Even more, that's *current* subscribers. Blizzard made that very clear: the 4 million figure does NOT include cancellations. How many people bought the game and then cancelled?
I play many different games, and one of the main things that bugs me about games today is that, in essence, they all look alike.
Why? Because the development houses are going for a "realistic" looking game. Oh, sure - the atmosphere in a Half-Life 2 is different from a Halo is different from Doom 3 - but the fact remains that they are trying to make things look like they "really would" if you were in any of those situations.
A rare-ish exception is World of Warcraft. I *like* that it doesn't look real. I *like* that the fantasy world looks, more or less, like a dream. I enjoyed XIII as much for the game as for the aesthetic, and I enjoyed Wind Walkers unreal style as well.
In my opinion, "realistic" graphics often wind up wrecking the concept of suspension of disbelief for me: Doom3 had "realistic" graphics, but the whole damn point of the game was that it was a nightmare scenario - in the "real" world, the undead don't walk around trying to eat you (except in Congress) - so for me, the realism really made it hard to immerse myself in the story. World of Warcraft, however - when I'm there, *anything* can happen exactly because the world doesn't look like the one I am familiar with, and therefore there's no expectation that gets violated when I see something strange.
Personally, I have one hope for games, and that be that eventually the rendering engine come with controls that let the user change the render option. Want Cel shading? Go for it! Want it to look like water colors? Stained glass? Real? Tweak your settings and change it on the fly.
Real is good for some things - sports games, I suppose - but when you're trying to sink into a world that is as unreal as it gets, I think it hurts.
Which stage is "Rolling around in an ocean of cash so large that if they never sold another product and just invested their Cash On Hand they'd still be making an ungodly amount of money"?
If by "doing something well" you mean "marketing" then I think you're on to something.
The world is littered with the rotting corpses of great technology that got outmarketed by weaker products that had a clever spin on them.
If I wanted to market something solely to engineers - yes, quality would be the key. But engineers make for a miniscule market.
If I wanted to make *real* money - Microsoft-level money - I would not worry about quality except at the most basic level.
Google is, in my opinion, a fluke. I can count on one hand the number of "quality" companies that are the biggest/most profitable in their fields. Contrast that with hundreds of mediocre but well sold companies that aren't the best - just the cheapest/"coolest"/easiest to do business with.
It sucks, but that's the way things tend to have worked. We'd need a *massive* change in mindset before quality could be anything other than something everyone *claims* they want, but clearly don't actually care about.
Voice (or any sound) when you do not expect it and it is not appropriate for the situation, is annoying.
Voice in MMOs to let you quickly and efficiently organize things = wonderful!
Voice on theonion.com because some liquor distributor thinks it's clever to have their ad literally scream at you = horrible idea, and someone should be slapped.
I'm all for engaging as many senses and communications methods as possible *IF THEY ARE APPROPRIATE* and not done for novelty. The idiot on eBay that you described was doing it as a novelty.
Actually, I could very easily see a server in a new MMO that is designated as a "veteran's" server where they do exactly that - give your new character some things based on what your old character had. An inheritance, if you will.
If the "upgraders" are kept seperate from the characters starting from scratch - like, only allowed on certain designated servers - I absolutely believe there would be a demand for this kind of thing and the complaints from everyone else could very easily be answered with "Well then, it's a good thing there are all those other servers to play on that don't let people do this, huh?"
To keep the veteran servers populated, they could give any "new" player who started there a freebie - perhaps 15/30 free days of play as a way to compensate for the disadvantage of starting penniless when everyone else is rich.
Internet-gaming-related death? We'll get on that right away.
More like:
Human rights? Tricky subject: How much freedom/human decency can you have in a ostensibly Communist nation and still maintain solid control?
Pollution laws? Tricky subject: How much can we look at cutting pollution while still developing our industrial capacity and supporting growth?
Internet-gaming-related death? Easy subject: Put fairly strict rules in place to reduce the time people can spend on "non-productive" tasks, and anyone complaining about the solution clearly needs to report for re-education.
I don't know much about them, but I had fantasies of powering my laptop with the heat difference between my coffee and the room temperature air when I saw a small one that demonstrated the concept and could fit in the palm of your hand.
