"Whaa, I don't have time to play this game, but I want to appear important and competent among my peers when playing the game, so I cheat"
You, dear sir, are a scumbag. Please find a hobby you have time for. Or try playing honestly for a change.
As for how WoW was when Tier 5 raid items were all the rage - Blizzard already nerfed it all to suit all the "I don't have time" guys. It is true that back when SSC and TK were new, you *had* to farm consumables for 4-5 hours a week to have the necessary items for proper raiding. You no longer need to do that. There is no need to farm consumables or just about anything for that matter. It's all casuali-zed by now. Heck, for the first three raid instances you do not need flasks, food buffs or mana potions at all - just drool and bash your head at the keyboard, then loot purple items.
In WoW the gold has been non-issue since.. at least an year ago. The only situation where it matters any more is when you buy BOE epics or extremely rare drops from AH (which have highly inflated prices due to the ease of obtaining gold). And with these, the more you buy gold, the higher these prices inflate to - and they are all luxury items for scrubs that don't have the necessary social skills to raid. All gear that you actually want to wear, assuming you have a choice, is Bind on Pickup anyway - you have to kill the boss to loot the item, can't just buy it.
As for all other use of gold in WoW - item repairs, consumables, crafting... it is insignificant compared to the amount you get from just playing the game. There is NO NEED to farm gold in WoW any more. Period. Only players in my large WoW guild who are commonly broke are the PvP idiots who do nothing but arena all day long - unsurprisingly that doesn't reward them with gold while they keep spending gold to enchant and gem their shiny PvP epics. So you have to go do some PvE from time to time to fund your PvP activities? Oh. My. God.
As for the leveling... it's a major piece of the content of the game. Sure, people gripe that their alt number four or five is a pain to level as you have already done all the content a couple of times, but do you really need that alt number four or five? And if you think you do, why do you think you are entitled to cheat (by using a powerleveling service)?
There is "consumer demand" because lazy bum players who "can't be assed" to play the game want to cheat by buying ingame assets and currency with real money.
Once it becomes okay to cheat, only the cheaters will stay around. It's fine to cheat in single player games - all you are really doing is cheating yourself out of the proper experience. Cheating in multiplayer games (especially persistent multiplayer games) you'll just participate in destroying the game you are playing.
The only reason game companies are even looking at this is because enforcing the rules is expensive. Too many lazy bums around that need the banstick. Plus they look at how Asian companies rake in the money from idiots out there who all like to play "whoever has the most disposable income wins"-style game. SOE already tried this with EQ2 and it really didn't work - cheaters kept cheating on the regular servers and the gameplay and community on the "enabled" servers was a cesspit of teenagers trying to convert excess free time into dollars and lazy idiots feeding the teenagers with too much disposable income. Professional farmers stayed on the normal servers as black market prices were always higher and the "consumer demand" was higher on the servers where you could actually buy an advantage.
Cheating with real money is an advantage only when it is cheating. When everyone is doing it, it's just a stupid way to milk more money from all the people who bother to play the "game".
The people who did know are retired or dead, and plenty of critical data to recreate Saturn V is lost. Considering how the related technologies have advanced since then, it just doesn't make sense.
No. Phasing was already used in late Burning Crusade - there is one daily quest that uses it, and the whole isle of quel'danas used phasing as people were "opening it up". In that case the "phases" of the island happened to everyone, but the system was the same - you did stuff, at some point - poof - things changed in the world.
Blizzard is not stupid - before they bet their whole franchise on a complex piece of code, they tested it, then they tested it more, then they tested it in the live game. Once it was proven to be solid, quest developers went nuts with it in Wrath of the Lich King.
Same is true for a lot of stuff - like, say, vehicles. Some of the vehicle stuff is new, but you could already "turn into a dragon" while fighting Kil'jaeden in Sunwell Plateau... or actually turn into a ghost while fighting Teron Gorefiend in Black Temple way earlier. Again, small roles for a piece of code ("morph player into something else, give him new quickbar of abilities, disable old ones") which, when proven, is then "let loose" with the quest designers, who promptly went nuts with the idea.
In this case, I think they are (mis)using the law for the purpose of protecting the game play of their multiplayer online game from miscreants who think it's their god given right to cheat.
Their methods may be under dispute, but their aim in this case is not evil. Anyone who values a fair game and has played WoW during the widespread Glider bot epidemic would agree with that.
