Gromnir

It definitely did, as it contained pre fab buildings and construction materials, both of which Israel embargoes, not deeming shelter and such to be "humanitarian essentials". The boats were not heading to an Israeli port, Israel has not annexed Gaza (as they would then have to give 1 million+ Palestinians the vote) so your comparison fails at the first hurdle. In point of fact the boat woulds never pass through Israeli waters, just Gazan. The only legal defence is that it was action in maintenance of blockade, which still has some rather significant flaws. Hoho, ninja'd by WoD, of all people. *sigh* fine... israelis is headed to denmark (not near the same as heading to gaza, but we give you the benefit o' the doubt.) swedes stop the israeli ship bound for denmark and swede sailors is then attacked. big difference? wanna debate the validity o' the israeli blockade? fine, be our guest... am not even gonna touch that subject, 'cause we do not have to. HA! Good Fun!

So if a burglar enters your home, you attack the burglar and he kills you, the burglar only acted in self defence since you were the one attacking him? These ships were on international waters. The Israeli soldiers boarded the convoy on international waters. What is so hard to understand here? If a ship is in international waters, that ship is to be seen as a continuation of the nation under which flag it sails. If the ship had a Swedish flag, this means the Israeli soldiers entered Swedish territory uninvited and the Swedish crew would be entitled to expel the intruders from their ship. I don't understand how the Israelis can claim they were attacked first.. they were obviously standing on the deck of a foreign nation's ship on international waters, holding firearms in their hands. So who attacked who? is a bit more complex than mkreku suggests. a foreign warship may board and inspect on high seas pursuant to "right of visit" and treaty. the U.S., for instance, has a treaty with sweden that allows for reciprocity o' searches on high seas to combat narcotics trafficking, weapons smuggling and a host o' other such stuff. is anybody current on israeli treaties with foreign powers? Gromnir ain't. furthermore, the "right of visit" allows warships to board and inspect foreign vessels on the high seas if they gots a suspicion of piracy, slavery and a few other things. what this typical means is that if representatives from a foreign warship wanna board and search your vessel, you let 'em do so... and then complain 'bout it later. mkreku's burglar metaphor would be more accurate if it were the police who were attempting to barge into your home at night. perhaps the police do not have reasonable cause to do so, but that does not give you the right to attack the cops with knives and metal bars, does it? rules is different for warships on the high seas... as odd as it may sound. change the facts: a swedish coast guard vessel stops and boards an israeli merchant ship six miles off shore, in international waters. the israelis is heading towards stockholm, but has repeatedly ignored hails from swedish authorities. as swedish sailors board the vessel, they is attacked by israeli's wielding broken bottles and baseball bats. the swedish sailors defend themselves, killing numerous israelis. *shrug* am suspecting that the public outcry over spilled israeli blood would be minimal. HA! Good Fun!

am so very tempted to respond with a host o' possible reasons to explain why anybody would choose soz as a recent favorite. soz? HA! Good Fun!

Are you being facetious or do you really believe what you just wrote? given your own use o' hyperbole in this thread, am not sure you is the ideal person to be criticizing. HA! Good Fun!

three years from now, only experts will be able to tell that there were an oil leak in the gulf simply by looking at the coast. nothing as grisly as oil-soaked pelicans, or a few thousand dead fish littering the shores, will be available to bear witness to the tragedy. hundred page reports on soil toxicity is not hardly as sexy as one dead bird. a committee, or ombudsman, or something similar, will be tasked with determining when bp stops paying, and how much they eventual pay. bp will happily fight a war with experts. bp will gladly go to court, and eventually agree on settlements or outlast the plaintiffs. bp will help fund candidate reelections and they will make very public demonstrations o' their continuing dedication to the community... create new jobs in these troubled times. *snicker* as each year goes by, the amount which bp will pay will become ever smaller compared to what they might actually owe... and we ain't even suggesting that a multibillion dollar corporation might use underhanded methods such as illegal payoffs to reduce and obliterate fines, 'cause that would be wrong. HA! Good Fun!

