No, this means the servers will finally be full of players and it'll be so awesome! Just you wait and see!

Although it looks damn cool, I'm going to wait a while for patches. Fool me once...

Looks like a billboard (or a pack of cigarettes or a soda can) is sticking out of his ear.

[Batman: Arkham Asylum]

I also had to read about Paul before I realized he could be saved.

and most importantly (don't know if this was mentioned before):

Excellent. I don't mind auto saving actually, as long as it's frequent. I just completed Batman: Arkham Asylum and thought they did a good job keeping the auto saves frequent, preventing me from replaying too much in case I messed something up. If the auto saving is fine I don't have to worry about manually hitting quicksave all the time, or accidentally hitting quicksave in a botched up situation I can't recover from. For the same reason I've learned to be more forthcoming about auto saving (I used to hate not being able to save anywhere).

Good coverage. But where's Data?

drifting kids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvQeVDqHv7I&feature=player_embedded

Someone should add some real skid sounds to that.

I had no idea he'd done that many death scenes. 

It's even worse than Charlton Heston.

I hate DVD intros that show key scenes as rolling footage behind the menu.

A lot of TV shows I have bought lately do this, Dexter included. It's pretty annoying.

Another thing I didn't like was the "Space:1999"-style "This Episode!" quick review part in the intro sequence of the newer Battlestar Galactica show. Whenever I started a new episode and heard the sound cue leading up to it, I closed my eyes until it was over and the episode started properly. I didn't want to know that character X was going to be hit on the jaw by character Y or worse spoilers. It might catch more viewers on live television, but when I own the DVD I don't need that anymore.

I also remember watching the first Planet of the Apes movie a few decades ago. I knew nothing about the ending and was genuinely surprised. It was such a great feeling and to this day, I'm glad I had the opportunity to watch the movie and see this ending at just the right time (during the cold war I think it was).

But if you visit the IMDb entry for this movie today, you'll see the ending right there in the top left image.

At one point I was a member of a Dexter fan page in Facebook. In a wall post they openly spoiled the ending of season 4 (I was still watching season 3 and knew nothing about it). They wrote the post as if everyone was aware of the ending already, merely asking for opinions about it.

I criticized this on my own wall to my friends, but a few just answered that it was my own mistake for joining such a fan page on Facebook and that I should be more careful in the future. Another friend I e-mail with even agreed with this too. But as I see it, at least the fan page could have come with a warning that spoilers might occur in the wall posts, or the posts themselves could have had some sort of spoiler warning.

Under all circumstances I left the fan page and have never joined anything of the like since.

And I really just don't make the kinds of relatively lasting friendships in MMOs that I did a few years ago in CoX and LOTRO. And I miss that. I don't know if games have become too scattered, or MMOs attract different people than they did a few years ago, or I'm just an old out of touch fart.

I've had the same problem in MMOs lately. In WoW in 2005-2008 or so, I was a member of a good guild where we knew each other well in-game and in the guild forums. I was also in a good guild in EQ2 in 2008. The past few years, however, the guilds I've been part of in LOTRO and Rift have seemed incredibly shallow or elitist. But perhaps it's just because I became more casual. I used to be part of raiding and dungeons, but around 2009 I decided I never wanted to bother with raiding again. I did some dungeons in LOTRO but in Rift I didn't bother (leveling was fast).

I usually don't guild hop much in the MMOs I play (I know how bad it makes you look) but in LOTRO, the shallow kinships bothered me so much that I tried out more than half a dozen anyway, hoping that eventually I would find a good kinship with interesting discussions going on. Almost all of them had kinship chat going through molasses. Sometimes I did try typing some interesting sentences to stir up things, but unfortunately I'm not immune to constant ignoring and the dreadful feeling of talking to myself.  Eventually I just gave up and minded my own business.

Perhaps I'm getting old too.

A nice video showing a fan's top 10 reasons to be interested in this game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBC_ig73aMs

When are the PvP impressions coming?

Well, there's another preview here from "Rock, Paper, Shotgun", and they write in the beginning that news about PvP will come in just over a week (as of April 28).

One thing I noticed from this preview:

In KotOR, when I’m sent to an ancient temple at the crux of a long series of missions, recovering some vital ancient artifact, I inevitably have to battle my way to the centre. Reaching my goal, I collect my prize, and victoriously make my way to the exit.

