Judgement_Dave

As Croesis says ax and axe are the same, just alternate spellings.

In my experience, the US billion (10^9) tends to get used in Britain in preference to the old British billion (10^12). I blame politicians and businessmen who wanted to start boasting about how much they spent or were worth and realised that a billion sounds more than just saying a thousand million.

If I've got this right, when the British government talks about how many trillions are being put into rescuing the economy they actually mean billions. But again - a trillion sounds a lot more than a billion.


BTW - I notice that another poster is asking for a North American Lounge... shouldn't it be something more american, like a diner, rather than a lounge?

I have actually been wondering if this is another difference between the two sides of the Atlantic.

Maybe in-game homophobia is more prevalent in some of the US servers than it is in the EU.

But then the US has always had extreme views and bigotry protected (to some extent) by freedom of speech and Europe had a much closer conflict with fascism... A gut feeling thinks that this may have something to do with a difference.

Actually that's one of the bits that I've been seeing as probably being delivered as described.

The way I've seen the idea of Universal Enhancement Slots is similar to the way the IO set bonuses work:
Smallish bonuses/changes that affect all applicable powers and stand outside of ED.

By applicable powers I mean that a +dmg UE wouldn't add damage to a non-damaging power, but would add damage to all damaging powers.

If the engine permits it, I could even see UEs ignoring many of the various caps (e.g. allowing a small progression past damage/def/res caps).

Back in about 1990 I had a postcard of a cartoon dog at a computer with the legend "on the internet no-one knows you're a dog".

Nearly 20 years later and people still seem to think it's important to make sure people do know (because you told them)...

The best use of minority/exclusive supergroups has always struck me as RP - it doesn't matter what the player is but the character has to fit the minority.

Just need to be careful that they don't get offensive parody stereotypes.

But SGs based on geographic location/sexuality/religion/zoological origin/mulitiverse plane of origin/etc/etc are all good as long as no offense or discrimination against players is caused.

Of course discrimination against characters may be fine if in RP and all participants know it to be pure RP...

First off: heterosexuality isn't flaunted. It exists - but that isn't flaunting it, in much the same way that a perceived lack of non-heterosexual relationships isn't neccesarily persecution or prejudice.

Second: I'd maybe agree on Manti and Sis P's wedding if it had been done just as a plot development and hadn't been because of the RL marriage.

As it was, it was effectively an ingame celebration of a major devs wedding. So the dev is male and has a heterosexual relationship and so married a woman and that was mirrored in-game.

It strikes me as a shame that you seem to consider that as some sign of a pro-hetero/anti-gay stance in the game in-general.

Wouldn't it have been somehow worse if the devs felt that they needed to do a gay or lesbian marriage (or civil partnership or whatever it may be called in your locality) just to maintain some sort of balance? Positive discrimination is just as bad as negative in many ways, it assumes that the minority needs extra help just to be on an even footing...

Now if any of the devs are homosexual and do get married (or equivalent) then I've no problem with that being celebrated in game. To be honest I'd prefer any ingame celebrations for any form of relationship to only happen for the longer-term major devs (we don't want an in-game event everytime one of the 60 or so devs gets a new partner or splits up...).

The big thing there was that a major dev found a partner that they want to share their life with and made a public legal/moral commitment to them (i.e. got married) - the dev's sexuality matters not one bit.

Finally: players saying "Wife/Husband agro" is very different to all the other examples you give (which were dev-created/actioned). And the exact example you give is somewhat petty...

If my wife calls me I may say "brb a min - Mrs JD called". This isn't actually me trying to assert that I'm a married male - it's just me stating why I'm going afk a minute.

If you're being given aggro by your partner and need to log, should you just say "got to go - getting aggro" or "significant other aggro" or maybe "aggro from a person or persons that shall remain unidentified to you"??

As I say - I think that's a poor example that you used. It's a different case if someone is making a big deal of dropping in references to their partner or their relationship every 5 minutes just for the sake of it... But that's annoying whatever the sex/sexuality of the player and partner.

