Azarkon
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Posts posted by Azarkon
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I don't have a point that I can put my finger on.
Africa is worse off than the Middle-East, but no one cares?
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Why 70%? As opposed to, say, 90% or 10% or 50%?
Odd number... (except it's even, meh
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Talking from a financial standpoint -
JE & Kaftan are absolutely correct - Blizzard is a company that can start off with a prototype, playtest it heavily throughout the period of a few years, decide to scrap it completely, and develop a new one until they get it "just right." And if they never get it right (ie Lord of the Clans & Starcraft: Ghost, which wasn't developed by Blizzard but was under the Blizzard "seal of quality"), they simply discard the game in order to preserve their reputation. Try doing that as a developer under publisher pressures.
There is also the matter of Blizzard's unstoppable marketing, PR, and global localization teams. They have the money to spend on advertisement, and, along with the "quality" word of mouth associated with Blizzard (due to the above), this is a potent advantage compared to smaller, less well-established companies.
Talking from a first-contact point of view -
Blizzard's success back in the heydays of the RTS genre and their masterful acquisition of key development teams (ie Condor->Blizzard North) is what gave them the financial resources necessary to accomplish the aforementioned feats. In this manner, they're very similar to Bioware - BG and BG2 built the basis of Bioware's fanbase, namesake, and finance, which in turn allowed them to spend ~4-5 years in the development of NWN 1 which, despite the less-than-stellar OC, guaranteed its success via the sheer abundance of features.
Finally, from the POV of a gamer -
Blizzard games are must-buys for many because of five reasons:
* They're always high-quality, because Blizzard simply does not release games that they do not consider up to par with their reputation. This also tends to mean an absence of bugs, the presence of significant polish even in the smallest of details, etc.
* They always have stellar gameplay - Blizzard have a good sense of what constitutes interesting and addictive gameplay, and this is something that they're willing to iterate as long as needed in order to get right.
* Excellent production qualities in terms of art and music - despite losing much of their artist team post-WoW, Blizzard seems to make excellent acquisitions in terms of artists in the industry.
* They always have mass appeal - the Warcraft world is like a watered down version of the Warhammer world (same with SC and WH40k) that trades the gritty, dark aspects of WH for the much ligher, "epic" atmosphere of an adventure narrative. Their art style, being Disney-esque, is very approacheable to players of all ages.
* The above is also in part due to Blizzard's focus on *streamlining*. Blizzard's games are always easy to play and they're always adorned with simple, user-friendly interfaces that require minimal effort on the part of players trying to learn it. Compare this to, say, Bioware's NWN or SoE's EQ 2, both which actually required you to *learn* the user interface and both of which had a generally clunky feeling throughout the game. The same streamlining is present in Blizzard's gameplay - you're never really in doubt as to what a spell/ability/unit does, because the information is presented in a simple, easily accessed way, and the game mechanics themselves are designed in such a way as to not require complicated descriptions (as opposed to, say, D&D). For this aspect of Blizzard's games, I like to use an example:
In a Blizzard game, the spell Magic Missile would simply say:
Magic Missile
(Rank 1)
Casting time: 1 second
Mana Cost: 5 mana
Does 1-5 damage to a single target.
In a SoE game, on the other hand, the spell Magic Missile would say:
Magic Missile
(Apprentice I/Apprentice II/Adept I/Adept II/Master I)
Casting time: 1 second
Recovery time: 0.5 second
Recast time: 0.0 second
Concentration: 0
Target: 1
Range: 20 yrds
Power Cost: 5
Mastery: Evocation
Inflicts 1-5 damage to target
* +1.5 for each two caster levels past the first
* Interrupts casting
If target is not Epic
* Does 100% more damage against magic vulnerable targets
* In PvP, the spell instead does 1-4 damage, and does not interrupt spells
Other companies have, as of late, tried to adopt this aspect of Blizzard games, but in trying to do so they've generally equated streamlining with shallow gameplay, forgetting that Blizzard's games are always "easy to play, hard to master."
Anyhow, those are my feelings with regards to Blizzard's success.
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The best reasons for abortion, imo, are these two:
1. The controversy inherent in defining the time when life begins (ie at conception, at the point of brain development, or at birth).
