"What's really been key, though, is that for it's entire life, AC2 has been dwarfed by AC1: itself not a very big game, but it says volumes about the game when you can't even convert a majority of your AC1 players over to AC2."
The same basically holds true for EQ1 and EQ2. Though EQ1 with its numerous expansions is fairly large now.
"Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play MMOGs), but isn't this a case of somebody going out and buying a game in a box, only to have it break completely a few months later?"
Not an accurate analogy. In spite of your having to keep paying monthly fees (comparable or slightly higher than a price of movie ticket) the amount of time you spend playing (most) mmorpgs numbers into the hundreds of hours.
AC2 has been around for more than a couple of years. Lets see you get that kind of gameplay out of your latest game box.
20 - 50 hours a week for 3 years? Some may argue about whether its fun. That aside, I haven't seen any non MMO title come close to providing that kind of gameplay in a very long time.
Counterstrike and its iterations are arguably one exception.
The reason many (most) prefer to solo a majority of the time is that in almost every MMORPG these days, you are required to form complete parties of 5 or more players.
Unless you're gaming for 4 - 8 hour stretches, its kinda inconvenient. 5 - 10 people needing to go to the bathroom, answer phonecalls, eat dinner and go to bed at various times just usually makes grouping downright inconvenient.
Developers in their infinite wisdom (with WoW being the only notable recent exception) didn't usually make 2 man groups or small groups viable for questing or gaining experience.
Requiring that you have every specific role filled in a party (tank, healer, nuker, downtime reducer, buffer) etc and not allowing much flexibility in the group just exarcebates the problem (yes FFXI I'm looking at you.)
I think many enjoy the social aspects of mmorpgs, not necessary meaning playing with other people all the time.
In the same way when back in the day when MUDS were popular, people soloed most of the time, but you chatted almost constantly with everyone else online. To the extent that there were players who just logged in to chat and hardly played at all.
Also aside from PvP, the other form of "competition" in an mmorpg, is for who has the coolest toys, the highest level etc. I think its a legitimate form of competition personally, though its been reduced to who has the most time to spend or has the most unbalanced character build now, more than a show of skill.
"You didn't look at the package for $1,200, did you? It includes the Xbox 360, a wireless controller, headset, hard drive, and remote control, along with 11 titles. Show me a high-end gaming PC with 11 titles for $1,200. Geez. You pay that for an average PC without any good software."
By that argument, when you purchase a PC, you can have potentially 100s if not 1000s of games (freeware, open source, abandonware)
And you'll have a device capable of word processing, web browsing, digital media editing, and more. All without any additional bullshit microsoft pay-to-play service.
Yeah, Xbox Live is bullshit. The level of service is not better than that which could be provided by public (free) servers. Additional yearly charge to download updates and add-ons? no thanks.
I took a free trial of AC1 fairly late into the life of the game, and it seemed to be interesting and fairly well designed.
Never tried AC2 though, and I'm glad I didn't.
This isn't real confidence inspiring however, for the company slated to launch Dungeons and Dragons: Online and Middle Earth Online in the near future.
Looks like I'll be giving those 2 games a wide berth.
*Presently suffering from MMORPG withdrawal, having quit WoW 4 months ago (60 Orc Shaman) and Guildwars 3 months ago.
I was eyeing Auto Assault but its been rescheduled to Feb 2006 last I heard. Tabula Rasa also looks interesting.
" I absolutely disapprove of the UMD move format, and I think Sony is stupid to force it upon the world.
How are they forcing it upon the world? I don't own any UMDs, do you? I'm not planning to buy any. In fact, they're not forcing the PSP onto you either. Don't like it? Don't buy it. I didn't.
Its not like they've phased out DVDs and all other forms of media.
"There's a quote about people living in glass houses which is appropriate to this situation. If you don't know which one I'm talking about, ask your mother."
Oh oh! I know this one! Ummm..Its..
People in glass houses should make sure their bathrooms have shower curtains!
"Rhinoceros bar crime large gain and National Police Agency announcement August 22nd of 2005 o'clock of 5 due to the Acanthopanax contribution of 55 parts, From net crime prevention section. Security
It has been said the teltel, " according to the article of the MYCOM PC WEB, the National Police Agency, " concerning arrest of rhinoceros bar crime of 2005 seniority half and consultation acceptance circumstance " " concerning the occurrence circumstance and the like of illegitimate access behavior of 2005 seniority half " (the pdf) with the data which is said is published. It is found from the data that substantial increase is shown arrest and illegality access of rhinoceros bar crime in comparison with last year. Overhead claim and the consultation regarding the fraud behavior in the auction are very many, it can perceive also the fact that really the considerable person has met to damage. On one hand, those where the National Police Agency verified concerning illegality access are 317 cases, so, the top of the number of the data enters, increasing, but reflecting the actual condition, it is and it is improbable. It is not the case that also the police has caused the hand to increase of these crimes densely, " the National Police Agency information security importance measure program -2005 " the future policy of saying is announced on August 15th. "
Well part of the problem is not everyone has the "Upstream of the Gods +5 (tm)" So it can be hard to achieve good download rates with bittorrent. Even if you set all your PCs to static IPs and forward the appropriate ports to it.
