LadyCrimson

In half an hour, I'm dragging my spouse kicking & screaming to the theater to see Inception.

Haha, that's awful cute/creative. ...they forgot to use a couple of peas for Florida.

Today I realized I use "etc" far too much when I type, lately. I cured myself of over-using "awesome" most of the time, time to work on this one now. haha

Alvin & the Chipmunks was on FX (ie, free) so I sat & watched it. I must admit I like chipmunk-style music. It amuses me. The narrating mice in Babe were some of the best giggle bits in the film. Chimpmunk movie was ok, nothing to write home about. Some cute moments, cute animation, and all that.

Speaking only for myself, I don't have any consoles, either. Doesn't apply. Despite researching/keeping an eye on them for years and years, I still don't want a console, still don't like playing on consoles. As for understanding...just feels like a personal boundaries thing. If my boundaries are different than person B, I think no amount of explaining is going to make person B think I'm being sensible. *shrug*

I'm not sure my bank has them either. They're big enough you'd think they would, but if they do, it must be buried in the bylines somewhere because I don't see it. You can get prepaid visa 'gift cards' but it's kind of a hassle for online use since you need to register it w/whoever you bought it from each time you get a new one. I imagine they're handy....it's mostly the extra hassle I wouldn't like, including needing to know how much to put on the card to buy what you want each time..but my not liking that is no one's fault but my own. I sorta explained that earlier in the thread a bit, but in essence: 1-not feeling like I own the product, I'm only "renting it". Must use Steam/be online to install game. 2-possibility of not being able to access games in the future. This applies to online-activation discs, too. It's a low chance, & I'll grudgingly tolerate it if it's a game I want super-bad, but I wouldn't want to spend 1000's on such games like I did pre-such. 3-don't play online/mulitplayer much so one of the main core appeals of Steam is a non-factor for me personally, thus accepting things I don't like in favor of gaining something else I do want doesn't work.

Divine Divinity...frustrated by bad random items, I started a new chr. to see if that would be any better. Apparently not. I didn't even know this special amulet could spawn in this useless, no-stats incarnation. Oh the giggles of references & puns to popular culture in games...

Our plan to have enough to retire semi-early hit a wall...oh well. Back to the drawing board. It's not like we're not moderately comfortable...but it sure would be nice to retire before we're 75, assuming we live that long. On the bright side, my dwarf hamsters like banana, which is too farking cute. Stress-relieving cute and more cute, that's my hammies.

I leave the actual maths proofs to people better equipped than I, which would be 98% of ppl, but I'm curious about the bolded statement. Taking that statement alone, and from my idiot layperson's perspective, I'm wondering is there anything in all this math theory that claims/proves that I/we could not be the ones to see that 1 in a trillion years chance thing happen, and it's all the generations after us that won't see it? Because if not, it does sound to my uneducated ears as if you're still saying these super high odds = absolute 0.

Privacy or security issues are always a risk (credit cards, as mentioned, among a million other things) but that doesn't mean we have to take extra risks just cause that's the way it is. ie, I have credit cards but I rarely use them and I rarely buy anything online, period. Not even w/PayPal/don't have a PayPal. Some ppl don't mind more potential risk via increasing exposure...some do. All there is to it. P.S. I don't mind the privacy stuff in Steam myself. Or at least, that's not what kept me from using it. If you read the TOA's of most games and services, there's all kinds of that stuff in there. If you agree to use something, I pretty much assume it's part of the package, these days.

Are you asking for DS3 ideas from WoW players or wondering how WoW does things and how it might apply to a non-MMRPG game? WoW uses bound items (not tradeable once worn) and has complicated chr. trade professions that require constant - and sometimes very time-consuming or dangerous-to-get - resources (ore, herbs, other stuff etc) to make their top items with. Most top-top tier items that aren't instant-bound (and there aren't that many, far as I could tell) are hard to get (can't get them with solo-Baal runs, haha), and thus rarely seen in general trade to begin with, because ppl want to keep them themselves or at least keep them in a group-guild. If you play long enough to acquire all those items from raids etc. then the continued fun of beating a very hard big man raid is supposed to be the challenge/motivation, not item hunting itself. Most of the general economy revolves around profession resources (ppl paying so they don't have to spend hours gathering themselves) and general items for new chrs/solo player types and low-level duelers, etc. Occasionally Blizzard adds new trade recipes etc. that include some of the early/easy to get resources in order to boost trade in those areas, to either force high-levels to spend time gathering them again or increase trade values for new players etc. I'm not sure if that sort of thing would work in a non-MMRPG. Most action-RPG's have no serious 'profession' to keep demand for some things very high throughout, for example. Something like what D3 seems to be planning to do would be more likely.

