I think companies are a bit cautious about adding voice chat support, especially if the customer is going to end up in situations like this. Might not make for a positive experience.
There's a button in the lower left corner of your character portrait. It has an icon that's supposed to represent two (or is it three?) people, coloured lightbrown on black. It's right above where the "Open parties in your area" frame appears. I think it even has a mouse-over helptext.
Are you referring to that brown graphic with the 2 (or 3) heads tied to the chat text display window? Don't you think that's kind of... wierd? Why is it not near the top left corner closer - generally reserved for the default character portrait position, along with party portraits and warband frames underneath, don't you think that would be a better place to have it?
So again don't feel bad if you really want to let go and call me names on the internet, the whole point of my arguement was not to state that the problem is that these elements do not exist, but rather that for a casual player that the interface needs some tweaking in order to better facilitate community interaction. I'm not trying to find a solution, obviously you've given me more than enough information to provide that. My issue is that the solution provided is not intuitive enough for the non-gamer gamer. Proper interface design shouldn't be trying to get the user to figure out 'how it's supposed to work.' It shouldn't be getting the user to right-click, left-click everything on the screen to see what pops up, and it certainly should NOT be getting the user to read a PDF to figure that out.
Granted, this is an MMO, and there will be a lot of buttons to press, but there was a noticable lack of consideration given to the actual social aspects of gameplay flow - and especially for a default client; the social impact dictated by ui design is bigger than a lot of people give credit.
You can click on the names when they pop up, and a button appears? As a 31 year old casual player, how would I have known that? It's not like there is even a visual notification when I mouseover the list, if I manage to mouseover it on time.
This is what I'm talking about. While the client has some great features, if it was presented differently, it could be put to better use. As of right now when I zone into a lake I glance at the top right corner when the list pops up and hope I remember to spell the party leader's name correctly. For all the features WAR has, the default UI involving social interaction needs a better front-end interface and design. It was built by an engineer, not a designer (not to diminish the merits of either engineer or designer - both have their place).
Even on various messageboards, there have been threads popping up regularly stating the fact that this may be the most antisocial MMO ever. People have been complaining left and right about the fact that nobody speaks. I think it's actaully due to a simple factor:
The chat interface is archaic, and terrible.
One of the major problems is that a zone is series of subzones, and each subzone has it's own channel. These subzones are TINY. You can walk 20 feet and you'll be in a new chat channel. Every single time. A lot of people have been crying for a zone-wide chat channel on the threads.
The lack of global channels was such a problem, that on my server (Volkmar) people have designated a common custom channel ("Order Warfront") and have been touting it to facilitate better rvr by alerting everybody in the channel where the fights are taking place. While this is a popular solution, one MAJOR problem is that the game client does NOT save the channel settings when you log off. Yeap. Everytime you log on you gotta remember to "/joinchannel Order Warfront." Some people have even set this as a macro. There are even addons that have a workaround for this, but for everybody else that's not about to install mods for the game, they either forget, or just are not aware. Very not friendly.
Another thing is that the chat input text field does not remember your last input settings for which channel - a recent patch they've updated the client to remember who you've last sent a/tell to, but it doesn't remember any of the channel messages. This is really annoying too, and is not conducive to a steady conversation.
Considering that they have created a series of new social mechanics which work to great effect, particularly the Public Quests and the Open Party, if there was an easier mechanic to ease the player into it further, that would really give a nice boost to the community.
One of my gripes with the UI is that the open party notification system time is extremely short - when you enter a new zone, you have a 3 second window to look at the list of open parties, how many people are in the party, and to remember the name of the party leader in order to/join the party (if people are even aware of that command). A better interface would be a simple button interface that pops up somewhere, maybe even have one of the existing chat tabs to start blinking to notify the user that open parties are availabe. This would be very handy and help promote participation - although regarding open parties there really hasn't been an issue, it could be tweaked a bit more.
I figured they solved the issue with having the single player game be distributed with no real restrictions (other than cd key install), only allowing online play have the stringent requirement of calling home for verification, since that's where the real gaming comes into place.
I could understand why blizzard would want to do some kind of measurement with regards to online play since people will do whatever it takes to cheat the client/gameplay in order to have an edge against a live opponent, but for single player?
The game doesn't truly pick up until you begin sieging keeps with your fellow faction-mates. This is important because keeps are not around until the second tier zones, which is typically regulated to lvl 11-21.
The first ten levels or so, is more for learning your character mechanics and how the world is set up. Their rvr zones in the tier 1 lands don't have keeps, but do have basic battle field objectives. During peak hours of the day you'll see a good amount of fighting going on, but is really dependent on player participation.
The scenarios (WAR's version of battlegrounds) in the tier 1 zones are really fun too, and usually queueing up for a round while doing your pve stuff is one of the fastest ways to gain exp. Each faction-pairing for each tier has it's own set of scenarios, so when you enter the next tier zone, you'll have a new set of scenarios to pvp in. With the bolster buff the matches are really fun too so lower levels really do have a chance.
What's interesting for me, was that I didn't WANT to level out of my bracket, I was having so much fun in tier 1 that I wasn't too sure I was going to experience the same thing in the next tier zone.
That is until ~50 people asked me to join them in defending their keep in tier 2.
After that - it was over. Participating in these massive Warhammer-scale battles was what it was all about. Last night I've managed to level twice while defending my keep - I forgot to mention that you can exp and gold killing fellow players. I've killed a witchelf 6 levels above me and won me some loot too.
Last night I joined a group of roughly 30 people and proceeded to take over a battlefield objective in an rvr zone. I was watching some TV (Heroes) and wasn't paying too much attention, it was all going pretty casually - we were all looking to get some pretty easy renown points (a second exp metric, comparable to WoW's honor points) - and then our of nowhere a huge zerg of destruction players came around the corner and we faced them head on. It was a really intense skirmish for ~15 mins, but in the end we won.
Keep in mind that this game really encourages player participation, the more players participate in rvr, the better the game gets. Fortunately there barrier to entry is so low that you can literally jump in and fight immediately. Even on the message boards players post messages to enemy faction players congratulating them on their victory over a keep assault(of course you'll always have the trash talking, but that's part of the rivaly). Regardless whether or not you have won or lost, everybody has a grand old time.
while I don't believe myself that WAR will not be reaching the kind of numbers that WoW has achieved, to say that they don't even care about WAR would mean to me as a business that their marketing team is extremely lazy and short-sighted. Which they are not.
After all, a lot of Warcraft's thematic elements were initially inspired from Warhammer (likewise Starcraft to 40k), so if anyone was to actually take notice, it would definately be the original members of Blizzard, like Metzen and Pardo who now hold executive positions in Blizzard Entertainment.
And especially since Mythic Entertainment is backed up by EA (who has had higher revenue over the past year than Activision and Blizzard COMBINED), there is serious potential that WAR will be causing some trouble in WoW-space. No, to not even care about Warhammer Online is suicide. Don't think for a minute that Blizzard is not even batting an eyelash at an upstart MMO that is backed by a publisher largely considered the Microsoft of the video game industry.
If anyone has the potential to cause WOW some trouble, it's WAR. They have the IP, the money, and the marketing muscle.
I think what's going on here is that Acti-lizzard is trying to cork up any potential bleeding that they see in the coming months by grabbing as many remaining players that haven't started an MMO as they can before there is an exodus to Warhammer Online. With the November-December holiday shopping time-frame approaching, they want to make sure they not only retain the top spot, but also have the other MMOs buried to obscurity.
confused my commas and semicolons, thinking that the commas seperated the 3 expressions - which doesn't even make sense, since there is only 1 comma there. Which is why I read it wrong in the first place. *boggle*
Peter Gibbons: The most they would do is put us for a few months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! You know, they have conjugal visits there?
Samir: They do?
Michael Bolton: Shit. I'm a free man and I haven't had a conjugal visit in six months.
Samir: I have a question.
Peter Gibbons: Yes?
Samir: In... in these conjugal visits, you can have sex with women?
Peter Gibbons: Yep, you sure can.
Samir: OK, I'll do it.
hear hear! I remember doing the same exact thing with my TI-81 back in highschool. I also remember that sucker having very little memory, so I had to really think of ways to really keep my code tiny while getting the functionality I wanted - up untill I get a TI-82 (which had a lot more memory).
I remember writing all kinds of random games - games like space invaders, to racing games to arkanoid type games. And I remember writing them over and over every time I replaced the battery since my backup battery was dead. That actually helped me get into the habit of thinking ahead, trying to remember what the hell I did, and see if I can code it 'just a little better.' Or use a different approach and see the outcome.
Wow, I had a lot of time on my hands when I was younger. Ahh those were the days!
