ijusten

Compare to population and take into account how many speak English well enough to do the survey. If we divide the answers by population (millions, rounded) we get a new list for top countries: 1. FINLAND 923/6=154 2. SWEDEN 141210=141 3. CANADA 3909/36=108 4. AUSTRALIA 2471/24=103 5. USA 25089/323=78 6. BRITAIN 3939/66=59 7. POLAND 1651/37=45 8. GERMANY 2431/82=29 9. FRANCE 1132/67=17 10. RUSSIA 1070/144=7 This leaves the top 6 as the countries where people speak native-level English.

Kusarigama. Thanks for the video! I've wondered for years how you wielded that. Great weapon, but seems limited in-doors or against multiple opponents (or many single opponents in a row). You need a lot of space for the chain and/or to remove the chain afterwards from around a dead body.

I'm not really sure what any of this has to do with what I said, but I'll take a stab. If they pay taxes and are upright, moral citizens, why do they fail to pay people for their hardwork when it comes to media? The girl (a lame attempt at empathy on your part) next door probably watches them on Hulu with ads. Hulu pays royalties to the companies who made Lost and thus are allowed to publish that. But still, this has nothing to do with games or Obsidian, specifically. Expect Hulu (and most other "free to use with ads") services don't work outside USA. Even Youtube has restrictions for music videos, these days! 1. You can get PC's for free if you are ready to get an older model. 2. Even if you have top-of-the-line gaming rig, it might be considerably bigger share of disposable income to operate. After all, people bought computers in the 80s, when their value adjusted to inflation was 5 to 10 times more.. even in the first world. You can also do a lot more on a PC than just play games. Getting slightly better graphics card when you need a heavy-duty computer for your [work/hobbies/other reason] anyways is smaller investment than getting "a pure gaming rig". That's what I did when I was a student. I needed a computer; I paid somewhat more to also play games on it. Also; P:E isn't supposed to be too heavy on a machine.. 3. You need Amazon.com afflicted Visa-card or PayPal to use Kickstarter. Even in Europe, these things are hardly self-evident (as Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk etc. don't count and direct bank transfers are free of charge, lessening the importance of the K-starters supported methods). In developing countries, these methods would probably be unthinkable. You're confusing the situation in America to be something shared by the whole world. Really. You're going to put colonisation, Soviet/Chinese/American/French/British funded coups, corruption, mafia, lack of geopolitical location or natural resources, all sort of market forces meddling, lack of infrastructure etc. as well as simple incompetence under "their governments have not ALLOWED their people to reach certain wealth"? Please, name one country that actively tries to keep its citizens poor! I try not to judge people I talk with on message boards, but you don't come across as a person that's completely connected with surrounding reality. Plus, you also sound somewhat dislikable, but that might just be your politics. Of course they want to be paid for their work. Everybody needs food on the table. But when you're yourself fighting to keep food on the table, you're hardly interested how some rich Americans aren't getting their slice - particularly if that 20 dollars is enough to feed you for a week. Not even if you're on the same line of work. I'm not familiar with the situation in Iran, so I shall not comment on it till you expand on the subject.

There are DRMs that stay uncracked for years.[...] Name one game. If there existed a DRM that couldn't be cracked you can be damn sure Assassin's Creed would have it. Discworld Noir. I own the CDs and have been trying to crack the DRM for years to replay the game (ever since I upgraded from Win ME to XP) and have yet to succeed. On side-note, I pirated the original Baldur's Gate when I was 14 years old and the game was new; I would not have had money to play it otherwise. When Baldur's Gate 2 came out, I was waiting on the door for the store to open to buy my copy. Paid more than would have been reasonable for a copy of Torment that I had missed earlier; I went on to buy every Bioware and Obsidian game ever since, without looking into reviews, without regard for the games running on my system (they would run when I upgraded later, right?). I'm reasonably sure that if I hadn't pirated that first game, I would never have done the follow-ups. At that point of my life I was interested in BG due to other interests (books by R.A. Salvatore) which faded soon after. If I hadn't played the game then, I never would have. I put money on P:A more than my income could reasonably allow. Some people will pirate the game (if not from our copies, then from the copies on sale at GOG). That's ok. Some of those people will turn into fanatics and buy the follow-ups (and probably buy the whole Infinity-catalogue from GOG). Some don't. But it's pretty safe that if they won't, they wouldn't have bought the games anyway. The first P:E game is already funded and Obsidian will not lose money over it. There will be more than enough people who buy that game to pay for the expansion as well. Obsidian will not be sweating to break even.

