Thank you for taking the time to write this Sovrath.

Posts like this are the most valuable on this site.  No hype,just one man's experience.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Torluk

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Torluk
Thanks for all the input guys. My main concern was that I had made some glaring error and a few of you have confirmed that I've not done this. I've bit the bullet and ordered the parts plus a decent mid range PSU.

 

Which power supply did you get? Buying something at random usually doesn't end well.

Went for this one in the end:  Antec High Current Gamer 620W

 

Then you're set.  Decent mid-range PSU is, indeed, a pretty good description of that model.

Thanks Quizzical, your first description wasn't far off the mark though - for someone like me it was a bit of a stab in the dark 

 

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Torluk
Thanks for all the input guys. My main concern was that I had made some glaring error and a few of you have confirmed that I've not done this. I've bit the bullet and ordered the parts plus a decent mid range PSU.

 

Which power supply did you get? Buying something at random usually doesn't end well.

Went for this one in the end:  Antec High Current Gamer 620W

Thanks for your input Shaky.

Yea, the longevity of the system is more important to me than the performance I would say.  Like you, I'm old enough to remember when games were just a few coloured lines on a black background so even on medium settings most games these days are gravy to me.

Originally posted by oubers

Originally posted by Torluk

CPU:  Intel 3rd Generation Core i5-3570K

MB:  Asus P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77

GPU:  Asus GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II 2048MB GDDR5

Mem:  8GB (2x4GB) Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" 1866MHZ Dual Channel DDR3 (9-9-9-24)

SSD:  Corsair Force Series 3 120GB 6GB/S

OS:  Win 7 Home Premium 64bit

That is what I intend to buy and unfortunately cannot afford to spend anymore than that on it.  Along with the listed components I will recycle an old Antec Sonata ATX form factor case, 600w Cooler Master PSU, additional 250GB SATA HD, SATA DVD RW and a wireless network card to finish it off.  I'm building the PC to play Skyrim in particular (last rig I built was for oblivion, so the new build is overdue) but also intend to use the PC to catch up on a few other games I have missed over the past few years as well as for MMORPGs of course.

Along with any additional thoughts you might wish to share I have two questions:

1. Have I made any schoolboy errors in my choice of components?

2. I'm always wary of diminishing returns as the cost of components increases, so with that said, are there any components you would substitute for cheaper versions (especially 650gtx vs 660gtx and some of the cheaper i5 or even i3 processors)?

Cheers,

Torluk

good setup for its money man, altough i would switch your SSD for http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-3-x2-pci-express-ssd.html for even better loading times :)

just saying :)

 

If only money was no object :)

Originally posted by grndzro

Not having a VRM on the voltage regulators pretty much means any overclocking is out of the question. And since you want a K series processor it isn't a good mobo for the system.

I'v seen good reviews of the brand new ECS boards.

ECS Z77H2-A4 looks to be a very good 100$ board that has features way above it's price. ECS quality seems to have gone way up in the A3-A4 revisions.

"ASUS DIGI+ VRM Utility" on the specifications page of the original mobo I linked.  Is that what you mean?

Thanks for the replies.

The Cooler Master appears to be this one - Cooler Master GX Lite 600W

A friend had a spare one and offered it to me, I could probably stretch to buying a PSU if this is not fit for purpose though.

Peripherals, yep they will be reused for now and replaced as I can afford.  Thanks for the tip on the HDD, will have to replace that in the near future then as it was bought in 2006.

Taking a quick look about I could save about £20 by getting a cheaper 660, is there anything more important I could spend that £20 on in your opinions?

VRM Sink (had to look up what that is) - is not having this on that mobo gonna be a problem?

Cheers,

Torluk

CPU:  Intel 3rd Generation Core i5-3570K

MB:  Asus P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77

GPU:  Asus GeForce GTX 660 DirectCU II 2048MB GDDR5

Mem:  8GB (2x4GB) Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" 1866MHZ Dual Channel DDR3 (9-9-9-24)

SSD:  Corsair Force Series 3 120GB 6GB/S

OS:  Win 7 Home Premium 64bit

That is what I intend to buy and unfortunately cannot afford to spend anymore than that on it.  Along with the listed components I will recycle an old Antec Sonata ATX form factor case, 600w Cooler Master PSU, additional 250GB SATA HD, SATA DVD RW and a wireless network card to finish it off.  I'm building the PC to play Skyrim in particular (last rig I built was for oblivion, so the new build is overdue) but also intend to use the PC to catch up on a few other games I have missed over the past few years as well as for MMORPGs of course.

Along with any additional thoughts you might wish to share I have two questions:

1. Have I made any schoolboy errors in my choice of components?

2. I'm always wary of diminishing returns as the cost of components increases, so with that said, are there any components you would substitute for cheaper versions (especially 650gtx vs 660gtx and some of the cheaper i5 or even i3 processors)?

Cheers,

Torluk

Originally posted by Vorthanion

Originally posted by AvsRock21

Originally posted by Iselin
It's nice that masochists have something to play. You deserve your own games too!

