Percival

I played the entire game on hardcore mode with AI turned on - casting was turned off tho. I didnt craft anything, so you dont need to worry about that, as the game throws you many decent weapons every 10 minutes, so you shouldnt worry about that. If the game is too hard, it's because of a weak group setup (lots of casters in the early levels makes it quite annoying) or you're not walking around buffed. Buffing up before hacking and slashing makes a world of difference.

Bingo. See PS:T dialogue, which had a great deal of [Truth] [Lie] options. I would have loved to have options such as that in say NWN2. No need to be rude and alienate your allies when you can lie, bluff and pretty much play a puppet master with people from the shadows without resorting to "You give me money or I kill you/dont help you/ROAR!1". Evil doesnt necessarily mean you have to actually be psychopathic evil murdering gold hungry fiend. Aside from all the killing, most people nowadays would be labeled as evil if real life was a game. Either playing or going against a manipulative that isnt aiming for the end of all life can be more fun then playing the rightous paladin going against the cliched destroyer of worlds no 234234.

Bloodlines is probably my favourite game I've played in the past few years. The storyline was really well done, they managed to avoid the bad Melrose place episode meets yuppie power struggle story that Vampire Requiem seems to favour - not that the old WoD didnt have any of that, but a central theme of Gehenna did manage to avoid a really bad aftertaste. I'm not sure how well Obsidian would be able to pull off a nWoD game, if NWN2 was the pinnacle of their storytelling, we're better off not seeing a game set in a setting that can be so horribly abused by hundreds of cliches and Spelling tv show plot lines.

You could say WoW invented the casual friendly attitude the game is advertising(which is a blatant lie by Blizzard btw). The game is does try some new things, which usually turn out into one big grind/timesink. Quick studies of free triel period MMOs dont really tell much about the game tho, or did you try raiding Naxxramas in WoW, level 60 PvP etc, or whatever place EQ2 has thats supposed to high end.

Did one of your favourite MMOs get shafted because of WoW ? WoW is probably the best MMO around. Blizzard may not have done anything new, but they took what they liked from other games and perfected them. Which is more then some companies do. WoW is in my opinion the most user friendly game around. It has the best user interface I've seen. (which is why I was so frustrated with the subpar $#%#% interface NWN2 has). I got to see most of the game, including the high end grind, and although the game has some major flaws (instanced pvp, heavy end game grind, lack of content for end game, heavy gear dependancy, stupid player base etc), it has more potential then any "elite" role playing game you can think of. Games dont need to invent anything new, what they have to be is fun, which WoW certanly is.

Disagreeing with someone about say a tavern brawl or complementing a tavern dancer means he isnt to be trusted - even tho you spent several months of adventures with them, from saving them to saving their furry friends,dwarves, etc ? Yeah, okay. "You're right Elanee, nature looks wonderful today/" [Gains +1 influence]. Followed by slaughtering every animal in a 5 mile radius without even a word from the druid.

Was seriously disappointed by the game, game engine issues aside, the game did start well but started losing its appeal quite soon. When I finished it, I actually thought that NWN1 OC was better then this. It felt like playing a japanese "RPG", monorail storyline, with you going along for the ride. The mandatory party member switching for quests gave me bad memories of playing a Final fantasy game, ugh. I thought the multitude of suggestions and feedback from the older D&D games would make Obsidian give us a lot more choices in the game. I'm sure a game from 2006 can surpass the dialogue options we had in say BG2, but sadly no. a) me help you b) giev monay!1 c) roar i'm a insane psychopath dieee, arent my ideas of a good dialogue options nowadays. And since when is having a opinion of your own a bad idea? Must I kiss my henchmen a** to make them talk? The villians were pretty weak and uninspiring, I'd take one of those cheesy bad guys from a Drizzt novel anyday over the bland KoS. Actually, the good guys were even worse off. Please give me the option to put Nasher out of his misery. I'd rate it a 5, with say NWN1 OC having a 6.5ish score, and HOTU a 8 (even with the +60 destroyer of worlds munchkin weapons) for comparison.

I asked a friend of mine who plays WoW and tried out GW how he feels about the latter game. His response was that Guild wars seems like a pale copy compared to WoW. A word of warning tho, any mp game is good if you're in the right crowd. Playing mmos alone is.. boring.

Seriously what you describe is the problem that all MMORPG:s have, not just WoW.. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And as with all mmo's, you need friends to play with, or it just becomes really boring. I am having lots of fun, doing stuff with my friends, from stealth runs to hd towns, raids to questing.

Only if you have good friends that will play with you. Soloing in WoW is oh so boring and annoying, esp. when you have to find a group to do the harder quests.

Poorly designed yes, but great rewards.

Heh, I've been waiting for the postman to arrive with WoW for the past 5 hours.

Haha, if you take board moaning, articles of a few unhappy customers, or even MMORPG subscription web site which have selective information - fine, just don't try to pawn it off as actual fact. Unless Blizzard releases the numbers, everything else is irrelevant. A couple of very vocal customers dont = the majority.

It must be great to make up a bunch of lies and call them facts.

They'll just add the japanese romance dating simulation thing in NWN2. Over 60 half elf paladins to romanticize! It'll be a hit, I tell you.

So just how many of us will be playing the european WoW?

The beauty of WoW char development is that you can experiment around without starting a new char. It does become costly after a while to change your builds, but there isnt the annoynce of starting a new char if you screwed up with your talent selection, or you simply want to try a new playstyle for your char.

Well, I don't know if this an another example of bias towards older games, or the fact that people played the game after a few months of its release, but KOTOR 1 had a few serious bugs when it came to the PC - bugs that made the game quite unplayable, untill they patched it. It seems people just don't want to use the same standards for the game.

Not for me. KOTOR was a fun game, but it wasnt spectacular. Storywise it was mediocre, NPC interaction was fun, but rather bland. Gameplay wise, it suffered from overpowered items and munchkin fast level upping and seriously unbalanced gameplay - really, after you got force powers the game became so very easy.

Heh, painful you say? Try wing commander 3 on a 386. 40 minute load times for the movie cinematics. Now that was... entertainging. Good old days.

Can't be done. A million players will find something quite unbalancing no matter how hard a dev team tries to balance everything.

I'm also having fun with WoW. Of course I'm playing the european beta, so all the more fun playing a free game.

Didnt Blizzard contract some other company to make SC Ghost?

You clearly do not have the intellectual skills required to appreciate a game ps Planescape Torments caliber. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> See, this proves my point. Its perfectly possible to understand everything about Torment, and still not care for the setting, characters, or tone of the game. OK, so for some its the greatest. But I dont't think it should keep getting held up as this "Gold Standard" for CRPG games when other games did SO MUCH MORE RIGHT THAN JUST THE STORY. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> People like to see older games through rose-coloured glasses, and PS:T wins the rose coloured contest on these forums.

Wow, companies still make adventure games? Isnt that a sure way for a game to fail in the sales department?