marelooke

Especially noteworthy as far as I'm concerned is that the opening dialogue (the really first few screens of text) was also voiced and *did not massively annoy me* by being so. This is probably the first time *ever* that has happened (I generally find fully voiced dialogues in text heavy games horrendously annoying and usually wish there was a way to tune it down to only the first sentence or so, I'm looking at you PoE and D:OS)

Which ghost woman ... the one with the ghost husband? Anyway, agreed, the assassin quests are pure pazaak. Had to look the name up, but this is the one (she's part of the Vampire DLC, though has exactly nothing at all to do with that entire questline): http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Katria After the pilot the TV series took a nosedive when it comes to writing quality. It only picked back up in season 3. If you need anything though, let me know. On PC EU I am EGO 4000+ on PC US just 1000something. I'm EGO580 or so now, still trying to figure out how some things work too, I assume most things end up being explained during main/DLC quests (though I sort of wonder what is supposed to keep players engaged once those are done...) Playing quite a bit of Warframe again, they overhauled the parcours and it's mostly an improvement. The new Warframe is also simply available as a (whole lot) of boss drops that don't require the farming of keys that pop up once in a blue moon or going through an annoying questchain to obtain. Now if only it were easier to PUG Void runs and they introduced a proper marketplace instead of this annoying trade channel crap... (if I had my way I'd just scrap trading entirely, but I doubt that's gonna happen, so I'll go with the next best thing) EDIT: also played through the Torment alpha (which is part of character creation/the introduction) and boy oh boy, I don't think I've been as excited for a game in a looooooong while.

The best questlines in Skyrim are the Dark Brotherhood one and the ghost woman imo (she has more character than most Skyrim NPCs combined imho, though that might not be saying too much...), I just wish they hadn't made starting all the guild questlines so insanely "in your face". Now playing quite a bit of Defiance. I think I need to watch some episodes of the series to get a better grasp on the setting though.

I can go with that, I started M&B once, got through what passed for a tutorial ended up being none the wiser and totally confused about where to go from wherever I was, decided to Google a bit but ended up playing other games instead...

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall Censorship is never a solution and is more often abused to silence dissenting opinion than for anything worthwhile. Ignoring people only takes a bit of willpower and then there are always technical solutions. I can hardly imagine that sort of rhetoric fly on this particular forum either, yet somehow we're not screaming about Obsidian's fondness for censorship and silencing dissenting opinions... Let's be fair, this forum is very accepting of various opinions as long as they are formulated in a civilized way, which is something I greatly appreciate by the way. Moreover I visit here to talk about games, mostly, if someone starts talking (real world) religion/politics I generally stop participating in the discussion (as I do in real life) as nothing good tends to come from discussing these topics. I was merely replying to Bruce's suggestion that certain places *ought* to censor certain opinions/worldviews to (avoid) send(ing) a certain message, such sets a dangerous precedent as before long we'll be making adult websites inaccessible (totally random example, truly), because surely, nobody would want to visit such degenerate places, right? So let's protect our citizens by making sure they cannot be lead astray (also: "won't anyone think of the children!!!"). I mean, where does one stop once started down that path? And truly I expect that these people mean well, unfortunately meaning well doesn't equal doing well.

Burned through chapter 3 of The Witcher 2 in a marathon session, the clunky mechanics and UI kinda make me don't want to play through again to see Roche's path. Only took me since release until now to remove this one of my "to play" list, heh. - story and characters are great - pacing in chapter 3 seemed way off when it comes to upgrades, it just started *raining* new gear all of a sudden, to the point of being ridiculous really. - UI is (still) unpolished, hitting esc ("Back") takes you back to the game world (unexpected/annoying) while clicking "Back" in the menus takes you up one level (expected behaviour). This little glitch annoyed the living hell out of me. - combat is either: boring (casual), annoying (normal) or frustrating (anything higher), either way, after chapter 1 I put it on casual just so I could just get it over with as fast as possible. - not being able to interact with things while in combat is seriously annoying (I had to basically murder the entire Kaedweni camp because I entered a wrong door at some point in Chapter III since I couldn't leave anymore /sigh) - autosaves could use some work: saving after an automatically triggered conversation (but not before?) but not after completing a major quest step? All in all the verdict is more or less the same as for TW1: I greatly enjoyed the game despite many of the mechanics, not because of them (though imho TW1 had much better combat than 2, but I also think Dark Souls is a horribly frustrating mess, this is probably related as I'm obviously bad at that kind of twitchy block/dodge/roll combat especially when combined with clunky movement) and the game certainly improved compared to the (imho: unplayable) mess it was at launch. If I sound overly negative that's just an impression, I greatly enjoyed the game and I'm curious how they've addressed some of the weaknesses in TW3 (and how the story plays out, of course!).

