BlueTear

Most MMORPG's today are so large and complex that playing a full two week trial isn't going to let you do more than scratch the surface, if even that.

If memory server me, there's a special druid only flight path in Moonglade which allows you to get back. Other routes are via the normal everyday alliance flightpath (just south of the big lake) or through Timbermaw Hold. However, you can't pass unscathed through timbermaw hold until at least lvl 55+, or a bit earlier if you're fast on grinding the rep to get into their good graces.

Except unique racial abilites, they're own dedicated starting zone and their own list of classes to chose from. Basically, aside from the way they look, they're about as a close as trolls are to night elves. But hey, surely the new race should've looked more exotic to warrant it's inclusion into the game. Have you seen the talents? Read enough about WoW to even realize what it means that each class will have three 41 point talents added, new talents and several old ones reworked? I'm not going to cheer that much about the alliance getting shamans, no - although I can see the game balancing logic - but the sneak-peaks at the talent changes they're adding is just plain good. To put it mildly, all existing classes will be recieving a substantial upgrade. Which is perfectly inline with Blizzards usual policy; "If it doesn't work properly, we ain't releasing it". As an ex-Sony customer, a company who actually went ahead and said "Sorry, we're not gonna be fixing these issues atm because we're devoting our resources to the OPTIONAL expansion pack", I appreciate that. Believe it or not, the quality of a game nor the company that makes it is not decided by how fast they can spit out expansion packs *cough*Everquest-has-it-been-a-month-and-a-half-already*cough*. Simpl put; I vastly prefer slow and steady to SOE's sloppy routine that had them fixing crap they broke faster than they could introduce new crap - which they tended to break as well. To skip back a bit to what you said about raiding... I suggest you look up how many guilds have killed Kel'Thuzad. Kel'Thuzad is currently the "endboss" of the entire game. Then figure out how many % of WoW players always have a new boss encounter to attack. And even then, knowing the strategy of an encounter and executing is not something that becomes "easy", you still have to 'play proper'. Not to mention that some encounters have rotating random abilities; From Nefarian and Chrommagus rotating colours and breaths, to BWL and AQ40 trash (Thunderclap + Shadowstorm = Sucks. Totally.) where the biggest difficulty lies in adapting to their special abilities fast enough to actually kill them. (As for playing MMORPG's... Since I started playing RS back in 2001, I've done six months of AC, two years of SWG and like 10-11 months of WoW. Basically, MMORPG's have been my genre of choice since the first time I logged into RS from home, more than five years ago. Of these five years, ever since I got SWG, I have never once spent a month not paying a subscription fee to one company or the other. I'm no nub to the genre. I'm not lauding WoW because of the advertising hype on it's release - I stuck to SWG until they effectively killed that game - or because it's a Blizzard creation.)

As someone who spent two years playing SWG - a Sony game - and quit it after they announced a series of sweeping changes that can - at best - be described as attempts to copy WoW, what you said is [cabbage]. I'll happily admit that I prefered to the originial SWG character design system, which - on the surface anyway - was a lot more complex than the one WoW has. I still consider SWG's crafting system to be vastly superior to any other game on the market, WoW included. The graphics were a lot nicer, and much more likely to make one go "Whoa". But, like someone once said about democracy, WoW has one advantage: It works. And EQ, and SWG, and probably a fair few other Sony products, don't. I've never played EQ or EQII, but during two years of SWG, there was two things that was sorrily lacking; Direction - Sony had no bloody semblance of a clue as to where they wanted to take the game, which is one of the main reasons why they ended up doing a bad clone of WoW - and some actual balanced gamplay - highly related to number one (Yes, this is a not-so-subtle way of saying "Don't bash WoW, bash Sony, 'cause they're the ones screwing up") The gameplay of WoW, although relatively easy to learn is complex. On a basic level, you need to learn your characters skills, and decide where you want to develop your talents to enhance different aspects of your character. Sounds easy enough, but the playstyles for different talent speccs within a class is radically different, and in some instance, it changes the role of your class entirely. Then, there's grouping up, an executing tactics on different encounters. Fairly easy on the basic level, but it gets harder and requires more and more communcation and cooperation. And then there's the endgame... Getting 40 people to do what they're supposed to at Nefarian, is hard. It's requires cooperation, communication, and the ability to the a proper post-battle assesment and figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it. Calling that "easy to play" is ridicolously arrogant if you have done it, silly if you've never tried it.

