Lothic

It got pushed live because they wanted to have something to counter the launch of Skyrim.
They launched Issue 12 about a week or two too early to give us Cimerora to counter Age of Conan as well.

Our Devs have a bit of a history of pushing out patches as "responses" to other games for a while now.

I know of at least 3 other SGs who are missing this same subset of SG badges. For what it's worth I petitioned for each of those SGs with characters I have in those SGs in just to add more fuel to this fire. Hopefully it won't take too long to fix.

We saw how Cind was able to trick Rumple with a "second deal" so I figure we'll see Emma manage to trick Gold in a twisty way with the "second deal" she made. I also figure Emma will use the Deputy job to maneuver her way against the mayor as well.

I didn't really mind that the fairy godmother got zapped either but it was kind of sad that she only got about 15 seconds of screentime. I almost feel sorry for the actress who barely had any chance to do anything.

Yeah that was my bad. I haven't read the comic this show was based on and I didn't really remember Carol's husband's name either (mostly because he was only in a few episodes and he was abusive goof anyway) so I made the quick assumption that's who was being talked about in that post. I basically didn't realize CaptainFoamerang was mixing TV and comic references there. *shrugs*

To be picky the flashback scene in last night's episode was on a two-lane road. The car pile-up in the previous few eps were on a stretch of four-lane Interstate somewhere. That being said I like that the story timeline is being filed in by these various flashbacks.

I think it's pretty well established that Rick is the group's leader. They may have not taken a formal vote on the matter but it's fairly obvious from a de facto point of view.

Yeah I'll give you this one. The number of people we see as "Hershel's family" seems to change from episode to episode.

I never had a compelling need to have that "mystery" answered. The assumption of some kind of generator didn't really need to be explained in this case.

Yeah they keep playing it kind of vague as far as how much "contamination" from zombie blood can or can't make you turn into one. It'd be nice if they nailed that detail down a little more precisely, especially when it comes to things like Daryl's crossbow bolts.

The Merle hallucinations were a little cliche but they were handled well enough. At least I favored the idea of seeing Merle like that as opposed to having the show have to come up with a reasonable excuse for why Merle would have been there for real.

As I mentioned before it seems pretty clear that Rick and Hershel are heading towards some kind of confrontation regardless.

Glenn's adapting to the situation and becoming more confident in himself. His character growth (and I'm not just talking about the "growth" in his pants) seems perfectly reasonable here.

Yeah these scenes were a little "forced" as you say.

Not sure if Carol's going to totally "shack up" with Daryl but clearly she's fairly overwhelmed and grateful that he would be willing to risk his own life to look for Sophia. Her relationship with Tyreese was obviously very abusive so her reactions to Daryl seem completely reasonable given the circumstances.

Well I'm pretty sure he's not going to keep the zombie barn a secret at all. And as far as Lori's baby goes that secret is going to out itself eventually anyway.

It definitely has plenty of rough edges, but it's still keeping me entertained which is all you can really hope from most TV shows these days.

I'm reasonably sure Suspicious_Pkg was making a joke out of that particular post.

Still your point about the generator being loud is noteworthy because all along it has seemed like Hershel has been relatively lackadaisical about the whole idea of "defending" his farm against zombies. He simply does not seem to be as worried about them storming the farmhouse the way you'd think most rational people might be concerned about that.

I think the revelation about his collection of zombies in the barn answers this mystery to some degree. Clearly Hershel has some relatively reliable way to herd the zombies and keep them safely contained in the barn. Maybe he has learned some way to control them which also extends to being able to maintain some safe perimeter around his house. Perhaps something along these lines will explain why he never quite seems as "worried" about the zombies as everyone else seems to be. Maybe his years as Vet has taught him how to handle various types of "animals" which gives him some insight about the zombies.

lol

Didn't they show silly things like that to get "useful manual labor" out of the zombies at the end of Shawn of the Dead?

Wow... that was a pretty gross theory as to why Hershel is keeping a coop of zombies in his barn.

Sure I'll grant you that it seems a bit weird that we haven't seen many (if any) normal animals around the farm but I can't really see Hershel stooping so low as to resort to eating zombies. At the very least they can still scavenge supplies from the surrounding towns and as crazy as Hershel might be I just don't think someone who was a medical doctor pre-ZA would be willing to eat diseased flesh much less flesh from former people.

Perhaps if this show was set in a future that was like 10 or 20 years after the ZA then I could almost see the last "normal" people becoming insane enough to eat zombies. But given that it's only been a few months post-ZA I just don't see anyone on the farm being that desperate for food.

Although I don't put too much credence in the idea that having all these pets out would have caused excessive server load I'm pretty sure the Devs themselves believed it was going to be serious a problem. Thus the toggle nerf.

You have to remember the history of the "non-combat pet" in this game. The first ones we got were gated by the 36 month Vet award. I can only assume the Devs did this because they figured that the subset of players who were 3+ year Vets was relatively small at the time. Now that anyone will be able to just buy non-combat pets on the Paragon Market I suppose the Devs were worried about a new source of excessive load.

It's sad, but it least it follows a pattern of keeping the total number of active pets at any one time/place limited.

I've heard of players rage-quitting a MMO but I've never heard of a MMO rage-quitting its players until now.

We also know that Hershel supposedly had that "no gun" rule on his farm which supports the idea that he's all about the anti-violence and firmly in the "zombies are people too so we can't hurt them" camp.

I'm pretty sure whatever Hershel's reason for keeping the zombies secret is going to be "kooky" because if he was just keeping them for some kind of scientific study then he probably would've told Rick about them at some point. I think he's kept them secret precisely because he knows that Rick's group just "wouldn't understand" what he's trying to accomplish.

As far as burning the barn down I think we can almost rely on some member of Rick's group doing that before the end of the episode. Just seems way too obvious not to happen.

I think we've been seeing a build-up to a confrontation between Rick and Hershel for at least a couple of episodes now. Clearly Hershel at best has only been tolerating their presence on his farm for the sake of Carl. My guess is that if Carl had not been shot and the group had just (for some reason) found Hershel's farm by accident that Hershel would not have let them stay at all. I think this stay on the farm has been an attempt by the writers to show how fleeting the idea of anything being nice post-ZA really is. It's just a tragic way to show the group that even this apparent safe haven is anything but.

I guess we'll have to see how Hershel "explains" why the zombies are locked up in his barn. Depending on what his motivations are will determine (for me at least) whether I consider him a full-blown antagonist or not. But I've got to say I can't really think of a "good" justification for keeping them around so things aren't looking good for a clean parting of the ways here.

"And don't call me Shirley..."

P.S. I knew the reference Father Xmas was making even without his attached link.

I realize that the standard fairy tale story here is going to be geared so that at the end the Evil Queen "loses" and Snow White "wins" but I'm pretty sure I'm only going to be enjoying this movie during the parts when the Evil Queen has the upper hand. Once Snow White starts to win here I'm going to be disappointed.

I always thought the classic D&D joke was related to a chainmail bikini. *smiles deviously*

Yeah I would say this trailer made the movie look awesome except for reminding me Kristen Stewart is in it.

The whole "Stench of Twilight" surrounding her is just something I'll to have to try to forget about if I want to see this. I suppose as long as absolutely no one else related to the Twilight franchise is involved in this movie then she might be able to do a passable enough job here to let me enjoy the rest of it.

It would be nice if they did that but could you imagine how much more pissed people would be if they had to, for some horrible reason, pull the patch back out? It's bad enough that they make us wait without explanation for 6 hours and -then- announce a new Issue launch. What if they specifically told us to wait 6 hours for a new Issue and then did not manage to deliver?

I'm not technically defending any downtime this game needs to keep operating.
No one really needs to defend a matter of fact.

But by the same token I'm not willing to delude myself into thinking the amount of downtime this game is currently "suffering" through is excessive in the least. Sure any downtime sucks and always will, but trying to hype up the idea that what we're being subjected to is unreasonable now (or ever) is just silly.

If you're looking for an excuse to quit I'd suggest you find a more valid one than this. *shrugs*

If the Devs decided to COMPLETELY RELAUNCH the game with a new player subscription/payment format every two months then yes, I might be willing to agree with you that there has been a SLIGHT increase to the standard amount of downtime this game experiences. But since we've only seen this kind of thing happen once in 7.5 years I'm willing to cut them just a tiny bit of slack.

Your lack of historical perspective on this is disturbing...

Besides it's probably fair to say that for every fan of "serious" Leslie Nielsen who hated his comedy roles he probably gained at least another new fan that only liked (or knew) him for his comedy roles. I really don't think Leslie ever "suffered" for his change in direction in the least.

As for my example of typecast breaking how about Paul Reubens' (a.k.a Pee Wee Herman) attempt to play a "serious" evil vampire in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.