I still think you have it backwards. I agree that almost all the systems of progression result in gear improvement, but there are so many methods to achieving gear it's much more like trying to take a sip of tea from a 5 gallon bucket. Quest rewards, faction rewards, instance raiding, crafting and PvP are the main methods. Pick two and you've got several weeks of 25+ hours/week play to reach the highest level.
Just because a very small percentage of the population thinks there is not enough content because they *skipped* most of it or the 15% of the game that fits their play style is not enough to keep them interested as long as the players who enjoy the wider variety the game offers is no basis to accuse WoW of lacking in content.
The only people I have *ever* heard complain of a lack of content were the few quick consumption, over achieving, detail ignoring, hardcore raiders. Those people that level to 70 in a month, raid all the high end instances for a month and once they have a tier 4/5/6 set, they "done" and complaining about nothing to do. This, by far, is not the majority, or even a significant percentage of WoW players.
I consider myself part of the middle group, the casual-hardcore. I've played since beta, I currently have two 70s with two more in the works and five other 40+ alts. I raid three to four nights a week for 3-4 hours a night. Playing multiple characters of various classes and races I've seen a much wider variety of quests than typical players. I know for a fact how much the quick consumers are missing of content. It is barely conceivable that any one person has seen all the content (all quests, all locations, all dungeons) even approaching the 4th anniversary of the game's release.
As someone else mentioned, I hear more often people complaining of too much content. Even people I know who only play one character 20+ hours a week missed some original Azeroth content, still haven't seen some BC quests or dungeons much less participated in the patched content addition we received a few months back.
In the time that WoW has had 1 major expansion to it, EQ2 has had 4. Quantity != Quality
The subscriptions numbers speak loudly, but ask any WoW player and they'll tell you that we see new content every few months for free. I'd much rather receive more bang for my subscription dollars than have to go purchase an expansion every few months.
I think your numbers are way off. You need to look at it more like a bell curve.
-5-10% of the players are so casual that they'll never see any "endgame" content.
-5-10% are so hardcore they reach endgame rather quickly (a few months at most) and see nothing but endgame for achieving full sets of the top gear. (How you're trying to measure 10-25 people getting a drop in an instance is beyond me.)
-The other 80-90% of us are in the middle. We play how we want, we see what content we want. Hardcore-casual. If I want to raid and possibly get some gear, then I do. If I don't, I had a fun few hours playing with friends. If I want to make money, I spend time gathering resources, crafting, providing a service, doing daily quests, etc. It's all progress in some form or fashion. I couldn't possibly say (neither can you) if that's 1% or 5% improvement every day because there is no end point.
Yes, the one expansion so far nullified a great deal of gear. People complained for all of 10 minutes until they started getting their new gear. At the same time, that expansion allowed the middle of the bell curve, those 80-90% to get gear the likes of which they'd only seen on those hardcore 5-10% or might have one or two pieces of a dungeon or tier set. We'll see this pattern repeated in WotLK.
Yes, it's designed to keep us interested and coming back for more. It's perpetual entertainment, and that's exactly what we're paying for - to be entertained. I'm gladly getting my money's worth and it's actually saving me money from buying other games each month or going to the movies.
Blizzard has always delivered quality. Even if their quality slipped 10%, they'd still be leagues above the quality of most other game producers. I see this merger as a good thing. Finally, someone will be able to compete head to head against the monstrous beast of EA in regards to acquisitions, contracts and resources. I don't think it will affect Blizzard's quality.
These are all based on a false premise: that players *want* to participate in PvP. Believe it or not, most players want to play the game, follow the story, achieve levels and make friends. If a player is trying to do that, participating in PvP is a hassle and a major interruption to continuing the game.
Look at Bartle's four player types: explorer, achiever, socializer and PvP. By the grid, in a group of 100 players, you'd expect 25 of those would be PvP. That's not the case. Usually it's more like 2 in 100.
I completely despise games that immediately expect you to start into PvP from the start or with little ramp up time. I avoid them. They are not for a player like me. I dislike PvP on principle. WoW's multiple layers of PvP is the best design I've seen. It's the only one that has tempted me to try PvP. The ability to voluntarily enter a battleground or arena allows me to play on my terms. If I want to make myself vulnerable, I can flag myself. If I want all out PvP with 20 levels to get ready for it, I'll choose a PvP server. Even then dieing to PvP is only an interruption of time without loss of the items I worked to gain.
Games can cater to PvPers all they want. They're talking to a small percentage of the player population and they cannot expect large subscriptions. PvPers can no longer expect to have helpless victims as in the days of UO. No one wants to roleplay the victim. This PvP only environment should promote quality and quantity of PvP that so many of them ask for, but even then you have the anti-social jerks who grief within the PvP system. It becomes apparent that it has nothing to do with the gameplay, but all about trying to control someone else.
When a game has mechanics for remembering player attitude and intent and reflecting that "personality" to others, we'll see these griefers become ostracized in the virtual world just as they are in real life.
