by looking at all the mmos out there free to play (ftp) and pay to play (ptp) the obvious conclusion is that there are quit a few good titles on both sides, however, ftp mmos have the edge of beieing FREE and therefore have a huge initial apeal.

that being said, one could ask: if ftp mmos are good or as good as ptp mmos then why those later ones even exist? shouldnt everybody be playing for free and saving a monthly subscription?

i, myself have tried a couple of free mmos and notabely maple story and perfect world, both games are amazing, PW being more technically superior with its fancy 3d graphics etc... both games have a huge player base and many millions of fans all arround the world, when you play such games, first you are very impressed, but while progressing through the game and having a more profoundd understanding of its mechanics, you come to know that it is a HIGHLY grind grind game and that YOU HAVE to purchase items from that item mall in order to have a descent experience. now they all say no no no, you dont realy have to use the item mall (real cash) to play the game and that the item mall is just optional... but thats not true at all, the games are made in a way that a regular progression through the game will require cash items and without them, the experience is at least nightmarish if not impossible and time waisting.

now, i understand that devs need money for their effort which is really faire, but how? how would a ftp mmo make enough money for the studio who made it and still maintain it, without disturbing the game experience?

and the answer is simple:

1- an item mall that contains "non gamplay altering items". an item mall could have fashion clothing, decorative items, alternative mounts, dyie items and cutomized items etc...

BUT DO NOT CONTAIN: in game money, exclusive weapons/ armor, power up items, etc...

2- use the power of google ads (or any other ads) !

it is a very known fact that websites which have a descent organic trafic make thousands of dollars every month, why not a an mmo with millions of users?

PUT ADS you idiots and cut the crap... ok im getting angry here, ill finish this later.

leve a comment or email me any thoughts.

now i have been playing eve for a couple of months or so and here are my sincere thoughts about this mmo:

1- it really feels like im just scratching the surface... now that i know about (almost) all the ships, factions, corps stuff, piracy, mining, R&D etc... i can easily say that i am more interested in playing this game even more than when i started. why? first because it seems more interesting now that i know more, do more, and have more stuff. and secondly because i know that there is more stuff that i can be doing in the future with more (skills and ISK (money)). so i kind of of have objectives in the game, not just playing to lvlup so i can kill higher lvl monsters/npc's...

2- my corp which i joined as soon as i started playing Have just finished the recruitment processin high sec (safe/limited) space and now is moving to 0.0 (free/dangerous) space where we are going to have our own POS (player owned stations) and will have to defend our own space and make our own rules ! R&D our own ships and gears... and also join other corps to form huge alliances. is that cool or what?

when i first started playing EVE on-line, i saw that i would need like 2 years of skill training to get into some type of ships and i was like wtf !!! but now i understand why is that so. Its to make the game fun and interesting for both noobs and 3+ years old players. i know its kind of complicated to understand if you don't play the game, but if you do, you will see noobs and vets fighting in the same wars in the same fleets and all having fun and completing each others roles...

A couple of months ago, i started looking for a serious/good mmo to play. i play a lot of other genres mainly RTS and FPS both on PC and Consoles, but its always good to have a character in training in some mmo, mmos gives you friends and clan mates that no other genre will ever give you.

Anyway, i started with Perfect world international (PWI), it was "free" to play, looked good and have a descent community, so i gave it a try, unfortunately, after about a month or so and after getting close to level 50, i found myself spending more money on the cash shop than on a paying mmo. not only that but basically just to do the same exact thing again and again... at level 10, i was killing level 10 mobs, and at level 40 im killing the same looking but lvl 40 mobs ! so, by doing basic math, its not worth it at all. the devs and some community members will tell you that the cash shop is not mandatory and that you can always make it through the game just by grinding and making in-game money... well that's bull $hit, will not happen... unless you wanna grind for the rest of your life... who ever made that game, made it in a way the YOU WILL use the cash shop sooner or later.

FINAL Verdict for PWI: stay away, its a waist of time and money.

So i decided to try a paying mmo instead, i was planing to get Age of conan (AOC), but a friend told me that it was useless, it gets boring very soon... so i got War Hammer On-line (WAR), it looked pretty good, smooth, descent community... however, when i registred and as soon as i logged in, the game prompted me to join a server, and so i did... jut to find out at lvl 10 that it was a desert oceanic server... at level 14, i gave up, that game was just anoter sword waving game... well it is actually a good mmo, have a lot of potential in PVP but somehow just felt empty... a very few selection of weapons and stuff made it look kind of dull...

