I'd think you'd love to see opponents botting while in battlegrounds. All you have to do is be unpredictable, and the bots will get confused.
And I'd say that more gold farming is done by humans than bots, hands down. Heck, they've even done news stories on how there are whole groups in Asia that run the same character in shifts so they can collect cash items, etc. They are more able to react to changes than a bot.
Bots are grossly overrated for MMOs for the most part. Sure, there are some few players that will use them in WoW and other games, but for the most part, people want to experience the game. And many bot users are very easy to spot, as their users don't put in enough to make it believable.
I am kind of surprised that Blizzard is doing this, but I think it's just a publicity thing, and they don't really care if they make any cash off of it. They are just trying to placate the masses on the forums that worry about every single little thing they can.
The reality is, bots make money for Blizzard. Once an account is banned, the player has to purchase a new box of the game to start playing again. And with the expansion, that's 2 boxes. So, Blizzard makes money off of the players that register new accounts/CDs every time they get banned.
Besides, most gold farmers are played by humans, not bots.
The article is essentially correct, copy protection is basically a waste of the game developer's money.
I'm tired of having to keep a CD/DVD in the drive, as I tend to end up playing several different games each month, or going back to old games. Since I am swapping discs, I sometimes end up leaving one laying on the desk, and it can go unnoticed for a bit. I've had 2 game discs ruined by that, which is admittedly my own fault. But the game was already installed on my HD, so I should have been fine. I wasn't.
The only copy protection that I've seen be effective against pirates is what I like to call the "zero day release protection" that seems to happen. All games these days are released too soon, with little to no beta testing or Q/A. So, bad bugs are present when the game hits the shelves, and often times the bugs are fatal issues to the game. Without a patch to fix those bugs, the game is basically a demo disc. Unlock the full game by getting the patch that was miraculously available a few days after release, and the game works much better.
Really, I would much rather have to register my copy of a game so I can patch it, than have to keep the CD/DVD in the drive. Once validated, I'm good.
It's why I've played so many MMOs over the years. No discs in the drive, the game gets patched all the time, and I get new content frequenly in most of them.
I was really disappointed with Hellgate:London, as they made you keep the DVD in the drive for solo play, but for multi-player, they didn't need it. Why? Because they wouldn't let you play on a LAN, it had to be on THEIR servers. I found myself playing solo on the multi-plyaer servers so I didn't have to keep a disc in the drive.
Most copies released on Usenet and through torrents are zero-day releases, so there is no patch available without a valid/registered CD key. Pirates get to play a "demo version" that will crap out within 2 hrs of starting gameplay in most zero-day releases. They get to see if the game is crap, without having to use the real demo that is usually so spit-polished that nothing ever goes wrong. That's the only advantage I can see to pirating a game. You know more than the flawless demo shows you, which is often some of the best of the game.
I suffered from ADD as a child, and still do as an adult. Finding something outside of a book or sports that could hold my attention for hours on end was a serious problem. And forget getting creative like writing a book or artwork. Even computer programming bored me to tears. And by my later teen years, I was so introverted it was pathetic.
But from the 8th grade on, one thing could get me to lock down and focus for hours on end, whether alone or in a group. And when I hit college, it really let me grow socially.
Alone, I could sit still for hours creating worlds, dungeons, bad guys, and plots. My only limitation was how fast I could write, and whether I could read what I had scribbled down later. It was probably some of the quietest I ever was as a teen..
In a group, I could easily hold my own, either taking over in spots where I just had more knowledge, or sitting back and being a good party member. I had something I really understood, and could easily pick up a conversation with others that shared my passion.
By the time I hit college for real (after dabbling at a tech school and wasting 2 years of my life), I was primed to meet people. Some guy started a "Adventurer's Guild" at the community college, and set up a first meeting, which I and two dozen others attended. We talked about what we wanted to accomplish, and what the school's fears were about it. (Urban Legends about D&D were very popular at the time.) And on the 2nd meeting of the group, the guy starting it never showed up. After sitting around with our thumbs up our collective butts, I got annoyed and started to organize things for that meeting, and found myself elected "guildmaster" of our group the 3rd meeting, not knowing a single person in the room. It was almost surreal to an introvert like me, but I was an introvert no more.
D&D really gave me a way out of my shyness, and let me have a common ground with people like me. And dealing with all those diverse personalities (and the few freaks that always seemed to gravitate to D&D) gave me leadership experience that has served me very well in life. From a chronic wallflower type to someone that has no fear of taking charge when it's needed, I grew up during those years.
Gary Gygax, thank you for your imagination and for making your dream a reality. It madea difference in my life.
It really does look like the military finally went and looked at what is happening in the MMO world. This sounds a lot like what the eq2maps project does, by allowing POIs (Points Of Interest) to be not only updated by users, but added by users.
The sad part is it has taken this long for the military to remember that it's the guys on the ground that are actually seeing what is happening, and can provide a lot of useful information if they are just listened to. Giving them the ability to update databases with what they see should help save lives down the road.
Having recently splurged over the summer for a 52" HDTV (LCD), I can agree with your comment about wanting HD content.
