This is an interesting question for me. I used to be solidly in the “no” camp but became part of the “yes” camp due to some things I’ve experienced in life.

Life is strange. Maybe it’s nothing more than what is happening in our brain. Maybe it’s more than that. I choose to believe the latter, but I’m open to having my belief challenged if (when?) scientific study provides a better answer than what we have now.

I was so excited to play the SC2 campaign when the game came out. Starcraft and Brood War was my life for years.

I was so disappointed by SC2 that, to this day, I haven’t even read the wikipedia summary of the expansion campaigns. Never bought either of them. I stopped playing around the time they introduced paid maps (in 2010 or something). Playing competitive was good, but UMS was botched just as bad as the campaign when the game was new. That was my most anticipated thing after the campaign. Even now people mostly only play the same 3 UMS maps.

The original game still holds up too. We got robbed of a good sequel. And don’t even get me started about diablo 3 lol. RIP blizzard.

Edit: did some googling and it turns out they announced, but did not implement paid maps in 2009. Map micro translation did eventually get implemented though.

Houstonian of 30+ years here.

Even with the insane number of lanes available, driving anywhere inside beltway 8 between like 12 pm and 8pm is hell on earth. And outside those hours, you’re playing chicken with drunk drivers.

Before I started working remote, I used to clock my average speed to and from work. Most of the time it was 15-20mph on a 65mph freeway. Literally bicycle speeds. Without cars or gridlocked traffic, I could have commuted faster on a bike.

More than one person dies in Houston traffic every day on average. This is probably the shittiest and most expensive form of mass transit mankind will ever build. At least I hope this is as bad as it ever gets, lol.