You're missing the point. Players play MMOs for four main reasons: Achievement, Exploration, Competition, and Socialization. You play because you enjoy the game -- you're an explorer or socializer, or if you enjoy PvP you're a competitor. Some people play to get a sense of achievement. They want to vanquish a monster or loot a dungeon or solve a puzzle, and they want badges and items that show their accomplishment. Skill doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it; they're not trying to increase their skill, they're trying to earn trophies, and in these games trophies can be won with enough determination and time.

The problem for other Achievers is that is level 90 is an achievement in itself, and being able to purchase it with real money cheapens the prize.

I'm not the OP, but I'll give you my reasons for why GW2 didn't work for me.

1. Gameplay was too dissimilar to GW1. I felt like I had been taken in a bait and switch.

2. Poor/no character customization. Every character was exactly like every other character of their class and weapon. MMO replayability requires diverse gameplay options, and social games require character uniqueness. GW had little of the first and none of the second.

3. Bad and inflexible control layout. This was my breaking point. What abilities I had were defined by the weapon I used, and were locked in place. In every game I like my fast attack to be on 1, my heal to be on 4, etc. In GW2 the ability keys were chosen for me and were not rebindable. This made play difficult unless you specialized in one character using a single weapon...and I don't play that way.

4. Bad storyline. A minor point for me, but the character story was not good. Some races were better than others. It wasn't good in GW1 either, so I'd overlook this, but it was a flaw.

5. Grind. Too much grind. You could avoid some grind by paying real money to buy better equipment, and I know that's a business strategy for MMOs now, but casual players like me are the least likely to engage in microtransactions *and* we hate long grinds. Put outrageous grinds in your game thinking you can mitigate it with an auction house, and you'll lose the casual playerbase.

Approx. 10 Years ago:

Everquest
Asheron's Call
Guild Wars
City of Heroes

Now:

(tumbleweeds blow through the space where enjoyable MMORPGs used to be)

Yeah. I'm still playing games, but much less than before.

Chernobyl was a completely different design. It had carbon graphite moderator rods that, once they caught fire, turned the whole mess into a radioactive barbecue pit. They were literally roasting uranium over charcoal briquettes.

Fukashima won't put up the huge smoke clouds that Chernobyl did. The main concern with it melting down has to do with steam release after it hits the water table. Which is bad enough.

You are neglecting the possibility of true dualism -- that we have a soul. If a portion of our decisions comes from an extra-universal source that does not follow the deterministic rules of the universe, that would provide us with true free will. Sadly, such a thing may be innately non-provable.

A year from now you should expect to hear about this research again, but it will be delivered as a dramatic result: "Scientists have proven Free Will exists!", or "Scientists have disproven Free Will!" The experiment won't actually do this, but that's how the press will report it.

The thought that some hidden variable may affect not only both sides of the universe but our own minds is frightening. It would really shake things up. So I expect that QM and 'free will' will come out triumphant in this test. Whether it's an actual assessment of Free Will or not will be the interesting argument afterward.

I've beaten FTL using every ship -- both configurations -- except for the Crystal ship which I've never unlocked. But even so, I still get into unwinnable situations now and then. The game sometimes gives you a death ship opponent specifically designed to take your ship apart. I can't believe that's completely random. But it's a roguelike, so you can't expect to win every game.

I played the hell out of DF years ago, but I don't like the direction the game is going now. I'm only interested in Fortress mode but most of the latest enhancements are to Adventure mode, and that doesn't appeal to me. On top of that the releases have gotten further and further apart -- it's nearly two years now since the latest patch.

Still a fun game if you like micromanaging complexity, but it's gotten very old and I don't believe Toady cares much about improving it anymore.

This is my impression about The Secret World as well. I played through the main story line, looked at the outrageous time requirements for the high level game, and walked away. A neat game, but not something I'd recommend for long-time play.

I miss City of Heroes sooo much. No other game is like it. Tried Champions Online years ago and it didn't appeal to me.

Since CoH died I played and finished or dropped Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, and Bioshock: Infinite. Only ones that I'm still playing are League of Legends (I dabble; nothing serious) and FTL.

I still hunger for an MMO as sweet and exciting as CoH. Might try Everquest Landmark someday, if I can get over my hatred for all things Sony.

Just as a warning: 'Altslash' sounds, well, sexual. 'Slash' is a popular term for erotic fan fiction, and putting 'alt' in front of it just makes it sound dirtier.

I agree with you that formatting and proper line breaks are essential in any useful discussion forum. Sigs? Eh, they're nice, but I can see arguments for disabling them.

The Javascript sliders were just an example of the innovations that we have now that are being thrown away. Maybe I'm one of the few who use them.

The whitespace argument is weird. I don't mind excess whitespace in a comment; presumably the comment could take up more of that space if it changed in length and format, and that's fine. I don't like all the wasted whitespace in the right side frame -- it's distracting, and looks like it's destined to be filled up with ads someday. But I'm not inclined to vilify the design just because of this.

All the protest about the Beta drove me to look at it. I can see a few things wrong. But in all it's not too bad; it looks a lot more like Slashdot than some forums do when they change code.

The main things that need fixing are features that were innovative and unique and I miss their presence, like the intuitive comment threshold sliders. I don't understand why you'd discard these features; they were simple and unique to this board. Maybe that made them difficult to maintain, but since this is a techie site you want to be leading technology, not playing it safe. In this way Beta does feel like a step backwards.

I'd also like to see the user page spruced up so that I can tell how my comments were moderated and whether they have any replies. Those are core features for a discussion board -- if you want to be part of a conversation, you need the ability to go back and check on how your contributions have been received.

Other than that, my only complaint was the font size. I had to zoom in 130% using my browser to read the beta site. But now that I've done that it's fine. Haven't checked it out on a mobile device yet.

In all, Beta is functional and not too bad. The protest seems overdone, to me. But like the protestors, I do prefer the classic look and features, just not enough to get groused about it.

Sounds like they cut out the auto-update code. That would drop a few megabytes.

I work on the Landsat program. The article pulls Landsat out as an example of mid-resolution satellites, but it's really an apples-to-oranges comparison. Landsat 8 has 11 spectral bands, including thermal IR, a Cirrus band, a coastal aerosol band, and so on. All of these are used for scientific purposes. The Dove and Skysat instruments have 3 or 4 bands, just enough to get an RGB picture and maybe some chlorophyll distinction for agriculture producers.

Landsat is used to study land cover change, find new resources, map fire scars, and other applications that require precision and data depth; the swarm satellites will be used to make maps and that's about it. Both are important, but comparing one to the other is like comparing a smart car to a grain combine. They're used for totally different purposes.