Trying to create true non-linear gameplay for MMORPGs is a two-edged sword, mostly because in open ended play, *something* is always exploitable *somewhere.* The beauty and true enjoyment of this model is in the act of searching for that *somewhere.* It encourages you to think, try out different combinations, experiment. If you try to do that in an MMO, however, you will have alienated your Lowest Common Denominator, which is arguably your majority of your subscribers - therefore causing your 75% of your marketshare to look elsewhere to find a game to play that doesn't consist of 'cheaters.'
For example, PVP is a totally unexplored world of massive online gaming, and unfortunately nobody has truly found that sweet spot that will get both the hardcore and casual gamer to interact together without feeling like "I would rather be playing with people like me, my level, so it doesn't feel so unfair," instead of, "Woah, I better stay away from him! I'll just sit at this bar, drink my drink, and maybe he won't notice me as he walks by.." I say all this in the perspective of "How do I get as many people as possible to play (and keep playing) my game??" FPS type games I don't count in this category, because the ratio between casual to hardcore gamers is quite large. Hardcore gamers hype your game to other hardcore gamers, but casual gamers hype your game to *everybody.* MMOs are some high stakes buisness, so unless you have cash to burn, odds are there are a buncha old rich men backing you up that have no interest in your game, but rather how much you can Step 4)PROFIT!! from it. And if that means sacrificing certain elements in your game that were key to providing the groundwork to fantastic non-linear gameplay, so be it.
Perhaps you misundestood what they meant by 'darker.'
You see, by the time the show gets airtime, technology for new LCD and plasma televisions will be quite mature, mature enough to the point where the BLACK levels will begin to rival CRT. As of right now, black levels for LCD televisions are quite poor, the closest we can get to rich black levels would have to be DLP, but those television units are not as thin. It'll be quite amazing actaully, to see a new darker star wars on 50 inch LCD television units! I can't wait.
Oh, what, did you think they were talking about the content? They already mentioned 'a bunch of new characters,' what other content would you possibly need?
If your idea turns out successful, then Lucas will capitalize on the popularity of that last season, and by the second season he will give us another long, slow, painful death of Jar-Jar(because he mysteriously survived). But this time in High Def.:-(
And in a volcano.:-(..
Under water.:-(....
On an ice planet.
That's being sucked into a black hole.
That's actaully an alternate dimension to the DC universe
Ugh. Let us not mention those hockey puck mice ever again. That was an overdesigned piece of hardware in an attempt at Apple to try and be radically different. That mouse sucked. Fortunately they learned from their past mistakes and took those aspects into consideration.
It's more than the fact that it's cute, simple electronics.
Apple as a brand can be more associated with fashion and it's social status of that brand recognition. Japan is not completely xenophobic when it comes to fashionable items. Wanna know what brand names are also highly sought after in Japan? Prada. Gucci. Louis Vuitton.
Apple is a fashionable product. 10 dollars says that the Ipod is real popular amongst mid to late teenage girls in Japan. Woah, it's also highly sought after by the same demographic in the US? It's more than the fact that it's 'a really good mp3 player' that makes that type of impact. The target demographic of people won't get excited because they own a Sony mp3 player. They don't even get excited that they own an mp3 player, they get excited that they own an Apple product
The reason why the xbox360 has no impact is because there is no 'social status' to gain from posessing one (also prolly that lack of games japanese people prefer prolly matters as well). An xbox360 is no Mercedes Benz. OR an Ipod.
Image matters. And apple's got it.
I wonder if the ipod costs the same in japan as it does in the US. If there is any social status to gain from owning an ipod, it can probably command a pretty penny (or yen in this case).
My brother was in Korea for the past 2 years, and the first thing he said when he came back to the US was "What is the connection so freakin slow??" We are on broadband, I was used to downloading big files at average download 'high' speeds of around 30-40kbps. Sometimes I would see it go up as much as 200kbps with BT, but never anything beyond that. To my brother, he considered 200kbps slow!
I'm gonna go out on a limb and have to agree with Dvorak: this needs to be government mandated if we are to see faster adaption of all this technology. I'm sick and tired of it all this being held back simply because of some greedy execs are trying to leech every last dollar out of us, without having to shell out any money to upgrade their systems. Why aren't those monopoly rules applying here??
This must be one of the more weaker stories of this week.
As much to the dismay of gamers, Blizzard and every other major game developer out there exist to fulfill their primary goal: to MAKE MONEY.
While it would be nice to have more of skill based element in WoW, they are constrained by a few variables:
1: Technical limitations, for example: Latency. I've been playing WoW for quite some time now, and I remember when they released the pvp honor system patch. The first day I loaded up the game, it was a lag nightmare. I was at the fort in Stranglethorn Vale, along with roughly 80 fellow horde members. My chat log start spamming with ppl yelling "THEY ARE COMING!!", and I roughly 200 alliance started to steam roll us. It was beyond laggy. We crashed the server. Several times. The server was Mannoroth. Massive pvp raids are not that massive in WoW, which is a shame.
2: Appeal to a wide audience. This generally means the Lowest Common Denominator, as in your average run of the mill gamer. If you cater too much to the hardcore gamer, guess what: someone else will create a game that WON'T and will take your subscribing members away. You wanna tell that to their investors?
3: Appeal to the narrow audience. I.E. the hardcore gamer. Or in this case, the hardcore group of gamers. You know who they are: the ones that got to Onyxia the first 2 weeks of release. The ones that killed Nefarious the day Blizzard released the 'cockblock.' These are the ones that generate the most noise in the gaming community, the ones that make the game alive. These are the players that average players look at in awe at the type of gear they are wearing (2nd tier epics), the title they hold (High Warlord Someandsuch) and the mounts they ride ("What the hell is that? That doesn't look like a wolf at all!"). They are what the average player looks up to and goes "Wow, I wanna be just like that someday.." and drives them keep playing (and keep paying). What do you think will happen when the hardcore group 'beats' WoW the first two weeks of playing? What's their incentive to continue paying the monthly fee? It's not called the Treadmill (or the Grind) for nothing.
The World of Warcraft did not create the beast, it was created by it.
I've had a WoW account since launch, played the beta, been to a few end game raids, and when reality set in, I've realized I was averaging around 5 hours a night every day, so I forced myself to quit after all the Molten Core raids netted me nothing except for lack of sleep.
Before WoW, I played Anarchy Online for about 6 months. I dont know what playability is like now on that, but in the initial months the networking issues and memory leaks caused the game to be virtually unplayable. I can't beleive I played AO for that long.
Before AO, I was an avid EQ player. I've logged on much much more time in EQ than WoW, but progression was much slower, but I've felt that the community in EQ was much more tight knit than in WoW (likely due to an attraction towards the older demographics of gamers). Gear in EQ was much harder earned, and people will recognize the hard work an individual went through in order to earn that epic weapon. I still miss EQ and the community it generated.
Before EQ, I was keeping up with the status of Origin and awaiting the release of Ultima Online. I think I've had the worst gaming experience with UO (in terms of stats), always being frustrated, always being PK'd (this was before OWO split the servers to PK and non-pk), trying to mine some metal, make some armor, cut some wood, all the while trying to stay alive and not lose hours and hours of work to some gang of punk kid tankmage player killers. Hopefully I'll earn a few bucks in order to get some basic gear so I can go out to adventure and kill some orcs, check out the other towns. And make sure I'm with enough people so I don't end up being another victim of someone looking for a cheap kill for easy loot. If you weren't careful, people can break into your house and strip it clean the next time you log in. Life in UO was a bitch, and you had to play HARD in order to simply survive. Wimps were relegated to the cities and barely left the borders.
My fondest memories of all MMORPG's are all from UO, but I've had the most fun playing WoW (the same type of fun I experience when I play Counterstrike). WoW is an extremely polished online game. But IMHO, WoW has even less roleplaying elements than it's RTS predecessors (you know, warcraft). WoW is simply an FPS draped in RPG elements. If you plan on PvPing in WoW, you better know your combat gametheory (and have all your action commands binded to shortcut keys for quick access). If you plan on PvEing in WoW, the better you know your combat gametheory against mobs, the faster you can grind. If you plan on joining end game raids, the smoother communication you have amongst your raid group, the less likely chance you have of wiping. Enough gametheory and time devotion will grant you certain notoriety in your local WoW server as a powergamer.