Verizon offers a lot of Video On Demand (VOD) that is free if you have subscriptions already to HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. It makes it great that the wife and I can pick movies without having to record them. Except... None of the offerings are in HD. They are all the regular 480 version. So, if I want HD for a movie, I have to still DVR the darn thing. And that pisses me off.
If I'm going to spend about $4,000 on a HDTV, I certainly want to be gaining the advantages I can. The 480 stuff often looks fuzzy on such a large screen.
As much as HD movies cost, I'm liking that I get content through HBO and the like that is in HD. I just want more than the one channel that shows the same crap movies over and over, with only 1 new movie a week. I may actually have to bother with Netflix or Blockbuster again, after I get a PS3. (Might as well get the player and a game system in one, and the 40GB version comes with a coupon for 4 free movies if I remember correctly.)
What happened to the common sense factor to business? It's bad enough they allowed the debacle of people that didn't own the trademark to a term getting to register that as a.com name, but you'd have though they'd have learned by now.
I can't tell you the number of games I've lost over the years due to damaged CDs. Yeah, you try to protect them, but when you end up switching CDs every few days because you wish to play a different game for a bit, sometimes the CD sits on your desk for a few minutes.
My copy of Temple of Elemental Evil worked fine for the orignal release, and the first patch. The second patch to come out wasn't compatable with DirectX 9.0c, so it was pointless. Applying the third patch to fix the second patch made my CD fail its check. So, the game worked out of the box, and through the first patch, but the 2nd/3rd patch broke my CD? You've got to be kidding me! And SecureROM analyzed my data, and said that it was because I had Daemon Tools installed. So, I uninstalled that, re-ran their program, and they said I must have a copy of an orignal CD. Since it's an Atari game that isn't being supported any longer, I can't get a new CD from the company.
Heck, my current copy of Hellgate: London acts up in single player mode (which requires the DVD to be in the drive. Multiplayer does not, as it should be.) Half the time I have to reboot my system, because SafeDisc doesn't recognize the DVD being in the drive. It spins, then stops and hangs. It's even told me that my OS isn't high enough, and I need to upgrade to Windows 98SE or 2000. I have XP installed. Some of that was the multi-language support, which can be clicked off, but the bottom line is, the copy protection makes the game sometimes unplayable without a reboot.
With the way today's games are, with the zero-day release always having a fatal bug (I believe intentionally) that requires a patch to be downloaded, there is no real need for this. Very few if any gamer systems aren't internet connected, so just make a simple verification check go out on the serial number, and let them play. No connection or a failure of that check, and no game.
It's one of the reasons I play MMOs so much, even though it is often solo. No copy protection to annoy me, no CD/DVD to keep track of, and less clutter in/on my desk.
It is a combination of "keyboard courage" that comes with being effectively anonymous, and the fact that most humans will treat other humans poorly if they think they can get away with it.
Rules help make a society, even a virtual one. Without those rules, everyone is prey.
It just goes to show you that the old addage is still strong: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
The problem with a Shadowrun MMO would probably be the same problem I had with the PnP version of the game. The darn hacking/decking part took WAY too long to do when it was incorporated into a mission.
A typical PnP campaign would have combat team in place, and then all the players would sit around and twiddle their thumbs while the guy with the cyberdeck would try to evade and defeat all IC. Unless the GM was kind, those rolls started to take their toll, and a half hour or more could go by before the decker was "in" and the combat team could proceed.
Deckers were one of the cool concepts for Shadowrun, but I don't see it flying well in a MMO setting. Either they would have to make it super simple in that you could either succeed or not succeed based on your basic ability, or the game bogs down while rolls are made and skill checks happen.
Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of Shadowrun. It's a great concept for a game system. They just never got the decking portion into a state where it wasn't "all or nothing" for success. And while a MMO can make some of it faster, if it isn't interactive, it would be a boring character class to play.
You can find a bunch of pretty decent demos over at http://www.fileplanet.com/ if you go over there and look. Sure, if you don't subscribe to it, they can take a while to download, but many are worth it.
Here's the problem with demos, imo. They are very polished little snippets of the game, and they don't reflect the reality of how good the actual gold version of the game will be. They are great to see how the basic mechanics of the game are in most cases, but they won't tell you if the game is buggy as hell.
I have yet to play a demo that crashed, or had more than a minor annoyance associated to playing them. Heck, I played the HellGate:London demo, and it ran flawlessly. I got into the closed beta, and it was buggy as hell for the multi-player. When the gold version was released, even the single-player version had some problems that had to be patched to correct, and that patch took several days.
Besides, with many games today, the demos are only the opening part of the game, which makes sense. However, for games where you progress along various trees of abilities that you don't get into until you play the game for a bit, later gameplay is not seen.
I played some demo version of Dungeon Siege, and thought it rocked. Unfortunately, it was the whole game. By the time I finished the game, I realized how average the game actually was. Just about everyone else that I know that played DS found the same thing. Awesome in the beginning, monotonous in the end.
So, demos only get you a glimpse, and a very polished one at that. Gold versions are probably released with deliberate bugs to help break the "zero-day" pirate scene. Release a game with a crippling bug that occurs about 1/2-2hrs into gameplay, and only a patch can fix it, and viola: pretty darn good copy protection. At the very least, it slows down the pirates, who have to then break the patch.
Well, for the most part, that monthly fee really isn't that much, compared to other entertainment options.
For the base MMO game, you will usualy pay about $45. You get the first month included in that price. Now, for the same price, you can by a FPS, or a RPG, etc, and get usually a month's worth (on average) gameplay for your $45. Then you are going out and paying anoher $45 for the next game, or breaking into multi-player games with little to no enforcement.
With the MMO, you get more content, and you pay about $15/month after your initial month, for it. The games are much more massive than a regular one, and you get usually many months/years of gameplay for your investment. The expansions come out frequently enough to keep most people happy. And there is usually enough rules/decency policies to keep the games from devolving down to a childish level. (Though the more PvP there is, the more childish people act.)
Now lets look at what else that $15 could get you.
A dinner for yourself at a decent resturant, if you have no alcoholic beverages or desert. Don't bring a date. Or a dinner date at McDonalds. Whohoo! You da MAN with the ladies, now!
A movie with popcorn and a drink. For yourself. Bring a date and double that up! Or you can catch a matinee and no eat/drink, and get in for that $15.
3-4 DVD rentals at Blockbuster or some other chain, unless you go the mail route.
I could go on, but really. If $15 is going to break your budget, you probably shouldn't be spending ANY money on games. And if it's going to make you whine, then you are a little too much of a tight-wad.
My father is in his 80s, and at first he thought it was nuts that I spent that kind of money a month for a game. And then he realized just how much time I could (and often did) spend in game, and how few other games I was buying every year. I went from buying 8+ games a year to 2-3, which included expansions to the MMO I was playing at the time. I got my wife playing, and now we have one more thing to do together.
Lord knows I get a good 40+hrs a month in my current MMO for that $15, and I find that a great deal.
I've played a lot of MMOs over the years, and it really depends on the game as to how much value there is in playing a female toon versus playing a male one.
In EQ1, you could outfit a whole party with good equipment by playing a single female toon. I have friends that did just that in the early days. One female cleric got the whole party very nice (for the time) equipment to get them going, just by standing around and acting clueless.
In games with much less mature players (WoW comes to mind awfully fast for some reason...) the amount of weird treatment towards female toons is higher. I haven't noticed it being nearly as much in EQ2 as it was in EQ1 or WoW. There aren't too many people that start throwing equipment at female toons anymore, and most people know that there is a large percentage chance that a female toon is being played by a guy.
I've played a few female toons, but it depends on the MMO. CoH/V, during the beta, it was fun to play a female toon, as the character creation alone took twice as long. (lol) I did the same in WoW beta for a bit, and had a great laugh at how much "bounce" the female night elf had when walking backwards. That got fixed before release, and I was one of the ones that reported it as a little too over the top.
The Asian MMOs are really bad, though. They love to give the female toons really provactive clothing. Remember the dark elves in Lineage II? They all started in a leather harness that only covered the nips and the pubic area. I remember being in the beta, and 85% of players that created a dark elf made a female one. You know it was all guys doing it. If it's an Asian-based MMO, it's pretty much a given that you will see a lot of exposed thighs and breasts. Even Guild Wars female toons show a lot of skin.
It's all about the titilation. When Anarchy Online when it first came out, you couldn't go anywhere without having someone having a female toon kneel in front of you and shake it's ass in the hopes of a tip or equipment.
With voice chat via Ventrillo or TeamSpeak being used by most guilds these days, there isn't a lot of "ZOMG, it's a GIRL playing!" going on. Maybe some pick-up groups see it, but usually not. And if more games do like DDO did and include a built-in group voice chat, you will see that phenomenom pretty much disappear. You can't really hide your voice, and you quickly forget that the toon is female while the player is male, or vice versa.
Still, this is China we are talking about. It's not exactly a hotbed of tolerance.
That was the "We Drank the Brad McQuid Koo-Aid" bunch. Sigil and their early fans were holding out for V:SoH to be the holy grail of anti-WoWness, and to destroy WoW. Well, they got part of what they asked for. A game that sucked ass from start to finish. Blizzard kicked butt from start to almost end-game, and then it bogged down.
The only real knock I have on Blizzard is how damn long it takes them to get expansions out for WoW. I cancelled my account after 9 months, due to boredom. I know they deliver quality work, but their expansion rate is horrible.
take merchandise, conceal it, and leave the store without paying for it Actually, in some states, the person does not have to leave the store without paying for it.
I know that in Maryland, the act of concealing the merchandise, such as putting it inside your clothes, is considered enough to arrest for shoplifting.
Allowing a person who has already concealed merchandise to leave the store means that they have a high probability of escaping with said merchandise. Being able to detain or arrest said persons before leaving the store means the merchandise doesn't become a corporate loss.
The grocery company I worked for had it's own security force that were all liscensed police officers in the states they were in. They routinely arrested individuals while they were still in the stores, and turned them over to local police for processing. They never had to bother with a foot chase, and it was very rare to have a physical confrontation.
Auto Assault was never going to be a huge hit. I just couldn't see myself playing it, and I beta a lot of MMOs. This game couldn't generate any interest for me.
