>> ^Ryjkyj:

"Excuse me, miss... I speak WOW."


Noob don't want the help, noob don't get the help. =)

What's wrong with the raid, don't worry you can tell me, I'm a shaman.

Wow, interposing WoW words into Airplane! is easy =)

I hope the people in her village brought her lots of food as a sign of respect and thanks, since as the village shaman she clearly kept the evil spirits out of the village...


How is it possible some of our species still dwell in the 21. century BCE instead of CE?

*facepalm*

This video is pure fail.

The premise is great, as EQ was definitely harder 'back in the days', but this is NOT EVEN REMOTELY 'back in the days'. The progression servers were an attempt at nostalgia that didn't quite cut it for me and quite a few others.

BTW, it's pronounced "Toonahhrree".

The following reasons are why EQ was harder back in the days:
1. Lag from the ultra-fast 14.4Kbps modem speeds
2. Holes in the world that have since been patched
3. Ultra-busy GMs and customer service (real fun when you fall through the world and can't get your corpse).
4. Much harsher corpse system, including no ability to drag (only to pull the corpse to you, which everyone macro'd so it was essentially like corpse dragging today), and the almost-guarantee of your own death when trying to recover your own corpse. /consent was a BEEYATCH when you had to trust the corpse dragger not to loot your corpse!
5. NO MONEY! Research the controversy of the plague rat tails that came later in the game. If you weren't a caster-for-money, such as a Shaman, Druid, or Chanter, you had to farm your own cash, which was ULTRA slow. And even for the casters it was often long hours of work, tho with much greater reward.
6. NO GEAR! The gear you could get before the first expansion was minimal at best, often requiring many, many, many hours of crafting or huge wads of plat to get. "Why yes, I would like to pay 100 plat (ie, potentially 30 hours of work) for that +1 to DEX ring!"
7. Camps. Don't even get me started on this. I get so much nerd rage TO THIS DAY about camps.
8. Binding. Nothing like having to pay a caster for where you're going to be resurrected, and then forgetting all about it until you're about to die and you realize you're literally a 30 minute's run away from where you bound.
9. Much harsher death penalties. I remember losing a LOT more XP when I died. I think if you died at 50 you'd lose a whole level, but don't quote me on that.

None of the above would you have experienced much if AT ALL on the progression servers. Gear was better, cash farming easier, corpse retrieval barely needed, never see all camps in a zone taken, etc.

To be honest, the reason it was "more difficult" was that they didn't pander to their players. They made you work for what you got, whether it be your XP, your cash, or your quests. Quest tracker? Yeah, that pen and paper next to your keyboard. Travel? Use autorun and pray you don't get creamed by the level 30 rare monsters in the level 10 zone. Crafting something? Better know your recipes.

Hell yeah, I miss it.

hahahaha yea you protesters should be more like the Tea Party!! totally grassroots legit uncorporate wise shaman!

Wow was that fox or cnn guess it dont matter.

So glad this sift is here!
I just saw Evelynn Glennie last night in a kick ass performance of a brand-new concerto written especially for her called "Shaman" It was virtuousic and mesemerizing. She is truly a unique talent. So inspiring.

If this stuff is true, it really brings validity to shamanism, witch doctors, and even — dare I say — christian exorcisms and evangelical healing rituals. And as far as the placebo effect goes, it's not science that makes a good placebo, but a good salesman.

I've seen little in WoW that has surprised me. There are a few things here and there, but it really is a game copied from another game that, that game copied from yet another and then they polished it. And..as The Mythbusters proved you can polish a turd; so taking this old-outdated-prehistoric-you-get-the-point concept of go fetch times 5 per level and go gather times 5 per level plus the times 5 per level go kill stuff -- this is WoW's main feature o'fun and is the core to leveling.

The items are okay, some quests are awesome: there's a Plants vs. Zombies type quest that is well done and VERY refreshing, some of the NEW new newbie areas (goblins and furry humans) have great opening quests and have "phases" which are essentially instances "on the run" -- you don't notice it load and others don't know your in it unless they're grouped -- essentially a personal instance, there are a few "red pill" vs. "blue pill" such as making you realize you need to jump off a cliff to complete it, some of the class specific are great due to their obvious care and attention to detail in teaching you how to play your class effectively (the rogue has some of these that are a joy to play), etcetera -- oh wait, there isn't really much beyond that except instances, raids, and "PvP".

