"That person would *never* have been your customer anyway..."
Except they list clients such as adidas... Its a pretty safe bet adidas pays more to develop its branding in terms of posters, print advertising, logo design, etc, etc per day than most professional web designers make in a year.
These guys bang out commercials, print media, merchandising, product placement in half the countries around the world. I'm pretty sure they can afford a decent web designer, and would pay one if they couldn't get it for free.
"Click here to go back to Google and find some other site that has the same damn thing for free"...back to google?!? Might as well just view the long series of advertisements then.
About 10k years ago, there was glacier over a mile thick right where I am sitting.
Must have been all those SUV driving woolly mammoth bastards!
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to see us avoid another ice age if possible. I don't much relish the thought of having to leave everything behind to flee a mile think sheet of ice. Some twit telling me its a 'natural cycle' isn't going to make that any easier.;)
There isn't when you continue comparing passwords well after you know they don't match, when you could just as easily yield the CPU to other processes.
"...well after you know they don't match" ?
If you were comparing strings that might be kilobytes or megabytes in length sure... but passwords? or even pw hashes? Wouldn't you waste more time doing the yeild than you'd ever possibly just finishing the comparison?
After all, once you have the sunk cost of setting up a gig, there is zero marginal cost for each additional member of the audience, so why should they pay anything?
Marginal cost isn't important. Demand and Scarcity are what count. A decent popular band should be able to drum up some demand, and the venue has pretty much absolute control over scarcity. That makes it entirely viable to sell tickets to live events for the foreseeable future.
When every 8 year old kid in the country can allocate space for themselves at concerts they wish to attend at virtually no cost or effort then you might have a point.
A good can't be scarce if anyone can make it themselves at no cost or effort. Establishing the legal fiction of a copyright monopoly when copying was hard enough and costly enough as to be an obstacle to massive non-commercial reproduction it worked. It doesn't work anymore.
As for 'how should musicians get paid', I'm sure they'll find lots of ways. It might not be as lucrative as $.99 every time someone somewhere on the planet hears something they've written, but they'll manage.
Garage bands will keep making music because they LIKE making music, and they'll get gigs and hang out with fans, and clean pools during the week. Manufactured pop bands will keep making music because of corporate sponsorship, product tie-ins, branding opportunities, movie deals, etc.
Many people like you confuse the hard work that put into making the album (which is not easy) and the split second it takes to copy the resulting work (which any moron on the Internet can do)
And many people, like you perhaps, seem to think its ok to attach the payment to cover the cost of making the album on the point at which you make a copy of the resulting work.
That is a failed business model. The hard part, as we all agree, is making the album. ~That~ is where the valuable and difficult work took place... ~that~ is where payment must be extracted. Pushing the payment out to distribution of individual copies worked when it was actually work to make individual copies.
But over the last couple decades the difficulty, effort, and expense of making those copies has gone to zero, and its no longer a rational or viable point at which to extract payment.
There are other ways of covering the cost of making the album. Its high time to start looking at them.
The tougher process of getting an app INTO the iTunes app store I honestly think is helping weed out the lower grade fluff we find in the Android market. How many times have you gone looking through apps, found something that looked pretty good, installed it, and it was crap? How many reviews on the Android Market read something like this: Force closes, one star!. It's the same problem with all the various free Windows software that's everywhere on the net. You have more choice, but you have more choices of crap. If people are going to spend the time, money, and effort to get an app into Apple's store, they're more likely to make sure it's something that's worth being there. They want to get paid, after all.
This is the sort of thing that i keep seeing. The app store is good because it blocks a lot of crap, stuff that crashes all the time, etc. And this is true. And this is a good thing about 'app stores'.
And honestly i've never met a single person on the face of the earth who REALLY had a problem with the app-store itself, as concept, as an implementation, as a way to get apps, as apples preferred way to get apps, etc.
But there is no valid reason for the app-store to be the ONLY way to get apps. Just as apt-get is not the only way to get ubuntu apps. If you want to download a nightly build of something, or write something yourself, or whatever you can. But most of us use apt-get most of the time, for most stuff that is available in the main repos. And if apple was set up this way most people would only use the app store and be perfectly happy, and for the minority of people who want/need something that isn't in the store and are willing to do the work to load it themselves they should be able to do that without being demonized or even criminalized.
