DanJW

I nearly cried at the "it's-a me, Mario!" in Assassin's Creed 2.

Yeah he made money from tax breaks and German film grants. It was not unlike The Producers. If that funding has been cut, then I have no idea how he is going to make movies now. Maybe he just built up sufficient momentum and can no longer be stopped, like a huge volcanic boulder rolling towards a school. The guy really is an execrable lunatic though.

Yeah, this. Not doing the lame "chatting up" stuff is all fine, but eventually you have to do the scary hard part and actually ask a girl out. Very few will do it for you. Just keep it simple; "would you like to go out for a drink* sometime?" works perfectly well. *or coffee, or lunch, if you don't or can't drink

Happy Birthday Spaff! You are 30! Amazingggggg.

That is fantastic.

"This game will wreck your economy" - IGN.com

Hmm, yeah the unspoken trend seems to be that we rate things as , or . Multiples are added for emphasis. Combinations for nuance.

Exercise is the biggy when it comes to getting good sleep. I think 7 hours is about right for me. Like others my body asks for more but if I listen to it then I turn to lead or something and can't do anything the whole day. If I make the effort then after a moment of displeasure I feel much better. Although I think I've got a bit of S.A.D. right now because I've been reeaaally tired and sleeping lots (breaking up with the girlfriend didn't help, so I put it down to necessary emotional healing time). Mind you I'm a natural night owl. It's genetic apparently, whether you are more alert in the morning or the evening. Age plays a lesser role too.

Live Messenger, although less and less these days, and gmail and facebook IMs. I know I know it's terrible, but it's convenient at least and it's where I find most people I need to speak to.

Time for change of sub-subject maybe? Can anyone playing currently tell me what the changes to PvP are like? My PvP-ing, like my raiding, happened in fits and starts, but WotLK got me playing PvP a lot more than I had before (part of that being down to the dual specs).

Those are all in WoW. I can't think of many examples from previous Warcraft games.

Oh noes! A belated happy birthday Ysbreker!

Chris was saying he finds a distinction between silly or funny-in-itself and references to outside media. He likes the former, not the latter. The former was always present but the latter crept in as time went on. Yeah, like that. On the whole I don't let the outside-references spoil my fun. I can either grin or roll my eyes and then afterwards I can integrate them into the game world, in a kind of suspension-of-disbelief-aided-by-forklift.

Actually, the endgame bores me. I've done a bit of raiding, but it's hard for me to keep it up. The repetition, the guild-politics, (or the PUG-drama). I dunno, I never really want to do any particular raid more than once. Once I have seen content I want to move on. So I actually prefer the levelling experience. I am at my happiest when I have a new continent to explore and new landscapes to marvel at. The community stance that "the endgame is the One True Game" sometimes really pisses me off. I suspect the success of WoW is 90% down to it providing a better levelling experience than any other MMO. It makes me wonder if it is possible to make an MMO in which you can develop a character indefinitely, without it becoming massively more powerful. Obviously there would be some increase in power but not to the usual extent. Instead deelopment would be about growth, diversification, becoming more unique and gaining history. This would be hard to do in a way that appeals to the hordes of OMG ai amz t3h 1337 adolescent-pattern-competitive-driven types. It's something I'll have to think about more. edit: oh shit I'm in a WoW thread. Ahhhg! Must... resist... reactivation...

I've never met anyone who disliked it. It actually bears repeated viewings - there's some very clever stuff in there that is often missed first time. I'd say it has more depth than any other Python production.

Difficulty levels have their place. People do have different levels of skill, in different genres too. It would be nice if there was some consistancy I agree. Many times I have played a game on normal and found it too easy or too hard. But then I can't be bothered to start over. If the game is good enough I will replay it on another setting, but this is rare (the MGS games are good examples of me getting more out of a game when replaying it on hard mode). It's tough though. There's not much science there. Judging difficulty is a black art. At best there are statistics; for instance in the way Valve uses them to analyse playstyles. Sometimes it's hard to direct the designers on this. One game in which I was a QA consult had a couple of ridiculously hard levels, both designed by the same guy. He couldn't understand that the reason he found it easy was because he built it and knew the position and behaviour of every entity. It took months to balance that game, arguing all the way, but I think in the end it had a nice range of challenge for anybody who wanted to play it.

G-qkNEampEA

TOR is not KOTOR. Different games. Bad branding move I think, a evidenced by the confusion. I'm hopeful for TOR, but more and more it looks like a WoW clone. The voice-acting could well be the best thing about it - I see no reason for them not to be proud of it. Yeah, I can sympathize. It definitely sounds like a lot of the games industry that I experienced for myself. The tone sucks, it's true - but there's something about being overworked and being fed too much sugar and being crammed in the same office with the same people and being forgotten about, something about being a cog in the games industry machine that does something to your head. You end up ranting like that. It's kind of a delirium. It passes once you've been out for a while, or you find a calmer position in a nicer company. That delirium can also skew your perceptions a bit though. Not completely - theres likely a few grains of truth there - but quite a bit.

Your height and weight may also be taken into account. Plus your physician may be planning to keep you on the high dosage for a only short period, to give a kick-start. With minerals like iron, high dosage is only dangerous if prolonged. Also keep in mind that the packet instructions are for lay-people and aim to avoid any chance of litigation. They are not for doctors, who know what they are doing. P.S. I am not a doctor.

Quite possibly. Depressing eh?

But falsifying applications to the patents office for personal gain is a crime. All of the licensing fees he was paid by companies using the Edge name was essentially theft. Not to mention the money lost by companies like Mobigames. I guess that counts as vandalism. Also he's a dick.

It is a joy to read. I can't believe I found myself cheering EA lawyers. They systematically destroyed all of Langdell's claims. My favourite bit maybe: Which is a win not just for EA, but for all developers who have been bullied or may have been bullied in the future by Tim Langdell. Next headline please: "Langdell to serve prison sentence". Now that would make the world seem like a better place.

Yeah I didn't manage to finish it. After the linear beginning I enjoyed the 'primary' text; the actual description of the video and the analysis of the house. But all the stream-of-consciousness wangst in the footnotes by the 'editor' just bored the hell out of me for the most part. I ended up skipping through.

Nice. Let's hope it does indeed go all the way to 'criminal penalties'.