I have isolated six major issues with religion (there may be more but upon writing this, I had six in mind). These six issues hurt any religion in which they exists. They are listed below:
Sanctimoniousness. Fundamentalists for some reason believe that they are divinely inspired and that everyone should follow them or they won't be saved and accepted by the grace of God. Their views are the only possible correct views. As such, they push their views on everyone else and try to force everyone to conform to these view points.
Look at gay rights. The religious right is so concerned over how two consenting adults act in the privacy of their own rooms. They believe that since the Bible declares homosexuality to be an abomination (Leviticus), they have the right to tell the gays how to live. Somehow, they have authority over other people.
This does not work in a free society because of the diversity of religions. People may believe in different ethical codes and as such, any authority must base their codes from values that transcend religion (Obama made a speech about this.) Authority from god is not an acceptable source of authority in a free society unless that authority can be applied to everyone, including non-believers. Which god is the right god?
The religious right do not have any authority on how to tell me how to live or behave.
Fanaticism. Most religions have fanatics within who take religions ecstasy to an extreme. Look at Islam. How many people have been killed by fanatics who strap themselves to bombs for a hypothetical heaven? It is revolting. But fanaticism isn't only violence. It is also fundamentalism and the refusal to compromise any belief for any rationality. Fred Phelps is a religious fanatic. He doesn't kill anyone, but he refuses to accept that what he does is immoral because he believes so strongly in it. Fanaticism leads to irrational, and often violent behavior, that does nothing but turn rational people away from religions.
Blind Faith. The most amazing sin of religion is blind faith. We are expected to believe, on the words of an old man at a pulpit or the words of a 5000 year old book, that there is some god out there meddling in human affairs. But we are given no basis of proof. No rational reason as to why we should accept these things as fact. But we are told to believe anyways. We are told to question our faith, but at the same time, we are told to believe in god and how to believe in god. And no rationality is given other than emotional experience and unexplained phenomenon. There is nothing that concretely states that there is a god, that Mohamed was inspired by Gabriel, that Jesus was divine, etc, etc. We are simply suppose to believe it.
This leads to a lack of critical thinking. If people are brought up to believe in a god because some authority told them to, how can we teach them to question the actions of authority figures?
Superstition. The world is still only six thousand years old in the minds of millions of people. A mountain of evidence, hundreds of thousands of scientific journals all support Darwin's theory of evolution and yet Creationism still lives. In fact, it lives so much that some states in the US, especially in the Bible Belt, are trying to push Creationism into a science class.
Superstition is the belief in supernatural phenomenon. All religions have some superstition. But superstition is faulty. Typically, supernatural acts are only supernatural due to being unexplained by science or by merely being coincidence. Something unexplained by science isn't supernatural, it simply means science doesn't yet have a working theory on that. There wasn't always a theory of gravity, for example. It doesn't mean that five thousand years ago, gravity was a supernatural phenomenon, it just meant no one could explain it. And being coincidental doesn't mean anything either. Correlation is not causation. Imagine that I pray to a milk jug for twenty million dollars and then I go and win millions in the lottery. Did the milk jug have anything to do with my winning the lottery?
Superstition leads to blind faith and belief in irrational statements because one refuses to accept that superstition is silly and irrational. It rejects empirical evidence in favor of faith-based "evidence" which isn't evidence at all.
Stubbornness. Religion is stubborn. It took the Roman Catholic church almost 500 years to apologize to Galileo. When something occurs, such as the theory of evolution, religion resists the tides of change furiously, to the point of recklessness. Religions refuse to adapt. In the Middle East, Islamics are still trying to impose 12th century values and laws (Sharia) on nations, laws that have long since been regarded as human rights violations. But the fundamentalists refuse to see this, it may make them recognize that their religion is faulty and they might have to think rationally. But it is easier to stupidly hold on to some values and drag a society down with you rather than to progress. The Catholic church is doing a little better these days. They have accepted Evolution and came to a compromise between genesis and science. But most baptist churches are still pulling back. Its a wonder that South baptist churches have accepted the round earth theory. Islam, unfortunately, is even further back in time than fundamentalist Christianity. To point this out, just a few weeks ago in Afghanistan, a Muslim was on trial for translating the Koran from Arabic to Farsi. Fundamentalists cried out that he be beheaded for such a dreadful act. Christianity hasn't executed someone for translating the bible for 400 years.
Biblical Buffet. The religious right in the US enjoys quoting Leviticus where it states that a man who lies with another man, as if he is a woman, is an abomination, shall be put to death. When they do this, I wonder, do they eat shrimp? Same book, different chapter. Leviticus has a load of dietary laws. Don't eat shrimp, shellfish, pigs, some birds, etc, etc. So, do any religious nuts who argue profusely against gay rights, argue against the consumption of shrimp and shellfish? It is a biblical buffet. They point out which passages are relevant to their interests and ignore ones that are irrelevant. I wonder if religious righties also beat their wives and children when they disobey. This is also in the Bible.
If you accept the bible as an authority, you can't pick and chose passages at whim.
Modern religions would do much better and garner larger and more accepting audiences if they would work harder at avoiding these six issues. If religion cannot compromise and fix these issues, religion might be gone in a century or two.
"Rawr" - some bear in the forest.
J Kuhl Signing Off
Friday, February 20, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Highly Skilled Air Traffic Controller
There is a storm coming towards an airport in Arkansas. All the black dots are airplanes. Watch as the controllers move the airplanes to the airport without getting them into the storm (the red area.)
A few go through the green, but I imagine that the green areas are just heavy rain and nothing too serious that an IFR flight can't handle.
"My wife told me that she wanted something sleek, shiny, and could go from zero to 150 in three seconds. So I bought her a scale. That's when the fight began."
J Kuhl Signing Off
Monday, February 09, 2009
Half Full Glass?
Joe Biden said a day or two ago, that the stimulus package has a 30% chance of failing. Which is interesting because in all of this economic hubbub, its been mostly republicans who've been saying the package won't work.
It kind of scares me that Biden said this, whether or not it was true, because it hints that even the democrats aren't optimistic. Biden could have said the package has a 70% chance of success. Its a true statement, given that Biden's assessment of failure was true, but it is more optimistic and kinda runs along the theme of Hope, which Obama and Biden ran on. I'm not saying they should lie to us, but this is the future of our nation right here. A little optimism won't hurt.
All in all, words like equity and mortgage and liquidate turn my brain into jelly, so I don't really understand the whole mess, I just hope to god the Congress is doing the right thing.
"I wouldn't describe any numerical percentage to any of this…given the magnitude of the challenges that we have, any single thing that we do is going to be part of the solution, not all of the solution," Obama
J Kuhl Signing Off
It kind of scares me that Biden said this, whether or not it was true, because it hints that even the democrats aren't optimistic. Biden could have said the package has a 70% chance of success. Its a true statement, given that Biden's assessment of failure was true, but it is more optimistic and kinda runs along the theme of Hope, which Obama and Biden ran on. I'm not saying they should lie to us, but this is the future of our nation right here. A little optimism won't hurt.
All in all, words like equity and mortgage and liquidate turn my brain into jelly, so I don't really understand the whole mess, I just hope to god the Congress is doing the right thing.
"I wouldn't describe any numerical percentage to any of this…given the magnitude of the challenges that we have, any single thing that we do is going to be part of the solution, not all of the solution," Obama
J Kuhl Signing Off
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Too Good to be True
I didn't trust Obama during the campaign. I voted for him, but I didn't trust him. Everything he said was simply too good to be true.
Now its three weeks into his administration, and I'm beginning to trust him.
It scares me because I'm too cynical to trust a politician, but I want to trust him.
So I start feeling good about him and he goes off and pulls this stunt:
Obama Apologizes about Daschle
He owned up and apologized to a mistake! Bush NEVER did that! Not ONCE (alright, fine, he did say that he should not have put a Mission Accomplished sign on an aircraft carrier). And Clinton, Clinton had to be caught with his pants down before admitting to his big mistake, note that he lied to us before hand (I did not have a sexual relationship with that woman!).
I mean, Obama's a politician! You can't trust him! But he keeps doing things that garner trust. He's closing down Gitmo, he's putting up bills up on the internet for 5 days for the public to view before he signs/vetos them. He's ensuring that when a terror suspect undergoes rendition, they do NOT go to a country that uses torture. He's spoken out against torture. He's making government transparent, moral, and accountable and he's actually admitting to his own mistakes!
Its like some sort of wonder dream. It's too good to be true! I'm still waiting for the suck that Republicans say he's full of.
"We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." -LBJ, another untrustworthy president.
J Kuhl Signing Off
Now its three weeks into his administration, and I'm beginning to trust him.
It scares me because I'm too cynical to trust a politician, but I want to trust him.
So I start feeling good about him and he goes off and pulls this stunt:
Obama Apologizes about Daschle
He owned up and apologized to a mistake! Bush NEVER did that! Not ONCE (alright, fine, he did say that he should not have put a Mission Accomplished sign on an aircraft carrier). And Clinton, Clinton had to be caught with his pants down before admitting to his big mistake, note that he lied to us before hand (I did not have a sexual relationship with that woman!).
I mean, Obama's a politician! You can't trust him! But he keeps doing things that garner trust. He's closing down Gitmo, he's putting up bills up on the internet for 5 days for the public to view before he signs/vetos them. He's ensuring that when a terror suspect undergoes rendition, they do NOT go to a country that uses torture. He's spoken out against torture. He's making government transparent, moral, and accountable and he's actually admitting to his own mistakes!
Its like some sort of wonder dream. It's too good to be true! I'm still waiting for the suck that Republicans say he's full of.
"We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." -LBJ, another untrustworthy president.
J Kuhl Signing Off
Monday, February 02, 2009
Patriotic Drunk Rednecks and Shopping Carts
I can't tell if this is funny or sad.
In other news, some random idiots left a shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot and Stop and Shop. Come on folks, the corral is ten feet away. It takes a total of ten seconds, maybe, to walk the cart to the corral.
US Legislature should increase the income tax on people who are caught leaving carts out. That'll teach 'em.
"Why would we vote for someone with a name like Ba-rack Hoosane Obama when we are at war with the ay-rabs?"
J Kuhl Signing Off
The Perfect MMO
Blizzard Entertainment, a favorite company for many gamers, achieved fame with three games, or rather, three universes. Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo. Starcraft and Warcraft were two best selling RTSs, which are still being sold, a decade or so after their release. And Diablo was a bestselling RPG, along with its sequel, Diablo 2.
Then Blizzard took Warcraft, and made it into the most successful MMO of all time. The geekfest World of Warcraft, which I admit, I've played. I had a level 70 rogue and 70 paladin (Horde, Ghostlands.) A few months ago, I quit the game.
Now I'm in Warhammer. This time around, it isn't on my PC, so I can't play it all the time, sort of a way to force myself into time management. But Warhammer took a lot of things from WoW, and improved upon it. Unfortunately, they also made somethings worse. Overall, my opinion is that Mythic made a game superior to WoW.
The following are what I believe would make the perfect MMO:
1. Give us slots for all our buttons and a method for which we can very easily and quickly access abilities without spending time, on the battlefield, scrolling through different action bars. In WoW, some classes, such as the Hunter, had more abilities than the interface could handle. Warhammer wins this one, as with a four action bar interface, every ability, and health pots, and everything else, fits on the screen with room to spare.
2. A global cool down (GCD) interface on the action bar. The GCD is a one second (or so) delay on all abilities, so that players cannot spam an ability or make a macro using that ability 500 times in one second (I'll cover macros in a moment.) Both War and WoW tie on this.
3. A button to main assist. Assist means that I target what my target is targetting. So if I click on a player named Bob, and Bob has a player named Job, I'll have Bob selected. Then I hit assist, and I have Job selected. WoW wins by default, because Warhammer requires the player to make this into a macro.
4. Macros. Give us an interface to make macros. A macro is a predefined group of actions. Tie.
5. The mailbox should automatically pick names from our friends list when we want to send something to them. The mailbox should also enable us to send multiple items at once. WoW wins
7. Every class should be able to quest efficiently and solo. Not all quests should be soloable (after all, this is a multiplayer game), but most should be. Tanking classes should have a means of doing damage while questing so killing a mob (an enemy creature is known as a mob, this comes from the days of MUD gaming) doesn't take an hour. And classes that are squishy, such as the Warhammer Sorceress (mine is Rank 31) need to be able to survive. A tie for both games.
8. Respawns. Being an MMO, you can't avoid respawns. But the spawn timer needs to be balanced. If it is too fast, then you can't complete quests because mobs are spawning faster than you can kill. If it is too slow, than you can't complete quests if someone else shows up. Personally, the respawn rate should be about twice as long as it takes for the weakest class to kill that mob (assuming that that class is at the same level of that mob), which is around 30 seconds. WoW wins. Most of the time, the mobs in WoW respawned at a decent rate. Warhammer, the respawn rate is a bit too fast and is the primary reason why I hate caves.