Its interesting to me because my first instinct would have been to assume something got corrupted and my first step would have been to reboot. If the problem persisted through a reboot then I might have gone down the rabbit hole in similiar fashion to try and find and fix the root cause.
There are enough sofware bugs, kernel bugs, driver bugs, hardware hiccups due to marginal equipment, power fluctuation, interference, random noise... and i suppose even cosmic radiation that I would rarely think to spend the time to trace a transient problem unless it was reproducible accross reboots, or at least happened on multiple separate occasions.
In a virtual world, you at least have to have someone grind it out for you.
Not at all. Any single player role playing game in existance has 'virtual currency' and its trivial to generate as much of it as you'd like. Whether its bottlecaps in fallout or wheatever. That is more like 'monopoly money'.
Virtual currency in persistant oline rpgs is more like casino chips.
If your reason for not liking Twitter is "I don't really care what you had for breakfast," the problem isn't Twitter - it's that you need to find some more interesting friends.
Exactly. Its like saying email is useless because "I dont really need a constant stream of Viagra offers".
Except email has a lot of real uses, so one doesn't generally say that. Twitter, unlike email, doesn't. People have to really stretch and contort to find use cases for twitter that actually make it worth filtering out the crap to get that worth.
After all, even if I knew "interesting people", i still don't need 120 character updates on what they are doing. What does twitter do that's useful that isn't already covered by email and rss feeds?
The point is, email is mostly spam, but its still very useful. Most of us use it and find ways to limit our exposure to spam. With twitter, for most of us, in most cases, its just not worth the effort, even if we could just see interesting twitter messages, it would still generally be a waste of our time.
The state doesn't really have that power since SCOTUS ruled that only a jury can impose the death penalty.
Your splitting hairs. The state asks the jury to impose it, then spends much effort convincing them to impose it, then once its imposed actually conducts it.
Or by analogy, I don't have the power to kill people. My fish does. I ask my fish to issue the kill order... if it hides under the rock I don't kill. If it comes out I do. (Oh, I forgot to mention I put fish food in the tank when I want someone dead...)
Who better to experiment on than a terminally patient with nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot?
For only $160,000 I can will inject you with a solution containing the power of crystals dissolved in a heterogenous suspension while you receive a photon bath. It may cure terminal cancers of the liver, pancreas, or in some cases lungs.
So if I find a terminally ill patient with "nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot", that's ok.
Even if I just inject him with salted milk while I wave a flashlight in his face?
As long as an individual is adequately informed of the risks that individual has a right to take that risk.
That's a meaningless platitude when it comes to something like this.
Many individuals with these diseases or conditions considering these treatments have no sense of risk left at all. They will do *anything* whether it has the slightest basis in science, or relies entirely on magic, astrology, mysticism, the power of crystals, aliens, jesus, snake oil... anything.
It is morally wrong to exploit someone in that position financially (or otherwise). Claiming that you disclosed the risks and they signed the waiver doesn't make it ok. In a sense they do have a gun pointed at their head... whats a raft of fine print and a 2nd mortgage when your life is on the line.
And they're promising the solution* to all your problems!!
(in 2pt font: * solution not guaranteed to solve your problems, and may actually make them worse, but there's a nother treatment we can try that will solve* that, but its a bit riskier and more expensive...)
The Geneva convention is about the state using humans as test subjects. That is a whole different can of worms.
The leading exclamation is apparently a...lol i dunno what its called, but its apparently one of the hollow popping/clicking sounds you see in some African languages.
i'd never write personally sensitive information in my work notepad...
So if you jotted a number down for work on a sticky note, and then stuffed it in your pocket after making the phone call. Then you needed to record something personal while you were out, so you reach into your pocket pull out the sticky note, and then put it back in your pocket to fumble for something else because that particular piece of scrap paper belongs to your employer.
would you rather have your employer tell you
1. never use this phone for any personal communication, if you do you will be fired 2. you can use this phone for personal communication, but it is subject to inspection
3. you can use this phone for personal and business communication. We don't monitor your usage provided there are no extra charges. 4. You provide your own phone personal and business communication. Here's a 10 cent raise to cover the work portion of the cost/you can expense $40 montly plus your work related long distance on an itemized sheet/some other co-pay solution...
