But my tolerance ended with The Clone Wars. When I saw the previews and saw the horrible animation, and realized the thing was just a tie-in to a kids cartoon and even more merchandising, that was it.
So you're basing your condemnation... on the previews?
^ Also, she did have a plan when going back to Naboo. Right before she told Palpatine she was going back, she had a discussion with Jar Jar where he told her that the Gungans were "warriors" with a "grand army" who wouldn't give up without a fight. He also alluded to the possibility that the disparity in the military might between the Gungans and Naboo was the reason that the two sides didn't get along. Yes, the dialog was goofy, but it was also important. Amidala goes back to Naboo with the plan of allying with the Gungans to fight together against the Trade Federation.
Agreed. I had TPM on DVD for about a year before I got my first big-screen TV, and it made all the difference. The Battle of Naboo is actually really freaking intense... so long as you keep your focus off Jar-Jar who appears at the center of every frame. I mean, in RotJ, you had comic relief teddy-bears, but there was at least a moment where the comedy was broken to see an Ewok getting blown to bits.
THANK YOU! In one scene, sure, he's got some anger issues, but he's not pissy all the time.
The next scene, he's slaughtering children at the Jedi school.
Perhaps I should just chalk this up as being part of the limited attention-span ADHD generation, but you really weren't paying attention, were you? First, he murders an entire tribe of Tusken Raiders (women and children included). Then he executes a (literaly) unarmed Count Dooku. Then, he winds up impulsively betraying and helping to kill the senior (motherf&*$ing) member of the Jedi Council. With all of his friends betrayed and noone else to turn to, he goes to Sidious, and is then given the order to raze the Jedi temple.
There are certainly things to criticize about the Prequels. But the argument that "one minute he's podracing, the next he's killing children" is a flat premise at best.
Maybe the big problem is Lucas made better movies when the technology was less capable of letting him go overboard.
Yes. The technology was so limited that it almost killed him! During the filming of ANH, he was waaay over budget, way past his deadline, the studio wanted him to axe the entire battle of Yavin because "the heroes already escaped the Death Star". On top of this, he sits down to see a "final" edit of key scenes that his team had worked a year on, only to see that it was downright dreadful. He had an anxiety attack and collapsed right on the set.
I'm not even sure why they started Anakin off as a child.
So you could see how someone "pure" with good intentions can turn out very, very wrong. To see that taking a small child away from his mother - only to be reunited with her 10 years later immediately before she dies can really mess you up!
Young Jedi are sequestered for their training as soon as they show aptitude. Anakin was a child, but a child who already had ideas and feelings that, by is upbringing and attachments, ran counter to Jedi Ideals.
But Lucas, in some bizarre mythos mashup decides to throw in the Immaculate Conception which added nothing to the story
Watch the Opera House scene in RotS again. The idea of the "immaculate conception" certainly was elaborated upon there.
In the Original Trilogy, it was pretty much all Black & White. Good Guys vs. Bad Guys. It wasn't until the last 10 minutes of the second film that we got any moral nuance at all. The key plot line that Darth Vader was worth redeeming wasn't touched on until the final film.
Flame away, but I actually like the story of the prequels better than the original trilogy. The story is actually much deeper, once you start to read between the lines. A trade dispute escalating to the brink of war by cowardly (but surprisingly well armed) corporate heads may not play out on screen like a Star Destroyer tearing apart a Blockade Runner, but the story it conveys is no less relevant. It's the first, seemingly inconsequential step that a Republic takes to become a Dictatorship. Here, the Good Guys aren't always "Good". The Republic, the intergalactic symbol of Democracy, is filled with "greedy, squabbling delegates". The Jedi, while "noble", are arrogant and stubborn. Also, the Bad Guys aren't always "Bad". Jango Fett was a mercenary - nothing more, nothing less. The Confederacy was filled with member systems who felt that the Republic had become too corrupt to represent them. Even Anakin himself fell to evil in an attempt to save the people he loved. Just like Jocasta in Oedipus Rex, he was so obsessed with preventing a prophecy from being fulfilled, that he wound up causing it to come to fruition.
Yup. Revenge of the Sith was definitely a kids movie. What with Anakin murdering a temple full of children before going all "domestic violence" on his pregnant wife, followed by him having three limbs lopped off and being burned alive.
