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Yes of course. How did I forget Judo? Grappling is one hell of a full-body workout, and most importantly, it's fun. I wonder if Greco-Roman wrestling is a thing over there? What with being Greece and all...

IMO, much like Crossfit, Krav Maga is a fad. If you are looking to take up martial arts for the exercise, I'd recommend the classics, such as Karate or Tae Kwon Do. Maybe boxing if you're up for it. That way when the fad for "hardc0re" stuff like MMA goes away, you won't find yourself out of a place to train. And from my experience with self-defence stuff, you won't really get a good workout out of each session. Self-defence is more a judgment thing first, and muscle memory second. Otherwise, just go Woldan and start picking up heavy stuff and putting it down. Hard to go wrong, and iron gyms are a dime a dozen. Just my $.02...

My bad. What I meant (and what Alanschu posted a few years back IIRC) is that from a content amount standpoint, the game was KotOR 3-5, not necessarily that the storyline picked up where K2 ended. I agree with the rest of your post. I didn't know it was Karpyshyn who wrote the JK storyline, but judging from the general poor press the Revan novel(s) -which I haven't read- have got, I guess I understand why it's the story I liked least. BTW, Hurlshot is a long time SWTOR player from what I've read, I'm guessing he's familiar with The Foundry/Maelstrom Prison and SoR plotlines.

She flipped out before or after you fixed the problem? I've found that if you can get a word in edgewise early in the torrent of verbal abuse and explain the solution, people usually calm down. Then again, some people become even more inflamed at "interruptions". Heh. Back when I worked as a travel agent, I wrongly charged this charming Brazilian lady several thousand €... and failed to issue any tickets while at it. Stupid Amadeus won't let you issue tickets unless the correct amount is charged, down to the cent. I had to make a second (correct) charge to get a useable payment order to issue her tickets. I was both scared ****less and baffled that she seemed much less preoccupied about the money than she was about making sure her seats were guaranteed. The original payment order wasn't confirmed so she was automatically refunded, eventually. That said, I much prefer dealing with the odd double charge than having to constantly demand that customers pay up after the service is booked and confirmed.

Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for housing prices to come crashing down spectacularly in the event of a bubble bursting. We had that over here, and a lot of people had banks foreclosing on their mortgages. You'd think that would mean cheaper houses, right? Think again. Mother****ers just sat on a lot of empty houses precisely to avoid a significant decrease in prices, only auctioning a fraction while they waited for the market to recover. And if it didn't and they ran out of time/money, who cares, they'd get bailed out anyway. Free market my ass. Of course that was here and this is there so the experience might be different, but "too-big-to-fail" wasn't coined in Europe.

I'm just going to comment on this real quick as others have already covered the other questions enough. Pathfinding is functionally the same, but I've experienced something that I don't remember being an issue present in the originals: when a creature cannot find a path (Iron Golems not fitting through doorways, Carrion Crawlers not being able to cross a stream) the game will often start lagging. BG2EE retains the original cutscenes, btw.

Catharine, huh? The handle sounds familiar. I think I may have run into you, or thought you were insane due to your GTN asking prices, or something... Will drop you a line if I reactivate my sub (which I'll probably do to check the expansion out, maybe sooner).

There is no irony. It's deliberate on his part and it's not new either. He's playing you like a fiddle. Don't bother.

It's my understanding that they still have the 12x Class Story XP bonus thing going for subscribers? At least until the expansion is released, too. You can avoid all sidequests thanks to that... avoiding trash mobs populating the instances is another thing, though. After leveling an Operative and a Shadow, I don't think I could go back to non-stealth classes.

