The problem there is defining words. If you use spaces as a delimiter, people will be forced to write posts like they would telegrams, with no particles, conjunctions or anything else to get in the way. The enterprising joker will simply replace every space in the Gutenberg version of War and Peace with an underscore, and flood the service.
If there is a French version, it's illegal to stock only the English version. The problem appears to be twofold:
First, if the game is scheduled to be released in both English and French, the stores have to wait until the French version is available. Retailers are worried that gamers will turn to imports if they can't get the hot new titles immediately after launch.
Second, this presupposes that there is an equal demand for games in French, to demand for games in English. The language police can be right fucking bastards about enforcing this sort of thing, so retailers are worried about having to buy more stock than they can guarantee moving. Margins are already pretty thin, so that's a definite concern.
Have you seen the kind of people who post in these threads? If they're not complaining about brief inconveniences, then they're claiming that piracy doesn't exist, or whining about Failed MMO X not being open sourced.
You shouldn't. These are the twits who ran a cover proclaiming 'DARWIN WAS WRONG', got called on it for the truly awful article inside... and continued to use the cover as advertising material.
Honestly, I think that's unlikely. There's no shortage of emulated shards, most of which are designed to simulate the halcyon days of free-range stealing, pre-Trammel and precasting... and the total number of users across all of them probably counts in the low thousands at best. Simply put, the vast majority of people who were kicking back and kicking ass in early UO have busy lives now. Even the youngest would be college age now, and the rest have families.
UO changed because the carebears were a more lucrative audience. UO kept getting expansions, filled with virgin land ready for people to plop houses down on, because so many of them are so crazy about their loot that they'll pay for four or five separate accounts to store it all (and to plop down more houses to store it all).
"Josh" is the kind of guy who thinks he can develop the next Google, and that the shit he's taking in the lobby planter smells just like the rest of the roses. He's already missed the boat if he's in the workplace and still hasn't figured how to network himself properly.
The story I've heard is that virtually everyone stayed where the steady money was, and remained with NCsoft. The number of major developments to the game post-Cryptic don't really speak to a [skeleton] crew of new coders, especially given references to the crazy state of the code.
Regarding competition from Champions and DCUO, it's really hard to say. CoX is a traditional MMO-styled game in tights, but the other two are very much action-RPGs with a very stylized aesthetic. They're in the same theme, and arguably the same genre, but so were Ultima Online and Everquest. UO is still ticking along even now, because there is an intense sense of ownership among players of that game-- personal housing still magnetizes the player base, which is why the newer landmass expansions include space for it. Even if it's possible to duplicate a character's identity in another game, the psychological impact of virtual uprooting is a strong deterrent to making the move. For CoX, that sense of ownership is in the character avatars themselves, their Badges (analogous to Xbox Live Achievements) and Veteran Rewards, instanced Supergroup bases and to a lesser extent, the optional value-add costume packs. The added opportunity to purchase extra character slots (and free slots earned every year of subscription) indicates that NCsoft knows exactly where the strength of their City lies in the face of competition.
Make it twenty. When you can't stretch a modern Star Trek series more than four years, and your final episode is focused around characters from another series entirely, you need to let the horse rot for a while instead of lashing it some more.
The creation of cultural artifacts is not, and should not be an industrial process.
Come back when you've actually made something of lasting worth yourself. Your seething jealousy, poor reasoning skills, and general ignorance are embarrassingly transparent.
You can't sue for using similar themes and tropes, otherwise Lucasfilm would have steamrolled JK Rowling the moment Harry Potter hit the shelves.
Besides that, player created missions are written in plaintext. When you've got a database of inappropriate words, names and variations, a system in place for flagging both inappropriate and wildly popular content, and a human-readable output, catching stuff like House of W is pretty damn easy.
Righty-o, then! They'll just have someone go through tens of thousands of lines of source code, take out the bits they don't own, then leave the rest in a tidy little depository for you to...
Uh, no.
First off, you're making a ridiculous assumption that the code belongs to the developer, and not the company's creditors. This is not iD, this is an outfit whose assets have gone into hock.
Second, you're making the ridiculous assumption that the developers are being paid to go through the source and make it open-source friendly. Instead of, you know, shopping their resumes around, hoping to God that they've got enough socked away to make it until they're rehired somewhere, and not providing you with entertainment for free.
Slashdot Mirror
If he's sending suggestive e-mails, then he's probably going to end up with one thing in his clenched fist...
