This is partially in response to the AC below as well.
Keeping score matters because the developers make it matter.
There are huge swaths of Everquest content that 95% of the players will never see.
Back in the early years, there were many critical missions that you could only beat if you played in 10 (or more-- jboots) hour chunks. Five 2 hour chunks would likely result in nothing while one 10 hour chunk results in reward 100% of the time.
Until at least 2003, there were many monsters and loot that you never ever got to see/beat/acquire unless you could log on at 2pm EST-- because everything was dead by 3pm EST.
If you are a "winner" you get lots of unique items, cool gear, and gear good enough so that you can take on certain encounters years earlier than other players (who may never see it at all).
To make things worse, the developers tuned the new expansions to the "winners" of the previous expansion and frequently tuned very old content to suddenly be much harder than it was for the first wave of players who went through it. So the "winners" took three 4 hour attempts but for the "losers" it took twelve 4 hour attempts. (and wiping and wasting an evening is a lot more unpleasant 11 times than it is 2 times).
The developers were members of some of the "winner" guilds, gave them information on how to beat encounters and quests (since they'd forgotten to put the information legitimately in the game it had to get out there somehow). I remember one of the worst cases was there was an unnamed mob, you had to walk up to and say a particular 10 word sentence. Any other sentence (same words different order, different synonyms for the words) resulted in no response at all- as far as you knew, this was a pointless mob.
---
Winners in MMORGs get to have more fun playing new content and spend a lot less time on the boring parts of the game. In mixed groups, they are very noticably tougher and often would escape when everyone else died (so they had less downtime and leveled faster).
E&B was like this as well (If things went badly in my group, they'd die, I'd escape, I'd be grinding solo when they got back 45 minutes later).
I don't know about Wow.
If you want to truly not have "winners and losers", then at the start, no mission should have any piece longer than 2 hours. Instead of spending 10 hours to qualify, it should be five 2 hour chunks.
If you let people beta real content, then they will immediately level faster than novices. If you let people beta AND start 3 days earlier, they'll have a huge lead on the fun content over the rest of the population.
The 3 day edge kept me ahead of the pack until the game was closed.
While they are fighting in zones with 90% capacity, lag, etc., you are in empty zones with 10% population, no lag, getting tons of xp and/or loot.
Important to pick a soloing class or to "two box" from the very beginning.
The people who are there on the 29th who can play 6-8 hours a day will mostly be in the lead for months. Folks who can play more will catch up with them but it's hard to break out of the mass of newbies who are killing everything and lowering your xp/loot/growth rate to 10% of what it could be.
Supes is a telekinetic but doesn't think he is a telekinetic.
For example, he frequently lifts planes, rockets, cars, ships, by a tiny corner of the object without any damage to the object at all (maybe a couple finger holes sometime).
The "powered by the sun" as a mental limitation. When he's under a red sun, the survivor's guilt gets to him and he "loses" his powers.
It's more credible than "why do his powers work at night & underground, but fail instantly under a red sun?"
It's an interesting take that I agree with but hadn't noticed.
Partially, it fits with the old marvel universe "personality" too.
-- In response to the "Octavius shouldn't take the beating" posts, I can't find anything to contradict them. It's a hole you could drive a truck through but apparently it's never been addressed yet.
I assume spider man realizes how weak Doc Oc is and pulls his punches since spiderman doesn't want to be a murderer.
Occasionally, when hollywood varies from the story, what results is quite good.
More often, it is bone numbingly stupid, and you wonder, "What were they thinking???"
Meanwhile, very often, when hollywood sticks to the story, the results are quite good.
Hollywood often takes books, comics, whatever, name, and then tosses everything else out so what you actually get has nothing to do with the original. In doing so they get a mess that causes the films to fail, and then they say, "super hero films are bad" or "science fiction stories are bad" or whatever instead of saying, "man we ruined that story and so it was bad".
