Personally, I think the only thing that will destroy the planet will be when our solar system's sun finally dies and implodes and I haven't heard scientists saying that'll happen anytime soon.
Seconded. Until humanity figures out how to become immortal, this will not happen within our lifespan.
So the real concerns for erradicating most of humanity stem from us ourselves. I wouldn't rule out a natural cause of some sort, but it won't be limited to any ancient timetables. We choose our own destiny (within reason), and I wouldn't rule out someone deciding the Earth needed to be cleansed with holy fire or a plague, or that a celestial object will finally swing through and tag us for untold devestation, but it's far more likely that most of us will pass away in the next 1 hour to 90+ years of a variety of causes.
Prepare for the worst; have food and water on hand, a 'bug out bag' ready to go and teach yourself a variety of worthwhile skills (first aid, gardening techniques, how to live on the land for extended periods of time), but losing some spare weight, adding more cardio to your weekly regimen and cutting back a little on the booze and fast food would likely extend and enrich most people's lives compared to worrying about "Planet X" or an alignment of this, that or the other thing.
Also, finished Normal last night. Enjoyed it greatly, playtime was about 14 hours, but I tore through the old Beta level content at a fairly breakneck pace. Ended up level 34 without even trying to farm, just went into the random caves/did events as they cropped up, and the levels came accordingly.
Of note; going the 'glass cannon' route will eventually get you killed. Vitality really is important, even in Normal, and there are bosses that have what are effectively one-shot kills if you get tagged and aren't packing enough life. Also, D2 style, some life drain is incredibly useful. I made it to mid act 4 without any (just potions and orbs), but then a mid-act boss kicked my ass repeatedly. Ducked out to the AH, dropped 4 grand on a upgrade bow with life steal, threw a flawless ruby in there for a massive damage bump, and suddenly I was unstoppable again. I'd keep an eye out for appropriate gear with some life on it by mid act 2, and by late 3 / early 4 you're really going to want to have a sizable chunk of life available. I'd ended up so Dex focused I had around 1700 health and there are things that'll smack you for well over half that without even trying.
A little torn, I really want to get into Nightmare, and to begin grouping for the joy of it and those achievements, but I'd also like to fire up some of the alts and put all those rares I've been finding to use.
Eh, hopefully it's just opening day shenanigans. The game hasn't even been out 36 hours yet.
Note, I'm not being an appologist here. Just giving them the benefit of the doubt that these issues will get resolved, holes will be patched, and in the coming days/weeks it'll be mostly smooth sailing to months and years of loot hunting.
Act 2 was fun, the final boss of it was a tough fight while I figured out how to survive. Then the servers were taken offline while I was watching the pre-act 3 cutscene. >.<
Oh well, hopefully tonight is fraught with less peril and I can plunge into Act 3.
If we're still dealing with constant peak hours downtime in a week or two, I imagine I'll be significantly less patient.
Edit: my first death was to the aforementioned second act final boss. There'd been close calls otherwise, but it took *redacted* to finally put me down (temporarily).
Also, I don't envy anyone ballsy enough to try Hardcore right now. Literally gambling with your character's life.
I'll speak up. Had it happen this morning when the woman at Time Hortons tried to charge me $3 on a $4 breakfast. Is the loss of a dollar going to hurt TH? Nope. Is having an extra dollar going to make my day? Not really. Is the loss of a dollar potentially going to cause an issue for the staff who made an honest mistake? Maybe, depends on their boss.
Then again I've also hunted down a woman who left a $20 bill in an ATM. I'm no saint, but you have to hit a lot more than a couple bucks to break my moral/ethical beliefs (whichever applies, I can never keep those straight).
Got to the beginning of Act 2 this morning before work, and man, this is Diablo as hell.
Tell you what; fighting like 4 groups of enemies at once including a Waller boss pack in mid act 1 is all kinds of tense. Anyone who based their opinion of this game on the beta alone was doing themselves a serious disservice.
Well, after a lot of thought and soul searching, I cancelled my CE pre-order.
... because $145 is a lot of money to pay when Amazon says they (well, via Fed Ex) might deliver it the following week.
Digital edition bought, ~58 hours to go, let's do this thing.
It's going to be so Diablo that Diablo himself will step back and say "damn man, that's some Diablo right there. Loot flyin' and enemies everywhere and hold onto your butts, we're moving into Nightmare DIABLO STYLE!"
Even the meta issues around the discussion are interesting.
Example; while there are most certainly minorities represented in the Magic community, if I'm not mistaken the majority (at least within North America) are heterosexual caucasian males in their teens to thirties.
As such, it's intriguing to ponder just how much experience and understanding can be conveyed from those who do live with the full impact to those who don't, thus, what affect does that have on the ability of what is most likely a largely young hetero white male group to discuss a highly sensitive racial topic?
Note: I am NOT saying that it's impossible. Nor do I know the full demographics of MTGS overall or the thread directly. Just something that struck me.
