Lothic

It's funny but way back when Enhancement Diversification (ED) was happening to this game I predicted eventually there would come a time when there would be plenty of players who wouldn't even know what it was let alone care about what the game was like -before- it happened. I suppose posts like these prove my point.

For some people ED was a truly apocalyptic event and many people were absolutely convinced it would ruin the game and/or cause the game to fail within months. Obviously since it happened over 6 years ago now none of the predictions of failure came true. While it's true a number of people did effectively rage-quit over it it certainly didn't spell the overall doom to the game all the naysayers assumed would happen.

ED was basically a "change" to the game that in a perfect world really should have been firmly in place when the game launched back in 2004. The game pre-ED was essentially broken because it allowed a degree of min/maxing that in hindsight would have actually prevented things like IOs and the Incarnate system from being added to the game in the future. Despite everyone's whining (and all puns aside) ED was actually a "good" thing for the overall health of this game.

All I know is that my "interpretation" is more humorous than minimizing the cat's behavior as a simple coincidental instinctual response. My guess is that the human would not have even bothered to upload the video in the first place if he/she didn't see the basic humor in interpreting the cat's change in actions as at least semi-embarrassment on the part of the cat.

Yeah I never knew his exact age but I knew he was relatively "mature" and young-than-expected looking.

Back when he was playing Spike on the Buffy shows he used to joke during interviews that he was the "old man" on the set and that he was lucky to be able to pull off playing a role that appeared to be a lot younger than he actually was.

Like I said I never knew his exact age but if you had asked me to guess I would have said at least 45 or 50 just based on what I knew from Buffy.

Or what about being able to push a button, flip a switch or pull a trigger from a distance? To be honest having telekinetics that was somehow "limited" in that way really wouldn't be a serious limitation if you used it to its fullest potential.

Sounds like an interesting premise for a show and I do like James Marsters for what that's worth. Too bad things like this pretty much always suck/tank on SyFy.

I actually agree with you on this. But I think we will always see this kind of ill-logic in movies for the same reason things like "reality TV" are popular now - there's always a built-in desire to see other people do stupid things.

There's probably some unconscious satisfaction we get as an audience to believe that we are "smarter" than other people. Perhaps it makes us feel better on some primitive level to believe that there's no way we'd be as dumb given the same situation. Who knows?

I guess the key is just how dumb the characters of a story like that are. Sometimes the dumbness may just be more artfully crafted in some cases versus others.

Basically this. You can call it an excuse for CS to avoid involvement but there's no denying the fundamental idea that if the SG was still important enough to the original Red Star leader he/she could either find a couple of minutes every 45 days to log in or manually transfer the Red Star to someone of their specific choosing who's more actively playing.

Sure I feel sorry for the fate of the SG in question, but I would be amazed to learn that CS would do anything about it.
Live and learn I guess. *shrugs*

These were basically the points I was referring to. It almost seems like the concept they are going for with this movie (which does actually look to be intriguing story-wise) is simply going to be hampered by gearing it towards a "PG-13" type rating. I'm not out for blood and gore just for the sake of on-screen violence. But if a story calls for being gruesome and shocking to drive home its point I wouldn't want its hands tied by an arbitrary ratings system.

I realize they went for the PG-13 just for the sake of attracting a bigger audience for the box office sales. I just have a sinking suspicion that I'm going to conclude that this movie could have been so much better if it was allowed to be as edgy as it -could- have been. *shrugs*

I thought it was funny the cat sort of stopped "barking" as soon as it realized somebody was watching it.
Makes you wonder what else they do when they think there's no people around.

I suppose it has some points for not having any "sparkling vampires" but like you it doesn't seem like it could be -that- good considering it's supposed to be about relatively innocent teenagers out to kill each other. Just how brutal or "realistic" could it actually be without being rated R or worse? I must admit the trailer presents an interesting variation of a dystopian future world set sort of in the mold of The Running Man. I'm just not sure a "group of picture-perfect teens that must fight to the death" scenario is going the best foundation to base such a movie on.

Ultimately I suppose if this does somehow hook the Twilight crowd it'll make a boatload of money regardless.

Yes - that's why I'd said "I'd take a Dixon with a magical crossbow". Obviously I was talking about Daryl.

And sure ID4 was a "FUN" movie. Taking it as a very cheesy popcorn flick that you could create a "discontinuity list" a mile long for is just about the only way any sane person could take it.

