First, I think the in-game DLC note is actually quite a good (usable) way to implement DLC. It ties the extra right into the game, so you can understand what you may/may not be buying into. Instead of, say, buying some DLC and it just being a tacked on side game.
Second, haven't spent more than a few minutes with this game yet. One of the reasons is I'm waiting for my bigger better gaming computer to come in so I can crank up the graphics. Second reason is, I saw the "mage" class can specialize into "shapeshifters". I thought this sounded kind of cool, so I started a mage. Except, I don't see a single mention of shape-shifting powers in "talent tree" thing. I was wondering if this was one of those DLC things or if there's some other thing you do to play a shapeshifter class?
I guess I'll find out later on when I actually sit down and try to play through it some. I'm looking forward to trying it, for sure!
In other, completely unrelated, news; parents of "balloon boy" report pitching a new reality TV series where they go and investigate strange meteorite crash sites all around the world, while racing other contests and competing in silly challenges.
For example, l4d costs now about 15$ if bought together with the still unreleased l4d2.
L4D was on sale for $15 recently, but not anymore. The package deal is $65. L4D2 is $45 pre-order. L4D costs $20 if bought in the package deal. Not $15. It was $15 as a weekend promotion, like 2 weeks ago or so.
I already have l4d, I don't want to purchase it again
Why would you? It's not mandatory, like Half-Life 2 did with their episodes. Though, if you did buy the package deal, it's plainly stated you can "gift" the extra L4D to a friend. If you want, you can get $20 from that friend and break even and give your friend a deal.
I am not buying l4d2 because I spent a pretty penny already for l4d and got a underwhelming experience.
Huh, "a pretty penny" means to me that you spent more than normal. L4D was $45 brand new, on release (if you pre-ordered and got the $5 discount like you can get now with L4D2). I don't see how that's "a pretty penny" unless you're not looking at it context of other game costs and just that "$50" is a decent amount of money, I can agree with that.
As for the experiance, I think L4D is by far the best FPS zombie game out there. It's unfortunately short, but the first couple runs are well worth it and well polished. It's *still* a good game to jump on and frag some zombies. =) And upping the challenge level is decent replay value. L4D does fall short on the nearly non-existent mod support and new "official" maps. If they got their tools out sooner, L4D might have felt like more of a value. I can agree of the unfortunately limited number of "stories" to play, but that doesn't take away from the great experiance those few missions offered.
I am looking forward to L4D2 and what they do to improve up on L4D. I'm hoping for being able to split up more and the to see how melee weapons work.
Games with good stories are good, but games like Doom are too. Does every game need to have a story?
I think TFA missed the point about Doom and it's story comment. I think it shows the greatness of Doom that you COULD start in a room, with evil imps and a gun, you knew exactly what to do and where to do. Now that's game design.
Sure, games like Half Life really injected a great story into the model, but that doesn't mean Doom's half-ass lack of a story was a strike against the game. More of a testament if you ask me. I felt like the story was more than there and made sense. At least, maybe it was just my imagination and connection to the hero of the game way back then that I made it feel like it had some story. *shrug* Isn't that what a game's suppose to do?
Not be forced to rebuy all my games when I lose / break my gaming console
The game should be cheaper because there is "no" shipping cost, no store taking their cut and no physical material being produced
I want an instruction booklet dammit! I RTM and I don't care what anyone says but I want an instruction booklet. A digital one will do just fine.
Unfortunately point #1 will not likely every happen with digital media due to the drawbacks for companies doing this.
However, point #2 is already here. Services like Steam allows you to download your games to new systems. There's some rules here and there and it suffers from the "all eggs in one basket" scenario, if Steam shuts down do you loose your media? Thought more companies with subscriptions and accounts, such as World of Warcraft, allow you to download the client directly from your account. It knows what client you should get based on your account activations.
Point #3 (and #4) is a bit of a misconception. It's true there's cost savings involved for the company. But when you spend $10 million on making a game, $60,000 on the box art and $0.02 per box carton doesn't really effect the price of the game. Likewise, shipping costs are insignificant to the cost of the final product.
And in the end, it's still about economics. The price is set to what people are willing to pay for (and the company is able to make a profit from). If people are still willing to pay $50-$60 for digital media, the company will sell it at that price. They will simply see better profit margins for it. And as you said, you still want a booklet, so it looks like they didn't really save any money on the box art anyways, since they're designing all the art, with-or-without a box, as part of game concepts and advertisements or digital booklets.