There was also the cut scene that was reinserted into the Special Edition where, prior to the Battle of Yavin, Red Leader expresses concern about Luke's ability to fly in combat. Biggs comes to Luke's defense telling Red Leader that Luke is the "best pilot in the outer rim".
That was actually a theory I came up with shortly after AotC came out. Palpatine conspired against the republic by breeding dissent with the separatists. Then, conveniently, the republic has a ready-made army waiting for them when hostilities break out. Why not destroy the Jedi from within as well? A Jedi "born of the force" would be considered to be the one to fulfill the Jedi prophecy. The Midi-chlorians seemed to exist for a single reason in the plot: to give the Sith something tangible that they could manipulate to their own ends. Needless to say, I felt quite vindicated once RotS came out.:)
I think even Lucas realized this mis-step, which is precisely why the midi-whatsits were ignored in the other films.
You weren't paying attention... In RotS, Palpatine tells Anakin that Darth Plagious was so powerful that he could "manipulate the midi-chlorians to create life". This was perhaps the biggest revelation in all six films.
As a former semi-pro musician, ASCAP is one of the only ways that many musicians actually make money. I saw a breakdown once of how recording artists get shafted unless they secure royalty rights. Let's say you have a five-man band. You release an album that goes Gold: that's 500,000 units sold. At $15 a CD, that means $7.5 million in revenue.
How much would you be compensated for your efforts?
About $20,000 - That's a pathetic 0.2%! And not even enough to be above poverty line.
If an artist secures royalties through a company like the ASCAP, they're guaranteed a much greater percentage.
Imagine Facebook would work like that. "Hey, I'm on Facebook, you too?" "Yeah man, add me as your friend! Oh wait, you're on a different Facebook server... never mind." You think that's acceptable too?
Aren't you the same guy a few posts up who kept complaining that "WoW isn't a game. It's Facebook."? You like to bitch. We get that. At least be consistent about it.
This makes you want to prevent being destroyed. In WoW nobody cares if their character dies, because it has no consequence.
Wow.. And to think all this time I thought "You have died. Your equipment suffers 10% damage." was a consequence. With all the bitching about repair bills, it sure feels like one.
WoW not having a lose condition is not the only reason why it isn't a proper game.
Stupid much?
You get together with 24 of your buddies for Trial of the Crusader. You spend 90 minutes getting through the first four bosses. You then fight Anub'arak. You wipe. You then fight him again. You wipe. Repeat this five or six times. Finally, you get him down to 10% of his health, and you still have 23 party members alive. Victory is within your grasp. Then his enrage timer goes off because you weren't fast enough in beating him down. You wipe. Discouraged and despondent, your group breaks up for the day. If this wasn't bad enough, you still have a 150g repair bill waiting for you when you get back to town.
So maybe by your definition, it ain't "losing". But it sure as hell feels like it!!
To WoW developers, adding grind is upping the difficulty...you know, instead of doing something like add strategy to a game that's designed around a bunch of people in a group all hitting their attack button at the same time.
Mmmkay... how about you try button mashing your way through Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader. Let me know how that works out for you. "Tank & Spank" raid bosses in Lich King end with Patchwerk. If you don't know the exact strategy for a boss with your class, you'll not only die, but probably take out the rest of the raid with you.
The meeting stone level requirement is effectively a nod toward boosting - given that low levels go past so quickly now, it's actually quite difficult to find a proper party for a mid level dungeon like maraudon, uldaman or that sort of thing. I guess Blizzard think it better that a new player get boosted through there, rather than miss it altogether.
I leveled my first character this summer. I didn't have much trouble finding groups for mid-level runs. It was just a matter of doing a 'who' for all characters in my level range and whispering an LFG request to them. It took time but it was doable.
What was damn near impossible was finding groups for classic lv 58-60 instances & Burning Crusade 68-70. I needed a guildie to run me through Scholomace, Stratholme, and Dire Maul. Half the BC instances I've never even seen. The random dungeon feature could help mitigate this.
Heirloom gear really helps mitigate this. Once you have one toon that reaches 80, you can buy bind-on-account gear that scales with level which gives characters a 10% bonus to all experience gained.
