars on the program windows ugly, anymore. It took me a while to get used to the menu is always at the top of the screen that OS X uses, but I find it is less clutter, more use of space for the app now, though. Least the drop shadows look good... though, that's not a hard aspect to do, really.
So, since I stopped using Windows for OS X they still haven't fixed this?
I've gotten so used to it on OS X, I figured MS might have fixed that on Windows by now...
Nothing worse than watching/listening to something and suddenly AIM/MSN messenger/Yahoo! IM going off and scaring the shit out of me... Well, yes there is, but not in the context of what we speak of here.
Or, that the rest of what's on Xbox Live doesn't have the mass draw appeal of Halo 2, nor the already tried and true strategies and other such that people have built up over the past 10 months.
This seems to be more of the case. Other games come out, they get a little XBL hype... then people go back to what they know and can pwn at: Halo 2.
Halo 2 is a very simple FPS to get into. This is good. It has a slow pace to it. This is not good to me. It had exploits that people used ALL THE TIME, many of which Bungie knew about a year before release (hey, some of these walls aren't solid!), and it took them until 8 freaking months after release to fix them (and maybe brought about new exploits, who knows... I haven't played it since, oh, around February). This is BAD. They had to release a quick patch to fix a 480p HUD problem and unlock the hidden map because they made the way to unlock it so screwed up that people would rather break the game than do it. This is good that they released that patch early... but bad that they let that ship.
Halo 2 is certainly not the best single player, nor multiplayer game on the Xbox. It is just the one that has so many idiotic people behind it 24/7, that it remains the most popular game on the Xbox and XBL.
The people that work for places like IGE and such, many of them Chinese workers who just watch macro-controlled characters getting paid a pittance for their time, are the problem.
They farm all the good items in the game, especially patterns/recipies/etc. needed to learn professions, and then sell what they can in the games for outrageous prices.
You can see stuff going for 10s or 100s of gold in WoW auction houses.
Now, when you see the same name auctioning off the exact same things all the time, you can start to see the farmers.
The problem becomes that new players look at the prices in the AH, and just assume that those prices are the normal prices for items. Hell, I see people trying to sell low level stuff for over 10 gold now, and it's tons of the same item from the same seller... first thing that pops in my mind is "Chinese farmer." And the sad part is, someone who buys the gold that these people farm, will just buy that stuff at those prices, and the cycle continues.
For reference, on my main server (Alliance side), stuff like light leather or linen cloth goes for about 25 silver for a complete stack. On my alt server (Horde side), the prices are about half that. Maybe it can be chalked up to there simply being more Alliance chars on the servers, or maybe it is because the Alliance players, in general, are more willing to go out and spend real world money to buy virtual gold.
Granted, not all farming is bad. I'm currently in farming mode for my characters so I can buy my mounts and other such... but, I'm farming for me, because my characters need the money; and I refuse to spend extra real life money for the virtual money I can make for my characters in game. I'm not selling the gold I make for real world cash; I barely make enough for myself anyway.
Worked fine with Safari, so i assume Konqueror will work as well.
A lot of people say this happened to them when they went to 10.3.9, but this happened to me the night before I went to 10.3.9.
I guess you've never seen this. The auto aim is hardly hidden.
* I can't get my most importat apps (the MS and Adobe bunch) to run under this OS. Classic is not an option.
Microsoft Office, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, and others, are all available on Mac OS X, as well as Adobe's suite of graphics applications. I use Photoshop CS on my iBook all the time...
Which programs from these vendors were you speaking of when you said they don't run on OS X?
With how many times I've died and had my enemy just a few hp away from death themselves, I think you over estimate how much better that 1% bonus to dodging is. If I was regenerating a few hp every tick, I'd have lived through at least some of those encounters.
I try and pelt my foe from afar with spells, especially trying to keep them entangled as much as possible... but you can't keep them away from you forever at all times (especially when they suddenly teleport right in front of you, still entangled, for some reason-- when they were 20 yards away half a second before hand). 1% better dodge is nothing. I don't know what controls your dodging ability in WoW (assuming agility), but my base percentage must not be very high, even with that extra 1%, because I don't dodge and avoid damage as much as you might think.
If we say that the base dodge percent for everyone is 5%, then Night Elves get 6%. Woooo! That means a whole one more time out of 100 attempts made, the Night Elf will dodge when the others fail. Statistically, it's still essentially a 1 in 20 chance to dodge using these numbers; the chance to roll a 6 out out of 100 is not substantially higher than rolling a 5 out of 100.
Meanwhile, the troll is regenerating his HP, 100% of the time, even if it is only 10% of his normal regen [(spirit regen+10%)/10]. If he has a high spirit, that can still be substantial. With the right equipment and buffs, at high levels, the troll could be regenerating as much as 10 hp or more each time he regens during combat. 10 hp at certain times can mean the difference between life and death.
