Darkhawk wrote:

Oh right, I know THAT trench, just thought someone was called like.. i.. Uh.. Never mind.

Like a pornstar? lol

Marianna Trench is the deepest place on Earth
The rest isn't worth knowing

Darkhawk wrote:

I.. think Midragar is reposting stuff from other forums here.. That.. That's what would make most sense?

Just felt going like on a rant after being smacked with Jesse McCartney in my face when I checked Myspace....seed was the victim of it, I'm sorry :oops:

To be honest, I never had high expectations of the Mainstream US Music Industry and stuff like Gangsta Rap, Mulit Format Starlets and boysbands made my opinion of it actually plummet to Mariana Trench depths.
But there is always hope right? Wrong!
We've had Britney and Justin proclaim their virginity, we still have the holy Jonas 'Twink-tard' Brothers and now we have Asscream & Cheese.

Jesse McCartney's attempts to look like a loverboy are quite entertaining for the first five minutes, after all it's always adorable to see a 5 year old mimicking his father, sadly you'll come to realize after 6 minutes that he isn't 5, but 12 and nothing is more annoying than a 12 year old going all smoochy with girls 4 years older than him.
Now dear Jesse is not only trying to be a loverboy, but a roughrider as well. I personally would first try to get through puberty and grow some facial hair, but Jesse doesn't need that, he has a gangsta to make him look "fo' reel" and he took the biggest bad ass there is...Ludacris.
Seriously, if you want to look hard yet adorable...pick a tru badass mofo like Varg Vikernes, Gaahl or Johnny Hallyday.
Granted, these dudes are white (bad for your multi-cultural image) and their biatches are either old, dead or wishing to be dead, but at least dear Jesse would have gained some credibility as a Hardcore Mofo.

But the world is cruel, pringles are tasty and Asscream & Cheese sells. After all, once you pop, you can't stop.

5

(72 replies, posted in Sava's Garden)

Kailas wrote:

I hope I can be a valuable asset to the community

Welcome,

If you can cook, waste time on irc or both at the same time, then you'll fit nicely in tongue

6

(3 replies, posted in Steambaths)

I picked to following snippet over from gamespy.com

"PETA Names Fable II Most Animal-Friendly Video Game (X360)
Lionhead's role-playing game has a vegan-friendly message, if you don't embrace your evil side, that is.
By GameSpy Staff | Jan. 6, 2009

With more than 2 million members, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world, but apparently they're also gamers. In the organization's sixth annual Proggy Awards, the organization recognized Lionhead Studios' Fable II as the Most Animal-Friendly Video Game.

According to PETA:

    "Created by Microsoft Game Studios, Fable 2 is a vegetarian's dream come true. Why? In this virtual fight between good and evil, characters powered by tofu are just as powerful as their meat-eating counterparts—and are more fit and attractive to boot. Featuring a strong pro-vegetarian theme, eating a plant-based diet helps you rack up "purity" points, whereas eating meat makes your character fat and evil. A fun and innovative game, it's also an effective tool that teaches gamers the real-life benefits of a vegetarian diet.


Now lets take a look at the last sentence.

"A fun and innovative game"

0k, I can still accept this, but then it goes horribly wrong.

"it's also an effective tool that teaches gamers the real-life benefits of a vegetarian diet"

Say what? They talk about "real-life benefits". How can a game like Fable ever show the real life benefits of anything...it's a game, not even a simulation. It's even in a fantasy world and it's GAME!!!!!
What's next? NRA praising World Of Warcraft for showing the real life benefits of carrying a gun?

What's even funnier is that PETA finds this great because only evil creatures eat meat. To all great vegan murderers, dictators, gangster, drug barons and other maniacs...eat meat else you'll look like a sissy.
I've got nothing against what people prefer to eat or not eat, but this kind of nonsense however makes me crave for the soft taste of a tender....

7

(0 replies, posted in Steambaths)

www.whoppervirgins.com

Ignorance and mockery has finally been deployed as a serious hard hitting viable form to spread commercial information. Burger King after decades of research finally discovered that the most honest opinion about a product can only be given by people who never saw a given product. In BK's case this would be a burger.

