I never really liked the weapons of Quake 3, and the dynamics behind the PvP. I don’t know it just didn’t feel like it was playing right. I guess I just liked Unreal Tournament a whole lot more. And I’m not talking 2k7, 2k4, 2k3, I’m talking the original version of Unreal Tournament.

There wasn’t a better game for fragging IMHO. It even had its own stats system, where you could see how well you were doing VS everyone on the internet.

The original Unreal Tournament has to be revived. If id software can do it, I’m sure Epic can pull it off. It wouldn’t even need any significant changes, I would rather no changes, but it would be cool to see a match-up system much like QuakeLive, and an achievement system, etc.

Maybe one day this will happen, until then I am going to have to keep hoping.

On a sidenote, while previewing this post, I noticed that google ads is spitting out links about terrorism. I wonder how the linked terrorism with Quake or Unreal. Does Jack Thompson have something to do with this? LOL.

Completely ridiculous, is what I have to say. More reason to stay away from titles being released by EA. Which is sad because EA owns exclusive rights to a couple licenses, and some of their titles are absolutely amazing. That being said, we don’t need some company monitoring how we use our computer, so they can profit from it. At least, it appears that they are going to be trying to turn a profit by using this information for in game ads.

At least they are being upfront with the whole situation, but it’s still complete bull. We don’t need more advertisements in games. Unless the publishers are going to start giving these games away for free. If the games were free, I could understand the want to have in-game advertisements, but thats not the case. As gamers, we fork out hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars every year towards the gaming industry. Is that not enough? I guess companies just need to make a couple extra million a year by making us watch advertisements.

I can just picture it now, instead of watching a loading screen, you will soon be watching a commercial for Coca-Cola, or something along those lines. It will only be a matter of time until something like this happens. Which will be a sad day for gaming.

As gamers we should take a stand and not let this happen. This is unnecessary and will only cause the quality of games to sink down the tubes. Companies will no longer be seeking how to make the most amount of money by releasing a hot game. Instead they will be more focused on how to cram as many advertisements into a 10-20 hour span as possible.

Did EA not learn from Sony’s mistakes? Sure they say they are not watching for piracy. Don’t put that past them. I’m confident that there is more than 1 reason this Spyware is going to be installed on your system. Who knows, maybe it will scan your whole hard drive and report back to EA which games you have, and if they are legit or not.

Hopefully EA includes a way to opt-out, or I’m quite sure this game’s success will be inhibited.

The problem is, in my opinion, the game industry releases way to much crap. The majority of games now adays are comparable to fast food. Template made games with bits of story copy and pasted directly into the script. Games of today were designed to stun you with intense visuals and sounds, but it seems that is what they were designed to do. It seems companies want to be able to show off what they can do instead of providing their player an exciting gaming experience.

Too many games today are to intricate for the casual gamer, especially PC games. Most people have limited time to play a game and don’t want to stay heavily wrapped up in a story. I myself would rather drop in a disc, and be instantly injected into the false reality of the game.

I am not a pirate myself, but I know people who happen to collect everything they can get their hands on, and I can tell you from what I learned that most pirates love games, and they love the industry. They are not downloading with malice to destroy the publishing house that released the game. Most pirates actually BUY legitimate copies of the games they love to not only own a real copy, but to support the developers and to promote further releases in the future.

Instead of releasing glorified tech demo’s companies should be releasing real games with real content. Not the McGame crap they have been constantly trying to force feed us for years now.

I highly doubt it. I think it’s so damn hot now because we made it that way. We have so many more electronic devices that produce large amounts of heat. Game Consoles, Computers, Refrigerators, Air Conditioners, Dryers, etc. Sure a lot of these devices are small and alone probably don’t amount to any amount of heat generated as a global population, however there are billions of us around, mostly all using electronic devices.

Game consoles are selling in the millions, probably even the hundreds of millions all generating just a little bit of heat. ClickZ Stats has estimated that by 2005 1.08 billion users will be connected to the internet and should be around 1.8 billion by year 2010. That’s a lot of computers generating heat.