7300 is useless due to the fact that it's almost as slow as 6200. Too slow for gaming. 7600GT is a reasonable gaming card for older games. Still, it's already two generations old. PCIE itself is three years old.
AGP is obsolete. If you want a new video card, replace your motherboard (And the CPU, and the RAM, and most likely the power supply as well)
GeForce 7300 series is useless for 3D GeForce 7600 closest ATI product is probably ATI X1650 series GeForce 7800/7900 is closest to ATI X1950 series
Of course, these days NVIDIA is already busy pushing the 9x00 series while ATI has the HD38xx models - two generations past the cards you were referring to.
Just stop clinging to the obsolete AGP port if you need 3D rendering performance.
That, plus their nonexistent character retention policy (we delete your chars if you ever cancel PLUS YOU GET TO BUY A NEW BOX IF YOU WANT TO RESUB) and the fact that they charge extra for alt characters ensured I never even started...
It may be preinstalled in Windows *Vista*, but it sure as hell is not preinstalled on XP.
Instructing end users to install this and that.NET framework is a common problem. As is explaining the fact 'WTF why do I have to install.NET 1.1, I already have 2.0!' - most users don't understand that the two can (and in some cases should) coexist.
"other than maybe making screenshots more difficult to get."
That would mean the card is DOA for every game reviewer out there.... and believe me, those guys will make their displeasure *very* well known. The card would be instant DOA among the prime target market (hardcore gamers) once every game and hardware reviewer has panned it for breaking the ability to take screenshots. In fact, hardcore gamers are one reason why Vista is being treated like a disease right now - games have ton of problem with Vista - part of it is immature drivers, part is game code not playing nice with the whole 'no admin access for normal users' thing and part is just general buggyness of Vista, but the end result is the same - early adopter hardcore gamers are telling their friends 'Vista sucks', and the story spreads from end user to end user.
Author is breaking the TOS and EULA, and Blizzard is saying that the author has therefore lost his license to the software (WoW client). So it's a copyright violation.
He definitely can't cook up his bot programs without access to the client (and continuing access to it's patches).
If you just use them to scan executables/emails before opening anything, for that an older one with up to date signatures should do fine.
But the old engines tend to lack defenses against 0wnage of the system via different holes. Major reason why new AV clients are so heavy on the system is because they actively try to stop any 'nasty' stuff from happening to the system - even against unknown threats using heuristics.
Older AV software also does not usually do anything against spyware and other crapware.
I've worked in PC repair, and its highly common to see systems with outdated AV software throughly owned by some spyware/adware, disabling the AV software (it would still fetch updates and claim all was well, but it would not do anything in reality), and it's not uncommon to find bunch of viruses in such cases as well.
If your system can't run a modern AV software (I recommend F-Secure, it's pretty lightweight for what it does), either upgrade your system, pull the network cable, or stop using Windows.
Little known fact: Keys from major OEMs printed on stickers on your box / under your laptop are DUMMY KEYS. You can install the OS with them, but it will NOT activate.
If you use manufacturer's recommended recovery method (Recovery CD, recovery partition), the key is never asked. If you use some other media, the key is accepted, but it _will not activate_. If you call MS and actually get a human, they usually give you a new key when you explain the situation, but the sticker key not working is WORKING AS DESIGNED.
The sticker keys used to work, but then people stole them by writing them down from PCs (shocking!), so the MS answer was to make them essentially duds.
This is easy to fix. Forget emachines, tell them to jump off a cliff.
Call Microsoft product activation center.
Tell them the following thing: "I need to reactivate my copy of Windows, since I had to replace my motherboard due to a defect."
They will activate it. If neccessary, they will give you a new product key. You may have to provide your current key (off your emachines system). Complain until they do.
(confirmed to work at least in Finland. Dunno if in US they have different procedures or rules, but here by law they cannot refuse)
Except that in my books, original Vampire Killer vas *not* a side scroller.
Anyway, I had assumed MSX2 versions were released prior to NES versions. It now appears that they were developed more or less in paraller, but by different development teams - hence, the games were not quite the same. MSX2 versions, however, are in my opinion superior versions, and it's a shame most gamers think these games originate from NES alone.
Then again, most current kids think Metal Gear series started on the PS1 with Metal Gear Solid. Ah well...
