Yst

Well, a few thoughts. As the current administrator of a fairly high traffic PHPBB elsewhere, and a long-time message board and, previously, Usenet whore (with >10,000 posts on a few different boards at this point), I've got to say that I think fully empowering prominent community members to maintain order in the community makes perfectly good sense. Inevitably, there are always people who complain about moderation when moderation is essentially controlled by members of the community itself - hell, there are always people who complain about moderation regardless - but it's presumably the best solution here. I've found that boards whose moderation is directly controlled by paid employees or a selection of employees are often more chaotically problematic, simply because the board gets an anti-establishment mentality subject to which problematic moderation is consistently blamed on the company itself. A fan-maintained, fan-moderated community redirects antagonism away from the development house itself, even if it merely redirects it at members of the community (antagonism will be directed somewhere, it's just a matter of where) which can be beneficial. And incidentally, as for developers being bugged to post and respond to PMs, it seems to me that under no circumstances should a developer be expected to perform a consistent public relations function in this kind of way, in this kind of environment, and sane fans know this, so this should be beside the point. Were I developer on such a board as this, frankly, I would simply disable PMs to all developers posting within the community, because it's not worth the hassle, nor should it be expected. PMs regarding message board administration should be directed at moderators and community leaders.

Just when I thought I'd found my salvation from GameFAQs forums (Surgeon General's Warning: reading of threads may result in brain melting into inert, spongy goo within 30 seconds), and Lucasarts Forums (does any fanbase on earth despise their own franchise and rights holder as much as these folks?) and even Penny-Arcade (interesting bunch, but they'll eat you alive), the best bunch of developers out there in the RPG world right now (IMHO) intend to close their forums. Ah, well. Such is the web.

Just considering two of the biggest releases of the last year, Doom 3 and Halo 2, yeah, I'd say the response to those releases and the ensuing debate was at least as vicious as the one here is, and both games are considered to have been stable releases of good games.

These forums without a community manager are about ten times tamer than Lucasforums with active representatives on the boards all the time. When the LA KotOR forums aren't busy burning George Lucas in effigy, it's only because the trolls are too busy telling one another to STFU. If the current state of these forums is a problem, 99% of all forums across the web, and the entirety of Usenet, need to be shut down immediately, because 99% of the forums I see out there right now contain more disruptive content, trolls and flames than these ones do.

It looks like it's among other things a fairly common last name. I'm willing to bet that, besides being a made up star wars obscenity, it was a clever prank on someone with that last name, who a writer somewhere had it in for

You mean all three votes? Out of hundreds? I'll put in a vote for 1) Who cares? with an additional tip of the hat towards 2) Why would you?

KotOR II and Planescape: Torment stand for me as the finest examples of story-telling in computer games to date which I have experienced. I find it difficult to say which is the better. But on the basis of one particular criterion, I could certainly pick a favourite. Torment benefits from its taking place in a vastly more complex game universe than any Star Wars game. Star Wars, at its core, still bases itself around the material of the original Light versus Dark, Good Guys versus Bad Guys save-the-princess story which started it all, effectively possessing all the moral complexity of a serial superhero flick. The depth of KotOR II is completely in spite of that fact, and the plot struggles to reconcile the insanity of the bland Light Side and Dark Side categories with a more meaningful moral universe where they cease to carry much weight. In the balance, I prefer the game, Planescape, which better benefits from its original setting and the depth of that setting, rather than struggling with its generic fairy tale clich

Oddly enough, I'm glad the graphics didn't change. It would feel like a different gameworld if the graphics had changed much at all. Returning to Korriban completely retextured and remodeled wouldn't feel like the same Korriban. So really, I'm glad it was much the same.

It's a franchise game. One doesn't "steal" ideas. Agreement between prior sources and present is encouraged.

For me, it's about writing, writing, writing. KotOR II is just a better written game, and it makes all the difference.

I'm glad that Kreia is getting some love from the closet GILF fans. Evil, sociopathic witches need love too.

Visas is proof positive of just how far ranging the benefits of force-sensitivity are. I mean, who on earth, among the hereditarily blind, persistently wears lipstick? The answer? Well, the force-sensitives, apparently. Good for Visas. I can't think of any better use for the force.