Calax

http://www.cityofheroes.com/trial/index.html 14 day trial of City of heroes and Villians.

New York is overrated, but it's less overrated than Vegas IMHO. Admittedly my experience was limited with Vegas, but the strip feels like it's disneyland without the attraction of friendly people, and more expensive. New York at least has REALLY good shows that are fairly cheap at Broadway, and it's reasonably priced for most things (meaning, it's not gonna be 10 bucks for a sandwich) because most of the locations that are used for entertainment are also part of the residents daily lives. I donno, Vegas didn't live up to it's reputation to me. New York I've never had a reputation to look at because I've been visiting that city since I was 6.

I was hanging out with my parents, arrived on friday, visited family (it was a reunion thing) then they all left saturday. We saw Ka friday with the family, then yesterday saw blue man group (which is REALLY cool!). Today I spent the day with my dad in the Monte Carlo reading because we decided it wasn't worth trying to do anything (shows don't start until later and I will NEVER gamble), then went to the airport. ... Honestly, I like NY better than Vegas.

In WoW, I dont see you able to fire critical strikes or power attacks or flurries at enemies, which is why it kicks ass. Combat in WoW isn't really worth the lowliest of garbage found in the most beat up garbage can. Combat in FPS games are great, and KotOR combat is worth the highest of a plasma tv. But not to be saying only KotOR and FPS game combat is good, I happen to like the Jade Empire and Mass Effect combat, and they aint FPS or TPS. I like games that dont just have in combat, attack, as an only choice, I like it when you have secondary attacks (such as Critical Strike) in combat too, adn I dont see that in WoW. Ok, JE and ME both have VERY shallow combat systems. It's really just kinda "pick your weapon and CLICK FOR YOUR LIFE!" If you did play WoW I'd guess you only played the 4 levels or something. Characters in WoW don't pick up real specialization or their "bread and butter" attacks until at LEAST the 40s. Levels 1-20 are really just excersizes in "spam 1 attack/autoattack". The combat system is pretty dang deep when you hit level 80. As a warrior I've got one of the lowest number of skills that I'll learn, but my bars are STILL full of stuff that I have to know when and how to use. My friends mage is SCARY in the number of skills and spells he's picked up (I think he has like 100? including teleports to various places). In the land of WoW endgame is king. Because only then do you have all the tools that you'll require to actually do your job in an instance or raid scenario. Do I need to break out a screen shot of my Raid UI for you to see the depth?

From what I remember, vampires, hunters and (oddly enough) demons were somewhat balanced, with hunters coming out a bit short usually. But Garou and especially the freaking mages... add to that that the mages' thing was "bending reality" as opposed to fixed, codified spells, so I think it would be hard to capture that in a game well. A mess if they tried to have all of them in the same game. Read: awesome fun. I hate the nWoD. Warewolves and Mages were EXTREMELY powerful in OWoD. Mages of the highest order could mop the floor with antediluvians pretty easily (they could turn the sky to flames, transmute flesh to gold. Mages operated by warping reality and if they were warping it HARD they'd just have a more difficult time than something simple.) That said, Champions seems to be pretty well designed, but I'm afraid that it just doesn't capture people. I think it's because the powers feel non interactive. some of them you just hit and then stand around while it builds your momentum (or drains it for higher damage). Admittedly I'm still pretty early in the game.

Well Wals, to the Anonymous factor, it's quite true that we're supposed to expect them to vet their sources. But I do think that you're holding them to a tiny bit of a high standard. I mean, Deep Throat was anon and he blew the lid off the biggest scandal the country has ever seen, from your stand point it seems like Deep Throat shouldn't have been believed. As to the Israel thing, I don't like them for the attitude that Kezrak mentioned, but also I don't like the fact that they've basically institutionalized racism. Also I think that if we were to drop our support of them they'd be MUCH less forceful in their foreign relations. I donno, from what I've seen of their actions, they're never gonna "live and let live" with arabic countries, and their attitude towards Palestine feels like the attitude of a parent to it's stupid kid, patronizing it and then beating the crap out of it when it gets a little bit out of line or shows any signs of independence. And the few Israli's I've seen on TV (never actually met one) have always come across as thinking that they're superior to anyone else and that they're the best humans have to offer.

Just got back from Vegas. Blue man group and Ka are REALLY good shows.

Actually, Planescape has a few quests nothing like that, and MotB is full of more abstract quest-ing. More seriously, though, you're right up to a point. But then, you can reduce all fiction down to about 7 basic stories. That still wasn't the point. The point, rather, was that (successful) MMOs avoid innovation and variation in quest designs, and maintain minimal plot and story, if any. We aren't talking about the issue of reduction. We're talking about the issue of the MMO genre lacking almost anything but the bare bones, and the players encourage that. Me? I like cutscenes, dialogue, and quests that aren't entirely about huuuuuuge stretches of combat (the caveat being unless the combat is very fun and/or the dialogue is not at all good). I require a little more than a glorified XP system to be entertained. You have to do A LOT more boiling to get the story thing than the quest difference. As to the MMO storyline, the reason that the storyline isn't presented in Bombastic cutscenes long single quests that span the entire game, and... well I guess that's the major difference in the two... anyway, the reason that they don't have the cutscenes and associated pariphanalia is because when you're leveling the 15th guy through the spot you don't exactly want to spend 5 minutes watching mary sue flee the big bad monster for the umpteenth billion time. And the only TRUE cutscene (that interrupts gameplay) that we've ever seen in an MMO is in Warcraft at Wrathgate. They were only able to do this because of the ability to Phase because otherwise the players would probably come back to a dead body when the scene ended rather than just standing around. Most MMO tales are woven into the quest text (you know, the thing that explains WHY you're killing X for npc Y?). In Warcraft one of the earlier quests has you running down a teacher who fell for one of his young students, then killled her, her male friend, and her whole family (I think on the last one) in a fit of rage. In another, in BlackRock Depths (lvl 55-58 instance) you have to go find the kings daughter and rescue her from the evil dark dwarf king. Except when you rescue her, you find that A) She's pregnant and B) She didn't need no rescuing, she was down there by her own will.

