TonyV

I didn't know him either, but I do express my condolences in a cosmic sense. I do care when other players have bad things happen to them, and even if I have no idea who they are, I still wish them all the best.

If I ever die during my run in the game, I hope everyone remembers me well. Please don't get too maudlin, though, I'd want everyone to have a big party. I've already told my family that I want to either be cremated or buried in something comfortable. Not that I suppose it matters, but the other part of my request is that the most formal I want anyone to dress at my funeral/visitation/wake/whatever is to be in blue jeans and maybe a golf or polo shirt. No ties, suits, dress pants, or dress shirts allowed. And if I'm in a suit or something, I'd probably look pretty silly being so overdressed.

I should probably put in my will something about notifying people here. The wiki should be pretty well taken care of, I do have another administrator who has root-level access to everything.

For what it's worth, I thought it was--and still is--a great issue. I'd love to see more updates that focus on content instead of or in addition to mechanics.

Good luck, and here's my advice for college.

By far, the most important thing you will need to do is to have a plan for getting out. Before you ever set foot on campus, sit down for a long session with your student handbook, the one that shows all the requirements for you to get a degree. Taking classes hoping that it all comes together in the end is a recipe for disaster, and you will 1) spend a lot of money you don't have to, 2) waste a lot of time, and 3) run the risk of getting extremely discouraged when you figure out that some of those classes you took don't count for anything, and you just missed the one class you need to graduate that's only taught once a year.

Make a detailed list of exactly what you're going to take. List each course, along with all of its prerequisites, and ensure that it lines up with what is required to graduate. Once you're done, make an appointment with your counselor and take your list to him. Make sure he's on board with your plan, and that there aren't any "gotchas" that you'll run into along the way.

Stay focused on the plan. When I was in college, my dean wanted all of his students to take a seminar that wasn't required to graduate. I declined. I found out way too late that he liked doing that, dragging out his students' graduation dates under the misguided assumption that everyone was there to eventually go into some academic profession.

If something comes along that varies your plan, such as having to drop a class for whatever reason (it happens to the best of us), the university stops offering a class, the requirements for you to graduate change (which you should strongly protest), you change your major, or god forbid you fail something (it's also been known to happen to the best of us), sit down again and come up with a new plan for going forward. Go to your counselor, and then set your sights on the new target. I'm serious, don't let up on that.

After every semester (or quarter, if your school is still on that system), write down the grade you got in each class and check them off the list of requirements to graduate. There's nothing quite like the feeling as seeing your progress represented on a sheet of paper filling up with stuff with lines through it.

As for day-to-day stuff...

Make an effort to meet each and every single professor you have. They all have office hours, make sure you go by at least once or twice a semester. Even if you understand what's going on, if you have to, make up a question you already know the answer to. This does two valuable things. 1) Most professors have a harder time giving you a bad grade if they know you, even a little bit, personally. 2) This is a clear signal to your professor that you are trying. Believe me, that has been the difference between several A's and B's that I've gotten or would have. Don't be afraid of being a "teacher's pet." In college, there's no such thing.

Unlike high school, in college, no one will make you get up and go to class. This has been the academic downfall of many students. If you don't go to class one day, no one is going to come get you. No one is going to call and see if you're okay. There will be absolutely no repercussions whatsoever. You'll get away with it scott free, because no one really cares if you show up or not. But it's a trap. Once you get away with it once, you'll try again. Then again. Then you'll miss two days. Then you'll tell yourself, "I just need to study for the test, I don't really need to go to class." Trust me on this, missing class is the single greatest reason I've known people to end up college dropouts and flunk-outs than any other, and NONE of them thought it was a big deal at the time. The single greatest factor that will determine whether you are successful is whether you bother to SHOW UP. Do not slack off on this.

Last, but not least, keep in mind that the end goal is to get out. Unless you're going to go for a PhD or you want to eventually get into an Ivy League school, there is absolutely no reason for you to feel like you have to get all A's. There's an old joke that goes like this: "What do you call the guy who graduates from medical school at the bottom of the class? Doctor." Another anecdote. A good friend of mine in college got straight A's. (He was going for his PhD, and with scholarships, he was actually making money by going to school.) I said something to him once about how he must get perfect scores on all of his tests. He told me that he doesn't; he studies just hard enough to get a 90% (for the A), and then stops. His philosophy was that anything over 90% was a waste of effort. If you're not going for a PhD or planning on applying to an Ivy League school, shoot for a mid-B average. Yeah, you'll get some C's, hopefully with some A's in the mix, but I guarantee you that in ten years after you finish, all that will matter is that you got the diploma, and no one will ever ask you what your GPA was.

So there you go, TonyV's college advice. Follow it, and hopefully you'll make it through without too much trouble and without it swallowing up your life and burning you out. I wish that someone had told me that stuff when I started.

I know it's impossible for a player to answer this definitively, but I'm really looking more for your observation and experience. The question is, what foreign language have you seen the most in your gameplay experience? Of all the non-English speaking (or even non-English preferring) players, what language do you think is most represented?

Personally, I've seen a handful of players who speak Portuguese; apparently there is a bit of a population of Brazilian players. I don't have access to the European servers, and I mean all players across the North American and European servers, so I'm wondering if there are more players whose native language is French or German since they have servers dedicated to them. When I think about it, it seems logical to me that there would be a lot of Spanish-language players, but to be honest, I don't think I've ever run across anyone speaking Spanish in the game. Or if something such as Chinese (not counting RMTers ) or Korean might be higher, but then, I don't see people speaking those languages, either.

