All the shows have Bush, Cheney and the rest constantly on the floor: Conan O'Bryen, Jay Leno, MSNBC.
I can't comment on the rest of your post, since I'm not from Europe, but keep in mind that Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, and all those other late night talk show hosts are comedians. I used to spend a lot of time watching late night television, and let me tell you, they'll rag on anybody for a laugh. If the Republicans have been have been made fun of more than anybody else lately, it's probably because there's more to talk about with them. They're the ones in power, and thus there's more material from them.
Look at it this way. I'm trying to buy a computer, but I don't have a lot of money. I can get a PC that's 2 years old, still perfectly fine, and dirt cheap. My other option is to get a 2 year old Mac, but it's almost as expensive as a new Mac. Which one am I going to get?
As long as it can do what I need it to do, the PC still has worth to me. It just also happens to have a lower price tag. Buying a computer isn't like buying a house. Nobody cares how much it's going to sell for in 10 years.
All I can say is if Blizzard has the kind of CS policies that have plagued their other games WOW will be an unmitigated disaster. Of course the standard arguement is since players will be paying a monthly fee for WOW, you won't see the utter lack of interest and bug fixing/patching that Blizzard has shown on their free bnet titles like Diablo 2 - but all we can go on is their past performance. Right now I'm not holding my breath.
Utter lack of interest in patching? Blizzard? Are we talking about the same Blizzard here? A major patch was recently released for Diablo 2, a game that's over three years old. Warcraft 3 is still constantly being worked on... there's a new patch in beta as we speak. Even their older games like Starcraft and the first Diablo have had many patches in their time. Judging only by their past performance, I'd say that WoW will have a lot of updates.
I don't remember how they handle it in StarCraft, but Red Alert 2 had a ghost mode added just for Korean TV broadcasts.
One of Starcraft's patches added replay functionality. At the end of a game, you save the replay so you can watch it later. You can fast forward, pause, etc, when watching a replay, and you can choose to have the entire map revealed or look at things from a certain player's view.
Of course, I don't know what they do for live matches. Do they even have live SC broadcasts?
I'm a fan of NWN and all, but is a sequel really needed? I was under the assumption that Bioware's Dragon Age was going to be the spiritual successor to NWN.
Donkey Kong, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Starfox... those are some more. Nintendo really does have a lot of franchises. Hopefully we'll see some new stuff as well.
Agreed. It's clear that some people do want online play. Nintendo would be wise to listen to those customers. It's not like there's a shortage of multiplayer Gamecube games. And yeah, it wouldn't be as good as playing face to face with somebody, but it's better than nothing.
I just don't think that online capabilities should be classified as the most important area of console gaming. Online play isn't worthless, but it's nowhere near the most important aspect of a game in my mind.
Online play, the area that's going to matter most for console gaming? I certainly hope not.
This may seem like blasphemy to much of the Slashdot crowd, but I don't think that online play is the be-all-end-all of console gaming or even PC gaming. It's a nice feature, but I'd rather have a rock solid single player experience or a great local multiplayer experience. Dealing with random asshats over the internet isn't very much fun.
It's kind of interesting that there was a poll on GameFAQs about this recently. It's probably just as inaccurate as a Slashdot poll, but the gaming community seems sharply divided on how much weight online play has. It'd be even more interesting to see some real numbers on how many people actually play games online vs offline.
WoW cannot keep my interest with its blocky graphics, it just looks cartoonish and I would get bored with it all too quickly.
Maybe it's just me, but my first concern when I'm playing a game isn't whether or not the graphics are amazing. If you're only playing for eye candy, I have a feeling that you'll get bored with just about any game rather quickly. Yes, good graphics help make a good game better, but as long as the gameplay is there, the rest is icing on the cake.
That said, from what I've seen of WoW, it doesn't sport huge numbers of polygons. What it does have is its own grapical style that fits the Warcraft universe quite well. I have no idea how good the gameplay is, and I'm not that keen on MMORPGs in general, but I really dig the style of WoW. The graphics, though slightly dated, still seem to add to the experience.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree on just about every one of your points.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say it runs like a dog. There's a couple of seconds of load time each time a map is loaded, but since you can easily spend 15-30 minutes on one map, that's not very significant. I guess this is a valid complaint, but it seems like a very trivial issue to me. Once things are initially loaded, there's no interruption or slowdown.
The graphics aren't state of the art, but they certainly hold up to time better than similar things from that era. Look at FF7. Other than the FMV, it looks terrible. While FF7 had great graphics (for a console game) when it was released, the low polygon characters just don't stand up to time. FFT's sprites, at least to me, still look rather fresh. Maybe it's because there's not a whole lot more you can do to a sprite now that hadn't already been done.
I'm also not sure what you mean when you say that it cheats. Does the AI follow the same rules you do? Absolutely. Everything down to chances to hit and the way damage is calculated is the same for both the player and the computer. There are a few situations where you're put at a disadvantage, but that's why it's called Final Fantasy Tactics. I can't think of any time the game cheats.
If you don't stick to the right character upgrade paths, you're screwed? That one's a laugh. I guess you've never heard of the Straight Character Challenge. It's a well-known challenge where you're only allowed to use one class in the game for all your units, and you're not allowed to use abilities of any kind that aren't learned in that class. The Straight Character Challenge has been completed using every single class. I think that's a pretty good indication that you CAN develop your character any way you want and still win. In general, abilities are more important than levels in FFT, but you should be okay with any skillset if it's used right. Oh yeah, and since I forgot to mention it, the Straight Character Challenge also has level caps, so it's not like those battles were won simply by overpowering the computer.
That gets me to my next point... lots of boring leveling? You don't need to level in FFT. Ever. As I said above, abilities are far more important than levels. Just about any reasonable combination of abilities will let you play through the game minimal leveling or no leveling at all. If you really think about what you're doing (Final Fantasy Tactics, remember?) you can easily beat the game below level 20.
I can think of many legitimate flaws in FFT, like the steep learning curve, iffy translation, and unbalanced abilities, but most of your complaints don't seem valid.
Well, there was an item in Link's Awakening that was used to jump, but you usually didn't have to be very precise with it. I think you've got it right, though... Zelda games aren't about jumping. That's what Mario is there for.
What are the advantages of a PC? Well, there's a storage device, better internet support, and generally better graphics. Anybody who's going to be gaming is guaranteed to at least have a keyboard and mouse, which is far from the norm on a console.
Since the Xbox has many of the qualities of a PC at a fraction of the price, it's certainly feasable that it isn't helping PC gaming. It's got a hard drive built in. The graphics, while still not as good as those on a PC, are good enough for most people. Internet support might even be better with the Xbox because everything is standardized over Xbox Live. What's left? A keyboard and mouse? That's a pretty marginal advantage, especially when many of the current consoles already have keyboard and mouse capabilities. The next round of consoles will probably be even better in that aspect.
On the other hand, as people have already said, the PC is contributing to its own demise without the Xbox's help. Using a PC for gaming is frustrating at times. You need a lot of hard drive space and a good video card to play the newest games. This upgrade cycle is much faster than most people are comfortable with, and it's expensive. Then there's the annoyance of installing everything and getting it to work right. Don't forget the complete lack of genres. I'm a FPS and RTS fan, but even I would like to see more games on the PC that go in different directions.
Basically, I don't think that the Xbox is the biggest problem facing PC gaming. It might even be contributing somewhat, since it's easy to port Xbox games over to the PC. PC gaming isn't going to die anytime soon, but unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll have a spectacularly amazing future either.
Unless people have suddenly started bunny hopping around everywhere since I last played paintball, playing paintball is nothing like playing a FPS. Going by that logic, why play the newest Madden game when you can go out and play football yourself? Why bother with Zelda when you can just take some fencing lessons? I'll tell you why: the two experiences aren't equivalent. They often have similar themes and rules, but they're played in a completely different manner.
Er, didn't you just completely prove my point? By those figures, on average, around 27% of all console games are completely kid friendly. That certainly doesn't sound like there's "little ALTERNATIVE CHOICE" to me. It seems that there's plenty of choices regardless of platform. Finding several games to buy out of 100+ titles shouldn't be that difficult.
I'm not disputing that there are more violent titles than non-violent titles; that was never my intention. I'm just saying that there are enough games available for children, and it's not that tough to find those games. You have a nice list of them right there.
