If you chargeback they suspend your account, removing access to all the games you have ever bought.

I looked into it and discovered that little gem. It seems almost criminal.

The tl;dr version: Steam Support can really suck and that is the reason that many people hate it. See below for an example.

In my experience, there are three camps for Steam. Those rabidly against it due to the rights management, those who love it, and those who have had an experience with Steam "Support" and now loathe it. I'll give personal experience as an (anecdotal) example for you:

I bought Champions Online off of Steam on Sept. 7th.
To my dismay, when I attempted to activate my CD key, it was already activated. I called Cryptic for support, and after speaking to a couple of employees, was told that since Steam was my distributor, I needed to contact Steam to get a new CD key. i.e. it was Steam's fault. I submitted a support ticket with the requested information within an hour of buying the game. I received the confirmation email and a ticket number from Steam Support, everything to verify that they actually did receive my support ticket. Researching their average response time, I gleaned a community accepted value of "3 to 5 days".

Fast forward about 4 weeks (October 9th).
After weeks of checking, my ticket was closed with no reply. I logged in to check it, and status was set to closed. There was no indication that anyone had even looked at the ticket. I re-opened the ticket, left a polite but firmly displeased message about the quality of the support and restated my request to get this resolved.

Fast forward another 2 weeks (October 23rd, this past Friday).
I FINALLY receive my first reply from Steam support. It's a one liner asking me to paste my conversation with Champions Online support into Steam. Since I talked on the phone, I can't do that. I sent a note explaining this, and have yet to receive another message back.

The situation as it stands now, is that the close group of friends I bought Champions Online to play with spent about 5 weeks intensively playing it, and have since moved on to other games (Our usual schedule for many games). I'm now left paying $50 for a game I never got to play, and by the time their glacial support gets around to solving it, I've lost all desire to play.

I'm now a wary customer as well. I've been burnt and am now much more reluctant to deal through Steam, with their lack of phone support and awful online support. Given that my friends and I tend to consume at least one new game a month or so, they've lost a pretty regular customer. Due to my experience, some of my friends are also starting to buy games elsewhere as well.

Yeah, WoW gets old after a while. Inevitably I find myself drawn back, but that has yet to happen again this time.

I've tried Champions Online. It's alright, but even giving it a lot of leeway as a new MMO, it has a rather shallow feel. It's almost like a cardboard cutout of an MMO.

That's an interesting development in WoW. Looks like they've realized that "longer" gameplay isn't always better, if it separates friends.

That must be new from after I stopped playing. Thanks for the info!

I used to play WoW - led 25 mans up until Ulduar - and was actually formerly in the top 10 on my server in terms of gear (as reported by warcrafter.net - note that it's no longer anything particularly special as I haven't been playing since about April 09). While gear checks can seem really harsh, the problem is that people hit fresh 80 and want to raid instantly.

The gear treadmill is NOT circular, at least not within a specific xpac. You gear up for raids in heroics/with crafting/rep vendor gear. You won't be great, but you'll be decent. Then you can start getting raid gear. The problem as I said is that you have "instant" raiders, who want to be dragged through and handed phat lewt and get totally tricked out while not contributing. In an already geared up group, this may not be a problem. But when your group is barely able to take down a new boss, having a few boat anchors can be a make or break. Even if they're intelligent players, if they can't push the minimum numbers required, it makes it that much more difficult. Of course, generally the really intelligent players don't attempt to raid until they have at least a semi-decent level of gear.

We would occasionally pug some people, and it's sad having a tank claim he's ready to raid wearing level 76-78 blue and green leveling gear (one shot boss squish - we took him for the laughs, he asked us to soulstone him). Or DPS who refused to upgrade half their gear from level 70 purples until they got level 80 purples and as a consequence are out-dps'd by the tanks (actually it was so sad in one instance, our healer was smite spamming in between heals and keeping up with this DPS). Just to round it out, I've also seen a priest outhealed by a ret paladin who also was top 3 of the damage meter (hint, the ret pally's HPS wasn't really all that high). If you have a guild that's already mostly geared out and they take you through because they can, that's fine, but that's your guild helping you short circuit the grind.

I do agree with your main point that it's the same addictive gaming mindset. But it really isn't circular, they've just determined the best way to lengthen the journey to the top. For level 80, it's currently:

Leveling up -> Heroics -> Tier 1 (Naxx, OS, EoE) -> Tier 2 (Ulduar) -> Tier 3(is it out yet?)

The next xpac (level 90) will start the cycle over. (Ok, I guess you could say that in an xpac to xpac comparison, it's circular).

I agree that the pvp upgrade cycle is very circular. In that case, you do the same few PvP arenas to get better gear, so you can perform better in those same few arenas to get better gear.

All in all though, at least WoW is $15/month, not per piece of gear. If it was, I think it would see many less players. I compare games that leverage micropayments to mosquitoes, they inject the player's wallet with an anti-coagulant (incentive to be the best and buy their stuff to get there) and then suck them dry. /rant

Indeed my iPod picks up on it... if I load lyrics into the ID3v2 tag, it will add another page to the song playing view that I can switch to that displays all lyrics.

Yep, I can confirm that this is possible.

