Profile of CombatMuffin

Thank you for the replies. I do have Shadowplay running but didn't think to disable it. I'll try turning it off tonight and report if it worked.

Thanks again in advance!

Not sure specifically on the eastern front, but the general information I have goes something like this:

The Waffen SS was the military arm of the Nazi party, basically a political tool for bragging rights, propaganda, etc. As such, they had very strict requirements at first, similar to many elite troops: specific height requirements, confirmed Aryan heritage, membership in the Party, etc. Many of the recruits came from the Nazi Youth camps.

As the war progressed, naturally casualties began to rise, particularly after the Eastern Front. It's no surprise their numbers rose: They probably used membership into the SS as an effective recruitment tool.

Here's a fun fact about the Waffen SS: They were not really elite. Sure, they had specialized training and had priority on most equipment, but apparently, reports from veteran officials and Generals during the initial blitzkrieg on Poland indicated that the Wehrmacht wanted the SS out of combat immediately (or at least out of their same operational area). Their fanaticism and zeal worked at first, but after the initial engagements they were just throwing themselves into fights blindly, messing up flanks, breaking all sort of organization, overextending and committing all sorts of unnecessary havoc on the civilian population.

Unless you were a veteran of WWI with direct affiliation to the Nazi party, most of the truly elite were in the Wehrmacht or recruited into the Brandenburg and Luftwaffe (Fallschirmjägers)

a slowly but working game became an useless one, yes they did it

Defeatism at its brightest. Relic didn't break a thing. They had a legal obligation to SHUT DOWN the game's servers. 9 out of 10 companies out there would have just blogged a big thank you and said goodbye.

Do they have a fully functional game? No, but they have it working when it shouldn't. The attitude you spread doesnt encourage anyone to fix, support or even possibly expand on the service.

A sport is NECESSARILY a game. A game is not, in turn, necessarily a sport.

A game must have some sort of competition --against someone else or yourself-- and must abide by a set of rules. If these rules are disregarded, then it stops being a game.

I agree with what Riddler said, there are practical connotations from a realistic point of view, but those things won't necessarily make it a sport or not. If the Olympic Comittee wanted to declare Starcraft an Olympic sport, then yes, it would be an Olympic Sport (if only by definition).

Not going to get into academics, but there are strong discussions comparing war or even "laws" to a game. They follow absolutely all the core tennets of a game. They are not sports though (and war is arguably VERY athletic and competitive).

It's a label, with VERY broad definitions and consequences. Some traditional, some radical, but it really doesn't matter if it advances the gaming culture since in the end: videogames AND sports are about entertainment.

I did some legal work for a small onnprofit, got to see government contracts and that stuff and did a tiny bit of Pr to gather funds from private companies in my city.

The one thing I learned from that experience was: about 20-30% of that money is actually going to be directed to rebuilding and feeding those people. About 7% is tax deductible (in my country at least), which with some clever scheming can be hoarded back by the shareholders, a large portion of it is spent on marketing like the one you posted, which brings them money indirectly by persuading subscriptions, and another large portion could go into "logistics" and other stuff.

It can all be justified, because you can say its not actually to HELP the people of the Phillipines, but rather about "raising awareness" and letting people know they need help.

Its not a bad move, but it certainly doesn't make them better than the rest for it.