Gorth

World of Goo. Surprisingly fun if taken in small doses. Not sure I could play it for prolonged periods of time. Has that weird "happy go lucky" feel to it that I remember from Lemmings and the original Worms.

Refreshing my old history lessons a bit, reading up on some of the major engagements in WWII (mostly the 3 largest ones). After that, probably time for a refresher of the pre-republic Roman era

Bortherhood of the Wolf Wow, that was bad... not even Monica Belluci could save that movie

Because they can?

They are learning from the best, the movie industry. They have exercised market control for years with the region encoding scheme in order to fight a free market and free trade.

Actually, a lot of universities, observatories, heck even churches were built as prestige projects by monarchs, trying to outdo each other. Not saying that none were ever built by a church, but the "all" is a wast exaggeration. I read a good book once about the history of the British Isles. Unfortunately it only covered the time from 4200BC to 400AD, so newer history (including the arrival of Chrisianity in the post Roman era) isn't covered.

I even bought an Aussie slang dictionary

Say wut? Of the universities I know, none were either founded nor funded by a church. My highchool was founded by a church in 1184 (AD) or so, but the universities? Not really.

Preaching to the choir I think... hate it with a passion. Thats like accusing The World Trade center of being the cause of 9/11 rather than just accept that piracy causes DRM and deal with the source of the problem. I wonder if people ever considered that Stardocks games might appeal to a different demographics than say Activision, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts games?

I think, usually 100% goes to the publisher. Of course, the publisher then has to buy the investors that they borrowed the money from to finance it (with interest), they pay the PR dudes, they pay their distribution network, they pay the devloper contracted to develop the product, they pay their own employees, they pay taxes, they pay external consulting firms (market analysis, audits etc.), they pay the running cost of maintaining their assets (rent, electricity, hardware etc.), they pay... well, you get the picture. It's a business. They invest money (sometimes their own, sometimes other peoples) in projects they believe are profitable. Digital distribution has it's pros and cons. it is not by any means free, as you still need the organisation, the hardware, the software, the bandwidth (wanna bet, unusal bandwidth requirements comes at a special price?) and the staff to maintain it, credit card companies/paypal whatever wants their share of the turnover too. Once it you have the infrastructure in place though, it is easier to increase the available sortiment compared to a physical shelf. Edit: Then of course they also have to pay the DRM dudes.

It's sort of a cousin to Heroes of Might and Magic III and Disciples II I might still have the box lying around here somewhere... Edit: I seem to remember that the game mechanics were fun, but the level design never really appealed to me, so it got stashed away in a big cardboard box and forgotten.

Yeah, $100 (thats $97 USD or 60 British pound) seems to be the "normal" release date price for new games down here. Sort of encourages waiting for sales or buying DD from places with less price gouging.

What's taxation like in Australia? Most of Europe gets a 15-25% price hike just from VAT, though. Not saying we aren't shafted, but that's a part of the equation, too... GST (thats Aussie VAT) is 10%. The Kiwis are worse off and just had a GST hike. As for income tax etc. not sure. I think I pay somewhere around 30-33% of my income to the tax man (blood sucker that he is)

So, what are you playing/collecting/painting? currently doing a death guard army while also going back and filling in the ranks of my necrons. in a few months i plan on suplementing my old dark eldar army with some of the new models... i'm very excited about all this. also: im not playing it NOW, but i cannot wait for the undead nightmare dlc for red dead redemption, it looks awesome I used to play Epic 40k (got a 20k+ point ork army, painted no less). Lost interest in that when they streamlined it to death. Got a fair sized Valhallan army and a SoB army (predating the Inquisitor Codexes) and a few Space Marines. Lost interest in WH40k with 3rd edition rules (streamlined all the flavour out of that game). Still collect a few Warhammer minis every now and then, but after they killed off Undeads and split them into two, leaving out the third option (necromancer led armies), I just play a bit of dark elves on rare occasions. Have an old style lizard man army too (never left its packaging). Painted up a Necromunda gang, but it's only ever seen action twice Incredible what you gather over 25+ years of collecting... Playing a bit of Painkiller Resurrection and started a game of Still Life.

What is there really to do in crpgs other than fetch this and kill that? Most stuff just seems variations of the two. Occasional variation of fetch this is go there and pull lever and the variation of kill that is kill everything else except that. That's one awesome cake!

So, what are you playing/collecting/painting?

Latest news, rapidly growing thread outgrowing old shoes. New thread here

Start of old thread End of old thread Ehh, nothing new from the West Front. Stealing somebody elses news: Ninja edit: Thread title spelling error and missing words fixed. Must be a Friday thing.

I thought that was Lord of Flies' job? Just to be a big bad moderator, oppressor of freeedom, devourer of virgins, slayer of heroes, promoter of prudish politics and all that, a friendly reminder to check one of our own guidelines, regarding discussing the forums/moderators etc. of colleagues and competitors On the nominal topic, I wonder how much effort is going into improving my own pet peeves with DA. I didn't mind that combat and only noticed shortcomings in the visuals because people pointed them out. What did leave me with an "umm, nice... I think?" feeling was the lore, setting and writing. Lack of interest in why I should do what I had to do (combined with the frequent grind) left me rather unenthusiastic about a sequel. Not to mention that some of the best dialogue was with the "extras" in the scenes, not the main party members Oh yeah, and the guy with the big "BUY ME!" neon sign in the camp. I'll never forgive that one, DA2 better be damn convincing

Serious subject is serious! Anybody have anything but trolling to contribute? I read the article. Interesting, although I'm not convinced about the China/Pakistan connection. It does have a point about a number of nuclear armed countries who all wants to be the next "super power" wrestling for position. I still think Pakistans actions are determined more by a desire to stay alive through all means available rather than megalomaniac ambitions. It is barely a coherent country and has more opposition internally than externally imho. India makes a good villain for Islamabad to deflect attention and pent up anger of the masses towards. When Taliban ruled Afghanistan, all the young unemployed hotheads, straight out of the Madrassas went there instead.

Good question Which is really the crux of it, isn't it? Abusing the power and authority invested in you for personal gain. If he had left his tools and uniform at home and gone over and had a few choice words with the neighbours, he would just have been another Al Bundy chasing Kellys suitors away at shotgun point

When the LHC gets up to full speed in 2012 we should get the answers

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Even sadder is the fact that you feel the need to preemptively discredit every one who would want to raise criticism, valid or not. Not trying to be preemptive (much), just pointing out what I expect will happen. I belong in the category "not too fussed" too, thinking as long as it does its job, i.e. functional, anything else is just bells and whistles. Does "fine art" look good? Probably, but I consider it secondary to the functionality of the graphics. Thats probably why I hated the Disciples III demo and still play Disciples II. The former may be technically better made (visually), but it sure feels less functional. You are left with the feeling that it is the graphics (in the case of Disciplis III) they want to sell, not the game. Yeah, I probably do like poking fun at people who are fussed about state of the art gift box wrappings