Hurlshort

I'm sure they won't be able to survive long-term without artistic merit. Obviously they arent going to intentionally stifle creativity, but they have made a ton of money churning out sequels and catering to the largest audience possible. Artistic merit is simply one aspect of development, and not necessarily the top one.

I'm not sure about that. These are massive businesses, I don't think they can stay profitable just focusing on artistic merit. That's more the realm of the indie developers.

That's they real key, EA is doing this because people are paying. If consumers so no, then we go back to the old ways. But that probably aint gonna happen.

It doesn't have to be pay to win either, people drop money on cosmetic stuff all the time. I guess if the market supports it, then that's what will happen. It bothers me less than it did a few years ago. Now that I've seen a few MMO's adopt the f2p model and it not be too terrible, I figure I can live with it.

Awesome! I'll have to check it out So after reading it I checked up on him, and apparently the book isn't getting published until July. But it is available on the Amazon marketplace. It did so well on there that he got picked up by Penguin to complete the trilogy. Pretty cool to see how these e-published authors are getting picked up by big publishers.

Uh, they aren't going to distribute the digital copies and shaft the people who paid more for physical copies.

I just finished Blood Song by Anthony Ryan, and it is easily the best fantasy book I have read in years. This may be my new favorite author, it reminded me of a David Gemmel book but with a more intricate plot and universe. It was outstanding.

Actually I read distribution complications as more of an issue with the physical good, but it is decidedly vague. Which means it is ridiculous to speculate. One of the problems could also be how to patch the game, there are bound to be issues.

I watched both my grandparents go through years of pain, I understand exactly what modern medicine is capable of. I remember carrying my weakened grandfather into the shower one day and him turning to me and saying "I just wish I'd die at this point." He lived for another two years after that point. Don't get me wrong, I cherish every moment I had with them. My grandmother lived long enough to meet my daughter and that was huge, but I wonder if it is almost selfish in some respects. Now both of them smoked, and that affected their health considerably in the end. I hope that leading a healthy lifestyle will make it easier on me and my children when I reach a ripe age, but I know there are no guarantees.

I'm not too surprised the Giants are disputing it, since they have nothing really to gain from it, but I agree it's ridiculous. As a Giants fan I totally support the move, there is no reason for San Jose not to have another major sports team, they can definitely support it. The crazy thing is the Warriors (NBA) are moving to SF in a year or two, and the Raiders are always threatening to leave, so Oakland is in a tough spot.

They offered the beta to everyone who pledged enough to get in the beta. Why should they send the beta out to people who pledged $15? Those people will get the game when it is done, that is all they earned with their pledge.

It's hard to really understand where you are coming from Hassat, since I have zero interest in PvP in any way. As a PvE game, I think TOR is solid offering. It does some thing really well, and some things really badly. I'm hoping they continue to improve on it, and I'll probably find myself going back to it a few times a year to see what they've done. I don't think you are freeloading or anything, but I think you are a bit impatient about some of this stuff. It took them about two weeks to fix your artifact unlock issue, right? That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way most of the time, we are just too good at medically dragging out the lives of people in poor health.

I'm very excited about the Giants this season. The toughest part will be making the postseason, once they get there the pitching is so good that they pretty much shut down the other teams. That weird thing is how little buzz they get even though they've won 2 of the last 3 titles. Yahoo has them ranked 8th, which I just don't get. In the AL, I'm hoping the A's can continue surprising teams. Their success comes from pitching, they've simply got a great group of young arms, they know how to develop them, and so many of the AL teams have weak pitching. On the other hand, the NL has a ton of good pitching teams. I put the Nats behind the Giants until they win a title. The Giants also have a much better lineup than they did in 2011. Posey staying healthy is obviously a key, the guy has won rookie of the year and MVP, as well as two series in his two healthy seasons. But top to bottom this is a younger team with more upside than the 2010 team that won. The Dodgers are obviously making an aggressive push to win the division, but they have a lot of question marks and they definitely don't have the arms after Kershaw. So it should be a great season, I'm looking forward to it for sure.

I'm not sure how that's an issue, many of these kickstarters are going to be missing the release dates. Seems to be a lot of baseless speculation from people who backed it minimally.

Yeah HBOGo really needs to offer an independent subscription system from cable/sat. It is well worth $15 a month, but they basically limit their audience by only offering it to cable subscribers. Hopefully that changes in the next year or so, but they are afraid of ticking off the cable companies and don't feel they can compete with Netflix digitally.

I'd eat there for my upcoming hockey tourney, but I'm pretty sure my body would shut down if I tried to play after eating something from that menu. Although I'm definitely hitting up the Hofbrau for some decent sausage. That doesn't sound right, but I'm not taking it back.

I'm sure we all have things we collect, I've got boxes and boxes of books sitting in storage. But I've also moved about 5 times in the last 10 years, so it is hard to justify keeping too much stuff.

I believe Jon Basso himself is a pretty big guy, so I'm guessing he has bought into his own line on the obesity epidemic, which is to make light of it. I have a few overweight friends who really just seem to be completely accepting of their excesses. It's a bizarre thing, I hate the way I feel when I go more than a couple weeks without a good workout or when I eat a few unhealthy meals strung together.

Yeah, I'm a huge anti-smoking advocate, so it might sound odd that I wouldn't condemn this restaurant. But the smell of french fries isn't quite the same as the smell of cigarettes. On a personal level I'm anti-fast food, but I'd rather see these places change because their customer base is becoming more educated and health conscious than any forced legislation.

Like many things in Vegas, this seems like a fun place to visit once. People who eat there every day are exercising terrible judgement. It's not like the place is trying to conceal how unhealthy it is for you. I just would rather see people taking more personal responsibility for their health than attempting any legal junction on a business. Feeding the morbidly obese for free is a bit of a tough one, that might be going too far.

Actually it sounds like Ken Taylor has a legitimate complaint, given that even President Carter questioned the direction of the film. I get that it is simply a movie, and Affleck is the star so he is going to get most of the play, but it rubs me the wrong way when they distort the history.

I believe Bioware Austin handles all the TOR stuff, so I doubt Alanschu, who works in Edmonton and is involved in DA3, would have any more insight than most of us here.

WoD, this fairly deep into conspiracy theory territory. I know you are conservative and I appreciate your input on many of these debates we have, but this one seems a bit out of the realm of reason.

This isn't a political issue, it's one guy arguing with Caltrans. There are tons of veteran's memorials all over the state of California, so trying to turn this one situation into some anti-American conspiracy is ridiculous. Do you really think that Caltrans is trying to push some socialist agenda here? Come on, that's just not reasonable. I'm not sure if you realize this WoD, but I'm not a liberal. I vote for the best candidates available for the job, which means I typically split my votes between republicans and democrats. I look at all media outlets skeptically. You could really help yourself by being just as critical with the conservative news sources as you are with the liberal. Both sides have an agenda and spin news to meet it.