Blarghagh

That was probably true during "vanilla" or for some raids in TBC, though I doubt it was true for, say, Karazahn and certainly not for any of the Wrath of the Lich King raids (which were still pre-raid finder). At least on our realm PUGs used to clear the previous "generation" of raids during WotLK (eg. we ran PUGs for Naxxramas/Eye of Eternity(Malygos)/Sartharion with alts while clearing Ulduar and started PUGging the first few bosses in Ulduar while working on heroic Ulduar). That, imho, was fine: hardcore raiders got to see the new content, and got it first, the rest just got to it later. It was already better than in TBC where most people indeed never got to see the inside of Black Temple. After Ulduar Blizzard imho just got lazy, instead of designing different fights for hard mode they just upped damage/hp on bosses and called it "heroic mode", moreover most raiders went through what is basically the same fight three times (raid finder -> normal -> heroic). Whether these were hard or not isn't even the point, it just got boring doing the same fights over and over (much more so than ever before) and you didn't even get any awesome loot to show off for it (a recolouring of the same items everyone else got hardly counts). If they'd continued on the Ulduar path then I'm sure hardcore raiding in WoW wouldn't be dead (exactly none of the raid guilds on my realm survived the introduction of the raid finder for long). If I just want to quest and wander around I just resub to EverQuest 2 tbh, that game is far superior in the actual RPG department to WoW. Our pseudo-hardcore guild just steamrolled Naxxramas in two raid evenings or so (we even nearly killed the first boss with only 10 as our raid leader hadn't figured out the switch between 10 and 25man modes...note that our guild was "special" in the sense that nobody was allowed to look at videos of fights before the guild had cleared it for the first time, in stark contrast to how most guilds operated), that said, some of the heroic modes were real fun in early WotLK (until after Ulduar, see above), I greatly enjoyed Sarth3D on 25man. You're right, the less than As for just upping the hp and damage on bosses, right now in Legion I enjoy that the fight mechanics are progressive over difficulties. Mythic has more mechanics than heroic which has more than normal and so forth. Still a problem with having to run the same fight over multiple difficulties, but it's more interesting than just upping the damage. LFR is mostly redundant - daily world quests offer the same gear level and there are no long quest chains you can complete on that difficulty so it's become the tourist mode it was meant to be, and normal isn't that hard so most casual guilds can easily clear it. I just feel like they could tune up heroic and get rid of mythic, by the time most guilds get to mythic they're sick of the instance and the next tier is about to come out. Plus my guild has trouble filling slots for heroic now because most of us are having much more fun in Greater Rif- I mean Mythic Keystone Dungeons. EDIT: Personally I think Wrath had the right idea, but feel fairly safe in saying that up until now Legion's been the best expansion since Wrath. I skipped Pandaland though and apparently that was better than Cata and WoD for people who weren't alienated by the Pandaland theme before it started, so I'm not 100% sure. The only problem I have with Legion is that they screwed the gear system a little by adding too many randomness layers on it, but the actual content you do for that vendor trash gear is pretty fun.

Yeah but it had a bot mode. I don't know any numbers about Battlefield but I remember reading that Unreal Tournament's bot mode was played more than the online game too, and that game was even more online focused. Since Battlefield added single player, I assume the number has skewed. Why else add single player at all if you're doing fine with just the multiplayer? Why don't more multiplayer only games become succesful? Other than Overwatch, I believe every multiplayer only game that wasn't free to play in the last couple of years was a bust, right? I can't remember any real successes (I firmly believe the disappearance of bots has a lot to do with this). Nobody played Evolve until it went Free to Play and that game was hyped as hell. To answer your WoW question: It depends on the route you take. The game encourages questing and for a new player with no heirlooms or tricks that's probably going to take you days rather than hours - I'd estimate 4 to 7 full 24 hour days worth of playtime. I leveled a toon from level 1 to level 100 right before Legion launched in about 12 hours chainrunning dungeons in full heirlooms. My quickest max level character was the free level 100 boost that came with my Legion pre-order (I normally don't pre-order but I was going to play this whether it was good or not, help me I'm addicted), the existence of which has probably helped with the massive level grind for a lot of people. Of course making a new player level 100 right away and throwing all these abilities at them when they never explain how to even play game is a bad idea, but really this game has enormous problems in its new player experience anyway so fair enough.

