pmp10

Very little noteworthy imo. Sounds like more name milkage for kickstarter. Only 'overturning RPG tropes' could be interesting but it will most likely involve minor details.

THQ to be carved up. Now the only question is who will not find a new home.

In Fallout 60% hit chance in ranged combat meant 90% hit-chance to the head point-blank plus a decent chance to score a critical. And that's assuming you could not kite the monster. Arcanum was far worse than that - largely thanks to it's critical miss system that would get you regularly killed.

Dafuq? I've only played the game through once but i never ever used melee or magic. Just guns, especially the sniper/scoped rifle and the elephant? gun. Those are available later in game. Trying to play technologist with firearms from the get-go is a complete nightmare.

Yeah I don't really understand what Pachter is talking about (not the first time he's made me shake my head at clearly talking out of his ass either). If only new copies of the game can be sold, Sony would probably come out ahead. He likely meant that it would lose them customers and they wouldn't profit much in the end. Whether Microsoft would really play the 'good guy' is the more interesting question. Plenty of publisher/developers want to kill used sales and shipping your console without an option to do so may be a risk. I guess customers will end up screwed either way.

Blizzard was in unique position with Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 as they were follow-ups to very popular games. There is no guarantee that their sequels could push DRM to the extend those 2 titles have.

You mean that it is disabled or that you don't put your saves there? I had savegame issues purely from not disabling it in steam settings.

Try turning off cloud storage on steam. Has similar issues with some other game.

Got bored of hotkeying in Old Republic so went back to Vindictus to see the new content. It looked great at the beginning but then you realize that already small population has now been stretched paper-thin.

I'd recommend that you review the National Academy of Science's meta-analysis, linked below. They address this issue specifically. Among other things, once you take into account international studies, firearm ownership and suicide are uncorrelated. That's very interesting but the firearms effect on violence report posted some pages back said that outside US correlation is strong. That's the problem with scientific research - anyone with money can have one done to say anything they desire.

A bit of a warning tho - from what I've seen previously of the man the author is badly biased.

Didn't d&d online try something like that? I don't think it was a smashing success. Personally I don't get the appeal of MMO-like storyline as it quickly devolved into finding new NPC to shoot in the face but as long as my friends want to play and player population is decent I don't mind seeing PvE content once.

If they are willing to charge for keybindings and actionbars I don't think just 'successful' will be happening. It will either become so profitable that a new f2p model will be set for all MMOs or it will turn out to be a complete disaster.

It's interesting that no one questioned media coverage of mass shootings. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l8rMYyegT5Y Just food for thought.

Never understood the point of gun control debate in the US. By now there are so many firearms in circulation it would take decades if not a century to make obtaining one seriously problematic. Sadly the only easy answer for the time being is more security. And not of the armed-citizen type.

It was probably a mistake to not have a more powerful CPU, and again Nintendo focus on gimmicky peripherals for core gameplay, pressuring developers to support them. With that install base, with that amount of pain in porting to the Wii U, this isn't surprising. Hardware is not the issue, the CPU has been proven capable by the Wii hacker dude. You only need to look at Pikmin 3's gameplay videos and its pretty obvious that anything that works on XB and PS3 should easily work on WiiU. The issue is the install base which needs time to grow so that the cost of development and the risks undertaken are deemed worthwhile by dev studios. The numbers are looking good so far, but we'll be well into 2013 when they're as good as they need to be for major publishers. That's basically what Reggie Fils-Aime said himself. The install-base may not be an issue for WiiU but the game sales are. Wii might have had an enormous install base but the games sales were never really impressive (except for casual titles like Wii fit).

