MTG Online is the money sink, not this one. Duels of the Planeswalkers was incredibly cheap for 2012, the game itself was under £15, I don't recall, and there were 3 DLCs of £1.99 each that added a total of 8 new decks. I played that over 100 hours and much longer than that modding in more cards and decks with the unofficial tools, it's the best value for money game I've played in a while.

The 2013 iteration is £6.99! Even with just the vanilla decks I'd recommend this straight away to someone who enjoys playing Magic. I've never touched a real card in my life, I just play this on the basis of it being a turn based strategy game with very good rules and AI.

Perhaps that is true. I suspect though their research tells them that those well informed, principled and determined enough to actually say no next time are in the extreme minority and that the millions will still buy the next big thing of theirs, either because they feel it's worth it despite these annoyances or to be a part of the next big thing. They are probably surprised by how messy this one has become but I don't think they'll conclude that they are jeapardising their immediate future. As long as they are not forced to close the RMAH completely, the money will flow in for years and the people who successfully added this new revenue stream will be showered in cars and money!

All the vitriolic noise, bad headlines and customer dissatisfaction in the world are short term and acceptable in the eyes of Blizzard. These days the only variables that they track are how much can you push the monetisation of this product, and how much will it detract from the monetisation of the next product. This was a record breaking release and if Diablo 4 were to be released in say 7 years time, millions will buy that too. There is literally no chance that inside Blizzard they are talking about this as a failure. They have chosen to fend off the backlash on a day by day basis and push on with the plan, and given that their aim is to maximise revenue, they are doing the correct thing and will succeed!

Having said that, this wriggling is quite fun to watch from the sidelines, it's a bit like a slow motion car crash!

Pankin wrote on Jun 18, 2012, 21:12:
Can you configure a screen of death with a custom color? So for instance, in addition to a BSOD, might you have a RSOD or a GSOD?

I love it! "For fuck's sake, another white with a hint of avacado screen of death!!!"

Yeah, my Vaio laptop is about 8 years old and Firefox on Windows 7 x64 is no trouble at all. I guess if you were placing an order from work you might be annoyed to pay a surcharge but in general I think it's quite a creative solution to encourage people to upgrade.

Ah, modding support! It occurred to me that the Civ 5 engine would play a great game of the Spectrum classic Chaos - The Battle of Wizards! One unit per tile, hitpoints and ranged combat, multiplayer etc, it could be fantastic. Since my coding and modelling skills are not up to it I will just have to keep my fingers crossed...

A faction and some new mechanics, this is quite straightforward DLC but at least we are a step up from the horse armour!

Yeah I remember Civ 5 used to do the same thing to my GPU, Warlock doesn't seem so bad for me though for some reason.

I've actually parked playing Warlock for the moment, I think it needs more updates, multiplayer and mod support to reach its potential, then it really could be huge. In its current state it has a handful of issues:

- Too much emphasis on getting units from land features, so at many points your best available units do not coincide with your race flavour, such as healer race using vampires, beast races using halberdiers etc.

- The tactical AI seems pretty good but the strategic, not so much. The late game is more about a small number of very powerful units and the AI does not adapt well as it stands.

- Diplomacy is incredibly basic currently, generally other civs hate you and make demands if you are a rival, or will hound you for treaties every turn once you are noticably stronger than them.

- The role of magic should be increased, unit buffs are permanent so you get those in place before war. Damage and heal spells are mostly one per turn so they have less influence than perhaps ten attacking units per turn during a fight.

I've already had a lot more fun than with Civ 5 in its current guise and as a budget title I've had no regrets whatsoever. With a few updates and letting people go mad with user created content this could still be a monster game!

So will Battlefield 3 threads or Diablo 3 threads be the biggest rage magnets in days to come? This is a brave and ambitious showing by EA but I think that Diablo might still have the advantage!

Regarding our web addiction - I was expecting a photo of a pallid Jabba the Hut with keyboard and headset rather than a bar chart!

I put it to you all that that "clever" dog just tried all possible actions involving those drawers until finally one permutation got him up on top! A cat would have been on top of there in seconds.

BTW I've finally been able to play the Torchlight 2 beta. I am loving it, it really does trigger the Diablo nostalgia. I'm not as bothered by the cartoon style graphics as I thought I might be and the main action is amazing! I just played up to general grell with a bow outlander and have had a blast. The action is really polished and some of the creatures and magic attacks are very well conceived! I'm playing on Veteran and there is not a problem with being to easy at all. I managed to kill Grell without dying but I managed a prolonged state of "oh shit oh shit" for about 5 minutes! I died just the once, opening two trapped chests side by side when on less than half health...

What the hell is Joomla? Is it anything like Skooma?

Fibrocyte wrote on May 22, 2012, 04:49:
That's a new low for the bickering on this website.

Surely you jest? That's a completely understandable stance to have. I avoid Chrome for the same reasons.

I used to completely reset my Oblivion installation every 18 months or so, and research and download a complete set of latest mod updates to rebuild with the best that was around at the time. You could pour time into nothing but mod configuration doing that!

Creston wrote on May 20, 2012, 16:49:
Does anyone know of a GOOD level slowing mod?