Okay, I'll bite. Go to the ESRB's website and do an advanced search on games rated "Early Childhood" or "Everyone." There's 396 titles for the Playstation 2 and 197 titles for the XBox. (There are 217 for the GameCube) Surely those aren't all educational and/or "girl" games. If there are certain descriptors you don't like, you can even exclude those from the search.
Whaaaa? I can't say I agree. There's plenty of games that are kid-friendly.
Just look at the Gamecube. Off the top of my head, I can think of plenty of games that a child could play: Mario Sunshine, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Mario Party (insert number here), Mario Golf, Super Monkey Ball, Mario Kart Double Dash, Harvest Moon. There's plenty more, but I thjnk I've made my point. Some of these have no violence at all or only stuff milder than most cartoons. Best of all, these are all pretty good games, and they're fun for adults too.
Anyone who says that there aren't options obviously hasn't looked very hard.
Gamers will "tolerate" it as long as the games are good. Tired or not, they're still fun to play, which is really the point. It's not as if Nintendo is alone here... what are the new big games everyone else is putting out? Halo 2? Doom 3? GTA: San Andreas? The next sports game? As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with sequels. If you don't like them, there's plenty of other games out there for you to buy.
I'd also like to point out that sequels can be innovative. Just because it has Mario in the title doesn't automatically mean that it's the same old thing.
As somebody above said, this just looks like a crippled computer.
Is there anything here to be interested in? I'm certainly not excited about playing games only through a subscription service. I want a physical copy of something I own. I want to be able to play my games years after Infinium goes out of business. The only advantage to streaming games over the internet that I can think of is that it saves money on inventory and packaging, and that really isn't an advantage to the consumer unless game prices are lower. Yeah, that'll be the day... CDs were supposed to be cheaper, too. I'm certainly not excited about the games lined up, since I couldn't find any mention anywhere of exactly what titles the damn thing will play. Since Infinium has no first party development, the vast majority of games on the Phantom will already be somewhere else.
So, given those disadvantages, why would anyone want to own this thing? To have a cheap PC? The X-Box already does that better.
"But remember that Nokia plays in a different world than Nintendo. Nintendo is starting to move from 3rd generation to 4th. (GB -> GBC -> GBA -> DS). That's a rate of about 1 generation every 4 years.
Nokia does a generation every 6 months. They've already fixed the "dork factor" and the "remove the battery" problem."
Interestingly enough, you've highlighted the exact reason that I don't think the N-Gage will ever be a contender in the video game market. A new generation of hardware every 6 months is a really bad strategy for a console. One of the biggest strengths of consoles is their fixed hardware base: you can program for one piece of hardware and know that it's going to work exactly the same for everyone who owns that console. Once you start throwing in a new model every 6 months, you have a whole host of problems thrown in as well.
The N-Gage might succeed as a phone, but I don't ever see it succeeding as a game machine. The fact that it has a vertical screen alone tells me that Nokia has no idea what they're doing. How much money is Nokia willing to spend to "get it right" before the N-Gage becomes profitable?
the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb
Uh... it has? Are we using the same internet? The internet is full of spammers, annoying flash and pop-up advertising, worms, spyware, and all kinds of other undesirable things. If anything, it sounds more like the ghetto to me, not a well-policed suburb.
a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat
Little known? I wouldn't call IRC mainstream, but it's certainly not obscure either.
Anyway, given the crap ratio of that quote, I don't think I'll bother to read the article. (Gasp! What's this, someone posting without reading the article?)
I think you hit the nail right on the head. It's not that difficult to figure out the basics of most graphics programs once you've learned one. Sure, you won't be a master overnight, but at least you'll have a good grasp of what's going on. I use Freehand for my illustrations, but I'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult to switch to Illustrator because both follow some basic conventions. It's not like those conventions are there just for the hell of it. They're there because they make a lot of sense, and they're there because it makes it easy to switch from one program to another.
GIMP, on the other hand, throws the idea of a semi-standard interface out the window. Admittedly I haven't tried version 2 yet, so maybe it's better in that respect now.
You're absolutely correct. Blizzard doesn't come up with any amazing new ideas, they just take old ideas and do them right. Is Starcraft a good game because it had some great new idea that blew everyone away? Hell no. Starcraft is a good game because it's extremely polished and it's a blast to play.