Why the hell didn't the game developers think of that when they were making the first game. That sounds like a good idea. By first game you mean Galaxies? They kinda did, but it was built into the really odd faction system. Basically, in galaxies, you selected your faction and could be either covert or overt. You were never hard line affiliated with either faction, but you were more of an independent contractor. As to the whole Jedi/Sith thing, I don't think they allowed sith per se because if a Sith appeared Vader and the Emp would be all over it like white on rice.

Sneaking/timing games are my Achilles heel. If you've got a game where it's ONLY viable to sneak, I'm NEVER going to play it.

Got an email from my benefits people saying telling me that yes my Insurance company screwed up and didn't drop my benefits when they were supposed to, it's FINALLY been canceled and I'm now going to get a refund.

Most MMO's now a days have RP servers set up, or at least unofficial ones set up by the players (meaning anyone can play on there, but most RP'ers go there). The interesting thing about quests is that when you break it down in ANY RPG you'll find that all quests are "Kill X for NPC Y" or "collect 20 of piece Z for NPC A". It's just that the SP rpg's usually disguise it better because they don't give you strait "Kill X for Y" objectives you can look at.

We were also playing on advanced until half way through the 4th level when we kicked it up to expert. Otherwise you guys would have died a few more times with those tanks throwing you all over the place. Did the second guy actually open fire on you guys? I do that an awful lot with another group that I play with. We compete for special infected kills which often means incapping the person in front of you so that he doesn't get the kill and then trying to take out the special before his pistols take you down. Can be a lot of fun if you've got a group that can handle playing expert with severely limited health and bodies. he opened up on us IN THE GREEN HOUSE of dead air. Anyway, I'm playing "get Internet Explorer 8 so I can beta test" and ghostbusters.

Part of me thinks that this is true, but then I'm not exactly a fan of Israel. I think that the media is responsible to take up things like this and publicize them rather than wrap them up for later use and go with a story about a woman's heartwarming reunion with her child that ran away three days ago, or who Lindsey Lohan is sleeping with. The media exists to inform, not to gossip. Unfortunately it seems to have fallen away from that.

Obviously Night is Scion... he got eaten while activating the event.

He's the new Jim Carrey. Everything he's in he is exactly the same. Though Anchorman is probably his best flick. Admittedly Jim has started shifting from his role with things like the Majestic. Doesn't work quite as well. Carrey is also pretty good at playing the role other than "dumb funny guy". Farrell doesn't seem to have gotten out of that. By this I mean that I remember Farrell from the trailers of Anchorman, Taladega Nights, Blades of Fury, and Land of the Lost coming across as the guy who's ALWAYS wrong or so pigheadedly stupid it's not funny. Carrey started with the Mask but ended up being pigeonholed into that role. I donno... I guess Farrel could be the next Carrey but I don't see Farrell moving away from the archtype as Carrey did.

L4D with Ros, Der, and nightshade. We did quite well on death toll, until we got to the "run to the climax" bit (where you make your way from the saferoom to the final hold out position) then we had der go afk on the phone, and we got the bejesus kicked out of us by the zombies witches and tanks. We started at green health (80 range) and got to the event (the second try) with two people on temporary and me having been revived. But finally we figured it out and got away. Then Der and Ros dropped and we got two pugs... the second pug promptly TKed us in the first level.

I'd hardly be surprised that there was support for K3 given that the people who play the games that these boards owners make are solely single player. Admittedly the whole "degeneration" thing is pretty standard with any thread where opposing viewpoints collide.

penn and teller episode on everyones favorite pasttime (if the censors let it through.) Warning: If you actually start watching it, beware of language.

you aren't, but you are however a bit of an ass given you pigeon hole 10 million people + because of a genre. Hell, Halo boys probably have more in common with the stereotype you posted than your average MMOer.

isn't that incline REALLY REALLY steep too? *thinks he remembers the climb and hurting all the way up and down because the slope was so steep*

I love three panel soul

Look, vehicles like the Twing and phantom are only really put into a game for game balance. They usually don't even have backround information about them.

I don't think so, I think he'd prefer anything mildly profane to be "special" and not thrown out every 20 seconds. As to king of squid, they tried that with Guild Wars, but for the company to earn enough revenue you have to play 30 bucks every 2 months... I'll let you do the math yourself.

I'm fighting around Temple Prime in C&C3