I think that MMOs need to look at characters that age, and can have descendents. Create a heritage for your kids, pass on items, establish a family history, etc.
Also to survive, gameplay needs to be emergent. The things you can do in game should give rise to the fun you can have by letting you be inventive, letting you interact with other players and make changes to the world.
I have recently started playing the SWGEMU (www.swgemu.com). I am in the process of being elected to be the mayor of a player city, I am building up businesses crafting, and I am slowly building a guild up. All of those activities are things which emerge from the possible activities my characters can engage in inside the game. Sandbox gaming is what is missing from today's MMOs I think, and it has far more potential for a long lasting appeal. Note: the swgemu is not finished, its in an alpha state so lots of elements of the game are not functioning yet but it is playable provided you have a copy of the install disks for the game. It is not illegal - they have permission from SOE's attorneys, and its free. The server code (as of patch 14.1 on the old game, so just prior to the Combat Upgrade) is being recreated by volunteer programmers and they are doing a fantastic job.
EVE has sandbox gameplay, it has a player driven economy and is probably the best example of that style of gameplay in a current MMO. Sadly its never appealed to me - I guess I like walking around as a character - but I should give it another try.
It seems to me that this is not really news. When I was studying Linguistics many, many years ago, it was pointed out to me that we shape entire sentences in our brain before we become aware of them and before we speak the words. This is how we can make unintentional errors when we speak - spoonerisms for example, where the initial sounds of one word are substituted with that of a subsequent word (Wikipedia gives this example: "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" (dear old queen, referring to Queen Victoria)). Since we are unaware of these errors prior to speaking them, it seems only logical that the subconscious/unconscious mind has the ability to recognize grammatical mistakes, since it has the capacity to formulate them. The human mind seems to be *built* to absorb rules of grammar and vocabulary at a very low level. We learn the rules of whatever language(s) we grow up speaking subconsciously by hearing them applied by those around us. Sure, people correct pronunciation and grammar in the young from time to time but a lot of it is just seemingly absorbed at a young age. After age 8 or so, you need to really study to learn a language in most cases, before that you can learn up to 3 languages at the same time apparently - although usually only if you speak each one to an individual that uses that language exclusively with you.
So this seems interesting but not all that earth shattering to me at least. Although of course this is/. so I didn't RTFA:p
Its stupid to keep the lab animals in the basement obviously, if only from the perspective of setting research back years as was pointed out, let alone the needless killing of thousands of animals. The basements should be kept for the adminstration staff, or at least the lawyers...
Bit of Trivia: I read somewhere just recently that in the line "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle", the word being translated as "camel" should actually refer to a type of rope - which makes more sense logically I think. Thus its easier for a large piece of rope to be passed through the eye of a needle (as you would pass a piece of thread) than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God... The word used for Camel and this specific type of rope were identical apparently, and the common translation is somewhat suspect I think. Wish I could remember the reference though...
I may be mistaken but I believe these billboard messages were primarily posted in areas of low income and that would likely support the Democrats. So not a lie, Voter Fraud is a crime but intended to intimidate minorities, quite likely.
Here in my part of Canada, there is no competition. Oh there are companies that are theoretically competing with each other, but they seem to have agreed that charging outrageous prices is working for all of them so why fuck with it. No one is offering cheap, efficient service to the masses. Competition does not work when the service or item in question is more or less essential, and the barriers to entry are significant. The CRTC here in Canada just seems to rubberstamp what the industry tells them to do.
I agree this is likely but who among us is going to argue that the Window UI can't use some improvements?
By comparison when I got my iMac desktop, it took me very little time to adjust to the way things work under OS/X, mostly because they made a lot of sense. There are some things I find strange, odd design decisions but overall it works fairly well.
The big thing for me is: I want to be able to ignore the OS most of the time, I am there to use my programs to do work or have fun. The OS should be so transparent I forget its there. Of course a lot of users don't or can't make the distinction between what is OS and what is application these days. And they don't really care.
I would extend that to read "Prisoners, by virtue of having been accused". A lot of people start railing against people who have been accused of a crime, regardless of whether or not they have been convicted yet, or even if there is any evidence against them. Once arrested, they are guilty to a lot of people it seems.
