Huh? do you have some source reference to back this up? I would probably imagine the opposite to be true, just thinking of the masses of extremely fanatically religous, uneducated people around the world disproves your argument.
Did you guys ever stop and think maybe there are dumb people who believe in God, and dumb people who don't believe in God?
Or are you so diluted by your own beliefs that you can't understand that someone with different views than yours on this subject can still be intelligent and educated?
You are incorrect. You are looking at "skill" as a measurement of physical reaction time. MMOs require skills from different SKILL SETS.
He clearly states that isn't the only thing he's looking at.
Managing a raid force of 40 to 70 people does not require much physical skill, but it does require many skills that are difficult to develop. You need to be politic, patient, good at communication, good at punishment (dealing with boat rockers and trouble makers) and large scale coordination.
Try running a FPS clan, it's the same deal. While you may have to manage more people, FPS clans have to come up with strategies on the fly against other human opponents of varying skill levels. You at the most will run into human opponents who are of about 8-10 different classes that determain what they can do to you.
All of that plus three or four hours of work for one or two powerful items. That takes an awaful lot of skill.
Not really, it just takes numbers. Pure numbers will overcome anything in a MMO, this is not so in a FPS. Take 10 level 60 players in WOW and put them against 3 level 60 players and the 3 players will ever lose. Do the same thing in Team Deathmatch in Unreal Tournament and the 3 players have a chance of winning. Why? Because it's skill based.
You may, perhaps, be comparing the WoW PvP game to the Q3 game and in that case physical reaction time is less important. You don't need as much "uber micro" in WoW. I think that's a poor comparison, given the issue at hand.
WoW PvP is rock, paper scissors, Q3 is "paintball" which is a harder game in real life?
The highest levels of achievement in MMOs like EQ, EQ2, and WoW take more dedication, time, and broader skills than any FPS. Succeeding at a massive social effort is not easy and I've seen many people break down under the challenge. Being able to punish a player who is disruptive and shape them into an effective cohort is really, really hard.
You deal with the same thing running a clan in a FPS game as I mentioned before. Also, running a raid isn't a 'massive social effort'. Everyone has the same goal, it's not hard to do as long as you don't have idiots doing insanly stupid stuff (ie pulling too many monsters at a time, not working within their preassigned rolls which are defined by class, not by a guild leader, etc) .
It's great that you can rack up 80 something straight hits in Q3DM17. If it earned you recognition among your peers, more power to you. You achieved that by yourself or with the handful of people who make up your clan. Those skills aren't going to help you become recognized in the MMO community, however. You can't do it alone. You're going to need a very large group of teammates in order to take down the biggest, baddest mobs and make headlines that MMO enthusiasts will want to read.
Yes, in a MMO you will have to join a guild and all run at the monsters at the same time, and tap 1 for attack repeadly. You might even have to cast a spell or two at the right time, but you can use a macro to do that.
Even if uber achievement isn't your goal, the MMO is a more trying experience. Just playing casually requires daily social interaction and people who have bad attitudes, unfriendly personalities, or an insular appraoch to play probably don't even realize how much of a disadvantage they are at.
People solo in MMORPGS because they realize that many MMORPG players have bad attitudes or aren't worth socializing with.
PS- There is no reason you can't solo through WoW with the exception of instances, if you are a casual player you do not need a guild.
What is really going on is that people are playing different games within the MMO - some are playing the Advancement Game, and for them, people who buy stuff are cheating. But people who are playing the Exploring Game or the Socializing Game only see the advancement as a means to an end - in the case of the latter, it may be a way to keep up with friends.
You forgot the Griefing game! I'm advancing just so I can gank better.:)
Q3 or Counterstrike. I've *always* had fantastic hand-eye coordination and reaction speed. I was competitive with the very best Street Fighter 2 players (back when Capcom used to give away full-sized videogames for winning big tournaments, back in the 90s). Reactions don't translate into skill. They may provide a ceiling, in the same way that physical fitness is a ceiling for competitiveness in a sport like tennis, but those underlying attributes are far less significant than the "learned skill" that goes along with the game.
I can second this. I went from playing in NES world championships, to playing in fighting game tournaments at eight on the break where they hold the east coast championships for streetfighter to this day. I moved on to playing Unreal Tournament and played for the #1 spot on the 1v1 OGL ladder as well as being ranked #1 in a few different statistical catagories at different times. Since then I've moved on to MMO's (SWG, and now WOW) and I would say they require the lowest skill of all the games I've played. You need to know how to play your class, and the tricks to fight against other classes but none of it takes all that much skill.
Morever, if you think outplanning and out-thinking your opponent is not a significant part of an FPS, then you're talking out of your ass. Anyone who has watched professionals play a game like Q3 knows that the entire game is a chess match which revolves around control of the map and the resources it provides.