Huh, I don't remember that episode. I do remember the Voyager one where Paris and Janeway get it on as some sort of ultra-evolved alligator but can be miraculously returned to normal by the doctor. Something about reaching Warp 10... or did theirs go to 11?
If they brought it out 3 months later no one would complain
I'm sure *someone* would complain.
It is an interesting discussion. What is appropriate for new content release? Especially if that content costs extra. If Bioware already had this content done and finished, and it was always planned to be offered as extra content, does it make Bioware any more/less "evil" by releasing it on day 1 or releasing it 'x' days later?
The thing that leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths is trust. There's no reason to trust that this content is truly "extra", rather than a piece withheld from the original game. Another question would simply be, is the original game worth the sticker price without this extra content? Are you getting value for what you're paying for? We'll find out soon enough.
I can say, if Dragon Age doesn't offer massive amounts of time investment without the DLC, the move by Bioware to offer DLC on day 1 is going to backfire big time. If Dragon Age offers 40+ hours of epic RPG goodness without this DLC, it will change minds as to if this DLC was truly "extra" or more of a scam.
Right now, Bioware still have good will with their fan base. If Dragon Age fails to deliver value for the money (While good, Half Life 2 was considered to be too short and the episodes even shorter and caused some ill will towards being shafted for the price, but Valve came back and offered the original game for fee with the orange box, a very value stuffed package, thanks in part to the great experiance Portal became, and even allowed you to gift that part of the game you already owned to a friend. Much good will was restored.).
Perhaps the Python fans should look up the stuff that inspired the Pythons like Spike Milligan & The Goons and Peter Cook & Dudley Moore. Then they'd see that Python is a continuation of a classic tradition of insane surreal satirical British comedy.
Lets not bicker and argue about who surreal who...
What are most people's iPods filled with? We'll not kid ourselves: pirated music.
The only person you're kidding is yourself. My iPod is 100% legit music. And yes, I'm more than tech. savoy enough to find everything I want for free. I'm willing to bet out side of one small demographic, most people's MP3 players are filled with legit music as well. You're making the same assumptions that record companies make. Congratulations.
No doubt, no doubt. But I'm still scratching my head as to the usefulness of this "technology". Was there some sort of market that was demanding that music should only be played if both buds are in the ear?
I say this as I have 1 ear-bud in at work, so if a co-worker calls my name I can answer them. Yet, when I'm at the gym, I'm more than happy to have them both in.
Point being, what's the point? All things being equal, these ear buds are less flexible than normal headphones and will probably be significantly more expensive. Is this an answer in search of a problem?
Hehe. Partly true. Novelty wears off fast on the Wii. Good thing there are at least a few good games. Heck, I'm still playing Dr Mario every day. =) Sadly, I play more WiiWare than anything else... and most NES games. hehe I just don't like playing them on the PC I guess.
Of course, there's still plenty of good games out there. Zelda, Metroid Triology, Mad World, House of the Dead: Overkill, Guitar Hero, Mario Galaxies. Yeah, mostly Nintendo games, but they're fun. But I game far more on my PC.
I know gear is vitally important. Man, it was crazy how terrible PvP was until I had nearly all PvP gear in each slot. Resilience is that important. Or being behind the weapon curve by 1 or 2 tiers.
What my point was that "easy" gear is a "Good Thing"(tm) for PvP because more people will have the gear they need, faster, to be relatively equal in those terms. Making "skill" and "class choice" the bigger issues.
What would be self-deprivating would be to only give "good" gear to "good" players, in PvP. And that's where Arena breaks down. You can have more skill, but if someone has better skill, they could beat you. If you loose, you don't get the points to get the gear you need. If you can't get the gear you need, you can't beat the person with better gear. Now you get caught in a vicious cycle.
Ergo, the best way to make PvP balanced and truly competitive is to make it as easy as possible get everyone the same level of gear. I think Blizzard has done a great job with that... except arena PvP weapons. WG has made it easy to get Honor and marks to buy fairly high quality PvP gear with not a lot of effort (see time investment).
