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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
Loving it, but still a bit nostalgic for Morrowind, which I found seriously addicting (my partner wasn't too keen on it...)

Also a big fan of world-building games - Civ, Caesar, Alpha Centauri....

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We have a similar taste in games Arabella. I thought Morrowind was seriously beautiful, although the combat system was too limited. Baldur's Gate was more fun for that kind of thing.

But Alpha Centauri was my favourite tactical game ever. It must have stolen literally hundreds of hours of my life, with me obsessively building boreholes, solar collectors and mag levs. Happy geek days.

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Originally posted by Wesley J:
[...] Having connected the [Wii] console to the internet with a LAN adapter [...]

Anyone coughed up 500 Wii points for full internet access? Is it worth it? And any comments on security there?

Ta. Just curious.

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Ok. Been there, done that. Interesting! Wii uses a customised version of the Opera browser; one community forum is here.

I've plugged my old DELL USB keyboard into the Wii - helps when entering URLs -, but you can also use the WiiMote, which otherwise works like a mouse. That's actually quite fun and pretty intuitive.

You can access most webpages, but possibly can't get into chatrooms, such as the SoF Cafe, because the Wii/Opera flashplayer isn't the latest version. You can watch YouTube videos though, and with an amazing zoom function make them rather gigantic on the TV screen. Fun, and useful as well, especially when sitting across the room; this is very handy too for any text or pic on the websites, and I think the resolution of texts, films and images is actually quite good.

I haven't been able to listen to BBC Radio - Wii/Opera hasn't got RealPlayer . Mp3 streaming of other radio stations however seemed to work.

Web access is rather basic, in general, and you can't download anything, I believe, and pdf files can't be opened either. However: Rather interesting add-on for the Wii console, all this.

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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)

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quote:

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Originally posted by Wesley J:
I can't believe I'm looking this up now...! Horsey thingies are always nice, and it does have a certain addictive potential, I'm sure. Oh dear.

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Originally posted by Cartmel Veteran:
I think it's a good solid game. It's had a much longer development cycle than the Indiana Jones game - which Traveller's Tales developed in parallel.

The ability to play as the bad guys is good and overall I think it's pretty neat.

However I only played it for a couple of hours back in the summer before the game was complete. But I was impressed.

I've enjoyed all the Lego movie/comic tie-ins so far.

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Originally posted by eremite:
If I didn't now live in a part of the world where there is only dial-up internet I'd still be drooling on my keybaord, staring with bloodshot eyes at the screen escaping the real world as I grew fatter and softer and lazier and grumpier (goddamned horde gankers)...

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Soliciting some WoW talk. I know yas are out there.

Actually I wouldn't mind ppl's comments on Warhammer since I am investigating that.

Am thinking of starting a WAR account because they have actual physical servers in Australia. I was really pissed off when I discovered that the so-called 'Oceanic' servers were physically located in LA, because I had vowed never to play an online game without local servers. I am used to latencies of 400ms when I game in WoW, but they have been much higher than that lately and it makes the game experience quite unpleasant. (The removal of the latency bar so we couldn't see how bad the stats were was insulting too, imo - but I have that info now using Titan Panel add-on)

After the debacle that was the Zombie Infestation, I became ready for WAR to woo me and less happy to put up with the poor server performance.

What did ppl think of the Zombie Infestation? It was a good idea imo, but very poorly implemented, such that it became Griefer Heaven.

There was one point just before shut down (on the 26th I think it was) where the atmosphere created was quite breathtaking. There was a real starkness and sense of siege in SW, a feeling of fighting desperately for something. I had my little 40s priest dashing about killing vermin and healing plague then dashing into the inn when he got diseased. It was a really interesting dynamic - all those able (high 60s-70) were off taking the fight up to the necropolises; and those left behind were fending as best they could for themselves - like a real life invasion I imagine with the civs left behind doing their best.

Then, after the shutdown, they removed the Argent Dawn healers from inn, AH, FP and it became a debacle. Absolutely effing hopeless. At one point I took my 60s warrior into the Stocks just to log out cleanly. (I am not opposed to PvP, but do oppose mindless griefing).

It was like they handed the game over to the griefers. I've been an AD&D DM since my yoof and Blizz really dropped the ball on this one. They failed in some very basic elements of how to make RP/heroic fantasy fun. Eg. 1) you must always give chars a chance - never make them have no choice at all; 2) keep the players who are trying to spoil it for others under control; and 3) sometimes realism has is better sacrificed for gameplay and 'fun'.

Ppl on my server (PvE, Caelestrasz) were really cranky, because they chose that server so they had the option not to PvP, yet they felt they had no choice at all. Basically paid money and the game was unplayable for them.

After the AD healers vanished except for in the keep with the King, I bailed out and went skinning around Telaar - I was lucky as I have 2 toons in Outland. Ppl with low or mid lev toons basically had to log out or stay in the Keep. If Blizz had stopped with the situation as it was before the shutdown that took the healers away, they would've had something really exciting and atmospheric. As it was, it was a most unenjoyable experience.

There were so many things Blizz could have done better - eg.

• Paladins and Priests by virtue of strong faith could have been greatly resistant to the plague or could have fought zombie-dom (translating into not infecting, attacking others)
• Ppl attacking their own faction, players and NPCs would lose rep (reflecting the shred of humanity that was still present in them and was opposed to harming their former allies). This would have stopped a lot of the non-RP killing and outright griefing (eg killing bankers, auctioneers, flightmasters)
• Or even, *everyone* lost control of their zombies for a brief time before they died when they became a zombie ie. truly no longer under their own control. This would have curbed the premeditated griefing eg. ppl bringing 20+ zombies up out of the stocks and sweeping up and down SW with them.

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• Fallout 3 was even more beautiful than expected, even if the gameplay got a bit repetitive and the ending sucked worse than any other game I can think of.
• Mass Effect was a pretty decent RPG, with some great acting and a fine plot. Shame about the rover vehicle.
• Portal was perfect, and the final song was one of my favourite gaming moments in the last 25 years:

This was a triumph
I’m making a note here: huge success
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction
Aperture Science

Yay for Valve!