The male protagonist in today's video games is typically:
-Unrealistically muscular, tall, and large in stature
Mostly because these are qualities that are valued by our society. You'll notice many games from Japan feature male protagonists that are the exact opposite.
-Unrealistically brave in the face of danger and certain death
Fear and cowardice are obstacles to overcome, not traits to celebrate. I have no problem with heroes male or female displaying these traits. The thought of women being afraid and needing a man to rescue her is the real enemy here.
Eh. Probably more of a problem that'd I'd like to think. It's easier to rely on beautiful good, ugly bad when establishing who is who in a narrative, but I agree it needs work.
-Portrayed in a stereotypical male dominated profession such as a soldier or knight
-If the character is in the military, it is typically a combat role and not an equally vital nonviolent role such as say a nurse or flight surgeon
Active role vs passive role. No one wants to stand in the back while someone else does the heavy lifting. The closest you're going to get to a non-com in a wargame is a diplomat. Even then that would be more of a visual novel.
-Usually always heterosexual, white, and cisgender and he never checks his privilege or acknowledges his heterosexual, white, male, cisgender privilege
I'm Commander Shepard and I'm a white, heterosexual, cisgender, priviliged male. Find any case where that sounds natural and we'll talk. Actions speak louder than words. There are a million issues here that I'm not even remotely qualified to talk about but it sounds like what you want is more equal representation of women and minorities. And I completely agree.
-I games in which the player chooses the player character's profession, he usually cannot choose to be a female dominated profession such as a teacher, nurse, or homemaker.
Again, no one wants to be the helpless guy in the back while someone else does all the heavy lifting. Remember that gaming is primarily to entertain. In most cases, the player wants to be the guy in the front boldly countering an enemy aggressor, not sitting in a 9 to 5 listening for bits of news that could indicate the danger has passed. I posit that again the real problem is societies idea that women belong in the back in the caregiver role.
Worst yet, players are nearly always encouraged to solve interpersonal conflicts using violence.
Most games I've played, interpersonal violence is reactionary to someone else's aggression. Being the bigger man and walking away only works if they don't throw the first punch. Even just disarming the aggressive party requires more than being submissive and taking it.
In the post-modern world, a player who solves in-game problems using violence (or at the very least gratuitous violence) should be heavily penalized and players who solve problems through mediation, negotiation, creative peacebuilding, and diplomacy should be rewarded extensively.
Giving someone access to lots of toys then punishing them for using them is bad game design. It's a great way to get someone not to play.
To my knowledge, there is no character-driven game on the market today which allows the player to peacefully resolve all conflicts. Some strategy games afford the player with some diplomacy options, among other peaceful resolutions, but these games are not character driven and typically don't even have a protagonist.
It is a pipe dream to think that all conflicts can always be resolved peacefully. Friendship is not magical fairy dust that can be liberally applied to all situations. Sometimes when you give an inch, they will take a mile. It is unfortunate, but true. But this is wish fulfilment so let's ignore that. We have a situation where war might break out. You want to resolve the issue peacefully without any form of violence. So you press the right combination of dialog options and game over, crisis averted. Completely uninteresting. There's a reason nobody plays "peace."
However, I agree that more games, especially RPGS, need well developed paths for completing objectives non-lethally. Deus Ex 1 is a prime example of a game that could be completed and resolved without killing anyone. It pissed me off when Deus Ex 3 removed that feature and made it mandatory to kill bosses. Having multiple ways to problem solve is a lost art that really needs to come back. :<
Tropes such as these send the wrong message to young people of what it means to be a man and what is expected of men in today's society. Playing games which features these tropes could be traumatic for a still developing young man.
Imagine a gay, transgender young man of below average physical appearance, who is probably already struggling enough with his body image and self-esteem. Popular games played by young men such as Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Gears of War, or Halo tells him that to be a "real man" and "bad-ass" he must:
1. Join the military and become an infantryman
2. Solve his problems through violence and physical altercations
3. Look like he can bench-press about 350 pounds
4. Use profanity among other vulgarity to prove how tough he is
5. Never cry or display stereotypically "feminine" emotions in perilous situations or when a comrade falls in battle
A "bad-ass?" Definitely. It is a pipe dream. A fantasy. Hence it being the player avatar in games. Its no different than any other form of entertainment where the average Joe becomes the worlds saviour. No man is an island. Being a cog is what we do in real life, we don't play video games to be another cog in the machine.
Being a man though? Hardly. You're focusing too much on superficial details instead of the underlying traits.
1. Try be proactive and face problems instead of running away and hope someone else deals with it.
2. Try be assertive.
3. Try be physically fit. No one holds the Chris Redfields or Marcus Fenixes of the gaming world to be the ideal male form.
4. No one over the age of 14 believes this and I defy you to show me any popular male protagonist in AAA titles that acts this way. Excessive swearing is a sign of immaturity and is usually relegated to small villains trying to act tougher than they are.
5. This I will concede. The whole boys don't cry thing is utter nonsense.
Worst is that gay players are subjected to exclusively heterosexual relationships. This is incredibly damaging to his psyche, to be forced to role play as a heterosexual player character, and it is unacceptable. And yet it is accepted, unfortunately. Role-playing games should represent all healthy orientations, sexualities, and genders as to not alienate their audience (Don't grasp for straws, I'm not suggesting immoral or unethical orientations such as bestiality, pedophilia, or incest should be represented in games).
I agree with your conclusion but not with your reasoning. Would being exposed a film with homosexual romance damage your mind cause it doesn't perfectly mirror your personal preferences? Your rationale is akin to those lobbying to ban homosexuality being depicted on TV for fear it'll turn their kids gay. People are made of sterner stuff.
Now some progressive developers such as Bioware DO attempt to remedy this by featuring homosexual love interests. This is a step in the right direction, but this is just one developer in the minority, and even Bioware does not adequately, if at all, represent transgender individuals in its games. Furthermore, a player character cannot identify as genderqueer, such as being bigender, the third gender, or agender.
a. I would think transgender individuals would rather be accepted for who they are rather than harping on how they were born. Seems counter intuitive.
b. Bigender and third gender? Really? Baby steps bro. Try Second Life.
I think in the coming years we will see the tragic effects of these insidious games in our culture. Worst case scenario, I expect that suicide rates will rise as young men realize they can't live up to the expectations of being a "real man" as presented to them by male protagonists in today's games.
I think you're overdramatizing. People are made of sterner stuff. 99% of people can distinguish reality from fantasy. And that is what games are, fantasy.
Disclaimer: I have not read World War Z nor have I seen many films in the zombie horror genre
I didn't much care for this one. It was a bland film that was paced and structured like a generic zombie video game.
The film's biggest problem is the lack of a developed cast. Brad Pitt gets no characterization other than a vague UN themed back story and a perfect family for motivation. This is a problem since he is the only character we spend any amount of time with for the first 75% of the film. There is no tension watching a walking board do nothing but run from zombies for 90 minutes. WWZ tries to add more cast after Israel with Pitt picking up the wounded Israeli soldier and the WHO staff but the Israeli solder has like 3 lines the whole movie so we know even less about her (A damn shame too, even with only 3 lines she was a helluvalot more interesting than Pitt) and the WHO staff are just there to spout exposition.
The ending confused me too. I wasn't aware that apex predators only went after healthy targets and ignored the sick and injured. Do zombie movies normally try to bring teh science! into them? I also thought it was convenient Pitt injected himself with the easily treatable disease vial. I would have appreciated this thing a lot more if he had shot himself with something like Small Pox or the Ebola virus and died bringing the vials home. It would have made him somewhat more heroic and given the conclusion some feel other than "welp, got the salvation thing, we win."
That said, not going the expected route is a noteworthy trait of this film. The opening sequence of going from perfect life to world ending in less than 5 minutes was really effective and the virologist getting shot before even getting off the plane was surprising twist as well. I just could have used some more developed people to make the whole adventure feel like more than... well a video game.
