"Then they started to make it a clone of the Blizzard game. No matter how loud their player base screamed."
It's funny you say this, that's exactly what I saw when they said they had streamlined 34 professions into 9 classes (there are nine classes in WoW). Basically Sony said hey, what happened, why is WoW kicking the crapola out of our former market lead, and Sony is playing "me too". Shame on them.
There are some people that love having 34 classes. It offers them diversity, freedom. Some want a classless system like Eve (though the races still play a strong role). Others, especially pvp oriented folks, want balance. And balance means you reach a problem of x squared when it comes to class balance. Basically, every one of those 34 classes has to be balanced against 33 other classes. That's over 500 comparisons, times the number of skills, specs, etc that can emerge from a given profession. Compared to a 9 class system of 36 comparisons. So you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Point is, each game should have a goal in mind from the design stage forward, and stick to it. We as gamers don't invest months of time and hundreds of dollars in a game to have the rules changed on us on the fly, to create a whole "new game experience". If SWG is dead to Sony they should sell it and develop a SWG2, but not annihilate the original.
Can't you die from falling in the game? Surely if this kid has played WoW enough to blame behavioral modifications on the game, he's died at least once this way. Watch Blizzard up fall damage in game to compensate.
While we have seen the "Do video games spill into real life" debate rekindled with GTAs PR disaster, IE Hot Coffee, CSI covering it is only a testimonial to it's being a popular issue - they take anything from current news and make a show about it. Frankly I've never seen much morality questioned in CSI, it's more about how many cool gadgets and crime scene techniques they can get into one show. It's like Blue's Clues for grown ups.
Internet : Disable Active X, javascript.
Trusted : Enable Active X, Javascript.
Maintain a trusted sites list.
Oh, and never, ever, install Norton. Even if you don't get a virus, your computer will run like c**p.
It's not that hard people.
I have to admit, seeing elves on the horde side is going to be a shocker. But the poster was right, introducing a more appealing race to the horde will help balance them out. I always pictured some kind of demonic or elemental race joining the horde, I guess the blood elves aren't far off.
I think the horde just ends up stronger in even matches because they are trained to fight superior numbers in field battles. That and you tend to remove those players interested in the appeal of their character's figure and have more players focused on skill and itemization. Both will become slightly more balanced, in fact I predict a good half the servers will jump on the blood elves just like night elves were the fad in open beta.
Level 70 will open talent options, but it will still force certain strategic decisions : you still can't put 31 points into 2 seperate trees, so one will still be dominant. Now if Blizzard could just fix all the 7th tier talents to be worth debating...
By the way, I have to disagree with the statement that servers don't need balanced out - especially pvp oriented servers. In the open field, the underdog gets dominated by a swarm of opposition, and in battlegrounds, the superior force has to wait in 2 hour queues to get in, the boredom tends to lead them back to the field to further grief the other side. I was on a server that was well balanced, then Blizzard opened realm transfers there and in the end the alliance held a lot more players after the transfer. Our forums became flooded with them crying that the horde never joined enough battlegrounds, when the reality is that there weren't enough horde players to make it fun. Also the entrance to blackrock mountain became a point of constant ganking from the frustrated alliance members that could not find any player vs player action elsewhere.
Here are my own thoughts on the economic impact of gold farmers. Most players in the game, as they progress, will eventually replace a given item on that character, at which point it gets sold to an npc for gold, or disenchanted (the soulbound prevents the item from continuing to circulate among players). If it's vendored, the amount the item sells at is the amount of gold added to the world economy, if it's disenchanted, there is actually a zero gold addition (shards are consumed in an enchantment, cannot be vendored, and do not increase the vendor value of an item). If another player offers 1000 gold for an item, the overall amount of gold on the server won't change, therefore there should be no inflation.
Since many players are not enchanters, it's reasonable to say that most of the greens a farmer finds translate directly into increased gold on the server. But if they are, say, shard farming, it can't ever lead to more gold. It may decrease the value of the high end enchants at best, which would actually lead to a drop in price. Further the high amounts people pay for say, a krol blade (900 gold) do not translate into 900 gold added to the economy. In fact with auction house fees as they are, more gold is usually lost in the listing than the item will eventually vendor for when the buyer finds something better. Now since the article talks about most farmers making the most money from selling epics and reagents to players, and I believe this to be true, then their farming is having a minimal impact on inflation.
Prices are driven up mainly in my opinion because of alts - addition characters played by the same player. Someone that raids the high end content has access to a great deal of gold compared to someone on level 10. It is faster for them to make a sum of money with their main character and buy low end reagents, than to use the lower character to collect said reagents. That's why you can sell a stack of briarthorn for several gold, even though the potions you could make from it are far less valuable than the reagents you put in. This is why low end enchants are driven down in cost to the point most are offered for free. It's got nothing to do with chinese farming, it's secondary characters powerskilling on a primary character's bankroll.
We still have Microsoft.
Seriously though, Threatening to create competition to the internet? Go ahead and try. I would encourage it. In order to come up with ANYTHING sustainable they would have to prove they have something superior to the massive information network that is the internet. I think it's a bunch of hot air and an appeal to fear. But if they do have something superior behind the curtain, I'm anxious to see it before I turn in what I have.
This guy hit it right on the head, if you control DNS you can levy taxes on it's use. Right now registering a domain name costs money. While that may flow through a variety of middlemen, it all comes back to ICANN to assign that IP address to a name. That's US GDP ($$$). If I live in China, and make a website for my local school, I still pay the US to have the web page.
Is this fair? I think so. The US developed the internet, that's why they have control of it today. Yes it's a monopoly, but I don't see the middle east giving away its oil either.
Yes, internet operations would likely move to states with lower tax rates. Wouldn't this then force states to be more competetive with their tax rates? An internet company is (can be) a very effecient business, you take a small amount of capital to generate huge returns. Therefore it doesn't get hit for the same property tax as say a restaurant or factory, that requires a significant amount of capital. That should be a reward for its effeciency, not a reason for states to hammer it.
I'm not sure from the original poster if the intent is for states to charge their sales tax on products they sell, or on products being shipped into their state. The former is reasonable, the latter is just greed.
Personally I'd like to see income and sales taxes eliminated, and go to an all property tax based system. If you have a lot of capital, you can afford to pay more taxes. And you should too, because you'll get more use from the government. If you don't even have a car, maybe the state could cut you a break? What need does a homeless man have for a fire department, or a carless man have for state police patrols and roads? Why should the poor pay for what the rich use most?
The real problem is the tax system is convoluted. Each of 50 states has it's own laws, plus federal laws, and when you have to do business in two states there are conflictions. If the states were taxing what they had a stake in, rather than reaching for money that really has nothing to do with the services they offer, this issue wouldn't even exist./end rant
Mickael
Props on the quotes!
I doubt there is a good arguement for the US to relinquish the control it has over the internet - while it accepts global feedback, it was created in the US, under US laws of capitalism, that means the creator gets to keep it.
Besides, if these other countries had solutions to problems like spam, minor pornography, internet fraud, they would present these solutions. And even if they had solutions for these problems, it wouldn't warrant seizure of the internet : if I go to McDonalds and tell them how to make a better burger, I don't get to own McDonalds. If they think they can do better, by all means make an internet, and we'll shop around for the one with the most to offer.
Slashdot Mirror
"Then they started to make it a clone of the Blizzard game. No matter how loud their player base screamed." It's funny you say this, that's exactly what I saw when they said they had streamlined 34 professions into 9 classes (there are nine classes in WoW). Basically Sony said hey, what happened, why is WoW kicking the crapola out of our former market lead, and Sony is playing "me too". Shame on them. There are some people that love having 34 classes. It offers them diversity, freedom. Some want a classless system like Eve (though the races still play a strong role). Others, especially pvp oriented folks, want balance. And balance means you reach a problem of x squared when it comes to class balance. Basically, every one of those 34 classes has to be balanced against 33 other classes. That's over 500 comparisons, times the number of skills, specs, etc that can emerge from a given profession. Compared to a 9 class system of 36 comparisons. So you can't have your cake and eat it too. Point is, each game should have a goal in mind from the design stage forward, and stick to it. We as gamers don't invest months of time and hundreds of dollars in a game to have the rules changed on us on the fly, to create a whole "new game experience". If SWG is dead to Sony they should sell it and develop a SWG2, but not annihilate the original.
Can't you die from falling in the game? Surely if this kid has played WoW enough to blame behavioral modifications on the game, he's died at least once this way. Watch Blizzard up fall damage in game to compensate.
While we have seen the "Do video games spill into real life" debate rekindled with GTAs PR disaster, IE Hot Coffee, CSI covering it is only a testimonial to it's being a popular issue - they take anything from current news and make a show about it. Frankly I've never seen much morality questioned in CSI, it's more about how many cool gadgets and crime scene techniques they can get into one show. It's like Blue's Clues for grown ups.
Internet : Disable Active X, javascript. Trusted : Enable Active X, Javascript. Maintain a trusted sites list. Oh, and never, ever, install Norton. Even if you don't get a virus, your computer will run like c**p. It's not that hard people.