9. Caves and other interiors. Caves are difficult areas in MMOs. Caves are narrow, with little room to maneuver. If you see a mob patrolling (a 'pat') near you, and you're already fighting another, there is often no where to go. Caves need to be designed with a relatively low respawn rate, so that you don't get stuck unable to get out because you can't kill things. Pats add a level of challenge, but should not be over done. WoW wins because Warhammer's respawn rate makes caves a PITA.
10. There should be more than enough quests to hit max level. I never played the game, but I heard stories that in Age of Conan, once you hit 20, there was nothing to do, no more quests. And 20 was not the level cap. War and WoW had plenty of quests. Tie.
11. Escorts. Escort quests are terrible. The escort never pays heed of what he is walking into, usually walking into a group of mobs that could have easily been avoided. Rather, if you are going to install escort quests, make the escort follow the player, not the other way around. Warhammer wins for not even putting in these terrible quests.
12. Travel quests. Sometimes these are great. A decent amount of xp for going to another land. But don't over do it. Don't send me back to the original point, and then send me a hundred miles somewhere else, and then send me a hundred miles somewhere else. Come on. Warhammer wins, there are very few annoying travel quests.
13. Quest rewards should benefit the player and the class he plays. Being a rogue in WoW, it was truly annoying to do a quest, only to get a magical staff as a reward. My character is a rogue. She uses swords, daggers, and maces. No staffs. Warhammer wins.
Zones
14. Walking. It gets boring. I did not buy a game to walk all day. We need a means of transportation, to get from place to place without falling asleep. Each town, or quest hub should have a flight path or a teleport device or something that allows you to travel to other quest hubs. WoW had this, but Warhammer only has flight paths in every other zone and only at Warcamps, until Tier 4, which meant that getting to Altdorf/Inevitable City was a long walk from some places (such as Ellyrion.) However, this is a tie because WoW had the terrible ten minute walk from Orgrimmar to Thunderbluff and Darnassus to Ironforge. If you are making your players walk for more than 5 minutes at a time, something is wrong.
15. High traffic roads should not be covered in mobs. Tie
16. Don't make zones so big that it takes a long time to go from quest hub to the area where the quest actually is. I'm speaking of course, of the Barrens in WoW, so Warhammer wins.
17. Instances should have their loot tables modified to fit the party entering. If a group of five (warrior, warlock, paladin, mage, and rogue) enter an instance, items for, say, druids, should not drop off bosses. Tie, neither Warhammer, nor Warcraft do this.
18. Instance 'trash' (mobs that aren't bosses) are fine, but don't over do it. Don't make the instance one long and boring trash fight. Put some in but not too much. Serpentshrine Cavern was an hour of just killing the same damn things over and over again before you got to Lurker. Boring. I haven't done many instances in War, so no comment.
19. Instances should not take 4 hours to finish. One hour, maybe two. Or allow the instance to be 'saved' and the group can go in and finish it. Warcraft did this with raids. Karazhan for example, reset once a week, so you could spend an hour one night, finish it in a week and be done, and STILL HAVE LIVES outside of the game.
Characters
20. Characters should look unique to their class. I really like the way Warhammer did this. No two classes look alike. In warcraft, any cloth-using class, could look the same. Cloth robes shared the same stats, so you could see a priest, a mage, and a warlock in the same gear. Warhammer wins
21. Classes should be able to defend themselves, even against their anti class. An anti-class is a class that is made to destroy another class (ex, rogues killed mages, mages killed warriors, warriors killed rogues, something like that.) As a Sorceress, my anti-class is the Witch Hunter or the Knight of the Blazing Sun. These guys can literally kill me in two hits. I don't mind that Witch Hunters can kill my squishy class, and I don't mind that I have a distinct disadvantage. But come on, a class should at least have a chance, if not a good one. And survival abilities should not be made null and void by having the other class immune to them. WoW wins. Although rock had a disadvantage against paper, rock at least had a chance to fight and escape paper.
