The article was supposed to be about the girl and her experience building the computer. Her comments took up all of 10% of the article. The rest of it was all the author's opinion of why he chose certain components. This smacks of an editor asking for a campy, personal bit and it gets interjected into the "How to Build a Mid-priced, Mediocre Gaming System."
While I can appreciate Glenda's (the girlfriend) desire to experience this, I pity the pain she'll feel over the next two years and I hope she blames her boyfriend. Whenever something goes wrong, she'll question herself of whether or not she did something wrong. When she calls him to fix it, he'll likely push it off as "This is your computer; you built it." When it can no longer handle new applications or games since 2GB is the realistic minimum for Vista, she'll wonder why her boyfriend let her install it when she could have been appreciating the speed of this system on Linux or XP.
Good learning experience. Here are the lessons:
It is currently no cheaper to build your own system than it is to purchase a pre-built one from a reputable company. http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/cfgpd.asp?v=d (Plus you don't have to cut yourself building it.)
One to three year warranties from said reputable company are priceless.
When something goes wrong, you don't have to doubt yourself or pester your live-in PC support.
Vista currently sucks. We'll see if SP1 fixes it.
Inserting your girlfriend's brief experience of building a PC into your component choice opinion article does not make for worthwhile reading.
Congratulations to Glenda for completing this task. Now you'll know better to take the easier, same-price route the next time.
For example: WoW is a terrible GRIND when you compare it to a game like UO, which had a much more robust setting to play in. Uo had crafting, gathering, hunting, quests, treasure hunting, boating in the seas, dungeons, role playing, houses, player cities and PVP (and that's just from 1996 to 2000 when I played) Those were all *MAJOR* aspects of the game. In WOW, the only major aspects are: PVP and Gear Grinding.
WoW has all of those with the exception of housing (thus player cities) and boating. While I would like to see player/guild housing in WoW, I simply hope they put it on a separate server to prevent ruining the landscape and the monster/resource spawn as UO did.
PvP and Grinding? It baffles me that this is all some people get out of WoW. How shallow and narrow-minded does a person have to be to take one character, push through all the levels (whether questing or grinding), see some high level instances, get some uber gear and declare "I've seen it all." Annoying beyond belief.
There are eight completely different starting experiences up to level 20. I've enjoyed every one of them and still feel that I missed a good deal of content. I've focused on the four blacksmithing professions, enchanting, engineering and alchemy; I have yet to completely master any of those and I know there are several other professions to explore. I never had the opportunity to experience all of the original raiding instances and I've only visited a few of the new instances, so I know I have all of that content in front of me. I've played an average of 25 hours a week since the original beta, and I'm still thoroughly enjoying WoW. I played UO for 7.5 years and 3.5 years of that I considered "maintenance" (login, do routine, logout) which led me to sell my account shortly after WoW was released.
I don't see how you can call WoW "linear" when you are free to ignore any and all quests and go do whatever you wish with only level restrictions. Get to those levels however you wish, and the world is your playground. It was the same in UO. You'd be a fool if you thought you could take starting skills and some basic weapons and armor and go explore the world, go fight any higher "level" monster, go to any dungeon or jump into PvP. Maxed skills and magic armor/weapons made a huge difference. Getting skills maxed in UO - that is one definition of "grinding" in my book. Resource gathering in UO was mind-numbing; WoW makes it considerably more interesting and you're likely to be able to quest, find treasure or join a group along the way.
I define "grind" as performing an action repeatedly for only one purpose (skill gain or XP). I laugh at anyone that calls WoW a grind or thinks they must grind in WoW. There are so many quests in so many zones there is no reason to ever kill something w/o a quest behind it unless you want to. It all comes down to choices. You want the top gear? Work for it, team up and run the instance or perform the actions to get it. You want the recipes or enchants from reputation? Repeat the actions to get them. You want to be a complete socialite who does nothing but stand in a town, drunk and talking to anyone who will listen? Knock yourself out. You're free to do whatever you wish.
There are a few aspects of UO that I'd like to see implemented in any MMO (boating, housing), but for my money and time, WoW is vastly superior. I greatly respect Richard and his visions. I'm looking forward to trying any game that he produces. WoW has figured out the magic formula for appealing to as many play styles and people as possible. Whatever innovations improve upon that will be fascinating to see. I strongly believe Richard is the most likely game producer to create such innovations, but it may be several years before we see it.
How is there even treasure hunting in WOW? Lock Boxes?
Not active treasure hunting that requires a dedication of skills (cartography, mining) as in UO, but numerous quests that equate to treasure hunting: finding pieces of maps, gathering and putting together clues or unraveling a mystery by performing certain steps. I would like to see something akin to the UO treasure hunting system introduced to WoW, but I do not feel it's absence detracts from WoW at all.
