Actually I felt this was one of the better teaser trailers for a games...simply due to the fact that it DOES show gameplay. As was mentioned by one of the replys here, the opening sequence with the wall jump looks very much like a quick time sequence.
The main thing here was that they showed the actual in game engine in action, and not all CGI sequences. With the game so far off, I couldn't expect them to have the actual gameplay ironed out enough to justify a full gameplay video.
Anyway, despite its short length, it is an honest teaser trailer.
What's wrong with running a wheel all the time if you are happy to do so?
I play volleyball at the Y. This is a "safe" activity. You can say this to people and there is nothing wrong with me, and i'm not wasting my life. It's good for me!
I play with the same ~50 people every year in the league. It is rec level. I play 4 games a week. At the end we do a tournament style play off, winning team gets a sweatshirt. I enjoy playing, but my skill level has plateaued, I would need to train or play more then once a week to improve from where I am now.
I could argue that my time at the league is just as wasteful as my time in an MMO, or playing any game for that matter. The score resets at the end of each "season", the teams get rearranged each year, and the last season might not have happened for all the way the gameplay changes.
But I can tell people I play volleyball without them rolling their eyes. I can't seem to say the same thing about playing WoW, even here, among 'geeks', it is still made fun of.
So long as you aren't hurting anyone, what's wrong with having some pointless fun?
Why not just admit that you got sick of the same old bs? By nature people tend to get bored of the same thing day in and day out. Eventually we "wake up" and realize something was pointless. We do this with MMO's, we do this in relationships (cmon how many ex's did you walk away from and say to yourself, wtf was i thinking?), we do this with hobbies.. I'm sure some guy has gotten bored of the same old thing with his guitar and took up mmos.
Variety is what we crave...just, why look back on something that made you happy, with disdain? You were obviously happy enough playing every mmo under the sun for years... why say it was a waste of time? You were having fun!
I took a break from my gaming and did the same thing. I picked up a guitar (its collecting dust now, I should have taken lessons, self taught after 3 months I still couldn't play a song, just a few chords and a scale or two), learned to juggle, took up volleyball (still play), tried yoga, took a tai chi class, a bunch of things.
Lately though I picked up wow again, and trying to figure out how to beat malygos (damn phase 3), and took a break on those other things.
I imagine I'll pick up a lot of those things when I have kids and less free time (alllmost time to start that/hides) But besides the health benefits of the few things (need to do those more often:) ), I am still just as happy... just make sure you are doing what makes you happy, even if that is just running on hamster wheels.
Before savage was "Allegiance" a rts / space flight combat game with an enormous learning curve. I believe allegiance is also freeware and is worth taking a look at if you like that style of game.
Sons is a big slap in the face:) But if you don't really want the small upgrade the shoulder enchants provide, you can check out the exalted aldor or scryer shoulders, which are essentially the same as the honored stuff, and much cheaper to boot. I think it will otherwise take you 28 days of dailies without picking up the everfrost chips to hit exalted. Blach.
Hey, way to go on having a healthy relationship. It seems very rare sometimes for people to respect each others opinions like that. I'm uh, I guess agnostic, vs my wive being catholic. We've never had an argument, and when one of us speaks about religion, we both listen, and take everything the other says as fact. It works fine. Should be interesting when we have kids though, I'll check back then with you haha. But anyway, just thought I would post my support of like, good couple thinking:)
It is so interesting how we cal all view the world differently. I am guessing from your posts that you were raised in a household where the idea of eating animals was a morally wrong choice, and have wrestled with it morally in your life. I think because of that, you tend to believe that other people do things like "reduce the problem to opinion" and what not because it is too difficult of a choice for them. Maybe, if they grew up in your area, with similar backgrounds this is true, but for many others, this is a non issue. Or, the issue is completely different then anything we might even thing. People's brains just work differently.
Similar, but different. I'm of a firm mind that what we see in other people, is often a reflection of ourselves and is very telling of how we/I view the world.
For myself, with the "issue" of animal consumption, to me it seems a perfectly natural thing to do. Perhaps the problem really is the increased efficiency of an industrial nation in terms of slaughtering large quantities of animals, growing them in smaller areas to save cash. If we all had to grow our own chickens, and slaughter them before cooking, we would probably have a much healthier respect for our food chain and where it came from, of that I agree. I also believe that were such the case I would have no problem slitting a turkey's throat and cleaning it for thanksgiving day. Growing up with something, it would be pretty normal, and the idea of it being a moral choice would probably not enter our brains.
Being able vegetarian is just a luxury of living in a rich nation. I know for a fact there are many impoverished countries where if you refused to eat meat, you would probably be dead do to food scarcity.
For me, I can understand it being a difficult thing to think of the marriage of industry and animal slaughter. But for me, denying myself meat would be denying myself a part of my humanity.
