I'm no slashbot, but I don't like my government wasting money chasing down warez pups. Their crime is non-violent, as close to harmless as you can get. There are much bigger fish to fry, and if the day comes that there are no bigger fish to fry they can use that money to pay down the deficit.
Really, if you are American do you feel good about your tax dollars going to this type of thing?
You illustrate the point of the program precisely, to educate people with reactionary views like your own. China does not want to be seen as a technically and military inferior country that can be pushed around by the worlds last superpower. The population of China is generally estimated to be 1.3B, not 2B.
I don't think his views are only towards China. Many people when America announces funding for NASA say "Well there is XYZ social problem which has not fixed, why is money going into NASA?". While I'm sure part of China's Space ambitions is military, that ambition is not unique to China.
That said, I'm all for China going into space, the more the merrier.
For example at the moment there is a sizable faction of the Republican party that spends its time talking about the need to start a trade war with China. Some of them even want to go further and instigate a new cold war. In that type of political environment it makes good sense to invest a few billion dollars pointing out that the economy of China is not stagnant and declining and that it has more than enough capacity to support a military sector that is more than sufficient for national defense.
This isn't exactly true. What you are stating is a rift in the Republican party that I feel is growing stronger. Old Republicans, i.e. Paleocons believe in Fair Trade, not free trade. They are upset that while we are trading freely with China, China's government is keeping the value of Chinese currency cheap. This artificially keeps China's labor cheap. Of course this isn't very 'free trade' like, so some Republicans and Democrats are upset with it, and want to pass a Tariff against China (27% IIRC) until China truly embraces free markets so that the US is at least on a level playing field. There is no desire on the old right (i.e. Paleocons) to start another cold war, just the opposite in fact, they are very anti-war unless our vital national interests are at stake.
The press does a good job with touting free trade, and making anyone who argues against it look like a monster rather than a voice of some much needed skepticism on the subject.
According to the CIA world fact book China's economy is worth 7.2 trillion and is growing at 9.1%, the Us economy is worth 11.8 trillion and is growing at 4.4%. At that rate China overtakes the US in 10 years time. That is not even taking account of the fact that the US economy is mature and the typical growth rates of mature economies are much less than 4%. Plus the US has a massive balance of payments deficit that is only being financed by China buying US bonds.
At some point the US citizens need to expect the government to be fiscally responsible. Unfortunately, the current face of the Republican party (i.e. Neocons) spend just as much as democrats.
That said, if China truly opens up their economy to free trade their growth will slow down. If not, expect the US to hit them with a tariff within the next 5 years, possibly even within the next 3.
So even if the US was to try a cold war strategy at this stage as the neanderthal wing of the GOP would like it is simply too damned late. China has more economic leverage over the US than the US could hope to gain over China.
Not true, first most people aren't looking for a 'cold war strategy' against china. All they want is Fair trade, if we open our markets to them, they must do so for us. Others do promote a trade policy of 'national interests' where we protect our own markets and workers. To that, I say why not? Most other countries do the same thing, why must the US worker be the one crushed under the harsh boot of globalism?
The US is currently facing the same problem that hit the British Empire. In the 1920s a bunch of politicians got into power who were really into the whole imperialism thing, they swaggered about holding 'empire days' and such. All the time complet
If it was say 20 bucks for 500 gold I could see people doing it, but it's more like 200 dollars!
Actually, the current price of gold is about $1 for 10G in wow, or a bit less. IIRC $129 dollars will get you 1500G.
Why would anyone spend that kind of money for something in an online game? Something that you'll probably only have for a few weeks before you get something better?
Well, for me personally to farm 1000G needed for an epic mount in WoW would take me months. I play on the weekends mostly, and sometimes on the weekdays. While farming 1000G might take me say 100 hours in game, I make over $100 a day at work, so why not just buy the gold?
Are Mommy and Daddy really not paying that much attention to the credit card?
I'd bet it's more of the 18-29 crowd that has the disposable income to afford this.
For the price of 500 Gold on WOW you could have a pretty good night on the town, even get laid!
Meh, well for the $129 you could spend on 1500G you could have a good night or two of drinking. I don't pay to get laid, so I couldn't tell you the going rate on that. I'd like to think I could get a women in bed without buying her something along the way but we both know that is a joke.
You could just get so much more out of your money and life than 500 gold will ever get you in an online game.
