One thing to note about the US is how large it is. Any disaster that could effect as much of the US, percentage wise, as Japan is being effected now would also be absolutely huge-- talking meteor, here-- which would effect much of the rest of the world as well.

With smaller nations, I imagine it's... closer to home, so to speak.

Katrina, for example, though effecting me in many ways, didn't have any practical effects on my life because I live so far away from where it occured. If I lived as far away from New Orleans as from the center of this earthquake, I could be living nearly in the middle east rather than Japan.

Ok, I assumed too much and was/am wrong about the extent of redundancy in even such frivious services. More thinking on the matter has brough up another point, though. The servers are only a thing and much pre-planning can go into them; let me ask all the IT people here if they would be able to go in to work normally and continue as if nothing had happened if their country had just been hit by a major disaster?

Even if not for the electricity excuse, I'd excuse them for taking some time off regardless; though I wouldn't have thought about it.

I'm pretty incredulous. I looked up EVE's server, and you're right. I guess I misremembered 'the largest in gaming' as the largest privately owned... Though I would've sworn I heard that from somewhere.

In any case, I don't buy that the a total loss of the data-center for any MMO wouldn't lead to a disruption in service. I'm sure they have redundancey for partial failures, and, obviously, data loss but the most I see happening is having a contract with another provider in another location to provide the service in case of extended damage, which would still lead to downtime as the account data was moved.

My point was and is that it's a collosal waste of money to have a full set of back-up servers fully capable of running a live service on the off chance a major disaster will hit. Again, this is not a mission critical service. I'm sure SE has back-ups of character data-- you people do realize there is insurance that covers downtime like this, right?

Rather than spend double your deployment cost, you just buy insurance which covers the loss of profit. It's far cheaper and... More sane. Again, this is not critical infrastructure, it's a fucking game.

A lot of fucking stupid people in this thread... Remind me never to let anyone in IT be in charge of money; I guess that's why software development houses have such a high failure rate.

Suggesting that SE have dupulicate servers somewhere else in the world on the off chance a major catastrophe hits their location is insane and if I, working in HR--and I do, noticed comments like this in my background checks I'd throw your resume out faster than I normally do... Which is usually within seconds... Eh, I'm not good with metaphors.

In case you haven't noticed, SE makes and runs games, not run a mission critial service. They aren't incompent for their handling of this situation unless you think CCP should have a back up Trainqulity sitting idle in case a volcano springs up in their neighborhood: Their server being, literally, one of the most powerful and expensive privately owned servers in the world. Or if you think Blizzard would give two shits about being out of service for a week or two should a flood, hurricane or earthquake hit one of their data centers(all of their data centers are vulernable to one or more of those) you are also fooling yourself.

I can't believe I'm in the position of defending Playonline and it's billing system(they suck), but wow! what an ass!

The problem you're experiencing is likely due to the fact that S/E had no idea how to set up a billing system when they made FFXI and made it so they have to process all charges at the same time at the end of the month, during which time they take the billing server down... Guess when now is?

Note that I've not played FFXI in years...

*Damn front page crawl*

I'm just a lurker who happened upon this thread due to the front page forum crawl and got entranced by the silliness of it.

My point is that it is pathetic both that an arguement sprouted up due to such an obvious troll and that the arguement was over any supposed superiority of one gaming platform over another. As a bonus, there's also the 'some of all ya'll're too old to be playing them thar games' angle going on.

As for me, I play whatever looks fun. I own a PS3, 360 and a capable PC. My current game of the year is Bayonetta(because of the gameplay-- I'm gay), but I expect it'll be replaced later this year by FFXIV or SC2, if it makes it in time. It's just so funny, to me, to see people argue whether it is OK for them to like something: It is. Like whatever you want; but know, that no matter what you like, somebody out there will think you're stupid for liking it.

You people are pathetic but not because you're gamers or because of your gaming platform...

Forget all your reasons. I have a much more petty reason I won't be getting it, and I definitely would have, otherwise(I buy everything, but have no loyalty): They IP block you from their site if you don't enter a 'reasonable' date in one of those stupid age check things... I guess no 80 year olds play gory MMOs.

(yes it's an IP block, I cleared cookies and refreshed.)

I think FFXIV will be to WoW as FFXI was to EQ. With the difference being that rather than take the difficulty and most of the mechanics from it while designing their own interface; they'll take the interface and accessibility elements from WoW and design their own mechanics.

In other words, I think they'll keep the game 'difficult' but not frustrating, such as how FFXI can be. It taking well over an hour to simply assemble a group-- and that's if they all know what they're doing-- is an example. The last member of the group arriving just 5 minutes after another group arrives and takes the spawn you were going to fight at is another...

If they simply made FFXIV a direct copy of FFXI with many fast travel options and faster respawns on bosses I'd be happy.

Uh... You all do realize that the real EQ2 was released about the same time as what they call EQ2 was released, right? It goes under the name of FFXI.

FFXI is pretty much what a lot of you are/were asking for: EQ mechanics and difficulty with a graphical upgrade and active player-base. The only real difference is the world it is set in.

The OP is asking a stupid question akin to 'is WoW a hardcore action game?'. The only people who might've thought Dragon Age would be an open ended RPG were people who spend more time waiting for games than playing them.

I will restrain myself and not comment on your usage of the word 'failure'. But! I'll happily answer your question as to why CoX did/has done so well and CO, maybe, not so much(maybe).

CoX was the first comic/super hero MMO to market and it was a niche that enough people desperately wanted filled that they would've accepted virtually anything thrown their way. As such, CoX was successful in spite of Jack Emmert/Cryptic, not because of them. Evidence can be seen in the increase in both the size of CoX's playerbase and their general happiness with the game since it was turned over to NCSoft(pvpers don't count).

I think you're being far too negative. I started two-boxing over a week ago and have already 'soloed' the first limit break quest(I'm addicted). The hardest part was the liches, but they weren't too bad-- fortunately I chose /nin as my tank's subjob.

Now, the second(level 55) limit break quest is impossible, as you have to be near a NM when it is killed... You don't actually have to kill it though. Once it's killed, if someone else kills it, you can just click on an object and you're done. But unless you have some phobia about asking for any help what-so-ever; you can just ask some people for help. As many level 75 jobs could solo the NM to clear the way for you.

The third quest is soloable with some items and luck.

The fourth quest is easily soloable.

The fifth quest is solo only.

Whether you can play this game solo or with a multibox depends on your mindset. If you must be able to do absolutely everything while never, ever, ever asking anyone for the slightest aid, then you will hit some very big walls. If, however, you don't mind asking for the occasional hand, it becomes quite a fun challenge...

What if it is a newly created character? Could you still get it?

I just started playing last week, after having tried it when it first came out in NA(Most of my complaints have been addressed, which I'm going to post about).

I've tried Phoenix, Shiva and Titan and all three had very good population. As far as S/E and the likelihood of them ever closing FFXI down... Well, they still milk FFI. Hell, they just did a reprint of the PS1 FFs(7, 8 and 9), which you can buy one their website now. I'm sure they'll be porting FFXI to the Xbox 3 and PS4 in a few years.

I have an E8400 and it's well over a year old at this point... I still play everything that comes out maxed out.

CPU isn't my limiting factor, it's GPU, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Unless money is totally not an issue, take the extra money you would've put into a quad-core and put it toward a slightly better GPU.

My recommondations for someone building a computer these days are:

First and most important! 4GB, minimum. I'd skimp on GPU before memory, now that I've experienced the glory of 8GB...

Second. GPU is the main factor in performance for games, don't  be cheap with it.

Thirdly, Get at least two hard drives. One for Windows, your music, photos, porn, ect. The other for your games. Size them proportionately depending on what you have more of.

Forth Froth Fourth. Multithreading an application like a game is very difficult and time consuming to do well enough to justify being done at all. So, it seems, developers have taken the 'not bother' route. It'll take OS advances to make utilizing multiple cores in a single application, on a PC, viable. Does Windows 7 do or even begin to do this? I haven't the slightest clue. All I know about odd numbered Windows releases is that they are the ones you wanted the previous release to be. So Windows 7 is more like Vista 1.5.

In other words, number of cores are less important than speed and effciency.

Originally posted by S1GNAL

It seems like a hardware problem. Most likely your hard drive that has some bad sectors. However AoC could have messed up your computer, cos I have a friend of mine that had similar problems after launching the game. Dont listen to all the fanbois in here, just stay away from AoC and play some game that actually works like most game should do.

I had my comupter freeze while playing a Youtube clip. After restarting the BIOS complained that the CMOS failed it's checksum so it reset everything to the presets that I saved in configuration 1. After rebooting it complained that the BIOS failed it's checksum and that it would attempt to reflash itself from backup... It did this 3 times before it actually booted. Then the BIOS crashed several times while I tried to access it to see/fix what was going on.

Moral of the story? Never go to Youtube! And don't let the fanboys tell you otherwise!!!!!!11one!!1

Or... I had accidently saved a BIOS configuration in which I had doubled the memory's speed(oops)...

PS: Don't try to run 400Mhz DDR3 memory at 800Mhz.

Why does it matter? Sometimes coming the right conclusion for the wrong reason is an important distinction and matters. This is not one of those times.

I'm going to give the people who are defending tasos a little hint. Your arguments fly a huge flag which says either 'I'm in school' or 'I live in my mothers' basement'.