In UO, you weren't well known in your local server unless you were VERY famous (i.e. Hulkamania, Xavori, Imanewbie). All the powergamers wore cheap robes over their insane gear in order to hide their 'true abilities.' There was an element of distrust and deception in UO, and visual clues gave away nothing. But simply due to the fact that your actions can affect the servers you were on means there was a level of immersion that exists in UO that doesn't exist in current MMORPGS. For example, players got together to create their own player run cities. They built everything themselves, the buildings, furniture, everything.
The problem with permanence in the world is that it's easily exploitable. For several months, there was a land shortage as everybody and their mother went to plant their own house on any plot of land they could find. The number of houses were so many it began to affect gameplay against the rest of the world (random mobs that spawn in the world started to spawn in the houses, which were of course locked, which means you wouldn't run into it). Future MMORPG designers saw that and decided that players cannot have their own houses in the world. That's the start of it. They've whittled down everything that made a rolep
Anything above 600$ will hurt, as my wife would try to kill me...
Shh! Better not tell her how much that engagement ring cost! Because if it's significantly more than $600, your wife is going to murder you. BUT, if it cost LESS than $600, your wife is going to do more than murder you.:-P
Not all RPGs use the d20 system, so there are systems out there that don't share the same kind of license. It just happens that the d20 system is some of the most popular. The d20 system is also open, which means that there is no royalty paid to anyone, so I'm curious to the sarcasm expressed in your post.
whoops, looks like I got caught with egg on my face! I didn't realize AC was responding to a post; thats what I get for reading at the normal threshold and being too snippy.
Was anybody else reminded of the Transformers when they saw this? LOL.
You mean, aside from the fact that the title the article says "A Real Transformer" and the summary contains a reference to the Autobot leader Optimus Prime? I wouldn't have thought of that one! Thank you, Captain Obvious.
It's a marketing tactic, look up Loss Leader for example.
Tactics like this are used to entice foot traffic; they bring in customers into the store. Of course, once they are in, customers tend to purchase other goods along with the 'discounted goods,' and hopefully profit will ensue to the business. It also employs another important strategy: It prevents the customer from going to the competitor's establishment to spend their money. Most of the time loss leader goods are cooperative strategies employed by both the retail establishment and the goods manufacturer/supplier. The manufacturer receives brand visibility and the the local Best Buy gets 20% more people wanting to shop there in hopes of getting the goods at the discounted price as advertised.
The downside to tactics like this (from the retail side) is that diligent customers that purchase only loss leader goods results in the net loss of profit. In order to curb that loss of profit, Best Buy will do whatever it takes (in a legal sense) to prevent you from receiving that rebate check; make it a hassle with all the paperwork in order to submit that rebate form by mail, or void any rebate submissions (and future submission opportunities) they see legally fit when you fail to follow their 'guidelines.'
They just makes it easier to keep track of people who flub up their rebate submissions. Mix up a rebate tracker number (or whatever it's called), or make a typo in your receipt number- and your rebate is invalid. BAM - there goes $60 you're never going to see. Perhaps you caught your mistake, and you want to resubmit it with the correct number; the computer will catch you resubmitting, and will consider you trying to dupe your rebate submission (you know, to 'catch' all those evil-doers that are trying to cheat the system by submitting over and over again *yeah right*) and will void your rebate. By having it all computerized, you remove the human element (i.e. the people that are paid to process your rebate forms via mail, and have them verify that the rebate is not void), and they save money by not having to hire people to process the mail-in rebates, AND accurately keep statistical analysis of the percentage of failed submissions to notify the accountants how much Best Buy has *saved* by not having to honor your rebate. Most of the time people won't care, since they will be able to do it right the first time, but if you mess up - poor internet connection, or cat jumped on keyboard and pressed enter or even just a typo or mixup- it just gives bestbuy a reason not to honor that rebate check.
Best Buy doesn't hate customers, they just hate customers that are trying to nickle and dime them - and that includes everybody that shops with rebates in mind.
Do you have a link to back up your statement? I'm curious to find out when FOX released the rights back to Whedon.
I was under the impression that FOX owns the television broadcasting rights to Firefly for 10 years, and they were unwilling to give it up to other studios without lots of money to entice them. What FOX gave up was the movie rights to Universal - or something like that.
