One: Because it's not enough to win. Somebody must lose.
As in, killing uber_dragon_001 is cool and all, but preventing from doing it because your guild killed him first is way better.
We had a monopoly on Azuregos in WoW for months and drove other guilds insane. We'd kite him until we got enough people to kill him. The amount of drama and hate this caused was pretty much why we did it, most of the loot got sharded. We only stopped because we ended up not having enough time due to new content.
Two: Devaluation of loot.
Ok. So lets imagine that there is no instancing in WoW. Onyxia's lair is not an instance. It's a simple walk in dungeon. Onyxia respans every 5 days.
This means that uber_item_001 can only drop every 5 days. This means that you get 72 uber_item_001 per year on a server of 3,000-5,000 people. This means that having uber_item_001 is rare and makes those who have it feel rather 'special' and makes the item worth a lot.
In WoW it drops every 5 days for every 40 man raid; on a server with 3000 users, this can mean up to 75 raids every 5 days, a total of 5,400 drops per year. That's 5,400 drops per year for a server of 3,000 user. This makes the item absolutley worthless. What good is having an Onyxia cloak when EVERYONE has one?
Actually, it was used extensively. Every single raid guild I've ever been in used it. That's not to say that everyone in the guild did, but a few people did. The scouts, the pullers, the raid leaders, they all had it. Each guild I was in had a 'subgroup', we jockingly refered to it as "BlackOps" and our job was always to get lists of raid targets, and keep an eye on other guild raids so if they wiped we could roll over them. I know other guilds had them too, sometimes we'd be raiding in a very high lvl area that is hard to get into withou a key etc and I'd see someone without any guild tag appear on SEQ and then dissapear again. I knew what they were doing because I was doing the same thing.
Anyone who used SEQ could easily spot others using it. We'd have scout chars logged off in zones to regularly check on rare spawns and scripts to start EQ, and log in the right char to scan a zone. As in, I'd click an icon my desktop, EQ would start in the background in a tiny window, log in and then log out right away. This gave SEQ time to scan the zone and if the mob that was on the watch list was up, it'd pop up an alert. We tested this, and the whole thing happened quick enough that nobody would even see the char appear in the zone - unless of course they ran SEQ themselves.
I was on Mithaniel Marr, and I know for a fact that one of the top EQ guilds, Afterlife, used SEQ. It's not just 'beelining' it's that SEQ keeps track of respawn times. Not only do you know what's there, you know what's going to be there in 5 seconds or 1 minute. You see which areas in a zone are taken, where the boss of the LDON dungeon is, where someone's corpse is - even if they themselves have no idea where they died because they got lost. You could see the players without it getting surprised by spawns, making wrong turns, getting adds on their pulls, being unable to find a corpse, clearing an entire LDON dungeon to find a named etc.
Of course whenever we had unknowns in the zone we'd act deaf and dumb, bumbling about acting like we don't know what's where, run into dead ends, clear unnecessary areas of dungeons. We knew that the other guilds at the very least suspected us of using it and probably reported us for it just as much as we reported them. It was meta-gaming at it's finest an I loved every second of it.
Yes but in all cases, circumcision increases the chance of the woman becoming infected.
The hardened skin of the penis and the lack of the gliding action created by the foreskin results in vaginal tears/cracks. Semen carries large loads of HIV.
Some people just like to 'progress' the character.
Which means that once they get to 60, they just don't feel like playing. Because there is no 61, and because getting a full set of class armor is difficult without a guild. These 'soloers' usualy just start another class, or quit.
The other group which I fall into is ex-EQers who rush to 60, caring little for everything pre 60, form guilds and get to raiding.
I do NOT care about my character. Yes I have amazing gear compared to the average hunter - but it is a sideeffect of the success of the guild. Thats all I care about; The Guild. Our progress, our raid, our people. WOW, nor any MMORPG, can be fun unless you care about the people you play with. You simply cannot have fun in WoW alone.
Games that did not force people into guilds failed in the US. Lineage 2 and Planetside are great examples of that. (Yes Planetside did have people join 'outfits' but most outfits did NOT have any true bond with members. I was in KAAOS which was very strong on bonding with guild mates, which is probably why I did play PS for over a year).
Yep. There is a TON of storyline quests. I do mean TON.
I'd say 80% of the quests ARE storyline based. Yes some aren't, like get my pot fixed...
But take Darkshire for example: There is a quest to explain why there are undead. There is a quest to explain why there are worgen. There is a quest to explain who Stalvan is. There is a quest to explain who MorLadim is. There is a quest to explain who Abercrombie is. There is a quest to explain who MorbentFel is.
Sure, many just give you notes or books to read - and if you don't read them, you don't get the story. But thats YOUR fault.
- Morkal. 60 Hunter. Officer of Keepers of the Keg (www.kegkeepers.org)
First let me introduce myself: Morkal - 60 Hunter, Officer of Keepers of the Keg (www.kegkeepers.org).
Having played a hunter since beta, I can firmly say that we are the most 'distinct' class in the game - sadly with the most problems also.
Frankly getting to 60 was VERY easy - at least compared to EQ, AO or AC.
At 60 you NEED to be in a guild. It's that simple. If you are not - you will NOT be happy. You need to be in a good and social guild that is filled with likeminded people.
If you are not in a guild, the end game has no meaning. Getting a full set of tier 1 class armor is easy. (Now it's a joke that they boosted BoE drop rates). You need to be interested in the guild and it's achievement.
Thus when we as a guild go raiding we do not bicker about drops and we can be happy if we don't get them, because someone in guild did. Oh and we do UBRS in 60 minutes. So I don't know what it is that takes you 6 hours(MC takes less than that.)
As to the things you want...
1) Yes, we need AA points. I believe that Hero classes will function in that way.
2) This would never happen. I think it'd unbalance the game far far too much.
3) Yeah..it'd be nice. I do wish WoW looked as good as Lineage 2. But then WoW has far more variety.
I have played EQ for 5 years, was a member of Dark Bane (www.dark-bane.net) and WoW is really just like EQ, but less time demanding.
If you think it's NOT like EQ, you're just playing it differently.
Actually, I think people buy swiss army knifes because it gives them a "cool" and "rugged" image.
The "sharp" knife is dull in 2 days of use, the included bottle opener is no better than any metal table corner and so on.
Finally, my main consideration was the price. A swiss army knife does not cost $500 or even $200 while a "good" pocket knife will come close to $200. Good as in Benchmade.
That was the point. I didn't say "ALL THESE" I said these - as in each under $500.
The idea was to point out that you can get the top of the line devices for what you'd pay for the phone. (Probably LESS than the phone.)
If you need me to show that you CAN get a shit PDA, shit camera, shit protable game system and a shit mp3 player for a TOTAL of $500 that can also be achieved.
I'm also somewhat confused by this new trend of attaching everything to cellphones and making it suck. So lets look at my options right now: Cellphone with a sucky camera. Cellphone with a sucky PDA. Cellphone with sucky games. Cellphone with sucky web browser. Cellphone with a sucky mp3 player.
All of these costing in the area of $500+. Now please tell me how is this better than getting a free cellphone and a REAL PDA or a REAL camera?
For $500 I can get the following: Apple iPod - top of the line 40 gigs. Olympus C750 (10x optical, 4.0Mp, upto 512Mb xD cards) GBA - And enough games to make my eyes bleed. iPaq - 400Mhz, bluetooth etc..
So at which point does the cell phone become a good deal?
Oh but it's all in one! I only have to carry the cell phone. Lame. Look at how HUGE that cellphone is, carrying that thing alone is a pain, adding an iPod or iPaq would make no real difference but so many other advantages.
If the phone was $200 sure, good deal. But paying $500 for inferior devices maeks no sense to me.
How about a userfriendly UI that'd let me configure everything without having to recompile eveything (or do it invisibly) just so that I can play and use without the pain and suffering that is require nowdays.
My main gripe with Linux has been that it's a bitch to configure for things that should't be so hard. Trying to get powermanagment to work on my IBM took me months and never worked right.
Now if they did that for older PC games that can't run on todays hardware.
For example, Motorhead. I miss that game but I can't run it on anything over 98 and it doesn't play well without the Voodoo Glide drivers.
Better yet, Transport Tycoon. I think that game was way ahead of it's time and for some reason largly ignored. Still building a really intricate train system that linked into your truks and air transports was great. Too bad the AI competition was pathetic.
Having had a friend who worked for Gamespy (supported one of the "planet" sites) get fired because he disagreed with some the reviews on Gamespy I'll maintain my view that GameSpy is an evil company with biased reviews.
