SteveThaiBinh

Yes. All that would happen is that she'd send half her army all the way over to attack us, then just as they arrived Zara Yaqob would declare war on her and conquer her undefended territory, thus emerging as a major rival to ourselves. Let's not do that, eh?

Did you attach the save game for the next person to download?

It's interesting that the language of the press release focuses on 'compelling stories' and 'character-driven games' - not really what you'd expect from an MMORPG. Maybe it is Kotor3 after all?

The speeder is fixable and usable, but not really useful. It doesn't really save you a whole lot of time moving from place to place, and it takes a while to get all the bits to repair it together. I can't remember where all the necessary parts are, but a website like gamefaqs.com will certainly have that information. I do remember (I think) that fixing the thing with Bao-Dur in your party is a way of gaining influence with him.

Pessimist. I'm sure we're nearer the end than the beginning.

Let's keep constructive and on-topic, please.

Sorry, I couldn't get it to accept the username and password, so I gave up. It's just generally uploaded instead. I hope everyone can still see it. First of all, I'd just like to say, "War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!". I'm tempted to declare peace immediately on principle, but I shall defer somewhat to the hive mind's plan - this time! 182 (1220AD) - We've entered the Renaissance era, and I see no reason not to continue with Liberalism as the next technology. The bombardment of Opis is underway. War weariness is becoming a bit of a problem in some cities - I think I want to wrap up this war by the end of my go. 184 (1240AD) - We're really getting screwed by Zara Yaqob - he now demands three resources (gold, clams and gems) in exchange for his silk. With an unhappy war-weary population, I felt I had to agree. We don't have any more resources to give him next time he ups the price - aside from horses, which would probably be a mistake. Perhaps we could make a move towards connecting the fur up in the far north-east? 185 (1250AD) - Scumbag Zara Yaqob cancelled his deal selling us fish - he wouldn't accept any trade without strategic resources, and I wasn't prepared to make that deal. So we are without fish for the moment. 186 (1260AD) - The Babylonian city of Opis is destroyed with few losses, and a settler on the way to found NotOpis to the east. I've switched a few cities to non-military production as they've completed military units. Peragus is going for the University of Sankore. 189 (1290AD) - Discovered Liberalism and chose Nationalism as the free tech, just because it was the most valuable one available. I'm research Divine Right now, in case we want to have our own national religion later. I've also made peace with Hammurabi in exchange for Music and Compass. 192 (1320AD) - Islam has been founded somewhere else. No religion for us! :sad: 193 (1330AD) - Zara Yaqob has declared war on Elizabeth . I'm going to train an explorer to head over west and see what's going on. 194 (1340AD) - Elizabeth has upped her price for sheep - she appears not to have iron, copper or horses, which suggests her war with Zara Yaqob could be rather brief. It may be too late to help her at all, but I've agreed a deal giving her horses and sent some workers to connect our extra iron resource so we have the option to give her that in the future. 195 (1350AD) - I have founded the city of Hereor1W (sorry, but the name just kind of grew on me - feel free to rename it if you think it's just too weird) in order to get those spices connected. 196 (1360AD) - Peragus has produced a Great Scientist, who's gone to found an academy in Irvine. Less good, someone has beaten us to the University of Sankore. I hate when that happens. 199 (1390AD) - Peace between Zara Yaqob and Elizabeth, courtesy of the Apostolic Palace. Zara Yaqob has built the Taj Mahal and is therefore having a golden age. 200 (1400AD) - The treaty with Hammurabi expires and he becomes a vassal of Wang Kon, so the war will be trickier to resume than I'd thought. Never mind. Some points to consider: There's a Great General in Irvine, just because I didn't know what to do with him. We probably ought to do something about that. Do we want to trade resources with Elizabeth to prevent Zara Yaqob from gobbling her up? The war between them didn't last long enough to get much idea of their real relative strengths, but there's likely to be a repeat performance soonish. At the moment, though, we're paying a hell of a lot for those sheep! How long can we afford to leave the territory to the north and southeast of Irvine unsettled? I've been building courthouses so that when we do settle there, it won't break the bank completely, but I'm worried Hatshepsut may try sending settlers as she appears to have done in the far west. Do we attack Hammurabi (and thus Wang Kon), switch and attack Hatshepsut instead, or go for a period of peace and building our strength? We've got gunpowder now, so I'd prefer to churn out a few musketmen and head towards rifling in our research.