I'm still not clear...you do NOT have to patch before re-starting/playing a game that has available updates, then? That would definitely improve things a little from my perspective. A quick search, I think I did see some 2009 forum posts that discussed how to keep different patch versions separate or something, so it does sound like there's a way to do it now, one way or another. And yeah, in terms of lifespan of games..20+ years is a long time, not that concerned about that. These days since I'm not as into gaming as before I'd be content (for the money paid) with about 4-5 yr 'lifespan.' A lot of the discs bought in late 90's early 2000's (some which were released a while before I bought them) still work on XP...hence why I keep an XP system around. Even have a Doom disc version that works on XP w/out Dosbox or similar. And somewhere I think I still have Doom on floppy. LOL

Yard work is done, and yet it's never done. If I wasn't at least minimally concerned with possible resale value, I'd just cement it all over.

The wiki (which I know isn't always reliable...) still says: "While there is no option to globally disable automatic updates, it is possible to set a specific game to only update when requested by the user. Steam requires that games be fully patched before they can be played, however." So that isn't true anymore, then? It's been 2-3 years since I last tried it....and like I said, I was considering installing it again for purposes of a few minor games here and there, but haven't yet. In terms of online auth upon install...yes, that's true. I don't like that either, so I either have to really really really want a game to buy it or have it be a game where I figure I won't care much about reinstalling it a couple years from now anyway. 8-)

Yeah, I figure it'll amuse me in that way, too. But I'm waiting for cable, since I'm not all melty-gooey over the main chrs to have to see it right now. Although, the vampire Dr. dude (Peter Facinelli) is pretty hot.

... did anybody take serious? HA! Good Fun! Not terribly, no....or maybe not at all. I just thought I should clarify just in case. I told you I sometimes have a hard time reading/interpreting your writing style.

While I'm sure some ppl are just stubborn like that, I'm not sure how disliking the chance (even if it's not a huge chance) that maybe one day you'll lose access to all those games you paid for is being old-school. So I don't think it's just being 'old school'....I know quite a few much younger than myself who dislike Steam as well. There's also (or at least there was, assume that hasn't changed?) the aspect on Steam where you can't control what patch is applied to the games you buy, since it auto-updates when you login to that game or something. So for me there's also a control freak issue in there, because I don't always want to play the patched version of a game. Cultural I could maybe see...liking to feel like you own something, rather than rent it, and CD/DVD=physical manifestation of ownership.

My Smurf/Blue Meanie comment was supposed to be a joke....not any kind of serious reference. Just sayin'. ie, maybe the Meanies are the mutated rebellious children of the Smurfs that had to be kicked out of the village.... In reality, I don't know much re:actual history of the Meanies or the Smurfs...all I remember is being mildly scared by the Meanies as a tiny tiny tot and uninterested in the Hanna-Barbera Smurf series as a pre-teen.

Hubby put a thermometer in his office yesterday, turned on on some pc's w/windows closed, went to work, and at end of day the high temp in there was 90F/32C. Outside, the weather had a high of 76F/24C. He has a work related reason for checking temps out, btw...wasn't just random. heh

Dear Divine Divinity item stat & loot drop randomizer: Please stop giving me crap, it's been 15 chr lvls with literally nothing, not even one charm. It's enough to make me want to meta-game, kthx bye.

Oh? I think I've seen that title on On-Demand, but hubby's not into animation films much. I'll have to check it out one afternoon. Thx.

Does anyone else occasionally miss traditional/cell animation? Not that I don't like computer animation, mind you. But sometimes....I wish not all animation had that computer look. And I've always suspected the Smurf's were somehow related to the Blue Meanies.

Hm...I played Morrowind quite a bit, and never once did it make me think of DS1 music...and I love DS1 music, especially that main theme. I'd have to hear Morrowind themes & perhaps other DS1 themes too, again tho, maybe I just can't recall. I didn't like DS2's overall soundtrack quite as much.

Get off my lawn. ...more seriously, at this point in time I may prefer having a CD/DVD of my own, but I don't have anything against the concept of direct-download instead. I just don't like Steam's way of doing it. Especially since I rarely play on-line/multiplayer games anyway.

No one is arguing that it's extremely unlikely...so unlikely that 'fraud' comes immediately to mind when you hear about it (hence the investigation, obviously). However, while "a probability infinitesimally close to 0 is functionally equivalent to 0" may be true in the classroom and while working on theories in the lab or whatnot, it does not, in fact, = "true 0".