Calax

actually what i said is that by definition group rights don't exist, not that governments don't try, because the concept means one group would end up with rights that supersede another group's rights. furthermore, we shouldn't legislate as if there are group rights, but the circumstances as they are dictate that we must, i.e., we created the need through unnecessary government involvement in the first place. by recognizing marriage, this example in particular, this singled out problems with gays and for that matter, singles. some groups have more rights than others? some groups are more equal than others? senseless. why should men and women have different rights, btw? taks I'm not saying they should, just that in general they do (the right to hit and not be hit back for example. The right to have hair in the military)

so from skimming taks posts he states that there is no such thing as group rights, but we can still legislate as if groups of people are seperate from each other. (men, women, black, asian, latino... not so much the latter three but the first two definately have different rights from eachother)

By nothing there, I meant content, not game mechanics. Also the writing in KOTOR is great, but mostly awful in ME, especially the story itself. Planets in ME are almost completely linear with nothing to do but shoot your way from point A to point B, while occassionally making an abrupt and meaningless decision which has nothing to do with anything. In contrast, KOTOR has interesting planets to explore, with tons of great quests to do. I'm guessing you didn't do much of the Uncharted worlds then. most of those are fairly open, and dispite what you think, Mass Effect had at least as good writing as Kotor did. Admittedly that is generally a personal opinion but all in all Mass Effect was IMHO better than Kotor because, among other things, you weren't mother Teresa or a baby eater

Oh right your not in america. There are a a few movies I think look interesting, Valkyrie and The Spirit.

I'm pretty sure that Flight 93 was shot down in favor of the possibility of it being used as another weapon. I was frustrated when the movie came out (I haven't seen it) because the film crew consulted the families on how the now dead member was as a person. And I'm presuming here but I would guess that each "passenger" in the movie was potrayed as a altruistic paragon of humanity. What's more likely is that rather than them moving to take down the plane (the fact that they were reported as gathering in the back sounds like it's falsified. I'm pretty sure anyone with half a brain knows that you don't let hostages congregate together for obvious reasons. Mob mentality takes over and things go REALLY wrong) a military plane just turned it into a smoking crater. It certainly makes more sense than the military simply sitting on their hands when a plane ignored a no-fly order.

got deeper in the Cruel Wind omnibus (the main three books in Glenn Cooks Dread Empire series). plots within plots, layers upon layers of power, complicated love story (a woman falls for father and son at the same time and actually sleeps with both, after hating men for most of her life. Oh and she doesn't know that her lovers are related (neither do they)). It starts 400 years before the first chapter with the fall of a corrupt empire. Cook is fantastic in that it's not High fantasy (everything isn't Good v Evil, Usually its the darkness of the black that the characters are fighting) and theres only men. Usually there are examples of the darkness inherent in human souls, characters raise people to power only to find that the kind old begger was more corrupt and tyrannical than the previous lord. Theres an example in the black company that I think is to dark for these boards. Also, unlike in most tales, where wizards are beings of power unimaginable but rarely hold power, Almost every King or lord in Cooks book is a magic user. Black Company is a better example because in the Dread Empire tales (at least as far as I've gotten) most of the sorcery in the part of the world that is dealt with has faded except in a few spots. All in all a favorable change from the usual rigamarole of Tolkien high fantasy where everyone is altruistic except those that are very obviously evil.

