I agree up to a point. VMs may not be the optimal solution in this case, but they can certainly be a lot more convenient and require a lot less work for a lot more payoff. Honestly, is it always "optimal" to code a hack that solves an API problem for one, or in this case 4, specific apps or use a VM to run the original software in its native environment? It totally depends on what you want to do and how broadly you want to do it.
If this hack worked for every ddraw game, I'd understand, but it contains just enough to get the WC games working.
Is that awesome? Yes.
Is it the ultimate solution for running ddraw apps in Windows 7? Not yet.
A VM can be a much more flexible solution that can work for many more apps. Sounds like you've just had a bad experience with virtualization... (which is underastandable, tbh:)
I usually find after a little forum digging that someone, somewhere has found a way to get them working... whether that's natively with compatibility options, or with some kind of wrapper or even in an emulator or VM, it's almost always been done.
There are some really good Glide wrappers out there now, and even ones that work with DOSBox (kinda). I've been on a retro game kick recently and there hasn't been a game yet that I haven't been able to run somehow.
Having said that, I'm sure there are games that were so poorly coded back when they were released that getting them to run today would be a major headache.
You're right about the experience being different, but just because you're not sitting in your bedroom in front of your old CRT TV in the 80s (for example) doesn't mean you're not experiencing the game as the creators would have intended.
At least one emulator I have used (can't remember which) includes "system sounds", like the whirr and buzz of the disk drive, which are played while software loads. VICE, arguably the most popular C64 emulator, has "PAL mode" which makes the display more closely resemble the output on an old PAL TV.
These are nice features that can make the experience more "authentic", but how far do you go? Is MAME less valuable because it can't recreate the atmosphere of standing in a crowded arcade? Are NES emulators less accurate because they don't necessarily give you blisters on your hands?
I found a similar argument in TFA:
Some of the DOS emulators we couldn't get sound out of at all. Some of them we got something, but it wasn't the original music. We had something like six different emulators we were trying on four different platforms. And of those various combinations, I think only two of them allowed us to get the sound out of Doom perfectly.
What is "perfectly"? The music in Doom differed depending on the soundcard used. Which is the "right" sound? This goes for many old PC games that had MIDI music.
Basically, I think as long as the game is playable, using the original files, the video and audio glitch-free and the emulation as close to cycle-exact as possible, then you've done the preservation part. I think it's up to the user (the player) to recreate the ancillary aspects of the platform if they so wish.
"From there we want to start looking at how effectively we can preserve these things using emulation software. One of the basic tenets of digital preservation is you want to leave the original bitstream intact. For those cases where we've got a binary, executable form of the game like Mystery House, if I'm going to provide access I basically have to run an emulator of some kind."
MAME is probably the most famous and widely used "game preservation" project in existence. The whole point of MAME is to re-implement obsolete arcade hardware and software as accurately as possible. Making the games playable is not the focus of the MAME project. It's been wildly successful, with lots of clever people reverse-engineering a lot of old hardware, and exceptionally rare games and hardware being documented and preserved.
MAME does "leave the original bitstream intact" as they put it. Getting accurate ROM or hard drive dumps is the entire point. Sure, MAME only handles arcade hardware, but there are plenty of other emulators out there for old gaming/computer systems, and people have spent a long time archiving software sets for these systems (Aminet, etc).
Basically, I'm finding it hard to see the difference between the emulation/preservation/source port culture we have now and what these guys are doing, with the exception that they are somehow more "credible" or "legitimate" because they're a university project. Their methodologies might be more formalized, and they're receiving government funding, but their goals are identical to those of the thousands of people already involved in emulation and archiving of obsolete hardware and software.
The Dreamcast was killed by the Saturn. After that pile of donkey shit, developers didn't trust Sega give them a viable platform for game creation, and the public didn't trust Sega to create a sustainable gaming ecosystem around their new baby.
The complete and utter lack of copy protection for games didn't help either.
The PS2 had hardware of almost exactly the same power, with some slightly different strengths and weaknesses. However, the power of the DC was easier for developers to leverage (remind anyone of the 360 vs PS3?), which is obvious when you compare the graphics quality of DC launch games to PS2 launch games. For a while, nothing looked more impressive than the DC. The graphics gap narrowed over time, but at first the difference was fairly eye-popping.
All of which was a damn shame, because the Dreamcast was a great console in so many ways. It had massive potential. I had and still have one, and there are still Dreamcast games I love. Unfortunately, Sega had already spent all their goodwill from the Genesis/Megadrive/Game Gear days. Somewhat overpriced and greatly undersupported, it was destined to fail.
