Drakron

Except they are. The reasoning behind death penalty is to serve as a deterrent effect, the same goes with copy protection systems behind piracy.

Metadigital raises a good point but he forgets that its the publishers that most of the time are funding the development of the game. Few companies can self-fund, let alone self-publish ... I remenber everyone being happy with Valve and Steam but not only Valve CAN self-fund but their self-publishing Steam is a spyware system (read its EULA) and they had no problems in going to EA to futher publish Half Life 2. The problem is the same of why artists cannot simply self record their songs, the huge publishing machines made it neat impossible to reach success without working with then.

A point I once tried to make is piracy does not make that much dent into profits because. 1) People could not afford the price. 2) People would not buy it. Take Channel for example, every year there are millions of copies of Channel products using the Channel label ... yet they remain because their products price tags makes well beyond most wallets ability. The imitations sell because they are Channel at a much lower price but also at a much lower quality. Same with watches. Yet you dont see anyone from that area making demands, sure they go after IP, trademark and copyright infrigement but that is to protect their IP, trademark and copyright and not actually stop then.

Nice seeing you ignore the huge paralel market in asia that exists because the usual cost of a game is 1/3 of their mensal revenue ... They are not giving the CDs and DVDs for free ... they simply dont carry the huge price tag but something that people can actually arford.

Well DVD lower sales are being blamed on piracy ... This tread will resolve in nothing because we have piracy going for ages ... and the methods to fight it? Sony latest copy protection was useless for CD mass copy machines (since they copy the entire CD content) and so the people that actually profit from it were not affected. The ones that were was the "casual pirates" that simply rip the song and put in on a P2P network. And the price to not stopping the people that are actually profit from piracy? Users that could not even use iTunes to play the music. That is the problem with the whole "anti-piracy" messures, they dont target the tradictional pirates that mass copy software and make a profit from it, they target the casual pirates that put stuff online. And why? Because its visible, its efforts are nothing but smoke and mirrors to account for "loss profit" ...

NwN was a online game and so they could not really push the graphics and I remenber the outcry over how Nvidia card had a water effect that ATI cards could not (at the time) produce. PS:T sold crap. GTA series make it with GTA III in consoles, before it was not a big name and certainly not the massive mover it became after being in consoles. I could add WC IV that a great game despite using WC III modified engine but it economical failed. Wrong, PC games run on the "gaming machines" fanatics ... they are a niche market due to the high price of having a "gaming rig". NwN 2 lack of "graphic whoring" is because its a online game and so there are limits of how far can it push processing power because such power is needed to be connected.

PC is always first in graphic whoring department, being "sponsored" by the main the main graphic card manufactures. Consoles on the other hand are not, they have only one hardware and only way to improve graphics is work with is avaible for then, the fact there is a progress in graphics is more due to then playing around until they get results. PC gaming does not do that, its simply easier to roll in with Nvidia and ATI latest card and be done with it. The reason consoles risen is because people got fed up with spending the same amount of money they could be used to buy a console every year to "update" their computer, these days we start to see 6 months computer updates that cost the same as buying a XBox ... its cheaper to buy a Xbox 360 that Nvidia or ATI latest card.

GW quests are not exactly dificult and there are henchman but the missions will eventually require you to team up with other players, I could do then until I reached the Jungle but after that it starts to require to team up with other players. Of course by the time you start to team up with other players you notice there are very few quests avaible.

Consider that I played both. I posted on Guild Wars Guru forums and complains were either PvP inbalance (spirit spawn was issue around the time I stop playing) or the lack of single player content ... in fact the PvP crew usually told us that "this is not WoW" and "dont turn this into WoW". WoW is very far from perfect but you cannot honestly compare the content of both games, GW is simply build too much around PvP (and god, how much the PvPs complained about the "skill grind") and the PvE content is very lacking. Of course others are entitled to their own opinions but mine come from playing both games and I even moved from GW to WoW ... you simply cannot compare what is walking on WoW in a lower level area and be left alone by the local enemies as walking in GW was a pain in the ass, lot of pop-up enemies (I hated the jungle and desert segment) and a lot of mobs that making walking a pain, I have a literal hate of South Shiverpeaks due to the amount of mobs, their obscene levels and the fact they drop junk (and the whole "henchman take a cut" so they might drop something worthy but its not like you are going to notice it ... and no, we cannot do it solo unless it was the old monk build that relied on a health trick to recive no damage).

Yes, it clocks how long the application is running so even if you pause it counts as time playing.

Really? How about we cannot take 2 steps without running into a mob? how about boring repeating combat? Guild Wars is very close to Diablo, its not Sacred (that is Diablo) butt it have several aspect of it. Guild Wars is not a MMORPG per say, its just a co-op game with gives the worst of MMORPGs (idiot players, farming) without the best (tons of quests, things to actually make farming and grinding have a purpose) ... only reason someone sould play Guild Wars is for competitive PvP.

