Aren't women still not allowed to be involved in ground combat in the US military? Kinda negates this whole idea of a woman soldier that still cares about her looks. Also, last I checked hygiene is an important part of military training, thus wouldn't you also expect any male to also care about his appearance (though unlikely to the extent of a woman, well, cuz men just don't care as much).

In reality, a big breasted woman swinging a 2-handed sword around is going to have some issues. Those thing are gunna get in the way, nothing you can do about it. Appearance, however, is not affected whatsoever. Your clear complexion, blue-eyes, soft-skin won't affect jack, unless she's fighting a typical man.

But it's not like you can take big-breasts out of a game. It's more unrealistic in their absence. So do you put controls in to adjust breast size during character creation? Sound like a great idea to me, and also some horrible publicity. Perhaps then we can have a setting to adjust the size of the bulge under my pallies' pants.

Or, rather than go down that road we'll just make all girls in the game reasonably large-breasted. Sure, not as realistic, thus not as ideal for role-playing. But seriously, have you ever met a girl who was like "damn, I wish I had a flat chest." I know of no girl that hates big breasts for their appearance. It's always the back pains, or how running a mile with a 20 lb. pack on the wrong side of your body is exhausting.

Around forever? yes. In-game ads? Not likely. There is no feasible way of doing that within the game model. You might see a few during startup, but not within the game itself. Over time the cost of maintaining the game will decrease though the player base will hold steady. Most likely the price will stop increasing (if it will ever increase, cuz it hasn't yet) and inflation will take its toll rather than decreasing the actual cost to play the game.

It will also never be free. Even in 15 years, 8.5million is unlikely to dwindle to a number where the need to make it free becomes necessary to keep the game around. Servers will slowly merge, but actual free play? no. If it did go free, Blizzard would get some kudos from me though. Couple examples of what I mean: EQ, AC, AO. Aged, but not free.

someday people will accept that the titles "mmorpg" and "mmog" done have the meaning we give them today. As a first example, look at everquest 2, where on certain servers players can buy and sell in-game items. But that is a controlled baby-step. A better example is Second Life, where they refuse to even consider it a game. All in-game content in capable of being bought and sold. Better yet, their control over their own world has recently been weakened by a judicial decision that their EULA does not provide them the protection they believe it does.

The fact is, they are not MMOG's, they are MMOW's, online worlds subject to the laws and policies set forth by the countries in which they operate. but they don't operate within a country, the company the OWNS them does. This is the perspective of CCP, in my opinion. The companies that control these worlds typical use authoritarian power to control their populace. History has proven how most authoritarian governments end. The fact is they do end. England, Germany, Japan... pick a country, any country. No matter who 'creates' these nations, the real owners typically end up being those that reside there. Democracy usually wins.

Back to the point: these worlds function independently of their makers, and their owners. Just as a government, they function to protect their populace, and to arbitrate disagreements. The only significant difference between online worlds and real nations are borders and land. This is a serious problem for anyone who has studied political science. Can you have a nation that does not have a contigous border and land? My argument is yes. These online worlds have citizens, commerce, taxes (of various sorts, but not for revenue purposes), even politics. Granted, you are unlikely to see an invading army (as we know it today), but there are black markets, terrorism, and other sorts of things that attempt to undermine the controlling power.

If CCP fails to control EVE, while the game fail? unlikely. People will still want to play it up till it dies unless CCP does something to kill it; something even a real government could do. Even if CCP gives up, others will pick up where they failed and the game may truly reach the type of existence I imply. You don't have to believe me, and it may not happen to CCP (because they are smart and are compromising), but there's plenty of other MMO's out there, ones that are accepting this fate. Time will prove me right.

Check out Reuters for virtual currencies, more evidence toward what I am referring to.

