alanschu

<nitpick>I wouldn't necessarily say C++ was a language of the 60's</nitpick> "

Spam can be easily fixed with a junk hotmail account however.

Year 2000 or so. It was Ultima 9, so it wasn't that long ago. I was definitely out of high school. Or you could provide additional votes (on top of what you paid for) for what type of games you'd like to have made.

Oh, one more thing, since I realized it later on. Admittedly there's not much tangible incentive to do so, but I did think it was pretty cool that Electronic Arts gave every person that registered Ultima 9 a free remastered CD with all of the patches built right in. Also included was a letter of apology for the state that the original game was sent in. That was pretty neat.

Hahaha. I think we can include Ultima 9 as one of those games that doesn't fit Hurlshot's definition. Everyone had problems with that game Fortunately, if you registered your game, they sent you a remastered CD with all of the patches on it.

Proof please. I had no problems with the death implementation that Bioware implemented in NWN (or KOTOR for that matter). The proof is in the pudding (as you like to say). Here Obsidian goes and makes a game about D&D, and then implements non-D&D style death. Do you think they did this because they thought it'd annoy people, and ultimately piss more people off? When I say the majority of gamers, I refer to the majority that they are targetting with this game. It doesn't take a dunce to realize they probably don't care a lot about what the sports game player feels about player death in RPG games.

It's just an additional way to provide feedback for what you as a gamer want from game companies.

If they felt that the majority of gamers preferred to have actual death and treks to temples to resurrect people, they would have designed the game that way.

The temple of seasons worked fine for me.

I think my quotation may have thrown you off, as I put it in brackets because that wasn't the actual word used, not to bring attention to it or anything.

Well, thanks for the info. I think registering is particularly important, but the initial impression seems to put me in a minority.

What exactly does it mean to "legally [have] the community?"

Well that sucks. I thought the devs were smart and used race specifics on some encounters. Guess it was just a race check when it came to the dialogues. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Having a Druid in the party could make a difference as well. And having just reached Act 2 again, I still have no problems with the murder accusation. The crime was committed on Luskan soil, and there's an extradition treaty between Luskan and Neverwinter (Nasher comments how he regrets the day he ever signed anything with a Luskan seal on it). And not unlike real-life politics, he manipulates the system by allowing you to become a squire to avoid extradition. Then the trial can commence in Neverwinter, where hopefully appropriate justice will be served. And clearly Nasher values Law and Order, because he still reluctantly allows for the Trial by Combat should you prove your innocence.

So the consensus it that people don't bother registering because they don't want to waste the time on it, and feel as though they will receive additional spam?

I don't think so. I think they are just special prestige classes you can take since you have achieved those titles.

Optional content?

Absolute values mean nothing. It doesn't matter if suddenly a few thousand more people are playing the game online. Who is to say that there haven't been significantly more people buying the game playing it offline? Or that a large chunk of these people are the same MP players that took a year or two off from playing the game before? And that is why they are worthless. Just because it's what you see happening, doesn't mean that that is an accurate reflection of the actual customer base. Your sample size is far to small, and heavily biased (since you're not talking to offline gamers). It's easy to remember the "thousands" of unique identities you met while playing a game over five years? Exactly. Since you only talk with people that are online, all of your information comes from them. You're sample is not representative. The people you meet playing the game online are not an unbiased sample. As for my experience with narcisstic gamers, I played Counterstrike, the grand poombah of total asswipes. So don't go talking around about how I don't have experience playing online. The thing is, (as I've stated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over) you cannot base your assumptions of a game that offers a single player experience purely on the fans that you see playing MP. If NWN was an online MP only game, your views would have a bit more validity. But since you have zero information about the single player users, your sample is worthless. It doesn't account for them. For the last time, you're not using deductive reasoning. Take a logic course. Your premises aren't true. My biased views? And I'm sure the guy that loves NWN MP and has been beating on NWN2 before it even came out is a beacon of objectivity on the issue. The examples you cite are worthless, because they are based upon personal experience. And I've been playing games online since 1999, starting with Action Quake 2. I've sunk mountains of time into games like Counterstrike, Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo II, Battlefield 1942/Vietnam/2, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Guild Wars, and so on. What counter example would you really like me to cite? Me speaking with many people that don't like playing games online?

You provide feedback to the game company about the game styles you are interested in. You also provide hardware specifications such as DVD drive capability. People claim that DVDs should have been the mainstay for years now, but if the registrations that they get are from people that all answer 'no' to that question, why should they think that the bulk of their target base does have DVD drives? I understand that the biggest vote is the sale itself (money talks), but I guess I just figure that taking the time to tell them the game types that I am interested in, as well as some information about my computer and my gaming preferences is worth it. Oh well.

Poor Spider

How is the game "so bad?" I know I'm one of the luckier gamers out there, as I rarely seem to suffer from many of the problems that people get at new releases, outside of the poor party AI and some AI quirks, I was able to play through the OC unpatched with no major issues. I had one crash that happened when loading a saved game, but that's it.

