Actually, my best bet would be on "cognitive dissonance" rather than "conspiracy theory."
The best way to illustrate cognitive dissonance is via the classic experiment: you assign someone (e.g., a student) a Homer Simpson-esque job that's boring him to tears. Then you one day say he can stop doing it, you have something better to do with him. But you ask him if he can find a replacement for that previous crap job. You even offer a dollar if he does. So he'll go try to convince someone else that it's a great job to take. The fun thing is, after a while he'll have convinced himself too that it's a great job.
Apparently, having to reconcile between "I'm a nice and honest guy" and "I just lied to a bunch of people for a lousy dollar", he'll alter the latter to, basically, "yeah, well, it wasn't really a lie." Just to keep his mental model consistent.
It seems to be a function of at least the mammalian brain. When you have two contradictory ideas in your model, one has to give. With humans, though, if one idea is too important to let go, something else has to give.
Even more fun is that the strength of the effect is inversely proportional to how sustainable or justifiable that action is. If you offer him a lot more money, he has the escape of, basically, "yeah, well, I needed the money. So I have my price too. Bite me." If it's a precondition to getting out of that crap job, same thing, he has an excuse. But when there's no excuse he can wrap his mind around, he'll alter the truth so he doesn't need an excuse.
A similar fun effect is with kids. Apparently when they really want something or to do something, as silly deterrent like "mommy will pout" is often actually more effective than a harsh punishment, if applied consistently. When there is no real justification for "why didn't I do that, if I wanted to anyway?" something else has to give, and it becomes, "I didn't really want that in the first place." Fun stuff.
I find that the same applies to politics, religion, fanboys, or, for that matter, everything else. The least justifiable a position is, the more people will warp reality to keep it. And the more rabidly they'll defend that redefinition of reality, lest their whole mental model comes crashing down around their ears.
And, yes, applying more force just creates more resistance.
And for a last bit of fun, there's no defender more stalwart of a piece of bullshit, than someone whose model already broke down once and was patched to that bullshit. If they're going to have to admit "I was wrong and doing wrong" anyway, they'll run with that to the hilt, and make an even more warped model in the other direction. So funnily enough, there is no more rabid, say, XBox fanboy, than one who was a PS2 fanboy and felt betrayed by Sony and had to let their whole "Sony for ever!!!" model crash. And viceversa. There is no bible-thumper for puritan morals more rabid than someone who was a prostitute until last week. And viceversa: nobody does a good christian-baiting trolling like someone who still went to church last month. There is no Republican more rabid about every single aspect of that ideology, than someone who was a Democrat until they felt somehow betrayed. And viceversa.
But now they won't just change about the aspect where they thought they were cheated, they'll go for the whole list, from military spending to abortion stance to gay marriage to everything else. Now Party X is right in everything, and Party Y is wrong about everything, because I don't like Party Y any more. And I must enlighten the masses about how wrong and evil Party Y is!
And the least justifiable that position is (e.g., don't be silly, Sony didn't "betray" anyone and didn't owe you anything in the first place), the more immovable it will be. As I was saying, fun stuff.
To be honnest, I've seen a pretty strong message happen at least once.
The German version of Victoria, as shipped, didn't even work. At all. On any computer. It bombed out with a script syntax error, right when you tried to start the campaign. Nothing blamable on video drivers, hardware configuration, etc. It just couldn't work on any computer, because a keyword in the script didn't match the keywords that the game engine recognized.
The German publisher pointed fingers at the devs. The devs pointed fingers at the publisher. Apparently both said that somehow an older beta version had been taken as the gold disk, but none of the two felt it was their job to do anything about it.
Most retailers dropped that game like a hot potato. Within a day or two of release, it had been simply pulled off the shelves.
I don't know if they actually gave the disks back to the publisher (probably), but here's the fun part: they don't even have to. You may have learned that the capitalism model is that the merchant buys cheap from the manufacturer, and gives it more expensive to you for a profit. Forget about that crap. There's a whole bunch of markets, from groceries to computer games, where it just doesn't work that way.
How it really works, at least for major retailers, is that you essentially the rent shelf space for your stuff from the retailer. If it doesn't sell, the retailer doesn't pay you a cent for those unsold copies. In fact, the retailer still makes a profit even if you didn't sell a single copy. If the retailer just pulls that stuff off the shelves and sends you your boxes / DVD cases back, you're shafted. They just denied you the use of their shelf space.
To get an idea of how important retailers are, E3 was originally conceived as a way to woo major retailers into carrying the publishers' stuff. Or, better yet, see the raging debate about AO ratings in the USA, whose root cause is really one single retailer: Wall-Mart won't let AO titles on their shelves. If they did, the whole "OMG, we're censored if we can't get a T rating for our gore-fest" debate would fizzle right there and then.
I think it's a pretty strong message they can get to the publishes. They don't even have to go talk to the publisher. Just send them their boxes back in a truck, with a document that says "because of disproportionate returns." That's it. Any publisher will listen, when essentially you're the one with your foot on their oxygen line.
And yes, there have been a few who insisted that they're so high and mighty, that the retailers should listen to them. They're all bankrupt by now.
Well, TBH I'm starting to suspect the same thing, seeing that some users swear that their server list is working. That's just about the only obvious difference that comes to mind.
Also the fact that their web site was still talking about preordering and beta access, would kinda make that conjecture easier to believe. It could be that we're still basically playing a beta down here.
To be entirely fair, though, it's not only GOA. There are quite a few companies that treat the European market like a pariah, and I can't really figure out why.
Oh, I didn't say they are really impartial, by _your_ definition or mine. Just that they came up with their own fucked-up definition of what impartiality means, and strive to meet that warped redefinition of it.
Same as if I said I'm an astronaut if I watched a documentary about the space shuttle. It may not match your definition, but it matches mine. I can now say with a straight face that I'm an astronaut. According to my own definition of it.
Basically I only said that they must have an opposing point of view, if they report it as news. (If it's an opinion column, or paid-for PR, well, now that's another thing.) It doesn't even mean they have to give them equal space, or anything. But they have to have that last paragraph that says, "meanwhile Dr Random J Scientist says, 'no, we have no data that links autism to MMR'", after they ranted over the whole page about how MMR causes autism. Now they have their opposing points of view, therefore it's impartial. According to their own redefinition of "impartiality."
Because while you claim a 0 is an 8 both servers I have characters on accurately show the number of characters. Your statement directly contradicts my experience with the game. Thus I have resonable basis for calling you a liar.
Heh, wait... so if a bug doesn't happen on your particular computer and set of servers, it can't _possibly_ happen on any other computer. That's your argument? Every computer in the world is a clone of yours, or what?`
Ok, it looks like I was hasty to call you a fanboy. If _that_ is your argument, then you're a cretin. Sorry for the mis-labeling.
Well, everyone being "super" worked perfectly fine for COH / COV.
The "normal" people in the COH / COV universe are the minions, the victims, etc. The civillians don't even have a level, in fact.
According to Statesman's intentions at one point, it would take about 3 minions _and_ a lieutenant to be a 50%-50% fight against a player. You know, better have an inspiration (potion) or two, if it starts going downhill. Bosses are nastier, but realistically only elite bosses are any danger to a hero. I've soloed elite bosses with a scrapper.
The trick there is that the minions _are_ generated in groups. Even the filler in a mission, if you solo it, routinely come in groups of 3 minions or 2 minions and a lieutenant, and now and then you face 2 groups at the same time. In a full 8-man group, you could face platoon-sized opposition.
The end boss can jolly well an elite boss if you solo it, or an archvillain / superhero if you're in a group. The latter are bad news, usually. You need the tank, and healer, and debuffer, and all that jazz to take them down.
Basically it manages to be challenging even if every single player is "super".
I find that that does a perfectly fine job of, well, having everyone be far above average. The roles below average are reserved for NPCs. There are thousands of NPCs there, whose role, really, is to provide the contrast and show how far above average you are.
I think the same could apply to any other genre.
- You could have everyone be Conan, or, heck, be Hercules himself. You don't _have_ to be yet another soldier. The common cannon fodder can be the NPCs. You could be the elite guy who dispatches common recruits in groups of 3 at a time, which is just as well, because they're spawned in groups.
- You could have a MMO where everyone is a Jedi. And I mean the demi-god Jedi of the original trilogy, not the toned down version in games, which are no better than someone playing a trooper. You could have each player parry blaster bolts and mangle 3 stormtroopers at a time, and, again, it only means you'll have to generate those stormtroopers in groups of 3. Have make each player class be a Jedi class (e.g., melee = Jedi guardian, etc) and let the common thrash be NPCs.
Etc.
It even allows for interesting classes like COV's Mastermind. It's a class which isn't "super" by itself, but can walk around with 6 (or a couple of combinations even 7 or 8) minions.
Again, that can apply to any setting. In a medieval setting, that could mean you can play a mercenary captain, if you don't want to be the burly super-human barbarian, or in a SF setting you could be an officer.
So basically, yes you _can_ let everyone play a spartan or anything else. Why not? If you're one in a million, even in modern day Earth, there'd be 6000 just like you. If you're as l33t as to be one in a _billion_, a planet like Coruscant would have a hundred natives like that, and the galaxy would have millions. It's plenty to populate a MMO server, and then some.
1. There are better ways to handle even that than, essentially, faking percentages.
E.g., let someone take the test again later. (Of course, not with the same questions.) If they worked on it and this time they learned that first half of the subject, ta-da, they don't flunk. There you go, that's your way how someone can pull themselves out, if they're willing to work to that end.
2. Children are good at gaming dumb rules. Heck, by high school they're biologically young adults. They're past the age when, in a different time and place, they'd be perfectly equipped to lead armies or fight for survival. Technically not all links in the brain are formed yet, but that's really how memory works, so that only says that they didn't fill their biological "hard drive" up there yet. At any rate, they're just as equipped to recognize a dumb rule and game it, as an adult is.
We've seen it before too. E.g., schools applying "the curve" to shift everyone's grade, just created the mentality that your grade could have been higher if it weren't for the damned nerds who pegged the upper point. Their learning lowered your grade. Cue open hostility.
I expect the same to happen here too. Because:
3. For most people, if the penalties for failure are negligible, then so is the incentive to even try.
See people who'll fuck without a condom, just because they think HIV is curable now. Essentially they, yes, plan to fail, because they think it's fixable later.
So I expect the same to happen: some people will plan to get that 50% the first time, so they can fix it later. Or, more rarely, don't even bother showing up in the second semester, because they did well enough in the first one, and that 50% is enough.
Especially because...
4. If you can put in some effort at some nebulous time in the future, instead of right now, most people will do just that.
