Hurlshort

Yeah, the crafting is pretty amazing and complex. It's hard not to want to focus on all the disciplines. For example, I noticed a few of my pieces of gear were pretty low, so today I crafted a new sword, shield, belt, and boots. Now the first step to becoming a decent crafter is to research. You unlock traits by researching item with those traits. It destroys the item, but then you can craft stuff with those traits as long as you have a precious gem. I've got a few traits researched for most armor and weapons at this point. The traits vary between giving magicka, stamina, health, speed, critical and durability boosts. There are a lot. So I make a sword with a decent trait, and then I use a honing stone to increase it's damage, which turns it into a green item. I can actually improve it all the way to an epic weapon if I have the improvement materials, but at this point I'm happy with it being green. Then I go to the enchantment table. I've got a lot of runes translated at this point, and I can make glyphs at a decent level, so I whip up a frost damage weapon glyph and apply it to my sword. Viola, I have a fancy magic sword. Oh, I almost forgot, you can unlock all sorts of racial motifs that decide what your sword looks like. So I really enjoy the breton style heavy armor, and the redguard swords. There are 10 different styles to craft as.

This game is sometimes very hard. I died like 7 times trying to complete a solo instance. Finally gave up, paid a huge repair bill, and decided to try again after getting some better gear and a level or at least some skill points. I enjoy the challenge, seems better than most MMO's I've played in that regard.

Every year I teach my students about Habeas Corpus and how important it is, and every year I surprise them with the fact that Abe Lincoln suspended it during his presidency. So it's pretty hard to find a President that is perfect.

I'd probably need to read a book or two before I'd be comfortable even discussing the guy, and I'm already busy reading these gigantic LBJ books, so I don't want to commit to another president. But I'll come back around to this in a couple years. :D

I think my name is too lame. I don't even use it when I play RPG's. GD, I think we should start some sort of forum for political moderates that think both parties are ridiculous.

Of course FDR is ranked high by most academics. Most modern academics are communist/socialist/statists, FDR was like a godsend to them. He also presided over WW2, and many historians are enamored with war leaders of all types throughout the ages, no matter how evil they really were. So you dismiss the majority of highly educated scholars. Brilliant.

I don't know why it's a big surprise that people who spend a huge amount on a developer's forum end up having an impact on the developer's creative process. That's really the whole point. It becomes more difficult as the communities and the developer's grow in size, but even us Obsidianites occasionally get to interact with the big wigs.

It seems odd to send a mail order bride in 3 parts, but I guess it probably saves on postage costs.

They aren't truly pyramid schemes, because you can actually turn a profit simply by selling the products. They are called multi-level marketing companies. My wife sells Mary Kay. She made a bit of money the first year because she was actively throwing parties, but the last couple of years she has taken a small loss. However that loss is pretty much covered by the amount of product she uses, so I figure we break even.

Gromnir definitely predates the character, and he was a prolific poster on the BIS forums, so it's not hard to believe that Gaider, who was also very active back then, would use him in the game. It's also important to note that you are dealing with smaller communities back in the day. Heck, Calax has a cameo in FO:NV. And we know that Hades will be featured in P:E.

His Obsidian forum persona is based on the half-Orc Gromnir, a character from Baldur's Gate 2 who would refer to himself in third person. this is incorrect. is there Anything you has been correct about in this thread? maybe we will review. no doubt there is some stuff you got right, but... HA! Good Fun! Isn't it the reverse? A character was named after you? I can't remember, I'm getting old and my memory isn't what it used to be.

Whoa...Gromnir dropped his syntax a bit. Epic.

FDR isn't in my presidential wheelhouse, but he is ranked extremely highly in every major academic list, so I'm going to go ahead and disregard everything you are saying. Regarding Japanese Internment camps, which of course was a terrible time in our history, I actually just went to a wedding in a small town that was built by Japanese Americans after they were released. Not all of them returned to cities like San Jose and San Francisco, some stayed and became very successful farmers in the Central Valley. It's amazing to see Japanese Americans take a terrible situation and turn it into a positive legacy, and a real testament of their character.

In the future, all air ducts will be increased in size by 50% to accommodate obesity among air conditioning repairmen.

It doesn't look like bastard. I think he actually was quoted as saying 'what the hell'. That is possibly the .gif of the playoffs. I know it is early, but it will be tough to beat that.

You are operating from the mistaken impression the federal government gives a sh-t about the environment. The people in the government don't care about land they don't live near. They care about their money, their power, their continuation in office. If they have to run agricultural or other interests off that land to sell it to someone else so be it. And if they can cloak their business dealings in the pseudo-morality of helping the environment then that would just be the icing on the cake. The Bundy situation is pretty close to matching that description to a T. One of my favorite quotes is "Government is small minded people grasping for power under the guise of advancing high minded ideals". That kind of sounds like a campaign push for Al Gore

So...the Sharks look pretty good.

The EULA is probably better used to protect against a lawsuit than as something a company would use to go after someone. When a company bans a customer from using the product they paid for, they are taking on a legal risk, and the EULA is one of to tools they can use to mitigate that risk. It would be interesting to see a group of players try and put together a class action lawsuit, but I doubt you will find a legal firm interested in such a case. edit: I just realized I pretty much said what volo said. :D

Wikipedia is a great place to look for sources.

A complete rollback would be ridiculous. The vast majority of players have not exploited the game at all. I've put in a pretty big chunk of hours in the first few weeks, I'd probably walk away from the game if they did that. Not that they will.

While I agree with you for the most part, it is important to note that within those parties you have a pretty diverse group of politicians. John McCain doesn't really have much in common with your tea party candidates for example, and in California our Democratic governor is more of a fiscal conservative than quite a few Republicans.

Just to add a bit of a positive spin, the average citizen still has a lot of different ways to exert their influence on the US. Voting is one aspect, but corporations cannot afford to simply ignore the middle and lower classes. They still have to at least create the illusion that they are looking out for the best interests of the common people. Why do oil companies bother investing in alternative energy? Why does change.org ever manage to change anything? Why do civil rights continue to progress? Public pressure is still a very effective tool in this country.

Weird, I've been playing the game like crazy and I haven't heard anything about this. Although the guild banks have been down a lot over the last week.

I can do this.

I can see some criticisms of Dishonored, but I don't understand complaining about the graphics. I thought they did a great job of creating a unique style and capturing an industrialization age city.