Good point. I may take another look at that game sometime, maybe when 2.0 comes out. I did a trial of that and it seemed pretty fun for pickup and play pvp with a minimum of time wasted and the single player quest driven stuff I saw at lowest levels was cool. I like how there is no monthly and you can just play when you feel like it too.

It's too bad they don't offer some sort of full bundle of the the entire game and its expansions at this point given its been a while now and 2.0 is somewhere on the horizon but maybe they continue to sell well enough that they feel no need to do so.

Someone I know was telling me they had an account with the newer Hellgate London which I guess is sort of a modernized Diablo II kind of game. I got the impression however that they charge something to play its multiplayer? That seems ridiculous to me and if it is true it would not surprise me if that fact hindered its sucess. The demo seemed pretty fun but there is no way I would pay a monthly for that online.

That's cool. Not everyone wants to know all about tinkering with PCs. I can tell from your comments about the video driver install you either did not read the instructions from Nvidia or you did read them but did not understand them. When you remove a driver and reboot the first thing Vista is going to do is try to remedy the problem for you. Since you have a better driver to install however, you just cancel it and then install your driver ignoring Windows complaints about doing that. Then you reboot again and that's that. Installed.

When you say won't let you deselect 3rd option, were you trying to deselect the option Selective Startup or clear the checkbox of the 3rd item under it which reads Use Original Boot Configuration? Because the former, Selective Startup is a radio button. You can't deselect it per se other than to choose one of the other two since only one radio button in a group can ever be selected at the same time. This is a Windows user interface convention that dates back to Windows/286 and probably earlier. If it was the 3rd checkbox item under that and you could not clear the checkbox that is strange and I don't understand why you could not clear a checkbox there. It made me wonder if you misunderstood and thought you needed to deselect the entire group by trying to deselect a radio button which isn't possible without clicking one of the other ones to choose it instead. I should have been more specific and told you to ensure that radio button was selected and then to clear the checkboxes I mentioned.

As for something not closing and hogging the CPU, you can usually kill programs doing things like that by calling up task manager and then choosing there to end the task. If it shows no applications running and something failed to shut down properly and you know something is chewing up CPU cycles, just look in the processes tab and click the heading for CPU useage to sort the list so whatever is hogging it comes to the top of the list. Then kill the process which will often have a name that gives a clue as to what program remnant it is, etc. You don't have to reboot every time something hangs.

Anyway, have the person doing the fixing explain what they find and show you how they fixed it if possible. This way you learn something useful for future reference. It is easier to be shown things like this than to read text about stuff you aren't familiar with. Visuals often help a lot. Good luck and let us know what the heck it was. :-)

It's cool. Considering all the rambling I do you won't hear me complain about rambling. Those are valid points too about the grind and lack of real engaging fun content a fair amount of the time.

MMOs are too time consuming and gear is usually equal to time spent more than anything else by far with insane amounts of it required for the best stuff which becomes a problem when pvp is introduced into the equation or as in the case of DAoC, when raid gear is introduced into the equation after the fact so to speak. Either way, it throws balance out the window for people who do not have that kind of time for a single game which depending on the game in question, would often be most sane people.

I'll never raid hardcore again so a game either needs to be fun within reasonable time constraints or I am not going there. For some reason makers of MMO's don't seem to get there are a lot more people like me who enjoy games than there are the hardcore who scream if its too easy, God forbid. It's ok if it doesn't require me to work 40 hours a week at it for a year. It really is. It's fine. I don't think any of them ought to take near the time they do to advance in but then how can they charge a monthly if they don't provide something to do? Too bad that something boils down to a lot of nothing really.

When I played WoW I leveled a Paladin until he'd finished the pve for all intents and purposes and now it was either pvp or raid. I passed on both and retired him since neither of those options in that game appealed to me. I did try the pvp off and on along the way, noting the disparity among players cited above. Raiding I knew about before I got to Azeroth and I knew before I even rolled a toon there that I don't care what the raid content or raid gear is. I don't have time for that nor the desire to waste any of mine on it. I think now I was too hard on WoW when I reviewed it and gave it a 7.0 but it was how I felt at the time. In retrospect, it's pretty fun and decent enough for what it is as long as one knows when its time to go do something else which was what I did.