See people who'll stuff their face now, and swear they're going to start exercising next month. Honestly this time.
5. A good intention that produces bad results is, nevertheless, a bad idea. There is a reason why most cultures have some saying or another to the effect of, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Doing somehing dumb in the name of a good intention, is, in the end, an application of the fallacy:
X="We have to do something about that." Y="This is something." therefore Z="We have to do this."
Even if it's not formalized like that, that's really the glue that links a good intention to a dumb solution. They have to do something about that good intention, this is something (regardless of whether it works or not), so, hey, it suddenly sounds like a good thing to try.
Personally I'd say: screw that. If you can know in advance how it'll fail, or calculate it on a napkin, there still is no excuse to do something dumb.
1. It's not as much self-contradicting, as two different people are supporters of two different theories. One of them is obviously wrong, and they'll have to compare the evidence and find out who. In the end that's how science works.
But at any rate, it's not that theory X contradicts itself. It's just that theory X contradicts established theory Y. Or at least someone thinks he has data which contradicts theory Y, and his own theory X explains better. That's expected. If it didn't contradict anything, it wouldn't be much of a piece of news, and probably the old one would fit Occam's Razor better.
2. Well, you don't seem to understand journalism. These guys can't just tell you "X says Y", because that would violate their fucked-up notion of journalistic impartiality. They _have_ to present the opposite point of view too, even if they have to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel to have an opposing point of view.
Because for these guys everything is an opinion. If they feature John Jackson saying "I say your 3 percent Titanium tax goes too far!", they have to bring in Jack Johnson saying "I say your 3 percent Titanium tax doesn't go far enough!" Well, in politics those _are_ opinions, but these guys have to do the same to science articles too. If they star someone saying, "the temperature is rising", they also have to find someone who'll go "no, it's sinking!" Or viceversa. If they feature someone who says, "power lines can't cause _allergies_, silly, because that's not how your immune system works. A protein has to bind to another mollecule, see.", they also have to drag in some crackpot who'll testify how he and his dog sneeze near power lines, and he's even in a crackpot group where they all can testify that they sneeze near power lines.
Even if one or both are with degrees in gardening, bought from some fly-by-night diploma mill in Elbonia. And they can't tell you that, because that would already tell you who to believe, and that's against journalistic impartiality.
In this case it's not that bad, and it's even relevant for a change. Because I'd assume the fellow from NASA _is_ in a position to know what he's talking about. But the basic principle is the same: if X says the rings are old, they can't publish that without finding someone else who says they're new. It's just how it works. In this case they actually found a scientist for the opposing point of view. But knowing modern journalism, that's more of a happy coincidence than the rule.
3. While this may create (and does create) a lot of impression that there's a lot of controversy in science, and nobody knows anything for sure, that's really nothing lethal to science. That's how it's supposed to work. We don't know _everything_ already, or we could fire all scientists and be done with it. A theory at a given moment is just the one which best explains the existing data. When new data is found that it doesn't fully explain, we get to refine it into something better.
That's really how we moved from, say, indivisible atoms, to the raisin-pie model, to the planetary model, to the modern quantum model. Each model was good enough for a given data set, but finding more data brought it into question. Until those Rutherford, Geiger and Marsden went and shot alpha particles through a gold foil, nobody ever suspected that the positive charge is concentrated in a small nucleus. Now we know better.
The same happens here. For the data we had, the existing theory (which obviously Jeff Cuzzi represents) of new rings was good enough. Now someone found data which he thinks contradicts the existing one. It remains to be seen if he's actually right. Yes, there still is the possibility, of an "or not." But either way it's no loss. At the end of it, we'll learn a little bit more about the universe. That's the whole purpose of the exercise.
Ok, it looks like I had missed a link to the news in the patcher anyway. Upon checking their list, though, nope, the downtime of the 3 servers on saturday doesn't seem to be there.
Also the possibility does strike me that maybe the server was _cloned_ to a RVR one. I don't think so, but I can't exclude the possibility.
The entire point of the game is RvR, there is no PvE, there is never going to be PvE, this is not dikumud, its a game. If you want a chat room, go to a chat room. Don't join a RvR game and then whine that its focused on RvR. What the hell are you so scared of anyways, there's no penalty for dying.
Heh. Wait. Did I read that right? Did you just presume to tell me what I should like in a game, and what should I play like?
Are you offering to pay me a salary to play like you want me to? Because if I'm doing what someone else tells me to, then it's no longer my entertainment. Then it's work. Should I send you a bill for my usual consulting fee?
At any rate, you illustrate what _amuses_ me the most about fanboys: that dog-brained willingness to bark at customers and try to drive them away from your "master". I saw an actual dog do that once, and I found that to be the _perfect_ metaphor for fanboys.
E.g., Mythic and EA have been in quite the rush to assure us PvE players that PvP is really purely optional, and, really, you can get to max level without PvP-ing once. Come on over, everyone, anyway. You tell me essentially to go away if I actually expect that. Hmm. You're not really helping your idol's sales, you know that? Are you trying to cost them some subscriptions, or what? Did they do anything evil to you, or what?:P
But, anyway, what matters is that they advertised PvP as being purely optional. I merely expect them to keep their word there. They _could_ have told me the same you did, basically, "don't join it if you don't like RvR." I could respect that. It's their game, their choice. Then they don't want my money, and I don't have to try their game. Nothing wrong with that. That's how capitalism was supposed to work. But if they seem to have decided that they want to make a game where PvP is purely optional, and advertised it as such, I just expect them to hold their end of that bargain and respect my choice. I _only_ paid for this game based on essentially that promise that I'll jolly well be left alone, if I don't want to participate in PvP. I do not appreciate bait-and-switch in any business. Nothing more, really.
Only on PvP servers. But since I already said I have no problem with keeping factions on separate servers, that's a moot point anyway. That was just the intro to the real problem in the next paragraph. I wasn't accusing them of anything... yet.
This appears to a complete falsehood. The feature works correctly for me.
I'm looking at it right now, and it shows zero. Even on a server packed with some 8 characters of mine. And even after yet another patch which doesn't tell me what it changed. Maybe it's an EU servers feature, maybe it doesn't like my computer or firewall, or God knows what else. I wouldn't know. But it shows zero from top to bottom. Trust me, I can read digits. If it's got two loops, it's an 8, if it's just one big loop, it's a 0. I have 0 from top to bottom in that list.
I think you need to review how the WoW launch went. Also the login screen has been telling what is down, why, and ETA for weeks.
_My_ login screen shows just a bullshit motivational text, about how great a game they promised to make and how they hope we'll enjoy the game as much as they enjoyed making it. Nothing more. Again, maybe they just work differently for the EU versions. Maybe someone forgot to copy over the MOTD. I wouldn't know. But I do know that I see nothing else. Not even what the feck did the last patch change. Just a bullshit pep-talk text.
If it weren't packed you'd be complaining that with the huge influx of people there wasn't enough to kill.
You _can_ make it a bit larger. I know fanboys have problems with logic, so I'll try to make it simple for you: large != empty. An area doesn't have to be cramped and tiny, to have stuff to kill in it.
In fact, here's a fun piece of elementary arithmentic: if you can have 10 enemies in a 20x20 ft area, at the same density you can have 250 enemies in a 100x100 ft area. It's even better for dealing with large influxes of people, isn't it? Yay for logic;)
Or you can even have the same 10, if the player isn't too lazy to run 10 ft or so between kills. If those 10 are enough for the number of people, they're enough in the larger area too.
I don't understand. Are you complaining that you don't waste time running places? Space is good but only if used. What's the point of making newbs run long distances? Do you think the flight masters teleporting you is bad to? I commute to work I have no urge to commute in game.
There are nuances, you know. No, I don't have anything against teleports. But, no, I don't think a MMO is supposed to be a fucking shooting gallery either, where you can stay near the quest giver and shoot all the enemies needed for two quests. A bit of space for exploration, or just to not step on each other's toes, is good. For me, anyway.
I'm not even asking to run for miles. But it would be nice to have a little bit to explore too.
Again this is a false hood. It's a PEBKAC. The user picked the wrong server.
Even assuming it were like that (but it wasn't, because that's the first thing I explicitly look for, when joining a server), then the game repeatedly failed to warn me that that's a PvP server. Or maybe their list was messed up again. Then the next day, wham, big dialog box informing me that it's an open RvR server, and asking if I really want to join it. I'm pretty damn sure that, having been in and out of that server half a dozen times before, I would have fucking noticed such a dialog.
You know, "oops, what's this big square thing blocking the centre of my screen? Can't quite select my chars because they're behind it.";) It's hard to fail to notice a warning like that even once. Miss it half a dozen times? Heh. Dream on.
_Something_ had been messed up there. If you're tellin
Well, I want to like it too, for much the same reasons. It just doesn't give me all that much to go by, other than, "well, at least technically it's not WoW.":P
As for the bugs, I _think_ they're performance related. I played it on two computers, a high end one, and a rather ancient box. That on the latter it's a slideshow, is pretty much expected. But what's interesting is that also on the lame box going through walls or half-way through doors seems to happen a lot more. It's as if, when texture swap hits, and my character moves in 1 yard increments (because I get 2-3 frames per second at the time), that's when it'll go right through the stairs or right through a wall. It's weird.
(Unfortunately, the high end one got a fried motherboard over the weekend, so I'm stuck for the moment with this hastily repurposed box where the weird stuff happens.)
As for good stuff, well, there are _some_ things I liked, but have you seen the size of that message? So I figure, everyone and their grandma tells you what you should like about a game. Reviews pretty much compete to tell you the good half of the story. So I figure, wth, let me be the guy who says the other half. Then people can put the two together on their own.
First, it's not fair comparing WoW to WAR on technical grounds, as Blizzard had several years to get rid of the bugs and get to a polished game.
As a consumer, sadly, I don't give a flying fuck about what their excuse is. They both cost the same, they both are the same kind of product, so it's very fair to ask, "which of them gives me more bang for my buck?" If WoW is the more fun one (for my subjective tastes), then that's that, really.
I mean, if I opened a restaurant and started serving (quite literally) shit, you probably wouldn't be interested in how unfair it is to compare me to those guys across the street who've had years to perfect their recipes. Either you like the food, or you don't. If it's not as good as what those guys across the street serve, then good for them, their win, my loss.
And I haven't come across any show-stopper bug yet.
Well, depends on what you call "show stopper". None of them uninstalled my Windows, so I guess none was really a show stopper.
How about, though:
- logging me out to get me unstuck. Getting stuck seems kind of a theme in this game. I got stuck in doors (you only need to run against a door in lag, really), stumps, and only Sigmar knows what else. Dunno, getting logged out is _kinda_ close to a show-stopper to me.
