Lothic

Yeah I just ran it again last night with a PUG team that acted almost as if they didn't even realize badges existed in this game. Can you beleive it?

Fortunately I just let them "Hulk Smash!" stuff while I clicked all the meteors for myself as much as anything. Luckily I was also able to talk them into defeating the two final AVs within about 15 seconds of each other so I was able to petition for another Brotherly Love badge.

It's always interesting to earn badges off of people who probably couldn't care less about them.

Right but according to what people have been saying here it could have been a swarm of rabid flying squirrels that destroyed the world just as easily as zombies. The zombies were clearly just the means to Kirkman's ends to tell a story.

But (and this is the key) since The Walking Dead doesn't have anything to do with rabid flying squirrels I don't want to KNOW anything about them. I'd rather know something about what's in THIS story... which happens to be zombies. Faceless vague threats work well enough for a while but unless an author eventually tells us WHY we should care about the faceless vague threats they eventually cease to serve their purpose in the ongoing story.

I'm not sure if you can call me a Star Wars "fan" but I've seen all 6 movies (especially the first 3) dozens of times over the last 30+ years. Even saw Episode IV in the theaters when it first came out back in late 70s a couple of times.

While I would certainly agree that Attack of the Clones is arguably one of the worst of the 6 movies in general I never had any problem whatsoever with seeing the "origin story" for the Stormtroopers in it. The Stormtrooper origin story didn't make that movie bad in and of itself - the movie had plenty of other better reasons for being lackluster on its own.

To be clear I probably could have gone to my grave without ever seeing an origin defined for the stormtroopers, but now that it's happened I don't consider it a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. I honestly don't think The Walking Dead would suffer that much if we ever got a supplemental side story which explained the origins of the zombies. It could be completely separate from the current group of characters and really having nothing to do with them at all. Basically it could be handled just like The Animatrix dealt with those things for the Matrix story. *shrugs*

Just because Kirkman plans to keep his zombies as a vaguely defined "phantom menace" for his books doesn't mean the TV show will follow that path. It's already been established several times that the comic book is not and never will be considered as "strict canon" for the TV show. Besides we've all seen enough of the TV show to realize that they are not following the comic book incredibly closely anyway. I suspect the TV show will handle things completely independently in the long run.

I'm not fishing to get a full explaination of the zombies just because I want a "happy TV ending". I agree that most TV viewers want/expect that kind of thing. But actually I wouldn't mind if the TV tried to stick as closely to the comic book as possible in this regard. I actually think it's cool that there is -some- mystery to the zombies and I really don't need TV Rick and company to know everything.

Just to refocus here the main problem I had that lead to this discussion is that I simply feel that the TV characters should already know the practical idea that "people can become zombies even if they aren't attacked by other zombies". I don't expect them to know WHY that happens or HOW to stop it, but I just have a hard time accepting that that nugget of knowledge is something that is apparently taking them months to figure out.

Let me put it like this: Let's say the world got overrun by millions of wolves that suddenly appeared and somehow, for the sake of argument, caused the end of civilization. Now don't you think that any survivors of the "wolf apocalypse" would almost instantly become aware that wolves like to hunt in packs? I think that very basic fact of how they operate would become common knowledge amongst anyone left alive in that world. Likewise if a zombie apocalypse like this story ever happened I think it would become a trivially obvious rule of thumb to ANYONE left alive that people could become zombies even without being attacked. That should not be a "mystery" to ANYONE.

I believe the TV show decided to make that core fact of how zombies work a mystery to the audience for dramatic purposes, but in so doing they had to make that very same knowledge a mystery to the characters as well which makes absolutely no sense to me. It forces these characters to seem that much more idiotic than I think they're already supposed to be. As a member of the audience I don't mind if I'm kept in the dark about how the world works until the story decides to reveal itself, but there's no reasonable way these survivors would or could have been ignorant of this at the same time.

Basically what I'm saying is the TV show's attempt to make a "mystery" out of how zombies work fell flat because it required that the characters of the show to be ignorant of something there's almost no way they could have ever been ignorant about.

