Poll of the Day > 28 Geeks Later

(+) Yeah! (+)

Actually I liked the story quite a bit, but I was expecting the music to stick in my brain in that "Broadway" way. The music was good, Matchmaker was probably my favorite one. It just didn't stand out as super catchy or memorable.

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On a whim, I wound up checking the Saints Row games on Steam and saw that they're running a sale. Even though I have all of them on the ps3 (except Gat out of Hell), I'm tempted to buy them again just for the perceived convenience (and I guess PC mods?) and because they're really, really cheap.

Otherwise I was just going to re-buy SR2 because I don't feel like dusting off my ps3, hooking it up to my "new" (well, probably two year-old now but barely used) tv, etc.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Including some that are very popular these days.

>_>

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Metalsonic66 posted...

Actually I liked the story quite a bit, but I was expecting the music to stick in my brain in that "Broadway" way. The music was good, Matchmaker was probably my favorite one. It just didn't stand out as super catchy or memorable.

Well, to be fair, the Broadway sound has changed over the years. There's a pretty wide range between South Pacific, Chorus Line, Phantom, 42nd Street, Les Mis, Rent, and so on. The sound of a given musical tends to depend on what era it was originally written in.

Fiddler was a 60s musical. From that period when Broadway was just sort of leaving behind the Rodgers and Hammerstein style of musical but hadn't quite moved into the hippie-influenced style that led to stuff like Jesus Christ Superstar or Hair. So it won't necessarily have the same sort of sound as some other musicals might, depending on what you're usually interested in.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Fiddler was a 60s musical. From that period when Broadway was just sort of leaving behind the Rodgers and Hammerstein style of musical but hadn't quite moved into the hippie-influenced style that led to stuff like Jesus Christ Superstar or Hair. So it won't necessarily have the same sort of sound as some other musicals might, depending on what you're usually interested in.

I will say that I rather liked Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, although the blending of musical styles doesn't really hold up well.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Well, to be fair, the Broadway sound has changed over the years. There's a pretty wide range between South Pacific, Chorus Line, Phantom, 42nd Street, Les Mis, Rent, and so on. The sound of a given musical tends to depend on what era it was originally written in.

Fiddler was a 60s musical. From that period when Broadway was just sort of leaving behind the Rodgers and Hammerstein style of musical but hadn't quite moved into the hippie-influenced style that led to stuff like Jesus Christ Superstar or Hair. So it won't necessarily have the same sort of sound as some other musicals might, depending on what you're usually interested in.

Was Yentl from that same era, or was that even Broadway? I kinda felt the same about that one. Good story, good music, but I didn't find myself humming the tunes later. Also Jewish people lol

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Truly, the End Times are upon us. Lo, the Signs and Portents have brought forth a dark omen indeed!

http://heroquest.avalonhill.com/en-us
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Revelation34 posted...

I want to preorder one but it would probably be stupid to do so since first release consoles tend to break.

I still have my original launch PS4. I got it like 2 months after it was released, and it's still going strong. I had to replace my power cord last month, but aside from that I've had no issues.

Now I went through 3 Xbox 360's, and 2 PS3's, and just one Xbone too, so I've had good luck this consoke generation.

Fun fact: I still have my original SNES from 1993 that my dad stole and pawned for crack money. My mom and brother got it back, and it still works. However, my Switch isn't charging anymore. I have no clue if it's my console or power cord with this one either. Off to Amazon.

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Plus I'll mention that my 40gb (iirc, launch was 20gb and 60b then the less-functional 40gb and 80gb came out) was what YLOD'd on me, and was my first home console to fail. (And the ps3 slim I got to replace it has some issues.) While I'm also leery of launch defects, there are no guarantees of things lasting any more *and* some functionalities can be removed the longer things go.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Truly, the End Times are upon us. Lo, the Signs and Portents have brought forth a dark omen indeed!

http://heroquest.avalonhill.com/en-us

Huh?

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I was on the cusp of buying some model kits from a Bluefin sale tonight (two from the Fate/ series and then three from LBX (Little Battlers eXperience) when I took some time to figure out how large the actual models would be and finally decided not to bother. That and I haven't completed a model in years. I still have a Tallgeese III (Gundam Wing) that I don't even then I started then another gunpla I began but never finished. (I also continue to be dismayed by how terrible the Bluefin site is.)

