LadyCrimson

Pretty soon this will be the 'Beautiful People' thread... :D I'm tempted to post a picture of SG-Atlantis' leading man for old memories sake, but...I shall refrain. For now. Edit - nice lake shot, Kaftan. A little grainy, but nice comp.

Xmas day is fine. It's all the days leading up to Xmas that I can't stand.

One of my remaining cats (11 y.o) is too fat around the middle to fold over and reach around and clean her own behind. She tries, and doesn't quite make it, and sits there looking hopelessly forlorn in a cute yet pathetic way. We call her our harpy-seal, cause she looks like one when she lies down, I swear.

If a monster hits you while you have the Hunter speed skill on, you're stunned/slowed to a crawling walking pace for some seconds. If they hit you again, it goes on forever. But it's still very useful for around the huge towns and actual road travelling, which is generally 'safe'. If you're hit while riding a mount, you're not stunned.

I'll agree. Most of them, anyway. I've met exceptions...

I don't mind some travelling in a game...can make a nice atmosphere and seem more 'real' than being able to super-sonic your way everywere...but Blizz went a little extreme. Heheh I think they do have plans for more eventual flight-paths tho. Edit - The Hunters speed skills are NOT good for out-running monsters....but hunters rock.

Even the mages can only teleport/make portals to certain main-hub towns. Useful, but it's no D2 town-portal spell hehe

@Petay - re: traveling in WoW yeah, there are 'flight paths' - but they are not in every town, and initially, you have to find them before you can use them. At level 40 (if you have the gold) you can buy a mount which speeds up land travel, but the distances are so long sometimes that even that takes a while. Mounts are very useful for outrunning monsters tho... So the flight-paths/mounts are useful and definitely help, but you will still spend a hell of a lot of time travelling from place to place.

Well, truthfully, people don't actually talk much in WoW - not in open public chat anyway - except in the Barrens, which seems to be the accepted 'chatroom' of WoW. I'm sure lots of intelligent and fun Guild/party chats are going on that aren't visible. I'm just referring to the visible public yakking. I'll put it this way - in WoW, my ignore list was often packed, and I'd often turn off general chat entirely, especially in the Barrens.. I tried the RP servers briefly...it didn't seem all that different to me (social-wise) than the 'normal' servers. And, Petay, one more thing - WoW is definitely not the kind of game where you can log on for an hour and get very far at all, so if you're often very short on gaming-time, GW might be more rewarding because of that. If you play WoW for the free month and like it enough to get to lvl 20 or more, I'd definitely go for the 3-6 month payment plan, because you'll probably be playing at least that long before you get totally bored.

Landscapes are nice, but I'm typically more into macros. Btw, maybe this thread should have a 56K warning? Just an idle thought.

Guild Wars - great for PvP, and somewhat fun for PvE. I like PvE, and I liked GW for about a month & a half of faily soild playing. It's very combat oriented, no non-combat skills, just run out and kill stuff. The quests were ok, but still your average RPG-lite fetch & carry stuff that's just meant to get you to a new area. Since I don't like PvP, I got bored pretty fast. The PvE part of GW is fun enough, and well laid-out, but it doesn't have the obsessive quality that makes me stick with it. I also didn't like the 'items' that much...they weren't very interesting at the time I played. It has more similarities to DungeonSiege than to Diablo2, IMO, although of course, all 3 are hack-n-slash stuff. WoW is a lot of fun, even solo...the world is neat, and huge, and fun to explore, but you'll hate all the running around to get from A to B. We're talking 15-20 minute runs or more sometimes. You will get lost and won't know 'what do to do' (quest-wise) many many times. WoW has more stuff to waste great chunks of your time with, like learning the blacksmithing trade etc., so if that's your bag, you'll have great fun with that. It's hard to get a PUG going in WoW tho, at least early on where everyone likes to go solo most of the time (unless you have a guild to rush you, of course). The general community of WoW...well, it's Blizzard, you can take a guess.

That I've actually played... Snake Rattle N Roll, for NES. It was easy/fun/hilarious for the first levels, and became increasingly impossible. Most everything else, there were tough levels or spots that'd take me 5 or 10 re-tries to get past, but nothing that made me toss the game at the wall or give up just because of it.

Duct tape rules them all.

Forgot to mention...I'm currently playing Diablo2 with a SP mod that allows me to have the Realm b.net 1.11 features without the actual idiotic hassle of b.net. It's been a mildly fun blast of the past...although I'm finding the 800x600 2D graphics a lot more annoying now than I did 4 years ago, so I think it's almost time for something else.

Diablo2 doesn't have cute pack animals. D2 and DS2 have a very different feel from each other, but I must agree with Battlewookie and say that at heart, they're essentially the same. Course, I think most 'action-RPG's' are the same, really. Just different faces, items, and maps.

