Gorth

Moved a handful pictureless posts to the fitness thread.

I havent bought the game yet(waiting for bargain bin deals), but pretty much agree with that sentiment. I liked how it was handled FO:NV. I.e. a non issue, it simply "was" and nobody seemed surprised or awkward because of it. I generally prefer games to be games and not the tooting horn for various lobby groups. Just sayin'. Reality is bad enough sometimes, games are supposed to be fun and remove you temporarily from reality (if it does its job well) Meh, enough side tracking. Some day I'll probably get the game and discuss specifics (although i suspect its fate will be the same as Witcher II)

So, 3.0 hit the street. Only tried it for a handful hours and... Was completely underwhelmed. Technical issues I expected, so my expectations were well "managed" in that regard. No biggie, the next 20 hotfixes released the next 10 days will probably address the worst of the perfomance, stability etc. stuff. Story has been unengaging so far. Didn't really expect anything extraordinary when they had to fall back on the Revan name. Worst part is the feeling of having wasted the last year gearing up though. Effecively bombed back to the stone age and I just can't find the motivation to do it all over again. Not because I don't like progress and gearing up would feel like improvement, but because whoever genius designed the expansion got the idea that you have to do it all over to get back to were you were a few days ago. It's not good psychology. Nevermind the new skill and utility system whose main purpose seems to make the choice of class irrelevant as the goal now seems to be to make the all "play and feel" the same. There are pretty much 3 advanced classes now, dps, tank and healer. Only good thing I can say about 3.0 at the moment is, I had a blast with the 12x xp boost, just playing class stories for a few weeks.

I got something with a similar sounding description... You are a: Left-Leaning Anti-Government Non-Interventionist Nativist Liberal Collectivism score: 17% Authoritarianism score: -17% Internationalism score: -33% Tribalism score: 50% Liberalism score: 17% Edit just for fun, tried the link GuardDog posted (just to see if I would have made a good American) Parties you side with... 72% Libertarians on economic, foreign policy, social, and domestic policy issues. 70% Green Party on social, environmental, foreign policy, domestic policy, and healthcare issues. 65% Democrats on environmental, domestic policy, and healthcare issues. 61% Constitution Party on economic and immigration issues. 60% Republicans on economic and immigration issues. 59% Conservative Party on economic and immigration issues. 54% Socialist on social and domestic policy issues.

Just when you thought a Star Wars movie couldn't get any worse than with Lucas in full creative control, they show lightsabers that makes you laugh for all the wrong reasons. I think my interest died just there and then >_

It is indeed impressive. Not just the technical side of things, but that people care enough about what is no longer a new game to put that kind of effort into it. Hope to see it as a released mod in all ist beauty some day

Which is probably one reason the law is the way it is. First impressions are always hard to shake off and an accusation is a "first Impression". It sticks in peoples minds and the thought that maybe there is something about it, can be almost impossible to get rid of. Even when proven 100% innocent by hard evidence, the ghost of the thought still lingers in peoples minds. Which is one reason false accusations of things like rape, child molestation etc. ought to be punished to the same degree as the crime the victims of the accusations were accused of (because a false accusation can ruin a life as effectively as the actual crime). That being said, there are a number of creepy people who have gotten away with too much for too Long, protected by their status and not least their connections. Australia had a case recently where a once popular actor turned out to be another "Jimmy Saville" abusing underage female cast members for years, whatshisname the Director hiding somewhere in Switzerland or whatever hidey hole, Hands in the air those who think Woody Allen didn't go where no man should go... etc.

I'm living in the dark... literally. I finally got my own roof over my head in a nice sizeable townhouse in the outskirts of Berlin (technically the state of Brandenburg) and it's all good. Except the place had no lamps, no curtain and no kitchen. Guess what 3 items are Gorth's Shopping lists (or Christmas wishlists for that matter)? I also don't have internet at home, so I'm improvising and using my mobile phone as a wifi hotspot. Bye bye monthly highspeed data allowance. Of course, my brilliant plans to go shopping in the next few weeks (Ikea and Bauhaus, here I come!) didn't survive the first Encounter with a new project either, so flying to Paris next week and staying there for a few weeks. The worst part was having to cancel the appointment with the Telekom technician who were to come and enable my internet connection (after almost a full month of waiting time). Next available appointment is mid December >_ Ah well, some day... The stories I could tell about paperwork, forms, customs, address registration, medical insurance, tax id no... welcome to Europe

There seems to be some misconceptions about ship to ship combat in MoO2 here... Attacker doesn't go first. Unless you leave all settings on default that is, but who does that??? "Ship Initiative" means ships attack in initiative order. Smaller, faster and higher tech ships move first, slow, lumbering low tech behemoths last. "Auto" button turns on AI for both player and opponent. 'z' key Speeds up auto combat. I.e. pretty close to instant resolve combat if you dont want to micromanage your fleet in this encounter.

Poor Gromnir I think I stay by my original "Position", waiting for some months and see where the game is headed, patch, UI, DLC and expansion wise.

I think I'm going to sit on the fence for this one for a least 2-3 months. Too much DRM, too little PC Support and apparently all of Biowares weaknesses and none of their strengths present in the game in its current state. Maybe it's something like NWN2 where the expansions are better than the original campaign...

I've only played it a few times. The mechanics seems Ok, but the User Interface is a step down. Too cluttered and not independently scalable. The latter is a big issue for me on large resolutions, as the microscopic text and tooltips are completely unreadable. So "user friendly"?... not really I might dig around a bit more and see if there are some settings somewhere I have overlooked. At the Moment, its unplayable for me.

You picked a *tv* over a computer? What is wrong with people???

Not bad, not bad at all

That system could have evolved into something interesting Instead, they just tossed it out with the bath water. It felt (Imnsho) superior to the simplified hack and slash, single player MMO game mechanics you got to use against the endlessly spawning paratroopers in DA2. I haven't really been following DA:I other than cursory readings of the threads here, so not really sure if they plan on more "tactical" combat or more "twitch" combat (the latter killed the Witcher franchise for me in the second game).

Heretic! I loved the original Tomb Raider game. One of the first games where I actually felt "immersed" in a world, with lots of free roaming exploring. *Exploring* being the keyword. It was also the first game I had that used my Orchid 3Dfx card The level design, the blatant ripoff from Jurassic Park, the ancient South American settings, the ambience, it was bloody brillant. Thread getting long... more stuff here

Start of old thread End of old thread Even Zzap64 had some rather questionable reviews when the big publishers games got released...

Blowing dust off old thread... Been doing exactly one L55 HM FP and one Toborro Courtyard since the last post (guildies needed a tank for both to get a few conquest points). I must say I'm being rather sceptical regarding the whole "discipline" system at the moment. I can understand the reason behind it because of the raised Level cap, but considering that they never managed to fix the feeling of L50 game with 5 levels slapped on top of it, slapping another 5 levels on top of the previous 5 Levels (that already felt like they "didn't" belong), maybe adding more levels isn't going to make the game more enjoyable. Ah well, time will tell. In the meantime, I'm playing as many alts as possible to Level 50 or thereabouts, not bothering with anything that gives classic coms or better. Started playing on Harbinger too, leveling up alts there. Since the latest cartel packs had some stuff that was ridiculous expensive (and rare) and not wanting to pay 5000+ CC's for a big crate with little or no chance of getting it, I simply shipped a toon with 10M credits to Harbinger and did a bit of shopping. That cost me 1800 CC (for the transfer) and 2x240CC (approx) to do the account unlock the two armour sets bought for 1/4th of the GTN Price compared to where the toon came from (Begeren Colony) and no gambling involved whether I got the pieces or not (and Bioware still gets a few real world Dollars).

Stuff like that is probably giving those Homeland Security guys nightmares... (time to call Bruce Willis!)

Oh dear... Almost as fun as one of those big US newspapers reporting how this Australian Team, the "All Blacks" beat some Chicago team in a PR game of Rugby (They are the Kiwi national team, not Aussies).

I'm a bit in the same boat. Sadly I can't just ignore threads, especially those where People seem to be occasionally emotionally invested... People I don't know, games I've never heard of, organisations that doesn't interest me, yet for those who can be bothered, it seems to matter enough to produce several 500+ post threads.

First off, I'm no "communist". That being said, all those people who condemn "communism" (and a lot of it's close relatives) as evil incarnate, have you ever given any thought to why so many millions of people found it attractive? It sure as heck has nothing to do with lazyness or entitlement issues. If Russia had still been ruled by the Romanovs, would it still exist today (or fragmented into a multitude of warring states)? If Cuba had still been ruled by the american pupptet dictators, would it eventually have gone the same way as Somalia (and to a degree Haiti)? People embraced it because it offered the prospect of improvement over what they currently had at the time and it (communist movements) managed to follow those promises with action. Did it come at the price of individual freedom? Yes. For some, that seemed to be an acceptable price for an end to wars, food on the table and a roof over the head. At least in the short term. Then eventually Maslow's hierarchy of needs reasserts itself and people starts looking for the next thing on their "to do list". Would I ever want to live under a communist regime. No way. Would I ever want to live under the regimes replaced by it? No way.

"Magic" games... For me, that would be a number of the very old crpgs (Rogue, Ultima IV, Phantasie I-III and a number of others), bg2 (not bg1 for some reason), fallout 1 (not 2 so much), PS:T. Getting close but not quite making the list would be Witcher I and DA:O. I *think* Fallout 3 would probably make the list too. Rambling a bit (thinking out loud) Since newish games still managed to stir the flames to some degree, it may not just be an age thing (contributing factor, but not the whole Explanation). Style over substance probably also contributes to it. A favourite pet peeve of mine is "internal consistency" (or rather the Feeling that it's lacking). When you feel like something doesn't make sense in the game world and it's only there so some invisible checklist can have ist bullet points crossed off. Minigames and QTE's. Few things kills a game more effectively than those. Too many cutscenes has the same effect. Even worse if prerendered rather than scripted in the game engine. When you feel beaten and tricked (trolled) by the developers rather than the game (the Darth Malak fight in Kotor anyone?). When the ego stroking becomes so bad you feel your breakfast coming up again. Bioware often overdoses people on it. Obsidian is not innocent of it either. The interlude halfway through NWN2 OC with all the backpatting was... horrible. Maybe it's because so many games these days are designed "by committee" and formulas rather than visionaries and lunatics with outrageous ideas?

That is no excuse... In 2001 Bergen Linux Group implemented RFC1149 (IPoAC) as put forth by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). Internet! Ping result: Script started on Sat Apr 28 11:24:09 2001 vegard@gyversalen:~$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0 tun0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:10.0.3.2 P-t-P:10.0.3.1 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:150 Metric:1 RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 RX bytes:88 (88.0 b) TX bytes:168 (168.0 b) vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -c 9 -i 900 10.0.3.1 PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms --- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics --- 9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms vegard@gyversalen:~$ exit Script done on Sat Apr 28 14:14:28 2001 Crazy Norwegians... Nobody seems to have implemented RFC2549 yet (RFC1149 with QoS enhancements) Edit: For good measure, BLUG's description of the event Edit2: Just for Bruce, a quote from the wiki page:

Is this where i get to point to my signature?...