Apparently when DDO was announced to go free there was the whole gnashing of teeth thing gong on and after it happened they discovered that it wasn't that big of a deal. Really if you enjoy it now, especially for those year one lifetime members, and the sky does not end up falling like you feared, you will come back.

I'm not done reading all the threads the players have put up but I'm not as irritated as before. I am seeing a bit of weariness to the point of pessimism with some of the players as to how this will affect the world. On one hand you have gold farmers (Which strangely I have no problem with as long as they actually play the game in an non automated/non hacking manner) but if they just stick with the free play option they are limited to two gold and if they purchase and item from the store it's bumped to five. While chat is unregulated, tells are limited to one every five seconds. Which if you are a normal player it probably takes that long to read and reply in a coherent fashion. Honestly I'm not really afraid sp(c)ammers will make too big of a dent in the social aspect and I'm looking at this from someone who has played EveOnline.

If you are a paid player, either as a lifetime or monthly, you will not be adversely affected. In that if you have something now you will not lose it come the fall as long as you maintain that status. If you let a subscription lapse or choose to downgrade (I saw both being tossed around but figure they are the same thing), you are placed into the Premium tier of service. Your character slots are knocked down to five but the characters themselves are still there and will require points to be spent to unlock them. I'm picturing an interface similar to WoW where when the expansions came out but you only have, say, the original the extra classes were greyed out. I also believe your gold will be knocked down to the five max with any additional being put into an escrow. I'm guessing, as I haven't come across the answer yet, that this is something else you can unlock with points if you choose to stay Premium.

Turbine points are not transferable between the games. That is if you purchased points in DDO you cannot use them in LotR and vice versa.

Here are some more Q & A from this thread as it seems to be updating as new questions are answered http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=335135

1. Will I be able to buy epic/raid loot at the item store? Will this diminish the value of raid gear?

NO. Quote from the FAQ: "While items in the Store are designed to immediately enhance your in-game experience, premium loot and rare gear are the rewards of adventure and are only obtainable through gameplay."

2. Will I lose character slots if I maintain my paid subscription?

NO. From the FAQ: "The benefits and features of the Adventurer's Pack will remain available to you. Whether you are a VIP, Premium player, or Free player, you will get to keep your 2 extra character slots and shared storage bank." Additionally, Mines of Moria and any other added slots will be maintained. Thanks, Blackadar.

5. What are the "premium classes?"

From Sapience: Warden and Rune-keeper. Players who did not purchase Moria and want to play these classes from the start can purchase them separately.

6. Will there be Free-2-Play and Pay-2-Pay servers?

NO. Tarrance: "There won't be a server merge, and there won't be separate free-to-play only servers. All the servers will remain as they are, and the new population will pick from them just as you once did."

7. What is the maximum amount of character slots achievable?

11. From the FAQ: "At any point, you can purchase more character slots in the LOTRO Store, up to 11 character slots per server." {/quote]

Right now I'm optimistic that this will add players to an MMO that deserves to stick around. My main concern right now, besides any issues that come up in the coming months, are how many points you will need to actually buy something worthwhile. Also my hope and maybe looking into how DDO handles this, though they did state it would be a bit different, is if they will use the term microtransactions and whether this will be truly micro (No more than $5) or WoW horse micro.

In the end this might highlight the benefits, and potential risks, of lifetime subscriptions and what it means in the long term. In that if you can get an influx of committed players who are willing to spend a large sum of money in the beginning, thus giving the company more money to deal with issues and content at the start. Which acts as an incentive to bring in new monthly players who see that there is a much larger playground with more things being added quickly. But, for the company,  knowing that down the line those same lifetime players will be a form of dead weight that you still have to appease because they are your lifeline to both new players and the community at large. Hmm could this be considered a new take on angel investing?

Of course this happens after I just committed to a year subscription. Damn

You're all a bunch of perverts.

Will never trust anything that comes from Jack Emmert. The man screwed with City of and then went and made an prettier but still disappointing clone. Maybe DC Online can take the mantle from NCSoft as far as super hero games go, but I would rather the current crew was given a chance to do things right with a sequel they make. Oh and bring back CuppaJo.

What's odd is that my first thought was probe droids.

Question is, how early is this code?  It may be review code, but they often send out early builds to review.

