Elerond

Something much more complicated that any one country/faction/something similar could be blamed for it alone.

I would say that that is the area which that map covers, so it is much smaller than 35-50% of spain, more like 5-10%. which is about 25k - 50k square kilometers (100 km x 250 km - 500 km).

The story was in a book about English martial arts, and was included as a demonstration of how effective it can be. re: Shaolin style combat weapons - I agree with you there, and while I don't doubt the skill of Shaolin monks, many of these demonstrations tend to be katas, which don't really impress me - to me, it's just a dance. I'm not saying it doesn't take skill, but being able to dance, and follow coreography, doesn't make you a skilled fighter. Vikings could easily do katas if they felt so inclined, but they didn't. Incidentally, Cossacks used to do sword dances too, as did the Sikhs, and many other cultures. It's not even an excusively Oriental thing. When I think of quarterstaff fighting, I don't think of Shaolin style twirling, and using the staff in the Hollywood "half-staff" manner (in which you hold half of the staff), I think of holding it in a similar way to a spear (holding only a quarter of it, hence the name "quarterstaff") and thrusting, as much as striking, with it. In other words, to me, it's a reach weapon, not a double weapon. The halfstaff method of holding in the middle and striking with both ends does not look very effective to me. Stylish and impressive, sure, but by holding it that way, you're severely limiting its reach, thereby taking away its advantage. You're much better off with a pollaxe if you're going to fight like that. Quarterstaffs/short staffs has been quite popular in England during history and during 16th century they were favored weapon of London Masters of Defense (or Company of Maisters of the Science of Defence of London, an organization that taught fencing). Zachary Wylde referred quatterstaffs as national English weapon in his book called "English Master of Defence or The Gentleman's Al-a-mode Accomplish", which is English martial arts manual from 1711.

Yeah that's my point. The way the map is laid out it looks like two decent size cities and a couple small villages that would take a day, maybe two to travel across. It doesn't look like a "country" or a "region". It looks more like one or two counties. I am sure as we get closer to release the map will become more fleshed out and start considering some of that "scale" it has crossed out. That map is only small portion of Dyrwood, which in my understanding is region size of Spain. Map of Dyrwood from kickstarter page. It seem that as Stronghold should actually be Twin Elms that that map don't yet have all the hubs in place or hub icons aren't up to date.

It may not be the best style of fighting withing rules of MMA, although Lyoto Machida has had quite successful career in MMA, but of course one could argue that he is not pure karateka.

And this is why 7 year old me quit Karate. I wanted to learn self-defence, not a glorified dance routine. Discipline and body coordination are probably your best tools when it comes to protect yourself from surprise attack. Of course internalizing counters and actions against different kind of grabs and hits also helps but more often than not you need to improvise in blink of moment what you do, which is becomes much more instinctual when you have good discipline and body coordination that gives you better ability to strike, grab or throw from any position and better body coordination means that you have much better ability to maximize effectiveness of you muscle strength. Although building your discipline and body coordination is slow and long process, which needs lots of dedication, which is reason why self-defense courses that focus on common attacks and easy ways to defend them are probably better for people that don't have dedication to practice several times per week over years or who need to have at least some knowledge how to defend themselves fast. So karate and other similar martial arts that focus on building person's discipline and body coordination gives person excellent bases to protect themselves, but they aren't miracle cure that make you super fighter in few lessons, but proven processes that build you up to at least decent in self defense and fighting in general. And I would not dismiss learning dance routines as something that don't help you defend yourself as dancing is excellent way to build you body coordination and many dance styles also build up your muscle strength and overall discipline and they also usually build your awareness what other person is doing, which are things that one needs to build up to become at least decent in fighting.

Charlatan or mentally unstable ? Charlatan and mentally unstable are accurate descriptions of most PCs in CRPGs. As they often seem to act like they are some sort heroes but they still have bad habit to take everything with them that is not bolted shut and they seem to believe that they have right to kill everybody/thing that don't agree with them and in in some cases they even kill those who agree with them.

Bioware is going for the plot twist that you've been in the Black City the entire time, which is actually real world Compton. That some reason brought this to my mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITiZfGKVkLM&feature=kp

I disagree strongly. IMO TESO is a textbook example of how not to do a classless system. Well to put it another way, it's about the only "classless" game I've enjoyed on the PC. However, I am not really one for classless systems, they've never held intuitive appeal to me. D&D tends to allow about as much customisation as I like. Have you not played any of such games like Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Shadowrun Returns, Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Divine Divinity, Divinity 2, Fable Lost Chapters, Jade Empire, Darklands, The Witcher, Witcher 2 or King of Dragon Pass or did you find all (that you have played) of them be unenjoyable experiences?

Our new skillet easily beats your previous skillet to garbage bin.

I disagree strongly. IMO TESO is a textbook example of how not to do a classless system. I agree with that statement that TESO's classless system is very flawed. I would look more towards systems like Rune Quest, Hero Quest, Rolemaster or GURPS if you want see what good classless RPG system looks like.

I remember reading that they covered their production costs with the initial sales, but that the stock holders weren't satisfied with the numbers and thus considered it a failure. I could be wrong about that, I read it a while ago. They broke-even end of the last year, by statements given by Tomb Raider's executive producer. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-17-tomb-raider-finally-achieved-profitability-by-the-end-of-last-year

The problem with that is that they have a funny way of gauging the point at which the game is profitable. A normal person would think that a game would be profitable if it covers it's production cost, but it seems it ain't so. Some games just have very high production cost, which means that they need to actually sell millions of games to be even break-even let alone to make profit. Like for example Tomb Raider's big sell figures weren't enough to cover its over $100 million budget, which was the reason why Square Enix said that it didn't reach its sale goal when it has sold "only" 3.4 million copies, as it needed to sell about 5 million copies to break-even (which it now has done, selling over 6 million copies).

Well now days that is not even a problem, no one is risking anything anymore. Everyone is rehashing their big hits and raking in the money. Also I still stand by my argument that most popular games, make their production budget back, it's just that companies have unreasonable standards by which they judge a success and thus get too bloated to support their own weight without those big profit games. If you want an example look up what square enix said about Tomb Raider, Infinite is another good example. It's more of a case with publishers/devs being unreasonable with their expectations then pirates taking their money away. Not all most popular games success to make their production budget back (for example new Tomb Raider had hard time to become profitable even though it was popular game, as it took it over year to do so), although they are most likely do it, as they are popular, but not all high budget games become popular, for one reason or another (or multiple) and they are ones that need to be compensated by those games that make profit.

You wanna say they went out of businesses because of piracy? They did go out of business because their games didn't produced less money than what did go to making them. There is no single reason why this happened and there is no evidence that piracy was even factor in one way or another, but that wasn't part of original argument that publishers lose money on majority of their games, which is compensated by big sellers

Now that is a load of BS. It's just the accounting arithmetic all large companies do to avoid large taxes. I mean Warner Bros claimed a loss on the lord of the rings movies... Every Hollywood production company claims a loss on their movies, I'm sure it's the same with game publishers. Not to mention how stupid it is to claim that piracy caused a loss on a game/movie. That is how taxes actually work for companies. New Line Cinema claimed that LotR did loss to avoid compensations for Tolkien Estate (and Peter Jackson), which is why they did go in court, which lead to settlement where Warner Bros paid not disclosed sum of money for Tolkien Estate. This lawsuit was also reason why Hobbit films were made so long after LotR trilogy.

Are you aware that Netflix, Amazon, Hulu is not available to more than 6 billions of people living on this planet? You are really missing the point. More than half of those people live in poverty. Is their access to the latest Game of Thrones episode really the most important issue? We are talking about entertainment. Stop trying to make it into some grand social justice issue. I am not going to oppose you but culture or entertainment is part of life, if you would earn just enough money to buy food/housing. would you rest of the day stare into wall if you can almost for free watch some movie on internet? Man cannot live by bread alone actual quote is as follows: "it is written: ‘man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." am not sure the passage is working for you the way you think it does. HA! Good Fun! I don't know-- it clearly justifies pirating Bibles. Which is not much as Bibles has long since become work of public domain, so every body is free to copy one as much they want (Of course there could be some translations or variant that still has some copyrights for it, but even those are on very loose bases if someone really tries to claim them to be new piece of work, that should have copyrights).

Reason for no next gen, PSVIta, or any other port that has not made is not technical, but that Ubisoft don't feel that they would sell enough to make profit. It should also be noted that Obsidian has next to nothing to say when it comes to make such ports, as IP rights are owned by South Park creators and Ubisoft, so those are the people that you should ask such ports and I am quite sure that they don't read Obsidian forums in any great frequency if they read them at all.

I would not like to be that government worker who has to read all those comments and revise them

They actually all bailed on the project very early on, like before development even started. They were involved in some very preliminary stuff. Weren't they hired as area designers and Stackpole also to write a novella? Which would mean that their job would have been completed before actually development of the game would have even started.

Scientists Just Achieved Quantum Teleportation for the First Time The news: It's not every day that you get to say Albert Einstein was wrong. On Thursday, scientists from the Netherlands announced that they were able to achieve quantum teleportation — a feat that Einstein once dismissed as "spooky action at a distance."

Which was, you know, what was originally agreed. No bail out. Too bad that the no-bail-out clause (Article 125 of the Lisbon's treaty) don't protect member states from economical destabilization if they let some members to default, especially when its their money that will be defaulted. So I think that many politician and even economist felt wrongly that no-bail-out clause would protect them from economical crises in other member states which come and bite them hard with sad reality that if loaned money don't come outside of eurozone then letting country to default would also hurt those member states that loaned the money in first place, even if it's private money, which would cause ripple effect that would hurt even those member states that haven't loaned any money at least directly for member state that is going to default. I agree with Walsingham that there was too little of oversight to see that there was no excessive borrowing and other bad habits in member countries. Most of oversight was left for financial markets, because it was assumed that they would not saw branch under them, but that failed miserably when some banks helped Greece hide their too rapidly growing debt and overall there was too much faith that markets will grow with out any glitches, which lead that many other members addition to Greece also had over extended their borrowings.

I think that if my salary was only $600 or even less in month, like average salaries in some eastern Europe countries are, I would probably think much harder where I put $5 than I currently do.

Letting Greece default would had shown that Euro is only monetary union for good days and on bad days its members are on their own, which would had removed most of economical stability that it has brought (meaning that price of loans would have risen probably more than they did and euro's swings in euro's value would probably been in much large and more difficult to predict) and caused it to lose it value as reserve currency, which would have put lots of other countries under economical threat. But even when take that consideration it's difficult to say which choice of action would have cost more in end. Euro countries decided to choose safer option, stabilizing currency by lending money for Greece to pay its debts and it would have quite minor impact on eurozone if they would have acted faster and if Greece would have been only country with problems. But in Euro crisis there is so much blame to throw around that it's in my opinion quite unnecessary start to point fingers to any one country or institution, especially when last five years has been agonizing for most of the "worst" offenders. Although that said I would like to see bit more control put for banks so that they don't do so much speculative investments with money that is not theirs.

If you broke EULA in digital products, given that EULA on question is legal in you country, you are considered as pirate in legal sense. Physical copies of piece of work, rule of thumb is that you are considered as a pirate if you make another copy of that work and lend or sell that copy that you have made. But there is always especially with EULA's question what kind of limitations copyright owner should have right put in their EULAs, which is more question about society's view about how owns the pieces of culture than question should something be considered as piracy or not. So to OP's question if ebook's EULA says that you can't make copies or lend your copy of book then you are pirating it, but if EULA don't prohibit you doing so then it is not pirating (in some countries you have legal right to make copies of book and lend of those copies even if EULA prohibit it, at least if book is not copy protected). In second question, lending physical copies of book that you own isn't, in my knowledge, considered thing that someone can prohibited do by copyright owner in anywhere in world.