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MI, I didn't want to sidetrack your Mage's Initiation Game Release thread, so I wanted to quote something from there and mention it here, since it deals with a game I am playing.

MusicallyInspired wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 4:05 pm Just a note as this has been brought up by a couple people, the GOG version, while DRM-free, is not free of the restraints of requiring GOG Galaxy, since it ties into the GOG achievement system. If you don't have Galaxy installed the game will fail to start. If you want a "true DRM-free" version, get the version from the Humble store (which also gets you a Steam key as a bonus, so win/win).

I also noticed this with The Witcher 3. When you launch it, it immediately installs Galaxy. You don't need to "connect" - you can hit "Play" and it will launch The Witcher 3. But for $#!+'s sake, the lack of SOMETHING other than the game starting up is why I preferred GoG over Steam.

Blame those people who love achievements! lol That's literally the only reason for the connection.

Some games do have an option to switch that stuff off. I don't know the ins and outs of doing that with an AGS game...if enough people raise this concern maybe the higher ups at Himalaya will do something about it...

MusicallyInspired wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 9:51 pm Blame those people who love achievements! lol That's literally the only reason for the connection.

Some games do have an option to switch that stuff off. I don't know the ins and outs of doing that with an AGS game...if enough people raise this concern maybe the higher ups at Himalaya will do something about it...

Yeah, just posted on there.

Actually, I wasn't quite right. This is from Chris Warren responding to someone who crashed out on the GOG release:

You shouldn't need to have Galaxy installed to play the GOG version of the game. Just the Galaxy.dll and agsgalaxy.dll files need to be in the game folder when you launch it. As long as they're there, then the game should work without any issues.

It sounds like the files are corrupt. Re-downloading them should probably fix it.

So Galaxy is not required for Mage's. Just those DLL files.

Tawmis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 8:57 am

Rath Darkblade wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:30 am Hmm. I haven't played any Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter since MK1 and SF2. Did I miss anything, or did it just get even sillier?

On the other hand, I did watch the "Street Fighter" movie one night, when there was nothing better on TV. Now there is a waste of two-hours-odd. But then, I wasn't expecting anything deep ...

MK definitely changed over the years. The fatalities got much more bloodier (as graphics improved), and they eventually introduced "X-Ray" moves.

I don't feel like Street Fighter changed really, other than adding more characters, and the graphics improving to a more cartoonish/animated look.

Oh dear. I watched about a minute and a half of the "x-ray" moves - that was enough. I worked in a hospital for two years, and dealt with insurance for road trauma patients and people who got injured while on the job, and I have a good imagination.

Yeah, I don't need a game to show me what happens when bones snap etc. I've read these things in nurses' reports from ER and ICU!

Jules wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 3:07 pm Awesome!! We had that game when it first came out but never was able to play it! There was some bug that made it crash on our Tandy during the intro. Back then we couldn't google what was wrong. Did you like it generally? Did it have a good story? And was it more combatty than adventurey?

Overall I enjoyed it a lot. Obviously early 3D games look far more dated today than pixel-art ones, but I got used to the visuals very fast, partly because the story was strong. I found it to be more adventure than combat, which I like. The combat which was there was good, but not excessive. I'm not huge a fan of games that are just an endless sea of enemies; it's fun to explore the environments in peace at times.

I enjoyed it so much I immediately dove into the third game!

Yeah I get you about the nonstop attack and when you're not attacking (or being attacked) you have anxiety waiting for the next one to pop out.

That's awesome though! I'll need to see if my copy actually works since it's been a looooong time.

Jules wrote: ↑Thu Jan 31, 2019 4:15 pm Yeah I get you about the nonstop attack and when you're not attacking (or being attacked) you have anxiety waiting for the next one to pop out.

That's awesome though! I'll need to see if my copy actually works since it's been a looooong time.

All three Lands of Lore titles are available on GOG and are very reasonable, plus 2 and 3 no longer require CD changing. The second one requires some tweaking to get it running adequately in DOSBox; most people seem to experience some framerate lags but overall I had no major issues.

I hope you're able to play them again! Having completed the third one now, I'm happy to say I've finished the trilogy at long last. Another one checked off my list

I wrapped up the main story on "Dragon Age: Inquisition". Rath was right about the side-content; I enjoyed the game a lot more once I stopped hunting for shards and chasing every exclamation point on the map. I did finish all the companion quests, though. Cassandra was my buddy the whole game and her last quest with Varric was my favourite. I'll probably check out the DLC later on.

