LadyCrimson

I'm in the sad for loss of diversity camp...but I'm also not surprised. If you hype your first product up and spend oodles of money, and then the product isn't what people expected/wanted, then...boom. That's business. HG:L wasn't the worst game in the world, but it certainly wasn't anything...stellar. And I buy games that I think I might like .... since I never know if I really like it until I've actually played it. If the game is by a company that I'm familiar with and have liked some of their past games, that's a bonus and makes me more confident I will like the game, but nothing is ever certain. While I'm willing to try anything if there's a free trial or something, to see if I want to purchase, I don't buy games (or anything else) I don't want just to show moral support. Perhaps if I was richer I might, but I'm not, so I don't.

That bit leaped out at me too. I kept thinking he'd "jump" over there and we'd see scenes of him saving people from drowning where he could, or something. Later, I felt that they'd put it in there largely as a display of how completely narcissistic and oblivious the character was. I'm guessing if there was a sequel we'd start seeing him be a little more heroic, but I'd also guess a sequel is pretty unlikely. :D

Was it ever difficult? Today I was "forced" to return to the store to buy canned cat food, since I forgot to yesterday, and my cat has been yowling, puking up furballs, and clawing at my feet all last night and this morning in protest. Patience is not a kitty's virtue.

Still WoW...kitty-kat druids are fun.

I hope the guy in the blue dress isn't the female character you "switched" to... So the graphics are decent if you have the 'puter...how's the gameplay? ie, the usual quest/hack-slash MMO?

Tonight we got to see the city fireworks display by just walking up a few houses to the end of our street. We'd forgotten they were fired off so relatively close...but the huge/loud booms we heard were enough to remind. Next year I'll be more prepared camera-wise, and maybe situate myself in a slightly better location, as some wires and building were a little in the way. :D

I can understand wanting to stop/reduce infringing video uploads - I don't think anyone can deny that YouTube users do that all the time & that YouTube has done almost nothing to prevent it out of fear people would stop using YouTube - but this is pretty ridiculous, because of: YouTube does have the "views for this video" stat, but it's not necessarily accurate, since it can/does record multiple views from the same IP/user. I'm not clear, but I'm not positive Viacom actually wanted the usernames etc. specifically, just accurate view stat information w/all the duplicate views eliminated, and perhaps those two things go together. Not knowing how such databases work, it feels a little odd that there isn't any other way of giving Viacom the stat information it wants w/out also having to fork over such information. The one bright side is that at least the judge had the brains to say no to the other things Viacom wanted.

I think this hasn't been mentioned here yet...but this is the current big "buzz" and it regards pk/griefing. Posted by Blizz rep Bashiok in this D3 thread: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...=2&sid=1#24 Edit: P.S. - if "griefing" is eliminated, I won't personally miss it.

I go through phases where I'll change my avatar several times in a short period of time...but then I'll stick with one for a few/several months. Eventually I get tired of using the same picture I guess. Or I take a really cute picture of my cat and....

That didn't work for a sorcerer so much. But if your fireball was good enough, you could pretty much spam it to death and it wouldn't take too long.

I don't see why it wouldn't be, unless they actually took away the single-player-only aspect of the game, maybe (I don't really know what LAN requires to work, programming wise?) which is doubtful. But for D2 at least, you could play on bnet in a private/password game so only your friends could enter. It's what I often did. But LAN is better if you're all local, I agree.

Would agree that as a single-player game, the Diablo style game wouldn't hook me nearly as much (for years and years of replays) like they did at one time. But they were just about the only multiplayer game where I actually liked playing with other people, despite all the "LOL" and "TP Plz" "u nub" nonsense....so that would keep me playing a lot longer than just playing it alone. I'm not sure why...maybe because I tend to like less disorganized mp grouping...keep it random, simple, and keep it unnecessary to have a huge tactical plan and certain classes required and 4 free hours to run and kill a dungeon boss....

You realize you're making me want to play D1 again, don't you? And yeah, when they're near the stairs and you haven't cleared any areas so you have no where to back up to, it's really hard. That was the great thing about D1, imo ... you never had that kind of feeling of potential "doom" in D2 - or at least never so harsh. I play WoW an hour or two each day maybe - all soloing, no raids etc. Hadn't played in a long while till last month. Mostly it gives me something to fart around with while waiting for Spore, tho I still find making gold and the AH game mindlessly pleasurable - in small doses.

But why? The only reason it's a "mans" cologne is because it's marketed to men as being a "mans" cologne. Psychological, socially-trained stereotypes. @ taks - yeah, hubby doesn't wear any either, and I don't wear make-up except maybe a little lip gloss - never really wore make up even as a teen. But sometimes in summer, showers aren't enough, or you can't get to a shower immediately. I prefer a body spray cologne over underarm deodorant. Just my preference.