Caveat: I never played UO, but I bought EQ just after its launch and played for
years.
Maybe WoW's precedent is that all content should be available to almost all players, not
just the unemployed catasses who can afford to grind 16 hours a day.
WoW's success stems from the designers' decision to make most content accessible to the
majority, rather than the minority of players. Yes, that means that some stuff is easier,
takes less time and less "skill" (though i'd argue there was, if you look at it
objectively, less skill involved in EQ's gameplay than in WoW).
Your argument basically boils down to the "catass" or "hardcore raider" argument; the
elitist view that only those who can dedicate the majority of their time to the game
deserve to see the high-end content. That attitude just won't fly in 2010. I don't see the harm in giving people easier versions of the same raid with lesser rewards. As someone who doesn't want to spend 8 hours a night raiding, that's a very good thing.
At the moment, even most "hardcore" guilds are still trying to get their first Lich King 25 Heroic Kill, a feat still only within the grasp of a tiny fraction of the playerbase. If you're not one of those people, don't complain that the raid content is "too easy" or "a given win".
EQ's "vision" didn't align with what most players actually wanted from an MMO, but
thanks to being "the only game in town" for a large part of its lifespan, it maintained its
popularity.
What WoW did was show the world that not only could MMOs be "casual-friendly", there was
no harm in giving the players what they wanted (a lesson EQ learned only after everyone
stopped playing).
Don't get me wrong, I liked EQ and had a lot of fun playing it. But ask me which MMO I'd
rather play today and, nostalgia aside, it's WoW every time.
It was slightly more complicated than that, originally. The earliest warez releases were not self-booting. You had to use a boot CD and then swap in the burned game disc.
It didn't take long for the main DC warez group "Kalisto" to get self-booting working, and it became a 1-step process. There were some niggles with the PAL/NTSC thing for a while but eventually they solved that too.
Kalisto then departed the DC scene and switched to PSX releases, while another group, "Echelon" appeared and took over the DC warez scene.
The GDROM could hold about 1GB, while CDs were limited to 700MB, so movies and audio were sometimes downsampled or removed completely from warez releases.
I remember the compression methods on some releases were quite ingenious. Audio tracks were sometimes compressed in MP3 format, and a tool was included that would decode them to WAV and inject them back into the disc image. Shaved valuable MBs off the distributed releases, which was a big thing back then before broadband was really commonplace.
I still own a DC and dust it off occasionally to play Powerstone or Ooga Booga.:)
Yep, IMHO Virtua Tennis on the DC is by far the best tennis game ever released on any platform. The graphics, the presentation and the gameplay - especially in multiplayer - are ace and it's still worth playing today.
This is actually one of their less asinine articles, despite almost certainly being a hoax. Their usual content is a mix of borderline racist scaremongering (usually targeted at immigrant/ethnic populations) and libellous articles about celebrities. It's a total rag - not worth the paper it's printed on.
Apart from the avatar, the problem with Dead Space, and an increasing number of 1st and 3rd person games, is the FOV being set stupidly low.
I see this with more and more games. It appears to be a last resort for developers to drag their framerates up in poorly-optimised games. Low FOV = less on screen = higher framerate, but it's getting ridiculous and Dead Space is one of the worst offenders of recent memory.
Would it be so difficult to just optimise the damn levels or take some of the shiny out of your game if the framerate sucks? Setting the FOV low is a cheap, crap solution. It's _almost_ as bad as the other godawful habit that lazy developers have got into (although the growth of HD gaming and widescreen monitors seems to be reducing the prevalance of this one) and that is cropping the image vertically for widescreen instead of expanding horizontally.
Maybe I'm just spoiled by years of Quake etc, playing at an FOV of >100, but I find that games with low FOV make me feel dizzy. Bioshock, Far Cry 2, Dead Space and many others are guilty of this. They could at least make it configurable on the PC.
Not everyone gets it wrong, though. Valve are good for this stuff; you can set the FOV in TF2 within certain parameters with a slider on the options screen, or via the console, and their widescreen modes are +horz instead of -vert.
Sorry, I realise this is a kinda OT disjointed rant, but these things really bug me.:P
YES. Infinite respawn is one of the most IRRITATING gameplay designs I've ever encountered.
I'm one of the "must explore everything/do every sidequest/find every secret/kill every enemy" type of gamers. Infinite respawn and its closely related companions (respawn after re-entering an area/after x game time) ruin my perfectionist/completist fun.
