Aran

Maybe I have it backward, but I kind of assumed that this evolution of the SW game engine (from Exile all the way through Avadon) was already driven by the attempt to widen appeal. You can now (maybe tediously) reach the late mid-game with a mess of a character build instead of (as in E1) taking multiple attempts even beating the first few wandering encounters with a fairly good party. One of the largest steps in that direction was effectively removing death since A4, in that (excepting TPK) eliminated characters are trivial to revive, and in Avadon will actually return as soon as combat ends. In the old series, you lost your inventory and had to pay gold to get the character back. The games haven't become easier per se, but the penalty for doing badly has been repeatedly reduced. In that sense, I think what you describe as a problem to be fixed may be the desired effect. It almost certainly gets a larger fraction of players to continue playing until mid-game, which in shareware games directly translates to sales.

Some of the design blunders become obvious very quickly though. I went into the wretch warrens with two sorceresses, and learned almost immediately that it's a bad idea to have no close combat character - particularly when there are monsters that are immune to your only basic attack. But I suspect there are other things I haven't learned yet, and still going a lot slower because of it. Exile 3 (my first one) was preferable in that sense because if you made a bad party you got wiped almost immediately.

I'd love to, but I don't know if it'll be playable on either of my computers. It's hard enough to get the native version of TF2 to run...

Sorry to hear that. Virtual hugs if you want them.

If I remember my history lessons, that was true of all medieval towns, woad or not.

Since you haven't specified a time period, I think Avernum during the time of Avernum 3 would be great. No wars or significant threats for years, and only a short time until the surface explorers save Valorim and people can return to the surface if they want. Just make sure you're nowhere near the Tower of Magi. "No special advantages" implies I'd be about as good in a fight as in reality, so I'd probably settle somewhere and become a sage or an alchemist. Ideally somewhere quiet, but still interesting enough to have adventurers coming in dropping lots of gold on potions or item identification.

Huh, I didn't notice her. I'm bad at spotting background characters though. Did Doctor Whooves make an appearance as well? The portal only opened every 2.5 years. Also, it's outdated now that the movie is out, but this was hilarious.

Oh, I didn't even realize that was still going. Will have to come back one of these days.

I haven't been involved in the development process, but I understand that SW's original code is pretty badly out of date and broken on modern systems. You may have more luck with the latest version of the community-developed project (recently moved to Github from Google Code). Before attempting to debug the 2007 code, you should definitely give that a try.

A3 is the one that came out around soon after I started playing. Therefore, all the engines before it feel too old, and all the ones after it feel like a betrayal of everything Spidweb stood for.

Did the Ikonboard only last a year then? I remember that UBB was set up in September 2001 from the join dates.

Yeah, it was one of the few ways to die instantly, without being left at 0HP.

I don't want to go. (I just made another attempt at watching that scene without misting up. Zero for five so far.)

(Just realized I missed it by two weeks, but no matter.) As of May 14, it's been over ten years since I joined Spiderweb. That's three US elections, as many Harry Potter novels, and one LotR movie, Doctor Who relaunch and Facebook founding each. In fact, it's only a few years from half the world wide web's entire lifetime! This was a different place, too. I sometimes feel a bit of nostalgia for the old days, but more than that I admire the ways in which it has matured. Only a handful of posters from that time are still a regular presence, though many will still drop in when you least expect it. Thousands of others have come and gone in the meantime, and many (I'd count, but this ain't a stats topic) came to stay and now form the core of this community. In real life, my network has completely changed at least twice since then, and this is probably the most constant circle of friends I've had outside my own family. I was in high school when I came here, and you've contributed to my upbringing in more ways than I'm probably even aware of (or would care to admit). All of you are pretty awesome, and I have really enjoyed spending my time here (and will continue to do so, this ain't a goodbye topic either). Thanks for everything! Anyway, that's enough speechifying and reminiscing and stuff from me. To another ten!

I play Blades for the plot.

We lost the polarisboard.org domain before that, so it'd have been www2.polarisboard.net. This domain loss coincided with the move from Logalot's own server to Hostgator; the www2 was after Hostgator wiped our files. Before that Polaris moved off TheKavern to its own domain. If we count all these, then www2.polarisboard.net would be 4.0, and polarisboard.org 2.0. (Not counting the various interim solutions. Also I don't know if TheKavern was its first home - that's before my time.)

Formerly, mostly film and video game soundtracks - though also a lot of classical music and folk or various shades of folk/rock/punk/celtic. More recently, I also added a small subset of metal (symphonic mostly, eg. Nightwish). Not long ago, I found out that the kind of stock epic music used in cinematic trailers is actually available by itself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailer_music), and ever since then my MP3 player has been mostly playing stuff by Two Steps From Hell / Thomas Bergersen and Immediate Music, in addition to Murray Gold's vast collection of Doctor Who scores. (Since I mostly listen to music while riding a bicycle or exercising these days, I tend far more toward louder/faster and epic stuff than I used to.) Also, http://www.last.fm/user/Arancaytar

My reaction to nearly every arc-related episode. Except Wedding of River Song and Big Bang; those provided a bit of rare closure at least.

That food is too sad!

Scorpius! It's been a while.

Scumbag Hawthorne: Exile an archmage. Get your son assassinated for it.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.de/2011/03/review-minecraft.html

DANGER, BLIT.

Sinister? It'd feel sinister if it were a machine that can turn itself on, I suppose.

It's only been one day so far, but do you have a set date for when you'll close the poll and make with the aggregating?