It definitely used to be. I did a little temping in legal offices way back in the day and they were all WordPerfect, which was fortunate because that's what I knew.
I don't think that's really as true anymore, though. At least, everyone I personally know in that industry has long since migrated to Word.
If AbiWord can load a Word97 and Word2000 document better than OfficeXP can then I would be impressed. That's just me though (I have a feeling this would be an important thing to look at for others as well).
Yup. Like it or not, the reality is that Word is the standard in the realm of word processors. Now, you can grab the odd caveman who's never seen Word and teach them to use your word processor, but to really gain users, you're going to have to steal some market share from Word. You don't necessarily need to emulate all of Word's features and quirks to get those users, but they're probably going to want to be able to use their old documents.
We really don't know from the review how AbiWord handles this at all. It might do a great job or a terrible job; we just don't know. Honestly, I'd rather see a review from someone who is an experienced user of Word, even if they're less technical.
That's what you get for having an unpopular opinion and stating it in two inflammatory sentences.
If you'd written an explanation of what you didn't like about the movies, that's an unpopular opinion. Your post, on the other hand? Troll.
If you want to troll, go wild. I could be wrong, but I doubt anyone much cares. Just don't write this "Woe is my trampled on free thinking and speech, don't cry for me Argentina" bullshit as an epilogue to it.
In FOSS, these things can't be implemented in a way that is pervasive ??!!!
It's not can't be so much as probably won't be. My dog is physically capable of lifting a toilet seat and relieving himself in the human manner, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
I think Mozilla is kind of an iffy example to prove or disprove any point about the FOSS paradigm due to the history of the project, but, whatever.
The point is that there are kinds of changes and innovations that free open source software excells at, and there are kinds that closed, commercial software does better. Along those lines, there are areas where each of them will improve by imitating the other. This is a symbiotic relationship and generally good for everyone. I would think you'd have to be a zealot of the worst kind not to accept that.
...what the grandparent poster was trying to say. At least, I took something different out of it than you apparently did.
It's not so much that FOSS can't implement these ideas. It's that they can't, or at least won't, do so in a way that's pervasive for the whole OS. FOSS can, for example, design a new filesystem or display model, but it can't make all of the apps written for Linux support those things. It especially can't make the apps support it in a consistent and comprehensible way.
Microsoft is capable of saying: This is the way we are going to do things now, and if you are going to make software to run on our OS, that's the way it's going to be. If the Office suite, for example, deals with the new filesystem in a certain way, that becomes the Right Way. Instant industry standard. Any software vendor who deviates from that method is going to be looked at as doing it the wrong way.
FOSS can't compell that kind of compliance. Developers are free to support or not support the work of other developers depending on how much time they want to put in or if they think it's a good idea. If there's a difference in vision, a fork can occur.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying the FOSS way of doing things is bad, and I don't think the grandparent poster was either. It's just different. It absolutely has its strengths, but it also has its weaknesses too. Microsoft is, perhaps wisely, choosing to try to push the strengths their model has.
I can't believe the most blatant case of in-game advertising ever hasn't been brought up yet...
Or am I just the only person in North America who played this Gamecube game where your goal was actually to gather magic Skittles(tm) and Taste the Rainbow?
It all sounds like a crock to me. Knowing the tools better will always help, but if only an expert can write usable code -- not great, but merely usable -- the language is junk, or at best the implementation is junk.
That seems a little harsh to me. Every language has its shortcomings.
For example, developers working in C++ who aren't experts will, on a project of any reasonable size, tend to write code that leaks memory like a sieve. In many environments, that's at least as crippling of a deficiency as Java's speed issues. I wouldn't say that's an indication that C++ is junk, however.
There's the old axiom in software development: Good, fast, cheap; pick two. It's pretty much the same thing in choosing or designing a programming language. Java's got its strengths over other languages, and it's got its deficiencies. Whether the strengths outweigh the deficiencies depends on the project.
I believe you've missed his point. He's not saying there are never reasons for free software to be made at all. He's saying he doesn't think all software can be free, and that's a big difference.
For example: People want to get a job as a programmer so they write a software package to prove they aren't total code monkeys doesn't apply any longer if there is no such thing as a software job.
Probably, the truth is that both free and unfree software both have their reasons to be, and neither will (or should) entirely replace the other.
When has an anniversary event for ANY product ever not just been a marketing scheme to sell more product?
