Gorth

I hate flying. Probably because I've done it so much the last 15 years, that I know the inside of major airports better than the inner city roads. I don't worry about crashing. Been in some close calls, including near misses between 737's with somebody parked on the runway we were seconds about setting down on (you would have to see it to believe it, how impressive evasive maneuvers a 737 can do at an altitude where the wingtip is almost touching the grass on the apron) and turbulence so bad that I worried about that *snap* sound from my neck might have been a "whiplash". No, what really brings out the cold sweat is the thought of being cooped up for hours in a small cabin with peoples screaming brats, that wont keep quiet, wont keep their ****ing knees out of my back and has to consistently stand up and jump in their seats because of the obvious lack of on board trampolines. *That's* why I hate flying. If/when they introduce child free flights, especially long haul flights, I might actually enjoy the services of airlines again.

The main reason for hanging out on my ship is to avoid general chat on fleet... Not sure I would set up shop in a house anywhere (who am I kidding, my curiosity will compel me to try it on at least one character). Legacy guild bank... now we are talking. That alone would be worth an expansion for me (playing waaay too many characters). Had a fun Athiss HM run on my Sith Warrior (DPS Juggernaut) a few days ago. Tank was an **** with no intention of doing the FP and thought wasting other peoples time a perfectly good idea, so after less than 60 seconds he told us, "btw. I have to do our regularly scheduled guild ops, kthxbye" and quit (idiot could just have hit decline and left us in the queue until getting a guy who intended to actually participate). After waiting for more than an hour in the queue, none of us were particularly impressed with that guys lack of decency. So, passing the next 5 minutes with killing a few trash mobs (and anger management), the other 2 guys (both operatives) decided we could do this 3 man. 1 of them had a well geared Treek and I switched to Soresu stance and grabbed the shield I had in my inventory (didn't have a complete tank gear, only just started collecting). We wiped once against beast of Vodal (because we forgot the little furball would taunt the beast away, halfway towards the cave) and twice against the end boss, because treek and one of the operatives managed to get caught by the pillars of flame early on. Apart from that, it went smoothly. Me doing the bulk of the tanking (in dps specs and mostly dps gear) and treek doing off tanking, off healing). Was quite an interesting experience in hindsight. Even if I thought they were a bit crazy to suggest such a thing in the beginning My sorcerer turned 55 and my Jedi shadow tank is now level 47. I figured I would get him leveled up to 55 over the weekend if possible and become the 7th one, leaving me with a jedi knight to do (for completions sake). Also managed to catch up on the class stories for some of those old toons that have been way over leveled for their place in the story line(s)

The fat lady sang... More music here

Start of old thread End of old thread "Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent." -- Victor Hugo The Gael (because I like hot violinists) http://youtu.be/EVbu8bh7SWk

Banning words... Anyone burnt some good books lately? Filthy things are full of words. Some of them unpleasant and inconvenient

Expand the restrictions a bit in some pseudo scientific way and say "you can't change the past because the result has already been observed" (faux quantum mechanics). I would satisfy my curiosity regarding the identity of Jack the Ripper. Stand next to Lee Harvey Osvald on that day in 1963 and see if he really was a lone, loose cannon, watch the battle of Hastings where European history was changed forever, watch the construction of the Cheops Pyramid, watch the final days of the Inca's and try to understand how a great civilisation could just collapse, steal a couple of ideas from Bruce and watch Jesus at work, see Buddha at work, watch how Julius Caesar pulled off the victory at Alesia... so much to do, so little time (pun not intended).

Had my first "real" taste of operations over the weekend, offering my Juggernaut DPS to fill up the dps body quota in two guild runs. Doing first part of Scum & Villainy in a 16 man group and the second part as an 8 man group (two different ops groups). Only missed out on the operator fight, as second group had progressed from that one. It may be harder to gather and manage 16, but I actually found the fights harder in 8 man mode. There sure is no room for slackers Had the dubious honour of causing a party wipe just after entering in the 8 man group. Ended up with the wealthy buyers coin and wanted to insert it in the slot announced by the ops leader. Clicking frantically, the darn coin just didn't want to go in. After the wipe, I explained I really tried right clicking for all I was worth. Apparently this is the exception to the rule and unlike everything else in the game, you do this by left clicking on the environment. Ah well, live and learn (or die as was the case). Noob error if ever there was one. Everything went smoothly until the last boss fight. Managed to get myself killed in that through sheer stupidity though, hitting tab key to select Styrak and jumping... over him to another Styrak holding a light beam cordon, moving towards the center. Ops boss had warned about staying in center alright. Yup, unable to move while game played the jump/landing animation, the guy walked all over me and insta-killed me. Fortunately I got battle rez'ed by our operative healer and think I did my share of damage in last phase where guys started dying left and right. There was 3 or 4 of us standing when he went down. Quite an exciting experience when you haven't tried it before.

