That URL 404s for me

Another mirror (for the Aussies):

http://www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/53188

Why would I want any money to go to the publisher on a trade?

If I sell my car, my car manufacturer doesn't get a cent. If I sell a book, the author doesn't get any more.

This is just pandering to publishers who think they should have a cut of every single software sale ever. First sale doctrine exists specifically to give you the right to do this. Why would you want to give away your rights?

I'd rather see efforts on gamers to figure out ways to force companies that offer digitally downloaded games to include the ability to allow them to be transferred in accordance with first sale doctrine.

$10 is not a microtransaction. It is a regular transaction. A microtransaction is in the order of cents, not dollars. That's why it is called 'micro'.

So yes, there are certain titles need a demo.

ALL titles should have demo. PC developers have gotten complacent and lazy and rely on their brand names to sell their games without having to actually create a demo to give gamers a feel for whether it's worth their hard earned cash.

PC gamers similarly have gotten lazy by just buying games without a demo. Consider the success of games like Quake, BF, etc - these games had massive, thriving communities before the game was even on the shelves, all because they had a freely available demo, which served as the best thing to market their game.

It's a sad state of affairs and it won't get better until PC gamers simply stop buying games until a demo has been released. Otherwise they simply won't change the process.

That said, will the final game be restricted to servers authorized by EA? Or can anyone use their own dedicated server? I'm hoping its the latter.

Based on this announcement, I would bet its the former, which is going to be utterly painful for everyone.

Game developers still, AMAZINGLY, haven't learned that having a freely available dedicated server means more people playing your game, because it means you'll have more online support.

This has been proven true of every single major FPS that has made it to the big time. Dice even MADE a few of them. BF2/2142 suffered at launch because of lack of servers (at least in Australia, although luckily they got their shit together and had enough providers that it wasn't a total pain in the ass).

I know they want to control the servers for their global stats thing, but a game that is going to be this popular and huge, not having enough servers at launch is just going to annoy the crap out of users who might not come back if they think they can't get a game.

Aussie mirror:

http://www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/39929

It's still extremely popular but games based on the Q3 engine just do not age well at all

Really? I think they age excellently. Remember Quake 3 was released in '99. There were no significant updates to the renderer between Q3 and ET either. If you crank up the detail it still looks pretty good; sure, it might not compare to a modern day FPS but it's still impressive.

Gameplay wise ET is still the most fun I've ever had in a pub server type environment. The default maps are so well designed for good solid play.

EDIT: But of course this is "Blues News" where everyone is master expert ninja cynics and doomsayers who simply draw conclusions by reading headlines.

Well, some headlines are <a href="http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/pirates-of-the.html">more indicative than others</a>

You can't really do a demo for a game like this of this scale no more than you could do a demo of Oblivion and do the game justice.

So the only way to find out if the game is good is to drop $50 and check it out? Sure as hell screenshots and videos of the game are going to do it less "justice" than any demo, no matter how crippled or limited.

this'd be good news if the game had a standalone dedicated server to actually enable multiplayer

This comment was edited on Mar 19, 02:22.

I plan to win the lottery and sleep with Scarlett Johansson, if possible.

This comment was edited on Dec 19, 21:11.

Yeh, its sad that Epic still seem to cluelessly flounder around when it comes to server software.

<quote>all UTs at least in australia end up with maybe 2 servers after a month of release. </quote> That is untrue, at least of UT2004. We supported it for a very long time on GameArena - the sad truth is that the player base tends to die quickly.

I have always theorised that this is at least in part due to having too many game modes, leading to too much community fragmentation.

... will there be a demo?

I'm going to guess the answer is "no", and to sample TF2/Portal all we'll get is the occasional free weekend.

No - it's not a rootkit at all. The article referenced in the slashdot article was written (at the author's own admission) as FUD to increase google rankings. There's no rootkit (at least, not one that has been found yet

australian mirror: http://www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/29832

I sort of find it hard to believe EA will keep Mac versions of BF2142 (and other games where the exact patch level is really important for online play) as up to date as their PC counterparts.

I'd love to be proven wrong, because it would be EA sending a clear message that quality is important in their cross platform offerings.

Otherwise this is great news for Mac, and gamers all over the place who are tempting to ditch the PC.

What a horrible website. Every time you clicked something, it had to download a whole new flash page. I gave up on downloading the trailer because I got tired of waiting for the damn pages to load.

Seconded, that website sucks. Here's a direct link to the trailer download:

http://www.frogster-interactive.de/downloads68!3!368,1.html

In classic Ubi style, I assume there will be no decent dedicated server software/interface for the demo or full game, resulting in a dearth of servers and a reduced multiplayer experience for customers. I'd love to be proven wrong though.