"Seeing how they *already* have a very popular MMORPG without a monthly fee (Guild Wars), I don't think it is a stretch to think this one won't either."
Seeing as they *already* have multiple MMOs which require a monthly fee (City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage II)and have stated in their Auto Assault faq that the game will have monthly fees, I think it's unlikely that the game will use the Guild Wars model. What remains to be seen is if they will do the advertising vs paid model like Anarchy Online or if all paid accounts will have advertising.
Um. The game Auto Assault is a post-apocalyptic wasteland car game similar to "Road Warrior" but with mutants and advanced technology. Kind of like Road Warrior meets the old Gamma World role playing game. So an ad saying "Go see Deuce Bigalow opening in theatres this weekend" would be really out of place. Maybe, just maybe if they integrated the ads as destroyed remnants of the former civilization it would fit. Maybe.
I would doubt they have a clue. As far as I've been able to tell most of the time they are dealing with complaints from users. Probably another player saw the activity and submitted it as being a bot. One time in WoW my group was trying to complete a quest and found that the ogre we needed to kill was bugged. It wouldn't die and wouldn't fight back. So we sat there for an hour on auto attack and skilled up our weapons to 300. Several people came by and joined in for awhile. So you've got six or seven players at times whacking on the invincible ogre. As far as I know nobody got banned or suspended for exploiting the bug. I don't know if since then they've added automated bot detection for this type of behavior. As far as the name ban thing seems to go, it also seems to be based on a player reporting a name. They don't even lock out the name after they remove it from a player. Once your name has been changed a new player can create a new character with the same violating name.
"have announced that they will be incorporating in-game advertising for their MMO Auto Assault"
The article is about advertising appearing in Auto Assault NOT Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage or any other NCSoft game. Auto Assault was pre-sold as an MMO with expected normal monthly MMO pricing. Now as to whether the monthly subscription will be for a game with advertising or if some other model is in the works, we don't know at this time.
"WoW runs on Mac too but I'm not sure if their other games support Mac."
Blizzard has pretty consistently supported Macs for years now. Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Diable 1 & 2 were all released for Mac. I believe the "Battle Chests" include both Windows and Mac versions in the box.
"WOW only did so at the low level. At the higher levels the game is nothing but grind."
You can go up to level 60 without really needing to grind. I think I only grinded a little bit at 57-59 just to speed things up. At 60 you hit the "giant wall of grind". You can grind faction, you can grind crafting materials, you can grind instances, you can grind for gold to get your epic mount, you can grind honor. There's a lot to do and ALL of it is repetitive. I think the brutal difference between the low end game and the high end (nothing like a curve, more like a wall) is the worst design decision Blizzard has made.
Or if you purchase a totalgaming.net subscription for $70, you get 10 tokens. Gal Civ 2 cost 5 tokens, equivalent to $35. You then have 5 additional tokens to use on other games. Depending on what you get, some older titles and indie games run 1-2 tokens. Overall it's a pretty good deal.
"I'm happily married, have a daughter, and have matured enough to realize that choice of an avatar in a game doesn't necessarily reflect anything real life."
Same here. I'm not sure why there is this association of having a female avatar = unsuccessful with women in real life. I play both male and female avatars. I don't consider either of them a projection of myself into the virtual world. My toons are characters. Just as much as a character in a story I might write.
"I'm serious, nowdays a PS2 offers a much better experience than a computer."
For FPS games - no way. For MMOs - no way. For RTS - no way. For turn based strategy - no way. For fight sims - no way.
Puzzle games are a toss up. Sports games are better on consoles. I'll concede you 3D platform games and RPGS as well, but only RPGs involving freaky looking anime people with spiky blue hair and giant heads. Ever compare Elder Scrolls Morrowind on the Xbox to the PC? The Xbox version was a pain in the ass to control.
