Bartimaeus

Yeah, it's a bit amusing that their 265 is somehow cheaper than their 260X. That was just a placeholder...for now. Ideally, I would get the Double Dissipation version for the double lifetime warranty, as XFX's warranty service is generally great, but you're right, it is quite pricey. I daren't get that PowerColor crap, (the $70 260X). Their fans are awful, their rebates unusable (they never fulfill them), and their service if anything ever goes wrong unreachable. Newegg shouldn't even be allowed to sell their products with that "2 year warranty" in its specifications, as they won't provide it. (edit): Wait, their 265 is given a lifetime warranty, too. That's unusual. Only their Double Dissipation products are supposed to have it. Now I'm *REALLY* tempted to buy it... (double edit): And the number of stream processors listed in the specs seem to be incorrect, too. 1280 vs all other 265s' 1024. Double weird. All black, though, which is nice...

I'll be reusing my old RAM for my Intel build, as I really don't need anymore/better for my low key Intel build, (sans the i7 CPU that I got for $100 - which arrived earlier this week). Will pickup either 4GB or 8GB for the old build, depending on how prices are affected by DDR4's release - I've been told that prices will probably drop either a little to some for a short while, then probably spike up to even higher. Does anyone have any experience with the switch from DDR2 to DDR3 that would suggest that something else might happen and I should probably grab something now? Settled on Corsair 300R (non-windowed) for the build. Settled also on the ASRock Z87 Extreme4 for my motherboard - as it's the only board that I can find, after looking at literally every single one I can on newegg and PCPartPicker, that matches all of my criteria. Now I play the waiting game for them to drop to better prices. Hoping for about $120-$125 for the motherboard *without* MIR - if there's a further discount via MIR, that's fine, too, but I won't be burned with another MIR to unmake a deal. $50, $55 is my target range for the 300R. Might also end up getting an R7 260X - not sure yet. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (Purchased For $100.00) Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Extreme4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($129.99 @ Newegg) Memory: Mushkin Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $50.00) Storage: PNY XLR8 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $40.00) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $50.00) Video Card: XFX Radeon R7 260X 2GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($134.99 @ Newegg) Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Silverstone 500W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $25.00) Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $15.00) Total: $606.97 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-06 01:28 EDT-0400) My build is definitely much lower key than your guys, anyways.

Actually, it was a library being shared *to* me that already owned the game that was the problem. I share my library, too, but I didn't need to disable that to fix it.

Away with you, beggar! Yes, correct, that is what I'm saying. I'm not sure where you were given the impression otherwise, to be quote honest. Must I display complete and outright contempt for you to get that? I made a correction to your message above.

Quite right: since this is a game, there's even less (reasonable) obligation than usual to have to "interact" with NPCs than usual, eh?

Hm. Depends on whether the forum is run as an autocracy - where yes, I think that'd probably be best: staff that is merely carrying out the clearly defined wishes of the autokrator - or if the forums are an aristocracy of sorts - where small parts of the forums are independently or jointly overseen/specialized in by individual staff members, and where more personal oversight and initiative is best...where, in my opinion, Chaotic or Neutral Good would probably be best, (though it would still lead to problems...but nevertheless). Congratulations, TrueNeutral.

Funny thing is I just added this game to my game list about 10 minutes ago, so it does work. I initially had a problem, try logging onto Steam again Barti? I tried both via my browser and via Steam itself. No dice, either way. I'm not too concerned, though, since I'm not interested in the game in question anyhow. (edit) Ended up getting it to work. Had to disable Steam Family Sharing first. Odd problem: reported it to Steam.

"An error was encountered while processing your request: There was a problem adding this product to your Steam account." Thanks, Steam.

Why couldn't you send yours in? No ready replacement? Did they ask that you send in the old one after the new one arrived, out of curiosity? They asked me to send them my old one first, but I explained that shipping and customs would cost me almost as much as a new board. I asked them to send me some keycaps, but they probably have none in stock. So they just gave me another keyboard That's...pretty exceptional. Some companies are more of the opinion that if they aren't making the product in question anymore, you're not really entitled to warranty service anymore. So that's pretty cool.

Was "Want You Gone" received as well by everyone as "Still Alive"? I can't say that I particularly liked the former...this song, consequently, is the song that I think of in regards to Portal 2's ending.

Malc you have to admit its always better playing an RPG where you can explore the various Romance arcs? Nope he doesn't. Planescape: Torment Arcanum of Steampunk and Magik Obscura Vampire: Bloodlines To name a few. An engaging story does not need active romantic pursuits for the protagonist to engage in. Romance does not make writing engaging or good just by being present. Good writing is what makes writing good. Ideally, if the romantic arcs were well written and did not take away resources from other aspects of the game, then, if they weren't forced down people's throats, one could make an argument that it is always better to have more options. But it is not better to play a game with crap on the side just for having crap on the side over one that doesn't have that. After all, most of us here enjoy a good steak, none of us though would ask for the cow to crap next to the plate. (yeah I know, terrible analogy. Just pretend it was said by Al Pacino or someone else who can get away with saying anything in a movie.) I didn't explain my point properly. I'm not saying you have to have Romance to have an engaging RPG ( but I do think it enhances and makes party interaction more significant ) I am saying if an RPG offers optional Romance its better to partake of them than to ignore them Not if said romance is written as they are in most games where they're present today and it consequently completely breaks the experience for you. Or...if you're the type of person to project yourself as your character, and find the idea of being romantically involved with whatever choices the devs have pre-written out for you when you already find merely being "friends" with them to be a chore to be an unpleasant one. ...Or if you find the entire experience inorganic to begin with and would rather not bother with it at all. I'd say I'd fit somewhat in all three categories, and these are just the reasons I can think of right now. For me, I find that the best character relationships - whether they be friendships or romances - are those between other characters that do not include your own. However, even these seem to generally be done shockingly poorly when regarding a long term relationship, (say, game long). It's just a delight when they're not.