My opinion of "professional" game reviewers is rather low, I tend to look at then as the industry whores that give 9s and 10s in exchange for payment. With that out of the way, Eurogamer tends to be rather brutal on their reviews and their scores (look at Black and White 2 review) so if the game have weak points they are more likely to concentrate of then that IGN or GameSpot. Also I wonder how many gaming news sites and magazines are going to say that MS just skip their own certification in order to have something that was hyped at a launch title ...

Tenchu: Return From Darkness (Xbox version of Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven) is tough for me. Currently I am playing Xenosaga ep. II that have a combat system that requires focus, I consider it hard because its not forgiving (it have been some time were I am wiped out by a standart fight) and "leveling up" does require the player to go training.

Well you get all the crap from MMORPGs without the ability to complain about it in Guilds Wars.

Oh simple, Sony had part of Square stock and raise it share after the Final Fantasy movie fiasco. And notice how it said "games", one thing is having SaGa for the Xbox 360 and another is having Final Fantasy.

Its not ... at least for the long run. Problem with it is that it lacks content, after you beat the game for the first time doing it again is just boring and as in MMORPGs like WoW you DO get something out of a instance in Guild Wars case you dont, there is 0 reason to repeat a mission. The only thing that difers of both is as in GW you never pay, in WoW you do.

Well I dont think NwN is a competition for a MMORPG, there are diferent beasts. The problem with MMORPG comes from the player base, most players are simply trying to be "the best" and they have no interest on anything else, beside those come the players that just want to play ... they dont care about anything expect compleating some quests and all. Very few want to roleplay and create a character that actually exist on the game world so eventually the game developers have no choice but to base their game for the biggest group and that means starting to push the PvP aspect of the game, make more grind and dont bother with the world. Case in point is WoW ... their main push was PvP and more dungeons, quest stories are decent but there is not much a linked coherant storyline ... its impossible to play a Night Elf were the game only goes into Alliance/Horde mentality ... classes are almost as bad (but they stink) but millions play. As for D&D ... they are pushing Ebron (or whatever) very hard as a setting and that makes me wonder how successeful it is on selling the campain D&D books, I did not had any interest on it when I was playing and even less that I was not ...

SEGA tried to make it for years, they produced technical advanced machines that never made it. And with Oblivion delayed as well there is nothing on the RPG front that I am remotely interested. In fact from what I seen Xbox 360 launch games appear to be the usual EA Sports titles that will come out for every single plataform as they always do. Games get delayed all the time but from recent comments over Oblivion I wonder if the whole "Xbox is so easy to program" is not just a marketing device from MS since the last comments I hear over Oblivion was they were working on Xbox version optimization. Of course they moved from a PC with a Nvidia card to a Mac with a ATI card ... XBox 360 is the worst console of the "next gen" in terms of backwards compatibility since it have to use a emulator for it (the Revolution also comes with one ... for N64 games). The Box 360 reminds me of the Dreamcast ... powerful but being beaten by Sony and with HD DVD were the next standart might be Blu-Ray that Sony uses.

Launch games are usual weak, the only ones that are worth is the flagship titles of the publisher that also happens to be the console creator (example, Nintendo Zelda and Mario games for its systems). Six months later is were we see if it have legs to stand since its when actual 3rd party support starts to show up (or not). Its not a suprise DoA 4 is Xbox 360 lauch title (in japan anyway) since Techno is a big Xbox supporter (and the fact DoA lacks the competition of Nanco fighting games) but if you are getting a console on launch dont get suprised if it turns out to end up like the Dreamcast.

Stop being a ass, Jade Empire is now a "classic" budget title in PAL region and that page referes to that ... there are pages for the regular and limited Jade Empire. You entire idiotic point is what? That some stores sell it at full price ... guess what? I seen 2 years old games being sold at their release date price, some shops simply do not lower their prices. I knew were to look since I seen Jade Empire as a "Classic" when I was looking for "Lost in Blue". The fact Amazon.com (North America) is selling it less that 20$US pretty much reflects the major retailers selling price, EB games is selling it as a similar price and Target at $29.99. All easy to verify information. Oh and Amazon.uk sells more that just UK, they pretty much sell for all of the european union. Again. Game Over.

You know this does a good job of shutting up a certain canadian idiotic ideas. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B...5570035-9813457 Game Over.

That is not the point people. Microsoft said that Xbox 360 games would all be at 720p and 1080i and now they are backing up from that claim. It does not matter if people will see the diference or not, they made a statement and backed from it. Considering Xbox 360 launch game list gets smaller as more and more game gets delayed its not a suprise.

J.E. Sawyer when will you learn that trying to argue with Volourn is like trying to argue with a wall ... except the wall being more likely to change its mind.

You know of all examples you could have selected you picked one of the worst. That was a example of sheer stupidity, the allies bombed a monestary (its not a town) and then the german troops dig in the ruins.

If you read what is on that link you would realize that Thief sold more that enough, it was not a failure in sales because if Thief 1 had failed Looking Glass would gone under and Thief 2 and Gold would never been made. Again if you bothered to read that article you realized that Thief sales are more that enough to keep then all happy. And what in the end destroyed Looking Glass was: