The first sentence of the release:
"has surpassed 13 million active accounts."

7 billion player minutes a month divided by 13 million accounts is 538 player minutes a month per account. It seems plausible to me that most of those accounts really are active.

My steam account is still active, because I'm still playing Counterstrike every once in a while. I still install the occasional single player mod for HL2 (the Awakening was quite good, really), and Garry's mod is addictive and I don't know why.

Steam has quite a bit going for it, despite all of the hate.

You actually posted this story this morning already

It can't come out soon enough.

To be honest, while it was amusing, it was so long I didn't watch the whole thing myself in my flu-addled state, so I just took Videosift's word for it since their post carried an NSFW tag.

I think that nobody has made it all the way through the video to find out what is NSFW about it, so that tag just keeps getting passed around.

What happened to the GW site?
Did you WOW it?

My thoughts exactly. Someone brought up the wrong topic, and complicity isn't around to clean up the mess. Serves you right.

Every year they hold this many people lose their lives. I remember the first time I heard about it, I thought it was funny - I mean people don't die flying kites. But now that I know a bit more about it and now that I've seen it repeated year after year, the whole thing is just sad.

Yeah, I beat the last mission in Driver.. getting across New York with the angry secret service after you, right?

I seem remember the key being having them hit you from behind at certain key times. I don't remember very well, it has been a while. All the same, I definitely remember beating that mission, no cheats. It is possible.

If there is one game developer that I respect, it's Blizzard. The Lost Vikings was an ingenious co-op platform game. Warcraft was the groundbreaking RTS (yes I know that Dune came first, but Warcraft really defined the genre). Diablo was a great point and click action RPG, and is another wildly popular game that is still copied by many developers. Starcraft is a masterpiece of a RTS, and I don't need to say anything about World of Warcraft.

But what I like and respect most about Blizzard are their self-imposed standards of quality. Warcraft Adventures simply didn't measure up, so they canned it. They certainly could have released a mediocre adventure game and it would have sold decently, but they didn't. Starcraft: Ghost has been delayed and delayed some more as they try to get it up to snuff.

Blizzard was lucky enough to have made their money early on before developers became extremely reliant on publishers for funding, and have used the resulting artistic freedom to really get things right before they release a game. Looking at that list of releases, every single game from Blizzard since 1995 has been a quality release (except Justice League Task Force, I never played that). What other developer can make that claim?

This is true in Nightfall as well, however, in NF they do give you access to the newb island with your lvl 20. You can play through the early content if you want, or you can skip it.

My point about taking your chars from other campaigns over is for when you've already beaten the game once and want to bring your other characters over to get a particular item / try a particular farm build / or just have a lvl 20 of a particular class available to the guild in the new missions too. I really enjoy the ranger class, but I don't want to start a ranger from scratch each time an expansion comes out. I like my current ranger and my current ranger items already.

Another benefit of linking accounts is that you have access to all the skills from all the campaigns for all your chars. I have a few builds that are dependent on skills from multiple campaigns.

There is also the ability to take chars between continents if you link Nightfall and Prophecies together. IMO it's much better to have the accounts linked.

I think Blue is refering to the fact that Steam is being included in a box product that's not made by Valve. ie, if you were to buy RACE in a store you'd have Steam included in that version as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that wasn't true of Sin Episodes.

edit: Check that. It seems Steam was in Sin Episodes boxes too

This comment was edited on Nov 13, 20:42.

The names of the cities in German threw me off. My furthest off was Moscow, simply because you have no point of reference for placing things in Russia.

The Pro Evolution/Winning Eleven series is the best soccer game around, maybe the best sports game around. It really is worth trying, especially if all you've played is Fifa.

I can't think of another sports game that feels so authentic while playing.. it's impressive. They spent a lot of time getting the a.i. right, and it shows. My only complaints are rather minor: goalkeepers respond sluggishly and the master league (dynasty) mode doesn't feel fleshed out like it could be.

Is sickening.. literally. I got motion sickness just playing to the fourth level, and I'm not usually affected by such things.

I would think that you would be able to turn this off if you want. If for no other reason than that the leagues will need it.

Was that Jimmy Kimmel clip a spoof, or did Damon actually get that angry? Anyone know?

Developers! Developers! Developers! (etc.)

I kinda agree with Bucky, with the extra two slots from Factions I'm not going to be looking for more character slots anyway.

But all the same, $10 for an extra character slot seems steep. Are they that short on server space?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4918184.stm

Pretty cool story. A guy started with a paperclip and has been trading it for other things, upgrading as he goes. He's worked his way up to having a house in Phoenix for a year rent-free. He wants to keep going until he gets a house. No downpayments, no mortgages. Just a house.

Agreed, they could drop 20 games off the hockey season and not suffer for it. There would be fewer injuries and more energetic play.. during the lockout negotiations shortening the season was proposed. However, lost ticket sales revenue will end any discussion of shortening the season.

If football players could play a longer season without wrecking havoc on their bodies would they still play a short season like they do now?

This comment was edited on Apr 18, 13:54.