>I don't know if I said this already, but some of the
>chat GMS have already suggested that they allow
>people to continue playing on the lower end so
>that they don't lose customers who can't upgrade.
<nods> I'm not tremendously worried about it since
i'll have my puter back soon and a copy of SoL should
run fine on it, but I know there's a rather
significant chunk of their customer base (and a loyal
group at that) who's really getting left behind. It
really wouldn't have killed them to come up with a low
res Vah Shir model and make that an option purely for
non-expansion viewing. This reminds me way too much of
what Origin did with it's Ultima/Wing Commander/etc.
games, and i'm sure half the mailing list is saying
"Origin who?". ;)
> Message: 15
> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 10:22:31 +0100
> From: alexander.jones@...
> Subject: RE: I hate Shadows of Luclin and I don't
> even own it yet...
>
>Old puters work just fine. The only problem you have
>is that your video card *MUST* be dx8 certified.
>Other than that even going as low as 128 megs will
>work. There is not the slightest chance in hell you
>can install luclin on that machine tho, cause it will
>die while trying to render the new graphics.
I haven't gone over the list, but how many low end
(8mb) video cards are dx8 certified? Keeping in mind
that there's a lot of video card manufacturers who
either got out of that aspect of the business or flat
out went under, so recent drivers are also a problem.
I know Verant can't cater exclusively to the low end
user, I suppose you could argue they've done that by
not making drastic changes in Kunark and Velious.
Perhaps in six months once Verant has hammered out a
few more of the hardware issues with patches, this
won't be as drastic a problem. Although I still hate
this mentality of "we have to release software that's
not ready to make the xmas sales rush, we'll patch it
to death til it actually works once it's been
released". Software that doesn't work properly on AMD
processors is *NOT* market ready yet. :) (what's AMD's
market share up to these days? I believe last number I
heard thrown around was 30%)
>And you should really get more ram, it isnt that
>expensive. Ram and a nice video card and everything
>works a lot smoother. CPU power isnt that important.
It's the best investment one can make at this point
for the price involved, but for a lot of people simply
keeping up with Verant's $10 a month (read: high
school/particularly broke college students) and their
broadband fees is expensive enough. In a perfect world
everyone would be running 1ghz+ Athlons with a gig of
RAM, 40gb of HD space, and new GeForce3 cards, but the
reality is that for every one customer running a
machine like that, i'd wager they have five running
the bare min reqs. (or in some cases <gasp!> even
below ;)
>And dont be so negative, SoL is a whopping expansion
>worth the new specs. Graphics are cool (some char
>models are a bit weird) but mobs/surrondings
>are very nice. The mob features are a LOT improved
>adding more tactics to fights.
From what little i've heard being unable to actually
play for the last week, it's a great expansion. :P The
general consensus among players I talked to during my
week long pre-SoL binge though was that the game
wasn't really in need of a major earthshattering
expansion. There's TONS of worldspace that the
majority of us haven't explored already, plenty of
cool items and armor to acquire, the alternate
advancement is interesting but doesn't effect most
people, etc. I'd go so far as to wager only a tiny
handful (if any) of people have explored every nook
and cranny of Kunark and Velious. mmmmmm... Who knows,
maybe if it wasn't for DAoC Shadows wouldn't have been
released for another year. ;) (whole other debate
there though...)
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