Varana

The border is not closed. Refugees at the German-Austrian border are not being sent back, they're being registered and sent to temporary accommodations, as usual. The main goal is to prevent this happening as chaotically as like last week in Munich where thousands of people just arrived without anyone knowing who they were, why they came, or who profited from trafficking.

Really, ever since Moria, bullet points 1 through 4 (well, maybe not singing, but saying stuff) this is just how ancient Dwarven fortresses are. They're not separate items, these are the vital ingredients in any Dwarven fortress that wants to be taken seriously. Together with the ever present Dwarven addiction to digging too deep.

The original article (here) actually is really good.

I'm letting the first paragraph pass, as I don't even know where to begin. As for the support of the Syrian opposition: Sure, they had support, at some time. As I said, the Gulf monarchies (esp. Saudi Arabia and Qatar) were quite active in Syria once the rebellion was in full swing. Turkey as well. And there were parts of the regular Syrian army who changed sides. Western support was quite small. (And Israel kept rather quiet the whole time. "Supported by Israel" is, after all, a label you want to avoid on your Arab movement.) Edit: Yes, LOOOL at that article. That headline is pure misleading propaganda - no, the German army was not "called in", and certainly not because of the clash in Frankfurt. As the article itself states later on, some soldiers were put in standby to "set up a refugee camp, to help with organization, provide buses and drivers, other types of transport, medical services and equipment, anything of that kind". It has nothing to do with these demonstrations.

Ooh, someone should tell them that. After all, they call their state the Syrian Arab Republic. *speechless* I mean, whatever floats your boat, but... WTF? Elerond: Put this way, I would agree, in general terms (although I'd highlight some aspects differently). Usually, though, the statement "the West/the U.S./NATO is responsible for the refugee crisis" means that they bear the main or even sole responsibility, and I'd still say that ktchong meant it that way. And that argument is the expression of a world view which I find deeply troubling - both in its view of Western democracy, and in its desire for simplicity and easy black-and-white solutions. One remark on details, though: A main factor in ISIS' successes in Iraq, IMHO, *was* home-made: The utter inability of al-Maliki's government in Iraq to achieve some kind of reconciliation between Sunnis and Shi'ites. As the U.S. slowly left, Iran's influence grew stronger, and both this and the long-standing animosity between those groups meant that al-Maliki basically reversed the process and alienated even those Sunnis who were kind of willing to cooperate with the central government. Sure, the American policy in post-war Iraq has been a huge catastrophe plagued with stupidity, but the various Iraqi factions had their part in the whole mess. The success of ISIS in northern Iraq also has its reasons in internal Iraqi politics, not only in the Syrian civil war. As usual, in combination with lots of other factors.

Yep, that was the point. Esp. in context, with his earlier posts, it was "simplified" to the point of being wrong. "Our atmosphere consists of CO2" is also "simplified". It contains CO2 which even plays an important role, but... you get the idea. And I would still dispute that Western intervention in any meaningful sense caused the uprising against Assad. Popular unrest in the Arab states - usually against dictators supported by the West - is nothing new. Even in Syria, slaughtering the populace for rebelling is a good Assad family tradition. In 2011, after Ben Ali surprised everyone by chickening out of Tunisia, and the reform movement in Egypt gained ground, people in other Arab states followed suit. What the West did until that point, apart from supporting a few human rights organisations, was basically just existing, with the clear message "we're rich and democratic and you can, too!" The Arab peoples rose against their leaders *in spite* of Western meddling like the Iraq war, or the support of Israel. Things like sanctions and a few attempts at supporting the opposition mostly came after Assad started shooting people and torturing children. Sure, the situation now is a lot worse. But I'm not convinced that we should therefore just let dictators do their stuff because there might be even bigger idiots around (and I'm not even talking about military intervention, just sanctions and things like that). And I certainly disagree with the line of thought that because our feeble attempts at punishing Assad contributed to preventing him from crushing the rebellion, we're somehow "responsible" for the situation in Syria, and the refugees (yay, topic! )