If it's a hobby and you enjoy it, why not? If a chess player bought a $129 chess set would you look down upon that?
The capital of Saudi Arabia is Riyadh. All you're proposing is the random killing of random Muslism, who may or may not be Saudi (or even Arab), considering Mecca's status as a pilgrimage destination. Way to take the high road there.
Hah, they mentioned they are going to explore GM island for their next article.
Good luck on them losing their accounts. I remember reading over at Blizz Hackers there was a guy who used a teleport hack to get to GM island.
He claimed to have walked around a bit, and found a room with a big table and a bunch of chairs around it. Another member claimed that while walking around on the island he got a whisper from a GM saying "You shouldn't be here", and his account was banned.
From the stories I've read it's somewhere in the middle of the world. People claim to have been teleported there when accused of hacking into an questioning type room that was totally dark with the exception of a beam of light coming through one window.
You don't get it, your issues have nothing to do with you being female. They are more about your relationship with your husband. He gets in more playing time than you do, there are plenty of relationships where this works in reverse, (ie talk to some married women in WoW, I've run into a few that play more than their hubbies).
Most of the things you've stated are mentioned by males as well, who are more into the social aspect of mmo's and gaming.
Both the grandpaent and parent are off base, the worlds population does not matter. The gaming population is what matters, and no matter how many bogus studies the media comes up with about yahoo games the main demographic that will spend money on video games is still 13-30 males.
Re:So will they make us wait hours...
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BlizzCon Cometh
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Yep, I cancelled mine as well. I'm sick of the poor game balance, on top of the poorly implemented battlegrounds, on top of the timesink/forced grouping that the endgame is.
Put simply, it's nearly impossible to create a game where you can advance as quickily by soloing as by grouping. In World of Warcraft, you can almost do this for the first 1/3 of your levels. Almost. Eventually it becomes impossible
I solo'ed 1 - 60 in world of warcraft. The only time I group was for instance runs (which I did 3 of pre-level 60). It is possible to go from 1-60 in WoW without grouping.
Of course, this means soloing, but then if I wanted to solo, why would I play a MMORPG?
To PvP.
The sad reason is that there just aren't that many good RPG-esque games out there. I'd love to play a single-player version of WoW, particularly with an added over-arching quest.
I like solo'ing and PvPing in WoW, my only problem is the forced socialization in the end game. If you want to do endgame dungeons you have to make friends with the social misfits that are in the big guilds. It's not enjoyable.
I think World of Warcraft has done so well because levels 1-30 are easly accessable to the casual player. You can log in, play 2 hours and level or get some new gear. After level 40, that totally wears off and it becomes a grind/questfest like every other mmorpg. I found WoW to be very enjoyable for the first few weeks I was playing, but after a while I decided that I was putting too much time in for too little reward. I cancelled my account two days ago. Yey, back to real life.
My only regret is not leveling a rogue high enough to pvp, as they seem like the best class for ganking.
Methinks the distinction here is censorship of information and legitimate opinion rather than censorship of trolls. We like to censor trolls, nobody wants to wake up to one in the morning...
Yeah right.
Until you make a joke about Mac's and get banned for a month. Of course, making jokes about Windows in every other article is ok, but don't touch the blessing children of Slashdot, the mac, or anything running linux.
The people who run slashdot abuse their power to enforce their views. It's not really that bad though, Slashdot isn't professional journalism, it's just a crappy website that became more successful than it ever should have.
The things I was expecting to happen never happened. The things I never imagined could happen would happen, and would have consequences far beyond what I could foresee.
This sounds juicy! Fill us in! Or at least give us some good reading material on the things you "Never imagined could happen".
I've been playing WoW now for 6 months. I'm amazed at it's success, because 2 million subscribers is quite an accomplishment. It is the most fun mmorpg I've played.
That said, they need to work on their customer support. If they have 2 million subscribers paying 15 dollars a month, they could at least hire one community manager for each class. As of now, on their forums feedback from developers funneled through their community managers (I believe there are 5) is extremely rare.
With the recent addition of battlegrounds which gave a set place for PvP, the lack of balance between the factions is showing. There are two 'faction only' classes, the Paladin and Shaman. The Shaman is the most powerful character in the game, while the Paladin is the weakest. When you combine this with the fact that the Horde has the better racial traits, battlegrounds is lopsided. People have been bringing this to blizzards attention for months with minimal feedback. Maybe now that battlegrounds are around they will do something to balance out the classes and races.