I may revisit WoW again and level some other class over a few months for the fun of it but I won't even consider serious pvp or raiding. The brief pve ride is fun enough and there is an end to it just like a single player rpg. You hit 70, do the dungeons if you like, maybe get a set of blues, maybe go kill some old world stuff because you can at which point that's pretty much it. It's time to either roll another class and do it again or better still, take another break from it till next expansion or till you at least somewhat forget the content you just did a second or third time. I think that isn't bad because at least a new class means you'll play that same content differently using whatever you have to work with as a particular new class you chose.

This is kind of cool because it then drops down into something more like a single player game and you are done when you are done. Unless for some reason you actually find daily quests for rewards you don't need for anything fun somehow. I didn't myself but i guess it is an easy way to raise cash to twink your next guy starting off which can be kind of fun. It's probably a nice way to fund leveling up a profession as well which could be cool if you took something interesting like engineering. It's too bad you can't do that and then give any of it you want to an alt but that would become a balance issue also I suppose.

I could probably casually play and enjoy something like D&D Online which I wouldn't expect to find pvp in but the hand crafted adventures are of a high quality and I don't care if I can see the content in a sane amount of time. I actually like that. If I see it all so what? Take a break and when they release more come back. Why is that so bad? I don't think it is. I think its great. Then you get to have fun with an MMO and still have ample time to play shooters or whatever and maybe even have a life, you know? That works for me.

Speaking of shooters, something I love about the pvp of shooters online is by and large you usually pop in whenever you feel like, join some suitable server, pop into an relatively equal playing field where its all about skill and not about who plays the most and therefore has the best stuff. I think that's great. I don't understand why they don't attempt a similar model in MMO pvp except I guess that MMO people are so into the itemization they wouldn't like that. The thing is, if MMO pvp worked like that, there might be over time a large influx of new people who in greater numbers and for more revenue do not need nor want a game that is nothing more than an itemization-fest and incredible waste of time.

That is exactly what they want to find out. This reminds me of fishing. I can waste a bunch of bait on a new pond to see if I make a good catch there or not. I can afford that easily. If it doens't go well np, I return to my former favorite place where it does. It didn't cost me a lot to find out.

Companies like EA and SOE have deep pockets and can afford to spend a little money to test the waters here and that is what they are doing. If it doesn't go well, np. The next Battlefield will be a retail boxed game. If it does go well, it might also be a retail boxed game but with added costs once you've bought it kind of like buying an MMO then paying a monthly.

This isn't the final deal here. This is just the start of it. There is a reason the game is going to be free. They want a large test base. If it was a retail game would it sell with ads and microtransactions tacked on? I doubt it. It HAS to be free to work at all.

As the old saying goes, there is no free lunch. Well most of the time. I do thank Id for the nice one they gave us because in their case, they really did give us something no strings attached.

Yes the EverQuests are MMOs and they do cost a monthly fee on top of buying the game and expansions as they release. But the CEO has openly stated they want to get users to pay for ingame items instead of paying monthly and he sees that as the way of the future for MMOs. I disagree but they are already introducing this into SOE titles via the backdoor as my blog article discusses.

I think the reason the new battlefield is free is because this gives EA a relatively risk free way to test the microtransaction model waters. Most people will agree you can't complain too much about a free game and I think EA is banking on this as a safe way to introduce microtransactions while minimizing user complaints and risk.

Good point about the adware. So far it looks like just banners to login and then its gone which is fine. Even I don't have issues with that. If it goes beyond that to installing something its game over here.

As for hacking local clients I think they have that somewhat covered in that its a client server game by the looks of things and not a fully stand alone client like Wolf ET is. Its more like an MMO where you will download a client that has probably more game resources, textures, etc. than anything else and the game itself with some data about your characters in it, will live server side. This gives them control over it which is non-existant in a release like Wolf ET.

It might sound crazy but where the new battlefield looks like a good game in its own right when you strip away ads and microtransactions, I wish it was something I could just buy and play without that crap.

Yeah, that's pretty much the view I have come to have also about MMOs unfortunately. It sounds like you played DAoC in the past and if so probably bailed when they killed the game by requiring raiding to be competitive in PvP?

I think because of that experience Mythic will do better with the new game. They learned the hard way what happens when you destroy the balance by dividing players into those who have issues and no real life and normal people who have better things to do than raid 30 or more hours a week for months so they can play the fun part of the game, namely the pvp.

I've had a video card die before but when mine did, it really died and required replacement to use the PC at all. Somehow I doubt hardware failure here in the video subsystem.