On December 1, 1990, President Bush signed into law the "Computer Software Rental Amendments Act," an amendment of section 109 of the copyright law, prohibiting the rental, lease, or lending of a computer program for direct or indirect commercial gain unless authorized by the owner of copyright in the program. Behind the amendment was a concern that commercial rental of computer programs encourages illegal copying of the rented programs, depriving copyright owners of a return on their investment and discouraging creation of new works."
Previous to this amendment, you could rent computer software. I used to rent software via the mail for the Commodore 64 and Amiga computers back in the '80s - long before GameFly. About the only thing you can do is buy used games on auctions sites like ebay or www.gameswapzone.com.
The interesting thing is that EQ2 actually reviewed pretty well when it came out. The average rating over at gamerankings.com is 84%. It was completely overshadowed by the launch of World of Warcraft. WoW gets a lot of stuff right and I love the game, but like anything else it gets old and you find yourself with nothing interesting to do. After getting bored of WoW I started shopping for another MMO. I tried some free trials including Eve online and Star Wars Galaxies. One of the things that's nice about WoW's success is that almost all of the other MMOs are offering some sort of trial. It's easy to jump in and see if you like the system. Much to my surprise I found I liked the EQ2 trial a lot. The trial covers the newbie tutorial zone and up to level 10 I think. While the map is the same for both good and evil sides, they have different quests so you can play through twice doing different things. A few things I would note for someone thinking of starting EQ 2:
1. The game is tough on hardware. You may need to scale back some of the effects or choose a higher performance graphic setting. You need 1GB of RAM and more helps. 2. The art direction is generic fantasy compared to WoW. Don't expect the consistent stylization of Blizzard. Then again if you don't like the cartoony look you might appreciate this. 3. If you do start playing go to www.eqinterface.com and download the EQ2map addon. It's about the only UI mod you really need. It adds maps for some smaller zones that are mapless. It also adds NPC and mob markers to the maps to help you get around. 4. Read through the Things I wish I'd Known Earlier Guide. 5. Don't purchase the regular EQ2 game online. Purchase the boxed retail Kingdom of the Sky expansion. It's the best deal currently. Even though the KoS expansion is high level (55-70), if you own it you will start earning achievement points (sorta like talents in WoW) starting at level 20. The boxed retail is a full version of the game including the expansion and a month of play. It doesn't require a previous purchase of the game.
Quite a few of the low level players I've met on EQ2 are ex-WoW players. Some are player who left EQ2 to play WoW and have returned after burning out on WoW. EQ2 isn't a perfect game - no MMO is but I'm enjoying myself exploring a new game.
Your right, it would have been much more fun to keep playing WoW. Like all that fun I was having with:
1. Running the same content over and over again in hopes of maybe getting an item that might drop 2. Waiting in a queue for an hour to even get on the server to play 3. Sitting around waiting for hours in game for a chance to play a PVP battleground for 5 minutes 4. Doing repetitive faction grinding quests over and over 5. Enabling, disabling, updating my UI addons for every little patch that Blizzard releases 6. Running through the exact same lower level content for the third or fourth time with an alt
I'm sure EQ2 has plenty of these issues at the high end and I'm sure I'll quit when I get annoyed at it. Right now there are tons of quests for both solo and groups, new zones and dungeons to explore, solid combat and a good player community. Oh wait, I'm sorry SOE is the devil incarnate and Blizzard is capable of doing no wrong.
Since I started playing MMOs. I played City of Heroes for almost a year, then moved to WoW. Played Wow for close to a year, jumped over to City of Villains for a few months and now I am playing EverQuest 2. I still play other games besides the MMOs, but my purchasing frequency has gone down. I probably buy a game every other month now, rather than 1-2 a month two years ago. It also takes me longer to wear out a single player game because of time spent with MMOs. I've barely scratched the surface on Civ 4 and am only about halfway through Quake 4. Both games I've had since Christmas.