As for the main article. Freedom of speech means freedom of speech for everybody, even if you disagree. A flash game is not set up to incite a riot. They have a message behind it. I disagree with the message, but they still have the same rights to parody that we all do.
I found the PETA game humorous, though inaccurate. It still gave me and my co workers a good laugh this morning. Thanks peta!
The internet is just a way for people to talk to each other. If you censor "the internet", it is the same as censoring what you can speak to another person. We have this whole thing called the 1st amendment that protects that.
If a parent doesnt want their child on the internet, they shouldn't allow them on it. Case by case. It is the same reason why you don't bring your kid with you to a sex shop. The material should be allowed to be there, and the parents should choose whether it is appropriate for their child or not.
Men have just as much trouble in teaching/day camp type of jobs. I had a friend who was really into helping kids, doing teaching jobs, summer camps, and the like. Except he had to leave the field because there such a giant lack of trust with male teachers working with any female students. Crazy rules had to be applied, and people look at you with super suspicion, as though your every action is trying to be to get your jollys off on little girls, rather then actually trying to make a positive impact in a childs life. It just go too much for my friend, and there were too many risks, one problem kid could fuck up your life for good, he got out of the field. I know female teachers don't have to worry about this nearly as much...
Meh part of the fun is actually killing things. I get itchy when the quests try to be creative sometimes, and I just want to get in, and start shooting things. I love using all the skills of my class, part of the fun, I'm a walking death machine, and enjoy that. There's a lot of variety in how you kill things. Sometimes I do a big aoe pull, sometimes I just cast the same thing on a mob the whole time. Sometimes I CC a bunch of guys and dot them up for shits and giggles. Also, randomness of a pvp server. Last night I had played an elaborate running game from a mage who we were killing back and forth. Was pretty exciting, shifting forms, hoting myself, while trying avoiding agroing mobs, jumpping off cliffs, eventually running underwater and changing to the seal form and sprinting away. Good stuff, very random. I still don't know what to do to survive encounters, wishing I understood the combat mechanics better, and when to use certain skills. When do I run and heal, when do I turn and try to dps someone down, when do I try to be tricky and typhoon breath someone off a bridge. Dunno!
Honestly wow does the best job of most MMO's in focusing you down a quest line. I like to stop and kill things, gives me a reason to be in an area.
But variety... Wow has added some things to the expansions that are somewhat groundbreaking for an MMO, that have had little mention.
Firstly there are vehicles. One early quest has you hopping in a tank thing that has a saw blade on the front that you can use to mow over a ton of guys, or deploy landmines around you and watch them all explode. Another quest had me on the back of a dragon, dropping bombs in a quarry, one of my skills to use was to devourer one of the guys whole to get health back. Another one I dropped boulders down in a canyon with a bunch of giants. One of them I summoned up a dude out of the ocean to talk to him that was about 6 stories tall. I haven't even seen the pvp with vehicle zones.
They have this thing called phasing. Remember all the bullshit "oh, well, you can't affect the world in an mmo?", welp, they did it. Half way through one zone you will have a cinematic play after finishing a quest line, which results in one area of the game completely changing. It will look different to you then it will to other players who have not finished the quest line. If that isn't groundbreaking and new in an mmo, I don't know what is.
But really, what has made the expansion worth it to me, is the art direction of this game. It is so well done in every zone, exploring has been the major highlight. Stopping to smell the roses while I follow a story line that breaths life into the excellent landscapes is even better.
I mean, if wow is boring, you ought to just quit, and let people go on enjoying it. I loved the concept behind guild wars, loved the graphics, loved the avatars, loved a lot of things about it, but something about killing monsters in that, was boring as hell. Dunno what it is, art design, skill mechanics, graphical varity, whatever it was, just bored me out. Hell, I quit wow way back in the day after about 2 months and hitting level cap, snore, on to more fun! I started from scratch 4 years later, and I've been going for about 6 months non stop, they must be doing something right.
I think if your wife is understand and you can explain this to her in a way that won't put her on the defensive, things can work. But I guess it depends on the person. My wife really isn't into wow or gaming too much, will occasionally go "cool" when i show her something, but goes right back to doing her thing while I'm wrapped up in my thing. When I started playing wow, it took away the pause button, which brought up situations like you mentioned, but after we talked it out, she knows when I'm busy raiding that I'll be short with her cause I'm already involved with something else. I mean its like, I play volleyball, and when the ball get served, I'd never see her come running out on the court to tell me something unless it was super important.
But yeah, just like tv etiquette, and sporting event etiquette, wow/gaming etiquette has to be learned. It's easy to walk into the room and know when a tv show is culminating, or the ball is in the air and the game is happening, and wait to talk. It's hard when they come in and have no clue whats going on, even if they can seen the screen, to know that you are busy and not grab at your attention. I had a few problems where I would be stressed, listening to instructions on a boss that I didn't read up on (la la lazy), and I needed to listen for like 5 min, when all of a sudden the wife wants to talk. So I' give her the finger in the air, 1 sec. Then she would stand there and wait to see whats wrong and be upset that I'm shooting her down so fast, which would just result in me getting more agitated that I cant pay attention while i'm frantically waving my hands like give me a second! Resulting in a stupid fight I'm sure we've all had before.
