Humanoid

Some random pickups while waiting for Shadowrun Returns, working my way up to my own truck in Euro Truck Simulator, going back to pick up some of the challenge achievements in Surgeon Simulator, finished Season of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders in a couple sittings, a bit of Theme Hospital nostalgia, and one mission in Dishonored before getting tired of it again (started in October, am now five missions in).

Heh, Xeon W3520? I remember a lot of people picking them up for home use, either due to shortages in supply of the i7 920, or because they hoped the Xeons would be better binned compared to the consumer line - there also might have been pricing anomalies making the Xeon cheaper. They were in all technical respects exactly the same chip.

Heh, I probably should have clarified. Multiboxing is controlling more than one character simultaneously, that much is obvious, and can be done for whatever reason desired. In my case, it was taking advantage of a bonus where if you 'recruited' a new account, and the recruiter and the recruit were in the same party, experience gain was tripled. Now I did this way back when the level cap was 70, so probably sometime in 2007, and the triple experience only worked until level 60, i.e. the base game level cap. The base game by itself was something like $5, with a free month included, so I figured why not, level up a couple of 60s real quick because I wanted a shaman (which was not an option for the Alliance faction in the base game). The mechanics are easy enough: launch multiple instances of the game executable (fully supported with WoW, not the case with TOR apparently), and use AutoHotKey to send commands to the 'background' window(s). My form of multiboxing was very basic, one command to make the background character follow the foreground character, one to perform the basic attack spell, and one to heal the foreground character. Functionally not very different from a TOR companion in that regard. Commands can be overloaded, which is to say, I had one of my attack keys perform an attack with both characters (which is basically what you were seeing, just on a smaller scale), others, such as the heal one, did nothing on the foreground character. Anyway, the implication of this is yes - in WoW you will see parties of up to five identically set up characters, usually with names like 'Bobone', 'Bobtwo', 'Bobthree', etc, (since there's no need to hide it) all performing the same action at the same time, most commonly in PvP matches. And as long as the player behind them is paying Blizzard their 5x$15 per month, then it's totally fine by them. At any rate, while I'm sure some players bend the rules, I made sure none of what I did was against the terms of service. Using the refer-a-friend system to recruit yourself is fine. Being logged into simultaneous accounts is fine. And the use of AutoHotKey is fine - with the proviso that there is no time-based automation: i.e. you hit a button and the commands sent by AHK need to be singular and immediate. From what I gather, this all makes most of these techniques against TOR's ToS in more than one way, so your report is correct in that regard.

More like $100k. The general conversion rule-of-thumb being +50% these days.

Huh, I didn't know they disallowed multi-boxing (not saying that guy you recorded was me ). I did do it in WoW once upon a time as a leveling measure, admittedly - it's something they're okay with though.

I dunno, number of hours as opposed to quality seems to be Bethesda's modus operandi. :D But in all seriousness, well done that man.

At the risk of piling on, Oblivion is still one of the trinity of games I can say are the worst I've ever had the misfortune to purchase. The other two parts of the trinity are Civilization: Call to Power and Mass Effect 3.

Can't have a good sale when there's nothing good to put on sale.

I thought it was meant to be the old woman at the back in purple in Malcador's post. Yeah, out of this entire thread I pick out that woman ...something's obviously wrong with me.

Oh I'm very much ignoring them. Just don't like it as a business practice, that's all. It's like giving away toys with kids' meals at fast food outlets, yeah, it's business, but it just feels icky.

Yeah, the monetary value is an issue. If it was just a plain collectible - well, offline mode can remember achievements now for example, so it'd be a similar thing. Not that I'm saying that's a good thing, offline mode now is a lot more intrusive than it used to be, with Steam connecting regardless of your wishes, to update itself and update the Store panel in the client for example. I'm pretty uncomfortable with that now, since it's basically turned into an online-light mode instead of being the strictly offline thing it used to be. On the mechanics of cards themselves, eh, it's a case of the cart driving the horse. Needless to say, my opinion of the platform as a whole continues its downward slide.

Cards are also only earned when playing in online mode. There's an indirect motive as well, ultimately with the same goal, but it's to get people more absorbed into the Steam ecosystem as a whole, in that you're encouraged to play online, with all the various knickknacks that that entails. They're selling the idea that Steam is the *only* games platform, much like MS tries to sell the idea that Windows is the only OS. That it's not just a distribution platform, but something you should make the centre of all your experience, not just for gaming, but perhaps everything that's social online. From a business perspective, the idea that you can make it a Facebook-style primary social hub while selling your own products through it instead of just serving ads is an attractive one. Case in point - already Steam is the first and only thought for people buying various indie games during the sale right now. This despite being many of the games being price-matched during the sale, right down to the daily deals, by the developers own storefronts. Monaco right now is on sale at the exact same price on Steam as it is on the official site, which not only gives you a Steam key, but also a DRM-free copy on top of it (and a couple other trivia). Steam takes a 30% cut of the sale when you buy from them, as opposed to a 5% cut taken by Humble Bundle (who do the fulfilment for the developer-direct sales).

I'm baffled that modern beat'em'ups have dropped the best part of the genre: multiplayer.

The thing is, I hate dungeons. So I'd go along with the one-dungeon design as long as all dungeons are 100% optional. The difference this time though should be that the time and money saved by doing so go into the overworld game rather than into Riccitello's pockets. (Yes I know he's gone, but point remains)

I'll go with the compromise candidate and choose the silicone spatula. If nothing else, it keeps the silicone out of the attractive women thread.

You got promoted then?

I'd say that of the various funding drives from all the other Sierra alumni, this one seems the most mature at the point of KS launch. The product itself is probably easily at the most advanced stage at this point compared to the others, and the sparse tiers aside, the logistics of the campaign is up there with the better ones. And given that fairly concrete news about this project being actively pursued as back as February, that's probably to be expected. Recent projects have certainly taken some steps back away from the high-cost physical goods excesses of previous projects. In this case they might have gone a bit too far stripping it down, resulting in losing some potential of the mid-range meat 'n' potatoes pledges, but the rationale is sound, particularly in light of the Double Fine problems. Ultimately it's a project of a fair bit more complexity than say, SpaceVenture or Larry, while at the same time probably not a meaningfully more attractive money draw - which would probably necessitate a lower percentage 'bleed' of funds into reward fulfilment.

Well, once you get the full set....

It added four separate entries to my library: Company of Heroes, Company of Heroes (New Steam Version), Opposing Fronts, and Tales of Valor. Confusing to say the least.

Cheers, will do, but I'll need to pick up a second copy to gift to my sister to try MP with, so I'm curious anyway.

Just when my wallet was starting to recover (that's a blatant lie). Well, I can't not support a Sierra alum, and I did love the bejesus out of Police Quest. Sonny Bonds Maxwell Jones reporting for duty. I fear that the $30 entry point to get the game will turn away many would-be supporters. Aware of the concerns over the relatively steep entry price, they've introduced a lower $19 tier now (limited amount). The $30 tier has been turned into a bonus edition of sorts. Good move I think.

Checking before I go ahead with it, there's no hidden gotcha here is there? Just regular pricing stupidity? $4.98 : Company of Heroes Complete Pack - Includes 3 items: Company of Heroes, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor $7.49 : Company of Heroes: Gold - Includes 2 items: Company of Heroes, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

Don't think I've ever managed that, even in attempts to play again within the last few years.

I guess all the predictions before the base game was even released, that the game would only get good enough to stand on its own after the second expansion, is very much true then. I bought both the base game pretty much on launch, and likewise Gods and Kings. Yet I only have a couple hours logged under the former, and none at all after the latter. I ought to be more sensible about these things, but I can't be. Only decision now is whether to buy digital or import a hard copy. EDIT: I think this is my worst grammar-ed post ever. But I can't fix it satisfactorily so I'll just add this.

Myst is just too cold, but the latter-day Zork games showed me that the format can still inject a bit more fun into the sub-genre, despite my heavy preference against first-person adventure.