Monobrow

Yay for usurping in the kingdom of cover art! Now who has money!?

wow... Kain's voice is... much lower than I expected

Congras Love is grand. Edit: Congrats too.

I see an ASHAMEEEEEEE!! You guys should consider the major envy I have for you being able to meet such an awesome gal.

Tight track

Aeroz played cello for me in a Tales project song that should be cool. You'll get to hear it in like 2012. :J

This is very sad news. Here's to his health and hoping for the best. Get better cool dude!

You should have tried my major :U Anyway I think the point Doug was trying to make is that a comparison like MY MAJOR IS WAY HARDER THAN YOUR MAJOR (Physics vs. Music) doesn't necessarily gel. I think the two focus on different things, but can be equally as taxing, as you're learning to master a skill that people compete in fields to be payed for. You have to be THE BEST. The arts and entertainment are an oversaturated place where mediocre leads to either a mediocre job, or no job at all. A physics major of course has tough work, but I don't think it's necessarily a harder field to major in than other areas for the following reasons: I myself don't know anything about majoring in music, but I'd say that it probably wasn't much different from my field of study, which was fucking HARD. Basically from day one, most of my professors in some way/shape/form told students that they should drop out and find another career, that most of them weren't half as talented as they thought they were, and if they wanted to get better they had to have dedication, or be extremely fucking lucky... Cynical professors that push and push and don't care how crazy they drive their students was the norm in my field. But to tell the truth, they really do half of these kids a favor, because like has been said before, in this day and age, you have to push yourself over the limit to basically "make it" in SO many desirable fields today. If you don't know exactly what you want, you're probably going to be chewed up and spit out. I can imagine that studying music involves a lot of strenuous practice, assignments about things you have no interest in, hours upon hours of work and study, and professors basically pushing you until you have nothing left to give... And what's worse, is that unless you're a prodigy or genius, you probably have been made to feel like it could all be one tremendous waste of time. That probably goes without saying for a lot of fields... So I don't necessarily think that one field is harder than another... There are a choice few I'd consider harder than anything else... But it's really about how far you want to go in it... And drawbacks as to what you have to do in order to make the most, or on the flip side, anything at all out of your time and effort.

I tend to discount people's opinionssssssss...

yeah even when I am at work or out or sleeping

I am actually a girl, actually, in reality.

I just read their argument about "color is your friend" or whatever. I'm not exactly sure if they understand what fans are complaining about (or what I hope they are complaining about). It's not about bringing as many colors to the table as possible for "contrast"... (because that's not exactly what contrast is about) And as long as that is what they are going for... I guess I need to bring an issue up. Every good artist knows you can have a good palette with LOTS of colors, but what's more important is if a palette has a FOCUS, a feel that you are going for. Diablo II had lots of colors, many different environments, a huge palette... But it also had focus, and I think it utilized its colors well. I don't mind all of those screenshots, and yeah it is too early to tell at this point, but some of those screens I see tell me that I don't like their focus (or lack thereof)... Yeah okay, any person familiar with Color Theory knows that green and purple are compliments... Whoopti doo Blizzard! I don't want neon green lighting contrasted by purple in dungeons. Orange and yellow go nicely with BLUE...oh my! But what about the natural contrast between black and white? Shadow and Light? I don't want a million colors that amount to a neutral tone mudfest outdoors either. Focus on the lights and shadows please, you can have AMAZING looks without using all of the colors of the rainbow from your bag of skittles. It's just about choosing the right ones. Diablo is about Heaven and Hell, angels and demons, with bones and death and destruction and blood... That's where the focus is... That's what they should be trying to depict as accurately and artistically as possible. They have the right to do whatever they want, however I'd like to hope their main objective is to please the fans that have waited years for the next game, and honor the previous two titles. Anyway I'm not really complaining, I'm just bringing up an issue that should be pretty much a given when art direction for any game is factored in.

One thing we gotta remember is that Warcraft was always a more colorful game. However, Diablo has always been dark, with lots of blacks and grittiness... And shiny shiny golds and greys contrasted on MORE BLACK. The comparison photo is right on the money with what Diablo has always looked like. Why change a good thing? Diablo is about LOTS OF BLOOD and blood looks really good when it's the only bright color in a dark palette. I'm not talking about supporting that whole "where are the colorful video games/we are too into browns and etc. etc." Diablo has always been like this, so why change a good thing to the "more popular" WoW-like palette?

back to the future NES

Well builds like ES Sorc wasn't the norm, I didn't know of more than 1 or 2 people that used it... Most of the best builds I knew weren't builds that people normally did, such as a well-built necro and charge pally (which was hard as hell to get good equipment for to even start the build) Some builds might have been similar, but thinking outside of the "norm" was what got those builds popular in the first place, and there were only a few people that really did it right... And I think at that point, there was still plenty of room to grow. Also, until dupes arrived, you were forced to "think outside the box" anyway because you had to build your characters around what your character found. 1.1's enforcement of sets and uniques being more important took away from that individuality of hard-found rare items anyway, as well as synergies basically pointing the player in the direction to go. IMO it basically made it easier for a player to have a "good" character, without putting that much though into it. And I think Blizzard could have done more about bigger problems, such as body glitches, dupes, AA, and things like people bringing Windforce into Classic duel games. *_* As far for me being mad, personally I'm not, because like I said earlier, I sold my accounts prior to the patch. But I can understand why a lot of people didn't like it (esp. the people I sold my accounts to) And when I came back, it just wasn't as fun for me.

