Calax

Calax, you're still at University right? Hit up some bars man! Meet some new people! The noise would exacerbate my symptoms. You need to get a good roll in the hay. That will snap you right out of it, or at least make it go easier. This requires being social enough to find a willing female who wants to roll around in a haybale. Again, not that much of an option except online. Honestly, the biggest thing I need to do is cultivate a good friend. It's really the isolation that gets to me (my demeanor doesn't really help me make any friends what so ever and right now my roomate is sleeping in another room because I flipped out on him for always using a variant of "Go **** yourself" to end every discussion). Admittedly saying that and DOING that are two entirely separate things and I'm getting worried about just how hard this one is going to hit given I've gone over in my mind the mechanics of stealing a neighbors bottle of Ibprofin for OD uses.

Doesn't the Gardens of the Moon have a glenn cook quote to promote it? (And the Instrumentality of the Night books have Erikson promoting those?) I think Erikson would have a lot more followers if he nailed down the narrative to a slightly more linear structure IN THE BOOKS (I don't mind the books being all over in chronology, but actually IN the books I think it needs to be less... schitzophrenic). And maybe explained more about the world.

Calax, you're still at University right? Hit up some bars man! Meet some new people! The noise would exacerbate my symptoms.

I'm headed into my depressive bipolar state.... yaaaaaay. Also I need to get out some.

Takes forever to get going IIRC.

That's because Oliver Platt makes everything he's in at least a little bit awesome.

Oh hey! Bloodlines is five bucks on steam right now.

Doesn't the Qua'ran acknowledge that Jesus is a prophet of god, just as the new testament acknowledges Moses and the Old testament?

For me The best of the most recent games has been Ballad of Gay Tony. Mainly because it's still story driven, but it returned a lot of the fun to the entire thing, as compared to GTA IV's depressing story. (seriously, you play golf onto some guys body to get him to talk) I'm hoping they've realized that people like the over the top level of action and such.

I donno... they seem fairly good to their people. Team Bondi would have been that, but they've been shut down. Rockstar's business crew is able to sniff out very good projects to take over. And if they have a project that isn't performing well, they'll find ways to make it better.

That reminds me, I need to go and check my gamestop for a beta invite... I pre-ordered it there.

70% of World of Warcraft player never make it to level 10. Only a minority of players ever make it to end-game, but those are the players who are most likely to spend years with your game. 80% of all statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. I found this page, which only shows people in selected guilds - there's about 300.000+ characters and as far as I can tell, the spread is pretty even (level wise). Two things, One, that is actually a mod that requires user support (basically in game you hit a button and it uses in game tools to figure out everyone that is currently visible and playing). Two http://www.warcraftrealms.com/charsheet/40301918 Wow... they have me from 06! and have the flaw of being unable to easily tell when it's the same character just with cosmetic changes.

Which don't really support it. Forgotten Realms has several entire pantheons as previously noted. And Elder Scrolls has belief systems vary by regions. The Dunmer in particular used to practice ancestor worship before the Triumverate ascended. And parts of that tradition are maintained. But as we discussed, when the gods are real you can't really call them different religions when you're watching Thor chokeslam Zeus into a tree. At least in my mind. I mean we see things in history where the competing religions have been morphed into a minor religion of the primary (where gods of pagans have become saints under Christianity). 40K has at least three competing belief systems for humans. The Imperial Truth, Imperial Cult, and Chaos. Only one of which is currently dominant for the Imperium, granted. And one of which is practically wiped out completely.Oh, and the AdMech's belief systems. But they all Worship the God-Emperor. That's made explicitly clear in the fluff. Well except for Chaos, but even Chaos can't deny that the Emperor is able to work miracles.

Actually, they do. The "Light" has basically been retconned into being the invocation of the Na'ru (after being retconned from God). Like I said, it's a bit of a quagmire to start digging into the Warcraft mythology as they tend to sorta splatter all over the place in what is a god, what isn't, and which ones are at the top of the tree. Xenogears/saga also has it (although not as pervasive... and you do kill God.) Suikoden... actually, many of the Japanese rpgs in the world have a single religious system in place. It's either based off of the Bhuddist or the christian models (admittedly, half their games have huge references to christianity built in). Most western RPG's are derivative works from PNP or books. I mean you could argue that Jedi is the single unifying theism of Star Wars, and let's not get started on the God-Emperor of Mankind.

In media in general for the point I posted the best examples is Edding's Elene church (which is an idealized view of catholics/christians), the other gods and dieties aren't allowed to be discussed except in very oblique terms. The two closest examples to the monolithic churches I've been talking about would be the church in FFXIII (complete with a pope!) and the church of the light in Warcraft. Although Warcrafts theology is one giant cluster F*** so...

That's the curse of being a whistleblower in a globalized market. You piss off a business by publishing their dirty laundry, the other businesses will drop their hammer on you. And you can't "launder" your donations through something else because the same companies control things world wide.

Eddings is a rather prolific author, I don't really like him because the book feels like the entire world is set up as his fantasy, and the main character is obviously an author insertion persona (the best warrior, super politician, married to a political bombshell 30 years his junior...) No, but most of the churches in media I've seen either don't touch on the gods being connected, or if they do then "there is no god but god" comes in and is used as a dramatic tool to create conflict.

True, but then you run into the land of contradictions that David Eddings enjoyed yutzing with in that many monotheistic religions borrow heavily from Christianity, and include "There is no god but my god" as a tennant of their religion. Ignoring if their god is currently arm wrestling the gnomish god of stupid in the corner of a seedy bar.

I'm not sure what you mean. Most MMO's I've played take 100's of hours to level to the cap, even when focused heavily on that goal. But comparing that to the time spent at the level cap. I wonder what the percentage is of players that cap out? I rarely reach the level cap in MMO's. I can never tell if I am in the minority. Honestly? I'm willing to bet that most of the players of MMO's have at least one character at the cap. I think you'd the minority (or abberation).

Thing is, can you really divide something like the D&D deities, when those gods are actually all in existence and arguing like children with one another.

I'm not sure what you mean. Most MMO's I've played take 100's of hours to level to the cap, even when focused heavily on that goal. But comparing that to the time spent at the level cap.

At 11:30 today I got this call "Where are you! YOu're supposed to work today!" "No I'm not..." "Yes you are!" "But Boom told me I wasn't supposed to come in today!" "Well Boom isn't me, I'll talk to her but get in here!" ... *sigh* For the record, Boom is the manager in charge of making schedules for the store, and was not the morning manager who I was supposed to work for.

Generally having as a reference "Hades_One from your official boards" Isn't gonna help you no matter how revered the guy is on here.

I suppose you could break it down to Many religions with some form of existing god for each Or One religion that is monolithic in structure and mirrors the Catholic church.

To a degree, the D&D stuff can still be considered as all being in the same pantheon. After all, one of the pervasive things about Forgotten Realms and such is that the gods do exist and throw about miracles to their priests and paladins. Dragon Age I can't really dig into, I've played it but not ever gotten to far (usually because I get stuck due to the game deciding it hates my computer). It still seems to have the monolithic megachurch that runs the entire land.