Heh, I could write a small book of things I though were done wrong with the game, but not even I would expect the classes to be unique on both sides. The forums were (are?) flooded enough with "unbalanced! nerf this buff that!" topics as it were. The forums are always full of such posts so that doesn't concern me. What dose is that with only 4 classes to try and 3 basic roles to fill I don't fell any need to experiment with character builds. Since I'm not too keen on concept of some classes or their storylines this leaves me with little reason to see the other side of the conflict. I'd agree with you if TOR was single player only, or wouldn't have PVP at all. PVP seems to be "the" reason for many to play the game and there class balance is very important. There was (and probably is) some issues with that, and with unique classes I'd expect there to be much more issues. The stories I heard about balance issues in WoW were just unbelievable. Actually I'd argue that class mirroring makes even PvP boring as it usually results in symmetric maps and thus same tactics. Not that it matters for TOR as the war-zone f2p limit scared me and friends away from PvP.

Heh, I could write a small book of things I though were done wrong with the game, but not even I would expect the classes to be unique on both sides. The forums were (are?) flooded enough with "unbalanced! nerf this buff that!" topics as it were. The forums are always full of such posts so that doesn't concern me. What dose is that with only 4 classes to try and 3 basic roles to fill I don't fell any need to experiment with character builds. Since I'm not too keen on concept of some classes or their storylines this leaves me with little reason to see the other side of the conflict. IMO the strength of the game is with its small group gaming. I never played the game solo, and only played with friends (real life friends, which is probably helpful). In this aspect, I didn't find the multiplayer component suffered much at all, and we had the added bonus of being able to complete more difficult content too. It's not like I played the game solo but even before 20th level flashpoints started to require decently put together groups. Trying to find players to fill specific roles through the chat proved rather fruitless and the f2p limits discourages sub-optimal attempts. I can only imagine how demanding end-game content can be.

Slowly wading through the free version of Old Republic. The attempt to marry storyteling and multiplayer is interesting but I feel it hurts the latter too much. Between f2p limitations and constant instancing there is simply too little incentive to group up and organize. The storytelling is also best remembered for it's production values rather than anything else. Playing lawful normal jedi or chaotic stupid sith fits the setting well enough but anything else seems out of place. Mechanics consist of standard hotkey MMO fare with the addition of companions in place of pets. The worst part so far is that mirroring of skills and classes between sides badly cuts down on the variety.

Let me correct myself then. You need to be online when turning on offline mode if you want it to play games. When you're offline and start up Steam, it will ask you to either go online, or into Offline mode. When you click "Offline", it does. Next: People are gonna complain that they can't post on the Obsidian boards while offline. And then you try to run New Vegas and find out it won't. Why? You should have switched offline mode back when you had internet connectivity. That's steam for you.

Let me correct myself then. You need to be online when turning on offline mode if you want it to play games.

What is it that Valve does right exactly, now that I think about it? They have a damn restrictive software platform with Steam, unlike say GoG games which might not have all the perks but at least you own the product you're buying and it doesn't need their software to run it. They haven't made a groundbreaking game since the original Half Life (and please let no one say Portal, the game is about the same length and quality as a well made mod). Excuse me, what exactly is restrictive about Steam? For starters you need to be online to turn on offline mode.

I imagine the point is that Valve want to start selling console games to console gamers through Steam even if it means they have to release their own console with Steam onboard to do it. The obvious problem is that Valve has barely anything to offer in a console market. Even their famous sales pale in comparison to the saving rentals and resales allow.

Mark of Chaos was on consoles, yes. But it wasn't particularly story-driven. It's not just Mark of Chaos but also Dark Omen and Shadow of the Horned Rat. All on consoles with campaigns consisting of battles and occasional choices. I doubt there will be any city building or tax collecting involved. No. Dawn of War is one of the best RTS's ever made. DoW 2 is a hybrid title no one really liked. This.

yay.... or something? Endless string of yet another RTS games? Some day, somebody is going to make strategy and crpg games instead of third rate action games out of those franchises. Probably be similar to the Total War titles. I wouldn't bet on it. All previous warhammer fantasy battle games were on consoles and featured story-driven campaign not a strategic one.