Magister Lajciak

Yes, HK-47 is my favorite droid.

I am just wondering: Are there any other DMs out there who, judging from the information we have thus far, would be unlikely to run 4th edition games, but would, nonetheless, be willing to play in 4E games?

Unless the CPU is soldered into the motherboard, it should be able to be upgraded - and you can find some nice deals out there. It helps that the C2D I have is the newer generation, so the socket it uses is the same as higher clocked CPUs (and the board itself can take up to a 2.4 or 2.6 C2D - I would, of course, look up the specs before upgrading). I didn't know that. I assumed that once I buy a notebook, I am pretty much stuck with what I have (apart from RAM and HDD). I went with a Vostro 1500 from Dell, and I could not find a better deal out there at the time. You might want to look at the Vostro 1700, it is a 17" rather than a 15", but you can get a nice little laptop that can also game for under $900 if you wanted to save some money for, say, a desktop gaming PC. I am not really in a position to utilize a desktop at the moment, due to the fact that I move frequently and expect to move again in the near future. given this constraint, i would opt for as much bang for the buck as possible. it's easy to say that you don't want to put forth the money now (for whatever reason), but if you want something to last for that length of time, you might as well spend it now rather than dole it out repeatedly upgrading over the next few years. of course, with PC-related technology changing so rapidly, it's always a difficult trade. i end up swapping out my desktop components about once every 12-18 months, though this is driven by games more than anything (well, that and i like building PCs). my latest was a complete overhaul changing everything except the case (got an antec server tower). my wife got most of the old PC, with some scattered elements going into my son's machine (which the little turd never uses, he's always on mommy's machine, grrr...) Yes, if I do upgrade, I will of course try to get the best possible deal. It bears noting, however, that the types of games I enjoy are not necessarily the 'pushing the graphical boundaries' types of games - I am basically saying that I only very rarely play shooters and these tend to be the most demanding on the hardware. CRPGs can usually get by with slightly weaker hardware.

More likely he will be a 4th ed apologist. On the other hand, it may not be entirely prudent to ascribe motivations to people we don't know personally. It could be that he actually likes the game, because it genuinely appeals to him. Besides, I would buy pretty much any D&D CRPG from Obsidian Entertainment (unless it was set in Eberron, which is just too steampunky for me) regardless of edition. My main problem with 4E is the removal of simulationist elements in favor of pure gamism, which removes most of my incentives for DMing the game (and I usually DM), though I would still be willing to partake in it as a player. This, however, matters far less in the CRPG format, since the work of world simulation is done by the developers of the game.

When no new rumors arise on a popular topic and there is little else to discuss, old rumors naturally resurface. It's one of the laws of the internet.

Thanks for the rundown. It seems that a boost in performance would be significant. Are processors on latpops upgradeable? If so, isn't it pretty expensinve to do so? To be honest, even my current setup seems adequate to play the games I enjoy. The main reason I am even pondering the notion of replacing my current notebook is the wear and tear. Of course, once if I will be getting a new laptop, I would like to make sure that it can fulfill its function as both a work-machine and a gaming-machine for at least 2.5 years and hopefully more. The urgency of the upgrade of my laptop will depend on whether I can get the requisite replacement parts, especially a cooling fan, for my current machine. I am cautiously optimistic, but provisionally need to think about what I could buy for about $1500 if it does not pan out.

Yes. It's nearly as good as a "full-blown" quad core. The only time you'd see a huge performance deficiency is if you have a multithreaded application with massive sharing across the threads, and that too only if the sharing is happening across the two dual-core dies. I doubt you will find any real desktop application today or for the next couple of years that will be bottlenecked by this style of quad-core implementation, however aesthetically unappealing it may be. Thanks for the explanation of why this is the case. I see. I did not know that the Quad-Core setup cannot attain the same clockspeed yet.

As a related question, is the current Core Duo architecture all that different from the Pentium M 760 architecture, or is the former based on the latter?

I currently have a notebook with the following specs: Acer Aspire 1694WLMi Intel Pentium M processor 760 (2.0 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 Cache) 15.4" WXGA CrystalBrite TFT LCD (Maximum resolution: 1280x800 pixels, 32-bit color) ATI MOBILITY RADEON X700 PCI Express with 128 MB VRAM 100GB HDD Slot-loading DVD-Dual (DVD Burner, supports DVD+R Double Layer/DVD+-RW) 2 GB DDR2 (supports dual-channel) 802.11b/g wireless LAN Bluetooth The notebook was bought more than two years ago for a price of about $1500. I feel it is still a good laptop computer, but it has experienced heavy use and is starting to show various wear and tear effects (broken cooling fan [it's proving very difficult to find a replacement], sound problems, touchpad problems, etcetera) . This has left me at least wondering about what kind of performance boost could I expect if I were to spend $1500 on a notebook computer today. Perhaps some of you computing whizes could help answer that for me? Note, that it would have to be a notebook computer. I should realistically avoid desktops, because I move relatively frequently and when I move I move 'on the light' - no cargo separate from what I take with me as luggage.

It is not as good as a full-blown quad-core, but surely it is better than a single dual-core, no? Mmm, 4GHz dual core.

A Sheet of 4E Rules from D&D Experience: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4096...amp;postcount=1

We know that BioWare is working on a story-based MMO already. Some argue that it could not take on two MMO projects simultanously, but what if the announcement of BioWare-LucasArts cooperation merely makes public an already existing cooperation on the afore-mentioned MMO. That would mean that the MMO project and the LucasArts cooperation are one and the same thing. Of course, I don't care at all for a KOTOR MMO. Indeed, it would most likely eliminate any chance of a proper single player KOTOR CRPG for a long time to come.

Its a better version than the other. This is certainly the case.

The article appeared on several news outlets. Fox News was just the first to come up on google when I was searching for it to link it, so you might as well read the article.

Alright, I found it - thanks! To the left of the "reply" button which is located on the right corner of each post, there is a "quote" button. If you press it it becomes red. Do that for all the posts you want to quote and then press "add reply" (which is at the bottom of the thread page). Thanks! I am testing it out on this post and it seems to be working.

When I was playing through the excellent NWN 2 expansion pack, the Mask of the Betrayer, I came across several instances of relatively concealed mature innuendo with Safyia. I wonder whether that was intentional, or if it is my dirty imagination and it was meant to be purely innocent. It was a while ago that I did my MotB playthrough, so I don't remember all of the instances when this occured, but I remember that I was rather astounded and amused several times throughout the game. The one instance I do remember was at the Red Wizard Academy. When I walked into the room with one of the instructors, he mentioned "deep pleasure" when he saw Safyia, who then in turn remarked that she notes his choice of words... Perhaps it is just my overactive imagination, but I found it amusing, especially since I felt it was done in an interesting, low-key and non-forced manner.

That's good news then! (I am proud to say that I have contributed to the EU sales and thus its position in the top 10, he he) Is there any link to this blog? BTW: Is there any quick way to quote more than one person in the same post?

Maybe they were - I simply do not know. They certainly deserve to be good!

I bougt the Force Commander for my friend's birthday once, but I have never played it myself.

I have also never heard of Cyberpower, but I have heard many good things about Dell.

I would also suspect that there is a sizeable market, but we don't really know how well MotB sold. It was a superb game, but it seems that many people did not like the innovative and interesting Spirit Meter mechanic.

Sooner my friend - look at all the UAVs flying around already!

The game was not done by Ensemble studios. It just used their engine.

We most certainly do not know that they are not working on Neverwinter Nights 2 NX2. In fact, most probably they are working on just that.

There is a good chance that the third project is the NWN2 XP2.