If you think that, play Daggerfall. Play it anyway actually, it's a great game - but it still shows that generated cities are a really bad idea.
Not really - it shows that one particular implementation didn't work well. There are certainly bad ways and good ways to do something like this - saying that because it failed once it isn't a good idea doesn't make any sense to me.
Your comment is about the same as saying "Look at the Apple Lisa - it shows that GUIs are a really bad idea."
how did you think Apple was going to keep their OS on the computers they make?
"Hi, this is Lisa from Apple - we just wanted to call and say that we'd really, rilly, REALLY appreciate it if you wouldn't run OSX on a generic x86 box. You won't? Promise? Cross your heart? No, our lawyers say we can't do the 'needle in your eye' thing anymore. Ok! Awesome! Thanks so much! Have a great evening!"
If it was Vista: The Pasta Manufacturer, or Vista: The Rug Cleaning People, no problem.
But they're in the same general industry, and, IANAL, I think that makes all the difference in a lawsuit like this.
If Microsoft does get away with this, I'm starting up a company called "Office 2003" and I'll be selling productivity software called "TM" - I think "Office 2003 [font size=-10] presents [/font] TM" would be a great thing.
You're misreading. It is not 1 in 5 business machines, it's 1 in 5 business machines in companies with more than 250 employees.
What percentage of total business machines are used in companies with less than 250 machines? What percentage of employees who work for larger firms are in positions where Macs are traditionally strong?
I agree that even with those things in consideration it seems a bit high, but you guys both misunderstood what was being said.
No, they're saying that in businesses larger than 250 people, 1 in 5 computers are Macintoshes. That is a very, very different thing than "1 in 5 business desktops are macs." Some people work for companies that have fewer than 250 people.
Really, this makes sense to me: Every large (250+ employee) business I've worked for or at has had an in-house graphic design staff (using Macs). The only small (250 employee) businesses I've worked for that had any Mac users were advertising and other creative firms. Big businesses can support "non core" employees much more readily than smaller firms can.
Any game that is moddable can be modified in this way then, and therefore all game companies need to make it impossible for users to create and then distribute "disturbing" (whatever your definition of it is) content with the game - if we follow your logic. Which I don't, but I understand the attraction of it.
Rockstar made a mini-game and then didn't remove all of it from their game, but they didn't make it accessable by "normal" play (or ANY play), either. It requires a modification of the software, not just some code that needs to be entered at a pause point. ANY game that is moddable can be modified into providing content that people will be up in arms to.
Oh noes, someone made a mod that turns the monsters in Doom 3 into children, and all the weapons into sex toys! Clearly, Doom 3 needs to be made Adults Only!
Oh noes, someone made some skins for The Sims that make them nude, and Little Jimmy has now got a house full of naked polyamorous lesbians running around! Clearly, The Sims needs to be made Adults Only!
Oh noes, someone made skins for Morrowind that makes every NPC in the game into an extremely well-hung and otherwise well-endowed transsexual centaur! Clearly, Morrowind needs to be made Adults Only!
Oh noes, someone made a mod of Barbie's Baking Challenge that converts the pies she bakes into Jewish Children, and the Betty Crocker Cooking Campus into Auschwitz! Clearly, Barbie's Baking Challenge needs to be made - what, it's only monstrous violence and not sex? - well, Mature then.
Not only is the ongoing fee reasonable, it's dirt cheap compared to virtually every other form of entertainment out there.
$50 up front and $15 a month is really a trivial expense for entertainment.
If a person were to buy a game and subscribe for a year, it comes out to about 63 cents per day. My local newspaper isn't that inexpensive.
Even if I only play 1 hour per week, that's about $4.41. Of course, I doubt anyone who will only play for 1 hour a week and never more than that would actually buy this game, so the actuall cost per hour is rather lower I'd think.
People who bitch that playing MMOs are expensive are either really bad at basic math or do nothing else for entertainment but stare at a wall.
Actually, fact is I would leave - I would no longer trust Blizzard if they did a roll-back.
What's to say that one of their devs won't make Yet Another Boneheaded Mistake in the future and leave another dupe possibility there, and then, when it is discovered, I, a legit user, pays?
