Players must feel repercussions for their decisions. Jumping and ganking the wrong people will result in total destruction of everything you and your friends have built by the community you have violated.
Let me explain something up front.
WAR has no inter-faction PvP.
Secondly, in accordance to this "ganking" in a sense is actually part of the Games Workshop lore of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe.
The Chaos faction is basically pure evil. Killing innocent and weak people is what they do.
At the same time, Empire ain't what you would the nice guys. They hold inquisitions, torture, and purge religions they don't think are compatible with their ideal. Witchunters have been known to burn down entire villages of innocents because there was on Chaos guy hiding their midst.
Well, ok the Empire isn't all that bad and neither is Chaos because they are actually very fleshed out as more than black and white (good and evil) in the lore.
But the idea behind the backstory which was built up by GW with their tabletop game and novels was that this is a no holds bar situation. Either you are with the team or your next in line to be slaughtered.
Anyways... There is change to the world, a faction can capture each others leader which results in certain changes to the world which is basically the idea behind the realm war. Its not as dynamic as one would like but its a lot more dynamic than most current other games.
If you capture a keep or vital point on the map you get NPCs guarding it and even shop keepers. If you take that point you can deny the other side the resources of the RvR gear sold there as well as a safe haven in hostile territory.
I thought tomorrow was when they turned it on. I thought the end of the world was to happen when the first collision is made right?
According to wiki it says the first collisions are supposed to happen on October 21st, but it references a russian website so I don't know how accurate that is.
Sigh...it is very tiresome to hear the same wrong headed myths about investment == gambling that have been circulating for years and gaining currency among the younger generations.
While I don't believe gambling is equal to investing either, I just had the impression that this particular person was going to blow it all on penny stocks or into a risky businesses he had no good knowledge off. Secondly which I should have explained, he was getting a three year loan at 24% which is pushing it real hard if he was going to invest in something secure like a SP500 ETF index.
There is nothing wrong in taking a margin account with your broker at say 7.9% and then investing it into a corporate bond that gives 9% or a growth stock that will give 10%+.
I was just trying to imply that borrowing money at high interest to invest in the stock market without a good plan is a bad idea because there is the possibility that if you invest poorly that you'll loose the investment and still owe money.
And yes fund managers do generally leverage all the time with borrowed money but they generally know what they are doing (well some of the time) and tend to diversify to reduce risk.
But yeah I agree pretty much on your second statement.
Instead of spending money on rolling copper or fiber into less-urban areas, the providers are spending all their spare money on backbone transit for bandwidth-hogging customers' packets.
I seriously doubt that is the case because Verizon seems to have no issues with bandwidth hogs while Comcast seems to wail and moan about the issue. This could be because of the nature of cable vs DSL technology, but I suspect it has something to with the fact cable companies are more focused on content delivery and using their bandwidth for other things like "On Demand".
Personally, I have more problems with the cable just going out (no TV and no internet at the same time) than I do with slow service.
Now Verizon is focusing are rich suburban neighborhoods leaving both rural grannies and us urbanites out in the cold, but I suspect they'll roll out to us next before they will to the rural areas mostly because of the issue of more profitability versus population density and not because of network bandwidth hogging.
My argument is that it isn't the file sharers that are causing this problem but rather the unwillingness of certain companies to supply the rural areas with the last mile because in the end its not going to make them much money. The whole P2P argument seems like a straw man that points the blame on the wrong set of persons.
A debt based monetary system may have an adverse effect on those living within it?
The other day I was looking for investment opportunities and came across Prosper.com which is a P2P lending company which you give to micro invest in people's loans. Reading some of the stories of why these people need loans started to make me laugh and then start to die inside a little bit after realizing that America is full of these people who just don't know how to deal with financial responsibility. One guy on there was asking for a $5,000 loan in order to buy stocks. That's the most retarded thing I can think of that you can do with a loan besides go to Las Vegas with it.
Sadly, our society cannot function without credit because its there in the first place. Because we can have mortgages and car loans, the demand for housing and cars increase which of course leads to higher prices which means the chance of getting. This is most likley tied into the situation we have with Freddie and Fannie now and the housing fiasco.
