Duke Togo

I have to say, the level of stupidity surrounding the discussion online over the ending is staggering. If you didn't get it, that's fine, we'll talk about it and explain it. If you didn't like it because you wanted/expected something different, that's fine, to each their own. But if you hate it and think it's stupid because you don't understand it, well, you're just an effing moron. Do I personally like the ending(s)? Yes. Do I have any issues with the ending(s)? Yes. Per my previous post, I think I prefer the "Red" ending over the "Blue" and the "Green," simply because of my time invested in this series. It doesn't really fit in with my Paragon Shepard, but it gives me the final scene I want. That said, Bioware is on the record as saying that Shepard's story is over, and any new games set in that universe will not involve him.

I beat the game last night using my Paragon Shepard that dates back to ME1 (I have a Renegade one as well that I have yet to play in ME3). I got to view all three of the "best" endings by getting my total military strength up around 7,200 (which is about as high as you can go), and my effective military strength over 5,000 (through multiplayer). That 5,000 effective stat is key; though, as I understand it 4,000 may work as well, it's just slightly less forgiving if you make some bad choices at the end. As far as I know, there is no other way to view the best endings (regardless of what Bioware says). Bioware may view the 2,800 ending as the best (it's listed as "Green" in the spoiler section bellow), but I am not sure I feel that way. Also, something I'd like to let everyone know up front: your choices in the first two games have little-to-no impact on the end of the game. You can come into ME3 having never played the earlier two and still get one of the three best endings. There are some 17 possible endings to ME3 (of which there are three "best"), though they only have three main variances: Imported saves from the previous game and New Game+ saves are treated to a secret post-credits scene that takes place sometime in the future. The "best" endings are: Minus a few missteps, I loved the hell out of ME3. I wish the ending gave more answers (i.e. backstory), but it was a hell of an adventure with some truly epic moments.

With "no" humans would be better.

I played half the demo (well, I think it was half) which was essentially the opening sequence of the game. I didn't want to play the next portion because it seemed like it might be somewhat spoilerish (takes place on another world). It's Mass Effect, what else can you say? I'd ready for it!

I have the demo installed on my PC but haven't gotten to play it yet. I'm hoping I'll have some time tomorrow.

First trailer for the movie based on the book. It looks absurd, but the subject matter is enough to have me atleast pay some amount of attention.

Can I put up the old animated version of mine? BTW, LOVE the banner. I'd vote for keeping it up permanently.

Lookin' good!

I've sadly not seen many Pubs outside of WZ's. I have 9 world kills to 2 deaths--much less than I expected to have at 50. As it stands now, Ilum is a place where the two factions get together to trade objectives for easy daily and weekly mission completions; even then, I generally only see a couple of Pubs in the zone. Thankfully our population isn't too skewed, and I only get Huttball as a WZ about half the time. I loved my class story as a Sith Warrior; simply excellent writing and voice acting, with only only one real misstep along the way. I've done every mission available to me--without space-baring though cut scenes--with the exception of two Heroic 4's on Hoth and one Heroic 4 on Corellia. The only planet I really loathed was Imperial Taris, and Imperial Balmorra went on a tad too long for my tastes. I've done my share of space missions and have a fairly well geared-out ship (Grade 5 and Purple upgrades). I've done every FP up to level 40 (The Foundry was the last I did) and spend some time every day in the WZ's. Right now I'm just waiting for some more folks in my guild to catch up so we can start running hard-mode FP's (and hopefully finish out those Heroics I need). We currently have three 50's and three more members in the 40's.

I used to play EVE Online; I'm not sure you can find a more hardcore sci-fi MMO.

Very much so. They won't lose any players over it, but it will "color" their opinion of the game.

Time frame seems to be a few months. Also, they are going to expand space combat.

The Blasters have been placed on the Davik's Estate server. That's US PvP East.

Everybody did.

Well, they're taking the extinction of their race pretty well, I'd say.

It's not about what computers are capable of; it's about not punishing those who are at a disadvantage because of their connection. What you are advocating for is what is known as "action based" or "twitch based" combat--this does not work in a large MMO environment because of the disparity in the latency among users.

Dual-specs are coming, just not at launch. If SWTOR was an "instanced" game world, it would essentially be a single-player game. There is no way around that. I don't play MMO's to play by myself in a world devoid of other players.

Ok, maybe I missed this, but what happened to the rest of the Thundercats? Are our band of brave adventures the only ones to survive a genocide? There was a huge city teaming with cats, and they all seem to be gone. I have a feeling I missed something about them being taken for slave labor or escaping into the hills. Or maybe they'll all just dead?

I win: I was getting 9 FPS during the dance off! If there was one thing 6 years of WoW has taught me, no class remains the same for long.

What is somewhat bothersome are those who didn't play this weekend chiming in on the forums saying, "Well, my hardware is 'X', and I was getting 100+ FPS." When you ask them if it was this weekend, they always say no. I have yet to see a single person with capable hardware post they were getting the numbers we had seen previously during the final beta this past weekend. Passing along a rumor: someone stated that Bioware re-enabled the in-game AA this weekend. I didn't see an option for it, but considering the issues they had in the past with it, I would not be surprised. However, I had AA enabled through CCC, and that would have overridden any in-game setting--meaning I *should* have been immune if that was the cause.

Bioware is actively investigating the issue.

This beta build they have us testing (on 6 NA servers) has some serious performance issues. Where previously I was seeing 90-110 FPS (unnecessary, obviously), I now average around 30-50--and never above 70. At times I dip as low as 20 FPS.I had to turn on vsync to correct some other graphic issues that have cropped up, so I'm capped at 60 now, anyway. This is very disappointing, to say the least. I have the hardware to run this game at max, and then some. I do hope they resolve this in the next few weeks. Edit: Bioware created what is a quickly growing thread on the tester forums because of this issue (currently at 26 pages). Servers are currently down and a new patch was rolled out; hopefully this fixes it.

Seems I've been invited, along with small group of testers (some of who are in regular beta), to test a new build of SWTOR starting tomorrow. No end date was given.

Though I can't really disagree with Shane, from my point of view his approach and how he handled it (and himself) was complete out of line--up until Sophia walked out of that barn. Totally changed how that entire episode looked.