Jackleope

Successful or not, I'm having a good time so far.

@arrrgh
For the record, I am not a fan of activation codes. With that said, the used car analogy is terrible. Why do people still use it? Cars are mechanical and therefore suffer from wear and tear over time. As such, they tend to lose function and force you to replace parts which costs you money over time. Since many of these parts come straight from the manufacturer, they can and do make money from used cars.

This is not the case with video games. What is on the disc/hd does not suffer from wear and tear and buying it used is exactly the same as buying it brand new. Without some sort of incentive to buy them new as opposed to used, why would anyone buy them new?

@stealthrider
But this is an RPG! They like for you to use the assets they've built as much as possible and to also artificially inflate the total time played so they don't have to add as much content. It's cheaper for them and somehow you still feel like you've gotten your money's worth.

@Jon Anderson
One of the best parts of the PC version is that you can download other people's playthroughs. Just find one that made roughly the same decisions you did. Google mass effect saves and you'll find a few places to get them.

@theBeast
I think you missed my point and perhaps that is my fault as I'm not the best at conveying my thoughts over text.

I'm fine with somebody expressing their opinion even if it isn't the same as mine. But I've seen this article before. Many times over actually and at least once before from this exact same editor.

It gets tiring hearing the same argument over and over. We get it, you want to relive the MMO "glory days" again. Recapture that same magic that made you fall in love with the genre to begin with. I absolutely loved Everquest and UO and really don't think any MMO will ever top those experiences. However, I see that nostalgia for what it is. That magic is not coming back and I think you'll be much happier when you accept that.

Just my opinion though.

@Kamalot
It's a toggled setting. Do you also lose interest knowing that somebody somewhere is playing with blocky shadows or, God forbid, no shadows at all? Total immersion breaker.

@freebase
I couldn't agree more. This whole "debate" is just asinine.

People have different tastes. Case closed. Do we really need *another* wall of text explaining why our opinion is wrong?

@Dalrint
I think you might have missed the point of the suicide mission. It was the ultimate consequence of every decision you made during the game. The utter unpredictability of the entire sequence kept me on the edge of my seat and excited to see what was in store next. A seemingly inconsequential decision led to Tali going down and, though I loved Tali, I loved it even more that I didn't see her death coming. It made the rest of the mission that much more exciting.

At one point, Miranda was sliding down a falling piece of metal and Shepherd was falling after her trying to save her and I was literally standing up yelling at the screen for him to save her. I would have never believed she would be in danger if Tali hadn't died earlier in the mission. Good times.

My first character was on a pvp server back in early 2000. It was a pretty magical experience. I tried out a barbarian shaman. Ran around Halas for about an hour before finally finding my way out into Everfrost. Wandered around a bit, killed a few wolves and the like and then was promptly murdered by another player from behind. I immediately rerolled on one of the pve servers.

I made a human paladin and started in Freeport and a friend of mine made a halfling. Well we wanted to play together and it seemed like a decent idea since, looking at the handy cloth map that came with the game, the two starting areas were pretty close together. He made another temporary character to make the journey with me and we set off on our first adventure. What followed is probably some of my fondest memories from the game. We ran past adventuring parties of all sorts. We saw big ogres fighting bigger spiders, were nearly eaten by a griffin, had massive hill giants cross our path, and were chased across the zone by this very cranky dark elf. We also ended up finding our way into the dungeons of Befallen somehow and had our very first experience of getting trained. Good times...then we made it to Kithicor. Some time later, we decided it was probably better for me to reroll halfling.

I honestly don't think I'll ever experience anything like that in a video game again.

@l0cke Haha, I know exactly what guild you're talking about on Nagafen, I was in it for a while too and even through the mass banning. That I take partial responsibility for since a few others and I were the ones that taught him how to do it. He just got the entire guild involved and took it to a ridiculous level. Funny enough, none of the originals got banned, just the ones that he suckered into mass exploiting the mechanic that weren't max level yet. Sadly, those stories don't even begin to describe the drama that surrounds that guild leader everywhere he goes.