Jonanananas

I would've expected more against a Portugal that knew it had no real chance of going further, and without a completely fit Ronaldo Maybe without the Boateng and Muntari issue it might have worked, who knows. But this way I think the best two teams made it, so that's good.

Pumped for Germany vs. USA. A good start so far :) A solid, but not an enchanting game by the German team so far. Though I guess that's understandable if a draw is sufficient for the group lead. Also one more goal for Ghana and my prediction will be true, even though I think the US team would deserve it more.

I seriously hope he gets banned for several games. Shit like this absolutely shouldn't be tolerated.

I'm not a native speaker, so I wasn't quite sure if World Cup was unambiguous enough, so I went with World Football Championship. Well, the second group game quite often has the favorites struggling, especially if they won the first game. The Dutch haven't done that well against Australia either. There were more surprises than usual for sure, but I'm sure some teams who haven't done that well so far will pick up when it comes to the knockout phase (or the third group match, if it is vital for them). It's difficult to compare, but right now my picks for the best teams would be Brasil, France, Netherlands and Germany. Some smaller teams like Chile and Costa Rica have done great, but I think that they will reach quarter finals at best, depending on the opponents in the eight finals. For Group G, I think Ghana might take it over the USA. With the bad goal difference, Portugal stands almost no chance of reaching the knockout phase, so I think Ghana will win that one. I also expect Germany to win against the USA. For Ghana to pass, they need to overtake the USA in goal difference, but for that either Germany or Ghana has to win with a two goals lead, which is definitely within the realm of possibility.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to see many games lately, just Germany vs. Portugal and Spain vs. Chile. Germany vs. Portugal was enjoyable - in the first half. After Pepe got banned and the two goals lead, Portugal gave up. Germany played a good game, but Portugal didn't do much to disrupt that either. The group constellation speaks for us, it might be that the semi-finals will be the first match with a really tough opponent. The matches up to that won't be a breeze (this is the world cup after all), but should all be doable. This should offer some time to really get the system to work, but it might lull us in a false sense of security. Spain was disappointing. Okay, the loss against the Netherlands was harsh, but they really haven't been able to deal with it. The match against Chile was almost already lost before it started, and when Chile scored the first goal, it was over. I can understand that the team might not be able to offer the same quality it did in the last world cup, but they didn't even try. Congratulations to Chile though, they tirelessly worked to win this and truly deserved it. Pumped for the match against the Netherlands, this should be interesting. My predictions: [hide] Largely agree with BloodAngel: Group A Brazil Croatia/Mexico. I'm really not sure about this one, could go either way. I slightly favor Croatia. Group B: Netherlands Chile (I would have predicted Spain before yesterday...) Group C Columbia Ivory Coast Group D Italy England Group E Switzerland France Group F Argentina Bosnia Group G Germany USA (Depends on whether the Portuguese react like the Spanish) Group H Belgium Russia [/hide]

So, what do you guys think of the games we've had so far? There was some very interesting games that made this World Cup even more interesting. Spain got demolished! After they've won three major tournaments in a row, have they lost the determination to win this one as well? The Netherlands are all the more hungry though. I haven't really considered them a serious contender after 2012, but that match was amazing. A few other favorites haven't done quite as well either. Brasilia won, but without the referee's help that match might have looked quite different. Uruguay won't defeat them in their own stadium like in 1950 though, after their loss against Costa Rica they most likely won't make the eigth finals. England and Italy both were very good, even if Italy won it in the end. Personally I'm looking forward to Germany against Portugal of course. We haven't done so well in the last test games, but the first few opponents should be difficult, but not impossible, so we can get into the rhythm. I fear we'll make semi-finals or finals without winning just like the last few times, but we'll see. Also, what do you think of the referee's so far? Is it overdue for the FIFA to allow some kind of video evidence during a match? We got goal-line technology, but should it stop there after several controversial decisions this early in the tournament?

yes, indeed

How do you possibly know this? Did you search through every single of the 119 likes to check their gender? Also, times like these make me wonder if women would like to see men in long hair. On the other hand, I recently got my hair cut fairly short (by dude standards) and threw some gel at it. A girl at work and allegedly one of the gay guys said it looks nice or I look good with this hair. Personally I'd say men can look great with long hair, better than they would with short hair - but that's rare, and in most cases it won't look good.

I've recently noticed that embedded videos (from youtube, not sure about other sites) don't show for me on the forums. Where the video is supposed to be, it's just blank background. I have a couple of blocking add-ons for firefox (Ghostery, Noscript, Leechblock, Adblock Plus) but disabling them does nothing, and embedded videos work fine on other websites. Any ideas?

