Lothic

Basically what happened is they wanted to give Massively a chance to do the "first reveal" of the Mecha set last week but pics were accidentally released by a Redname in the beta forums one week -earlier- than that (back on 4/12). Those beta forums leaks were quickly pulled back (like 30 minutes later) and at that time Zwill (again on 4/12) asked that no one release any info they captured from that leak.

By the time Massively finally did their thing last week it was pretty much open season for anyone after that. In fact the actual thread that was originally leaked was even fully restored back to the beta forums -after- massively ran their article.

I already offered that it doesn't really matter who the "enemy" is now or was 8,000 years ago. The simple logistics of trying to defend a frontier, no matter what you're defending it from, for such a long period of time is simply improbable to say the least. Worried about the Night's Watch falling apart now? Why didn't it fall apart 2, 4 or 6,000 years ago?

The Romans didn't just man the Hadrian wall - at their height they patrolled and defended a frontier that stretched across Europe and the Middle East. Arguably this was a much more formidable task than whatever distance the Wall is supposed to stretch in this story. Just because the Romans didn't make their walls 700 feet tall or use magic doesn't make them invalid as case study for the Night's Watch, a fictional organization which clearly borrowed quite a lot from how the Roman frontier legions worked.

I'm sorry but even with the "standard fantasy" excuses I really can't see the Wall (with the Night's Watch) existing as a status quo deterrent for 8,000 years given the typical political and social fluctuations that humans are prone to. *shrugs*

Maybe if Martin had come up with a more believable timeline for his story I wouldn't be having as much trouble with it.

I'm sorry I apparenly confused everyone but my position here has never changed. If anything I simply stated 1) why the Wall is silly and then 2) expounded on why that silly Wall makes me worry about the story in general.

I don't like having to suspend disbelief into thinking that the Wall is an effective deterrent to invasion when it clearly isn't and probably never was. It's a Maginot Line that the "enemy" (whoever that happens to be at any given moment organized or not) has had 8,000 years to figure out. It's a fundamentally stupid idea for that kind of status quo to be in place that long whether it be a fantasy, real life or otherwise.

But just because I think the very concept of a Wall like this is silly I never once denied that this story was forcing us to accept its key role in the climax of the entire series. The very fact that we're having to "take for granted" the workings of this flawed Wall in order to understand the greater notions of the overall story simply irks me.

No, I was just poking a bit of fun. Obviously the books must be good enough to have warranted a HBO show to begin with.

Hopefully whatever happens (or doesn't happen) to the Wall will make sense once he finishes off the series. Sometimes a cigar at the beginning of a story should remain a cigar even if it would be cute to randomly turn it into a golf cart along the way.

Then perhaps maybe it's better I'm getting to enjoy his story through the "filter" of the TV show that likely requires a bit more sanity for its HBO audience. Perhaps I'll get around to reading the books as soon as he thinks he's done writing them and can't change anything else.

I'm not really asking for any either. I simply refuse to assume that this story is going to end -radically- different from my general musings.

I'm just saying a story about an 8,000 year old Wall doing the same thing it's been doing for 8,000 years would be fairly boring wouldn't it?

The only thing I've been saying here all along is that this story has the very obvious elephant-in-the-room that the "downfall" of the status quo of the "Era of the Wall" will be part of its climactic conclusion and people have somehow been trying to suggest that there's something "deeper" to it than that. Really?

I simply think it's a tad predictable that we're having to wait how many books/shows before the Wall fails and seals the fate of the Iron Throne. It's sort of like watching the Cameron's Titanic knowing the ship is going to sink and just waiting to see how the people are going to react to its sinking.

The Wall was literally the very first thing we saw in the very first episode of "The Game of Thrones". I don't think it could have been made any more obvious that the Wall will play a critical role in the fate of the Iron Throne.

I just happen to believe the Wall's ultimate fate will center around its tragic failure. Whether it "fails" to keep something out or it "fails" to distract or lure various factions towards it or away from it, will be its primary purpose in the story.

The TV show has already told us the Wildlings are gathering enmasse and that it's never happened before. That's not a spoiler. Why they are doing it has not been revealed yet, but again I say it's probably very safe to say that the fate of the Wall, the Wildlings and the Night's Watch are all fairly well entwined.

Again I'll point out that you don't really need to know ANYTHING about the nature of what's north of the wall to understand that the Wall stands to keep "bad things out" and that it would be a "bad thing" if the wall somehow failed to do that. Tell me how interesting would this story be if we find out the Wall totally did its job as expected and everyone lived happily ever after?

I'm open to the idea that the original purpose of the Wall itself has become so "outdated" at this point that the Night's Watch is going to have to move out significantly far past it in order to "confront" whatever the current threat is.

But even if it comes down to some kind of "twist" like that then my more generic observation that the wall has "failed" during this story is correct.

I don't think it's really a "spoiler" to say that the Wall is going to play some kind of key role in this story. I got the gist of that after the first 5 minutes of the first episode.

All I'm suggesting is that they're clearly building up this "hype" that the Wall is the only thing "protecting" the happy-go-lucky peoples of the south from all the ickiness of the north. If that doesn't play itself out in the form of seeing what happens when that protection fails then one has to question what that apparently major plot thread was for in the first place.

If whatever Evil(™) in the north is going to threaten the kingdoms of the south the Wall is either going to be breached/bypassed by the end of the story or there's going to have to at least be a credible possibility that that could happen.

This is Chekhov's Gun where this time the Wall itself is the "gun" - if the Wall doesn't fail in some form or fashion then there wasn't much reason for the Wall to be there in the first place.

Eh, at least the person in my position (enjoying the story for the first time via the TV show) doesn't exactly know what role the dragons will play yet. Are they merely "nuclear weapons" for any army to threaten others with or are they here to "take over" the world and kill all the pesky humans no matter what faction? The only thing the Wall is going to do is eventually fail to serve its purpose as a "speedbump" holding back the Nameless Evil(™) from threatening the world.

Trust me when I say I have no problem accepting fictional story concepts in fantasy/sci-fi. Been watching and enjoying things like Star Trek for well over 30 years now. But I do tend to have problems with certain story elements when even the internal logic doesn't adequately support them.

Even though I haven't read these GoT books in particular I've been familiar enough with stories like these for decades to have a "ballpark idea" of what's in store. Some Ancient Evil(™) has finally awoken after hundreds/thousands of years and it's somehow going to be involved with the dragons and the Coming Storm(™) of war that'll threaten all the human kingdoms in the south. All the warring factions currently fighting each other for the Iron Throne will have to unite against the Common Enemy(™) for the sake of saving the world. Yata-yata-yata...

Again I don't really mean to burst anyone's bubbles over this point. Like I said before it just happens to be a personal nitpick of mine. My main problem with the Wall is the general naivety that all the Kingdoms apparently had to suffer from to think that the Wall by itself was going to be enough to permanently protect them from ANYTHING north of the wall forever. Sure the characters in the story have had 8,000 years to get used to the idea that the status quo would never change and the Wall would save them forever. But any reader from a mile away could smell the obvious hubris of dumb people having faith in a static defense that you know by the end of the story is going to be breached/bypassed in some form or fashion.

I guess I'm just finding the Wall to be a plot device that's a little too obvious and heavy-handed to be accepted at face value. *shrugs*

And as I implied before whenever I think of the general idea of "let's have a wall that'll -permanently- keep the bad things out" I just think of how well that worked in real life with things like the Maginot Line.

I'm sorry if my historical knowledge tends to make me "disbelieve" the implied effectiveness of an 8,000(!) year old wall no matter what the circumstances are fantasy or otherwise.

Right, walls can't hold an enemy back forever and that's PRECISELY the problem I have with this wall in this story. According to this story this wall has somehow "worked" for hundreds of years. How is it really possible that things have remained so static for so long? It just seems like the people of this story take this wall far too much for granted and it simply comes across as that much less "plausible" to me because of it. *shrugs*

Yes the waters around the British Isles can be rough. But just like in this story the Scots didn't really need to go too far out to sea in order to just skirt around the edge of the wall if they really wanted to. And like I just mentioned above the wildlings have had hundreds of years worth of opportunities to catch a calm day to go sailing if they wanted to.

You focus on Serenity/Firefly like that's the only thing Whedon has ever made.

For what's it worth Whedon has enjoyed killing off main/favorite characters in pretty much EVERY movie/show/story he's ever been involved with. As Arnabas implied I've seen enough of Whedon's work to practically -expect- someone big to die in The Avengers without any other knowledge about that movie in particular.

The irony here is that even though people who are familiar with Whedon's work could easily predict that he'd try to kill someone off in this movie people who aren't quite as familiar with him might actually find that kind of "plot twist" to be new and edgy for the typical superhero movie. *shrugs*

I understand the "desire" behind wanting things like your humanoid bird character to have a specific set of wings from the very beginning. But I suppose I can't shake my own experience with this game vis-a-vis my character concepts versus what I could do with the costume items available.

When I created my first main character 8 years ago I envisioned her having cool demony wings and a moving tail. Turns out I had to wait 2.5 YEARS before -any- wings were added to the game and something like 5 YEARS before moving tails were added.

So basically when people like Samuel_Tow complain that they can't get such-n-such item until they craft it or level their character up to a certain level I really have almost 0% sympathy for that.

Yeah I can't really off-hand think of any single change "smaller" than this that would force me to quit.

Sure there's a lot of things they could change that would greatly annoy me, but they'd have to do many of those things all at once to push me over the threshold of making me quit.

Eh, I don't think the way it works is supposed to match 100% with the episodes. For example I think they've showed Winterfell and The Wall in every opening credits regardless. I figure the idea is to just toss in one or two "episode specific" ones (like Quarth) to make it unique and interesting.

There may come a time when our need for relatively rare materials like gold or platinum for industrial purposes will become so dire that it'll drive our need to mine asteroids for those things. But right now an iPod made with extraterrestrial gold components would likely cost on the order of like $5000 simply because the cost of getting that specific bit of gold from that location and bringing it back would simply be too cost prohibitive.

Unfortunately I suspect that people will be willing to drill 10+ miles down for possible gold deposits on Earth before they'll be willing to pay the cost to go up into space to get it. Eventually the tide will turn and space-based sources will finally become more cost effective. I simply suspect that it's going to take quite a long time for the paradigm to shift that way.

"I'm not threatening his Grace, I'm educating him... [turns to Bronn] Bronn, if Ser Meron speaks again, kill him... [turns back to Ser Meron] See? Now -that- was a threat."

Tyrion is awesome! I'm just obviously worried that he's not going to be able to get away with that forever and I fear what the little sadist-snot Joffery will finally do to him.

I've noticed that every episode changes up the opening credits to highlight the various places that are going to be important in the episode. It's a pretty clever way to keep you watching the credits each week.