Amen. Both Castlevania (aka Vampire Killer) and Metal Gear series started on MSX2 way back... before NES was even launched.
NES versions of those first titles were (poorly done) ports, but apparently they sold a truckload because the fundamentals of gameplay were good enough even if the graphics and content was gutted due to NES limitations.
I mean in the US, there are models you cannot buy unlocked. You either commit to bundles, or that model is *not available*.
Like this Apple uberphone.
Where I come from, it's illegal to force you to buy a bundle. You can always buy the phone and the service separate. Silly people with poor math skills still do buy bundles looking just at the '1 euro phone' start price and 'low monthly fee'... unable to figure out that in two years they've paid more than the price of the phone + average amount of calls they'd make during that time.
... they brought in a massive truckload of money that they've ripped off their customers with their long and overpriced contracts?
Plus some they are going to rip off people with those 2 year contracts.
Silly US bundle-phone crap. I'd never buy a phone with a contract - the deal is always calculated to be good for the phone company and bad for the user. Logic is that while you are tied down for 2 years to pay the contract, prices elsewhere go down, but you are stuck paying higher prices. Separate phone is always the better deal.
Fujitsu most likely fobbed you off because they do not have the logistics in place to ship 30$ parts around to individuals, so they claimed you need to be a rocket scientist.
Do you also commonly contact manufacturers to actually buy your laptops? Most manufacturers are not direct seller (dell is an exception). Manufacturers sell to distributors (and in case of parts, to certified repair centers), and that's where you have to ask for your parts.
Ask a certified, independent Fujitsu repair center - they most likely are happy to sell you any part, plus you get someone with a clue to help you make sure you get the right part. At least that's how it works over where I live. If I call fujitsu direct, they are not interested in helping you. However, if you call any number of local shops who repair Fujitsu laptops, they can get you any part for a reasonable price.
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You, dear sir, are a scumbag. Please find a hobby you have time for. Or try playing honestly for a change.
As for how WoW was when Tier 5 raid items were all the rage - Blizzard already nerfed it all to suit all the "I don't have time" guys. It is true that back when SSC and TK were new, you *had* to farm consumables for 4-5 hours a week to have the necessary items for proper raiding. You no longer need to do that. There is no need to farm consumables or just about anything for that matter. It's all casuali-zed by now. Heck, for the first three raid instances you do not need flasks, food buffs or mana potions at all - just drool and bash your head at the keyboard, then loot purple items.
Not really.
In WoW the gold has been non-issue since.. at least an year ago. The only situation where it matters any more is when you buy BOE epics or extremely rare drops from AH (which have highly inflated prices due to the ease of obtaining gold). And with these, the more you buy gold, the higher these prices inflate to - and they are all luxury items for scrubs that don't have the necessary social skills to raid. All gear that you actually want to wear, assuming you have a choice, is Bind on Pickup anyway - you have to kill the boss to loot the item, can't just buy it.
As for all other use of gold in WoW - item repairs, consumables, crafting... it is insignificant compared to the amount you get from just playing the game. There is NO NEED to farm gold in WoW any more. Period. Only players in my large WoW guild who are commonly broke are the PvP idiots who do nothing but arena all day long - unsurprisingly that doesn't reward them with gold while they keep spending gold to enchant and gem their shiny PvP epics. So you have to go do some PvE from time to time to fund your PvP activities? Oh. My. God.
As for the leveling... it's a major piece of the content of the game. Sure, people gripe that their alt number four or five is a pain to level as you have already done all the content a couple of times, but do you really need that alt number four or five? And if you think you do, why do you think you are entitled to cheat (by using a powerleveling service)?
There is "consumer demand" because lazy bum players who "can't be assed" to play the game want to cheat by buying ingame assets and currency with real money.
Once it becomes okay to cheat, only the cheaters will stay around. It's fine to cheat in single player games - all you are really doing is cheating yourself out of the proper experience. Cheating in multiplayer games (especially persistent multiplayer games) you'll just participate in destroying the game you are playing.
The only reason game companies are even looking at this is because enforcing the rules is expensive. Too many lazy bums around that need the banstick. Plus they look at how Asian companies rake in the money from idiots out there who all like to play "whoever has the most disposable income wins"-style game. SOE already tried this with EQ2 and it really didn't work - cheaters kept cheating on the regular servers and the gameplay and community on the "enabled" servers was a cesspit of teenagers trying to convert excess free time into dollars and lazy idiots feeding the teenagers with too much disposable income. Professional farmers stayed on the normal servers as black market prices were always higher and the "consumer demand" was higher on the servers where you could actually buy an advantage.
