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What is in-store for the
future of online PC Gaming:
Firstly I will state the obvious. If you are preparing to purchase
a new computer you are going to need something with power
under-the-hood! Everquest II, World of Warcraft and many more will
require you to be close to the cutting-edge of computer technology
to take advantage of a majority of the coolest effects and
features. You might run some of these games using the minimum
requirements but you will likely experience endless bouts of
link-dead play and crashes!
P-4 running at 2 ghz or faster is the recommended processor for
most of the new games coming down the pipe. 1 gig of ram,
accompanied by a video card with 256 or more ram will be needed
and windows XP (is recommended), utilizing directx 9.0 or greater.
You will want to be careful about what utilities and programs you
have running in the background as well. Many of the new games will
hit the market with 100’s if not 1000’s of bugs remaining in the
programming so be prepared to have some patience.
Everquest II will probably be the most stable since Sony Online
has so much experience with tweaking Everquest over the past few
years. Look for WoW to be touch and go for the first couple of
months. Blizzard has a name in the industry for solid coding but
judging by the number and extent of delays in getting this title
to market we should be prepared for the worst.
Everquest II will be a very interesting release since so many
people have invested so much time in the original Everquest. After
spending hundreds or even thousands of hours questing the lands of
Norrath and it’s nearby regions with your trusty hero it will be
hard to toss it all away and start off with at level one again. No
matter how revolutionary Everquest II is you will still basically
be killing bugs or bats for endless hours to raise the levels
needed to gain strength, power and respect. I know there are many
hard-core gamers hoping that EQ II will finally be the game where
you can quest for experience as easily and productively as the
killing of creatures but any questing system like that still seems
to be quite elusive.
World of Warcraft has gamers trembling in anticipation, can it
stand up to the hype? I hope so! How close it WoW to going Gold?
The following was taken from Blizzards website:
Closed Beta Has Ended -
Nebu on 10/29/04
“The
closed beta servers are now offline; this phase of the beta is at
an end. We'd like to thank the thousands of dedicated testers who
helped us day in and day out to make World of Warcraft what it is
meant to be: a fun game. Your aid was invaluable over these past
months -- the game wouldn't be where it is now without you! Please
be sure to check back here over the next few days for more
information on the upcoming stress test!”
That sounds promising so let us just keep our fingers crossed and
hope for the best!
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