My, you are persistent. No, the reason that the US became the wealthiest country in the world is that it was able to harness enormous amounts of cheap resources without much interference by neighboring countries nor effective resistance by the native populations.
We were also the only large, industrialized nation whose manufacturing and infrastructure weren't bombed to cinders during WW2.
I agree that for leveling it's a nice thing to have, but also it makes groups boring. There's no such thing anymore as someone's "reputation" on a realm (except when you're the local Trade chat clown I guess) which is a bit of a shame. There's no chatting anymore in dungeon groups (besides "hi" and "bye" if you're lucky, no silly shit going on anymore) which is a real shame.
This is a good point. Cross-realm, there are no real sanctions for being a jerk in a group anymore. But that being said, cool guys will still be cool cross realm. I've met and real-id friended a few of the RDF pugs I've run with.
The trouble in getting groups for old dungeons is related to a couple of factors, firstly they made it faster each expansion to get through the previous one, making dungeons uninteresting as there are faster ways to quickly accumulate experience. Secondly: the gear was horribly out of date. That's two important motivations for people to do dungeons right out of the window. I think fixing those two would have been better than the LFG system.
So yeah, guess we gotta take the bad with the good but I dunno if it's really worth it.
Correct. If you're out to steamroll up to 85, you won't be running lower level dungeons. But RDF makes dungeon-leveling workable for those who don't mind taking a little more time to reach end-game. Before RDF, a dungeon was a luxury I could have once every couple days. Now, I've leveled several toons (with tank or heal spec;) ) almost exclusively through dungeons.
I just resubbed for a bit and I'll try and level a character from 1 on a totally new realm (and new faction, so everything will be shiny and new, except for the game mechanics) and see how it goes. I somehow expect it to be a pretty lonely experience (which is a rather sad thing for a multiplayer game), but I'd be very glad to be proven wrong.
Blizz put forth a lot of effort into revamping many of the starting zones. I'm a big fan of the lore, so it's been nothing but a pleasure for me. I just leveled through the new Forsaken starting area, and it was FUN! Even though I didn't run into many other players, the quests make you feel like you're much more a part of the story. And with phasing, you actually see the battle lines change through Silverpine as you push back the Gilnaens.... And, for the love of all that is good, play through the Goblin starting zone! By the time you reach level 10, you will have 'fixed' a professional sporting event, shaken down your competitors, hosted a party with way too much alcohol, and committed insurance fraud while using high explosives.
The 'A' in 'AGW' stands for "Anthropogenic". "Anthropogenic" means "caused by people", for all the Beck-erheads out there. The hypothesis is: "Global warming is caused by a large extent by people". Now, to falsify this hypothesis, you simply need to show that activities such as pouring thousands of tons of sequestered CO2 and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, massive deforestation, and overfishing have no notable impact on the change in the earth's climate
The problem is, the demagogues and dittoheads that buy in to climate change denial won't be budged an inch by the findings of the Scientific Method. All it takes is one "Climatologist" on the payroll of Exxon to talk on the Glen Beck show for five minutes, and their point will be irrefutably proven to them.
Total: $80
If you buy a 6 month subscription, your cost is $12.99/month. That's up to dozens of hours of entertainment for about the cost of a movie ticket. How is that "predatory".
Low-level mats (at least on my server) auction pretty well. Last week, my 20 priest made over 200g just by selling a few stacks of light leather when the supply was low.
I tried a multi-day trail. I'd end up on a quest where multiple people were camping a mob to complete the quest. I was unable to ask them if they'd group for the quest, so that we could all complete the quest on a single mob respawn. The only way to interact with other players is through the WoW defined emotes, which do not contain a/wantToGroup.
Not true. You could still communicate with/say.
The multi-day trails did have the ability to join guilds. This gave them a taste of the social aspect. I don't know why they'd remove the ability to join a guild as a paying account is the one initiating the trail accts invitation to the guild. That paying account can easily boot the person if they're a gold spammer.