In TOR, when I’m sent to an ancient temple at the crux of a long series of missions, recovering some vital ancient artifact, I inevitably have to battle my way to the centre. Reaching my goal, I collect my prize, and then have to kill all the same creatures I fought on the way in. Huh?

Interesting, since the writer of the other preview was also annoyed by that.

There's a good and relevant discussion about the preview (and expectations) at Tobold's MMORPG Blog.

A worrying preview.

What's exposing, precisely?

It's a debuff you get when you try to flee from too many mobs gang-banging you. It increases the damage they do to you and can even stack. I heard it can really be a problem for repositioning tanks (I wouldn't know as I usually play a healer).

I don't think Rift is the WoW-killer, but maybe, just maybe, it's a step in breaking the cycle of developers just throwing up their hands and giving up on ever making an MMO that can compete. As much as Rift steals from other MMOs, it also adds some really daring features that in my mind prove they are at least as interested in innovation as they are in imitation.

I was sure in Silverwood (the first full zone for Guardians) that this game would definitely be a massive hit. Everyone was attending the rifts and it was great fun zerging them. After the next zone (Gloamwood, level ~20-26) I'm not so sure anymore. Suddenly no one is touching the rifts at all and then there was only questing. Gloamwood is also a dark and gloomy zone which can sometimes be atmospheric, but here it mostly felt bleak.

I've barely arrived at the next zone Scarlet Gorge, and I'm excited to see if the fact that it's contested also means that the rifts will be populated once again. But perhaps it's inevitable that there's a lot of attendance in the starter zone and then again in the zone for the level cap (50)? (I Imagine a graph with a big bump in the beginning and end of it, plus a long flat valley in the middle.)

Other than that, I saw at the official forums that low level enemies can still throw you off a 110% speed mount in one hit, so apparently they won't get much sturdier. It really sounds extremely annoying. I sure hope they are going to mend that in a patch.

I get hit all the time on my mount and stay mounted.  It's not a 100% chance to dismount by a long shot.

And that's on a fast 110% mount? Sounds good in that case. Guess the rumors have been exaggerated.

One thing I noticed yesterday was that you can mount in-combat. It's useful when being gang-banged, dismounted, then running up to a nearby camp with guards. As the guards take over, you can immediately mount up and escape.

Is it just me or it is annoying that mobs many levels below you will still attack and knock you off your mount easily?

They seemed to have copied the title color system for enemies from World of Warcraft: Yellow for non-aggressive, red for aggressive and enemies never turn gray. LOTRO and EQ2 uses the rainbow color system where enemies eventually turn gray and won't attack anymore. I always liked that better. The fact that Trion Worlds uses the former system screams to me that they really, really, really want to target the WoW audience for their game.

Other than that, I saw at the official forums that low level enemies can still throw you off a 110% speed mount in one hit, so apparently they won't get much sturdier. It really sounds extremely annoying. I sure hope they are going to mend that in a patch.

it works as in you can do it.  It doesn't help anything.  It does irritate me though because it's simply annoying in every game it's in.  Throws out all immersion (and some games barely have any to begin with). I'd love to see someone make a spoof war movie with everyone bunnyhopping while fighting.

It would be great to see something like this in future patch notes:

• If you bunnyhop too much, you'll start losing mana/power.

I leveled a Warden to 60, and then 65 shortly after Mirkwood arrived. He was indeed a lot of fun solo with his ports and self-healing, but at level cap I soon found out that it was way too much trouble tanking with him in groups. I constantly had to trigger gambits (sort of 3-4-5 key combos) just to get and maintain aggro while also self-heal. It was stressful and way too much micro management for my taste. It was a sad decision because I wanted to try a lot of grouping and raiding, but I just didn't find that funny with a Warden. Also, his low DPS at higher levels started to annoy me as well.

A few months later, I decided to level up a Rune-keeper instead and let him be my new main. I got all the way to 65 again and this time I really hit the jackpot. The RK has a ton of high DPS spells, some of which are instantaneous, and certainly gives a Hunter a run for his money regarding top notch direct damage. At the same time he is also one of two main healers in the game. Think Druid in World of Warcraft with lots of Healing-Over-Time. (The other one is a Minstrel which is more like a Priest or a Paladin in World of Warcraft with direct healing spells.) I loved healing in groups and raids with the RK and thus finally found the fun I never had with the Warden. Apart from a lot of HOTs, the RK also have a good arsenal of group-wide healing abilities and wards, making him more entertaining than the Paladin I used to go to raids with in World of Warcraft.

