There actually are a number of problems generated by the buying and selling of in-game characters, items, and gold. (I'm not writing on any one specific game here, although my experiences are weighted towards EverQuest and WoW).
One problem is that the associated "value" of items often leads to anti-social behavior and the breakdown of in-game ettiquete. For example, if a powerful magic staff drops in a group, a warrior might roll on it (distribution of item drops are handled by random number "rolls"), despite the fact that the staff might be much better used by a wizard type character. This can lead to the breakdown of friendships and general ettiquete in the game.
"Okay", you might say, "so you need to find new friends and people you can trust". That may be the case, but sometimes the desire to earn these items leads people towards disruptive anti-social behavior that effects people even outside their group. For example, in EverQuest, known eBay farmers would frequently attract the attention of huge packs of monsters, far beyond the ability of any group to deal with, run up to a competing group, and use the "feign death" ability. This would cause all the monsters to lose their focus on the eBay farmer and instead turn towards the nearest target: you.
"Okay", you might say, "but World of Warcraft staff will ban disruptive player slike that, plus it mitigates this problem by creating instanced areas for groups to fight in, avoiding disruption by outside players." While this is true, it takes a fair amount of time for an eBay farmer to get caught, and they will not always be. Often, Customer Service staff must actually witness such an event happening, and it can take hours for them to respond.
While instanced content really alleviates this problem a lot, you still have the problem of pickup groups. To some extent, almost everyone is forced to group with strangers at one point or another. Grouping with a stranger who has relied on items they would never be able to naturally obtain, or who purchased a character can often result in hours of frustration as you deal with warriors who don't know how to hold the monster's attention, priests who don't heal, and wizards who are inept at dealing damage. It's just not a fun situation overall.
I have to say, that message was oddly frightning in the context of this story.
...so? am I missing something?
on
Halo 2 Stats Reset
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't really see what the big deal is. What do you think the game was like when everyone first signed up? I would imagine everyone started off at the same level, leaving Halo 1 experts and Halo 2 newbies playing against each other. From TFA (not the article linked in the story, the REAL Article, "It'll take several games before skill levels begin to even out again, so initially, players will be matched against folks who're a lot better, a lot worse and everything in between. As you start to level up, you'll also level off, and find yourself playing against similarly skilled players once again." Furthermore, does your "level" even influence anything other than the people you play against? I dunno, it seems like a big deal about nothing.
I hope you didn't mean that there are about ~300M people in 10 major cities combined, because that's the impression I got from reading your post. The USA* itself only has ~281M people, and Chicago (the largest city that the preview is being shown in) has only about ~3M in the city itself.
Furthermore, I'd be curious to hear where you got your "1000 seats" number, as there is no actual article linking any solid information, other than the official website, which only lists the cities being shown.
*And before anyone accuses me of being a excessively US-centric, the website lists the 10 cities, and they're all here in the USA.
Instability? Have you even used a windows machine in the past four years? Windows XP, and to a lesser extent, 2000, are by far the most stable operating systems I've ever worked with, linux included.
This is NOT what the article is about. Take some time to read the article before you post disinformation that might cause harm to others.
That said, I really fail to see what the big deal about this article is. It sounds roughly as bad as copying the content of a foreign page, getting pagerank pretending to be that foreign page, and then replacing that page later. This sounds like far more of a human problem than a technical problem to me.
To be perfectly honest, do you really think that the average consumer has the ability or the desire to decide what is "best" for themselves? People, as a whole, look at computers as an appliance that either works or doesn't; there's so much that we take for granted that they don't even know exists.
No offense meant, but I think that your post is "a wonderful example of the difference between Microsoft and the OSS movement". While I agree fully with the OSS movement in theory, there is a lot more to a computing experience than the sum of the components. There is the overall presentation to the user, THAT is what Microsoft gets right, and THAT is what the OSS movement needs before it can ever truly be mainstream.
The obvious danger to that is that it might prompt untold numbers of corporations to start filing suit on open-source developers, simply to preserve their own patents. Do we really want that?
Open Source Software is about more than just the bottom line. While a corporation may only consider OSS int erms of what it can save them, OSS is about much more. While the software is free as in beer, it's much more important that it is free as in speech.
First, even though they're using Linux, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're saving a significant amount. Anti-linux trolls have often said that Linux is only free if your time if valueless. While somewhat trite, this statement DOES have truth in it. It takes time and money to switch over to a new operating system - you may save money in the long run but the initial investment is often significant.
Just because YOU don't care what the underlying OS of your phone is, doesn't mean that others don't. Then inclusion of an Open Source operating system is significant for several reasons. It shows the increasing credibility and validity of Open Source. Every dollar spent developing an OSS solution is one less dollar given to Microsoft or a smilar corporation. By buying a product that runs off Linux instead of WinCE or a similar OS, people can be confident that they're not supporting a company that they find morally objectionable.
