Congrats to Sollog, he's really showing/. trolls what it MEANS to troll. Forget the GNAA, forget Fr1st Ps0t and Hot Grits. Sollog has developed a religion and a following (ok, maybe a virtual following) around his trolling capabilities.
I guess I don't see why botting is bad at all, but perhaps I misunderstand. I usually play 2 accounts on EQ at once, it's a way of getting something done without having to wait for a group. Maybe I'm a rich yuppie bastard for paying for 2 accounts but I see nothing wrong with it. I guess I fail to see why it's necessary in WoW, but if people do it so what? They're paying for the accounts and bandwidth...
As for eBay, I see 2 real problems with it:
1) The temptation for Blizzard to make money on the side selling stuff on eBay using a second company. This gets worse as they make in game items harder to get in game to help boost up their eBay biz. EQ I think suffered from this in the later days at least insofar as it was hard for a truly new person to "break in" to EQ without eBay.
2) People buying high level characters they are not competant to drive. In WoW you don't have to group if you don't want to. If you group you will pay the price. But at least in EQ this happened but was uncommon. People that liked the game enough to eBay also understood how to play it, at least in general, there were a few obvious screwballs.
I guess it just seems to me Blizzard should worry about the game itself. It's great but it's not perfect.
I understand what you're saying but look at it this way.
To be successful in EQ you had to invest a LOT of time (or a lot of money in eBay). You couldn't play 10 hours a week and hope of ever seeing the fun part of the game in under a year. People do not understand that EQ is not about the journey, it's entirely the destination. The game STARTS at level 65. Not true for WoW, but I digress. You play level based RPGs to progress and succeed, it's escape from life where hard work doesn't always pay off. Ass kissing, brown nosing, back stabbing, etc., will not move you up in these games as in RL.
Now it's true anyone who puts the game ahead of real life needs help. At the same time, only sick people play EQ (I admit to playing it). While I have not lost my job or divorced, I know so many in game who have. Adults with kids, people who should know better. Calling them irresponsible may be a statement of fact, but it also makes the thesis no less true: eq is a causal factor in divorces etc. I suspect not the only cause, but who is to know.
Fortunately with WoW there's no reason to play EQ anymore. You can play it for a few hours, enjoy every minute of it, and put it down knowing you can pick up again tomorrow. In EQ/EQ2/FFXI/CoH it may take over an hour to get a group (let alone a great group), you sometimes don't want to stop because you've finally got something going, etc.
The pedigree behind this open source RPG reminds me of another type of pen and paper RPG: Purity Tests.
"Have you ever drank so much that you puked?" (1 point) "... and passed out afterwards?" (3 points) "... and woken up next to a stranger?" (3 points) "... and couldn't remember her name?"(1 point) "... and fathered her children?"(10 points)
etc.
I had to level up a lot after the first time I played, I was too far behind everyone else =/
I've heard of it and lived it. I learned algebra from my PE teacher, no, really. (I really learned algebra from my father)
My point is we ought to be changing our system now, and figuring out how to attract teachers back. I'm a believer in the money talks, bullshit walks school.
If we lost math/science teachers to NASA and industry, they went for more money. They'll return for the same. It'll right itself in 20 years.
I think you're almost right. The working class is changed to be more office/sales/service based, but our educational system is not serving that need very well.
We don't need more intellectuals, in fact we probably still have too many for the available work force. Many/most are doing jobs beneath their expertise that cannot be filled by the "working class" and yet have to demand the high wages they ought to be making. I should not spend my day writing code, making schematics or running simulations. I should be writing documents describing new products, diagnosing/fixing design flaws and thinking of new things to build. Yet most of us do the mundane too, we have to no one else can. Some of us do the mundane so long, so much, that we've forgotten what we set out to do.
We do need people with different skills than we did 50 years ago. In science and engineering especially we need people with more than the most basic education in hard sciences and technology who did not necessarily have the motivation, money or time to get advanced college degrees. This whole outsourcing nonsense started because of that, and went out of proportion because such a labor base exists in India (and China, Korea, Russia, etc). It's become critical now, because obviously, those countries are seeking to employ their own intellectual class for the bigger ROI.
On another note, I'd say Asian mathematical curriculum are significantly less enlightened than the american public schools I went to. My wife describes for me hours of drills and memorization, and sheer volume of homework that many people here would consider old-fashioned. She knows her math though, all the way up to the point where she came to the US, and I think got more out of the same college program than I did.
In her words "we did our work because our parents made us". Sounds familiar. But I spent more time in school on history, literature and "other" activities. I suspect I only learned math because my father used to be an engineer and taught me, a statement I hear a lot. In fact, most of the people I work with here have a parent who was a scientist or engineer. Scary.
I think the only reason you can get semi-reliable movie reviews from a newspaper is because the newspaper has many different types sponsors, and printed newspapers are not yet totally owned by the big media companies.
IGN? May as well ask Microsoft what it thinks about Windows.
Ken was not in his usual final jeopardy position, and thus it was up to fate to decide. I don't watch every night, but every time I've seen him, it didn't matter if he won final jeopardy or not, he won the game.
