I started watching ZDTV back in 1998 when it started and watched all the time. I even got on Call for Help once and was a really good time. I was saddened when they merged with G4 and in my opinion ruined the shows. But nothing good or bad lasts forever I supose.
Same here, really when it was ZDTV was when the network was at it's best. I was more a fan of Silicon Spin and Big Thinkers then Call for help though.
When has this ever stopped anyone from trying to gain an advantage? Especially in a multiplayer video game?
2. No matter how big someone else's equipment is, yours is good enough to play, have fun, and be happy.
If "Good enough to play" means have no chance of winning, sure.
3. Trying to compete with others for time, money, or equipment size is always going to leave you lacking.
I agree, but there is no way someone who was playing 10 hours a week (ie one of my RL friends who played with me) could even hope to compete with me back when I was playing and getting gear from BWL (The old hotness).
4. Trying to play with "full time players" if you aren't one is a waste of time. Find "part time players" and play with them. The full time players aren't having more fun.
Good luck with that! I'm sure that will work well on the pvp servers when you run into someone with uber gear, and you try to tell them not to fight you because you only play with part timers.
I suggest you go to a reputable website and see what the prices are now. Start with IGE and work your way down. Yeah, you can go to a 'whisper bot', or some unknown website, then when you get dicked out of your money don't be suprised. As for your google links, please post them rather than troll.
always thought the best way to remove farmers was to create a game that's fun to play in ALL regards; farmers only exist because part of the game is so tedious that many players don't want to bother with it. Personally, I'd be insulted if people were paying money NOT to play my game...
Removing the boredom of farming would go a long way, but people will always pay to have an advantage at these types of games.
About 2-3 months ago Blizzard really started to crack down on the buyers and the sellers of gold in World of Warcraft. Before that they would sometimes ban farmers if they caught them. What they've started to do is take back gold from the buyers when they ban seller accounts. This led to a large jump in the price of gold. Where gold was selling for around 2000G for $125 USD a few months ago, it's back around 1000G for $169 USD. That is a huge jump.
I've actually heard of people quitting WoW over this, because the only way they thought they could compete with full time players was with buying gold. Between the growing gear gap, and increasing price of gold, it's making some people reconsider playing.
If the U.S. were to cede control of ICANN, would this in any way affect any of the net-neutrality hullabaloo going on in the U.S., or would these be entirely unrelated?
What it would mean eventually is that rather then net-neutrality you'd likely get some UN resolution to tax the internet usage of first world countries to run fiber to the palaces of third world dictators...and there would be no way to fight it.
I'd hate to break this to "Kieren" but being patriotic does not make one mindless. There is nothing wrong with being proud of your country, no matter where you are from.
Koster created virtual worlds with UO and SWG that are unlike anything that exists today--particularly the completely directed experience that is WoW 1-59.
WoW 1-59 is totally 'directed'? Really? It seemed pretty open ended to me, you can get experence from doing almost anything. You want to quest? There are billions of them. Some are as simple as "go kill 10 of whatever" while others are long questlines. You can get experence from pvp'ing within battlegrounds. You can get experence from simply grinding. You can level any of a number of professions.
Most importantly, you can log in for 30 minutes to an hour, and significantly advance your character. Especially at 1-40. That is why WoW is successful imo. You couldn't do that in SWG, at least not for the first few months I gave it.
If anything, you have it backwards. WoW 1-59 is fairly open ended, WoW at 60 is totally scripted...It's raid or barely advance.
Not to mention he's one of the few developers trying to let players "become the actual content" and "effect the world."
Yet he believes that he should be cracking down on behavior he doesn't like, rather than allowing freedom which is what most people want in a virtual world. He can go buy old MUD/MOO games all he wants but the people who played those are a significantly different kind of player on average than the one who plays World of Warcraft.
I could play all of WoW and never interact with anyone outside of my guild. Koster's worlds throw everyone together, force dependency, and say "you figure it out." I'd take that over the "shared single player" of WoW any day.
