Who says that such debates are a waste? Discussing such topics at least gets them to think about the subject, which really should be the point of discussing religion and politics. I mean, what's the point in having beliefs and ideals if they can't be challenged because of some societal taboo that it destroys friendships and families?
There's nothing wrong with a little freethought every now and then.
Add those options anyways. Some people will go for them (can you imagine being able to spend your entire in-game career as a blacksmith or a tailor selling your creations instead of having to go out and kill things in order to "earn the right" to make them?), but I imagine most would take the more conservative route and be adventurers.
I mean, the adventurer angle is fun for a time, but as I've illustrated, it gets old when you realize that it's all you really do in the game, and by the end it barely exists; it essentially boils down to grinding mobs to gain rep so that you can grind more mobs and gain rep, hoping that eventually you'll reach a level of prestige in that group where they'll give you nice stuff. Somehow, this is supposed to be so much fun that over 7 million people are doing it. I just don't get it.
To be honest, I don't really know what I'm looking for anymore when I pick up these kinds of games, 'cuz each one I've played I've had such high expectations ("Oh, I hope they have housing! And an alignment system! Maybe I can be a tailor and spend my time making the best clothing ever! and blah blah blah") and had them dashed because the developers feel that such things aren't important enough to include, even though they've been in the genre since Ultima Online, or ever since P&P came into existence. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but then again, if we've seen it before, it's downright stupid to never see it again.
I start in Northshire, and the guard has asked me to kill the Defias who have taken over the vineyard to the east.
Now, being a guard, you'd think that it would be HIS job to do that, seeing as he's the law in that region. But I humor him and do it anyways; I kill a bunch of bandits, get their masks as proof, kill their leader and bring his head to the guard, who congratulates me and rewards me for doing his job.
So now it's time to move on. I head to Goldshire, and from there to Stormwind, and I run a couple of errands for people, which is no big deal; I'm a good guy, after all. So I do that and head back to Goldshire.
In Goldshire, I help a couple of civilians in gathering things they need, which are carried by kobolds, and I also help the captain of the guard here with some scouting missions. Now, the civilians at least have a decent excuse; I mean, they're weak and can't possibly stand up to a gang of walking rats. But the Captain of the fucking Guard?! It's not like the kobolds are going to be that much of a problem for a single level 20 guard to go out and beat the shit out of them, at either mine.
In any case, I complete these tasks, and I get a modest reward from the civilians while the captain of the guard pays me a fraction of his daily wage to sit around on his ass and make sure the bunnies don't get too close to town. Glad to see that you're keeping the good people safe, Captain Jackass!
In any event, I move on.
And so it repeats, for every area of the game. Help the head of the People's Militia (level 30 Elite) by going into the Deadmines and killing the Defias Kingpin, Van Cleef--a task that nobody, not even him or his militia, is able to accomplish, yet 5 misfits who don't know their asses from their feet fuck this guy up good and then steal his valuables before leaving him for dead.
And as you continue to do these repetitive tasks for these incompetent assholes every time you enter a new area, it begins to dawn upon you that all you're doing is grinding after reading some flavor text to spice things up, and it's this text that's supposed to somehow make WoW superior to all other MMO offerings? Talk about simple things for simple minds. Shit, why didn't anybody think of this sooner?
Wait, I forgot; I played Ragnarok Online, a game that would have you collect 100 of at least 3 different items from mobs with a less than 1% drop rate just to get a hat, and it had all kinds of flavor text for these tasks. Sure, it was in the most horrible broken English ever conceived by a localization team, but it was flavor text nonetheless.
Here's the kicker though; it only takes 20 people to accomplish tasks that not even the great armies of the Alliance and Horde are able to accomplish. 20. That's it. At least. Some tasks take 40 people, instead of 20, and yet, still, these mythical armies (which don't seem to exist. At all. Anywhere in Azeroth) can't spare a single soldier to go out and defeat a threat that could very well destroy the entire bloody world. I'd say that the nuts are in control of the asylum in this regard if your armies are fighting on distant battlefields that nobody has ever been able to find in the last 3 years.
So to summarize, flavor text and accomplishing tasks for the incompetent denizens of Azeroth does not remove the grind, nor does it soften its impact; it merely hides it behind a wall of irrelevance that is easily dispelled when you stop killing Twilights for a second and ask yourself "Why am I killing these cultists over and over again?".
You know, if you want to grind, why play a MMORPG? Why not just connect to a MU* of some sort? Some of them, like AmberMUSH, are all about grinding. And on top of that, they tend to be free.
