Enoch

As far as the actual playing experience, the New York Times is unimpressed so far. (May require free registration)

So what's the over/under on number of days before he checks into a rehab clinic? I'd say 7, if only because of the holiday weekend.

Played a little more this past weekend. A few more impressions: The camera didn't bother me until I went to clear out the back alley in the docks. When there are obstructions that tall and close together, they really need to 'go transparent' like the trees do. Some sort of indication of spell range would be nice. I'd really like to know whether my spellcaster will be able to hit the target from where he's standing, or if he's going to have to charge ahead to do so. Nitpick: It would be nice if NPCs in conversation looked down at my Halfling PC when they were talking to him (and vice versa). I had a chat with the druid where my character was staring at her crotch, and she just was staring off into space. The overall impression was odd, to say the least.

I've just gotten to Neverwinter, and I've only had 1 crash so far (on the area transition to the top floor of the WW Inn). By the way, is there a way to complete

Well, with the number of options you're given, I can understand why they didn't make much custom content for the dieties. Why bother with god-specific dialogue choices if only 2% of gamers are going to see them? They chose following FR canon (lotsa gods) over creating interesting roleplaying opportunities. My understanding from the character creation process was that the only effect from your diety choice would be if you took a cleric/pally/druid/ranger level later in the game.

I played for a few more hours last night. Finished the bandit camp (w/ diplomacy), picked up the Druid and did a first pass talking to people around Highcliff. Based on the hour I've spent with her in the group so far, I'm definitely taking the Druid's side in the Elanee-Neeshka debate. (Although I plan on avoiding any silly elf-halfling romantic subplots.) Neeshka is getting irritating; my girlfriend made me turn the voice volume down because she could hear Neeshka's selection sounds in the next room.

Certainly a giant in the field, and well worthy of respect, regardless of whether you agree with his outlook. In fact, he gets a bit of a bad rap because he was far more reasonable in acknowledging flaws in the unregulated free marked than many of the ideologues who cite him to support their anti-government screeds.

I feel like I should go get this album, if only because I grew up on a street called Mermaid Drive. Currently, I'm listening to Mingus-- Better Get a Hit in Your Soul, but only in my head, because I don't listen to music at work. (I also don't post on internet message boards. " )

So I guess I should stop selling the gemstones I find, huh?

I know that he starts as NG. I assume that if you get him converted to a Monk, his alignment shifts to LG, since Monks must be Lawful.

That's what I thought. I just got the impression from some of the earlier posts on this topic that others knew exactly when and how much influence they were accruing/losing with their NPCs.

Is there a way to display the influence you have with your NPCs in-game? Or do you have to use the debug console?

Lunch break. Vegetable soup and a wrap with grilled chicken, honey mustard, lettuce, and tomato. The soup has a disappointingly large amount of cauliflower in it.

Haven't had much time to play lately. The combat's getting a little frustrating, but that's mostly because of my party makeup. I'm currently going through the crypts in the graveyard with a level 5 group. Between the fiendling, the dwarf, and my halfling wiz/rog, the dwarf is the only one who does any real damage to the zombies. Plus, they keep diseasing my characters and I've run out of healing kits. I'm finding lots of fun loot, though.

Is that so surprising? It seems to me that it would be an object of negotiation in the contract between Bioware & Atari (and Obsidian, for that matter). Whoever hosts the community fora is going to have opportunities for cross-promotion with their other projects, user data for future marketing, etc. (They'll also have the bandwidth and maintenance costs.) For a game like NWN2 where the development of an online community of users is an important part of it's long-term success, it makes sense to plan this sort of stuff out well in advance of release.

Well, that was no fun. I hate to say it, but the injury to Petitgout probably dooms the Giants

I've got nothing against pay-to-play, per se. I just don't enjoy the kind of gameplay MMOGs offer. Really, paying a monthly fee to play a game is no different that paying for cable TV, or to join a bowling league, or any other kind of entertainment that comes with a periodic charge.

Not a bug as in a problem with the software. A bug as in the beetle familiar.