I am a little behind with the mod scene too, but I would think that a level rate mod is probably pretty hard to do wrong. The Well Rested perk when you sleep in a decent bed already modifies your global skill gain rate, so there is a direct handle on the overall skill rate this time round which runs no risk of adjusting some skills more than others. I would suggest that the construction set could easily be used to add such a skill rate adjustment to either the enchantments that stones give you, or perhaps the racial abilities, or perhaps just a permanent enchantment that kicks in the first time you load up with the mod.

Given that someone always wants a skill rate adjustment mod, I would anticipate that someone's already done exactly this and that the complexity is roughly on par with a "hello world" mod. If it doesn't exist you could probably slap one together quickly or I could probably have a crack at doing the same. I am no pro modder but I did make some simple gameplay adjustments in Morrowind and Oblivion to tune the games to my taste.

Edit: oh and browsing mods for two days and not actually getting around to loading up the game is a proud Elder Scrolls tradition!

I had the spectrum version! As I kid I only won once, but I played a lot of it. It's ridiculous thinking back that a Spectrum game would need a manual with such a big spine on it.

Prez wrote on May 15, 2012, 21:51:
I'm still stunned Blue actually used the "arrow to the knee" line after his comment. UGH!

In fairness he referred to the phenomenon, he didn't use it.

With all the new dungeon crawlers coming out I will definitely be buying one of them... but which? D3 is out, the previous videos I saw showed very little new and exciting, and there is already a growing collection of feedback along the same lines. Also looking for single player I hate the online DRM so that makes the decision even easier.

I love the skill web and graphic style of Path of Exile but I understand it's currently crude in places. I'm not the biggest fan of the cartoon style of Torchlight 2 and I agree with TB that the tech tree seems dated now, but hearing him rave about the main combat mechanics being so satisfying I think that's probably out on top at the moment...

It is as least a health time for these games, competition breeds quality!

DG wrote on May 15, 2012, 12:42:
heh, feel the wrath on metacritic.

There's a chap on there, ArcherSterling, who says he finished the story in 3 hours!

ASeven wrote on May 8, 2012, 20:17:
In all seriousness I'm absolutely surprised at how much I'm loving the game, more than I did CivV that's for sure even though this game is far, far more focused in war.

I feel the same. The tactical feeling of Civ5 made me feel like it wasn't doing justice to a planet sim played across a few thousand years. In this you have a feeling of a province or continent played out over a century or two, it works a lot better to me.

That was about a 6 hour session, I'm taking a break! I am really loving it so far. I haven't felt such a compulsion to play a 4x in a long time. It's great that the wilderness is so dangerous, if you are trying to outgrow your rivals then you have to choose where you can expand because it takes a concerted effort and you can only place your resources in so many places. I love that there's a big difference between the tiers of units, taking down a greater fire elemental takes a combined assault with the earliest units you get and when a higher tier unit comes into view the balance shifts a great deal.

Also there's more depth to the magic system than I thought. The spells to research do come up randomly but there are arcane spells and divine. Arcane seems to have a general set of spells, the divine spells all have prerequisite favour levels with one of the eight gods. They are themed according to the god they belong to and seem to be much more mana-efficient than arcane counterparts if you can get them so it seems viable to get these via land grabbing holy sites rather that building lots of mana nodes everywhere.

On the downsides, the diplomacy is pretty much unfinished from what I can see. I'm playing a large map on Challenging level, and all 3 opponents I met just made demands where it's may tribute or war. I've been at war with all of them for 20-50 turns but they've barely attacked yet, certainly nothing coordinated. I suspect they have the same issues as me with the ferocious wilderness creatures. I've seen neutrals attack in groups so it must be possible somehow but this map is quite snaky and I don't have a wide open border with any of them so perhaps that's why. There hasn't been any trading in this game and I can't even see if diplomatic states actually exist between other rival players so it makes this game play like a pure wargame based on my first campaign.

Also related to this is the level of challenge. The main challenge is cutting a swathe through the wilderness to settle it rather than the other great mages. It seems like it's going to be possible to play undisturbed by attacks until you have an unstoppable force organised then you can sweep the map. Speaking of which, I just unlocked the Ancient Lich in one of my cities only to learn that it costs 700 gold! My empire's set up for mana and I have a tiny gold income with no reserves. I'm looking at the info screen for this beast and drooling.

Anyway in short I am having great fun despite a couple of niggly things, I think this game has fantastic potential if they keep investing in it.

skyguy wrote on May 8, 2012, 15:24:
Warlock is clearly a Fall from Heaven 2 clone. No one here ever played Fall from Heaven 2?

Yeah I played quite a bit of that back in the day!

I had great fun with the demo of this and preordered. The 1UPT hex combat with the damage types, buffs and magic spells really works well on the Civ 5 engine, even better than it did for Civ 5 itself. From the demo I really felt they'd struck a magic balance between keeping individual decisions to being straightforward while allowing you to build up your cities and magic according to different strategies. I am just loading up the full game and taking a session now

Yes, mutiplayer is a planned update. From the design of the game I suspect only live multiplayer would work, there seems to be no provision for simultaneous turn or PBW or anything like that. Having said that the smaller maps would play very well as multiplayer and with all the magic flying around I think the balance of fights could shift around rapidly and it could be fantastic.