I'm not saying Generals is a bad game, What I'm saying is it had nothing to connect it to the C&C franchise other than the name. It had a completely different money scheme, different build menu, no live action cutscenes. NOTHING that was a C&C trademark until the expansion came in that added live action cutscenes. At least TOR is a storyline sequel to the Kotor games. IMHO a game must have one of two things similar to it's predecessor, the style of gameplay, so an FPS is an FPS with a similar control scheme, Strategy games have the same interface, RPG's have the same rules set and interface, or the storyline is the same/set in the same universe. If you don't have these you are either trying to zap life into a monstrosity that seemed to have died years ago (weather it works or not depends), or you're trying to milk the franchise name for cash (Generals gets a leery eye for that one) Ah, but Generals was made by EA too, so it was bound to be uber different. Well, IMO, TOR isn't really a sequel, it has almost nothing to do with KOTOR. The only thing it has to do with KOTOR is these "sith" have attacked. There is ANOTHER WAR, or is it like, a "Cold War" so to speak? I can't remember. Also, I disagree with having a lot of time for the Sith to lose badly, see the Star Wars timeline. And I agree with Dawuss. It would be really hard to change a world where there are players that are DS, Light, and maybe Neutral, all in the same environment. Its physically impossible, unless they make it based on PVP, in which case it WOULD be like Star Wars Galaxies. Except that C&C3 and Red Alert 3 were also made by EA and they retained enough connection to the franchise that fans liked em. Generals was an expirament that got people to buy it by cashing in on a name.

IIRC the Exile was also a good friend of Revan's next to Malak, hence why the Exile was given a really good position within the army. And yes they tie to each other, they both leave known space to fight the threat together. Exile seeks out Revan for a reason, if the Exile didn't really care about the experiences he had with Revan, then he probably wouldn't have bothered to go find him and help. I'm going to stay out of this Calax-Vasheir argument is I am still not completely sure what they are arguing about. Game mechanics and the fact he has SWG (which was a BROKEN game at launch and got even more broken, so everyone who played it left, then they changed it into somthing that might be playable which alienated most of the remaining playerbase) as the paragon of MMO's

When I was at "Meps" (military entrance processing center) they maked DAMN sure that you knew that just trying to be homosexual wouldn't get you kicked out it had to be pretty outrageous to get you out (or suicidal or depression... there were all sorts of wierd things that people had in Seperations)

If it slips any further I would almost ask that it be pushed into 2010 so that it actually has a chance to shine (Oct/Nov is a REALLY packed area in terms of releases every year). Rather than be drowned in the number of AAA titles that get released every fall.

