Personally I used the HeroEngine and the amount of time they would of saved using it over their own or another would be a big cost savings, but if their own engine and system is capable of doing what the HeroEngine can do in terms of speed then they may very well have a good time frame on this one still, otherwise it will take much longer now.

These accounts aren't necessarily hacked but more likely easily guessed by other players who already have their login names via places like the forums. Once they got a login name they use a bot to try thousands of passwords to try login to that account.

And I can't wait to read the headline someday about servers got hacked. D3 is a waste of space.

Right, take away everything you claim is same old same old and you got an empty world LMAO. What do you want? By the way you forgot to remove your sig if you hate GW2.

The marketing of the movie was fail, the trailers sucked, I watched it the other night and it was a very nice movie.

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Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

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Originally posted by bezado
I guess having 86 people online really is terrible to some people, also wtf gives with the $12.95 a month fee still?
Man this game rocks still, but we need more people. Why do you think Turbine isn't helping
 
and the game has virtually no economical contingency other than the same old useful things like mana forge keys etc.
 

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 Exageration for effect I assume. DT gets up into the 500s online at once, FF doesn't do much worse. In a world where everyone chats of the same channels and you can get to essentially any spot in the world within a couple of minutes, that isn't bad at all.
 
Turbine has added tons to this game over the past 2-3 years so once again you aren't being honest there. They have added lots of new features and lots of new content on top of the continually monthly updates. All of these are free, no paid expansions or the like. I'd say they're doing plenty to keep it running and to keep players playing.
 
The game has always run off of loot. It is a game where you can kill a creature and get the best weapon/armor/etc in the game. Mana Forges put out the top tier of loot also, so the main trading commodity is MFKs because.... this game is about the loot and always has been.
 
The subscription price isn't holding it back, gamers who only care about eye candy and not substance are holding it back and that will never change. Gamers would rather pay $50-60 bucks every couple months on the latest shiny MMO that they get bored of in a month than play a game where the graphics are cutting edge.

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If you feel like hyping the game you play I can understand that, but to blatantly disregard real numbers and how things are to get past your denial of a game that isn't doing well is plain disrespectful.

You say DT and FF both get upwards of 500 online, that is a JOKE man, the command to view online for your server or by using a plugin show how many are online, I have dozens of screenshots. You maybe confusing the online players number with the virindi bundle system that you installed which has interogator chat system and it will tell you how many players are logged in over all servers to the virindi chat system, usually it is around 600-700 for that, if you look at each server players logged into the server the numbers are around what I posted, and just yesterday we were below 200 online for FF, a Friday night!

So get your facts right before I need to start uploading screenshots of the actual server population logged into each world during peek hours.

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Originally posted by dubyahite
Simple answer when it costs more to operate than it creates in revenue. And as for your example of AC, I would imagine those older games are easier to keep on a sub. The players that are still around are very dedicated. The game has obviously payed for all development costs long ago, and they probably have a very bare bones staff led working on it. In short, the cost of running AC is probaly very low. There is enough subs left to keep making profit for the company. It's probably operating at a high margin these days (same with games like daoc, planetside, uo, and up until recently EQ). The thing with f2p on these older games is that there are actually costs an resources involved with going f2p. It takes some extra coding as well as creating new content and cash shops/cash shop items for thegame. With a game as old as AC or daoc or planetside, is it really worth it? Will they actually be able to attract new revenue and grow their profits? Probably not for long. People won't stick with those old games, except for those that already are paying a sub. I think those older games could lose revenue by going f2p.

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EQ went F2P and is doing very well. The kind of F2P that doesn't involve item shop is based on the same design Sony uses, in that it just limits what you can do or get based on playing for Free and if you want more like higher levels unlocked or whatever then you got to pay monthly plan, but the plans are reasonable and low enough that they attract players who managed to play for Free and like the game. So Turbine should at least try it and then lower the cost monthly to unlock all for around $6 a month, sure would help the populations out and current players who love to play the game.

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Originally posted by jlabruno
Has anyone found a good site on the internet with some information about Everquest Next? I can not find anything on it other then a few sentences. I am so bored out of my mind with the current mmorpgs. I started with everquest and loved it. Best game I ever played. Would still play it but can not get past the graphics. So I went to everquest 2 and then after some time to world of warcraft. Now I can not stay with anything. Rift has no population, Tera is well eck, Star Wars is terrible and wow I have been playing so long I can not play it for more then 30 minutes without taking a break. I need something to read about the next game I plan to give a try.
Any info on the game would be awesome. 

