Calax

They Declared on me. I was kinda wanting to head north to take Berlin rather than south, but it looks like I'm gonna march for byzantium. That said, anyone know good mods that are similar to Total Realism at least map wise? I'm not exactly fantastic at medival and it's melee heavy partners, but I'm frustrated that ALL of france is one province. But isn't that going to require you to DOW a ton of other countries before heading south? Or is this not right at the beginning of the game? .. Wait, I'm not prussia, I'm austria *facepalm*

They Declared on me. I was kinda wanting to head north to take Berlin rather than south, but it looks like I'm gonna march for byzantium. That said, anyone know good mods that are similar to Total Realism at least map wise? I'm not exactly fantastic at medival and it's melee heavy partners, but I'm frustrated that ALL of france is one province.

Started a game of Empire:TW I'm Prussia and was having trouble deciding which way I wanted to go... then that decision got made for me when the Turks decided to attack. I need more schools >.>

Games are much more complex now from a technical point of view. The experiences are more streamlined, the games more formulaic. The innovation seems to come more from smaller indie games with the bigger developers taking less risks. The complexity of gameplay and the importance of story/characters/writing may have declined, but the overall quality of products has undoubtedly gone up. This, also as gaming has become larger in terms of audience and appeal certain niches have died out because gamers need to have things moving swiftly and dislike not having a clear direction. This is why Turtle RTS's and adventure games like Monkey Island and Myst have kinda fallen off the map. Turtle games because most players don't want to spend an hour trying to crack the nut of a king turtles base. And the adventure games often give you a goal, but 0 hints on how to reach it, often requiring you to look stuff up on gamefaqs.

Reminds me of a movie where they put Jenna Jameson in a lab coat and glasses and called her a scientist (not sure if it was jenna or some other porn star, but still).

Bioware was the big main guy for RPG's back with IE. But as time moved on other groups got into it and soon they were in pretty heavy competition but didn't make the change to keep ahead.

DOOO EEETTT!

Healbot. So easy a Paladin could do it. So I've been told, as it is I'm SLOWLY leveling a shaman to 80 that'll be elemental/resto so I can get a caster for once (all my toons have been melee)

That was the only one I EVER saw, and that kept me up for two days strait.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underd...p3/icecrown.xml For lore nerds, Icecrown Citadel is coming out in 3.3. That's explaining the 5 mans. Basics: Three wings, the raids will be smashing down the front door, the 5 mans will be sneaking in the back door to sabotage the Lich Kings defenses (and attack him in his chambers). Gives out NICE gear. Lich King will be defeated in the last 5 man (not killed, that's saved for the 25 man). From the sound of it the raids will have you charging in on either the Skybreaker or Ogrims Hammer (which are airships in icecrown) to get into the Citadel proper. Then you'll fight through the wings of Icecrown to break open the way to Arthas to finally defeat him. In other news, Cataclysm had more details pop up. Southshore is being wiped out by a tidal wave. STV is gonna be the MOST changed zone in the place. New Orgrimmer lead by Garrosh Hellscream who is slightly racist (orcs and taurens only allowed). Undercity revamped so you can get in from above. The ashenvale outpost the horde have is going to be changed to look like Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra. Raids will be based more around the Naxx model (lots of bosses, wings, etc) than the Sarth model (on big boss in the entire instance).

I played it, it's not currently on my computer. The biggest thing about Mplayer is that you've gotta get pioneer/enginner squads (two or three) and send them out to take territory. Most maps will have obvious choke points that you should fortify to at least slow your opponent down. Some strategies depend on the map, for example in Vire River Valley you're probably gonna blow the bridges as fast as you can and fortify the heck out of the ford with AT weapons, snipers, and a MG or two (along with pillboxes etc). Depending on how the fight goes, it usually ends either REALLY fast with one team managing to blitz the other team and cripple them within 10 minutes, or it'll turn into a protracted siege. If the latter occurs, probably your best bet is to hold ground. If you're allied you should build tanks and repair one of the bridges to sneak across while your teammate holds the ford. If you're axis Artillery is your bestest friend for this. Because the allied don't have a mobile arty unit (compared to your nebels and halftracks). If you've got somebody as defensive doctrine an 88 or two can be DEVESTATING to the allied lines as long as you have a scout that can sight for it.