Spoken like somebody who got a few K gold dropped in his pocketbook by a duper:)
So where you come from, it's okay to accuse a stranger of cheating as long as you smile when you do it? Huh. Where I come from, you'd still be considered an asshole, smile or not.
And no, it's spoken like somebody who just doesn't care if other people have more of some imaginary currency than she does.
About the economy and rollbacks: Punishing everyone because of bad code and a few malicious people is not what I'd consider a winning move in this case. I seriously doubt that wiping out all of the time players have spent over the last week or so, and the ensuing cancellations and bad-will (I know my account would be up for sale on eBay and I'd never buy another Blizzard product, or any product from anyone involved in making these kinds of decisions at Blizzard ever again) is actually less expensive in the long run than just fixing the problem, banning the obvious offenders (Easy: no possible reason a level 30 person should have 100k gold, or whatever the limit is) and letting the flood of dupes and other stuff pass out of the market over time.
For a few days, people have been sitting in Ironforge just giving away gold. I assumed then, and now feel 99% sure, that these were people who'd used the dupes and were trying to muddy the waters - make it so that Blizzard would have to either completely screw over legitimate players who thought they were just getting a nice gift from people on "their side" etc.
So, what can be done to remove this stuff from the environment? Some are suggesting a rollback to the last maintenance spot, making people lose a week of progress (and, presumably, pissing off legitimate people/losing accounts) in order to get the duped stuff out of the economy. Does it even need to be removed?
I, personally, don't really care if it's there or not - the "economy" as it is seems pretty random anyway, and I'm not terribly bothered if some other player has things I don't.
Clearly they need to fix the actual exploit/bug, and hopefully remove the accounts of the people who actually did it (not that that will accomplish anything other than getting rid of a few suburban teens while the people who make real money off this just go buy a few more copies) but is it really that big a deal to the average player?
... Marvel and DC don't do what The Matrix Online and Star Wars: Galaxies did, and create sub-par games while hoping that the fans will be too excited to play in their universes to notice how lousy the game actually is.
And, it'll be great to have more MMO's that are not elf-based fantasy stuff. I enjoy WoW, but sometimes a girl just wants to beat the crap out of things that aren't "Generic Fantasy Creature #180zillion."
I think it is largely a cultural difference, not a nationalistic difference.
Look at the styles of the games that do well in the larger markets in Japan and the US. For the most part, the Japanese mainstream just doesn't get into the same stuff that makes the USians buy games, and for the most part the reverse is true in the US.
If Microsoft wants the 360 to do well in Japan, they're going to need to make a huge investment in getting a large library of games that the average Japanese person will want to play. Sony did it right with the PS and PS2 - they have a huge library of games for Japanese gamers, and another huge library of games for USian gamers.
Now as to the FFXI game for the 360 - that's *one* game. And, there will be a few more that are *sort of* geared towards the Japanese market. But, unless Microsoft can come up with a must-have like Nintendogs, these few titles just aren't going to cut it.
To put it in reverse: Imagine if the PS2 library of "american" games numbered less than a dozen - no sports games, no beat-em-ups, no driving games, none of that stuff. How many USians do you think would buy a PS2 just so they could play Parappa the Rapper? My guess - about the same number proportionately as the number of Japanese who'll buy a 360 for FFXI.
I disagree. I'm a casual gamer, and I enjoy MMORPGS. Here's why: Because I could give a flying fuck if someone has the +3 thingamabob and I only have the +2 version.
My friends who play are usually willing to hook up a gimp like me, and, when they aren't, I find other people to go and do stuff with for a bit.
Just because I'm not in the same party fighting the same creatures doesn't mean that my friends can't still talk to me...
Now, if you're a hyper-competitive person and can't cope with the idea of people getting ahead of you because they've spent more time playing, well, yeah - then MMO's aren't for you.
Slashdot Mirror
A few decades ago it was cocaine. Then cigars. Then SUVs. Now poker.
It's a fad. Fad's decline by definition.
Even more, that's *current* subscribers. Blizzard made that very clear: the 4 million figure does NOT include cancellations. How many people bought the game and then cancelled?
WoW is not a cash cow - it's a cash megafarm.
I play many different games, and one of the main things that bugs me about games today is that, in essence, they all look alike.
Why? Because the development houses are going for a "realistic" looking game. Oh, sure - the atmosphere in a Half-Life 2 is different from a Halo is different from Doom 3 - but the fact remains that they are trying to make things look like they "really would" if you were in any of those situations.
A rare-ish exception is World of Warcraft. I *like* that it doesn't look real. I *like* that the fantasy world looks, more or less, like a dream. I enjoyed XIII as much for the game as for the aesthetic, and I enjoyed Wind Walkers unreal style as well.
In my opinion, "realistic" graphics often wind up wrecking the concept of suspension of disbelief for me: Doom3 had "realistic" graphics, but the whole damn point of the game was that it was a nightmare scenario - in the "real" world, the undead don't walk around trying to eat you (except in Congress) - so for me, the realism really made it hard to immerse myself in the story. World of Warcraft, however - when I'm there, *anything* can happen exactly because the world doesn't look like the one I am familiar with, and therefore there's no expectation that gets violated when I see something strange.
Personally, I have one hope for games, and that be that eventually the rendering engine come with controls that let the user change the render option. Want Cel shading? Go for it! Want it to look like water colors? Stained glass? Real? Tweak your settings and change it on the fly.
Real is good for some things - sports games, I suppose - but when you're trying to sink into a world that is as unreal as it gets, I think it hurts.
Clearly, Australia is intent on annexing the US and this was a public slip. Thank god we got the advanced warning!
So, based on the spelling error in your sig, would that make you a RINO (Republican In Name Only)? :)
Wait - which party wouldn't have a spell-check? My guess is Libertarian, the party that ran a smurf for congress.
Which stage is "Rolling around in an ocean of cash so large that if they never sold another product and just invested their Cash On Hand they'd still be making an ungodly amount of money"?
Something along the lines of a massively huge dike between New Orleans and the ocean.
Is Rosie O'Donnell still looking for work?
If by "doing something well" you mean "marketing" then I think you're on to something.
The world is littered with the rotting corpses of great technology that got outmarketed by weaker products that had a clever spin on them.
If I wanted to market something solely to engineers - yes, quality would be the key. But engineers make for a miniscule market.
If I wanted to make *real* money - Microsoft-level money - I would not worry about quality except at the most basic level.
Google is, in my opinion, a fluke. I can count on one hand the number of "quality" companies that are the biggest/most profitable in their fields. Contrast that with hundreds of mediocre but well sold companies that aren't the best - just the cheapest/"coolest"/easiest to do business with.
It sucks, but that's the way things tend to have worked. We'd need a *massive* change in mindset before quality could be anything other than something everyone *claims* they want, but clearly don't actually care about.
I would like to amplify/ammend/fix your comment:
Voice (or any sound) when you do not expect it and it is not appropriate for the situation, is annoying.
Voice in MMOs to let you quickly and efficiently organize things = wonderful!
Voice on theonion.com because some liquor distributor thinks it's clever to have their ad literally scream at you = horrible idea, and someone should be slapped.
I'm all for engaging as many senses and communications methods as possible *IF THEY ARE APPROPRIATE* and not done for novelty. The idiot on eBay that you described was doing it as a novelty.
Actually, I could very easily see a server in a new MMO that is designated as a "veteran's" server where they do exactly that - give your new character some things based on what your old character had. An inheritance, if you will.
If the "upgraders" are kept seperate from the characters starting from scratch - like, only allowed on certain designated servers - I absolutely believe there would be a demand for this kind of thing and the complaints from everyone else could very easily be answered with "Well then, it's a good thing there are all those other servers to play on that don't let people do this, huh?"
To keep the veteran servers populated, they could give any "new" player who started there a freebie - perhaps 15/30 free days of play as a way to compensate for the disadvantage of starting penniless when everyone else is rich.
Human rights? We'll pass.
Polution laws? Maybe next year.
Internet-gaming-related death? We'll get on that right away.
More like:
Human rights? Tricky subject: How much freedom/human decency can you have in a ostensibly Communist nation and still maintain solid control?
Pollution laws? Tricky subject: How much can we look at cutting pollution while still developing our industrial capacity and supporting growth?
Internet-gaming-related death? Easy subject: Put fairly strict rules in place to reduce the time people can spend on "non-productive" tasks, and anyone complaining about the solution clearly needs to report for re-education.
What about a Stirling (sp?) engine?
I don't know much about them, but I had fantasies of powering my laptop with the heat difference between my coffee and the room temperature air when I saw a small one that demonstrated the concept and could fit in the palm of your hand.
If you think that, play Daggerfall. Play it anyway actually, it's a great game - but it still shows that generated cities are a really bad idea.
Not really - it shows that one particular implementation didn't work well. There are certainly bad ways and good ways to do something like this - saying that because it failed once it isn't a good idea doesn't make any sense to me.
Your comment is about the same as saying "Look at the Apple Lisa - it shows that GUIs are a really bad idea."
how did you think Apple was going to keep their OS on the computers they make?
"Hi, this is Lisa from Apple - we just wanted to call and say that we'd really, rilly, REALLY appreciate it if you wouldn't run OSX on a generic x86 box. You won't? Promise? Cross your heart? No, our lawyers say we can't do the 'needle in your eye' thing anymore. Ok! Awesome! Thanks so much! Have a great evening!"
If it was Vista: The Pasta Manufacturer, or Vista: The Rug Cleaning People, no problem.
But they're in the same general industry, and, IANAL, I think that makes all the difference in a lawsuit like this.
If Microsoft does get away with this, I'm starting up a company called "Office 2003" and I'll be selling productivity software called "TM" - I think "Office 2003 [font size=-10] presents [/font] TM" would be a great thing.
You're misreading. It is not 1 in 5 business machines, it's 1 in 5 business machines in companies with more than 250 employees.
What percentage of total business machines are used in companies with less than 250 machines? What percentage of employees who work for larger firms are in positions where Macs are traditionally strong?
I agree that even with those things in consideration it seems a bit high, but you guys both misunderstood what was being said.
No, they're saying that in businesses larger than 250 people, 1 in 5 computers are Macintoshes. That is a very, very different thing than "1 in 5 business desktops are macs." Some people work for companies that have fewer than 250 people.
Really, this makes sense to me: Every large (250+ employee) business I've worked for or at has had an in-house graphic design staff (using Macs). The only small (250 employee) businesses I've worked for that had any Mac users were advertising and other creative firms. Big businesses can support "non core" employees much more readily than smaller firms can.
Any game that is moddable can be modified in this way then, and therefore all game companies need to make it impossible for users to create and then distribute "disturbing" (whatever your definition of it is) content with the game - if we follow your logic. Which I don't, but I understand the attraction of it.
Rockstar made a mini-game and then didn't remove all of it from their game, but they didn't make it accessable by "normal" play (or ANY play), either. It requires a modification of the software, not just some code that needs to be entered at a pause point. ANY game that is moddable can be modified into providing content that people will be up in arms to.
Oh noes, someone made a mod that turns the monsters in Doom 3 into children, and all the weapons into sex toys! Clearly, Doom 3 needs to be made Adults Only!
Oh noes, someone made some skins for The Sims that make them nude, and Little Jimmy has now got a house full of naked polyamorous lesbians running around! Clearly, The Sims needs to be made Adults Only!
Oh noes, someone made skins for Morrowind that makes every NPC in the game into an extremely well-hung and otherwise well-endowed transsexual centaur! Clearly, Morrowind needs to be made Adults Only!
Oh noes, someone made a mod of Barbie's Baking Challenge that converts the pies she bakes into Jewish Children, and the Betty Crocker Cooking Campus into Auschwitz! Clearly, Barbie's Baking Challenge needs to be made - what, it's only monstrous violence and not sex? - well, Mature then.
An amplification of some very good points:
Not only is the ongoing fee reasonable, it's dirt cheap compared to virtually every other form of entertainment out there.
$50 up front and $15 a month is really a trivial expense for entertainment.
If a person were to buy a game and subscribe for a year, it comes out to about 63 cents per day. My local newspaper isn't that inexpensive.
Even if I only play 1 hour per week, that's about $4.41. Of course, I doubt anyone who will only play for 1 hour a week and never more than that would actually buy this game, so the actuall cost per hour is rather lower I'd think.
