Hurlshort

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.

I like the choice to liberate cities, but I liberated London and Queen Elizabeth still treats me like I've got the pox. The city-states are cool though.

What took you so long? I realized I hated it by Act II. I never did complete the thing until after Hordes came out. I still don't even know why I gave Hordes a chance, but am glad I did. Seconded. I stopped at Act 2. I did finish both expansions, which were way better.

In Risen, I went to the town first and leveled up there quite a bit. In fact I probably missed out on all the swamp quests because now I am an Order lackey, but I don't really like murky bogs anyways.

Americans don't use toilet paper, we wipe our butts with the symbol of freedom, the bald eagle. The talons hurt like hell, but I'll pay that price any day for liberty.

I've lost a few more units, but usually it is because I mess up trying to move them around because they don't stack anymore.

I'm kind of looking forward to either Rock Band 3 or Power Gig. Both have you playing an actual 6-string guitar, and supposedly you can use them to learn to play. The guitars are about $150. I've always wanted to learn to play, and this seems like a good way to do it. I'll have to watch the reviews to see which one is better for actual guitar playing. I've never dug the music games in the past, but playing a real instrument has piqued my interest.

I'm sure he is simply referring to German cuisine and the fact it will become quite popular among the ladies. It is October, after all.

I am agreeable about agreeing with some of you. I believe the aggregate will find I am correct.

In Risen, make sure you aren't going too far off the beaten path early on. It takes awhile before you are ready to handle much in the way of a fight.

When did I ever say there was an age limit on ineptness? You could even argue the opposite, that older folks are less technically adept than the younger folks. I know I am way less knowledgeable about the current stuff than I was in my 20's. I just don't have the time that I used to to stay up on it.

Stardock publishes fairly niche products. I'm not being dismissive of them, but I think you can see why a major publisher would hesitate to adopt their business model when they don't run on the same scale or even appeal to the same demographics in most cases. Wasn't it just argued that piracy hits small companies more than big ones? Not by me. As I also said, the demographic is very different. You're right - Stardock's target demographic probably all are able to pirate and use cracked games, because their niche is a group of fairly "internet-savvy" people. How exactly does that minimize their losses to piracy, again? How many teenagers do you think are playing Sins of a Solar Empire and GalCiv2? Heck, my students barely know what Civ5 is, and that is fairly mainstream. Piracy is a young person's game. I'm not saying people don't pirate Stardock titles at all, but I am saying they have less to be worried about than Ubisoft and games like Assassin's Creed 2.

Aaliyah was fantastic in Queen of the Damned. Stupid overweight bodyguards.

Stardock publishes fairly niche products. I'm not being dismissive of them, but I think you can see why a major publisher would hesitate to adopt their business model when they don't run on the same scale or even appeal to the same demographics in most cases. Wasn't it just argued that piracy hits small companies more than big ones? Not by me. As I also said, the demographic is very different.

Stardock publishes fairly niche products. I'm not being dismissive of them, but I think you can see why a major publisher would hesitate to adopt their business model when they don't run on the same scale or even appeal to the same demographics in most cases.