From someone who works in the tech industry on server-side applications, I find the simpler explanation more plausible:

“As with cable, there’s a lack of commercials”

You don’t have to play the rest of the series, but there are some significant story beats and changes in combat from the first Valkyria Chronicles that would make that game a bit less magical if you had already played VC4.

It’s certainly part of the reason that the ghosts of The Overlook are able to influence him.

That was the same with Cataclysm’s announcement. We knew for months that leveling was going to become a lot more fun once the pre-expansion patch came out.

I disagree on the notion that a cosmetic feature won’t generate profit or increase sales, but otherwise you’re correct.

This expansion is looking a bit like Cataclysm to me, in that there will be new zones, storylines, and endgame content, but the real meat of their work appears to be the drastic changes to the leveling process.

One thing to remember is that until Warlords of Draenor, the playable character models were really clunky. Their entire system of mapping armor to models, particularly for armor that had its own geometry, was based on anchor points for these very old models. Remember also that the armor has to be able to smoothly…

It’s BerenSTAIN Bears, actually. Apparently the “-stein” suffix was so common that either one of the authors or their kid got told by a teacher that they were pronouncing their name wrong. 

FYI: I think this is the eighth expansion, not the seventh.

Plenty of people do want that, but it’s an unethical desire.

Yep. Keep an eye on the official union Twitter account.

If you check the GMG Union twitter, they’re getting ready to make a statement and take action.  They just haven’t done so yet.

The union hasn’t officially started action yet. There’s no picket line to cross. 

Not that ActiBlizzard would do this, but standing for human rights and free speech (and thus getting their company kicked out of China) could be a net-positive for the average Chinese citizen.

If you read some of the other articles Kotaku has posted on the subject, corporate leadership basically got it in their heads that Diablo 3 was an unrecoverable failure. The sales for Reaper of Souls weren’t high enough to change their minds, so D3 has been granted just enough staff to keep loyal players happy at this…

The white dude in question was attempting to capture these tales in order to celebrate the culture of early African Americans, but his own blind spots are still a problem in that regard.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with being sexual, but the designs for many female WOW characters are intentionally titillating. It’s par for the course for the fantasy genre, not really specific to WOW at all.

I’m not sure expanding the objectification of women’s bodies to include nudity in product advertisements actually makes nipples blasé. If you start with a culture that doesn’t associate breasts with titillation, as with many sub-Saharan tribes, then that’s certainly possible.

There are a whole lot of details that go into the playing of LOL at the micro and macro levels that are completely beyond the average viewer, likely more so than the average broadcast sport.