I like that they brought up Advanced Wars. The beauty of that game is that it looks great on the small screen and does it using techniques familiar to us from the SNES days, just with higher bit depths. But the core gameplay is there, the graphics look great, and the game accomplishes exactly what it set out to do and looks good doing it. I can just imagine some designer coming into the sequel and getting all gaga over making it 3D. Nope, it ain't a 3D game, never was and never should be. There's many good 3D combat games that could be made but they wouldn't be Advanced Wars. If that's the game you want to make, go make it and leave AV alone.
Fun Fact: They already did that. If I recall correctly the Battalion Wars series is an offshoot of Advance Wars, in 3D.
Actually, a major reason why PC gaming struggles is because PC game developers forget that just because Nvidia released a freaking sweet new piece of hardware doesn't mean more than 10% of the market has the old one.
Most people don't upgrade their PC even after it's long obsolete. After a person buys a game or two that doesn't run, they give up. They look at the black box of technology, hear from their tech savvy friends something about $600 to upgrade their computer, say "screw that" and buy a console instead.
One might argue that it is, in fact, a clever ruse. We pirate and make public our treacherous ways to lure what we see as evil into moving ever further down the road of damnation. Eventually, the measures they put in place will be so draconian that the average joe will be sorely afflicted. We will no longer be a mere handful of misguided freedom fighters, but the core of a resounding crash of thunder.
Alternatively, the company takes over the world and all is for naught, but it's a neat idea.
There are various negative effects associated with the buying of gold. As I only play WoW I can't speak for other games, just from what I know.
Years back I had a similar opinion to that of dave562 below. At the time gold sellers actively earned the gold they sold through playing the game like anyone else. I didn't see any issue with allowing players to save themselves time and buy gold.
The primary reason I am against gold selling now is the nature in which the gold is acquired. Gold farming as it once was is impossible due to the vigilance of Blizzard; the ubiquitous gold farmer of the old days is long since gone. Today gold farmers get their gold by spreading trojans and hijacking accounts, stripping them of everything for their own profit.
In effect, almost all gold on the market is acquired through someone else's misery. As a conscientious consumer that's not something I can support.
Secondly, it does have a significant effect on the game economy. Gold buying/selling contributes to, though is not the sole cause of, in-game inflation.
Under normal circumstances inflation is controlled by the basic behavioral patterns of the players combined with a few gold sinks. The majority of players don't actively seek to earn vast quantities of gold unless they have a goal that requires doing so. As a result Blizzard is normally able to keep inflation in check via a couple choice gold sinks even with the existence of multiple methods for players to increase their money hoard.
Gold selling upsets the balance significantly. Because Blizzard is nice and doesn't say "tough luck" to people that get hacked, gold sellers effectively force Blizzard to add money into the economy that normally wouldn't be there. This naturally causes inflation as the gold enters circulation.
There are other minor issues as well, but those are the two major ones. Generally speaking I find the practice silly as the best gear in the game can not be bought with gold, and anything worth buying with gold can be obtained just by playing the game for fun.
You're telling someone their experience is wrong. Simply put, that's silly.
If your experience is different that's a fair point to make. If you feel certain complaints are unrepresentative that's a fair point to make. Rather than making fair points, you categorically refused to add anything of worth to the conversation.
From other anecdotes in the thread WAR sounds like a good enough game that you shouldn't need to resort to such a pithy set of retorts for its defense.
The first issue in your argument is WarCraft III. For the expert RTS players it certainly was flawed and imperfect. However, the game had reach far beyond veterans of the genre. Overall the game increased the brand's worth.
The second is Warhammer itself. Warhammer might be well known amongst avid gamers, but the moment you step outside that market it's an unknown.
That's ultimately the crux of the matter. WoW launched on the heels of one of the most successful RTSs in the history of the genre, from a company with one of the most if not the most solid reputations in the business at a time when the competition was lethargic. By no stretch of the imagination is Warhammer releasing in the same conditions.
I'm not saying that Warhammer won't be successful, or that it won't potentially outdo WoW. What I am saying is that neither scenario is as assured as you seem to think it is.
You are correct that there is no proof that she did this to hide government business. That would be leaping to conclusions.
But what we have is evidence that she used non-government e-mails to conduct government business. We also know that doing so is a known loophole by which politicians skirt the laws requiring transparency.
It's possible, as you note, that no laws were actually circumvented and that she had no intent to hide government business. The problem is it's difficult to think of another reason for a governor to use a non-government email address for official business.
I appreciate your viewpoint and actually share it. Generally speaking I despise the debate because it is emotionally charged on both sides. However, I don't let that stop me from arguing logically and pointing out when others are not.
I believe I was quite correct in calling that post out as an argument from ignorance. The implication of the sentence "Show me evolution from the ground up to prove that life is not divine" is quite clear. It obviously points to a lack of evidence (the scientist's inability to show evolution from the ground up) as proof for another view (that life is divine).
The problem is that journalistic rigor and integrity are largely dead.
In the age of the internet and instantaneous communication you have a variety of news sources competing to get the word out first. The speed with which an article hits the internet/24 hour news network is so important that the level of fact checking and common sense appraisal has dropped considerably. It doesn't matter whether the article is wrong, you need those page views/advertising dollars before the other web site/network can get them. You can always issue an apology/corrective statement later, or fire an anchor.
Some might argue that this is coupled with a loss of critical evaluation of said news sources by the general populace, but that's something of a moot point. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not people stop and consider the veracity of their news source because the next five they check will say exactly the same thing.
As a result people don't know what to believe. They either float about in confusion or latch on to the only tangible "truth" available. Specifically, whatever it is the media is telling them is true.
It doesn't matter that later the real truth comes out because it isn't as interesting and fewer people pay attention to it. As a result, this person could expect to suffer at the hands of his miscommunication for years. Even after stepping down it will take him a long time to be able to rebuild his reputation.
It's a shame, but that's the kind of reactive, uncontemplative world we live in.
It's not so much lost charm as it is a snowball effect.
For one reason or another a few people stop playing in the face of the oncoming expansion. This puts a strain on grouping/raiding for the players who remain, some of whom will then stop playing. Rinse and repeat.
This started three or so months ago, leaving us where we are now (there's only one guild still raiding 25 mans on my server/faction).
I think it's probably an emergent property of the nature of the game.
WoW has three advantages that make it uniquely poised to flood slashdot with news. 1) It's monstrously huge. 2) It's online. 3) It's social.
For the first point, it's fairly obvious that having a large player base inherently means you have a lot of people interested in news about the game.
Second, we can assume that everyone who plays the game has a basic modicum of internet skills. All WoW players are potential readers, while the same can not be said of everyone who plays Mario Galaxy.
Third, the social nature of the game further pushes the demographic toward sites such as Slashdot. The people who play WoW don't just want to read about it, they want to talk about it even if it's with people who don't play WoW.
The only other game bearing those three attributes is Spore. Incidentally, the only other game with as much Slashdot coverage is also Spore.
You may have been trying to shed light, but you only showed your own colored view of the situation.
Firstly, "never" is a very bad word to use unless you are absolutely sure of the impossibility of something. This is especially true as the second sentence of your second paragraph refutes your use of the word in the first paragraph. That said, we can conclude that there are times where month rate games are a good deal and it's only a matter of arguing how often and under what circumstances they are.
Secondly, "saving money" and "good deal" are relative to the individual gamer's habits. Gamers who consistently buy $60 games every month could easily save money, while gamers who dredge through bargain bins and ebay for deals could possibly lose money. There's more nuance than the "nothing BUT wow" crowd.
In conclusion there's no issue in pointing out the the cost of WoW is, in most cases, non-trivial. There is issue, however, in making a mountain out of a molehill.
You have a good point, but it's muddled in your stereotyping and misinformation. You're also missing the point.
The good point is that a cruise has worth as it potentially offers you opportunities WoW does not.
Your problem is that you overlook that the same is true of WoW. What the cruise and WoW offer are separate and address different needs. The comparison used in the GP highlights that.
WoW is very economical entertainment, and very convenient. It fills the same niche as movies, books and television. For four years worth of entertainment $800 is extremely cheap. It looks a lot bigger because we're summing up the total costs over years.
Blizzard isn't under new management (all literature on the subject shows Blizzard is maintaining similar or greater autonomy in relation to their parent company), and they certainly aren't being rushed (the Beta for WotLK hit a lot sooner than the BC beta, proportional to the closer release date).
The implication of your parenthetical statement seems to be that Diablo was groundbreaking but doesn't count as it was developed by Blizzard North. That is misleading.
Diablo wasn't particularly groundbreaking, plenty of other Dungeon crawlers existed prior. Like every other Blizzard game Diablo was simply better.
I'm confused about the second implication. Blizzard North was no more separate from Blizzard than Will Wright is from EA.
Perhaps I simply read into your statements, but I felt clarification was necessary.
It's only propaganda if it's intentionally hiding/twisting the truth. So long as an adequate explanation of the single star is included (i.e. a description of the DRM and why it's a problem for the reviewer) I don't believe it falls under that category.