I can't think of any MMOs that fits that criteria offhand; except perhaps Ultima Online. From what my friend tells me, there are no levels, its very skill heavy, and accepts user-creations input such as houses and castles. That's really old now though, dunno if there are any live servers for it any more.
Richard Garriot is making another Online RPG called Shroud of the Avatar that sounds like its going to be similar but who knows when that is going to go live. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.
If there exists such an MMO though, I'd be very interested in it too.
"And you better wear your shades
The spotlights here can burn holes through the stage
Down to the basement pass the Indian graves
Where the dinosaurs laid
Then out through China, nearly miss the airliners
Magnified times five, 'less it's pointed at the rhymer
Ricochets off the moon and sets the forest ablaze...
Now that's important to say
'cause even with all that most of us don't want it to fade
We want it to braid, meaning we want it to grow
Meaning we want it to stay
Like the Governor called and he told him to Wait
Un-strap him from the chair and put him back in his Cage...
The audience ain't fazed
And they ain't gonna clap and they ain't gonna praise
They want everything back that they've paid
'cause they've been waitin' since ten to see the lights get dim..."
That your character has no control over, despite his or her best efforts. For once, the world doesn't inexplicably bend to your will. You can't talk someone out of their most deepest beliefs because you got a high roll.
Funny, that's exactly what happened in paragon Shepard's resolution of the Quarian/Geth conflict. But I digress, that's a small matter that was never really fleshed out anyway.
I felt the same way, but I liked the ending. I was very sad when the series was over, but not because I was dissatisfied. Maybe it matters that I experienced the EC first /shrug
Again, I found it refreshing that my character couldn't control the universe. You're choices were not disregarded because the point of the game was the journey, not the destination.
I would normally agree with you BUT ME3s ending, ESPECIALLY the extended cut, has a very special problem with it. There are no consequences for anything in this game. No matter what happens, the reapers lose and everything is sunshine and rainbows for everyone. You don't need to control the universe if the universe is going to give you sunshine and roses at the end of the day anyway.
I could go on about how the showdown with the star child makes no sense for any of Shepard's incarnations but whatever. My real problem is below:
Really this should have been the end of Shepard's story, but not the Mass Effect story. You have the Homeworld of three major super powers in ruins due to the reapers. You have their fleets stuck in another region of space with no way to get home because the relays are broken. (No, **** that hand wave in the EC. I remember the DLC in ME2 [Alpha Relay] that EXPLICITLY states that no one really understands how these things work. And you're going to repair it with what? A half crippled fleet and E-Zo tape??? Sucks for the rest of the universe.) Based on your choices, you have the Krogan race revitalized and a growing new power OR an even more desperate race probably out for revenge. The Salarian's homeworld wasn't even touched the whole time if I recall correctly. There's a shift in power structures here. There's more story to tell. But no, it's been hand waved away. The universe is saved and everything is better now. THAT is why I hate this ending. This isn't an ending. It's a "And thus the war of the ring ended because we ran out of either time or money."
Tying back into the topic, I do think the decline in Bioware quality lately is because of EA meddling. They tend to do that with every studio they absorb into their conglomerate. Milk it for what its worth then discard. Still, making pessimistic cash grab VGs is pretty... unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Other corps should have gotten the overall title.
Not liking "World of Warcraft" type mmos is pretty vague. Most mmos tend to try to copy WoW in some fashion but do certain aspects "better" or at least different. I'm guessing its the grind you don't like but you could mean anything from its raid emphasis to PK-ing to fact that its 3D to too many skill choices but not really.
Some not WoW-like games:
Guild Wars 1 is my favorite MMO to date. Not really an MMO in the traditional sense; party sizes vary from 4 to 12 max, all pve zones are instanced, there is no interacting with other players outside town hubs where you can form parties, nor is it in 3D technically. Still, it does benefit from having a huge pool of distinct playable classes and skills to interact with, an amazing plot by RPG standards let alone MMO standards, and quite a bit of playable content for dirt cheap. It is a pay once MMO with a small microtransaction section that offers nothing but cosmetics. Guild wars is kind of dead now though.