That said...
I've played dozens of different RPG systems, and I generally prefer D&D. It's not for everyone, and it's not for every game. (I prefer classic Cthulhu to d20 Cthulhu, for example, simply because of the greater PC fragility.)
If you and your gaming group prefer a different system, more power to you. We're fortunate that the hobby can support these alternatives. However, it seems silly at best to imply that D&D's popularity is solely a result of momentum and ignorance.
The parent post, while short, actually is not off topic. Al-Qadim was a setting for the AD&D game in its 2nd edition, and a computer game was made for it.
Bartenders should just expect to breathe smoke, it goes with the territory, and being a bar-back is unskilled labor and you can get the same kind of job anywhere.
That being the status quo isn't really a very good argument for it remaining that way. Once upon a time in America, black people should just expect to be worked as slave labor, too. I don't see anyone rational defending that.
Instead the mother state has made yet another decision for us.
Don't forget that the state represents the will of the people. If a majority of the people in the state were against that particular piece of legislation, I'd be surprised if it stayed.
There're a lot of people who can't get better jobs than to be bartenders, waitresses, etc. Rather than rage against laws that try to protect them, you should be happy they're taking these shitty jobs rather than living on unemployment.
Well there are smoke free bars out there that are created by people who want that choice.
Well, right. But good luck finding one in, say, Wisconsin. Good luck finding a really top/popular club anywhere but Cali that is one.
I guess you could say I'm in favor of oppressing the rights of smokers for my own benefit because I'm not one, and I wouldn't really argue with that. When you come right down to it, I think it should be one of those things that's ok in the privacy of your own home but not in the public space. That, and it should ideally make you ineligible for normal people's health insurance so we're not paying the cost for their slow suicide.
Semi-back on topic, there are a lot of other laws that are pretty different in California, and they're not all the quasi-restrictive kinds. Better carpool lane setups than I've seen elsewhere, for example.
I lived in California for a few years during the dot.com era, like probably a lot of people.
Legislation-wise, it's really different out there. California is often the first state to try a new law for something. As you might expect, some of those experiments work out pretty well, and some don't. It's the price you pay for innovation, so to speak.
I'll tell you this, though: I sure as hell miss the California smoking laws. I wish I could spend half an hour in any local bar or club and not come out smelling like an ashtray.
This isn't the solution if you don't like what the Republicans currently holding office in this country are doing.
One thing to do is vote, I agree, but I'd take it a step further.
It would be nice if America wasn't effectively a two-party system, but realistically, I don't see that changing anytime soon. It would take a third-party candidate with enormous popularity, credentials, and charisma, who for some reason would not run under either existing party to break that up. I can't imagine who such a person could be. Perot wasn't it. Nader isn't it.
The solution, I believe, is to work with the two parties we have.
Sure, you could just vote Democrat. God knows I probably will come election day for lack of a better option. But even if that was a viable long-term strategy, it would only encourage the Democratic party to wander further and further from being a voice of the people. Representative government, sadly, only works when the candidates need to fight for your votes.
What we need are geek Republicans. I'm completely serious about this.
Over the years the Republican party seems to drift more and more towards ideals I'm not happy with, such as religious extremism and being in the pocket of business. What if you tried to push it back towards more geek-acceptable ideals?
For example, what if you ran as a Republican and went against RIAA-supportive anti-fair-use laws on the grounds that people have their rights and the government should stay out of their way and let them use them? I mean, isn't small government supposed to be a Republican ideal?
I never thought I'd actually get drawn into a Star Wars purity thread -- it's a little bit of a geek nuts flex even for me. Anyway.
Believe me, it's hard to see some of this stuff happening to the films I grew up with (I was 12 when I saw Star Wars), but is the fact that Greedo shot first going to change the entire demeanor of the film?
Maybe not, but it does change the character of Han Solo a lot. I mean, sure, we've all seen these films a zillion times now and know he ends up as a good guy, but when you're seeing the film for the first time, you don't know that. Our heroes hire him to smuggle them offplanet, and it's interesting precisely because he's this unpredictable, dangerous, mercenary character. He could extort Obi-Wan for more money once they're in space, or turn them over to the Imperials for a reward. You just don't know.
A guy who shoots only in self defense loses a lot of that edge. I thought the original scene was great in that it gave you the essence of the character in just a few minutes. The alteration changes what that essence is.
