Humanoid

In context it's understandable, though with the benefit of hindsight given the complexities of the licencing model it's obviously something that should have been cleared up during the campaign. Also raises the question of whether it would be possible to, within the constraints they have, provide an alternate DRMed version which has one-time activation but is not linked to a Steam/Steam-like client. Aside, this bit was weird: "These updates will require Backers to re-download the game from the Harebrained Account Website, since it will not include auto-patching functionality." I hope that means directly downloading a patch file and not the entire package....

I'm kind of the opposite, most of the loot I get is either only incidentally interesting to me, or just filler. I get the hardcover sourcebooks, and I assume I'll read them at some point, but it's pure background as I don't PnP. I get a fifth copy of Wasteland 2 overall so I can, uh, yeah. I don't listen to game soundtracks, don't really have an interest in the novellas, and don't usually bother with pre-release versions of games. Maybe I shouldn't think about this kind of thing too much lest I realise how poorly I spent my cash in objective terms - but nah, the point is that I put in what I think getting a new game of this type is worth to me. EDIT: To kind of illustrate the point, if it was the same cash for a CE box of the game plus a half-dozen T-shirts I'd probably take that one....

Guess that silly petition thing for a Betrayal at Krondor follow-up will be the last we'll hear of it then.

The pink shirt is gone. No deal.

The difference is that it's the one promised during the KS campaign, indeed as a stretch goal, so they're bound to do it for all copies of the game. So the technical ability is there, leading to the assumption that the restriction of future, paid DLC is a commercial one.\\EDIT: beaten!

Cowon made the best portable music players bar none, it's a shame that it looks like they've left that part of their business behind. I waited too long and missed out on the now-discontinued J3. Sure, it's a niche market to care for such trivialities as audio quality, but I find the trend towards folding all portable devices into smartphones, with all the compromises that entails, to be a very unfortunate one.

Apparently yes, in a manner so complex as to lead to the creation of walkthroughs specifically for it. Didn't read it so it may be mostly self-evident, but still, that's a lot of images.

There's a good deal of damage done regardless of the resolution, because what they've done is paint themselves as lawyers, staying within the letter of the law but all to happy to trample over the spirit of it. Fully within their rights to do so, but no one likes lawyers. The feeling I get is similar to, say, misuse of donations by a charity who, while still pursuing the goal of helping their particular cause, give the cushy contract to a buddy of the suits running it to carry out the work. I stress it's not an analogy, but just the gut feeling I get from the move. I, and I suspect a good many others, would have thrown in a bit extra as a pushback against the notion that Steam be the end-all ultimate utopia of video game platforms, but instead we've ended up achieving the opposite. Steam is certainly a tool of convenience, and I'm totally fine with that, hence my assertion that having mods require manual installation is fine, but when actual capabilities are different then something starts to smell, especially as it's clear it's not a technical limitation but a business-imposed one. While I'm certainly not going to do anything drastic like some of the reactions have threatened (e.g. chargebacks), it does mean I'll stay at the lower tiers for any of their future offerings.

Got to say I'm more than a little surprised about the open admission that the online requirement was DRM for the sake of wanting DRM as opposed to the usual drivel. I mean he's basically saying that the RMAH is just a facade for the draconian DRM despite it hurting the game. I half expected the article to say he was a former employee, but looks like that's not the case. Contrast the statement: "Without the auction houses the always-on requirement would stop making sense, and then players would ask for it to be removed, and no one from the business side of things would likely be willing to give that up. So it remains, but at the cost of the game itself," with EA's recent defense: ”Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.”

The precedent was set when the second release of the PS3 removed PS2 compatibility from hardware - up until then there was basically a PS2 inside every PS3, which was laudable but in financial terms a ridiculous extravagance. The requirement that Sony put a Cell inside every PS4 to achieve backwards compatibility with the PS3 meant the chances were nil from the very beginning. It's only slightly more rational in engineering terms than duct-taping a full-blown PS3 to every new PS4. Support for PS2 games would depend on whether a modern mid-range PC nowadays could run a PS2 native game acceptably - I have no idea whether that's the case or not, but it's basically what the PS4 would have to do. But one suspects that given the option of either implementing that, or getting customers to pay again for the same game (albeit at whatever the new price will be), Sony will choose the latter. EDIT: Ironically perhaps, it may well be the least engineering effort for Sony to reverse-port the PC port of their PS3 games to get them running on the PS4.