If they gave it up, we'd let em go. If they gave us lip, we PK'd them, like real bandits would probably do.
You can't do things like that in WOW because of engine limitations and their considerations to "balance".
Thus you forced your style of game play on someone else, changing their game play to something undesirable and adding a dislike for the game to their memories.
It was actions like this that caused the creation of Trammel and the numerous departures of players before and after the split.
UO also had player run vendors which is why it had a much better crafting system.
Vendors had nothing to do with crafting and more to do with a mechanic to offer goods/services when you were not online. I greatly prefer the AH system in WoW, but would like greater capabilities of offering services (smithing, tailoring, etc.)
"...offering more strategic demands and ethical choices for the player."
I have greatly admired Richard since I started playing Ultima IV in the early 80's. The Ultima series was hands-down the best RPG ever IMO. If I could pry myself away from WoW, I'd go back and play every one of them again. I highly respect his vision of games and the ideals he tries to incorporate into them. I especially admire how he and his team put the players' experience before everything else.
That said I think he is too much an optimist about players, how they will react to a game and what happens if you give them control. I am hoping that he learned a great many lessons in UO. Based upon my own 10 years of MMO playing, something like the following:
players will take any and every advantage to get ahead whether it is part of the game or not
"ethics" is a completely foreign concept in a game of anonymous characters
if there is an exploit/cheat, someone will find it and use it to their advantage regardless of the effect on other players or the game world
PvP is a choice and a play style, not a necessity or a right
PvP justice/self-policing does not work (think "WarGames" - only way to win is not to play)
feed the PvP/PKers and the rest of the world can exist in peace
if you build it, someone will want to destroy it just to see your reaction
if you give players control of the world, expect to see that world sink into corruption, erupt into chaos and dwindle in population
a great deal more planning should go into expecting and preventing what players should not do rather than what you allow them to do
avoid forcing player interaction - it cripples self-sufficiency/solo play and introduces more opportunities for conflict
While I'm looking forward to TR, I still doubt it will be either a revolution or a WoW-killer. I do believe that Richard is the most likely designer/producer to create a major innovation in a MMO, but I feel it is a few years' distant.
Not just the intern to blame here. There is obvious failure, lack of responsibility and plain stupidity amongst all those involved.
Consultants reporting to consultants? Great plan if you don't care to remain in control of your company/organization.
Making a single, bottom level, low income person responsible for your most valuable asset, data? Obviously no concept of sensitive information.
No encryption? Dumb, dumber and dumbest omission of data management.
My recommendations:
1) Keep the intern. He now is knowledgeable and will make better decisions on similar matters; however, let him do the job appropriate to his level. Being fully responsible for off site data should not be part of his job.
2) Update the policy in accordance with federal, SOX, ISO 17799 and whatever other standards apply to include data encryption and a *real* off site method.
3) Get rid of one of the consultants. All consultants should be reporting directly to an employee who has interest in the company/organization.
4) Use the money saved by removing the excess consultant to pay a professional company to pickup and store the tapes off site, in a secure, disaster recovery designed site. Iron Mountain does a pretty good job. (or use their online data transfer method) If nothing else, purchase a small, fireproof box with a lock and make the manager carry it home each night.
These are really basic IT management decisions. I feel sorry for the people relying upon such an organization with an obvious lack of skill or concern.
You got me on having no sources. I based this on reports from devs, forum conversations and numerous websites relevant at the time.
I completely understand hacking for exploratory purposes. I strongly doubt the people that caused these issues in UO had any such high ideals. They did it to make game money (some then sold the secrets to make real money). They did it because they could get away with it. If they had the ideals you suggest, they would have discovered it and reported it without taking advantage of it, thus the term "exploit."
I'd also agree with you about the boredom of the game if this hadn't happened in the first few months of the game. Very few were to the stage of "seen it all, been there, done that" at that time. Again no statistics or facts, but just my own experience and the feedback from other players and developers at that time.
Obviously it's screwed up. That's why the PvP servers are all so highly populated, battlegrounds are constantly filled and arena teams are constantly forming.:-) It's so flawed Blizzard has numerous systems dedicated solely to PvP, PvP recieves 25% attention of every update and as much as I try, I cannot escape the presence, conversations and actions of PvPers on my PvE server every hour I play.
I cannot speak from experience since I have yet to participate in any part of it, but I'd say a few million people are proving your statement wrong. I strongly believe the lack of penalties is what brings them back over and over. If you have loss/penalties then the losers eventually give up because they've run out of resources, cannot spend more time recovering or generally just get tired of being beaten. When the losers start quitting, the winners no longer have victims and they quit. This is exactly what happened in UO.