The only reason I got the impression he "gave up" was because he missed some questions even I knew, and I know less than 10% of them, and more importantly, he usually plays smarter esp. when it comes to daily doubles. It seemed like he bet a lot for subjects he wasn't exactly in control of.
I've seen Ken against tougher opponents than Zerg, though I agree she played smart. She didn't know most of those questions and seemed almost flustered in double jeopardy.
All I can say is he was on jeopardy a long time, away from his life (though we may make fun of it). He won $2.5M, which is enough for him to pay off "the man" and live/work on his own terms. He made his mark and he's moving on.
It is a good thing when it comes to contracts. We have been able to keep quite a few people employed by selling rights to 3rd parties to distribute in limited geographies we won't go to anyhow. For example, someone wants to sell equipment in Turkey, we don't have any business or foothold there, it'd cost a lot for us to even try. We do have partners however who live there and can do business profitably, they just need our product to sell. More power to them, but they better not sell to anyone else. Thus limitation is a good thing.
In this particular case it is good too, Valve made the game, they own it, not the publisher. The publisher in this case was given the right to sell the game to a specific market. Vivendi needed to be smacked for the old fashioned belief that they simply own anything they are chosen to publish. Bad doggie.
Diablo 2 is fun. EverQuest is fun. Quake 3 is fun.
-----
Next discussion, monthly fees:
Why do 2 of those games require a monthy fee? There's a good reason.
Too much? Do you think $50 shoes cost $50 to make? More like $5 (in materials). Is the company making $45 profit/pair? No. Are they making a profit? Obviously, or they wouldn't be selling shoes anymore.
I think shoes are overpriced, how do I get them cheaper? Buy cheaper shoes or go barefoot.
---
Final discussion, borrowing money.
"Mom, may I have $10?" "Yes honey."
"Dad, can I have a car? Get a job, pay me back"
"Mr. Loan man, may I have $300k loan?" "Assuming your credit history is good, and you have a job paying you sufficiently, then yes, you can have a $300k loan. It will cost you $150k. You can pay me back $450k over 30 years."
"Mr. Investor Man, I'd like $5M to fund my game" "Well you seem to have a record of successfuly managing money, but what's in it for me? You can't possibly pay me back $5M in our lifetime, so I will have to assume risk that you fail. No, I will not give money to you, and not at once. I will let you use installments of my money to run your business. I will meet quarterly to discuss how you've spent this money, how much you've earned, and how much you expect to earn next year and perhaps give you a bit more money or pull the plug. I expect to make consistently 20% above my investment. Some of this I will give to you back in salary. I will let you have a small percentage of the profit, another percentage will go back to your company for investment, the rest and majority I keep."
You're a public person, I can't take a look at your bank account and figure out how much money you're making. Similarly you have no business snooping on corporation business transactions. It's none of your business.
All that is important is this: They can choose any pricing model they want, and charge price they want. They're in business to make money so:
1) If the price is higher than the consumer will pay, the consumer will not buy.
2) If not enough consumers are buying, Blizzard will drop the price until such a time as the earnings cannot sustain the business. (Note: This may be different than "operate at cost", companies do not operate at cost, they operate for profit. If they do not get a desired profit margin, they may STILL fold.)
3) If not enough buy even at the minimum price, Blizzard will then attempt to sell the product to someone who may be able to operate on reduced earnings (perhaps a company that will operate on a lower profit margin, or who will cut costs/quality, etc.)
4) Failling that, they will cancel the product rather than operate inconsistently with investor expectations.
All I can say is feel free not to pay, that's the best way to get them to drop the cost.
I think believing that WoW could operate without a montly fee is an uninformed opinion. I'm interested in hearing suggestions on how such a game could be made.
This article isn't newsworthy. Someone is using mathematical speculation, combined with unbacked assumptions to "prove" Bush had fewer votes? This is why the average joe doesn't trust science. Stop it, you're hurting.
Common sense > conspiracy. Kerry ran a bad campaign that did absolutely nothing to steal Bush's strong religious right base. Just look at the red and blue on the map, that says everything in a nutshell. By reading/. and other left-leaning material, sometimes we get the idea everyone agrees with us. Yet fully 50% of those in the country do not. Kerry forgot that, and lost.
My personal guess (and I'm honest about it), if Kerry focused on the economy and jobs instead of iraq and Bush's policies, he would have won. I come from the south, most of my family still lives there. They like religious crusades, but they like having a job a whole lot more. Clinton knew that, why didn't Kerry? Maybe because he's not as brainy as we think he is...
Actually I think the "foosball policy" worked great for upper management. By having distraction you could guilt otherwise responsible employees into working long hours ot meet schedules etc. Also the office comraderie creates a social environment that's easy to high pressure people into free overtime.
"I gotta take my kid to the doctor."...Later...
"Where's Bob?"
"Something about spending time with his family, we're never going to meet the schedule."
"He's never here. It's 3am, doesn't he think we're all tired?" etc. etc. Office politics etc. etc.
At least around here, our yearly review also involved a "peer review". You can guess what that was for...