If somebody has asked stuff like that in this thread, it has escaped my notice. Mostly people are asking for more exotic races and others are denouncing them as furries. At no point has anybody mentioned romances or actually any sort of relationships. At worst examples have been to Elder Scrolls - was there a lot of yiffing in those games that I failed to see?

EDIT: This was double post due to the forums loading minutes for each page. Please remove.

I can't think of any mythology where anthropomorphic races are the good guys, although you're welcome to give some counterexamples. Even then, I'd guess the good anthropomorphic guys are the minority among mythology. So what do you want to imply? We're fine with slaughtering them. First, depending on the source, Medusa was a normal human that was cursed with the snakes. By another source, she was one of three sisters. Hardly a race, even if having strange hair alone counts! Second, Minotaur was a singular freak of nature, who got locked in the labyrinth because he was related to the king. Again, not a member of race of minotaurs. And Anubis, of course, was a god. I think the problem is really in our points of view - our ancestors thought even normal animals were intelligent and might have their own agendas (in Red Riding Hood, for example, the wolf was able to talk to the girl, operate the tools in the cabin and dress himself in grandma's clothes, then change his voice so that it wouldn't be recognised ). Japanese believed that certain animals could take human forms to carry out their own plans. Foxes are often mentioned, but also other animals. In African stories, similarly, humans might not realize they were talking to animals if they weren't being observant. In Chinese Journey to the West two of the travellers are actually animals - The Monkey King is somesort of hero to a clan of monkeys, another is a human reincarnated as a half-pig. Earlier in the thread I noted that in Finland eating bears ("the kings of the forrest") was not done, as this was seen as cannibalism. Differing "wereanimals" from normal animals would have been absurd, as the normal animals were ALREADY "wereanimals", able to either change their forms (like Japanese foxes) or otherwise interacting with humans as equals (as in many European stories)! The separation to "dumb animals" and "humanlike/magical animals" would only have happened after we started ascending from position of one species sharing their niche in the world to "dominant life-form" - and this would have happened in the early 19th century, long after our mythologies and stories would have been set into stone.

>I do not want to relate, relation, relay, relax, release, rely, relieve, relinquish, relish, or relationship/relative furies (yes nouns are verbs now). Ever. I want them out of my sight or dead. That's perfectly acceptable way to roleplay a prejudiced character.

The thing is, ideas are very easy to have. It's the execution that matters. There are boring films where planets explode and exiting films where the main character never leaves a phone booth. If devs decided to add races that weren't just "humans with three fingers and red skin", they wouldn't do so because "that's what furries like". They are going to go along with what THEY like. What worked in earlier games that P:E is taking influence from and what worked in p&p's. And let me tell you; sex dolls with fur aren't a big part of that. But animalistic races are. EDIT. Also, in case it wasn't blindingly obvious, I do like races that have vast differences to the main line (that is, humans). As I have mentioned several times, I dislike that the difference between elves and humans are in many games the same differences as WASP vs. Chinese second generation immigrant to USA. Eg. not huge.

Afaik there will be no open mod-tools for the public. They promised mod-support in update #16 and compared it to those in NWN2 and F:NV.

I really dislike forums where people drop in and announce their opinions without bothering to check to which direction the conversation is going. Would it have ruined your day to check the last five or six messages in this thread? In this case, I believe we are talking about "anthropomorphic animal races" such as the skaven. Not pre-catgirls.Perhaps the skaven float somebody's boat, but I think that far more are attracted to elves or dwarves. To answer your questions.. 1. Obsidian has announced what the PLAYABLE races are. They have not told if they are the only intelligent races living in the world of Project Eternity. There may be other intelligent races which may be included as playable in the extensions or sequels. After all, BG2 included half-orc, back in the day.. 2. AFAIK, Obsidian has not given any descriptions on what aumauas may look like. Orlans description may be anything from "think halflings" to something more exotic. Some of the godlikes are descripted to be "similar to tieflings". Tieflings in turn tend to look like.. well.... 3. And that's just for the new races. Then there's the question how Obsidian wants to spin the established races. How otherworldly will elves and dwarves be like? Are elves just pointy-eared anorexic humans or will the artists and writers intentionally make them more foreign appearance and culture-vise? If you think about it, the Forgotten Realms setting had drows, Elfquest had elves to be originally highly scientific race among cavemen like humans. In both cases, you wouldn't choose to think elf just as "human with infravision and other enchantments", which tends to be my view when choosing a race. I would hope that Obsidian would look farther than that, but.. oh well.

>Now about history...if you look back the fascination and sometimes worship of animal spirits and gods is deeply rooted within mankind. [...] Anthropomorphic deities galore. This is true, but I think our views on why they are so common differ. I'm going to write a rant here, just for the pleasure of it! A little background to my view; few months ago I read books about local believes for an article. I thought and talked about this subject at length. I'm also from one of those places where you can say "when people still believed in the old things" and refer to people who are still alive. My grandparents still believed in house tomtes (I can't get the highlight to work, so here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomte). I've hiked to places which were local focal points for beliefs, and I must say that even as I'm educated city-dweller, standing next to the natural monuments make it very easy to think that maybe there was something in the stories after all. Now, if you think about it, our "mastery over nature" is rather recent accomplishment, tied to our lives in towns and cities. Our belief that there's nothing outside our windows but natural is rather easy when all you see out of the window is man-made (or, if you see trees etc., are there because we have decided to not hack them down). Anything that you can't understand is easy to handwave as an action of a fellow human. It was different when your homestead was next to (or even in the middle of) forest. And I don't mean those small hundred acre-type things, but proper things were you can get lost and wander for days without finding your way out. Your livestock was always threatened by predators such as wolves; lynx might attack you personally even on your backyard. Fox might get in to the henhouse etc. Without modern firearms, electric torches and fences, protecting or doing anything about these things was rather difficult. You just had curse what ever animal was responsible (and finding out what the culprit was was easy due to tracks). And if you left the house-stead for woods (and many of the collected stories I read started in such way), there was always danger you wouldn't get back (after all, you wouldn't have a compass nor a map; there also wouldn't be any roads or man-made tracks). It's easy enough on daylight, but once the night comes, you can't see anything.. but everybody can see you. And if you happen broke your leg by falling into a burrow? Dead. Encountered a bear? Dead. Wolves? Dead. Just got lost? Dead, or at least takes days to get back (and this is provided you can find water and food). Even a moose might attack you if you look at it wrong. What I'm trying to say here, that before we moved to towns and/or cities being "the smartest species on the block" might have helped us make tools, but once you were in the woods, all that smarts just meant that you had a knife on your belt (and perhaps a bow and arrows if you were hunting). And you couldn't run, because the ground is full of rocks and fallen trees. And bears have claws. They're also rather smart. And running on four legs isn't all that difficult. So, these were the cards. When you start wishing that you survive your oncoming trip to the woods, you're going to pray. And who are you going to pray to? To the rather intelligent-feeling other animals (because back in those days, it wasn't us vs. them), particularly you would pray to bears, the kings of the forest. What would be the use to pray for human-spirits? They live on areas that you are on rather good ground already. And if you met one, you could always try to talk it out (there are plenty of stories of that as well). But forest? Bears? Thats like jumping to water where sharks were known to live. There's no talking. Just wishing that if you encounter a bear, he will look favourably on you and let you live. Something on the attitude about bears might be implied here, if you are interested; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peijainen >Also, we already have gnolls as a common staple of fantasy settings. Basically hyena anthros. Oh, and Minotaurs. Yes, I mentioned gnolls. Even linked to a picture that was akin to my own thoughts on the subject I don't like minotaurs as they are basically tall humans with cow's head. Sometimes they have fur. I prefer my other races to be somewhat more animal-like.

Thank you. Spent an hour writing and then fixing the text (still full of missing words and odd grammar!). Hope it brought something to the conversation. Justifying everything with furries seemed awfully strange. I think that if you can see the animal races as cute and cuddly.. well, that's the same as seeing immortal, highly intelligent elves with hundreds of years of life experience as just normal people with pointy ears and anorexia. (Now, looking for an avatar.)