I have to admit, seeing elves on the horde side is going to be a shocker. But the poster was right, introducing a more appealing race to the horde will help balance them out. I always pictured some kind of demonic or elemental race joining the horde, I guess the blood elves aren't far off. I think the horde just ends up stronger in even matches because they are trained to fight superior numbers in field battles. That and you tend to remove those players interested in the appeal of their character's figure and have more players focused on skill and itemization. Both will become slightly more balanced, in fact I predict a good half the servers will jump on the blood elves just like night elves were the fad in open beta. Level 70 will open talent options, but it will still force certain strategic decisions : you still can't put 31 points into 2 seperate trees, so one will still be dominant. Now if Blizzard could just fix all the 7th tier talents to be worth debating... By the way, I have to disagree with the statement that servers don't need balanced out - especially pvp oriented servers. In the open field, the underdog gets dominated by a swarm of opposition, and in battlegrounds, the superior force has to wait in 2 hour queues to get in, the boredom tends to lead them back to the field to further grief the other side. I was on a server that was well balanced, then Blizzard opened realm transfers there and in the end the alliance held a lot more players after the transfer. Our forums became flooded with them crying that the horde never joined enough battlegrounds, when the reality is that there weren't enough horde players to make it fun. Also the entrance to blackrock mountain became a point of constant ganking from the frustrated alliance members that could not find any player vs player action elsewhere.
Here are my own thoughts on the economic impact of gold farmers. Most players in the game, as they progress, will eventually replace a given item on that character, at which point it gets sold to an npc for gold, or disenchanted (the soulbound prevents the item from continuing to circulate among players). If it's vendored, the amount the item sells at is the amount of gold added to the world economy, if it's disenchanted, there is actually a zero gold addition (shards are consumed in an enchantment, cannot be vendored, and do not increase the vendor value of an item). If another player offers 1000 gold for an item, the overall amount of gold on the server won't change, therefore there should be no inflation. Since many players are not enchanters, it's reasonable to say that most of the greens a farmer finds translate directly into increased gold on the server. But if they are, say, shard farming, it can't ever lead to more gold. It may decrease the value of the high end enchants at best, which would actually lead to a drop in price. Further the high amounts people pay for say, a krol blade (900 gold) do not translate into 900 gold added to the economy. In fact with auction house fees as they are, more gold is usually lost in the listing than the item will eventually vendor for when the buyer finds something better. Now since the article talks about most farmers making the most money from selling epics and reagents to players, and I believe this to be true, then their farming is having a minimal impact on inflation. Prices are driven up mainly in my opinion because of alts - addition characters played by the same player. Someone that raids the high end content has access to a great deal of gold compared to someone on level 10. It is faster for them to make a sum of money with their main character and buy low end reagents, than to use the lower character to collect said reagents. That's why you can sell a stack of briarthorn for several gold, even though the potions you could make from it are far less valuable than the reagents you put in. This is why low end enchants are driven down in cost to the point most are offered for free. It's got nothing to do with chinese farming, it's secondary characters powerskilling on a primary character's bankroll.
We still have Microsoft. Seriously though, Threatening to create competition to the internet? Go ahead and try. I would encourage it. In order to come up with ANYTHING sustainable they would have to prove they have something superior to the massive information network that is the internet. I think it's a bunch of hot air and an appeal to fear. But if they do have something superior behind the curtain, I'm anxious to see it before I turn in what I have.
This guy hit it right on the head, if you control DNS you can levy taxes on it's use. Right now registering a domain name costs money. While that may flow through a variety of middlemen, it all comes back to ICANN to assign that IP address to a name. That's US GDP ($$$). If I live in China, and make a website for my local school, I still pay the US to have the web page. Is this fair? I think so. The US developed the internet, that's why they have control of it today. Yes it's a monopoly, but I don't see the middle east giving away its oil either.
Yes, internet operations would likely move to states with lower tax rates. Wouldn't this then force states to be more competetive with their tax rates? An internet company is (can be) a very effecient business, you take a small amount of capital to generate huge returns. Therefore it doesn't get hit for the same property tax as say a restaurant or factory, that requires a significant amount of capital. That should be a reward for its effeciency, not a reason for states to hammer it. I'm not sure from the original poster if the intent is for states to charge their sales tax on products they sell, or on products being shipped into their state. The former is reasonable, the latter is just greed. Personally I'd like to see income and sales taxes eliminated, and go to an all property tax based system. If you have a lot of capital, you can afford to pay more taxes. And you should too, because you'll get more use from the government. If you don't even have a car, maybe the state could cut you a break? What need does a homeless man have for a fire department, or a carless man have for state police patrols and roads? Why should the poor pay for what the rich use most? The real problem is the tax system is convoluted. Each of 50 states has it's own laws, plus federal laws, and when you have to do business in two states there are conflictions. If the states were taxing what they had a stake in, rather than reaching for money that really has nothing to do with the services they offer, this issue wouldn't even exist. /end rant
Mickael
Props on the quotes! I doubt there is a good arguement for the US to relinquish the control it has over the internet - while it accepts global feedback, it was created in the US, under US laws of capitalism, that means the creator gets to keep it. Besides, if these other countries had solutions to problems like spam, minor pornography, internet fraud, they would present these solutions. And even if they had solutions for these problems, it wouldn't warrant seizure of the internet : if I go to McDonalds and tell them how to make a better burger, I don't get to own McDonalds. If they think they can do better, by all means make an internet, and we'll shop around for the one with the most to offer.