It was a bad day. A lot of bad stuff happened. And I'd love to forget it all. But I don't. Not ever. Because this is what I do. Every time, every day, every second, this: On five, we're bringing down the government.
Friday, March 30
Today's Greatest Thing Ever
A macabre fairy tale? As if there were any other kind.
In other news, I have a llama. Arrived this morning as a freebie with some t-shirts. Which were greatly discounted, then over-charged, then over-refunded, so they worked out being reasonably priced even with international shipping.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:19 PM
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Thursday, March 29
Still No TV
ac ai bz fm gs im io li lk me ms mx nu pt sc sh vg vu
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 29 2012 04:29 PM (PiXy!)
5
I don't understand. What's wrong with "mee.au"? (Besides the fact that it sounds like a catgirl?)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, March 30 2012 01:25 AM (+rSRq)
6
So, will mee.mee.me be a Miss Piggy tribute site?
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Friday, March 30 2012 01:29 AM (2XtN5)
7
The Australian domain registry only lets you register domains under .com.au, .net.au, or .org.au. But yeah, mee.au would be cool.
As for mee.mee.me.... Maybe.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 30 2012 11:16 AM (PiXy!)
8
Try to get .su. It was supposed to be shut forver, but then two years ago someone registered pant.su. No idea how.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, March 30 2012 12:07 PM (5OBKC)
It's ten years after the events of Origins, and the brief peace following the Warden's victory has all but collapsed. There's open conflict among the lords of Ferelden, between the lords and the crown, between the mages and the Chantry, between Ferelden and Orlais. The only reason Orlais hasn't stepped in and taken over is that they aren't faring any better, nor is any help to be expected from Orzammar, which is in open civil war, nor the Dalish Elves, who have completely vanished.
And there are reports of a new Blight from the north... And from the west, and from the south.
And into all this steps the Warden, the saviour of Ferelden. Only you have no idea where you've been for the past ten years. If you died at the end of the first game, doesn't matter, you're back. You still died, but that's still you walking around. (Indeed, whoever died at the end of the first game is back, very much alive.)
You have even more trouble on your hands than the first time, and all your former allies are dead, lost, or struggling with their own problems. You have to gather the scattered remnants of your party and try to save Thedas from the greatest peril it has ever faced.
You certainly have a taste for more...apocalyptic favoring than I do, though it would make for an interesting story.
Speaking of apocalypse and blight...I think it is north of you, but it seems the online reaction to the Queensland's election is excited, to say the least.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, March 25 2012 11:51 AM (Hep/0)
2
Hadn't been following the election news, actually. Let me see...
Heh. Yeah, ain't that somethin'? Labor (the incumbents) lost, probably 78-7 with 4 independents.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 25 2012 03:00 PM (PiXy!)
Maybe I should just put a stop to something right now.
We ARE NOT going to:
* Burn DA2 to the ground
* Pretend it doesn't exists
* etc...
I am proud of what DA2 accomplished in several areas. It is certainly not without flaws.
We have things to learn from BOTH Dragon Age games as well as other titles.
Starting your post by telling me to ignore the hard work of over a hundred people is NOT a good way to start a dialogue with me.
Grow up, Mark.
You just cancelled all future DLC and expansion packs for Dragon Age II, but you still haven't learned your lesson. Dragon Age II is not a particularly good game. While it's not awful in itself, it is awful in that it trashes the legacy of one of the best games of all time. It is not in any sense a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins.
This is real life. You don't get a reward for showing up. You don't even get a reward for working hard. You get a reward for results.
The right thing to do - and the sales figures and the cancelled projects clearly bear this out - is to abandon Dragon Age II completely. Burn it to the ground, sow the ground with salt, and forget it ever existed. So a hundred people worked hard on it? I don't care. What they produced is no good.
You do have things to learn from both games, but the lessons are very simple:
1
Honestly, it would take an absolute tour de force for me to pick up another Dragon Age game. The first one was all right, in the sense that it wasn't offensively bad, but it was lousy enough that I just plain let it go without even bothering to finish it. The second one I avoided based on that, and to hear tell, it was so bad that even people who thought the first one was one of the best games of all time would like to burn it to the ground and sow the ruins with salt.
There have been games where the second one was garbage but the third one was such a good game that I took a risk on it (Deus Ex is the only recent one I can think of, though).
Honestly, I think everyone's fixation on DLC as the Big Focus is detrimental in the long term. A good game needs to be good without DLC. I've picked up DLC for Civ 5 because the base game was really good, and the DLC for Fallout NV was generally good (not uniformly so, but the highs were quite high). But if the base game isn't much to talk about, I don't think "gee, maybe I should sink ten more bucks into it and get that extra mission pack"...
So who cares if they burn DA2 to the ground or create a monument to its awfulness and carefully tend the lawn for a hundred years? Unless they suddenly remember how to make a really, really great game, I won't be back anyway.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thursday, March 22 2012 01:49 PM (pWQz4)
2
I can understand not everyone enjoying Dragon Age: Origins. It has some real problems with pacing; the beginning is slow, some parts in the middle seem interminable, and the ending is very rushed. But the story and the characters really clicked for me. I was sad to see the game end; I'd spent over 80 hours playing it and still wanted more. And I was dead. Well, my character. To be honest, me as well.
Fortunately, Dragon Age II came out about the same time I finished Dragon Age: Origins. So I pre-ordered it, installed it, fired it up, and...
Nyrrgh. Just... I don't think any adults were involved in the direction of the project. It's that inept. Technically fine, but the storytelling is what you'd expect from an over-excited five-year-old. Confused and disjointed and ultimately pointless. Could have been a fun snack while waiting for the real next entry in the Dragon Age saga, but as Dragon Age II? No.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 22 2012 03:11 PM (PiXy!)
3
Pardon me for asking, but what does "DLC" stand for?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, March 22 2012 03:51 PM (+rSRq)
4
Downloadable content. That is, an add-on to the game that's smaller than a full expansion pack.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 22 2012 04:17 PM (PiXy!)
5
Downloadable content should be a nice to have. Especially if its paid. Its a cool extra.
But it shouldn't be a way of extracting more money from players. The insistence in marketing add ons to new releases. Special editions for specific retailers.
I want to play a game. Not spend hours maintaining logins to access publishers websites for a virtual widget or skin in exchange for marketing blurb.
Bioware seem to be a little patchy lately. Mass Effect 3 seems to have earned the ire of players with its ending. To the point people are petitioning for a new ending.
But Old Republic seems to be going strong. Enough for Blizzard to feel that they're taking subscribers from WoW.
Posted by: Andrew at Thursday, March 22 2012 04:19 PM (PDuG2)
6
I have mixed feelings about DLC in roleplaying games. I think a good RPG tells a single, cohesive story, and you can't just drop storybits into that and pretend it adds something.
On the other hand, The Stone Prisoner (Dragon Age: Origins) and Lair of the Shadow Broker (Mass Effect 2) were both beyond awesome, so...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 22 2012 08:13 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:52 PM
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Whu... Blee....
Must... Purchase... 50,000-year-old dice...
Or 25-year-old AD&D. That's cheaper.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Sunday, March 18
So That's What This Hunger Games Thing Is
Okay, they're "young adult" novels, but that doesn't actually require the writing to be eye-gougingly awful. I'll stick with Terry Pratchett or Garth Nix, thanks all the same.
Amazon gets told what highlighting I do? The hell you say.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, March 18 2012 09:59 AM (+rSRq)
2
Apparently yes. You can turn it off, but it sounds like its on by default.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 18 2012 01:39 PM (PiXy!)
3
I just looked around and I can't find anything like that. But that doesn't prove anything. It's obviously the kind of thing they don't want me to find easily.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, March 18 2012 01:51 PM (+rSRq)
4
From Slashdot, Home -> Settings -> Popular Highlights -> Turn Off.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 18 2012 02:52 PM (PiXy!)
5
On my Kindle Fire, there isn't any "Popular Highlights" choice in "Settings". Probably that was in the earlier versions of the Kindle.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, March 18 2012 11:09 PM (+rSRq)
6
Yeah, on the Fire it's likely completely different.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 19 2012 01:18 AM (PiXy!)
7
I actually loved reading Garth Nix back when I was in sixth grade. Those were the days.
Posted by: Chelsea Rose at Friday, March 30 2012 06:21 AM (fTmKZ)
8
His Old Kingdom series (Sabriel / Lirael / Abhorsen) is particularly good.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 30 2012 11:19 AM (PiXy!)
Does anyone remember the year - probably in the late nineties, maybe 2000 or so - when suddenly every woman in the world took to wearing orange and black and it looked like the planet had been invaded by giant anthropoid bees?
There is actually a reason I ask. Well, two reasons, one being that I can't remember.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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It Is A Sobering Thought
That by the time Mozart was my age, he'd been dead for two years.*
