This is what gets me in just about every MMO that has balancing issues and players feel that their class is somehow disadvantaged compared to everyone else. I'm glad to hear that at least you try to stick to your principles, but for every person who actually cancels a subscription due to a game moving in a direction they don't agree with, there are at least 1000 others that will continue paying.

Typically their mantra is "If you don't fix class X then I will stop playing my class X and play my class Y instead." How does that possibly enact any change when your subscription is still being paid and the game developers are still receiving your money? It doesn't.

I'll play but I won't like it seems to be a fairly common sentiment among gamers, and anyone who decided, for instance, to boycott MW2 for whatever reason and actually stuck to their guns is in the minority.

~jaraxle

Much like you, I remember the developers of games as well.

I remember Origin Systems, Westwood Studios, and Mythic Entertainment (granted, still around but "rebranded" to EAMythic). I also remember the publisher that effectively destroyed them and the works that they created; Electronic fucking Arts. Granted, Mythic is not yet destroyed but their latest flagship product, Warhammer Online, didn't truly start sinking until the merger with EA. Take into account the gutting of the studio with last years Q4 layoffs and it's doubtful WAR will recover without some serious TLC.

Let's see how EA handles Bioware now that they've been assimilated. Time will tell of EA forces them to push Old Republic out the door too fast without it being finished thereby guaranteeing MMO failure, or if they actually learned from the mistakes they heaped upon WAR and let Bioware just do their job.

~jaraxle

I remember watching a roast of Jerry Stiller (Ben Stillers dad, the obnoxious loud father of George Costanza on Seinfeld) and Jason Alexander was MC'ing the deal. When asked where Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus were and why they weren't there for the roast, Jason's only reply was (and I paraphrase):

While I really enjoyed Seinfeld as a show, I can't say that I found Jerry Seinfeld himself all that funny. It really was the writing/ideas (no doubt mostly from Larry David) and his supporting cast that gave the show most of its humour.

~jaraxle

Oh my god, you use Usenet?

/goes off to post some drivel about "Culture20 on FIDOnet...

~jaraxle

And this is something that SoE at least did right. While EQ and EQ2 all have multiple servers per game, same as WoW has, you can easily communicate across servers by appending the server name to the character name when you send a /tell. As well, you can create player-channels cross-server in similar fashion.

In fact, you can even communicate cross-game between EQ and EQ2 by appending the game name in front of the server name. While it's not as easy as EVE, since EVE is one server total, it's still better than nothing. Never mind the fact that their latest game launcher includes a sort of IM client that allows you to talk with friends in-game without being in-game yourself (even includes voice chat for guilds). I really can't believe other multi-server MMO's haven't implemented something like EQ/EQ2's cross-server messaging.

~jaraxle

Oblig. Penny Arcade

~jaraxle

I agree completely. I didn't fully understand the relevance/popularity difference between Google and Bing until I went to Bing and searched just my last name. It gives plenty of results about a uranium mine that begins with a similar name, but nothing on pages 1 to 3 go to my website at all. Search for the first and last name combined of either myself or my wife, and nothing on the first or second pages link to our website either.

With Google, if you search my last name, my website is the third result on the first page since I would assume my family website is pretty relevant to my last name (it used to be first).

Now, I'm not particularly vain and I don't feel desperate to have my website show up right off the hop in all search engines, but it just sort of shows that Bing doesn't necessarily provide the most relevant results, just whatever happens to be most popular (which my website really isn't).

~jaraxle

Another bit of clarification:

- Nerfs are done by developers to the game itself, typically in patches or hotfixes
- Debuffs are in-game abilities used by NPCs or PCs

Technically, "buff" is used as the opposite of "nerf" as well as "debuff".

ie. The developers nerfed the Wizard spell "Fireball" by reducing its damage by 30%, but compensated by buffing the Wizard spell "Blast Wave" by 20%.

~jaraxle

You're probably exactly right here. I consider myself a fairly intelligent driver (perhaps I get a bit too aggressive/angry towards people who drive like morons) that keeps a clear head and drives safely. However, trying a dirtbike for the first time this summer, I wound up getting into a very embarrassing accident simply because I was unfamiliar and obviously not completely comfortable.

I hopped on and, not realizing how touchy it was, pulled a bit on the accelerator handle while keeping my left hand over the brake just in case. However, the bike took off and I sort of got knocked off a bit. Despite having my left hand over the brake ready to pull on it, I wound up pulling harder on the accelerator instead, running myself and the bike into a chain link fence, then throwing myself over the bike. Nothing broken or bruised but my ego, but still... it's easy for even intelligent drivers to make idiotic mistakes like this when they're not fully comfortable with their situation.

~jaraxle

I would too. If anything, Clinton and Lewinsky taught me that it's more difficult than you'd think to get those stains out...

~jaraxle

I don't know why I'm bothering to reply, particularly so late in the discussion, but here goes...

Of course he still actually retains the rights, and of course the rights are being infringed.

However, what it boils down to is what fucking good is having the rights to your own works if a big corporation is blocking your ability to distribute said works? At that point, it's like you don't have the rights to your works at all (hence why I said He effectively has no rights).

~jaraxle

Neither can you, apparently.

The artist holds rights to his own works. A major label has laid claim to his works, saying they hold the rights to it. After getting hold of an actual lawyer with said major label, the artist is told "Sorry" and that it will be sorted, but after months it still isn't.

In trying to publish works that the artist owns the rights to, he is told he can't, nor can he apparently rectify the situation with the label causing the problems. He effectively has no rights to his own works at this point.

~jaraxle

A couple months ago when my wife and I still played WAR, she would receive up to 10 in-game mails a day from gold spammers. Not sure why she got so many and I didn't, but gold spam is still a problem in WAR, albeit not as much. Part of the reason why as you touched on to is that there is such a small market... both because gold is easy to come by, and because the game is hemorrhaging subscriptions (or at least it was, not sure how the recent changes particularly to the low level experience have affected things). Not much point in spending good money to advertise to a clientÃle that barely exists.

However, when WAR first came out and almost broke the "million mark", gold spam was an enormous problem, to the point that Mythic kept a counter on their realm war website counting up how many spammers were banned each day. They couldn't keep up.

~jaraxle

A lot of people seem to forget or just not know that two of the major figures in WoW's development were Tigole (Legacy of Steel) and Furor (Fires of Heaven), guild leaders of possibly the most hardcore raiding guilds in EverQuest, and part of their "Vision" (yes I use that term on purpose for those that understand why) in the beginning was to make an MMO that offered gameplay that they were used to (raiding) to a broader audience. AKA make raiding more casual friendly.

~jaraxle