It's the same old white guy falls in with non-white people, learns that non-white people are people too, then teams up with non-white people against evil white people... see: Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, District 9.

That said, it looks like even if this movie suck, it will be beutiful enough just to stare at for 2 hours.

Originally posted by EvolvedMonky

OP:  have you ever heard of the term "sheep"? Not the animal but what it means when applied to humans.

"BAH BAH BAH its popular so it has to be the best"  says the lil sheep.

 

EvolvedMonky: Have you heard the term "troll"? Not the animal but what it means when applied to humans.

"WAH WAH WAH its popular so I must be cool if I trash it" says the lil troll.

Originally posted by Caleveira

Do you think people in college faculties take seriously anyone who reads best selling books?

 

Um... yes? Why Wouldn't they? You mean people that ONLY read best selling books? Well then no, of course not... but that's not a reasonable assumption is it?

The assumption that somone who read Plato couldn't possibly enjoy Harry Potter. Or that someone who eats steak a Ruth's Chris couldn't enjoy a Big Mac. Or somone who buys Dickies Work pants at Wal-Mart doesn't appriciate the wine selection at Trader Joes. Or that somone who enjoys Linkin Park never listened to Tiamat.

The clearly ridiculous assumption that all of these Spice Girls/McDonalds are base on...

Originally posted by Ruyn

Originally posted by NotNiceDino

Originally posted by Ruyn

WoW is cheap.  Cheap thrills, cheap spills.  Everyone is a winner.  A place to goto for a quick fix.  Therefore the analogy is valid and your argument null.

Are you really that stupid? Cheap, as in literally costs less money. As in a McDonalds extra value meal cost $5-10 and that's why they're popular. WoW, regardless of what anyone thinks of the game itself, is at the high end of the cost scale, therefore it can not be said that WoW is popular like McDonalds is popular. My arguement isn't just vaild, it's mathmatically irrefutable, which makes you about the worst troll ever. And that's saying something.

 

You misunderstand the analogy.  The fastfood analogy is not meaning cheap as in monetary value but from a quality standpoint.  The better analogy would be Wal-Mart.  A lot of people shop at Wal-Mart because it the price is right and it CATERS TO EVERYBODY, except of course the people who look for a quality product or quality service.  WoW is the Wal-Mart of MMO's.

Ok, so what's wrong with Wal-Mart? I shop there. Sure, I prefer more specilized store for certain things... for example, I refuse to buy meat and produce there, but for the prepackaged stuff the price is better. Sure there's a local grocery store which I like a lot, the have good meats, local vegatables, and the local milk in glass bottles I really like... but the Campbells Soup and Quaker Oatmeal Sqaures are cheaper at Wal-Mart, and while I'm there I can buy new pair of the Dickie's Rip-Stop pants I like to wear to work, see if they have any good deals on DVDs and buy a toy for me kid.

Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by NotNiceDino

Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Caleveira

And junk food outsells healthier choices, come on! WOW advertises in the mainstream media. You mean to tell me MMOs offer the public more variety than the music industry? Or maybe you think Tom Clancy is a better writer than Wislawa Szymborska? How bout Michael Bay vs Gus Van Sant? Yours is nothing but a fanboys argument.

1. The junk food analogy is utterly flawed. Most analogies are.

2. WoW was a runaway success before ever advertising in the mainstream media.

3. Labelling me a fanboy because I disagree with your opinion makes you a troll.

 

1. No its not. Analogy is considered legitimate discourse, and i havent seen the issue settled in any of the threads discussing it. Ive previously explained why i consider this a good analogy and have yet to see my arguments challenged.

2. You brought up the current figure not the one at launch. By your rationale WOWs ad campaign would be a waste of resources for Blizzard if it didnt impact sub numbers. Yea, im sure multimillion dollar ad campaigns are run by incompetents.

3. I labeled your argument not you. Its your post that made things personal, fanboy.

And for someone who seems to find most analogies flawed you neither addressed the music industry (which kind of was the OPs point) nor the literature and cinema examples i added.

 

Junk food is popular because it is cheap and convinient. WoW is neither cheap nor convinient, and therefore is not popular for the same reason junkfood is.

You failed anology is not legitimate discourse, it's appeal to ridicule, your insulting another person by implying that he lacks taste and sofistication. Nothing more.

WOW may not be cheaper than other games but is more accesible (better known to people outside of gaming circles) and it is convenient in the sense that not only are barriers to entry low but its difficulty level is unchallenging.
 

Yes, the analogy is meant to imply lack of taste and sofistication on WOWs subscribers but it isnt meant as insult but as statement. Your reading more into it obviously shows where you stand on this issue, wanna flame?