Guild Wars 2 is a pay once mmo masterpiece in the sense that it takes the persistent world approach and makes interacting with other people enjoyable. There's no loot stealing, no pqing, and the constant flow of dynamic events makes partying completely impromptu and really fun. GW2 has also done away with the traditional class roles of tank/dps/healer in favor of a more Korean approach to classing where every class has their own special gimmick and can function perfectly fine in a team made up of anything. It has jumping puzzles too. I personally don't like Guild Wars 2 because of its reduced emphasis on story, dungeon diving consisting of nothing but million hp boss slogs, and a minimal skill pool compared to its predecessor. BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT AMIRITE A-NET.
I would bring up Dungeon Fighter Online but Nexon has killed it in America. Rusty Hearts is Perfect World entertainments equivalent. Its a "3d" F2P dungeon crawler with heavy emphasis on combat prowess. Warframe is like this too, only with guns and space ninjas. Grind heavy, instanced pve with no pqing.
Maplestory is 2D F2P WoW with lots of micro transactions. I hate this one too but i have a friend who hates 3D MMOs who loves this thing for some reason so it bears a mention. VERY VERY grind heavy, persistent world, 2D, full of hackers.
Guild Wars 2 is my recommendation till I see how Elder Scrolls Online turns out.
Just got back from Les Miserables. For the most part I really enjoyed it. The collective cast did and excellent job and really sold their respective roles to me. Anne Hathaway's entire performance and Eddie Redmayne's rendition of Empty Chairs and Empty Tables were heartfelt and even got me tearing up a little.
I had heard a lot of bad things about Russell Crowe's Javert so I was expecting the worst going in. After having seen the movie though, it don't think his voice nor his performance were THAT bad. He certainly looks the part and had a very commanding presence on screen. I wasn't feeling it though. By the end of the film I finally realized why. Someone on this production crew, whether the director or Crowe himself, does not understand the character of Javert at ALL. Sure he hits the notes and says the words, but its all hollow. When Javert started to suspect the mayor was Val Jean, he acted more like "Huh, you remind me of this one guy" rather than "YOU." There was no passion or dogged determination in Stars. Javert's Suicide was sung like a guy singing a song before jumping off a bridge. You could almost see on Crowe's face "Welp, I guess this is where I kill myself, better start singing." There was no internal conflict there, no deeply seated world view getting challenged. Just an actor going through the motions, which is unfortunate. Still a thoroughly enjoyable flick.
I think it might in certain situations where developing a new business is has greater profit potential than other alternatives.
The problem with the trickle down theory right now is the rich in particular have no incentive to put those savings into new businesses when they can just invest it and make quicker and *maybe* even safer money that's taxed at a maximum of 15% thanks to long-term capital gains tax rules. They don't call now "the second gilded age" without reason.
First, the qibble over 2 types of salvation seems semantic. Is not "salvation" from the original sin/the fall the reason babies are baptised in Christian tradition? I don't see a meaningful difference. Besides, he's not talking about two separate types of salvation, just that Jesus's gift to man had two effects.
Second, they suggest Mormans believe there is a spiritual checklist that gets them into Heaven. This is not what he said at all, simply that faith AND adherence to God's Commandments will. I also like how they casually omit James 2:14-26 in there insistence that faith alone brings salvation. If that were true wouldn't the commandments be helpful suggestions rather than rules? Who cares what you do as long as you have faith at the end of the day.
I don't deny there are significant doctrinal differences between mainstream Christianity and Mormonism, but I don't see what Illuvator Brightstar meant based on that reading.