Maybe in the origional WoW but there are currently several instances I've done in less than an hour. And the Black Morass from BC was timed at I think 1:27. I think that you suffer from only playing one game and assuming that because it was way X in SWG it will be that way in TOR. This isn't true, the Dev teams are entirely different from one another, and they have a different design philosophy. this is again where you suffer from only having played one game. Basic gameplay lession for most MMO's that I've played: There are several types of servers (well in WoW and EQ at least) PVE PVP RP and PVPRP. Each server has different basic rules, an RP server you have to stay in character for those who get really into the game (I'm not sure how many servers are RP for WoW at the moment), but the basics rules for player vs player combat depend on if you choose a PVP or a PVE server. In WoW (like most MMO's) there is no such thing as a Covert member of either side, you are either Alliance or Horde. Now on PVE servers this means that you can only get attacked in areas that you don't control (An alliance member in the middle of the Undercity would be eaten for breakfast) or specifically PVP zones. Once you attack another player in one of these zones you get flagged for pvp and can get your butt kicked all over the school yard for a while until you get away. However more realistically, there's PVP servers, where any territory flagged as "Contested" is considered open territory for PVP. This often leads to a 13 year old running around in lower zones attacking players 40+ levels his junior just to get his ego inflated. But this self corrects when the players he's praying on call guildies and a small pvp war starts (usually in Stranglethorn Vale in WoW). It's MORE than likely that the Developers at Bioware will follow the standard and have open affiliation rather than the PvP system in SWG (which IIRC was insane because your credit only counted on the deathblow which could be delivered by a passerby). Blizzard has spent 4 years perfecting the system for PvP and awarding gear for it that's balanced to that particular playstyle. I'm not saying TOR will mirror the system blizzard has in place, but it's more likely that Sith and Jedi will always be known who's who. Again making a world where the geometry will let you roam over it completely would probably cause alot of the terrain to be flat. It's doubtful that TOR will have terrain you can get to (some of the best areas in wow are actually reached though wierd jumping/blinking/slowfalling combonations, like the upsidedown sinners and Old Ironforge.) Also this would disallow areas like GM and Developer playgrounds where the devs and GM's could flex their power a little (rumors in WoW state that theres actually a little room on GM island where particularly bad players are placed to get them to cool off). The problem is that most people won't want a game where they, in order to be successful enough, have to rely on harvesters to get them stuff while they work or sleep or whatever offline. They want to be in the game and (usually) fighting, or socializing. I have yet to meet a person who said "WOOOOHOOOO! I get to play a game that only requires me to log in once a week to collect my materials and actually try to make some money! AND I get to pay 15 bucks a month for this! YAY!" Because while Rep grinding, material grinding, and raiding is what make the world go round in WoW, it's usually pretty easy to earn a fast buck (my blacksmith can create a single item that sells for 100g pretty easily in WOTLK) and quest. I'm a little hazy on the quests in SWG but I don't remember them being very active. Usually it was run for half an hour to find location of mob, kill 10 mobs, run back. In WoW they kinda miniaturized the world to a degree to allow for fast travel. You can easily get from one point to any other within at least a half hour (maybe a little more if your a level one trying to reach Shattrath in Outland) but Blizz being masters at figuring out what to do, usually group several quests together so that you run out and kill 30 things and complete 5 quests at the same time. The point is Balance. If I wanted a game that let me customize everything and was based around the Social aspect of it, I'd play Second Life (entirely user generated.) There are a few things you have to understand about ANY game, people will always take it to far (Asians are particularly bad about this, I've heard of one case where a man murdered another man for not giving an ingame item, another where a guy died at a computer console from not eating or drinking during a 36ish hour marathon of Starcraft... Divorces between people including characters ingame being fought over in custody battles) but there are also people who want a game where they can climb on, be relatively powerful and not have to play more than a few hours a day, and don't want to have to wait a LONG time for their mats to be ready at hand to raise their crafting skill... The problems with SWG was that it de-emphasized the primary way most MMO's operate (fighting) in favor of crafting and entertainment jobs that would pay more per hour and would lead to a better chance at unlocking the holy grail (Jedi). When you earn money by putting together a macro to ask for tips and then just leave your character standing there playing a song for umpteen hours, rather than go out and actually have to actively participate, you have a SERIOUS problem in how the game works. Now I only played three months of SWG right after launch, but I've also played at least a years worth of City of Heroes which is a completly different game from either SWG and WoW. In CoH you don't have crafting or any extreme amounts of depth in how the game works. You just fly around the city doing instanced missions with friends. CoH actually doesn't tell you the exact numbers because the devs thought that would be too much math for players to get into (they turned out to be wrong after WoW did the exact opposite). In fact alot of things that CoH emphasized (uniqueness and simplicity of interface) and deemphasized are the exact opposite of the way WoW and most other MMO's work. COH doesn't have gear or end game raiding. Just missions you run that give you stupid amounts of money (when an actual economy was introduced items sold for numbers upwards of 1 million of the ingame currency), that would end after you finished them. Some things CoH got somewhat wrong (the lack of endgeme or things to do other than kill stuff) have been slowly corrected by NCsoft, and Cryptic in the Champions MMO (upcoming). But one thing I think CoH got right was the sheer amount of variations you could put into a costume or powerset that made it YOURS, where as in most other games the players have to use cookie cutter builds and reach benchmarks before they are actually used in Raids or other endgame content. Remember MMO's are Games first, Social tools second. Lives last.

Just finished the new game on my recently reformatted system for COD4. I think that Valve needs to take a look at what Infinity Ward did to explain story and keep the action moving at the same time. From what I get out of it Infinity Ward took one of Valves major things (keeping the player always in control) and gave it one or two minor touches (where you look through the eyes of different characters but can't do anything) that really make it sparkle. I do agree with the Zero Punctuation that the ending is terrible (I also missed Major Ingram) it just comes out of nowhere and messes up everything you'd gotten used to through the entire game. I hope they learn from the critics about the ending and change it for Modern Warfare 2 (slated for fall 2009)

just realized that I've got a wan card built right into my ps3 and hooked that sucker up and am now updating it.

