Enoch

Eldar's in the right ballpark, although I'd shift it a bit lower, personally. The game is most fun when all the little various random events are roughly of equal importance. If the outcome of battles repeatedly come down to the same variable, it gets boring and frustrating. Below level 4 or so, critical hit rolls are too powerful. Having your character be perpetually one unlucky roll from certain death can be very frustrating. As levels get really high (exactly where depends on how magic-heavy the campaign is), the saving throw becomes far too dominant. As for how fast to advance, I'm awful at hour-counting in games. I can't really quantify the rate that would feel right to me. However, I've always felt that the D&D advancement system was a bit too granular. You get no improvement for a long time, and then a dramatic step forward all at once. This leads CRPG developers, who know that gamers want regular rewards for their efforts, to turn nobodies into world-beaters far too quickly.

Don't forget to make sure that your power supply can handle it before switching to a dual-core setup.

That's probably a pretty accurate description of where the market is going. The teenagers (et al.) with lots of free time to burn can sink it into MMOs. The employed adults who are lucky to pull together 4-5 hours a week for gaming (at which pace a 60-hr. game would take 3 months to complete!) will get shorter, but better crafted SP games. These consumers are also less sensitive to price, so the value/hour isn't as big a deal.

I'm not gonna have much time for gaming until sometime around May 10, so I'm staying away from getting into anything. I'm still playing Final Fantasy II & Super Mario World on my GBA from time to time (i.e., on the can).

I hardly think that going on a fan message board pre-release and informing players interested in designing persistent worlds that it might be more difficult than they expect amounts to telling them to "shove it." And the initial allocation of resources is simply a rational company decision that they think will most please the majority of their fans. Companies that don't do this kind of thing end up bankrupt. Heart of Winter was crap because the content stunk. If it were twice as long, it would've been even crappier.

As for MP v. SP, I think this is the key quote: Nothin' wrong with any of that. As to overall SP length, who has the time to play a 60-hr game, anyway? Is a 4-hour movie necessarily better than a 2-hour one? Quality over quantity.

My favorite part:

From a fan's point of view, you're right. But from a marketing point of view, a delay from November to March (a guess) means there will be a huge hit in sales.

Eyeball Skeleton -- The Smokey Turtle. Greatest Elementary School Band EVAR!!

Check it out! (Link goes to civfanatics thread w/ lots of mirrors) I haven't gotten a chance to mess around with it yet, but it looks like they've done quite a bit of re-balancing. For example, early game forest chopping yields fewer hammers, the Financial trait loses its cheap banks, the Expansive trait gets a better health bonus, the happiness bonus from Representation is lower, and the upkeep costs are adjusted for several Civics. They've also released some of the source code for higher-level modification, as well as lower-resolution in-game movies (intro, wonders, and victories) for players with older machines.

Which means it'll be nothing more than a collection of feats with a cool name.

That's probably true. There are a decent number of musicians who have pulled the acting thing off pretty well. Queen Latifah, Will Smith (yeah, he's been in a lot of crap, but go rent Six Degrees of Separation), Ices Cube & T, etc. Tough to think of many actors who have put together decent careers as musicians... But, then again, there is the Hass! :D

Dune was a book that I really liked when I was younger. I've read it since and wondered what the heck I was on back then. So much of it makes so little sense (e.g., the empire that the book brings down is possibly the stupidest one ever imagined in print) and is so ham-handed (e.g., you hate the villian because he's sickeningly fat) that it approaches unreadability. I've never read the sequels.

Umm... What?

What an odd selection to choose from. I thought it was pretty well established that the choices for this question went Beatles, Zepp, Who, Stones (with a few oddballs throwing in Floyd and the Doors). Anyhow, I'll take option 1.