A weird quirk is that I didn't really want to romance anyone in this Bioware game. After seeing my options, I thought my Inquisitor was better off just being work-friends with everyone. I started clicking the "love" option whenever it popped up in conversation to see who the game would try to pair me with, and it landed on Josephine. But then Lelianna told me to back off, so that ended quickly.

Fun game, though! I feel it put a lot of "Dragon Age" lore better into context for me than the previous games. Someday, I might go back and revisit those.

Having just completed my Sierra back-catalog marathon, I'm going with something Sierra-ish. Hero-U. I've had this for a while but haven't gotten around to it.

A few co-workers are into WoW - I reactivated my account, and yup - still can't get back into it.

I feel like the Star Wars - The Old Republic is a better MMO as is Lord of the Rings Online, because they tend to focus more on "story" related quests, rather than grinds ("Go kill 10 spiders", "Go kill 10 Gnarlspine Ambushers", "Bring me 10 pieces of deer meat") - granted all MMOs have this, but WoW seems pretty heavy with these types of quests.

notbobsmith wrote: ↑Sun Feb 03, 2019 9:11 pm Having just completed my Sierra back-catalog marathon, I'm going with something Sierra-ish. Hero-U. I've had this for a while but haven't gotten around to it.

Nice, Bob! Good choice. I think you'll enjoy Hero-U, especially if you enjoyed QfG etc.

Tawmis wrote: ↑Mon Feb 04, 2019 6:54 pm A few co-workers are into WoW - I reactivated my account, and yup - still can't get back into it.

I feel like the Star Wars - The Old Republic is a better MMO as is Lord of the Rings Online, because they tend to focus more on "story" related quests, rather than grinds ("Go kill 10 spiders", "Go kill 10 Gnarlspine Ambushers", "Bring me 10 pieces of deer meat") - granted all MMOs have this, but WoW seems pretty heavy with these types of quests.

I'm not sure what a Gnarlspine Ambusher is (something out of WoW)? I've never tried WoW, but I have tried another online Blizzard game - Diablo II ... yeah, never again. WoW is Blizzard's primary cash-cow. If I buy a game, I'd like to pay for it once and once only, thank you very much.

And yes ... all RPGs have quests like these (e.g. in QfG5, where you have to find Sarra's basket, or more recently in Skyrim, where you can help x (i.e. 3 or 4 or 5) residents of a Hold in order to become a Thane in that Hold). Or in Dragon Age Inquisition ... wow. So many side-quests to find tiny, unimportant, hard-to-find bits and pieces, it's just not funny. Excuse me - I thought this game was about beating up demons, not playing hunt-the-pixel.

Speaking of fetch quests, I always loved "Penultima", a NWN1 mod, where you had an option at the start of the mod to ask a drunk if he had any heroic quests you could do. Eventually, he asked you to heroically fetch him a mug of ale (this was years and years before Skyrim gave you the same option). What's so hard about that, you ask? Well, the only bar in town only serves coffee. You have to hunt through the town to find a place that sells ale, but when you do, the game gives you 100 XP and tells you: "Congratulations. Thou hast fetched ye ale for the drunk. Thy name shall go down in history."

I haven't played either SWTOR or LOTRO, but as I'm not a huge fan of Star Wars and heard bad things about LOTRO, perhaps I'm not missing much?

Rath Darkblade wrote: ↑Tue Feb 05, 2019 6:50 am

Tawmis wrote: ↑Mon Feb 04, 2019 6:54 pm A few co-workers are into WoW - I reactivated my account, and yup - still can't get back into it.
I feel like the Star Wars - The Old Republic is a better MMO as is Lord of the Rings Online, because they tend to focus more on "story" related quests, rather than grinds ("Go kill 10 spiders", "Go kill 10 Gnarlspine Ambushers", "Bring me 10 pieces of deer meat") - granted all MMOs have this, but WoW seems pretty heavy with these types of quests.