Not true. Joining a guild has always (at least for the past 2.5 years) been reserved for subscribers.
Once subscription numbers for WoW drop under a certain level the best way to continue is probably to make both the server and the client freeware and let the community take over.
You're not going to see those numbers for a long, long time. Anecdotally, I saw a big exodus with Rift. (With the anecdote being that our small-but-active active guild lost half it's members when it came out) WoW has hundreds of realms worldwide. I'd anticipate them consolidating realms long before they give it away for free.
The only way to make it better is to drop the LFG system, so people actually know who the hell is on their realm and know who to group with and who not to group with (because of skill or just because they're omgwipequitters or just plain rude bastards). I had a full friends list in TBC, in Cata after changing realms and being on the new realm for an entire year the only people I knew were my guildmates (who transferred with me) and the realm clowns in trade chat (who I avoided) and it's not like I didn't try (joining WG/TB, pugging the PvP raids etc)
You can have my Random Dungeon Finder when you pry it from my Cold... Dead... Hands.:) No one is forcing you do do heroics cross-realm. You can simply get a 5man group together with guildies or realm friends and still get your Valor points. You said you had a 'full' friends list prior to your realm switch. Why leave a good thing?
Myself, I level mainly through doing 5-mans. Doing this was neigh impossible before RDF if you were on a low-pop server. Even with an active guild and large friends list, it's a huge effort to find four other folks who are in the narrow level range (and who have the desire) to run specific Vanilla and BC dungeons. If I wanted a Scarlet Monastery or Mana Tombs run, I'd have to spend an hour or so in trade chat (or spamming a 'who' listing of similarly leveled characters) to get a group together. Plus the travel time to get two people to the summoning stone. Add another 20 minutes to find a replacement for the Tank who went 'gtg' before you even started. Add a ragequit halfway through the instance, and the group you've spent nearly two hours putting together disbands after 20 minutes of play time. How much fun is that??
Now, keep in mind that these are dungeons that people regularly level through! You want to do Scholomance, Dire Maul, or Stratholme? Forget it! Everyone's moved on to BC content by level 58. BC dungeons were even worse! I never saw more than half of the BC dungeons before RDF. People simply didn't run that content anymore. With RDF, I can get a group for any dungeon I want. The population is now large enough to support this. And with the incentives to do daily randoms, groups are always forming. BEST OF ALL, I'm not stuck wasting my time as I wait. I can quest, do auctions, raise skills, while RDF puts my group together for me. And if someone quits halfway through, RDF pulls the guy from the top of the queue into our group. It's virtually painless.
Finding a competent PUG in Cata was hell (I had just changed realms/guilds), I totally gave up on heroics because of it as tanks would ragequit after one wipe (usually caused by them being idiots and not listening to the healer or just going on with the Wrath mentality of "healer will heal through this") resulting in another 30-40min dungeon queue, only to have the story repeat. I think there are far less tanks now that tanknig actually requires some skill again (I leveled/geared a paladin tank in TBC, I guarantee you, it was hard, pallies weren't always faceroll like they were since Wrath)
I'm confused. Is the renewed difficulty of Heroics a "good" or "bad" thing to you? I agree that pugging Heroics with RDF for the first month or so of Cata was painful. More than once, I'd spend 30 minutes in a queue, plus a solid hour in an instance only to get vote-kicked by guys in the same guild so they could bring in one of their pals for the last boss. To Blizzard's credit, they've taken steps to fix this. Heroics have been manageable for some months now. And with more people running with full sets of raid/Zandalari gear, you can start facerolling through a lot of them now.
Also Cata wasn't necessarily hard, hell, most normal raid zones were "yawn" for experienced raiders. The problem is players were no longer used to having to put any effort or skill into instances.
Now, I'm really confused... You can find 10-25 competent folks on your server to raid, but can't find 5 to do your daily heroics??
As it is now questing in WoW is tedious and arguably pointless once you hit max level.
You've obviously not played the new "end-game" quests that dropped with the Firelands expansion on Tuesday. The "Rescue Thrall" questline is arguably the most epic in the game. The new daily quests added are also far more varied and now actually give a sense of accomplishment. End-game questing has been getting stale for years, but Blizzard obviously payed attention to user complaints with this release.
The restrictions in place sound exactly like the restrictions they used for earlier trial accounts. Only now, the trial can go on indefinitely rather than just 10 days.
I've heard just the opposite: putting a fish in the freezer is the most humane way to euthanize them. The sudden drop in temperature renders them unconscious almost instantly.
[T]ensions were building in the western and southwestern states regarding the influx of Mexicans to America. Many Mexicans also smoked marijuana to relax after working in the fields. Later in that decade negative tensions grew between the small farms and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Shortly afterwards the Great Depression came which increased tensions as jobs and resources became more scarce. In 1913 California passed the first state marijuana prohibition law, criminalizing the preparation of hemp and its products, the phrase "Indian Hemp" (Cannabis indica) is sometimes used or "loco weed". Other states followed with marijuana prohibition laws including: Wyoming (1915); Texas (1919); Iowa (1923); Nevada (1923); Oregon (1923); Washington (1923); Arkansas (1923); and Nebraska (1927).
Personally, my ideal world would be one in which no one had any desire for chemical stimulus.
Well then, plan on giving up sex and any food with more taste than tofu. The reason we crave sex and food is that they produce chemicals that provide us with pleasure responses.
If I buy a tomato from the grocery store, I don't know what fertilizers, pesticides, or preservatives were used on its trip to market. If I grow a tomato plant in my back yard, I know exactly what I'm getting.
And at the same time the top terrorist himself isn't clever enough to store this sensible data in a cabinet with a pound of thermite in case he gets raided? Or to use a thumb drive only once and then destroy it?
It happens... often. Just look at a former "World's Most Wanted". Hitler may have been a political savant, and an expert in personal security - but as a Military Strategist, he was an utter buffoon. It appears that Bin Laden was so secure in the idea that he'd never get caught, that he didn't have any real contingencies planned for the day that someone came knocking.
They may be forced into it by circumstance (not wanting to starve to death), but nobody held a gun to their head.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard since stupid came to stupidtown. Starvation will kill you just as dead as a bullet, only it's longer, more painful, and more emotionally traumatizing. I find no end of irony in the fact that the Libertarian Paradise you keep gushing over is smack dab in the middle of Communist China. This has nothing to do with free markets. This is one short step above slavery.
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We were also the only large, industrialized nation whose manufacturing and infrastructure weren't bombed to cinders during WW2.
As someone rapidly approaching 40, I've got to say it. You're old! :)
OMG! I can't imagine what 1 and 0 look like in Arabic! Must be hideous!
Do you have health insurance? You do realize that someone else's medical care is paid for, out of your wallet by your premiums, right?
I agree that for leveling it's a nice thing to have, but also it makes groups boring. There's no such thing anymore as someone's "reputation" on a realm (except when you're the local Trade chat clown I guess) which is a bit of a shame. There's no chatting anymore in dungeon groups (besides "hi" and "bye" if you're lucky, no silly shit going on anymore) which is a real shame.
This is a good point. Cross-realm, there are no real sanctions for being a jerk in a group anymore. But that being said, cool guys will still be cool cross realm. I've met and real-id friended a few of the RDF pugs I've run with.
The trouble in getting groups for old dungeons is related to a couple of factors, firstly they made it faster each expansion to get through the previous one, making dungeons uninteresting as there are faster ways to quickly accumulate experience. Secondly: the gear was horribly out of date. That's two important motivations for people to do dungeons right out of the window. I think fixing those two would have been better than the LFG system.
So yeah, guess we gotta take the bad with the good but I dunno if it's really worth it.