Of course, in this case he pissed off rich people so he *will* be found guilty no matter what happens, and because the offense concerns Big Media's rights, the punishment will be much more severe than is justified. There is no longer any justice in the world if your accusers are rich and influential, only the illusion of justice and a system that plays along with the rules to give the suggestion that everything is being done according to the book, but the corruption will out in the end.
All corporations should be inherently amoral. If they took a morale stance that would limit their profit potential and not be in the interests of the owner or the shareholders as the case may be. Not that there aren't corporations which take a moral stance of a sort but its usually just for the sake of their public reputation and thus only skin deep.
Capitalism is not a positive moral force in the world, rather the complete opposite - the structuralization of Greed.
But if the rest of the Muslim world gets together and makes a video refuting the film they find offensive, then posts it on Youtube, will the mainstream media report it? I doubt it. The capital of something like this film is that the majority of westerners are not so much offended by the film but by the fact that people are protesting something that they find insults their religion. Most people here don't care that the film is offensive - they already dislike Islam, have already decided that *all* muslims are at heart terrorists and are ready to post their bigotry in response. Before anyone decides to dismiss me for it: no, I am not a muslim. I am posting from Canada where I was raised as a United Church member (although I was never consulted in this and it didn't stick). I just find the mass hatred against the members of the muslim faith a little tiring and offensive myself. Yes, a small bunch of criminals are using the Islamic religion as an excuse to justify their acts of terrorism, but they hardly represent the bulk of muslims in any regard. I am sure we would know if 1.5 billion people were actively attacking the west by now. Sadly the majority of people have no desire to learn anything about something they don't undersand, they find it easier to pigeonhole it, dismiss it as wrong and then vilify it in the best manner of internet trolling. When I saw the subject I knew that was what would happen here.
Americans seem to love hating foreigners. A while ago it was the French (and I am sure millions of you still hate the French because they didn't choose to join the illegal war in Iraq when the US asked them to. You remember thats why right? They used to be your close friends). Now its hating Muslims, next it will be the Chinese, or maybe Laotians, or the Russians (again), or some group we haven't yet had brought into the news. You even seem to love hating muslims who were born in the USA.
I have to say I do wish that the muslim world would generate a thicker skin: some people in the west feel compelled to insult anything and everything that they don't understand. You can't explain anything to those people they just hate shit for its own sake. They need to get used to that fact.
The media would be doing us all a service if they stopped reporting events in a sensationalist manner and actually did unbiased and researched reporting. Of course they are no longer the Media per se, since so much of the reporting you get these days is really focused on getting our attention so they can sell advertising or simply reflects the political orientation of their corporate owners. The integrity of someone like Edward R Murrow or Walter Cronkite is long since gone sadly, now we get thinly veiled propaganda reflecting the views of the corporate owners based on very little if any actual research. I guess keeping the sheep dumb and ignorant is preferable to educated and informed citizens who might decide to vote based on the information they received, rather than on whatever data has been spoon fed to them.
But the right wing folks don't want to see the rich pay more taxes. They want that money to "trickle down". Sadly most of it trickles into off shore accounts rather than to create jobs - or it creates jobs in third world countries where Labour goes for a few dollars a day.
Mob standing for Mobile Object I believe, indicates a major difference between NPCs and Mobs: NPCs are usually static in most MMOs. Sometimes they move or appear in multiple places based on the progress of a quest but generally speaking they don't move. Mobs are usually things you encounter as you move through the world, they move about even if its just inside a specific area or within range of some centre point. In most MMOs your gameplay often consists largely of talking to an NPC, getting a quest or mission, going to some other location, having to defeat various Mobs en route, looting some object or defeating some major Boss (a tough type of Mob to defeat), then returning to the original NPC to report your progress and receive a reward. Sometimes these can be strung together into a series of quests in which completing each stage sends you to a new NPC to get the instructions for the next stage etc.
The problem is that a government facing protesters and equipped with a non-lethal weapon that leaves no visible marks faces less of a barrier towards using it than one where the media can get juicy pictures of the government abusing its citizens. This thing going would be worse for free speech in the long run, and let's face it free speech is already under attack as it is.