How long have you played it?

Go for WoW. Well worth it in terms of hours of play time. Leveling different characters can keep you occupied for quite a while, and calling the endgame "extensive" is a gross understatement.

Seen the BC talent trees + skills? There's some serious respeccing coming up...

The first question is hard to answer because the EU is made up of independent nations. If I start walking around in a capital of a neighbouring nation I have not have moved that much in terms of actual distance as I could move within, say, the USA, but culturally I've covered a lot of ground. The nations that make up the EU have culturally diverging backgrounds stretching centuries into the past. Not only does the boys and girls living 400 km over the local 'sea' speak a different language, they're history is radically different from mine, as is their economic, cultural, social and political backgrounds. That's a long way of saying that you can't ask europeans about the general opinion about the EU, because it differs too much from country to country. The same goes for entering the Union, I know we had referendums for it all, but the way our... er... "basic law" is laidout, referendums can only take on an advisory capacity; The elected government is free to do as it chooses - no matter what the referendum says - but obviously they'll be paying for it by the next election. I don't know how entering the Union came about in, say, eastern europe (though I suspect the public majority was strongly in favour). Personally, I'm all for the rise of a European Federation. Yes, we have our differences, but on the other hand, I think a lot of them could be reconciled if people were willing to let go of their national pride - I mean really, what's wrong with just calling english the official language and stop this silly translation crap? - and work for the future. And in the process, I'd think we'd all benefit from it; Economically, socially and certainly culturally and politically. (It might be worth pointing out that the European Union started out as a trade agreement between a few nations for specific industrial causes, which is another reason why asking if everyone in it has voted to join in a bit futile; The current EU is a progressive development, not the result of a bunch of people going "Let's have a union of nations!")

Hmz... We used a gnome MT on those three bosses the first times we downed them, and apart from the fact that the whole LoS-healing concept took a while for the healers to figure out, we didn't have any major problems. Using a night elf now though, "the walking wrath helm's" computer broke.

I still play DotA once in a while. 3.7 is so much more fun than allstars is though, but it's easier to find people willing to play allstars... Never really got into the stockgame that much. Did the campaigns for as long as I could be arsed, played online for a while, then wandered off and did a lot of DotA's til I got caught up in another MMORPG.

So adding that to my list of Things To Try One Day... That's hilarious!

I didn't get that. Osama bin Laden, although harboured by the taliban and having a relationship with them, was not a taliban, nor was his organization a taliban organization?

And where's the line between insult and differing opinions? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having the prejudices crap sprouted by some of the kiddies removed - just as Sunli says - but I don't agree with No_OnE's definitions of what is just mindless bashing and what's opinions actually based on something. The thread about the US government was, after all, made by a guy living there.

And two of those three threads were made by americans, and the third by a guy from australia - a country where AFAIK the imperial system is still in the process of phasing out? I'm not going to claim there's not a lot of people on these forums who has knee-jerk "Must bash country!" reaction everytime someone says "America!". But I'd like to point out that most of the time, "America!" is a cy originating from an american, who wants to discuss a subject close to his her heart. Which is fine by me. This is an international forum. Make less threads that start of talking about american things, see less bashing. I'd say it's that simple.

Because I'm a lazy slacker, I'll just link to the wikipedia article where they dissect the "evidence" for a fake landing point-by-point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_moo ... _arguments One of easiest ones to figure out if you stop to actually think about rather than just read a conspiracy theory and accept it as evidence is the one about the shadows suggesting multiple light sources; Go on, have a look outside. edit: Eh? Someone posted that link on page 2 and we're still getting 'but the shadows!' etcetc?

