Humanoid

Barest minimum - I'm using MSY prices as a guide: CPU: AMD A8-3870 $139 M/B: Asrock A75M-HVS $72 RAM: cheapest 8GB kit $42 SSD: Intel 320 120GB $145 ODD: cheapest one $19 Equals $417 leaving $83 for a case with PSU which I don't tend to spec because taste is everything - but doable assuming you don't need an OS, external peripherals, etc. Now what do you get for increasing the budget up by $200? Well given the lowest GPU I can conscionably recommend for gaming, the HD6850, is $135, not much wiggle room is really added. With a dirt-cheap case you may juuuust be able to stretch to the cheapest Sandy/Ivy Bridge quad-core and suitable budget motherboard. I wouldn't bother with a dual-core. Even then I'd actually lean towards keeping the Llano CPU and instead trying your best to stretch to a $250 7850 GPU - if you're sneaky you'll stick it in your old machine and give her your old one. Obviously if you need anything more than just the system box, it's outright not possible to do a discrete GPU in your budget.

I'm almost always underlevelled but that's probably because I stealth through most content and kill close to the minimum number of mobs for a given quest, that's with no group content at all but with the bonus series and supplementing with space battle xp if I'm near a level threshold. Even then I've had to quit some yellow quests and come back later just because I'm not able to beat some elites without a group. Admittedly the problem is exacerbated by not making use of rested XP early on (frequently I'd just log out in the middle of nowhere because cantinas are few and far between - typically one per planet), not using my planetary commendations until recently (no idea they were only good if used immediately), not realising I could mod my gear without a modification station (thus not bothering most of the time), and not supplementing my gear from my crew skills in general. I do turn down some side quests for RP reasons but the number of those can be counted on one hand so it'd have been of no real impact.

AMD Llano-based (A-series) systems are actually viable for very basic gaming and given a graphics card worth its salt will eat up about a quarter to a third of the budget. I'd say onboard at the $500 budget level and discrete at $700 would be a fair assessment of the budget. I'll add in a couple example specs a bit later.

Nah, just a random image from the interwebs - though I've attempted it with an old P3 before without plugging it in. Don't imagine moisture to be a problem at all though dust would be. But I'm very noise-sensitive so my system is pretty much build the exact opposite principles - sub-1000rpm fans, openings covered with foam and taped up, etc.

My position is about the same, yeah - that said, I'd take a generic fantasy setting over Star Wars which I've grown to dislike even more since my venture with TOR (it's just too limiting a setting to develop a character which I'd be comfortable with). That said, given both the limitations of technology and Bethesda's dismal track record of creating even remotely compelling combat, I don't think it's a horrible thing to copy that aspect - though perhaps with a greater emphasis on skill with a particular weapon or school of magic rather than having combat ability solely based on class and level. Note I don't actually know if ESO will have any notion of either class or level but anyway. NPC handling is subject to the same limitations - in this case also by the reality of human behaviour. If you make an NPC anything other than an indestructable signpost, players will inevitably grief each other. One thing I would genuinely be disappointed about however if the mooted three-faction split approach just apes WoW's system of total isolation from each other except in cases of PvP. I don't like the system in general because I prefer free association from both a character standpoint and from a game viability standpoint. After all, if you split your clientele from a userbase which is dominated by an 800-pound gorilla game in the form of WoW into three, it's just going to decrease population density and make it that much harder to reach that critical mass where your game is commercially viable. Creating for example the concept of Imperial cities vs Thalmor cities and having access to them be mutually exclusive makes the game effectively half the size it actually is for a given player, despite there quantitatively being more content. A much better approach would be a softer approach to factions, such as having the option after some time playing the game to join the Fighters' guild or whatnot, and have the guild send you on tasks which may directly conflict with what players from the Mages' guild at some points. But players would still fundamentally have access to the same cities, the same NPCs, same non-denominational quests, etc.

Dinosaurs for mine - admittedly less so now but it was far more interesting to me than human history as a kid.

Well Microsoft are killing the "Live" branding from all their products shortly. Won't make the resulting product any better but it'll no longer be Live Messenger.

Only because it had no extensive swamp-trudging.

