Most companies essentially mandate the use of Outlook and have MS Exchange as their back end.

As bad as Outlook is, it's still better than any webmail solution.

Why should the employees want to use it? "Eat your own dogfood" is a bad idea for your employees, unless you are creating a product intended for those types of employees. Is Yahoo Mail intended to be a corporate mail solution? If so then the employees should be encouraged to use it. If instead it is intended to be a general purpose web mail service, then it may be inappropriate for work.

Similarly, if my company made catheters I most certainly would object to be asked to use one while at work! Similarly, if I was creating a product intended for people with average to low technical aptitude (twitter, facebook) I would strongly object to be required to actually use that product all the time (I'd use it for testing purposes only). If I was at Google I would strenuously object to doing all my documentation by using Google Docs, or read mail via Google Mail, even if I was working on those products to make them better.

People are not cookie cutter clones!

Science does not start with an assumption that there is no creator, that is just plain false. Science is merely trying to deduce what what evidence reveals, starting from no assumptions.

The only assumption if there is one is that one can not explain everything away with a divine caveat. That is, mathematicians do not say "two plus two equals four, as long as divine beings allow it to be so, should they exist."

If you start with an assumption that there is a divine creator, and then further add on an assumption that this creator is a divine micromanager in charge of all possible physical interactions, then you can learn and deduce nothing about the universe this way. You throw a ball into the air and can not predict that it will fall to the ground, because there might happen to be a miracle that occurs preventing it from falling, or you instead conclude that the ball falls because God wills it to fall.

You can't do science very well that way. Indeed scientists did work this way in the past and it caused all sorts of problems. Ie, planets were assumed to orbit in circles because that was the natural conclusion derived from the assumption that God created a perfect system of physics, and an elliptical orbit was decidedly imperfect even if the mathematics was simplified. The problem with having any a priori assumptions is that those assumptions are used to fill in the holes in knowledge; if we don't know why something happens but we assume there is a God then we conclude that God causes those things to happen.

One big difference here is that when presented with a question, scientists will say "we don't know but we want to find out" whereas some creationists might say "we don't know because it is a divine mystery."

What are examples of monarchies that work very well? Constitutional monarchies don't count as the monarch has no power. It worked out terribly in Europe, Mid East, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Maybe there's an occasional flash of some monarch being slightly more enlightened, but then the flash vanishes soon after.

Yup, there's no way to judge "best of breed", or "best" genetically, or "best" leader, or "best" anything. It is all purely subjective. The majority of our industry leaders are incredibly far removed from being the smartest or most fit in anything, except in sales and persuasion. You want Ballmer to run the world? Or Jobs? Or God forbid, Ellison?

The problem is that every "good" monarch was recognized for being good because of efforts to weaken the monarchy or promote wider freedoms. There's just no such thing as a good monarch who would maintain the strict class divisions that come with a monarchy.

As the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, being fired is merely the next step in getting an even more lucrative position. A failed CEO is a hot commodity since you have experience! You'll probably get a larger golden parachute than most of the workers will make in a decade. The worst is that you go from making $50 million a year in compensation ($1 salary plus options plus forgivable loans) into another job where you make $25 million a year.

These "tech" leaders have little to do with technology, but sometimes they have a lot to do with the dumbing down of technology. Advertising on the internet or promoting advertisement does not automatically create a "tech" company.

Except that in a hybrid game like LotRO, the subscribers get everyone plus an allowance, so they can purchase so much more than F2P players. There is nothing a subscriber can not do that a premium store using player can do. The goal is to convert the totally free grind-all-my-points players into a subscriber or payer. Which is perfectly fine with me and better than requiring everyone to spend a fixed amount each month.

And then it's a coop game so there is no "win" except for the tiny PvP side game where experience and skill still count.

There are about three things I do in LotRO and other MMOS: do the new quests that come out and explore new regions, do some light group content if it's not some tier 2 challenge raid led by a drill sergeant, and then repeat on other characters. I'm middle of the road here; not a pure soloer, not a hardcore raider, which was LotRO's strengths early on.

LotRO Helm's Deep is very very good with the first part, the quests are nice and entertaining so far, lots of good tie in with the books, exploring is fun. Sure the combat is a bit simpler now (they really didn't balance much after the skill revamps, so everyone is overpowered) but that's ok since it doesn't ruin the questing and exploring. As for the end game group content it remains to be seen, but the new stuff looks interesting even though it isn't a traditional instance, but we still have older scalable instances and I'm sure plenty of people will be running those. The really serious raiding types aren't happy but I was never in their cliques and tended to do the group content after those guys got tired of it.