I've found I achieve the highest transfer rates with azureus on a port in the 60k range on a PC with a static IP. But my overall download speed is still limited by sucky upstream (384k) due to the nature of the protocol.
Also you should consider changing your BT port(s) from the default 6881 - 6889 as many ISPs are starting to throttle or even outright block those ports.
Meh "Ninja Scroll" is overrated, Yes, I've watched both movies and the complete TV Series.
Its all a matter of taste really, by the same token this statement is true:
"Hollywood needs to give me something worth my time and effort first. [Insert 2 movies you like.] Everything else since has been disappointment, which covers the past few decades.
I actually thought Blizzard's use of BitTorrent was innovative (and extremely cheap)
Though now there is an option to direct download your updates from extremely low bandwidth servers (damn cheapskates)
Using BT to distribute free or heavily subsidised content is something I think the masses will happily embrace.
Delivering content that is charged at full price though..I don't see why I have would want lower transfer rates and to tie up my upstream bandwidth whilst purchasing material.
Its not like they're doing me a favor by letting me pay them full retail price or very close to that, to obtain their product at a slower rate at the expense of my bandwidth.
The movie and music industry aren't interested in BT because it lowers their distribution costs. They're interested because it can potentially increase their profit margins.
His solution was not only more unwieldy but is more expensive than an aftermarket Graphics card heatsink. (He even uses the rear retention clip from another graphics card cooler)
Also it doesn't cool the ram chips which almost all of the ready-made graphics card coolers do.
He should have just invested in a water cooling setup for CPU and GPU and eliminated all those fans from his system.
Would've cost a little more, but obtained far better (and neater) results, with much less effort (ever tried removing all the fins from a heatsink?).
Zyxels, US Robotics Couriers and Hayes were the modems us "older timers" lusted for. The Rolls Royces of 14.4k modems.
The best I could ever afford back then was an el cheapo "Zoom Telephonics" But it was a _vast_ improvement over the generic 1200 and 2400bps modems I was using back then.:(
POTS infrastructure also often fails when a moron with a backhoe or shovel accidentally severs your connection. The telephone poles usually aren't backed up anywhere near the way that the cells are.
Those windowless 'central office' buildings the phone company maintains are full of batteries which in the event of your line being severed are still useless.
Go ahead and rely on your neighbors, but be careful; they might also be using POTS and thus will have also lost service.
Anything that uses the "Real" Codec is most likely a piece of shit, and you just shouldn't bother.
If you for some matter of life and death have to view one of these garbage codec encoded videos, go download Real Alternative.
Another alternative for Win32 users is go google for "K-Lite Mega Codec Pack" and download/install the pack. That should take care of just about any stupid media format (as well as many not so retarded ones) that you'd need or want to play.
Slashdot Mirror
"What's really been key, though, is that for it's entire life, AC2 has been dwarfed by AC1: itself not a very big game, but it says volumes about the game when you can't even convert a majority of your AC1 players over to AC2."
The same basically holds true for EQ1 and EQ2. Though EQ1 with its numerous expansions is fairly large now.
"Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play MMOGs), but isn't this a case of somebody going out and buying a game in a box, only to have it break completely a few months later?"
Not an accurate analogy. In spite of your having to keep paying monthly fees (comparable or slightly higher than a price of movie ticket) the amount of time you spend playing (most) mmorpgs numbers into the hundreds of hours.
AC2 has been around for more than a couple of years. Lets see you get that kind of gameplay out of your latest game box.
20 - 50 hours a week for 3 years? Some may argue about whether its fun. That aside, I haven't seen any non MMO title come close to providing that kind of gameplay in a very long time.
Counterstrike and its iterations are arguably one exception.
The reason many (most) prefer to solo a majority of the time is that in almost every MMORPG these days, you are required to form complete parties of 5 or more players.
Unless you're gaming for 4 - 8 hour stretches, its kinda inconvenient. 5 - 10 people needing to go to the bathroom, answer phonecalls, eat dinner and go to bed at various times just usually makes grouping downright inconvenient.