Which is tragic, because these Hero classes don't feel so... heroic.
I thought hero classes should have been progression based depending on class. As it stands essentially the hero class is nothing more than 'just another tank' or 'just another melee dps' or 'omg war with deathcoil? NERF!' It appears to have nothing to do with the main avatar you are playing.
Yes yes, I understand that the leveling curve in WoW has gotten so easy that many people have multiple characters on one account, but seriously, this is nothing more than just a partial reroll. It would have been more interesting to see the culmination of progression based on existing toons - you do the 'hero' quests on your warlock,then you unlock the warlock 'hero' deathknight ability - to wear plate. Or do it on your priest, and unlock the 'hero' ability of the deathknight - to raise the dead and make your own skeleton army.
Or on your shaman/druid and get the ability to cast 'death and decay.' That would have been more interesting - and you wouldn't feel like you're just shelving another toon out of the way to play the deathknight.
Wait a minute, so the only thing that is 'browser based' is the matchmaking service, that does nothing more than list who is playing what? I think I remember having a plugin like that on IE 6 years ago, when I was playing Counterstrike with a CS clan.
You're assuming I am associating dialogue with gameplay, which is the mistake. The point that I was trying to make was not that shiny video game graphics == shiney movie visuals, but that you are limiting yourself to preferences of a single element, which in this case would be lack of dialogue == story does not work.(insert 'Period.' to emphasize finality)
Film, like video games, employ a variety of elements in order to produce an item of quality, sure. BUT, that does not necessarily mean that element1+element2+element3 == quality. Oftentimes the mark of artistic quality comes when certain elements are deliberately omitted, with emphasis on the careful crafting and the dynamic interactions between the different elements that DO exist.
The point of my analogy was that your observation was a little too 1-dimensional. I was simply making a snarky response;
story:dialogue:: gameplay:graphics
i.e. dialogue does not necessarily make the story quality, just like how graphics do not necessarily make gameplay quality. (of course, 'quality' is a relative term, so YMMV)
That being said, if the lack of dialogue is the only limiting factor that is preventing you from seeing said movie[s], you are not doing yourself a favor. A movie like Wall-E emphasied robots 'with character' (whatever that means). It's about how the character(s) interact with their environment, with the situation at hand, and with one another - using physical gestures, movement styles unique to the robot model and facial expressions (well, as much as robots can express, anyways). All this done with little to no dialogue. So live a little, try out new things! Watch a movie without a lot of dialogue, you may be pleasantly suprised.:-)
Y'know, I haven't seen the movie, but I really find this to be impossible. Indeed, the lack of dialogue is the single biggest reason I'm not going to see the movie until I, at the very least, pirate it to see if it's any good: stories without dialogue don't work. Period. There's a reason why we quit making silent movies, and it really disappointed me that Pixar is taking a step backward in that regard.
You are disappointed in Pixar because of the lack of dialogue in a movie you haven't even seen yet? Wow.
Let me guess: do you only play video games with the shiniest graphics, with little regard to actual gameplay?
I thought the message was 'geeky socially awkward guy robot gets the hot chick robot.'
IMO the whole 'taking care of the planet' business was nothing more than a macguffin; the movie doesn't revolve around B&L, but around the interaction between Wall-E and EVE. You could have replaced B&L with anything, such as a post-apocalypse setting, or widespread disease, or simply running out of food (or space).
I always thought that Wonderland is a kind of proof-of-concept type of application for Sun's Project Darkstar platform (formerly called the Sun Game Server)
from the FAQ:
Project Darkstar is software infrastructure created by Sun Microsystems to simplify the development and operation of massively scalable online games, virtual worlds, and social networking applications. It is freely available under open source license from the Project Darkstar Community.
...This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune. Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns "that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making." Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.
This was from the article you just linked. My suspicion is that BillG doesn't really follow how the assets are managed, probably because he was distracted with a job or something. In any case, your bashing of BillG just seems to be a bit, excessive.
the charity is just a front for tax evasion? If that's the case, why doesn't he just cash out, put his money in a big giant Scrooge McDuck-style money bin and live off of that for the rest of his life? It's not like the US is going to tax him for not making any money.
Slashdot Mirror
I think companies are a bit cautious about adding voice chat support, especially if the customer is going to end up in situations like this. Might not make for a positive experience.
Ah interesting! I'll have to take a look later tonight, thanks for the tip. I wonder why I've never noticed it before.
