LadyCrimson

The main potential benefit to a company, imo (and this would be a long long term benefit, that doesn't always occur) would be that since modding tends to keep a game in the public eye, so to speak, it may help if/when one day the company wants to make a sequel or homage to the game ... so a publisher may go "yeah, still a lot of interest there, ok, go for it" or crowd-funding is wildly successful due to rep and hopes. I rate it as something akin to when cancelled Star Trek reruns and enough rabid fans, in part, helped the series be chosen for a possible movie franchise many years later. Again, doesn't happen often, but when it does, can certainly be seen as profitable/good for the creators/company/whoever. That all said ... I'm not sure modding alone is a marker of true longevity of a game. It can help, and certainly doesn't hurt, but I don't see it as the biggest factor.

Hubs has over 160k hit points now, I think, so it takes half to a full clip at this point if he's almost empty. And if he stands still. Darn hard to heal in mid-combat, too, when he's dancing around like MJ doing a fast moonwalk.

Ultimate mode in BL2 - the only time I get to hear my husband repeatedly holler "Shoot me, hon, just shoot me!"** **Siren's heal via shooting other players...an ability I almost never had to use, until now.

Good luck GD! Happiness is a fuzzy kitty giving wet nose kisses. Marriage is ... all things rolled into one. Depends on the day.

The consistency is good/nice, but it looks a little on the red side to me. On my monitor. TV-colors ... always too red, too green, or occasionally, too blue. Especially fleshtones. Some day I'll have to buy the whole series on Blu-Ray ... but my Ssn 5-7 DVD's are still fine. The older seasons I haven't bothered to buy yet...well, unless you count my VHS tapes.

Parents should have an ability to "block" individual websites from being accessible on their own computers, if they wish, so I'm not sure I'd mind if it was mandated that ISP's had to offer such a blocking type service as an option as you're going through the ISP purchase/subscription process (vs. parents having to go buy some 3rd party software) - but putting default to "on" and that this seems poised to potentially be some kind of general blanket "sex/violence/rock n roll" censorship route vs. a site by site basis doesn't seem good. :/

That's terrible. I can completely understand wanting to try to help/save a favored pet, especially when so young. Dunno about "most" Americans but I do consider $1000 a lot to spend on a pet (at once) and I've only done it twice. Most of the time, it's spay/neuter/shots and I'd pay to set a broken leg, but no heroic or extensive measures if the odds are low or answers aren't likely forthcoming. But a couple I went a bit further, trying to save them because they weren't that old. Worked once, didn't work the other. Around here, if they needed intensive care it'd probably cost more than it would if *I* went to the emergency room...since I'm definitely not paying for any dubious "pet vet insurance".

Yeah, I did take him to the vet to make sure there was nothing super obvious, like a throat tumor or mouth ulcers or something (had a cat with a face tumor, once...), but nothing initially. If he had little/no appetite, that would be disease-worrying but doesn't seem to be the issue. Just finicky. Maybe his sense of smell is going... Ah well.

Hubs and I just finished the Bunker/Angel bit in Ultimate mode, in BL2. Jeez the Bunker took forever (lvl55), even with me slagging almost all the time. I think it took us over 30 minutes, and we had to jump down and refill our ammo from the machine below, once. Apparently increased enemy hitpoints 4x + health regen, so you pretty much have to use slag (they upped slag effectiveness). Most of the time it's not so much that it's super-harder, but it sure does take longer (might be more enemies too). Some of the AI seems a bit different too. And if you don't use slag you feel like you're doing hardly any damage even with purple gear. Hubs said when I slag it basically triples his dmg. now. So I have a slag Tediore SMG, slag Valdolf pistol, slag sniper, and a poison pistol. I do the slagging, hubs focuses on elemental + his slagging turret. I'm glad we're a duo...having to slag then swap weapons all the time would drive me batty. Also...in the new Ultimate mode you can "reset" the whole questline or something, so when you're done you can do them all again. Which is kinda cool. Endless replay of the game (quests and all) even at max clvl.

I think I have about 6 Eggs from lockboxes, when I was opening those. I didn't get any from the Giftboxes ... but I only farmed about 25-30 of those before I got bored (one of the instance quests I never completed, the Menzo run w/drow, dropped a lot of them in there). Did you get any of the blue "special armor" to find out what those were? At this point the only thing I seem to like to do is treat this game like a professions/fantasy stockmarket mini-game...that and collecting pets of course. ... mostly because I don't feel like spending too much time with the game actually running.

I definitely couldn't sit at chair/desk distance with panorama's like that. I'd get whiplash neck or something. From farther away, it might be fine, but then it would seem too small unless the screens were a lot bigger, which of course means I'd want to sit father away... But regardless, yeah ... expensive, for gaming at least. For 15k+ I'd rather have a hi(ish)-res 60+" TV for film watching, instead.

Had a nice weekend with family plus some general relaxing days out and about. Cat care blathering: My outdoor kitty (Mr. Grey, for lack of a better name) has always been a finicky eater since I adopted him (won't eat ANY dry kibble, I've tried dozens) but lately he's become finicky about his wet food now too. Only cat I know that will literally starve himself rather than eat what he thinks is subpar food, or something. Was using Friskees canned for a while, now he won't eat it. He lost a lot of weight before I noticed how much so. Back to Fancy Feast, which was ok at first and he started to gain it back, but now he won't eat much of that and he's losing weight again. He can eat (nothing wrong with his mouth), he's definitely hungry, he just refuses to eat more and more of the options. His hip bones are starting to stick out. So now it's down to me buying fresh chicken breast, baking it wholesale, stripping it into pieces, and he'll eat that. If he stops eating the chicken, outside of an IV drip I don't know what to do. Watch him starve to death in front of full plates while yowling for food, I guess. It's so bizarre.

Orange is the New Black - the newest Netflix original series. Fish out of water woman in low security prison for a crime she did 10 years ago or something likethat. Drama/comedy I think, based on someone's real-life memoir, although highly exaggerated I'd assume. First episode doesn't leave the best impression, but the 2nd was a lot better, so I might watch some more. Also: saw an ad for the new Michael J. Fox series this fall on NPC. I hope it does well (and is a good show, of course), and I hope this means he's well enough to maintain a whole series. Because if it does, that's awesome. Call me oldskool, but I've always loved Fox/his comedy/acting and always will. It woudl be great to have him back more regularly.

Hubby's current running around in BL2 has equaled a lot of Legendary items dropping. He's gone from lvl43-50 and has had maybe 7 oranges drop, mostly from trash mobs (eg, he's not "farming" anything). I wonder if they altered the chance percentages with the last patch or DLC.

Family summer events this weekend. Hopefully the weather is nice. John Carter was on cable and watching part of it again, I still think the "dog" is the best thing in the film. They should make a children's animated short based only around that "dog" or something.

Think it's just a weekend event. It didn't officially start until this morning I think, but for some reason the boxes were dropping last night, before official announcement. And yeah...if you price it out, it's far cheaper to just buy the pants/shirt from the AH than try to get the crafting tools to have a chance at making one yourself. At least at the moment.

Don't know if you know (or care, heh), Keyrock, but the new Tymora giftboxes that drop (random mobs, anywhere, temporary event) apparently have a good chance to come up dragon egg...so the price for those on the AH has dropped like mad for a while. I got six boxes in an hour in Whispering Caverns (I think that's what it's called) area ... no eggs, but got the decorative crown and other things. Potions seem the most common. Not worth much to me, really, but at least you don't need a key to open them. Anyway...guess they really want people to make purple pants.

My husband would like to differ with you. The whole purpose of the wireless PC controller is precisely so he can play a PC game on the big-screen TV whilst sitting with his feet up in the recliner with a cat on his lap and a beer on an endtable. Of course, he's not "most people."

Considering how many Drizzt's and Frodo's and what have you that you see running around in every fantasy MMO, I doubt a player naming their game chr. after an existing fictional chr. is generally a cause for copyright concern.

The 30's ... those are great years. Happy Birthday, ya young pup!

Generally speaking I suppose I'm just the type who doesn't think much is going to be solved via responses on the internet. There's several factors going on (lack of brain-filter/real faces to stare into, cultural/social differences of what's "insulting" or "too far", blahblahblah). Now I don't mean one shouldn't speak one's own mind/put in their two cents if one wishes. I just mean ... it's going to take something more like what Hurlshot's classes are doing, perhaps. Building more awareness/tolerance outside of the internet so less people think it's "ok" to behave that way just because ... it's the internet. The "I can get away with it, so I'm gonna do it" mentality...that's what you're fighting, really. Edit: Also, the "words can never hurt me" thing we're often trained to believe. Which is a type of lie, because words definitely can hurt. It's just different people have different tolerances, like with anything else.

I re-watched Margin Call, largely because of the awesome cast it has. Which makes me wonder a bit about Zachary Quinto. I hear he doesn't want to be Spock for very much longer (maybe a 3rd time). Understandable .... a lot of Star Trek folk get so typecast it's hard to find "popular" work after that. Would they just find a new Spock or reboot the film series once more, I wonder. Also...I saw The Captains - William Shatner's film where he interviews/talks to all the actors who played Captains in the ST franchise (it's recent enough that it includes Chris Pine). Shatner manages to keep his self-absorbed ego at least somewhat in check and it's cool to see/hear from those actors. Altho, I think what I mostly came away with was a feeling of "time is marching on/most look so much older" and learning who Chris Pine's father was ... (CHiPS actor Robert Pine) ... I didn't know that before. Bizarro.

I used to read the manual, until they largely stopped being useful...eg, just listing the controls/hotkeys, a few of the "possible cool items you may find!" and a bit o' flavor backstory on enemies or chrs. or whatnot. A line that goes something like "Strength is the attribute that dictates how hard you hit" and "Life is what dictates when you die" isn't very useful in terms of knowing whether I'm going to like a Sword-Warrior or a Mace-Warrior in a particular game, or whether a mixed-skill type of character may be viable or not. Some manuals are still better than others these days, of course. But a lot of the time...pffffft.

Why I've never been "ambitious" - not having deadlines and lounging about is far too enjoyable.

I thought one of the definitions of ignoring something was, in essence, that you're running away from a problem. Assuming, of course, one thinks something is a problem. Not everyone thinks some troll comments towards themselves on the 'net is a problem. One can just not want to have to listen to it for a while, like one doesn't want to listen to a nagging spouse all day long. Like most people, I occasionally get irritated by or tired of the shenanigans on the internet. But I also know I can go away, immerse myself in life that's not the over-reactive/no-brain-filters internet, and come back refreshed. That's not, imo, running away. That's knowing when to take a break to get perspective so you yourself hopefully won't let temper get the better of you, act the fool, and end up just adding to the problem. Now, that's me talking about general internet trolling. If someone is "cyberstalking" you specifically and/or seems a serious threat to your/someone's actual person, that's a different thing and one should at least report it to the website/IP owner or the authorities.