Part of that was PlayNC being at the controls. I really liked CoH/CoV initially. The character generation is STILL the best ever, and just about everyone lost an hour or more on their first character design. But all of their games tend to devolve into a redundancy that hurts them in the long run. You can only do so many missions in CoH/CoV before they all look the same, feel the same, and drive you insane. Dungeon Runners is a joke, with graphics that are ancient, and gameplay that is too repetitive. Lineage II is a gold-farmer's dream location, which means it sucks for the rest of folks. None of their games are managed well, and don't develop well over time.
Much of Blizzard's success has to do with timing. The MMO market was simply waiting for a game that both the casual and psuedo-hardcore gamer could play, without being TOO repetitive. It has PvP for those that wish to do it full-time, and those that wish to do it part-time. The competition at launch time just wasn't there.
Most folks had burnt out on the original EQ, and EQ2 was being released, so there was a big exodus at this timeframe. Everquest2 was launched 2 weeks earlier that WoW, if memory servers me right, but was filled with things to make the game harder than it needed to me. DAoC had the problems you documented. CoH/CoV ran into a redundancy problem that started too early in the game to keep people's interest for long. Other, smaller MMOs just filled a niche player base.
So there was this vacumn dying for a really good game that could appeal to just about everyone, and Blizzard didn't just wander it, they overwhelmed it.
Blizzard now has better competition for players, even if most of the recent MMOs have been poorly attended. Yes, I'm talking to you, Vanguard and LotR:O. And soon, we'll be adding Tabula Rasa to the list of poorly attended MMOs.
EVE has really hit the spot for folks that like PvP, but to me the learning curve and the need for a good friend-base is a real limiting factor. Unless I knew a group of folks that played and were looking for me to join, I wouldn't go there. It's not for soloing or cutting your teeth without friends. It just sounds too daunting to take on by yourself without knowing folks. Unless you want to join BoB, that is.
EQ2 has been given many a facelift, and I personally feel that unless you are looking for PvP, it is the best MMO going. The playerbase tends to be a little more mature than the typical WoW crowd, and no raid requires more than 24 persons max, and many are 12 person raids. If you played it at launch and were disgusted, take a look at it now. I've had many WoW fanatics burn out, and come try EQ2 with those of us that are playing. Only one has not stayed with EQ2, and he left due to not having enough RAM to run EQ2 and Skype at the same time. Most of them have been simply stunned at how different a game it is.
I keep waiting for some other game to hit me like EQ originally did, or like WoW did, but EQ2 is the closest I've come to, and that is only after coming back to it years later. I had hopes for LotR:O, but a beta stint fixed that for me. Same with Vanguard, as I knew after 2 days that it was going to suck.
Nobody is going to knock off WoW for a long time, but maybe some game will eventually shake their tree. Blizzard needs to release more than 1 expansion every 2 years to keep the attention of players. Their working towards their second expansion, while SoE is working on the 4th for EQ2. An expansion before that first year was done would have probably kept the wife and I playing for another 6 months at least, but instead we cancelled our accounts and found other games to play.
Only those people under the age of 14 might not have figured out that the game magazines are all propped up fronts for the game companies. And it isn't just the magazines. Many of the on-line sites are just as guilty of sucking the tail-pipes of the game publishers.
Every month a game magazine manages to come up with some "hot new title". Yet how many games each year are actually good? Yeah, I thought the same thing.
For a while there I was receiving a copy of Computer Game World for unknown reasons. (I didn't subscribe to it, and never paid for it.) Each edition promptly tried to blow smoke up my ass about how (title x) was going to be the greatest game ever.
Sadly, this works, especially with spoiled kids that have clueless parents. "Look, Mom! This game was given UBER scores by this game magazine. Everyone will have it! I NEED it!" And the darn parent will buy it, because it was reviewed as worthy.
The game companies count on people being lemmings. And all to many game players fall into that category. Regardless of how bad a game is, if someone tells the gamer it's a hot title, they will buy it, and then talk it up because they don't want to look stupid.
Anarchy Online already did the more FPS version of a MMO.
Tabula Rising isn't groundbreaking. It's another stab with small variations of games that have already been done. Whether or not it gets done better remains to be seen.
Folks that are still whining about SW:G NGE change, or UO's light/dark shard change, are just living in a dream past. Both games sucked, were losing subscribers, and needed to do something.
Now, stop, before you start blaming SOE for V:SoH's woes. It seems you can count on 3 things on any/. article that you could possibly mention a MMO as part of:
SW:G's NGE change UO's light/dark change EVE Online is the greatest MMO ever, but the players all bitch about BoB and the devs playing.
There are still plenty of folks playing EQ1, EQ2, and other SOE games. Heck, you couldn't give me a free copy and pay for my subscription to WoW, and get me to play. Same with EVE.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd think you'd love to see opponents botting while in battlegrounds. All you have to do is be unpredictable, and the bots will get confused.
And I'd say that more gold farming is done by humans than bots, hands down. Heck, they've even done news stories on how there are whole groups in Asia that run the same character in shifts so they can collect cash items, etc. They are more able to react to changes than a bot.
Bots are grossly overrated for MMOs for the most part. Sure, there are some few players that will use them in WoW and other games, but for the most part, people want to experience the game. And many bot users are very easy to spot, as their users don't put in enough to make it believable.
