Ignore Hellbinder.

Every time he cries about "potty mouths" let's just refer to these posts:
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=38027&id=58030&view=threads

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=40772&id=76903&view=threads

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=39820&id=69131&view=threads

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=39378&id=66058&view=threads

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=39378&id=66057&view=threads

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=39370&id=65973&view=threads

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=39324&id=65761&view=threads

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=39649&id=67864&view=threads

Apparently it's okay to swear if you don't type the whole word or replace it with ****! Oh, except that he does on at least one occasion.

Sorry for the redundancy here but: religious hypocrisy at it's finest.

This comment was edited on Mar 1, 2010, 13:54.

Here's a hint to all you people with your next 'hit' IP that want to make an MMO with it: Don't.

Not unless you plan to support it for a minimum of 5 years and take at least as long to develop it.

Companies need to stop treating MMOs like regular games where they can create one for every IP and just flush it out the door without a second thought. MMOs are vastly more expensive to build and maintain and have a much worse success/return ratio than traditional games given the significant up front investment you have to spend on support if you expect it to have any users at all.

Also, tying it in with external properties in parallel is largely bad idea unless you segregate the worlds completely (usually via different timelines or time periods). Star Trek might be able to get away with it but I think that's mostly because everyone takes it with an ocean of salt anyway.

This is almost certainly going to be a big money loser, even if it's a decent game.

Yeah, but it's still PROFIT, not revenue. $3.57 billion in profit is still a lot of money coming in.

The homogenization is absolutely necessary for 10 man raids to be functional. It's the same reason 5 mans will always be very easy, you simply can't count on certain buffs to be there when designing the instance. If you do, it's impossible without it and we revert to "oh, you're XYZ spec/class, you can't come to this instance" which is by far a worse design than buff homogenization and far more frustrating for players simply because it creates a second-class of classes who are denied even the chance at a spot simply because they made the wrong choice 70 levels ago. Without raid-buff homogenization this would still be a problem in 25-mans where you neglect people who don't quite synergize with the rest of the group purely by what class they are and not how well they play that class. Otherwise your guild is not min-maxing to the extent it could and is bringing itself down from the best possible performance. While you could do it with 2 shamans, 2 shadow priests (why does 1 spec of 1 class get more representation? Because it's overpowered) and 2 warlocks, you were vastly rewarded for stacking them all heavily due to the class synergy which is also terrible design unless it is opened up to more than just a couple classes. The warlock/Spriest combo was grossly overpowered and absolutely needed to go in order to create encounters that were fun and achievable even if you didn't have a single one of either of those classes. The same reason potions were changed, the same reasons flasks and elixirs were changed in old Naxx. Was spending 4 hours farming for each hour of raid really an enjoyable investment of time? No, not really.

You say hard modes are a terrible idea, but you give no evidence what-so-ever to support your claim. You just say it like it's a natural law. Why do you claim hard modes suck? Particularly the Ulduar ones. I like Ulduar ones, but I'm not fond of the extreme they've taken in the Coliseum. I felt Ulduar's hard modes (as in, do it normally or do it "XTREME!"(tm) is the difference between HARD and easy, not just merely turning the damage up to 11 across the whole instance) were pretty good and some even creative (Iron Council, Algalon aside from the stupid 1 hour limit).

Attunements were a complete nightmare for any guild that had turn-over or alt-itis. It was unnecessarily arduous, particularly for tanks and healers since they were the ones who ended up having to run them the most; some to the point of quitting. And I can tell you that on servers with lower raiding populations that some guilds simply would not have enough people and would be utterly incapable of recruiting someone they could actually try out because the population did not sustain enough attuned people. So it was either attune them, or short-man the raid.

So now easy bosses after a hard one is a reward boss? But I thought you said that it's welfare epics for people who can't kill Yogg+4? What reason is there to not just make them a challenge in themselves? Why do hardcore raiders need pinatas as a reward if challenge is a reward in itself? Or is it that casual players don't deserve instant gratification but hardcore players do?