If they would hire a community manager for each class, then they could have the current ones moderate the other boards, such as PvP, RP, General, etc.
Overall, they need to get their act together before people notice they were never ready for this kind of userbase. The latest thread of doom in their forums is about someone with cerbral palsy who was banned for using '3rd party programs' which allowed him to play world of warcraft even though he was disabled.
They can't let PR disasters like this go on for too long. It is a game, but it's also a service. Blizzard needs to wake up and realize that.
World of Warcraft does have some pretty bad class balance issues, and just some gimped classes. Some examples of blizzards incompentency:
1. As mentioned, Paladins were reworked two weeks before release the class had it's whole combat system changed (Read nerfed). While the class is described to this day as a 'melee based hybrid' it puts out less damage per second than any other class (including priests). It also has no long ranged attack, and only one stun. On the healing side of it, the Paladin in the fourth best healer in the game, behind Priests, Druids and Shamans. What it all adds up to is a class that is poor at PvP. Instead of keeping an eye on the paladin since they were changed 2 weeks before launch, blizzard has chosen to ignore them.
2. Warlocks, along with having to deal with Will of the Forsaken going through their only decent crowd control spell (fear) also have to put up with farming soul shards to PvP. Basically, a warlock must PvE for a good 20-30 minutes to PvP for an hour since they need soul shards to preform some of their better spells/abilities. No other class has to put up with this sort of thing. To top it off, the shards are not stackable, meaning each one takes up one spot in your inventory, thus limiting other things a warlock could take for PvP from his or her bank.
3. Hunters have some kind of "Dead Zone" inbetween Melee range and their ranged attacks where from what I understand they can be attack but they can not attack others. Since hunter is one of the few classes I don't play, I'm taking the word of the 1000 hunters whining about it on the forums.
4. All of the racial traits for one faction (The horde) vastly overpower those of the other (alliance).
5. Instead of improving classes, Blizzard has shown that they would rather swing the nerf bat. This is the wrong way to go about balancing a MMO.
Hello, my American hating Euro-peon friend!
Remember that train wreck a few months ago in, I think, California? It was caused by some guy attempting to commit suicide and then backing out at the last minute. He ran away and left his car on the tracks. Massive carnage, disruption and 11 people lost their lives.
Massive carnage? Want to compare that to 9/11? Dumbass.
Anyway, what amount of carnage, disruption and casualties would we see if 20 'daggum terrists' around the country simultaneously left cars, trucks, car/truck bombs etc on rail tracks? What if they did it again the next day/week/month in 20 other locations? All that would take would be 20 people and 20 vehicles. No special equipment, no special training, no special skills. That this, or other such simple attacks, hasn't happened yet is proof that there aren't hundreds of AlKayduhhh cells
See, if you had half a fucking brain in your propaganda infused eurotrash brain you would understand that such attacks are stupid. Say you have 500 terrorists in a country. Are you going to attempt 'simple attacks' that might kill 10-20 people and risk losing your assests (terrorists on the ground?) Of course not! The most effective thing to do, is wait for the right time and unleash the most spectacular attack possible which will bring the most attention to your cause (the change of US middle east policy in this case)
As for the time in between attacks..why not wait? After all how long was it between attacks on the WTC? These people are not stupid (like you), and they are not in a hurry. After all, time is on their side. The longer they don't attack, the more morons like you influence dumb Americans that there is no threat.
I realize your reply is just a symptom of your brainwashed leftist socialist mind. Maybe one day you will learn to think for yourself.
across the US just waiting to blow you up as you're striding through Walmart looking at oversized clothes eating your freedom fries.
1.) Targetting Women is nothing big, they target blacks whites, christians, homosexuals etc.
Really? Where is the video game targeted at African Americans? Whites? Christians? Did I miss, super crusader 2k5?
It's refreshing to read there is a women out there who ISN'T expecting the game industry to specifically cater to her.
2.) Nausea - Several girls I know had this, there is talk of spacial awaareness. Claiming a weak stomach doesn't get your gender off the hook. WE WANT TO FRAG YOU COME ONLINE!.
This isn't a 'women' problem. I had it pretty badly with the first few FPS games I tried. Eventually I played Q2 enough that my seasickness went away. That is exactly what it is too, if you get seasickness, or car sickness if you read in the car you will likely get nausea from FPS games. When your body sees yourself moving, or something moving but your inner ear that controls your balance doesn't "feel" movement that is when you get seasick.
