Blarghagh

Nah, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I'm just touchy today because it's been a bad day for me on this subject. Probably wouldn't even have noticed if you posted it a couple of days ago or made jokes too, but today was one of those days I had to ask my wife to hide all the pills in the house because I was afraid I'd have too big an appetite for them, so to say.

Yeah, I phrased it as too much of an absolute, my mistake. I don't think every Christian is a murderer waiting to happen upon losing faith, but it is a concern of mine considering the strength of human cognitive bias over evidence. Religion is a strong counter to problems caused by those among our species with those kinds of cognition issues is more like what I'm trying to say, but that's more vague and less dramatic and apparently I'm all about the drama today.

Yeah, I know. I'm just... Touchy subject for me, I guess. My life is an every day spiral of my brain trying to convince me the world is better off without me. It's hard for some people (don't mean you, just people in general) to imagine what it's like having to constantly choose to stay alive rather than it being the default state. I don't blame them, honestly, it's called mental illness for a reason. Explaining how cancer feels to a healthy person, as easy as describing a color to a blind person. That's fine, lots of people do. But others just don't. I'm honestly envious, I'm about as far to the other side as someone can be.

Oh, I thought he WAS that guy. Edit: Re: religion, I've always been of the mind that you should follow demonstrable evidence. Some of science is on faith, but at least they're based on stuff you can research and test and most of the time they're out to prove themselves wrong. I respect that, not people who get their life rules from a book of fables. That being said, those kinds of fables feel neccesary to society to me and I'm thankful. The fact that so many Christian people fear that atheists for having no morals is telling, it's essentially an admission that they wouldn't have if the book didn't tell them. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I believe religion is useful in keeping the masses in check and without it, society would never have developed far enough to coin the word 'science'.

Society as a whole is moving up Maslow's hierarchy of needs while decreasing the importance of things needed to actually fulfill the needs higher on the pyramid, making the core needs of modern people difficult to satisfy. It's an irony of sorts, you're less likely to get depressed you're trying to find food, shelter, security etc. than if you're trying to find happiness. Human beings are not built to be happy.

Funny isn't the word I'd use, but then me and chronic depression have a very toxic relationship. Didn't know the guy, but every mental illness related suicide is a tragic failure of society. R.I.P.

I dunno, when they announced Solo I can't recall hearing many responses other than "why?". I never expected it to do good. Thought the same for Rogue One though, and I was wrong on that.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom If you liked any of the Jurassic films, you'll probably like this one. Plot's a slightly more interesting retread of The Lost World but the script is decent until the ending, and it's got some of the best dino action since the original. It's also by far the most gorgeous, and I'm not talking special effects - though the real life animatronics were spectacular - the cinematography is outstanding. One scene in particular was hauntingly sad and beautiful. I'd say it's the best since the original, but I'd also say that the original is still the only movie in the series that's actually a good film. Decent first half, stellar second half that's got actual tension for the first time in the series since the original, weak ending and some subplots that are awkward as heck.

Ruined most online experiences, really.

Some of the newer zones (Worgen, Goblin, Panda) have voiced bits in addition to quest text. The former two in particular have a tendency to just stop giving quests until dialogue is finished, leading to lots of people wandering off in search of the next quest and never finding it. Irony of sorts. Nah, WoW's strength lies in group content with friends and the persistent world that you can just jump back into whenever you want.

No, not that I know of. I'm impressed you made it to level 5 at all while reading quest text. That stuff is as dry as a textbook.

Not sure how long each of my two toons took, a grand total of 3 hours to get a human warrior to 5 and a blood elf mage to 7. Bear in mind, I had to learn the mini map, the vendor locations (which all seem to follow a pattern), watching cinematics, getting a feel for how much opposition I could handle without getting myself killed and listening to all the dialogue from the quest givers (since I've never seen them before) etc. etc. Also spend (wasted) some time trying to change the quick bars, but gave up eventually. Listening to the who and what now? You mean reading quest text?

Although very convenient for people who take frequent breaks like me.

I don't even want to know how much money I dumped into WoW, and will probably continue to do so.

I haven't leveled since they changed the leveling curve a few months ago, supposedly it's more difficult now, but the last toon I leveled made it to level 5 in 5 minutes without any xp enhancing heirlooms and it was a starting zone I hadn't done before (Goblin), so I was actually being conservative with that estimate. >_> And the game is super handholdy and railroaded up to level 20, you can't really make any mistakes. Just talking to the first NPC in most starting zones gets you 3/4 to level 2.

I'm not surprised, really. The second 'M' in MMORPG doesn't mean much anymore (and the last three were canned ages ago in WoW's case). When I started playing WoW I was just hanging around questing with others within a few hours and I didn't exactly look for it (I'm well to asocial to just hook up with randoms). Nowadays starter zones are mostly empty, quests are boringly easy and streamlined to a fault and getting to the level cap is a solo-affair that you just get over with as fast as possible so you can participate in the "end-game" rather than something to be enjoyed in itself. If you're not into raiding or competitive PvP then WoW, I feel, has very little to offer anymore. Kungen (a rather (in)famous player from the Ensidia guild, a top tier guild from the "old" WoW days) has a pretty good video about why MMOs (and WoW in particular) are pretty terrible nowadays. (He also complained about current day WoW being pathetically easy, which he demonstrated by, having not played WoW for many many expansions (think he quit in Cataclysm or so), ripping through the "hardest" content in a matter of weeks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MNFWhCw8dg Like Kungen when I started playing (not in vanilla, but in TBC in my case), I didn't even know about raiding, I pretty much just wanted an RPG that would never end. I got dragged into dungeons by my guild leader, ended up loving the hell out of it and got invited to my first (real) raid fight by someone I met while I was doing dungeons when I was levelling up, they were short a few people and I'd shown to be somewhat competent (the boss was The Lurker Below in Serpentshrine Caverns, if anyone cares). After that I started trying to get into a raid guild, ended up in one of the top tier guilds on my realm that was just getting started and the rest is history. I don't necessarily agree with all of his points. I can see his point about BDO providing play time and it did seem to have interesting mechanics, but I disagree about the game being any good, it's just another boring Asian P2W grindfest from where I stand (also doesn't have any form of community building like old WoW had). If he'd used EVE as an example I'd have been on board though But like him I ended up quitting WoW once I noticed there really wasn't anything in the game anymore outside of raiding and the raids, at that time (Cataclysm), weren't particularly fun. I gave it another go last year, but nothing's really changed. This seems misaimed, since level 7 is like 15 minutes of playtime and it wouldn't have been that different in vanilla. I know, since I got bored and left at level 19 back then and didn't give the game another try until Wrath. If you don't have friends along, WoW will always have a terrible and boring first experience.

Moved to Computer & Console because it's more general gaming discussion.

Don't worry. I missed all that Black Isle stuff too. I haven't been here that long - just 14 years.

Ah, Oby. That brings back memories. Horrible, horrible memories. Still waiting for Walsingham to come back.

Not sure if Carth is a good example, since that game would often prompt you "Carth seems like he wants to talk to you" only for him to go "I don't want to talk about it, leave me alone." But yeah I prefer that to jumping through hoops like with Durance and his arbitrary "now you need to rest before you can talk to me more" time limits.

I don't know. Let me know if you find out.

Pretty sure that means it's an incredibly sound business strategy, just not a morally responsible one.

Don't shame me because I can't sleep without my chum buddy.

That new Gorillaz song is very relaxing.

Wonder if that's what they were setting groundwork for with the whole metacritic thing.