melkathi

And in that they differ from the male npcs how exactly?

They take other species' genetic material? Sounds almost like the Genestealers Tyranids got fleshed out and their evolution and gene gathering got further looked at over the years. 1993 in particular saw a lot of Tyranid love with Tyranid Attack for Advanced Space Crusade and the novel Space Marine by Ian Watson. They showed very clearly how Tyranids take genetic material to evolve the swarm. Of course after the popularity of Starcraft, GW had grounds to rethink the appearance of the Hive Fleets. (especially as the 'nids of the early 90s looked a bit silly) That SC2 is moving closer to 40k is only natural: Andy Chambers wrote most Tyranid stuff for 40k and now is the Creative Director for SC2.

Well, 4 was just going to be an expansion for 3. Enter the Dominatrix. Then apparently the content became enough to justify turning it into a stand alone title and push its release back nearly a year. We'll see. I guess from a tech point of view we wont see any advances. But possibly they'll improve on the world.

My guess would be that GW wasn't so trigger happy back then. It was only after StarCraft that they realized just how much money others were raking in with basically their ideas.

Dead State first combat alpha video:

It's also about teasing RC, the fan turned forum moderator / community person. Awesome guy

Well, hope you do give the game another chance. It is a very itneresting experience once you get past its failings.

What really made me warm to the Witcher was stumbling through the town at night, drunk like a pirate crew on shore leave, and trying to fight off things in dark alleys. Loved the bleak atmosphere in that situation.

Yeah its around that part of her body. Seems as if the textures are the wrong way round, with the belt buckle being on top of the actul undies. Never played a sith slavekeeper, so never met that npc myself.

I'm hoping they don't pull a Frozen Throne this time and derail the story just so they can announce an MMO. I felt the whole of Wings of Liberty (and thus the expansions in turn) were only meant, storywise, as world-building in anticipation of a MMO. After all, already in WoL they scaled down from the "epicness" they always seemed to aim for, to tell a much more personal story which did not call for a "And you have vanquished all your enemies. Everyone is dead Jim. But once we make a sequel we'll have to figure out how to bring people back to life." I think they are trying to make a more gradual evolution in the story towards the MMO type world with the required loads of factions, locations etc than what they did with Frozen Throne.

That is a fair analysis. I like Led. The long dungeons were a pain... searching for the ladders to take you to the next level... And we all hated Monolith (read: evil publisher) for what they did to the game.

Care to share opinions? Bought it last year, but still haven't played. I loved that game. I am very fond of the characters and did enjoy the magic system. The world design is interesting. Of course j-rpgs aren't everyone's thing, especially not if made by westerners. The devs were a great bunch though and it was fun hanging out with them on the forum.

Going to try out The Missing Ink. Seems promissing enough.

Or way too much experience If you do a speech every other day for years, then there will be little nervousness left. For us normal people though... I got lucky. I was a best man at a wedding without speeches

I'll swap over to the NA server. As I said in the PM, I'll be out of town from Friday morning until Monday noon (graduation for my Masters (yay)). So if you play this weekend, Lephys will have to fill in for me

Heh, have you tried any of the Liaden Universe books? Best described as "Pride and Prejudice meets Star Wars..." Nah. Starwars no longer is something that labels things positively for me Is it space opera? I prefer my scifi to at least attempt to create some sort of (pseudo)scientific bit. So if it is just a "there are spaceships and lasers" but other than that it could have been any fantasy setting, then it probably isn't for me.

I can only tell you what isn't going on: war changing.

Sounds like a lot of fun, Hiro. I kinda envy you a little bit

Not really in character and the storyteller is too nice to really say no to players, especially if they are new to the setting. So we ended up with a jerk simply trying to ruin everything and making the first 5 minutes of the session last 3.5 hours.

I'm reading a Steampunk anthology right now. It has no lasers and had no swords so far I loved Pride and Prejudice, that pretty much no swords in it either. Nor do I remember it having lasers.

I wasted my time today.

We played an introductory session of Vampire: the Requiem today. It went very badly. Now I'll have to nicely tell teh storyteller tomorrow that I will not be present the next session or any session thereafter as I truly have better ways of spending my Sundays. I hate players who actively try to sabotage the team...

Just that "et cetera" is not a colloquialism. It is a latin phrase that survived to this day and is far from what you try to make it out to be. Perhaps its a sort of "language barrier" or a cultural thing. Over here in the old world, there is nothing strange about that scene you linked. Far from it, a high ranking military man, to prove being above the rabble would make sense to be using a latin phrase instead of saying "and so forth" or something like that. After all, it is part of how those phrases did survive. If you would be talking about the "thou" and "thy" we were plagued with in so many games (I tried replaying Vampire: Redemption... god, those dialogues were painfull), then I could understand the criticism. Or if we were talking about teh blizzard tendency to build in a fake jamaican in every game, that could be seen as immersion breaking as well. My own pet pieve for example is Leliana's obsession with shopping, which is a far too modern thing for a setting that otherwise tries to be dark fantasy. The use of et cetera on the other hand is part of the world they are trying to depict and unlike "thou" not a complete anachronism. But it may just be a location thing. The Witcher is more based on central european culture than on D&D and therefor as a setting it may just be more attuned to our reality over here and fail to strike the same chord over there.

Which leaves us with Planescape: Torment and ... Alpha Protocol as the only RPGs with good writing? But the example you are mentioning kinda is realistic. In a situation where someone is being victimised you only have two choices: help them or look the other way. What did you want? Option 3: join the tormentors? That isn't very realistic either.

I haven't even finished The Witcher 1... Luckily what I did play of it I did in German and not English, which, from what I heard, made a huge difference. There is one thing that always bugged me and I could never figure out. When leveling up a skill - let's say for example my *wooshslashwhirl* attack used against many weak opponents - is the bronze medal upgrade I chose cummulative with the silver medal upgrade? Or should I, wherever possible, use bronze uprades for skills I wont want to strengthen further and hold out for a better upgrade I'll be wanting down the road? If I got a +10% damage and then take a +20% damage, does that turn into a +30% or is the +10% wasted as I could take the +20% without taking that first? (numbers in example completly random)