To a certain extent, I'm inclined to agree with you. I go back to the release of the original 1st edition boxed set with the campaign, and there was a lot of great FR stuff put out in 2nd edition.
There was a lot of bad or weak stuff put out in that era, too, though. And the concept of tacking rules material onto story material to sell the latter certainly didn't start in 3e, though it seems to have become more the rule. In 2e, it was things like new spells, specialty priest types, kits, and magic items. In 3e, it's spells, domains, prestige classes, feats, and magic items. God knows I knew enough 2e powergamers who would only buy the supplements that included new rules information -- those people really haven't gone away.
What's different, if anything, is that TSR was sold to WotC and in turn to Hasbro. I gather that Hasbro bought WotC because of the likes of the Pokemon card game and couldn't give a rat's ass about D&D. To be able to keep putting out Realms stuff with a corporate parent like that, I imagine WotC needs to be able to show a certain profit margin on it, and the books without rules material don't do it. Silver Marches was heavy on background and light on rules, and I'm told it sold abysmally. That was probably the death knell for a book of that type.
Aside: What I miss the most is the publishing of Realms adventures. As far as I know City of the Spider Queen is the only they've put out for FR in 3e, and I can't help but think of it as a poor man's Night Below.
I don't think rules information in the books is a purely bad thing. In an awful lot of the Realms campaigns I've played in over the years, the DM had a great grasp of the Realms and the imagination to take it further story-wise, but fell down badly whenever they needed extend or modify the rules -- in the sense that midway through the campaign it becomes apparent that they've inadvertantly overpowered one or more of the PCs in a way not easily correctable. These are people I wouldn't consider bad DMs, but probably people that could use help on the rules end. It's not a terrible thing that there are books that provide them assistance on that end as well as assistance to DMs who need help with story ideas.
All that said, I think the 3e FRCS is a pretty great book, and I'm getting an enormous amount of use out of Unapproachable East for the campaign I'm running right now. Granted, I still supplement it with 2e material about the region as necessary, but it's a pretty good book.
I always thought the world and story to Rifts was cool. However, although I tried playing in a few different campaigns of it, I ultimately decided I couldn't stand it -- the game mechanics in general and the combat in specific just bogged down WAY too slow for me. It wasn't unusual for a decent sized combat to suck up an entire night by itself.
A computer, on the other hand, could crunch those numbers and make all of those parry/dodge/roll/etc. rolls instantly, taking out the part of the game that I hated and leaving most of what I thought was cool.
Granted, there was a lot more Realms material released under 2e, much of it good, but in terms of the rules themselves... ugh... why would you want to go back to that kind of retarded brokenness? Or am I just misunderstanding what you mean?
Another point of the grandparent poster that 3e invalidates/corrects that I'm surprised you didn't mention...
It's still a class-based game, yes, but a much less rigid one. If you want to play a wizard who runs around slashing people with a greatsword, you can easily do that, even at level 1. (Spend your starting feat on martial weapon proficiency: greatsword.) No problem.
But there's an opportunity cost there; that level 1 wizard could have as easily spent that feat on plenty of other things. He could have learned to make some of his spells harder to resist, or how to avoid physical attacks better, or how to modify his spells for greater power or duration, or a hundred other things.
No character design is truly optimal for all situations, and, chances are, everyone else in your party can do SOMEthing better than you can -- but if you want to build a sword-wielding wizard or a rogue with healing powers, you certainly can. They just might not be as strong in their primary elements as part of the price for that diversity.
I'm stunned that Ys Book I & II is on that list. I'd still rate that as one of the top ten games in the history of ever.
I've never actually encountered someone before who played that game and didn't love it. From the text of the article, it seems like the author didn't understand how combat in the game works. I mean, no shit it seems like a dumb game if you don't understand its relatively simple mechanics. Soccer would seem like a pretty dumb game too if you thought the sole object was to see how hard you could kick the ball.
Not only was the encounter rate ridiculously high, you often needed to seek out even MORE encounters to progress in the game. Talk about super levelling grind. I'm glad we demand more from our games these days.
Slashdot Mirror
It definitely used to be. I did a little temping in legal offices way back in the day and they were all WordPerfect, which was fortunate because that's what I knew.
I don't think that's really as true anymore, though. At least, everyone I personally know in that industry has long since migrated to Word.
If AbiWord can load a Word97 and Word2000 document better than OfficeXP can then I would be impressed. That's just me though (I have a feeling this would be an important thing to look at for others as well).
