Lothic

Well that was basically my point: It's always safe to assume any advance in robotics (especially Japanese robotics) will be applied to the future of sexbots in some form or fashion.

I'm not saying that's a bad/derogatory thing in the least. I'm just suggesting that it's something to keep in mind whenever you read about some kind robot news that seems otherwise "boring" or "pointless". None of it is ever pointless...

Sooooo

The Devs gave us a handful of new capes and auras. How on Earth could anyone reasonably think that a "handful" of options was ever going to satisfy EVERYONE?

Until the Devs can figure out how to give us a new Booster Pack that provides an infinite number of new options they're never going to be able to satisfy everyone. If you didn't like what they gave us this time then I guess you lucked out. Sorry. *shrugs*

But here's the irony of that: depending on your age of course by the time you're on your death bed there could very well be "machines" that will actually feel empathy for you.

The Technological Singularity is going to change everything.

Nice job, especially since you gambled on the Halloween Tips lasting past the end of the Event. The Devs could have easily designed it to auto-delete that Tip after the Event or some-such.

Your scenario is exactly what I was wondering about earlier in this thread: I bet there'll be a scramble for people who kept a Halloween Tip from people who'd like to get/change those badges in the coming months.

As a player who's been around long enough to have pretty much every "exclusive" item this game has ever released I will state for the record that I wouldn't care less if they decided to repackage and sell all these things in new Booster Packs for people who missed them years ago.

The only things I think should remain PERMANENTLY exclusive are Vet Awards. Unique Vet Awards should remain Vet Awards otherwise what's the point of the Vet Award system? But if whatever you're talking about was not originally a Vet Award then sure it should be made available to anyone who wants it.

Notice in my paragraph above how I highlighted the word "permanently" in reference to things that are exclusive? The one thing people often confuse about exclusive items in MMOs is that they mistakenly assume that anything labeled as "exclusive" is PERMANENTLY exclusive. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In legal terms simply using the word "exclusive" does not necessarily guarantee something will remain exclusive FOREVER. An item can be "exclusive" for six months or a year and then be released to everyone and still satisfy any legal interpretation of the original use of that word. Remember the Devs of this game have never specifically used the words "exclusive FOVEVER" in reference to anything. They just simply let people's imagination's connect the dots and assume that these things are permanent as a classic marketing maneuver.

There is no way NCSoft could be successfully sued for this kind of thing. Sure there might be a handful of people who feel like they were "tricked" or "cheated" out of something, especially if the period of exclusivity is not reasonably long enough. But frankly that's their own naivety for thinking they were getting something PERMANENTLY exclusive in a game like this.

I think it's pretty safe to say the people who are working on robot/android technology are racing as fast as they can away from your Option #1 and trying to get to your Option #2 as fast as possible. At the rate they are going we might have to "suffer" with a few more decades of the uncanny valleys, but eventually we will get past that, for better or worse.

You have to hand it to the Japanese. Not only are they clever with the robot technology in general, but they are also masters of indirection and camouflage. Sure this "nurse" robot has potential to be helpful in a health/hospital setting but think about the bigger picture going on here. This kind of robot is also advancing the technology that will allow for better telepresence-based sexbots.

Now obviously it would be hard to get money for research if your main public goal was sexbot development so by using the cover of a "publicly acceptable" purpose like making a nurse robot you can get away with a lot of basic research you'd need for more "naughty" purposes later on.

You have to remember where robot technology is ultimately going: The two main types of robots people have always wanted are sexbots and terminators. These two types of robots will satisfy humanity's most primitive desires. I think in the future there will be all sorts of robots doing all sorts of things. But out of all the types that will be developed the two types we can pretty much be guaranteed to have will be sexbots and terminators.

Looks good.

I came to the conclusion a few days ago that even though both the Omega and Bio Plasma auras are very similar that the Bio Plasma one was perhaps a bit cooler. That was probably "on purpose" in order to encourage us to buy this new Pack.

I guess Captain America was working on his Alignment Tip missions to gain access to the redside.

Well adapting a short graphic novel series into a TV show is probably the opposite challenge than what you have with taking a novel and squeezing it down into a TV series. They probably had to expand single panels of graphic novel content into multiple minutes worth of TV time.