I think the "easy" gear has been a good thing for PvP. Or, at least those who like to PvP on a relatively more competitive level. But, as we have seen and as you have eluded too, many people don't enjoy competitive levels, they enjoy pure unfair dominance. Those people have migrated a lot to "Twink" non-XP battlegrounds... who have now flocked to WoW forums QQing about no one to play with but other twinks... which isn't fun because they can't/faceroll anyone.
You aren't going to attract new customers by touting something like "new improved attack system".
You're not going to attract players when some other company say "hey, we're making an even BETTER Star Wars game" either. Galaxies will be dead shortly after launch of The Old Republic. Sony's more than likely knows this and is planning the phase-out.
There's barely room in the market place for all the MMO's as it is, there's certainly no room for two Star Wars MMO... one that's been so tainted with stories of terribleness that it's joke in the MMO community.
No it doesn't because anyone who PvP's tells you it's about "Skill". Getting people in reasonably the same gear simply flattens out that variable, making skill more important.
I pre-ordered Aion from Gamestop a while back and they gave you a Beta key. I've been beta-ing in for like a month now. It's not hard to get into this beta.
Since then, I've canceled my pre-order and put the $5 in on the WoW Cataclysm, which was listed with a release date of 11/2010. Which, of course, means nothing but a rough idea of when we might expect the new WoW xpac. It seems about right to me as well... except for the 2 months they'll likely push it back come Oct. 2010. =)
Aion wasn't bad and anyone with enough time on their hands who enjoy fantasy MMO's should give it a look... if they don't mind the GameGuard Rootkit. I already installed the beta when I found out about it, but I canceled the preorder because I won't purchase a game with a ToS that states it's GameGuard can delete files off MY computer if it doesn't like it. Terrible, terrible.
Obligatory TL;DR - Only Fantasy MMO's make money. SWTOR is fantasy enough and "like" enough to WoW that it will successfully compete with WoW, but not overtake it. Read Richard Bartel. =)
1) I agree that Aion will not be a huge success, but it will likely be a good niche game. It will not challenge WoW by any means. I've tested it. It's fun, it's good, but it doesn't have "WoW Appeal".
2) Age of Conan was pure gimmick. "Oh look! Boobs and Blood!". Yeah, coupled that with a crap-tacular gaming experience and endless bugs and balance issues. I beta'd it for a good while, up till launch day. I still couldn't get into the city after the starting zone because of graphic bugs. AoC would have been a better niche game if they had development money to make it good from the start. Blizzard did have this.
3) Warhammer's graphics where far behind WoW's at launch. The animation was terrible. The game play was ok, but it also suffered from major bugs within the first 5 levels. These levels are suppose to be *the* most polished part of a game at launch. They have to be, or you'll never get people to play long enough to put any kind of investment into their character. Man, after trying 5 classes, all the starting zones, only one zone was anything halfway cool, and I was discouraged because I saw some other class easily soloing stuff I couldn't even touch... and they where lower level than me. At level 5-6 or something. War suffered from terrible bugs, bad animation, and some odd imbalances. The PvP stuff was cool, as well as "world quests" or whatever they called them. That was cool. But far from being WoW quality.
4) Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR.com) I predict will be the only MMO to successfully challenge WoW. I don't think it will reach WoW subscriber numbers (11 million) but it will get a huge market share (6-7 million) after the first year or so. Partly thanks to WoW. SWTOR simply has too many good things going for it, atm.
a) Bioware has the notoriety that Blizzard had when they entered the MMO market with WoW. This will sell to Bioware fans regardless, like WoW sold to fans who would by anything Blizzard. You could chalk this up to their track-record of good game making, particularly RPG games.
b) Bioware's going with stylish art, similar to what WoW did. Hardcore Ignoramuses would call it "cartoon" graphics. The art looks good. Real good, this will attract a lot of people, and like WoW, keep system specs. lower to capture more possible gaming markets.
c) SWTOR is going pure voice acting. Nothing new to MMO's, EQ2 has done it. Oblivion has it, though it's not an MMO. From the game footage, and previous experience of such systems, it works, and works well. Rarely anyone reads quest text, but a lot more people will follow the story if someone's telling it to them. Assuming it's done right.
d) Star Wars also has it's own (huge) fan base. But it's also got a huge black stain thanks to Star Wars Galaxies epic fail. I think most people will pass off Galaxies and try TOR regardless, but that's yet to be seen.
