Re:can anyone tell me a single compelling reason..
on
Longhorn Beta Begins
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· Score: 1
Come now. Because Microsoft tells them they do.
It't not as if that's different from any industry in the world. You need very little, but companies tell you you need very much. It's how capitalism works.
Not all those areas are bannable, mind you and everybody. The areas that are simply 'out of the way' like the ones you have to swim to are fine.
I also believe that they don't care about the airport, either, even though you do need to use a little trick to get there. (No mobs, and anybody that pays attention on their gryphon rides already knows it exists.) I'm just wondering if they ever plan to make it easily accessible, and put useful stuff there. Though...if I remember right, there's a trainer of some kind there already. Heh. Walking near the dancing couple.
I think stuff like that is just an easter egg. Like the quest that you can get by repeatedly clucking at a chicken that ultimately leads to a pet chicken of your own.
By the way..."PVP Instance #3", by the description you gave, sounds exactly like Warsong Gulch...
And I'm hoping Outland is more than just an instance.
A while back people got banned for going into unfinished areas, and exploiting them for benefit. It wasn't sinply being in the areas that was the problem, not really, it was the mobs they had put there. (Though there was certainly never any question that they didn't want people in the given areas. Giant mobs called "Guardians of Blizzard" that can kill you by looking at you are a good clue.)
I don't think any of them are actually exploitable anymore, though I could be wrong.
I don't know about market saturation. Myabe if people were smarter. Heh. But I really have to agree on the profit side. While I don't expectto see them on top in sales, I don't expect to see them as far behind as the GameCube is, and as far as I can tell the GameCube is already a fairly close second in total profitability.
Here's what I think. This is a generalization. I think it's true in many/most cases. Not all.
I don't think games now are inherently better or worse than they used to be. I think they're different, and that's the key. People really don't like change. They can say they want innovation, but they'll always long for "the way things were back in my day." I think if you took a newer gamer and showed him older games, assuming he wasn't the type to say "Graphics suck, not trying it," he wouldn't like the gameplay as much as a person that grew up woth that game might expect him to. Those old games are not what good games are to him, the things that he sees as fun have been defined by the latest generation. Just like the things many older people see as fun were defined by older generations.
Fun is a subjective word, people. Some people think cutting themselves is fun. Some people think cutting OTHER people is fun. Likewise, some people like their games hard, with a minimal story, and graphics that keep your imagination running a bit. Others like games that are easier, more story-driven, and use graphics to keep them immersed.
The truth is, if you're an older gamer, just about everything being made these days is "Not For You." The games aren't bad (well, a lot of it is, but that's not new), they'rs just not your type of game. (I don't like FPS games much, I only like a very few, but that doesn't lead me to say that they're all bad.) A lot of people don't see the distinction there, and they'll claim that it's possible to objectively state that being story driven, or easy (with quicksaves!) is a bad thing. No it isn't. Lots of people like it, and have much more fun with those things than they'd have without them.
You realize that they're a business, right? Out to make money? An expansion is just a really, really big patch that you have to pay for. If the original game has imperfections, then that makes the expansion (which contains improvements, you realize) more desirable.
Anyway, even if the Blizzard expansion pack was just a bunch of new zones, that would still be good to have at any time. There are lots of players (though I'm not one of these) whose biggest 'problem' with the game is that they've run out of content.
System Shock is an amazing candidate for a movie. (Also, best FPS ever.) I read an online novel loosely based on it (twice) that, I think, really shows how great a script could be.
It's called Free Radical, by Shamus Young, and I won't link to it anywhere on Slashdot. Google is a useful tool.
She does do the Wednesday Addams thing very well, sure, so she gets called on to do it a lot. And I can't pretend I'm some kind of Christina Ricci expert or anything, I've only seen at most five movies with her in them, but she isn't ALWAYS like that.
I seriously doubt they're profiting on these little machines. Not that that's new for them, of course.
But what IS new to Sony is not having a massive game library. How do you make up losses on system sales when you hardly have any games worth the effort it takes to lift the UMD?
Anyway, arrogant, arrogant, etc., their lies killed Sega, etc.
I'm not denying the existence of problems, but I have characters on four servers and never have any problems. I never have queues or even enough lag that in annoys me.
When you look at the massive number of players, and compare it to the number of people complaining, then it should become obvious that the issues are not as major (certainly not as universal!) as they make them out to be. The vast majority of players have been coasting along, infrastructure-related-problem-free, basically since launch -- though, even since then, great improvements have been made for everybody.
Okay, I play on Arthas. High-pop, but one of the more balanced in numbers.
Every new patch the game becomes more and more laggy. I'm playing on a mid-high population server , and I just dont go to Ironforge to avoid the lag. The mail everywhere takes like 10 seconds to open, and like 10-20 seconds to detach an item. Trying to use the AH is almost pointless and require a lot of patience.
Here, I don't know what you're talking about, honestly. I get mail in two or three seconds during primetime. I actually haven't seen AH lag for months.
Battlegrounds have 6-8 hours queue for alliance (Blizzard said that all servers were balanced, bullshit).
