Spider

Red Dead Redemption? Not sure that was released on both consoles though, but definitely not on PC.

How about second hand car sellers? Pretty sure they make a killing.

Also, I seem to recall an EA earnings report where they were shown to be making more money than from PS3 games, and certainly Wii games. I've said this before, but I'll say it again. We're seeing the console-pc cycle again. Whenever a new generation of consoles come out, they'll be very popular and PC games will be seen as dying. When the consoles age, PC gaming increases in popularity again until the next generation of consoles is released.

Yeah, but if they sell enough copies of PE to non funders, they might have enough cash to fund the next game themselves, at least partially.

They never promised cathar as part of the expansion. They were shown for the first time at the same time as makeb, so I understand the confusion, but was never said to be part of the same package. Irrc, the warzone Ancinet Hypergates and HK as companion were revealed at the same time. cathar was originally supposed to arrive way before the expansion, but kept getting delayed. As for wether or not it should have been in the expansion. It depends. If including cathar in the expansion would have meant raising the price of the expansion, then I prefer them doing it like this. As a subscriber I don't have to pay extra money for the cathar should I want them. I haven't gotten them yet and have no real desire to either. I don't particluarly want to change any of my characters to that race, and don't see myself levelling another one anytime soon (if they release a new class or advanced class that may change). Edit: As for your question, tooltips on damage over time abilities are a bit misleading. What it does is x ticks for y damage. putting those skillpoints there should mean that x is increased, ie making it do more damage overall.

XCOM was ok, gets a bit too much of a procession towards the end, but I suppose that is inevitable with the kind of game it is. Hopefully it's patched up better and the infinite Alien turn bug is gone . The handholding tutorial is annoying on replays as is the alien spawning, but nothing to make it really terrible. Grab it on sale. You can skip the tutorial though, there's an option when you start a new game. Personally I loved XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I was set on beating it on iron man (or what it was called) and classic difficulty. It took me some 40 restarts to do that. Any game that keeps me hooked for that long while still being utterly frustrating is doing something right. As for the fps, I'm looking forward to it with catious optimism. It sounds like it could be a nice game. And if it's not, at least we got the Firaxis game, so all is good.

janmandens response is more if you're upgrading the entire system I think. If you're only upgrading the CPU, then checking what motherboard you currently have (and what CPU) is a good place to start. but the first question I'd ask is why do you feel the need to upgrade? As in what is it you feel should run better?

Iirc, there is a setting for how auto target works. Or maybe that's just for target cycling. I typically turn auto target off anyway, since it tends to be a liability (causing attacks to sometimes go on targets that REALLY shouldn't be hit). Target cycling with tab is more reliable in my experience, especially with it set to display the current target and the next target in the cycle so you know where it'll end up. Edit: oh and the classes on republic side and imperial side are mirrored, so abilities are practically identical. So it's no easier for imperials to set up than it is for republics. There are a couple of cases where animation plays a part, but those are not many and the impact is very minor.

Also, I will say that as far as PvE is concerned, the expansion made an amazing job at balancing the classes. Now each class has at least one dps spec that is viable for PvE, and they're all within 5% of each other more or less. Except maybe assassins, but I think they're doing fine as well, but may be trailing a little. Likewise, all healers and all tanks are completely viable options. In PvE balance is worse, there are still classes that are leaps and bounds after the rest. So that they're balancing for PvP at the cost of PvE is pretty much a myth.

Apart from the artifact unlock, I never really considered any of those to be a huge benefit as a subscriber. And they still cost the same, just because people buy them and put them on the GTN it doesn't devalue the subscription. Someone still has to pay for them in the first place. Like I said, for me the subscription is completely worth it and the game would cost me more if I went f2p. Sure, I could probably burn through credits for a while and survive on unlocks (I have plenty of credits, so it's certainly viable), but I like the game and would like to see it stay around. So giving the developers money seems like a good way to accomplish that. And I certainly still feel I'm getting my money's worth each month. But I'm glad f2p is working for you. Another thing, you said you bash the game so that developers will see it's föaws and correct them. That's a fine sentiment, but do you really think developers will see what you post here? And even if they did, saying what they're doing right as well as what they're doing wrong is probably more productive anyway.

What functions have been given to f2p that subs don't have access to without paying cash?

Not paying my subscription would still be more expensive for me than f2p, even when I don't pvp (which I don't currently). So subscriptions are still more cost efficient by far if you do endgame conten regularly (as in on a weekly basis). Also while 2.1 will be a cartel market focused patch, 2.2 will have no cartel market features (apart from maybe a set of packs and some items). Also the underworld gear for some classes is actually really nice. And 90% of the items in the cartel store are just as ugly as other gear anyway. Edit: I just don't understand why you're playing a game you so clearly hate? I don't think I've seen you write a single positive thing about it, and you have bashed it repeatedly. Why are you still playing if it's that bad?

