James

Right now I'm playing: Guild Wars 2 Is anyone still playing this? I played for a bit when it came out and then gave up; there were some elements that I really didn't like. But they've made a few minor tweaks since launch - I'm enjoying it a lot more now. So I'm finally playing it and my character has just reached level 20. I'm not sure what my full username is on there (it has numbers at the end for some reason) - but my current character is Ingrid Hammersmith. If you can add characters like that, then feel free to add me via her. :P Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots To prepare for the launch of MGSV! Splatoon Holy crap this is a great game! The online gameplay is supoib. ;P This is the first truly new Nintendo IP since Pikmin, I believe. It's absolutely incredible. Beautiful graphics, great sound, and really innovative mechanics - and again, excellent online gameplay. I love how they rotate the levels and work in the different challenges. Single-player mode is incredibly awesome as well. Huge slam dunk for Nintendo I'd say. Bloodborne I've completed it once, but still playing it. This game is amazing on just about every level. I love it. Cities Skylines Still tinkering around with this. I don't play it all the time, but I can easily sink a fair bit of time into one sitting. Really great game, and in many ways, it's what I hoped SimCity would be.

For me, it has to be practical application/workshop or at least some interactive discussion/Q&A. I can learn just by watching/listening to a lecture and taking notes, but that's not ideal. If I do have to learn that way, I'll always go back and re-write/summarise my notes afterwards - this helps a lot with comprehension for me.

Fair enough. I think that the result (from what I've seen) is better overall. The gain is a much improved functionality I think. Also, I know this is just the generic default skin...but I think it's better than the ones we had. We didn't have an in-house designed skin since v7. Even with the tasks left to go, you've done a good job Petie. I don't know how much easier the upgrade process is these days, but I remember that it used to take a long time and there was a lot to clean up manually.

This is much better I think. It needs a bit of design/skinning, but the actual layout looks much better. Plus, it seems to be more useable now...I had real issues on my browser with the previous version. Looks nice and clean, and commenting looks good. Nice one, Petie. :P

It's an Apple Watch: http://www.apple.com/watch/

My latest toy is attached (if it worked...)

A couple of members also went missing over the years, which I still think about from time to time.   I remember how huge Digimon was on OB. Wow. Even the Digimon fan art was massive. :-\

>_>;;;;

Right now I'm still playing [b]Dragon Age: Inquisition[/b] here and there. But I'm also playing [b]Bloodborne[/b]. And wow...it's punishing, but it's [I]so[/I] addictive. I love it. It seems to make a masochist out of all who play it. :P

Haha...what was the golden age for OB? I feel like we were at our best between v3 and v5, roughly.

I try. :D   (Actually, to be specific, I think we are already in that state. The relevant question is how to apply the defibrillator, so to speak...)

Yep, it's thriving like a coma patient with a weak pulse.

In an ideal world I think it would be good to have all the separate forums back (separate forums for separate franchises and such). But our activity started to decline long before forums started to be merged. One reason for merging forums was because numerous sub-forums were dying, or had been effectively dead for weeks or months. So the decline in activity definitely pre-dated any merging, and not the other way around.   The problem has always been bigger than that; we got to a point where we still had a lot of new people "coming in the door", but not staying around. We went stagnant, then fell into decline. And now, OB is probably sitting at the bottom somewhere - I am confidently guessing that this is its lowest level of activity in its entire history, even before it was an independent entity with its own ".com" address.   The big question is whether or not activity could be generated here again and we could see growth. Without some really big commitment and major change, I don't think that could happen. The commitment could be there, but I doubt the appetite for change is.

Yeah, the Wii U is emerging as a pretty significant console in its own right as the game library grows. Having said that, I'm spending most of my time on Xbox 360 and PS4 lately. I'm now on my second play through of Dragon Age: Inquisition - and wow, even the second time 'round, it's absolutely amazing. I love it. :P

Makes sense. :P

What do you use your pocketknife for? I've always been curious about why people carry around pocketknives (unless you're doing a lot of outdoorsy things).   My most recent toy is probably my PS4. I'm absolutely loving it, especially [I]Dragon Age: Inquisition![/I] 