This seems to be a winning strategy. A new idea won't always make for a fun game, but a well thought out implementation of an old idea probably will. I've always thought that many people put too much emphasis on innovation in games. Games seem more suited to evolutionary changes than revolutionary ones.
Have you tried BattleLAN or LANCraft? Those programs let you play TCP/IP games with Warcraft 3. Hell, there's even a program called Farsight that works for Macs.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't comment on the rest of your post, since I'm not from Europe, but keep in mind that Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, and all those other late night talk show hosts are comedians. I used to spend a lot of time watching late night television, and let me tell you, they'll rag on anybody for a laugh. If the Republicans have been have been made fun of more than anybody else lately, it's probably because there's more to talk about with them. They're the ones in power, and thus there's more material from them.
This is supposed to be a good thing?
Look at it this way. I'm trying to buy a computer, but I don't have a lot of money. I can get a PC that's 2 years old, still perfectly fine, and dirt cheap. My other option is to get a 2 year old Mac, but it's almost as expensive as a new Mac. Which one am I going to get?
As long as it can do what I need it to do, the PC still has worth to me. It just also happens to have a lower price tag. Buying a computer isn't like buying a house. Nobody cares how much it's going to sell for in 10 years.
Utter lack of interest in patching? Blizzard? Are we talking about the same Blizzard here? A major patch was recently released for Diablo 2, a game that's over three years old. Warcraft 3 is still constantly being worked on... there's a new patch in beta as we speak. Even their older games like Starcraft and the first Diablo have had many patches in their time. Judging only by their past performance, I'd say that WoW will have a lot of updates.
One of Starcraft's patches added replay functionality. At the end of a game, you save the replay so you can watch it later. You can fast forward, pause, etc, when watching a replay, and you can choose to have the entire map revealed or look at things from a certain player's view.
Of course, I don't know what they do for live matches. Do they even have live SC broadcasts?
I'm a fan of NWN and all, but is a sequel really needed? I was under the assumption that Bioware's Dragon Age was going to be the spiritual successor to NWN.
Donkey Kong, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Starfox... those are some more. Nintendo really does have a lot of franchises. Hopefully we'll see some new stuff as well.
I just don't think that online capabilities should be classified as the most important area of console gaming. Online play isn't worthless, but it's nowhere near the most important aspect of a game in my mind.
Online play, the area that's going to matter most for console gaming? I certainly hope not.
This may seem like blasphemy to much of the Slashdot crowd, but I don't think that online play is the be-all-end-all of console gaming or even PC gaming. It's a nice feature, but I'd rather have a rock solid single player experience or a great local multiplayer experience. Dealing with random asshats over the internet isn't very much fun.
It's kind of interesting that there was a poll on GameFAQs about this recently. It's probably just as inaccurate as a Slashdot poll, but the gaming community seems sharply divided on how much weight online play has. It'd be even more interesting to see some real numbers on how many people actually play games online vs offline.
Maybe it's just me, but my first concern when I'm playing a game isn't whether or not the graphics are amazing. If you're only playing for eye candy, I have a feeling that you'll get bored with just about any game rather quickly. Yes, good graphics help make a good game better, but as long as the gameplay is there, the rest is icing on the cake.
That said, from what I've seen of WoW, it doesn't sport huge numbers of polygons. What it does have is its own grapical style that fits the Warcraft universe quite well. I have no idea how good the gameplay is, and I'm not that keen on MMORPGs in general, but I really dig the style of WoW. The graphics, though slightly dated, still seem to add to the experience.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree on just about every one of your points.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say it runs like a dog. There's a couple of seconds of load time each time a map is loaded, but since you can easily spend 15-30 minutes on one map, that's not very significant. I guess this is a valid complaint, but it seems like a very trivial issue to me. Once things are initially loaded, there's no interruption or slowdown.
The graphics aren't state of the art, but they certainly hold up to time better than similar things from that era. Look at FF7. Other than the FMV, it looks terrible. While FF7 had great graphics (for a console game) when it was released, the low polygon characters just don't stand up to time. FFT's sprites, at least to me, still look rather fresh. Maybe it's because there's not a whole lot more you can do to a sprite now that hadn't already been done.