But if you talk it out, you just learn to deal with each other's habits. She knows now that if I do the 1 finger quicky thing that I'm doing something that needs 100% of my attention, then I go get her as soon as I am available to talk, and we talk. If it's a scheduled raid time, she knows I'll be busy for a few hours, and sometimes goes so far as to grab food for me or something, which i'm super grateful for.
This is the same respect I give her if she is on the phone (easily distracted), rapt at the end of a movie, or super into reading on a webpage about something, or just wants to take a nap and be left alone.
I think these moments shouldn't be 100% of the time, cause then why be married, but, understanding what your partner is doing, and that they can't always be at your beck and call, while still being respectful, can go a long way towards making the house a happy place to be. Of coarse, lots of fights have more to do with other crap, then what you are actually fighting about.
Anyway good luck, just posting here to let you know that it can actually work:)
Sweet, I never lived around a botanical garden. I've been to a few, they are neat, but they are small and boring. Flowers, trees, bugs. Snore, they are all over the world. Whilst I would like to afford the couple hundred dollars and have enough vacation time off work to fly to say finland to see real Fjords, or the grand canyon, or any such giant panoramas, I still have an equally exciting moment walking into a game designers vision for the first time when done by talented artists. It's like having a painting you can walk around in. I latterly said out loud "holy shit" when I walked through the barrier into ice crown and stared with my mouth open. I had a moment like this on every new zone I walked into in northrend. I didn't have this moment in outlands or vanilla wow btw. The zones really are something to be seen, even if they aren't real.
A cool experience in my living room to break up the time between work, can't complain about that. Well, you can. I'm just so sorry your vista's are only limited to the ones that exist in the real world. Try enjoying both for once.
Exactly. I always read lots of posts about MoM xyz strat that was broken... I kind of like being able to choose if I want to play the game hard mode, or I want my flying galley's to take over the world. I guess that was part of the fun:)
I used to play turtle boy on an island somewhere, upping my magic/tech until I got warrax, beefed him out in spells, and used him to conquer the world. I think I just liked him as a hero unit for his style, but yeah, lightning bolts of death and solely conquering cities... yeah, that's what its about, fuck the balanced armies they force on us all now a days:)
I've always felt the downfall (for me!) in my enjoyment of wargames has been the increased amount of CPU power available for the games. I played the hell out of civ, Master of Orion, and ESPECIALLY Master of magic. What worked for me, which I think at the time was a lack of "cpu power", was the simplicity of complex systems. The game was always moving forward, I could clearly tell what was going to be good for me or bad for me, and I didn't have to think too much about micromanaging towns.
But the trend has really been to add more and more complex systems to the game, to get closer to modeling the "real thing". I think that is awesome and I definitely know people who love that niche. But for me, I guess I just want to really build up towns, build badass armies, and beat the crap out of everyone while I turn the map my color.
There are few games now a days that fit that cater to the, dare I say it... "casual wargamer" like MOO and MoM did. I think back then it was just tech limitation holding them back, which resulted in a fun, manageable game.
It's rough cause all the things dev's want to add are great ideas, but, for myself at least, I never seem to finish any of the wargames lately. I get to that point where you are a steamroller and it is just a matter of time, then quit, because at that point, the sheer volume of managment that has to take place in a large empire is just a super headache, turns take 10 min, 15 min, more...and between play sessions I forget where I was moving each army, or what town is building what, or what my build path for planet reapy 310 is supposed to be.
Anyway, I think stardock gets all this, and I look forward to elements, as i think they'll take the best parts of all their games and put it in this one (as seems to be their trend).
Haha. I ran home from the store to install it. I played for like 4 hours. Then, I pushed "next turn" to move to turn 2. By turn 3, I turned the game off and uninstalled. Damned bastards.
All of these publishers are searching for alternative pricing schemes lately, trying to turn a greater profit. But the thing is, no amount of clever slicing and dicing of your content will change the fact that good games sell, and shitty games tank. That's it. That's the facts.
It's just like weight loss. Calories in, calories out, bam, end of story, no way to avoid this.
Good game == Good sales. Shitty game == shitty sales.
Not very difficult (except for the coming up with a good game part).
100% with you on that. Maybe they need to come up with a new phrase for their argument fallacy, because begs the question doesn't seem to make sense from my understanding of the word beg.
hat page linked is pretty offensive really. Its like they reserved 3 words, each with individual meanings, used in that order, to act like a single word.
Look up any WORD in the dictionary and it can have several meanings, sometimes nothing to do with one another, completely unrelated. All of a sudden, when I place 3 words together, they MUST MEAN THIS ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY?!?! This makes no sense to me.
