Will H

I think what everyone is getting at here is that there's no point in drawing up some kind of turf war between PC gaming and console gaming here. For almost everyone who's into gaming, they're not in competition. I still think you should go to a LAN party before discrediting them, though. There is a reason they are popular, despite the effort to set up.

English as a native language, and I could hold a conversation in French, but I haven't had enough experience to really say that I'm fluent in it. I'll be honest, being a native English speaker really doesn't provide you with many real-world incentives to learn much about other languages, but I'd feel a bit embarrassed if I couldn't answer this question with anything other than "English". Also, French is an elegant language.

I passed all of my University courses this year, no retakes! However, I have no beer to celebrate with, and the local Tesco closed an hour ago. I think I'll eat some jelly babies.

That's when America goes bankrupt and people lose their entitlements. Like what is happening with Greece. Greece's financial woes are the result of a lot of factors and institutional problems that extend far beyond anything to do with its healthcare system that frankly aren't present in the US. But alternatively we could just continue to cover ourselves in layers and layers of false arguments whenever we hear anything that even has the tiniest whiff of socialism, like the entirety of mainstream American politics has ever since the Cold War. Maybe the proponents will eventually get bored and go away.

The existence of countries with socialised healthcare means that we don't have to resort to anecdotal evidence of how things could have been if we go in one direction or another. There's a common theme in American political history of the concept of "universal human rights" and how regardless of race, religion, gender or nationality, humans deserve some of the same basic needs. Determining what these needs are does not remain exclusively in the realm of Americans. We are saying that having to have your healthcare provided via your work is not a fair or logical system, it runs off the mentality that it only makes sense to bring a sick person back to health so they can continue working for you, instead of any appreciation of them as a human being. Everyone gets sick and injured regardless of whether or not they have money or a job, and having either of these things does not afford you more rights in this respect. That's the kicker though. If someone were in the position of running a company, I doubt that they would honestly give a shit about your employees. I sure wouldn't. As long as it is good business, it keeps people happy, and it makes me money, it wouldn't care. The thing is though, the healthcare provided by the government would be worse than what I get now, and chances are, it might even end up being more expensive in the long run. The company gives a shit about not losing their skilled workers to ill health for longer than is necessary, that's why they give healthcare instead of just higher salaries, it's all the same money from the company's point of view, they just give it in a way which implicitly helps themselves. However, this is not why healthcare should be given to people, and there's a certain amount of compassion that needs to be represented in the healthcare of all people. That's assuming that they would. Personally, I would take a job that payed less and that gave me a good healthcare plan than one that payed more that didn't. It makes things much simpler and easier than doing it all yourself. Competition and the laws of Supply and Demand would ensure they would. Healthcare has a value, and it's subtracted from your wages. As I said, it's all the same money at the start.

The existence of countries with socialised healthcare means that we don't have to resort to anecdotal evidence of how things could have been if we go in one direction or another. There's a common theme in American political history of the concept of "universal human rights" and how regardless of race, religion, gender or nationality, humans deserve some of the same basic needs. Determining what these needs are does not remain exclusively in the realm of Americans. We are saying that having to have your healthcare provided via your work is not a fair or logical system, it runs off the mentality that it only makes sense to bring a sick person back to health so they can continue working for you, instead of any appreciation of them as a human being. Everyone gets sick and injured regardless of whether or not they have money or a job, and having either of these things does not afford you more rights in this respect.

I know you're trying to be a little dramatic here to get him to consider some other possibilities, but c'mon, now you're just making yourself look silly if you really believe this. Mostly I take offense to using the word "idiot" to describe people with differing viewpoints. It's that type of arrogance that makes politics nasty. All of my friends (including me) have jobs thanks, and I also vote (although I do it in the UK). My point was that the Internet is homogeneous, so if you want to get an idea of the types of views people actually have and where they get their information from then you do have to "leave the house". My experience is that despite the occasional troll online, offline you'd be surprised how many people have ridiculously stupid opinions (on all sorts of issues). So, I'm calling them stupid not because they're conservative (you assumed that), but because they don't use the Internet so they probably don't have political debates and instead they get their political views from celebrities, sitcoms, or reality TV. That's really another assumption, but I understand where you are coming from. This really has nothing to do with Conservatism or Liberalism, (after all, I personally identify as a British Conservative, and I'm here), but rather to do with the quality of the sources that people get their political opinions from. Debating with real people who can answer back is strictly a better source than TV or any one-way media. The movement of the internet up the generations will eventually mean that we can be online and get the full spectrum of opinion, not only from the youth, but from the experienced. This will take time, and can't be accelerated in any meaningful way, but it is improving.

