New efforts!

[MWRuger]

Yes, these must have been exceptional 14 year old teenagers who paid such close attention to world events! :)

I remember the bicentennial, playing D&D, having trouble with math and Nixon giving a lot of speeches and pre-empting TV shows.

[TonyV]

I have a feeling that Wikipedia has been hit pretty hard recently with "list of events in the year 19**/2000" :)

Well, we can't all be Marilu Henner.

[Thunder Glove]

I definitely remember Ghostbusters and Reagan's re-election directly.  (I got a lot of my "news" from being allowed to stay up late and watch SNL, in much the same way that I currently get a lot of my news from Wait Wait.. Don't Tell Me)

I'm pretty sure I was also watching Transformers at the time, because I was always a big geek.  (Wikipedia tells me that Voltron premiered that year, too.  Oh, and Friday Night Videos!  I loved that show)

[CheerGunbunny]

Form feet and legs!  Form arms and torso!  And I'll form...the head!

Always preferred the lions to the vehicles.....

[Aggelakis]

I have a feeling that Wikipedia has been hit pretty hard recently with "list of events in the year 19**/2000" :)

I actually remember both my comments directly - as they actually impacted my life - I had shopped at a few Woolworth's during travels, and Che Guevara's body returning home was a big event in my circle, since we had a decent number of Cuban nationals and Cuban-Americans in the area.

[Flamazing Sally]

1959 ...Alaska & Hawaii admitted to the union.  Barbie entered the toy world.  Twilight Zone premiered.  Eisenhower was president.  Castro took over Cuba.  And, yes, I did google this.  I'm so old that just knowing about wiki-fu is considered a PLUS.  I want my game back.   

[LaughingAlex]

I have a feeling that Wikipedia has been hit pretty hard recently with "list of events in the year 19**/2000" :)

I only went by events I remember.  I was in isolation school at the time when I was 14.  Perhaps something I could mention, my favorite gamese in which I had the most fun came out, unreal tournament and deus ex.  Deus ex actually influenced me quite a bit about games and rpgs.  I was also enjoying diablo 2 before they introduced the dreaded immunities to force teamplay(in a game that, people would steal items from under you repeatedly in teams, leading to nasty under-equiped problems for those who were in the front line when that stupid barbarian player stole that critical unique, that contributed to my leaving that game later, alongside the immunities, Unreal tournament was far funner, so I moved on to unreal tournament).

[Nitekilla]

Do you like Diablo 3 ?

[AlphaFerret]

Form feet and legs!  Form arms and torso!  And I'll form...the head!

Always preferred the lions to the vehicles.....

Yep the lions were the real Voltron....I never did like the mass of vehicles.  Fond memories of watching that along with Masters of the Universe and Thundercats.

[AlienOne]

Do you like Diablo 3 ?

I was also a huge fan of Unreal Tournament and Diablo 2 during those times....

And, yes, I like Diablo 3--NOW.

I didn't like it as it was first released under the direction of Jay Wilson.

I do like how much it's improved since then.

[LaughingAlex]

Do you like Diablo 3 ?

Know?  I do, with reaper of souls it's alot funner, and I like diablo3  more then diablo 2 due to no immunities.  I had it before, but didn't play past nightmare due on part of fights just taking longer, longer and longer.  But on the other hand, it's not something I play every day.  It's gotten alot better now.  Diablo 3 2.0 see has a smart-loot system, it generally see's if your becoming undergeared at a level, and begins dropping items specifically for your character more untill your closer to where you need to be(at the same time, your better off playing the class you want to gear, and not one class specifically to farm with it).

Basically the game now looks at your luck, and if you'd been unlucky, it'll kick items of a certain quality higher and higher in the drop chance based on the area.  Say if your in a nephelim rift, and you had completed one prior with no legendaries, odds are your almost if not outright gauranteed at least one, or maybe even 2-3, based on the last nephelim run being a failure(legendary drops not dropping in a nephelim rift run generally means it was a waste of time, as those are by design SUPPOSED to drop legendaries more often and thats the only reason to do them).  It's still a gear grind but it's far less then it was before due to smart loot.  Heck often I'll get a legendary drop within a few hours if I hadn't played in a while.

Everything scales to your level now, which is actually something I do like, as I don't rely on level to win in any situation for me(yes, I know alot of people hate enemies leveling with the player character, but I tend to enjoy it as it keeps things challenging for me and ensures I cannot get lazy fighting level 10 enemies at level 30 or just out-leveling a boss before ever actually fighting him).  Before you ask me if i'm auto-losing due to having a 70, or people run into an auto lose problem, the game difficulty is also more scalable then before.  In that if your 60-70, enemy difficulty is now determined entirely by the difficulty setting.  So if your character is not correctly/adequetely geared for higher difficulties(thats where gear really impacts you), you can lower it untill you get that socketed weapon you desparately need to increase your damage to do a higher setting effectively.

Only issue I do have, is in fact that gear still makes to much of a difference.  But then you have to approach diablo 3 like a rogue like, in that your better off improvising a quality tactic of your own with what your getting.  The only consistent thing I have noticed is the emphasis on critical chance and critical damage being kind of a be-all-end-all of damage, as you can only get so much with raw damage.  And difficulty settings, while they do up the damage alot, the biggest issue I have is that the health bars still get ludicrously high for boss-like enemies.  And then they still have the demonic spider problem in that on torment mode, it feels at times like every other enemy uses arcane enchanted + vortex, which can insta-kill just about anyone if some bad luck, fun occurs.

General advice for gear; critical chance/critical damage, healing + resistance/armor stacking is what you want to do.  Don't rely to much on the toughness rating the game gives you as it focuses to much on raw health when, well, damage mitigation is far more important.

I like Diablo 3 but as I said, I don't play it all the time and it's not perfect, they still need to think about some things here and there.

[LaughingAlex]

I was also a huge fan of Unreal Tournament and Diablo 2 during those times....

And, yes, I like Diablo 3--NOW.

I didn't like it as it was first released under the direction of Jay Wilson.

I do like how much it's improved since then.

Aye, I feel the best improvement was the changes to difficulty settings and the smart loot system, both of which cut the forced grind out significantly.  I couldn't stand the way the game played before that, it seemed that they were trying to make it a korean style grind.  I felt that way when I was messing with hell mode, and ended up quitting when I was finding EVERYTHING was taking forever to kill on just hell mode and I was left thinking "and inferno is supposed to be harder?".  I got bored and stopped playing.  Then people mentioned the dreaded enrage timer.  I looked it up at one point, glad i never had to deal with it.

[Nitekilla]

I just started playing Diablo 3 for the first time a couple of days ago.  I like it alot and there are some things that remind me of City of Heroes.  For example, the instanced dungeon and caves where you slowly uncover the map as you go along.  Also, I picked a Monk character and he is level 25.  With his playstyle and powers it reminds me of my Scrapper in City of heroes :)  Is there anything in Diable 3 that reminds you of City of Heroes?

[CoyoteSeven]

1959 ...Alaska & Hawaii admitted to the union.  Barbie entered the toy world.  Twilight Zone premiered.  Eisenhower was president.  Castro took over Cuba.  And, yes, I did google this.  I'm so old that just knowing about wiki-fu is considered a PLUS.  I want my game back.

You are my parents' age! And they keep insisting that videogames were for my generation...

[CoyoteSeven]

I actually remember both my comments directly - as they actually impacted my life - I had shopped at a few Woolworth's during travels, and Che Guevara's body returning home was a big event in my circle, since we had a decent number of Cuban nationals and Cuban-Americans in the area.

I remember sitting in front of the TV at home and watching the shuttle Columbia launch for the first time.

I remember us all being let out of class early because of the Challenger explosion.

I remember being surprised and shocked over the destruction of Korean Air flight 007. I was scared that the nukes were gonna get launched soon!

But really, I spent most of my youth in the 80's inside video arcades.

[Goddangit]

When I was 14 - the band AC/DC was formed.
Aerosmith released their first album.
Pink Floyd releaes Dark Side of the Moon


•The Paris Peace Accord is reached with Vietnam.
•Rowe v Wade overturns bans on abortion.
•All U.S. troops leave Vietnam.
•The first cellular phone call is made in New York.
•The World Trade Center opens in New York.
•The Watergate hearings air on TV.
•Skylab is launched.
•VP Spiro Agnew resigns.
•Gerald Ford becomes VP


Sorry folks nothing new gamewise - but that is good in its own way :)

For additional things when I was 14, see above list.

I had to do the Google thing because although I remember a lot of things and I can do the math to see how old I was, working the other direction and picking events that happened a certain year is tough.  I remember watching the first Apollo moon landing on TV.  I also remember President Kennedy's assassination.  Several other big events.  Just wasn't 14 at the time.  :)

And thank you for the update.  I've been having "maybe today..." for a few days now.

[MWRuger]

DEUS EX!!!!

I played through it three times and have started a fourth play through. Graphics aside the best melding of RPG/FPS i have ever played and I have played many of both.

I didn't play Diablo 3 mainly because I don't want another game service that wants to constantly market me. I only do single player (except for CoH) so battlenet's charms are lost on me. I just want to play my game without being bombarded with offers of crap I don't want or emails telling me about some great offer to "enlarge my library"

Same reason I have been giving EA's offerings a pass. It bite's because ME 1&2 I have on steam and no one has been able to tell me if I can import  from the steam version. Origin? Yeah origin of EA pissing me off yet again.

I use GoG and Steam. That's enough for me. Especially after the Windows Live fiasco and Rockstar Social Club. 3 separate logins to play a game I paid for? Just so I can save my game. Worse, all these services are just doing the exact same thing as Steam, there is no added benefit just more BS for me to go through.

I'm calling Shenanigans (you may get your brooms) and pox on all their houses.

[dwturducken]

...
I still played videogames on my Atari 2600.
...

...
Played video games on my Commodore 64
...

Do either of you still have them? I still have my C64, but the power supply is dead. Pulled out the old Pong "console" (actually a Sears "Tele-Pong") and plugged it into the 40" HD TV. My 16 year old and 12 year old (I believe they were 14 and 10 at the time) were entertained for hours! It takes 8 D-cell batteries, and they ran fresh ones down. :)

[CoyoteSeven]

Do either of you still have them? I still have my C64, but the power supply is dead. Pulled out the old Pong "console" (actually a Sears "Tele-Pong") and plugged it into the 40" HD TV. My 16 year old and 12 year old (I believe they were 14 and 10 at the time) were entertained for hours! It takes 8 D-cell batteries, and they ran fresh ones down. :)

My first Atari VCS was of the wood-panel variety, with the difficulty switches in the rear. This one died due to my own stupidity curiosity over how it functioned. I later got the the 2600 jr. model, and soon after that I managed to get my hands on an Atari 7800.

The 2600 jr. and the 7800 still work just fine. They are stored in a box along with my first gen Sega Genesis. Nowadays tho I just play those games in an emulator.

[dwturducken]

We do the emu thing, too, but it's fun to pull out the original, now and again. :)