Good article in general. Even though I do not PvP, I keep abreast of it to know how to avoid it.
PvE players are only wasting their *own* time. That's considered entertainment about the same as watching TV. PvP is wasting other peoples' time and in non-consensual play, forcing others to change their play style as well as having their time wasted.
Obviously, this from the PvP/PKer's point of view.:-)
It was rather hilarious. On the boards, at the conventions and at RL events, we mostly heard about PvP this and PvP that. You'd have thought that UO was designed to be a PvP paradise and the total population were PvPers. When Trammel opened, an average 80% of the population of each shard moved to Trammel, the non-PvP side.
The masses spoke and said "we will not play your way." Obviously, PvPers are simply more vocal.
UO doesn't have levels. Those blacksmiths could train their swordsmanship or magic or whatever to defend themselves. That was counter-productive and did not work in the system. If you had a GM crafting skill (say 100 blacksmithing), you had to dedicate the other 600 points to combat and you still could not be as effective as a full 700 point combat player. The most effective and productive crafters were all crafting and gathering skills and were therefore easy victims.
UO also has a well balanced and intricate murderer system - i.e. if you are a murderer anyone can attack you on sight and you are unable to go into towns or are killed on sight by town guards. That was only after the first two years. Prior to the karma system and Trammel, there was no way to identify or strike back at a PK except to travel in groups of combat-skilled players.
There were no spawn campers in UO because there were no spawns. You must not have played much. There was a spot outside my house near Wrong where ettins would spawn on a regular basis. UO used a resource per grid system. Every x minutes the grid was checked. If it did not contain a certain number of monster(s) and resources they would be spawned. With the solid coverage of houses, the spawn points became 'cornered' and easily predictable. Furthermore, the dungeons were not instanced, so it was a matter of first come, first kill. People fought constantly to get boss kills.
Those 10 million people, if they knew how much fun UO was - I can't attest to its current form - would switch in an instant. I was one of the 250k subscribers of UO from 10/7/97 until 3/15/05. I suffered through the PKs, prospered despite them and played five characters on Baja. I canceled my account after playing WoW beta. I sold my account a few months later to someone still grasping that UO would survive. I'm still in contact with several of my UO friends. Very few miss it over WoW. UO was a good start to MMO's, but they missed some major points, mainly about letting *everyone,* not just PvPers play the way they want to play.
In the simplest scenarios, yes. One day I had my fresh new tinker/lumberjack (no fighting skills) outside Minoc chopping trees. When my backpack was full of logs, I'd tinker them into clock frames. Rinse and repeat for about an hour before heading into town to sell them for profit. With my backpack full of nothing but an axe, a tool and clock frames a PK jumped out, killed me and complained about what lousy loot I had.
Yes, in that case I bought a new axe and tools and went back to chopping in a different forest. The fact that the PK wasted my time and forced me to change my playstyle was the infuriating part.
Now consider a worst case scenario. (This one is hypothetical as the previous one really happened.) After establishing myself with a small house and making a good deal of money, I decide to upgrade my house. Due to storage limitations yet the need for large amounts of resources to profit from crafting, I have to buy a few pack mules to store all my items while I demolish the old house and build the new one. As the old house comes down, out comes a PK (or more likely a gang) who proceed to kill me, kill my pack mules, take all my items and place their own new house in the spot mine had previously occupied.
That's months worth of effort gone in less than a minute. Even if I had millions of gold in the bank, why should I bother starting over? Whatever efforts I make will be thwarted by people who would rather capitalize off of other peoples' work.
As you mentioned some of the best (but not THE best) items were GM crafted. Yet how can crafters get the resources they need when the PKs continuously interrupt the work? All the suggestions I heard from pro-PvPers were pointless.
- "Put fighting skills on your crafter." He's a crafter. To be the most efficient crafter and not have multiple crafter characters, fighting skills are zero.
- "Have your friends guard you while you mine/chop." Oh, yeah. Like standing guard for hours is a great way to play a game.
- "Only go to 'safe' zones." Before Trammel the only safe zones were inside city boundaries and the amount of trees and mineable rock within cities was sparse at best.
PvP/PKing in UO was griefing of the worst kind. Not only did you lose hours of effort, not only did PKs force you to change how you wanted to play but on top of it all they could violate your senses and your character's corpse without any recourse.
UO could have been the best MMO on the market. Underestimation by the developers of how immoral and idiotic players could be killed it before it got up to full speed.
I agree completely, but from a different perspective.
PvP has no place in MMORPGs. The fundamental designs of exploration, achievement and socialization are contradictory to PvP. The first three have to do with making progress or friends.
I agree gear and levels have too much impact on PvP. Skill can only overcome so much. IMO every player entering a PvP zone/arena should be normalized so that everyone is equal. That way all those PvPers clamoring that they play PvP for a fair fight and the challenge of a human opponent can get exactly what they want.