It's even worse with VR helmets, 40% of the population suffers from seasickness with a helmet on.
3.) You aren't novel for being a girl who plays RPGs no one cares! Your boring! There are tonnes of you! You are a significant portion of the market, no one cares that girls play the sims no one cares they play RPGs (Except game production companies. A ratio of 1/5th RPG players isn't a problem a ratio of 1/50th of FPS and RTS players? Now that's a problem!
Who cares? She's novel enough to me, since most of the girls I meet don't even play games.
Stop making games for girls make cosmetic purchasing, testing, organizing software! This could be a GENRE it even needs cutting edge hardware!
They have this kind of crap already.
5.) " diversity and thinking outside the limits of games that are currently available" You're a FREAKING GENIUS let me bow down!
Everyone talks about this, men and women of all ages. The fact is, gaming is a business now. Something radical is much more likely to fail. Look at cars, you don't see insane designes because they will likely fail.
These girls who write these articles are all braindead, there are smart girls out there, let them make the games produce the critiques, draw the art, create the characters, define the gender roles and battle the sexist majority to bring gaming to women... It's not hard, make a mod or something. These evangelical feminist gamers are trying to get hits.
Yeah, I kinda hate the feminist gaming movement. They moan and bitch about more women in the gaming industry blah blah blah. My whole take on it is just let the most talented people make games, I don't care what they are.
Ah, but we do. Oh, we don't, not we sophisticated intellectuals, but we the people as a whole are very keen on these rules.
You are assuming only people who believe as you do are 'sophisticated'. There are plenty of sophisticated people who do not agree with you.
Every single damn poll I see reveals massive support for further crackdowns and additional police powers, to protect us from terrorism.
Of course, because the threat is real. The problem is, things like warrentless searches probably won't stop terrorists.
The masses actually believe they're in real danger. They've completely bought into the whole politics of fear we've been fed for the last few years.
If you are American, you are in danger. Osama Bin Laden for years before 9/11 said he would strike America on it's soil. After 9/11 he promised that the next attack would be more spectacular that the last and has contiunally hinted at the use of a nuclear bomb. He likely doesn't have the means to deliver such a weapon. Even a dirty bomb would be a challenge. However, all the warrents in the world are unlikely to stop someone who has one.
If you are American, there are plenty of islamic fundamentalists who will kill you just for that reason. That will continue until we have either killed all of them, or we have changed our policies twards the middle east and isreal.
The real problems with the Patriot act are that they overstep the boundries set up by the founding fathers. Also, they wouldn't help as much as closing up our borders and paying attention to who is coming into our country. It wouldn't be that difficult to at least watch the Mexico/US border and give labor passes to mexican citizens who have ID and a clean record. Of course then, US politicians might actually have to pay more for their cheap labor and stopping terrorism isn't more important that cheap and exploitable labor.
I've had at least one console from every generation of consoles since the Atari-2600. Most of the time I've had two. I found with this past go-round that I play very few console games anymore on my x-box or PS2. I spend much more time with PC games (WoW, CS, UT).
This is going to be the first generation of consoles where I do not buy one.
Is anyone excited by the games they are announcing for this? I bought a PS2 at launch and an X-Box shortly after launch last time around. The only thing I used them for was SNK vs Capcom EO, GTA, and the Madden series. Everything else I can play on my pc (Madden just doesn't feel right on the PC.).
Nothing really jumps out at me personally gamewise that I'd want, except tekken if it's online. I know a lot of people liked devil may cry, and MGS4 and GT will be popular. I don't see the standout game that will sell the system.
Or maybe software doesn't sell hardware anymore? Maybe having one of these things at launch is just a 'status symbol' now. *shutters*
The US is the teeth behind the UN. Whenever armed conflict is needed, the US is called upon.
In all reality the US should pull out of the UN, the UN is nothing but a bunch of rapist scam artists from third world countries trying to bring down the US.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no slashbot, but I don't like my government wasting money chasing down warez pups. Their crime is non-violent, as close to harmless as you can get. There are much bigger fish to fry, and if the day comes that there are no bigger fish to fry they can use that money to pay down the deficit.
Really, if you are American do you feel good about your tax dollars going to this type of thing?