If you think you can go 1-59 and not interact with anyone outside of your guild, you obviously didn't play on a pvp server. If you think you could have played at 60 pre-honor system/Dishonorable kills and not interact with anyone, you didn't play on a pvp server.
I'm sure you can get away with it now, because any incentive for world pvp in WoW is dead, and will remain dead even in 1.12.
This isn't a flamebait either. This guy has a huge ego, and for what? Because he was in on Ultima Online? The funny part is, most people who look back fondly on ultima online do so because of the all-out PK'ing that went on. Kosner went out of his way to discourage it. Then, we can talk about Star Wars Galaxies...was that not a complete and total failure? The star wars franchise is much more appealing than the world of warcraft one, yet WoW managed to sell copies to people who weren't even interested in Warcraft lore (myself included).
He can write about " A Theory of Fun for Game Design." all he wants, he still doesn't 'get it'. What people want is world of warcraft from levels 1-59 and early WoW/UO PKing. The funny part is, you don't have to spend a zillion dollars making new content every 3 months if the players become the actual content and you give them meaningful ways to effect the world and each other. (ie, real pvp objectives).
Oh, you're quite wrong. The answer to the problem is in the name of our nation: "The United States of America"
The answer to most of our problems is in the name of our nation, it's too bad politicians want us to be the "United State of America". Most of the social issues they use to divide the voters today could easly be decided if they were simply left to the states. Self government is best done on a local level.
Sometimes the popular vote reflects the college vote (especially in the case of a landslide), but in many close races the two will differ. (e.g. Bush vs. Gore '00)
Actually, most of the time the popular vote reflects the college vote. The majority of close races in our history have turned out with the popular and electoral votes being the same. IIRC, there was only one other election in US history where the president didn't win the popular vote.
Granted my personal experience is anecdotal, but I do not know one single person who WANTS self checkout. Stores are moving to this model to save labor costs, not because of some public outcry demanind self checkout.
I love self checkout, it means I don't have to deal with the barely human checkout clerks, or stand behind someone with a cartload of things when I just want to buy some break and milk. I'd rather deal with a computer then a person, especially a rude/dumb person. Doesn't most of Slashdot feel that way?
Please, one of their original design goals before they were overrun with ex-EQ developers was that no class would be a 'pure support' class. Which is exactly what paladins are in the end game. This is the typical blizzard spin, much like Caydiem saying that 'A talents position in a talent tree really doesn't matter, talents are just there to give players more options, not make them more powerful as they move up a tree'. Now take that statement, and think about mortal strike as a tier 1 talent, or shadowform. The CM's are just paid to BS around bad/lazy design.
Shamans for the alliance will be a nice novelty, but ultimately a white elephant in dungeons. they will be quite a nice addition for burst damage in pvp though.
on the horde side, the raiding shamans will see their roles marginalized by new paladins.
Odds are PvE groups are going to take both. Despite the shamans crying of late, their totems are valued in PvE. Why would you take paladin #4 in place of a shaman? Most classes only need 2-3 paladin buffs. Kings on everyone, Salvation on everyone but tanks, Wisdom on casters, Might on melee. Then you can take some shaman to stack their totem buffs on top of those.
This just seems like a cop-out by a company that used to do innovation very well. They supposedly class-reviewed the shaman and for some reason gave them PvP buffs (especially with their offensive spell tree) when shaman were asking for more PvE utility.
The funny part is the paladins had a similar situation. All they wanted were a few pvp buffs, and the devs buffed holy (healing) during the paladin review, and basically said screw off to retribution and protection paladins.
I think the paladins have a bit more to bitch about, being that their class description used to mention being 'tanks overall' and 'dealing damage' as their gameplay style, when in fact they are the only pure support class in the game.
Horde typically dominates PuG matches. I think the reasons for that are:
1. A bad shaman is worth more than a bad paladin. A shaman that doesn't heal or support his group can still dish out some nice offense, the nature of the paladin's combat system (a lack of combat options such as snares, silences, etc) makes them a liability if they go all out offense.
BR>
2. The horde racials are mostly offensive, and offense seems to have a great advantage in wow.
In each industry, which entity do you think is to blame for the generic corporate schlock that's on the store shelves?