Developers in their infinite wisdom (with WoW being the only notable recent exception) didn't usually make 2 man groups or small groups viable for questing or gaining experience.
Requiring that you have every specific role filled in a party (tank, healer, nuker, downtime reducer, buffer) etc and not allowing much flexibility in the group just exarcebates the problem (yes FFXI I'm looking at you.)
I think many enjoy the social aspects of mmorpgs, not necessary meaning playing with other people all the time.
In the same way when back in the day when MUDS were popular, people soloed most of the time, but you chatted almost constantly with everyone else online. To the extent that there were players who just logged in to chat and hardly played at all.
Also aside from PvP, the other form of "competition" in an mmorpg, is for who has the coolest toys, the highest level etc. I think its a legitimate form of competition personally, though its been reduced to who has the most time to spend or has the most unbalanced character build now, more than a show of skill.
"You didn't look at the package for $1,200, did you? It includes the Xbox 360, a wireless controller, headset, hard drive, and remote control, along with 11 titles. Show me a high-end gaming PC with 11 titles for $1,200. Geez. You pay that for an average PC without any good software."
By that argument, when you purchase a PC, you can have potentially 100s if not 1000s of games (freeware, open source, abandonware)
And you'll have a device capable of word processing, web browsing, digital media editing, and more. All without any additional bullshit microsoft pay-to-play service.
Yeah, Xbox Live is bullshit. The level of service is not better than that which could be provided by public (free) servers. Additional yearly charge to download updates and add-ons? no thanks.
Cost may be another factor.
I foresee the prices of 4GB flash memory based devices to fall very soon.
I just saw that Sandisk has launched a 4GB USB flash storage device (Thumbdrive, Flashdrive, Jumpdrive etc, same diff, diff branding.)
I took a free trial of AC1 fairly late into the life of the game, and it seemed to be interesting and fairly well designed.
Never tried AC2 though, and I'm glad I didn't.
This isn't real confidence inspiring however, for the company slated to launch Dungeons and Dragons: Online and Middle Earth Online in the near future.
Looks like I'll be giving those 2 games a wide berth.
*Presently suffering from MMORPG withdrawal, having quit WoW 4 months ago (60 Orc Shaman) and Guildwars 3 months ago.
I was eyeing Auto Assault but its been rescheduled to Feb 2006 last I heard. Tabula Rasa also looks interesting.
" I absolutely disapprove of the UMD move format, and I think Sony is stupid to force it upon the world.
How are they forcing it upon the world? I don't own any UMDs, do you? I'm not planning to buy any.
In fact, they're not forcing the PSP onto you either. Don't like it? Don't buy it. I didn't.
Its not like they've phased out DVDs and all other forms of media.
It'll handle a 75w peltier element and a watercooling system on top of that.
And will still be a ways from maxing out a 550w PSU.
I guess the next craze in home computing is going to be Quad motherboards, each running quad processors with geforce SLIs.
"There's a quote about people living in glass houses which is appropriate to this situation. If you don't know which one I'm talking about, ask your mother."
Oh oh! I know this one! Ummm..Its..
People in glass houses should make sure their bathrooms have shower curtains!
Thanks for the link to /..jp translation.
I've read the funniest thing I've seen all week.
"Rhinoceros bar crime large gain and National Police Agency announcement
August 22nd of 2005 o'clock of 5 due to the Acanthopanax contribution of 55 parts,
From net crime prevention section.
Security
It has been said the teltel, " according to the article of the MYCOM PC WEB, the National Police Agency, " concerning arrest of rhinoceros bar crime of 2005 seniority half and consultation acceptance circumstance " " concerning the occurrence circumstance and the like of illegitimate access behavior of 2005 seniority half " (the pdf) with the data which is said is published. It is found from the data that substantial increase is shown arrest and illegality access of rhinoceros bar crime in comparison with last year. Overhead claim and the consultation regarding the fraud behavior in the auction are very many, it can perceive also the fact that really the considerable person has met to damage. On one hand, those where the National Police Agency verified concerning illegality access are 317 cases, so, the top of the number of the data enters, increasing, but reflecting the actual condition, it is and it is improbable. It is not the case that also the police has caused the hand to increase of these crimes densely, " the National Police Agency information security importance measure program -2005 " the future policy of saying is announced on August 15th. "
(You read more... | 2 / 10 comments"
" Hmm - did you ever actually watch an entire movie at once? Were you at any point in the past a girl?
Ehhhhh? How else are you going to understand the storyline?
*blinks innocently*
Well part of the problem is not everyone has the "Upstream of the Gods +5 (tm)" So it can be hard to achieve good download rates with bittorrent.
Even if you set all your PCs to static IPs and forward the appropriate ports to it.
I've found I achieve the highest transfer rates with azureus on a port in the 60k range on a PC with a static IP. But my overall download speed is still limited by sucky upstream (384k) due to the nature of the protocol.
Also you should consider changing your BT port(s) from the default 6881 - 6889 as many ISPs are starting to throttle or even outright block those ports.
Meh "Ninja Scroll" is overrated, Yes, I've watched both movies and the complete TV Series.
Its all a matter of taste really, by the same token this statement is true:
"Hollywood needs to give me something worth my time and effort first. [Insert 2 movies you like.] Everything else since has been disappointment, which covers the past few decades.
I actually thought Blizzard's use of BitTorrent was innovative (and extremely cheap)
Though now there is an option to direct download your updates from extremely low bandwidth servers (damn cheapskates)
Using BT to distribute free or heavily subsidised content is something I think the masses will happily embrace.
Delivering content that is charged at full price though..I don't see why I have would want lower transfer rates and to tie up my upstream bandwidth whilst purchasing material.
Its not like they're doing me a favor by letting me pay them full retail price or very close to that, to obtain their product at a slower rate at the expense of my bandwidth.
The movie and music industry aren't interested in BT because it lowers their distribution costs. They're interested because it can potentially increase their profit margins.
" who the hell uses that POS anyway?
The people who have it preloaded on their Dell, Gateway, HP, Sony, Toshiba, etc...
That's more than just a small slice of the consumer market."
They're obviously not the l33t pir8s that hollywood is afraid of.
Then again its not like any self-respecting "IP Infringement Co-op" would use DRM laden mechanisms to encode their "warez."
" I want to replace my radeon 9700 tx with a comparable or better nvidia card for the cheapest possible price,"
ATI never produced the Radeon 9700 in an XT or tx flavor. Only Pro and vanilla and later ultra versions existed.
Also when the 9700 Pro was released it was the fastest (and most expensive) video card by a respectable margin.
They're gonna need a triple wide version if they want to sell this to McDonalds.
" I never overclock, and I found the 6800GT would overheat and crash with its stock cooling"
Assuming your AGP bus isn't overclocked. Its most likely that the cooling/air circulation within your casing is insufficient.
Or your power supply and/or motherboard are possibly faulty.
His solution was not only more unwieldy but is more expensive than an aftermarket Graphics card heatsink. (He even uses the rear retention clip from another graphics card cooler)
Also it doesn't cool the ram chips which almost all of the ready-made graphics card coolers do.
He should have just invested in a water cooling setup for CPU and GPU and eliminated all those fans from his system.
Would've cost a little more, but obtained far better (and neater) results, with much less effort (ever tried removing all the fins from a heatsink?).
"The hybrid Civic runs $6k more but gets 10mpg more. How many years does it take you to break even on the gas costs?"
When you're paying US$2.70 per gallon (98 Octane) or higher at the pump. It suddenly starts making a whole lot more sense.
Not having a perpetual haze lingering over your cities is an added bonus.
Ah those were the good old days of ANSI.
:(
Zyxels, US Robotics Couriers and Hayes were the modems us "older timers" lusted for. The Rolls Royces of 14.4k modems.
The best I could ever afford back then was an el cheapo "Zoom Telephonics" But it was a _vast_ improvement over the generic 1200 and 2400bps modems I was using back then.
pfft I can 'read minds' without the fMRI or even accessing the visual cortex.
:D
Just place the pictures 6 feet apart and see which way your subject's head turns..duuuh
POTS infrastructure also often fails when a moron with a backhoe or shovel accidentally severs your connection. The telephone poles usually aren't backed up anywhere near the way that the cells are.
Those windowless 'central office' buildings the phone company maintains are full of batteries which in the event of your line being severed are still useless.
Go ahead and rely on your neighbors, but be careful; they might also be using POTS and thus will have also lost service.
"(city of heros seems to buck the trend... is there anything fundamentally very different about its economy?)"
City of Heroes has a system that uses no items at all. The only things characters purchase are skills.
In COH, the currency (influence) is fairly easy to acquire. Also rarity of in-demand skills is not generally completely insane.
Anything that uses the "Real" Codec is most likely a piece of shit, and you just shouldn't bother.
If you for some matter of life and death have to view one of these garbage codec encoded videos, go download Real Alternative.
Another alternative for Win32 users is go google for "K-Lite Mega Codec Pack" and download/install the pack. That should take care of just about any stupid media format (as well as many not so retarded ones) that you'd need or want to play.