And that is what is nice about LotRO's payment models. You can do it for free, or just pay a little bit of money now and then. If you're playing a couple hours only on Saturdays then it is ridiculous to be asked to fork over $10-$15 a month for that. But if you pay $5 and get access to content that lasts you a couple months, then pay another $5 for another month of new content, then it fits very well with an occasional player. I do recommend subscribing at least one month to unlock things, then purchasing an XP disabler token since everything gets too easy otherwise.

ESO will be subscription only which I am very wary of. I'm also wary of it for other reasons (it is not built by Bethesda, the lore is screwy, and it has too much pvp in it).

EVE is one of those old school "you must group up you evil scum sucking soloer, don't you know what the M stands for!" games. Thus it appeals heavily to some players while disgusting others.

LotRO doesn't really have pay-to-win by many definitions. There is literally nothing you need in the store to play the game at all levels, all the items are optional. If you subscribe then you get enough point allowance to even purchase an expansion with the points every year as long as you don't waste points on extras. But subscribing is pay-to-win (also pay-to-play). You can drop that down and budget only $5 a month and get everything ala-carte and do quite well, you won't even need to grind out points. I don't understand why people are so intent on going back to the old days where you were required to pay $15/month just to log in. If paying $5 a month is too much then you can play completely free: there are players at max level who have played for free the entire time, including earning points to get quest packs. Sure it's a lot of work, but it is possible.

If this were a pay-to-win game then they'd be having stuff in the store you were required to get. Ie, it would be so difficult to play the game without buying powerful consumables in the store. Some people predicted this would happen but it never did. If it was pay-to-win then they'd be treating the free players as undesirables. The ala-carte players have the best of it all, paying for only what they want.

But instead players complain about optional items that they don't need and claim they're being nickle-and-dimed to death. Are those players incapable of keeping their wallets locked tight? Do they not know how to budget their 500 points a month allowance? I am utterly baffled why some players call Turbine a greedy money grabber when the other games cost much more to play and give non-subscribers so much less. People are excited about Elder Scrolls Online but they will charge $15 a month with no opportunity to play for free or ala-carte, which is a much bigger money grab than Turbine is doing.

I think the skill revamp is a big change, but it's not the disaster people claim. Many other MMOs have even simpler play styles. People are really using the skill revamps as the excuse they were looking for to justify their pre-planned departure.

The real problem is that the game has gotten simple anyway and the developers are making leveling up be faster and combat simpler. The sooner you get to end game the sooner you feel compelled to spend money on an expansion. It is true we used to have a large variety of skills, even before the first expansion you could argue that some classes were overloaded, but there was more grouping involved from just getting together to defeat a tough opponent on the landscape up to doing a full raid. Later it was simplified so that casual grouping was never needed, as that would slow people down on their accelerated leveling schedule. If you only solo then you really don't need many skills, but this applies to all MMOs.

Part of the problem is with players too. They really don't want to do quests on the landscape as much, they don't want to explore, they're not doing any of the single player RPG style of play at all. Instead they want to get to end game fast. They'll feel powerful if they kill things with one shot while leveling but then at high levels that same play style makes them wonder why it's easy. Most new players focus intently on making a high damage build, choosing high damage classes as main preference, others will discourage new players from trying harder or more nuanced classes, etc. So don't blame just the devs, also blame players who want to turn the game into yet another generic MMO.

And for those players who left last year for the glorious offerings of new games, I've seen quite a chunk of them returning later saying how another game was even worse or that they couldn't stand the other players and so on. There's good stuff in this expansion: the epic quests are very good again compared to the last few updates, the landscape looks great, etc. Sure not as many raids but this was never a raid heavy game.

As for the original poster: you were NOT robbed. Every game out there changes mechanics along the way, this was just a bit larger than some. But it is in no ways similar to the massive change of NGE that some compare it too. And pre-ordering is always a bad idea for any game or product. It's just dumb. Always know what it is before you buy. And since there's not sub required, you can still keep playing. The game is not the pay-to-win so many claim when you compare it to other games; you can get everything for a much smaller cost than a traditional subscription game (being forced to subscribe to play is the very definition of pay-to-win).

Finally. Please, if you're going to leave a game then just leave. Don't stick around bad mouthing it. Don't go onto all the forums to bad mouth it. Don't go onto slashdot to whine about it. JUST LEAVE! This is not a popularity contest where you're required to drag others away with you when you leave. Getting bored and leaving because of that is natural; it's an old game so it is normal for people to leave. Just don't try to drag it down when you do go.