Thank you. That is new and insightful information to me.
I attended both UO World Faires including the one where McFarlane visited. I don't tend to go crazy over celebrities in general, but I especially had no excitement about Todd even though I did enjoy "Spawn." It was apparent even then that McFarlane was simply there to fulfill an obligation and make money. Even more sadly it was apparent from the EA/Origin employees that they did not really want him to be part of UO. They were happy he was present, regardless, but there was no hint of wanting to work with him. This became obvious at player luncheons a year later when McFarlane's contract was over. The producer and developers were openly relieved and made statements towards what a mistake it had been.
I totally agree. PKers almost drove me away from UO completely when it first began. I tried to get my wife interested, but she hated how vulnerable we were and how pointless PvP was in general. (you call friends, they call friends, everybody dies and loses gear and it just wastes your time instead of allowing you to play the game)
I showed her WoW during beta and she was curious. When I purchased it, she started a character and was hooked within a few hours. She went on a trip and came back home to find her own account waiting for her. We still play side by side to this day and show no signs of slowing.
Key point to WoW's popularity: it appeals to EVERY play style in some form or fashion.
- losing a full suit of armor could set you back quite a bit if you had a full set of valorite armor or any of the other colored, skill specific armors. Not to mention if you had rare, magical weapons that were found in dungeons.
- A few thousand gold trivial? Hardly. Only those who exploited, sold numerous rares or had been there since the server first powered up considered that trivial. To any player of a few months, that was equivalent to several days of killing and gathering.
Being a 7.5 year UO vet, I think I can address this.
Many aspects of UO were ahead of its time. It could have been a fantastic MMORPG that would have reached millions of players, but too many factors prevented that from occurring.
- Garriott's vision of a dynamic online world never reached fruition. The ecology system never really worked (animals preying upon other animals to keep the spawn rate down). It does work in WoW, and it's fascinating to watch monsters fight each other.
- Garriott (and Raph's) vision was too dependent upon players "playing nice" and wanting to be a moral, socially upright group. What they didn't count on was how some people feel they have the right to be complete and total a-holes because they're hidden behind the anonymity of a game character.
- The economy was ruined... by players. Greed, immorality and the desire to simply ruin the experience for others drove exploiters to imbalance the money system. Granted WoW has its share of gold exploits and problems with people selling their gold farming "services," but it's not nearly as skewed as UO was after the first two years.
- The PvP system was ruined... by players. Instead of a fair playing field where everyone has an equal chance, it turned into a predator/prey system where crafters gathered resources and fighters took it away. I despise PvP, but WoW is so well balanced and has such few penalties I'm considering participating. If it's attractive to a pacifist like myself, I imagine it's remarkable to those that enjoy PvP. If someone kills another player for gear, they're playing and killing for the wrong reason, IMO.
- The classless system was unique and allowed some flexibility, but still you ended up in a niche of "warrior, caster or crafter." I knew of numerous players who started out going one direction only to discover they had wasted their time and needed to go a different direction. I lost count of how many times I "respecced" my main character. Having grown up playing D&D, I prefer the class style.
- EA prevented UO from reaching it's potential numerous times. 1)Pushed Garriott out. When you get rid of the person with the vision, how do you know where you're going? 2)Lost the "Ultima" in "Ultima Online." I'm sure you probably played the series, too. Didn't you want to see more correlation with the series stories? There were two major attempts to bring that content to UO, but EA killed them. Then they brought in Todd McFarlane to add his touch. Another major mistake there. 3)There were also multiple attempts to overhaul the game entirely, but EA wouldn't hear it because it might endanger their constant cash flow if some players decided to jump ship if they had to start over. I would have stayed because there was nothing better than UO for several years (tried DAoC, AC, AO. EQ sucked from the outset, so I never needed to try it.)
To your points:
- Crafting skills in WoW are just as separated from fighting as they were in UO. In order to gather resources, you must be able to face the wilds and at least fight enough to defend yourself from roving monsters. Otherwise a crafter can stay in town safe from harm.
- WoW also has a few rares, but they are not exchangeable which I prefer. My pets from my Collector's Editions make my account fairly valuable. Since I cannot foresee my future of not playing WoW, I have no intention of cashing in.
- I do hope WoW implements housing, but I hope they do it correctly. I despised how UO just allowed players to ruin the landscape and affect the monster and resource spawns. I had even sent the designers several suggestions of having housing servers with teleporters to keep the land pristine. If WoW does add housing, I'm sure it will be a separate server that would not affect the current world.
- I liked having my vendors sell my wares while I was away, but I did not like having to keep them stocked and paid whether they sold anything or not. I much prefer the Auction House in WoW.
- WoW has a very similar, and I think more robust, soc
The 9 million might actually be a very accurate number. While there are many individuals with multiple accounts as you suggest, there are likely just as many accounts with multiple individuals. My wife and I own one account each, but our daughters play on each of our accounts, so we're two accounts but four users. We know of several online friends who are siblings or spouses that share an account. I don't personally know of anyone who has multiple accounts.
I'll be checking out the Ubuntu/Wine combo. Besides WoW all I do is word processing, spreadsheets, surfing and e-mail. Gaming is the only point where a Mac or Linux falls short. Shame to keep Windows for only one thing.
Point taken. I could have sworn there were seven versions, but Microsoft's site only shows the four you mentioned.
I fail to see how using individual or site licensing should make a version difference. Having worked at a company that was a Gold partner, the versions didn't differ, only the key that you entered.
All good points, and I agree: Vista was not enough of an improvement to warrant an upgrade. From my experience, I purchased a new computer in February this year (Core 2 Duo E6600, 2Gb RAM, 2x nVidia 8800 384Mb cards in SLI, 320Gb SATA) that I felt would easily exceed Vista requirements and provide me the promised "gamer experience."
Install was easy if not quick. The UAC pop ups were expected and not so annoying to begin with. I started clearing them and changing the factors that caused them. Everything I did caused another one. I started trying to get my SLI and dual screen setup to work. Vista would never see the second screen. I went to download the latest nVidia driver (~60Mb) via IE 7. It took it nearly 12 minutes over my 15Mb FiOS connection. Installed the driver and still Vista would not see my second monitor. That did it for me. Three hours was enough time wasted when I should have been surfing at the speed of light and playing.
Installed XP and updated it in less than 2 hours. Downloaded the same ~60Mb patch via Firefox in less than one minute. By hour three I was playing World of Warcraft faster, more smoothly and more richly than I'd ever seen it before.
I could have eventually worked through the technical glitches, but there's no way I can improve Vista and IE 7's sluggish performance THAT much.
Say MS came out with a rock solid, optimized OS with only the basic utilities, namely the ability to attach to a network/the internet and the ability to add, remove, organize and manipulate applications, utilities and files.
Once you connect to the net, you start customizing your OS for your own purposes. Add a text editor, a bitmap editor, a calculator and other desktop utilities for free. Add other, more specialized applications and utilities for a fee. You pick and choose what you want based upon what you want to do and how much you're willing to spend.
I think I just described most Linux ports... except for the fee part.:-)
Does anyone else feel Microsoft would do better to get a clue from customer service? First rule of thumb, find out what your customer wants to DO with your product as opposed to forcing a matrix of features upon them which they may or may not know they need or want.
From my own experience MS could offer the following flavors:
Windows Home: basic, home user for internet usage, budgeting, word processing, music, pictures and video.
Windows Business: still basic, but geared towards a business environment so the entertainment aspect is removed.
Windows Developer: tools, utilities and VM environment.
Windows Gamer: graphic intensive environment (would also work for heavy photo, video, music or CAD environment)
Granted this, too, could be driven into the ground by having 40 different versions, but I think these cover most of the existing environments and usage.
If I missed it, please, correct me, but TFA does not mention if these are new computer sales (i.e. first PC in household) or replacement sales. All they consider are the raw sales. I think this makes a huge difference and greatly impacts these predictions.
Desktop computers are steadily increasing their lifespan. In the early 90's you were lucky if you could get two years' usage out of a desktop. Now we're looking at desktops that last four or five years or more depending upon their usage (typical office user, gamer, print server, dedicated task). Laptops have not increased their longevity that well. In the early 90s you could expect to replace a laptop every two years while most executives wanted a replacement every year. That's still the same schedule for a laptop. Three years is the maximum life expectancy of a laptop and that's only because accounting practices enforce it. It doesn't mean the same person will have that laptop for three years, more likely it will be passed down to users with less demanding tasks.
Because desktops have increased their life expectancy and laptops have not, of course laptops are outselling desktops because they have to be replaced more often. Add factors that others have mentioned here (non-upgradeable, battery life, power deficiency) and laptops start falling into the "disposable" category, like an inkjet printer.
Raw sales are not enough information to justify such a prediction.
Personally, I'm a gamer. Until a laptop matches the power, graphic capability, comfort of interface and upgrade ability of a desktop, they'll always be a runner-up IMO. They always have been for the 23 years I've been working with computers. Laptops have their place, but they're only a desktop replacement when you're willing to sacrifice many things.
It's not that Comcast hates Firefox, Linux or Macs; it's just that Comcast as a whole is stupid.
The install disks are so the install techs don't actually have to be knowledgeable - it automates the basic operations.
Comcast officially supports only the common denominators they know: Windows, IE, stand alone computers. From peers, any OS or browser will work, but if you have issues, Comcast cannot help you because it's beyond their knowledge.
I put up with their unstable network, flaky modem and horrendous customer service only as long as I had to. As soon as Verizon FiOS hit the area, I dropped Comcast ASAP. If I ever move again, I'll only go where FiOS or DSL is available. No cable ever again, not from Comcast, Time-Warner or any other low-brow, low-tech provider.
They did nothing of the sort in my area (Dallas, TX).
Tech installed the ONT and UPS. He then installed a wall biscuit to hold the RJ-45 from outside and connected the router and VOD box. Connected my computer to the router, renewed an IP address on the router interface and he was done.
I later secured the router and poked holes through it for my games and updates and connected the rest of my networked computers.
Easy-peasy and I've never had any trouble or downtime in about two years.
So whenever Moore or Mattrick leave their current companies we'll have a qualified individual capable of writing the authoritative book "The Greater of Two Evils: MS vs. EA."
Sickening thing is how rich these two and others like them are getting on *failures.* Normal people don't make money for failures - they tend to lose their jobs. What a scheme.
If we can form fit it to ourselves, then we can form fit it to animals as well. Imagine training a dog or chimpanzee wearing one of these suits to fetch tools, packages, etc. on the moon or Mars.
Also if it works in space, it will likely provide a major improvement for deep sea diving as well.
Kudos to Riccitello for saying something like this. His peer CEO's at other companies are probably choking and gasping that he'd publicly admit such a thing whether it's true or not. Question is did he come up with this himself or did he simply listen to the hundreds of analysts and tens of thousands of consumers that have been saying this for the past 5-10 years?
I'm with others here that EA owes numerous development studios and their loyal customers a huge apology for stifling creativity in lieu of mass production according to a project manager's schedule. What's next? Will EA take the next obvious step and publicly acclaim that they will not ship a product until it is complete and as bug-free as possible? Yeah, I doubt that, too.
There are two ways to make money: quality or quantity. I think Wal-mart and McDonald's have the market cornered on quantity. EA is proving that a similar model does not continue to be profitable in the games industry. Eventually your audience grows up and expects more than the next version of the same game. It's time to look towards quality, EA. You have the talent; we've watched you consume them. Let them do their job.
Thanks for speaking up, Mr. Riccitello. Now can you walk the walk?
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While I can appreciate Glenda's (the girlfriend) desire to experience this, I pity the pain she'll feel over the next two years and I hope she blames her boyfriend. Whenever something goes wrong, she'll question herself of whether or not she did something wrong. When she calls him to fix it, he'll likely push it off as "This is your computer; you built it." When it can no longer handle new applications or games since 2GB is the realistic minimum for Vista, she'll wonder why her boyfriend let her install it when she could have been appreciating the speed of this system on Linux or XP.
Good learning experience. Here are the lessons:
Congratulations to Glenda for completing this task. Now you'll know better to take the easier, same-price route the next time.
WoW has all of those with the exception of housing (thus player cities) and boating. While I would like to see player/guild housing in WoW, I simply hope they put it on a separate server to prevent ruining the landscape and the monster/resource spawn as UO did.
PvP and Grinding? It baffles me that this is all some people get out of WoW. How shallow and narrow-minded does a person have to be to take one character, push through all the levels (whether questing or grinding), see some high level instances, get some uber gear and declare "I've seen it all." Annoying beyond belief.
There are eight completely different starting experiences up to level 20. I've enjoyed every one of them and still feel that I missed a good deal of content. I've focused on the four blacksmithing professions, enchanting, engineering and alchemy; I have yet to completely master any of those and I know there are several other professions to explore. I never had the opportunity to experience all of the original raiding instances and I've only visited a few of the new instances, so I know I have all of that content in front of me. I've played an average of 25 hours a week since the original beta, and I'm still thoroughly enjoying WoW. I played UO for 7.5 years and 3.5 years of that I considered "maintenance" (login, do routine, logout) which led me to sell my account shortly after WoW was released.
I don't see how you can call WoW "linear" when you are free to ignore any and all quests and go do whatever you wish with only level restrictions. Get to those levels however you wish, and the world is your playground. It was the same in UO. You'd be a fool if you thought you could take starting skills and some basic weapons and armor and go explore the world, go fight any higher "level" monster, go to any dungeon or jump into PvP. Maxed skills and magic armor/weapons made a huge difference. Getting skills maxed in UO - that is one definition of "grinding" in my book. Resource gathering in UO was mind-numbing; WoW makes it considerably more interesting and you're likely to be able to quest, find treasure or join a group along the way.
I define "grind" as performing an action repeatedly for only one purpose (skill gain or XP). I laugh at anyone that calls WoW a grind or thinks they must grind in WoW. There are so many quests in so many zones there is no reason to ever kill something w/o a quest behind it unless you want to. It all comes down to choices. You want the top gear? Work for it, team up and run the instance or perform the actions to get it. You want the recipes or enchants from reputation? Repeat the actions to get them. You want to be a complete socialite who does nothing but stand in a town, drunk and talking to anyone who will listen? Knock yourself out. You're free to do whatever you wish.
There are a few aspects of UO that I'd like to see implemented in any MMO (boating, housing), but for my money and time, WoW is vastly superior. I greatly respect Richard and his visions. I'm looking forward to trying any game that he produces. WoW has figured out the magic formula for appealing to as many play styles and people as possible. Whatever innovations improve upon that will be fascinating to see. I strongly believe Richard is the most likely game producer to create such innovations, but it may be several years before we see it.
Not active treasure hunting that requires a dedication of skills (cartography, mining) as in UO, but numerous quests that equate to treasure hunting: finding pieces of maps, gathering and putting together clues or unraveling a mystery by performing certain steps. I would like to see something akin to the UO treasure hunting system introduced to WoW, but I do not feel it's absence detracts from WoW at all.
Thus you forced your style of game play on someone else, changing their game play to something undesirable and adding a dislike for the game to their memories. It was actions like this that caused the creation of Trammel and the numerous departures of players before and after the split. Vendors had nothing to do with crafting and more to do with a mechanic to offer goods/services when you were not online. I greatly prefer the AH system in WoW, but would like greater capabilities of offering services (smithing, tailoring, etc.)
I have greatly admired Richard since I started playing Ultima IV in the early 80's. The Ultima series was hands-down the best RPG ever IMO. If I could pry myself away from WoW, I'd go back and play every one of them again. I highly respect his vision of games and the ideals he tries to incorporate into them. I especially admire how he and his team put the players' experience before everything else.
That said I think he is too much an optimist about players, how they will react to a game and what happens if you give them control. I am hoping that he learned a great many lessons in UO. Based upon my own 10 years of MMO playing, something like the following:
While I'm looking forward to TR, I still doubt it will be either a revolution or a WoW-killer. I do believe that Richard is the most likely designer/producer to create a major innovation in a MMO, but I feel it is a few years' distant.
Consultants reporting to consultants? Great plan if you don't care to remain in control of your company/organization.
Making a single, bottom level, low income person responsible for your most valuable asset, data? Obviously no concept of sensitive information.
No encryption? Dumb, dumber and dumbest omission of data management.
My recommendations:
1) Keep the intern. He now is knowledgeable and will make better decisions on similar matters; however, let him do the job appropriate to his level. Being fully responsible for off site data should not be part of his job.
2) Update the policy in accordance with federal, SOX, ISO 17799 and whatever other standards apply to include data encryption and a *real* off site method.
3) Get rid of one of the consultants. All consultants should be reporting directly to an employee who has interest in the company/organization.
4) Use the money saved by removing the excess consultant to pay a professional company to pickup and store the tapes off site, in a secure, disaster recovery designed site. Iron Mountain does a pretty good job. (or use their online data transfer method) If nothing else, purchase a small, fireproof box with a lock and make the manager carry it home each night.
These are really basic IT management decisions. I feel sorry for the people relying upon such an organization with an obvious lack of skill or concern.
I completely understand hacking for exploratory purposes. I strongly doubt the people that caused these issues in UO had any such high ideals. They did it to make game money (some then sold the secrets to make real money). They did it because they could get away with it. If they had the ideals you suggest, they would have discovered it and reported it without taking advantage of it, thus the term "exploit."
I'd also agree with you about the boredom of the game if this hadn't happened in the first few months of the game. Very few were to the stage of "seen it all, been there, done that" at that time. Again no statistics or facts, but just my own experience and the feedback from other players and developers at that time.
I cannot speak from experience since I have yet to participate in any part of it, but I'd say a few million people are proving your statement wrong. I strongly believe the lack of penalties is what brings them back over and over. If you have loss/penalties then the losers eventually give up because they've run out of resources, cannot spend more time recovering or generally just get tired of being beaten. When the losers start quitting, the winners no longer have victims and they quit. This is exactly what happened in UO.
I attended both UO World Faires including the one where McFarlane visited. I don't tend to go crazy over celebrities in general, but I especially had no excitement about Todd even though I did enjoy "Spawn." It was apparent even then that McFarlane was simply there to fulfill an obligation and make money. Even more sadly it was apparent from the EA/Origin employees that they did not really want him to be part of UO. They were happy he was present, regardless, but there was no hint of wanting to work with him. This became obvious at player luncheons a year later when McFarlane's contract was over. The producer and developers were openly relieved and made statements towards what a mistake it had been.
Sounds like more ammo to blame EA. :-)
I showed her WoW during beta and she was curious. When I purchased it, she started a character and was hooked within a few hours. She went on a trip and came back home to find her own account waiting for her. We still play side by side to this day and show no signs of slowing.
Key point to WoW's popularity: it appeals to EVERY play style in some form or fashion.
- losing a full suit of armor could set you back quite a bit if you had a full set of valorite armor or any of the other colored, skill specific armors. Not to mention if you had rare, magical weapons that were found in dungeons.
- A few thousand gold trivial? Hardly. Only those who exploited, sold numerous rares or had been there since the server first powered up considered that trivial. To any player of a few months, that was equivalent to several days of killing and gathering.
Many aspects of UO were ahead of its time. It could have been a fantastic MMORPG that would have reached millions of players, but too many factors prevented that from occurring.
- Garriott's vision of a dynamic online world never reached fruition. The ecology system never really worked (animals preying upon other animals to keep the spawn rate down). It does work in WoW, and it's fascinating to watch monsters fight each other.
- Garriott (and Raph's) vision was too dependent upon players "playing nice" and wanting to be a moral, socially upright group. What they didn't count on was how some people feel they have the right to be complete and total a-holes because they're hidden behind the anonymity of a game character.
- The economy was ruined... by players. Greed, immorality and the desire to simply ruin the experience for others drove exploiters to imbalance the money system. Granted WoW has its share of gold exploits and problems with people selling their gold farming "services," but it's not nearly as skewed as UO was after the first two years.
- The PvP system was ruined... by players. Instead of a fair playing field where everyone has an equal chance, it turned into a predator/prey system where crafters gathered resources and fighters took it away. I despise PvP, but WoW is so well balanced and has such few penalties I'm considering participating. If it's attractive to a pacifist like myself, I imagine it's remarkable to those that enjoy PvP. If someone kills another player for gear, they're playing and killing for the wrong reason, IMO.
- The classless system was unique and allowed some flexibility, but still you ended up in a niche of "warrior, caster or crafter." I knew of numerous players who started out going one direction only to discover they had wasted their time and needed to go a different direction. I lost count of how many times I "respecced" my main character. Having grown up playing D&D, I prefer the class style.
- EA prevented UO from reaching it's potential numerous times. 1)Pushed Garriott out. When you get rid of the person with the vision, how do you know where you're going? 2)Lost the "Ultima" in "Ultima Online." I'm sure you probably played the series, too. Didn't you want to see more correlation with the series stories? There were two major attempts to bring that content to UO, but EA killed them. Then they brought in Todd McFarlane to add his touch. Another major mistake there. 3)There were also multiple attempts to overhaul the game entirely, but EA wouldn't hear it because it might endanger their constant cash flow if some players decided to jump ship if they had to start over. I would have stayed because there was nothing better than UO for several years (tried DAoC, AC, AO. EQ sucked from the outset, so I never needed to try it.)
To your points:
- Crafting skills in WoW are just as separated from fighting as they were in UO. In order to gather resources, you must be able to face the wilds and at least fight enough to defend yourself from roving monsters. Otherwise a crafter can stay in town safe from harm.
- WoW also has a few rares, but they are not exchangeable which I prefer. My pets from my Collector's Editions make my account fairly valuable. Since I cannot foresee my future of not playing WoW, I have no intention of cashing in.
- I do hope WoW implements housing, but I hope they do it correctly. I despised how UO just allowed players to ruin the landscape and affect the monster and resource spawns. I had even sent the designers several suggestions of having housing servers with teleporters to keep the land pristine. If WoW does add housing, I'm sure it will be a separate server that would not affect the current world.
- I liked having my vendors sell my wares while I was away, but I did not like having to keep them stocked and paid whether they sold anything or not. I much prefer the Auction House in WoW.
- WoW has a very similar, and I think more robust, soc
The 9 million might actually be a very accurate number. While there are many individuals with multiple accounts as you suggest, there are likely just as many accounts with multiple individuals. My wife and I own one account each, but our daughters play on each of our accounts, so we're two accounts but four users. We know of several online friends who are siblings or spouses that share an account. I don't personally know of anyone who has multiple accounts.
I'll be checking out the Ubuntu/Wine combo. Besides WoW all I do is word processing, spreadsheets, surfing and e-mail. Gaming is the only point where a Mac or Linux falls short. Shame to keep Windows for only one thing.
I fail to see how using individual or site licensing should make a version difference. Having worked at a company that was a Gold partner, the versions didn't differ, only the key that you entered.