Yeah yeah, go ahead and call me names, I guess I owe it everybody since I opened my big fat mouth. :-P
You're missing the whole point of my arguement.
Are you referring to that brown graphic with the 2 (or 3) heads tied to the chat text display window? Don't you think that's kind of... wierd? Why is it not near the top left corner closer - generally reserved for the default character portrait position, along with party portraits and warband frames underneath, don't you think that would be a better place to have it?
So again don't feel bad if you really want to let go and call me names on the internet, the whole point of my arguement was not to state that the problem is that these elements do not exist, but rather that for a casual player that the interface needs some tweaking in order to better facilitate community interaction. I'm not trying to find a solution, obviously you've given me more than enough information to provide that. My issue is that the solution provided is not intuitive enough for the non-gamer gamer. Proper interface design shouldn't be trying to get the user to figure out 'how it's supposed to work.' It shouldn't be getting the user to right-click, left-click everything on the screen to see what pops up, and it certainly should NOT be getting the user to read a PDF to figure that out.
Granted, this is an MMO, and there will be a lot of buttons to press, but there was a noticable lack of consideration given to the actual social aspects of gameplay flow - and especially for a default client; the social impact dictated by ui design is bigger than a lot of people give credit.
You can click on the names when they pop up, and a button appears? As a 31 year old casual player, how would I have known that? It's not like there is even a visual notification when I mouseover the list, if I manage to mouseover it on time.
This is what I'm talking about. While the client has some great features, if it was presented differently, it could be put to better use. As of right now when I zone into a lake I glance at the top right corner when the list pops up and hope I remember to spell the party leader's name correctly. For all the features WAR has, the default UI involving social interaction needs a better front-end interface and design. It was built by an engineer, not a designer (not to diminish the merits of either engineer or designer - both have their place).
Even on various messageboards, there have been threads popping up regularly stating the fact that this may be the most antisocial MMO ever. People have been complaining left and right about the fact that nobody speaks. I think it's actaully due to a simple factor:
The chat interface is archaic, and terrible.
One of the major problems is that a zone is series of subzones, and each subzone has it's own channel. These subzones are TINY. You can walk 20 feet and you'll be in a new chat channel. Every single time. A lot of people have been crying for a zone-wide chat channel on the threads.
The lack of global channels was such a problem, that on my server (Volkmar) people have designated a common custom channel ("Order Warfront") and have been touting it to facilitate better rvr by alerting everybody in the channel where the fights are taking place. While this is a popular solution, one MAJOR problem is that the game client does NOT save the channel settings when you log off. Yeap. Everytime you log on you gotta remember to "/joinchannel Order Warfront." Some people have even set this as a macro. There are even addons that have a workaround for this, but for everybody else that's not about to install mods for the game, they either forget, or just are not aware. Very not friendly.
Another thing is that the chat input text field does not remember your last input settings for which channel - a recent patch they've updated the client to remember who you've last sent a /tell to, but it doesn't remember any of the channel messages. This is really annoying too, and is not conducive to a steady conversation.
Considering that they have created a series of new social mechanics which work to great effect, particularly the Public Quests and the Open Party, if there was an easier mechanic to ease the player into it further, that would really give a nice boost to the community.
One of my gripes with the UI is that the open party notification system time is extremely short - when you enter a new zone, you have a 3 second window to look at the list of open parties, how many people are in the party, and to remember the name of the party leader in order to /join the party (if people are even aware of that command). A better interface would be a simple button interface that pops up somewhere, maybe even have one of the existing chat tabs to start blinking to notify the user that open parties are availabe. This would be very handy and help promote participation - although regarding open parties there really hasn't been an issue, it could be tweaked a bit more.
Did blizzard really have an issue with drm?
I figured they solved the issue with having the single player game be distributed with no real restrictions (other than cd key install), only allowing online play have the stringent requirement of calling home for verification, since that's where the real gaming comes into place.
I could understand why blizzard would want to do some kind of measurement with regards to online play since people will do whatever it takes to cheat the client/gameplay in order to have an edge against a live opponent, but for single player?
The game doesn't truly pick up until you begin sieging keeps with your fellow faction-mates. This is important because keeps are not around until the second tier zones, which is typically regulated to lvl 11-21.