That's a very sharp decline since the last expansion, I guess quite a few people were like me, give the game another go every now and again for nostalgia's sake but at some point you just give up the hope they'll actually improve upon the things you care about and move on. Judging by that graph I kinda expect the spike at the beginning of each expansion to be less and less over time. Judging by how steeply the subscriptions fell off after WoD release I'd say they ought to be happy if they still hit 8million when the next expansion is released. (I'm also kind of surprised there was no decline in subscriptions near the end of WotLK, that's when guilds on my realm started folding due to either being bored of killing the Lich King heroic, or being frustrated due to not being able to beat him on heroic...)

Sure you right...it is harmless , but its more the principle. I have an issue with associating with people who really think its okay to say " a good raping will sort her out " ...you see on the Codex that type of rhetoric is tolerated and that sometimes leads to people thinking that type of comment is acceptable outside the Codex. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall Censorship is never a solution and is more often abused to silence dissenting opinion than for anything worthwhile. Ignoring people only takes a bit of willpower and then there are always technical solutions. Moreover visiting a forum also frequented by people with dissenting opinions surely doesn't mean you're "associating" with them any more than visiting a bar which is also frequented by members of the local fascist movement/biker gang/*insert socially unacceptable clique of people here*, especially if you stay away from their subforum/table...?

I think they finally ditched the Flash player entirely, at least I notice that the HTML5 player seems to be used for everything now (old videos tended to still require Flash, but that seems gone as well now).

I've been jumping between The Witcher 2 (must be very close to the end of chapter 2 now) and EverQuest 2.

My "default" party composition was Blackwall/Cassandra, Solas and Varric (and myself, also a [Dalish] mage). Don't think there's many other characters that have much useful (from a lore perspective) to say anyway (Solas for the elf stuff, Blackwall about Wardens, Cassandra for the Chantry/mage/templar arguments and Varric because red lyrium/Hawke). Possibly interesting to bring Dorian where Tevinter is concerned and Cole where the Fade is concerned. The rest is pretty much a waste of space (Leliana gives more exposition about Orlais than Vivienne/Sera ever do and the Qunari are only relevant in Inquisition because of Iron Bull's presence in the first place. On top of that pretty much all the stuff about the Qunari/Qun you can learn from him without bringing him anywhere). I'd also be receptive to the argument that Blackwall also adds little for anyone who has played DA:O. If I had to pick a best bang for the buck party for DA:I it would be PC (female Dalish), Cassandra, Solas (romance) and Varric. Note that the above only concerns itself with the lore the main story revolves around and ignores whether the characters are interesting/well written on their own (de gustibus et coloribus etc.).

It's handwaved at some point by Solas. Generally... because magic. Bit of a shame one does not learn more of Skyhold's history, given what Morrigan mentions about the location. Then again, many of the areas are left seriously under-explored, which is a real shame. I know that for some locations it'd have been somewhat unfair given that what you learn would have been highly dependant on who you bring along, but I'd rather have had them use a more fixed party composition than settle for just not letting your learn anything interesting...

After Mafia 2 I'm not sure I can even be bothered to care about Mafia 3 in the slightest.

I think most people forgot how hard heroics were in TBC due to having run them millions of times after they acquired rather high level raid gear. So, today I ran into something that kinda shows why I think EQ2 is so cool. I was flying around the Great Divide when I spotted a quest marker. I kinda thought I had done most quests in this area before I quit playing four years ago, so I went to check it out. Turns out it was a Fae trying to figure out how flying works (Fae in EQ2 have always had slowfall but can't actually *fly*), suffice to say, I, being a Fae, was intrigued. Long story short (and lots of running back and forth later) my Fae can now actually fly! BOO-YEAH!!! As for the reasoning behind it all (gotta make sure stuff makes sense lore wise): All of the above also applies to the Arasai (= evil Fae), afaik, but my Arasai assassin isn't exactly at a level to be able to fly yet.