Partially it's a matter of taste, I've greatly preferred the four Harry Potters that followed the books, and mostly disliked the two harry potters that wandered too far from the books (i.e. WHY KEEP THE NAME "HALF BLOOD PRINCE" and not spend TWO FRIKKIN MINUTES pointing out that Snape is a half blood-- i.e. PART MUGGLE-- and hence just MIGHT have a credible reason for siding against the pure bloods in addition to being in love with Harry's mom who was kind to him). While I liked the young teens in hormones take on the story, they could have cut something to put in a little more on the half blood prince.
And then there is "Bleach", "Naruto", and a few others which do not reboot and which just get more complex and awesome.
It takes 250+ episodes to really build to the awesomeness that was Kenny vs Arankar #6. It takes 250+ episodes to get Ichigo vs Grimjaw.
I watched 60 episodes, finished the introductory arc (introductory!), and thought I was done. Then I noticed that was about 25% of the run (about 15% of the manga) and slowly started up again.
The Kenny vs Arankar #6 battle has to be in my top 10 battles of all time and may be the top "Crowning Moment of Awesomeness" I've ever seen in nearly 50 years on this planet.
The best take I've seen on Kryptonite is the early Byrne take.
Superman is really a world class telekinetic (and general psionic*) and his problems with Kryptonite are mostly mental. Thus when he really has to, he can react differently to Kryptonite.
Alternatively, the continent was synthetic Kryptonite and differed in some crucial way from real Kryptonite.
If you think about lifting a continent without it breaking apart, the telekinetic angle looks better and better.
My point was that action stars in the 60's tended to be mature males (30's). When I was talking about young actors, I was talking about movies today, not about bond (see below)
Action stars to day are in their mid 20's (young adults) and portraying early 20's (Star Trek)
Consider the fantastic four-- it used to be a mid 40's to early 50's scientist, his 30's wife, a 30's test pilot, and the young 20 year old hot head.
Today, it's a late 20's scientist, his mid 20's wife, a mid 20's test pilot, and a young 20 year old hot head.
This creates problems of the fact that the protagonists hasn't been alive long enough to possess the skills being portrayed (this bothered me in Avatar where the protagonist learned years of skills in 90 days). While it feels nice, there is a reason the Navy doesn't make 20 year olds the captains of large ships. Somethings really do just take time.
Having a young character like Spider Man, you have a challenge that every 3 movies either you address the fact that spider man is now in his 30's and can't be a struggling photographer any more (it's okay, no-- cool, to be poor and struggling when you are young- it looks odder and more pathetic the older the character gets).
On Bond:
Roger Moore was extremely old and they probably should have changed to a younger star in his thirties- but Moore's golden gun was quite good (it got goofy after that). He was always a bit too "happy" compared to the book bond.
Daniel Craig (in his mid 30's)was a very good choice and the "reboot" was really not a reboot but a return to the "real" bond story (tried less successfully with Timothy Dalton who was also an emotionally wounded, comparitively low tech bond-- the tuxedo that folded over to make a completely black suite was a really cool assassin low tech item.) Craig *looked* like a man, not a boy.
A good "bond" is going to be 30 to 50. Much outside of that age range, he's too young or too old to be credible.
After 3.0, I've had severe performance issues with firefox off of a flash drive.
Did I miss a switch somewhere? It has to be related to some new performance feature because the flash drive continuously flashes with 3.1+ and doesn't flash at all with 3.0.
It's interesting because I only started taking more of that approach about 9 years ago.
It worked much better than I would have ever expected.
While I haven't turned into a complete ass, I'd say even being normally polite as I was in the past is apparently too wimpy for most women and produced undesirable results.
Part of it is that I'm getting too old to put up with their shit. Part of it is that the power changes hand as a male in your late 30's, early 40's if you stay in shape because there are very few men who look decent after a while.
What you are saying might be true in a small town but isn't true in a large city, much less in a country.
You have effective anonymity to pick your nose in your car while driving and no one you know will ever see it.
Facebook is more like having a camera in your car pointed at your face that is searchable. I'm sure some of your phone conversation are much more of an issue than merely picking your nose.
So far, "both"... I was halfway through this and remembered another guy I knew with the german wife.
Should say, "all three".
It all has to do with how lucky the lady feels to be with you. If she is certain she traded down, she's going to be a bitch and probably worse- sleep around on you.
A comic on the radio the other day said, "no doesn't mean no- it means, work on the nipples some more, kiss the side of the neck some more, and check back in five minutes".
I've found most females have to approach sex sideways. "I'm not doing this.. oh look, we just somehow ended up naked and having sex".
OTH, The two females who were direct were a bit scary and offputting.
You just have to ask them a question to start them talking about something that interests them and then say "ah", "yes", "that bitch!" occasionally.*
---
To be fair, dale carnegie teaches that the thing most people love talking about is themselves and you are seen as a great conversationalist if you get someone started, listen, then ask questions about things they say which you are genuinely curious about. At some point, most conversations will turn into a give and take.
---
There's more than one comic routine about recognizing this fact.
A pretty women makes her husband look small it very often causes a system fall As soon as he marrys her then she starts looking for things that will break his heart but if you make an ugly women your wife you'll be happy for the rest of your life An ugly women will put peals on that and she'll always give you a piece of that.
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life Never make a pretty women your wife Go for my personal point of view Get an ugly girl to marry you
---
I've found less attractive women to be much better sex partners. For one thing, they are happy to have a good looking boyfriend and that happiness feeds into sex. As far as attractive women go generally, I'm less dark than you. I'd say about 60% had all the issues you talk about while 40% were okay (except that I'm a better cook than any woman I've met and frequently cook the "nice" meals for us and our friends).
---
I've never tried the magic wand. I found a pyrex toy that is pure magic tho.
---
Three guys I know have foreign brides and so far, both are very happy. One russian, one philipino, one german.
---
There are attractive women out there who are not messed up and who are good catches... but they are uncommon and typically disappeared off the marriage market in their late 20's.
In the 50's, average pay was $3000. Scientists who were "middle class" (or perhaps higher, earned as much as $10,000).
So far so good, since $46k is the average today and scientists earn about $138k... oh wait, actually their pay is more like $70-80k but senior ones can make $110k.. past their we are talking about the top edge of the bell curve these days.
CEO's received, in adjusted for inflation year 2000 dollars, $500,000 annual salaries in the 1950's. So they earned about 150x the average national salary. A princely sum. But nothing near the 6,000x the average national wage today.
Here's the problem... A person who wants to go to a ski resort or to a nice beach can save up enough money to compete with a 1950's CEO salary. There is no hope of competing with the current ultra rich. You could save your entire lifetime and they could out bid you with an hour's wages.
--- So meanwhile back to scientists... they produce the work-- but management has highjacked their compensation. If CEO's were earning a million a year today, then scientists could be earning the $150k average that would justify the expense and effort that goes into acquiring a degree in science.
Slashdot Mirror
This is partially in response to the AC below as well.
Keeping score matters because the developers make it matter.
There are huge swaths of Everquest content that 95% of the players will never see.
Back in the early years, there were many critical missions that you could only beat if you played in 10 (or more-- jboots) hour chunks. Five 2 hour chunks would likely result in nothing while one 10 hour chunk results in reward 100% of the time.
Until at least 2003, there were many monsters and loot that you never ever got to see/beat/acquire unless you could log on at 2pm EST-- because everything was dead by 3pm EST.
If you are a "winner" you get lots of unique items, cool gear, and gear good enough so that you can take on certain encounters years earlier than other players (who may never see it at all).
To make things worse, the developers tuned the new expansions to the "winners" of the previous expansion and frequently tuned very old content to suddenly be much harder than it was for the first wave of players who went through it. So the "winners" took three 4 hour attempts but for the "losers" it took twelve 4 hour attempts. (and wiping and wasting an evening is a lot more unpleasant 11 times than it is 2 times).
The developers were members of some of the "winner" guilds, gave them information on how to beat encounters and quests (since they'd forgotten to put the information legitimately in the game it had to get out there somehow). I remember one of the worst cases was there was an unnamed mob, you had to walk up to and say a particular 10 word sentence. Any other sentence (same words different order, different synonyms for the words) resulted in no response at all- as far as you knew, this was a pointless mob.
