If they'd let people telecommute (haven't seen that word in ages!), they'd have less of a problem. I'd love to work for Blizz, but I'll be damned if I'm moving to LA.
It took them 8 months to finally take a good look at the Warlock class, which was easily the least played class in the game.
Who they then promptly broke.
It still takes, on average, about 15+ hours to get a response from a GM.
I feel bad for the GMs. ~400 of them to keep watch on 3.5 million of us, most of whom are snotty little kids reporting other snotty little kids for swearing.
I agree with a good portion of what you say; however Blizzard's customer service is....lacking.
You bring up GM support as a cost. For 3.5 million people, guess how many GMs they have? 400. I was in a bugged WSG game last night (no one could capture their flags), ticketed it, two hours later still no response and I had to/afk.
The content development. Eeek. Have you seen 1.6? It's awful. It looks like BWL wasn't beta tested at all, and the bugs that were on the test server weren't fixed before release. Two classes are broken, and another one has god mode against casters (grounding totem, "working as intended").
There's a certain kind of person who gets addicted and ignores their responsibilities. If it wasn't an addiction to games, it would be drugs, gambling, drinking, what have you.
Plenty of people play this game without any repercussions. I don't think it's the game's fault that people are getting addicted.
- There's an in game economy, run solely by the players.
- PvP isn't boring unless you play on a carebear server, or a low pop PvP. Join a raid on an enemy city and you'll see what I mean.
- You don't "occasionally" need help on quests. There are instance dungeons throughout the levels (you do more and more the higher you get) which require at least 3-4 people, recommend 5, and can have up to 10 people in them. Not to mention raid dungeons, that require 40 people to get through.
It sounds like you've played a character up to maybe the 20s and given up. There's a lot more to the game than what you seem to have seen.
You give someone some money, walk into an instance (which transfers your character to another server), if the instance server is down, you get booted back to the world server.....with your original gold. The other person still has the gold you gave them as well.
The scams are usually, "I'll trade 300g here for 300g on (other server)!"
I would hope they would be smart enough to not hook theirr critical systems up to the internet. At the very least, put a firewall and antivirus on them.
I agree, though the first one anyone actually managed to talk me into playing was Halo. Not bad, but nothing that great, either.
FPS's have the benefit of being the games that are on the bleeding edge of technology - HL2, D3, etc. Beautiful, beautiful games. Most FPS's (HL excluded) have no plot. Or they make a kind of half hearted attempt to make one. You know that's something they threw in at the last minute.
Why would I want to play a game that I'm not invested in? Why should I care? Oh look, another alien, and I'll turn around and there's one behind me, kill him, yawn. As opposed to an RPG, which has a plot, which makes you care about your characters, when you finish an RPG you've done something.
Hands down, Final Fantasy. It's what got me into games. You don't need reflexes, there's menus. They ease you into playing pretty well. And the stories are great. FFX and X-2 would probably be best for a fledgling female gamer - pretty, and there's a love story.
Before the calls of sexism come, I don't care who the girl is, all girls like romance. Even when they say they don't. They only say that to see if you'll be romantic anyways. (Yes, girls are sneaky.)
Women have been outperforming men academically for decades...in liberal arts.
I'm a woman, I'm (for now) a CS major, switching to math education soon. Why am I not staying in CS? No jobs, no money, no interest. While some men apparently would be happy to spend the next 40 years of their lives working on the next version of MS Office, I want to *do* something. It used to be that this was a field where you could really innovate and have fun with it; anymore, I don't see that.
I'm taking my AS in CS just for the love of it, but I don't want to ruin my hobby with work.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, SS is *supposed* to be optional...
If they'd let people telecommute (haven't seen that word in ages!), they'd have less of a problem. I'd love to work for Blizz, but I'll be damned if I'm moving to LA.
But if a bug benefits someone, you get a hotfix.
:P
Unless it's shamans.
It took them 8 months to finally take a good look at the Warlock class, which was easily the least played class in the game.
Who they then promptly broke.
It still takes, on average, about 15+ hours to get a response from a GM.
I feel bad for the GMs. ~400 of them to keep watch on 3.5 million of us, most of whom are snotty little kids reporting other snotty little kids for swearing.
I agree with a good portion of what you say; however Blizzard's customer service is....lacking.
/afk.
You bring up GM support as a cost. For 3.5 million people, guess how many GMs they have? 400. I was in a bugged WSG game last night (no one could capture their flags), ticketed it, two hours later still no response and I had to
The content development. Eeek. Have you seen 1.6? It's awful. It looks like BWL wasn't beta tested at all, and the bugs that were on the test server weren't fixed before release. Two classes are broken, and another one has god mode against casters (grounding totem, "working as intended").
I'm a fangirl, but Blizz is testing my patience.
You get honor. And even when you don't, there's the sheer barbaric satisfaction of having ruined someone else's day.
There's a certain kind of person who gets addicted and ignores their responsibilities. If it wasn't an addiction to games, it would be drugs, gambling, drinking, what have you.
Plenty of people play this game without any repercussions. I don't think it's the game's fault that people are getting addicted.
- There's an in game economy, run solely by the players.
- PvP isn't boring unless you play on a carebear server, or a low pop PvP. Join a raid on an enemy city and you'll see what I mean.
- You don't "occasionally" need help on quests. There are instance dungeons throughout the levels (you do more and more the higher you get) which require at least 3-4 people, recommend 5, and can have up to 10 people in them. Not to mention raid dungeons, that require 40 people to get through.
It sounds like you've played a character up to maybe the 20s and given up. There's a lot more to the game than what you seem to have seen.
That's not how it works.
You give someone some money, walk into an instance (which transfers your character to another server), if the instance server is down, you get booted back to the world server.....with your original gold. The other person still has the gold you gave them as well.
The scams are usually, "I'll trade 300g here for 300g on (other server)!"
Later ones involved lagging the shit out of the game, to induce a rollback. Sell to vendor, lag, rollback, buy your item back, now you've got two.
Blizzard will ban half of the dupers, at least a hundred casual players who happened to get stuck in an instance, and none of the gold sellers.
I would hope they would be smart enough to not hook theirr critical systems up to the internet. At the very least, put a firewall and antivirus on them.
And men *never* play minds games. Right. *rolls eyes*
It's revenge on the class for enigma hammerdins. Quit whining.
Yes.
At least he's not a chicken.
They tend to have in-house support so you have fewer clueless people calling vendor tech support.
:)
So then, all of us geeks should get discounts. We're not going to be calling tech support.
Er, Rodney stopped writing. Shut up, it's early.
Fred stopped writing it after like, strip 20. It's been funny long after Rodney left.
I was gonna get one of those this summer. I guess it *was* too good to be true. :(
I agree, though the first one anyone actually managed to talk me into playing was Halo. Not bad, but nothing that great, either.
FPS's have the benefit of being the games that are on the bleeding edge of technology - HL2, D3, etc. Beautiful, beautiful games. Most FPS's (HL excluded) have no plot. Or they make a kind of half hearted attempt to make one. You know that's something they threw in at the last minute.
Why would I want to play a game that I'm not invested in? Why should I care? Oh look, another alien, and I'll turn around and there's one behind me, kill him, yawn. As opposed to an RPG, which has a plot, which makes you care about your characters, when you finish an RPG you've done something.
Hands down, Final Fantasy. It's what got me into games. You don't need reflexes, there's menus. They ease you into playing pretty well. And the stories are great. FFX and X-2 would probably be best for a fledgling female gamer - pretty, and there's a love story.
Before the calls of sexism come, I don't care who the girl is, all girls like romance. Even when they say they don't. They only say that to see if you'll be romantic anyways. (Yes, girls are sneaky.)
IIRC, most game programming is done in C++. I know Half Life 2 was written in C++.
I didn't mean to be insulting to men, I was simply making the assumption that most MS programmers are men.
Women have been outperforming men academically for decades...in liberal arts.
I'm a woman, I'm (for now) a CS major, switching to math education soon. Why am I not staying in CS? No jobs, no money, no interest. While some men apparently would be happy to spend the next 40 years of their lives working on the next version of MS Office, I want to *do* something. It used to be that this was a field where you could really innovate and have fun with it; anymore, I don't see that.
I'm taking my AS in CS just for the love of it, but I don't want to ruin my hobby with work.
Am I the only person who *likes* tater tots?
So, what you're saying is New England and the west coast should secede, before it's too late?
:)
I agree.