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MinionOfCthulhu posted:Answer the important questions! Monocles for your avatar: Yes or no? Yes! At least, I saw one in the prototype leader customizer...
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Feb 9, 2013 16:33
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Was just thinking of reinstalling Shadow Magic and storming through the campaigns. How many will there be in this one? And more important, can you summon Dire Penguins?
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Feb 9, 2013 16:34
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Gerblyn posted:Yes!
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Feb 9, 2013 16:39
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The last mission in Shadow Magic was insane fun. I also remember people remaking that map to be multiplayer, which was epic on hard. Are maps in this one going to have multiple levels like in the previous games? I always loved getting lost in the monster cave labyrinths that some maps had, especially AoW1 with the two levels of cave.
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Feb 9, 2013 16:40
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I really hope they make this as good as the others. I'm excited. 
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Feb 9, 2013 16:41
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Gerblyn posted:Sorry to disappoint, but I believe it's 5 or 6. Each class has it's own set of units as well though, and they all have racial variants too, so you'll still have a huge amount of variety. I'm not really all that disappointed. One of the problems I noticed with Age of Wonders later on in my playing career was that there was a ton of overlap between races. I don't know if that's going to be different or the same with 3, but I would definitely take five or six fleshed out races over 12 virtually identical races (until you get to tier 3). This stuff, plus the idea that your class impacts what units you get later on, could still make for some great replay value. Plus, there's always a chance for more races being released down the line. With all of the different permutations of classes and races, adding a new one of either into the mix could change up the playstyles a lot. What type of modding support are you guys going to offer? Could anybody get in there and add their own idea to their games, or would it take some serious dedication (see: age of wonders 2 heaven folks) to get stuff like custom units/a campaign working?
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Feb 9, 2013 16:43
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Raygereio posted:If I can't put a tophat on my monocle wearing goblin pope, I'll be very disapointed. Oh yeah, that reminds me: Will you be able to "multi-class" your Wizard/Hero? Like a Dreadnought/Sorceror for techno-magic shenanigans and Theocrat/Warlord for being a badass crusader wizard? Or are specializations going to be another version of that?
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Feb 9, 2013 16:44
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Arrrthritis posted:I'm not really all that disappointed. One of the problems I noticed with Age of Wonders later on in my playing career was that there was a ton of overlap between races. I don't know if that's going to be different or the same with 3, but I would definitely take five or six fleshed out races over 12 virtually identical races (until you get to tier 3). This stuff, plus the idea that your class impacts what units you get later on, could still make for some great replay value. I agree with this, I don't mind having a smaller selection of races if the units have some nice variety. As I understand, the Dark Elves and Wood Elves have joined forces, so the Elves and Dark Elves from the previous games are now 1 faction which should be interesting. but I stand by what I said: I demand Lizards! E: got units and races reversed
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Feb 9, 2013 16:47
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PiCroft posted:I agree with this, I don't mind having a smaller selection of races if the units have some nice variety. As I understand, the Dark Elves and Wood Elves have joined forces, so the Elves and Dark Elves from the previous games are now 1 faction which should be interesting. 5 or 6 is plenty, especially if there is some distinction between them. Balance is nice too, but I usually stick to single player anyway so this is less of a concern for me (not that it isn't important)
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Feb 9, 2013 17:38
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Arrrthritis posted:I'm not really all that disappointed. One of the problems I noticed with Age of Wonders later on in my playing career was that there was a ton of overlap between races. I don't know if that's going to be different or the same with 3, but I would definitely take five or six fleshed out races over 12 virtually identical races (until you get to tier 3). I would kind of disagree. I know the basic units didn't have a ton of variation, but there were definite differences between each group in some small way. I really liked having 12 different factions with small differences that ramped up to big ones at the top. And even then I'd say stuff was different enough. There's not a great gulf between elves and halflings but halflings and Undead didn't have many similarities. I'd be really really disappointed if it went down to just 5 or 6 sides. For me, more is always better and part of the reason I didn't like the new heroes game was the complete lack of factions. It also stops repetition when you have massive maps with 10 or so players on, but then I only play single player. Bit sad to learn that Dark Elves aren't their own faction any more, they were my chosen race in both games. Oh Incarnates, you were so wonderful. I really hope the campaign takes the path of Age of Wonders 1 though, I liked choosing my path as I went through, helping the dwarves or the lizards, the orcs or the goblins. Gave you a good look over every different race and made the last fight really interesting.
