User comment history
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| News Comments > Sunday Legal Briefs |
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| 2. |
Re: Sunday Legal Briefs |
Oct 24, 2010, 23:11 |
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They'd probably collect the tax if there were profits to be made doing it. But it's all cost and red tape, and any mistake will end up being scrutinized and such. If they said "Collect our sales tax, and send us 75% of it." they'd probably get people to play ball. Except the B&Ms then would want the same deal.
Sales tax is a little iffy anyway. Lots of people use non-profits to get around sales tax, and it may even be illegal but it's not like they are busting down doors to figure out if they are actually complying with non-profit status.
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| News Comments > It Came from BlizzCon 2010, Part 2 |
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| 12. |
Re: It Came from BlizzCon 2010, Part 2 |
Oct 24, 2010, 23:04 |
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When they finally get done releasing all the SC2 packs, will there be a GOTD (Game of the Decade) version that includes all 3 packs, patches, and additions about 8 years from now?
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| News Comments > TRIBES Acquired, Tribes Universe Announced |
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Re: TRIBES Acquired, Tribes Universe Announced |
Oct 24, 2010, 23:00 |
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Sounds like a bad idea to pull high level players from your existing game unless you want your next game to be like the first.
Of course people who play GA enough to hit 50 and such are going to want another game like GA with a few additions/fixes.
I hope they get people who didn't like GA but liked the idea of GA to sign up and influence the making of the game, otherwise they'll never learn there's another side to the coin.
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| News Comments > Pitchford: DNF Cost Broussard $20-30M |
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Re: Pitchford: DNF Cost Broussard $20-30M |
Oct 7, 2010, 16:53 |
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Guy writing the wheel of time series is Brandon Sanderson. He has a 3 book series of books under the name Mistborn...I thought they were an interesting twist on typical fantasy books. Haven't looked into the wheel of time books, after awhile I got tired of trying to read my way through the dull parts...because they started becoming the majority of the books.
Another thing I've noticed in long term series writers recently is that their books are becoming shorter and shorter. Series that used to have 400-500 pages per book early on..and are now on their 15th or so book are now only 150-200 pages. Laurel K Hamilton basically butchered her own Anita Blake series around book 10. I am not sure if it's the authors or the publishers causing this, but I know I'd probably butcher a series too if I was forced to keep writing when I thought it was over 5 books ago. If the story is over in your mind, finish it and don't let them keep dragging it on.
Terry Brooks had a decent idea with the Shannara series books, he'd skip around in time and write instead of trying to keep a linear story each and every book that got out of hand like the Wheel of time.
George RR Martin has his sights on a TV show based on the Fire and Ice books. I was upset with his last published book in the series and I will read the next if it ever comes out probably. Although if it's as sketchy as the last I doubt I'll read any further.
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| News Comments > Morning Safety Dance |
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| 12. |
Re: Morning Safety Dance |
Sep 29, 2010, 17:34 |
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You go anywhere with teens and young 20 somethings and you'll see people who are on their phones talking or texting constantly. Even while out with friends, I saw a group of 4 girls I could have sworn were talking to each other on the phone while they walked around in a group less than 3 feet from each other.
Doctors office, post office, ATMs, drive thru as a fast food joint, standing in line for tickets/food orders.....there's more and more assholes who can't put the phone down to communicate/focus on what they are trying to do.
You see how badly those go while they aren't traveling at 20+ mph with the stereo blasting, GPS talking to them and whatever else their car might have.
It's creating a growing group of people whose time/convenience is more important than yours, and rarely do I see a business/employee enforce a posted no cell phone policy. And here I am feeling bad when I forget to turn my phone or the ringer off when I am somewhere people might find the ringing annoying.....and I rarely get calls on it because I really don't want people feeling like they should call me at any time for any reason.
But nothing pisses me off quite so bad as to see an erratic driver who has their head cocked to the side or one of their hands held up to the side of their head so they can talk on the phone while they nearly kill me. You'll see some of them drive with two hands but keep super low in the car so they can rest themselves against the door and hold the phone up with their shoulder, so low I would be shocked to find they could see over the dash to see a small child or dog in front of their vehicles.
Should be a 3 strikes law when it comes to cell phones and driving, if you were on your phone when the crash happened and you were at fault you get a strike and lose your license for a bit, extending it with second strike and third puts you away for a few months to ween you of your cellphone addiction and suspends your license for quite awhile afterwards. That way people who CAN successfully navigate traffic while on the phone can continue to do so, and those who can't will suffer. It's even less complicated than drunk driving, don't pick up the fucking cell phone if you don't want to suffer the potential consequences.