Also for the record, I consider Mormonism to be a branch of Christianity
This probably belongs in the religion subthread, but you are right on one point and wrong on another. Most Christians believe that to be a Christian, one follows the teachings of Christ. The key point here, though, is that one of those biblical teachings is that there is no other path to salvation but through Him. Mormonism espouses beliefs that don't jive with that teaching. That's why many (most?) Christians don't consider Mormons as within the fold. Now, saying it's a cult is slightly different, but saying non-Christian is pretty accepted.
Can you give any specifics? My impression was the concept of the Trinity vs the Godhead was the key sticking point with most Christians against Mormonism, which doesn't conflict with that at all.
Dungeon Fighter Online is a free MMO that sounds like it would fit your style. It's a dungeon crawler mixed with MMO that has a large variety of classes and play styles to play around with. Another plus is a total lack of reliance on the item mall to have fun. Nexon has seen fit to make the item mall cater almost exclusively to end game players so have no worries about being goaded into giving them cash if you are just looking for something to kill time.
I also support Guild Wars 2 suggestions though that is not technically "free."
I would imagine there's not incriminating at all on those returns and will be released eventually. Like, say, a month before the election.
This strikes me as a diversion tactic. Keep the media and public eye hyper-focused on something trivial like tax returns so they don't go looking for less obvious, potentially more damning skeletons in his closet. All while proving that he won't cave to political pressure so easily.
He had no father at all in the book. They completely fabricated that character and the entire subplot (which didn't really improve the movie anyway).
This is incorrect. The book makes a point to emphasis the Bucket's poverty by discussing Mr. Bucket's job as a toothpaste cap tightener making only $0.01 per cap. From what I remember of the book at least, the Tim Burton rendition is a bit more faithful.
That being said Gene Wilder is the man and the original is waaay better than the Tim Burton version. Tim Burton's still cool though. Nightmare before Christmas is one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time.
Really, for all the inconsistencies with the original ending, the developer response to the backlash was what really cheesed me off. Someone at Bioware kept throwing out vague assurances on the twitter that "no one would starve" and "everything would be alright, so stop complaining about it." No. You stranded the fleets of at LEAST 7 species on a war ravaged planet by destroying the Mass Relays, a technology no one has been able to replicate to the best of my knowledge. You established that even species with similar genetic make-ups (Turians and Quarians, for example) can't properly digest the the same foods as each other, much less what's left on Earth. And now you want to tell me "it will be alright?" No. I don't buy it.
I was really hoping the extended cut would somehow fix that, whether by proving indoctrination theory or introducing some other retcon that either didn't destroy the relays. They sure introduced some retcons but nothing that fixes the above problem. I choose the destroy ending and the extended cut, instead of saving the relays, has everyone run away before the super weapon destroys the relay... Ok, problem. We know where the Sol Relay goes and its not to everyone's home planet. Now your fleets are in a worse spot, the relays are still destroyed, and you still haven't told us how you are going to get home.
But it's okay because Admiral Hackett says it is. He even gives us some visions of the future showing us how ok it is.
What we have here is a war story where the war has no lasting consequences. They don't even allude to the possibility of lasting consequences. No food shortages, no civil unrest, not even a sign that the ravaging of the entire galactic community has any long lasting problems at all. The war is over cause the enemy is defeated. Whatever Mass Effect. It's over. On to the next game.
Mostly because these are qualities that are valued by our society. You'll notice many games from Japan feature male protagonists that are the exact opposite.
Fear and cowardice are obstacles to overcome, not traits to celebrate. I have no problem with heroes male or female displaying these traits. The thought of women being afraid and needing a man to rescue her is the real enemy here.
Eh. Probably more of a problem that'd I'd like to think. It's easier to rely on beautiful good, ugly bad when establishing who is who in a narrative, but I agree it needs work.
Active role vs passive role. No one wants to stand in the back while someone else does the heavy lifting. The closest you're going to get to a non-com in a wargame is a diplomat. Even then that would be more of a visual novel.
