Of course, because it's all 3d and the models are all so high-polygon, most computers can't even handle the small amount of troops already. I have to imagine that's why the caps are in place.
What really happened is that a bunch of 14 year olds hammered every gaming message board on the internet going "this sux not even 3d wtf bs" and Blizzard got cold feet. Which is really sad, because I was absolutely salivating over that game. But, the 14 year olds have spoken, and a game that isn't 3d isn't worth making.
I have them to thank for the piece of crap that Warcraft III became. Every time I build up to full food capacity and run my little band (you can't rightly call anything in warcraft III an army, or even a squad) up against their little band, and watch my computer try to keep up, I think back to having dozens of soldiers and tanks running down scores of zerg and I weep.
God, I wish I could've played Warcraft Adventures. Forget bnetd, I'm bitter with Blizzard about THAT.
I think that was the whole fuss companies had about people selling stuff on eBay. They wanted a piece of that action. It only makes good business sense. Get them hooked on a game, then sell them for stuff in the game that is meaningless once you log off but still has value to you. It's like a drug dealer; the first one's free.
I don't see why something like this would have people in such an uproar. I've played a few of these games and it seems like the whole fun in them is starting from scratch and building your character up, making all the decisions that go into it. If someone wants to pay a premium to skip that whole aspect of the game, which to me skips a big chunk of the fun in having the game, they're more than welcome to do it. They'll hear no complaints from me.
They're paying to lose out on fun. I think the uproar begs the bigger question, though. If the process of leveling up and getting to that stage is so un-fun that people are willing to pay a premium for it, and people who don't pay for it consider themselves cheated for having to make their characters from scratch, why the hell are we doing it? It's a game. It's supposed to be recreation, not a chore.
Of course, I think the real objection is the competitive aspect of the game. A lot of gamers get off on how many people they're better than on the server, and the sense of accomplishment in being better. Well, where does that line get drawn? I can start off by saying if I had my hand-crafted character trashed by someone fresh out of the box, I'd be a little miffed. However, I know that when I have characters on these games, sometimes I get help from others either via getting cash donations, spell buffs, power leveling, and so on. This is "cheating" too, and it seems like it would diminish that sense of accomplishment in the same way, but I don't hear many people crying foul over that. The people who do, are hardcore gamers who are likely to be much stronger than these pre-packaged "powerful" characters anyway.
But, back to my first point. Buying a pre-made powerful character, to me, takes away the whole point of the game. However, if people want to pay to do that, more power to them. There's always going to be someone more powerful than you on the game - the fun is found in the journey, not the destination. But, that's just my opinion. I feel the same way about people who use hacks or exploits.
So instead, people block out reality in order to play these games? Letting themselves get sucked into a world that will never exist so they can satisfy the delusions of grandeur instead of finding real life activities that are more fun?
Some people block out reality, but they're the minority, not the majority. The issue isn't the video game. The issue is an addictive personality. If it weren't for Dark Age or Everquest, they would probably be parked in front of their TV, or off somewhere drinking, or locked in some unhealthy co-dependent relationship (which some sadly think is "more" healthy than a video game somehow), or compulsively checking slashdot posts all day, every day. It's like saying that TV causes violence. It's a false cause and effect chain.
I also don't understand why playing a video game is any less of a "real world" activity than reading a book or watching TV.
When you get to high levels in EQ, people spend 4 hours waiting for a monster and spend the time chatting. How is that stimulating the mind much past finding creative ways to misspell "your"?
I've never reached a high level in EQ, or any other massively multiplayer game. Most people who play them don't. I don't know how the dynamics of the game change becuase of a high level, but if you need to be addicted to get one, only addicted people will get it. Read above.
Funny you should mention that. I usually work about 80 hours a week. I still find a few hours a day to have a social life. I don't sleep much, it suits me just fine. I don't need more sleep than what I get. The difference is I love my job. My job is 30% social, 10% walking around talking to myself about some problem, and 60% in front of a computer. I love it.