That management in some cases failed to make good use of this, or was working on the wrong things, is the subject of Dilbert cartoons. The fact is, I for one, ended up working 18 hours/day 7 days a week for months at a stretch for the same pay I presently make (with a pathetic 5% bonus at the end...if the project didn't mothball). I've been reading/. for a long time, but I only got this 6 digit ID in the past few years;)
I hope it's the techies themselves that don't buy in to another foosball policy. Negotiate better salaries, negotiate better benefits, negotiate better conditions, do not confuse work and leisure. It's good to enjoy what you do, but don't forget this is also how we put food on the table. Never confuse it with leisure activity, and never work for free.
You're always worth more to someone else, that's not a change from the status quo. Those going out are getting more money to be elsewhere, those coming in are getting more money than they were. (Also some factor of fed up and wanting a change applies)
The question of whether those coming in are getting more money than those going out is the issue. I'd consider it typical for new people to make more at the same job level than the old outbound ones. If that's not true, then things are still sucky.
Because tech geeks are still pretty arrogant, and think that there is a wide salary gap between the elite alpha geek (which many younger people identify with) and the 'average slob'.
As far as I can see, the only ones doing A LOT better than the average guy are either self-employed (and even this is fading), or are in a high position in a company that has a place for non-managing engineers that are esentially senior management (or are in management, but still do engineering).
So in fact, everyone is getting the same crappy salary and benefits, but the elitist behavior drives people apart who should be teaming up and organizing. Only something like a union has the power to negotiate work rules and conditions, and only something like a union has the muscle to build barriers to outsourcing.
Test 36 EST. I don't exactly know what prompted the battle, all I know is I was trying to keep up with some morlock respawn so i could inspect some washed up carcass, and then all kinds of people ran by me killing each other. Shortly thereafter 3. - Local Defense became active with "strategies".
"Strategies" included getting everyone 11-23 (our highest level I guess) to the druid grove. Dying shortly thereafter to one of the aforementioned morlocks, I had the occasion to wisp back to my body and examine a huge number of dead people near the druid grove =)
After that I joined up, but this conflict was like the initial RvR conflicts in DAOC. Massive zergism, no strategy, and no goal but fun for what it was.
I hope to see later on a real goal in attacking opposing faction NPCs, and a similar goal in protecting them. Otherwise PvP will probably never truly be anything other than an oddity.
It seems your post has the bias of someone paying unduly close attention to Blizzard/GW politics.
GW and WoW/EQ2 are very different games. GW is more like Diablo 2, WoW is more like EverQuest. It would be like comparing Madden 200x to Mortal Kombat. At lease this is my take based only on beta-weekend and my experiences there.
I played GW only during beta weekend and had not heard of it before. It looks promising, my wife loves it, but it's certainly not ready for prime time. Let's give it a chance to brew for a while and forget about which developers left which company for reasons that none of us will ever know for sure. None of that is relevant.
I'm a Night Elf Priest, the quest was in Tendrassil (sp?). You're correct, I was several levels above the quest.
The quest is described here: http://www.thottbot.com/?q=2933
I was level 11 when I did it, which is well above the level most people would find it (probably level 6-7). At level 10 I gained a number of new offensive spells, which is undoubtedly why I was able to win. I was about to move out of newbie land, and was just intentionally trying to find missed quests. It was a real hard fight and I barely won. I was not sufficiently overpowered that the xp/loot reward was useless tho =)
My feeling is elite quests should not be soloable (for the intended level), but all non-elite quests should be. I have found only one regular quest that can't be soloed at the intended level so far (http://www.thottbot.com/?q=6614) as there are simply too many bad guys around the target and I can't kill them all before the respawn. I haven't retried since level 13, but I suspect when I reach level 16 I will be able to finish it.
So far though that's the exception rather than the rule.
I'm got in the WoW open beta, only level 15 so far, but it seems WoW is superior to every other MMOG I've played.
To start, it's actually fun. Like levelling up, that tedium in EQ you had to go through to get to where the real content is? Well it's like fun and stuff. Get this, you do quests, and most don't suck. You level up as a side effect of quests. Unlike CoH, you can actually (so far at least) solo all of the quests. There are tons of them, I have not run out (currently have 11 quests active). There are rumors of "elite" quests that require groups, but the one I had I was able to solo. I prefer to level up and quest alone, saving groups/raids for big events or RvR stuff.
Last night someone from the horde tried to attack us little night elves. I think it was a draw, they had levels on their side, but we had numbers. It was fun regardless. We're on a non-PVP server, which means it's totally optional whether to get involved with that or not, which I like. I didn't like the griefing and other crap in DAOC that you get from xp'ing in RvR zones. The PvP servers exist for people who like that, but I suspect that the non-PvP servers will be the more popular choice. If it's done right, the high level quests will lead you to want to kill the opposing faction NPCs, and draw you in to PvP. The bulk of the high level game will probably center around this. That seems like the way to go, and where I'd at least want to group/guild and spend time. It's a guess, but it sounds like it'd be fun.
The graphics are of course great, but so are CoH and EQ2. I think WoW has them beat in mechanics and artistry, but it's a judgement call. I think CoH landscape/pathing may be a bit better, but WoW complexity is much higher. I still play EQ for raids, and I have never been unsatisfied with EQ graphics so...
