I played it for about 1 1/2 hours and enjoyed it very much. It's a huge leap forward from DS 1, IMHO. I played the DS 1 demo and decided not to buy it, this new demo has changed my tune, I will be buying DS2

Is there a new demo out? It's be great to have a single-player, co-op game to mess around with.

Nothing in life is free, and this game won't be either. Right, no fixed monthly fees, but when it is all said and done it'll cost you ~$10 a month... if you want the new zones, equipment, spells, etc. And ArenaNet will make it such that you will buy the expansions every 3 months or so. They have a business plan, they want to make money, don't be so naive.

Seriously though, it's no wonder the FPS genre is going nowhere if people keep buying the same old generic run and gun games.

At least it has co-op, which is very rare these days. They will get my money in hopes that other devs will see that the gaming population does want co-op games. Games like Painkiller and Doom 3, while they were fun (IMHO), missed the boat on co-op which would have made them great (co-op did make Doom 2 great).

Support co-op.

I don't think you will get hammered with spam etc. You will see people running around with 'cool' swords and armor that you can't get unless you start paying, just the same way as Guild Wars will be (want that new GW sword, buy the expansion).

You have? and more importantly where?

PC Magazine had like a 10 page spread of it a couple/few months ago. I'm sure Google would have some links to screen shots.

"I think Doom 3's engine is disappointed and heavily limited to a dark low character count enviroments."

You haven't seen the previews for Quake 4 huh?

care to share with the group on how you did that?

Are you asking me how I blocked STEAM with my router? I'm not sure who your question is referring too honestly. If you are asking me, then the answer is simple, I just watched my Outbound Logs on the router as I started up STEAM, you should see what ports it opens to communicate. In my case, I blocked a range of ports as it seemed everytime I closed one port it opened a new port, once I blocked the range I saw it using I finally got the "Offline Mode" button consistantly.

When I check Blues and I see that there is a patch coming from Valve I'll let STEAM run, why does it need to be on all the time? I'm playing a single player game and it works just fine, I don't want it to patch so I get stuttering problems. I'll patch it when I feel I need to patch it. I felt that the old HL1 Update Utility worked great and I started it from time to time and it automatically updated when it saw I was out of date, but it didn't need to run all the time.

Wow, Furious maybe next you should rip half the plug out on your hard drive while it's running and take it back if anything wierd happens.

Thanks for assuming that I was crying conspircy theory asshole. All I was trying to do is NOT have STEAM run while I played a game that did not need (or should not need) an internet connection, or for me to have to jump through hoops to not have STEAM run to play a SP version of a game. I never said I thought STEAM was spyware, so fuck off. Yes, I'm sure fucktards like yourself need utility programs like STEAM to do everything for you. Go plug yourself back into the Valve machine and spread the good word brother, amen.

JosephBlowski: Disconnect your net connection - Steam will try and fail, and then ask if you want offline mode. (Or deny Steam access via firewall)

I succesfully blocked the port(s) that Steam wants to use via my router. I test this by attempting to start STEAM, it fails with the message:

"Could not connect to STEAM network.
This could be due to a problem with your internet connection, or with the STEAM network. Please visit www.steampowered.com for more info."

Ok, now that STEAM is blocked I attempt to launch HL2, the STEAM Login Box comes up, I type in my user name and password, it trys to connect and I get the same error:

"Could not connect to STEAM network.
This could be due to a problem with your internet connection, or with the STEAM network. Please visit www.steampowered.com for more info."

Why am I not getting the option to start HL2 single player in "Offline Mode"?

Edit:

Well, when I pull my ethernet cable out of the NIC card I get the "Offline Option" so obviously I am not smothering out the STEAM application 'enough'. Thanks Valve, I love not having control over apps on my PC, great job. Be nice if there were a simple checkbox to say 'run in offline mode' instead of having to unplug my ethernet cable. STEAM is really making me not like Valve to much and HL2 is not any better or any worse than Doom 3, however, I can at least play Doom 3 without hand cuffs.

Edit Part Der:

Ok, I successfully blocked STEAM with my router and now get the "Offline Mode" option... after waiting 5 minutes for the 'Updating STEAM' dialog box to shut the fuck down. I will not, ever, buy a game that supports STEAM or is only avialible through STEAM. This little utilty is over the top intrusive for playing a SP game. Now, I never had a problem with WON as that only checked my ID when I went to play online and I never had to wait 5 minutes to play HL1 SP. STEAM is bad, I really can't believe people are behind this utilty and think it's great, maybe Valve should be able to put cameras on our PC's to make sure we are playing Valva games they way they want us too.

Cheers,
Furious

This comment was edited on Nov 24, 19:39.

a dedicated demo.

PC Gamer has the Demo for this game, based on these posts I look forward to trying it out.

I'm sure the Kleenex company is really bummed out to hear this news.

I wish ONS Version 2 well.

Good demo, but not my bag baby. The constant incursion of enemy troops into the secret base and the need to swat them all was damn annoying. Might as well install a revolving door for the do-gooders...

The constant incursion of enemy troops is isolated to the demo and it won't be like that in the full release. There was a press release by the Dev that stated that not so long ago. It'll be like GTA, you will bring the heat upon yourself depending on how 'evil' you are. If you are really friggin evil then you will have swat/spies all over your base, or you can make it quiet, it's up to you. Just an FYI.

Edit - Here is the link to the press release I was talking about above; http://www.elixir-studios.co.uk/nonflash/eg/egd_faq.htm

The first question explains the craziness of the demo.

This comment was edited on Sep 27, 19:18.

I'll be buying it, had a blast with the demo.

I'm guessing this is related to iD not including coop in Doom3 because PC gamers "don't want it". You know, sarcasm.

Yes, thank you for noticing quazz, I thought the sarcasm would be dripping heavily off that statement, guess not, some people are just wound up super tight. Doom 3 is just the most recent game to not have co-op; Painkiller, Doom 3, Quake 4 (next game to not have it, that should, made Q2), Jedi Outcast/Academy, from what I have read STALKER has pulled it.


So to clarify, Professional, I am looking forward to at least checking out Dungeon Lords, even though I hate co-op

Is this an online game?

I beleive it is VERY equivilent to Diablo where you can play SP by yourself or join up to 7 other people with co-op, you know, that game type that us PC Gamers don't like.

What the? Just a month ago the demo was supposed to be out... some bads things must have been found...

Gonna pass. Yes, Tribes 1/2 pre-dated UT2K4-ONS, but T:V looks just like what I would think ONS version 2 would come out looking like. Just didn't meet my expectations and I was totally bored with the MP demo within hours. Oh well, plenty of other games coming out now or very soon

P.S. - Thanks to the T:V team for at least releasing a demo, props for that.