I'm happy you like your job. I'd hate a job working 80 hours a week. Even if it were filming pornos. I'm not trying to attack your job. I'm just saying that people can be happy and successful without working 80 hours a week, and that affords us more time to kill (I think activities that "kill time" aren't necessarily bad, they recharge your batteries - and some of us need our batteries recharged a little more than you seem to, and there's nothing wrong with that either). I code for a living too and I get sick of it by the end of the day. I'm fuckin' READY to do something mindless. I want more of a life outside of work, and for me part of that lifestyle includes some time to play video games.
I fail to see how finding good ways to kill an imaginary creature carries on into real life. Most people that play those games suffer from losing real life skills.
It carries on to real life no more and no less than picking up a novel and reading about imaginary people. Yet, people say reading stimulates your mind. There are many choices involved in playing these games - who to group with, how to develop your character, where to travel, whether to power level, PVP, explore, and so on. If you have something against video games that's fine, but you can't think it any worse than people who spend 6 or more hours a day watching TV, can you?
We play them because we have overactive imaginations, because we want to do things that we can't do in normal life. We want to cast spells. We want to fight dragons. We want to raid keeps and steal relics. We can't do this in real life, no matter how many friends we have, how many sports we play, and how hot our girlfriend is.
Not to sling stereotypes of my own, but I'll tell you a funny observation *I've* noticed... The people who can't stop talking about how hot their girlfriends are and how having sex with them is better than playing any video game ever are usually people who haven't had that much sex and for whom the whole act is new and amazing. Good recreation stimulates the mind, the body, or both. I think people find that playing these big RPGs, developing alter-egos, suspending their disbelief, and interacting with other like-minded people does stimulate their minds. It seems to me that the biggest reason we all become such curmudgeons when we get older is that we lose that sense of imagination, adventure, and wonder.
Also, if you choose to work more than 40 hours a week, that's your choice. There are some people who choose to work 40 hours a week, or less, so they can have some time for recreation and sanity (the things *I* equate to "having a life"). Not to mention alone time. If working over 40 hours a week equates to having a life, I'm happy not to have one, thanks.
Because the most important element of an IM client is how many of your friends are on it. Maybe it's feasible for you to tell all your friends to drop whatever system they're familiar with and switch over to something completely new, but for a vast majority of us it's not. Lots of people know AIM, use AIM, like AIM, and they're not gonna change that because of an issue like this. Therefore, we're gonna use AIM too, even if we don't like it.
I'll tell you what broadband is for -- most people out there playing Counter-Strike would happily double their bandwidth if it shaved a few seconds off their ping. Not to mention, on my friend's DSL line, we all play Counter-Strike at the same time. If we put three people on there, it doesn't make much of a difference. Soon as the fourth or fifth person starts playing, our pings all tank hard.
There's a lot more to broadband than warez. I would say that gaming is THE biggest appeal to broadband.
Though I couldn't really prove it, and I don't really know any better, I get the feeling that games are being sent out with sloppier and sloppier network code, expecting broadband to pick up the slack, because I've noticed games performing more and more horribly at higher pings. I wonder how far this trend will go (if it's a real trend) before it has to even out.
I think that's a little excessive on the obnoxious nitpicking of a game that's not even out yet based on an anime which, all told, really wasn't that good to begin with. But, that's just me. Some people work in nitpicking the way others work with clay or watercolors. I can't wait to see your insightful posts on the Middle Earth movies ages before they come out too.
Nobody cares about a hard day's work. Welcome to the internet version of the "me" generation. The internet's collective hatred of intellectual property has to do with the fact that we want everything, nay, are entitled to everything, free, now.
The RIAA has won the battle, but they've lost the war. If we can't use Napster anymore, we'll find another way to rip off our favorite artists in peace. It's an inconvienence, but no agency, business or industry can stop us from our god-given right to rip people off. They should ask the software world how successful they've been with warez. After that, they should give the fuck up and let us steal in peace.
well.. with all due respect for the ridiculousness of this suit, I'd have to say that there's a little more similarity between referee.com and ereferee.com than aeiou.com and slashdot.org.
Oh man.. You know, I might not be fond of our current system.. But I sure hope you aren't suggesting (even in jest) that slashdot should be arbiters in any sort of legal case whatsoever. That's gotta be just about the absolute worst idea in the history of global law. The inquisition, the salem witch trials, none of it matches up to what a slashdot with legal authority would be.
Let's spin the old discussion from a few days/weeks/months ago again. I remember when etoy sued eToys, all of this nonsense suddenly became good and just for a split second. Then SSH threatened legal action against OpenSSH; once again the process is evil. Now this. When will common sense prevail? That's not a question for slashdot to answer, that's for sure. This is a ridiculous action, just like eToys vs. etoy, etoy vs. eToys, SSH vs. OpenSSH (at least they're civil about it) and the whole lot of them. I will say this, though..
Threatening to sue a company because their actions against said company caused a consumer boycott; that's the laugh of the day. Has anyone ever heard of this type of legal action before? "These guys forced us to be petty and mean, which caused people not to like us, which caused them not to buy our magazine." Wah!
If you're smart enough to create an alias that points the name SSH to whatever OpenSSH decides to call itself, you're probably smart enough to know about the difference between SSH(tm) and OpenSSH anyway, and you're not the person this trademark and the resultant enforcement of such trademark was intended for. You know the difference, and therefore, SSH(tm) would have no reason to have a beef with you.
Slashdot Mirror
WESTWOOD invented the RTS market? That's news to me.
This is either the best troll I've ever read or the biggest piece of shit I've ever come across in the tech world, and I've come across some big ones.
Of course, because it's all 3d and the models are all so high-polygon, most computers can't even handle the small amount of troops already. I have to imagine that's why the caps are in place.
What really happened is that a bunch of 14 year olds hammered every gaming message board on the internet going "this sux not even 3d wtf bs" and Blizzard got cold feet. Which is really sad, because I was absolutely salivating over that game. But, the 14 year olds have spoken, and a game that isn't 3d isn't worth making.
I have them to thank for the piece of crap that Warcraft III became. Every time I build up to full food capacity and run my little band (you can't rightly call anything in warcraft III an army, or even a squad) up against their little band, and watch my computer try to keep up, I think back to having dozens of soldiers and tanks running down scores of zerg and I weep.
God, I wish I could've played Warcraft Adventures. Forget bnetd, I'm bitter with Blizzard about THAT.
I think that was the whole fuss companies had about people selling stuff on eBay. They wanted a piece of that action. It only makes good business sense. Get them hooked on a game, then sell them for stuff in the game that is meaningless once you log off but still has value to you. It's like a drug dealer; the first one's free.
I don't see why something like this would have people in such an uproar. I've played a few of these games and it seems like the whole fun in them is starting from scratch and building your character up, making all the decisions that go into it. If someone wants to pay a premium to skip that whole aspect of the game, which to me skips a big chunk of the fun in having the game, they're more than welcome to do it. They'll hear no complaints from me.
They're paying to lose out on fun. I think the uproar begs the bigger question, though. If the process of leveling up and getting to that stage is so un-fun that people are willing to pay a premium for it, and people who don't pay for it consider themselves cheated for having to make their characters from scratch, why the hell are we doing it? It's a game. It's supposed to be recreation, not a chore.
Of course, I think the real objection is the competitive aspect of the game. A lot of gamers get off on how many people they're better than on the server, and the sense of accomplishment in being better. Well, where does that line get drawn? I can start off by saying if I had my hand-crafted character trashed by someone fresh out of the box, I'd be a little miffed. However, I know that when I have characters on these games, sometimes I get help from others either via getting cash donations, spell buffs, power leveling, and so on. This is "cheating" too, and it seems like it would diminish that sense of accomplishment in the same way, but I don't hear many people crying foul over that. The people who do, are hardcore gamers who are likely to be much stronger than these pre-packaged "powerful" characters anyway.
