Magister Lajciak

I don't know, as I hadn't bought the game. I do have experience through some members of my family with Sony's music DRM though from some years back (and nobody in my family has ever bought anything tagged with the Sony brand again, without first considering if it could be impacted by Sony's DRM policies). The music simply stopped working after some software changes on the computer. That's right, those were not even hardware changes and not even a full reinstall of the OS. From that I suspect that if the configuration of your computer changes sufficiently for Securom to decide that it is a new computer, Spore will simply stop working until you reinstall it, thus using another activation. That is just my suspicion - again, I don't really know for certain and don't intend to find out through experience.

Wait... "going back to 3.5" is a bad thing?! For me this is a huge attraction of NWN2 and its expansions. I like 3.5E and dislike 4E in PnP. In CRPGs I like 3.5E too and would be much more reluctant to buy a 4E CRPG, though I probably would if I felt it was good in other respect or that the 4E negatives were minimized in electronic format (which, I think, would in fact be the case.

Many financial companies did just that!

Regardless of when Spore was pirated and when Fallout 3 was pirated, I doubt either date had much to do with the type of DRM used. Internal security with respect to leaks and simple lack (or lack thereof) probably had much more to do with it.

I thought the whole point is that it is now downloadable off the internet - maybe I am confused?

skuld1, does make a fair point. I am of two minds about the kind of software described above. On the one hand, there is the innocent until proven guilty presumption, but on the other hand, I simply cannot think of any other use for the software than making copies of copyrighted software... which is illegal.

So... one of the gaming sites or their staff leaked it?

That's what developers want you to think, when in reality they're not at all secure. I guess I learned something today. I don't own a console, so I guess the insecurity of consoles and the subsequent migration of developers to the secure board-game platform will not affect me directly. Nevertheless, this is still bad news for Fallout 3. I hope Bethesda catches the leaker.

On a related note - since this is console piracy - I guess PC sales will not be overly affected by this particular leak (only indirectly - people who pirate the console version might not get the PC version...).

That is very interesting. I didn't know significant piracy existed on a large scale on consoles. It's there, you just need a chipped console -and sometimes not even that- and a DVD burner. In many ways it's simpler than PC piracy. That's weird. I thought one of the main reasons why so many game companies are switching to supporting consoles is to avoid piracy. Indeed, I thought console is essentially a super-DRM-machine.

That is very interesting. I didn't know significant piracy existed on a large scale on consoles.

That sucks big time. Of course, if it had draconian DRM that wouldn't really make a difference and it would have been pirated similarly fast anyway, but it might be erroneously interpreted in certain quarters as a pro-DDRM argument. They really ought to concentrate on closing those leaks with embeded unique identifiers per disc, rather than on using ineffective draconian DDRM.

Thanks samm! From what you say the performance does not seem that much worse and the chipset news is very encouraging. That means I will be buying the laptop in the next few hours unless somebody chimes in with comments that could make me reconsider.

Sounds great and it's less than two months till release!

Erm, that is just, ehm, tiny bit, ehm, over my budget... In any case, does anybody have any word on the AMD Turion processor I mentioned? If it is good, than I will end my ordeal and just go buy the computer without waiting any further.

Hmm, it is interesting that I cannot find any Intel chips in combination with the Mobility Radeon 3850.

Thanks for the link!

Bad news, though not unexpected... the following site got the invite to the 21 October revelation of the game: http://www.massively.com/2008/10/07/check-...ncement-invite/ Note that it is an exclusively MMO site, so it stands to reason that the announced game will be an MMO. Maybe tack on a single player announcement at the same time? Pretty please, BioWare?!?!

Here is my list of already existing Obsidian's and BioWare's games in order of preference: MotB / BGII / KotOR (I honestly cannot decide which of the three gets the top spot) ToB NWN2 OC KotOR 2 BG NWN 1 Not played at all: Mass Effect & Jade Empire

This would, of course, be great, since it would satisfy both camps. A nice and satisfying KOTOR 3 that concluded the trilogy would make me very happy.

Yes, there is some immediacy to this, since my current laptop is becoming unreliable and might collapse permanently at any time. Budget is also important and the waiting for better hardware is more a question of the newer hardware driving down prices of current hardware than actually going for the newest CPU. There is also the lingering issue of laptop versus desktop. A desktop wins on value for money, but a laptop does beat desktops on conveniance for me by a substantial margin (since I move around frequently) and I am also beginning to have some jitters regarding building a desktop on my own given that I have never done so before nor have I every observed anybody do it. As I said - still undecided... but I definitely do appreciate the help you guys have given me - it has made things clearer on how stuff works and what is worthwhile and will enable me to make a more informed decision on the matter.

I have managed to find one notebook with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3850 and that is the following: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetai...ctCode=10009297 I am temtped to buy it, as other specifications seem alright too (it doesn't have Blu-Ray, but I suspect that it will take another 3 years or so for Blu-Ray to become mainstream... and without Blu-Ray the WSXGA 1680x1050 screen is probably sufficient) and the price seems decent too, but it has the following processor/chipset: CPU Type: AMD Turion X2 Ultra CPU Speed: ZM-82 2.2GHz Chipset: ATI RX781 I am not very familiar with AMD/ATI chipsets and processors, but I do know that unlike Intell, they have not yet transitioned to a 45 nanometer process and still use 65 nanometer processors. This sucks in terms of heat generation/overheating, in battery power (though that is somewhat less important for me) and I suspect in performance too. I have heard that they lag behind Intel's solutions performance-wise at the moment. Does anybody know about this particular CPU and chipset? Is it any good compared to stuff like say Intel's P8400 or similar Dual Core processors?

Since the revelation about faulty NVIDIA cards, I have been searching for laptops with ATI Mobility Radeon 3850 or 3870. The strange thing is that I simply cannot find any of those at all. It is almost as if they don't exist. Did anybody else manage to find notebooks containing these graphics cards?

All KOTOR discussion is concentrated in this thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?showt...75&start=75 That said, I unfortunately think it is KOTOR MMO. Nevertheless, I still hold out a glimmer of hope that it might be KOTOR 3.

Well, I guess a partial hope lies in the fact that the MMO and the LucasArts project is listed separately on the BioWare website: http://www.bioware.com/ Still, it is only minor grounds for hope, since the KOTOR MMO has essentially been confirmed by EA's CEO.