Mailbag
I read your preview on World of Warcraft: Battlegrounds and I have just one question. What kind of s***** review was that? I don't care what your concerns are, just tell me what the product is and what it is about. You spent more time talking about your worries in a product that isn't even out or that you haven't even tried yet then about the features included. When I read about battlegrounds, I want to learn about battlegrounds, not what you think are problems with it before you've even played that. Save it for the reviews. You barely even mentioned any positives about the product. Why so all the negative?
Stephen R.
Well, Steve-O, it's like this. You see, WoW is an insanely popular game. As such, its many fans will suck up all available info before I've even gotten a handle on it. By the time I've woken up the next morning, the overwhelming majority of the people who've read the article already know what I'm talking about and have digested it, debated, and whipped up witty online cartoon strips. All that's left for me to do is put on my Expert on Everything thinking cap and overwhelm the masses with my cuttingly insightful genius. Sorry I bent you out of shape.
Tom
INCREDIBLE, NO GAMECUBE GAME ON YOUR FAVORITE LIST, EVEN IN THE PS2 AND X-BOX EDITORS LIST, NOW I SEE WHY YOU HAVE SUCH BIAS WITH NINTENDO GAMES, YOU DONT PLAY THEYR GAMES, I�VE HEARD THAT YOUR BOSS ARE PISSED OFF WITH YOUR ATTITUD TOWARD NINTENDO GAMES, AND THE DS, OK, LET ME TELL YOU, THIS GOES EGAINST YOUR CREDIBILITY, MAY BE THATS WHY YOU LOSE THE SPIKE NOMINATION AS THE BEST WEBSITE FOR GAMES, WHAT A DRAG,
claudioalex
You know, I think I actually am starting to hate the Gamecube.
Steve
Howdy,
I was looking thru some of the screen shots on yesterday's Battlegrounds preview, good stuff. I'm wondering, what custom UI is being used in the screen shot linked below?
-Link-
Shaner
That's CosmosUI, and I was actually only using a part of it at the time. Among many other features, there's also action buttons that go vertically along the left and right side of the screen and a game clock with a load of dynamically updated info about your character's status. You can grab it from the official site, but that one isn't up all the time. Thankfully, there's a handy mirror that also address many common questions about the UI mod, such as its legality and performance issues you may come across. Cosmos contains many separate modifications that you can enable and disable to your liking, besides just more buttons on the screen. I particularly like the loot mod, DPS recorder, and the one that makes quest text show up instantly instead of that slow scrolling.
If Cosmos isn't to your liking, there are several other up-and-coming WoW UI mods. Another one, which I haven't used yet, is GypsyMod, whose chief advantage appears to be the ability to move windows that are normally static, like your character screen and quest windows.
One last note: Once you've installed these UI mods and have them tweaked to your liking, I wouldn't recommend jumping into a party right away, because the additional onscreen info can be disorienting. Give it a day of just wandering around and familiarizing yourself with your new Powers of Awesome. For example, you now have enough space to drag and drop things like potions, food, mana juice and gear into the action bars, in addition to your usual combat stuff.
Tom
I just finished reading the "World of Warcraft Battlegrounds" article, written by Tom McNamara, and at the end of the article, he mentioned that the goblins would become a Horde player race. From census numbers I've seen on the game, gnomes (the goblin counterpart) aren't the most popular, so I don't see how making another, similar race, would be to Blizzard's advantage. What I do think would be interesting would be to make the Naga a playable race, with INT being "their stat" as the Horde doesn't really have an INT-based race. As for the Alliance, maybe centaurs (STR-based?)? Just a thought.
Andrew
Thanks for writing in, Andrew, but what I said was, "Things seem to indicate that the goblins will eventually be playable." As for Nagas� Come on, man. Hot demon chicks! Who's with me? Nagas don't even have legs.
Tom
On page 2 the review says: "Say you need ten wolf ears or whanot--it could take thirty wolves before all ten of those ears drop, even though you should theoretically be able to rip the suckers right off, stick them in your pocket, and be on your way. And when you party up for these, the drop only occurs for one person at a time, unless you select the Need Before Greed loot mode."
This is a little misleading. First, if there are unique items you need to collect from say a boss, everyone in the group can loot that item. Second, if you need some "wolf ears" and the person looting doesn't need them or already has all that he needs then someone who DOES need the quest can still loot the corpse. The unneeded items will not show up for the first looter, but the person in the party who needs the item can still get them from the corpse.
