Allright, I see.

Is there an unofficial fix out yet? Like for the latest C&C.

I've been told how to edit out the one line in a hexeditor to remove the unnecessary getTime-routine and allow 2k to start TR, but I'm so rarely on the computer now that I don't care to go through all that hassle. I'd rather just have a patch to apply. I guess if the game was better I might be more keen to get back in, but that's another issue.

Any word on this?

Thanks for the responce. Your argument is valid enough, but what you expect it do to isn't relevant within the context of my question. I wanted to know if actually runs or not.

At the start of beta TR supported win2k. At a later time they included some launch routines that called on a specific winxp function in some relation to date/time, which they didn't translate into 2k. It could still be run on 2k if you modified the client executable, meaning it's not the actual game that doesn't like 2k, but its startup, and it also means the function is redundant, its only purpose being to exclude 2k.

Did they redo the OS requirement or does it still not run on win2k or lower than winxp sp2?

Try get an arrangement going where you work for allowance which your father lets you subscribe with each month.

Apart from the fact that it sounds dodgy having to subscribe to play a videogame, he might be worried about the fact that 'these guys' get access to draw from his credit card pretty much at will.

If that's the case you could ease his worry by suggesting he starts another account for you ins his name where he'll pool that allowance you work up. That way, in his eyes, there'd never be more money than you could afford to be scammed for, in that highly unlikely event.

Of course, this requires a little bit of effort on his part. So you better make it worth it to him ;) On the bright side, maybe you won't end up rotting behind your computer 24/7 like 75% of MMO addicts do.

I would assume both will be pretty huge in terms of content and the harddrive space they'll claim. Performance is a different beast though. Judging from the sort of graphics AoC is going for I'd say you'd stand a good chance of running it well if Everquest 2 works for you (get a trial to check). Allthough EQ2 might be a bit laggier because they aren't exactly masters at optimizing performance over at SoE, fact.

WAR seems to be going more along the graphical mechanics of City of Heroes, but without realtime physics, so a CoH trial wouldn't be a valid benchmark. I'd wager it will be less demanding on your computer than Conan by far. That's not entirely based on appearances either, but also the fact that Dark Age of Camelot, WAR's predecessor, never really had "mindblowing" graphics. Instead it stayed true to being accessable.

If this caught you by surprise then I can see the source of frustration, but seriously, this was hardly unexpected and is just the Burning Crusade scenario all over again, doomsday-whining included.

The trend will continue untill they hit the hardcoded level cap at 100, which early Blizzard statements have claimed is the highest player characters are supported to go unless they redo parts of the engine.

In all likeliness the Maelstroem will be your level 80-90 expansion and they might just make up a new continent or find some forgotten one for the 90-100 grind, if they don't send you to the place where all the demons hang out.

The interesting thing will be seeing if they'll be reasonable with the prestige classes and keep adding them as part of content patches instead of future expansions.

And it's doubtful they're screwing themselves over. People like you will be back to play regardless of how loud you whine. They have the drug you need.

Not that I feel it's in my place to correct you, but for the sake of your peace of mind, as you clearly seem dumbfounded by trivial events like this, I posted this at the official boards 5min later because I had half thought it would be deleted, but mostly because it didn't matter. You probably read it there then.
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=413775

Anyway, I had some enjoyable sessions last night on an entertainer. Having caught a few of the things in the game that annoyed me, I could stay away from them completely, and it did make quite a difference. SWG's 'extra something' comes from its particular community and those undefinable non combat elements left over from the old days, which comes together to really help you perceive it as something more than flawed and a perpetual grind.

It's been so long since I played the original that I barely remember what it was like, so I thought the time was right to try the current version now that I've heard some good things about it.

I really wanted to like it and have tried as much as I can endure to like it, but the game irritates me to the point that I get angry and physically ill while playing it, something only the Roma Victor beta has managed to do before it.

I kept playing in spite of this though, trying to pinpoint what felt wrong and if I could ignore it and enjoy the game anyway, but it has such a bad effect on my mood that I have to put it down.

I think I've narrowed down some sources of frustration:

Combat:

*NPCs do this ridiculous burstsprint back and forth where their legs move at 200mph and then they slow down to a halt, before burstsprinting again.

*Autofire feels ackward. I've tried to figure why, but it just feels outlandish and weird. I'd much prefered having more buttonmashing attacks instead and your guy not doing anything if all your actions where on cooldown. It's like the "wanding" in Guild Wars only at a much higher rate and combat hardly last longer than a fart. You probably have alot more options at lvl 90, but I'm not lvl 90, I'm in the teens and I have weeks if not months of grinding ahead of me with what is mashing two special attacks and watching my guy autofire people to death. That's not a game. That's an interactive screensaver. Or, well, it sort of reminds of Auto Assault now that I think about it.