you're serious? really? how often does corporations drag their feet when it comes to fixing problems they created? auto makers discover a defect in a car and don't fix 'cause it is cheaper to pay injury/death benefits than it is to fix the car. "you can't put a value on a human life." sure you can. companies do it all the time. it looks like bp rushed their gulf platform construction and they didn't have adequate measures for fixing potential problems... but do you really think they didn't anticipate a disaster and affix a dollar amount to a worst case scenario? *chuckle* tobacco, asbestos, petrochemical, etc... name all the industries that has been accused o' reacting slowly (or not at all) to environmental or human disasters. btw, folks is still fighting with exxon over valdez. it is very possible that the most cost-efficient response for bp is to do as little as possible... look good for the cameras while this is a public disaster, and then find ways to mitigate and avoid eventual fines two or three years from now when only the locals care/remember. your naivety is... quaint. HA! Good Fun!

we would be more than a little disappointed in the bbc if the had reported that the main leak had been "plugged." given the scope o' the potential disaster, am actual a bit surprised that the U.S. government has been willing to let bp handle the leak-killing and cleanup operations. is doubtful that the federal govt. has better resources for cleaning up such messes than does bp, but typically it only takes a few phone calls to figure out who IS the best. am not certain why bp is still bumbling their way through this mess, particularly as their primary duty is to their stockholders. is not difficult to see potential for a conflict o' interest between doing what is right, and doing what is right for bp stockholders. HA! Good Fun!

were nwn2 as buggy as: arcanum: no toee: no vampire: hell no as for vol's recollection o' the stability o' nwn... HA! bioware were excellent in terms o' patching the neverwinter nights(mare), but the initial release were riddled with bugs. to be fair, nwn bugginess were hardly surprising given that the various aspects o' the game were an awkward chimera o' features. scope o' nwn were enormous. thus, while nwn were a far better game than many folks recollect or admit, the only aspect o' the game that initially matched the scale o' bioware's ambitions for nwn were the bug list. but this is 'bout da... so, we will note that the initial release were remarkably stable for a game of its size. sadly, the bugs that some folks suffered were often true game-killers... such as inability to enter orzamar. also, as nobody ever knew what the underlying rulez were for da, it were difficult to identify many potential da game bugs. every d&d geekling knows how much damage a fireball spell cast by a 12th level mage can do. d&d geeklings know how what creatures gots immunity to fire. d&d geeks knows the impact o' magic items on spell castings and defenses o' the fireball. if a fireball spell is implemented wrong in a d&d game, some geekling will know and post 'bout the error almost immediate after a crpg release. in da, we knew very little 'bout the hows and whys behind the simple fireball spell. were damage, range, and duration o' fireball implemented correct in da? how would we know if such were implemented wrong? HA! Good Fun!

I'm not familiar with the rogue bug but the JNPCs are bugged to hell and back Volourn, at least on PC. Things like approval going to 100 because of broken triggers during side quests, impossibility of making a party member ( ) do the Joining ritual if you break the sequence of events that the developers probably intended you to do (then again, if you give me freedom in the order to tackle different main quest mission I'm going to take advantage of it!), dead NPCs reappearing during the final sequence, etc. Add to that the frequent crashes and Awakening is by far the buggiest game I've played from Bioware. Granted, it is indeed awesome IMHO, and felt spot-on when it comes to story, interactions, feel and depth.. it's just that there is a remarkable similarity between this project's lack of polish and usual Obsidian games. the trap disarming bug is, according to boards, extreme common on the pc... but it only affects player-character rogues. 'course, there is 'posed only a handful o' traps in the game, so most folks never even noticed. as for the expansion being similar to an obsidian product... we cannot comment as we have not played. however, for Gromnir, Obsidian's signature move is the patented Chris Avellone Conclusion of Disappointment. obsidian has mastered the crappy climax as not other developer we can name. too many other developers seeming ignore qa to single out obsidian. heck, we cannot think o' an obsidian release that were as buggy as any troika release... or bioware's nwn. oh, and warden's keep were a short 1007fest that added very little quality gameplay content to the game. stone prisoner would garner our vote for the best da dlc to date. added two game areas and a quality/unique jnpc... though as it were a free day-1 release, am not certain if it should count. HA! Good Fun! ps is not actual that obsidian releases has worse climax and denouement than other crpgs, but obsidian games has relative strong story elements with the Exception o' climax and the ever-after portions o' the game. makes horribleness o' their The End that much more glaring.

Apparently no word on a patch, sorry Gromnir, at least as far as I know =/ I almost feel like Bioware has sneakily outsourced this expansion to Obsidian, considering how buggy it is. too bad. given the discoraging reviews and rumors surrounding AP, Gromnir were gonna give da:a a shot. oh well. back to work. HA! Good Fun!

any word on a 1.04 patch? we finally found the expansion at a more reasonable price, but am not feeling like playing a game wherein our rogue pc cannot detect/disarm traps, a joinable npc may not join, and at least 1 potential game-breaker bug... and a whole laundry list o' other minor bugs. we looked at bio boards briefly and saw no mention of 1.04 for more than a couple weeks. HA! Good Fun!

You can always opt for the Flamer Pistol, amirite? Or some home-made low power crap, or a specially damaged Energy Pistol. It's not like this isn't a Scavenger World. same rationale worked for big guns. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

Energy Weapons is easier to "fill out" than Big Guns. Flamers don't constitute early, bread and butter weapons, but it's not hard to think of and implement other low- and mid-power Energy Weapons. so, early lasers... or is there some other kinda weapon you have in mind? tasers? again, since you raised the spectre o' early game absence o' energy weapons, am curious as to how you "fixed." personally, am fine with "weak" energy weapons being available from start of game, but am curious how josh implemented. HA! Good Fun!

am in san joaquin valley o' CA... is 1:00pm and the temp is a balmy 62 F (am crappy at conversions... 16.5 C?) is late May, and am looking at forecast for this week: rain and no high temp above 70 F (20C?) surely these is the End of Days. HA! Good Fun!

"If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons." am not seeing how the merge of big guns into other categories addresses the problem josh identifies in the aforementioned quote. a non sequitur? is flame throwers available early and constitute a bread and butter weapon? HA! Good Fun!

I think the Bobble heads and their stat-raising effects are fine. The biggest problem with the stat/skill system in FO3 was the huge number of skill points available within the game. I personally don't think there should be enough skill points in a game to allow a player to come close to maxing out more than a handful of skills. our problems with fo3 skills were legion... but will limit to but a couple key points for the nonce. fo3 skills point availability and awards were relative straightforward and simple, which is a Good thing. unfortunately, it were rather easy for a player to become proficient in every skill due to availability o' exp and the seeming minimal proficiency threshold for most combat related skills. didn't need 100 in a combat skill to be extreme proficient... so problem of excessive points were actual worse than some suggest. 1) am hopeful that obsidian fixed combat mechanics so that there is a genuine reason for adding points into a combat skill beyond some minimal threshold value. we never figured out the exact numbers, but it frequent seemed as if there were hardly any genuine advantage to raising a combat skill beyond 45 or 50%... which is stoopid. am hopeful that obsidian fixed so that adding skill points to a combat skill beyond minimum thresholds is actually meaningful to gameplay. 2) am hopeful that 100 points won't get you 100% typically, we is opposed to unnecessary complications of da rulez. nevertheless, we thinks that there shoulds be a mechanic for promoting skill choice diversity as well as specialization. unlike previous fo games, fo3's cap at 100 makes sense, but am not thinking you needs have 100 skill points equal 100% in a skill. if it actual takes 50 points to get from 90 to 100 in a skill, then perhaps a player will consider the advantages o' diversification over specialization, no? developers and testers may decide to play with the numbers a bit, but increasing skill point costs at 50, 75, 85, and 90 might be worthy o' consideration... at the very least, such a progression will chew up loads o' exp. 'course, in returning to our first point, there must needs be a genuine reward to makes such costs worthy o' consideration. HA! Good Fun!

merging big and small don't bother us in the least. however, am more concerned that energy is separate. given how previous fo games approached ranged weapons, energy weapons were a skill that became useful later in game but largely pointless at the beginning. am not a fan of having a Super-Skill that is worthless for 10-20 hours o' gameplay. josh is unlikely to make energy weapons as overpowered as previous developers has been willing to do, but one wonders how the face o' fo will change if there is useful 'mounts o' energy weapons and ammo early in game. every third bandit gots a laser rifle? HA! Good Fun!

from our pov, the strength o' fo3 were not its gameplay or story elements but rather the degree to which bethesda managed to capture the feel o' a Fallout washington dc. the quirky, retro-sci-fi freak show that is fallout were realized in a rather inspired choice o' Americana steeped locales... the best character in fo3 were the setting itself. HA! Good Fun!