Why couldn't you send yours in? No ready replacement? Did they ask that you send in the old one after the new one arrived, out of curiosity?

Finished Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. Got Silent Assassin ratings on every mission. Weirdly enough, the latter half of the game was much, much easier than the first half: not sure if it's because I got better, or if it was just because it was genuinely easier. I'm leaning towards the latter, but it's something worth considering. Playing a little Binding of Isaac recently. I have the Golden God achievement, and the only thing I'm missing for Platinum God is kill Mom 200 times. I have a little over 100. Can't wait for Rebirth. (edit) lol, I thought this was the what are you playing thread. Whoops! Well, both of these games are on Steam, so...

Sorry, that was a poor way of stating what I meant: it's not that I'm totally uninterested in the morality aspect of the issue in general, but rather the boring, bland discussions that generally arise from discussing it. The discussion did indeed mostly head that way, which is why I bowed out of the topic after that first post of mine. Everything said here has been stuff that has been said a thousand times before: people trying to justify their particular exception (or exceptions they can think of that, in their opinion, might make it...at the very least, not completely reprehensible or whatever), and the other side, equally arrogant in their condemnation for whatever reasons, too. Most everyone's already so entrenched in what they think regarding the issue, and the people that aren't generally don't have anything much interesting to say (e.g. me), either, which is no better. Which is why I asked what I did: I'd have rather seen a discussion purely on the legal aspect instead of the moral, because it'd at least but something semi-new, but I guess they're both too intertwined for that to realistically happen - indeed, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure what a discussion purely about the legal aspect would even look like. To me, this is like a discussion on abortion and other such "moral" standstill issues: nobody's going to change their minds, and it's going to (probably) be boring for those of us who have seen the subject raised a dozen times before with nothing to show for it. My opinion on the subject is the following: it's not black and white, (nor is anything hardly ever, really), exceptions can (and probably should be) made, laws should probably be updated to reflect the reality of the situation at some point (without doing something stupid like giving copyright infringement blanket legality), things can't be as horrible as some make it out to be, (on both sides), or there wouldn't still be massive corporation profits from making software/content, and you wouldn't be able to pirate stuff if you really "needed" to without being arrested, etc., blah blah blah. Honestly, I'm boring myself here: tempted to not post this, since it's rambly and poorly written, but...since it's already here...

Huh. I'd always wondered what "hardware mouse" actually did in the few games I've come across that have it as an option. The only question I have is why it's an option instead of the default...

First unless you correct the white around the second's Steam symbol to be whatever it was before you pasted it on the penguin. Then maybe that.

The plug and play/charge kit, at least for the 360 controller, doesn't allow it to actually work as a wired controller - still need a wireless transceiver.

I don't understand: what's the purpose of these special, rather obnoxious looking keys?

I would think that that's because a legal punishment isn't required nor appropriate, (in the case of infidelity).

Morality, (at least for this issue), doesn't really interest me. Other people's subjective morals are hardly likely to be of interest to me unless they raise interesting, new points/perspectives...of which there is almost certainly to be none of in regards to this subject, as it's such a dry, burnt topic that everyone seems to already have entrenched view points regarding. Nor am I really interested in detailing my own, equally subjective thoughts on any issues such as this in a forums as wildly polemic as these can be. Consequently, I'm more interested in the legal aspect, and would like to see the discrimination made between the two for this discussion so I can either ignore or follow this topic, accordingly.

Are we talking about in a legal or a moral sense? Your first question was "piracy or not?", when makes me think legal; your second is "is it bad or not?": which is it?

I love rainy days. In fact, I would very much like it if it were raining and semi-dark outside all the time, (discounting any other effects, like floods, that might result). Depends on what's in it. Could range from not caring hardly at all to contemplating suicide. Fix that crap. Throw it away if it's unfixable.

Very interesting. I, too, am curious as to whether it's true. If it is, well...previously, I was uncaring as to whether I'd end up getting a Z87 or a Z97 board for my 4770k, since it's unlikely I'd upgrade my CPU within the next five years with it. However, if it is true and actually begins to be implemented, the new speeds would completely ruin current SATA 3 capabilities - nevermind what they'll be in a few years - necessitating a jump to SATA Express/M.2 that I previously thought was not worth it. Even those might not be enough for the next few years if it's really as good as that article makes it out to be. I'll have to keep an eye on any further developments in the next few weeks as I'm considering a motherboard purchase.

I played NWN2/MotB on Core difficulty, and could never make myself control any character but my own. I don't know about Hardcore, but regular Core was pretty dang easy. The camera always infuriated so much that I refused to deal with it as much as possible. How much that game would've benefited by having a proper camera system...or simply being 2D. Although...it didn't even begin to compare to the absolute horror that was the Dragon Age: Origin's camera, so I guess there's that - that was nearly enough to reduce me to tears at times. I'll never play Dragon Age again for just that reason, nevermind all the others. All the time wasted trying to navigate the stupid "personal" camera so that you can actually see anything, having to readjust every five to ten freaking seconds if you're anywhere you might be making >=90 degree turns, (e.g. those tunnels in the beginning of MotB - those were a huge pain in NWN2...can't even imagine how terrible it'd be in Dragon Age)...or a completely non-functioning isometric camera that gets you murdered over and over because it doesn't let you see what you're going to be running into because the developers thought it'd be a fantastic idea to not be able to move your camera at least as far as the first archers you run into can shoot you from - no, instead, it's closer to only half as long as that...

Yep. 6-12 months here, generally, depending on the game in question. I haven't pre-ordered or bought at release an AAA game in many years.