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| News Comments > StarCraft II Reporting |
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| 2. |
Re: StarCraft II Reporting |
Sep 29, 2010, 17:05 |
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And in only a few short months they will take care of the spammers, cheaters and hackers in one big wave. And a week later their box sales will skyrocket for a bit.
It's in their best interest to ban people, but not to keep them off their services permanently...although you know they could easily do so.
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| News Comments > PC Super Street Fighter IV in Doubt Due to Piracy |
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| 49. |
Re: PC Super Street Fighter IV in Doubt Due to Piracy |
Sep 22, 2010, 02:03 |
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I got to wondering if they count console piracy as PC piracy because I haven't seen any xbox or PS3 that run torrent clients. And then you unpack (if needed) and burn the media to play it on your console. Do they count that in their PC piracy figures even though technically it's done for the ability to play it on a console?
Either way, I kind of feel like the piracy campaign took some notes from the War on Terror campaign. Keep people a little concerned/scared, keep bringing it up every few days so it's always there to be seen and easier to believe since it's all over the place. Make you start wondering "Is my friend/neighbor/relative a pirate?", he's the reason I can't play my games when my internet connection is down! Substitute in terrorist for pirate and apply it to airport security/whatever. Now to figure out what they are gaining from preaching it constantly.
I mean seriously, if piracy is so bad that you have to bring it up every day by some company in the industry.... why do they even consider the PC platform anymore? Isn't a lost cause? Just say "We only develop for the console." and leave it at that. But they don't do that...because a lot of companies make money on the PC market despite piracy. And the other scapegoat they've been harping about too is used game sales. If they can't claim used game sales as profit losses, they can always fall back on piracy. Feel bad for them, everyone is out to get them including their customers.
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| News Comments > Morning Legal Briefs |
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| 4. |
Re: Morning Legal Briefs |
Sep 16, 2010, 15:48 |
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The more I hear about piracy, the more I think it's a lot of propaganda being spread by these developers, publishers and businesses who have dealings with them such as the BSA to get laws passed especially for them.
I mean it's almost constant noise at this point with nearly no hard facts or information on how they get these numbers. And in the article they claim China generated 200k+ jobs due to reduced piracy, but there's no information on how...just that it matches their formula. But how are they distinguishing between market growth and growth caused by reduced piracy?
They should put effort into closing down operations that profit off using illegal licenses or selling pirated software, but all the non-money generating things floating around seem to be what they use as their figures. I just can't make the connection in my head how the non-money generating stuff is going to create jobs, if there was no money involved before how are they going to suddenly create active consumers that generate these jobs?
If they ever were able to 100% prevent piracy, would DRM makers be out of business? Would game and software devs start spending their efforts on making the best product they could for the lowest price? Somehow I doubt it'll create an environment that's better for the consumer no matter how many jobs they create.
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| News Comments > David Allen Speaks |
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| 49. |
Re: David Allen Speaks |
Sep 7, 2010, 18:07 |
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I just have to make the comment that admitting faults or mistakes while in the middle of a lawsuit is not the best strategy to take. It never fails that the other side will take them and twist them into more than you meant, implying intent to do those things from the beginning.
Saw this first hand with a family inheritance issue related to the care and financial management of my grandmother. Estranged aunt comes into the picture and suddenly not being able to produce expense sheets like you're a financial planner implies you added onto your house at your own expense just so you could steal money.
Spouting off is not the right thing to do either. You just don't offer up information unless required to, because then the info you do offer up becomes super-scrutinized and when it comes back harmless they wonder what you were trying to hide by wasting their time on that. Get the best lawyer you can find in your price range, hopefully one who can manage expenses well. Then keep your mouth shut and only discuss the case with people who have as much to lose as you, your lawyer, and very trusted friends and close family. Don't even mention you're involved in a lawsuit if possible, otherwise the gossips in contact with both sides start stirring the pot. There are a number of relatives my parents don't speak to anymore after this case because it seemed that some were actively encouraging them to do questionable things prior to my grandmothers death and suddenly knew information that only the aunt would know or care about....even though they claimed to be on my parents side of it all.
It's a horrible way to live for a time, but it's better than jeopardizing your future over misinterpreted or poorly chosen words.
bobbyric wrote on Sep 7, 2010, 16:27:
while I don't 100% agree with the ridiculous personality disorders, i've been in business long enough to know when a producer/financier is going to turn to the guy who tells them "I can get your product finished and get it done NOW" opposed to the other guy who's been burning a hole in your wallet. You can sit around sharpening your spear all you want, but eventually you have to go hunting.