The thing that kinda killed it was that the listed height for the LBX was listed as 4" for two of them and 5.1" for the other. While 5" isn't a bad height for a model kit, 4" just seems kinda small for what it is. Meh.

Speaking of disappointments, I reached the end of Blacklist tonight and was disappointed to see how awful the animation looks. As I mentioned in the watching topic, I guess it's better than nothing but still...

EDIT: Just realized that wasn't the series finale. Not sure what I thought it was. Kinda weird. At any rate, it has another season so... yay?

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Microsoft is buying Bethesda Softworks, for a metric **** ton of money. (7.5 billion dollars.) Bethesda claims nothing will change, and they're making the same games that they always will, but that's definitely a lie. Microsoft wants The Elder Scrolls and Doom forXbox alone since Halo isstruggling. (I kind of miss Quake) Definitely to stick it to Sony.

As a Playstation fan, I would be worried, but I don't play The Elder Scrolls, and Microsoft has a history of messing up once great studios and killing studios and franchises. (Rare and Westwood comes to mind.) They've seemed to resurrect Killer Instinct, but then let it die a slow death again. Battletoads was apparently good, but they put it on Gamepass, and no one cares.

It's a big bold move, but we won't see the results until 2023 or 2024, well into this upcoming console generation. It's an arms race, and I'm proud of Microsoft for loading up their guns and firing a shot.

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-bethesda-zenimax-aquisition

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Considering the way Bethesda's been fucking up lately, I'd be less worried about Microsoft ruining Bethesda than I would about Bethesda poisoning Microsoft.

Then again, I've always thought Bethesda's rep has been vastly overinflated for years anyway, so I have like zero nostalgia or love for the company to be fearful of, as opposed to the slow aching tragedy that I've been living through watching EA slit Bioware's throat and then fucking the corpse.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Considering the way Bethesda's been fucking up lately, I'd be less worried about Microsoft ruining Bethesda than I would about Bethesda poisoning Microsoft.

Then again, I've always thought Bethesda's rep has been vastly overinflated for years anyway, so I have like zero nostalgia or love for the company to be fearful of, as opposed to the slow aching tragedy that I've been living through watching EA slit Bioware's throat and then fucking the corpse.

The day EA bought Bioware is the day you can see the soul get extracted from their body. What a shame. As for Bethesda, the only good recent Fallout was "Glitch Vegas." The story was damn good, and Bethesda didn't even make that game.


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Yeah, Bathesda's going to die.

The annoying thing is that Bathesda, as a publisher, would actually publish interesting and fun games. That's just not going to happen if it's just being folded into Microsoft.

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Maybe this will work out well for them.

Microsoft needs more exclusives like a dying man in the desert needs Gatorade

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The Wave Master posted...

Microsoft is buying Bethesda Softworks, for a metric **** ton of money. (7.5 billion dollars.) Bethesda claims nothing will change, and they're making the same games that they always will, but that's definitely a lie. Microsoft wants The Elder Scrolls and Doom forXbox alone since Halo isstruggling. (I kind of miss Quake) Definitely to stick it to Sony.

Probably the most depressing gaming news I've heard in a while. The only silver lining is that even if ES and FO becomes console-exclusive, they'll likely still be on PC as well so I won't get stuck buying a XB whatever for them.

The Wave Master posted...

Battletoads was apparently good, but they put it on Gamepass, and no one cares.

The graphics looked awful so I hadn't cared. It looked more than an Earthworm Jim game than Battletoads. Plus it's on a Steam, so...

The Wave Master posted...

It's a big bold move, but we won't see the results until 2023 or 2024, well into this upcoming console generation. It's an arms race, and I'm proud of Microsoft for loading up their guns and firing a shot.

Yeah, that's about as big as you can get right now.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Considering the way Bethesda's been fucking up lately, I'd be less worried about Microsoft ruining Bethesda than I would about Bethesda poisoning Microsoft.

Example?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Then again, I've always thought Bethesda's rep has been vastly overinflated for years anyway, so I have like zero nostalgia or love for the company to be fearful of

Considering that the company hasn't been around all that long, it'd be weird for you to have nostalgia. As for its rep, ES alone is massive.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Microsoft needs more exclusives like a dying man in the desert needs Gatorade

Kind of a mixed metaphor considering that Gatorade would be a terrible choice of drink for the desert.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Truly, the End Times are upon us. Lo, the Signs and Portents have brought forth a dark omen indeed!

http://heroquest.avalonhill.com/en-us

Still have my original box, though I need to put the cardboard furniture back inside it. (I used to use those for D&D when miniatures were less annoying to me.) I thought HQ had become a standard pencil-and-paper game, though? Glorantha, IIRC?

(Related: Good to see the Avalon Hill brand again, though I never did figure out the right way to play Dragonhunt. Those devs were always good at really crunchy board games.)

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The Wave Master posted...

Microsoft is buying Bethesda Softworks, for a metric **** ton of money. (7.5 billion dollars.) Bethesda claims nothing will change, and they're making the same games that they always will, but that's definitely a lie. Microsoft wants The Elder Scrolls and Doom forXbox alone since Halo isstruggling. (I kind of miss Quake) Definitely to stick it to Sony.

As a Playstation fan, I would be worried, but I don't play The Elder Scrolls, and Microsoft has a history of messing up once great studios and killing studios and franchises. (Rare and Westwood comes to mind.) They've seemed to resurrect Killer Instinct, but then let it die a slow death again. Battletoads was apparently good, but they put it on Gamepass, and no one cares.

It's a big bold move, but we won't see the results until 2023 or 2024, well into this upcoming console generation. It's an arms race, and I'm proud of Microsoft for loading up their guns and firing a shot.

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-bethesda-zenimax-aquisition

Microsoft is EA?
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Zeus posted...

Kind of a mixed metaphor considering that Gatorade would be a terrible choice of drink for the desert.

It would be refreshing though

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Eh. Bethesda has been slowly trending downwards, and even at their best of times, they can't program a game without glitch-ridden spaghetti code to save their lives, anyways. This might actually be better for Bethesda in the long run.

That said, as a glorious PC master race user, I won't have to worry about not playing their games. Just maybe the shoddy optimization with the continuing trend of catering to the console crowd.

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Should we start thinking about workshopping the next topic title? This one went fast...

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Shit, you got #420

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Zeus posted...

Example?

Pretty much every creative decision they've made over the last few years or so?

It used to be that their reputation was almost bulletproof, and people would fall over themselves to excuse or justify buggy game design as "Well, it's okay, modders will fix it" or "Yeah, but give it a few years and it will be a great game", but they've been stepping on rake after rake after rake and slowly turning the community as a whole against them, to the point where now release announcements from them are more likely to spark negativity than optimism.

They still hold the Elder Scrolls trump card, but honestly, they've milked Skyrim so hard and hyped it up so much that it almost feels like no possible follow-up game could ever live up to it. Especially not games set in places like Elsweyr (the most likely possibility), Valenwood, or Black Marsh. Hammerfell (the other likely possibility) might have advantages of its own, but it depends on how they handle it.

Starfield might be the fulcrum point, though. If it comes out and is kind of shit, the backlash might hit them hard.

(Not financially, though. We all know gamers tend to buy based on their memory/opinion of past products more than they do the worth of the actual new thing, but that building resentment tends to be cumulative. But that only takes you so far.)



Zeus posted...

Considering that the company hasn't been around all that long, it'd be weird for you to have nostalgia.

They've been around longer than some PotDers have been alive. They're certainly older than most of the companies I DO still have some degree of love/nostalgia for, and plenty of ones I used to have affection for before they either ruined their own legacies or got ruined by outside powers.

Honestly, one of the few companies I can think of that's older than Bethesda that I used to be really fond of is Squeenix, and honestly I've hated them for like 15 years now. The merger basically killed everything worthwhile in either company for me - the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
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I usually wait until the last 50 post, but since I got yelled at, and lost a regular, because I missed the request of a regular, then the earlier the better.

Post your next topic title suggestions.

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I_Abibde posted...

