Hurlshort

First off, I'm not quite sure what you mean by taking a holiday. I wasn't going to resorts, I was spending time with family that lives in Mexico. My point is I have travelled the country fairly extensively and have never taken bodyguards. There are places I would obviously not be safe going. But there are places in the US I am not safe going, as opposed to Afghanistan being almost an entire country of unsafiness. As I've said, it is a developing country with plenty of problems, but Afghanistan is a country at war. There is a huge difference.

Mexico isn't anywhere near Afghanistan, geographically, politically, or stability wise. It is a laughable comparison, I figured WoD was just being colorful with his comment. Mexico has problems, it is still what can be considered a developing country. My own family will tell you that the government is filled with crooks and corruption. Of course we get those same complaints in the US as well. The current drug war going on is a big problem, but it is not indicative of the entire country and plenty of the problems are on the US side. My guess is it will get worse before it gets better as law enforcement from both countries work to bring down these cartels, but eventually they will succeed, as the law always does. You guys know that all this violence is in response to the government putting more pressure on shutting these cartels down, right? They are backed into a corner and lashing out, but eventually the leadership will be taken out and this will end.

Sounds interesting. If we do dating, I vote that Shryke is not allowed to take part, he's not an amateur like the rest of us.

The Bioware defense squad is out in force! Well, OK, mostly one guy. Nothing wrong with paying subscription for a single player game, so long as enough new content is being provided in return. The quality of that content is in doubt though. Your monthly subscription fee in an MMO does not mainly go towards new content. Yeah, it goes towards creating a giant swimming pool filled with money for John Riccitiello to wade in.

I visit family regularly in Mexico. There are some very rough parts, but there are also some rough parts in every major city in the US. Once you get away from the cities, it is a very beautiful country.

It's also made by people with a great deal of experience in and intimate knowledge of what works and what doesn't, MMO wise. LOTRO was designed specifically to be somewhat "limited"* as compared to other offerings but to make sure that what it did it did very well. It's been successful precisely because it did not promise the world on a platter but delivered what it claimed, unlike the other roughly contemporaneous examples like Conan and WH which had far more grandiose claims but far less actual achievement and capacity to deliver. Frankly, everything we've seen about TOR suggests they aren't going for the rather more limited but very well executed approach but for the blunderbuss/ shotgun try to hit every target at once and promise the stars approach, ie comparisons to AoC/ WH seem far more apropos. *To clarify, I'm certainly not saying that LOTRO is bad or limited mechanics/ gameplay wise, just that their approach- given the sort of thing which might have been expected in an 'epic' setting like Middle Earth- was rather more circumspect and scaled than might have been expected from other MMO companies. And more successful because of it. I agree with everything you said. I am going to give Bioware a chance to pull it off though, because they've never really done me wrong with a game.

No one has dismissed him. He worked on the Mythic side though, so I'm not going to take his word on a completely different project as gospel. The other day I was playing an MMO and I helped the Fellowship of the Ring prepare to leave Rivendell. Then I went through Moria and cleaned up the giant mess the Fellowship had made when they ran through there. Then I killed the Watcher in the swamp. All of these things opened up new areas for me to adventure in, it felt epic, it felt like an advancing storyline, and it all happened in an MMORPG. LotR Online is one of the best story driven RPG's I have ever played, and it is simply an added bonus that I get to play it with a bunch of other people.

Lord of the Rings Online features a plot that you play through, and most single player RPG's feature character building. I'm not quite sure why you are sold on them not being able to work together. WoW has also been working towards a more solid narrative, wasn't that a key feature of Wrath of the Lich King? This sounds like you just have a problem with a monthly fee. As for EALouse, the guy has very little real knowledge about TOR or Bioware. He worked on the Mythic side, quite clearly. He knows the details about WAR, which is pretty obviously a failure. EA is cutting its losses there, and he's part of that. He's upset, and I'll take his word on the Mythic stuff because WAR really did have major issues and all, but I think he's talking out his butt when it comes to TOR.

I'd say Oakland is scarier.

I like ToEE, but 5.5 out of 6 stars shows the people who rate games on GoG are completely insane.

Is Bad Company 2 on the PC? I thought it was console only. I played them all. I wouldn't bother with Vietnam, it was neat, but BF2 really outdoes it in every way. BF1942 is worth it if you are a WW2 buff, but it has aged a bit. You might want to pick up BF1943, I haven't tried it, but it is a redone version of a few maps from the original. That being said, I love both BF2 and 2142.

And they learned it all from Cobra Commander!

Wow, there are a lot of them! I have no clue which one I am, there are just too many to go through.

Not much info has been released yet, but I have seen no indication of Risen 2 being streamlined. Quite the opposite, in fact. To be fair, Risen is kind of a streamlined version of the Gothic games. Streamlined in all the right places though. I'll go ahead and wait for the North American release in January for TW2, I figure they will have all the bugs worked out by then. The original Two Worlds was a lot of fun Boo. It's worth picking up for a few bucks. Although it's completely a sandbox game, so that might not be your cup of tea.

LotR Online has apparently found the secret to success in their free to play model.

Hey, San Jose has got Douglas Murray! Aren't our goalies Swedish too? It's kind of a bizarre way to start the season, but honestly I'm busy watching baseball right now.

The Gamespot review seems to be a guy who never played the original, because all of his complaints existed in it as well. That's an odd criticism of a review. Pointing out that bad things about it aren't newly bad. In my opinion, the original sucked. Why could I not then point out that XIV sucks as well? I'm just saying it would have been faster for him to say "if you liked the original, you will like this one. If you didn't, it has these issues.' I haven't played it, so I can't really speak with much authority, but a 4.5 seems a bit severe, considering you have a lot of positive reviews coming out as well. I just think when you review a product, you should keep in mind the audience it is designed for. If he reviews Barbie Adventures, is he going to trash it for immaturity and being too girly?

The tweaks from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 rocked. Just getting rid of the terrible inventory/omni-gel system alone was a huge improvement.

Robin Hood - The new one by Ridley Scott with Cate Blanchet and Russel Crowe. I enjoyed it, I thought it was a fun spin on the legend. It was similar to Kingdom of Heaven, as long as you ignore the history and stuff, it is a great looking film with some good action and adventure. I wish the Merry Men were in it a bit more though.

The Gamespot review seems to be a guy who never played the original, because all of his complaints existed in it as well. It's always a problem when a reviewer doesn't take into account what the target audience is.

I'm not really the type to care about the combat all that much, but I was under the impression that the party based combat of DA was fairly challenging and did share some strategic elements with BG.

I won by domination last night. I was a little bummed, I was headed towards a space race victory. But Napoleon kept ticking me off, so I marched over him and he was the only guy with a decent amount of land. Ah well, time to up the difficulty. I think I'm also going to try for a small country with good defense and a lot of culture next game.

I like Bioware games, I must be a hipster

I thought the point of robots is that they don't have feelings and thus you can abuse them and work them as much as you want... Racist. More like botanist. Wait, that didn't work.

Power Armor with built in beer belly support.