Gorth

Western intervention... didn't someone say something about being doomed to repeat history? Libya, helping one tribe overthrowing the ruling tribe and settle old grudges. Heading towards becoming a failed state. Iraq, helping the Shias overthrow the Sunnis. Country destabilized to the point of becoming a failed state. Syria, helping a one minority trying to overthrow the other (ruling) minority, making it a defacto failed state in it's current condition. Practically a playground for every regional powers proxy war and settling of scores. Sometimes you just can't rush things by pointing a gun at people and tell them to be "be happy". A desire among the locals for a change of balance of power is not the same as a desire for a different kind of society.

I think the last two achievements that I pursued actively were the "Jump the Rockshark" and whatsitsname killing 500 kolto barrels in the Manaan flashpoint. The former simply because i found the idea funny and the latter because of the title, which I've plans for ("All Natural"). I would have loved the Grave Robber title too for a scoundrel (finding the appropriate relics while having the "ghost buffs" from the ghosts on Yavin), but I read that it's rather buggy and you are likely to go through all the steps without getting the title. Read up on the dulfy page on the 4.0 changes. A mixed bag, but looking forward to datacrons becoming legacy wide and that retro actively no less. Time to find the last 3 Rakata power cubes on Belsavis so I can get a complete collection (found 1 on my very first play through of the game and put in my storage bay, not figuring out what it was for until 2 years later). Edit: Nope. It was a previous gfx "upgrade" from a while ago. According to the patch notes, they added those filters to emphasize the ambience of planets. Think Photoshop correction layers Everything got a bit of bloom, Tattooine got extra bright, everything on Hoth turns blue and the screenshots with my Sith Warrior uses some kind of "Ash cloud" overlay to make everything appear dark and sooty. I think some people have posted fixes to ini files, so you can remove those effects and the rendering underneath those layers are relatively normal.

Is that from a dev stream or did you get in on a closed beta??? Just so weird seeing "mastery" instead of Aim, Cunning etc.

*Sigh*... sometimes I'm really tired of Bioware lying to your face. Not talking about them using the "classes should have skills important to their role sooner" excuse to remove skill trees (and then announcing that one of the single most important tank skills, the gap closer wont be available until level 61), but their latest stunt with the graphics changes being marketed as an "improvement". Sure, low end machines may experience better frame rates, but lowering the overall gfx fidelity is not an improvement. Reduced number of frames for background animations, creating a rather noticeable "slideshow" effect, from anything more than 30 meter away. Level of detail that is now way too low. Texture and object pop ins now happening waaaay too late. Heck, I wiped to a trash mob yesterday because I got butchered by "something(s)", which didn't appear until five seconds after I was dead (and you can't target them either until they are done popping in). Whats the point of having high and ultra high settings if the game completely ignores the settings. Never had performance problems before. Still don't have that, but now the quality just went down the drain. Anyway, todays character, Female chiss agent A'zz'ure from the Harbinger. Specialist in all things toxic and venomous (Lethality Operative) It actually started out as an idea where I just wanted to use those boots. Love the little dagger and pistol tucked away in them No, Kaliyo is not about to keel over from sunstroke, it's a weird fish eye perspective happening when things gets close to the side of the camera lens.

I know, I said it was time for new toons, not old ones. Plans... never bother with them Nothing "special" about this guy, just a bit of nostalgia. When I started playing, it was when f2p was brand new. I actually blame this very thread (earlier incarnation of it) for luring me into trying the game in the first place. You could create 2 characters and chose between 3 races, human, cyborg and zabrak. I liked the game enough to get the RotHC expansion pre-order the day after and became a preferred status player for a few weeks. The first two characters, which i still have were a human (my current "main" guy) powertech tank and the archetypical trooper guy, complete with cyborg implants. The fellow below was my third attempt at creating a toon and of course had to be the third available race. Being a bit of a conservative Sith, his only concession to the cartel market gear is his lightsaber, which is from the old space pirates pack. Everything else, right down to his red saber crystal is crafted or looted. Of countless alts, he's one of two who got named by the random name generator (the other being a chiss sniper) Prowling a dead world, hunting for glory, credits and monolith kills... Yelling to Vitiate: "Oh, oh, I see, running away then. You yellow bastard! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!"

Removed a handful posts that looked like a nervous octopus had all hands on deck... or keyboard, or whatever

I know. That's what caused my frustration, I got it once before, like 2 years ago on my old Powertech tank. Ok, enough old characters, time to introduce a few of the new ones. Say "Hello" to Rodriquez the Gunslinger on Harbinger --- "Wut? No Nuka Cola???... *sigh* Diet Somthing it is then" "... Bar Keeper, one of my Rishas has abandoned me, need to restore my double vision... Quite a few more coming over the rest of the week.

Must be Gorth's new improved algorithm at work! Heh, yeah. **** doesn't happen if I have something to say about it!

Curious to see what they do with the data crons once the primary stats dissappear from the game in a few weeks time? Bugs, bugs everywhere! Well, only a few amusing ones that I actually got screenshots of while playing the last few months. Take that Han Solo, your Kessel run is nothing. Gorth (or rather, his jedi alt which is now on the Jedi Covenant) can fly so fast that he is doing two space missions simultaneously! Someone forgot to pull the hand brake. Bike is floating away... You can never have enough of a good thing (this is actually a well known bug). Two Rishas No, you really can't have enough of a good thing. Between two Lanas, two Therons and 1 Gorth, Revan doesn't have a chance. The next one was rather spooky actually, again my old assassin tank went data cron hunting on Alderaan and I remembered from my old toons that there was a cron somewhere on a platform in a lake. I'll be damned if I could find it again. In my frustration, i diverted myself by climbing the highest mountains I could find and try to get an overview of the surrounding area. Well, much to my surprise, I was suddenly "floating on air". What was his name who boasted he had built the Norwegian fjords in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy??? Looks like one of his colleagues left some invisible scaffolding on Alderaan when building the mountains there. I tried to capture a sense of how high up I'm actually driving. Testing the limits, I wanted to drive to the nearest Republic outpost and see if I could troll a few pubs a bit. Sadly, after a while I hit the edge of whatever i was driving on and plummeted to an ignomeous death. Such is the life of an explorer Taking off... The world is my playground! (you can just spot my tiny assassin in the middle, having adjusted max camera distance from 23 to 100 percent in settings)

