Gorth

No statistics, just wondering, maybe there is a correlation between suicide rates, demographics and whatever stigmas exists in the local communities around such outrageous and alien ideas as "mental healthcare" and "seeking help", rather than always do the acceptable thing and "suck up adversity like a man!"?

Looks like the direct clashes between Syria and Turkey have been inevitable for a long time, especially with Turkey trying to do the land grabs around Aleppo. Russia and Iran will likely support Syria to a degree (probably limit overt support from Russia). Turkey seems to want to free the IS fighters, guessing on my part entirely, to re-arm them and sic them on the Kurds. Question is, will Trump aid Turkey militarily against Syria/Russia in such a conflict, especially if the conflict spills over the border into the Turkish side of it? Of course, Trump being the moron he is, I do not doubt that he would happily support Turkey, Saudi Arabia and their IS allies, and claim it was his plan all along for a better and brighter middle-east (regardless of how many billions of dollars he has now wasted trying to suppress IS).

Not quite as bad as when I played Swtor (but then, I played that for 6+ years before putting it aside). My Guild Wars 2 level characters just keep popping up, getting played for a long time, put aside and then new ideas manifest themselves in my brain, I just desperately have to try out how it looks and works. So many alts.... I'm sure Arenanet loves the money I spend in the cash shop for character slots! A rather sinister dude, the Deadeye sniper, lurking in the shadows, hitting hard with a long range barrage of damage and fading back to stealth. Edit: I almost finished the pre-cursor for the legendary weapon "The Predator", which is a fancy rifle, no doubt introduced with this class in mind And the other new guy (girl) on the block, a "Weaver", which is an elementalist that unlike other elementalists can combine and use two elements at the same time.

London has some excellent Fish & Chips! Just kidding, one of the few things I miss from the greater London area is the variety of restaurants and take-aways.

My much anticipated Metallica concert at the end of this month got cancelled. James Hetfield sent to rehab. Now torn between getting a refund or hang on to the tickets and wait for a replacement date to be announced at some distant future time.

I can't believe it took me this long to recognize an obvious Easter egg. I've been walking past this trio several times over the last year (A meerkat, a warthog and a lion cub, cue Disney music)

There, fixed it for you. The guy is only a year younger than Sanders though, so just as likely to keel over from a heart attack before the final vote is counted. Elizabeth Warren might surprise you. She's the bookmakers favourite too... at least at the time of writing. No, not going to post link to gambling sites, but lets just say Aussies give her 1.91 times money back, Biden 4.33 (and Sanders 11.0)

It's not like Trump ever tried to abide by the law or any rules. Why should anyone dealing with him be expected to do so? (Biblical quote) "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them" I still think it was a stroke of genius on Putin's part putting him in the white house. It was the most damaging thing, short of nuclear war, he could do to the US. Sad thing is, when the US becomes the fifth major bankruptcy in Trumps "career" as a business man, he's going to drag the world economy down with him. Ah well, the world was getting too overpopulated anyway. Time to place bets on when world wide social unrest becomes unmanageable on a large scale.

It's been quite a few years since I read something that wasn't either Warhammer/WH40k fiction or technical documentation, so it was nice for once getting started on a "real" book Currently reading "The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science". Not quite fiction, not quite science, more the journey of a writer. It doesn't try to prove science wrong or alien abductees wrong, it tries to work out the mindset and psychology behind the positions that people take on both sides of the fence. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/9887992/The-Heretics-by-Will-Storr-review.html

Being a fan of turn based goodness, I gave Battlestar Galactica Deadlock a try. Not bad, even if I got my butt handed to me by the AI. I need to play tutorials for a bit I think

Ah, Spy vs. Spy. I already put up a list of the most nostalgic ones, so just some honourable mentions (I mentioned some of my favourite publishers of the age). From Electronic Arts: Archon I+II - chess was never the same again for me, although the second game was a bit different Skyfox - It was like a cold war thriller/war movie/simulation, oozing atmosphere. Alternate Reality - First crpg where I didn't care that it had almost no story and no discernable plot. Exploring was fun! Heart of Africa + Seven Cities of Gold - Similar type games in different settings. Again, exploration was a large part of the fun. My little brother at some point got Mail Order Monsters and I bought Racing Destruction set - Just endless hours of fun. Realm of Impossibility - Take that "Wistrik"!!! From Activision: H.E.R.O. - Something about going underground and rescuing trapped people was never more fun than this. Watch out for the lava! Pitfall - What is says on the tin Trailblazer - A "surreal", futuristic ball game. Fast and furious Hacker - Play it in a dark room. Pull a blanket over your head and monitor. Creates the right atmosphere for this gem of a game. Little Computer People - I didn't have it, but my brother got it as a Christmas present. This was The Sims more than a decade before The Sims. No idea how many years "Alfred" lived in that Commodore 64 Rescue on Fractalus - Early attempts at real, 3d landscape and exploration on 8bit machines. Fractals were a thing back then. Alter Ego - A game that somehow managed to weird me out. Really, really well done for it's time. Several floppies big and that's for a text only game! US Gold: Zaxxon - Side scrolling done right! Chop Lifter - Sort of the opposite of H.E.R.O. open air rescue of people on the surface Beach Head - mentioned in previous post in this thread Fort Apocalypse - Don't want to remember the obscene number of hours trying to penetrate the fortress, shooting your way through enemies and destructible terrain. Impossible Mission - After a few years of trying, it was a relief to finally hear the "Noooo!" (game had digitized speech) Solo Flight - A flight simulator that was FUN to play. Just strolling around in your little plane, taking off, landing etc. Advanced for its time. Nato Commander - Probably saw regular play for almost 10 years. This was during the cold war after all. Silent Service - I still remember dreading the engine sound of destroyers! I could probably list scores of additional games, but those sprang to mind when jogging down memory lane.