The tradeskill system seems decent. The system is similar but improved in mechanics from Horizons. You can't exclusively tradeskill, but to my mind that's not a rational plan for a fantasy/adventure game. It is TBD whether it is functional in terms of actually being useful to the game. No game has yet hit the mark on tradeskills except perhaps EVE, but EVE is a different type of game.
Raiding is still TBD. EQ in my mind is wearing the crown, it's unclear if it will be dethroned. If open beta ran longer, I'd probably be high enough to raid by early december (playing 3 hours a day mind you, in EQ it takes a year to do that). I suspect EQ mechanics will be better for a while, I think they'll end up having to tune WoW. It's supposition but I'm guessing that'll happen. Blizzard seems to have an eye on EQ for that judging by the competition going on, we'll see.
Anyway after EQ and the total disaster that was SWG, plus my limited but disgusted experience with EQ2...I'm giving that a miss. At this point I think I will be buying WoW. The most important criteria I have is that it seems well thought out, and the developers want the game to be fun above all. Most MMOGs miss that completely, or have only one or two elements that are fun (like say, raiding or RvR), while the bulk of the game is boring.
I know many executives, and they ALL work insanely hard. I think we need to be fair, most of them are not porking their secretaries on an italian leather couch in the office they stay in 5% of the time. Almost all of them, even the horrible ones, really work their asses off. I respect that. The problem I think is that respect is not reciprocated.
What I do not appreciate is the opinion of one such executive, "I'll never ask my employees to do anything I wouldn't do". He finds it acceptable to live 6 weeks in China away from his family. He also expects that of his employees. Some cannot say no very easily. Why is this attitude wrong? Clearly the boss has a totally different value system. Maybe it's more money, probably he'd do it just for the emotional gain. Either way, it's bad.
Most of the time the people at the top of these mammoths base their entire identity, ego, finances and ambitions around their company (or more often "career"). In their eyes the company/career is more their child than their actual children (which I have found they are not often very involved with). Some would quite literally do anything for their company. This is where the problems are. Most of the people they hire simply want to do a job, get paid, and go build their own shrines to personal immortality (i.e. children, projects, etc).
Somehow boundaries need to be set, but it's hard to do when so much of the labor force is out of work (or in countries so desperate for money they'll do almost anything). It's clearly not in the best interests of our society for everyone to abandon their family for their job.
Strictly speaking this isn't illegal. People are undoubtedly 'voluntarily' working overtime. Just like you may 'voluntarily' empty your bank account if someone has your child at gunpoint. If you have a family, you have to put food on the table, and that's that. What they're doing is wrong, but not illegal.
Maybe the time has come for the software industry to unionize. I hate unions and the mediocrity they produce, but then EA is happy with that. Let's face it, unions were created for a good reason. They may also be able to build the political muscle to stop outsourcing. It sounds like EA employees spend a lot of time together, and are already roughly making the same money. I suggest they spend a few evenings discussing a coup de tat. Even in this job market, no company can survive it's brains and brawn in a 90-100% walkout.
Also consider that making a video game is probably better in your mind than in reality. In implementation it's the same as the job you already have: hard work, unforgiving, usually unrewarding and generally not fun. And just like your job now, when you get "it" working and near complete, it's a great feeling. And just like your current job, if you have a truly great idea, it's almost always better to keep a lid on it develop it on the side as long as you can, then take the risk of starting your own business. Ultimately that's the only way to break the cycle.
That's not true at all. EverQuest (the first) is not about levelling. Levelling is merely a very long, boring, inconvenient roadblock to the content. It's designed to teach you your role on a team (hence, role playing). It's WAY exaggerated and drawn out, I agree. Take the levelling out of EQ and you still have a viable game, just many never make it far enough to see that.
Everquest is about 30-100 person collaborative raids against very hard NPC driven events. It's about growing that team as a group and moving on to even tougher challenges. In implementation growing doesn't mean levels, it means equipment and practice. It's more equivalent to creating a football team than creating a god-like character.
Any complaint you have about the levelling component I agree with completely, you're dead on. This is why there's this eBay aftermarket for pre-built characters that even now is strong. The only reason this market exists and is successful, however, is precisely because levelling isn't the fun part of the game and no one wants to do it.
I'm with you. I invested 5 years of sweat and blood and non-fun to get a character in EQ that I can finally enjoy. I'm not giving it up unless a game comes along that satisfies either of these criteria:
a) It is so insanely good and enjoyable that I forget entirely about my EQ character. (This is ideal, but very, very hard for any game to achieve)
b) It doesn't require much of a time commitment to be reasonably more fun than EQ.
It's not EQ2. Back before there was EQ there was M59 and UO, both fun games in their own right. EQ was the next step above them (in most ways, we lost good PvP somewhere in there). Companies aren't trying to build a new generation of MMOG, they're just trying to build a better EQ clone. They're not going to attract a big audience that way. Just a few new people, a bunch of people disgruntled with and probably a substantial number of "try and ditch" people on release.
Slashdot Mirror
Congrats to Sollog, he's really showing /. trolls what it MEANS to troll. Forget the GNAA, forget Fr1st Ps0t and Hot Grits. Sollog has developed a religion and a following (ok, maybe a virtual following) around his trolling capabilities.