To the best of my knowledge, LotRO is the first significant game Turbine has pumped out since Asheron's Call 2. At the very least, it's the first game (that I know of) using Turbine's engine since AC2. What concerns me is that lag killed AC2. Not to say that they didn't totally destroy the game along the way through total overhauling various in-game systems, but the horrible rubber-band lag made it nearly impossible to do the most basic thing in any MMO: travel.

It was nearly impossible to walk 3 yards without being pulled back to where you were. Moving from one  point to another typically involved a lot of foward progress overwhelmed with instantious rubber-band lag putting you right back where you started. Aside from that, it really wasn't that bad of a game. There were towns that would actually grow based on player's effort, crafting (in the end) became integral in being a successful player, and not a passtime as in WoW. The cut scenes were neat, the story was interesting, fighting was pretty fun. But this isn't about AC2...

What concerns me is that Turbine might not have realized their failures. A game like LotRO has a lot of appeal. There's a lot of story, culture, room for RP, all that jazz that's possible in this game. I've heard that the game includes a small area of Middle Earth. This doesn't bother me, so long as it's big enough. Assuming this game has approximately a 5-7 year lifespan, I'd like to see a game that in the end is very large. In WoW you can see this, Azeroth is large, but the Outlands even bigger. Since Turbine can't exactly make up new continents without undercutting the loyal fans, starting small makes sense. I've heard there's no main city. That doesn't bother me either. There is absolutely no reason in the world to expect a city in a world like this. London was not exactly a large city throughout all of history, in fact it wasn't even one of the largest trade centers (though still large). But this isn't about game content either.

In the end, what I am absolutely most concerned with is rubber-band lag, and lag in general. This game is running on the exact same engine that essentially failed to produce a quality game in the past (AC2). Occasionally someone will mention lag issues. How bad is it? Is it rampant, or just the select few DSL and dial-up players? Is it isolated to highly populated areas, or can you not even walk a few feet without being 'rubber-banded' back to where you were? Did Turbine learn from their mistakes, and at this current time is LotRO worth my money?

I'm going to have to agree, this review is more of an overview than a re-view. I could've gathered the same basic info from their website. What is lacking is what comes between what we got (a summary) and the ratings. I don't mind seeing an 8 on graphics. Most of these stats seem inflated anyway, so a lower score is fine. But the problem is why. Everyone talks of the fancy-graphics CD, but that does not mean good graphics. Just because the graphics are better than EQ2 or whatever else does not justify a higher rating. Technology increases over time, making such a basic assumption impossible to apply over time. In the end, you can't have a 1-10 scale and still base the rating off the graphics of the last time; all games will end up scoring 10.... off the point. If you feel it's only an 8, tell us why.

why why why. that's what we want. why did you rate it the way it is. that answer isn't in the review, and that's why it lacks.

I don't want to get pulled in to this fiasco, but I will say that if you (whoever it was that original stated such) thinks that the majority of mmo players are 13-21 needs to substantiate this claim. Though I can't substantiate it for you, I would guess it to be closer to 19-34 single males as the majority, with females being the same but not single.

I don't have the patience to read this whole thread in detail, but I also agree that if you haven't reached 60 and haven't been to AT LEAST ZG, you also have no clue what end-game is in WoW. It is very different, which is why I always die when I go back to soloing.

And for the comment about warriors sucking at both pvp and pve, try being a rogue sometime. At least you can take hits, maybe an elite somewhere close to your level, and may actually live if you pull more than one.

What else can I comment on.... Oh, here you go. End-game pvp as was hinted at in one post, where competition is lacking to due the constant need to upgrade gear to stay on par is actually a catch-22. the MMO side of the game drives people to play with others in some setting, the Game part usually entails competition (as almost every non-single player game, be it video game, board game, card game, etcs), but then there's the Role Playing part of an MMORPG. The RP part is what involves the storyline, the leveling, and the progression that you all find from lvls 1-60. Once you reach 60 and begin PvPing on what is believed to be a fair playing field, the MMOG and the RPG begin to conflict. To truly make PvP a fair competition you have to remove the RPG from the end-game. If you remove the RPG from the end-game, people lose sight of the reason behind grinding to 60 and playing this type of game in the first place. In other words, a catch-22.

That's what I think. It's an opinion, and thus subjective. Agree, disagree, or agree to disagree. and if you don't know what substantiate, catch-22, or even end-game means try wikipedia for those big words too.

Don't even bring drugs, especially weed, into this. For one, you are absolutely wrong, and two, has no relevance aside from the use of moral grounds for restriction.

BTW, was watching CNN or some other news network, forgot which, the other day. Apparently we are in the middle of a moral crusade. Prohibition was a moral crusade, look what good it did.

*sigh*  Maybe you're better off just not showing him the game at all. Either way, don't leave the kid alone with the majority of people that post on this thread. You might, in the end, be ok showing the kid the game or leaving him with certain priests, but these posters care more about their own moral standing than the responsibility one has to caring for a child as their parents choose.

With that out of the way.... violence is everywhere. There are now 4 different kinds of Law and Order, 3 CSI's, whatever other shows that involve shooting people, vampires, or the works, not to mention most movies, and I don't think video games even need to be mentioned since most are driven by some sort of violent action (GTA, Resident Evil, Zelda even).

But nudity, in America (as I've been told in England there's no restrictions on topless nudity) it is filtered and screened from the eyes of most. As mentioned by the dev, most Adult-rated stuff finds itself on select stores and websites flooded with popups and the works. It takes skill to find decent, popup free, spyware and virus clean pornography even on the Internet. Even a Playboy magazine is rare to find in most convenience stores or elsewhere, and when you do it's still in a special sleeve to cover the cover, or even greater coverage to prevent seeing whatever might be on the front cover.

It is simple to understand why one may choose to censor their child from nudity and not violence. It's unknown whether the parent would like to shield violence, but it's unlikely to be effective (as explained). Nudity, on the other hand, is easily censorable from a child's eyes. You could even say they are realists for accepting the innevitable of one and not the other. Regardless, none of you have any place to tell them one way or another. Perhaps when you are old enough to see a rated R movie in a theater, better yet have a child of your own, you may change you opinion. And when that happens you can leave your v-chip off, get skinemax, bookmark the good porn sites, and leave your favorite pornos sitting on the coffee table. But be assured, when one of your kid's friends comes over and even mentions ANY of it to their parents you'll regret it.

$75,000,000. That's how much revenue Blizzard is making (very roughly, 5mill*$15), a month. Add to that game sales, and also soon all the sales from their expansion. Obviously they have expenses too, but with a revenue off of a single product of this size, 23mill euro loss isn't much. On top of that, if European business practices are in any way similar to U.S. business practices, investments and research is often used to conceal actual monetary growth of a company, since these expenditures reduce profit, and thus reduces their taxes. With the anticipation of their expansion, such a loss is probably negligible as well as expected. They'll make it all back overnight come the expansion.  Easy math to prove that, the expansion costs $40? I really don't know to be honest, but lets go with that, and say 10% of their subscribers buy it (500k people), that's $20,000,000. There you go, there's their loss, regained, all overnight.

oops, you said billion. lol! still, add to this some 5 year projections and all the other aspects of their conglomeration and the value of all assets i'm sure it's not as bad as it sounds.

why can't someone who's played UO for only 3 days critique reviews of mmo's or mmo's themselves? you make it sound like UO is THE standard. Does EQ not count? what about paper and dice rpg's? what about the FF series (though I'd even rip you for that), or any other console rpg? This site has how many games listed? 50? If i've played even 10 of those (excluding UO), compared to someone who's played only UO surely the prior is more knowledgable of MMORPGs than the latter. What about those that failed? Above and Beyond or whatever it was, AC2, SWG, etc...

