Uhm, that's what these bundles are all about. Last I looked, Gamestop.com still has some available, as long as you're willing to buy the ones bundled with a plasma TV.
It's just so they can say they have a $299 price point. Nevermind that it will be 6 months before you can actually get one at that price, due to forced bundles.
This is where the current MMORPG model makes things a little muddy, IMHO. If it were a simple subscription cost billed monthly, then I would say it would be reasonable for you to be able to get a refund prorated for how much time is left this month.
But with their $50 up front cost, a free month, then a monthly subscription, what exactly would you get refunded? All of your $50? But you played the game some amount of time, so surely a prorate is reasonable. But what does that $50 cover? Is that a balloon payment for the first month, that you could only get prorated if you canceled within the first month? Is it the cost of the media, box, manuals, and such that you never get back? How should that work?
There are some parts that are boring for most people. In WoW, for instance, there's the epic mount. It's not necessary to game play, but it's a status symbol, and it makes getting around faster. In some aspects, like PvP, it's also a big advantage.
The problem is it's so expensive, it takes long hours of grinding to get the money. This repetitive grinding is not fun, and Blizzard has occassionally taken out some of the more lucrative methods of getting this money, extending the grind even longer.
So in this sense, it often makes sense to just buy your gold. You can spend 50 hours grinding , or you can pay $100 bucks and be done with it, and have what you want. By doing it yourself, assuming its something you don't enjoy and that it feels more like work than playing, you're only saving yourself $.50 an hour, as opposed to buying it.
Although this is a different topic altogether, I have to wonder, is Blizzard intentionally driving people to buy gold? I'm normally not a conspiracy theorist, but by having something this expensive to buy in the game, and continually nerfing some more attractive means of making money, it seems weird. I guess the idea behind nerfing the lucrative money making spots is to curb the productivity of those who farm the gold to sell, but it hurts those who farm it for their own needs just as bad, if not worse.
I think they have it half right. The best equipment in the game is generally bind on pickup. That means you have to get it personally for you to be able to use it. You can't just buy the best items in the game. For big ticket items like mounts, however, it should be the same. You should have to quest for them, like Pallies and Warlocks. That would make them fun to work towards, and eliminate one of the major reasons people purchase gold.
Not to steal thunder from your "prediction", but you don't exactly have to be a prophet to predict a new major console is going to suffer from shortages, especially when it's coming out near the holiday season.
While I love conspiracies as much as the next guy, I don't think would really be to Sony's benefit. Don't they take a loss on all hardware sold, that they expect to recoup through software sales? If you brick your PSP, you're likely to just go out and buy another one. And a lot of types that do this kind of hacking aren't buying a lot of software anyway, so it would just cost Sony money.
1. Make a crappy game knowing all retailers refuse refunds on opened software.
2. Eliminate used game market, so consumers can't even sell at a loss a crappy game, thus sucker #2 has to buy it new, giving you the profit.
3. ???
4. Profit!
HL2 was a beautiful game. The action and pacing were also very well done. I enjoyed the mix of shooting and psuedo puzzles.
But I never finished the game. Why? Because all the eye candy in the world couldn't make me put up with the frequent yet lengthy loading delays.
Personally, I would be more impressed if they worked instead on ways to stream content on the fly so there wasn't delays for loading screens. Despite pulling you out of the immersion, it's frusterating. A necessary evil in the past, it seems like with some work they could be vastly reduced or even completely eliminated.
Anyone else a little disillusioned about Blizzard with the announcement of this expansion? The game hasn't even been out a year.
Part of the reasoning for the $15 subscription costs are new content. Yet since November's release, there have only been ~6 content patches. That is barely just one patch every two months, and considering some of these content patches have had very little content, it's not a lot.
Now, this announcement of an expansion brings to mind mental pictures of the devs splitting their time between implementing new content, and working on an expansion.
I wouldn't begrudge them an additional revenue stream in the form of an expansion if the "frequent content releases" promise was lived up to. There has been some, but it's been very underwhelming.
Is it going to make my cancel my subscription? No. Will I buy the expansion? Yes. It's just that it almost feels like a slap in the face when Blizzard claims patches are coming out so slow because they're working so hard on making them the best they can be, and then they announce they have an expansion almost ready to show!