Hell, I regenerate like 30-40 HP out of battle, or somewhere around there... I'd have to log in to check... and getting 3-4 hp back a tick during battle could have saved my life more than a few times. Besides, I'd say the Night Elf 25% faster ghost is better than their 1% to dodge, being as if the foe dies anyway (say from Thorns, or residual MoonFire effects), and the graveyard isn't half the land away, you can normally get back to your body before the enemy respawns.
Gnome 5% int > Tauren 5% hp, bigger mana pool and higher crit rate with spells that completely ignore armor vs taking one extra melee hit from a non-leet.
For a spell caster, like me, I would agree. And for PvP, I could see this as extremely useful. But in PvE, they balance out. In PvE, the spell caster has to worry about casting and being interrupted... but in PvP the spell caster can try and sit back if in a group (and in PvE as well, but aggro seems to draw the enemies to the spell casters) and let the warriors tank up front. And, in reality, this part of the discussion is about PvE, not PvP.
BTW I did say "actually usefull" traits.
I think a 10% regen rate during combat is actually useful. Have a troll warrior tanking up front, with a druid able to cast Regrowth or Rejuvenation on him, and he's nigh near un-killable, both in PvP and PvE.
And, since I'm a n00b at WoW, I don't go and do battlegrounds.
And let's not forget that trolls get a 10% health regeneration bonus outside of combat, and 10% of their health regen while in combat; undead can breathe underwater 4x as long as other races; and Tauren have 5% higher hit points than anybody else of the same class at the same level.
Even if you say that longer breath holding under water isn't an advantage (because it can be overcome depending on situations), or that a 5% hp bonus isn't that much (5 hp for every 100)... the fact that trolls can regen in combat and have a better regen outside of combat makes your 3:2 ratio become 2:1 in favor of the Horde. If we have the others, then it's 3:1 for racial bonuses favoring the Horde (well, 5:2 because Gnomes get a 5% increase to intelligence if we count the 5% hp bonus of the Taurens).
Since I've yet to play a Horde, I can't say for areas of leveling or quests and quest rewards. But, I've leveled my char pretty fast (level 24 Night Elf Druid in my 10 day trial, which expires tonight, I'll re-up when I get a little extra money)-- but being on long term disability means I was able to power game it, with about 10 hours a day, sometimes more, of playing.
I gotta agree to a point about them needing to be toned down, though. My 23rd level Night Elf Druid went up against a 23rd level Tauren Shaman tonight... In the time it took me to cast 1 spell (and not even something that takes forever to cast, like StarFire, we're talking Wrath with .3 seconds taken off the casting time, and he didn't hit me while I was casting it) and then change to bear from, he had at least 3 totems on the ground... and promptly proceeded to take almost no damage from my bear form and whittled away the over 1k hit points I had (Gift of Wild Stamina bonus, armor stat boosts, Bear Form bonus) in under 30 seconds. I think I took off maybe 1/3 his health.
Theoretically, a 23rd level anything should hold their own against a 23rd level anything else, right? At least to the point of not feeling like they just go their ass handed to them because they went weak character class against strong character class. Against that Tauren Shaman, I had no chance. Even in D&D a 23rd level mage can actually go against a 23rd level fighter, if played right, and have a chance at winning.
I'm not saying nerf them to the point of making them unplayable, but fer God's sake, make some of those totems take some time to throw down. Otherwise, the only way my druid can ever hope to beat one is to spam MoonFire the whole battle (which defeats the purpose of a spell that continues to do damage over time, but has an instant cast), and even then that's only if I crit each MoonFire spell.
And, before you say "well stay away before fighting him so you can hit him with spells," he was in alliance territory, and wouldn't get more than a foot away from me until I finally went PvP on him. Sure, he goaded me into attacking him, but I still should have had a better chance than none against him when we are the same level.
At least MS had demos (playable in some cases, others were played by MS people as demos) running on Apple G5 towers (development kits) to show what the games were supposed to be like.
The PS3 was all hype and fluff. The Revolution (which I am looking forward to), was a no show, basically. At least MS had Xbox 360 (worst console name EVAR) specs down, demos running, etc. As far as the next gen of consoles is concerned, MS was the only player ready to step up to the plate.
Now, if this gamble of launching early will pay off for them, well, only time will tell.
There are 7 SPEs on the PS3. One of my developer friends speculates that each SPE can handle 1 controller, hence, 7 wireless controllers.
Is he, or is he on to something here?
The fact that your opinions are so self-righteous does not make them correct.
Self-righteous opinions are not automatically correct, true.
It is completely feasible that the tone and flavor of the cell shaded graphics in Wind Waker did not really tickle some gamers fancy.
This is true. However, to simply refuse to play a game based on its graphical style is akin to judging a book by its cover, is it not? Most of the arguments you will ever hear about people refusing to play Wind Waker are based off of the "kiddy" graphics.
Yet, these same people will jump and grab the newest Jak game, or Ratchet and Clank game, even though the graphics, in all honesty, are no less "kiddy" in design, but they aren't cell shaded graphics in those games.