Okay, I've started. I shouldn't take long, depending on whether I can remember how to upload pictures.

In an MMORPG? Highly unlikely, I would think.

Gamespot has a rumor control report on this. It's certainly not confirmed, but I accept the point that, alas, a Kotor MMORPG has a sort of inevitable logic about it. An announcement wouldn't honestly suprise me.

Earliest I can make it is Thursday, so someone else should take the next turn if possible. Go on, Kissamies, you know you want to...

As you wish.

Fantastic news. Thanks for the update.

I initially loved the fact that with MotB, casters automatically summon their familiars and you have your own travelling zoo, but alas, it's bugged. It screwed up my NWN2 original campaign as halfway through the second act Khelgar merged with Qara's familiar, resulting in a weasel with some suspiciously dwarf-like axe-related feats. :sad: It shouldn't be necessary to keep puppet-mode on in MotB, so long as 'Use abilities' is turned off. But I gather anyone in the NWN2 OC needs to make sure they unsummon all familiars before transitioning to a new area.

Thanks guys. I'm starting my bard now with renewed confidence.

Okay, help me please. Or rather, reassure me. I've just finished MotB for the first time (I thought it was fantastic, by the way) with a ranger dual-wielding flaming swords, and he just, only just, made it through the final battle with you-know-who. I'd really like to start a new game with a bard character (with some conversation skills, to see what my bumbling ranger and his woeful bluff attempts missed), but I just can't imagine how my bard would survive the endgame without turning the difficulty down to easy (which is cheating). Can anyone suggest a viable strategy for building a bard character capable of surviving this battle? Is it really easy and I'm missing something?

Yes. I thought it was because of Vista, but maybe not? Oblivion always used to crash on exit for me as well. The error message does make me smile though: 'Neverwinter Nights 2 has stopped working' - err, yes, that's good since I just closed it... I've just finished Mask of the Betrayer. I loved it - loved the writing, the story, the voice acting, everything. In an age of lowest common denominators, Obsidian still believes in bringing imagination and interesting ideas into their games.

Ooh, not long to wait then. I agree with the comment about Darkness over Daggerford being good but lacking something. However, if this module is as much of an improvement over that as Mask of the Betrayer was over the NWN2 OC, I'll be very happy.

Not me, I'm afraid. I've stupidly gone home to visit my family and forgotten my Beyond the Sword disk (remembered Warlords and Civ IV, though, for all the good they'll do me). I'll be back in Saudi Arabia at my own computer next week and back in the game, so in the meantime I'm here to support and encourage only. This may be a good thing - I'm not really the person you want in charge when running a war.

It should be perfectly possible to tell the computer to run this one game using only one of your two cores, without it affecting any other program or in any way harming the computer. The problem is I can't remember how to do it on XP, and the computer I'm using at the moment is Vista. I hope someone else can help, or perhaps you could google it?

It won't have any impact, I would imagine. NWN2 is developed by Obsidian and published by Atari. Neither Bioware nor EA have anything to do with it.

And an entirely legitimate one. We encourage use of the search button.

Are you running Windows Vista or XP?

Be wary of ex-pats and their take on any issue, but don't discount it either. Always ask around if you need anything - everyone knows someone who knows someone who can do it better than anyone you could have found yourself. Register with your embassy as soon as you arrive. They may invite you to fun things, but more importantly they'll know where you are if there's a problem. I've never been to India, but have a number of colleagues from Kerala, so perhaps that's a place to consider going? They say it's very friendly there.

Doesn't EA have something of a poor reputation as an employer, demanding huge amounts of overtime, even outside 'crunch' times for example? I wonder how the Bioware staff feel about this buy-out...