Vivi22

I'd probably play occasionally. I play a few quick games 4 or 5 days a week lately so why not.

You do get points for more than just killing. Not saying it would be enough to top Frogg mind you, but you wouldn't have to match his kills to get the same number of points as an Engie.

If you're going at it with everything you have then there's no real harm if you really can't keep going. As long as you're pushing yourself you will adapt and eventually you'll be able to handle more of the workout and the whole thing someday. Just stick with it.

Hey no worries man. I'm not trying to complain about it. Mid 70's is perfectly playable and as good as I ever saw on the old server so no issues here. Actually, I think it might be a bit better than what I got on the old server. I've just been somewhat spoiled lately playing on servers with 30 ping all of the time.

My ping was around the mid 70's which isn't too bad. I'd rather lower than that obviously, but it's not far off of what I had on the old server so I can live with it.

Saw that thread, and that combined with me already waffling on my previous statement since making it has lead me to take it back. Count me as being down for a reserve slot once we have to pay for them, even if I don't use it right away.

Only managed to get on for a couple of rounds of badwater tonight but the server seemed pretty good. I think my ping was about the same as it usually was when I was able to get on the old server regularly so it wasn't bad, and played well with around 20 people on it. As for reserve slots, I'm not opposed to paying $2 a month or something. It's a reasonable amount I think, but I can't commit to getting one anytime soon. My ability to get on in the evenings when the server is actually full has been curtailed in recent months so I'm left with playing on other servers usually earlier in the day. Hopefully things would go back to normal in a few months, but I can't see myself paying for a reserved slot I might not even get to use for the next few months.

Too late. The fact that I agree with atmuh means the internet probably already exploded. Either that or there's no more porn to be found on it and none of us are really here anymore. Anyway, pretty lackluster announcements. I'd say I was disappointed, but that would imply I had expectations higher than ankle level to begin with. Microsoft just never seems to wow me.

I agree the epilogue was underwhelming, but I think that was deliberate. He didn't really seem to want to do one to begin with but did it because people hassled him into it. I actually liked the ending as it was with the dark warriors installed as the fake heroes instead of the ironically more evil fake heroes, so I can't help but laugh a little at a less than stellar epilogue for people who expected something amazing.

Because standing around spawn waiting for the round to start is so much more interesting.

King's Quest http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/king%E2%80%99s_quest_4_5_6

Like I said, there are things that didn't need to be explained or shouldn't have been and I would have been fine with that. Problem was, stuff like what the island was, what the light was, etc. were the central reasons that everything happened on the show and we got no explanation of what they were or why they were important. All we got was Jacob's Mom saying that the light going out would be bad and you can't let it happen. Trust me. Bullshit. Don't build this stuff up for six seasons only to never even explain why it's so important. And for the record, I'm not looking for big sciency explanations because I know they'd never work. But we didn't even get half-assed metaphor's. I'm going to call bullshit on this again, largely because we were promised explanations about what was so special about the island and why it was important. We were told the writers had a plan, but that plan was apparently "it's important because we said so". I have no problem with faith being a theme in the show with a number of characters as it was, but the fans who stuck with it, especially through the last couple of seasons deserve a little more than that. And I also don't agree that characters like Jacob would have been less special if they explained more. For starters, I don't feel they would have had to undermine all of the mystery behind them in explaining some things, and second, they already did undermine just how special he seemed in his flashback episode. Turns out the guy manipulating everything and making people live forever started off as a know nothing kid who got the job because his brother had mommy issues. They literally made the guy who seemed to have all of the answers look like he never knew as much as he let on to begin with. I would have preferred they explain more of the island during the course of this season instead of wasting a lot of time. Of every season they've ever done, they honestly seemed to drag this one out the most, and much of it struck me as pretty pointless to be honest. Had they sprinkled in some more answers throughout they could have easily done this very same finale and I wouldn't have minded a bit. As it was, they spent a whole lot of the season on filler and wasting time until the end, which is a big part of the reason that I wasn't really surprised when the finale came and went and proved that they didn't have a damn clue where to go with most of the mystery behind the island.

I thought atmuh didn't even play with voice on to begin with.

I'm not sure what show you were watching DrumUltimA, but unless I've really just forgotten a lot of hints from the five previous seasons (which I find unlikely since that's really not like me and I've seen most of them two or three times) they really didn't answer much at all. In fact, they left us hanging on pretty much everything major. Namely stuff like what was up with Jacob and the light, or what would happen if the smoke monster got off the island. Sure we got little answers here and there like the whispers being people who died on the island and Jack's father from the first season being the smoke monster, but we really didn't need those spelled out because they did hint at them along the way and I doubt anyone was really surprised by those revelations. The closest we came to any answers was some vague description of the island as a cork holding back hell. Which I'm cool with, but it still leaves the question of what the hell the light was and why it turned MIB into a smoke monster, why the island was there holding back hell to begin with, who built things like the statue and the temple and why, and how the hell they all traveled through time.

I don't think giving us some answers would distract from the characters at all, or that I somehow missed the effect that the events on the island had on the characters just because I want answers. They spent more than half a decade building up the mystery and promising answers to things, only to leave us wondering on the most important mysteries the show ever created without even a hint at the truth's behind them. I never expected answers to everything, nor did I expect, or even want them to just spell out the answers behind the major questions. But the fact is they gave us just next to nothing in the end, and as good as the character stuff was, saying that that somehow was the only stuff that mattered or that it makes up for being strung along for so long is a cop out and little more than an attempt to justify lazy writing. Fact is, when it came time to give us some real answers the writers didn't have a damn clue how to dig themselves out of the hole full of mysteries that they'd dug for themselves and didn't even try. So you'll have to excuse me if I feel somewhat cheated in the end.

I have to say that all the things that bothered Big Giant Circles bothered me as well. The finale was great from a character standpoint. But by only giving us a fitting conclusion to that stuff it feels like the show was only half finished. Of course I never expected answers to everything, but this whole season has really been about answering almost nothing and telling us to like it. Just about every major question they ever brought up about the island was left unanswered, and almost every answer they did give didn't really answer anything and left the same old questions lingering. I can't think of any finale that's ever left me simultaneously satisfied and annoyed/disappointed.

That's really what it's all about. -Vivi20+2

Someone who refuses to use proper capitalization and punctuation forfeits the right to complain about something as insignificant as a person signing their posts.

How is it not a stupid argument? And how did I leave it at calling it stupid? I said a company owned by, and therefore a part of EA made the games. Just because the company has a name separate from the EA name doesn't make them any less a part of EA. In practice it's no different than developers/publishers having multiple development teams in house under one brand (such as what Square-Enix does). The only difference is that EA's development teams are set up as wholly owned corporations rather than internal teams. So from a legal and financial standpoint there's a difference in how Bioware is set up with regard to EA when compared to how Square structures their development teams, but in practice there really isn't a difference. The parent company EA is still calling the shots, just as Square's executives are calling the shots with regard to their internal development teams. Except that so-called second party developers aren't really independent. Rare is a first party developer for Microsoft in actual fact. Same as Naughty Dog and Polyphony Digital are for Sony. And it wouldn't be improper to say Sony made Uncharted 2 since the company responsible for making it is a Sony company. They're separate from Sony in name only, not in actual fact.

What's it matter? It's good business for EA to keep the brand equity that exists in the Bioware name. They could just as easily have renamed the company if they chose. In fact, since buying they've expanded Bioware to include three other studios besides their original one in Edmonton. I understand why the name may give the impression that the companies games are only published by EA, but it's EA calling the shots. Just because they bought them and left the old names doesn't make them any less a part of EA than a studio that EA established themselves. Using that argument, Dante's Inferno wasn't made by EA because their subsidiary Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores) made it. But that argument is inherently stupid because it would basically mean that EA doesn't make anything, they just publish games made by their subsidiaries. They didn't make the first one, but a wholly owned subsidiary made the second and third. So technically, they were made by Microsoft under the Bungie brand name. Had they changed Bungie's name for some stupid reason when they bought them you would be saying Microsoft made them.

They do when they own the developer. Also, Mirror's Edge was awesome regardless of what you think.

Dead Space, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Mirror's Edge, and if you're into BioWare stuff then pretty much everything they've done in the last few years (EA bought them in 2008 ).

I agree completely. Wasn't trying to claim otherwise.

Anyone want to take bets on how long until bleeding gets nerfed?

I don't think I'd go that far. At most I could see a $10 fee driving the prices of used games down $10 to match once your average consumer gets wise to what's going on. So instead of charging $55 dollars for a used copy of a normally $60 game, they'd drop the price to $45. Considering the pathetic amount of credit they give people who trade the title in they're still working with a pretty good profit margin. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if most games saw a drop in their trade in value of at least a couple of dollars to match. Now if publishers tried to go much farther than this system then yeah, good chance the used market crashes. But since that would put specialty stores like Gamestop out of business I don't think publishers will push it that far.