The first ten levels or so, is more for learning your character mechanics and how the world is set up. Their rvr zones in the tier 1 lands don't have keeps, but do have basic battle field objectives. During peak hours of the day you'll see a good amount of fighting going on, but is really dependent on player participation.
The scenarios (WAR's version of battlegrounds) in the tier 1 zones are really fun too, and usually queueing up for a round while doing your pve stuff is one of the fastest ways to gain exp. Each faction-pairing for each tier has it's own set of scenarios, so when you enter the next tier zone, you'll have a new set of scenarios to pvp in. With the bolster buff the matches are really fun too so lower levels really do have a chance.
What's interesting for me, was that I didn't WANT to level out of my bracket, I was having so much fun in tier 1 that I wasn't too sure I was going to experience the same thing in the next tier zone.
That is until ~50 people asked me to join them in defending their keep in tier 2.
After that - it was over. Participating in these massive Warhammer-scale battles was what it was all about. Last night I've managed to level twice while defending my keep - I forgot to mention that you can exp and gold killing fellow players. I've killed a witchelf 6 levels above me and won me some loot too.
Last night I joined a group of roughly 30 people and proceeded to take over a battlefield objective in an rvr zone. I was watching some TV (Heroes) and wasn't paying too much attention, it was all going pretty casually - we were all looking to get some pretty easy renown points (a second exp metric, comparable to WoW's honor points) - and then our of nowhere a huge zerg of destruction players came around the corner and we faced them head on. It was a really intense skirmish for ~15 mins, but in the end we won.
Keep in mind that this game really encourages player participation, the more players participate in rvr, the better the game gets. Fortunately there barrier to entry is so low that you can literally jump in and fight immediately. Even on the message boards players post messages to enemy faction players congratulating them on their victory over a keep assault(of course you'll always have the trash talking, but that's part of the rivaly). Regardless whether or not you have won or lost, everybody has a grand old time.
I'm looking forward to playing again tonight.
while I don't believe myself that WAR will not be reaching the kind of numbers that WoW has achieved, to say that they don't even care about WAR would mean to me as a business that their marketing team is extremely lazy and short-sighted. Which they are not.
After all, a lot of Warcraft's thematic elements were initially inspired from Warhammer (likewise Starcraft to 40k), so if anyone was to actually take notice, it would definately be the original members of Blizzard, like Metzen and Pardo who now hold executive positions in Blizzard Entertainment.
And especially since Mythic Entertainment is backed up by EA (who has had higher revenue over the past year than Activision and Blizzard COMBINED), there is serious potential that WAR will be causing some trouble in WoW-space. No, to not even care about Warhammer Online is suicide. Don't think for a minute that Blizzard is not even batting an eyelash at an upstart MMO that is backed by a publisher largely considered the Microsoft of the video game industry.
If anyone has the potential to cause WOW some trouble, it's WAR. They have the IP, the money, and the marketing muscle.
What's interesting is that this was announced around the same time EA Mythic announces their Warhammer Online launch. Also, reports of their open beta progrem is set to begin August 15.
I think what's going on here is that Acti-lizzard is trying to cork up any potential bleeding that they see in the coming months by grabbing as many remaining players that haven't started an MMO as they can before there is an exodus to Warhammer Online. With the November-December holiday shopping time-frame approaching, they want to make sure they not only retain the top spot, but also have the other MMOs buried to obscurity.
wow, I fail at for loops
confused my commas and semicolons, thinking that the commas seperated the 3 expressions - which doesn't even make sense, since there is only 1 comma there. Which is why I read it wrong in the first place. *boggle*
sorry about that.
You really should do for(var i = 0, e = elements.length; i < e; i++)
Otherwise, elements.length needs to be re-evaluated every iteration of the loop.
isn't being evaluated there anyways when it's assigning it to e? How about something like
for(var i = 0; var e = elements.length, i < e; i++)
Peter Gibbons: The most they would do is put us for a few months into a white-collar, minimum-security resort! You know, they have conjugal visits there?
Samir: They do?
Michael Bolton: Shit. I'm a free man and I haven't had a conjugal visit in six months.
Samir: I have a question.
Peter Gibbons: Yes?
Samir: In... in these conjugal visits, you can have sex with women?
Peter Gibbons: Yep, you sure can.
Samir: OK, I'll do it.
hear hear! I remember doing the same exact thing with my TI-81 back in highschool. I also remember that sucker having very little memory, so I had to really think of ways to really keep my code tiny while getting the functionality I wanted - up untill I get a TI-82 (which had a lot more memory).