When I tried to get an official response on why they got fired by starting up a shitfest on the forums my posts got removed for "Violating the Rules". When I demanded to know which rules I was violating I was told that the boards do not tolerate harassment and I was "harassing GameSpy" by demanding a response.
Come on "GameSpy - Gaming's Homepage" you tell me they're not trying to monopolize the market. Furthermore I have yet to see a bad review for a major publisher game. I mean a trully bad review.
Come on...Daikatana got a 74%...thats 7/10 compared the 4.6/10 from Gamespot. Thats just one example, I really don't feel like looking for more. But you can...
Look at the reviews. It's consistant that all major publisher games NEVER score below 70%, all others can get as low as 50%.
70% is 7/10. Look at Gamespot where many many games get well below that.
Slashdot Mirror
You're full of shit. EA never hired anyone at any point to work on HGL.
HGL was only ever touched by Flagship employees as they are the only ones who had any kind of access to the code.
EA only worked on the marketing/packaging aspects of the game in the US.
Oh and EA didn't set the release date. It was set by Flagship as they were out of money in the fall.
Two reasons.
One:
Because it's not enough to win. Somebody must lose.
As in, killing uber_dragon_001 is cool and all, but preventing from doing it because your guild killed him first is way better.
We had a monopoly on Azuregos in WoW for months and drove other guilds insane. We'd kite him until we got enough people to kill him. The amount of drama and hate this caused was pretty much why we did it, most of the loot got sharded. We only stopped because we ended up not having enough time due to new content.
Two:
Devaluation of loot.
Ok. So lets imagine that there is no instancing in WoW. Onyxia's lair is not an instance. It's a simple walk in dungeon. Onyxia respans every 5 days.
This means that uber_item_001 can only drop every 5 days. This means that you get 72 uber_item_001 per year on a server of 3,000-5,000 people. This means that having uber_item_001 is rare and makes those who have it feel rather 'special' and makes the item worth a lot.
In WoW it drops every 5 days for every 40 man raid; on a server with 3000 users, this can mean up to 75 raids every 5 days, a total of 5,400 drops per year. That's 5,400 drops per year for a server of 3,000 user. This makes the item absolutley worthless. What good is having an Onyxia cloak when EVERYONE has one?
Actually, it was used extensively. Every single raid guild I've ever been in used it. That's not to say that everyone in the guild did, but a few people did. The scouts, the pullers, the raid leaders, they all had it. Each guild I was in had a 'subgroup', we jockingly refered to it as "BlackOps" and our job was always to get lists of raid targets, and keep an eye on other guild raids so if they wiped we could roll over them. I know other guilds had them too, sometimes we'd be raiding in a very high lvl area that is hard to get into withou a key etc and I'd see someone without any guild tag appear on SEQ and then dissapear again. I knew what they were doing because I was doing the same thing.
Anyone who used SEQ could easily spot others using it. We'd have scout chars logged off in zones to regularly check on rare spawns and scripts to start EQ, and log in the right char to scan a zone. As in, I'd click an icon my desktop, EQ would start in the background in a tiny window, log in and then log out right away. This gave SEQ time to scan the zone and if the mob that was on the watch list was up, it'd pop up an alert. We tested this, and the whole thing happened quick enough that nobody would even see the char appear in the zone - unless of course they ran SEQ themselves.
I was on Mithaniel Marr, and I know for a fact that one of the top EQ guilds, Afterlife, used SEQ. It's not just 'beelining' it's that SEQ keeps track of respawn times. Not only do you know what's there, you know what's going to be there in 5 seconds or 1 minute. You see which areas in a zone are taken, where the boss of the LDON dungeon is, where someone's corpse is - even if they themselves have no idea where they died because they got lost. You could see the players without it getting surprised by spawns, making wrong turns, getting adds on their pulls, being unable to find a corpse, clearing an entire LDON dungeon to find a named etc.
Of course whenever we had unknowns in the zone we'd act deaf and dumb, bumbling about acting like we don't know what's where, run into dead ends, clear unnecessary areas of dungeons. We knew that the other guilds at the very least suspected us of using it and probably reported us for it just as much as we reported them. It was meta-gaming at it's finest an I loved every second of it.
Yes but in all cases, circumcision increases the chance of the woman becoming infected.
The hardened skin of the penis and the lack of the gliding action created by the foreskin results in vaginal tears/cracks. Semen carries large loads of HIV.