I have to agree. We see our efforts in the rest of the world as spreading democracy, law & order, humanitarianism, etc. Third world countries see us as spreading Christianity at the expense of their own religion, backed by military force, morals and customs they do not accept and often find reprehensible - as extolled by Hollywood movies etc. It doesn't help when a few US military leaders involved in the occupation of Iraq were quoted as saying something like they felt good about it because it let them spread the word of Christianity to the people of Iraq. This only gives ammunition to those who portrayed the US presence as "Crusaders". We smugly assume that our way is the *only* way that a human society can work, and we blithely continue to try to shove our version of reality down the throats of people who do not want it, at a rate that is faster than they can adapt to it, etc, without regard to the chaos that might cause in their society, without regard to what is lost in their society. Its a modern day version of the White Man's Burden that justified the European empires spread around the globe. The idea that our way is mandated as inherent true by its very nature, when what we consider to be acceptable is just as arbitrary as anyone else's set of standards really, and of course adapts and is subject to sudden changes.
It will keep being increased to protect Disney and its idiotic mascots. For this reason are the rest of us oppressed by draconian copyright legislation and oppressive DRM schemes enforced by government institutions for the benefit of private corporations, to protect fucking Micky Mouse...
It was very repetitive I will admit. A lot of the missions were identical to ones you did previously, although they did a lot with what they had. It did have the best group combat dynamic of any MMO I have ever played. Each class had an interesting mix of abilities and a clear function in a group. Solo it was rather dull, but grouped up with the difficulty ramped up and a good group of players who knew what they were doing, it was unequaled in my opinion. Played COH/COV from beta for 5 years or more. Created probably almost a hundred alts and played them to various levels. It was very creative with character costuming and had an interesting dynamic in the way they worked. It will be sadly missed by me at least. It baffles me how a great game like this can disappear and something like WOW - which I heartily detest - can continue to have millions of players:(
Or you could say Napoleon took over the government because he could gain control of it when it was in absolute chaos. The French then attempted to spread their version of a society where "Liberty, Equality and Freedom" were the watchwords of the day and there was no room for a Noble Class and a Peasant Class who were dominated by them. All of the other countries in Europe (dominated by Nobility who still wielded very considerable power) immediately ganged up on the French to destroy this idea that having a Nobility rule over you was morally wrong. The French attempted to expand the territory they control and to introduce a new type of government.
In the process they introduced a detailed and arguably fair legal code (although the English code is preferable IMHO), the metric system, high speed communications (for the time of course: news of a victory in Austria could be in Paris in about 18 hours), they revolutionized the warfare of the time and forcing every other army in Europe to reorganize and revamp their units in reaction. They attempted to spread a new way of thinking about government and society and to eliminate the class system that dominated all politics at the national level in Europe.
History has been written by the supporters of those Nobles who defeated Napoleon. For 20+ years, he was the most brilliant commander of military forces in Europe, and only seldom was he bested. The rest of the time he often made his enemies look like inept buffoons. He overstepped his reach in Russia of course, but that seems to be a common fate for those who attempt to cross the steppes. Note that the French did better than the Germans in WWII although the results were the same in the end. Napoleon is too easy to caricature and dismiss, and of course since he is French, every American out there will dismiss him out of hand almost automatically - since everything French must be dismissed these days *simply* because the French were unwilling to participate in the Iraq war (which was of course based on lies anyways).
Before anyone asks, no I am not French, don't live in France etc.
Haven't tried the Sea of Time books yet, but his Dies the Fire and subsequent books (7 or so I think) are brilliant fun and probably my current favorite books, although they verge on Fantasy of course. They are tied to the Sea of Time series of course, since they relate what happens in this world when Nantucket is sucked back in time.
Emberverse I: Dies the Fire The Protector's War Meeting at Corvallis
Emberverse II: The Sunrise Lands The Scourge of God The Sword of the Lady The High King of Montival Tears of the Sun - with 2 more books to come, next one this September
They are sort of a retelling of the King Arthur myth as well as others, in a world where technology suddenly stopped working - but only some technology, and our ancient myths start coming alive again. Set in North America, primarily the former USA, and initially at least mostly in Oregon, with bits told elsewhere, including Britain. I absolutely love these books, and I think they are greatly underrated to be honest.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that MMOs need to look at characters that age, and can have descendents. Create a heritage for your kids, pass on items, establish a family history, etc.
Also to survive, gameplay needs to be emergent. The things you can do in game should give rise to the fun you can have by letting you be inventive, letting you interact with other players and make changes to the world.
I have recently started playing the SWGEMU (www.swgemu.com). I am in the process of being elected to be the mayor of a player city, I am building up businesses crafting, and I am slowly building a guild up. All of those activities are things which emerge from the possible activities my characters can engage in inside the game. Sandbox gaming is what is missing from today's MMOs I think, and it has far more potential for a long lasting appeal.
Note: the swgemu is not finished, its in an alpha state so lots of elements of the game are not functioning yet but it is playable provided you have a copy of the install disks for the game. It is not illegal - they have permission from SOE's attorneys, and its free. The server code (as of patch 14.1 on the old game, so just prior to the Combat Upgrade) is being recreated by volunteer programmers and they are doing a fantastic job.
EVE has sandbox gameplay, it has a player driven economy and is probably the best example of that style of gameplay in a current MMO. Sadly its never appealed to me - I guess I like walking around as a character - but I should give it another try.
It seems to me that this is not really news. When I was studying Linguistics many, many years ago, it was pointed out to me that we shape entire sentences in our brain before we become aware of them and before we speak the words. This is how we can make unintentional errors when we speak - spoonerisms for example, where the initial sounds of one word are substituted with that of a subsequent word (Wikipedia gives this example: "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" (dear old queen, referring to Queen Victoria)).
Since we are unaware of these errors prior to speaking them, it seems only logical that the subconscious/unconscious mind has the ability to recognize grammatical mistakes, since it has the capacity to formulate them. The human mind seems to be *built* to absorb rules of grammar and vocabulary at a very low level. We learn the rules of whatever language(s) we grow up speaking subconsciously by hearing them applied by those around us. Sure, people correct pronunciation and grammar in the young from time to time but a lot of it is just seemingly absorbed at a young age. After age 8 or so, you need to really study to learn a language in most cases, before that you can learn up to 3 languages at the same time apparently - although usually only if you speak each one to an individual that uses that language exclusively with you.
So this seems interesting but not all that earth shattering to me at least. Although of course this is /. so I didn't RTFA :p
The thing is, if you blame Harper and the Conservatives for something - they are likely guilty of it :P
Its stupid to keep the lab animals in the basement obviously, if only from the perspective of setting research back years as was pointed out, let alone the needless killing of thousands of animals. The basements should be kept for the adminstration staff, or at least the lawyers...
Bit of Trivia: I read somewhere just recently that in the line "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle", the word being translated as "camel" should actually refer to a type of rope - which makes more sense logically I think. Thus its easier for a large piece of rope to be passed through the eye of a needle (as you would pass a piece of thread) than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God...
The word used for Camel and this specific type of rope were identical apparently, and the common translation is somewhat suspect I think. Wish I could remember the reference though...
I may be mistaken but I believe these billboard messages were primarily posted in areas of low income and that would likely support the Democrats. So not a lie, Voter Fraud is a crime but intended to intimidate minorities, quite likely.
Here in my part of Canada, there is no competition. Oh there are companies that are theoretically competing with each other, but they seem to have agreed that charging outrageous prices is working for all of them so why fuck with it. No one is offering cheap, efficient service to the masses. Competition does not work when the service or item in question is more or less essential, and the barriers to entry are significant.
The CRTC here in Canada just seems to rubberstamp what the industry tells them to do.
I agree this is likely but who among us is going to argue that the Window UI can't use some improvements?
By comparison when I got my iMac desktop, it took me very little time to adjust to the way things work under OS/X, mostly because they made a lot of sense. There are some things I find strange, odd design decisions but overall it works fairly well.
The big thing for me is: I want to be able to ignore the OS most of the time, I am there to use my programs to do work or have fun. The OS should be so transparent I forget its there. Of course a lot of users don't or can't make the distinction between what is OS and what is application these days. And they don't really care.
Not some of the business users I have met... :P
I would extend that to read "Prisoners, by virtue of having been accused". A lot of people start railing against people who have been accused of a crime, regardless of whether or not they have been convicted yet, or even if there is any evidence against them. Once arrested, they are guilty to a lot of people it seems.
Of course, in this case he pissed off rich people so he *will* be found guilty no matter what happens, and because the offense concerns Big Media's rights, the punishment will be much more severe than is justified.