2. To prevent the government from dictating people's moral outlooks.
If there was no controversy as to when life begins, then the abortion issue would be one-sided because it'd fall under either clipping a mass of flesh or murder. However, because such a controversy exists, the issue becomes a matter of morality - and laws should not be in place to dictate morality. Personally, I would never support abortion except in life-threatening situations; however, I would also not support the government taking away another person's right to choose his own moral priorities. This, I think, is the essence of the pro-choice argument (and not the "zomg I want the choice for women to have an abortion anytime they want cause I'm selfish and most definitely will use abortions in place of abstinence and contraception~" that the pro-life side keep trying to paint it as).
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I'm kinda curious about you, Hades. On one hand, you strike me as someone who wants the US to be isolationist - ie not to meddle in the affairs of other nations, and yet on the other you appear to be a hardened moralist who wants to see economic sanctions, which are most definitely the instrument of US neo-colonialist intervention, being implemented against authoritarian regimes. I understand the whole "we shouldn't do business with bad governments" angle, but you do understand that a sanction on the part of the US is not merely a hands-off approach for us, but an aggressive policy of containment, right?
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So still a top-down revolution, huh? Well, we can agree to hope, but more than that I wouldn't count on it. Certainly, any actions on the part of Western powers wouldn't do jack and would probably exacerbate the situation, in my view.
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This is also no excuse for the communist regime to deny people democratic reforms. The majority of the population (even most of the peasants) has improved their economic well-beings many folds since the early 80s, but the political system has remained about the same. Furthermore, a country's economics will always be linked to its politics. An unprogressive political system in China will eventually hinder its economic progress. The current stability sustained by the economic boom of China will end, and to reform without bloodshed might not be possible anymore.
The leadership has no interest in democratic reforms, because that cuts into their political power. The rich have no interest in democratic reforms, because they see nothing to be gained and everything to be lost. The poor, while they may want democratic reforms, are not pissed off enough to fight for democratic reforms, and at any case most of them blame the local governments and not the central government, which they associate with the old Communists that liberated China. And none of the above want democratic reforms as imposed by a foreign government, ie the US in Iraq. Putin put it best when he brushed off Bush's proposal for democratic reforms in Russia: "if by democracy you mean what's happened in Iraq, we'd rather not have that, thanks."
So tell me - how exactly do you bring about democratic reforms?
India has a similar economic structure and its democracy has worked. Maybe an electoral system will work in China to offset the dominace of the peasants?People in China do not consider the weak infrastructure of India, alongside its numerous rural problems, its caste biases, and its internal fragmentation issues, an example of success, so I doubt bringing up India will help your cause.
I am not saying Falun Gong is pushing for any sort of political change but this phenomenon does reflect a void within the Chinese society that cannot be filled by material wealth or any sweet lies about communism.If the sort of revolutionary change you're suggesting by innuendo is what the Chinese people wanted, they would've stuck with Communism. No, like normal human beings, that's not what they really care about. But a comfortable living that does not involve starvation due to a failed harvest, and which includes all the nifty luxuries of the modern world? Now we're talking.
Make no mistake, the PRC is not immortal. Their success lasts insofar as they are able to keep up the economic boom that gives off the impression that China is moving forward and becoming a global superpower. When that streak ends - and, significantly, not by foreign intervention but by the mistakes of the PRC itself - they will have to deal and that might just include democratic reforms. But till then, I wouldn't hold my breath in believing that anything can be done.
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Remember Taiwan? It achieved considerable success in democracy within one decade. How could democracy be hopeless in China where the culture of the people is almost identical?
Two reasons:
1) because Taiwan is a small island, whereas China is a diverse nation comprised of 1.3 billion people; managing an island is always easier than managing a continental empire
2) because Taiwan had a hell of alot of foreign support (ie from the US) that essentially produced a first world country in terms of living conditions; if tomorrow, China attained the same living conditions, democracy in the Asian sense (which is *not* the same as a lack of cronism, nepotism, or corruption - there is corruption, even within Taiwan) would probably not be far away. Let's not forget how oppressive the KMT regime was upon Taiwan when they first arrived. The PRC is no different.
We cannot change the corrupt political culture overnight, but any progress beats stagnation and to hope for the best outcome while doing nothing is no solution to any problem.What makes you think there isn't change? The PRC's favorite saying is that it lifted 400 million of the world's poor out of poverty. These people, whom I do have contact with, are considerably well off and do not, largely, suffer the kind of problems you see publicized by Western press. It's the peasants - ie those who were left behind in the economic boom - that are largely discontent and the victims of local thuggery and corruption.