I actually have a friend who went back to the game after the NGE. He loves it. He suckered a me and someone else he played WoW with into trying it out. What can I say, no character customization, seriously whacked out combat, buildings that pop up after you've driven on top of them, no apparent player population. I wasn't impressed. The space combat is pretty cool although seriously repetitive. My friend is known to be extremely critical and have very picky taste. Apparently Sony has hit on the formula that is perfect for him. Which means it is very likely horrible to everyone else on planet Earth.
So if I'm playing the market to earn money for my epic mount I'm a farmer? As far as I'm concerned since the game places no restrictions on market tactics such as monopolizing components, it's fair game to buyout and resell. You may prefer to make money by hunting mobs, but for me as a healer it was always more efficient to harvest herbs, buy up the AH, repost at high prices, buy up the undercutters etc. It was easy enough to make 70-100g in a good night for an hour or two of effort.
I did it all the time to finance my epic mount. Once you have a few hundred gold you can play monopoly all you like. You do need to be smart and sometimes bide your time, not just re-flood the market but it doesn't take a genius to figure this stuff out. Now a group of people (farmers or not) with pooled resources (both gold and harvesting) can really dominate the market.
"But if the point of the game is to have fun, why should you feel pressured to prove yourself?"
For some people it isn't just about having fun. Or maybe a better way to put that is some people consider lording their mighty epic epenis over "lesser" players to be fun. I remember one incident where a member of my server's top raiding guild walked into the casual dueling area outside Iron Forge and proclaimed that the unwashed (unepic'd) masses were "pathetic and should just quit playing now" because we'd never have a big shiny epeen like his.
I hate to say it - but if you have people who want to use real money to buy and sell virtual items AND people who feel it is cheating or in violation of the EULA - maybe Sony has the right approach with the Station Exchange. Sony maintains a site for the sale of gold, items and characters within EverQuest II. The catch is, sales are only allowed on servers which are "Station Exchange" servers. This means that if you are that player with too much extra cash you should consider playing on one of those servers rather than deal with potentially shady 3rd party transactions.
"By paying for the gold instead of the shoes, the shoes go uncreated, while someone spends weeks doing something utterly unnecessary."
Well, I would assume that the individual working at the gold farming company is there for a reason. Although they have been labeled "sweat shops" in the media, if I was in one of those countries I would rather work in a gold farming sweat shop versus a shoe making sweat shop where I would risk physical injury or maiming due to inadequate safety procedures. You do realize that the person creating the shoe is not creating it for themselves? They don't give a flying fuck about the shoe, they care about the paycheck they get to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. For the worker virtual gold is just as real an item for earning a paycheck as a shoe.
For how messed up the AH can be. When I was working towards my epic mount, mostly by selling mid to high end herbs, I used to deliberately corner the market on items, drive up the prices, buyout anyone who undercut me and resell at the higher price. Once you have a base of gold to work from (say 300g or so) this can be pretty easy to do, so long as the items are not super common. You also learn when to sell and when to buy. The big raid guilds usually have pretty consistent schedules so it's easy enough to time buying out the supply and listing it high. After all everyone needs materials for certain potions. It took me about 2 weeks to get the gold for my epic mount. Rather than being broke I had a good deal of materials left over from my "business" and cleared an additional 400g just from leftover stock. Now I wasn't doing this full time, just one or two hours a night. This was also on a high population server with plenty of materials flowing into the AH. Now, if you have a guild that actually coordinates its harvesting and pooled its funds - I would imagine you could completely turn cost upside down and make mad profits. I believe this has been done in game before. I've also heard people in the forums complain about this behavior. It's just a natural part of an open economy. There is no penalty for monopolizing a raw material but you do take a risk that someone will flood the market and undercut you (which I've done to my competitors). I've had to sit on a ton of items because the price was driven down too low and I had way to much stock to buyout the glut. A couple days later however I was able to move the stock at double the price.
I think they're calling it altaholism these days. You may be genetically predisposed to the condition.
