Mild threadjack here, but how many times have you had to reinstall Windows on the same computer? Why in the hell would you have to?
About once every six months I used to format and re-install Windows XP to keep it clean. Now you ask why but I always enjoyed messing with the deeper settings and sooner or later my tweaking would make windows unstable or Windows just tends to build up crap if you leave it to do its thing. I used to get back a gigabyte or more every time I formatted. Of course now a gig is trivial and so far at least Windows 7 doesn’t seem to compel me to try to improve it like XP did.
Anyway I did this for years and carried XP from computer to computer as I upgraded never running into an issue until about 3 years ago when it decided I was at my install limit (I’m fairly sure they quietly tightened the limit some time ago). It now requires me to phone in if I want to install it. Last year I was feeling lazy and bought a pre-built machine from a shop and though it was a ‘new’ copy of XP it decided it was at its install limit the day I added a new harddrive (moving windows onto it) and a new video card. Personally I think XP is trying to make it just a little harder to run XP so people would move to Vista (and now Windows 7).
It’s late and there’s been a lot of randomness in the last barrage of replies so I’m not going to spend a lot of energy parsing the various responses, but I wanted to respond to this.
I don’t care that much really, but the academic discussion of the market interests me. I don’t actually have a horse in this race, but I’m a bit of a geek and I like following the gadget/gaming blogs. Versions of this debate happen all the time and I tend to just cruise the thread until I see something particularly indefensible or I see a bit a fanboyism crop up. It’s probably annoying to those passionate believers on either side but that’s the Dope I suppose.
Long story short I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve posted. It seemed that the thread was being hijacked a little in the discussion about PC hardware needs as it applied to WoW. I suppose I just furthered the hijack for little clarity on what should and shouldn’t be considered part of the “cost” debate which frankly is neither here nor there. I don’t have a grand point on the subject, I just think the OP and the plus ones are being every bit as flawed in their logic as the console gamers have been in past threads when they disparage PC gaming.
How’s my post flawed in it’s logic?
In my OP, I’ I only mention consoles gamers as the gloom and dooms who keep holding up signs about the “End is nigh!” when it comes to PC gaming.
The figures surprised me in that apparently 80% of the market no longer uses retail, and I pointed out that 13 billion, even if it’s considerably lower than the consoles, is still a viable market, simply because people aren’t going to say no to 13 billion.
It was then that people came out of the woodwork saying how since the figures didn’t stack up to the US ONLY NPD (retail only, console hardware bias) numbers that they MUST be made up! No, no no, we can’t have those uppity PC gamers thinking that they’re better than us!
Same old BS. From the same old people.
Oh, and I’d like to point out that you Mr Omniscient aren’t living up to your name here. Gives us the real numbers!
I think there’s medication or therapy available to people like you.
No doubt. It’s no stranger then a person always tinkering with their car in my opinion though and I’ve gotten better.
I’m sure you consider me a fanboy, but I don’t think of myself that way. Yes, I am very passionate about defending PC gaming, but I don’t feel that I go through an illogical or irrational thought process when defending them. It’s not equivelant to rooting for a favorite sports team for me - I’m seeing my hobby slow be degraded and destroyed, and I’m trying to make a logical case against it.
Back in the days before consoles tried to be shitty little PCs, I had no problem with them. I didn’t have a “lolol console users!!!” attitude towards people who played the PS2 a decade ago, because they were seperate spheres of gaming - the ps2 did not hurt me, so… great for anyone who liked it. The current gen, however, by being as advanced as a shitty 2004 PC, does hurt me. It means a lot of the games I’m interested in playing are dumbed down to function on those platforms because they’re the lowest common denominator, and it also means that some games don’t get made because they’d never work right on the consoles and too many people stopped having a gaming PC because they moved to a console. If it wasn’t slowly strangling my hobby, I wouldn’t give a shit.
So I’d like you to tell me exactly in this thread how I’ve been irrational or illogical. Despite claimed neutrality, I think you’ve been more illogical and fanboyish than I have. For instance, on the issue of the NPD vs total market size, I did not rush to support the 13B conclusion without seeing their evidence and methodology. If I was an irrational fanboy, I’d accept any evidence thrown in that’s pleasing to me uncritically. You, on the other hand, handwaved the number away as a matter of faith - you said essentially “well, if the PC market is 26x bigger than the US sales market, then uh… so is the console market! therefore we multiply the console numbers by 26x and it’s still way bigger!” … there was no rational reason to do, especially since I outlined reasons why US NPD retail numbers were a poor way to judge the market and that indeed the numbers are much bigger, reasons that mostly did not correspond to consoles because they were already being more accurately tracked by retail sales (in addition to being artificially hugely inflated by including the hardware numbers too).
Your hijack about cost was completely non-sensical and a non-sequitor - both in and of itself (how many people own modern consoles/gaming PCs but are too poor or too disinterested in internet use to have their own connection?) and because it had nothing to do with what anyone said. We were talking about the inclusion of hardware console cost as it pertains to the size of the market as reported by the NPD numbers, the cost to the user was never an issue under debate or relevant. I can only assume it was a misguided fanboyism attempt to score some points somehow.
So yes, there’s plenty of fanboyism to go around in the video game world, but it’s a mistake to assume that anyone who’s passionate about the subject can be hand-waved away as a fanboy. You should attack their arguments on their logical merits, and maybe apply some critical analysis to your own arguments as presented when you claim to be above it all.
No, you don’t. That was my entire point, and the only reason I chimed in at all. (I read most of these threads, but rarely participate because I haven’t owned any videogames – console or computer – for over 5 years.)
Yes, it is. You’re a Browns fan. Unless you mean it’s different because the degradation of the Browns isn’t a slow progression but rather an eternal absolute? (hehheh. I can’t not swing when you lob 'em over the plate like that.)
WoW does scale extremely well with low end hardware. I’m not claiming WoW drives massive cutting edge computer sales. But it does indeed require a computer with some gaming hardware … the only clear piece of “gaming hardware” you can clearly delineate is a video card, but I’m sure people who play WoW purchase their CPU/ram/etc with the game in mind. The requirements (and graphics performance) have been in development for as long as the game has been around - you’d have a very hard time running the new content adequately on something that was barely running the game at launch. I’m not even sure how this whole hijack is relevant, though.
Right, because if I weren’t a fan of any sports teams, or if I were a fan of a good team, then my arguments about the merits of PC vs console gaming would be valid. But since I’m the fan of a bad team, my arguments are faulty. You got me again.
(I realize this was mostly a joke, but I’m not entirely sure you don’t look at rooting for bad teams as some sort of character flaw or something).
sigh
I forget that you are devoid of a sense of humor.
Again, no it does not.
No, actually, I have a really good sense of humor. You aren’t funny.
Do you really think “again no!” is a valid retort here? It doesn’t require a video card? Depending on what your definition of “gaming” hardware is, it doesn’t require some reasonably recent CPU with a decent amount of ram?
You claim to not have owned a game in 5 years, but you’re sure what the play experience is like on WoW? The minimum requirements listed by blizzard are silly - you could run around elwynn forest at the lowest settings on that hardware, but you wouldn’t even be able to load the current main hub of the game, Dalaran, on it - let alone play it at some reasonable performance level. Substantiate your claim.
Again, I’m not claiming it requires anything cutting edge. But to say it requires no hardware is… strange.
I could easily play it just fine on this computer, a budget desktop bought 2 years ago with no thought or intention toward gaming.
Yeah, couldn’t possibly be that you’re pissy and humorless.
I don’t know what the specs are on your computer, or for that matter why you assume you could. I don’t even really care - what relevance does any of this have to anything anyway?
No, it really can’t. No one who knows me would ever use the word humorless to describe me. You use this “you’re a fan of a bad sports team so therefore you’re stupid and can’t ever be right!” thing over and over. It’s not funny the first time, and it certainly isn’t funny when you hammer it into the ground. It’s not like I’m even bothered by friendly ribbing - me and my friends are routinely much worse. No, I react this way because it’s stupid and boring and quite unfunny, especially when used in a completely unrelated context (bringing it up in a thread on the size of gaming markets, really?) especially when used in a dismissive way about something I said.
According to this:
Unless you plan on playing at much less than 1680x1050 and at minimum settings you’re going to need a discreet video card.
I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you.
Who even has a monitor that uses 1680x1050 that doesn’t already have a video card? The first post below that article
Not perhaps the most eloquent of speakers but it aligns perfectly with my experiences playing it on an old laptop. The simple fact is that nobody is going to upgrade their computer to play WOW. You either already have a computer that can play it or you don’t even have a computer made in the last 3+ years and have no interest in playing any computer game.
I’ve almost forgotten why we got off on this WOW tangent. It may be the biggest game in town but it has to be about the least demanding on hardware that’s still in the market as a player. As I somewhat implied before the Sims series would be a better example of driving hardware sales that was a huge hit on the PC.
I’ve got a 2 year old Dell that was only $380 when purchased as a factory refurb. It has a Dual Core CPU and integrated graphics. It plays WoW just fine, no need for a discrete video card.
I’m not sure what the track of the argument is at this point but this is one data point that confirms this statement.
- I have no idea what the point of this wow hijack is or what it would prove at this point, but I do 2) find myself curious. What integrated graphics chip are you using? What settings do you run the game at, including resolution, quality settings, etc. Are you playing in the new content like Dalaran and Northrend? What sort of frame rates do you get?
I’m having a hard time believing it. But I guess you may have one of the better integrated graphics solutions like the nvidia 8400 or 9400s, run at low resolution and low settings, and stay out of the graphically intense stuff it would be … not the worst thing ever. Maybe.
I don’t play WoW. I installed a trial many months ago and it ran fine for a couple days, I just didn’t get any enjoyment from the MMO genre and have since banished it from my machine. It played at whatever the default settings were, I’m not sure if it adjusts automatically based on your hardware or what but I never tinkered with the settings manually. Here’s the onboard graphics chipset.