Truly an American icon!
I guess I don't see why botting is bad at all, but perhaps I misunderstand. I usually play 2 accounts on EQ at once, it's a way of getting something done without having to wait for a group. Maybe I'm a rich yuppie bastard for paying for 2 accounts but I see nothing wrong with it. I guess I fail to see why it's necessary in WoW, but if people do it so what? They're paying for the accounts and bandwidth...
As for eBay, I see 2 real problems with it:
1) The temptation for Blizzard to make money on the side selling stuff on eBay using a second company. This gets worse as they make in game items harder to get in game to help boost up their eBay biz. EQ I think suffered from this in the later days at least insofar as it was hard for a truly new person to "break in" to EQ without eBay.
2) People buying high level characters they are not competant to drive. In WoW you don't have to group if you don't want to. If you group you will pay the price. But at least in EQ this happened but was uncommon. People that liked the game enough to eBay also understood how to play it, at least in general, there were a few obvious screwballs.
I guess it just seems to me Blizzard should worry about the game itself. It's great but it's not perfect.
I understand what you're saying but look at it this way.
To be successful in EQ you had to invest a LOT of time (or a lot of money in eBay). You couldn't play 10 hours a week and hope of ever seeing the fun part of the game in under a year. People do not understand that EQ is not about the journey, it's entirely the destination. The game STARTS at level 65. Not true for WoW, but I digress. You play level based RPGs to progress and succeed, it's escape from life where hard work doesn't always pay off. Ass kissing, brown nosing, back stabbing, etc., will not move you up in these games as in RL.
Now it's true anyone who puts the game ahead of real life needs help. At the same time, only sick people play EQ (I admit to playing it). While I have not lost my job or divorced, I know so many in game who have. Adults with kids, people who should know better. Calling them irresponsible may be a statement of fact, but it also makes the thesis no less true: eq is a causal factor in divorces etc. I suspect not the only cause, but who is to know.
Fortunately with WoW there's no reason to play EQ anymore. You can play it for a few hours, enjoy every minute of it, and put it down knowing you can pick up again tomorrow. In EQ/EQ2/FFXI/CoH it may take over an hour to get a group (let alone a great group), you sometimes don't want to stop because you've finally got something going, etc.
Level 30, still no groups. Grouping can be quite disadvantageous on certain quests too...
The pedigree behind this open source RPG reminds me of another type of pen and paper RPG: Purity Tests.
"Have you ever drank so much that you puked?" (1 point)
"... and passed out afterwards?" (3 points)
"... and woken up next to a stranger?" (3 points)
"... and couldn't remember her name?"(1 point)
"... and fathered her children?"(10 points)
etc.
I had to level up a lot after the first time I played, I was too far behind everyone else =/
I've heard of it and lived it. I learned algebra from my PE teacher, no, really. (I really learned algebra from my father)
My point is we ought to be changing our system now, and figuring out how to attract teachers back. I'm a believer in the money talks, bullshit walks school.
If we lost math/science teachers to NASA and industry, they went for more money. They'll return for the same. It'll right itself in 20 years.
I think you're almost right. The working class is changed to be more office/sales/service based, but our educational system is not serving that need very well. We don't need more intellectuals, in fact we probably still have too many for the available work force. Many/most are doing jobs beneath their expertise that cannot be filled by the "working class" and yet have to demand the high wages they ought to be making. I should not spend my day writing code, making schematics or running simulations. I should be writing documents describing new products, diagnosing/fixing design flaws and thinking of new things to build. Yet most of us do the mundane too, we have to no one else can. Some of us do the mundane so long, so much, that we've forgotten what we set out to do. We do need people with different skills than we did 50 years ago. In science and engineering especially we need people with more than the most basic education in hard sciences and technology who did not necessarily have the motivation, money or time to get advanced college degrees. This whole outsourcing nonsense started because of that, and went out of proportion because such a labor base exists in India (and China, Korea, Russia, etc). It's become critical now, because obviously, those countries are seeking to employ their own intellectual class for the bigger ROI. On another note, I'd say Asian mathematical curriculum are significantly less enlightened than the american public schools I went to. My wife describes for me hours of drills and memorization, and sheer volume of homework that many people here would consider old-fashioned. She knows her math though, all the way up to the point where she came to the US, and I think got more out of the same college program than I did. In her words "we did our work because our parents made us". Sounds familiar. But I spent more time in school on history, literature and "other" activities. I suspect I only learned math because my father used to be an engineer and taught me, a statement I hear a lot. In fact, most of the people I work with here have a parent who was a scientist or engineer. Scary.
Fuck stock, I want a job there.
I think the only reason you can get semi-reliable movie reviews from a newspaper is because the newspaper has many different types sponsors, and printed newspapers are not yet totally owned by the big media companies.
IGN? May as well ask Microsoft what it thinks about Windows.
Ken was not in his usual final jeopardy position, and thus it was up to fate to decide. I don't watch every night, but every time I've seen him, it didn't matter if he won final jeopardy or not, he won the game.