And that's the point I believe the grandparent is trying to make. Those who simply refuse to play a game based off of its graphical style alone, are not true gamers. Those that refuse to play a game because it doesn't "look" the way they feel games "should look;" they aren't real gamers. They'll, instead, be blown away by the "OMGZ l00k at th0$3 grafx!!!!!!!!!" and never care that the game could either be the best thing ever made, or the biggest piece of shit ever made, they'll make their mind up based off of graphical style alone-- which is not a real gamer.
It would be akin to me hating Frank Miller's drawing style, and thus never picking up The Dark Knight Returns, or Sin City, or any other book he has written and drawn simply for the fact that I didn't like his art style-- and thus claiming the books were "teh suck" simply because of the art style. This exact same thing is what these "gamers" are doing to Wind Waker, and other games (JGR/JSR and JSRF would spring to mind here)-- claiming they are "teh suck" based solely on graphics alone, and never playing the game to find out if the game is good or not. Yet, they're out playing Madden every waking moment...
People have different criteria for what they consider a good game, and simply because their set does not correspond with yours does not make them wrong.
This is true. But if the only criteria for a game being "good" to these gamers is how it looks, then yes, they are wrong. Graphics are not the be all and end all of games, and anyone who thinks they are is completely in the wrong.
From their Fiscal 2003 report (I had that direct linked from something earlier, don't feel like searching the SEC website right now):
"Sony's sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003 decreased approximately 2 percent and operating income decreased approximately 5 percent compared with the previous fiscal year."
From the same report regarding fiscal 2002:
"Sony's sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2002 decreased approximately 4 percent compared with the previous fiscal year, and an operating loss was recorded compared to operating income recorded in the previous fiscal year."
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but operating loss is the exact opposite of profit (operating income). So fiscal 2002 had an operating loss, and fiscal 2003 had seen sales and income slump beyond what it had slumped to in fiscal 2002.
Although, it seems fiscal 2004 they made a profit, which I was unaware of. But your "LONG LONG time" seems a bit off the mark, being as 2002 and 2003 are not a long long time ago, nor in a galaxy far far away.
Almost everything you are describing sounds hardware related. It could be something as simple as bad RAM, or you might need a new logic board. The fact it is locking up in different ways points me to the RAM or logic board problem.
Mine had the same types of problems, a few times. Each time it turned out to be hardware problems. Thankfully, I opted for AppleCare when I bought my iBook, and now that my initial 1 year parts/labor warranty is over, I still have 1 year 10 months left for free warranty repairs if my hardware goes bad, again. And, being as I am on my 4th logic board, I am glad I bought the AppleCare.
Plus, let's say that in 1 year 9 months, I get a horrid problem and they can't replace my current logic board (due to not having the parts anymore), I'll get upgraded, for free, to the current 14" iBook at the time. So, if this means I get a faster CPU, better video card, bigger HDD, etc. then that's all part of my AppleCare warranty. I'll just have a backup of my hard drive to keep all my data if that happens. i know someone who had his nearly 3 year old PowerBook upgraded to a much better one through AppleCare for just this reason... they no longer had the parts to repair it, so he got upgraded for free. And Apple states you will never be downgraded if you require a replacement; the replacement will be at least equal to, or better than the stock computer you bought (screen size, CPU, RAM, HDD, video card, optical media drive, etc.).
I think you mean annual earnings, not annual profit. Sony hasn't made an annual profit, as an entire company, in three fiscal years.
And, yet, there is not one single PS2 game that looks as good as the FFVIII dance scene in game... None. No GC or Xbox games that look that good, either, but the GC and Xbox do have games that come closer to that quality in game than the PS2 does.
Until you look at their tech specs from their press release.
Sony says 2 TFLOPS of floating point calculations... but the Cell is doing 218 GFLOPS, and the RSX is supposed to be handling the other 1.8 TFLOPS. The Xbox 360's triple cored dual threaded CPU does 1 TFLOP. As far as the CPUs are concerned, the Xbox 360's is more powerful, at least according to the floating point operations per second it can do.
GPUS are a bit of a different story. Even though the PS3 GPU is supposed to be based off of the GeForce 6800 Ultra (and be equivalent to 2 of them combined), my friends who are game developers said they know jack shit about the RSX chip, yet. But they've been working with the Xbox 360 dev kits for 8 months, and only got their PS3 dev kit in the last 3 weeks (and the dev kit has 1 Cell running at 2 GHz, not 3.2 GHz).
And I'm not particularly convinced that (based on the cell architecture) cells can be used efficiently in a useful manner (syncronization between main memory, the cpu/cpu cache, and their small working cache sucks up a lot of cycles).
Neither are my game developer friends, especially since the Cell itself can't access any main memory, and has to go through the 7 SPEs to access main memory.
In short, they're saying that the Xbox 360 is easy as hell to work with, and takes about 1/6 the manpower to develop for as the PS2 currently does... but they're pulling their hair out at the PS3 specs and dev kit wondering just how long it will take for them to get around its hard to develop for architecture and get good games out for it.