Magister Lajciak

I don't know who he was.

Halo Wars: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/vie...n/645-Halo-Wars

Thanks for the article. As to the possibility that the EA is reacting to the backlash - well, that's fine by me. As long as we get to purchase their games without the need for online activation and limited installs, as far as I am concerned they might as well be reacting to anything they want, so long as their reaction entails removing these anti-features and keeping them removed.

Hopefully, it's the start of a new trend! We will have to wait and see.

WHy are they working on another MMO? Are they planing on killing WoW in the future? Well, that they are working on another MMO is pretty old news, though little is known beyond that tidbit. Bear in mind that the the MMO, however, is not yet announced, so it is probably quite far out - especially considering how long Blizzard development cycle can take. By the time it releases, WoW might not be at the top of the heap any more, so as strange as it may sound now a new MMO might be just the thing for them to regain market share at that point in time. Furthermore, the new MMO might appeal to a different target market or to those who have tired of WoW, which may limit overlap to some extent.

Blizzard(along with Valve) have earned enough good will from me that I will play anything they make(except MMOs). I am pretty much the same way - a Blizzard game that is not a MMO is an auto-buy for me (not Valve though - I have actually not played any of their games, so I cannot judge). Have you at least played Portal? No, I never have.

Blizzard(along with Valve) have earned enough good will from me that I will play anything they make(except MMOs). I am pretty much the same way - a Blizzard game that is not a MMO is an auto-buy for me (not Valve though - I have actually not played any of their games, so I cannot judge).

Well, it's clearly too early to tell what type of game it will be, but I doubt it will be a MMO - after all, they have Wow and are working on another MMO - even Blizzard is not crazy enough to be working on 3 MMOs simultaneously! Actually another Warcraft RTS would be kind of nice to have! Still, I suspect a new IP - Blizzard has been relying on the same three IPs for more than a decade now and although wildly successful, they will probably nonetheless want to expand their IP garden.

I would suspect a new IP is in the works.

Apparently, there is a 5th Project that Blizzard is working on that is distinct from the unnanounced MMO: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/967/967014p1.html

What I would hope for the unannounced Obsidian game to be, in order of preference: 1) KOTOR 3 - unfortunately, this is highly unrealistic, given the TOR MMO 2) Pathfinder RPG game - again, this seems highly improbable 3) 3.5E D&D RPG - this too is very unlikely, as I doubt WotC would countenance another 3.5E CRPG - they would want to move it to the loathed 4E - though if it were a new NWN 2 expansion, this one might work 4) Original IP - A new fantasy IP, as BioWare is doing with Dragon Age, might be nice, depending on style and flavor that were to be chosen

Actually, there's a lot of speculation that next year's campaign setting will be Dark Sun. The proponents of this seem to have made a compelling argument for it. Yes, the signs do point that way. As much as I like Dark Sun, though, even that won't be enough to bring me to 4E. Worse still, I fear they will butcher Dark Sun in the same way they did Forgotten Realms, which will leave the setting effectively ruined even post-4E (say after 5E arrives). As such, despite my very positive opinion of the setting and it suitability for CRPGs (the two Dark Sun games in the 1990s were awesome and the first one of those was actually my first encounter with D&D [though I played other PnP RPGs before]), I am not sure I am keen on Dark Sun being revived at the moment...

I honestly can't think of a reason for zone restrictions... I think they were instituted to artificially split the market into different segments, so that different prices can be charged to different segments depending on what each segment will bear. Frankly, I am surprised that the European Competition Commission has not yet jumped on this issue - the most likely reason is that they have more important cases to deal with. I do think, however, that piracy might be partially responsible for region-zoning too. Maybe the movie-companies believed that in the absence of region-zoning, there might be widespread movement of pirated DVDs prevalent in Asia also into the European and North American markets, thus decreasing profits there.

To give credit where credit is due, I originally found the information here: http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?t...65&forum=22

I bear good news! EA has decided not to use online authentication on Sims 3! Rather a traditional disc-based authentication will be used and it will not be SecuROM! Links: (Taken from BioWare boards) http://thesims3.ea.com/view/pages/newsItem...item=-608201177 http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/m...dfc6c17cf007a2b http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/m...65b437b65c7932e

I hope this thing fails, or else it will accelerate the game as a service rather than a game as a product transition and we will soon see no normal, online-free game products again. Hmm, maybe with my insistence of having the game as a product without dependence on outside server, I am just too old for gaming and should seek a different hobby?

Hi, I'm leader of the game mechanics design for "Par Pig" as we are calling it - the nuclear winter is sort of my idea. Hello, nice to meet you here! Well, I actually think Scandinavia is a pretty good setting for such a game. Indeed, because of its status as 'European periphery' it would likely be targetted with fewer nuclear warheads and it would actually, therefore, be more plausible that a greater proportion of the population survived there than in other regions of Europe. Actually, although nuclear winter is only peripheral to that, international security with the concentration nuclear weapon issues (deterrence, proliferation, etcetera) is, in fact, my Ph.D. focus field, so no need for Wikipedia for this. Right, but we actually have some decent indicators for this based on vulcanic eruptions, so it is not as nebulous as it might seem. Sure, it is fine for a video game. A completely realistic video game would probably be pretty boring. All I wanted to suggest is that when a departure from realism is made, it should be made with the knowledge of what the realistic outcome would have been. I am glad that that maxim is being followed. In any case, good luck with making the game, back to studying and paper-writing I go.

Fair enough, but did you read my comments about how nuclear winter works in terms of timing? Are you going to take it into account?

There you go, Monte Carlo, thanks for finding some evidence for my assertion! Besides, I think U.S. gamers are much more open to non-U.S. locations than is commonly believed. I am currently in the U.S. and my interactions here provide anecdotal evidence that the fabled U.S. insularity is greatly exaggerated.

Do we have a clue about what kind of changes they are planning to make? Are they major or just minor changes? We don't know precisely what kinds of changes will be made, but there will be previews before the 13 August 2009 release. It has been stated several times by the designers, however, that the final version of the Pathfinder RPG will be closer to 3.5E than the Beta version was to 3.5E. They said, that they basically wanted to try how far they can push it and thus experimented with the Beta and some of the changes will be reverted back to 3.5E way of doing things (and for some of the changes I think this is a good thing). There are also some hints that of some other changes. For example, a while back (still during the playtest) Jason (the lead designer) posted an alternate Barbarian and an alternate Paladin on the boards for community evaluation. These were substantially different from how those classes were in the Beta, and in my opinion much nicer (especially the Barbarian), so I hope they make it into the final versions (with some modifications based on my and other community-member feedback - I hope). For now, however, we don't know of any specific changes. I am looking forward to the previews to find out!

Good luck in the campaign - I heard some anecdotes that it can be quite deadly! I have never played any of the adventure paths or even in Golarion, but I keep hearing good things about both.

My new specs: Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 NVIDIA 9800GTS with 512MB VRAM 4GB RAM (I run Windows XP 32 bit, however, so not fully utilized) 500GB 5400rpm HDD Blu-Ray player / DVD burner 17" 1920x1200 pixel screen

Revan seems to be one of the most competent Jedi and would probably only lose to the super-jedi of the movie era (Yoda, Anakin and Luke Skywalker, the Emperor and so on).

I thought the Dark Side was supposed to provide a faster route to power, but the Lightside was ultimately meant to be more powerful.

You forgot to add the 'bs' at the end of the word.