You can disable that by flipping the corresponding option in baldur.ini from "1" to "0". Not sure if it's anywhere in the options menu though. (I hate that **** too btw)

Don't you usually roll a custom party anyways? I think the VA on new companions is pretty poor and mod-quality myself. Well, as with the rest of BD content, it's hit-and-miss. Dorn is good, Neera is bad. So, so bad. And so annoying I've actually developed a newfound appreciation for Jaheira. Baeloth is pretty good. Rasaad is so-so. Then again, Rasaad and Baeloth are both Mark Meer, so I'd be surprised if he suddenly couldn't do VA. Unless you mean the actual quality of the recording, as in, it sounds as if I had recorded them with my webcam mic, in which case I tend to agree. The only thing that no mod has come close to in terms of added content quality are the new areas. And those still feel different for some reason I can't quite put a finger on. Color palette maybe? They are bringing back "some" of the original cast, so it'll be interesting to see if it's a matter of VA direction or what.

Oster also said he was ~30h in and by his estimate roughly only 2/3 through. That would make it, what, 45 hours long? They also mentioned the specific number of new areas created, but I can't remember what it was. TotSC and ToB didn't really have that many new areas IIRC.

Right, right. Maybe it's the muscle dysmorphia talking, but the black guys in those pics look seriously underfed. Neither extreme is "healthy". *cough* You get points for the classic Ahnuld pic, though.

That's for mobile devices. The masterrace versions are $19.99 each. I'd wait for either Christmas or the inevitable pre-SoD sale.

Ughhh... why do they think that making things "less intimidating", splitting everything into tiny bits that are easy to digest, putting important stuff in CAPITAL LETTERS and BIG NUMBERS etc will make the game more appealing to newcomers? I had zero prior D&D knowledge when I played IWD, which was my first IE game. I loved the beautiful landscapes, the music, and yes, the combat. By the time I got to Dragon's Eye I realized I needed to RTFM to understand what THAC0 meant, how primary stats affected secondary stats, and I had to read item and spell descriptions to be able to make informed tactical decisions (which didn't work out so well back then, heh). I consider that learning process an essential part of my enjoyment of the game. Is it too much to ask that people spend a few minutes reading so they can understand what's going on instead of having everything sorted out for them with *pretty colors*? I mean, it's not like the IE UI is complicated. Victoria 2 is complicated, BGEE is simple and to the point. D&D 2e isn't exactly rocket science and they already have "story mode" for people who DGAF about gameplay. Why bother? /old geezer

Yeah, that's what 2nd Ed. 18 Strength looks like IRL apparently. Anyway, read on KKKodex that MCA is "on board" to "help polish up the writing". From the Q&A it seems his involvement is limited to playing through an early build and giving feedback. It'd be great to know if he's done some actual writing for the game. Personally I'm not impressed with the UI changes (accessibility!) but it's likely trivial to revert to at least the default EE version. On the plus side, they will be patching the new class -and logic suggests the new spells too- into BGEE and BG2EE. The Q&A:

Oster & co. talk 'bout stuff. Don't care, won't be playing this until DavidW adapts SCS.

Oh, you bet. I disagree it's low-level, though. It's rampant, all-encompassing and systemic. It's also essentially cultural. To illustrate the point, one of the -very many- recent corruption scandals involves one of the top Catalan political families, who turns out have been demanding a bribe amounting to 3% of the price of any contract with the Catalan government since its inception, if the contractor wanted to get anywhere. This is a fraud calculated in billions we're talking about. Par for the course so far, right? Then the scion of the family gets indicted, his pops, the great symbol of Catalan nationalism and fighter of Spanish oppression is called to testify as a witness (because we don't actually dare charge him), and in one of the most culturally shameful displays I can remember, he is greeted by cheering crowds of people who were waiting for him to arrive at the court, who apparently applaud that he's been abusing his power and cheating them for 30+ years. No, voting doesn't change anything because in order to make a name for yourself in politics, you need to be a pathological liar, a hypocrite and morally bankrupt so there is functionally no difference between candidates. It's these same mother****ers that ask for moar money from the ECB to cover their mismanagement, corruption and stupidity, not the loser that religiously pays his taxes and puts in 3+ unpaid extra hours every day, and gets to shoulder the burden of austerity for his trouble. But what alternative is there to voting? Taking the Bastille? Funny that the romantically corrupt, bandit-idolizing culture is the least often referenced of applicable stereotypes, btw. edit: heat melts mah brain