I agree the Coliseum design is overkill. I don't like the idea of 4 separate lock-outs, nor do I like Conquest badges dropping in heroics, if only because it nearly forces people to run them all the time, whether they like it or not, because if they don't, they're behind the curve. I think it'll burn a lot of people out to the point that they quit. I think the better you get the less you should be playing, not more. It feels like the 3.2 changes are trying to force people to play more if they want to feel competitive.

PropheT: In 3.2, at least, they added the ability to extend the lock-out timer. Kind of a hack, I guess, but I think that fits what you want re: the 10 man instances.

5-man elitism is silly, I completely agree. Hopefully if you're in a half-decent guild that doesn't happen, but I dislike PuGs for that very reason. It doesn't even give people a chance.

As for making stuff "we don't see", what's the point in that? It's not mystique as it's all online for everyone to see anyway. If I'm paying $15/mo why shouldn't I have the option to see it in my own way? I'm lucky enough to be with a group that can do hard modes, but I understand that some people aren't and why shouldn't they be able to enjoy the fights that do have interesting mechanics? They can't do hard modes, fine, that's for people who want a serious challenge, but why shouldn't they be able to explore the content that their money has paid for? Yeah, that might mean making "welfare epics" available each patch, but I don't see how that invalidates your experience and what you want to do.

Ok, you managed to get enough competent people together to win the 25 schedule management game (which is honestly the hardest part about raiding), congrats (no, genuinely congrats, I can't raid 25s anymore because 2/3 of my guild has jobs that no longer allow for that kind of time commitment).

But are you honestly saying that you preferred the shaman, shadow priest and warlock stacking TBC WoW of the past? I mean, that's really the only significant difference between WoW now and WoW then if you're on the cutting edge. Now you don't have to stack your raid to such an extreme (sure, raid stacking can be beneficial in a couple cases, but not like that was) in order to simply compete.

Yogg+0 is relevant (or was, anyway until people seriously get in to 3.2 encounters in a few weeks) because it is still a challenge that you haven't conquered (if you were still raiding, at any rate), and I assume that you say the game is boring because you don't find it challenging anymore. To say it's not relevant is to entirely miss the point.

I disagree with your statement that it requires no thought, skill or strategy. What it no longer requires is having enough alts of the right class to stack the raid. Skill, thought and strategy and the class you like to play already being ready to go is why things seem easier. No longer forced to grind alts of a certain class, swap people left and right for a different spec. It was stupid and it wasn't fun. You're lying if you say it was enjoyable to hearth, respec, and come back to the raid between boss fights. That's what TBC raiding was and that's what is gone with WotLK.

Do you miss the massive attunement chains? I don't. I don't miss dragging people through them to find out half-way through they couldn't commit to the hours, or simply didn't play as well as they claimed. Now I can kick them after the first boss fight without any significant investment loss on my part.

Yes, it's more casual friendly, but the challenging elements aren't gone, they just have fewer annoying logistical elements that almost no one enjoyed. How does a bad player picking up a handful of purples from a new 5-man affect your experience?

As for "couldn't kill Yogg+4 killing bosses in coliseum", so what? People who could barely get Kael'Thas would roll over the first 3 bosses in Hyjal without even blinking, yet you hail that as the pinnacle of raiding. That's not to say the design of the entirety of 3.2 content is good, I just don't think it supports your points. From a lore progression perspective it seems dull and lazy.

If you really did enjoy that, then maybe WoW isn't for you. Perhaps EQ or UO is more your thing. It takes all kinds and I'm told EQ is fun, I just couldn't get in to it myself.

Honestly, the "casual v hardcore" argument is tired and pointless. Both play the game, and Blizzard is catering to both equally. The biggest difference between the two is that 'hardcore' is always a temporary thing that keeps moving up, as it has been and as it will continue to be in games like this.

So, eunichron, how're your Yogg+0 attempts going?

Deep breath can't kill an 80 unless they're naked or completely stupid.

Seriously, the "WoW is too casual friendly" QQ is so stupid. So what if people who don't raid as much as you do get to see content? How does it harm you? I agree the emblem changes for heroic 5 mans is stupid but only because 95% of the level 80 population is already sick of them and the idea of having to clear them all every day just to fill a few gaps in gear on an alt makes me cringe. The same way running fresh 70's through heroics in TBC just to attune them made me want to kill myself.

3.2 instances are kind of dull. I love Ulduar and the hard modes. Nax was a joke, but it was supposed to be (maybe not quite as much as it is...). Regardless, there are plenty of real challenges to a competent raid group.

If you are in the very, very small % of guilds that can kill Yogg+0, I only slightly apologize, but these changes don't affect you at all. Until then, you've got work to do.

You forgot that some classes can
Heal
Tank
Melee DPS
Spell DPS

so they need a quad-spec option.

You guys are confused with regards to the latency problem. Latency does not effect FPS because the server will render the next frame regardless of your input. Bandwidth affects FPS, but you can scale quality down until it fits in the pipe at a reasonable frame rate. The latency problem will be when you turn your mouse quickly, or fire your gun, how long does it take for the server to respond to that input. In a traditional client/server (and even most peer-to-peer) game, the client makes some assumptions about the actions you give it. It filters things it knows are invalid and tries to guess the results of things that are valid to start playing the effect immediately (ie, results next frame). The problem with OnLive is that when I fire my gun, I get my latency*2 as the *minimum* delay before I see the results of any of my input. I doubt most people are going to have 16ms or even 32ms latency to the OnLive service. This thing is going to cause severe motion sickness in a lot of people and aiming in FPS games is going to be very difficult.

Everything else can be solved with bandwidth / compression. Bigger frames just get more compressed until they meet your Bandwidth/Frame ratio to maintain a constant frame rate. Unfortunately that has some other issues but they're relatively minor compared to the above. Fluctuations in bandwidth (peak-usage at ISPs) and inconsistent latency (some frames arrive quicker than others) will cause a much worse user experience than they do now.

What, no X-Com? List fail.

This is really vague, how do you expect me to answer?

I dont expect you to answer. I dont know if you noticed that problem. But you could at least acknowledge it if you heard about it. It took months to get fixed.

They can't do client side prediction with UDP, people could then modify the packets a la Diablo 2. It's an MMO, you can't do what you're asking without allowing for massive abuse.

I guess I didnt choose the words well. Heres an explanation:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3271071466&sid=1&pageNo=1

1) Client side prediction works just fine with UDP. In fact WoW uses a lot of client side prediction and you frequently see artifacts of it. Without it player movements would be VERY choppy. One very noticeable artifact is when you see someone riding their mount towards you and it looks like they are constantly turning to the left or right then warping forward. This is due to the prediction thinking they are traveling in a different direction than the server is moving them (the warps are server updates to the player position).

A big reason for not using UDP is that you end up implementing 2/3rds of the features TCP/IP gives you in what is usually a less efficient manner. There's a lot of useful software already written with TCP/IP in mind re: session management and traffic shaping that would be annoying to re-implement for UDP. Why re-invent the wheel when you can just borrow an existing one?


2) The link mentioned turning on TCP_NODELAY near the end. WoW already disables the nagle algorithm (they didn't initially, the flag was toggled a few patches ago, 2.4? I think.) so the things in the link will do NOTHING.

Also, your client won't wait for an ACK before sending more data unless it goes a very long time without getting an ACK. ACKs are used to guarantee reliable transmissions, not to say 'YES IM READY FOR MORE DATA'. If a packet (or more often a group of packets gets ack'd all at once) isn't Ack'd, and TCP was told to guarantee the delivery, it will try to resend until the data times out or it is resent with another batch of data.

He tapped mobs inside of the new 5mans in Northrend, a 5man entered and killed them. Something along those lines. They all got banned for it despite asking a GM for permission beforehand who said it was OK. Not sure if they're unbanned or not. It was perfectly legitimate in my opinion but who the hell wants 80 that fast? It's all about the journey, not the destination but to each his own I guess.