No significant changes to my core system two years on, just added a 256GB second SSD as my games drive. Really should put the OS on it since it's the faster drive compared to my first-gen Indilinx one, but it's fast enough to not be worth the bother. Intel i5-750 @ 3.33GHz Prolimatech Megahalems + 2x Nexus Real Silent 120mm fans Gigabyte P55A-UD4P 8GB PC10666 G.Skill Eco DDR3 1.35V 7-7-7-21 808.8GB WD Green 128GB G.Skill Falcon II SSD Gigabyte HD5850 Asus Xonar Essence ST Sound card Pioneer DVR-216 DVD-RW Sony 3.5" FDD Win7 Pro 64-bit OEM Seasonic X-650 Antec P182 Scythe Slipstream 800-1200rpm case fans 2x Dell U2711 27" IPS monitors Audioengine A5 2.0 powered speakers Logitech MX1100 mouse + G15 (2nd gen) Keyboard In: Crucial m4 256GB SSD CH Products F-16 Fighterstick USB Alessandro MS-1 headphones Out: Audio Technica ATH-AD700 headphones It really is time to upgrade the graphics card because the 1GB on the 5850 would choke on any modern graphically intensive game. The issue though is that the only modern graphically intensive game I own is The Witcher 2, which I have already completed once and would therefore feel silly blowing $400 on a worthwhile upgrade (GTX670 or HD7950) on half a game. *sigh* Actually my biggest upgrade recently is not one that gets listed on system specs but is pretty notable in terms of overall usability. A new desk. Out goes my 15 year old IKEA chipboard desk that flexed alarmingly under the weight of my screens, and in is a fancy new L shaped workstation with hutch (and, get this, actual drawers ) - only MDF but at least it's solid. Also got a new chair, IKEA high-back Markus. Also built a HTPC a year ago: Intel i5 2300 (stock cooler) Intel onboard HD2000 graphics Asus P8H67-M microATX motherboard (first gen, complete with the potentially faulty SATA ports, too lazy to RMA) 4GB Kingston Value RAM 128GB Crucial m4 SSD 1x 2TB WD Green HDD 1x 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP HDD LG BD-RW 2x 2TB 5900rpm Seagate external HDDs 2x 3TB 7200rpm Seagate external HDDs Win7 Home Premium Corsair CX-400 PSU Antec Fusion Black case Logitech Harmony 650 remote control Onkyo SR-578 HT Receiver Monitor Audio Bronze BR-2 bookshelf speakers TV is still my old Samsung 46" B650 LCD which is really holding me back. Waiting around for the end of this year to see if I can get a good deal on the current get 65" plasmas.

690 is based on far smaller, more power-efficient chips than the 590, as the previous-gen Fermi chips were possibly the most power hungry GPUs ever. If you can run a 590, you can run a 690 with plenty of headroom to spare. I have to say those power numbers in general don't look right - even considering nVidia's tendency to ah, bend the truth when it comes to TDP, the GK104 sips power compared to Tahiti (the 79x0) so something is definitely off when both the 690 and the 680SLI setups are consuming more than the 7970CF. Personally I would be comfortable (in the hypothetical situation in which I was gifted one of these cards) to run it on my 650W PSU, and indeed would be on a 550W model assuming the CPU wasn't overclocked something silly. The thing I'm not comfortable with is spending $1000+ on a card which will probably hit the VRAM ceiling far sooner than it runs out of actual grunt - possibly in the case of a 25x16 screen, and most definitely on any triple-screen setup worth its salt. 4GB 680s are meant to be available about now, the 690 could really use that extra memory.

Bah! Desktop PCs don't need a case, just a large enough flat surface to place all the components on.

The only milestone that really should matter is the final one, because any earlier ones attempt to tie the contract to some sort of nebulous definition of "completion level." If a dev overpromises on delivery time then it's unfortunate but it's their problem. Anything earlier has a whiff of publisher meddling and is vulnerable to "having its numbers rearranged" to have it look like what the publisher wants it to look. Unfortunately I have no idea what, besides Kickstarter, would give the average developer enough bargaining power to negotiate a balanced contract. Also if the project was really that far behind schedule, one wonders if it may have had something to do with the non-payment. Working for six months without pay tends to have a detrimental effect on morale....

Personally I'm hoping it's that Victorian era one that came last in the vote as I'd like something with a non-supernatural vibe to it. ...yeah the horse I back comes last as usual.

Opposite for me, been really winding down on TOR after my smuggler's plot hit a brick wall at the end of Chapter 1 (where it's essentially - Okay, your personal plot is over, here's a generic "help the Republic" storyline). For a game I wasn't particularly enjoying the gameplay of, that's the end of the line really. I'll give one other class a go for the remainder of my free month but 100% sure I'm not subscribing now. With WoW also now dead for me, it means I'll be MMO-less for the first time in years - though to be fair I'd been winding down my commitments gradually over the last couple of years anyway. Not sure what I'll do in the short term. Might install ME3 I guess, it's been sitting on my desk since it arrived a couple of weeks ago.

Well if the last time he played was on launch, the previous patch also made the prologue significantly easier, which may be another factor. I certainly couldn't beat the gate fight in the prologue on normal in 1.0.

I wonder how much of the previous engine they'd be reusing, would be a shame to discard it so soon.