Yeah, these quests are fairly similar. The actual story quests are great, at least if you like more puzzle-y type quests. Then there's a bunch of filler in the middle that's extremely dull.

It's two quest lines, they're fairly long and they each end with heroic 4:s. Some of the quests in those lines are actually pretty sweet, but the filler quests are dull as hell (in line with the HK search, although not quite as bad). They are, however, completely optional and has nothing to do with anything on Makeb (other than you can pick them up there). You need to have the first meeting in each quest in order to do a new set of dailies, but if you hate the digging I don't know why you'd want to (I did the dailies once and decided I hated them and haven't touched them since). They've got their own labels in the quest log as well. "Macrobinoculars" and "Seeker Droids". So just don't do those if you hated HK. Though Macrobinoculars is nowhere near as annoying, if you're doing that questline you might as well do the other one as well since they're lining up pretty well as far as which planets you need to go to.

Yeah, I was one of the criers (at least I was concerned). Turns out they knew what they were doing just fine.

Personally I never liked SMAC all that much. I acknowledge it's strengths in atmosphere and storytelling, but found the asthetics of the world to be very boring, and it got fairly repetetive. The scripted events were cool the first few times, butafter a while you started playing around them, so I felt replay value was way less than in other civ games. The very specific nature of the faction leaders that Drowsy mentioned also contributed to this. At the time I even preferred Civ3 over SMAC, but given hindsight I will acknowledge SMAC is a better game. Civ4 on the other hand, is way better than both.

well, mostly I think people are spending money on the packs, possibly some of the gear sets or mounts. I'm not one of them, so I'm not sure. But the packs are what I hear about the most. Subscribers get all content for free, but any convenience stuff in the cartel market we need to spend cartel coins on. We also get 500 cartel coins per month (600 with a security key), so we can get some of the stuff if we want (for reference, cartel packs cost 380 cc, armor sets can go for 1000cc to 1800cc depending on how many pieces are included). Also most of the cartel market items can be bought and then resold on the auction house of in game credits, so I'm guessing some players are doing that as a way to get more credits in game. And in a week they'll be adding the Cathar as a playable race, which needs to be bought from the cartel market for anyone who wants them. Also coming in the next patch are character customization options, where you can change everything except for gender about your character, but each change will also cost cartel coins. Edit: And in regards to the brouhaha humanoid mentioned, I personally feel that's blown way out of proportion. The cathar will cost 600cc for an account wide unlock, and subscribers get 5-600 cc a month. So no big deal. You won't be buying a couple of packs this month if you really want the cathar. I can live with that (though I don't even know if I care about the cathar, but have 1800cc lying around so might as well buy them). The bigger issue is that character customization will cost cc, as that is something people are more likely to do frequently, but the pricing on that is yet to be seen.

Also, some. Subscribers are spending a fair bit on the cartel market outside their subscription.

They kinda sorta are, just implemented in a way that is bad enough that no one uses it. At least there used to be an option "Planetary Destinations" which is intended to get groups for stuff like heroics on a planet. But since you don't specify which ones, it gets kinda dicey.

Relics and some light sabers are the only things alignment affects. But you won't really need relics until endgame, and there are plenty of options for light sabers anyway. And at end game neither relics nor light sabers have alignment restrictions. I personally don't bother with relics much when leveling, they're an ok bonus, but won't really impact your gaming experience that much.

Not wanting to spoil too much, here. There are two romance options for IA (could be a third, but I think it never develops that way, more like a close working relation). One male and one female. The male companion option has more depth to him than I'd think at first, so it's ok. The female option (which I suppose you've already met) Is kinda cool, in a psychotic sort of way.

I'd like to add that while Imperial Agent has the best story, it's not necessarilly the most Star Wars-y story. It's definitely a story taking place in the SW universe, but the feel of it is a bit different. if you want the classic Star Wars epicness, you might want to consider Jedi Knight, it's the most epic. If you're sticking with Imperial Agent, you'll get to choose between Operative or Sniper at level 10. Operative is either stealth healer or stealth melee dps (a lot of people get confused with the operative dps, since it has attacks that are ranged, but the core of it's abilities are all melee based). The sniper is a pure ranged dps class.

Imperial Agent has the best story if that's what you're after. otherwise I suppose it depends on what you enjoy in a game like this.

The expansion is pretty sweet, and Makeb is the best planet they've made. Especially the planetary story is much more engaging, though I suppose that's because it doesn't compete with a class story for attention. I also liked how they made the imperial and republic stories not be mutually exclusive. This always bugged me in the original quest line.

I think you get the skill at what level you had it when you lost access to it.