MMORPGs are for roleplaying and bragging about roleplaying. Kind of like college. So are most MUDs. But there's a bunch of MUCKs and MUSHes and MOOs and MUSEs and whatnot that provide a primarily-grinding environment. You don't need pretty graphics if you want to grind - So go grind!
Now obviously the AmberMUSH example wouldn't apply if it's not a grinding MUSH, but you can see that a little word substitution makes wanting to grind in MMOs as silly as wanting to roleplay. You could as easily have said "play D&D if you want to roleplay", but that doesn't really solve anything either. I mean, sure, it gives the mindless hordes that defend the genre's current state peace of mind, because now they don't have to deal with the guys who want to masquerade as elves speaking ye Olde English, but where does that leave the guys who want to masquerade as elves speaking ye Olde English, or their friends who can roleplay without sounding like they're from 11th-century England?
Honestly, I think that if this is how these games are going to continue to be developed, they need to drop the RP moniker completely, because as it stands right now, it's very misleading. Massively Multiplayer Online Fantasy Setting Game would be a more accurate description for so-called MMORPGs, don't you think?
I would actually surmise that people play WoW because it's made by Blizzard, so it's gotta be good.
I'll admit that WoW is a well-made game, but like most MMOs that have come before it, it gets really boring REALLY fast because all there is to do is grind mobs, grind quests, grind rep, grind resources, grind honor...just grind, grind, and grind some more. Then maybe after you finish that, you can do a bit of grinding, take your mind off the grind for a bit while you prepare for your next grind.
It seems that the only time you can really get some GOOD, non-grind-related entertainment is if you're one of those rare creatures that actually plays MMORPGs to roleplay your character, and even then you're only a mere drop in a bucket full of inbred assholes who hate you for doing something other than grinding. The GMs won't do anything because their job isn't to hold events anymore, but to do what every other company has the people at the bottom of the company do--provide shitty customer service, even to people with legitimate problems.
What makes this even sadder is that WoW actually made some attempt to add roleplay elements to the game with interactive objects, like chairs to sit on or books to read, and even alcohol to consume. Yet when the players themselves have to expand the interface to add RP elements that should have been there by default, and won't add those elements to the standard UI, then are you really playing a role-playing game anymore?
This is only a small bit of the things I feel are wrong with MMOs, though the central theme of all of them is that roleplaying and worthwhile events get the shaft in favor of static worlds because 1) No company wants to write up a contract that allows them to avoid lawsuits from volunteers, and 2) They don't want to piss people off by "always having events when I'm offline and its not fair" and having people quit in a childish manner. And honestly, I'm not expecting any company to move forward with such things in the near future.
I think what he's getting at is that most MMOs put you into this role where you're forced into some kind of combat role; if you wanted to spend your time as a merchant and build up a successful business, or to be a crafter and make the best items anybody has ever seen, you're SOL because of the game's design.
That's something that's always bothered me about MMOs; there's never the path of the "average person" for players to take, there's no political path, there's no real puzzle-solving to be done ("push these switches in a precise order to open the door; get it wrong and you're all dead"). Everything is fight, fight, fight, and I don't think games--MMOs especially--should have to be that way.
MMOs really should be about making choices about how you want to develop your character as opposed to killing mobs for the best loot.
Hmmm...I see. Then that raises the question of why developers don't develop for non-Windows platforms, ignoring the obvious market share answer. I mean, performance-wise, WoW ran better on my Linux partition under Cedega than it ever did on my Windows partition, which seemed odd to me. You'd think that having to use a middleware solution to play a game would have more glaring performance issues than just a missing targeting circle. It probably had something to do with OpenGL on Linux though, 'cuz Doom 3 and Quake 4 (which used OpenGL exclusively on both platforms) also ran better than they did on Windows.
In any event, the whole thing seems rather stupid to me.
Furthermore, Cedega users are not identified the same as windows users. If they were, there would be no way to target them in the way that the OP describes.
Actually, from what I understand, it does. When I've ran System Information checks under Cedega, the OS returned has been whatever Cedega was configured to run as (usually WinXP).
There are differences between a person running under Cedega and a person running under Windows. The one I've found is with my motherboard, which has "Cool 'n' Quiet" support. I started up my computer with CnQ enabled, and I started up WoW while the CPU was underclocked. CnQ would raise the clockspeed of the CPU to what it was normally configured as, and it looked like I was using a speed hack. You can see how this would be a problem. Disabling CnQ support fixes the issue though, though that might not occur to everybody.