I think CS is a better example of this, anyone who watches a pro CS match would realize all of the planning needed for 'raids' in MMO's and more goes into a pro CS match where people need to ajust strategies on the fly.
Anticipation, timing, the ability to adapt quickly, understanding an opponent; those are the skills which make you good at the highest eschelon of skill in "twitch games". Newb players think it is about fast reactions or perfect aim, but it isn't, because at the top level, EVERY pro hits almost every shot.
I can tell you at unreal tournament, my aim wasn't as good as people on the pro level, but my movement, and my thinking skills and ability to control the map were top notch, which allowed me to contend with the best players. The same really went for fighting games also, I was damn fast, but I won most of my games by creating good strategies on the fly and adapting to who I was playing. There is no adaptation in MMO's, what you've got is what you've got. There aren't too many inventive ways to use 'holy light' or 'hammer of justice' in WOW. Furthermore, what is the prevailing strategy in MMO's? Pulling baddies 1 by 1 from a mob? Stacking states correctly? This is skill? Ugg.
You are obviously justified in your anger, but your attempts to link Hitler with the Democrats are no less suspect.
Linking him with either party in America is silly, but I was proving a point. His political beliefs were in line with some on the left (perhaps more-so than the right).
From http://www.politicalcompass.org/ (where Hitler is presented as an authoritarian in the middle of the left/right divide, and so he might do well with the authoritarian elements of either party in their primaries):
I don't see "politicalcompass.org" as a valid source. Their test by the very nature of the questions is biased.
Oh, and for the record, political correctness is not censorship,
Yes it is. I guess it depends on your point of view but to me anything that limits free speech is censorship.
Hitler was NOT a vegetarian (except maybe occasionally, because he suffered from severe gastrointestinal problems, but not for moral reasons)
Hitler followed a strict vegetarian diet , because he did suffer from gastrointestinal problems but he also championed this position saying he "Didn't think any healthy man should eat meat". He did occasionally cheat on his vegetarian diet, usually for German sausage (Put in your hitler/gay theory here).
and Democrats do not seek national socialism.
Perhaps just socialism, since nationalism isn't something they are very good at.:)
In the last decade I have noticed a significan tincrease in the number of women involved in roleplay conventions, largely due to an increase in games that focus more on characterisation, political machinations and problem solving over dice rolling and simply slaying things.
Or maybe women are more open to it, because they are more open to RP in general from growing up with video games.
Which is not to say that us chicks don't enjoy a bit of hack-n-slash from time to time, but overall we don't find it particularly compelling hour on hour.
That isn't a "chick exclusive" trait, plenty of men don't enjoy that either.
Oddly enough, games that apparently did well in the female demographics were games like Myst and The Sims. They focus more on relationships and problem solving and not so much on killing stuff. They were also games that appealed to non-gamers generally.
They did plenty well among men as well, or they wouldn't have the sales they did. I don't think it's odd these games did well in the female demographics, especially 'the sims' which is a glorified version of the kiddie game 'house'
They were also games that support picking them up and playing for a few minutes if that's all you have, but will also let you play for hours if you can. As someone with lots of other responsibilities in my life, it can be incredibly frustrating to playing a game and being unable to find the save point before you have to leave the game to deal with something more important. A good example would be one section in the middle of Sphinx last year where it was about an hour between save points the first time through in one area, with complex jumps, stealth sections, pattern based puzzle sequences and several combats
I think this is a problem for anyone that plays games and has other resposibilities like work/school. It isn't exclusive to females.
As another example, in WoW my primary character is Lvl 27, my husband's is Lvl 36, we started on the same day but I do most of the housework because he can't drag himself away from the computer.
This really isn't a sex exclusive problem. I play WoW and I can't keep up with my friends online because I have a job that requires me to be away from home for 12-13 hours a day. In any MMO, people who put in more time will be rewarded, regardless of sex. The fact that you do more housework while he plays is something you should address with him.
Most women who game probably class themselves as casual gamers rather than hardcore, if they want to capture the femlae market it's possibly more important to focus on that aspect rather than how much cleavage the female characters are showing.
I find that offensive as a Male gamer. I could care less about how much cleavage the female characters show. If I want porn, well that is what the internet is for. Is there a lot of half naked women running around in games? Sure. There are plenty of half naked Men running around too. I could care less about anything that doesn't revlove around gameplay.
I would argue that not only are there female casual gamers, there are a lot of male ones out there, and it's an untapped audience. With the "Atari Generation" in their 30's, there are plenty of casual gamers out there not being catered to.