Either way with 6 planned episodes for the first season it sounds like they've chosen to focus in on the key elements of the story and make something tight and fast-paced. Now since we know they are already going to do a 2nd season the proof will be in what form that will take. If they try to expand it out to a "standard" 22 episode season then I'm going to worry that they "sold out" the idea already. I guess we'll see.

So far I've liked the True Blood TV show very much. It was the inspiration for me to go out and read the first 9 books of the Sookie Stackhouse series pretty much back-to-back earlier this year.

I'll offer the "standard book rant" that the TV/movie version of a book series leaves out a lot of detail from the books that they can't hope to include. But I will agree that the differences/updates that the TV show has offered have been very well done and it definitely adds to the overall story beyond what the books alone provided.

As to whether the TV show is ultimately "better" than the books I'm going to reserve judgement on that until the TV series is completely finished.

Well most American TV shows are forced into trying to follow the "standard" network model of a season being something like 22-23 one hour episodes for business reasons. The eternal problem with that mindset is that most stories/plotlines don't easily fit into that scheme without having to be "artificially" altered to fit it.

It goes against the "system" so to speak to have a show be only as long as it should be so it's sadly rare to see it happen. With the advent of DVD box sales I think more people are willing to try unusually numbered series like this because they know they'll be able to sell it as a unit no matter how many episodes it's cut into.

I can only suggest that we try to brake our collective notions of what a "series" or "mini-series" is supposed to be and look more towards accepting shows that have as many episodes as makes sense.

True Blood stuck close to the first two books fairly well during the first two seasons. The third season started "creeping" across the plotlines of many of the later books (not just the third one) and it's not entirely clear if it's going to reign itself in and get more focused in the next season. I fear if it continues to spin out of control that it might not last much past its fourth season.

I couldn't care less what they call it as long as the number of episodes is appropriate for what the story is trying to accomplish.

Without getting into any "math" different MOBs in this game have different aggro ranges that overlap and complement each other. I've been playing this game for over 6 years now and never had a problem with it one way or the other. Maybe the way those other games handled it was silly and you've just gotten used to that?

If you're running a character that can routinely handle +4, 8x missions then yes, the game is going to continue to be easy for that kind of character. The "challenge" you're looking for is to run a AT/Powerset combo that CAN'T handle +4, 8x missions no matter how good a player you are. Trust me when I say many of them can't. YMMV.

Actually if this show is "staying true" to the comic then it's probably a good thing it's only 6 episodes long. All too often people who make TV shows tend to think the only thing that's important is to make as many episodes as possible regardless if the story actually calls for having lots of episodes or not. Some of the best shows ever made are ones that understand that sometimes "less is more" and that to do the material justice you don't have to run it into the ground or "jump the shark" as quickly as possible.

Well like I just said everybody and their "brother's sister's cousin" is trying to get it right now. That's why I wait a few hours to avoid the hassle. Besides being at work right now it's easily going to be like 6 more hours before I can even play around with it anyway. What would be the point of me having the code this very second?

There have been Issues where the "open" part of their betas lasted less than a week.
But I'd agree that as each day of this week goes by the chance of it being the 9th seems less likely.

Still that does leave Nov. 16th and Nov. 30th as reasonable guesses before Dec. 7th.
Based on the history of this game's beta periods Dec. 7th would make I19's beta length "longer than normal" at the very least.

There's always a bit of delay and/or server overloading with these Booster Packs the first few hours they activate them. Everyone rushes to get it as instantly as possible. I usually give it a few hours at least before I try to buy them and by doing that I never have any problems with it. YMMV.

Well in case it wasn't obvious I think the idea is pretty silly myself. I think many of the reasons they started using it around the world roughly 100 years ago no longer apply. *shrugs*

Well I understand why it's -not- standardized because every country (or even regions within countries) has the right to set the clock to whatever they want. But I would expect it to based more on the scientific realities of the movement of the Earth around its axis and through the solar system more than on the whims of human governments.

That said I'd agree it'd be more useful to regions that are farther away from the equator regardless.

It's actually a lot more silly than that. Check this map out to see how semi-random it seems to be.
You'd think something like this would be standardized around the world. Well, you'd be wrong.