You can have #2 if you like. But I've had both #3 and #4. There are situations where #2 or even #1 make sense but most of us have no reason to be subjected to that sort of hassle.
"So is war but the government doesn't seem to have any problem organizing that"
I didn't they the government couldn't do it or that it wasn't worthwhile. I simply found it ironic that you thought such a massive government project could be the underlying basis for what you called "true competition".
"it sorts of like if you had an office, and decided to make use of it for personal activities on the weekend. after all, the lease is paid up so it's not costing your employer anything for you to use the office then. would you expect that anything you do in your office on the weekends, while you are technically "off the clock" to remain private? no, it's still your employer's office."
Its sort of like if you had a pen in your pocket and you instinctively reached for it to take down notes when your doctor called you on your private line, at home, after hours, and then your employer claims they have a right to see what was written... since they own the pen.
Of course, one day I lost my work pen, and brought in one from home, and somehow it ended up in the CEO's hand, so naturally I'm suing now him for transcripts of everything he wrote with *MY* pen...which based on their argument that they have a right to monitor what was written with theirs they can't really refute that I have a right to monitor what was written with mine.
Somewhere there is a balance. If the phone is agreed to be available for personal use then they really have no business monitoring that aspect of it.
Perhaps more "expensive" in up-front costs, but definitely less expensive over the long run
Except that half the kids if not more ALREADY HAVE A LAPTOP. Whether its dad's hand-me-down, or an inexpensive dell, or a gaming laptop...
You can argue cost over the life of ownership until you are blue in the face because those arguments always assume you are choosing at a point in time when you need to pick one. A lot of these kids will ALREADY have made the investment in a laptop.
Since I started using a Mac, full time - almost four years ago - I've had 0, none, zilch down-time due to system problems.
Whatever. I've got a macbook pro... its finicky about what wifi networks it will 'just work with'. Its a pain to attach to things like projectors; so i need to carry adapters around EVERYWHERE. Lots of printers don't 'just work' either. And I've spent hours on those issues.
A few months ago, it wouldn't empty the trash. Tried everything, forums/blougs, apple's knowledge base, and even tried apple support. Had to reinstall OSX to fix it. My anecdote is about as worthless as yours.
But its all moot, because the whole cost-over-ownership comparison is irrelevant if people already have a windows laptop.
but it lost so many players the game nearly went under.
Its a niche market. Let the people who want to play in a micropayments buy your gear server play there. Run a purist server without it, and zero tolerance for it. Let the niche that wants it have it. Let the group that wants micropayments have it... i never understand why its an either or situation.
As for actually enforcing 'restricted trade'... lots of ways to do that, especially when you've narrowed the server focus on the players who want to play a server where 'wealth' and 'gear' represent the meritocracy of time invested and skill. (Preferably skill, but too many mmos substitute 'tedious' for 'difficult'... but that's a separate discussion.)
The trouble is they try to have have a gear meritocracy and a vibrant crafting system and robust player economy at the same time. This doesn't work. Everquest tried to combat this somewhat with no-drop, and quests, and keys, and flags... but it was a hackjob that annoyed more than it helped. And the crafters raised a stink because the good gear was no-drop drops and nobody wanted there crafted crap... so they bump up the crafted crap and then theres no reason to go raiding... just by some gold from a pharmer and buy the crafted set... and round it went. The only solution for the mmo was to keep inflating so there was always something better coming... but this just left most of the game unused while the crowds chased down the latest shiny.
Its easy to solve, but you have to pick your path... you can't do it all... at least not on the same server.
True, but some people would rather spend $30 and find that out today than spend $15/mo for 6 months to find that out later.
And I'm saving both groups the trouble by spelling it out, now.
Although I do disagree with you. A raid is MUCH more fun than a quest to kill the 8 pigs attacking xyz farm.
