I offer my deepest condolences to you and your loved ones. I hope your fond memories of her are able to bring comfort in your pain and loss on such an occasion.

All my best thoughts go to you and your family as this trying time. I hope that your mothers prognosis is not as grim as first thought.

<RANT>Anyone who has ever tried to use Webex for bussness will know that it is one of the most useless services to ever fall out of the a$$ of a company. It can take ages to try to get everyone into the conferances once they get the invite emails and (while the people who have connected are getting charged a buck a minutes each while they wait for thier collegues) My company bought signed up and have tried to use Webex on many occasions and have justr cranked up HUGE bills for conferances that we have ended up abandoning.
We are now using Netmeeting and it has been a far superior web conferancing and collaboration tool. If anyone is thinking about using webex (dumb radio ad or no) DONT BOTHER, you will just end up tearing your hair out and paying for the inconvenience through your nose.
</RANT>

I feckin Love this game. I reacon it stand atop a great mountain and urinates on counterstike from insurmountable height (and I love CS BTW). This game forces and rewards teamplay and stealth alot more than CS, which often just ends up being a deathmatch type game unless its a properly organised clan game or something.

GO BLue ! Fight the power !

Hallelujah ! Hallelujah ! Hallelujah ! ABout freakin time ! YAY ! Oh and F#$%K fileshack, F#$%K then in thier stupid a$$es. Go the free mirrors !

I personally am getting a bit anoyed with Epic anouncing patches and bonus packs that are no way near ready to be realeased. We 1st heard mention of this patch about 2 weeks after the release of the 1st patch. And the bonus pack weeks and weeks ago.
I get get sick of waiting for stuff like this and lose interest. I love UT2k3, if its not everyones taste then whatever. Dont play it. You can still play UT you know. Its still out there, and yes, there are still ALOT more people playing UT online than there are Playing 2k3. Go and do that rather than b1tch about 2k3.
BUT the realease was buggy and I know sometimes that has to go with the territory. If they are gonna release something buggy then they have to be prepared to release TIMELY fixes for the bugs. I for one cant use the redeemer because I STILL (even after the 1st patch that was supposed to fix it) have the view skew to one side and everything get messed up till I die. Surely they could have released a few hotfixes in the meantime while they betatest the patch. Yes, I want added content, but its more important to me that the game that was shipped actually works properly 1st. Priorities guys. And keep your traps shut untill maybe a week or so before you are ready to release something. People will play your game because its a good game, they arent gonna stoop just because you p1ssed them off, but still, is it anyway to treat your customers?

UT2k3 does use curves on some maps, like the CTF map (at all those big curved spikes around the top outside the bases) and the valley map(the bone structures that leads to the top level of the shrine where one of the rocket launchers is) (names elude me right now) for example. The only thing is that for them to be rendered as true curves you need to be running it in GL not in Direct X.
I wonder how many people have tried running the demo in GL? It looks sooooooo sweet and performs ALOT better than Direct X with antialiasing on, even 2x, which looks really smudgy even with testure sharpening. The framerate is of course higher in DX without anti aliasing than it is in GL but has a more pixelly look (jaggies)
The character models of course dont have any curves but I think with the sweet ass job they have dont on the models and skins that and performance hit you would get from all those extra curves that having curves on the models wouldnt really add that much to the experience. The only time you are really gonna get a good close look and notice stuff like that on the models is when you're dead

One thing that I would add is that I actually think that the Hit points thing can go TOO high. Kinda like the difference between playing normal Deathmatch and hardcore mode in the origional. Hardcore was way more fun because the weapons did more dame so you could die easier. I find it a bit frustrating at times when you slam 3 direct rocket hits into someone who has 200 health and 100 armour and they hit the floor next to me and I die from the splash
I hope they add an equivalent to hardcore mode in the full version. To be honest I wouldnt mind a mode than ran even an little faster 9I am gonna get flamed for that I'm sure ) and the weapons doing more damage. I know you can speed the game up but it would be cool if there was a standar sped up game mode.

Yeah, I agree to a certain degree about the anouncer. Its not the comments that anoy me, its the voice. It does sound a little cheesy, like a gameshow anouncer, it should be a much darker, sinister voice, like the one in the origional UT. I like having the comments though, for me it furthur adds to the futuristic sport combat thing that I love about the game. I think they have done a good job of explaining things like re-spawning, saying how its new technology that regenerates you when you're at the point of death but that a side effect is that it eventually drives you crazy. Nicer tha just, "thats just the way it is ok, you respawn and can die over again, accept it" Didnt take a genius to think it up but at least they bothered.

I personally think that UK2k3s gameplay is a breath of fresh air. I think that it has truely captured the spirit of "Sport Combat". Anyone who has spent any time online playing against REALLY good players will know that it hasnt been made that much easier on the n00bs. I am pretty damn sharp and usually paste most of the players on servers, but then theres always the times that one REALLY good player comes on and NO-ONE can touch them. 40 kills 0 deaths and the rounds over in 5 minutes. As far as spam weapons like the Flak cannon, if you pay attention to the spread on it you will notice that it spread out over a much smaller area than it did in UT, bounces much more predicably and evenly and requires more aim. Sure n00bs are gonna get a few kills here and there, thats luck and chaos factor. But no matter what weapon they have they cant hit you if you arent where they're aiming. It doesnt take long to notice the pattern in someones spam firing and predict it.
The new movements like the wall jumps and double jumps make for some really intense firefights and its great to end up in an area with another really good player and be bouncing around each other off walls etc while you dodge each others fire.
Also with the addition of the adrenaline feature at least it means that people cant just cycle powerups, they have to earn them with kills, it takes ages to get 100 adrenaline just picking up the pills. I am sure we all know that friend who just cycles the invisibility EVERY SINGLE ROUND that its on.
Fair enough if UT2k3 isnt your kind of game. I play CS alot aswell but I personally havent had this much fun since I first played Qtest. I think that people are trying to take it too seriously. Its not Counterstrike. This game is about fantasy not reality and its not meant to feature realistic apearing characters. Its meant to be a world that doesnt exist or maybe a world that doesnt exist yet. Open your mind a little and you might enjoy all the games you play more. People have been talking about how they dont like this kind of game and prefer realism FPS's becuase they have "grown up". Why is everyone in such a hurry to grow up. The successfull conclusion of growing up is death. I dont see why people who dont like this game are dissing it so much, isnt that a waste of your time? If you dont like a game then why do you bother giving it your attention? Shouldnt you be posting possitive things to threads about games you DO like?
Cant wait for the full version, I'm getting sick of cycling the same 2 maps and everyone I kill looks the same