You might argue that the lopsided nature of the "flash mob" twists truth by weighting the overall rating in an abnormal manner. That's a tougher, more interesting argument.
At the same time, there's a limit to how far you can get in raiding with a limited schedule, depending on other guild factors.
If you have 10-25 skilled people who can always be prepared to raid the same 10 hours each week then you can theoretically progress. It will be slower than other guilds, but it will happen.
The problem is that guilds which the base assertion describes are very rare. Most guilds, even hardcore ones, require a number of additional people as backup for absentees and also must recruit new players to replace old ones who stop playing. This acts as a counter to progression, slowing and even reversing it in certain conditions.
It's complicated by many other factors, but in summary the various, natural stresses a guild experiences place a limit on how far it may progress without extending its hours of raiding. You're still technically be raiding, but the effect will be similar to playing Guitar Hero on easy. There's a point where you've mastered that level and are tired of the game or wish to move up in difficulty.
I feel like a moron because I failed to come up with that explanation first. It's blindingly obvious, yet somehow it seems everyone's oblivious to it (including me).
Isn't there always someone who brags about getting their Amazon ordered copy of a game before the release date, or has that become a thing of the past?
While I'd like to see a new Eternal Darkness, if Too Human is as people say I'd like the developers to take a break, recenter themselves and then make a sequel.
If it were a stone, that would imply that it would be impossible for it to be warm. Some philosophies might therefore find it hard to blame the man for something he isn't capable of (i.e. no one goes around crucifying people for their inability to fly like Superman to work).
Because it is coal, it implies that their is the potential for it to be warm, and that therefore the person possessing the heart has neglected it. Thus, it's quite easy to pass judgement on him for having failed to fulfill his potential in this regard.
Now you could argue that some effort towards warming said heart might be worthwhile, but then you run into/. mob justice. It's easier to lynch someone than to fix them.
4/5ths of the country thinks he's screwed everything up. We can expect some portion of that group to have a more deeply seated belief, and some portion of that group to live in their parent's basement posting to Slashdot.
For the record, I blame Mr. Rogers for all the world's ills.
Slashdot Mirror
I like that they brought up Advanced Wars. The beauty of that game is that it looks great on the small screen and does it using techniques familiar to us from the SNES days, just with higher bit depths. But the core gameplay is there, the graphics look great, and the game accomplishes exactly what it set out to do and looks good doing it. I can just imagine some designer coming into the sequel and getting all gaga over making it 3D. Nope, it ain't a 3D game, never was and never should be. There's many good 3D combat games that could be made but they wouldn't be Advanced Wars. If that's the game you want to make, go make it and leave AV alone.
Fun Fact: They already did that. If I recall correctly the Battalion Wars series is an offshoot of Advance Wars, in 3D.
I never said any of those things. I simply pointed out "the point in learning a task if you can't do it anyway".
The fact that legislators don't do this is irresponsible, but that's another matter altogether.
If you're charged with passing laws relating to the task, one would expect you to be knowledgeable about it or at least informed.
Even if a referee is physically incapable of playing a football game they should be able to decide a play.
Actually, a major reason why PC gaming struggles is because PC game developers forget that just because Nvidia released a freaking sweet new piece of hardware doesn't mean more than 10% of the market has the old one.
Most people don't upgrade their PC even after it's long obsolete. After a person buys a game or two that doesn't run, they give up. They look at the black box of technology, hear from their tech savvy friends something about $600 to upgrade their computer, say "screw that" and buy a console instead.
One might argue that it is, in fact, a clever ruse. We pirate and make public our treacherous ways to lure what we see as evil into moving ever further down the road of damnation. Eventually, the measures they put in place will be so draconian that the average joe will be sorely afflicted. We will no longer be a mere handful of misguided freedom fighters, but the core of a resounding crash of thunder.
Alternatively, the company takes over the world and all is for naught, but it's a neat idea.
There are various negative effects associated with the buying of gold. As I only play WoW I can't speak for other games, just from what I know.
Years back I had a similar opinion to that of dave562 below. At the time gold sellers actively earned the gold they sold through playing the game like anyone else. I didn't see any issue with allowing players to save themselves time and buy gold.
The primary reason I am against gold selling now is the nature in which the gold is acquired. Gold farming as it once was is impossible due to the vigilance of Blizzard; the ubiquitous gold farmer of the old days is long since gone. Today gold farmers get their gold by spreading trojans and hijacking accounts, stripping them of everything for their own profit.
In effect, almost all gold on the market is acquired through someone else's misery. As a conscientious consumer that's not something I can support.