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That is pretty weak argument to have assuming you played EQ and loved it in the day, that the graphics are what keep you from it. If you truly played EQ and loved it then the graphics wouldn't matter, as a matter of fact the EQ graphics are freaking awesome now. With everything maxed and when ran on native screen resolutions, meaning you don't run EQ at lower than your screens default resolution, the graphics are mind blowing for how old of a game it is. They revamped the graphics sometime ago and they are very nice.

EQ Next will not be out for another couple years at least or more, there is several developer videos of a small conference of the EQ Next dev team discussing the upcoming plans and what they are working on in EQ Next, using google I found these pretty quickly, same site that has been up for over a year now with all the info you need. http://www.everquestnext.com/

When you can't find anyone to do things with, or when you know you have no economy because there is no population, when do you decide to close up shop or start venturing in a new direction with a different model plan? In question and up for debate is a current game I am playing that is over 12 years old now. Considering it's counterpart being the same age but with 250% to 300% more players online, should tell you something isn't working.

First off, I am waiting for GW2, that said my current favorite mmorpg that I consistently go back to over the years for fun has dwindled down to but a memory for most. Just to put things into perspective I took liberty of logging on each server the past 2 weeks during prime time to take the number of players online from each world and then tonight for the final night took all numbers and got an average over the 8 worlds.

With 8 worlds we have an unfavorable average of 118 players on during Monday-Thursday during PEEK hours, while Friday-Sunday has an average of 135 players per server on during peek hours. This doesn't even take into consideration two other important details, one of them is very important in that we only have 2 favorite servers where the populations exceed 200 players online during PEEK hours and a couple servers are below 100 and with one server consistently around 25-35 players online during PEEK hours, the other important thing to note is that each server has approximately 50% of the players dual logging accounts, meaning players are playing two accounts or more at a time. I say approximately 50% because everyone I run into usually has two accounts logged on at once.

Now to the sad state of affairs, this leads me to point out the game in question. Asheron's Call. It's sad that Turbine isn't doing anything about it to get more players. The game still requires a hefty $12.95 a month subscription fee. So much of the player-base is paying double or more a month, this is where Turbine is getting the extra subscriptions from players with multiple accounts.

So if you were a man in charge what would you do about something like this to get more players? I have created another thread before asking Turbine to create a model like SONY did with it's station pass so players from the other Turbine games could play every Turbine game for a fixed price, I even asked them to lower the monthly subscription price to a competitive price point of $5.99 a month.

But as time progresses on it seems more and more harder to get things done or to find players interested in doing things. I can only imagine those players who are not on the two top servers for decent populations, even off peek hours the top two servers are below 150 players online.

Seems Turbine doesn't care for AC anymore cause the games populations are dwindled to below comfortable levels to sustain a great game experience, although I will continue to play, but this title has lost it's MMO tag just about. I guess having 86 people online really is terrible to some people, also wtf gives with the $12.95 a month fee still?

Man this game rocks still, but we need more people. Why do you think Turbine isn't helping, and to answer people who keep saying people are returning and such, it's just easier to see returning players come back when you barely had a population to begin with, then add in the fact everyone who currently plays has multiple accounts because we all got so much shit we have to store it on mules. Take away all the extra accounts people have and this game has worn pretty roughly even though it's one of the best games out there.

The only thing holding it back is the insanely high subscription fee which veteran players will argue is good and they will pay it no matter, that making it lower would somehow make things worse, which is a logical fail since lowering a subscription price would garner more subscribers because it would be reasonable. People need to grasp the fact this game is over 12 years old now, and is one of the hardest if not most frustrating games to get to understand and play for a new player than any other game, you have to realize that without significant change a game this old and this good will never rise up again, it will keep sinking lower and lower.

So this is my call out to Turbine, hardly think they will see this or read it, probably almost certain of it, but I get it out there anyway without having to post to the AC Turbine forums and get ridiculed by the stubborn vets who want no change because they like playing solo or with few people, but that doesn't help the game, and the game has virtually no economical contingency other than the same old useful things like mana forge keys etc.