The goal: documenting a comparable study between a Whopper and a Big Mac
Location: : Remote (read: Uncivilized) Rural (read: Backward) Foreign (read: not yet invaded by US Marines) locations.
Study objects: Locals who have never eaten a burger in any form.

The set-up as it was, might still be plausible for a fun mockumentary. Thrown in a bunch of overacting stereotypes and let them lose on some fastfood...sadly enough they went for traditional dressed people who behave awkwardly at the sight of a burger. This might sound innocently enough, but you really need to watch it to understand the degree of humiliation that seems to be intended.
I hate political correctness just as much as any other more or less intelligent person, however there is always the case of that one gay-joke that slipped from fun into homophobic behavior. This commercial/documentary is in my opinion the proverbial gay-joke that slipped.

First off it oozes some kind of weird superiority feeling towards people who know what a burger is. Secondly the commercial floats on the presumption that these people have no clue what the idea is of two slices of bread with something eatable in between. Thirdly the whole thing dresses itself up as a serious documentary
I've stepped in the Michael Moore trap myself very often, but at least he offered some tongue in the cheek situations. WhopperVirgins is devoid of any subtle humor at all. It feels like a performance in the zoo where monkeys are dressed up as humans and forced to run around with a caddy and a stuffed dog on wheels.

Burger King....stick to flipping meat. Cultural ignorance is already practiced by the masses, no need to spread it further.

8

(2 replies, posted in Steambaths)

http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=37958

watch and weep

9

(2 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Why? What idiot actually believed that turning Dragonball into a live action movie with hollywood actors would be a great idea? Has the credit crunch made people so utterly desperate? Other than a few balls, the names and a green skinny dude it seems to have nothing to do with DB or DBZ.

They should have at least asked Uwe Boll to direct it, then it was a believable anime-to-movie screw up. Now it smells like a US Cable Network Dumbing Down With Emo Allures version...believe me, the acronym DBE: UCNDDWE isn't a great marketing tool.

There is one thing we can safely expect...gazillions of sequels....each on its own not telling anything specific, but if you take the time to follow it over the span of 15 years you might pick something up about space monkeys, pigs, turtles and androids with a personality problem.

After milking the" japanese long haired creepy chick" genre, Hollywood has discovered the "ridiculously stretched storyline-anime" to abuse.

Goodness gracious, we ran out of mayonnaise back there, but no worries, I went to the shop and got some fresh from the ermmm Mayo-creator-thing.

I'm now up to rank 21, which is some pretty fast leveling for me personally. It took me 2 years to get to 54 in WoW. I've so far rearranged 836 faces of Order, killed a huge amount of mobs, bought a horse named Desire and wielded an axe vaguely resembling a vase.
I've seen myself die at least 200 times (if not more), became a chicken twice and had one as a sidekick. It took me three weeks to kill 20 Witch Hunters in RvR and auctioned two things for over 1 gold which were barely worth 5 silver.
I've also unlocked over 500 tome unlocks and went from wearing pants to a tuff of bear fur and back to pants never losing my village people-style leather breast-straps. I've seen wizards setting themselves on fire and I fought several deamons. Those to weak to follow the Host were sentenced to death and I have had to kill them frequently. I murdered once a defenseless player, 6 ranks lower than me because he was unlucky enough to happen to be flagged while running around. I did some crafting only to abandon it and go for scavenging instead looting charming stuff like "a tuff of hair".
I wore a hat and turned into a bear, but no-one was impressed so I did a public quest. I wasted hours running around and twice as much getting drunk on a friday night with my mates. I've killed trolls and met some on a messageboard. I've been shot at, stabbed and burned and resurrected time after time.

I play WAR and I like it.

11

(659 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Sub-Zero having some fruit in Vegan Combat: Celebrate The Lettuce?

12

(659 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Darkhawk had like aeons to claim his turn, but did he noooo...and yes its teh keen.

Anyway, creating one is not as fun as guessing one...so that would have been my last one

13

(659 replies, posted in Steambaths)

another bit of the greater whole

http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/6762/bit02wb3.jpg

14

(659 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Going to post my first.
This will be an easy one.


http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/8050/bit01le6.jpg

The Bringer of Change has tricked me a formed me to tell a horrible and ugly lie!

