Azarkon

So still a top-down revolution, huh? Well, we can agree to hope, but more than that I wouldn't count on it. Certainly, any actions on the part of Western powers wouldn't do jack and would probably exacerbate the situation, in my view.

The leadership has no interest in democratic reforms, because that cuts into their political power. The rich have no interest in democratic reforms, because they see nothing to be gained and everything to be lost. The poor, while they may want democratic reforms, are not pissed off enough to fight for democratic reforms, and at any case most of them blame the local governments and not the central government, which they associate with the old Communists that liberated China. And none of the above want democratic reforms as imposed by a foreign government, ie the US in Iraq. Putin put it best when he brushed off Bush's proposal for democratic reforms in Russia: "if by democracy you mean what's happened in Iraq, we'd rather not have that, thanks." So tell me - how exactly do you bring about democratic reforms? People in China do not consider the weak infrastructure of India, alongside its numerous rural problems, its caste biases, and its internal fragmentation issues, an example of success, so I doubt bringing up India will help your cause. If the sort of revolutionary change you're suggesting by innuendo is what the Chinese people wanted, they would've stuck with Communism. No, like normal human beings, that's not what they really care about. But a comfortable living that does not involve starvation due to a failed harvest, and which includes all the nifty luxuries of the modern world? Now we're talking. Make no mistake, the PRC is not immortal. Their success lasts insofar as they are able to keep up the economic boom that gives off the impression that China is moving forward and becoming a global superpower. When that streak ends - and, significantly, not by foreign intervention but by the mistakes of the PRC itself - they will have to deal and that might just include democratic reforms. But till then, I wouldn't hold my breath in believing that anything can be done.

Two reasons: 1) because Taiwan is a small island, whereas China is a diverse nation comprised of 1.3 billion people; managing an island is always easier than managing a continental empire 2) because Taiwan had a hell of alot of foreign support (ie from the US) that essentially produced a first world country in terms of living conditions; if tomorrow, China attained the same living conditions, democracy in the Asian sense (which is *not* the same as a lack of cronism, nepotism, or corruption - there is corruption, even within Taiwan) would probably not be far away. Let's not forget how oppressive the KMT regime was upon Taiwan when they first arrived. The PRC is no different. What makes you think there isn't change? The PRC's favorite saying is that it lifted 400 million of the world's poor out of poverty. These people, whom I do have contact with, are considerably well off and do not, largely, suffer the kind of problems you see publicized by Western press. It's the peasants - ie those who were left behind in the economic boom - that are largely discontent and the victims of local thuggery and corruption. Unfortunately, it's also the case that these peasants lack much of the education that you'd expect from an average first world citizen. The success of democracies are largely determined by the qualities of its people; in China, democracy would mean the dominance of 800 million unwashed uneducated masses over < 400 million middle-class, among which a small fraction holds a majority of the wealth (much like the US). Can we say Communist revolution all over again? Err, I hope you're not stating that the reason Falun Gong gained so much influence is because of its push for change. Falun Gong is a cult (insofar as the term can be applied - I'm not trying to be derogatory to their goals here, but they have very cultish features) and its appeal is largely religious. Yes, religion can be awfully influential, as we've seen in the Middle-East, and when it comes into contact with a secular authoritarian government there's bound to be major clashes of power. That's what happened with Falun Gong, unfortunately.

