Author Topic: Video Games (2009-2011)  (Read 88925 times)

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Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #200: December 13, 2009, 09:54:16 PM »
Yea, Bioware has been really great at RPGs. KOTOR 1 and Mass Effect and Dragon Age (Which Im trying to play)

Now a Star Wars MMO with Bioware is like perfect. I heard the old star wars galaxies one you could fly yourself from planet to planet, so I'm assuming you can do that in this one. That would be cool if it were from your angle in a massive ship.

Id try to be a Bounty Hunter for sure

Offline Lintyfresh85

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #201: December 13, 2009, 10:12:39 PM »
Yes! That's what I want to be as well.

Maybe we can team up and go round up all the intergalactic bad guys out there.

I'll bring the carbonite.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #202: December 13, 2009, 10:26:39 PM »
As an owner of all 4 Guild Wars campaigns, lemme say that it is phenomenal. A truly awesome game..

i have discovered the world of "free-2-play" MMOs. Their business model is different from the typical western MMOs but is pretty much standard in asian games.

"free-2-play" means that you can download the entire game for free and play it for free. The company makes its money off of an "Item Mall" that sells convieniece items for real money.

the item mall is the exact same concept as playstation store and xbox live marketplace. You buy a special game currency in blocks(just like ms points) and you spend it in the item mall for the items you want.
the "F2P" item mall business model is largely unpopular with north american mmo players for several reasons, but it is the standard business model for mmo games in asia. It is slowly gaining popularity in the west. VERY slowly. (continued next post)

Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #203: December 13, 2009, 10:36:17 PM »
Its good that they haven't decided to go for pay to play because GW2 looks tight.

GW has a deal were you buy the two expansions for GW you get eye of the north free. Id like to see if it takes me down that route though.

I really should decide on this whole star wars thing though. Whenever I look at someting I want to just pay and play.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #204: December 13, 2009, 10:44:47 PM »
There are two primary reasons that the west dislikes "f2p" mmorpgs.

1 - the vast majority of them SUCK. And they suck badly. Most of them are crappy grindfests. (grinding = killing the same enemies for hours on end for miniscule xp). And they look cheap as hell with crappy graphics and low production values. However there are also some VERY, VERY good games among the dreck that just need to be found. As the business model becomes more popular, the quality of the games is increasing.

2 - many of the games promote a "win with your wallet" mentality. Rather than playing the game and earning you gold/armor/weapons etc, you just buy them from the item shop. The GOOD games dont do this, but a LOT of the worse ones do. The better games offer convienience items like mounts, potions(xp potions, stronger health potions etc) house items and cosmetic items (clothes and such that dont add to your stats but look cool as hell). Things like that.

(continued next post)

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #205: December 13, 2009, 10:58:55 PM »
I have found several good things about "f2p" mmos.

you can try them easily..and if you dont like it, you have lost nothing but time.

where your standard western subscription mmo sticks with the tried and true formula(ie everquest/wow clones), and most games that dont fit into that box get ignored, in the "f2p" sector these games thrive. One wouldnt think that a turn-based mmorpg would work...but Atlantica Online makes it work, and it is awesome! Maplestory is a 2d side-scrolling mmo, and is more popular worldwide that WOW. There are loads of other 2d mmos as well in the "f2p" sector if that is your thing. The next mmo i am going to try is a Strategy RPG MMO (think final fantasy tactics) called Dofus(yes, extremely silly name lol). In the f2p sector there is a lot more variety in playstyles and game types than in subscription mmos.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #206: December 13, 2009, 11:15:52 PM »
As far as i can tell, right now the BEST, cream of the crop f2p mmorpgs are:

1) Runes Of Magic - this game is as close to WoW as you can probably get without being sued. Literally. If you like wow, you will love this.

2) Dungeons & Dragons Online - formerly a subscription game. It failed, died, and was resurrected as a F2P game, where it now enjoys immense success. Probably the first Western-made MMO to try the F2P model and succeed.

3) Atlantica Online - turn based MMORPG. You command a party of yourself and up to 8 "mercenaries" in final fantasy style turnbased combat.

4) Perfect World International - formerly the gold standard of f2p mmos, as the games get better, it slides further and further down the list.

all of which are free to download and play.

on the horizon there is Allods Online, which will raise the bar for f2p games. And the original designers of Diablo are working on a Diablo-style MMO called Torchlight.

Offline Lintyfresh85

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #207: December 13, 2009, 11:20:25 PM »
How many of those can you play on a Mac?

Offline Nathan

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #208: December 13, 2009, 11:21:43 PM »
The best thing about blizzard games is that they come out with a mac native version at the same time as the pc version, in the same box.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #209: December 13, 2009, 11:30:26 PM »
I am not sure about macs, since i do not use them. Next time i get to a computer, i will check.

Offline The Chief

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #210: December 13, 2009, 11:34:22 PM »
According to Wikipedia, all four of the games JMad mentioned are Windows-only.  Of course there are always emulators and/or bootcamp.

