> I can't see "Firefly" as anything other than southern/racist propaganda for the wrong side in the Civil War.
Yeahbutwhat?
A show where one episode (Shindig) opens with Mal starting a bar fight with some guys... because they were slave traders?
Where one of the crew is a hero to an entire town of indentured servants because of his (ok, misunderstood) actions? (Jaynestown)
A show where most of the episodes revolve around personal freedom? (River's in Objects in Space, the whores in Heart of Gold, the indentured servants in Jaynestown, Saffron's in Our Mrs. Reynolds (till the end, anyway), Simon and River's in Safe and Ariel, Mal's in Out of Gas, and the list goes on with many moments in every show?)
A show where the entire premise is, arguably, about freedom?
The crew of Serenity were on the losing side of the war, and that's where the similarities end. Comparing Firefly/Serenity to the South in the Civil war is one of the more whacked out things I've ever heard.
> Depending on how bad it is, consider rewriting the HTML and CSS part of the website from scratch. It may be easier than fixing old code.
I'll second that. If you have your own system of page templates, CSS, etc, just junk all of the old code entirely. Think of how easy it is to paste text into your own (working) template vs. how hard it would be to go through and manually correct every mistake in a large website.
The tagless text could be gotten easily enough via a Perl script. A script smart enough to grab exactly what you want and put it where you want would be impossible, so you'd want to oversee the process yourself, obviously, but it would become a whole lot simpler.
I can't even find and correct the mistakes in one of my own pages. A whole site, written by someone else (who didn't know what they were doing)? Forget it. If you have a job where you are being trusted with large tasks like that, then you must have your own system for designing sites by now. Start from scratch, toss out everything but what the user needs to see, and stick it in your own framework.
> Not to be overly optimistic but how many MMORPG's can one company screw up?
Per year, or lifetime? SOE is able to screw up about 2 MMORPGs per year, however we still have not determined how many they will screw up in the future. Assuming the company lasts for 100 years, that would mean that one company can screw up 200 MMOGs.
Mythic, on the other hand, has never really screwed up since DAoC, IMHO. The game was not to everyone's tastes, but the fact that we are still talking about it today says something. I love them as a company even though I only like their games. They've been better about sticking to their principles than any long-running MMOG I can think of. This news makes me sad.
So when we get to the moon for the first time...
on
One Small Breath For Man
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· Score: 4, Funny
It's a shame I can't set a cookie in my browser (or something) that tells Google I have no interest in video ads. The advertisers would like it because they wouldn't waste an impression on an annoyed viewer
I don't know any advertisers who care how much they annoy us... I don't even think the word "annoy" registers in their minds properly. They only think More people seeing my stuff! Buy my stuff! BUY MY STUFF!
Course I could be wrong, but considering so many still serve popups when not a single person I've ever met, heard of, or dreamed of is not annoyed by them, it's the only explanation I can think of.
All of this is very reassuring, and sounds reasonable. But the way it's being presented by Sigil sounds too good to be true. I'm not saying that it's not completely true, I'm just saying that I've read thousands of press releases from MMOG developers before, and when something sounds too good to be true, it makes me nervous.
Now that we're done with the reasonable reactions, can I give my gut reaction? Ready? Plug your ears:
WHAT IN THE BLOODY SIXTH CIRCLE OF A CRAWLING, UNIMAGINABLE HELL HAPPENED?
What happened to all of those thinly veiled (and not so thinly veiled) comments from Mr. McQuaid about SOE? The constant, subtle (and not so subtle) implications that yes, SOE is the devil, and yes, SOE did ruin their game? The winks and nods? The soft caresses?
No matter what, being associated with SOE is a black eye for them. For years, the company and game have been basically sold to the players with one statement: we're not with SOE. It's not an exaggeration to say that a lot of their fanbase exists because of that one fact.
I don't think they're going to lose all of those people, or even many of them, but what they will lose is the trust of many of them. This is bad because the game is already being directed at a narrow audience. The audience is narrow for a hundred reasons, some key ones being: a) it's a subscription game, b) it claims to be a return to the unforgiving game mechanics of old, c) many people will have to upgrade their hardware to play it.
To upgrade your computer for a single game takes faith, and faith is what they're losing with this move.
This is the part that I never understood about Big Bang theory, or theories that say the universe is limited in size:
Time couldn't have had a beginning, by its very nature. So of course there was stuff happening before the Big Bang... a chain of Big Bangs is what I always assumed happened, or if not that, at least something.
But I'm not a physicist, or a scientist, so what do I know. Maybe time is limited, it did start there, and I've been thinking about it all wrong.
Space, on the other hand, is explained with all sorts of strange geometric diagrams that I don't even pretend to understand, so I won't touch that. But I'll never wrap my head around the idea of time having a beginning.
Yeah, blame the sellers for meeting demand. Except they didn't create the demand, Square-Enix did. It's Square-Enix's game design that causes the demand that the gold sellers exploit. [...] It's hardly IGE's fault that Square-Enix misdesigned their game.
I see. So, because these companies only destroy half the games they infiltrate, that makes it ok. The games that do get ruined were asking for it. Pick a different reason for every game, but it's the game designer's fault for not being able to handle these cartels when they try to take over. Because after all, this has only happened to FFXI.
Cartels like IGE ruin games for profit. They work full time, either exploiting bugs or taking what they want by brute force. They're larger than the largest guilds. They have the financial means, and the manpower, to get what they want in any of a hundred ways.
Blaming the gamers or the game designers for the fact that these guys exist is like blaming someone for getting mugged. Yes, you had a lock on your front door, but was it a titanium lock with 53 bolts? Because these guys just designed a way to pick the old 52-bolt locks last week. Go ahead and upgrade, but just remember, there are a thousand guys in your hallway with hundreds of millions of dollars of resources, and they'll be working on that lock 24/7, and every time they get in, it's your fault. Also, you can't tackle the problem like a normal security expert does, because what these guys do is apparently not illegal. They have nothing to lose, in fact everything to gain, by trying again, and again, and again.
Online games obviously need to defend against it better, but blaming them because this huge, sustained effort against them exists is just insane.
Well, Bruce Springsteen's drummer took on the rather grueling gig of being Conan O'Brien's drummer five nights a week.
I don't have any hard numbers on what musicians get-- and contracts differ, of course-- but everything I've read agrees that it's pretty dismal for new musicians.
And people said that the popular obsession with the Red Sox would end after they won a world series.
I have to admit, it did cool my obsession a little bit. I don't hang on to the idea of a World Series win with the same... what's the word... desperation? I don't do that anymore.
But I think that now, the obsession for most people is still there, it's just changed. It's like people who love the old Commodore 64 games, or old anything. It's a club now, people remembering when-- just like people recreating text based games. I thought I'd be annoyed with it, but it's actually feeling cooler every year, not the other thing.
The responses in this thread are disgusting. Out of all the groups on the planet, one of the few that has a good reason to complain about their treatment does, and we get 5,000 slashdotting gamers, kiddies and overall fucking idiots showing up to tell the world why the American Indians should shut the fuck up.
By the way, they're doing this the right way, with a boycott, instead of trying to pass legislation. All they're doing is not buying the game.
The computers get smarter, but the people never do. Go play World of Warcraft-- they have a nice new policy of not allowing minority groups.
Based on your description, I'd recommend Puzzle Pirates. It has most of the things you're looking for:
It's "a multiplayer cooperative puzzle solving game" (although your group must be online for most things, you can still puzzle to help someone who is offline by working in their shop). There are cooperative puzzles and semi-cooperative, where people play different puzzles at the same time to help the team as a whole (for instance, someone plays the sailing puzzle to build speed, another plays carpentry to fix the boat, another bilges out the water, loads the cannons, navigates... you get the idea).
You can easily play in 30 minute chunks, or even 5 minute chunks (although you'll find most people tend to get on a roll and play for longer).
You can play on a free server (although if you end up liking the game, I'd definitely recommend the pay server, which is $10 a month).
It avoids repetition somewhat by giving you harder puzzles based on your performance; but in the end, there's still plenty of repetition once you learn the game. You're going to find that anywhere. Developers can only come up with so much content for a persistent world. Since there isn't an end to the game, every play session has to be an end in itself. Like most MMOGs, once it hits that repetitive point you've either met people who you want to keep playing with, or you move on.
That's just one story. And who's to say a plot from the comic won't ever make it into a movie? They're all part of the same greater story-- it wouldn't surprise me a bit.
Joss has said repeatedly that all of the actors are signed for 3 movies and that he plans to use them all. He's also said that it won't be in a cheesy, "oh look, a clone of Wash!" way. Or an "evil twin brother" way.
My guess is that there will either be a prequel, or a lot of flashbacks. Remember, there are 8 months of un-accounted for time between the series and the movie. Whatever it turns out to be, I trust the guy's storytelling abilities enough to believe it won't be cheesy.
