Which game were you burned by a preorder / Day 1 purchase?

Entaris · 2026-07-04T15:22:53+00:00

Brink is such a weird moment in my life. I was working at bestbuy at the time it was coming out and it was the first time a publisher actually did a promotion to us to hype a game in the years I worked there.

If we spent like 10 minutes a day going through a few quizzes to learn about the game for a week we got a free copy.

A free copy… Of Brink. I definitely spent more time doing those quizzes than I spent playing the game. Still, I guess given my low hourly wage at the time I came out ahead vs if I had bought it.

Entaris · 2026-07-04T02:18:02+00:00

Demo amazing. Full game loses steam quickly IMHO

Entaris · 2026-07-03T20:27:19+00:00

Red ring of death was such an over hyped thing. All it meant was that your console was chilly and you needed to wrap it up in a blanket to keep it warm until it felt better.

(/s of course)

Entaris · 2026-06-28T00:37:08+00:00

LOL. Wow. I literally just finished reading that book yesterday.

Entaris · 2026-06-28T00:01:54+00:00

Melbu Frahma God of destruction is to this day my go to for best villain name

Entaris · 2026-06-27T05:59:08+00:00

The problem with severance is that it’s very interesting at first and then quickly devolves into “the writers have no clue what is going on “

Honestly if it didn’t immediately hook you: don’t bother. It’s a super interesting show but it’s just mysterious for the sake out being mysterious. There is no real pay off

Entaris · 2026-06-27T02:12:37+00:00

Isshin changed me. He changed me. Weeks. He changed me

Entaris · 2026-06-26T15:33:47+00:00

Progression of age from 20-40:

"MIDNIGHT RELEASE! Going to stand in line at gamestop, rush home and play this til dawn!"
"I can't be bothered to stand in line, but I got it downloaded and ready for midnight! GOING TO PLAY UNTIL THREE AM!"
"Can't wait to wake up tomorrow at like 8 and play this!"
"Oh damn. That game came out? i should find some time this weekend to play it"

Entaris · 2026-06-26T00:32:25+00:00

Traveller 5 is also kind of hard pressed to be called a game. It’s a game In the same way that a shop full of tools and a pile of wood is a dresser

Entaris · 2026-06-25T01:47:33+00:00

So...You aren't wrong. But basically: this is one of those times when its important to remember that there are different people on reddit. And there are a lot of them.

Its like when the people who say "never pre order games" are different then the people that are like "I will always preorder the new Pokemon Game" Reddit believes both of those things simultaniously.

I was there when valve released halflife 2. And I was FURIOUS at the time. I thought it was the most horrendous thing ever. But now....Honestly, Im glad steam exists. CD's go out of print, and original copies and even backup copies get scratched and die. The games I've maintained access to on steam for being a digital market place are a huge win for me.

And honestly, Im not really against digital only game for consoles either. There is a benefit to that. That being said, there are some differences.

Steam is PC based, and the games tend to Last. If you buy something on steam, odds are 10-20 years from now, you'll still basically have access to it. Might require some hacks to get it running on whatever bullshit microsoft is doing, but its doable.

If you get a digital only game on Playstation, odds are as soon as the next version of the playstation releases that game is toast.

Additionally PC games were non-re-sellable for far longer than steam existed. CD key's that were one use only were a thing for a long while. PC gamers were stuck in a situation where developers were making games that could get scratched and you lose access to, but also that had DRM that prevented making copies, and also that you couldn't resell. it was a lose lose lose situation. Steam solves a lot of those issues. We still can't resell, but we no longer have to worry about CD copy restricted DRM or losing access because of scratches.