Elerond: If you read closely, you'll see that I didn't deny *any* role of Western nations in the conflict. What ktchong wrote was that "aggressions and interventions" were "the cause" of the refugee crisis. And I stand by it that that's complete nonsense. On the contrary - in Syria, we have the prime example of what may happen if we don't intervene. The support of the FSA and similar groups by the West was a drop in the ocean compared to what e.g. Iran pumped into Assad's regime. In the early months and year of the conflict, before the radical Islamist groups turned up, the rebel movement begged for any intervention, help, money, or weapons, in an increasingly desperate manner. Actual support was negligible, in the scale of what happened. The result is what we see today - the secular and democracy-oriented opposition to Assad has basically disappeared. What we got instead was an entrenched dictator who barrel bombs his own people; radical Islamic groups, partly funded by the Gulf monarchies eager to remove Assad to weaken Iran; Kurdish separatists who are probably the most reasonable bunch in this whole mess; and complete nutcases like ISIS. After Libya, the West tried to placate Russia and China by not doing anything of importance, and now we see the effects of that. Sure, there's been some meddling here, some (mostly symbolic) support there, and the Iraq war wasn't exactly helpful. But that Western intervention was the reason for the current crisis, is simply BS - and quite patronising. The various regional groups, sects, states and so on are perfectly capable of f***ng up themselves. They don't need the West to do that. Darkpriest and your parallel with the fall of communism: With the exception of Libya, that's exactly what happens in the Middle East, and what happened in the Arab Spring. Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, even Syria and Libya in the early days - the West didn't intervene in any military way. On the contrary, the U.S. had funded e.g. the Egyptian regime for decades and continued to do so for quite a while. In Libya, NATO intervened during the siege of Misrata - yes, that didn't happen during the Cold War, but that's not the usual level of opposition, demonstrations, and so on, that's full Hungary '56 (or worse). And what we're seeing now is exactly that cycle of revolution, failing, and maybe trying again. Tunisia struggles a lot, Egypt fell back into quasi-military rule, Bahrain was crushed, Morocco and Jordan deescalated the crisis, the Saudis threw money at the problem, and Libya (with intervention) and Syria (no intervention) disintegrated. As for democratisation, the Arab Spring has mostly failed. But hopefully, it will bounce back in the future. Maybe (probably) it will fail again. But not in the end. I think that generally, we would agree on how movements like the fall of communism or Arab reform will play out. Where we don't agree, I guess, is the West's role in both of them.

First of all, though, it's dead wrong. And after that, when asking why it's being said anyway, being "anti-West" usually is a good guess.

Just posting stuff on the internet doesn't mean it's true, but I'm sure you know that. So why do it?

God, this thread is depressing.

That's very good to hear. While organic ingame character creation sounds like a good idea, it usually fails to stay interesting by the 20th time you run through creation. There's a reason why everyone kept or distributed Oblivion saves right before the sewer exit, or why the BG2 mod "Dungeon Be Gone" is a godsend. Nice to see that the game's doing well.

Can an unintelligent or semi-intelligent being be "evil"? Can they be a race in the sense of playable or NPC characters? PoE playing a Shadow: You roam Caed Nua's backyard, and every time something living crosses your path, you fall into a frenzy and have to attack it, because you're hungry. Very ... satisfying, and I'm sure not many would accept as a viable option for playing an "evil race".

Races are not evil. Races cannot be evil or good. Individuals can be. Either of them. Cultures and upbringing can tend in a certain direction which may be perceived as either one. But races are not. P.S. Oh, pleeeeaaase no Drow.

If they had called them two expansions, even more people would have whined about "DLC!" and "selling out!" and "everything used to be better!"

Also, the ceiling. :D

Are there mountains like this in southern England?

That's what he meant by "unrealistic": The hero(es) stealthily infiltrate the enemy's castle, disguise themselves as priests, sneak around, until they finally reach the throne room ... and then simply walk away and do the same thing weeks later again, and no one even notices that there's people missing and stuff? The heroes are there, they have to deal with it now. You can come back later and kill Raedric, as well, but I think you have to kill both (first Kolsc, then Raedric) in order to complete the quest that way. I think.

This. I played a (very powerplayish) BG2+ToB run with a guy from the Netherlands and one from the States, and IWD (or IWD2, can't even remember) with a full party of six from all over Germany. And frankly, it was more about chatting and doing things together than about anything thrown at us by the game. :D That disparity (casters doing lots of stuff, fighters... not so much) was even more pronounced in the IE games. As I said, I can see why coop mode may be attractive. But it's neither simple nor cheap, technology and player's expectations have skyrocketed, and Obsidian's purse doesn't have endless amounts of money in it, unfortunately.

Yep, the dialogue files say that line is for non-Ciphers.

Did you already collect the camp supplies in the Valewood? There's at least one in the north east (where you first enter from Cilant Lis), and one in the wagon at the bridge.

Itumak likes this.

That's a display bug. They're being paid fine, no need to worry. Also, for almost all adventures (maybe with the exception of "Legendary" or the like), you don't really miss out on anything that is unique. If you can't see a way to continue, better recall them instead of stopping to play.

The reason for the (majority of the) gods turning away from Thaos is, I think, his collaboration with Woedica. His open support for Woedica's return to power is a relatively recent thing, IIRC, and probably connected to the Hollowborn. That is, Eothas knew or suspected that Thaos was active in the Dyrwood not only to suppress animancy but to use this to hide his real actions, that is to feed souls to Woedica. And this he tried to stop. Thaos hadn't always been Woedica's pawn (or collaborator).

No. 1998 was sh**te. :D [/spam]

What? :D