Wizardry inspired a lot of games, but the three games listed have greater influences elsewhere. (FF and DQ in particular are more like Ultima.) Sadly the games that were most inspired by Wizardry, sometimes called “blobbers,” have mostly died out: The classic Bard’s Tale games, Might & Magic, Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. Etrian Odyssey and the Japanese Wizardry games hold the torch but are pretty niche these days.

The demise of the original Wizardry series is one of the greatest injustices in the history of computer gaming, up there with the closing of the original Atari.

DOS Wizardry has a significant bug that makes it one of the worst versions.

Warning: this is secretly a Nethack thread!

So, the model was playing on average 2,000 points worse because the player was luckier? The things about werewolves and dogs is a factor but is statistically insignificant.

Nethack has a couple of other gotchas like this. They should be grateful they weren’t playing on Friday the 13th…

The operator for ensuring something appeared in a search used to be “+”, but they stopped using that for some _?^??mYsTeRiOuS rEaSoN^?_??

What the heck is Dexerto?

Ed Zitron has a scathing piece about that (in the podcast version he’s seething) entitled “The Man Who Killed Google Search.” Worth checking out, it contains some quality righteous anger.

This isn’t the worst timeline. It was always destined to end up this way. Corporations consider themselves ethically mandated to squeeze as much profit out of customers as they can, to find the exactly monetary line where the number of customers they drive off is balanced by the money they can gain by the things that drove them off. They actually believe that, and that basically means any profit-seeking corporation is going to ruin their user experience in the long run.

Once, I was asked if I wanted a special offer on Microsoft Office on boot up. Explorer freezes so often for me when I right-click a file and select Open With that it’s made me twitchy. Frequently image icons stop displaying. For a long while, every time I’ve installed Windows on a computer, I’ve had to go through and disable all the awful misfeatures Windows tries to put in the taskbar. I also always have to set OneDrive so it doesn’t redirect folders like Desktop and Documents into its cloud storage area. Now Windows 11 is threatening to put CoPilot on my desktop, and I’ll have to disable it too.

I’m positively longing for Linux now.

It has. For the first time, it’s risen to over 4% of market share of desktops: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/linux-continues-growing-market-share-reaches-4-of-desktops/

Of course this doesn’t count Android or Chromebooks, both of which run Linux on some level.

I use and appreciate it!

I contribute $5 a month to Metafilter, and I use a paid VPN.

Note: article puts a rectangle in front of the article when you’ve read half of it.

Why is Microsoft even deciding what programs I can run on my computer in the first place? They’re not malware, they shouldn’t be doing this at all.

Yes, it’s worth noting that some companies will do A/B tests, where one user is offered one choice, and another gets a different one. It’s possible for the two of you to have had a different experience.

I unironically love that fmhy.net’s site would work well in Gopher.

I think we’re starting to see the beginning of the end of the Windows hegemony, for one reason: the success of the Steam Deck has made gaming on Linux mainstream. The two things that have always kept power users tied to Windows have been games and office, but GAMES were the big one. Suddenly, it starts to look like it might be possible to do without Windows for gaming, if not now, then soon.

Roguelike.

Showrunnners are never absolutely sure how many more seasons they’ll get. If a show is popular, they could end up having to continue it after a conclusion. Or the show could be popular but corporate priority could be elsewhere, and they’ll be forced to wrap up promising storylines quickly. Even for shows that announce they have plans for a beginning, middle and end, it’s possible that they’ll be cancelled before end planned ending, or else have to stretch after the ending has been reached. Safer is to try to just coast along, being non-committal about major plot elements, until something happens that pushes the show to resolve things.

Maybe? We’re fighting anecdotes with anecdotes here, there is no way I can examine your statement when it’s entirely a friend-of-a-friend memory. I take issue with your “wildly ignorant” statement (of course), and stand by my point. And it’s not learning about a discipline, it’s the opportunity to learn about it.

Now it’s my turn to tell you basically what a lot of people here have already said, but maybe you can get something extra out of this telling.

Everyone who was mega-successful, in old age or young, has had a huge advantage somewhere that people rarely talk about. There are no exceptions to this, only cases where those advantages are lost to time or secrecy. And nearly every time, family wealth is involved in some way. Usually directly, but even if they never got a penny, being in a wealthy family brings you so many casual advantages.

You’re comparing yourself to people who were dealt winning hands from the start. Like, a kid who gets a patent at a young age? Someone was coaching them, possibly someone with an agenda. Invents a new plastic? Uh-huh, at what age did they get into polymer chemistry? Who even told them polymer chemistry even existed? There’s something else going on there. Don’t let the media gaslight you into thinking you’re “behind.”

It’s okay to be you! It’s not a race, and even if it was, the people you’re comparing yourself to had a gigantic head start.