Well even the lowly, faceless stormtroopers from Star Wars finally got an "origin story" in Attack of the Clones.
Maybe our favorite Walkers will be lucky enough to get the same treatment some 20+ years from now.

I only want "answers" here in as much as I'm curious why this show, as presented, even bothered to use zombies as a means to set up a "post apocalyptic" world in the first place.

Frankly I'm personally more scared of things like an extinction-level asteroid impact or the Yellowstone super-volcano going off. Either one of those things could destroy civilization as we know it and leave a small group of survivors trapped on a Georgia farm trying to deal with their situation. But The Walking Dead has nothing to do with asteroids or volcanoes. Its "vector" is zombies, and sooner or later (in this case for me sooner) as I start to get bored by the lack of fully satisfying characters that are left alive I'm inexorably finding myself wanting to know a little more about the zombie backstory. Sorry if that makes me weird or something.

If the zombies aren't important enough to understand then why are they in this story to begin with?

The Chekhov's gun concept can also be taken to mean "do not include any unnecessary elements in a story". If all you need is a "random vague threat" that does not need to be completely defined to make a group of people react like this then they could have replaced the zombies with sharks with "freakin" laser guns on their heads.

The idea of zombies as a vague, undefined boogeyman will only last so long until eventually you have to stop ignoring the elephant in the room and ask "Hey, by the way, what's your deal anyway?"

It's funny that someone took the "bait" of my indirect Lost reference. I suppose I can now shock you by admitting that I never bothered to watch even a single episode of that show.

But yes I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of The Walking Dead: This story has tried to distance itself from something like Lost by focusing overwhelmingly on the "human" part of the story instead of the "mystery" part of it. The problem with that approach is that the "human" side of this story is far from perfect and it lacks much of the gravitas to fully carry a show like this.

What we're left with is a show that's relying too much on the human side of the equation and not enough on the "mystery", especially considering that the human side here is far from perfect. The net effect is a show that continues to be just a tad "out of balance". I believe if they let a little more of the zombie stuff become more important it could balance out the relatively weak human-drama aspects.

Bottomline in their attempt to avoid becoming a "Lost clone" they've over-corrected here and relied too much on characterization aspects that aren't quite strong enough to carry a show like this on its own.

All I can say to this is that if an author becomes more interested in telling his story than accounting for how an audience might react to it then he might find himself with a story that no audience will care about. I'm not suggesting that authors must focus exculsively on pandering to or "entertaining" any potential audience. I'm just saying if he ends up writing a "never-ending story" that meanders off into the weeds then he's bound to lose the interest of -any- potential audience in the long run.

A story about "Carl and Rick in Zombieland" will only remain novel and cute for so long...

Your point has been that you don't really care about the particulars of how the zombies "work" because you (as you just said) don't really consider the zombies to be important in and of themselves. Did I miss your point with this?

Actually it's a drama that's using the "backdrop" of a zombie apocalypse as a means to explore various human relationships that you normally would not see in "real" life. But just because its primary focus is on how these humans are dealing with this situation doesn't mean that we (as the audience) should never care or ever learn anything about the circumstances that put these humans in this situation in the first place.

If all these people had found themselves trapped on a desert island I'm sure it would be interesting to see how they get along under that circumstance. But don't you think it might eventually be important to know -how- they got there, especially considering that that knowledge might eventually lead to the ultimate resolution of their characters? I do. Why put them on that island if you're not going to eventually explain the need for the "island" in the first place?

Likewise if The Walking Dead doesn't eventually reveal its "Big Secret" about why the zombies came about and/or how they fit into the big picture then we may never have the proper context to understand or care about what happens to the ultimate fate of the characters.

Sorry but this is just a variation of Chekhov's gun - the zombies -must- serve a purpose in the story else there was no point in having them be there in the first place.

I won't argue the position that there's been absolutely no individual character growth in this show. Obviously you can cite examples of that to various degrees.