And that's what I think is cool - people who want it can have it, people who don't don't. Cool stuff. Even better would be if less aids = more xp. Or something. that causes problems. more xp results in your character being tougher... which makes game easier. more gold/jink/money more exp more 1007 all such stuff means that developers must find additional ways to stay ahead o' the curve. am understanding that for most folks playing a crpg, some kinda Reward is expected, but such rewards is typical at odds with the seeming goal o' a feature intended to increase the difficulty o' a game. developers necessarily needs adopt seemingly ridiculous scaling options and other less palatable solutions. ... actually, awarding less xp would seem to be a more effective solution, but am betting that most players would balk at such an obvious means o' increasing game difficulty. HA! Good Fun!

i'll actually go ahead and agree with this. i enjoyed CoP quite a lot (though Pripyat itself was a huge disappointment, imo) and never found eating/sleeping/taking cover/etc to be tedious. it helped animate even further for me the sense of survival in The Zone. no, i think he was just asking for a less juvenile form of discourse (speaking of, do you larp as an ogre/troll in real life too? like...at work and socially?) *shrugs* sometimes the line dividing irony and hypocrisy is thin. Gromnir can turn off the ogre/troll in rl... am doubting you can say the same. in any event, we appreciate josh's post-before-you-think style as it frequent results in him divulging perhaps more than he might otherwise do 'pon reflection, but his post count clearly refutes twink's theory. the number o' Gromnir posts josh has responded to in the past is not easily counted, and sadly obsidian's most loquacious developer is perhaps more likely to respond to respond to inane posts and obvious trolls than genuine queries. dunno, maybe is a cathartic thing. regardless, it would seem that the restless corpse o' lord british, forever choking 'pon poisoned bread, will once again rise from its grave to plague gamers in yet another franchise. oh joy. HA! Good Fun!

Please critique those game play elements in your own words instead of modifying mine. 'cause by doing so the critique is changed in some meaningful way? *shrug* regardless, if food and ammo runs may be avoided by means o' the hardcore toggle, then we ain't seeing a problem. "strategic" concerns that only impact the number o' tedious trips we needs make back to "base" (or wherever we has ammo/food stashed) doesn't boost fun-factor for Gromnir... though we does understand that some folks enjoy such stuff. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

Eating/sleeping are in STALKER: Call of Pripyat and honestly it never feels annoying (to me). It's just something you have to strategically plan for by carrying a small amount of food and returning to base occasionally (which doesn't genuinely make the game more enjoyable, but does become tedious after the first dozen or so food-runs). CoP also uses ammo weight, so inventory management is more involved overall, (but fo3 insta-travel effectively nerfs any strategic factors related to weighted inventory, thus making it a rather pointless theoretical addition to fo:nv). fixed HA! Good Fun!

atomic power by uncle tupelo the song were original released in the early 50's by the louvin brothers... and it were not meant to be funny. gets us in the mood for more fallout. HA! Good Fun!

no. it's not really about "funny" for me. oh, well of course that settles everything. but then again, no. if you ain't one o' the folks that thought fo were serious biz with very little funny, then our comments were not directed at you and your reply is pointless. *shrug* can debate all day long regarding whether fo were successful funny, but the notion that fo (the original) were not intended to be funny is hardly worthy of argument. is a considerable 'mount o' intended funny/camp in fo, but is seeming that the serious hardcore fo fan is very likely to have missed the humor. regardless, am pleased to hear that uncle fergie ain't swallowing the revisionist history o' the Faithful in this regard: there will be ha-ha in fo:nv. HA! Good Fun!

hmm. Do you really consider this box art discussion a lather? Seems more like a musing. Or a pondering. no doubt you could describe any fo issue discussed in this place as a "musing" or "pondering." wouldn't be appropriate, but you could do so. HA! Good Fun!