In reference to Brandon Vedas: I just read through that entire chat log. It is some very sad stuff.
The majority of people in the chat room seemed to be trying to help him, but there was one punk that just kept daring him to eat more and more. Then they decided to call him. So which one calls him? The punk, of course. I'm sure that helped. It's the guy named Smoke2k in the chat log.
Point is, we don't have the original site to look at. We only have heresay. But I'm inclined to believe the original article just because I know people and I know gamers. I've been in a lot of gaming communities, and we all know what they can be like. If you're enough of a gamer to be reading the gaming section of Slashdot, you know what I'm talking about.
People making fun of him, and egging him on, is more believable to me than a community full of helpful folks. Until we see some proof either way, I'm going to have to believe the original articles, because they ring of truth to me, while this rebuttal doesn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeahbutwhat?
A show where one episode (Shindig) opens with Mal starting a bar fight with some guys... because they were slave traders?
Where one of the crew is a hero to an entire town of indentured servants because of his (ok, misunderstood) actions? (Jaynestown)
A show where most of the episodes revolve around personal freedom? (River's in Objects in Space, the whores in Heart of Gold, the indentured servants in Jaynestown, Saffron's in Our Mrs. Reynolds (till the end, anyway), Simon and River's in Safe and Ariel, Mal's in Out of Gas, and the list goes on with many moments in every show?)
A show where the entire premise is, arguably, about freedom?
The crew of Serenity were on the losing side of the war, and that's where the similarities end. Comparing Firefly/Serenity to the South in the Civil war is one of the more whacked out things I've ever heard.
I'll second that. If you have your own system of page templates, CSS, etc, just junk all of the old code entirely. Think of how easy it is to paste text into your own (working) template vs. how hard it would be to go through and manually correct every mistake in a large website.
The tagless text could be gotten easily enough via a Perl script. A script smart enough to grab exactly what you want and put it where you want would be impossible, so you'd want to oversee the process yourself, obviously, but it would become a whole lot simpler.
I can't even find and correct the mistakes in one of my own pages. A whole site, written by someone else (who didn't know what they were doing)? Forget it. If you have a job where you are being trusted with large tasks like that, then you must have your own system for designing sites by now. Start from scratch, toss out everything but what the user needs to see, and stick it in your own framework.
I actually just loled. Mod parent funny.
that might be true. Giving it a spot on this list is like giving the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey a spot. Or how about Sonny from I, Robot?
Per year, or lifetime? SOE is able to screw up about 2 MMORPGs per year, however we still have not determined how many they will screw up in the future. Assuming the company lasts for 100 years, that would mean that one company can screw up 200 MMOGs.
Mythic, on the other hand, has never really screwed up since DAoC, IMHO. The game was not to everyone's tastes, but the fact that we are still talking about it today says something. I love them as a company even though I only like their games. They've been better about sticking to their principles than any long-running MMOG I can think of. This news makes me sad.
we can test that.
I don't know any advertisers who care how much they annoy us... I don't even think the word "annoy" registers in their minds properly. They only think More people seeing my stuff! Buy my stuff! BUY MY STUFF!
Course I could be wrong, but considering so many still serve popups when not a single person I've ever met, heard of, or dreamed of is not annoyed by them, it's the only explanation I can think of.
Why was the parent was modded funny? It's probably the most thoughtful post in the topic.
All of this is very reassuring, and sounds reasonable. But the way it's being presented by Sigil sounds too good to be true. I'm not saying that it's not completely true, I'm just saying that I've read thousands of press releases from MMOG developers before, and when something sounds too good to be true, it makes me nervous.
Now that we're done with the reasonable reactions, can I give my gut reaction? Ready? Plug your ears:
WHAT IN THE BLOODY SIXTH CIRCLE OF A CRAWLING, UNIMAGINABLE HELL HAPPENED?
What happened to all of those thinly veiled (and not so thinly veiled) comments from Mr. McQuaid about SOE? The constant, subtle (and not so subtle) implications that yes, SOE is the devil, and yes, SOE did ruin their game? The winks and nods? The soft caresses?
No matter what, being associated with SOE is a black eye for them. For years, the company and game have been basically sold to the players with one statement: we're not with SOE. It's not an exaggeration to say that a lot of their fanbase exists because of that one fact.
