NcSoft Just tried your Other Game and WOW

Just checked it out and I probably won't touch it at all. Looks way too much like Lineage 2 for me to care about.

And your sword glows when you swing it?! Lame! Least Cryptic's working on the option to let us turn that stuff off.

Guild Wars is alot of fun. I hope it stomps WoW into the ground. After Warcraft III, I just hate Blizzard. Stupid NightElf.

I think a NightElf had relations with the developers over there after seeing WoW and Warcraft III.

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I'd love to get Guildwars but my wife is comes from a relgious background and frankly its annoying that every fantasy games degenerates into involving demons and undead which she is very much against. It would be nice to have an fantasy MMO that just stuck to dragons, monsters and goblins.

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I have always wondered why on earth devout Christians are against games where you slay demons by the thousands (Diablo 2, etc) rather than cheering them on. After all, demons are evil, and so when you're fighting pure evil you're doing good. What's the issue?

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Just checked it out and I probably won't touch it at all. Looks way too much like Lineage 2 for me to care about.

And your sword glows when you swing it?! Lame! Least Cryptic's working on the option to let us turn that stuff off.

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Dude, believe me. Guild Wars is *Nothing* like Lineage 2. It is far, FAR better then Lineage 2 could ever hope to be.

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I think the only things that Cryptic could poach from Areanet is that fantastic post process fuzz (A-la ICO) and perhaps some of their scenery guys because GW scenery is _gorgeous_

I honestly think that with a revised enviroment lighting system (the buildings are much to uniform in light tone) and a little post processing (when graphics cards mature a smige more) the COH engine could be top notch for a _long_ time.

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The CoH environments feel a little too regular, something GW seems to have skipped, I'd love for them to be able to find some way of adapting CoH to include that.

Other things I wish they'd take from GW: Single shard (even if it's sort of split into continents, plus a shared international area) rocks muchly, and generally not having different clients for different countries would be nice. The content streaming system for updates is excellent, too, although I'm not sure that their frequent update policy won't come back to bite them.

The only complaint I have about GW is the missions are too linear, and the invisible walls make navigating a nuisance. It's a great game.

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What drew me to it was the idea of no monthly charges

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If I read correctly, and it was a while ago so I might possibly be wrong, but with Guild Wars, you'll have to pay for the Content Updates (our 'Issues').

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Those must be some expensive updates to compensate for a loss of monthly revenue.

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Actually I expect their Updates will more than likely be every 6 months if not later. Also I expect any Major Updates to Drastically add on to the Game. So it would be one big Update that will last for Months of play.

The Updates we get - Which isn't every month are Ok - This latest one with the Addition of PvP (Arena's) was a tad Drastic in power swing.

So One thing I will say about Guildwars, is that what is in place will stay the way it is without - Tweaking =) IMO.

So if you need a break from COH and no monthly committment give Guildwars a Try.

Take Care.

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The buisness model for Guild Wars is that you don't have a monthly subscription however you will be paying $30-$40 every 4-5 months for an expansion. However the expansions are not necessary for you to play the base game.

Now one thing this game has PvP and of coarse as expansions come out if you want to compete effectively in PvP you will of coarse want the new uber/escalated loot :P

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Is GW basically pointless aside from PvP?

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GW allows you to strictly to RP if you desire - This is what I'm into so I haven't jumped into the PvP idea. Actually when you create your character your given the Option of PvP or RPing. I'm having a ball with the RPing side.

Take Care.

I think this is funny because we have 3 gamers in my house and 3 gaming computers. At any random moment in the day when all 3 of us are home, you'll likely find one person playing COH, one on WoW, and one on Guild Wars.

The Guild Wars guy introduced the two of us to CoH before moving on to WoW, and later to GW.

One recently moved from CoH to WoW.

I remain hooked on CoH.

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Just takes a bit of imagination.

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Imagination is of the devil!
You must be one of them infidels.

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Guild Wars is alot of fun. I hope it stomps WoW into the ground. After Warcraft III, I just hate Blizzard. Stupid NightElf.

I think a NightElf had relations with the developers over there after seeing WoW and Warcraft III.

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Yeah, those goddamned Nightqueefs. Blizzard used to be a cool company until those things came along. "HUNT RUSH! HUNT RUSH!" Bleah. I think they were actually long lost cousins and ended up inbreeding.