It's not just about the total balance actually. There are other factors that come into play. Example...my current favorite character is a low-level priest, so I play a lot of CTF. Despite the fact that my server does have more Alliance, I have been outnumbered by at least 2 (and usually more) in all but 1 of my 14 games. Location matters, as well.
On weekends I have 10-15 minutes of queue to join the server.
Mid-high pop, you say? I don't think so. Last time I saw a queue was in November.
Suppose the lower standard does bring more 3rd parties aboard (btw, Nintendo has stated their strategy is to keep game budgets from skyrocketing...) which would hurt Nintendo more: Fussy HDTV owners, or not as many games? They may very well be ceding one market but they may also be expanding another. Strategy.
It isn't simply shifting their market, it's shifting it away from the one being targetted by their major competitors. That means that even if the market stays the same size, they still get more sales. (Probably.)
I do doubt that Microsoft is going to allow a retail shortage to occur.
I wouldn't be surprised. It sure as hell worked for the PS2. More importantly, at the beginning they almost don't want to sell that many units. You need the systems out there so you can sell the games of course, and the more systems you have out in the wild, the easier it is to get games made.
However, Microsoft, like Sony, needs to balance this need with the desire to not piss millions of dollars away. You can be sure that they're going to sell these things at a loss. You can be equally sure that as time goes on, that loss will decrease.
Because they're launching way ahead of their competition, they don't need to have an explosion of users. It's just not necessary. A better solution would be slow(er) but steady sales. The marketshare doesn't become too important until the competition launches, so why lose more money than you need to in the meantime?
In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if actually failing to meet demand helps them sell more systems in the long run. Citing sales numbers is pretty meaningless. When you have no other numbers to compare it to, nobody knows what those numbers mean. But saying "We can't keep up with this demand!" is something everybody understands to mean that people want the system.
I'm not a businessman or accountant, but in the case of a product that's initially sold at a loss, I think it's quite possible for intentionally missing demand to be a smart move.
Slashdot Mirror
Come now. Because Microsoft tells them they do.
It't not as if that's different from any industry in the world. You need very little, but companies tell you you need very much. It's how capitalism works.
While calling people using windows slaves is childish, ignoring these issue isn't exactly mature either.
Bitching about it on a web site where everybody will validate your opinions for you, on the other hand...
My $120 9600XT is still running wonderfully. Maybe in two or three years, I'll spend another $120.
Not all those areas are bannable, mind you and everybody. The areas that are simply 'out of the way' like the ones you have to swim to are fine.
I also believe that they don't care about the airport, either, even though you do need to use a little trick to get there. (No mobs, and anybody that pays attention on their gryphon rides already knows it exists.) I'm just wondering if they ever plan to make it easily accessible, and put useful stuff there. Though...if I remember right, there's a trainer of some kind there already. Heh. Walking near the dancing couple.
I think stuff like that is just an easter egg. Like the quest that you can get by repeatedly clucking at a chicken that ultimately leads to a pet chicken of your own.
By the way..."PVP Instance #3", by the description you gave, sounds exactly like Warsong Gulch...
And I'm hoping Outland is more than just an instance.
A while back people got banned for going into unfinished areas, and exploiting them for benefit. It wasn't sinply being in the areas that was the problem, not really, it was the mobs they had put there. (Though there was certainly never any question that they didn't want people in the given areas. Giant mobs called "Guardians of Blizzard" that can kill you by looking at you are a good clue.)
I don't think any of them are actually exploitable anymore, though I could be wrong.
I don't know about market saturation. Myabe if people were smarter. Heh. But I really have to agree on the profit side. While I don't expectto see them on top in sales, I don't expect to see them as far behind as the GameCube is, and as far as I can tell the GameCube is already a fairly close second in total profitability.
Except that the console maker only gets a small percentage of most games' sales revenue...
Here's what I think. This is a generalization. I think it's true in many/most cases. Not all.
I don't think games now are inherently better or worse than they used to be. I think they're different, and that's the key. People really don't like change. They can say they want innovation, but they'll always long for "the way things were back in my day." I think if you took a newer gamer and showed him older games, assuming he wasn't the type to say "Graphics suck, not trying it," he wouldn't like the gameplay as much as a person that grew up woth that game might expect him to. Those old games are not what good games are to him, the things that he sees as fun have been defined by the latest generation. Just like the things many older people see as fun were defined by older generations.
Fun is a subjective word, people. Some people think cutting themselves is fun. Some people think cutting OTHER people is fun. Likewise, some people like their games hard, with a minimal story, and graphics that keep your imagination running a bit. Others like games that are easier, more story-driven, and use graphics to keep them immersed.
The truth is, if you're an older gamer, just about everything being made these days is "Not For You." The games aren't bad (well, a lot of it is, but that's not new), they'rs just not your type of game. (I don't like FPS games much, I only like a very few, but that doesn't lead me to say that they're all bad.) A lot of people don't see the distinction there, and they'll claim that it's possible to objectively state that being story driven, or easy (with quicksaves!) is a bad thing. No it isn't. Lots of people like it, and have much more fun with those things than they'd have without them.
I'm wondering why my house seems to be blurred out, while all the other houses around mine are clear.
