It's true even for 'pirate' servers. The 'pirate' WoW servers are generally free to play, but ask for 'donations' in exchange for in-game items. Most people don't pay, but those who do tend to pay big... I'm talking like $300-400 worth of armor.
Personally, I paid about $30 just to give an edge.
My problem with commercial free-to-play is that you really can't do jack without major grind-time unless you pay, and even then, most pay items are temporary or cosmetic. Some things are both!
As for 'bringing it to the US'... I guess someone has forgotten about Puzzle Pirates, which did this long ago... And probably wasn't even the first.
I stand corrected. It wasn't the app I thought it was.
I still think Blizzard should have taken my money when I wanted to speed level and created a 'fun' server that I could play fast on, instead of grinding for months to get level 70. I simply don't have time for grind.
Instead, I gave that money to someone else (I donated it to the server) and had my fun there, instead. Actually, I'm considering going back again soon for some more fun... Blizzard's missing out on potential revenue for no reason that I can fathom. They don't have to ruin their existing servers, they can just copy the 'private' server structure and state what the stats are on each server.
Re:a bunch of questions
on
C# In-Depth
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· Score: 1
How does that make any sense? Almost all programming languages work on Windows, so it comes right back to technical merit. There's nothing stopping a 'better' language from being more popular on Windows.
If anything, the fact that C# didn't run on Linux and Mac for a long time (and still isn't perfect) should have reduced its usage, lending credit to the hypothesis that C#'s rise is based on its technical merit.
Personally, I think C# is a pretty nice language to write simple programs on. If you need raw speed, or hardware interface, then it's not a good choice... But just about all desktop applications need neither. It's much easier to deal with than C++ or VB6 and combines the best of both of them. I definitely find it more responsive than Java, and it has a much better IDE. (Even the open source #develop is better than anything I've found for Java.)
I agree. I played briefly on a 40x experience pirate server and found the leveling to be a tad slow. Playing on the live servers was horrifyingly slow.
But all this program did was run you from place to place, no? (At faster speed, I think, too.) If running from place to place is such a tedious and repetitive task, Blizzard should have implemented changes that drove these people out of business and pleased their customers, rather than sueing and pissing everyone off.
Then again, they're still the King of MMOs, so maybe they aren't too wrong about how to make the game right. I did play longer on the live servers than the pirate ones.
I have serious doubts as to their projected costs. This will have changed so radically in 4 years that these predictions are about as stable as gas predictions that far out.
On the other hand, they are somewhat correct about bandwidth usage becoming more common. My sister and mother both have Skype now and use it regularly, and many people are looking to set-top boxes for NetFlix's on-demand and other services like that. It won't be long now before heavy bandwidth usage forces the ISPs here to seriously consider bandwidth issues.
Luckily, I believe in the market and I think someone will lay the groundwork for serious bandwidth soon, instead of continuing to use copper for everything.
Bingo. I've already been told by a Best Buy that they'd throw me out if I continued taking pictures in their store. I took 1 picture of the box of a game I knew my friend was looking forward to, and suddenly there's a crowd of employees staring at me, and then a manager coming to talk to me.
At first, I apologized and said I'd stop. Then I realized that I wasn't in the wrong and it pissed me off, so I went and found that manager, handed him everything I was going to buy (that I already had in my hands) and left.
His excuse was that 'loss prevention' made the rules and he had to do it. Too bad for him that he lost $1000 in sales that day. (I bought my laser printer at Office Depot instead.)
It's worth noting that I asked OD if they'd do the same, and the answer was 'If I didn't know you, yes.' (I knew the manager personally.)
Personally, I expect this barcode scanning craze to happen just about like the cuecat: Big buzz for a while, and then nothing.
The only uses I -do- see is cataloging things you already own, or remembering things to research them later. (Or possibly searching for reviews based on the UPC, but there's no infrastructure for that yet.) I tried the cataloging thing on the PC, but none of my webcams were good enough to get a quick scan from UPCs, so that was a bust. (Some never did work at all.)
"take a look at the US public education system and tell me there isn't a problem..."
Who said there wasn't a problem? His point was that a socialized system worked, and it worked better than what we had before it.