e) Fantasy games are the only MMO's that do exceptionallly well. Thankfully Star Wars has enough "fantasy" elements to really cross genre's of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. After all, SW has magic with the Force and Sword play with Lightsabers. Of course, the rest is guns and machines, but WoW has that too and it works fine for them. Yet, the Sci-Fi aspect will keep subscribers lower than WoW's numbers.
f) WoW's created a much larger market that's ever existed for MMO's. There's far more for SWTOR to tap and many first time MMO players started with WoW but did not experience WoW from day 1. A new MMO from day 1 is far different experience than one that's seen an expansion or two. Many new MMO players will try SWOTR for this very reason. It'll be up to SWTOR to keep these new players from going back to their invested characters with WoW.
g) WoW's been out too long and been too casual, creating far more inve
I don't know how many times I have to explain it, but your character on World of Warcraft is not a cartoon.
It's a character.
*sigh* And what's one of the definitions of "cartoon"? "3 : animated cartoon"[1]: "A motion picture that is made from a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of inanimate objects (as puppets) and that simulates movement by slight progressive changes in each frame." [2]
Video games are a type of animation. A character or avatar in a video game can very much be called a "toon" by it's very definition. Just because you can't get over your association of "toon" with "Looney Toons" doesn't make the slang and term inappropriate. It just makes you look silly trying to claim such.
For further argument, cartoons are also not all of the classic "Looney Toon" style either. Regard many of the computer generated cartoons such as Final Fantasy or the recent Beowulf film. Certainly Cartoons, yet it's far from "Anvil dropping on people heads" fair.
It's your use of the word "toon" that needs to be modernized to the 21st century. I guess it's time for someone "explained" it to you.
If you took a look at the first result of Bing "Why are Macs so expensive", you'll actually see Microsoft a few times in the article as well. Looks like Bing just doesn't weight page titles as heavily as page content, like Google does. And all search engines relate keywords. No doubt Bing does as well and Mac and Windows have a relation in the keyword space.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I think the in-game DLC note is actually quite a good (usable) way to implement DLC. It ties the extra right into the game, so you can understand what you may/may not be buying into. Instead of, say, buying some DLC and it just being a tacked on side game.
Second, haven't spent more than a few minutes with this game yet. One of the reasons is I'm waiting for my bigger better gaming computer to come in so I can crank up the graphics. Second reason is, I saw the "mage" class can specialize into "shapeshifters". I thought this sounded kind of cool, so I started a mage. Except, I don't see a single mention of shape-shifting powers in "talent tree" thing. I was wondering if this was one of those DLC things or if there's some other thing you do to play a shapeshifter class?
I guess I'll find out later on when I actually sit down and try to play through it some. I'm looking forward to trying it, for sure!
I have a rock that keeps tigers away to sell you ...
Please, this is the 21st century... there's an App for that.
In other, completely unrelated, news; parents of "balloon boy" report pitching a new reality TV series where they go and investigate strange meteorite crash sites all around the world, while racing other contests and competing in silly challenges.
For example, l4d costs now about 15$ if bought together with the still unreleased l4d2.
L4D was on sale for $15 recently, but not anymore. The package deal is $65. L4D2 is $45 pre-order. L4D costs $20 if bought in the package deal. Not $15. It was $15 as a weekend promotion, like 2 weeks ago or so.
I already have l4d, I don't want to purchase it again
Why would you? It's not mandatory, like Half-Life 2 did with their episodes. Though, if you did buy the package deal, it's plainly stated you can "gift" the extra L4D to a friend. If you want, you can get $20 from that friend and break even and give your friend a deal.
I am not buying l4d2 because I spent a pretty penny already for l4d and got a underwhelming experience.
Huh, "a pretty penny" means to me that you spent more than normal. L4D was $45 brand new, on release (if you pre-ordered and got the $5 discount like you can get now with L4D2). I don't see how that's "a pretty penny" unless you're not looking at it context of other game costs and just that "$50" is a decent amount of money, I can agree with that.
As for the experiance, I think L4D is by far the best FPS zombie game out there. It's unfortunately short, but the first couple runs are well worth it and well polished. It's *still* a good game to jump on and frag some zombies. =) And upping the challenge level is decent replay value. L4D does fall short on the nearly non-existent mod support and new "official" maps. If they got their tools out sooner, L4D might have felt like more of a value. I can agree of the unfortunately limited number of "stories" to play, but that doesn't take away from the great experiance those few missions offered.