FINAL VERDICT for WAR: good mmo, but not for me.

Then, i saw some posts about EVE on-line (EVE), i thought i would give it a shot, the 14 days trial was just in time, now i played it for about a week and it didnt stop to amaze me, the gfx are soo good that i forget im on an mmo... the interface is one of the best if not the best user interfaces ive ever seen, both clear and smooth, the game is honestly VERY difficult to learn, it is by no mean an easy game but its not because it was badly made but because it is a close to reality as you can get. the complexity and the ingenuity of the ships and personal attributes is just outstanding. skills can be trained even while you are offline, and the skill tree is very diversified, you can chose a Carree of making money by training trading and mining skills or a war carriers by training skills relevant to weaponry, war ships and command... i didn't get yet into any full scale PvP warfare, but only from looking at the ships variations and dependency upon each other, this game looks like a lot of fun...

Initial VERDICT for EVE: very good, but with a very high learning curve, and only for hardcore Sci-Fi fans.

if you are woundering why i didnt try WoW, its simply because its gfx are too old, its kind of an insult to any 2008 rig, i would love to buy it and play it, but Blizzard should invest some time in making a newer engine for it. because honestly for anyone who played a game like the Witcher, going back to WoW will hurt his eyes.

more to come...

i was planning to get one for a while, mainly for the BluRay, but with GTA IV not on PC, it was enouph of a catalist for me to get it, first impression : The PS3 is great and stable...

new config :

q6600 GO - eVGA 8800GTS 512 - eVGA 780i mobo - 2G Corsair Dominator.

hey! what's wrong??? about the wii. the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Last Saturday i went to best buy to get something, and just by curiosity i asked a guy over there :
-"where are the wii's?"
-"no wii's !" he said in a confident tone. So i kept staring at he's face not satisfied with the answer and waiting for him to explain himself, and thinking to myself, how in the world would a huge store like best buy run out of stock of anything?. so the best buy guy knew then that i didn't know [yet], so he explained to me... and really really guys, i was shocked to know that since this wii thing was marketed about a year ago, every piece was sold out in every store at the first hour, i have witnessed the playstation3 event last year but its nothing like that.
and then the guy was a gentleman and told me that they are bringing in about 250 units the next day which was Sunday December 1st 2007, and that i would have a good chance to get one if i come about one hour before store opening. I thanked him for the tip, and so I did, I went there with my wife like 45mn to 10am when the store opens, after waiting just a few minutes behind the 20 to 30 people already in line, a best buy associate came along and distributed vouchers for each person in line, the voucher was just a plain paper print-out with a promise valid till noon from best-buy to sell the carrier of the voucher a wii bundle, it also has a marked number on it, mine was 46.
People who came 15mn later didn't get anything, the vouchers were out. one hour later i was out with 2 wiis (we got 2 vouchers my wife and I -one for us and one for eBay-) i also bought one extra nunchuck (whats this wiered name anyway??? it sounds like a Japanese dish) and a package called wiiPlay containing 1 extra controller and few games.

Five minute after opening the package I was already playing with wii spot games that came with bundle, the installation is so easy and obvious that i barely used the manual.
the wii is impressively small, at least compared to what i had in mind, and the controllers looked very weird at first glance.

Ok, now you are reading this and thinking why this guy is telling us all this stuff about his experience. well, its just because it is important that i tell you all that so you will know how pissed and frustrated i am.