I know what you mean. We cleared the new Emerald Nightmare raid in one week and my guild goes in blind (i.e. nobody knows tactics). At least they have Mythic mode these days, which gives a serious challenge, but only But even with how easy it is now, an estimated 8% of the playerbase cleared Blackhand during WoD on any raid difficulty including LFR - which you can win by pressing a queue and going afk - according to some numbers MMO-Champion published last year. Comparatively, about 60% killed the first boss of that instance - the majority of WoW players cared so little about raiding that they can't be bothered to afk until the end of a raid instance - and this was in an expansion where there was little else to do than raid (I'm convinced at this point that the emphasis on raiding in WoD was why the subscriber numbers dropped as quickly as they did, because that expansion was even worse for casual players than it was for the hardcore). Raiding is not and will never be the primary action people do in WoW. Most subscribers just quest by themselves. It's surprising but true. Which is my point - of any game, assume that less than 10% play it the way its meant to be played or how gamers think it should be played. When I still worked in game dev you don't want to know how many people would complain that the easy modes of our casual mobile games were too hard. Similarily, when I was young I didn't know anybody who played StarCraft online which everyone says was "StarCraft's strength", but I knew plenty of people who used cheatcodes to beat the campaign. Go figure.

Pay close attention to the first part of that - it's a question everyone hates to hear: Is it REALLY what you want to do? I don't want to put you off, but that's my story. I studied to become and briefly was a game animator because I thought that was what I really wanted. I ended up hating it.

Actually, they had to add a raid mode that you can queue for with the push of a button to justify their continuing to make them, because not enough people actually raided to justify the cost of making raids. Back in 2013 there was a Blizzard post explaining why that mode exists, and it include this quote (emphasis mine): "We don’t want to restrict raiding again to People underestimate the amount of casual players who will buy a game simply for the single player experience. I'm sure 90% of the people who buy Battlefield do so for the crappy single player experience.

This reminds me of how World of WarCraft players say people only play that game for raiding.

Two lost in the woods buddy movies: - Hunt For The Wilderpeople: Pretty funny, great performances by the leads, especially Sam Neill, but has trouble moving back and forth between its serious character-driven scenes and the more over the top comedic scenes. Overall still great and I'm looking forward to what this director does with Thor 3, the Thor & Hulk buddy movie. 7/10 - Swiss Army Man: Also pretty funny, but it got a little too out there and nonsensical for me when it tried turn a story about a corpse with magic fart, vomit and boner powers into a character driven drama. I'd say someone needs to make a highlight reel short-film and leave it there. The scenes that work are fantastic, but there are too many that don't. 5/10

Building a portfolio of writer's samples and published work (articles, short stories, perhaps writing a game and getting a mod team together to make it) is essential. A good portfolio trumps a diploma every time and experience most of the time. Either way, writing for games isn't exactly a career you can work towards in a traditional way at the moment. Writers are underappreciated and rather often the game designers are also the writers ("why should we pay for a writer when I can write just as well?" they exclaim, thinking they know anything about writing at all) unless you're working for medium-to-large studios. It's possible, but it's going to be hard.

Quite liked Star Trek Beyond, it seemed hopeful and positive and even had a literal bit of Utopia in it. The villain and character development were a bit meh but it was fun at least. Was this explicitly stated because I interpreted this as less a battle between the mirror and the protagonists and more just the mirror screwing with them. I believe so, but I don't remember if there was exact dialogue, sorry. I do remember that they had electronic surveillance they could look at for that purpose (the other person would see the truth and alert the one in the illusion) and that certain stimuli knocked them right out of the illusion (such as the part where one of the leads believes to be eating an apple and realizes she just bit into a lightbulb because of the pain). I might watch it again to check. Of course, the twist was in fact that they stood no chance, but I don't believe that was implied before the end.

