Obligatory: what could possibly go wrong?
Surely they can't do worse than the first three episodes (heh), but I'm not holding my breath. My poor childhood memories... a dead horse that's constantly being beaten. Yeah, I know that the horse spits out dollars with each hit, but please stop hitting it... please.
Yeah, my wife taught at a high school that bought every student and teacher a Macbook Pro. Yes, Pro. At the cost of several million dollars to the school district, no less... oh, but that wasn't the REAL cost. The REAL cost was that the teachers could no longer buy books to teach with. They were supposed to use only the laptops. Oh, and at the end of the year, the school laid off 50 teachers.
They closed down one school in the district entirely, electing instead to privatize it and lay off all of the teachers to "save some money." The private company that came in was supposed to "specialize in teaching underperforming students using technology." Good luck with that... Remind me again when technology became better than books and teacher interaction for students.
Then again, I guess I can't expect much, given my state's history in education. (Hint: We're the dumbest, poorest state in the US.)
Why is everyone saying that Steam is non-intrusive? It forces you to install it on your system and constantly whines when you don't have a net connection. Steam is only good if you have a good, reliable broadband connection. I know that encompasses most people now, but there are some people who simply don't have the option.
I live in a rural area without broadband access, but *gasp* I enjoy playing games. Back when Half-Life 2 was released, I was still on dialup, and Steam was a MAJOR pain. It would work fine in offline mode for a few days, but then it would decide that it just had to authenticate online again. Unfortunately, after dialing in, Steam told me that I just HAD to download some new 200mb patch in order to play my single player game. Why? I have no idea. So this cycle would continue... some days it would be a never ending cycle of patches, since as soon as I got one finished, Steam would prompt me to download the next one. It took me months to finish a simple game due to that crapware.
I have satellite now, which is marginally better because I can at least download patches, but the connection to Steam is still spotty. Besides, I shouldn't NEED to connect to play a single player game that I own. So for all of you who love singing Steam's praises, congratulations. Steam does what you want, and in your mind, the DRM is worth the hassle. That's not the case for me, so I can't support it.
As an avid Civ 4 player, this is disappointing.
If the government didn't foot the bill for much of the infrastructure, rural areas wouldn't have electricity or telephone service. I don't think it's a good idea to leave much of your population without access to basic utilities that everyone else takes for granted. I know someone will say "but broadband isn't necessary," but it makes life a major inconvenience (in the tech field, I can't work from home, can't use vpn, can't download updates, can't stream media, can't play online games, etc, etc).
And no, moving to a new house isn't always an option. Unless you want areas of the country to fall massively behind in landing good jobs, getting a good education, and having a decent technical quality of life, you need to provide them access to some kind of low latency broadband.
Besides, there are worse things for the government to spend money on.
I played the (rather broken and buggy) version on the PC... it was enjoyable for the most part, thanks to the pretty awesome co-op mode. But thanks to Epic's "no PC" policy, I will not be buying this or any other game from them. Remember who got you where you are today, fools.
You're referring to Smash Bros. as casual? That's one of the most hardcore Gamecube games out there. People still play all kinds of Smash Bros. tournaments around the world. People have studied combos, found all kinds of little glitches in the game to exploit... L-cancelling, "wave dashing", etc... not to mention all the in-depth strategies people have developed for each character. Go check out the forums at Smash Boards and see what a hardcore community this game really has.
It's hard NOT to turn this into a platform bashing issue, because to me that's exactly what killed Oblivion. Because the game was made to be 360 compatible, there were a lot of features that I hated about the game (PC user here, obviously). Here they are, in no particular order...
1. Consolified interface. It was huge, clunky, and wasteful to say the least. Even the basic UI mods that came out improved it drastically. Still, I shouldn't have to mod my game to get a half decent interface on a 2006 game of the year candidate.