Re:RPMs are not the only measure of hard drive spe
on
Why Vista Won't Suck
·
· Score: 1
True not 100x times faster more like 15-20x faster than the top speed of SCSI 1 (which that 100MB drive probably never hit) at best on a top of the line single drive. The biggest difference being that the laws of physics don't allow us to crank the spindle speed up on a hard drive - the platters would rip through the unit. Just as CD-ROMs have topped out at 52x or so and those occasionally explode.
"Upgrading the processor would speed the internal graphics as well."
The graphics chip will not gain any new features. The only video operations that will be faster are things that are CPU dependant, where the CPU is your bottleneck. The bus speed stays the same after the upgrade which means the video chip has the same bandwidth to the system memory.
I recently purchased EverQuest 2 through the Direct2Drive service. I figured an MMO was relatively safe since I wouldn't need to deal with any of the weird DRM that most Direcr2Drive games require to be installed. The big problem was delivery of the game files. At least for EverQuest 2, in order to download the files I paid for I had to use the FilePlanet servers and a proprietary download program. The real problem is that unless you are a FilePlanet subscriber you can't use the "no wait" servers AND ads are displayed by the download application for the duration of the download. Now you can minimize the application and use your computer, but every couple minutes when the ad changes the application will pop up into the middle of your screen. The only way to stop this from happening is to subscribe to FilePlanet to disable the ads (keep in mind this is to download a program I PAID for, not a demo). Additionally, you can't just leave the download going overnight because the download app has a habit of timing out the connection, in which case the download needs to be manually resumed. I spent an exciting 3 hours watching the bits come down and had to resume the download more than 20 times. I can understand problems with downloads timing out as the Internet is far from perfect, however forcing a paying customer to watch ads while the product they bought is being downloaded just boggles my mind. I thought the Steam install process was much better although I waited until a couple weeks after Half Life 2's launch before using it. Just wish I could figure out how to install Steam programs on some drive other than C:.
Slashdot Mirror
"Seeing how they *already* have a very popular MMORPG without a monthly fee (Guild Wars), I don't think it is a stretch to think this one won't either."
Seeing as they *already* have multiple MMOs which require a monthly fee (City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage II)and have stated in their Auto Assault faq that the game will have monthly fees, I think it's unlikely that the game will use the Guild Wars model.
What remains to be seen is if they will do the advertising vs paid model like Anarchy Online or if all paid accounts will have advertising.
Um. The game Auto Assault is a post-apocalyptic wasteland car game similar to "Road Warrior" but with mutants and advanced technology. Kind of like Road Warrior meets the old Gamma World role playing game.
So an ad saying "Go see Deuce Bigalow opening in theatres this weekend" would be really out of place. Maybe, just maybe if they integrated the ads as destroyed remnants of the former civilization it would fit. Maybe.
I would doubt they have a clue. As far as I've been able to tell most of the time they are dealing with complaints from users. Probably another player saw the activity and submitted it as being a bot.
One time in WoW my group was trying to complete a quest and found that the ogre we needed to kill was bugged. It wouldn't die and wouldn't fight back. So we sat there for an hour on auto attack and skilled up our weapons to 300. Several people came by and joined in for awhile. So you've got six or seven players at times whacking on the invincible ogre. As far as I know nobody got banned or suspended for exploiting the bug.
I don't know if since then they've added automated bot detection for this type of behavior.
As far as the name ban thing seems to go, it also seems to be based on a player reporting a name. They don't even lock out the name after they remove it from a player. Once your name has been changed a new player can create a new character with the same violating name.
No - YOU missed the point:
"have announced that they will be incorporating in-game advertising for their MMO Auto Assault"
The article is about advertising appearing in Auto Assault NOT Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage or any other NCSoft game.
Auto Assault was pre-sold as an MMO with expected normal monthly MMO pricing. Now as to whether the monthly subscription will be for a game with advertising or if some other model is in the works, we don't know at this time.
"WoW runs on Mac too but I'm not sure if their other games support Mac."