Many of the issues that get written about here in slashdot as "female gaming issues" are really gaming issues in general
PS- If you are level 27 at WoW you've been playing a hack-n-slash game for "hour on hour".:)
I'm so sick of hearing about "girls in gaming". Girls play games, guys do to. One of the beautiful things about playing games online is that gender/race really doesn't matter. If you want less half naked chicks in games, then don't buy games with half naked chicks. It's that simple.
Stuff like this:
Do you think the shift towards breeding game designers in college with specialized degrees is going to detract from the casual-gaming young female? Companies so intent on hiring people with only complete devotion to videogames... I didn't know I wanted to make games until my last year of college."
Is just silly. What the hell does it matter to the casual-gaming young female? So companies want to hire people with complete devotion to what they do, how is that different from any other industry?
And if they did that, then the Republicans could reincarnate Hitler and get the vast Christian majority of this country to vote him in on "moral issues."
I'm really, really sick of people associating the Republicans with Hitler. Lets take a look at Hitler's political beliefs.
He was for:
abortion (like the democrats)
censorship (like the democrats.. under the mask of being politically correct)
euthanasia (like the democrats/left)
gun control (like the democrats)
vegetarianism (like the democrats/left).
national socialism (like the democrats)
So Mr. Dragon, before you argue that Hitler would be a republican if he were reincarnated I suggest you go read up a bit about him. A Hitler/Stalin ticket would probably do really well in the primary elections for the democrats, but get crushed nationally. But hey, that isn't much different from what usually happens to you guys.
"Common men" don't care about secret tribunals, election fraud, attacking the wrong guy, invading soveriegn nations, alienating the world, or any of that stuff that "nerds" (of all types) care about. They want to be told that their leader empathizes with them, and that by golly, he's going to make it right. That's the stuff that makes the "common man" sleep easy at night.
I take offense to this. I am a "nerd". I am young, I have a degree in computer science, live in a blue state, and work in another blue state (as a programmer) but I vote Republican. There are plenty of smart people who agree with the Republican party platform.
Isn't your party the one that dislikes stereotypes? Your basic argument that Bush won because Americans are stupid is disgraceful, not insightful despite the modding of your peers.
What if you could have families in MMO's? Virtual Children... What if your characters could have children and pass on the family name...This is a very vague idea and I'm not sure if he words it that way on purpose or not. The concept of Virtual Children and passing on the family name isn't new
I always thought it would be cool to have perma-death in MMO's but to be "Reborn" into another family. New players, or players who died would be "born into" a family of high level characters.
For every "level" you get in one of these games, you will lose one in real life.
Damn, and I was really working twards level 255 at Java Programming and I just lost it for level 25 paladin at WoW. Oh well, at least I have my holy light spell to keep me happy.
Taft, Johnson, Ford, Carter? one termers all who lost re-election bids
Ok I did leave a few out, lets look at these...
Taft: Same deal as HW Bush, he had his vote split by a strong third party challenge and he came in THIRD.
Johnson: Didn't run for re-election, withdrew in the primaries
Ford: Didn't run for re-election.
Carter: I forgot him, since he was the most inept president of all time. He ran and lost. He along with Herbert Hoover are the only presidents from 1900 on you can look at and say "Yes a president can lose a 1 on 1 election if he REALLY screws things up".
You've only reinforced my view sterotype of the idiotic right winger, ever hear of these guys:
You've only reinforced my view that many left wingers are uniformed. While my previous post forgot Carter, my original point was that "Incumbant presidents don't lose elections very often if there is no third party involved, so odds were Bush wasn't losing". While your mentioned 4 presidents that you say "lost re-election bids" only 2 of them ever ran! Furthermore one came in third because his party was split (taft).
And that's not even counting the guys that died within their first term
What does that have to do with anything? Go take your ridalin.
The 1.4 million character stat from wow-census.com in the./ article body is inaccurate and should NOT be used to formulate any sort of statistics regarding the population of WoW.
Not to mention, many players have 4-5 characters, and use them as mules, or to use other professions to support their main character. A popular tactic is to make an alternate character who stands at the auction house all the time. Then if your main character doesn't want to run to the auction house (time consuming, and expensive if you fly) you can just email your alt the items you want to sell.:)
This might sound a bit pessamistic but I wonder if they just don't care. After all, they have your $50, they know you are going to sign up and if you can't the first day you have the game, it might piss you off but you will get over it once you start playing.
The money for additional bandwith/servers to handle the two to three day period where people are registering and logging in at the same time might not be worth it.
Am I the only one who is absolutely repulsed by that message?
No.
A friend just said, after reading it, "wow... how come I feel that i was just glared at by the SS?".
Your friend needs to stop making radical statements and get a clue. It is a overbearing and invalid statement, but just calling all of your enemies 'hitler' destroys your credibility and takes away from the evil that hitler did.
This kind of brainwashing is the same bullshit that got Bush re-elected.