Their are low level instances in WOW for example that were just as much fun to do as a raid, if you ask me. Not many of them compared to the endgame... but i had to actually try hard to avoid levelling past them to fit them all in.
And here's the other issue: for your non-paying user to gain those items, or items of equal power, the structure typically requires that user spend a prohibitive number of hours grinding menial tasks.
That's not an 'issue'. That's the game. You are supposed to enjoy the menial "tasks" to get the items of power that enable you to do the same set of menial tasks against high level critters. If you don't enjoy play the game... play something else.
or you waste every bit of your free time not having fun in order to (theoretically) make the game fun.
There is no pay off where the game "becomes fun". Its the same game all the way up.
If you enjoyed questing and leveling, forming groups, and running pvp battlegrounds and what not at level 10, you'll enjoy it at level 80.
If you hated doing quests, running around, etc at level 10, you'll likely hate it just as much at level 80. There are more options at the higher levels, and some of the encounters are mroe elaborate, but the lowbie stuff in EQ2, WoW etc is a decent primer for what's ahead for you. If you're not having fun with that, its insane to think it will 'get fun' later.
Much like Everquest ( yes it is still around ), they charge a monthly fee, but you can also purchase ornaments and other items that don't majorly change the game dynamics. It's not like you can buy a sword of awesome +5, just something that makes your sword look more awesome.
If it was just ornaments I wouldn't ever have objected. I do find it offensive that they do affect the game dynamics, its enough that one can feel compelled to use them for the extra edge.
It's amazing that BP can drill for oil with no provable solution to a catastrophic failure. It's like operating on a patient and going 'Trust me, I'm a doctor'.
If you can find a surgeon who can provide you with a provable solution to a catastrophic failure, please forward me his name and number! All mine want me to sign waivers that I acknowledge "surgery is risky, I might die, and they won't be held responsible."
Slashdot Mirror
"That person would *never* have been your customer anyway..."
Except they list clients such as adidas... Its a pretty safe bet adidas pays more to develop its branding in terms of posters, print advertising, logo design, etc, etc per day than most professional web designers make in a year.
These guys bang out commercials, print media, merchandising, product placement in half the countries around the world. I'm pretty sure they can afford a decent web designer, and would pay one if they couldn't get it for free.
"Click here to go back to Google and find some other site that has the same damn thing for free" ...back to google?!? Might as well just view the long series of advertisements then.
About 10k years ago, there was glacier over a mile thick right where I am sitting.
Must have been all those SUV driving woolly mammoth bastards!
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to see us avoid another ice age if possible. I don't much relish the thought of having to leave everything behind to flee a mile think sheet of ice. Some twit telling me its a 'natural cycle' isn't going to make that any easier. ;)
There isn't when you continue comparing passwords well after you know they don't match, when you could just as easily yield the CPU to other processes.
"...well after you know they don't match" ?
If you were comparing strings that might be kilobytes or megabytes in length sure... but passwords? or even pw hashes? Wouldn't you waste more time doing the yeild than you'd ever possibly just finishing the comparison?
After all, once you have the sunk cost of setting up a gig, there is zero marginal cost for each additional member of the audience, so why should they pay anything?
Marginal cost isn't important. Demand and Scarcity are what count. A decent popular band should be able to drum up some demand, and the venue has pretty much absolute control over scarcity. That makes it entirely viable to sell tickets to live events for the foreseeable future.
When every 8 year old kid in the country can allocate space for themselves at concerts they wish to attend at virtually no cost or effort then you might have a point.
A good can't be scarce if anyone can make it themselves at no cost or effort. Establishing the legal fiction of a copyright monopoly when copying was hard enough and costly enough as to be an obstacle to massive non-commercial reproduction it worked. It doesn't work anymore.
As for 'how should musicians get paid', I'm sure they'll find lots of ways. It might not be as lucrative as $.99 every time someone somewhere on the planet hears something they've written, but they'll manage.
Garage bands will keep making music because they LIKE making music, and they'll get gigs and hang out with fans, and clean pools during the week. Manufactured pop bands will keep making music because of corporate sponsorship, product tie-ins, branding opportunities, movie deals, etc.