- falling through the stairs at the freaking first inn as an Imperial, falling through the floor (and to my death) in the dwarves' starting area, etc. It seems as if entirely too much is left to the client. When i get low frame rates (and you mentioned performance yourself), wham, collision detection gets funky too. Though on the bright side, sometimes it works to my advantage: I've passed through walls like that, and spared me the time and effort of a detour.
- as I was mentioning, how about freaking changing a server from Core to Open PvP without giving me any chance to move that char? Not a "bug" as such, but that was the end of the show for that char anyway, right there and then. It's as close to "show stopper" as you can get without deleting it from the database. Quite annoying, at any rate.
I think I saw an option for this in the options (duh) panel
What you think is interesting, of course. But if there is an option, it must be freaking well hidden. I did look for it first.
Anyway, I don't agree with most of your gripes. And about the pvp related ones : WTF ? It's been heavily advertised as a PVP-oriented game, and you're trying to avoid PVP by all means ? I don't get it.
I was under the impression that it's not mandatory, or I would have saved my money indeed.
Whereas in WoW my squishy holy priest got raped continuously by rogues and the like, here I happily engage in PVP and am having a blast.
Well, I'm happy for you. I certainly don't have any reason to wish you don't have a blast or anything.
But it's not _my_ kind of thing. Some guy at Mythic (or maybe EA) deciding it's ok to trick me into PvP when I don't want to, just because he thinks I might like it anyway... well, is on par with deciding to rape a woman, just to show her how fun sex is. Let _me_ decide in which activities I want to take part. If PvP is supposed to be purely optional, then leave it at just that: purely optional.
At any rate, if that's the kind of attitude I can continue to expect from Mythic, please do tell me. Then I can cancel my account and spare my money, and you don't have to read my PvP-related whines any more. Sounds like win-win to me;)
Well, I've played it for a couple of days, since I'm bored to tears with WoW by now. It's certainly not a horrible game, and there isn's even much "bad" about it, but it's certainly not half as polished as WoW. There's probably some gem in there, but unfortunately nobody tried much to separate it from the rock, much less give it a shine. In other words, it's yet another half-arsed, me-too attempt at milking the MMO market.
In fact, probably the best thing that can be said about it, is that it copied WoW shamelessly. It's a good thing, really. WoW did figure out the righ gameplay by now. And yes, I really mean clone. E.g., Witch Elves and Witch Hunters work _exactly_ like WoW Rogues. They build up combo points, then spend them on finisher moves. In fact, they may even be renamed "bloodlust points" and "accusation points" respectively, but at least one tooltip still calls them "combo points." E.g., Ironbreakers (dwarf tanks) work almost exactly like WoW warriors, with 0 to 100 "grudge points" that build up as you hit or are hit. Are you thinking "rage points" too, Pinky? Only dumbly enough, they didn't understand the role of that mechanic on WoW, like the difference between burst damage and sustained damage, so as a warrior you're _also_ stuck with a mana bar. Etc.
The downside isn't that it's a clone, that it's yet another half-arsed, shove-me-out-the-door-patch-me-later clone.
To understand what I'm talking about, just look at the web site. Two days after release, it was still talking about preordering, and it was telling me things like that I don't need to register my preorder code again. When in fact, I was registering the game key for the first time. They didn't even bother updating the web site. Now I'm certainly not playing the web site, so it's not a vital issue, but it serves to illustrate the half-arsed attitude I was talking about. Rest assured that it's reflected in the actual game too.
Ok, to the game itself. The first thing that happens, is that promptly at the list of servers the game informs me that server X needs more players. Do I accept? Well, ok. Good thing I decide to double-check that choice, because it turns out to be an open PvP server. (Ok, ok, RvR.) Normally the game seems to ask, basically, "do you really want that?" when you choose such a server. But IIRC if I'm goaded via such a dialog, it didn't. Though maybe that was still one step too early, because when I see "Open RvR", I'm out of there. Way to make friends with your potential customers by trying to shaft them out of choosing a type of server they like.
I pick a new server and start by creating a character. As it happens, on the Destruction side. I play with it for a bit, and, being the altaholic that I am, figure out I'll see if there's an equivalent on the Order side. I need to go to another server for that, though, and honestly I have no problem with that. I like to keep my characters sorted like that anyway.
Again comes a dialog asking me to join realm Y, 'cause it needs more players. I'm weary, but say "OK." Immediately comes a prompt saying that the realm is full and I'd face queues if I play there. What. The. Fuck? It just told me they need more players on a full server?
Ok, I pick another one, toy with character creation for a bit, want to go back to my first one on the other server. But, as it happens, the server names say nothing to me (I'm not a tabletop buff or anything), so I forgot its name. But that's ok, because it has a column in the server list which says how many characters you have on a server. And an option to sort by it. So finding the server should be a two second affair, right? Wrong, because it's non-functional and says 0 for all servers.
After a brief scare that it lost my character, I resolve to do it by brute force and perseverence, by joining and leaving each bloody server in the list, until one has my character in the list. Yep, that's some time lost just because they can't even finish the very first list you'll see, before they release the game. The impressio
The point is that if things are realistic it makes the game that much more fun and immersive. So as you cast chain lightening at the frogs you might actually feel like it's a real world and you are really the hero and provides the same type of escapism of a movie. That immersion makes the game that much funner and enjoyable.
Oh really? Please do enlighten me exactly what do frog demons look like IRL (since we're talking _realism_), or what is the real incantation for casting chain lightning IRL, or exactly how much mana does a level 5 wizard have IRL, how much of it is used by a chain lightning, and how fast it would regen for you. IRL.
Also, hey, let's make the game realistic. Let's see:
It's the middle ages. Chances are you're a peasant. (Some 80% of the population was, after all, so sheer probabilities point that way.) work dawn to dusk just to feed your family, but you're still badly malnourished since last year's war saw most of your crop looted. Half the village just died of plague, and the survivors are screaming in agony all night. Some of them are throwing themselves off houses and bridges just to end the excruciating pain already. You sneezed this morning. You're still scared shitless, because that's the first symptom of the plague. Please God let it be hayfever or a cold, is what goes through your head as you mindlessly walk behing the plough like a zombie. You'll likely always be a peasant. You'd have to buy yourself off serfdom before you can go do anything else, at all. Three of your five kids so far died before even reaching their first birthday. Which is just as well, since you wouldn't have enough food to feed all 5. And if demons attacked your church, you'd get drafted by your lord into hauling rocks to repair it.
Oh, sorry, that's not much fun... let's try again:
You're a grizzled mercenary. You've seen half your unit die of dysentery in the last war. In fact, in the last battle, you fought without pants so you can shit yourself on the move. The peasants in this village hate your fucking guts, because it was your unit that looted them in between employment as mercenaries. Your old commander got himself a promotion for volunteering your unit to Forlorn Hope. Actually meaning "lost troop", as that's the first wave to assault the walls. If he survives, the commander gets an automatic promotion, but you just got to burry your horribly mutilated mates and got kicked out of the army as soon as peace was signed. That old scar didn't make you tougher, it just got infected and that was a fun year of suffering. All the wounds and bad food and shitting your guts out on campaigns, have shortened your life expectancy a lot, and make you feel like you're 20 years older already.
In all probability, a single hit by any demon under the church will likely kill or disable you. It doesn't take much destroyed tissue to make anybody collapse in shock. You don't get -5 hp from the hit and to wait 10 seconds for it to regen. You'll probably just get killed, or disabled long enough for the rest of the demons to eat you alive. If you survived at half health, you'll just bleed to death. Or maybe the infection will kill you. Even if you're so elite as to dodge or parry 99% of the attacks (which is unrealistic already), in all probability, by the 20'th demon one will land that disabling blow right through your defenses.
And if you don't die there, chances are you'll end up crippled. And get to beg from those same villagers, who'll roll their eyes and pretend to not even see you.
Well, that's just as well, because I _don't_ want the androids to be indistinguishable from people. When somebody builds that hot android maid, well, if she's just real people, she'll tell me to get lost and she'll go marry a jock. Or pretend to like me only as long as I clean spyware off her computer, then go write online prose with it about how nerdy, self-proclaimed Nice Guys are, like, so yuck, and how sexist of them it is to put you on a pedestal.
I don't want _that_. I want an android nobody can possibly confuse with the real thing. I want her to be more like, "mmm, I find your milky-white manboobs soo sexy. Lemme fix you dinner, then we'll fuck like crazy rabbits, and then we'll go farm those feathers on WoW together. Won't that be romantic?"
(Ok, ok, I know that's very sexist and all, but it's all for a greater cause: comedy. That's how selfless a guy I am;)
I have to wonder if the CEOs and the decision-makers are out-of-touch and naive. Who do they think is actually going to believe this shit? Do they?
Actually, from the very limited sample I've seen (two people, for two different products, to be exact) they actually do believe that it'll help. That somehow _this_ time, surely people won't find a crack for their hare-brained protection scheme, at least until the first weeks have passed and the sales went past their peak.
Frankly, I don't think any actual malice is going on, just complete stupidity by non-techies easily wowed by the DRM snake oil.
Both people I'm talking about were techies. One was a _brilliant_ programmer, in fact.
Actually, I have a better idea. DRM is being used not because it works, but because someone (or some group, the people responsible for fighting piracy or such?) in the corporate structure ants the people up top to think they're doing their (impossible, and they likely know it) job so they don't get sacked. DRM stinks of a product of bureaucracy.
In both cases it didn't come as a requirement from the publisher. Well, I suppose it probably would have, sooner or later, but it didn't even have to come to that. People a heck of a lot lower down that food chain were already convinced that (A) they need some copy protection or people will steal their preciouss... err... I mean their work, and (B) that this time theirs will work. Even if you point out that every game before had been cracked before it even hit the shelves, they'll retreat into faith that surely people will be too stupid to find that crack.
(Especially us nerds are good at building stupid arguments based on "everyone else is stupid.";)
I guess the moral is: don't underestimate the power of wishful thinking. Faith may not really be able to move mountains, but it sure can make one run head first into a mountain, believing right until the impact that it'll yet move out of the way for him.
I guess it's just a subset of a more general observation I've made some time ago: the easiest way to get someone to do stupid stuff, to get even an otherwise intelligent and logical person to warp their logic into wishful thinking, is greed. You can see it in this, pyramid scams, advance-fee (a.k.a., Nigerian 419) scams, stock tip spam, both recent bubbles, or the occasional idiot gambling himself into debt. At some point the temptation is so big that the brain kinda shuts down. Well, ok, maybe not "shuts down", but goes into a failure mode where all logic is warped and it starts using fallacies and lies on itself. The carrot on a stick of "man, if I were that lucky..." is perverted into "yes, I _know_ I am that lucky, and here's the string of fallacies and bullshit that 'proves' it."
