No, it's a response to your

The point being, WoW's success compared to SWG has relatively little to do with the licensed properties and everything to do with being a better *game*.

baleeted, nvm

i actually just realized from reading this thread that the most annoying thing about online gaming is that everyone thinks they're an expert on games and game balance.

Has to be a lot more annoying when you actually *are* someone with experience in design/balance, eh?

Kalman:
I don't really agree. Star Wars licenses in games have been very patchy at best (some great stuff, some terrible stuff) so it's not the auto-hit with the gamer base that Blizzard's properties are. Furthermore I'm skeptical about the Star Wars mythos's penetration in the Asian market, where WoW has made principal gains. On the other hand, we all know the penetration of Blizzard's worlds in the same market.

But yes, WoW is a better game than SWG, and this explains (partially) its enduring (rather than initial) success.

The reason I thought the comment was ironic was because he seemed curious as to how it's possible to screw up a game with the Star Wars license when there have been a great many games that did just that.

On a lighter note:
IRT #53
I just got Dragonmaster'd

i think SWG started on a better platform, gave the players a lot more freedom, but had much less contents, and worse devs.

the design team for SWG made some monumental errors that WoW has been lucky enough to have gone without.

in the line of bad decisions SOE made with SWG, i attribute the first major one to "free holocron". I can't think of a similar mistake in WoW.

Well, having experience doesn't make you an "expert" (not that Elendril isn't an expert.)

Koster has indisputable experience in design, but the consensus in this thread seems to be that he's still pretty crappy at it.

To be fair, I would take a pretty populist approach and say that anyone who has 3000+ hours of experience (which most of the here do...) at something is pretty qualified to at least have an opinion. Not to say that their opinion would have good consequences or has merit, but they're not exactly an idiot off the street, either. Just because someone is patently wrong doesn't mean they're not qualified to discuss the topic. (Check out a few famous scientific debates in history).

I've noticed most of the pet peeves people list aren't unique to videogames, though. I hate that most people are idiots who can't think in discrete terms.

So basically this list can be summarized as "The problem with online games is the other people playing them", ok got it

Re: Elendril from the first page --

As a recent undergraduate with a major in Philosophy, I disagree about the value of the individual not trained in the field attempting his hand at it. Yeah, he looks like an idiot at first when doing it (we all do at the start because we're used to a certain way of thinking), but it's my personal belief that philosophy is a crucial component behind the decisions every person makes, whether he knows it or not, and an understanding of it can lead him to make better decisions. Give the armchair philosopher some proper instruction in philosophical thinking and he ceases being an armchair philosopher, because he learns how to properly articulate his argumentation without making presumptions.

i'm not suggesting that people shouldn't attempt to delve into difficult questions. quite to the contrary, i think investigating such things ought to be encouraged. i'm suggesting that far too many people portray themselves as an authority on, say, buddhism, because they read one book by the dalai lama that was on the NYT bestseller list.

Similar to alot of other people's posts but my list would be:
10. Armchair raid leaders
.
.
.
1. Armchair raid leaders

Nothing frustrates me more than misinformed "experts" spewing nonsense about encounters.

More frustrating than if I were to teabag your corpse and put a spraypaint over it with the picture of a penis?

Oh, its on!

Agreed, usually the disinformed and stubborn RL'ers don't last too long though. Also, outta the 40 people in the raid there will always be good advice and suggestions to be found.

As a former RL you know when to offer suggestions and when to let the RLs figure it out themselves. The people that don't understand the difference (and the encounter) are what annoy me.

People who don't have real lives, and try to belittle people in game to compensate piss me off.