Capital Cities are perfectly accessible for low level players...you simply fly to it, at least on Destruction side, Order will likely give their Weaklings 5 Star Accommodation on some fancy airship.

I went to the Inevitable City and it's impressive and although it rejoiced me to see it, it is also a cause for concern.
If this city would ever be the scene of some massive RvR fighting and I happen to be witness to it, I fear that my comp will blow up.  I'm certain that once people start throwing around punches, fireballs and pink globes with teeth everything will grind to a halt on my precious little screen. I fear that endgame will verymuch demand me to upgrade, but these are concerns for later.

I just wanted to correct my statement about Capital Cities being restricted to endgame.

Destruction RP Server players are amongst the dullest people around when it comes down to creating a guild name. You can quote me on that.

Examples: Lobotomy, Army Of Darkness, In With The Darkness, Waaagh! (at least this more or less WH orientated), etc.

The best guild names, "best" being a relative term here, are coming from the Dark Elves. They either work with "Houses" or names referring to various legends, mostly in one or other Scandinavian language.


Character driven RP is very thinly spread, at least for Destruction. Of course this does not come completely as a surprise as Greenskins and Chaos are not exactly communicative societies and WAR on it self doesn't really seem to offer many places where you can have quiet and nice talk.
First off, you have the zones that are almost directly tied to your game progression. Once you're engaged in Tier 3, there is little point in going back to Tier 1 and people still in Tier 1 can't easily hop over to Tier 3.
Zoning is where the traditional successful mmorpg's still score far better.
Secondly Capital cities are use for endgame and not as hubs in the currently established mmorpg's
Does the average non-rp'r care about this, not likely. They use the chat functionality to communicate, there is no need for virtual personal interaction and in my own current experience is doesn't influence the joy that I get out if playing WAR. It's just and issue that pops up for rp'ers when it comes to social interaction.

[big]Sqarak the Marauder: How to make Conan Cry[/big]

I'm currently spending my last few minutes in Northland and I actually had great fun playing a Marauder so far. It fits perfectly in my rushing-type of playing.
The only thing I noticed is that Zealots (destruction healing class) tend to forget to heal me and either focus on supporting tanks or focus on getting their own kills, which is kinda stupid RvR being teambased and all. Although a marauder can take a punch or two, our primary reason in existence is dealing damage and Order players realise this fairly early on. They often want to take me out before a tank, so I usually get mobbed by the Weakling masses and that's fine, if anything they should mob me even more in PvP, it means more Weaklings to slaughter and less of them on the actual RvR objective.
Yet a marauder cannot live and fight on the graces of the Raven God alone, we need some care while we are out there and some Zealots understand this and back me up, which leads to some higly effective bloodshed.

Luckily the warhost has more to offer than highly talented Marauders and the day can be saved by any career/ class, but I am what I am and I live for what I do. I slaughter Weaklings, any interruption of the cause is an interruption of my existence, any interruption of my existence is a failure and failure is a sign of weakness and weakness cannot be tolerated. I might as well confess my so called sins and join Order.....



[big]Gharen the Runemaster: Where Elfs Deserve To Cry[/big]

I did some Witchhunting with Ruben, but in the end it all felt a bit too WoW-Rogue to be any fun. I've never been the stealthy sneaky type. I hate snipping in shooters, I hate stealth in action-adventure and I hate being Rogue in WoW.
In comes  Gharen the Runemaster. Do not ever...EVER...EVER EVER EVER call him a Priest. Slapping the label Priest on a dwarf is the worst insult ever done to those little hairy stunties since Legolas was caught with Dwarven Porn under his pillow. Damn you "Blizzard Activision Might Overlord Gonna Punch EA In The Face Company"!!!!!
No, Gharen is a Runemaster, he heals and hurts and looks down upon any form of magic. The lad uses runes (hence the career title) and they've proven their worth in the many ages that dwarves have been using them, unlike magic that tends to hurt its caster.
If I compare my Runemaster to my Marauder then I must admit that the first one feels a bit slower gameplay wise. My marauder kills pretty much anything crossing its path until something stronger finishes him.
The runemaster can't just charge in and keep hitting. I need to balance my healing and my damage dealing. In PvE this makes for a slow progression, but the runemaster does show its charm in RvR. Thanks to WAR allowing to select two targets, a runemaster can be supporting and attack/defend itself rather easy.
Sadly my RvR experience is rather limited due to having a hard time finding RvR to do on my Order Server.


