Firstly, the Wii version can't accept an HD stream (since the Wii doesn't support HD), which is not a point in it's favor. Secondly, you're not being gouged twice for the service -- you can still stream video on any other device, so the service is still there. Thirdly, as the majority of Xbox 360 users have a gold account anyway (you cannot play online multiplayer without gold unless you're playing Final Fantasy XI), which makes it a non-issue for them anyway.
We could easily get into a debate on if Xbox Live Gold should cost anything in the first place, but to say that people are being charged extra for streaming Netflix is flat out incorrect.
Why should you be allowed to play with multiple people online using a single copy of the game? Yes, Starcraft 1 explicitly allowed it, but the vast majority of games have never allowed for it outside of legitimate piracy. I follow the rest of your argument.
As I elaborated below, Pangya is the main one. However, I have spent a fair chunk of money on Mabinogi as well -- it's more action oriented, and has some glaring flaws, but I love it's style and the fast-paced gameplay.
The third is Ragnarok Online, which is a very polarizing game -- it's extremely grind-heavy and much of the end-game content is caught up in guild vs guild PVP. It used to be subscription-based, but now has multiple official NA F2P servers that operate on microtransactions.
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't a lot of that seem to be also associated with sugar and caffeine intake? I know I consumed far more of both in high school than I did around the house.
A fair warning, however: While a $30 investment is sufficient to put yourself at a competitive level (with practice), investing further into the game is extremely helpful.
The majority of my cash invested into the game has been during scratch items that I really wanted, or invested into cards. These are both lottery items -- the scratch lottery tickets and card packs. Both items are earnable in-game, but are VERY difficult to get anything functional out of due to the fact that they're both essentially lotteries and you do not earn them in-game quickly. When items come up that I want in the scratch lottery and I can spare it, I'll sometimes drop $50 or so on tickets for it. I no longer invest into card packs, though that's because the only card left that I want is rare enough that I'm not going to try for it.
Things that come out of these lotteries can occasionally be superior to any other items obtainable in the game. There is a third lottery type more recently introduced as well that also contains superior items, but I haven't had the money recently to invest in it, so I'm not sure how good it's winning rates are. This last lottery type cannot be earned in-game and must be purchased.
You can spend a lot and get nothing, or you can spend a little and get lucky.
My final point, and this one is probably the most important of all: Beyond your initial $30 for clubs and clothes, that ultimate capability of your character is based more on your personal skill than anyone else's monetary investment. The edge you gain from most paid items is slight, and usually just makes it a bit easier to hit an accurate shot. Due to the lack of a random factor, personal skill trumps any gear.
Apparently I can rant about this game all day. I'll stop now.
Pangya. [ http://pangya.ntreev.net/ ] It's a golf game, so not technically an MMORPG in the traditional sense. It makes little to no attempt at realism (best well-known comparison I can think of is Hot Shots Golf, or Mario Golf), and contains RPG elements in character development.
It has fantastical shots, such as a Tomahawk shot that simply stops precisely where it lands, but travels an extra dozen or so yards to compensate. So yeah, realistic it is not.
The game has a VERY heavy skill element to it, as the game engine has no random factors added to your shots [every other online golf game I've found does this]. This is the aspect of the game that appeals to me the most -- You can never blame anyone but yourself for your losses. The learning curve is pretty easy [and the tutorial is fairly decent too], though learning all the various trick shots is more difficult for some than it is for others.
I regularly recommend that players invest a one-time $10 into the game if you play it past Beginner rank, as the Twin Feather club set, once upgraded (costs in-game currency to upgrade) will allow you to compete much better with other players, stat-wise. The clubs offer a very well-balanced amount of power, accuracy and control. They're probably the most-used purchasable equipment item.
The second-highest recommendation I could make for cash investment would be a set of clothes that you like that has a lot of control or control slots. They typically will run you between $10 and $20. Control doesn't technically raise your character's capabilities beyond those of other players, but it DOES slow down the speed of the shot bar, allowing a much higher level of precision in your play. It's the only stat that really increases your personal skill instead of your character's potential.
With both the clothes and the clubs as a Junior rank character [attainable in about 10-20 hours of play], the difference, statistically, between your character and a veteran who has played a couple years, will be about 8-16 yards on your drive.