Open Source is about more than the bottom line, it's about the freedom to study, tinker with, and use software however you want. It's about the freedom not to be restricted by close-minded, selfish licences that will ultimately impede the progress of software development.
If you had bothered to even read the article summary, you probably could have figured out the acronyms by putting in a tiny bit of effort. But no, it's easier to bitch here and get others to do your work for you.
Yes, but as technology improves for RAM and for memory cards, technology will also *gasp* improve for hard disk technology, providing more benefits and/or decreased cost as well, especially if the HD industry looks at memory cards as a direct competetor.
There are a couple of important difference between Apple cracking down on its users, and Microsoft cracking down on its users.
First of all, Apple is not a convicted monopoly. The rules change siginificantly when you are a monopoly, and what might be standard business practices otherwise suddenly become unethical and illegal.
Secondly, this isn't Apple cracking down on an average joe who's releasing a free update under the GLP. This is Apple getting pissed off at Real for doing something that could potentially damage the public image of the iPod. Real, who's only motivation in doing this is to make an extra buck because their products suck so badly they only way they can hope to succeed is to piggyback off another company's success.
This isn't a case of Apple fanboys saying "It's different beacuse it's Apple!" The situation IS fundimentally different than Microsoft cracking down on a hobbyist for modifying their XBox or the like.
I doubt Lexis-Nexis will ever be replaced by Google, beacuse it is widely considered to be a legitimate academic source of news and information. While articles of equal quality may be availble on Google, people are willing to give a lot more weight to an article that came from "an academic database" than they are one from Google. This is especially aplicable in high schools and universities, where many instructors aren't as tech-savvy as the slashdot crowd, and are hesistant to trust Teh Intarweb where anyone acn publish anything.
Ok, seriously? If "millions" of people use this site, do you really think slashdot is going to make that much of a dent? Take your karma whoring somewhere else.
For a moment there, I read that as "I'd tag all my tools, the remote controls, the kids, and anything else we habitually lose".
I guess this is the result of growing up as the oldest of six =p
Slashdot Mirror
How the beginning begins? Is this yet another fine piece of work from the Department of Redundancy Department? ;)
On a more serious work, I love the little skit. I can completely see it, too.
There actually are a number of problems generated by the buying and selling of in-game characters, items, and gold. (I'm not writing on any one specific game here, although my experiences are weighted towards EverQuest and WoW).
One problem is that the associated "value" of items often leads to anti-social behavior and the breakdown of in-game ettiquete. For example, if a powerful magic staff drops in a group, a warrior might roll on it (distribution of item drops are handled by random number "rolls"), despite the fact that the staff might be much better used by a wizard type character. This can lead to the breakdown of friendships and general ettiquete in the game.
"Okay", you might say, "so you need to find new friends and people you can trust". That may be the case, but sometimes the desire to earn these items leads people towards disruptive anti-social behavior that effects people even outside their group. For example, in EverQuest, known eBay farmers would frequently attract the attention of huge packs of monsters, far beyond the ability of any group to deal with, run up to a competing group, and use the "feign death" ability. This would cause all the monsters to lose their focus on the eBay farmer and instead turn towards the nearest target: you.
"Okay", you might say, "but World of Warcraft staff will ban disruptive player slike that, plus it mitigates this problem by creating instanced areas for groups to fight in, avoiding disruption by outside players." While this is true, it takes a fair amount of time for an eBay farmer to get caught, and they will not always be. Often, Customer Service staff must actually witness such an event happening, and it can take hours for them to respond.
While instanced content really alleviates this problem a lot, you still have the problem of pickup groups. To some extent, almost everyone is forced to group with strangers at one point or another. Grouping with a stranger who has relied on items they would never be able to naturally obtain, or who purchased a character can often result in hours of frustration as you deal with warriors who don't know how to hold the monster's attention, priests who don't heal, and wizards who are inept at dealing damage. It's just not a fun situation overall.
I have to say, that message was oddly frightning in the context of this story.
I don't really see what the big deal is. What do you think the game was like when everyone first signed up? I would imagine everyone started off at the same level, leaving Halo 1 experts and Halo 2 newbies playing against each other. From TFA (not the article linked in the story, the REAL Article, "It'll take several games before skill levels begin to even out again, so initially, players will be matched against folks who're a lot better, a lot worse and everything in between. As you start to level up, you'll also level off, and find yourself playing against similarly skilled players once again." Furthermore, does your "level" even influence anything other than the people you play against? I dunno, it seems like a big deal about nothing.
I hope you didn't mean that there are about ~300M people in 10 major cities combined, because that's the impression I got from reading your post. The USA* itself only has ~281M people, and Chicago (the largest city that the preview is being shown in) has only about ~3M in the city itself.
Furthermore, I'd be curious to hear where you got your "1000 seats" number, as there is no actual article linking any solid information, other than the official website, which only lists the cities being shown.
