Well said, sorry no points today!

Ultraedit

I think this was inevitable given how much better Chrome is then all the competition. Once Chrome gets the breadth of plugins that Firefox has, it's game over.

I hate being a me too, but damn, this was a good post!

Hang on, nearly 10% of men in the study contracted prostate cancer?! That seems extraordinarily high doesn't it?

Right on the money. Seems so obvious when laid out like this, but is counter-intuitive to many people. Add to that the very high taxes that already exist on cigarettes and you can bet that no government wants people to quit smoking. They are cash cows both in tax revenue and then savings on the back-end when they die early. Win-win!

Very well said and right on target. It's seems kind of strange too when you consider it really wasn't that long ago that having a gun or two in the house was not only common place, but carried no social stigma at all. On topic, it seems very simple to me - you need to survive. Survival is two basic parts, sustenance and self defense/protection. Have food and water (and a way to procure more) and a way to defend yourself from the elements and predators. The things you need to satisfy those two basic requirements seem pretty obvious.

I recently cancelled my WoW subscription, along with four of my friends.

The reason was this game takes a real 180 once you hit level 60. Leveling up was quite easy as a casual player, I could solo and make good gains and group when needed for the more difficult quests. A good balance and a much better leveling system then most MMO's.

Then came level 60. The "high end" PvE content completely alienates the casual player as 4-5 hour chunks of uninterrupted time are needed to progress through places like Molten Core and BWL.

The PvP content (my preference) is even worse. Players have to dedicate an abnormally high amount of time to succeed in the PvP ranking system. And ironically, this is to gain rewards that are quite inferior to their PvE counterparts.

It has been my experience in other MMO's that the "power gamers" always rank up the fastest, get the best gear first, etc, etc and that is expected. However, the casual gamer could achieve these things, it just takes alot longer. This isn't the case with WoW, advancement is predicated on non stop play without letting up, because once you do, you fall too far behind.

So, that leads to this question: Am I alone in this observation/experience, or are you hearing this quite a bit from your player base? That is, are you hearing that the game starts out very casual player friendly, and then turns very casual player hostile at the end game?

And further, if this is the case, are you satisified with this situation, or do you intend to ease up on blocking casual players from aquiring end game gear?