All Posts by SioBabble

Originally posted by jdun1

This is what I don't understand about liberals and leftists. You got a religion, Islam that is the complete opposite of what liberals believes in. Islam will be the first to put a bullet into a liberal head without any regrets. From killing gays to limiting freedom of speech to legalizing the beating of women, yet the liberals defend Islam like there are no tomorrow, all because they hate Americans and Christians.

 

For the record, I'm very unfond of all flavors of fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever.  Even Buddist fundamentalists can be a pain.

The problem with this story is it's very one sided, obviously intended to raise religious bigotry.  The kids are not stupid, they know claiming they were disiciplined because they were "forced" to pray to Allah is a great dodge for whatever their suspension was actually about...but we don't know what that is because the reporter went in with an agenda and stuck to it.

BTW, there are plenty of "Christians" who firmly believe that women should be treated as chattel, so please don't insult the intelligence of everyone here by making such beliefs into a universal belief of all Muslims, who are not monolithic on the matter any more than Christians are.

This isn't an issue of "defending Islam", it's an issue of cutting through the religious bigotry BS and getting to what actually happened, not quietly accepting the accounts of those with an interest in fanning the embers of relgious bigotry.

BTW, you are aware that "Allah" is the God of Abraham, right?  The same one that Christians and Jews worship?  The Muslims have a different take on the details.  To them, Jesus is a prophet, but not the Son of the God of Abraham as Christians believe.

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Originally posted by Dekron

Originally posted by SioBabble

Forgive me for using critical thinking skills and not just accepting Faux Noise garbage at face value.

 

Your "critical thinking" skills have showed that you would believe such a story if it were reversed with another religion forcing such policies on Muslims and such story was on a liberal news network. Also, the use of the term Faux News shows you are extremely biased.

If the story were datlined, say, Riyahd, I'd have no problem accepting it at face value, even if the source were Faux Noise.

However, reading the source story indicates that the school wasn't given a chance to respond.  There are no quotes, no explanation for the suspension from the school.

Faux Noise is not a news source, it's a propganda operation.  Your acceptance of a fascist propaganda organ as a source for "news" indicates a lack of critical thinking skills.

Originally posted by daeandor

Originally posted by SioBabble

Originally posted by Cabe2323

Originally posted by SioBabble

For some strange reason, I think there's more to this story than the trained monkeys at Faux Noise are telling us.

 

Well the story is originally reported by a newspaper in England.  Not sure on the actual full story but I would think that Liberals (such as yourself SioBabble) would be offended by any forcing of religious ceremonies.  If it was forced on the children it shouldn't matter what religion it is, it is still wrong. 

 

 

Well, you see, that's part of the problem with the story.

It's rather one sided.

I rather suspect that the suspensions were for something other than the story claims.  Because from the story itself, it appears no one at the school was asked to comment on the claims of the pupils.

Forgive me for using critical thinking skills and not just accepting Faux Noise garbage at face value.

 

A critical thinker does not reject information immediately based upon the source.  Critical thinking implies analysis and evaluation, only part of which includes source credibility, accuracy, etc.  This also implies that the critical thinker understands ad hominem.

Faux Noise has a long and well documented history of distortion, sensationalism, and outright fabrication.

Therefore I treat everything they "report' with skepticism from the getgo.  They have a less than stellar track record.

Originally posted by D3mis3

I want two honest opinions here; one from someone who played Pre-CU and someone who started Post-CU. I've only ever played the Newbie Station as I don't know if it's worth buying. Give me some insight on how the game expands.

Population?

Game World Size / Creativity?

End Game?

Content?

PvP?

No reason why you shouldn't be able to get off n00bie station and see Tatooine (and the other worlds) for themselves.

Keep in mind that PvP is basically reserved, for the most part, for level 90 toons.  There are no level regulated battlefields as you have in WoW.

The end game is PvP, ongoing collections, and the heroic instances.

Game world size: deceptively huge, because the brutal reality is that planets have been stratified by level.  As you grind your way through the levels, via the Legacy Quest series, you'll move from Tatooine through Naboo, Corellia, and Talus.  The worlds are huge, but they're irrelevant to your level grind.  The collections system does send you all over the various worlds to kill 200 klickniks, 150 devil gulginaws, etc.  Some of the old feel of the original sandbox game can be percieved through collections.

Population depends on the server.   A few are better populated than others, but none are populated as they once were before the CU and NGE drove away the original player base.