The thing is, it took a long time for people to get their builds down, and since there was no restat or sharing of stats/builds (without hacks) of course people would be mad at a new patch coming out and completely ruining their builds, especially a build that took forever to make (because leveling, at least in classic, was a huge bitch) and were superior to everyone else's (because not everyone knew what the hell to do or how to build a good character, or had the best equipment for it, so most people without help, made many different versions of the same character until they eventually got it right) So yeah, I'm not the only person that thought it was shit. I haven't given D2 a thought in years, but since it is brought up, I'm certainly gonna say why that patch sucked. I didn't mind any other patch, but 1.1 came pretty late into the game's career, and all it did was basically WoW up D2... If something ain't broke, don't fix it, IMO, or at least don't change it so drastically as to put off the people that have played it for years and years. Besides, I did come back, I did make a very good Necro, tried out a way overpowered Hammerdin, sorc, etc. etc and had some fun (on Classic Ladder, like I said) But that still doesn't take away from the fact that D2 lost a huge amount of people playing because of that patch... And very few remained afterwards to start over! Where there was no shortage of games to join pre-patch (especially duel games), it became much harder and downright boring unless you wanted to duel the same people over and over and over. Quality and variety of PvP significantly dropped, bottom line. Anyway enough about this, let's hope D3 has the best of both worlds.

... you weren't towed were you?

1.1 was the goddamn blight. So many people left after it was applied. I'm glad we sold our accounts before it came out, because it basically ruined every pvp character we had. (91 pvp zon, 90 zon, 92 necro, 90 sorc, couple dins (FOH and Charge) and a few barbs (lance, hammer, and exe)) Zons were basically raped, guided arrow was so badass and it was ruined. Sorc energy shield build was ruined, Charge Pallys, Barbarians... Life leech was ruined, duels (which were basically centered around this) were ruined... a 9/6 ring became absolutely worthless... Hammerdins became way overpowered... Sorcs had only one choice, blizzard. Barb duels lasted all of 3 seconds because of no LL. Anyway yeah... And it became really annoying when you couldn't beat solo a special monster as a barb because of "immune to physical"... In fact most monsters became annoying as hell. Anyway I'm talking about Classic D2 and later Classic Ladder D2, didn't really play Xpansion much... But I'm sure they got raped too.

ah and don't forget to naked-kill

I can't wait! I really want to pwn sum randoms who are gay and their maphack/AA ain't sh1t 2 ezzzzzzzz compared to my IGA on my l33t 91 pvp ruby dart zon, and tell all them weak ass bitches to GOOOOOOOO HOMMMMMMMME when I enter games like korea/korea and Huahauahauahauahauah... cwY? CwY? damn subpar townguarding n00blarz. Edit: and guys, D2 itself was good, but hell if I played it after a week for anything other than battlenet.

I didn't enter this month, but that's because I'm not good at self-portraits

games I played over and over and over were: Final Fantasy IV - weekend Secret of Mana - weekend Lufia II - weekend Dragon Warrior IV - weekend Mega Man 2, 3, and 4 Turtles in Time (about 30 minutes) Mario Kart (SNES) Aladdin (SNES) - collect all the red gems Silent Hill speedrun Silent Hill 2 speedrun Brandish Donkey Kong Country 2 Mega Man X (constantly!) Shadowrun Starfox 64 Yoshi's Island Zelda II Link's Awakening Castlevania: SOTN Unfortunately I don't seem to have the will to play these that much anymore, but when I do get the urge, this is what I play.

Just want to re-emphasize: The cello you have playing is really generic sounding. What I'd recommend is slight pitch bends (listen to some music with solo cello)... You need to basically tweak the shit out of this instrument to make it sound convincing, since it's the lead for half of the song. At this point, it sounds completely uninspired. Mess with the volume automation for dynamics, that'd REALLY help, some crescendo and decrescendo... use automation to give the cello different attacks for different parts of the song... Also I think the cello is too up front in your face and doesn't fit with the soundscape you're using. Try putting some delay on it and see how it sounds... Put some appropriate reverb on it as well... The song sounds eerie, and seems like it could get away with a more spacey/ambient cello part anyway. As for the rest of your instrments, I think they kind of keep the song sounding uninspired as well... Try layering that choir pad with something else, work on the drums a little more, they sound kind of midi-ish to me... If you just don't have great samples, layer layer layer, experiment and see if you can get a good drum sound (with lots of EQ/Compression/and luck) Anyway, good luck!

This really should be thoroughly documented.

Shit! Piss! Fuck! Cunt! Cocksucker! Motherfucker! and Tits!