Yeah I wonder about that too. It would only make (financial) sense to market microtransaction to free players more heavily. As far as I'm aware, the SOF is somewhat of a membership advertisment, very often offering member prizes you have to subscribe to get, right? But considering their changing approach to getting new players (trying to make them subscribe immediately with the new tutorial and trial membership), that is rather counterproductive, imo. If someone didn't subscribe to members but continues to play F2P, he probably either doesn't have the money/isn't allowed to spend it on Runescape, or it's someone who explicitely wants to play F2P. The chances of finding someone who wasn't convinced by the free trial but will sign up for a SoF prize or something from SGS is rather slim, imo. The chances of someone who will spend money on microtransactions is bigger. It will obviously still exclude those who just don't have the money - but you could get something from those playing f2p on purpose. And (again from the financial viewpoint), what do they have to lose? With members, they had to watch out so they don't piss off too many of their subscribers with too heavy-handed microtransactions. With free players...if they quit, the loss for Jagex is absolutely minimal. (Next to) nothing to lose, something to gain - it seems like an obvious choice (considering they aren't bothered about potentially ruining their game with microtransactions)

Yeah, income from F2P is a fraction from P2P income. Since they only list "Game income" (Membership and MTX together) and "Advertising revenue" in their financial statement, it's hard to tell how much they make from microtransactions. We can only estimate... Assuming they make exactly the same money from subscriptions as before (Game Time Income from 9 months ended December 2011: 31,983,489 pounds), then microtransactions would make up roughly 20% of their "game income" (Game Income from 12 months ended December 2012: 52,335,101 pounds). I'd personally say membership income has dropped, but not dramatically. In any way, it should be a safe bet to say that 1.Financially, microtransactions were definitely beneficial 2.Microtransactions make up a significant part of the income, but the larger part still comes from subscriptions, most likely at least twice as much. No way to tell how much of the microtransaction money comes from F2P though.

Not sure if I should watch The world's end....I really liked Hot Fuzz but Shaun of the Dead was pretty meh...

I have to get around to reading that too. Bad thing about an ereader is, while you can get many great classics for free, that subsequently also means about half your books on there are unread and you never get around to reading all of them because you find new books before that >.>

I always thought it was to make the ending part of the name....like with the calculators on here, where you click on the "Tip it!" button to confirm the information you entered

I've heard the first episode was screened at Comic-Con and can be found online, but I'll be waiting - getting one appetizer and then nothing more is not for me. Shouldn't have watched that damn trailer either :P I'm wondering about that male waterbender shown a few times...that's either Tarrlok or Noatok/Amon, right? (I'm guessing the latter, can't watch the first book to check right now). And he seems to be some kind of enemy too. Does that mean he survived? (would be lame...) Or will Korra reencounter him in the spirit world? Edit: Wow - Neither Tarrlok nor Noatok look like him - It's been too long since book 1 lol :P

Ohhhh I wanna get that, really liked Little Brother. All the more scary with the current "revelations" about the NSA.... Currently reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, really enjoying it, I love its humor.

While I don't play RS any longer, I'm still somewhat interested in how the game is doing, plus I've come to like a lot of people both in-game and here on the forums... Though admittedly I usually keep to the off-topic section, browsing somewhere else usually means I'm either bored or actively procrastinating (Like right now, dammit)

Yeah, I'm really happy about this, says a lot about the quality of their CS :)

My parents and brother each have a Kindle and they borrow library e-books all the time. Maybe it's your library? Hot and annoying here, and I need to do actual work but was caught up in hysterical blog posts and then did the unit quiz for my online chem... More boring British lectures coming up next. US vs. Europe :( No library in europe supports Amazon books (And I doubt Amazon is keen to change this, considering you can borrow books with Prime...) Anyhow, I've contacted Amazon CS, and I get a discount for sending my broken Kindle in (Even though there's no guarantee on it anymore). That means I'm getting a refurbished Kindle Paperwhite with the usual guarantee for 91€ (compared to 114€ for a refurbished Kindle without the discount or 129 € for a new one) Excited!!! :thumbsup:

I broke my kindle :( Currently looking for a replacement...I'd like to get one from another company so I can borrow library e-books...but the Amazon Shop is by far superior to all alternatives, both in books available and in ease of shopping. I can't decide which of those two is more important to me

Both most expensive and most embarrassing - I was at steel dragons, only half paying attention and at some point didn't put melee protection. My grave at the time was the 6:00 min type, so no big issue normally. I was still panicking a bit. Gathered my stuff, ran back to brimhaven and steeldragon - only to instantly die again - had forgotten the anti-dragon shield. Gather my stuff again, run to brimhaven, more panicked this time...only to die again - had forgotten the antifire potion :P. The timer ran out when I just dropped off the boat for the third time -.- Loss was about a million at the time I think...maybe a tenth of my wealth.

83*337=27971 (Almost prime!) Also, I'm sorry but I can't resist:

Here is the 2011 report which details the exceptional items if anyone is interested: http://skillers-inc.com/jagex.pdf Here are the interesting parts as a picture (couldn't quickly figure out how to get the text from the pdf lol) None of the exceptional items are directly related to game development. Also, yes microtransactions surely make up part of the profit. Afaik, there haven't been huge increases in membership numbers (right? or am I talking bull?) so the increase in game income should be largely microtransactions. If we assume membership revenue was exactly the same, microtransactions would roughly make up 12 million. However, I'd think there have been increases in subscription revenue, both from Runescape and the newly launched games. Not in the mood to look up any numbers though.

Well, this year, they have a 600k gain instead of a 14.9 million loss under "exceptional administrative expenses", and I remember there was something about paying several million to the investors in 2011 (which I guess the exceptional administrative expenses are) but I don't quite remember the reason why they paid such a huge sum in a single year.... I also found it interesting that they laid off a quarter (!) of their staff in customer support....

Still no confirmed release date for Seasons 2 :( Meanwhile, I've been reading The Search Part 1 - Interesting so far, but I'm a bit afraid the resolution is going to be quite cheesy...