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I'm not insulting you. I can't afford it - I have 2 warning points already. Fun in games is also the only requirement for me. Unfortunately -for this discussion- "fun" like "unplayable" are subjective notions. See, the problem with your stance is that, no matter the arguments I make, no matter the specific shortcomings in games I point to, no matter the PR falsehoods I remind you about, you can always fall back to "well, that's like, your opinion, man. I had fun with that one". I don't care if you had "fun" with it. The point is, I had to drop Binary Domain because it suffered from the console port syndrome so bad that playing with a mouse is all but impossible. Voice recognition was bunk, too. I had to drop TFU because of similar reasons, on top of the game's writing being especially terrible in a genre renowned for its general lack of quality in that regard. I had to drop Civ4 because it had a memory leak so severe that the game would either crash constantly or slow to a crawl in long games. I had to download a cracked exe for FO3 as Securom thought I was a pirate and prevented me from running my copy. I had to drop ME3MP because my favorite class, the Vanguard, is bugged so deeply it's unplayable (yes, unplayable as in getting locked outside of the map for the whole match), and Bioware hasn't fixed it even after stating in the last patch notes that it had been solved. Those are just right off the top of my head, I'm sure others have similar experiences. I guess they were "playable", in the same sense that a car can still run if the A/C is busted, the lights don't work, but it's not the product I've paid full price for.

Oh, I see. No point in presenting facts because the dudeness is strong with this one indeed. Screw falsifiability, I have an opinion! So yeah, it's always the stupid consumer's fault for not enjoying the endless stream of craptastic, bug-ridden, generic repackages, after all, you do! Good faith, business ethics and plain old shame are worthless concepts from barbaric times, but piracy is a CRIME and y'all filthy pirates are the scum of the high seas. Anything else is just like, your opinion, man. You can try clothes on before you pay for them, and clothes don't start to suck or stop protecting you from cold after you wear them for an hour or two. And if they did, you could return them for not working as advertised. (FACT) edit: agreed about kickstarters (to an extent) and the point about piracy as a "tool" for anything other than getting stuff for free. But that's not what I was discussing.

Yeah but under the old thinking, this was already accomplished by keeping "our bastards" in power. They could be used to fight proxy wars, and they expanded "our" influence, while keeping local undesirables in check and enforcing stability. Their human rights records weren't so good, but that's realpolitik for you. With the new approach, you have formerly stable countries thrown into chaos, potentially or overtly hostile elements filling the power vacuum and, for all intents and purposes, diminished influence both regionally and globally. What's the idea?

A rip-off isn't only a game that "doesn't work". Rarely a game does not work at all (even though this does happen with some bull**** DRM systems) -- mostly it's just bugs preventing the game from working as advertised, the serverity of which varies from title to title. It's also the product not living up to the expectations created, explicitly, by the people charged with promoting it (the Casey Hudson/ME3 ending example). This is an already ludicrous concept (puffery) taken to outrageous extremes. The thing is, the industry is used to really, really low quality/consumer satisfaction standards, and with mainstreaming it's getting worse (!). If you are sold rotting fruit or spoiled meat, you'd be an idiot not to return it, even though you could perhaps still eat it and not die. If you are sold a piece of clothing that completely loses color after washing or tears after wearing it once, you can return it and get a new one or a refund. Same thing with most tangible goods. A game? You are out of luck, there is no physical evidence to push your claim, and you can't go solve your grievances with the publisher or developer face to face either. But on the other hand, they insist piracy is "theft". Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

We both know it's no use trying to rebut the "moral" aspect of piracy, because that's not its raison d'être. You said it yourself in this very thread, even if it was just paraphrasing someone else. It's not about justice, it's not about consumer rights. It's about convenience. People pirate because warez is cleaner, easier to acquire, and to top it off, it's free. Everything else is just an excuse or an exercise in self-deceit. Now, there is a lot the industry could do to attack the real causes of piracy, and that sure as **** is not pump out half-assed sequels every odd year, protected by ever-increasingly obtrusive DRM schemes or ****ty forced-online activation platforms. Good to have you back, btw. I know I always end up picking on you but... seriously? Sorry if I don't fit into your resigned goody-two-shoes consumer land fantasy, but I don't usually accept being ripped off. Ofc, I never preorder or buy on release, but still. That's just not a very good mindset to have.