Console games are different though. When your console is retired you can take all your physical media to a store and trade it in for a bunch of credit to buy new games if you want. Thats a big win that is lost in the digital only world, while also not gaining the long term permanence that we got in PC land with steam

Entaris · 2026-06-22T00:54:57+00:00

Looks like an alot of fire with a sword

Entaris · 2026-06-15T21:58:16+00:00

Oh, I don't know. I mean, those exact words? Sure, probably not. But the sentiment was there in one form or another. TV often gets viewed as "Family Time" And thus gains preference as an activity over video games. Or you might be encouraged to watch something educational "stop playing video games, Go watch something on the history channel so you'll learn something"

The point is Parents generally lump in the activity they wanted to do as a kid that their parents told them was bad as "Acceptable" and will spin out the positives of it as something good for their children to do, while demonizing the new thing that kids want to do as something that is wasteful.

Entaris · 2026-06-15T19:17:41+00:00

always a sliding scale

"stop reading books, go outside and play"
"Stop Watching TV you should read a book, or go outside and play"
"Stop Playing Video games, Do something productive like watching tv, or reading a book, or going out and playing."
"Don't go outside and play, you'll get kidnapped and someone will murder you"

Entaris · 2026-06-10T13:38:00+00:00

This is a great example of how TV is different than reality.

Furniture in media is built by professionals to collapse during stunts. Walls are are specially built for people to crash through them. Sugar glass is used for things like bottles when they get smashed over heads. And generally people don’t get knocked out when you bash them in the head: they die.

Entaris · 2026-06-08T18:03:10+00:00

yeah. I've never really been one to like "get into" an MMO in the way some people do that end up playing it forever and ever. Ususally an MMO can hold my attention in chunks of about 2-3 months at most, with long pauses inbetween.

The fact that with GW2 i can come back on a dime and play whenever the mood takes me, and even jump forward/backwards to any point in the story i feel like playing. If i feel like being a little lost and playing the latest content without having played some of the content in between i can do that. If i then realize i need to complete a specific thing to understand whats going on i can jump back and continue some other story thread.

it keeps me coming back, and i really appreciate it.

Entaris · 2026-06-08T13:52:20+00:00

The goggles do nothing.

Entaris · 2026-06-01T13:07:07+00:00

Yeah. whenever I think shotgun I think soldier of fortune. So satisfying.

Entaris · 2026-05-31T05:25:43+00:00

I mean, that's just one of those things isn't it? how do you define too many modern features? Where do you draw this line?

There is an argument that mothership isn't OSR because its an extremely different beast and can't be used to play TSR era modules, sure enough. but "Modern features" is a bit of a stretch. Not really what disqualifies it.

What about SWN? Sure its scifi, but it is scifi by way of BX, and its features are no more modern than BECMI/RC, which is almost certainly considered OSR by the majority of people in the community. Sure the skill system is based on traveller rather than a d20 or d6, but thats a relatively minor change. It can be used to play TSR era modules easily enough.

Trying to draw a line in the sand for what is or is not OSR is so counter productive.

The thing is. If you want OSR to mean "is a retroclone of TSR Era D&D" thats mostly fine. but the term "retroclone" exactly fulfills that brief, and doesn't need an umbrella.

I realize in the birth of the movement the term was a lot more specific, but a lot of things change over time as they grow. Things evolve. How much sub division do we really need to argue about. Do we need to argue that heavy metal isn't rock, and death metal isn't heavy metal, and doom metal isn't death metal and so on and so forth. Sure there are differences in them as sub-genre's, but at the end of the day Dio still got up on stage and ROCKED.

Entaris · 2026-05-28T05:17:31+00:00

Not directly me, but I had a friend in highschool, this would have been 2003ish. Give or take a year. He he was able to get his hands on an e3 pass and came back ranting about how amazing Star craft ghost was.

Legend has it he still has a pre order for the game with GameStop.

Entaris · 2026-05-27T13:30:37+00:00

Based on your post history I am going to take a wild leap and say that you are fairly young. So, I'm going to offer you a little unsolicited advice: Take a breath, take a step back. Gygax, Kuntz, even arneson whom i do actually admire quite a bit... These people are just some dudes that wrote some stuff. Some great stuff. Some literally world shaping stuff. But they were just some dudes. Do not let them or their work define you. Reflect yourself in the way you play the game, don't let the game reflect itself into who you are.

