Op Ed

The Houston Chronicle - Racism in video games? The new norm? Thanks GamePolitics.
One of the games that comes to mind is "Left 4 Dead 2." Though the game isn't out yet, it's already causing an uproar. Set in New Orleans, players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies - with several of them who appear to be African-Americans. When I saw the first trailer for the game, all I could think about was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. Setting the game in a city that was scene of dead, bloated bodies floating by so soon afterward was a bad call, IMHO. The city has had enough to deal with -- Valve, you should have spared them, even if it's just a video game.

Sessler's Soapbox - Indie Games Are Important.
The Sess wanted to explain why he thinks games coming from independent developers are so important for the industry and gamers alike. If you bring more creative voices to the table, everyone else has to match their game and be just as innovative, creative and interesting as the other guy. So press play and find out what Adam has to say on the subject.

IncGamers - WoW is Killing Itself.
Essentially, the problem is that WoW has gone off the track. The game gained popularity because it appealed to normal gamers, willing to devote a few hours a day running dungeons and completing quests in a game they really enjoyed. However, WoW has evolved. The game is now catering to a small minority of so-called 'hardcore' players - according to one developers' research, these make up less than 5% of the overall population. The WoW developers have repeatedly discussed the fact that the hardcore players experience is the best, most challenging content in the game; have more skills than 'casual' players, and therefore receive the best rewards. Even normal, average players now accept these ideas as fact.

IncGamers - WoW Is Not Killing Itself.
In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard really went to town and introduced 10 man raids alongside 25 man ones. When this announcement was made at the WWI in Paris last year the cheer from the crowd was deafening. Bleeding edge guilds certainly weren't happy with losing their exclusive access to the hardest encounters in WoW, but this change meant the majority of level cap players would finally get the chance to see end game content.

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28 Replies. 2 pages. Viewing page 1.
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28.
 
Re: Evening Consolidation
Jul 16, 2009, 18:31
Kxmode
 
28.
Re: Evening Consolidation Jul 16, 2009, 18:31
Jul 16, 2009, 18:31
 Kxmode
 
OMG A black zombie? Wait... were there white zombies? How dare we have a black zombie. Wait if we really do not see color...why do we always separate? If there are white zombies...and black zombies....bingo! Anyone can be a zombie!

Black zombies are a myth.
http://golden-silver.deviantart.com/art/What-I-Learned-from-L4D-105202937

This comment was edited on Jul 16, 2009, 19:01.
"...and in stonks, Fizzy Squeezy Stocklebocks leaped over Droopy Whoopy Bondfluffs, hitting 300-gigglebits to their 150-snorebucks. Meanwhile, in Whimsyland's market, the pancakes reached parity with pogo sticks."
Avatar 18786
27.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 17:57
27.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 17:57
Jul 16, 2009, 17:57
 
When WoW's population gets to under a million we can start talking about if it's coming to an end. I'm sure that's still a few more years yet.

"The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip." - Henny Youngman
26.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 17:00
26.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 17:00
Jul 16, 2009, 17:00
 
Still, all that aside, this was me playing off you telling whathisnuts what to believe. Maybe going a bit too deep in fucking with the original concept of being told what to do.

yeh, its often silly to accept anything on faith alone.. even completely "rational" statements that often obfuscate the deeper issues

but the underlying need to imitate (which also infers a need to be told what to do, or shown what to do) is an indirect cause of the vacuum of experience which is then filled with faith in hearsay, so i gave out the most common pacifier there is
25.
 
Re: Evening Consolidation
Jul 16, 2009, 16:45
25.
Re: Evening Consolidation Jul 16, 2009, 16:45
Jul 16, 2009, 16:45
 
OMG A black zombie? Wait... were there white zombies? How dare we have a black zombie. Wait if we really do not see color...why do we always separate? If there are white zombies...and black zombies....bingo! Anyone can be a zombie!:)
o0
24.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 16:38
24.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 16:38
Jul 16, 2009, 16:38
 
Damn man! Hah hah, wasn't referring to anyone here! Was more for the people on the other forum where the article was hosted. It's like people are so brainwashed by this game that they defend it to the death no matter what. I played for about a year logging in here and there until I realized the game was really just boring and not fun at all. The average single-player rpg is much more fun than WOW but I guess most people don't care about story and immersiveness in an rpg, they just want epic lootz so they can showoff in front of the bank. Ehh, whatever floats their boat...
23.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 16:32
23.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 16:32
Jul 16, 2009, 16:32
 
In the beginning of Christianity? I'm afraid history disagrees as the founders of that religion most probably had a legitimate belief in their organization. As is a prime example in the amount of splinter factions of Christianity and Islam, the real lunatics came out when the issue of interpretation reared its head.

I was spinning off something space captain had said. Just counterpoint rhetoric.