I'll tell you what, I was playing RPG's on my puter before there was internet. That's right, BEFORE internet. I was flying around my ANSI text of a space ship in Galactic Empires when you nay-sayers were likely being weened off yer mother's milk. I can't even remember the names of the games it's been so long.

This is by far my most aggressive post, but nothing drives me crazier than some nub telling ANYONE whether they have the experience, knowledge, or whatever background necessary to critique another game. Just argue your point well, be articulate, site your sources or what you are comparing to. But don't put someone down cuz they haven't played your UO for 4 years.

One could argue it's how different WoW is from these classics that makes it such a success. Oh wait, that's what he did... guess the 5mill subscribers and one decent editorial showed you.

I'm not singling anyone out (notice I mentioned no names), but you know who you are.

I don't understand the perspective you (that disagree with the editorial) have when criticize what the author states. I am one of those people that has played WoW from the beginning, so have a full 2 years playing the game. I played WoW, DAOC, Eve, AC2, AO, SWG... the list goes on. And there are 2 game mechanics that I think make it more playable than any other MMO before it: simplicity, and the pace of the game. I recently started playing EQ2, as I am burned out on WoW, and much like Eve it is not simple to fully understand the choices you make when you choose to use one ability over another or the order one uses their abilities. For example, in EQ2 the cost, cooldown, and often the actual effect of the ability is not clear until you 'examine' the item. A better example: in Eve, if you choose to upgrade, say, your weapons on your noob ship you find yourself considering about 5 different factors in choosing the right weapon for you, which in turn requires you to reconsider multiple components related to your ship and all other components already equipped. In other words, upgrading your weapon often requires upgrading 2-4 different ship components, not to mention finding, buying, and then acquiring those components.

I'm rambling... WoW isn't perfect though. Why in the world did WoW set up armor the way that they did??? why even allow a rogue to wear cloth, they never will. Why does a priest have to wear cloth? They're just going to stand there casting heals, there's no need for light amor!

I also agree that WoW has no role-playing. This doesn't anger me, as I'm not a very good RPer anyway, but I do play on those servers. Why? maturity. It's still not perfect, but hey...

And WoW does get old. I feel sorry for those looking for groups to scholo or strat. Sometimes I feel like I slipped by just in time as everyone else was running these dungeons, cuz sometimes people seem to be waiting forever to go there. But in contrast, now that my 60 (that's right, 2 years of playing and I only cared to get 1 char to 60, but I do have over a dozen alts of all lvls) has been at end-game for some time, I find myself very very bored. There is nothing I can do solo, aside farming, that's worth my time. In fact, I find that the only reason to play my 60 is for raids. Finding a raid by your lonelies is basically impossible, and not very smart. And to get in a raid via your guild requires scheduling ahead, which doesn't always work out when you need 60 people.

PvP they've ruined. My guild once ruled the horde-side for PvP on our server, if not the whole server. I do enjoy what they've done with x-realm bg's, but with not balancing mechanism it's not worth it to me. But to compare it to DAOC, it's the best thing ever. Never again do I have to worry about getting into the fight at the right time or the right day to see some action or to have a good battle. In Wow, if the first match sucks, rejoin and it's a whole new opportunity. Regardless, you never wait and there's rarely a 'bad' day to PvP. But again, world-PvP is a joke. The new systems they implemented in in EPL and silithus is nice, but the rewards aren't worth it. There's just no point to it.

I'll end with quests. Most of the quests are enjoyable to do. I can't recall (too many) quests that felt like a grind or just frustrated me. But the story behind them was always lacking. Immediately, playing EQ2, I realized that quests can and should have important storylines, that fit into the scheme of the world, and give you enough motive alone to do the quests even if the end result is a simple grind. Had WoW's quests had the depth that I've found in EQ2 I might actually have the motivation to reread them, as well as repeat them. Eve lacks any real quest depth of any kind, and most other games I recall playing were simply average.

I worry that 10 more lvls and some new areas just won't suffice to fullfil what leaves me feeling empty when playing WoW. Granted, the expansion is needed, but I think it might be too late for what they going to give. For EQ2 being just as old and having 4 adventure packs, on their 3rd expansion, more depth, and greater detail (in every aspect: graphics, storyline, mechanics...), what WoW is giving us almost seems like a profitable joke.

Customization of appearance is nice, but has nothing to do with WoW. I like the idea of custom appearances but it's an utter waste to do it when you're likely to be covered in armor in the end. Of course, there's likely a chunk of time where you won't be fully decked-out and will matter somewhat. The funny thing is, you have more control over your appearance before you have any armor (in WoW) than you do once you are 60. However, alot of the armor available is bright and very unique (easy to notice in a crowd), and that is very nice.

But the type of customization he (the author) seems to be referring to is talents and armor.

Talents in WoW are customizable within reason and class. Like He said, a warrior basically has only 2 choices. A priest typically has 3 and is more likely to switch between them than other classes. I play a rogue mostly, have never changed it (even after patch 1.12), but can propose between 5-10 very unique talent specs based on style and weapon choice. Sadly, most rogues still settle with 1 of 2 'popular' options, which is truly sad.

With the expansion, there does seem to be an attempt to encourage people to customize their talents more than in the past, but this is not entirely true. Priests, and especially rogues, are being pigeonholed into even more specific class roles than before (priests through new talents, rogues through new abilities). Thus, customization of play-style/talents is very debatable.

Armor, on the other hand (and in my opinion) offers next to no customization currently in WoW. As I already said, there's many pieces of armor that'll stick out and look very neat, but the customization is strictly in what pieces you have. There is no ability to change color, or add some spikes, or do anything to customize your armor from someone with the same piece. Furthermore, customization through the STATS on the armor is even more restricting, and plays back into talent customization. Upper level armor in WoW provides little opportunity for a class to choose strength over agility, or AP over crit, and so on. By the time you reach tier2 armor, the stats you will be optimizing has been chosen for you, all you can do is throw on some enchantments. This, in turn, controls how you are likely to spend your talent points, as to make the best use of your stats.

Thus, in the end, your only customization in WoW is your glowy effects, and how far up the armor ladder you've made it.

But then there's jewelmaking. Really, none of us know how it'll all end up. I don't mind the loss of some customization in appearance if it reduces latency, so long as I can still find my friends when I need to. What I don't like is losing customization in how I choose to play my character.

This topic was very interesting and informative about the innards of quests in EQ2, until about page 3...

Having never played EQ2, and being very burned out on WoW, i was hoping to shine some light on a game that I thought had more to give than WoW originally laid on the plate 2 years ago. I've learned that there's supposedly 3500+ quests, though a lacking of lore and build-up in storyline in these quests, and that crafting actually adds something to the game. However, you have all degraded managed to degrade this topic to a childish punching fight which is very sad. Now I'm learning nothing, gaining nothing.

Hopefully you will all learn this from me: keep your retorts impersonal and short; sticks and stones hurt, times new roman shouldn't. Someone says something innapropriate or personally offensive I have no problem with you saying something, but several pages of it is just sad.

Oh, and I have to agree that Eve is quite boring, but it's incredibly open for the player to roleplay in the purest sense of the word (even more pure than your DnD magic-missles sense of the word).

Funny thing is C is supposed to be average in school too and it's not. So why would you expect 5 to be average in ratings? How people view a 5 score also reflects how non-average of a score that really is. Regardless, if you read the review you'll understand why the score may deviate from what you might expect, whether it a 5 or a 7 for average. It's actually a pretty good review. I would've rated role-playing lower, being that i play on an RP server and have hardly roleplayed. But i know there's people out there that do. But in all, the gear-grind nature of WoW end-game content is right on. That's what my guild does, we run 40man dungeons for the gear so we can take that to the battlegrounds and hopefully reign supreme.

Though it is my understanding that the honor/reward system used for the bg's will be completely different with the expansion, as well as other things that will completely change the nature of the game (difficulty settings for dungeons, 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 arenas, the new talents and abilites). The review to come with the expansion will be very interesting.

It's actually pretty neat. It's like watching ESPN, but it's Eve-online PvP battles.

some more useful info, this time specifically about the rally around the flag effect.

Although the existence of the rally effect has long been taken for granted by scholars and journalists, it received its first systematic treatment in John Mueller’s landmark War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (1973), a work that spawned a cottage industry of related studies. Mueller defined the rally effect as “being associated with an event which (1) is international and (2) involves the United States and particularly the president directly; and it must be (3) specific, dramatic, and sharply focused”.

The “rally-round-the-flag effect” sparked by the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and by President George W. Bush’s prompt launching of the War on Terrorism cries out for the kind of timely analysis that political scientists sometimes can provide. A rally effect is the sudden and substantial increase in public approval of the president that occurs in response to certain kinds of dramatic international events involving the United States. The September 11 rally effect is distinctive for at least three reasons. First, of all the recorded rally effects, it is the largest. Bush’s approval rating soared in the Gallup Poll from 51% on September 10 to 86% on September 15. This 35-point increase nearly doubles the previous record, the 18-point boost triggered by his father’s launch of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. Second, the further increase in Bush’s approval rating to 90% on September 22 represents the highest rating ever recorded for a president (Morin 2001). Third, the September 11 rally effect has lasted longer than any in the history of polling.

Excerpted from "Anatomy of a Rally Effect: George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism"
Marc J. Hetherington, Bowdoin College
Michael Nelson*, Rhodes College
http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/AnatomyRallyEffect-Hetherington.pdf

In response to the last post, war is never necessary. Though you would have a strong argument under the condition of being attacked, as the agressor it is very hard to say it is necessary to go to war. Granted, this is a general argument. However, in considering the recent war in Iraq, the rally around the flag effect stated above, and the complete lack of tangible evidence supporting claims made by Bush and his cabinet in justifying the war, it is very very hard to say this war was necessary.

Something else for you all to think about.

According to the facts given by my professor in my Politics and War class, (more striking is the existence of these facts at all): The expected duration of the war in Iraq
US using a maneuver strategy, Iraq an attrition, in open terrain - 0.88 months
US maneuver, Iraq attrition, mixed terrain (open and urban) - 2.50 months
US attrition, Iraq attrition, open terrain - 10.63 months
US attrition, Iraq attrition, mixed terrain - 12.27 months
Actual length of war - 0.9 months. The first possible outcome was likely the correct one.

The current war in Iraq involves the US using an attrition strategy, and the AIF a punishment strategy, in mixed terrain. Expected duration of war: 83 months. That's why we're still in Iraq.

more random stuff:

Hitler's ideals of a unified German people goes back to nearly 1800, and more or less climaxed with the seven weeks war and the following war with france, all before 1900. Hitler's stance was little more than an expansion upon this heavily founded belief of having all German people under a single German flag.

As for WMD's, Iran is quite a stable, and democratic country. It has one of the largest militaries in a world. The religious council (forgot its actual name) that can basically trump anything the government tries to do is kind of scary. So in all actuality, the US is playing politics, and little more. The US is also responsible for the current regime in Iran as well.

I skimmed alot of your posts, some random lines for you all to think about:

Treason is a relative thing;
democrats and republicans all but changed sides 45 years ago so bashing on democrats for something done in the 1860s is irrelevant to contemporary politics;
there are no wmd's in iraq, chuck norris lives in texas;
look up the rally-round-the-flag effect, and try comparing it to Bush's political agenda and the republican party's support of that agenda;
war tends to inflate national expenditure, but it never comes down.

Now only if there wasn't so much downtime while playing Eve. I could finish a novel in the time it takes me to rebuild my ship from choosing the wrong agent mission.