Keyrock

KD's 30+ point scoring streak is over. Durant and the Thunder could have easily kept it going, as Slim Reaper had 26 points, along with 7 assists, on an insanely efficient 10 of 12 shooting through 3 quarters, but the Thunder were up huge and Scott Brooks decided to rest KD for the rest of the game. It was a wise move. KD's scoring streak had already reached an epic 12 games, the third best in the past 30 years. Chasing T-Mac's 2003 14 game streak or Kobe's 2003 16 game streak would just be superfluous. More importantly, the Thunder won their 10th straight game, a streak that includes wins over Miami, San Antonio, Portland, Houston, and Golden State. OKC now has a 4 game lead in the brutally tough Western Conference. There is a lot of season to go, but they're obviously in damn good shape right now. As for the individual honors, while I still think LeBron is still the most talented player in the game when he tries his hardest (note: The MVP award does not reward the most talented player, it rewards the best performance through 82 regular season games), it is no longer a foregone conclusion. While in the past couple years when the question "Who is the best player in the NBA?" was asked, the vast majority of people would answer "LeBron James" without giving it a second thought (and rightfully so), I believe that now when someone asks that question most people at least have to pause and think about it and compare LeBron and KD, before answering "LeBron". What I'm saying is that KD is now in LeBron's ballpark, in the same category. Before it was: 1)LeBron 2)Everybody Else Now it's: 1)LeBron 2)Durant 3)Everybody Else This is not because LeBron has regressed (he's playing as well as ever in several areas). It's because KD has improved so much in ball control, passing, and defense. King James is still the best player in the league when he tries his hardest, but he now has a truly worthy challenger for his crown. The next few years should be really entertaining as we get LeBron in the second half of his prime and KD in the first half of his. It's not quite Bird and Magic, two guys whose primes ran at approximately the same time. And it's not quite Kobe and LeBron, a guy at the end of his prime overlapping with a guy entering his prime. It's somewhere in betweem. Hopefully both guys stay healthy (as they have throughout their careers) and we get the 3 to 4 years when both guys are near their peak. It should be fun to watch.

I'm not going to argue the particulars of each game in the series with you bevcause it's been a decade since I played any of the older games, and my memory is far from photographic. Suffice to say, I'll take your word for it. I'm sure they took elements from many of the games, but their main target was World of Xeen (they stated so, but I'm too lazy to look for a link). As a dev who had never made a Might & Magic game before, or any type of old school RGP, they likely cherry picked features they thought would work together, and, as anyone with little or no experience doing something, made missteps. My point is, all things considered, the game turned out pretty doggone well. I think they really nailed the combat mechanics and difficulty level. Sure they could have implemented more features and done a lot of things better, but they exceeded my expectations and made a game I'm really enjoying. Edit: Just killed the Shadow Dragon. At level 17, it was a piece of cake. The warfare skill that stops enemies from casting makes that battle much easier.

Well, the devs specifically targeted World of Xeen (M&M 4&5) as the games to pattern this after, so it's no wonder that stuff in M&M 6 and onward wasn't in this game. I agree there is plenty of room for improvement, but I think that for a first effort in this series and this type of game for a relatively unknown developer, they did a pretty good job. Which makes me all the more eager to see what they could do with the series now that they have some experience under their belt.

♫ In the midnight hour we cried "more, more, more" With a rebel yell we cried "more, more, more" In the midnight hour Ubi "more, more, more" With a rebel yell "more, more, more" More, more, more ♫

That sums up my feelings pretty well. I hope the DLC comes out soon and I hope this sells well enough to convince Ubi to have them do a full blown sequel (Elevenquel?).

Sunny D is pretty disgusting. I'd carry bubble tea in there instead. That stuff is the best.

I found the setting, lore, and quests sleep inducingly boring, but the combat, while easy, is quite fun, minus the mash the button QTE garbage. Overall it's a fairly enjoyable game, well worth the sale price. The disenchant mini-game is quite possibly the worst thing ever programmed. Worse than the Sasser and Melissa viruses.

