You'll never see a playable Yoda race. LucasArts (or Lucas himself, perhaps) has a huge bug up their butt about that race being unique and special.

You've got to admit that fantasy settings mesh really well with games. Monsters, melee, and magic.

lol.

This is a perfect example of impossible it is to please people. 'Fix your game! But don't patch it!' Wut?

Instancing has been in MMORPGs since Anarchy Online at least. I don't understand the complaint.

Pancakes.

I thought they said this was incomming.

But the Republic will be overrun in turn, by the seriously battle-hardened Rotworm Empire.

You're arguing my point. That is the definition of a set amount of currency. Central banks control the amount of currency in circulation-- sometimes more, sometimes less. By "a set amount", I don't mean a specific sum forever and ever, I just mean the amount is regulated.

Ask the feds how they feel about regular citizens adding actual money to the system. Counterfeiting money is not the same as 'growing an economy'.

Sure, the net result will be similar while those conditions persist, but it's still just the same old game economy approach. EVE's also got a truly massive amount of people in one setting, which helps stabilize things a bit, I think.

Well, a contract would still be a contract. Even if the cost of doing the 'job' had gone down since you accepted the mission, they'd still have to pay the agreed-upon price. I assume the server would have to set the money aside when you accepted the quest, and return it to the system if you hadn't completed it in some set amount of time. Bleh, it already seems like a programming nightmare, lol.

EVE's actually currency is unregulated. Players add wealth to the system by mining, and remove it by blowing up expensive ships. It's really just the same old gold sink approach, with an unusually steep, and deep, hole.

Every game I've ever played, including EVE, suffered from the fact that players *add money* to the economy as they play, instead of borrowing money from it. There's no set amount of currency in circulation. The only way money is ever actually removed from the system is when players purchase things from NPC vendors. In EVE, money is also removed when players' expensive equipment is destroyed in PvP. But those are both just masks on inflation, and the actual money supply is completely unregulated. Do you think a realistic economy, where the supply of money remains somewhat steady (maybe increasing or contracting by some set amount for each active player on the server), could work in a game like this? What sort of problems would you get?

CC Music Factory

It's true-- I don't think I've ever seen that in another MMORPG. Hmm. I'd like run bounce, too. And self-shadows even when in first person.

Suddenly he's gone silent. I'm sure it was just dinner time or something.

I've found three or four by asking myself where I'd hide one if I were a level designer. Every time I've been surprised... yet somehow not... when I see it.

There are innovative, sandbox MMORPGs out there right now-- you just don't play them. The risk takers are, just as in movies, found among the smaller, more independent studios that build and maintain their games on a tiny fraction of the funds that places like Bioware or Blizzard spend. Of course, their graphics are much less impressive. Their marketing is almost nonexistant. But they are out there, and if you really wanted to see innovation, you'd be playing one of those games. When movies and games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, you really can't fault the big studios for endlessly trying to reproduce the last big budget hit.

That's what I don't understand. This crap isn't even being run by the playerbase before deployment. It's bizarre.

Well, on the bright side, cooldowns are darkened again instead of just having that window shade on top that was completely unreadable just when you'd need to read it. Honestly, this wouldn't bother me if the darkness were reduced about 40%. The icons go so dark that you can't even see what they are. They should be dark enough to read that they're unready out of your peripheral vision, but bright enough to see what the icon is.

The small games tend to have great communities. Big crowds mean relative anonymity, and anonymity turns regular morons into epic morons.

Let me know when Barbie comes with hand grenades. What's your point?

Yeah, everyone except the fanboys and people who understand concepts like "numbers".

You'll just have to do the internet version of 'meet me after school' by agreeing to meet your adversary on some other forum. :/