Secondly, it does have a significant effect on the game economy. Gold buying/selling contributes to, though is not the sole cause of, in-game inflation.
Under normal circumstances inflation is controlled by the basic behavioral patterns of the players combined with a few gold sinks. The majority of players don't actively seek to earn vast quantities of gold unless they have a goal that requires doing so. As a result Blizzard is normally able to keep inflation in check via a couple choice gold sinks even with the existence of multiple methods for players to increase their money hoard.
Gold selling upsets the balance significantly. Because Blizzard is nice and doesn't say "tough luck" to people that get hacked, gold sellers effectively force Blizzard to add money into the economy that normally wouldn't be there. This naturally causes inflation as the gold enters circulation.
There are other minor issues as well, but those are the two major ones. Generally speaking I find the practice silly as the best gear in the game can not be bought with gold, and anything worth buying with gold can be obtained just by playing the game for fun.
You're telling someone their experience is wrong. Simply put, that's silly.
If your experience is different that's a fair point to make. If you feel certain complaints are unrepresentative that's a fair point to make. Rather than making fair points, you categorically refused to add anything of worth to the conversation.
From other anecdotes in the thread WAR sounds like a good enough game that you shouldn't need to resort to such a pithy set of retorts for its defense.
I'm afraid I have to disagree.
The first issue in your argument is WarCraft III. For the expert RTS players it certainly was flawed and imperfect. However, the game had reach far beyond veterans of the genre. Overall the game increased the brand's worth.
The second is Warhammer itself. Warhammer might be well known amongst avid gamers, but the moment you step outside that market it's an unknown.
That's ultimately the crux of the matter. WoW launched on the heels of one of the most successful RTSs in the history of the genre, from a company with one of the most if not the most solid reputations in the business at a time when the competition was lethargic. By no stretch of the imagination is Warhammer releasing in the same conditions.
I'm not saying that Warhammer won't be successful, or that it won't potentially outdo WoW. What I am saying is that neither scenario is as assured as you seem to think it is.
You are correct that there is no proof that she did this to hide government business. That would be leaping to conclusions.
But what we have is evidence that she used non-government e-mails to conduct government business. We also know that doing so is a known loophole by which politicians skirt the laws requiring transparency.
It's possible, as you note, that no laws were actually circumvented and that she had no intent to hide government business. The problem is it's difficult to think of another reason for a governor to use a non-government email address for official business.
I appreciate your viewpoint and actually share it. Generally speaking I despise the debate because it is emotionally charged on both sides. However, I don't let that stop me from arguing logically and pointing out when others are not.
I believe I was quite correct in calling that post out as an argument from ignorance. The implication of the sentence "Show me evolution from the ground up to prove that life is not divine" is quite clear. It obviously points to a lack of evidence (the scientist's inability to show evolution from the ground up) as proof for another view (that life is divine).
The problem is that journalistic rigor and integrity are largely dead.
In the age of the internet and instantaneous communication you have a variety of news sources competing to get the word out first. The speed with which an article hits the internet/24 hour news network is so important that the level of fact checking and common sense appraisal has dropped considerably. It doesn't matter whether the article is wrong, you need those page views/advertising dollars before the other web site/network can get them. You can always issue an apology/corrective statement later, or fire an anchor.
Some might argue that this is coupled with a loss of critical evaluation of said news sources by the general populace, but that's something of a moot point. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not people stop and consider the veracity of their news source because the next five they check will say exactly the same thing.
As a result people don't know what to believe. They either float about in confusion or latch on to the only tangible "truth" available. Specifically, whatever it is the media is telling them is true.
It doesn't matter that later the real truth comes out because it isn't as interesting and fewer people pay attention to it. As a result, this person could expect to suffer at the hands of his miscommunication for years. Even after stepping down it will take him a long time to be able to rebuild his reputation.
It's a shame, but that's the kind of reactive, uncontemplative world we live in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
It's not so much lost charm as it is a snowball effect.
For one reason or another a few people stop playing in the face of the oncoming expansion. This puts a strain on grouping/raiding for the players who remain, some of whom will then stop playing. Rinse and repeat.
This started three or so months ago, leaving us where we are now (there's only one guild still raiding 25 mans on my server/faction).
I think it's probably an emergent property of the nature of the game.
WoW has three advantages that make it uniquely poised to flood slashdot with news. 1) It's monstrously huge. 2) It's online. 3) It's social.
For the first point, it's fairly obvious that having a large player base inherently means you have a lot of people interested in news about the game.
Second, we can assume that everyone who plays the game has a basic modicum of internet skills. All WoW players are potential readers, while the same can not be said of everyone who plays Mario Galaxy.