However, I definitely agree that some of these items drop far, far too slowly.
Will
Well, sure, there are the named mob quest drops, and unique item quest drops--like Voodoo Dues in Stranglethorn Vale--but what I'm referring to is the collection quests, where the game balances the drops so that everyone gathers the items at the same rate. Thankfully, this means that a person is less likely to just cut and run when they get all their stuff, but what I'd rather see is the collection item spawning for every player, when it does drop. Hope I explained myself better this time.
Tom
Tom,
Since I'm not very rich, I can afford to buy one used card from a friend of a friend of a friend of a guy.
Anyway, it's either a geforce 4200 Ti or an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Which one will be better suited for Half Life 2 and support all the directx funkiness?
I guess I could research this for myself, but I'm lazy, and you are the oracle of all things grand. Please take pity on this poor soul and send me to better lighting--and bump mapping and normal mapping and all the rest of it.
Many thanks,
Daph
Hi Daph,
9700 Pro, no question. Finally, an easy one! The 9700P is a generation ahead of the 4200 and sports all kinds of horsepower and bells and whistles and 4200 could only dream about. It also supports pretty much all of HL2's shininess, whereas the 4200 only goes up to DX8.
The 4200 will probably be a lot cheaper, and the 9700 Pro currently retails for over $300 due to tight supply, but the former just won't make the game look as good. You'll be able to turn on antialiasing, for one thing, drastically reducing those ugly jagged edges. Hope that helps!
Cheers,
Tom
Not to sound like a jerk or anything, but T3 [Tribes: Vengeance] sucks. I am a coder, and I was, and am, a die-hard T1 and T2 fan. I built mods for T2 and played T2 all the time, so I was obviously excited when I heard that T3 was coming out. Then it did come out, and I was extremely disappointed.
The game looks like Unreal, acts like Unreal and, unfortunately, is as lame and boring as Unreal. One player or multiplayer, doesn't matter, it is still boring. All the excitement and fun of Tribes was taken away by this half-a** attempt to change what was perfect. Is it smooth game play? Yes. Are the graphics nice? Yes.
The characters' abilities and the weapon usage were poorly thought out. If the weapons were any slower or weaker, I would be able to catch the enemy in a wheelchair and kill them with a spit wad.
I realize that they put a lot of work in to making the game (being a coder myself, I understand how hard it can be) and in the reviews and the creators notes they even talked to gamers. I just don't think they talked to any good gamers. I was looking forward to a game that was intense and extreme all the way through. What I got was a boring game of Unreal with jump jets and some poor excuses for weapons.
The characters are slow. The default weapons are weak and, again, I was so disappointed. I do appreciate the work put in to the creation, but I still feel that it was in vain. I have sent mail to everyone I know from T2 to see what they thought about T3 and 95% said the same thing--they wasted their money. I agree. That is why I will continue to play T2 and some other games. I threw away my T3 disk and will not be getting another one. I am just disappointed. Sorry to rant to you about this but I thought maybe you would be willing to hear another opinion. No one else is.
Thanx for your Time,
John
A True Tribes Fan
Well, John, thanks for writing in, and I'm sorry it didn't have that same magic for you, man. I think they took a risk on 1st-person shooterizing what was a very tactical 3D squad game, and apparently it didn't pay off. Did you try the single-player portion, though? It's supposed to be pretty keen.
Cheers,
Tom
Chestnuts Roasting over an Open Flamewar
So there's this thing about World of Warcraft where the paladin is considered to be an overpowered character class. Apparently he has "three lives" available at any given moment. Kids, gather 'round and listen close. Are you comfortable? Good. Those people are not paying attention. You see, there's one immunity spell that last ten fricking seconds and can't be used again for five minutes. There's another one that protects us for ten seconds, on a five-minute timer, but only against melee damage. We're not protected against spells. You can still kill me with a fireball. Apparently, the Horde is always polite enough to wait until our timers have reset before attacking.
Then there's Lay on Hands. Oh man, they really don't like that one, even when we cast it on them. You see, we get all our health back. We lose all of our mana, and can't do that card trick for another sixty minutes, but you should just hear all the Horde PvP bullies complaining so that lone Alliance questers will be that much easier to turn into hamburger.
You see, thanks to all the paladin's protection abilities, he's the most difficult to swarm and pulverize. When all you want to do is gather up your buddies and cut down some people ten levels below you, shouldn't it be equally easy to rape and pillage whether it's a mage or a servant of the light? I think so. When I'm a rogue and I get behind a guy who I should be able to liquify before they even know what's happened, it's such a buzzkill when this bubble appears around them and they run off to get help. Where is the love? Can't something be done?