The video game 'snob' articles are getting redundant. So is comparing Video Games to movies or music when it comes to sequals. Most movie sequals don't live up to the originals. Games however *do* tend to get better as more sequals are made. For example, compare the original Unreal to Unreal Tournament. I'm not just talking about graphics here either, the gameplay of video game sequals are often better then the originals. Look at how many sequals were made to street fighter before they started going dowhill. The second Mortal Kombat was better than the first. Super Mario Brothers was much better than the original.
As for the amout of games of the same genre out there, the reason for that is simply that they sell. I'm looking forward to the next FPS, the MMO that is better than World of Warcraft, etc. The reason there aren't 100 clones of Katamari Damacy out there is because people WANT FPS games, MMO's, etc, etc. Unlike movies, games aren't all about stories. While people complain about genres being saturated, this is often a good thing. Look at the FPS world...should we have just stopped at Quake because Unreal Tournament and Halo were basically the 'same thing'?
If the video game industry is 'so broken' and so in need of innovation, then go hire a few developers and make a revolutionary game. The makers of GTA did it, and if the industry is as broken as the slashbots claim, they should be able to also.
that's my whole point, the more prosperous a country becomes the population growth slows down, it's like economic birthcontrol
It has more to do with religion and woman's changing role in western society then economics. Religious people have a lot of children, if you don't believe that, pick out religious sub-groups in the US and look at their birthrates (IE in Utah I think the birth rate is 3.2).
You want to slow the birthrate of a country down? Take religion away from them and allow women (or encourage women) to work.
I'm out of mod points, or I'd mod you up just for expressing an alternative view, that not too many people know about.
The best way to survive the next 100 years is to stop running from the imaginary boogeymen of the LAST 100 years. We have this suicidal fascination with birth control and population reduction.
This is mostly due to scare tactics in the 70's about overpopulation which were basically created to encourage abortion/birth control.
In reality, birth rates are plumetting all over the world.
They aren't though. They are plumetting among 'western civilizations'. Muslim countries, China, parts of India, and many places in Africa still have high birth rates. Europeans are dying out, as are japanese, not the whole world.
An if it wasn't for immigration, the population of most propserous nations would be in rapi decline. In the U.S. the average couple has only 1.4 children.
I think you have this number a bit low, I believe it's 1.9, but it's closer to 1.4 among 'Caucasian Americans'. Also our replacement rate that is around 2.2 doesn't take into account all of the illegals that are in the country IIRC.
Without immigration from third world countries, the U.S. would be depopulating at a rate of 30% every 25 years.
Exacerbating this is the profile of who is reproducing. In our welfare state, we pay the least functional and arguably least intelligent segments of our population (this is not racist - 75% of welfare recipients are not african americans) to sit around and breed. The only part of the population demographic that is growing is the poor and dependent.
Actually, a law was passed while Clinton was in office which limits the amount of welfare money you get for children to three kids.
The crisis of the next 100 years will not be global warming or toxic waste or nuclear fallout. It will be vast armies of stupid belligerent parasites with their hands out demanding to be fed and clothed by a shrinking pool of intelligent functional human beings.
That was the crisis of the last 100 years, or did you miss out on the growth of communism in the world?:)
The next world crisis is the crisis of de-evolution!
It's interesting, but demographics will be a problem in Europe before the US. Will a young generation revolt against a larger older generation which keeps voting itself more and more social benifits? How about if the two generations are of a vastly different racial makeup?
Also I'm not too sure it will be a de-evolution, as much as a demographic war.
To survive, we must institute emergency programs of tax relief and education to encourage intelligent people to BREED, for the sake of humanity.
I do think a 'four-two-one' (that is four grandparents, and two parents, all being cared for by one child) problem will cause some havoc on socialist programs, but I don't think it's a danger to the whole human race.
The biggest threat to the human race over the next 100 years is nuclear proliferation. There is no good solution to this, the US can only police the world for so long. The world doesn't like it, and at some point the US citizens won't like it either. But what else is to stop every country in the world from having nukes? The UN? That seems unlikely.
