design-flaws
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Hyperspace Beacon: Cheating vs. poor design
Recently, Ilum took center stage in an argument about exploits, and I honestly cannot say which side of the fence I'm on. When do the intentions of the designers take precedent over the players taking advantage of poor design? Well before Star Wars: The Old Republic even crossed the mind of BioWare's creative brain-trust, exploiters have been taking advantage of unintentional game design. Even more interesting about the situation with Ilum was that the design was not exactly flawed; instead, players did not respond to the designs the way the developers intended. The game was "working as intended," but the players weren't. At what point do we blame the designers? In a game as large as SWTOR, we know that if someone is allowed to do something, he will. At the same time, players are lazy efficient when playing the game: They will find the fastest and easiest way to level or gear up despite the intended path. Designers should know this. I remember in Ultima Online when players would raise skills by poking each other with low-level swords for hours on end. I am sure the designers intended that players would earn skills by actually battling each other, but the simplest solution was to prod one another with a dull stick. I honestly don't know if that was ever fixed, but I certainly don't remember a GM tossing out a ban hammer for it.
34 design flaws found in Intel's Dual Core chip
Uh oh. It appears that in the first twenty days of launching the Intel Dual Core chip in Apple's iMac, 34 design flaws have been found in the chip itself. While Slashdot, where I found this, points out that design flaws in Intel's chips aren't exactly a new thing (which could be good or bad), it is significant that Intel apparently knew about the flaws before releasing the chip. Check out the report at Geek.com for more deets and stay tuned for more information on the severity and impact of this hiccup in this new chip's launch.
