It's good to see. The UK one is still ticking upward too (133.5k/100k). It's been an impressive last minute push.
Now, we wait and see I guess. I expect nothing useful to come from the UK one, but at least we force them to respond again. Even if it is the same response.
The EU one, I really do hope something comes of it.
They didn't close it. They provided an answer early. That as they see it, existing trade and consumer law should cover games and they don't plan on carving out extra legislation for it but they will "keep an eye on it".
Now it is over 100k, it doesn't actually mean anything more than they "might" debate it in parliament.
Now, don't get me wrong. I signed the petition, and I think they SHOULD look into it. But, my old cynical bones tell me that even if they do have a debate in parliament. It will be at a time when there will be 5 MPs in there, who will have nothing to say on the matter and it will be swept under the rug with a further canned statement drawn up by some civil servant in whitehall talking about consumer law just like the statement before.
Most western governments are on the side of industry, and that includes game developers. I cannot imagine they care about this subject and will do the bare minimum lip service to move past it.
I hope I'm wrong.
I do have a bit more hope for the European parliament. Just a little. They do seem to be a bit more pro-consumer. That is the one that matters most IMO.
I don't think it's rose-tinted glasses really. I think it's just the change in dynamic. It was definitely different during the "real" classic times (I would say classic to Wrath).
In 2005 when I started playing you needed to group up to get things done really. When you did this you met people. You talked, not with a microphone, but you would be talking. You'd get to know people, they'd invite you to dungeon groups and vice-versa, it would widen both of your in game circles and so on.
When I got to the position to raid, I was on an RP-PvP realm and while there were raiding guilds, many people were in smaller guilds that were either role-playing or guilds of friends. So, there were often raiding groups. I was in one of these, and we had our own guild chat-esque thing that everyone in the group could chat through and of course raids were mandatory voice. Because generally you did need to have communications to raid. This increased your in game circle too.
I still speak to some people now, on social media in various forms that I played the game with in 2005-2010. Some I met, others I never did. I've not really played retail much for a while now. But, it's not the same. To an extent, neither is classic now.
Now, probably an unpopular opinion because I think a lot of people think Blizzard's actions led to this change in community spirit. I actually think it's the other way round. I think they saw their player-base changing, and adjusted the game to suit. The side effect is that it put off some of those with a more social gaming mindset for good. But, it would have happened anyway.
This is the answer. If you don't like live service don't buy live service games. If the majority have the same opinion there won't be profit in it.
Games publishers are businesses and they want to make money.
Now in reality I think they make more money from those that are buying microtransactions and so long as that makes them more money than selling a plain single player game, it's a no brainer they'll keep making the.
My first ever international business trip (in the late 90s) was to Skovde, and that was for software development reasons. So the town has a long history for it.
That's weird. I'm getting to the age where I wouldn't see the point in 4k, I'd need to have my head on top of the screen to see it. But refresh rate can be felt in fluid scrolling etc and definitely even if only on the unconcious level, improves awareness in games too.
Here you had several town maps, including dual carriageways, main roads, side roads, one way streets. And you could just drive down any of them. They were all nondescript, but the amount of memory really limited what could be done.
There was also the games using the freescape engine. Driller, Darkside and Total Eclipse. These were all about as open world as you could achieve on the hardware of the time.
In terms of "open world" the definition is open to interpretation. I'd argue that text based adventures were open world too in their own way. So it really depends on what features people agree makes an "open world" game as to what the first game that contains all those features was.
There have been "open world" games since the 1980s. Just of course, memory limited how big that world could be, and how much you could do in it. The genre as a whole is ancient.
So if you mind sharing your data, don't get the shiny. You know it will become like that shiny pony back in wow's wrath expansion. It told you more about the person than anything else.
I really don't see the problem, provided it is cosmetic. If you don't want to link, you don't get a glittering, whatever in game. If you don't mind sharing your datas, then you get the shiny thing (and everyone knows you don't mind sharing your datas).