This was the paladin that got to 79 in 13 hours that was banned.

This player actually was grabbing groups of normal mobs and having his fel guard tank them while he DOTted them (siphon life + corr + CoA I think). He had a priest with him (not grouped) to heal him. He also wasn't banned.

TBH, I'm surprised it took him this long. I expected it in under 24 hours.

I am running it in 1680x1050 just fine.

SST
On hard I find it most annoying that your 'ally' rarely is capable of defending himself. At all. He'll send a bunch of units out in to a wall of turrets but never build any turrets around his naval assets or base.

Specifically the mission where you are assassinating the Empire's leader. I got really tired of having to spend all my income defending my teammate.

/SST

One more reason why DRM "solutions" like this FAIL.

3 hours of downtime for a single player game because the website is down? Lame.

I believe he is referring to the former in that they think it is a reasonable restriction that the number of people playing the game at one time is at most the number of copies that have been purchased.

So, you can't buy one CD-key for WoW, and then install it on 5 computers and party with yourself, you need 5 distinct keys/accounts to do that (or.... 36.)

No best of list (particularly one this long) that doesn't include X-Com is shit.

*goes back to slaughtering Mutons*

I'd like a few more convenience items for the space stage.
1. Bookmarking planets...
2. Shortest known path to things I've visited (having systems in multiple arms of the galaxy is a nightmare if you don't have a close by blackhole :[ )
Colony presets so I can restore colonies quickly after Grox raids I couldn't get to due to point 2... Replacing all the turrets is a pain.
I like that they're reducing the disaster and raid rate for the non-hard difficulties but it'd be nice to have more items that cost a lot more (10's of millions) that reduces them for your nearby allies too. that or the ability to dump disaster missions. If he can't maintain his planet, why should I care? the mission hangs around until the entire planet is toast.

Also, once I've met the grox, can all my planets please be able to differentiate the grox from common pirates? I constantly get unknown raiders trying to wipe out my civ on a planet, but it's either the grox or some random pirate (or the last remnants of a hostile empire...) but they apparently can't distinguish between any of them!

After reaching the center of the galaxy I got fairly bored with the space game. Running around and kowtowing to the trivial whims of my allies got old. I wanted to focus more on exploration. I had oodles of cash, why can't I buy better tech that minimizes the things I don't enjoy?

I wanted to focus on assault Grox worlds, not on killing 5 infected creatures 500 parsecs away on a planet that has plenty of aircraft with energy weapons already...

A PC Version exists but only because they develop the game on the PC.

I'll go home and install it tonight. I've got high hopes for it (big fan of previous red alerts, and C&C3 overall wasn't *that* bad [single player, didn't do much multi]) so going to give it a shot.

Varies. It has decreased a bit the last time I looked (or better hidden, but probably decreased). Early on they were almost exclusively keyloggers or back.orifice type things. While the level of keyloggers stayed roughly the same there was a brief rise in generic adware installers that grew more in to just a general 'download from site x, install whatever is there' type thing. fairly small and simple tucked in directly to the cracked .exe or the key gen. A number of them didn't even work or only worked on older OSes (ME, 2k) so I don't think they were trying all that hard some of the time. The most common one I've seen recently has been registry fishing for popular games and their CD keys/key hashes.

there were a couple groups that were always clean and a couple that were always 'dirty'.

I hate having to keep my CDs handy for all the games I have, so I kept trying to find clean cracks.

Basically it comes down to, just like DRM, you are trusting them completely. Current DRM solutions are as bad or worse than a lot of malware out there, so either way you go, you're probably going to get screwed.


--
Also, a lot of the time it was the packaging from the site that had the malware more than the crack, so where you get it from can have as much to do with it as anything.


I don't like having to crack games to get around the stupid CD check. I have the CD, it's in a box in the closet where it belongs, not cluttering up my desk with 1,000's of other disks. If I have to spend 30 minutes tracking down a CD every time I get the whim to play something, I'll just play another game. The CD check is the least effective protection in general anyway... such a waste of time.
This comment was edited on Jul 19, 01:35.