Psyte

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/gam..._overview.html
They mention a lot of whiz-bang words I don't exactly understand, but those two are "yes"s. So its a nice little upgrade for existing content. I'm more curious about Going Rogue and future content updates that will be designed with it in mind. It looks prettier, and seems like it'll make the game more immersive for those who can run it (be cool to zoom by and see yourself).

http://anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=673
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index5.aspx?lang=en-us
Here’s a link for instructions on how to roll back your driver. http://www.nvidia.com/object/driver_rollback.html

Here's hoping nobody had any damage done to their GeForce cards! If your card is fried, then I hope something gets worked out. Bummer for my fellow gamers

And let me just say right now: no gloating, please.

And given past history on the forums, even if the rednames did come out and say something, it'll still get twisted, warped, mis-remembered or creatively interpreted into something other than what they said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItM3OLqb5w
Around the 9:12 mark.
"No features Vista or Windows 7 dependent."

DX10 is only for Vista, and DX11 is only for Vista and Windows 7. You're fine with XP, although you'll want a DX10 card at least because, well, they're so freakin' awesome at DX9 games

I don't think (could well be wrong) Microsoft charges for companies to use DirectX. That being said, Guild Wars seems to have lower system requirements in general, but at the same time when you're playing you never see other people unless you're in a town/outpost, there's far less variation in looks and such, less special effects going off, etc. When you load up COH, you're loading up a ton of stuff regardless of if you see it (or if anyone in the zone has it).

There's little reason, in my mind, why Guild Wars couldn't be an offline game, only going online if you want to play with a friend. Its Diablo/Torchlight/etc., with a WOW/MMO point-of-view rather than isometric.

Hello someone who has a name very similar to one of my favorite people on chat!

ATI cards are quite good. As pointed out right now they do offer the best price/performance, and Ultra Mode will be getting rid of the crappy code (very possibly put in there by Nvidia) that causes the issues COH has had with ATI cards in the past. As such, in theory, any graphics card (Nvidia or ATI) will be fine.

I myself have a Radeon 4670, which is an older card bought for under $100. Runs quite well!

Worth mentioning: COH currently likes fast CPU's. Moreso than normal. I wouldn't necessarily buy until we get minimum/recommended specs for Going Rogue if GR is a major factor for you. If you've got other games you're jonesing to improve, well, that's something else

Yep. Of course, now to try and find the old redname comments I remember to generally support this, but that sums it up.

They've never told us who are not in closed beta who's in closed beta.

They've never told us why people who are in closed beta were selected to be in closed beta.

They never tell show people outside closed beta the patch notes for closed beta.

They don't tell us when closed beta is going to end, only when open beta is going to start.

They might say stuff while its happening to the rest of us, or comment about things after the fact, but that's their prerogative.

None of this is speculative.

For Going Rogue the beta access that Vets, Loyalty program folks, etc., are getting to be in is pretty much a "marketing" beta, which is very common practice for MMO's.

Which is why the devs specifically said Ultra-mode wouldn't require Vista or Windows 7 - no need for DX10 or DX11.

I love our devs. Even the ones that left

They're part of the expansion that everyone who buys GR will get. The goodie pack is something separate that only Complete buyers will get with GR but everyone else can buy ala cart if they want.

Going Rogue only. No other betas mentioned or implied.

heh... depends on how cool they look.

Granted, last time I was doing that my GeForce was slowly dying of heat stroke.

Yeah... closed betas can be interesting, but honestly I've come to the conclusion that real betas aren't that much fun and most players should be grateful they're not subjected to them

That's for Going Rogue, though, not i17 (which is testing ultra-mode).

The devs have not disclosed why they select some folks for the closed betas for issue updates, and its unlikely they ever will. If you do get in, hey, great! Just remember you're in there as they hope to get information out of you (bug reports, performance reports, etc). Otherwise, you'll have to wait for it to go into open beta like the rest of us.

Actual beta'ing is a privledge and a responsibility. Open-beta-ing, where most things are usually fixed (or at least in better shape than closed beta) is a lot more fun in my experience. Of course, in some regards I'd just as soon not mess too much with the beta as it takes the new stuff smell off of things when they go live.

I don't much care about the Ultra mode specs at the moment - its more the "Hey, look, my computer can handle this!" moment someone may have when going to the store. The friends of mine who used to play with 512megs of RAM crashed a lot, especially when changing zones, along with a host of other problems. I can't imagine trying to play on 256megs of RAM.

Uhm... are we sure about this? Seriously? I've bought games recently where the minimum specs provided a wonderful gameplay experience (I find GFW to be quite good about this), but I'm pretty certain that these minimum specs would not do so with COH in this day and age. Heck, I'm not sure if it would even run Windows XP in a satisfactory manner! Is there any chance of these minimums getting updated anytime soon? Because, and I could well be wrong on this, aren't these the same minimum specs as COH had when it launched?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qYF9DZPdw

^_^

That's the trick - it adds up. I mean, jeez, how many terabytes can you buy these days? Even cheap computers come with a pretty hefty sized drive...

QFT. Granted, I'm not sure if the folks making RAM can get away with this sort of nonsense, so at least they're honest (whether they like it or not) on this issue. Of course, they've got plenty of other ways they can mislead the buying public

Only because they're deliberately miscounting, and know that they can get away with it since that sounds right to the general public. Of course, when you load up your new "500g" harddrive and your OS says differently, I think most folks will blame the OS for miscounting.

500g = 512,000megs
"500g" = 500,000megs

~12gigs is quite a bit to lose just because they're lying about a gig really is.

edit: 11.71875g if you want to be exact about it

Smaller than i6 was!

Well, "the best value for the money" is still up in the air and likely will be until Ultra Mode debuts (although it seems like you should be good with most modern cards). I can't recommend considering SL/Crossfire until the issue that UM has with that is resolved (Posi said its currently not working). I personally don't want to overspend, I know that much

The only objective answer I can give is that the 5830 is *not* the best value for the money at current prices ($240). Its not enough of an improvement over the 5770 to justify the higher price, but doesn't perform well enough compared to the 5850 to justify its price either. Critically speaking (ie, every review I've read thus far) says it'll be a great card at the $200 price point, but I don't know how long it'll take to drop by $40.