I agree, the end game leaves something to be desired. Levels 1-59 were great. It's really hard for me to get motivated to go do these instances for set gear, when all this gear is going to help me do is... what? Be better at doing the same instances for the rest of my gear? I already hold my own well enough in PvP, so a slight edge isn't really motivation.
Besides, you get all your gear, and then what? Go for the next tier, that requires an even larger investment of time, and a larger raid group?
Don't get me wrong, some of the armor sets look cool, and have interesting bonuses. I really like the ones that lower a cooldown on some ability, or make some ability more powerful, kind of like a talent point or two does.
It's just there's very little motivation to get it, because once you get it, then what? At least levels 1-59, you look forward to better gear to help you level more effectively, look forward to new spells for new tricks, etc.
Maybe some of this would be allieviated somewhat if the PvP was better. Both battlegrounds at the moment don't really require much strategy. You can win if you can convince everyone to stick together and attack the same target. It's the classic zerg.
Having said all that, however, I am still playing. Since levels 1-59 are what I enjoyed the most, I have several alts. It's fun playing with different classes abilities and strategies, and is probably making me a better PvPer in the process, as I'm learning everyone else's tricks first hand.
I imagine I'll get bored at some point, but for now, I'm still hooked despite all my grievances.
Well, for me and my wife, both WoW addicts, it isn't a budget issue. It's not that we can only afford x number of games a year, and have reduced that number of games by y, due to our $15 a month for WoW.
It's a time issue. I used to buy a game every two weeks, on average. I'd play it for a bit, get bored with it, or some new game would come out that was better, and I'd get it and start playing it instead.
Since I started playing WoW, however, I have bought a few games, but after always shelving them after a play or two, I have dramatically curbed my game buying. Not because I can't afford it, but because I don't have time for anything else, considering I enjoy playing WoW so much I just go right back to it when I have free time to game.
My wife and I can't be the only ones. So maybe it is hurting the industry somewhat as a whole, but it sure has been saving me money:)
Probably because most of the sales are impulse buys, or people who don't want to wait. I go into a store, see game X that I've always been curious about, so I pick it up. I'm not actively seeking the game, so I don't think about finding it online.
Or, I am actively seeking game Y, I call the local brick-and-mortar, and they have a used copy in stock. Buy it online for $5-10 cheaper, or just go get it right now? I want it now, so I'll pay the extra for it.
I partially agree with you. I think one of WoW's biggest appeals was how it catered to your gaming style for levels 1-59. Things like the lack of dealth penalty and rested XP bonus allowed those who couldn't play 12 hours a day to make progress. The quests are set up so you can complete one, or at least make a dent in one, in any block of time you have.
At the same time, if you want to grind for 12 hours a day, you can do that too.
It's only as things reach the end game at 60 that more casual players get left out. If it were a game like Everquest, where only the hardcore players are ever going to hit the level cap anyway, it'd make sense to only cater to them.
But by now, even the most casual player who started at launch has hit 60, and there's not much to do on short blocks of time.
I would like to see some sort of solo instances, and group instances that save your progress. It could be as simple as turning off respawns. If they're worried about groups beating it through persistance rather than skill (dying, coming back again, dying, coming back again, until they get to the end) then implement something like if you die, respawns occur. If you just log out, nothing respawns and you can resume where you left off.
Don't you think delaying the game, and then adding it in the last 4-6 months is the very definition of tacking something on?
This is adding something near the last minute for which the game was presumably not originally designed.
Sure, they may have designed it from the ground up for DS to DS wifi, but taking something online where you have to deal with latency is a whole different ball game.
There are going to be a lot of people angry if Nintendo delays the game, and then the internet play isn't even very well executed. I know Nintendo has a good track record in making games, but they are very untested in the quality of online games and their netcode.
You don't HAVE to buy the $1000 bundle. It's a bundle, in that it comes with the system, a bunch of games and accessories. There are cheaper bundles, and ways to get the system unbundled from other retailers.
Can you buy your sweet gaming rig, enough accessories to use it (ie, keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc), and 10 new release games for less than $1000?