Then launch with a 10% off sale. The perception of savings and a limited time offer will bring buyers out in droves.
The problem there is defining words. If you use spaces as a delimiter, people will be forced to write posts like they would telegrams, with no particles, conjunctions or anything else to get in the way. The enterprising joker will simply replace every space in the Gutenberg version of War and Peace with an underscore, and flood the service.
He was the one who shouted KHAN! at the news.
"Your favorite artist" sees just about zilch from CD sales, unless they're totally independent. If you want to support them, go see them in concert.
...because Jesus, this is the only level-headed post in the batch. Even the bloody tagline reads 'what they want you to believe'.
First, if the game is scheduled to be released in both English and French, the stores have to wait until the French version is available. Retailers are worried that gamers will turn to imports if they can't get the hot new titles immediately after launch.
Second, this presupposes that there is an equal demand for games in French, to demand for games in English. The language police can be right fucking bastards about enforcing this sort of thing, so retailers are worried about having to buy more stock than they can guarantee moving. Margins are already pretty thin, so that's a definite concern.
Right. Because a nationally syndicated newspaper is going to play April Fool's jokes.
It sounds like there's something ROT-13 in the state of Hawaii.
Pff. They are like, so late.
Have you seen the kind of people who post in these threads? If they're not complaining about brief inconveniences, then they're claiming that piracy doesn't exist, or whining about Failed MMO X not being open sourced.
You shouldn't. These are the twits who ran a cover proclaiming 'DARWIN WAS WRONG', got called on it for the truly awful article inside... and continued to use the cover as advertising material.
Sites like Filefront also provide a lot of bandwidth for mods and other community-developed content. It's not just big-name developers and publishers.
The iPhone gets a killer app!
UO changed because the carebears were a more lucrative audience. UO kept getting expansions, filled with virgin land ready for people to plop houses down on, because so many of them are so crazy about their loot that they'll pay for four or five separate accounts to store it all (and to plop down more houses to store it all).
Would the UPN be considered as having 'jumped the shark', or merely 'folded under its own mediocrity'?
"Josh" is the kind of guy who thinks he can develop the next Google, and that the shit he's taking in the lobby planter smells just like the rest of the roses. He's already missed the boat if he's in the workplace and still hasn't figured how to network himself properly.
Or maybe Josh needs to find himself a nice silverware drawer where he can sparkle.
Regarding competition from Champions and DCUO, it's really hard to say. CoX is a traditional MMO-styled game in tights, but the other two are very much action-RPGs with a very stylized aesthetic. They're in the same theme, and arguably the same genre, but so were Ultima Online and Everquest. UO is still ticking along even now, because there is an intense sense of ownership among players of that game-- personal housing still magnetizes the player base, which is why the newer landmass expansions include space for it. Even if it's possible to duplicate a character's identity in another game, the psychological impact of virtual uprooting is a strong deterrent to making the move. For CoX, that sense of ownership is in the character avatars themselves, their Badges (analogous to Xbox Live Achievements) and Veteran Rewards, instanced Supergroup bases and to a lesser extent, the optional value-add costume packs. The added opportunity to purchase extra character slots (and free slots earned every year of subscription) indicates that NCsoft knows exactly where the strength of their City lies in the face of competition.
This is why I'm not so keen on the Singularity. The entire world at what passes for your fingertips... but at what cost?!
Make it twenty. When you can't stretch a modern Star Trek series more than four years, and your final episode is focused around characters from another series entirely, you need to let the horse rot for a while instead of lashing it some more.
Come back when you've actually made something of lasting worth yourself. Your seething jealousy, poor reasoning skills, and general ignorance are embarrassingly transparent.
Norton software has been a sad joke since the advent of Windows 95.
Besides that, player created missions are written in plaintext. When you've got a database of inappropriate words, names and variations, a system in place for flagging both inappropriate and wildly popular content, and a human-readable output, catching stuff like House of W is pretty damn easy.
Uh, no.
First off, you're making a ridiculous assumption that the code belongs to the developer, and not the company's creditors. This is not iD, this is an outfit whose assets have gone into hock.
Second, you're making the ridiculous assumption that the developers are being paid to go through the source and make it open-source friendly. Instead of, you know, shopping their resumes around, hoping to God that they've got enough socked away to make it until they're rehired somewhere, and not providing you with entertainment for free.
Third... you're ridiculous, period.