All Posts by zantax

With Vista you shouldn't be asking if it runs better on Vista or on XP.  The fact is most games will run just as good on Vista as they do in XP if you have the hardware to back it up.  As one of the posters stated, 4GB or RAM is a starting point.  If you have any hardware pre dual core don't even bother with Vista to start off with, stick with XP, and if you have a dual core or up CPU then make sure you have the memory to handle Vista plus anything else you do.  My recommended system right now to run Vista with most games running just fine would be...

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 4GM RAM, 8800GT 512MB

With that as a starting point of a system you will finally start seeing Vista run good with your games.  I currently run a Quad processor with the above specs and everything includeing AOC looks great and runs perfect.  Oh and I am running Vista Ultimate x64.

Inevitably there will be someone on here that flames me for saying the above, with something like, "The same hardware the games run better in XP you NOOB!!".  I won't deny this however the argument has being beat to death, and the same argument is used when going from ANY Windows OS to a newer Version, 98se-XP, DOS-Win, Windows 3.11 - 95, 95-98...etc.  The fact remains that in order to enjoy DX10 or 11 XP has to be shelved, and in Microshafts infinate wisdom they released Vista a full year to early in my opinion.  However finally like XP was, Vista is starting to come into its own, it took XP almost a full year before people STOPPED turning off all the frill so they could play there games.  I remember turning off all the nice desktop effects just so my games would run, and so XP would run better, then formatting and going back to 98 or ME for the speed.  Then one day hardware caught up to the OS and poof I didn't look back. 

Anyways to answer the OP question, it worked fine on Vista...LOL

Originally posted by alacres

Sorry, I should have used "build" instead of class.

I'm still experiencing side-effects of class based games I guess hehe.

Originally posted by alacres

Well, every class is important and each has it's strength and weakness but mages are just a heck of a lot more fun imo. Also, they're much more survivable, so if you plan to solo a bit I'd say they would be the best choice.

You should search "Asheron's call" on youtube and watch some vids of the different builds in action. The mage was always the most entertaining to watch for me, atleast when it comes to pvp.

Have fun with the game and remember your character isn't a set design he/she is your design.

Originally posted by Digera

No more creature or item magic.  just life and war.  strip the code to 1999..  $1m programming budget.  release as a free game with ads all over the place and premium content and whatever.  it'd make a killing.  they could hype it to get like 70% of the old players back...

Honestly I like alot of what AC did but I don't like the idea of the no comps for spells anylonger only tapers.  Also rework the randomized tapers for people.  Make figuring out spells difficult again, also the crafting system needs to stay as well, but get rid of the Marketplace and all the BOTTing.  I remember it took the first guy almost 2 years to get to max level of 125 I think.  He was useing a basic experiance chain and a massive guild to help him, now people just do a /market and get a bot to buff them from level 1-100.  Which can be done in like a week.

Ahhh AC If only Turbine would give you an overhaul I would be back playing for another 3 years.

Originally posted by turnipz

You talk about vista being the future and to just accept it, etc.. etc.., well I dont really remember, did ME fail as an operating system?

Well it really doesn't matter here what anyone says, the XP die hards won't budge from the thought of losing XP.  It still comes down to a simple fact of change, people don't like it, it happened from every previous OS to every new one.  Heck I was even one of the ones that LIKED the change from 98se to ME, just for the new netcode that was part of ME.  98se never could talk via the network like ME did, the speeds that I got and ping rates literally were cut by 1/3, BUT I did get more blue screens then normal.  However for gaming ME was the way to go, stability wise not so much.  When XP came out I saw an OS that SUCKED horribly until some updates came out, i remember some programs and games wouldn't work at all in XP.  Upgrading it ment that I needed at least a Pentium 233 or higher with minimum of 256MB of ram...OMG and the Video requirements of my Voodoo 2 just sucked at that point.  God I couldn't play half my games the way I did on ME or 98, and programs hated XP I remember Easy CD creator being a biatch to get working in XP originally oh and lets not talk about CD Burner drivers...MY GOD, we should have stayed with ME or 98.  Oh wait, SP1 and 2 came out and a few years pass and how many people would go back to 98se now?  It all boils down to people not wanting change, the amount of CPU Cycles for DRM...blah blah blah, Memory Usage...BLAH BLAH BLAH, size of OS on hard drive.... BLAH BLAH BLAH.  Look at dos, it fit on a FLOPPY DISK, not a 1.44MB disk but a 320k 5'25" disk and it took time to load.  Your OS was under 320K to load????  Go up from there what is windows 3.11 to load 25 x 720k disk, and 95 is like 40 x 1.44MB...OMG soon the OS will be the entire HDD.  Technology advances, OS's advance with them, they follow what people ask for in alot of cases and what we need to move to the next level in technology.  DX10 requires Vista, I am not saying it is the end all beat all reason to upgrade but wouldn't it be nice to fully use your spanky new video card?  Everyone screams that windows is to unsecure in XP, so they pile on the security in Vista, now everyone feels choked, well that is what we wanted, thankfully you can disable or modify most of the security in Vista.