I am looking forward to L4D2 and what they do to improve up on L4D. I'm hoping for being able to split up more and the to see how melee weapons work.
Games with good stories are good, but games like Doom are too. Does every game need to have a story?
I think TFA missed the point about Doom and it's story comment. I think it shows the greatness of Doom that you COULD start in a room, with evil imps and a gun, you knew exactly what to do and where to do. Now that's game design.
Sure, games like Half Life really injected a great story into the model, but that doesn't mean Doom's half-ass lack of a story was a strike against the game. More of a testament if you ask me. I felt like the story was more than there and made sense. At least, maybe it was just my imagination and connection to the hero of the game way back then that I made it feel like it had some story. *shrug* Isn't that what a game's suppose to do?
Unfortunately point #1 will not likely every happen with digital media due to the drawbacks for companies doing this.
However, point #2 is already here. Services like Steam allows you to download your games to new systems. There's some rules here and there and it suffers from the "all eggs in one basket" scenario, if Steam shuts down do you loose your media? Thought more companies with subscriptions and accounts, such as World of Warcraft, allow you to download the client directly from your account. It knows what client you should get based on your account activations.
Point #3 (and #4) is a bit of a misconception. It's true there's cost savings involved for the company. But when you spend $10 million on making a game, $60,000 on the box art and $0.02 per box carton doesn't really effect the price of the game. Likewise, shipping costs are insignificant to the cost of the final product.
And in the end, it's still about economics. The price is set to what people are willing to pay for (and the company is able to make a profit from). If people are still willing to pay $50-$60 for digital media, the company will sell it at that price. They will simply see better profit margins for it. And as you said, you still want a booklet, so it looks like they didn't really save any money on the box art anyways, since they're designing all the art, with-or-without a box, as part of game concepts and advertisements or digital booklets.
Huh, I don't remember that episode. I do remember the Voyager one where Paris and Janeway get it on as some sort of ultra-evolved alligator but can be miraculously returned to normal by the doctor. Something about reaching Warp 10... or did theirs go to 11?
I don't recall ever hearing that complaint, but my reaction is there's no satisfying some people.
Actually, I believe it might have been the episodes that where too short. Maybe not HL2 proper. It's been a while.
This is the internet... it'll soon be used for 90% porn fanfic.
If they brought it out 3 months later no one would complain
I'm sure *someone* would complain.
It is an interesting discussion. What is appropriate for new content release? Especially if that content costs extra. If Bioware already had this content done and finished, and it was always planned to be offered as extra content, does it make Bioware any more/less "evil" by releasing it on day 1 or releasing it 'x' days later?
The thing that leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths is trust. There's no reason to trust that this content is truly "extra", rather than a piece withheld from the original game. Another question would simply be, is the original game worth the sticker price without this extra content? Are you getting value for what you're paying for? We'll find out soon enough.
I can say, if Dragon Age doesn't offer massive amounts of time investment without the DLC, the move by Bioware to offer DLC on day 1 is going to backfire big time. If Dragon Age offers 40+ hours of epic RPG goodness without this DLC, it will change minds as to if this DLC was truly "extra" or more of a scam.
Right now, Bioware still have good will with their fan base. If Dragon Age fails to deliver value for the money (While good, Half Life 2 was considered to be too short and the episodes even shorter and caused some ill will towards being shafted for the price, but Valve came back and offered the original game for fee with the orange box, a very value stuffed package, thanks in part to the great experiance Portal became, and even allowed you to gift that part of the game you already owned to a friend. Much good will was restored.).
Let hope Dragon Age turns out for the better!
Perhaps the Python fans should look up the stuff that inspired the Pythons like Spike Milligan & The Goons and Peter Cook & Dudley Moore. Then they'd see that Python is a continuation of a classic tradition of insane surreal satirical British comedy.
Lets not bicker and argue about who surreal who...
And...
HUGE TRACKS OF LAND!
What are most people's iPods filled with? We'll not kid ourselves: pirated music.
The only person you're kidding is yourself. My iPod is 100% legit music. And yes, I'm more than tech. savoy enough to find everything I want for free. I'm willing to bet out side of one small demographic, most people's MP3 players are filled with legit music as well. You're making the same assumptions that record companies make. Congratulations.
