Adam007

I think there might be a limit though. At my school, I'm pushing that line hard just by wearing flat front khakis, a belt, and a not tucked in button up. I did get a lot of attention though, but at the same time people were just like why the hell are you wearing that? Haha, my answer was simply that I like wearing it. What do you guys think of sweater vests? Yes or no? I'm not a sweater vest fan. I've tried it before and I can't really make it work. Go to a store that sells them, try on one or two, and see if you like the look. You can still pull them off, you just have to dress down the rest of the outfit.

Lenticular, I have to say, it's nice having another style-minded guy around here. I'm impressed with your knowledge especially given your age, not even having been through college yet. I feel like most of what I wanted to say has been said already. My biggest general points are to wear clothing that fits. Go as slim as you can without it hugging your skin. If you're thin, roll your sleeves up. Learn how to roll your dress sleeves up correctly. Wear straight cut jeans - boot cut is out. It's spring/summer now: if you're going to wear shorts, wear flat front and not cargos. Don't wear white socks. Match your belt with your shoes. Never wear more than two of these three colors together: black, blue, and brown. And don't be afraid to push/develop your style. You'll make mistakes, but you'll learn from them. I look at some stuff I used to wear/try to pull off and laugh about it, but if you don't develop your personal style you won't grow. Make it your own and have fun with it, it will pay off.

I've learned a lot about different perspectives and how to quickly develop a point in writing. It's also interesting to watch other posters develop over the years and seeing how cyclical the forum can be over time.

PLOT TWIST

There is undoubtedly life out there, at least microorganisms. But I'm assuming we're talking about intelligent life. In my opinion, there is a reason we haven't been contacted. 1. When you think about most intelligent life, it is not a question of where, but when. Most life that evolves to have technology like our own (long distance communication, advanced weaponry). Societies that have the need for weaponry, that have the need to assert themselves amongst others within their own society, are ultimately doomed to a short existence. Humanity has not been around long. Humanity with the ability to communicate over planetary distances has been around for only a quarter millennium. The thing is, as long as we have the type of weapons we do, we won't be around for long. Most other societies that have that technology also will end up destroying themselves quickly in the grand scheme of things. Our current existence will leave no impact on the history of the universe. 2. That leaves us with intelligent life that does not destroy itself. Here we have two categories. One is life like dolphins and chimpanzees. They have been shown to have intelligent life, they just perceive things differently than we do as we measure their intelligence relative to our own. On other planets there are surely intelligent creatures like these who just perceive their world with likely different senses than we do. We are a water based planet, and the possibilities of different constructions of life are out of our minds capacities to imagine. 3. This leaves us with one last type of society. Intelligent life capable of communicating with other planets that has not managed to destroy themselves. For whatever reason, they managed to evolve to become complete altruists, never with an urge to compete with other life forms for resources. Is this possible? Who knows. But if such a society exists, they are much more enlightened than we are. They know we exist and may have visited, but they have no reason to contact us. And being culturally enlightened, they would not want to contaminate our collective consciousness with their own existence as it would cause some chaos in our world. They may be aware of us, but we're not aware of them.

I think television is horrible for a developing brain. It forces a child's thought processes into passivity. Television is no replacement for parenting, and should be as limited as much as possible, or at least like everything, used watched in conservative moderation. [hide][/hide]

I was in Corruption a long time ago. I doubt I'll be remembered aside from a few friends.

Hey polo, great to see such a well thought out first post. This does fit more with rants, however. I have to agree that the game is not what it used to be. The issue is, that's a problem with players like us - not the game. The game is just not the same game it used to be. Jagex will not change that. I started in 2002 and played because I loved merchanting (as well as many other aspects of the game). When they nerfed trading, they nerfed the game for me. But I was already on my way out at that time. The other factor you have to remember for players like us who have been around for so long is that we've grown up a lot over those years. Over time you just grow out of things. There's nothing wrong with the game - it's just a different game. And to an extent, we're different people. You pretty much just have to accept this and move on in your life.

One could say you're getting better all the time? I had to go there. It's fine if you don't know what I'm referencing, I just had to do it. Good luck on that claw drop. :)

Definitely DI

Nice hearing from you Tomato, but please bring back the avatar! Have any updates with your life?