Of course, not every game is capable of having these (lazy) mechanisms shoehorned in, but way too many of them do. When I clear a dungeon I don't want to re-enter it 2 minutes later to find it fully repopulated. That just ruins the illusion that the players' actions have any lasting effect on the world. Even Oblivion's 3 day (game time) respawn limit is too short.
I can forgive SS2's alarm system somewhat, since the infinite respawn only occurs when you've made a mistake and triggered the alarm, and only lasts for a limited time, but far too many games rely on it to keep the "excitement" level up in otherwise boring areas.
Perhaps the worst sin of the infinite respawn you mention is how illogical it becomes when you reach the checkpoint. I don't think I've ever got to the checkpoint that disables the respawn and thought "oh, there's the explanation for the ridiculous number of enemies that i just encountered". An empty mess hall, a barracks, a conference room.. SOMETHING that would explain why an entire platoon had just happened to be there, ready to pour into the corridor in front of me, but no... usually just another corridor or room.
On the other hand, I don't have a problem with insta-death when it's done right. I mean, there's plenty of opportunity for insta-death in real life too. Let the player know the threat is there, and give them ample opportunity to avoid it, sure... but there's sometimes a valid design case for insta-death. I agree that slightly misjudging a jumping puzzle (grrrrrr) is not one of those valid cases.
Seen that one more times than I can count. Think I can beat it though...
I do IT support in a small school. A staff member is trying to play a DVD to a class.
She sends a kid down to tell me the "DVD isn't working".
I go upstairs to the classroom, PowerDVD seems to be having trouble reading the disc. The drive is spinning up and down and making the "I can't read this" sounds.
I assume the disc is dirty or scratched. I pop the drive open and remove the disc.
When I turn the disc over, I just about fall out of the chair laughing. I had to really struggle not to completely lose composure in front of the class.
The staff member had written their name and department all around the data side of the disc, in black permanent marker.
A couple of months ago, I downloaded the first season of The West Wing, after it was recommended to me. I never watched it when it was aired (I don't watch much TV).
I watched the entire season over a couple of days, and liked it enough to buy the DVD box set with all 7 seasons. I don't regret my purchase.
If I hadn't downloaded the first season, there's no way I'd have bought the box set. P2P made that sale.
I played (I don't play WoW any more) a Warrior - a tank. On my old PC I had abysmal framerates on raids to the point I was endangering the raid because my FPS had dropped to 5 and just moving and targeting was a major problem. I had to turn eye-candy down in raids just to be an effective tank. Being an eye-candy fan, this irritated me.
If your are a class that has to move around a lot and timing is a major factor, then a massive FPS drop does affect your gameplay. If you're willing to accept such FPS drops, I would guess you play a mage or something, and I would also guess you don't PvP much.
On my new PC my framerates rarely dropped below 60 with EVERYTHING on (except in Dalaran, of course). The game just looked much better when everything was moving smoothly.
I might be talking out of my ass here, but I think high framerates even help the "sharpness" of the display on LCD monitors thanks to their innate response time. More frames = greater "interpolation" of the moving image = neighbouring pixels changing less dramatically = better image quality/less "smearing". Hard to describe what I mean, but I felt the image quality increase when my framerate did.
Yep. Unreal was a fantastic engine, and the game showed it off really well, but it was just boring. I never managed to make it all the way through Unreal, whereas I've completed Quake more times than I can remember. (Quake has its fair share of flaws too)
I'm a Quake guy through-and-through though. I'll take a Quake game over an Unreal game any day.
I remember showing comparison screenshots between software Quake and GLQuake to my mother, trying desperately to convince her to buy me a Voodoo card. She didn't understand why I cared that the textures weren't blocky and the particles were softer, but she did understand my relentless enthusiasm (read: constant whining), and I got the card:D
Slashdot Mirror
I agree up to a point. VMs may not be the optimal solution in this case, but they can certainly be a lot more convenient and require a lot less work for a lot more payoff. Honestly, is it always "optimal" to code a hack that solves an API problem for one, or in this case 4, specific apps or use a VM to run the original software in its native environment? It totally depends on what you want to do and how broadly you want to do it.
If this hack worked for every ddraw game, I'd understand, but it contains just enough to get the WC games working.
Is that awesome? Yes.
Is it the ultimate solution for running ddraw apps in Windows 7? Not yet.
