I understand the ilevel of items and how it's affected/determined by the quality/rarity of the items. It's a good point to bring up, thank you. I feel it should have simply been done differently right from the start, however you're right in that it's probably too far developed to be changed at this point.

~jaraxle

This is why I believe the item rarity system should never have been used to begin with. If item quality was based on comparing just the stats and benefits with no other measure (ie. name colour, level requirement) then I highly doubt so many people would have their panties in a knot over "casuals" getting similar quality gear.

~jaraxle

I said it from the start, and I still believe it... Blizzard, and any other company that implemented similar, made a big mistake in classifying gear in a tier system, namely their grey white green blue purple orange system (EQ2 has similar with treasured legendary fabled mythical).

Would there be such a big uproar from raiding players if gear didn't have this classification? What if every piece of gear was all the same colour and the only way to determine what was better was to look at the actual stats on it and compare to what you were already wearing? As it was when I left WoW (around Arena Season 4) you could find any number of people wearing crappy gear just because the name of the item was purple, despite the fact that if they did a bit of looking around on websites they could find at least one piece of gear that was better for that slot but the name was blue instead. People are blinded by purple so to speak.

While I understand it makes it a bit easier for players to identify possible upgrades and also possibly allow easier classification for developers to determine what gear should drop from where with a tiering system, how much of this problem would go away without it? EverQuest 1 had no tiering system for gear (not sure if they do now, haven't played in years) or item colours to determine rarity, and you could find people raiding top end content still wearing gear obtained from mid-level content just because there was no item level or colour to compare. You looked at the stats and benefits of the item, and if what you had was better than what dropped, you didn't bother getting that new item even if what you had was something you looted 30 levels ago.

~jaraxle

Then maybe you're not as good at PvP as you think you are and were just relying on gear the entire time.

In a PvP MMO, the "equation" should really be Numbers > Skill > Gear. Basically, a large number of enemy players should be able to take you down when you're alone, a much better skilled player in similar (or slightly worse) gear should be able to take you down 1 on 1, and when you have two equally skilled players the one with the better gear should come out on top.

Sadly, WoW fubared this right up from the beginning and gear trumped everything so that even the worst players imaginable could dominate in PvP simply because they were capable of raiding the top end content and anyone solely interested in PvP were left by the wayside. The Honor System attempted to fix that, but ended up being an even worse grind than any raiding ever was, so you were still better off tackling PvE content in order to PvP (unless you really had nothing else to do than PvP all day every day for weeks on end, or share your account). I quit WoW around Arena Season 4 because I was getting sick of lesser skilled players able to just crush me and some close friends just because their top end epics were far better than our mix of blues and "welfare" epics (just for the record, during the Honor Grind, I was able to get the blue Warrior set and was able to 1v1 almost anyone who wasn't decked out in 100% BWL gear).

Quite frankly, if you find that now suddenly people can get epic gear who previously were unable to and they're trouncing you in PvP I say "Good". You never deserved to be king of the heap, requiring "parties of 5 to kill you" because you relied on gear and now that the field is evened out a bit and skill is more a determining factor, your ego has taken a hit. Call me bitter, call me a troll, but I know a lot of people would agree.

~jaraxle

I'm not trying to call BS or anything here, but I'd be interested to know how many schools you've actually seen these digital clocks in.

I ask simply because I have three kids that have been in 6 different schools over the past couple years, and every single one of them were using the "old" synchronized analog clocks. You know, the big round ones with the white face, black numbers, black hour and minute hands, and red second hand.

Quite honestly, it would be a shame for schools to upgrade to digital clocks, and my reasons are twofold:

1) The cost of upgrading the clocks, and potentially the synchronization system, is an expense that isn't needed and with the way public schools are funded that money could be better used elsewhere

2) While it's easier for children to read digital clocks, part of grade school education is actually learning how to read analog clocks! What better way than actually telling the correct time by looking up at a live example?

~jaraxle

Ack, I should say by "youngster" I mean young teen (13 - 15). It's a matter of personal morality, and possibly even hypocritical to an extent, but I personally don't think younger is appropriate. I also don't mean that parents should go out and buy porn for their kids, but if they happen to come across it, curiosity is natural in those circumstances.