I'm not sure what a Gnarlspine Ambusher is (something out of WoW)? I've never tried WoW, but I have tried another online Blizzard game - Diablo II ... yeah, never again. WoW is Blizzard's primary cash-cow. If I buy a game, I'd like to pay for it once and once only, thank you very much.
And yes ... all RPGs have quests like these (e.g. in QfG5, where you have to find Sarra's basket, or more recently in Skyrim, where you can help x (i.e. 3 or 4 or 5) residents of a Hold in order to become a Thane in that Hold). Or in Dragon Age Inquisition ... wow. So many side-quests to find tiny, unimportant, hard-to-find bits and pieces, it's just not funny. Excuse me - I thought this game was about beating up demons, not playing hunt-the-pixel.
Speaking of fetch quests, I always loved "Penultima", a NWN1 mod, where you had an option at the start of the mod to ask a drunk if he had any heroic quests you could do. Eventually, he asked you to heroically fetch him a mug of ale (this was years and years before Skyrim gave you the same option). What's so hard about that, you ask? Well, the only bar in town only serves coffee. You have to hunt through the town to find a place that sells ale, but when you do, the game gives you 100 XP and tells you: "Congratulations. Thou hast fetched ye ale for the drunk. Thy name shall go down in history."
I haven't played either SWTOR or LOTRO, but as I'm not a huge fan of Star Wars and heard bad things about LOTRO, perhaps I'm not missing much?

I don't mind a fetch quest if it's a single item ("Please, help me find my dog.") - what I don't like is a repetitive fetch quest ("We all all very hungry here and have no food. Please bring us 10 pieces of deer meat.")

Between the Star Wars MMO and Lord of the Rings Online, I'd prefer the Star Wars one because it's beautiful, all the dialogue/quests are fully voiced, has great cinematic videos between stuff.

Whoever you heard bad things about Lord of the Rings Online is leading you astray. I paid way back in the day when it first came out for about a year. I jump on now, as Free To Play (like Star Wars), and while there's "limits" - the game is rather fun, and feels very, very, very, very big. The graphics are a bit dated, but honestly it's not game breaking. (I mean, we're on a forum where we're obsessed with EGA and VGA graphics... so no one on here should really have room to complain about the graphics).

I think my favourite MMO experience was with Star Trek Online. The Old Republic is nice, but there's so much locked content you simply can't access. STO has a bunch of stuff locked away too, but it's stuff that makes sense. Like uniforms and ships. I can't even count the amount of items and features in TOR that is all locked away. You can basically experience the story but you can't really ever advance in anything or truly make your character your own. It sucks.

In STO my ship's name is the USS Enclave. Whenever I get far enough to acquire a new ship, I retire the old ship and give the new one a new letter in the registry. It requires paying a few extra credits to keep trading names but it's worth it.

The Elder Scrolls Online has gotten a lot better since its release as well.

MusicallyInspired wrote: ↑Tue Feb 05, 2019 6:02 pm I think my favourite MMO experience was with Star Trek Online. The Old Republic is nice, but there's so much locked content you simply can't access. STO has a bunch of stuff locked away too, but it's stuff that makes sense. Like uniforms and ships. I can't even count the amount of items and features in TOR that is all locked away. You can basically experience the story but you can't really ever advance in anything or truly make your character your own. It sucks.

In STO my ship's name is the USS Enclave. Whenever I get far enough to acquire a new ship, I retire the old ship and give the new one a new letter in the registry. It requires paying a few extra credits to keep trading names but it's worth it.

The Elder Scrolls Online has gotten a lot better since its release as well.

Interesting - I have leveled four different character classes to 50 (I stopped at 50, because that's the cap for free to play - so there's still more quests for my classes for each - but I am going to get the other classes I enjoy to 50 - and see if in the end, I want to pay for a month - which then automatically bumps you to the current expansion's level limit) and continue playing. Because it's Bioware, and you have the choices (that typically reflect Light Side, Dark Side, and sometimes no influence either way) - you "change" your story based on your decisions (so you might kill an NPC with one character, then go back with the same class, and let that NPC live). The only real limit I have run into with SWTOR is the money cap - which is 350,000 credits. Whenever I get close to it, I just go and buy a bunch of different mounts or ship upgrades, because getting credits in the game is so easy (as a result I have bought upgrades I can't even apply to my ship because the level requirement is above 50, and I have like 20 different mounts).

I have, however, never played the Star Trek Online game myself. So I can't fairly compare the two.