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The lights went out when we lost the subSilver theme on the phpBB Interplay forums.

My contribution to the Deus Vult discussion:

Nah, not the world. Mostly just "journalists" and their social media cohorts. The dumber they are the louder they moan, is all. In other (vg related) news, another DLC was officially announced that will probably not live up to its name: It'll include the Marauder and Warhammer in the free patch, so at least there's that.

Isn't the main "Western" (see American) value to make money? So in essence they are staying one with "Western" values.

Not validated yet, but at this point it was so much work I'm just happy to be done. I don't know how other people went about it, but the way I did it was to break the run up into small, easily-rehearsable sections, and run a character in parallel to my real run so I could practice each section before doing it with my real character. It was a hell of a lot of work (I probably in aggregate did the ultimate many times over), and it required a massive amount of note-taking, down to all relevant dialogue choices: If I were to go back in time, I don't know if I'd do it this way again. On the other hand, this was my 23rd attempt (though only the 3rd since I started this method), and I'm not sure I would have had the time or patience to start over from scratch every time I messed up, versus simply mindlessly rehearsing each section until I had it down pat. edit: if you're actually watching, i recommend clicking through to youtube - i have comments on most of the later section that let you jump past the buffing sections (of which there are a lot).

phpBB is an open source forum software that was - probably still is so as long as they still have forums - used by a lot of companies to implement their internet forum presence. SubSilver is a theme, one with black text on silver background and blue links and headers. Well you can find an example by googling phpBB SubSilver. Of course this board has neither a bright theme nor does it run on phpBB, so that's the joke. The "light" went out when we lost a bright forum theme of a different forum software with Interplay's demise. Well, what do they say, a joke explained is a joke ruined. Sorry Avatar.

I dunno, stealing tech, sabotages, kidnapping, infiltration, info gathering, assassinations, riots...

Wtf can't say Deus Vult anymore because apparently it's used by racist or what? I swear this world gets dumber by the day.

That was pretty much exactly my experience with JE as well. I enjoyed it mostly, but somehow despite being fairly short for an RPG at 20ish hours it ended up dragging, and the combat quickly became boring. Plus the longer it went on the more overt Biowarisms I hit in terms of plot and characters. The one thing that really disappointed me though was that it had a 'unique' setting, but failed to take much advantage of it and ended up feeling like the standard Bioware game with a Chinese theme; and it really needed a bit more to differentiate it from being KOTOR/ NWN with a Wuxia reskin.

Data is, datum are.

Yeah, that sounds like the kind of micromanagement that is actually fun to get busy with. Heh. It's kind of sad that Star Wars Rebellion had much better espionage/covert ops mechanics than whatever is on offer twenty years later.

Wrapped up Jade Empire yesterday. I forgot how bad the combat was. Halfway through I shamelessly turned the difficulty down to easy and started demon frog strong attack spamming just to get through the fights. There were a several of quests I didn't do. One quest wasn't available to me because I didn't have the right 'alignment', another because I didn't want to do the flying mini game, and then I got in too big a rush to wrap it up the main quest to do all of Lord Lao's Furnace so Kang's personal quest wasn't finished. I played Open Palm; the only other time I finished JE I played Closed Fist but aside from getting Death's Hand as a follower and siding with Sun Li, there wasn't as much difference as I thought there would be. Thankfully, JE is blissfully short (both times I've played it took me less than 25 hours and that's doing all or most of the content). Liked it a lot, but it'll likely be another 7+ years before I replay it. Oh, and Dawn Star is best girl, of course. Other than that, I returned to my New Game + of Trails of Cold Steel 2 (PC). ToCS 3 is due to come out in North America for the PS4 later this year. If the timeline for 1 and 2 releases are anything to go off of, that means they'll get ported to PC sometime in the next year and a half. I'm waiting for that to happen 'cause I ain't buyin' a console just to play the nest Trails game, despite how much I love the franchise.

I'll agree that BattleTech DLC has been overpriced and underwhelming but I'm not sure I'd go that far.