Yeah, nowadays all PSUs I encounter are the switching voltage type, no need to manually flick that switch at the back (which often led to disaster when kids got curious). And yeah, take out the expansion cards, probably the spindle drives, and maybe take off the CPU heatsink (though then you'd need some thermal paste when reassembling).

People who benchmark all day instead of playing games.

My understanding is that they're usually legitimate Russian keys which can be sourced cheaply because of regional pricing policies. Not familiar with that particular vendor though.

I'm in both their "new subscriptions" and "lost subscriptions" columns this month, signed up but immediately cancelled the recurring sub. Interesting enough to play a month while I wait to buy a new video card to play Twitcher 2, but 95% sure I won't renew in either the short or medium term.

One is having poor fallbacks if that always-online model fails - one being having to go online to get into offline mode, and further, not having a contingency should the connection fail in other ways. The other things that do bother me I've already outlined - non-existent version management (it recently for me decided on its own to redownload the entire 6GB of King's Bounty Crossworlds for a tiny update, and for those people who were silly enough to buy The Witcher 2 on it, it did something similar on the release of the first patch) and again, the forced incompatibility with other distribution systems when it comes to expansion packs. That's a win-win for them, if you buy the base game on Steam, you're locked in to their price for all future content. If you buy it elsewhere, you have to rebuy it on Steam should you want to move over to their system. And yeah, that's before the complicity in the regional pricing scam - I can just barely let that slide because the options for them legally are to comply with the publisher's demands or not sell a particular product at all, but that in itself is perpetuating that ongoing scam. Yes, they chose the latter path because business is business, but it's definitely something that has a tangible negative impact on the average joe. And for whatever reason they feel like they should police that policy in the manner they are now - actively seeking out people using VPNs to bypass the anti-competitive behaviour, and locking out entire accounts for it. Somewhat tangentially, I would like to compare this approach with the one adopted by independent film distributor Eureka (and their Masters of Cinema arthouse brand) who are similarly bound by contracts to enforce DVD/Blu-ray region restrictions. While this is of no impact to me personally since I use a HTPC which ignores region coding, I'm heartened to see them having convinced a few film studios to change their minds, and for the ones who persist, the splash message when you attempt to play the disc on a "wrong" region player explains their position and urges people to get in touch with the out-of-touch studios to voice their concerns. On the other hand, Criterion who roughly filfil the same market segment in the US market blindly region-lock every single one of their releases whether required by their contract or not. Suffice to say I always buy from the former if the same title is available from both. At any rate, my preferred channel for new games remains the direct import model from the UK for reasons of both cost and principle, but I can see how some people may not be as patient as I am when it comes to new releases.

Maybe I was a particularly poor (and easily frightened) gamer as a kid, but I tend to not feel that playing older games has gotten any more difficult to me. I never got past the Death Tower segment in Flashback on my first encounter with it, over a decade and a half ago, but on picking it up again just a couple years ago, breezed through that part. (Escaping the disintegration field on the alien base, and fighting the aliens on their homeworld on the other hand....) Heck, I don't think I managed to clear Super Mario Bros and SMB3 until I was into my twenties. On the other hand, it is true that I'm less willing to delve deeply into their mechanics - if I played an IE game now for example I'd not even think about doing anything remotely close to min-maxing as I once way. Sure, I'd be better at it then back then I suspect, I just don't want to dedicate the effort in the foreknowledge it isn't required to achieve the same result. So yeah, it is a manifestation of losing ability to concentrate, just not a literal one. Difference is "just because" is not a sufficient motivator for me now where it might have sufficed in the past.

If it leaves people unable to cast a critical eye on the very real warts, of course. There are some people who go out and proclaim they won't even consider using another digital distribution service - not just currently worse ones like Origin, but all - and that's not a good way to go forward in terms of competition and innovation. I see it as not being a million miles away from how Google is perceived. It's currently the best at what it does as its primary function, but there's also some creepy, questionable stuff going on behind that.

Not sure how it could adopt ideas from a platform that's almost its diametric opposite, at least in terms of the concept of game "ownership". Any move away from the current lock-in model would defeat the entire purpose of the Steam client and would presumably make it non-viable from a business perspective for new games. Does Steam even have the capability to tag a game bought on the platform - presuming the company controlling it desires to - as independent of the client? i.e. for that particular release, Steam would just act as a download manager for a bunch of files. Personally I'm the type who logs into Steam only for necessary updates, and logs back out as soon as the job's done. This is parallel to the concerns I still have about other limitations, deliberate or otherwise, about the client. No direct control over installation locations, the flaky way it patches (redownloading massive files, ignoring the never-update flag, inability to roll back), incompatibility with expansions bought via alternative channels (I think this is particularly insidious). But I'm veering off-topic so I'll shut up.

Since it's free to play and all and you don't have to worry about matching payment details and such, wouldn't it therefore be no issue at all to just create a new battlenet account for this game alone with all fake details?