I read the whole topic and the answers disappoint me. Really? You'd sacrifice gameplay because somebody is going to wank over it? If we really are going to have an issue over that, there isn't much left on the game. Elves? Gone. Horses and other pack-animals? Gone. Exotic clothing? Gone. Any relationships before proper marriage? Gone. Rule 34. You may want to google it (but not at work). But to the topic itself. I'm for anthropomorphic races. For several reasons; - First, because elves/dwarves etc. are just "humans with pointy ears"/"small humans with beards". It's very easy to see why these races would go along with humans. At worst the equivalent real-world scenario would be jews and general population in the early 20th century Europe. It's very hard to these races as "The Other", as dictates by the story. For example, in Dragon Age the treatment of elves as racism was hard to understand because it reminded us of our own minorities. In other words; elves and dwarves are treated like human minorities, not as races on their own right. Big part of this is that the difference between white human male and white elven male are smaller in appearance than between African and European males before colonisation. On the other hand, if instead of elves, the humans had gone against the earlier mentioned rat-people, player would have been more inclined to see the game's view of the side, and looking "past the differences" would actually have been a real accomplishment. -Second. On the other hand, I'm not really into humanising the other races too much (which might have been evident from the earlier point). When you see, say, a "cat-person" you're not supposed to go "aww, how cute". What you're supposed to think is IT'S A LION IN ARMOUR. Mano a mano, YOU'RE GONNA DIE. And I don't mean "lion in armour" like this. If it's just the head and hands that are different, we're back in the "elves are human minority" problem again. This gnoll is actually a very good example. Think seeing him running a grocery store at the big city! Perfectly harmless, upstanding citizen.. but you suspect that when you talk to him, he's going to see food. In a way, I'd like to see that "racism", if you will, isn't just irrational behaviour but something you can really justify, and not just in the "they're gonna steal our jobs" kind of way. Can I emphasise that I disliked the way Oblivion handled this? The differences between races were just in the face and few stats. They all paid their taxes and the cultures were limited to what spices were used in the food. -Third. OK, this is a bit strange, because I'm going to talk of different settings as they were part of some bigger continuum. While I don't think of it as such, "elves" and "dwarves" are moved from setting to setting very easily and they are always related to ideal template. I'm going to argue that template has been flanderized. At this point, elves are just long-lived humans with pointy ears. In older stories elves aren't supposed to have souls and dwarves were supposed to be born from the rock itself, just to drop few facts from early D&D and Tolkien. In even earlier stories, elves were supposed to be scary in the same way that "gray aliens" tend to be seen as scary. Obviously we can't really return to that with elves (people would revolt) but creating new races that could take that place in the stories - not just as enemies (as gnolls are in D&D), but as things that don't really see humans as collective danger - or even danger per se. Perhaps because they see their position as secure (as a nation/race) or because they see themselves individually better than the other races - and for a good and factual reason. To get back to racism, would the point of Ku Klux Klan have been better if white people would live 500 years against black people's 50 years? If the blacks really were savages that couldn't understand higher magic? And so on. Summa summarum. I think history is very enlightening. The adventures of Livingstone, the Mongol Horde, KKK, disputes over languages in European countries... today we can see these things from above, think these things factually and think of them as small and insignificant things to fight over. But what people actually saw and thought back then.. to the black tribes, Livingstone with his guns must have been something else; The Mongol horde could as well have been *uruk-hai*, the KKK really thought that what they were doing had basis in facts. Looking back into these times and trying to see to understand the reactions of people THEN should be tried to moved into game-setting. We should try to see these small and insignificant things and in the game-setting make them into large and justifiable. I'm tired of playing fantasy settings where everybody thinks and acts like well-educated modern Americans. Nothing smells bad and everybody is clean, even as lavatories are just holes in the ground and nobody washes themselves OR their clothes. Having races that make you feel like you've dropped into a cage in the zoo - a cage you share with an intelligent predator - well, THAT'S interesting. And just because you're potential prey doesn't mean you turn into ACTUAL prey. Think Life of Pi (trailer, as I haven't actually seen the film). Thank you for reading this far.