bourgeoisdude
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- Dec 15, 2005
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GreenDragon
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- Jan 10, 2006
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I really don't like the current THG. I used to read good review about games in their Games & Entertainment section. Now this so called TWATGURU section just filled with boring rants of some deranged column writter and the oldie moldie Retro Arcade/Console memorabila thingies, nothing about what's good or what's not about the new games people want to read. And Now they even write about retro movie posters!!! What the hack have that have to do with twitch factor? Is it about how fast you can rub your Willie in front of a retro porn movie poster??
I have to register just to express my opinion about THG. If Tom is not doing anything about the baboons he hired to tear this site down, I may soon delete the THG link from my Favorites in the browser.
I have to register just to express my opinion about THG. If Tom is not doing anything about the baboons he hired to tear this site down, I may soon delete the THG link from my Favorites in the browser.
- Jan 18, 2006
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As with many entities, corporations and web sites alike, without proper leadership, the foundation on which the entity is built is lost amiss a sea of opinions and ultimately distorted by a lobbying for power (and prestige).
It's my belief, from my experience, that there's a lack of proper leadership to route the company to common goals. These goals had, in the past, appeared to be:
- Unbiased Articles
- Well-written, well-edited articles
- A wealth of information to allow a reader to draw conclusions specific to thier needs
- Fast, realiable information about bleeding-edge technologies (It keeps the readers coming back regularly).
How many of these points have we seen fall by the wayside? One can only specualte about the reasonings, but again, the blame should fall squarely on the leadership.
It's my belief, from my experience, that there's a lack of proper leadership to route the company to common goals. These goals had, in the past, appeared to be:
- Unbiased Articles
- Well-written, well-edited articles
- A wealth of information to allow a reader to draw conclusions specific to thier needs
- Fast, realiable information about bleeding-edge technologies (It keeps the readers coming back regularly).
How many of these points have we seen fall by the wayside? One can only specualte about the reasonings, but again, the blame should fall squarely on the leadership.
parlee
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- Dec 16, 2005
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its all of those plus one more, stuff that is actually interesting whether or not its bleeding edge as long as it interests us. reading about movie posters from the 1930's may be interesting to 10 people at most. i found myself falling asleep while reading the artical then skiping to the end just to see what the summory was, theres no reason to be posting this stuff!! x1900's are comming out nvidia is launching the 8000 series socket M2 is comming out intel is changing from 90nm to 65nm theres TONS of stuff to be writing about. it is just my opinion and im pretty new to THG but people dont want to read about stuff that happened 60 years ago, they want current computer stuff and perhaps advise on current stuff, maybe thg can do a comparison on pciexpress and agp? thatd be a good artical, it could show whether or not its worth buying an entire new computer to get pci express. i like that idea maybe they could do somthing with it 
.. comparing ati xX00 series and nvidia 6X00 series!
.. comparing ati xX00 series and nvidia 6X00 series!
Dekkard
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- Jan 19, 2006
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The thing is, most people with the sense to check sites like THG before buying or building a PC know that they can put together a $1200 system with performance to match those Uber PCs and just as long a lifespan. Plus, PC games drop in price quicker than console games....consoles have a shorter shelf life and minimal upgrade capacity. Plus, you have to pay to even play online with LitterBox360! What does that mean for MMORPG fans already chipping out their monthly dues!?
Dekkard
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- Jan 19, 2006
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I agree totally. The mid-range market right now is full of quality products but finding the best deal can be challenging and some good old fashioned comparisons of nvidia vs ati products in this area would be nice. The 6800GS AGP has been out for a couple of weeks and nowhere online is there a proper review and definitely no comparison of the rival cards in that market. I couldn't even tell you what is going on in this area with ati cards!
parlee
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- Dec 16, 2005
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thats what i tell my friends when they try to get me to get xbox live, its 50 bux for 6 months i think, which doesnt seem horrible considering wow is more than that and its just 1 game, xbox live lets you play any games online... the thing is everygame with the exception of maybe 20 titles are out on pc and offer online play for free!
parlee
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- Dec 16, 2005
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well id consider it a ripoff if it was a bad mmo, but right now the mmo i play is wow, and to me its wroth 12 dollars a month.. that game is incredable, they need money to run the servers and keep patching it... if people had to buy servers then itd be free
Vascular
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- Jan 1, 2006
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Im not saying its not worth $12 dollars a month but to charge you $50 for the game and then charge you a relatively high rate per month, just doesnt add up to me.well id consider it a ripoff if it was a bad mmo, but right now the mmo i play is wow, and to me its wroth 12 dollars a month.. that game is incredable, they need money to run the servers and keep patching it... if people had to buy servers then itd be free
Correct me if wrong but everquest was a free game and charged a lot less to play.