As a hetero 32 y/o white male, I certainly fall outside that demographic, and you sure as hell won't ever catch me uttering that word. I'll jump across "politically correct" lines happily enough for humour in the right crowd, but even then I don't think I'd be comfortable. Call it PC, call it an overreaction, whatever, but I consider words a powerful tool to convey messages, and I know they can be used to hurt people. As such, I leave it be. If others want to use it, that's their prerogative (like the homosexual community retaking several words generally used as slurs against them, it can be empowering for them and lessen the sting, but as I don't belong, that's not my place).
Edit: an aside; there's a forum I browse once in a while where the n-word is used repeatedly between posters. Honestly, I find it off-putting. It has a sense of trying too hard, to take something and just wallowing in it. Probably part of what keeps me from bothering going there very often. That and the ricidulously long threads.
The store I went to in Toronto got a foil Helvault. I'm not sure if the store added anything to the mix, but we had judge promo Decree of Justices and a pile of random older prerelease cards (Glissa the Traitor, Sun Titan, etc).
I was waiting for packs so I ended up near the end of the line for the Helvault contents, so I'm not sure if the random promos came with the Helvault, or if the store boosted the prize giveaways because we had 62 players.
I'm not so sure. If there are only 3240'ish of these things out there (a number that will very slowly begin to go down), that's an awfully small supply of something compared to almost anything else in Magic. Now, granted, the demand isn't going to be great, but collectors alone oughta keep some interest going.
If you look at the Marit Lage foil tokens on Ebay, there aren't any BiN's for less than $10 including S&H. These have more use (two tokens in one card), likely greater casual appeal (Demons, Dragons, Angels, etc, The Casual Suspects) and rarity going for them (at least in foil, I agree that the presumably 600,000+ regular ones will sate a great many fans).
So I'm not disagreeing about them dropping in price, just that I don't think they'll hit (or stay at) $2.
I think it might be most straightforward to stay within the scope of other laws/punishments tied to injury. If someone intentionally poisons me and I suffer liver failure, that person can be charged with *insert crime here* and punished accordingly.
Of course, depending on who you speak to and how far along in development the fetus is, some will view it as not such a big deal (you can live without a baby, it is difficult to live without a liver), others will view it as not nearly far enough, but in either case the woman has been harmed (poisoned, struck, etc).
I don't mean to minimize the loss suffered in such a case, but I agree with bLatch; it's a terribly complicated subsect of an already murky issue. Granting too much importance risks unintended consequences, too little and it's insulting to the victims.
Wow, I'd thought it was a complete joke about the foil tokens being $50+, but given that there are only 3,240'ish 'in the wild', they are pretty damned rare.
Now of course, that's offset by the non-foil versions being available in the hundreds of thousands, which is still lower than most tokens across a print run (I assume), but a sizable number all the same.
That reminds me; one thing I do when I bother bringing a bag with me is to use a courier/messanger bag I got a while back. When I'm sitting, I hang it off my knee by the strap, meaning it's not going anywhere without my noticing.
If I'm standing, it's on my shoulder. Only time it's not suspended from my person is when I have it on the table/chair/floor and I'm actively going through it for something or putting something away.
Though these days I generally just carry a deck box in one pocket of my hoodie and a small bag of d6s in the other, less shuffling around of stuff and whatnot.
I don't really understand what the point of contention is. There's no need to shoe-horn it into murder or some other crime if you don't feel it fits that. If you want to make forcing a miscarriage/abortion a crime, make it a crime.
"It is illegal to deliberately terminate the pregnancy of a woman against her will."
Boom. Done.
Sounds good to me.
As I was reading the thread I figured it'd just fall under assault or grievous bodily harm or one of those other strings of words that CSI/L&O have put into the common parlance.
Seconded. Until humanity figures out how to become immortal, this will not happen within our lifespan.
So the real concerns for erradicating most of humanity stem from us ourselves. I wouldn't rule out a natural cause of some sort, but it won't be limited to any ancient timetables. We choose our own destiny (within reason), and I wouldn't rule out someone deciding the Earth needed to be cleansed with holy fire or a plague, or that a celestial object will finally swing through and tag us for untold devestation, but it's far more likely that most of us will pass away in the next 1 hour to 90+ years of a variety of causes.
Prepare for the worst; have food and water on hand, a 'bug out bag' ready to go and teach yourself a variety of worthwhile skills (first aid, gardening techniques, how to live on the land for extended periods of time), but losing some spare weight, adding more cardio to your weekly regimen and cutting back a little on the booze and fast food would likely extend and enrich most people's lives compared to worrying about "Planet X" or an alignment of this, that or the other thing.
Also, finished Normal last night. Enjoyed it greatly, playtime was about 14 hours, but I tore through the old Beta level content at a fairly breakneck pace. Ended up level 34 without even trying to farm, just went into the random caves/did events as they cropped up, and the levels came accordingly.
Of note; going the 'glass cannon' route will eventually get you killed. Vitality really is important, even in Normal, and there are bosses that have what are effectively one-shot kills if you get tagged and aren't packing enough life. Also, D2 style, some life drain is incredibly useful. I made it to mid act 4 without any (just potions and orbs), but then a mid-act boss kicked my ass repeatedly. Ducked out to the AH, dropped 4 grand on a upgrade bow with life steal, threw a flawless ruby in there for a massive damage bump, and suddenly I was unstoppable again. I'd keep an eye out for appropriate gear with some life on it by mid act 2, and by late 3 / early 4 you're really going to want to have a sizable chunk of life available. I'd ended up so Dex focused I had around 1700 health and there are things that'll smack you for well over half that without even trying.