I'm inclined to think a once stable system the performed decently and now performs badly has configuration issues rather than hardware failure. It may also be loaded with viruses, back-doors, etc. if you don't run a good security suite and especially if you visit sites that are not major know safe places to be such as Gamespot, CNN, The Weather Channel Online, Amazon.com, etc. These are not the places you'd run into trouble but there is plenty of them out there where you could of course, particularly downloading shareware, freeware and otherware...

If this were my system I would approach the problem like so:

1.) Run a full scan for viruses and spyware and be sure the system is clean. If any are found and quarantined or deleted, repeat the process until it reports the system is clean. After doing this test a known failure, such as one of the games you know freezes now that did not before.

2.) Defragment the drive. I know you said you did this so this can be skipped but its what I would do next if it hadn't been done.

3.) Go to the nvidia site (or ATI if that's what you have) and find the utility to remove the video driver completely. Run it exactly as instruced there and reboot the PC. Windows will install a vanilla lame driver. That's ok. It has to have something to give you a working display. Now install the latest Nvidia or ATI driver and do NOT install a beta version driver even if it is newer. Not for this troubleshooting at least. Get the lastest WHQL driver which they will identify as such and simply means this is the latest tested one for this version of windows and is known stable as of its release. Test again. Still have problems? Then go to next step.

4.) This actually should be done before the video driver upgrade but I am too lazy to cut paste, etc. But using whatever program you prefer eliminate ALL startup programs that automatically starting with Windows. You just want Windows itself and whatever Microsoft processes it requires with nothing else added. If you do not have something to do this such as System Mechanic or MS One Care or something else than you can do this with an included Windows program called MSCONFIG. Be aware however that MSCONFIG is a powerful utility that you can cause yourself problems with if you are not careful. Don't let that scare you off however, it is a very helpful program used correctly. To access it in Vista open your Start menu and in the search box at the bottom, type in msconfig and press the enter key.

You will see a UAC prompt asking if it is ok to run this. Its ok to allow it to run. You will see a window that is really a dialog box with 5 tabs along the top. We only care about two of them. The first one is labeled General. There are three options here and you want the third one on the bottom of the list which reads Selective Startup. Make sure this one is selected. Underneath it you will notice three checkbox items. You want to be sure the first one is checked which says Load System Services. The second one Load Startup items, you want to clear that checkbox and the third one also. Make sure the other two options here are NOT checked.

Now proceed to the services tab by clicking it at the top of this window. At the bottom of this view listing all services presently starting when windows starts you will see a checkbox with the label Hide All Microsoft Services. You want to make sure this item is checked. When you do this, the list above will immediately refresh and show you any 3rd party services that you do not have to have running for this troubleshooting test. If you see Punkbuster or Steam services listed here leave them turned on but uncheck everything else. Don't worry about these changes because all are easily reversible as you narrow down what is causing your problem. Nothing gets deleted doing this but changes get written to not allow these things you turn off to run on bootup. Later you can turn things back on one at a time as desired if you miss them because something you use isn't working, etc. Once you've done that click ok and reboot when prompted to put the changes in place and boot clean.

When you reboot the msconfig utility will pop up a window and you can tell it not to come up anymore with a checkbox. Do that as you can run it directly as outlined above any time you want.

Now, test again to see if anything is still broken. Begin with a game you know was failing right away, etc. Did disabling startup programs fix it? If so, you can safely assume one or more of them is the culprit here. I'd stop right there and start gaming unless something you disabled is something you know you want like say a camera driver or something. But really, don't bother letting stuff start until and if you actually notice it interferes with using something you know you want to use. A lot of software installs junk to speed its own startup or whatever. Programs like iTunes run services you don't need and it will start what it does need when you actually run it to play something.

Less is more as the old saying goes. Do not run a bunch of utility junk and a million scanners, widgets, sidebar gadgets, fancy video desktop backgrounds, etc. Ideally you want Windows and your game and your firewall and thats about it. Some security suites are hard or impossible to shut off so you have determine if one you like causes too much performance hit or not. I like One Care myself because it is simple, comprehensive and does not bog down my midrange gaming PC. But whatever you like works as long as you aren't seeing a significant performance hit with it vs without it.

If after all of this the PC is still not behaving well and games don't run right and not a single thing has improved when you test it, I would try running the memory test included with Vista. I believe you see an option to run it when you boot up. I doubt this is it but it doesn't hurt. Next you'd want to run dxdiag from the same place you ran msconfig and test your DirectX setup with it. It will do some basic testing of your video and sound subsystems. If your PC flunks any of these tests, try driver updates first before assuming hardware is broken which is unlikely most of the time.

If all those measures do not get you back to pre-problems performance its time for the last ditch effort: backup ALL of your data including ALL of your saved games and reinstall Windows from your system recovery CD or Windows install CD. Do a clean install and completely blow away the old one. When its up and running and done, get your current video driver because you won't have it and get your sound driver too. Then install and test one single game you know was failing and try it out.

If all of that fails I'd have to think something is wrong with the hardware somewhere and I would begin by returning the video card for service since after all of the above that is the one item I would most suspect if problems persisted.

Obviously, you might like to copy and past this wall of text to a new text file on your desktop and print it out before you begin so you can see it easily all of the time while troubleshooting.

Hopefully I have not missed any steps there. That is what I would try. I do think it is possible your DirectX could be screwed up somehow and its possible the only cure for that since it cannot be removed and reinstalled is a full reinstall of Windows and newest drivers.

Good luck and look at the bright side here. Solving system problems is how you learn all about your system and become more independent in fixing things as they sometimes come up in PC gaming. We've all been here which is how any of us know any of this stuff. Keep us posted on how it goes with this. Enquiring geeks want to know! lol

There isn't any really, is there considering the twinks? It becomes a more level playing field at the upper levels but even there people with real lives and therefore lesser gear compete against people in tier x (whatever is highest at the moment) or the highest level of arena gear, etc.

It seems to me that this is the largest problem with pvp in WoW. I've played it and I thought all the BGs were fun in their own way. I never did get around to trying Arena play with my 70 Pally before taking a break but I may do that next time around for the fun of it.

What I am talking about here is the case of I am leveling an alt say, and he gets to level 19 and I waltz into a BG for his level and a twink rogue eats me alive moments later. I am in level appropriate gear for 19 and of course, have yet to earn any rewards from the BG I just started playing. If I continue to simply play the pve game with this character and as he reaches the appropriate level try new BGs with him the same scene replays itself with competition vs raid or arena geared players at 70 to look forward to.

I don't say this stuff to knock WoW but I am thinking the pvp could be better and more fun if there was improved balance with an even playing field gear-wise when you enter one. This of course doesn't touch on stuff like fearing, stun locking, etc. which is another debatable area of balance but one I'd leave out of this discussion. This is all about the great disparity in gear and wondering about whether level appropriate gear among players in BGs was the original intent once upon a time.

To fix this I wonder if changing BGs and maybe even Arenas such that when you enter you are outfitted in a default set of level appropriate gear and then you are switched back to your own upon exit. Or maybe ala CS, you get a buy menu of sorts and pick from available default level stuff, and can save your choices for fast entry from there on in for that particular BG. This of course eliminates the twinks but the issue there is, high levels have earned their twinks and like them so how is that addressed or is it at all? Maybe by allowing separate twink BGs? I don't know but it seems to me like they need to fix that to improve WoW PvP.

If gear was roughly equal across the board once you are in there it then becomes purely about class balance and more importantly skill in playing. Personally, I'd like that better. What do you think about this?

I don't like them myself, not at all. In fact I really, really hate them. Originally I wrote a post about this that became a wall of text with my thoughts in detail and decided that would make a better blog entry than a post. In it I discuss at some length the backdoor approach of SOE to this via their Legends of Norrath card game that EverQuest and EverQuest II players got installed and still get regular updates for and endless ingame spam via GMs whether they want it or not. Mr. Smedley of SOE says this is the way of the future. How do you feel about that?

If this subject interests you enough to read a more fully explained opinion about it by all means have a read of my blog on my gamespot profile page.

How do you feel about them? Do you like them? Do you hate them? Is ingame stuff worth real money or not worth anything? Is this another greedy play for more of your money would you say? Or it is something you could care less about? Bring on the free Battlefield and who cares about buying costume jewelry in a shooter? Can you imagine a Buy screen like in CS but where you have to actually input a credit card number and buy your gear to go play? What about an MMO where raid gear is for sale? Maybe they just want to sell ingame junk and steer clear of game balance to milk more money out of us but is this ok?

In a world of ingame ads now, it is not much of a stretch to see ingame ads for stuff they want you to buy ingame for the game.

If I went to the movies and they hit me up for an extra buck to see certain optional scenes I'd walk out. Would you?

I'd love to hear what you think of this stuff.