I completely disagree with your interpretation. It isn't inevitable at all. Different methods of training doesn't mean they have to be faster XP, just alternatives. In fact the fastest methods are often the most boring methods from my experience. The game may have been altered to include more of the general population rather than just the players who played back when, but to just accept that the game is going to get easier all the time isn't good for a few reasons: Whats the point of a game if its too easy? If any player wants it 'that' easy then the game is overly challenging for them so what's the point? No challenge = No point. Players wouldnt bother to play, they'd just go somewhere else. That is unless they wanted it 'that' easy. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought a game was to be progressively harder and more challenging the more you went through it? We've seen the outcomes of 'easy' skills such as cooking. The outcome? No-one really gives a toss about them now. Thats what you get when you make things too easy. I can accept that for some players RS is a little too much of a challenge for them, otherwise they'd play the game and accept the hoops to be jumped through to gain skills/items/quests etc instead of whinging about them. For the rest of us we need and enjoy some sort of challenge. Thats why RS has kept me playing for 4 years and I don't intend on quitting it yet. You seem to think that I support that progression. I'm stating it has happened and continues to happen. Is that what you disagree with? Because you went on to talk about how they did that with cooking, so I don't know what your point is. In reference to your 4 points. 1: There isn't too much of a point of making the game progressively easier. I simply make the claim that that's what jagex does, regardless of whether or not we like it. 2. There still is a challenge. Jagex just raises the bar on skills. They progressively make you hit harder with stronger weapons, so they then make stronger armor. If a new weapon does not add anything new (which is normally being a stronger weapon than what is out there in some way), it is considered a waste of an update by the players. It is the players who demand the game be made easier and easier with each update. Regardless of what is best for them. 3. Again, you're completely misinterpreting what I said. I'm not suggesting what jagex does is good. I'm saying it is inevitable, given the way they update. Granted they have been adding less content, but when they do add new content, they generally have to add something that is in some way better than the available training in some way. They may make the game harder by releasing stronger monsters, but this is consistent with how they update: they have to push the boundaries of what is already in the game. This means the game gets easier, equipment gets stronger, and monsters get harder. 4. Yes, that's what you get when you make things too easy. That's the point I made in the post you just quoted. Without sounding condescending, I just don't see how that isn't clear to you. I'm not suggesting that the game 'has to become easier' in the sense that it's something jagex should do. I'm claiming that since day one the game 'has become easier' in the sense that jagex inevitably has to make updates one-up the content currently in the game, otherwise players are not satisfied. Granted there will always be a challenge. Just compare getting 99 in a skill today to getting 99 in any skill back in rs1. The game has gotten and will continue to get easier.

Things just got a lot weirder with the addition of video chat.

Locking: not a serious topic.

It likely has already been said, but Jagex making the game easier is inevitable. Every update they make to a skill has to be in some way better than what the skill currently has to offer, otherwise it's widely considered a waste of an update. Since the game's been around for 8 or so years, it got a lot easier over time. I mostly see comparisons to rs2, but in rs1 there were certain skills you could barely grind over 10k xp per hour. I'm not going to list out comparisons, but the game has to get easier across all skills or otherwise jagex can't update them.

I'll be in Israel during Chanukah this year on birthright. I don't know what we'll be doing for it but I'm excited!

What bothers me the most is not that these characters predictably make the worst decision possible, but it's that they don't develop or learn from their mistakes. They'll seem wiser for about one episode but then do something stupid again. Claire, Peter, and Mohinder are the worst about this. The only character who develops on this show seems to be HRG, and he's in such a static place right now even he's not that interesting. I wish they wouldn't have a mindblowing episode once a season because as much as I hate most episodes, I can't stop watching every week for the one interesting twist.

I thought the last episode was horribly written. Why would Nathan have tried to commit suicide by falling off the building knowing one of his powers was being able to heal? Knowing he would be out of Peter's range why would he have done that? The episode would have been much better if the whole time Peter thought he had brought Nathan back, it was really Sylar shapeshifting as Nathan just to mess with Peter. Once on the roof, Sylar would have easily just thrown Peter off. Of course Peter would have been saved, but it would have been a lot more exciting and actually would have made sense. It's moments like before where the protagonist has an obvious solution (Nathan allowing Peter to kill him) but instead do something stupid like that. Guaranteed next episode Sylar will be himself even though Peter supposedly erased his memories. Except for that one moment in the last episode where Sylar will be about to kill someone and Nathan resurfaces briefly to save the day. Also another predictable element is going on with Claire ONCE AGAIN. Samuel used to be somewhat interesting because we didn't know his motives. Now we know he's another antagonist who wants power. This automatically makes him a bad guy, so we know Claire is free to temporarily join his side because in the end she'll have to leave the carnival since Samuel is a bad guy and therefore doomed to eventually alienate everyone around him. The only thing that would redeem that part of the episode would be if it was the puppetman who conspired with Samuel to make the baseball player attack Samuel, which is entirely possible, because what kind of grown adult male would seriously attack a young girl like that? I never thought I'd say it, but maybe they need to just write an ending to Heroes already if they're not going to develop characters anymore.

