Yeah except with Guild Wars there are only 2 paid for updates at probably $20 each as opposed to 12 updates at $15.99 each, it's just a little cheaper that way.
Personally I still like EVE-Online's pricing model. You pay your monthly subscription fee and they just give you the expansions instead of having to pay for them.
But Blizzard isn't really providing extra value for the sub, they are merely finishing features that they promised would be in the game on startup and fixing bugs/balancing classes that also should have been fixed before the game came out.
The guildwars model works just as good as the subscription model, but instead of having to wait for the money to roll in with subscriptions they get it all up front when people buy the game initially, and many will because there is no monthly fee, so they get higher initial income.
As far as continued support I see it being as good as or better than most MMO's, it has been easily better than WoW's so far. And the game really can't lose players, sure they may stop playing but it's not like they are losing subs when they do it.
If the population drops below a certain point all they have to do is reduce the amount of hardware that they have. Most MMO companies will not buy the hardware they use, it is better for them to lease it so they can add or subtract it as needed.
As long as they release expansions at thier estimated 2 per year rate and they are priced reasonably enough for the players to pick them up...then they can maintain a profit until that stops.
Why do you automatically assume that would be the case when it is shown that it is not.
Besides, I'm not saying they need to outlaw guns completely, just have more stringent control guidelines for them than are currently in place. Mainly this will help control the DISTRIBUTION of firearms, which is where I believe the main problem lies.
If you exert greaty control over who can sell guns you automatically control who can buy guns, which reduces the number of guns that get into the hands of criminals/idiots.
Sorry, I wouldn't know about that problem, as we generally don't have to worry about someone invading our homes up here. And the likelyhood of them having guns if they do decide to invade my home is pretty slim, so a sharp kitchen knife or a baseball bat is adequate to fend them off.
See the fact that the police have guns and the criminals don't is a major deterrent to them trying to pull that kinda crap in the first place.
yes there are several differences.
1. We can't buy handguns of any kind and are limited in the kinds of rifles and shotguns that we can aquire. (clip size is severely limited and no semi or fully auto weapons of any kind)
2. You must have the fire-arm registered and have a hunting license to use the gun.
3. You must take a series of safety courses in order to get your lisence.
4. You can not store a loaded gun. Guns must locked away properly and seperately from ammo.
5. You cannot carry a firearm of any kind on your person. It must be stored unloaded while in transit.
6. You can't buy guns at fucking corner stores and quickie marts. Only at specific lisenced locations.
sorry but that is a load of BS, I live in Canada and I never have to worry about being shot by a criminal because 99.99% of the time they are not going to have a gun. And the 0.01% chance that they DO have a gun, it came from your fucking country anyways.
That makes YOUR gun problem OUR gun problem, which is why most Canadians get so pissed off about your gun-happy culture.
I would suggest reading this site for an alternate theory to the universe, there is a lot of material but after reading through the majority I'd place more trust in this theory than the current gravity-based one.
Re:Broadcast TV Cares Not For Quality
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 1
Personally I doubt that ad revenue will ever entirely dissappear, I see it becoming less important though.
What I believe will happen is the shows will get produced and aired like normal on the networks, with advertising included and will then go into syndication but will also be available for download as well, and eventually available on dvd, or something similar.
My windows XP box experiences uptimes of 6-8 months at a time without reboots if I so choose. I only reboot the machine when updating drivers or when an update requires it.
Total boot time from powered off to loading up a game is less than 30 seconds.
I currently run my system without any antivirus software at all and ms antispyware and I haven't had any viruses on my system as of yet, and have been spyware free for 2 years.
Also as some have mentioned, the windows is a one time cost. And don't give my the excuse that you need to keep buying the windows updates to keep playing games, that's BS and you know it. Even using a conservative estimate of 5 years between OS updates that's $130/5 years = $26 a year, whipty freakin do.
If you really want to break it down with cedega @ $49.95 per year x 5 years that's $249.75 after 5 years. WOW what a savings.
Half of the problem with all these "new and exciting" types of games is that while the concept sounds cool, will the gameplay actually be any good.