I don't think they're going to lose all of those people, or even many of them, but what they will lose is the trust of many of them. This is bad because the game is already being directed at a narrow audience. The audience is narrow for a hundred reasons, some key ones being: a) it's a subscription game, b) it claims to be a return to the unforgiving game mechanics of old, c) many people will have to upgrade their hardware to play it.
To upgrade your computer for a single game takes faith, and faith is what they're losing with this move.
Time couldn't have had a beginning, by its very nature. So of course there was stuff happening before the Big Bang... a chain of Big Bangs is what I always assumed happened, or if not that, at least something.
But I'm not a physicist, or a scientist, so what do I know. Maybe time is limited, it did start there, and I've been thinking about it all wrong.
Space, on the other hand, is explained with all sorts of strange geometric diagrams that I don't even pretend to understand, so I won't touch that. But I'll never wrap my head around the idea of time having a beginning.
I see. So, because these companies only destroy half the games they infiltrate, that makes it ok. The games that do get ruined were asking for it. Pick a different reason for every game, but it's the game designer's fault for not being able to handle these cartels when they try to take over. Because after all, this has only happened to FFXI.
Cartels like IGE ruin games for profit. They work full time, either exploiting bugs or taking what they want by brute force. They're larger than the largest guilds. They have the financial means, and the manpower, to get what they want in any of a hundred ways.
Blaming the gamers or the game designers for the fact that these guys exist is like blaming someone for getting mugged. Yes, you had a lock on your front door, but was it a titanium lock with 53 bolts? Because these guys just designed a way to pick the old 52-bolt locks last week. Go ahead and upgrade, but just remember, there are a thousand guys in your hallway with hundreds of millions of dollars of resources, and they'll be working on that lock 24/7, and every time they get in, it's your fault. Also, you can't tackle the problem like a normal security expert does, because what these guys do is apparently not illegal. They have nothing to lose, in fact everything to gain, by trying again, and again, and again.
Online games obviously need to defend against it better, but blaming them because this huge, sustained effort against them exists is just insane.
I don't have any hard numbers on what musicians get-- and contracts differ, of course-- but everything I've read agrees that it's pretty dismal for new musicians.
I have to admit, it did cool my obsession a little bit. I don't hang on to the idea of a World Series win with the same... what's the word... desperation? I don't do that anymore.
But I think that now, the obsession for most people is still there, it's just changed. It's like people who love the old Commodore 64 games, or old anything. It's a club now, people remembering when-- just like people recreating text based games. I thought I'd be annoyed with it, but it's actually feeling cooler every year, not the other thing.
By the way, they're doing this the right way, with a boycott, instead of trying to pass legislation. All they're doing is not buying the game.
The computers get smarter, but the people never do. Go play World of Warcraft-- they have a nice new policy of not allowing minority groups.
...then Ballmer threw a chair at China.
It avoids repetition somewhat by giving you harder puzzles based on your performance; but in the end, there's still plenty of repetition once you learn the game. You're going to find that anywhere. Developers can only come up with so much content for a persistent world. Since there isn't an end to the game, every play session has to be an end in itself. Like most MMOGs, once it hits that repetitive point you've either met people who you want to keep playing with, or you move on.
They have games there too?
That's just one story. And who's to say a plot from the comic won't ever make it into a movie? They're all part of the same greater story-- it wouldn't surprise me a bit.
(This joke was stolen from Penny Arcade)
Exactly. Now all of you mods go back inside, or we will blow a new crater in this little thread.
My guess is that there will either be a prequel, or a lot of flashbacks. Remember, there are 8 months of un-accounted for time between the series and the movie. Whatever it turns out to be, I trust the guy's storytelling abilities enough to believe it won't be cheesy.
In any case, Wash and Book are not gone.
...find 400,000 images and videos on the internet that weren't porn? Now that really is an accomplishment.
The majority of people in the chat room seemed to be trying to help him, but there was one punk that just kept daring him to eat more and more. Then they decided to call him. So which one calls him? The punk, of course. I'm sure that helped. It's the guy named Smoke2k in the chat log.
Point is, we don't have the original site to look at. We only have heresay. But I'm inclined to believe the original article just because I know people and I know gamers. I've been in a lot of gaming communities, and we all know what they can be like. If you're enough of a gamer to be reading the gaming section of Slashdot, you know what I'm talking about.
People making fun of him, and egging him on, is more believable to me than a community full of helpful folks. Until we see some proof either way, I'm going to have to believe the original articles, because they ring of truth to me, while this rebuttal doesn't.
We care, of course we care! Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer...
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