I try to make sure to read Count of Monte Cristo at least once a year. Slow paced revenge drawn out over decades... with some dark elements of human nature wrapped around optimism and some swashbuckling intrigue. What's not to enjoy? As pointed out, the word count because Dumas was paid by the word. So there are some sections that really draw out background elements, fashions, geography and literature of the time rather than focus on the pure plot.

Nope. No ones here. Turned off the lights ages ago.

Do it. I don't need pretend money and usually click on someone's link anyway and sometimes inform particularly annoying buyers that "Sorry, I just clicked other referral for free"

Hi Pixies nice to see you here classing the joint up.

You are comparing applres to oranges. Pallid Knight doesn't represent Berath in Huana tradition. A valid comparison would be Rikuh and Kohopa&Tangaloa - not sexy either, unless you are into Eels. I suppose Huana are more into primal/watery themes, rather then marketable hotties. I did find it rather strange that Ondra used her Huana aspect when talking to you. Most of them used something that watcher (and you as the player) would be familiar with, rather then their local counterparts. My wild guess is, that that is because Ondra didn't a have defined aspect carrying over from PoE1, and often her representation pops up throughout the game, the artists just stick with what you will know, instead of coming up with something else entirely. It would be cool, however, if when starting a game with a Watcher with Deadfire background you would talk to two Giant Eels instead of the Pallid Knight 😉. Overall, it would be cool if Gods would use different aspects when talking to Watchers from different cultures... but that would be difficult to pull off with full visual representation. I liked PoE1 pure text discription more anyway.

sup

I've always found Hemingway very readable. He certainly wasted no words. If you want to live in the 1920's with the Lost Generation for a brief time he's your man. Jack London is one of my all time favorites but my favorite work of his was far from his most popular: The Sea Wolf. But Wolf Larson is one of the best characters in all of American literature IMO. All of London's stores were set in the late 1800's. He passed away during WWI, don't remember the exact date. The Great Gatsby was a great novel. I love the closing line of the novel, absolutely poetic. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is a easy read of life in the the American south in the '20's. The Great Depression was actually happening there well before Black Tuesday and that book follows a family through it. If you are interested in classics that put you IN the Great Depression look no further than John Steinbeck. Particularly The Grapes of Wrath.

Hell yeah Hurly

I'm just baffled that there's folks that think that opposing a wider American intervention in Syria (a view that I myself hold) and being clear-eyed and recognising that Assad is a murderous despot are somehow mutually exclusive viewpoints to hold.

Check mark means I completed it edit: The final video is finishing uploading, I'll have playlist shared soon. At this point I don't even care if it gets validated or not, I'm just glad I finally finished it.

They are however confining more than a million Uighurs in 're-edurcation' camps, stealing their children, destroying their culture and harvesting organs for sale off those that cannot be re-educated. China has not fundamentally changed at the top/ leadership wise (population definitely has, but they're also being suppressed more effectively too via 'Social Credit Scores' etc) and they'd happily drive tanks over protesters in any of the big cities westerners haven't heard of, or Beijing which can be sealed off effectively. HK is a special case though, since most of its value to China comes from a western legacy that would be massively reduced in a Tiananmen scenario. Only other city that might get away with similar is Shanghai because it too is a sea port and financial centre with a lot of ingrained foreign presence (Macau which was Portugese is probably just too small and unimportant). One thing is for sure though, gaming boycotts are generally the most embarrassing and ineffective of 'protests', only beaten out by #Kony2012 style twitter slacktivism.

China has changed quite a bit in the last couple decades as they've become a major player in the world economy, so it's not like they aren't susceptible to pressure from the West. The fact they haven't driven tanks over Hong Kong protesters already is a pretty clear sign that it isn't the same country as it was during Tiananmen Square. So yeah, it'd be nice to see the NBA and Blizzard stop kowtowing to them and recognize that the money may not be worth the damage their brand may be taking.

I guess its more about not feeding China government with money, maybe some morals - if you expect any from corporations...

It has no direct impact on what happens there, but if the customers does not raise their voice now, it will have serious impact in the long turn, on all our lives. Because if nothing happens, big money will be encouraged to continue in their footsteps and CCP will through them continue to attempt to control our freedom of expresion...