Cataclysm was actually the peak of WoW dungeon difficulty, and MoP actually went to the other extreme as a result, dungeons were the easiest they'd ever been. WoD dungeon difficulty is somewhere in between, but they've messed it up in a completely different way - there's no longer any incentive to do them because the loot is hopelessly outdated and you can get better stuff easily from solo outdoor content. This was once again an overadjustment, previous expansions had the opposite problem where people felt obliged to run old dungeons that had long been trivial for them to acquire special currencies. Apologies, I mixed up Cataclysm and MoP when it came to dungeon difficulty, you were right of course, though I'm not sure if dungeons were any more difficult in Cataclysm than they were in TBC, they likely just appeared as such because people were no longer used to a challenge (and especially: actually having to work together with strangers, the main appeal of MMOs for me!). The reason I think this might be the case is that we generally had little trouble with Cataclysm heroics in guild groups but struggled with PUGs. Unfortunately I was rather new in that guild at the time (since my previous one got bored out during the latter stages of WotLK) and as such was sentenced to PUG on a very regular basis, which lead to no end of frustration (due to tanks ragequitting all. the. goddamn. time.) I don't think so, I was specifically talking about cross-server dungeons as I have no experience with the "full" cross-realm thing since MoP was the final drop for me and I called it quits on WoW (for the second time, not that I had anything left there anyway, since whatever was left of my guild had much shriveled up and died by that time). As far as I'm aware there are no plans for cross-server support that goes further than dungeons in EQ2, not that it would matter very much since there is only one EU English server anyway and tossing the French or German speakers onto that same one isn't going to benefit anyone (though the whining about non-English in General chat would probably make things seem more lively ).

As someone who likes the folks she passes in the street to chatter a bit, I've always considered Beth's writing to be right on target. Most casual conversation does tend to be trite and repetitive. Anything too insightful, witty, or generally memorable would stick out in a way that street conversations that you're going to overhear over and over again shouldn't. In my opinion whether writing is "good" or not depends on its purpose, and the sorts of things you overhear in Beth games are exactly the sorts of things I'd expect to overhear if I lived in Tamriel. I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I ... what, too soon?

So now we can play a half finished game in 4K resolution and others fixing up the rush job is now easier! Yes, I'm still bitter about all the missed potential.

Actually enjoying EverQuest 2 quite a bit again. I'm one of those people that always logs off in his character's house so when I loaded the game I was immediately greeted by lots of curio of past exploits, stuff like this sets this game squarely above pretty much every other MMO out there. Of course, not everbody cares about such things, but me, I do, a lot (I also always kept my Tier-gear sets in WoW, for example, even long before you could use them as appearance gear) It's a bit hard to get around without a guild (at least when you're used to having a guild at your disposal) and the same goes for crafting, but figuring out stuff and running into the familiar is good fun, for now at least. EQ2 has quite a few problems though (a terrible graphics engine, extreme top-heavyness, lack of participation of players outside of their guilds and the fact that SOE made the stupid decision to "borrow" some of WoW's worst ideas instead of focusing on what sets their game apart of the competition, which imho is: the ability to really discover things that most people have forgotten about or that just aren't obvious as there's no big ass quest marker to point you the way). There's also talk about cross-server dungeons, which, imho, is a terrible idea (I attribute much of WoW's decline to the cross-realm group finder and the resulting death of realm-communities, combined with a focus on making everything easily accessible to everyone, because, yeah, you can't have hard dungeons if you plop a bunch of random people together in a group, that would only lead to frustration*...) * Blizzard actually tried this with Mists of Pandaria (iirc), the resulting backlash was...well, lots of people quit then. Because the general way groups went was: group enters heroic dungeon, group wipes once, tank says "FU BUNCH OF NOOBS!" and drops group, group falls apart, everybody gets to join the group finder for 2 hours again (not making this number up, it really was that bad for DPS) to find a new group, except for the tank, who is locked out from grouping for 20min (as "punishment" for dropping group), but instantly has a new group after those 20minutes... Net result is that heroics were nerfed into the ground, so the only way to find challenge in the game is to raid (actually raid, not raid finder, which is snoreworthily easy), which takes a lot of time and commitment...