But just as Chyll doesn't seem to think it's very important to understand anything about the initial nature of the zombies or what the characters know about them beyond the simple-minded response of "See zombie, kill zombie" I likewise don't really consider it too important to dwell on how the characters are going through their cliched, one-dimensional evolutions. I mean of course Rick is going to "grow" as a leader and who didn't expect to see Glenn "grow up and become a man" or Andrea become a "strong confident woman" after she overcame her suicidal funk? I mean seriously, if you had asked me to guess where most of the characters were going to "grow" to at the very beginning of the show I probably would have nailed 80-90% of them without much effort.

Perhaps I just think "a show about zombies" ought to focus a tiny bit more on the zombies and not try to be a soap-opera with a few minutes of pseudo-horror sprinkled on top. I'm all for the idea of sci-fi and horror being used as vehicles to present meaningful human drama. I just think in order for that to work you need to have the proper mix of "human drama" balanced by "genre content". If the show is going to concentrate too much on the human-stuff then why even bother having any zombies standing in the background at all?

Maybe that's why I wanted more revealed about the zombie portions of this show - the semi-wooden (and sometimes even borderline idiotic) characters aren't quite enough to carry the show for me all by themselves. *shrugs*

The only difference is the speed with which things happen. Obviously this other game you're talking about has more resources available to make things happen quicker.

But I would still argue your attempt to call the actual process these two companies use as being fundamentally different is naive at best. There are not -that- many different ways to run the proverbial railroad in this case.

Sure it exists... with companies which are obviously large enough to AFFORD that kind of operation. You do realize it requires money and infrastructure to accomplish that kind of thing right?

Paragon Studios may be a great MMO company, but obviously it's not the largest one out there. *shrugs*

There may be MMOs out there with very efficient beta and regression testing operations. But there really is no such thing as "plug-n-play" bug fixing without the possibility of affecting other preexisting code.

If you looked into what's actually going on here you'd see that this game doesn't really operate all that much differently than any other MMO out there as far as these things are concerned.

Because software is never just -that- easy.

To put it simply the build "22.3b" in your example may indeed have some number of bug fixes, but it might also be filled with all sorts of -other- bugs. Just because 22.3b might solve some problems doesn't mean it couldn't introduce a whole load of others without proper testing.

Bugs aren't just isolated things that can be dealt with on an individual basis. Entire BUILDS have to be tested, not just piece-parts.

Preaching to the choir here - I've been a software engineer for many years so I can feel your pain.

It will never cease to amaze me how players/users never seem to get the "big picture" when it comes to software releases. Whenever you're talking about a commercial environment there are all sorts of factors and deadlines when it comes to the final decisions on when things go live.

Developers in the trenches rarely get to make the call as to when things are launched or when things can be "held back for another week to work all the bugs out". When players make statements like "They should have just waited a few weeks to make it better" I sometimes can't help but to groan at their innocent naivety.

Software is never "perfect". At best all you're ever going to get is "good enough" and sadly it can be a matter of interpretation what "good enough" means to you.

Yeah it sounds like you could just slowly move him to that final area on the map where the 3 minute "countdown" takes place and then leave him there to finish the other areas. Once you trip the clock you can run back and have him be there ready to help you.

A "learning process" implies going from one level of growth to another. I'm beginning to fear this show and its characters have effectively been stuck in "neutral" for far too long.

Let's put it this way: I'm still watching this show despite this "lack of realistic knowledge" issue so I wouldn't call it a total deal-breaker for me. I suppose I'm just having trouble, as each episode goes on, suspending my disbelief each time I realize just how relatively clueless these people -continue- to be about the zombies or anything else for that matter.

I'm all for the general premise of "let's see what happens to a bunch of random average people who are suddenly thrown into a post zombie apocalypse world". On the face of it it is a very cool story idea. But the problem I'm having with it now is that these characters don't really seem to be going ANYWHERE with it, and I don't just mean how they've been stuck on Hershel's farm in the middle of nowhere for a dozen episodes. Where's the character growth? Where's the reveal of hard knowledge about the zombies? How many more seasons are we supposed to wait before Dr. Jenner's whispered secret kicks in and actually means something?

