IndiraLightfoot

Yay!!! 2-1. Go, Belgium!! :D

Fellaini puts up that fluffy head with perfect timing! 1-1!!

No!! Algeria gets 1-0 after a penalty kick. Here's hoping for a fast comeback for la Belgique.

Speaking of clothes; What about clothes as filler? In many CRPGs, including D&D ones (especially on persistent servers and such), you get to pick among entire wardrobes of casual, non-expeditionary clothing for your player character. Will PE have the same roleplaying feature? This means that there will be clothes that are paltry, standard, beautiful - going from gratis to very expensive - still most of them are non-magical and have very low or no armour value.

Melkathi: Those goblins look like Dobby in that Harry Potter-movie, and you know, of course, which guy that fella is based upon?

To me, the most outstanding American soccer player I can recall is this guy: Alexi Lalas What's there not to like?

"I don't go for this kind of thing."

The Netherlands and Germany certainly look like candidates for winning the whole thing. 4-0 to Germany now. EDIT: Nice save by the German goalkeeper at the very end too.

Goal!! 3-0!! Football is a game which ends with Germany winning after 90 minutes (or earlier)... (You know that saying I'm paraphrasing)

Azdeus. Well, a new day, and new hopes, and what do I see? All the icons and smileys look normal again! I have no idea what it was. Weird is the word.

Nope. It's three years old, but it has a pretty decent graphics memory, and my ram is like 16 GB on this x64-system, which is always nice. During the match, where like 40-70 infantry took part on both sides (we were two humans playing it), plus some scout cars, all up at the same time, I got like five red-letter warnings that I was lagging the game for my opponent because my graphics couldn't handle the load. Still, there was never any real bad lag, just occasional lag spikes in the midst of the tank battles. The din of the war was roaring. Well, pretty soon, I'll upgrade both my pc and my broadband, and then it will be easy-peasy.

GOOOOLLLLL! Smashing tackle, sent out, a minute before the mid-match break - great work from the Honduran player. :/

Hi! A couple of hours ago, I have the problem described in the topic title. It looks bizarre and unfinished, and it's very annoying too. I haven't downloaded anything, and almost all surfing on the www works and looks just as before. On one CoH2-blog, the same problem recurs, though. Could it be that some servers in North America all of the sudden screw up some links/URLs or something? Thankful for any info that explains this, coz I've never seen it before. EDIT: I just switched to the white-intense IP board setting, and all of the sudden all those icons look alright again. But if I pick "Obsidian", it's all messed up again.

You are right about asking for the exclusion of auto-levelling being pretty crude and old-school. Still, I'd much prefer it anyways (I don't see it as gimped, but as part of the way the game plays out, and that could often be considered somehow logical within the event flow of the game, almost roleplaying in itself). However, often it would make sense that set-aside NPCs have been doing other stuff while being away, some companions like Ammon Jerro are very active in their pursuits, but others would just hang around somewhere passively. That said, I'd love it if it at least the companion couldn't be auto-levelled higher than one or two levels behind your pc, just for the sake of keeping it real (and costly when shuffling companions). As for encouraging replays, I'm all for it. If this kind of non-auto-level feature makes a few play the game again, that's just icing on the cake in my book.

On a related note: Am I the only one that deplored those auto-level-up NPCs in NWN2? It didn't make sense, even if it could be argued that it was practical? If your buddy has glugged pint after pint at some inn for three weeks, expect him to be lagging behind a bit.

A couple of days ago, I finally won a 1x1 vs a human player with the Ostheer. Yay! Otherwise, I've been fooling around with custom maps with much higher pop caps. In one 3 h match, I had 42 Elefants and 30 StuGs assaulting squadrons of heavy Soviet tanks and at least 50 T-34/76s. It was an epic tank battle, which I finally won. Those kind of maps are great for getting bulletins that would take forever to get otherwise.

Sports for men? Hmm, all I know is that padding's a bit sissy: Here's a sport for tough guys, no armour, and by the way - Karmichael Hunt here played for the real Broncos on our planet:

Go, Holland!! 5-1 so far!!

Bloodborne: Oh, The Incredible Adventures of van Helsing in 3D FP. Good, good! *Rubs hands together fiendishly*

BruceVC: I rarely play games that are more or less realistic and packaged in wrappings that almost fade effortlessly into our own present world, if that makes sense. I mean, I do play nasty games - horror, alternative history FPS, zombies and gore - but for some reason I draw the line when I get the vibe that I'm enjoying some sadistic/violent crime spree in an environment much like one of ours today, here and now. I'm mainly an escapist, and not at all one for trying out alternative life styles in this world we live in, especially not those of thugs and drug lords. I think I am too sissy, traditional or morally rigid for something like that. Goat Simulator was almost too much already, since it was a here-and-now-environment, and the goat itself was very real indeed. Luckily, the game had the redeeming quality of being like a whack-a-mole. It all screamed "just for fun and show" from the get-go.

For exactly the same reasons, I wouldn't touch the GTA franchise with a stick. There's something deliciously despicable about it all, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

I really hope you guys do a fantastic job, since there isn't any time for a beta phase (a bit weird, that)! I'm also still playing COH2, but basically just learning the ropes, still, in the vanilla version. Those Paratroopers and Fallschirmjäger in Western Fronts seem to be fun. You drop into a zone, taking a deliberate risk. If you succeed in your strategy, the reward can be great.

Unfortunately, yes. It seems to be a stereotypical bias in our brains or something. We are hard-wired to demonize neighbours and pick on anything different. I reckon, it's been around since time immemorial. The same goes for exploiting the environment and pillaging and raping Mother Earth. Those indigenous communities were small-scale and had much simpler technologies at their disposal, but when you crank up the scale, and increase the technological level, the effects becomes multiplied almost logarithmically. When industrial nations with millions of people got around to their racism and environmental plundering, it came to be on a factory scale, where everything bad and evil got realized with a hitherto never seen efficiency and fervour. Another factor is that small-scale communities were literally much more afraid of nature, and had spirit beliefs and pantheons and what not, which all helped dampening the exploitation and tribe-vs-tribe cruelties somewhat. During the 19th century, when the eyes of God didn't feel as burning as before, and mass media consumerism hooked up with old collective values, our planet was in for huge catastrophes.

The referees certainly weren't world class. Poor Croatia! After the first 25 minutes, I reckon their cool and fast counter-attacks along the lines would simply pull the pants down the Brasilian foot-on-foot fondling of the ball. My favourite moment was when a pretty tiny Brasilian player saw a Croatian receiving a high ball by his forehead, and realizing he didn't have a chance in that duel, he just tackled the Croatian outright! It was in the 20th minute or something. Amazingly, the Croatian barely winced, and the Brasilian bounced off of him.