Bjorn

I think it's even more complicated than that. It seems that losses may subtract from your wins, so you need 500 more wins than losses to hit rank 3. Don't quote me on that, but I've seen a bunch of forum posts citing some odd irregularities in ranking up in the BoB. You might think about looking it up before getting going in it.

I never thought of White as being hyper-competent, except in chemistry. Everything else just seems like he's hoping, guessing and reacting by the seat of his pants and he only gets away with a bunch of it because of how incredibly impossible it is for anyone to imagine that he's as deep into crime as he is.

I never use the heavy attacks on either, the recovery delay is too brutal. I'd just rather chain a couple of R1s together. I'd have to check my current character, but each at +10 at 40Str/18Dex, the damage difference is pretty negligible between them, like less than 10 points. Of course at lower Str levels, the Mace is going to be quite a bit better. If 2-Handing, I think it switches and the club is slightly better, even at high Str levels. But it really just comes down to which swing someone likes more. Binoculars plus a powerful spell was the only way I've killed it. Trying to melee it, the little bastard just scurries off way to fast every time, and I'm always there too early to have a bow that's capable of one or two shotting it.

Ugh, unfortunately yes. It's the worst thing about that production. But it was the first version of Othello I had ever watched, and that was already one of my favorite Shakespearean plays. At the time, I only knew Hoskins from Roger Rabbit and the (at the time) recently released Super Mario Bros. Movie. So to my late teen mind, I was blown away seeing him play Iago, and owning it.

I'd say if there is money to be made, Disney would license the Marvel characters for another MvC game. Kingdom Hearts, while it has had some bumpy moments, has managed to keep chugging along, hasn't it? FUUCK! Now I really want a kart racer with Manny Calavera in it. That's the best idea. I would probably buy a next gen console right now for that shit. Or even a Wii U.

I'm sure I have some seriously rose tinted glasses on when reflecting back on it. I can remember the horrible lag, overloaded servers, and all sorts of other bad stuff. But the good memories mostly outshine all that stuff. I think the points about DayZ are interesting, and whatever Rust ends up becoming. If those games fully supported a player economy (even just trading/bartering), and had lots of non-violent, but interesting, activities I'll bet you could have an interesting hybrid community going on.

The Small Soap Stone is a godsend, and one of my favorite additions to the game. I use it all the time. I'll use it to refresh my Estus and equipment before a boss, because helping someone go through 5-10 regular enemies is a lot more likely to be successful than helping against the more difficult bosses. Your reward is also a Smooth and Silky Stone, and it is the easiest way to get those, which in turn makes for a fantastic way to get elemental stones, chunks, twinkling titanite and petrified dragon bone (as well as a lesser chance to get the unique item/weapon drops) from the crows. And if you are trying to control your Soul Memory, you can use it to get those stones without having the Soul earnings from helping people beat bosses. And yes, it definitely has a larger Soul Memory range than the regular stone. I was severely under the average for SM when I got to Drangleic two nights ago, as in there were NO summon signs anywhere. But I was able to be summoned into others' worlds to farm some souls using the Small Stone. Buy the basic club from the hag. Fully upgraded on a Str build, it does slightly less damage than the mace, but has a different moveset that hits Crystal Lizards with ease. It's a wider arc sweeping from high right to low left, and then the combo swings it horizontally back from left to right. If you have 2+ enemies, it's quite easy to tag multiples with the combo. It's got lower durability and poise damage, but weighs less as well. I tend to use it more than the mace, as they kill enemies in the same number of hits, but I like the Club moveset more. For those of you who like the striking weapons, I'd also suggest making the Barbed Club boss weapon if you have some Petrified Dragon Bone to upgrade it. Fully upgraded it's more damaging than the mace, but with the same moveset, plus having elemental and bleed damage. It's one of the weird/unique weapons that does NOT lose base damage when infused, in fact the base damage actually increases, bleed proc increases and it gains whatever element you add. Plus once infused, it upgrades more per level than uninfused. Scaling does drop, but the base damage and elemental gains more than offset that. Next on my list of shit to try is to go Bonfire Ascetic that boss and get a second one to try powerstancing them in PvP. I've got a Lightning one right now, want to make either a fire or magic one, will depend on how I finish out the build on which spell buff is better for me.

Gavlan no wheel, Gavlan no deal. I really actually wonder how one goes about judging the difficulty of DS2. I'm in no position too, I sunk hundreds of hours into both Des and DS1. I thought DS2 and the bosses felt easier, but then I went and browsed through some forums, particularly those with people new to the series. HOLY SHIT! People die a lot, run out of effigies, can't figure out where to go, can't master basic mechanics, never learn how to open secret doors, miss getting the soapstones, miss getting the Estus Flask, join the Company of Champions (and don't know what it does), don't upgrade weapons, etc. Even some of the co-op people I've played with amazed me that they were able to get as deep into the game as they were. I was in the Undead Crypt, and a phantom with a long sword backstabbed one of the knights there and only took a third of its health (my club would one shot them on a backstab). If that was his main weapon, every enemy must have been a serious challenge for him. I finished my no death/no bonfire run last night! Getting through it was a real treat. Not being able to teleport or rest at bonfires, and having no access to magic of any kind made it a fun challenge. Build was super simple, just high health/str using maces and clubs. My closest calls ended up coming during the end of the game. I got summoned in for what I expected to be a co-op refresh for me, and discovered the host had been invaded. The invader almost one shot me, but ended up killing the host before me, allowing me to escape. The boss of the Undead Crypt came within a sliver of health of killing me, and the final boss did as well. The run ended up taking about 16 hours total. I had 3 previous failed attempts, 2 on the PS3 and one on the PC. Two of those attempts were relatively short (just a couple of hours). The longest one I was about halfway through when I bit it. It was almost weird to be able to sit at bonfires to recharge and teleport after hours of avoiding them like the plague. Now I need to go back and clear out all the areas I skipped to properly kit myself out for PvP.