Not this thread again. Ignorance, as always, on the part of people who don't/can't understand what is the real problem with China and what are the real solutions. I guess I can add a few tips: * The central government in China does not hold all the power, nor is it a united entity that can be judged as one. The thuggery that is most oftenly reported by Western press has to do with the actions of local governments, which are corrupt, self-serving, and cannot be easily controlled due to the whole cultural "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" tradition of nepotism that has been ingrained within Chinese society (and one might argue Asian society in general) for thousands of years. * Democracy, implemented in such an environment of corrupt officials and bureaucratic entanglement, cannot possibly function. What's to stop the local boss and his cronies from misreporting votes? The central government that is comprised of the friends and families of such officials? Yeah, right. * A revolution to overthrow the central government will do nothing; as I said, nepotism and cronism are ingrained within the political culture. All you'd accomplish is replace one corrupt government with another. Remember, many of the current PRC power holders came from the peasantry, so it's not a matter of "teh rich are all evil teh poor are good and honest!11!" * There's no such thing as "appeasement" with regards to China, at least not in the sense of appeasing Hitler. Stop all inflow of Chinese goods and nevermind what happens to the US (ie likely economic depression), China's economic collapse will bring about far worse consequences and will likely destabilize the entire region. A strong, authoritarian China is preferrable to a fragmented, sectarian, and most importantly *impoverished* China. Why? Think WW 2 - why did Germany fall so easily into the hands of Hitler? You might as well ask for another Islamic Revolution or North Korea. * There is nothing, ultimately, that the West can achieve through embargos, sanctions, wars, etc. to change China that is not for the worse. The Chinese government might make some concessions with respect to human rights, but based on their record with stopping piracy, I wouldn't hold my breath. In fact, I doubt the local governments would care what the central government says, since behind closed doors it's all a family game anyhow (and this is what many Western observers don't understand about China - they try to approach it as if it were a Western sociopolitical state built upon the cooperation of industies, companies, and governments each serving their own enlightened self-interest, when it is in fact very much a game of powerful families and friends). And this represents one of the central hubris in American thinking - that other cultures can abide by the same rules it abides by and triumph similarly. Given the massive failure of such an ideology in the Middle-East, I'm surprised there are still people in the American government that believes in the same sort of engagement with China. Until you can change the culture of China, there is no "good solution," and the days when the US could simply go into a country, destroy its infrastructure, and rebuild it from the ground up (ie what it did with Japan and South Korea) are long over. The US cannot even rebuild Iraq; what makes you think it can do anything in China other than spark a world war the likes of which we have not yet seen? Historically, for China, a strong central government has always equaled prosperity while a weak central government has ever equaled internal collapse, mass suffering, rampant corruption, and bloodshed. This will not change. What might change, though, is the living conditions of the Chinese people and, by way of effect, their willingness to tolerate stringent social control. What are the concerns of the rising Chinese middle class? Politics? Not so much. But the ability to spend money as they please in pursuit of luxury and to enter into the 21st century of mass consumption? Yes, very much so, and if you observe carefully, the success story of the PRC lies precisely in its ability to offer economic and social freedom while retaining political control (albeit hampered, in large part, by the presence of corrupt local governments). And it is from this point of view alone that we can hope for the future of China.

All this talk about the weather being hot and no mention of global warming? What has happened to this forum? Anyhow, I'm roasting in CA, which is surprising given that the weather here is supposed to be mild compared to elsewhere. I do think that there is cause for alarm, even if Al Gore didn't make An Inconvenient Truth.

If I made a portal on the ground, and then one directly above it on the ceiling, and then jumped into the one on the ground, wouldn't I fall forever?

More fuel for the fire: (From cnn.com) I hope this teaches the Lebanese that in this world, you can't depend on anyone to stand up for you. Not the Lebanese government. Not the UN. Not Hezbollah, and certainly not the US. Everyone's a victim, except those who choose to stop being victims.

History is not determined by those who are right, but by those who are strong. Israel understands: the US didn't enter WW2 to save the Jews from genocide. We entered WW2 because we were attacked by Japan and because our allies in Europe were getting pounded. Number One comes first; allies go second. Right and wrong? Eh, a distant third.

The only power capable of stopping Israel now... Is the power of love! :D

Who needs enemies, when your allies stand against you whenever you go to war? This isn't about right vs. wrong, Hades. It's about maintaining both a system of alliances and the facade of national righteousness. Bush is simply bushbeating around the grass to make it look like the US has got the moral high ground (ie the situation is "pathetic" - his words); he's not going to shake the US-Israel alliance. Iran isn't Israel. Iran's an enemy. Israel, an ally. That's how it goes and have always went.

Israel is at fault insofar as it was a fault to put Israel there in the first place. National survival, with respect to Israel, means putting an end to anti-Israeli organizations like Hamas and Hizbollah before they can gain a significant following. Israeli politicians that do not think like this won't last long in a country that's been the target of terrorist attacks ever since it was born - it only took, what, one major attack to make the US go berserk? Israel's been taking it for decades. Feel free to blame the Western-centric "international" organization that decided Israel's fate back in the day, but it's too late to regret that decision now. You can't ask every Israeli to pack up and leave the land that's been their home for many years, and which has always possessed a symbolic value in their religion, even if the US is willing to offer relocation within its borders. And there's a fat chance of that happening.

Well, the first two posts were in jest, but since you took it seriously, there is a gesture of truth in'em: Bush isn't going to do anything about Israel, because Israel is an American ally and he'd look a real hypocrite for calling an end to Israeli hostilities while his country is still in Iraq, and he isn't going to negotiate with Hizbollah, which runs this war in Lebanon, because Hizbollah is a terrorist organization. That's the bottom line.

Bush did :D Hizbollah is named a terrorist organization by both Israel and the Bush administration.

Why is this topic on nigh every message board I visit? Is there some central hub of information that engineers what's on forum goers' minds? Perhaps in the 10th dimension?

Bush: "We don't negoti-ate with terrorists."

We agree a-plenty on games, Eldar, but this is Way Off-Topic

Does it matter what it's called? Putting *the* Jewish state in Muslim central might've been a dumb idea, but it does pour plenty of oil on the whole religous aspect of the Chosen people and their trials on the way to the Promised Land. The situation there is not merely political - it's Biblical. I'm sure the fair-minded would argue otherwise, but it's funny how these things work - it's almost as if the rest of the Christian world is looking on with bated breath for the fulfillment of the Prophecy. You don't need to be apocalyptic to understand the Middle-East, but it helps.

If this is Alazandar's mod series, I found that Part II (Crimson Tide of Tethyr) was pretty good as far as NWN mods go. It seems that the transition to Premium actually shortened his mod's length and, if people here are to be believed, quality.

Depends on the evidence. Since I don't have all the evidence and the government appears to be hiding some of the evidence, I do think that it's possible that the simplest explanation is a degree of government involvement, yes.

Why? Because simplicity is equivalent to ignorance? Taking into account every single fact before you come up with a "simple" explanation is not called complicating the issue. It's called being responsible. In other words, the statement that the simplest explanation is often the right one presumes that you've got all the evidence. Otherwise, you're just being ignorant.

I think you guys are missing the forest for the trees. If it were a matter of the Bush administration orchestrating the entire attack, there would be a tremendous amount of people involved who would have to be silenced. However, if it were a simple matter of the Bush administration facilitating the attack knowing that it's coming, very few people would need to be silenced. The entire attack could've been facilitated by a few top officials of the government plus a small cadre of military personnel. I do not believe that Bush hired Osama to blow up the buildings. I do think that Al Qaeda is behind the attack and would've done it regardless. I don't think that it requires a leap of faith to realize that such an attack could serve both sides' interests. People say that the simplest explanation is often the correct one. I tend to agree, except the simplest explanation here, taking into account evidences from both sides, is for there to have been a mutually beneficial relationship. Otherwise you would have to disregard every single piece of evidence pointing to a possible conspiracy - and that's impossible, because frankly put, there's far more than the WTC argument. What is unsettling about that video is not its physics arguments about whether the WTC collapsed on its own or through implanted bombs, but by the references to various attempts by the government to silence key witnesses, to prevent official personell from flying, from redirecting fighter jets during the day, and for remaining secretive regarding actual video-tapped evidence. There's a separate explanation for each one of these issues, but are you willing to trust that everything was a coincidence? If so, then you're making as big of a leap of faith as any conspiracy theorist. It's doubtful that an otusider like the one who made Loose Change could've gotten all the facts right. However, after viewing the video I doubt I can say, with good judgment, that he's got nothing right. The truth may not be as sinister as he believes, but given the major beneficiaries of the events following 9/11 and given how convenient the attack was for the Bush administration, it's also not likely to be as simple as the other side wants you to think.