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I'd love to get Guildwars but my wife is comes from a relgious background and frankly its annoying that every fantasy games degenerates into involving demons and undead which she is very much against. It would be nice to have an fantasy MMO that just stuck to dragons, monsters and goblins.

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While you might possibly be able to get your wish with demons, skeletons and undead are extremly common in any fantasy genre and are must likely aren't going to go away. If you want that then you need to pick up a D&D book and then never use anything she finds objectonable...

Though one wonders why she find's it ok to go around hacking things to bits with a sword, for pay, using "magic" and "powers" which are also forbidden by many denominations, and entering a fantasy setting with false deities is completely beyond me. If you let her really study the different caveats of her particular faith I can assure you it'll be nearly impossible to find anything to please her.

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I'd love to get Guildwars but my wife is comes from a relgious background and frankly its annoying that every fantasy games degenerates into involving demons and undead which she is very much against. It would be nice to have an fantasy MMO that just stuck to dragons, monsters and goblins.

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I have always wondered why on earth devout Christians are against games where you slay demons by the thousands (Diablo 2, etc) rather than cheering them on. After all, demons are evil, and so when you're fighting pure evil you're doing good. What's the issue?

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*shrug* Rejecting evil might extend to the point of not glorifying them in a vid game, even if they are on the opposing side...I dunno.

One thing I do know is, Tyrael is the most badass looking archangel to date. If there was a statue of him in front of a church I'd go everyday

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FYI: ArenaNet, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft Corporation, was founded by key members of the creative teams that developed the hit games Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, as well as the Battle.net gaming network.

-Gil

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Blizzard managed to vomit up folks who started Flagship AND ArenaNet? Says something about Blizzard, ya know?

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I'd love to get Guildwars but my wife is comes from a relgious background and frankly its annoying that every fantasy games degenerates into involving demons and undead which she is very much against. It would be nice to have an fantasy MMO that just stuck to dragons, monsters and goblins.

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I have always wondered why on earth devout Christians are against games where you slay demons by the thousands (Diablo 2, etc) rather than cheering them on. After all, demons are evil, and so when you're fighting pure evil you're doing good. What's the issue?

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*shrug* Rejecting evil might extend to the point of not glorifying them in a vid game, even if they are on the opposing side...I dunno.

One thing I do know is, Tyrael is the most badass looking archangel to date. If there was a statue of him in front of a church I'd go everyday

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...More like Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil...

There's a Lot of confusing crud like this in that particular religion because people don't hold bliblical translations to a direct standard and meaning. Especially nowadays, it's become a matter of "I think that's icky so God must hate it too". Putting on a fascade of fighting and further demonizing the ills of the world while wimping out on the fight with the demons in one's own head....so to speak.

Fact of the matter is, it's only Art, it can't hurt you. Only a frail mind let's entertainment subject matter shake their faith, or for that matter alter the path they follow. Only a REAL person's REAL actions should affect that, yet more and more people seem to have closed their eyes to that reality. There's far more sinister things in store for humans in general supposedly born with original sin than can be provided with threats and temptations of damnation. Infact the Demons and devils in most fantasy games are more shallow than the CoT's in this game when all is considered.

...Atleast in the Video Games, the BadGuys rarely win.

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FYI: ArenaNet, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft Corporation, was founded by key members of the creative teams that developed the hit games Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, as well as the Battle.net gaming network.

-Gil

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Blizzard managed to vomit up folks who started Flagship AND ArenaNet? Says something about Blizzard, ya know?

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Yeah, it says that they've Screwed up a lot in the last 6 years (And I watched 'em do it, I fought against it, but they did it anyway). They had incredible talent(that got incredibly discusted with corporate-beuracracy) and they squandered their last opportunity for a great game on an EQ rip-off. ...So the real talent (Rob Pardo and Samwise Diddier being the last few remaining exceptions) said "We're going to where it's FUN again". ...And they did.

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...More like Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil...

There's a Lot of confusing crud like this in that particular religion because people don't hold bliblical translations to a direct standard and meaning. Especially nowadays, it's become a matter of "I think that's icky so God must hate it too". Putting on a fascade of fighting and further demonizing the ills of the world while wimping out on the fight with the demons in one's own head....so to speak.