No doubt, no doubt. But I'm still scratching my head as to the usefulness of this "technology". Was there some sort of market that was demanding that music should only be played if both buds are in the ear?
I say this as I have 1 ear-bud in at work, so if a co-worker calls my name I can answer them. Yet, when I'm at the gym, I'm more than happy to have them both in.
Point being, what's the point? All things being equal, these ear buds are less flexible than normal headphones and will probably be significantly more expensive. Is this an answer in search of a problem?
Hehe. Partly true. Novelty wears off fast on the Wii. Good thing there are at least a few good games. Heck, I'm still playing Dr Mario every day. =) Sadly, I play more WiiWare than anything else... and most NES games. hehe I just don't like playing them on the PC I guess.
Of course, there's still plenty of good games out there. Zelda, Metroid Triology, Mad World, House of the Dead: Overkill, Guitar Hero, Mario Galaxies. Yeah, mostly Nintendo games, but they're fun. But I game far more on my PC.
Actually, you're saying the same thing I am.
I know gear is vitally important. Man, it was crazy how terrible PvP was until I had nearly all PvP gear in each slot. Resilience is that important. Or being behind the weapon curve by 1 or 2 tiers.
What my point was that "easy" gear is a "Good Thing"(tm) for PvP because more people will have the gear they need, faster, to be relatively equal in those terms. Making "skill" and "class choice" the bigger issues.
What would be self-deprivating would be to only give "good" gear to "good" players, in PvP. And that's where Arena breaks down. You can have more skill, but if someone has better skill, they could beat you. If you loose, you don't get the points to get the gear you need. If you can't get the gear you need, you can't beat the person with better gear. Now you get caught in a vicious cycle.
Ergo, the best way to make PvP balanced and truly competitive is to make it as easy as possible get everyone the same level of gear. I think Blizzard has done a great job with that... except arena PvP weapons. WG has made it easy to get Honor and marks to buy fairly high quality PvP gear with not a lot of effort (see time investment).
I think the "easy" gear has been a good thing for PvP. Or, at least those who like to PvP on a relatively more competitive level. But, as we have seen and as you have eluded too, many people don't enjoy competitive levels, they enjoy pure unfair dominance. Those people have migrated a lot to "Twink" non-XP battlegrounds... who have now flocked to WoW forums QQing about no one to play with but other twinks... which isn't fun because they can't /faceroll anyone.
You aren't going to attract new customers by touting something like "new improved attack system".
You're not going to attract players when some other company say "hey, we're making an even BETTER Star Wars game" either. Galaxies will be dead shortly after launch of The Old Republic. Sony's more than likely knows this and is planning the phase-out.
There's barely room in the market place for all the MMO's as it is, there's certainly no room for two Star Wars MMO... one that's been so tainted with stories of terribleness that it's joke in the MMO community.
It affects you in PvP.
No it doesn't because anyone who PvP's tells you it's about "Skill". Getting people in reasonably the same gear simply flattens out that variable, making skill more important.
I pre-ordered Aion from Gamestop a while back and they gave you a Beta key. I've been beta-ing in for like a month now. It's not hard to get into this beta.
Since then, I've canceled my pre-order and put the $5 in on the WoW Cataclysm, which was listed with a release date of 11/2010. Which, of course, means nothing but a rough idea of when we might expect the new WoW xpac. It seems about right to me as well... except for the 2 months they'll likely push it back come Oct. 2010. =)
Aion wasn't bad and anyone with enough time on their hands who enjoy fantasy MMO's should give it a look... if they don't mind the GameGuard Rootkit. I already installed the beta when I found out about it, but I canceled the preorder because I won't purchase a game with a ToS that states it's GameGuard can delete files off MY computer if it doesn't like it. Terrible, terrible.
Obligatory TL;DR - Only Fantasy MMO's make money. SWTOR is fantasy enough and "like" enough to WoW that it will successfully compete with WoW, but not overtake it. Read Richard Bartel. =)
1) I agree that Aion will not be a huge success, but it will likely be a good niche game. It will not challenge WoW by any means. I've tested it. It's fun, it's good, but it doesn't have "WoW Appeal".
2) Age of Conan was pure gimmick. "Oh look! Boobs and Blood!". Yeah, coupled that with a crap-tacular gaming experience and endless bugs and balance issues. I beta'd it for a good while, up till launch day. I still couldn't get into the city after the starting zone because of graphic bugs. AoC would have been a better niche game if they had development money to make it good from the start. Blizzard did have this.
