Humanoid

Significant integrated graphics performance boost, though only in a few selected models (four tiers of integrated graphics for this gen, just to add to the confusion), and some good power efficiency gains in the mobile models. Actual CPU performance gains will be modest, in the single digits percentagewise clock-for-clock, and clock speeds will be overall similar to Ivy. It's a "tock" in Intel's schedule and therefore is on the same process as Ivy but with with a largely new design (compared to Ivy being a "tick", a process shrink without much else). Desktop Ivy chips had an annoying design where, breaking from tradition, they no longer soldered the die to the heatspreader, resulting in a big hit to the clock ceiling. Curious whether that'll continue. There would also be some appeal, if the rumours are true, in Haswell possibly being the last Intel platform to support drop-in CPU upgrades, the word being that future CPUs will be soldered onto the motherboard and sold as complete, non-upgradable units that way.

And SimCity remains a rich vein of comedy gold, but that can't really be counted as a positive for EA either. The latest patch reportedly resulted even worse traffic problems, and also had a laxative effect on the populace as sewage systems everywhere were pushed to the brink.

Yeah, the bundle thing was more of a side-query since I was assuming I might be able to keep a crew skill I'd otherwise completely lose with it. But if I technically keep it anyway then it's something I won't worry about at all. Googling for the information has been surprisingly tricky, yielded one lone result that mentions in a roundabout way that it's single character only, but in the context of a rant about the cartel coin system. Assuming it's accurate for now.

Haven't really kept up with the rumours but is that related to the mooted switch to BGA (soldered on CPUs) for desktops or a different rumour altogether? Aside, my "no new desktop CPU" statement is a bit of a lie because technically I'm still interested in building a new mini ITX system as a side-project, it's just that it's probably going to be a Richland-based system.

Still happy enough with how my Lynnfield does, though USB3/SATA3 would be nice, so no desktop upgrades (storage aside) until Broadwell at the earliest for me. Will pretty much jump on a Haswell notebook near launch though, current one is near death, or indeed possibly undead. Intel's naming conventions getting worse with every gen once again, a shame after the relatively straightforward Sandy.

Well the entire software industry sales model is to bamboozle the customer, so yeah.

Still haven't gone back yet, but was just looking at the feature comparison chart again. I know that as a non-subscriber I'll lose one of my crew skills, but I also see I can buy that slot back. But do I get that third skill reset back to zero in the transition or can it be retained if I buy the upgrade (though likely I won't)? I also see the additional crew skill slot is in the "preferred access bundle" they're selling, but I have a strong suspicion that it's for one character only, anyone able to confirm?

Pfft, it's no challenge getting it into a 3.5" floppy. If it was a genuinely floppy 8" or 5.25" on the other hand....

Felt a little spendy in the end, so I did end up buying Sleeping Dogs from the Squeenix store, just the base game mind, and added the $3 Hitman Blood Money to it for the hell of it. Also bought the Tropico pack from GMG, but no to Tomb Raider (thematically not my thing) and Borderlands (genre not my thing, and I have no friends anyway).

That's the first tape measure I've seen that doesn't have both centimetres and inches on it.

So $12.25 for game plus all content DLC at the Squeenix store. Hmm.

I felt there was too little freedom in the story missions, and too little focus in the open-world gameplay. The former being simple canned segments that could have come out of any game, and the latter was all just a bit samey where you could do some activity at any given location and have it be basically the exact same experience as it happening at any other location. That said, which of the DLCs are actually story DLCs? At the moment I'm taking a crude approximation that the ones over a dollar have some content and the ones under a dollar are just wearable tat.

The 20% off does work, but on the other hand at Squeenix's own store you get to pick and choose the DLC or just go for the base game at $7.50. So at $17.50 for everything or $7.50 for just the base game I probably would say the latter makes more sense. Moot point personally since I've decided against it for now - as someone who thought SR3 was dull and that GTA was terrible, I don't think the game would have done anything to change my mind. Same with Tomb Raider for $20, Borderlands complete for $22, or Total War for $33, Tropico for $8, Gothic for $5. I'm pretty bored but I don't think that any of them, good deals they may be, would help me.

