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[silverspawn]

Well, I think Dream Theater and Nightwish had drops in quality after Mike Portnoy and Tarja Turunen departed, respectively.

That's fair

[silverspawn]

Classic pieces of Starcraft I history

Mengsk desclares himself Emperor (End of Campaign 1 Video)
UED Victory Report (End of Campaign V Video)
Kerrigan celebrates victory & DuGalle commits suicide (End of Campaign VI Video)
Zeratul/Duran Hybrid in-game dialogue

I was pretty young when I first saw that, but man that last bit was terrifying. So much more powerful than anything in sc2

Also, Horror flick from Zerg Campaign I

[silverspawn]

I was pretty young when I first saw that, but man that last bit was terrifying. So much more powerful than anything in sc2

and ALSO, like, that was HARD to find. you had to finish the previous mission (destroying Zeratul's base before he can escape with the matriarch) in I think 15 minutes rather than 30 to unlock the secret mission where this is from, and there is no helpful menu tip like "Secret found: No" after the game that helps you. It was years after owning the game that we discovered this. Back then, game designers had the guts to put in easter eggs that not everyone will find. I mean admittedly, we only found it after hearing it from somewhere. Without help, you could only find it by sheer luck

[silverspawn]

And the last video is also far scarier than any fancy cinematic from sc2. not even close.

[silverspawn]

UED Victory Report (End of Campaign V Video)

I know this never actually happened, but I feel like it may be a pretty good approximation of how good reporting is in the real world

- Blatant lies (Stukov didn't die in the assault on char, he died right before, murdered by other terrans)
- "It was believed to have planned an invasion of earth" - literally just making stuff up
- "Terran military was more than a match for beast-like zerg" unclear but very favorable way to present facts
- The zerg victim count -- probably also just making stuff up. This is pretty lol, why would you even want to kill zerg when you control them

*even though* the mission *was* extremely successful.

Perhaps one difference is that real reporters don't lie quite so brazenly as that can be fact-checked. But even that's only true for some outlets. I think like most people have no idea how bad most reporting actually is.

[silverspawn]

Also love the passive phrasing "was believed to". Well yeah someone sure believed it.

[silverspawn]

There are too many movies about heroic reporters uncovering something genuinely bad, and too few about decent people's lives being dragged through the mud by terrible reporters

[silverspawn]

I'd play it.

You didn't play!

[silverspawn]

Jim Raynor / Mengsk in SCI and SCII



 


Imagine having characters that -- gasp -- aren't unusually attractive

[silverspawn]

I like this quite a lot

[Awaclus]

I'd play it.

You didn't play!

I would have, but I was busy with moving out of my apartment and I stopped checking that thread especially since I thought you were going to make a new one.

[silverspawn]

Comparatively, I get 36.75€ for editing a 7000 word document. To be competitive, that should take no longer than 2.5 hours. But there's no way I can do it in 5 hours. This means I'm realistically working for at most half the pay when there's no real need to earn more money.

Correction: I of course get paid in $

How long do these people think we need to edit 7000 words? This is getting pretty absurd. 7.5h was optimistic.

[silverspawn]

And that will be it, editing company. Go exploit some people who couldn't get better paying jobs

[LaLight]

wow, 36$ is a lot in roubles considering our dying economy. My wife works as an editor and she gets 6$ for 2000 characters (I don't know how much this is in words) when she is rewriting trash texts to normal ones and twice as much for writing texts from scratch.

[LaLight]

and this is considered good money at that

[silverspawn]

Your wife gets paid more than double what I am! 36$/[7000 words] ≈ 36$/[28000 characters] ≈ 2.57$/2000 characters

[LaLight]

Your wife gets paid more than double what I am! 36$/[7000 words] ≈ 36$/[28000 characters] ≈ 2.57$/2000 characters

ah, math!

[LaLight]

wow you got underpaid than!

[LaLight]

then*

[silverspawn]

Your wife gets paid more than double what I am! 36$/[7000 words] ≈ 36$/[28000 characters] ≈ 2.57$/2000 characters

ah, math!

To be fair, I also read that and thought "wow, she's really poorly paid!" and started to write a post with that premise, until at some point I did the calculation

[silverspawn]

Campaign VIII

You are Kerrigan who is now human but can still control zerg. For inexplicable reasons, she at some point in the campaign goes back to infesting herself, but this is also totally unimportant because this time it doesn't affect her character, but the story is no longer sophisticated enough for anyone to acknowledge this difference. You help Raynor overthrow Mengsk, who for some reason has become the arch Villain. Raynor kills Mengsk.

Not that this needs any more strikes against it, but I just realized for the first time that I don't think Kerrigan had any reassurance that this second infestation wouldn't change her utility function this time.

I can't decide whether or not to be mad about this part of the story. One the one hand, it's like the only genuinely unpredictable important thing that happens throughout all of starcraft II. On the other hand, why?? Imagine you're a genuinely ethical person, then you take a drug that warps your mind and you betraying everything you once cared for and kill millions of people and physically turns you into a monster, then you get saved, and then, presented with the opportunity to go BACK to being a monster at the vague promise of more power, you voluntarily take it. ??????

Is weird but nonsensical better than being completely predictable and boring?

[silverspawn]

The single most egregious thing about the sc2 history is what they did to Mengsk.

In SC1, Mengsk is a really interesting character. He is introduced as the rebel leader in an evil regime, someone you ideologically align with. Then he's shown to be somewhat of a ruthless pragmatist, but very smart. Then, it turns out he puts selfish interests above altruistic one as he names himself emperor.

But even then, he's never the villain. He's just an asshole. The zerg are the real enemy, and then the UED comes and fights Mengsk (a battle where neither side is good, pretty sure there is no such thing in SC2), and he gets demoted to an asshole who doesn't even have power anymore. then Raynor saves him because they need his help to fight the UED. Here's how Raynor talked to him during campaign VI



And even once he gets to be Emperor again -- who cares? I never expected SC2 to be about overthrowing him. Why would Raynor give a fuck whether he's emperor or not? If he had worked with Mengsk, that would have made at least as much sense as trying to rebel against him.

Making him the arch villain is just so stupid  But at least in Campaign VII, that was the side plot; the main plot was about Kerrigan. Making him the arch villain in Campaign VIII is worse still.

[silverspawn]

And then ofc his character is gone come sc2; he's just a stereotypical evil and dumb dictator. he used to be smart goddamnit

If anyone wonders why I'm talking so much about this, starcraft used to be a really big deal to me. And the campaign used to be a super big deal. I so badly wanted to see it continued. And then when sc2 came out, when I was about to finish school, I wanted to become  a progamer. Thankfully, I wasn't anywhere close to talented enough to make it. Becoming a pro gamer would not at all have been a good idea in retrospect.

[silverspawn]

please don't close schools

like how am I even going to teach data bases remotely in principle? the students do not have a data base server at home.

There was some talk about just starting the winter holidays earlier. Which would be lol and most of the exams I was going to have written at the end of December would then not have occurred, but fine. Just don't make me do online teaching. Even though it would make work much more efficient by removing travel time.

[Awaclus]

please don't close schools

like how am I even going to teach data bases remotely in principle? the students do not have a data base server at home.

Make them set up databases in localhost? That's what we've been doing at school the entire time. And by the entire time, I mean including before the pandemic, since my degree is completely remotely studiable.