2. Removal of many rpg elements. Oblivion ended up being a 'fantasy FPS' instead of a real RPG. What happened to levitate? What about the exotic weapon types? Don't want to run? That's ok, we'll let you fast travel to within 5 feet of any place on the map. Don't want to explore? It's ok, quest and location markers show you every hidden cave and every NPC on the map. Morrowind felt like a virtual world. Oblivion felt like an arcade game.
3. Leveled enemies. There was no reason to level up, because you could never outlevel your enemies. You could walk out at level 2 and kill vampires, win the arena, become a guild grandmaster... or you could level to 30 and get attacked by bandits in full daedric armor. On either end of the scale, that's just messed up IMO. A good suit of armor should be a challenge to obtain... every loser bandit on the planet shouldn't have it just because you reached the big ranks. News flash: full daedric isn't too special when every Joe bandit has some. I guess I would expect the character to adapt to the world, not the world to adapt to the character.
4. Voiceovers all sounded the same. I realize that games are expected to have voiceovers now, but there seemed to be all of 3 people doing them. Everybody sounded the same, with only slightly different voice inflections. It was creepy, really.
5. Oblivion's game world = blah. It felt like Oblivion's world was made by someone with ADD. I couldn't run 10 feet without stumbling over a bandit cave, a big ruin, a shrine, or something else. Morrowind's landmass felt more like a "real" virtual world. Oblivion's devs apparently felt the need to cram it full of everything. I don't see the need to stumble over an aethid ruin every 2 seconds. And with all the ruins, where is the non-leveled armor? In Morrowind I found a remote cave during my exploration, and just when I thought I had found everything in it, I looked up and saw a shield hanging on the wall (it turned out to be one of the best shields in the game). I did the same thing later in the game when I found one of the best daggers in the game in a vampire lair. But in Oblivion, there were just leveled treasure chests and leveled loot lists. I didn't see any special, hand placed uber loot for some lucky adventurer to find.
Honestly, Oblivion was one of the biggest letdowns I've ever purchased. After the greatness that was Morrowind, I expected much better. I don't even consider it to be the best RPG of 2006, much less game of the year.
Yea, and it wasn't that many years ago that we heard the same thing about PDAs. Amazingly, computers are still around and going strong. IMO, the main barrier with using cell phones as computers is the input method. The current trend is that cell phones are getting smaller and smaller, and I doubt we'll be slipping any keyboards in there anytime soon.
I was thinking about this yesterday... I had downloaded a rom of Crono Trigger for the SNES, and I'm having a blast. When all the new games like Battlefield 2, Titan Quest, UT2004, and FEAR get old, I like to go back to the old games. So someone might say... why go back to the old games? They're old and pixellated. But they're FUN! The old classics like Crono Trigger, Secret of Mana, original Mario Bros., Zelda Link to the Past, Super Metroid... they don't make em like that anymore. And there's a generation of "gamers" coming up that have missed out on a lot because of that.
Nowadays it's all about the graphics, and the gameplay tends to (but not always) suffer. Even the best of the best new games have these problems. FEAR? A pathetic 8-9 hours of gameplay, though it was pretty fun while it lasted. Oblivion? Tons of hours of gameplay, but completely SHALLOW in terms of the overall experience. Even Morrowind had this game beat IMO. Battlefield 2? Awesome graphics, and fun gameplay... oh, but don't try running more than a few bots on your machine unless you want to run at 2fps, and forget about coop play, and don't expect single player with more than 16 player maps (mods notwithstanding).
It seems to me that the more games focus on graphics, the more they lose in other areas. They either have cut features, performance issues, lack of content, or something... this isn't always the case (think Half Life 2), but unfortunately we're paying for the 'shiny factor' more often and losing out on the content that made the old games fun. Maybe I'm getting too old, or maybe I'm just jaded, but I still miss the old style games.
but not by that much... I mean, just based on the price alone I could see the Wii being right up there with the other systems. Personally, I'm a Nintendo fanboy, so they could have put out anything this round and I still would have bought it. But the price point of the system makes it exactly able to do what Nintendo wants... be a second console to the people who are already buying the Xbox/PS3. So what is Nintendo doing right?