Many people like you confuse the hard work that put into making the album (which is not easy) and the split second it takes to copy the resulting work (which any moron on the Internet can do)
And many people, like you perhaps, seem to think its ok to attach the payment to cover the cost of making the album on the point at which you make a copy of the resulting work.
That is a failed business model. The hard part, as we all agree, is making the album. ~That~ is where the valuable and difficult work took place... ~that~ is where payment must be extracted. Pushing the payment out to distribution of individual copies worked when it was actually work to make individual copies.
But over the last couple decades the difficulty, effort, and expense of making those copies has gone to zero, and its no longer a rational or viable point at which to extract payment.
There are other ways of covering the cost of making the album. Its high time to start looking at them.
The tougher process of getting an app INTO the iTunes app store I honestly think is helping weed out the lower grade fluff we find in the Android market. How many times have you gone looking through apps, found something that looked pretty good, installed it, and it was crap? How many reviews on the Android Market read something like this: Force closes, one star!. It's the same problem with all the various free Windows software that's everywhere on the net. You have more choice, but you have more choices of crap. If people are going to spend the time, money, and effort to get an app into Apple's store, they're more likely to make sure it's something that's worth being there. They want to get paid, after all.
This is the sort of thing that i keep seeing. The app store is good because it blocks a lot of crap, stuff that crashes all the time, etc. And this is true. And this is a good thing about 'app stores'.
And honestly i've never met a single person on the face of the earth who REALLY had a problem with the app-store itself, as concept, as an implementation, as a way to get apps, as apples preferred way to get apps, etc.
But there is no valid reason for the app-store to be the ONLY way to get apps. Just as apt-get is not the only way to get ubuntu apps. If you want to download a nightly build of something, or write something yourself, or whatever you can. But most of us use apt-get most of the time, for most stuff that is available in the main repos. And if apple was set up this way most people would only use the app store and be perfectly happy, and for the minority of people who want/need something that isn't in the store and are willing to do the work to load it themselves they should be able to do that without being demonized or even criminalized.
Its interesting to me because my first instinct would have been to assume something got corrupted and my first step would have been to reboot. If the problem persisted through a reboot then I might have gone down the rabbit hole in similiar
fashion to try and find and fix the root cause.
There are enough sofware bugs, kernel bugs, driver bugs, hardware hiccups due to marginal equipment, power fluctuation, interference, random noise... and i suppose even cosmic radiation that I would rarely think to spend the time to trace a transient problem unless it was reproducible accross reboots, or at least happened on multiple separate occasions.
In a virtual world, you at least have to have someone grind it out for you.
Not at all. Any single player role playing game in existance has 'virtual currency' and its trivial to generate as much of it as you'd like. Whether its bottlecaps in fallout or wheatever. That is more like 'monopoly money'.
Virtual currency in persistant oline rpgs is more like casino chips.
At which point I assume using it in that game of monopoly will be illegal.
When playing WoW you are already playing with that group.
If your reason for not liking Twitter is "I don't really care what you had for breakfast," the problem isn't Twitter - it's that you need to find some more interesting friends.
Exactly. Its like saying email is useless because "I dont really need a constant stream of Viagra offers".
Except email has a lot of real uses, so one doesn't generally say that. Twitter, unlike email, doesn't. People have to really stretch and contort to find use cases for twitter that actually make it worth filtering out the crap to get that worth.
After all, even if I knew "interesting people", i still don't need 120 character updates on what they are doing. What does twitter do that's useful that isn't already covered by email and rss feeds?
The point is, email is mostly spam, but its still very useful. Most of us use it and find ways to limit our exposure to spam. With twitter, for most of us, in most cases, its just not worth the effort, even if we could just see interesting twitter messages, it would still generally be a waste of our time.
The state doesn't really have that power since SCOTUS ruled that only a jury can impose the death penalty.
Your splitting hairs. The state asks the jury to impose it, then spends much effort convincing them to impose it, then once its imposed actually conducts it.
Or by analogy, I don't have the power to kill people. My fish does. I ask my fish to issue the kill order... if it hides under the rock I don't kill. If it comes out I do. (Oh, I forgot to mention I put fish food in the tank when I want someone dead...)