The only reason I got the impression he "gave up" was because he missed some questions even I knew, and I know less than 10% of them, and more importantly, he usually plays smarter esp. when it comes to daily doubles. It seemed like he bet a lot for subjects he wasn't exactly in control of.
I've seen Ken against tougher opponents than Zerg, though I agree she played smart. She didn't know most of those questions and seemed almost flustered in double jeopardy.
All I can say is he was on jeopardy a long time, away from his life (though we may make fun of it). He won $2.5M, which is enough for him to pay off "the man" and live/work on his own terms. He made his mark and he's moving on.
It is a good thing when it comes to contracts. We have been able to keep quite a few people employed by selling rights to 3rd parties to distribute in limited geographies we won't go to anyhow. For example, someone wants to sell equipment in Turkey, we don't have any business or foothold there, it'd cost a lot for us to even try. We do have partners however who live there and can do business profitably, they just need our product to sell. More power to them, but they better not sell to anyone else. Thus limitation is a good thing. In this particular case it is good too, Valve made the game, they own it, not the publisher. The publisher in this case was given the right to sell the game to a specific market. Vivendi needed to be smacked for the old fashioned belief that they simply own anything they are chosen to publish. Bad doggie.
You're trying to compare apples to oranges.
GW is fun. WoW is fun. HL2 is fun.
is like
Diablo 2 is fun. EverQuest is fun. Quake 3 is fun.
-----
Next discussion, monthly fees:
Why do 2 of those games require a monthy fee? There's a good reason.
Too much?
Do you think $50 shoes cost $50 to make? More like $5 (in materials). Is the company making $45 profit/pair? No. Are they making a profit? Obviously, or they wouldn't be selling shoes anymore.
I think shoes are overpriced, how do I get them cheaper?
Buy cheaper shoes or go barefoot.
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Final discussion, borrowing money.
"Mom, may I have $10?" "Yes honey."
"Dad, can I have a car? Get a job, pay me back"
"Mr. Loan man, may I have $300k loan?"
"Assuming your credit history is good, and you have a job paying you sufficiently, then yes, you can have a $300k loan. It will cost you $150k. You can pay me back $450k over 30 years."
"Mr. Investor Man, I'd like $5M to fund my game"
"Well you seem to have a record of successfuly managing money, but what's in it for me? You can't possibly pay me back $5M in our lifetime, so I will have to assume risk that you fail. No, I will not give money to you, and not at once. I will let you use installments of my money to run your business. I will meet quarterly to discuss how you've spent this money, how much you've earned, and how much you expect to earn next year and perhaps give you a bit more money or pull the plug. I expect to make consistently 20% above my investment. Some of this I will give to you back in salary. I will let you have a small percentage of the profit, another percentage will go back to your company for investment, the rest and majority I keep."
You're a public person, I can't take a look at your bank account and figure out how much money you're making. Similarly you have no business snooping on corporation business transactions. It's none of your business.
All that is important is this: They can choose any pricing model they want, and charge price they want. They're in business to make money so:
1) If the price is higher than the consumer will pay, the consumer will not buy.
2) If not enough consumers are buying, Blizzard will drop the price until such a time as the earnings cannot sustain the business. (Note: This may be different than "operate at cost", companies do not operate at cost, they operate for profit. If they do not get a desired profit margin, they may STILL fold.)
3) If not enough buy even at the minimum price, Blizzard will then attempt to sell the product to someone who may be able to operate on reduced earnings (perhaps a company that will operate on a lower profit margin, or who will cut costs/quality, etc.)
4) Failling that, they will cancel the product rather than operate inconsistently with investor expectations.
All I can say is feel free not to pay, that's the best way to get them to drop the cost.
I think believing that WoW could operate without a montly fee is an uninformed opinion. I'm interested in hearing suggestions on how such a game could be made.
This article isn't newsworthy. Someone is using mathematical speculation, combined with unbacked assumptions to "prove" Bush had fewer votes? This is why the average joe doesn't trust science. Stop it, you're hurting.
/. and other left-leaning material, sometimes we get the idea everyone agrees with us. Yet fully 50% of those in the country do not. Kerry forgot that, and lost.
Common sense > conspiracy. Kerry ran a bad campaign that did absolutely nothing to steal Bush's strong religious right base. Just look at the red and blue on the map, that says everything in a nutshell. By reading
My personal guess (and I'm honest about it), if Kerry focused on the economy and jobs instead of iraq and Bush's policies, he would have won. I come from the south, most of my family still lives there. They like religious crusades, but they like having a job a whole lot more. Clinton knew that, why didn't Kerry? Maybe because he's not as brainy as we think he is...
Actually I think the "foosball policy" worked great for upper management. By having distraction you could guilt otherwise responsible employees into working long hours ot meet schedules etc. Also the office comraderie creates a social environment that's easy to high pressure people into free overtime.
...Later...
/. for a long time, but I only got this 6 digit ID in the past few years ;)
"I gotta take my kid to the doctor."
"Where's Bob?"
"Something about spending time with his family, we're never going to meet the schedule."
"He's never here. It's 3am, doesn't he think we're all tired?"
etc. etc. Office politics etc. etc.
At least around here, our yearly review also involved a "peer review". You can guess what that was for...
That management in some cases failed to make good use of this, or was working on the wrong things, is the subject of Dilbert cartoons. The fact is, I for one, ended up working 18 hours/day 7 days a week for months at a stretch for the same pay I presently make (with a pathetic 5% bonus at the end...if the project didn't mothball). I've been reading
I hope it's the techies themselves that don't buy in to another foosball policy. Negotiate better salaries, negotiate better benefits, negotiate better conditions, do not confuse work and leisure. It's good to enjoy what you do, but don't forget this is also how we put food on the table. Never confuse it with leisure activity, and never work for free.
You're always worth more to someone else, that's not a change from the status quo. Those going out are getting more money to be elsewhere, those coming in are getting more money than they were. (Also some factor of fed up and wanting a change applies)
The question of whether those coming in are getting more money than those going out is the issue. I'd consider it typical for new people to make more at the same job level than the old outbound ones. If that's not true, then things are still sucky.
Because tech geeks are still pretty arrogant, and think that there is a wide salary gap between the elite alpha geek (which many younger people identify with) and the 'average slob'.
As far as I can see, the only ones doing A LOT better than the average guy are either self-employed (and even this is fading), or are in a high position in a company that has a place for non-managing engineers that are esentially senior management (or are in management, but still do engineering).
So in fact, everyone is getting the same crappy salary and benefits, but the elitist behavior drives people apart who should be teaming up and organizing. Only something like a union has the power to negotiate work rules and conditions, and only something like a union has the muscle to build barriers to outsourcing.
Coincidence I'm afraid.
Test 36 EST. I don't exactly know what prompted the battle, all I know is I was trying to keep up with some morlock respawn so i could inspect some washed up carcass, and then all kinds of people ran by me killing each other. Shortly thereafter 3. - Local Defense became active with "strategies".
"Strategies" included getting everyone 11-23 (our highest level I guess) to the druid grove. Dying shortly thereafter to one of the aforementioned morlocks, I had the occasion to wisp back to my body and examine a huge number of dead people near the druid grove =)
After that I joined up, but this conflict was like the initial RvR conflicts in DAOC. Massive zergism, no strategy, and no goal but fun for what it was.
I hope to see later on a real goal in attacking opposing faction NPCs, and a similar goal in protecting them. Otherwise PvP will probably never truly be anything other than an oddity.
It seems your post has the bias of someone paying unduly close attention to Blizzard/GW politics.
GW and WoW/EQ2 are very different games. GW is more like Diablo 2, WoW is more like EverQuest. It would be like comparing Madden 200x to Mortal Kombat. At lease this is my take based only on beta-weekend and my experiences there.
I played GW only during beta weekend and had not heard of it before. It looks promising, my wife loves it, but it's certainly not ready for prime time. Let's give it a chance to brew for a while and forget about which developers left which company for reasons that none of us will ever know for sure. None of that is relevant.
I'm a Night Elf Priest, the quest was in Tendrassil (sp?). You're correct, I was several levels above the quest.
The quest is described here:
http://www.thottbot.com/?q=2933
I was level 11 when I did it, which is well above the level most people would find it (probably level 6-7). At level 10 I gained a number of new offensive spells, which is undoubtedly why I was able to win. I was about to move out of newbie land, and was just intentionally trying to find missed quests. It was a real hard fight and I barely won. I was not sufficiently overpowered that the xp/loot reward was useless tho =)
My feeling is elite quests should not be soloable (for the intended level), but all non-elite quests should be. I have found only one regular quest that can't be soloed at the intended level so far (http://www.thottbot.com/?q=6614) as there are simply too many bad guys around the target and I can't kill them all before the respawn. I haven't retried since level 13, but I suspect when I reach level 16 I will be able to finish it.
So far though that's the exception rather than the rule.
I'm got in the WoW open beta, only level 15 so far, but it seems WoW is superior to every other MMOG I've played.
To start, it's actually fun. Like levelling up, that tedium in EQ you had to go through to get to where the real content is? Well it's like fun and stuff. Get this, you do quests, and most don't suck. You level up as a side effect of quests. Unlike CoH, you can actually (so far at least) solo all of the quests. There are tons of them, I have not run out (currently have 11 quests active). There are rumors of "elite" quests that require groups, but the one I had I was able to solo. I prefer to level up and quest alone, saving groups/raids for big events or RvR stuff.
Last night someone from the horde tried to attack us little night elves. I think it was a draw, they had levels on their side, but we had numbers. It was fun regardless. We're on a non-PVP server, which means it's totally optional whether to get involved with that or not, which I like. I didn't like the griefing and other crap in DAOC that you get from xp'ing in RvR zones. The PvP servers exist for people who like that, but I suspect that the non-PvP servers will be the more popular choice. If it's done right, the high level quests will lead you to want to kill the opposing faction NPCs, and draw you in to PvP. The bulk of the high level game will probably center around this. That seems like the way to go, and where I'd at least want to group/guild and spend time. It's a guess, but it sounds like it'd be fun.