Then I share the same disdain for your opinion. Or at least 80% of the disdain. COmplaining because the game has similiarities to KOTOR. Wow.

I'm just curious how many people take the time to register the PC games they buy? I usually register all of my games, since it provides some feedback to the company about the types of games I am interested in and whatnot, and I was just curious if other people did the same thing. The reason why I brought this up is I just registered Madden 07, and it asks questions such as whether I have a DVD drive, my preferred gaming platform of choice, and so on. The DVD one in particular caught my eye, because I know a lot of people in North America are annoyed that more games don't come out on DVD (though it's less of an issue now IMO). It's hardly scientific, but I'm the only person in my group of PC gaming friends who bothers to register my games, so maybe PC gamers are unknowingly giving themselves a quieter voice than they really need? Discuss. Or not.

Black Isle and Bioware had a lot of fanboys willing to rush and buy NWN2 right away. Nowhere near the same number of fans that Blizzard or Bethesda have, but still a significant number. I dont think that it is a coincidence that many of the NWN2 lovers have been on these boards a long time. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Volourn is right. Black Isle may have fanboys, but I doubt it's truly that significant of a number. Otherwise they would have had a few more games that were significant financial successes. Did they have any? It took PST years to become a financial success. The Bioware fanboys are more numerous, but for every person that goes out and buys it just because it's NWN2, you're going to get fanboys that refuse to buy it because it's not a Bioware game.

Haha Spider. I got the sarcasm don't worry As for the article, I laugh at some of these complaints: "- You are unable to multiple-select your characters in a party under your control. Why could you do that in every single Infinity engine game and most every other RPG with a party system, but not in NWN2? Because that's the way it was in KotOR." I don't recall being able to do that in NWN either!!1 NPCs with no freedom of selection of class? Check. Auto-level button? Not here! Okay, so it's a regressed KotOR engine. Outside of Deekin, was it possible to affect anyone's level in NWN? Even then I think Deekin was only in HotU, which isn't technically NWN, but rather NWN++. - licensed a (perfectly unsuitable) engine that they did not develop - refrained from modifying that engine to suit the needs of the game This is super awesome, as the engine (as Volo pointed out) at its root is the same as NWN. - Inventory. Who stole a paycheck for designing this travesty? The icons are about as informative as C3PO's beeps. It has 128 one-cell slots each of which can fit any item, potentially enabling you to carry one hundred and twenty eight scythes on your person. If the elementary "realism" and "roleplay" connotations of this do not worry you like they do me, then I hope you will at least agree with me that the inventory is nigh impossible to manage visually. Inventory tetris was a part of my pack-rat roleplaying experience. I liked the fact that even if I was inhumanly strong, I could carry at most 30 greatswords. I never understand beefs like this. If he's that interested in roleplaying, there's nothing stopping him in not picking up 128 Scythes. - You have more quickslots than in NWN, but they are inaccessible by hotkeys. In a way, you have less quickslots, but more useless slowslots. Why in the hells can't I drag a spell from the quickcast into one of those? Hitting Shift+Number works fine. Though it means I only use the first 4 or so (Shift-7 is an awkward reach, and not even really necessary anyways). - There is no freedom of choice in this game, and the difference between good and evil is that evil simply kills everyone, while good talks to them a bit and then kills everyone. Lovely roleplay. Is this really any different than pretty much every CRPG out there? - Being evil. The campaign is simply not made for it. Nothing should stop me from murdering peasants for a few gold coins if that is what I want, but this game stops me. It's nearly impossible to maintain an evil alignment in this game to keep, say, assassin or blackguard class features within the frames of roleplay. The "evil" dialog options are mostly just obnoxious or rude. Rude does not equal evil. I'm rude. And obnoxious. But I'll give you a hand if you're drowning, and I will not ask for any compensation. In this game you end up inadvertently doing good deeds to just advance the plot. I'm not sure I understand. He just genuinely performed a good deed by saving someone's life, and gets some Good points for it. It's not like it put him all the way to full Good! I played an Evil Rogue/Assassin, and they still did the odd Good deed. But it didn't suddenly make my character something other than Evil. - The quests are all regurgitated nonsense that we saw in NWN. Go to area A, kill baddie B, and bring quest token Q to move on. Only this time you have the NPCs tag along with their... Heh...welcome to CRPGs! - The OC is non-multiplayable. It has dialog pauses, forced party transitions, a plot thoroughly incompatible with multiplayer (so which of the four of us is the main character?). Makes you remember how the NWN OC started perfectly compatible with multiplayer - a few friends in a city's military academy called to serve their homeland. Great hook! Everyone is equal, everyone can complete the tasks, and the plot is not character related. In NWN2, most dialogs make no sense whatsoever unless initiated by the main character. Seeing how the developers specifically designed the OC to not be played in multiplayer, it is not surprising. Meh. Never stopped me from playing BG and BG2 in multiplayer, and won't stop me from playing NWN2 in multiplayer. The guy is a moron.

When I said better games, I meant PC games.