Sunday, August 25, 2013
Why World of Warcraft loses membership.
I must confess, I haven’t logged into World of Warcraft for over two years. TWO years. And, it’s not because the game changed much, but I have, and so has the gaming community. We’ve come to expect better things. Yet, I still compare EVERY new MMO game to World of Warcraft in some aspect. My criteria for judging MMO’s has mostly been, “Is this as fun as WoW?” I know I’m not alone in using this criteria. And, for the most part, new MMOs have fallen short of WoW’s appeal. But, it’s still no surprise that Blizzard saw a loss of 1.3 million subscribers for World of Warcraft in the first quarter of 2013, and another 600,000 in the second quarter. There’s an obvious reason that WoW has lost 1.9 million subscribers in three months; people have changed.
The key to World of Warcraft’s appeal and success was that everyone was playing it; your best friends, your wife, your uncle, your mailman, your professor, your dog-walker, Mr. T, etc. This is no longer the case. The gamers that grew up playing World of Warcraft nearly ten years ago are now ten years older. Think about that for a minute; where were you ten years ago? I, myself, was in high school, with nothing else to do but neglect my homework and play video games. Where am I now? Married with two kids and a full time job. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for three hour raids and dungeon sessions. I certainly wouldn’t be able to play the game for a long enough period of time that would provide any worth to having a monthly subscription, so, again unfortunately, I go without World of Warcraft. It’s just not worth it to me anymore.
With the release of newer, more polished MMOs such as Guild Wars 2 and Neverwinter, there’s no denying that WoW’s graphics and cost model need updating. Guild Wars 2 was a one time purchase of $60, and then you can play it free for life (or until the company shuts down the servers), and Neverwinter, which will be hitting retail sometime soon, is now in a free, open beta. Free. But where WoW falls short on graphics, Guild Wars 2 and Neverwinter fall short (in one way or another) on gameplay. I’m just starting my journey with Neverwinter, so I can’t say just yet whether or not it has staying power, but if it’s anything like my MMOs of games past, my interest in it won’t last more than a year. I haven’t logged into Guild Wars 2 in six months. I haven’t logged into DC Universe Online since a week after the latest content update was released. I haven’t logged into Defiance since a week after finishing up my review for Den of Geek.
The money that I used to spend on my monthly subscription to World of Warcraft now goes to the necessities in life. On top of that point, I have to be more choosey with the games I want to spend my hard-earned money on. I can’t just go to GameStop and buy 2 or 3 games at a time like I used to when I was 15 years old without any bills to pay. So, some games are missed, and I tend to look for the cheaper options for gaming; World of Warcraft is not one of those options. It’s not like there isn’t a cost barrier for WoW to get new subscribers, either. You’d have to first purchase World of Warcraft and its first two expansions, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King for $19.99, then Cataclysm for another $19.99, then Mists of Pandaria for another $39.99, PLUS a monthly fee? No thanks. World of Warcraft would undoubtedly benefit from a free-to-play model (which every Tom, Dick and Harry on the web is crying for). You can add my name to that list, sure, but the game would still have to be updated graphically to hold my interest.
There’s also the need for that “new-new”; gamers always want to try the newest games. Between new retail releases from big companies like EA, Perfect World, NCsoft, Trion Worlds, XBLA and PSN titles, Indie releases every week, and alphas, closed betas, open betas, etc, gamers are constantly getting new options for games to play. And, it’s nearly impossible to keep up. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve missed already this year that I, hopefully, will get a chance to go back and play at some point, simply because there isn’t enough time in the week to play all the new games and still keep up with real life. Thankfully, gaming is part of my career, so I do get to play more than the average adult gamer (awesome). Still, there’s not enough time in the week to play all of the new games that I would like to get my hands on. There’s no time to play it, and my pockets aren’t endless, so where would World of Warcraft even fit into this equation?
It doesn’t.
Friday, August 23, 2013
The Catch 22 in life.
My college wants everybody to be on Facebook. The problem with Facebook is nobody answers and declining followers. I am on Twitter, same thing, nobody answers and declining followers. So I know I stalled everybody by disabling Facebook! I fare better on Youtube, but the shitheads on Youtube thumbs down without looking at Discogs. I steal videos of much more talented people (I am stupid btw) and they do not comment.
catch-22; plural noun: catch-22s
1.
a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.
catch-22; plural noun: catch-22s
1.
a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Videogames owned 0.5%
I am in the 0.5% of videogame owners. I have 859.