Please, do you think people on the right are happy about the MPAA going pulling this crap?
Our society requires an informed populace to function properly. All the powers that be are manipulating public perception to suite their own needs and it really, really, needs to stop.
Really? Who are the powers 'that be' then? Because the American Media is by far more slanted to the left than right, yet you think that 'this is the same bullshit that got Bush re-elected'. You should rethink your own bias.
Bush wasn't going to not be re-elected. The only presidents not to be re-elected in the 1900's were Herbet Hoover and George HW Bush. HW's election was a special case since there was a third candidate that took 19% of the vote. Herbert Hoover oversaw the great depression and had to face one of the best politicians in American History.
Bush wasn't going to lose. Despite his poor speaking abilities, he was an incumbant wartime president up against a weak opponent who was an anti-war protester in the first election after the worst attack on US soil in the past 100 years.
Therefore, I'm hoping I'll be able to use this as a "quick blast" MMORPG when I need a break from the FFXI grind (and above level 55, the experience-grind does get pretty heavy going).
World of Warcraft gives you an experence reward for NOT being logged in, up to a max of one and a half levels (which takes about 7 days to gain). So if you don't log in for a week, when you come back you will earn double experence on every kill you get until you gain one and a half levels. You get this bonus just for logging out at night too. It's a good way to discourage bots and to make hardcore grinding less of an issue.
"Login server down" in? It seems to be one of their favorites as they appear to have every Blizz system hooked into their Access DB haxxored together authentication system
I've been playing for one month, and I go on almost every day, I've only seen their login server down once. I've seen it lag a few times, but this is nothing compared to the login problems at launch of NeverQuest or Star Wars Galaxies.
The login server only seems to struggle when individual realms are brought down. For example, last night around 7 ET they brought down about 10 realms (servers) for emergency patching. This triggers a "Herd of Nerd" on the other servers, as everyone on the 10 servers that went down try to log into their alternate characters on servers that are up so yeah there is going to be some lag then.
The Adrenaline Vault posits that talented gamers are not always the best reviewers because of the necessity for those with elite skills to care as much as they do about their performance
It's not their performance they care about, it's about being rewarded for performance. A casual gamer plays for fun, and competitive one plays to be reward for skill. For example:
Casual Fighting game fans love killer instinct, the graphics were nice, and the combos were easy to do. The "elite" players hated it, played at it's highest level the game was nothing but a turtlefest and didn't reward players based on "skill".
FPS players tend to gravitate twards counterstrike. Why? Because spamming for the most part, isn't effective. Casual gamers may love the fact that they can grab the flak cannon in the original Unreal tournament and spam it around corners in hopes for a kill, but 'elite' players hate it, because it isn't skill based.
If a skilled player wants to review a game, they have to realize what their main audience would be playing the game for, which most often is fun.
US intellegence agents, and Russian Intellgence agents, and Vladimir Putin all disagree with you and think that Saddam's regime was preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations.
Now, do we have to wait for more American civilians to die (ala 9/11) before you are willing to let our president take action?
The anti-US propaganda surrounding this war has been disgusting.
Bush had to appear on national TV in June/July of 2003 to explain to the nation that we did not invade Iraq because of 9/11. Why? Because polls showed that almost 70% of the US population believed that to be the reason
*sigh*
You have the poll wrong, this poll was talked about in the media at length. The Poll was about an Saddam-September 11th link. The media would basically run stories like this one which includes this text "Yet, a new poll found that nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved" most of the stories talked about how the American public has been "mislead".
32 Percent of the people said it was very likely
37 percent said it was somewhat likely.
Somehow though, CBS turned this into "nearly 70 percent of the respondents believed the iraqi leader was probably personally involved". Maybe it's just me but the words probably and somewhat have different meanings to me. Also what does "personally involved" mean? Was Saddam personally involved if one of the September 11 hijackers trained at a terrorist camp in Iraq for sometime? Or does personally involved mean that Saddam was sending them money? Or does it mean Osama called Saddam and the two watched September 11th unfold on CNN from a remote cave somewhere? Ok, I'm being a little silly but I think you get my point.
Sometimes the questions in these polls aren't very clear and can mean different things to different people. Yet the media picks them up and spins them to run the stories they want to run to influence YOU and it works.
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Huh? do you have some source reference to back this up? I would probably imagine the opposite to be true, just thinking of the masses of extremely fanatically religous, uneducated people around the world disproves your argument.
Did you guys ever stop and think maybe there are dumb people who believe in God, and dumb people who don't believe in God?
Or are you so diluted by your own beliefs that you can't understand that someone with different views than yours on this subject can still be intelligent and educated?
You are incorrect. You are looking at "skill" as a measurement of physical reaction time. MMOs require skills from different SKILL SETS.