All I'm really starting to see here is cool story premise that's stalling out big time. I consider myself a very patient person as far as letting stories unfold in their due time. I just get the sense that this story is moving so glacially that I'm starting to wonder if there's any "there" there. Hopefully the last show will set the stage for some hope that the next season will actually budge them out of neutral and have the group collectively go somewhere story-wise.

It looks like what happened here is a simple "cut-n-paste" error when the Devs were making Issue 22 and I've already reported this as a bug.

When you check the preexisting redside Ouro arcs you'll see that there was already an arc named "The Aeon Conspiracy" with Marshall Brass in the Malcontent (Level 16 - 19) range. When they were adding this new Brother Hammond arc in the Insider (Level 20 - 24) range it looks like they applied the wrong name to its "arc selection button" as if they just copied the code from the old arc to make the new arc. This is why it may have a Gold Star next to it because you may have already done the old arc.

The good news at least is that once you find the Brother Hammond arc (listed under the wrong arc name) you can still select it, do the arc, and get the new badge. Bascially at some point the Devs just need to fix the text error.

I'm not wanting or asking for the characters in this show to all be "super scientist-commandos" who are going to go out and "save the world" from from the zombie menace. I'm not expecting them to instantly have all the answers or to know how to deal with everything they face. I realize this is a random collection of average, normal people who are more or less just struggling to survive day-to-day.

All I'm asking people here to think about is that there was a period of roughly 4 to 6 weeks, while Rick was in coma, that the story (at least the TV show) has not bothered to tell us hardly -anything- about. What happened during that time? Is it reasonable to think that during the days while things were getting worse and civilization was falling apart that there might have been at least RUMORS (much less official government reports) that some people were becoming zombies that had not been attacked by other zombies? Come on people - imagine what it would be like if the world was falling apart around you. You don't have to be a hyper-genius superhero in real life to pay attention to what's happening and have SOME idea as to what was going on, even from the point of view of average, normal people.

I don't think it's too much to ask from a viewer of this show to at least realize that there was this chunk of time that happened "off-camera" that has to be accounted for somehow. Once again I would expect Rick to be "slow on the uptake" because he had the excuse of being in a coma the whole time. But there really is NO excuse for any of the other characters to be anywhere near as ignorant about the zombies as he is because they actually lived through the day-to-day chaos of the world coming to an end.

I think what's ultimately frustrating about this show for me is that the writers seem to be treating it as if ALL the characters had been in a coma just like Rick. They don't seem to understand that these characters, even accounting for their random individual experiences, should have learned far more about zombies than they are being given credit for. I'm not saying they would know things about zombies the same way some characters like Spock or Sherlock Holmes would know about them, but they'd at least know some fundamental practical things that they seem completely clueless about even now.

Bottomline I don't need these people to know EVERYTHING about zombies. But I do need them to know at least what average, normal people would reasonably understand about them after learning to survive a couple of months in a post Zombie Apocalypse world. The writers simply need to come to grips with the simple fact that their characters can't be as -completely- clueless as they are making them out to be.

I think the point is that there's so much out there that's actually worthwhile to watch that there's really no point in wasting precious time watching things that have proven themselves to be sub-par.

I gave Terra Nova a chance. In fact unlike most people I think I suffered though almost every episode they made trying to see the "good" in it so I think I can speak with some experience when I say that in its presented form it deserved to either be cancelled or massively overhauled for improvement. Fox chose the former.

I wanted an enjoyable show out of this and I didn't get it. It happens. I think the only real reason people are "gleefully happy" it got the axe is that for once it seems like a show that actually -deserved- to be cancelled got cancelled. Far too many better shows have been unjustly subjected to the same fate over the years.

Then I guess I shouldn't mention that my -second- badger should be there in a few days or so.

Go figure. I guess I'll have to try to remember that if I run it again with a lower DPS alt.

Leo? Leon? All I know is that I didn't notice either of them in my mission.