Unfortunately there is no way to find out but by being the first to try it. Also, if a new game genre is successfully created it will just be copied ad infinium until everyone is completely sick of it again in no time.
Personally, I'm not really picky about a game's genre per say, so much as how effectively the developers are able to tell the story they have created, whether it's a FPS, 3rd person, rts or whatever type of game.
I have no issues with the server that I'm on, which is Mannoroth, one of the busiest PVP server and one of the most highly populated WoW servers out there. I have never had need or desire to request a character transfer, I was just pointing out the incorrect assumption by the parent that it was possible to transfer your character to another server on a whim, which it is not.
As for the whole server overpopulation issues, it would have been easily avoided had blizzard released the server names before release day, then they could have avoided the whole "well my friends already started characters on this server so I will too" syndrome.
My main problem with Blizzard (besides their shitty CS and their virtually non-existant presence on their own message boards) is how it seems that they have not learned anything from previous MMO's that have come out. They are needlessly making the same mistakes that other, earlier MMO's have made in the past. It's like they've been locked away in a cellar while the rest of the MMO world has been advancing.
The deformable landscapes you speak of have more to do with physics than they do graphics, and with the introduction of the PPU's we could start to see this become more and more prevalent.
Also improving A.I. is another big challenge in creating new gameplay in new games coming out, and it is not an easy challenge to overcome.
Graphics will eventually plateau in I think 2 or 3 more generations of upgrades, and then it will be some time before the abilities are used to there fullest. By that time I believe physics will play an integral part in future games and world-interactivity.
I still firmly believe that graphics are important in current and future games but they are only 1 part of the overall equation.
A bit worse....ummmm....the heads on some of the models are freaking triangles.
I'm sorry but if you think this game passes as a decent fps game I feel sorry for you. The wall textures are flat and low rez, the gun models are horrid, and there don't seem to be any distiguishing features that differentiate the game from being a q1/ut clone.
And why use the q1 engine when the Id has also released the source code for the q2 engine to the general public (I'm 99% certain they have but could be wrong)
This wasn't a discussion about colour fidelity, which is arguably less important when it comes to games anyways. It was about response time and ghosting of the display when playing games on a crt. And instead of looking at last-gen 16ms panels you should be looking at the current-gen 8 ms panels. There are many decent panels out that are running fine at 8 bits per channel and not reducing it to 6 bits per channel. I have been shopping around for an LCD for over 6 months now specifically for gaming and in my personal experience I find that many of the newer LCD's offer better colour quality than most standard crt's do. I'm more than willing to sacrifice a little colour fidelity if it means I can get great performance in gaming.
erm....console controls are NOT good for fps games. Give me my mouse and keyboard control AND accuracy in an fps game on a console and I would wipe the floor with gamepad users without a doubt.
PSSSTTT....new generation LCD's play games just fine without any ghosting.
FFS quit grasping on to that old and no longer accurate aspect of LCD's.
As for Consoles killing PC Gaming....erm...as soon as they bring out a controller that allows the same accuracy of control that I get with a mouse/keyboard combo, then it might have a chance.
Well seeing as I've had 0 driver problems since I first got my 8500 I'd say they are working pretty good. It's not like Nvidia drivers are all that pristine anyways. I've seen issues with both manufacturer's cards and 9 times out of 10 it's not the drivers that are the cause but the user or rarely the hardware.
Actually I believe Sci-Fi was the one who bank-rolled the series to begin with, SkyOne helped finance the first season and got exclusive first rights to that season but I'd imagine Sci-Fi re-negotiated when the series ratings went through the roof.
Here's hoping that raven software gets Quake 4 done so they can get to work on Soldier of Fortune 3. I can only imagine what they could do with per-pixel hit detection and their damage model.
Ok, how about Test Drive: Unlimited, where they mapped 500 sq km of a hawaiian island with gps and all players in the game are in a persitant world with up to 100 other players per zone, they can create their own races easily and you can zoom all the way out and see the entire island being rendered in one shot in photo-realistic resolution. I'd say that's something that was definitely not possible on previous gen consoles.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah except with Guild Wars there are only 2 paid for updates at probably $20 each as opposed to 12 updates at $15.99 each, it's just a little cheaper that way. Personally I still like EVE-Online's pricing model. You pay your monthly subscription fee and they just give you the expansions instead of having to pay for them.