Everyone wants their house to be kept cold with an air conditioner, but running it all day, even when your not at home is excessive. Air conditioners may produce lots of cold air, but they also produce a lot of hot air, which gets pumped right outside. Dryers are the same, they run for about an hour pumping hot air through wet clothing, so not only are you pumping high temperatures into the environment, your pumping humidity out aswell.

I don’t even remember it being this hot, 15 years ago when I was younger, but we didn’t have the technology that we have today. We take this technology for granted and utilize it 24/7 which generates mass amounts of heat. Not to mention the electrical drain it puts on the power grid which creates more pollution.

I think if we all worked together we could lower the amount of energy we consume as well as lower the amount of heat we expel into the environment. Clothes can be hung dry and placed in a dryer for 10-15 minutes just to soften them up. Air conditioners can only be run when someone is at home. Computers don’t need to run when nobody is using them, uptime is no longer ‘l33t’. If we were a little more responsible and took care of our planet, it wouldn’t be trying to kill us slowly.

1. Learn the automated messaging system. – This wont speed up your first call, but if you happen to call back for support, you will know the proper channels to get that help. Hitting random buttons may expidite you to a representative, however you may be sent to the wrong representative. If your calling for technical support, make sure you put yourself in the technical support queue, same for sales, same for billing, etc. Learning the automated messaging system will save you lots of time, and prevent you from being transfered around the call center.

2. Do all the proper troubleshooting. – Proper troubleshooting is the key to good support. If you refuse to troubleshoot your problem, you are refusing yourself help. Troubleshooting should cover all of the basic problems, and usually 99% of the time fixes the issue at hand. The troubleshooting steps were not designed to aggravate people, they were designed to help fix problems, so follow them.

3. Write down troubleshooting steps. – When you know the troubleshooting steps, you won’t have to call in for support right? It’s a good idea to write down the trouble shooting steps and keep them documented. Usually if you have the problem once, you will have the problem again, and unless you can remember how to fix it, you will definatly be calling technical support again.

4. Don’t call in under the influence. – This makes trouble shooting problems next to impossible. Please do not call in for support while you are drunk/stoned. Wait it out, then call in.

Amd64 3000+
1.5 gigs of Ram
BFG GF 6600 GT Overclocked

But I was able to run OSX Tiger and Windows Vista ontop of XP Pro at the same time! I left an mp3 playing to see if it would get choppy, which it didnt.

1. Have your account information, and identification ready. Why? Every company I have called in for support has asked for either a) your account #, or b) your identification information or c) all of the above. Having this information ready is useful because the rep can easily pull up your account, the rep will also appreciate this and if they have been properly trained they will express this to you. Some cities have privacy by-laws where customers have to confirm ALL account and identification just to make sure you are who you say you are. Would you want your neighbour calling in and cancelling your visa, or calling your ISP and having your e-mail password changed? It may become redundant, get used to it, these systems are setup to protect you, not piss you off.

2. When calling in for technical support DO NOT call in from offsite. How is the technical rep supposed to help you troubleshoot your problem when you are in the office, or driving to work? The only way that I can think of that this rule won’t apply to you is if you are calling for support on your offsite webserver or something. Even then, you should really try to be near a computer.

3. Dont Lie. Being evasive makes troubleshooting very hard. The tech rep realizes they cannot see what they are doing so they trust you to be telling the truth all the time, just like you trust them that they are going to do their best to try and solve your problem.

4. Cool down before calling in. Being hostile with the tech rep isn’t going to get things completed faster. Think about it, you are calling in for help, why would you scream at the person that is trying their best to help you? They are humans too and deserve repect too. If you don’t like what the representative is saying, ask to be escalated to higher level support or to a supervisor. Don’t demand it, be polite and ask. They understand your frustrated and are there to help you.

5. Complaining about the phone menu system, or the wait times are going to get you nowhere.  Your barking up the wrong tree.  Tech reps can’t control the ammount of people calling in at a given time, and they can’t make changes to how the phone system is setup.  They may be able to submit customer feedback about it, ask and see.

6. Don’t use your speakerphone.  It causes an echo in the headset and makes it hard to hear you.

I hope these 6 tips help out for now. Part 2 will be posted eventually.

Along with the software update, is an update to the theme, which I feel is alot nicer