I don't have any problem making "good natured" friends after civilization goes to heck. But if any part of it ever becomes as cheesy and poorly scripted as ID4 I might just put a bullet in my own head at that point. I'd take a Dixon with his "I have only one crossbow bolt yet I can keep reusing it to kill zombies and hunt squirrels without getting sick from it" magic any day.

As far as the Technological Singularity goes I'm fairly certain your efforts would end up being more like the historical example of Neville Chamberlain's...

This sums it up more or less. The Mayans organized their calendar into "eras" each lasting (IIRC) like hundreds of years each. There were dozens of these eras established to help them organize their "ancient" and "future" histories. The only thing special about December 2012 is the last of these recorded eras is coming to an end.

But the Mayans also apparently believed that time was cyclical so in effect they generally expected time to restart back to its first era. To put it in modern Gregorian calendar terms it's like going from the December of one year to the January of the next.

I think the only reason anyone ever believed that December 2012 would be the "end of time" according to the Mayan calendar is that it's a fun thing to get all the paranoid people riled up about.

I've never had a serious problem with people "reimagining" stories that are relatively old and updating them for modern audiences. Obviously works as old as Greek mythology, Shakespeare and even Arthur Conan Doyle are well ripe to be modernized. I suppose what makes those examples acceptable is that there have been many, many years separating the source materials and present day generations.

Where this practice mostly goes haywire is when the period between the original and the remake becomes so short that it's almost a blur artistically speaking. You could take that scenario to its logical extreme by mentioning people like George Lucas who's not even content to be dead yet before he tries to remake his -own- masterpieces.

I'd agree that TPN might eventually be considered one of the easier ones, especially once we see how much more powerful we'll be after the last Incarnate abilities are unlocked. But until they give us a trial easier than Apex I doubt TPN will ever be considered the absolute easiest by most people. YMMV of course.

I ultimately look at this situation this way: Even Achilles had his heel.

This is cool. I'll have to re-park my Praetorians back out in First Ward to pick this one up.

It's definitely packed full of info. I'd guesstimate roughly 80-90% of all the questions asked in these forums simply require a redirect over to the ParagonWiki site.

What makes the MoKeyes badges even harder -now- is that it's fairly difficult to organize a league that even wants to try for those badges much less succeed in getting them.

I had the relative misfortune of being overseas during the time that the Keyes trial was first introduced and had no regular access to be able to play the game for a few months. Consequently most of the serious badgers on my server who ever cared about getting those badges managed to get them months ago.

I now consider the MoKeyes badges amongst the hardest to earn in the entire game at this point. It's not just overcoming the challenges the game requires to get them but having to rely on multiple other people who want to spend the time as well. I know a few people who've said they'd be willing to help but even that's a challenge finding all of them on at the same time.

Thankfully I managed to get Loves A Challenge a couple of weeks ago due to a lucky break finding a league going for it (Thanks @Ara and company) but it seems uncertain when or if I'll get other chances at the others. I guess time will tell.

Actually during the "let Conan go free" scene the narration (from Mako) pretty much explains it along the lines that Conan had finally become too powerful and too dangerous to be kept by his masters any longer. He outlived his usefulness and they didn't want to deal with him anymore. He had probably killed off every other gladiator they had put him up against and they couldn't afford to have him just hanging around as an "attack dog" with nothing to attack.

I agree that Conan might not have known that reason with 100% certainty at the time but it's fairly clear that's what he likely came to believe about it later on. At any rate the "question" of why he was released never really seemed like a mystery to me while I was watching it.

Yeah it's never quite explained if the wheel was connected to some kind of machinery or if it was simply a method to exercise the slaves. Despite that it's pretty easy to assume that during his years pushing the wheel they were watching him and training him for the fighting pit.

As the other children dropped away he got stronger and they only wanted the very strongest to receive their training and resources. It was made pretty clear they spent a lot of time and money training him. He was like a prize racing horse that his masters groomed to be the perfect warrior. But like all racing horses he only had a certain period of usefulness for the "arena" thus the reason why he eventually became more trouble than he was worth and they kicked him out. Again I just wasn't left with much of a mystery here. YMMV of course.

As far as Jones' Thulsa Doom goes he was meant to be the insanely charismatic leader of a evil snake cult. His main weapons (beyond his magic) was his ability to manipulate and hypnotize his enemies (just like a snake does). He did an amazing job acting this role and it was this kind of psychologically deep performance that makes this movie just that much more worthwhile than the newer one which lacked this kind of gravitas.