Yup. Like it or not, the reality is that Word is the standard in the realm of word processors. Now, you can grab the odd caveman who's never seen Word and teach them to use your word processor, but to really gain users, you're going to have to steal some market share from Word. You don't necessarily need to emulate all of Word's features and quirks to get those users, but they're probably going to want to be able to use their old documents.
We really don't know from the review how AbiWord handles this at all. It might do a great job or a terrible job; we just don't know. Honestly, I'd rather see a review from someone who is an experienced user of Word, even if they're less technical.
That's what you get for having an unpopular opinion and stating it in two inflammatory sentences.
If you'd written an explanation of what you didn't like about the movies, that's an unpopular opinion. Your post, on the other hand? Troll.
If you want to troll, go wild. I could be wrong, but I doubt anyone much cares. Just don't write this "Woe is my trampled on free thinking and speech, don't cry for me Argentina" bullshit as an epilogue to it.
In FOSS, these things can't be implemented in a way that is pervasive ??!!!
It's not can't be so much as probably won't be. My dog is physically capable of lifting a toilet seat and relieving himself in the human manner, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
I think Mozilla is kind of an iffy example to prove or disprove any point about the FOSS paradigm due to the history of the project, but, whatever.
The point is that there are kinds of changes and innovations that free open source software excells at, and there are kinds that closed, commercial software does better. Along those lines, there are areas where each of them will improve by imitating the other. This is a symbiotic relationship and generally good for everyone. I would think you'd have to be a zealot of the worst kind not to accept that.
...what the grandparent poster was trying to say. At least, I took something different out of it than you apparently did.
It's not so much that FOSS can't implement these ideas. It's that they can't, or at least won't, do so in a way that's pervasive for the whole OS. FOSS can, for example, design a new filesystem or display model, but it can't make all of the apps written for Linux support those things. It especially can't make the apps support it in a consistent and comprehensible way.
Microsoft is capable of saying: This is the way we are going to do things now, and if you are going to make software to run on our OS, that's the way it's going to be. If the Office suite, for example, deals with the new filesystem in a certain way, that becomes the Right Way. Instant industry standard. Any software vendor who deviates from that method is going to be looked at as doing it the wrong way.
FOSS can't compell that kind of compliance. Developers are free to support or not support the work of other developers depending on how much time they want to put in or if they think it's a good idea. If there's a difference in vision, a fork can occur.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying the FOSS way of doing things is bad, and I don't think the grandparent poster was either. It's just different. It absolutely has its strengths, but it also has its weaknesses too. Microsoft is, perhaps wisely, choosing to try to push the strengths their model has.
I can't believe the most blatant case of in-game advertising ever hasn't been brought up yet...
Or am I just the only person in North America who played this Gamecube game where your goal was actually to gather magic Skittles(tm) and Taste the Rainbow?
It all sounds like a crock to me. Knowing the tools better will always help, but if only an expert can write usable code -- not great, but merely usable -- the language is junk, or at best the implementation is junk.
That seems a little harsh to me. Every language has its shortcomings.
For example, developers working in C++ who aren't experts will, on a project of any reasonable size, tend to write code that leaks memory like a sieve. In many environments, that's at least as crippling of a deficiency as Java's speed issues. I wouldn't say that's an indication that C++ is junk, however.
There's the old axiom in software development: Good, fast, cheap; pick two. It's pretty much the same thing in choosing or designing a programming language. Java's got its strengths over other languages, and it's got its deficiencies. Whether the strengths outweigh the deficiencies depends on the project.
I don't disagree with that; however, the post in question does not specify packaged software.
A friend of mine knows the guy making this, and I got to see a not-quite-done-with-editing version of it a while ago.
p le train wreck kind of sense.
It's an entertaining watch if you're a gamer, if at times in a oh-my-god-is-THAT-what-we-seem-like-to-normal-peo
Do project managers and HR people work for free? Right.
I believe you've missed his point. He's not saying there are never reasons for free software to be made at all. He's saying he doesn't think all software can be free, and that's a big difference.
For example: People want to get a job as a programmer so they write a software package to prove they aren't total code monkeys doesn't apply any longer if there is no such thing as a software job.
Probably, the truth is that both free and unfree software both have their reasons to be, and neither will (or should) entirely replace the other.
