It's actually common practice to schedule presidential debates opposite of major sporting and entertainment events so the public won't watch. It's in the candidate's best interest for their constituents to remain in the dark.

Most dogs can't handle that much rich rood in one sitting. Packaged dog food is very bland.

I know a few people who feed their dogs Biolgically Appropriate Raw Food (BARF - http://www.barfworld.com/) and it supposedly has cured them of a number of cronic ailments.

Next time Blue should reward Hudson with a good hike. I think I read here once upon a time that Blue lives in Westchester. Rockefeller State Park in Sleepy Hollow ( http://nysparks.state.ny.us/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/nysparks/parks.cgi?p+134) is about the best place on earth to walk with your dog. It's easy to get to and the vast majority of it is under used. I used to walk my dog there everyday off leash. Lots of deer and small game to chase, a good sized stream for swimming - dog heaven. Doesn't suck for people either.

Halsey, you've quoted perhaps the finest monologue ever recorded on film. And to think that Robert Shaw was drunk off his ass when he did it makes the achievement that much greater.

Everytime I see this movie on cable, I turn over just to watch this scene. It's brilliant.

That and "We're going to need a bigger boat" or "He ate the light."

AO is a great game. There's not another MMORPG that looks like it or has a more interesting back story. The production design is amazing. The sheer number of different looking mobs beats most games out there. Rather than 100 different kinds of spraggons spread across 50 levels, you can fight something new each time you advance.

Their use of "instanced" content came about years before any other game. PvP has a purpose and is possible at any level of the game. There are several modes of transportation so getting around the game world is pretty quick and painless.

That being said, it's probably got one of the steepest learning curves of any game out there. To be effective you have to be familiar with the thousands of different stat-effecting items and buffs in the game. It's a twinkers dream but a nightmare for casual players.

I've played it on and off since launch and I'm considering going back again for this expansion pack.

They'll be talking about SWG II before they get this game fixed. I wonder if SOE realizes how much money they could have made if they had gotten this game right? I know it's still got quite few subscribers. They aren't hurting financially I'm sure but I'll bet they would have twice as many if the game worked the way it's suppose to.

[qlue needs to stop giving this guy attention. The PC game industry is full of small independent developers who sure as hell deserve and could use the promotion and support of this website a lot more than Derek Smart.[q]

Blue's just giving us what we want. THere were 219 posts to the first thread and god only knows how many lurkers. Who knows how many there will be on this thread before it's done.

Each click serves an ad - which is good for Blue. If you don't want to read about Dr. Smart, stop clicking.Maybe Blue should throw a little cash Derek's way to make an appearence.

I'm for it! Let him have the license. Maybe if he steps away from the Battlecruiser stuff he can come up with something good.

Good luck.

As God is my witness, I will never kill another spraggon, spraggonite, elder spraggon, spraggon elder - whatever, again!

That game reuses art like nobody's business. No thank you.

Eve takes a lot of work before you get to the fun. Basically you need to mine for a couple of months before you can build up enough of a bank roll to PvP - but then it's a lot of fun.

SWG still makes me bitter. On a surface level it has everything I ever wanted in a game - except some form of entertainment. Even now, I feel drawn to it - like a moth circling a 250w bug zapper. So beautiful...ZAP!!

I doubt if anyone is reading this thread at this point because usually by about the 20th post on Blues News, the flame wars begin and it all just turns into a pit of vipers - but I love the sound of my own voice, so here goes.

I've played SWG on and off since beta. It's a game I want desperately to like but it's nearly impossible for me for most of the same reasons it is for everyone else - it's dull, blah, blah, blab, etc.

I'm currently playing City of Heroes and having a great time.

I believe that the lesson other developers should learn from these two games is this: focus on a few key systems and forget the rest. Forget the economy, forget crafting, forget advanced chat systems, forget it all and just get the basic combat, grouping and questing systems right.

The MMORPG genre continues to trade on it's "potential." You can say it for the genre as a whole and for the individual games - once they get the technology fixed the genre/insert MMORPG of your choice will be amazing. As fans, we continuously give the developers the benefit of the doubt. We're willing to play through a buggy mess for months at a time based on "potential" alone.