But Blizzard isn't really providing extra value for the sub, they are merely finishing features that they promised would be in the game on startup and fixing bugs/balancing classes that also should have been fixed before the game came out.
The guildwars model works just as good as the subscription model, but instead of having to wait for the money to roll in with subscriptions they get it all up front when people buy the game initially, and many will because there is no monthly fee, so they get higher initial income.
As far as continued support I see it being as good as or better than most MMO's, it has been easily better than WoW's so far. And the game really can't lose players, sure they may stop playing but it's not like they are losing subs when they do it.
If the population drops below a certain point all they have to do is reduce the amount of hardware that they have. Most MMO companies will not buy the hardware they use, it is better for them to lease it so they can add or subtract it as needed.
As long as they release expansions at thier estimated 2 per year rate and they are priced reasonably enough for the players to pick them up...then they can maintain a profit until that stops.
Why do you automatically assume that would be the case when it is shown that it is not.
Besides, I'm not saying they need to outlaw guns completely, just have more stringent control guidelines for them than are currently in place. Mainly this will help control the DISTRIBUTION of firearms, which is where I believe the main problem lies.
If you exert greaty control over who can sell guns you automatically control who can buy guns, which reduces the number of guns that get into the hands of criminals/idiots.
Sorry, I wouldn't know about that problem, as we generally don't have to worry about someone invading our homes up here. And the likelyhood of them having guns if they do decide to invade my home is pretty slim, so a sharp kitchen knife or a baseball bat is adequate to fend them off.
See the fact that the police have guns and the criminals don't is a major deterrent to them trying to pull that kinda crap in the first place.
Or more accurately, the NRA won't compromise because the gun companys throw millions of dollars at politicians to protect their profits.
yes there are several differences. 1. We can't buy handguns of any kind and are limited in the kinds of rifles and shotguns that we can aquire. (clip size is severely limited and no semi or fully auto weapons of any kind) 2. You must have the fire-arm registered and have a hunting license to use the gun. 3. You must take a series of safety courses in order to get your lisence. 4. You can not store a loaded gun. Guns must locked away properly and seperately from ammo. 5. You cannot carry a firearm of any kind on your person. It must be stored unloaded while in transit. 6. You can't buy guns at fucking corner stores and quickie marts. Only at specific lisenced locations.
sorry but that is a load of BS, I live in Canada and I never have to worry about being shot by a criminal because 99.99% of the time they are not going to have a gun. And the 0.01% chance that they DO have a gun, it came from your fucking country anyways.
That makes YOUR gun problem OUR gun problem, which is why most Canadians get so pissed off about your gun-happy culture.
I would suggest reading this site for an alternate theory to the universe, there is a lot of material but after reading through the majority I'd place more trust in this theory than the current gravity-based one.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/
And that would be bad why?
Personally I doubt that ad revenue will ever entirely dissappear, I see it becoming less important though. What I believe will happen is the shows will get produced and aired like normal on the networks, with advertising included and will then go into syndication but will also be available for download as well, and eventually available on dvd, or something similar.
My windows XP box experiences uptimes of 6-8 months at a time without reboots if I so choose. I only reboot the machine when updating drivers or when an update requires it.
Total boot time from powered off to loading up a game is less than 30 seconds.
Next BS fact please!!.
What antivirus/spyware crap do I have to buy.
I currently run my system without any antivirus software at all and ms antispyware and I haven't had any viruses on my system as of yet, and have been spyware free for 2 years.
Also as some have mentioned, the windows is a one time cost. And don't give my the excuse that you need to keep buying the windows updates to keep playing games, that's BS and you know it. Even using a conservative estimate of 5 years between OS updates that's $130/5 years = $26 a year, whipty freakin do.
If you really want to break it down with cedega @ $49.95 per year x 5 years that's $249.75 after 5 years. WOW what a savings.
Half of the problem with all these "new and exciting" types of games is that while the concept sounds cool, will the gameplay actually be any good.
