Gorth

Like Volourn I got 100's but mostly DVD and less than 10 blu-rays. Simply becaue I don't have a multi region blu-Ray player, so not buying any movies in that format

I doubt Bioware can say anything that would excite me particular much as this point. The NGE (New Grind Experience) killed any fun that may have been left in the game mechanics department. Only thing that makes me keep an eye on what comes out of the PTS eventually is that the first boss fight allegedly is designed by the guy behind the Revan fight (Temple of Sacrifice Revan, not the Yavin 4 mini story Revan "fight").

Just when I thought I had completely forgotten how to smile... Not sure how I ended up at that video. Opera is not normally my thing, but google/youtube probably remembered that I did some searches for xyz got talent in past years. A stunning performance from a young lady (9 years old participating in the "grown up" version of the show). http://youtu.be/qDqTBlKU4CE I ended with this wide, stupid grin that I couldn't get off my face again, no matter how hard I tried to be grumpy.

Somehow I just got this image in my mind now that I can't unsee... Trump sitting in his tower with a Palantir in his lap, listening to his Masters words, knowing nothing escapes the all-seeing eye of Putin

I bought this old Infocom Adventure game once upon a time. Can't remember the exact name but I think it was Starcross or something similar. I never beat it (that was before the internet). I think you needed a chemical engineering degree to get some of the puzzles

I do disagree, because looking at most things in complete isolation misses the point *for me*. Causes and effects is what interests me (hence my interest in history in general). Bin Laden was already a militant person looking for a cause before Soviet presence, which wasn't an "invasion" btw (Western bias shining through) but an intervention requested by the Afghan government. Before that he was being a good, rabid Sunni slaughtering civilians in Shia villages as the pawn of the Pakistani intelligence service. Finding a new cause more interesting than butchering villagers in Afghanistan he fought there with the mujahedeen indeed and used the Saudi and US funds to build Al-Qaeda. What turned Al-Qaeda into the "terrorist" organisation (because until then they had been "heroic freedom fighters") was the fallout between him and King Fahd over who should protect Saudi Arabia after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Fahd decided to invite the US Troops (Bin Laden was adamant his Arab fighters from the Afghan war could do the job) and the result was an undying hatred of both the Saudi monarchy and the US for daring to set foot on the land of Mecca and Medina. Killing Americans (and westerners in general) became priority no. 1, even more important than killing Shia Muslims. If you want to look for a cause for the "Terror organisation" Al-Qaeda, the first Gulf war is a good place to look. And yes, Bin Laden was an avid follower of "Qutbism" (see previous post) and Al-Qaeda had many members from radical Egyptians, not just disgruntled Saudis. Without his leadership, it fragmented and reverted to its "base nature", killing Shia's again became a priority (leading to a break between groups like Al-Qaeda who wants to kill westerners and ISIS who wants to kill Shias).

Sorry Bruce, but in this case you missed the target by a few light years. AQ (and ISIS by extension) is rooted in Saudi history, or rather in the history of the house of Saud and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The founder of modern extremist Islam was Sayyid Qutb. I'll leave it to you to study the history of those people, it's quite enlightening and leads directly to the modern day conflicts

Bought a six pack of beer for myself, then pulled out my work laptop. Never was a fan of "commercial" holidays whose purpose seems to be revenue boosting and nothing else

You are probably thinking of the heat wave they had in NSW (which seems to be over now) I live in QLD. The temperatures (33-36C) are normal summer temperatures. It will get cooler in the late autumn. Edit to add: PSA: That would be approx. 91-96F

That's around 18.3C according to Google. I don't think my AirCo can even get the temperature that low inside at the moment, regardless how long I let it run.

Never got to play Mordheim the board game. Did get to play some Necromunda though. Still got my House Cawdor warband (fully painted) in storage somewhere. Would love to see a PC game version of it.

Should you ever play on Harbinger drop me a message. 'Macroth' on imp side or 'Blind Justice' on pub side. At least pub side I would be able to hook you up with some nice people. Unfortunately I don't play much on TRE anymore, although I do pop in sometimes in the early mornings my time (that would be early to late evening Fridays and Saturdays European time). Sort of fits nicely with server depopulating and my real life day about to start.

Hmm.... it's not really a fair comparison, because the rose coloured nostalgia glasses does compensate for some of the technical weaknesses of older titles. So listing the crpgs that left the biggest, lasting impressions on this greybearded gamer. In no particular order: 1. Nethack 2. Ultima IV 3. Temple of Apshai I left out my all time greatest game favourite 'Lords of Midnight' as that one is genre hybrid which is hard to really classify. Should probably have a category all of its own (turn based exploration-strategic-warfare-roleplaying-game).

Much to my surprise we actually managed to find 16 people yesterday. 16m is tonnes of fun and poor Styrak bit the dust (16M HM SNV)

Friends and the social stuff is the only thing that keep me (barely) interested in the game at the moment. Going to grind a few max level alts over the next month, but it's infinitely more fun when doing it with aforementioned friends. Class balance is at an all time low with so many problems that you despair just by thinking at where to start listing the problems, nothing new to do with friends/guildies in the game besides uprisings and a warzone for the last two years... it's like dealing with a patient in a state of coma. Will it ever wake up and try to interact with the players again?

A Decade of Death... Somebody compiled a list of Australia's deadliest animals over the decade 2000-2010. And the "Winner" is: Who would have thought. Lets exterminate those beasts for the safety of all Australians! Same numbers broken down by state: Yeah, guess which state I live in

Not trying to turn this into a politics thread, but he would probably also claim the credit for daylight savings

Who would have thought it... an uprising actually posing a challenge? We sure had our (the little pub side guild I'm in on Harbinger) with the bonus boss in Destroyer of Worlds (a boss named 'The Caller in the Dark'). This was in HM though, I wonder if he's just a tough opponent in story mode. We actually had to swap a few character alts to get the right team composition to beat him (2 gunslingers for the 35m range, commando healer and shadow tank). Gunslingers are safe from his AOE damage when more than 30m away and only have adds as a problem. Poor healer had to run back and forth healing tank and us gunslingers when adds had been chewing away at our health and yes, they do a lot of chewing So we took turns using shields, diversion and knockbacks to keep them off us.

Nature is so blasted overrated sometimes... woke up at 4am when the Kookaburras started. Didn't stop until 5am. That's when the pigeons (aka "flying rats" locally, being for all intent and purposes rats with wings) started and didn't let up with their infernal noise until 6:30. Not a cat around when you need one Kookaburra sound... https://youtu.be/UXA0-YAoo9Q

I think Trump suffers from a small male reproduction organ complex and wants to compensate by building a wall larger than the one in China

Playing a bit of Pillars of Eternity. Went into a lighthouse Defiance Bay. Bad idea Need better preparation for that.

While they would probably never come out and say it, my personal suspicion is they have been stalling for time for a long time. Ever since around the introduction of the DvL event. Failed attempt at crowd control of the customer base?

5.1 details have been released... To summarise: Old gearing system, split in PVP and PVE. In PVP you would earn commendations and could buy gear. Turn in old gear and more commendations to upgrade to the higher tier. In PVE you could earn commendations (which was renamed data crystals because commendations were too confusing) and buy non optimised gear from vendors. Doing operations could give you tokens to buy optimised gear for. Bioware thought this was waaaay too confusing for people so they simplified it. Now you can do certain activities which earns you a currency which will enable you to buy a token for. This token, together with another currency earned in another way can be traded in for gear (with set bonuses where applicable). To upgrade this gear, you can trade in the gear together with more of the latter currency. The latter currency is entirely based on grind. In addition, you can also run operations and with luck, get a token from the first bosses, last boss is a guaranteed drop. This token, like the previous mentioned one, can then be traded in together with the other currency for optimised gear (with set bonuses where appropriate). Upgrade process is similar if wanting to upgrade lower tier token gear. Much, much simpler way to gear up, yes?

I only browsed a few pages back, so not sure if mentioned already. Love it or hate it, Mass Effect 2 is available for free (doesn't get much cheaper than that) on Origin (the 'On the house' deals)

As Infinitron said. If I remember correctly, Knights of the Old Republic 2 used to be "Project Delaware"? Edit to add: Which in the past lead to many funny suggestions what to do when running out of US States. Annexing Canada was one option