I attacked only Soulskill's review because it is blatant marketing material, right up into the "what the next expansion brings", that was a truly terrible review. If you are going to review something, you need to point out blatant deficits. To get a 9/10 the product has to be really excellent and groundbreaking but have some small defects, that's not what WoTLK is (or what most games that get 9/10 reviews are).
You need to say at least "they don't let you use your flying mount until 77, however it works because...", if indeed you feel it works. I don't, I think it's a huge miss. I think the intent of a flying mount is to traverse a lot of land quickly, and if the designers don't wish you to do that, either do not add flight, or use some other mechanic to make you wish to stay grounded. As it stands, I feel its really just to ensure that you have to endure the time sink of getting from a-b by fighting a bazillion mobs, repeatedly.
Some people really like this game as it is, I can't imagine they'd be hurt if it were easier thus I don't know why they care, but I do know a few very competitive people who think they and they alone deserve the top rewards. It seems that the game is designed for that crowd, particularly manifested in the arena system but also the PvE achievement system (1st to do x), so why not give them their own server to play on? Let it be as hard or harder than the game is now... give them the visibility they crave for doing it.
I don't want to be held to that standard and to suffer with it. I do want EZ-mode after a fashion. The game does not have to hand me the item, if there is an enjoyable and reasonable set of obstacles to obtain it. I'm happy to work to 80, but not if quests all boil down to time sinks. Focus on the new and original quests and the storylines - if a quest is just there to soak up time, eliminate it. As it is, on my first WoTLK quests, I've already killed 10 raiders, then waded back through those same raiders to kill their boss, then waded through them again to get to some serpent, etc. That could have been reduced to "Kill raider boss", "Go to serpent (on your flying mount)". I didn't mind helping the walrus-men out, but I'd rather the quests be oriented towards their main goal rather than a bunch of redundant subtasks. I can kill 10 people just getting to the boss... why make me do all the running around? If the quests that comprise my entrance to Northrend are to save the Walrus-men, why not present that, at once as a battle plan?
In general a good part of my solo complaint is that if the item is blocked solely by arbitrary goals (kill 1000 weasels, farm 2M faction, collect 100000 items) you would lose nothing by changing that to (kill the weasel, farm a faction, collect an item) except cutting the time down. In this game, if you can do something N times, you can do it N+1 times, so why beat around the bush?
I do like a subset of the game as it exists and I want to see my complaints addressed so I can enjoy the game. If you like the game, and have time to play it, I have no quarrel with you. If you insist the game has to be this much of a sink because you need to separate the boys from the men, then yes I do. If you can kill 1 guy, you can kill 10 guys, without learning anything, it's just more work and you're not getting paid for it. I'd buy your argument if, in the process of learning to kill those 10 guys you were, in some way, learning to play your class more intelligently. That's never been the case. In fact you learn almost no group skills by soloing, almost no raid skills by grouping, and all the permutations therein.
There's a lot of good to the game that justifies it's popularity, I still think it's the best PvE mmog out there. It's definitely polished, the client is excellent. I personally love LUA and the scripting aspect (and hate how WAR nerfed it so badly - again, if a player can automate something essential, you have a gameplay bug, don't kill the messenger). But let's not pass WoTLK off as anything other than a mediocre expansion to a game that hasn't always aged well. There are lots of misses, they aren't being (obviously) addressed, and the door is still open for someone to go eat Blizzard's lunch. We should not let them have a free pass.
Every complaint is "Waaah!". The entire point is to highlight the flaws so that they can get fixed. Blizzard has demonstrated an ability to fix some flaws with MMOGs - prior to WoW EQ was (arguably) the dominant MMOG. It was viewed as inconceivable by forum trolls (which you run dangerously close to), to have a game where you didn't have to grind as a group to level up, and which took less than an eternity to do a dungeon. Blizzard took a look at that, copied the good parts and mostly fixed the bad. By comparison EQ doesn't exist now, a few still play it but it's mostly dead. That doesn't mean they've made it perfect, and since WoW launched they've taken a lot of bad turns some of which feels to me like a bait and switch - group caps and dungeon class requirements being MORE difficult and MORE unapproachable than EQ ever was.
I'm going to ignore their alleged 10M subscribers, since I'm not sure how much of that number includes all my RL friends whose accounts have expired and don't play anymore (in fact I'm the only one to have even BOUGHT wotlk). I'm sure it doesn't include a large body of mostly console gamers who may have tried WoW but won't play it because of the time investment. The fact is it's losing what it had, it's not reaching many new people, and I believe it is fixable not a "natural progression of a game aging". A mmog doesn't NEED to age. It does need to address problems which drive people away, and keep new people from joining.
Some of the complaints I have are just stupid and unoriginal design choices, the pinnacle of which is not being able to use the very expensive and very useful flying mounts form the last expansion. The only good argument is that it allows you to "skip content", but I'm not sure what that means. There's no scenario in which I can see using a flying mount to skip content that produces a good result for me, or in which I couldn't do so equally well by walking. There are two carrots for doing content: gear and xp. A third carrot for some (including me): to follow the plotline. This last one i have issue with (i.e. there never has been a compelling story line, so I wouldn't expect there to be one now), but it's a digression. The bottom line is, unless they made boneheaded design choices, there's no reason not to allow us to use the mount. I want to travel fast, I paid good money and levelled up to the point where I could buy the mount, I should be able to use it. I believe lack of creativity is what drove this choice, and we should be outraged.
The rest of my complaints hinge around WoW being designed around a target audience that isn't anyone I personally know. Maybe WoTLK is better for me, and I'm not giving it a fair chance. But having been burnt by WoW for so long, history clouds my sight and I don't see anything from my visitations to Northrend that changes my view. I'm not seeing any great promises from Blizzard to acknowledge the error of their ways, or in fact any hint that they're doing anything different.
I want to see something really big. I want to see them make a server, perhaps called "Ranked" which has all the really hard content, long grinds, and WoW as it is today. let those people get scored,rated, ranked...their achievements tracked. Give them beta access, etc. Then have the EZ mode servers for the rest of us. Something where in 6-8 months playing 10 hours a week we can see and do everything, one way or another. I want to see no group size caps on any instance (up to whatever limits there may be on client performance), I want faction and money to never be an issue gating progression to the lich king. I want fewer but more storyline related "kill 10 poobahs". In general I want the same game, but with fewer time sinks and more approachable content for people who want to play the class they want, with the people they want, without half as much politicking and frustration. For the crowd who likes that, and who wants to "work" on a game, there are the ranked servers.
