Chat/Comment thread

I think the difference is that they were deliberately trying to kill one specific named person. They weren't trying to kill a generalized "the people in the training camp" or "the pilot of the plane", they had a missile with his name on it. I never said that killing Anwar al-Awlaqi was "outside of the appropriate realm of military conduct". I approve of killing him. I merely say that they did so deliberately. Yes. So in defense of your claim that it wasn't an ordered killing, you're going to argue that all deaths in war are in effect ordered killings?Well that would include Anwar al-Awlaqi then.

Well they may not use them. I have been finding it hard to fathom that magnitude of stupidity and blind self destruction. They would likely just polish their knobs and parade them around. Use them as a threat and a bargaining tool.On the other hand, there has been some talk of bringing their Islamic Revolution to the rest of the world and they had expressed a mild interest in a world that did not contain the state of Israel. This is all probably just rhetoric but if it is not then I can see how they might think that nukes could make it all happen. They have a theocratic government that supports terrorism as a legitimate tool of the state. A government that sent children into the battlefield to 'look' for mines. They have no regard for opposing beliefs. They support none of the fundamental human rights that you cherish and enjoy. They are isolated in the global community.The US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and N. Korea have nukes. Do you really believe that Iran should be allowed to have them just because it is a fair and non-hypocritical position?

All of the diplomatic and economic tools are being used. I guess it comes down to your level of resolve. If you actually believe that we should be rid of them then you cannot allow their proliferation.The misery of war will be a lot less before they have them. Also it will mostly be their misery instead or ours. Which, I would say, actually is better than the alternative.There is no road to peace. Peace is the road. I can see the wisdom in that but how do we get there from here?

Of course not. But that is not my position.My position is even if they have a nuclear bomb, several possibly, they simply can't use them for anything other than bluster.

Looks like Tom Brady and the Pats are better at football than jeebus. Either that or jeebus is a Pats fan.... ALL HAIL TOM BRADY!!!! PRAISE BE TO BELICHICK!!!!!!!!

Ahem.Whadaya think Stile? I really like Diable 3 so far.PM your email address for Battlenet and we can be friends and play together. That goes for anyone here.

I can't say too much yet. I had a baseball game last night so only got to play about an hour's worth before bed. I'm not even out of the content that the beta covered yet... But, from what I have seen and played... I love it. I think it's a fanatastic system and I'm really enjoying the gameplay.
I'm hooked on the fishing-style of gameplay that involves always looking to upgrade or find better junk.
I haven't done any single-player, though. My wife has a copy too and we play together all the time. Will do, but after the weekend. For the first few days I just want to play through with the wife and get used to things a bit. Then I'll start doing more multi-player stuffs.The one laptop my wife uses has a decent video card in it. It's really nice and smooth on that machine.
The laptop I'm using only has an intgrated Intel (R) HD card. I have to have all the settings either "off" or "low", but I haven't reduced the game from full laptop resolution yet. It's slightly laggy... but not too bad. Certainly acceptable for me.Weapon choices... armour choices... rings, belts... runes, skills... followers, artisans (blacksmith...) so much to take in right now. Still a bit overwhelmed by all the mechanics. That should calm down after playing for a few days, though.I hear the servers have been down a bunch and the launch was "less than successful".
Personally, I haven't had any problems and my wife hasn't had any problems either.
I do work in an industry that creates new things (assembly lines) all the time, though. So I'm likely a bit biased in accepting a few glitches here and there as the bugs are worked out. That's just the nature of any new... anything.Work is dumb. Making me all not-play-Diablo-3 and all.

I'm sorry for your loss. Yep, here's my personal review that I email to my buddies:

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It was fantastic. Me and ******** had a blast for like 5 hours straight last night. We were all laughing and carrying on the whole time.

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The game is just like Diablo 2 with a bunch of additions and improvements in a new story line. So yeah, exactly what a Diablo *3* should be.

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The graphics are glorious, not too crazy, but nice to look at and interesting. The mobs are way more detailed and the spells and abilites are colorful and look great. The theme is fantastic and the sounds are hilarious. Just a bunch of demons and ghouls and all kinds of nasty stuff making freakish screams and grunts n'shit. Big ole fat guys that explode on death and a handful of giant worms crawl out of them and attack.

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Game play is pretty much the same as D2, and it takes some getting used to tranistioning form MMO's and FPS's. You don't use WASD, you click where you want to go. I kept trying to hit S to stop my guy from going forward too far >.<

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Grouping and transportation are wonderful. You group up before you start a game and then spawn in right on the guy. Next to the Town Portal spot there are Banners, one for each guy in the party. If you click on a person's banner you are teleported directly to them. So, say you have a full bag and port back to town to sell. Your party can keep going and when you're ready, you can teleport right to where they currently are rather than taking the port back and trying to catch up.

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Crafting was good too. You recycle magical gear into consumables for future crafting. So when you make a new piece, you don't throw away the old one. Save all the magical stuff you find 'cause your gonna need those consumables.