Okay. But when you watch it again, try to pay attention to how much of a difference he actually makes to the plot. To be fair, neither does Indiana Jones.

Naw man, what movie did you watch? This ain't "How Sparrow got his boat back". He was the Inigo Montoya of this movie, just with more screen time. You could write him out and be left with pretty much the same story. The shenanigans are because pirates want Bill Turner's blood and gold but kidnap the wrong girl. Will Turner breaks Jack out to get him there and that's as far as his impact on the plot really goes. Jack Sparrow is the best thing in that movie, but he's not even important in it. He's even just a cog in Will Turner's character development, the mentor who shows up and teaches the poor boy who spent his entire life living by other people's rules that to do the right thing, sometimes you have to live by your own rules. Having more screentime or higher billing doesn't prove anything - hell, Mark Hamill got second billing on The Force Awakens and he's in it for twenty seconds. It's all a moot point anyway, my definition of lead character is probably just different from yours (since billing matters to you apparently). Either way, Jack may not be the lead character but he's the one we as the audience cares about. But that's because he's pulling all these weird shenanigans to distract us from how boring the actual plot and story and the other characters are - which is what I was trying to say in the first place. These movies don't work if the story is about Jack, because what was fun about Jack in the first place was that he royally ****s the story up for everyone. Nobody wants him there - Will and Elizabeth don't want him there, the Pirates don't want him there, the Navy doesn't want him there, even his cohort pirates leave him behind. He's a spanner in the works and that's what makes him work, and that's why the fourth Pirates film was a monstrosity. We don't care about Jack's quest for immortality, we only care about how badly he ****s up everyone else's quest. The more these movies focused on Jack's story, the worse they got.

Nope. Doesn't even show up until like 20 minutes into the first film. Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner were the leads of the first film and Jack Sparrow was the wacky sidekick, just he totally upstaged those losers because Depp was great and kept grabbing more and more screentime. In the shooting script, he had less than half the dialogue and only speaks as much as he did because they wisely let Depp do his thing (this was before he was annoying). Was more of a co-lead in the second and third, but didn't become the full-fledged sole main character until the fourth, which was completely boring and annoying because Jack Sparrow is only as funny as the people who are reacting to his antics. He needs a straight man to function in any story.

Not really, it establishes pretty soon after that it's possible to break out of that perception if you realize it's happening. The resulting mind games are what create the tension, so it's the exact opposite.

Yes, that's why I'm saying it needs to be an expanded library of older titles, not JUST Skyrim. A backlog of titles that you can play while waiting for a new game is invaluable. Don't forget that's how Steam became huge, and is the entire business model of GOG. With the recent resurgence in Pokémon sales and their gimmicky NES thing, there's no way Nintendo doesn't realize by now how many people are looking to play older titles, and by using Skyrim they show that not only will they have older titles, it won't even be just Nintendo titles. I also assume this is the Skyrim Enhanced Edition, which after a big hullaballoo can now be modded on both larger consoles. It'd be silly that Bethesda pushed for that with Sony but not Nintendo. But yeah, ideal world and all that. Nintendo has been known to **** up on things like this.

I can't say I'm not worried about the third part support. I'm guessing that's why they released their list of partnered devs and tech companies: I think a smart move is the focus on Skyrim in that trailer. They don't seem to be afraid to bring older titles to this. An expanded library of old titles complimenting the new ones, especially ones with high playtime value, is a smart idea. Playing Skyrim requires a lot of time, time that will be easier to find if you can just grab your console and take it with you.

I went to see Ouija 2 with a friend that I saw Ouija 1 with because we were alone in the theater and ripped that movie to shreds hilariously, expecting it to be just as bad and unintentionally hilarious. Boy were we wrong, that was actually a good horror movie. Creepy as hell, unrelenting tension and good performances. Turns out it was directed by the same guy who did Oculus, which was also fantastic. Why is that guy wasting his time on sequels to awful films?

