Originally posted by Elikal

THAT is what I HATE about the game. The party members are way to independent, like a walking critic holding scores over every goddamn decision of mine. I don't carry around people to score my every step and end up pleasing them! I am to save the world, dammit not please some touchy egos. Bioware went WAY overhead with this. Companions are free to have opinions, but when I have my own private jury following me, it gets annoying. I ended up hating all, outside of Zevran, who ended up the most loyal, since he usually had no judgement on my decisions.

Cause he's the only one who'd bone you up the butt? :P

I soooooooooooo wholeheartedly disagree with you. They might've been independent, but even if they didn't like you, they were still enjoyable characters who realized what they had been recruited/tasked to do trumped their personal feelings. They might've disliked you, but it added, imo, a great deal of depth to them.

If this is true, this is fucking awesome. Planetside 2 and ToR beta sign-ups? Bad-ass! Great week/day.

ignore, breached nda, please delete

Originally posted by Thradar

1) F2P
2) gpatato
3) "two factions that have been at war for over a millenium"  (said in dramatic voice referring to generic canned lore)

That's 3 fails in my book.

Dig around a bit, it'll probably surprise you

Originally posted by xiirot

Looks interesting, I'll keep an eye on it.

it really does... book marked the russian site, definitely going to keep tabs on it.

Originally posted by star

sig test

i should learn to read...testing again

sig test

Originally posted by Aetius73

Originally posted by Trizic

Originally posted by Aetius73

This BS lost all credibility when one was elected for President. Everytime one of them pulls this crap we should pull a picture of Obama out and say try again.

 

The very fact that you say "when one was elected for President" shows that the credibility is not lost(although as i said, in this case it was totally uncalled for). Racism is far from dead, especially in America.

Your right. The liberals are so busy trying to make up for past injustices that the pendulum has swung so far the other way more capable white men are passed over for promotion to meet racial quotas.

Of course they will blame us that the tests are rigged etc.

What is the real truth is a culture that looks down on academic success as being too white suffers for it once they enter the work force and have to test for promotions. They are not less intelligent or less capable. These days its the thug culture that holds back the majority.

President Obama has proven that you can succeed to the ultimate position in the country no matter who you are. Everything else is just an excuse.

Incidentally back in my younger days before I finished my degree I was doing some pest control in the local housing projects office when a black lady very loudly accused another black lady of not giving her a free apartment because she was black (the project was 100% black btw). They even use it on each other its just a lame excuse to get preferential treatment. Their parents may have faced real discrimination but these days its all in their heads. The fact that they constantly demand preferential treatment has soured more of generation x than actual racial bias.

I like how you tout that 'racism is over', when you're own post just exudes it from ever sentence. Racism is far from over, as is sexism. There are still irregularites in both the public and private sector about how minorities are treated. Hell, take a gander at the number of hate groups that have popped up - the majority of them have shifted away from their anti-semtic view points, to an anti-black/anti-brown one. Perceived fear is a powerful tool.

President Obama, as much as a step forward that he's been, is not the be-all-to-end-all of racism.

He was not born in the ghetto.
He was therefore not surrounded by the ghetto culture.
He went to schools without funding issues and got a proper education.
He went to some of the best colleges/universities.
ect

If he had been born in the ghetto, surrounded by the crime, drug/gang culture, and poor education, do you honestly think that today we'd have an african-american president?

And please don't pigeon hole one racial/ethnic group. 'They'? Who is 'they'? There are millions of african americans in this country, and just like you white folk, we don't all march to one beat.

Edit: oh, re-reading your post, you seem to be stuck with an old notion of racism that is accompanied by men wearing white robes and lynching blacks. That form of racism is mostly dead, except with a few resurgrences nation wide (as I said, go read a little bit on the number of hate groups, it might surprise you /shrug). The forms of racism we see/deal with today, from a socialogical standpoint, are instututional and unintentional. It is not (maybe) planned by people, or even known by them as they commit it, but it's there.

It's the push of hollywood and the media to reincforce the sterotype of the gangbanger.
It's unequal laws that punish drug usage differently.
It's the constant cycle of poor funding to ghetto/low income schools (which poor whites also suffer from).

It's not just one thing, and many a time, racism is intertwined with it's cousins sexism and classism.

Some sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege'

You don't see it. It won't (98%) affect you. But it's there.

Originally posted by Dekron

Originally posted by Vendayn

that combo...actually...sounds really good

It does...what to do?

enjoy it :D

Originally posted by Porfat 

 

In the US we have a tradition of former presidents staying on the sidelines.  They can raise money for charities but they shouldn't be meddling in foreign policy or criticizing the current administration.  Carter is the absolute worst is this respect. Worse than Regan, both Bushes, and Clinton.

We loved Carter so much that we replaced him with his opposite in a landslide.   I know alot of people think George W Bush was the worst president of modern times don't remember what it was like under Carter.   A recession and high inflation coupled with a nation in paralysis over the Iran hostage crisis doesn't do much for a legacy. 

Islam is an intolerant religion.  Read the Koran a lot love thy neighbor in there.   As for racism I hate all people who want to force their religion on others no matter what shade of brown they may be.

 

Go read the Qu'ran. Islam has been, and will probably always be, the most tolerant monotheistic/abrahamic religion.

And us brown folks aren't the only one's who try to push religion on to others.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Not Star Wars related, but I decided to pull this from the Zorvan Bag O' Novelties for your viewing pleasure:

oh jeez, it's back... many a hour i've spent wasting watching them swing back... and forth... so hypnotic...

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by pandrax
snip

 

snip

snip

 

snip

 

It seems that companies have forgotten they are making games and not just some product. 

 

 

 

when have games  ever not been 'just some product'?

Originally posted by EricDanie

 Option 3, downloading the game to give the chance it deserves and has given me.

This :)

Originally posted by mklinic

Originally posted by star

goddamn, for once I thought I was on top of things. qq for it not being in the wow forums though.

 

heh, you have a point. I've seen conversation pop up in a few places about this. I just thought that previous thread had a good sampling of opinions.

Yah, I saw the topic on my server forums, and figured mmorpg would be a good catalyst for interesting discussion... oh well, off to read 6+ pages of opinions before posting my own :D

thanks for the link/heads up though ^^

Originally posted by mklinic

Originally posted by star

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/07/wow-subscriptions-down-to-5-million.html

 

/discuss

 

I think people already have..

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/242675/WoW-Subscriptions-Down-to-5-Million-Allegedly.html.

goddamn, for once I thought I was on top of things. qq for it not being in the wow forums though.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/07/wow-subscriptions-down-to-5-million.html

/discuss

Originally posted by Xasapis

A bit off topic, but what's the point of using xfire in the first place?

It's really nice as a chat client. I have a fair amount of friends who don't play WoW (my current game du jour), and it's a great way to chat with them while they're playing something else.

/shrug

I'm not certian, but I have a feeling it'll be something like the Vista 64bit upgrade, where you pay a nominal fee and they'll ship you the disc to upgrade to the correct version. I'll double check with my dad tonight though, he's part of the team working on it, and if no one else has given you a definitive answer by then, I should be able to ;)

oh, and there's your answer :D

Originally posted by Man1ac

Due to the lack of a a half-decent reply, I'm gonna take it you guys are ashamed of a retarded education system. Probably the reason why a country so much larger doesn't have a higher ranked university than oxford or even cambridge.

Yet the UK really only has two schools of recognition. Over here we've got the Ivy League, the Public Ivies, and dozens of small private college that are also top tier. But onto your original question (and just a tip, if you want a polite response, don't insult your potential respondees.)

Our education systems starts around age 5, though some parents delay kindergarten by a year. Pre-school is also an option for some that can afford it. 1-6th grades are elementary school, where the basics/fundamentals of math, english and science are taught.

7-8/9th grade are middle school (the top end varies district to district), and your education branches out from there with more specialized classes.

9/10-12 is high school. AP classes, ect, ect.

During your junior year (11th grade), if a 4 year university is the path you wish to persue, you take the standarized tests the ACT and/or the SAT. The SAT was the gold standard for many, many years, but the ACT is starting to be come widely seen as a viable alternative. Most people take either of the tests twice, and will use the best score when applying to colleges.

The college application process is fairly simple - fill out a few forms, send in your deposit, wait - and it's done generally at the beginning of your senior year.

If college isn't where you wish to go, there is basically one path - work. Olddaddy's post about working at McD with minimum wage wasn't too far off.

Our system definitely has plus sides to it, but some major gaps (the real lack of a funded apprenticeship program for those who don't wish to go to college for example) definitely drag it down.

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by star

Yes'masta

Yes, because my great grandmother (and her mother, and probably her mother's mother) really benefited from being raped by her masters, beaten until the skin fell off her back, forced to sell her children and work without compensation or rights. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

 

I know I shouldn't point this out but if it's true that you are descended from three generations of women who were raped by slave owners than shouldn't you, as the direct descendant of those slave owners, be expected to do some apologizing?

Because if that's true then you certainly are more closesly related to the slave owners than I am even though I'm white.  In my family history in the United States, to the best of my knowledge, none of my ancestors owned slaves.  But you, your great grandfather was a slave owner, and his father, and his father.

So really, by this logic that we have to apologize for the misdeeds of our ancestors shouldn't you have to apologize?  I would have to apologize to Native Americans for some things that my family was directly involved in but none of them had any direct involvement with slavery that I know of.

If you saw my post up there, I stated I thought this was a pretty ridiculous apology. I was merely commenting on Scrubies ignorant, hurtful remark that I should be grateful for a genocide because it saved me and my 'people' from famine.