I think he's saying it's cool to AFK if you need to pee. Bioware could make a smartphone app so that if you vid yourself peeing then the game won't count you as AFK-like-for-reals.

Buffbots were lame. Gatecamping was awesome. Leveling was terrible. Killspam made it all worthwhile.

Those were such good times. DAoCC.

I think the biggest reason they never broke 300k (or whatever sub number they had) was because getting to max level was basically a humongous vial of Joie de Vivre Antidote until they started handing out free levels. By the time they started handing out free levels, the barrier to entry for endgame was enormously high. Premade Pain Trains were already well-oiled machines by then, and if you didn't have one, you weren't getting one. Being completely unfriendly to new players is a game design issue.

I totally agree with the specific point you're making - when the lines are delivered well. If that were the case on the regular, I would move on to the larger point, but I feel like an alien because everyone's like: "wow, the acting is so amaze in the face!" And I'm like, uhhhh. I'm trying to think of a single quest where the voice acting delivery added to the quest. Maybe the one time is that little girl on Coruscant who asks you to rescue her brother and then calls you her second-best friend. But that's not because the acting was great, it's just I'm a sucker for little kids. I have no doubt that there must have been other lines that were delivered perfectly. I just can't recall them ever making an impact. That says volumes to me. The larger point is this: great voice acting can certainly add to a game - I can quote huge segments of Mass Effect dialogue strictly because the tone was perfect ("Metal in tank an excellent iron supplement for maw's diet!"). I still remember: "hey ya, it's me! Imoen!" because the tone was memorable and conveyed something about the character. The original Starcraft units had amazing lines ("Ssst, oh, that's the stuff." "...and dispense some indiscriminate justice!"). But of all the fully VO'd games I've ever played, the only game I would ever say I played *strictly because of the voice acting* was the Mass Effect series (and only as Fem Shep). That might not even be a true claim, either, but I'm willing to exaggerate because I thought Jennifer Hale did an incredible job, there. So: people really will *only* play a game if it's voice-acted. Ok, cool. I get that, if well done, it can add a lot to the experience. But as the deciding factor?

That, except I also read-space the quest story arcs. The time saved this way is much greater than the time lost in those very few and very rare scenes where some important non-dialogue action happens and I have to escape out and restart it.

One of the biggest things that Champions did to facilitate that was letting people select an animation set for the things we see toons do the most: running around. I mean, it was only (IIRC) four or five different choices, but it actually did make a difference in the presentation of the toon - up until we all got rope-swinging travel powers.

Also, for the OP: you should heal them because that's the role you signed up for. Nahmean?

This guy. I make it a point in /ops to give ups to whoever is doing the boring side-guard. He doesn't always get my MVP vote (sometimes the reason why his job was so boring is because the rest of the team was destroying the opposition elsewhere), but still: he's taking one for the team. As a reformed / former healer, and having gotten way more than my share of MVP votes (yeah, I admit it, I have on more than one occasion been baited into pouring heals onto The Wrong Guy or at The Wrong Place), I don't default to giving MVP to heals, either.

Some of them, yeah. An example I think most people here would know: Natalie Portman was totally reading aloud as Padme.

If you stopped at "I get the sense that you somehow see VO in this game as a 'gimmick'" you'd be right. The VO's here strike me as very gimmicky. The rest of it is just ad hom. If we can make the distinction between voice acting and reading aloud, can we make some distinctions about the characteristics that differ between the two? What constitutes "acting?" Is there some level of overall quality, or maybe some effect that should be conveyed in the voiceover, in order to qualify it as acting? I'm just asking.

And my last word is: Cool. I don't know that you should be ascribing intent to me, it might be unfair, but that's cool. You're a nice person.

I am making the bold claim that MOST of the VO's in this game fall under "being read aloud to." I am. There are very few voiced lines in this game that strike me as memorable or memorably delivered. Maybe they do it for you, maybe you think the VO's are consistently high enough quality to be labelled "acting." Cool. That's cool with me.

I don't look at it as being nice, I look at is as validating and enabling insecurity. I'm the nicest guy you'll ever meet, true story. And I think being nice is this: look, I don't judge any of you for enjoying being read aloud to. It's not, like: "omg, you're a bad person!" You're not, ok? But admit it, it's funny. But this is a totally different discussion.

You're misunderstanding me. I totally believe that VO's Matter to you people. That is true. It doesn't make it less funny to me. You know how radio stations will sandwich new singles between established hits and replay the same three-song rotation over and over? They do it because it *works*, it makes people like the new single because they associate it with the familiarity of the established hits. Still funny.