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Feb 9, 2013 17:41
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So we got Humans, Elves, Orcs and Goblins (assuming they are a seperate faction). That leaves 2 races. I assume none of the Shadow Magic races will be returning. So that leaves Dwarves, Halflings, Draconians, Frostlings, Nomads, Tigrans and Undead. I'm guessing it will be the Undead and Draconians returning and the Dwarves and Halflings will be either neutrals or mixed with the existing races. Other races will go neutral too I guess.
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Feb 9, 2013 17:45
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quote:I agree with this, I don't mind having a smaller selection of races if the units have some nice variety. As I understand, the Dark Elves and Wood Elves have joined forces, so the Elves and Dark Elves from the previous games are now 1 faction which should be interesting. Right. Archons would pretty much be Humans+Theocrat under this scheme, while Wood Elves could be Elves+Druid and Dark Elves Elves+Rogue. Nomads don't need to be their own faction either, even though they were hella fun. So, for a list of 6... Humans, Elves and Goblins are confirmed. Dwarves and Orcs are very likely. That only leaves one real floating slot for either Halflings, (boo!) Undead, (Eh) Lizardmen/Draconians (Yes, dammit!) and Tigrans. (I always kinda liked Tigrans and their egyptian/desert nomad thing, honestly.) Hmmm. Tough choices, for sure. Merging Orcs and Goblins would help and free up another slot. quote:So we got Humans, Elves, Orcs and Goblins (assuming they are a seperate faction). That leaves 2 races. I assume none of the Shadow Magic races will be returning. So that leaves Dwarves, Halflings, Draconians, Frostlings, Nomads, Tigrans and Undead. I'm guessing it will be the Undead and Draconians returning and the Dwarves and Halflings will be either neutrals or mixed with the existing races. Other races will go neutral too I guess. That's not a bad list either. After breaking it down I think 8 would be ideal, but there's always the possibility of DLC/expansions, I guess. madmac fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Feb 9, 2013 |
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Feb 9, 2013 17:47
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Davincie posted:So we got Humans, Elves, Orcs and Goblins (assuming they are a seperate faction). That leaves 2 races. I assume none of the Shadow Magic races will be returning. So that leaves Dwarves, Halflings, Draconians, Frostlings, Nomads, Tigrans and Undead. I'm guessing it will be the Undead and Draconians returning and the Dwarves and Halflings will be either neutrals or mixed with the existing races. Other races will go neutral too I guess. Honestly if they go that route it'll spoil what made the games great! You're losing all that lore and lots of replayability if there's fewer races. Don't get me wrong, I'd still play. I'd just be really sad about it.
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Feb 9, 2013 17:50
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I think one of the things they were trying to do with this game is that all races are neutral races. You can play them as a terribly evil, scorched-earth rear end in a top hat, or you could be a goody two shoes and do quests for the local outpost of fiends, both as goblins, elves, and humans. I think the Undead are going to be left out of the mix, possibly to be left open for a Necromancer class, or a specialization of the Theocrat class (One side leading to Archons, the other leading to Undead). I'd be drat disappointed if they didn't incorporate Frostlings in some way, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they mixed the Frostlings with a firey race, like the Tigrans or Draconians, or with the halflings themselves (Serious, a stunty race would be awesome to play as). It's all speculation at this point, though. I'm just going to enjoy the ride no matter where it takes me. Taear: Don't get me wrong, I agree with you in a lot of ways. I definitely would prefer if we had the 12/15 races to the six we're getting, But I'd also like it if the ones we got had vastly different units from the get-go. The main difference I found between Undead archers and Halfling Slingers would be one stone and a couple feet. I kid, Slingers could be loving devastating Definitely agree with you on the campaign. I seriously wish more strategy games would take cues from Age of Wonders 1 as the basis for their campaigns. Hell, I'd like if they could expand on the same idea and present more trade-off decisions for the game. I'd also really like it if a strategy campaign included both success and failure as methods of proceeding.
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Feb 9, 2013 17:55
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I demand Lizardmen  They had the coolest backstory in the original game. Fighting to return their ancient swampland breeding grounds was great and really, the "life" side of the Dark Elf story was 100x better than the undead one.
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Feb 9, 2013 17:56
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Arrrthritis posted:Taear: Don't get me wrong, I agree with you in a lot of ways. I definitely would prefer if we had the 12/15 races to But I'd like it a lot more if there were five or six races that had vastly different units from the get-go. The main difference I found between Undead archers and Halfling Slingers would be one stone and a couple feet. I kid, Slingers could be loving devastating I guess to me those differences were big enough to justify having lots of races. It felt different to me in a way that - for example - many of the cities in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 didn't do. Lots of little differences in power and abilities seems enough to justify a load of different races. It's just more fun and surprising to me, like in Civilization I enjoy it more and more as more civs are added, even if the difference isn't huge.
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Feb 9, 2013 18:00
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I love the AoW series but heroes were pretty broken especially in the campaigns due to the low unit limit. I ignored basically 80% of the first game's campaign maps because I could just beeline the enemy heroes with my superpowered killing machines, and in Shadow Magic you could just create absurd artifacts for your heroes as soon as you got a decent city. Might be just the way I played but another issue caused by the 8-unit limit is that the endgame was basically decided by level 4 units (and repeater ballistae) alone which was a bit dull and led to some hilariously lopsided battles when you for example had Syrons and their one-per-stack-non-flying Forceships that hurled some weak lightning against the Undead and their Death Striking, Magic Striking, Fear Causing, Life Stealing, Energy Draining, True Seeing, Shadow Walking, Wall Ignoring Dread Reapers who only took half damage from physical attacks and literally killed the ground they moved through.  Anyway, looking forward to III. I will love/hate you if you bring back Doom Bats.
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Feb 9, 2013 18:10
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As long as there are Dire Penguins, I'll be happy.
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Feb 9, 2013 18:18
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Hey, I'll be fine as long as I can roll out my good old Steam Tank, shooting cannonballs at trolls and scalding goblins to death. And then it lets down a ramp and squads of drunken sentient beards jump out and gun down the survivors and hack at them with bayonet-axes 
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Feb 9, 2013 18:24
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Kanfy posted:I love the AoW series but heroes were pretty broken especially in the campaigns due to the low unit limit. I ignored basically 80% of the first game's campaign maps because I could just beeline the enemy heroes with my superpowered killing machines, and in Shadow Magic you could just create absurd artifacts for your heroes as soon as you got a decent city. You could use Dark Elf incarnations to take over their heroes and have an army entirely of heroes. I did that loads.
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Feb 9, 2013 19:07
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quote:I love the AoW series but heroes were pretty broken especially in the campaigns due to the low unit limit. I ignored basically 80% of the first game's campaign maps because I could just beeline the enemy heroes with my superpowered killing machines, and in Shadow Magic you could just create absurd artifacts for your heroes as soon as you got a decent city. To be fair this was a real weakness of earlier AoW games. The limits on units per hex and production cap (one unit per turn max) meant that flooding with weak units wasn't at all viable compared to bringing the best doomstacks you could produce. It's not all bad, but some sort of mechanic to encourage using a variety of units would be helpful. The shared unit/building queue was also an issue. It meant pumping out lower level units was actively bad because it made teching up impossible. That one at least is an easy fix.
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Feb 9, 2013 19:17
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So making GBS threads snow all over the map to annoy everyone as the frostlings wont be in 3 then. 
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Feb 9, 2013 23:25
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Well, if you want domestic management, you will probably find AoW3 just as lackluster in that department. Really, off the top of my head, I can't thin of any fantasy 4Xs with actual interesting domestic management gameplay. That stuff is usually really heavily abstracted and the main focus is on army building and conquest. It actually shocks me how true this is. The closest thing is Majesty(Warlock can count too) and even then it's more about questing. I mean, I understand it's not the most popular genre, but you'd think a fantasy Settlers/Tropico/Simcity with non-humans/non-Earth would be a thing.
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Feb 10, 2013 05:37
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Picked up the original off Steam and jumped right into Oracle's Eye. Kind of surprised how much all the strats and micro came right back to me. Call me skeptical about this new one though. Biggest question for me, in the fiction will there be a character who's mistaken for dead yet shackled to vengeance??
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Feb 10, 2013 06:10
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It's Inioch. After the breather that was Shadow Magic that rear end in a top hat is coming back again to try to take things over.
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Feb 10, 2013 06:19
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Arrrthritis posted:It's Inioch. After the breather that was Shadow Magic that rear end in a top hat is coming back again to try to take things over. Or maybe that retarded asshat Merlin from AoW2. That moron was probably my biggest problem with the AoW2 campaign, as opposed to AoW1's approach.
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Feb 10, 2013 06:21
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One of my favorite games a s a kid. I loved using mass rangers and unicorns to take out the orc and dark elf hordes. Although I do hope, as others have said that the game promotes a little more variety in units. Armies shouldn't just be Tier 3 and 4 units.
Crowsbeak fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Feb 14, 2013 |
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Feb 14, 2013 03:38
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Possibly, possibly not. Though I'm biased in that I've been playing Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations, where there's so many units you need to have, and mass X doesn't really work. Sometimes it's nice to have one or two things to shoot for. Probably because I'm dumb or something.
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Feb 14, 2013 09:26
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poo poo, Notch was the backer on this game? Didn't know much about him and Minecraft, popular as it was; only about some tiff he had with Yogscast and various bad stuff in MC's development.
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Feb 14, 2013 12:26
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If his filthy minecraft monies bring me a new Age of Wonders then
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Feb 14, 2013 12:33
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toasterwarrior posted:poo poo, Notch was the backer on this game? Didn't know much about him and Minecraft, popular as it was; only about some tiff he had with Yogscast and various bad stuff in MC's development. Dude's just passionate about games and he ends up saying whatever comes to his mouth without thinking about it, which gets him in trouble. And then MC fans got really bitter as he kind of slowed down development and eventually handed it off to other people at Mojang (who are now doing good things, again). He was also seriously considering funding Pyschonauts 2 but that one may have been a little too rich for his blood. Notch is basically the prime example of a huge gaming nerd with more money than sense, and it turns out that very good things CAN come of that!
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Feb 14, 2013 12:36
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Notch is basically the prime example of a huge gaming nerd with more money than sense, and it turns out that very good things CAN come of that! Hell, he's getting us AoW3 and I'm totally cool with that. The only "recent" fantasy TBS that really drew me to it is Fall from Heaven: Master of Mana, and that's a mod of a mod of a mod! Good on him on potentially bringing back the subgenre.
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Feb 14, 2013 12:50
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I never thought I would be praising Notch for his gaming investments. I was never a big fan of minecraft, but if the dude gets me some more Age of Wonders then by god he's good by me.
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Feb 15, 2013 05:41
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Yeah, I was a bit bummed the psychonauts 2 thing fell through but this is just as good!
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Feb 15, 2013 05:43
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So I'd like to thank this thread for talking about the old games so much. After seeing how interesting this one looked, I went ahead and just bought Shadow Magic off GOG. A friend and I have been playing the hell out of it the last few days. Even if we generally have no clue what the hell we're doing, it's still a blast. This game just about perfectly fills the kind of experience I've always been really looking for in a strategy game, an itch that things like Warlock failed to scratch, but just made even worse. So yeah! Shadow Magic is a blast, and I'll definitely be watching this new one very closely! Keeping my fingers crossed for Undead to show up again, even though I'm kinda doubting it's likely. There's definitely undead dudes in one of the screenshots on their site though!
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Feb 18, 2013 13:29
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Don't forget to try the first one, Ruder.
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Feb 18, 2013 16:07
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I've been trying Shadow Magic and this series for the first time too. Been splitting my time between it and Eador. Not bad, I'm quite looking forward to seeing what happens with III. Apparently the random map generator can trap you though. My latest game got off to a decent start and then I discovered I was completely caged in by mountains into a corner. 
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Feb 18, 2013 17:03
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Holy poo poo this is great news! I bought shadow magic on gog last year and I ended up liking it way more than heroes of might and magic.toasterwarrior posted:Hell, he's getting us AoW3 and I'm totally cool with that. The only "recent" fantasy TBS that really drew me to it is Fall from Heaven: Master of Mana, and that's a mod of a mod of a mod! Good on him on potentially bringing back the subgenre. If you haven't already you should totally check out Eador. It's getting a modern remake in a few months.
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Feb 18, 2013 17:05
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Fintilgin posted:I've been trying Shadow Magic and this series for the first time too. Been splitting my time between it and Eador. Not bad, I'm quite looking forward to seeing what happens with III. Apparently the random map generator can trap you though. My latest game got off to a decent start and then I discovered I was completely caged in by mountains into a corner. Earth magic, or wind, one of them gives erosion which lets you level mountains and let fourth your armies of doom! 
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Feb 18, 2013 18:28
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Demiurge4 posted:Earth magic, or wind, one of them gives erosion which lets you level mountains and let fourth your armies of doom! If you're playing Humans, you can also fly your armies over them in zeppelins. Oh poo poo, AoW3 is going to have zeppelins.
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Feb 18, 2013 18:30
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