Possibly, but not the way we were doing it. Took more than 10 minutes to get to the beast of Vodal (without clearing the way to the cave, so that meant also fighting the adds) and the fight hadn't even started. Assuming 3-5 minutes for the fight leaves approx 5 minutes for the rest of the fp to complete including last boss fight. Call me a pessimist, but I considered that an impossibility (and didn't want to invest more time in what I considered an endeavour doomed from the outset).

Hehe... sounds familiar. Did 5 HM flashpoints over the weekend. Had to "abort" 2 of them as it was just getting silly. First failed attempt was Hammer Station where we just couldn't beat final boss. Tank was an a slightly under geared (imho) shadow that couldn't hold aggro and boss kept targeting my gunslinger and the the other dps (sentinel). Which meant, we were both on low health and got run over by the adds of all things trying to protect the healer. Rinse and repeat 3 times. Not sure where 61 and 63 mods come from, but it's rare to see people equipped in those in HM FP's. Second failed PF was one where I decided to cut my losses early. Healer was in hurry, had 20 minutes he said (yeah right, doing Athiss in 20). Operative and shadow decides stealth is the solution and starts sneaking, cc'ing and whatever that group cloak ability is. Problem is just, with all the roundabout ways, when we approached the beast boss, we had spend 50% *more* time than just killing a few select mobs and go straight from point a to point b. No way were we going to make that in time (and a time of day where both tanks and healers are a rare breed, so you could end up waiting forever for a replacement). Other 3 HM 's (including a Hammer Station run and CZ Labs+Meltdown) were smooth and trouble free. Otherwise it's just a bit of grinding. Getting quite decent at soloing Oricon heroics on the pub side. Oh, and finally got the seeker droid quest done too on my main character. Had 3 friends who helped me out doing it, despite them already having done it. That's friends alright (picked the "light" side armour)

Didn't you have some kind of coyote problem at one time??? Yes, the entire discussion really *is* hard to comprehend as an outsider. I sometimes suspect it's more to do with principles (the context of the original legislation being forgotten in the mists of history) rather than any practical value of having a gun under your pillow at night. That being said, I think I would like to satisfy my curiosity some day and try out various hand weapons on a shooting range (with proper instructors and training mind you).

Watch this space for the announcement that Merkel and Putin has decided to split Ukraine in "spheres of interest"

Since I had planned on using the retired parts anyway later this year (putting in my old antec p182 case together with half decent gfx card), I might as well try buying a "cheap" PSU (i.e. good enough to put in the future spare pc) and give it a shot. It's effectively not going to cost me something I wasn't going to spend anyway

Finished my class quest for my sorcerer. For some reason, it's only the 3rd class quest I've completed in full (trooper and bounty hunter), despite having numerous level 55's. For some reason they just seem to get stuck on Belsavis and not making it any further. Decided to bite the bullet and start finishing them one after the other now. Agent is next, having started on Corellia and who knows, maybe my smuggler and Sith warrior will get around to it too. Having an incredibly hard time motivating myself to play my two jedi characters (consular being the most likely to make it anywhere since he's now on Hoth)

It's all liquid cooled (motherboard, cpu and gfx card). Water temperature is constant 40 degrees (room temperature is about 32-35 here in summer). I tried running the bios diagnostic screen (hitting the del key during boot) and keep an eye on motherboard and cpu temperature. Nothing seems to get above 40 degrees when it croaks. You can almost set your watch after it, like x minutes after startup. After that point however, it becomes stable again and can run for 24 hours without a hitch.