Let me take it from the top: #1: I feel that the biggest problem with the influence system, from playing KOTOR 2, was that it felt artificial. Not that the alternative of asking your companion to chat and getting the same answer back every time isn't artificial, but I felt that a typical player of the game simply didn't *stress* over that. They waited for the periodic conversations to pop up and maybe asked their companions a question every once in a while. That worked fine because the game flow wasn't interrupted by the player having to go through routine "dialogue check-up" points in order to not have missed anything. *That* felt artificial. Moreover, I also think that fly-by (NPC-initiated) dialogue has a certain advantage in that they *can't* be repetitive - you get them once, choose what you want to say, and they're gone. Woosh. Never to return. Not so with player-initiated dialogue in which the system is inherently limited to a set number of choices and *must* be forced to repeat certain lines again and again sooner or later. To stress this particular avenue of NPC interaction is to purposefully reveal the seams, so to speak, and that led to a focus on the artificial side of NPC interaction that I think detracted from the experience. This is particular true when combined with that earlier aspect of having to check, time from time, whether the NPC has anything more to say or whether you could progress to the "next step." I could only take Aton's "I don't think this is the right time for this talk" so many times before throwing my light sabers up in exasperation. #2: Nice to hear that the "where's the text" crowd won't be left behind, and as always, quality trumps quantity. I do think that good voice acting adds to a game, so I don't think the move to less text due to audio & localization is a bad thing. Perhaps this can even be rectified one day with some sort of computer generated voice system, but that's a far ways off. #3: It's accepted nowadays that the direction we're moving towards with regards to games is interactive cinema. But I can't help but wonder, from time to time, what we're losing in the process. Certainly, the first rule of writing is to "show, not tell." And translated to a graphical environment, that roughly becomes "display, not describe." But the jump from text to graphics is not necessarily so simple, I think. Text has a way of setting fire to your imagination that pictures don't, or can't. I remember the days when I played roguelike games and MUDs when a single scarlet 'D' or prismatic ASCII 'elder dragon lord' could hold my attention. The battle in-game was simple enough: a contest of numbers where I matched my hps to the enemy's and stared intently at descriptions of "you slash an elder dragon lord with GODLY force" while fearing the equivalent counter-attack to appear on the next line. Yet in my head the battle was in full-swing, each fire ball streaking across the film of my mind to explode in variegated sparks on the dragon's shimmering scales. I'm not so good at make-belief to feel the heat of dragon fire upon my cheeks, but I was certainly excited enough that it made no difference. So I wonder, really, what is lost by departing from the abstraction provided by text. Certainly, the fact that novels are still popular even in this age of silver screens and cathode ray tubes should say something about the enduring power of language. And I worry - can those majestic lines really be replaced by photorealistic renderings of the same? CRPGs have, for now, the best of both worlds. But how long before the push of mass commercialization abolish paragraphs altogether and replace them with strictly the snappy lines of pop culture? Would it - could it - still have the same impact as a good novel did, or is the genre to forego its textual roots and enter full-fledgedly into the realm of interactive cinema? #4: I must say that it heartens me greatly to hear that PS:T is your proudest achievement, MCA. I recently read an extensive explanation of the game from back in the day and it just struck me how different the game was from everything else that's come along in the CRPG genre. Certainly, there are games in the adventure genre that might be comparable, and perhaps PS:T was more like an adventure game in many respects, but it was still one of a kind. It did indeed break new grounds. But enough praise and nostalgia. Any plans for a game like PS:T? *duck* I had to ask. #5, 7: I think Eldar summarized my concerns over Mature & Teen and ratings in general pretty well. #6: Thanks for the reply. I think something like this will really help wannabe modders like the rest of us do well in NWN 2 One specific comment: I think this is true, but that being "well liked" is not necessarily a unanimous NPC goal. Maybe