Third, the social nature of the game further pushes the demographic toward sites such as Slashdot. The people who play WoW don't just want to read about it, they want to talk about it even if it's with people who don't play WoW.
The only other game bearing those three attributes is Spore. Incidentally, the only other game with as much Slashdot coverage is also Spore.
You may have been trying to shed light, but you only showed your own colored view of the situation.
Firstly, "never" is a very bad word to use unless you are absolutely sure of the impossibility of something. This is especially true as the second sentence of your second paragraph refutes your use of the word in the first paragraph. That said, we can conclude that there are times where month rate games are a good deal and it's only a matter of arguing how often and under what circumstances they are.
Secondly, "saving money" and "good deal" are relative to the individual gamer's habits. Gamers who consistently buy $60 games every month could easily save money, while gamers who dredge through bargain bins and ebay for deals could possibly lose money. There's more nuance than the "nothing BUT wow" crowd.
In conclusion there's no issue in pointing out the the cost of WoW is, in most cases, non-trivial. There is issue, however, in making a mountain out of a molehill.
You have a good point, but it's muddled in your stereotyping and misinformation. You're also missing the point.
The good point is that a cruise has worth as it potentially offers you opportunities WoW does not.
Your problem is that you overlook that the same is true of WoW. What the cruise and WoW offer are separate and address different needs. The comparison used in the GP highlights that.
WoW is very economical entertainment, and very convenient. It fills the same niche as movies, books and television. For four years worth of entertainment $800 is extremely cheap. It looks a lot bigger because we're summing up the total costs over years.
Blizzard isn't under new management (all literature on the subject shows Blizzard is maintaining similar or greater autonomy in relation to their parent company), and they certainly aren't being rushed (the Beta for WotLK hit a lot sooner than the BC beta, proportional to the closer release date).
The implication of your parenthetical statement seems to be that Diablo was groundbreaking but doesn't count as it was developed by Blizzard North. That is misleading.
Diablo wasn't particularly groundbreaking, plenty of other Dungeon crawlers existed prior. Like every other Blizzard game Diablo was simply better.
I'm confused about the second implication. Blizzard North was no more separate from Blizzard than Will Wright is from EA.
Perhaps I simply read into your statements, but I felt clarification was necessary.
It's only propaganda if it's intentionally hiding/twisting the truth. So long as an adequate explanation of the single star is included (i.e. a description of the DRM and why it's a problem for the reviewer) I don't believe it falls under that category.
You might argue that the lopsided nature of the "flash mob" twists truth by weighting the overall rating in an abnormal manner. That's a tougher, more interesting argument.
At the same time, there's a limit to how far you can get in raiding with a limited schedule, depending on other guild factors.
If you have 10-25 skilled people who can always be prepared to raid the same 10 hours each week then you can theoretically progress. It will be slower than other guilds, but it will happen.
The problem is that guilds which the base assertion describes are very rare. Most guilds, even hardcore ones, require a number of additional people as backup for absentees and also must recruit new players to replace old ones who stop playing. This acts as a counter to progression, slowing and even reversing it in certain conditions.
It's complicated by many other factors, but in summary the various, natural stresses a guild experiences place a limit on how far it may progress without extending its hours of raiding. You're still technically be raiding, but the effect will be similar to playing Guitar Hero on easy. There's a point where you've mastered that level and are tired of the game or wish to move up in difficulty.
I feel like a moron because I failed to come up with that explanation first. It's blindingly obvious, yet somehow it seems everyone's oblivious to it (including me).
Good show.
Isn't there always someone who brags about getting their Amazon ordered copy of a game before the release date, or has that become a thing of the past?
While I'd like to see a new Eternal Darkness, if Too Human is as people say I'd like the developers to take a break, recenter themselves and then make a sequel.
That's actually the point.
If it were a stone, that would imply that it would be impossible for it to be warm. Some philosophies might therefore find it hard to blame the man for something he isn't capable of (i.e. no one goes around crucifying people for their inability to fly like Superman to work).
Because it is coal, it implies that their is the potential for it to be warm, and that therefore the person possessing the heart has neglected it. Thus, it's quite easy to pass judgement on him for having failed to fulfill his potential in this regard.
Now you could argue that some effort towards warming said heart might be worthwhile, but then you run into /. mob justice. It's easier to lynch someone than to fix them.
4/5ths of the country thinks he's screwed everything up. We can expect some portion of that group to have a more deeply seated belief, and some portion of that group to live in their parent's basement posting to Slashdot.
For the record, I blame Mr. Rogers for all the world's ills.