He clearly states that isn't the only thing he's looking at.
Managing a raid force of 40 to 70 people does not require much physical skill, but it does require many skills that are difficult to develop. You need to be politic, patient, good at communication, good at punishment (dealing with boat rockers and trouble makers) and large scale coordination.
Try running a FPS clan, it's the same deal. While you may have to manage more people, FPS clans have to come up with strategies on the fly against other human opponents of varying skill levels. You at the most will run into human opponents who are of about 8-10 different classes that determain what they can do to you.
All of that plus three or four hours of work for one or two powerful items. That takes an awaful lot of skill.
Not really, it just takes numbers. Pure numbers will overcome anything in a MMO, this is not so in a FPS. Take 10 level 60 players in WOW and put them against 3 level 60 players and the 3 players will ever lose. Do the same thing in Team Deathmatch in Unreal Tournament and the 3 players have a chance of winning. Why? Because it's skill based.
You may, perhaps, be comparing the WoW PvP game to the Q3 game and in that case physical reaction time is less important. You don't need as much "uber micro" in WoW. I think that's a poor comparison, given the issue at hand.
WoW PvP is rock, paper scissors, Q3 is "paintball" which is a harder game in real life?
The highest levels of achievement in MMOs like EQ, EQ2, and WoW take more dedication, time, and broader skills than any FPS. Succeeding at a massive social effort is not easy and I've seen many people break down under the challenge. Being able to punish a player who is disruptive and shape them into an effective cohort is really, really hard.
You deal with the same thing running a clan in a FPS game as I mentioned before. Also, running a raid isn't a 'massive social effort'. Everyone has the same goal, it's not hard to do as long as you don't have idiots doing insanly stupid stuff (ie pulling too many monsters at a time, not working within their preassigned rolls which are defined by class, not by a guild leader, etc) .
It's great that you can rack up 80 something straight hits in Q3DM17. If it earned you recognition among your peers, more power to you. You achieved that by yourself or with the handful of people who make up your clan. Those skills aren't going to help you become recognized in the MMO community, however. You can't do it alone. You're going to need a very large group of teammates in order to take down the biggest, baddest mobs and make headlines that MMO enthusiasts will want to read.
Yes, in a MMO you will have to join a guild and all run at the monsters at the same time, and tap 1 for attack repeadly. You might even have to cast a spell or two at the right time, but you can use a macro to do that.
Even if uber achievement isn't your goal, the MMO is a more trying experience. Just playing casually requires daily social interaction and people who have bad attitudes, unfriendly personalities, or an insular appraoch to play probably don't even realize how much of a disadvantage they are at.
People solo in MMORPGS because they realize that many MMORPG players have bad attitudes or aren't worth socializing with.
PS- There is no reason you can't solo through WoW with the exception of instances, if you are a casual player you do not need a guild.
What is really going on is that people are playing different games within the MMO - some are playing the Advancement Game, and for them, people who buy stuff are cheating. But people who are playing the Exploring Game or the Socializing Game only see the advancement as a means to an end - in the case of the latter, it may be a way to keep up with friends.
:)
You forgot the Griefing game! I'm advancing just so I can gank better.
Q3 or Counterstrike. I've *always* had fantastic hand-eye coordination and reaction speed. I was competitive with the very best Street Fighter 2 players (back when Capcom used to give away full-sized videogames for winning big tournaments, back in the 90s). Reactions don't translate into skill. They may provide a ceiling, in the same way that physical fitness is a ceiling for competitiveness in a sport like tennis, but those underlying attributes are far less significant than the "learned skill" that goes along with the game.
I can second this. I went from playing in NES world championships, to playing in fighting game tournaments at eight on the break where they hold the east coast championships for streetfighter to this day. I moved on to playing Unreal Tournament and played for the #1 spot on the 1v1 OGL ladder as well as being ranked #1 in a few different statistical catagories at different times. Since then I've moved on to MMO's (SWG, and now WOW) and I would say they require the lowest skill of all the games I've played. You need to know how to play your class, and the tricks to fight against other classes but none of it takes all that much skill.
Morever, if you think outplanning and out-thinking your opponent is not a significant part of an FPS, then you're talking out of your ass. Anyone who has watched professionals play a game like Q3 knows that the entire game is a chess match which revolves around control of the map and the resources it provides.
I think CS is a better example of this, anyone who watches a pro CS match would realize all of the planning needed for 'raids' in MMO's and more goes into a pro CS match where people need to ajust strategies on the fly.
Anticipation, timing, the ability to adapt quickly, understanding an opponent; those are the skills which make you good at the highest eschelon of skill in "twitch games". Newb players think it is about fast reactions or perfect aim, but it isn't, because at the top level, EVERY pro hits almost every shot.