But, back to my first point. Buying a pre-made powerful character, to me, takes away the whole point of the game. However, if people want to pay to do that, more power to them. There's always going to be someone more powerful than you on the game - the fun is found in the journey, not the destination. But, that's just my opinion. I feel the same way about people who use hacks or exploits.
So instead, people block out reality in order to play these games? Letting themselves get sucked into a world that will never exist so they can satisfy the delusions of grandeur instead of finding real life activities that are more fun?
Some people block out reality, but they're the minority, not the majority. The issue isn't the video game. The issue is an addictive personality. If it weren't for Dark Age or Everquest, they would probably be parked in front of their TV, or off somewhere drinking, or locked in some unhealthy co-dependent relationship (which some sadly think is "more" healthy than a video game somehow), or compulsively checking slashdot posts all day, every day. It's like saying that TV causes violence. It's a false cause and effect chain.
I also don't understand why playing a video game is any less of a "real world" activity than reading a book or watching TV.
When you get to high levels in EQ, people spend 4 hours waiting for a monster and spend the time chatting. How is that stimulating the mind much past finding creative ways to misspell "your"?
I've never reached a high level in EQ, or any other massively multiplayer game. Most people who play them don't. I don't know how the dynamics of the game change becuase of a high level, but if you need to be addicted to get one, only addicted people will get it. Read above.
Funny you should mention that. I usually work about 80 hours a week. I still find a few hours a day to have a social life. I don't sleep much, it suits me just fine. I don't need more sleep than what I get. The difference is I love my job. My job is 30% social, 10% walking around talking to myself about some problem, and 60% in front of a computer. I love it.
I'm happy you like your job. I'd hate a job working 80 hours a week. Even if it were filming pornos. I'm not trying to attack your job. I'm just saying that people can be happy and successful without working 80 hours a week, and that affords us more time to kill (I think activities that "kill time" aren't necessarily bad, they recharge your batteries - and some of us need our batteries recharged a little more than you seem to, and there's nothing wrong with that either). I code for a living too and I get sick of it by the end of the day. I'm fuckin' READY to do something mindless. I want more of a life outside of work, and for me part of that lifestyle includes some time to play video games.
I fail to see how finding good ways to kill an imaginary creature carries on into real life. Most people that play those games suffer from losing real life skills.
It carries on to real life no more and no less than picking up a novel and reading about imaginary people. Yet, people say reading stimulates your mind. There are many choices involved in playing these games - who to group with, how to develop your character, where to travel, whether to power level, PVP, explore, and so on. If you have something against video games that's fine, but you can't think it any worse than people who spend 6 or more hours a day watching TV, can you?
We play them because we have overactive imaginations, because we want to do things that we can't do in normal life. We want to cast spells. We want to fight dragons. We want to raid keeps and steal relics. We can't do this in real life, no matter how many friends we have, how many sports we play, and how hot our girlfriend is.
Not to sling stereotypes of my own, but I'll tell you a funny observation *I've* noticed... The people who can't stop talking about how hot their girlfriends are and how having sex with them is better than playing any video game ever are usually people who haven't had that much sex and for whom the whole act is new and amazing. Good recreation stimulates the mind, the body, or both. I think people find that playing these big RPGs, developing alter-egos, suspending their disbelief, and interacting with other like-minded people does stimulate their minds. It seems to me that the biggest reason we all become such curmudgeons when we get older is that we lose that sense of imagination, adventure, and wonder.
Also, if you choose to work more than 40 hours a week, that's your choice. There are some people who choose to work 40 hours a week, or less, so they can have some time for recreation and sanity (the things *I* equate to "having a life"). Not to mention alone time. If working over 40 hours a week equates to having a life, I'm happy not to have one, thanks.
Because the most important element of an IM client is how many of your friends are on it. Maybe it's feasible for you to tell all your friends to drop whatever system they're familiar with and switch over to something completely new, but for a vast majority of us it's not. Lots of people know AIM, use AIM, like AIM, and they're not gonna change that because of an issue like this. Therefore, we're gonna use AIM too, even if we don't like it.