Batman: Origins would have been a good title for a game based on the 60s Batman show.

$1000. Personally I wouldn't want my ugly mug in the game even if I did pledge that much though.

Hopeful that they'll reverse that decision looking at the outcry in the comments. Even if they don't though, it's not quite clear if the direct download version is meaningfully hobbled or not - installing mods manually isn't a bother, so if it just means there's no in-game mod browser, then eh. It's just the last sentence which is the sticking point, at least for people who buy DLC. Since I'm not one, technically the decision doesn't really personally impact me, but I am somewhat disappointed out of principle. Y'know, if they were a bit smarter about it, they'd talk about the direct download version first, then afterwards talk about how the Steam version has some extra convenience by virtue of the platform's features. Would turn it into a PR win instead of a loss, though there's still the DLC issue.

The place where the loss of the paper manual is felt most keenly. I never really got around to playing the game, but Falcon 4.0's hardcover binder manual is something I cherish.

Didn't Sony just refresh with the new cheap-looking pop-top PS3s?

More likely the source of confusing is that F2P "casual" game Ultima Forever, which is being developed by EA/Bioware/Debbie Mythic (whatever the hell they're calling themselves today) currently. They currently possess whatever's left of Origin's (the company, not the platform) assets after the closure. LB had a sly dig at it when talking about his wife in the SotA final stream - the real "Lady British."

I have a Nokia 6300 dumbphone which is the only mobile phone I've ever purchased. For about a year prior to that I used another Nokia dumbphone, model unknown, that was a hand-me-down from a family member, until it started dropping calls. That was in 2007, so I was very much a latecomer to this whole mobile gadgets stuff. I wouldn't get very far with a smartphone as I pre-pay just the $30 every 6 months for my access and have no data allowance whatsoever. If you count the now old-fashioned MP3 player as a mobile device then I also have a Sansa Clip Zip player.

Yeah, despite the name, "Crew Skills" are really your skills, except you delegate their execution, you've got just the three. As for the rewards of crafting, I found that while levelling how much utility you get out of the skills is, naturally for an MMO, dependent on how much you want to grind it out. You learn to make basic "green" equipment which is equivalent to basic solo quest reward stuff. If you "reverse engineer", i.e. destroy the stuff you created for a partial component refund, you have a chance of learning an advanced "blue" version of that item which is superior to what you'd otherwise be wearing when solo questing. (And for a second tier, repeat the above replacing green with blue and blue with purple, but that's not worth the time and material investment at lower levels). Personally I just used the materials I had on hand without buying any extras from trade, and the result is that every so often I'd luck out into getting something decent - but as I levelled it became a rarer occurrence since I steadily fell behind the tradeskill levelling curve (i.e. I'd be making decent level 25 gear at level 30). So unless things have changed, if you want your profession to remain useful for the entire levelling curve, expect to have to supplement your crafting materials from the trade network on a regular basis. No idea how useful crafting is once you hit max level, but at a guess based on traditional MMO patterns is that you get to make stuff better than any flashpoint gear but inferior to any operations gear.

Clearly the solution is to use Volourn style quotes.

I grew up in a Nintendo household so my purity has not been corrupted by such filth. But I do feel like playing a beat-em-up now.

Obama himself is not-uncommonly called good looking in the media too, is he not?

I read that sentence as "SSDs are great for constant disk writing". Anyway, saw that Amazon UK have the *960GB* M500 for under $600, though it's on backorder (in the sidebar, ignoring the 3rd party sellers). Good god that's tempting, especially considering I paid $400 for my old 120GB one.

How about the dwarf's pecs? Racism!

Courtesy bump for two hours remaining, it ought to hit the $2m mark okay with under 60k left to get (accounting for in excess of $100k of non-KS site pledges). Didn't think it would initially. Believe they've decided against adding any late incentive/addon type stuff and will just do an online store thing later instead. Functionally it's the same result since it doesn't really matter when exactly the money comes in.

Hmm, tried to log in to catch up on recent months' patching. Unfortunately it looks like a new login system is in place, and it's a bit of a hassle. I have to use my "display name" instead of my email address as my ID, which happens to be a string of mostly random junk (as all my user credentials are made-up junk, being intended to be for a throwaway weekend trial account); then there's the two-factor verification change that means I have to get a one-time pass sent by email when logging on. Took three attempts for one email to even arrive. Is their email server running on the same hardware as the SimCity servers?