When has an anniversary event for ANY product ever not just been a marketing scheme to sell more product?
That said...
I've played dozens of different RPG systems, and I generally prefer D&D. It's not for everyone, and it's not for every game. (I prefer classic Cthulhu to d20 Cthulhu, for example, simply because of the greater PC fragility.)
If you and your gaming group prefer a different system, more power to you. We're fortunate that the hobby can support these alternatives. However, it seems silly at best to imply that D&D's popularity is solely a result of momentum and ignorance.
The parent post, while short, actually is not off topic. Al-Qadim was a setting for the AD&D game in its 2nd edition, and a computer game was made for it.
The articles' "dis" of it is definitely on topic.
Bartenders should just expect to breathe smoke, it goes with the territory, and being a bar-back is unskilled labor and you can get the same kind of job anywhere.
That being the status quo isn't really a very good argument for it remaining that way. Once upon a time in America, black people should just expect to be worked as slave labor, too. I don't see anyone rational defending that.
Instead the mother state has made yet another decision for us.
Don't forget that the state represents the will of the people. If a majority of the people in the state were against that particular piece of legislation, I'd be surprised if it stayed.
There're a lot of people who can't get better jobs than to be bartenders, waitresses, etc. Rather than rage against laws that try to protect them, you should be happy they're taking these shitty jobs rather than living on unemployment.
Well there are smoke free bars out there that are created by people who want that choice.
Well, right. But good luck finding one in, say, Wisconsin. Good luck finding a really top/popular club anywhere but Cali that is one.
I guess you could say I'm in favor of oppressing the rights of smokers for my own benefit because I'm not one, and I wouldn't really argue with that. When you come right down to it, I think it should be one of those things that's ok in the privacy of your own home but not in the public space. That, and it should ideally make you ineligible for normal people's health insurance so we're not paying the cost for their slow suicide.
Semi-back on topic, there are a lot of other laws that are pretty different in California, and they're not all the quasi-restrictive kinds. Better carpool lane setups than I've seen elsewhere, for example.
I lived in California for a few years during the dot.com era, like probably a lot of people.
Legislation-wise, it's really different out there. California is often the first state to try a new law for something. As you might expect, some of those experiments work out pretty well, and some don't. It's the price you pay for innovation, so to speak.
I'll tell you this, though: I sure as hell miss the California smoking laws. I wish I could spend half an hour in any local bar or club and not come out smelling like an ashtray.
This isn't the solution if you don't like what the Republicans currently holding office in this country are doing.
One thing to do is vote, I agree, but I'd take it a step further.
It would be nice if America wasn't effectively a two-party system, but realistically, I don't see that changing anytime soon. It would take a third-party candidate with enormous popularity, credentials, and charisma, who for some reason would not run under either existing party to break that up. I can't imagine who such a person could be. Perot wasn't it. Nader isn't it.
The solution, I believe, is to work with the two parties we have.
Sure, you could just vote Democrat. God knows I probably will come election day for lack of a better option. But even if that was a viable long-term strategy, it would only encourage the Democratic party to wander further and further from being a voice of the people. Representative government, sadly, only works when the candidates need to fight for your votes.
What we need are geek Republicans. I'm completely serious about this.
Over the years the Republican party seems to drift more and more towards ideals I'm not happy with, such as religious extremism and being in the pocket of business. What if you tried to push it back towards more geek-acceptable ideals?
For example, what if you ran as a Republican and went against RIAA-supportive anti-fair-use laws on the grounds that people have their rights and the government should stay out of their way and let them use them? I mean, isn't small government supposed to be a Republican ideal?
Is this crazy?
I never thought I'd actually get drawn into a Star Wars purity thread -- it's a little bit of a geek nuts flex even for me. Anyway.
Believe me, it's hard to see some of this stuff happening to the films I grew up with (I was 12 when I saw Star Wars), but is the fact that Greedo shot first going to change the entire demeanor of the film?
Maybe not, but it does change the character of Han Solo a lot. I mean, sure, we've all seen these films a zillion times now and know he ends up as a good guy, but when you're seeing the film for the first time, you don't know that. Our heroes hire him to smuggle them offplanet, and it's interesting precisely because he's this unpredictable, dangerous, mercenary character. He could extort Obi-Wan for more money once they're in space, or turn them over to the Imperials for a reward. You just don't know.