And as an aside: In conversation, I've known gay friends refer to their partner as 'the wife'. As have straight/bi friends referring to a female partner who, amazingly, may not actually be a legal wife.

Someone saying they're getting aggro from the wife doesn't mean that they actually have a wife or are even a male heterosexual in a marriage.

Gay isn't filtered.

I suspect it may have been when the boards went online on Friday, but by Saturday afternoon it wasn't.

Now that's just going too far.

DEVS HWAT R U THINKIN NERFIN DP TO JUST ONE STRAW????
WE NEED 2 STARWS OR IT ISNT DUAL STRAWS NEMOAR

You say 'now' as if it's new.

Pretty sure that the neccesity of jerks to keep teh intawebz running with clean tubes was first mandated in the December 1974 RFC 675.

But sadly, due to the lack of tech know-how of many jerks, it wasn't until Berners-Lee popped the web on top of the internet that sufficient number of jerks could easily gain access to teh intawebz.

Having too few jerks for the best part of 20 years meant that many of teh webz tubes were clogged up or blocked entirely and many are still being slowly cleaned. It's estimated that by 2020 there'll be enough jerks that the tubes are all clean and lag is eradicated.

The web can't run without jerks.

Quite easy (in my head). Both pronounciations refer to slightly different cakes.

A scone (rhyming with 'gone' and said in a gruff northern English accent) is a hearty little beast of a cake, which some of my lesser acquaintances seem to think is a type of rock cake.

Whereas a scone (rhyming with cone and said in a mandatory higher pitched southern accent) is a wussy, airy-fairy piece of worthlessness eaten with cream by people not tough enough to face the former scones.

Anyone who disagrees is obviously cruising for a baked-produce-based bruising.



It wouldn't surprise me if many readers have never heard rock cakes called scones before...

I actually grew up knowing what you may call 'rock cakes' as 'scones' when my grandma would often bake them. My wife couldn't understand me calling them scones when she only knew them as rock cakes. So after months of minor disagreement over this I had a dig about and found a few old recipe books calling them both names and that the term scone was used as another name for rock cakes in North East England. Given that some of my great-grandparents had lived much of their lives around Newcastle that seemed to explain my use of scone for rock cake.

This may be a personal usage, but I find that scone (rhyming with cone) suits the lightweight cake eaten with clotted cream when faced with the hardier scone (rhymes with gone) of a rock cake.

Damn straight he is - Gordon hardly swears at all compared to many British Citizens. Or is that just chavs?

nudge nudge wink wink

Quite literate and well written compared to some tells.

Lag's been a bit worse for me, but other than that aren't these three just examples of what occasional idiots you get in the game?

I don't think the dxp brings out any more pillocks than usual, and maybe this one's had even less impact than usual as many of the noobs and newbs keep themselves to AE farms anyway - so if you enjoy non-farming AE or dev-content you're not likely to interact with them apart from the odd tell.

Personally, Friday was much as usual - ran a few TFs of varying quality.

Saturday I had a fun team of c.18-22 villains for a few hours, mainly doing the cape mission in Sharkshead. A fun, competent team that I would have stayed with a lot longer if I hadn't been feeling a little unwell and needed a break. I usually find CoV a lot harder to get teams on than CoH, so if dxp helped this team form then it did me some good.

This may vary greatly geographically, but I've always found the crossed 7/Zs to be fairly uncommon in natural British citizens but a lot more common in mainland Europe. I've always guessed it may be down to differences in language and letter frequencies.

So I don't usually cross Z/7s but I do often cross my noughts - a throwback to old programmer habits that I don't see much in younger programmers.

If you want to know why I'd PM the admin. But I guess that since GG was still posting in the EU she should still be able to post on the merged boards.

If she's improved her behaviour she'd never be able to prove it without being allowed to post. If she breaks the rules (or exhibits the behaviour that got her banned in the old US boards) from now on I guess she risks getting a new ban.