So if you ask me, a RK is much better than a Warden. Yes, the RK is a glass cannon, but if you play him right you can get around that problem easily. For example, he has a healing runestone he can put down before a fight, much like when the Shaman puts down a totem in World of Warcraft. The runestone draws healing aggro and has a small pool of hit points, so if you concentrate on one enemy at a time, other mobs nearby will hit the runestone instead. You can also daze one mob for 5-15 seconds (depending on an equipped trait). All this makes it possible for me to fight a group of enemies just as easily, as long as I pay attention.

There are a lot of worse choices than Hugh Jackman, but I still thinks he "looks too good" (like a model) to play Roland.

[very]

I just spent a little over a month reading all seven books from one end to another, for the first time (better late than never). There were great moments of science fiction and western/fantasy as well as memorable characters, but perhaps also a bit too many pop culture references and deus ex machina (King even jokes about this later once or twice). I thought the second and the third book (The Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands) were the best in the series. The sixth book (Song of Susannah) was the weakest.

Character names coming up below (i.e. very small spoilers).

For some reason I can't help but imagine actors in the roles of the books I read. I personally think that Daniel Day-Lewis would be excellent as Roland, and as Callahan perhaps Keith Carradine.

As Eddie Dean I imagined Joshua Jackson from Fringe, but I don't think he has brown eyes. He could wear contact lenses, but I admit that perhaps he's not perfect for the role. Still, once I imagined this actor in the role I couldn't replace the image anymore.

Contact.

What I liked about the housing in EQ2 was that you could put actually useful stuff in there, like the AA mirror or the god pedestal where you can refresh your god spells. I also liked the pets crawling around, as long as it wasn't overdone (I settled with 3-4 or so to prevent the frame rate from bogging down my system).

I'll add a few comments too instead of just lurking around like I always do. I also have tooth problems these days which seems to be worse than they should be, and I have even had various other sorts of bad luck (dropping stuff on the floor, etc.) which have had me think about whom I might have hurt lately.

Last Thursday I had a wisdom tooth removed. The process was actually quick and easy and was done in less than half an hour. Now, more than week later, I have had odd excruciating pains which comes and goes in waves and seems to be related to the next tooth that is now the last in line. Sometimes there's a pressure pain on it, but the dentist can't seem to provoke the pain when he knocks on it. As of typing this, the pain has been quite bad today - bad enough for Ibuprofen not being able to cover it completely - but suddenly, an hour ago, it left again without me doing anything to cause it. This will probably only last until I eat dinner. I may have to insist on a root canal this Monday.

However, my pains are probably nothing compared to what you are going through and I just want to wish you the best of luck getting over it. Toothaches can be among the worst crap in life. The funny thing is that when the pains gets past a certain threshold, it completely zaps my ability to concentrate about reading, editing web sites or similar stuff.

Wow, that is really a slick piece of work Chordian!  Are you doing all that with JavaScript and CSS?  It look great and seems to work very smoothly.

Thanks, good to see you find it useful.

It's done with HTML, CSS and a Javascript library called jQuery. The library makes it much easier to add "snazzy" animated effects and it's great fun to learn how to use it. I wish I started using it earlier than I did.

I'm sure you've got more than enough work on your plate.  But it would be really great to see something similar for the Skirmish cosmetics.  I'm very curious as to what all the Soldier cosmetic options actually look like.

I have skirmish camps somewhere on my "ToDo"-list (they have a ton of stuff!) - I wanted to get Mirkwood done first and then maybe the rest of Moria.

Normally I'm just lurking here, but now that you're fiddling with housing and armor items I thought I'd make use of this opportunity to show you a section on my web site where you can see what they look like before buying them. The section is fairly new, so perhaps you haven't heard of it yet: Chordian's LOTRO Barterers

Try going to Lothlórien => Echad Andestel => Ardela - or alternatively - go to Moria => Twenty-first Hall => Rori (click his blue barter icon). Use CTRL+CLICK on the items to see what the housing items looks like. All housing items are covered in the zones, not just from those taxidermists. I had to run around checking houses in several homesteads to find all the images, and even then I had to buy one myself because apparently the item was so boring that no one wanted it.