Calax

Thing is, if you rely on people to buy everything (and I do mean everything), you'll see a spike in numbers early on, but that'll trickle off when they realize they're spending twice as much as a monthly subscription would be, just to see the game reasonably. F2P seems to be a tight-rope act between affording the players a game that's interesting and fun, and ensuring that those players are willing to keep paying. TOR is currently trying to earn to much money to fast for it to be worth that much.

Assuming that their bandwidth cap is based solely on TOR's server requirements. I think one of the points that Alan is trying to make is that either way, those same bills are being paid at the same amount, and (from a business standpoint) having people online will have the side effect of generating income from the people who get frustrated at f2p restrictions and just buy stuff. IMO the f2p restrictions will end up costing the company more in the long run because the game won't draw anyone really new to the table with those sort of measures, but it should generate some revenue rather quickly with the "preferred player" sales and similar one-time-only deals.

for 2? Yeah, it's your interface trying to say "Max is drunk and on vykadin." As to the Autosave function? I don't think you lose to much overall if you quit anywhere because once you know where the guys are you can make your way through the firefights quickly. There is only one small issue that I have with the story, but I'll save that for when/if people want it to be said (it's kinda spoilertastic).

But it's the only time it'll ever come up for discussion.

Guns are really an all or nothing thing in terms of control. Either ALL (that is, everyone gets guns and nobody doesn't have guns) so that in situations where now there wouldn't be guns nearby there would be. Or nothing, nobody has guns and we become Great Britan. of course, both of those are entirely incapable of happening, so an Assault Weapons ban would mean quite a bit. Yes, there would still be those guns around, but they wouldn't be as easy to get and as ubiquitous as they are now... where Chicago gang crews are driving around with M4's and AK's in their trunks.

The central ring breaks off and flies away. The Catalyst even says they will be destroyed. This does not matter because the Normandy was between relays, not at one. How does an explosion hit FTL?

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2012/11/mmo-grinder-ep33/ Gives a run down of the F2P nonsense.

One thing I'd like to point out is that each debuff does NOT have a unique icon. So it becomes crazy if you're trying to do perfect rotations without putting your DoT's to often because you can't tell if it's your dot or some other guys debuff.

Because AC2 built significantly on AC1. And 3 just decided to kill the franchise. Hmm...I did really enjoy AC2. Does AC3 have at least some redeeming qualities? It's getting pretty rave reviews, but that doesn't say a ton. Not to me. The reviews I've seen are screaming "There's so much to do with your homestead and the challenges and the woods and and and!" but when you get right down to it, the homestead is just a non-necessary secondary plotline and time sink. The only reason it exists is to get you money, and unlike AC2 and it's brothers, the money doesn't just automatically accrue. You have to go in, and play a spreadsheet to build and sell things to earn money. The characters and little bits of story ARE interesting, but the entire thing is just annoying and frustrating. The entire game is just to flawed from the start. A main character who's boring as HELL because his voice actor is playing up the Indian stereotype of "I only talk in a monotone", and thus half of what he says that's supposed to be quips and one liners gets lost in the monotone. His dad is by far the more enjoyable character, but you don't see that much of him. There isn't that much Jingoism that people were worried about. It's still there, with all of the Founding Fathers and important americans during the War of Independence having American accents and giving the whole song and dance... with a good half of it undercut outside the animus in text and speech by the british character. It does seem a little odd that Conner is popping up at every single major battle and event that led up to the war, and during the war... and always on the side of the Colonies. It's attempted to make it into a mirror of the Templar/Assassin struggle of Independence vs Order, but that just doesn't jive for me.

Ok. I just read through this again: http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/5557/article/former-mass-effect-lead-writer-defends-series-conclusion/ And I must ask... why does everyone think that Humanity is magically going to be more genetically diverse than any other species in space?

Pay $10 to watch someone's let's play videos? ....Naaaaaaah. On the subject of TOR: I smacked a bunch of red guys with a play lightsaber for a while while other players did the same thing and still wasn't particularly impressed. Still waiting for the story to start. Got bored and went back to CivV GODS AND KINGS (caps lock necessary) and either my game is bugged or Carthage's Harbor bonus is not clearly explained because i'm not getting trade routes between coastal cities here. FIRAXIS. TELL ME WHY. I NEED GOLD. And I don't want to waste any on road maintainence. Road maintainence is for those losers in Rome. Speaking of which, that's why I got GODS AND KINGS, to right the wrongs of history and have Carthage conquer Rome. Incidentially, I just now built a city in between Cerro de Potosi and a river. No coastal access, but getting Cerro de Potosi is worth any (non-10 gold per turn) cost. Not just one persons videos... hundreds of peoples videos. Also, a lot of it is screenshots and text. It makes for good reading. They also have a pnp Battletech game being played

Because AC2 built significantly on AC1. And 3 just decided to kill the franchise.