• the good:
  The wii system is at least IMPRESSIVE and PHENOMENAL, now just picture this : ive got cramps after playing a half an hour tennis, and i sweat while boxing on the wii!!!
  so instead of just laying back on a couch holding a ****c game pad while getting fatter eating ships and drinking soda, i can move and make real movement that translates into real time action on the screen. from this side alone we can call the wii revolutionary. i mean come on, a few years ago those kind of things were scifi area51 stuff!
• the bad :
  We had a lot of fun playing the different sport games, and training to use the wii controllers with the wiiPlay "mini games", but, i was hanging around the game industry for a while, and i noticed that there was something wrong.
  looking at the graphics of those games took me back almost a decade ago, when i first saw a 3d game with everything so square and polygonal. but i said to myself: "hey, those are just mini games coming with the bundle, just for fun and practice". so i hurried to a store and purchased the legend of Zelda for wii for 49.99 + tax, and really i was shocked with the graphics. they are just awful, ugly ughkh disgusting... a playstation1 is 10 times better. add to that the characters do not speak, they just make noises like "haa, hee, hoo" and you just have to read the screen. what is that? some kind of 1996 RPG or what?
  After playing the game for a while, my eyes got used to the glunky, stupid, vintage, graphics. i started enjoying myself with the controllers and trying to keep my mind away from thinking about graphics, it just feels so good to slash and punch with the wii remote and the nunchuck.
  so the paradox is : why would a giant company like nintendo, come with such an impressive product idea, and make such an unforgettable mistake to handicap it?
• the ugly:
  The first thing that came to my mind is the hardware, maybe the wii's hardware is just not top of the line. maybe nintendo just tried to make an enjoyable, affordable game console with regular graphical capabilities, but with cutting edge gameplay and revolutionary wireless controllers.
  But it couldn't be that because there is no gfx chip that makes such out of date graphics anymore, plus the technical specs of the wii say otherwise, some experts say that it is almost neck to neck with the XBox360. so whats the deal?
  after browsing the Internet and experts reviews looking for an explanation, i found out that it is not a hardware fault, but it was a software fault indeed. no video game producer have expected the wii to dominate the PS3 and the XBox360 in matter of number of units sold, so they didn't plan any serious projects for the platform and they directed all their efforts and resources toward the other platforms. and that certainly explains why the wii games shelves section on the stores is too tiny comparing to the other platforms, most of the games available for the wii are either for babies like mario stuff, or some dumb copies "remakes" from GameCube and other low budget titles.

also it is clear that the wii didn't and still don't get enough attention even from video gaming journalists and web site like gamespot... there are just not enough reviews, which really makes me ponder about the neutrality and transparency of these guys.

• what's next :
  "No matter how many units we put on the market, they are just sold out", thats the meaning of what some nintendo official said a few days ago. Yes, most of the people who just bought a new game system lately went for a wii and thats a fact, and money talks, video game makers have no choice but to start making good looking game titles for that platform.
  some good titles are already on the shelves now like mario galaxy (stunning gfx), metroid prime and resident evil 4...
  but still, the possibilities of usage of the wii wireless remote and the nunchuck are endless, so i really want to see games that take full advantage of them...

Maple Story is an online RPG, it is very cool but be ware!!! it is very addictive...

This game values the on-line experience and player to player interaction more than the Frames per second and anti-aliasing...

thats why it has one of the best, if not the best on-line communities.I was shockedwhen i saw people buying virtual goods for real money for the first time, but i did it, ill do it again and i think it is very fun.

thats me on maple-Story :

http://www.mapletip.com/rankcapture.php?name=sammiup&check=true

Come on in, join and try it it isfast andfree !

http://www.maplestorymob.com/zone/maplestory/join/447727

I found this one while i was browsing the servers on the UT2004 internet tab, it is pretty interesting, you can carry tow weapons instead of just one, the fire rate is very high, the game speed is about the same as the regular, but with the new features, the matches a more likely faster (not always), the maps are really nice and original, and many of them have some nice features like radars and new vehicles, so if your are tired of ONS_TORLAN, try this server, i do not guaranty that you'll like it, but it is much diffrent...
beware, i've seen a map with explicit adult content.
Server Adress :
ut2004://12.175:16:212:7777
u can just past it in your favorite servers insite ut2004.
have fun and keep playing.

I was trying to buy a computer myself a few weeks ago, and with today's -more than necessary- processor and graphic cards types and brand names, and with the crazy minimum configuration that you're willing to see on the back of any modern game while browsing your local store.  you bet that it was not very easy to make a swift choice.

when buying a computer, one could sacrifice one components in the sake of another. for example you could limit yourself to any regular processor and motherboard combo when shopping for a home office computer, this way you'll save a few bucks for the all in one printer/fax/scanner... and with such a configuration you could write, print, fax and scan documents, surf the web or connect to the local network or attend a net meeting by connecting a web cam... and basically it would be a good deal, because the main objective was to have a home office computer.

But, when your main purpose is hard-core playing games all the variables change. so what makes a computer good or bad for playing cutting edge video games? that's the five thousand dollar question.

some will say the CPU.. this part that part.. blabalabla
but hardware pros would say : ALL OF EM DUDE.

maybe some parts are more popular than others because they have good marketing names. but when it comes to high end benchmarking and performance, every single piece of the computer counts, even the cables...

put an FX 57 on a poorly  ventilated case and it will run as slow as the home office computer i described earlier , or it will just burn.
or have a very good central unit (good MoBo, good CPU and GPU...) that runs doom 3 on 120FPS in high quality, and plug it to a wide screen flat panel with 16ms response time(the time that takes one LCD pixel to turn black and then changes back to a newer color), and guess what will happened, you ll get 62.5FPS, why?  because if you divide 1000ms which is 1s by 16ms which is your LCD response time you get 62.5 frames per second. in this case the monitor is the bad guy in the hood.
those were just examples to show how some hardware could affect or limit the overall performance.

many factors are to be considered while shopping for a game rig, the discussion will be a thousand and one lines if i go in every detail, but here are the most important as far as my knowledge goes:

hardware quality :
--CPU : the CPU is usually talked about as the most important component in a computer, well, its name says it all (Central Processing Unit), i remember the days when one have just 2 or 3 choices(Intel, amd and every bran had just one or tow processors for the PC market. but now, they are just too many to remember unless your selling them.
in a nutshell, they are single core and bi-core processors, and since most of the games do not take advantage of neither the multi-core nor the 64bit architectures, the difference is minor, even more, single-core processors like the fx 57 , have proven to be much much faster for games then their Bi-Core counterparts. and those little toys are not $800 to $1000 a pop for nothing.
i bought an fx57 myself, and it never said no.

--Mother Board: again the name says it all, since the MoBo connects most of the components to each other and to the BIOS, it has to be good for the sake of the overall performance. the choice of the mobo is tightly related to the CPU brand,
my advice : do not play with budget of the mother, just get the best you can get. its maybe the most complicated part of the computer. and describing the all its features in here will be a wast of time. just remember that it is useless to get a $1000 CPU just to suffocate it with a heat crazy chip set on a $60 less motherboard.

--RAM : well, i think it is irrelevant to discuss in detail what is it for, just look at the back of the elder scroll Oblivion, and you'll see that it says : get 1GB or else...
the main memory could removed exchanged and tweaked, so just make sure that it goes with your CPU and mobo, and it would really be cool if the RAM has a heat sink (without fan).

--GPU : ok, this is the best part i guess : the eternal battle between the two pioneers of gpus comes lately with the nVidia SLI and the ATI crossfire, briefly, SLI and Crossfire are techniques allowing you to put 2 Graphical cards together on you MoBo, link them with a little wire, and the power of two is all yours
i wish i could say that you'll get two with the price of one, but unfortunately those technologies (sli and crossfire) are expensive, as an example as f today (april 06) a 7900GT SLI will cost about $660, a 7900GTX sli would cost over a $1000. there are just too many articles over the Internet about graphic cards performance and benchmarking,
it is very sad that some of them are not sponsor free, and therefore willing to tweak and twist a little bit the charts in favor of who's paying more. however, there are more and more people reporting their own result, so if a benchmark looks out of the mainstream, it is probably wrong.
 All of the latest GPU are very good, and deliver very strong performance for almost any game i know, the only restriction is how much you are willing to pay, and how high you wanna see your FPS go, even if sometimes it is only good for benchmarking?

Energy :
All the components we have talked about uses electricity (of course) and the only component delivering this energy is the PSU (power supply unit), this specific part of he computer was neglected for a long time, but now that all the components are more performant and therefore crave for more energy, the more loaded a processor for example the more juice it needs, and so, the PSU have become as necessary as any other part
and if you need proof, just take a look at the PSUs shelf on your local store or online, and you'll notice that some of them are as expensive as an average 1GB of RAM, and still jumping, many factors are in play while choosing a PSU, the most important is how many watts it could deliver, well, naturally it has to deliver the sum of all the components needs. but still their are many tricks involved in reading the technical sheet on a PSU.
sorry but i don't remember all this stuff, i suggest that you browse some websites or specialized magazines like (CPU or PcModder)... ill put more detailed information about all the components later (it's just because i don't wanna put inaccurate info).

Heat :
one important thing to know about electronic components in general is, a components uses energy as electric current to do the job it is intended to do, however, the component also delivers this little side effect of heat (like a car engine or a TV), the only difference is that processors for example are advancing very fast, and the highest the frequency the more heat they generate (and by the way this is one of the top reasons why both
AMD and Intel have switched to multicore processors with lower frequencies, the fans and heat sinks just couldn't take it any more). now, as a matter of fact, the highest the temperature of a CPU core, the more mistakes it makes, and then it needs more and more time to execute an instruction, and even the metal is no more a good electric conductor under extreme conditions. (well its a little bit more complicated than that but ill stop here).