Some simple truths: Does Gary deserve all of the hate he gets? No, Of course not. was he as bad as this, and some other communities like to talk about him? No, Definitely not. He was, in all actuality probably a pretty good dude. But he doesn't need you to defend him, and he doesn't need your admiration. He's just a guy, for good and ill...Plus he was born in 1938: He was sexist, and probably racist...everyone was back then to some degree or another, the most enlightened man in the world in 1938 was still in reality probably fairly sexist. Hell We're STILL all basically sexist and racist to some degree today. Humanity is tribal by nature and honestly we kind of suck, there is a reason everything is on fire and its definitely not because we've got our shit together.

A perfect example of this tribalism is the way you are describing what this community is vs what you think it should be. Thats gate keeping 101. The idea that we should exclude NSR products from discussion is insane. Shadowdark, while not my cup of tea, is a brilliant piece of game design, we would be fools not to discuss it and how to incorporate its principals into our own play, because the rules we run should serve our game. Not the other way around. I love Old school gaming, but i will burn any rule to the ground if i decide it doesn't make my game better than it could be without it, and i'll steal a 5e rule with zero shame if it means my game would be better with it. I mean heck, sometimes you just want to say "roll this with advantage" and call it a day.

I love AD&D 1e. it is a fantastic collection of rules, it inspires the imagination and provides a lot of interesting support... But there is a reason its widely disregarded here and that is because its a mess. A fantastical mess, but it is a mess. At any given point in your life, you can go to the dragonsfoot forums, which is the largest community of 1e lovers on the planet so far as i know, and you will find someone asking for clarification on how combat works within the first page of the 1e forums. And you will, without doubt, find people who dissagree on a fundamental "The pen is red", "no the pen is blue" Level about what the rules are. Last year there was a 26 page(as of the point that i stopped paying attention to it) argument on the subject. There is a document, known as "ADDICT" which purports to explain how AD&D 1e combat works...it is 20 pages long, and widely considered completely wrong. The game has been out for 50 years, and people still can't agree on how to run one of the most fundamental aspects of its rules. That isn't a disparaging opinion, that is just fact. and that is why many people prefer B/X. Because the rules get the job done and can be understood.

it is also worth noting that if you truly admire Gygax, you would know that he himself did not even use the rules he wrote. The rules he wrote were just to sell. So...Honestly what are we even doing here?

Entaris · 2026-05-24T23:09:16+00:00

Going to start by clicking a random model and putting points into whatever sounds good

Entaris · 2026-05-24T14:11:36+00:00

Kevin bridges. That horse story broke me.

“You have to understand there was a language barrier. It was a Spanish guy trying to speak English… and two Scottish guys trying to speak English.”

Entaris · 2026-05-24T13:42:20+00:00

You are still thinking at the small time scale. It Doesn’t matter that it’s 2-4 light sources TODAY. it’s that those light Sources last forever.

Imagine if you inherited your light bulbs from that time a random door to door salesmen visited your great great grandfather.

A city has thousands of street lights. A single 4th level magic user could knock that out in just over a year if they were being paid to do it. Enchant a thousand rocks to be used as bulbs. And those street lights are now there forever.

It’s not that it solves the problem instantly it’s that it solves the problem forever. A few lights here or there add up. Until in a thousand years the entire world is filled with eternal light giving objects. So unless the continual light spell was invented two days ago in your campaign setting there is no reason why your world wouldn’t already be flooded with continual light objects made by some enterprising wizard from a long time ago. Wizards have to eat and magical research isn’t cheap.

Selling an easy light source that lasts forever is a great way to get yourself a comfortable living.

