Drowsy Emperor

Had an amazing game of CS 1.6, dominated a server full of good players 25-5 in frags. Surprised at my own success really. Part of it is surely switching to low sensitivity style play and my Steelseries 9HD mat, one of the rare "gaming products" I've bought that actually improved my performance in game.

Without the details:

Yes, because there were so many massacres and so much ethnic cleansing in this conflict.

Happy birthday!

What are your specs? And on what settings are you running the game on? The tabletop is reflected in the character models [inspired by the minis], but the environments are not something Games Workshop bothers with [for obvious reasons], or has even developed farther than a few artsy pictures and some fortifications. They had plenty of space to go crazy but the world design looks really weak, blocky and lacks detail. It does look unfinished and what they dumped the money [supposedly up to 200 mil USD] on is a real mystery. I also don't think it helped that most of the source material are pseudo oil paintings and heavily detailed and ornamented characters. The first thing that crossed my mind when looking at the pictures in the art book is that: a) they're impossible to convey in game with current MMO tech b) they aren't suited to game design with its overtly detailed and cluttered aesthetic Example: Looks nice on paper, but you can see [below] that in game it melds in a ****ty brown mess unless you go crytek on it and draw every single thing - which you're not going to do in an mmo. Conan got it right. Simple clear lines, without too much detail.

They are a good idea, yes. Maybe, I dunno. The expansion looks absolutely gorgeous, with first class graphical design [in the screenshots]. The people at Funcom know what the word moderation means, and obviously cracked open a few history books for inspiration. <<< is kinda sick of the over the top designs of most fantasy games

Or if you weren't actively powerleveling and metagaming your character, which to some degree you almost had to do to stay alive at higher levels. Well I wasn't, since I was new to the system and not adept at abusing it. At higher levels gameplay became torture, particularly the oblivion gates with a lot of high level mobs. Dying was too easy and too common, and my weapons and martial skills seemed useless all the time.

I've been comparing screenshots of Age of Conan to Warhammer Online since they apparently came out the same year and I'm quite surprised how bad Warhammer looks. I wonder what they dumped the enormous budget on since it is, except for the characters, in every other respect - worse than WoW. As for a direct comparison to AoC, that would be an insult to the game.

It was the only game that actively punished you for leveling up, by making the monsters an absolute annoyance to deal with at higher levels, particularly if you were, like I was, playing a fully melee character.

^^ He's a well known Starcraft II comentator. -Graphics look quite dated -Some sound effects are from DoW2 -Looks fairly standard shooter gameplay -Combat looks okay -Teammates are either retarded and useless or he doesn't know how to use them -Enemies are stupid, even for orcs -I like the jump pack

Gamespot gave the game only 85. If I didn't see it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it.

This would be a dream come true! I know a few good shops for tabletop RPGs in Vienna, at least let me raid them first.

But it is uncomfortable, the idea at least, of having a single player game you can't play without going online. Or at least not having the choice to do so, if you want to.

Who is the bad guy, Q? Who exactly are you talking about? You can point a finger and find a "bad guy" but you'll be hard pressed to find a "good guy" by your standards. The rebels are the product of the same political and cultural environment that created Q, how can they be the good guys? Its not like they're a grass roots movement, most of them have been part of the ruling elite one way or the other. All middle eastern states are authoritarian, its the way that world works. Do you think they're crying for democracy, or for the opportunity to be the next king? You'd expect more popular support for a supposedly democratic movemnt, no?

Gifted was asking and he got an answer, I wasn't really judging either way, just pointing out what NATO is in my opinion. I'm in a no man's land on the issue, NATO [uS] having decided to support every pro-islamic, anti-Serb element possible, contrary to its own long term interests and against a country that was decidedly pro western and would have been a steadfast ally. The notion that the revolt was going to end with a clear winner and that its going to be the rebels has no grounding in fact. It only became obvious when the west declared its support for the rebels, because that would mean it would go as far as necessary for them to win the war and to most of us that follow international relations its also a signal that the west was actively involved in the preparatory stages of the revolt. The visits of the soon to be revolutionaries to France, before the revolt broke out strongly suggest this.

Because we say so Never mind that they are not a uniform faction and led by former military personel, most likely looking to replace the current regime with a new, similar one, just with different names on the business cards. To hold this belief is essentially denying history. No, its called common sense. But whatever, none are so blind as those who refuse to see.

Well I ordered some Arctic Silver Matrix (was the only one available), the card is super clean so if this doesn't solve it nothing will. If the paste manages to drop the temperature 10c I think it'll be fine. It basically goes from 45-50c when doing nothing to 85-100c when in game, and after 95 it craps out usually. It craps out in say Painkiller after 20 minutes, but can run Oblivion for as long as you like. I'll have to, if the paste thing doesn't work

Hey I'm master gamer extraordinaire, I leave all the grubby work to the grubs. Jokes aside, i was under the impression that its beyond repair, but I'll try the paste thing anyway.

I neva dun it before boss.

You know how my graphics card was half fried? Well it still is. Works okay for undemanding games but chokes and dies on the new stuff most of the time. No fun at all. And no cash to replace it. Am considering an ATI Radeon 5670 or some such, but I need to get the moneys first.

I played WoW for a fun 20 days of soloing to level 52, but the pretty world design could not salvage the incessant grind and boring quests that made the meat of the gameplay. I assume with friends it would have been much better but there were none actively playing at the time. I'm just curious about Rift as it seem so popular now, I can't really afford a subscription based game right now. I'll try out WAR at some point, apparently both it and AoC have a lot of new subs after going ftp. I'm most interested in AoC because of your recommendations and most importantly the free form combat. Apart from the nice graphics that's the biggest draw for me. If its anything like the old game Rune I'm likely to enjoy it a lot. I also tried Guild Wars which was ugly and boring. Haven't tried AION but I'm not particularly drawn to it.

I expect it can't be very good when it failed so bad but I'm interested to know why. And what's the general consensus on Rift?

LOL Any particular reason for that apart from the fact its half dead?

Ah okay, that's tolerable. Probably the only possible way for it to work and not be like Oblivion. And the stuff you said about non leveled unique loot? I suspect the main plot will be standard fare, but as long as the rest of the quests are good, its no big deal.

I am officially interested. What about the level scaling?