Let's look at history: Once upon a time, only the rich could afford to go to school. Everyone else choose to spend their money on food instead. Then someone got the bright idea to make the government pay for schooling for everyone. (And by government, I mean taxes, and by taxes, I mean everyone.) Now, all children not only have the option to attend school, it's practically mandatory.
So we -could- go back to the old ways now, and let every person pay for the schooling of their own children. That would mean that the poorest families would again choose to 'homeschool' (or not school at all, more likely) and the rich families would have really good schools for their children. Those in the middle would choose based on their current income, but as children tend to come early in your adult life, and that's the time when you have the least money anyhow, it's pretty likely that many will opt for the no-school treatment.
No, I'd say socialized schooling has worked damned well. So has roads, post offices, etc, etc. They'd all be in the same 'only the rich have them' situation if there was no government involvement.
Don't get me wrong, I wish the government would back the hell off on a lot of stuff... Just not any of this stuff.
I haven't read it either, but I've heard it's mostly copying, with a little bad paraphrasing thrown in. He didn't even use any user-provided content because he didn't want to share his profits.
She did the right thing here. He was clearly using her work as his own.
Re:It's a pretty good game...
on
Review: Spore
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· Score: 1
Don't forget that you are the only being in your civilization competent enough to trade spice between planets. None of the rest of them can figure it out at all. Also, you are the entire space navy. And the colonization effort. And the only diplomat.
Seriously, it's more than a little crazy how much micromanaging you have to do. To the point that you get a hologram later so you can literally be in 2 places at once.
Re:I am more comfortable wtih Reloaded, than EA.
on
Review: Spore
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Oh God. I just realized that it's true. I -do- trust Reloaded a lot more than I trust EA.
My stance on cracked EXEs was locked permanently in place when I -needed- one to run NeverwinterNights. Without the crack, my legal discs would quit every 5-10 minutes. Not crash or have some issue, just quit with no warning. I thought it was crashing and just not giving an error, until someone figured out it was the copy protection. It didn't like my super-expensive CD drive and couldn't read the invalid data off the CD the way it wanted to. (It was one of the ways they verified the disc was real... Bad data on purpose.)
The crack fixed it instantly and I was playing easily, and didn't even need the disc in the drive. Since then, I've found a crack for every game I've purchased since.
And Reloaded has made the majority of those cracks I used.
Re:It gives you something just as bad...
on
Review: Spore
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· Score: 1
My main issue with DRM is that I end up with a worse product than the pirates have. It may wreck my software or hardware (Yes, it happens) or make me do stupid things, like keep the CD/DVD in the drive while playing for -no- reason, or have period checks online to make sure I haven't stolen it.
Re:Can you change the world in MMO's?
on
Quests
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· Score: 1
I don't see how a changing world is 'screwing over new players' any more than advances in science are screwing over newborns in the real world. If the world is constantly evolving, they will always be part of the current time and have something interesting going on.
DragonRealms (a MUD) has a long and rich history full of world-shaking changes. New cities that spring up, guild halls that were destroyed and then abandoned, or later rebuilt... Constant changes. For a graphical game, it would be more artwork-intensive, but it's still totally possible.
In fact, Asheron's Call 2 had changes like this as well. I remember one plot point where a major lake dried up and revealed a ancient city that was below it.
Re:Can you change the world in MMO's?
on
Quests
·
· Score: 1
"If you put in puzzle quests, someone will post the answer on a spoiler site"
At least they'll have the choice, then. As it is, there's no puzzles to be had. DragonRealms, a MUD I used to play, has a few really hard puzzle quests that are necessary to get some of the best stuff in the game. I enjoyed figuring some of them out, but I was forced to turn to others for help on some. It was still a LOT more fun than a 'fedex' quest, though.
"How many people actually read the quest text in WoW in detail?"
Why would they, when there's no POINT to the text? There's a tiny bit of 'plot' to some of them, but most are just plain 'fedex' or journey quests. If there was more to the quests, they'd be forced to actually read them.
A 'prankster' bothered to search out and send notices for 4000 videos? He'd have to be pretty dedicated to his prank.
No, I think it's much more likely that it was a scientologist that did it. Slightly less likely is that it's a scientology hater trying to make them look bad. (As if they can't handle that on their own.)