Next time I'll be ranting about RP Servers and Destruction Guildnames

As far as I know only trail after buy. Get 30 days
Maybe 10 day trials will be appearing in a month or so.

@Mir. I'll make sure to claim your weakling life in the name of the Raven God

19

(659 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Darkhawk wrote:

Populous is one of the greatest and most influential games of all time.. At least for some time, now it's pretty forgotten wink

Never played it, I always was more of a Alex Kid, Kid Cameleon, Chuck Rock, Sonic...etc child back in the day.

[big]Kinky Carpenter's Escape From New Emskrang[/big]

Last time I complained about the apparent lack of initiative on Destruction side when it comes to world RvR. Yesterday we kicked Order out of New Emskrang (RvR zone in Northland).
Again RvR showed it's charm here and we even managed to pull some tactics off. One of the players actually managed to get the warband (raid party in wow) to listen to his or her orders and as an effect we fought with some cohesion and sent Order crying after their mums.

Yet a good experience in the magical world of the mmo's is never without its little niggling issues.
Lets first state the obvious.

Tanks and melee dps fight upclose
Casters, ranged dps, etc fight from a distance.

That was the obvious smile

None of classes have a far reach when doing something en unless one of the sides rushes in (usually the ones that need to capture or recapture something) the game can quickly turn into a stalemate were both sides stay out of each others fighting range and do nothing much other than taking potshots at each other.
As effect once we had captured the city there was little else for us to do other than guard it. I'd like to point out that once a point has been conquered it can't be reclaimed for the following 15 minutes
Yesterday Order decided to amass their forces and basically do nothing, my guess is that they planned on waiting till all 3 points of New Emskrang became reclaimable and rush on all three at once. To be honest I couldn't be bothered to wait around 30 - 35 minutes to see some action.

Now I had a peek at some of my class it's advanced skills and one of them is getting tentacles and drawing an enemy closer to you. Is suspect  other classes have something similar or a mindcontrol thing, so the stalemate issue might only be a low-rank issue.
Overall I'm truly enjoying RvR and it must be said Mythic really knows how do draw traditional PvE-ists like me into the PvP-land.

21

(659 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Populus?

[big]Sqarak Big World Adventure: RvR for the Masses[/big]

Yesterday evening was pretty much "RvR Unleashed: Prime Time Edition" for me. I only played with my main (Sqarak, Destruction, Burlok) and started of with some PvE missions. They were mostly mop-ups with very easy kills and thanks to the 100% droprate not much of a timesink.

As I was on my way to Norsca I notice an Open RvR zone just near the sea. It was currently in the hands of Destruction (yay). As I did a little quest on the way to Northland the zone was taken by Order. I as a loyal servant of the Raven God rushed down to meet the enemy. I saw one slip out into "logout" as I ran down. I charged completely alone with no backup into the fray and was greeted by....no one, except a couple of low level guards and a lvl 10 Champion. I soloed the low level mobs, expecting an invasion by my Chaos brethren by the time I got to the Champion.
None came, not even Order. So I left the level 10 Champion to prance around on his own and continued on to Northland. Here I discovered a new RvR zone, a town, completely dominated by Destruction (yay and a cheer!). I picked up some quests (some involving RvR objectives), did a little PQ and by the time it was done Order was reclaiming the town, this time I would intervene.
I saw a Bright Wizard dancing around and went after him, but he nuked me pretty fast. I spawned and ran back only to be greeted by 3 other Order players....long story short, I spawned and ran back. By then they were with eight...and Destruction had gathered an army....three strong.

Warcamps were literally crawling with Destruction players,  but somehow they don't care about  Open RvR. They continue doing their little PvE quests or they just rush by RvR zones onto the next Region.
Again the Lore issue shows itself here. People don't care about the lore, they don't realise that Destruction, esp Greenskins and Chaos, live to fight and kill.  I'm not advocating ganking, but if people start ignoring the core element of a games setting, something is very wrong.

