Lothic

I'm a "child of the 80s" and think I saw maybe half an episode of this show back when it was first on TV.
I like Depp regardless but I don't even care enough about this franchise to be upset about it being remade into a movie good or bad. *shrugs*

I'd be willing to bet the "saving people from getting disintegrated during a Keyes" scenario was probably one of the main reasons we got Incandescence added to the game in the first place. It's good to hear that you can still get the badges while using this power to save people.

Back when this game was in early beta testing it had a power selection scheme that was far more free-form than our current AT/powerset system. They wanted to allow people to be able to select pretty much any kind of power you wanted at any level. Unfortunately that quickly led to people creating either over-powered tankmages or under-powered gimped characters.

To solve that problem they restructured the game into our present AT/powerset scheme. This ensured that people could no longer create extremely over or under powered characters. The idea of "forcing" us to select the tier-1 power of our secondaries was part of that restructuring in order to balance the powersets. By making sure we all had that one hardwired power it helped to make sure there were fewer "broken" characters.

While I agree it may be a little annoying from a "power freedom" point of view it serves the purpose of regulating all the powersets and keeping everyone from potentially gimping themselves.

Yeah I don't have any problem with a TV show like this trying things that TV audiences don't normally expect. But in this case (like Frosty_Femme implied) their attempt to focus in on this "Lost Sophia" thing has slowed the momentum of the story down so much that's it's almost become tedious. I think in retrospect they'll realize they spent an episode or two too long on this part of the story.

I think it's almost guaranteed the story is going to have to (no pun intended) lurch forward next episode. Now that we know Hershel is keeping a flock of zombies in his barn there's no realistic way Rick and company are going to be "OK" with that. Either they'll argue/fight Hershel over that to try to get rid of them or they'll just end up leaving the farm regardless.

I'll bet what we'll find out is that the Huntsman is routinely "servicing" the Mayor but that he doesn't really love her. Perhaps she has some kind of blackmail over him that allows her to "use" him whenever she wants. Now that Emma has arrived he might decide that being used by the Mayor is something he won't want to do anymore. It's a possibility at least.

Yes I can accept the fact that the Devs were considering the future problems involved. Everyone running around with a ton of pets would very likely be a problem. I'm just not convinced that the "everyone running around with two pets" scenario would be that much more impactful to the servers to force us down to only one pet.

Even if we accept this argument as the "real and truthful" reason for why the Devs made this change I still think the Devs could easily limit us to one vanity and one combat pet at the same time and still satisfy the intent of "reducing server load" without overly restricting our freedom in this area. After all people who've been 48+ month Vets have been able to have one of each of these kinds of pets out at the same time for years now and I've never heard of servers crashing because of that. *shrugs*

I can certainly understand why some players will consider paying 500 points for a dog like this to be "too expensive". But I'll never understand why people can't see obvious method behind the prices Paragon Studios sets for these items.

Clearly the prices are set on the simple principle of what the market will bear. To some people paying 500 points for this dog is not only worth it but totally acceptable. As long as there are plenty of people out there willing to pay that much Paragon Studios would frankly be foolish to charge anything less.

Eventually the number of sales at the original prices will fall far enough that the Devs will willingly lower the prices on their own. All the people who'd pay 500 points to have their dogs will be gone and the prices will have to drop to keep sales going. This will let all the other people unwilling to pay what they considered to be "too much" to finally jump in.

People need to stop thinking the Devs have "made a mistake" setting their prices at a point that they consider to be too high. They are a company out to make a profit - they are always going to charge what the market will bear regardless of our individual opinions on the matter for as long as possible.

The fundamental difference between those examples (Morgan and the Morales family) and Merle and Sophia are that Merle and Sophia were both at least borderline core characters of the main group of characters of the show. There was no "mystery" as to what happened to both Morgan and the Morales because they both chose to do their own thing away from the main group. Sure we can wonder what happened to them, but there was no "mystery" involved with it.

I was just making the point that with Merle we already had a "mysterious departure" from the main group. I've basically considered it kind of silly they've apparently decided to play that same plot twist card again with Sophia so far. Plot twists used multiple times usually end up being cheesy.

