Well North Korea is a failed state, and all you need to do to reject the idea that they would for some reason reunite with South Korea to attack the U.S. is read the news. They've been completely isolated and falling apart for going on 50 years. The reason they have one of the largest armies in the world is because their populace is so brainwashed that they will accept starvation and disease so that money can be pumped into maintaining the huge conscripted armed forces and a nuclear program. Remember when Iraq had one of the largest armies in the world before Desert Storm? That didn't work out too well for them. Point is, the U.S basically controls the world's oceans in that we have the military ability to destroy most any naval force anywhere on the globe before they got within 500 miles of the coast. A successful military invasion (naval, ground, or air) of this country is pretty much impossible due to our force supremacy alone, not to mention "a rifle behind every blade of grass". The only way that invasion could happen would be if we let it happen. Fallout 3 gets a complete pass because it's set in an alternate universe that is divergent from our own. In the fallout universe, transistors were never invented but advanced robotics and laser weapons were. Talking about the realism of a Fallout game is a meaningless exercise. I'd much rather have some sort of separate history that imagines a vastly weakened U.S. due to some catastrophic event or series of events rather than pretending like these "America gets invaded" plots are at all believable or immersive. The scenarios are only interesting because they have never come close to happening, precisely due to the reasons I've mentioned.
Fair enough. But doesn't speculating about future events, even if they aren't very likely, qualify as an "alternate universe?" That video also addressed things such as the financial crisis and cited other superpowers in history that were thought to be invincible, to illustrate that the U.S. being invaded, regardless of by whom, isn't as far-fetched of an idea as most would believe. I'm not saying it's probable, but it's not impossible, either. The movie V For Vendetta poses a similar problem, with the U.S. in shambles economically. On one hand, it's easy to think, "Yeah right, THAT will never happen. How could this country possibly fall apart?" But on the other, you think, "Just maybe..." It's all in good fun. Nobody's saying it NEEDS to be an impending reality. Because if it was, that would make it more depressing and less entertaining.
And I don't even play video games for "story" at all; I could care less. However, you're the one who called its premise "fantastically genius" above, and that's what I was responding to. Funny you should mention that, since there have recently been a slew of news articles about this very subject. Both the US and Chinese governments separately believe that North Korea will collapse in the next 10-15 years...basically, as soon as Kim Jong-Il dies. (Courtesy of Wikileaks) So it's not that I'm sure or not sure of anything, but rather, that two of the largest governments seem to believe it's inevitable. By the way, isn't it hilarious that the two weeks during which we learn how miserable, pathetic, and on the brink of total collapse North Korea is...we get a video game about North Korea conquering the US? Again, you have to love political correctness. The developers' first choice was probably some rich Arab country, but that was nixed for obvious reasons. I was about to make a joke about how North Korea conquering the US is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard...but North and South Korea willingly uniting is actually much stupider. It's not quite as moronic as the idea of Israel and Lebanon willingly uniting with one another...but it is at least AS stupid as India and Pakistan uniting, or basically any two other mortal enemies whose ideologies are largely built on destroying the other. Yeah, video games ripping from movies is fine, but no one was calling Black Ops' story "fantastically genius" either, were they? And if they did, they were idiots who should try reading a book some day. Things like perks, rankings, and class loadouts are in virtually every half-serious first-person shooter these days, and have nothing to do with the actual gameplay. Really, none of those little trinkets are why CoD is so popular and successful. It would be like saying that any fighting game with a health bar, timer, unique characters, and a super is "Street Fighter-esque". No, that's just the general characteristics of the whole genre, and says nothing about its quality as a whole. There's nothing wrong with getting excited over a game, and maybe "Homefront" will be the greatest FPS of all time. However, I just despise unwarranted hype (since I've been burned by it so many times before), and at this point, we know absolutely nothing about it.
Alright, I'll concede on the premise for now. Even I can recognize how silly it is. I just appreciate the different angle it takes, fighting on home soil and all that. Let's at least agree on what really matters: Dedicated. Fucking. Servers. Assuming they get everything in working order, things like lag and poor hit detection will (hopefully) be non-issues. It's the one major overhaul that needs to happen to the COD games as well. P2P needs to GTFO.
This. Dedicated servers and a re-spawn system that isn't fucking retarded is all I want. Fuck single player.
I mentioned this in the CoD thread. This seems to be an FPS version of World in Conflict which I thought is one of the most underrated games to come out in the last few years. If they can pull it off, I'll be impressed. Even MW2 tried to do it and wasn't very successful in their campaign mode.
Cataclysm comes out at midnight PST tonight. Is anyone playing tonight like I am? What are you guys looking forward to? What zones are you going to hit up? I plan on going to Vashj'ir to start off. Yeah, it's underwater and all that, but it looks really cool. I don't plan on doing any of the new dungeons tonight, just questing. All that hard work of getting up into Wrath 264s will be for nothing once you hit 81-82. I'm excited to have new content though. Questing in new zones where you aren't completely overgeared makes things so much better. Heck, I may even try and solo Molten Core tonight while I'm waiting for 2am CST.