As for religion in general...whatever helps someone sleep at night. If it becomes intrusive, I'll be happy to send them to meet the deity of their choice.
"Just take a look around you, what do you see? Pain, suffering, and misery." -Black Sabbath, Killing Yourself to Live.

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Avatar 21247
22.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 16:30
22.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 16:30
Jul 16, 2009, 16:30
 
disregarding the afterlife version, plenty of psychotics and schizophrenics would probably beg to differ

Yes, but then the question to them would be am I real or just yet another tormenting hallucination?

Still, all that aside, this was me playing off you telling whathisnuts what to believe. Maybe going a bit too deep in fucking with the original concept of being told what to do.

This comment was edited on Jul 16, 2009, 16:30.
"Just take a look around you, what do you see? Pain, suffering, and misery." -Black Sabbath, Killing Yourself to Live.

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Avatar 21247
21.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 16:15
21.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 16:15
Jul 16, 2009, 16:15
 
Hah hah, WOW fanyboys crack me up. Say anything slightly negative about "MY PRESHUSSSS" and their panties get all in a bunch.

You are calling me a WoW fanboy? Because I disagree with the editorial, which editorials are supposed to incite discussion?

I barely play WoW. Haven't logged in in 2 weeks. And when I do I usually only have time to repost Auction House stuff, or do 2 or 3 quests. I would be what you call a "Casual Player". I however used to be a hardcore raider in EQ until the Gates of Discord expansion. The WoW content is very accessible.

So throw your pathetic uninformed insults. Just makes you look like an absolute tool, insulting people for discussing a game on a game forum.

Way to register just to post your insult. I'm sure you are just one of the resident trolls hiding under another account.

20.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 15:54
20.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 15:54
Jul 16, 2009, 15:54
 
disregarding the afterlife version, plenty of psychotics and schizophrenics would probably beg to differ

Heh, the whole phenomenon of "personal hell" apparently doesn't exist either.

They're like racism consultants..

Or psychiatry and the peddlers therein?

Hell was invented by lunatics and propagated by scam artists, err "churches", to pick your pocket clean and enforce their social order.

In the beginning of Christianity? I'm afraid history disagrees as the founders of that religion most probably had a legitimate belief in their organization. As is a prime example in the amount of splinter factions of Christianity and Islam, the real lunatics came out when the issue of interpretation reared its head.
19.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 15:50
19.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 15:50
Jul 16, 2009, 15:50
 
Hah hah, WOW fanyboys crack me up. Say anything slightly negative about "MY PRESHUSSSS" and their panties get all in a bunch. Someday they'll realize their playing the most boring, mind-numbing game on the planet!
18.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 15:39
18.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 15:39
Jul 16, 2009, 15:39
 
A casual player is not going to see the end of Ulduar; they aren't even going to see all of Naxxramas or Malygos unless they have more hardcore people to run them through it.

Nobody is saying they should. But in the past, and with other MMO's high end content only has 1 setting...Raid at X number of players. There was no Normal & Heroic modes. You couldn't do part of the dungeon as a 5 or 10 man group instead of the 25 man, etc, etc. There are also plenty of various ways to get gear that would help those players get geared well enough to eventually go on those raids should they choose to.

The high end raid content and dedication required for that is still there. There is just a much softer curve and defining line for the casual player to get there over a long period of time, or at least to prevent them from being cut off from a huge chunk of that content.

ie: Everquest, Planes of Power, when it was first released, succeeded in royally screwing any form of casual player from accessing 75% or more of the expansion content unless they were in a raiding guild. Hell even many raiding guilds found themselves cut off from the content because there was no such thing as instances and they had to race far more advanced guilds for the same content (due to individual player flags [keys] being required to move forward in the content).

WoW raiders that haven't played older MMO's don't know what hardcore is. 4 hours is hardcore in WoW? Shit, some EQ raid content when it was first released took guilds running 60 to 100 players 8+ hours each. Hell Vex Thall took weeks and weeks of guild raids to get key parts to make the Vex Thall key, then it was a 2 day raid to fight to the end of the dungeon...until they started getting better gear of course.

Long and short is...WoW raid/group content is VERY accessible to casual players.

17.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 15:37
17.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 15:37
Jul 16, 2009, 15:37
 
Lies.

no shit

There is no Hell.

disregarding the afterlife version, plenty of psychotics and schizophrenics would probably beg to differ
16.
 
Re: WoW is Killing Itself
Jul 16, 2009, 15:04
16.
Re: WoW is Killing Itself Jul 16, 2009, 15:04
Jul 16, 2009, 15:04
 
Would be nice if the people writing these OpEds actually knew what they were talking about.

What eunichron said. I was about to post something similar, as Blizzard have really gone beyond expectations to make the high end content accessible to casual players by way of smaller groups and less risk for a lesser reward.