The only solution I can think of is to actually focus on long term solutions is get a house that is close enough public transportation which you intend to pay off in 30 years and then keep it in the family so that future generations don't have to put up with this crap.
I think the majority of our societal problems is related to ignorance towards what we need and what we want and the issues that puts on everyone else. Personally, I don't really care that other people took out loans they couldn't pay back, but when it starts to affect my life because of the national economic situation then it becomes bothersome.
Then again, I suppose I should start living off of other people's ignorance and bid on their loans.
Then how do you explain the study "Unemployment, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and body weight in young British men" by SCOTT M. MONTGOMERY1, DEREK G. COOK2, MEL J. BARTLEY3 and MICHAEL E.J. WADSWORTH3? They found when british men become unemployed they get fat. Seems to me they have plenty of time to exercise.
Maybe they are depressed and that working isn't so stressful over there. I have something anecdotal. Even though I myself haven't had any adverse effects to my own health, I do work in a very stressful job and often have noted new employees gaining lots of weight here since working.
Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind.
Well the unified central authorship and message is most likley due to the Catholic churches councils determining what texts were considered cannon and which were not. Considering the history of the Catholic church, its somewhat hard to believe that god would have guided such men in exactly what to put in and what not to put in (you know the whole issue about the Cathars).
Which is why Eastern Orthodox Christianity believes in slightly different message than the Western Catholic. The differences are subtle but the effects are profound IMO.
The key issue of course is the message you believe to be the word may not in fact be exactly what the authors meant originally. Mostly because these texts were translated from Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek into Latin and then into vernacular with varying results. One could argue that the King James bible was created due to entirely political motivations with the Anglican church versus the Papacy and other non-government approved protestant sects (like the Puritans).
This of course might be why Jews and Muslims study their religious texts in its original tongues.
So yeah, if you wanna delude yourself out of the fun, go ahead... but consider the fact that you haven't tried being married, so how would you know the truth?
Feh. I've lived with a girlfriend plus 3 years and I don't like it. Of course we're not officially "married", but I realized I can't personally live with another person. I can be monogamous, but sometimes I just want to be alone for extended periods of time.
The problem with marriage is that its a hit or miss situation. Had you married someone who turned out bad you'd probaly feel different about marriage.
So my personal rule is that you should live with someone 5 years before you marry them. If you can still stand them after that then you should go ahead. Otherwise your just wasting everyone's time and the crap you have to deal with divorce.
Granted, the cars themselves should produce nothing but water, but how do we produce the hydrogen? Does that not require energy? I simply don't believe that all of the hydrogen plants are powered by nuclear or hydroelectric energy.
Well here is the deal:
1. Even if you have to use a coal power plant to produce the hydrogen, its extremely more efficient than using petroleum in terms of releasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
2. And speaking of, this also means we don't have to rely on foreign oil.
As a small time investor, one of the odd things I've noticed is that currently the Brazilian economy is booming. Most Brazilian stocks are going through the roof. Now it could be that the US and China just aren't doing as good as they used to, but it also dawned on my that Brazil has almost ceased the need to import energy from foreign sources due to its aggressive ethanol campaign.
Now, IMO ethanol isn't the solution for the US, but anything that reduces the need to pay foreign sources for energy simply keeps the money in the US rather than someone overseas.
OTOH, something that doesn't seem to be taken into account is, what happens when families change? A single guy only needs 'x' amount of space. Now when that single guy gets married*, has 4 kids, and a parent becomes decrepit/disabled and decide to move in...? Obviously there's going to be a lot of change in how much space the guy can be comfortable living in, no matter what culture we're talking about here.
The same thing they do in NYC or Tokyo where real estate is a premium:
Make do.
There has been one compelling argument tho that suggests the end of McMansion and Surbia due to peak oil.
The End of Suburbia (its the full 52 minutes allowed on youtube) documentary which gets into the issues with peak oil and its effects on society.
Its worth a watch and even though I disagree on the alternative energy not being able to take up the slack, it points out how inefficient our current life style is with car transportation and how really the move towards a "New Urban" society is the best solution.
Actually, being able to walk anywhere seems like an optimal solution even if peak oil isn't as bad as they make it out.
Anyways... If they are right, the suburbs will be the new urban blight who no one wants to live in because no one can afford to travel anyways in your car.
Had gas prices gone to $5 this year I'd say we're well on our way to peak oil, but even seeing we have a reprieve we might still want to consider our alternatives.
Don't confuse a "feat" with a "record". Feats are what people do. Records are feats that can be proven to have happened. If an achievement is not properly documented, there's no way to know for sure whether it was done.
I thought this was more of a "proof of concept" rather than breaking any records. I think this team's main goal is get a working prototype the military can use for reconnaissance missions.
Arguing whether it broke an official record will be a moot point once they get a production model in the field which will most likley have better air times anyways.
Need I remind this government that there has never been a completely crime-free country in the history of the world?
Well, the ones who didn't have any laws didn't have any crime.
Crime is defined not as something good or bad, but defined by the state.
This could be as innocuous as speeding to something very authoritarian where being a particular race or belonging to a particular political party is a crime.
The key is that if you want less crime, you shouldn't forget about moving the goal posts to where certain things aren't a crime anymore. Like the alcohol prohibition.
It never hurts to have laws against douchebagery, but overall when you just have laws to have laws then you make everyone a criminal eventually and that isn't a good way to have a society.
The key problem is that no one else seems to realize this and your best option as an individual is move to more rational countries or just stay low on the radar and don't read the news.
Can't type today... There should be an if where one of those extra "it" are.
This is a serious question. I'm curious to what kind of debris and how much fire it was on as it seemed to enter the lower floors of the other building.
I think that's the problem with MMOGs is right there. That's what developers think everyone wants to be.
First objection to this, in truth there is a large amount of the gaming community that loves to be "the faceless storm troopers" or the lowly grunt because they can relate better to them than the hero. And its not like most people role play a hero in MMOGs anyways, but just some random dude looking for loot and XP.
Secondly, its not truly feasible in the current state of MMOG so that everyone feels like their the hero because even now it still doesn't feel like it.
"Gee... I just killed the boss of the whole game but it really doesn't feel that important because he's coming right back for the next guy in line"
See, no mater how you look at it, you will never feel like a hero if everyone can do what you do or that the fate of the world really doesn't hang in the balance.
The solution, IMO would involve a pretty complex system of quest generation that are one off quests and scenarios that affect the world in someway slightly.
Not that anyone is under the illusion that actual Role Playing was ever strong in MMOs, but the fact that the world is mostly static really has always killed it for me.
Originally, Ralph Koster (whatever happened to him after SWG?) had this idea for Ultima Online in which the world was completely dynamic. Animals and monsters could go extinct because of player interaction and they would interact with each when none one was around. You would walk around in the forest and see a wolf attacking a rabbit or a cat eating a rabbit and so on.
Natural resources were limited and you could mine a mine out ore.
Of course there was a period of time when UO got quite barren because of this but I don't think they thought it through.
Suffice to say Ralph went on to other jobs and the Ultima Online live team kind of turned his vision into something else not as interesting. Despite all that UO still remains fairly non-static in his AI behavior in its NPCs. I always enjoyed having to talk to my vendors instead of using a graphical interact (I like muds like that) and all the other MMOGs seemed quite gamey compared to it.
Shame no one is trying something as bold again instead of making another EQ/WoW clone.
Wouldn't it be poetic justice and just a tad ironic if the US spent all this time and money on the "boogey man in Iraq", then like the boy who cried wolf, is criticized and ignored over Iran?
Despite what you may think, Iran having nuclear weapons is not a big deal.
They maybe very religious and fanatic elements to their regime, but they aren't stupid. Using a nuclear weapon on Israel or any other state would result in the summary destruction of their nation with nuclear weapons.
Secondly, using nuclear weapons on Israel is a very dumb idea when the goal was to give the territory back to Palestinians. Obviously, being owners of a radiative wasteland is a Pyrrhic victory.
And I'm not sure dropping a nuke on Jerusalem (where Mohamed ascended into heaven) would be a very pious act either.
Of course there is the option of handing a nuke over to Hamas, but strategically that would lead to a very unstable situation for their regime considering US's reaction.
That said, I'd be more concerned about Russia at the moment than Iran.
Generally, there are monsters that you could kill in 2 hits but they are always below your level and not worth fighting.
The spell ranges are measured in feet and at least the with the Magus the maximum range is about 100ft so I'm able to get a equal to my level mob about a quarter damage before he gets to me.
As a personal strategy either I use a pink horror who has ranged attacks do the first hit so that the mob is aggroed to him but I have found that blue horrows (melee) are stronger in defense and offense so I tened to summon the blue horror between me and the mob and then cast on the mob.
Of course this is just soloing with 1vs1 fights. Fighting harder mobs or more mobs take a bit different approach for different classes.
Well I'll agree to some extent. A well designed economy can make a game enjoyable (well I'm personally thinking about Ultima Online but I think that was an accident more than a well planned design).
However, I don't think WAR is trying to fit a mold of anything that I can compare it too. I mean, Team Fortress 2 is fun but it doesn't have an economy to speak of. So I think the same concept is here as well. Its not as gear oriented as some other games so I think that helps with the lack of economy.
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Players must feel repercussions for their decisions. Jumping and ganking the wrong people will result in total destruction of everything you and your friends have built by the community you have violated.
Let me explain something up front.
WAR has no inter-faction PvP.
Secondly, in accordance to this "ganking" in a sense is actually part of the Games Workshop lore of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe.
The Chaos faction is basically pure evil. Killing innocent and weak people is what they do.
At the same time, Empire ain't what you would the nice guys. They hold inquisitions, torture, and purge religions they don't think are compatible with their ideal. Witchunters have been known to burn down entire villages of innocents because there was on Chaos guy hiding their midst.
Well, ok the Empire isn't all that bad and neither is Chaos because they are actually very fleshed out as more than black and white (good and evil) in the lore.
But the idea behind the backstory which was built up by GW with their tabletop game and novels was that this is a no holds bar situation. Either you are with the team or your next in line to be slaughtered.
Anyways... There is change to the world, a faction can capture each others leader which results in certain changes to the world which is basically the idea behind the realm war. Its not as dynamic as one would like but its a lot more dynamic than most current other games.
If you capture a keep or vital point on the map you get NPCs guarding it and even shop keepers. If you take that point you can deny the other side the resources of the RvR gear sold there as well as a safe haven in hostile territory.
They play for the co-op and social aspects. They don't PvP.
As a WAR beta player I have to say two things:
1. PvP is completely optional.
2. PvP is actually fun because its organized into something other than random gankfest.
There is no inter faction PvP whatsoever in a sense so its kind of very community like as you would find in say capture the flag.
If you like playing TeamFortress but with an RPG setting and gameplay, you'd probaly like WAR.
I thought tomorrow was when they turned it on. I thought the end of the world was to happen when the first collision is made right?
According to wiki it says the first collisions are supposed to happen on October 21st, but it references a russian website so I don't know how accurate that is.
Anyone got any sources on this?
Sigh...it is very tiresome to hear the same wrong headed myths about investment == gambling that have been circulating for years and gaining currency among the younger generations.
While I don't believe gambling is equal to investing either, I just had the impression that this particular person was going to blow it all on penny stocks or into a risky businesses he had no good knowledge off. Secondly which I should have explained, he was getting a three year loan at 24% which is pushing it real hard if he was going to invest in something secure like a SP500 ETF index.
There is nothing wrong in taking a margin account with your broker at say 7.9% and then investing it into a corporate bond that gives 9% or a growth stock that will give 10%+.
I was just trying to imply that borrowing money at high interest to invest in the stock market without a good plan is a bad idea because there is the possibility that if you invest poorly that you'll loose the investment and still owe money.