Oh my god, NBA Jam was a great purchase. I brought it, and my PS3, to my brothers house over the weekend. We were right back in middle school, trash talking while Detlef Shrempf rained down threes and Patrick Ewing slammed down jams. Of course, his wife sitting there staring daggers through us while holding their month old daughter reminded me that it wasn't 1995 anymore. Whatever.
I'll be playing tonight as well, I actually took a PTO day tomorrow and Wednesday so that I could play. I will probably start questing in Hyjal first, I read somewhere that that is going to be the best place to start off. Of course trying to do quests right as they activate the new content is going to be a pain in the ass, trying to compete for quest mobs and all that. I may just buy my Azeroth flight license and fly around and check out some of the new stuff that I haven't seen yet. I don't know about the rest of you that play WoW, but I am a complete UI whore. I will spend 4 hours logged into wow and not move my character because I am downloading and configuring different UI mods, trying to get that perfect setup. I might have to post a screen shot of what I'm running with when I get home.
I was wondering how the competition will be for mobs and what not. I guess if you beat everyone to the zone you wont have any competition. I'm pretty excited to fly around Azeroth to see some of the things I never saw before. Flying with be HUGE in Kalimdor since the shattering made a lot of zone-to-zone travel inaccessible from now on (especially if you're Alliance). I'm a huge UI whore as well. I use Tukui and more specifically Toresh's edit of it. It's fantastic, clean, and has pretty much everything you need (except Healbot since I'm a Holy Pally). The great thing about the release tonight though: you wont need to do any updates on your UI. Anything that worked on 4.0.3a will work after they flip the switch. Here is my UI (I've made some mods to it since but not much - you'll also notice the lack of Holy Power aka pre 4.0): One other thing to take a look at: they made some sweet upgrades to professions. Blacksmithing can now make skeleton keys to pick any lock. Engineering has some pretty sweet stuff as well. I'm also very interested to try out archaeology.
I actually just downloaded and started using Tukui last week, I'll have to check out Toresh's edit though. Also, the addon right above your action bars, is that the forte exorcist or whatever? I've seen that in several screen shots, but I wasn't sure what it was. How useful is that one? I really like the minimal look of Tukui, the skin especially, but I almost prefer to download all the unit frame, action bar, etc addons by themselves and then set it all up just how I like it, without having to edit a ton of LUA files. And good point about the profession stuff, I'll probably start working on my tailoring asap, and archeology looks really cool too.
That is Forte above my action bars. However, in the new edition of Toresh's edit, he uses Cool Line instead. It pretty much does the same thing. I didn't have to edit one LUA file with Tukui. Honestly, they have some sweet pre-packaged stuff that forum members have built. If you look in the forums section, there are a lot in there. My blacksmithing and alchemy are WAY behind. It just costs so much to level it up if you don't have a gathering profession to go along with it. I didn't put any effort into them when I started (I had no idea about them) so it's been a pain to try and catch up. The latest one I've been working on is fishing but even that takes a long time at 17 seconds/cast. One other thing I'm excited about: since I have the RaF rocket, I'm going to give low-levels flights to new flight paths. But, when I get there, they're getting ejected off. It's fun playing eject a warlock.
If you're talking about the screen shot, they're all the different spells you can cast (or items you can consume). Most characters have around 15-20 spells they use. 4-6 core spells and the rest are situation spells. Unless you're being a smart ass and I completely missed the joke/reference.
I did a bunch of the UI stuff back when I played. To be perfectly honest, you probably don't need half that junk on the screen. I had 10 things on my action bar to show cooldowns, everything else was keybound and there was no separate cooldown timer mod. Basically, information shows up in only one place, which a) opens up more space so you can view your surroundings easily and b) trains you to not be lazy and look that place instead of looking one place or another based on how lazy you are. That said, that UI is certainly visually appealing.
I'm not worried about space, I use the 30" Apple Studio monitor and a 25xx x 18xx res (I can't remember the exact numbers). I also just switched around my keybindings so I'm still learning where everything is (especially on the shift + keys). I think once you get comfortable with your keybinds you definitely dont need two rows on the bottom. It's nice though if you have the space, makes things a little bit easier. I'm also a huge fan of recount and omen. It's nice to have damage/healing meters and being a healer I religious watch omen to see who's rising on threat so I can proactively heal.
This morning I took some snapshots of myself, the "before" pictures if you will: Spoiler Stat inflation is always included in these expansions, I can only imagine what those numbers will be at 85, with T11. Still not sure if I'll dive right into the quests, or put Old Weather Flying to use. Unlike my "hardcore" guildmates I actually plan to enjoy myself; not barrel through so I can be raiding by Friday.
From what I've seen a DPS decked out in full gear from the first raid is looking at 90-100k health, while tanks are going to be over 170k. I'm assuming this carries over into PvP and I'm hoping it makes for some longer battles rather than the burst-fest that it has been throughout WotLK.
I have never played WoW yet have tried many other MMOs but feel like getting in to it now. Would I need all the expansions or should i get them as I level up? Would I be missing out on anything?