--Tom McNamara
Well, Steve-O, it's like this. You see, WoW is an insanely popular game. As such, its many fans will suck up all available info before I've even gotten a handle on it. By the time I've woken up the next morning, the overwhelming majority of the people who've read the article already know what I'm talking about and have digested it, debated, and whipped up witty online cartoon strips. All that's left for me to do is put on my Expert on Everything thinking cap and overwhelm the masses with my cuttingly insightful genius. Sorry I bent you out of shape.
Tom
INCREDIBLE, NO GAMECUBE GAME ON YOUR FAVORITE LIST, EVEN IN THE PS2 AND X-BOX EDITORS LIST, NOW I SEE WHY YOU HAVE SUCH BIAS WITH NINTENDO GAMES, YOU DONT PLAY THEYR GAMES, I�VE HEARD THAT YOUR BOSS ARE PISSED OFF WITH YOUR ATTITUD TOWARD NINTENDO GAMES, AND THE DS, OK, LET ME TELL YOU, THIS GOES EGAINST YOUR CREDIBILITY, MAY BE THATS WHY YOU LOSE THE SPIKE NOMINATION AS THE BEST WEBSITE FOR GAMES, WHAT A DRAG,
claudioalex
You know, I think I actually am starting to hate the Gamecube.
Steve
Howdy,
I was looking thru some of the screen shots on yesterday's Battlegrounds preview, good stuff. I'm wondering, what custom UI is being used in the screen shot linked below?
-Link-
Shaner
That's CosmosUI, and I was actually only using a part of it at the time. Among many other features, there's also action buttons that go vertically along the left and right side of the screen and a game clock with a load of dynamically updated info about your character's status. You can grab it from the official site, but that one isn't up all the time. Thankfully, there's a handy mirror that also address many common questions about the UI mod, such as its legality and performance issues you may come across. Cosmos contains many separate modifications that you can enable and disable to your liking, besides just more buttons on the screen. I particularly like the loot mod, DPS recorder, and the one that makes quest text show up instantly instead of that slow scrolling.
If Cosmos isn't to your liking, there are several other up-and-coming WoW UI mods. Another one, which I haven't used yet, is GypsyMod, whose chief advantage appears to be the ability to move windows that are normally static, like your character screen and quest windows.
One last note: Once you've installed these UI mods and have them tweaked to your liking, I wouldn't recommend jumping into a party right away, because the additional onscreen info can be disorienting. Give it a day of just wandering around and familiarizing yourself with your new Powers of Awesome. For example, you now have enough space to drag and drop things like potions, food, mana juice and gear into the action bars, in addition to your usual combat stuff.
Tom
I just finished reading the "World of Warcraft Battlegrounds" article, written by Tom McNamara, and at the end of the article, he mentioned that the goblins would become a Horde player race. From census numbers I've seen on the game, gnomes (the goblin counterpart) aren't the most popular, so I don't see how making another, similar race, would be to Blizzard's advantage. What I do think would be interesting would be to make the Naga a playable race, with INT being "their stat" as the Horde doesn't really have an INT-based race. As for the Alliance, maybe centaurs (STR-based?)? Just a thought.
Andrew
Thanks for writing in, Andrew, but what I said was, "Things seem to indicate that the goblins will eventually be playable." As for Nagas� Come on, man. Hot demon chicks! Who's with me? Nagas don't even have legs.
Tom
On page 2 the review says: "Say you need ten wolf ears or whanot--it could take thirty wolves before all ten of those ears drop, even though you should theoretically be able to rip the suckers right off, stick them in your pocket, and be on your way. And when you party up for these, the drop only occurs for one person at a time, unless you select the Need Before Greed loot mode."
This is a little misleading. First, if there are unique items you need to collect from say a boss, everyone in the group can loot that item. Second, if you need some "wolf ears" and the person looting doesn't need them or already has all that he needs then someone who DOES need the quest can still loot the corpse. The unneeded items will not show up for the first looter, but the person in the party who needs the item can still get them from the corpse.
However, I definitely agree that some of these items drop far, far too slowly.