15.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 14:48
15.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 14:48
Jul 16, 2009, 14:48
 
I'd guess you're a hardcore player, right? Because that sort of player is the only sort that seems to believe that just because you can complete a raid dungeon after running it every week for a month or two that it's too easy.
I was. I was "hardcore" until about 2 months ago. The guild I was in was a top 50 US guild to clear Sunwell Plateau, we cleared Naxx less than a week after WotLK's release, we had most of the achievements done (including 3 drake Sartharion) within a month of WotLK's release.

We cleared Ulduar in the first week of 3.1's release (13/14 bosses). Before I quit raiding 2 months ago we had a few hard modes down, but most of them were impossible, or just severely overtuned, at the time.

But I quit for the same reasons you're saying that casual players are becoming disenfranchised with the game. There's nothing to do outside of raiding, and that was Blizzard's design with WotLK. People complained that less than 1% of players ever got to see 40man Kel'thuzad, only 1-2% got to see Kil'jaeden before the big 3.0 nerf. Blizzard changed the game to FORCE players into raiding. They did this by de-emphasizing max level dungeons and heroics, and by making normal raids and 10man raids (not hard modes) easier... so that the casual player can log on for 2 hours and join a Naxx pug. Or the more casual raiding guilds (not individual casual players) aren't smashing their heads against X boss for months on end. They didn't do this just because they want the game to be raiding and only raiding, they did it because that's what the casual players were complaining about in the previous expansion; that they didn't get to see this content before new content was released.

The game -is- more casual friendly because the raids are easier, not just the raids but all of the content, that was the whole point of Wrath's design. Easier content for more players. That's what casual players were asking for. But now it's coming back to bite them in the ass, because even the casual players that only play a few hours every week are running out of things to do in those few hours. While the hardcore raiders are being bored to death by easy raids and hard modes that they can clear in a night or two.

This comment was edited on Jul 16, 2009, 14:50.
Avatar 13977
14.
 
Re: WoW is Killing Itself
Jul 16, 2009, 14:35
14.
Re: WoW is Killing Itself Jul 16, 2009, 14:35
Jul 16, 2009, 14:35
 
The Civil War is still a touchy subject? Maybe if you're a deep south redneck that still believes the Confederacy never lost and the war is still ongoing.

There's more people than you think that are still bitter that the Confederacy lost. To them, the Civil War was all Lincoln's fault.
13.
 
Re: Racism in video games
Jul 16, 2009, 14:29
DG
13.
Re: Racism in video games Jul 16, 2009, 14:29
Jul 16, 2009, 14:29
DG
 
What a terrible article by a complete idiot.

Actually, no. I think he's just trolling for the hits.
Avatar 14793
12.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 13:40
12.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 13:40
Jul 16, 2009, 13:40
 
Would be nice if the people writing these OpEds actually knew what they were talking about. Anyone who has played WotLK knows Blizzard stopped catering to hardcore players a long time ago. In fact one of the primary focuses of WotLK was to cater to the non-hardcore, so that even the casual players that don't have the time to raid 24/7 can experience all of the games content.

Just no.

I'd guess you're a hardcore player, right? Because that sort of player is the only sort that seems to believe that just because you can complete a raid dungeon after running it every week for a month or two that it's too easy. A casual player is not going to see the end of Ulduar; they aren't even going to see all of Naxxramas or Malygos unless they have more hardcore people to run them through it.

Casual players don't schedule out four hour stints to sit and run through an instance. They don't plan their week around playing a video game like you need to in order to be a successful raider, even in the "more casual" Wrath expansion. The game is so raid based that you have to schedule long periods to game, or at the very least a few hours of time on multiple days of the week.

And it's not just raiding, because you need to do that in order to get gear to compete at a level where you'll get decent rewards in the PvP aspects of the game as well.

The game -isn't- more casual friendly just because the raids are easier than they were in previous expansions. There's less to do in Wrath if you're not a raider than there ever has been leading up to this point in WoW, and it's starting to show.
11.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 13:14
11.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 13:14
Jul 16, 2009, 13:14
 
Someone tell me what to believe!

worship jesus or you will be tortured and burned in the fires of hell forever

Lies. There is no Hell. Hell was invented by lunatics and propagated by scam artists, err "churches", to pick your pocket clean and enforce their social order.

"Just take a look around you, what do you see? Pain, suffering, and misery." -Black Sabbath, Killing Yourself to Live.

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Avatar 21247
10.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 13:03
10.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 13:03
Jul 16, 2009, 13:03
 
If it wasn't for the zombie outbreak in Kijiju, we'd have never had Blues music.
Avatar 13955
9.
 
Re: Op Ed
Jul 16, 2009, 12:45
9.
Re: Op Ed Jul 16, 2009, 12:45
Jul 16, 2009, 12:45
 
Someone tell me what to believe!

worship jesus or you will be tortured and burned in the fires of hell forever
28 Replies. 2 pages. Viewing page 1.
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