I am posting my review of Vanguard from the perspective of a gamer dad with moderate mmorpg experience. I started playing online in Horizons..3 years played. Played Guild Wars since it's launch and did some beta play in WoW and SoR. Though relatively inexperienced in the mmo genre...I have been deeply involved and very active during my brief 3 years playing online. I base my review of Vanguard on two months of daily play...beta 5 to current. I score with 10 being the best and 1 being the worst. Chacter models / creation ~ 9 They look great. There are dozens upon dozen of options from adjusting the " tilt " of your ears to the angle of the tip of your nose. Oddly enough though...only 4-5 hair styles to choose from. In ones home town there is a sense that everyone looks the same. This lessens alot though as you level up and travel around to various other areas. A bit of a disappointment overall though. I hate seeing another avatar that looks just like my own. The massive variety of other ways to customize one avatar is the reason for the 9 otherwise it would be an 8. The incredible amount of races and schools available help keep the score up as well. Each race is very unique in its style of play..each has a very unique look and racial abilities. Starting Areas ~ 9 The starting areas in Thestra actualy get a score of 10. Starting areas in Kojan get a 8. Starting areas in Qalia get a 9. This score is based on my experience on each continent. I think the way the quests are lined up and the way they introduce you to various aspects of gameplay are well done....the scores reflect which areas are better to start in. The leveling is fast early on and the pace is quick. Plenty of lore is provided though one has to pay attention to avoid getting lost. I learned the hard way that skimming through npc dialog is ill adivised...read it all or you will get confused easily. Game Performance ~ 8 This score has come up alot for me. A few weeks ago I would have scored it a 6. Memory leaks have been fixed. Mobs no longer disapear while engaged. Stutter has been greatly reduced. My fps has increased from 15-20 to 25-30 with no adjustment on my end. For perspective sake...rig is a 3500 amd, Nvid 6600 gpu, 1 gig of ram...graphics set to high performance though I can play on balanced with a 5-10 fps hit on my cpu. Since graphics aren't a major priority for me..I play on high performance instead..game still looks plenty good to me.
I lose connections with the social server fairly often and the chunk crossing remain to be an issue. Those are my two biggiest complaints. Losing the social server connection forces a relog to fix and the chunk crossings can sometimes crash me to desktop and always involve about a 10 second pause while the new chunk loads. I think my 1 gig of ram has alot to do with that though. I will be upgrading ram soon...2-3 gigs is highly reccomended. * UPDATE~ I have now upgraded to 3 gb of ram. Stutter is non-existant. Social server has not crashed once in days. Chunk crossings are barely noticeable now !!! I still play on high performance..BUT...I have view distance maxed, animation distance maxed, detail level doubled, lighting details doubled...with grass and fancy clouds turned off. *EDIT ~ There are some ISOLATED accounts that have had some game breaking..can't log in or play issues. Out of 100 people in my guild..this has been an issue with about 3-5 that I am aware of. so.. I have had no such issues. Warning..3-5% of the player base will have game breaking issues. Combat ~ 10 I love the combat. I love the difference in combat between schools. I love the variety of skills and how positon is important. I love the fact that I have to use every skill I have in different ways depending on which mob I am engaged with. The particle effects are supurb. The combat animations vary greatly with lots of variety. A few weeks ago I would have scored a 9 here..but recent fixes have made combat a blast ! No cookie cutter abilities carried from one school to another. Each school is indeed...completely unique and requires different tactics to be successful. I will eventualy play them all...I'm in danger of too many alts simply because they are all so fun to play. One has to pay attention. This is no click and watch combat. Do that and you will die often. One actualy has to quickly learn a mobs strengths and weakness. One has to fully understand their own strengths and weaknesses. Not all schools solo the same and group the same. If you solo..pick a healing type school. You can solo well with other schools..but it's harder. I have had no difficulty leveling my Paladin solo. Mage types and light armor types is more challenging..but still possible. I reccomend rolling a Paladin or Cleric as a first character...expand to other schools once you become more familiar with gameplay. Crafting ~ 8 I dinged crafting because it is still too buggy. Too many complications and too much of a grind. Despite the grind and complications it still gets an 8 from the sheer potential. It's a very engaging process where actual talent comes into play. I really feel like I'm making something. I get a good sense that I need to understand how to make something in order to make it well. Making it well is important. Their is a big difference from a grade A item and a grade B one. Harvesting is its own little mini game that is independant from the