Install was easy if not quick. The UAC pop ups were expected and not so annoying to begin with. I started clearing them and changing the factors that caused them. Everything I did caused another one. I started trying to get my SLI and dual screen setup to work. Vista would never see the second screen. I went to download the latest nVidia driver (~60Mb) via IE 7. It took it nearly 12 minutes over my 15Mb FiOS connection. Installed the driver and still Vista would not see my second monitor. That did it for me. Three hours was enough time wasted when I should have been surfing at the speed of light and playing.
Installed XP and updated it in less than 2 hours. Downloaded the same ~60Mb patch via Firefox in less than one minute. By hour three I was playing World of Warcraft faster, more smoothly and more richly than I'd ever seen it before.
I could have eventually worked through the technical glitches, but there's no way I can improve Vista and IE 7's sluggish performance THAT much.
Say MS came out with a rock solid, optimized OS with only the basic utilities, namely the ability to attach to a network/the internet and the ability to add, remove, organize and manipulate applications, utilities and files.
Once you connect to the net, you start customizing your OS for your own purposes. Add a text editor, a bitmap editor, a calculator and other desktop utilities for free. Add other, more specialized applications and utilities for a fee. You pick and choose what you want based upon what you want to do and how much you're willing to spend.
I think I just described most Linux ports... except for the fee part. :-)
Does anyone else feel Microsoft would do better to get a clue from customer service? First rule of thumb, find out what your customer wants to DO with your product as opposed to forcing a matrix of features upon them which they may or may not know they need or want.
From my own experience MS could offer the following flavors:
Granted this, too, could be driven into the ground by having 40 different versions, but I think these cover most of the existing environments and usage.
Desktop computers are steadily increasing their lifespan. In the early 90's you were lucky if you could get two years' usage out of a desktop. Now we're looking at desktops that last four or five years or more depending upon their usage (typical office user, gamer, print server, dedicated task). Laptops have not increased their longevity that well. In the early 90s you could expect to replace a laptop every two years while most executives wanted a replacement every year. That's still the same schedule for a laptop. Three years is the maximum life expectancy of a laptop and that's only because accounting practices enforce it. It doesn't mean the same person will have that laptop for three years, more likely it will be passed down to users with less demanding tasks.
Because desktops have increased their life expectancy and laptops have not, of course laptops are outselling desktops because they have to be replaced more often. Add factors that others have mentioned here (non-upgradeable, battery life, power deficiency) and laptops start falling into the "disposable" category, like an inkjet printer.
Raw sales are not enough information to justify such a prediction.
Personally, I'm a gamer. Until a laptop matches the power, graphic capability, comfort of interface and upgrade ability of a desktop, they'll always be a runner-up IMO. They always have been for the 23 years I've been working with computers. Laptops have their place, but they're only a desktop replacement when you're willing to sacrifice many things.
The install disks are so the install techs don't actually have to be knowledgeable - it automates the basic operations.
Comcast officially supports only the common denominators they know: Windows, IE, stand alone computers. From peers, any OS or browser will work, but if you have issues, Comcast cannot help you because it's beyond their knowledge.
I put up with their unstable network, flaky modem and horrendous customer service only as long as I had to. As soon as Verizon FiOS hit the area, I dropped Comcast ASAP. If I ever move again, I'll only go where FiOS or DSL is available. No cable ever again, not from Comcast, Time-Warner or any other low-brow, low-tech provider.
Tech installed the ONT and UPS. He then installed a wall biscuit to hold the RJ-45 from outside and connected the router and VOD box. Connected my computer to the router, renewed an IP address on the router interface and he was done.
I later secured the router and poked holes through it for my games and updates and connected the rest of my networked computers.
Easy-peasy and I've never had any trouble or downtime in about two years.
I guess it may be different in each market.
Sickening thing is how rich these two and others like them are getting on *failures.* Normal people don't make money for failures - they tend to lose their jobs. What a scheme.
If we can form fit it to ourselves, then we can form fit it to animals as well. Imagine training a dog or chimpanzee wearing one of these suits to fetch tools, packages, etc. on the moon or Mars.
Also if it works in space, it will likely provide a major improvement for deep sea diving as well.
I'm with others here that EA owes numerous development studios and their loyal customers a huge apology for stifling creativity in lieu of mass production according to a project manager's schedule. What's next? Will EA take the next obvious step and publicly acclaim that they will not ship a product until it is complete and as bug-free as possible? Yeah, I doubt that, too.
There are two ways to make money: quality or quantity. I think Wal-mart and McDonald's have the market cornered on quantity. EA is proving that a similar model does not continue to be profitable in the games industry. Eventually your audience grows up and expects more than the next version of the same game. It's time to look towards quality, EA. You have the talent; we've watched you consume them. Let them do their job.
Thanks for speaking up, Mr. Riccitello. Now can you walk the walk?