I don't know why it's necessary to endure that crap if I'm never going to be able to see the end. I'm not sure why I want to pay for expansions to subsidize a small but vocal subset of people whose entire life revolves around synthetic frustration.
There are nearly a dozen quests leading you to Gunbad, I've done all quests in all pairings from T1-T3. I had to keep running there often. Never did find a group who wanted to mess with it, but I had no reason to try hard.
In WAR people do PvE only to gear up for RVR. T1-T3 are generally fast enough that there's no real reason to spend time gearing up below T4. At least not for now, I'm sure the twinking days will start, but I'm not sure the ROI will be enough.
I don't think it's appropriate to compare WAR to WoW. Warhammer is a great RvR game, with a PvE thing tacked on that has some limited value that serves RvR. I hope they don't attempt to "fix" PvE to be more like WoW, because I'm convinced they'll hurt RvR in doing it.
World of Warcraft is a PvE game with a lousy RvR/PvP tacked on. They have hurt PvE numerous times in order to make RvR work, but RvR there is fundamentally flawed. Arena more or less was the icing on an already poorly baked cake. They'd have done better to remove the alliance/horde system and leave pvp as a curiosity, forming opposing teams more or less randomly.
In terms of a dynamic world, Warhammer is dynamic only in terms of RvR. Much like any other mmog, the PvE content is not dynamic at all. I'm not even sure that's such an important feature, either. It gets a lot of press mileage but to do it right requires a lot more work than we probably want to pay for.
Both games I think are at the same level of "technology", and both have some problems. It may be fair to say WAR's problems are less systemic and depressing.
- That flying mount you saved up for (worse, if you bought an epic) - can't use it until 77 or so. Bad call.
It actually helps when exploring the initial content. The world seems so much bigger at first.
I would rather have my flying mount so that I can get around fast and not have to pay the excessive bird path costs (1G just from the starting city to one 2 hops over!). I'm not going to spend hours farming and doing dailies, I have other things to do. I spent lots of gold on that mount, I want to use it.
add flight combat based on class! That would also keep people from short circuiting quests, and be awesome.
Good idea for the per-class thing, but they DID add flying combat - lots of it! Many, many quests allow for flying combat, including some dailies. (Hence, my first suspicion that your one hour is inadequate to give the expansion a review.)
Obviously, I wouldn't know at level 70.6. But I note a lack of agro mobs above my head. If they added flight combat as I'm thinking of (i.e. not "bombing run" missions from TBC, which were fun, but something more freeform), I'd think they'd want to do it right off.
- Not a mage? Can't get to Dalaran until 74 (or so, I haven't done it yet). That's right, a major feature cut out for you while you grind. This really serves just to highlight the grind, not remove it.
My paladin got to Dalaran at 71. My wife's shaman bound there at 56. This limitation is non-existent thanks to two (or four) transportation methods: 1. Mage can port you there at any level. 2. Warlock can summon you there at any level. (3. Anyone of similar level can queue you for a battleground from there; when you leave the battleground you'll be there.) (4. If you die on another continent, you can travel there and spirit rez in town.)
There is no one who wants to be in Dalaran of any level who isn't there yet, if they've put in effort into it at all.
I am aware of the first two options of course, and one of my characters is a mage, but I ought to be able to go straight to the city and go right in. I won't know for a while, but in TBC there were resources available there I needed as early as I could get them.
- More dailies...ugh
But much more variety in the dailies. What do you expect? Would you prefer the game before there were dailies? You don't have to do them. For several factions, they've included both dailies and the ability to grind faction in dungeons. Even better, you pick the faction you want to grind (by wearing the appropriate tabard), so you can do a different dungeon every day and grind the same faction, or just run your favorite dungeon and grind all the factions out.
The review suggests blizzard went out of its way to remove grinds? Dailies are grinds, rep running is a grind. All of it is designed to do one thing: force you to do content many more times than your patience would otherwise allow. I don't mind rerunning instances for friends, but as far as I'm concerned I'm done with an instance after having cleared it 4-5 times.
Pretty much the minute logged in I was beat with the old problems that caused my entire guild to quit: "Heroic Nexus LF2M, need tank and 1dps (at least 1300DPS!)".
To be fair, as a pure tank I put out more than 1300 DPS. That's a pretty small number. There's no way any competent DPS player should be in a heroic instance with stats that low.
people unwilling to enter a dungeon that they don't outgear
There are also people who try to enter dungeons they undergear and expect to be carried through. There is supposed to be a minimum needed to run some places; otherwise people would just skip the intermediate steps and run the final instance, then call the whole expansion done.
It may be, I don't keep damage meters installed and I'm sure at 70 my dps isn't representative of what it w
Your review is a little more like a review than the blatant marketing release that slashdot is passing off as a review. At least you have an opinion and acknowledge weaknesses, although I think there are still some big problems in WoW that WoTLK doesn't deal with or contributes further to.
I haven't managed to spend more than 1hr in WoTLK (after having quit WoW for a year). WoW may no longer have a hold on me... but I'm not that impressed. There is a substantial amount of blatant stupidity:
- That flying mount you saved up for (worse, if you bought an epic) - can't use it until 77 or so. Bad call. Opportunity to up the ante here: add flight combat based on class! That would also keep people from short circuiting quests, and be awesome.
- Not a mage? Can't get to Dalaran until 74 (or so, I haven't done it yet). That's right, a major feature cut out for you while you grind. This really serves just to highlight the grind, not remove it.
- More dailies...ugh
- At least as far as tailoring is concerned, in TBC I could at least earn decent epic items without having to set foot in a raid. Thus far, I have not seen it in WoTLK. Given that it's a virtual guarantee I will disable my account as soon as I've done the last 5 man (or maybe before if I can't get my friends to come back) this annoys me. One thing I do like is entering northrend with a lot of epics and slaughtering for a while, that's probably the only reason I really bought the expansion: to use the gear I farmed last time.
- Pretty much the minute logged in I was beat with the old problems that caused my entire guild to quit: "Heroic Nexus LF2M, need tank and 1dps (at least 1300DPS!)". Now I happen to have a tank, a healer and a mage, all were well enough geared for heroics in TBC... but I remember this all too well. Damage meters, people not understanding there are multiple ways to play the game, people unwilling to enter a dungeon that they don't outgear (because they don't understand subtlety)...this basically puts you in a place where you only want to play with friends, and you are at the mercy of trying to get 5 adults across 4 timezones, with wives and kids, to block out 1,2,3 hours to do a dungeon.
