is a girl (!?) 

i was joking, again.

iirc from a legal pov it's fine to lend the game away. In Germany, anyways. 

If there was no copy protection we would even be allowed to copy it for close friends and family members. But breaking copy protection is illegal, so... 

Elder Scrolls 3, 4 and Call of Cthulhu on Steam for pretty affordable prices.

Must... resist...

Fuck it I'm buying them. 

Is a buggy port.

If you can't get away from the Shoggoth then you need to lower your screen resolution = higher running speed. 

hexen mod
http://hamsterrepublic.com/dl/starship.zip
Pretty cool if you can get over the idea of a medieval themed spaceship. Our HHexen GL is busted though %< 

medieval themed spaceship
This would be an awesome idea for a Quake map too! 

I still have a copy of Half-Life 2 on steam that I can give away for free to anyone with a steam account.

Let me know if you want it! 

http://www.incgamers.com/Interviews/190/StarCraftIIDevelopersInterviewed 

but added value services like starting a custom tournament, league, or the like would cost a small amount of money.

They've actually gone insane after WoW.

mentioned WoW as an example, where "value added services" like server transfers are paid for, but "you can get the full experience of Battle.net with all the features just from buying the box."

Well, that and the fucking subscription fee.

The WoW profit model is one of the most unethical things in gaming, the fact that they seem to be trying to work out how to convert it to more traditional genres scares the hell out of me...


And yeh, no LAN support. As far as I can tell if I want to host my own game with (local) friends I have to connect to battle.net, pay blizzard for the 'privilege' of creating a game then get the people sat in the same room to connect to me via blizzards own servers (yeh, I get it's not going to be stupid enough to proxy the entire game, but still, that's hassle).

Only other option is to steal a cracked, non-battle.net version of the game just to play on LAN. And forcing your customers to turn to crime is ofc an excellent business model... 

I kinda agree all this sucks... But damn I can't wait to play the hell out of this game. =\ 

it looks exactly like SC1 gameplay with new graphics?

I never really did get on with Blizzards strategy games, I much preferred Relic's offerings over theirs any day, company of heroes is still my favourite RTS game, though I have not tried DoW2 yet as my pc is crap!

Blizzards strategy games upto and including warcraft3 seem to be more about what order to build units in and then just swarming your enemy, and that just has never been fun for me at all. 

I must say StarCraft is pretty damn addictive. It was the first RTS I ever played, and the one I played the most. AoE2 however felt the best. If I could get an RTS that combined the economy of AoE2 with the micro/macro of StarCraft on a DoW battlefield, I think I just might be in heaven. 

But damn I can't wait to play the hell out of this game.

aannd, that's why they can get away with it. 

aannd, that's why they can get away with it.

But that doesn't justify it in the slightest, if anything it makes it worse 

But that doesn't justify it in the slightest, if anything it makes it worse

it's fair game if you can pull it off and make money off it. it's not about ethics, it's about money and the fact is that people want to play this game so much, they'll be willing to spend an extra whatever $ to do so.

btw, i wasn't trying to single you out, Bal. your comment just provided a stating point.

i mean, i get it. i understand the sentiment behind it. but if a person is willing to pay, than it's not bad business because the net profit is positive. if this pissed people off enough to not buy it such that those net profits are negative, well... 

my point isn't that people are stupid to pay extra money, but that their willingness to pay means that the game is worth the extra money to play.

something's worth is determined by how much people want to sacrifice for it. if the subscription fee goes through and people agree to pay, it just means your take on how much the game is worth doesn't coincide with everyone else.

i personally don't think the game is worth the extra money, but i don't think the game is worth 50-60$ (or whatever it's price will be) either, so i will not be purchasing it. :) 

To be honest, I don't feel like I'm paying extra money... yet.
The LAN thing isn't an issue for me, I don't play LAN, or when I do it's at work and we are all connected anyways. The three games issue will become one if the 2 next games aren't priced as expansions, and if they aren't nothing is forcing me to buy them. I played the hell out of Warcraft3, but never bought the expansion for instance.

There has been NO talk of subscription for Battlenet (for SC2 anyways) at the moment, I seriously doubt they will go that route. 

... is so 2003, seriously. You are buying a maintained and constantly developed and evolving service, not a static game. 

nyah!

My productivity has just gone up 50% =) 

50%? 

Now get Vondur to delete it! 

You are buying a maintained and constantly developed and evolving service, not a static game

And if we were actually discussing an MMO game that might almost be approaching a valid point... 

But EVE Online has some of the best stories I think I've ever seen in an MMO.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/100/1002527p1.html 

i always felt that eve had hit on something quite good. while it doesn't appeal to as many people as wow, having never played eve, it seems to me as if the developers can take a much more 'hands off' approach. blizzard is constantly working with the next expansion in the pipeline because WoW is content driven whereas eve gives the player more of a framework to work with and pits players against each other.

a game that could apply eve's model but also break into the casual market like wow could be amazing.
the important thing here would be to make sure people know that it's the players who write the story, not the devs.