Better yet, let's get all the PvPers together in real life, strip them to their underwear, give them each a baseball bat and lock them all in an empty, dark warehouse until there's only one left. Then perhaps game developers can quit squandering so many resources on pleasing players who want nothing more than to waste time killing each others' pixels.
"Remember torturing puppies, stealing money from your mom's purse and pissing in the neighbor's pool? Man we were so 733t!!!!111"
Congratulations. You and your PvP jerk friends finally won. You drove so many people away from UO it was too late to save the game when PvP-choice play (Trammel) was created. You and your kind killed UO because you wanted the freedom to be anti-social pricks who robbed players of hours of effort. A GM sword/tactics master killing a GM miner. Ooh, big challenge.
Are you still playing UO? Felucca is still there as the lawless, jerk-infested land of no fun or productivity. I'm guessing you quit when Trammel was created because 80% of the population on ALL shards moved to the non-PvP side. When the PvPers had no victims for loot and resources, they started preying on each other. Despite every PvPer I've ever met stating "I PvP for the challenge of a fair fight against a human," when they had to fight each other and it turned into gang wars with the largest gang with all the best gear owning the Felucca side of the shard, they all quit, too.
Yeah, that's real PvP. Killing off an MMO for the enjoyment of ruining others' game.
Vista could be lighting-fast and have a perfect UI and you'd still get people freaking out because they've learned and grown accustomed to the stupid quirks of XP over the past seven or so years. Despite what they say to the contrary, most people hate dealing with change so the longer you give them to get used to something, the more aggressively they'll reject the "latest and greatest". I disagree with you. Yes, there are a certain percentage who resist change in general. Typically IT and slashdotters are not part of that crowd. Part of that resistance comes from past bad Microsoft experiences of having to upgrade or reload to a new OS. I don't think that is the case with Vista. It's not about change - it's about loss of performance, stability and compatibility and the addition of annoyances that shouldn't be there.
If Vista were faster than XP, provided any significant improvement over XP and was fully compatible with all current (less than 2 years old) hardware and software, people would be all over it, lauding it's greatness and claiming what a great upgrade Microsoft provided. I remember doing so with 2000 over 98 and with XP over 2000.
I've worked in IT for 24 years and I'm typically an early adopter. The only time I can remember flat out refusing an OS due to it's unusability was Windows ME. All the rest had *some* reason to upgrade. Vista offers nothing better than XP except improved security (supposedly). The graphics and interface were supposed to be better - I see slower screen refreshes and difficult to find controls. It was supposed to be faster - XP can outrun it with "half" the hardware. It was supposed to be more compatible - I have yet to see someone get Vista working with dual monitors w/o having to resort to a hack, and I've tried to support numerous friends and customers who cannot get certain applications to run under Vista.
It's no surprise that we're seeing, hearing and reading of more and more people exploring Linux distros. I'm considering Ubuntu myself if I can get my games to run under it. If I could afford a Mac, I'd have been on one last year. The Microsoft regime and all their hardware and software cohorts have us backed into a corner for certain. It takes a major effort to escape that corner. Really the market share is Microsoft's to lose, and if they have another incident like Vista, they will lose it.
You laugh, but I think there may be a side effect to this "protection."
Will we see the development of different levels of "genetic quality" to rate people? i.e. Those with flawless genetic sequences compared to those with several dormant defects or diseases? Even if the government protects this information from insurance companies and employers, what will stop other systems from accessing it and publicizing it? How hacker proof is this information if someone wanted it for blackmail? Will we start seeing a caste system, very much like the one suggested by the "Gattaca" movie?
It simply makes me nervous that this passed legislation 414-1. When has congress ever agreed on something so unanimously if it doesn't benefit them and their wallets in some way? What aren't they telling us?
I find it fascinating that an online comic can bridge the gap to a game. Keeping the game episodic and using the original artwork keeps the comic feel.
I haven't followed PA consistently, so I don't have much of an opinion on their content. An online comic I think that would translate well to a game is Girl Genius (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/index.php). Heck, I think that whole universe would translate well to a MMO, though the female characters wouldn't be able to see the ground or run without toppling over.:-)
If this process is easily mass produced, I could see past and current comic books becoming games.
MMOers want to continue to progress their character(s). 2 years is FAR too long to give people really something to progress with besides horizontal progression with a couple new dungeons thrown in once in a while.
You're only focusing on the small percentage of single-minded, "hardcore," single character, playing 16 hours a day achievers who will burn through any amount of content that Blizzard throws at them in half the expected time because they're too focused on getting to the "end" as opposed to playing the game. I've known a few of these consuming players who play one character to max level, get a few pieces of decent gear, visit a couple of dungeons and they're "done."
I strongly believe that does NOT described the greater percentage of casual to semi-hardcore players. The 10+ million who are still actively playing are still wanting to see content added last January with Burning Crusade. I know the guilds I associate with are still working on Gruul's, Magtheridon's Lair and Serpentshrine Cavern. We've attempted the Sunwell dungeon released in the most recent patch, but found our gear was inadequate since we haven't seen the end game content of the original BC. Knowing there are many guilds ahead of us and many more behind us, I'm guessing we're right in the middle of the pack.
