Hurlshort

It's a good idea to know the law when you are in a different country.

No f2p until the fall, but I believe you can start a trial account and play up to level 15. Given the unique storylines, that can actually give you a fair amount of gameplay if you level a few characters to that point. You might be surprised at how much you like it, quite a few people I know where reticent, but ended up having a blast.

Even Guild Wars 2 has a pretty strong narrative to it, and that is a very free form MMO.

That sounds unnecessarily complicated.

So how do you think the people that create the games feel about that?

You don't actually see MMO after MMO failing though. It is a high risk genre for sure, but there are quite a few successful MMO's running right now, and many that have been running for years with no problems. So doing an MMO wasn't really a bad idea, it was pumping soooooo much money into it that it had to be a huge hit to justify itself. Meomao, you understand that you represent a very small minority of the actual customer base, right? Like a super small one. We all do, all of us who spend time posting on forums are just a vocal minority, we don't actually represent the larger target demographic that Bioware is currently after. I figured that out after the original Dragon Age added that ridiculous blood splatter effect. And you know what? When I sat in line for ME3 I listened to a bunch of folks talk about how cool it was to button mash their way through Dragon Age 2, and they PREFERRED it to the original. That terrified me, but it also made sense. Heck, just look at Project Eternity. It has been super successful, but it still only has like 50k backers. Bioware is selling $2 million plus copies of their games. We won't really know until DA3 comes out and we see how it sells, but I just don't think you are going to find the majority of those customers sharing your complaints.

My wife is doing much better, but they still don't know why she got pancreatitis. She might be able to go home tomorrow if she keeps improving, so fingers crossed. They gave her a liquid diet lunch today and she looked a lot better after that.

I noticed Tarna there, I hope he's doing ok, we haven't had an update in awhile.

I'm glad it didn't go much deeper, I actually deleted it immediately so I can wait for the real thing.

I was very happy that my soldiers felt like they had some character, while still being a blank enough slate for me to build stories about them. That is a difficult thing to accomplish. I'm not sure what is going on with Morgoth. I know he has a duty to be the board cynic, but it's almost as if this game has turned out too good, and it has broken something inside of him. Get well soon Morgie!

Well, the demo pretty much confirmed my suspicions. This game will join my list of the original Xcom and JA2 as best games ever created. I know it was just a tutorial, but it's pretty clear once they take off the training wheels that this is the real deal. Can't wait to jump in to a full game.

Isn't Dishonored coming out in a few weeks?

I know that GW2 is F2P. But it allways been. I'm not sure where you guys get the F2P from. I'm pretty I payed 60 euros for the thing.No subscription fee =/= F2P. Just to be clear, before you guys give other people the wrong idea. >.> Yes, we are talking about subscriptions. I believe TOR initially sold over 2 million, so it did get off to a great start.

The one thing I know is don't trust the media. Both liberal and conservative sides are after ratings first and foremost. The radio is the worst, they really seem to just make up garbage regularly.

They should announce that they are bringing on Prosper as a partner, or at least an art consultant. I'd quadruple my pledge if I heard that!

My wife is in the hospital with pancreatitis. Basically she was having stomach pains and it kept getting worse. They are running a bunch of tests, typically this can be associated with gallstones but they haven't found any yet. I'm not too worried yet, hopefully they'll have some answers tomorrow for us

Foreign - This was Bush's biggest weakness during his term. Obama has improved foreign policy by virtue of not coming across as arrogant, but his actual policy implementation has been painfully slow. He is very cautious in every respect, from the very slow troop pullout plan to his comments about other countries. Romney has already had a few big missteps, and he's barely even started to address foreign policy. I would have to call Romney a step backward. Domestic/Economic - Obama has failed on this front to make any major headway. The big problem is we need a president that, as WoD already mentioned, can work with the opposing party for the betterment of the country. I've been unhappy with Obama here, but I'm not convinced Romney can do better. I'd jump in front of a bullet for a bipartisan candidate. They don't seem to exist anymore. I'm really not happy with either choice on this issue. Security - I'm calling it a draw because both candidates will be forced to trim expenses here, but I believe both will heed the Department of Defense as much as possible. Social - The real reason I will vote for Obama in 2012 is because he came out against discrimination when he dropped his support of the Defense of Marriage Act. Sure, his VP kind of pushed him into it, but he did the right thing. If Romney wants my vote, he needs to stand up against discrimination as well. I can't get over these civil rights issues, the Republican party needs to get on the right side of history here.

Critical reception is how it is received by published critics, and ME3 fantastic (it scored even higher on consoles.) http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect-3 TOR has a more mixed reaction from fans, but again it still has a high critical score. http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic I know many of you don't place much importance on things like the metacritic scores, but the publishers and investors do. They don't hang out on message boards reading user reviews, this is what they have to go on. They also go on sales figures, which all have good numbers there. Dragon Age 2 had a significant drop off compared to the original, by the way, so that is closer to a failure. DA2 was also developed quickly and more cheaply than the original, so if investors and publishers think that score trade off is worth it, then they will turn out another one like it. This is a business. Also TOR as a WoW killer was always a ridiculous idea, no one from EA or Bioware ever said it was supposed to compete at that level. The expectation was probably at least a million subscribers in the long run. They initially exceeded that, then they dipped below it. Now they are attempting a new business model in order to right the ship. Read the TOR threads here if you want to see some positive feedback. There are plenty of us enjoying the game.

It's funny that you mention Guild Wars 2 when talking about TOR, it is a free to play MMO. TOR is struggling to establish itself, but it is an extremely good game. Like many MMO's, it needs to figure out how to be successful within the confines of a certain budget. For example, they had to cut a chunk of their staff a few months ago, but they were also operating with a much larger staff than many other MMO's. Mass Effect 3 was a critical and commercial success story. To a lesser extent so was Dragon Age 2 (which I hated.) Bioware is clearly targeting a broader audience today, which sucks for many of us, but doesn't actually mean they are failing.

Welcome aboard! Ron Paul would be a better candidate because he would raise important questions and hopefully push the Obama administration to be better. But his chances of winning would be incredibly small, he'd struggle just to keep the Republican base and the independents he brings to the party are not enough to offset the losses. It's a similar reason I wanted Gingrich to win. He'd never win the general election, but he is the only politician in the mix that has a history of balancing a budget and working effectively with the other party. He would challenge the Democrats on those issues, hopefully making our current President a better one. This Romney campaign hasn't really done anything except trip on itself.

You have an odd definition of multiculturalism. That is not how it works at all in the diverse regions of the US. Honestly listening to some of you makes me feel like I live in a Utopian society or something. People in the Bay Area are immensely proud of being Americans AND proud of their diverse native cultures. I'm a 30-minute drive from any type of community I am looking for. If I want authentic Japanese, Indian, Persian, Russian, Vietnamese, Greek, or French food I can find it. I get to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Chinese New Year, Ramadan, and the 4th of July every year. I can go to a Buddhist temple, a mosque, or any Christian denominational church and feel welcome.

There won't be many people working on this, the number thrown out was a team of 20. You can bet that quite a few of those will be splitting time with other projects, so 150k a month should be enough to cover labor and overhead. Marketing is also a huge cost, as is voice work, so cutting those out helps a lot.

Here is an article Chris Avellone did about publisher's and Kickstarter on Time's Techland: http://techland.time.com/2012/09/21/project-eternity-chris-avellone-interview/

I've yet to beat the boss in FTL though. That fight is not fun.

As uneducated as the unemployed welfare recipients who leach off of taxpayer money? Typically, yes. I feel bad for both groups. They are usually raised in an environment where education is not valued. It is difficult to rise above that.