~jaraxle

*shrug*

At 13 (agreed, it's not 12), my dad and I went on a fishing trip and on the beach one night I found an old Hustler magazine laying amongst some rocks. My dad allowed me to peruse through it so long as I didn't bring it home since he knew my mom wouldn't agree. He also allowed me to use "soft swears" such as "hell", "damn", and even "shit". However, the basic deal was if I was allowed to do this, I had to behave responsibly, as one old enough see and do such things as well. I found that out the minute I caught my finger on a fishing hook and started with the "owie owie" whining (it wasn't that bad, barely even bled)... he told me to suck it up, and if I couldn't then I wasn't able to have the other privileges he allowed me.

It's a memorable experience, and a good one in my opinion.

Personally, I had access to porn (my parents had a big satellite dish, back before DirecTV, etc, where you changed the channel and the damn thing turned on its base) as a youngster and I can't say it did any damage to me. I may be a bit crass at times, but all in all I lead a healthy life... married, 3 kids, good job, and a fairly healthy outlook in general. I know my kids are going to be curious about a great many things, I just hope we all as a family can be open and honest about it, and that they can have healthy discussions with my wife and I should they have any questions.

~jaraxle

And to a great many people, the plot is part of the "entertaining gameplay". While I know both Oblivion and Fallout 3 have been lambasted by some for various flaws in both story and the actual game, I find both very entertaining as do a great many others. I haven't come close to finishing Oblivion yet (partly because I don't have a lot of time) because I spend so much time when I am playing it going around doing side quests, exploring, and talking to NPCs to see what they have to say. I find the main plot, as well as all of the side stories, to be very entertaining. Same goes for Fallout 3.

Go back a number of years to the old TSR Gold Box RPG games. Simplistic game play for the most part, but I ate them up and probably played every single one that was released (oh to have the free time I used to have as a youngster). They were fun because of the story they told (and it was really neat reading the novels they corresponded to after). Hell, I currently play EQ2 not because it's perhaps the best MMO out there, but because I find the storylines to be quite entertaining (and the game community seems to be much more socially mature than other MMOs out there).

You may not understand people who play games for the plot, but to many people it's a way of "living a book" so to speak. Don't rag on something because you fail to understand it.

~jaraxle

*BANG*

(sorry)

Wow...

Only on Slashdot would an article about pornography (ethical or not) turn into an argument about mathematics.

~jaraxle

I think I will follow you on Twitter so I can make sure I get updated on the progress of this ground breaking idea of yours.

Or perhaps I will just go and Bing Flibubu...

~jaraxle

Even for the XBox? I have a feeling it's not possible except for PC...

~jaraxle

Or, assuming there's a "demonstration" version available at all.

There's a few games that have been released recently that I've been a bit leery about, yet interested in, simply because I couldn't download a demo on XBL.

Sacred 2 is one of them. I've heard great things about it all over the internet between great "professional" reviews to great reviews by players (blogs or forum posts). However, there was no demo I could download to verify gameplay myself (tweaked or not). I ended up buying it for my wife because she likes that sort of game (she ate up Fable 2 and played Diablo 2 forever and a day on the PC) and we can play it together. We ended up being a bit iffy about the camera, specifically the limited angles you could get, but otherwise it seems to be quite enjoyable.

Another game I've stayed away from buying is Warhammer: Battle March. I'm not much into strategy games, but this one interests me because it's the Warhammer Fantasy universe. However, again there's no demo available for download from XBL. I haven't gone into reading many reviews yet, but I do know it's based on Warhammer: Mark of Chaos for PC. However, RTS on PC and RTS on a console can be two very different beasts simply due to one having mouse/keyboard and the other does not.

Did I mention that both of these are also not available for rent and my local Blockbuster? So basically I have no options to try-before-buy on either of these and would have to take a giant leap of faith based on nothing more than reviews (a good "pro" review can be easily bought and blog/forum posts are very subjective).

~jaraxle