I would rank massive natural disasters/diseases as the second biggest threat in the next 100 years. I do have to say though, they will probably be the easiest 100 years of humankind, so I don't know why people worry so much.:)
Given the lack of high profile MMORPG coming out, I'd think WoW is going to stay at the top for a while.
But for many, wow is the first mmorpg they have played. They won't need to go to another mmorpg, they may leave for a fps, rts, etc.
it wouldn't show up as more than a blip on a game like WoW where a significant portion, if not the majority of the subscription comes outside of North America/Europe.
Are there solid numbers for the subscribers outside of the anglosphere?
Is it just my server, or does it seem like everyone is quitting WoW in the last month? Pretty much all the raiding guilds are either recruiting like mad, or merging so they can still raid.
I think with the summer coming, and most classes having had their 'reviews' people are leaving since they see nothing new on the horizon. Even though the next patch is the 'pvp patch', Blizzard has stated that they won't be changing the horrid honor system until the expansion. I think when the next one of these comes out, we will see a 500,000 to 1,000,000 drop off of subscribers over the summer of 06.
They did find 500 WMD's in Iraq and announced it just last week. CNN refused to cover the story along with other liberal outlets. It's pretty funny that someone in the senate could hold a press conference, annouce something like that, and it doesn't get covered by the US press.
The weapons were a clear violation of the peace treaty Hussain signed in 1991. The war was justified.
As you say, Mod me down all you want. It's still true.
A simple litmus test to see if an action is *ist is to imagine the response if an arbitrary decision was reveresed. Would people be mad if Gnome was hiring only men for a position?
Yes, because talent and ability is the only thing that should matter in who gets a job. What is inbetween your legs, who you like having sex with, or the color of your skin should have nothing to do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I started watching ZDTV back in 1998 when it started and watched all the time. I even got on Call for Help once and was a really good time. I was saddened when they merged with G4 and in my opinion ruined the shows. But nothing good or bad lasts forever I supose.
Same here, really when it was ZDTV was when the network was at it's best. I was more a fan of Silicon Spin and Big Thinkers then Call for help though.
1. It is a _game_.
:)
When has this ever stopped anyone from trying to gain an advantage? Especially in a multiplayer video game?
2. No matter how big someone else's equipment is, yours is good enough to play, have fun, and be happy.
If "Good enough to play" means have no chance of winning, sure.
3. Trying to compete with others for time, money, or equipment size is always going to leave you lacking.
I agree, but there is no way someone who was playing 10 hours a week (ie one of my RL friends who played with me) could even hope to compete with me back when I was playing and getting gear from BWL (The old hotness).
4. Trying to play with "full time players" if you aren't one is a waste of time. Find "part time players" and play with them. The full time players aren't having more fun.
Good luck with that! I'm sure that will work well on the pvp servers when you run into someone with uber gear, and you try to tell them not to fight you because you only play with part timers.
I'm glad I'm back to playing counter strike.
I suggest you go to a reputable website and see what the prices are now. Start with IGE and work your way down. Yeah, you can go to a 'whisper bot', or some unknown website, then when you get dicked out of your money don't be suprised. As for your google links, please post them rather than troll.
always thought the best way to remove farmers was to create a game that's fun to play in ALL regards; farmers only exist because part of the game is so tedious that many players don't want to bother with it. Personally, I'd be insulted if people were paying money NOT to play my game...
Removing the boredom of farming would go a long way, but people will always pay to have an advantage at these types of games.
About 2-3 months ago Blizzard really started to crack down on the buyers and the sellers of gold in World of Warcraft. Before that they would sometimes ban farmers if they caught them. What they've started to do is take back gold from the buyers when they ban seller accounts. This led to a large jump in the price of gold. Where gold was selling for around 2000G for $125 USD a few months ago, it's back around 1000G for $169 USD. That is a huge jump.
I've actually heard of people quitting WoW over this, because the only way they thought they could compete with full time players was with buying gold. Between the growing gear gap, and increasing price of gold, it's making some people reconsider playing.
The terror I feel when I think about the rest of the world blinds me to the exact same flaws existing in my own country
What does the media censor in the US? Please, feel free to back up your mindless fishing for anti-American mod points with some facts.
If the U.S. were to cede control of ICANN, would this in any way affect any of the net-neutrality hullabaloo going on in the U.S., or would these be entirely unrelated?
What it would mean eventually is that rather then net-neutrality you'd likely get some UN resolution to tax the internet usage of first world countries to run fiber to the palaces of third world dictators...and there would be no way to fight it.
mindlessly patriotic electorate
I'd hate to break this to "Kieren" but being patriotic does not make one mindless. There is nothing wrong with being proud of your country, no matter where you are from.
Koster created virtual worlds with UO and SWG that are unlike anything that exists today--particularly the completely directed experience that is WoW 1-59.
WoW 1-59 is totally 'directed'? Really? It seemed pretty open ended to me, you can get experence from doing almost anything. You want to quest? There are billions of them. Some are as simple as "go kill 10 of whatever" while others are long questlines. You can get experence from pvp'ing within battlegrounds. You can get experence from simply grinding. You can level any of a number of professions.
Most importantly, you can log in for 30 minutes to an hour, and significantly advance your character. Especially at 1-40. That is why WoW is successful imo. You couldn't do that in SWG, at least not for the first few months I gave it.
If anything, you have it backwards. WoW 1-59 is fairly open ended, WoW at 60 is totally scripted...It's raid or barely advance.
Not to mention he's one of the few developers trying to let players "become the actual content" and "effect the world."
Yet he believes that he should be cracking down on behavior he doesn't like, rather than allowing freedom which is what most people want in a virtual world. He can go buy old MUD/MOO games all he wants but the people who played those are a significantly different kind of player on average than the one who plays World of Warcraft.
I could play all of WoW and never interact with anyone outside of my guild. Koster's worlds throw everyone together, force dependency, and say "you figure it out." I'd take that over the "shared single player" of WoW any day.
If you think you can go 1-59 and not interact with anyone outside of your guild, you obviously didn't play on a pvp server. If you think you could have played at 60 pre-honor system/Dishonorable kills and not interact with anyone, you didn't play on a pvp server.
I'm sure you can get away with it now, because any incentive for world pvp in WoW is dead, and will remain dead even in 1.12.
This isn't a flamebait either. This guy has a huge ego, and for what? Because he was in on Ultima Online? The funny part is, most people who look back fondly on ultima online do so because of the all-out PK'ing that went on. Kosner went out of his way to discourage it. Then, we can talk about Star Wars Galaxies...was that not a complete and total failure? The star wars franchise is much more appealing than the world of warcraft one, yet WoW managed to sell copies to people who weren't even interested in Warcraft lore (myself included).
He can write about " A Theory of Fun for Game Design." all he wants, he still doesn't 'get it'. What people want is world of warcraft from levels 1-59 and early WoW/UO PKing. The funny part is, you don't have to spend a zillion dollars making new content every 3 months if the players become the actual content and you give them meaningful ways to effect the world and each other. (ie, real pvp objectives).
Oh, you're quite wrong. The answer to the problem is in the name of our nation: "The United States of America"
The answer to most of our problems is in the name of our nation, it's too bad politicians want us to be the "United State of America". Most of the social issues they use to divide the voters today could easly be decided if they were simply left to the states. Self government is best done on a local level.
Sometimes the popular vote reflects the college vote (especially in the case of a landslide), but in many close races the two will differ. (e.g. Bush vs. Gore '00)
Actually, most of the time the popular vote reflects the college vote. The majority of close races in our history have turned out with the popular and electoral votes being the same. IIRC, there was only one other election in US history where the president didn't win the popular vote.
Granted my personal experience is anecdotal, but I do not know one single person who WANTS self checkout. Stores are moving to this model to save labor costs, not because of some public outcry demanind self checkout.
I love self checkout, it means I don't have to deal with the barely human checkout clerks, or stand behind someone with a cartload of things when I just want to buy some break and milk. I'd rather deal with a computer then a person, especially a rude/dumb person. Doesn't most of Slashdot feel that way?