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Combat was really easy at first and got gradually harder as we progressed. Mobs drop health pods when they die that heal the whole group so you don't really have any down time from healing up for the next battle.

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They really hit a home run with this one. I'm loving it.

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I forgot to mention how much more interactive the environment is now. Like with how you can drop chandeliers on mobs or knock wall down on them n'stuff. So... you run around an kill all these mobs to get all the loot... and gettting better loot lets you kill even more mobs... which allow you to get even more loot!!.... to kill more mobs!!... to kill more loot!!... and so on. Its great!The hook is in the random chances for drops. That next big mob, or that next chest, just might have that awesome piece of loot that'll make you even better.They're constantly dangling that carrot out in front of you to keep on chasing forever. And I like the chase! As far as I'm concered it doesn't exist. Lucky! That's cool. I'm using a very personal email address so you have to promise not to risk my anonymity here. I have a super awesome gaming pc that I built for like $1500 some months ago. I haven't looked at the graphics settings, but I'll be putting them a "full blast". Yeah... it'll all come back. My biggest problem was getting myself to stop using WASD And I think everything you do is undoable so you don't have to worry about spending points that you'll regret later. You can just unspend everything and put it wherever you want whenever you want. The servers crashed at around 10:30 central last night. We had gotten to level 8 and then when we were booted the login screen said we were only level 5... so I guess it only saves your character info at those checkpoints or something. Oh, sure. A couple speed bump ain't so bad. Although, FunCom really screwed up Age of Conan with all the glitches that game had. Yeah, that and actually being a responsible person. I've got plenty of sick time but there's just a lot of shit going on at work right now that I can't bring myself to neglect in order to play video games... even as much as I'd rather just play.

It's the best gameplay to evolve into games that I've ever come across. Agreed. Multiplayer is so much better.
Unfortunately, you cannot have a "follower" while in a multiplayer game. Or maybe just while in a party in a multiplayer game? Haven't tested... Apparently each follower is supposed to have their own little backstory quest-line thing to discover as well. Poops upon your single player only content! No problem. Mine's not so personal. Not that I'm looking for additional spam or anything... Wicked. I thought the good laptop was going to be for me when D3 came out. But, alas, I was outvoted It's fair enough, though... my wife's home all day (she has Complex PTSD and has a really hard time interacting with anyone on a social level... becomes almost impossible for her if she's not with me or someone else she trusts). So she gets to play all day and it doesn't make any sense to make her switch computers whenever I'm around just to play D3. Besides, doing that would also make me feel like an ass I am coming only from D2 (never even tried WOW or any other MMORPG), so the actual controls are very comfortable for me. Except I hate the "ALT" button to re-display the items on the ground. I always re-map this to the "F" key.
Oh, nice options to know about if you haven't seen them all ready. Turn on "Advanced Tool Tips", it'll tell you the exact numbers for every skill (+150% damage for 2 seconds... or whatever). Also, you know how there are different groups of skills and each group is kinda bound to each of the 6 action buttons (LM, RM, 1, 2, 3, 4)? If you turn on "Elective Mode" you can then bind any skill to any action button. You still only have 6 action buttons... but you can choose 2 skills from the same group if you're okay with not using any from one of the other groups. I would guess that this was a glitch and probably had something to do with the servers going down for correction.
The Checkpoints are simply places you can return to if you die, or even exit the game (on re-entry you'll start at the last checkpoint, even if it's in the middle of the dungeon or wherever...) Any items or experience you've gained after a checkpoint will be saved within milliseconds of you adding the item to your inventory... during normal operation it'll just be the monsters you have to re-kill when you re-start a game at a checkpoint.
You just got screwed from whatever glitch happened to the servers. Had to run some stupid-responsible errands yesterday. And go to the batting cages (because I sucked in that baseball game I mentioned earlier... ). But then I got 2 hours in to D3 last night. Wife and I went through and beat the Skeleton King with 40 seconds to spare before the servers got reset for some reason. Hopefully the items I picked up were saved... haven't checked yet. But still, the game's just awesome and it's only getting more compelling.

Did you ever try Torchlight? It was decent. Offline tho. That's right; you can use your follower while soloing in multiplayer, just not while in a party. Yeah, and there's different ones that hold different roles. My wizard started out with an archer-type follower, but then I saw the tank/healing one and was all "Yes please!"Oh, and we ran across a random "Event" quest. At the top of an alter on a mound we clicked the thingy and the event started and we got bum-rushed by a bunch of mobs. Afterwards, we noticed all the dead bodies at the top and we're all: "Oh, lol, I see what's going on here" Holy shit!, that sucks... What happened?"exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma in the context of either captivity or entrapment"Yikes. I hope it wasn't something completely terrible. Hey, she playes video games, dude... she can have the good computer. Right on. yeah, I take a little screwdriver and pop off the windows button from the keyboard so I stop minimizing the game window whenver I'm shooting for the big loots I don't think I've ever pushed that button on purpose once, so... good riddance! We just figured out the advanced tool tips last night, but I wasn't aware of "elective mode" so thanks. I've already figured that I'd prefer to use two of the one type of abilities over using one of the other type and I thought it would be really odd if they restricted me from doing that. We just can't bring our selves to stop killing in order to play around with options When I logged back in last night my toon was back to level 8 so I hadn't lost anything. Glitch it is. Sweet! That was a good battle. We got to Act II... back out in the desert fight them god-damned poisonous bug swarms! Oh yeah, I'm already hooked.So, usually with muliplayer games we'll each make a toon reserved for playing with each other so they stay around the same level and on the same quests n'stuff. But that's not needed at all now. If you start a game for quests that I've already done then it doesn't matter and I just do them again. And get the experience for them again too! Life's not fair.You just gotta keep at it! I've stubled upon some yellow-colored magic gear now, and even found and orange-colored belt! Its just random so I guess it all about your luck.