crafting process. Harvesting is actually a 4th element of gameplay to go along with the craft, adventure and diplomacy aspescts. Diplomacy ~ 9 To be fair..I have not explored this aspect of gameplay much at all. What little I have done I have enjoyed. There is simply to much to do. I have been too busy and having too much fun with the other aspects of gameplay to spend much time in diplomacy. Based on what my guildmates have done and what I've seen in game...it loosk fun and has great potential. Its an aspect of gameplay that has dynamic impact on everyone. Civic diplomacy can grant entire areas various buffs to adventure and craft that everyone in that area for a long period of time can enjoy. Graphics ~ 10 Simply put...fantastic! I do not have a single complaint in the graphics department. They do require a high end machine. Any gaming rid bought today though for about $2000 ( not store bought ones )..custom online ones can play this game at max settings with acceptable fps of 30-40 range. The colors, lighting, view distance, animations, water....everything..gorgeous ! Don't listen to the nay sayers....most of them just got their egos crushed when their " killer rig " they bought a year go won't get the 60+fps they are used too. You will find most of them are under the age of 20 yrs and have their egos tied up in their rigs like one would have their egos tied up in there hot rod cars too. A year from now your standard $1500 cpu will run this game great with the price of technology coming down fast and the game continueing to optimize. Community ~ 10 On the Thunderaxe server..I have found the community to be awesome. Lots and lots of older...vetern gamers that know how to handle themselves well. I don't advise anyone to come in from WoW thinking they all uber and great..trash talking anyone though. They will get jumped on pretty fast....and rightly so imo. Credits earned gaming in WoW are invalid as my 7 year old max level in that game. My biggest issue with the players on my server is they are TOO QUICK TO TRY AND HELP ! That's right...everyone is so eager to help you it is actualy annoying at times. A problem I can live with though. This game is so big..and so deep..I could almost go on forever. It is a fantastic experience for those players who value the journey more than the destination. Its a great game for those that appreciate the fact that the sweet aint so sweet without some bitter. Overall score is a very solid ~ 9 I think this score will be a 10 a year from now. I think Vanguard is going to be a major success. I would predict over 500k in subs a year from now ...with over a million subs within two years. I think this may even be conservative. Six months from now...once the remaining few bugs are ironed out...people will be coming to Vanguard to play in droves. I'm enduring a few the bugs now so that I will be set up real nice when this game explodes in population. I have no doubt at all it will. Its infamous status now is actualy helping things. Vanguard is nearly a household name as it is. Vanguard is the game that sucks less than the rest ! Flamers ..flame on. Jackdog....Godpuppet and all you other Vanguard trolls...have a blast and pick apart my review. I rest my case
I do not think you are very real to this review. First of all, the games ratings were no lower then 8! the performance was 8! I have to disagree with you there. The performance should atleast be a 5. The character customization i say would be a 8. The starting areas should be a 7.5 because they dont really intrigue you. The overall score i say would be a 6.5-7. Obviously you were leaning towards this game before you even wrote this review.
If the poster had argued that he had a lower end card, you'd have told him he shouldn't've tried playing it without buying a new one.
If he buys a new card, you say that he shouldn't be playing with newer cards.
And if he buys one in the middle, then you'd just state that he must have something wrong elsewhere.
However, the problems with vanguard and video drivers (that nv4disp.dll BSoD) and crashing to the desktop (after update 1) are a combination of nvidia's drivers and the graphics engine for vanguard. They aren't alone in this respect though.
I find it flat out shameful that they didn't code AA into the game at all. That's just... weird. No level of graphics looks good without AA.
Anyway, there were a large number of bugs but they've been fixing those. A new mmorpg is just going to have bugs. They had more than is commonly expected though and had a large number of other issues as well.
You see...I don't crash to desktop anymore. I would once in awhile for a few weeks after launch, but since I put in 3gb of ram right after update #1 I can't remeber the last time I crashed to desktop. That makes me think they did some fixes on their end OR I was crashing due to ram issues..or lack of rather. I may be a combination of the two.
I don't hear much complaining from our guild members about this..cept for the same few people. The fact it happens to the same people..repeatedly and nobody else suggests it's an issue with their rigs...likely a compatability issue or some corrupt code.
The Addition of a further DIMM there to increase you to 3 Gb has more than likely slowed and partially absolved some of the well known issues that still exist with the client side code exhibiting memory leaks.