There is no longer any justice in the world if your accusers are rich and influential, only the illusion of justice and a system that plays along with the rules to give the suggestion that everything is being done according to the book, but the corruption will out in the end.
All corporations should be inherently amoral. If they took a morale stance that would limit their profit potential and not be in the interests of the owner or the shareholders as the case may be. Not that there aren't corporations which take a moral stance of a sort but its usually just for the sake of their public reputation and thus only skin deep.
Capitalism is not a positive moral force in the world, rather the complete opposite - the structuralization of Greed.
But if the rest of the Muslim world gets together and makes a video refuting the film they find offensive, then posts it on Youtube, will the mainstream media report it? I doubt it. The capital of something like this film is that the majority of westerners are not so much offended by the film but by the fact that people are protesting something that they find insults their religion.
Most people here don't care that the film is offensive - they already dislike Islam, have already decided that *all* muslims are at heart terrorists and are ready to post their bigotry in response.
Before anyone decides to dismiss me for it: no, I am not a muslim. I am posting from Canada where I was raised as a United Church member (although I was never consulted in this and it didn't stick). I just find the mass hatred against the members of the muslim faith a little tiring and offensive myself. Yes, a small bunch of criminals are using the Islamic religion as an excuse to justify their acts of terrorism, but they hardly represent the bulk of muslims in any regard. I am sure we would know if 1.5 billion people were actively attacking the west by now.
Sadly the majority of people have no desire to learn anything about something they don't undersand, they find it easier to pigeonhole it, dismiss it as wrong and then vilify it in the best manner of internet trolling. When I saw the subject I knew that was what would happen here.
Americans seem to love hating foreigners. A while ago it was the French (and I am sure millions of you still hate the French because they didn't choose to join the illegal war in Iraq when the US asked them to. You remember thats why right? They used to be your close friends).
Now its hating Muslims, next it will be the Chinese, or maybe Laotians, or the Russians (again), or some group we haven't yet had brought into the news. You even seem to love hating muslims who were born in the USA.
I have to say I do wish that the muslim world would generate a thicker skin: some people in the west feel compelled to insult anything and everything that they don't understand. You can't explain anything to those people they just hate shit for its own sake. They need to get used to that fact.
The media would be doing us all a service if they stopped reporting events in a sensationalist manner and actually did unbiased and researched reporting. Of course they are no longer the Media per se, since so much of the reporting you get these days is really focused on getting our attention so they can sell advertising or simply reflects the political orientation of their corporate owners. The integrity of someone like Edward R Murrow or Walter Cronkite is long since gone sadly, now we get thinly veiled propaganda reflecting the views of the corporate owners based on very little if any actual research. I guess keeping the sheep dumb and ignorant is preferable to educated and informed citizens who might decide to vote based on the information they received, rather than on whatever data has been spoon fed to them.
But the right wing folks don't want to see the rich pay more taxes. They want that money to "trickle down". Sadly most of it trickles into off shore accounts rather than to create jobs - or it creates jobs in third world countries where Labour goes for a few dollars a day.
Mob standing for Mobile Object I believe, indicates a major difference between NPCs and Mobs: NPCs are usually static in most MMOs. Sometimes they move or appear in multiple places based on the progress of a quest but generally speaking they don't move.
Mobs are usually things you encounter as you move through the world, they move about even if its just inside a specific area or within range of some centre point.
In most MMOs your gameplay often consists largely of talking to an NPC, getting a quest or mission, going to some other location, having to defeat various Mobs en route, looting some object or defeating some major Boss (a tough type of Mob to defeat), then returning to the original NPC to report your progress and receive a reward. Sometimes these can be strung together into a series of quests in which completing each stage sends you to a new NPC to get the instructions for the next stage etc.
What about the fact that there are tons of Chinese gold farmers screwing with the economy or is that no longer the case in WOW? :P
The problem is that a government facing protesters and equipped with a non-lethal weapon that leaves no visible marks faces less of a barrier towards using it than one where the media can get juicy pictures of the government abusing its citizens. This thing going would be worse for free speech in the long run, and let's face it free speech is already under attack as it is.
I have to agree. We see our efforts in the rest of the world as spreading democracy, law & order, humanitarianism, etc.
