Gromnir

lord knows that Gromnir has been anxiously awaiting the dd age for games. small developers just don't have the resources to print and distribute copies of their games w/o the aid o' a publisher. give small developers a chance to cut publisher out of the equation? how could that be bad? yeah, there is gonna be lots more crap available, but we is also finally gonna see what happens when developers is able to take risks... and to makes games the way they thinks games should be made. *shrug* dd has the potential to change everything 'bout the gaming industry. that being said, does anybody know how long it takes to dl a modern game with a typical dsl connection? is probably quite a wait. am not sure how economical it is for Gromnir to go back to cable simply for dl of games

it has been noted in the past that almost half of the cost incurred by a publisher to gets a game developed and onto shelves is simply the cost of distribution... ship finished product from manufacturing site to retailer wharehouses represents a HUGE expense. something to consider. HA! Good Fun!

okie dokie, that were actually kinda amusing. HA! Good Fun!

based on info we got we can make no reasonable guess. however, for you folks that insist on doing so, we will note that josh told us that some of the areas from nwn2 had recently been cut from game so that obsidian could meet deadlines and maintain quality. so, as you makes your guestimates be sure to gives some value for how many hours you thinks obsidian were shooting for (X), and then be sure to subtract some 'mount from that value to reflect the diminished content we now gots available (Y). so if you were thinking that the developer were shooting for 40 hours (X=40,) then makes sure that you subtract some quantity from that (40-Y.) no game in our recollection ever gots additional gameplay when content had to be cut to meet a deadline. next step is to adjust for whether you thinks developer gameplay estimates is higher or lower than actual gameplay you will gets. some of us discover that developers is... optimistic with their time estimates. game developer says 25-30 and you get 10-15? maybe reverse is true and a developer says 40 hours and you typically get 50 from them. obsidian only has made one game, so such an adjustment is almost useless unless you widen the scope of your analysis a tad. maybe includes past bis titles? so, if you thinks that maybe obsidian were originally shooting for 30-40 hours of gameplay from nwn2 in addition to and on top of efforts to include mp and toolset aspects, then you gots a rational and logical method for coming up with an estimate that ain't based simply on how lengthy you hopes or wishes nwn2 will be. is still a complete guess, but we thinks that at least our approach is having the benefit of being a bit more dispassionate. so knocks yourselves out... HA! Good Fun!

The alternative would be non voluntary regulation. Which would be both stricter and take longer. Stunts like leaving things on a disk to be found dosnt do the non censorship side any favours. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No regulation. Use common sense when you think about purchasing a game, or parents should use common sense if they feel the game is too violent or sexual for their children. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> don't go and get reasonable. if a parent sees her child throw a brick through a window it is easier to blame tv or video games or sun spots than it is to takes responsibility. democratic government can also leads to the tyranny of the masses. Congressmen and Senators, whether you like it or not, is 'posed to represent their constituents, so is no reason to be surprised or offended when they do. in Gromnir's biz we often refer to certain Supreme Court Decisions as "cute cases." is a stupid label, but what it means is that occasionally the Courts seemingly ignore precedent in favor of protecting some special groups o' people. the amish, the mentally handicapped, children, etc. children, in particular, is a source of much fuzzy law... gotta protect kids from hearing swear words, so even if indecent speech is technically protected... *shrug* industry lawyers and ceos is real familiar with irresponsible parents who somehow manage to gets their Congressman to pass all kinds of wacky laws and those lawyers and ceos also know that when it comes to protecting kids the Court can be bit unpredictable... regardless of what past Courts has claimed were the meaning o' the Constitution. so, games industries and movie industries and record industries figures that it is far better to police themselves than it is to have Government setting the standards and policing. game industry efforts to police self is completely practical

your reasoning is disjointed and erratic and incomprehensible... random. sure, once you hit on a conclusion you will stick with it regardless of resistance, but the almost alien rationales we seen you use to backs up your position is disquieting. vis contradicts self every 10 seconds, but vol is simply

