Hurlshort

Gray Warden doesn't sound very Paladin-like. Did you consider the Spectres a paladin-like group? I thought they were more like a "protect the council by any means necessary" group. And even then, you didn't need to follow the mission statement.

I think my daughter is a zombie. All she does make odd noises, shuffle around, and sometimes she tries to bite us. What do I do?

After a few atrocious rounds of BF: Bad Company, I finally had a decent one. The highlight was jumping into a tank, manning the guns, and tearing apart a couple buildings that were concealing enemy troops. I also unlocked the M16 and I'm having much better luck with it. Under the barrel grenades are money, I've taken out a tank with them and it was wonderful.

Sorry to hear that Mus. I went rollerblading and pushed my daughter in our jogger stroller. It was pretty fun, she seemed to enjoy it and promptly passed out when we got home. I don't see why, I did all the work . I think I covered about 10 miles.

Nothing about that game has ever appealed to me. I'm confused about all the hype it gets.

Didn't we have a thread on this earlier? I agree it looks interesting.

Wierd, I hated Sin City and thought 300 was a blast.

Actually a Charles Manson MMO sounds pretty interesting.

Woohoo, Gametap is getting the original Fallout next Thursday. I'll definitely be downloading and playing that!

Not just awesome, but awesome times 3!

Heh, sometimes people quote DR and I accidently read the nonsense that she posts. GW and Battlenet are not anything like the standard MMO. They are both great ways to run a game, but not everyone wants to be limited to instances and chat rooms. Subscription numbers are growing, so developers aren't going to be backing off the monthly payment model. $10-15 a month for hours of entertainment is a reasonable exchange for most people. Movie prices have continued to rise over the years as well, and I don't think a few folks staying home will change that. Considering a month of WoW or whatever is the some price as 2 movie tickets, I consider it a fair exchange.

Mercenaries 2 is an entirely different title. That's like saying you won't buy CoD4 because GTA4 is coming out. They don't have much in common. What does Llyr say is wrong with the aiming? I'm getting the hang of it, and I usually hate not having a mouse.

Weird, Jaesun asks me for a source and then supplies one of his own that proves my point. Turbine has never released official subscription numbers, so who knows how many people they have, but they've made enough money to continue making new games, supporting old ones, and even buying their original property from Microsoft. They've stated LotR Online issecond overall in subscriptions, but I've no clue if Age of Conan has surpassed them. SOE has also managed to be fairly successful, at least enough to keep building EQ2. They were even confident enough to buy Vanguard, which might be considered a competitor for EQ2, and put that on their Station Pass program. So you have Blizzard, Turbine, SOE, Funcom, and NCSoft all doing fairly well with their MMO strategy. Sure, SOE has lost the crown and taken some lumps, but they don't look to be folding. So this seems like a fairly reasonable business decision for Bioware and EA. As for a single player KotOR, I can see where folks are disappointed. I think they should at least make it an even trilogy before entering MMO territory. But hey, I'm stoked, I love MMO's.

Actually, the gigantic release of Funcom's Age of Conan makes it clear that the upper limit for MMO subscribers is really unknown. Plus, MMO's do taper off over time, and those players tend to look for greener pastures. WoW is king right now, but this KotOR Online is probably still years away from release, and who knows what the market will be by then? You have quite a few MMO's going strong right now, and by strong I mean over 100k subscribers: WoW (of course) LotR Online EQ2 AoC (impressive start, not sure on lifespan) EVE FFXI Lineage 2 I'm probably forgetting a few, and there are some that manage to cling on to enough people to stay in business: The original EQ, Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, D&D Online, Vanguard, SW: Galaxies (I think this one is ending)...

That's a tough question. I know quite a few folks who are enjoying the post-20 content, but they are more comfortable with the grinding nature of MMO's. I don't see that changing. I do imagine they will clean up the bugs and add some content for those levels over the next year, but I don't think they will change their entire design. 10 hours is probably about right for the first 20 levels. There is pretty decent re-playability though, a stealthy character takes a very different route to the end than a warrior character. I played through it three times and it wasn't until the third time that I started getting bored with it.

I played it for the first month of release, as well as a bit of open beta. It's a beautiful game and it really catches the flavor of the Conan books and the best parts of the movies. It is different than any MMO out there in terms of setting and gameplay. The setting is more adult, and I'm not talking about boobs, it's just a very gritty world. Slavery and cruelty are very common themes throughout the game. The gameplay is much faster than other MMO's. I'd compare it more to Guild Wars than anything else, but it still is fairly unique. That being said, it's still very simple. I played three different characters through the first 20 levels of Tortage. This part of the game is well done, in fact I've compared it favorably to many single player games. The purchase alone was worth it for that part of the game for me. But after level 20 I really lost interest fast. The game loses its purpose after that and becomes fairly grindastic. The level cap is 80, so you can see that Funcom is pretty set on the treadmill game design. So I'd say get it if you enjoy the setting, they really pull it off. Also get it if you have the patience for an MMO grind.

I don't think we are getting dialogue videos for the same reason movies don't show a 30 second conversation as a trailer. They are sticking to the fireworks, it's not a conspiracy, it's just standard advertising. I think if someone is really worried about dialogue and RP, they will probably have to wait for folks who have played through the entire game. Also, they've given some pretty decent information on the character creation and life in the vault. That doesn't seem like they are avoiding RP information to me.

I bought Bad Company jerks. It's awesome, and I've made new friends so I don't even need you guys anymore! Ok, I lied about the friend part, but the game really is awesome. The single player campaign is solid and fairly humorous, and the MP is a step up from CoD4. The destructible environment really amazes, there's nothing as satisfying as bringing a house down around a sniper's head with under the barrel grenades. Plus, vehicles are a nice change, loading 4 guys into a jeep is almost as good as a warthog.

That Washington Post article is an interesting read. But despite the wild events, reviewers aren't biased, they just have their own opinions. That's just life. Find a reviewer that shares your opinions, if it's so important to you. Reviewers don't really make much money either, the events are one perk in a relatively low paying job. The consensus is that Fallout 3 will be good. That's not surprising, the consensus was that Oblivion was good and so was Morrowind. So I don't know why anyone is surprised by the positive hype.

Seriously though, I hope that was a joke by whoever wrote that thing. It's scary to think there is someone that emo over the FF series. I like the games, but wow. So...no one is going to play BF: Bad Company with me? It looks better than CoD4.

I enjoyed the Resident Evil films. The last one left something to be desired, but I wouldn't say it was terrible. I also really liked the FF: Spirits Within movie. I'd say that's it. The rest are only enjoyable in a campy sense.

You can make it through this Xard. We are pulling for you.

Hellgate isn't pay to play. It's pay to play with certain parts, but the core game is free.

I'm pretty sure Rove's political capital is dead. Nobody wants to touch the guy.

I'm not sure anything can be compared to WoW. It's way to early to tell if Conan has stamina, I know quite a few folks that cancelled after the first month. The game isn't built as solid after level 20 and that may hurt their subscription numbers. EQ2 manages a steady rate of subscriptons, and they manage to sell expansions every 6 months, so I think it's doing better than most people think. I would guess that it pulls in about the same money as LotR Online if you factor in the expansions and the extra fees Sony charges for everything.