Stephen Amber

Tron 2.0, Warcraft3, and NWN are the only games I've played lately.

Irrational Games is prolly the best bet for BG3. One of the Irrational head honchos is a self proclaimed old school d&d nut, so it makes perfect sense to me they would want to persue the game. And Bio is huge, but they will still need Atari for a while yet if they plan on making or subcontracting d&d titles as Atari holds the license to publish such games, I believe. Anyways, it's good to see Bio work with decent people rather than scumbags like those they used to at the now defunct interplay.

David Torn: Seven door #3

Super Mario Brothers Super Techmo Bowl Zelda Ghosts and Goblins Contra Ring King Metroid Double Dragon Mike Tyson's Punch Out Blades of Steel(hockey) Super Techmo Bowl is, to this day, a funner pvp sports game than most of what's on the market.

I would like it for Way Way Off Topic to stay as un-moderated as possible. Server operators can get in trouble for "stalking...death threats...whatever" on their server. 'Nuff said.

I would not cry if Off Topic was totally eliminated, frankly. If history proves anything, it's that sooner or later this part of the forum will become a political maelstrom of hatred, divisiveness, insult and name-calling. Not to mention stalking... If I remember right, one of the denizens of the old Black Isle off topic section(the least productive forum in the history of the net prolly) sent a picture of himself nude to an underage girl. Real classy... Of course, stalking can occur pretty much anywhere on the net, but that place was especially conducive for it. On the plus side, the Black Isle forums also had movie and literature sections which were just grand.

Window's XP prarie wind

I must commend you on your excellent taste in literature! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thx Most of the Smith/Dunsany stuff has been out of print and hard to come by, though over the last few years a handfull of small publishers have brought back most of Smith's major works(including a nice volume of poetry), if you can find their obscure websites... I think someone re-released Dunsany's Jorkens, and that will likely be the next work I will persue. In sci-fi I like Aasimov and AC Clarke.

Lord Dunsany: King of Elfland's Daughter Clark Ashton Smith: Zothique cycle... and numerous other short stories, such as City of the Singing Flame.

? That last post.... unbelievable. All the conspiracy B.S. that has followed Interplay (and Obsidian) through the last few years has been unreal. It's like a nancy drew mystery. How JE's polemical skills serve as a model for others to follow and make great games is also unclear. To get a job yes... to make a decent game? Shut the boards down. All the NWN2 guys are where they should be: the Bio boards.

One post from a thousand! hurry hurry!

yes Josh quit... quite the publicity stunt and now he's where? midway games(?) working a universe away from rpgs... - rock star -/+ rock star + rock star

Interaction with fans is'nt part of their job description. I'm sure if they had some clause incentive ".0005% pay increase after 500 posts", or something, that might be different. It comes down to the predilection of the individuals on the team. You have natural polemists like JE, but he was one of those rare exceptions. He was really more interested in presenting what he thought to be unassailable arguments, and then defending them. He simply enjoyed arguing... I mention him specifically since he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the "mood" shall we say of the old Interplay Boards, in which the fans came to expect this free flow, this interchange, of information. Maybe people expected that to carry on here, even though he's not a part of Obsidian. *shrugs* As to why others around here choose/chose not to speak up, that's their business. Sports/Rock Star is'nt really that accurate of an analogy. Novelist might be better. Or ship in the bottle maker... har har Introversion, patience levels(1000s of worthless posts to wade through), work load(no time),... these folks have plenty of reasons for not posting. And it's certainly not recreational for them(cept for JE), since, unlike fans, they have to be carefull about what they type.

Stick a fork in them... If the designers are'nt gleaning anything of value from the forums, as seems to be the case, then they serve no purpose. And no, a long winded lecture telling them buck up and thicken their skins probably is'nt going to help.

2. Troika never had a forum and never paid much attention to their fan base and look where they are now. This is obvious enough, but Tim Cain did'nt rely on a fan base or message boards back when he came up with Fallout in the mid 90's either. I know that all the people at Codex and NMA trip over their tounges and basically choke on themselves when lauding this game, but they had nothing to do with it. For any decent games(not necessarily hugely financial successes) with boards and high developer/fan interaction, you could probably name just as many without...