Dan

Everquest was my first introduction to an entirely new and unique (at the time) genre of massive multiplayer games. I was hooked on the game - and the genre -from the first login. Even the introductory music was enchanting, the music of Halas stirred the blood of my first character, a Barbarian Shaman named Tarnarious.

For the first time, graphics based role playing games were full of real people instead of brainless NPC's. Sony created a carefully crafted experience, however it was and always will be the people that make the game worthwhile. I still hold so many good memories from the first time someone stopped to save my foolish life to me returning the favor in later years when my character was more powerful.

To this day I occasionally give in to the urge and reopen an ancient account to relive past glories.

A lifetime subscription? Who could pass that up?

Well really...it is your job!! =D I spend a minute or so making sure everybody gets pally buffs from me at the start of every BG, if I had a mage I'd be putting out table and int before people even asked for it.

Although if someone really does get your goat and you want to be passive aggressive, just tell them you didn't spec Table =)

This was an interesting game. The online aspects were fun, but way too much lag. The single player game is tight, with a decent story, but mostly kill stuff, turn in quests and upgrade your character. It has an interesting way of upgrading gear, where you combine items that are the same which continually increases it's stats. For example if you combine two rusty knives with 10 attack, you combine them and get a rusty knife that does 12 or 13 attack, and add another and it's a rusty knife with 15 attack, and so on. Did I mention it's also pretty? I played the PC version. Personally, I enjoyed Gothic 3 more.

Pentium 4, 1 gig of RAM, X800 Platinum vid card. My computer runs most things decently, however current gen games that require PS 3.0 are out of the question completely.

I have 2 Commodore 64 PC's with a tape drive(literally reads magnetic cassette tapes) and a 5 1/4" Floppy drive. I have a wide variety of games, and productivity software(GEOS Operating system ftw!). It even has - get this - a RAM expansion module, bringing the available system RAM up a whopping 32Kb!!

This is a good one, but so was SOE's Everquest April Fools prank. The original Everquest had a small update, in which the update notes claimed a major overhaul of the graphics and character models, and that they were sure the players would be amazed. After logging in, all of the characters and NPC's were stick figures...

What could you say besides "the Video game industry"? There are not too many other terms synonymous to Video games unless something is made up. Even a google search of "Synonym Game" or "Games" comes up with search results leading you to word games.

When speaking of the Movie industry people often say Hollywood - maybe what we need is a central location with a name that could become synonymous to the industry - though I must admit, I don't have any suggestions....

I think a new term might be helpful, but until gaming truly goes mainstream, video games will always be seen by non-gamers as childish.

Joystiq - you said it best yourself...

""Why do you own an Xbox 360 without an HDTV?" or "HDTV's are so cheap, just go out and buy one!" "

Good grief, one of the biggest arguments console vs PC nuts have is that the console is cheaper. Not so true now is it? Just face it, you bought a machine that looks best and should be played on an HDTV, not in Standard Definition. How is that the developers problem that you didn't fork over the extra $$$ to play the console it was made to be viewed?

"it needs to become less expensive. Even spending $500-750 (which is on the low end) to upgrade one's system to play modern games is ridiculous considering the price of even the most expensive of next-gen consoles."

1 XBox 360 Premium - $400
2 X-Box 3rd Party games - $120
1 TV for High Definition play that PC gamers have been enjoying for years - $600

Shelling out $1120 for a 360 played the right way, and then bitching about the price of upgrades for a PC.....Priceless.