Especially when one has already invested a lot of personal money, and stands to lose them if things don't go as planned -- be it having already paid the first advance fee in a 419 scam, having already bought the started kit in a pyramid scheme, or merely having taken a loan to start that small games studio -- it's a depressing thought that you could lose it all for nothing. At some point you start lying to your own damned self just to allay your fears. Yes, you know you'll be that lucky, this time the hare-brained scheme will work, even if the universe has to bend its rules for you. Or even if half the world has to be hit by an access of stupidity and forget how to google for a crack. You know it'll happen for you.
Of course, that's just armchair-shrink conjecture, but it's the best I've come up with, to explain the real observation that otherwise intelligent and logical people can become utterly stupid and illogical about such a topic. They can do advanced maths just for fun, they can calculate advanced probabilities and exponents in their head, but they seem to genuinely believe that they can join a pyramid scam in some point where they still win big and everyone else loses. Something doesn't add up.
The classes are based directly on the WH lore. I'm sure there's plenty of material out there for that.
Yes, but the point they keep trying to make is "why should you give our game a try if you're a WoW player", not "why should you give our game a try if you're a tabletop Warhammer Fantasy geek." If they wanted their game to be only for people who've already memorized the source books and lore of the tabletop game, well, we could have ended this talk a lot earlier, because then I'd just know they don't want my money in the first place;)
But if they want a Joe Sixpack like me to even give their game a second look, it would be _nice_ to tell me what I can expect there. So far they've only told me to expect lots of RvR, and not much else. That's the whole point. Since RvR is squarely outside my interest domain, they don't give me much else to go by. I shouldn't have to undertake a whole research project just to see if I'm interested in playing their game. It seems a bad marketing move, that's all I'm saying.
(Plus, that plenty of other material might be misleading. I understand that, for example, the tabletop game doesn't allow male sorceresses, but WAR does.)
As for no hybrids? Archmage, DoK, Shaman, Warpriest. All of those are healing/DPS hybdrids. You even have a split between melee/healing and caster/healing.
Pet classes? Engineer and Magus have non-moving pets. White Lions and Squiq Herders have moving pets.
No CC? Almost every single class has CC. The only thing that doesn't exist is mezz/sleep. All melee have snares. Most casters have roots, those that don't have snares. There's knockback and disabling (stuns). What else do you want?
Kinda makes my point that they haven't been good at getting that info across, doesn't it? Would it have hurt that much to repeat some of that more, even if it cuts into the time they spent repeating the "but it has more PvP" hype?
Essentially, you just told me that I might like the game, after all. Thanks. Why couldn't they? That's my whole point, really.
As for complaining that a BW uses fire... again the classes are based on WH lore. You are upset that the graphics aren't different colors depending on spec? Casters can focus on different types of damage in WAR, just as they can in DAoC or WoW. You can go ranged AE, PBAE, CC focus, better pets, etc, depending on the class.
A quick googling says there are 8 colleges of magic in Altdorf alone. Are they _all_ fire-based?
You don't have to like RvR, and that's fine, but to decry that a game based on total war is all about war is just being an ass.
Dude, I'm talking about what _my_ doubts are about it. You know, as in, whether _I_ want to buy it or not.
I'm the consumer there. I don't give a flying fuck about what their excuse is. Either they convince me that it's worth my money, or they don't. So far they have focused on keeping repeating the same stuff to me that falls squarely outside my interests. I don't really care why, or on what it's based. It could be based on Pokemon or a parody like The Tick, for all I care.
At any rate, nobody's decrying the game as a whole. I'm just saying they haven't convinced _me_. Which, tastes being a subjective thing, is really the only claim that I can make and the only thing that matters. To me.
If you can't wrap your head around that, or think it makes me an ass to think about my tastes instead of what's Mythic's excuse... well, speaking of asses, you can jolly well kiss mine;)
Well, I'm not saying WAR will suck, or anything. In fact, I'll probably give it a try one of these days, just for curiosity sake. I'm just saying why I hate PvP in any setting where levels, stats and loot are 10 times more important than skill. Doesn't mean I'll avoid WAR merely because it has it, if I can avoid taking part in it. Same as I didn't avoid WoW just because far away some other people are PvP-ing, and I didn't cancel my COH account when they introduced the PvP zones.
The only thing that makes me think twice about WAR isn't that it has RvR, but rather that they don't seem to have much else. Or at least their marketing and interviews didn't really tell me much else so far. Everywhere I turn, I'm told "join us because we have PvP". Well, fuck off, I'm not interested in that. Anything else? Well, they're not exactly in a rush to tell me.
That's not to say that there's something wrong with the game itself, but rather just that they ought to give a clue to whoever decided that the whole PR focus should be on something that most of the population doesn't need or want.
Skimming the game's web site, also leaves me a little unconvinced. I can think of whole class descriptions that really told me nothing beyond "hits people with a sword". Well, yes, but what makes it unique? What will be my role in a group there? They really ought to get a better writer there, IMHO.
From what I can gather on my own, from that site, I'm left a little underwhelmed:
- The classes seem to be actually the bare minimum, and certainly lacking the number of possibilities of WoW's class/race combinations. Honestly, I'm left with the impression that they took the 4 basic classes of old D&D (fighter, thief, magic-user, priest) and did those time 6 races (3 for each side). With some of the combinations missing. So yeah, you can say they have 20 classes, but each seems actually a minor variation of what WoW would have called a class/race combo.
- complexity and depth seem to be missing too. I see no hybrids, yes, no CC, no pet classes, etc. I certainly understand why you'd hate CC in PvP, but in PvE I actually liked doing that shit to monsters. So, if anything, it seems to confirm my long time conjecture that too much focus on PvP is detrimental to PvE.
- for that matter, some of the complexity and depth of the roughly equivalent classes seems to be... lost in all the consecutive feature cuts. E.g., from what I gather from the web site, if you want to be a mage, the choices are, umm, fire spec, fire spec or fire spec. Ok, ok, direct-damage fire, DOT fire, and, umm, direct-damage fire again. WTF is with that? That's like a third of WoW mage. Were there no other colleges of magic available there?
Now it's possible (and even probable) that I missed or misunderstood some stuff from that web site there, but it kind of makes the point I was trying to make: maybe they should have explained those things more, instead of all the "but it has RvR!!!111oneeleventeen" hype? Or, in case I didn't mis-understand all that, well, see that conjecture again: maybe if they hadn't been so obsessed with PvP, they could have afforded to code more other stuff.
Well, as far as I can tell after more than a decade and a half of MUDs and MMOs: the argument isn't about what it would do for you. The "I want penalties for death" argument really boils down to "I want to be even more annoying when I gank you."
So, yes, it didn't do anything for _you_ when you got ganked in lag in UO. It did make some troll with no other achievement in life feel great about himself, though. Yay, that's another player annoyed. For some people that's the only attention they'll ever get.
Well, unfortunately it's a bit like the problem with conspiracy theories: anything that needs the complete cooperation of thousands to keep a secret, isn't going to really stay a secret. Building a 22nm fab is going to require a lot of stuff, and a lot of people knowing what is being done there, how, and why. It takes only one disgruntled employee, or some chinese subcontractor going, "hmm, I wonder what'd they buy that big an electron gun for... too big for electron microscopy... could it be they're using electrons at this many electron-volts instead of light?" to lose that trade secret in a jiffy.
Is that because the PvP aspect in WoW isn't fun or just because you prefer the PvE aspect of MMO's?
I don't know about him, but in my case it's because I consider any kind of MMO PVP to be a rigged contest, and thus f-ing stupid.
When I play UT or whatever, then it's my skill against the opponent's. Period. We both have the same hp, access to the same weapons, access to the same armour pieces, etc. Whether I end up winning or losing, it's because I had more skill, or the opponent had more skill. I can respect that.
Enter the world of PVP with stats and gear. WTF is that supposed to prove? That someone has 5 more levels, a rare dagger bought for 300 gold, and enchants worth thousands? Yeah, that so proves skill. Bonus points if the retard paid RL cash to feel like less of a worthless loser.
It also doesn't help that it seems to attract a certain kind of loser, like shit attracts flies. I've seen level 70's in epic gear who apparently have nothing better to do than camp some spot in, say, Dustwallow marsh where a level 35 quest turns one PvP. I've seen level 70 hordies hanging around just to ruin some newbie's escort quest in Westfall, or conversely Alliance retards camping just to ruin some newbie hordie's escort quest in the Barrens. I've seen them clucking like fucking retards, trying to provoke a level 6-7 newbie fresh out of the newbie zones. I've seen level 60's, back when that was the maximum, _farm_ the level 40+ areas on PvP realms because a level 60 in epics still got honour out of ganking a level 48. There were level 60 rogues pretty much queueing around waiting for some warlock to come get ganked when they try to do a certain quest. Etc.
And the nasty realization gradually sunk in that _some_ people, especially the more vocal about how it takes balls to PvP, don't actually have those balls. They actually _need_ those purple crutches to finally muster the courage to gank some newbie. Yay, they're so 1337 now.
It has nothing to do with WoW. I've seen the same in UO, where idiots were camping the town exits to gank some freshly created newbie. Or were camping the mines because they weren't even secure enough to attack anyone but miners overloaded with ore so they can't run away. I've seen them on MUDs, where high level idiots would camp near some monster boss, so they can gank a newbie who comes to fight said monster. 'Cause, you know, even with 5 times the HP and 10 times the DPS, they weren't quite secure enough to attack that newbie without said newbie being at half HP. I've seen idiots whine on COV that their Stalker (think: Rogue) should be 100% undetectable when stealthed _and_ their backstab should instantly kill even a tank with no exception. Anything else is unbalanced against them, goddammit. Etc.
And, well, let's just say: I could sink further into misanthropy, or I can ignore the whole lot of idiots and stick to PvE. I chose the latter.
_Maybe_ WAR will manage not to attract the retarded and insecure gang there. Who knows. Stranger things have been known to happen occasionally. Am I going to be the one who dives into the cesspit of PvP to find that out? Nope.
Except I don't think anyone can ever say they have reached their full potential. And being perfectly content with, and in fact proud of, what you already are, is the recipe to not even try.
To be fair, though, everybody does that kind of thing even without having that kind of an electoral process. I do realize that in America it is tainted by pork-barrel fights for one's state, instead of looking at the big picture, but the actions you've listed aren't unique to that process.