I've been practising my screenshot techniques a bit. Not perfect, but better. An old toon of mine getting ready to descend on the unsuspecting planet and "de-mystify" the Voss. Cool anger personified... But, next up is a handful pictures of funny bugs. Then more toons after that

Not going to give the specifics, but lets just say I've been around the block. Never did JD Edwards though. Been the architect of stuff for tens of users to thousands of users. Mostly doing Microsoft stuff these days. Smaller in scope, but way less boring. 25+ years professional experience helps when selling yourself

Gorth what do you do for a living again? Software ERP software to be more precise, but not everyone is familiar with it (the term), despite most people in the industrialised world being slaves to it.

Only use I can find for basic commendations these days is really just for companions. You get the Ziost gear which is superior almost for free (like the old 153 gear from the Oricon mini story). And when they have the basic com gear, I simply just grab something from the vendor and wait for the timer to expire so i can sell it back for a handful credits. Hence why I referred to it as the new classic coms previously, since companions are not going to need them either apparently in a few weeks time, relegating them to complete irrelevance. Heck, if you could at least buy crafting mats for them like you could once upon a time with the space on rails coms.

Getting closer to finalize my "exit plans" for Germany, having decided on a start date in my new job, giving me a definite goal for when I have to be in the UK. In the process of packing... sheesh you gather a lot of stuff over time and I thought I tossed out a lot when moving from Australia

They must have done some optimization of the asset database. My jaw almost hit the keyboard when Alderaan loaded in half the time... Sure... So, commendations are being renamed to crystals. While they said they wouldn't introduce conversion rates or strip people of their commendations this time, I still expect a "devaluation" to come soon. Another shade of crystal is probably easier for the PR department to sell to disgruntled customers than telling them that basic coms are the new classic coms and ultimate coms no longer buy top tier gear, you need mega ultra plus coms for that. No that commendation gear was worth buying in the first place, but at least all 3 roles got screwed over equally with SoR, not just tanks. Still curious to see how they are going to convince people to play PT/VG tanks now that they intend to take any and all gap closers away from them until level 61 (the abilities that Jug/VG tanks gets at level 2 and Shadow/Assassins at level 14)

Not laughing at you, but with you I haven't really bothered with dailies/weeklies/com grinding for a long time (don't really need the credits and expect to get screwed over again with the coms/gear levels when level cap gets raised again). Most of the time has indeed been experimenting with characters, concepts (looks and themes) and the futile quest for "uniqueness" in a game with finite options. It's like starting a new game of Baldurs Gate in the past, rolling, re-rolling, repeating until not too unhappy with the result and *then* go adventuring. Did cheat a bit and took some of the ideas and transferred to old toons, but otherwise, the time invested in the game since 12x xp started has been trying out ideas and leveling up those I decided to stick with

I guess even a Gurkhas need a tea break... Seriously, they have an impressive track record.

Looks like a drop of water, the moment it hits the surface.

OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE WE'VE GOT THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE AND THERE AIN'T NO WAY WE'LL LOSE IT THIS IS OUR LIFE, THIS IS OUR SONG WE'LL FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE JUST DON'T PICK OUR DESTINY 'CAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW US, YOU DON'T BELONG

The history of the Germanic tribes is a long and convoluted one. The French, whether they like it or not are just as German as the "Germans". So is just about everyone living north of Rome in Italy, being descendants of Germanic tribes. So, which of the German peoples is the most German one? Nation states didn't really appear as a concept until the middle of the seventeenth century, so before that time there's little point in thinking of countries as something like we know them today. Loyalties (both secular and spiritual) of people were to rulers, leaders, lords, lieges etc. "Country" was an alien concept. Rulers fought over provinces and resources, not over "nationalist" objectives. If you look at a map of Europe from 1000ad (i.e. about a thousand years back), the Holy Roman Empire is not a country. It's a loose union of 30+ independent realms, including several from northern Italy, eastern France, Holland etc.

I still think it's my duty as a loyal Republic citizen to replace that %§!&%$§ Twilek that calls herself Supreme Chancellor with a proper, responsible administration. Sadly, the the game never allowed for such an option

This is the exact anti-German sentiment that worries me...its not based on fact or an objective analysis of the reality of the current role and motives of Germany Besides, a thousand years may be a bit exaggerated, as there wasn't *a* Germany before 1814. The story is similar to Italy's which also traces its modern version roots back to the end of the Napoleonic wars and the congress of Vienna

In between all the misery and suffering of refugees from Syria, it's nice seeing some of those rare, heartwarming moments. No, they didn't solve the world situation, most likely they're probably still looking for a new place to call home, but dang, the little girls joy at a simple game of "guess the hand" with the police in the middle of the closed highway is infectious... More pictures and background story here

Not my work, no idea who originally came up with this... -- The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other contender. Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had room for improvement and has therefore accepted a five-year phasing in of "Euro-English". In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump for joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k", Which should klear up some konfusion and allow one key less on keyboards. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f", making words like "fotograf" 20% shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e" is disgrasful. By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and everivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. ZE DREM VIL FINALI COM TRU! Herr Schmidt

Yeah. Where was the option of staging a coup and introduce a new military caretaker government??