What? Do you live on another planet? Nope, the good old US of A, just two time zones east of you. And try as I might I cannot recall a single instance in US History where homosexuals have been treated with institutionalized discrimination like most minorities have at one time or another. I'm not talking about people, there is nothing you can do about that. I'm talking about using the power of the state to suppress liberty for a group. And no marrige does not count because there is no "right" to marry. The military would be a good example here but I also discount that because it does not exist for the empowerment of the individual and is a whole different animal than real life anyway. ... I believe you missed the bit where being gay was technically a Mental Disease that could lead to people getting "institutionalized" to make them "better". HOW is that NOT institutionalized discrimination? Being told you have a disease and the nice man with the ice pick is going to make it all better.

several things 1) Obsidian is not making the MMO, Bioware is in conjunction of with LucasArts 2) Having played SWG, I can say that while it had a good crafting system, the basic gameplay about how to earn money and such was lacking. Rather than actually play the game the way to get money was to set up harvesters on a planet, and log out. Log back in a few days layer and craft whatever you needed, then sell it on the market, wash rinse repeat. 3) most games have a gameworld where you can get most anywhere, WoW's original continents didn't because the creators took various short cuts and visual tricks to get things looking just right (which is why they don't allow Flying mounts in the old world). 4) instancing a section of the game is probably going to happen. City of Heroes did it for most of the player content (the missions), Guild wars had EVERYTHING be instanced, and WoW used the instance so that more than one group of people could experience a dungeon at the same time. If you don't do instances you are either going to have to create a MASSIVE number of areas that the player can get fairly good gear, Or you are going to find that the entrance to most dungeons are PVP killing grounds that drive off most of the PVE crowd. 5) while you may think that WoW is terrible, you don't have a majority opinion. My guess is that Bioware is going to make TOR partly in WoW's image because WoW is so wildly successful. Part of the reason WoW is successful is that you can actually get somewhere in 2 hours time. When I played SWG, it took me forever to hit the max level in any particular profession. If we were to make SWG how you seem to want it, I think you'd end up with an MMO looking more like EvE online rather than something that a casual market can get into. And while EvE seems to have a pretty good time for those who are REALLY into it, it seems more a second job than a game (and the politics in that game are serious, a guild spent 1 1/2 freaking years planning and executing the downfall of one of the most successful guilds in the game!).

got frustrated at my wow guild again, and started reading "the dread empire" by Glenn Cook. That book is very very difficult to get into.

The current policy is "don't ask, don't tell". However if you are gay, or show homosexual tenancies once in the military, you will be booted and have pay docked for false enlistment. This is after they hit you with a visit to the Psych unit and force you to sit around in a barracks for three f'n weeks, then throw you on a bus to get you back home. Can you really pursue happiness if a jack hole puts a freaking redwood across the road? Except that they already kinda did in Lawrence v Texas. Several states had sodomy laws that basically said any sex other than that used to procreate was unlawful. In fact it seems like the Supreme Court of the United States has as much of a leg to stand on in the case of Prop 8 and it's brothers, as it did back when Lawrence was decided (and Justice O'Conner actually used equal protection in her decision, as the laws in particular were aimed at a group rather than at the people as a whole.). Heck Even Scalia stated that State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers' validation of laws based on moral choices. (Bowers' being a previous case that was overturned in the Lawrence decision)

true, in previous games the cars had enough grip that you could turn a corner at 90 mph with application of the E-brake. To me, GTA4 both succeeded and failed, it succeeded at improving the storyline and better driving physics, but I think that it lost some points for me by adding a fake social aspect to the game I mean sure it's realistic to have you have to party with all your friends and keep their relationship strong, but it doesn't really make for very good gameplay (see Zero Punctuation's take on the social aspect.) anywho, still playing WoW and started a game of resistance 2.