1. Innovative new controls. Will it be fun? Who knows... but a lot of people will try it out to see.
2. Aforementioned price point.
3. Backward controller compatibility. You can use your Cube controller for games that support it (ala the awesomeness that will be the next Smash Bros).
4. Virtual console. Sure you can get these as illegal roms, but I have this strange desire to compensate Nintendo for finally giving me this option. Ironically enough, I'm probably looking forward to playing the old classics more than some of the Wii games.
But the real reason I like Nintendo is because they're sticking to what they're good at... making gaming systems. Their console isn't made to play music, watch super HD content, bake bread, take out the trash, etc... It's made to (gasp) play games. And because of that, it costs (gasp) a third the price of the PS3 all in wonder system, packed full of features that most people really don't want *cough* Blu Ray *cough*. If I wanted to do all that, I'd buy a computer... which I do anyway, plus my computer is better at doing those things than some bloated, overpriced console.
MMORPGs are sometimes used as scapegoats though. I was one of the avid EQ players back in the day... I'd get in from high school, play 5-7 hours per night (except weekends, where I could spend all day Saturday playing), wash, rinse, repeat. You can add that up and say that I was addicted, but I'd have to disagree. I kept my grades at a 4.0 average, I did the chores my parents gave me, and I quit when it was time to quit. My parents were pretty easy going about my gaming habits, and for good reason. Honestly, what else would I have been doing with my free time? Watching tv? The rest of the people in my school were out drinking, partying, smoking, doing drugs... and I was playing video games. In hindsight I shouldn't have played so much, but I'm not any worse for wear because of it.
It's easy to blame MMORPGs over other kinds of games because of the nature of the beast.
1. They're never ending. You can play forever and ever and never win. So of course they lend themselves to larger amounts of playing than 'other' games.
2. They're social in nature. Instead of static boring worlds, you have a dynamic atmosphere because of the sheer number of people involved. No two days of adventuring will ever be the same.
3. It's in the companys' best interests to keep you playing. Obviously, the longer you play the more they get paid... and they want to get paid, so they invent nice ways to keep you p(l)aying.
I know some people who spend hours upon hours doing everything in the world. Some of them ride horses, some hunt, some fish, some watch tv, etc, etc. But because those are accepted activities, nobody considers those things an addiction. But you get a video gamer playing his games for that amount of time, and all of a sudden you're some kind of crazy addict. If you compare the tv watching habits of the average person to someone who's supposedly addicted to gaming, you'd probably find that they're not all that dissimilar...
This is exactly my dilemma. Initially I started my Netflix subscription to rent a lot of anime and tv shows that I normally wouldn't be able to find in a rental store. I live in a small town without a Blockbuster or anything like that, so for that purpose Netflix works fine. But what it comes down to is, like you mentioned, there are many nights that I don't want to watch a movie. Right now I'm in the middle of my own 'movie drought' where work or other 'real life' things get in the way of my movie watching. At this point, I'm giving Netflix money for nothing.
On top of that, just the other night my wife had friends over who had already seen or didn't want to watch the movies we had ordered from Netflix. Well, there goes another five bucks because she just went and rented something else from the store. The bottom line is that Netflix just isn't convenient enough for me to continue subscribing too. Yes, it's convenient in the fact that I don't have to drive to the store. But many times when I'm renting a movie, driving to the store is what I need anyway.
Yea, even with this mod you have to be careful about the guards. Always make sure that there's no guards outside the house when you attempt a crime... wait until they walk away and you're good. Also make sure that you're in sneak mode whenever you steal something, as that decreases the likelihood of you being heard.
As for your request about sneaking, this should do the trick... it had some bugs last I checked, but it looks like they've updated to version 2.0 now. But it sounds like what you're looking for...
I got the original Animal Crossing for the Cube back when it was first released... I was in college, going to class and all that, and I really didn't have time to play it. When I graduated I gave this to my mom to play on her Gamecube because I figured she'd like it. Geez, she got freakin addicted to it.
