OMG...the Sorcery series was the first RPG I ever played. It was different from the "Twist-a-Plot" books (aka choose your own adventure) that you actually had a character sheet. I still have the Sorcery books. I can see them on my bookshelf from here.
I would love to see SJ bring his talent to the MMO world. Just as long as he leaves a few of his MIB cohorts behind:) jk guys...don't kill me!;)
There are some T-shirts advertised on the site that read "G33k" with the two threes formed by polyhedral dice...BUT from the small pic and a quick glance, it looked like they read "GOOK". OMG!
Menus affect games in different ways...it all depends on the game. For me, I usually only use menus when I am first playing a game. During that time I am also trying to figure out the hotkeys so I can skip the menus (much faster than gestures or selecting from a menu). I understand that some games can't make extensive use of hotkeys because of the mechanics of the game, and perhaps these fall in the B&W variety. BUT, I loathe the game (or app) that forces me to open up menu after menu to do the same thing again and again and again wihtout ever having an option for a hotkey.
Are you basically saying that we should force Peter Molyneaux to actually make a game that does what he says it will do instead of dumbing it down to wash-out worn down industry standards? Not that I don't like his games...I like 'em, but if they did everything he promises...then it would break more barriers...or am I completely off my gourd?
: changes subject quick!
Hey! How about that summer movie slump?
Re:the worst are always good for you in some ways.
on
Coffee A Health Drink?
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· Score: 1
Reminds me of the Woody Allen movie "Sleeper", when he wakes up in the future and finds out that cigars are actually good for you.
So does the station access scheme (the keeping the subscriber number up part) ultimately benefit SOE management and stockholders? Or, does it help the devs & programmers who are trying to keep their jobs?
It must be like a rite of passage for new devs at SOE now...imagine, you get hired on at SOE dreaming to work on a new game, but no way Jose! You've got to put in time on SWG before you can move up...but it's a catch-22. If you do well at SWG, they will keep you on it, if you do poorly but show potential they will switch you to another game.
I hate all this skewing of reality and online games (well, not really, it's fun!). But if we want to compare then let's compare real live games to online games, well... Let's say in REAL life, I'm into fighting as a sport. Boxing, ultimate fight contests, etc... Let me skew reality a bit then...
Now, I can't just go down the street and beat people up...well, I could, but I have a fair chance on going to jail no matter how light I hit a person. Put some boxing gloves on me and let me knock someone into a bloody pulp and not only do I NOT get arrested,, but I have people cheering for me and I might get some prize money out of this. One of these is a game and the other is not. The rules of the game allow for this behavior.
Take online games...simulated violence is inherent in games like lineage. I like simulated violence because I don't have to show my bruises at work the next day when I get my ass kicked, but under the "rules" or rather, the possibilities in the game, I could get the snot beat out of me and get mugged. That really sucks,but because it is a game, and within the possibilities of the game world I have a reasonable expectation to occasionally get ganked, then I'm mostly okay with that. I can whine and bitch about it a bit, but in the end it is JUST a game.
If I'm making the analogy, I will go off on a slight TANGENT as well...performance enhancing drugs (bots?) can make the game unfair. The organization that runs the game, i.e. MLB, NBA, etc, should police their own ranks and keep performance enhancers out of the game, but why the heck should Congress get involved in the actions of a private organization to the extent they did?
I've heard a lot of people say "There goes Sony again!", or "Anything to make a buck!", or "I'm glad I moved on to Wow, Sony SUXXORS!" and etc...
But the truth is that people will love it! People are going to absolutely love this and think it is the best thing to happen to gaming. It wil legitimize this and that and etc... Not everyone will love it, but enough people will that we'll start to see new games and old games follow this model after they learn lessons from the SOE model.
Might be fun to get some of these implanted under your skin. I bet a system could be designed that uses a small battery implanted with it that would last a couple years. You'd need a reliable switching mechanism though.
Humans don't only pass on information stored within our genetic structure. Humans, more than any other animal, carry on evolution at a level much higher than our animal cousins because our evolution depends only partly on genes, but to a vast degree on memes. Genes code proteins, memes code ideas/thoughts. But just like genes, there are a lot of memes that are vestigial and don't do much of anything, and some memes are quite handy to have around. Some memes even work in conjunction with genes (i.e. hunter gatherer instinct and modern day shopping). Memes are the basic ideas and basic thoughts that often are the building blocks of culture and lead to the success, failure, and stagnation of civilizations.
The human desire to procreate is based on genes, but who we chose to procreate, or practice procreating with is based mostly on memes. Most other animals, and protozoa, don't give a tinkers cuss about memes, otherwise they would build tiny pyramids to worship us with. I think this pyramid theory is your irrefutable proof that protozoa don't care for human morals, theories and ideas.
I won't care about the protozoa until they build me a pyramid, demmit!
My favortie pinball machines in college, also led to me leaving my first college without a degree. I can't believe no one has mentioned Bride of Pinbot or Mousin' Around!
Bride of Pinbot was always faithful, in that it performed well, not the other way. I skipped Calc IV so many times because of this machine. Pinball just seemed too much like applied math to me. Unfortunately the teacher didn't see it that way.
Mousin' Around was fun, but broke every week, and then they stopped fixxing it. And I knew the guy who did maintenance on them. I couldn't pay him enough of my laundry money to get him to fix it. Maybe he thought I needed the laundry money more than he needed the dough? hmmm....
One of my dreams is to retire and set up an old-fashioned arcade with lots of pinball machines./sigh
This worked well for me in SWG too. I was/am a Master Chef and I started out my business by crafting crates of stuff like that and the much loved (at the time) Tatooine Sunburn, and I would take these to a remote hostile place and sell it. After I made quite a bit and established a solid list of clients, I finally set up shop and raked in the credits! I had shops on four planets, another chef making stuff for me, and I was still turning special orders away because I had too many orders. My customer base blossomed and spilled over quick!
And then they revamped the Chef profession overnight and 90% of my inventory went from awesome to novelty. I was faced with a steep learning curve, so many bad crates that I had to just destroy all but one of my shops and in that remaining shop I destroyed all but one of my vendors, and still had 30 crates in the basement I had to destroy because they were now useless components.
Nowadays I sell the occasional crate on the street, but my days in the fast food business are over.
SWG is still going on...it hasn't quite died yet, and it peaked..umm..when did it peak again?
MMO Games that did die: Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond, what else? Oh, a whoile bunch that never got past development. I don't wondner why MCO died, I sometimes wonder why EnB died, and I really wonder why some of the ones that didn't make it out of the gate died.
I don't play WoW, but there is no chance of it dying this year or next. I'd bet my defunct TSO account on it.
"The employment environment at EA was built to allow you flexibility as professionals, with the expectation that time on the job could be managed without watching the clock. Unfortunately, labor laws have not kept pace with this spirit of entrepreneurialism, innovation and creativity."
So what does that make the military as a job? Salaried employees with no chance for overtime, or bonuses and your own death as a potential hazard. I'm proud to serve my country, but what the heck is EA saying about their practices before? Okay, I'm a bit OT there, but it seems a lot of bigger software companies BUY innovation by buying out the small companies that are being creative.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is if this will really change the product (aka games) that we get with the EA stamp on them? My vote is that it won't since the pay scheme doesn't influence the small innovative company about to have it's game bought out and distributed by EA.
Maybe this will help with the case of establishing the Global Energy Network? But only if we can overcome the "what's in it for me ($_$)" approach and look to how we can benefit all humanity.
Then we could get the areas that would benefit from this the most to send electricity to where it's needed? And in the case of the southwestern U.S. If they don't do it, then we'll stop sending them water!:)
Think of it this way...it isn't that the musicians weren't paid, maybe they weren't paid very much in hard currency...at first...but payment for artists and sportsmen in communist regimes usually came in the way of better connections to use to get what you wanted, or more benfits, or greater notariety...It's not just communist regimes though...
I mean, look at some of the rich people in Hollywood....some actors have enough money where they don't need to make another movie ever to enjoy the lifestyle they lead. Their "payment" comes from something else...status, fame, friends, etc...
Some people want more than money...some people just want the loot.
...we won't be able to realize the potential of this technology unless it includes drilling through the ice caps and displacing indigenous wildlife or maybe even if it creates a million new jobs.
Good thing this is in the hands of our neighbors to the north. Thank you, University of Toronto!! Now we can invade!/sarcasm off
Most people will get these packs for the novelty and the phat lewt. But there is already enough content in EQ2 to last a while for the not quite hardcore players.
I welcome this business model even though I will not be investing in it anytime soon. I'm happy enough playing as is and exploring what's already there. Just as long as they don't tie in these quest packs into a server wide, sooperdooper, you gotta finish this before level pi * 20 required quest.
Besides...they'll probably charge a higher fee for the first 6 to 9 months and then drop the price or bundle the quest pack into a later expansion pack that would make it worth it.
Reminds me of the Simpson's episode when the favorite TV show is canceled and all the kids come wide-eyed into the outdoors and actually play and get along with eachother in a utopian slendor.
Well, this didn't happen. The usual lot of people threatened to quit. Some people did quit, but quite a few were very supportive of the hiccup. SOE is a real company, people! Not a MMORPG running a MMORPG. Everyone expects everything to run like clockwork, but it never does because real life is random and untamable. There will always be the "OOPS" or "OH $#!^" factor.
All MMORPGs have their rough periods. This is very evident in the short history of MMORPGs. Not all MMORPGs are designed for you, because you can't please everyone all of the time. That's why it just baffles me that so many people try to convert the EQ2 players over to WoW thinking that it will click and that SOE is the darkside. EQ2 is a good game, so is WoW. They are both in the fantasy genre, but they are different games. period. SOE can screw up games, but they are about the only company that has tried so many online games...what about all the games that have ever been released that sucked, or the ones that eventually changed into PWOTs? SOE is neither angel nor demon...they just have the money and cajones to give it the ol' college try. (though I'm still PO'd about the SWG fiasco, I don't hold that against them, it was time for me to leave it)
So, just remember what Jack Burton says when things don't go your way and game life is getting you down...JPTFG. Okay, maybe he didn't say that, but he should have.
Slashdot Mirror
OMG...the Sorcery series was the first RPG I ever played. It was different from the "Twist-a-Plot" books (aka choose your own adventure) that you actually had a character sheet. I still have the Sorcery books. I can see them on my bookshelf from here.
I would love to see SJ bring his talent to the MMO world. Just as long as he leaves a few of his MIB cohorts behind
I'd like to see a TV/DVD/media center remote sewn into the arm of my couch, or something like that so I never lose the %$^@#%^ remotes again!
Wow! speed read some of the adds on the site...
There are some T-shirts advertised on the site that read "G33k" with the two threes formed by polyhedral dice...BUT from the small pic and a quick glance, it looked like they read "GOOK". OMG!
Menus affect games in different ways...it all depends on the game. For me, I usually only use menus when I am first playing a game. During that time I am also trying to figure out the hotkeys so I can skip the menus (much faster than gestures or selecting from a menu). I understand that some games can't make extensive use of hotkeys because of the mechanics of the game, and perhaps these fall in the B&W variety. BUT, I loathe the game (or app) that forces me to open up menu after menu to do the same thing again and again and again wihtout ever having an option for a hotkey.
If hammers can cost $100 to the Government, then these keyboards can easily cost $80! Their only practical use is in black-ops anyway!
Are you basically saying that we should force Peter Molyneaux to actually make a game that does what he says it will do instead of dumbing it down to wash-out worn down industry standards? Not that I don't like his games...I like 'em, but if they did everything he promises...then it would break more barriers...or am I completely off my gourd?
: changes subject quick!
Hey! How about that summer movie slump?
Reminds me of the Woody Allen movie "Sleeper", when he wakes up in the future and finds out that cigars are actually good for you.
So does the station access scheme (the keeping the subscriber number up part) ultimately benefit SOE management and stockholders? Or, does it help the devs & programmers who are trying to keep their jobs?
It must be like a rite of passage for new devs at SOE now...imagine, you get hired on at SOE dreaming to work on a new game, but no way Jose! You've got to put in time on SWG before you can move up...but it's a catch-22. If you do well at SWG, they will keep you on it, if you do poorly but show potential they will switch you to another game.
Hmmm...this might explain a few things.
Aye...me too.
I hate all this skewing of reality and online games (well, not really, it's fun!). But if we want to compare then let's compare real live games to online games, well... Let's say in REAL life, I'm into fighting as a sport. Boxing, ultimate fight contests, etc... Let me skew reality a bit then...
Now, I can't just go down the street and beat people up...well, I could, but I have a fair chance on going to jail no matter how light I hit a person. Put some boxing gloves on me and let me knock someone into a bloody pulp and not only do I NOT get arrested,, but I have people cheering for me and I might get some prize money out of this. One of these is a game and the other is not. The rules of the game allow for this behavior.
Take online games...simulated violence is inherent in games like lineage. I like simulated violence because I don't have to show my bruises at work the next day when I get my ass kicked, but under the "rules" or rather, the possibilities in the game, I could get the snot beat out of me and get mugged. That really sucks,but because it is a game, and within the possibilities of the game world I have a reasonable expectation to occasionally get ganked, then I'm mostly okay with that. I can whine and bitch about it a bit, but in the end it is JUST a game.
If I'm making the analogy, I will go off on a slight TANGENT as well...performance enhancing drugs (bots?) can make the game unfair. The organization that runs the game, i.e. MLB, NBA, etc, should police their own ranks and keep performance enhancers out of the game, but why the heck should Congress get involved in the actions of a private organization to the extent they did?
my 2p...
Sorry, just had to say that.
I've heard a lot of people say "There goes Sony again!", or "Anything to make a buck!", or "I'm glad I moved on to Wow, Sony SUXXORS!" and etc...
But the truth is that people will love it! People are going to absolutely love this and think it is the best thing to happen to gaming. It wil legitimize this and that and etc... Not everyone will love it, but enough people will that we'll start to see new games and old games follow this model after they learn lessons from the SOE model.
Might be fun to get some of these implanted under your skin. I bet a system could be designed that uses a small battery implanted with it that would last a couple years. You'd need a reliable switching mechanism though.
Would make for a nice tattoo!
Humans don't only pass on information stored within our genetic structure. Humans, more than any other animal, carry on evolution at a level much higher than our animal cousins because our evolution depends only partly on genes, but to a vast degree on memes. Genes code proteins, memes code ideas/thoughts. But just like genes, there are a lot of memes that are vestigial and don't do much of anything, and some memes are quite handy to have around. Some memes even work in conjunction with genes (i.e. hunter gatherer instinct and modern day shopping). Memes are the basic ideas and basic thoughts that often are the building blocks of culture and lead to the success, failure, and stagnation of civilizations.
The human desire to procreate is based on genes, but who we chose to procreate, or practice procreating with is based mostly on memes. Most other animals, and protozoa, don't give a tinkers cuss about memes, otherwise they would build tiny pyramids to worship us with. I think this pyramid theory is your irrefutable proof that protozoa don't care for human morals, theories and ideas.
I won't care about the protozoa until they build me a pyramid, demmit!
My favortie pinball machines in college, also led to me leaving my first college without a degree. I can't believe no one has mentioned Bride of Pinbot or Mousin' Around!
Bride of Pinbot was always faithful, in that it performed well, not the other way. I skipped Calc IV so many times because of this machine. Pinball just seemed too much like applied math to me. Unfortunately the teacher didn't see it that way.
Mousin' Around was fun, but broke every week, and then they stopped fixxing it. And I knew the guy who did maintenance on them. I couldn't pay him enough of my laundry money to get him to fix it. Maybe he thought I needed the laundry money more than he needed the dough? hmmm....
One of my dreams is to retire and set up an old-fashioned arcade with lots of pinball machines.
okay..back to work...
This worked well for me in SWG too. I was/am a Master Chef and I started out my business by crafting crates of stuff like that and the much loved (at the time) Tatooine Sunburn, and I would take these to a remote hostile place and sell it. After I made quite a bit and established a solid list of clients, I finally set up shop and raked in the credits! I had shops on four planets, another chef making stuff for me, and I was still turning special orders away because I had too many orders. My customer base blossomed and spilled over quick!
And then they revamped the Chef profession overnight and 90% of my inventory went from awesome to novelty. I was faced with a steep learning curve, so many bad crates that I had to just destroy all but one of my shops and in that remaining shop I destroyed all but one of my vendors, and still had 30 crates in the basement I had to destroy because they were now useless components.
