Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by Homitu

 

It's a matter of what order you level each skill.  Enemies scale based on your character level.  If you got your character level up mostly by increasing skills that don't yield much of an offensive return for you yet, enemies will feel unkillable early.  While enchanting proves to be the single most OP skill late game, it will put you at a disadvantage early game if it's one of the first things you level.  

I just now got into Enchanting and disenchanted a few pieces to get the enchants I want to apply to other gear. That's about the extent of it, though.

Right now I'm between a rock and hard place...  I can use leather armor for better survivability, but no magic bonuses (making magic casting less efficient) until I apply the enchants (which I'm working on getting). Or I can continue using robes which give me some nice magic bonuses, but no protection.

So... 'til I come out the other side of that "slump" by being able to enchant the leather gear, I'm having a rather tough time dealing with some enemies. That's why I think I'll need to ask Lydia to be a meat shield for a while and hopefully not get her killed.

Edit: So I got Lydia to come along and, go figure, this time there were only 2 bandits outside and not 3. Natch.

I use Lydia since i am a mage type squishy playing master difficulty and she is quite good at taking hits. You can even equip her with better armor and weapons, just talk to her and ask her to carry something and if the item is better than her default she automatically uses it.

It all sounds good i just wish you could betray and swap sides as well.

Its a lot of fun and a different dynamic than the classic game.

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For both manners of PvP, Funcom announced that players would be analyzed and assigned a role upon entering a battlefield. Depending on the role assigned to a player, his outfit will be changed to role-specific armor. This gives each player a distinctive look based on his combat role, thereby allowing players to be immediately identified. In this way, allies know which players to protect and which enemies to focus on.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/08/31/pax-2011-funcom-discusses-tsws-pvp-arg-and-more/1#c34723752

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If they had put more effort into open world events/pvp instead of instances this game would be win. Sitting around the Hall of Justice/Doom waiting for instances to pop ain't my idea of fun i'm afraid.

All this does is split up communities. Part of the Oceanic community will get the game from overseas and settle on an unofficial Oceanic server.

Then when the game is officially launched here that server will probably be too full or will get lost in the rush to get in game so another server will be chosen or EA even label a server as Oceanic where everyone rolls on.

The people who started early either stay and hope its a sustainable population for that time zone or have to transfer or re-roll.

I actually found bots to be smarter than people when i first started playing. Learn to last hit minions so you get your gold up. Here's a site with write ups on how to play most champions. http://www.solomid.net/guides.php

I had been planning to go back to DCUO online when they had released enough monthly content to make it worth it. This expansion pack just means i'll never go back now. Shame as its a decent game run by an incompetent company imo.

After playing games like crysis 2, dungeon seige 3, brink, duke nukem forever, dcuo etc i've realised that most pc developers have already shifted over to consoles. The one thing i hate about console ports is they are designed and optimised for play on a controller and all it limitations. Playing with a keyboard and mouse feels like playing in mud.

I have nothing against consoles as i grew up playing them as well as PC's but i wish for the days when games were separate for each platform. My hope for the future is that consolidation takes place and there is a clear winner. History shows when there are competing technologies like vhs/beta or the HD DVD/Blu-ray disc formats one becomes the dominant. Much like apple's iPhone.

I can't believe i'm saying this but i hope its the xbox (which is looking more like a mini pc nowadays with internet access and hard drives) just because its probably closer to a PC than a PS3 or a Wii. Maybe Sony being hacked will contribute to less future console sales for the PS. I'm sure developers would also rather a single platform to develop on as it costs less to maintain quality. Games are also getting shorter and shorter in length which is probably related to trying to get the game released simultaneously on multiple platforms so something has to suffer.

I think the future of pc mmo's lies in the success or failure of SW:TOR. There is so much expectation riding on it (and money) that if it fails developers just won't get funding for big pc mmo projects.

That said it not all doom and gloom for pc users. The indie scene is thriving and i've had a blast playing games as varied as minecraft to amnesia to plants vs zombies or world of goo....and all for $5 to $20.

If your motherboard has onboard sound and you have a sound card installed you should be able to split sound sources to whatever you want as well.

Not all hacker agree with what Lulzsec are doing. Web ninjas have started a blog to name and shame them.

http://lulzsecexposed.blogspot.com/

Originally posted by Thillian

Steam is rubbish, and so will be Origin. I want to play a game without installing third party software that scans my computer, runs in background, EXCLUSIVELY sets forth in EULA, that I no longer own the game I buy, but instead I get a limited access to the game via steam or that can block my access anytime they see fit - also set forth in EULA, which applies to single player games as well. I'm sure most of you did not even read that.

 

You are missing out on so many good indie games in the $5 -$20 range like Terraria, Braid, Defense Grid, Greed Corp, Plants vs Zombies, World of Goo etc. These games have renewed my interest in pc gaming after too many years of being jaded by bad console ports and expensive and half finished sequels.

As for TSW, after AoC i'm not going near it till i see the response a month or more after release. Fool me once.

I'm a fan of steam mainly because i buy my games on specials. It also (usually) cheaper than retail stores where i live for new releases. Yet i think there needs to be more competition in the digital download market. Monopolies are rarely good for consumers.

So while its good to see EA provide an alternate model i hope its by offering a better service rather than just making its titles exclusive to Origin. Instead of stopping TOR from being sold on Steam why not offer a slight discount or exclusive pre-order bonuses. Give the consumer the choice to decide rather than forcing us to use Origin and customers will be satisifed rather than feel cheated.

Originally posted by MuffinStump

This nonsense simply leads to tighter, more restrictive internet 'freedom' for the rest of us. It becomes a rallying point for those who want to censor most of the net usage and generally speaking if that control benefits corporations then it will happen especially in our 'prisoner of the moment' culture.

Conspiracy theorists will say that the people who want more regulation and controls are actually the ones behind it all.

After the hacking scandal at Sony i'm thinking a game where you don't have to hand over credit card details will be a winner.

I'm a fan of GW's B2P model. It means i can take a month off here and there and don't have to worry about cancelling or resubbing just to play.

It also means they better do a good job with their expansions or i won't pay for it rather than hoping my sub money goes towards an expansion but since they already have my money it doesn't matter if i like it or not i have paid for it.

I like it even thou its not perfect but i'm one of the lucky ones. I have an ati card and Brink runs flawlessly unlike my friend who gets 5-10 FPS atm. Its a decent team based shooter. There are 8 maps but only half are really balanced. The single player was meh imo. I'd rate the game 6/10 atm but if they can fix some things and release some better maps i'd give it an 8.

Originally posted by Stradden

In any case, let's get this back on topic please.

 

Good luck with that lol. Remember you can't please all of the people all of the time. Heck its hard enough trying to please some of them some of the time.

Personally i read the review mainly to see if the game is buggy and how polished it is. I ignore scores because everyone's tastes are different and i like to make my own mind up.

I think categories could be useful as long as they are relatve to the genre.

Content (is there more stuff to do than is required to level up or does it run out and i need to grind some activity to progress)

Replayability (will i want to go back and start again with a different toon, is there more than 1 starting area)

Polish (how many bugs? are they game breaking or just annoying? how does the game run on minimum specs...do you guys even run mmo's on different computers to see how it goes?)

Socialization (does the game promote soloing over grouping while leveling or are they both supported, is the world open or instanced? are there good guild tools like guild banks etc, is there a viably economy, decent non-combat activities such as crafting, how is the chat system, is it easy to use)

I thought the rule of thumb nowadays for forum posts was "don't let facts get in the way of a good story".

We've all been hearing over and over again for the last week that Sony was running an outdated version of the Apache web-server software on its webservers. The implication, of course, was that this represents Sony's laissez-faire attitude toward the protection of customer information, making it easy for the hackers to gain entry to the PlayStation Network.

But the funny thing about this kind of "common knowledge" in the age of the Internet is the way rumors have an unfortunate tendancy to be repeated as fact. Just a week ago it was "common knowledge" that Sony stored every PSN password in plain text. It was also "common knowledge" that Sony Online Entertainment hadn't been compromised. Neither of those things proved true.

One member of the Beyond3D forum, deathindustrial, was curious about the outdated server software claim and did a very brief amount of very interesting research into the issue....

(Beyond3D's community has a unique combination of technically knowledgable users with a low rate of console fanboyism, allowing for an honest discussion of things like the PSN data breach without the conversation devolving into another proxy battle in the great fanboy wars.)

As it turns out, it is fairly simple to use Google's webcache to show what version of Apache the PSN servers were using back in March. According to a page request archived by Google on March 23, 2011, at that time Sony was running version 2.2.17 of the software. You can see from Apache's website that 2.2.17 is the latest stable version of the webserver available even today. This is a direct repudiation of the claims being made that Sony's webservers were out of date by as much as five years.

Poster deathindustrial also goes on to point out the folly in using "security expert" Dr. Eugene Spafford's testimony before Congress as a source for the claims that the servers were outdated and that Sony knew about it. In the written statement which accompanied his testimony, Spafford clearly states:

I have no information about what protections they had in place, although some news reports indicate that Sony was running software that was badly out of date and had been warned about that risk.

So he had no first-hand knowledge of the state of Sony's servers or Sony's knowledge about possible exploits, and he was literally repeating claims that he read in the media, which might have stemmed from IRC chat logs that were being passed around back in February. He didn't even do the very basic detective work it would've taken to completely repudiates the claims.

It's sad to say, but many are so eager to see Sony's eye blackened that they are willing to believe any rumor that puts the PlayStation in a negative light. We are in a backwards world where everything Sony says is assumed to be a lie or conspiracy, and anonymous IRC chat logs of dubious origins have miraculously become the most trusted news source in the industry. Here we ha

http://bitmob.com/articles/detective-work-reveals-psn-servers-up-to-date

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1549251&postcount=491