To try and grow a guild of like minded people is entirely more frustrating: dungeons come in 5, 10 and 25 and need to be approached with the maximum allowable team (assuming you don't outgear them), as a group with approximately equal gear within what someone defines as reason. The result is a lot of people are left off and get bored with the game. You can't grow a guild of responsible adults, because you can't play the game, have fun, and be responsible at the same time.
Nothing in WoTLK addresses the elitist mentality the game has been designed for. The belief that only the hardcore deserve to be included in higher end dungeons and raids. The best you can do is join a large casual guild, put up with (and play) the politics, and go as far as a mob mentality will allow (usually only 1 or 2 tiers). Plus deal with people who aren't very smart and don't understand the game, but who are what you have to work with. This means damage meters, pvp specs in raids, weird and self-nerfing specs, people fighting over gear, etc.
The game jumped the shark when they lowered group-size cap on Scholo/Blackrock Spire/etc. It was totally devoured in TBC when they started designing dungeons to require very specific group/raid structures similar to EQs "holy trinity" concept (tank, slower,healer). When it was the casual alternative to EQ, it was awesome.
So on the whole, WoTLK deserves 6/10, mostly on account of being pretty, adding new content, and a few other details covered above. It doesn't fix the game it's based on, or change WoW or MMOGs in general. It's just another expansion.
You bring up a good point, Bart and Lisa are clearly depicted as children, in spite of being decades "old". But what about all those Manga girls? Are they 18 (or whatever is legal where you are at)?
Stupid ruling, and one that easily can infect other nations for no reason other than it sounds like it "protects the children".
Yet it does not matter. There is a lot of legitimate use of bittorrent. From linux images to world of warcraft updates. The ISP should not be throttling any of it. If they are going to be unable to support the traffic from everyone using the bandwidth they pay for at the same time, I think they're going to need to use some of the money we pay them to update their network infrastructure.
Perhaps small businesses are different, but generally innovation is difficult for most companies to sustain.
Another way of staying afloat and making money is to ask yourself what your customers really want when they choose to use a given piece of software. Chances are, they don't want to fix it, make it work for them (i.e. customize) or integrate it into a workflow. They want to use it, it's not their core business, it's part of the landscape.
I think open source may drive generic, commodity software to zero in the long run, but that's ok. What I see being missed in my large corporation is the ability to make the tool work for us smoothly. There's lots of money there, lots of software development too...you just have to build a business around that customization, not the core software.
Proprietary software loses here, and it's quite visible. Proprietary software vendors, lacking enough eyes and ideas, spend forever trying to make their core tool correct. They never get to the customization that we think we're paying for. It's one set of bug fixes after another, and we find ourselves doing our own in-house tools badly to accomodate.
That's completely ridiculous, and any westerner, American or not, should get angry.
Freedom and liberty once gained, are real and comparatively easy to protect. On the other hand, if you do not have them, they're really hard to get. Yet people at all levels of society are willing to die for them, repeatedly, across generations. I cite any of the magna carta, various revolutions, abolishment of slavery, suffrage, and eventually black civil rights as just a few examples of obstacles the US (and western world in general) has fought on its way to get where it is now. I can't believe anyone out there who opened a history textbook would believe otherwise.
Wealth for all, in itself, is self contradictory. Wealth is a relative term. One can be wealthy only compared to another. If a few are wealthy and a few are not, it follows, no one is secure. This is also pretty well covered in history.
Yet every time I feel like I live and work in a sausage factory, I wander to HR or Marketing, and wonder where all the men went.
I do think there's probably something to the "stalker" mentality, though it's not as creepy as some make it out to be. Yes, as the one girl in a group of 40 guys...you will get a lot of unwanted attention. But put it the other way, assuming they aren't serial rapists (most may be horny, but aren't rapists), can men and women socialize together the same way they can in their same gender? I don't think so, not in college and not afterwards. I may go out to lunch with one of my male coworkers, but I'm scared to do so with one of my (young, attractive) female coworkers. All it takes is for one nosy neighbor (some of which work in my group)...
There's also the "investment" theory. While I did not go to CS, I started programming when I was 12. I played a lot of video games, watched all those "demos" and "intros", and that was my motivation. I wanted to learn how to do all the interesting things i saw there, that I wasn't (in the pre-internet age) able to figure out on my own. A lot of that stuff is very male oriented. Games? We already know that, but the entire hacker culture there was male. By the time you get to college and choose a major, you are theoretically already minimally knowledgeable and committed to your field. At least, that's what your professors will assume. In any of the science/engineering fields, a lot of coursework and knowledge is serial, and there is less room for uncertainty. If you are a female, interested in a subject but only trained from JHS/HS formally, you will be behind, and you have a lot steeper of a curve to climb.
In order for it to work, you have to have loyalties somewhere else. If you are elected as the most powerful man in the world, I'm not sure what on earth would tempt you to "sell out", particularly to some dirt ball in the middle east. If you're crooked, you have all the power in the world to set up your own nice retirement...I think we can think of a few examples of that.
For a poor American scientist, there's a lot to be had back in China, or pretty much anywhere else, whether you are of chinese descent or not. We produce so few scientists and engineers, because the rewards are so pathetic for the capacity of work being done. Within our own country, various silly IP and anti-workforce laws protect investors from our knowledge and abilities moving to competitors easily (also forcing salaries down). But outside of our borders? Not so much. Reverse brain drain, and it's friend "espionage" are real problems. All we need is money, and we can recreate anything we've done before, and probably do it better.
In the 8 years I've been employed, this is the 3rd time I've heard of naturalized Chinese citizens sending back design data to the motherland. Having known personally one of the people later convicted, loyalty to "the party" had nothing to do with it. He was disgruntled at being laid off, believed in his product (but not his company), and was sending design files to his buddy back home so they could start their own business. Illegal, yes. Seditious? Not intentionally.
The saddest part is, that's how the US got its foot in the door. The British didn't really care for us all that much back then, and wanted us kept out of the loop, but had much the same problem with its industry as we do now. Enter a lowly engineer who had know how, but not $ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater)
It's a shame when history repeats itself, particularly since the US was founded on better ideals than China. What on earth do we stand to gain by promoting a country that, other than rabid capitalism (with a phony communist mouthpiece), is the anti-thesis to our way of life?
