Hurlshort

I do like that my scout sets up a spawn station. One, it gives me something to do other than sneak around with my sniper rifle, and two, it is a pretty good match for the playstyle. I can sneak into a nice spot behind enemy lines and have my squad cause trouble.

I'm not sure what you mean. Most MMO's I've played take 100's of hours to level to the cap, even when focused heavily on that goal. But comparing that to the time spent at the level cap. I wonder what the percentage is of players that cap out? I rarely reach the level cap in MMO's. I can never tell if I am in the minority.

Actually that looked like the GW starting area to me. With a healthy does of bloom.

I think you will be happy with the decisions made for Battlefield 3 then. It isn't a complete return to the awesomeness of BF2, but it's a nice marriage of what worked in BC2 and BF2.

I'm not sure what you mean. Most MMO's I've played take 100's of hours to level to the cap, even when focused heavily on that goal.

Battlefield 1942 is where it's at yo.

Hey, I wasn't claiming mine would be up by November 1st I have a lot of Halloween decorations actually. I will probably put up the Christmas stuff during Thanksgiving week. I'm very excited that we have a nice big room for a tree this year.

I'm ok with putting up Christmas decorations as early as November 1st. You figure they can replace the Halloween decorations, and Thanksgiving decorations are lame.

I much prefer a bobblehead and an extra $10 on the price, myself.

Exactly, I really play MMO's in the completely opposite way. I love them because I can log in for a little bit, do a quest, and then log out. Sometimes I just log in and chat with friends. I also have little desire to reach the level cap, for me that means the game is almost over until they raise it. I'm playing for the trip, not the destination.

I'm thinking it is less about Obsidian and more a situation where if Bioware does need an outside developer, they will need to stay within EA. Bioware is also so large at this point that it seems unlikely they will need to outsource again.

Yeah, that was originally why I got tired of WoW. I wanted more fun PvE content, and all they seemed interested in was balancing PvP and adding raids. I never took part in a single raid in about 2 years of play. By the time Burning Crusdae came out, I had already found an MMO that was more focused on casual gaming.

Yeah, I finally broke down and ordered one. They were still available at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago. It's a lot of dough, but I can see myself playing this game for a long time, and I like having a shelf of CE's.

Is that the new one? It looks a bit meh, but I assume it still has a lot of development time left.

I'm actually not all that excited. I keep thinking about what it will be like to start the game. I will be a prisoner, I will break out by some chance of fate and just happen to learn skills on my way to the daylight, and then I will fight a few wolves to get to the first town, where some underwhelming quests will be offered to me. I don't know, I will still pick it up, hopefully I'll get excited in time. Uhm, I can understand not being excited about Skyrim, but your criticism basically sounds to me like "I don't really like open-world/Bethesda titles". Why are you buying the game then? I thought it was more of a "I'm tired of the same exact starting scenario in every Bethesda game." I need to be in a certain mood for open world games, and I'm clearly not there right now. Maybe I will get there by November 11th.

I know what you mean. Earlier this year I was on the way to work when I heard on the radio it was the 20th anniversary of the beginning of Desert Storm/Gulf War. I almost wrecked. How could that be so long ago when I remember all that so clearly? You know it never occurred to me that in a lot of our discussions on teh Gulf a lot of people I'm talking to don't remember the firt Gulf, let alone Iran-Iraq. Huh. Today I was teaching about the Crusades and religious fervor, and I tried to use Al-Queda as an example of fervor. Way too many kids gave me blank stares. I'd say half of them had no idea what I was talking about. There response to me was "We were only 2 when 9/11 happened!"

I'm actually not all that excited. I keep thinking about what it will be like to start the game. I will be a prisoner, I will break out by some chance of fate and just happen to learn skills on my way to the daylight, and then I will fight a few wolves to get to the first town, where some underwhelming quests will be offered to me. I don't know, I will still pick it up, hopefully I'll get excited in time.

It was made very clear to the testers that our NDA is still in effect. My guess is it will not be lifted until the end of beta. It makes sense, they can control the information that the press releases to an extent, thousands of testers are much more difficult to manage.

Agreed, I never felt like I was grinding in LotRO to level. Same thing with Rift, actually. The story components have improved greatly in MMO's. As for the rats spawning and the next guy running in, that is a tough one. Sure, we all want to make a marked difference in the world. Single player RPG's are able to make it more apparent that your actions have an impact. But with the use of instances, MMO's have gotten considerably better at creating the illusion that you are changing the game world. In the end it is about how willing you are to let your imagination carry you.

While the red parts are a bit obnoxious, I don't see why it should bother you. That ad doesn't follow you into the game, and it is an ad for the expansion to the game you are playing.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/36...ta-Preview.html Another pretty big preview site. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/20...ublic-part-one/ As well as Rock, Paper, Shotgun http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/v...blic-Hands-On.2 And the Escapist as well.

Anecdotal evidence (i.e. my own experiences), so far none. If you have some really antiquated, obscure (and unsupported) hardware, you might have trouble finding drivers, but anything released by most popular brands is updated a long time ago by now. Haven't found a game or application yet that hated W7 x64 more than it hated my hardware. Very old stuff can run on Dosbox or VirtualPC anyway. Yup, that's about it for my experience too. I don't see any reason not to run the 64-bit version. I have to do a clean install to upgrade to x64, right? It's probably time for that anyways, I suppose.

When I am alone, sometimes I fart on my hand and smell it. Is that what you mean?

Apparently the press embargo is being lifted today, so you can expect a flood of information in the next week. Here is IGN's hub: http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1210147p1.html I am still under the NDA, sorry.

So far it's great, much better than Vista. Cleaner, simpler, faster. It also made networking with my wife and our printer super easy. I'm running the 32-bit version. I'm tempted to up it to the 64-bit version, as I have 6 gigs of RAM and I know it can't handle that. I'm just not sure what the potential drawbacks are. The only glitch I see is when I open my games folder, I have a bunch of broken icons. Some of them say Everquest 2: Desert Flames and some of them are blank. I can't delete them or anything. I read online that the windows cleaning utility can get rid of it, but apparently that has been retired because it can break your OS. :/