While I've been frequenting Blues News long enough to know Smart has a narcisstic personality, Allen obviously has other issues, especially about not fessing up to his mistakes. Never once in his blog did he say "I really should have done this ___ or worked harder to do this ___" he days say "I learned that ___" but obviously he made grievous mistakes along the way. When he started to write in his blog "We did not have enough money for marketing"... seriously? Since when did MMO's really need money for marketing? WoW didn't even get it's first TV commercials until AFTER it had hit mainstream big time. |
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| News Comments > Stargate Games Lawsuit |
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| 16. |
Re: Stargate Games Lawsuit |
Aug 27, 2010, 04:13 |
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Yeah I see what I did, got to thinking millions and screwed up my argument. But the point still stands, it's not as pronounced but if the assets were really worth the 10+ million they claim... assuming the transaction was handled solely by the conspiring parties which is hard to imagine and then went through with no one noticing it. I would think the court would freeze them.
10 million in damages is now only fair if they can prove that the assets are worth what they claim. And they can only prove that if they can find someone who would pay that for them.
However now I can see why they went bankrupt if they "raised and expended tens of millions of dollars in connection with the development of Stargate Resistance and Stargate Worlds."
But yep, I screwed up on the numbers and still may have screwed up on them given that Im tired. Values still seem awfully blatant fraud, so much so that it seems like there's a bit of seller's/investors remorse going on with hopes that the courts will help them increase the payout purse. I mean maybe they did do it, or maybe they were the only ones willing to pay at least 100k for it at the time. Still seems like there's plenty of bullshit in the little info released.
I'll refrain from math in the future.
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| News Comments > Stargate Games Lawsuit |
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| 13. |
Re: Stargate Games Lawsuit |
Aug 26, 2010, 23:40 |
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If this company sold assets for 100k and that was less than 1% of it's value....they are trying to say that the original company was worth more than 100x that. So the company that filed for bankruptcy was worth over 100 million dollars.
And they only want 10 million dollars in damages for being scammed out of 99.9M dollars?
I agree they should never be able to sell assets to themselves without scrutiny, but something here doesn't sound right in either instance.
If that company was worth over 100mil, why was it going bankrupt? Sounds like horrible speculation to me. If you had that much realistically in assets, you could afford to sell off some of it to keep the company floating to cash in on the works in progress. If it's "theoretical maybe coulda made after all this extra work" then it's worth whatever someone will pay. If someone else would pay more than 100k for it and they never took the time to shop around, then I see a reason for the lawsuit in that.
100m in property for 100k should have been an immediate action from the courts to freeze accounts and transactions until it was straightened out. The fact that it took place and no one really noticed until afterwards says that the 100m claim is complete bullshit.
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| News Comments > StarCraft II Free Name Change Coming |
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| 10. |
Re: StarCraft II Free Name Change Coming |
Aug 17, 2010, 02:57 |
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The thing that pisses me off about their services on WoW is that they pretty much charge 25 bucks for every single thing they provide...
Paid name changes at first they put delays on it of 6 months, then 1 month, now it's 3 days. Hell it probably takes 3 days for it to fully propagate through their system. So it's obviously become automated, so unless something goes very wrong..no one is going to look at this transaction and they pocket 10 bucks.
Then server transfers, 25 bucks again, but you know this is technically more difficult and could just as easily offer a name change in the process and maybe sometimes have to.
Faction Change is 30....includes name change...
What got me about the way they set it up is they never seemed to consider that people might not want to spend 200 bucks to move all of their characters on a server from one to another so they keep their group of characters together. Or that some people have personal guild banks (I kept low level alts in a personal guild so it's easy to exchange things between them) and might want to move the whole operation for a fee.
I had a friend who talked me into playing on a PVP server....it was OK at first but the constantly ganking just wore me out. I wanted to move my whole setup to another server until I realized I'd have to do each character individually, spread my money out to make sure it didn't get capped off, hope the server didn't reject any moves when I started the process leaving me with half and half, and leave my guild bank behind or try to sell it before I left...and for all my trouble if I wanted to move all my characters it'd be 200 dollars.
If their system made sense, cool. But if they are going to offer you 8 slots to play on a server and pretend like you wouldn't possibly ever want to keep them together....I don't see the purpose. I can see not letting huge guilds server hop for a 50-100 dollar fee, but they were letting entire guilds leave the server during free transfers...so the capability existed to move all chars and banks associated with a guild.