Last I checked, the latest video cards can cost up to $600 alone.
I don't get the complaints on console prices. Okay, it's going to be $400. That's a lot of money.
But at the same time, that $400 will be just enough to buy a new model graphics card for a PC. Then you still need a mobo, RAM, sound card, case, power supply, keyboard, mouse, etc.
True, PCs can do other things. But most of those other things can be done on a $150 used PC you pick up out of the classified ads.
As far as gaming goes, consoles are usually a great value.
No, that's not fair! Because the lions don't have guns! Or stone-headed arrows with homemade bows! Or a spear!
In fact, they don't even have opposable thumbs. So you must chop off your thumbs prior to going to battle with the lions, else you might have an unfair evolutionary inspired advantage that you could use by gripping the lion, or using your thumbs to help get leverage while trying to strangle one.
Oh, wait. They have claws we don't have. And bigger, sharper teeth.
Did you play Windwaker? Or even Metroid Prime? These were both games that while were great, were too short. They "fixed" this by adding in some backtracking quests, and sail around in your boat and hunt for things quests that you were FORCED to do in order to make the story progress.
I think they realized how much many gamers resented that. You can put in an optional 20 hour side quest that involves fetching stuff, and I'll probably do it. But when it's required, and it feels so obviously slapped on with the intent of making the game artificially longer, I quit playing the game.
Anyhow, I think they ran into that here. They got the game to a stage where they could play through it. They realized it was too short for what people expect. They were faced with the option of either adding in another artificially lengthening fetch quest, or actually adding some new levels, etc.
I doubt it will feel tacked on. They'll probably keep the existing framework for the story, and throw in a few more dungeons to crawl in the middle.
As a previous poster pointed out, your information isn't worth thousands. It's probably not even worth a full penny.
People sell this information only after aggregating a whole pile of it from many, many different people that spans a lengthy period of time.
They probably compile it into a nicely formatted, stastical software useable format too.
So you're information isn't worth squat by itself. It's only bundled in with the other statistics that it is worthwhile.
On another note, those surveys and registrations you allude to are a little bit different. I personally fill them out as falsely as possible. Why? No, I'm not worried about my privacy. It's just the rebel in me wanting to throw a wrench (albeit a small one) into the system.
Besides, I bet the 90 year old single mothers from Estonia aren't getting a high enough representation in their aggregate statistics, so I'm helping.
I see all these posts about people who delete them every day, every time they close their browser, or they don't accept them to begin with.
Anyone just not give a damn? I mean, everyone's up in arms about privacy, and these lofty ideals of how it should be protected, etc. Just come out and say it. You don't want anyone else to see what porn sites you've been to.
Personally, I don't care about cookies. I don't have many illusions of privacy to begin with. I'm just non-egotistical enough to know that no one really cares about what sites I go to, as an individual.
They want to track my usage and habits? Fine. Throw me in a demographic, and call it a day. Use me as a statistic. Whatever.
Is everyone here paranoid, or do I have any fellow compatriots in the nation of apathy?
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Uhm, that's what these bundles are all about. Last I looked, Gamestop.com still has some available, as long as you're willing to buy the ones bundled with a plasma TV.
It's just so they can say they have a $299 price point. Nevermind that it will be 6 months before you can actually get one at that price, due to forced bundles.
So early adopt more often! It might end up getting your kid a good job someday!
But with their $50 up front cost, a free month, then a monthly subscription, what exactly would you get refunded? All of your $50? But you played the game some amount of time, so surely a prorate is reasonable. But what does that $50 cover? Is that a balloon payment for the first month, that you could only get prorated if you canceled within the first month? Is it the cost of the media, box, manuals, and such that you never get back? How should that work?
The problem is it's so expensive, it takes long hours of grinding to get the money. This repetitive grinding is not fun, and Blizzard has occassionally taken out some of the more lucrative methods of getting this money, extending the grind even longer.
So in this sense, it often makes sense to just buy your gold. You can spend 50 hours grinding , or you can pay $100 bucks and be done with it, and have what you want. By doing it yourself, assuming its something you don't enjoy and that it feels more like work than playing, you're only saving yourself $.50 an hour, as opposed to buying it.
Although this is a different topic altogether, I have to wonder, is Blizzard intentionally driving people to buy gold? I'm normally not a conspiracy theorist, but by having something this expensive to buy in the game, and continually nerfing some more attractive means of making money, it seems weird. I guess the idea behind nerfing the lucrative money making spots is to curb the productivity of those who farm the gold to sell, but it hurts those who farm it for their own needs just as bad, if not worse.
I think they have it half right. The best equipment in the game is generally bind on pickup. That means you have to get it personally for you to be able to use it. You can't just buy the best items in the game. For big ticket items like mounts, however, it should be the same. You should have to quest for them, like Pallies and Warlocks. That would make them fun to work towards, and eliminate one of the major reasons people purchase gold.
Not to steal thunder from your "prediction", but you don't exactly have to be a prophet to predict a new major console is going to suffer from shortages, especially when it's coming out near the holiday season.
While I love conspiracies as much as the next guy, I don't think would really be to Sony's benefit. Don't they take a loss on all hardware sold, that they expect to recoup through software sales? If you brick your PSP, you're likely to just go out and buy another one. And a lot of types that do this kind of hacking aren't buying a lot of software anyway, so it would just cost Sony money.
1. Make a crappy game knowing all retailers refuse refunds on opened software. 2. Eliminate used game market, so consumers can't even sell at a loss a crappy game, thus sucker #2 has to buy it new, giving you the profit. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
But I never finished the game. Why? Because all the eye candy in the world couldn't make me put up with the frequent yet lengthy loading delays.
Personally, I would be more impressed if they worked instead on ways to stream content on the fly so there wasn't delays for loading screens. Despite pulling you out of the immersion, it's frusterating. A necessary evil in the past, it seems like with some work they could be vastly reduced or even completely eliminated.
So who's going to be able to run it?
Part of the reasoning for the $15 subscription costs are new content. Yet since November's release, there have only been ~6 content patches. That is barely just one patch every two months, and considering some of these content patches have had very little content, it's not a lot.
Now, this announcement of an expansion brings to mind mental pictures of the devs splitting their time between implementing new content, and working on an expansion.
I wouldn't begrudge them an additional revenue stream in the form of an expansion if the "frequent content releases" promise was lived up to. There has been some, but it's been very underwhelming.
Is it going to make my cancel my subscription? No. Will I buy the expansion? Yes. It's just that it almost feels like a slap in the face when Blizzard claims patches are coming out so slow because they're working so hard on making them the best they can be, and then they announce they have an expansion almost ready to show!
Besides, you get all your gear, and then what? Go for the next tier, that requires an even larger investment of time, and a larger raid group?
Don't get me wrong, some of the armor sets look cool, and have interesting bonuses. I really like the ones that lower a cooldown on some ability, or make some ability more powerful, kind of like a talent point or two does.
It's just there's very little motivation to get it, because once you get it, then what? At least levels 1-59, you look forward to better gear to help you level more effectively, look forward to new spells for new tricks, etc.
Maybe some of this would be allieviated somewhat if the PvP was better. Both battlegrounds at the moment don't really require much strategy. You can win if you can convince everyone to stick together and attack the same target. It's the classic zerg.
Having said all that, however, I am still playing. Since levels 1-59 are what I enjoyed the most, I have several alts. It's fun playing with different classes abilities and strategies, and is probably making me a better PvPer in the process, as I'm learning everyone else's tricks first hand.
I imagine I'll get bored at some point, but for now, I'm still hooked despite all my grievances.
Well, for me and my wife, both WoW addicts, it isn't a budget issue. It's not that we can only afford x number of games a year, and have reduced that number of games by y, due to our $15 a month for WoW. :)
It's a time issue. I used to buy a game every two weeks, on average. I'd play it for a bit, get bored with it, or some new game would come out that was better, and I'd get it and start playing it instead.
Since I started playing WoW, however, I have bought a few games, but after always shelving them after a play or two, I have dramatically curbed my game buying. Not because I can't afford it, but because I don't have time for anything else, considering I enjoy playing WoW so much I just go right back to it when I have free time to game.