What? "isn't meant as insult but as statement." Are you you serious? That's just like saying, "That's not a threat it's a promise!"

Implying a lack of taste and sofistication is by definition insult. As is, "Your reading more into it obviosuly show where you stand on this issue (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) wanna flame?"

And what exactly are "people outside of gaming circles" anyway? This is something I never got about wannabe elite crowd on this board. I've been playing MMOs continuously since UO. Largely with the same group of people. I've played everything that isn't F2P because I wasn't born yesterday, and nothing is Free. Hell to this day except for when I'm hardcore into something ineither game, I've got EvE and WoW open at the same time and tab back and forth. So tell me smart guy, where exactly is that you think I stand?

Originally posted by Ruyn

WoW is cheap.  Cheap thrills, cheap spills.  Everyone is a winner.  A place to goto for a quick fix.  Therefore the analogy is valid and your argument null.

Are you really that stupid? Cheap, as in literally costs less money. As in a McDonalds extra value meal cost $5-10 and that's why they're popular. WoW, regardless of what anyone thinks of the game itself, is at the high end of the cost scale, therefore it can not be said that WoW is popular like McDonalds is popular. My arguement isn't just vaild, it's mathmatically irrefutable, which makes you about the worst troll ever. And that's saying something.

Originally posted by Caleveira

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Caleveira

And junk food outsells healthier choices, come on! WOW advertises in the mainstream media. You mean to tell me MMOs offer the public more variety than the music industry? Or maybe you think Tom Clancy is a better writer than Wislawa Szymborska? How bout Michael Bay vs Gus Van Sant? Yours is nothing but a fanboys argument.

1. The junk food analogy is utterly flawed. Most analogies are.

2. WoW was a runaway success before ever advertising in the mainstream media.

3. Labelling me a fanboy because I disagree with your opinion makes you a troll.

 

1. No its not. Analogy is considered legitimate discourse, and i havent seen the issue settled in any of the threads discussing it. Ive previously explained why i consider this a good analogy and have yet to see my arguments challenged.

2. You brought up the current figure not the one at launch. By your rationale WOWs ad campaign would be a waste of resources for Blizzard if it didnt impact sub numbers. Yea, im sure multimillion dollar ad campaigns are run by incompetents.

3. I labeled your argument not you. Its your post that made things personal, fanboy.

And for someone who seems to find most analogies flawed you neither addressed the music industry (which kind of was the OPs point) nor the literature and cinema examples i added.

Junk food is popular because it is cheap and convinient. WoW is neither cheap nor convinient, and therefore is not popular for the same reason junkfood is.

You failed anology is not legitimate discourse, it's appeal to ridicule, your insulting another person by implying that he lacks taste and sofistication. Nothing more.

Originally posted by hogscraper

To all the people who argue which game is greatest, it seems like people's first response is to say my game is the greatest because we have x number of subs. For now and forever, please realize that to make the claim that numbers of people who like your game make it great is the same argument that these bands are the greatest bands of all time. 

The best-selling album of 1997 was Spice, by Spice Girls

The best-selling album of 1998 was Titanic Soundtrack

The best selling album of 1999 was Millennium, by Backstreet Boys 

The best-selling album of 2000 was No Strings Attached, by *NSYNC

The best-selling album of 2005 was The Emancipation of Mimi, by Mariah Carey

The best-selling album of 2006 was High School Musical Soundtrack

The Backstreet Boys album above is also the 9th highest grossing album of all times in world sales.  To all the people who think that simply being the lowest common denominator somehow makes your game/music/whatever the best, it simply means that in reality, its simply average. And in being AVERAGE it appeals to the most people. It also means that the only thing that will ever top it is a game that's even more watered down and average. 

Yes... and noone who bought any of those would admit today that they did,  and noone would buy them today... unlike say WoW, which relies on the fact that A: People are still buying iy, and B: Those people like it enough that they keep paying subscription fees.

Anology Fail. Care to give MCDonalds a try?

I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!

Originally posted by Visc

Originally posted by bloodaxes

Originally posted by Visc

If an RMT can't sell his/her ingame cash to one of the companies that buys/sells the cash. And that company can't have a player on each server that transfers the ingame cash for real cash to the players too lazy to farm then that DOES end all RMT in that game. Money in the game can still exist and be used for what is needed. It is just that simple.

 

Here's an easy replacement on money trading:

Player X puts 1 item on AH for 10kk

Bot Y buys that item

Player X got the money he bought.

That's easy to fix.... end the auction house system and while your at it the mail system for things other than text based messsages. Once again it doesn't take much to figure it out. Auction house systems are not required and encourage RMT. NPC's can sell everything and what they don't you need to craft. The game company wins because players will have to play the game, not just level. Gather, craft and see/ use the world which the devs designed.
 

Simply put your solution is to remove all player influence from economy. You can only get money from the non-player characters and activieties and you can only spend money on non-player characters and activities. Player driven economy is one of the KEY things MMO players DEMAND in mmorpgs, one even that many playerw feel games like WoW don't accomodate enough.

Removing player driven economics is a garaunteed way to fail. The only possible solution is aggressive tracking and enforcement, video games are nothing but number crunching. It's entirely possible to set up a system to red-flag large money and item transfer and then invisably audit and moniter those players until there give themselves away as RMTers and then ban them. Both of them.

The problem of course is you have to staff a team to investigate red flags and then track player until they give themselves away beyond a doubt that they are trading against the TOS. The thing is that if a game does this up front, they quickly establish that RMT is too high-risk and the market evaporates, because only that will truly combat RMT.

Originally posted by severity3

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Whatever the concept of this MMO, the people funding it did not have much confidence in it.  Probably not much of a loss.

 

this

Right on. Yet another doomed to failure half-assed project that may have been a brilliant idea but never had the funding to make it happen. At least this one had the decency to die before the hype started.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by heremypet 

 In EQ you had to first of all be talking to a nondescript NPC and even then all you may get it a [topic[, and even then you had to read what he said before you saw it, then after asking about the topic, you had to figure out the keywords just get info on the quest, which was usually pretty general like, "a rogue in southern mountains of rathe, which damn, meant you actually had to use your eyes more than to simply line up a yellow arrow to the top of your compass.  And that's just to find the rogue, maybe you have to hail him, maybe you have to kill him, maybe you have to say something in particular. 

That sound like a fairly poorly designed quest to me (unless it is meant to be one of those 'obscure mysteries' quests).  If an NPC wants you do do something, he better give me all the info he has without me having to play 20 questions.

 

 

No, that was questing in traditional single and multiplayer games back in the 90s and early 2000s'.  NPC's would provide clues, but players would have to interact with NPC's and try to say the correct keywords to extract the information need to complete the quest. 

It was a different design that did not appeal to the mass market, hence it was changed to what we have today, mindless quests that no one bothers to even read, much less interact with an NPC.

Its a shame the adventure game genre died, so many people don't know how to play games like them anymore.

 

 

Um yeah. No. The adventue game genre will always be my hands down favorite, and Quest For Glory will always be my favorite franchise. Ever. Period.

Kings Quest not far behind...

I run Windows 3.1 in Dosbox in Vista64 just so I can play the Windows version of Kings Quest VI CD which has extra features which rely on an ancient video codec. I use my original CD which I got at a discount because you could buy an "upgrade" if you owned a previous Kings Quest game... Kings Quest IV having been my favorite one of my games for many years (so yeah, I know the old school parser system also... Quest for Glory II FTW).

So yeah... Adventure Games are my true first love...

And I F'IN HATED THE S&^T OUT OF TRYING TO NAVIGATE EQ'S QUEST SYSTEM!!!!

Seriously. I never bothered with it. It was easier and funner to sit in the would and grind monsters.

Originally posted by Dubhlaith

This was fun. Thank you for the laugh.

I chose Science Fantasy! The best of both worlds, no?

Oh... so now your going to bring SWG into this? Hey, screw you buddy.

The problem here is that Azeroth has magic. The problem with magic is that it tends to do exactly what the plot needs it to do, even if it was specific mentioned that whatever it is the magic is doing specifically can't be done (esspecially in Harry Potter). Thus it's entirely possible to say that the scroll of all spaceships turn into pink bunny factories and explode drops from some boss in some dungeon. Problem solved. Science Fiction on the other hand has to remain bound to it's own fictional science unless of course that science is time travel which once again can be used to solve any problem even that problem is specifcally cited as unsolvable by time travel. Once again this make Harry Potter notable as one of the few fictions to spackle plot holes using magic AND time travel AT THE SAME TIME, other wise known as Deus-Ex Double Trouble.

Bottum line: in a fight between WoW and EvE... f''in Harry Potter would win in the most dissatisfying way imaginable. And we would all die a little inside.

I'm depressed now, and it's all the OP's fault.

Originally posted by OldBiker

The speculation around the merger of Eve Online developers CCP and Vampire - The Masquerade publisher White Wolf was that CCP was going to do a vampire MMO.  The inclusion of ambulation in Eve was thought to be so they could test out the graphics engine for the upcoming MMO.  Now, a year or two later, ambulation still hasn't made it into Eve and you don't hear anything about a vampire MMO from CCP.

I am all for something other than a Tolkienesque/D&D based MMO.  Been there done that...  well... still doing that. :)

EDIT:  Actually it was nearly three years ago when there was talk about CCP starting a vampire MMO.

"Conceptualization and early development has begun to bring White Wolf's World of Darkness, one of the world's strongest gaming properties, into the online world." -- http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/index.php?articleid=629

So I suppose you'd rather they'd have spent those years pre-maturely running their mouth ala Darkfall? Actually it was Dana Massey who posted an article about making that mistake just recently.

Sure, they are lot's of people waiting around for WoW to be overtaken... and they're all stupid.

Really, how pathetic do you have to be to care? I enjoy my niche games, and don't give a crap that they are niche. I enjoy WoW and don't give a crap that it's popular. My enjoyment is not affected by a games relative popularity to WoW, my enjoyment of WoW isn't even affected by the relative popularity of WoW.

I have nothing to gain or lose by WoW being overtaken. And neither do you.

Originally posted by dhayes68

 

Clearly there is a role for instancing.  A group of people gather to accomplish a specific goal that could take 4 to 8 hours, its merely sanity that provides them an opportunity to do so without being griefed.

HOWEVER to go from that to what AoC and Champions Online did for example, where ever single part of the game is instanced is, imo, completely counter to what MMO's are about.

As usual, with most debates, the answer is moderation. Thoughtful extremely strategic use of instancing greatly enhances play for all. No instancing can be intense but often counter productive, total instancing is just completely pointless in an "MMO".

This is pretty much dead on. Full-instanced games are bullshit. But instances are an effective way of present scripted encounters or activities (ala WoW). Of course this assumes that players WANT scripted content... which obviously player who prefer 100% Sandbox, 100% of the time don't, which is completely valid and completely a matter of taste. What I'm sick to death of is people implying that anything that isn't to their taste is not valid i.e. ""Instanced" gameplay is really offline gameplay" or that anyone with diffrent taste is wrong (WoW Kiddies). I also find it distasteful that MMORPG.com would create a Community Spotlight actually encouraging such drivel. More and more, it seems like the management here is actively trying to encourage the silly flame wars this site has become so notorious for.

As I have said before... No fantasy author ever wrote an epic tale of brave heroes standing around in a cave with a hundred other brave heroes valiently waiting for the dragon someone just killed to reappear so they could take their turn.

That is no more immersive than being loaded into your own copy of a dungeon

Newsflash: MMORPGs are NOT REAL WORLDS. They are computer video games. They are limited by the fact that they are computer video games. WoW is, UO is, EvE is. Period. Nothing on the market right now will ever fool you into not realising your playing a video game, within the ruleset of that video game, unless you are literally mentally handicapped. I can't do whatever I want to do in EvE, I can only do what EvE allows me to do, it's no less true in EvE than it is in WoW, the two just let me do diffrent things.

The fact that you like what EvE let's you do better than what WoW let's you do is no diffrent that te fact that you like Halo and I like Civilization IV. WoW is what it is, and has the ruleset that it does, because that's how the developer decided it was going to work, and obviously they founf a customer base.

Instancing is nothing more than one way of creating an expirience withing and MMORPG, not amount of like or hate validates or invalidates it. It simply is.

Originally posted by Dana

And I'm pretty confident WoD is nowhere near what I outlined in this article.

You are? Why?

The original Vampire the Masquerade lent itself very well to the kind of play your talking about. In fact I always the the Pen and Paper system lent itself better to RP than G. The whole point of the Clans in VTM was that it accomodating all of the Vampire archtypes in a single product. You had the Venture- faggy Anne-Rice types, and the Toreador who are even worse. And then you have the Max Schrek type Nosferatu, the animalisti Gangrel, and the Brujah who like yelling and breaking stuff... and at that's without even making the Sabbat clans playable. My point is within World of Darkness, you can do Twilight (well, except for the Sparkling) and Interview with a Vampire or just as easily 30 Days of Night and From Dusk till Dawn.

WoD is the PERFACT IP for the kind of game your describing, and CCP didn't licence it... they fricken OWN it.

The reason you failed to avoid "CCP is already making World of Darkness" comments is because you simply can't have this conversation without them.

Of frickin course Vampire MMOs are a valid discusssion, but World of Darkness is every bit as important a part of Vampire pop culture as Twilight is and you can't throw out the fact that a popular MMO developer FRICKEN MERGED with the company that created World of Darkness and accept to have a valid conversation about Vampire MMOs.

Oh, and what's with? "(And yes, I do know CCP is doing World of Darkness, but since we have no idea what exactly that game will be like, I'm choosing to ignore it for today!)"

Your actually going to just toss out a key fact that invalidates the discussion in order to make the discussion work?

Seriously WTF?