Blizzard has pretty consistently supported Macs for years now. Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Diable 1 & 2 were all released for Mac. I believe the "Battle Chests" include both Windows and Mac versions in the box.
"WOW only did so at the low level. At the higher levels the game is nothing but grind."
You can go up to level 60 without really needing to grind. I think I only grinded a little bit at 57-59 just to speed things up.
At 60 you hit the "giant wall of grind". You can grind faction, you can grind crafting materials, you can grind instances, you can grind for gold to get your epic mount, you can grind honor. There's a lot to do and ALL of it is repetitive.
I think the brutal difference between the low end game and the high end (nothing like a curve, more like a wall) is the worst design decision Blizzard has made.
Or if you purchase a totalgaming.net subscription for $70, you get 10 tokens. Gal Civ 2 cost 5 tokens, equivalent to $35. You then have 5 additional tokens to use on other games. Depending on what you get, some older titles and indie games run 1-2 tokens. Overall it's a pretty good deal.
"I'm happily married, have a daughter, and have matured enough to realize that choice of an avatar in a game doesn't necessarily reflect anything real life."
Same here. I'm not sure why there is this association of having a female avatar = unsuccessful with women in real life.
I play both male and female avatars. I don't consider either of them a projection of myself into the virtual world. My toons are characters. Just as much as a character in a story I might write.
"I'm serious, nowdays a PS2 offers a much better experience than a computer."
For FPS games - no way.
For MMOs - no way.
For RTS - no way.
For turn based strategy - no way.
For fight sims - no way.
Puzzle games are a toss up. Sports games are better on consoles. I'll concede you 3D platform games and RPGS as well, but only RPGs involving freaky looking anime people with spiky blue hair and giant heads. Ever compare Elder Scrolls Morrowind on the Xbox to the PC? The Xbox version was a pain in the ass to control.
Renting computer software without permission of the copyright holder was made illegal in the US by the Computer Software Rental Amendment Act of 1990.
In a nutshell:
On December 1, 1990, President Bush signed into law the "Computer Software Rental Amendments Act," an amendment of section 109 of the copyright law, prohibiting the rental, lease, or lending of a computer program for direct or indirect commercial gain unless authorized by the owner of copyright in the program. Behind the amendment was a concern that commercial rental of computer programs encourages illegal copying of the rented programs, depriving copyright owners of a return on their investment and discouraging creation of new works."
Previous to this amendment, you could rent computer software. I used to rent software via the mail for the Commodore 64 and Amiga computers back in the '80s - long before GameFly.
About the only thing you can do is buy used games on auctions sites like ebay or www.gameswapzone.com.
The interesting thing is that EQ2 actually reviewed pretty well when it came out. The average rating over at gamerankings.com is 84%. It was completely overshadowed by the launch of World of Warcraft.
WoW gets a lot of stuff right and I love the game, but like anything else it gets old and you find yourself with nothing interesting to do.
After getting bored of WoW I started shopping for another MMO. I tried some free trials including Eve online and Star Wars Galaxies. One of the things that's nice about WoW's success is that almost all of the other MMOs are offering some sort of trial. It's easy to jump in and see if you like the system.
Much to my surprise I found I liked the EQ2 trial a lot. The trial covers the newbie tutorial zone and up to level 10 I think. While the map is the same for both good and evil sides, they have different quests so you can play through twice doing different things.
A few things I would note for someone thinking of starting EQ 2:
1. The game is tough on hardware. You may need to scale back some of the effects or choose a higher performance graphic setting. You need 1GB of RAM and more helps.
2. The art direction is generic fantasy compared to WoW. Don't expect the consistent stylization of Blizzard. Then again if you don't like the cartoony look you might appreciate this.
3. If you do start playing go to www.eqinterface.com and download the EQ2map addon. It's about the only UI mod you really need. It adds maps for some smaller zones that are mapless. It also adds NPC and mob markers to the maps to help you get around.