I know I won't be amongst the early achievers who will level to 80 in less than a week when WotLK releases. When it does, I'm certain we'll see WoW jump to 12 million active subscribers as those consumers mentioned above will return to gobble up their fraction of the new content in a month and be "done" again. Meanwhile the bulk of the population will still be struggling to fathom how many more choices and paths they have before them. The amount of content in WoW, for those that wish to really play, is daunting. I know a few who quit shortly after BC because it was "too much to keep up with."
It comes down to who Blizzard is trying to please the most: the quick consumers who only see 10% of the content before moving on to new things, or the 90% who are there for the long haul and want to enjoy as much of the game as possible. Blizzard's answer is both - they provide new content in a timely enough manner to keep the faster consumers coming back, and enough depth to keep the explorers and more casual players engrossed for months.
I know BC caused the dissolution of several guilds because members had differences of opinion on this same topic: take the leading edge or take a more casual pace. WotLK will likely cause this again, and depending on what the new content is like, I may soon adopt the "too much for me" group and depart. Any MMO is going to suffer this same division of players in relation to content updates. How well the game replays for secondary characters or keeps new players in mind will determine its success or failure.
I want my children to have a career and a life. IT interferes with both of those. I don't know anyone in IT who has been in a single position for 10 years. We all hop from one title to another, usually for more responsibility and more pay. Sadly more responsibility usually means more work time and less life time.
My children will be technically savvy, able to load OSes and applications, capable of troubleshooting and replacing components, but I do not want them doing that for a living. Computers should simply be the tools that assist us in our jobs, NOT our entire job.
I'm in a similar situation. We have hundreds of books on several bookshelves throughout the house. Several are collector's or first editions. I'm considering an eReader, but I don't think they've arrived yet for the mass market or even for avid readers with extensive libraries.
- All are less than a pound
- If not using the wireless, most can last several days
- Treat them like a book (don't get wet, don't set on a hot stove, etc.) and they're as durable as a book
- Comfort is subjective, but at the weight and size all of these are, they're just like holding a book or more comfortable. Most interfaces for page turning look to be convenient, too.
- Wireless download, USB download or memory card storage. Sound as easy to use as any MP3 player.
- Most have a wireless option. Kindle seems to be the easiest, but it's also proprietary.
- Price is a major factor now. I think we'll see these drop drastically as they catch on. The content prices should drop as well.
- Not sure what you mean by your library supporting it. Content?
My main gripe is the same I've had with re-buying movies on DVD that I already had in VHS. It's the same movie; why do I have to buy it again? Why can't I just pay for the difference of the format and not pay for the content again? Likewise if I own all of these books, why do I have to buy them all again?
My ideal would be that I can take a reader, have it scan the barcode on my paper book, locate the digital version and offer me an "upgrade" price of $1 or $2 for the convenience of having it digitally.
Eventually every book will be in a digital format and inexpensive to get. THAT'S when I'll seriously look at a reader. I'll still keep all the paper books as collector's items. At least with a reader you never have to worry about tearing or staining that rare book just because you wanted to read it. I think comic book/graphic novel collector's would catch on to this as well so they could enjoy reading all those comics they can't touch.
I agree. I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but even a non-news watching, politically ignorant consumer such as myself knows that the petroleum and automotive industries have a choke hold on the government and consumers.
The automotive companies will buyout whatever companies produce successful vehicles for the AXP and continue their profitability. The petroleum companies, however, will not cease interfering and lobbying until they manage to get control of the alternative fuels and power sources OR kill alternative fuel vehicles outright to continue our dependency upon their product.
Note the words "through 2007" at the end of the first paragraph. If you read further, once these companies sell 60k vehicles, there will no longer be any tax credit for them at all.
Unless there's a new EP Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005), all of these alternative fuel cars will cost us the same or more than the current gas guzzlers if you take all the factors into consideration: vehicle cost, taxes, fuel cost, maintenance cost, insurance cost, infrastructure cost to provide electrical outlets to parking lots/garages and any unforeseen costs that such a change to our current system will incur.
I'm all for alternative fuels to decrease our impact on the Earth's ecosystem and shift power away from the petroleum companies, but you're fooling yourself if you think any of these cars will result in saving consumers money.
I agree. I had hopes that del Toro would be called upon to direct the World of Warcraft movie. I think this is better and will be more significant in his career.
Tolkien was the bridge between mythic literature and fairy tales which created what we know as the fantasy genre. He's credited with being the father of the modern fantasy genre, but others were doing similar work, mainly C.S. Lewis, but none to the depth that Tolkien did.
Tolkien took from Saxon, Finnish, Teutonic, Norse and Gallic mythos and combined and transformed them into a British mythos. More significantly he interwove religious belief, political statements and derision for industrialization into an epic struggle of several peoples. He developed a universe from his suggested pre-history of the United Kingdom and developed that world's own pre-history (Silmarilliion).