For what it's worth, I do have stats from the Paragon Wiki that might help somewhat. The top 10 countries by page loads are as follows, along with their relative percentage of loads:

• United States (79.78%)
• Great Britain (6.85%)
• Canada (6.30%)
• Germany (1.79%)
• Australia (1.57%)
• Denmark (0.90%)
• Sweden (0.88%)
• France (0.76%)
• Netherlands (0.60%)
• Brazil (0.57%)

Of course, that might not accurately represent languages within the game; after all, if you only speak French, why would you come to the English-language Paragon Wiki? It could be more of an indication of how many people within those countries speak English than representative of how many non-English speaking people from those countries play the game.

Anyway, any insights would be appreciated!

<QR>

Man, what a fun OP to read!

If someone was making inappropriate solicitations of your friend, regardless of orientation, he should have petitioned them. If your friend takes offense because he thinks that someone merely mentioning that they're gay is a solicitation, or if someone took offense to him using the word "gay" as a synonym of "stupid," then--how can I put this?--your friend needs to grow the hell up.

I typically avoid discussing my (or my character's) sexual orientation in the game because frankly, it's no one's business. If asked, I'm as likely to lie about it as not. I've seen inappropriate homosexual chatter, and I've reported it. I've seen a lot more inappropriate heterosexual chatter, and I've reported it, too. Fortunately, both types are very rare.

Here's his info on the Paragon Wiki, it's pretty complete. You could say he has a "magnetic" personality...

P.S. For reference to look up info on him, his name is "Gaussian."

Bloody bad news, actually, for a few reasons.

First, RMTers are not going to simply go away. I guaran-damn-tee you that they will find ways to convey their ads, and I'm betting that it won't be as passive or ignorable. Honestly, I liked getting spam e-mail, because it was trivially easy to deal with, it was extraordinarily simple for us to flag spam accounts, and it means that they weren't forced to resort to other, more irritating measures. It's not a question of whether or not we'll get spam, but how we'll be getting spam. In that sense, e-mail ain't so bad.

Second, it's not addressing the root cause of the issue, real money trade. I've said all along (and still maintain) that this is not a problem with the e-mail system. Until they get more results from things such as more quickly and efficiently detecting (e.g. more advanced heuristics, faster and better reporting, honeypots) and dealing wtih (e.g. more advanced filtering, easier GM tools, better automated systems) RMT, this problem will continue to plague the game in some form.

Third, in spite of the "I never use e-mail!" crowd, there are plenty of us out here who do. This is nothing less than significantly crippling the system's effectiveness to us. Instead of firing off an e-mail, now I'm going to have to ask them to turn off their filter, add me as a friend, read my e-mail, turn back on their filter, drop them as a friend... Many people I send e-mails to, I don't really want to be their friend, any more than I want to give my phone number out to everyone who has my e-mail address.

In short, this is basically letting the RMTers dictate to us how we will and won't be allowed to communicate. I, for one, will continue to leave my e-mail on across all characters. I highly encourage everyone else to do the same. Practically speaking, though, I know that they might as well remove the e-mail system entirely, and if you're thinking to yourself, "Finally, an end to the onslaught of RMT spam!", well, I hate to be the one to inform you that it most assuredly isn't.

So I could start documenting stuff for the Paragon Wiki. Even better, I wish I could nominate two or three other people to get in, because honestly, they're better at it than I am. Still, I'd take what I can get.

Plus, I actually fill out generally tedious bug reports on simple "polish" issues, such as obscure spelling and grammatical errors. I carefully read everything and use my English pedantry to hopefully keep others from being distracted.

It took me around four or five days to figure out how to get out of a mission without running all the way back to the entrance door. I noticed everyone just vanishing, and finally, I asked, "How are you getting out so quickly?" To be fair, though, this was before there was an exit button, and you had to click anywhere on the compass bar except the menu or the info icon to exit, it's not like it was intuitive.

When I finally made my way to Kings Row, one night I noticed this odd little machine generating a huge bubble. It was just sitting there, not moving, and not protecting or being protected by anyone or anything. It was labeled "Shield Generator," and it belonged to a faction I had never heard of, something called "Sky Raiders." In hindsight, someone must have defeated all of the spawn, but left the generator there, which I ran across. I took a few swipes at it just to see what would happen, but I couldn't hit it, and nothing did. I just chalked it up as something interesting to figure out later, which I suppose I eventually did. At the time, I wasn't even sure whether it was friendly or not.

For a long time, I didn't realize that you could combine enhancements by dragging one from your tray over an existing one that was slotted. I thought that you had to slot it, then combine them. I honestly thought that if you had, say, four slots, then you could only combine up to the first three enhancements. I figured out how to combine that last slotted enhancement accidentally when I tried to replace one with a higher-level one and it brought up the combine interface.

After the revamped Hamidon, I took one of my characters who had Phase Shift there to get the badge who didn't have it. I Phase Shifted and started walking towards the badge. *BAM!* "Crud, I could have sworn that I phase shifted!" I went to the hospital, went all the way back to The Hive, and tried again. *BAM!* "Ahhh... I see now. Let me go load up on purples and get it that way." *BAM!* @#$%! They changed that too? (BTW, Hamidon completely ignores phase shift and all defense/resist damage effects. I felt like the victim of a Chuck Norris joke that night.)

By the way, here are the default vBulletin settings. Whether or not the admins have changed them, I don't know: