However, Shepard is a special case. Her enemies are vile (especially so in ME3), they slaughter innocents without remorse, and for the most part do not even appear to be sentient. Killing reapers is about as morally complex as removing a malignant tumor, and I’d be shocked to hear an oncologist have moral reservations about that part of their job.

Now, what really, really bugs me on this show is that it only works until you realise that Leonard could probably do a lot better than that blonde girl.

I figure this will *always* be a problem. It’s just inherent in the nature of these beasties. That’s why I don’t sweat it too much, though it does make it easier to see behind the curtain and break immersion when I’m presented with choices that I’d never really consider to be options.

Join the army and go fight a real war. See your comment is stupid and shows you know next to nothing. In a war you must kill the enemy. But they are basically just like you with family, friends, needs, wants etc.

You took life and had to do it. Its a tough thing to do. There is a difference in taking life because you must vs. rejoicing in the taking of life.

I played the game in college back before there were any expansions, levelling a Priest with a core group of friends. We actually played the game as a group experience, rather than a solo one, and that’s what interested me about the game.

Around level 40, the group decided to cut ways, and solo because it would be faster. Having played primarily holy up to this point, I had to switch to shadow, and found levelling to be painful at best. The group, meanwhile, levelled effortlessly past me, and just left me behind rather than helping me catch up. Eventually, bad blood just made me quit the game entirely.

Whenever someone’s invited me back to play the game, I’ve had three core problems with doing so.

1) The thought of how much money I’d have to plunk down to get the expansions to the game as a cost before I could play the game further.

2) The painful choice of either buying an (overpriced, in my opinion) server transfer to get a 40 level headstart on the levelling process, or starting a new character on my friend’s server (and spending time instead, something i don’t have as much of anymore now that I have a full time job.)

3) The fact that either of those choices then requires me to get all the way up to at least level 80 in order to even be able to see my friends’ characters and be able to group with them for real.

In one offer, WoW has removed all three of my complaints that kept me from wanting to play the game, and made me at least curious to try it again. I don’t think I’ll stick with WoW–RIFT interests me far more–but before these changes, I had no real desire to ever return. Now I can see trying them again, and with the right group of friends, even sticking around for a while.

And perhaps also about the loss of camaradarie. Doing something with a gang of friends, that you used to do a long time ago, and suddenly they bring their kids and husbands, and everything is weird and not as good.

Anyway, what I thought was weird about that whole tv show, was that in season 1 or 2 they featured age of Conan, with way more in game graphics and it centered more about the game, than this did. Yet this time every gaming site, and blog writes about it, as if this is a new thing.
Maybe it is because the show has gotten so much bigger since

In my US guild, a lot of guild members had multiple accounts. The main reason for this is the character limit per server. I had a second account for 3 months when Blizzard had a sale, because I really really wanted to play a Tauren paladin on my main server, but had all character slots full. I never understood why Blizzard is not selling extra character slots. The ladies on Bronzebeard in my two guilds there would beg them to take their money.

Isn’t it well-established within the show that pretty much any female (with the possible exception of Howard’s mother) is intrinsically superior in almost any way you care to name to any male? That’s how I’ve always read it. I can’t immediately think of a single incident in which a female character hasn’t emerged looking either wiser, more grounded, more empathic, better-socialized or just plain human than whichever guy or guys share the scene.

On the reading given of the show in question it sounded to me as though Bernadette was approaching the playing of a computer game as most adults would – a silly frippery not to be taken seriously. Raj’s quoted comment looks to be emphasizing how ridiculous the men are for equating what they do in a video game with manhood.

I think it’s long been clear that the writers of BBT do not like geeks or geek culture. Leonard, the focus of the show, is clearly a bridging character, trapped in his geekhood but yearning to be free of it. Alone of the four geeks he has sufficient empathy and self-awareness to perceive what he is missing. I would also guess that the writers, while they almost certainly must play video games occasionally (everyone does now) are absolutely not gamers and would not expect their audience to be. Getting fine details right would be lost on the majority of their viewers and if getting them (probably deliberately) wrong makes gaming nerds cringe then that wouldn’t be a problem.

Probably should have posted this on the site that had the piece about it…

We all know how successful they were the last time they released a PvE game and added PvP later.

To me that sounds like they will add major PvE nerfs (*) later just to “balance” PvP and probably annoy the “VAST majority of players”.

*) Nerfs to fun. PvP requires characters to be more equal then solo PvE.