Still have my original box, though I need to put the cardboard furniture back inside it. (I used to use those for D&D when miniatures were less annoying to me.)

...and now I'm going to post this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx8sl2uC46A



I_Abibde posted...

I thought HQ had become a standard pencil-and-paper game, though? Glorantha, IIRC?

Different HeroQuest.

The Hasbro board game was based on Warhammer Fantasy (and references a lot of Warhammer concepts and mentions a few locations from that setting). The Glorantha setting started out as a board game but wasn't actually called HeroQuest until after it became a tabletop RPG.

And yes, that IS very confusing. It was a bit of a trademark tangle at the time (HeroQuest the RPG had to publish as Hero Wars or RuneQuest at various times because Hasbro holds the name for board games).

Obviously, Hasbro STILL has the brand at this point, if they're going to announce something involving it tomorrow. Whether that's a simple re-release of the same board/pieces/system or a complete updated upgrade version, we won't know until they tell us. But it's interesting nonetheless.
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Is Microsoft known to use Denuvo? Bethesda doesn't use it so I really hope Microsoft doesn't ruin the new Elder Scrolls game with it.
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If we push to 500 tonight, we can call the next topic "Fall Geekquinox".

>_>

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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Should we start thinking about workshopping the next topic title? This one went fast...

In honor of the Bethesda sale, we could go with The Geeks Sell Out (or maybe Fallout of the Elder Geeks)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

They still hold the Elder Scrolls trump card, but honestly, they've milked Skyrim so hard and hyped it up so much that it almost feels like no possible follow-up game could ever live up to it. Especially not games set in places like Elsweyr (the most likely possibility), Valenwood, or Black Marsh. Hammerfell (the other likely possibility) might have advantages of its own, but it depends on how they handle it.

I'd be hyped for Elsweyr (although it'd possibly be divisive given the Khajiit-centered setting) or Black Marsh.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

They've been around longer than some PotDers have been alive.

A somewhat dubious statement (considering that new people rarely come to Gamefaqs) that would be meaningless anyway, especially considering the company is only about 20 years old and became big maybe 15 years ago with Morrowind.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

They're certainly older than most of the companies I DO still have some degree of love/nostalgia for, and plenty of ones I used to have affection for before they either ruined their own legacies or got ruined by outside powers.

https://i.imgur.com/U8e38EI.gif

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Honestly, one of the few companies I can think of that's older than Bethesda that I used to be really fond of is Squeenix, and honestly I've hated them for like 15 years now. The merger basically killed everything worthwhile in either company for me - the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

I realize a lot of the game companies I love either went out of business or merged. I suppose Nintendo and Capcom are the only ones left.

The Wave Master posted...

I usually wait until the last 50 post, but since I got yelled at, and lost a regular, because I missed the request of a regular, then the earlier the better.

Post your next topic title suggestions.

Can't you lure them back via offering them the next choice via PM?


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Zeus posted...

https://i.imgur.com/U8e38EI.gif (click to expand)

To a few of us, Y2K was still like a decade ago. 20 years is plenty of time for "nostalgia" to develop. 25 years is enough to get antique plates on a car. There are Saturns that can get antique plates at this point.

I just crossed the point where kids born the day I graduated high school are "antiques".

So don't give me this gatekeeping bullshit about nostalgia. It hasn't been a year of this covid-1984 Clownworld and I already have "nostalgia" for catching live music at venues, movies at theaters, and not having to brown bag a beer in a park with a gas station sandwich because I can't go to a bar like a normal human being and order a pizza and a pitcher. I have to keep my FWB at arm's length instead of making things official because we're both caring for at-risk parents. I couldn't get a steak at a restaurant with friends or family on my goddamned birthday two weeks ago because of the pandemic.

So don't you DARE fucking gatekeep "nostalgia" in the world we live in Zeus. I usually defend you, but this is the sort of thing that makes me want to choke you.

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October is soon so something Halloween related. Geekula?
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Fall Geeks
Since everything is Fall Guys related now.

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Geeks and Recreation
3rd Geek from the Sun
Rules of EnGeekment
How I Met Your Geek
The Big Geek Theory

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WhiskeyDisk posted...