E.g., AFAIK, agriculture is subsidized in Europe too. The funny thing is that after the Great Depression, agriculture isn't profitable any more. Everyone can produce vastly more than anyone needs, and when that happens to supply and demand, prices go into a nose dive. No farmer can make a decent living out of that. So we all subsidize it because it's the kind of thing that's too strategic to let go. Plus, I guess some electoral concerns after all, because very few people can wrap their mind around, basically, "let's let agriculture die, we don't need food any more";)
This is about to change as more and more arable land is needed for ethanol and biodiesel for fuels, but that's what we have at the moment.
E.g., tariffs aren't that USA-only either. We used to have tariffs on game consoles in Europe, and the elder gods know we didn't even have a local equivalent of Nintendo to protect from the Japanese one. But at any rate, that's what everyone does: try to protect their local industry from being bankrupted by the foreigners. Steel is, or used to be, a rather strategic industry too, because if a war breaks out, you don't want to depend only on steel from China for your tanks.
The same applies to agriculture too, like sugar in your example. If you're going to subsidize agriculture in the first place, you might as well have at least some of it be indirect via tariffs.
It's not a new thing either. See the Corn Laws in England in the 19'th century, for example. That's what it was all about: protecting local producers from the foreigners. And it got repelled only when someone figured out they can boost their industry instead by repelling them. (The whole trend in the 19'th and early 20'th century was to demand more and more work for less and less pay. At some point it looked like approaching rock bottom, and some industrialists figured they could maybe pay even less in wages if the price of bread goes down. Hence, allowing foreign grain to come in, even if it bankrupts the landowners. Funnily though it didn't work as planned.)
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Actually, my best bet would be on "cognitive dissonance" rather than "conspiracy theory."
The best way to illustrate cognitive dissonance is via the classic experiment: you assign someone (e.g., a student) a Homer Simpson-esque job that's boring him to tears. Then you one day say he can stop doing it, you have something better to do with him. But you ask him if he can find a replacement for that previous crap job. You even offer a dollar if he does. So he'll go try to convince someone else that it's a great job to take. The fun thing is, after a while he'll have convinced himself too that it's a great job.
Apparently, having to reconcile between "I'm a nice and honest guy" and "I just lied to a bunch of people for a lousy dollar", he'll alter the latter to, basically, "yeah, well, it wasn't really a lie." Just to keep his mental model consistent.
It seems to be a function of at least the mammalian brain. When you have two contradictory ideas in your model, one has to give. With humans, though, if one idea is too important to let go, something else has to give.
Even more fun is that the strength of the effect is inversely proportional to how sustainable or justifiable that action is. If you offer him a lot more money, he has the escape of, basically, "yeah, well, I needed the money. So I have my price too. Bite me." If it's a precondition to getting out of that crap job, same thing, he has an excuse. But when there's no excuse he can wrap his mind around, he'll alter the truth so he doesn't need an excuse.
A similar fun effect is with kids. Apparently when they really want something or to do something, as silly deterrent like "mommy will pout" is often actually more effective than a harsh punishment, if applied consistently. When there is no real justification for "why didn't I do that, if I wanted to anyway?" something else has to give, and it becomes, "I didn't really want that in the first place." Fun stuff.
I find that the same applies to politics, religion, fanboys, or, for that matter, everything else. The least justifiable a position is, the more people will warp reality to keep it. And the more rabidly they'll defend that redefinition of reality, lest their whole mental model comes crashing down around their ears.
And, yes, applying more force just creates more resistance.
And for a last bit of fun, there's no defender more stalwart of a piece of bullshit, than someone whose model already broke down once and was patched to that bullshit. If they're going to have to admit "I was wrong and doing wrong" anyway, they'll run with that to the hilt, and make an even more warped model in the other direction. So funnily enough, there is no more rabid, say, XBox fanboy, than one who was a PS2 fanboy and felt betrayed by Sony and had to let their whole "Sony for ever!!!" model crash. And viceversa. There is no bible-thumper for puritan morals more rabid than someone who was a prostitute until last week. And viceversa: nobody does a good christian-baiting trolling like someone who still went to church last month. There is no Republican more rabid about every single aspect of that ideology, than someone who was a Democrat until they felt somehow betrayed. And viceversa.
But now they won't just change about the aspect where they thought they were cheated, they'll go for the whole list, from military spending to abortion stance to gay marriage to everything else. Now Party X is right in everything, and Party Y is wrong about everything, because I don't like Party Y any more. And I must enlighten the masses about how wrong and evil Party Y is!
And the least justifiable that position is (e.g., don't be silly, Sony didn't "betray" anyone and didn't owe you anything in the first place), the more immovable it will be. As I was saying, fun stuff.
To be honnest, I've seen a pretty strong message happen at least once.
The German version of Victoria, as shipped, didn't even work. At all. On any computer. It bombed out with a script syntax error, right when you tried to start the campaign. Nothing blamable on video drivers, hardware configuration, etc. It just couldn't work on any computer, because a keyword in the script didn't match the keywords that the game engine recognized.
The German publisher pointed fingers at the devs. The devs pointed fingers at the publisher. Apparently both said that somehow an older beta version had been taken as the gold disk, but none of the two felt it was their job to do anything about it.
Most retailers dropped that game like a hot potato. Within a day or two of release, it had been simply pulled off the shelves.
I don't know if they actually gave the disks back to the publisher (probably), but here's the fun part: they don't even have to. You may have learned that the capitalism model is that the merchant buys cheap from the manufacturer, and gives it more expensive to you for a profit. Forget about that crap. There's a whole bunch of markets, from groceries to computer games, where it just doesn't work that way.
How it really works, at least for major retailers, is that you essentially the rent shelf space for your stuff from the retailer. If it doesn't sell, the retailer doesn't pay you a cent for those unsold copies. In fact, the retailer still makes a profit even if you didn't sell a single copy. If the retailer just pulls that stuff off the shelves and sends you your boxes / DVD cases back, you're shafted. They just denied you the use of their shelf space.
To get an idea of how important retailers are, E3 was originally conceived as a way to woo major retailers into carrying the publishers' stuff. Or, better yet, see the raging debate about AO ratings in the USA, whose root cause is really one single retailer: Wall-Mart won't let AO titles on their shelves. If they did, the whole "OMG, we're censored if we can't get a T rating for our gore-fest" debate would fizzle right there and then.
I think it's a pretty strong message they can get to the publishes. They don't even have to go talk to the publisher. Just send them their boxes back in a truck, with a document that says "because of disproportionate returns." That's it. Any publisher will listen, when essentially you're the one with your foot on their oxygen line.
And yes, there have been a few who insisted that they're so high and mighty, that the retailers should listen to them. They're all bankrupt by now.
Well, TBH I'm starting to suspect the same thing, seeing that some users swear that their server list is working. That's just about the only obvious difference that comes to mind.
Also the fact that their web site was still talking about preordering and beta access, would kinda make that conjecture easier to believe. It could be that we're still basically playing a beta down here.
To be entirely fair, though, it's not only GOA. There are quite a few companies that treat the European market like a pariah, and I can't really figure out why.
Oh, I didn't say they are really impartial, by _your_ definition or mine. Just that they came up with their own fucked-up definition of what impartiality means, and strive to meet that warped redefinition of it.
Same as if I said I'm an astronaut if I watched a documentary about the space shuttle. It may not match your definition, but it matches mine. I can now say with a straight face that I'm an astronaut. According to my own definition of it.
Basically I only said that they must have an opposing point of view, if they report it as news. (If it's an opinion column, or paid-for PR, well, now that's another thing.) It doesn't even mean they have to give them equal space, or anything. But they have to have that last paragraph that says, "meanwhile Dr Random J Scientist says, 'no, we have no data that links autism to MMR'", after they ranted over the whole page about how MMR causes autism. Now they have their opposing points of view, therefore it's impartial. According to their own redefinition of "impartiality."
Heh, wait... so if a bug doesn't happen on your particular computer and set of servers, it can't _possibly_ happen on any other computer. That's your argument? Every computer in the world is a clone of yours, or what?`
Ok, it looks like I was hasty to call you a fanboy. If _that_ is your argument, then you're a cretin. Sorry for the mis-labeling.
Well, everyone being "super" worked perfectly fine for COH / COV.
The "normal" people in the COH / COV universe are the minions, the victims, etc. The civillians don't even have a level, in fact.
According to Statesman's intentions at one point, it would take about 3 minions _and_ a lieutenant to be a 50%-50% fight against a player. You know, better have an inspiration (potion) or two, if it starts going downhill. Bosses are nastier, but realistically only elite bosses are any danger to a hero. I've soloed elite bosses with a scrapper.
The trick there is that the minions _are_ generated in groups. Even the filler in a mission, if you solo it, routinely come in groups of 3 minions or 2 minions and a lieutenant, and now and then you face 2 groups at the same time. In a full 8-man group, you could face platoon-sized opposition.
The end boss can jolly well an elite boss if you solo it, or an archvillain / superhero if you're in a group. The latter are bad news, usually. You need the tank, and healer, and debuffer, and all that jazz to take them down.
Basically it manages to be challenging even if every single player is "super".
I find that that does a perfectly fine job of, well, having everyone be far above average. The roles below average are reserved for NPCs. There are thousands of NPCs there, whose role, really, is to provide the contrast and show how far above average you are.
I think the same could apply to any other genre.
- You could have everyone be Conan, or, heck, be Hercules himself. You don't _have_ to be yet another soldier. The common cannon fodder can be the NPCs. You could be the elite guy who dispatches common recruits in groups of 3 at a time, which is just as well, because they're spawned in groups.
- You could have a MMO where everyone is a Jedi. And I mean the demi-god Jedi of the original trilogy, not the toned down version in games, which are no better than someone playing a trooper. You could have each player parry blaster bolts and mangle 3 stormtroopers at a time, and, again, it only means you'll have to generate those stormtroopers in groups of 3. Have make each player class be a Jedi class (e.g., melee = Jedi guardian, etc) and let the common thrash be NPCs.
Etc.
It even allows for interesting classes like COV's Mastermind. It's a class which isn't "super" by itself, but can walk around with 6 (or a couple of combinations even 7 or 8) minions.
Again, that can apply to any setting. In a medieval setting, that could mean you can play a mercenary captain, if you don't want to be the burly super-human barbarian, or in a SF setting you could be an officer.
So basically, yes you _can_ let everyone play a spartan or anything else. Why not? If you're one in a million, even in modern day Earth, there'd be 6000 just like you. If you're as l33t as to be one in a _billion_, a planet like Coruscant would have a hundred natives like that, and the galaxy would have millions. It's plenty to populate a MMO server, and then some.