If you dont believe me Themoris look at the Memory leak thread at one point in the official technical support forums, it was exceptionally large and even acknowledged by the developers themselves after myself and others did some serious technical homework to track the VGClient.exe process using MemMon and ProcessMon. We even posted details on the modules the exe was calling that were causing high numbers of page faults and continuing to take available memory resource until the operating system would detect invalid pages into memory exclusive areas and kill the process. ^^
To my knowledge these faults still occur and do occur for a number of vanguard subscribers in the technical forums. Sigil IS and HAS been working very hard on highlighting and resolving these memory leaks in the client side code...however they still have not rectified all of them which means they must have had a considerable number in the client side code to begin with. Which isnt ideal. All applications have the tendancy to leak memory granted however Vanguard is extremely poor at handling resources handed to it by the operating system layer and stll is.
Just because the problems do not appear for you i am really pleased and genuinely rooting for the fact that you have had a good, smooth play experience. However others...and a considerable number of others have not...and just because the individual doesnt see or feel the symptoms of these technical issues doesnt mean that they dont exist.
I am posting my review of Vanguard from the perspective of a gamer dad with moderate mmorpg experience. I started playing online in Horizons..3 years played. Played Guild Wars since it's launch and did some beta play in WoW and SoR. Though relatively inexperienced in the mmo genre...I have been deeply involved and very active during my brief 3 years playing online. I base my review of Vanguard on two months of daily play...beta 5 to current. I score with 10 being the best and 1 being the worst. Chacter models / creation ~ 9 They look great. There are dozens upon dozen of options from adjusting the " tilt " of your ears to the angle of the tip of your nose. Oddly enough though...only 4-5 hair styles to choose from. In ones home town there is a sense that everyone looks the same. This lessens alot though as you level up and travel around to various other areas. A bit of a disappointment overall though. I hate seeing another avatar that looks just like my own. The massive variety of other ways to customize one avatar is the reason for the 9 otherwise it would be an 8. The incredible amount of races and schools available help keep the score up as well. Each race is very unique in its style of play..each has a very unique look and racial abilities. Starting Areas ~ 9 The starting areas in Thestra actualy get a score of 10. Starting areas in Kojan get a 8. Starting areas in Qalia get a 9. This score is based on my experience on each continent. I think the way the quests are lined up and the way they introduce you to various aspects of gameplay are well done....the scores reflect which areas are better to start in. The leveling is fast early on and the pace is quick. Plenty of lore is provided though one has to pay attention to avoid getting lost. I learned the hard way that skimming through npc dialog is ill adivised...read it all or you will get confused easily. Game Performance ~ 8 This score has come up alot for me. A few weeks ago I would have scored it a 6. Memory leaks have been fixed. Mobs no longer disapear while engaged. Stutter has been greatly reduced. My fps has increased from 15-20 to 25-30 with no adjustment on my end. For perspective sake...rig is a 3500 amd, Nvid 6600 gpu, 1 gig of ram...graphics set to high performance though I can play on balanced with a 5-10 fps hit on my cpu. Since graphics aren't a major priority for me..I play on high performance instead..game still looks plenty good to me.