Please, one of their original design goals before they were overrun with ex-EQ developers was that no class would be a 'pure support' class. Which is exactly what paladins are in the end game. This is the typical blizzard spin, much like Caydiem saying that 'A talents position in a talent tree really doesn't matter, talents are just there to give players more options, not make them more powerful as they move up a tree'. Now take that statement, and think about mortal strike as a tier 1 talent, or shadowform. The CM's are just paid to BS around bad/lazy design.
Shamans for the alliance will be a nice novelty, but ultimately a white elephant in dungeons. they will be quite a nice addition for burst damage in pvp though. on the horde side, the raiding shamans will see their roles marginalized by new paladins.
Odds are PvE groups are going to take both. Despite the shamans crying of late, their totems are valued in PvE. Why would you take paladin #4 in place of a shaman? Most classes only need 2-3 paladin buffs. Kings on everyone, Salvation on everyone but tanks, Wisdom on casters, Might on melee. Then you can take some shaman to stack their totem buffs on top of those.
This just seems like a cop-out by a company that used to do innovation very well. They supposedly class-reviewed the shaman and for some reason gave them PvP buffs (especially with their offensive spell tree) when shaman were asking for more PvE utility.
The funny part is the paladins had a similar situation. All they wanted were a few pvp buffs, and the devs buffed holy (healing) during the paladin review, and basically said screw off to retribution and protection paladins.
I think the paladins have a bit more to bitch about, being that their class description used to mention being 'tanks overall' and 'dealing damage' as their gameplay style, when in fact they are the only pure support class in the game.
That may be so, but Horde dominates most PvP.
Horde typically dominates PuG matches. I think the reasons for that are:
1. A bad shaman is worth more than a bad paladin. A shaman that doesn't heal or support his group can still dish out some nice offense, the nature of the paladin's combat system (a lack of combat options such as snares, silences, etc) makes them a liability if they go all out offense. BR>
2. The horde racials are mostly offensive, and offense seems to have a great advantage in wow.
In each industry, which entity do you think is to blame for the generic corporate schlock that's on the store shelves?
The video game 'snob' articles are getting redundant. So is comparing Video Games to movies or music when it comes to sequals. Most movie sequals don't live up to the originals. Games however *do* tend to get better as more sequals are made. For example, compare the original Unreal to Unreal Tournament. I'm not just talking about graphics here either, the gameplay of video game sequals are often better then the originals. Look at how many sequals were made to street fighter before they started going dowhill. The second Mortal Kombat was better than the first. Super Mario Brothers was much better than the original.
As for the amout of games of the same genre out there, the reason for that is simply that they sell. I'm looking forward to the next FPS, the MMO that is better than World of Warcraft, etc. The reason there aren't 100 clones of Katamari Damacy out there is because people WANT FPS games, MMO's, etc, etc. Unlike movies, games aren't all about stories. While people complain about genres being saturated, this is often a good thing. Look at the FPS world...should we have just stopped at Quake because Unreal Tournament and Halo were basically the 'same thing'?
If the video game industry is 'so broken' and so in need of innovation, then go hire a few developers and make a revolutionary game. The makers of GTA did it, and if the industry is as broken as the slashbots claim, they should be able to also.
Yeah really. Who is the lady in the wheelchair? She is pretty hot. Hubba hubba.
that's my whole point, the more prosperous a country becomes the population growth slows down, it's like economic birthcontrol
It has more to do with religion and woman's changing role in western society then economics. Religious people have a lot of children, if you don't believe that, pick out religious sub-groups in the US and look at their birthrates (IE in Utah I think the birth rate is 3.2).
You want to slow the birthrate of a country down? Take religion away from them and allow women (or encourage women) to work.
What chat rooms do they hang out in? #osama or something?
I'm out of mod points, or I'd mod you up just for expressing an alternative view, that not too many people know about.
:)
:)
The best way to survive the next 100 years is to stop running from the imaginary boogeymen of the LAST 100 years. We have this suicidal fascination with birth control and population reduction.
This is mostly due to scare tactics in the 70's about overpopulation which were basically created to encourage abortion/birth control.
In reality, birth rates are plumetting all over the world.
They aren't though. They are plumetting among 'western civilizations'. Muslim countries, China, parts of India, and many places in Africa still have high birth rates. Europeans are dying out, as are japanese, not the whole world.
An if it wasn't for immigration, the population of most propserous nations would be in rapi decline. In the U.S. the average couple has only 1.4 children.
I think you have this number a bit low, I believe it's 1.9, but it's closer to 1.4 among 'Caucasian Americans'. Also our replacement rate that is around 2.2 doesn't take into account all of the illegals that are in the country IIRC.
Without immigration from third world countries, the U.S. would be depopulating at a rate of 30% every 25 years. Exacerbating this is the profile of who is reproducing. In our welfare state, we pay the least functional and arguably least intelligent segments of our population (this is not racist - 75% of welfare recipients are not african americans) to sit around and breed. The only part of the population demographic that is growing is the poor and dependent.
Actually, a law was passed while Clinton was in office which limits the amount of welfare money you get for children to three kids.
The crisis of the next 100 years will not be global warming or toxic waste or nuclear fallout. It will be vast armies of stupid belligerent parasites with their hands out demanding to be fed and clothed by a shrinking pool of intelligent functional human beings.
That was the crisis of the last 100 years, or did you miss out on the growth of communism in the world?
The next world crisis is the crisis of de-evolution!
It's interesting, but demographics will be a problem in Europe before the US. Will a young generation revolt against a larger older generation which keeps voting itself more and more social benifits? How about if the two generations are of a vastly different racial makeup?
Also I'm not too sure it will be a de-evolution, as much as a demographic war.
To survive, we must institute emergency programs of tax relief and education to encourage intelligent people to BREED, for the sake of humanity.
I do think a 'four-two-one' (that is four grandparents, and two parents, all being cared for by one child) problem will cause some havoc on socialist programs, but I don't think it's a danger to the whole human race.
The biggest threat to the human race over the next 100 years is nuclear proliferation. There is no good solution to this, the US can only police the world for so long. The world doesn't like it, and at some point the US citizens won't like it either. But what else is to stop every country in the world from having nukes? The UN? That seems unlikely.
I would rank massive natural disasters/diseases as the second biggest threat in the next 100 years. I do have to say though, they will probably be the easiest 100 years of humankind, so I don't know why people worry so much.
Given the lack of high profile MMORPG coming out, I'd think WoW is going to stay at the top for a while.
But for many, wow is the first mmorpg they have played. They won't need to go to another mmorpg, they may leave for a fps, rts, etc.
it wouldn't show up as more than a blip on a game like WoW where a significant portion, if not the majority of the subscription comes outside of North America/Europe.
Are there solid numbers for the subscribers outside of the anglosphere?
Is it just my server, or does it seem like everyone is quitting WoW in the last month? Pretty much all the raiding guilds are either recruiting like mad, or merging so they can still raid.
I think with the summer coming, and most classes having had their 'reviews' people are leaving since they see nothing new on the horizon. Even though the next patch is the 'pvp patch', Blizzard has stated that they won't be changing the horrid honor system until the expansion. I think when the next one of these comes out, we will see a 500,000 to 1,000,000 drop off of subscribers over the summer of 06.
They did find 500 WMD's in Iraq and announced it just last week. CNN refused to cover the story along with other liberal outlets. It's pretty funny that someone in the senate could hold a press conference, annouce something like that, and it doesn't get covered by the US press.
The weapons were a clear violation of the peace treaty Hussain signed in 1991. The war was justified.
As you say, Mod me down all you want. It's still true.
A simple litmus test to see if an action is *ist is to imagine the response if an arbitrary decision was reveresed. Would people be mad if Gnome was hiring only men for a position?
Yes, because talent and ability is the only thing that should matter in who gets a job. What is inbetween your legs, who you like having sex with, or the color of your skin should have nothing to do with it.