So don't you DARE fucking gatekeep "nostalgia" in the world we live in Zeus. I usually defend you, but this is the sort of thing that makes me want to choke you.

Don't you dare gatekeep my gatekeeping. You keep your gates and I'll keep mine. As the proverb says, "Good gates make good neighbors."

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Zeus posted...

Don't you dare gatekeep my gatekeeping. You keep your gates and I'll keep mine. As the proverb says, "Good gates make good neighbors."

I'm willing to bet I'm bigger than you and no stranger to violence if push came to shove champ.

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"Hey, you. Let's fight."
"Them's fightin' words!"

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Yeah, I'm not going to let a guy try and piss higher on the wall over this topic or my hometown when I've gone to bat for them before in open forum on both fronts in the past.

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WhiskeyDisk posted...

I'm willing to bet I'm bigger than you and no stranger to violence if push came to shove champ.

The bigger the neighbor, the bigger your gate ought to be! At any rate, that gate just got 10 feet taller.

WhiskeyDisk posted...

Yeah, I'm not going to let a guy try and piss higher on the wall over this topic or my hometown when I've gone to bat for them before in open forum on both fronts in the past.

I'm sure I've gone to bat for you at times as well in the past. Honestly, you're getting pretty defensive. Might I suggest a stronger gate? Maybe something wrought-iron with a sturdy lock?

That and I'm not sure what you mean by "on both fronts"

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Zeus posted...

The bigger the neighbor, the bigger your gate ought to be! At any rate, that gate just got 10 feet taller.

I'm sure I've gone to bat for you at times as well in the past. Honestly, you're getting pretty defensive. Might I suggest a stronger gate? Maybe something wrought-iron with a sturdy lock?

That and I'm not sure what you mean by "on both fronts"

Undertaker had 12' iron gates around his house back when he still lived on Shippan point. We still egged and TP'd his house for Halloween because he was literally giving out candy corn. He's just had his hip and back fused so there was fuck all chance he was going to chase us. Make your fences as big as you like. They shot Tough Enough in warehouses we used to tag. There's a whole compound off of Hamilton nobody knows about where WWE shoots all of their off-event shit. Want directions to the gate? Want directions to the hole in the fence back on Sutton?

Make all the fences you want. I can tell you 3 places within a block to gank a ladder.

As to going to bat for me, lol. I don't need it, I don't want it. I still have a thumb ring that you can take to at least 3 bars in Stamford and call in ridiculous favors in my name if you knew it.

As to my reputation here? Pfft. I've been around for so long it really, really doesn't matter. Half the active posters here have no idea what the bad old days were like. Have at it.

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Sounds like I'll need a gate around my gate to keep my gate safe. Maybe also a moat.

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Zeus posted...

Sounds like I'll need a gate around my gate to keep it safe. Maybe also a moat.

Good luck with that. Alligators can't survive the new England winter's, and Stamford's sewers don't go deep enough to keep them alive. 2 inches of rain and they have to let the runoff go straight into the sound or the lower east side floods up to the mall.

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When I say I was a townie back in Stamford, you literally have no idea what that means.

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No, Entity isn't coming back. He/she was upset that his repeated post about Final Fantasy XIV were ignored. I personally don't care about FF XIV, but I never disrespected him/her about the whole situation. Then Entity got upset that we talked about wrestling and ignored some of his/her other post too.

I apologized several times in public and private, and told Entity that he/she was always welcome here. Which he/She is.

I feel bad for how it all went down, but I'm not going to force myself to talk about and like things I don't know or care about at all. The entire point of these topics is to talk about what you like. I like wrestling and football and will bring them up from time to time, but I'm not going to get upset if someone doesn't like exactly what I do. I'm almost 40 years old, and the world is way too big and enough things exist in this world that u do or do not card about that I have to limit myself to what I like. I spend 20 hours of week with needles in my chest just to stay alive. Forgive me if I don't want to spend my precious free time on things I have no interest in just to make others happy.

If this sounds catty, then I'm sorry, but I am not going to feel bad for not liking something.

I will say this going forward: If you don't like a subject being talked about, then don't get upset. Just post about what you like, and don't get upset if it's not something you are interested in, we're all adults here.