Who better to experiment on than a terminally patient with nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot?
For only $160,000 I can will inject you with a solution containing the power of crystals dissolved in a heterogenous suspension while you receive a photon bath. It may cure terminal cancers of the liver, pancreas, or in some cases lungs.
So if I find a terminally ill patient with "nothing to lose who is willing to give it a shot", that's ok.
Even if I just inject him with salted milk while I wave a flashlight in his face?
As long as an individual is adequately informed of the risks that individual has a right to take that risk.
That's a meaningless platitude when it comes to something like this.
Many individuals with these diseases or conditions considering these treatments have no sense of risk left at all. They will do *anything* whether it has the slightest basis in science, or relies entirely on magic, astrology, mysticism, the power of crystals, aliens, jesus, snake oil... anything.
It is morally wrong to exploit someone in that position financially (or otherwise). Claiming that you disclosed the risks and they signed the waiver doesn't make it ok. In a sense they do have a gun pointed at their head... whats a raft of fine print and a 2nd mortgage when your life is on the line.
And they're promising the solution* to all your problems!!
(in 2pt font: * solution not guaranteed to solve your problems, and may actually make them worse, but there's a nother treatment we can try that will solve* that, but its a bit riskier and more expensive...)
The Geneva convention is about the state using humans as test subjects. That is a whole different can of worms.
Agreed.
"Bo3b"
Never seen that one but I've heard of a: !bo
The leading exclamation is apparently a...lol i dunno what its called, but its apparently one of the hollow popping/clicking sounds you see in some African languages.
i'd never write personally sensitive information in my work notepad...
So if you jotted a number down for work on a sticky note, and then stuffed it in your pocket after making the phone call. Then you needed to record something personal while you were out, so you reach into your pocket pull out the sticky note, and then put it back in your pocket to fumble for something else because that particular piece of scrap paper belongs to your employer.
would you rather have your employer tell you
1. never use this phone for any personal communication, if you do you will be fired
2. you can use this phone for personal communication, but it is subject to inspection
3. you can use this phone for personal and business communication. We don't monitor your usage provided there are no extra charges.
4. You provide your own phone personal and business communication. Here's a 10 cent raise to cover the work portion of the cost/you can expense $40 montly plus your work related long distance on an itemized sheet/some other co-pay solution...
You can have #2 if you like. But I've had both #3 and #4. There are situations where #2 or even #1 make sense but most of us have no reason to be subjected to that sort of hassle.
"So is war but the government doesn't seem to have any problem organizing that"
I didn't they the government couldn't do it or that it wasn't worthwhile. I simply found it ironic that you thought such a massive government project could be the underlying basis for what you called "true competition".
"it sorts of like if you had an office, and decided to make use of it for personal activities on the weekend. after all, the lease is paid up so it's not costing your employer anything for you to use the office then. would you expect that anything you do in your office on the weekends, while you are technically "off the clock" to remain private? no, it's still your employer's office."
Its sort of like if you had a pen in your pocket and you instinctively reached for it to take down notes when your doctor called you on your private line, at home, after hours, and then your employer claims they have a right to see what was written... since they own the pen.
Of course, one day I lost my work pen, and brought in one from home, and somehow it ended up in the CEO's hand, so naturally I'm suing now him for transcripts of everything he wrote with *MY* pen...which based on their argument that they have a right to monitor what was written with theirs they can't really refute that I have a right to monitor what was written with mine.
Somewhere there is a balance. If the phone is agreed to be available for personal use then they really have no business monitoring that aspect of it.
"Let the government run 100 fibers under the street...Then let each homeowner decide which fiber he wants to tap into. True competition."
Do you think a fiber bundle to every door is something that just happens? That's a massive government project.
"(comcast, cox, apple, google, time-warner, etc)."
being able to select from 5 large cap corporations is not true competition either.
Perhaps more "expensive" in up-front costs, but definitely less expensive over the long run
Except that half the kids if not more ALREADY HAVE A LAPTOP. Whether its dad's hand-me-down, or an inexpensive dell, or a gaming laptop...