3) Warhammer's graphics where far behind WoW's at launch. The animation was terrible. The game play was ok, but it also suffered from major bugs within the first 5 levels. These levels are suppose to be *the* most polished part of a game at launch. They have to be, or you'll never get people to play long enough to put any kind of investment into their character. Man, after trying 5 classes, all the starting zones, only one zone was anything halfway cool, and I was discouraged because I saw some other class easily soloing stuff I couldn't even touch... and they where lower level than me. At level 5-6 or something. War suffered from terrible bugs, bad animation, and some odd imbalances. The PvP stuff was cool, as well as "world quests" or whatever they called them. That was cool. But far from being WoW quality.
4) Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR.com) I predict will be the only MMO to successfully challenge WoW. I don't think it will reach WoW subscriber numbers (11 million) but it will get a huge market share (6-7 million) after the first year or so. Partly thanks to WoW. SWTOR simply has too many good things going for it, atm.
a) Bioware has the notoriety that Blizzard had when they entered the MMO market with WoW. This will sell to Bioware fans regardless, like WoW sold to fans who would by anything Blizzard. You could chalk this up to their track-record of good game making, particularly RPG games.
b) Bioware's going with stylish art, similar to what WoW did. Hardcore Ignoramuses would call it "cartoon" graphics. The art looks good. Real good, this will attract a lot of people, and like WoW, keep system specs. lower to capture more possible gaming markets.
c) SWTOR is going pure voice acting. Nothing new to MMO's, EQ2 has done it. Oblivion has it, though it's not an MMO. From the game footage, and previous experience of such systems, it works, and works well. Rarely anyone reads quest text, but a lot more people will follow the story if someone's telling it to them. Assuming it's done right.
d) Star Wars also has it's own (huge) fan base. But it's also got a huge black stain thanks to Star Wars Galaxies epic fail. I think most people will pass off Galaxies and try TOR regardless, but that's yet to be seen.
e) Fantasy games are the only MMO's that do exceptionallly well. Thankfully Star Wars has enough "fantasy" elements to really cross genre's of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. After all, SW has magic with the Force and Sword play with Lightsabers. Of course, the rest is guns and machines, but WoW has that too and it works fine for them. Yet, the Sci-Fi aspect will keep subscribers lower than WoW's numbers.
f) WoW's created a much larger market that's ever existed for MMO's. There's far more for SWTOR to tap and many first time MMO players started with WoW but did not experience WoW from day 1. A new MMO from day 1 is far different experience than one that's seen an expansion or two. Many new MMO players will try SWOTR for this very reason. It'll be up to SWTOR to keep these new players from going back to their invested characters with WoW.
g) WoW's been out too long and been too casual, creating far more inve
I thought a lot of spam came through zombie / infected computers. So, it's just going to be other people who pay for it anyways.
I don't know how many times I have to explain it, but your character on World of Warcraft is not a cartoon. It's a character.
*sigh* And what's one of the definitions of "cartoon"? "3 : animated cartoon"[1]: "A motion picture that is made from a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of inanimate objects (as puppets) and that simulates movement by slight progressive changes in each frame." [2]
Video games are a type of animation. A character or avatar in a video game can very much be called a "toon" by it's very definition. Just because you can't get over your association of "toon" with "Looney Toons" doesn't make the slang and term inappropriate. It just makes you look silly trying to claim such.
For further argument, cartoons are also not all of the classic "Looney Toon" style either. Regard many of the computer generated cartoons such as Final Fantasy or the recent Beowulf film. Certainly Cartoons, yet it's far from "Anvil dropping on people heads" fair.
It's your use of the word "toon" that needs to be modernized to the 21st century. I guess it's time for someone "explained" it to you.
And it didn't take long before a /. registered the domain and redirected it to the silly T-shirt store.
If you took a look at the first result of Bing "Why are Macs so expensive", you'll actually see Microsoft a few times in the article as well. Looks like Bing just doesn't weight page titles as heavily as page content, like Google does. And all search engines relate keywords. No doubt Bing does as well and Mac and Windows have a relation in the keyword space.
Thanks you just ruined that movie for me, whenever it's made.
What do you think it would be worth for you to do it?
If you got an extra $10/$50/$100 month? It's an intriguing question.