Playing games on-line.

[Sir Taliesin]

I played EQ for over a year and a half before I burned out (played almost every night for at least two hours. They don't call it "Evercrack" for nothing, you know! I played on a 56k modem running at 45,333. Never had a problem. Actually I usually zoned as fast or faster than the people playing with a cable hook up.

[esquire]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but check out DSLreports.com

THey have great tools to tweak your settings, and they might even have info on your isp.

[Vaskez]

Originally posted by /)eathKiller: quote: Originally posted by Vaskez: Phantasy Star Online????!??!!? Is that like the Phantasy Star games for the Megadrive (Genesis) years ago? THese were the best RPGs for ages!! You're telling me there's a PC version! *note to self: calm down* phew! hehe. Also you play Seiken Densetsu online? I thought that was the japanese name for Secret of Mana 2 for the SNES? What do you play it on?

1: Phantasy Star Online came out for the Sega Dreamcast in 1998, It came out for the PC in 2002, and out for the X box and Gamecube in the same year (2002) and has no plans to launch on the PS2...

I played PSO on the Dreamcast for a very long while and reached level 200 and collected every rare item that existed in the game. all-in-all it required me to play for 80,000 + hours. I am an expert on the series if you have any questions.

The PC version is Found Here
More Info and Info In English

The fighting system is turn based but feels like Zelda [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Happy hunting...

2: Seiken Densusetsu 3 is Secret of Mana 2, and I played it online Via the Znes emulator, which is kind of against Ironworks policy to talk about directly as it's an Emulator...

Hope that Helps![/QB][/QUOTE]Heh I played Phantasy Star 2 and 4 on the Megadrive. I completed PS4 but not 2. PS4 was cool [img]smile.gif[/img]
I never knew there was a PC version!

I played Secret of Mana 1 on the SNES and completed it 2 or 3 times. It was cool cos you could get 3 people playing at the same time. I played Secret of Mana 2 on the zsnes emulator too although I don't think it's as good as the 1st one - I mean the combat is just out of your control isn't it?

[ 01-19-2003, 11:21 AM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]

[Arvon]

As for me, I don't do it. I bought Everquest and when I got it home I found I have to pay Sony $20 a month to play. And the blasted game was the full price os any stand-a-lone RPG. So for the most part I'm not taking a chance. They should give the game away if they're going to charge monthly.

[Luvian]

A little unrelated, at this website, you can find out your internet connection's speed. Mine is 947.6 kilobits per second.

I never tried Phantasy Star online, but I have been playing Asherons' Call 1 for more than 3 years, now. It's a good game, and people who never played a mmorpg can't really understand them before they try them.

Sure, you need to pay a monthly fee, but in the case of Asheron's Call, every month, we get an update (much like an extention), in wich we get new quests, new items, new monsters to fight, the storyline progress,... As an example, some months ago, an army of shadows destroyed the biggest town in the world, but it has been slowly rebuilding, and now, it's almost complete again.

In my opinion, paying 10-20 a month is worth it, to play an endless game. I have been playing 3 years, and the new stuff and quests keep coming, they even added 4 new island ever the years. I have yet to see everything that is already in the game.

[Sir Krustin]

Originally posted by Luvian: A little unrelated, at this website, you can find out your internet connection's speed. Mine is 947.6 kilobits per second.

Mine rated at 621kb/sec, but I know that's slow b/c I used to have Broadband Wizard check my speed periodically, and it's usually in the 1mb/sec range. (Sunday's a bad day to test! )

In my opinion, paying 10-20 a month is worth it, to play an endless game. I have been playing 3 years, and the new stuff and quests keep coming, they even added 4 new island ever the years. I have yet to see everything that is already in the game.

I agree with Arvon, $20/mo is way too much. I don't have endless streams of time to spend on online games. I would - at most - spend maybe 4-5 hours a month, and I would get much better bang for the buck simply buying a single-player game. $5 a month is much more reasonable - if they had a graduated pay system where the heavy users pay more, I'd probably be more interested.

I know what you're talking about with Asheron's call, though - a friend of mine plays it heavily and just loves it. I think it substitutes for his social life. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ 01-19-2003, 12:34 PM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]

[Paladin2000]

Originally posted by Luvian: A little unrelated, at this website, you can find out your internet connection's speed. Mine is 947.6 kilobits per second.

Mine is tested at 205.9 kilobits/s. Not really that fast for online gameing but good enough to download stuff and surf the net.

[Luvian]

5$ a month is not a lot, considering that you get an expension every months.

You have to remember than with the monthly payment, they pay for their bandwith, the salary of the devs creating each monthly update, the salary of the admins in the game, and more.

Ac is 10$ a month. It's about the price it cost to go see a movie, wich usually last 2 hours, while your your 10$ get you 24/24/7 access to the online game, it's a much better investment in my opinion.

[Sir Krustin]

Ultima Online makes $3,000,000/month @$9.99/user. It's been so profitable for them that Origin has stopped doing any other kind of software development.

$10 is more than enough, if I had more time I might think it was that valuable, but otherwise I stand by my comments on graduated usage.

[Luvian]

I agree that graduated usage might be usefull, but how lower could they ask for? 10$ is so little, it's the price of two hours at the cinema.

What could they do? They are already charging you for only two hours. Don't tell me you would not even play 2 hours a month? If you would play two hours, well, you already would have gotten your money worth of time. They can't be more fair than that with an offer of "Pay us for two hours, and get 718 hours for free!"

So what if you don't use the extra hours? You don't even pay for them, so they are not wasted.