And yes fund managers do generally leverage all the time with borrowed money but they generally know what they are doing (well some of the time) and tend to diversify to reduce risk.
But yeah I agree pretty much on your second statement.
Instead of spending money on rolling copper or fiber into less-urban areas, the providers are spending all their spare money on backbone transit for bandwidth-hogging customers' packets.
I seriously doubt that is the case because Verizon seems to have no issues with bandwidth hogs while Comcast seems to wail and moan about the issue. This could be because of the nature of cable vs DSL technology, but I suspect it has something to with the fact cable companies are more focused on content delivery and using their bandwidth for other things like "On Demand".
Personally, I have more problems with the cable just going out (no TV and no internet at the same time) than I do with slow service.
Now Verizon is focusing are rich suburban neighborhoods leaving both rural grannies and us urbanites out in the cold, but I suspect they'll roll out to us next before they will to the rural areas mostly because of the issue of more profitability versus population density and not because of network bandwidth hogging.
My argument is that it isn't the file sharers that are causing this problem but rather the unwillingness of certain companies to supply the rural areas with the last mile because in the end its not going to make them much money. The whole P2P argument seems like a straw man that points the blame on the wrong set of persons.
A debt based monetary system may have an adverse effect on those living within it?
The other day I was looking for investment opportunities and came across Prosper.com which is a P2P lending company which you give to micro invest in people's loans. Reading some of the stories of why these people need loans started to make me laugh and then start to die inside a little bit after realizing that America is full of these people who just don't know how to deal with financial responsibility. One guy on there was asking for a $5,000 loan in order to buy stocks. That's the most retarded thing I can think of that you can do with a loan besides go to Las Vegas with it.
Sadly, our society cannot function without credit because its there in the first place. Because we can have mortgages and car loans, the demand for housing and cars increase which of course leads to higher prices which means the chance of getting. This is most likley tied into the situation we have with Freddie and Fannie now and the housing fiasco.
The only solution I can think of is to actually focus on long term solutions is get a house that is close enough public transportation which you intend to pay off in 30 years and then keep it in the family so that future generations don't have to put up with this crap.
I think the majority of our societal problems is related to ignorance towards what we need and what we want and the issues that puts on everyone else. Personally, I don't really care that other people took out loans they couldn't pay back, but when it starts to affect my life because of the national economic situation then it becomes bothersome.
Then again, I suppose I should start living off of other people's ignorance and bid on their loans.
Then how do you explain the study "Unemployment, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and body weight in young British men" by SCOTT M. MONTGOMERY1, DEREK G. COOK2, MEL J. BARTLEY3 and MICHAEL E.J. WADSWORTH3? They found when british men become unemployed they get fat. Seems to me they have plenty of time to exercise.
Maybe they are depressed and that working isn't so stressful over there. I have something anecdotal. Even though I myself haven't had any adverse effects to my own health, I do work in a very stressful job and often have noted new employees gaining lots of weight here since working.
Tesla's wireless power may get fruition (at least on a small scale for recharging cell phone batteries) sometime in the near future.
Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind.
Well the unified central authorship and message is most likley due to the Catholic churches councils determining what texts were considered cannon and which were not. Considering the history of the Catholic church, its somewhat hard to believe that god would have guided such men in exactly what to put in and what not to put in (you know the whole issue about the Cathars).
Which is why Eastern Orthodox Christianity believes in slightly different message than the Western Catholic. The differences are subtle but the effects are profound IMO.
The key issue of course is the message you believe to be the word may not in fact be exactly what the authors meant originally. Mostly because these texts were translated from Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek into Latin and then into vernacular with varying results. One could argue that the King James bible was created due to entirely political motivations with the Anglican church versus the Papacy and other non-government approved protestant sects (like the Puritans).
This of course might be why Jews and Muslims study their religious texts in its original tongues.
So yeah, if you wanna delude yourself out of the fun, go ahead... but consider the fact that you haven't tried being married, so how would you know the truth?
Feh. I've lived with a girlfriend plus 3 years and I don't like it. Of course we're not officially "married", but I realized I can't personally live with another person. I can be monogamous, but sometimes I just want to be alone for extended periods of time.
The problem with marriage is that its a hit or miss situation. Had you married someone who turned out bad you'd probaly feel different about marriage.
So my personal rule is that you should live with someone 5 years before you marry them. If you can still stand them after that then you should go ahead. Otherwise your just wasting everyone's time and the crap you have to deal with divorce.
Granted, the cars themselves should produce nothing but water, but how do we produce the hydrogen? Does that not require energy? I simply don't believe that all of the hydrogen plants are powered by nuclear or hydroelectric energy.
Well here is the deal:
1. Even if you have to use a coal power plant to produce the hydrogen, its extremely more efficient than using petroleum in terms of releasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
2. And speaking of, this also means we don't have to rely on foreign oil.
As a small time investor, one of the odd things I've noticed is that currently the Brazilian economy is booming. Most Brazilian stocks are going through the roof. Now it could be that the US and China just aren't doing as good as they used to, but it also dawned on my that Brazil has almost ceased the need to import energy from foreign sources due to its aggressive ethanol campaign.
Now, IMO ethanol isn't the solution for the US, but anything that reduces the need to pay foreign sources for energy simply keeps the money in the US rather than someone overseas.
Can't be a bad thing.
OTOH, something that doesn't seem to be taken into account is, what happens when families change? A single guy only needs 'x' amount of space. Now when that single guy gets married*, has 4 kids, and a parent becomes decrepit/disabled and decide to move in...? Obviously there's going to be a lot of change in how much space the guy can be comfortable living in, no matter what culture we're talking about here.
The same thing they do in NYC or Tokyo where real estate is a premium:
Make do.
There has been one compelling argument tho that suggests the end of McMansion and Surbia due to peak oil.
The End of Suburbia (its the full 52 minutes allowed on youtube) documentary which gets into the issues with peak oil and its effects on society.
Its worth a watch and even though I disagree on the alternative energy not being able to take up the slack, it points out how inefficient our current life style is with car transportation and how really the move towards a "New Urban" society is the best solution.
Actually, being able to walk anywhere seems like an optimal solution even if peak oil isn't as bad as they make it out.
Anyways... If they are right, the suburbs will be the new urban blight who no one wants to live in because no one can afford to travel anyways in your car.
Had gas prices gone to $5 this year I'd say we're well on our way to peak oil, but even seeing we have a reprieve we might still want to consider our alternatives.
Someone crashes a A340F full of explosives into it. Or sets fires in it, or...
Well make it out of something that doesn't burn or collapse in on itself if partially damaged by a large object.
A building that size could be built with enough shock absorbing material to basically survive a ship tanker dropped from orbit.
Don't confuse a "feat" with a "record". Feats are what people do. Records are feats that can be proven to have happened. If an achievement is not properly documented, there's no way to know for sure whether it was done.
I thought this was more of a "proof of concept" rather than breaking any records. I think this team's main goal is get a working prototype the military can use for reconnaissance missions.
Arguing whether it broke an official record will be a moot point once they get a production model in the field which will most likley have better air times anyways.
Need I remind this government that there has never been a completely crime-free country in the history of the world?
Well, the ones who didn't have any laws didn't have any crime.
Crime is defined not as something good or bad, but defined by the state.
This could be as innocuous as speeding to something very authoritarian where being a particular race or belonging to a particular political party is a crime.
The key is that if you want less crime, you shouldn't forget about moving the goal posts to where certain things aren't a crime anymore. Like the alcohol prohibition.
It never hurts to have laws against douchebagery, but overall when you just have laws to have laws then you make everyone a criminal eventually and that isn't a good way to have a society.
The key problem is that no one else seems to realize this and your best option as an individual is move to more rational countries or just stay low on the radar and don't read the news.
Can't type today... There should be an if where one of those extra "it" are.
This is a serious question. I'm curious to what kind of debris and how much fire it was on as it seemed to enter the lower floors of the other building.
Its a reasonable conclusion that a tower would collapse it it caught on fire, but how did the impact debris catch the tower on fire?
If you live in a place with a population
That's what Myspace blogs are for.
Everybody wants to be a hero, right?
I think that's the problem with MMOGs is right there. That's what developers think everyone wants to be.
First objection to this, in truth there is a large amount of the gaming community that loves to be "the faceless storm troopers" or the lowly grunt because they can relate better to them than the hero. And its not like most people role play a hero in MMOGs anyways, but just some random dude looking for loot and XP.
Secondly, its not truly feasible in the current state of MMOG so that everyone feels like their the hero because even now it still doesn't feel like it.
"Gee... I just killed the boss of the whole game but it really doesn't feel that important because he's coming right back for the next guy in line"
See, no mater how you look at it, you will never feel like a hero if everyone can do what you do or that the fate of the world really doesn't hang in the balance.
The solution, IMO would involve a pretty complex system of quest generation that are one off quests and scenarios that affect the world in someway slightly.
Not that anyone is under the illusion that actual Role Playing was ever strong in MMOs, but the fact that the world is mostly static really has always killed it for me.
Originally, Ralph Koster (whatever happened to him after SWG?) had this idea for Ultima Online in which the world was completely dynamic. Animals and monsters could go extinct because of player interaction and they would interact with each when none one was around. You would walk around in the forest and see a wolf attacking a rabbit or a cat eating a rabbit and so on.
Natural resources were limited and you could mine a mine out ore.
Of course there was a period of time when UO got quite barren because of this but I don't think they thought it through.
Suffice to say Ralph went on to other jobs and the Ultima Online live team kind of turned his vision into something else not as interesting. Despite all that UO still remains fairly non-static in his AI behavior in its NPCs. I always enjoyed having to talk to my vendors instead of using a graphical interact (I like muds like that) and all the other MMOGs seemed quite gamey compared to it.
Shame no one is trying something as bold again instead of making another EQ/WoW clone.
Wouldn't it be poetic justice and just a tad ironic if the US spent all this time and money on the "boogey man in Iraq", then like the boy who cried wolf, is criticized and ignored over Iran?
Despite what you may think, Iran having nuclear weapons is not a big deal.
They maybe very religious and fanatic elements to their regime, but they aren't stupid. Using a nuclear weapon on Israel or any other state would result in the summary destruction of their nation with nuclear weapons.
Secondly, using nuclear weapons on Israel is a very dumb idea when the goal was to give the territory back to Palestinians. Obviously, being owners of a radiative wasteland is a Pyrrhic victory.
And I'm not sure dropping a nuke on Jerusalem (where Mohamed ascended into heaven) would be a very pious act either.
Of course there is the option of handing a nuke over to Hamas, but strategically that would lead to a very unstable situation for their regime considering US's reaction.
That said, I'd be more concerned about Russia at the moment than Iran.
How is it that AMD is able to release x86 chips, but nVidia can't without a license from Intel? Why would nVidia need AMD to be gracious?
According to wikipedia nVidia does have license from its purchase of what was left over of 3dfx. Remember them?
So the answer to your question is: Yes, but only until 2013.
I'd thought the x86 patent would have expired by now.
Generally, there are monsters that you could kill in 2 hits but they are always below your level and not worth fighting.
The spell ranges are measured in feet and at least the with the Magus the maximum range is about 100ft so I'm able to get a equal to my level mob about a quarter damage before he gets to me.
As a personal strategy either I use a pink horror who has ranged attacks do the first hit so that the mob is aggroed to him but I have found that blue horrows (melee) are stronger in defense and offense so I tened to summon the blue horror between me and the mob and then cast on the mob.
Of course this is just soloing with 1vs1 fights. Fighting harder mobs or more mobs take a bit different approach for different classes.
Well I'll agree to some extent. A well designed economy can make a game enjoyable (well I'm personally thinking about Ultima Online but I think that was an accident more than a well planned design).
However, I don't think WAR is trying to fit a mold of anything that I can compare it too. I mean, Team Fortress 2 is fun but it doesn't have an economy to speak of. So I think the same concept is here as well. Its not as gear oriented as some other games so I think that helps with the lack of economy.