Looks good on paper. But then, Iraq, Libya, Egypt. So probably that was the MO until '91, but hardly anymore. I have my own ideas (well, not really mine, I'm not that smart) regarding why, but I'd quite like to hear your opinion. What's the master plan behind this radical policy shift whose result is, invariably, political instability and, consequently, economic decline or outright collapse?

Truly one of the mysteries of the world... http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/06/the-absurdity-of-usisraeli-relations/

I'm a sucker for Paradox LPs, your excellency. Will be following this one closely as you diplomatise the **** out of these infidels.

Well, I was thinking something more along these lines.

Not necessarily a "traditional" MMO like WoW or TOR, but something like Planetside. I'd buy that. Err... maybe I wouldn't, right away, considering how bad EABIO are at solving basic problems of the online genre such as connectivity issues. But yeah.

So little love for Victoria ITT. P'dox weekend on Steam means 50% off so I think I will finally get around to giving Vicky2 a try.

Another MP DLC announced, and still no actual patch in sight (unless MC can correct me). I guess it's nice that Bio is trying to keep the game interesting by adding new content, but I'd like a bit more support. The tech kind.

That figures. There is no Nobel Prize for Mathematics. Rumor has it good ol' Alfred was pissed at some mathematician for scoring with some girl he had a crush on or something equally apocryphal. (Come on, Obsidian! you should have spotted that one instantly. I am disappoint.)

Aliens vs Predator (2010). I don't understand what everyone seems to have hated about this game. Great atmosphere, and playing as a predator or alien is no longer a walk in the park, as it was in previous installments. There is something immensely satisfying about leading a bunch of xenos into a colonial marine outpost as a predator and picking off the remains. I'm loving it.

This. At least D3 can fix the major issues plaguing its release (ie. server issues, bugs, etc.). We're almost 3 months since ME3's release, and the ending still sucks donkey nuts. And the multiplayer problems haven't been addressed either. Poorly designed and unreliable store, ridiculous connectivity issues, mad lag, glitchy gameplay, etc. Most of those are in the game since day 1, and EA has done bugger all about it. Seriously, if anyone is still undecided, they should avoid this **** like the plague. It's hard to imagine that Blizz will handle problems worse than EA has.

I haven't made any arguments, only counter-arguments, so they don't represent a stance other than "it's not as clear-cut as you make it to be". I don't really have a -moral- stance on freeloading, I just accept it as a fact of life. On a personal level I think it's fair to reward effort and encourage further production. On the other hand, I don't really agree with the accumulation of money as an end in itself and the idea that it's a good thing to involve money in everything, under threat of prison or fines if need be. I really wish I had a more manichaean answer for you, but alas, I don't.

Oh, no you don't. You don't get to dismiss opinions and arguments with a wave of your hand and an insinuation that "it should be obvious". You are expected to articulate and explain your arguments, or at least reference them. And it doesn't matter whether you mentioned physical goods or not, because the debate about IP is an entirely different beast. No matter how much you repeat yourself, they aren't going to become one and the same any more than the earth is going to get flat. Nice. Which are these "most" countries you speak of? Downloading for non-profit purposes isn't illegal many countries, as far as I know. Of course, you can just dismiss those as "uncivilized", as you see fit, right? Hint: that's an informal fallacy. Yeah, I guess that was unwarranted. They must have software pirates also in Somalia. I was simply pointing to yet another appeal to emotion in Hurl's post, with his "pirate isn't something positive" comment as the connotation there clearly comes from high seas piracy. Again, equivocation. Or do we know of any (software) pirates that have hijacked a server room at gunpoint and held the sysops hostage for ransom? Didn't think so. Because making a copy of such goods costs exactly zero and doesn't deprive anyone of anything directly - and to prove that there is indirect damage you need to prove that the freeloader would have paid for it otherwise. And at no point I've said it's "ok" to be a freeloader. But it is impossible to calculate the effect that freeloading has on a given system, be it positive as some folks claim or negative as the industry insists. And it most definitely is not comparable to theft.