Correct. If you're out to steamroll up to 85, you won't be running lower level dungeons. But RDF makes dungeon-leveling workable for those who don't mind taking a little more time to reach end-game. Before RDF, a dungeon was a luxury I could have once every couple days. Now, I've leveled several toons (with tank or heal spec ;) ) almost exclusively through dungeons.
I just resubbed for a bit and I'll try and level a character from 1 on a totally new realm (and new faction, so everything will be shiny and new, except for the game mechanics) and see how it goes. I somehow expect it to be a pretty lonely experience (which is a rather sad thing for a multiplayer game), but I'd be very glad to be proven wrong.
Blizz put forth a lot of effort into revamping many of the starting zones. I'm a big fan of the lore, so it's been nothing but a pleasure for me. I just leveled through the new Forsaken starting area, and it was FUN! Even though I didn't run into many other players, the quests make you feel like you're much more a part of the story. And with phasing, you actually see the battle lines change through Silverpine as you push back the Gilnaens. ... And, for the love of all that is good, play through the Goblin starting zone! By the time you reach level 10, you will have 'fixed' a professional sporting event, shaken down your competitors, hosted a party with way too much alcohol, and committed insurance fraud while using high explosives.
Good luck with that!
The problem is, the demagogues and dittoheads that buy in to climate change denial won't be budged an inch by the findings of the Scientific Method. All it takes is one "Climatologist" on the payroll of Exxon to talk on the Glen Beck show for five minutes, and their point will be irrefutably proven to them.
Vanilla + BC = $20 (comes with a month free)
Wrath = $20
Cata = $40
Total: $80 If you buy a 6 month subscription, your cost is $12.99/month. That's up to dozens of hours of entertainment for about the cost of a movie ticket. How is that "predatory".
Low-level mats (at least on my server) auction pretty well. Last week, my 20 priest made over 200g just by selling a few stacks of light leather when the supply was low.
Not true. You could still communicate with /say.
Not true. Joining a guild has always (at least for the past 2.5 years) been reserved for subscribers.
Once subscription numbers for WoW drop under a certain level the best way to continue is probably to make both the server and the client freeware and let the community take over.
You're not going to see those numbers for a long, long time. Anecdotally, I saw a big exodus with Rift. (With the anecdote being that our small-but-active active guild lost half it's members when it came out) WoW has hundreds of realms worldwide. I'd anticipate them consolidating realms long before they give it away for free.
The only way to make it better is to drop the LFG system, so people actually know who the hell is on their realm and know who to group with and who not to group with (because of skill or just because they're omgwipequitters or just plain rude bastards). I had a full friends list in TBC, in Cata after changing realms and being on the new realm for an entire year the only people I knew were my guildmates (who transferred with me) and the realm clowns in trade chat (who I avoided) and it's not like I didn't try (joining WG/TB, pugging the PvP raids etc)
You can have my Random Dungeon Finder when you pry it from my Cold... Dead... Hands. :) No one is forcing you do do heroics cross-realm. You can simply get a 5man group together with guildies or realm friends and still get your Valor points. You said you had a 'full' friends list prior to your realm switch. Why leave a good thing?
Myself, I level mainly through doing 5-mans. Doing this was neigh impossible before RDF if you were on a low-pop server. Even with an active guild and large friends list, it's a huge effort to find four other folks who are in the narrow level range (and who have the desire) to run specific Vanilla and BC dungeons. If I wanted a Scarlet Monastery or Mana Tombs run, I'd have to spend an hour or so in trade chat (or spamming a 'who' listing of similarly leveled characters) to get a group together. Plus the travel time to get two people to the summoning stone. Add another 20 minutes to find a replacement for the Tank who went 'gtg' before you even started. Add a ragequit halfway through the instance, and the group you've spent nearly two hours putting together disbands after 20 minutes of play time. How much fun is that??