My wife and I can't be the only ones. So maybe it is hurting the industry somewhat as a whole, but it sure has been saving me money
Or, I am actively seeking game Y, I call the local brick-and-mortar, and they have a used copy in stock. Buy it online for $5-10 cheaper, or just go get it right now? I want it now, so I'll pay the extra for it.
At the same time, if you want to grind for 12 hours a day, you can do that too.
It's only as things reach the end game at 60 that more casual players get left out. If it were a game like Everquest, where only the hardcore players are ever going to hit the level cap anyway, it'd make sense to only cater to them.
But by now, even the most casual player who started at launch has hit 60, and there's not much to do on short blocks of time.
I would like to see some sort of solo instances, and group instances that save your progress. It could be as simple as turning off respawns. If they're worried about groups beating it through persistance rather than skill (dying, coming back again, dying, coming back again, until they get to the end) then implement something like if you die, respawns occur. If you just log out, nothing respawns and you can resume where you left off.
This is adding something near the last minute for which the game was presumably not originally designed.
Sure, they may have designed it from the ground up for DS to DS wifi, but taking something online where you have to deal with latency is a whole different ball game.
There are going to be a lot of people angry if Nintendo delays the game, and then the internet play isn't even very well executed. I know Nintendo has a good track record in making games, but they are very untested in the quality of online games and their netcode.
It's like saying PCs are too expensive, because you can do your taxes with a calculator and pencil/paper.
They are two very different platforms that just happen to have one facet they both do (games).
Add in the original Playstation and Dreamcast as well, as systems that required a memory card to save that didn't come with one.
Can you buy your sweet gaming rig, enough accessories to use it (ie, keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc), and 10 new release games for less than $1000?
Last I checked, the latest video cards can cost up to $600 alone.
But at the same time, that $400 will be just enough to buy a new model graphics card for a PC. Then you still need a mobo, RAM, sound card, case, power supply, keyboard, mouse, etc.
True, PCs can do other things. But most of those other things can be done on a $150 used PC you pick up out of the classified ads.
As far as gaming goes, consoles are usually a great value.
In fact, they don't even have opposable thumbs. So you must chop off your thumbs prior to going to battle with the lions, else you might have an unfair evolutionary inspired advantage that you could use by gripping the lion, or using your thumbs to help get leverage while trying to strangle one.
Oh, wait. They have claws we don't have. And bigger, sharper teeth.
I think they realized how much many gamers resented that. You can put in an optional 20 hour side quest that involves fetching stuff, and I'll probably do it. But when it's required, and it feels so obviously slapped on with the intent of making the game artificially longer, I quit playing the game.
Anyhow, I think they ran into that here. They got the game to a stage where they could play through it. They realized it was too short for what people expect. They were faced with the option of either adding in another artificially lengthening fetch quest, or actually adding some new levels, etc.
I doubt it will feel tacked on. They'll probably keep the existing framework for the story, and throw in a few more dungeons to crawl in the middle.
There's also something to be said for getting it right on time. Does anyone make a AAA title and release it on time? What's the problem?
People sell this information only after aggregating a whole pile of it from many, many different people that spans a lengthy period of time.
They probably compile it into a nicely formatted, stastical software useable format too.
So you're information isn't worth squat by itself. It's only bundled in with the other statistics that it is worthwhile.
On another note, those surveys and registrations you allude to are a little bit different. I personally fill them out as falsely as possible. Why? No, I'm not worried about my privacy. It's just the rebel in me wanting to throw a wrench (albeit a small one) into the system.
Besides, I bet the 90 year old single mothers from Estonia aren't getting a high enough representation in their aggregate statistics, so I'm helping.
Anyone just not give a damn? I mean, everyone's up in arms about privacy, and these lofty ideals of how it should be protected, etc. Just come out and say it. You don't want anyone else to see what porn sites you've been to.
Personally, I don't care about cookies. I don't have many illusions of privacy to begin with. I'm just non-egotistical enough to know that no one really cares about what sites I go to, as an individual.
They want to track my usage and habits? Fine. Throw me in a demographic, and call it a day. Use me as a statistic. Whatever.
Is everyone here paranoid, or do I have any fellow compatriots in the nation of apathy?