Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.HBO is going to have one more sub soon thanks to this news:
Winter is, indeed, coming.
HBO has greenlighted highly anticipated fantasy series “Game of Thrones.”
The premium network has picked up the project for a first season debut next spring (below is the first released photo from the series). Nine episodes plus the pilot have been ordered. Production will begin in Belfast this June.
Awesome.
– Ethic
I like The Onion, but I rarely find myself reading much of it because the full text rarely improves on the headlines. You might need to read the first paragraph to see where they are taking the joke, but stringing it out for 1000 words does not add much to the first 5 seconds. (I might take this as an object lesson, but look at me go, still typing.)
Syp finds the same problem with Star Trek Online, I said the same thing about LotRO skirmishes, and many of us have said the same about Borderlands and Torchlight: it is great at first, but there is not all that much improvement or variation over time. (I do credit the two single-player games for having interesting boss fights mixed into the repetition, where MMOs tend to rely on even more repetition, even in tank-and-spank bosses.) I appreciate being able to get 95% of the benefit in 5% of the time. Portal did that brilliantly and then ended.
: Zubon
Non-MMO inspiration banished to the first comment.
That MMO break has been working out so well, it merits an extension. This is a good time for it anyway; the only interesting MMO release announced for this year is Cataclysm (I already beat WoW, done), and last year’s only sign of promise was Fallen Earth. This is a point in the industry when Raph is reduced to copying Farmville, and while that is probably a good financial decision, it is a bad sign.
To help make the break clean, I have uninstalled a bunch of “just in case” MMOs, deleted bookmarks, decimated my RSS feeds, and will be mostly absent from here unless I have something to say about any other games I might be playing. I had considered queuing up some previously written posts and ending with this on an Ozymandious note, “I did it [a week] ago,” but this is already pompous enough.
Don’t worry about me. No matter how many times you clear that boss, the villagers will still need me to deal with him if I come back.
: Zubon
One thing I’ve picked up from everyone’s favorite stable of bloggers at the George Mason economics department is that you should be willing to bet on your beliefs. If you really believe in what you are saying, it is taking easy money; if not, shut up. I think this would be useful in our world of interminable online arguments. It improves the accuracy and precision of your beliefs, and it forces others to face up to theirs.
The heart of it is nailing down just what it is that you (or others) believe. Many of your ideas exist as fuzzy generalities that have no application to the world because they are insufficiently well defined for there to be any counter-evidence. If mutually exclusive options are both consistent with what “you know,” you don’t really know anything. Continue reading Bet or Change Your Mind
I’m pretty much out of reasons not to have played this game.
: Zubon
From His Master’s Voice by Stanislaw Lem:
The inflation of the printed word has been caused, no doubt, by the exponential increase in the number of those writing, but in equal degree by editorial policies. In the childhood of our civilization only select, well-educated individuals were able to read and write, and much the same criterion held after the invention of printing; and even if the works of imbeciles were published (which, I suppose, is impossible to avoid completely), their total number was not astronomical, as it is today. Today, in the flood of garbage, valuable publications must go under, because it is easier to find one worthwhile book among ten worthless than a thousand among a million. …
… It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of imposters, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?
We will note that similar complaints against the masses have abounded since before the printed word, back when any danged fool thought he was the next Sophocles. I am mollified in the pointless narcissism of blogging every book I read by the Victorian tendency to do something very similar in print, so as to circulate with their friends what they were reading and what they all thought about it. The Victorians were strong in introspection but had terrible latency.
: Zubon
I feel so free.
: Zubon
“Talking” with a friend on chat last night, I mentioned that, despite how I appear online, I am rather quiet and reserved in-person. (Ethic also seems to be the strong silent type, so you can imagine that our occasional get-togethers look like The Adventures of Dour and Taciturn.) You may have noticed a bit of logorrhea here, too.
It later struck me: given the ebb and flow of chat, it amounts to maybe a sentence or two per minute. You might read 1000 words from me here, but that is 1000 words per day. Even when I am being chatty, it is mostly silence.
: Zubon
One of the exhibitors is showcasing Battle Royale. It is a Japanese novel from 10 years ago, now in manga and movie form, about a bunch of teenagers armed then left on an island until there is one survivor. The Hunger Games came out in the US 2 years ago, it being a novel about a group of teens enclosed and forced to fight until one remains (sequel is out, movie planned). If I can find a few more of these, I must just read them all in a row.
Knowing a bit about each book, I am reminded of how different our gamer tactics are because of respawning and chat. People set up great ambushes and backstabs in FPS games, and you might warn your friends while dead or spawn as a countering class to go back for the guy. I know one character from those books who does very well with a “feign death and ambush” tactic, until he meets someone who knows rule 2: the double tap. And it only needs to fail once.
I have also been offered five teen vampire romance novels. I can tell that others lie in wait behind the less prominent promotions.
: Zubon
As we head to the annual New Year’s LAN party, I post my annual off-topic reminder. I moonlight in traffic safety when not living the glamorous life of a gaming blogger, and midnight to 4am on January 1 is the worst time of year for alcohol-involved crashes (July 4 is a worse day, but January 1 packs a lot into those 4 hours). Your tolerance is probably not as high as you think it is, nor is that something you can judge well after you lose count of drinks. Even if you are fine, that other guy isn’t.
On the gaming front, before heading to the LAN party:
Nothing slows down the gaming like having someone patch for an hour before every new game. Don’t be that guy.
: Zubon