It's probably just me, but I don't see a huge difference in writing "quality" from BG/BG2 generation of games to Bio's current crop. There are definitely gameplay differences, but writing differences...? Maybe I'm just not as big a fan of the older games as some people are so I tend not to place them on a pedestal. Honestly, I think it'd be really hard to change the quality of writing for games unless you actually went out and found a new writer.

This one actually made me out and out laugh (which is REALLY hard to do anymore... at best I usually snicker)

I'd say that Sega and co know better what's going on with the game than gamestop does. If gamestop changed their date it's because their unsure of the game's arrival. But until Sega changes it's date, I wouldn't go into panic mode. Trust me, gamestops dating system is a capricious creature. Often changing dates with little news, and generating dates for games that don't have them. (Cataclysm is listed as 9/1/10 in the gamestop system currently).

Picked up Final crisis, a GLC trade (with the reintroduction of the star sapphires), and Messiah War. Final Crisis I'm gonna need to read again in order to get it all ironed out. But the basics are, New Gods got in a war, New Genesis lost, and now Darksied is going about making the future that was in Rock of the Ages happen.

The demo was very pretty. Yeah, didn't really understand how this would work or why it was included, but I suppose some people enjoy such things. Apparently there is a firm 'single player' option, so no biggie. Patched, or purchased? Because I started reading about monthly payments in order to have a train network, and that's just not happening. To be honest, I don't understand what they're proposing in this area, but it's very off-putting. Don't know about the third one, but for the second one they were talking about the ability to have an avatar that you can use to go to other cities and throw events.

Yeah, they are a GOOD team. Admittedly I haven't read many bat books (staying with Teen Titans Superman, and Lantern).

Can I come?

SimCity with updated graphics, and an MMO aspect to it. Also the other transportation modules (busses, trains, subways etc) will be patched in.

Well. if Bioware keeps posting profits than EA will make back their money, it's that simple.

Year one is actually a retelling of batmans origin by Frank Miller. Of course the guy has gone bonkers and has become similar to judd winnick in that e always changes the characters to suit his morals. Well, he certainly made Jim Gordon a BMF. But it's interesting to see where the movie had drawn from the book, even though it's not supposed to be based on Year One at all, IIRC. Actually, DKR I think is more based on the events of "long halloween" than anything else. Which was written by Jeph Loeb.

She reminds me of a chaos worshipper from Warhammer.

WoW... I did two raids tonight, one on my warrior, and half of one on my DK. For my Dk's raid we were doing Twin Valks (in ToC25). We basically ran into a brick wall because the dps just was not there. Now I don't know how many of you are WoWers but damage meters showed a WARLOCK was below a WARRIOR TANK (warriors are notorious for being the lowest dps overall in an instance when tanking) For the overall raid I came in sixth on the meters at 5751 damage per second (top was 7.8k). The dps was kinda tied with 7 people around 5.5k, but then it drops like a rock until there is a dps in 17th and 19th (with a tank in 18th) both sub 3.7k. And the interesting bit is that the person in 17th has a similar level of gear to my dk. the person in 19th I don't know what gear he had but he was pulling just BARELY more than a tank. Anyway, the numbers are attached, I just had to vent. The one on the left is damage per second from each member, the one on the right is overall damage. it's color coded for classes (blue is mage green is hunter, red is dk and so on and so on). My DK is Cardathian.

I think they also need to work on the battle maps for Empire, there is like 1 map for plains, one map for hills, one for rivers and two for cities. You need more variety than that (and it'd be nice if they at least KINDA followed the terrain they were around rather than trying to cross the rhine, but the Rhine looks like a creek)