too bad you is getting an answer to the wrong question. looks at the two previews linked. one says 40 other says at least 30. these preview guys is getting these numbers from somewhere. if no estimate can be given, then why did fergie give 20, and why does obsidian keeps giving out estimates to reporters? was 20 the mistake? maybe 40 were... or 30. they get another preview that say 10 and future one that says 50 and obsidian will be able to comes back after game release and simply say, see, we were right. pretty much gotta be with a range like that. lead designer tells us that some areas of game had to be cut... but gameplay hours has seemingly doubled. go figure. and again, if no gameplay hours is possible to estimate, then why is the damned developers continuing to give out estimates to reporters? maybe we hear from josh that nobody at obsidian gave out the new estimates... which means that either the reporters is liars, or they got their numbers from atari... in which case the only estimate we still got from obsidian is the fergie estimate. HA! Good Fun!

if fergie says he doesn't really know how many hours nwn2 gots and he pulled "20" out of thin air then he looks silly, but issue dies... for now. fergie could also claim that the guy at codex is a liar, and that he never said no 20 hours... but if it turns out that the codexian weren't full o' crap... is a number of options for fergie. come clean and admit that he were talking out his arse when he gave estimate might be a bruise to his ego for a second, but we would respect him more than we does now. oh, and for the record, being the suspicious kinda fella we is, we does note that shortly after we seen a good 'mount of feedback here and at bio suggesting that 40 hour would be much preferred for nwn2 as 'posed to 20, we now suddenly sees a preview from gamespy that says 40... or maybe you thinks gamespy reporter pulled 40 number out of thin air too? HA! Good Fun!

btw, is not like Gromnir needs fergie to tell us how many playable hours nwn2 gots. josh told us that fergie were talking out his arse when he came up with 20 hours... noted that fergie not had 'nuff info to makes a reliable guestimate... pointed out that nobody at this point gots power to make a reliable estimate. fine. we accept that. problem is that we still not know why fergie made his 20 hour estimate... or if he even did... and he ain't trying to clarify at all. fact is that we gots a german magazine article we cannot read... and we gots a german guy telling us what fergie said in that german magazine article. 20 hours. 1) 2 weeks ago fergie says 20. disturbing # of people is ok with that, but many complain. 2) josh informs us all that fergie cannot have made an educated guess 'bout hours of gameplay and many of you is mollified 'cause that mean that maybe you gets more than 20 hours, right? 3) now you sees in some preview that the guestimate is 40 hours and more of you is happy 'cause 40 hours sure sounds better than 20... but you seems to forget that josh were just telling you how improbable a current guestimate of playable hours at this point is. 4) Gromnir begins to thinks that many of you people is on drugs. 5 minutes of time for somebody to clarify. oh, and vol, leave the job of trying to get eldar or Gromnir brought up on harassment charges to the da... 'cause you not know what in the hell you is talking 'bout... as is par for course. heck you admit that you is full of crap often nuff... maybe you tell fergie that doing so ain't so hard, then maybe we gets a response. HA! Good Fun!

and yet you is telling Gromnir and eldar and others that we should just accept silence as our answer. bah. am not gonna act as if you is reasonable... is wasted effort. HA! Good Fun!

"If Mr. U wants to give you answers he will. Asking questions over, and over can go from being an intelligent potential consumer to harassing." anybody recall krazy? his dual-wield nonsense drove most of us a little nuts... but Gromnir were right there with him up to and until he actually GOT an asnwer. krazy only went too far when he refused to accept the answer he got... but we applaud him for pushing for a response. HA! Good Fun!

if Gromnir is over-reacting it is 'cause we sees a void left by the folks we thinks should be reacting. am frankly disgusted that so many who we know does care 'bout this is just so damned complacent 'bout it. is why we keeps getting shorter games and buggier games: 'cause we lets the publishers and developers get away with it. one thing that guts under our skin is when folks simply accept what they has been told or what they has been given. sure, when nwn2 comes out and it is short or buggy lots of you will complain, but it will be too late... 'cause you will have already bought game and proved to obsidian and atari that your post purchase complaints is just so much noisome wind... leave nothing but stench behind. now is when you got a chance to get some meaningful answers that could leads you to making an informed choice. don't simply wait til game is released to complain... 'cause you lost any real power at that point. HA! Good Fun!

btw, no matter how silly and a$$inine a rumor may be, fergie or somebody else would answer as soon as 'nuff folks got angry 'bout it. nuf coverage in mags and online sites and on message boards and fergie inevitably shows up to respond. am just not sure why you jokers is letting him get away with this crap. if you honestly thinks 20 hours is an okie dokie new standard for a sp crpg, then fine... sit back and enjoy. but if 20 hours bothers you we don't knows why you wouldn't be banging on doors and sending emals and posting on boards. fergie only stirs when people makes a big 'nuf stink. is unfortunate but true. HA! Good Fun!

"Grom, Fergie owes us boardies nothing." owes? am not sure 'bout "owes" but any consumer with half a brain should ask questions 'bout a potential purchase... and the reasonable consumer expects to get answers too. ask questions 'bout fergies love life is unreasonable and offensive, but you try to tell us again that it is arrogant to ask questions of fergie 'bout his product and we call bs. if fergie didn't wanna make gameplay hours an issue, he shouldn't have told the gosh darned germans what approx hours were... and if germans got fergie wrong, then fergie can easily explain. oh, and it ain't like the same question were NOT asked by Gromnir on the nwn2 board... so you can go cram that one up your tuckus. am gonna ask everywhere, 'cause fergie ain't responded yet. if we were in socal we would stop by the obsidian offices and ask for a response. HA! Good Fun!

it not matter which is more accurate. the thing is that the estimate from the German rag were attributed directly to fergie. 2x translated? yeah, that makes suspect... so why did fergie not simply say that the Germans or the guy who translated from German got it wrong? obvious reason is that the translation were accurate, and fergie did not wanna confirm that they were accurate... which is kinda chicken$h!7, no? any gameplay hours estimates we get at this point is gonna be suspect... if we take josh comments to be true. however, if the Big Herring, aka: uncle fergie, aka: feargus urquhart, gives an estimate of 20 hours and then refuses to confirm or deny... well, that is wrong. at best it is inconsiderate of him to not at least have one of his many toadies clarify. 5 minutes of somebody's day to clarify is asking too much? at worst fergie is being a duplicitous jerk. cowardly b00b is probably falling somewhere in between the two extremes. some folks wanna believe the 40 hour estimate more than the 20, and you is finding excuses for doing so. good for you.

Actually, my family and I (we're Oneida, of the Haudenoshonee) prefer "Oneida" first and foremost, and then "American Indian". <{POST_SNAPBACK}> we have always been Oglala, but bout a decade ago our cousins told us that we were being offensive if we used the Native American term. Indians were more appropriate. *&$# 'em. we get so tired seeing folks fight over the little crap 'cause they thinks they can win those battles... and then lets all the important stuff be forgotten. infant mortality and malnutrition is still higher on the rez where Gromnir grew up than it is in many 3rd world countries and these jerks is wasting spleen on Native American v. Indian? we say, "*&$# 'em," and we not apologize. also, we will note that the term genocide is appropriate when describing what occurred to many Indian peoples and that even if every recognizable Indian nation/tribe were given its land back there would still be a great deal of land in North America leftover. HA! Good Fun! ps am not saying *&$# you to deg personally. am saying it to our sanctimonious relatives.

Well, Mike Tyson would technically be assaulting a member of the public with a deadly weapon if he only used his bare hands: it depends on the context. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> deadly weapon can, for purposes of the statute, also include an attack by multiple assailants. and why on earth would you wanna use this as an example to bash America? you want us to find any number of examples of euros acting like jackarses? how long you think it would take us to find a few euro examples? bah. HA! Good Fun!

2 quick comments... 1) point of the thread were not to get advice. don't get Gromnir wrong, we not mind advice, but for a campaign to run 8 months we gotta be doing something right. am not trying to fix at this point. our number 1 goal is for players to enjoy the experience, and they is. fact that they went and did things far different than we expected is irksome to us, but is not really a problem. 2) "To get player's to make moral decisions, you need to:" as far as we is concerned, there never is and never should be a reason to Make players do what we want 'em to. am not gonna specific reward the rights and wrong moral choices. is maybe the way other folks GM, but not Gromnir. we set up the rules and the setting and we tries to give players stuff to do, but we do not dictate to them overtly or through carrot & stick routine what it is we wants them to do. we got expectations, and that helps us better prepare for what players will want to do next week or month, but we never try to make'em do stuff. am just simply surprised at the direction the players chose... considering our rather alarming lack o' subtlety. btw, eldar's advice, other than the Divine intervention stuff (no Gods to muddy our campaign with Transcendent Morality,) is stuff that were built into the campaign from start. we had clear and definite practical reasons for the players to wanna makes the brain battery moral questions their primary focus. the whole undead stuff were one such method we used. in a d20 kinda world with traditional undead but no clerics, and given that undead is such a terrible foe for mind zorking psychics, makes undead a real and serious problem for our players. the growing undead threat and the use o' brain batteries were linked. we were giving the players an obvious kinda Big Threat to contend with. also, our resistance movement (more like sympathetic terrorists,) afforded all kinds o' potential for players to meets npcs and situations that we thought would makes 'em question The System. heck, we even had our players eventually discover that a sub-race of degenerate humans had survived the seeming destruction of their race. illithids in Gromnir's campaign is not bred from humans, but is, in point of fact, a remnant of a cult o' humans that managed to survive their race's apocalypse. those brain eating monsters is what is left of humanity (though we gots a couple baba yaga and merlin kinda characters in our world who is rumored to possibly actually be human as well.) see, the thing is that the players were really having fun with the world we created and they were enjoying using the brain batteries and brain powers far more than they were interested in getting involved in a Big Picture campaign... which is fine for them, but Gromnir obviously miscalculated. our players happily harvest from kills and preserve tissue and when they is in towns or cities they restock their supply o' batteries or even buy slave stock from which they can makes their own bats, now that their appropriate craftsmanship and profession skills is high 'nuff to be doing so. our greedy players would prefer to perform the gruesome brain harvesting themselves if it is meaning they can save a few brass coins by so doing. did far more work than we had to with detailed setting and npc backgrounds n' such. were simply wondering if other gms had had a similar experience... players go all Lord o' the Flys on 'em... or simply act in a completely unexpected manner. has never really been something we had to deal with in the past. HA! Good Fun!

we gots hijacked by our players

seemingly moments ago you were complaining 'bout 20 hours and how you weren't gonna buy til bargain bin prices for nwn2 were making reasonable. personal opinion is that we am still gonna wait for bargain bin. HA! Good Fun!

listening to fergie we could not help but wonder if he were the nerd that ricky manning jr. recently beat up at a LA area denny's. http://www.suntimes.com/output/bears/cst-spt-bear24.html linky for you non-sports fans. HA! Good Fun!

I only get games if I can get the CD Pass. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> maybe you can burn the game onto a cd? am having dsl at home. one wonders just how long it would take to download that game. might consider if we coulds manage to use our office connection for the inevitable interminable download process. problem is we cannot let anybody from office know we is downloading games at work. download pr0n would be more acceptable than would be downloading games. HA! Good Fun!

nwn2 sucks. you know how we know? 'cause we saw a child in a screenshot. children will continue to be unkillable 'cause certain euro countries has some laws 'bout such things, and 'cause atari probably don't want a MA rating here in the States even if they could release such a game in europe. and as we all know from having followed the codexians, a game with unkillable children is NOT a real crpg. therefore, as is proved by means o' simple logic, nwn2 must suck. is a shame really, 'cause we actually prefer many of the nwn2 screenies to stuff we seen from oblivion. no nightmarish faces alone is a vast improvement over bethesda

... huh? "GB: If Jade Empire sells well for the Xbox, is there anything that would necessarily restrict you from porting the game to the PC? If there would ever be a PC version of the game, are there any particular features you'd like to tweak or enhance given the opportunity to take advantage of more powerful PCs? "Ray: We haven