As for OS usage from home computer users, are we talking about users with only one computer and one operating system, or are we including dual-boot users and people with multiple machines as well? You can't trust a statistic that uses either because they're going to contribute to multiple sides of the fence, or they're going to inflate a particular side by having two or more versions of the same operating system (i.e. a person who dual-boots Ubuntu and Fedora is going to be as bad as a person who has 4 Windows machines, each running a different version of the OS).
Therefore, it becomes a question of "which do you prefer?" which can be interpreted as if everything you need would work under your OS of choice. You'd get a number of dual-booters and multi-machine owners who would probably dump their *nix, BSD, and Mac machines to run purely in Windows, but I think what would be more surprising would be the number of people who would dump their Windows machines to run purely in *nix, BSD, and Mac, and I think it's important to know just how many of those folks actually exist. Adding this to the single-OS homes would yield a much more accurate statistic. The number of Windows users would increase slightly, but I'd also wager that the Mac, *nix, and BSD users would each increase by a significant amount, to the point where developers would need to seriously consider developing for those platforms.
And besides that, Linux gamers are not in any way a significant percentage of the user base of this game.
The same could probably be said of their Mac userbase, but that doesn't mean that they should drop Mac support, now does it?
Besides that, how do you find out what percentage of the userbase uses Linux other than asking the players? If anything, Cedega users will be identified as Windows users by the servers, so the only option left after that would be to run a poll, and that's not necessarily accurate either.
I think it's going to get to the point where "anti-cheats" and "copy protection" are the major things tying games to the Windows platform
DirectX already does a stellar job of tying games to the Windows platform, so anti-cheating and copy protection are the least of concerns with regards to Linux as a gaming platform.
One of the things that makes DirectX great for developers is that all the necessary APIs are consolidated into one package and developed in unison, whereas the cross-platform equivalents are all independently worked on by various groups. Ergo, DirectX will have an advantage in reliability, since the APIs are designed to work together, and they all get updated at the same time.
However, in the future, should some project be started (or a pre-existing project decides that it's time to advertise and make developers aware of their existence) that rivals DirectX and offers better performance on both Windows and Linux, and makes game developers aware of the alternative, then there just MIGHT be a chance there for Linux gaming, and then anti-cheating and copy protection can be developed from there. Until such time though, it's a non-issue.
I don't think the intended idea here is to share your entire source code with the world on their service; that's what Sourceforge is for. However, if you have a couple of code snippets that you want to upload, or you're getting an error and you post the relevant code up to get help in finding a solution, then what's the problem?
I mean, it's not like Microsoft is out to steal your for-loop that does something that only you and you alone know about, or your Muffin class, which is derived from the BakedGoods base class. And if it's something that you want to keep away from the clutches of the Evil Corporation(TM), just redirect people to code posted on your website instead.
"I'll give you an example: It's my favorite feature within Windows Vista, it's called ASLR (Address Space [Layout] Randomization). What it does is, each Windows Vista machine is slightly different than every other Windows Vista machine. So even if there is a remote exploit on one machine, and a worm tries to jump from one machine to another, the probability of that actually succeeding is very small."
Anybody else thinking that we'll have Vista viruses that mutate and adapt to the ASLR of a particular system within a year or two? I mean, seriously, what is it with software companies (or rather, security companies) and this apparent hubris that "our product is bullet-proof"? I mean, haven't we seen enough security systems and copy protections go down in smoke, even when people were convinced that "it can't be cracked"? Give me a break...
We put our sick in hospitals, we extend the lives of the terminally ill, we allow people with disease to live, we pay taxes to aid the disabled.
I am not against any of these things. They are the morally right thing to do.
However, they inhibit evolution.
That's certainly possible, and is one way to interpret it. Another way to look at it is that, by not letting natural selection take its course on these "weaker" specimens and studying their conditions, we get closer to eliminating these defects from our genome altogether and ensuring that they don't pop up randomly 1, 10, 100, 100000 years from now. In that respect, isn't it considered evolution?
Okay, now THAT'S a valid reason; something TFA was missing. I'm still a bit skeptical though that a mere date could fubar things to such a degree, but I guess it's always the smallest problems that come to bite you in the ass (i.e. if(stringA = stringB) {/* stuff goes here */ })
Pardon my ignorance, but is this really serious enough that it should actually cause a delay? I mean, if it's simply a matter of figuring out what the date is, I'm sure that the astronauts and engineers involved in the project know at LEAST basic mathematics, and can determine that if it's, say, Day 367 on the shuttle computer, then 367-365 = 2, AKA January 2nd, 2007.