A VM can be a much more flexible solution that can work for many more apps. Sounds like you've just had a bad experience with virtualization... (which is underastandable, tbh :)
I usually find after a little forum digging that someone, somewhere has found a way to get them working... whether that's natively with compatibility options, or with some kind of wrapper or even in an emulator or VM, it's almost always been done.
There are some really good Glide wrappers out there now, and even ones that work with DOSBox (kinda). I've been on a retro game kick recently and there hasn't been a game yet that I haven't been able to run somehow.
Having said that, I'm sure there are games that were so poorly coded back when they were released that getting them to run today would be a major headache.
Jesus tap-dancing christ. Sometimes I'm really glad I dual-boot.
You're right about the experience being different, but just because you're not sitting in your bedroom in front of your old CRT TV in the 80s (for example) doesn't mean you're not experiencing the game as the creators would have intended.
At least one emulator I have used (can't remember which) includes "system sounds", like the whirr and buzz of the disk drive, which are played while software loads. VICE, arguably the most popular C64 emulator, has "PAL mode" which makes the display more closely resemble the output on an old PAL TV.
These are nice features that can make the experience more "authentic", but how far do you go? Is MAME less valuable because it can't recreate the atmosphere of standing in a crowded arcade? Are NES emulators less accurate because they don't necessarily give you blisters on your hands?
I found a similar argument in TFA:
What is "perfectly"? The music in Doom differed depending on the soundcard used. Which is the "right" sound? This goes for many old PC games that had MIDI music.
Basically, I think as long as the game is playable, using the original files, the video and audio glitch-free and the emulation as close to cycle-exact as possible, then you've done the preservation part. I think it's up to the user (the player) to recreate the ancillary aspects of the platform if they so wish.
MAME is probably the most famous and widely used "game preservation" project in existence. The whole point of MAME is to re-implement obsolete arcade hardware and software as accurately as possible. Making the games playable is not the focus of the MAME project. It's been wildly successful, with lots of clever people reverse-engineering a lot of old hardware, and exceptionally rare games and hardware being documented and preserved.
MAME does "leave the original bitstream intact" as they put it. Getting accurate ROM or hard drive dumps is the entire point. Sure, MAME only handles arcade hardware, but there are plenty of other emulators out there for old gaming/computer systems, and people have spent a long time archiving software sets for these systems (Aminet, etc).
Basically, I'm finding it hard to see the difference between the emulation/preservation/source port culture we have now and what these guys are doing, with the exception that they are somehow more "credible" or "legitimate" because they're a university project. Their methodologies might be more formalized, and they're receiving government funding, but their goals are identical to those of the thousands of people already involved in emulation and archiving of obsolete hardware and software.
The Dreamcast was killed by the Saturn. After that pile of donkey shit, developers didn't trust Sega give them a viable platform for game creation, and the public didn't trust Sega to create a sustainable gaming ecosystem around their new baby.
The complete and utter lack of copy protection for games didn't help either.
The PS2 had hardware of almost exactly the same power, with some slightly different strengths and weaknesses. However, the power of the DC was easier for developers to leverage (remind anyone of the 360 vs PS3?), which is obvious when you compare the graphics quality of DC launch games to PS2 launch games. For a while, nothing looked more impressive than the DC. The graphics gap narrowed over time, but at first the difference was fairly eye-popping.
All of which was a damn shame, because the Dreamcast was a great console in so many ways. It had massive potential. I had and still have one, and there are still Dreamcast games I love. Unfortunately, Sega had already spent all their goodwill from the Genesis/Megadrive/Game Gear days. Somewhat overpriced and greatly undersupported, it was destined to fail.
Caveat: I never played UO, but I bought EQ just after its launch and played for years.
Maybe WoW's precedent is that all content should be available to almost all players, not just the unemployed catasses who can afford to grind 16 hours a day.
WoW's success stems from the designers' decision to make most content accessible to the majority, rather than the minority of players. Yes, that means that some stuff is easier, takes less time and less "skill" (though i'd argue there was, if you look at it objectively, less skill involved in EQ's gameplay than in WoW).
Your argument basically boils down to the "catass" or "hardcore raider" argument; the elitist view that only those who can dedicate the majority of their time to the game deserve to see the high-end content. That attitude just won't fly in 2010. I don't see the harm in giving people easier versions of the same raid with lesser rewards. As someone who doesn't want to spend 8 hours a night raiding, that's a very good thing.
At the moment, even most "hardcore" guilds are still trying to get their first Lich King 25 Heroic Kill, a feat still only within the grasp of a tiny fraction of the playerbase. If you're not one of those people, don't complain that the raid content is "too easy" or "a given win".