Depends what the frog is smoking. As for the case, it's fairly obvious that video games are an expressive medium within the First Amendment. The question is what standard applies under the caselaw interpreting that Amendment. I looked the full decision up, and Michigan was arguing that violent video games should be treated similarly to obscenity (which makes it relatively easy to restrict access to adults-only). The court didn't buy this because Michigan didn't establish any evidence that the game are actually harmful. Also, the law was unpermissably vague (doesn't define "violent") and arbitrarily under-inclusive ("It cannot be said that the Act materially advances these purported goals by preventing a minor from purchasing such video games as Resident Evil 4 or Doom 3, while they can still easily purchase the Resident Evil and Doom movies.").

I'm slowly coming around to the idea of building my own. It'll be a lot more likely if this upgrade goes well. (So that really doesn't help me much in the decisionmaking!) I'll probably go with a cheaper one on this round, though. I figure that, if I do end up building a new rig in a year or two, I won't mind buying a new PSU, considering that I'll still be saving a good amount of $$ over an equivalent retail PC. But if I get a high-end PSU now, and this upgrade turns into a nightmare, I'll be pissed at myself for sinking more $$ than I needed to into this machine.

Exactly. Guitars are so played-out. The musical sound of the new millenium is the muted trombone.

His evidence is a bit too lyric-centered. What that guy needs to learn is that virtually all song lyrics sound stupid if you just read them off the page. It's about context. And, based on lyrics alone, the worst song ever written is Journey's "Any Way You Want It." There can be no debate about this.

To un-hijack us for a moment, I've been looking into PSUs. In addition to the 500W model Meta recommended above, I noticed that Seasonic also makes a highly-rated 430W model (at about 2/3s the price of the 500W). It lacks the SLI support of the more expensive model, but that's not anything I'd ever make use of on this machine. Seeing as my whole system now runs on 250W (and this is almost certainly the last upgrade I'll do on this rig), is there any compelling reason why I should shell out the extra cash for the more powerful model?

I would, but my motherboard doesn't have the 3 necessary PCI-Q slots.

Thanks, Ang. Very helpful stuff. I probably won't be making the order for another week or two-- I've got some important projects going, and I don't want to risk messing with my PC until they're off my plate. (I'm also not going to have much to play games until they're done, and what's the point in upgrading before you can actually use it?!)

Thanks for the input. Total $$ isn't as big a deal to me as value-- I'd like the whole of my machine to be obsolete at around the same time (I'll probably start considering a new rig in about a year and a half). As evidenced by my putting off an upgrade for this long, I don't need the bleeding edge (where I'd imagine that my processor would start to hold me back more than the vid card). Tentatively, I'd get worried about price if the whole transaction (vid card, RAM, PSU) starts getting into the $400 range. On the RAM, my owners' manual tells me that 1 gig is the maximum my mobo can handle. As for the video cards, an additional question: I'm a little lost in the differences within each model. I.e., what's the performance difference between a card with 128MB DDR3 VRAM and one with 256MB DDR VRAM? I'm probably a bit old fashioned in reading too much into the # of MB, especially considering that the pricetags tell me that the former setup is more desirable.

Thanks, Meta, thats helpful. I was afraid that messing with the power supply (which I've never done before) would be a pain. Should I worry about getting one that will fit well in my case, or is the size & screw configuration standard?

A few of the local experts might remember me piping into some of the recent video card discussions around here. I've finally done some preliminary shopping, and I've got a few questions. I'm looking for an AGP vid card to replace my old geforce3. The machine (a Dell purchased in 2002) is a 2.0 gig P4, with 512 MBs of RAM (I'm planning on doubling this; I'll probably order it with the vid card to save on shipping). I'm looking for something that'll extend its useful gaming life by another year or two (i.e., will run Oblivion, NWN2, Civ4 maps larger than "standard"). My current concern: Power supply is 250 W. Is this sufficient to run a newer card? If not, is this something that a relative neophyte can hope to replace by himself? (And approximately how much would that set me back?) Many thanks! (Note: For price references or retailer recommendations, I'm in the continental US)