I didn't realize there were so many free high-quality mmo's out there.  I also can't believe the size of the downloads for some of these...  sheesh.  Average broadband speeds in the US definitely aren't keeping up with content.

Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #211: December 13, 2009, 11:35:41 PM »
I tried downloading Runes of Magic like 2 weeks ago but the log in was being really retarded so I got frustrated and deleted it and just installed Guild Wars instead.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #212: December 13, 2009, 11:48:48 PM »
Yeah f2p mmos are huge business overseas. Huge business.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #213: December 13, 2009, 11:56:54 PM »
Keep in mind chief, that the primary distribution method for north american subscription mmorpgs is disc. So you really only download the patches, which are smaller.

for f2p the ONLY distribution method is digital download, since the game client itself is free. Saves the publisher money, and really no point to print discs for free games, right?

so the downloads you are seeing is the entire game. Given the size of some of the gameworlds, the clients are rather small for some of them.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #214: December 14, 2009, 12:12:59 AM »
Keep in mind chief, that the primary distribution method for north american subscription mmorpgs is disc. So you really only download the patches, which are smaller.

for f2p the ONLY distribution method is digital download, since the game client itself is free. Saves the publisher money, and really no point to print discs for free games, right?

so the downloads you are seeing is the entire game. Given the size of some of the gameworlds, the clients are rather small for some of them.
Actually I bought WoW online and downloaded the game, it was not too bad.  The worst part was downloading a 2 GB file, then it says it needs to update and downloads a patch.  Like 5-10 times.  Why not roll the whole thing into the latest patch?  I guess it would suck for people already up to date.

Also, I think that WoW streams a lot of the game world as you go along.  I'm guessing that while it makes it simpiler to update things, the f2p games would rather have you download the whole shebang once and have that server strain once than have you constantly streaming map data as you roam.


I might have to boot into Win7 and try some of these.  The D&D one looked interesting to me before, but I never tried it because it was on windows only.  I don't know if my MacBook Pro can handle it though, looked pretty graphics heavy and WoW can make it choke on max settings to the point I only get 25-30 FPS.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #215: December 14, 2009, 12:25:41 AM »
If wow makes it choke, dont bother with ddo.

Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #216: December 14, 2009, 12:27:43 AM »
I wish I had a better computer that handled games well. I try to make it the best on medium settings in wow but my game hits a big gap when it freezes to readjust and handle the settings :lol:

I guess I should make it all low, which sucks because the higher the better, I think. Makes it more enjoyable visually.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #217: December 14, 2009, 12:36:22 AM »
I mean wow plays fine on default settings, I'll do over 100 fps, but when I Jack settings up to max, it will do 25-30 fps.  I can even do 80+ fps on the integrated card.  It makes me wonder if it has to do more with the Mac or with the coding of the game.  I would think a game from 2004 would play on max on a 2009 computer with a 2.8 GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, and a Nvidia 9600m GT.  Those are decent specs.

Maybe I should download the client on windows and compare.

Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #218: December 14, 2009, 12:42:46 AM »
Well each expansion adds alittle to the graphics, or I assume. Since some patches added visual features while the new games added graphical additions to spells and such.

Offline JMW IV

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #219: December 14, 2009, 12:46:22 AM »
Your specs should be fine. I thought that you meant you had trouble running wow on low/medium. My bad.

one thing that really helps though, is to completely disable Shadows. Helps a lot. And do you REALLY miss seeing everyone's shadow? I barely notice them anyway.

Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #220: December 14, 2009, 12:48:19 AM »
I mainly like seeing view distance and spell/texture details. Everything else I couldn't care about really. View Distance hurts my game though. In battlegrounds or towns it goes down alot because of all the bodies and structures.

When I'm out just running around it looks great. Wish I could handle all of that mess.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #221: December 14, 2009, 12:53:50 AM »
I mainly like seeing view distance and spell/texture details. Everything else I couldn't care about really. View Distance hurts my game though. In battlegrounds or towns it goes down alot because of all the bodies and structures.

When I'm out just running around it looks great. Wish I could handle all of that mess.
Yeah, when there are other players involved like in towns and cities seems to be the time when the frame rates take a crap.  The first time I went to the main horde city on my one horde char and with the integrated graphics card on default settings, I dropped to like 10 fps.

I don't need huge fps, on wow I keep it capped to a max of 60 to keep the heat lower.  But I do like to be pegged at 60 most of the time and not dip below into the 40s or 30s.

Offline cmdterps44

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #222: December 14, 2009, 12:54:46 AM »
60 is usually the norm its supposed to be running on. You can go higher? :lol:

Offline Nathan

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #223: December 14, 2009, 12:57:11 AM »
Well it was claiming mid to high 100s until I put the cap at 60.  I forget the command to set the cap though.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Video Games
« Reply #224: December 14, 2009, 01:01:36 AM »
/console maxfps X where X is the framerate you want to cap it to.  Or put 0 to turn off the cap.  It may be a Mac client specific command though, I don't know.