Fact of the matter is, it's only Art, it can't hurt you. Only a frail mind let's entertainment subject matter shake their faith, or for that matter alter the path they follow. Only a REAL person's REAL actions should affect that, yet more and more people seem to have closed their eyes to that reality. There's far more sinister things in store for humans in general supposedly born with original sin than can be provided with threats and temptations of damnation. Infact the Demons and devils in most fantasy games are more shallow than the CoT's in this game when all is considered.

...Atleast in the Video Games, the BadGuys rarely win.

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While I agree wholeheartedly, the way some fundamentalist Christian sects view this sort of thing is that any manifestation of evil (comic book demons, video game necromancers, pea-soup-spitting girls in Mario Puzo novels) means the intent of evil exists in the comic book/game/book, therefore it is very real and has the power to manifest if one is not on guard against it. In their belief these things have actually been infested with evil by the Devil himself in an effort to corrupt the unwitting and tempt them from the path of whatever it is they're on the path of. They honestly believe Old Nick is real and he's running about, higgledy-piggledy getting folks to sin, renounce God and sign their souls away. Only determined vigilance is the key to salvation. There's nothing more important, vital or earth-shattering than naming evil where they see it and working to expunge it.

Can you tell I play a Sisters of Battle army in Warhammer 40k? Naw....

Now, I'll take my pagan gods and complete responsibility for my own actions without that helping of original sin, mkthx. For others, having something that simple to belive in, something that black and white, can be very soothing. They know what is right and what is wrong and they know evil when they see it.

Sometimes simplicity can be bliss.

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FYI: ArenaNet, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft Corporation, was founded by key members of the creative teams that developed the hit games Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, as well as the Battle.net gaming network.

-Gil

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Blizzard managed to vomit up folks who started Flagship AND ArenaNet? Says something about Blizzard, ya know?

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Yeah, it says that they've Screwed up a lot in the last 6 years (And I watched 'em do it, I fought against it, but they did it anyway). They had incredible talent(that got incredibly discusted with corporate-beuracracy) and they squandered their last opportunity for a great game on an EQ rip-off. ...So the real talent (Rob Pardo and Samwise Diddier being the last few remaining exceptions) said "We're going to where it's FUN again". ...And they did.

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I'm actually looking forward to Hellgate: London. Can't get enough of shooting things with other things... wait. Wrong game.

I'm thoroughly convinced that when a developer goes all suit and tie the gamers are doomed. Let's hope CoH never goes suit and tie!

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While I agree wholeheartedly, the way some fundamentalist Christian sects view this sort of thing is that any manifestation of evil (comic book demons, video game necromancers, pea-soup-spitting girls in Mario Puzo novels)

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Threadjack alert! Or... threadjacking the threadjack! Something! Just be alert!

Anyhow, wasn't that William Peter Blatty rather than Puzo? Or is there a White House dinner scene in "The Fourth K" that I'm unaware of?

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For others, having something that simple to belive in, something that black and white, can be very soothing. They know what is right and what is wrong and they know evil when they see it.




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Actually they don't know it when they see it. The people that claim moral absoletness often support the most evil things when it is in their interest to or when they claim their holy book claims something is evil. Slavery was defended by Biblical Literalists who called anti-slavery folks atheists.

Nowadays all Bible claim slavery is evil. However there are Biblical Literaist groups in this country who want Slavery back in place, women to have all voting rights rejected. Also women wouldn't be able to own property but be considered the property of their husbands and family members. Also stoning of children is on their agenda. And I am not talking about hippy stoning but Biblical stoning.

These Biblical Literaists groups are the ones funding the Intelligent Design movement and the take over certain churche denominations.

Many things the religious conservatives claim to hate where in fact celebrated by them as being Biblicaly acceptable. Induced Abortion, [censored] Marriage. Heck Communism resembles the early Christian churches far more then the Fundamentlists ever would. Heck Communism was spread by Christians. The conflict with the churches in Communist countries was due far more to the churches trying to incite revolt or gather polictical power. Heck under Communism you have democratic elections and most liberals abandoned Communism when these elections didn't occur.

Communists in fact resembled American Conservatives to the point that Induced Abortion was outlawed, gays were sent to gulags and often died there, the teaching of evolution was outlawed, pornography got you heavy prison sentances.

People who claim to only see the world in black and white often are blind to evil and blind to good. People aren't cartoon characters. Someone who steals food from a marketplace to feed their family who cannot afford it isn't evil. Someone who steals from people
s houses.to buy crack cocaine is evil.

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Someone who steals food from a marketplace to feed their family who cannot afford it isn't evil. Someone who steals from peoples houses.to buy crack cocaine is evil.

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Eh....that thing about the cocaine person well...addiction is a very very nasty thing. The person may not be evil, but the addiction drives them to desparation. Fighting addiction is a hard thing...that's why there's all those programs to help with them.

Now....a better example of evil would be someone who steals because they want stuff without working for it. Or say...CEOs that follow unethical business practices because they make even more money doing them.

Evil is not an objective quality. I'm sure that Hitler rationalized his actions as doing good for Germany. It makes it a lot easier of you don't view the people you slaughter as being human beings worthy of empathy.

I'll give you another example, which is not as extreme, but is a lot more common that most people I think realize or want to admit. My parents were very liberal. When we lived in the Bronx, my parent's best friends were an interracial couple, and I used to play with Alex, their son who was just a year younger than me. I invited black friends to my Bar Mitzva. Hell, my dad once received some kind of honor from a church in Harlem and was invited to speak to the congregation because of work he did for them (we are a white Jewish family, btw, and my dad was an attorney, and my dad had done some pro-bono work for them). I just say that to give you some background. Hell, the apartment that we lived in in the Bronx looked like the UN, it was that diverse.

Later we moved to the suburbs, something happened which shattered my happy view of people I thought I knew == our neighbors. The suburban neightborhood we lived in was not very diverse at all. Sure, we had the token black family, and a couple of white protestants, but other than that, the neighborhood was about 95 percent Jewish and Italian (about equal parts of each). A rumore got started that one of the families was selling their home to a black family. And I found out about this because my dad was talking to my mom about it, because our lovely neighbor was upset about it and wanted my dad to help him do somethig about it. Of couirse my dad was not going to help, and thought by explaining that there was nothing they could do, that that would be the end of it.

But no, things were going to become a bit insane. The next day there was what best could be described as a race riot out in front of my home. Almost all of our white neighbors wre gathered there and there was a lot of yelling and screaming going on. My parents were scared and wouldn't let me or my brother leave the house. The crowd ended up throwing bricks at the home of the family that was selling, and breaking several of their windows.. The family that lived there started receiving all sorts of nasty threatening phone calls. There were bricks thrown at the cars of people driving through the neighborhood by blacks that I suppose they thought were the prospective buyers (at least one of which probably WAS the right car).

The deal fell through.

What was funny was that I was never really friends with the kid of the family that was moving out, mostly because his friends that also lived in the neighborhood didn't really like me. He was actually an OK guy though. And after that rough business we got to be much better acquainted (largely because he lost those other friends over those events).

And even funnier (though I regret that he left so soon after I became friends with him) the family ended up selling the house to another black family, this time in secret. And there were no rumors and no one even knew they were moving out until the day it actually happened.

And if you don't believe that something like that could happen in your neighborhood, just think that Germany was considered the most cultrually modern and sophisticated nation in all of Europe when the Nazis were voted into office. When the Nazis went into Poland, it was easy to round up the Jews there in large part because antisemitism was already rampant among the conquered nation.

My view of humanity has changed a lot since then. I now believe that there is evil under the surface, and in a lot of people's hearts -- all it takes is a little bit of the right kind of stress for it to come out. Never underestimate people's capacity for hatred. I'm not talking about Nazis or neo-nazis, or KKK members. I'm talking about average people that you may live next door to.

BTW, when I told that story to a friend of mine, a nice midwesterner, fellow CoH player, who hasn't noticed much prejudice in his life, by his testimony (I now live in the midwest) he said that it was probably mob psychology, and that people do a lot of things out of fear and they may not actually be prejudiced. I thought about that and realized that thats no excuse. Fear, at most, is only what drives people to act on the prejudice. The person who throws the second rock may have been caught up in the mob's actions -- it doesn't excuse his actions, but it may explain them. But the person who throws the first one is guilty as sin. IF it was only one loud-mouth raciest yelling, thats where the whole thing would have ended. There would have been no mob to blame it on.