Blaming the "correct" people is fine enough. But I don't usually have to be that specific when I use the generic term "Devs".

In this case when I say Devs it's pretty obvious I mean "the company" in general regardless of whether it's a corporate suit or a lowly software jockey. Basically someone, somewhere, in charge of deciding whether they are ever going to sell this power in the Paragon Market has strangely and stubbornly made arbitrary decision about it.

Whoever is "in charge" over this particular situation ought to reconsider. *shrugs*

Wow when 'Hollyweird' jumps on a bandwagon they really do it to death. That's at least two network TV shows and two different movies I'm aware of all roughly based on Snow White and/or fairy tales all at the same time.

Yes I also totally thought this was something Star Trek related at first. The irony of course is that the name for that original Star Trek episode probably came from a play on the famous quote from Snow White so I guess the whole thing just came full circle here.

Well I must admit transforming Red Riding Hood into a tarted up adult "rockabilly" waitress was a bit of a stretch for that character. I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of people who don't realize that's who she's supposed to be, even after the wolf reference in the last episode.

I'm reasonably sure that the Sheriff of Storybrook is the Huntsman from the Snow White fairy tale, but I suppose that might not be extract right depending on how they decided to transform the character. *shrugs*

Remember that post I made on this thread a little earlier about how many current fans of the franchise probably would not like this movie for all sorts of (implied nit-picky) reasons? Meet exhibit A.

Could be. But even if they don't introduce an actual BB Wolf character they ought to at least have some passing idiot on the street hoot out a wolf-whistle at her just to acknowledge who she is as an inside-joke.

I would not consider myself the most fanatical fan of Doctor Who but I've watched various incarnations of the show for the better part of 30 years now. Even accounting for that amount of "familiarity" with the franchise I never knew they already tried a theatrical movie at some point. *shrugs*

Just to sharpen the opposite edge of that sword you're swinging if "no one" is using the power then it makes very little sense for the Devs to keep it strictly exclusive forever. To my knowledge it is now the ONLY power being maintained in such an arbitrarily exclusive manner.

I'm not technically arguing that the Devs should start selling it in the Paragon Market tomorrow. But by the same token I see no logical reason why the Devs could not (or perhaps should not) eventually sell it there at some point. The only reason holding them back is that the Devs -want- to be arbitrarily restrictive about it and as time goes on that excuse seems to become more and more silly. *shrugs*

I have a feeling that an interesting Dr. Who movie could be made.
I however predict that at least 89.5% of current Dr. Who fans would not like how it turns out for at least 17 different reasons.

Maybe they'll eventually get around to introducing a wolfy looking guy who'll "hound" Ruby as a sort of recurring pseudo-love interest for her. Maybe it could be a guy who hangs out at the restaurant who keeps making playful passes at her that she keeps having to dodge while she's doing her job.

I pretty much assumed there was no "Lost Sophia" arc in the comics because no one here who's read the comics has ever bothered to blab about it.

As far as my predictions go I think as a bare minimum they will find Sophia. Now she might be dead and/or zombified, but they will at least find her. I understand it might be "realistic" for them to never learn of her fate, but I really don't seeing that happening for the purposes of this show. The audience simply has too much invested in the "mystery" surrounding her disappearance not to fully resolve it one way or the other.

I figure there's even a good chance she'll still be alive, but she might be some kind of prisoner to another group of people. There really are still quite a few possibilities for her, and whatever those possibilities turn out to be will likely drive the next major arc in the story.

Before the Paragon Market we used to get new things (good or bad) roughly only once every 3 or 4 months. Now that we are getting new things EVERY WEEK there are bound to be weeks that are more impressive than others. I suspect that by the time we look back after the Paragon Market's been live for say six months we'll realize that we will have gotten more new stuff in those last six months than we got in the previous 7.5 years combined.

Sure you can fault them for some recent testing problems/bugs, but on the "getting new stuff every week" front trying to call that a "failure" is completely laughable.

Based on what was new on Beta last week and Zwillinger's posts today I'd say there's about a 99% chance we'll (at least) get the German Shepherd pet today.