I lose connections with the social server fairly often and the chunk crossing remain to be an issue. Those are my two biggiest complaints. Losing the social server connection forces a relog to fix and the chunk crossings can sometimes crash me to desktop and always involve about a 10 second pause while the new chunk loads. I think my 1 gig of ram has alot to do with that though. I will be upgrading ram soon...2-3 gigs is highly reccomended. * UPDATE~ I have now upgraded to 3 gb of ram. Stutter is non-existant. Social server has not crashed once in days. Chunk crossings are barely noticeable now !!! I still play on high performance..BUT...I have view distance maxed, animation distance maxed, detail level doubled, lighting details doubled...with grass and fancy clouds turned off. *EDIT ~ There are some ISOLATED accounts that have had some game breaking..can't log in or play issues. Out of 100 people in my guild..this has been an issue with about 3-5 that I am aware of. so.. I have had no such issues. Warning..3-5% of the player base will have game breaking issues. Combat ~ 10 I love the combat. I love the difference in combat between schools. I love the variety of skills and how positon is important. I love the fact that I have to use every skill I have in different ways depending on which mob I am engaged with. The particle effects are supurb. The combat animations vary greatly with lots of variety. A few weeks ago I would have scored a 9 here..but recent fixes have made combat a blast ! No cookie cutter abilities carried from one school to another. Each school is indeed...completely unique and requires different tactics to be successful. I will eventualy play them all...I'm in danger of too many alts simply because they are all so fun to play. One has to pay attention. This is no click and watch combat. Do that and you will die often. One actualy has to quickly learn a mobs strengths and weakness. One has to fully understand their own strengths and weaknesses. Not all schools solo the same and group the same. If you solo..pick a healing type school. You can solo well with other schools..but it's harder. I have had no difficulty leveling my Paladin solo. Mage types and light armor types is more challenging..but still possible. I reccomend rolling a Paladin or Cleric as a first character...expand to other schools once you become more familiar with gameplay. Crafting ~ 8 I dinged crafting because it is still too buggy. Too many complications and too much of a grind. Despite the grind and complications it still gets an 8 from the sheer potential. It's a very engaging process where actual talent comes into play. I really feel like I'm making something. I get a good sense that I need to understand how to make something in order to make it well. Making it well is important. Their is a big difference from a grade A item and a grade B one. Harvesting is its own little mini game that is independant from the crafting process. Harvesting is actually a 4th element of gameplay to go along with the craft, adventure and diplomacy aspescts. Diplomacy ~ 9 To be fair..I have not explored this aspect of gameplay much at all. What little I have done I have enjoyed. There is simply to much to do. I have been too busy and having too much fun with the other aspects of gameplay to spend much time in diplomacy. Based on what my guildmates have done and what I've seen in game...it loosk fun and has great potential. Its an aspect of gameplay that has dynamic impact on everyone. Civic diplomacy can grant entire areas various buffs to adventure and craft that everyone in that area for a long period of time can enjoy. Graphics ~ 10 Simply put...fantastic! I do not have a single complaint in the graphics department. They do require a high end machine. Any gaming rid bought today though for about $2000 ( not store bought ones )..custom online ones can play this game at max settings with acceptable fps of 30-40 range. The colors, lighting, view distance, animations, water....everything..gorgeous ! Don't listen to the nay sayers....most of them just got their egos crushed when their " killer rig " they bought a year go won't get the 60+fps they are used too. You will find most of them are under the age of 20 yrs and have their egos tied up in their rigs like one would have their egos tied up in there hot rod cars too. A year from now your standard $1500 cpu will run this game great with the price of technology coming down fast and the game continueing to optimize. Community ~ 10 On the Thunderaxe server..I have found the community to be awesome. Lots and lots of older...vetern gamers that know how to handle themselves well. I don't advise anyone to come in from WoW thinking they all uber and great..trash talking anyone though. They will get jumped on pretty fast....and rightly so imo. Credits earned gaming in WoW are invalid as my 7 year old max level in that game. My biggest issue with the players on my server is they are TOO QUICK TO TRY AND HELP ! That's right...everyone is so eager to help you it is actualy annoying at times. A problem I can live with though. This game is so big..and so deep..I could almost go on forever. It is a fantastic experience for those players who value the journey more than the destination. Its a great game for those that appreciate the fact that the sweet aint so sweet without some bitter. Overall score is a very solid ~ 9 I think this score will be a 10 a year from now. I think Vanguard is going to be a major success. I would predict over 500k in subs a year from now ...with over a million subs within two years. I think this may even be conservative. Six months from now...once the remaining few bugs are ironed out...people will be coming to Vanguard to play in droves. I'm enduring a few the bugs now so that I will be set up real nice when this game explodes in population. I have no doubt at all it will. Its infamous status now is actualy helping things. Vanguard is nearly a household name as it is. Vanguard is the game that sucks less than the rest ! Flamers ..flame on. Jackdog....Godpuppet and all you other Vanguard trolls...have a blast and pick apart my review. I rest my case
I do not think you are very real to this review. First of all, the games ratings were no lower then 8! the performance was 8! I have to disagree with you there. The performance should atleast be a 5. The character customization i say would be a 8. The starting areas should be a 7.5 because they dont really intrigue you. The overall score i say would be a 6.5-7. Obviously you were leaning towards this game before you even wrote this review.
FLAME ON
Of course I was leaning towards the game in my review. I'm playing it and having a great time ! As I have gone over several times in this thread...complete with official definitions of what a review is...a review is opinion based.
If I had scored more to what you think I should have scored at...you would have said " great review dude...very realistic "....the fact that my scores do not reflect your experience in Vanguard makes it unrealistic ?
Would you rather I give a game I'm having a blast playing a low score? Would that make more sense? Would that be more " realistic "?
If I scored the game the way YOU think is realisitic...I would not be playing Vanguard to begin with....and thus...no review anyways.
My review is accurate from my perspective...based on my experiences.
NOW ...to be fair...I come from years in Horizons. A game that has been neglected...shrinking...and terribly out of date. Things like graphics and performance I score higher than most folks probably because the graphics and performance issues are so much worse in Horizons. This is why I stated my background in playing mmo's before I even started writing my review. Likely my review would be much different if I came from years in WoW or Eq2 or Lin 2 ....ect.
My point is...EVERYONES review is biased ! ....based on THEIR own personal in game and life experiences.
I find it interesting to see so many willing to give THIER REVIEW of MY REVIEW ....it seems we have alot of people that are experts in what MY reality is.
Read the review...think what ya want about it. I stick by my words and scores...not backing down an inch on them. If anything...their are a few scores I would now raise..rather than lower. Particularly in the " game performance " areas as much has been improved both in game and on my rig.
Markaj's signature basically illustrates one of my main points. What I posted before is how I feel and also the likely outcome of this game, all signs point towards it. I am glad you enjoy yourself, nothing more needs to be said.
Markaj's statement in his sig does have some validity to it. Orginal mmos have been launched...and failed. People don't WANT or are not READY for off beat orginal concepts....generaly speaking. The failure rate of such mmo's is high. Horizons, auto assult and D&D online are a few expamples of failing mmo's that attempted to do alot of things not seen in the mmo arena before.
Horizons with it's playable dragons , deep crafting system, dynamic on the fly events ( no scripts needed ) and it's nearly endless multi classing tried this. They had build an engine from scratch to do this and this has been its downfall. Nobody can fix the engine cause nobody knows how it works and nobody has the money to pay the people that do know how it works.
Auto Assult....car game mmo...great idea I think..poorly executed.
D&D online use of instances tried to recreate the table top dungeon crawl experience....and from what I've read...failed.
No mmo is ever going to be " ready " . Guild Wars had a great launch but even that game had lots of fixes and tweaks first couple months out of the gate.
If someone wants a perfect..out of the box experience...stop playing mmorpg's....period. It won't happen. Go play console games. It's only console gamers coming into the mmrpg arena lately that try to demand this anyways. True PC gamers know they will always have to tweak, fix and patch up online games. It's not a big deal ...and sometimes can be fun as I know I learn more and more about how my pc works trying to optimize a game for my system.
You see...it's IMPOSSIBLE to predict how a mmorpg is going to respond to 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of player loggin in. They CAN"T predict that.
Bottom line is....if one wants a perfect out of the box experience...don't play mmorpg's.
Ultima Online 98~04 Dark Age of Camelot 03~07 Final Fantasy XI 04~06 Guild Wars 05~08 World of Warcraft 04~05 Unsuccessful Tries: DFO/EQ2/DRaja/Rag/Req/RYL/9D/Cabal/KO/PSU/RF/GE/TO/TR/DDO/EVE/LoTRO/L2/RZ/SWG/VG
Comments
I do not think you are very real to this review. First of all, the games ratings were no lower then 8! the performance was 8! I have to disagree with you there. The performance should atleast be a 5. The character customization i say would be a 8. The starting areas should be a 7.5 because they dont really intrigue you. The overall score i say would be a 6.5-7. Obviously you were leaning towards this game before you even wrote this review.
FLAME ON
You see...I don't crash to desktop anymore. I would once in awhile for a few weeks after launch, but since I put in 3gb of ram right after update #1 I can't remeber the last time I crashed to desktop. That makes me think they did some fixes on their end OR I was crashing due to ram issues..or lack of rather. I may be a combination of the two.
I don't hear much complaining from our guild members about this..cept for the same few people. The fact it happens to the same people..repeatedly and nobody else suggests it's an issue with their rigs...likely a compatability issue or some corrupt code.
The Addition of a further DIMM there to increase you to 3 Gb has more than likely slowed and partially absolved some of the well known issues that still exist with the client side code exhibiting memory leaks.