So are you some kind of carebear that can't take a challenge? Sounds like you only play easy PvE games. Do you even understand what a masochist is??

I agree with Iselin.  "Hardcore" games is an oxymoron.  It's one thing to implement challenge into a game, quite another when it feels like a second job or is frustrating as hell.  We aren't carebears, we are casual gamers who like to play casual games.  Although if you are going to label us as carebears, then he is certainly within his rights to label you guys as masochists, because that's what it feels like to me after playing games like DF1 or EQ after level 60.

I am a huge fan of this game but I have to say you two have a point.  I've long been of the opinion that a 'wurmlite' version of the game would be very popular amongst casual gamers.

The only legitimate option for casuals at the moment is to join a good village, otherwise it is far too much work for one person playing a few hours a week.

Good to see Wurm getting some more attention on this site now that it has gone gold.  Nobody is doing what Rolf is doing better at the moment.  If you want a sandbox with true freedom then check it out.

p.s. If you are having trouble finding land to build on, get friendly with some locals and ask them to point you in the right direction.  Don't give up and eventually you'll find someone willing to take some time to show you good areas.

I can say without a word of a lie, this is the best MMORPG I've played and one of the few to truly take on the challenge of simulating an entire world.

Can't wait to get back in game and have a nosey around.

Congrats Rolf!

I've noticed lately that many of the articles on the site seem to fit more closely with the opinions and ideas discussed by the general members on the boards.  It is refreshing to see imo.

I am in complete agreement with the content of this piece.  Now all we need is for you writers to please start pouring honey in the ears of the folks that matter to get the genre out of this rut it has been in for the past few years.

This is certainly one of the most creative troll posts I have seen here recently.

Unfortunately as it mentions politics it probably won't last long.

No, their reason for being is still the hunt for the greatest profit.  The games still come second.

Has SOE changed their hunting techniques? Perhaps and that might not be such a bad thing.

Originally posted by IrishChai

Originally posted by Torluk

Maybe I'm missing some subtelty in your argument but it seems like you two (Itsneo and Irishchai) are saying that if a company brings a product to market and the consumers don't like that product then it is the consumers fault for not liking the product.  

That is clearly a silly thing to say, so what am I missing?

 

There's a difference between having reasonable expectations and having unreasonable expectations. I think if a game succeeds in numbers and majority than some of the unreasonable expectations get thrown at the game by the minority that exaggerated how it fails to be a good game, and vice-versa. Unsuccessful games by the number and majority understandably receive bad responses and are less likely to be an issue of unreasonable expectations. My main point is expectations or perspective can be adjusted by us when we seem to be hating on a very successful title, or people can just choose to have different, stricter expectations and not enjoy a game as a result.

 

I think it's silly to say you can't adjust your expectations or perspective at all. That's just plain wrong. Everyone can improve or adjust their perspective and expectations. So many people do that I think it should be pretty obvious. Sometimes your expectations are just too high or hyped. It is not necessarily all the consumer's fault or the developer's fault. I am not saying it's always the consumer's fault, but it absolutely can be. It would be just as silly to say every complaint thrown at a developer is automatically accurate and something they need to change.

I agree that folks can choose to change their expectation or perspective as you say, I have no issue with that.

I'm not a fan of them either.

Darkfall: Unholy Wars won't have a cash shop as far as I know.  Whether they have succeeded in rectifying the problems from Darkfall remains to be seen though.

Maybe I'm missing some subtelty in your argument but it seems like you two (Itsneo and Irishchai) are saying that if a company brings a product to market and the consumers don't like that product then it is the consumers fault for not liking the product.  

That is clearly a silly thing to say, so what am I missing?

I can kinda understand folks giving money to indie devs through Kickstarter.  

However, established studios are not charities - none of them see a penny of my money till they have a finished product.

Originally posted by SereneBlue

Originally posted by Torluk

Originally posted by SereneBlue

The trend that INVESTORS are making (allocating their money on which products/categories, etc they think shows upward growth) is trending away from MMOs and traditional console games and toward cellphone games and facebook type games.

But is that really the case?  Or is money that would never have been available to invest in MMORPGs anyway being invested in these other areas?  Both areas are video games but they are not like for like investment opportunities.

If the investors who are throwing money at social and mobile games wouldn't have invested in more traditional video games then it's not really a problem.  If it is a significant part of the pot that used to fund more traditional games then it would be concerning.

 

He never directly answers your question but he definitely implies that it is a re-direction of capital rather than an avalanche of never-before-seen capital (although I'm sure he would admit at least some of it is new capital as well). But he doesn't make these arguments if it were only NEW capital. I mean...he even Titled his paper The Death of MMOs (a step I did not go so far as to make in my own headline in this thread).

 

Here's some quotes from some of his papers and comments. And mind you - he is an industry insider who is getting commentary from fellow industry insiders. At the very least he *isn't* like the folks here on this board (the typical gamer who doesn't help to create an MMO as his/her day job).

