Humanoid

Just bought a family pack of Win 7 (three copies), half to cover myself in future, plus Haswell i3 and board, a couple cases, coolers and PSUs. After the holidays I plan to do the following: 1) Rip out the i5-2400 and Asus H67 motherboard from my HTPC and stick it in a Bitfenix Prodigy M. This computer will have no particular purpose, but I wanted to pre-empt the inevitable failing of the first-gen, pre-recall motherboard, where all but two of its SATA ports will fail. Also because it doesn't have proper 23.976Hz video support. Besides the case it'll retain everything else including the system disk, PSU, stock cooler, etc, since it's probably just going to gather dust. 2) Install the Haswell machine in the HTPC, also replacing the Corsair CX400 PSU with a quieter Seasonic G360 in the process. Other parts: i3-4130, Asus H87M-E motherboard, Gelid Slim Hero CPU cooler, 256GB Sandisk Ultra Plus SSD, Win 7 HP. Win8 is not a viable choice for a HTPC due to needing not only the Pro version but also to buy the Media Centre on top. 3) Got a Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl case for a future NAS, one Seasonic G360 PSU reserved for this, a Silverstone AR01 cooler and also a 128GB Sandisk Ultra Plus SSD. Will probably learn FreeNAS on the fly. The guts of the machine are on hold until I determine whether Kaveri will bring any benefits (power consumption, possibly) for the purpose, and also for the 5TB HDDs release next year so I can start the migration without getting tangled up shuffling data around. Notes: Why the Sandisk Ultra Plus SSDs? Because they were dirt cheap, other than that they're thoroughly mediocre, but reliable performers. I'll be reusing some old RAM sitting on my shelf, four 2GB sticks of DDR3L, between the two new systems, though I think one stick is faulty - no matter, don't need dual channel memory for this type of system.

Just less visual clutter. If there was a control panel setting to hide all badges that'd be even better.

Opposite request: can I have all my badges removed?

Super-optimist hat again: hopefully TESO is such a massive runaway hit that it fully consumes Bethesda's attention the way WoW did for Blizzard, leaving them no time to do Fallout and leading to them outsourcing it.

dibs on one of those, if any are available I'd rather trade with you then buy from InXile, if you don't mind Sure, only need had one copy reserved beyond the one for myself anyway so the rest are spare.

If I were to put on my super-optimist hat, I'd hope that given the precedent of Bethesda having released Arena and Daggerfall as freeware, that these games get the same treatment.

So it's going to go under control of Bethesda, who have no current deal with GOG, presumably (as far as I can see, none of their titles are or have ever been available).

I'd assume it'd appear on the PE backer portal once it launches proper, yes. I think I'm getting five copies of W2 due to all the various intertwined rewards. Yeah....

Google's motto has always been "Do know evil". It's that old chestnut, Google is an advertising company first and foremost, and so we're not the customers, we're the product. The customers are the advertisers, so it's no surprise who wins out there. For what it's worth, I'm trying to convert over to DuckDuckGo for my search needs, but old habits die hard.

Only did character creation. Most of the ingame model faces look like zombies for some reason. And the scroll function through the menus is kinda broken. But otherwise I think the level of complexity in character stats feels about right - reasonable enough task to make a party that covers all the bases while still having some variety, and without getting tediously into numbers hell.

Fixed that for you.

I haven't done one of these beta things in, well, ever. But today have access to both Wasteland 2 and Shroud of the Avatar. Eh, I guess I can download first and decide whether to do either of them later.

To be fair, even EA is setting an example for Valve.

To be honest, all I can remember of the dragon fights in BG2 were of dragging a box around my party then right clicking on the dragon. Which is probably all I did.

I want stretch goals which progressively remove wilderness areas from the game as they are reached. Screw the wilderness. *runs and hides*

Only if there's a totally cool cycling cap addon. Serious answer: If it's just more stuff related to combat and dungeons (that whole series of mini-goals for the megadungeon was, from my selfish perspective, a damp squib), no interest. If it's more talking and other noncombat interactions, then sure, why not.

Actually, this doesn't matter. The pledge options are really well set-up and easy to understand. I even had twenty bucks pledged that I forgot about and I was able to order a tee-shirt. Just had a look, and yeah, looks good. But I have funds for two t-shirts when I don't remember specifically adding on cash for two t-shirts. But eh, two t-shirts it is. Would be useful to have some sizing information for them however, or at least what brand T-shirts they'll be printed on, lest I fall into the American Apparel trap. EDIT: Looks like I'm confused because the T-shirt was a $25 addon, but is now $20 in the portal. But that would mean I probably had a mousepad addon instead planned. But I don't remember that either....

It's been so long that I can't remember what combination of addons I had planned for myself to reach the pledge amount I ended up with.

Eh, I felt the smugglers' acts two and three were basically "we're out of story to tell, here's some generic filler to get you to level 50".

Nico has changed voice actress *every* game. EDIT: List of VAs in the sidebar here.

Krez changed his screenname to Humodour for whatever reason - user names are a fluid thing on this forum software - but hasn't been around for some months. Tess made a ninjapost in the Tarna thread as Keturah, but was a one-off visit. Lanie drops by for whirlwind visits now and then. Haven't seen the Rayt and Onkel in forever. HKD made a disappearing act as well, as did slowtrain, but there have been a couple sightings lately.

Monaco wasn't even nominated. It's my game of the year, easily. Not indie game of the year, but game of the year, period.

We'll be having the Obsidian forums 2013 awards soon, that'll be far more interesting. :D

Tried Rogue Legacy for an hour or so. Probably won't be back, it's just grindy tedium from what I can tell. Not that I was expecting much, never found a roguelike I've enjoyed, but eh, five bucks. P.S. They really need a quickstart function that goes straight to the first proper room of the castle upon each death. EDIT: Prior to that, also tried an hour of Borderlands 2. I also won't be back for that one. But again, also something I mostly knew already. Looting in games is just never something I find enjoyable, ever. Only single player, mind, but the opinion stands.

A Wii U and Super Mario 3D World. Just waiting on a good deal for the console itself. Nothing else presently released that I want to buy comes to mind. The concept of a 'backlog' is an alien one to me. Sure, I have hundreds of games I never finished or (in most cases) begun, but in all of them, I have no particular intention to do so. Whether 0%, 10%, or 90% done, if I've dropped it, I've dropped it for a reason and don't feel any obligation to amend that situation. I suppose I envy those who have queues of games to play and not enough time - personally my decisionmaking is more along the lines of "do I play this one game or not play anything?"