alanschu

Except for the hours and hours of gameplay invested prior in order to develop that secret. I bet any one of those people put in a significant factor of time more than you did into any of those games to be able to beat it that fast.

Report away. Have fun. I have heard that definition before, and know few programmers that adhere to it in that way. Mostly because it also encompasses trivial things like typoes. It's also why Microsoft critics are able to inflate the number of bugs in Windows. Oh, Microsoft missed a comma, bugCount++.

Our precogntive skills are quite amazing.

Very, very surprising, and the first I have heard of it. I wonder if someone released a virus that calls its process StarForce, because I don't have any processes on my machine that have starforce in the name, but I know I have starforce installed on my computer.

If poor design allows one to become stuck than it is a bug. Otherwise Testers would never be needed on Adventures like MI...but they are needed, mainly to make sure you CANNOT get stuck in the plot by doing something in some wrong way combination (like loosing the cat to scare of the dog while you still needed it to hunt the rat 4 screens beyond)... Nope. But what do I know, I forgot that you are the one with mountains of experience in this field, given all the "smart" things you are always saying. Besides, the situation you describe is quite different from a player selling quest items. Failing to protect players from their own stupidity is not a bug. Otherwise, letting someone even DROP a quest item would be considered a bug.

I wouldn't apply that condescending and dismissive maxim to this case. The speed runs would imply that people don't have enough time and so must finish a game as quick as possible! " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was thinking the same thing. I chose not to comment though, as I had a feeling you were thinking the exact same thing as well, and figured you'd be more creative in the deliver. Excellent decision on my part :D

LOL @ Volourn

It's all kind of moot if you don't actually care whether the developer makes more money.

Yeah, but the amount of anti-smoking stuff was just laugh out loud funny. My roommate and I were in stitches when the Surgeon General's warning was on the screen.

Well, at one point the Surgeon General's warning against the effects of Tobacco takes up the entire screen.

It's kind of stating the obvious when someone says they wouldn't mind an excellent game to be longer. Just magically making the game longer does not guarantee that the quality of the game would remain constant though.

Constantine might have been interesting if it wasn't a huge stop smoking ad.

Meh. Games like Close Combat, as well as Hearts of Iron are real time.

A game-stopping "event" because you sold a quest-important item is NOT a glitch ? It's poor design. If you were able to sell it, when code was provided to ensure that you shouldn't be able to sell a quest-important item, then it would be a bug. If it was never considered, it is a mistake in the game, but the game is still working as designed. This likely would be a bug. I didn't say that exploits weren't bugs. Yes. That's why people refer to them as exploits. Being able to maniuplate existing game mechanics in legal ways that the developers have allowed, in a way that they never considered, isn't a bug. If it does something like let you walk through walls (an intentionally placed barrier), then it would be a bug. Something in the code is actually broken and not working as intended. I should probably reconsider how I worded it, as many exploits are bugs. But there's many that aren't either. Players have just taken a legal game mechanic and used it in a way that was never considered in design.

You guys actually did some research/polls on this? I'm sure people in that age-group don't want to cough up 50 bucks for a game they can beat in a weekend. If you buy a game, you want to play it for a while, no? Also, I've heard this comment before, and I must say I find it particularily ridiculous when it comes from people who frequent these boards for years waiting for a game, only to hear them say: hey, gimme a 20 hrs game, you see I don't have a lot of time to play these days. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> People that frequent video game message boards are not representative of the majority of gamers.

I rather have a nice box, manual and added stuff than additional cash to the devs IF the prices are exactly the same for both... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Then why all the comments about developers margins?

It's Gromnir. He's had the half-orcish persona on message boards for years. Bioware even gave him a cameo in Throne of Bhaal, likely due to his unique and persistent posting style.

Bioware admitted that the MP in HotU was broken. That's a fact. It's why people had to use the Stone of Recall to skip past the introduction (because all but the main character were actually ACTIVE characters in the sequence. I killed the Drow Priestess 2 minutes into the game). This is a fact. It's why, when trying to lower yourself into the Undermountain after someone else did, Durnan told you that access was limited to <player X> where Player X was the player that just went down. I couldn't actually follow him down. This is a fact. Since you obviously don't visit the NWN forums (or at least didn't when HotU was released), you don't know what you're talking about. The MP was hideously broken, and Bioware was going nuts talking about how they never said that the campaign supported MP, and if you look at the box, they were right. Besides, I was never questioning whether or not you played it. So this statement is pointless, since I wasn't addressing that. If you consider abusing Stone of Recall, and modifying scripts as "playable" then yeah, sure.

Amen.

Despite Bioware themselves stating, explicitly, that the game did not support multiplayer when it was released. I guess you didn't pick it up when it was released. I suppose that's also why there's a nineteen page thread dedicated to finding work arounds so that you can play it appropriately in multiplayer. According to that thread it sounds like there may have been a patch released some time between October 2004 and February 2005, because the Feb 2005 posts seem to indicate that people were no longer having problems playing it in multiplayer. The link that the moderator kept linking to where Bioware explicitly stated that the expansion campaign was intentionally not supporting multiplayer now links back to the main forum page. EDIT: Heck, you can even see me posting my disappointment in this thread.

"More than happy?" Maybe in the same universe where Hordes of the Underdark was released with MP support.

What was the process name exactly? Even then, why would it actually cause your computer processor to get damaged. Even if it is constantly running a process, it certainly isn't pushing it to extremes. Otherwise the game it's trying to protect wouldn't even run well.

Because no team is perfect. This is shown by the fact that no team has gone undefeated for an entire season.

I point it out because Hades' absolute boycott of Electronic Arts and Ubisoft doesn't accomplish anything. It's easy to "boycott" a company when they don't make games you like. Lets see how well he adheres to his boycott if this RPG game rocks. Furthermore, what message does he send to EA, and the entire game industry, if it's an excellent, high quality RPG (which he says he wants more of) and he doesn't buy it because of decisions made a decade ago? (including the desolving of a company that he admits he didn't particularly care for - Westwood). It's not like he would have bought all of their games otherwise. It's just convenient because he's never been a situation to actually have to adhere to his boycott. Refusing to buy products you're not interested in is hardly a good demonstration of conviction. And I've seen my share of internet "boycotts" as well. Often against copy protections...even ones other than Starforce.

Linky linky????? In any case: Freelancer HOI2: Doomsday