You illustrate the point of the program precisely, to educate people with reactionary views like your own. China does not want to be seen as a technically and military inferior country that can be pushed around by the worlds last superpower. The population of China is generally estimated to be 1.3B, not 2B.
I don't think his views are only towards China. Many people when America announces funding for NASA say "Well there is XYZ social problem which has not fixed, why is money going into NASA?". While I'm sure part of China's Space ambitions is military, that ambition is not unique to China.
That said, I'm all for China going into space, the more the merrier.
For example at the moment there is a sizable faction of the Republican party that spends its time talking about the need to start a trade war with China. Some of them even want to go further and instigate a new cold war. In that type of political environment it makes good sense to invest a few billion dollars pointing out that the economy of China is not stagnant and declining and that it has more than enough capacity to support a military sector that is more than sufficient for national defense.
This isn't exactly true. What you are stating is a rift in the Republican party that I feel is growing stronger. Old Republicans, i.e. Paleocons believe in Fair Trade, not free trade. They are upset that while we are trading freely with China, China's government is keeping the value of Chinese currency cheap. This artificially keeps China's labor cheap. Of course this isn't very 'free trade' like, so some Republicans and Democrats are upset with it, and want to pass a Tariff against China (27% IIRC) until China truly embraces free markets so that the US is at least on a level playing field. There is no desire on the old right (i.e. Paleocons) to start another cold war, just the opposite in fact, they are very anti-war unless our vital national interests are at stake.
The press does a good job with touting free trade, and making anyone who argues against it look like a monster rather than a voice of some much needed skepticism on the subject.
According to the CIA world fact book China's economy is worth 7.2 trillion and is growing at 9.1%, the Us economy is worth 11.8 trillion and is growing at 4.4%. At that rate China overtakes the US in 10 years time. That is not even taking account of the fact that the US economy is mature and the typical growth rates of mature economies are much less than 4%. Plus the US has a massive balance of payments deficit that is only being financed by China buying US bonds.
At some point the US citizens need to expect the government to be fiscally responsible. Unfortunately, the current face of the Republican party (i.e. Neocons) spend just as much as democrats.
That said, if China truly opens up their economy to free trade their growth will slow down. If not, expect the US to hit them with a tariff within the next 5 years, possibly even within the next 3.
So even if the US was to try a cold war strategy at this stage as the neanderthal wing of the GOP would like it is simply too damned late. China has more economic leverage over the US than the US could hope to gain over China.
Not true, first most people aren't looking for a 'cold war strategy' against china. All they want is Fair trade, if we open our markets to them, they must do so for us. Others do promote a trade policy of 'national interests' where we protect our own markets and workers. To that, I say why not? Most other countries do the same thing, why must the US worker be the one crushed under the harsh boot of globalism?
The US is currently facing the same problem that hit the British Empire. In the 1920s a bunch of politicians got into power who were really into the whole imperialism thing, they swaggered about holding 'empire days' and such. All the time complet
If it was say 20 bucks for 500 gold I could see people doing it, but it's more like 200 dollars!
Actually, the current price of gold is about $1 for 10G in wow, or a bit less. IIRC $129 dollars will get you 1500G.
Why would anyone spend that kind of money for something in an online game? Something that you'll probably only have for a few weeks before you get something better?
Well, for me personally to farm 1000G needed for an epic mount in WoW would take me months. I play on the weekends mostly, and sometimes on the weekdays. While farming 1000G might take me say 100 hours in game, I make over $100 a day at work, so why not just buy the gold?
Are Mommy and Daddy really not paying that much attention to the credit card?
I'd bet it's more of the 18-29 crowd that has the disposable income to afford this.
For the price of 500 Gold on WOW you could have a pretty good night on the town, even get laid!
Meh, well for the $129 you could spend on 1500G you could have a good night or two of drinking. I don't pay to get laid, so I couldn't tell you the going rate on that. I'd like to think I could get a women in bed without buying her something along the way but we both know that is a joke.
You could just get so much more out of your money and life than 500 gold will ever get you in an online game.
If it's a hobby and you enjoy it, why not? If a chess player bought a $129 chess set would you look down upon that?
The capital of Saudi Arabia is Riyadh. All you're proposing is the random killing of random Muslism, who may or may not be Saudi (or even Arab), considering Mecca's status as a pilgrimage destination. Way to take the high road there.
How many world wars has the 'high road' won?
