New parts arriving soon

So, I took the first step and started ordering parts of my new rig. As I discussed earlier I am going to have to give up my dream rig and go for something that is more a marginal upgrade. I'm not disappointed or upset, I would gladly give up a PC for the things I will need to make my new born child comfortable. The fact still remains, if I didn't have a child on the way... I'd be a lot more selfish. =P

I ordered:

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE (3.2 GHz quad core, 6MB L3 cache)

HDD - WD Cavia Black 1 TB SATA3 (6GB/sec) 7200 RPM 64MB cache

Sound - Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium

Picked those up for $275 or so. I am pretty pleased. This should get me set up for gaming immediately as I work on fleshing out the rest of the system. I'm gonna make another post and detail a budget rig. I figure I might as well keep the info on hand, just in case.

Stupid, responsibility....

So, my wife is pregnant. Yes, I know, it's an amazing thing and I am blessed and all that. I've been getting high-fives and fist pumps all day. However, this puts a decided kink into my plan to upgrade my PC like a fucking madman come February. Sad fucking panda.

I did let my wife know that over the next several months that I would be dumping cash into some new shit. While she didn't quite understand, she did know that I was going to need "toys", too.

I already have a decent mother board (ASUS M4A77D) and enough RAM (8 gigs) that I should be okay for the immediate future. I have decided on a AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE (4x3.2GHz), a WD 1 TB 7200RPM 64Mb cache SATA3 hard drive, and a PCI-Express Creative X-Fi Titanium. That chip should give me enough power that I can get through a bit of time without feeling the pressure to upgrade. While it won't be as smoking as the new Sandy Bridge, it will be enough to keep me happy for now. The hard drive isn't an SSD, but it will serve as something a bit faster than what I am running now and will allow faster reads and writes for gaming. The sound card should take some of the pressure off of my CPU and allow my games to sound sexy and clear again.

I was really going to get something very nice and very expensive, but it seems like that timing may not line up and when I was going to be dropping dimes on that fancy new PC... there will instead be a crying poop-machine. Hooray! Let's be honest, though. As long as this new rig runs BF3, I don't really give a shit.

TF2 is F2P

Yep. I said it.

One of the best games that I have ever seen is now free to play. While the game hasn't been the same to me since they tried to monetize it with the MannCo store, I still think it is a top tier game. Rarely are there games that are able to last 5 years, let alone still provide so much fun and still have UPDATES! Not just updates, but regular updates that are FREEEEEEEE! It's kind of amazing, really.

However, like I said before, I haven't bothered to play since the MannCo update. I was actually kind of upset that Valve put that in there. Some of us had worked hard for hats or weapons or the likes just to have a system come along and basically dash all of that work to little bits, eat those bits and then shit them all over us. Even still, the quality of the game is probably far beyond what a lot of other games are, maybe even some franchises who have released 4 games just during the time that TF2 has been out..... you know who you are.

It remains to be seen what kind of impact this will have on the community of TF2, but I can only imagine that it will be rather negative at first. If you haven't ever played TF2, I suggest you give it a try. Now is the best time to do it, it seems.

My future PC.

I don't normally go over it, but my PC pretty much blows.

I recently did some small modifications (Back around the holidays).

Old PC: Intel Core2Duo E4400 [original] (2x2.0GHz), 3 gigs of DDR2, 320 gig 7200 RPM 16mb cache SATA drive, 80 gig 7200 RPM 8mb SATA drive, eVGA 8800GT (AKIMBO), Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS, Asus P5N-E motherboard.

Current PC: AMD X2 6000+ (2x3.1GHz), 8 gigs of DDR2, 1TB "Green" SATA 3 (6gb/s) 64mb cache drive, AMD Radeon HD6870, Asus M4A77D motherboard.

A little give and a little take. My new drive is ultra slow, but will mainly act as a storage drive. It can make gaming quite a pain at times. The CPU, while it is an upgrade, is still very limiting in it's ability to play newer titles. The video card is solid and will probably be carried over and possibly placed into a Crossfire config in my new PC.

Right now I am set on the new line of Intel CPUs. The second generation of the core series is pretty awesome. They put up some pretty good numbers and I'm pretty impressed with out well they stand out among the crowd. As of now I am looking to get the Core i-7 2600K.

On the memory side I believe that 1600 will be the sweet spot. I am still undecided on what brand I will get. A-Data has proven to be very reliable and just as good as Kingston and Corsair. Crucial is still my favorite brand of memory. I am probably going to be picking up 16 gigs. Depending on if I get a different chip or Intel goes back to the triple channel RAM, will determine if I get less, but even then it will be 12 gigs.

As far as hard drives go, this will be a bit tricky. I want to get SSD drives, but they are still a little too expensive for me to drop the money on. Intel's new technology built into their latest boards is very interesting. It uses the SSD to cache commonly used files to speed up the HDD that is attached. Think of it as a RAID between mechanical HDD and SSD. I will probably get a WD black edition drive if I go this route. I believe I can offset the speed loss of Raptor by using this method. However, if in the next 6 to 7 months the price of SSD drives goes WAY down or I happen into a large sum of money, then I could totally see myself picking up a bunch of those.