Heh, I've totally neglected Arcane Discipline too. It seems wise to invest some points into that. And yeah, using that cast WS and Light Or before rest seems like a neat little harmless trick. Interesting that your Hunter is such a defensive star. Thanks to Humanoid's tips, I've turned my Defender into a taunt tank. So, in order, Buff-Mage, Pain-Dealer, Pain-Dealer, Taunt Tank. And... To the best of my knowledge, Hunters can't use axes. Were you thinking Barbarian? My Hunter is my favorite class thus far in the game. Both an offensive powerhouse and a versatile defensive character. My Defender is the best at defending strictly against physical attacks (because armor, shield, high vitality), but my Hunter can deal with physical attacks pretty well too and is very resilient against magic. On the offensive end she stabs right through armor (because spear), or what's left of it (because shatter), and does massive damage (because high might, weapon skill) and crazy criticals (because orc). In theory, she could cast air magic spells too, but I doubt I'll ever have the points to put in that skill.

Oh It's worse (on PC at least) due to terrible mouse accelartion which makes for floaty uncomfortable aiming, badly implemented cover mechanic, and bland gunplay. They don't include an option to turn off mouse acceleration? How does somebody put out a FPS, or any action oriented game, for that matter, on PC and not have a mouse acceleration toggle in the options?

I use the buffs/debuffs carrying over during rest to my advantage all the time. When my party is worn and I'm about to rest I always cast Whispering Shadows and Dark Vision (when I'm in a dark dungeon) before I rest (assuming I have enough mana). Dispel Magic is very useful. The downside of the spell is that it wipes out your buffs too, and I'm usually constantly running Celestial Armor and often Stone Skin, but when you have debilitated party members and you don't have the spell to remove the specific status ailment or that party member can't cast (stunned, feebleminded), then you gotta do what you gotta do and cast Dispel Magic. I have 5 scrolls of Dispel Magic in my inventory that I've gathered from my travels. I hang onto them for emergency situations. At this point in the game, physical damage has become of secondary concern to me. As long as I have Celestial Armor up, which is to say almost all the time, then I'm quite confident I can survive anything short of a particularly brutal critical. What does me in more than anything is getting debilitated. This is why over the next few levels I'm going to focus heavily on Arcane Discipline, something I probably shouldn't have neglected this long (it was always a "I'll get around to it next level" skill). By the time I hit level 20, I plan to have at bare minimum one, and hopefully two, characters that are master level in the skill. My Hunter is at expert right now, my Shaman is close to expert (I'll likely get expert next level up), and the Defender and Freemage have some work to do. My Hunter is quickly becoming my best defensive character. She can't block quite as well as the Defender and doesn't have as much health, but she still blocks fairly well (because spear) and her evade value is high, so attacks flat out miss her quite often. My plan is to grand master in Spear, Dodge, Arcane Discipline, and at least master in Endurance, grand master if I can afford the points. If I can grand master those 4 skills I'm going to be laughing at enemies' futile attempts to harm me.

Even the ambush wasn't hard, just lengthy. I got through it on the first try without having anyone even fall unconscious (well, not for more than a round, and not ever at a moment when experience was given out).

Finished act 2. The final boss fight of the act was surprisingly easy, all things considered.

To the best of my knowledge, we haven't had the option to choose distribution yet. I doubt we will for a while. I want to run the Valindra's Tower Epic Dungeon in Neverwinter Online, but everytime I go to play some games, I just wind up playing Might & Magic X instead. Damn that addictive game. Damn it.

Eh, I'm unterested because Ski Jumping is awesome, also Biathlon rocks. The terrorist threat is definitely scary, though. Hopefully nothing happens.

I just hit level 16 and got spear master for my hunter and magic focus master for my freemage. I haven't cleared the Lost City yet, but I found the secret entrance into Seahaven, which is convenient. Maybe it's time to try the cyclops and shadow dragon again? As an aside, I can't wait to get to The Crag so that I can train earth magic master.

Nah, you were right, I just checked it. You only pay for the supplies you need to top off, rather than a flat rate. I'm pretty sure it was a flat rate during Early Access and they changed it since. Since I started playing again when the game was fully released I only bought supplies when I was down to zero, so as to maximize my value, hence why I didn't notice the change.

I always pictured Al Qaeda as running NetWare 286 2.x IPX/SPX protocol on machines running DOS. Have I been living a lie?