I'm Commander Shepard and I'm a white, heterosexual, cisgender, priviliged male. Find any case where that sounds natural and we'll talk. Actions speak louder than words. There are a million issues here that I'm not even remotely qualified to talk about but it sounds like what you want is more equal representation of women and minorities. And I completely agree.
Again, no one wants to be the helpless guy in the back while someone else does all the heavy lifting. Remember that gaming is primarily to entertain. In most cases, the player wants to be the guy in the front boldly countering an enemy aggressor, not sitting in a 9 to 5 listening for bits of news that could indicate the danger has passed. I posit that again the real problem is societies idea that women belong in the back in the caregiver role.
Most games I've played, interpersonal violence is reactionary to someone else's aggression. Being the bigger man and walking away only works if they don't throw the first punch. Even just disarming the aggressive party requires more than being submissive and taking it.
Giving someone access to lots of toys then punishing them for using them is bad game design. It's a great way to get someone not to play.
It is a pipe dream to think that all conflicts can always be resolved peacefully. Friendship is not magical fairy dust that can be liberally applied to all situations. Sometimes when you give an inch, they will take a mile. It is unfortunate, but true. But this is wish fulfilment so let's ignore that. We have a situation where war might break out. You want to resolve the issue peacefully without any form of violence. So you press the right combination of dialog options and game over, crisis averted. Completely uninteresting. There's a reason nobody plays "peace."
However, I agree that more games, especially RPGS, need well developed paths for completing objectives non-lethally. Deus Ex 1 is a prime example of a game that could be completed and resolved without killing anyone. It pissed me off when Deus Ex 3 removed that feature and made it mandatory to kill bosses. Having multiple ways to problem solve is a lost art that really needs to come back. :<
A "bad-ass?" Definitely. It is a pipe dream. A fantasy. Hence it being the player avatar in games. Its no different than any other form of entertainment where the average Joe becomes the worlds saviour. No man is an island. Being a cog is what we do in real life, we don't play video games to be another cog in the machine.
Being a man though? Hardly. You're focusing too much on superficial details instead of the underlying traits.
1. Try be proactive and face problems instead of running away and hope someone else deals with it.
2. Try be assertive.
3. Try be physically fit. No one holds the Chris Redfields or Marcus Fenixes of the gaming world to be the ideal male form.
4. No one over the age of 14 believes this and I defy you to show me any popular male protagonist in AAA titles that acts this way. Excessive swearing is a sign of immaturity and is usually relegated to small villains trying to act tougher than they are.
5. This I will concede. The whole boys don't cry thing is utter nonsense.
I agree with your conclusion but not with your reasoning. Would being exposed a film with homosexual romance damage your mind cause it doesn't perfectly mirror your personal preferences? Your rationale is akin to those lobbying to ban homosexuality being depicted on TV for fear it'll turn their kids gay. People are made of sterner stuff.
a. I would think transgender individuals would rather be accepted for who they are rather than harping on how they were born. Seems counter intuitive.
b. Bigender and third gender? Really? Baby steps bro. Try Second Life.
I think you're overdramatizing. People are made of sterner stuff. 99% of people can distinguish reality from fantasy. And that is what games are, fantasy.
I didn't much care for this one. It was a bland film that was paced and structured like a generic zombie video game.
The ending confused me too. I wasn't aware that apex predators only went after healthy targets and ignored the sick and injured. Do zombie movies normally try to bring teh science! into them? I also thought it was convenient Pitt injected himself with the easily treatable disease vial. I would have appreciated this thing a lot more if he had shot himself with something like Small Pox or the Ebola virus and died bringing the vials home. It would have made him somewhat more heroic and given the conclusion some feel other than "welp, got the salvation thing, we win."
That said, not going the expected route is a noteworthy trait of this film. The opening sequence of going from perfect life to world ending in less than 5 minutes was really effective and the virologist getting shot before even getting off the plane was surprising twist as well. I just could have used some more developed people to make the whole adventure feel like more than... well a video game.
Richard Garriot is making another Online RPG called Shroud of the Avatar that sounds like its going to be similar but who knows when that is going to go live. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.