That sounds like the government

Ummm, about that *cough* About a year? gw2efficiency says I've played about 2600 hours (and died 2020 times, giving approx 0.8 death per 1 hour played ) Bear in mind, the ingredients on the base ingredient list are the easy things to get. The not so base ingredients are the tough ones to get. But, my Charr warrior is happy to carry his new friend along

Checked up a few reviews for BL3. Not that I was going to install the Epic launcher anyway, just to satisfy my curiosity. Mechanically similar to BL2, but without the story and Handsome Jack as the main antagonist. The latter is going to be a tough act to follow in any case, Handsome Jack being my favourite villain in any game so far Oh, and buggy as hell was something people seemed to agree on. So, still having a lot of fun playing Guild Wars 2. I finally managed to complete my first legendary weapon My very own Quaggan in a bowl https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shooshadoo When not playing GW2, I have a go at the old EU III (I have IV too, but never really got into it). Cheated outrageously, editing the original saved game and gave Byzantium a larger starting pool of manpower, gold and spies. Spies in particular are helpful, causing Cyprus, Rhodos, Kreta and what's their name the islands east of Athens to defect from the despicable Venetians to me. Building up mercenary forces, naval superiority too, meant I could fight the Ottomans in Europe while their army was in eastern Anatolia fighting the Timurids (and cutting off their ability to reinforce their position in Greece). I've managed to change my technology to 'Western'. Trying to reach a point where I can also change unit types to 'Western' Also trying out Monster Hunter World. I find it boring and uninteresting as a single player game, but the team missions with friends are fun

Keeping an eye on the news the last few days. Got friends living in the affected areas in Queensland (Australia has broken all the old records for start of and severity of bushfires and it's not even summer yet). Not sure if this link works outside Australia, but it looks impressive... from a distance that is. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-09/ember-attack-during-bushfire-on-the-sunshine-coast/11494188

I like unusual stuff.... unusual enough for me to like it

A bit of Metallica 2019... because my friend and I are going to see them live in Melbourne end of October Looking forward to it

Trump is like a broken clock, he might accidentally be right about something, no matter how unintentional. Got bored of the Greek Tragedy that is the Trump administration running the economy into the ground and even turned off the news when new fights repeatedly breaks out in Hong Kong. The new comedy series du jour is starring the Johnson family, Farage, and a few other comedians in a 2019 version of "Yes Minister". You have to give a hand to the script writers, even Monty Python would be hard pushed to beat it for sureality and absurdity. Got a feeling that the next *elected* PM will be named Corbyn. (yeah, it's even worse than the circus that is Australian politics, which relies more on backstabbing and nightly maneuvering)

This poll is even worse than a false dichotomy, as neither option actually solves anything. You could add Dungeons & Dragons too to the list for that matter. North American population is too overweight: Ban KFC or Ban McDonald? Same thing, banning either, neither or both wont solve the problem. Presenting no viable poll options is just trying to create an echo chamber for your own perceptions for the problem. Volourn (bless his little kanadian soul) almost got it right, except banning people wont work either. People and society is the problem and fixing the underlying problems need to start there. Addressing things like how are people that are isolated, ostracized, marginalized etc. treated? How is the mental healthcare for the population, especially for the aforementioned groups? The NRA isn't the problem, just a symptom. Cure the disease and the symptoms go away.

@BruceVC the US has spied on the rest of the world and influenced regional politics and toppled democratically elected governments to replace them with puppets for decades. I'm not sure if anyone is *really* surprised when other countries eventually try to return the favour. Heck, for two decades (at least), the US has been spying on European citizens and companies via the Echelon system (google bbc and echelon for a more in-depth art article on it). Couldn't help but burst out laughing when I read the BBC news this morning. Good on you Ms Frederiksen, one woman who is very unimpressed by Trump, there is apparently no limit to how far he will go embarrass himself. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49423968

Being in a nostalgic mood today, I guess this thread got resurrected just in time My first two purchased games were for the Commodore 64 (in 1983). A cartridge with a game of two vs two soccer. Aptly named International Soccer by Commodore. The other game was called Beach Head, published by a big name of the time, called 'US Gold'. Took my a bit to get through all the levels. I remember some frustrating late nights trying to dodge tank traps when getting my tanks off the beach. The game I spent to most time on until the age of MMO's was a game called 'Doomdarks Revenge'. It was a hybrid of a strategy game and a crpg. You started out with 4 heroes and their armies in a "fake" 3D world. No mean feat in 1985 or thereabouts. In my book, the best game ever made. Forbidden Forest was a game that managed something no other game ever did since, not even the Penumbra games, it sent a chill down my spine and gave me bad cases of goosebumps. The pacing of the building up the difficulty, the increasing darkness and tempo of the music was just genius. Elite was a class of it's own. A decent port from the Acorn BBC computer, I spent months doing trading, smuggling, getting chased by Thargoids and cursing the malfunctioning drive that left me stranded light years from the nearest system. Nato Commander by Microprose. My brother and I spend waaay too many nights sitting up and playing this, being complete wrecks the day after at school/work On the Commodore Amiga, the biggest time sink was probably a shareware game called Mechforce. A brilliant adaptation of FASA's (the IP holder at the time) Battle Mech. Turn based combat goodness with environment effects, including destructible terrain. Speaking of the latter, X-Com 3: Apocalypse share the spot with Jagged Alliance 2 in turn based combat done right. Including clever use (and destruction) of terrain and terrain effects. Master of Orion 2. Nuff said. Just my $0,25 In the 1980's, there were so many great games by EA and US Gold, as well as Epyx (Jumpman and the Summer Games franchise), it was just impossible to pay tribute to them all.

A bit of 80's nostalgia. A tribute to the madness of the cold war and imminent end of the world

Looks like the UK got fed up with keeping Iranian oil tankers hostage and let it depart Gibraltar. Mostly of interest because Trump has recently tried bullying the Australia government into joining the war against Iran that he (and the Saudis) wants so badly. I wonder if he wont try to mimic the Prussians who got fed up with the Austrians (not to be confused with Australians, thank you very much) as they kept outmaneuvering Prussia in the game of diplomacy and just went screw it, lets cut to the chase and declare war against Austria anyway, casus belli be damned.

The architecture of Orr. Not for the faint hearted (it's a long way down). Yes, I'm "cheating", using a flying mount to get up there. Surreal skies over the land of the undead.

Shamelessly copying the Bioware wikipedia page (middle paragraph bold faced by me): --- Their first game, Shattered Steel, began its life as a proof-of-concept demo, similar to the MechWarrior games. This demo was submitted to ten publishers, seven of whom returned to the company with an offer. A publishing deal for Shattered Steel was eventually signed with Interplay Entertainment. Brent Oster and Trent Oster left BioWare at that time to form Pyrotek Studios, which continued developing Shattered Steel but broke up a year later, with Trent returning to BioWare to finish the game.[5] BioWare's first game was released the following year. Shattered Steel's release was described by IGN as a "modest success" with "decent sales". Two noteworthy points were the deformable terrain (player weapon damage caused craters in the environment) and zone damage (well-placed gunfire could shoot mounted weapons off enemies). A sequel to Shattered Steel was planned for 1998 but never realized.[4] BioWare's founders and staff were keenly interested in both computerized and pen-and-paper variants of role-playing games. Their next development project, therefore, was determined to be a role-playing game. When Interplay financed "exploratory development", BioWare presented the publishers with a demo called Battleground: Infinity. Interplay suggested that the demonstrated gameplay engine would be well-suited to the Dungeons & Dragons licence which it had acquired from Strategic Simulations. Accordingly, Infinity was reworked in line with the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset.[4] This resulted in Baldur's Gate, which witnessed a development cycle of three years. During this time, the three doctors continued to practice medicine. However, in the final years of the project, the demands of development prompted Muzyka and Zeschuck to leave medicine and move into full-time development. Augustine Yip decided to continue with his medical practice. Baldur's Gate sold more than two million copies after its release, nearly matching the sales of Diablo. Following the success of Baldur's Gate, the Infinity Engine was used for the games Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series. The success of Baldur's Gate was followed by an expansion pack for the game: Tales of the Sword Coast.[6] Edit: tl;dr; what was pitched as a typical (for the time) rts game got reworked into Baldurs Gate instead. Based on memory, may be wrong, but the thinking behind it being that the rts market was already very competitive at the time.