22. Make classes unique across factions and races. WoW had vague classes like 'rogue' or 'warlock.' Warhammer had more specific classes, like 'witch elf' or 'bright wizard.' Even Warhammer lore made vague sounding classes (Sorceress) specific (Sorceresses are a specific group of Dark Elves who use dark magic and who serve Malekith, or something like that.) It makes the game more interesting and it makes the divide between factions more obvious. And you really don't have to make a unique class each time. The Magus (Chaos) has similar abilities to the Engineer (Dwarf) and the Witch Hunter (Empire) has the same mechanics as the Witch Elf (Dark Elf.) Warhammer wins
23. Stats. Don't make a class stack ten or twenty stats. I remember WoW hunters needed to stack ranged attack power, agility, stamina, resilience, intellect, mana regen and so on and so forth. Do away with all of this and compress stats, so there are only 7 or 8 total stats, and each class only needs to stack two or three. Warhammer wins.
24. Give us an interface to find groups for group quests and instances. Tie
25. Death. Death needs a penalty, but not a severe one. Reducing xp, possibly even deleveling, is terrible. It removes the challenge of the game because now no one dares to try to fight mobs they know will be difficult. Resurrection sickness was terrible because it meant you are now disabled (all stats reduced by 75%, that does a lot) for 15 minutes. I like Warhammer's method. You rez at the nearest quest hub, with Rez sickness, but a healer can remove rez sickness. The punishment comes in having to hoof back to the quest, deal with the respawns to get back to what you wanted to do. Nothing so severe that I'm afraid to try a challenge, but enough of a PITA that I don't want to get killed. Warhammer wins.
26. Public Quests!!! Give everyone in the zone an area where they can all work together and get loot. Warhammer wins
27. PvP/RvR. Taking keeps and controlling RvR zones for the glory of *insert faction here* makes the game far more interesting. Being ganked by high levels and camped, does not. Warhammer removed ganking, everyone in an RvR zone that is beneath their level (a level 12 in Teir 1 (ranks 1-11)) gets turned into a chicken until they leave the RvR zone. Warhammer wins. They made PvP/RvR far more fun than it was in WoW.
28. Getting stuck. Walking through a Dark Elf quest hub could get annoying frequently. They have these tents that have spikes and my character often gets stuck on them. In 3D Gamestudio, there is a command called c_move, which moves an entity, and one of the parameters of c_move is GLIDE. This means if you hit something, you'll glide along its surface while trying to still move, according to friction. In Warhammer, its easy to get stuck. In WoW, there were mechanincs like GLIDE. WoW wins.
29. Make the zones visually stunning to look at. Some of the zones in Warhammer are beautiful or inticing to look upon. Chaos Wastes, I thought, were dark and creepy, like they should be. Altdorf was a beautiful work of art, very much like a German city, but with its own style built in (crooked chimneys, asymmetrical half timbering, winding streets.) WoW isn't ugly, but Warhammer wins for style.
30. The story. WoW started out with a good story, but then everyone went insane. Arthas went insane. Illidan went insane. Maiev went insane. Malygos went insane. Kael'thas went insane. Kael'thas was a good guy, he sided with the Naga and Illidan to save his people. So why are we killing him in the Eye? He went insane. Warhammer has a rich story line. Everything has a story. Every rally master in every town has a story. You get a Tome of Knowledge with the entire story in it as you play the game. The story literally opens up before you as you play. Warhammer wins.
31. Arena. Warhammer wins for not putting such a dumb idea in an MMO.
"WAAAAGH" - some goblin shaman.
J Kuhl Signing Off
Then Blizzard took Warcraft, and made it into the most successful MMO of all time. The geekfest World of Warcraft, which I admit, I've played. I had a level 70 rogue and 70 paladin (Horde, Ghostlands.) A few months ago, I quit the game.
Now I'm in Warhammer. This time around, it isn't on my PC, so I can't play it all the time, sort of a way to force myself into time management. But Warhammer took a lot of things from WoW, and improved upon it. Unfortunately, they also made somethings worse. Overall, my opinion is that Mythic made a game superior to WoW.
The following are what I believe would make the perfect MMO:
1. Give us slots for all our buttons and a method for which we can very easily and quickly access abilities without spending time, on the battlefield, scrolling through different action bars. In WoW, some classes, such as the Hunter, had more abilities than the interface could handle. Warhammer wins this one, as with a four action bar interface, every ability, and health pots, and everything else, fits on the screen with room to spare.
2. A global cool down (GCD) interface on the action bar. The GCD is a one second (or so) delay on all abilities, so that players cannot spam an ability or make a macro using that ability 500 times in one second (I'll cover macros in a moment.) Both War and WoW tie on this.
3. A button to main assist. Assist means that I target what my target is targetting. So if I click on a player named Bob, and Bob has a player named Job, I'll have Bob selected. Then I hit assist, and I have Job selected. WoW wins by default, because Warhammer requires the player to make this into a macro.
