I love it when the ignorant masses cause rules/laws to be put into effect that affect people who are smart enough to make decisions on their own.

I love it when the ignorant masses cause rules/laws to be put into effect that affect people who are smart enough to make decisions on their own.

Perhaps the question is, is there a level of usage that in itself forms evidence that the user isn't smart enough to make decisions entirely on their own? A friend of mine at university was (at least IMO) addicted to gaming, but it's not obvious to me whether or not there's clear blue water between him and that faction of Empeg who've been heard to leave the pub at the end of the night saying "See you on shooting-people-game server such-and-such in half an hour".

Maybe one definition could be that you're gaming too much if it's starting to interfere with your drinking...

Peter

Maybe one definition could be that you're gaming too much if it's starting to interfere with your drinking...

...and that was the moment at which peter realized his calling in life, and founded the Cambridge Gaming Pub, where alcoholic game addicts could continue feeding both addictions without compromising one or the other.

wow, that sucks. the board just ate my half page response. argh. no time to retype... maybe later. but to summarize:

Rhino: BF1942, hands down. i like my playtime to be completely inaffectual to the next time i want to play, and i like to be able to get in and out whenever i feel like it.

Bitt: Other revenue models have been hammered over, but no one wants to take the risk and be the one to fail at it. LucasArts especially, we can't afford to at this point... and we don't have a past of huge risk taking.

Jeff and Tony: Yup, cutting off addicted players has definitely come up on our message boards many times. Social responsability is something that has been discussed believe it or not.

Actually, what I’ve though would be a totally cool idea for an online game is to have components for people who don’t want to commit a lot of time, but would still be interested in the online competition. Something like being able to purchase the “shop running” module of the game, but not actually being able to log in and play the “action” portion of the game. So you could get up in the morning, check the markets online, set prices, order/ manufacture new stuff, etc. and then log off and go to work. You’d only have to interact with the game-world a few minutes each day, but you’d be competing with other players across the world. But what would set this apart from a simple “business simulation” is that the “action” players would really be buying and selling from your shop, thus providing a real economy and not just a simulation. That way you can get gamers who have little time at their disposal involved at (hopefully) a scaled down price (say $5 a month). Maybe the “shop running” idea is a little boring, but maybe you see where I’m going.

Another cool thing to add in would be a “weapons design” component where all weapons have to be designed before they are “produced” and players could sell custom designs. To pull this off you’d have to come up with a very complex “science” of weapon design that somehow forces tradeoffs and makes the “Ultimate Weapon” something of an unattainable holy grail. It’d really only be the engineering types who’d find this type of interaction interesting, but it would be yet another way to compete without spending gobs of time online. Again, users could just pay for the limited design part of the game without having to actually do any of the “action” stuff.

Of course, I could be totally off the mark here. It’s probably more likely that just about anyone who wants to play a computer game is more interested in blowing stuff up than designing a new cool weapon or running an online shop. Probably why I’m not in the gaming industry!

I saw this type of addiction hit a few people, one in an extreme way. Most games allow you to see how much time you have spent playing the game. A person that used to work with me picked up Dark Ages of Camelot, and began playing the free trial (30 days). At the end of that time, he looked at the played time, and it totaled 20 days. Mind you, thats not 20 days in that 30 days he logged in, that was 480 hours played in the game. He had used his vacation time for the year to take off from work, and spent it all in game.

In one month, he managed to play a MMORPG more then I ever have. And I started playing Everquest in 1999, quit it for a while, then moved on to DAoC and now Shadowbane. I still don't think I match his time, though I might finally be close after 4 years.

They are adding huge new features as the game progresses. Eventually you will be able to hop in your ship, fly up into space, and go to other planets as well as do full on space battles.

I was just reading this review of SW:G, and his biggest complaint by far was the lack of content. I assume that that's being taken care of by the developers. What I want to know is if they intended for it to be quite small to begin with and then expand, and, if so, why? I can understand adding new stuff as the game progresses, but from that guy's review, it sounded like it was way too small.

I may have to check it out anyway, assuming I get a new computer in the near future.

I was just reading this review of SW:G, and his biggest complaint by far was the lack of content.

I guess it depends on your definition of content. His was based on EQ. SWG uses different 'content'. Others are having this same problem, check out this thread on the SWG forums for more on the lack of content. Some people agree, others don't.

If the link reports the server is too busy, keep trying. Their forums get hammered constantly.

The impression I get from all of this is that they're currently in ``setup'' mode, where there's not really a lot to do, but there soon will be. I'm not sure what my feelings on that are.

A lot of people have the same impression. Those forums are spammed with people complaining about the game (bugs, price, lack of 'content', etc), but I have only run into one person in the game who wasn't happy, and he was just asking if there was anything to do besides missions.

I have nothing to compare it to since I've never played a MMORPG, but I'm having a blast with it so far.