I remember writing all kinds of random games - games like space invaders, to racing games to arkanoid type games. And I remember writing them over and over every time I replaced the battery since my backup battery was dead. That actually helped me get into the habit of thinking ahead, trying to remember what the hell I did, and see if I can code it 'just a little better.' Or use a different approach and see the outcome.
Wow, I had a lot of time on my hands when I was younger. Ahh those were the days!
Which is tragic, because these Hero classes don't feel so... heroic.
I thought hero classes should have been progression based depending on class. As it stands essentially the hero class is nothing more than 'just another tank' or 'just another melee dps' or 'omg war with deathcoil? NERF!' It appears to have nothing to do with the main avatar you are playing.
Yes yes, I understand that the leveling curve in WoW has gotten so easy that many people have multiple characters on one account, but seriously, this is nothing more than just a partial reroll. It would have been more interesting to see the culmination of progression based on existing toons - you do the 'hero' quests on your warlock,then you unlock the warlock 'hero' deathknight ability - to wear plate. Or do it on your priest, and unlock the 'hero' ability of the deathknight - to raise the dead and make your own skeleton army. Or on your shaman/druid and get the ability to cast 'death and decay.' That would have been more interesting - and you wouldn't feel like you're just shelving another toon out of the way to play the deathknight.
Wait a minute, so the only thing that is 'browser based' is the matchmaking service, that does nothing more than list who is playing what? I think I remember having a plugin like that on IE 6 years ago, when I was playing Counterstrike with a CS clan.
which would have been kinda funny. (in Joker's eyes, I mean)
You're assuming I am associating dialogue with gameplay, which is the mistake. The point that I was trying to make was not that shiny video game graphics == shiney movie visuals, but that you are limiting yourself to preferences of a single element, which in this case would be lack of dialogue == story does not work.(insert 'Period.' to emphasize finality)
Film, like video games, employ a variety of elements in order to produce an item of quality, sure. BUT, that does not necessarily mean that element1+element2+element3 == quality. Oftentimes the mark of artistic quality comes when certain elements are deliberately omitted, with emphasis on the careful crafting and the dynamic interactions between the different elements that DO exist.
The point of my analogy was that your observation was a little too 1-dimensional. I was simply making a snarky response;
story:dialogue :: gameplay:graphics
i.e. dialogue does not necessarily make the story quality, just like how graphics do not necessarily make gameplay quality. (of course, 'quality' is a relative term, so YMMV)
That being said, if the lack of dialogue is the only limiting factor that is preventing you from seeing said movie[s], you are not doing yourself a favor. A movie like Wall-E emphasied robots 'with character' (whatever that means). It's about how the character(s) interact with their environment, with the situation at hand, and with one another - using physical gestures, movement styles unique to the robot model and facial expressions (well, as much as robots can express, anyways). All this done with little to no dialogue. So live a little, try out new things! Watch a movie without a lot of dialogue, you may be pleasantly suprised. :-)
You are disappointed in Pixar because of the lack of dialogue in a movie you haven't even seen yet? Wow.
Let me guess: do you only play video games with the shiniest graphics, with little regard to actual gameplay?
I thought the message was 'geeky socially awkward guy robot gets the hot chick robot.'
IMO the whole 'taking care of the planet' business was nothing more than a macguffin; the movie doesn't revolve around B&L, but around the interaction between Wall-E and EVE. You could have replaced B&L with anything, such as a post-apocalypse setting, or widespread disease, or simply running out of food (or space).
Who's the more foolish: The fool, or the fool who follows him?
only an API of evil, Darth!
I always thought that Wonderland is a kind of proof-of-concept type of application for Sun's Project Darkstar platform (formerly called the Sun Game Server)
from the FAQ:
Really? I find that color scheme has always given me the most eye pain. I'm always straining my eyes trying to read my code!
...This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune. Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns "that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making." Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.
This was from the article you just linked. My suspicion is that BillG doesn't really follow how the assets are managed, probably because he was distracted with a job or something. In any case, your bashing of BillG just seems to be a bit, excessive.
the charity is just a front for tax evasion? If that's the case, why doesn't he just cash out, put his money in a big giant Scrooge McDuck-style money bin and live off of that for the rest of his life? It's not like the US is going to tax him for not making any money.
He's obviously role playing. During that session Bill was a lvl 1 Clueless class User. All nerds do that.