I was wondering if anyone would pick up on that. The problem with entertainment components is that they're usually placed right next to each other/ontop of each other, and thus the...flow...of the mismatched component doesn't blend. The colors may go well together, but only in the right layout/proportions of 'blending' do they provide the 'proper' impact.. At least, that's what they say on the HGtv channel shows. Since my house essentially has no interior design scheme except too much cat-hair, I wouldn't really know...

Kreia reminds me more of Senator Palpatine/Sidious...where the evil is more a subtle and manipulative thing...and I find such evil to be more....evil. Thus, I vote Kreia. Even tho I didn't like to use her to play with in the game all that much.

Green or red, or both?

@taks Well, since I have no facts or figures to make debate points with (not to mention I don't like debating that much, hehe), I'll just end with...all 'systems' have pros and cons and it's all really just dependant on what the population of an area is willing to put up with at any given time. What works in one country may not work in another, blah blah. In terms of the medical debate, my sister would be better equipped...she's a general practice MD for low-income families in SF and has been highly active in the politics regarding rying to improve the situation there (from both the 'doctor' and the patient aspects). She's created interesting, potentially workable...bills?...that were voted down...it's a highly frustrating process for her, to say the least.

Yes, it would bother me if all my other companents were a single color and the cable box was not. Not a lot, mind you, but I'd notice, and for about two days I'd moan about it...and after that, I'd forget all about it. Either that or I'd buy new accessories that matched the cable boxes color and use them to off-set the difference. Did you ask your provider if they had different colors available?

Oh, I agree with that...which was sort of the point of the first part of my post. While there are plenty of people who go into jobs because they simply like the profession and want to help people, and thus they are only concerned with a certain livable wage rather than an 'uber-materialistic' wage, they are not enough to make a high-quality system. Think of the US Dept. of Motor Vehicles and all the jokes about their employees...now think of the medical profession being run the same way. Now...I believe it'd be possible to create a socialist hathcare system that works better than the US DMV, haha, but it would still lack something. I didn't say universial preventive care (notice I didn't say universal treatment) was truly feasible...just that I'd like it. Couldn't you have a basic socialist type healthcare for basic needs, even if it was filled with grumpy government workers, and still have the 'pay through the nose' higher-end options for those who could afford it? For me, I'm more concerned that there are too many people in the US who have absolutely NO healthcare because they can't afford it at all, especially as more and more companies are getting rid of all or part of their 'benefits.' Some kind of minimal, standarized healthcare program for those people would be nice...and while it may be naive, I don't think such a thing would neccesarily have to get rid of/replace the free-market end of things.

So IQ tests, then, are essentially trying to measure one's ability at problem solving? I'm not entirely sure I'd consider that true 'intelligence', especially without a defined concept of what constitutes a 'problem to be solved', but since one needs to define something in order to be able to test for it, I suppose it's as good a definition as any. But I think they have about as much merit as 'personality' tests....

I just wanted to point out that the fact people have to wait in line for hours to see a doctor has less to do with the system than with the fact not enough people want to be doctors (vs. the speed of the growth of the population)...or at least, not enough people want to be general practictioners, because it pays less or has less chance for 'glory and recognition'. I've always wanted 'universal' preventive healthcare - the check ups, the tests, tho being no policy expert I'd have no idea how to implement it or if it would even be possible given the mechanics of the US systems. Currently, the US medical system seems to largely consist of nothing but drug-pushers.

I would like to know what, exactly, these tests are supposed to measure. As far as I can tell, they usually seem to measure one's ability to make random lucky guesses. I once tried a lot of IQ tests, from books, on the web, etc (nothing 'official tho) and the results varied wildly between 110 to 160 depending on the type of dominant 'format' the test was based around. For example, I have little formal education in math, and for decades my lifestyle has not included any math more complicated than balancing a checkbook. Thus, IQ tests that are 'mathy', I do the worst in. If I did have a great education in math, and if that resulted in my doing much better on those type of IQ tests, what, exactly, are we measuring? Education level? Ability to remember what you've learned? To recgonize patterns? On about half the tests, I'd get over 140 just from taking wild guesses - I had absolutely no clue on the problem and just picked an answer that 'seemed less incorrect' than the others. What does that measure? Instinctive & intuitive brainpower? Grain of salt, indeed. "

Ah...these type of tests. I always come out an INTJ and have for 20 years, with very strong introvert/thinking and just barely Intuitive/Judging. I tested as something quite different when I was a young teen tho, during that period of time that kids are rebelling against parental control. Make of that what you will. :D @Kaftan - no one likes to believe they can be fit snugly into some defined category...I had a friend once who declared that such tests made him feel as if he *had* to behave a certain way, as if being labeled as 'this' was an attempt to declare that there is no such thing as free will or true individuality because a 'personality type' dictates what the outcome of your reactions to stimuli will be. But (serious) personality tests aren't really like that and they're not designed to say anything of the sort. They're just...average preferences at that time in someone's life. Not actual roadmaps or crystal balls. But yeah, I don't think they should be used for hiring criteria, or anything of that sort, either, cause in such uses they tend to get abused as if they *are* roadmaps, and that's wrong, IMO.