Tale

Apparently about 8, as that is the amount of classes with unique story lines. Yet they have vast amounts of shared content. From art assets to sidequests. It would seem a grossly inefficient method for estimation.

If you only went to the BW Social site, this would seem like the appropriate next step. You can display your virtual "achievements" on a bunch of gaming sites, so why not Facebook? You can, nobody cares though. You've been able to do it on Steam Community ever since Steam Community came into existence, too. But it's not why people use Steam. They think it will draw in the "core social gamer." You think that's the CoD crowd. I ask you not to explain why Bioware is doing it, but what makes you think the CoD crowd is that group and cares about this particular feature. I'm with Oblarg. I'm not sure it's a real group, maybe it's MMO gamers. And that social integration features aren't going to draw anyone.

So... chakrams are pretty awesome. They have a medium range and seem to attack anything in the path of their flight. They and the sceptre seem like the best weapons in the game. My rogue-mage had more fun with his mage weaponry. Kind of struggling to figure out what I'll use the rogue part for now. The shadow ability was kind of nice to slip into combos but was completely unnecessary given how well the dagger combo chains into chakram by itself. Stealth is a non-combat ability unrelated to finesse and assassin's arts is given automatically.

The flaw in that defense is that SWTOR isn't competing against WoW of 6 years ago. SWTOR is competing against WoW of today. Yes, it's unreasonable to expect SWTOR to have everything WoW does with less time. But it still needs to aim to be a more enjoyable experience in appreciable ways. I do not wish to claim it fails at that. I only mean to say that for any player to choose TOR over WoW, TOR must appeal to that player in a way that WoW does not at this very moment. WoW can never lose that particular advantage.

5:1? I really didn't think it'd be that bad. I knew it would be bad some way or another, but not that. Why do they not force balanced sides in PvP areas like Illum?

The proposed bills threatened content YOU generate. Third parties could get entire domains shut down for things the owner has negligible control over. Fair usage had no exemptions and could only be argued in court after your site gets shut down and your funding cut off. This is my big problem with the proposed bill. I want something to be done to help combat piracy. But the threat of collateral damage and outright abuse is too high in this particular case. This isn't a new thing. The 90s saw two previous attempts at regulating the internet passed by the US government, the COPA and CDA. One of them was so broad and open to misuse it was overthrown in only a year. The other one we had to deal with for 10 years. We have several laws already in effect that currently aim to protect intellectual property in the digital domain, namely the DMCA (which we already have problems with being abused and insufficient remedies) and the Pro IP Act. And another bill that aimed to do more without quite as many problems as these two, ACTA. The problem with these two isn't that they domesticate the wild west. It's that they give authority to burn down houses on flimsy pretext.

My Farscape Blu-Rays have a defect. Season 2, disc 5. Thankfully it's only during the "previously on" sequence, so no content is skipped. But this is annoying. I had a defect on my DVDs, too. I've only ever had 4 defects buying movies, no defects in game discs. Two of those defects were from Farscape.

I'm pretty sure the CoD crowd aren't dying to broadcast their game progress to their facebook accounts either.

Gave the Amalur demo another whirl. Now to do the Darkness II demo. Edit: Oooh, starting with an onrails segment. Really putting your best foot forward, guys. Edit 2: Other than that, I like it.

Typically leveling is to allow you to approach harder encounters and make them easier, not necessarily to fight the tutorial enemies all over again. I encountered some enemies that seemed drastically harder than the tutorial guys. The starting daggers I had were worthless pretty quickly. The staff was useful though.

Copernicus, yes. I'm not sure on the intimate details, but they're in the same setting and same developer.

Except when one guy utilizing fair use material can get an entire site shut down. This isn't "a degree of regulation." This is carte blanche for media companies to shut down entire domains without due process.

I say that I hope they didn't spend that much. I wonder how much of what Kotick (Activision and Lucasarts have had past dealings) said earlier is true or relevant. That however the deal was arranged, it was to Lucasarts benefit over EA. If EA made a sizable investment and Lucasarts pulls all the profit out of the deal, that would be not very good. That's why I hate not having facts. There's a tendency in speculation to completely miss the mark.

It's not about the big websites failing. It's about all the websites that focus on user-generated content failing and a framework for censorship. Startups aren't going to have the infrastructure to enforce the requirements, either. They'll be more in danger than the likes of Wikipedia. There was no input from technology companies outside of large media companies involved in the bills' (there's two) creations. So it was weighted heavily to protect copyright holders with no regards to the impact on infrastructure and how hard it'll be for the people who actually end up being forced to enforce it. And there's an insufficient system of checks-and-balances to prevent abuse. We've already seen problems of media companies abusing DMCA for censorship purposes in defiance of fair use. The proposed laws would only make that worse.

Okay. Maybe being a Finesse/Sorcery with Sorcery gear isn't the best place to generalize about everyone. But I can't imagine fighting those wolf packs without dodging them. Did you use KB/M or gamepad? I used gamepad and am wondering how the KB/M is working out for people.

I liked it. The big negative for me is that the sound is really weak. I was afraid of that back in the preview videos and it looks like it carried forward. Rocks falling all around in the intro and they sound like they're always in the distance, even if hitting right next to you. Monsters don't sound impressive. Combat was fun enough for me, but I don't think I'm used to it yet. Can not dodge as I'd like to. Only made it to level 2 before it crashed. But I probably only had a few minutes left of demo time anyway. Plot didn't really catch me. Neither did the setting. But I didn't really see much of it in the short time I had. Visited only two dungeons, a tutorial boss, saw one small town of three buildings. The customization options look good for character builds. It's very action oriented. If you don't work on dodge or block timings, you will get creamed.

I'm really hoping for the rise of princess dating sim RPGs.

What was your opinion of the DLC?

The analogy is apt. I want to touch the LHC. Ooooooooh. So mesmerizing.

Woooo, haaaaaats Now to cancel my Amazon order in favor of this one. Interesting note, EA games is not publishing the Steam release.

360 demo is supposed to be up already. PC demo is not up just yet. Unless it went up in the past hour or so. Other bit of news is that they'll be able to talk about the Steam release later today according to the Community Manager. Edit: And the PC demo is up on Origin.

From October 2011 http://www.g4tv.com/videos/55954/sesslers-...-i-hate-numbers I know there's been a small amount of discussion on rating system as a result of the linked Giantbomb articles. It seems Adam Sessler really really hates numbers. "Everytime I have to come up with one of those numbers, just imagine a little piece of me dying." I give the rant 4.7 stars.

http://www.gog.com/en/news/syndicate_on_go..._plus_a_contest Syndicate... gog... Thursday

Boo the Ranger? I may have to demand your geek card.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxKEwgCR1CY 30 minutes of gameplay with commentary. It's interesting for me that there's no regenerating health. And seemingly no regenerating mana. So, is it going to be chugging potions? Is there a rest system? Only 12 minutes into the video so far, so it may be mentioned later. World looks large. "Kill everyone you see. Steal from everyone you see." No mention if it's truly "everyone" or if there's exceptions like the last two Elder Scrolls.