LadyCrimson

I remember that breakdown of GW cost before - which is why I asked - and it did assume they'd keep up with those expansions. They were banking on the fact players psychologically might be more willing to buy a tangilble in-my-hands product (expansion) vs. the idea of a constant monthly add to their credit cards, or whatever. So was curious if that actually seemed to be so.

They're very fun sometimes.

Stronghold series is still one of my favorites. Most of the rest, I may love a few of the tracks - Nox and Majesty had a couple of the most delightful themes, I thought - but overall not so much. That sort of thing. I also tend to turn music off in games, particularly action/RPG's - it always feels a bit odd to march around in fields and dales with music playing mysteriously 'from above.' :D Plus sometimes music gets in the way of the other game noises I'd rather hear, like the crunch of bunny footsteps in the snow.

I'd agree w/Cant's analysis about pay-to-play - particularly in terms of the cost to the player. But there's only so many players, even if it does number in the billions, and most aren't likely to become monetarily dedicated to more than a 1-3 at a time. So I do wonder if, in order for the concept to become truly common, vs. a few "giants", if the price isn't going to have to come down. By that I mean, how many never-ending pay-to-play MMORPG's can the market really support? I haven't kept up with GuildWars news - how is their method of paying (theoretically more frequent expansions instead of per-month) working out, anyone know?

Not a video, one of those ytmnd pages. Don't know how old or 'net famous' it might be but someone linked to it and it cracked me up. How to make an AGP vid card work in a non-AGP slot? Makes me wonder if it was a real forum post.

No and no. That said, based on the guys name in the articles, I think these are two videos that show some of this new footage from aired news stories. One's on youtube and the other some news website where you have to watch an ad first etc. video.ap.org link It's just another blurry dark shape in the water video.

I've only seen a few of those shows, and he's still Shatner in terms of the frequent speech-pausing ... only he talks a lot softer, so it gives a different feel. In ST:TOS he was almost shouting every line. I think he's matured as an actor in his old age - or at least mellowed.

Well, I've never been able to level super fast in any action-rpg game, barring being "rushed" in some fashion by higher level players. I hear people say how fast they reached max level and I always think I must be playing a different game.

I suspect Greedo's father might be involved.

Just piping up to say I agree with the above. Mostly, I don't like the overuse of pastels or neon-bright colors, and I feel like I see far too much of it in games these days. Kind of ... renaissance or Picasso painting palette oriented, perhaps. Which is fine in some cases, but it's an overall trend I haven't particularly liked.

Yeah, the highest I ever got was 47. I don't mind grinding when levels come at a somewhat reasonable pace, but no matter how much I might like and play an action-rpg, when it gets to that point where you play a few hours and your exp. bar barely moves, I always lose patience and make a new character, instead. In Diablo2 I only reached lvl 99 once, heh. There's a lot of small but kind of cool changes since the last time I logged in, even without the expansion, anyway.

I was considering it, but I think I'll wait to see if I ever have a lvl60 character, first. I don't tend to be that long-term dedicated to MMORPG's; not sure it's worth it for me, at least right now. The new races are kind of interesting, but it'd still be the same game mechanics. If I joined the AB guild with the others, or otherwise found some regular play-pals, perhaps ... we'll see.

Hahaha, hubby and I joke about Mr. Caruso/Shatner all the time. Shatner did tone down the ham a little for the movies, tho he still had some classic moments. When I bought the first two seasons of ST on DVD, I hadn't seen any in years, and it was actually pretty entertaining to see them again. Tho I did FF in some spots ...

All the talk of WoW in the other thread caused me to re-install the game and peek at my old and dust-covered characters. Then I created a new one, just to see if I'd still like the game, and because I was considering using another server where some acquaintances are. While still addicting in the wee hours, I'm not sure I could start all over from scratch again for a new server. Even after all this time, I have the beginning areas and quests mostly memorized and the thought of countless hours building up profession skills for the 10th time or more makes me snore. But riding around on my mounts and petting my raptor again was fun!

*pats Sand on the head while speaking in soothing tones* There there, we know, it's okay.

The people who made that make some funny stuff - I still think the Braveheart one is one of their better ones.

Re: save points - I kind of like the way Titan Quest uses 'resurrection fountains' - basically fairly frequent and re-activateable save points that dictate where you'll show up in the game next time you fire it up. I rather like it and it's fairly flexible. If you give up on a big battle for the day, you close the game, come back the next day and just have to retravel a small portion of an area to get back to the boss again. In other words, it's not frustrating to the more casual player but not as convienent as 'I can save/restart the game anywhere anytime.' I don't know if it's a method that could be adapted to the more tradtional RPG, tho. PS - I like TQ's system despite being an addicted 'save at anytime' type of player.

Leonardo still looks like he's under 20, to me - but his intense gaze and brows sometimes carries his believability through - to a point. Matt Damon, imo, doesn't have those intense peepers and thus falls flat, no matter how old they manage to make him look. He's too plain vanilla. Great for Good Will Hunting/dramas - not for being a super-spy/action dude. So I think it's less about looks/age - there are some pretty youthful "bad guys" etc in real history, after all - as it is about a certain type of charisma and projecting it on-screen. Matt doesn't have it. Neither does George Clooney.

Deja Vu on cable HD on-demand. Not at all what the TV ads had me expecting. Here I thought it'd be kind of like "Denzel the recent psychic" running around seeing flashes and whatnot. But no ... instead it's a riddiculous tech-babble time wormhole sort of thing. It didn't completely suck, and Denzel is always nice on the eyes, but I'd say ... mmm ... 5.5/10.

A big mug of oolang tea, before I take a shower and head out to aquire some real caffeine.

Actually, I kind of agree on the RTS's. Although in my limited experience it's usually because the AI "cheats" and comes at you in 10 minutes with full armies while you're still carrying a hoe. The surprise and overwhelm factor. FPS - do you think the actual combats are easier than RPG's? I mean, I've always had terrible aim & reaction speed, so I figure my problem with those is mostly that ... thus hard for me to judge. Although, I did think Doom3 wasn't as difficult as I was expecting. Doom and DoomII, those final few crazy battles were killers for me. FPS do seem to have changed their combat tactics somewhat, these days.

I've been using this one as a tiled background desktop, because ... well, because I love Puss n Boots. I have yet to find it in a bigger size ... not that I've looked really hard.

I've never found RPG's all that difficult (on 'normal' difficulty, assuming it had different difficulties) combat wise, except for a few of the boss/act end type battles. Not that I mean they were "sooo easy", either - but it's more about patience and persistance than difficulty - I rarely feel like "omg, this is so hard/impossible." FPS give me that sensation a lot more, since they're more based on hand-eye, which I suck at. I've always personally liked combat possiblities where you're not really supposed to 'defeat' a monster at the chr. lvl you first encounter them, but if you're determined, you can try, and might be able to win. Like, in one of the Might & Magics where you could try and defeat the dragon in the cave on the 'starter training' island. Pretty darn hard - and required some tricksy behaviour - but wildly fun when you managed it. :D

After Might and Magic7, I kept waiting for the sequel that would save that series, but alas it never came ... It didn't 'save' the series in terms of popularity/sales, but I personally was very glad for Caesar4, since while Pharoah and Emperor and all those were ok, I didn't like they direction they going with them. But I think I'm in the minority there.

I agree. I don't think it looks that bad, really. The backgrounds and other visuals are fine - it's just the faces ... kind of like in games ... that pop out as being unealistic. But since they all kind of have a similar style to them (elongated triangular), I'd say it was on purpose. It's a lot better looking to me than most popular anime, anyway. If the plots are interesting, I might watch it for a little while.