So what seems obvious to me now is, when launching a new title, don't pull a SWG and try to include every feature under the sun, none of which will work because your development team is spread so thin they'll never get it to work. Instead follow the lead of CoH and just get the basics right. Make combat fun, make it easy to get a group and make it simple and fast to find content appropriate for the group's level. We, the players will wait for the rest, just like we wait for you to fix all the bugs and endure dull game play while you get the balance right. Reward us rather then punish us for giving you our $15 every month.

Ok boys - step one - build a long boring spreadsheet er, I mean combat system. Also substitute "innovative and ground-breaking" for long and boring in the press release.

Step two - add a 1 minute timer to any simple activity and give each mob 3 times the hit points of any player as a way of extending the "content".

Step three - Spread the development team so thin and add as many features as possible to the game so that there isn't any way that any of them will work well at launch and most of them will be down right broken. Make it a goal to fix the first third of these and call it an expansion.

Step four - profit!

Can I have my thousand dollars now?

More SST:

"I'll be happy if Carm ends up with nothing from the divorce. You can't marry a mobster then expect to break free and keep all your stuff. And it's fun to watch her try."

I hope Tony gives her something. The thing that is missing from the Sopranos now is the possiblitiy for redemption for Tony. That's what made the first season of the show so great - the idea that this killer could be saved. Every season since just hasn't been as good. Now it feels like they're just covering the same territory over and over again.

The Funcom forums are filled with bitching

And this is different, how?

I love AO - it's a great game but MMORPG players are the biggest bunch of whiney babies on the internet. It made sense when the genre was new - but there are a billion games out there now and they all have the same problems.

Developers are slow to respond, classes are imbalanced, customer service sucks, they nerf you if you get too powerful, you have to camp spawns to get the best items, other players will grief you.

Did I miss anything?

If any of these problems are too much for you to deal with, move on! It will not change. It is the nature of the beast.

Give in Bronco... Do it, all the popular kids are. No one will like you if you don't...

Seriously try it, it's a lot of fun.

Bill you should try City of Heroes - tons of spandex wrapped fun

Dumb question/observation but doesn't Star Wars call faster than light travel hyperspace? It's a bit nit picky but it's the first thought I had when I heard the title of the expansion. That and - do you mean I have to give them another $30 to make the game fun?

"Traveling through Hyperspace ain't like dustin' crops boy..."

Let me be a complete and total fanboi here - City of Heroes is pretty damn good. I've only been playing for two days but the game has the best low level game I've ever experienced in any MMORPG.

There is no down time and you get to do cool stuff right away. You don't have to go wack rats out in a field for ten or twenty levels before you get to wack rat-a-sauraus'in a different field for twenty more levels.

There is no crafting.

Everyone looks different and seems to have different powers.

Combat is fast, furious and team based.

If you don't like joining a group, this isn't the game for you. I've solo'd some and it's dull by comparison. That being said, it's easy to find a group and there are in-game tools that make it even easier.

Lots of eye-candy.

There is no camping. All the dungeons and missions are "instanced" content so you aren't fighting others for the spawn or loot.

It seems to be a pretty big world and I've spent a lot of time running but I just hit level 6 and started flying so travel should speed up.

It's a lot of fun. I pre-ordered it this morning. There doesn't seem to be many bugs and I've experienced little or no lag with 30 or 40 player characters on my screen at the same time.

I have no idea if the high level and end games are any good but I'm pretty sure I can get at least a month of entertainment out of it. It will be interesting to see how the high end game works since you can do so much right out of the box. If you enjoy MMORPGs and you're looking for somehting new, pick this game up!

It's a great looking game. The treadmill is well represented but by all reports it's easy enough to get past if you group as much as possible.

All the fun comes in the end game. The thing that makes Lineage great is the seige system and player politics. All the other stuff is extraneous to that. It's another sand box game. You have to make your fun. It's definately not going to be found in the exisitng content.

They were all too busy bashing Valve in the HL2 video thread.

Every one of you bashing hl2 are going to be there opening day to buy it and you know it.

Actually they won't have to because they all have Steam subscriptions.