I'm also sorry if I aired the dirty laundry.

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No worries, I ignore everything I don't have an opinion in too.
I don't play MMO's, I don't watch wrestling, I don't care about the old games you play.

I just skip most of it, I just don't have time to read about a mcman or whatever, I don't have the emotional whatever to give a fuck.

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I have no beef with Terri, she knows that...I'm sure well over a decade of back and forth is enough to prove that to her. She knows how to find me, same as all the former assassins.

While we're airing dirty laundry, Knives won't acknowledge my existence since he went full sjw. There were matters of business regarding the zetaboard transfer to Tapatalk that required his input that all I got was radio silence over when former members were having metooable shit popping up in professional situations from when they were edgy teens a decade ago. That's some weak sauce shit when it's strictly business if we're being honest.

People change. At least people that weren't already pushing 30 back when this place was a thing. All of you that knew me from AMW/SBA/ProM should all know my door is always open, and I'm not terribly hard to find.

Just sayin'.

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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Alligators can't survive the new England winter's,

Then alligators for summer, polar bears or walruses for winter? (And stow them at the Norwalk Aquarium during the off-season or something.) Or I could just go animal-less on the moat. I'm honestly not sure how often animals were used in moats historically.

WhiskeyDisk posted...

When I say I was a townie back in Stamford, you literally have no idea what that means.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8IOCzgqYZI

When I hear "townie," I mostly think of 70s & 80s college films so I can't imagine I would know what you mean. And back when I worked in Stamford, it's not I did a lot of exploring there either -- I occasionally killed some time at the Ferguson library or popped into the mall or a local store or restaurant (so I wasn't driving back right at rush hour) -- so I didn't experience whatever subculture the area might have. (Although the few co-workers who lived in the area were always mentioning this or that.)

The Wave Master posted... He/she was upset that his repeated post about Final Fantasy XIV were ignored. I personally don't care about FF XIV, but I never disrespected him/her about the whole situation. Then Entity got upset that we talked about wrestling and ignored some of his/her other post too.

Well, that's be to be expected when you don't have FF XIV players in the topic =p Like half the stuff I mention doesn't generate any discussion either, but that's okay.

I wasn't aware that was the additional context. I thought it was just a gripe with being ignored on the topic name.


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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Good luck with that. Alligators can't survive the new England winter's, and Stamford's sewers don't go deep enough to keep them alive. 2 inches of rain and they have to let the runoff go straight into the sound or the lower east side floods up to the mall.

What about the alligators in New York City's sewers?

WhiskeyDisk posted...

When I say I was a townie back in Stamford, you literally have no idea what that means.

You met Travis?
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Off topic for the crazy stuff and dirty laundry airing, but damn does Metroid Prime have great music.

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Revelation34 posted...

You met Travis?

i used to feed Travis ice cream and french fries down at Shippan beach growing up. the guy that had to drop Travis was one of my clients at the time. it really fucked him up. the family that owned travis used to pay me quite well under the table to do ridealongs with their yougest tow truck driver on repos. 73 repos and i only had to pull my pistol once.

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Zeus posted...

I'd be hyped for Elsweyr (although it'd possibly be divisive given the Khajiit-centered setting) or Black Marsh.

The vast majority of gamers (especially more casual ones) would probably kind of hate Black Marsh. It certainly wouldn't appeal to the more casual player, which is what the success of Skyrim was mostly built on. Most polls I've seen rank Argonians lower than anything other than Orcs, and the fact that their entire region is mostly swampy jungle and Mesoamerican ruins really doesn't scratch the same generic fantasy itch for Western audiences that places like Skyrim or High Rock do.

Elsweyr has the advantage of being about cat-people, so the Internet won't be able to stop squeeing over it, but it would also be like 90% desert and maybe 10% rainforesty jungle, which might turn off the sort of people who spent most of their time ranting about how pretty they though Skyrim was.

ESO is actually a pretty good gauge of what various regions will probably turn out like if they got full versions.



Zeus posted...

A somewhat dubious statement (considering that new people rarely come to Gamefaqs) that would be meaningless anyway, especially considering the company is only about 20 years old and became big maybe 15 years ago with Morrowind.