I've been told by many people since I moved to the midwest that tehre is no racism no antisemitism around their parts. I think that unless you actually are born into a minority, that you inherit a kind of blindness to it, because it seems so normal to you, unless you are its target. That my friend is true evil.

-Haldur

I played WoW for a while, CoH before that and recently came back to activating my CoH account. I just got Guild wars too and like it, and I can enjoy the game as it doesn't feel like its sucking away my free time as much. I still want burning monkeys in CoH (fire imps), as well as alot of other cool power combinations so I'll probably bounce between the two but I let my WoW account slip, just burned out on the instancing.

As stated, NCSoft is the publisher of both GuildWars and CoH. And the team behind GuildWars are a lot of the founders of Blizzard and original brains behind Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, though IMO Guildwars is a different game from those.

I love CoH becuase there is nothing else like it out there. It's not another fantasy ratkiller. You are a hero saving the city, fighting crime with fantastic powers! I still hope for more interactivity with the world. I don't want it to become another item collecting madfest like most games, but there needs to be more depth to it that just the missions. It also needs to become more solo friendly at higher levels than it currently is.

WoW I have a love/hate relationship with. It's one of the best MMOG designs out there. The mission stories are deep and well written, the environment feels alive and interactive, and it's the easiest and most solo-friendly game I've ever played. If they can only resolve their technical issues; it is plagued with communications latency problems, with each server being it's own unique animal of issues. But I must confess, this one sucks most of my playtime now for it's depth of crafting, lootgathering, and questing. As for the religious implications of demons someone mentioned, I've never understood zealouts' inability to separate reality from fantasy and their own fears. Christ and the devil's gateway to this world is through us, not our games.

Finally, while Guildwars is kinda fun and definitely good for tactical PvPers who like group on group battles, soloers and ganker will be disappointed with the inability to be uber and the pace of the game. I was looking for the next diablo, and I didn't find it. Instead I found a relatively weak individual character, and I play games like this to feel powerful. But if there's a free client trial, by all means, download it and try it yourself.

I got guildwars over the weekend.

I bought it expecting a game of single player, diablo-esque quality, and i'm loving it. It has thus far had THE most tactical combat of any game (mmo or diabloish) i've ever played. I've taken on 4 foes around my level while being alert, reactive, and maintaining good performance, but there's also been times where 2 foes, half my level ambushed me, and i wasn't paying attention and I died. both instances are pve (I haven't done much pvp yet) and neither instance was because I was 'one shotted' or fought weaker or stronger foes, there's just that much tactics in a common fight.

although i'm playing a necromancer, they may be more involved than most charicters

Uma gives this game the thumbs up IF you are looking for a diablo-esque, skill based pvp (as opposed to loot and gank based), or a single player game sort of game that your friends can join in if they want. It may be good on level ground with most mmo's, but i've had it for all of 3 days and I don't know how it'll be in three months for most. I'll still play it, but then I still play generals, renigade, and emulators religiously.

I'm impressed with ncsoft's games, they're realy making a name for themselves in the market.

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I don't see the problem with it though. It's a fantasized world obviously different to our own. So demons and undead exist in the fantasized world, along with all other things which can't exist in ours. Just takes a bit of imagination.

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I understand the difficulty she's having. Then again, to be internally consistent, magic should also be considered a problem for most Christian-based faiths and in fact is usually tossed into the mix as a complaint point.

Like you’re saying, they’re actually a different reality despite the name similarities (which is what confuses the issue). AD&D-style magic, for example, is generally not magic defined Biblically (i.e., an “arcane power” derived from some spiritual being opposed to God) but rather a force of nature that is harnessed – basically science (“Follow this list of steps, and you can replicate this effect because that’s how the natural laws in this world work.”) They are in essence two different things.

Nor am I sure why a line is drawn with goblins and dragons and such, since they are generally cast in opposition to “goodness.” If the undead and demons are bad because they oppose good, they’re “spiritually” the same as dragons, goblins, and other lackeys that are also opposed to good. And anything that grants man power that he "shouldn't have" (in lieu of dependence on God) should be something to be abhorred. [Ouch -- that would include all sorts of "fantasy" ...including superheroes.]

I figure it's a game, though. We should enjoy it for what it is, and play it however we feel comfortable playing it. It's supposed to be fun, right?