If there exists such an MMO though, I'd be very interested in it too.
The spotlights here can burn holes through the stage
Down to the basement pass the Indian graves
Where the dinosaurs laid
Then out through China, nearly miss the airliners
Magnified times five, 'less it's pointed at the rhymer
Ricochets off the moon and sets the forest ablaze...
Now that's important to say
'cause even with all that most of us don't want it to fade
We want it to braid, meaning we want it to grow
Meaning we want it to stay
Like the Governor called and he told him to Wait
Un-strap him from the chair and put him back in his Cage...
The audience ain't fazed
And they ain't gonna clap and they ain't gonna praise
They want everything back that they've paid
'cause they've been waitin' since ten to see the lights get dim..."
-Lupe Fiasco, Superstar
Free ap and armor makes jungling harder? I'm confused.
Do you mean the Q passive when leashing for the jungler?
Funny, that's exactly what happened in paragon Shepard's resolution of the Quarian/Geth conflict. But I digress, that's a small matter that was never really fleshed out anyway.
I would normally agree with you BUT ME3s ending, ESPECIALLY the extended cut, has a very special problem with it. There are no consequences for anything in this game. No matter what happens, the reapers lose and everything is sunshine and rainbows for everyone. You don't need to control the universe if the universe is going to give you sunshine and roses at the end of the day anyway.
I could go on about how the showdown with the star child makes no sense for any of Shepard's incarnations but whatever. My real problem is below:
Tying back into the topic, I do think the decline in Bioware quality lately is because of EA meddling. They tend to do that with every studio they absorb into their conglomerate. Milk it for what its worth then discard. Still, making pessimistic cash grab VGs is pretty... unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Other corps should have gotten the overall title.
Some not WoW-like games:
Guild Wars 1 is my favorite MMO to date. Not really an MMO in the traditional sense; party sizes vary from 4 to 12 max, all pve zones are instanced, there is no interacting with other players outside town hubs where you can form parties, nor is it in 3D technically. Still, it does benefit from having a huge pool of distinct playable classes and skills to interact with, an amazing plot by RPG standards let alone MMO standards, and quite a bit of playable content for dirt cheap. It is a pay once MMO with a small microtransaction section that offers nothing but cosmetics. Guild wars is kind of dead now though.
Guild Wars 2 is a pay once mmo masterpiece in the sense that it takes the persistent world approach and makes interacting with other people enjoyable. There's no loot stealing, no pqing, and the constant flow of dynamic events makes partying completely impromptu and really fun. GW2 has also done away with the traditional class roles of tank/dps/healer in favor of a more Korean approach to classing where every class has their own special gimmick and can function perfectly fine in a team made up of anything. It has jumping puzzles too. I personally don't like Guild Wars 2 because of its reduced emphasis on story, dungeon diving consisting of nothing but million hp boss slogs, and a minimal skill pool compared to its predecessor. BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT AMIRITE A-NET.
I would bring up Dungeon Fighter Online but Nexon has killed it in America. Rusty Hearts is Perfect World entertainments equivalent. Its a "3d" F2P dungeon crawler with heavy emphasis on combat prowess. Warframe is like this too, only with guns and space ninjas. Grind heavy, instanced pve with no pqing.
Maplestory is 2D F2P WoW with lots of micro transactions. I hate this one too but i have a friend who hates 3D MMOs who loves this thing for some reason so it bears a mention. VERY VERY grind heavy, persistent world, 2D, full of hackers.
Guild Wars 2 is my recommendation till I see how Elder Scrolls Online turns out.