Unfortunately, it's also the case that these peasants lack much of the education that you'd expect from an average first world citizen. The success of democracies are largely determined by the qualities of its people; in China, democracy would mean the dominance of 800 million unwashed uneducated masses over < 400 million middle-class, among which a small fraction holds a majority of the wealth (much like the US). Can we say Communist revolution all over again?
I think that you might also have underestimated the Chinese society's hunger for change (socially and politically). Why do you think that Falun Gong gained so much influence over China so fast that the central government felt the threat to its stability and power to rule? The Chinese people have tasted material wealth and their pursuit of luxury has not brought them the full satisfaction expected.Err, I hope you're not stating that the reason Falun Gong gained so much influence is because of its push for change. Falun Gong is a cult (insofar as the term can be applied - I'm not trying to be derogatory to their goals here, but they have very cultish features) and its appeal is largely religious. Yes, religion can be awfully influential, as we've seen in the Middle-East, and when it comes into contact with a secular authoritarian government there's bound to be major clashes of power. That's what happened with Falun Gong, unfortunately.
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Not this thread again.
Ignorance, as always, on the part of people who don't/can't understand what is the real problem with China and what are the real solutions. I guess I can add a few tips:
* The central government in China does not hold all the power, nor is it a united entity that can be judged as one. The thuggery that is most oftenly reported by Western press has to do with the actions of local governments, which are corrupt, self-serving, and cannot be easily controlled due to the whole cultural "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" tradition of nepotism that has been ingrained within Chinese society (and one might argue Asian society in general) for thousands of years.
* Democracy, implemented in such an environment of corrupt officials and bureaucratic entanglement, cannot possibly function. What's to stop the local boss and his cronies from misreporting votes? The central government that is comprised of the friends and families of such officials? Yeah, right.
* A revolution to overthrow the central government will do nothing; as I said, nepotism and cronism are ingrained within the political culture. All you'd accomplish is replace one corrupt government with another. Remember, many of the current PRC power holders came from the peasantry, so it's not a matter of "teh rich are all evil teh poor are good and honest!11!"
* There's no such thing as "appeasement" with regards to China, at least not in the sense of appeasing Hitler. Stop all inflow of Chinese goods and nevermind what happens to the US (ie likely economic depression), China's economic collapse will bring about far worse consequences and will likely destabilize the entire region. A strong, authoritarian China is preferrable to a fragmented, sectarian, and most importantly *impoverished* China. Why? Think WW 2 - why did Germany fall so easily into the hands of Hitler? You might as well ask for another Islamic Revolution or North Korea.
* There is nothing, ultimately, that the West can achieve through embargos, sanctions, wars, etc. to change China that is not for the worse. The Chinese government might make some concessions with respect to human rights, but based on their record with stopping piracy, I wouldn't hold my breath. In fact, I doubt the local governments would care what the central government says, since behind closed doors it's all a family game anyhow (and this is what many Western observers don't understand about China - they try to approach it as if it were a Western sociopolitical state built upon the cooperation of industies, companies, and governments each serving their own enlightened self-interest, when it is in fact very much a game of powerful families and friends).
And this represents one of the central hubris in American thinking - that other cultures can abide by the same rules it abides by and triumph similarly. Given the massive failure of such an ideology in the Middle-East, I'm surprised there are still people in the American government that believes in the same sort of engagement with China. Until you can change the culture of China, there is no "good solution," and the days when the US could simply go into a country, destroy its infrastructure, and rebuild it from the ground up (ie what it did with Japan and South Korea) are long over. The US cannot even rebuild Iraq; what makes you think it can do anything in China other than spark a world war the likes of which we have not yet seen?
Historically, for China, a strong central government has always equaled prosperity while a weak central government has ever equaled internal collapse, mass suffering, rampant corruption, and bloodshed. This will not change. What might change, though, is the living conditions of the Chinese people and, by way of effect, their willingness to tolerate stringent social control. What are the concerns of the rising Chinese middle class? Politics? Not so much. But the ability to spend money as they please in pursuit of luxury and to enter into the 21st century of mass consumption? Yes, very much so, and if you observe carefully, the success story of the PRC lies precisely in its ability to offer economic and social freedom while retaining political control (albeit hampered, in large part, by the presence of corrupt local governments). And it is from this point of view alone that we can hope for the future of China.
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All this talk about the weather being hot and no mention of global warming? What has happened to this forum?
Anyhow, I'm roasting in CA, which is surprising given that the weather here is supposed to be mild compared to elsewhere. I do think that there is cause for alarm, even if Al Gore didn't make An Inconvenient Truth.