I'd say the article missed something; the whole concept sounds far too ridiculous to stand on its own.
Wow. I can totally see these new Blood Elves spending all their time in the woods, lifting trees, spotting each other, getting into the shower together after a long workout and having hot, sweaty se--um, yeah.
You gotta feel sorry for the Blood Elf women though; they can look, they can dream, but they know in their hearts that it can never be. To make things worse, they don't have the nice human gentlemen callers to fall back on; that ship sailed more than 4 years ago.
Why the hell would Sony give a shit about imports? Because it hurts sales in Europe, but not in China? Who cares? All the money goes to the same source in the end, so what's the big deal?
I mean, he's right; games can't provide the same narrative as TV or films, but then again, films and TV are also distinct in narrative, so it hardly matters because they're supposed to be different.
I mean, why'd he use cooking and lamaze class as examples? Are they somehow more significant than other mundane events, like brushing your teeth, or taking a shit? There we go! In order to be accepted by clueless, geriatric jackasses, Half-Life has to have a sequence where Gordon Freeman has to stop running from the Combine chasing him, find a secluded spot in the wilderness, and just squat, and he has to do it before the patrolling Strider nearby notices him and rains death upon him. To make it even more intense, he has to run around the woods looking for leaves to wipe his ass with!
In all seriousness though, it sounds like he has a narrow-minded perspective as to how games are. I mean, the fact that he hasn't even touched them since the NES days because he sucks at them speaks volumes.
Perhaps sometime in the near future, someone will make a game so good and rich in narrative that EVERYBODY will just stop watching television and movies altogether, exchanging their satellite receivers and DVD players to get a Wii or an Xbox 360. Meanwhile, this guy will be looking desperately for a job, or maybe he'll just say "Fuck it." and retire. Who knows?
Not really -if you read non-fiction books you get some bits of knowledge (while it may not help you at least it is real) . I can say that I am addicted to wikipedia and slashdot - difference from WoW that here and there I actually get some useful info . Is there anything useful I got from a dozen of MMORPGS? - very little. Some insights into human psychology and online community but everything related to actual games is pure junk. And actually those insights are better if you just study those games - not play them.
I think you're a tad foolish in your views. EVERYTHING has something of value that we walk away with, including MMORPGs. Besides insight into psychology and community elements, a game like WoW is going to show some people that they have leadership qualities, while others will find out that they can, in fact, socialize with other people without coming off as some creepy person or a pretentious cock, or that, yes, they can assert themselves and make their opinions both known and respected. All of these are valuable things, and you're cheapening them by suggesting otherwise.
There are various forms of entertainment and some of them are bad and addictive(like drugs, excessive alcohol, tv , mmorpgs). It is better for example to do sports as entertainment -as it keeps you fit. It is better to go fuck random girls every night as it builds up your social skills and friends network. It is better to play chess/bridge/etc -as it keeps your brain busy.
You're giving each of these far more credit than they're due. Participating in sports may keep you fit, but if you can't pull yourself away from the football field or the golf course, you're still going to have problems.
If all you can do with a girl is fuck her, you're going to have a difficult time building a relationship with her that doesn't revolve around both of you taking your pants off.
You can spend a great deal of time playing chess and such, but again, if you can't moderate it, it's no better. A smart chess junkie is still an idiot at heart.
What you don't seem to realize is that ANYTHING can be regarded as addicting in nature. The whole purpose of entertainment is to give ourselves a break from the rest of our lives, and most people have a lot of shit to deal with. If it gets overwhelming and they become depressed or anxious or just can't handle it, they're going to take longer breaks so that they can have more entertainment and experience less of whatever is bothering them. However, if you can figure out what's bothering them, and help them solve the problem, there's a good chance they'll be able to get back on track.
And yes in fact I think everyone should devote 100% of time to productive work -problem is humans are not build that way, majority of us cannot be happy working 100% of time,we need "entertainment". -There is no solution for this ATM as it requires changing human nature (or,which is preferable, replace humans with something better). And while humans are not perfect - solution is to work around those things,not get hooked up to next drug( chemical or psychological).
So what you're saying is that, rather than be human, you'd wish for us to be tranformed or modified into something else, like the Borg or some other soulless entity obsessed with work.