If you dont believe me Themoris look at the Memory leak thread at one point in the official technical support forums, it was exceptionally large and even acknowledged by the developers themselves after myself and others did some serious technical homework to track the VGClient.exe process using MemMon and ProcessMon. We even posted details on the modules the exe was calling that were causing high numbers of page faults and continuing to take available memory resource until the operating system would detect invalid pages into memory exclusive areas and kill the process. ^^
To my knowledge these faults still occur and do occur for a number of vanguard subscribers in the technical forums. Sigil IS and HAS been working very hard on highlighting and resolving these memory leaks in the client side code...however they still have not rectified all of them which means they must have had a considerable number in the client side code to begin with. Which isnt ideal. All applications have the tendancy to leak memory granted however Vanguard is extremely poor at handling resources handed to it by the operating system layer and stll is.
Just because the problems do not appear for you i am really pleased and genuinely rooting for the fact that you have had a good, smooth play experience. However others...and a considerable number of others have not...and just because the individual doesnt see or feel the symptoms of these technical issues doesnt mean that they dont exist.
Regards
Mag
I do not think you are very real to this review. First of all, the games ratings were no lower then 8! the performance was 8! I have to disagree with you there. The performance should atleast be a 5. The character customization i say would be a 8. The starting areas should be a 7.5 because they dont really intrigue you. The overall score i say would be a 6.5-7. Obviously you were leaning towards this game before you even wrote this review.
FLAME ON
Of course I was leaning towards the game in my review. I'm playing it and having a great time ! As I have gone over several times in this thread...complete with official definitions of what a review is...a review is opinion based.
If I had scored more to what you think I should have scored at...you would have said " great review dude...very realistic "....the fact that my scores do not reflect your experience in Vanguard makes it unrealistic ?
Would you rather I give a game I'm having a blast playing a low score? Would that make more sense? Would that be more " realistic "?
If I scored the game the way YOU think is realisitic...I would not be playing Vanguard to begin with....and thus...no review anyways.
My review is accurate from my perspective...based on my experiences.
NOW ...to be fair...I come from years in Horizons. A game that has been neglected...shrinking...and terribly out of date. Things like graphics and performance I score higher than most folks probably because the graphics and performance issues are so much worse in Horizons. This is why I stated my background in playing mmo's before I even started writing my review. Likely my review would be much different if I came from years in WoW or Eq2 or Lin 2 ....ect.
My point is...EVERYONES review is biased ! ....based on THEIR own personal in game and life experiences.
I find it interesting to see so many willing to give THIER REVIEW of MY REVIEW ....it seems we have alot of people that are experts in what MY reality is.
Read the review...think what ya want about it. I stick by my words and scores...not backing down an inch on them. If anything...their are a few scores I would now raise..rather than lower. Particularly in the " game performance " areas as much has been improved both in game and on my rig.
Markaj's statement in his sig does have some validity to it. Orginal mmos have been launched...and failed. People don't WANT or are not READY for off beat orginal concepts....generaly speaking. The failure rate of such mmo's is high. Horizons, auto assult and D&D online are a few expamples of failing mmo's that attempted to do alot of things not seen in the mmo arena before.
Horizons with it's playable dragons , deep crafting system, dynamic on the fly events ( no scripts needed ) and it's nearly endless multi classing tried this. They had build an engine from scratch to do this and this has been its downfall. Nobody can fix the engine cause nobody knows how it works and nobody has the money to pay the people that do know how it works.
Auto Assult....car game mmo...great idea I think..poorly executed.
D&D online use of instances tried to recreate the table top dungeon crawl experience....and from what I've read...failed.
No mmo is ever going to be " ready " . Guild Wars had a great launch but even that game had lots of fixes and tweaks first couple months out of the gate.
If someone wants a perfect..out of the box experience...stop playing mmorpg's....period. It won't happen. Go play console games. It's only console gamers coming into the mmrpg arena lately that try to demand this anyways. True PC gamers know they will always have to tweak, fix and patch up online games. It's not a big deal ...and sometimes can be fun as I know I learn more and more about how my pc works trying to optimize a game for my system.
You see...it's IMPOSSIBLE to predict how a mmorpg is going to respond to 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of player loggin in. They CAN"T predict that.
Bottom line is....if one wants a perfect out of the box experience...don't play mmorpg's.
Ultima Online 98~04
Dark Age of Camelot 03~07
Final Fantasy XI 04~06
Guild Wars 05~08
World of Warcraft 04~05
Unsuccessful Tries: DFO/EQ2/DRaja/Rag/Req/RYL/9D/Cabal/KO/PSU/RF/GE/TO/TR/DDO/EVE/LoTRO/L2/RZ/SWG/VG