I am kind of surprised that Blizzard is doing this, but I think it's just a publicity thing, and they don't really care if they make any cash off of it. They are just trying to placate the masses on the forums that worry about every single little thing they can.
The reality is, bots make money for Blizzard. Once an account is banned, the player has to purchase a new box of the game to start playing again. And with the expansion, that's 2 boxes. So, Blizzard makes money off of the players that register new accounts/CDs every time they get banned.
Besides, most gold farmers are played by humans, not bots.
The article is essentially correct, copy protection is basically a waste of the game developer's money.
I'm tired of having to keep a CD/DVD in the drive, as I tend to end up playing several different games each month, or going back to old games. Since I am swapping discs, I sometimes end up leaving one laying on the desk, and it can go unnoticed for a bit. I've had 2 game discs ruined by that, which is admittedly my own fault. But the game was already installed on my HD, so I should have been fine. I wasn't.
The only copy protection that I've seen be effective against pirates is what I like to call the "zero day release protection" that seems to happen. All games these days are released too soon, with little to no beta testing or Q/A. So, bad bugs are present when the game hits the shelves, and often times the bugs are fatal issues to the game. Without a patch to fix those bugs, the game is basically a demo disc. Unlock the full game by getting the patch that was miraculously available a few days after release, and the game works much better.
Really, I would much rather have to register my copy of a game so I can patch it, than have to keep the CD/DVD in the drive. Once validated, I'm good.
It's why I've played so many MMOs over the years. No discs in the drive, the game gets patched all the time, and I get new content frequenly in most of them.
I was really disappointed with Hellgate:London, as they made you keep the DVD in the drive for solo play, but for multi-player, they didn't need it. Why? Because they wouldn't let you play on a LAN, it had to be on THEIR servers. I found myself playing solo on the multi-plyaer servers so I didn't have to keep a disc in the drive.
Most copies released on Usenet and through torrents are zero-day releases, so there is no patch available without a valid/registered CD key. Pirates get to play a "demo version" that will crap out within 2 hrs of starting gameplay in most zero-day releases. They get to see if the game is crap, without having to use the real demo that is usually so spit-polished that nothing ever goes wrong. That's the only advantage I can see to pirating a game. You know more than the flawless demo shows you, which is often some of the best of the game.
Sheesh, I know they are one of the punching bags of /., and deservedly so, but can't you get the nutbag's name right?
It's L. Ron Hubbard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard
I suffered from ADD as a child, and still do as an adult. Finding something outside of a book or sports that could hold my attention for hours on end was a serious problem. And forget getting creative like writing a book or artwork. Even computer programming bored me to tears. And by my later teen years, I was so introverted it was pathetic.
But from the 8th grade on, one thing could get me to lock down and focus for hours on end, whether alone or in a group. And when I hit college, it really let me grow socially.
Alone, I could sit still for hours creating worlds, dungeons, bad guys, and plots. My only limitation was how fast I could write, and whether I could read what I had scribbled down later. It was probably some of the quietest I ever was as a teen..
In a group, I could easily hold my own, either taking over in spots where I just had more knowledge, or sitting back and being a good party member. I had something I really understood, and could easily pick up a conversation with others that shared my passion.
By the time I hit college for real (after dabbling at a tech school and wasting 2 years of my life), I was primed to meet people. Some guy started a "Adventurer's Guild" at the community college, and set up a first meeting, which I and two dozen others attended. We talked about what we wanted to accomplish, and what the school's fears were about it. (Urban Legends about D&D were very popular at the time.) And on the 2nd meeting of the group, the guy starting it never showed up. After sitting around with our thumbs up our collective butts, I got annoyed and started to organize things for that meeting, and found myself elected "guildmaster" of our group the 3rd meeting, not knowing a single person in the room. It was almost surreal to an introvert like me, but I was an introvert no more.
D&D really gave me a way out of my shyness, and let me have a common ground with people like me. And dealing with all those diverse personalities (and the few freaks that always seemed to gravitate to D&D) gave me leadership experience that has served me very well in life. From a chronic wallflower type to someone that has no fear of taking charge when it's needed, I grew up during those years.
Gary Gygax, thank you for your imagination and for making your dream a reality. It madea difference in my life.
It really does look like the military finally went and looked at what is happening in the MMO world. This sounds a lot like what the eq2maps project does, by allowing POIs (Points Of Interest) to be not only updated by users, but added by users.
The sad part is it has taken this long for the military to remember that it's the guys on the ground that are actually seeing what is happening, and can provide a lot of useful information if they are just listened to. Giving them the ability to update databases with what they see should help save lives down the road.
Having recently splurged over the summer for a 52" HDTV (LCD), I can agree with your comment about wanting HD content.
Verizon offers a lot of Video On Demand (VOD) that is free if you have subscriptions already to HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. It makes it great that the wife and I can pick movies without having to record them. Except... None of the offerings are in HD. They are all the regular 480 version. So, if I want HD for a movie, I have to still DVR the darn thing. And that pisses me off.