Third world countries see us as spreading Christianity at the expense of their own religion, backed by military force, morals and customs they do not accept and often find reprehensible - as extolled by Hollywood movies etc. It doesn't help when a few US military leaders involved in the occupation of Iraq were quoted as saying something like they felt good about it because it let them spread the word of Christianity to the people of Iraq. This only gives ammunition to those who portrayed the US presence as "Crusaders".
We smugly assume that our way is the *only* way that a human society can work, and we blithely continue to try to shove our version of reality down the throats of people who do not want it, at a rate that is faster than they can adapt to it, etc, without regard to the chaos that might cause in their society, without regard to what is lost in their society.
Its a modern day version of the White Man's Burden that justified the European empires spread around the globe. The idea that our way is mandated as inherent true by its very nature, when what we consider to be acceptable is just as arbitrary as anyone else's set of standards really, and of course adapts and is subject to sudden changes.
And of course Natalie Portman and hot grits, equally important, if slightly older memes for this website
It will keep being increased to protect Disney and its idiotic mascots. For this reason are the rest of us oppressed by draconian copyright legislation and oppressive DRM schemes enforced by government institutions for the benefit of private corporations, to protect fucking Micky Mouse...
It was very repetitive I will admit. A lot of the missions were identical to ones you did previously, although they did a lot with what they had. :(
It did have the best group combat dynamic of any MMO I have ever played. Each class had an interesting mix of abilities and a clear function in a group. Solo it was rather dull, but grouped up with the difficulty ramped up and a good group of players who knew what they were doing, it was unequaled in my opinion.
Played COH/COV from beta for 5 years or more. Created probably almost a hundred alts and played them to various levels. It was very creative with character costuming and had an interesting dynamic in the way they worked.
It will be sadly missed by me at least. It baffles me how a great game like this can disappear and something like WOW - which I heartily detest - can continue to have millions of players
Only if both people involved are Republicans :P
They are called Republicans...
Or you could say Napoleon took over the government because he could gain control of it when it was in absolute chaos. The French then attempted to spread their version of a society where "Liberty, Equality and Freedom" were the watchwords of the day and there was no room for a Noble Class and a Peasant Class who were dominated by them.
All of the other countries in Europe (dominated by Nobility who still wielded very considerable power) immediately ganged up on the French to destroy this idea that having a Nobility rule over you was morally wrong. The French attempted to expand the territory they control and to introduce a new type of government.
In the process they introduced a detailed and arguably fair legal code (although the English code is preferable IMHO), the metric system, high speed communications (for the time of course: news of a victory in Austria could be in Paris in about 18 hours), they revolutionized the warfare of the time and forcing every other army in Europe to reorganize and revamp their units in reaction.
They attempted to spread a new way of thinking about government and society and to eliminate the class system that dominated all politics at the national level in Europe.
History has been written by the supporters of those Nobles who defeated Napoleon. For 20+ years, he was the most brilliant commander of military forces in Europe, and only seldom was he bested. The rest of the time he often made his enemies look like inept buffoons. He overstepped his reach in Russia of course, but that seems to be a common fate for those who attempt to cross the steppes. Note that the French did better than the Germans in WWII although the results were the same in the end. Napoleon is too easy to caricature and dismiss, and of course since he is French, every American out there will dismiss him out of hand almost automatically - since everything French must be dismissed these days *simply* because the French were unwilling to participate in the Iraq war (which was of course based on lies anyways).
Before anyone asks, no I am not French, don't live in France etc.
The most frightening words you might hear "This afternoon, President Palin announced..." :(
Haven't tried the Sea of Time books yet, but his Dies the Fire and subsequent books (7 or so I think) are brilliant fun and probably my current favorite books, although they verge on Fantasy of course. They are tied to the Sea of Time series of course, since they relate what happens in this world when Nantucket is sucked back in time.
Emberverse I:
Dies the Fire
The Protector's War
Meeting at Corvallis
Emberverse II:
The Sunrise Lands
The Scourge of God
The Sword of the Lady
The High King of Montival
Tears of the Sun
- with 2 more books to come, next one this September
They are sort of a retelling of the King Arthur myth as well as others, in a world where technology suddenly stopped working - but only some technology, and our ancient myths start coming alive again. Set in North America, primarily the former USA, and initially at least mostly in Oregon, with bits told elsewhere, including Britain. I absolutely love these books, and I think they are greatly underrated to be honest.