The grandest part of Tolkien's work is the language. The man lived for languages, so much so that he invented them. I'm not talking about a few hundred words like Klingon is today, but entire languages with real etymology and conjugation in oral and written form.
Add to this the attention to detail he had. He drew maps and made certain that the story could be followed geographically. He created the lineage of the main characters and made it possible to trace the accounts of the longer lived ones (Galadriel, Elrond). Having created a race half the height of an average person, he had continuity throughout all the books to take their size into account. He basically developed the world enough and provided enough details that any reader could imagine every part of it. Many fantasy authors have often done some part of it, but I cannot think of one who has done all this.
On top of all of this remember that the writing occurred from 1920's to 1950's, i.e. before most all modern fantasy writers were born. Every fantasy book since the publication of LOTR owes tribute to Tolkien. Tolkien is to fantasy what Jules Verne is to science fiction. The main difference is, Jules was simply predicting whereas Tolkien recreated the world and re-wrote history.
I read a great deal of fantasy literature. In everything I read, especially Eddings, I can easily pick out the portions that mimic Tolkien and his work. It can all be traced back to the Professor. Have others improved upon the genre? Sure, but most of the work was already done for them. I can easily make a wooden statue look great with a new coat of stain as long as someone else carved it for me.
The fact that the movie makers made a major effort NOT to alter the work significantly and there are so many voices complaining of the changes that were made indicates the *continued* widespread popularity and legacy of LOTR. I greatly appreciated the movies simply to bring the message of LOTR to the current generations who are intimidated by the English language (and Quenya)in its fullest form as Tolkien wrote it and it was written in that time period. Grammar is quickly becoming a lost art. Works like Tolkien's help to preserve it.
What's the draw? It was an unprecedented paradigm. It was an epic work. It canonizes the English language. It inspired, continues to inspire and will inspire millions and millions of people for centuries to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because a very small percentage of the population thinks there is not enough content because they *skipped* most of it or the 15% of the game that fits their play style is not enough to keep them interested as long as the players who enjoy the wider variety the game offers is no basis to accuse WoW of lacking in content.
The only people I have *ever* heard complain of a lack of content were the few quick consumption, over achieving, detail ignoring, hardcore raiders. Those people that level to 70 in a month, raid all the high end instances for a month and once they have a tier 4/5/6 set, they "done" and complaining about nothing to do. This, by far, is not the majority, or even a significant percentage of WoW players.
I consider myself part of the middle group, the casual-hardcore. I've played since beta, I currently have two 70s with two more in the works and five other 40+ alts. I raid three to four nights a week for 3-4 hours a night. Playing multiple characters of various classes and races I've seen a much wider variety of quests than typical players. I know for a fact how much the quick consumers are missing of content. It is barely conceivable that any one person has seen all the content (all quests, all locations, all dungeons) even approaching the 4th anniversary of the game's release.
As someone else mentioned, I hear more often people complaining of too much content. Even people I know who only play one character 20+ hours a week missed some original Azeroth content, still haven't seen some BC quests or dungeons much less participated in the patched content addition we received a few months back.
In the time that WoW has had 1 major expansion to it, EQ2 has had 4. Quantity != QualityThe subscriptions numbers speak loudly, but ask any WoW player and they'll tell you that we see new content every few months for free. I'd much rather receive more bang for my subscription dollars than have to go purchase an expansion every few months.
-5-10% of the players are so casual that they'll never see any "endgame" content.
-5-10% are so hardcore they reach endgame rather quickly (a few months at most) and see nothing but endgame for achieving full sets of the top gear. (How you're trying to measure 10-25 people getting a drop in an instance is beyond me.)
-The other 80-90% of us are in the middle. We play how we want, we see what content we want. Hardcore-casual. If I want to raid and possibly get some gear, then I do. If I don't, I had a fun few hours playing with friends. If I want to make money, I spend time gathering resources, crafting, providing a service, doing daily quests, etc. It's all progress in some form or fashion. I couldn't possibly say (neither can you) if that's 1% or 5% improvement every day because there is no end point.
Yes, the one expansion so far nullified a great deal of gear. People complained for all of 10 minutes until they started getting their new gear. At the same time, that expansion allowed the middle of the bell curve, those 80-90% to get gear the likes of which they'd only seen on those hardcore 5-10% or might have one or two pieces of a dungeon or tier set. We'll see this pattern repeated in WotLK.
Yes, it's designed to keep us interested and coming back for more. It's perpetual entertainment, and that's exactly what we're paying for - to be entertained. I'm gladly getting my money's worth and it's actually saving me money from buying other games each month or going to the movies.
Blizzard has always delivered quality. Even if their quality slipped 10%, they'd still be leagues above the quality of most other game producers. I see this merger as a good thing. Finally, someone will be able to compete head to head against the monstrous beast of EA in regards to acquisitions, contracts and resources. I don't think it will affect Blizzard's quality.