The fact that KTchong and I are on the same side of this Tulsi Gabbard thing has me concerned. Maybe I am wrong about her after all.

A Jacked-o-Lantern...

Very good video with a lot of arguments and a timeline of the Hong Kong protests by a guy, whom livelihood depends on Overwatch, and what is happening there, including slaughters. Watch it and think more about it. Same thing was happening in central and eastern europe during the late 80s, when I was in my early teenage years. In some of the countries, there were also lot of people slaughtered. West gave us helping hand during that time, and I think West should do the same now as well. If you allow few shareholders to censor your freedom now, and do not speak up, you will end up in the situation in which my country was between 1948 and 1989. My Granddad was imprisoned because he also tried to express his freedom of speech during that time, because he openly critisized Communist Party. Shortly after being released from prison, he died with not so clear circumstances few months after my Dad was born. Afterwards my whole family was forcefully relocated to another part of the country, they got stripped of all of their possesions, with no monetary reimbursement, and the comming years some of father’s siblings were denied education and job applicatuons. Free speech matters now more, that anytime before. That’s why boycotting Activision Blizzard should matter for all of us as well... Our entertainment should not have bigger value than other poeple lives...

Steam is a necessary evil. Epic is not worse than Steam. It does lack a few features but it works (and for the record it took Steam years to offer the possibility of getting a refund). In my experience Epic is a lot better than the Microsoft Store (I tried it once and I'm staying away from it as much as I tried my best to stay away from Games for Windows Live back in the days). I can understand people wanting (and asking for) a GOG release since it would come with the advantage of being able to have a DRM free version of the game that can be used offline. The only reason why I got Steam almost ten years ago was to play Fallout New Vegas. Until then I had managed to stay away from that platform that is now ubiquitous. I use Steam because I have no choice in the matter and I'm also using Origin, Uplay, Battlenet, Rockstar and the Epic launcher for the very same reason. Sure that's a lot of game launchers and DRM applications but personally I'm wary of Steam having a monopoly on PC games. At the end of the day, it's good not to have all your eggs in the same basket but if you feel so strongly about using Steam there is a possibility of using Steam and adding a game as a "non Steam game" in your Steam library so you can launch it directly from Steam. I've been doing it with some Origin titles in order to use the Steam App to take screenshots in game (strangely enough Uplay does support taking screenshots with the overlay while Origin doesn't). It works with GOG games too so we don't know yet but there may be a possibility it may work with the Outer Worlds as well.

I cast Arcane Dampener

consider playing as a paladin order or a priest subclass that has favored dispositions that forces you into things you might not normally do. bleakwalker, steel garrote, skaen, and woedica, for example, both have cruel as a favored disposition. (bleakwalkers also have aggressive, for extra "fun" - you might end up getting into lots of extra fights). start from there and do a build-around in terms of race and background. i focused on cruel because cruel path is probably under-explored by most players, and being forced to be cruel for gameplay purposes leads to some interesting new outcomes.

...really? You don't understand why an RPG has a character creation system? Really?

Jesus ****, is every single goddamn thing SJW now? Having women in your game that are combat capable, SJW. A playstyle that involves killing slavers, SJW. A plot that is in any way challenges or subverts the current system, SJW. Just pull the political **** out of your mouth and play a ****ing game for gods sake.

Not quite as bad as when I played Swtor (but then, I played that for 6+ years before putting it aside). My Guild Wars 2 level characters just keep popping up, getting played for a long time, put aside and then new ideas manifest themselves in my brain, I just desperately have to try out how it looks and works. So many alts.... I'm sure Arenanet loves the money I spend in the cash shop for character slots! A rather sinister dude, the Deadeye sniper, lurking in the shadows, hitting hard with a long range barrage of damage and fading back to stealth. Edit: I almost finished the pre-cursor for the legendary weapon "The Predator", which is a fancy rifle, no doubt introduced with this class in mind And the other new guy (girl) on the block, a "Weaver", which is an elementalist that unlike other elementalists can combine and use two elements at the same time.

Weeeeee, I just got invited to the Galaxy 2.0 Beta.