So Turbine if you are there and have one care for AC please do something, we need players, we need a remodeled subscription fee that is competitive so people feel more comfortable to give it a go after the 14 day trials. Also remember how hard this game is for new players, keep this in mind it is why most do not survive past the free trial if we do get any new players. It should be a price point around $5.99 a month to make it competitive. F2P works as well but that probably wont happen because you got no way to generate revenue from it.

My last point is take a page from SONY, they manage to give you multiple games for one price, what say you on this?

Take away their accents and they are not popular. I don't enjoy them, they do have funny bits here and there but that is just because of their culture and accents make things sound even funnier, especially when they are laughing.

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Originally posted by SnarlingWolf
They gave up?
 
They just had a massive update that changed how melee combat skills work and added several new combat skills to the game. They also updated all of the quest weapons at the same time.
They've also added tons of new features over the past couple of years including:
New playable races
Tailoring (Can take the look of any loot armor/quest armor and apply it to a piece who's stats you like)
Updated all quest/creature XP to create a better leveling curve
Updated all of the landscape textures
Added Two handed combat and Void Magic
Added new equipment slots several times (trinkets, aetheria, cloaks)
Continued monthly updates with new content
Added a quest of the month feature which changes each month and gives a big bonus for trying out different quests
Created a whole new desert hunting area with a new race of creature/new art etc.
Added luminance, an end game refillable xp system that allows the purchase of special enhancements
Created a PvP arena for extra excitement on Darktide
Created a new consolidated questing system for levels 1-50
Added contracts, and a group of contracts specifically for the 50-100 range
Consolidated all of the random portals to a new centralized town hub for easier travel.
 
I could reall go on for quite a while. They've far from given up and there are more than enough people running around to find an allegiance, find groups and just plain have fun.

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I never said they gave up on content. Reading comprehension ftw. I said they gave up on trying to get more subscribers essentially advertising and lowering the price point and getting rid of the free trial by credit card would be a good start. They did give up with the game to get more people to play, that my friend is a fact.

I can't do it. Paying to play a game where there are few people playing seems a bit for me, even though I can afford it. I would be subing back 5 accounts. I really wish they were not charging that much for subs.

If they drop the sub fee to $4.99 or something reasonable I would return. But right now I think they are hurting themselves by not adjusting to the times. F2P would be nice or lower price on AC per month. I guess I will just wait for GW2.

I don't think the guys running AC know what they are doing cause it seems like they have not done much anything to get new subscribers or want to keep it going. Just look at the main page, they rarely update things. I dunno, I just feel like they gave up, and I wanted to really return to a classic game I always loved playing but at this cost for what you get doesn't seem right, compared to other mmo games on the market now and coming out soon.

Why is it taking them so many years to bring this game out? A company as big as Blizzard is you would think it would be real easy to throw this out there quickly, being that it is only 2D and plus it doesn't really feel any different than what others have released. Truthfully I think they waited way to long to try and spark new life into this ip.

One of the best headsets I ever used and coming from a $200 set to this is amazing that the sound and performance is that good for the price of $85. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826816005&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Headsets+and+Accessories-_-Corsair-_-26816005