Blizzard has always delivered top quality games. I have yet to be disappointed with any of their products.
You have to enter paragraphs 'less than p greater than' or breaks 'less than br greater than' to separate text.
Look at Bartle's four player types: explorer, achiever, socializer and PvP. By the grid, in a group of 100 players, you'd expect 25 of those would be PvP. That's not the case. Usually it's more like 2 in 100.
I completely despise games that immediately expect you to start into PvP from the start or with little ramp up time. I avoid them. They are not for a player like me. I dislike PvP on principle. WoW's multiple layers of PvP is the best design I've seen. It's the only one that has tempted me to try PvP. The ability to voluntarily enter a battleground or arena allows me to play on my terms. If I want to make myself vulnerable, I can flag myself. If I want all out PvP with 20 levels to get ready for it, I'll choose a PvP server. Even then dieing to PvP is only an interruption of time without loss of the items I worked to gain.
Games can cater to PvPers all they want. They're talking to a small percentage of the player population and they cannot expect large subscriptions. PvPers can no longer expect to have helpless victims as in the days of UO. No one wants to roleplay the victim. This PvP only environment should promote quality and quantity of PvP that so many of them ask for, but even then you have the anti-social jerks who grief within the PvP system. It becomes apparent that it has nothing to do with the gameplay, but all about trying to control someone else.
When a game has mechanics for remembering player attitude and intent and reflecting that "personality" to others, we'll see these griefers become ostracized in the virtual world just as they are in real life.
Good article in general. Even though I do not PvP, I keep abreast of it to know how to avoid it.
PvE players are only wasting their *own* time. That's considered entertainment about the same as watching TV. PvP is wasting other peoples' time and in non-consensual play, forcing others to change their play style as well as having their time wasted.
It was rather hilarious. On the boards, at the conventions and at RL events, we mostly heard about PvP this and PvP that. You'd have thought that UO was designed to be a PvP paradise and the total population were PvPers. When Trammel opened, an average 80% of the population of each shard moved to Trammel, the non-PvP side.
The masses spoke and said "we will not play your way." Obviously, PvPers are simply more vocal.
In the simplest scenarios, yes. One day I had my fresh new tinker/lumberjack (no fighting skills) outside Minoc chopping trees. When my backpack was full of logs, I'd tinker them into clock frames. Rinse and repeat for about an hour before heading into town to sell them for profit. With my backpack full of nothing but an axe, a tool and clock frames a PK jumped out, killed me and complained about what lousy loot I had.
Yes, in that case I bought a new axe and tools and went back to chopping in a different forest. The fact that the PK wasted my time and forced me to change my playstyle was the infuriating part.
Now consider a worst case scenario. (This one is hypothetical as the previous one really happened.) After establishing myself with a small house and making a good deal of money, I decide to upgrade my house. Due to storage limitations yet the need for large amounts of resources to profit from crafting, I have to buy a few pack mules to store all my items while I demolish the old house and build the new one. As the old house comes down, out comes a PK (or more likely a gang) who proceed to kill me, kill my pack mules, take all my items and place their own new house in the spot mine had previously occupied.
That's months worth of effort gone in less than a minute. Even if I had millions of gold in the bank, why should I bother starting over? Whatever efforts I make will be thwarted by people who would rather capitalize off of other peoples' work.
As you mentioned some of the best (but not THE best) items were GM crafted. Yet how can crafters get the resources they need when the PKs continuously interrupt the work? All the suggestions I heard from pro-PvPers were pointless.
- "Put fighting skills on your crafter." He's a crafter. To be the most efficient crafter and not have multiple crafter characters, fighting skills are zero.
- "Have your friends guard you while you mine/chop." Oh, yeah. Like standing guard for hours is a great way to play a game.
- "Only go to 'safe' zones." Before Trammel the only safe zones were inside city boundaries and the amount of trees and mineable rock within cities was sparse at best.
PvP/PKing in UO was griefing of the worst kind. Not only did you lose hours of effort, not only did PKs force you to change how you wanted to play but on top of it all they could violate your senses and your character's corpse without any recourse.
UO could have been the best MMO on the market. Underestimation by the developers of how immoral and idiotic players could be killed it before it got up to full speed.
PvP has no place in MMORPGs. The fundamental designs of exploration, achievement and socialization are contradictory to PvP. The first three have to do with making progress or friends.
I agree gear and levels have too much impact on PvP. Skill can only overcome so much. IMO every player entering a PvP zone/arena should be normalized so that everyone is equal. That way all those PvPers clamoring that they play PvP for a fair fight and the challenge of a human opponent can get exactly what they want.
Better yet, let's get all the PvPers together in real life, strip them to their underwear, give them each a baseball bat and lock them all in an empty, dark warehouse until there's only one left. Then perhaps game developers can quit squandering so many resources on pleasing players who want nothing more than to waste time killing each others' pixels.
Congratulations. You and your PvP jerk friends finally won. You drove so many people away from UO it was too late to save the game when PvP-choice play (Trammel) was created. You and your kind killed UO because you wanted the freedom to be anti-social pricks who robbed players of hours of effort. A GM sword/tactics master killing a GM miner. Ooh, big challenge.
Are you still playing UO? Felucca is still there as the lawless, jerk-infested land of no fun or productivity. I'm guessing you quit when Trammel was created because 80% of the population on ALL shards moved to the non-PvP side. When the PvPers had no victims for loot and resources, they started preying on each other. Despite every PvPer I've ever met stating "I PvP for the challenge of a fair fight against a human," when they had to fight each other and it turned into gang wars with the largest gang with all the best gear owning the Felucca side of the shard, they all quit, too.
Yeah, that's real PvP. Killing off an MMO for the enjoyment of ruining others' game.
both of our Vista users need constant support and cannot reach us if you're keeping the lines busy.
If Vista were faster than XP, provided any significant improvement over XP and was fully compatible with all current (less than 2 years old) hardware and software, people would be all over it, lauding it's greatness and claiming what a great upgrade Microsoft provided. I remember doing so with 2000 over 98 and with XP over 2000.
I've worked in IT for 24 years and I'm typically an early adopter. The only time I can remember flat out refusing an OS due to it's unusability was Windows ME. All the rest had *some* reason to upgrade. Vista offers nothing better than XP except improved security (supposedly). The graphics and interface were supposed to be better - I see slower screen refreshes and difficult to find controls. It was supposed to be faster - XP can outrun it with "half" the hardware. It was supposed to be more compatible - I have yet to see someone get Vista working with dual monitors w/o having to resort to a hack, and I've tried to support numerous friends and customers who cannot get certain applications to run under Vista.
It's no surprise that we're seeing, hearing and reading of more and more people exploring Linux distros. I'm considering Ubuntu myself if I can get my games to run under it. If I could afford a Mac, I'd have been on one last year. The Microsoft regime and all their hardware and software cohorts have us backed into a corner for certain. It takes a major effort to escape that corner. Really the market share is Microsoft's to lose, and if they have another incident like Vista, they will lose it.
Will we see the development of different levels of "genetic quality" to rate people? i.e. Those with flawless genetic sequences compared to those with several dormant defects or diseases? Even if the government protects this information from insurance companies and employers, what will stop other systems from accessing it and publicizing it? How hacker proof is this information if someone wanted it for blackmail? Will we start seeing a caste system, very much like the one suggested by the "Gattaca" movie?
It simply makes me nervous that this passed legislation 414-1. When has congress ever agreed on something so unanimously if it doesn't benefit them and their wallets in some way? What aren't they telling us?
I haven't followed PA consistently, so I don't have much of an opinion on their content. An online comic I think that would translate well to a game is Girl Genius (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/index.php). Heck, I think that whole universe would translate well to a MMO, though the female characters wouldn't be able to see the ground or run without toppling over.
If this process is easily mass produced, I could see past and current comic books becoming games.
I strongly believe that does NOT described the greater percentage of casual to semi-hardcore players. The 10+ million who are still actively playing are still wanting to see content added last January with Burning Crusade. I know the guilds I associate with are still working on Gruul's, Magtheridon's Lair and Serpentshrine Cavern. We've attempted the Sunwell dungeon released in the most recent patch, but found our gear was inadequate since we haven't seen the end game content of the original BC. Knowing there are many guilds ahead of us and many more behind us, I'm guessing we're right in the middle of the pack.
I know I won't be amongst the early achievers who will level to 80 in less than a week when WotLK releases. When it does, I'm certain we'll see WoW jump to 12 million active subscribers as those consumers mentioned above will return to gobble up their fraction of the new content in a month and be "done" again. Meanwhile the bulk of the population will still be struggling to fathom how many more choices and paths they have before them. The amount of content in WoW, for those that wish to really play, is daunting. I know a few who quit shortly after BC because it was "too much to keep up with."
It comes down to who Blizzard is trying to please the most: the quick consumers who only see 10% of the content before moving on to new things, or the 90% who are there for the long haul and want to enjoy as much of the game as possible. Blizzard's answer is both - they provide new content in a timely enough manner to keep the faster consumers coming back, and enough depth to keep the explorers and more casual players engrossed for months.
I know BC caused the dissolution of several guilds because members had differences of opinion on this same topic: take the leading edge or take a more casual pace. WotLK will likely cause this again, and depending on what the new content is like, I may soon adopt the "too much for me" group and depart. Any MMO is going to suffer this same division of players in relation to content updates. How well the game replays for secondary characters or keeps new players in mind will determine its success or failure.
I want my children to have a career and a life. IT interferes with both of those. I don't know anyone in IT who has been in a single position for 10 years. We all hop from one title to another, usually for more responsibility and more pay. Sadly more responsibility usually means more work time and less life time.
My children will be technically savvy, able to load OSes and applications, capable of troubleshooting and replacing components, but I do not want them doing that for a living. Computers should simply be the tools that assist us in our jobs, NOT our entire job.