I just watched Brazil a few weeks ago. Him and De Niro have such fabulously bizarre roles in it.

Just started playing that song, and the wife looks at me and says, "Nuh uh, it's fucking cold outside."

That's now on my list of weird places I want to visit. Thanks!

If I remember right, they have had more than one canon for SW, there were levels of canon, and each level could not contradict any levels above it. It went something like Lucas>movies>tv series>EU>non-EU written works>toys and merchandise.

I usually just use ships like that for a quick bathroom break, or to check my email or something. I don't have the time/patience to level up all the way, but I figure if I get to the Yellow level early on, it's worth a few minutes of waiting.

#foodporn (video is NSFW, but hilarious)

Oh yeah, I absolutely agree, it's like design brilliance through ignorance. Eve has interesting long form stories, but the original UO really empowered both short and long term stories. Any given night could give you a great single encounter, but then there were longer playing arcs too. For awhile, I was in an anti-griefing rapid response team. We had a bunch of people who would report active gangs of PKers to us, and we'd roll out to try and stomp them. A few years after I quit playing, I was visiting a friend and watched him play for a bit. I didn't even recognize the game anymore. Not just the new areas and stuff, but the metagame had evolved to where you needed to run it windowed, with macro programs and helpers running, and other windows tracking things. I remember thinking that it just looked gross and boring.

It was empowering and antagonistic to players in ways that I think any MMO now would be terrified to implement. The closest we get is the Souls games, but they don't have the RPG depth, variety or social interactions of UO. I honestly think a lot of the original systems only made it into the game because the devs had no frame of reference for what would or would not work. Which resulted in gloriously mixed chaos. I don't know how many of those systems have been paved over and smoothed out since then. That process was already happening when I quit playing around '99. That's just a fabulous story. I can still remember being terrified if I was by myself outside of town and ran into players with Red names.

Maybe not the perfect thread for this, but I don't see any other Ultima threads and not sure it needs its own. So Ultima Online is coming to Steam...which is sooo weird to me. UO is the game that introduced me to online gaming. It always surprises me that it's still around. It really brought out my inner asshole. As soon as I discovered that pickpocketing people was a possible job, I made it my mission to make the most legendary thief that I could. The hatemail I received in game was fucking intense, when I got caught. Steal someone's entire bag of teleportation ruins they have spent days making and they get really pissy. And I didn't need anything that I stole, I was just a kleptomaniac hoarder. I didn't use it to support a guild, or make myself rich, or to adventure. It was just about stealing whatever I thought I could get away with. God forbid I found a character off by themselves afk. I don't know that there has ever been an MMO that enabled griefing like UO. Fuck I was an asshole. I'd actually think about picking it up, but it looks like there is still a decent buy-in ($30 for the most up to date version) and a $14/mo subscription.

Fuck. RIP Mr. Hoskins. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the easy one for our generation to love, but I'd like to point out how fucking good his Iago was. He pretty much ended up defining that character for me. I do have a deep love of Roger Rabbit though. I may have rewatched it more than any other movie. For years, it was just something I would put on in the background when I was doing other things.

Don't watch the spoilered video unless you've finished the game, it features one of the very late game optional bosses. The player discovers that the Hex Climax consumes ALL of your souls while trying it against this boss. I haven't messed around with Hexes yet and did not realize that's how Climax worked. I can't imagine how many people have tried this spell without paying attention to the description on it.

I live in quite a few miles outside of my nearest town, and depend on a small business (Mercury Wireless) for my Internet, via fixed wireless broadband. And honestly it's the best ISP I've ever had. The speeds aren't the fastest, but that's just because it's long range wireless and there are simply limits to that tech. But outages are fixed quickly and when I have to call them, I get someone knowledgeable and friendly who usually knows how to take care of my problem.

I have to send that to a few academia friends.

I read the Zahn stuff, and a bit of other EU things in high school, but was never super invested in it. So maybe that's part of the reason it doesn't bother me. And I always figured that canon existed solely at the whim of George, who was free to validate or invalidate anything as it pleased him. So there was little reason to regard anything as being truly canon, arguably even original film releases given his willingness to go back and mess with them.

The handwringing over the EU has actually struck me as a bit strange. Disney will use whatever they want from the EU, whether it's characters, planets or plot lines (they said as much in the announcement). They just aren't going to feel any compunction to not contradict the EU. Which is exactly what Lucasfilm would have done if producing new movies. And they don't appear to be killing off the EU, they are rebranding it SW: Legends. They're still getting their feet under them on how to manage what may be the largest fictional universe there is in terms of total things that have been created for it (I suppose the Marvel Universe may be bigger). Lucas allowed EU content to be made because it made money. Disney will likely take the same attitude towards Legends content, provided there is a profit at the end of it. Profitable EU content will remain in print/distribution so long as it is profitable.

Do they make something like a candied pea? Honey roasted peas?

That got me to laugh. I both love and hate the feeling of soreness/weakness. Ugh, haven't worked out in a week. My wife tore something in her bicep, and she was the real big motivator behind us working out most nights. Since she can't do kettlebell swings for awhile, we've ended up in a cycle of mutual demotivation.