Point taken. I'll shop around a bit more Did the memtest thing btw, came up clean. Last resort before hitting the checkout button is, over the weekend, to take the pc completely apart and only stick the basic necessities back in. Leaving out various cards like soundblaster card, tv card, usb 3 expansion card, sata 3 expansion card etc. If it still acts up, it's history. if it works, then I'll have to do the painful process of testing each individual piece. Edit to add: One thing I didn't think about but need to try is to "unhook" it from the UPS and just plug it in the wall power outlet. Stranger things have happened.

So, I'm better off suffering the regular crash for a while yet?

Arghhh!.... Something in my PC is dying on me and I don't know what. I *think* it's temperature related, as it only seems to happen as part of a transition from start to working temperature. It will simply die on me and crash. Screen goes black, a second later sounds starts stuttering and then it reboots. Worse, it will happen (if timing is right) during POST too, showing memory and cpu info, then die (so I'm fairly sure it's not Windows/Driver related as HDD's haven't even been detected at that time). Not sure if there is anything in the crash dump files that is worth searching for or just toss out the innards and replace the core of the system. Damn thing is, it's 6-8 months too early for my budget for what I had in mind. I can then either go really cheap or just get a "good" system. I figured a new motherboard, cpu and memory would be a good place to start as I got all the rest in fairly good shape (PSU, case, drives, gfx card etc.). Anyone know if coolers for the previous 1156 (or however many pins) are compatible with the LGA2011 cpu size? Would love to keep my old water cooling block. My shopping list looks like this at the moment: CPU RAM (x2 for 64gb) Motherboard I can get a custom fit water block for the motherboard from EK Waterblocks. Any suggestions, ideas, improvements? Or am I wasting my money on soon to be obsolete tech?

Yeah, read about that producers road map and the follow up discussion. Apparently something along the scope of Rise of Hutt Cartel. Oh, and two new flashpoints in a not so distant future, intended to kick off a new story arc. Was getting a bit tired of hearing about dread master this and dread master that anyway (especially when not playing the operations, time zones still being the main joy killer, ops night being on Wednesdays during my normal work hours). @Hassat: I know what you are saying about grinding With 5 level 55 (and my sorcerer who is almost level 52), it took a while to get them geared in first 69's and later 72's. Lots of Oricon/Czerka weeklies and an obscene amount of HM flashpoints.

The first group of people would just end up on the ignore list. Makes sense to ignore tactics if ridiculously over leveled/over geared, but if not, it's perpetuating bad habits (like guarding healers in pve) that will come back and bite people who listen to such "advice". Had a first go at the final seeker droid mission. Didn't end so well. Only 5 minutes before server reboot did we realise that the reason we kept exploding was because you can't use any abilities while carrying the batteries for the turret/shields (wiping 3 times at 87.5%). Ah well, live and learn. Some other day when we get the time all 4 of us.

Thread getting longer than an old dwarfs beard... New thread here

Just to hit the ground running... No. It was more "we want to move away from old technology and consolidate everyone onto the same tech (early DA3 prototypes were already using Frostbite) and we really like what we've seen with DA3 at this point and are more keen on following up with that than DA2." Keeping us working on DA2XP would just delay us ramping up on Frostbite. Part of the influence of this thought process is likely how meh Awakening's sales were compared to the investment and install base. Couple that with less overall sales of DA2 and it's not hard to see that the XP held higher risks than we would necessarily want. That does make a valid point.

- trailer. From IGN: Release Date: Fall 2014 Supported: PS3, PS 4, XBox 360, XBox One, PC Engine: DICE's Frostbyte ----------------------------- Why Dragon Age: Inquisition isn't Called DA 3 - article - video interview First Look: DA:I Concept Art - blog DAI Wallpapers A Look Inside Dragon Age: Inquisition's Development

Thread pruned a bit as discussion went from pointless to tasteless. Let's try to steer back to Kickstarter again?

Finally completed my first Binocular quest and got my just reward... a pair of binoculars Not sure I'm going to go through this for all my toons though. Figuring out the mechanics was half the fun, but after a bit of trial and error and paying a bit attention, we eventually worked out the various obstacles. The story ending was bad though. Not going to spoil it other than say I was disappointed. Ah well, Seeker Droid is next I think. Time to get the gang together and head to Ilum.

Games as an online service is the future.