The problem with allowing gender choice in a historically accurate period piece of a game is all the extra development that this would entail. You can't just simply let the player choose male or female, change a few lines of dialogue here and there and keep the rest the same, because that would not reflect an accurate representation of the attitudes of that time period. Entire quest lines would have to be completely remade for the female character, to accommodate the unique challenges a female character would face when compared to a male. While I think that would be certainly interesting to play and I would welcome such an option, I can certainly sympathize with the developers not wanting to do the extra work involved in creating many of the quests and scenarios twice to accommodate the gender choice. They are making a game centered around a very specific protagonist, that is their choice and that is their right.

I too hope Shani makes an appearance.

I haven't paid close enough attention to say for sure, but my impression is that you pay the same price for rations from each vendor regardless of whether you had 4 rations or 2 rations or 0 rations with you previously. Maybe I'll do an experiment to test that theory when I get home.

It was a little bit of a role reversal with Lebron scoring a bit more and KD having the more complete game with more rebounds, assists, and steals. Both guys played at a really high level though, it's basically splitting hairs between them in that game. The shooting performance they put on at the end of the 3rd with LeBron and KD trading buckets back and forth was pretty fun to watch. And yeah, Miami jumped out to a big lead, but it was all OKC after that. Neither guy can do it alone, not against an opponent of that caliber, anyway, but OKC's supporting cast was better. Lamb and Serge were great and Fish had a throwback game, playing like it was 4 or 5 years ago. Like I wrote a while back when Russ had surgery again, him being out is turning out to be a blessing in disguise. Guys like Reggie Jackson, Jeremy Lamb, and Perry Jones are getting more minutes and having to take a larger role on the team. They're building valuable experience and confidence and they've learned how to play and win without Russ, all while not losing any ground, in fact, they've gained ground. They're still obviously a better team with Russ playing, but it's good to now know that, unlike last year's playoffs, if the need arises, these guys are ready to step up and fill the void. On Miami's side, while D-Wade put up respectable and efficient shooting numbers, watching him, it's pretty obvious that he's not at 100%. That's fine for now, but the Heat will need him at full strength come May and onward.

Actually, you always get the amount they advertise, whether you have any with you or not, to the best of my knowledge. So you can but the rations from the merchant in the wagon and have 9 whether you had any with you already or not, same price either way. In Seahaven you can get 13 rations. I always wait until I have zero left to buy rations to maximize what I get for my money. Soprigal (so far) has the best price per ration, but then you only have 6 (you can't buy another 6 from them to have 12). Seahaven has the highest price per ration but you can have 13, which is great if you're heading into a long, tough dungeon). From a realism standpoint, I like to look at it as the rations in Seahaven have a longer shelf life, hence why you can carry more with you, while the ones in Soprigal spoil quicker. Also, I meant to write level 15 in my previous post. I obviously am not level 5 in act 2. That's what I get for posting late at night. (*grumble* *grumble* damn system won't let me edit my post after a set amount of time *grumble* *grumble*)

I'm up to level 5 and still trudging along in Act 2. I actually still don't even have a full complement of gear on every character, as I'm missing a bunch of rings and necklaces. I refuse to buy them, unless I see something really nice that I can actually afford. I figure that I'll find something good eventually, so it would be better not to waste my money. I just found the Lost City. Seems easy so far, but I'm only right at the entrance, I figure it gets harder later on. I'm pretty well stocked on supplies, so I might be able to clear the whole thing in one go. If not, I'll trudge back to town for supplies. Once I hit level 16 or 17 I think I'll go back and try the cyclops and shadow dragon again. At that point I think I'll be able to kill them without having to drink a wheelbarrow full of potions. I hope.

I like Boogie. I'm a fan of the head cases, provided the don't do anything too crazy. It helps that he's very talented too. Definitely a fun guy to watch.

Bigger deal for the Thunder than the Heat, though not a huge deal for either team. It's a nice confidence booster for the Thunder knowing they can beat the Heat and they can beat them in Miami, plus any win is important in the insanely tight West. For he Heat, the loss isn't a huge deal, they know they have another gear they can go into in the playoffs. Ultimately it's a January game. If they meet again in June, those will be the games that matter.