Once the initial wave of pre-orders and first week gotta have its are done its not going to be a problem anymore. This volume doesn't last that long and theres no point in burning cash on servers and connections you wont need in a week. Suck it up and be patient you'll get your turn.
Maybe they don't want to put in the effort just to hear you cry some more. For instance ID software released linux binaries for Doom 3 and the majority of the things I read were that they poorly implemented, or the sound was slightly off, and that they should have been released the same time as the windows version. I'm convinced that no matter what you do for a Linux user they're going to cry about it. So why should companies go through the extra effort of pointless trying to please people that just bitch for the point of bitching ?
I always thought it was something along those lines but perhaps it had to do with the very "pure" sample of whatever Gordon used to start the resonance cascade scenario.
No excuses? Do you know how much bandwidth costs on this scale? Double that cost and find out your game isn't selling as well as the buzz indicated? I preloaded the game and was running it at 3:15 am on Tuesday. Currently on the Sand-Trap chapter and I can say right now that you're not going to mind the 6 hour wait to activate.
I'm not following you on signing over your hard drive. Its not like Valve is stealing your Britney Spears mp3s or looking through your pr0n. Its ONE application that you have to authenicate ONCE upon installation. Same thing as entering a CD-Key just it requires a server instead of your case. 4 hours from now I'm going to be feeling sorry for you.
Please man that contract was signed with Sierra before the release of Half-Life 1. Unfortunately they still have one more game to go after HL2. If I were Valve I'd remake pong with customizable paddles were you can change the colors by altering the RGB bars and send it off to VU to sell!
Honestly, if Vivendi weren't in the picture would there be any waiting for HL2 at all? Wouldn't it have been released like 5 weeks ago? And yes I do blame WWII on the Germans, damn Krauts!
Whatever Blizzard's next project is. I'm praying that it is Starcraft 2 but with Ghost in the works I have a feeling that it isn't. Perhaps an exciting new franchise....
In any event I think I'm going to sit this round out. Played EvE online last summer and that pretty much did me in for MMORPGs. Great game with tons of combat and non-combat options just the grind is too much.
Not quite as rapid as in the old days. I remember the SNES / Sega Genesis rivalies. I kinda stopped paying attention to consoles when I got a into the PC after my SNES crapped out. Although I must admit that Metriod Prime (and eventually Starcraft: Ghost) did get me to buy a Game Cube but I haven't touched the thing or found a decent game for it since. Looks like I've struck gold again with MP2. But Samus is taking a back burner to Half-Life2.
Umm... you might have this one confused. Valve being the developer makes one copy of the "finished game". Vivendi being the publisher takes the one "finished game" and makes many copies of this one "finished game" which we will call "retail copies". These "retail copies" are placed into boxes and sent from Vivdeni's production line to stores. From the stores these "retail copies" are now to be sold.
As you can see from my example it was Vivendi Universal that allowed the "retail copies" to exist in stores before the release date, that everyone knows (even Best Buy and EBG) is November 16th.
And if you bought the game on steam then you signed (err clicked) an agreement, it was pretty obvious and specific that the game would not be available until Nov. 16.
I have faith in valve to make that patch should the time come to close their doors forever. Honestly they are re-coding all of half-life 1 to work with the new source engine, I don't know if they're redoing the models or textures as well but thats quite a bit of effort for a product they're essentially not going to make any money on, its just something cool for the fans. And btw my original NES is getting there, 3 more years and its turning 20.
Honestly man I could not have said it better myself. Valve has the lock down on the game until November 16th. They're living up to their end of the agreement and VU released the game early to stores. Thats their problem. Regardless in 2 days we wont hear all these 5 year olds complaining about their game not working. And if you're that fed up with the copy protection return the game. (I know they only let you exchange it for an unopened version of the original. Then you take that to another store, like Wal-Mart, and return it without a receipt. Magic!)
Seems to be a lot of people using slashdot from their local library because I hear a lot of 'What if I don't have an internet connection?'. Honestly who doesn't have an internet connection these days? And if you don't, blow the dust off of your modem, swipe one of those AOL 9 bazillion hours free discs and authenticate your game and then cancel your subscription.
And you act like a machine that was brand new a year ago can't run it? Man I have a machine that runs CS:Source thats 4 years old, 1.4 Ghz AMD Athlon, yeah before the XP line, 256 DDR pc-2100, and a 32 mb radeon ati all-in-wonder radeon card, note the lack of numbers after radeon, yeah that old, gets over 60 FPS on the stress test in Source and runs the game decent, quit your bitching with your one year old fossil. Granted it just my bitch computer but hey yours should do fine.
Install steam and play it, stop acting like you're signing over the deed to your house. Or maybe you're just a whiner like the rest of the people that don't actually have a CD-Key in that case work at McDonalds for 10 hours and buy a fucking copy.