Back when I was playing Mario Kart Double Dash A LOT, I got to the point where I could dodge them about 30-40% of the time. It's easier to do on sharp corners. There's nothing more satisfying than dodging blue shells and laughing all the way to the finish line half a lap ahead of the pack.

As you were saying though, if you can't dodge em, stay in second place until near the end. Another trick is intentionally go into last place, grab a star, and then get into first place and hold onto it until you hear that evil hiss... then activate your star and laugh maniacally while the blue bastard bounces harmlessly away!

Ah memories... I think I'm going to go see if my friends have forgotten how well I play yet... (i.e. See if I can convince them to play it again)

Totally OT in an OT thread, but your user name makes me lol every time I see a post from you.

Oh hey, brownies!

Maybe there's a major accident, and they discover that one of the drivers had sent 2 texts within the last 5 minutes. Of course, they would either have to examine your phone or get the co-operation of your cell phone provider for these things. I remember reading a report of a driver here in Canada (either BC or Alberta) where they pinpointed what happened from his cell phone records. He had sent a text less than 30 seconds before the accident occurred.

Of course, he had splattered himself all over the pavement, so he wasn't around any more to object to them going through those records.

Having said that, I do agree, it would be hard to enforce it in many cases.

My biggest beef with public transportation is the seats are generally set up in pairs of two. I take up almost 1.5 of the seats, I'm not fat, they're just rather small... I need to literally turn my shoulders on a 45 degree angle if someone is to sit comfortably beside me, and I'm not really that large of a person.

Now, enter the obese person who is all sweaty from lumbering to the bus... who literally COULD take up both of the seats in a pair... who somehow doesn't realize they can't even fit a single ass cheek on the .5 of seat that is left, and then proceed to try to fit into that space, ramming me against the side of the bus with their sweaty fat folds. Not really productive when my cell phone in my pocket is buried under a wave of someone else's sweaty fat. 2 weeks ago, one guy did this who smelled so bad that when I got to work, my boss could smell the fat sweat off of me. Thank god I bring a change of clothes for working out, I just wore them instead.

I've been taking public transportation for years and ignorant fat people are my longest running complaint. If it was once or twice, I wouldn't care... but it's more like once a month. /rant

Ummm? I don't think it worked that well. I live in Ottawa, and in the past week I've almost been clipped by stupid drivers on cell phones three times. It'd be humorous, except it happens at least once a week. Throughout this summer, I've heard street racers a good 4-6 times, which I'll admit is lower than it used to be but it's still going on.

We have the laws, and some of them can be quite harsh, but they don't get enforced enough. It's like the no-smoking-within-9-meters (of a public entrance) law. It's there, it has penalties, quite harsh compared to the crime, but I've watched cops stop and light a cigarettes right beside the signs saying not to smoke there.

My bottom line: Harsh penalties can make people think twice about doing something dumb, but only if they're actually enforced. Of course, YMMV depending on what jurisdiction you live in.

Judging from the tone of replies, many didn't really get where I was coming from with that comment. I seem to remember zombies having the same vulnerability to blunt trauma, but it's been MANY years since I played D&D.

Decomposing flesh WOULD be easy to slice... but unfortunately, your light and sharp slicing weapon will get tangled in bones (especially rib cage and vertebrae) rather quickly. The katana was never meant for large sweeping strikes through bodies, contrary to what various sources would have you think.

Also, to anyone saying to use a gun, you're not thinking longer term survival! You will run out of bullets eventually! And zombies won't drop replacements, unless they happen to be redneck zombies with a penchant for using your favorite gun. You always want at least one melee weapon as a backup!

A katana? Hand in your geek card, everyone knows that blunt trauma does 150% damage to undead! (Think sledgehammer, or maybe a maul)

After all, it's the arms that you just cut off that will crawl behind you and trip you up when you least expect it!

I can't believe I'm bothering to respond to a coward, but this is what happens because of boredom and is a good way to kill 15 minutes...

Did you just seriously link to some random article on about.com? How about we examine the credentials of your author?

Sounds really professional, and like she knows EXACTLY what she's talking about. After all, she finished university! Gee, I should random articles found throughout the internet as blind truth more often! Of course, I personally can't be bothered to do in depth research on such a trivial thing anyways. At least not in response to some random on the internet.

I'll see your poorly researched link and raise you some personal anecdotal evidence: in my many many many hours of shooting pellet guns when I was younger, I tried shooting from any stance you can imagine and from either hand. I consistently hit the target slightly (the amount varies depending on the distance) to the side of where I was actually trying to aim with my non-dominant eye. My grouping was generally tight enough to make me think it's more than chance. When more than 75% of my shots stopped hitting the bulls eye area and instead focused roughly an inch to the side, I considered it as having an effect. Of course, I could adjust my aim and still hit the bulls eye, but the point still stands that I wasn't hitting what I was aiming at, I was just correcting for the skew.

Couldn't tell you with other sports though. I never really tried it with archery, as the bow I made was distinctly left handed. Also, I mostly threw knives right handed but I don't think the level of accuracy required was high enough for me to really make a judgement. My stint trying to bat right-handed in baseball didn't work out so well, as I had been batting left long enough that it felt too strange to switch. That about covers the sports and activities I participated in enough where any sort of aiming might be important/fine-grained enough to notice.