All classes of clay make the same kind of familiar scroll, it's just that better clay makes more of them (Class 2 = 2 scrolls etc.). You'll most likely need to use one in a game though. However, better familiars have better storage capacity, so it's more efficient to try to land the best one you can make.

Say what you want about the rest of the game, Jagex has never lost its touch with quests. I enjoyed it immensely.

I'm really not convinced that there can be any justification for powering up the Lodestone Network any more, if anything it is too powerful, and I'd support putting back the 30 minute cooldown. Building up your personal array of transportation options is a part of the game that really shouldn't be compromised any more than it already has. May I suggest investing into a Portal Room in your house? You can attune a portal to the Kharyrll teleport in the Ancient spellbook, which allows unlimited and (after the cost of building the portal) free teleports to the bar in Canifis.

Wow. I suppose it depends, do you have a solid enough case to make some noise about it? It's not like you have anything to lose in that respect. Was the deadline posted somewhere reasonable for you to see, or was it not posted at all?

Enjoy your month long waits for hospital visits :P Socialised healthcare may not be as speedy and efficient as privatised, but it's not that far behind and crucially it's fairer and more respectful to human rights. After all, it works in other developed countries.

I don't normally post here, so why not now? Just did a 4 day stint being a car park attendant at the Royal Norfolk Show. It's basically an agricultural festival where people compare cows. In any case, I got ludicrously sunburnt even with cream, and the wage was just disappointing. I think I've decided that for someone like me (19 year old university undergraduate student), there aren't any summer jobs that are worth doing, the wages are too low.

I think Jagex saved itself quite a bit in this respect by not having early level caps (a la World of Warcraft). Power creep is only really visible if we talk about extreme examples of old content, such as Dragon armour and the KBD, which as far as MMO's go, is really pretty good. That said, there is definitely some obsolete content out there, and this is something that needs to be talked about sooner than later. (P.S. Extra Credits is great, I highly recommend watching the rest of their videos.)

Welcome, I hope you enjoy your time with us. :)

If I'm not mistaken, level 199 Ghosts as well, but only the 199 ones. I've also found it worthwhile to mage particularly tough Fire Giants (level 200+) and Greater Demons. It's all down to filling in the weaknesses of the 2H sword.

My current position when it comes to immortality is this: I would love to live youthfully for 300 years, because I don't see the story of interstellar exploration finishing in any satisfactory way during my lifetime. I don't particularly mind the concept of out-living people I know, I think there's far more to the world than that, but the world will get stale, and I think that's at the 300 year mark.

That can't be provided with a simple yes-no answer. I do respect them much less than I used to, but the fact remains that the only impact that they've really inflicted is on their own creation. They have made a game that redefined what you could do with a browser-based Java applet, and they have made something that has directly been part of more than a quarter of my entire lifespan. In the words of Mark Zuckerberg, "It's Complicated".

Thanks a lot, we'll have a look at all of them and see which one we like.

I live with two housemates who are very keen on gaming, and we have a room with all the computers together which we go on during breaks. Over the past university year, we've been enjoying co-operative hardcore Minecraft and have really enjoyed the experience of working as a group at the same time on a LAN server. However, we've pretty much exhausted all of the possibilities that it has to offer and want a game we can collectively get into the next year. Runescape isn't really an option because we really want to learn the game at the same time, but an MMORPG of that type would otherwise fit the bill. My only specifications are this: 1. It can be played as a co-operative group of 3. 2. It has high replayability or has a decently long gameplay length. Any suggestions?

I rather love that idea, you're awesome Will :)

Nice quest. I do love the music, I hope to see much more of it. [hide]Little bit of trivia, those glowing symbols you step on are the Seal of the Dragonkin, which itself derives part of its design from the Stone of Jas. It's also engraved on the floor where the huge tree grows. Here's a bit of speculation: The seething soul mentioned during the tree puzzle was a weak or young dragonkin who fell into the sea and nearly drowned thousands of years ago. The Siren nursed it back to health, but in doing so was forced to remake it. Its higher functions and intelligence stripped away, but not its strength, it rapidly grew into what we know as the Queen Black Dragon, the mother of all dragonkind. It is true that the dragonkin spawned the dragons, but it was by accident.[/hide]

Oh come on, looking at the sun directly isn't that bad. I'm not going to advocate doing it, especially for extended periods, but the dangers of glancing at it for a second are a bit overestimated. That said, it's worth wearing sunglasses so you can look at it for longer periods of time.

I'm a little bit excited for this, but at the same time I'm worried it might be terrible. So much of the construction of the game is based around the combat system, so there's bound to be risks.

Aw, no eclipse for me, the Earth is blocking the way. It's been ages since I've seen one. Thanks for the heads up anyway!