1376 0.1%
739 0.5%
554 1.0%
500 1.22%
400 1.91%
300 3.26%
231 5%
200 6.21%
138 10%
100 14.71%
72 20%
50 26.97%
36 33.33%
26 40%
17 50%
10 61.35%
5 73.76%
And everybody talks about playing videogames, but they don't talk to me about it. It's a catch 22 thing. I had 300 comments from Gamespot, but then they deleted them all (GiantBomb) in the name of profit. . It's bizarre. I bet when I own a 950 games in a few years, people still ignore me. I bet I have the same games everybody else buys, but they hate my talent.
1376 0.1%
739 0.5%
554 1.0%
500 1.22%
400 1.91%
300 3.26%
231 5%
200 6.21%
138 10%
100 14.71%
72 20%
50 26.97%
36 33.33%
26 40%
17 50%
10 61.35%
5 73.76%
And everybody talks about playing videogames, but they don't talk to me about it. It's a catch 22 thing. I had 300 comments from Gamespot, but then they deleted them all (GiantBomb) in the name of profit. . It's bizarre. I bet when I own a 950 games in a few years, people still ignore me. I bet I have the same games everybody else buys, but they hate my talent.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Bought Earthbound for SNES
I used to play this game on ZSNES and then tested on my GP2x Caanoo handheld in 2011. This RPG is collectible. My SNES reproductions are even rarer.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
liberals' racial bullying
Democrats spent the first century of this country's existence refusing to treat black people like human beings, and the second refusing to treat them like adults.
After fighting the Civil War to continue enslaving black people and then subjecting newly freed black Americans to vicious, humiliating Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan violence, Democrats set about frantically rewriting their own ugly history.
Step 1: Switch "Democrat" to "Southerner";
Step 2: Switch "Southerner" to "conservative Democrat";
Step 3: Switch "conservative Democrat" to "conservative."
Contrary to liberal folklore, the Democratic segregationists were not all Southern -- and they were certainly not conservative. They were dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats on all the litmus-test issues of their day.
All but one remained liberal Democrats until the day they died. That's the only one you've ever heard of: Strom Thurmond.
As soon as abortion is relegated to the same trash heap of history as slavery has been, liberals will be rewriting history to make Democrats the pro-lifers and Republicans the pro-choicers. That's precisely what they've done with the history of race in America.
In addition to lying in the history books, liberals lied on their personal resumes. Suddenly, every liberal remembered being beaten up by a 300-pound Southern sheriff during the civil rights movement.
Among the ones who have been caught falsely gassing about their civil rights heroism are Bob Beckel, Carl Bernstein and Joseph Ellis. (Some days, it seems as if there are more liberals pretending to have been Freedom Riders than pretending to be Cherokees!)
In the 1950s and '60s, Democrats were running segregationists for vice president, slapping Orval Faubus on the back and praising George Wallace voters for their "integrity." (That was Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The New York Times.)
But the moment the real civil rights struggle was over, liberals decided to become black America's most self-important defenders.
Of course, once we got the Democrats to stop discriminating against blacks, there was no one else doing it. So liberals developed a rich fantasy life in which they played Atticus Finch and some poor white cop from Brooklyn would be designated Lester Maddox (racist Democrat, endorsed by Jimmy Carter).
White journalists who didn't know any actual black people (other than Grady the maid) became junior G-men searching for racists under every bed, requiring a steady stream of deeply pompous editorials.
You will never see anything so brave as a liberal fighting nonexistent enemies.
Liberals drove the entire country crazy with their endless battles against imaginary racists, to make up for their having been AWOL during the real fight over civil rights.
Throughout this period, every black-on-white crime became a re-enactment of "To Kill a Mockingbird"; every cop who shot a black perp was Bull Connor; and every alleged racist incident was instantly presumed true, no matter how preposterous.
When it turned out the hate crime was a hoax, the cop was being mugged and the black kid was guilty, the whole story would just quietly disappear from the news, as if the media were reading a bedtime story to a child, whispering the ending and tiptoeing out of the room.
Then came the O.J. verdict.
Millions of Americans watched as a mostly black jury acquitted an obviously guilty black celebrity and saw black America cheer the verdict. The sight of black law students whooping and applauding O.J.'s acquittal had the same emotional impact as watching Palestinians celebrate the 9/11 attack.
Overnight, the white guilt bank -- once thought "too big to fail" -- was shut down. Henceforth, instead of producing stuttering embarrassment, liberal moral intimidation on race produced only eye-rolling. With that, America became a much healthier country, especially for black people.
Without nonsense claims of racist "code words" to stop them, Republicans were finally able to implement long-sought reforms on crime and welfare. The unqualified success of Rudy Giuliani's crime policies in New York saved tens of thousands of black lives. Welfare reform was such a stunning success that Bill Clinton claimed credit for it.
Blacks had won the final civil rights battle: The right to be treated like adults. Even liberals ceased their oohing and ahhing over every little thing any black person did.
But the post-O.J. paradise came to a crashing halt with the appearance of Barack Obama.
Obama allowed liberals to return to accusing Americans of being racists and get the most liberal president America has ever seen at the same time.
The only firm evidence that there are any actual racists left in America is the fact that so many whites voted for Obama as some sort of racial penance.
More white people voted for Obama in 2008 than had voted for any Democratic presidential candidate in nearly 40 years.
They must have felt guilty about something. Not harboring any racist impulses, I was free to vote Republican.
Now that Obama is up for re-election, liberals are back to their old tricks. A nation with more child pornographers than racists -- a nation that's already elected a (half) black president once -- is suddenly said to be bristling with racists again!
After fighting the Civil War to continue enslaving black people and then subjecting newly freed black Americans to vicious, humiliating Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan violence, Democrats set about frantically rewriting their own ugly history.
Step 1: Switch "Democrat" to "Southerner";
Step 2: Switch "Southerner" to "conservative Democrat";
Step 3: Switch "conservative Democrat" to "conservative."
Contrary to liberal folklore, the Democratic segregationists were not all Southern -- and they were certainly not conservative. They were dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats on all the litmus-test issues of their day.
All but one remained liberal Democrats until the day they died. That's the only one you've ever heard of: Strom Thurmond.
As soon as abortion is relegated to the same trash heap of history as slavery has been, liberals will be rewriting history to make Democrats the pro-lifers and Republicans the pro-choicers. That's precisely what they've done with the history of race in America.
In addition to lying in the history books, liberals lied on their personal resumes. Suddenly, every liberal remembered being beaten up by a 300-pound Southern sheriff during the civil rights movement.
Among the ones who have been caught falsely gassing about their civil rights heroism are Bob Beckel, Carl Bernstein and Joseph Ellis. (Some days, it seems as if there are more liberals pretending to have been Freedom Riders than pretending to be Cherokees!)
In the 1950s and '60s, Democrats were running segregationists for vice president, slapping Orval Faubus on the back and praising George Wallace voters for their "integrity." (That was Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The New York Times.)
But the moment the real civil rights struggle was over, liberals decided to become black America's most self-important defenders.
Of course, once we got the Democrats to stop discriminating against blacks, there was no one else doing it. So liberals developed a rich fantasy life in which they played Atticus Finch and some poor white cop from Brooklyn would be designated Lester Maddox (racist Democrat, endorsed by Jimmy Carter).
White journalists who didn't know any actual black people (other than Grady the maid) became junior G-men searching for racists under every bed, requiring a steady stream of deeply pompous editorials.
You will never see anything so brave as a liberal fighting nonexistent enemies.
Liberals drove the entire country crazy with their endless battles against imaginary racists, to make up for their having been AWOL during the real fight over civil rights.
Throughout this period, every black-on-white crime became a re-enactment of "To Kill a Mockingbird"; every cop who shot a black perp was Bull Connor; and every alleged racist incident was instantly presumed true, no matter how preposterous.
When it turned out the hate crime was a hoax, the cop was being mugged and the black kid was guilty, the whole story would just quietly disappear from the news, as if the media were reading a bedtime story to a child, whispering the ending and tiptoeing out of the room.
Then came the O.J. verdict.
Millions of Americans watched as a mostly black jury acquitted an obviously guilty black celebrity and saw black America cheer the verdict. The sight of black law students whooping and applauding O.J.'s acquittal had the same emotional impact as watching Palestinians celebrate the 9/11 attack.
Overnight, the white guilt bank -- once thought "too big to fail" -- was shut down. Henceforth, instead of producing stuttering embarrassment, liberal moral intimidation on race produced only eye-rolling. With that, America became a much healthier country, especially for black people.
Without nonsense claims of racist "code words" to stop them, Republicans were finally able to implement long-sought reforms on crime and welfare. The unqualified success of Rudy Giuliani's crime policies in New York saved tens of thousands of black lives. Welfare reform was such a stunning success that Bill Clinton claimed credit for it.
Blacks had won the final civil rights battle: The right to be treated like adults. Even liberals ceased their oohing and ahhing over every little thing any black person did.
But the post-O.J. paradise came to a crashing halt with the appearance of Barack Obama.
Obama allowed liberals to return to accusing Americans of being racists and get the most liberal president America has ever seen at the same time.
The only firm evidence that there are any actual racists left in America is the fact that so many whites voted for Obama as some sort of racial penance.
More white people voted for Obama in 2008 than had voted for any Democratic presidential candidate in nearly 40 years.
They must have felt guilty about something. Not harboring any racist impulses, I was free to vote Republican.
Now that Obama is up for re-election, liberals are back to their old tricks. A nation with more child pornographers than racists -- a nation that's already elected a (half) black president once -- is suddenly said to be bristling with racists again!
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