Cheating with real money is an advantage only when it is cheating. When everyone is doing it, it's just a stupid way to milk more money from all the people who bother to play the "game".
Yep, definitely need this.
No, we don't.
The people who did know are retired or dead, and plenty of critical data to recreate Saturn V is lost. Considering how the related technologies have advanced since then, it just doesn't make sense.
No. Phasing was already used in late Burning Crusade - there is one daily quest that uses it, and the whole isle of quel'danas used phasing as people were "opening it up". In that case the "phases" of the island happened to everyone, but the system was the same - you did stuff, at some point - poof - things changed in the world.
Blizzard is not stupid - before they bet their whole franchise on a complex piece of code, they tested it, then they tested it more, then they tested it in the live game. Once it was proven to be solid, quest developers went nuts with it in Wrath of the Lich King.
Same is true for a lot of stuff - like, say, vehicles. Some of the vehicle stuff is new, but you could already "turn into a dragon" while fighting Kil'jaeden in Sunwell Plateau... or actually turn into a ghost while fighting Teron Gorefiend in Black Temple way earlier. Again, small roles for a piece of code ("morph player into something else, give him new quickbar of abilities, disable old ones") which, when proven, is then "let loose" with the quest designers, who promptly went nuts with the idea.
In this case, I think they are (mis)using the law for the purpose of protecting the game play of their multiplayer online game from miscreants who think it's their god given right to cheat.
Their methods may be under dispute, but their aim in this case is not evil. Anyone who values a fair game and has played WoW during the widespread Glider bot epidemic would agree with that.
Well, it *should* be big news. The status quo should be that a game is released when it's ready and polished.
It's a sad world when it's shocking to find a new MMO to be actually bug-free and polished...
7300 is useless due to the fact that it's almost as slow as 6200. Too slow for gaming.
7600GT is a reasonable gaming card for older games. Still, it's already two generations old. PCIE itself is three years old.
AGP is obsolete. If you want a new video card, replace your motherboard (And the CPU, and the RAM, and most likely the power supply as well)
GeForce 7300 series is useless for 3D
GeForce 7600 closest ATI product is probably ATI X1650 series
GeForce 7800/7900 is closest to ATI X1950 series
Of course, these days NVIDIA is already busy pushing the 9x00 series while ATI has the HD38xx models - two generations past the cards you were referring to.
Just stop clinging to the obsolete AGP port if you need 3D rendering performance.
That, plus their nonexistent character retention policy (we delete your chars if you ever cancel PLUS YOU GET TO BUY A NEW BOX IF YOU WANT TO RESUB) and the fact that they charge extra for alt characters ensured I never even started...
FFXI is utter crap.
Bit like ATI then, I guess. Their Catalyst Control Center still requires the framework installed...
As does the game Lord of the Rings Online.
Damn penny pinchers.
It may be preinstalled in Windows *Vista*, but it sure as hell is not preinstalled on XP.
.NET framework is a common problem. As is explaining the fact 'WTF why do I have to install .NET 1.1, I already have 2.0!' - most users don't understand that the two can (and in some cases should) coexist.
.NET very end-user unfriendly in XP.
Instructing end users to install this and that
MS has made
"other than maybe making screenshots more difficult to get."
... and believe me, those guys will make their displeasure *very* well known. The card would be instant DOA among the prime target market (hardcore gamers) once every game and hardware reviewer has panned it for breaking the ability to take screenshots. In fact, hardcore gamers are one reason why Vista is being treated like a disease right now - games have ton of problem with Vista - part of it is immature drivers, part is game code not playing nice with the whole 'no admin access for normal users' thing and part is just general buggyness of Vista, but the end result is the same - early adopter hardcore gamers are telling their friends 'Vista sucks', and the story spreads from end user to end user.
That would mean the card is DOA for every game reviewer out there.
Duh, that's Blizzard's argument.
Author is breaking the TOS and EULA, and Blizzard is saying that the author has therefore lost his license to the software (WoW client). So it's a copyright violation.
He definitely can't cook up his bot programs without access to the client (and continuing access to it's patches).
Learn 2 Use robots.txt
Next case.
It depends.
If you just use them to scan executables/emails before opening anything, for that an older one with up to date signatures should do fine.
But the old engines tend to lack defenses against 0wnage of the system via different holes. Major reason why new AV clients are so heavy on the system is because they actively try to stop any 'nasty' stuff from happening to the system - even against unknown threats using heuristics.
Older AV software also does not usually do anything against spyware and other crapware.
I've worked in PC repair, and its highly common to see systems with outdated AV software throughly owned by some spyware/adware, disabling the AV software (it would still fetch updates and claim all was well, but it would not do anything in reality), and it's not uncommon to find bunch of viruses in such cases as well.
If your system can't run a modern AV software (I recommend F-Secure, it's pretty lightweight for what it does), either upgrade your system, pull the network cable, or stop using Windows.
Working as designed.
Little known fact: Keys from major OEMs printed on stickers on your box / under your laptop are DUMMY KEYS. You can install the OS with them, but it will NOT activate.
If you use manufacturer's recommended recovery method (Recovery CD, recovery partition), the key is never asked. If you use some other media, the key is accepted, but it _will not activate_. If you call MS and actually get a human, they usually give you a new key when you explain the situation, but the sticker key not working is WORKING AS DESIGNED.
The sticker keys used to work, but then people stole them by writing them down from PCs (shocking!), so the MS answer was to make them essentially duds.
This is easy to fix. Forget emachines, tell them to jump off a cliff.
Call Microsoft product activation center.
Tell them the following thing:
"I need to reactivate my copy of Windows, since I had to replace my motherboard due to a defect."
They will activate it. If neccessary, they will give you a new product key. You may have to provide your current key (off your emachines system). Complain until they do.
(confirmed to work at least in Finland. Dunno if in US they have different procedures or rules, but here by law they cannot refuse)
Except that in my books, original Vampire Killer vas *not* a side scroller.
Anyway, I had assumed MSX2 versions were released prior to NES versions. It now appears that they were developed more or less in paraller, but by different development teams - hence, the games were not quite the same. MSX2 versions, however, are in my opinion superior versions, and it's a shame most gamers think these games originate from NES alone.
Then again, most current kids think Metal Gear series started on the PS1 with Metal Gear Solid. Ah well...
Amen. Both Castlevania (aka Vampire Killer) and Metal Gear series started on MSX2 way back... before NES was even launched.
NES versions of those first titles were (poorly done) ports, but apparently they sold a truckload because the fundamentals of gameplay were good enough even if the graphics and content was gutted due to NES limitations.
I mean in the US, there are models you cannot buy unlocked. You either commit to bundles, or that model is *not available*.
Like this Apple uberphone.
Where I come from, it's illegal to force you to buy a bundle. You can always buy the phone and the service separate. Silly people with poor math skills still do buy bundles looking just at the '1 euro phone' start price and 'low monthly fee'... unable to figure out that in two years they've paid more than the price of the phone + average amount of calls they'd make during that time.
... they brought in a massive truckload of money that they've ripped off their customers with their long and overpriced contracts?
Plus some they are going to rip off people with those 2 year contracts.
Silly US bundle-phone crap. I'd never buy a phone with a contract - the deal is always calculated to be good for the phone company and bad for the user. Logic is that while you are tied down for 2 years to pay the contract, prices elsewhere go down, but you are stuck paying higher prices. Separate phone is always the better deal.
Must be US thing.
In europe, as far as I know, all the Fujitsu repair centers I know can resell parts freely. Fujitsu themselves only sell to repair centers.
Fujitsu most likely fobbed you off because they do not have the logistics in place to ship 30$ parts around to individuals, so they claimed you need to be a rocket scientist.
Do you also commonly contact manufacturers to actually buy your laptops? Most manufacturers are not direct seller (dell is an exception). Manufacturers sell to distributors (and in case of parts, to certified repair centers), and that's where you have to ask for your parts.
Ask a certified, independent Fujitsu repair center - they most likely are happy to sell you any part, plus you get someone with a clue to help you make sure you get the right part. At least that's how it works over where I live. If I call fujitsu direct, they are not interested in helping you. However, if you call any number of local shops who repair Fujitsu laptops, they can get you any part for a reasonable price.