If I'm going to spend about $4,000 on a HDTV, I certainly want to be gaining the advantages I can. The 480 stuff often looks fuzzy on such a large screen.
As much as HD movies cost, I'm liking that I get content through HBO and the like that is in HD. I just want more than the one channel that shows the same crap movies over and over, with only 1 new movie a week. I may actually have to bother with Netflix or Blockbuster again, after I get a PS3. (Might as well get the player and a game system in one, and the 40GB version comes with a coupon for 4 free movies if I remember correctly.)
ICANNdowrong
.com name, but you'd have though they'd have learned by now.
What happened to the common sense factor to business? It's bad enough they allowed the debacle of people that didn't own the trademark to a term getting to register that as a
I can't tell you the number of games I've lost over the years due to damaged CDs. Yeah, you try to protect them, but when you end up switching CDs every few days because you wish to play a different game for a bit, sometimes the CD sits on your desk for a few minutes.
My copy of Temple of Elemental Evil worked fine for the orignal release, and the first patch. The second patch to come out wasn't compatable with DirectX 9.0c, so it was pointless. Applying the third patch to fix the second patch made my CD fail its check. So, the game worked out of the box, and through the first patch, but the 2nd/3rd patch broke my CD? You've got to be kidding me! And SecureROM analyzed my data, and said that it was because I had Daemon Tools installed. So, I uninstalled that, re-ran their program, and they said I must have a copy of an orignal CD. Since it's an Atari game that isn't being supported any longer, I can't get a new CD from the company.
Heck, my current copy of Hellgate: London acts up in single player mode (which requires the DVD to be in the drive. Multiplayer does not, as it should be.) Half the time I have to reboot my system, because SafeDisc doesn't recognize the DVD being in the drive. It spins, then stops and hangs. It's even told me that my OS isn't high enough, and I need to upgrade to Windows 98SE or 2000. I have XP installed. Some of that was the multi-language support, which can be clicked off, but the bottom line is, the copy protection makes the game sometimes unplayable without a reboot.
With the way today's games are, with the zero-day release always having a fatal bug (I believe intentionally) that requires a patch to be downloaded, there is no real need for this. Very few if any gamer systems aren't internet connected, so just make a simple verification check go out on the serial number, and let them play. No connection or a failure of that check, and no game.
It's one of the reasons I play MMOs so much, even though it is often solo. No copy protection to annoy me, no CD/DVD to keep track of, and less clutter in/on my desk.
Your observation is quite correct.
It is a combination of "keyboard courage" that comes with being effectively anonymous, and the fact that most humans will treat other humans poorly if they think they can get away with it.
Rules help make a society, even a virtual one. Without those rules, everyone is prey.
It just goes to show you that the old addage is still strong: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
"RIAA killed the radio star..."
Coming soon to a radio station near you! Oh, wait...
The problem with a Shadowrun MMO would probably be the same problem I had with the PnP version of the game. The darn hacking/decking part took WAY too long to do when it was incorporated into a mission.
A typical PnP campaign would have combat team in place, and then all the players would sit around and twiddle their thumbs while the guy with the cyberdeck would try to evade and defeat all IC. Unless the GM was kind, those rolls started to take their toll, and a half hour or more could go by before the decker was "in" and the combat team could proceed.
Deckers were one of the cool concepts for Shadowrun, but I don't see it flying well in a MMO setting. Either they would have to make it super simple in that you could either succeed or not succeed based on your basic ability, or the game bogs down while rolls are made and skill checks happen.
Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of Shadowrun. It's a great concept for a game system. They just never got the decking portion into a state where it wasn't "all or nothing" for success. And while a MMO can make some of it faster, if it isn't interactive, it would be a boring character class to play.
You can find a bunch of pretty decent demos over at http://www.fileplanet.com/ if you go over there and look. Sure, if you don't subscribe to it, they can take a while to download, but many are worth it.
Here's the problem with demos, imo. They are very polished little snippets of the game, and they don't reflect the reality of how good the actual gold version of the game will be. They are great to see how the basic mechanics of the game are in most cases, but they won't tell you if the game is buggy as hell.
I have yet to play a demo that crashed, or had more than a minor annoyance associated to playing them. Heck, I played the HellGate:London demo, and it ran flawlessly. I got into the closed beta, and it was buggy as hell for the multi-player. When the gold version was released, even the single-player version had some problems that had to be patched to correct, and that patch took several days.
Besides, with many games today, the demos are only the opening part of the game, which makes sense. However, for games where you progress along various trees of abilities that you don't get into until you play the game for a bit, later gameplay is not seen.
I played some demo version of Dungeon Siege, and thought it rocked. Unfortunately, it was the whole game. By the time I finished the game, I realized how average the game actually was. Just about everyone else that I know that played DS found the same thing. Awesome in the beginning, monotonous in the end.
So, demos only get you a glimpse, and a very polished one at that. Gold versions are probably released with deliberate bugs to help break the "zero-day" pirate scene. Release a game with a crippling bug that occurs about 1/2-2hrs into gameplay, and only a patch can fix it, and viola: pretty darn good copy protection. At the very least, it slows down the pirates, who have to then break the patch.
Reading the actual article FTW!
It came packaged with every copy of Windows XP (and Server 2003) that M$ has sold.
Using the terms "nerf bat" and "ED" in the same sentence... It's Viagra/Cialis/Levitra time!
Well, for the most part, that monthly fee really isn't that much, compared to other entertainment options.
For the base MMO game, you will usualy pay about $45. You get the first month included in that price. Now, for the same price, you can by a FPS, or a RPG, etc, and get usually a month's worth (on average) gameplay for your $45. Then you are going out and paying anoher $45 for the next game, or breaking into multi-player games with little to no enforcement.
With the MMO, you get more content, and you pay about $15/month after your initial month, for it. The games are much more massive than a regular one, and you get usually many months/years of gameplay for your investment. The expansions come out frequently enough to keep most people happy. And there is usually enough rules/decency policies to keep the games from devolving down to a childish level. (Though the more PvP there is, the more childish people act.)
Now lets look at what else that $15 could get you.
A dinner for yourself at a decent resturant, if you have no alcoholic beverages or desert. Don't bring a date. Or a dinner date at McDonalds. Whohoo! You da MAN with the ladies, now!
A movie with popcorn and a drink. For yourself. Bring a date and double that up! Or you can catch a matinee and no eat/drink, and get in for that $15.
3-4 DVD rentals at Blockbuster or some other chain, unless you go the mail route.
I could go on, but really. If $15 is going to break your budget, you probably shouldn't be spending ANY money on games. And if it's going to make you whine, then you are a little too much of a tight-wad.
My father is in his 80s, and at first he thought it was nuts that I spent that kind of money a month for a game. And then he realized just how much time I could (and often did) spend in game, and how few other games I was buying every year. I went from buying 8+ games a year to 2-3, which included expansions to the MMO I was playing at the time. I got my wife playing, and now we have one more thing to do together.
Lord knows I get a good 40+hrs a month in my current MMO for that $15, and I find that a great deal.
I've played a lot of MMOs over the years, and it really depends on the game as to how much value there is in playing a female toon versus playing a male one.
In EQ1, you could outfit a whole party with good equipment by playing a single female toon. I have friends that did just that in the early days. One female cleric got the whole party very nice (for the time) equipment to get them going, just by standing around and acting clueless.
In games with much less mature players (WoW comes to mind awfully fast for some reason...) the amount of weird treatment towards female toons is higher. I haven't noticed it being nearly as much in EQ2 as it was in EQ1 or WoW. There aren't too many people that start throwing equipment at female toons anymore, and most people know that there is a large percentage chance that a female toon is being played by a guy.
I've played a few female toons, but it depends on the MMO. CoH/V, during the beta, it was fun to play a female toon, as the character creation alone took twice as long. (lol) I did the same in WoW beta for a bit, and had a great laugh at how much "bounce" the female night elf had when walking backwards. That got fixed before release, and I was one of the ones that reported it as a little too over the top.
The Asian MMOs are really bad, though. They love to give the female toons really provactive clothing. Remember the dark elves in Lineage II? They all started in a leather harness that only covered the nips and the pubic area. I remember being in the beta, and 85% of players that created a dark elf made a female one. You know it was all guys doing it. If it's an Asian-based MMO, it's pretty much a given that you will see a lot of exposed thighs and breasts. Even Guild Wars female toons show a lot of skin.
It's all about the titilation. When Anarchy Online when it first came out, you couldn't go anywhere without having someone having a female toon kneel in front of you and shake it's ass in the hopes of a tip or equipment.
With voice chat via Ventrillo or TeamSpeak being used by most guilds these days, there isn't a lot of "ZOMG, it's a GIRL playing!" going on. Maybe some pick-up groups see it, but usually not. And if more games do like DDO did and include a built-in group voice chat, you will see that phenomenom pretty much disappear. You can't really hide your voice, and you quickly forget that the toon is female while the player is male, or vice versa.
Still, this is China we are talking about. It's not exactly a hotbed of tolerance.
That was the "We Drank the Brad McQuid Koo-Aid" bunch. Sigil and their early fans were holding out for V:SoH to be the holy grail of anti-WoWness, and to destroy WoW. Well, they got part of what they asked for. A game that sucked ass from start to finish. Blizzard kicked butt from start to almost end-game, and then it bogged down.
The only real knock I have on Blizzard is how damn long it takes them to get expansions out for WoW. I cancelled my account after 9 months, due to boredom. I know they deliver quality work, but their expansion rate is horrible.
They did when I played. Though at this point, probably half their players get it from FilePlanet.
I think Blizzard got a cut from all FilePlanet subscriptions that happened 3+ months after WoW launched.
I believe the WoW patcher uses a bittorrent model, as well.
Considering there are something like 2 million plus users in the U.S. alone, that would add up to a lot of traffic each patchday!
conceal it, and
leave the store without paying for it Actually, in some states, the person does not have to leave the store without paying for it.
I know that in Maryland, the act of concealing the merchandise, such as putting it inside your clothes, is considered enough to arrest for shoplifting.
Allowing a person who has already concealed merchandise to leave the store means that they have a high probability of escaping with said merchandise. Being able to detain or arrest said persons before leaving the store means the merchandise doesn't become a corporate loss.
