It's available all over the world, but not in Canada.
According to the Globe and Mail, that is because until next month, there is only one network in Canada capable of carrying it (Rogers). In November, Bell and Telus will also be capable of carrying it.
I work in IT for another government in Canada. On a smaller scale, we see this kind of thing too.
Politicians simply don't understand IT. Neither does senior management. They understand stuff like "strategic vision", which roughly means a glossy report full of lots of charts showing amazing things with absolutely no detail about how its going to work.
If the same group of politicians/senior managers have a strong IT staff below them to sort out the truth from the crap, do the integration, and support things afterwards, you can get decent value out of consultants... sometimes. If you have an organization like eHealth, it's just a playground for consultants to do whatever they want and rack up huge bills for no valuable work.
At it's worst, you get someone out to enrich their consultant buddies on the taxpayer dime... like the former eHealth CEO. I wasn't in there, so I don't know if she was completely incompetent or corrupt, but its one of the two.
I don't really care. I want to play a game, what the logos look like on the cars really doesn't matter to me. Given the option, I'd rather not be driving a high speed billboard, though (which is what NASCAR cars tend to look like in reality).
This "research" of theirs is little better then your standard slashvertisement.
Yeah. It's gotten pretty ridiculous that you need approval to put things in a specific store so people can use them. This is something that Microsoft actually got right.
Yeah, I agree. WoW costs $15/month, or more like $12 if you're on the 6 month subscription. That's what, the equivalent of an Xbox game every 4 months (or 5 on the cheaper plan)?
Very few 360 games provide four months worth of play time. If you actually enjoy MMOs, they are a bargain. (And if you don't, then you should take your money elsewhere.)
No, that number is lower then both AoC and Warhammer by a good deal. You call either of those a "contender" these days?
The number of people still playing in six months is the only indicator of success for a MMO. The number of people who pre-order is a function of hype generation and has nothing to do with the long term success of the game.
That's a funny statement, because arenas are pretty much the single most loathed feature in all of WoW, and are regularly blamed for every idiotic PvE balance mistake Blizzard makes. I always laugh at people who waste time in that lolesport instead of playing what the game was really built for.
But then, different people play for different reasons. Nothing really new or interesting about that, except you don't seem to realize it.:P
Because that's what ganking IS. It's what forced PvP is about. You come into this zone where somebody who you can't possibly fight back against can simply flatten you.
Actually they are designed for solo play now. Where have you been the last few years? Solo-unfriendly MMOs are a niche product these days.
When I want to PvP, I can go hit a battleground, or arena, or just flag up and try to screw with people. That's a small price to pay for the ability to be left the fuck alone when I just want to go exploring and not have some asshat 40 levels higher then me decide to do some corpse camping.
For people who like that kind of gameplay? More power to them, thats what PvP servers are for. But I notice that type is much more quick to start hurling insults at people who don't like it.
"Does it? all I've seen about WoW suggests that the community is filled with stat-whores who won't give you the time of the day if you can't do $X of DPS and have at least an $Y level armor, and that a 'casual' gamer has no chance of *ever* finding a good party (defining 'good' as 'can speak proper english and is willing to help newbies with their shortcomings instead of writing "gtfo nub"') withotu joining a mature, respectable guild. In other words, exactly the same as most free MMOs."
What is known as a 'casual' guild also fits. Those are people not interested in hardcore pushing content, and go out to have fun. It means you progress more slowly, if at all. It also means people won't start yelling at you because you haven't dropped 1000g on an enchant five minutes after getting a weapon upgrade.
Though my guild is pretty helpful, actually. It depends on the type of players you run with. Playing alone? Not so good, you'll run into a lot of jerks. Thats true in pretty well any MMO.
Actually its entirely true. Someone beat me to the Warcraftrealms stats.
So, I've got that. I've also got the server count, showing more PvE/RP (129) servers then PvP/RP-PvP ones (112). And on top of that, the average population is higher on the PvE side (3.9 million to 2.5). More PvP servers run at low population then PvE servers do.
Now, what have you got to disprove it?
It's a fundamental reality - more people dislike being ganked then like ganking. Which makes sense, really. There's nothing very cool about one shotting someone who can't fight back unless you're some kind of reject that is terrible at the game and thus can't beat players your own level.... so to quote you, proof or retraction.:P
When you do that, the gankers whine on the forums endlessly about how the game is too "carebear" now, and other such nonsense.
Lots of developers listen to their forum whiners and thus don't want to do anything to stop it. In something like WoW, you can just join a PvE server and the problem basically doesn't exist. Unsurprisingly, the PvE servers are more popular then the PvP ones where ganking does exist (not that the pro-ganking forum whiners would ever want to acknowledge such a thing).
Nope. PvE focused MMOs have always been more popular then PvP focused ones. Ganking is why forum whiners play the game, but that's a minority.
Ganking in particular is never popular for the people on the receieving end. Only instead of bitching about it on Slashdot, they just quit the game entirely and go spend their money on something else.
The whole point of different server types is that you can play on yours, I can play on mine, and we're both happy. That means more customers.
Since Aion wants to force me to endure that bullshit, I'm taking my money elsewhere. The only real way you can oppose such a server split is if your goal is to get people who don't want to be ganked forced into it, so you can gank them.
Yeah, pretty much. I wasn't impressed and cancelled my order. Blizzard doesn't have much to worry about here. It gets really good when you get into the forced PvP part. Once people learned that, every single person in my WoW guild who had been interested decided not to bother.
It seems that being ganked isn't exactly a feature people look for in games.
Well yeah, it's more then a year old now. I'd hope some of the massive crippling bugs would be fixed.
I mean this is the game that advertised DX10 on the box, and 9 months later still didn't have it. It's pretty understandable for people who were ripped off on the broken mess at release to carry a grudge when they see "Funcom" mentioned anywhere.
Expecting stats to function correctly isn't asking very much of a game. Any game that can't do that is not ready to ship.
This was one of the most botched launches in the history of MMOs, and it came in an era when majorly botched launches aren't tolerated anymore. To say that the game is "vastily improved" is also like saying "the game actually works most of the time now."
PvP and PvE are so fundamentally different that balancing all the classes for both at the same time, with the same skills, is nearly impossible. The best way to deal with it is to have two different sets of rules, with some skills working differently depending on what you're doing.
A one system fits all solution just results in either serious PvP imbalance, or seriously nerfed PvE.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, this. At any one point in time across all of WoW's servers combined, there are more people in Dalaran then there are playing EVE.
It's available all over the world, but not in Canada.
According to the Globe and Mail, that is because until next month, there is only one network in Canada capable of carrying it (Rogers). In November, Bell and Telus will also be capable of carrying it.
We'll see.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/telecom-competition-behind-kindle-delay/article1317633/
It's not like IE is being removed from Windows anyway. There's other things that use it no matter what your default browser is.
This is just whining for the sake of whining.
I work in IT for another government in Canada. On a smaller scale, we see this kind of thing too.
Politicians simply don't understand IT. Neither does senior management. They understand stuff like "strategic vision", which roughly means a glossy report full of lots of charts showing amazing things with absolutely no detail about how its going to work.
If the same group of politicians/senior managers have a strong IT staff below them to sort out the truth from the crap, do the integration, and support things afterwards, you can get decent value out of consultants... sometimes. If you have an organization like eHealth, it's just a playground for consultants to do whatever they want and rack up huge bills for no valuable work.
At it's worst, you get someone out to enrich their consultant buddies on the taxpayer dime... like the former eHealth CEO. I wasn't in there, so I don't know if she was completely incompetent or corrupt, but its one of the two.
I'm sure nobody has ever released a buggy game on Steam, right? Or in retail for that matter?
What a silly argument.
I don't really care. I want to play a game, what the logos look like on the cars really doesn't matter to me. Given the option, I'd rather not be driving a high speed billboard, though (which is what NASCAR cars tend to look like in reality).
This "research" of theirs is little better then your standard slashvertisement.
Research done by a company selling in game ads says that people like in game ads?
Sounds like those Microsoft studies finding that Linux has a higher TCO then Windows, or big oil studies showing that climate change is a sham.
Yeah. It's gotten pretty ridiculous that you need approval to put things in a specific store so people can use them. This is something that Microsoft actually got right.
Yeah, I agree. WoW costs $15/month, or more like $12 if you're on the 6 month subscription. That's what, the equivalent of an Xbox game every 4 months (or 5 on the cheaper plan)?
Very few 360 games provide four months worth of play time. If you actually enjoy MMOs, they are a bargain. (And if you don't, then you should take your money elsewhere.)
Hey, it's a great piece of advice if ex Duke Nukem Forever programmers read the article!
No, that number is lower then both AoC and Warhammer by a good deal. You call either of those a "contender" these days?
The number of people still playing in six months is the only indicator of success for a MMO. The number of people who pre-order is a function of hype generation and has nothing to do with the long term success of the game.
That's a funny statement, because arenas are pretty much the single most loathed feature in all of WoW, and are regularly blamed for every idiotic PvE balance mistake Blizzard makes. I always laugh at people who waste time in that lolesport instead of playing what the game was really built for.
But then, different people play for different reasons. Nothing really new or interesting about that, except you don't seem to realize it. :P
Phone records show that you sent a text message 15 seconds before the accident? It's pretty easy to prove, actually.
Plus all these phones have GPS in them these days. It won't be long before they know you were doing 60 mph when you sent that message.
Because that's what ganking IS. It's what forced PvP is about. You come into this zone where somebody who you can't possibly fight back against can simply flatten you.
Actually they are designed for solo play now. Where have you been the last few years? Solo-unfriendly MMOs are a niche product these days.
When I want to PvP, I can go hit a battleground, or arena, or just flag up and try to screw with people. That's a small price to pay for the ability to be left the fuck alone when I just want to go exploring and not have some asshat 40 levels higher then me decide to do some corpse camping.
For people who like that kind of gameplay? More power to them, thats what PvP servers are for. But I notice that type is much more quick to start hurling insults at people who don't like it.
"Does it? all I've seen about WoW suggests that the community is filled with stat-whores who won't give you the time of the day if you can't do $X of DPS and have at least an $Y level armor, and that a 'casual' gamer has no chance of *ever* finding a good party (defining 'good' as 'can speak proper english and is willing to help newbies with their shortcomings instead of writing "gtfo nub"') withotu joining a mature, respectable guild. In other words, exactly the same as most free MMOs."
What is known as a 'casual' guild also fits. Those are people not interested in hardcore pushing content, and go out to have fun. It means you progress more slowly, if at all. It also means people won't start yelling at you because you haven't dropped 1000g on an enchant five minutes after getting a weapon upgrade.
Though my guild is pretty helpful, actually. It depends on the type of players you run with. Playing alone? Not so good, you'll run into a lot of jerks. Thats true in pretty well any MMO.
Actually its entirely true. Someone beat me to the Warcraftrealms stats.
So, I've got that. I've also got the server count, showing more PvE/RP (129) servers then PvP/RP-PvP ones (112). And on top of that, the average population is higher on the PvE side (3.9 million to 2.5). More PvP servers run at low population then PvE servers do.
Now, what have you got to disprove it?
It's a fundamental reality - more people dislike being ganked then like ganking. Which makes sense, really. There's nothing very cool about one shotting someone who can't fight back unless you're some kind of reject that is terrible at the game and thus can't beat players your own level. ... so to quote you, proof or retraction. :P
When you do that, the gankers whine on the forums endlessly about how the game is too "carebear" now, and other such nonsense.
Lots of developers listen to their forum whiners and thus don't want to do anything to stop it. In something like WoW, you can just join a PvE server and the problem basically doesn't exist. Unsurprisingly, the PvE servers are more popular then the PvP ones where ganking does exist (not that the pro-ganking forum whiners would ever want to acknowledge such a thing).
Nope. PvE focused MMOs have always been more popular then PvP focused ones. Ganking is why forum whiners play the game, but that's a minority.
Ganking in particular is never popular for the people on the receieving end. Only instead of bitching about it on Slashdot, they just quit the game entirely and go spend their money on something else.
The whole point of different server types is that you can play on yours, I can play on mine, and we're both happy. That means more customers.
Since Aion wants to force me to endure that bullshit, I'm taking my money elsewhere. The only real way you can oppose such a server split is if your goal is to get people who don't want to be ganked forced into it, so you can gank them.
Yeah, pretty much. I wasn't impressed and cancelled my order. Blizzard doesn't have much to worry about here. It gets really good when you get into the forced PvP part. Once people learned that, every single person in my WoW guild who had been interested decided not to bother.
It seems that being ganked isn't exactly a feature people look for in games.
How is this possibly a troll? XP 64 IS terrible, Microsoft didn't even recommend its use outside of certain professional environments.
Well yeah, it's more then a year old now. I'd hope some of the massive crippling bugs would be fixed.
I mean this is the game that advertised DX10 on the box, and 9 months later still didn't have it. It's pretty understandable for people who were ripped off on the broken mess at release to carry a grudge when they see "Funcom" mentioned anywhere.
Expecting stats to function correctly isn't asking very much of a game. Any game that can't do that is not ready to ship.
This was one of the most botched launches in the history of MMOs, and it came in an era when majorly botched launches aren't tolerated anymore. To say that the game is "vastily improved" is also like saying "the game actually works most of the time now."
PvP and PvE are so fundamentally different that balancing all the classes for both at the same time, with the same skills, is nearly impossible. The best way to deal with it is to have two different sets of rules, with some skills working differently depending on what you're doing.
A one system fits all solution just results in either serious PvP imbalance, or seriously nerfed PvE.