Will
Well, sure, there are the named mob quest drops, and unique item quest drops--like Voodoo Dues in Stranglethorn Vale--but what I'm referring to is the collection quests, where the game balances the drops so that everyone gathers the items at the same rate. Thankfully, this means that a person is less likely to just cut and run when they get all their stuff, but what I'd rather see is the collection item spawning for every player, when it does drop. Hope I explained myself better this time.
Tom
Tom,
Since I'm not very rich, I can afford to buy one used card from a friend of a friend of a friend of a guy.
Anyway, it's either a geforce 4200 Ti or an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Which one will be better suited for Half Life 2 and support all the directx funkiness?
I guess I could research this for myself, but I'm lazy, and you are the oracle of all things grand. Please take pity on this poor soul and send me to better lighting--and bump mapping and normal mapping and all the rest of it.
Many thanks,
Daph
Hi Daph,
9700 Pro, no question. Finally, an easy one! The 9700P is a generation ahead of the 4200 and sports all kinds of horsepower and bells and whistles and 4200 could only dream about. It also supports pretty much all of HL2's shininess, whereas the 4200 only goes up to DX8.
The 4200 will probably be a lot cheaper, and the 9700 Pro currently retails for over $300 due to tight supply, but the former just won't make the game look as good. You'll be able to turn on antialiasing, for one thing, drastically reducing those ugly jagged edges. Hope that helps!
Cheers,
Tom
Not to sound like a jerk or anything, but T3 [Tribes: Vengeance] sucks. I am a coder, and I was, and am, a die-hard T1 and T2 fan. I built mods for T2 and played T2 all the time, so I was obviously excited when I heard that T3 was coming out. Then it did come out, and I was extremely disappointed.
The game looks like Unreal, acts like Unreal and, unfortunately, is as lame and boring as Unreal. One player or multiplayer, doesn't matter, it is still boring. All the excitement and fun of Tribes was taken away by this half-a** attempt to change what was perfect. Is it smooth game play? Yes. Are the graphics nice? Yes.
The characters' abilities and the weapon usage were poorly thought out. If the weapons were any slower or weaker, I would be able to catch the enemy in a wheelchair and kill them with a spit wad.
I realize that they put a lot of work in to making the game (being a coder myself, I understand how hard it can be) and in the reviews and the creators notes they even talked to gamers. I just don't think they talked to any good gamers. I was looking forward to a game that was intense and extreme all the way through. What I got was a boring game of Unreal with jump jets and some poor excuses for weapons.
The characters are slow. The default weapons are weak and, again, I was so disappointed. I do appreciate the work put in to the creation, but I still feel that it was in vain. I have sent mail to everyone I know from T2 to see what they thought about T3 and 95% said the same thing--they wasted their money. I agree. That is why I will continue to play T2 and some other games. I threw away my T3 disk and will not be getting another one. I am just disappointed. Sorry to rant to you about this but I thought maybe you would be willing to hear another opinion. No one else is.
Thanx for your Time,
John
A True Tribes Fan
Well, John, thanks for writing in, and I'm sorry it didn't have that same magic for you, man. I think they took a risk on 1st-person shooterizing what was a very tactical 3D squad game, and apparently it didn't pay off. Did you try the single-player portion, though? It's supposed to be pretty keen.
Cheers,
Tom
Chestnuts Roasting over an Open Flamewar
So there's this thing about World of Warcraft where the paladin is considered to be an overpowered character class. Apparently he has "three lives" available at any given moment. Kids, gather 'round and listen close. Are you comfortable? Good. Those people are not paying attention. You see, there's one immunity spell that last ten fricking seconds and can't be used again for five minutes. There's another one that protects us for ten seconds, on a five-minute timer, but only against melee damage. We're not protected against spells. You can still kill me with a fireball. Apparently, the Horde is always polite enough to wait until our timers have reset before attacking.
Then there's Lay on Hands. Oh man, they really don't like that one, even when we cast it on them. You see, we get all our health back. We lose all of our mana, and can't do that card trick for another sixty minutes, but you should just hear all the Horde PvP bullies complaining so that lone Alliance questers will be that much easier to turn into hamburger.
You see, thanks to all the paladin's protection abilities, he's the most difficult to swarm and pulverize. When all you want to do is gather up your buddies and cut down some people ten levels below you, shouldn't it be equally easy to rape and pillage whether it's a mage or a servant of the light? I think so. When I'm a rogue and I get behind a guy who I should be able to liquify before they even know what's happened, it's such a buzzkill when this bubble appears around them and they run off to get help. Where is the love? Can't something be done?
--Tom McNamara
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