Some ISPs think they can cut or filter your internet activities because you consume too much bandwidth. It's probably in your terms of service somewhere (now or in the future, you'll sign or you won't get internet). Elsewhere on slashdot, if you mention "Comcast", an array of hysteria breaks out.
If these people are guilty of a crime, law enforcement needs to prosecute. If you can track the perpetrator to a US based location, then there's no "global problem" excuse. The only issue is that as a citizen there's no chain of custody on your evidence, so they'll have to do their own detective work. But once you know someone is probably guilty of something, you can probably find something on him. If the appropriate authorities are not interested in being involved, THAT is the problem worthy of public attention.
The ends don't always justify the means. Bypassing proper authorities is not appropriate when it's a big evil corporation chasing 12yo girls pirating Britney, and it's not appropriate from a group of well-intentioned vigilanties. We have law and law enforcement to prevent this sort of thing from happening. If they are inadequate, we should focus on solving that problem. It's true spam may not rate right now with unemployment and economic collapse...and that's not a bad thing.
I hate spammers and won't lift a finger to help them (I really ought to, I just can't overlook my hatred of them), but I worry more about the long term effects of people taking laws into their own hands and getting street justice. I worry about ISPs getting excessively involved in the content passing through their networks, and being, in any way, legally justified in moderating, censoring or controlling access based on anything other than whether your check cashes. I would rather tolerate a few low grade crooks than live in the kind of society where the lowest common denominator creates all laws.
Exactly, except they need to make the keying requirements much more impossible and time consuming. So much that they don't even need to worry about the raid content for say, 6 months while they work on the "real" game. Then, just as the elite are nearing the end of their treadmill, release the content and drop the grind.
All I can think is that in EE we study a particular subset of PDEs, and solutions to them that pertain to EE work. We may not be looking at them in the most generic possible sense a mathematician might.
In any event my degree is 9 years old, and PDEs were topical from EE101 all the way up through masters. Not much has changed.
Fourthed, except I took PDEs my second, third and fourth year of BSEE, and then pretty much every semester of my masters.
Strangely the solution to almost every EE problem is a partial differential equation. Unless you're into computers, then it's boolean algebra and discrete math.
Both of those were taken my freshman year. So exactly what kind of math program are you in? Did you intentionally stack ALL your general ed requirements into the first 2 years?
Yes, and it will be LESS work. The personalities that engage in this 3 day marathon type thing are not afraid of obstacles, arbitrary, stupid obstacles. To be first, and to lord over the masses, they will do pretty much anything. So give them something really hard, totally unfair in the easiest possible way. They'll throw themselves at it, as long as it feels "real".
Meanwhile focus on making a good game for the 99% of us who won't ever see top-end anything. As the majority approach the raids, then patch in the "real" content with things like "harder than intended", "fixed a bug with", "reduced key requirements" etc.
With any luck, the 1% will be so alienated that they'll be afraid to engage in this behavior in future releases.
That's actually an idea I've been campaigning for. These raiding guilds like to show off how great they are, yet they're just incredibly dedicated. Your average guild can't even get people to log in for scheduled events on time.
So up the ante, make the raids insanely hard even for pro's. Make them unfair (like Naxx), require a distorted balance of classes, designed to engender social infighting. Give them some really hard problems to overcome inside and outside the game. Plant a few CSR "reps" in these guilds, have them create chaos, fan the flames of egos. Basically get them to play the game like normal people so the dev's can focus on the 99%, not the 1%.
Then gradually ease up as your main player base starts to reach the top. "Patch" content that was "harder than anticipated", etc.
Nice rant, that I halfway agree with, but this is why you don't get invited to many cotillions. Science does not work if people aren't willing to believe in things that may not be true, either. Mechanics, relativity and evolution are examples of things that did not get derived from an equation, were not written in the sky or handed down from stone tablets. Someone, at some point, had an irrational thought (or more likely a series of them, many of which were not true), which he proved to be true within the space of previously accepted fact. There is room, and a need, for irrationality. Relativity is irrational in context of Newtonian mechanics, except that Newtonian mechanics didn't explain everything and someone had a crazy idea of how to explain it, and patch it in to what was already known.
It also helps to listen to the irrationality of others, politely, without throwing insults, because in their ham handed way, they may have a point. One that helps you, in my case, helps you reconcile the needs of a scientist with the needs of non-scientists. No one in this thread mentioned that we don't accept evolution, quite the opposite, plenty of people, scientists in fact, hold beliefs that the universe was Created. That evolution, the big bang, etc. are mechanisms, not justifications. It doesn't matter to Science, since it's just a belief they hold that they can't ever prove. I get tired of supposed scientists, or those that religiously believe in proven science, misstating or overstating what we know, just to irritate the religious people. This is how you turn non-scientists "off" and let them conclude you are elitist. You hear one mention of "God" or "Created", and assume the speaker is an ignorant buffoon, when in fact he may have a lot of intelligent things to say.
Science has its place, but there are more things on heaven and earth, ObsessiveMathsFreak, than dreamt of in your philosophy. A guy can communicate a great deal by painting the sky yellow. In 14 lines a poet can describe the rise and fall of civilization, it's application to our own society, and the dangers of pride, without ever once using any of those words and in fact by using total fiction. There IS more to our world, than the physical universe. Slashdot's mere existance is your proof: it has no academic or scientific value, many people post falsehoods with reckless abandon, grammar is terrible, and very little education is possible. But we come here anyway, you in fact come here, knowing what you will see, why do you do such crazy things?
I agree with you it's stupid to believe something in total opposition to everything that can be proven, observed and repeated. But you are entirely wrong to believe that science alone is the entire summation of the universe, that it is all we need to know. That it is insanity to believe in what has not been proven today, or what can't ever be proven or disproven. There is more we need to teach our children than how the machine works (but it doesn't belong in biology class, I grant you).
If believing that somewhere, sometime, God created everything and set it in motion, helps you lead a good, productive life, what harm is there? What is the point in arguing about it?
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I attacked only Soulskill's review because it is blatant marketing material, right up into the "what the next expansion brings", that was a truly terrible review. If you are going to review something, you need to point out blatant deficits. To get a 9/10 the product has to be really excellent and groundbreaking but have some small defects, that's not what WoTLK is (or what most games that get 9/10 reviews are).