You are attempting to create an argument where there isn't one. There is no NEED for a 'behemoth' free-to-play game, and I don't see where anyone was saying that there needed to be one. Free-to-play games don't have to be massive to succeed at making money, which is the whole point.
In addition, you're making the assumption that WoW is successful because it isn't free to play -- instead of the fact that it had a marketing behemoth (worldwide), an extremely popular brand name (worldwide), and a very highly praised development team (worldwide) working behind it.
Furthermore, if you WANT to see sizable Free-To-Play games, they're out there if you look. You also mention 'lifetime' subscriptions to LotRO -- a game that is in the process of converting to free-to-play precisely because of the success of DDO's free-to-play conversion that the company already had.
>Why pay more for lesser games?
Who decides they're lesser? Subscription numbers are meaningless to personal tastes. I've had more fun playing free-to-play games than any retail subscription game - and not for lack of trying them. I've had active subscriptions at one point or another to approximately half of the mainstream subscription MMORPGs in the west.
Another benefit of free-to-play games: When I'm struggling financial, I can still play and just stop paying.
I've played numerous F2P MMORPGs (at least 20) that operate on a micro-transaction model. While many of them were not good enough games to justify payment of any kind, those that have gotten to my wallet have done so in varying degrees. I have sunk over $400 each into three separate games, and one of those three has exceeded $1000. If you take the $400 figure, even at a $15/mo subscription [above average for a subscription based game], I have paid the equivalent of over 2 years of subscription time to each of these three games. I am not an exception to the rule. I have met multitudes of people in each of these three games that have invested at least as much as I have, and no shortage of people who have invested at least an order of magnitude more into them. For each person who isn't paying, I can assure you, someone is making up for it enough to turn it into a major profit.
Where did I say the rest of the world shouldn't care about privacy? I'm just saying, I don't CARE what people can find out about me on the internet. Also, a remarkable amount of the information a people-search comes up with on me is false - I don't have kids, for example. The things I >DO care about I don't post online. The AC still hasn't even explained how the statement is somehow more verifiable on account of it not being posted AC, given that it still offers no proof of the original claim even if the person in question DOES work for VZW, therefore proof that the AC has worked at VZW either current or in the past at some point is quite useless. If I hate my employer (or former employer), I could say all sorts of nasty things about the company -- it doesn't inherently make them true.
Particularly for handheld games - They are immensely popular in Japan largely due to the excess of mass transit and lack of personal-owned cars, and while they SEEM to be decently popular around here, I wouldn't be surprised if the total sales in Japan actually exceed those of US titles on handheld consoles, despite the massive different in population.
I don't think it's an issue of ambidextrous skills -- it's trivially easy to control both of them -- it's dividing attention between the two long enough to play both effectively that is the issue.
Lord of the Rings Online is about on-par with WoW in terms of 'grindyness'. A friend of mine who was a WoW veteran joined LotRO and capped a character faster than he did with his newer WoW characters, and didn't have the knowledge to draw from as he did with his WoW characters. That's just one anecdote, but based on his experience, LotRO actually is easier than WoW.
I would also not call FFXI a grindy game. There was a time that it was, but changes to the game over the last 2 1/2 years have drastically altered both the methods and efficiency of levelling. A friend who recently got back into the game is now 5 levels away from the cap with two fully-levelled subjobs, and has been playing for 5 weeks. I levelled a new job from 1 to 65 in 2 weeks (4-6 hours a day), ten levels away from the cap, and could have done it faster (I missed 2 days). Parties gaining 10k+ EXP / hour are common as early as level 18 now, and even level 74 to level 75 is only 42000 EXP -- End-game parties exceed 20k / hour.
In the near future (next month) the level cap will rise for the first time in nearly 7 years. It might become a grindy game again, time will tell -- but for right now, I don't think it's a good example.
That aside, I completely agree with all your other examples.
To address your question about the mad rush to level: Different people have different motivations. Some just want to be the best they can be, and playing the content does less for their character's development than simply rushing out to gain more levels. Others have already levelled 4-6 characters and don't WANT to do the content again, they just want to get the new character to endgame (because their guild needs more X job, or they just want to play X job, but never got around to it, etc). And, sadly, from an end-game perspective, content that is not end-game is irrelevant. Gear will become outdated, and usually the auxiliary rewards are not sufficient enough to justify coordinating a group (if a group is needed) over simply grinding out some quests solo. The older a game gets, the more prevalent these things become.
Moreover, different games have different levels of content. FFXI is VERY top-heavy with it's content, with extremely limited content pre-30 and very little to do until 50 at a bare minimum. I would say 65 is where the real meat of the game opens up. Conversely, World of Warcraft has a wide spread of content that's fairly evenly spaced. I enjoyed taking my time to level in WoW. Not so much in FFXI.
If that was Microsoft's goal, it wouldn't be done through a voluntary update, it would be built in to the OS already. It is impractical and also rather unwise to publish such a feature if that was the objective, as a feature that is identified can be disabled -- a 'feature' that is completely unknown until it is utilized, not so much.
It's irrelevant. The Bible was never intended to be an accurate historical account, but rather an accurate account of God's work. Trying to use the Bible to define historical events is foolish, as that was never it's intended purpose.
Minor nitpick, but EXTREMELY common oversight. SELECT and START are not part of the code. SELECT is commonly believed to be part of the code, but as the code is most commonly used on the title screen, it only switches between single and multiplayer modes, and START was to actually start the game. Konami had several games where this code was used in places other than the title screen, and SELECT and START are not a requirement.
Katamari Damacy was a breakthrough in gameplay during the PS2 era. Despite virtual silence in the marketing department, it's $20 price tag at launch and unique gameplay lead it to be wildly successful and it had several sequels. I am of the opinion that all of the 'obvious' game genres have been covered, but I imagine there will ALWAYS be some bizarre untapped potential out there.
If only Square-Enix was so fast with their Security Token (purely optional, but incentivized in-game through a 100% increase in inventory space) -- It took nearly a month to resolve a guildmate's issue with a malfunctioning token. Mine has never had problems, and I'm happy with it, but the horror stories I've heard...
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, the Wii version can't accept an HD stream (since the Wii doesn't support HD), which is not a point in it's favor. Secondly, you're not being gouged twice for the service -- you can still stream video on any other device, so the service is still there. Thirdly, as the majority of Xbox 360 users have a gold account anyway (you cannot play online multiplayer without gold unless you're playing Final Fantasy XI), which makes it a non-issue for them anyway.
We could easily get into a debate on if Xbox Live Gold should cost anything in the first place, but to say that people are being charged extra for streaming Netflix is flat out incorrect.
Outside of LAN play, both Neverwinter Nights games, right off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others.
Why should you be allowed to play with multiple people online using a single copy of the game? Yes, Starcraft 1 explicitly allowed it, but the vast majority of games have never allowed for it outside of legitimate piracy. I follow the rest of your argument.
The 360 has full keyboard support [though not all games do]. The PS3 has full mouse and keyboard support [though again, not all the games do].
As I elaborated below, Pangya is the main one. However, I have spent a fair chunk of money on Mabinogi as well -- it's more action oriented, and has some glaring flaws, but I love it's style and the fast-paced gameplay.
The third is Ragnarok Online, which is a very polarizing game -- it's extremely grind-heavy and much of the end-game content is caught up in guild vs guild PVP. It used to be subscription-based, but now has multiple official NA F2P servers that operate on microtransactions.
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't a lot of that seem to be also associated with sugar and caffeine intake? I know I consumed far more of both in high school than I did around the house.
A fair warning, however: While a $30 investment is sufficient to put yourself at a competitive level (with practice), investing further into the game is extremely helpful.
The majority of my cash invested into the game has been during scratch items that I really wanted, or invested into cards. These are both lottery items -- the scratch lottery tickets and card packs. Both items are earnable in-game, but are VERY difficult to get anything functional out of due to the fact that they're both essentially lotteries and you do not earn them in-game quickly. When items come up that I want in the scratch lottery and I can spare it, I'll sometimes drop $50 or so on tickets for it. I no longer invest into card packs, though that's because the only card left that I want is rare enough that I'm not going to try for it.
Things that come out of these lotteries can occasionally be superior to any other items obtainable in the game. There is a third lottery type more recently introduced as well that also contains superior items, but I haven't had the money recently to invest in it, so I'm not sure how good it's winning rates are. This last lottery type cannot be earned in-game and must be purchased.
You can spend a lot and get nothing, or you can spend a little and get lucky.
