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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 3426688" data-attributes="member: 13966">Now I'm just wondering how you get your computers so cheap.  I spent over a thousand dollars on my current machine, a very average computer (maybe slightly above-average when I first bought it), around 6 years ago.  Over that span, we've gone from Playstation 2s to...what, PS3s?  Yeah, there's a big shift.  A lot less money to spend on a game console than my current computer (even if you measure by other systems, there's still only 2 new non-handheld systems by any other company; like GameCube and Wii, frex).  Certainly, if you expect to buy every single console system out there, then you would be spending a lot more than on a single, decent or good, gaming computer.  But I've never known anyone, personally, who felt an unholy compulsion to buy every single console system.  Certainly there are plenty who buy 2 systems (like an Xbox and PS2, or Xbox 360 and Wii, or whatever), myself not included.  The PS2 I bought in 2001 cost less than my previous computer (that I had replaced in early 2001); if my previous computer had been a quality gaming machine in the first place, comparable to the PS2's efficiency, the gap in cost would've likely been higher; but my old PC was only mediocre.Along with occasional bugs and such trying to play computer games, it stopped working for certain games altogether in the past 2-3 years or so.  Didn't matter if I reinstalled them.  Somethin's messed up with the machine now, and I can't even fathom how it has ended up like that.  I can't play NWN anymore.  Can't play PS: Torment anymore.  Can't play MechCommander anymore.  Could hardly play MechWarrior 4 anymore if I tried (it wasn't running too reliably just before I uninstalled it).  Can't play StarCraft anymore.  Don't even want to try some of my other games on this machine now.And I never did anything to mess it up; my father and sister certainly made some stupid mistakes using the computer, but not often enough that I would expect it to mess the machine up this much.  I had to get this computer because my old one didn't have the specs to run any of the newer games that were coming out around 2000-2001.  It would've ran like molasses if it could handle them at all (it wasn't a high-end machine when we got it, anyway).  And it wasn't even a very old machine at the time.  My father and I couldn't upgrade it piecemeal or anything; we're not tech geeks (though by now I am somewhat tech-savvy).  On my current machine, the only way to make it work properly would likely be to chuck out the hard drive, the CD-ROM/CD-RW (which has ceased functioning for no discernable reason), and probably much of the computer's memory, replacing them all just to get the machine to stop having inexplicable errors every other day that mess up work and/or force us to reset it.Not at all.  As I said, I wasn't sure about several companies, because I had little experience and reading to make an informed decision, about whether or not I could've expected them to do a better job with DDO.  And mind you I mentioned UO2, not UO as an example of a good MMO; UO was one of the first few, so give it a break.  The designers had to start somewhere.  The team learned a lot and UO2 seemed to be shaping up into a great, and different, game just sharing the same setting (kinda).  Then EA decided to kill it during alpha testing or thereabouts.  Blizzard makes great games, to be sure, but they do tend to rehash stuff that Blizzard or other companies had already done before.  So if they did make DDO, it would probably be fun and all, but play like a superficially improved clone of WoW or EQ most likely.  Story-wise it would probably still be great.  We've already seen how Sony botched Star Wars Galaxies, and EQ2 is a bit of a dud, and now they've got a new fantasy MMORPG I forget the name of; Vanguard maybe?  Which seems neat, but is probably going to be a lot like EQ's and WoW's grind in play.Now, I'm not saying that these companies would've messed up DDO for sure, just that I don't think they would've done it justice.  They still would've done a better job than Turbine, IMO.  DDO has some aweful design conceits that keep many folks away from it, myself included.  Certainly there are some who like its design and enjoy the game; but a lot of D&Ders and MMORPGers will not.</blockquote>

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