Instances can be great with your buddies and when the group size is a nice manageable size, but the fact they don't have randomized group size and level based dungeons is ridiculous, with this much time having passed. The fact that some of the boss fights start of at super hard and never bother to ramp up is stupid (as wiping should minimized to affect only idiots; trust me it doesn't matter if everyone has l33t gear, everyone should have the chance to have a character they feel is special and a force to be reckoned with). Where the hell are unique, non-soulbinding items; i.e., there are these "named" (I know they've made a few, laughable, *requires a raid* to get the guild leader the super item, which means you've got a better chance to win the lottery if you're an average player ) items that could be made into the thousands available (non-soulbinding so that they can be sold on the auction house -- which would fight gold-farmers and allow ANY player to get: THE GOODS) that drop once per server and have a 100% chance of being found for everyone...?

I could go on, but I think my point is made. There is little thought going into game creation and mechanics. Everyone stole from the MUDS, Ultima Online, and what little originality Everquest had; and no-one ever looked back. I know it will take some hard work to make a NEW TYPE of MMO that isn't guaranteed to be a slight upgrade in graphics, item crafting, or *pick your one "special" thing* the next MMO does...

So many of the current crop of MMO's have their own original and great ideas. If it would be sifted through and made into a "best of all worlds" (which is what WoW did, but they left in aggro which is a HUGE disservice to ALL players) we might get something unique and great; it would only need expansions as the core would not need much change ever (unless the engine becomes the "hindrance" to development).

Right now the aggro system n e e d s t o g o . It's archaic and mystifyingly still used though it was made for games that couldn't handle AI running (Ultima Online, Everquest,etc...) full-blast. But, with the power servers have available plus the bandwidth and the users' computer this should be a very easily solved or solvable issue. Second, comes two things that walk hand in hand: dungeons and loot. I addressed both above and what I propose should solve a lot; but imagine semi-random dungeons created that lead to great cities (very doable just from what I've seen in Warhammer and WoW's "phasing"), think: D&D's Forgotten Realms - Undermountain™, anything approaching something that massive would be equal to creating a dungeon the size of the world map, but every-time you enter you procedurally move forward to a new creation (so if you join a party your "dungeons" join to make a "seed" that is unique to those to characters. I'll stop there as it would into full-on programming techniques that aren't used either because of the complexity, non-skill, or doubt that they can make a "performance" acceptable version. Items have just as much ability to be enhanced (their own level-ups with skills, AI weapons, vehicular type, etc...).

Quests are the last concern. Fetch should only be around if you're character is going there anyway. Collection type quests should ONLY be used if you are keeping some of said items and are useful in some way. Hero quests do need to teach you to be a better "x = your class + type of class + modifiers", using instances or "phasing" (which I like more as I hate load screens). Quests need to have an main-arch that branches, but it needs to available to even the solo player; not the 60 man raid (which is a joke in the first place). Quests need to be rich in diversity: send, fetch, lead, fight, find, steal, games, test, challenge, dungeon, redemption, vengeance/wrath, ability, skill, un-lockable/lockable, class, species/race, race/time, item, creation, destruction, defend, follow, help, should I keep listing....?

I hope the programmers, I don't really care who hits the trump card first (although a low monthly cost team would be nice), figure this out. As it is getting boring even though there is "more" to do, how it's presented in WoW makes me less inclined to get involved, because it requires dedication and at that point, as he pointed out is almost as fun as shooting yourself.

As @MilkmanDan points out there is a lot of content that I don't use and at the lower levels I believe this to be fine as you'll make a mage, a shaman, a warrior, etc... Doing the same quest over and over is terrible. However, much of the high level content you CAN see, but you'll never get the riches (lottery again) and doing THE SAME EXACT DUNDEON 30 times to find that one head piece is ridiculous -- that is their idea of fun "high-end" content. F*%K YOU! This is all due to the notion (and I believe you see this in action at the auction houses, if you can compare the past to present) of inflation; the numbers go higher for the sake of going higher -- if it's higher it's better, right?!?. I'm better due to a number increase and I'll add to that number continually, mainly, because as is said above I'm now level 10 and no longer 5. I want the numbers to be in a "set" range so that you know, whenever you find or get something new, immediately how this new addition (or subtraction) will affect you. (Ultima Online got that partially correct and it made fighting on their a unique experience, STILL, although Warhammer Online uses a set number of action points instead of mana so it has a fun PvP experience, but ultimately fails due to the level problem. Oh and PvP is a joke as level and gear are the deciding issues in battle (which is funny as the winners get the better gear, thus making them win more and you can see where that goes...) and as long as you aren't stupid your talent specs (you really can't screw this up anymore as Blizzard decided that you can only go down one tree at a time rather than all three, until you've got talent point 32).