I can tell you at unreal tournament, my aim wasn't as good as people on the pro level, but my movement, and my thinking skills and ability to control the map were top notch, which allowed me to contend with the best players. The same really went for fighting games also, I was damn fast, but I won most of my games by creating good strategies on the fly and adapting to who I was playing. There is no adaptation in MMO's, what you've got is what you've got. There aren't too many inventive ways to use 'holy light' or 'hammer of justice' in WOW. Furthermore, what is the prevailing strategy in MMO's? Pulling baddies 1 by 1 from a mob? Stacking states correctly? This is skill? Ugg.
You are obviously justified in your anger, but your attempts to link Hitler with the Democrats are no less suspect.
:)
Linking him with either party in America is silly, but I was proving a point. His political beliefs were in line with some on the left (perhaps more-so than the right).
From http://www.politicalcompass.org/ (where Hitler is presented as an authoritarian in the middle of the left/right divide, and so he might do well with the authoritarian elements of either party in their primaries):
I don't see "politicalcompass.org" as a valid source. Their test by the very nature of the questions is biased.
Oh, and for the record, political correctness is not censorship,
Yes it is. I guess it depends on your point of view but to me anything that limits free speech is censorship.
Hitler was NOT a vegetarian (except maybe occasionally, because he suffered from severe gastrointestinal problems, but not for moral reasons)
Hitler followed a strict vegetarian diet , because he did suffer from gastrointestinal problems but he also championed this position saying he "Didn't think any healthy man should eat meat". He did occasionally cheat on his vegetarian diet, usually for German sausage (Put in your hitler/gay theory here).
and Democrats do not seek national socialism.
Perhaps just socialism, since nationalism isn't something they are very good at.
At least now there's an alternative for those poor cancer-ridden souls who are allergic to carrots.
Don't laugh, I'm allergic to carrots! It's a good thing I don't have cancer ^_^.
In the last decade I have noticed a significan tincrease in the number of women involved in roleplay conventions, largely due to an increase in games that focus more on characterisation, political machinations and problem solving over dice rolling and simply slaying things.
:)
Or maybe women are more open to it, because they are more open to RP in general from growing up with video games.
Which is not to say that us chicks don't enjoy a bit of hack-n-slash from time to time, but overall we don't find it particularly compelling hour on hour.
That isn't a "chick exclusive" trait, plenty of men don't enjoy that either.
Oddly enough, games that apparently did well in the female demographics were games like Myst and The Sims. They focus more on relationships and problem solving and not so much on killing stuff. They were also games that appealed to non-gamers generally.
They did plenty well among men as well, or they wouldn't have the sales they did. I don't think it's odd these games did well in the female demographics, especially 'the sims' which is a glorified version of the kiddie game 'house'
They were also games that support picking them up and playing for a few minutes if that's all you have, but will also let you play for hours if you can. As someone with lots of other responsibilities in my life, it can be incredibly frustrating to playing a game and being unable to find the save point before you have to leave the game to deal with something more important. A good example would be one section in the middle of Sphinx last year where it was about an hour between save points the first time through in one area, with complex jumps, stealth sections, pattern based puzzle sequences and several combats
I think this is a problem for anyone that plays games and has other resposibilities like work/school. It isn't exclusive to females.
As another example, in WoW my primary character is Lvl 27, my husband's is Lvl 36, we started on the same day but I do most of the housework because he can't drag himself away from the computer.
This really isn't a sex exclusive problem. I play WoW and I can't keep up with my friends online because I have a job that requires me to be away from home for 12-13 hours a day. In any MMO, people who put in more time will be rewarded, regardless of sex. The fact that you do more housework while he plays is something you should address with him.
Most women who game probably class themselves as casual gamers rather than hardcore, if they want to capture the femlae market it's possibly more important to focus on that aspect rather than how much cleavage the female characters are showing.
I find that offensive as a Male gamer. I could care less about how much cleavage the female characters show. If I want porn, well that is what the internet is for. Is there a lot of half naked women running around in games? Sure. There are plenty of half naked Men running around too. I could care less about anything that doesn't revlove around gameplay.
I would argue that not only are there female casual gamers, there are a lot of male ones out there, and it's an untapped audience. With the "Atari Generation" in their 30's, there are plenty of casual gamers out there not being catered to.
Many of the issues that get written about here in slashdot as "female gaming issues" are really gaming issues in general
PS- If you are level 27 at WoW you've been playing a hack-n-slash game for "hour on hour".
I'm so sick of hearing about "girls in gaming". Girls play games, guys do to. One of the beautiful things about playing games online is that gender/race really doesn't matter. If you want less half naked chicks in games, then don't buy games with half naked chicks. It's that simple.
Stuff like this:
Do you think the shift towards breeding game designers in college with specialized degrees is going to detract from the casual-gaming young female? Companies so intent on hiring people with only complete devotion to videogames... I didn't know I wanted to make games until my last year of college."
Is just silly. What the hell does it matter to the casual-gaming young female? So companies want to hire people with complete devotion to what they do, how is that different from any other industry?
And if they did that, then the Republicans could reincarnate Hitler and get the vast Christian majority of this country to vote him in on "moral issues."
I'm really, really sick of people associating the Republicans with Hitler. Lets take a look at Hitler's political beliefs.
He was for:
abortion (like the democrats)
censorship (like the democrats.. under the mask of being politically correct)
euthanasia (like the democrats/left)
gun control (like the democrats)
vegetarianism (like the democrats/left).
national socialism (like the democrats)
So Mr. Dragon, before you argue that Hitler would be a republican if he were reincarnated I suggest you go read up a bit about him. A Hitler/Stalin ticket would probably do really well in the primary elections for the democrats, but get crushed nationally. But hey, that isn't much different from what usually happens to you guys.
"Common men" don't care about secret tribunals, election fraud, attacking the wrong guy, invading soveriegn nations, alienating the world, or any of that stuff that "nerds" (of all types) care about. They want to be told that their leader empathizes with them, and that by golly, he's going to make it right. That's the stuff that makes the "common man" sleep easy at night.
I take offense to this. I am a "nerd". I am young, I have a degree in computer science, live in a blue state, and work in another blue state (as a programmer) but I vote Republican. There are plenty of smart people who agree with the Republican party platform.
Isn't your party the one that dislikes stereotypes? Your basic argument that Bush won because Americans are stupid is disgraceful, not insightful despite the modding of your peers.
What if you could have families in MMO's? Virtual Children... What if your characters could have children and pass on the family name...This is a very vague idea and I'm not sure if he words it that way on purpose or not. The concept of Virtual Children and passing on the family name isn't new
I always thought it would be cool to have perma-death in MMO's but to be "Reborn" into another family. New players, or players who died would be "born into" a family of high level characters.
The only way to win is to not play.
Ok Joshua.
For every "level" you get in one of these games, you will lose one in real life.
Damn, and I was really working twards level 255 at Java Programming and I just lost it for level 25 paladin at WoW. Oh well, at least I have my holy light spell to keep me happy.
Taft, Johnson, Ford, Carter? one termers all who lost re-election bids
Ok I did leave a few out, lets look at these...
Taft: Same deal as HW Bush, he had his vote split by a strong third party challenge and he came in THIRD.
Johnson: Didn't run for re-election, withdrew in the primaries
Ford: Didn't run for re-election.
Carter: I forgot him, since he was the most inept president of all time. He ran and lost. He along with Herbert Hoover are the only presidents from 1900 on you can look at and say "Yes a president can lose a 1 on 1 election if he REALLY screws things up".
You've only reinforced my view sterotype of the idiotic right winger, ever hear of these guys:
You've only reinforced my view that many left wingers are uniformed. While my previous post forgot Carter, my original point was that "Incumbant presidents don't lose elections very often if there is no third party involved, so odds were Bush wasn't losing". While your mentioned 4 presidents that you say "lost re-election bids" only 2 of them ever ran! Furthermore one came in third because his party was split (taft).
And that's not even counting the guys that died within their first term
What does that have to do with anything? Go take your ridalin.
The 1.4 million character stat from wow-census.com in the ./ article body is inaccurate and should NOT be used to formulate any sort of statistics regarding the population of WoW.
:)
Not to mention, many players have 4-5 characters, and use them as mules, or to use other professions to support their main character. A popular tactic is to make an alternate character who stands at the auction house all the time. Then if your main character doesn't want to run to the auction house (time consuming, and expensive if you fly) you can just email your alt the items you want to sell.
This might sound a bit pessamistic but I wonder if they just don't care. After all, they have your $50, they know you are going to sign up and if you can't the first day you have the game, it might piss you off but you will get over it once you start playing.
The money for additional bandwith/servers to handle the two to three day period where people are registering and logging in at the same time might not be worth it.
Also octopus only live a year
Haha, you think you are smart Mr. Octopus? Come back and tell me about it next year!
Am I the only one who is absolutely repulsed by that message?
No.
A friend just said, after reading it, "wow... how come I feel that i was just glared at by the SS?".
Your friend needs to stop making radical statements and get a clue. It is a overbearing and invalid statement, but just calling all of your enemies 'hitler' destroys your credibility and takes away from the evil that hitler did.
This kind of brainwashing is the same bullshit that got Bush re-elected.
Please, do you think people on the right are happy about the MPAA going pulling this crap?
Our society requires an informed populace to function properly. All the powers that be are manipulating public perception to suite their own needs and it really, really, needs to stop.
Really? Who are the powers 'that be' then? Because the American Media is by far more slanted to the left than right, yet you think that 'this is the same bullshit that got Bush re-elected'. You should rethink your own bias.
Bush wasn't going to not be re-elected. The only presidents not to be re-elected in the 1900's were Herbet Hoover and George HW Bush. HW's election was a special case since there was a third candidate that took 19% of the vote. Herbert Hoover oversaw the great depression and had to face one of the best politicians in American History.
Bush wasn't going to lose. Despite his poor speaking abilities, he was an incumbant wartime president up against a weak opponent who was an anti-war protester in the first election after the worst attack on US soil in the past 100 years.
For the worse. After a half day of release the signup (!) servers are down.
Has any popular MMORPG anywhere ever had a release date that went smoothly?
Therefore, I'm hoping I'll be able to use this as a "quick blast" MMORPG when I need a break from the FFXI grind (and above level 55, the experience-grind does get pretty heavy going).
World of Warcraft gives you an experence reward for NOT being logged in, up to a max of one and a half levels (which takes about 7 days to gain). So if you don't log in for a week, when you come back you will earn double experence on every kill you get until you gain one and a half levels. You get this bonus just for logging out at night too. It's a good way to discourage bots and to make hardcore grinding less of an issue.
"Login server down" in? It seems to be one of their favorites as they appear to have every Blizz system hooked into their Access DB haxxored together authentication system
I've been playing for one month, and I go on almost every day, I've only seen their login server down once. I've seen it lag a few times, but this is nothing compared to the login problems at launch of NeverQuest or Star Wars Galaxies.
The login server only seems to struggle when individual realms are brought down. For example, last night around 7 ET they brought down about 10 realms (servers) for emergency patching. This triggers a "Herd of Nerd" on the other servers, as everyone on the 10 servers that went down try to log into their alternate characters on servers that are up so yeah there is going to be some lag then.
The Adrenaline Vault posits that talented gamers are not always the best reviewers because of the necessity for those with elite skills to care as much as they do about their performance
It's not their performance they care about, it's about being rewarded for performance. A casual gamer plays for fun, and competitive one plays to be reward for skill. For example:
Casual Fighting game fans love killer instinct, the graphics were nice, and the combos were easy to do. The "elite" players hated it, played at it's highest level the game was nothing but a turtlefest and didn't reward players based on "skill".
FPS players tend to gravitate twards counterstrike. Why? Because spamming for the most part, isn't effective. Casual gamers may love the fact that they can grab the flak cannon in the original Unreal tournament and spam it around corners in hopes for a kill, but 'elite' players hate it, because it isn't skill based.
If a skilled player wants to review a game, they have to realize what their main audience would be playing the game for, which most often is fun.
Neither was Iraq a threat to the USA
US intellegence agents, and Russian Intellgence agents, and Vladimir Putin all disagree with you and think that Saddam's regime was preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the United States and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations.
Now, do we have to wait for more American civilians to die (ala 9/11) before you are willing to let our president take action?
The anti-US propaganda surrounding this war has been disgusting.
Bush had to appear on national TV in June/July of 2003 to explain to the nation that we did not invade Iraq because of 9/11. Why? Because polls showed that almost 70% of the US population believed that to be the reason
*sigh*
You have the poll wrong, this poll was talked about in the media at length. The Poll was about an Saddam-September 11th link. The media would basically run stories like this one which includes this text "Yet, a new poll found that nearly 70 percent of respondents believed the Iraqi leader probably was personally involved" most of the stories talked about how the American public has been "mislead".
The actual poll however asked the question How likely is it that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks? Would you say that it is very likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, or not at all likely?
32 Percent of the people said it was very likely
37 percent said it was somewhat likely.
Somehow though, CBS turned this into "nearly 70 percent of the respondents believed the iraqi leader was probably personally involved". Maybe it's just me but the words probably and somewhat have different meanings to me. Also what does "personally involved" mean? Was Saddam personally involved if one of the September 11 hijackers trained at a terrorist camp in Iraq for sometime? Or does personally involved mean that Saddam was sending them money? Or does it mean Osama called Saddam and the two watched September 11th unfold on CNN from a remote cave somewhere? Ok, I'm being a little silly but I think you get my point.
Sometimes the questions in these polls aren't very clear and can mean different things to different people. Yet the media picks them up and spins them to run the stories they want to run to influence YOU and it works.
So, does the game work well for dialup users?
Dial-up? What is that? Seriously....I don't know, probably not. It also doesn't work on a commadore 64, Amiga or Apple IIC.
I guess not! (I'm also guessing that nobody gets this post...)