having a competitor within the party can motivate the player just as well? I guess this wouldn't work very well if you had the choice of dropping the self-important bastard in an alley somewhere, preferrably where he'll get bitten to death by rabid dogs. But still, conflict is a source of inspiration, and absent the ever-present villain, a rival could work to carry the player through the more "routine" parts of the game. Maybe this'll work better in a game where you don't have a small set of companion characters, but must work within a permanent, but larger "squad" where rivalries and friendships can both blossom within the context of a greater story. #8: I'll go ahead and agree that games are already works of art. And not just art in the PS:T sense of literary value, but also art in the sense that they communicate something meaningful. Game mechanics *can* communicate a certain sensibility, I think, but maybe that's just because my times in a MMORPG have brought about a change in my person. Freaky, I know. #9: Interesting insight into the changing game industry. I guess high-profile designers are an inevitability, since the game industry doesn't quite have the equivalent of actors (though voice actors definitely receive attention as well), and so gamers have nothing to worship aside from company brands and team leads. I certainly think a star-worship cult is forming around designers, and become reminded of this each time my friends mention Hideoki Kojima, Ralph Kostor, Lord British, or Chris Metzen. Which gets me to the question, can I have your autograph? #10: Hmm. Can't say I agree with the publisher trends. I think someone posted an article earlier that outlined the problems of where the publishers are pushing the industry - namely, towards things like better graphics, accurate physics, streamlined gameplay, and a cinematic experience. All of these things are great, arguably, but they're approaching the point where they're becoming victims of diminishing returns. It leads down the path of buying games for superficial improvements: things like higher res textures (HDR, which is apparently a big thing nowadays to put on your game boxes), improved ragdoll systems, metal that looks more metallic, soil erosion - and my response to it all is: who cares? The jump from 2D to 3D was significant enough, but who cares if soil erodes in Oblivion? Who cares if the trees have a million triangles as opposed to 500,000? Does it really improve my gaming experience that much if you translated BG 2, with the same gameplay, into 3D? The answer, I think, is an increasingly vehement "NO." And I'm not just talking about gamers like myself and those who frequent the Codex. I'm talking about casual gamers who I discuss these things with - they, too, are getting tired of the focus on superficial qualities as opposed to the real, core game mechanics that make a game enjoyable. I don't think verisimilitude is the ultimate aphrodisiac of the gamer psyche. Some of the best and most classic games of this day and age are on handhelds, and improving their graphics really doesn't do anything more than invoke a gasp or two at the progress of portable technology. Would you really enjoy Pac-Man more if you could see the fear in the ghosts' eyes as you chomp your way towards them? Or Tetris if the blocks looked like actual cement from the Chrysler building? I, personally, don't think so. And I think that we're due for a time when shinier graphics and snazzier physics just won't do it anymore. The time will then be set, I hope, for another CRPG Renaissance. :cool: Anywho, thanks to everyone for posting their insightful questions, Chris for answering them, and Fionavar for setting this up I really like this sort of in-depth interaction with the devs and think that it's a great idea overall (thought it might help in he popularity if the NWN 2 board could've also participated). Good night all.

Play a high int, wis, and cha character to get the most out of the game.

Because we all know the only thing that matters to people on this board are graphics, yes? EQ 2 and WoW are comparable products. Having played both recently, I must say that EQ 2, frankly, is getting better as a MMO while WoW is getting worse. WoW nowadays is all about the raiding game, and coupled with the glacial pace at which the developers update the game, the player base is rapidly getting bored. EQ 2, on the other hand, has tons of content for the non-raiders, and are adding more on a frequent basis. Yes, EQ 2 tends to be more price gouging than WoW due to its reliance on $$$ adventure packs, but then the game doesn't have 6.5 million subscribers but still manages to out-produce Blizzard in terms of content and support. That it costs a bit more is unsurprising.

Charily optimistic.