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Halo 2 Online Preservation Effort Ends
A couple weeks ago, we discussed news that some dedicated Halo 2 fans were keeping the game's multiplayer alive after support for online play was dropped. Now, a few days shy of a month after support ended, the last users have been knocked off the server.
"[A user named] Apache N4SIR outlasted everyone. 'May 11th @ 0158hrs I was FORCEFULLY REMOVED!!' he wrote on the forums at Bungie.net. 'I thought I'd be the one turning off the lights but that was done for me. Good night everyone, my Elite needs a rest.' His last comrade in arms, Agent Windex, was still signed on, as spotted by Kotaku at 4 p.m. US Pacific Time on May 10, but their adventure, which began on April 15, ended after Windex announced 21 minutes later that he had been removed from play and Apache N4SIR suffered a similar fate hours later, as he described in his post."
Counterstrike. I seriously doubt it will decommision in my lifetime
It's the Pacman of FPS.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Halo 2 was released in 2004, its now 2010. Thats almost 6 years. Don't know of many (if any) console games that have had that much online support made for them. I don't feel thats really screwing over your loyal customers as have some of the longest online multiplayer support. And there is a time for a business to have to cut legacy support.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Anyone else feel it sad when people reference a whole six years as an eternity, after which a product should surely be dropped?
Stuff used to be made to last a lifetime. I have an old double-barreled shotgun my granddad passed down to me. My mother has dresses, dolls, and other heirlooms passed down to her by her mother. Most of this stuff is 50-75 years old, and I envision it to be around a lot longer. Even in content - I've got movies and such that are as old as I am (original release Star Wars VHS for example). Yet with this type of thing, well, it's SIX years old. It's obvious that you shouldn't expect to keep using it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
What makes consoles so special?
It's easier to screw owners over.
Om, nomnomnom...
First they take multiplayer away after 6 yrs, next it will be DRM disabling of single player after 6 yrs... then 5... 4.... 3.... or whenever the sequal comes out. Slippery slope, and I'm sure some kid will say "Come on that game is 2 yrs old and they have a sequal they have to stop support someday!". No, they didn't, they designed the game so multiplayer support could be shut-off and use that as an excuse.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Monopoly, Risk, Axis & Allies, Diplomacy (50 years old).
Yea-- hard to believe ANYONE would want to play a game 7 years after it was published.
Games Workshop is getting bad about this (as is Magic the Gathering).
Sure- you can play on your own, but convention play requires the current figures and rules. Which are arbitrarily changed about every 24-36 months.
Business wants you to RENT everything- no ownership.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's all part of the rentification. At one time when you bought something you owned it. You could expect to pass it on to your children one day. Your wealth would tend to increase over time.
Now, it's all essentially a multi-year rental. Even major appliances may be expected to conk out in a decade or so and become landfill (yeah, that's really green!). You may rest assured that replacement parts will not be available should you decide to try to fix it or they will only be available to the brand X authorized repair shop that will (because of the costs to become authorized) charge you nearly as much as the cost of a new unit to replace the $20 part (that cost $2 to make and $8 to ship from China). Yeah, perhaps you were thinking one of those fancy new ones would be nice anyway, but it might have been nice to sell the old one to someone who needed a good deal on a basic appliance.
The difference here is that you can still use FORTRAN if you want to.
One of the main selling points of games like these is their multiplayer. You'd want it to go on forever--and well you should, you certainly paid for it!
You can still compile and run FORTRAN programs--in fact, if you run Linux, you might have a FORTRAN compiler installed and not know it (I'm in Windows, so I can't see if I do right now). Hell, when you install mingw, the compilers offered are C, C++, and FORTRAN. (Probably Java too, but I don't remember. Wikipedia says there is also Pascal and Ada support.)
The problem with Microsoft's treatment of their fanbase is "This product has reached end-of-life, we're killing it. Tough. What, you want more? No. And don't think about setting up your own master servers, etc., or we'll sue you." (Or something to that effect.)
...the Windows XP hangers-on were annoying. Sheesh...let it go guys. Like that one wizened old-timer in the back warehouse blathering on how FORTRAN is still relevant...
Ehmm, it works. It supports all the hardware in my gaming machine. It has been rock stable for the past few years.
Why *would* I change to a different OS? I already paid for this one...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
You are operating under the assumption that you did not put more energy and resources into the manufacture of the new equipment or that it was going to be done anyway. Now if you really needed a new computer to do something you could not do before that holds up. You should always use the newer more energy efficent model. On the otherhand if that P4 was doing everything you needed it to do the truely green thing would probably have been to never create a market for that new computer and therefore avoid its constuction in the first place.
There is more to greeness than just carbon emmissions; people seem to have forgotten this! Losts of really awful chemicals get used to manufacture chips; computers are full plastics that don't biodegrade and are made from limited petrol resources. Oh and on the carbon front manufacture of the thing probably consumed quite a lot of engergy all told; possibly years worth of the delta between the efficencies of the two units; and released lots of carbon.
People whine and cry about efficent this but really most of it is feel good nonsense so people can create an excuse to make and have new toys. The disposability of our society is doing more harm to our enviornment than anything else. Which is not to say that when we do make new things we should not make them as efficent as can be. Its also true that old things which can be retrofited to improve them possibly should not be. Adding more insulation to an existing house probably makes all kinds of sense. Replacing something like an old boiler where almost everything can be recycled might be good too. Retering a perfectly servicable computer or automobile probably not so much.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
And what if 3,500,000 people take their $50 elsewhere? What then?
This is why I don't own a console, and probably never will. A console doesn't give me enough control, and is nothing but a money pit. Far more so than a PC.
Control is what it comes down to. I insist on controlling the equipment I own. Excepting my Cable box (which I'm basically renting) I have ultimate authority over all electronics in my house. Nobody else can tell me how to use it., and nobody can remotely disable any of it's capabilities.
Think about it: What good are those old X-boxes now? You can't play online with them, and Single player was NEVER very impressive on them. They don't have HD capabilities, so even XBMC isn't useful anymore. They are junk. Not even useful for nostalgia's sake like an old Atari, NES, or SNES. And the old games? Money down the drain. Hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars per person just gone.
With PC games, even if my PC dies and I have to build a new one, I can still play my old games. Even if I change OSes I can still play most of them because community groups are porting them over. So even though I've changed PC's multiple times since MW4 came out, I can still bust it out and play it, any time I want. (and I do. MW4 was and is a great game.)
Long live PC gaming.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory