dourin

@SirPsychoSexy: It'll all be archived on the twitch channel.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: I am saving the announcement for launch, so no fucker steals my glorious name. :)

@TheHT: Oh god damnit :(

Ok, fixed in the post, can't fix the title =/

Hey all, just a quick heads up for anyone who either didn't catch it in the podcast or just needs a reminder. Lincolncast will be doing a live version of our podcast this week in celebration of the BWE#3 this coming Friday, the 20th, beginning at 9pm EST. Format will be similar to our last live event, with myself acting as cameraman, and @selfconfessedcynic, joined by some guests, discussing game mechanics, the Sylvari and Asura, any news that has come up since our previous podcast, and who knows what else.

This time around, we will take a break from dub v dub and instead focus on the Asura starting experience. I will create the character at the beginning of the stream, and we'll be off from there. If any of you from Lincoln Force are interested in tagging along in-game and getting some screen time on the stream, just let us know in this thread, and be sure to be on Mumble so coordination can go smoothly (I'll actually be in mumble this time, though as before, I won't be talking, just listening.). Just be aware that we don't plan to speed through the content, and there might be times I will be stopped so I can pull up a UI element that they might be discussing on the podcast.

Anybody interested in watching can head on over here to watch it all go down. If you'd like, you can even head over there now and hit the follow button, so you will get an email letting you know when we go live.

We will also be fielding questions from the twitch chat, so if you have something you'd like to ask us and have answered live on the stream, be sure to be signed into your twitch account so you can join in the discussion.

I think that pretty much covers everything, and if not, cynic will likely be on here before long to remind me of what I forgot. Anyway, I can't fucking wait for Friday, and hope to see you all there!

I will be sticking with plain ol' Dourin for this BWE. Though I do have some fun names for live characters that I do not wish to disclose at this time.

@ZoomyRamen: You're mostly right, but on digital purchases such as this, at least in the majority of the US, we don't pay taxes. That's the point I was getting at. So the price you see in $ is the price we pay, period. Where as in EU, the price you see in € is the price you pay, but that includes VAT, which accounts for at least some of the premium you guys are seeing in pricing compared to the US.

Edit: And I just verified this by going to the final stage of purchasing gems, and it indeed charges $0.00 in tax on the purchase.

@Hunkulese: The problem with that is that then you are still generalizing to an extent. By your rule, people in California should have to pay more for games than I do in the midwest, because the standard of living is higher there, therefore market prices are higher. I want my $30 games for living in cow country!

But yeah, as a couple of people have pointed out here, I believe those EU prices are including their respective VAT, where as here in the US, in most cases, there are no taxes on digital online purchases. So EU may be getting screwed, but it's by pennies, not euros, and by their government, not Anet. There's no reason Anet should take a hit on gem profits because your country wants to charge a tax.

@No0b0rAmA: This is what happens when you push a Canadian over the edge. Full on, brutal, unadulterated niceness all up in your face.

@No0b0rAmA: Ha! Joke's on you! I flip flopped my prediction on the most recent podcast!

In all seriousness, as we discussed on the podcast, this really is for the better. Allows Anet a chance to do a sort of soft launch with this BWE, and a month from there to better prep for the real thing. Friday is gonna be nuuuuuuts though.

I would not call Tropico an RTS experience. Tropico is straight up a city builder. The biggest difference between it and Sim City is that if people don't like your reign, they can leave the city and become rebels that can/will attack your city. Also, you have to worry about your relationship with other powerful nations like the US who will begin bordering your island if you begin to become suspect. Even with all that, the game is still just a city builder at its core. There is no unit management, unit upgrading, nothing at all that would resemble a real-time strategy game.