Nuking the Middle East? I'm not sure how that's a solution for anything, even if you're hawkish about this. I actually think that President Obama is doing a pretty good job in this area; it's a ridiculously complex problem and no one approach will solve it. Also, I think it will take generations to resolve, which runs a bit counter to many people's "everything is a quagmire if it isn't solved by dinner" rationale. It seems to me that Obama is carefully trying to marshal support from moderate Muslims by saying that we (the West) aren't "attacking Islam" and by taking away religious justifications from the perpetrators of the violence (by not referring to them as "Islamic terrorists"). I'm a bit mixed on the latter point, but I can see why Obama is doing it, and he has sound reasons I'd say. My own view is that this is the sort of thing that does require a comprehensive approach. There's absolutely justification for military action in some circumstances, but there are so many other things that need to (and are) happening too: everything from pursuing dodgy finances, to international policing, to education and economic stimulation programs. It all needs to happen, I guess. The only other thing I'd say is that this is a problem of religion; that is, the justifications for the violence are always explicitly religious in nature. Even if extremists don't represent the "true faith" (which I see as a questionable claim anyway), it doesn't really matter; by their own lights, they are doing God's will. Whether it's Islam, or Christianity, or any system of faith...I think this shows how easy (and dangerous) it is for people to act based on completely batty beliefs about the world. The extent to which people don't strictly follow their faith is the extent to which, in large part, we have a fairly peaceful existence.

Mordin and Garrus are fantastic characters. These are the types of characters who really give you some emotional investment in Mass Effect, I think. :P I've finished Dragon Age; Origins and now I'm just starting Dragon Age 2 (my first DA game was Inquisition). So far, so good. I'm digging the changes they made in DA2 and I can see how they progressed that through to Inquisition.

Holy crap, I thought this was a new thread at first... Commenting on grave digging is so TOTALLY OtakuBoards.

Without multiplayer? So does that mean you didn't do matchmaking where it's available? P.S. Have you got a PS4 and a PSN ID?

I haven't played Destiny for a few weeks, but I've been enjoying it. I don't care much about the competitive side - I'm very much a "PvE" person - so this may have tempered my experience a little bit. The two biggest issues in my view are: the story was clearly butchered during development (huge huge chunks were clearly taken out...you can see obvious gaping holes as you play through the campaign), and I don't like the inability to do matchmaking on the DLC strikes, because I don't know enough people who have Destiny...so matchmaking is my only option. Aside from that, it's very worth playing. The gunplay is great, the environments are really well-designed and beautiful, and there have been a lot of tweaks to public events and such...to the point where they are more regular, and when they happen, they're really good fun.

I don't have an Xbox One, but I do have a PS4 and a Wii U. I'm absolutely loving the PS4. It's cheap as hell, frankly, at least compared with where the PS3 was at roughly the same point in its lifespan. The game library is starting to build up, PlayStation Plus is a great deal, and I really love a lot of the little details; Sony finally nailed the controller design (it took them long enough!), and the built-in sharing capabilities are absolutely brilliant. The Twitch integration alone is fantastic. My current favourite games on PS4 are Dragon Age: Inquisition (it's absolutely gorgeous), Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Destiny. In terms of Wii U, it's an interesting one. In the first few months of life, it was really gathering dust at my place. But in the last 6 months or so, it just exploded. Nintendo has delivered hit after hit, and the value proposition of buying the thing is starting to make sense now where it didn't before. Even games like Zombi U are really interesting and worth playing, despite the stupid name. Actually, Zombi U is one of the most unique games I've played in years and it's definitely not the type of experience that you can get elsewhere. And then you've got titles like the new Zelda coming up, which looks great. There's lots of really solid content there now, and a few key OS updates from Nintendo that make a big difference to the overall experience. I think you can't go wrong with a current gen console. I can't speak for Xbox One, but I think Microsoft are doing a lot of work to improve things there. Whichever way you go I think you'll be fairly happy.

Yeah, despite the way the site currently looks...I think there's no value in going back and fiddling with the old stuff. It took a lot of work to get onto IPB relatively intact; I think you and Petie did a really great job to keep the site preserved as much as possible in the transition.

Des, I think you and Petie are both probably right. Honestly, I can't remember. The one thing I remember is that the change had to happen - that is, we didn't have a choice from an OB perspective. I'm just really thankful that we had you guys there to support the change and keep OB intact. I think that moving between platforms is a bit traumatic for a lot of reasons, not least because it has largely destroyed much of our historical formatting on RPGs and such.