Counting the damage this month - $661. Also more copies of the games than I have friends to give them out to. But it feels like collectively there's a bit of a peak that's now been crested - got up to a dozen games to harvest between now and the end of the year.

Not really an answer, but I use foobar2000 as my all purpose music organiser and player. I do use it to fix up dodgy tags, bulk renames, format conversions, etc, but I can't really compare it to specialised tools out there since the only other program I use is Exact Audio Copy to do the ripping from CD. Yeah, 100% of my music is still purchased on CD (then ripped to FLAC for desktop/HTPC listening and to ogg for portable players).

Haven't played anything all week, but tempted by gameplay video of Monaco, if anyone has a good word to put in about it. Unfortunately I only generally play my multiplayer games with one other person which I guess would kind of put a crimp on it, but still.

Did they get around to releasing an image of the addon poster? Leaving the possibility open of throwing in an extra $25 or whatever at the last hurdle but I'd like to at least have a vague idea of what to expect. I'm in for +$25 already on top of the $95 physical and a separate $65 digital pledge, the first addon which will probably go for the weresheep T-shirt, but not super-keen on the "normal" T-shirt, hence the question. This despite me being one of those a bit tired of the weresheep thing in general, but eh, it works best as a T-shirt rather than all the other overuse.

Odds are that's not a bad thing given recent trends.

GOG have done D&D bundles more than once previously (though before they got the rights to NWN2, so that last time was the first time that "full" set appeared). And Zoraptor pointed out earlier in this thread that the Gamersgate pack is literally a bundle of the GOG versions, installer and all.

In for minimum game pledge at the moment, but won't really be something I'll think about until release. April's been by some distance the biggest month so far in terms of throwing cash into KS - between the big three titles alone that's $600+ sunk. Just as well there's nothing major on the horizon, and even on the smaller scale I'm not aware of anything else other than maybe Jim Walls' new Police Quest. Aside, $150 minimum for a box copy? On the one hand it's probably a sensible thing to keep overheads down, but I like my boxes.

I take the one licence is one copy of the game dictate at face value since I don't want to think too hard about lawyerish matters. I do maintain that the licences should be fully tradable though, if not currently in use, hence my offer to Tigs. I don't see it as anything out of the ordinary - I bought both the Witcher 2 digital copy and a CE boxed copy, and when the latter arrived I gave away the key in it to a friend so they could redeem it on GOG. Two licences, two people playing, sunshine and lollipops. Obviously some vendors, notably Steam, make this very hard to accomplish, but it can still be done if you register each game on a separate Steam account.

Back in 2007, by alternately serendipitous or cruel circumstance depending on what day you ask me, ended up co-founding what turned into a WoW raiding guild. I was right on the verge of quitting back then, but as a result ended up playing for almost another half-decade. A bit of an oddity is that due to the opinions of the few various founders, right to the end of the guild's heyday at the close of the second expansion, it was operated without voice chat. Some members used it casually between themselves, but all official communications were strictly text-only. I'll say those were easily my best four years playing MMOs, but I have no desire to ever come back. The flipside, although not a personal disadvantage, is that it does tend to become a fairly insular environment - so after the event, it was pretty much guild activities or nothing.

I think all the questions which were basically rate yourself from 1-4 on each of these glaringly telegraphed stats were rather tedious and pointless. I'm not trying to be a negative nancy - indeed some of the random alignment-type test things can be amusing diversions (and a quick look shows some very familiar-looking questions), but yeah, this just seems to be trying to do a little too much.

Unless you have a different distribution to me, the NWN2 CD-key is on a sticker on the front of the fat manual. (And at 35 characters, probably the longest CD-key I remember seeing) As I have the GOG copy now, I can PM you my original copy's key all legal-like if you wish. And hopefully Feargus won't smack me for denying a sale...

A GW2-type guild system would be perfect for a loose-knit type guild that an Obsidianite one would be. That is, the ability to be in multiple guilds simultaneously, on any server. Still, with only 8 US servers and 3 EU English-speaking ones, still a far less daunting task than if it were, say, WoW.