*Looting. You killed something, walk over to loot it. "You're in combat!" No I'm not. You try again. "You're in combat!". There isn't a microbe alive in that damned desert and I'm in combat with a corpse for what ironically is a longer period of time than it actually takes to kill the damned guy.

Animations:

*When something dies it plays a 3 frame animation from its combat stance and straight into a pile on the ground. Come on. The game has been out for what now, 5 years? And they still can't make a death animation? Every time something dies I think of that horrible trailer to Dark and Light with the Satyr and some sort of animal fighting, where they have a 1 frame attack animation and just suddenly appear dead on the ground. It feels cheap and soulless.

Space:

*Missions consist of patroling empty space forever. Why on earth would I play a twitch-based shooter to autorun back and forth all the time? I might as play Eve Online where I can go between patrol waypoints on autopilot. Even alt-tabbing appears to throw you of course so you have to be ingame and wait for something to happen. I expected to be told to "fly to point A to fight enemy B" and that would have been allright, but not "fly to A, B, C, D, back to A, then check out C again, and then fight." For someone who's played games long enough to recognize a timesink when he sees it, this is like spitting in his face.

*Combat is counterintuitive. The tutorial tells you to lead your shots, and that's to be expected. Of course you should lead your shots. Then you get into combat, target an enemy and you get a fixed crosshair on him which is two full ships lengths ahead of him. If you lead ahead of his graphical appearance, you will hit him and see his shields flare, but he won't take damage. If you lead ahead of the crosshair which is ALREADY leading ahead, then you hit empty space, you watch your beams disappear in space and the ship takes damage. Great. Talk about killing any sense of immersion.

Camera:

*The camera angle will be based on an over-the-shoulder point of view. It's not for everyone and I would to be right behind in center, but I can't find where to enable this feature. I would expect this to be customizeable from somewhere, but that's besides the point because it wasn't blatantly obvious and as such I was stuck with another minor, but annoying issue. It all adds up for the total experience >.<

Chat:

*Everyone and their grandmother has something to say be it to themselves, to the wall or to their imaginary friends, and they make sure to repeat themselves if you stick around to fight or hang out near them. Again, I expect you're able to block out NPC spam from some option, but if I do that it leaves me at a disadvantage when I actually need to read what they've said to me. More frustration.

Conclusion:

I resubbed SWG because I was in the MMORPG mood again, but I think SWG tries too hard to feel like a fps shooter without actually delivering, and apart from the other issues, this is something I keep having in the back of my head: "Why don't I just return to PlanetSide if I want a MMOFPS?" And I don't return to PS, because I don't want a MMOFPS right now.

Crafting was always the best part of SWG, what set it apart from the competition, and what made it worth playing even from the combat professions' perspective. So to get something out of my one month sub I'll try that next time I feel up to relogging, but anyway, that's my thoughts and I had to vent the frustation in the form of this post. If it can be put to constructive use, cool, but if you want to rip into me in a defensive reaction, feel free.

Allright :) Man, I'm starting to get real excited now, hehe.

I only think I'm eligible for the 3 month vet reward, but I should have unlocked all anniverseries. Is there anything I should know about them so I don't miss out or waste them? I had hoped I could get those items and sell them so I'll have a decent base of credits.

I understand, thank you all :)

I guess not owning the expansions is a drawback if you'd take up bounty hunting as well then.

The reason the Trials of Obi Wan confused me was that I'm pretty sure I had a pop up about preordering it right before I started patching. In comparison, I got no information about the Rage of the Wookies and had to dig around in the flash website for it.

The Trials are included even though it isn't out yet?

I have no idea how much credit my guy has. I'm afraid I probably donated all he had to the last entertainer I saw before quitting to join the army years ago. Anyway, for the sake of stubborness I'm sticking to the old account :) With the USD as low as it is it's not such a big deal if I have to get the Rage of the Wookies later.

Okay started patching. I got bummed with the two free weeks I guess, had to pay subs right away. Anyway, as long as that's the only surprise I'll be a happy camper ;)

A. What's the Wookie expansion pack?

B. What's in the upcoming Trials expansion pack?

I just want to go back to my old taming ways. Breeding, mutating and capturing wildlife, and I'm very excited to learn that the recent update included just such a profession again. Can I enjoy that to the fullest with just the standard game plus the Jump expansion?

Edit: Thanks for the above reply by the way :)

I've been out of the SWG loop for too long. I played during release, but haven't been back since.

I've checked the stickies here, and to my understanding I'll have two free weeks of play when I log in, but that still leaves a pair of questions.

1. Do I need to buy anything, or just resubscribe to experience all current features?

2. I think my main was on Bria. He was one of the first master creature handlers. I'm guessing he's been butchered and then killed again a few times along with any property and credits he might have owned. Is the name still reserved and are there any veteran perks he will have enabled?