Hm, sounds like everything else in the world. That's how it works: Someone produces something really great, and a bunch of copycats make things almost like them in order to make some money on someone else's idea. I don't know if you've tried, but coming up with original -good- ideas for video games is -not- easy.
There's nothing stopping small companies from making good games except their own skill. Most innovation right now is in the 'casual' gaming market because that's where the money is. There are a TON of clones in that market, but new things do appear every so often.
Maybe if the 'core' gamer market was better, companies would start producing new games for it as well. But their insistence on invasive and interfering DRM is killing them. I refuse to install any game that requires me to remove some of my hardware or other software to make it work, and that's most DRM schemes now. (Can't have Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools installed, for example.) Those tools have legitimate uses for me, and they have no right to make me remove them to play a game I actually purchased. (Note that pirates don't need to remove the other software, only legit customers.)
Spore's DRM only allows you to install the game 3 times. Ever. How is that fair? I format my Windows computer about every 6 months. That means the game has a max lifetime of 18 months for me. Chances are I won't still be playing it at that time, but some people play a single game for years. (TheSims comes to mind, from the SAME COMPANY.) (Again, note that pirates don't have this limitation.)
Most games stop working if you lose your original disc, as well. Why? It doesn't -use- the disc any more. (Again, pirates don't have this limitation!)
No, the market is dying because it is pissing its customers off. They're simply going elsewhere. I'm mostly a console gamer now. No limit on the number of installs there! I never have to unplug equipment or delete anything from my consoles!
If you don't like your toaster and take it back, you don't end up with a copy of the toaster.
Combined with his 'no drm' policy, there's no way for him to guarantee you didn't just steal the game via this method.
I think he should offer refunds if you "don't like it", but your logic doesn't support anything. Personally, I would be more willing to buy games if I knew I could get my money back for the bad ones. If I get bad food at a restaurant, I can get my money back. Even if I've eaten part of it! (Well, the decent ones. The rest aren't worth eating at anyhow.)
I think Introversion is a bad counterexample. The graphics were never the draw of their games, the gameplay was. They all scale as much as they need to: Not at all.
The rest is not as simple as you make it sound. The limits for graphics quality aren't just set by what the hardware can handle. Most people know a game from 2000 (or before) won't look great (compared to today's games) because of the hardware upgrades. But you also have to take other things into consideration, such as the size of the media. It was not acceptable to have 4GB of graphics and video back then any more than it would be acceptable to have 40GB now. Having to install 10 DVDs to play a game is just not an option. The best you can hope for is to add new 'stuff like HDR', which applies to everything.
In addition, new 'stuff like HDR' is being invented all the time. Scaling for the future is almost impossible... Scaling for the past is pretty much all you can hope for. Scaling for more than a couple years in the future is impossible to predict, and it takes at least that long to make the game. They're lucky to have it scaled to the present.
Personally, I think it's a waste of time and they'd be better off concentrating on new products instead.
Indeed they have. When I was just out of highschool, I met a girl online and called her on the phone for a month. I had no clue what it was going to cost. Turns out it was $2000. My parents complained and the long distance company lowered it to about $600. I was ready to pay the whole thing as it was MY FAULT. It was a valuable lesson and now I always know what I'm paying before I do things.
Seriously? You're going to pay $60+ per month on a 2 year contract and NOT read all the text? Are you insane? Anything I sign that costs that much and lasts that long gets fully read.
Please tell me you read the lease on your apartment? Car?
Sounds like there is DRM embedded in the video stream, so there's no way to decode it unless you have the right codec, which will look for the USB key.
It also sounds like it'll be locked to Windows, since I doubt they put that much effort into making it for Linux as well... Or even OSX.
It's really sad, because it's not like that's a hard movie to get... DVD, Divx... Just about every format imaginable is available on the web for that one.
Slightly off. Most developers are saying 'so long as you don't release my work as non-free' or 'so long as anything based on my work follows my rules.' It's not truly 'free' for everyone, no matter what they say.
There are a few developers asking for their piece, though... MySQL comes to mind. 'Free for non-commercial use only' is not really all that free.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true even for 'pirate' servers. The 'pirate' WoW servers are generally free to play, but ask for 'donations' in exchange for in-game items. Most people don't pay, but those who do tend to pay big... I'm talking like $300-400 worth of armor.
Personally, I paid about $30 just to give an edge.
My problem with commercial free-to-play is that you really can't do jack without major grind-time unless you pay, and even then, most pay items are temporary or cosmetic. Some things are both!
As for 'bringing it to the US' ... I guess someone has forgotten about Puzzle Pirates, which did this long ago... And probably wasn't even the first.
I stand corrected. It wasn't the app I thought it was.
I still think Blizzard should have taken my money when I wanted to speed level and created a 'fun' server that I could play fast on, instead of grinding for months to get level 70. I simply don't have time for grind.
Instead, I gave that money to someone else (I donated it to the server) and had my fun there, instead. Actually, I'm considering going back again soon for some more fun... Blizzard's missing out on potential revenue for no reason that I can fathom. They don't have to ruin their existing servers, they can just copy the 'private' server structure and state what the stats are on each server.
How does that make any sense? Almost all programming languages work on Windows, so it comes right back to technical merit. There's nothing stopping a 'better' language from being more popular on Windows.
If anything, the fact that C# didn't run on Linux and Mac for a long time (and still isn't perfect) should have reduced its usage, lending credit to the hypothesis that C#'s rise is based on its technical merit.
Personally, I think C# is a pretty nice language to write simple programs on. If you need raw speed, or hardware interface, then it's not a good choice... But just about all desktop applications need neither. It's much easier to deal with than C++ or VB6 and combines the best of both of them. I definitely find it more responsive than Java, and it has a much better IDE. (Even the open source #develop is better than anything I've found for Java.)
I agree. I played briefly on a 40x experience pirate server and found the leveling to be a tad slow. Playing on the live servers was horrifyingly slow.
But all this program did was run you from place to place, no? (At faster speed, I think, too.) If running from place to place is such a tedious and repetitive task, Blizzard should have implemented changes that drove these people out of business and pleased their customers, rather than sueing and pissing everyone off.
Then again, they're still the King of MMOs, so maybe they aren't too wrong about how to make the game right. I did play longer on the live servers than the pirate ones.
I have serious doubts as to their projected costs. This will have changed so radically in 4 years that these predictions are about as stable as gas predictions that far out.
On the other hand, they are somewhat correct about bandwidth usage becoming more common. My sister and mother both have Skype now and use it regularly, and many people are looking to set-top boxes for NetFlix's on-demand and other services like that. It won't be long now before heavy bandwidth usage forces the ISPs here to seriously consider bandwidth issues.
Luckily, I believe in the market and I think someone will lay the groundwork for serious bandwidth soon, instead of continuing to use copper for everything.
Being above your job, knowing it, and acting like it are all different things. The first 2 are fine, the third is what keeps you from getting the job.
Bingo. I've already been told by a Best Buy that they'd throw me out if I continued taking pictures in their store. I took 1 picture of the box of a game I knew my friend was looking forward to, and suddenly there's a crowd of employees staring at me, and then a manager coming to talk to me.
At first, I apologized and said I'd stop. Then I realized that I wasn't in the wrong and it pissed me off, so I went and found that manager, handed him everything I was going to buy (that I already had in my hands) and left.
His excuse was that 'loss prevention' made the rules and he had to do it. Too bad for him that he lost $1000 in sales that day. (I bought my laser printer at Office Depot instead.)
It's worth noting that I asked OD if they'd do the same, and the answer was 'If I didn't know you, yes.' (I knew the manager personally.)
Personally, I expect this barcode scanning craze to happen just about like the cuecat: Big buzz for a while, and then nothing.
The only uses I -do- see is cataloging things you already own, or remembering things to research them later. (Or possibly searching for reviews based on the UPC, but there's no infrastructure for that yet.) I tried the cataloging thing on the PC, but none of my webcams were good enough to get a quick scan from UPCs, so that was a bust. (Some never did work at all.)
"take a look at the US public education system and tell me there isn't a problem..."
Who said there wasn't a problem? His point was that a socialized system worked, and it worked better than what we had before it.
Let's look at history: Once upon a time, only the rich could afford to go to school. Everyone else choose to spend their money on food instead. Then someone got the bright idea to make the government pay for schooling for everyone. (And by government, I mean taxes, and by taxes, I mean everyone.) Now, all children not only have the option to attend school, it's practically mandatory.
So we -could- go back to the old ways now, and let every person pay for the schooling of their own children. That would mean that the poorest families would again choose to 'homeschool' (or not school at all, more likely) and the rich families would have really good schools for their children. Those in the middle would choose based on their current income, but as children tend to come early in your adult life, and that's the time when you have the least money anyhow, it's pretty likely that many will opt for the no-school treatment.
No, I'd say socialized schooling has worked damned well. So has roads, post offices, etc, etc. They'd all be in the same 'only the rich have them' situation if there was no government involvement.
Don't get me wrong, I wish the government would back the hell off on a lot of stuff... Just not any of this stuff.
I haven't read it either, but I've heard it's mostly copying, with a little bad paraphrasing thrown in. He didn't even use any user-provided content because he didn't want to share his profits.
She did the right thing here. He was clearly using her work as his own.
Don't forget that you are the only being in your civilization competent enough to trade spice between planets. None of the rest of them can figure it out at all. Also, you are the entire space navy. And the colonization effort. And the only diplomat.
Seriously, it's more than a little crazy how much micromanaging you have to do. To the point that you get a hologram later so you can literally be in 2 places at once.
Oh God. I just realized that it's true. I -do- trust Reloaded a lot more than I trust EA.
My stance on cracked EXEs was locked permanently in place when I -needed- one to run NeverwinterNights. Without the crack, my legal discs would quit every 5-10 minutes. Not crash or have some issue, just quit with no warning. I thought it was crashing and just not giving an error, until someone figured out it was the copy protection. It didn't like my super-expensive CD drive and couldn't read the invalid data off the CD the way it wanted to. (It was one of the ways they verified the disc was real... Bad data on purpose.)
The crack fixed it instantly and I was playing easily, and didn't even need the disc in the drive. Since then, I've found a crack for every game I've purchased since.
And Reloaded has made the majority of those cracks I used.
My main issue with DRM is that I end up with a worse product than the pirates have. It may wreck my software or hardware (Yes, it happens) or make me do stupid things, like keep the CD/DVD in the drive while playing for -no- reason, or have period checks online to make sure I haven't stolen it.
I don't see how a changing world is 'screwing over new players' any more than advances in science are screwing over newborns in the real world. If the world is constantly evolving, they will always be part of the current time and have something interesting going on.
DragonRealms (a MUD) has a long and rich history full of world-shaking changes. New cities that spring up, guild halls that were destroyed and then abandoned, or later rebuilt... Constant changes. For a graphical game, it would be more artwork-intensive, but it's still totally possible.
In fact, Asheron's Call 2 had changes like this as well. I remember one plot point where a major lake dried up and revealed a ancient city that was below it.
"If you put in puzzle quests, someone will post the answer on a spoiler site"
At least they'll have the choice, then. As it is, there's no puzzles to be had. DragonRealms, a MUD I used to play, has a few really hard puzzle quests that are necessary to get some of the best stuff in the game. I enjoyed figuring some of them out, but I was forced to turn to others for help on some. It was still a LOT more fun than a 'fedex' quest, though.
"How many people actually read the quest text in WoW in detail?"
Why would they, when there's no POINT to the text? There's a tiny bit of 'plot' to some of them, but most are just plain 'fedex' or journey quests. If there was more to the quests, they'd be forced to actually read them.
A 'prankster' bothered to search out and send notices for 4000 videos? He'd have to be pretty dedicated to his prank.
No, I think it's much more likely that it was a scientologist that did it. Slightly less likely is that it's a scientology hater trying to make them look bad. (As if they can't handle that on their own.)
Hm, sounds like everything else in the world. That's how it works: Someone produces something really great, and a bunch of copycats make things almost like them in order to make some money on someone else's idea. I don't know if you've tried, but coming up with original -good- ideas for video games is -not- easy.
There's nothing stopping small companies from making good games except their own skill. Most innovation right now is in the 'casual' gaming market because that's where the money is. There are a TON of clones in that market, but new things do appear every so often.