Just for the TOR discussion. If you have a Something Aweful account their Let's Play section has an Old Republic game running... it's technically four let's plays (the entire imperial side) all at once. It's... unique.

I think part of it is that he's put into the stereotype so whole-heartedly. He's a "meat head", which has always been associated with the standard military stereotype. It fits him so well into a niche, and your interactions with him don't make him break that mold at ALL. Now, if they'd gone the opposite way, that'd have been interesting. This rail thin guy, always found looking over intelligence reports or playing chess with the crew. But still a soldier who has character moments involving him just out right brutalizing your enemies, and co-ordinating tactics of a squad or six. THAT'd make him more interesting. The closest we got was Edi who is the AI and thus it's expected she'd be very into the whole intelligence thing... although she didn't play that much to the whole "royal smart person" of the crew all that much.

I liked him better than Jacob... because Jacob you give mildly supportive comments to and he thinks you want to bone.

Can't be worse than mine. Iowa apparently uses these computerized THINGS that make you unable to smile, you can't wear glasses and have to stand a certain way. So you end up looking either stoned or SERIOUSLY angry.

I'm very confused as to how a nazi created the precuror to NATO, other than being the catalyst for the Soviet takeover of eastern Europe.

Now that I think about it... Mass Effect 4, James Vega Chronicles!

The issue with Vega is that while he had a good bit of character. It never really came out that much. It seemed like they were trying to make him into sort of a "mini-Shepard" that was just starting on the path that Shep had taken, and thus had a unique connection to Shepard, but they already had somebody filling that role in Garrus. I'd have preferred if they'd kept him as an entire non-romance (not even flirting) and then had him as more of a grunt leader. So while Shep and Garrus were doing high level "This is how the universe will save itself!" style stuff, he's running combat sims against a room full of geth.

Alcatraz is just to insanely rough to upkeep. No fresh water is on the island, so it has to have constant supplies of that and power from the mainland. Side note: As part of Boy Scouts, I actually went and spent a night there, in one of the D block cells. During the not-on-the-public tour that we went on, we saw the mental ward and the doctors area... in the Doc's area the ranger pointed to the celing and you saw all these red flecks on the cling. Turns out, those flecks were movie blood from The Rock, with a shootout between the bad guys.

One of those games eh? Can you run up to them and talk to them first, or does that have the opposite issue of running up to say hi and they shoot you dead? If you ride right past they won't say a word. They'll just keep shooting at each other. It's just if you decided to run in and figure out who's supposed to be the "good" guys, one of the sides will be dead right quick.

The Brits were still using Roman standards for who owns land (if it is "unclaimed" all you gotta do is improve it... usually by plonking down a fort, and it's yours).

Alex didn't last long enough as a cohesive unit to be to great. I'd argue either Rome (as above) or Ottomans.

*insert trend bucking here* I was ok with Mordin. He went out well, and we'd gotten to know him fairly well. However LEGION I was kind of pissed about. Not because he died, but because we basically didn't get to interact with him all that much. He shows up on one mission, then you have just enough time to get his loyalty up and do that before you end the game in ME2. And ME3 has him pop up only as a non-squaddie who WILL die (in one form or another). Legion is, overall, my favorite character, and showing my bias I am annoyed that he gets so little screen time... especially in comparison to Tali. I don't mind that he went out overall... it's just that in comparison to MANY of the other characters in 2 and 3, he wasn't allowed to visit with the players nearly as much as any other squad member in the game. You can insert pretty much any ME2 squaddie here, really. Thane is very similar, and the Jacob fangirls were fairly royally pissed, too. Then there's the "we really don't have a good reason for not giving them to you even as temporary squaddies for the final climax, but we still won't do it, haha" crowd of Miranda, Jack, Wrex, Grunt etc. Except that you had each of those characters almost entirely through the game. Legion was only retrieved after the IFF mission, which gave you enough time to wake him up, get his loyalty up, go flying off for the Collectors to attack Normandy, and do his loyalty mission. Even though he was one of the most interesting and different characters from the others in that game. I was fine with Mordin and the others because they got to run around during the majority of the game, but Legion is rolled out for the last little bit and doesn't get that much on his own to work with.

Well aren't you just adorable?