Keyrock

From everything I've read, Haswell should be great for mobile because of massive power efficiency gains, but pretty much a non-upgrade (minimal gains) over Ivy Bridge or even Sandy Bridge on the desktop front, especially considering that it once again requires a new socket. It's too bad AMD's CPUs are so far behind Intel, because they at least stick with a socket for a good long time, making upgrading a much cheaper matter.

I'll be happy just to get mailsmithing and leadership up to 20. Right now I'm at 16 for mailsmithing and 10 for leadership. My main goal is to be able to make myself a purple shirt and pants, since those items generally don't drop and you can't buy them anywhere outside of AH. I've seen all of 1 shirt, a blue lev 30 I wore until fairly recently, drop for my character and zero pants. I bought one green mailsmith from AH when I saw one a bit cheaper than the going rate. I'll probably buy a few more when I find them at discount. I'm pretty much decked out in almost all purples right now (I'll post a picture when I get home), so my main goal right now is fusing some sweet runes for my Acolyte of Kelemvor and fusing enchantments for myself. Unlike with my other run of the mill companions, wehre I just plopped any ol' runestone on them since they were never going to be particularly good anyway, I'm being careful what I put on the Acolyte, since she's actually a doggone good companion. Right now I have yet to put a single rune on her because they're so expensive to remove so I need to plan strategically and wait to fuse higher rank stones. I don't want to put anything on her below rank 6. All rank 7s would be ideal, but that would take a ridiculous amount of time and/or AD. Gah, double post. Curse you, browser. (I'm stuck with an ancient version of Internet Explorer at work. Yuck)

I'll be happy just to get mailsmithing and leadership up to 20. Right now I'm at 16 for mailsmithing and 10 for leadership. My main goal is to be able to make myself a purple shirt and pants, since those items generally don't drop and you can't buy them anywhere outside of AH. I've seen all of 1 shirt, a blue lev 30 I wore until fairly recently, drop for my character and zero pants.

Lost & Damned is fairly meh, slightly below the level of the main story, in my opinion. The Ballad of Gay Tony is the star of GTA 4, it's easily better than both the main story and Lost & Damned.

LOL, yeah I've made quite the pile of mail and scale shirts and pants too, largely because they seem to be the item with the best experience to time and resources invested ratio. I like to think that I'm helping to clothe all the unfortunate people that lost their homes and belongings after the cataclysm hit Neverwinter. I'm doing my part to help the community.

When was that? Sometime in the late 80s/early 90s

For a desktop or lappy I've still not seen a single compelling reason to switch from Windows 7 (In fact my lappy came with 8 and I switched to 7 ). Windows 8 is designed for tablets and other touchscreen devices, bringing back the start button doesn't change that.

^ So rugged. I bet he'd drive a super duty dually truck... If they had working trucks in Fallout, that is.

I'm one of those weird folks that didn't play D&D as their first P&P game. For me it was Space Master, the sci-fi spinoff of ICE's Rolemaster. I played a Transhuman (genetically engineered human) Arms Tech who preferred rifles and was skilled in bypassing security systems as well as tinkering with weapons. I was also the ship's main gunner and backup tech on all the non-weapon systems (obviously I was the main tech on the weapon systems). Good times.

Rename characters AGAIN? *sigh* Why can't MMOs learn and give people a global handle and let them have non-unique names for their characters? If Cryptic can do it with their MMOs and Tabula Rasa could do it, then it can't be all that hard... Now, if they could just fix their flaky party queuing system in Neverwinter.

The first two Tex Murphy games, Mean Streets and The Martian Memorandum, came on floppies. Those games had full motion video and digitized speech, albeit in tiny windows and very short snippets, on floppies!

At level 8 the Acolyte of Kelemvor already had as many hit points as my Cleric has at lev 15, plus, since she doesn't actually cast any healing spells, she doesn't pull nearly as much aggro, so she already survives much longer. At level 25 she should be pretty doggone resilient.

That sounds really awesome. Yet another reason to return to New Vegas. I was going to at some point anyway.

If it won't fit on a single density 5 1/4" floppy, it's probably not worth playing anyway.

Not 15% off, 15% more Zen when you purchase a game card and redeem it. I guess in theory it works out to be the same thing. If nothing else I can get my new companion up to lev 25, rather than the standard 15, so she should survive a little longer.

Hey LadyCrimson, my companion is thinner than yours.

LOL. I'm in the process of training a second rank 3 mailsmith right now. The process is so long. In other news, I decided that after putting in some 30-40 hours into this game and still enjoying it, Cryptic and PWI deserve some of my money, so I bought $20 worth of Zen via a game card (since they're running a promotion right now where you get 15% bonus Zen) and used it to buy an Acolyte of Kelemvor companion. 20 bucks is more than fair for what I've already gotten out of this game. Pictures in appropriate thread.

That's a pretty defeatist attitude, Felithvian. Worthwhile games still get made all the time. Look at World of Goo, or FTL, or Portal, or Machinarium, just to name a few from the last 6 years or so. There is, always has always been, and always will be, a giant sea of mediocrity out there, but if you're careful with your fishing you can always catch some keepers. Even better, since so many of the truly worthwhile games these days aren't "AAA", you don't have to drop $50 for them, you can get them for $15 or $20 (or cheaper on a sale).

In order of amount of time sunk into said game: Neverwinter Nights (vast majority of the time spent in HotU and user made mods) X3: Reunion X3: Terran Conflict Gran Turismo Twisted Metal 2 Jet Moto ZAngband Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (vast majority of the time spent in the Shivering Isles) Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind Final Fantasy 6 Chrono Trigger Starflight 2 Gradius R-Type Goldeneye Planescape: Torment Legend of Zelda Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon GTA: San Andreas Blaster Master Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link

Had a run through Epic Grey Wolf Den last night with a group. Man, the final boss in that dungeon is ridiculously hard. Our group was working really well together, we absolutely steamrolled through the entire dungeon, including the sub-bosses, without breaking a sweat, but we just kept on getting slaughtered by the end boss. The problem was that he had one particular attack that did several circles of AoE damage that would also knock you prone and he did that attack quite often. There is a long animation on that attack but it's still not the easiest thing to get out of the way of because the AoE circles are randomly all around him. This was compounded by the sheer number of adds. The first couple waves of adds were pretty easy to clear out, but eventually the waves of adds just got ridiculous, consisting of groups of the most difficult non-boss enemies in there. Some of them have AoE attacks that knock you prone too and they take a really long time to bring down, especially when you're dodging AoEs much of the time. You make one tiny mistake and get knocked prone and there is a high likelihood of getting stun-locked to death as you get hit with AoE after AoE. We never did beat him, the closest we got was getting him down to about 20% health, at which point the sheer number of adds just got too overwhelming and dodging AoE attacks became ridiculously hard. That was a good time despite the defeat. We'll get him eventually.

I've seen people running around with "more unique" looking gear on. I'm assuming those are the higher tier purples. I'm also assuming those drop in the higher difficulty epic dungeons that require a really high gear score. I also have seen some more unique looking blues drop, like a pirate hat, but it didn't have nearly as good stats as this helmet so I sold it in AH. Item variety is still definitely lacking, though. Supposedly it's something they're going to address, but I suspect they're likely more concerned about getting whatever is the next class out the door first (please, please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top let it be an archer class) and introducing another race (I doubt it will be full blooded orcs, but a man can dream).

Bought this helm using Seals of the Unicorn: I'm starting to build up a good collection of purples and blues. You get a lot of Seals of the Unicorn in epic dungeons, especially when a Dungeon Delves event is happening. Pretty soon Seals of the Unicorn will become useless to me and it will be completely about Seals of the Drake and drops. Still don't know what Gyrm Coins do, but I guess I'll find out eventually. @LadyCrimson - Your characters must do an awful lot of cardio.

Actually, I'm not objecting anything, I love that series. I just wanted to post that image. My plate remains the same: End game dungeon farming in Neverwinter Grim Dawn GRID 2 Wizardry 6 Surprisingly enough, I'm finding end game dungeon farming at least as fun, often more so, than all the stuff leading up to that. Even though Epic Dungeons are just dungeons from earlier in the game turned up to 11, they're really fun because of the challenge involved. There is frustration when you're with a crappy group, though I can usually sense when a group is not working rather early and I'll usually give it until the first sub boss for the group to get its **** together and if it doesn't then it's time to bail. However when you're with a good group working as a well oiled machine then end game boss fights are a freaking blast. Everyone does their job: The TR and GF tackle the main boss and do their best to keep him/her occupied. The GC drops AoE heals in just the right spot. The CW does AoE damage and drops status effects on mobs, and I, as a GWF, clean up groups of adds, trying to keep us from getting overwhelmed by sheer numbers, then jump on the boss during those moments when adds have been cleared. I have a couple of abilities that knock enemies prone so I can semi-stun-lock many enemies. This tends not to work on bosses, with a few exceptions, so I can't control them, but I can control lesser mobs and always make sure to try to keep the most dangerous lesser mobs (read: casters) stun-locked as much as possible.

And, as Drowsy Emperor already established, all elves are on crack. Seems like LadyCrimson's half-elf may have inherited that particular trait from her elvish half. My character, Murzush Gro Ruhm, on the other hand inherited all the best characterics from both halves of her heritage: From her orcish half: Strength Toughness Cunning Fearlessness Resolve Devilishly good looks From her human half: ... ... ... Curiosity, I guess?

That 5% was nearly 85-90% during the 80s, 90s & 2000s. I highly doubt they "fell on their face", since most if not all our glorious childhood memories came from those ages. Plus they used to sell like hell during those years. I think you're looking back at those times with rose-tinted glasses. It's natural that the successes are remembered and failures are forgotten. I'll give you that success rates for unconventional projects were likely higher in the past, but 85% is a ridiculously optimistic figure. I don't have any hard data to back me up, but I have complete confidence that that number is nowhere near realistic. One thing I will say about the past is that major publishers were generally more willing to take a chance on an unconventional project back then. The market was still saturated with clones of Super Mario Brothers and Double Dragon and the like, but budgets back then weren't nearly as uncontrollably out of control as they are now, so going out on a limb meant potentially a loss in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or two in the worst possible scenario. These days publishers are looking at potential losses of 8 or 9 figures if **** goes south, and that's just bonkers. This has led to major publishers basically just sticking to clones and retreads of established game types with and established fanbase while the vast majority of outside the box thinking and innovation comes from small independent studios working on limited budgets. The "innovation" in games from major publishers these days consists mostly of "we crammed more polygons into it" and "moar explosions in set pieces". This ties in to the Is PC Gaming Dead thread where greylord obsessed over some mythical lack of "AAA" games on the PC. To me whether such a "lack" truly exists or not is irrelevant since that's not where the innovation comes from any more. It's the indie studios that are bringing interesting and fresh games, and while they do have a presence on XBLA and, to a lesser degree, PSN, the PC is still overwhelmingly the #1 playground and testbed of indie games.