The grocery company I worked for had it's own security force that were all liscensed police officers in the states they were in. They routinely arrested individuals while they were still in the stores, and turned them over to local police for processing. They never had to bother with a foot chase, and it was very rare to have a physical confrontation.
Auto Assault was never going to be a huge hit. I just couldn't see myself playing it, and I beta a lot of MMOs. This game couldn't generate any interest for me.
Part of that was PlayNC being at the controls. I really liked CoH/CoV initially. The character generation is STILL the best ever, and just about everyone lost an hour or more on their first character design. But all of their games tend to devolve into a redundancy that hurts them in the long run. You can only do so many missions in CoH/CoV before they all look the same, feel the same, and drive you insane. Dungeon Runners is a joke, with graphics that are ancient, and gameplay that is too repetitive. Lineage II is a gold-farmer's dream location, which means it sucks for the rest of folks. None of their games are managed well, and don't develop well over time.
Much of Blizzard's success has to do with timing. The MMO market was simply waiting for a game that both the casual and psuedo-hardcore gamer could play, without being TOO repetitive. It has PvP for those that wish to do it full-time, and those that wish to do it part-time. The competition at launch time just wasn't there.
Most folks had burnt out on the original EQ, and EQ2 was being released, so there was a big exodus at this timeframe. Everquest2 was launched 2 weeks earlier that WoW, if memory servers me right, but was filled with things to make the game harder than it needed to me. DAoC had the problems you documented. CoH/CoV ran into a redundancy problem that started too early in the game to keep people's interest for long. Other, smaller MMOs just filled a niche player base.
So there was this vacumn dying for a really good game that could appeal to just about everyone, and Blizzard didn't just wander it, they overwhelmed it.
Blizzard now has better competition for players, even if most of the recent MMOs have been poorly attended. Yes, I'm talking to you, Vanguard and LotR:O. And soon, we'll be adding Tabula Rasa to the list of poorly attended MMOs.
EVE has really hit the spot for folks that like PvP, but to me the learning curve and the need for a good friend-base is a real limiting factor. Unless I knew a group of folks that played and were looking for me to join, I wouldn't go there. It's not for soloing or cutting your teeth without friends. It just sounds too daunting to take on by yourself without knowing folks. Unless you want to join BoB, that is.
EQ2 has been given many a facelift, and I personally feel that unless you are looking for PvP, it is the best MMO going. The playerbase tends to be a little more mature than the typical WoW crowd, and no raid requires more than 24 persons max, and many are 12 person raids. If you played it at launch and were disgusted, take a look at it now. I've had many WoW fanatics burn out, and come try EQ2 with those of us that are playing. Only one has not stayed with EQ2, and he left due to not having enough RAM to run EQ2 and Skype at the same time. Most of them have been simply stunned at how different a game it is.
I keep waiting for some other game to hit me like EQ originally did, or like WoW did, but EQ2 is the closest I've come to, and that is only after coming back to it years later. I had hopes for LotR:O, but a beta stint fixed that for me. Same with Vanguard, as I knew after 2 days that it was going to suck.
Nobody is going to knock off WoW for a long time, but maybe some game will eventually shake their tree. Blizzard needs to release more than 1 expansion every 2 years to keep the attention of players. Their working towards their second expansion, while SoE is working on the 4th for EQ2. An expansion before that first year was done would have probably kept the wife and I playing for another 6 months at least, but instead we cancelled our accounts and found other games to play.
Only those people under the age of 14 might not have figured out that the game magazines are all propped up fronts for the game companies. And it isn't just the magazines. Many of the on-line sites are just as guilty of sucking the tail-pipes of the game publishers.
Every month a game magazine manages to come up with some "hot new title". Yet how many games each year are actually good? Yeah, I thought the same thing.
For a while there I was receiving a copy of Computer Game World for unknown reasons. (I didn't subscribe to it, and never paid for it.) Each edition promptly tried to blow smoke up my ass about how (title x) was going to be the greatest game ever.
Sadly, this works, especially with spoiled kids that have clueless parents. "Look, Mom! This game was given UBER scores by this game magazine. Everyone will have it! I NEED it!" And the darn parent will buy it, because it was reviewed as worthy.
The game companies count on people being lemmings. And all to many game players fall into that category. Regardless of how bad a game is, if someone tells the gamer it's a hot title, they will buy it, and then talk it up because they don't want to look stupid.
Anarchy Online already did the more FPS version of a MMO.
Tabula Rising isn't groundbreaking. It's another stab with small variations of games that have already been done. Whether or not it gets done better remains to be seen.
You need to get over it, already. No, seriously.
/. article that you could possibly mention a MMO as part of:
Folks that are still whining about SW:G NGE change, or UO's light/dark shard change, are just living in a dream past. Both games sucked, were losing subscribers, and needed to do something.
Now, stop, before you start blaming SOE for V:SoH's woes. It seems you can count on 3 things on any
SW:G's NGE change
UO's light/dark change
EVE Online is the greatest MMO ever, but the players all bitch about BoB and the devs playing.
There are still plenty of folks playing EQ1, EQ2, and other SOE games. Heck, you couldn't give me a free copy and pay for my subscription to WoW, and get me to play. Same with EVE.