Hans Gruber

Weak

The only entertaining thing about this massive failure of a game is the drama from current and ex-employees.

Off to turd burger another game.

If it allows me to simply purchase a horse without having to go through all of that leveling and the long inane quest, I'm in.

Eight hours to catch up to where WoW was several years ago. Big accomplishment.

Exquisite idea.

Or they could just tailor the overall mechanics of the game toward a more enjoyable experience that doesn't include forced massive grinding in the least.

And just a quick add: my good friend, who is from Hong Kong, suffers daily from the knowledge that most of his family was wiped out because they dared ask for democracy. You know, during the time China was publicly rolling tanks up on students? And the media blackout that followed and lasted for years? And has never been resolved but has learned to put on a slightly more pleasant public face?

They are not democratic in the least, they still murder and oppress, and as benign as this episode appears it's still a stark and visual symptom.

We do not have a warped view. We, as realists, understand why and how people will act given the circumstances of their lives.

We live in the real world. We know people from Soviet states, the Middle East, and China that have fled to the US/Canada/UK/etc.

Please don't play pretend that the face value of discussions within those nations are/were what people really felt/were. And please don't disregard the obvious.

Two of my best friends of all time were from Azerbaijan and Hong Kong respectively. They and their families have plenty of stories about how they were so frightened while in their homeland they said anything. This has historical precedent. It's fucking OBVIOUS.

A government shutting down all entertainment for any reason is totalitarianism. Just because people happened to die this time means nothing. It's still the opposite of freedom and we, as humanity, should never condone it because this particular circumstance involves natural deaths.

I can't believe that massively.com was this obtuse. It is truly mind blowing. And I am not being hyperbolic.

Whether or not the natural disaster affected us is irrelevant. We're criticizing the oppressive government and their practices.

And I'm glad that you can provide several anecdotes relating your experiences with Chinese people in China that enjoy (or are ignorant or afraid of) the oppression they experience. I can provide similar anecdotes from the fifty-or-more Chinese people I've know, worked with, or been been friends with - who have recently emigrated from China to seek freedom and escape oppression, persecution, etc.

And finally, you're acting as if it's a secret (or in the least, still up for debate) that the Chinese government doesn't face all kinds of pressure from the rest of the world to cease their many, many human rights abuses. I mean, what fantasy world are you reporting from?