Time for my annual BG saga playthrough! I'm excited. The twist this time is that I'll be playing the EEs instead of my usual flavor of BGT. I'm trying party and class compositions I haven't before, so I'm going F/M multiclass (bows) with Baeloth, Dorn, Kagain, Faldorn and Safana for BGEE. Thinking of giving Faldorn a kit — SCS supposedly balances Shapeshifter for low level play so I might try that. One advantage of an EE installation is that it's easier to set up than BGT/TuTu. We'll see if the supposed abundance of bugs offsets the ease of use, but from the GOG comments, most should have been ironed out by now.

The question is one of "when" rather than "if", I think. Also, no Malgus armor in the CM yet, I wonder what's up with that. Hmm. He's a far more interesting character than cardboard Marr, that's for sure.

Work harder? Siestas? Well, let's take a look at the data [1] [2] [3] for a second. So it turns out that Spaniards not only work longer hours than, say, Britons (and Germans!* Go go German diligence and work ethos!). We are also more productive while we're at it. We also have comparable official and effective retirement ages (fun fact: we retire later than them hard-working German übermenschen). So maybe let's start revising a few of these stereotypes? Or at least reference them a bit less. I'll just use my personal example. I don't always work weekends, but when I do, I work 15 hour a day shifts, in which I have to handle a workload that's split between three people during weekdays. And I do this on a part-time contract. I barely have time to take a dump and eat mate, let alone for siesta. Of course this is illegal and under-reported, but this sort of arrangement is fairly common. Beyond that, I agree. Nobody should be in the ****ing Euro. Let northern Europe citizens decide if they want to loan Club Med south Europe banks more money, instead of having that **** decided by committee. It is their money, after all. We can't have them PIGS defaulting because, unlike Greece, the Eurozone couldn't soak it up, so Greece needs to be made an example of. *Germans still have us beat in the productivity department though

...for ultimately very similar reasons, I might add. Let's not forget that German big businesses and international financiers (Hello, Mr. Bush. Great day for genocide, wouldn't you agree?) were happy to support Hitler early on.

I love how Bruce keeps posting links that actually disprove the points he's making. He can't read, he's impervious to facts and logic, and yet, despite taking a sound beating in every topic in which he participates, he's never afraid to remind everyone of how ignorant he is. Trollish regeneration at work, I suppose. Why people keep engaging with him is beyond me...

Which rules are you referring to, in particular? The same ones that are changed literally on the fly when it's convenient for France and Germany decided they aren't such a good idea? The same rules that weren't really so closely enforced when it was politically expedient to allow Greek accession? Further, I don't know of any EU treaty that precludes national referendums or forces member countries to accept economic impositions from non-EU entities with no recourse. Illegal impositions, btw, as the IMF a) acted in bad faith, b) blatantly ignored their own Guidelines and Articles of Agreement and c) disregarded their own internal Debt Sustainability Analyses that predicted an increase in debt-to-GDP ratio as a result of the measures but released fake figures to go ahead with the program anyway. As for the first, you are right, and yet way off the mark. The Greek government isn't messing with exchange or interest rates, as those are exclusive ECB prerogatives which Greece agreed to give up when they joined the EU. "Some of their ability" doesn't mean "all of their ability", and in this case the Greek government is simply exercising its remaining sovereignty. I like the "comply or GTFO" undertone in your statements, though. Regarding the second, the only valid criteria is one of importance. If an issue is both important enough to warrant popular vote and complex enough that the people at large can't make heads or tails of it, then you have an uneducated populace that simply cannot sustain a democracy, the same way that a child that cannot handle his own affairs needs to rely on parents. So we either accept that peoples are masters of their own fate, or they aren't and must be ruled by wise men committees and enlightened despots. "Only sometimes" isn't a solution. Especially when, in this context, you don't want people to make the call and yet you expect them to meekly suffer the consequences. edit: I really need to be less of an ****