4. Read through the Things I wish I'd Known Earlier Guide.
5. Don't purchase the regular EQ2 game online. Purchase the boxed retail Kingdom of the Sky expansion. It's the best deal currently. Even though the KoS expansion is high level (55-70), if you own it you will start earning achievement points (sorta like talents in WoW) starting at level 20. The boxed retail is a full version of the game including the expansion and a month of play. It doesn't require a previous purchase of the game.
Quite a few of the low level players I've met on EQ2 are ex-WoW players. Some are player who left EQ2 to play WoW and have returned after burning out on WoW.
EQ2 isn't a perfect game - no MMO is but I'm enjoying myself exploring a new game.
Your right, it would have been much more fun to keep playing WoW. Like all that fun I was having with:
1. Running the same content over and over again in hopes of maybe getting an item that might drop
2. Waiting in a queue for an hour to even get on the server to play
3. Sitting around waiting for hours in game for a chance to play a PVP battleground for 5 minutes
4. Doing repetitive faction grinding quests over and over
5. Enabling, disabling, updating my UI addons for every little patch that Blizzard releases
6. Running through the exact same lower level content for the third or fourth time with an alt
I'm sure EQ2 has plenty of these issues at the high end and I'm sure I'll quit when I get annoyed at it. Right now there are tons of quests for both solo and groups, new zones and dungeons to explore, solid combat and a good player community.
Oh wait, I'm sorry SOE is the devil incarnate and Blizzard is capable of doing no wrong.
Since I started playing MMOs. I played City of Heroes for almost a year, then moved to WoW. Played Wow for close to a year, jumped over to City of Villains for a few months and now I am playing EverQuest 2.
I still play other games besides the MMOs, but my purchasing frequency has gone down. I probably buy a game every other month now, rather than 1-2 a month two years ago. It also takes me longer to wear out a single player game because of time spent with MMOs. I've barely scratched the surface on Civ 4 and am only about halfway through Quake 4. Both games I've had since Christmas.
I actually have a friend who went back to the game after the NGE. He loves it.
He suckered a me and someone else he played WoW with into trying it out.
What can I say, no character customization, seriously whacked out combat, buildings that pop up after you've driven on top of them, no apparent player population. I wasn't impressed. The space combat is pretty cool although seriously repetitive.
My friend is known to be extremely critical and have very picky taste. Apparently Sony has hit on the formula that is perfect for him. Which means it is very likely horrible to everyone else on planet Earth.
So if I'm playing the market to earn money for my epic mount I'm a farmer?
As far as I'm concerned since the game places no restrictions on market tactics such as monopolizing components, it's fair game to buyout and resell. You may prefer to make money by hunting mobs, but for me as a healer it was always more efficient to harvest herbs, buy up the AH, repost at high prices, buy up the undercutters etc. It was easy enough to make 70-100g in a good night for an hour or two of effort.
I did it all the time to finance my epic mount. Once you have a few hundred gold you can play monopoly all you like. You do need to be smart and sometimes bide your time, not just re-flood the market but it doesn't take a genius to figure this stuff out.
Now a group of people (farmers or not) with pooled resources (both gold and harvesting) can really dominate the market.
"But if the point of the game is to have fun, why should you feel pressured to prove yourself?"
For some people it isn't just about having fun. Or maybe a better way to put that is some people consider lording their mighty epic epenis over "lesser" players to be fun.
I remember one incident where a member of my server's top raiding guild walked into the casual dueling area outside Iron Forge and proclaimed that the unwashed (unepic'd) masses were "pathetic and should just quit playing now" because we'd never have a big shiny epeen like his.
I hate to say it - but if you have people who want to use real money to buy and sell virtual items AND people who feel it is cheating or in violation of the EULA - maybe Sony has the right approach with the Station Exchange. Sony maintains a site for the sale of gold, items and characters within EverQuest II. The catch is, sales are only allowed on servers which are "Station Exchange" servers.
This means that if you are that player with too much extra cash you should consider playing on one of those servers rather than deal with potentially shady 3rd party transactions.
"By paying for the gold instead of the shoes, the shoes go uncreated, while someone spends weeks doing something utterly unnecessary."
Well, I would assume that the individual working at the gold farming company is there for a reason. Although they have been labeled "sweat shops" in the media, if I was in one of those countries I would rather work in a gold farming sweat shop versus a shoe making sweat shop where I would risk physical injury or maiming due to inadequate safety procedures.
You do realize that the person creating the shoe is not creating it for themselves? They don't give a flying fuck about the shoe, they care about the paycheck they get to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. For the worker virtual gold is just as real an item for earning a paycheck as a shoe.
For how messed up the AH can be. When I was working towards my epic mount, mostly by selling mid to high end herbs, I used to deliberately corner the market on items, drive up the prices, buyout anyone who undercut me and resell at the higher price. Once you have a base of gold to work from (say 300g or so) this can be pretty easy to do, so long as the items are not super common.
You also learn when to sell and when to buy. The big raid guilds usually have pretty consistent schedules so it's easy enough to time buying out the supply and listing it high. After all everyone needs materials for certain potions.
It took me about 2 weeks to get the gold for my epic mount. Rather than being broke I had a good deal of materials left over from my "business" and cleared an additional 400g just from leftover stock.
Now I wasn't doing this full time, just one or two hours a night. This was also on a high population server with plenty of materials flowing into the AH.
Now, if you have a guild that actually coordinates its harvesting and pooled its funds - I would imagine you could completely turn cost upside down and make mad profits. I believe this has been done in game before.
I've also heard people in the forums complain about this behavior. It's just a natural part of an open economy. There is no penalty for monopolizing a raw material but you do take a risk that someone will flood the market and undercut you (which I've done to my competitors). I've had to sit on a ton of items because the price was driven down too low and I had way to much stock to buyout the glut. A couple days later however I was able to move the stock at double the price.
I think they're calling it altaholism these days. You may be genetically predisposed to the condition.
True not 100x times faster more like 15-20x faster than the top speed of SCSI 1 (which that 100MB drive probably never hit) at best on a top of the line single drive. The biggest difference being that the laws of physics don't allow us to crank the spindle speed up on a hard drive - the platters would rip through the unit. Just as CD-ROMs have topped out at 52x or so and those occasionally explode.
"Upgrading the processor would speed the internal graphics as well."
The graphics chip will not gain any new features. The only video operations that will be faster are things that are CPU dependant, where the CPU is your bottleneck. The bus speed stays the same after the upgrade which means the video chip has the same bandwidth to the system memory.
I recently purchased EverQuest 2 through the Direct2Drive service. I figured an MMO was relatively safe since I wouldn't need to deal with any of the weird DRM that most Direcr2Drive games require to be installed. The big problem was delivery of the game files. At least for EverQuest 2, in order to download the files I paid for I had to use the FilePlanet servers and a proprietary download program. The real problem is that unless you are a FilePlanet subscriber you can't use the "no wait" servers AND ads are displayed by the download application for the duration of the download. Now you can minimize the application and use your computer, but every couple minutes when the ad changes the application will pop up into the middle of your screen. The only way to stop this from happening is to subscribe to FilePlanet to disable the ads (keep in mind this is to download a program I PAID for, not a demo). Additionally, you can't just leave the download going overnight because the download app has a habit of timing out the connection, in which case the download needs to be manually resumed. I spent an exciting 3 hours watching the bits come down and had to resume the download more than 20 times.
I can understand problems with downloads timing out as the Internet is far from perfect, however forcing a paying customer to watch ads while the product they bought is being downloaded just boggles my mind.
I thought the Steam install process was much better although I waited until a couple weeks after Half Life 2's launch before using it. Just wish I could figure out how to install Steam programs on some drive other than C:.
"This character is coming to life in every way; in terms of physics and animation..."
The key words are physics and animation. This time around it's not the size of the balls that matter it's how high they bounce.