FACT: heat kills performance.

Solution: cool it down. how?

-Regular Guy Way: -most of the graphical cards come with a heat sink and a fan all together, so this one is checked, even more, the latest GPUs are optimized to run quieter and cooler without any divine intervention. for example, compare the 7800 and 7900, the latest one is much cooler, quieter and delivers more performance.
    -many motherboards come with Cooper pipes linked to the heat sensitive parts of the MoBo and then to one or more heatsinks like the asus A8N SLI Deluxe, so if you care about performance, don't say I'll get this one because it looks cute.
    -and regarding the processor, if yours doesn't come with its heat sink, i suggest you buy the best you know of, ask at the store, you don't wanna lose you're CPU to save $10. especially if you're gonna play with the multipliers on the bios, and try to overclock the thing...

-Modders way: well, this is kind of and advanced and expensive way, you can actually mod your own case, make the air circulate inside it as well as in the windy city, make some holes, buy some 16" fans...
  I'm not an exert of the subject myself, but if you are interested, there are tons of topics online.
  
In between the two approaches, you can always get the best of each one, assemble your computer together and then buy a water cooling kit, its a little hard to implement, but this thing will keep your component as cool as Chicago in January, but if you've still reading this , ill bet you're willing to do it.

MISC:
I'm just wanna say a little something about screens and other stuff in here(I'm tired of writing, man), OK, there are features that have become a must have today:
-get wide screen, with a 16:9 aspect ratio. nothing else will be good any soon. and believe me the difference is huge.
-get at least a 16ms response time monitor, its on the technical sheet, if its not then just forget about it.(16ms,12ms,8ms,4ms) are all good, more then 16 is not good (less is better) for games or action movies. 
-it is better to look at the TV section than the monitors section, since all the video cards now have a dvi output, whats the difference then? only on the tv sets section of the store, you'll have more choice!!!
-DVI DVI: i bought a 7900 GT that came with 2 dvi outputs (no regular vga), i tried it first with the adapter that came with, the picture looked fine but a little blurry, it was nothing serious til i bought a dvi cable for $50, and believe me guys i am willing to pay $100 for it if i have to, i mean the difference was huge, especially on bigger screens.

OK guys' I've collected some info over the Internet while i was doing my homework and trying to build my gaming rig, i know how hard it is to look over endless articles and websites, this is why i think it should be most helpful if some of us shared their experience and advice.
feel free to contact me and ask about more details or about anything I've omitted in this article.

keep playing...

You know guys, i hate to say that, actually i dont belive im saying this, but i think oblivion rocks, FEAR rocks, empire at war Rocks... but  doom3 & Quake4 just sucks.

I dont know what happend, it came so fast, i mean -Id software- hibernated for a long time just to bring this B-S, and destroy the name of the tow Top best FPS, I never thought they could do sush a stupid thing.

Ok, look at Doom3, i started the game and i was very impressed by the 3D engine, the graphics looked cutting edge, Wow, i was very impressed, but after 15 mn tweeking then playing, i was so shocked, i couldnt say it loud.

it was like if i picked the wrong DVD, this game looks like a bad version of resident evil with nicer graphics. or maybe a game from the movie -down of the dead- or somthing.

I think this latest Doom was developed by people who never played doom2 -ever-, maybe it will impress sombody who doesnt know anything about doom, but for all hard-gamers who know what a doom looks like and should look like and should not look like, DOOM3 is just bs with extreem graphics.

and thats not all, like if destroying the reference FPS of all times was not enough for those stupid guys at Id Software, they actually came up with Quake4, and just to remind those who missed it : -Quake 3 Arena was an Impressive FPS- .

and guess what quake 4 looks like? well, take doom3, modify the colors of the menue and the controls,  a little modification on the weapons, and there you go, a new quake4 that looks like nothing good. it looks more like a doom3 mod.

what is it some kind of sheep production line?

Im not trying to say that these games are very bad or not playable, yes the graphics are very good, the gameplay , the missions and characters are well done,  but calling this a sequel to doom and quake was a big mistake.

where are the huge rooms and maps of doom2?

where is the original art?

I WANT MY DOOM BACK

and for the guys of Id i say : YOU HAVE FAILD EVERYBODY, and from all the doomers and quakers i say YOU ARE FIRED.