Today I'm wondering if it's socially too odd to wear a man's cologne if I like it a lot myself...I don't like many "women's" scents, too strong, too flowery or whatever, can't breathe. I like what the guys get - musky, usually more subtle. But I picture myself in a room where people ask "Are you wearing (insert popular man's scent here)??" and having to explain it a hundred times, which would get annoying. ...Ok, actually, I only spent about 6 seconds on this thought as I was getting dressed, but it was something to say.

My stats are pathetic, feel free to laugh.

That's the debate. In WoW, as often as you can afford to..the first time is cheap, and it goes up from there, but with an eventual gold-cost cap. In MMO's, this seems reasonable because of the immense amount of time involved in getting a chr. to high levels, for the average player. In games like D3, it's not as extreme...which is why I think if Blizz allows respecs, that there should be some method of limitation. Either thru the difficulty idea, or number of times, or quests, or whatever.

The difference between games like Oblivion and Diablo/WoW is that changing the spec of which "talent/skill tree" you've invested in doesn't make your mage a warrior. The only thing that changes is whether your mage deals in fire, ice, or lightning, or some combo of two, or even all three...with a single-tree chr. being the most powerful in that specialization, of course. Respec in this case isn't talking about stat points or changing classes - it's about the points that decide what abilities you will possess and how effective those abilities are, within that class.

One of the biggest arguments for respec is pretty much what Spider said. Casual players - which includes those who can't play 30+ hours a week as well as players who aren't as...hardcore, perhaps? - don't like to have to replay the entire game 60 times in order to try out every possible talent build for every class, just to be able to find out if they even like playing that build/class. Those against it often say such players are just lazy and not willing to work for it. As usual, I fall somewhere in-between...I wouldn't mind some respec ability/feature, because eventually playing the beginning of a game yet again gets really old (Peragus anyone?) but I don't think it should be all-encompassing ala WoW.

Diablo1 responses: Sorceror items were: Thinking Cap (pain to raise the durabilty w/shrines), Wizardspike (dagger), Naj's Light Plate, and Dreamflange (mace). The plate wasn't very useful past Normal, imo...the main reason to use it was to up your spell levels. I always found the D1 sorc to be easy to play...Don't put many points in VIT, since once you get mana shield, that's points largely wasted. I found the Warrior fun, until you reached the Hell levels and to chase all over the place after those Succubi. The corner trick worked, but it was still tedious. Edit: @Deraldin - you need a lot of Magic resistance against the witches, as a Warrior, or it's very very painful. The only thing to do is to lure then around a corner and then try to get them in a corner. If you attack them from the right angle whilst they're in a corner, they cannot run away from you.

My avatars are almost always cats of some kind. Because I like cats. Also, I can never think of anything else that's humorous/cool/hip.

Today I noticed that The Big Green Dragon is not the same dragon anymore. Nifty new av. Other than that...I've done the usual big nothing-much. Oh, I did try to make my own BBQ Chinese pork last week. Which was hilarious because it came out extremely pink, instead of the desired BBQ pork reddish color. Looked bizarre and unappetizing, but actually tasted pretty good. heheh

Someone elsewhere made what I thought was a pretty good suggestion on the respec idea....to make it fit more into D3's kind of game...a kind of compromise for those who hate the respec thing and those who don't. To make it so you can respec in Normal difficulty, but not in the harder difficulties. That way, more casual players could respec during the early phase of learning what skills do and what build they might prefer to continue on with etc. but it couldn't be used as an end-game crutch, if that makes sense...you'd still have to make a new chr. if you wanted both a max lvl fire mage and a max lvl cold mage, for instance. Not that I or anyone else have any say in what Blizzard will actually do....

In D2, I don't recall too many areas that were all that demonic/warmish/reddish/brownish in color...there was a lot of blues and greens and beige tones as well. Some areas had that sort of "diablo look" and some didn't. Even in Diablo1, the catacomb levels were predominantly blue, for instance. I think there was a general sense of there being a brownish undertone to many things such as stonework and walls and such, but I guess I didn't see it as consistent enough to be an actual theme. I think, as Moat mentioned, it's hard to speak to atmosphere/environment w/out seeing the whole game.

I think it would depend on how it's done. Even in WoW, respeccing when the game first came out wasn't considered super-easy, since it cost gold that in the beginning, wasn't easy for everyone to spend every day so someone could run 2 different dungeons w/different specs every few hours. Course, by now everyone is overflowing w/gold, so that system of limitation is "broken". If it was quest or item based, it could be made somewhat challenging or take some time, but not nearly as long as building up a new character. So players would still have to "work" a little for it while still being the easier option.