Morgoth

Oh please it's hardly as bad as Halo! Some of the environment art was weak. Especially the Citadel looked so clean, boring and...you know, that Star Trek architecture. The bar was an alltime low. They better create levels for ME2 both visually and for gameplay purposes more interesting this time.

Normally, I refuse to throw out money for sucky games, not copy protections. Knowing that DA will be awesome, and knowing that my DVD-drive eats SecROM for breakfast, I'll happily spend the 50

They're talking about the leveldesign process, actually. But when they start doing that, they ought to announce ME2 there also. Is GDC actually an event were game announcements are usual?

Beta.... It will be probably NA only. I'm more keen on a single player demo though.

Yeah, clearly it's my fault. Because I'm not experienced or knowledgeable about computers that are configurable by untrained monkeys or anything and I really enjoy having one single game in my fairly vast library of games force me to reboot my PC every time I want to play it. It's okay. At least you don't seem to be one of those guys like Rhomal who always have the urge to dissect every little tiny flaw Bio games have and then use it against Bioware fans.

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For some reason, people just don't know how to properly setup a computer. But yeah, it gotta be Bio's fault. Always.

Take the Asus. Always bet on Asus. But I'd recommend to snoop around a bit more before you buy. I'd also recommend using a Mobo that uses an Intel chipset. Edit: I remember, I've myself a P5K board with G31 chipset, and it's awesome. Go for it.

No. The environments are striking and very versatile. The underground city let me think "Oh boy, this is Planescape Torment realized in 3D".

Mass Effect was a very polished game. Perhaps you had problems with SecuROM? In that case, it's not the game to blame, but the copy protection sheme. I didn't care either for the lack of a DM client in NWN2 either, but I remember the whiney outcry when this was announced. Boo-Hoo. Will people whine when SecuROm doesnt allow them to play DA properly?

Truth. But Gears 2 crushes both it's predecessor and Crysis together easily, both on a technical and artistical level.

So, Q1 by Sega standards actually means "Spring" (End March to June). Good to know that Colonial Marines and AP will be released in June at the latest.

2 GB is fine, but then I also recommend you to use XP instead. Vista runs great and super stable when you have 4 Gb of memory, but not so great with less, especially games.

It's already been surpassed by Gears of War 2. It's art is much more striking than the ever boring jungle-military-camp stuff that Crysis displayed. I guess you didn't play for more than 30 minutes? Finished it plus finished Warhead as well. There was also this Alien ship I remember, but it was rather forgetable. The Crytek artists can never match the talent of Epic.

Except that Bioware never needed to release a day 0 patch. You must confuse those with the gentleman at Obsidian (day 0 patch for NWN2). How quickly the bio fanboys forget the mess that was nwn1... took bio months of patching to get the game client stable and half a year+ of patching before the server app was was worth anything due to all the memory leaks (and another 6 months of patching after that to get it fully stable). So while my memory does not recall if a 0 day patch was released for nwn1 certainly the first of many were released not too much later if you want to split hairs. And at least when I first ran nwn2 I could play from start to finish without the client crashing out on me every 30 to 40 mins unlike nwn1. *shrugs* (Not saying it was bug free but at least playable) You seem to forget that the single player portion (i.e. the majority people were interested in buying NWN) was stable without patch. I could finish it with no noticeable hitches. Now the Multiplayer, Toolset and DM client stuff may be a different story. But at least it was included in the shipped version, as opposed to NWN2, which didn't even have the DM client included at the start. I also reinforce my statement that DA will be playable by release by the fact that it is a single player only game, thus it's codebase should be slimmer (therefor easier to debug) than the one of NWN. But hey...once a Bio hater, always a Bio hater.

It's already been surpassed by Gears of War 2. It's art is much more striking than the ever boring jungle-military-camp stuff that Crysis displayed.

Perhaps they're picking up that once cancelled Project New Jersey again. Or it's the rumored BG3. Or it's about dwarf monkeys!

I'm too tired for this angry chit-chat anyway. Drink Onko, be happy. DA will be as long as the story needs to be. That could be 10 hours, that could be 20 hours, that could be - ACHTUNG - 100 hours! Yes, I'd play even that. But unless you got an army of David Gaiders, it will be unlikely.

@Tigranes You don't get it huh? Do you seriously think it takes someone 100 hours to finish a Zelda game? Sure, if you play it 10 times! Now here's a bummer for you: DA will be 200 hour long! When I play it 10 times! Incredible! And when I play 1 hour the day, it takes me 200 days to finish DA 10 times! You're my hero.