You do realize that working too much is just as detrimental to one's physical and mental health as any other thing taken in large quantities, right? A workaholic has worries too, and those are going to keep him working, even though the wife wants him to come to bed, or little Timmy wants to play catch with his dad. Of course, once we're all drones in your little world, families and shit will be a thing of the past, and we can all focus on being addicted to the office. You'll forgive me if I don't jump for joy.
Ebert began by explaining why he felt a game (particularly the shoot-shoot, point-scoring kind) was not an experience equivalent to that of reading a great novel like, say, 'The Great Gatsby,' because games don't delve very deeply into what it means to be human.
Perhaps he should pick games that do. I mean, I can see his point that games aren't "art" if playing, say, the original DooM, but then you got games like Half-Life 2; same genre, same basic mechanics, yet it plays different because you're not just trying to "kill the bad guys," you're trying to follow the narrative. Just like a movie.
It's as if he expects that the majority of titles need to be "artistic" before the form itself can be considered as such. Perhaps he should take a second look at what he does for a living, and take note of the reams and reams of shitty movies that come out every year and re-evaluate whether movies are "art" anymore than games, because right now, both are merely corporate money-making machines rather than forms of expression.
Slashdot Mirror
It may not be a sequel to anything, but I swear I've seen it someplace before.
Who says that such debates are a waste? Discussing such topics at least gets them to think about the subject, which really should be the point of discussing religion and politics. I mean, what's the point in having beliefs and ideals if they can't be challenged because of some societal taboo that it destroys friendships and families?
There's nothing wrong with a little freethought every now and then.
Add those options anyways. Some people will go for them (can you imagine being able to spend your entire in-game career as a blacksmith or a tailor selling your creations instead of having to go out and kill things in order to "earn the right" to make them?), but I imagine most would take the more conservative route and be adventurers.
I mean, the adventurer angle is fun for a time, but as I've illustrated, it gets old when you realize that it's all you really do in the game, and by the end it barely exists; it essentially boils down to grinding mobs to gain rep so that you can grind more mobs and gain rep, hoping that eventually you'll reach a level of prestige in that group where they'll give you nice stuff. Somehow, this is supposed to be so much fun that over 7 million people are doing it. I just don't get it.
To be honest, I don't really know what I'm looking for anymore when I pick up these kinds of games, 'cuz each one I've played I've had such high expectations ("Oh, I hope they have housing! And an alignment system! Maybe I can be a tailor and spend my time making the best clothing ever! and blah blah blah") and had them dashed because the developers feel that such things aren't important enough to include, even though they've been in the genre since Ultima Online, or ever since P&P came into existence. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but then again, if we've seen it before, it's downright stupid to never see it again.
Well, it's like this:
I start in Northshire, and the guard has asked me to kill the Defias who have taken over the vineyard to the east.
Now, being a guard, you'd think that it would be HIS job to do that, seeing as he's the law in that region. But I humor him and do it anyways; I kill a bunch of bandits, get their masks as proof, kill their leader and bring his head to the guard, who congratulates me and rewards me for doing his job.
So now it's time to move on. I head to Goldshire, and from there to Stormwind, and I run a couple of errands for people, which is no big deal; I'm a good guy, after all. So I do that and head back to Goldshire.
In Goldshire, I help a couple of civilians in gathering things they need, which are carried by kobolds, and I also help the captain of the guard here with some scouting missions. Now, the civilians at least have a decent excuse; I mean, they're weak and can't possibly stand up to a gang of walking rats. But the Captain of the fucking Guard?! It's not like the kobolds are going to be that much of a problem for a single level 20 guard to go out and beat the shit out of them, at either mine.
In any case, I complete these tasks, and I get a modest reward from the civilians while the captain of the guard pays me a fraction of his daily wage to sit around on his ass and make sure the bunnies don't get too close to town. Glad to see that you're keeping the good people safe, Captain Jackass!
In any event, I move on.
And so it repeats, for every area of the game. Help the head of the People's Militia (level 30 Elite) by going into the Deadmines and killing the Defias Kingpin, Van Cleef--a task that nobody, not even him or his militia, is able to accomplish, yet 5 misfits who don't know their asses from their feet fuck this guy up good and then steal his valuables before leaving him for dead.
And as you continue to do these repetitive tasks for these incompetent assholes every time you enter a new area, it begins to dawn upon you that all you're doing is grinding after reading some flavor text to spice things up, and it's this text that's supposed to somehow make WoW superior to all other MMO offerings? Talk about simple things for simple minds. Shit, why didn't anybody think of this sooner?