Basically Destruction should invade Order territory and Order defends it.  Order defends their ground allright, but Destruction is plain laizy. They might invade, but preferably without to much resistance.

I'm Chaos, I fight to appease my gods and strive to become their Champion, no matter what the cost is....dressing up like a Elf is the limit..or maybe not. Failing to impress them leads to punishment and imo running past a battle is not going to impress them much, unless you worship Slaanesh, then you have a slight chance of being noticed if you bother doing it gracefull or while torturing a kitten....guess what! There are no kittens and WAR is no Devil May Cry so no Style points either! You kill! Kill kill kill kill, can't be to hard can it?

That's why I'd like to see some negative buffs bestowed on players who ignore RvR! I'm not expecting people to RvR aaaalll the time, but FFS, at least bother to do it when the game asks you kindly to do so....it even guides you into these RvR zones.


I also played a RvR scenario and Order got kicked in the ass with 215 to 500 \x0x/

[big]Solo Public Quests: It's like having a rave on your own[/big]

Been playing it for about a week now and some things have become rather noticeable.

It seems that to few are around in the same location on the same time. While this prevents the frustration of being without mobs, it does make some public quest useless.

Public quests consist of several stages that must be completed. The first one is usually the untimed kill x mobs type. Later stages involve harder mobs and a time limit. This thing can be so great...if you can play them through to the end that is.
The first stages are perfectly playable on your own, the second one might be doable aswell on solo if you are above the recommended level, the final one is always a boss-battle...so you need some backup here and that is where some PQ's lose out.

Looking at the average server-population it seems that a lack of players isn't an issues -most have "medium"-, what might be a problem is the faction and race balance of the server population.
This is also something that reflects in RvR scenarios. On the server where I play Destruction, i got a game within 10 min of joining a queue, while on the server where I play Order I joined one for 30 min and still didn't get one.
Does this mean the game sucks? NO, not at all, the game works as it should, it's the players that need to be poked to balance themselves out.

While this might resolve most of the RvR scenarios and PQ issues, there is another issue plaguing (no nurgling intended) zones that have several PQ's
In WAR you can fill three types of progression bars. You got the xp-bar, the renown bar and the influence bar.
XP you get for killing, exploring, unlocking tome entries and completing quest objectives and with enough xp you level...I mean you rank up. Typical, old school and fairly straight forward
Renown is basically RvR xp, you earn it by completing Renown Objectives. This can be anything from playing RvR scenarios to completing quests that influence the overall RvR game. With enough Renown you achieve a higher Renown level and get access to stuff that depend on your Renown level. Bit like PvP gear and skills in other mmo's.

Influence is what you get extra during PQ's. It can be best described as faction points which unlock certain bonuses with certain factions. Unlike Renown and XP, Influence doesn't take you to a higher level when you have a certain amount. It finishes a chapter. Once a chapter is done you need to unlock a new one in another zone.
Although the faction loot will encourage people to play the PQ's, the fact that the amount you achieve is limited within a chapter people will not hang around for long once their chapter is completed. This is highly noticable in zones where you have several different PQ's.
People will play the one closest to the base spawn point until they complete their respective chapter and those further off will simply be ignored. This might improve on higher levels where the loot received from completing PQ's is far better than the one you get in the starting zones, but as it is now it seems that a lot of content is being ignored by endgame rushers.


[big]The larger MMORPG issue: people prefere megamixes to all night raves[/big]

This is a downside of the game, but it's a downside that can easily be fixed. MMORPG players need to learn the art of slowing down and enjoying the game. It seems that far to many play these games like they play shooters. Fast, purely focused on the strictly necessary and only doing it for the win and to be frank, I don't believe it will ever change.
People want to do 5 million crit damage, achieve level 8000 and solo every boss in a game within a day. Then then they bitch on every single message board in existence on how they feel ripped off and that they would have downloaded it if they'd known that it would be so short.
When RP went from geek to sleek it seems to have lost the "role play' point. Content does no longer reflect on lore, but on giving 15000 levels that can be completed with a minimum of dehydration or urine poisoning during a one play session. People want to go bitch further on the message boards before they finally land in ER or the morgue.
I wont even go into idiots who buy in game currency with real money or those who pay for leveling services.