---
Winners in MMORGs get to have more fun playing new content and spend a lot less time on the boring parts of the game. In mixed groups, they are very noticably tougher and often would escape when everyone else died (so they had less downtime and leveled faster).
E&B was like this as well (If things went badly in my group, they'd die, I'd escape, I'd be grinding solo when they got back 45 minutes later).
I don't know about Wow.
If you want to truly not have "winners and losers", then at the start, no mission should have any piece longer than 2 hours. Instead of spending 10 hours to qualify, it should be five 2 hour chunks.
If you let people beta real content, then they will immediately level faster than novices.
If you let people beta AND start 3 days earlier, they'll have a huge lead on the fun content over the rest of the population.
EQ (and I assume star trek) was a good solid source of hookups.
Join a guild which is serious but "fun" (not a guild full of swearing assholes).
Pick a good looking avatar.
Flirt.
Go to your guild parties and any conventions for the game.
I did this for earth and beyond.
The 3 day edge kept me ahead of the pack until the game was closed.
While they are fighting in zones with 90% capacity, lag, etc., you are in empty zones with 10% population, no lag, getting tons of xp and/or loot.
Important to pick a soloing class or to "two box" from the very beginning.
The people who are there on the 29th who can play 6-8 hours a day will mostly be in the lead for months. Folks who can play more will catch up with them but it's hard to break out of the mass of newbies who are killing everything and lowering your xp/loot/growth rate to 10% of what it could be.
True... Colm Meany (sp) just doesn't look like an action star with the smaller mouth and chin.
As an american tho, I grew up knowing that the Romans all spoke with british accents while robin hood spoke with an american accent.
It partially depends on the parts too tho.
Consider Alan Rickman. While he was a big villian, he was also very sympathetic in Pride and Prejudice, and quite funny and heroic in Galaxy Quest.
But you are right, the classic hero is a lantern jawed alpha male type.
Supes is a telekinetic but doesn't think he is a telekinetic.
For example, he frequently lifts planes, rockets, cars, ships, by a tiny corner of the object without any damage to the object at all (maybe a couple finger holes sometime).
The "powered by the sun" as a mental limitation. When he's under a red sun, the survivor's guilt gets to him and he "loses" his powers.
It's more credible than "why do his powers work at night & underground, but fail instantly under a red sun?"
I like your post a lot.
It's an interesting take that I agree with but hadn't noticed.
Partially, it fits with the old marvel universe "personality" too.
--
In response to the "Octavius shouldn't take the beating" posts, I can't find anything to contradict them. It's a hole you could drive a truck through but apparently it's never been addressed yet.
I assume spider man realizes how weak Doc Oc is and pulls his punches since spiderman doesn't want to be a murderer.
Occasionally, when hollywood varies from the story, what results is quite good.
More often, it is bone numbingly stupid, and you wonder, "What were they thinking???"
Meanwhile, very often, when hollywood sticks to the story, the results are quite good.
Hollywood often takes books, comics, whatever, name, and then tosses everything else out so what you actually get has nothing to do with the original. In doing so they get a mess that causes the films to fail, and then they say, "super hero films are bad" or "science fiction stories are bad" or whatever instead of saying, "man we ruined that story and so it was bad".
Partially it's a matter of taste, I've greatly preferred the four Harry Potters that followed the books, and mostly disliked the two harry potters that wandered too far from the books (i.e. WHY KEEP THE NAME "HALF BLOOD PRINCE" and not spend TWO FRIKKIN MINUTES pointing out that Snape is a half blood-- i.e. PART MUGGLE-- and hence just MIGHT have a credible reason for siding against the pure bloods in addition to being in love with Harry's mom who was kind to him). While I liked the young teens in hormones take on the story, they could have cut something to put in a little more on the half blood prince.
And then there is "Bleach", "Naruto", and a few others which do not reboot and which just get more complex and awesome.
It takes 250+ episodes to really build to the awesomeness that was Kenny vs Arankar #6.
It takes 250+ episodes to get Ichigo vs Grimjaw.
I watched 60 episodes, finished the introductory arc (introductory!), and thought I was done. Then I noticed that was about 25% of the run (about 15% of the manga) and slowly started up again.
The Kenny vs Arankar #6 battle has to be in my top 10 battles of all time and may be the top "Crowning Moment of Awesomeness" I've ever seen in nearly 50 years on this planet.
The best take I've seen on Kryptonite is the early Byrne take.
Superman is really a world class telekinetic (and general psionic*) and his problems with Kryptonite are mostly mental. Thus when he really has to, he can react differently to Kryptonite.
Alternatively, the continent was synthetic Kryptonite and differed in some crucial way from real Kryptonite.
If you think about lifting a continent without it breaking apart, the telekinetic angle looks better and better.
*
Superstrength, flight, invulnerability- TK.
Heat/Cold breath, pyrokinesis.
X-Ray Vision: Clairvoyance.
Superhearing: Clairaudience.
My point was that action stars in the 60's tended to be mature males (30's).
When I was talking about young actors, I was talking about movies today, not about bond (see below)
Action stars to day are in their mid 20's (young adults) and portraying early 20's (Star Trek)
Consider the fantastic four-- it used to be a mid 40's to early 50's scientist, his 30's wife, a 30's test pilot, and the young 20 year old hot head.
Today, it's a late 20's scientist, his mid 20's wife, a mid 20's test pilot, and a young 20 year old hot head.
This creates problems of the fact that the protagonists hasn't been alive long enough to possess the skills being portrayed (this bothered me in Avatar where the protagonist learned years of skills in 90 days). While it feels nice, there is a reason the Navy doesn't make 20 year olds the captains of large ships. Somethings really do just take time.
Having a young character like Spider Man, you have a challenge that every 3 movies either you address the fact that spider man is now in his 30's and can't be a struggling photographer any more (it's okay, no-- cool, to be poor and struggling when you are young- it looks odder and more pathetic the older the character gets).
On Bond:
Roger Moore was extremely old and they probably should have changed to a younger star in his thirties- but Moore's golden gun was quite good (it got goofy after that). He was always a bit too "happy" compared to the book bond.
Daniel Craig (in his mid 30's)was a very good choice and the "reboot" was really not a reboot but a return to the "real" bond story (tried less successfully with Timothy Dalton who was also an emotionally wounded, comparitively low tech bond-- the tuxedo that folded over to make a completely black suite was a really cool assassin low tech item.) Craig *looked* like a man, not a boy.
A good "bond" is going to be 30 to 50. Much outside of that age range, he's too young or too old to be credible.
After 3.0, I've had severe performance issues with firefox off of a flash drive.
Did I miss a switch somewhere? It has to be related to some new performance feature because the flash drive continuously flashes with 3.1+ and doesn't flash at all with 3.0.
and these days they make it about 9.
I think it is partially the fact that they are using very young actors.
Of course, part of that is the comic book universe's problem.
Spider man was 18-26 for 40 years. In "reality", spider man in the comics should be in his late 60's.
It's interesting because I only started taking more of that approach about 9 years ago.
It worked much better than I would have ever expected.
While I haven't turned into a complete ass, I'd say even being normally polite as I was in the past is apparently too wimpy for most women and produced undesirable results.
Part of it is that I'm getting too old to put up with their shit. Part of it is that the power changes hand as a male in your late 30's, early 40's if you stay in shape because there are very few men who look decent after a while.
What you are saying might be true in a small town but isn't true in a large city, much less in a country.
You have effective anonymity to pick your nose in your car while driving and no one you know will ever see it.
Facebook is more like having a camera in your car pointed at your face that is searchable. I'm sure some of your phone conversation are much more of an issue than merely picking your nose.
There needs to be a foundation we can donate to that will provide 24x7 surveillance of these guys.
No, mostly it says "don't be a boring dickhead".