I did say it was unlikely. It's using updated nVidia Shield technology though, and that was always surprisingly powerful. In either case, even if it's not as powerful as the XBone and PS4, it looks powerful enough for me. I think that whether or not it's underpowered compared to those consoles doesn't matter, I don't think power is a selling point these days. Core gamers don't use consoles anymore.

Racist and offensive against asians, specifically? I dunno, with the Cannibals from the second flick, the Asians from the third and the Spaniards from the fourth I think they were pretty racist all around - offensive, however, is in the eye of the beholder. It's supposed to be like old school pirate stuff, if they painted a realistic view of the world and cultures around that time it'd be wildly different. Anyway, I enjoyed the first one which was a fun adventure whose only flaw was that it was slightly too long. The first two sequels were pretty bad but I respect them because they were bad in a spectacular, ambitious way (which also holds true for Gore Verbinski's Lone Ranger). The fourth movie where they decided Jack Sparrow was the lead character was absolutely terrible, though. Jack was only as interesting at all because of how everyone else had to deal with his shenanigans - the shenanigans themselves aren't nearly as fun if he's the point of view character.

Honestly the convenience of being able to pick up my console game and continue when my girlfriend needs the TV or I need to catch a train or something is priceless to me - that's a huge difference between it and any other "I guess I'll bring Pokémon with me to play or something because I can't bring the game I really want to play" mobile device. This is the first time in years that I'm considering buying a console. Which makes sense, because I'd been looking into the nVidia Shield before and this is pretty much that with Nintendo support. But I need much more info before I actually do, such as knowing the specs, if there's sufficient release-titles, a post-release slate worth sticking around for and most importantly power management and battery life. No use being able to take Skyrim with me on the train if it lasts twenty minutes, am I right? And I don't want another Wii situation where I buy a console and get maybe 50 hours out of it over its entire lifespan. How do you know if it's underpowered? Are there any real specs? Boogie2988's source has thus far been confirmed legit and also said it was on better or on par with the XBox 1 (which sounds unlikely, but he was right about everything else). EDIT: Haha, I was checking Boogie's twitter to check if I read that correctly and he started calling it the Nintablet.

Looks like an Arrow time-travel episode.

Don't Breathe - First time ever I actually wished there was a trigger warning because nothing I remember from promos suggested it was this rapey. I'll never look at a turkey baster the same way again. Terrifying horror movie though, even though there's not a ghosty or goblin in sight. Stephen Lang, or as I like to call him, Old S. Lang, was horrifying as... the blind hermit who gets robbed by some young punks? That doesn't sound like he'd be horrifying, but he is.

That may be true, but Blizzard isn't exactly known for doing that quickly. Both Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 took 12 years and I've been waiting for WarCraft 4 for 14 now. As for an MMO, I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed. Blizzard knows there will never be another succesful MMO, it's why they cancelled Titan.

The lead designer who ruined Diablo 3 moved on to WoW and someone else fixed his mess by making an expansion that changed most of the systems, so I don't think so. (I don't hate the guy, but clearly he wasn't the right designer for Diablo 3, most of his systems felt like MMO systems so WoW is a better fit).

Date night with my lady included sappy romance movie and horror movie. Me Before You - Surprised me, thought it would be run of the mill romance drama where a depressed white guy gets taught how to live by a manic pixie dream girl. Turns out it was a deconstruction of the manic pixie dream girl trope in which the characters are counting on that and the depressed white guy teaches the manic pixie dream girl how to live instead. It also won me over by never taking itself too seriously despite heavy subject matter. Lights Out - Horror movie based on the short film of the same name. Fantastic first half in which characters are smart, then they all grab the idiot ball because there was nowhere else to go with the plot in the second half - it also explains literally everything about our supernatural creature halfway through taking away most of the fear. Characters were done pretty well and the dumb horror movie boyfriend turned out to be by far the best part. Very strange ending with horrible implications though. Spoilers below!

Enolicia, never heard that one before. I've met a Bronwyn myself, and also a Blodwyn which is the most metal girl name ever.