Hyperstrike

Okay, I've been trying to be polite to people but this warrants a blunt response.


Speaking as someone who's spent decades in white-hat circles, as someone who's put people who've done dumb **** like this in federal prison, you REALLY don't wanna do that.

Even nowadays, they basically toss you into a room, lock you up, and throw away the room for a couple years before you even get NEAR a court. You then spend the next few years fighting in court against people who have INFINITELY more money than you (not just NCSoft, the US government).

Then you get to spend a few years having to have people make phonecalls for you, you can't even be in the same room as a computer, can't even hold a McJob because it involves access to computers and you effectively may as well be back in jail.

Also, any attempts to cash in on your fame are simply siphoned off as part of the damage award to your victims.

But, by all means, go ahead and flush your life.



Now, I know you may have intended this as a joke.

But it ain't funny.

Well, I occasionally come across people who look at some Quad SLI machine, then look at me and go, "Well, I've got $500! GIMME!"


Friends don't let friends buy Alienware.


Spare box. Cool.


S'okay. The machines quoted should be fairly decent for all-around gaming.


For the quoted pre-built machines, they already come with KB+Mouse. They just may not be all that great (or not as nice as what you already have).


It's not really "hard". Just, some people can get intimidated by it. If you've ever upgraded parts of a machine at all, you're 9/10ths of the way there.

If you want to go the "build it" route, I can give you my Skype address and help you through some of it.


Also, in my build list, if you happen to hate the case (I more or less just selected a semi-decent one), look around Newegg to find something you DO like.

If you're not sure about the size of a case, get a tape measure out and measure where you plan to put the computer too.

Some, the the stupid-high-end CoolerMaster Cosmos cases are positively HUUUUUUUUGE.
My case is pretty large. But I'm a fan of big cases. The Cosmos almost makes mine look like a mini-tower.

Okay. That's a fairly simple group of games to get a system together for.




Okay, a realistic budget.



Okay. Nothing exotic for shipping.



Honestly, don't waste your time or money on Alienware. They're essentially relabeled Dell boxes at a premium price. Labeled as "gaming" PCs becuase they have a discrete (but low-end) video card from a non-Intel manufacturer.

I can suggest a general parts list. Then if that seems intimidating, I can suggest something from iBuyPower or CyberPowerPC so you can see what buying vs building will be as a price premium.



If you're not reusing, you're pretty much building from scratch


.

Okay.



That's do-able.




Okay.



At $8-1200? No. SLI really isn't. But the good news is, even the "mid-range" cards will whup *** on pretty much every game in your list.



Okay. Probably looking at 8GB minimum. Decent graphics card. No problem.

"Lag" is a "catch all" phrase for a lot of people. Not all of them have anything to do with the graphics system.



Easy enough.


Go 64-bit. There's no reason to be using 32-bit Windows as your host OS anymore.



Here's a build option:

Case
PSU (Comes as a combo with the case)
Motherboard
Memory
CPU
Vidcard
OS Drive
Optical
OS

$1261.75 shipped.

Haven't included a keyboard or mouse.
Haven't included a huge 3rd party CPU heatsink. If you're not overclocking, I wouldn't worry too much about the default Intel HSF.

Found something comparable at CyberPowerPC (Link is the link)

Here's something comparable at iBuyPower (A bit more expensive, but the upgraded card is the 3GB model instead of the 2GB.)


The only thing this would be missing would be a large hard drive (either internal or external) for storage.

The game itself will help.

But anything relatively modern should run most of these games okay so long as you're not trying to do a $500 PC and expecting to run at 2560x1440 at max detail.

So dish out as much info as you can. It'll help tune in to something suitable for you more easily.

Again. I'm not saying you're not allowed to vent.

If you absolutely GOTTA, go ahead.

If you get some sort of catharsis out of it, fine. More power to you.

I'm simply saying that, if saving the game (in some form) is your ultimate goal, then it's not helping anything.

It's all a Bill Z Bubba plot?

Not saying you can't.

Honestly, I have exactly zero power to make people STFU, short of finding out where you live and focusing the killsat.



I'm just asking, as civilly as possible, to try and stay positive about our situation.

However, if you quite simply can't stand to not go up in a ball of nuclear fire, again, I can't stop you. I'm simply saying that it's not productive at this time.

Understandable? Sure! The abrupt nature of this is aggravating as hell. Especially when we've had so much open communication from Paragon in the past.

But hulking out (verbally or physically) and finding the nearest NCSoft exec to play "Puny God" with, while emotionally gratifying, isn't productive or helpful.