Wait, I forgot; I played Ragnarok Online, a game that would have you collect 100 of at least 3 different items from mobs with a less than 1% drop rate just to get a hat, and it had all kinds of flavor text for these tasks. Sure, it was in the most horrible broken English ever conceived by a localization team, but it was flavor text nonetheless.
Here's the kicker though; it only takes 20 people to accomplish tasks that not even the great armies of the Alliance and Horde are able to accomplish. 20. That's it. At least. Some tasks take 40 people, instead of 20, and yet, still, these mythical armies (which don't seem to exist. At all. Anywhere in Azeroth) can't spare a single soldier to go out and defeat a threat that could very well destroy the entire bloody world. I'd say that the nuts are in control of the asylum in this regard if your armies are fighting on distant battlefields that nobody has ever been able to find in the last 3 years.
So to summarize, flavor text and accomplishing tasks for the incompetent denizens of Azeroth does not remove the grind, nor does it soften its impact; it merely hides it behind a wall of irrelevance that is easily dispelled when you stop killing Twilights for a second and ask yourself "Why am I killing these cultists over and over again?".
Now obviously the AmberMUSH example wouldn't apply if it's not a grinding MUSH, but you can see that a little word substitution makes wanting to grind in MMOs as silly as wanting to roleplay. You could as easily have said "play D&D if you want to roleplay", but that doesn't really solve anything either. I mean, sure, it gives the mindless hordes that defend the genre's current state peace of mind, because now they don't have to deal with the guys who want to masquerade as elves speaking ye Olde English, but where does that leave the guys who want to masquerade as elves speaking ye Olde English, or their friends who can roleplay without sounding like they're from 11th-century England?
Honestly, I think that if this is how these games are going to continue to be developed, they need to drop the RP moniker completely, because as it stands right now, it's very misleading. Massively Multiplayer Online Fantasy Setting Game would be a more accurate description for so-called MMORPGs, don't you think?
I would actually surmise that people play WoW because it's made by Blizzard, so it's gotta be good.
I'll admit that WoW is a well-made game, but like most MMOs that have come before it, it gets really boring REALLY fast because all there is to do is grind mobs, grind quests, grind rep, grind resources, grind honor...just grind, grind, and grind some more. Then maybe after you finish that, you can do a bit of grinding, take your mind off the grind for a bit while you prepare for your next grind.
It seems that the only time you can really get some GOOD, non-grind-related entertainment is if you're one of those rare creatures that actually plays MMORPGs to roleplay your character, and even then you're only a mere drop in a bucket full of inbred assholes who hate you for doing something other than grinding. The GMs won't do anything because their job isn't to hold events anymore, but to do what every other company has the people at the bottom of the company do--provide shitty customer service, even to people with legitimate problems.
What makes this even sadder is that WoW actually made some attempt to add roleplay elements to the game with interactive objects, like chairs to sit on or books to read, and even alcohol to consume. Yet when the players themselves have to expand the interface to add RP elements that should have been there by default, and won't add those elements to the standard UI, then are you really playing a role-playing game anymore?
This is only a small bit of the things I feel are wrong with MMOs, though the central theme of all of them is that roleplaying and worthwhile events get the shaft in favor of static worlds because 1) No company wants to write up a contract that allows them to avoid lawsuits from volunteers, and 2) They don't want to piss people off by "always having events when I'm offline and its not fair" and having people quit in a childish manner. And honestly, I'm not expecting any company to move forward with such things in the near future.
I think what he's getting at is that most MMOs put you into this role where you're forced into some kind of combat role; if you wanted to spend your time as a merchant and build up a successful business, or to be a crafter and make the best items anybody has ever seen, you're SOL because of the game's design.
That's something that's always bothered me about MMOs; there's never the path of the "average person" for players to take, there's no political path, there's no real puzzle-solving to be done ("push these switches in a precise order to open the door; get it wrong and you're all dead"). Everything is fight, fight, fight, and I don't think games--MMOs especially--should have to be that way.
MMOs really should be about making choices about how you want to develop your character as opposed to killing mobs for the best loot.
Hmmm...I see. Then that raises the question of why developers don't develop for non-Windows platforms, ignoring the obvious market share answer. I mean, performance-wise, WoW ran better on my Linux partition under Cedega than it ever did on my Windows partition, which seemed odd to me. You'd think that having to use a middleware solution to play a game would have more glaring performance issues than just a missing targeting circle. It probably had something to do with OpenGL on Linux though, 'cuz Doom 3 and Quake 4 (which used OpenGL exclusively on both platforms) also ran better than they did on Windows.
In any event, the whole thing seems rather stupid to me.
Actually, from what I understand, it does. When I've ran System Information checks under Cedega, the OS returned has been whatever Cedega was configured to run as (usually WinXP).
There are differences between a person running under Cedega and a person running under Windows. The one I've found is with my motherboard, which has "Cool 'n' Quiet" support. I started up my computer with CnQ enabled, and I started up WoW while the CPU was underclocked. CnQ would raise the clockspeed of the CPU to what it was normally configured as, and it looked like I was using a speed hack. You can see how this would be a problem. Disabling CnQ support fixes the issue though, though that might not occur to everybody.
As for OS usage from home computer users, are we talking about users with only one computer and one operating system, or are we including dual-boot users and people with multiple machines as well? You can't trust a statistic that uses either because they're going to contribute to multiple sides of the fence, or they're going to inflate a particular side by having two or more versions of the same operating system (i.e. a person who dual-boots Ubuntu and Fedora is going to be as bad as a person who has 4 Windows machines, each running a different version of the OS).
Therefore, it becomes a question of "which do you prefer?" which can be interpreted as if everything you need would work under your OS of choice. You'd get a number of dual-booters and multi-machine owners who would probably dump their *nix, BSD, and Mac machines to run purely in Windows, but I think what would be more surprising would be the number of people who would dump their Windows machines to run purely in *nix, BSD, and Mac, and I think it's important to know just how many of those folks actually exist. Adding this to the single-OS homes would yield a much more accurate statistic. The number of Windows users would increase slightly, but I'd also wager that the Mac, *nix, and BSD users would each increase by a significant amount, to the point where developers would need to seriously consider developing for those platforms.
The same could probably be said of their Mac userbase, but that doesn't mean that they should drop Mac support, now does it?
Besides that, how do you find out what percentage of the userbase uses Linux other than asking the players? If anything, Cedega users will be identified as Windows users by the servers, so the only option left after that would be to run a poll, and that's not necessarily accurate either.
DirectX already does a stellar job of tying games to the Windows platform, so anti-cheating and copy protection are the least of concerns with regards to Linux as a gaming platform.
One of the things that makes DirectX great for developers is that all the necessary APIs are consolidated into one package and developed in unison, whereas the cross-platform equivalents are all independently worked on by various groups. Ergo, DirectX will have an advantage in reliability, since the APIs are designed to work together, and they all get updated at the same time.
However, in the future, should some project be started (or a pre-existing project decides that it's time to advertise and make developers aware of their existence) that rivals DirectX and offers better performance on both Windows and Linux, and makes game developers aware of the alternative, then there just MIGHT be a chance there for Linux gaming, and then anti-cheating and copy protection can be developed from there. Until such time though, it's a non-issue.
I don't think the intended idea here is to share your entire source code with the world on their service; that's what Sourceforge is for. However, if you have a couple of code snippets that you want to upload, or you're getting an error and you post the relevant code up to get help in finding a solution, then what's the problem?
I mean, it's not like Microsoft is out to steal your for-loop that does something that only you and you alone know about, or your Muffin class, which is derived from the BakedGoods base class. And if it's something that you want to keep away from the clutches of the Evil Corporation(TM), just redirect people to code posted on your website instead.
Anybody else thinking that we'll have Vista viruses that mutate and adapt to the ASLR of a particular system within a year or two? I mean, seriously, what is it with software companies (or rather, security companies) and this apparent hubris that "our product is bullet-proof"? I mean, haven't we seen enough security systems and copy protections go down in smoke, even when people were convinced that "it can't be cracked"? Give me a break...
That's certainly possible, and is one way to interpret it. Another way to look at it is that, by not letting natural selection take its course on these "weaker" specimens and studying their conditions, we get closer to eliminating these defects from our genome altogether and ensuring that they don't pop up randomly 1, 10, 100, 100000 years from now. In that respect, isn't it considered evolution?
"On December 32nd, 2006, Skynet became aware and launched a space-based retaliatory nuclear strike against its human enemies."
Okay, now THAT'S a valid reason; something TFA was missing. I'm still a bit skeptical though that a mere date could fubar things to such a degree, but I guess it's always the smallest problems that come to bite you in the ass (i.e. if(stringA = stringB) { /* stuff goes here */ })
Pardon my ignorance, but is this really serious enough that it should actually cause a delay? I mean, if it's simply a matter of figuring out what the date is, I'm sure that the astronauts and engineers involved in the project know at LEAST basic mathematics, and can determine that if it's, say, Day 367 on the shuttle computer, then 367-365 = 2, AKA January 2nd, 2007.