Maybe RP'ers should re-invent  MMOPnP-RPGs through Play By Mail.

In the mean time I'll be trying to enjoy WAR as much as possible.

I'm not yet in a guild, but RvR is accessible from the go.
Where I started out as my Chaos marauder I could immediately find a NPC that offered me access to a battleground (it's called differently in WAR ofcourse, but i can't remember).

I was already able to enter at rank 3, once in I got the temporal status of a rank 8 (just the stats, not the gear or skills).  Chaos got canned by Order, but that's likely because it was mostly free for all with little team-work on our side, while Order backed each other up. So entering it with a guild or predetermined group might open it up to more tactics.
If you got killed you spawn almost immediately. It was a bit like like Battlefield, but then with a bunch freaks kicking each other heads in and the point was to capture certain points on a map and convert them to your side

Can't say if this is any better or worse than what WoW is offering as I never got into the whole PvP Battlegrounds over there, but it at least feels like good fun. Once out I wanted to go immediately back in, but I had to log off.

As soon as you start playing anything relating to RvR you gain Renoun, so although you might get killed more often than you like, you still make some progression.

To be honest, it's not half as bad as I feared it would. In fact it's quite good....so far of course.

On the surface it is very similar to WoW. Graphically it's a bit less cartoony, but UI is almost a carbon-copy.
Beyond that it does a lot of things similar as well. You got two factions, three races each and beer boozing dwarfs. Ofcourse, lets be honest....Blizzard copied Games Workshop back in the day and not the other way around like plenty of airheads will soon be claiming.

For the happy elfy marrying endless speech rp'ers WAR will be a cold, dark and sad place. For other rp'ers it will as well, but we will at least accept it.
Listen closely happy-go-marry elfs....WAR has elfs and they even come in two flavours! Just like our beloved very cute WoW \^0^/ (peaches!!!!), but they don't taste as nice. WAR elves come as Cultured Angry Elves and Torture Little Babies Angry Elves. They don't care much for getting married at the moment, they've got other problems going on....like war and near extinction ofcourse....

To the misunderstood alternative threehugging hord players, don't bother playing any faction in destruction. They are evil, they kill each other, betray friends and slaughter innocent people.  Orcs are not noble here. They are stupid, violent and merciless. You can't play a sentient cow here, but if you happen to meet one it will likely kill you, being chaos and warpy and all that messy stuff. Elf players...you should already have gotten the point by now and then we come to a our fellow undeadies....guess what! You've become slaughterfodder!



Now look at AoC. It looked better than WAR, it's figthing system was more interesting and a distinct lack of elves didn't hurt either. What did suck was bugs, lag and high system requirements.

AoC and WAR clearly shares the "war is everywhere" setting and they both do interesting things with their guilds. AoC offered cities and sieges. WAR offers cities, sieges and guild levels.
Where WAR is the better gameplay wise is PvP/RvR. You earn renown (pvp exp) the moment you start to play in a pvp/rvr situation. It doesn't matter if you get killed or not. The point is that you have to fight, to beat the enemy no matter the cost and come out victorious. Don't think to much about your renown, you'll get it anyway, just try to maximise it.
WAR also excels in  another thing. It works and i've only experienced one case of freeze-up that could be blamed on my computer aswell as it frooze up later on, without the game running. It does have bugs, but no gamebreakers during my playtime


WAR is also rather grind-friendly. I like to stress friendly. If you need wolf paws, you hunt wolfs and get the paws. You need five of em, you kill five wolfs. WoW had you kill half the wolf population before you found one paw. You also get achievements for killing a certain number of certain something and with it you get a little extra xp as well.
You can also get other achievements for discovering stuff dotted around the gameworld and it'll help you unlock the background lore of the setting as well.

WAR its biggest fun-factor and I only discovered it yesterday are the public quests. You just run into them and the only thing you need to do to earn xp and make a chance for the loot at the end is to participate. No need to look or wait for a group or raid, just join in the fray.
This is a great thing for people who like to play in group, but don't have the time to be participating in organised raids.


Before playing the game I was more or less a WAR-sceptic, after playing it for some time I actually like it.
The final test will be for how long it'll be able to capture my interest.