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If I made a portal on the ground, and then one directly above it on the ceiling, and then jumped into the one on the ground, wouldn't I fall forever?
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More fuel for the fire:
(From cnn.com)South of Beirut, Israeli forces targeted Debiyeh and Sarasand, a coastal road leading to Tyre, according to Lebanese internal security forces.One of the airstrikes hit a minibus carrying 20 civilians, killing at least 15 of them, Lebanese internal security sources said.
The van was heading along the coastal road from Shamaa to Bayada when its passengers stopped at a U.N. base asking for shelter and were turned away, a security official said.
The van was continuing on toward Bayada when it was hit, the official said.
I hope this teaches the Lebanese that in this world, you can't depend on anyone to stand up for you. Not the Lebanese government. Not the UN. Not Hezbollah, and certainly not the US. Everyone's a victim, except those who choose to stop being victims.
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History is not determined by those who are right, but by those who are strong. Israel understands: the US didn't enter WW2 to save the Jews from genocide. We entered WW2 because we were attacked by Japan and because our allies in Europe were getting pounded. Number One comes first; allies go second. Right and wrong? Eh, a distant third.
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The only power capable of stopping Israel now... Is the power of love! :D
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Who needs enemies, when your allies stand against you whenever you go to war?
This isn't about right vs. wrong, Hades. It's about maintaining both a system of alliances and the facade of national righteousness. Bush is simply bushbeating around the grass to make it look like the US has got the moral high ground (ie the situation is "pathetic" - his words); he's not going to shake the US-Israel alliance.
Iran isn't Israel. Iran's an enemy. Israel, an ally. That's how it goes and have always went.
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Israel is at fault insofar as it was a fault to put Israel there in the first place. National survival, with respect to Israel, means putting an end to anti-Israeli organizations like Hamas and Hizbollah before they can gain a significant following. Israeli politicians that do not think like this won't last long in a country that's been the target of terrorist attacks ever since it was born - it only took, what, one major attack to make the US go berserk? Israel's been taking it for decades.
Feel free to blame the Western-centric "international" organization that decided Israel's fate back in the day, but it's too late to regret that decision now. You can't ask every Israeli to pack up and leave the land that's been their home for many years, and which has always possessed a symbolic value in their religion, even if the US is willing to offer relocation within its borders. And there's a fat chance of that happening.
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Idiot. Who the hell said they were prisoners of those guys? They aren't. Sheesh.
Just because they are in Lebonon they must be held by terrorists! OH NOES!
Give me a f**king break.
Well, the first two posts were in jest, but since you took it seriously, there is a gesture of truth in'em:
Bush isn't going to do anything about Israel, because Israel is an American ally and he'd look a real hypocrite for calling an end to Israeli hostilities while his country is still in Iraq, and he isn't going to negotiate with Hizbollah, which runs this war in Lebanon, because Hizbollah is a terrorist organization. That's the bottom line.
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Who the hell said they were in the hands of terrorists?
Bush did :D
Hizbollah is named a terrorist organization by both Israel and the Bush administration.
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Why is this topic on nigh every message board I visit? Is there some central hub of information that engineers what's on forum goers' minds? Perhaps in the 10th dimension?
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Bush: "We don't negoti-ate with terrorists."
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We agree a-plenty on games, Eldar, but this is Way Off-Topic
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Does it matter what it's called?
Putting *the* Jewish state in Muslim central might've been a dumb idea, but it does pour plenty of oil on the whole religous aspect of the Chosen people and their trials on the way to the Promised Land. The situation there is not merely political - it's Biblical. I'm sure the fair-minded would argue otherwise, but it's funny how these things work - it's almost as if the rest of the Christian world is looking on with bated breath for the fulfillment of the Prophecy. You don't need to be apocalyptic to understand the Middle-East, but it helps.
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If this is Alazandar's mod series, I found that Part II (Crimson Tide of Tethyr) was pretty good as far as NWN mods go. It seems that the transition to Premium actually shortened his mod's length and, if people here are to be believed, quality.
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Depends on the evidence. Since I don't have all the evidence and the government appears to be hiding some of the evidence, I do think that it's possible that the simplest explanation is a degree of government involvement, yes.
")
Neverwinter Nights: Darkness over Daggerford
in Computer and Console
Posted
Yeah, modules rarely get that right for some reason - after instant leveling at the start, wizards and clerics need a mandatory resting period.