But I'm sure that if she's been banned before that admin will have an eye on her.

Anyway - back on the rails...

Gratz again to the 3 50s that only took a mere 11 years or so between them!!!

We also need mean words per post and mean smileys per post then we'd probably be able to work out a rough guide to posters signal to noise.

Though my rating would be doomed as soon as a readability index and mean ellipses per post got added...

OMG - on a weekend evening as well.

Well that's how true dev sloth starts - you stop to have a life away from development for a few hours 1 weekend and next you know you don't give a rat's...

Now if they can only rename Paragon Studios to Cryptic the OP begins to look so prophetic.

No.

Really it does.

And a large portion doesn't.

If I've got it sort of right then:

Back in Britain we had a language going before we were brought a load of words by linguistically helpful Romans, vikings and germanic tribes. This influx of new words/syntax gave us the confidence to race off plundering the globe grabbing new words from whoever we could subjugate. Helped us develop quite a rich old tongue. We weren't really nasty imperialists - we just love getting new words.

Yes - the British Empire was merely a result of us wanting quirky words to fuel modern generations appetite for Call My Bluff and Countdown.

We also had the habit of being quite welcoming to groups persecuted in the rest of Europe (we've always been part of Europe that likes to pretend it isn't - so annoying the mainland by taking in refugees always appealed). This managed to sporadically add a good mix of new linguistic input.

Never too sure where the various bits of Greek came from though... although we often manage to mix it with some latin in a single word just to put our own unique stamp on it.

Of course, it helped that we never had an academy like French has - so English still manages to evolve quite freely.



IIRC (from a dodgy memory):
US English tends to use a lot of English words that were common in England when the various waves of settlers left Europe for the new world... British English subsequently moved on and the US kept using the old words.

This accounts for differences such as drapes/curtains, faucet/tap, fall/autumn and gray/grey - all of these 'Americanisms' were in common use in England at various points and so aren't Americanisms.

And then there were various Americans who seemed to want to almost adopt an Academy-type approach, and seemed to almost change many words spellings to adopt a missing conformity or to distinguish US English from British English.

US English also managed to evolve, and with it's melting pot attitude has managed to adopt and adapt elements of other languages/cultures much as Britain had historically (and still does).

It's just a shame that Hollywood and US TV is now such big business in the Western world that English seems to be converging to some Fox-approved, homogenous state with much of the rich variety being lost.

Of course, they probably said that in Shakespeares day...

But surely cont is just an abbreviation of continue(d)?????

I used to be in a NFL prediction game at the place I worked and just had to go for Useless Punt as my team name...

Help is at hand!

We know he's a Gallifreyan -though was that concept so hard to get across to the Americans?

Luckily Britain tends to get all your ex-soap actors when they widen their reportoire or pursue a singing career. We also have several TV shows about poms looking to emigrate down under, so we might just be more familiar with some Aussie terms/thinking.

And who can forget Monty Python educating us about Australian universities.

Just try to stay away from Cricket and I'm sure everyone will get on like a house on fire...

Actually the OP asks about plans to merge the server regions/lists so that all accounts have access to all servers. He doesn't ask for servers to be merged.

Given that the game ran for about a year with only the US servers I'd guess that there are quite a few people who aren't in US time zones but didn't transfer to the EU servers as they were established and wanted to stay with friends they'd made. So it doesn't surprise me in the least bit that this was asked by a player on the US servers.

Also: Many EU players already know the stance since it's come up many times on the EU forums, whereas I'd guess that the US don't ask the question as often.

I've always wondered if a merge of server lists might also benefit the odd French speaking Canadian who could, presumably, play on Vigilance alongside the other servers.

Yikes - BaBs obviously needs to work on his whip technique if it's him and the whip that you're worried about and not the 6 demons stood at the side of him laughing...

He is testing the whole powerset isn't he?