Begs the question... That seems like acceptable English to me. It makes sense to me, in that, when I make statement A, it is practically begging me to ask question B. Why am I restricted to just say, "raises" the question, when I would like to use another word to be more descriptive. Raises the question is boring. BEGGING the question has more oomph, and more imagery behind it.
Reading the definition of beg's the question, the fallacy, it is not intuitive at all. I know what "begs" means, I know what a question is, I know how "the" is used, why can't I understand what they meant. Amazing, I have to do something crazy like evaluate the context in which these words were used, to select the proper definition to apply to the combination of words supplied.
Crazy, I know, right?
I guess we can just be happy that a zealot like this is spending his time defending the phrase "begs the question", rather then something else equally stupid that might actually effect my life. Or maybe affect it.
Sure, you can contact them and wait for customer support to figure out what your cd key is, or give you a new one, or you could just spend 5 minutes figuring out the last digit, and play the game you've been trying to install, right now. Mistakes happen, blame the publisher's printing house.
I think there could some great implementations here. If you could do like one of the BMX style games with tricks and stuff, except allow the "go forward" power to come from bike wheels rather then the rest, but have some buttons in there for the tricks. It might result in a lot of start/stop biking, but could be cool.
Another thing, is to just get some really cool virtual worlds going, and network all the bikes up. I could see a gym lan, where the line up of bikes has a bunch of options where you can join in on another bike stations game, and the two or three of you can go riding somewhere. Put a little joystick on the handle so you can steer around, and you can go forward through your own man power. Just give a giant freeform area to explore through your own wheel power. This way instead of watching tv or staring at someone's ass in front of you (granted that may be more entertaining:) ), you can can go virtual bike riding over some crazy scenery, plunge off cliffs, find hidden nooks, and do whatever. Plus you and your friend can pace each other, taking turns drafting, or just trying to keep up with one another. I dunno could add some neat interaction at the gym, or even better, if you could network it up at home.
I think it might have to do with gaming/geek getting more mainstream so it's cool to talk about how I was there first before you, so I know how cool it is, but now I'm totally over that childish stuff and scoff at your frivolous habits!
See, I think we get pleasure from these old games because to some extent is like flipping through a photo album. I can go back and play dragon warrior and love it, even though it is simplistic pile of crap compared to what you can play now a days, but I like it cause it was my first console style RPG.
But take crono trigger, I never got to play it back in the day, and going back to it, I found the graphics pretty bad, and the dialog very simple and short, not having much depth at all. But then I could go back and play secret of mana without problem since it brought back memories (I think its a little bit better of a game). I was also able to get into 7th saga since again I had great memories of playing it while younger, but I can step back and see how it is not that good of a game at all.
But really it just comes down to a good game is a good game. Most of those good games we look back to and really love had ground breaking graphics, as well as great gameplay, which is why we go back to it. I can say for a fact that if you just picked up a game with great gameplay and subpar graphics, you are going to like it, but its not going to live in your head like something that pushes the boundaries in both areas.
I don't always mean pushing pixels too. Just anything with a constantly great art direction is very memorable.
Anyway, my rant got triggerd by the "gameplay over graphics" rant, as I've been seeing that same rant about how games now a days are all graphics and no gameplay. I was reading that back in the day, where the games that were given crap for being all graphics, are now used as the "all gameplay" examples.
Well whatever, I'm sure in 30 years I can quote this post in a thread about how the latest VR games are all graphic and not enough gameplay:)
I think you are making the mistake in thinking that your kids are you, and represent the entire generation. Even their friends and neighborhood kids, don't really represent EVERYBODY.
I mean in general gaming is an 'accepted' hobby in school now. Way back I felt I had to hide it cause it was wierd and dorky. Now the geek thing seems to be "in". That's one landscape difference.
For me, I got so wrapped up in games and books cause I didn't have many friends growing up. I had lots of time to explore every nook and cranny. It could be that your kids have better things to do and want to cooperativly work on something like maria galaxy.
Another thing is it could just be personality too. I honestly thing games that come out now have designs that are much more developed then games of the past. But yeah I mean I got into gaming due to my father, who has a different taste of what he likes in a game. He really really likes exploring games and finding every nook and cranny, for me, I kind do my exploring based on intuition, oh i look a path that leads nowhere, must be a chest at the end here. Oh look at this corner of the map, I haven't been here, they have to have put something down here.
I dunno, I guess it just seems wrong to make sweeping assumptions about changes in gaming and what "kids now a days" like based on just the small subset of kids. I bet you could go out right now and find a kid at your children's school that games just like you did in the past, it might just be that your children are hanging with a different subset of people then you did back in the day.
This exists already. I forget what game though:( I think someone mentioned age of empires... I think another game has it as well, I remember this game style existing for RTS games out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I felt this was one of the better teaser trailers for a games...simply due to the fact that it DOES show gameplay. As was mentioned by one of the replys here, the opening sequence with the wall jump looks very much like a quick time sequence.
