So, does this person actually know anything about operating systems? Or is this "my friend heard from a friend heard from that friendly Mac guy" type of silliness?
I mean, where I work we're not upgrading to Vista either. But that was a decision made by IT, after actually looking into it. I highly doubt the politicians have any idea of what they're talking about.
Remember, next month they could just as easily say "no upgrading to Linux, everyone knows that's socialism!" It'd have just as much research behind it as this legislation does.
The UN Human Rights Committe is a joke. It's not taken seriously anywhere because it's just used by flagrant human rights abusers as a "bash Israel" platform.
This is a meaningless vote from a discredited body. It's not worth media attention.
Well, I own both of them. I only paid for the PS3 (the 360 was a gift because I refused to buy one due to the RROD). RROD jokes aside, I actually use the 360 more for games. Mostly it's due to the controller, which on the 360 is FAR better then the PS3 one.
That's even before you count the stupidity of having to charge the PS3 controller by plugging it into the system, and leaving the system on for hours. On the 360, I just swap out a pair of rechargable AA batteries (conveniently the same ones that the Wii uses) and go right back to it.
I also had problems getting the PS3 to actually connect to online games through my router, while the 360 has always just worked.
The PS3 is a better media player for sure, but honestly, unless you want both a console and a blu-ray player, that doesn't matter very much. If your goal is game playing, it's not worth the extra money at all.
Their fanboys didn't go along with that. There was MONTHS of this nonsense on the WoW forums about how Warhammer would destroy WoW, people playing WoW are noobs, and so on.
So a lot of WoW players take special enjoyment in watching those fanboys now backtracking, if not coming back to WoW entirely (which happened quite a lot).
That's just a side effect of a hype driven launch.
Most companies don't try to build MMO populations over time. They treat them like console games: sell a million copies the first week and hope those people stick around.
Of course, more then half of them didn't. So you have 750k people in Month 1, and 300k three months later. That gives you both queues in the first month, and deserted wastelands today.
Seriously, these speed comparisons are getting stupid and pointless. The major delay in loading websites is waiting for the server to send it, and waiting for the thing to download. There aren't very many websites where the browser actually creates noticable delays on its own.
Can we please have a browser vendor focus on usability and security over "hey I can display this page 0.1 seconds faster then you!"
According to what I've found, there's 16 servers left in North America, where I believe 40 of the 63 being shutdown are.
Just another Age of Conan, they massively overhyped to get a ton of initial box sales, and wound up with 2/3 of those people leaving in a couple of months.
When the same mistake is repeated over, and over, and over, and over, and over again for decades, it's only natural to wonder if maybe letting it happen was itself a mistake.
I mean, if I design a road and one car crashes, it's probably the driver. If there's crashes every day for 15 years? Either every driver is bad, or something is wrong with the road design.
Yeah, this. A lot of the time the customer doesn't really know what they want, they just think they do. You give it to them and discover that they didn't actually want that.
WoW raids are a good example. People said for years "we want easier more casual raids!" In Wrath, Blizzard did it. Now people are bored to death because everything is so easily PUGgable, there's no sense of accomplishment that comes from hitting your head against a wall for a while before doing something hard.
What they really wanted is some of the bureaucracy removed from raiding, so they could get some friends together easily and try stuff. They didn't want every boss to become a total joke. But they couldn't articulate what they actually wanted properly.
I hated Chrono Cross SO much. It's what happens if you take Chrono Trigger, make the magic system incredibly lame, remove all the dual/triple techs, and add a much more convoluted story.
It is technically the sequel to Chrono Trigger, but a lot of people prefer to forget it exists at all.
Vanguard has always been aimed at a select "hardcore" group of people who feel that any MMO you can play without it being a full time job is for noobs. Those people seek to recreate a mythical golden age from Everquest, which is impossible since back then it was a new and shiny thing for most of them. It's not new anymore.
But, thats the audience they have. At this point in the wider market Vanguard is known only as the "WoW killer" to bomb most quickly. It was one of the buggiest, worst performing, and outright not done MMOs ever when it came out. There is no way it'll ever move into the mainstream market successfully.
Since that market is closed, they're best off catering to what they have.
(Lord of the Rings Online does pretty well without a huge market too, really. I really wish I liked that game more then I do, Turbine does so many things well.)
So you're suggesting that your right to do whatever the hell you want trumps Blizzard's right to control what happens on property (servers) that Blizzard owns?
That's interesting. I wonder if you'd feel the same way should I decide to use my right to make an asshat of myself on your front lawn.
Your Call of Duty example is also stupid. It's totally legal for a company to do that. It'd be pretty bad for business though, who would ever buy a game from them again?
Considering the way modern consoles work, once they have a keyboard, for practical purposes it's just a DRM'd PC anyway.
I wish more games did support mouse/keyboard though. Console strategy games would be far less annoying if you could use a mouse instead of trying to shoehorn a gamepad into something it's just not good at.
Facton imbalance is a cosntant problem when wide open PvP is supposed to be the goal. It happens in every game. If they don't do something to force the populations to be balanced, you will find some server where the game is totally broken over it.
They really should instance stuff so they can enforce population limits on the fights. You might have to wait in line to get in, but that beats a 200 vs 35 battle.
Slashdot does it again with quality reporting. From the very first paragraph of the MS advisory:
"Systems with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 4, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 are not affected by this issue."
So it's "unpatched", unless you installed the service pack. First rate reporting here.
Slashdot Mirror
People who grind the raids regularly are likely good enough at it to turn a profit from it.
Naxx is so easy and has so much gold in it that if you really have to go farm gold, you suck. Even PUGs make money in there.
In other words, you want to play a game that has no economy whatsoever.
That's fine. It means WoW isn't actually aimed at you. Instead of cheating, go play a game that plays the way you actually want it to.
Most of the feedback about the game was actually about SecuROM. That totally overshadowded the game.
The game itself was pretty meh. It's easy as hell, and the replay value very poor.
Still waiting for SimCity 5.
People react in different ways to news like this. There's nothing wrong with making jokes, especially since a lot of us had no idea who he was.
200 posts of "my condolonces" doesn't make for interesting reading.
So, does this person actually know anything about operating systems? Or is this "my friend heard from a friend heard from that friendly Mac guy" type of silliness?
I mean, where I work we're not upgrading to Vista either. But that was a decision made by IT, after actually looking into it. I highly doubt the politicians have any idea of what they're talking about.
Remember, next month they could just as easily say "no upgrading to Linux, everyone knows that's socialism!" It'd have just as much research behind it as this legislation does.
It's not for no reason at all. It's for epeen.
The UN Human Rights Committe is a joke. It's not taken seriously anywhere because it's just used by flagrant human rights abusers as a "bash Israel" platform.
This is a meaningless vote from a discredited body. It's not worth media attention.
Well, I own both of them. I only paid for the PS3 (the 360 was a gift because I refused to buy one due to the RROD). RROD jokes aside, I actually use the 360 more for games. Mostly it's due to the controller, which on the 360 is FAR better then the PS3 one.
That's even before you count the stupidity of having to charge the PS3 controller by plugging it into the system, and leaving the system on for hours. On the 360, I just swap out a pair of rechargable AA batteries (conveniently the same ones that the Wii uses) and go right back to it.
I also had problems getting the PS3 to actually connect to online games through my router, while the 360 has always just worked.
The PS3 is a better media player for sure, but honestly, unless you want both a console and a blu-ray player, that doesn't matter very much. If your goal is game playing, it's not worth the extra money at all.
It does both.
Some people actually like that sort of thing. For them, it's exciting, and it keeps them playing.
For the majority of the market, it just drives them away.
If you're aiming the game at that specific market and don't want to try and compete with WoW, it's a good way to be successful.
Their fanboys didn't go along with that. There was MONTHS of this nonsense on the WoW forums about how Warhammer would destroy WoW, people playing WoW are noobs, and so on.
So a lot of WoW players take special enjoyment in watching those fanboys now backtracking, if not coming back to WoW entirely (which happened quite a lot).
That's just a side effect of a hype driven launch.
Most companies don't try to build MMO populations over time. They treat them like console games: sell a million copies the first week and hope those people stick around.
Of course, more then half of them didn't. So you have 750k people in Month 1, and 300k three months later. That gives you both queues in the first month, and deserted wastelands today.
Seriously, these speed comparisons are getting stupid and pointless. The major delay in loading websites is waiting for the server to send it, and waiting for the thing to download. There aren't very many websites where the browser actually creates noticable delays on its own.
Can we please have a browser vendor focus on usability and security over "hey I can display this page 0.1 seconds faster then you!"
That'll work really well when a new WoW raid comes out and a million players are all milling around outside using the summoning stones and dueling.
Hell, Naxx's entrance is crowded on most nights right now, and that's with hundreds of servers. It'd be unplayable to put them all together.
This single universe thing doesn't scale beyond a certain point when the players all have a reason to be in the same place.
According to what I've found, there's 16 servers left in North America, where I believe 40 of the 63 being shutdown are.
Just another Age of Conan, they massively overhyped to get a ton of initial box sales, and wound up with 2/3 of those people leaving in a couple of months.
When the same mistake is repeated over, and over, and over, and over, and over again for decades, it's only natural to wonder if maybe letting it happen was itself a mistake.
I mean, if I design a road and one car crashes, it's probably the driver. If there's crashes every day for 15 years? Either every driver is bad, or something is wrong with the road design.
According to the Ten Ton Hammer preview, this game features rampant kill stealing and quite possibly the worst community of any MMO, ever.
That's a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one. Hooray for yet another niche PvP game.
Yeah, this. A lot of the time the customer doesn't really know what they want, they just think they do. You give it to them and discover that they didn't actually want that.
WoW raids are a good example. People said for years "we want easier more casual raids!" In Wrath, Blizzard did it. Now people are bored to death because everything is so easily PUGgable, there's no sense of accomplishment that comes from hitting your head against a wall for a while before doing something hard.
What they really wanted is some of the bureaucracy removed from raiding, so they could get some friends together easily and try stuff. They didn't want every boss to become a total joke. But they couldn't articulate what they actually wanted properly.
I hated Chrono Cross SO much. It's what happens if you take Chrono Trigger, make the magic system incredibly lame, remove all the dual/triple techs, and add a much more convoluted story.
It is technically the sequel to Chrono Trigger, but a lot of people prefer to forget it exists at all.
Vanguard has always been aimed at a select "hardcore" group of people who feel that any MMO you can play without it being a full time job is for noobs. Those people seek to recreate a mythical golden age from Everquest, which is impossible since back then it was a new and shiny thing for most of them. It's not new anymore.
But, thats the audience they have. At this point in the wider market Vanguard is known only as the "WoW killer" to bomb most quickly. It was one of the buggiest, worst performing, and outright not done MMOs ever when it came out. There is no way it'll ever move into the mainstream market successfully.
Since that market is closed, they're best off catering to what they have.
(Lord of the Rings Online does pretty well without a huge market too, really. I really wish I liked that game more then I do, Turbine does so many things well.)
That sound you hear is the point going way above your head.
Yeah it's the same here. They can get the ocean floors in, but can't get anything even resembling a recent image of my area.
So you're suggesting that your right to do whatever the hell you want trumps Blizzard's right to control what happens on property (servers) that Blizzard owns?
That's interesting. I wonder if you'd feel the same way should I decide to use my right to make an asshat of myself on your front lawn.
Your Call of Duty example is also stupid. It's totally legal for a company to do that. It'd be pretty bad for business though, who would ever buy a game from them again?
Considering the way modern consoles work, once they have a keyboard, for practical purposes it's just a DRM'd PC anyway.
I wish more games did support mouse/keyboard though. Console strategy games would be far less annoying if you could use a mouse instead of trying to shoehorn a gamepad into something it's just not good at.
Facton imbalance is a cosntant problem when wide open PvP is supposed to be the goal. It happens in every game. If they don't do something to force the populations to be balanced, you will find some server where the game is totally broken over it.
They really should instance stuff so they can enforce population limits on the fights. You might have to wait in line to get in, but that beats a 200 vs 35 battle.
Slashdot does it again with quality reporting. From the very first paragraph of the MS advisory:
"Systems with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 4, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 are not affected by this issue."
So it's "unpatched", unless you installed the service pack. First rate reporting here.