The only downside is that the participants need to be familiar enough with their chosen game to do a randomizer which means roping in casual players is difficult.

Casual players can be fine with some games. Some actually become easier with Archipelago (e.g. Noita, Risk of Rain 2) since you’re getting meta-progression between runs that normally wouldn’t be there. Others though are especially punishing for new players (Doom comes to mind - you have to be pretty intimately familiar with the levels. There’s keys hidden in secret areas sometimes, for example, and ammo can be very scarce.)

Augusta, Maine. They have one actual city in the state. It isn’t Augusta, it’s Portland. However, Portland wasn’t central enough, so Augusta got the crown. Being centrally located is its only noteworthy feature.

Every time I see this, I can’t help but feel like it works better without the third panel. Showing it happening dulls the comedic impact of the final panel. Anyone who doesn’t know what Kirby is about isn’t going to understand the comic anyway, and anyone who does doesn’t need the third panel to understand what happened.

And really, they’ve never been easier, with the advent of gaming laptops and the Steam Deck and etc. - no more having to lug a desktop PC, mouse, keyboard, CRT monitor, and a box of cables and find room in your friend’s garage to set it up.

Did you read the article?

The protesters yelled slogans including “Free, free Palestine.”

If they had been chanting ‘Stop the Genocide!’, then I’d agree with you - it would have been an anti-genocide protest. But they weren’t; they were chanting pro-palestinian slogans, so calling it anything other than a ‘Pro Palestine’ demonstration would have been misrepresenting the situation.

I don’t know where you get the takeaway that they’re talking about you, or that you are in any way involved in what happened here, unless you were specifically there. This isn’t about you, or any other anti-genocide protest; this is about a very specific, pro-Palestine protest.

I was talking about what they’re calling me

What? Are you in the wrong thread?

It’s assumed that you already have a pear tree; the partridges are just being installed into your pre-existing tree. Don’t be greedy. Mature fruit trees are expensive.

One brother is on an Xbox One is on a PC One is on a steam deck with WiFi hotspot.

That’s going to be the limiting factor.

Are you specifically looking for something to play against each other? There’s some pretty good options for co-op games with crossplay, and that might make for a more friendly experience, but if you’re in the mood for something competitive, options are a little more limited.

Some potential options:

• Destiny 2
• Monster Hunter Rise
• The Ascent
• Borderlands 3
• Warframe
• Remnant 2

If you all had a PC, you’d have a lot more options. Maybe two of you should consider going in on a Steam Deck for Brother #3 for Christmas!

Not only WoW, but most old MMOs were built around being social experiences. The really old ones (Everquest, most notably) were basically chat rooms with games attached. The gameplay was very slow, and you relied heavily on other players to progress, so you spent a lot of time just chatting with people, either in zone chat or in groups or in guilds. Over time, you started to recognize the same names showing up in the same places, or as you progressed, the same players would be progressing at the same pace so you’d keep seeing them as you moved from zone to zone.

It was also a lot easier to build friendships for otherwise socially awkward people. You had an immediate common interest and common goal (advancing in the game), so you had common ground to talk about, and a common activity to enjoy together, but during the downtime, conversation would often shift to other things - where you lived, how old you were, what your hobbies were… so you’d get to know people ‘outside the game’, too.

Nowadays, WoW and other MMOs are much more fast-paced, and much more solo play oriented. There’s still group-required content, but it’s very action-heavy; you don’t have a lot of time that you’re just sitting around chatting, and groups are much more short-term things. 15 or 20 minutes, whereas once upon a time, it was 3+ hours as standard.

I met my oldest friend in an MMO about 24 or 25 years ago… we accompanied each other to a few different games over the years, and now we aren’t playing anything together, but we still talk. I flew across the country to attend his wedding a couple years ago. Similarly, I met my wife in WoW. Our first “date” was killing bugs in Silithus together. We’ve been together for about 18 years.

Old (as in, early-late 2000s) MMOs generated a lot of friendships; this isn’t at all an uncommon story to hear from people who played them at that time.

Correct, there’s currently no way to migrate post / comment history to another instance.

Surely we’ve all seen it before at this point, but it’s never too late to be reminded of The Enigma of Amigara Fault.

That would make Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa the only places in the universe an American can’t vote for President

An American who is registered to vote in a state can vote from Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands or American Samoa just like an American who is registered to vote in a state can do so from another country, or from space. An American who is not registered to vote in a state cannot vote from anywhere, regardless of where that is.

Maybe for some folks…

Giving the statues “an orange makeover” implies something a lot more permanent or at least harder to remove than high-vis vests. If someone tells you they “got a makeover”, when in reality what they did was change their shirt, would you not think that was a little disingenuous?

I’m not being critical of you, or the protest, to be clear, I just think the title is a poor representation of what happened.

I feel like this title is intentionally misleading, probably trying to draw parallels to the defacing of Stonehenge with orange powder.

They put orange high-vis vests on the statues. No damage was caused.

Incidentally it’s a lot easier to take legal action against a business that violates the ADA than to take action against a government that insists on defunding programs like that.

You’re the hero the internet needs.

Yeah, and at that point I’ll also just wait for a 50% off sale, whereas I would otherwise have been a day 1 purchase.

I feel like this happens a lot, honestly - there’ll be a game I’m really excited for, and either it’s got some shitty DRM, or it’s a timed Epic exclusive, or whatever else, and then a few months later when I could be playing it, I’ve mentally moved on to other things and I end up just buying it much later on deep sale if at all.

There’s a lot of games coming out all the time; if I get past that initial hype period around launch without buying a thing, it’s 50% or more off, or I won’t buy it at all.

It’s really a shame, because I was super excited for MH:Wilds, but the confirmation that it will include Denuvo killed my enthusiasm completely.

Vampire Survivors’ genre has been coined ‘Bullet Heaven’, literally the opposite of bullet hell. The fact that it has the tag on Steam is kind of meaningless. Monster Hunter: Wilds’ Steam Page has the Dating Sim tag, but I’m willing to bet I won’t get to romance a Rathalos.