*And before anyone accuses me of being a excessively US-centric, the website lists the 10 cities, and they're all here in the USA.
Instability? Have you even used a windows machine in the past four years? Windows XP, and to a lesser extent, 2000, are by far the most stable operating systems I've ever worked with, linux included.
Did you bother reading any farther than the second sentence? He explains what he means by that quite well =P
This is NOT what the article is about. Take some time to read the article before you post disinformation that might cause harm to others.
That said, I really fail to see what the big deal about this article is. It sounds roughly as bad as copying the content of a foreign page, getting pagerank pretending to be that foreign page, and then replacing that page later. This sounds like far more of a human problem than a technical problem to me.
It's a reference to a Night Elf unit from Warcraft III, called a Wisp.
To be perfectly honest, do you really think that the average consumer has the ability or the desire to decide what is "best" for themselves? People, as a whole, look at computers as an appliance that either works or doesn't; there's so much that we take for granted that they don't even know exists.
No offense meant, but I think that your post is "a wonderful example of the difference between Microsoft and the OSS movement". While I agree fully with the OSS movement in theory, there is a lot more to a computing experience than the sum of the components. There is the overall presentation to the user, THAT is what Microsoft gets right, and THAT is what the OSS movement needs before it can ever truly be mainstream.
The obvious danger to that is that it might prompt untold numbers of corporations to start filing suit on open-source developers, simply to preserve their own patents. Do we really want that?
Yellow orbs? I'm assuming the other two references are to Tetris and Super Mario Bros.
Previously seen here
I'm almost afraid to ask, but what exactly are the hand gestures for said game? :P
Open Source Software is about more than just the bottom line. While a corporation may only consider OSS int erms of what it can save them, OSS is about much more. While the software is free as in beer, it's much more important that it is free as in speech.
First, even though they're using Linux, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're saving a significant amount. Anti-linux trolls have often said that Linux is only free if your time if valueless. While somewhat trite, this statement DOES have truth in it. It takes time and money to switch over to a new operating system - you may save money in the long run but the initial investment is often significant.
Just because YOU don't care what the underlying OS of your phone is, doesn't mean that others don't. Then inclusion of an Open Source operating system is significant for several reasons. It shows the increasing credibility and validity of Open Source. Every dollar spent developing an OSS solution is one less dollar given to Microsoft or a smilar corporation. By buying a product that runs off Linux instead of WinCE or a similar OS, people can be confident that they're not supporting a company that they find morally objectionable.
Open Source is about more than the bottom line, it's about the freedom to study, tinker with, and use software however you want. It's about the freedom not to be restricted by close-minded, selfish licences that will ultimately impede the progress of software development.
If you had bothered to even read the article summary, you probably could have figured out the acronyms by putting in a tiny bit of effort. But no, it's easier to bitch here and get others to do your work for you.
pathetic.
Yes, but as technology improves for RAM and for memory cards, technology will also *gasp* improve for hard disk technology, providing more benefits and/or decreased cost as well, especially if the HD industry looks at memory cards as a direct competetor.
There are a couple of important difference between Apple cracking down on its users, and Microsoft cracking down on its users.
First of all, Apple is not a convicted monopoly. The rules change siginificantly when you are a monopoly, and what might be standard business practices otherwise suddenly become unethical and illegal.
Secondly, this isn't Apple cracking down on an average joe who's releasing a free update under the GLP. This is Apple getting pissed off at Real for doing something that could potentially damage the public image of the iPod. Real, who's only motivation in doing this is to make an extra buck because their products suck so badly they only way they can hope to succeed is to piggyback off another company's success.
This isn't a case of Apple fanboys saying "It's different beacuse it's Apple!" The situation IS fundimentally different than Microsoft cracking down on a hobbyist for modifying their XBox or the like.
For the thousandth time, APPLE IS NOT A CONVICTED MONOPOLY. The rules change significantly when you're a monopoly with near 100% market share.
I doubt Lexis-Nexis will ever be replaced by Google, beacuse it is widely considered to be a legitimate academic source of news and information. While articles of equal quality may be availble on Google, people are willing to give a lot more weight to an article that came from "an academic database" than they are one from Google. This is especially aplicable in high schools and universities, where many instructors aren't as tech-savvy as the slashdot crowd, and are hesistant to trust Teh Intarweb where anyone acn publish anything.
Ok, seriously? If "millions" of people use this site, do you really think slashdot is going to make that much of a dent? Take your karma whoring somewhere else.
The only problem is when people start spamming the usual contact information (admin@, root@, etc) of your domain =/
"But take that pancreas away and boy, do you get someone's attention quickly."
...I would really hope you're not speaking from experience, or anything...
For a moment there, I read that as "I'd tag all my tools, the remote controls, the kids, and anything else we habitually lose".
I guess this is the result of growing up as the oldest of six =p