Seriously, I know you are smarter than this. In a transaction between two individuals, where tangible goods -or services- are being exchanged it makes sense to talk of thievery. Do not equivocate the issue. This is not thievery, it's freeloading. It's just a tad more complicated. So can we just call things by their names and leave corny appeals to emotion out of it, pretty please?

But it is immoral. I'm not sure how you get around that, legality withheld. Someone creates something, they ask for compensation in exchange for that creation, and piracy means you take it without compensation. Pretty simple. The word pirate is used for a reason, it is not a positive term. Because we are dealing with intellectual property, not actual physical goods, that line of thinking is obsolete. No longer valid. Now that your illegal = immoral theory has been refuted, I'd like to see something a bit more solid than "but it's still wrong!" before I take that to heart. "Because I say so" isn't usually accepted as an argument in morality discussions. And frankly, I'm really thankful to pirates for providing cleaner, easier to use versions of software I've paid for. I have a few unopened game boxes lying around which I probably wouldn't have bought if I hadn't known I could turn to the scene to find a workaround for obtrusive DRM, or forced digital distribution/authorization schemes. So, for me, pirate does not have any negative connotations, per se. Unless we are referring to the Somali kind.

I'm not sure what your point is. If you make an order by mail and it never arrives, does it make any difference whether it was due to malice or incompetence and laziness? My point wasn't "either everything works flawlessly or I feel entitled to take it for free", but rather, that when pirates offer a product that is, in fact, better, easier and faster to install/uninstall and use, and more convenient than the original retail, the industry is definitely doing something wrong. You know what's funny, I really am one of those shafted customers. I wouldn't be bothered in the least by an EA server fart if I actually had the superior warez version installed - chances are I wouldn't even be aware there is a problem. So not only his reasoning is bunk, but also his assumptions about me. Heh.

Do you always herp when you derp?

On a slightly related note, EA servers seem to be down. As a result, users are locked out of their games -you know, the stuff they paid for- especially those that actually paid more for one of those Collector thingy editions that came bundled with DLC that needs authentication every time the game is booted up. So, apparently, the more money you give these people, the worse they treat you. On the other hand, if you pirate, you get the better product, 100% hassle free. It's funny 'cause it's true. But what really boggles my mind is that you still have people pop up and defend the rights of these suits, when they are perfectly happy to trump -paying- customers' rights in return. Have fun getting shafted, I guess.

Doesn't seem to work that way on the Internet. Read up on Kim dot Com's case, they were able to bust him because there's alleged proof that they not only knew that illegal **** was going on in their servers, but also actively encouraged it to make money. If it were as simple as you say, there would be no online hosting services when, in fact, they pop up like mushrooms. @delfosse: it's not that there's no freedom in the West (which is only true in an absolute and meaningless scale), but rather that no one really cares about that **** anymore. D:

Carnifex and especially Paladin are basically sniper rifles when fully upgraded. They weigh way less than that Widow or Black Widow and pack some serious punch. Can't have everything, which is a good thing I guess. In SP where lag is not a factor, I've found the Graal is amazing. Charge the gun -> release the shot -> Charge yourself -> unload a second blast right after coming out of the Charge. With projectile delay you'll be landing 3 attacks with next to no delay which is enough to bring down protected mobs instantly. It's also pretty accurate over long distances so you don't need a backup gun. The downside is it's fairly heavy. As for the ninjas, have Liara or Kaidan prime them, storm to Nova -> Charge -> shotgun blast to the face. I find enemies that can't be staggered such as Cerberus turrets much more troublesome. Those are responsible for like ~90% of my deaths or something. Been trying some Gold matches lately, branch out a bit from the Asari Adept biotic bomb spam on FBW/G. PuGs are generally terrible. Doesn't help that my gear -and skill- isn't up to snuff and can't carry the team myself. :/

I liked K