 

*******QUOTE***********

As a general rule, games are not made by designers, programmers, or artists. They are made by investors. All of the games in the social network space currently are either single player games, small group games, or multiplayer “pay to win”/ante games as I describe in my “How “Pay to Win” Works” paper. There are no massively multiplayer games at all in either the social network or mobile space currently. If investors keep making more of these, they won’t make any more [new] MMO’s.

 

In my eyes, the last successful MMO’s, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, EVE Online, and Final Fantasy XI, were all made almost ten years ago. EA’s recent Star Wars:The Old Republic is more of a massively single player game than an MMO, and would have been more successful if designed as such. The only two recent multiplayer products to have found a way around both the classic subscription and microtransaction monetization models are Wargaming.net’s World of Tanks and RIOT Games’ League of Legends products. What makes these games different from their competition is explained in my upcoming Supremacy Goods paper. These small scale match-based games are still not what I would describe as an MMO. The scale is too small and without an understanding of what makes these games successful, investors will not fund more complex versions of these. Even if they did, these two titles bypass the weaknesses in their models by not permitting most forms of social interaction. Thus they would not scale up in an elegant fashion.

 

For gamers, the social game revolution peaked some time around 2003-2004, and it has been downhill since then. As investors pull the plug on massively social games and move their resources to social network games (not the same thing), gamers are going to have to endure an extended “Dark Age” while investors unsuccessfully attempt to give us what we want. I would think that the ante game bubble will burst severely, and soon, and then perhaps a new Golden Age of social gaming will be born on the other side. The risk is that as investors catch fire during the bubble burst, they will reallocate their resources to other industries, thinking ours is “too high risk”.

*******

And some others:

 

******QUOTE**********

In about 2 years there will be very little market for ante games (My Note: this is his word for P2W monetization schemes in MMOs whether western or asian). The only people still playing them will be those that prefer ante games, which is at most 2% of the consumer base. The other problem here is that those that prefer ante games only like them when they are not populated with others that like ante games. If they are, they experience competition and uncertainty as to outcome, and the price of winning the ante game can be much higher. So if you lump all these people together into one game, it suddenly becomes a lot less attractive to them.

 

 

To a fellow game developer who commented on his paper:

 

*****QUOTE********

I am not sure I got your central theme, but you make a good point that those on good projects tend to get good skills. In theory they could make even better games on the next pass. There are two things preventing this:

1. There is this axiom, I forgot who came up with it, that people tend to be promoted until they are no longer qualified for the positions they are in. In this case, the best people will eventually get promoted to places where they are no longer skilled while at the same time their egos get so big (along with their paychecks) that they don’t want to admit the situation. I see this all the time.

2. These games I mentioned were all great games that were poorly monetized. This usually means that money that customers would have liked to spend on the product instead went to the grey market, which actually hurts the game directly in addition to representing lost revenue. This issue of lost monetization is what spurred my research in this field starting in 2005. Overcoming these systemic issues can lead to games that monetize two to four times as high, allowing much more elaborate products to be built."

********

*****QUOTE*******

I would suggest that the Peter Principle kicks in even faster than normal in this industry, especially when you realize that the average working life span of people in the IM industry is 3.5 years. Turnover is massive. The industry is growing so fast that there is a lot of opportunity for advancement, possibly too much. Getting your foot in the door is the hard part. I attribute the high turnover rate to people thinking that game development is “fun”, and not realizing just what a grind it is, especially for lower level employees. Hours are very long and there are always 50 people who would love your job. I intentionally skipped a lot of that by training myself with skills that did not exist in the industry but that I predicted would be in demand before their existence.

**************

And here was a surprisingly nice comment he made about GAMERS vis-a-vis Game Designers (of all things...)

 

****QUOTE*****

I should have been more clear before I started making generalizations about gamers. If you want to include ALL gamers, that is a huge slice of society now. But… that slice does not make games. Every interview I have walked into in the last year, and every game design session I have ever had in my entire life, has been all male. I am usually the oldest guy in the room (been a few exceptions). Most studios have VERY few women, and they are almost always in “grunt” (non decision-making) position.

This is our industry, and I don’t like it because it means we make games for the people making games, not the people playing games, which is two very different groups. The people making games, I would propose, have lower social skills than those playing them on average.

********

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply SereneBlue.  He certainly has more direct experience with the industry than I do and raises some interesting questions.

I hope he's wrong but I wouldn't be shocked if he was right.

Originally posted by SereneBlue

The trend that INVESTORS are making (allocating their money on which products/categories, etc they think shows upward growth) is trending away from MMOs and traditional console games and toward cellphone games and facebook type games.

But is that really the case?  Or is money that would never have been available to invest in MMORPGs anyway being invested in these other areas?  Both areas are video games but they are not like for like investment opportunities.

If the investors who are throwing money at social and mobile games wouldn't have invested in more traditional video games then it's not really a problem.  If it is a significant part of the pot that used to fund more traditional games then it would be concerning.