Rs1 had peaks of about 75k if I remember right. That was 5 years ago, I don't remember exactly. Compare rs1 to the high definition runescape we now have. That's a massive graphical leap. Even if they made an update analogous in magnitude, the fact remains that from rs1 to the current population, the rate has not increased by much. I wouldn't expect much to change so long as jagex doesn't advertise at all. It will still grow, just not by much. Although I'll say I do think they have a lot to work with and I am surprised they haven't advertised much because I have seen advertisements for other inferior browser games similar to runescape.

How long have you been playing runescape? I'd like to argue the opposite of your point, from seeing jagex/runescape operating seven years now. From rs1 to the launch of rs2 runescape experienced huge growth. It averaged low thousands being online at once during its first few years, gradually growing until about 2004-2005 where users online at once actually plateaued and the rate of growth stagnated. Over the past few years I haven't played but every time I check the amount of people playing at once it still floats around the same number. A few years back it had its best selling point: a browser based free game that didn't require much comp power to run. It was the only game of this type, and it didn't have many other MMORPG's to compete with. Now there are several larger games that offer much more than rs does. And if you argue that jagex doesn't compete with companies that sell software, then compare it with the already saturated free-in-browser game market. Although it probably is the best amongst other offerings out there, there just isn't much room for serious expansion. Rs is a gateway game and more serious gamers move on shortly to purchase games like WoW and less serious gamers soon get bored of rs. Runescape won't be going anywhere anytime soon. It's very successful in it's niche area and has delivered more than any other in-browser game. But unless jagex decides to start guerrilla marketing I see no reason for the popularity of rs to explode. Why wouldn't it already when it was better positioned 1-5 years ago?

I'm less proud that I don't sport fashion than that I uphold my standards of simplicity and little extravagance. Though touting that about wouldn't be a very Communist thing to do, I suppose. I would argue that keeping things simple is an important part of dressing. Disregarding what you see on runways, because nobody actually dresses like that, one of the hardest things to pull off when you dress well is not looking tacky. Once you start being aware of texture/color/value, it's almost as hard to make sure your clothes don't match too much, are different values, etc. This isn't a problem if you just wear a t-shirt, jeans, and athletic shoes every day, but when you start wearing things that stand out a little bit it's easy to go overboard: You'd just get laughed at for wearing anything that tacky unless you were actually a model. But part of the fun is challenging yourself to skirt that line every day.

Usually jeans with a polo, button up, hoodie, or track jacket. In the summer usually shorts and a T-shirt but I love the fall/winter because you can layer things. I usually get stuff from American Eagle, Aeropostale, and the Gap/Old Navy as well as TJ Maxx stuff since they're cheap, but occasionally wear J Crew, Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, Penguin, Abercrombie and Fitch, Express, and Banana Republic. I do have a rule of not paying over $20 for an article of clothing, and I've managed to do that with all of those brands save a few rare exceptions. @Saruman44: Agreed. It must be because of college, but ever since then I've switched from the "I don't care, whatever's comforatable" mentality which is basically an excuse for not expressing yourself. In highschool I would just wear loose jeans with a baggy hoodie every day, but now I really try to dress form fitting with a prep inspired look. Once you realize clothing is more than a device to keep you warm and socially acceptable looking to go outside with, you can really have fun with it.

I actually find deadmau5 to be very boring for the same reason you do. Yeah it's like how do you dance to that stuff? I guess my criteria for music is if you can't get the song stuck in your head I won't like it.

I don't really listen to electronic music, but a friend's making me go to a Deadmau5 concert this weekend. Says it's somewhat 'house' and somewhat electronic. I listened to some of it. It's the type of music that has a nice rhythm and beat, but I have a tough time really getting into a song without a strong melody.

Yes, rs1 to about a month or two into rs2 merchanting made soo much cash. Whenever I log on I just feel like I've come into 'old money.' Unfortunate because I spent all that time merchanting but only spent a minute fraction of what I made, saving money hoping phats would just keep on growing exponentially. And assuming I would keep playing indefinitely.