4. Macros. Give us an interface to make macros. A macro is a predefined group of actions. Tie.
5. The mailbox should automatically pick names from our friends list when we want to send something to them. The mailbox should also enable us to send multiple items at once. WoW wins
7. Every class should be able to quest efficiently and solo. Not all quests should be soloable (after all, this is a multiplayer game), but most should be. Tanking classes should have a means of doing damage while questing so killing a mob (an enemy creature is known as a mob, this comes from the days of MUD gaming) doesn't take an hour. And classes that are squishy, such as the Warhammer Sorceress (mine is Rank 31) need to be able to survive. A tie for both games.
8. Respawns. Being an MMO, you can't avoid respawns. But the spawn timer needs to be balanced. If it is too fast, then you can't complete quests because mobs are spawning faster than you can kill. If it is too slow, than you can't complete quests if someone else shows up. Personally, the respawn rate should be about twice as long as it takes for the weakest class to kill that mob (assuming that that class is at the same level of that mob), which is around 30 seconds. WoW wins. Most of the time, the mobs in WoW respawned at a decent rate. Warhammer, the respawn rate is a bit too fast and is the primary reason why I hate caves.
9. Caves and other interiors. Caves are difficult areas in MMOs. Caves are narrow, with little room to maneuver. If you see a mob patrolling (a 'pat') near you, and you're already fighting another, there is often no where to go. Caves need to be designed with a relatively low respawn rate, so that you don't get stuck unable to get out because you can't kill things. Pats add a level of challenge, but should not be over done. WoW wins because Warhammer's respawn rate makes caves a PITA.
10. There should be more than enough quests to hit max level. I never played the game, but I heard stories that in Age of Conan, once you hit 20, there was nothing to do, no more quests. And 20 was not the level cap. War and WoW had plenty of quests. Tie.
11. Escorts. Escort quests are terrible. The escort never pays heed of what he is walking into, usually walking into a group of mobs that could have easily been avoided. Rather, if you are going to install escort quests, make the escort follow the player, not the other way around. Warhammer wins for not even putting in these terrible quests.
12. Travel quests. Sometimes these are great. A decent amount of xp for going to another land. But don't over do it. Don't send me back to the original point, and then send me a hundred miles somewhere else, and then send me a hundred miles somewhere else. Come on. Warhammer wins, there are very few annoying travel quests.
13. Quest rewards should benefit the player and the class he plays. Being a rogue in WoW, it was truly annoying to do a quest, only to get a magical staff as a reward. My character is a rogue. She uses swords, daggers, and maces. No staffs. Warhammer wins.
Zones
14. Walking. It gets boring. I did not buy a game to walk all day. We need a means of transportation, to get from place to place without falling asleep. Each town, or quest hub should have a flight path or a teleport device or something that allows you to travel to other quest hubs. WoW had this, but Warhammer only has flight paths in every other zone and only at Warcamps, until Tier 4, which meant that getting to Altdorf/Inevitable City was a long walk from some places (such as Ellyrion.) However, this is a tie because WoW had the terrible ten minute walk from Orgrimmar to Thunderbluff and Darnassus to Ironforge. If you are making your players walk for more than 5 minutes at a time, something is wrong.
15. High traffic roads should not be covered in mobs. Tie
16. Don't make zones so big that it takes a long time to go from quest hub to the area where the quest actually is. I'm speaking of course, of the Barrens in WoW, so Warhammer wins.
17. Instances should have their loot tables modified to fit the party entering. If a group of five (warrior, warlock, paladin, mage, and rogue) enter an instance, items for, say, druids, should not drop off bosses. Tie, neither Warhammer, nor Warcraft do this.
18. Instance 'trash' (mobs that aren't bosses) are fine, but don't over do it. Don't make the instance one long and boring trash fight. Put some in but not too much. Serpentshrine Cavern was an hour of just killing the same damn things over and over again before you got to Lurker. Boring. I haven't done many instances in War, so no comment.
19. Instances should not take 4 hours to finish. One hour, maybe two. Or allow the instance to be 'saved' and the group can go in and finish it. Warcraft did this with raids. Karazhan for example, reset once a week, so you could spend an hour one night, finish it in a week and be done, and STILL HAVE LIVES outside of the game.
Characters
20. Characters should look unique to their class. I really like the way Warhammer did this. No two classes look alike. In warcraft, any cloth-using class, could look the same. Cloth robes shared the same stats, so you could see a priest, a mage, and a warlock in the same gear. Warhammer wins
21. Classes should be able to defend themselves, even against their anti class. An anti-class is a class that is made to destroy another class (ex, rogues killed mages, mages killed warriors, warriors killed rogues, something like that.) As a Sorceress, my anti-class is the Witch Hunter or the Knight of the Blazing Sun. These guys can literally kill me in two hits. I don't mind that Witch Hunters can kill my squishy class, and I don't mind that I have a distinct disadvantage. But come on, a class should at least have a chance, if not a good one. And survival abilities should not be made null and void by having the other class immune to them. WoW wins. Although rock had a disadvantage against paper, rock at least had a chance to fight and escape paper.
22. Make classes unique across factions and races. WoW had vague classes like 'rogue' or 'warlock.' Warhammer had more specific classes, like 'witch elf' or 'bright wizard.' Even Warhammer lore made vague sounding classes (Sorceress) specific (Sorceresses are a specific group of Dark Elves who use dark magic and who serve Malekith, or something like that.) It makes the game more interesting and it makes the divide between factions more obvious. And you really don't have to make a unique class each time. The Magus (Chaos) has similar abilities to the Engineer (Dwarf) and the Witch Hunter (Empire) has the same mechanics as the Witch Elf (Dark Elf.) Warhammer wins
23. Stats. Don't make a class stack ten or twenty stats. I remember WoW hunters needed to stack ranged attack power, agility, stamina, resilience, intellect, mana regen and so on and so forth. Do away with all of this and compress stats, so there are only 7 or 8 total stats, and each class only needs to stack two or three. Warhammer wins.
24. Give us an interface to find groups for group quests and instances. Tie
25. Death. Death needs a penalty, but not a severe one. Reducing xp, possibly even deleveling, is terrible. It removes the challenge of the game because now no one dares to try to fight mobs they know will be difficult. Resurrection sickness was terrible because it meant you are now disabled (all stats reduced by 75%, that does a lot) for 15 minutes. I like Warhammer's method. You rez at the nearest quest hub, with Rez sickness, but a healer can remove rez sickness. The punishment comes in having to hoof back to the quest, deal with the respawns to get back to what you wanted to do. Nothing so severe that I'm afraid to try a challenge, but enough of a PITA that I don't want to get killed. Warhammer wins.
26. Public Quests!!! Give everyone in the zone an area where they can all work together and get loot. Warhammer wins
27. PvP/RvR. Taking keeps and controlling RvR zones for the glory of *insert faction here* makes the game far more interesting. Being ganked by high levels and camped, does not. Warhammer removed ganking, everyone in an RvR zone that is beneath their level (a level 12 in Teir 1 (ranks 1-11)) gets turned into a chicken until they leave the RvR zone. Warhammer wins. They made PvP/RvR far more fun than it was in WoW.
28. Getting stuck. Walking through a Dark Elf quest hub could get annoying frequently. They have these tents that have spikes and my character often gets stuck on them. In 3D Gamestudio, there is a command called c_move, which moves an entity, and one of the parameters of c_move is GLIDE. This means if you hit something, you'll glide along its surface while trying to still move, according to friction. In Warhammer, its easy to get stuck. In WoW, there were mechanincs like GLIDE. WoW wins.
29. Make the zones visually stunning to look at. Some of the zones in Warhammer are beautiful or inticing to look upon. Chaos Wastes, I thought, were dark and creepy, like they should be. Altdorf was a beautiful work of art, very much like a German city, but with its own style built in (crooked chimneys, asymmetrical half timbering, winding streets.) WoW isn't ugly, but Warhammer wins for style.
30. The story. WoW started out with a good story, but then everyone went insane. Arthas went insane. Illidan went insane. Maiev went insane. Malygos went insane. Kael'thas went insane. Kael'thas was a good guy, he sided with the Naga and Illidan to save his people. So why are we killing him in the Eye? He went insane. Warhammer has a rich story line. Everything has a story. Every rally master in every town has a story. You get a Tome of Knowledge with the entire story in it as you play the game. The story literally opens up before you as you play. Warhammer wins.
31. Arena. Warhammer wins for not putting such a dumb idea in an MMO.
"WAAAAGH" - some goblin shaman.
J Kuhl Signing Off
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