I'll tell you what broadband is for -- most people out there playing Counter-Strike would happily double their bandwidth if it shaved a few seconds off their ping. Not to mention, on my friend's DSL line, we all play Counter-Strike at the same time. If we put three people on there, it doesn't make much of a difference. Soon as the fourth or fifth person starts playing, our pings all tank hard.
There's a lot more to broadband than warez. I would say that gaming is THE biggest appeal to broadband.
Though I couldn't really prove it, and I don't really know any better, I get the feeling that games are being sent out with sloppier and sloppier network code, expecting broadband to pick up the slack, because I've noticed games performing more and more horribly at higher pings. I wonder how far this trend will go (if it's a real trend) before it has to even out.
Actually, he's just a writer. It would be more tantamount to trusting John Dvorak's opinion of tech issues over your own.
Thanks for acting in true slashdot fashion and destroying perhaps the last shred of faith in humanity I had left.
Death, destruction, tragedy.
Fuckin' grammatical errors.
What's the greater atrocity? Ask Slashdot. (c)(r)(tm)
Well, we americans are pretty callous, but I think we still consider concentrations of human life to be a little more important than monuments.
I think that's a little excessive on the obnoxious nitpicking of a game that's not even out yet based on an anime which, all told, really wasn't that good to begin with. But, that's just me. Some people work in nitpicking the way others work with clay or watercolors. I can't wait to see your insightful posts on the Middle Earth movies ages before they come out too.
Boy, you sure showed him what a Pimp A$$ you are. I'll bet he jerks off bitterly at night, pretending that he's you.
Nobody cares about a hard day's work. Welcome to the internet version of the "me" generation. The internet's collective hatred of intellectual property has to do with the fact that we want everything, nay, are entitled to everything, free, now.
The RIAA has won the battle, but they've lost the war. If we can't use Napster anymore, we'll find another way to rip off our favorite artists in peace. It's an inconvienence, but no agency, business or industry can stop us from our god-given right to rip people off. They should ask the software world how successful they've been with warez. After that, they should give the fuck up and let us steal in peace.
well.. with all due respect for the ridiculousness of this suit, I'd have to say that there's a little more similarity between referee.com and ereferee.com than aeiou.com and slashdot.org.
Oh man.. You know, I might not be fond of our current system.. But I sure hope you aren't suggesting (even in jest) that slashdot should be arbiters in any sort of legal case whatsoever. That's gotta be just about the absolute worst idea in the history of global law. The inquisition, the salem witch trials, none of it matches up to what a slashdot with legal authority would be.
*shudder*
Let's spin the old discussion from a few days/weeks/months ago again. I remember when etoy sued eToys, all of this nonsense suddenly became good and just for a split second. Then SSH threatened legal action against OpenSSH; once again the process is evil. Now this. When will common sense prevail? That's not a question for slashdot to answer, that's for sure. This is a ridiculous action, just like eToys vs. etoy, etoy vs. eToys, SSH vs. OpenSSH (at least they're civil about it) and the whole lot of them. I will say this, though..
Threatening to sue a company because their actions against said company caused a consumer boycott; that's the laugh of the day. Has anyone ever heard of this type of legal action before? "These guys forced us to be petty and mean, which caused people not to like us, which caused them not to buy our magazine." Wah!
Actually, it uses the MIT license, which is like the BSD license, but who even keeps track anymore..
I vote for PuTTY, too. It rocks.
...or when you don't read it at all..
Unlike the vast majority of slashdot posters, who are emotionally stable, well-adjusted, intelligent, etc.
Er..
Ewww.
I'm sure the OpenBSD people wouldn't want to have GNU in the name of any of their products, even as an acronym.
If you're smart enough to create an alias that points the name SSH to whatever OpenSSH decides to call itself, you're probably smart enough to know about the difference between SSH(tm) and OpenSSH anyway, and you're not the person this trademark and the resultant enforcement of such trademark was intended for. You know the difference, and therefore, SSH(tm) would have no reason to have a beef with you.