Hah, they mentioned they are going to explore GM island for their next article. Good luck on them losing their accounts. I remember reading over at Blizz Hackers there was a guy who used a teleport hack to get to GM island. He claimed to have walked around a bit, and found a room with a big table and a bunch of chairs around it. Another member claimed that while walking around on the island he got a whisper from a GM saying "You shouldn't be here", and his account was banned. From the stories I've read it's somewhere in the middle of the world. People claim to have been teleported there when accused of hacking into an questioning type room that was totally dark with the exception of a beam of light coming through one window.
You don't get it, your issues have nothing to do with you being female. They are more about your relationship with your husband. He gets in more playing time than you do, there are plenty of relationships where this works in reverse, (ie talk to some married women in WoW, I've run into a few that play more than their hubbies).
Most of the things you've stated are mentioned by males as well, who are more into the social aspect of mmo's and gaming.
Both the grandpaent and parent are off base, the worlds population does not matter. The gaming population is what matters, and no matter how many bogus studies the media comes up with about yahoo games the main demographic that will spend money on video games is still 13-30 males.
Yep, I cancelled mine as well. I'm sick of the poor game balance, on top of the poorly implemented battlegrounds, on top of the timesink/forced grouping that the endgame is.
Limiting daily gameplay per character would definatly force everyone to be a casual player.
:)
Haha, my god would ganking rule then. If someone had only 4 hours a week to play, I would be doing a lot more corpse camping!
Put simply, it's nearly impossible to create a game where you can advance as quickily by soloing as by grouping. In World of Warcraft, you can almost do this for the first 1/3 of your levels. Almost. Eventually it becomes impossible
I solo'ed 1 - 60 in world of warcraft. The only time I group was for instance runs (which I did 3 of pre-level 60). It is possible to go from 1-60 in WoW without grouping.
Of course, this means soloing, but then if I wanted to solo, why would I play a MMORPG?
To PvP. The sad reason is that there just aren't that many good RPG-esque games out there. I'd love to play a single-player version of WoW, particularly with an added over-arching quest.
I like solo'ing and PvPing in WoW, my only problem is the forced socialization in the end game. If you want to do endgame dungeons you have to make friends with the social misfits that are in the big guilds. It's not enjoyable.
I think World of Warcraft has done so well because levels 1-30 are easly accessable to the casual player. You can log in, play 2 hours and level or get some new gear. After level 40, that totally wears off and it becomes a grind/questfest like every other mmorpg. I found WoW to be very enjoyable for the first few weeks I was playing, but after a while I decided that I was putting too much time in for too little reward. I cancelled my account two days ago. Yey, back to real life. My only regret is not leveling a rogue high enough to pvp, as they seem like the best class for ganking.
I'm going, and I'm going to find the developer who decided a priest should outdamage my paladin and kick him square in the balls.
Methinks the distinction here is censorship of information and legitimate opinion rather than censorship of trolls. We like to censor trolls, nobody wants to wake up to one in the morning...
Yeah right.
Until you make a joke about Mac's and get banned for a month. Of course, making jokes about Windows in every other article is ok, but don't touch the blessing children of Slashdot, the mac, or anything running linux.
The people who run slashdot abuse their power to enforce their views. It's not really that bad though, Slashdot isn't professional journalism, it's just a crappy website that became more successful than it ever should have.
The things I was expecting to happen never happened. The things I never imagined could happen would happen, and would have consequences far beyond what I could foresee. This sounds juicy! Fill us in! Or at least give us some good reading material on the things you "Never imagined could happen".
Fine, but what do I get in return? Will they farm my World of Warcraft gold for me? Make me a snow-globe or something?
SWG, EQ, EQ2
Could you really hope to play all of these games and make worthwhile progression? Just 1 mmorpg is enough to rape your life away, nevermind 3.
I've been playing WoW now for 6 months. I'm amazed at it's success, because 2 million subscribers is quite an accomplishment. It is the most fun mmorpg I've played.
That said, they need to work on their customer support. If they have 2 million subscribers paying 15 dollars a month, they could at least hire one community manager for each class. As of now, on their forums feedback from developers funneled through their community managers (I believe there are 5) is extremely rare.