Nowadays I sell the occasional crate on the street, but my days in the fast food business are over.
yeppers
SWG is still going on...it hasn't quite died yet, and it peaked..umm..when did it peak again?
MMO Games that did die: Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond, what else? Oh, a whoile bunch that never got past development. I don't wondner why MCO died, I sometimes wonder why EnB died, and I really wonder why some of the ones that didn't make it out of the gate died.
I don't play WoW, but there is no chance of it dying this year or next. I'd bet my defunct TSO account on it.
"The employment environment at EA was built to allow you flexibility as professionals, with the expectation that time on the job could be managed without watching the clock. Unfortunately, labor laws have not kept pace with this spirit of entrepreneurialism, innovation and creativity."
/shrug
So what does that make the military as a job? Salaried employees with no chance for overtime, or bonuses and your own death as a potential hazard. I'm proud to serve my country, but what the heck is EA saying about their practices before? Okay, I'm a bit OT there, but it seems a lot of bigger software companies BUY innovation by buying out the small companies that are being creative.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is if this will really change the product (aka games) that we get with the EA stamp on them? My vote is that it won't since the pay scheme doesn't influence the small innovative company about to have it's game bought out and distributed by EA.
Maybe this will help with the case of establishing the Global Energy Network? But only if we can overcome the "what's in it for me ($_$)" approach and look to how we can benefit all humanity.
:)
Then we could get the areas that would benefit from this the most to send electricity to where it's needed? And in the case of the southwestern U.S. If they don't do it, then we'll stop sending them water!
To bad your name isn't Monty...then you could make the Monty Python Civilization IV special add-on edition.
ok..I'll go back to my corner now...
Think of it this way...it isn't that the musicians weren't paid, maybe they weren't paid very much in hard currency...at first...but payment for artists and sportsmen in communist regimes usually came in the way of better connections to use to get what you wanted, or more benfits, or greater notariety...It's not just communist regimes though...
I mean, look at some of the rich people in Hollywood....some actors have enough money where they don't need to make another movie ever to enjoy the lifestyle they lead. Their "payment" comes from something else...status, fame, friends, etc...
Some people want more than money...some people just want the loot.
Good thing this is in the hands of our neighbors to the north. Thank you, University of Toronto!! Now we can invade!
Sounds like we need to gather up a few Norns, and a Grendel and throw them inside for a year.
Most people will get these packs for the novelty and the phat lewt. But there is already enough content in EQ2 to last a while for the not quite hardcore players. I welcome this business model even though I will not be investing in it anytime soon. I'm happy enough playing as is and exploring what's already there. Just as long as they don't tie in these quest packs into a server wide, sooperdooper, you gotta finish this before level pi * 20 required quest. Besides...they'll probably charge a higher fee for the first 6 to 9 months and then drop the price or bundle the quest pack into a later expansion pack that would make it worth it.
Reminds me of the Simpson's episode when the favorite TV show is canceled and all the kids come wide-eyed into the outdoors and actually play and get along with eachother in a utopian slendor.
Well, this didn't happen. The usual lot of people threatened to quit. Some people did quit, but quite a few were very supportive of the hiccup. SOE is a real company, people! Not a MMORPG running a MMORPG. Everyone expects everything to run like clockwork, but it never does because real life is random and untamable. There will always be the "OOPS" or "OH $#!^" factor.
All MMORPGs have their rough periods. This is very evident in the short history of MMORPGs. Not all MMORPGs are designed for you, because you can't please everyone all of the time. That's why it just baffles me that so many people try to convert the EQ2 players over to WoW thinking that it will click and that SOE is the darkside. EQ2 is a good game, so is WoW. They are both in the fantasy genre, but they are different games. period. SOE can screw up games, but they are about the only company that has tried so many online games...what about all the games that have ever been released that sucked, or the ones that eventually changed into PWOTs? SOE is neither angel nor demon...they just have the money and cajones to give it the ol' college try. (though I'm still PO'd about the SWG fiasco, I don't hold that against them, it was time for me to leave it)
So, just remember what Jack Burton says when things don't go your way and game life is getting you down...JPTFG. Okay, maybe he didn't say that, but he should have.