So far, "both"... I was halfway through this and remembered another guy I knew with the german wife.
Should say, "all three".
It all has to do with how lucky the lady feels to be with you.
If she is certain she traded down, she's going to be a bitch and probably worse- sleep around on you.
A comic on the radio the other day said, "no doesn't mean no- it means, work on the nipples some more, kiss the side of the neck some more, and check back in five minutes".
I've found most females have to approach sex sideways. "I'm not doing this.. oh look, we just somehow ended up naked and having sex".
OTH, The two females who were direct were a bit scary and offputting.
Most females are great at conversation.
You just have to ask them a question to start them talking about something that interests them and then say "ah", "yes", "that bitch!" occasionally.*
---
To be fair, dale carnegie teaches that the thing most people love talking about is themselves and you are seen as a great conversationalist if you get someone started, listen, then ask questions about things they say which you are genuinely curious about. At some point, most conversations will turn into a give and take.
---
There's more than one comic routine about recognizing this fact.
They've known this since at least the 50's...
A pretty women makes her husband look small
it very often causes a system fall
As soon as he marrys her then she starts
looking for things that will break his heart
but if you make an ugly women your wife
you'll be happy for the rest of your life
An ugly women will put peals on that
and she'll always give you a piece of that.
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty women your wife
Go for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
---
I've found less attractive women to be much better sex partners. For one thing, they are happy to have a good looking boyfriend and that happiness feeds into sex.
As far as attractive women go generally, I'm less dark than you. I'd say about 60% had all the issues you talk about while 40% were okay (except that I'm a better cook than any woman I've met and frequently cook the "nice" meals for us and our friends).
---
I've never tried the magic wand. I found a pyrex toy that is pure magic tho.
---
Three guys I know have foreign brides and so far, both are very happy. One russian, one philipino, one german.
---
There are attractive women out there who are not messed up and who are good catches... but they are uncommon and typically disappeared off the marriage market in their late 20's.
No, it doesn't make you sex toy nazi, but your comment did prick my interest.
Some of those girls (including Elliot Spitzers) run $3000 for 4 hours.
I love your eyes Roxxy
roxxy: I love your eyes too, bill.
You make me hot!
roxxy: do you like it that i make you hot?
What's your favorite sex move!?!
roxxy: What about your own favorite sex move, bill?
I like pinching your nipples.
roxxy: Can you elaborate on that, bill?
I like pinching them and making you squeal!
roxxy: Do you wish to like pinching them hard so me, bill?
http://www-ai.ijs.si/eliza-cgi-bin/eliza_script
More here...
And it turns out I was being optimistic for executive pay.
http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_16/b3625017.htm
Only 30 made over 300,000 the equivalent of those today made 500 million or more.
Completely agree.
Since the 80's, americans have lost the last of the respect they had for scientists previously (since perhaps the 40's?)
Meanwhile, they increasingly pay smart, non-science positions increasingly disproportionate amounts of money.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_salaries_in_the_1950s
In the 50's, average pay was $3000.
Scientists who were "middle class" (or perhaps higher, earned as much as $10,000).
So far so good, since $46k is the average today and scientists earn about $138k... oh wait, actually their pay is more like $70-80k but senior ones can make $110k.. past their we are talking about the top edge of the bell curve these days.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/06/25/305448/index.htm
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/workshops/AppliedEcon/archive/pdf/FrydmanSecondPaper.pdf
CEO's received, in adjusted for inflation year 2000 dollars, $500,000 annual salaries in the 1950's.
So they earned about 150x the average national salary. A princely sum. But nothing near the 6,000x the average national wage today.
Here's the problem...
A person who wants to go to a ski resort or to a nice beach can save up enough money to compete with a 1950's CEO salary.
There is no hope of competing with the current ultra rich. You could save your entire lifetime and they could out bid you with an hour's wages.
---
So meanwhile back to scientists... they produce the work-- but management has highjacked their compensation. If CEO's were earning a million a year today, then scientists could be earning the $150k average that would justify the expense and effort that goes into acquiring a degree in science.