Now, keep in mind that these are dungeons that people regularly level through! You want to do Scholomance, Dire Maul, or Stratholme? Forget it! Everyone's moved on to BC content by level 58. BC dungeons were even worse! I never saw more than half of the BC dungeons before RDF. People simply didn't run that content anymore. With RDF, I can get a group for any dungeon I want. The population is now large enough to support this. And with the incentives to do daily randoms, groups are always forming. BEST OF ALL, I'm not stuck wasting my time as I wait. I can quest, do auctions, raise skills, while RDF puts my group together for me. And if someone quits halfway through, RDF pulls the guy from the top of the queue into our group. It's virtually painless.
Finding a competent PUG in Cata was hell (I had just changed realms/guilds), I totally gave up on heroics because of it as tanks would ragequit after one wipe (usually caused by them being idiots and not listening to the healer or just going on with the Wrath mentality of "healer will heal through this") resulting in another 30-40min dungeon queue, only to have the story repeat. I think there are far less tanks now that tanknig actually requires some skill again (I leveled/geared a paladin tank in TBC, I guarantee you, it was hard, pallies weren't always faceroll like they were since Wrath)
I'm confused. Is the renewed difficulty of Heroics a "good" or "bad" thing to you? I agree that pugging Heroics with RDF for the first month or so of Cata was painful. More than once, I'd spend 30 minutes in a queue, plus a solid hour in an instance only to get vote-kicked by guys in the same guild so they could bring in one of their pals for the last boss. To Blizzard's credit, they've taken steps to fix this. Heroics have been manageable for some months now. And with more people running with full sets of raid/Zandalari gear, you can start facerolling through a lot of them now.
Also Cata wasn't necessarily hard, hell, most normal raid zones were "yawn" for experienced raiders. The problem is players were no longer used to having to put any effort or skill into instances.
Now, I'm really confused... You can find 10-25 competent folks on your server to raid, but can't find 5 to do your daily heroics??
You've obviously not played the new "end-game" quests that dropped with the Firelands expansion on Tuesday. The "Rescue Thrall" questline is arguably the most epic in the game. The new daily quests added are also far more varied and now actually give a sense of accomplishment. End-game questing has been getting stale for years, but Blizzard obviously payed attention to user complaints with this release.
The restrictions in place sound exactly like the restrictions they used for earlier trial accounts. Only now, the trial can go on indefinitely rather than just 10 days.
All the starter zones (and many mid-level 'vanilla' zones) have been completely revamped with the Cataclysm release.
I've heard just the opposite: putting a fish in the freezer is the most humane way to euthanize them. The sudden drop in temperature renders them unconscious almost instantly.
It would still be less dangerous than someone driving under the influence of legal proscription narcotics - say, Oxycontin.
Marijuana is the most profitable illegal drug. Last numbers I heard said that $100 spent on growing turns into over $20,000 on the streets.
Well then, plan on giving up sex and any food with more taste than tofu. The reason we crave sex and food is that they produce chemicals that provide us with pleasure responses.
If I buy a tomato from the grocery store, I don't know what fertilizers, pesticides, or preservatives were used on its trip to market. If I grow a tomato plant in my back yard, I know exactly what I'm getting.
IIRC, you can turn off 3DO voice acting and switch the 3DO soundtrack to the classic DOS soundtrack.
It happens... often. Just look at a former "World's Most Wanted". Hitler may have been a political savant, and an expert in personal security - but as a Military Strategist, he was an utter buffoon. It appears that Bin Laden was so secure in the idea that he'd never get caught, that he didn't have any real contingencies planned for the day that someone came knocking.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard since stupid came to stupidtown. Starvation will kill you just as dead as a bullet, only it's longer, more painful, and more emotionally traumatizing. I find no end of irony in the fact that the Libertarian Paradise you keep gushing over is smack dab in the middle of Communist China. This has nothing to do with free markets. This is one short step above slavery.
If you want liquid chlorine, just go to a Pool Supply store.