You need to say at least "they don't let you use your flying mount until 77, however it works because...", if indeed you feel it works. I don't, I think it's a huge miss. I think the intent of a flying mount is to traverse a lot of land quickly, and if the designers don't wish you to do that, either do not add flight, or use some other mechanic to make you wish to stay grounded. As it stands, I feel its really just to ensure that you have to endure the time sink of getting from a-b by fighting a bazillion mobs, repeatedly.
Some people really like this game as it is, I can't imagine they'd be hurt if it were easier thus I don't know why they care, but I do know a few very competitive people who think they and they alone deserve the top rewards. It seems that the game is designed for that crowd, particularly manifested in the arena system but also the PvE achievement system (1st to do x), so why not give them their own server to play on? Let it be as hard or harder than the game is now... give them the visibility they crave for doing it.
I don't want to be held to that standard and to suffer with it. I do want EZ-mode after a fashion. The game does not have to hand me the item, if there is an enjoyable and reasonable set of obstacles to obtain it. I'm happy to work to 80, but not if quests all boil down to time sinks. Focus on the new and original quests and the storylines - if a quest is just there to soak up time, eliminate it. As it is, on my first WoTLK quests, I've already killed 10 raiders, then waded back through those same raiders to kill their boss, then waded through them again to get to some serpent, etc. That could have been reduced to "Kill raider boss", "Go to serpent (on your flying mount)". I didn't mind helping the walrus-men out, but I'd rather the quests be oriented towards their main goal rather than a bunch of redundant subtasks. I can kill 10 people just getting to the boss... why make me do all the running around? If the quests that comprise my entrance to Northrend are to save the Walrus-men, why not present that, at once as a battle plan?
In general a good part of my solo complaint is that if the item is blocked solely by arbitrary goals (kill 1000 weasels, farm 2M faction, collect 100000 items) you would lose nothing by changing that to (kill the weasel, farm a faction, collect an item) except cutting the time down. In this game, if you can do something N times, you can do it N+1 times, so why beat around the bush?
I do like a subset of the game as it exists and I want to see my complaints addressed so I can enjoy the game. If you like the game, and have time to play it, I have no quarrel with you. If you insist the game has to be this much of a sink because you need to separate the boys from the men, then yes I do. If you can kill 1 guy, you can kill 10 guys, without learning anything, it's just more work and you're not getting paid for it. I'd buy your argument if, in the process of learning to kill those 10 guys you were, in some way, learning to play your class more intelligently. That's never been the case. In fact you learn almost no group skills by soloing, almost no raid skills by grouping, and all the permutations therein.
There's a lot of good to the game that justifies it's popularity, I still think it's the best PvE mmog out there. It's definitely polished, the client is excellent. I personally love LUA and the scripting aspect (and hate how WAR nerfed it so badly - again, if a player can automate something essential, you have a gameplay bug, don't kill the messenger). But let's not pass WoTLK off as anything other than a mediocre expansion to a game that hasn't always aged well. There are lots of misses, they aren't being (obviously) addressed, and the door is still open for someone to go eat Blizzard's lunch. We should not let them have a free pass.
Every complaint is "Waaah!". The entire point is to highlight the flaws so that they can get fixed. Blizzard has demonstrated an ability to fix some flaws with MMOGs - prior to WoW EQ was (arguably) the dominant MMOG. It was viewed as inconceivable by forum trolls (which you run dangerously close to), to have a game where you didn't have to grind as a group to level up, and which took less than an eternity to do a dungeon. Blizzard took a look at that, copied the good parts and mostly fixed the bad. By comparison EQ doesn't exist now, a few still play it but it's mostly dead. That doesn't mean they've made it perfect, and since WoW launched they've taken a lot of bad turns some of which feels to me like a bait and switch - group caps and dungeon class requirements being MORE difficult and MORE unapproachable than EQ ever was.
I'm going to ignore their alleged 10M subscribers, since I'm not sure how much of that number includes all my RL friends whose accounts have expired and don't play anymore (in fact I'm the only one to have even BOUGHT wotlk). I'm sure it doesn't include a large body of mostly console gamers who may have tried WoW but won't play it because of the time investment. The fact is it's losing what it had, it's not reaching many new people, and I believe it is fixable not a "natural progression of a game aging". A mmog doesn't NEED to age. It does need to address problems which drive people away, and keep new people from joining.
Some of the complaints I have are just stupid and unoriginal design choices, the pinnacle of which is not being able to use the very expensive and very useful flying mounts form the last expansion. The only good argument is that it allows you to "skip content", but I'm not sure what that means. There's no scenario in which I can see using a flying mount to skip content that produces a good result for me, or in which I couldn't do so equally well by walking. There are two carrots for doing content: gear and xp. A third carrot for some (including me): to follow the plotline. This last one i have issue with (i.e. there never has been a compelling story line, so I wouldn't expect there to be one now), but it's a digression. The bottom line is, unless they made boneheaded design choices, there's no reason not to allow us to use the mount. I want to travel fast, I paid good money and levelled up to the point where I could buy the mount, I should be able to use it. I believe lack of creativity is what drove this choice, and we should be outraged.
The rest of my complaints hinge around WoW being designed around a target audience that isn't anyone I personally know. Maybe WoTLK is better for me, and I'm not giving it a fair chance. But having been burnt by WoW for so long, history clouds my sight and I don't see anything from my visitations to Northrend that changes my view. I'm not seeing any great promises from Blizzard to acknowledge the error of their ways, or in fact any hint that they're doing anything different.
I want to see something really big. I want to see them make a server, perhaps called "Ranked" which has all the really hard content, long grinds, and WoW as it is today. let those people get scored,rated, ranked...their achievements tracked. Give them beta access, etc. Then have the EZ mode servers for the rest of us. Something where in 6-8 months playing 10 hours a week we can see and do everything, one way or another. I want to see no group size caps on any instance (up to whatever limits there may be on client performance), I want faction and money to never be an issue gating progression to the lich king. I want fewer but more storyline related "kill 10 poobahs". In general I want the same game, but with fewer time sinks and more approachable content for people who want to play the class they want, with the people they want, without half as much politicking and frustration. For the crowd who likes that, and who wants to "work" on a game, there are the ranked servers.
I don't know why it's necessary to endure that crap if I'm never going to be able to see the end. I'm not sure why I want to pay for expansions to subsidize a small but vocal subset of people whose entire life revolves around synthetic frustration.