My final point, and this one is probably the most important of all: Beyond your initial $30 for clubs and clothes, that ultimate capability of your character is based more on your personal skill than anyone else's monetary investment. The edge you gain from most paid items is slight, and usually just makes it a bit easier to hit an accurate shot. Due to the lack of a random factor, personal skill trumps any gear.
Apparently I can rant about this game all day. I'll stop now.
Pangya. [ http://pangya.ntreev.net/ ] It's a golf game, so not technically an MMORPG in the traditional sense. It makes little to no attempt at realism (best well-known comparison I can think of is Hot Shots Golf, or Mario Golf), and contains RPG elements in character development.
It has fantastical shots, such as a Tomahawk shot that simply stops precisely where it lands, but travels an extra dozen or so yards to compensate. So yeah, realistic it is not.
The game has a VERY heavy skill element to it, as the game engine has no random factors added to your shots [every other online golf game I've found does this]. This is the aspect of the game that appeals to me the most -- You can never blame anyone but yourself for your losses. The learning curve is pretty easy [and the tutorial is fairly decent too], though learning all the various trick shots is more difficult for some than it is for others.
I regularly recommend that players invest a one-time $10 into the game if you play it past Beginner rank, as the Twin Feather club set, once upgraded (costs in-game currency to upgrade) will allow you to compete much better with other players, stat-wise. The clubs offer a very well-balanced amount of power, accuracy and control. They're probably the most-used purchasable equipment item.
The second-highest recommendation I could make for cash investment would be a set of clothes that you like that has a lot of control or control slots. They typically will run you between $10 and $20. Control doesn't technically raise your character's capabilities beyond those of other players, but it DOES slow down the speed of the shot bar, allowing a much higher level of precision in your play. It's the only stat that really increases your personal skill instead of your character's potential.
With both the clothes and the clubs as a Junior rank character [attainable in about 10-20 hours of play], the difference, statistically, between your character and a veteran who has played a couple years, will be about 8-16 yards on your drive.
You are attempting to create an argument where there isn't one. There is no NEED for a 'behemoth' free-to-play game, and I don't see where anyone was saying that there needed to be one. Free-to-play games don't have to be massive to succeed at making money, which is the whole point.
In addition, you're making the assumption that WoW is successful because it isn't free to play -- instead of the fact that it had a marketing behemoth (worldwide), an extremely popular brand name (worldwide), and a very highly praised development team (worldwide) working behind it.
Furthermore, if you WANT to see sizable Free-To-Play games, they're out there if you look. You also mention 'lifetime' subscriptions to LotRO -- a game that is in the process of converting to free-to-play precisely because of the success of DDO's free-to-play conversion that the company already had.
>Why pay more for lesser games?
Who decides they're lesser? Subscription numbers are meaningless to personal tastes. I've had more fun playing free-to-play games than any retail subscription game - and not for lack of trying them. I've had active subscriptions at one point or another to approximately half of the mainstream subscription MMORPGs in the west.
Another benefit of free-to-play games: When I'm struggling financial, I can still play and just stop paying.
I've played numerous F2P MMORPGs (at least 20) that operate on a micro-transaction model. While many of them were not good enough games to justify payment of any kind, those that have gotten to my wallet have done so in varying degrees. I have sunk over $400 each into three separate games, and one of those three has exceeded $1000. If you take the $400 figure, even at a $15/mo subscription [above average for a subscription based game], I have paid the equivalent of over 2 years of subscription time to each of these three games. I am not an exception to the rule. I have met multitudes of people in each of these three games that have invested at least as much as I have, and no shortage of people who have invested at least an order of magnitude more into them. For each person who isn't paying, I can assure you, someone is making up for it enough to turn it into a major profit.
And while we're adding personal attacks into the mix, learn to spell, and use a question mark when making an inquiry.
Where did I say the rest of the world shouldn't care about privacy? I'm just saying, I don't CARE what people can find out about me on the internet. Also, a remarkable amount of the information a people-search comes up with on me is false - I don't have kids, for example. The things I >DO care about I don't post online. The AC still hasn't even explained how the statement is somehow more verifiable on account of it not being posted AC, given that it still offers no proof of the original claim even if the person in question DOES work for VZW, therefore proof that the AC has worked at VZW either current or in the past at some point is quite useless. If I hate my employer (or former employer), I could say all sorts of nasty things about the company -- it doesn't inherently make them true.
The difference is, I don't care what information people know about me. The fact that you are willing to look all this up amuses me.
Because posting with a pseudonym somehow makes his information more verifiable? Has VZW leaked a list of employees and their /. IDs or something?
No, but it should still be labeled NSFW
Particularly for handheld games - They are immensely popular in Japan largely due to the excess of mass transit and lack of personal-owned cars, and while they SEEM to be decently popular around here, I wouldn't be surprised if the total sales in Japan actually exceed those of US titles on handheld consoles, despite the massive different in population.
I don't think it's an issue of ambidextrous skills -- it's trivially easy to control both of them -- it's dividing attention between the two long enough to play both effectively that is the issue.
Lord of the Rings Online is about on-par with WoW in terms of 'grindyness'. A friend of mine who was a WoW veteran joined LotRO and capped a character faster than he did with his newer WoW characters, and didn't have the knowledge to draw from as he did with his WoW characters. That's just one anecdote, but based on his experience, LotRO actually is easier than WoW.
I would also not call FFXI a grindy game. There was a time that it was, but changes to the game over the last 2 1/2 years have drastically altered both the methods and efficiency of levelling. A friend who recently got back into the game is now 5 levels away from the cap with two fully-levelled subjobs, and has been playing for 5 weeks. I levelled a new job from 1 to 65 in 2 weeks (4-6 hours a day), ten levels away from the cap, and could have done it faster (I missed 2 days). Parties gaining 10k+ EXP / hour are common as early as level 18 now, and even level 74 to level 75 is only 42000 EXP -- End-game parties exceed 20k / hour.
In the near future (next month) the level cap will rise for the first time in nearly 7 years. It might become a grindy game again, time will tell -- but for right now, I don't think it's a good example.
That aside, I completely agree with all your other examples.
To address your question about the mad rush to level: Different people have different motivations. Some just want to be the best they can be, and playing the content does less for their character's development than simply rushing out to gain more levels. Others have already levelled 4-6 characters and don't WANT to do the content again, they just want to get the new character to endgame (because their guild needs more X job, or they just want to play X job, but never got around to it, etc). And, sadly, from an end-game perspective, content that is not end-game is irrelevant. Gear will become outdated, and usually the auxiliary rewards are not sufficient enough to justify coordinating a group (if a group is needed) over simply grinding out some quests solo. The older a game gets, the more prevalent these things become.
Moreover, different games have different levels of content. FFXI is VERY top-heavy with it's content, with extremely limited content pre-30 and very little to do until 50 at a bare minimum. I would say 65 is where the real meat of the game opens up. Conversely, World of Warcraft has a wide spread of content that's fairly evenly spaced. I enjoyed taking my time to level in WoW. Not so much in FFXI.
>>[M]etallica [has] shown beyond all doubt that they are contemptible, loathsome, and evil beyond redemption.
I never thought I would see the day that my mother agrees with something on Slashdot. You're about a decade behind her, but some day you'll catch up.
At least they ultimately got what they wanted, in a way.
If that was Microsoft's goal, it wouldn't be done through a voluntary update, it would be built in to the OS already. It is impractical and also rather unwise to publish such a feature if that was the objective, as a feature that is identified can be disabled -- a 'feature' that is completely unknown until it is utilized, not so much.
It's irrelevant. The Bible was never intended to be an accurate historical account, but rather an accurate account of God's work. Trying to use the Bible to define historical events is foolish, as that was never it's intended purpose.
Minor nitpick, but EXTREMELY common oversight. SELECT and START are not part of the code. SELECT is commonly believed to be part of the code, but as the code is most commonly used on the title screen, it only switches between single and multiplayer modes, and START was to actually start the game. Konami had several games where this code was used in places other than the title screen, and SELECT and START are not a requirement.
Katamari Damacy was a breakthrough in gameplay during the PS2 era. Despite virtual silence in the marketing department, it's $20 price tag at launch and unique gameplay lead it to be wildly successful and it had several sequels. I am of the opinion that all of the 'obvious' game genres have been covered, but I imagine there will ALWAYS be some bizarre untapped potential out there.
If only Square-Enix was so fast with their Security Token (purely optional, but incentivized in-game through a 100% increase in inventory space) -- It took nearly a month to resolve a guildmate's issue with a malfunctioning token. Mine has never had problems, and I'm happy with it, but the horror stories I've heard...