Originally posted by Muirin

1. Did the founding fathers support immigration?

2. Did Martin luther King Jr. oppose affirmative action?

3. Were the American Indians really environmentalists?

4. Were state rights just code words for slavery and oppression?

5. What was "The biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years"?

6. Was the "Wild West" really so wild?

7. How Antiwar have American Liberals actually been over the years?

8. Did the Iroquois Indians influence the US constitution?

9. Did desegeration of schools sginficantly narrow the black-white educational achivement gap?

10. Was the Civil War all about slavery, or was something else at stake as well?

11. Can the president, on hiw own authority, send troops anywhere int he world he wants?

12. Is it true that durning World War 2 "America never had it so good"?

13. How does Social Security really work?

14. Was George Washington Carver really one of Americas greatest scientific geniuses?

15. Was the US constitution ment to be a "living, breating" document that changed with the times?

16. Did the pilgrims flourish in America thanks to Indians agricultural wisdom?

17. Who is most responsible for the "Imperial Presidency"?

18. Is discrimination to blame for racial differences in income and job placement?

19. Where did Thomas Jefferon's radical states right ideas come from?

20. What really happened in Whiskey Rebellion?

21. What made Americas wages rise?

22. Did capitalism cause the great depression?

23. Did HerbertHoover sit back and do nothing durning the Great Depression?

24. Did Franklin Rosevelt's New Deal lift the United States out of the depression?

25. Does the Constitution's Commece Clause really grant the federal gocernment the power to regulate all gainful activity?

26. Can the federal goverenment do whatever it thinks will provide for the "General Welfare" of Americans?

27. Does the Constitution really contain an "elastic clayuse"?

28. Did the Founding Fathers believe juries could refuse to enforce unjust laws?

29. Is the US governent to stringy with foreign aid (or not stringy enough)?

30. Did labor Uniond make Ameircans more free?

31. Should americans care about historians rankings of the presidents?

32. Who was S.B. Fuller?

33. Did Bill Clinton really stop a genocide in Kosovo?

 

Try to answer as many as you can.  These questions are taken from the book "33 Questions About Americans History Your Not Supposed to Ask".

What is the source of this set of highly loaded and leading "questions"?

The LEC marketing droids really have no clue as to how LEC is perceived in the gaming community.

They also wish away the impact of word of mouth....it can help you beyond the dreams of Nute Gunray's avarice, or it can kill you deader than Darth Vader's force choke.

Originally posted by Warmaker

I wouldn't say they were all complete, blithering idiots  Some of them did a few things right.

They did implement the original Sandbox system that we miss to this day.

The original game worlds are still, IMO, some of the best in MMOs.  All terrain was traversible.  There were no stupid invisible walls like most MMOs have, and which Rage of the Wookies and Trials of Obi-Wan introduced.  The original worlds were different from each other, had distinct feel.  The towns are still nice, but it's regretting some of those wonderful towns were little used.  Corellia and Naboo had some FABULOUS cities.  Cycle of time and weather.  I still remember starting the game waaaayyy out in Doerba Goefel, Northeast in the mountains of the Corellia map.  Graphics turned up high, took forever for me to reach the top of a big hill overlooking the town (I had no terrain negotiation as a newbie Marksman).  But the view was spectacular.

And hats off to the original art team.  You could see the work in now well the original worlds looked, how nice and detailed the original equipment was.

The one thing that ALWAYS amazes me, to this day on my quarterly vet trial, is that some things about SWG are so right it is painful.

My favorite example is that the ambient light when dawn hits on whatever planet you're on, especially Corellia, feels like morning.  It's absolutely authentic for me.  I can tell you what time of day it is by looking around at the ambient light, not by noting the position of the sun in the sky.

Sometimes I just find a mountain top to be on to watch the sunrise or the sunset.  Or to watch the other four planets in the Corellian sky slowly march across during the night.

The original SWG team absolutely nailed this.

Then there were the creature animations...which were fantastic, before everything mobile was put on crystal meth.  The leaping of my greater sludge panther as it attacked a ronto, or a kimogilla.  The movement of a dewback or a humbaba.  The death of a cu pa...cribbed straight from a taun taun dying from ESB.  The movement of klickniks.  The fearsome attack meow of a kima...beyond hilarious.  Yet kimas could be death to anyone unwary on Talus.

This is the true tragedy of SWG...they had so many things so incredibly right.  The lost potential causes me to tear up.

Frankly, I am sick and tired of whining babies like the OP who demand that permadeath be imposed on everyone in an MMORPG.

You always have the option of rerolling your toon if you die.

Your problem is that you can't impose your idea of "fun" and "challenge" on everyone else playing the game.

Originally posted by Warmaker

Heh, you could see the first signs of a shift towards loot gear in the Rage of the Wookies expansion.

* Introduced Clone Armor that was quite easy to attain.  Don't need a crafter.

* Anti-Decay Kits.  Biggest warning that I didn't heed at the time.  Kept the rare, ultra powerful gear in the game indefinitely, which would no longer be destroyed given time and usage.  I'm quite sure the exp.pack came out in the CU era, or maybe at the very tail end of the Pre-CU days at the earliest (and a big maybe).

* Very strong loot / quest reward gear, namely weapons.  A wide variety of potent gear was available on Kashyyk.  In general, they usually weren't far superior to well crafted gear.  But in hindsight, one of the first indications to the shift towards loot / reward gear instead of crafted gear in the NGE.

Another indicator of the direction the game was going that was foreshadowed by RotW was that when you died on Kashyyyk, you didn't suffer the gear decay hit, which was 10% if uninsured, 1% if insured everywhere else.

Interestingly, the NGE actually devalued some of the quest reward weapons, particularly the melee weapons, making things like low power Xris Acid Sword skins loot drops off of Valerians and Skaak Tippers.

You can still get a premium price for some of these weapons simply as house decorations, not actual weapons you would use, because the skins are different and desirable.

Originally posted by Cabe2323

Originally posted by SioBabble

For some strange reason, I think there's more to this story than the trained monkeys at Faux Noise are telling us.

 

Well the story is originally reported by a newspaper in England.  Not sure on the actual full story but I would think that Liberals (such as yourself SioBabble) would be offended by any forcing of religious ceremonies.  If it was forced on the children it shouldn't matter what religion it is, it is still wrong. 

 

Well, you see, that's part of the problem with the story.

It's rather one sided.

I rather suspect that the suspensions were for something other than the story claims.  Because from the story itself, it appears no one at the school was asked to comment on the claims of the pupils.

Forgive me for using critical thinking skills and not just accepting Faux Noise garbage at face value.

For some strange reason, I think there's more to this story than the trained monkeys at Faux Noise are telling us.

Originally posted by DeltaXi65

Damn, that was a blast from the past. Rereading that reminds me of how absolutely angry I was when I wrote it.

I went back with a couple friends last year and tried to get back into SWG again, but it just wasn't the same. The community was dead, and that's what kept so many of us playing.

Oh well - glad to see this letter is still floating around out there. I think it had the record for page views back on the old SWG forums. :)

B

Brisc, you old devil you!

I'm afraid the rancor/graul pens are not what they once were when new master scouts were sent to clean them out as part of the inititiation ritual.

You're right that the community is the reason to keep at a MMO when you grow tired of the grind, or whatever silliness and stupidity the developers/publishers see fit to impose on the people who pay their salaries.

Community kept me in SWG for the run and the destruction of the community in the NGE was one factor among many for not sticking around.

Originally posted by War_Eagle

I wonder if there's ever been a study done where folks who profess being religious were given a polygraph test?  I think the results would be interesting.

Given that polygraphs are notoriously unreliable, not sure what good it would be except as fodder for yet another flamefest at MMORPG.COM.

Originally posted by altairzq

This is so sadly correct. Except the confusion with the islamist terrorism.

Not confusion.

The same fanatical monotheistic mindset is there.

Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have much more in common than many of their followers are willing to concede.

I don't understand why this is even an issue, because as part of the NGE they made every account JTL enabled, they had to in order to make it possible for you to jump into the turret of the Millenium Falcon to fight of the TIE fighters as you're escaping the station, as part of the n00bie island feature of the NGE.

They basically gave away JTL to everyone at that point, rendering the need to have JTL "enabled" to fly on a POB ship OBE.

It's still quite possible to not go to Kashyyyk if you don't have RotW enabled.  In fact, if you're not RotW enabled you can't do the ground quests for Katarn Armor, which don't involve travelling to Kashyyyk at all.

It would be very difficult for Funcom to pull an SOE.  For one thing, Funcom doesn't have Robert E. Howard looking over their shoulders insisting that no, Conan can't appear in this instance.

For another thing, Funcom isn't the big bad King of MMOs being bitch slapped silly by some first time MMO project the way SOE was by Blizzard.

Also, I doubt Funcom will just trash their existing game because it's not "Conanish" or "Iconic" enough.

Also, I don't think Funcom will replace Conan the Barbarian a year in with Conan the Comedian in an attempt to capture some imagined larger audience than the one they have now.

Originally posted by Wolfenpride

They're on the sports channel on my tv

so they must be. =/

My first thought, too.  :)

I've always found it difficult to think of auto racing as a "team" sport, but bicyclists seem to have a "team" concept in which members of the team do things to support whoever is designated as the pack leader.  It's rather different than baseball or football (be it rest of the planet football or US football) in which there is no game for individuals at all.