Not really dubious at all, considering the company has actually been around since 1986, and there are definitely PotDers younger than 34 years old.

But even just Elder Scrolls as a franchise is 26 years old (and there are PotDers younger than that, too). And while you can say it "became big" with Morrowind (something I'd tend to dispute, pushing Oblivion as the game that really made it a household name, and Skyrim being the one that took it fully mainstream and established its current popularity - Morrowind still has the stink of old-school grognards moaning about how much better things were in the old days when everything was complicated and somewhat niche, back when they felt special because they were video game hipsters and the thing they loved wasn't entirely mainstream yet), that's not really what we've been talking about.

The specific statement I was responding to wasn't about how long the company has been popular, or how long the specific franchise has been popular, but how long the company has been around. Trying to redefine when a company "is around" based solely on the first time they released a game that you personally care about is kind of just moving the goalposts (especially since, while you might not care about Arena or Daggerfall, they were popular enough at the time to result in sequels - without which, we wouldn't be talking about Skyrim or ESVI right now, because the franchise would no longer exist).



Zeus posted...

http://i.imgur.com/U8e38EI.gif

Nostalgia doesn't really mean "that thing I liked as a kid", even if most people online use it that way as a shorthand for "childhood nostalgia". Nostalgia is really just sentimentality for the past (often somewhat melancholic), which means if you can contrast the present to a past "good old days" or "golden age", you can easily have nostalgia for it. Even if it wasn't all THAT long ago.

Hell, I have nostalgia for the times when this site wasn't mostly shit, and that was only about a dozen years ago.

I definitely have nostalgia for the "good old days" of BioWare (which I didn't know or care about prior to around 2000 or so) and Bungie (which I didn't really know from the Marathon/Myth/Pathways Into Darkness days, as much as from Halo in 2003). Enough nostalgia to mourn when those companies turned into something I really don't like - in both cases having their internal company culture stripped away by corporate influence and killing the thing that made them special in the first place.

10 years ago, if I heard a new game was coming out made by either BioWare or Bungie, I'd be excited for it without even knowing anything about it. Today, if I heard a new game was coming out made by either BioWare or Bungie, I'd immediately be pessimistic and cynical about it, assuming it will be terrible, and will show very little interest until after far more details are out and then only if it seems like they've somehow accidentally lucked into something worthwhile.

There are very few studios I've ever really had that sort of loyalty and nostalgia for over the years, and most of them are dead to me now. Square has been shit ever since the merger. Obsidian was slowly collapsing under its own weight even before Microsoft bought it (presumably to work on shitty exclusives for a console I have no real desire to buy). BioWare has basically been careening downhill since ME3 (and arguably, from the moment EA bought them). Bungie pretty much sold their souls and lost their minds after Halo: Reach (jumping ship from Microsoft to Activision).

(And even prior to BioWare and Oblivion, there was Black Isle and Interplay - though that didn't slowly turn into something I hate as much as it kind of exploded and left gooey bits of IP all over the walls, which Bethesda then came in and scraped off to steal for themselves.)

On a smaller scale, there are franchises that I absolutely loved at one point, but now am ambivalent about at best, and actively hate at worst. I loved Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands, but Borderlands 3 is pretty much shit (and I no longer care if they ever make a Borderlands 4). Saints Row slowly became one of my favorite franchises in a very long time, and then Agents of Mayhem sort of ruined the entire setting (and left me lukewarm about a potential Saints Row 5).

In all of those cases, I absolutely have a melancholic bittersweet nostalgia for the time when I was able to love a franchise or company unreservedly, looking forward to new releases without cynicism or disgust. A time long since passed, that lives on only in memory.

Which I was contrasting to Bethesda Elder Scrolls, which I've almost never given much of a fuck about. I liked Oblivions, Skyrim, and ESO, but I never loved them (and I loathed Morrowind, so I started out with a very low opinion of the developer anyway). For as much as I loved Fallout: New Vegas, I was mostly meh about Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.