I don't see how this can possibly be something people in SC2 would care enough about. It's not as if they are stuck playing on the same map with the same 100 or so people who constantly grief them and a name change will magically make that disappear. The only possibility is they plan on going crazy with SC2 in the future game releases and adding things that might make paid services more viable....can't imagine it'd be good for gamers as it'd require them removing and restricting things that otherwise would normally be there.
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| News Comments > Bill Roper Leaves Cryptic |
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| 13. |
Re: Bill Roper Leaves Cryptic |
Aug 17, 2010, 02:30 |
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My vote is that he probably saw the writing on the wall and instead of having a fired on his record, he's doing the old spin and turning it into his decision.
Dude probably doesn't have the ability to give an honest answer with all the double speak that occurs in the announcements regarding jobs in general and it being ten times worse in entertainment venues.
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| News Comments > Global Agenda Interview |
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Re: Global Agenda Interview |
Aug 7, 2010, 14:51 |
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Yeah I don't trust any comments unless they can provide some numbers that back up their claims. Growing could refer to their patches instead of number of players. Thriving could mean, they have servers online still.
It's a game that needs a lot of people to play, otherwise the whole point of having central servers is lost.
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| News Comments > Out of the Blue |
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| 53. |
Re: Out of the Blue |
Aug 1, 2010, 21:25 |
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I've been telling people who are willing to listen about deaths in my family related to smoking.....it's one of my biggest fears to suffer from lack of breath whether it be through drowning or other means. I don't smoke, but I was diagnosed with asthma in the 5th grade and I always wondered if it was related to being left with my grandparents who smoked....virtually an unknowable thing...but neither of my siblings have lung problems and neither of them were exposed to smoking via the grandparents to the degree I was due to one dieing from it and the other quitting because of that.
Grandfather (mom's side) worked in asphalt of most his life (asphalter's lung is something they can develop from it) he also smoked a lot. He died in his early 60s after having a long fight with emphasema and other issues....died on my 5th or 6th birthday (can't remember exactly). Grandmother quit smoking because of illness and issues with breathing and she lived to be nearly 90, although they detected some spots that they believed to be lung cancer in the year prior to her death.
Grandfather and grandmother (dad's side) grandfather worked in asphalt some, grandmother I am unsure of if she had any jobs that had potential chemical exposure. Grandfather ultimately died of a burst valve/artery near his heart that was inoperable because his lungs were so weak from smoking. Grandmother was on oxygen for years prior to having a stroke....I can't say for certain that the smoking led to this or not but she was pretty much confined to her house due to her lung issues and not being able to walk longer distances because of it. Both died in their early to mid 60s I believe. It was horrible visiting when they smoked, couldn't stand to be around them. And I never really knew them very well because of this.
Im sorry your father died, but I hope his story and my grandparents stories help someone out there decide to quit. |
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| News Comments > StarCraft II Patched |
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| 6. |
Re: StarCraft II Patched |
Jul 30, 2010, 23:12 |
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Read elsewhere that SC2 is having issues with the menu systems causing video cards to overheat because it's not limiting the rendering of the menus....something like that. So they have some command line stuff they want you to stick in a config file to stop this from happening...Im guessing if it can fry a card it can cause a system to blue screen as well. Saw pictures of a guys video card with scorch marks on it from playing SC2.
Awesome.
Editing: Read further down on blues and saw that it's covered here with lots of comments....so Im guessing it's been seen by those posting here but just in case. It is burning people's video cards up.
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| News Comments > Legal Briefs |
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Re: Legal Briefs |
Jul 28, 2010, 17:10 |
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I am still pissed about the guy who called my cell phone repeatedly and finally when I answered it sometime the second day of him calling...thinking it was someone mistakenly calling the wrong number. He's trying to sell me something, I ask him if he realizes it's a cell phone number? Yes. Do you realize it costs money to receive your calls? Yes. Then why the fuck are you calling me? No answer. Stop calling me and take me off your fucking list. Yes sir.
And the whole conversation takes place with him in a mocking tone like he doesn't know what he's doing is just flat out wrong if it isn't completely against the law (although I think it is at some stage of them calling, but there should be no grey area for these assholes).
The DNC list is a pain in the ass because it may "kind of" prevent some people from calling you, it also advertises your number to all the non-profits and campaign BS. And the amount of effort it takes to report someone whose blatantly violating it is useless. I have to question the guy, tell the guy not to call, wait for the guy to call back, log all this BS and hope they call from the same number.
And then we have the scammers masquerading as telemarketers lighting up the phone lines. I had someone who called saying there was a problem with my bank account at .....uh 5/3 or somewhere. I didn't have an account there, but someone else in the family did so thought perhaps it was them. They contacted bank direct, no issues. People called back again, someone answered and they asked for me by name. I let them give me all the info and said non-agreeing comments that would keep them going but not shut them down. They had my name wrong for one, I didn't bank there, and then they started talking about what they could do to help me or whatever. I tell em first they got the wrong name, and they wanted me to elaborate and give them my full name....hah. So I talked over them at this point when they kept asking, told them that second I don't have an account at that bank...and they started questioning that. Finally tell em if they are going to try to scam people they should at least try to get some reliable information and put someone on the phone who isn't a total fucking idiot. Impossible to report those twits too because it's probably a bogus company name and the caller ID info is also probably bogus.
Firing squad for all cold call telemarketing, death by waterboarding for scammers, and death by horse rape for market research who call you up to give you "free" home alarm systems if you sign this contract and pay this overpriced monthly fee.
The new thing in the neighborhood now is having people doing door to door, but ringing your doorbell for like 5 minutes, waiting outside for 10-15 minutes and offering to come back at a later date if you don't make it clear that you don't want to see their ass again. It's pretty bad when you gotta consider putting no trespassing signs up because these assholes practically demand you answer your door no matter what the hell you may be doing. They can't understand that you might be in the house sleeping when they come a knocking and don't want to go to the door to tell them to fuck off. Used to have a no solicitation sign up on the front of the house, I don't know if one of those peckers took it or if it blew off...but 5 minutes of ringing door bells...my house better be burning down.
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| News Comments > StarCraft II Budget Oopsie, Preorders Soar |
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Re: StarCraft II Budget Oopsie, Preorders Soar |
Jul 23, 2010, 20:16 |
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WoW cost of development had to be pretty large just because they spent over a year beta testing the game, and probably longer than that on smaller tests. But the stage WoW was at for a year prior to it's launch was pretty close to the release quality of most MMOs in the past but they kept modifying it to make it more appealing (elites to dungeons, talent trees/rebalancing trees, whatever else). Most games at that point in the game say screw it after a month of testing and release whether the features are in or not. So they spent over a year just addressing and adding things to make it more diverse.
It wasn't a perfect game by any stretch, but the time they spent modifying things and re-testing is something the rest of MMO companies don't do when the game was in the shape it was in. They would dump it on the market and depending on how well it sold they'd deliver features they promised on the box.
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| News Comments > SOE Layoffs |
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| 14. |
Re: SOE Layoffs |
Jul 16, 2010, 11:03 |
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It's not so much the percentage or the overall number, it's the claim they are making of what those cuts will enable. Unless it's project managers or higher ups in the company controlling the decisions made toward the games.....I laugh and expect mockery.
This is the company that bought Matrix Online.....
This is the company that is known for what not to do to an MMO via SWG....
Same company that didn't support Planetside and has not made a game to pickup the players who desire for a newer Planetside style game.
Vanguard......I have no idea what they ended up doing to it, but it never recovered from the initial year of failure that followed it's release (which by all accounts was a release or die situation). And they still haven't found a way to bring players back to it after all that time.
I don't know if they kept up their voice over work in EQ2 or not.
But I do know their trials for EQ and Vanguard are some little hole of a zone you play in and never experience the "real" world without buying in. I view it as a shady practice to hide the realities of the real game via trials.
Everquest game franchise is probably the one true success they have had....and they even botched that with EQ2 being so different than EQ1 when it was released.
It's like they lucked out with Everquest, learned nothing from it but how to charge for content packs way too often and drive people away with the sheer number of them they have to buy. Then decided to make more games, but actively sought ways to fuck them up whether by lack of support...stupid expansions or completely changing the gameplay in unnecessary ways just because they could.
Oh they did add the /pizza command to MMOs, revolutionary.
And the ability to spend real money on in-game items on top of subscription fees they garner.... which if you ask me is their real passion. Finding ways to monetize more in-game activities, and the expansions are just a necessary evil to keep people subbing.
SOE is where MMOs go to die.
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| News Comments > SOE Layoffs |
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Re: SOE Layoffs |
Jul 15, 2010, 21:57 |
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They will be able to reach a wider and more diverse audience with a smaller and less diverse workforce. Makes sense.........................or not.
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440 Comments. 22 pages. Viewing page 18.
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