Not long. But planning what they're going to do for refunds or credits can take time. And going off half-cocked and announcing partial plans can just get them in more trouble.

Again, a company isn't one guy on the internet twitting every half-hour. Information coming out from large companies that aren't "media" or "news" companies is going to always be (comparatively) slow in coming.

Why do you think NCSoft, AFTER the closure announcement started pimping the upcoming i24 on their website? Because stuff like that was pre-scripted weeks or months ago and inserted with a trigger date.

1. Hit this link
2. Answer the questions
3. Post them back here

That'll help give us an idea about what to suggest to you.

As to your questions:

1: The industry's idea of a "gaming PC" an gamers ideas of what a "gaming PC" are have always borne almost NO resemblance to one another other than "they're computers".

2: A 640 isn't comparable to a 670. A 640 is essentially an entry-level card. It's better than native i5/i7 on-chip graphics, but a 670 will suck the doors off it. For people playing Farmville and Solitaire, there's no difference. For people playing Arkham City, and newer, high-detail games, it's the difference between minimum settings and near-maximum settings.

3: Pretty much. I'm sure goatherds in Albania have more realistic things to worry about than the fact that their PC (should they have one at all) isn't getting 120fps in Battlefield 3.

I hate to come off as a heckler. But this needs saying.

No. No you haven't been "patient". It's been two weeks. This is the blink of an eye.

Multi-million dollar companies quite simply do NOT move this rapidly.

Nor do many of them directly engage in extensive social media campaigns.

It only seems like a long time because the Internet is so good at supplying instant gratification for informational and recreational purposes. People so used to this "now" culture have a skewed outlook that anything that doesn't happen within the framework of the Internet Attention Span is a mark of apathy or lack of care/respect.

It's nothing of the sort.

No. The economic realities of the game are what killed it.

Had Paragon been located in an area where cost of living and doing business wasn't positively stratospheric, the revenue-vs-profit outlook wouldn't have looked so bad.

Again, simple economics killed the game. NCSoft is just the one getting **** for making the tough decision to pull the plug on life support.

Personally, I'd think they should have given their business strategy a full year to pan out. But, with everything else going on, they were probably under pressure to "trim the fat".

No. Current exchange rate is about 1100 Won to the Dollar.

Something else to cogitate on.

Internet Attention Span. (Or more correctly Internet Attention Deficit Disorder.)

Due to the more or less instantaneous gratification provided by the Internet for various information and entertainment outlets, there's some expectation of rapid response from corporate entities to various social pushes.

Large, multi-million dollar corporations are amongst the slowest animals on the planet. Due to legal concerns, ongoing business negotiations, and the simple need for standard business continuity (coming in to work and getting all the busy-work done) it can take some companies astoundingly long times to actually respond to things unless they have a lawyer, a process server, or a police officer there.

Well, technically it does.

• All the severance packages.
• Unemployment
• Discharge of any existing debts
• Miscellaneous costs associated with the shutdown
• Legal fees

All of which they're taking in no actual revenue to counterbalance. So yeah, it's a chunk outta their budget.


True. But this game has won multiple awards, and continues to be viewed as a benchmark of excellence.

quote]The vow to never buy another NCSoft title is hardly a monolithic stance among us.[/quote]

True, but in my business classes I was always taught that an angry/disgruntled customer could influence a minimum of seven other people not to deal with my business. Shrugging off what could, potentially be tens or hundreds of thousands of sales...

Agreed.

Do ye take this saucy wench?
Do ye take this scurvy knave?

Now kiss her already ye blamed fool!

And we want pictures Agge! PIC-TURES!

Yeah. But think about how much fun laughing at "DOOOOOM-sayers" will be if the game is saved.

This never happened. As has been pointed out, it's a false correlation. B&S has been coming to the states for a while.

Correlation != Causation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Let me put this even more slowly.

There are myriad reasons CoH was given the "Old Yeller". Ascribing it to any singular cause (as you are doing) is simply scapegoating.

Sorry, but what you're doing is trying to oversimplify a complex issue.
It isn't that simple. And the people at NCSoft aren't stupid.

And please get your numbers right. NCSoft lost six MILLION, not six BILLION. In a volatile market like theirs, with numerous obvious and non-obvious triggers for spending (as well as various mergers and acquisitions happening), this can happen to even the smartest businessmen.

One quarter is a painful smack in the face for them. But watch what happens over the next couple quarters before you declare their business strategy "dumb" or "deficient".

Thank you for your concern. I won't be responding to this thread in the future.