Hillsborough and why you should care

This is mainly for those in the UK, but really it's something anyone should consider.

It doesn't matter if you're interested or not in football, Liverpool Football Club or even politics. If you've any brain cells at all then you should still be interested in Hillsborough and the events of today. This was the government finally admitting that they, along with the police and media, lied, cheated and doctored evidence to blame innocent people (and their dead kids!) to cover up their own failures. 

Most conspiracy theories are a load of bollocks that manipulative people use to sell books and bullshit, but as today proves, sometimes conspiracies are real. Sometimes the people we put into power lie in the most horrible ways. If their job or political ambitions are at risk then regardless of the truth, they will lie and tell grieving parents that a horrific tradgedy was their dead children's own fault. And then they will refuse them compensation or help, all whilst watching their own police officers get a truck load of cash.

If that doesn't bother you, if you don't care, then you have serious moral issues.

For those that don't know what this is all about, please read this article.

Planetside 2 NDA lifted... Post 1 - Performance

OK so as the title says, Planetside 2's NDA is no more and I can now talk about the game. I'll be making a few posts about Planetside 2, but this first one is about client performance.

When I first started playing PS2 I had big concerns. The game itself seemed spot on, but it ran like shit for me and would quite often become unplayable slideshow style. Sometimes I'd be just about able to take part in small infantry fights with FPS of about 10 and very laggy player movement, but soon as the battles got more than small it just became horrible beyond words. Also it was completely impossible to fly any aircraft at all, suffering from a bad case of Powerpoint presentation. Now since I can run pretty much anything else on at least medium graphics, don't have performance issues and I can't afford to upgrade... this was a worry. So I talked with other folks on the beta and whilst they weren't immune to performance issues, they didn't have problems like I did. We went through our different PC specs and I worked out what my problem was; RAM and Windows version.

I started off with:

Q6600 (overclocked to 3.2ghz)
GTX260
4gb RAM (limited to 3.25gb because of my operating system)
Windows Vista (32bit)

I then installed a 64 bit version of windows and upped my RAM to 6gb. Changing it to:

Q6600 (overclocked to 3.2ghz)
GTX260
6gb RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit)

So a very minor upgrade and one that really just brings me up to basic standards...

The performance increase was monumental. First thing I did was jump into a Scythe fighter plane and discovered it was now absolutely fine to fly! Then I got into to some proper battles and all was well. FPS is hugely improved and the teleporting enemy player lag is completely gone. Happy Boots was happy. :) Since then SOE have made continual improvements to the game's performance and I have to say their work has been extremely impressive. My FPS varies between 15 and 60 depending on situation, with 15 being very unusual, most of the time in large scale battles I'm running at around 30 FPS which is perfectly fine for a low end system like mine. I was in a battle earlier that was mind-blowing in scale, there was masses of tanks, swarms of infantry and a sky packed with dueling aircraft. Contrails from jets covered the air like a ADHD kid scribbling after too much Sunny D, bombs exploded left right and center, tracer fire and just bat shit crazy sci-fi warfare could be seen all around. Yet the game ran perfectly.

I can quite honestly say I have never seen performance like this in any other large scale PvP MMO. Perhaps its because by the nature of the game people are just more spread out than in melee based games like WAR, DAoC, GW2, etc. Perhaps its something to do with the differences developers face between traditional lock target MMORPG spam 157 ability buttons combat and that which we see in a MMOFPS, but then Planetside 1 often ran like poo and I'm only guessing. So I don't know and nor do I care. What I do know is  Planetside 2 is looking hugely promising for people with low end systems like mine.

Oh and the game itself is bloody awesome, but we'll get to that later.

Hello again

Sooooo, Guild Wars 2 is about to launch. It will be a huge deal at launch, obviously, and I think it will do well after for a good while too. Not exactly a shocking statement I know, since no sub fee should by default ensure so. Of course like most of ya'll, also I know plenty of folks getting all excited about it. However I'm well and truly back to not bothering with it at all. I just don't have the time, I'm in 3 betas that I'm very keen on and I tend to dabble with those when I have time for gaming. So little point in spending £50 on a game I won't play at all.

Situation remains as it was... Only games on my eventual horizon are free to play anyway, Planetside 2 and Mechwarrior Online. There's still nothing else inspiring me, that I can talk about yet anyway ;) Well I say that, I will dabble with others, but don't let that count as me giving two turds about them. For example.......

Star Wars (SWTOR) is going free to play. Yeah, good move. I enjoyed it whilst I leveled through it and thought it was pretty good, as a single player game... It lacked interest and most importantly motivation to continue as a multiplayer game, so a sub fee was always going to become an annoyance. When it turns F2P then I will reinstall and dabble a bit, but can't see me spending any money on it. Sure plenty of folks will though, at least if BioWare are clever with their cash shop and don't make it too aggressive a sell, if you get what I mean.

Oh and Vanguard has gone F2P I believe. I've never played it, but I might try it out of curiosity. I'm not expecting much.

All this prompts a question... Why the fuck is WAR not going F2P? Seriously.

Planetside 2 beta next week

Yup, it's been confirmed by John Smedley ‏on twitter:

"@j_smedley THE BETA WILL START NEXT MON OR TUESDAY BARRING ANY UNFORSEEN CIRCUMSTANCES."

Whilst I don't do much in the way of gaming these days, I will be finding time to get a good chunk of Planetside 2 in. Oh yes. First beta I've actually been excited about in a looooooong time.

 

Games and TV

Still not playing any MMOs. In fact I'm still not gaming a huge amount anyway, but when I do I've just been on a Football Manager 2012 and Skyrim. I do kinda want to play an MMO, but there's just nothing interesting enough to warrant a sub fee and I'm not that inspired with any of the current F2P games. Sure, a sub fee isn't a huge amount to spend, but I know right now I wouldn't play any of my existing MMO accounts for more time and enjoyment than I would get out of the 3 pints of beer or whatever for the same cost. 


The Secret World did tempt me a little, but at £40? No way would I play it enough to bother with that cost. Personally I think £40 is a total fucking piss take for a game with a sub fee AND a cash shop. BOLLOCKS TO THAT! Though even if it was less, I just don't think I would play it enough and certainly I would drop it like a sack of wet turds the moment either the Planetside 2 or Mechwarrior Online betas start.


So there you go, not much to say on MMOs right now. I'm just waiting still...


In other news... I've been catching up on TV shows I didn't watch for some stupid reason before. Rome was not bad, historical artistic licence wasn't toooooooooo bad. And yeah, yeah I'm stupidly late to the party, but Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes were amazing. The British versions of course, I got warned about the US remake of Life on Mars and just have to say christ on a bloody bike! The US makes some great TV, but they really know how to screw up iconic TV shows from other countries. Just watch the originals in everything, actually that's generally a good rule in life.

Planetside 2 E3 trailer

yum

Soooooooo games

I've been busy and stuff. Only game I've played recently is Football Manager 2012. I have however kept half an eye on MMO news and community reactions, which basically went as expected, with reactions going kinda like this...


GW2
GW2
GW2
GW2
The Secret World, hmmph, meh, Funcom up to the usual.
GW2
GW2
Oh what's this? New Planetside 2 video?

OH
MY
GOD

Planetside 2
Planetside 2
Planetside 2
Planetside 2
Planetside 2
But GW2!
STFU!
Planetside 2
Planetside 2
Planetside 2
Planetside 2
Planetside 2
Planetside 2


There you go, a month's MMO news in one post.

Oh and in case you aint seen it yet, check out this most glorious of concepts for Mechwarrior Online gaming: http://www.razerzone.com/artemis