A guy who shoots only in self defense loses a lot of that edge. I thought the original scene was great in that it gave you the essence of the character in just a few minutes. The alteration changes what that essence is.
To a certain extent, I'm inclined to agree with you. I go back to the release of the original 1st edition boxed set with the campaign, and there was a lot of great FR stuff put out in 2nd edition.
There was a lot of bad or weak stuff put out in that era, too, though. And the concept of tacking rules material onto story material to sell the latter certainly didn't start in 3e, though it seems to have become more the rule. In 2e, it was things like new spells, specialty priest types, kits, and magic items. In 3e, it's spells, domains, prestige classes, feats, and magic items. God knows I knew enough 2e powergamers who would only buy the supplements that included new rules information -- those people really haven't gone away.
What's different, if anything, is that TSR was sold to WotC and in turn to Hasbro. I gather that Hasbro bought WotC because of the likes of the Pokemon card game and couldn't give a rat's ass about D&D. To be able to keep putting out Realms stuff with a corporate parent like that, I imagine WotC needs to be able to show a certain profit margin on it, and the books without rules material don't do it. Silver Marches was heavy on background and light on rules, and I'm told it sold abysmally. That was probably the death knell for a book of that type.
Aside: What I miss the most is the publishing of Realms adventures. As far as I know City of the Spider Queen is the only they've put out for FR in 3e, and I can't help but think of it as a poor man's Night Below.
I don't think rules information in the books is a purely bad thing. In an awful lot of the Realms campaigns I've played in over the years, the DM had a great grasp of the Realms and the imagination to take it further story-wise, but fell down badly whenever they needed extend or modify the rules -- in the sense that midway through the campaign it becomes apparent that they've inadvertantly overpowered one or more of the PCs in a way not easily correctable. These are people I wouldn't consider bad DMs, but probably people that could use help on the rules end. It's not a terrible thing that there are books that provide them assistance on that end as well as assistance to DMs who need help with story ideas.
All that said, I think the 3e FRCS is a pretty great book, and I'm getting an enormous amount of use out of Unapproachable East for the campaign I'm running right now. Granted, I still supplement it with 2e material about the region as necessary, but it's a pretty good book.
Hell, I wouldn't mind seeing a Rifts game period.
I always thought the world and story to Rifts was cool. However, although I tried playing in a few different campaigns of it, I ultimately decided I couldn't stand it -- the game mechanics in general and the combat in specific just bogged down WAY too slow for me. It wasn't unusual for a decent sized combat to suck up an entire night by itself.
A computer, on the other hand, could crunch those numbers and make all of those parry/dodge/roll/etc. rolls instantly, taking out the part of the game that I hated and leaving most of what I thought was cool.
Why a 2e design philosophy?
Granted, there was a lot more Realms material released under 2e, much of it good, but in terms of the rules themselves... ugh... why would you want to go back to that kind of retarded brokenness? Or am I just misunderstanding what you mean?
Another point of the grandparent poster that 3e invalidates/corrects that I'm surprised you didn't mention...
It's still a class-based game, yes, but a much less rigid one. If you want to play a wizard who runs around slashing people with a greatsword, you can easily do that, even at level 1. (Spend your starting feat on martial weapon proficiency: greatsword.) No problem.
But there's an opportunity cost there; that level 1 wizard could have as easily spent that feat on plenty of other things. He could have learned to make some of his spells harder to resist, or how to avoid physical attacks better, or how to modify his spells for greater power or duration, or a hundred other things.
No character design is truly optimal for all situations, and, chances are, everyone else in your party can do SOMEthing better than you can -- but if you want to build a sword-wielding wizard or a rogue with healing powers, you certainly can. They just might not be as strong in their primary elements as part of the price for that diversity.
Around the end of the dot.com era, I found a decent full-time (tech) job on craigslist.
I know a ton of people who found apartments and other stuff there, too.
I'm stunned that Ys Book I & II is on that list. I'd still rate that as one of the top ten games in the history of ever.
I've never actually encountered someone before who played that game and didn't love it. From the text of the article, it seems like the author didn't understand how combat in the game works. I mean, no shit it seems like a dumb game if you don't understand its relatively simple mechanics. Soccer would seem like a pretty dumb game too if you thought the sole object was to see how hard you could kick the ball.
Not only was the encounter rate ridiculously high, you often needed to seek out even MORE encounters to progress in the game. Talk about super levelling grind. I'm glad we demand more from our games these days.