No. Wanted to, but no time. Torchlight 2 is coming out in the next few months, supposed to be much larger and more of what it was "supposed to be". And the creators of torchlight are actually the orginal creators of Diable 1 and 2... Sounds like the random Jar of Souls event when searching for the right tomb-place before the Skeleton King. There are many random events. Even if you play the game through and search out everything... you won't find everything. There are some random events that just may happen to not spawn in whatever single instance you're in. Just another level to the randomness they've jammed in to enhance replay value. Unfortunately, yes, it was many somethings that were all completely terrible.
She doesn't mind talking about it, though, and hates the social stigma attached to not talking about such horrible things. It's like all this bad stuff happened, and she's also punished by not being able to talk to people about the stuff other assholes did to her? It's shitty.
Quick summary:
-raped repeatably by step-uncle while she was 8-10 years old
-during this time mother was getting drunk a lot and would be abusive or not around
-during this time father was dying from breathing chemicals (now illegal) at a manufacturing plant during his job (so he was bed-ridden)
-during this time she lived in rural Arkansas (read: hours away from the fastest ambulance/police/help), and with her mother taking off she was the sole care-taker of her dying father... heating a wood stove and feeding them, paying the bills and that sort of thing too.
-father died and other shitty family members wouldn't let her see him when he was in hospital (wouldn't take her), stole her inheritance (house and land father left for her), and blamed her for his death
-moved to Illinois at around age 14
-raped repeatably by rich russian mob members
-got pregnant by older boyfriend, who forced her into an abortion
-abused by drunken step-brother
...I'm probably missing a few things, even, but that's all the largest stuffsNow:
-currently living with me in Canada away from abusive family members
-relationship with mother is much better and even very healthy (mom stopped drinking a few years ago)
-now has a very nice, very safe house and environment to heal within
-Canada heath care is good for things like broken arms or other physical problems, but pretty shitty where mental health is concerned... she basically needs professional therapy 2-3 times a week... for a good few years at least. But the cost is about $200-$250 per session. Which comes out to about $2000-$3000 per month... None of which is covered by OHIP (OHIP will cover about 1 session a week for a maximum of about 2 months. Period. Not per year... ever. Most company insurance plans will provide only $500/year for this sort of thing). So, basically, we can't afford the therapy she should get.
-I provide decent therapy myself, but I'm by no means a professional
-she has a decent friend base now, and a few healthy relationships, it's growing, but there are hurdles
-once she trusts you/knows you, you would never imagine anything at all is wrong with her
-she loves animals and would never hurt anyone (one of the reasons I love her... went through all this shit and still cares more about others than for herself)
-her improvement over the last few years of living with me and away from the abuse is phenomenal, but still a ways from integrating into society on her own
-sounds like a shitty deal, (and the past really is), but now... we wouldn't really have our relationship any other way, we live a relatively healthy life, we love each other, have some supportive friends, are not (currently... stupid economy) in any financial trouble, and generally have a really good time. Exactly Nice!
Losing stuff is not fun. In D2 the only way to transfer things between characters was to drop it in a game, exit and re-enter with other toon and pick it up. Sometimes exiting and re-entering just plaing didn't work and shit got lost. Le poops.
D3 now has the stash-thing, though (big chest in town). Anything in there is seen by any toon you have. It is good. I think (depending on level difference) your exp from monsters might be a bit restricted, but all in all they've developed a really good system for multiplayer.

Are the rares the yellow items?i got two of those. no orange items yet though.

Yes, if you look at the item in it's blown-up box, it should even say "Rare" somewhere...
Not sure exactly what official category the orange items are in. But I do know there's a "Legendary" category up with the Rare's. Maybe that's what the orange ones are?Rare's have a bunch of good additions to them, mostly random.
Legendaries have a bunch of set additions to them, with 1 or 2 additional random modifiers added on.Legendaries are harder to find than Rare's. But it is possible (Blizzard designed it this way) such that certain "really good/lucky" Rare's can be bettern than the Legendary items.

are you still playing Diablo III even though the flaws are widely known.I am, i just play slowly, (maybe 1 or 2 nights per week, and hour or two each time i play).Are the "rares" that you can craft random or does everyone get that yellow head-piece at journeyman?I am playing a barbarian still, but have made a Wizard due to the design flaw.

Edited by rbp, : No reason given.