The idea that marriages entered under the law as it stood at the time would be nullified is abhorrent. No person should be willing to countenance that outcome, no matter how he voted on the measure of gay marriage. I had thought that it had been made clear to voters that it could not be applied retroactively, at least that's what I heard prior to the election and I'm a cali resident The state Supreme court couldn't legally overturn it, I would hope that the US supreme court would rule it unconstitutional (the REAL constitution rather than the toy that california has).

they have enough that they can reference him pretty easily without most people getting ticked. LA has clearly stated that Revan was a lightside male, add 300 years to what he might or might not have done, and you could possibly make him into a pop culture icon who killed a million sith, could cause entire planets to move about in space, and give away an orphan at her wedding at the same time, simply because the tale gets embellished and he becomes legendary. I mean 300 years ago we hit the enlightenment and the scientific revolution, and now we tell stories, write novels, and watch movies about them because of the possiblities. (pirates also ruled the gulf of mexico) We also make up characters or change the ones that exsist to make them larger than life. I think the one drawback to Star Wars as a universe is that there is no real scientific progress. Well... there kinda is, the tech is always the same basic stuff but the older it is the less powerful it is. Anywho, off to bed for work in a few hours.

Tying off plot lines is a double edged blade, yes it answers question and makes the player feel accomplished, but then on the other hand people will buy a game based totally on the fact that X is going to be explained within. However if you leave plot lines dangling too long or put to much work into them you'll end up being forced to make something like MGS4. Not saying MGS4 is a bad game, nor that it is unplayable if you haven't played the previous games, but somebody who played all the previous games will have a MUCH better grasp of whats going on. You practically need to take a class to get the full backstory for the game, and Kojima tied up so many plot lines in a haphazard way that disciples of the franchise who had been faithful for years we a bit miffed because some parts of the ending didn't fit with what happened ingame and yadda yadda yadda. To say the Exile's experiences are directly tied to Revan is a bit of a falsehood. The exile while a Knight was also a general under Revan, this doesn't necessarily mean that they sat and had tea together. Also the Exiles philosophy differed from Revans as Revan went on to make himself a warlord and try to conquer the known galaxy, while the exile came back, argued with the council and left. they are two different characters, they do intertwine a little but so does my life and that of my boss.

I'm not saying Generals is a bad game, What I'm saying is it had nothing to connect it to the C&C franchise other than the name. It had a completely different money scheme, different build menu, no live action cutscenes. NOTHING that was a C&C trademark until the expansion came in that added live action cutscenes. At least TOR is a storyline sequel to the Kotor games. IMHO a game must have one of two things similar to it's predecessor, the style of gameplay, so an FPS is an FPS with a similar control scheme, Strategy games have the same interface, RPG's have the same rules set and interface, or the storyline is the same/set in the same universe. If you don't have these you are either trying to zap life into a monstrosity that seemed to have died years ago (weather it works or not depends), or you're trying to milk the franchise name for cash (Generals gets a leery eye for that one)

to say that the US only shot at people who were shooting at us is absurd when you think about it, if we did we'd have to have enough armor to stop the bullet and still keep right on running to steamroll the enemy. While that particular ROE is highly touted as what is active, I sincerely doubt that the military kept to it as generally the guy who shoots first wins.

The California SC cannot throw the amendment out because it is part of the Constitution of the State now. In other words, unless it conflicts with another aspect of the same it is the supreme law of the state and the SC is bound to enforce and uphold it. That said I'm a little curious how the suit to anull existing marriages makes it to the SC. Correct me if I'm wrong (especially Enoch or Gromnir) but isn't the first requirement of any lawsuit that the plaintiff have standing to file the suit? How are the plaintiffs here damaged by existing marriages to the extent that it requires a legal remedy? What is their standing? I think that they are standing on a leg that it's for "the greater good" that these marriages get annulled.

I think that if the pro-prop 8's keep up the shinanigans then we'll see the amendment thrown out.