JavaLord, the 'uber' gear simply cannot be bought in the AH. Good guilds do NOT have "ninja" problems because they have trust or DKP systems.
We run all our raids on FFA, yet we have never had any item ninjaed, not even in MC.
I suppose it really depends on the kind of guild you are in. Our guild was formed by people leaving a guild that they were not happy in.
For the 3 months that our guild has been running, only 2 people left.
I do not intend to go yell "PLAY MY WAY", but I dare say that I think you're really missing out.
It depends on your 'ultimate goal' in WoW.
Some people just like to 'progress' the character.
Which means that once they get to 60, they just don't feel like playing. Because there is no 61, and because getting a full set of class armor is difficult without a guild. These 'soloers' usualy just start another class, or quit.
The other group which I fall into is ex-EQers who rush to 60, caring little for everything pre 60, form guilds and get to raiding.
I do NOT care about my character. Yes I have amazing gear compared to the average hunter - but it is a sideeffect of the success of the guild. Thats all I care about; The Guild. Our progress, our raid, our people. WOW, nor any MMORPG, can be fun unless you care about the people you play with. You simply cannot have fun in WoW alone.
Games that did not force people into guilds failed in the US. Lineage 2 and Planetside are great examples of that. (Yes Planetside did have people join 'outfits' but most outfits did NOT have any true bond with members. I was in KAAOS which was very strong on bonding with guild mates, which is probably why I did play PS for over a year).
Yep. There is a TON of storyline quests. I do mean TON.
I'd say 80% of the quests ARE storyline based. Yes some aren't, like get my pot fixed...
But take Darkshire for example:
There is a quest to explain why there are undead.
There is a quest to explain why there are worgen.
There is a quest to explain who Stalvan is.
There is a quest to explain who MorLadim is.
There is a quest to explain who Abercrombie is.
There is a quest to explain who MorbentFel is.
Sure, many just give you notes or books to read - and if you don't read them, you don't get the story. But thats YOUR fault.
- Morkal. 60 Hunter. Officer of Keepers of the Keg (www.kegkeepers.org)
First let me introduce myself:
Morkal - 60 Hunter, Officer of Keepers of the Keg (www.kegkeepers.org).
Having played a hunter since beta, I can firmly say that we are the most 'distinct' class in the game - sadly with the most problems also.
Frankly getting to 60 was VERY easy - at least compared to EQ, AO or AC.
At 60 you NEED to be in a guild. It's that simple. If you are not - you will NOT be happy. You need to be in a good and social guild that is filled with likeminded people.
If you are not in a guild, the end game has no meaning. Getting a full set of tier 1 class armor is easy. (Now it's a joke that they boosted BoE drop rates). You need to be interested in the guild and it's achievement.
Thus when we as a guild go raiding we do not bicker about drops and we can be happy if we don't get them, because someone in guild did. Oh and we do UBRS in 60 minutes. So I don't know what it is that takes you 6 hours(MC takes less than that.)
As to the things you want...
1) Yes, we need AA points. I believe that Hero classes will function in that way.
2) This would never happen. I think it'd unbalance the game far far too much.
3) Yeah..it'd be nice. I do wish WoW looked as good as Lineage 2. But then WoW has far more variety.
I have played EQ for 5 years, was a member of Dark Bane (www.dark-bane.net) and WoW is really just like EQ, but less time demanding.
If you think it's NOT like EQ, you're just playing it differently.
It's funny, maybe ironic, that after posting this, my other 3 posts(including this) get hammered with "overrated".
Thats very nice. I KNOW it's the same person. Why else does each thread get only ONE -1? You can only mod threads once.
Re:Lock-in-a-Sock?, posted to Best hand-to-hand weapon?, has been moderated Overrated (-1).
It is currently scored Informative (4).
Oh why make me pick?!, posted to Most irritating prefix/suffix?, has been moderated Overrated (-1).
It is currently scored Funny (3).
Re:Would you Warranty Your Slashdot Posts?, posted to Would you Warranty Your Email?, has been moderated Overrated (-1).
It is currently scored Interesting (3).
To the mod bomber...FUCK YOU
You would need to record the moderator and make him visible in such a case.
This way any mod bombing would be obvious. Since you are taking a direct financial loss due to poor moderation, you need to know 'who' is causing it.
Kinda like you can't sue people anonymously.
Fitting cartoon.
Googlism for: gloukhoff
gloukhoff is being considered for tuesday evening
I am? Oh dear...
Actually, I think people buy swiss army knifes because it gives them a "cool" and "rugged" image.
The "sharp" knife is dull in 2 days of use, the included bottle opener is no better than any metal table corner and so on.
Finally, my main consideration was the price. A swiss army knife does not cost $500 or even $200 while a "good" pocket knife will come close to $200. Good as in Benchmade.
That was the point. I didn't say "ALL THESE" I said these - as in each under $500.
The idea was to point out that you can get the top of the line devices for what you'd pay for the phone. (Probably LESS than the phone.)
If you need me to show that you CAN get a shit PDA, shit camera, shit protable game system and a shit mp3 player for a TOTAL of $500 that can also be achieved.
I'm also somewhat confused by this new trend of attaching everything to cellphones and making it suck.
So lets look at my options right now:
Cellphone with a sucky camera.
Cellphone with a sucky PDA.
Cellphone with sucky games.
Cellphone with sucky web browser.
Cellphone with a sucky mp3 player.
All of these costing in the area of $500+. Now please tell me how is this better than getting a free cellphone and a REAL PDA or a REAL camera?
For $500 I can get the following:
Apple iPod - top of the line 40 gigs.
Olympus C750 (10x optical, 4.0Mp, upto 512Mb xD cards)
GBA - And enough games to make my eyes bleed.
iPaq - 400Mhz, bluetooth etc..
So at which point does the cell phone become a good deal?
Oh but it's all in one! I only have to carry the cell phone. Lame. Look at how HUGE that cellphone is, carrying that thing alone is a pain, adding an iPod or iPaq would make no real difference but so many other advantages.
If the phone was $200 sure, good deal. But paying $500 for inferior devices maeks no sense to me.
Ha! I ride in a Concorde every day!
A Chrysler Concorde that is...sadly they're also discontinued...oh well.
I couldn't get sound to work with in in anything past 98.
You forgot about Duke Nukem Forever
How about a userfriendly UI that'd let me configure everything without having to recompile eveything (or do it invisibly) just so that I can play and use without the pain and suffering that is require nowdays.
My main gripe with Linux has been that it's a bitch to configure for things that should't be so hard. Trying to get powermanagment to work on my IBM took me months and never worked right.
Now if they did that for older PC games that can't run on todays hardware.
For example, Motorhead. I miss that game but I can't run it on anything over 98 and it doesn't play well without the Voodoo Glide drivers.
Better yet, Transport Tycoon. I think that game was way ahead of it's time and for some reason largly ignored. Still building a really intricate train system that linked into your truks and air transports was great. Too bad the AI competition was pathetic.
I think "Nobodycaresanymoreium" would be a great name for element 111.
I mean seriously, how many samples of 111 exist in non lab enviroments? For how long?
I am confused by the purpose behind this research...seems like one of those "because we can" things.
- Drexel Student
I like PICO!
Alright so it's semi lame and I use vi 99% of the time, still I'd rather use pico. Why not? It works.
By the way...I'm hating going to the same school as an AC.
PS - How's the Drexel Shaft handling you? They lost my insurance registrationg for the 3rd time so far..
So what happens if it's cloudy and the water particles cause the laser to difuse?
Does the plane crash?
MTA is fun as hell. The only problem is that it's still not fully stable, a bit laggy and some people still manage to cheat.
Still weeks of fun for me so far.
Having had a friend who worked for Gamespy (supported one of the "planet" sites) get fired because he disagreed with some the reviews on Gamespy I'll maintain my view that GameSpy is an evil company with biased reviews.
When I tried to get an official response on why they got fired by starting up a shitfest on the forums my posts got removed for "Violating the Rules". When I demanded to know which rules I was violating I was told that the boards do not tolerate harassment and I was "harassing GameSpy" by demanding a response.
Come on "GameSpy - Gaming's Homepage" you tell me they're not trying to monopolize the market. Furthermore I have yet to see a bad review for a major publisher game. I mean a trully bad review.
Come on...Daikatana got a 74%...thats 7/10 compared the 4.6/10 from Gamespot. Thats just one example, I really don't feel like looking for more. But you can...
Look at the reviews. It's consistant that all major publisher games NEVER score below 70%, all others can get as low as 50%.
70% is 7/10. Look at Gamespot where many many games get well below that.