Aenril

As for mages in cloth armor. This comes from the days of DnD. In the DnD world, and indeed the world of EQ which together heavily inspired fantasy MMOs, Mages needed to use hand gestures and even dance steps in order to summon forth the forces of nature. Actually preventing a mage from making wild gesticulations would prevent them from being able to cast. This is also why it is easy to knock a mage out of casting a spell unless they were good at channeling through.

Big, bulky and heavy armor prevented them from doing the necessary movements with the speed and precision needed to cast spells. Clerics meanwhile, were able to cast magic by just summoning the will of their god of choice and therefore didn't need somantic or movement components. You will notice that these type of casters traditionally wear plate mail or heavier armors. Because they can and it would be silly otherwise in a world of swords and magic.

It is hard enough to get people to switch from an MMO to the sequel. Everquest 2 never really got the support Everquest did. If they were going to be given the option to start over, they explored their other options, which helped WoWs popularity.

Now, telling people to switch to a new MMO while also telling them that they have to support the most expensive console on the market? They are killing this title before it even launches - and they are also killing FFXI in the process.

The language used during the announcement is key I think. They said it would be "launching only on the PS3". To me that sounds like a timed exclusive. Which makes sense since like I said above, they would be killing both games otherwise.

I think there is definately some legitimacy to the idea that support for old technology is holding some games back. Since the vasy majority of MMOs are on a PC, they do have that option of eventually rolling out a patch that scales things up to claim compatability with the larger portion of their user-base. For one example we have Everquest; One of the oldest MMOs still played today, originally it was held back not only on graphics, but on memory usage. One of the biggest excuses they used back in the day of not adding specific content was the size of their "global file". Now, with computers and video cards easily supporting more memory, this isn't really an issue any more. And Everquest has made changes that reflect that.

On the other end we have a game locked to its hardware, Final Fantasy XI. A character cannot display more than 80 items at a time due to the memory limitations of the PS2 that the game supports. Likewise the PS2 holds it back from gaining modern rendering effects. The vast majority of problems FFXI has when they try to think of ways to modernize the game is that they have to continue to support the PS2 userbase. If they would drop support for the PS2, we could see things like quest trackers, more better particle effects and yes, larger gobbie bags / mog houses. They could even finally give throwing weapon skills.

My favorite technology is USB 3.0, since it is something that will help most connected tech and isnt just a one-trick pony.

Looks nifty, but I am still not playing EQ2 until they bring back the Beastlord

I cant wait for this game and will be playing it on the 360. The original PSO was plagued with cheating after it came out on the PC. At least I know that Xbox Live is a more secure system that makes cheating much much harder, if not impossible. I will be selective with who I play with regardless of which platform, so the Xbox kiddies versus Battle.Net kiddies idea doesnt hurt me much.

As an actual gypsy, I am not offended at the use. That being said, I know a couple people that would be very offended. I also find it amusing that there is a whole generation of people that probably thing gypsies are some made up distinction to put in Disney cartoons. We are a semetic race, same as the Jews and Arabs. Biggest different is that during WW2 we were essentially cast to the wind as about 80-90% of all European Gypsies were killed. (Depending on who you ask). Thankfully my relatives lived in America at the time, regardless of vc's statement to the contrary. Heck, the last anti-gypsy laws in America were revoked as late as the 1990s.

This is another one of those things that should appear on all platforms. No technological restrictions here.

I was gonna make a post about how much of a joke these game degree programs are. 6 other classes to teach you how to code up a game? As a person who works as a programmer in the industry I wanted to make fun of these some more and started looking them up.

First thing I noticed is that almost no websites list the actual classes or how many you have to take. They will say stuff like "21 months for your bachelors". 21 months? Even if that is school months that is less than 3 years. For a bachelors? Who certified this school, Cracker Jack? Others are the same, even offering game degrees by taking nothing but online classes. Taking 6 programming classes and one math class does not a programmer make.

I will note one exception I just found though. I wanted to rip on the "Nintendo" school, DigiPen. However on their website I not only discovered no Nintendo-ness, but they actually have their whole catalogue online. Now that school actually looks hard. 154 actual college credits for their degree and almost too much math, computer science and physics. I would probably flunk out of that school =(