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Originally posted by Quizzical
The AsRock motherboard that you linked is likely better than the MSI one that I linked.  It's definitely more expensive--by $15 before rebate or $45 after rebate.  It's pretty common for more money to get you something better.  You can make a case for either paying more to get something better, or for saving money.
As for the SSD, have a look:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4863/the-samsung-ssd-830-review
The review is for a Samsung 830, but it includes data on both the Crucial M4 and two SandForce drives.  The Vertex 3 Max IOPS is often faster than an ordinary Vertex 3, but they're in the same ballpark.  The Kingston HyperX is also SandForce.
Sometimes the Crucial M4 beats the SandForce drives.  Sometimes it loses.  It wins more than it loses on read speeds, and usually loses by a pretty big margin on writes.  Those are double the capacity of the SSDs that we're talking about, which generally increases write speeds quite a bit and doesn't affect read speeds much.
I cited my own OCZ Agility because it's a lot slower than either of those SSDs.  It can't touch 200 MB/s even in sequential reads or writes.  In the harshest tests of 4 KB random writes, it's around 10-12 MB/s.  And you know what?  It's still fast.  Fast enough that upgrading to something faster would be a silly waste of money.  Fast enough that when I have to wait, I'm nearly always waiting on the processor or Internet connection or some such, and not on the SSD.
Once SSDs get fast enough that they don't make you wait, adding more speed doesn't matter.  It's kind of like how, if you're never going to play games, the difference in speed between a Radeon HD 7970 and a Radeon HD 7750 doesn't matter, even though everyone can agree that the first card is a lot faster than the second.
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No, the capacity is not the same.  They do have the same amount of physical NAND flash.  The OCZ Vertex 3 has to use some of it for RAISE, which leaves you less usable capacity.  Windows will show the Crucial M4 as a little over 119 GB.
Would you rather have $20 cheaper without having to do a rebate, or $10 cheaper after rebate but you have to do a rebate and wait a few months to get the $30 back?  I'd rather have the former, but opinions can vary.
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It's not write endurance that I'm talking about on reliability.  As much as I hate to cite user reviews on New Egg, compare the user reviews for OCZ SSDs versus those for Crucial SSDs.  It's a pretty glaring difference.
And there's a good reason for it.  Crucial really only makes two SSDs (they also have an enterprise version), and then makes varying capacities of it.  They'll have different SKUs for different box contents (e.g., want a cable to transfer data?  different box), but that doesn't affect the SSD itself.  So they only really have to worry about one SSD controller, one NAND flash source, and so on.  First they had the M225, then the C300, and now the M4.  When a new one comes, they discontinue the old one.  And that helps tremendously with validation.
Compare that to what OCZ does.  Currently in stock on New Egg, Crucial has the M4 and that's it.  OCZ has the Nocti, Petrol, Agility 3, Octane, Strata, Vertex 3, Onyx, Solid 3, Vertex 2, Agility 2, Vertex 3 Max IOPS, Synapse, RevoDrive, RevoDrive 3, RevoDrive 3 X2, RevoDrive 3 Max IOPS, Colossus 2, Ibis, Talos C, Talos 2 C, Talos R, Z-drive R4, and VeloDrive.  That's at least four different SSD controllers, at least seven different interfaces, and more types of NAND flash than you can shake a stick at.
When Crucial changed their NAND flash while using essentially the same controller as before, they changed the name from C300 to M4.  With OCZ, you can have several drives of exactly the same SKU, with different NAND flash in each of them.  So, who do you think has an easier time with validation?

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I agree with most but the points I am making are about better performance/price on parts and having owned all the above with my own reviews. But you know we all got our opinions, if it makes sense go with it I guess.

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Originally posted by Ridelynn
I wouldn't touch Asrock with a 10 foot pole. Their motherboard lines are as flakey as they come lately. They've went from all low end stuff, to mostly low end stuff with a few hit or miss wannabe high end boards. Sure you may get a hit, but there are a lot of misses out there too.

All things equal, I'd go for the Crucial over the OCZ, because Crucial has one important thing on their side. Crucial uses their own memory, so it's always the same, known NAND. OCZ just goes for the lowest bidder, and different brands of NAND have been known to cause some problems with the drives. It's not a huge percentage, or very high, but if all other things are equal, I'd lean towards Crucial just because it's marginally that much more stable.

I'd take the OCZ if it were any cheaper though - it's not a bad drive, it's just that all other things equal, Crucial is a most consistent build.

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Going against a brand because they may have a bad product or issues is sort of a moot point when you think about it in this case. Almost all the mobos parts are built from a couple vendors, and the major parts from one vendor usually. These mobo makers put everything together and make it work using their own software and some specific chipset's and whatnot. With that said every mobo manufacturer has had hit or misses and bad releases, every one, in fact ASUS is the worst of all. MSI ranks high too for hit or miss.

The mobo I linked by Asrock is a top pick and scored the highest in initial quality and performance testing. It just depends on what your looking for and you can find a top pick in any manufacturer these days.

As far as the ssd thing, well both use NAND memory. Both get the ssd memory from the same vendors truth behold, micron owns the vast share of ssd manufacturing. The difference in performance mostly boils down to the controllers used. As OCZ has the better controller using from Indilinx vs crucials marvell controllers. When you got a company making controllers for all brands you tend to run into problems where you wont reach the best performance possible because of too many vendors using your controller. Now OCZ doesn't have this issue as they got their own and can focus on major improvements at a faster pace. If you move to the larger 240gb models of each drive above then you get an updated marvell controller in the crucial that performs on par and some applications better then the vertex3, but this is a expensive area to obtain a advantage over the vertex3 when we are comparing 120GB and 128GB models respectively here.

