Because if global warming was man-made, then presumably it is possible to be man-unmade.

The difference in GW2 is that there are very few spells that just do pure damage. Most have secondary and sometimes very powerful effects attached to them, which means you will want to use them wisely and not just "as soon as your cooldown timer clears".

For example, one spell may have a blind effect which causes your enemy's next attack to miss. Another may have a knockdown effect. Another might launch you forward while leaving a trail of fire in your wake. Hopefully it's obvious how this forces smart use of skills and not just whack-a-mole whatever's off cooldown.

As a side note, I find mana to be a very bad resource system (large pool, slow/cumbersome to regenerate) and it seems to have stuck around only because it's "traditional". It is essentially unlimited in the short-term, and has a hard limit in the long-term, which means that in the heat of battle, you might as well not have a resource unless you are engaged in very long fights. And if you do run out of mana, it's a very unfun mechanic since there's basically nothing you can do except sit there and reflect on your character's poor life decisions that led to this point.

Energy (small pool, fast-regenerating resource) seems like a much more interesting resource for forcing resource management, as it forces smart, controlled skill usage and heavily prohibits button mashing. However, a purely cooldown based system like GW2 basically creates the same thing.

Elementalists do not have a weapon swap, due to their attunement mechanic. 4 attunements with 5 skills apiece = 20 skills, compared to standard classes who just have a weapon swap with 5 skills apiece for 10 skills. If eles also had a weapon swap, they'd have 40 weapon skills which would be obviously overpowered.

Reminds me of this excellent scene from Game of Thrones.

I'm guessing you've never played DotA or anything in the genre? The target dummies you refer to have this annoying habit of always ending up on your team. Considering that even one weak link on a team will usually cost the game, this is what creates the rampant noob-hostile community in the genre.

I actually think the opposite of what you said will happen - everyone will game the system to report the terrible players (skill-wise, not personality-wise) from their team, and new players will eventually be turned away because they keep getting reported and having to pay more.

What could possibly go wrong?

Sincerely,
The Winklevoss twins

Well that's just silly - obviously only the comments that are +5 are true.

Agreed - the distribution of wealth in China makes 1%-ers look like child's play. As you mention, this is creating a ticking social time bomb as people inevitably harbor envy and resentment.

Another serious problem they have is the one-child policy creating major social issues. The obvious one is the gender ratio, which was something like 56% male last I heard. That means over 20% of guys are left out in the cold. Then there are less obvious things like how you now have 2 parents and 4 grandparents all focusing their attention on raising a single kid. This is creating a generation of incredibly spoiled and entitled children. The flip side of this is that a single person may have to support his parents and grandparents when they are older which is a not insignificant financial burden.

The bottom line is that China might have a promising economy from an outsider's perspective, but their society is massively dysfunctional. They might be able to be successful for a short period of time but in my opinion they are not built for long term success.

It's fairly safe to assume GW2 will be launching some time in the next few months. Maybe not by mid May, but then Blizzard is still first to market which doesn't really disprove my theory.

Also, the whole situation stinks of some suit forcing the devs to cut PvP in order to rush it out the door in time to match up against the anticipated Guild Wars 2 release date.

We certainly have a lot of other things that start with "idio-" though...

According to this, he will be half English, half Native American.

Most don't realize that in modern pop/rock music, you don't need a good singer, or a technically superior guitarist to get national. But if your drummer (and bassist, as part of the rhythm section) sucks, you're going no where... ever.

The White Stripes say hi.

Maybe he's just trying to properly convey that this situation is no laughing matter.

Bill Gates, I believe.