1. There are better ways to handle even that than, essentially, faking percentages.
E.g., let someone take the test again later. (Of course, not with the same questions.) If they worked on it and this time they learned that first half of the subject, ta-da, they don't flunk. There you go, that's your way how someone can pull themselves out, if they're willing to work to that end.
2. Children are good at gaming dumb rules. Heck, by high school they're biologically young adults. They're past the age when, in a different time and place, they'd be perfectly equipped to lead armies or fight for survival. Technically not all links in the brain are formed yet, but that's really how memory works, so that only says that they didn't fill their biological "hard drive" up there yet. At any rate, they're just as equipped to recognize a dumb rule and game it, as an adult is.
We've seen it before too. E.g., schools applying "the curve" to shift everyone's grade, just created the mentality that your grade could have been higher if it weren't for the damned nerds who pegged the upper point. Their learning lowered your grade. Cue open hostility.
I expect the same to happen here too. Because:
3. For most people, if the penalties for failure are negligible, then so is the incentive to even try.
See people who'll fuck without a condom, just because they think HIV is curable now. Essentially they, yes, plan to fail, because they think it's fixable later.
So I expect the same to happen: some people will plan to get that 50% the first time, so they can fix it later. Or, more rarely, don't even bother showing up in the second semester, because they did well enough in the first one, and that 50% is enough.
Especially because...
4. If you can put in some effort at some nebulous time in the future, instead of right now, most people will do just that.
See people who'll stuff their face now, and swear they're going to start exercising next month. Honestly this time.
5. A good intention that produces bad results is, nevertheless, a bad idea. There is a reason why most cultures have some saying or another to the effect of, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Doing somehing dumb in the name of a good intention, is, in the end, an application of the fallacy:
X="We have to do something about that."
Y="This is something."
therefore
Z="We have to do this."
Even if it's not formalized like that, that's really the glue that links a good intention to a dumb solution. They have to do something about that good intention, this is something (regardless of whether it works or not), so, hey, it suddenly sounds like a good thing to try.
Personally I'd say: screw that. If you can know in advance how it'll fail, or calculate it on a napkin, there still is no excuse to do something dumb.
1. It's not as much self-contradicting, as two different people are supporters of two different theories. One of them is obviously wrong, and they'll have to compare the evidence and find out who. In the end that's how science works.
But at any rate, it's not that theory X contradicts itself. It's just that theory X contradicts established theory Y. Or at least someone thinks he has data which contradicts theory Y, and his own theory X explains better. That's expected. If it didn't contradict anything, it wouldn't be much of a piece of news, and probably the old one would fit Occam's Razor better.
2. Well, you don't seem to understand journalism. These guys can't just tell you "X says Y", because that would violate their fucked-up notion of journalistic impartiality. They _have_ to present the opposite point of view too, even if they have to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel to have an opposing point of view.
Because for these guys everything is an opinion. If they feature John Jackson saying "I say your 3 percent Titanium tax goes too far!", they have to bring in Jack Johnson saying "I say your 3 percent Titanium tax doesn't go far enough!" Well, in politics those _are_ opinions, but these guys have to do the same to science articles too. If they star someone saying, "the temperature is rising", they also have to find someone who'll go "no, it's sinking!" Or viceversa. If they feature someone who says, "power lines can't cause _allergies_, silly, because that's not how your immune system works. A protein has to bind to another mollecule, see.", they also have to drag in some crackpot who'll testify how he and his dog sneeze near power lines, and he's even in a crackpot group where they all can testify that they sneeze near power lines.
Even if one or both are with degrees in gardening, bought from some fly-by-night diploma mill in Elbonia. And they can't tell you that, because that would already tell you who to believe, and that's against journalistic impartiality.
In this case it's not that bad, and it's even relevant for a change. Because I'd assume the fellow from NASA _is_ in a position to know what he's talking about. But the basic principle is the same: if X says the rings are old, they can't publish that without finding someone else who says they're new. It's just how it works. In this case they actually found a scientist for the opposing point of view. But knowing modern journalism, that's more of a happy coincidence than the rule.
3. While this may create (and does create) a lot of impression that there's a lot of controversy in science, and nobody knows anything for sure, that's really nothing lethal to science. That's how it's supposed to work. We don't know _everything_ already, or we could fire all scientists and be done with it. A theory at a given moment is just the one which best explains the existing data. When new data is found that it doesn't fully explain, we get to refine it into something better.
That's really how we moved from, say, indivisible atoms, to the raisin-pie model, to the planetary model, to the modern quantum model. Each model was good enough for a given data set, but finding more data brought it into question. Until those Rutherford, Geiger and Marsden went and shot alpha particles through a gold foil, nobody ever suspected that the positive charge is concentrated in a small nucleus. Now we know better.
The same happens here. For the data we had, the existing theory (which obviously Jeff Cuzzi represents) of new rings was good enough. Now someone found data which he thinks contradicts the existing one. It remains to be seen if he's actually right. Yes, there still is the possibility, of an "or not." But either way it's no loss. At the end of it, we'll learn a little bit more about the universe. That's the whole purpose of the exercise.
Ok, it looks like I had missed a link to the news in the patcher anyway. Upon checking their list, though, nope, the downtime of the 3 servers on saturday doesn't seem to be there.
Also the possibility does strike me that maybe the server was _cloned_ to a RVR one. I don't think so, but I can't exclude the possibility.
Heh. Wait. Did I read that right? Did you just presume to tell me what I should like in a game, and what should I play like?
Are you offering to pay me a salary to play like you want me to? Because if I'm doing what someone else tells me to, then it's no longer my entertainment. Then it's work. Should I send you a bill for my usual consulting fee?
At any rate, you illustrate what _amuses_ me the most about fanboys: that dog-brained willingness to bark at customers and try to drive them away from your "master". I saw an actual dog do that once, and I found that to be the _perfect_ metaphor for fanboys.
E.g., Mythic and EA have been in quite the rush to assure us PvE players that PvP is really purely optional, and, really, you can get to max level without PvP-ing once. Come on over, everyone, anyway. You tell me essentially to go away if I actually expect that. Hmm. You're not really helping your idol's sales, you know that? Are you trying to cost them some subscriptions, or what? Did they do anything evil to you, or what? :P
But, anyway, what matters is that they advertised PvP as being purely optional. I merely expect them to keep their word there. They _could_ have told me the same you did, basically, "don't join it if you don't like RvR." I could respect that. It's their game, their choice. Then they don't want my money, and I don't have to try their game. Nothing wrong with that. That's how capitalism was supposed to work. But if they seem to have decided that they want to make a game where PvP is purely optional, and advertised it as such, I just expect them to hold their end of that bargain and respect my choice. I _only_ paid for this game based on essentially that promise that I'll jolly well be left alone, if I don't want to participate in PvP. I do not appreciate bait-and-switch in any business. Nothing more, really.
Only on PvP servers. But since I already said I have no problem with keeping factions on separate servers, that's a moot point anyway. That was just the intro to the real problem in the next paragraph. I wasn't accusing them of anything... yet.
I'm looking at it right now, and it shows zero. Even on a server packed with some 8 characters of mine. And even after yet another patch which doesn't tell me what it changed. Maybe it's an EU servers feature, maybe it doesn't like my computer or firewall, or God knows what else. I wouldn't know. But it shows zero from top to bottom. Trust me, I can read digits. If it's got two loops, it's an 8, if it's just one big loop, it's a 0. I have 0 from top to bottom in that list.
_My_ login screen shows just a bullshit motivational text, about how great a game they promised to make and how they hope we'll enjoy the game as much as they enjoyed making it. Nothing more. Again, maybe they just work differently for the EU versions. Maybe someone forgot to copy over the MOTD. I wouldn't know. But I do know that I see nothing else. Not even what the feck did the last patch change. Just a bullshit pep-talk text.
You _can_ make it a bit larger. I know fanboys have problems with logic, so I'll try to make it simple for you: large != empty. An area doesn't have to be cramped and tiny, to have stuff to kill in it.
In fact, here's a fun piece of elementary arithmentic: if you can have 10 enemies in a 20x20 ft area, at the same density you can have 250 enemies in a 100x100 ft area. It's even better for dealing with large influxes of people, isn't it? Yay for logic ;)
Or you can even have the same 10, if the player isn't too lazy to run 10 ft or so between kills. If those 10 are enough for the number of people, they're enough in the larger area too.
There are nuances, you know. No, I don't have anything against teleports. But, no, I don't think a MMO is supposed to be a fucking shooting gallery either, where you can stay near the quest giver and shoot all the enemies needed for two quests. A bit of space for exploration, or just to not step on each other's toes, is good. For me, anyway.
I'm not even asking to run for miles. But it would be nice to have a little bit to explore too.
Even assuming it were like that (but it wasn't, because that's the first thing I explicitly look for, when joining a server), then the game repeatedly failed to warn me that that's a PvP server. Or maybe their list was messed up again. Then the next day, wham, big dialog box informing me that it's an open RvR server, and asking if I really want to join it. I'm pretty damn sure that, having been in and out of that server half a dozen times before, I would have fucking noticed such a dialog.
You know, "oops, what's this big square thing blocking the centre of my screen? Can't quite select my chars because they're behind it." ;) It's hard to fail to notice a warning like that even once. Miss it half a dozen times? Heh. Dream on.
_Something_ had been messed up there. If you're tellin
Well, I want to like it too, for much the same reasons. It just doesn't give me all that much to go by, other than, "well, at least technically it's not WoW." :P
As for the bugs, I _think_ they're performance related. I played it on two computers, a high end one, and a rather ancient box. That on the latter it's a slideshow, is pretty much expected. But what's interesting is that also on the lame box going through walls or half-way through doors seems to happen a lot more. It's as if, when texture swap hits, and my character moves in 1 yard increments (because I get 2-3 frames per second at the time), that's when it'll go right through the stairs or right through a wall. It's weird.
(Unfortunately, the high end one got a fried motherboard over the weekend, so I'm stuck for the moment with this hastily repurposed box where the weird stuff happens.)
As for good stuff, well, there are _some_ things I liked, but have you seen the size of that message? So I figure, everyone and their grandma tells you what you should like about a game. Reviews pretty much compete to tell you the good half of the story. So I figure, wth, let me be the guy who says the other half. Then people can put the two together on their own.
As a consumer, sadly, I don't give a flying fuck about what their excuse is. They both cost the same, they both are the same kind of product, so it's very fair to ask, "which of them gives me more bang for my buck?" If WoW is the more fun one (for my subjective tastes), then that's that, really.
I mean, if I opened a restaurant and started serving (quite literally) shit, you probably wouldn't be interested in how unfair it is to compare me to those guys across the street who've had years to perfect their recipes. Either you like the food, or you don't. If it's not as good as what those guys across the street serve, then good for them, their win, my loss.
Well, depends on what you call "show stopper". None of them uninstalled my Windows, so I guess none was really a show stopper.
How about, though:
- logging me out to get me unstuck. Getting stuck seems kind of a theme in this game. I got stuck in doors (you only need to run against a door in lag, really), stumps, and only Sigmar knows what else. Dunno, getting logged out is _kinda_ close to a show-stopper to me.
- falling through the stairs at the freaking first inn as an Imperial, falling through the floor (and to my death) in the dwarves' starting area, etc. It seems as if entirely too much is left to the client. When i get low frame rates (and you mentioned performance yourself), wham, collision detection gets funky too. Though on the bright side, sometimes it works to my advantage: I've passed through walls like that, and spared me the time and effort of a detour.
- as I was mentioning, how about freaking changing a server from Core to Open PvP without giving me any chance to move that char? Not a "bug" as such, but that was the end of the show for that char anyway, right there and then. It's as close to "show stopper" as you can get without deleting it from the database. Quite annoying, at any rate.
What you think is interesting, of course. But if there is an option, it must be freaking well hidden. I did look for it first.
I was under the impression that it's not mandatory, or I would have saved my money indeed.
Well, I'm happy for you. I certainly don't have any reason to wish you don't have a blast or anything.
But it's not _my_ kind of thing. Some guy at Mythic (or maybe EA) deciding it's ok to trick me into PvP when I don't want to, just because he thinks I might like it anyway... well, is on par with deciding to rape a woman, just to show her how fun sex is. Let _me_ decide in which activities I want to take part. If PvP is supposed to be purely optional, then leave it at just that: purely optional.
At any rate, if that's the kind of attitude I can continue to expect from Mythic, please do tell me. Then I can cancel my account and spare my money, and you don't have to read my PvP-related whines any more. Sounds like win-win to me ;)
Well, I've played it for a couple of days, since I'm bored to tears with WoW by now. It's certainly not a horrible game, and there isn's even much "bad" about it, but it's certainly not half as polished as WoW. There's probably some gem in there, but unfortunately nobody tried much to separate it from the rock, much less give it a shine. In other words, it's yet another half-arsed, me-too attempt at milking the MMO market.
In fact, probably the best thing that can be said about it, is that it copied WoW shamelessly. It's a good thing, really. WoW did figure out the righ gameplay by now. And yes, I really mean clone. E.g., Witch Elves and Witch Hunters work _exactly_ like WoW Rogues. They build up combo points, then spend them on finisher moves. In fact, they may even be renamed "bloodlust points" and "accusation points" respectively, but at least one tooltip still calls them "combo points." E.g., Ironbreakers (dwarf tanks) work almost exactly like WoW warriors, with 0 to 100 "grudge points" that build up as you hit or are hit. Are you thinking "rage points" too, Pinky? Only dumbly enough, they didn't understand the role of that mechanic on WoW, like the difference between burst damage and sustained damage, so as a warrior you're _also_ stuck with a mana bar. Etc.
The downside isn't that it's a clone, that it's yet another half-arsed, shove-me-out-the-door-patch-me-later clone.
To understand what I'm talking about, just look at the web site. Two days after release, it was still talking about preordering, and it was telling me things like that I don't need to register my preorder code again. When in fact, I was registering the game key for the first time. They didn't even bother updating the web site. Now I'm certainly not playing the web site, so it's not a vital issue, but it serves to illustrate the half-arsed attitude I was talking about. Rest assured that it's reflected in the actual game too.
Ok, to the game itself. The first thing that happens, is that promptly at the list of servers the game informs me that server X needs more players. Do I accept? Well, ok. Good thing I decide to double-check that choice, because it turns out to be an open PvP server. (Ok, ok, RvR.) Normally the game seems to ask, basically, "do you really want that?" when you choose such a server. But IIRC if I'm goaded via such a dialog, it didn't. Though maybe that was still one step too early, because when I see "Open RvR", I'm out of there. Way to make friends with your potential customers by trying to shaft them out of choosing a type of server they like.
I pick a new server and start by creating a character. As it happens, on the Destruction side. I play with it for a bit, and, being the altaholic that I am, figure out I'll see if there's an equivalent on the Order side. I need to go to another server for that, though, and honestly I have no problem with that. I like to keep my characters sorted like that anyway.
Again comes a dialog asking me to join realm Y, 'cause it needs more players. I'm weary, but say "OK." Immediately comes a prompt saying that the realm is full and I'd face queues if I play there. What. The. Fuck? It just told me they need more players on a full server?
Ok, I pick another one, toy with character creation for a bit, want to go back to my first one on the other server. But, as it happens, the server names say nothing to me (I'm not a tabletop buff or anything), so I forgot its name. But that's ok, because it has a column in the server list which says how many characters you have on a server. And an option to sort by it. So finding the server should be a two second affair, right? Wrong, because it's non-functional and says 0 for all servers.
After a brief scare that it lost my character, I resolve to do it by brute force and perseverence, by joining and leaving each bloody server in the list, until one has my character in the list. Yep, that's some time lost just because they can't even finish the very first list you'll see, before they release the game. The impressio
Oh really? Please do enlighten me exactly what do frog demons look like IRL (since we're talking _realism_), or what is the real incantation for casting chain lightning IRL, or exactly how much mana does a level 5 wizard have IRL, how much of it is used by a chain lightning, and how fast it would regen for you. IRL.
Also, hey, let's make the game realistic. Let's see:
It's the middle ages. Chances are you're a peasant. (Some 80% of the population was, after all, so sheer probabilities point that way.) work dawn to dusk just to feed your family, but you're still badly malnourished since last year's war saw most of your crop looted. Half the village just died of plague, and the survivors are screaming in agony all night. Some of them are throwing themselves off houses and bridges just to end the excruciating pain already. You sneezed this morning. You're still scared shitless, because that's the first symptom of the plague. Please God let it be hayfever or a cold, is what goes through your head as you mindlessly walk behing the plough like a zombie. You'll likely always be a peasant. You'd have to buy yourself off serfdom before you can go do anything else, at all. Three of your five kids so far died before even reaching their first birthday. Which is just as well, since you wouldn't have enough food to feed all 5. And if demons attacked your church, you'd get drafted by your lord into hauling rocks to repair it.
Oh, sorry, that's not much fun... let's try again:
You're a grizzled mercenary. You've seen half your unit die of dysentery in the last war. In fact, in the last battle, you fought without pants so you can shit yourself on the move. The peasants in this village hate your fucking guts, because it was your unit that looted them in between employment as mercenaries. Your old commander got himself a promotion for volunteering your unit to Forlorn Hope. Actually meaning "lost troop", as that's the first wave to assault the walls. If he survives, the commander gets an automatic promotion, but you just got to burry your horribly mutilated mates and got kicked out of the army as soon as peace was signed. That old scar didn't make you tougher, it just got infected and that was a fun year of suffering. All the wounds and bad food and shitting your guts out on campaigns, have shortened your life expectancy a lot, and make you feel like you're 20 years older already.
In all probability, a single hit by any demon under the church will likely kill or disable you. It doesn't take much destroyed tissue to make anybody collapse in shock. You don't get -5 hp from the hit and to wait 10 seconds for it to regen. You'll probably just get killed, or disabled long enough for the rest of the demons to eat you alive. If you survived at half health, you'll just bleed to death. Or maybe the infection will kill you. Even if you're so elite as to dodge or parry 99% of the attacks (which is unrealistic already), in all probability, by the 20'th demon one will land that disabling blow right through your defenses.
And if you don't die there, chances are you'll end up crippled. And get to beg from those same villagers, who'll roll their eyes and pretend to not even see you.
Won't that realism be fun?
Well, that's just as well, because I _don't_ want the androids to be indistinguishable from people. When somebody builds that hot android maid, well, if she's just real people, she'll tell me to get lost and she'll go marry a jock. Or pretend to like me only as long as I clean spyware off her computer, then go write online prose with it about how nerdy, self-proclaimed Nice Guys are, like, so yuck, and how sexist of them it is to put you on a pedestal.
I don't want _that_. I want an android nobody can possibly confuse with the real thing. I want her to be more like, "mmm, I find your milky-white manboobs soo sexy. Lemme fix you dinner, then we'll fuck like crazy rabbits, and then we'll go farm those feathers on WoW together. Won't that be romantic?"
(Ok, ok, I know that's very sexist and all, but it's all for a greater cause: comedy. That's how selfless a guy I am;)
Actually, from the very limited sample I've seen (two people, for two different products, to be exact) they actually do believe that it'll help. That somehow _this_ time, surely people won't find a crack for their hare-brained protection scheme, at least until the first weeks have passed and the sales went past their peak.
Both people I'm talking about were techies. One was a _brilliant_ programmer, in fact.
In both cases it didn't come as a requirement from the publisher. Well, I suppose it probably would have, sooner or later, but it didn't even have to come to that. People a heck of a lot lower down that food chain were already convinced that (A) they need some copy protection or people will steal their preciouss... err... I mean their work, and (B) that this time theirs will work. Even if you point out that every game before had been cracked before it even hit the shelves, they'll retreat into faith that surely people will be too stupid to find that crack.
(Especially us nerds are good at building stupid arguments based on "everyone else is stupid.";)
I guess the moral is: don't underestimate the power of wishful thinking. Faith may not really be able to move mountains, but it sure can make one run head first into a mountain, believing right until the impact that it'll yet move out of the way for him.
I guess it's just a subset of a more general observation I've made some time ago: the easiest way to get someone to do stupid stuff, to get even an otherwise intelligent and logical person to warp their logic into wishful thinking, is greed. You can see it in this, pyramid scams, advance-fee (a.k.a., Nigerian 419) scams, stock tip spam, both recent bubbles, or the occasional idiot gambling himself into debt. At some point the temptation is so big that the brain kinda shuts down. Well, ok, maybe not "shuts down", but goes into a failure mode where all logic is warped and it starts using fallacies and lies on itself. The carrot on a stick of "man, if I were that lucky..." is perverted into "yes, I _know_ I am that lucky, and here's the string of fallacies and bullshit that 'proves' it."
Especially when one has already invested a lot of personal money, and stands to lose them if things don't go as planned -- be it having already paid the first advance fee in a 419 scam, having already bought the started kit in a pyramid scheme, or merely having taken a loan to start that small games studio -- it's a depressing thought that you could lose it all for nothing. At some point you start lying to your own damned self just to allay your fears. Yes, you know you'll be that lucky, this time the hare-brained scheme will work, even if the universe has to bend its rules for you. Or even if half the world has to be hit by an access of stupidity and forget how to google for a crack. You know it'll happen for you.
