mrimac00

If it was Peyton Manning on the cover, then I would believe in this curse.

Are any of the games actually good? Haven't played any of them myself except for the demo for the first one long ago. Wasn't impressed.

I appreciate the use of Nermal.

Question: Can we still expect to see a "battle chest"-style set to be released around the time of MoP? I've still only got Burning Crusade and would love to upgrade to MoP but that is not a cheap endeavor.

Are the Horde and the Alliance going to eventually fall apart or certain races are going to change who they are allied with? I do not read the books nor have I played the game regularly lately to follow the lore, so perhaps I'm coming to the wrong conclusions. But there seems to be a lot of infighting in the Horde and the Alliance lately, and some diplomacy between unlikely groups (such as the Dark Iron Dwarves hanging out in Ironforge and the Trolls that are stuck in Stormwind Harbor). And of course, there's the whole deal about the Twilight Father and who he is (but it seems like 4.3 will resolve that)...

I honestly am bewildered about where Blizzard is trying to take the story with the future expansion(s). I get the feeling the Horde and Alliance will disintegrate. PvP will never be the same again...

@Slomoshun

They never called the multiplayer betas of Uncharted 3 or Gears of War 3 "demos." They were called "betas." They were still unfinished but didn't play like total trainwrecks the way BF3's did. They asked for user feedback, which I and many others did provide and there were definitely bugs in both of those betas that warranted testing.

I think you're using your own personal definition of a "beta" or "demo."

That said, calling these "betas" is a misnomer. The builds QA's and internal testers play are really betas. What we're getting would be more accurately called "public test builds" or something to that effect. But "beta" probably sounds cooler because it makes it sound like you're QA testing for a real developer.

The only other betas I played this year were for Gears of War 3 and Resistance 3. Both of those games felt like near-finished products.

Battlefield 3 beta felt like a half-done game developed by some college students, indie developers, or modders. Lots of glitches. Fairly choppy graphics (or maybe just lag). Graphics that looked like they belong in the last generation and horrendous shadow effects. (The battle outside of the Subway in Metro was painful because of how bad the trees and shadows were, ignoring the hills that allowed you to fall through the ground.) And to top it off, we got no large vehicle-based map to show off Battlefield 3 (on the consoles). My opinion is based on the PS3 version.

I would've tried the Xbox version, but I couldn't download the beta with my 48-hour Gold trial. I'd ideally play this on the PC, but my computer ain't up to snuff for it.

It would've been safer if they kept the beta PC only since they could push updates without any of the console approvals, and it probably just looked prettier on the PC. Obviously the port from PC to consoles isn't exactly one-to-one, but it really feels like the console version was an afterthought based on the beta.

This. I saw someone put the raid icons in random spots during battlegrounds this weekend.

I hope they eventually do a true sequel. I'll admit, I haven't played the Joker series, so perhaps I should give those a try. But, I remember this game being waaaaaay better than Pokemon. The breeding system is much deeper and felt more rewarding than Pokemon's. Pokemon just hasn't felt like it's evolved much (pardon the term) since the Gold/Silver days on the GBC.

It's strange that developers are on board about the Slidepad attachment. The attachment is only stirring up negative reactions from fans and the press, yet this is apparently what developers wanted (short of a 3DS redesigned with two Slidepads). You'd think the developers would've come earlier in the 3DS' development to say, "Hey, Nintendo. Give us a second
Slidepad, and we'll bring the games." It's also stranger that the lack of dual analogs was never seen as an issue on the DS and only the PSP. Just observations.