Most of what you're asking for exists already. Here's a good reference I found: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
- All are less than a pound
- If not using the wireless, most can last several days
- Treat them like a book (don't get wet, don't set on a hot stove, etc.) and they're as durable as a book
- Comfort is subjective, but at the weight and size all of these are, they're just like holding a book or more comfortable. Most interfaces for page turning look to be convenient, too.
- Wireless download, USB download or memory card storage. Sound as easy to use as any MP3 player.
- Most have a wireless option. Kindle seems to be the easiest, but it's also proprietary.
- Price is a major factor now. I think we'll see these drop drastically as they catch on. The content prices should drop as well.
- Not sure what you mean by your library supporting it. Content?
My main gripe is the same I've had with re-buying movies on DVD that I already had in VHS. It's the same movie; why do I have to buy it again? Why can't I just pay for the difference of the format and not pay for the content again? Likewise if I own all of these books, why do I have to buy them all again?
My ideal would be that I can take a reader, have it scan the barcode on my paper book, locate the digital version and offer me an "upgrade" price of $1 or $2 for the convenience of having it digitally.
Eventually every book will be in a digital format and inexpensive to get. THAT'S when I'll seriously look at a reader. I'll still keep all the paper books as collector's items. At least with a reader you never have to worry about tearing or staining that rare book just because you wanted to read it. I think comic book/graphic novel collector's would catch on to this as well so they could enjoy reading all those comics they can't touch.
So if you make him project Star Wars: Episode I will he sound an alarm, spin around and spit out the DVD?
The automotive companies will buyout whatever companies produce successful vehicles for the AXP and continue their profitability. The petroleum companies, however, will not cease interfering and lobbying until they manage to get control of the alternative fuels and power sources OR kill alternative fuel vehicles outright to continue our dependency upon their product.
http://www.energy.gov/taxbreaks.htm
Note the words "through 2007" at the end of the first paragraph. If you read further, once these companies sell 60k vehicles, there will no longer be any tax credit for them at all.
Unless there's a new EP Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005), all of these alternative fuel cars will cost us the same or more than the current gas guzzlers if you take all the factors into consideration: vehicle cost, taxes, fuel cost, maintenance cost, insurance cost, infrastructure cost to provide electrical outlets to parking lots/garages and any unforeseen costs that such a change to our current system will incur.
I'm all for alternative fuels to decrease our impact on the Earth's ecosystem and shift power away from the petroleum companies, but you're fooling yourself if you think any of these cars will result in saving consumers money.
I agree. I had hopes that del Toro would be called upon to direct the World of Warcraft movie. I think this is better and will be more significant in his career.
Tolkien took from Saxon, Finnish, Teutonic, Norse and Gallic mythos and combined and transformed them into a British mythos. More significantly he interwove religious belief, political statements and derision for industrialization into an epic struggle of several peoples. He developed a universe from his suggested pre-history of the United Kingdom and developed that world's own pre-history (Silmarilliion).
The grandest part of Tolkien's work is the language. The man lived for languages, so much so that he invented them. I'm not talking about a few hundred words like Klingon is today, but entire languages with real etymology and conjugation in oral and written form.
Add to this the attention to detail he had. He drew maps and made certain that the story could be followed geographically. He created the lineage of the main characters and made it possible to trace the accounts of the longer lived ones (Galadriel, Elrond). Having created a race half the height of an average person, he had continuity throughout all the books to take their size into account. He basically developed the world enough and provided enough details that any reader could imagine every part of it. Many fantasy authors have often done some part of it, but I cannot think of one who has done all this.
On top of all of this remember that the writing occurred from 1920's to 1950's, i.e. before most all modern fantasy writers were born. Every fantasy book since the publication of LOTR owes tribute to Tolkien. Tolkien is to fantasy what Jules Verne is to science fiction. The main difference is, Jules was simply predicting whereas Tolkien recreated the world and re-wrote history.
I read a great deal of fantasy literature. In everything I read, especially Eddings, I can easily pick out the portions that mimic Tolkien and his work. It can all be traced back to the Professor. Have others improved upon the genre? Sure, but most of the work was already done for them. I can easily make a wooden statue look great with a new coat of stain as long as someone else carved it for me.
The fact that the movie makers made a major effort NOT to alter the work significantly and there are so many voices complaining of the changes that were made indicates the *continued* widespread popularity and legacy of LOTR. I greatly appreciated the movies simply to bring the message of LOTR to the current generations who are intimidated by the English language (and Quenya)in its fullest form as Tolkien wrote it and it was written in that time period. Grammar is quickly becoming a lost art. Works like Tolkien's help to preserve it.
What's the draw? It was an unprecedented paradigm. It was an epic work. It canonizes the English language. It inspired, continues to inspire and will inspire millions and millions of people for centuries to come.
And...
No reason to slow down a perfectly good browser like Firefox, Opera, Safari or even IE6.