There are nearly a dozen quests leading you to Gunbad, I've done all quests in all pairings from T1-T3. I had to keep running there often. Never did find a group who wanted to mess with it, but I had no reason to try hard.
In WAR people do PvE only to gear up for RVR. T1-T3 are generally fast enough that there's no real reason to spend time gearing up below T4. At least not for now, I'm sure the twinking days will start, but I'm not sure the ROI will be enough.
I don't think it's appropriate to compare WAR to WoW. Warhammer is a great RvR game, with a PvE thing tacked on that has some limited value that serves RvR. I hope they don't attempt to "fix" PvE to be more like WoW, because I'm convinced they'll hurt RvR in doing it.
World of Warcraft is a PvE game with a lousy RvR/PvP tacked on. They have hurt PvE numerous times in order to make RvR work, but RvR there is fundamentally flawed. Arena more or less was the icing on an already poorly baked cake. They'd have done better to remove the alliance/horde system and leave pvp as a curiosity, forming opposing teams more or less randomly.
In terms of a dynamic world, Warhammer is dynamic only in terms of RvR. Much like any other mmog, the PvE content is not dynamic at all. I'm not even sure that's such an important feature, either. It gets a lot of press mileage but to do it right requires a lot more work than we probably want to pay for.
Both games I think are at the same level of "technology", and both have some problems. It may be fair to say WAR's problems are less systemic and depressing.
- That flying mount you saved up for (worse, if you bought an epic) - can't use it until 77 or so. Bad call.
It actually helps when exploring the initial content. The world seems so much bigger at first.
I would rather have my flying mount so that I can get around fast and not have to pay the excessive bird path costs (1G just from the starting city to one 2 hops over!). I'm not going to spend hours farming and doing dailies, I have other things to do. I spent lots of gold on that mount, I want to use it.
add flight combat based on class! That would also keep people from short circuiting quests, and be awesome.
Good idea for the per-class thing, but they DID add flying combat - lots of it! Many, many quests allow for flying combat, including some dailies. (Hence, my first suspicion that your one hour is inadequate to give the expansion a review.)
Obviously, I wouldn't know at level 70.6. But I note a lack of agro mobs above my head. If they added flight combat as I'm thinking of (i.e. not "bombing run" missions from TBC, which were fun, but something more freeform), I'd think they'd want to do it right off.
- Not a mage? Can't get to Dalaran until 74 (or so, I haven't done it yet). That's right, a major feature cut out for you while you grind. This really serves just to highlight the grind, not remove it.
My paladin got to Dalaran at 71. My wife's shaman bound there at 56. This limitation is non-existent thanks to two (or four) transportation methods:
1. Mage can port you there at any level.
2. Warlock can summon you there at any level.
(3. Anyone of similar level can queue you for a battleground from there; when you leave the battleground you'll be there.)
(4. If you die on another continent, you can travel there and spirit rez in town.)
There is no one who wants to be in Dalaran of any level who isn't there yet, if they've put in effort into it at all.
I am aware of the first two options of course, and one of my characters is a mage, but I ought to be able to go straight to the city and go right in. I won't know for a while, but in TBC there were resources available there I needed as early as I could get them.
- More dailies...ugh
But much more variety in the dailies. What do you expect? Would you prefer the game before there were dailies? You don't have to do them. For several factions, they've included both dailies and the ability to grind faction in dungeons. Even better, you pick the faction you want to grind (by wearing the appropriate tabard), so you can do a different dungeon every day and grind the same faction, or just run your favorite dungeon and grind all the factions out.
The review suggests blizzard went out of its way to remove grinds? Dailies are grinds, rep running is a grind. All of it is designed to do one thing: force you to do content many more times than your patience would otherwise allow. I don't mind rerunning instances for friends, but as far as I'm concerned I'm done with an instance after having cleared it 4-5 times.
Pretty much the minute logged in I was beat with the old problems that caused my entire guild to quit: "Heroic Nexus LF2M, need tank and 1dps (at least 1300DPS!)".
To be fair, as a pure tank I put out more than 1300 DPS. That's a pretty small number. There's no way any competent DPS player should be in a heroic instance with stats that low.
people unwilling to enter a dungeon that they don't outgear
There are also people who try to enter dungeons they undergear and expect to be carried through. There is supposed to be a minimum needed to run some places; otherwise people would just skip the intermediate steps and run the final instance, then call the whole expansion done.
It may be, I don't keep damage meters installed and I'm sure at 70 my dps isn't representative of what it w
Your review is a little more like a review than the blatant marketing release that slashdot is passing off as a review. At least you have an opinion and acknowledge weaknesses, although I think there are still some big problems in WoW that WoTLK doesn't deal with or contributes further to.
I haven't managed to spend more than 1hr in WoTLK (after having quit WoW for a year). WoW may no longer have a hold on me... but I'm not that impressed. There is a substantial amount of blatant stupidity:
- That flying mount you saved up for (worse, if you bought an epic) - can't use it until 77 or so. Bad call. Opportunity to up the ante here: add flight combat based on class! That would also keep people from short circuiting quests, and be awesome.
- Not a mage? Can't get to Dalaran until 74 (or so, I haven't done it yet). That's right, a major feature cut out for you while you grind. This really serves just to highlight the grind, not remove it.
- More dailies...ugh
- At least as far as tailoring is concerned, in TBC I could at least earn decent epic items without having to set foot in a raid. Thus far, I have not seen it in WoTLK. Given that it's a virtual guarantee I will disable my account as soon as I've done the last 5 man (or maybe before if I can't get my friends to come back) this annoys me. One thing I do like is entering northrend with a lot of epics and slaughtering for a while, that's probably the only reason I really bought the expansion: to use the gear I farmed last time.
- Pretty much the minute logged in I was beat with the old problems that caused my entire guild to quit: "Heroic Nexus LF2M, need tank and 1dps (at least 1300DPS!)". Now I happen to have a tank, a healer and a mage, all were well enough geared for heroics in TBC... but I remember this all too well. Damage meters, people not understanding there are multiple ways to play the game, people unwilling to enter a dungeon that they don't outgear (because they don't understand subtlety)...this basically puts you in a place where you only want to play with friends, and you are at the mercy of trying to get 5 adults across 4 timezones, with wives and kids, to block out 1,2,3 hours to do a dungeon.
To try and grow a guild of like minded people is entirely more frustrating: dungeons come in 5, 10 and 25 and need to be approached with the maximum allowable team (assuming you don't outgear them), as a group with approximately equal gear within what someone defines as reason. The result is a lot of people are left off and get bored with the game. You can't grow a guild of responsible adults, because you can't play the game, have fun, and be responsible at the same time.
Nothing in WoTLK addresses the elitist mentality the game has been designed for. The belief that only the hardcore deserve to be included in higher end dungeons and raids. The best you can do is join a large casual guild, put up with (and play) the politics, and go as far as a mob mentality will allow (usually only 1 or 2 tiers). Plus deal with people who aren't very smart and don't understand the game, but who are what you have to work with. This means damage meters, pvp specs in raids, weird and self-nerfing specs, people fighting over gear, etc.
The game jumped the shark when they lowered group-size cap on Scholo/Blackrock Spire/etc. It was totally devoured in TBC when they started designing dungeons to require very specific group/raid structures similar to EQs "holy trinity" concept (tank, slower,healer). When it was the casual alternative to EQ, it was awesome.
So on the whole, WoTLK deserves 6/10, mostly on account of being pretty, adding new content, and a few other details covered above. It doesn't fix the game it's based on, or change WoW or MMOGs in general. It's just another expansion.
You bring up a good point, Bart and Lisa are clearly depicted as children, in spite of being decades "old". But what about all those Manga girls? Are they 18 (or whatever is legal where you are at)?
Stupid ruling, and one that easily can infect other nations for no reason other than it sounds like it "protects the children".
I would think Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony etc. not MS, whose world domination strategy still centers around Windows.
Yet it does not matter. There is a lot of legitimate use of bittorrent. From linux images to world of warcraft updates. The ISP should not be throttling any of it. If they are going to be unable to support the traffic from everyone using the bandwidth they pay for at the same time, I think they're going to need to use some of the money we pay them to update their network infrastructure.
I tried but they're all at home leveling up to 80.
Perhaps small businesses are different, but generally innovation is difficult for most companies to sustain.
Another way of staying afloat and making money is to ask yourself what your customers really want when they choose to use a given piece of software. Chances are, they don't want to fix it, make it work for them (i.e. customize) or integrate it into a workflow. They want to use it, it's not their core business, it's part of the landscape.
I think open source may drive generic, commodity software to zero in the long run, but that's ok. What I see being missed in my large corporation is the ability to make the tool work for us smoothly. There's lots of money there, lots of software development too...you just have to build a business around that customization, not the core software.
Proprietary software loses here, and it's quite visible. Proprietary software vendors, lacking enough eyes and ideas, spend forever trying to make their core tool correct. They never get to the customization that we think we're paying for. It's one set of bug fixes after another, and we find ourselves doing our own in-house tools badly to accomodate.
I was thinking that missing spider, after being exposed to radiation from solar flares while in a hard vacuum, finally returned to earth.
And it's mad.
and you'll never find the bottlecap of your drink, syrup container, OJ bottle, etc. ever again...
I'm not sure I trust the opinions or objectivity of anyone who is a "reformed nerd". That probably will keep me from buying the book.
To reform you have to recognize a problem. To recognize a problem you have to believe that something is wrong. Therein lies my concern.
That's completely ridiculous, and any westerner, American or not, should get angry.
Freedom and liberty once gained, are real and comparatively easy to protect. On the other hand, if you do not have them, they're really hard to get. Yet people at all levels of society are willing to die for them, repeatedly, across generations. I cite any of the magna carta, various revolutions, abolishment of slavery, suffrage, and eventually black civil rights as just a few examples of obstacles the US (and western world in general) has fought on its way to get where it is now. I can't believe anyone out there who opened a history textbook would believe otherwise.
Wealth for all, in itself, is self contradictory. Wealth is a relative term. One can be wealthy only compared to another. If a few are wealthy and a few are not, it follows, no one is secure. This is also pretty well covered in history.
Because it sounds sexist when you say that.
Yet every time I feel like I live and work in a sausage factory, I wander to HR or Marketing, and wonder where all the men went.
I do think there's probably something to the "stalker" mentality, though it's not as creepy as some make it out to be. Yes, as the one girl in a group of 40 guys...you will get a lot of unwanted attention. But put it the other way, assuming they aren't serial rapists (most may be horny, but aren't rapists), can men and women socialize together the same way they can in their same gender? I don't think so, not in college and not afterwards. I may go out to lunch with one of my male coworkers, but I'm scared to do so with one of my (young, attractive) female coworkers. All it takes is for one nosy neighbor (some of which work in my group)...
There's also the "investment" theory. While I did not go to CS, I started programming when I was 12. I played a lot of video games, watched all those "demos" and "intros", and that was my motivation. I wanted to learn how to do all the interesting things i saw there, that I wasn't (in the pre-internet age) able to figure out on my own. A lot of that stuff is very male oriented. Games? We already know that, but the entire hacker culture there was male. By the time you get to college and choose a major, you are theoretically already minimally knowledgeable and committed to your field. At least, that's what your professors will assume. In any of the science/engineering fields, a lot of coursework and knowledge is serial, and there is less room for uncertainty. If you are a female, interested in a subject but only trained from JHS/HS formally, you will be behind, and you have a lot steeper of a curve to climb.
In order for it to work, you have to have loyalties somewhere else. If you are elected as the most powerful man in the world, I'm not sure what on earth would tempt you to "sell out", particularly to some dirt ball in the middle east. If you're crooked, you have all the power in the world to set up your own nice retirement...I think we can think of a few examples of that.
For a poor American scientist, there's a lot to be had back in China, or pretty much anywhere else, whether you are of chinese descent or not. We produce so few scientists and engineers, because the rewards are so pathetic for the capacity of work being done. Within our own country, various silly IP and anti-workforce laws protect investors from our knowledge and abilities moving to competitors easily (also forcing salaries down). But outside of our borders? Not so much. Reverse brain drain, and it's friend "espionage" are real problems. All we need is money, and we can recreate anything we've done before, and probably do it better.
In the 8 years I've been employed, this is the 3rd time I've heard of naturalized Chinese citizens sending back design data to the motherland. Having known personally one of the people later convicted, loyalty to "the party" had nothing to do with it. He was disgruntled at being laid off, believed in his product (but not his company), and was sending design files to his buddy back home so they could start their own business. Illegal, yes. Seditious? Not intentionally.
The saddest part is, that's how the US got its foot in the door. The British didn't really care for us all that much back then, and wanted us kept out of the loop, but had much the same problem with its industry as we do now. Enter a lowly engineer who had know how, but not $
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater)
It's a shame when history repeats itself, particularly since the US was founded on better ideals than China. What on earth do we stand to gain by promoting a country that, other than rabid capitalism (with a phony communist mouthpiece), is the anti-thesis to our way of life?
Some ISPs think they can cut or filter your internet activities because you consume too much bandwidth. It's probably in your terms of service somewhere (now or in the future, you'll sign or you won't get internet). Elsewhere on slashdot, if you mention "Comcast", an array of hysteria breaks out.
If these people are guilty of a crime, law enforcement needs to prosecute. If you can track the perpetrator to a US based location, then there's no "global problem" excuse. The only issue is that as a citizen there's no chain of custody on your evidence, so they'll have to do their own detective work. But once you know someone is probably guilty of something, you can probably find something on him. If the appropriate authorities are not interested in being involved, THAT is the problem worthy of public attention.
The ends don't always justify the means. Bypassing proper authorities is not appropriate when it's a big evil corporation chasing 12yo girls pirating Britney, and it's not appropriate from a group of well-intentioned vigilanties. We have law and law enforcement to prevent this sort of thing from happening. If they are inadequate, we should focus on solving that problem. It's true spam may not rate right now with unemployment and economic collapse...and that's not a bad thing.
I hate spammers and won't lift a finger to help them (I really ought to, I just can't overlook my hatred of them), but I worry more about the long term effects of people taking laws into their own hands and getting street justice. I worry about ISPs getting excessively involved in the content passing through their networks, and being, in any way, legally justified in moderating, censoring or controlling access based on anything other than whether your check cashes. I would rather tolerate a few low grade crooks than live in the kind of society where the lowest common denominator creates all laws.
Exactly, except they need to make the keying requirements much more impossible and time consuming. So much that they don't even need to worry about the raid content for say, 6 months while they work on the "real" game. Then, just as the elite are nearing the end of their treadmill, release the content and drop the grind.
That's how you fix them.
All I can think is that in EE we study a particular subset of PDEs, and solutions to them that pertain to EE work. We may not be looking at them in the most generic possible sense a mathematician might.
In any event my degree is 9 years old, and PDEs were topical from EE101 all the way up through masters. Not much has changed.
Fourthed, except I took PDEs my second, third and fourth year of BSEE, and then pretty much every semester of my masters.
Strangely the solution to almost every EE problem is a partial differential equation. Unless you're into computers, then it's boolean algebra and discrete math.
Both of those were taken my freshman year. So exactly what kind of math program are you in? Did you intentionally stack ALL your general ed requirements into the first 2 years?
Yes, and it will be LESS work. The personalities that engage in this 3 day marathon type thing are not afraid of obstacles, arbitrary, stupid obstacles. To be first, and to lord over the masses, they will do pretty much anything. So give them something really hard, totally unfair in the easiest possible way. They'll throw themselves at it, as long as it feels "real".
Meanwhile focus on making a good game for the 99% of us who won't ever see top-end anything. As the majority approach the raids, then patch in the "real" content with things like "harder than intended", "fixed a bug with", "reduced key requirements" etc.
With any luck, the 1% will be so alienated that they'll be afraid to engage in this behavior in future releases.
I'll pass, I have a wife. All the same bitching and nagging, less browbeating.
That's actually an idea I've been campaigning for. These raiding guilds like to show off how great they are, yet they're just incredibly dedicated. Your average guild can't even get people to log in for scheduled events on time.
So up the ante, make the raids insanely hard even for pro's. Make them unfair (like Naxx), require a distorted balance of classes, designed to engender social infighting. Give them some really hard problems to overcome inside and outside the game. Plant a few CSR "reps" in these guilds, have them create chaos, fan the flames of egos. Basically get them to play the game like normal people so the dev's can focus on the 99%, not the 1%.
Then gradually ease up as your main player base starts to reach the top. "Patch" content that was "harder than anticipated", etc.
Nice rant, that I halfway agree with, but this is why you don't get invited to many cotillions. Science does not work if people aren't willing to believe in things that may not be true, either. Mechanics, relativity and evolution are examples of things that did not get derived from an equation, were not written in the sky or handed down from stone tablets. Someone, at some point, had an irrational thought (or more likely a series of them, many of which were not true), which he proved to be true within the space of previously accepted fact. There is room, and a need, for irrationality. Relativity is irrational in context of Newtonian mechanics, except that Newtonian mechanics didn't explain everything and someone had a crazy idea of how to explain it, and patch it in to what was already known.
It also helps to listen to the irrationality of others, politely, without throwing insults, because in their ham handed way, they may have a point. One that helps you, in my case, helps you reconcile the needs of a scientist with the needs of non-scientists. No one in this thread mentioned that we don't accept evolution, quite the opposite, plenty of people, scientists in fact, hold beliefs that the universe was Created. That evolution, the big bang, etc. are mechanisms, not justifications. It doesn't matter to Science, since it's just a belief they hold that they can't ever prove. I get tired of supposed scientists, or those that religiously believe in proven science, misstating or overstating what we know, just to irritate the religious people. This is how you turn non-scientists "off" and let them conclude you are elitist. You hear one mention of "God" or "Created", and assume the speaker is an ignorant buffoon, when in fact he may have a lot of intelligent things to say.
Science has its place, but there are more things on heaven and earth, ObsessiveMathsFreak, than dreamt of in your philosophy. A guy can communicate a great deal by painting the sky yellow. In 14 lines a poet can describe the rise and fall of civilization, it's application to our own society, and the dangers of pride, without ever once using any of those words and in fact by using total fiction. There IS more to our world, than the physical universe. Slashdot's mere existance is your proof: it has no academic or scientific value, many people post falsehoods with reckless abandon, grammar is terrible, and very little education is possible. But we come here anyway, you in fact come here, knowing what you will see, why do you do such crazy things?
I agree with you it's stupid to believe something in total opposition to everything that can be proven, observed and repeated. But you are entirely wrong to believe that science alone is the entire summation of the universe, that it is all we need to know. That it is insanity to believe in what has not been proven today, or what can't ever be proven or disproven. There is more we need to teach our children than how the machine works (but it doesn't belong in biology class, I grant you).
If believing that somewhere, sometime, God created everything and set it in motion, helps you lead a good, productive life, what harm is there? What is the point in arguing about it?