I believe that in raiding in world of warcraft, the 'performance' difficulty has actually reduced as the game has progressed whereas 'mathematical' difficulty increases all the time (thats 'tier progression').
No, the performance aspect is still very much there. On our realm, I believe that there are only four guilds who have defeated Alagon. And this is three months after Tier-9 equipment has been available. And having just gotten the ToC 25 achievement, I can tell you that all the gear available in the game won't get you past the Faction Champions much less Anub'arak unless you are very cognizant of how the encounters work.
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So you're basing your condemnation... on the previews?
^ Also, she did have a plan when going back to Naboo. Right before she told Palpatine she was going back, she had a discussion with Jar Jar where he told her that the Gungans were "warriors" with a "grand army" who wouldn't give up without a fight. He also alluded to the possibility that the disparity in the military might between the Gungans and Naboo was the reason that the two sides didn't get along. Yes, the dialog was goofy, but it was also important. Amidala goes back to Naboo with the plan of allying with the Gungans to fight together against the Trade Federation.
Agreed. I had TPM on DVD for about a year before I got my first big-screen TV, and it made all the difference. The Battle of Naboo is actually really freaking intense... so long as you keep your focus off Jar-Jar who appears at the center of every frame. I mean, in RotJ, you had comic relief teddy-bears, but there was at least a moment where the comedy was broken to see an Ewok getting blown to bits.
Perhaps I should just chalk this up as being part of the limited attention-span ADHD generation, but you really weren't paying attention, were you? First, he murders an entire tribe of Tusken Raiders (women and children included). Then he executes a (literaly) unarmed Count Dooku. Then, he winds up impulsively betraying and helping to kill the senior (motherf&*$ing) member of the Jedi Council. With all of his friends betrayed and noone else to turn to, he goes to Sidious, and is then given the order to raze the Jedi temple.
There are certainly things to criticize about the Prequels. But the argument that "one minute he's podracing, the next he's killing children" is a flat premise at best.
Yes. The technology was so limited that it almost killed him! During the filming of ANH, he was waaay over budget, way past his deadline, the studio wanted him to axe the entire battle of Yavin because "the heroes already escaped the Death Star". On top of this, he sits down to see a "final" edit of key scenes that his team had worked a year on, only to see that it was downright dreadful. He had an anxiety attack and collapsed right on the set.
So you could see how someone "pure" with good intentions can turn out very, very wrong. To see that taking a small child away from his mother - only to be reunited with her 10 years later immediately before she dies can really mess you up! Young Jedi are sequestered for their training as soon as they show aptitude. Anakin was a child, but a child who already had ideas and feelings that, by is upbringing and attachments, ran counter to Jedi Ideals.
Watch the Opera House scene in RotS again. The idea of the "immaculate conception" certainly was elaborated upon there.
In the Original Trilogy, it was pretty much all Black & White. Good Guys vs. Bad Guys. It wasn't until the last 10 minutes of the second film that we got any moral nuance at all. The key plot line that Darth Vader was worth redeeming wasn't touched on until the final film.
Flame away, but I actually like the story of the prequels better than the original trilogy. The story is actually much deeper, once you start to read between the lines. A trade dispute escalating to the brink of war by cowardly (but surprisingly well armed) corporate heads may not play out on screen like a Star Destroyer tearing apart a Blockade Runner, but the story it conveys is no less relevant. It's the first, seemingly inconsequential step that a Republic takes to become a Dictatorship. Here, the Good Guys aren't always "Good". The Republic, the intergalactic symbol of Democracy, is filled with "greedy, squabbling delegates". The Jedi, while "noble", are arrogant and stubborn. Also, the Bad Guys aren't always "Bad". Jango Fett was a mercenary - nothing more, nothing less. The Confederacy was filled with member systems who felt that the Republic had become too corrupt to represent them. Even Anakin himself fell to evil in an attempt to save the people he loved. Just like Jocasta in Oedipus Rex, he was so obsessed with preventing a prophecy from being fulfilled, that he wound up causing it to come to fruition.
Yup. Revenge of the Sith was definitely a kids movie. What with Anakin murdering a temple full of children before going all "domestic violence" on his pregnant wife, followed by him having three limbs lopped off and being burned alive.
There was also the cut scene that was reinserted into the Special Edition where, prior to the Battle of Yavin, Red Leader expresses concern about Luke's ability to fly in combat. Biggs comes to Luke's defense telling Red Leader that Luke is the "best pilot in the outer rim".
^Ohhhh, that's right!! The Original Trilogy certainly did not feature a hero who whined and bitched throughout the first two films!!
That was actually a theory I came up with shortly after AotC came out. Palpatine conspired against the republic by breeding dissent with the separatists. Then, conveniently, the republic has a ready-made army waiting for them when hostilities break out. Why not destroy the Jedi from within as well? A Jedi "born of the force" would be considered to be the one to fulfill the Jedi prophecy. The Midi-chlorians seemed to exist for a single reason in the plot: to give the Sith something tangible that they could manipulate to their own ends. Needless to say, I felt quite vindicated once RotS came out. :)
You weren't paying attention... In RotS, Palpatine tells Anakin that Darth Plagious was so powerful that he could "manipulate the midi-chlorians to create life". This was perhaps the biggest revelation in all six films.
The marriage between films and merchandising didn't exist before Star Wars came out. Star Wars invented the movie tie-in.
As a former semi-pro musician, ASCAP is one of the only ways that many musicians actually make money. I saw a breakdown once of how recording artists get shafted unless they secure royalty rights. Let's say you have a five-man band. You release an album that goes Gold: that's 500,000 units sold. At $15 a CD, that means $7.5 million in revenue.
How much would you be compensated for your efforts?
About $20,000 - That's a pathetic 0.2%! And not even enough to be above poverty line.
If an artist secures royalties through a company like the ASCAP, they're guaranteed a much greater percentage.
Aren't you the same guy a few posts up who kept complaining that "WoW isn't a game. It's Facebook."? You like to bitch. We get that. At least be consistent about it.
Ever play an RTS? Blizzard damn near invented the genre.
Wow.. And to think all this time I thought "You have died. Your equipment suffers 10% damage." was a consequence. With all the bitching about repair bills, it sure feels like one.
Stupid much?
You get together with 24 of your buddies for Trial of the Crusader. You spend 90 minutes getting through the first four bosses. You then fight Anub'arak. You wipe. You then fight him again. You wipe. Repeat this five or six times. Finally, you get him down to 10% of his health, and you still have 23 party members alive. Victory is within your grasp. Then his enrage timer goes off because you weren't fast enough in beating him down. You wipe. Discouraged and despondent, your group breaks up for the day. If this wasn't bad enough, you still have a 150g repair bill waiting for you when you get back to town.
So maybe by your definition, it ain't "losing". But it sure as hell feels like it!!
Mmmkay... how about you try button mashing your way through Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader. Let me know how that works out for you. "Tank & Spank" raid bosses in Lich King end with Patchwerk. If you don't know the exact strategy for a boss with your class, you'll not only die, but probably take out the rest of the raid with you.
I leveled my first character this summer. I didn't have much trouble finding groups for mid-level runs. It was just a matter of doing a 'who' for all characters in my level range and whispering an LFG request to them. It took time but it was doable. What was damn near impossible was finding groups for classic lv 58-60 instances & Burning Crusade 68-70. I needed a guildie to run me through Scholomace, Stratholme, and Dire Maul. Half the BC instances I've never even seen. The random dungeon feature could help mitigate this.
Heirloom gear really helps mitigate this. Once you have one toon that reaches 80, you can buy bind-on-account gear that scales with level which gives characters a 10% bonus to all experience gained.
What's wrong with the low-level dungeons? Ragefire Chasm, Shadowfang Keep, and Wailing Caverns are a blast.
Sure. Let's shorten the growing season in the US midwest by 30 days and see how that works out for us...
Don't waste your time watching "Expelled". Simply hit your head once or twice with a hammer. It's quicker, and will have the same results.
No, the performance aspect is still very much there. On our realm, I believe that there are only four guilds who have defeated Alagon. And this is three months after Tier-9 equipment has been available. And having just gotten the ToC 25 achievement, I can tell you that all the gear available in the game won't get you past the Faction Champions much less Anub'arak unless you are very cognizant of how the encounters work.