I'll stop there as I'm getting nauseated talking about this much (which is a lot). But, this is my view point on almost any RPG. Why is it so hard to make a fun system -- it seems obvious how to go after these issues. I think they're (the programmers and publishers) are lost in the woods with 100 foot tall pines and I'm on a outcrop that can see over the forest -- I see them occasionally, but even if I yelled (and I've made some of these points before) they'd still never gather a clue of what I mean. Or as it's usually said at this point:

"I'm afraid you can't see the forest for the trees."...

Damn, that was long, phew (hopefully a programmer reads it -- or I'll just cut & paste ) !

What some shaman see while in a trace (mostly drug induced), makes this seem rather 'white toast'. Funny thing though, what a shaman sees always has to do with the environment/world that they live in. I'm kind of betting that the kid's visions have everything to do with his life as a good christian boy. That being said, this is a very shamanic type event and relates to some bizarre aspect of the human mind.

What does he think, there's this religious cabal out there plotting ways to make atheists look bad? It just seems to be a bit paranoid to think of a bunch of imams, rabbis, priests, pastors, shamans, etc. getting together in some smoky room to figure out ways to screw atheists over. - SDGundamX


Um, Yes, That's exactly their plan - have you not been to church lately?
The only plan that's in place is conversion. Every "non-believer" out there has a target for religion painted on their forehead. And for those that are dissident enough to actually stand up and be vocal that something is wrong about religion, they become targets for degradation.

If you have not "found God yet", then religion takes pity on you and offers you the "Kingdom of God!"
If you see through religion, you are looked down upon as a lost soul. You will not be invited to be with all your friends and family in the afterlife and will be tortured in Hell for eternity.

So, Yes, I'd say there is some "Plotting" going on...

@MilkmanDan

I agree with everything you said. It's too bad there are atheists who do the same exact thing in reverse--make stereotypical judgments about people who are religious, such as they're all uneducated, domination-seeking, closed-minded, deluded bigots.

Also, he thinks "it's a trap deliberately set" for atheists? Set by who? What does he think, there's this religious cabal out there plotting ways to make atheists look bad? It just seems to be a bit paranoid to think of a bunch of imams, rabbis, priests, pastors, shamans, etc. getting together in some smoky room to figure out ways to screw atheists over. MilkmanDan's point that all labels can be used both descriptively and pejoratively seems way more plausible.

Finally, I think there is definitely a need to distinguish atheists (i.e. people who don't believe in a deity or deities) from people like Sam Harris and the other "new atheists" who are on a crusade to destroy religion. The term militant atheism is not an attempt to subvert Sam's argument; it's a practical necessity to differentiate his ideas and the people who share them from those atheists who aren't hostile to religion.

Summary from imdb:

Shake is a powerful shaman of the Yanomami people. He wields his power to heal and to protect his people against their enemies in this world and beyond. Tracing his life and the life of his community over 40 years of their history, Shake tells how he and his people grapple with new ideas that come from the outside world and the challenging decisions they make in order to maintain their identity and survive as a people.

I'm not sure how to feel about this film. Christian reviewers love it--they claim it shows how Christianity rescued the Yanomamo's from themselves. However, that message is apparently never overtly stated in the film and is an interpretation of the reviewers themselves. The filmmakers have denied (see the comments for this video on YouTube) having that agenda. Other reviewers have hailed the film as accurately documenting the difficulties indigenous peoples still living a traditional lifestyle face when suddenly confronted with the radical outside ideas of "the modern world."

I just re-installed Diablo II last week - So I'm in head deep in that as well

>> ^marinara:

actually i started up a world of warcraft membership last week. shamans have no time for frivolous political quests.

actually i started up a world of warcraft membership last week. shamans have no time for frivolous political quests.

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by SlipperyPete. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Do-Glass-Pipes-Incense-Prove-Teens-Practicing-Shamanism