I had heard a lot of bad things about Russell Crowe's Javert so I was expecting the worst going in. After having seen the movie though, it don't think his voice nor his performance were THAT bad. He certainly looks the part and had a very commanding presence on screen. I wasn't feeling it though. By the end of the film I finally realized why. Someone on this production crew, whether the director or Crowe himself, does not understand the character of Javert at ALL. Sure he hits the notes and says the words, but its all hollow. When Javert started to suspect the mayor was Val Jean, he acted more like "Huh, you remind me of this one guy" rather than "YOU." There was no passion or dogged determination in Stars. Javert's Suicide was sung like a guy singing a song before jumping off a bridge. You could almost see on Crowe's face "Welp, I guess this is where I kill myself, better start singing." There was no internal conflict there, no deeply seated world view getting challenged. Just an actor going through the motions, which is unfortunate. Still a thoroughly enjoyable flick.
The problem with the trickle down theory right now is the rich in particular have no incentive to put those savings into new businesses when they can just invest it and make quicker and *maybe* even safer money that's taxed at a maximum of 15% thanks to long-term capital gains tax rules. They don't call now "the second gilded age" without reason.
First, the qibble over 2 types of salvation seems semantic. Is not "salvation" from the original sin/the fall the reason babies are baptised in Christian tradition? I don't see a meaningful difference. Besides, he's not talking about two separate types of salvation, just that Jesus's gift to man had two effects.
Second, they suggest Mormans believe there is a spiritual checklist that gets them into Heaven. This is not what he said at all, simply that faith AND adherence to God's Commandments will. I also like how they casually omit James 2:14-26 in there insistence that faith alone brings salvation. If that were true wouldn't the commandments be helpful suggestions rather than rules? Who cares what you do as long as you have faith at the end of the day.
I don't deny there are significant doctrinal differences between mainstream Christianity and Mormonism, but I don't see what Illuvator Brightstar meant based on that reading.
Also for the record, I consider Mormonism to be a branch of Christianity
Can you give any specifics? My impression was the concept of the Trinity vs the Godhead was the key sticking point with most Christians against Mormonism, which doesn't conflict with that at all.
I also support Guild Wars 2 suggestions though that is not technically "free."
This strikes me as a diversion tactic. Keep the media and public eye hyper-focused on something trivial like tax returns so they don't go looking for less obvious, potentially more damning skeletons in his closet. All while proving that he won't cave to political pressure so easily.
This is incorrect. The book makes a point to emphasis the Bucket's poverty by discussing Mr. Bucket's job as a toothpaste cap tightener making only $0.01 per cap. From what I remember of the book at least, the Tim Burton rendition is a bit more faithful.
That being said Gene Wilder is the man and the original is waaay better than the Tim Burton version. Tim Burton's still cool though. Nightmare before Christmas is one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time.
Really, for all the inconsistencies with the original ending, the developer response to the backlash was what really cheesed me off. Someone at Bioware kept throwing out vague assurances on the twitter that "no one would starve" and "everything would be alright, so stop complaining about it." No. You stranded the fleets of at LEAST 7 species on a war ravaged planet by destroying the Mass Relays, a technology no one has been able to replicate to the best of my knowledge. You established that even species with similar genetic make-ups (Turians and Quarians, for example) can't properly digest the the same foods as each other, much less what's left on Earth. And now you want to tell me "it will be alright?" No. I don't buy it.
I was really hoping the extended cut would somehow fix that, whether by proving indoctrination theory or introducing some other retcon that either didn't destroy the relays. They sure introduced some retcons but nothing that fixes the above problem. I choose the destroy ending and the extended cut, instead of saving the relays, has everyone run away before the super weapon destroys the relay... Ok, problem. We know where the Sol Relay goes and its not to everyone's home planet. Now your fleets are in a worse spot, the relays are still destroyed, and you still haven't told us how you are going to get home.
But it's okay because Admiral Hackett says it is. He even gives us some visions of the future showing us how ok it is.
What we have here is a war story where the war has no lasting consequences. They don't even allude to the possibility of lasting consequences. No food shortages, no civil unrest, not even a sign that the ravaging of the entire galactic community has any long lasting problems at all. The war is over cause the enemy is defeated. Whatever Mass Effect. It's over. On to the next game.
EDIT: After reading the multiplayer patch notes: