TimTheEnchanter

Dumbest phrase ever created by humans, done for no other reason than to trick society into believing that being a business somehow mystically ascends you to a god-like status and makes you accountable to nobody. Everyone is just accustomed to it being that way. Doesn't make it right. It's a kind of free-reign that business never should've had. And this isn't the same kind of thing as intense regulation that some people are whining is evil socialism, communism, or whatever they're calling it now. What happens when people start acting immoral? A law gets passed to discourage such behavior. Why should businesses not have to operate under the same pretense?

Just imagine other activities being given that get-out-of-blame-for-free card.

"It's just war."

"It's just terrorism."

"It's just theft."

Doesn't make sense, does it? Neither does it when applied to business, or any other thing you can dream up.

That's cryptic-speak (no pun intended) for, "We just felt like it." Nope, sorry. When a product is still profitable, that should be good enough for anyone. They weren't losing any sleep over it. It should've been left alone. At least wait until it becomes wasteful.

But if they were, it would still be "their right." And... nobody sees a problem with this?

Though technically, whether or not the community gets murdered remains to be seen...

Well, your "rule" needs to change then.

People deserve better treatment than being stomped out like a spent cigarette butt after supporting a business for nearly a decade.

Otherwise, what can people use to 'divine' whether or not anything is worth the time? It made sense when games were being shut down for wasting money. But now even games that are still in the black can be deemed not worth keeping alive? Now we can't even trust businesses to behave like businesses?

One invests time, money, whatever, into many things, and hobbies have been being called investments since long before MMO's existed.

Neither the "It's just a game" argument, nor an intense desire for business to be unaccountable for its actions magically isolates MMO gaming from all other hobbies that people invest in.

It wasn't something that anyone ever openly talked about, because frankly there wasn't any need to. Nobody really knew what to expect of MMO's when they began, but the wording of certain things, listening to devs talking about their visions, hearing the long-term goals of other players, etc, all pointed towards a very long-term plan. Even just the amount of grind-time of some early MMO's demanded years of commitment from a more casual gamer (and in the case of a hard-core one, the calculations of time needed to fully level a pre-NGE Jedi in SWG was ridiculously long, and was only changed after a tremendous amount of whining from the community).

If I were to compare the vision of an MMO to anything, I guess it would be a television station, rather than a television show. When certain shows went sour, the station would run new shows (content) and the viewers(players) would keep coming back. Just because its entertainment doesn't mean its automatically expected to have a short lifespan.

Another reason that few had any real foresight about the impact of shutdowns, is MMO's are the first time as far as I know, that any games have been released that couldn't be played independently of company servers. And of the multiplayer deathmatch-style games that predated MMO's and DID rely on company servers, I'm not aware of any company that didn't allow the players to set up private ones after the official servers went dark.

And this assumption isn't even for just old MMO's. Before launch, Bioware openly said at a press conference that they expected to have 500 planets in SWTOR by the year 2025. So at a time long after the fickle nature of MMO communities is common knowledge, and before the game has even launched, they expected it to last at least 14 years. Not even a year later, the game has had to switch to an F2P model. If you want to try and call their 14-year assumption "advertising fluff" I suppose you can, but that's pretty ridiculous even for fluff.

Considering the age of the game, nobody knew what to think of MMO's at the time. It was an accepted idea that these games would have an unbelievably long life, and dated engines would be replaced, upgraded, etc. The pioneering game companies probably also thought this was entirely possible. Only recently has the reality of it begun to hit, which is going to drastically alter the way MMO's are handled. This probably has partially influenced F2P becoming an accepted business model. MMO gamers until recently have been like teenagers falling in love for the first time, thinking the 'homecoming' fling is going to last forever. Now the naivety is fading as even successful games are being shut down. You don't want to pay for dinners and shower a person with gifts when in all likelihood you're going to get dumped in a month no matter what. In the long-run, this new-found cynicism could utterly kill the MMO market unless some kind of a guarantee is put in place.

As for joining other games to 'undermine the evil monarch from within his own kingdom', that would certainly fly in the face of the "voting with your wallet" theory that everyone seems to think makes the corporation vs. consumer match a fair game. The profiteering robots of shareholder-land only communicate in one language, and all they would see is another subscription adding to their already over-sized egos. Besides, we've already seen a lot of censorship happening on Facebook and in other NC-owned game forums regarding CoH. Joining another game and then warning other players about what has happened here, is nothing more than a sure-fire way of getting banned.

Your saying it's not an investment doesn't make it a non-investment.

Sorry, no. Monthly fees for a service IS an investment. One could go out an buy themselves a fricking CAR for less money than some monthly gaming fees would cost them for the amount of time CoH has been running. And I didn't even even go into the time sink that MMO's incur. There are also people out there who actually earn a living from MMO trading.

And if you're saying it's not the same because the value of the investment becomes irrelevant the moment the servers shut down, well 'news flash' the same is true of every man-made system in the universe, money included.

And when was the last time you saw that strategy work? And I mean in the global economic era? The BP oil spill has proven that big businesses are practically immune to PR suicide. And that wasn't just inconveniencing people or treating customers like dirt. They threatened the survival of the entire bloody planet. And where are they now? Back to business as usual like nothing ever happened.

As long as the foolish rats outnumber the smart ones, having the wisdom to "vote with your wallet" accomplishes diddly squat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-LE0ycgkBQ

It sounds wonderful in theory, but seriously, what's the alternative?

How to you entice an ethical change in an entity that exists under the principle of maximizing profit by any legal means necessary? That's like telling a carnivore to stop being an apex predator. That code of 'ethics' immediately makes social morality and empathy an inconvenient afterthought at best, and at worst, an unnecessary impediment to success.

I still have a PC running Windows 95. So there's already a difference.

But yes, there should be the power of give & take on both sides of the customer/business relationship, particularly when it comes to long-term investment.

Nobody should be allowed to suddenly discontinue a service such as this anymore than they have the right to nuke a city (that was still in the black, no less) on a "whim."

Absolutely, I'd love to see it!

As for the rock opera, that sounds pretty wicked too. Is there a project page anywhere for it?

As for graphics and animation, I might be able to help on something there, depending on what it is. I'm absolutely horrid with organic creatures though, beyond modelling a plant or two. This probably has a lot to do with why I got into machinima; the bodies have already been modelled for me.

I'm working on another video, just for the troops. Nothing meant to go to the newssites. Nothing so extravagant as the last video (besides I don't think something like that can happen twice), but it'll be a fun little 2-minute pick-me-up.

Well I'm still seeing particles, I just don't see them interact with the ground the same anymore. Casings fly, but don't sit on the ground waiting to be tossed by a close proximity energy blast. Same like I said with the leaves.

So an easy question to test... DO you see leaves sit on the ground after they fall? I cranked up the particle physics to max (didn't even know there was a higher setting before) and it didn't fix the problem. So if you stand under a tree and the leaves collect on the ground (instead of falling through) then there is something very odd going on here. Kinda a pointless issue in the middle of sunset, but still, that would have me very perplexed.

Though if one ended up rising from the bowels of the Earth and started tearing Paragon's buildings apart, I wouldn't complain (aside from the part where I started shooting at it).

Thank yas! It's hard to say what was causing the problem now, since... I just reinserted the costume data you gave me into another demo and the armor powered up fine.

The original file I no longer have in the proper state though since I was constantly tweaking it for each of the dancers. At the very least though, I know the FX command was still fine, because I checked the code for it to see if it was there. Really weird. I'm a stickler for detail so little things like that really get on my nerves. Besides, I really love the electric armor effect, and way more than the electric aura.

Do you think you'll be able to get the vid finished?

Still, there's a lot of things on the forums that would be nice to keep around, in the event that something happens with the game, even years from now. Celebration threads, walk-throughs, template guides, etc. For reference material if nothing else.

Someone needs to put Atlas Park through a 3D printer.

Not only did I end up with more costumes than I expected, but some I got, couldn't be used in the main part of the vid. Dark costumes in dark scenes means a big no-no in film etiquette, and things that are dark already, get even darker after youtube compresses it. But they're easier to identify on a solid black background than a complex dark one, and dagnabbit, I wasn't going to leave anyone out in the cold. The result was a very fun credit roll.

Whoever originally created the rumor had to be dicking around.