Personally, I can see why it can gain popularity. Let's have a look at other religions. First of is christianity. Ignoring various political practices over the years, the inquisitation, the whole business with Martin Luther and various other spectacular screwup, it's a religion that speaks of things you should Do, and things you should Not Do Unless You Want To Burn In Hell. There's a moral code attached to it, Thou shalt not kill and all that. It judges people. It wants people to evaluate themselves and see if they're good human beings. Most religions are quite similar. They encourage evaluation of one's behaviour to see if it's Right or Wrong. Most of them even have the Thou Shalt Not Kill clause, not to mention stealing and various other crimes. And the afterlife... Most people are afraid of death, yet the greatest reward in most religions require you to die to recieve them. Not to mention the fact that there's some really excurciating punishments if you were to fail, ranging from Burning to Having To Do It All Over Again. Not so in scientology. You are, in effect, a god. You are worth more. And you don't have to die to claim your reward either, just send some of that cash this way... *shrug* As I said, I can see why it's popular.

What a cheap way to make the people pay for expansion content they've already made. Really. "Pay extra, and you'll get a class we've already designed, with items we've already designed, with quests we've already designed" Sure, shamans and paladins have differing utilities - and some encounters are simplified by one or the other class - but that adds fun as there's then two primary ways of fighting a given boss and then tactical variations of it. The closer to release the expansion gets, the more it pisses me off.

The only thing that gets old around here faster than stuff like this, is all the people bent on making sure everyone else knows they've seen it before. I mean really, a single "yeah, cool thing, we had a post about it a few months back" is quite sufficient. We don't really need to the "I've seen it before TOO!".

Go for it then, 'cause I don't get it. First link suggests premarital sex would be punished with lashes, not stabs, so I doubt they really cared about that bit at all. Second one, well, Turnip quoted some of the more interesting parts. Make 'em work for you.

Economic Left/Right: -2.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.18 I've always liked surveys that doesn't offer a neutral option, because it forces people to take a stand. Yes, it's possible that you truly are neutral on the matter, but IMHO, most of time people just check the neutral option rather than actually taking the time to figure out where they stand.

It's not religion, it's culture. "Honourkillings" occur throughout the Middle East and around the eastern parts of the Mediterranean, by people from several different religions.

Let's put it this was; Hitler had been dead for months and one of the reasons for electing to use nuclear weapons was that the death toll was estimated to be lower than that of the already planned land invasion. There's even analysts suggesting that it saved more civilian lives, 'cause without the food imports and the planned strikes on infrastructure that was used for transportation of said food would've left people starving. It was not a panic reaction from a government who thougth they might lose; It was a calculated strike to end the war as soon as possible (IMHO, that classifies as a Good Thing). It definitely wasn't a "last resort". (And btw, the largest single bombing is the Allied bombing of the city of Dresden, which killed approximetely 100 000 civilians)

Let's say your average crusader or +15 agi enchant costs 100g (it varies a bit). There's a few ways for a lvl 19 character to get this amount of gold, but there's only two that does not mean he will level while doing it, and if he levels, he's out of that particular battleground bracket. In other words, he does not want to level. He can either buy/sell stuff on the auctionhouse and make money that way - which is a going to be quite a painstalking process because he's not going to start out with that much funds, but it's theoretically possible, or he could be someone's twink. That's it. The primary thing here is that he cannot do anything that will make him level which makes him very different from the people who are "just good at making money". IMHO, the only thing twinks does is make low level BG PvP boring because enchants and whatnot do not come with level restrictions, meaning a lvl 19 character can run around with the same enchants on his gear as a lvl 60 will. But... I can take 1-20 in less than a week and be out of that bracked. Heck, if I didn't have anything else to do, I could probably do it as one all-nighter. But that's it. They don't ruin the game any other way. As for alchemy... The big money is at 300 when you can transmute and make major mana/health potions, but along the way there's a few things that might sell anyway. I'd recommend picking up and leveling fishing a bit, as some alchemy things require fishes. Swiftness potions and Free Action Potions are not that high in the alchemy tree, but they can - and are - used even by high levels (For example, our guild uses swiftness potions on Razorgore in BWL)

Nah, the "original" tip.it forums pre-dates scapeboard by a year or thereabout, and that's if you count the time on dk3 before tip.it aquired the domain name scapeboard.

I doubt it. They tend to cost money and most are most likely used for organized group activites, with social chatting in between. Not sure if RS has changed enough to require a large amount of people coordinating their efforts since I last looked?