Of course, that's just armchair-shrink conjecture, but it's the best I've come up with, to explain the real observation that otherwise intelligent and logical people can become utterly stupid and illogical about such a topic. They can do advanced maths just for fun, they can calculate advanced probabilities and exponents in their head, but they seem to genuinely believe that they can join a pyramid scam in some point where they still win big and everyone else loses. Something doesn't add up.
Yes, but the point they keep trying to make is "why should you give our game a try if you're a WoW player", not "why should you give our game a try if you're a tabletop Warhammer Fantasy geek." If they wanted their game to be only for people who've already memorized the source books and lore of the tabletop game, well, we could have ended this talk a lot earlier, because then I'd just know they don't want my money in the first place ;)
But if they want a Joe Sixpack like me to even give their game a second look, it would be _nice_ to tell me what I can expect there. So far they've only told me to expect lots of RvR, and not much else. That's the whole point. Since RvR is squarely outside my interest domain, they don't give me much else to go by. I shouldn't have to undertake a whole research project just to see if I'm interested in playing their game. It seems a bad marketing move, that's all I'm saying.
(Plus, that plenty of other material might be misleading. I understand that, for example, the tabletop game doesn't allow male sorceresses, but WAR does.)
Kinda makes my point that they haven't been good at getting that info across, doesn't it? Would it have hurt that much to repeat some of that more, even if it cuts into the time they spent repeating the "but it has more PvP" hype?
Essentially, you just told me that I might like the game, after all. Thanks. Why couldn't they? That's my whole point, really.
A quick googling says there are 8 colleges of magic in Altdorf alone. Are they _all_ fire-based?
Dude, I'm talking about what _my_ doubts are about it. You know, as in, whether _I_ want to buy it or not.
I'm the consumer there. I don't give a flying fuck about what their excuse is. Either they convince me that it's worth my money, or they don't. So far they have focused on keeping repeating the same stuff to me that falls squarely outside my interests. I don't really care why, or on what it's based. It could be based on Pokemon or a parody like The Tick, for all I care.
At any rate, nobody's decrying the game as a whole. I'm just saying they haven't convinced _me_. Which, tastes being a subjective thing, is really the only claim that I can make and the only thing that matters. To me.
If you can't wrap your head around that, or think it makes me an ass to think about my tastes instead of what's Mythic's excuse... well, speaking of asses, you can jolly well kiss mine ;)
Amen, I was pissed off too when I heard they won't let me worship Khorne ;)
Well, I'm not saying WAR will suck, or anything. In fact, I'll probably give it a try one of these days, just for curiosity sake. I'm just saying why I hate PvP in any setting where levels, stats and loot are 10 times more important than skill. Doesn't mean I'll avoid WAR merely because it has it, if I can avoid taking part in it. Same as I didn't avoid WoW just because far away some other people are PvP-ing, and I didn't cancel my COH account when they introduced the PvP zones.
The only thing that makes me think twice about WAR isn't that it has RvR, but rather that they don't seem to have much else. Or at least their marketing and interviews didn't really tell me much else so far. Everywhere I turn, I'm told "join us because we have PvP". Well, fuck off, I'm not interested in that. Anything else? Well, they're not exactly in a rush to tell me.
That's not to say that there's something wrong with the game itself, but rather just that they ought to give a clue to whoever decided that the whole PR focus should be on something that most of the population doesn't need or want.
Skimming the game's web site, also leaves me a little unconvinced. I can think of whole class descriptions that really told me nothing beyond "hits people with a sword". Well, yes, but what makes it unique? What will be my role in a group there? They really ought to get a better writer there, IMHO.
From what I can gather on my own, from that site, I'm left a little underwhelmed:
- The classes seem to be actually the bare minimum, and certainly lacking the number of possibilities of WoW's class/race combinations. Honestly, I'm left with the impression that they took the 4 basic classes of old D&D (fighter, thief, magic-user, priest) and did those time 6 races (3 for each side). With some of the combinations missing. So yeah, you can say they have 20 classes, but each seems actually a minor variation of what WoW would have called a class/race combo.
- complexity and depth seem to be missing too. I see no hybrids, yes, no CC, no pet classes, etc. I certainly understand why you'd hate CC in PvP, but in PvE I actually liked doing that shit to monsters. So, if anything, it seems to confirm my long time conjecture that too much focus on PvP is detrimental to PvE.
- for that matter, some of the complexity and depth of the roughly equivalent classes seems to be... lost in all the consecutive feature cuts. E.g., from what I gather from the web site, if you want to be a mage, the choices are, umm, fire spec, fire spec or fire spec. Ok, ok, direct-damage fire, DOT fire, and, umm, direct-damage fire again. WTF is with that? That's like a third of WoW mage. Were there no other colleges of magic available there?
Now it's possible (and even probable) that I missed or misunderstood some stuff from that web site there, but it kind of makes the point I was trying to make: maybe they should have explained those things more, instead of all the "but it has RvR!!!111oneeleventeen" hype? Or, in case I didn't mis-understand all that, well, see that conjecture again: maybe if they hadn't been so obsessed with PvP, they could have afforded to code more other stuff.
Well, as far as I can tell after more than a decade and a half of MUDs and MMOs: the argument isn't about what it would do for you. The "I want penalties for death" argument really boils down to "I want to be even more annoying when I gank you."
So, yes, it didn't do anything for _you_ when you got ganked in lag in UO. It did make some troll with no other achievement in life feel great about himself, though. Yay, that's another player annoyed. For some people that's the only attention they'll ever get.
Well, unfortunately it's a bit like the problem with conspiracy theories: anything that needs the complete cooperation of thousands to keep a secret, isn't going to really stay a secret. Building a 22nm fab is going to require a lot of stuff, and a lot of people knowing what is being done there, how, and why. It takes only one disgruntled employee, or some chinese subcontractor going, "hmm, I wonder what'd they buy that big an electron gun for... too big for electron microscopy... could it be they're using electrons at this many electron-volts instead of light?" to lose that trade secret in a jiffy.
I don't know about him, but in my case it's because I consider any kind of MMO PVP to be a rigged contest, and thus f-ing stupid.
When I play UT or whatever, then it's my skill against the opponent's. Period. We both have the same hp, access to the same weapons, access to the same armour pieces, etc. Whether I end up winning or losing, it's because I had more skill, or the opponent had more skill. I can respect that.
Enter the world of PVP with stats and gear. WTF is that supposed to prove? That someone has 5 more levels, a rare dagger bought for 300 gold, and enchants worth thousands? Yeah, that so proves skill. Bonus points if the retard paid RL cash to feel like less of a worthless loser.
It also doesn't help that it seems to attract a certain kind of loser, like shit attracts flies. I've seen level 70's in epic gear who apparently have nothing better to do than camp some spot in, say, Dustwallow marsh where a level 35 quest turns one PvP. I've seen level 70 hordies hanging around just to ruin some newbie's escort quest in Westfall, or conversely Alliance retards camping just to ruin some newbie hordie's escort quest in the Barrens. I've seen them clucking like fucking retards, trying to provoke a level 6-7 newbie fresh out of the newbie zones. I've seen level 60's, back when that was the maximum, _farm_ the level 40+ areas on PvP realms because a level 60 in epics still got honour out of ganking a level 48. There were level 60 rogues pretty much queueing around waiting for some warlock to come get ganked when they try to do a certain quest. Etc.
And the nasty realization gradually sunk in that _some_ people, especially the more vocal about how it takes balls to PvP, don't actually have those balls. They actually _need_ those purple crutches to finally muster the courage to gank some newbie. Yay, they're so 1337 now.
It has nothing to do with WoW. I've seen the same in UO, where idiots were camping the town exits to gank some freshly created newbie. Or were camping the mines because they weren't even secure enough to attack anyone but miners overloaded with ore so they can't run away. I've seen them on MUDs, where high level idiots would camp near some monster boss, so they can gank a newbie who comes to fight said monster. 'Cause, you know, even with 5 times the HP and 10 times the DPS, they weren't quite secure enough to attack that newbie without said newbie being at half HP. I've seen idiots whine on COV that their Stalker (think: Rogue) should be 100% undetectable when stealthed _and_ their backstab should instantly kill even a tank with no exception. Anything else is unbalanced against them, goddammit. Etc.
And, well, let's just say: I could sink further into misanthropy, or I can ignore the whole lot of idiots and stick to PvE. I chose the latter.
_Maybe_ WAR will manage not to attract the retarded and insecure gang there. Who knows. Stranger things have been known to happen occasionally. Am I going to be the one who dives into the cesspit of PvP to find that out? Nope.
Except I don't think anyone can ever say they have reached their full potential. And being perfectly content with, and in fact proud of, what you already are, is the recipe to not even try.
To be fair, though, everybody does that kind of thing even without having that kind of an electoral process. I do realize that in America it is tainted by pork-barrel fights for one's state, instead of looking at the big picture, but the actions you've listed aren't unique to that process.
E.g., AFAIK, agriculture is subsidized in Europe too. The funny thing is that after the Great Depression, agriculture isn't profitable any more. Everyone can produce vastly more than anyone needs, and when that happens to supply and demand, prices go into a nose dive. No farmer can make a decent living out of that. So we all subsidize it because it's the kind of thing that's too strategic to let go. Plus, I guess some electoral concerns after all, because very few people can wrap their mind around, basically, "let's let agriculture die, we don't need food any more" ;)
This is about to change as more and more arable land is needed for ethanol and biodiesel for fuels, but that's what we have at the moment.
E.g., tariffs aren't that USA-only either. We used to have tariffs on game consoles in Europe, and the elder gods know we didn't even have a local equivalent of Nintendo to protect from the Japanese one. But at any rate, that's what everyone does: try to protect their local industry from being bankrupted by the foreigners. Steel is, or used to be, a rather strategic industry too, because if a war breaks out, you don't want to depend only on steel from China for your tanks.
The same applies to agriculture too, like sugar in your example. If you're going to subsidize agriculture in the first place, you might as well have at least some of it be indirect via tariffs.
It's not a new thing either. See the Corn Laws in England in the 19'th century, for example. That's what it was all about: protecting local producers from the foreigners. And it got repelled only when someone figured out they can boost their industry instead by repelling them. (The whole trend in the 19'th and early 20'th century was to demand more and more work for less and less pay. At some point it looked like approaching rock bottom, and some industrialists figured they could maybe pay even less in wages if the price of bread goes down. Hence, allowing foreign grain to come in, even if it bankrupts the landowners. Funnily though it didn't work as planned.)