What is happening is the same thing that happens when anything is changed, Windows Vista will live on, windows 7 will come out and so will Windows 2020, but each time we will have THOUSANDS of people out there that don't want to change.  And every time all those thousands of people will change with the times because something will require them to eventually.  It is time for microsoft to full cut its backward compatability and start fresh, and I think that is what they are really trying to do with Vista.  Once the shed all there backward compatability I really believe no one will have anything to complain about.

Oh as for those saying that 3rd party drivers are not allowed, has anyone seen the third party drivers for Creatives equipment to give better and all functionality to there hardware in vista.  It is a good read on the Creative forums, but I know Creative threatened the guy who was writing these drivers and he has quit now but just goes to show that 3rd party drivers are allowed in vista you just have to know what your doing.

I say GO VISTA, and I can't wait for the next evolution of Windows, i will be leading the change there just as I did with Vista.  It will be a fun ride, and it will be more fun to hear all the people screaming that they still want to stay with Vista now or even still XP.  I really believe Windows 7 will be the next ME, they are trying to bridge the gap between xp and vista just like ME tried to do between 98 and 2000 at the time then XP was released after they figured out what they did wrong.  I really believe Vista is the Windows 2000 of today, and the next version after Windows 7 will be the XP of tommorow, but until then I am happy with Windows Vista Ultimate X64.

Originally posted by BlackWatch

Unless your games require Vista, there is no reason to switch.  XP SP3 shows 10% performance gains over even XP SP2. 

Compare Vista performance to XP performance isn't even a real contest, even with Vista SP1.

...

After testing Vista vs XP on standard laptops, pc's, and even workstations... I won't roll to Vista for some time on my main systems. 

The recommendation to the company that I work for (at this time) is to skip Vista entirely. 

Vista = WinME, imho. 

You know my company had a similar thought process as yours, however once they saw that new hardware is being released with NO xp drivers they decided to look into Vista implimentation only if the new hardware had no XP drivers.  That hasn't happened to us completely yet but once manufactures quit offering xp drivers then my company and yours will be FORCED into the Vista world, I just want my company to be ready for it if it happens.  Also like I said before even with a new version of Windows it won't be dramaticly different then Vista, so the change might as well start now.

Originally posted by Deathstrike2

 

Originally posted by zantax

You know I have being running windows xp 32bit up untill xp 64bit came out, and the day it came out I started useing it.  I ran into ALOT of issues to start off with xp 64, mostly driver compatability and finding programs that would run on it like anitvirus software, so as a result I went back to xp 32 for a few months then back to xp 64 and I haven't looked back.  Now when vista came out all I could say was, ohhhh pretty...well actually I realized at the time no computers being released had the power to run vista 32 or 64 properly.  I put it on my machine anyways at the time to see how well it would kill my computer, and boy was I right.  I had at the time a AMD x64 2200+ with 2GB of memory and a fairly good Nvidia card at the time...and WOW did ultimate 32 and 64 kill that machine.  I laughed so hard that within 10 minutes I reformated and reinstalled XP x64, and stayed that way for about 3 months when it was time to upgrade.  I upgraded to an E6600 just like the OP with 2GB of memory with an Nvida 7950GT and that is when I realized the hardware should be able to run Vista.  So I installed Vista Ultimate 32 and used it for about 2 months, I did a few tests comparing this machine to an XP 64 load on another HDD and found about a 15% decrease in performance on alot of games.  I attributed this to hard drive speed and just congestion from the OS itself since I went from a SATA to an IDE drive at the time.  Then I loaded Vista ulitimate x64, and found that the decrease in performance from XP 64 to Vista x64 was only about 10%, so I made Vista ultimate x64 my primary OS, and I found everything worked on it with a little work.  I will admit there might have being a few small issues, C&C 3 would not run unless you performed the patch, even then it would not put my shortcuts for the game anywhere so you would have to hunt for them on the HDD, but it would run fine after that.  So at this point I had decided Vista was the way to go and specifically Vista x64, it just seemed to have less issues to me.

So here we are almost a year later and I have just upgraded my computer to a intel Q6600 with 4 GB of memory and an 8800GT card and I will tell you it improved Vista quite a bit.  I think it was more the memory that improved it but at this point I find it a chore to go back to XP.  I use XP at work and find it clunky now, not user friendly.  As for performance I refuse to load XP onto this machine because it is a thing of the past and I want to learn Vista the way I know XP.  If it won't work in Vista now I haven't seen it, I have gotten all my games to work fine in Vista X64, hardly any issues there.  I had to update my burning software going to vista, but other then that it works perfectly for me.  I don't have SP1 installed yet either so I can't see it killing my computer at all, only improvements from here on out.

Also for those people complaining about Vista compared to XP, this argument has happened so many times before, "Dos is more efficient then windows 3.1", "windows 95 are you kidding me 3.11 is the way to go", "what the heck 98??  Why would I get rid of my perfectly good windows 95", "Yea right XP sucks compared to 98se it is so slow I need a Pentium 2 to run it with 256MB of RAM JESUS!!"...the arguments will keep comming up as long as people hate change.  I quote a GM at a computer store I used to work at for this, "The number one returned item in the store are MAC's.  Why, because people know Windows they are not patient enough to learn the MAC OS, so they return it with the 14 days for a full refund."  Change scares people and the XP to Vista change is huge, but DX10 is nice so it is worth it right there.  Also no matter what you think of Vista it is here to stay, they may come out with another version of Windows but do you really think they will move away from the Vista architecture?  I think not.

SO OP to give you an answer to upgrading to Vista, do it.  Your machine can now handle it and once you get used to it you won't WANT to go back to XP.

 

SOLD!  Thank you, I'll be upgrading my system this weekend.  One last question.  I've read that the Vista upgrade is problematic, and that people should just buy the full version.  Is this true or will the upgrade version work for me?  I plan on going from XP Pro to the 64 bit version (either home premium or ultimate).

Thanks again!

 

Hey and good luck with your new machine bud, I hope you enjoy it.  A few things to look into once you get Vista up and running that might save you some headaches.  The secure desktop is the only thing that really ticked me off in vista here is a link to disable it...

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2141/vista_disable_secure_desktop_promp_elevation

The biggest problem I think anyone will really have with vista is the new security settings, once you get them to a point that resemble or act like XP it all works fine.  Good luck

You know I have being running windows xp 32bit up untill xp 64bit came out, and the day it came out I started useing it.  I ran into ALOT of issues to start off with xp 64, mostly driver compatability and finding programs that would run on it like anitvirus software, so as a result I went back to xp 32 for a few months then back to xp 64 and I haven't looked back.  Now when vista came out all I could say was, ohhhh pretty...well actually I realized at the time no computers being released had the power to run vista 32 or 64 properly.  I put it on my machine anyways at the time to see how well it would kill my computer, and boy was I right.  I had at the time a AMD x64 2200+ with 2GB of memory and a fairly good Nvidia card at the time...and WOW did ultimate 32 and 64 kill that machine.  I laughed so hard that within 10 minutes I reformated and reinstalled XP x64, and stayed that way for about 3 months when it was time to upgrade.  I upgraded to an E6600 just like the OP with 2GB of memory with an Nvida 7950GT and that is when I realized the hardware should be able to run Vista.  So I installed Vista Ultimate 32 and used it for about 2 months, I did a few tests comparing this machine to an XP 64 load on another HDD and found about a 15% decrease in performance on alot of games.  I attributed this to hard drive speed and just congestion from the OS itself since I went from a SATA to an IDE drive at the time.  Then I loaded Vista ulitimate x64, and found that the decrease in performance from XP 64 to Vista x64 was only about 10%, so I made Vista ultimate x64 my primary OS, and I found everything worked on it with a little work.  I will admit there might have being a few small issues, C&C 3 would not run unless you performed the patch, even then it would not put my shortcuts for the game anywhere so you would have to hunt for them on the HDD, but it would run fine after that.  So at this point I had decided Vista was the way to go and specifically Vista x64, it just seemed to have less issues to me.