Why? If we accept that games are / have becoming / become a valid cultural phenomenon (which I do, gaming culture and memes are now firmly part of the cultural mainstream), not unlike books or movies, then they all build on what went before. Then the wheel turns, and what went before actually becomes fashionable again. This is why marketing people always invoke the spirit of the classics (in literature, music, art and just about everything else). A couple of years ago trendy London restaurants went mad about 1970's food. Oasis think they're The Beatles. Quentin Tarantino is making a movie that sounds like the Dirty Dozen (made in 1969). Everybody is loving Marvel comics superheroes. And so on. It is inevitable that a ridiculously old-school RPG will eventually be released at the mainstream market, polished a bit, but aimed at grognard gamers ("see what the fuss was about in 1997 d00ds!"). Look at hex-based wargames. Cottage industry, loved by a tiny but loyal minority who remember the SPI games of yesteryear. I'd be happy with a low-tech, high-content CRPG version of that developing one day, which it will. I know there's that cliche about those forgetting their past not deserving a future (yadda yadda) but there's an element of truth to it. Sometimes less is more, and games are no different. Cheers MC I see DA exactly to be this re-awakened, fashionable classic of the BG era again - but in a modernized, tighter and more progressive form.

Comparisons with reading books is silly. I can set the pace for reading a book on my own, and I can read a book everywhere I want (train ride, in my bed etc.). Games however, I don't play tiny 1 hour per day bits, especially not RPGs. That's not my preference. I can play a FPS maybe 1 hour the day, that's okay, but when a major RPG (from bioware or Obsidian) gets released, I usually have to schedule much time for it. At some point, it has to end. I prefer seeing the end of a game and be happy instead of getting overwhelmed by sheer (mostly useless) content until I lose sight. Again, my play habits have changed over the years.... and I'm certainly not the only one, as the whole industry moves towards shorter, but richer game experiences. And that doesn't give you the right to insult someone as inferior "console kiddies".

"You have "console kiddies" in the literal sense (young console lovers, love Halo, love GoW, etc) that burn +60 hours into Oblivion happily, so I'm afraid this is a farcical claim. Have you seen the number of hours burned on a Final Fantasy game, as well? In a discussion about a single high-profile RPG game, this is irrelevant." I don't think such "console kiddies" (Halo, Oblivion, GoW freaks) are even the target market for Bioware. You can play 100 hours Halo 3 MP matches if you want, but doing a 100 hour story-driven RPG is suicide these days. "What do you mean, "artificially extend" it? What exactly about, say, BG2 is "artifically extended"" BG2 was hardly artificially extended, as it had plenty of interesting side quests to do. Again, this was possible due to the less complex production process (art assets, animation) and much less VO. With "artificially extended" I mean Oblivion/Gothic style gameplay, something that Bioware never made. Please stop reading between the lines. Edit: I'm happy with the direction Bioware has gone with DA. It's a modernized form of BG if you want. Let the old BGs and PS:Ts finally die, you old grumpy crooks!

You should find an instruction on the Asrock website how to flash your motherboard. Traditionally, I only use Asus, so the process was always the same. Downloading the flasher (exe file), the BIOS file, put them both on a boot floppy disk, boot with the floppy, and then just type (in case of Asus boards) a:\aflash.exe biosfilenaem.suffix -o <Enter> Thingy does flashing, then restarting computer (or turning off?) and it's done. I think there's also an option for making a backup on the floppy disk. Asrock might have a slightly different procedure. Oh and only use the Bios files from the official website. Edit: Ah here I found it: http://www.asrock.com/support/download.asp...TA&OS=Vista 1. Create a bootable system floppy disk. 2. Download an updated ASRock BIOS file (WinZip format with .zip file extension) from the web site, unzip the BIOS file and save both ASRFLASH.EXE utility and BIOS file to the disk you created in step 1. 3. Boot from the disk you created in step 2. 4. At the "A:\" prompt, type ASRFLASH, hit space bar once, and type BIOS file name then press <Enter>. For example: A:\ASRFLASH K7S41GX2.00 <Enter> then you will see a message "Please wait for BIOS loading ROM". 5. After 30 seconds, you will see the message "Flash ROM Update Completed - Pass", then you have finished upgrading the BIOS. 6. After finishing upgrading the BIOS, please remove the floppy disk. Restart your system and press <F2> to enter the BIOS setup utility during boot up. 7. In Exit menu, please select "Load Default Settings" and press <Enter> to continue. 8. Select "Exit Saving Changes" and press <Enter> to exit the BIOS setup utility. 9. Now, system is booting up with new BIOS. Edit 2: It seems there's also a Win patcher, but I'm not sure these are really reliable. Edit 3: Not sure if that's even the right motherboard.

I should receive my copy tomorrow or Thursday, so I'm curious what this buzz is all about.

I'm a grown-up gamer too who enjoys RTS and RPGs, but that doesn't mean I want to play through a 100 hour game. Does that make me now a console kiddie? Seriously, who knows how linear DA will be. They haven't really talked about the world size much yet, so perhaps there're some pleasent surprises. After all, this game is supposedly made for the BG/NWN crowd in mind, so perhaps there's more meat to it. But I doubt it will be 100 hour meat.