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to each his own.
parlee
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- Dec 16, 2005
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wouldnt know about eq cause i didnt paly it much, and ur missing the point... wow took years to create and they have probably close to 30 servers running and since the game is pretty graphically demanding the servers need to be pretty powerful, plus theres a lot more bandwith being used than in eq making it a more expensive game to make, meaning higher prices/monthly fees, this is also the reason why next gen games retail for 60, they simply take more time and manpower to make
Pardon me but, a graphically enhanced client does not require an espacially powerful server. All the server does (in a simplified contrast) is collect changes in location and states of the players and the non-players and process them and then broadcast these info to all the clients that is connected to the server. The server doesn't even need to render the scene at all. All the mucho-macho graphical effects are done in the client locally. Even a game makes tonnes of animated background props (i.e. trees and grass that sway around reacting to the virtual wind sweeping through), lets say Players A and B are looking at the scene at the same time from the same spot, B wouldn't complaint "Hey, how come your tree is already swinging to the left and my tree is still at the middle position?!", nope, the server doesn't need to synchronize the background animation, so it need not to be as powerful (in grpahics or not) as the clients have to be. The server can even run on a machine that has no 3d hardware! All it need is just a small 100x16 dot matrix LCD display to show "All Status: O.K." to the server admin. The processing power needed by a server is measured in terms of how many players are connecting to it and how many data needs to be processed per connection and the complexity of the world. Graphics is never a concern.
haven't read the artical in question but I have been left confused after reading the articals as they don't have info in them I can relate to or are to much apple to orange comparisons to be usefull to be able to use to draw my own conclusions from (maybe im dense?)for my personal reserch into what current/noncurrent items, justifiable expense are the right choice for the PC I would like to replace......what can I say the old p4 2g 478 pin aint cutting it any more!
ps2 xbox or what have u? reply..IMO ...pc game not entirely free it still takes a internet connection and if your playing anything current DSL at the least! cables better! unless you like major lag or like being ejected from game rooms for XXXX ping. I not sure what everyone else is doing for internet but I don't have cable possable here so dsl is my only choice, and between the phone company charge and the server charge its a little over $50.00 a month for my 1.5meg DSL, of corse the rest of the internet comes with that ...this forum and the rest of the web plus e-mail and so on but free not really! all that is avaible for $10.00 so the extra $40.00 is just to play the game!
$12.00 a month dosen't sound that bad if the game play is satisfying?
just personal choice I think. Or what it takes to be able to interact with your friends! If you can afford it and like it, do it! but I guess if you cant afford it you wouldn't be reading here?
sorry so long
Slo
ps2 xbox or what have u? reply..IMO ...pc game not entirely free it still takes a internet connection and if your playing anything current DSL at the least! cables better! unless you like major lag or like being ejected from game rooms for XXXX ping. I not sure what everyone else is doing for internet but I don't have cable possable here so dsl is my only choice, and between the phone company charge and the server charge its a little over $50.00 a month for my 1.5meg DSL, of corse the rest of the internet comes with that ...this forum and the rest of the web plus e-mail and so on but free not really! all that is avaible for $10.00 so the extra $40.00 is just to play the game!
$12.00 a month dosen't sound that bad if the game play is satisfying?
just personal choice I think. Or what it takes to be able to interact with your friends! If you can afford it and like it, do it! but I guess if you cant afford it you wouldn't be reading here?
sorry so long
Slo
- Jan 18, 2006
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You should be buying your PC games, too. If you like good games, pay for them. Don't be a cheap shmuck.
- Jan 18, 2006
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Doesn't matter.
The point is that playing monopoly on your xbox doesn't require a server. WoW does, and that server requires active maintenance. Not to mention, WoW comes out with regular content updates.
Is blizzard making stupid amounts of money? Yes, and it's well-deserved. They took the risk of investing millions of $$$$ into a game and succeeded where most others failed.
$15 is reasonable, and pretty standard for MMPORGS with 'active' content.
The point is that playing monopoly on your xbox doesn't require a server. WoW does, and that server requires active maintenance. Not to mention, WoW comes out with regular content updates.
Is blizzard making stupid amounts of money? Yes, and it's well-deserved. They took the risk of investing millions of $$$$ into a game and succeeded where most others failed.
$15 is reasonable, and pretty standard for MMPORGS with 'active' content.
parlee
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- Dec 16, 2005
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well then theres still the cost of devolopment and the cost to keep30+ servers running and paying for amount of bandwith that the people are using... even if the server doesnt need to be that powerful a lot of bandwith still travels backand forth...
Vascular
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- Jan 1, 2006
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Ok obviously your guys dont pay for this and your parents do.
Lets put this into perspective.
Last I saw WOW had something like 1 million subscribers. At $12/month that 12 million a month. 144 million a year, do you really think it takes that kind of money to run some servers and a couple of patches? The developement cost was more than likely taken care of by everyone who bought the game at lets say an average of $35 per game. With 1 million people $35 million dollars to make a game and distribute it.
You cant tell me they are not over charging.
Lets put this into perspective.
Last I saw WOW had something like 1 million subscribers. At $12/month that 12 million a month. 144 million a year, do you really think it takes that kind of money to run some servers and a couple of patches? The developement cost was more than likely taken care of by everyone who bought the game at lets say an average of $35 per game. With 1 million people $35 million dollars to make a game and distribute it.
You cant tell me they are not over charging.
mpasternak
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- Apr 27, 2005
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absolutely NOT
how much does a fiber channel cost to run? do you know? what type of servers do you think a WoW server is?
I pay for my own accounts. and i'm proud ot help out Blizzard because well. face it they made a great product (yes, debatable).
and yes, they have costs they need to maintain. how much do you think they must pay their tech support people? how about software developers. testers? coders? managers? hardware technitions? and how many of these do you say they have?
they are making a killing and they deserve it but they are paying for the game to exist as we know it. and for that to continue we need to pay for it.
how much does a fiber channel cost to run? do you know? what type of servers do you think a WoW server is?
I pay for my own accounts. and i'm proud ot help out Blizzard because well. face it they made a great product (yes, debatable).
and yes, they have costs they need to maintain. how much do you think they must pay their tech support people? how about software developers. testers? coders? managers? hardware technitions? and how many of these do you say they have?
they are making a killing and they deserve it but they are paying for the game to exist as we know it. and for that to continue we need to pay for it.
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