With the recent addition of battlegrounds which gave a set place for PvP, the lack of balance between the factions is showing. There are two 'faction only' classes, the Paladin and Shaman. The Shaman is the most powerful character in the game, while the Paladin is the weakest. When you combine this with the fact that the Horde has the better racial traits, battlegrounds is lopsided. People have been bringing this to blizzards attention for months with minimal feedback. Maybe now that battlegrounds are around they will do something to balance out the classes and races.
If they would hire a community manager for each class, then they could have the current ones moderate the other boards, such as PvP, RP, General, etc.
Overall, they need to get their act together before people notice they were never ready for this kind of userbase. The latest thread of doom in their forums is about someone with cerbral palsy who was banned for using '3rd party programs' which allowed him to play world of warcraft even though he was disabled.
They can't let PR disasters like this go on for too long. It is a game, but it's also a service. Blizzard needs to wake up and realize that.
World of Warcraft does have some pretty bad class balance issues, and just some gimped classes. Some examples of blizzards incompentency:
1. As mentioned, Paladins were reworked two weeks before release the class had it's whole combat system changed (Read nerfed). While the class is described to this day as a 'melee based hybrid' it puts out less damage per second than any other class (including priests). It also has no long ranged attack, and only one stun. On the healing side of it, the Paladin in the fourth best healer in the game, behind Priests, Druids and Shamans. What it all adds up to is a class that is poor at PvP. Instead of keeping an eye on the paladin since they were changed 2 weeks before launch, blizzard has chosen to ignore them.
2. Warlocks, along with having to deal with Will of the Forsaken going through their only decent crowd control spell (fear) also have to put up with farming soul shards to PvP. Basically, a warlock must PvE for a good 20-30 minutes to PvP for an hour since they need soul shards to preform some of their better spells/abilities. No other class has to put up with this sort of thing. To top it off, the shards are not stackable, meaning each one takes up one spot in your inventory, thus limiting other things a warlock could take for PvP from his or her bank.
3. Hunters have some kind of "Dead Zone" inbetween Melee range and their ranged attacks where from what I understand they can be attack but they can not attack others. Since hunter is one of the few classes I don't play, I'm taking the word of the 1000 hunters whining about it on the forums.
4. All of the racial traits for one faction (The horde) vastly overpower those of the other (alliance).
5. Instead of improving classes, Blizzard has shown that they would rather swing the nerf bat. This is the wrong way to go about balancing a MMO.
Hello, my American hating Euro-peon friend! Remember that train wreck a few months ago in, I think, California? It was caused by some guy attempting to commit suicide and then backing out at the last minute. He ran away and left his car on the tracks. Massive carnage, disruption and 11 people lost their lives.
Massive carnage? Want to compare that to 9/11? Dumbass. Anyway, what amount of carnage, disruption and casualties would we see if 20 'daggum terrists' around the country simultaneously left cars, trucks, car/truck bombs etc on rail tracks? What if they did it again the next day/week/month in 20 other locations? All that would take would be 20 people and 20 vehicles. No special equipment, no special training, no special skills. That this, or other such simple attacks, hasn't happened yet is proof that there aren't hundreds of AlKayduhhh cells
See, if you had half a fucking brain in your propaganda infused eurotrash brain you would understand that such attacks are stupid. Say you have 500 terrorists in a country. Are you going to attempt 'simple attacks' that might kill 10-20 people and risk losing your assests (terrorists on the ground?) Of course not! The most effective thing to do, is wait for the right time and unleash the most spectacular attack possible which will bring the most attention to your cause (the change of US middle east policy in this case)
As for the time in between attacks..why not wait? After all how long was it between attacks on the WTC? These people are not stupid (like you), and they are not in a hurry. After all, time is on their side. The longer they don't attack, the more morons like you influence dumb Americans that there is no threat.
I realize your reply is just a symptom of your brainwashed leftist socialist mind. Maybe one day you will learn to think for yourself.
across the US just waiting to blow you up as you're striding through Walmart looking at oversized clothes eating your freedom fries.
Keep dreaming euroshit.
1.) Targetting Women is nothing big, they target blacks whites, christians, homosexuals etc.
Really? Where is the video game targeted at African Americans? Whites? Christians? Did I miss, super crusader 2k5?
It's refreshing to read there is a women out there who ISN'T expecting the game industry to specifically cater to her.
2.) Nausea - Several girls I know had this, there is talk of spacial awaareness. Claiming a weak stomach doesn't get your gender off the hook. WE WANT TO FRAG YOU COME ONLINE!.