FOX knows there is a following behind this group, and giving up the rights away will only make the other people ("not FOX") money - the network doesn't want THAT to happen, so better off just holding on to the rights, so that NOBODY profits (look what happened to Star Wars, all that MORE money Fox COULD have made). It's kinda like the greedy kid with all the toys not willing to share - well, that's my theory anyways.
About champagne, have you considered sparking wine from california (or other domestic parts of the world)? While I can't speak much for sparkling wines that cost >$100, I find that the best value sparkling wines I can get can be $20-40 are from california. The only reason I would buy expensive (such as Dom, Krug or Grand Damme) would be stricly to impress the would be in-laws or other people that really have no idea other than brand recognition.:-P
Agreed. BN is harvested during the summerish time, and is ready to drink by the time November rolls around. Wines made from carbonic maceration (generally how 'nouveau' wines are made) are not even designed to be tannic anyway. I wouldn't want to drink BN after spring, especially considering poor storage conditions of most retail establishments would spoil the wines quickly due to it's lack of tannins which act as a preservative. Note: I only say this from experience, so I am unable to back up anything I say. I've stored both wines that are tannic and others that are not. Non-tannic wines (like Pinot Noir for example) are much more sensitive to external conditions (exposure to light, change in temperature, the oxygen and cork conditions along with other stuff in the bottle already) tend to go bad much more quickly. Also, when was the last time you've heard wine retailers sell you white wine - which have less tannins then most reds - that are designed to be stored long term? You can probably list some exceptions, but those are the very rare ones.
Not all wines are made the same. Some wines are made to be consumed immediately, and those wines are NOT designed for long term storage. Others, are the very opposite; If you consume them immediately, they will taste amazingly tannic and harsh, to which is better to hold off on drinking them and put them into storage so that the tannins break down to 'smooth' out the wine. (and yes, that is the 'technical' term according to me:-P)
When some guy approaches me and tells me he can take BN, put it thru a machine, and have it taste like a 1st Growth Bordeaux that's been aged 15 years, I call shenanigans. That's like taking Bud Light, putting in thru the machine, and having produced aged Lager.
A more interesting test sample would have been to use an 'expensive' wine with heavy harsh tannins (like a Rothchild, or even Petrus). Take a vintage from 2005, zap it, and drink it side by side to a same maker's product that's been aged like 20-30 years or so, AND drinking it side by side to a fresh bottle from 2005 to see the differece between a zapped and non-zapped wine of the same year.
Not to be a total Debbie Downer, but I bet the reason why the BN has even got 'smoother' in the first place is due to it's exposure to air, resulting in some alcohol evaporation along with initial chemical change from the exposure to oxygen and other things resulting in some of the harshness to go away (similar to how the decanting process can smooth out the wine a bit). Remember, BN is designed to be consumed immediately, and spoils quickly.
I apologize for any redundancy in the post, its late...
I mean no disrespect, but if you are doing any video editing and post-production work on an apple platform machine, why aren't you doing it on a powermac? Price is obviously not the issue. Neither is portability. Because if you really needed to max out the throughput, you would need to use a raided setup, as single disk portable drives can't even use all 400Mb/s (or can they? it's been a while for me..) Do you have your portable HD plugged in?
Just curious why the absence of firewire 800 is such an issue.
You know, I'm gonna have to agree with you. There is something more inherently 'human'(?) about artwork that is created by artists - you can see the flaws, the imperfections, and it somehow brings character to the subject in question, whether it be music, or painting, or winemaking. Wine, like a lot of other foodstuffs, or even fine art (like painting, sculpture, or musical style) - is an acquired taste. Just like how a computer can compose a perfectly 'clean' peice of music, computers and mathmatics can be used to make clean wine as well. That doesn't necessarily mean that the wine will necessarily be good to the individual person. It could be an issue of preference - some people like r&b, others like jazz or even others listen to only listen to jpop - others still abhor gregorian chant. Wine could be considered likewise - how can someone determine if the expensive Sauvignon Blanc really does taste like cat urine(seriously) - and like it?