I would never pre order a mmorpg more than 1 week out of launch date. SImply because you end up putting out cash that is tied up into something that you wont have the product for months or years in this case when they announced pre orders back 2 years or so ago. Makes no sense. Plus it's cheaper usually to just order the digital download directly then get the pretty box that will collect dust and never amount to being worth anything in the future. I hate buying game boxes.

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Originally posted by wrightstuf
Which would you rather...
 Come home from work and find a GW2 beta invite  or come home from work and find Kim Kardashian ?

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I feel sorry for you that you picked KK as one of the choices for a which would you rather. Out of all the beautiful girls in this world who are celebs you pick KK, I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

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Originally posted by Quizzical
Can the motherboard you linked overclock further than the one I linked?  Likely.  Does it matter?  Not unless you're looking for a maximum overclock.  And in that case, you really should get a better cooler, too.
Is the OCZ Vertex 3 faster than the Crucial M4?  In synthetic benchmarks, they trade wins.  You could argue that it's a little faster on net.  In real-world use, they're both so fast that the difference would rarely be noticeable.  A difference of 7 seconds versus 4 seconds in a real-world use scenario would be an extreme outlier.
For that matter, a difference of 7 seconds versus 4 in comparing the OCZ Vertex 3 to my own OCZ Agility in a real-world use scenario would be an extreme outlier.  If something takes 7 seconds on a good SSD, then most likely 6+ of those seconds are marked by something other than the SSD being busy, and even a theoretically infinitely fast SSD couldn't push the wait down to 4 seconds.
But the Crucial M4 has some major advantages.  It is:
1)  Larger capacity,
2)  Lower price, and
3)  More reliable, at least if you update the firmware when you get it (which you should, if it's still on 0009).
I'd say that any one of those is enough to outweigh a dubious speed advantage from the Vertex 3, let alone all three at once.

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Well the mobo I linked is better than the one you linked by far even without OC'ing. I own both those ssd drives, the vertex3 is faster than my crucial by a large enough % that it matters keeping it as the system drive and some games that access the HD often. Those are not synthetic benchmarks, I own them I know how both operate under the same circumstances. The vertex3 is over 100mb/s faster in read performance over the crucial and over 300 mb/s in writes, my vertex3 is stable out of the box no firmware update needed. Granted this is sustained sequential operations it still shows how much faster the vertex3 is over the crucial. My boot times are measured with a time to boot from post using all the necessary SSD tweaks available. Most people get an ssd and do not tweak the system for it to use the ssd properly. A tweaked system will boot crazy fast if you take the steps to ensure the OS will give the ssd all the performance it can throw out.

You definitely will have slower boot times then me of course without doing the proper tweaks necessary for ssd drives. Mind you these tweaks are not ssd tweaks that change the performance from stock, these are just OS tweaks to allow your ssd to perform at optimum speeds as advertised. Also 7 sec over 4 sec is reasonable when you are comparing a loss of 100mb/s + in read performance.

1. Larger capacity? By what 8 gigs if that? The systems trim space is roughly larger
than OCZ anyway so they are about even near 111GB after you format and install Win7

2. Lower price by what $19 bucks? You also get rebate on the vertex3 which brings it's price point lower than the crucial, so price isn't a factor. Better performance and price for the vertex3

3. Reliability? Both are equally reliable, both can do as much write data as the next and the normal user who games and does normal heavy PC stuff wont even kill either drive after 5 years of use, you could even get 10 years off these.

4. Sometimes you just have to agree with someone else when they give advice that is correct instead of trying to argue with them and try prove them wrong, it doesn't always have to be about you being right. When recommendations are given that make sense and are accurate you should just say I agree, I missed those and leave it at that.

Edit: Ohh yeah forgot to say what is the sense of getting a 2500k if you are not going to OC? You give him a recommended CPU built to OC and yet you debate that my mobo doesn't matter cause you not looking to get maximum OC. You buy a 2500k to OC it at the standard 4.5 to 4.8, you want stability. If you push for a maximum OC you would hit 5.0 to 5.2 respectfully with proper cooling setup.

My cooler is the best cooler on the market for HSF, I do not care for water cooling because of the hassle with it.