This isn't a 'women' problem. I had it pretty badly with the first few FPS games I tried. Eventually I played Q2 enough that my seasickness went away. That is exactly what it is too, if you get seasickness, or car sickness if you read in the car you will likely get nausea from FPS games. When your body sees yourself moving, or something moving but your inner ear that controls your balance doesn't "feel" movement that is when you get seasick.
It's even worse with VR helmets, 40% of the population suffers from seasickness with a helmet on.
3.) You aren't novel for being a girl who plays RPGs no one cares! Your boring! There are tonnes of you! You are a significant portion of the market, no one cares that girls play the sims no one cares they play RPGs (Except game production companies. A ratio of 1/5th RPG players isn't a problem a ratio of 1/50th of FPS and RTS players? Now that's a problem!
Who cares? She's novel enough to me, since most of the girls I meet don't even play games.
Stop making games for girls make cosmetic purchasing, testing, organizing software! This could be a GENRE it even needs cutting edge hardware!
They have this kind of crap already.
5.) " diversity and thinking outside the limits of games that are currently available" You're a FREAKING GENIUS let me bow down!
Everyone talks about this, men and women of all ages. The fact is, gaming is a business now. Something radical is much more likely to fail. Look at cars, you don't see insane designes because they will likely fail.
These girls who write these articles are all braindead, there are smart girls out there, let them make the games produce the critiques, draw the art, create the characters, define the gender roles and battle the sexist majority to bring gaming to women... It's not hard, make a mod or something. These evangelical feminist gamers are trying to get hits.
Yeah, I kinda hate the feminist gaming movement. They moan and bitch about more women in the gaming industry blah blah blah. My whole take on it is just let the most talented people make games, I don't care what they are.
Ah, but we do. Oh, we don't, not we sophisticated intellectuals, but we the people as a whole are very keen on these rules.
You are assuming only people who believe as you do are 'sophisticated'. There are plenty of sophisticated people who do not agree with you.
Every single damn poll I see reveals massive support for further crackdowns and additional police powers, to protect us from terrorism.
Of course, because the threat is real. The problem is, things like warrentless searches probably won't stop terrorists.
The masses actually believe they're in real danger. They've completely bought into the whole politics of fear we've been fed for the last few years.
If you are American, you are in danger. Osama Bin Laden for years before 9/11 said he would strike America on it's soil. After 9/11 he promised that the next attack would be more spectacular that the last and has contiunally hinted at the use of a nuclear bomb. He likely doesn't have the means to deliver such a weapon. Even a dirty bomb would be a challenge. However, all the warrents in the world are unlikely to stop someone who has one.
If you are American, there are plenty of islamic fundamentalists who will kill you just for that reason. That will continue until we have either killed all of them, or we have changed our policies twards the middle east and isreal.
The real problems with the Patriot act are that they overstep the boundries set up by the founding fathers. Also, they wouldn't help as much as closing up our borders and paying attention to who is coming into our country. It wouldn't be that difficult to at least watch the Mexico/US border and give labor passes to mexican citizens who have ID and a clean record. Of course then, US politicians might actually have to pay more for their cheap labor and stopping terrorism isn't more important that cheap and exploitable labor.
I've had at least one console from every generation of consoles since the Atari-2600. Most of the time I've had two. I found with this past go-round that I play very few console games anymore on my x-box or PS2. I spend much more time with PC games (WoW, CS, UT). This is going to be the first generation of consoles where I do not buy one.
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
That would be Robert Tappan Friggin Morris, and I don't think he is coming to help you with Unix, although he probably could.
Is anyone excited by the games they are announcing for this? I bought a PS2 at launch and an X-Box shortly after launch last time around. The only thing I used them for was SNK vs Capcom EO, GTA, and the Madden series. Everything else I can play on my pc (Madden just doesn't feel right on the PC.).
Nothing really jumps out at me personally gamewise that I'd want, except tekken if it's online. I know a lot of people liked devil may cry, and MGS4 and GT will be popular. I don't see the standout game that will sell the system.
Or maybe software doesn't sell hardware anymore? Maybe having one of these things at launch is just a 'status symbol' now. *shutters*
but having the digits 10 gives you four options....
The US is the teeth behind the UN. Whenever armed conflict is needed, the US is called upon.
In all reality the US should pull out of the UN, the UN is nothing but a bunch of rapist scam artists from third world countries trying to bring down the US.