Getting rid of all slides to block shots/intercept passes in hockey

I recently heard that Bob Gainey suggested to the other NHL GMs that defensemen shouldnt be allowed to dive on the ice to block a shot or intercepting a pass otherwise they would get a penalty. That means all players shoudl be standing up at all time and only use their body/stick to take away the puck.

this is the most stupid suggestion i ever heard. It means putting more rules into the game to make less accessible and more compliated to play where plaeyrs cant do anything on the ice and have to htink of so many rules. hockey's strenght use to be cause it didnt have that many rules altering gameplay. players just did what they needed to do to score a goal. it gave alot of room for defensive play making it important to be good at both ends of the ice to win. taking away all dives and slides would dumb down hockey.

It would also means a ton more penalty and we all know how much a player advantage can influence your chance to score a goal on both ends. i think theres too many powerplays currently but its bearable.

When i watch a hockey game, i watch goals and shoots, but i spend alot of time looking at defensive play and positioning cause its interesting to see what players are doing to score a goal or to avoid being scored on. the game is not only about scoring goals its about working your way toward the net to do it. but i guess the masses just dont understand that and want to see goals.

So im just crossing my fingers that this change never happens cause this is when i will stop watching hockey

rank 15 in Guildwars

I will try to explain to the neophytes what this is and what it represents

In guildwars you can participate in a 8v8 tournament that goes on all the time 24/7. you face something like 6 different stages to eventually get to the hall of heroes where you compete against 2 other teams to win the control of the hall of heroes, at that point you face other teams coming to challenge your position and you can be there for as long as you can keep winning games.

Winning in hero's ascent rewards you with fame points which are used to level up in the ranks of Hero, 185 fame gives you rank 3 and your first emote which is a deer, rank 6 is 1000 fame and is a tiger and theres other emotes for rank 9 and 12. rank 10 is 7750 fame, as you can see the fame recquirement rise pretty damn fast and it gets much harder to gain ranks at the higher levels.

The game has been out since 2004 and until then there was nobody with r15, (100 000 fame) and for a long time nobody with rank 13 and 14 (in fact i didnt know anyone was r14 (60 000 fame)until i saw this video showing the r15 emote http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeVs70UKVw)

so everyone that has been through elementary school knows that 7750 is much lower than 100 000 and getting r15 already seems like a big accomplishment but let me present you this in another way

You earn 1 fame if you win 1 game in heroes ascent, that number rises with consecutives wins, if you lose you get kicked out of the tournament and the counter restarts. the number of fame you get is 2 if you win 2 games, 3 for 3, 4 for 4 then it starts rising faster and eventually you get to the maximum which is 40 (after 13 wins in a row) for every win after 13 you get 40 fame.

but you have to win those 13 games and the competition in HA is very strong so getting there and staying there is already a huge accomplishment in itself

so getting 100 000 fame represents a lot of wins because its unlikely the guy could get to the 40 fame per win cap everytime he tried. very unlikely, so unlikely that i have no clue how to guess a number for that

lets look at it from my perspective, im a pretty good GW players, ive been playing for over 30 months, im a rank 5 with 786 fame. I never won the hall of heroes and i dont think i ever won more than 4 or 5 games in a row and that is playing with fairly decent teams most of the time (i didnt get much into the higher ranks restricted groups because of lower rank)

seeing that this person won 100 000 fame and got the rank 15 is an incredible accomplishment not only in terms of ridiculous amount of time spent playing but also cause it needed to be done while performing really well.

Darkfall Online

Many players are really tired of playing WoW and are looking for something fresh and new. This is why the expectations for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes were that high. A game that was gonna be really vast and suited for hardcore players. But the game was horribly designed and was really far from what it was advertising. As a result only a handful of players are playing VG now while over 200 thousand quit within the first 3 months. And so time went on and the amount of players wanting a change from WoW grew. Lets precise that its not only wow players that are looking for a new good game, Since i believe Ultima Online there was no game for hardcore players, no game with good Free for all settings and corpse looting and other hardcore features. Them paired with players from other games and mostly the huge wave of players that got introduced to mmos by WoW as well as other people from all horizons makes a pretty huge chunk of players. So they heard that Age of Conan was in development a game with supposedly revolutionary combat and gameplay. While AoC has several good aspects, good graphics, animations, outstanding sound and music. the guys that designed the classes and abilities was really stupid and the game was really unfun to play and lacked several of its advertised feature. People were and are being patient with AoC but they failed and are still failing to deliver what they promised and people get tired of waiting and quit. this is why AoC lost close to half its subscriber base after 3 months (possibly more than that, but all we have is the number Funcom had at the end of july or something like that). Meanwhile, several other mmos tried to copy the wow formula in an attempt to make something better and new like Lord of the rings online, Star Wars Galaxies and the Game enchancements, etc etc. But everytime they failed miserably because while they had a little something of their own to bring to the table, they were not as detailed and polished as WoW.

So its in this context that a game that has been in development for 7 years and didnt get much attention at all is now intriguing many players: Darkfall Online. Darkfall is being developped by a small studio in greece caleld Adventurine. they are being helped by norwegians and swiss developpers. After i read the list of features and saw their long gameplay trailer, I came to the conclusion that DF is a really ambitious project. it seems like they nailed down well what they needed to put in a game to make it good now all they need to do is do it. If they manage like to put everything in there. then we will have a really great game. Things like the ability to create and change your class to your taste anytime you want minus some time levelling, item decay to create a world economy, skill based gameplay, destructible player cities, naval combat etc etc (i dont know them all). But the pressure is high on them because the game looks horrible graphically and animation wise so that is not what will draw players. We also have the right to be afraid that despite teh bad graphics the game will recquire pretty high system recquirements due to the fact that its a small studio. so while the game looks like it would be good in 2003 it might need a 2007 machine to play well but we will see how that goes cause we can always be surprised.

So let us hope the game runs smoothly on older machines so that way the target audience is larger and let us also hope that the game delivers all its advertised feature and we might Finally have something unique Post-WoW that will be worth playing. But I'm skeptical they will pull it off so I'm still looking forward Guildwars 2 and the Star Wars Galaxies pre-combat upgrade emulator.