By the way, it's now official: George Allen has conceded in Virginia. That makes the Senate 51-49 in favor of the Dems.

yeah, sort of a tit for tat. "ok, i want to keep this district seat, and you can have that one." here lies another corruptive element of our system, for which i do not have a solution (i don't know if anyone does). taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> "Activist Judges" could solve this problem, if they were so inclined. The Supreme Court has required for decades that Congressional district be as close to equal in population as possible, and that racially discriminatory districting is forbidden. It's not a huge leap to say that drawing districts in bizarre shapes to turn a statewide 55-45 majority into a 70-30 majority of that state's Representatives is a partial diminishment of the political minority's voting rights (similar to that of districts that aren't of equal population). But the SCOTUS has been presented with this question several times and always avioded it as a matter for the legislatures alone. Also, some states like Iowa do all their districting via a computer formula that doesn't consider the political consequences of the outcome. California had a ballot initiative to do something similar to this a couple of years ago, but it failed.

Ah, Gerrymandering. I'm assuming, for simplicity, a single-axis model of political preferences (as in Alan's neat little diagram, but with a general "Left/Right" rather than "Commie/Cappie"), and a normal, bell-shaped distribution of the the populace. In a normal 2 candidate general election, rational politicians would race to the center, positioning themselves as close to the median voter as possible. But, elections in the U.S. are actually 2-step processes. First, there is a primary election, where candidates who position themselves as pragmatic centrists are often defeated by more extreme pols. So there is a dynamic both pulling candidates away from and towards the center. Normally, the most "fanatical and bizarre" candidates who win the primary are defeated because the opposition is closer to the median voter. But what if the district is overwhelmingly dominated by one party? If the only real threat to an incumbent is a primary challenge from within his/her own party, the incentive to cling to the median voter in his/her district is much weaker. Over the past 20 years, political Gerrymandering of "safe seats" has taken off, accelerated by computer models that make it very easy to "pack and crack" the opposition. (These terms refer to putting a huge number of your opponent's supporters into one district so that your party has a stable majority in all the other surrounding ones.) Even when one party doesn't have exclusive control of the districting process, there is often a bi-partisan Gerrymander to protect the status-quo incumbents.

Hey, lets not get personal here! The use of too few troops in Iraq had more to do with Rumsfeld's attempt to prove that his plan of "military transformation" would work than it did with cutting costs. Hell, extra troops and tanks are probably cheaper than the extra precision-guided cruise missiles, et al., that his strategy calls for.

AT requires a 2D6 sneak attack, so you need a few levels of Rogue (or maybe Shadow Thief or Assassin). My current character is heading that way-- he's a halfling Rogue2/Transmuter2. Basically, he'll be a somewhat gimped wizard, but with some basic thiefy skills and good diplo/bluff. I'm targeting him at Wiz5, Rog3, AT(the rest), but I might be tempted to get a 4th rogue level for Uncanny Dodge.

It's a symptom of our system being set up with single-member, winner-take-all districts. Nobody agrees fully with the platform of any one party (well, maybe the producers at Fox News), but they don't want to start new parties because the best they could do is siphon off votes from whichever of the established parties their outlook is closest to. The system is set up so that the best ways to enact change are by working within the existing political parties to get one (or both) of them to adopt your position. It works reasonably well, but with the marked drawback of each voter always feeling like they're doing nothing but picking the lesser of two evils (which might explain the low turnout rates). The only way to change this would be with a constitutional amendment, which takes a large majority with substantial motivation. It's tough to get the people excited about procedural matters like that. Also, it's not as if European-style parliamentary systems are without their own set of faults. When there's a party, a party, a party, a party, a party, a :crazy: party, a party, and a party all trying to forge a consensus policy agenda, the result is hardly a model of stability.

Now about 5 hours in (I'm a certified pause-whore, so I'm probably going slower than most). Had my first crash-to-desktop when I tried to go to the 2nd floor of the Inn where you meet the dwarf. When I realized that my last save was the autosave before leaving West Harbor, I decided that it was time for bed (the area transition alone took several minutes). Hopefully, the crash won't repeat itself. Story has been interesting. I'm getting the hang of the UI. So far, the level progression is too fast for my tastes. I'm quietly hoping that this was only done to get through the very low levels where one enemy crit-hit can take you down, but I'm not very optimistic on this count.