So here we are almost a year later and I have just upgraded my computer to a intel Q6600 with 4 GB of memory and an 8800GT card and I will tell you it improved Vista quite a bit.  I think it was more the memory that improved it but at this point I find it a chore to go back to XP.  I use XP at work and find it clunky now, not user friendly.  As for performance I refuse to load XP onto this machine because it is a thing of the past and I want to learn Vista the way I know XP.  If it won't work in Vista now I haven't seen it, I have gotten all my games to work fine in Vista X64, hardly any issues there.  I had to update my burning software going to vista, but other then that it works perfectly for me.  I don't have SP1 installed yet either so I can't see it killing my computer at all, only improvements from here on out.

Also for those people complaining about Vista compared to XP, this argument has happened so many times before, "Dos is more efficient then windows 3.1", "windows 95 are you kidding me 3.11 is the way to go", "what the heck 98??  Why would I get rid of my perfectly good windows 95", "Yea right XP sucks compared to 98se it is so slow I need a Pentium 2 to run it with 256MB of RAM JESUS!!"...the arguments will keep comming up as long as people hate change.  I quote a GM at a computer store I used to work at for this, "The number one returned item in the store are MAC's.  Why, because people know Windows they are not patient enough to learn the MAC OS, so they return it with the 14 days for a full refund."  Change scares people and the XP to Vista change is huge, but DX10 is nice so it is worth it right there.  Also no matter what you think of Vista it is here to stay, they may come out with another version of Windows but do you really think they will move away from the Vista architecture?  I think not.

SO OP to give you an answer to upgrading to Vista, do it.  Your machine can now handle it and once you get used to it you won't WANT to go back to XP.

To me sandbox style has only being achieved by a few games.  I really believe that a sandbox style game has to have challenges, second life to me was nothing but a hodge podge of garbage, no real point in it other then social interaction.  I think the only true sandbox style games out there are Eve, and Asherons Call.  Now the reasons I say these are the only TRUE sandbox style games or MMO's out are quite simple.

1. There is no clear classes, no cookie cutter creation of your character unless you choose that, your class is yours from the start, and no one can force you to make it differently.

2. Free roam, lets face it in EVE if you want to just pick a dot hundreds of jumps away and go for it you can, In AC exploring lead to advancement as well pick a spot on the map and start running.

3. If you want to take part in world events or challenges you can and you feel like you make a difference, who can forget the great Crystal Defense in Asherons Call, Player killers sacraficing themselves to a crystal to level it up so that no one could kill it, to try and change the outcome of the monthly event.

These are lost in EVERY MMO out to date as far as I am concerned.  People will drone on about SWG, LOTRO, or DDO, and maybe others saying your not locked into your class on these games.  They are right but you have to level your character and advance your skills in a particular way the same as everyone else and when you look at your character vs someone else's your still, a doctor, or bard, or theif, just like EVERY other character on the server just a few small differences.  Call them Feats, masteries, talents...etc, each character is essentially the same.

In EVE your characters skills are yours to raise at your will, I would seriously challenge someone to show me two characters that were not conciously created to be identical in skills in EVE.  The same goes for Asherons Call, however since it has being out longer then all of these games most people follow a guide to show them the most effective character skills to use for what you want to do, hence NOW there would be identicle characters out there but not bottlenecked by the limits of the game, but instead by the limited knowledge of the players.  In the begining of Asherons Call no one knew what to do so we all tried out different things, yes there were those people that specialized the JUMP skill or RUN skill in order to jump onto Trees, or be able to outrun a tusker.  These people raised there stats and skills to fit what they wanted to do, and no one really could match them because every character was unique till the guides started comming out, explaining "battle mages", "Life mages"...etc.