Yeah I think game programmers are pretty safe from outsourcing. Moving to India and still programming games like Madden 2005 or Need for Speed would just be kind of weird if the people that designed and programmed it didn't really understand what the whole thing was about. But Maybe I'm just naive. Honestly I read this post (The spouse speaking out against EA) on Thursday and hoping to get into the gaming industry someday it really made me think twice, perhaps this might make a little difference.
why not hire a day-shift and a night-shift? Cut everyone's salaries and hours in half. Granted they'd lose a little money fronting computers, workspace, and benefits for all of the new employees. But when people are well rested and relaxed they work much more efficiently. The other problems arise in the transistion of code from one person to the next. But if two programmers are assigned to work with each other and their shifts overlap by 4 hours and they are assigned the same task, it wouldn't be that crazy.
Has anyone ever mentioned that the Firefox browser is more secure because a lot less people use it? Hell I love Firefox but I think that the security issue is just to hype up the browser. If more people had firefox than IE I'm sure there would be more ad-ware / spy-ware that targets it. Until then, love live Firefox!
Steam isn't the devil man. Its not even burdensome like most of the software that makes you prove you own the game.
No disc swapping or CD/DVD installation.
No CD Key to lose.
No advertising.
No reminders to register your product.
No hassel looking for patches or waiting 12 days to download from Fileplanet, (Unless of course you're a member and they have a server right in your house for you.)
Honestly, Valve hasn't made me feel like a criminal like other game companies have. I really feel sorry for anyone that isn't playing Half-Life 2, because they're anti-Valve elitists. Steam is the next step in online gaming. Worked great for Blizzard so Valve kicked it up a notch. More and more gaming companies are going to start doing this, I hope you like making your own games cause the list that you're not buying its gonna keep growing.
I remember playing through Half-Life + Opp Force a little over a year ago in anticipation for the release of HL2....
Doom3 wasn't a let down to me, but it didn't have much replayability. Half-Life on the other hand did. I cant wait to see new ways around the standard fire-fight till the monsters are dead using a fantastic physics engine.
I thought it was a breath of fresh air flying a cloud car through Bespin in Rogue Squadron 2, it too bad it suffers from the same Snow Speeder drag however.
Anyone think Rogue Squadron 3 is worth buying if you have already have Rogue Squadron 2?
Slashdot Mirror
Once the initial wave of pre-orders and first week gotta have its are done its not going to be a problem anymore. This volume doesn't last that long and theres no point in burning cash on servers and connections you wont need in a week. Suck it up and be patient you'll get your turn.
Maybe they don't want to put in the effort just to hear you cry some more. For instance ID software released linux binaries for Doom 3 and the majority of the things I read were that they poorly implemented, or the sound was slightly off, and that they should have been released the same time as the windows version. I'm convinced that no matter what you do for a Linux user they're going to cry about it. So why should companies go through the extra effort of pointless trying to please people that just bitch for the point of bitching ?
I always thought it was something along those lines but perhaps it had to do with the very "pure" sample of whatever Gordon used to start the resonance cascade scenario.
No excuses? Do you know how much bandwidth costs on this scale? Double that cost and find out your game isn't selling as well as the buzz indicated? I preloaded the game and was running it at 3:15 am on Tuesday. Currently on the Sand-Trap chapter and I can say right now that you're not going to mind the 6 hour wait to activate.
I'm not following you on signing over your hard drive. Its not like Valve is stealing your Britney Spears mp3s or looking through your pr0n. Its ONE application that you have to authenicate ONCE upon installation. Same thing as entering a CD-Key just it requires a server instead of your case. 4 hours from now I'm going to be feeling sorry for you.
Please man that contract was signed with Sierra before the release of Half-Life 1. Unfortunately they still have one more game to go after HL2. If I were Valve I'd remake pong with customizable paddles were you can change the colors by altering the RGB bars and send it off to VU to sell! Honestly, if Vivendi weren't in the picture would there be any waiting for HL2 at all? Wouldn't it have been released like 5 weeks ago? And yes I do blame WWII on the Germans, damn Krauts!
Whatever Blizzard's next project is. I'm praying that it is Starcraft 2 but with Ghost in the works I have a feeling that it isn't. Perhaps an exciting new franchise.... In any event I think I'm going to sit this round out. Played EvE online last summer and that pretty much did me in for MMORPGs. Great game with tons of combat and non-combat options just the grind is too much.
Not quite as rapid as in the old days. I remember the SNES / Sega Genesis rivalies. I kinda stopped paying attention to consoles when I got a into the PC after my SNES crapped out. Although I must admit that Metriod Prime (and eventually Starcraft: Ghost) did get me to buy a Game Cube but I haven't touched the thing or found a decent game for it since. Looks like I've struck gold again with MP2. But Samus is taking a back burner to Half-Life2.
At first glance I thought the article said,
"Ion-Propulsion Craft Crashes into the Moon"
meh, and i wonder why my karma is the 5UX!!1!