Am I that ugly? Really?
Well, the plural form is often used with decimals, even if the number is less than 1.
0.9 hundreds.
Meanwhile, my dick is hundreds of feet long.
Come now.
I think it's safe to say that every single time that somebody ran over hundreds of pedestrians in an outing, it was because of Carmageddon.
If it isn't about profit, then it isn't a business plan, and so isn't relevant.
"Point being." is not a sentence.
You realize that they're a business, right? Out to make money? An expansion is just a really, really big patch that you have to pay for. If the original game has imperfections, then that makes the expansion (which contains improvements, you realize) more desirable.
Anyway, even if the Blizzard expansion pack was just a bunch of new zones, that would still be good to have at any time. There are lots of players (though I'm not one of these) whose biggest 'problem' with the game is that they've run out of content.
System Shock is an amazing candidate for a movie. (Also, best FPS ever.) I read an online novel loosely based on it (twice) that, I think, really shows how great a script could be.
It's called Free Radical, by Shamus Young, and I won't link to it anywhere on Slashdot. Google is a useful tool.
Hey, now. I liked Resident Evil.
But...yeah, okay, that's the only one.
GO to IMDB and look at the headshot they have on her page. Actually, hell, here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000207/
Tell me that isn't freaking perfect.
She does do the Wednesday Addams thing very well, sure, so she gets called on to do it a lot. And I can't pretend I'm some kind of Christina Ricci expert or anything, I've only seen at most five movies with her in them, but she isn't ALWAYS like that.
Maybe they're just losing money like crazy.
I seriously doubt they're profiting on these little machines. Not that that's new for them, of course.
But what IS new to Sony is not having a massive game library. How do you make up losses on system sales when you hardly have any games worth the effort it takes to lift the UMD?
Anyway, arrogant, arrogant, etc., their lies killed Sega, etc.
Why the smiley face?
I'm not denying the existence of problems, but I have characters on four servers and never have any problems. I never have queues or even enough lag that in annoys me.
When you look at the massive number of players, and compare it to the number of people complaining, then it should become obvious that the issues are not as major (certainly not as universal!) as they make them out to be. The vast majority of players have been coasting along, infrastructure-related-problem-free, basically since launch -- though, even since then, great improvements have been made for everybody.
Okay, I play on Arthas. High-pop, but one of the more balanced in numbers.
Every new patch the game becomes more and more laggy. I'm playing on a mid-high population server , and I just dont go to Ironforge to avoid the lag. The mail everywhere takes like 10 seconds to open, and like 10-20 seconds to detach an item. Trying to use the AH is almost pointless and require a lot of patience.
Here, I don't know what you're talking about, honestly. I get mail in two or three seconds during primetime. I actually haven't seen AH lag for months.
Battlegrounds have 6-8 hours queue for alliance (Blizzard said that all servers were balanced, bullshit).
It's not just about the total balance actually. There are other factors that come into play. Example...my current favorite character is a low-level priest, so I play a lot of CTF. Despite the fact that my server does have more Alliance, I have been outnumbered by at least 2 (and usually more) in all but 1 of my 14 games. Location matters, as well.
On weekends I have 10-15 minutes of queue to join the server.
Mid-high pop, you say? I don't think so. Last time I saw a queue was in November.
Why is it that Nintendo ignores obvious trends in gaming, only to come up with their own arrogant and ultimately useless "innovation"?
I'm not sure! It's crazy! Maybe it's because they make almost twice as much money as the people that do it your way. I don't know.
Suppose the lower standard does bring more 3rd parties aboard (btw, Nintendo has stated their strategy is to keep game budgets from skyrocketing...) which would hurt Nintendo more: Fussy HDTV owners, or not as many games? They may very well be ceding one market but they may also be expanding another. Strategy.
It isn't simply shifting their market, it's shifting it away from the one being targetted by their major competitors. That means that even if the market stays the same size, they still get more sales. (Probably.)
Whoa, hold up. You expect them to profit on the hardware? I don't think so.
I do doubt that Microsoft is going to allow a retail shortage to occur.
I wouldn't be surprised. It sure as hell worked for the PS2. More importantly, at the beginning they almost don't want to sell that many units. You need the systems out there so you can sell the games of course, and the more systems you have out in the wild, the easier it is to get games made.
However, Microsoft, like Sony, needs to balance this need with the desire to not piss millions of dollars away. You can be sure that they're going to sell these things at a loss. You can be equally sure that as time goes on, that loss will decrease.
Because they're launching way ahead of their competition, they don't need to have an explosion of users. It's just not necessary. A better solution would be slow(er) but steady sales. The marketshare doesn't become too important until the competition launches, so why lose more money than you need to in the meantime?
In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if actually failing to meet demand helps them sell more systems in the long run. Citing sales numbers is pretty meaningless. When you have no other numbers to compare it to, nobody knows what those numbers mean. But saying "We can't keep up with this demand!" is something everybody understands to mean that people want the system.
I'm not a businessman or accountant, but in the case of a product that's initially sold at a loss, I think it's quite possible for intentionally missing demand to be a smart move.