3. If my old character is waiting for my at a wiped and reset state, are there any drawbacks to playing him as opposed to a creating brand new character?

When I quit EQ2 some time before the first expansion it was from mixed annoyances, and I'd like to hear if there's been some progress there.

Armour selection was so poor and uninspiring that I can't explain in words how disappointing or unmotivating the armour hunt was. I've seen alpha/beta screens of wonderful clothes and suits of armour that were cut out "because they were too complex", which is SoE talk for "we don't believe in optimization". Did they get around to add things like that with the expansion packs?

Performance. Again, it's a SoE hallmark to make a game and say you'll need a computer brought back from 5 years into the future to be able to run it at the best, because, yes you guessed it, they can't optimize. So, how does EQ2 fare now in terms of performance to say a two year old computer running the likes of Oblivion and FEAR smooth at the max settings. Did they improve the engine or just add more demanding content to it?

Debt. Is there still group debt along with the (at worst) stacked loss of up to 10 spirit shards? Just curious if this has been altered. I can see how many might like it that way, but as an avid pick up group healer I didn't care for it.

Oh man, Guild Wars Factions has one of the best MMORPG cinematics I've seen :)

I wasn't aware of it before I'd completed the campaign though, so that probably made me biased, because seeing the villain like that gave me goosebumps all over.

Also, I thought Auto Assault and D&D Online's cinematics really put you in the mood. I used to watch AA's cgi every other time I played it to get psyched. On the other hand, at the time I played World of Warcraft and was really into it, I still disliked its cinematic. It was too fragmented and without a redline. Pleasing on the eye of course, but when haven't they been.

Oh, and the Hellgate London cinematic with the two armoured swordfighters slaughtering massive amounts of zombies was brilliant. The other cinematic for it, which is probably the intro of the game, with people driving along and being ambushes was so-so. Good atmosphere, but it drags out.

The cinematic was okay, but not brilliant.

From a gameplay point of view they'd probably be better served with the camera starting high above a keep under siege, capturing alot of different sorts of fights and slowly descending down to ground height along with a guy chopping off limbs and whatnot. Then it could've faded out and shifted to Conan brooding on his throne while some servant yelled at him along the lines of: "They're coming, my lord!" "Who?" "Everyone."

From what I gather, alot of Conan's oooh-factor will come from team combat and formations and cavalry and things like that.

On the other hand, better music could've helped this trailer. It just didn't feel special as it is.

Shame you didn't include a poll here :/

Anyway. It had its moments and could be fun at times, but no, AA wasn't anywhere near innovative. It was Everquest on rollerskates.

If it was innovate enough, that would have saved it.

It can be eliminated and it has been.

All you need to survive an encounter is damage mitigation. As long as you can provide that you can fight anything. Most run of the mill games give you mitigation in the form of a dedicated healer and someone armoured taking the majority of the beating through damage reduction.

Other forms of mitigation would be crowdcontroll, pets and minions, and damage avoidence through debuffs and buffs.

City of Villains is one game where you don't have a tank or a healer. The 5 classes are hybrids and as such they can do a couple of things more than your classic archetype, but none very good. A team of 8 at standard setting will have huge groups of mobs thrown at them and they survive that either through being buffed or debuffing so all damage recieved is something they're sulfsufficient enough to remedy themselves, or you put up a wall of pets to spread out aggro and avoid focus fire against you, or a crowdcontroller removes enough mobs out of the fight for the party to survive. The few times people share heals with you is usually right at the end of a fight to reduce the downtime before busting into a new group.

Warhammer Online is also headed down that path without a dedicated healer class. Like CoV the guy with a couple mediocre team heals also happens to be a damagedealer, so that sort of sets the bar right there. As a rule of thumb in these games, you need at least some minimal ability to mind yourself, and if you die alot then you're playing against something that's too hard ;)

I'm tired of my games and was wondering if you had a MMO to recommand where I can log in and get right into some mindless slaughtering the likes of which would come close to the Diablo games.

Guild Wars would be perfect for me right now, if it wasn't for the fact that you have to do those horribly boring "out in the world" quests if you want a new character before you can pick and choose between each of the missions, and also for the fact that I've beaten the entire thing and hard mode doesn't sound inviting enough.

Would City Heroes/Villains be the thing, you think? I only tried it for a few hours before, seemed nice and all, but couldn't be arsed to get into the story. I couldn't care less for grinding or finding shiny suits of armour to impress a bunch of kids with my manlihood. And no text. I want to kill things. Not read stuff. If I was in the RPG mood I'd go get Jade Empire or something.

*sigh*

Something like Hellgate London... Random generated maps, random mobs, one goal: kill everything, then do it again. I've looked through mmorpg.com's lists and there's like a billion games there. Anyone matching the above criteria?