EVE's exploring is good, vast space to hunt through but nothing really to find, that is the problem I found with it.  You can find ore, but nothing else really, I could be wrong but I never did find a derelict alien space craft or anything did anyone else find a random encouter somewhere with that?  Although the freedom is there to go where you want if you can survive the jump campers.  Asheron's Call you could just run for hours and find all sorts of new things, and you had to dodge creatures that would eat you, or become more powerful to be able to survive them.

In the end is Sandbox style MMO's lost, I would say YES in modern games, hopefully EVE and Asherons call could spark it back but I think we are screwed into this style of game from now on where everything is linear, quests are picked up in order to advance you properly with an end game so people have something to strive for.  Oh well just my 2 cents.

You know I think you are right, and I think the game that will really give us a new "AC" style game is "The Chronicles of Spellborn"  Reading the skill developments and how they are trying "new" things out in the game make me think that it will be the next AC.  I know there are alot of differences, but maybe the few changes they are making will actually improve the way we play MMO's today.  I for one am thinking the TCOS will keep my attention as much as AC did back in the day. 

How about you?

Originally posted by Kugeln

whats wrong with you people this game is not good at all 1980's graphics crappy ui just all around crappy game. i downloaded the trial played it for about 15 minutes and said screw this. even everquest back before the graphics update was a better game than this. this game should go free to play. no wait scratch that should be removed from existance.

First if you didn't look at screenshots to know what you were downloading to begin with you are what I like to call an Rtard.  Second 15 minutes to immerse yourself in one of the last and only True sandbox style games is hardly enough to get a feel for it other then the training area.  Most likely you didn't even get out of the training dungeon.  In 15 minutes you didn't even get to see the role your skills and stats play out on your character, how pumping your jump skill to 300 will allow you to jump onto buildings, how you can't hit that Lugian at all untill your attack skill hits 120.  Or how just looking at the map you can decide, "Hey I want to see what those dots are?"  and you go for a 3 hour run.  Overall 15 minutes was never enough to get a feel for AC, take some advice try it out for a week of play time, unless your someone that needs each quest handed to you with a gold ring, or gold exclamation point.  If that is the case go back to LOTRO or WOW, and play a very limited game.  The rest of us will continue to love a game that was far far ahead of its time, and hope that the devs finally figure out that remaking it would be benificial for the entire MMO community.

I am surprised that so many people keep talking about games that have seemless worlds or landscapes.  I even find it more funny that people thing Wow's world is seemless.  IMO the one who started the seemless worlds was Asherons Call.  I mean you could portal from place to place if you wanted but you could also run there, it might take you 2 hours but not one zone screen or pause just terrain as far as you could see.  Just wanted to point that out, seeing how zoneing seems to always have a pause in most games, but AC didn't have that.  If AOC has it I don't know if people will like that.

Well although I like XP to a point, there is part of me that doesn't like it now.  The reason being is because I have started useing vista since release and I must say going back to xp even for work really bothers me.  I play alot of games and I have semi good hardware at home.  As for compatibitly issues, well I haven't seen alot maybe 3 in the last year when it comes to games.  I run Vista Ultimate x64, and I love it, I have tried x32 but 64 seemed more stable to me...LOL.  My suggestion is if your upgrading your machine go no less then the following...

Processor - Quad core entry level

Memory - Minimum 4 GB for vista

HDD - 100GB SATA drive

Video Card - Nvidia 8800GT 512MB is what I run for now

If you keep your machine at those stats or better you will be rocken for at least 1-2 years with no upgrades, well maybe a new video card.  Overall I say don't be afraid of vista it really isn't that bad, look up a few things like, "How to make the screen quit darkening in vista", then vista becomes a great thing.

I figure the next progression of MMORPG's is onto console anyways.  Lets face it if Blizzard really wanted to make some more money, they would port WOW to 360, and PS3 and box it with a zboard and mouse just for there game.  We all know that the 360 and the ps3 can handle wow, but I bet if they did this you would see a 40% increase in accounts over the next few months after its port.  It honestly would be unhealthy for MMO's not to start porting to these systems, lots of people don't want to upgrade there computers every year, I am not one of them however I upgrade 1 time per year.  Usually a new video card, or HDD, or if it is time usually about every 2-3 years a new Motherboard and Processor and memory.  Anyways i think there shouldn't be a line between console and pc because now they can both do the same job, well maybe not the 360 with its failure rates...LOL.