I'm also not sure what you mean when you say that it cheats. Does the AI follow the same rules you do? Absolutely. Everything down to chances to hit and the way damage is calculated is the same for both the player and the computer. There are a few situations where you're put at a disadvantage, but that's why it's called Final Fantasy Tactics. I can't think of any time the game cheats.
If you don't stick to the right character upgrade paths, you're screwed? That one's a laugh. I guess you've never heard of the Straight Character Challenge. It's a well-known challenge where you're only allowed to use one class in the game for all your units, and you're not allowed to use abilities of any kind that aren't learned in that class. The Straight Character Challenge has been completed using every single class. I think that's a pretty good indication that you CAN develop your character any way you want and still win. In general, abilities are more important than levels in FFT, but you should be okay with any skillset if it's used right. Oh yeah, and since I forgot to mention it, the Straight Character Challenge also has level caps, so it's not like those battles were won simply by overpowering the computer.
That gets me to my next point... lots of boring leveling? You don't need to level in FFT. Ever. As I said above, abilities are far more important than levels. Just about any reasonable combination of abilities will let you play through the game minimal leveling or no leveling at all. If you really think about what you're doing (Final Fantasy Tactics, remember?) you can easily beat the game below level 20.
I can think of many legitimate flaws in FFT, like the steep learning curve, iffy translation, and unbalanced abilities, but most of your complaints don't seem valid.
Well, there was an item in Link's Awakening that was used to jump, but you usually didn't have to be very precise with it. I think you've got it right, though... Zelda games aren't about jumping. That's what Mario is there for.
What are the advantages of a PC? Well, there's a storage device, better internet support, and generally better graphics. Anybody who's going to be gaming is guaranteed to at least have a keyboard and mouse, which is far from the norm on a console.
Since the Xbox has many of the qualities of a PC at a fraction of the price, it's certainly feasable that it isn't helping PC gaming. It's got a hard drive built in. The graphics, while still not as good as those on a PC, are good enough for most people. Internet support might even be better with the Xbox because everything is standardized over Xbox Live. What's left? A keyboard and mouse? That's a pretty marginal advantage, especially when many of the current consoles already have keyboard and mouse capabilities. The next round of consoles will probably be even better in that aspect.
On the other hand, as people have already said, the PC is contributing to its own demise without the Xbox's help. Using a PC for gaming is frustrating at times. You need a lot of hard drive space and a good video card to play the newest games. This upgrade cycle is much faster than most people are comfortable with, and it's expensive. Then there's the annoyance of installing everything and getting it to work right. Don't forget the complete lack of genres. I'm a FPS and RTS fan, but even I would like to see more games on the PC that go in different directions.
Basically, I don't think that the Xbox is the biggest problem facing PC gaming. It might even be contributing somewhat, since it's easy to port Xbox games over to the PC. PC gaming isn't going to die anytime soon, but unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll have a spectacularly amazing future either.
Unless people have suddenly started bunny hopping around everywhere since I last played paintball, playing paintball is nothing like playing a FPS. Going by that logic, why play the newest Madden game when you can go out and play football yourself? Why bother with Zelda when you can just take some fencing lessons? I'll tell you why: the two experiences aren't equivalent. They often have similar themes and rules, but they're played in a completely different manner.
Er, didn't you just completely prove my point? By those figures, on average, around 27% of all console games are completely kid friendly. That certainly doesn't sound like there's "little ALTERNATIVE CHOICE" to me. It seems that there's plenty of choices regardless of platform. Finding several games to buy out of 100+ titles shouldn't be that difficult.
I'm not disputing that there are more violent titles than non-violent titles; that was never my intention. I'm just saying that there are enough games available for children, and it's not that tough to find those games. You have a nice list of them right there.
Okay, I'll bite. Go to the ESRB's website and do an advanced search on games rated "Early Childhood" or "Everyone." There's 396 titles for the Playstation 2 and 197 titles for the XBox. (There are 217 for the GameCube) Surely those aren't all educational and/or "girl" games. If there are certain descriptors you don't like, you can even exclude those from the search.
Whaaaa? I can't say I agree. There's plenty of games that are kid-friendly.
Just look at the Gamecube. Off the top of my head, I can think of plenty of games that a child could play: Mario Sunshine, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Mario Party (insert number here), Mario Golf, Super Monkey Ball, Mario Kart Double Dash, Harvest Moon. There's plenty more, but I thjnk I've made my point. Some of these have no violence at all or only stuff milder than most cartoons. Best of all, these are all pretty good games, and they're fun for adults too.
Anyone who says that there aren't options obviously hasn't looked very hard.
Gamers will "tolerate" it as long as the games are good. Tired or not, they're still fun to play, which is really the point. It's not as if Nintendo is alone here... what are the new big games everyone else is putting out? Halo 2? Doom 3? GTA: San Andreas? The next sports game? As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with sequels. If you don't like them, there's plenty of other games out there for you to buy.
I'd also like to point out that sequels can be innovative. Just because it has Mario in the title doesn't automatically mean that it's the same old thing.
I'm not surprised. Mario is a communist, after all.
As somebody above said, this just looks like a crippled computer.
Is there anything here to be interested in? I'm certainly not excited about playing games only through a subscription service. I want a physical copy of something I own. I want to be able to play my games years after Infinium goes out of business. The only advantage to streaming games over the internet that I can think of is that it saves money on inventory and packaging, and that really isn't an advantage to the consumer unless game prices are lower. Yeah, that'll be the day... CDs were supposed to be cheaper, too. I'm certainly not excited about the games lined up, since I couldn't find any mention anywhere of exactly what titles the damn thing will play. Since Infinium has no first party development, the vast majority of games on the Phantom will already be somewhere else.
So, given those disadvantages, why would anyone want to own this thing? To have a cheap PC? The X-Box already does that better.
Nokia does a generation every 6 months. They've already fixed the "dork factor" and the "remove the battery" problem."
Interestingly enough, you've highlighted the exact reason that I don't think the N-Gage will ever be a contender in the video game market. A new generation of hardware every 6 months is a really bad strategy for a console. One of the biggest strengths of consoles is their fixed hardware base: you can program for one piece of hardware and know that it's going to work exactly the same for everyone who owns that console. Once you start throwing in a new model every 6 months, you have a whole host of problems thrown in as well.
The N-Gage might succeed as a phone, but I don't ever see it succeeding as a game machine. The fact that it has a vertical screen alone tells me that Nokia has no idea what they're doing. How much money is Nokia willing to spend to "get it right" before the N-Gage becomes profitable?
Uh... it has? Are we using the same internet? The internet is full of spammers, annoying flash and pop-up advertising, worms, spyware, and all kinds of other undesirable things. If anything, it sounds more like the ghetto to me, not a well-policed suburb.
a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat
Little known? I wouldn't call IRC mainstream, but it's certainly not obscure either.
Anyway, given the crap ratio of that quote, I don't think I'll bother to read the article. (Gasp! What's this, someone posting without reading the article?)
Will it be original? No. Will it probably be fun to play? Yes.
Innovation is good and all, but sometimes people just want an improved version of a game they already liked.
I think you hit the nail right on the head. It's not that difficult to figure out the basics of most graphics programs once you've learned one. Sure, you won't be a master overnight, but at least you'll have a good grasp of what's going on. I use Freehand for my illustrations, but I'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult to switch to Illustrator because both follow some basic conventions. It's not like those conventions are there just for the hell of it. They're there because they make a lot of sense, and they're there because it makes it easy to switch from one program to another.
GIMP, on the other hand, throws the idea of a semi-standard interface out the window. Admittedly I haven't tried version 2 yet, so maybe it's better in that respect now.
You're absolutely correct. Blizzard doesn't come up with any amazing new ideas, they just take old ideas and do them right. Is Starcraft a good game because it had some great new idea that blew everyone away? Hell no. Starcraft is a good game because it's extremely polished and it's a blast to play.
This seems to be a winning strategy. A new idea won't always make for a fun game, but a well thought out implementation of an old idea probably will. I've always thought that many people put too much emphasis on innovation in games. Games seem more suited to evolutionary changes than revolutionary ones.
Have you tried BattleLAN or LANCraft? Those programs let you play TCP/IP games with Warcraft 3. Hell, there's even a program called Farsight that works for Macs.