As I just mentioned there is a new Intel chipset out for boards. It offers a couple new features. I can't wait to get one. MSI and Gigabyte are the brands I like to stick to, but I've had a couple of Asus boards in my last two PCs (which I've had way tooooo long). The P5N-E sucked. I hated that board beyond belief, but didn't want to go mucking about in my case or have to spend a day reinstalling my OS and games. Free time is at a premium and back then I was a very avid WoW player.

The video card debate is really going to be whether or not something has come out or is on the brink of releasing. I wouldn't mind grabbing another 6870 and running a Crossfire config. It really depends on what the price of a new high end card will be. The 6990 is still 800ish dollars. I have no idea what may come out or how prices will rise or fall by the time I decide to upgrade.

Yeah, I know I am planning in advance, but I want to know what to get. I want to be able to cherry pick the things I am putting in my PC. I plan to spend enough money that my wife will be upset if I don't just get everything I want. While I don't plan on spending 4 grand, I do plan to spend plenty of cash and get nice components, just in case I have another half decade before I get to upgrade again.

Black Ops shines where Bad Company 2 fails.

I give CoD a really hard time. The gameplay is shitty and recycled. The visuals are mediocre by today's standards and the overall appeal of the game is kind of bleh. Activision spends more time counting cash than adding fun and interesting new features to their games. I did take a shot with Black Ops over the free weekend and it really surprised me. Bad Company 2 on the other hand, has managed to continual disappoint.

I gave Black Ops a chance to win me over during this last free weekend on Steam and it almost did the trick. The gameplay is a lot of fun and it really reminds me a lot of CS. It has a lot of new features, but it builds on that part of the genre, as opposed to shitting all over it. Don't get me wrong, the game still shits on a lot of other stuff. While playing Black Ops I immediately found things I both loved and hated. I hated the shitty matchmaking system and fail attempt at balancing. I haven't play BlOps since the start, so I was immediately faceraped by people who knew the best camping spots or memorized all of the objectives. This... isn't a lot of fun. I've always been an early adopted to the games I am good and end up playing for any length. This made the game pretty unbearable. I gave it a few tries and found it unsatisfactory over and over again. People who seemed flawless, hosts having clear advantages and crap pings/performance all kept me from having a good time.

Then... THEN I discovered that I can play "offline" and do Combat Training. Wow! What a blast. Killing the bots and running around the maps was a lot of fun. I scaled up the difficulty during the weekend so I didn't just pound asses and feel cool. It was actually a ton of fun and since I never get to play with my friends, seeing their names all over the place was a lot of fun, too. This feature seems pretty cool and it really made me miss it in BFBC2. After my renewed lust for PC FPS games I decided to give BFBC2 another whirl...... it wasn't pretty.

I fired the game up and was expecting to be blown away. I've always regarded the BF series as far superior to CoD. Thus far, they hadn't let me down. Upon entering my very first game I was greeted with epic baserape. After giving up all hope I moved on to another server where I was throttled by people who were outrageous ranks. I've not played the game a whole lot for a multitude of reasons: it feels like I'm running in sludge, there are constant ping issues when I play (I don't know if it's the game, the way I disabled my Nagle, or the fact that when I play at night I'm playing on Euro servers), and the gap between the newbies and the badasses is HUGE. These were all my original gripes with the game and this being the second time I've given it a real shot, I was quite saddened.

I have the game... twice. I bought it once nearly at release and then picked it up on Steam after misplacing my other copy (turns out I loaned it to someone). I gave the copy on Steam a shot and found the same issues. I didn't expect much better, but I thought maybe my install sucked or something.

I know, I know. I should feel like a dick for praising BF and giving CoD such a hard time, but let's be honest... BF is still better. Sure my old and dated PC computer can't run such an awesome game as well, but it runs BlOps pretty smoothly. The physics and destructible environments in BF make it way better. The custom kits and interesting ranking procedure are fun in both. I hope that new FPS games really shake things up in this genre. With a new MW3 looking to be more of the same and the new BF3 looking to be FUCKING AWESOME... I sure hope I'm ready.

Okay, Black Ops, I'll give you this one chance...

Steam is offering a free weekend for Black Ops. Well, I've been itching to get ahold of a newer shooter. Now, I'm terrible and have no idea what I'm doing, but I'll give it a try.

I've never stepped foot in a map on Black Ops. I've never pulled the trigger and I've never even though about getting the game. I know that I'm behind the curve and it's a lot like Halo. Each game adds on just a little bit, but keeps enough of the same stuff that the old pros can hop in and kick ass with ease. I don't look forward to getting facefucked for a few days, but I would like a shot at playing a new FPS and getting a good idea of what I can expect from the future.

I plan on getting BF3, because I believe it will be a front-runner for PC gaming, especially on the FPS side. MW3 may catch a few eyes and be a huge success (again), but I've not really enjoyed the pacing of CoD for a while. BF has always held an edge of CoD due to the extra stuff that it has. Vehicles and destroyable environments together... OH LAWDY!

I'm gonna give Black Ops a shot this weekend. Not because I am sure it'll be the next thing I buy, but because it might just be fun. Who knows.

Also, GO MAVS!

WoW didn't make your MMO suck, you did.

It is no secret, I've been a WoW player for a LOOOOOONG time. I have been around for various stages of the game and a lot of changes that felt almost gamebreaking. During my time playing WoW I have personally played a handful of other MMO games and watched others play even more. Nothing stands up to WoW, not even close. I am starting to wonder if WoW is the Facebook of gaming.

Before WoW we had other MMOs. They did some stuff alright, but nothing really awesome. We had seen games that started in other genres bend themselves to fit into another niche, but nothing like what WoW was trying. The beta of the game was wildly successful. Even before the game came out people wanted to play and were ready to dedicate time and attention to WoW. I'm wondering if this might have been because WoW released at a time when EQ was a bit long in the tooth (about the age WoW is now) and DAoC just hadn't quite done as well as people had hoped (they released the game unfinished, yes... unfinished, they figured they had time to finish it while you were grinding to cap). Could it really be timing or an aging MMO market?

Let's be honest, EQ was cool. It was the first time we got to see a lot of that stuff done in that particular fashion. Yes, we had other MMO type games, but EQ gave us a whole different look and feel. One that is still copied to this day. It had a lot of inventive ideas that we also still see today. The game was solid, but it was just a little too old and in some cases way too hard core. The dedication to raiding and the ability to "get phat lewtz" was pretty intense. Though EQ gave us what we now call talents in WoW, but they gave you those as an alternate progression once you reached a certain level. EQ was a game changer, but it was old.

When we talk about old in gaming terms, we are mostly talking about the engine and the graphics. Most engines allow for graphic overhauls, but you can't take something developed in the mid 90s and expect it to compete in the mid 2000s. Even with all of the updates that EQ tried, it didn't bring the games level of beauty up to where some players wanted it. The leveling times in EQ were also brutal. You would invest weeks and weeks into leveling. The idea of questing for larger chunks of experience existed, but it hadn't been fleshed out. There were lots of repeatable quests that asked you to collect incidental items from mobs, but nothing like what we know today. Grinding through mobs where most of the time you couldn't go though more than two before sitting to med was pretty lame. To much downtime caused excessive time to be essentially wasted in the game.

WoW came out and fixed those things. You felt like a hero almost from the start, you were thwarting evil and performing multi-part quests all over the place. You could endlessly kill mobs and if you did have to sit down your downtime was minimal. It was a fast and furious pace and the cartoonish, but polished world look amazing. The art design was over the top and you felt like you were in the world that you had seen in the RTS games. It was actually pretty cool. They didn't do anything special, they just did it a little better and in a prettier package with less hassle.

WoW has had several games come out that could have hurt it. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online are two large ones. Warhammer sucks for various reasons, I've discussed those a couple times. I just recently ranted about it after they sent me a "come back for 2 weeks, it's awesome now" email. I just saw AoC was going F2P and decided to finally turn in my free 30 day key and give it a shot to see if it'd be something worth getting in to. Nope. It's terrible. I played AoC at release and it was a hot mess of bugs and bad. AoC is a little more complete now and it looks very nice, but it also sucks. The combat feels good, but a lot of things feel awkward and clunky. The game engine looks good, but the animations of combat look sad. I didn't make it far in AoC, but so far... I don't wanna play it again. I couldn't see myself playing to max level, because I would probably be bored to tears before I got half way there.

Aion was poised to take down WoW. Turns out it just looked pretty and had a sparkly UI. Within 2 months that game fell pretty far. The first month people were hoping more would be added, the second month people were let down, realized flying sucked and understood why Lineage in the sky wasn't gonna make it. The latest game to test WoW is RIFT. RIFT has done a decent job of pulling in subs, but just a few short months after release and you can see people looking for something new again or complaining about how the game sucks. I gave RIFT a shot for a few days and just didn't like the feel of it. It also didn't seem complete and polished, especially since that is what so many people were boasting about. It felt weird and it looked even weirder. The awkward rubber banding of people and mobs also pissed me off. Ugh.

What is next? What will REALLY give WoW a run for it? What is going to be a good enough game that I can cancel my sub and wait to play it next expansion? ToR continues to release info that makes me less and less happy with it. Planetside Next just doesn't seem to want to come out and Sony doesn't help when they keep firing people. FireFall looks neat, but can't seem to get on track either. Guild Wars 2 looks great, but we still have almost another year until it's going to release. Secret World looks creative and interesting, but I'm afraid it'll be a crappy reskin of one of the terrible Cryptic games that we had the misfortune of stumbling upon at one point or another (none of them were even good enough to mention as WoW competition).

We need another good MMO, any good MMO really. WoW is almost 7 years old and it's a bit long in the tooth. The new Blizzard project might be really good. I don't know, they refuse to leak info on it. And we all know that since it's a Blizzard game it might fall into oblivion for 10 years *COUGHSTARCRAFTCOUGH*.