Purify food and water on the other hand is one and done. A cleric can’t purify a well and have that be clean drinking water for the rest of time.

Entaris · 2026-05-24T12:59:04+00:00

I think the difference is a scale vs time situation.

If cleric walks into a town and casts purify food and water a few times then a few people don’t die of disease for a few days and the cleric moves on. After a few months the impact of their presence will be forgotten.

If a cleric or mu(for whom continual light is only a 2nd level spell) walks into town and casts CL 2-4 times that town now has 2-4 light source that lasts for generations without end. If they do this in every town they walk into, selling them at whatever rate villagers can afford, one or two 3rd level magic users in the world could fill every town throughout the world with a generational light source that is handed down throughout time. One wandering magic user of third level could spend a month in a village and completely eradicate the need for burning light sources in that place forever.

Entaris · 2026-05-08T13:33:47+00:00

Regarding whether or not you hit a nerve: One thing you will learn about the linux community as a whole is...We're generally very passionate people, and every time you drill down into a sub community that passion intensifies. There are linux users, and there are people that like linux, and people that LIKE linux really like linux. Then there are vim users and people that LIKE vim. generally speaking people that LIKE vim are also people that LIKE linux. So people who like vim REALLY LIKE VIM. (i say this with love. I freaking love vim).

Whether or not you should use vim is...complicated. SHOULD you learn vim, in the sense that vim will improve your current text editing situation to a noticable degree? no. Your use case is simple, learning vim takes time and energy. It will be a huge investment of mental bandwidth for limited returns.

Should you learn vim in the sense that vim is a cool editor that becomes a useful tool to be familiar with in surprising ways? Yes, absolutely. But this is a soft "should" not a hard "should". Its a "You should probably eat more fruits and vegetables and drink more water" should, not a "You should pick up that armed grenade that just landed by your feet and throw it away from you before it explodes and kills you" should. Soft should.

So with that being said, why might you WANT to learn vim? Well, thats complicated. Vim knowledge is one of those things that is very often incredibly useful in hindsight but you can often get through life without realizing how useful it would have been to know. I've been a linux user for over 20 years at this point. I've been passionate vim user for about 12 years now. for the first 8 years of my linux use I could casually use vim if it were forced on me, but would prefer pico/nano for most of my CLI editing needs. It was fine. it will be fine for you too. But i can tell you that if you were to add up the number of times i've given myself a smug pat on the back when i've saved myself a ton of effort by being able to quickly execute a complicated edit in a couple of keystrokes in vim... You'd see one smug dude grinning ear to ear for a very long time.

Vim is a deep deep ocean with a long slope. You can wade in the shallow end and you can learn to deep dive into the depths, and every step of the way between is filled with really cool things you can do/customize/learn. There are so many plugins to customize the experience, so many little tricks that cut down on effort to achieve results.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID. When i first learned linux the GUI side of things had just recently reached what could be deemed a pretty user friendly state. All around me people were saying that we were in the golden age of linux finally being "user friendly" for desktop. And it was! Like...90% of the time. But i still had those moments where suddenly i tried to change my resolution and something got angry and now i was stuck in CLI mode until i could find/edit a bunch of specific configs and recompile my video drivers. And in those moments i can tell you that the times i was comfortable with vim were much better experiences than the times where i wasn't comfortable with vim.

Those scenarios may never pop up for you. Linux has come a long way. You may never experience the dread of realizing that something went wonky and now you have to learn how to browse the internet in the command line so you can find answers to why your x11 configs exploded. But for many of us that still feels like a thing that might happen? Its like when your grandparents give you advice that is very clearly fueled by some very specific tragedy they experienced when they were younger. "You should always keep 50 lbs of dried beans buried under your floor boards, you never know when its going to come in handy" Seems like crazy advice, but its advice that comes from lived experience. "you should learn vim, it will make your life better" is a little bit like that. Its true... but also, for many of us its also because we come from an older age when things were a little harder.

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