Before I knew it, she was barely getting to work on time, staying up late... all to play Animal Crossing. She wouldn't change the clock settings, instead molding her life around the game. This led to my wife getting involved, then it was all over... In-game events like fishing tournaments and aerobics parties became weird family gathering time where my mom and my wife would pass the controller around and participate. It was like those Indian pipe circles you see on TV, but with controllers...
Of course I got in on the action too... always ready to assert my superiority, I always played to pwn everyone at the fishing contests and catch all the bugs before they did. I even paid off my mortgage, though somehow my mom had several million dollars in the bank when we finally quit playing. Who knew what that game was capable of...
100% agree about BTMod... this came out days after Oblivion's release, and it was very needed. I'm not sure what kind of lazy programming left that original UI in the PC version, but it's inexcusable. I'm also using the Natural Environments mod and loving it. Here are some others I'd recommend:
Tired of seeing supposedly rare daedric and glass armor drop off common bandits at high levels? Ever wonder why these guys are harassing you for 100 gold when they're wearing tens of thousands of gold worth of armor? Download this... now rare armor stays rare, only dropping from high level creatures, and bandits have more appropriate gear. (I know this is the same as #9 on the list, but this is the one I use personally).
It's hard to be a master of crime when the guards are psychic... ever try killing someone and having a guard port up to get you? This mod greatly reduces the guard alert radius when you attempt a crime against someone. No guards hear, no bounty. Yay.
Now a bow actually shoots harder than a plastic Wal-Mart bow... even the lowest quality of arrows will fire harder, and the better ones work much better.
The summon length in the game is really low... some only last as long as 20 seconds. This mod can double or triple that value... especially useful for pure mage characters who depend on summons to 'tank' for them.
Your comment is funny, but it raises a point... what do we get out of this? Of course the answer is nothing...
So we put up with these ads, whether they're built into the game using textures of put up on a splash screen when we login, but we don't get any benefit from them. The games will NEVER go down in price. Sure some mmorpg companies (like Funcom with Anarchy Online) have provided their games free of monthly fees if you have the ads, but I don't think we'll ever see a mainstream game disk go for $40 because of advertiser funding.
It's like my satellite ISP that made me buy my own satellite equipment then sign a one year contract with them. They get to have their cake and eat it too...
I can still remember back in the day when this channel was ZDTV... I was all excited when my satellite provider added a new computer channel that I stumbled on one day. I remember watching Dvorak argue with people, seeing hardware reviews, news programs... it was cool to be a nerd.
Then ZDTV turned into TechTV and it was still good. I loved The Screen Savers with Leo and Patrick (and Kate before that), Call for Help, plus the news and hardware reviews (Fresh Gear)... even the X Play show was cool back then (it was Extended Play and didn't include Morgan Webb). There was even anime and stuff, but it still felt in line with the tech/nerd culture.
Even TechTV started to go downhill though... with shows like Unscrewed with Martin Sergeant (poser), Wired for Sex, and the hundred reruns of Robot Wars. But it completely fell apart when G4 bought it, and I've only watched about three shows on it since the buyout (all of them were Icons).
Now I'm just waiting for someone else to make a real tech channel the caliber of the old ZDTV/TechTV. It's not like they have any competition...
To those saying that it's the game makers' fault or it's due to the boring grind... maybe you're just in the wrong genre? Though I'm not saying it's necessarily good, the mmorpg genre has moved toward rewarding gamers based on time spent doing certain activities. Sure, there's some level of skill involved, but not as much as you'd find in most other genres... in the end, the guy with the most playing time "wins." You can buy your way to the good stuff, but then what's the point? There's nothing left to work toward, nothing left to raid for, nothing left to do except to show off your shiny equipment. It's like the Staple's Easy Button, only for something pointless.
