CJ

Danger Mouse.

You are welcome.

I found playing it a little bit straining on the eyes. It seems like a good idea and looks great in videos, but I'm not sure how well that transfers to an extended gaming session.

Maybe it's a good way to help fight game addiction?

Prothetic foreheads.
Yes, please.

Active or free:
Mortal Online Beta
Gates of Andaron
D&D Online
Runes of Magic
Guild Wars
Ultima Online

Inactive or waiting on updates:
WAR
EVE
Champions Online
Fallen Earth
Wakfu

So 11 in total taking up room on my various drives. As you can see I've been on something of a soul-searching journey since I decided to take a break from WAR. Hopefully one day a true next-gen sandbox game without spaceships* will go gold.

*(EVE is great but I just don't get attached to spaceships. I take this as a personal shortcoming and would accept some form of therapy if it was available.)

So far I'm pretty happy with my netbook for study use. It lasts me a full day at univeristy taking notes, researching assignments and the occasional procrastination session. I really see netbooks as the perfect study computer over MIDs, phones, laptops etc. I'm sure there are other uses outside study, but I think if they want to bring netbooks forward they should pick a demographic and this one is a no-brainer.

So things that are already pretty good for netbooks as a study device are: 10+ hour battery life, decent resolution screen, decent connectivity, fast enough, light enough, good looking enough.

What does this leave?
- real capacitive Wacom style pen/touchscreen with swivel screen (There's been many a time where I've really wished I could draw on some notes. And no, a finger based hack job won't cut it, we need the detail of a pen here people)
- matte screens (glossy + low screen brightness = mirror)
- better Linux support, particularly in regards to battery optimization (Students are traditional poor and this would give us one less reason not to use Linux but right now I get about 4hrs less battery)
- better cloud services (I want to put my entire life and any remaining privacy onto Google's servers, please make it easier for me)

Things that can come with time as prices go down:
- faster processors/more RAM
- more rugged features (maybe solid state drives?)
- lighter/thinnger/sexier

I guess I missed the first one. Second time's the charm?

This did look interesting, and I'm hoping the crusade features come together in an interesting way.

Well that's just sad. I'd agree that WAR has dropped players since the last report.

I think it's due to a confluence of a TERRIBLE balance patch being put on the test server and then reverted, at the same time as testing what turned out to be a primarily PvE expansion.

I personally lost most remaining faith I had with what they tried in that balance patch, and decided to take a break until I see the final results of the balancing. I can only guess that others may have felt similarly.

Land of the Dead may be fun in it's own right (I can't comment), but because of the terrible balance patch it wasn't properly tested and its effect on RvR wasn't well thought out, or again, tested.

I think many of the 300k subs had decided to stick it out because they enjoyed the game despite it's flaws. Introducing even more problems and screwing up an attempt at sorely needed balance changes may have just been too much. Not to mention any reduction in confidence with MJs departure.

Thanks for that write up. I haven't heard many people with hands on CO experience and it's great to hear it compared so favorably to Aion.

I'll give CO a try, total pass on Aion and will probably end up going with EVE or a T2A UO shard. Screw graphics, I want gameplay.

I don't know what a decent price is for you, but you can't go wrong with some Edirol(Roland) micro-monitors. If you can find some on sale, they beat the fidelity of any "computer speakers" hands down for a comparable price. Plus they have quite a few inputs, so you can hook up both a computer and a media player/game console directly and independently control the volume.

My old MA-10's are in fact the only speakers I use now. I'd rather the quality over sub-par surround anyday.