EQ's "vision" didn't align with what most players actually wanted from an MMO, but thanks to being "the only game in town" for a large part of its lifespan, it maintained its popularity.
What WoW did was show the world that not only could MMOs be "casual-friendly", there was no harm in giving the players what they wanted (a lesson EQ learned only after everyone stopped playing).
Don't get me wrong, I liked EQ and had a lot of fun playing it. But ask me which MMO I'd rather play today and, nostalgia aside, it's WoW every time.
I just assumed this was just an extension of Otto von Bismarck's famous quote: "Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made."
[CITATION NEEDED]
Think you're mistaking the word "shell" with the word "notepad", unless you really do need to open an XML file in a shell.
It was slightly more complicated than that, originally. The earliest warez releases were not self-booting. You had to use a boot CD and then swap in the burned game disc.
It didn't take long for the main DC warez group "Kalisto" to get self-booting working, and it became a 1-step process. There were some niggles with the PAL/NTSC thing for a while but eventually they solved that too.
Kalisto then departed the DC scene and switched to PSX releases, while another group, "Echelon" appeared and took over the DC warez scene.
The GDROM could hold about 1GB, while CDs were limited to 700MB, so movies and audio were sometimes downsampled or removed completely from warez releases.
I remember the compression methods on some releases were quite ingenious. Audio tracks were sometimes compressed in MP3 format, and a tool was included that would decode them to WAV and inject them back into the disc image. Shaved valuable MBs off the distributed releases, which was a big thing back then before broadband was really commonplace.
I still own a DC and dust it off occasionally to play Powerstone or Ooga Booga. :)
Yep, IMHO Virtua Tennis on the DC is by far the best tennis game ever released on any platform. The graphics, the presentation and the gameplay - especially in multiplayer - are ace and it's still worth playing today.
You made Dr. Pepper come out of my nose.
Shame on you.
Round these parts it's known as the Daily Fail.
This is actually one of their less asinine articles, despite almost certainly being a hoax. Their usual content is a mix of borderline racist scaremongering (usually targeted at immigrant/ethnic populations) and libellous articles about celebrities. It's a total rag - not worth the paper it's printed on.
You can blame Larry Osterman for that one.
Apart from the avatar, the problem with Dead Space, and an increasing number of 1st and 3rd person games, is the FOV being set stupidly low.
I see this with more and more games. It appears to be a last resort for developers to drag their framerates up in poorly-optimised games. Low FOV = less on screen = higher framerate, but it's getting ridiculous and Dead Space is one of the worst offenders of recent memory.
Would it be so difficult to just optimise the damn levels or take some of the shiny out of your game if the framerate sucks? Setting the FOV low is a cheap, crap solution. It's _almost_ as bad as the other godawful habit that lazy developers have got into (although the growth of HD gaming and widescreen monitors seems to be reducing the prevalance of this one) and that is cropping the image vertically for widescreen instead of expanding horizontally.
Maybe I'm just spoiled by years of Quake etc, playing at an FOV of >100, but I find that games with low FOV make me feel dizzy. Bioshock, Far Cry 2, Dead Space and many others are guilty of this. They could at least make it configurable on the PC.
Not everyone gets it wrong, though. Valve are good for this stuff; you can set the FOV in TF2 within certain parameters with a slider on the options screen, or via the console, and their widescreen modes are +horz instead of -vert.
Sorry, I realise this is a kinda OT disjointed rant, but these things really bug me. :P
YES. Infinite respawn is one of the most IRRITATING gameplay designs I've ever encountered.
I'm one of the "must explore everything/do every sidequest/find every secret/kill every enemy" type of gamers. Infinite respawn and its closely related companions (respawn after re-entering an area/after x game time) ruin my perfectionist/completist fun.
Of course, not every game is capable of having these (lazy) mechanisms shoehorned in, but way too many of them do. When I clear a dungeon I don't want to re-enter it 2 minutes later to find it fully repopulated. That just ruins the illusion that the players' actions have any lasting effect on the world. Even Oblivion's 3 day (game time) respawn limit is too short.
I can forgive SS2's alarm system somewhat, since the infinite respawn only occurs when you've made a mistake and triggered the alarm, and only lasts for a limited time, but far too many games rely on it to keep the "excitement" level up in otherwise boring areas.
Perhaps the worst sin of the infinite respawn you mention is how illogical it becomes when you reach the checkpoint. I don't think I've ever got to the checkpoint that disables the respawn and thought "oh, there's the explanation for the ridiculous number of enemies that i just encountered". An empty mess hall, a barracks, a conference room.. SOMETHING that would explain why an entire platoon had just happened to be there, ready to pour into the corridor in front of me, but no... usually just another corridor or room.
On the other hand, I don't have a problem with insta-death when it's done right. I mean, there's plenty of opportunity for insta-death in real life too. Let the player know the threat is there, and give them ample opportunity to avoid it, sure... but there's sometimes a valid design case for insta-death. I agree that slightly misjudging a jumping puzzle (grrrrrr) is not one of those valid cases.
Um, I think you misread it.
Or, put another way, 96.2% of Xbox 360 owners would buy another Xbox if theirs died.
Playback software: I told you, PowerDVD. Specifically PowerDVD 8 Ultra, boxed retail copy. Same on all OSs. Funnily enough, it's also the decoder.
I don't even know what you mean by "rendered" and I doubt you do either, so I'll ignore that.
Video drivers: latest nvidia drivers for the respective OSs.
The results are as I stated previously. So, yeah, I've got anecdotal evidence and you have nothing at all. Well played, sir.
And while we're at it, I said "ignorant, deluded OR lying (astroturfing)."
So, if you're not astroturfing...
On XP I can play my Blu-Ray movies (legally purchased) in PowerDVD (legally purchased) on my LCD monitor connected via DVI (legally purchased).
On Vista and Win7, I can't. Instead, I get a message about "upgrading" to a display with HDCP.
Sure, I can buy a HACK like Slysoft's AnyDVD HD to work around it, but why the hell should I have to?!
To the people who blame the content instead of the OS: note here that ONLY the OS has changed. It worked in XP, it doesn't in Win7 or Vista.
Bottom line: It's still TEH EVILZ0RZZZZ, and anyone who says there's less DRM in Win7 or Vista is either ignorant, deluded or lying (astroturfing).
Seen that one more times than I can count. Think I can beat it though...
I do IT support in a small school. A staff member is trying to play a DVD to a class.
She sends a kid down to tell me the "DVD isn't working".
I go upstairs to the classroom, PowerDVD seems to be having trouble reading the disc. The drive is spinning up and down and making the "I can't read this" sounds.
I assume the disc is dirty or scratched. I pop the drive open and remove the disc.
When I turn the disc over, I just about fall out of the chair laughing. I had to really struggle not to completely lose composure in front of the class.
The staff member had written their name and department all around the data side of the disc, in black permanent marker.
A couple of months ago, I downloaded the first season of The West Wing, after it was recommended to me. I never watched it when it was aired (I don't watch much TV).
I watched the entire season over a couple of days, and liked it enough to buy the DVD box set with all 7 seasons. I don't regret my purchase.
If I hadn't downloaded the first season, there's no way I'd have bought the box set. P2P made that sale.
I played (I don't play WoW any more) a Warrior - a tank. On my old PC I had abysmal framerates on raids to the point I was endangering the raid because my FPS had dropped to 5 and just moving and targeting was a major problem. I had to turn eye-candy down in raids just to be an effective tank. Being an eye-candy fan, this irritated me.
If your are a class that has to move around a lot and timing is a major factor, then a massive FPS drop does affect your gameplay. If you're willing to accept such FPS drops, I would guess you play a mage or something, and I would also guess you don't PvP much.
On my new PC my framerates rarely dropped below 60 with EVERYTHING on (except in Dalaran, of course). The game just looked much better when everything was moving smoothly.
I might be talking out of my ass here, but I think high framerates even help the "sharpness" of the display on LCD monitors thanks to their innate response time. More frames = greater "interpolation" of the moving image = neighbouring pixels changing less dramatically = better image quality/less "smearing". Hard to describe what I mean, but I felt the image quality increase when my framerate did.
Yep. Unreal was a fantastic engine, and the game showed it off really well, but it was just boring. I never managed to make it all the way through Unreal, whereas I've completed Quake more times than I can remember. (Quake has its fair share of flaws too)
I'm a Quake guy through-and-through though. I'll take a Quake game over an Unreal game any day.
Amen.
I remember showing comparison screenshots between software Quake and GLQuake to my mother, trying desperately to convince her to buy me a Voodoo card. She didn't understand why I cared that the textures weren't blocky and the particles were softer, but she did understand my relentless enthusiasm (read: constant whining), and I got the card :D