The main thing here was that they showed the actual in game engine in action, and not all CGI sequences. With the game so far off, I couldn't expect them to have the actual gameplay ironed out enough to justify a full gameplay video.
Anyway, despite its short length, it is an honest teaser trailer.
What's wrong with running a wheel all the time if you are happy to do so?
I play volleyball at the Y. This is a "safe" activity. You can say this to people and there is nothing wrong with me, and i'm not wasting my life. It's good for me!
I play with the same ~50 people every year in the league. It is rec level. I play 4 games a week. At the end we do a tournament style play off, winning team gets a sweatshirt. I enjoy playing, but my skill level has plateaued, I would need to train or play more then once a week to improve from where I am now.
I could argue that my time at the league is just as wasteful as my time in an MMO, or playing any game for that matter. The score resets at the end of each "season", the teams get rearranged each year, and the last season might not have happened for all the way the gameplay changes.
But I can tell people I play volleyball without them rolling their eyes. I can't seem to say the same thing about playing WoW, even here, among 'geeks', it is still made fun of.
So long as you aren't hurting anyone, what's wrong with having some pointless fun?
Why not just admit that you got sick of the same old bs? By nature people tend to get bored of the same thing day in and day out. Eventually we "wake up" and realize something was pointless. We do this with MMO's, we do this in relationships (cmon how many ex's did you walk away from and say to yourself, wtf was i thinking?), we do this with hobbies.. I'm sure some guy has gotten bored of the same old thing with his guitar and took up mmos.
Variety is what we crave...just, why look back on something that made you happy, with disdain? You were obviously happy enough playing every mmo under the sun for years... why say it was a waste of time? You were having fun!
I took a break from my gaming and did the same thing. I picked up a guitar (its collecting dust now, I should have taken lessons, self taught after 3 months I still couldn't play a song, just a few chords and a scale or two), learned to juggle, took up volleyball (still play), tried yoga, took a tai chi class, a bunch of things.
Lately though I picked up wow again, and trying to figure out how to beat malygos (damn phase 3), and took a break on those other things.
I imagine I'll pick up a lot of those things when I have kids and less free time (alllmost time to start that /hides) But besides the health benefits of the few things (need to do those more often :) ), I am still just as happy... just make sure you are doing what makes you happy, even if that is just running on hamster wheels.
Before savage was "Allegiance" a rts / space flight combat game with an enormous learning curve. I believe allegiance is also freeware and is worth taking a look at if you like that style of game.
Sons is a big slap in the face :) But if you don't really want the small upgrade the shoulder enchants provide, you can check out the exalted aldor or scryer shoulders, which are essentially the same as the honored stuff, and much cheaper to boot. I think it will otherwise take you 28 days of dailies without picking up the everfrost chips to hit exalted. Blach.
Hey, way to go on having a healthy relationship. It seems very rare sometimes for people to respect each others opinions like that. I'm uh, I guess agnostic, vs my wive being catholic. We've never had an argument, and when one of us speaks about religion, we both listen, and take everything the other says as fact. It works fine. Should be interesting when we have kids though, I'll check back then with you haha. But anyway, just thought I would post my support of like, good couple thinking :)
It is so interesting how we cal all view the world differently. I am guessing from your posts that you were raised in a household where the idea of eating animals was a morally wrong choice, and have wrestled with it morally in your life. I think because of that, you tend to believe that other people do things like "reduce the problem to opinion" and what not because it is too difficult of a choice for them. Maybe, if they grew up in your area, with similar backgrounds this is true, but for many others, this is a non issue. Or, the issue is completely different then anything we might even thing. People's brains just work differently.
Similar, but different. I'm of a firm mind that what we see in other people, is often a reflection of ourselves and is very telling of how we/I view the world.
For myself, with the "issue" of animal consumption, to me it seems a perfectly natural thing to do. Perhaps the problem really is the increased efficiency of an industrial nation in terms of slaughtering large quantities of animals, growing them in smaller areas to save cash. If we all had to grow our own chickens, and slaughter them before cooking, we would probably have a much healthier respect for our food chain and where it came from, of that I agree. I also believe that were such the case I would have no problem slitting a turkey's throat and cleaning it for thanksgiving day. Growing up with something, it would be pretty normal, and the idea of it being a moral choice would probably not enter our brains.
Being able vegetarian is just a luxury of living in a rich nation. I know for a fact there are many impoverished countries where if you refused to eat meat, you would probably be dead do to food scarcity.
For me, I can understand it being a difficult thing to think of the marriage of industry and animal slaughter. But for me, denying myself meat would be denying myself a part of my humanity.
As for the main article. Freedom of speech means freedom of speech for everybody, even if you disagree. A flash game is not set up to incite a riot. They have a message behind it. I disagree with the message, but they still have the same rights to parody that we all do.
I found the PETA game humorous, though inaccurate. It still gave me and my co workers a good laugh this morning. Thanks peta!
The internet is just a way for people to talk to each other. If you censor "the internet", it is the same as censoring what you can speak to another person. We have this whole thing called the 1st amendment that protects that.
If a parent doesnt want their child on the internet, they shouldn't allow them on it. Case by case. It is the same reason why you don't bring your kid with you to a sex shop. The material should be allowed to be there, and the parents should choose whether it is appropriate for their child or not.
There is no such thing as "reasonable" censoring.
Men have just as much trouble in teaching/day camp type of jobs. I had a friend who was really into helping kids, doing teaching jobs, summer camps, and the like. Except he had to leave the field because there such a giant lack of trust with male teachers working with any female students. Crazy rules had to be applied, and people look at you with super suspicion, as though your every action is trying to be to get your jollys off on little girls, rather then actually trying to make a positive impact in a childs life. It just go too much for my friend, and there were too many risks, one problem kid could fuck up your life for good, he got out of the field. I know female teachers don't have to worry about this nearly as much...
Meh part of the fun is actually killing things. I get itchy when the quests try to be creative sometimes, and I just want to get in, and start shooting things. I love using all the skills of my class, part of the fun, I'm a walking death machine, and enjoy that. There's a lot of variety in how you kill things. Sometimes I do a big aoe pull, sometimes I just cast the same thing on a mob the whole time. Sometimes I CC a bunch of guys and dot them up for shits and giggles. Also, randomness of a pvp server. Last night I had played an elaborate running game from a mage who we were killing back and forth. Was pretty exciting, shifting forms, hoting myself, while trying avoiding agroing mobs, jumpping off cliffs, eventually running underwater and changing to the seal form and sprinting away. Good stuff, very random. I still don't know what to do to survive encounters, wishing I understood the combat mechanics better, and when to use certain skills. When do I run and heal, when do I turn and try to dps someone down, when do I try to be tricky and typhoon breath someone off a bridge. Dunno!
Honestly wow does the best job of most MMO's in focusing you down a quest line. I like to stop and kill things, gives me a reason to be in an area.
But variety... Wow has added some things to the expansions that are somewhat groundbreaking for an MMO, that have had little mention.
Firstly there are vehicles. One early quest has you hopping in a tank thing that has a saw blade on the front that you can use to mow over a ton of guys, or deploy landmines around you and watch them all explode. Another quest had me on the back of a dragon, dropping bombs in a quarry, one of my skills to use was to devourer one of the guys whole to get health back. Another one I dropped boulders down in a canyon with a bunch of giants. One of them I summoned up a dude out of the ocean to talk to him that was about 6 stories tall. I haven't even seen the pvp with vehicle zones.
They have this thing called phasing. Remember all the bullshit "oh, well, you can't affect the world in an mmo?", welp, they did it. Half way through one zone you will have a cinematic play after finishing a quest line, which results in one area of the game completely changing. It will look different to you then it will to other players who have not finished the quest line. If that isn't groundbreaking and new in an mmo, I don't know what is.
But really, what has made the expansion worth it to me, is the art direction of this game. It is so well done in every zone, exploring has been the major highlight. Stopping to smell the roses while I follow a story line that breaths life into the excellent landscapes is even better.
I mean, if wow is boring, you ought to just quit, and let people go on enjoying it. I loved the concept behind guild wars, loved the graphics, loved the avatars, loved a lot of things about it, but something about killing monsters in that, was boring as hell. Dunno what it is, art design, skill mechanics, graphical varity, whatever it was, just bored me out. Hell, I quit wow way back in the day after about 2 months and hitting level cap, snore, on to more fun! I started from scratch 4 years later, and I've been going for about 6 months non stop, they must be doing something right.
I think if your wife is understand and you can explain this to her in a way that won't put her on the defensive, things can work. But I guess it depends on the person. My wife really isn't into wow or gaming too much, will occasionally go "cool" when i show her something, but goes right back to doing her thing while I'm wrapped up in my thing. When I started playing wow, it took away the pause button, which brought up situations like you mentioned, but after we talked it out, she knows when I'm busy raiding that I'll be short with her cause I'm already involved with something else. I mean its like, I play volleyball, and when the ball get served, I'd never see her come running out on the court to tell me something unless it was super important.
But yeah, just like tv etiquette, and sporting event etiquette, wow/gaming etiquette has to be learned. It's easy to walk into the room and know when a tv show is culminating, or the ball is in the air and the game is happening, and wait to talk. It's hard when they come in and have no clue whats going on, even if they can seen the screen, to know that you are busy and not grab at your attention. I had a few problems where I would be stressed, listening to instructions on a boss that I didn't read up on (la la lazy), and I needed to listen for like 5 min, when all of a sudden the wife wants to talk. So I' give her the finger in the air, 1 sec. Then she would stand there and wait to see whats wrong and be upset that I'm shooting her down so fast, which would just result in me getting more agitated that I cant pay attention while i'm frantically waving my hands like give me a second! Resulting in a stupid fight I'm sure we've all had before.
But if you talk it out, you just learn to deal with each other's habits. She knows now that if I do the 1 finger quicky thing that I'm doing something that needs 100% of my attention, then I go get her as soon as I am available to talk, and we talk. If it's a scheduled raid time, she knows I'll be busy for a few hours, and sometimes goes so far as to grab food for me or something, which i'm super grateful for.
This is the same respect I give her if she is on the phone (easily distracted), rapt at the end of a movie, or super into reading on a webpage about something, or just wants to take a nap and be left alone.
I think these moments shouldn't be 100% of the time, cause then why be married, but, understanding what your partner is doing, and that they can't always be at your beck and call, while still being respectful, can go a long way towards making the house a happy place to be. Of coarse, lots of fights have more to do with other crap, then what you are actually fighting about.
Anyway good luck, just posting here to let you know that it can actually work :)
Sweet, I never lived around a botanical garden. I've been to a few, they are neat, but they are small and boring. Flowers, trees, bugs. Snore, they are all over the world. Whilst I would like to afford the couple hundred dollars and have enough vacation time off work to fly to say finland to see real Fjords, or the grand canyon, or any such giant panoramas, I still have an equally exciting moment walking into a game designers vision for the first time when done by talented artists. It's like having a painting you can walk around in. I latterly said out loud "holy shit" when I walked through the barrier into ice crown and stared with my mouth open. I had a moment like this on every new zone I walked into in northrend. I didn't have this moment in outlands or vanilla wow btw. The zones really are something to be seen, even if they aren't real.
A cool experience in my living room to break up the time between work, can't complain about that. Well, you can. I'm just so sorry your vista's are only limited to the ones that exist in the real world. Try enjoying both for once.
Exactly. I always read lots of posts about MoM xyz strat that was broken... I kind of like being able to choose if I want to play the game hard mode, or I want my flying galley's to take over the world. I guess that was part of the fun :)
I used to play turtle boy on an island somewhere, upping my magic/tech until I got warrax, beefed him out in spells, and used him to conquer the world. I think I just liked him as a hero unit for his style, but yeah, lightning bolts of death and solely conquering cities... yeah, that's what its about, fuck the balanced armies they force on us all now a days :)
I've always felt the downfall (for me!) in my enjoyment of wargames has been the increased amount of CPU power available for the games. I played the hell out of civ, Master of Orion, and ESPECIALLY Master of magic. What worked for me, which I think at the time was a lack of "cpu power", was the simplicity of complex systems. The game was always moving forward, I could clearly tell what was going to be good for me or bad for me, and I didn't have to think too much about micromanaging towns.
But the trend has really been to add more and more complex systems to the game, to get closer to modeling the "real thing". I think that is awesome and I definitely know people who love that niche. But for me, I guess I just want to really build up towns, build badass armies, and beat the crap out of everyone while I turn the map my color.
There are few games now a days that fit that cater to the, dare I say it... "casual wargamer" like MOO and MoM did. I think back then it was just tech limitation holding them back, which resulted in a fun, manageable game.
It's rough cause all the things dev's want to add are great ideas, but, for myself at least, I never seem to finish any of the wargames lately. I get to that point where you are a steamroller and it is just a matter of time, then quit, because at that point, the sheer volume of managment that has to take place in a large empire is just a super headache, turns take 10 min, 15 min, more...and between play sessions I forget where I was moving each army, or what town is building what, or what my build path for planet reapy 310 is supposed to be.
Anyway, I think stardock gets all this, and I look forward to elements, as i think they'll take the best parts of all their games and put it in this one (as seems to be their trend).
Haha. I ran home from the store to install it. I played for like 4 hours. Then, I pushed "next turn" to move to turn 2. By turn 3, I turned the game off and uninstalled. Damned bastards.
All of these publishers are searching for alternative pricing schemes lately, trying to turn a greater profit. But the thing is, no amount of clever slicing and dicing of your content will change the fact that good games sell, and shitty games tank. That's it. That's the facts.
It's just like weight loss. Calories in, calories out, bam, end of story, no way to avoid this.
Good game == Good sales.
Shitty game == shitty sales.
Not very difficult (except for the coming up with a good game part).
100% with you on that. Maybe they need to come up with a new phrase for their argument fallacy, because begs the question doesn't seem to make sense from my understanding of the word beg.
hat page linked is pretty offensive really. Its like they reserved 3 words, each with individual meanings, used in that order, to act like a single word.
Look up any WORD in the dictionary and it can have several meanings, sometimes nothing to do with one another, completely unrelated. All of a sudden, when I place 3 words together, they MUST MEAN THIS ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY?!?! This makes no sense to me.
Begs the question... That seems like acceptable English to me. It makes sense to me, in that, when I make statement A, it is practically begging me to ask question B. Why am I restricted to just say, "raises" the question, when I would like to use another word to be more descriptive. Raises the question is boring. BEGGING the question has more oomph, and more imagery behind it.
Reading the definition of beg's the question, the fallacy, it is not intuitive at all. I know what "begs" means, I know what a question is, I know how "the" is used, why can't I understand what they meant. Amazing, I have to do something crazy like evaluate the context in which these words were used, to select the proper definition to apply to the combination of words supplied.
Crazy, I know, right?
I guess we can just be happy that a zealot like this is spending his time defending the phrase "begs the question", rather then something else equally stupid that might actually effect my life. Or maybe affect it.
Two things that'll never go away.
Hrm, several years ago on the GC I did chop down every tree in my town. I wonder if they grew back... :)
Sure, you can contact them and wait for customer support to figure out what your cd key is, or give you a new one, or you could just spend 5 minutes figuring out the last digit, and play the game you've been trying to install, right now. Mistakes happen, blame the publisher's printing house.
I think there could some great implementations here. If you could do like one of the BMX style games with tricks and stuff, except allow the "go forward" power to come from bike wheels rather then the rest, but have some buttons in there for the tricks. It might result in a lot of start/stop biking, but could be cool.
Another thing, is to just get some really cool virtual worlds going, and network all the bikes up. I could see a gym lan, where the line up of bikes has a bunch of options where you can join in on another bike stations game, and the two or three of you can go riding somewhere. Put a little joystick on the handle so you can steer around, and you can go forward through your own man power. Just give a giant freeform area to explore through your own wheel power. This way instead of watching tv or staring at someone's ass in front of you (granted that may be more entertaining :) ), you can can go virtual bike riding over some crazy scenery, plunge off cliffs, find hidden nooks, and do whatever. Plus you and your friend can pace each other, taking turns drafting, or just trying to keep up with one another. I dunno could add some neat interaction at the gym, or even better, if you could network it up at home.
Yes all too true :)
I think it might have to do with gaming/geek getting more mainstream so it's cool to talk about how I was there first before you, so I know how cool it is, but now I'm totally over that childish stuff and scoff at your frivolous habits!
See, I think we get pleasure from these old games because to some extent is like flipping through a photo album. I can go back and play dragon warrior and love it, even though it is simplistic pile of crap compared to what you can play now a days, but I like it cause it was my first console style RPG.
But take crono trigger, I never got to play it back in the day, and going back to it, I found the graphics pretty bad, and the dialog very simple and short, not having much depth at all. But then I could go back and play secret of mana without problem since it brought back memories (I think its a little bit better of a game). I was also able to get into 7th saga since again I had great memories of playing it while younger, but I can step back and see how it is not that good of a game at all.
But really it just comes down to a good game is a good game. Most of those good games we look back to and really love had ground breaking graphics, as well as great gameplay, which is why we go back to it. I can say for a fact that if you just picked up a game with great gameplay and subpar graphics, you are going to like it, but its not going to live in your head like something that pushes the boundaries in both areas.
I don't always mean pushing pixels too. Just anything with a constantly great art direction is very memorable.
Anyway, my rant got triggerd by the "gameplay over graphics" rant, as I've been seeing that same rant about how games now a days are all graphics and no gameplay. I was reading that back in the day, where the games that were given crap for being all graphics, are now used as the "all gameplay" examples.
Well whatever, I'm sure in 30 years I can quote this post in a thread about how the latest VR games are all graphic and not enough gameplay :)
I think you are making the mistake in thinking that your kids are you, and represent the entire generation. Even their friends and neighborhood kids, don't really represent EVERYBODY.
I mean in general gaming is an 'accepted' hobby in school now. Way back I felt I had to hide it cause it was wierd and dorky. Now the geek thing seems to be "in". That's one landscape difference.
For me, I got so wrapped up in games and books cause I didn't have many friends growing up. I had lots of time to explore every nook and cranny. It could be that your kids have better things to do and want to cooperativly work on something like maria galaxy.
Another thing is it could just be personality too. I honestly thing games that come out now have designs that are much more developed then games of the past. But yeah I mean I got into gaming due to my father, who has a different taste of what he likes in a game. He really really likes exploring games and finding every nook and cranny, for me, I kind do my exploring based on intuition, oh i look a path that leads nowhere, must be a chest at the end here. Oh look at this corner of the map, I haven't been here, they have to have put something down here.
I dunno, I guess it just seems wrong to make sweeping assumptions about changes in gaming and what "kids now a days" like based on just the small subset of kids. I bet you could go out right now and find a kid at your children's school that games just like you did in the past, it might just be that your children are hanging with a different subset of people then you did back in the day.
This exists already. I forget what game though :( I think someone mentioned age of empires... I think another game has it as well, I remember this game style existing for RTS games out there.