Unfortunately there is no way to find out but by being the first to try it. Also, if a new game genre is successfully created it will just be copied ad infinium until everyone is completely sick of it again in no time.
Personally, I'm not really picky about a game's genre per say, so much as how effectively the developers are able to tell the story they have created, whether it's a FPS, 3rd person, rts or whatever type of game.
I have no issues with the server that I'm on, which is Mannoroth, one of the busiest PVP server and one of the most highly populated WoW servers out there. I have never had need or desire to request a character transfer, I was just pointing out the incorrect assumption by the parent that it was possible to transfer your character to another server on a whim, which it is not. As for the whole server overpopulation issues, it would have been easily avoided had blizzard released the server names before release day, then they could have avoided the whole "well my friends already started characters on this server so I will too" syndrome. My main problem with Blizzard (besides their shitty CS and their virtually non-existant presence on their own message boards) is how it seems that they have not learned anything from previous MMO's that have come out. They are needlessly making the same mistakes that other, earlier MMO's have made in the past. It's like they've been locked away in a cellar while the rest of the MMO world has been advancing.
As someone already stated....you CANNOT transfer characters to another server at this time. So no, he doesn't have that option.
The deformable landscapes you speak of have more to do with physics than they do graphics, and with the introduction of the PPU's we could start to see this become more and more prevalent. Also improving A.I. is another big challenge in creating new gameplay in new games coming out, and it is not an easy challenge to overcome. Graphics will eventually plateau in I think 2 or 3 more generations of upgrades, and then it will be some time before the abilities are used to there fullest. By that time I believe physics will play an integral part in future games and world-interactivity. I still firmly believe that graphics are important in current and future games but they are only 1 part of the overall equation.
A bit worse....ummmm....the heads on some of the models are freaking triangles. I'm sorry but if you think this game passes as a decent fps game I feel sorry for you. The wall textures are flat and low rez, the gun models are horrid, and there don't seem to be any distiguishing features that differentiate the game from being a q1/ut clone. And why use the q1 engine when the Id has also released the source code for the q2 engine to the general public (I'm 99% certain they have but could be wrong)
This wasn't a discussion about colour fidelity, which is arguably less important when it comes to games anyways. It was about response time and ghosting of the display when playing games on a crt. And instead of looking at last-gen 16ms panels you should be looking at the current-gen 8 ms panels. There are many decent panels out that are running fine at 8 bits per channel and not reducing it to 6 bits per channel. I have been shopping around for an LCD for over 6 months now specifically for gaming and in my personal experience I find that many of the newer LCD's offer better colour quality than most standard crt's do. I'm more than willing to sacrifice a little colour fidelity if it means I can get great performance in gaming.
erm....console controls are NOT good for fps games. Give me my mouse and keyboard control AND accuracy in an fps game on a console and I would wipe the floor with gamepad users without a doubt.
PSSSTTT....new generation LCD's play games just fine without any ghosting.
FFS quit grasping on to that old and no longer accurate aspect of LCD's.
As for Consoles killing PC Gaming....erm...as soon as they bring out a controller that allows the same accuracy of control that I get with a mouse/keyboard combo, then it might have a chance.
Well seeing as I've had 0 driver problems since I first got my 8500 I'd say they are working pretty good. It's not like Nvidia drivers are all that pristine anyways. I've seen issues with both manufacturer's cards and 9 times out of 10 it's not the drivers that are the cause but the user or rarely the hardware.
Actually I believe Sci-Fi was the one who bank-rolled the series to begin with, SkyOne helped finance the first season and got exclusive first rights to that season but I'd imagine Sci-Fi re-negotiated when the series ratings went through the roof.
It doesn't burn dvd's it READS burned DVD's
Here's hoping that raven software gets Quake 4 done so they can get to work on Soldier of Fortune 3. I can only imagine what they could do with per-pixel hit detection and their damage model.
Ok, how about Test Drive: Unlimited, where they mapped 500 sq km of a hawaiian island with gps and all players in the game are in a persitant world with up to 100 other players per zone, they can create their own races easily and you can zoom all the way out and see the entire island being rendered in one shot in photo-realistic resolution. I'd say that's something that was definitely not possible on previous gen consoles.