There is an attraction to a game system where the only rules are the ones your Guild lives by. But too much of a timesink in a system like that for a casual gamer like myself.

You've got to be kidding me. You take his radio schtick seriously?

On a regular basis people will be interviewed and remark about how different Howard is in real life.

I don't think you have to worry about him being sincere and honest when he makes his real picks.

He got you to post about him, didn't he? That's why he says that stuff.

I was really hoping that they would tie this case (pretty much a focus since the first show) into previous storylines.

Instead they seemed to come up with a whole new case and give us a bunch of new "facts" that we had never heard before.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the ride but I was hoping they'd do a better job of tying up the entire show's history.

Like Shawn I have switched sides in Allods (bugged Blue XP Empire Orc) and am having fun exploring this game's closed Beta.

As a moderate Trekkie I came to this thread to complain about the tone of the posting but after reading some of the replies I have changed my mind.

As far as insulting Trekkies in future posts:

MAKE IT SO!

Just wanted to drop a note to the commenters: Just because you are familiar with a game does not mean that anyone else knows what the acronyms you are using mean.

There are 3 or 4 in there that I have NO idea what game they are referencing.

"is still your typical go "kill 15 bears" type of thing"

I can't deny that you're right but I do have to defend Allods a bit.

I am also running another Beta (which I saw on this site) and the quests in that MMO are so horrific that Allods is to be given SOME credit for the writing and variety they do have.

In the other MMO (which has some painfully AWESOME features dragged down by very lazy quest design) 95% of quests are literally an NPC saying "Go kill 9 mobs for me" with no story. And one actually completed with the NPC saying "Okay, now go kill 5 more".

It was such a pleasure to return to Allods for Closed Beta 2 and do their quests.

They do at least TRY to create some interesting stories to go along with the kill quests.

Man, is this page broken for me. I get AOL headlines!

Anyhow, this picture actually brings back very good memories for me. I get very nostalgic about my WoW days.

I get the feeling that if they separated that choice into two:

-The 3.2 inch screen
-Its capacitive touchscreen

it wouldn't be so lob-sided.

I am pretty much only playing MMO Betas nowadays.

A couple of the developers hinted at something I think very few Beta-Testers seem to consider: The developers focus in a Beta-test are not likely the problems that the testers are reporting.

They are looking at raw server/game data and monitoring CPU usage, memory, etc. and their focus may be on things that players will never see.

When servers crash during launch it's because developers haven't done their job cleaning up the servers software.

There's always a handful of idiots in every Beta forum posting stuff like OMG YOU CAN C UNDER THAT ROCK LOL DUN U CARE ABOUT UR GAME LOL I POSTED ABOUT IT 2 DAYS AGO STILL NOT FIXED LOL

I am sure that the forums get screened and problems cataloged but a lot of those tweaks can be made late in beta or even just before game goes live.