Umm... you might have this one confused. Valve being the developer makes one copy of the "finished game". Vivendi being the publisher takes the one "finished game" and makes many copies of this one "finished game" which we will call "retail copies". These "retail copies" are placed into boxes and sent from Vivdeni's production line to stores. From the stores these "retail copies" are now to be sold. As you can see from my example it was Vivendi Universal that allowed the "retail copies" to exist in stores before the release date, that everyone knows (even Best Buy and EBG) is November 16th. And if you bought the game on steam then you signed (err clicked) an agreement, it was pretty obvious and specific that the game would not be available until Nov. 16.
I have faith in valve to make that patch should the time come to close their doors forever. Honestly they are re-coding all of half-life 1 to work with the new source engine, I don't know if they're redoing the models or textures as well but thats quite a bit of effort for a product they're essentially not going to make any money on, its just something cool for the fans. And btw my original NES is getting there, 3 more years and its turning 20.
Honestly man I could not have said it better myself. Valve has the lock down on the game until November 16th. They're living up to their end of the agreement and VU released the game early to stores. Thats their problem. Regardless in 2 days we wont hear all these 5 year olds complaining about their game not working. And if you're that fed up with the copy protection return the game. (I know they only let you exchange it for an unopened version of the original. Then you take that to another store, like Wal-Mart, and return it without a receipt. Magic!)
Seems to be a lot of people using slashdot from their local library because I hear a lot of 'What if I don't have an internet connection?'. Honestly who doesn't have an internet connection these days? And if you don't, blow the dust off of your modem, swipe one of those AOL 9 bazillion hours free discs and authenticate your game and then cancel your subscription.
Join your friends on the other side EA, go to the light, frolick with Interplay, Sierra, Acclaim, and take Vivendi with you while you're at it.
And you act like a machine that was brand new a year ago can't run it? Man I have a machine that runs CS:Source thats 4 years old, 1.4 Ghz AMD Athlon, yeah before the XP line, 256 DDR pc-2100, and a 32 mb radeon ati all-in-wonder radeon card, note the lack of numbers after radeon, yeah that old, gets over 60 FPS on the stress test in Source and runs the game decent, quit your bitching with your one year old fossil. Granted it just my bitch computer but hey yours should do fine.
Terrorism is totally hyped up. It was so much better in the version 1.3 beta.
I hear they have free-form gladitorial style combat on Fridays. Pit the rookies against hobgoblins and shit.
Have fun playing Quake for the rest of your life buddy.
Install steam and play it, stop acting like you're signing over the deed to your house. Or maybe you're just a whiner like the rest of the people that don't actually have a CD-Key in that case work at McDonalds for 10 hours and buy a fucking copy.
Yeah I think game programmers are pretty safe from outsourcing. Moving to India and still programming games like Madden 2005 or Need for Speed would just be kind of weird if the people that designed and programmed it didn't really understand what the whole thing was about. But Maybe I'm just naive. Honestly I read this post (The spouse speaking out against EA) on Thursday and hoping to get into the gaming industry someday it really made me think twice, perhaps this might make a little difference.
why not hire a day-shift and a night-shift? Cut everyone's salaries and hours in half. Granted they'd lose a little money fronting computers, workspace, and benefits for all of the new employees. But when people are well rested and relaxed they work much more efficiently. The other problems arise in the transistion of code from one person to the next. But if two programmers are assigned to work with each other and their shifts overlap by 4 hours and they are assigned the same task, it wouldn't be that crazy.
Has anyone ever mentioned that the Firefox browser is more secure because a lot less people use it? Hell I love Firefox but I think that the security issue is just to hype up the browser. If more people had firefox than IE I'm sure there would be more ad-ware / spy-ware that targets it. Until then, love live Firefox!
Steam isn't the devil man. Its not even burdensome like most of the software that makes you prove you own the game. No disc swapping or CD/DVD installation. No CD Key to lose. No advertising. No reminders to register your product. No hassel looking for patches or waiting 12 days to download from Fileplanet, (Unless of course you're a member and they have a server right in your house for you.) Honestly, Valve hasn't made me feel like a criminal like other game companies have. I really feel sorry for anyone that isn't playing Half-Life 2, because they're anti-Valve elitists. Steam is the next step in online gaming. Worked great for Blizzard so Valve kicked it up a notch. More and more gaming companies are going to start doing this, I hope you like making your own games cause the list that you're not buying its gonna keep growing.
I remember playing through Half-Life + Opp Force a little over a year ago in anticipation for the release of HL2.... Doom3 wasn't a let down to me, but it didn't have much replayability. Half-Life on the other hand did. I cant wait to see new ways around the standard fire-fight till the monsters are dead using a fantastic physics engine.
I thought it was a breath of fresh air flying a cloud car through Bespin in Rogue Squadron 2, it too bad it suffers from the same Snow Speeder drag however.
Anyone think Rogue Squadron 3 is worth buying if you have already have Rogue Squadron 2?