You can argue cost over the life of ownership until you are blue in the face because those arguments always assume you are choosing at a point in time when you need to pick one. A lot of these kids will ALREADY have made the investment in a laptop.
Since I started using a Mac, full time - almost four years ago - I've had 0, none, zilch down-time due to system problems.
Whatever. I've got a macbook pro... its finicky about what wifi networks it will 'just work with'. Its a pain to attach to things like projectors; so i need to carry adapters around EVERYWHERE. Lots of printers don't 'just work' either. And I've spent hours on those issues.
A few months ago, it wouldn't empty the trash. Tried everything, forums/blougs, apple's knowledge base, and even tried apple support. Had to reinstall OSX to fix it. My anecdote is about as worthless as yours.
But its all moot, because the whole cost-over-ownership comparison is irrelevant if people already have a windows laptop.
but it lost so many players the game nearly went under.
Its a niche market. Let the people who want to play in a micropayments buy your gear server play there. Run a purist server without it, and zero tolerance for it. Let the niche that wants it have it. Let the group that wants micropayments have it... i never understand why its an either or situation.
As for actually enforcing 'restricted trade'... lots of ways to do that, especially when you've narrowed the server focus on the players who want to play a server where 'wealth' and 'gear' represent the meritocracy of time invested and skill. (Preferably skill, but too many mmos substitute 'tedious' for 'difficult'... but that's a separate discussion.)
The trouble is they try to have have a gear meritocracy and a vibrant crafting system and robust player economy at the same time. This doesn't work. Everquest tried to combat this somewhat with no-drop, and quests, and keys, and flags... but it was a hackjob that annoyed more than it helped. And the crafters raised a stink because the good gear was no-drop drops and nobody wanted there crafted crap... so they bump up the crafted crap and then theres no reason to go raiding... just by some gold from a pharmer and buy the crafted set... and round it went. The only solution for the mmo was to keep inflating so there was always something better coming... but this just left most of the game unused while the crowds chased down the latest shiny.
Its easy to solve, but you have to pick your path... you can't do it all... at least not on the same server.
True, but some people would rather spend $30 and find that out today than spend $15/mo for 6 months to find that out later.
And I'm saving both groups the trouble by spelling it out, now.
Although I do disagree with you. A raid is MUCH more fun than a quest to kill the 8 pigs attacking xyz farm.
Their are low level instances in WOW for example that were just as much fun to do as a raid, if you ask me. Not many of them compared to the endgame... but i had to actually try hard to avoid levelling past them to fit them all in.
And here's the other issue: for your non-paying user to gain those items, or items of equal power, the structure typically requires that user spend a prohibitive number of hours grinding menial tasks.
That's not an 'issue'. That's the game. You are supposed to enjoy the menial "tasks" to get the items of power that enable you to do the same set of menial tasks against high level critters. If you don't enjoy play the game ... play something else.
or you waste every bit of your free time not having fun in order to (theoretically) make the game fun.
There is no pay off where the game "becomes fun". Its the same game all the way up.
If you enjoyed questing and leveling, forming groups, and running pvp battlegrounds and what not at level 10, you'll enjoy it at level 80.
If you hated doing quests, running around, etc at level 10, you'll likely hate it just as much at level 80. There are more options at the higher levels, and some of the encounters are mroe elaborate, but the lowbie stuff in EQ2, WoW etc is a decent primer for what's ahead for you. If you're not having fun with that, its insane to think it will 'get fun' later.
Much like Everquest ( yes it is still around ), they charge a monthly fee, but you can also purchase ornaments and other items that don't majorly change the game dynamics. It's not like you can buy a sword of awesome +5, just something that makes your sword look more awesome.
If it was just ornaments I wouldn't ever have objected. I do find it offensive that they do affect the game dynamics, its enough that one can feel compelled to use them for the extra edge.
It's amazing that BP can drill for oil with no provable solution to a catastrophic failure. It's like operating on a patient and going 'Trust me, I'm a doctor'.
If you can find a surgeon who can provide you with a provable solution to a catastrophic failure, please forward me his name and number! All mine want me to sign waivers that I acknowledge "surgery is risky, I might die, and they won't be held responsible."