But for the players who don't like gold farmers, it really ruins the game in many ways... these aren't average people farming for gold... they're 24/7 sweatshop workers and botters who are always there. They'll introduce much more money into the economy than your average player. Then when the massive influx of gold is distributed into the economy, inflation occurs and items cost more gold. This is fine for the people buying gold, but now your average joe can't keep up with his normal playing. In addition, the gold farmers monopolize the high level loot areas because they're always online, and this keeps real players from enjoying those parts of the game.
So yea, I hate gold farming... IMO, if you're so desperate to get gold and gear then maybe you shouldn't be playing mmorpgs anyway... maybe a good single player games like the Elder Scrolls series would be better for you and allow you to fulfill your gaming needs on your own time.
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Obligatory: what could possibly go wrong? Surely they can't do worse than the first three episodes (heh), but I'm not holding my breath. My poor childhood memories... a dead horse that's constantly being beaten. Yeah, I know that the horse spits out dollars with each hit, but please stop hitting it... please.
Yeah, my wife taught at a high school that bought every student and teacher a Macbook Pro. Yes, Pro. At the cost of several million dollars to the school district, no less... oh, but that wasn't the REAL cost. The REAL cost was that the teachers could no longer buy books to teach with. They were supposed to use only the laptops. Oh, and at the end of the year, the school laid off 50 teachers.
They closed down one school in the district entirely, electing instead to privatize it and lay off all of the teachers to "save some money." The private company that came in was supposed to "specialize in teaching underperforming students using technology." Good luck with that... Remind me again when technology became better than books and teacher interaction for students.
Then again, I guess I can't expect much, given my state's history in education. (Hint: We're the dumbest, poorest state in the US.)
Why is everyone saying that Steam is non-intrusive? It forces you to install it on your system and constantly whines when you don't have a net connection. Steam is only good if you have a good, reliable broadband connection. I know that encompasses most people now, but there are some people who simply don't have the option. I live in a rural area without broadband access, but *gasp* I enjoy playing games. Back when Half-Life 2 was released, I was still on dialup, and Steam was a MAJOR pain. It would work fine in offline mode for a few days, but then it would decide that it just had to authenticate online again. Unfortunately, after dialing in, Steam told me that I just HAD to download some new 200mb patch in order to play my single player game. Why? I have no idea. So this cycle would continue... some days it would be a never ending cycle of patches, since as soon as I got one finished, Steam would prompt me to download the next one. It took me months to finish a simple game due to that crapware. I have satellite now, which is marginally better because I can at least download patches, but the connection to Steam is still spotty. Besides, I shouldn't NEED to connect to play a single player game that I own. So for all of you who love singing Steam's praises, congratulations. Steam does what you want, and in your mind, the DRM is worth the hassle. That's not the case for me, so I can't support it. As an avid Civ 4 player, this is disappointing.
If the government didn't foot the bill for much of the infrastructure, rural areas wouldn't have electricity or telephone service. I don't think it's a good idea to leave much of your population without access to basic utilities that everyone else takes for granted. I know someone will say "but broadband isn't necessary," but it makes life a major inconvenience (in the tech field, I can't work from home, can't use vpn, can't download updates, can't stream media, can't play online games, etc, etc). And no, moving to a new house isn't always an option. Unless you want areas of the country to fall massively behind in landing good jobs, getting a good education, and having a decent technical quality of life, you need to provide them access to some kind of low latency broadband. Besides, there are worse things for the government to spend money on.
I played the (rather broken and buggy) version on the PC... it was enjoyable for the most part, thanks to the pretty awesome co-op mode. But thanks to Epic's "no PC" policy, I will not be buying this or any other game from them. Remember who got you where you are today, fools.
You're referring to Smash Bros. as casual? That's one of the most hardcore Gamecube games out there. People still play all kinds of Smash Bros. tournaments around the world. People have studied combos, found all kinds of little glitches in the game to exploit... L-cancelling, "wave dashing", etc... not to mention all the in-depth strategies people have developed for each character. Go check out the forums at Smash Boards and see what a hardcore community this game really has.
What do I find wrong with Oblivion? Let's see...
It's hard NOT to turn this into a platform bashing issue, because to me that's exactly what killed Oblivion. Because the game was made to be 360 compatible, there were a lot of features that I hated about the game (PC user here, obviously). Here they are, in no particular order...
1. Consolified interface. It was huge, clunky, and wasteful to say the least. Even the basic UI mods that came out improved it drastically. Still, I shouldn't have to mod my game to get a half decent interface on a 2006 game of the year candidate.
2. Removal of many rpg elements. Oblivion ended up being a 'fantasy FPS' instead of a real RPG. What happened to levitate? What about the exotic weapon types? Don't want to run? That's ok, we'll let you fast travel to within 5 feet of any place on the map. Don't want to explore? It's ok, quest and location markers show you every hidden cave and every NPC on the map. Morrowind felt like a virtual world. Oblivion felt like an arcade game.
3. Leveled enemies. There was no reason to level up, because you could never outlevel your enemies. You could walk out at level 2 and kill vampires, win the arena, become a guild grandmaster... or you could level to 30 and get attacked by bandits in full daedric armor. On either end of the scale, that's just messed up IMO. A good suit of armor should be a challenge to obtain... every loser bandit on the planet shouldn't have it just because you reached the big ranks. News flash: full daedric isn't too special when every Joe bandit has some. I guess I would expect the character to adapt to the world, not the world to adapt to the character.
4. Voiceovers all sounded the same. I realize that games are expected to have voiceovers now, but there seemed to be all of 3 people doing them. Everybody sounded the same, with only slightly different voice inflections. It was creepy, really.
5. Oblivion's game world = blah. It felt like Oblivion's world was made by someone with ADD. I couldn't run 10 feet without stumbling over a bandit cave, a big ruin, a shrine, or something else. Morrowind's landmass felt more like a "real" virtual world. Oblivion's devs apparently felt the need to cram it full of everything. I don't see the need to stumble over an aethid ruin every 2 seconds. And with all the ruins, where is the non-leveled armor? In Morrowind I found a remote cave during my exploration, and just when I thought I had found everything in it, I looked up and saw a shield hanging on the wall (it turned out to be one of the best shields in the game). I did the same thing later in the game when I found one of the best daggers in the game in a vampire lair. But in Oblivion, there were just leveled treasure chests and leveled loot lists. I didn't see any special, hand placed uber loot for some lucky adventurer to find.
Honestly, Oblivion was one of the biggest letdowns I've ever purchased. After the greatness that was Morrowind, I expected much better. I don't even consider it to be the best RPG of 2006, much less game of the year.
Make that "... and an army of robot sharks with friggin laser beams on their heads" and we'll see.
Yea, and it wasn't that many years ago that we heard the same thing about PDAs. Amazingly, computers are still around and going strong. IMO, the main barrier with using cell phones as computers is the input method. The current trend is that cell phones are getting smaller and smaller, and I doubt we'll be slipping any keyboards in there anytime soon.
I was thinking about this yesterday... I had downloaded a rom of Crono Trigger for the SNES, and I'm having a blast. When all the new games like Battlefield 2, Titan Quest, UT2004, and FEAR get old, I like to go back to the old games. So someone might say... why go back to the old games? They're old and pixellated. But they're FUN! The old classics like Crono Trigger, Secret of Mana, original Mario Bros., Zelda Link to the Past, Super Metroid... they don't make em like that anymore. And there's a generation of "gamers" coming up that have missed out on a lot because of that.
Nowadays it's all about the graphics, and the gameplay tends to (but not always) suffer. Even the best of the best new games have these problems. FEAR? A pathetic 8-9 hours of gameplay, though it was pretty fun while it lasted. Oblivion? Tons of hours of gameplay, but completely SHALLOW in terms of the overall experience. Even Morrowind had this game beat IMO. Battlefield 2? Awesome graphics, and fun gameplay... oh, but don't try running more than a few bots on your machine unless you want to run at 2fps, and forget about coop play, and don't expect single player with more than 16 player maps (mods notwithstanding).
It seems to me that the more games focus on graphics, the more they lose in other areas. They either have cut features, performance issues, lack of content, or something... this isn't always the case (think Half Life 2), but unfortunately we're paying for the 'shiny factor' more often and losing out on the content that made the old games fun. Maybe I'm getting too old, or maybe I'm just jaded, but I still miss the old style games.
1. Innovative new controls. Will it be fun? Who knows... but a lot of people will try it out to see.
2. Aforementioned price point.
3. Backward controller compatibility. You can use your Cube controller for games that support it (ala the awesomeness that will be the next Smash Bros).
4. Virtual console. Sure you can get these as illegal roms, but I have this strange desire to compensate Nintendo for finally giving me this option. Ironically enough, I'm probably looking forward to playing the old classics more than some of the Wii games.
But the real reason I like Nintendo is because they're sticking to what they're good at... making gaming systems. Their console isn't made to play music, watch super HD content, bake bread, take out the trash, etc... It's made to (gasp) play games. And because of that, it costs (gasp) a third the price of the PS3 all in wonder system, packed full of features that most people really don't want *cough* Blu Ray *cough*. If I wanted to do all that, I'd buy a computer... which I do anyway, plus my computer is better at doing those things than some bloated, overpriced console.
So I wouldn't count the Wii out just yet...
It's easy to blame MMORPGs over other kinds of games because of the nature of the beast.
1. They're never ending. You can play forever and ever and never win. So of course they lend themselves to larger amounts of playing than 'other' games.
2. They're social in nature. Instead of static boring worlds, you have a dynamic atmosphere because of the sheer number of people involved. No two days of adventuring will ever be the same.
3. It's in the companys' best interests to keep you playing. Obviously, the longer you play the more they get paid... and they want to get paid, so they invent nice ways to keep you p(l)aying.
I know some people who spend hours upon hours doing everything in the world. Some of them ride horses, some hunt, some fish, some watch tv, etc, etc. But because those are accepted activities, nobody considers those things an addiction. But you get a video gamer playing his games for that amount of time, and all of a sudden you're some kind of crazy addict. If you compare the tv watching habits of the average person to someone who's supposedly addicted to gaming, you'd probably find that they're not all that dissimilar...
This is exactly my dilemma. Initially I started my Netflix subscription to rent a lot of anime and tv shows that I normally wouldn't be able to find in a rental store. I live in a small town without a Blockbuster or anything like that, so for that purpose Netflix works fine. But what it comes down to is, like you mentioned, there are many nights that I don't want to watch a movie. Right now I'm in the middle of my own 'movie drought' where work or other 'real life' things get in the way of my movie watching. At this point, I'm giving Netflix money for nothing.
On top of that, just the other night my wife had friends over who had already seen or didn't want to watch the movies we had ordered from Netflix. Well, there goes another five bucks because she just went and rented something else from the store. The bottom line is that Netflix just isn't convenient enough for me to continue subscribing too. Yes, it's convenient in the fact that I don't have to drive to the store. But many times when I'm renting a movie, driving to the store is what I need anyway.
As for your request about sneaking, this should do the trick... it had some bugs last I checked, but it looks like they've updated to version 2.0 now. But it sounds like what you're looking for...
Attack and Hide v2.0
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2294
I got the original Animal Crossing for the Cube back when it was first released... I was in college, going to class and all that, and I really didn't have time to play it. When I graduated I gave this to my mom to play on her Gamecube because I figured she'd like it. Geez, she got freakin addicted to it.
Before I knew it, she was barely getting to work on time, staying up late... all to play Animal Crossing. She wouldn't change the clock settings, instead molding her life around the game. This led to my wife getting involved, then it was all over... In-game events like fishing tournaments and aerobics parties became weird family gathering time where my mom and my wife would pass the controller around and participate. It was like those Indian pipe circles you see on TV, but with controllers...
Of course I got in on the action too... always ready to assert my superiority, I always played to pwn everyone at the fishing contests and catch all the bugs before they did. I even paid off my mortgage, though somehow my mom had several million dollars in the bank when we finally quit playing. Who knew what that game was capable of...
Tom Servo's equipment rarity mod
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1968
Tired of seeing supposedly rare daedric and glass armor drop off common bandits at high levels? Ever wonder why these guys are harassing you for 100 gold when they're wearing tens of thousands of gold worth of armor? Download this... now rare armor stays rare, only dropping from high level creatures, and bandits have more appropriate gear. (I know this is the same as #9 on the list, but this is the one I use personally).
No psychic guards
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2299
It's hard to be a master of crime when the guards are psychic... ever try killing someone and having a guard port up to get you? This mod greatly reduces the guard alert radius when you attempt a crime against someone. No guards hear, no bounty. Yay.
Arrow velocity
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1793
Now a bow actually shoots harder than a plastic Wal-Mart bow... even the lowest quality of arrows will fire harder, and the better ones work much better.
Longer summons
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1898
The summon length in the game is really low... some only last as long as 20 seconds. This mod can double or triple that value... especially useful for pure mage characters who depend on summons to 'tank' for them.
Your comment is funny, but it raises a point... what do we get out of this? Of course the answer is nothing...
So we put up with these ads, whether they're built into the game using textures of put up on a splash screen when we login, but we don't get any benefit from them. The games will NEVER go down in price. Sure some mmorpg companies (like Funcom with Anarchy Online) have provided their games free of monthly fees if you have the ads, but I don't think we'll ever see a mainstream game disk go for $40 because of advertiser funding.
It's like my satellite ISP that made me buy my own satellite equipment then sign a one year contract with them. They get to have their cake and eat it too...
I can still remember back in the day when this channel was ZDTV... I was all excited when my satellite provider added a new computer channel that I stumbled on one day. I remember watching Dvorak argue with people, seeing hardware reviews, news programs... it was cool to be a nerd.
Then ZDTV turned into TechTV and it was still good. I loved The Screen Savers with Leo and Patrick (and Kate before that), Call for Help, plus the news and hardware reviews (Fresh Gear)... even the X Play show was cool back then (it was Extended Play and didn't include Morgan Webb). There was even anime and stuff, but it still felt in line with the tech/nerd culture.
Even TechTV started to go downhill though... with shows like Unscrewed with Martin Sergeant (poser), Wired for Sex, and the hundred reruns of Robot Wars. But it completely fell apart when G4 bought it, and I've only watched about three shows on it since the buyout (all of them were Icons).
Now I'm just waiting for someone else to make a real tech channel the caliber of the old ZDTV/TechTV. It's not like they have any competition...
To those saying that it's the game makers' fault or it's due to the boring grind... maybe you're just in the wrong genre? Though I'm not saying it's necessarily good, the mmorpg genre has moved toward rewarding gamers based on time spent doing certain activities. Sure, there's some level of skill involved, but not as much as you'd find in most other genres... in the end, the guy with the most playing time "wins." You can buy your way to the good stuff, but then what's the point? There's nothing left to work toward, nothing left to raid for, nothing left to do except to show off your shiny equipment. It's like the Staple's Easy Button, only for something pointless. But for the players who don't like gold farmers, it really ruins the game in many ways... these aren't average people farming for gold... they're 24/7 sweatshop workers and botters who are always there. They'll introduce much more money into the economy than your average player. Then when the massive influx of gold is distributed into the economy, inflation occurs and items cost more gold. This is fine for the people buying gold, but now your average joe can't keep up with his normal playing. In addition, the gold farmers monopolize the high level loot areas because they're always online, and this keeps real players from enjoying those parts of the game. So yea, I hate gold farming... IMO, if you're so desperate to get gold and gear then maybe you shouldn't be playing mmorpgs anyway... maybe a good single player games like the Elder Scrolls series would be better for you and allow you to fulfill your gaming needs on your own time.