A little torn, I really want to get into Nightmare, and to begin grouping for the joy of it and those achievements, but I'd also like to fire up some of the alts and put all those rares I've been finding to use.
Note, I'm not being an appologist here. Just giving them the benefit of the doubt that these issues will get resolved, holes will be patched, and in the coming days/weeks it'll be mostly smooth sailing to months and years of loot hunting.
Act 2 was fun, the final boss of it was a tough fight while I figured out how to survive. Then the servers were taken offline while I was watching the pre-act 3 cutscene. >.<
Oh well, hopefully tonight is fraught with less peril and I can plunge into Act 3.
If we're still dealing with constant peak hours downtime in a week or two, I imagine I'll be significantly less patient.
Edit: my first death was to the aforementioned second act final boss. There'd been close calls otherwise, but it took *redacted* to finally put me down (temporarily).
Also, I don't envy anyone ballsy enough to try Hardcore right now. Literally gambling with your character's life.
Then again I've also hunted down a woman who left a $20 bill in an ATM. I'm no saint, but you have to hit a lot more than a couple bucks to break my moral/ethical beliefs (whichever applies, I can never keep those straight).
Tell you what; fighting like 4 groups of enemies at once including a Waller boss pack in mid act 1 is all kinds of tense. Anyone who based their opinion of this game on the beta alone was doing themselves a serious disservice.
... because $145 is a lot of money to pay when Amazon says they (well, via Fed Ex) might deliver it the following week.
Digital edition bought, ~58 hours to go, let's do this thing.
It's going to be so Diablo that Diablo himself will step back and say "damn man, that's some Diablo right there. Loot flyin' and enemies everywhere and hold onto your butts, we're moving into Nightmare DIABLO STYLE!"
Example; while there are most certainly minorities represented in the Magic community, if I'm not mistaken the majority (at least within North America) are heterosexual caucasian males in their teens to thirties.
As such, it's intriguing to ponder just how much experience and understanding can be conveyed from those who do live with the full impact to those who don't, thus, what affect does that have on the ability of what is most likely a largely young hetero white male group to discuss a highly sensitive racial topic?
Note: I am NOT saying that it's impossible. Nor do I know the full demographics of MTGS overall or the thread directly. Just something that struck me.
As a hetero 32 y/o white male, I certainly fall outside that demographic, and you sure as hell won't ever catch me uttering that word. I'll jump across "politically correct" lines happily enough for humour in the right crowd, but even then I don't think I'd be comfortable. Call it PC, call it an overreaction, whatever, but I consider words a powerful tool to convey messages, and I know they can be used to hurt people. As such, I leave it be. If others want to use it, that's their prerogative (like the homosexual community retaking several words generally used as slurs against them, it can be empowering for them and lessen the sting, but as I don't belong, that's not my place).
Edit: an aside; there's a forum I browse once in a while where the n-word is used repeatedly between posters. Honestly, I find it off-putting. It has a sense of trying too hard, to take something and just wallowing in it. Probably part of what keeps me from bothering going there very often. That and the ricidulously long threads.
I was waiting for packs so I ended up near the end of the line for the Helvault contents, so I'm not sure if the random promos came with the Helvault, or if the store boosted the prize giveaways because we had 62 players.
If you look at the Marit Lage foil tokens on Ebay, there aren't any BiN's for less than $10 including S&H. These have more use (two tokens in one card), likely greater casual appeal (Demons, Dragons, Angels, etc, The Casual Suspects) and rarity going for them (at least in foil, I agree that the presumably 600,000+ regular ones will sate a great many fans).
So I'm not disagreeing about them dropping in price, just that I don't think they'll hit (or stay at) $2.
Guess I'll just have to view it from my phone at some point.
Of course, depending on who you speak to and how far along in development the fetus is, some will view it as not such a big deal (you can live without a baby, it is difficult to live without a liver), others will view it as not nearly far enough, but in either case the woman has been harmed (poisoned, struck, etc).
I don't mean to minimize the loss suffered in such a case, but I agree with bLatch; it's a terribly complicated subsect of an already murky issue. Granting too much importance risks unintended consequences, too little and it's insulting to the victims.
Now of course, that's offset by the non-foil versions being available in the hundreds of thousands, which is still lower than most tokens across a print run (I assume), but a sizable number all the same.
If I'm standing, it's on my shoulder. Only time it's not suspended from my person is when I have it on the table/chair/floor and I'm actively going through it for something or putting something away.
Though these days I generally just carry a deck box in one pocket of my hoodie and a small bag of d6s in the other, less shuffling around of stuff and whatnot.
Sounds good to me.
As I was reading the thread I figured it'd just fall under assault or grievous bodily harm or one of those other strings of words that CSI/L&O have put into the common parlance.