Automating the winemaking takes the 'art' aspects of the wine, and it just becomes processed, similar to the cartons of orange juice you see in the supermarket. The idea behind wine isn't that bottles of wine year after year taste exactly the same (although there are certainly winemakers that go for that in order to maintain marketability to a certain population that like the way their wine tastes and aren't looking for 'suprises'), but rather the fact that no two wines from different years are alike.
It's kinda like going to the theater and watching the same scifi space opera movie being produced over and over - some people like change (parody), others like extreme change (epic fantasy), and others like to watch the same exact thing(episode II). Appeal in wine is the same.
But hey, I'm not knocking it. If they are able to recreate my favorite wine year after year, count me in! That is, untill I'm bored with it and want to try something different.:-P Still, it's kinda like watching a recording and comparing it to a live performance. Different strokes for different folks coupled on top of the fact that people are fickle.
The big benefit for me is speed. I can get lots of different news articles and titles consolidated undeer one app, which I can scan over real quickly and cherry pick the ones I would be most interested in. It's amazing how up to date I can be on the topics that pique my interest, and at the same time by scanning thru the headlines real quick have some cursory knowledge on information that may not normally interest me initially, but may develop into something later. The downside to this is that you have to be regularly checking your aggregator, otherwise if you take a week off it, you'll be overloaded with like 600 articles to read when you check it again. Incidentally it also slowed down my constant refreshing of/., causing me to participate less (prolly also got something to do with the way/. does it's RSS feeds - pretty slow). Today I've decided to do something different and just read/.
Yeah yeah, I'm an RSS speed junkie. But i like my news, and I like it fast. Within 5 minutes of hitting the web, I'll know about it. I also listen to podcasts which I get fed, but I only do that at work. I do miss the discussions on/. when I just have my RSS feeds, but on the flipside, I can get a lot more work done!:-)
Unfortunately, the only the thing writer was looking for WAS the hype. He was disappointed with knowing so little about the Revolution. He was disappointed that the PSP sales aren't that great. He's disappointed with the XBOX 360 holiday launch. Simply by the fact that he needs to go to lengths to take the time and space to write out insults and offtopic flamebait material in an attempt to add validity to his observations shows that he's really grasping at straws. I don't want to waste time reading how much Nintendo sucks and how they should go back to selling play cards (because that's *SO* FUNNY! HARHAR get it?! That's what Nintendo used to do! I'm so 1337 in my nintendo trivia and it clearly shows that I know this industry!!1)
The whole article reads like an emotional article by an irate highschool kid. I'm angry at myself for reading that piece of trash.
Seriously. They need more granularity with their subscription rates. Why is it so difficult to bill by the hour? And people wonder why the MMO market only caters to the hardcore? It's kinda like the cell phone business. I guess we'll have to wait untill the MMO market itself levels out, then we will start seeing "Fair and Flexible" plans..
Slashdot Mirror
From Wikipedia:
1 LOC = 20 tebibytes
1 tebibyte = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes
Doesn't sound nearly as impresive, perhaps marketing should stick with 6,984,919,309 nLoc/hr
For example, PVP is a totally unexplored world of massive online gaming, and unfortunately nobody has truly found that sweet spot that will get both the hardcore and casual gamer to interact together without feeling like "I would rather be playing with people like me, my level, so it doesn't feel so unfair," instead of, "Woah, I better stay away from him! I'll just sit at this bar, drink my drink, and maybe he won't notice me as he walks by.." I say all this in the perspective of "How do I get as many people as possible to play (and keep playing) my game??" FPS type games I don't count in this category, because the ratio between casual to hardcore gamers is quite large. Hardcore gamers hype your game to other hardcore gamers, but casual gamers hype your game to *everybody.* MMOs are some high stakes buisness, so unless you have cash to burn, odds are there are a buncha old rich men backing you up that have no interest in your game, but rather how much you can Step 4)PROFIT!! from it. And if that means sacrificing certain elements in your game that were key to providing the groundwork to fantastic non-linear gameplay, so be it.
You see, by the time the show gets airtime, technology for new LCD and plasma televisions will be quite mature, mature enough to the point where the BLACK levels will begin to rival CRT. As of right now, black levels for LCD televisions are quite poor, the closest we can get to rich black levels would have to be DLP, but those television units are not as thin. It'll be quite amazing actaully, to see a new darker star wars on 50 inch LCD television units! I can't wait.
Oh, what, did you think they were talking about the content? They already mentioned 'a bunch of new characters,' what other content would you possibly need?
And in a volcano. :-(..
Under water. :-(....
On an ice planet.
That's being sucked into a black hole.
That's actaully an alternate dimension to the DC universe
Where Brainiac rules the unvierse
Oh, the drama that this will cause!!!
Ugh. Let us not mention those hockey puck mice ever again. That was an overdesigned piece of hardware in an attempt at Apple to try and be radically different. That mouse sucked. Fortunately they learned from their past mistakes and took those aspects into consideration.
Apple as a brand can be more associated with fashion and it's social status of that brand recognition. Japan is not completely xenophobic when it comes to fashionable items. Wanna know what brand names are also highly sought after in Japan? Prada. Gucci. Louis Vuitton.
Apple is a fashionable product. 10 dollars says that the Ipod is real popular amongst mid to late teenage girls in Japan. Woah, it's also highly sought after by the same demographic in the US? It's more than the fact that it's 'a really good mp3 player' that makes that type of impact. The target demographic of people won't get excited because they own a Sony mp3 player. They don't even get excited that they own an mp3 player, they get excited that they own an Apple product
The reason why the xbox360 has no impact is because there is no 'social status' to gain from posessing one (also prolly that lack of games japanese people prefer prolly matters as well). An xbox360 is no Mercedes Benz. OR an Ipod.
Image matters. And apple's got it.
I wonder if the ipod costs the same in japan as it does in the US. If there is any social status to gain from owning an ipod, it can probably command a pretty penny (or yen in this case).
I'm gonna go out on a limb and have to agree with Dvorak: this needs to be government mandated if we are to see faster adaption of all this technology. I'm sick and tired of it all this being held back simply because of some greedy execs are trying to leech every last dollar out of us, without having to shell out any money to upgrade their systems. Why aren't those monopoly rules applying here??
As much to the dismay of gamers, Blizzard and every other major game developer out there exist to fulfill their primary goal: to MAKE MONEY.
While it would be nice to have more of skill based element in WoW, they are constrained by a few variables:
1: Technical limitations, for example: Latency. I've been playing WoW for quite some time now, and I remember when they released the pvp honor system patch. The first day I loaded up the game, it was a lag nightmare. I was at the fort in Stranglethorn Vale, along with roughly 80 fellow horde members. My chat log start spamming with ppl yelling "THEY ARE COMING!!", and I roughly 200 alliance started to steam roll us. It was beyond laggy. We crashed the server. Several times. The server was Mannoroth. Massive pvp raids are not that massive in WoW, which is a shame.
2: Appeal to a wide audience. This generally means the Lowest Common Denominator, as in your average run of the mill gamer. If you cater too much to the hardcore gamer, guess what: someone else will create a game that WON'T and will take your subscribing members away. You wanna tell that to their investors?
3: Appeal to the narrow audience. I.E. the hardcore gamer. Or in this case, the hardcore group of gamers. You know who they are: the ones that got to Onyxia the first 2 weeks of release. The ones that killed Nefarious the day Blizzard released the 'cockblock.' These are the ones that generate the most noise in the gaming community, the ones that make the game alive. These are the players that average players look at in awe at the type of gear they are wearing (2nd tier epics), the title they hold (High Warlord Someandsuch) and the mounts they ride ("What the hell is that? That doesn't look like a wolf at all!"). They are what the average player looks up to and goes "Wow, I wanna be just like that someday.." and drives them keep playing (and keep paying). What do you think will happen when the hardcore group 'beats' WoW the first two weeks of playing? What's their incentive to continue paying the monthly fee? It's not called the Treadmill (or the Grind) for nothing.
The World of Warcraft did not create the beast, it was created by it.
Before WoW, I played Anarchy Online for about 6 months. I dont know what playability is like now on that, but in the initial months the networking issues and memory leaks caused the game to be virtually unplayable. I can't beleive I played AO for that long.
Before AO, I was an avid EQ player. I've logged on much much more time in EQ than WoW, but progression was much slower, but I've felt that the community in EQ was much more tight knit than in WoW (likely due to an attraction towards the older demographics of gamers). Gear in EQ was much harder earned, and people will recognize the hard work an individual went through in order to earn that epic weapon. I still miss EQ and the community it generated.
Before EQ, I was keeping up with the status of Origin and awaiting the release of Ultima Online. I think I've had the worst gaming experience with UO (in terms of stats), always being frustrated, always being PK'd (this was before OWO split the servers to PK and non-pk), trying to mine some metal, make some armor, cut some wood, all the while trying to stay alive and not lose hours and hours of work to some gang of punk kid tankmage player killers. Hopefully I'll earn a few bucks in order to get some basic gear so I can go out to adventure and kill some orcs, check out the other towns. And make sure I'm with enough people so I don't end up being another victim of someone looking for a cheap kill for easy loot. If you weren't careful, people can break into your house and strip it clean the next time you log in. Life in UO was a bitch, and you had to play HARD in order to simply survive. Wimps were relegated to the cities and barely left the borders.
My fondest memories of all MMORPG's are all from UO, but I've had the most fun playing WoW (the same type of fun I experience when I play Counterstrike). WoW is an extremely polished online game. But IMHO, WoW has even less roleplaying elements than it's RTS predecessors (you know, warcraft). WoW is simply an FPS draped in RPG elements. If you plan on PvPing in WoW, you better know your combat gametheory (and have all your action commands binded to shortcut keys for quick access). If you plan on PvEing in WoW, the better you know your combat gametheory against mobs, the faster you can grind. If you plan on joining end game raids, the smoother communication you have amongst your raid group, the less likely chance you have of wiping. Enough gametheory and time devotion will grant you certain notoriety in your local WoW server as a powergamer.
In UO, you weren't well known in your local server unless you were VERY famous (i.e. Hulkamania, Xavori, Imanewbie). All the powergamers wore cheap robes over their insane gear in order to hide their 'true abilities.' There was an element of distrust and deception in UO, and visual clues gave away nothing. But simply due to the fact that your actions can affect the servers you were on means there was a level of immersion that exists in UO that doesn't exist in current MMORPGS. For example, players got together to create their own player run cities. They built everything themselves, the buildings, furniture, everything.
The problem with permanence in the world is that it's easily exploitable. For several months, there was a land shortage as everybody and their mother went to plant their own house on any plot of land they could find. The number of houses were so many it began to affect gameplay against the rest of the world (random mobs that spawn in the world started to spawn in the houses, which were of course locked, which means you wouldn't run into it). Future MMORPG designers saw that and decided that players cannot have their own houses in the world. That's the start of it. They've whittled down everything that made a rolep
Shh! Better not tell her how much that engagement ring cost! Because if it's significantly more than $600, your wife is going to murder you. BUT, if it cost LESS than $600, your wife is going to do more than murder you. :-P
Not all RPGs use the d20 system, so there are systems out there that don't share the same kind of license. It just happens that the d20 system is some of the most popular. The d20 system is also open, which means that there is no royalty paid to anyone, so I'm curious to the sarcasm expressed in your post.
whoops, looks like I got caught with egg on my face! I didn't realize AC was responding to a post; thats what I get for reading at the normal threshold and being too snippy.
Unless he was looking at a 404 page for the past 5 minutes, confusing that for content. I would probably be pissed too. :-)
Disclaimer: site was down for me, so I only spent around 20 seconds waiting for the page to load.
You mean, aside from the fact that the title the article says "A Real Transformer" and the summary contains a reference to the Autobot leader Optimus Prime? I wouldn't have thought of that one! Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Tactics like this are used to entice foot traffic; they bring in customers into the store. Of course, once they are in, customers tend to purchase other goods along with the 'discounted goods,' and hopefully profit will ensue to the business. It also employs another important strategy: It prevents the customer from going to the competitor's establishment to spend their money. Most of the time loss leader goods are cooperative strategies employed by both the retail establishment and the goods manufacturer/supplier. The manufacturer receives brand visibility and the the local Best Buy gets 20% more people wanting to shop there in hopes of getting the goods at the discounted price as advertised.
The downside to tactics like this (from the retail side) is that diligent customers that purchase only loss leader goods results in the net loss of profit. In order to curb that loss of profit, Best Buy will do whatever it takes (in a legal sense) to prevent you from receiving that rebate check; make it a hassle with all the paperwork in order to submit that rebate form by mail, or void any rebate submissions (and future submission opportunities) they see legally fit when you fail to follow their 'guidelines.'
Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :-P
Best Buy doesn't hate customers, they just hate customers that are trying to nickle and dime them - and that includes everybody that shops with rebates in mind.
I was under the impression that FOX owns the television broadcasting rights to Firefly for 10 years, and they were unwilling to give it up to other studios without lots of money to entice them. What FOX gave up was the movie rights to Universal - or something like that.
FOX knows there is a following behind this group, and giving up the rights away will only make the other people ("not FOX") money - the network doesn't want THAT to happen, so better off just holding on to the rights, so that NOBODY profits (look what happened to Star Wars, all that MORE money Fox COULD have made). It's kinda like the greedy kid with all the toys not willing to share - well, that's my theory anyways.
About champagne, have you considered sparking wine from california (or other domestic parts of the world)? While I can't speak much for sparkling wines that cost >$100, I find that the best value sparkling wines I can get can be $20-40 are from california. The only reason I would buy expensive (such as Dom, Krug or Grand Damme) would be stricly to impress the would be in-laws or other people that really have no idea other than brand recognition. :-P
Not all wines are made the same. Some wines are made to be consumed immediately, and those wines are NOT designed for long term storage. Others, are the very opposite; If you consume them immediately, they will taste amazingly tannic and harsh, to which is better to hold off on drinking them and put them into storage so that the tannins break down to 'smooth' out the wine. (and yes, that is the 'technical' term according to me :-P)
When some guy approaches me and tells me he can take BN, put it thru a machine, and have it taste like a 1st Growth Bordeaux that's been aged 15 years, I call shenanigans. That's like taking Bud Light, putting in thru the machine, and having produced aged Lager.
A more interesting test sample would have been to use an 'expensive' wine with heavy harsh tannins (like a Rothchild, or even Petrus). Take a vintage from 2005, zap it, and drink it side by side to a same maker's product that's been aged like 20-30 years or so, AND drinking it side by side to a fresh bottle from 2005 to see the differece between a zapped and non-zapped wine of the same year.
Not to be a total Debbie Downer, but I bet the reason why the BN has even got 'smoother' in the first place is due to it's exposure to air, resulting in some alcohol evaporation along with initial chemical change from the exposure to oxygen and other things resulting in some of the harshness to go away (similar to how the decanting process can smooth out the wine a bit). Remember, BN is designed to be consumed immediately, and spoils quickly.
I apologize for any redundancy in the post, its late...
Just curious why the absence of firewire 800 is such an issue.
Automating the winemaking takes the 'art' aspects of the wine, and it just becomes processed, similar to the cartons of orange juice you see in the supermarket. The idea behind wine isn't that bottles of wine year after year taste exactly the same (although there are certainly winemakers that go for that in order to maintain marketability to a certain population that like the way their wine tastes and aren't looking for 'suprises'), but rather the fact that no two wines from different years are alike.
It's kinda like going to the theater and watching the same scifi space opera movie being produced over and over - some people like change (parody), others like extreme change (epic fantasy), and others like to watch the same exact thing(episode II). Appeal in wine is the same.
But hey, I'm not knocking it. If they are able to recreate my favorite wine year after year, count me in! That is, untill I'm bored with it and want to try something different. :-P Still, it's kinda like watching a recording and comparing it to a live performance. Different strokes for different folks coupled on top of the fact that people are fickle.
Yeah yeah, I'm an RSS speed junkie. But i like my news, and I like it fast. Within 5 minutes of hitting the web, I'll know about it. I also listen to podcasts which I get fed, but I only do that at work. I do miss the discussions on /. when I just have my RSS feeds, but on the flipside, I can get a lot more work done! :-)
i certainly hope he didn't mean "just like the rest of us one-handed Buck-Rogers, watching 12-year-olds" cause that'll get ya in all kinds of trouble!
The whole article reads like an emotional article by an irate highschool kid. I'm angry at myself for reading that piece of trash.
Sheesh