You act as if the DRM companies intentionally make it crackable. The fact is that any DRM a company makes is cracked.
This DRM sounds innocuous -- it just tracks how many times you install your key in case you try giving it to 30 of your friends or something. I would call that not restrictive...
I think the major baffling thing to this is Funcom did it AGAIN. You think they would have learned from Anarchy Online, that you just can't release a buggy and/or content-lacking game and hope to "patch it in later".
First impressions matter in games just like with people. Releasing a game missing content or with major mechanics like banks, mail, and stats not working is virtual suicide.
Tire chains are illegal in most states because they destroy the pavement very quickly. A quality set of snow tires are more than adequate in most cases. I recommend Blizzaks -- had a pair for 5 years and it was a dream using them in winter compared to all-seasons.
It amazes me the amount of people that will choose to white-knuckle their driving during every snow storm, or get in an accident with their $25k car causing thousands in damages, rather than spend $300 on a set of snow tires that will last for 5+ winters.
If the article is meant to be edited before posting anyways, then why fake dialogue in the first place? Why not just leave it "" or have it say "dialogue" etc.? This goes beyond merely prepping an article ahead of time, because they started faking details about the launch as well. Also coming from a government known for major deception...
And yes, I'm aware the US isn't pearly white on that issue, but that is for another article.
I wonder what they have to say about the fact that the game was already cracked before the release date, and more than half a million people pirated it in the first week alone? How do they still justify that it prevents piracy?
In many cases the crack lets you get the game running faster than trying to mess around with driver and firmware upgrades to get the DRM functioning.
I spent 6 hours trying to get Brothers in Arms to run "legitimately" on my PC after buying it. I eventually gave up and downloaded the no DVD crack to get it running. Quite sad.
Quoted from a comment below the article on Massively.com:
"Understand a few things before you QQ (listen up, it's important). You are looking at a newbie mission - in a Solrain newbie shuttle. This is the equivalent of "Go out and collect me 10 boar tusks young one; gain a level while you're at it. Congratulations, you're two!"
The flight mode is using "dampeners". That's a jargon way of saying flight-assist mode is turned on. This allows new players to spend their first few missions learning the game instead of learning how to fly. Once you disable dampeners you enter into a Newtonian physics based flight sim in Space."
There really isn't a lot of cost or performance savings with choosing a Dual core instead of Quad core atm as long as you are willing to overclock a bit.
The recent Core2Quads have a very good overclocking record right now. They can be ran at 3.0ghz stable on stock cooling, and with more aggressive cooling people have been running them stable as high as 3.4ghz. The E8500 is $190 for 3.16ghz atm for Dual cores.
The current bottleneck IMHO tends to be more from video card and ram/bus speeds than your CPU. You really can go quite a number of years nowadays just with a video card upgrade if you have a multi-core system.
(Running a 3 year old AMD X2 system that is still very good at gaming with just a video card upgrade)
It seems the next logical step for them will be to develop a Chinese-grown OS and "strongly frown upon" use of Windows at home. (While at the same time having their OS support Windows apps)
That way they can have the OS report any "dangerous behavior" by default, and roll out any patches or refresh a new "blocking list" daily....
My mistake, I should have double-checked my info. Toys For Bob is owned by Activision (Activision-Blizzard now I guess) They also were not involved in Star Control 3.
As commented on earlier in the topic -- Ur-Quan Masters is Star Control 2. It's a space exploration and combat game from the early 90s by a small studio called Toys For Bob. A Star Control 3 was released after TFB was bought by a larger studio, but it didn't get very good reviews. Last I knew, Toys For Bob is still technically around as one of the many studios gobbled up by EA.
Around here some will still ask you paper or plastic, but plastic is their first choice. Others you have to ask for paper and they will provide it. Places like Walmart only have plastic AFAIK.
I prefer paper because it's more orderly to pack and put in the car. Not to mention they make great kitchen garbage and recycling bags;)
Where I live, when you blow your nose you use a kleenex.
When you want to cover leftovers, you use saran wrap.
Yet Kleenex is just a brand of tissue paper, and Saran Wrap is just a brand of plastic wrap, but both products are so widespread, that the brand name is used to describe a generic product.
The Zelda series is highly popular after all these years, and it has a lot of puzzle elements built into the games.
Tomb Raider is also known for puzzles, and has been a fairly successful franchise.
It's true though, that in order to broaden market appeal these days, companies seem to design to the lowest denominator. I swear some of the people I see asking for help in World of Warcraft couldn't even pick their own nose. They are unable to even read the quest or use their eyes to get the answers that are right in front of their face.
But the only reason they are doing all of this is so that they aren't publicly disgraced in front of the entire world over complaints about how polluted their country and/or Beijing is.
When all is said and done, the only thing that will be different is a handful of factories were moved.
The reason so many people are starving in the developing world isn't due to supply -- it's largely due to political and economic reasons. Too many dictatorships, civil wars, etc. are preventing the food from getting to the people that need it, at a cost they can afford.
Just look to Burma as a recent example of how a government can willfully ignore their people.
The reason raiders are angry is not because casual content is being added, but because the focus is being switched mid-stream. Not only with the new content coming out, but with changing of the old content as well. It's basically pulling the rug out from under the raiding community which Blizzard had supported well to this point. And the raiders also have a lot more invested in their characters.
It's basically killing raiding overall, because the more casual players getting into raiding now tend to lack the determination to wipe for many nights learning bosses. They expect them to all fall over dead in 3 attempts, and after the first week where they have to spend 5hrs attempting one boss they're ready to quit. (And usually blame the guild for "sucking")
Yet other famous franchises managed to flop -- you can't tell me that Blizzard/Warcraft is more well-known than Sony/Starwars to the average Joe. Dungeons&Dragons. Lord of the Rings (which is even quite good IMHO, I felt it was almost as polished as WoW). Everquest2.
Blizzard's claim to fame has always been these three major points IMHO:
#1 - They don't release a game until it's ready.
#2 - It runs well on very modest hardware. Not only 10% of the hardware like the ones that try to woo through graphics. (Looking at you AoC)
#3 - They are willing to scrap a game if it doesn't live up to their standards. (Warcraft Adventures/Starcraft Ghost)
I assume they are pre-installing a copy of XP Pro without a key, which is totally legal AFAIK, since the software is not functional at that point. This saves customers the time of installing XP, yet allows them to re-use their current licenses from the machines they are scrapping, or buy used licenses from other vendors.
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You act as if the DRM companies intentionally make it crackable. The fact is that any DRM a company makes is cracked.
This DRM sounds innocuous -- it just tracks how many times you install your key in case you try giving it to 30 of your friends or something. I would call that not restrictive...
I think the major baffling thing to this is Funcom did it AGAIN. You think they would have learned from Anarchy Online, that you just can't release a buggy and/or content-lacking game and hope to "patch it in later".
First impressions matter in games just like with people. Releasing a game missing content or with major mechanics like banks, mail, and stats not working is virtual suicide.
Tire chains are illegal in most states because they destroy the pavement very quickly. A quality set of snow tires are more than adequate in most cases. I recommend Blizzaks -- had a pair for 5 years and it was a dream using them in winter compared to all-seasons.
It amazes me the amount of people that will choose to white-knuckle their driving during every snow storm, or get in an accident with their $25k car causing thousands in damages, rather than spend $300 on a set of snow tires that will last for 5+ winters.
If the article is meant to be edited before posting anyways, then why fake dialogue in the first place? Why not just leave it "" or have it say "dialogue" etc.? This goes beyond merely prepping an article ahead of time, because they started faking details about the launch as well. Also coming from a government known for major deception...
And yes, I'm aware the US isn't pearly white on that issue, but that is for another article.
I wonder what they have to say about the fact that the game was already cracked before the release date, and more than half a million people pirated it in the first week alone? How do they still justify that it prevents piracy?
In many cases the crack lets you get the game running faster than trying to mess around with driver and firmware upgrades to get the DRM functioning.
I spent 6 hours trying to get Brothers in Arms to run "legitimately" on my PC after buying it. I eventually gave up and downloaded the no DVD crack to get it running. Quite sad.
To the contrary, I think it's probably driven MORE people to pirating the game just so they can say "screw you" to EA for the excessive DRM.
Don't remind me. If you didn't want to break something after the speeder bike stage of Battletoads, there is something wrong with you.
Quoted from a comment below the article on Massively.com:
"Understand a few things before you QQ (listen up, it's important). You are looking at a newbie mission - in a Solrain newbie shuttle. This is the equivalent of "Go out and collect me 10 boar tusks young one; gain a level while you're at it. Congratulations, you're two!"
The flight mode is using "dampeners". That's a jargon way of saying flight-assist mode is turned on. This allows new players to spend their first few missions learning the game instead of learning how to fly. Once you disable dampeners you enter into a Newtonian physics based flight sim in Space."
There really isn't a lot of cost or performance savings with choosing a Dual core instead of Quad core atm as long as you are willing to overclock a bit. The recent Core2Quads have a very good overclocking record right now. They can be ran at 3.0ghz stable on stock cooling, and with more aggressive cooling people have been running them stable as high as 3.4ghz. The E8500 is $190 for 3.16ghz atm for Dual cores. The current bottleneck IMHO tends to be more from video card and ram/bus speeds than your CPU. You really can go quite a number of years nowadays just with a video card upgrade if you have a multi-core system. (Running a 3 year old AMD X2 system that is still very good at gaming with just a video card upgrade)
It seems the next logical step for them will be to develop a Chinese-grown OS and "strongly frown upon" use of Windows at home. (While at the same time having their OS support Windows apps) That way they can have the OS report any "dangerous behavior" by default, and roll out any patches or refresh a new "blocking list" daily....
Because everyone knows regular consumers need a 1TB+ HDD in order to surf Myspace and download a couple of songs on iTunes, am I right? :)
My mistake, I should have double-checked my info. Toys For Bob is owned by Activision (Activision-Blizzard now I guess) They also were not involved in Star Control 3.
As commented on earlier in the topic -- Ur-Quan Masters is Star Control 2. It's a space exploration and combat game from the early 90s by a small studio called Toys For Bob. A Star Control 3 was released after TFB was bought by a larger studio, but it didn't get very good reviews. Last I knew, Toys For Bob is still technically around as one of the many studios gobbled up by EA.
This totally reminds me of having to fill up on crew members after losing "hit points" in a ship battle ;)
Around here some will still ask you paper or plastic, but plastic is their first choice. Others you have to ask for paper and they will provide it. Places like Walmart only have plastic AFAIK. I prefer paper because it's more orderly to pack and put in the car. Not to mention they make great kitchen garbage and recycling bags ;)
Where I live, when you blow your nose you use a kleenex. When you want to cover leftovers, you use saran wrap. Yet Kleenex is just a brand of tissue paper, and Saran Wrap is just a brand of plastic wrap, but both products are so widespread, that the brand name is used to describe a generic product.
The Zelda series is highly popular after all these years, and it has a lot of puzzle elements built into the games. Tomb Raider is also known for puzzles, and has been a fairly successful franchise. It's true though, that in order to broaden market appeal these days, companies seem to design to the lowest denominator. I swear some of the people I see asking for help in World of Warcraft couldn't even pick their own nose. They are unable to even read the quest or use their eyes to get the answers that are right in front of their face.
But the only reason they are doing all of this is so that they aren't publicly disgraced in front of the entire world over complaints about how polluted their country and/or Beijing is. When all is said and done, the only thing that will be different is a handful of factories were moved.
Slashdot never fails to amaze me at the amazingly strange leaps of discussion that occur...
Cardboard box cartel? I've now heard it all... Crazy Aussies ;)
The reason so many people are starving in the developing world isn't due to supply -- it's largely due to political and economic reasons. Too many dictatorships, civil wars, etc. are preventing the food from getting to the people that need it, at a cost they can afford. Just look to Burma as a recent example of how a government can willfully ignore their people.
The reason raiders are angry is not because casual content is being added, but because the focus is being switched mid-stream. Not only with the new content coming out, but with changing of the old content as well. It's basically pulling the rug out from under the raiding community which Blizzard had supported well to this point. And the raiders also have a lot more invested in their characters. It's basically killing raiding overall, because the more casual players getting into raiding now tend to lack the determination to wipe for many nights learning bosses. They expect them to all fall over dead in 3 attempts, and after the first week where they have to spend 5hrs attempting one boss they're ready to quit. (And usually blame the guild for "sucking")
Yet other famous franchises managed to flop -- you can't tell me that Blizzard/Warcraft is more well-known than Sony/Starwars to the average Joe. Dungeons&Dragons. Lord of the Rings (which is even quite good IMHO, I felt it was almost as polished as WoW). Everquest2. Blizzard's claim to fame has always been these three major points IMHO: #1 - They don't release a game until it's ready. #2 - It runs well on very modest hardware. Not only 10% of the hardware like the ones that try to woo through graphics. (Looking at you AoC) #3 - They are willing to scrap a game if it doesn't live up to their standards. (Warcraft Adventures/Starcraft Ghost)
I assume they are pre-installing a copy of XP Pro without a key, which is totally legal AFAIK, since the software is not functional at that point. This saves customers the time of installing XP, yet allows them to re-use their current licenses from the machines they are scrapping, or buy used licenses from other vendors.