Basically, Bethesda's fuck-ups really haven't disillusioned be, because I was never "illusioned" in the first place. I wasn't blinded by love or fond memories or - I've always turned a critical eye to almost everything Bethesda has released, and have been more than willing to call bullshit on their litany of issues (they're basically the reason I coined the phrase "If your game needs multiple fan mods to be good, then it's a shit game in the first place").

But the people who HAVE been blinded by their love, who have always made excuses or tried to justify or forgive Bethesda screwing up, are slowly becoming more bitter and disillusioned by those screw ups. Negativity is rising, and that negativity may scour games like Starfield and ESVI in ways it wouldn't have if they came out 10 years ago.
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The Wave Master posted...

No, Entity isn't coming back. He/she was upset that his repeated post about Final Fantasy XIV were ignored. I personally don't care about FF XIV, but I never disrespected him/her about the whole situation. Then Entity got upset that we talked about wrestling and ignored some of his/her other post too.

I feel bad for how it all went down, but I'm not going to force myself to talk about and like things I don't know or care about at all. The entire point of these topics is to talk about what you like. I like wrestling and football and will bring them up from time to time, but I'm not going to get upset if someone doesn't like exactly what I do. I'm almost 40 years old, and the world is way too big and enough things exist in this world that u do or do not card about that I have to limit myself to what I like.

At the time I felt like Entity was vastly overreacting, and my assumption was that there was a ton of pent-up frustration and anxiety there that had literally nothing to do with this topic and everything to do with things going on in Entity's life outside of the Internet/PotD/Geek topics (which would be understandable, considering the current state of the world and how stir-crazy some people are getting from being locked up in quarantine).

I still feel that way.

I personally ignore FFXIV topics because I couldn't give less of a fuck about FFXIV if you paid me to give less of a fuck about FFXIV. But I also never threw tantrums when other people here DID ramble on about FFXIV because they did care. Not every geek is going to be interested in every single thing every other geek is interested in.

As hard as it can be to tell sometimes, I don't feel like I need to be personally engaged with EVERY SINGLE discussion here. Nor do I feel personally attacked or rejected if I throw out something I find interesting or care about and no one here seems interested.

To be frank, this (and ignoring people's suggestions for topic titles) has been how we've done things in these topics since the very beginning (hell, Wave ignores my suggestions for topic titles in favor of titles I think are terrible all the time!). If someone doesn't have a problem with it for 12 years and then suddenly decides that it's absolutely a deal-breaker that forces them to leave the topic forever, that tells me there are way more significant things going wrong in your life than mostly-strangers on the Internet not talking about the sort of nerd things you want them to be talking about. It strikes me as lashing out at the things you can control because of the helplessness you feel over the things you can't control. Where your nerves are so raw that even the most inconsequential nonsense thing can set you off on an emotional explosion.

I've been there at times in my life (though now I'm mostly just too old and tired to get all that freaked out by things).

But I'm not going to try to tiptoe on eggshells or completely fake my way through a situation just to soothe someone else's bruised feelings. Life's too short for that kind of co-dependent sort of relationship.

I'd be happy to see Entity come back and chat about whatever topics spring to mind, or spark interest, or whatever. But I don't think the entire tone and context of the topics should radically change just so that we're only talking about the things Entity wants to talk about, or paying the proper amount of attention and deference.

And hey, it's possible that we just never talk about things Entity is actually interested in, and there are other places to talk about those things, so it just feels like a waste of time and energy to post here. And that's understandable, too. People move on, their tastes change, and not everyone is going to be interested in the sort of stuff we talk about here. Que sera sera.

I might feel different if Entity was like "Guys, could we maybe talk about some of the things I like?" and our response was really hostile or insulting, or if we were really abusive about things in general. Like a "Well, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out the door, dickhead!" kind of attitude. But I don't think anyone here reacted that way at all, and some people went out of their way to be even more accommodating than was strictly justified. There was clearly an effort made to be understanding, apologetic, and friendly. At which point the rejection is more sort of on the head of the person doing the rejecting than it is on the thing being rejected.
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I have to agree with PO here. Entity hung in there on many of the spinoffs back when they were still a thing and far less...accommodating to her specific situation.

Even IRL a lot of people aren't themselves with the punches 2020 keeps dishing out. All we can do is soldier on without her if that's how it is.

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