The graphics are of course great, but so are CoH and EQ2. I think WoW has them beat in mechanics and artistry, but it's a judgement call. I think CoH landscape/pathing may be a bit better, but WoW complexity is much higher. I still play EQ for raids, and I have never been unsatisfied with EQ graphics so...
The tradeskill system seems decent. The system is similar but improved in mechanics from Horizons. You can't exclusively tradeskill, but to my mind that's not a rational plan for a fantasy/adventure game. It is TBD whether it is functional in terms of actually being useful to the game. No game has yet hit the mark on tradeskills except perhaps EVE, but EVE is a different type of game.
Raiding is still TBD. EQ in my mind is wearing the crown, it's unclear if it will be dethroned. If open beta ran longer, I'd probably be high enough to raid by early december (playing 3 hours a day mind you, in EQ it takes a year to do that). I suspect EQ mechanics will be better for a while, I think they'll end up having to tune WoW. It's supposition but I'm guessing that'll happen. Blizzard seems to have an eye on EQ for that judging by the competition going on, we'll see.
Anyway after EQ and the total disaster that was SWG, plus my limited but disgusted experience with EQ2...I'm giving that a miss. At this point I think I will be buying WoW. The most important criteria I have is that it seems well thought out, and the developers want the game to be fun above all. Most MMOGs miss that completely, or have only one or two elements that are fun (like say, raiding or RvR), while the bulk of the game is boring.
$.02
I know many executives, and they ALL work insanely hard. I think we need to be fair, most of them are not porking their secretaries on an italian leather couch in the office they stay in 5% of the time. Almost all of them, even the horrible ones, really work their asses off. I respect that. The problem I think is that respect is not reciprocated. What I do not appreciate is the opinion of one such executive, "I'll never ask my employees to do anything I wouldn't do". He finds it acceptable to live 6 weeks in China away from his family. He also expects that of his employees. Some cannot say no very easily. Why is this attitude wrong? Clearly the boss has a totally different value system. Maybe it's more money, probably he'd do it just for the emotional gain. Either way, it's bad. Most of the time the people at the top of these mammoths base their entire identity, ego, finances and ambitions around their company (or more often "career"). In their eyes the company/career is more their child than their actual children (which I have found they are not often very involved with). Some would quite literally do anything for their company. This is where the problems are. Most of the people they hire simply want to do a job, get paid, and go build their own shrines to personal immortality (i.e. children, projects, etc). Somehow boundaries need to be set, but it's hard to do when so much of the labor force is out of work (or in countries so desperate for money they'll do almost anything). It's clearly not in the best interests of our society for everyone to abandon their family for their job.
Strictly speaking this isn't illegal. People are undoubtedly 'voluntarily' working overtime. Just like you may 'voluntarily' empty your bank account if someone has your child at gunpoint. If you have a family, you have to put food on the table, and that's that. What they're doing is wrong, but not illegal.
Maybe the time has come for the software industry to unionize. I hate unions and the mediocrity they produce, but then EA is happy with that. Let's face it, unions were created for a good reason. They may also be able to build the political muscle to stop outsourcing. It sounds like EA employees spend a lot of time together, and are already roughly making the same money. I suggest they spend a few evenings discussing a coup de tat. Even in this job market, no company can survive it's brains and brawn in a 90-100% walkout.
Also consider that making a video game is probably better in your mind than in reality. In implementation it's the same as the job you already have: hard work, unforgiving, usually unrewarding and generally not fun. And just like your job now, when you get "it" working and near complete, it's a great feeling. And just like your current job, if you have a truly great idea, it's almost always better to keep a lid on it develop it on the side as long as you can, then take the risk of starting your own business. Ultimately that's the only way to break the cycle.
That's not true at all. EverQuest (the first) is not about levelling. Levelling is merely a very long, boring, inconvenient roadblock to the content. It's designed to teach you your role on a team (hence, role playing). It's WAY exaggerated and drawn out, I agree. Take the levelling out of EQ and you still have a viable game, just many never make it far enough to see that.
Everquest is about 30-100 person collaborative raids against very hard NPC driven events. It's about growing that team as a group and moving on to even tougher challenges. In implementation growing doesn't mean levels, it means equipment and practice. It's more equivalent to creating a football team than creating a god-like character.
Any complaint you have about the levelling component I agree with completely, you're dead on. This is why there's this eBay aftermarket for pre-built characters that even now is strong. The only reason this market exists and is successful, however, is precisely because levelling isn't the fun part of the game and no one wants to do it.
I'm with you. I invested 5 years of sweat and blood and non-fun to get a character in EQ that I can finally enjoy. I'm not giving it up unless a game comes along that satisfies either of these criteria:
a) It is so insanely good and enjoyable that I forget entirely about my EQ character. (This is ideal, but very, very hard for any game to achieve)
b) It doesn't require much of a time commitment to be reasonably more fun than EQ.
It's not EQ2. Back before there was EQ there was M59 and UO, both fun games in their own right. EQ was the next step above them (in most ways, we lost good PvP somewhere in there). Companies aren't trying to build a new generation of MMOG, they're just trying to build a better EQ clone. They're not going to attract a big audience that way. Just a few new people, a bunch of people disgruntled with and probably a substantial number of "try and ditch" people on release.