alanschu

Because it's fun to play with other people that have the stakes just as high.

What are you trying to say!?

****ed up marketing? You think they decided to post a release date even though it wasn't actually a goal for the development team? Depending on the size of their QA team, you can crush a lot of bugs in a 14 day period.

Your argument rests on a rather extreme supposition. There are canon choices on Virmire in regards to Wrex or Kaiden/Ashley. Are you telling me that a 'large amount' of people killed Wrex in a single ME saved game and that they will only play ME 2 off that single saved game? It seems more likely that people who are so into ME 1 that they'll only play off saved games will have more than one saved game. And people who just pick up ME2 and play it will have whatever canon situation it starts with. If BioWare is smart, that's with Wrex alive. It's far more likely that the number of players for whom getting Wrex is *impossible* is 0%, while those who stick to only playing off their single ME 1 save where Wrex dies will be minute. Is BioWare on the record for acknowledging Canon? In that case, who's in, Ashley or Kaiden?

Which would make sense, given designing a good MMO would be significantly more difficult.

New games come out more popular than when a year goes by. By next year TOR will probably still be popular, but not on the top 40. The only exceptions are Halo and Call of Duty, which were probably popular right from the start. If so, then why the hell didn't LucasArts demand new MMO right after K1 was a big hit so they could come up with other snappy ways to earn some cash. I guarantee that SWTOR will easily be in the Top 40 for interest next year.

Depends on whether or not you want it "meaningful" or not, because it's not just about whether or not you've known these people before. Taking it at its simplest, there's two ways you can go through with either character, depending on your romance situation. Either you did, or you didn't (which can also apply for same sex scenario). If you did romance one of those characters, I would expect there to be more than just a casual reference to the relationship if I were to persistently interact with the character over the course of the game. It wouldn't just be that I knew Ashley in the past, but that there was a developed chemistry and history between them. A lot of dialogue could easily be shared, but if it's just "hey, you've known me in the past and we were close" at the start, and then the exact same Ashley regardless of what the player chose in ME1, then we really do not have a situation of any meaningful consequence coming from the first game. For there to be any sort of plausible progression, I would expect that there would be a lot of very different lines of dialogue throughout the course of the game to reflect upon it. Otherwise it's as much of a gimmick as people claim it is now. Combine this with the fact that, compared to new NPCs (such as Thane, as you mentioned him), Ashley/Kaiden will only be present not just those that have played Mass Effect, but still have their saved game to import into the new one, you create content could be impossible to be seen by a large part of your audience. Does it make more sense to invest time and effort into a character (optional or not) that anyone that picks up the game can experience, or one that can only properly appeal to those that played the previous game? As you say, they hope to have content only available to those that have ME1, but they're still going to do it in moderation.

Yup. You didn't duel in PvP, though PKers were the biggest pain.

Oh really? I take it back then. NK is a paradise.

So you plan on MW2 occupying your time forever, and hence, never be interested in DA or AP sometime in the new year? Funny that you seem to have no problems getting 3 other games (DA, Borderlands, and AP) with the month extra time (a little more than one week per game), but when it's only a week or two away from MW2, you completely write off all three games. Too bad for you I guess.

I already did admit it!

I wouldn't play a PvP MMO in hardcore mode.

An advantage of Diablo, ironically due to the grinding, was that it didn't take very long to get to the higher levels. I'd play a hardcore MMO. I won't disagree that it's less appealing on a larger scale though.

I can't tell if you are being serious or not. I wasn't. My only assumption is that because your point is absolutely absurd, you're not being serious either.

Haha I guess that's one way of looking at it.

HC is a one way ticket to regret. Seriously, why would anyone want a one time only character? Some people are crazy. Because it's tense. When you have to be careful because if you die, you're rerolling a character, it actually gives a bit of fear should you suddenly stumble upon super Diablo while running through the Catacombs.

There is, it's just still a part of the human noble origin. Origin stories (mage excluded) aren't affected by whether or not you pick warrior or rogue.

Bioware writes well?

I loved HC mode and it's all I played. I went on a ton of Bhall runs myself, it's just that I enjoyed the parts where we'd go through and get a lot of quests done.

That makes sense. I mean, I know when I reach for a gun, I don't know if I'm grabbing a shotgun or a pistol until I have already picked it up...

He doesn't like Mass Effect, and was actually passing judgment on the fact that you will play a "crap" game because you want to import into ME2.

I agree. I didn't like that the game became a grindfest of killing particular bosses over and over. I actually enjoyed complete playthroughs of the game.

That doesn't make a shred of sense. You'd rather have it so the game randomly picks a weapon if you want to change your weapon?

I've heard this excuse several times, and it doesn't wash for me. As far as we know, there are 12 possible party members, and of them, only two are mandatory. That means that the other 10 may or may not be in a specific play-through for a specific player. And how many of them would have had a significant past with the player from the previous game? Would people be content with Kaiden/Ashley having the same roles as the other joinable NPCs in the party? If so, then is it really THAT big of a deal if they aren't joinable NPCs? Having said that, I'll be very surprised if either NPC does not exist at all in the game. Do you by any chance have a list of the NPCs? I'll concede your point, although the situation you describe is possible (and possibly even common, especially in my first playthrough) WITH mandatory NPCs in my party. You're right, it does. It's all about determining whether or not the investment is worth it. I don't know the metrics, but increased content through higher quality sidequests, especially when sidequests were such a knock on the original game doesn't strike me as wasted resources. In fact... Numbers man is right. I should just call you queen of the Strawman. Look CAREFULLY at what I called a weaker investment of resources, before you start going off and saying random, and incorrect, things. In fact, look carefully at the entire sentence. At no point did I declare that optimal use of resources would be a completely linear game, as you seem to be implying.

Yup, always a joy to see placeholder text hehe. The placeholder visual effects and whatnot for GUIs are usually quite entertaining too I find. Drawn in paint by a programmer, waiting for the GUI artist to make it all pretty