People who bitch that playing MMOs are expensive are either really bad at basic math or do nothing else for entertainment but stare at a wall.
Actually, fact is I would leave - I would no longer trust Blizzard if they did a roll-back.
What's to say that one of their devs won't make Yet Another Boneheaded Mistake in the future and leave another dupe possibility there, and then, when it is discovered, I, a legit user, pays?
Far better for me to cut my losses and move on.
Spoken like somebody who got a few K gold dropped in his pocketbook by a duper :)
So where you come from, it's okay to accuse a stranger of cheating as long as you smile when you do it? Huh. Where I come from, you'd still be considered an asshole, smile or not.
And no, it's spoken like somebody who just doesn't care if other people have more of some imaginary currency than she does.
About the economy and rollbacks: Punishing everyone because of bad code and a few malicious people is not what I'd consider a winning move in this case. I seriously doubt that wiping out all of the time players have spent over the last week or so, and the ensuing cancellations and bad-will (I know my account would be up for sale on eBay and I'd never buy another Blizzard product, or any product from anyone involved in making these kinds of decisions at Blizzard ever again) is actually less expensive in the long run than just fixing the problem, banning the obvious offenders (Easy: no possible reason a level 30 person should have 100k gold, or whatever the limit is) and letting the flood of dupes and other stuff pass out of the market over time.
For a few days, people have been sitting in Ironforge just giving away gold. I assumed then, and now feel 99% sure, that these were people who'd used the dupes and were trying to muddy the waters - make it so that Blizzard would have to either completely screw over legitimate players who thought they were just getting a nice gift from people on "their side" etc.
So, what can be done to remove this stuff from the environment? Some are suggesting a rollback to the last maintenance spot, making people lose a week of progress (and, presumably, pissing off legitimate people/losing accounts) in order to get the duped stuff out of the economy. Does it even need to be removed?
I, personally, don't really care if it's there or not - the "economy" as it is seems pretty random anyway, and I'm not terribly bothered if some other player has things I don't.
Clearly they need to fix the actual exploit/bug, and hopefully remove the accounts of the people who actually did it (not that that will accomplish anything other than getting rid of a few suburban teens while the people who make real money off this just go buy a few more copies) but is it really that big a deal to the average player?
... Marvel and DC don't do what The Matrix Online and Star Wars: Galaxies did, and create sub-par games while hoping that the fans will be too excited to play in their universes to notice how lousy the game actually is.
And, it'll be great to have more MMO's that are not elf-based fantasy stuff. I enjoy WoW, but sometimes a girl just wants to beat the crap out of things that aren't "Generic Fantasy Creature #180zillion."
I think it is largely a cultural difference, not a nationalistic difference.
Look at the styles of the games that do well in the larger markets in Japan and the US. For the most part, the Japanese mainstream just doesn't get into the same stuff that makes the USians buy games, and for the most part the reverse is true in the US.
If Microsoft wants the 360 to do well in Japan, they're going to need to make a huge investment in getting a large library of games that the average Japanese person will want to play. Sony did it right with the PS and PS2 - they have a huge library of games for Japanese gamers, and another huge library of games for USian gamers.
Now as to the FFXI game for the 360 - that's *one* game. And, there will be a few more that are *sort of* geared towards the Japanese market. But, unless Microsoft can come up with a must-have like Nintendogs, these few titles just aren't going to cut it.
To put it in reverse: Imagine if the PS2 library of "american" games numbered less than a dozen - no sports games, no beat-em-ups, no driving games, none of that stuff. How many USians do you think would buy a PS2 just so they could play Parappa the Rapper? My guess - about the same number proportionately as the number of Japanese who'll buy a 360 for FFXI.
I disagree. I'm a casual gamer, and I enjoy MMORPGS. Here's why: Because I could give a flying fuck if someone has the +3 thingamabob and I only have the +2 version.
My friends who play are usually willing to hook up a gimp like me, and, when they aren't, I find other people to go and do stuff with for a bit.
Just because I'm not in the same party fighting the same creatures doesn't mean that my friends can't still talk to me...
Now, if you're a hyper-competitive person and can't cope with the idea of people getting ahead of you because they've spent more time playing, well, yeah - then MMO's aren't for you.