Maybe if the 'core' gamer market was better, companies would start producing new games for it as well. But their insistence on invasive and interfering DRM is killing them. I refuse to install any game that requires me to remove some of my hardware or other software to make it work, and that's most DRM schemes now. (Can't have Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools installed, for example.) Those tools have legitimate uses for me, and they have no right to make me remove them to play a game I actually purchased. (Note that pirates don't need to remove the other software, only legit customers.)
Spore's DRM only allows you to install the game 3 times. Ever. How is that fair? I format my Windows computer about every 6 months. That means the game has a max lifetime of 18 months for me. Chances are I won't still be playing it at that time, but some people play a single game for years. (TheSims comes to mind, from the SAME COMPANY.) (Again, note that pirates don't have this limitation.)
Most games stop working if you lose your original disc, as well. Why? It doesn't -use- the disc any more. (Again, pirates don't have this limitation!)
No, the market is dying because it is pissing its customers off. They're simply going elsewhere. I'm mostly a console gamer now. No limit on the number of installs there! I never have to unplug equipment or delete anything from my consoles!
If you don't like your toaster and take it back, you don't end up with a copy of the toaster.
Combined with his 'no drm' policy, there's no way for him to guarantee you didn't just steal the game via this method.
I think he should offer refunds if you "don't like it", but your logic doesn't support anything. Personally, I would be more willing to buy games if I knew I could get my money back for the bad ones. If I get bad food at a restaurant, I can get my money back. Even if I've eaten part of it! (Well, the decent ones. The rest aren't worth eating at anyhow.)
I think Introversion is a bad counterexample. The graphics were never the draw of their games, the gameplay was. They all scale as much as they need to: Not at all.
The rest is not as simple as you make it sound. The limits for graphics quality aren't just set by what the hardware can handle. Most people know a game from 2000 (or before) won't look great (compared to today's games) because of the hardware upgrades. But you also have to take other things into consideration, such as the size of the media. It was not acceptable to have 4GB of graphics and video back then any more than it would be acceptable to have 40GB now. Having to install 10 DVDs to play a game is just not an option. The best you can hope for is to add new 'stuff like HDR', which applies to everything.
In addition, new 'stuff like HDR' is being invented all the time. Scaling for the future is almost impossible... Scaling for the past is pretty much all you can hope for. Scaling for more than a couple years in the future is impossible to predict, and it takes at least that long to make the game. They're lucky to have it scaled to the present.
Personally, I think it's a waste of time and they'd be better off concentrating on new products instead.
Indeed they have. When I was just out of highschool, I met a girl online and called her on the phone for a month. I had no clue what it was going to cost. Turns out it was $2000. My parents complained and the long distance company lowered it to about $600. I was ready to pay the whole thing as it was MY FAULT. It was a valuable lesson and now I always know what I'm paying before I do things.
2-3 orders of magnitude larger?
Let's assume $50/month. 1 order of magnitude larger is $500. 2 is $5,000. 3 is $50,000.
I think you meant 1-2 orders larger.
Seriously? You're going to pay $60+ per month on a 2 year contract and NOT read all the text? Are you insane? Anything I sign that costs that much and lasts that long gets fully read.
Please tell me you read the lease on your apartment? Car?
Sounds like there is DRM embedded in the video stream, so there's no way to decode it unless you have the right codec, which will look for the USB key.
It also sounds like it'll be locked to Windows, since I doubt they put that much effort into making it for Linux as well... Or even OSX.
It's really sad, because it's not like that's a hard movie to get... DVD, Divx... Just about every format imaginable is available on the web for that one.
They listen when there's a major Slashdot posting that tells them how stupid they've been, too.
In fact, I'd guess the Slashdot posting would gather more attention than all the emails combined.
Does anyone else feel like their reading Captain Planet when they read that comic?
Slightly off. Most developers are saying 'so long as you don't release my work as non-free' or 'so long as anything based on my work follows my rules.' It's not truly 'free' for everyone, no matter what they say.
There are a few developers asking for their piece, though... MySQL comes to mind. 'Free for non-commercial use only' is not really all that free.