I'd say the article missed something; the whole concept sounds far too ridiculous to stand on its own.
You can still blame it on stupid people though. ;)
"oh its spelt youtube not utube? silly me must be all teh iming i do lol"
Wow. I can totally see these new Blood Elves spending all their time in the woods, lifting trees, spotting each other, getting into the shower together after a long workout and having hot, sweaty se--um, yeah.
You gotta feel sorry for the Blood Elf women though; they can look, they can dream, but they know in their hearts that it can never be. To make things worse, they don't have the nice human gentlemen callers to fall back on; that ship sailed more than 4 years ago.
Which will explode due to shoddy manufacturing.
Why the hell would Sony give a shit about imports? Because it hurts sales in Europe, but not in China? Who cares? All the money goes to the same source in the end, so what's the big deal?
void History()
{
History();
return;
}
He may be a smart man, but he's a damned fool.
I mean, he's right; games can't provide the same narrative as TV or films, but then again, films and TV are also distinct in narrative, so it hardly matters because they're supposed to be different.
I mean, why'd he use cooking and lamaze class as examples? Are they somehow more significant than other mundane events, like brushing your teeth, or taking a shit? There we go! In order to be accepted by clueless, geriatric jackasses, Half-Life has to have a sequence where Gordon Freeman has to stop running from the Combine chasing him, find a secluded spot in the wilderness, and just squat, and he has to do it before the patrolling Strider nearby notices him and rains death upon him. To make it even more intense, he has to run around the woods looking for leaves to wipe his ass with!
In all seriousness though, it sounds like he has a narrow-minded perspective as to how games are. I mean, the fact that he hasn't even touched them since the NES days because he sucks at them speaks volumes.
Perhaps sometime in the near future, someone will make a game so good and rich in narrative that EVERYBODY will just stop watching television and movies altogether, exchanging their satellite receivers and DVD players to get a Wii or an Xbox 360. Meanwhile, this guy will be looking desperately for a job, or maybe he'll just say "Fuck it." and retire. Who knows?
I think you're a tad foolish in your views. EVERYTHING has something of value that we walk away with, including MMORPGs. Besides insight into psychology and community elements, a game like WoW is going to show some people that they have leadership qualities, while others will find out that they can, in fact, socialize with other people without coming off as some creepy person or a pretentious cock, or that, yes, they can assert themselves and make their opinions both known and respected. All of these are valuable things, and you're cheapening them by suggesting otherwise.
You're giving each of these far more credit than they're due. Participating in sports may keep you fit, but if you can't pull yourself away from the football field or the golf course, you're still going to have problems.
If all you can do with a girl is fuck her, you're going to have a difficult time building a relationship with her that doesn't revolve around both of you taking your pants off.
You can spend a great deal of time playing chess and such, but again, if you can't moderate it, it's no better. A smart chess junkie is still an idiot at heart.
What you don't seem to realize is that ANYTHING can be regarded as addicting in nature. The whole purpose of entertainment is to give ourselves a break from the rest of our lives, and most people have a lot of shit to deal with. If it gets overwhelming and they become depressed or anxious or just can't handle it, they're going to take longer breaks so that they can have more entertainment and experience less of whatever is bothering them. However, if you can figure out what's bothering them, and help them solve the problem, there's a good chance they'll be able to get back on track.
So what you're saying is that, rather than be human, you'd wish for us to be tranformed or modified into something else, like the Borg or some other soulless entity obsessed with work.
You do realize that working too much is just as detrimental to one's physical and mental health as any other thing taken in large quantities, right? A workaholic has worries too, and those are going to keep him working, even though the wife wants him to come to bed, or little Timmy wants to play catch with his dad. Of course, once we're all drones in your little world, families and shit will be a thing of the past, and we can all focus on being addicted to the office. You'll forgive me if I don't jump for joy.
Perhaps he should pick games that do. I mean, I can see his point that games aren't "art" if playing, say, the original DooM, but then you got games like Half-Life 2; same genre, same basic mechanics, yet it plays different because you're not just trying to "kill the bad guys," you're trying to follow the narrative. Just like a movie.
It's as if he expects that the majority of titles need to be "artistic" before the form itself can be considered as such. Perhaps he should take a second look at what he does for a living, and take note of the reams and reams of shitty movies that come out every year and re-evaluate whether movies are "art" anymore than games, because right now, both are merely corporate money-making machines rather than forms of expression.