Mommy, is that an angel? Yeah, so I've been away from this game for a while... After all this time I'd still consider this the best (non-sandbox) MMO I've played. EDIT: btw, I'm on Splitpaw-EU and I'm sure you can figure out my character name from the screenshots Any EQ2 players feel free to poke me if I'm on (might need to pok regularly tho, I think my chat settings are still a bit off)

Finally made it to chapter 2 in The Witcher 2 (only took me 4 years...), the definitely improved combat (and general movement) compared to release though I still prefer Witcher 1's combat. Inbetween I've also been working on my backlog of games I backed on Kickstarter but didn't get around to really spend time with, first up was Unrest. It is RPG-ish game set bleak India-inspired universe and it's all about choice en consequence of your (= the player's) actions. It's actually one of the first games with C&C where I really wonder what would happen if I'd handle certain situations differently and since it's a very short game (assuming you only play through once, my first playthrough was ~2hours, but I might have rushed things a bit to see how things would turn out...) For those who don't know you play through different "chapters" with various characters (sometimes on opposing sides of the central divide), the actions of each of them influence the fate of the nation, though what's best for the nation isn't necessarily best for that specific character... There is no combat to speak of, pretty much everything happens through dialogue. I'd say it's definitely worth picking up in a sale if you like a good interactive story with C&C though the ending exposition could have been better (eg. the fates of the different characters you get to play are mostly not touched on, which makes sense given who some of them are, but not everybody will like this) I somehow also manged to get a craving for EQ2 (which I quit playing around 2011-ish, I think), seems it's now run as some F2P thing. Going to be interesting if any of the new stuff is actually any good or the whole game has devolved into the usual F2P nickel-and-diming... Guess I'll find out once the download finishes

Not bad for EA, and a good move for those who enjoy the DA:I multiplayer aspect. But that move also makes me believe that it´s not a very successful aspect of the game. I tried it, and it came across as a useless tacked on mode, one i certainly don´t enjoy or need. Wouldn't surprise me. Personally I didn't even try it, just like I ignored it in ME3, my stance on it is that they could have used the money wasted on those multiplayer modes to give the single player campaign some much needed extra love in both games. Because, seriously, who bought ME3 or DA:I for the multiplayer? Nobody *I* know for sure... (though my sister did enjoy ME3 MP, pretty sure she'd have gladly traded it for a better SP experience)

Duel-wielding rogue the first time, mage the second. I hated the first, enjoyed the second. Combat, IMO, doesn't favor duel-wielding rogues. Whereas if you specialize as a Knight-Enchanter, you can take on dragons all by yourself. I was doing it the other way around (Knight-Enchanter Mage first, dual wield rogue second). I did find playing a mage more enjoyable in DA:I than in DA2 at least, whereas in the second game I just quit the mage and rerolled a dual wield rogue to get through the game I stuck with the mage in DA:I. I mostly started the new playthrough to see if I'd notice any differences with my new graphics card on the Nvidia recommended settings, not sure if I'd want to go through the entire game a second time. Either way I upgraded from a GTX460 to a GTX970 btw, didn't notice that much difference so far, game does seem to run smoother (no more occasional stuttering so far) and loading times seem shorter (but I reserve judgement on that until I try to load Hinterlands for the first time) other than that it looks mostly the same, I think I'll try and up some more settings beyond what Nvidia recommends.

I checked Amazon and the PC version is up for 50€ on pre-order. Big AAA game tend to be 60€ on Steam.. is that where you're getting that price from? Yeah, Steam is kinda rubbing F4 in my face all the damn time, hadn't really checked other retailers yet (shame on me, I know)...

those were the days... of spending an entire week to download a 300 MB torrent. don't miss them one bit Why, I remember when Peter was seen as a visionary, rather than someone who sees visions I almost spilled my tea just now. Bittorrent is a product of this millennium though

Finished Revelations 2, got the "good" ending. Might go through again to get the other one. Also did some raid mode stuff, but that seems to just be run-and-gun so, meh (though that time I ran out of ammo was kinda fun). Went back to an ancient Skyrim playthrough, still have 2 achievements I'm missing (one of which due to a bug...), going to try to get those. The first minigame was upgrading the gazillion mods though