I suspect the load times will be made slightly better, but not by much though. But, much of a game's optimization takes place at the end of development.

From the article:

The review code given to us wasn't from a retail copy of the game, but after looking through the notes there is no mention of loading times being improved for launch; odds are this is how the game will act for everyone else.

http://dlh.net/getfile.php?40:97823fcc1e9e7107:39b1150e40c617bd:/pc-patches/3dcard-patches/hwc101usa.zip
http://dlh.net/getfile.php?78:97823fcc1e9e7107:39b1150e40c617bd:/pc-patches/3dcard-patches/hwc101usa.zip

Courtesy of Patches-Scrolls.de

Just to serve as an update.

There was another individual, on the Asus boards, that had a very similar setup to mine (Though I should note that his supply was 650 compared to my 500) and had found that under powering the memory to 800watts made his system stable. Worked for me as well.
Yes I would like to have a power supply that that can give more power, and did for my old system but sadly it didn't have the right connections. In the immediate, though, my system is solid and that is all I care about.

it's 57 degrees and clear here.  I got all the windows open and I'm wearing shorts.

tomorrow is going to be cloudy and 71 though.  it might rain.


wait a tick, it hails during the summertime.  do you mean sleet?

Looking at the definitions I would still say it was hail.

It's hailing right now, in April. Besides the fact that winter here in Oregon has been dismal for the past 10 years it also seems to have shifted when it starts and stops.

[Listening/watching to live.twit.tv]

Cross posting on Overlords as well as the Asus forums

Times my computer has froze:
Listening/watching to live.twit.tv - Usually happens within five minutes. Freeze is accompanied by screeching from the speakers.
Youtube - Only had it happen once, but it happened over and over (I think I tried 4 times) with the same video within 10 seconds. Screeching as well.
Booting into XP - Sometimes hits me at the Welcome screen or the loading window. No sound this time, though it should be noted that I have system sounds disabled.
Loading iTunes or synching my Zune with it's software - Believe I have fixed this by disabling the Express Gate motherboard utility as mentioned on Asus forums. But it should still be mentioned.
Running Malwarebytes - Happens every time within 10 seconds. The obvious answer would be that I have a trojan or other type of malicious software. But I can refute this as it happens with a clean install on a different hard drive in which I was connected for a minute to grab the software.
Running Windows Update - Froze during downloading of updates.
Running CPU testing software - Everytime. If not right as the tests start, a couple seconds after.
Running a game - Mass Effect in this example. What should be noted is that freezes during play happen rarely, though when it has is usually accompanied by screeching. Will sometimes freeze during loading of the game from the launcher.
Installing mythbuntu - Installing on a clean drive. Happens every time on second stage of installation.

I have had it happen with random video, from mainstream sites, played on the net as well.
Have had a few times where system at boot or in windows has produced one continuous beep from the case speaker.
I'm sure there are other times, but these are the ones that stand out in my mind.

Hardware Setup:
Motherboard - ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
Memory - (2) Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (Yes more than 4 GB on a 32 bit machine is wasted, I know)
Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s
Video Card - Sapphire 100269SR Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready
CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core
Power Supply - Antec 500 watt

I can cross off the video card as being the problem as the motherboard has an onboard one that I have tried after taking out the Sapphire card. I also disable the onboard when I have the Sapphire installed. Just in case it is mentioned I have also left the onboard on as well, but it made no difference.
While I cannot definitively cross of the memory I have run memtest86+ for over ten hours with zero errors. Have also tried only one stick (Tried both) and different slots.
Ran a few quick tests on the hard drive. I think it may have froze once, not positive.
Have tried manually changing settings in the BIOS. Though for some reason it only lets me change voltage for both the CPU and memory not timing. Tried recommended for both.
Don't think over heating is a factor as it can happen right at the start. The times where it has let out the continuous beep I've rebooted and right away checked the temp. No outrageous reading that I could see. As of writing this, according to PC Probe II my CPU is at 86F and motherboard is at 106F. I've seen the CPU at 95F before with the motherboard being pretty much unchanged (I think it may have even been lower during that time).
Have also updated the BIOS to newest version as well as all other devices on this system.

If I was to go with my gut I would say that the CPU is at fault. But I cannot rule out the memory even with a clear test. Hell it could even be the hard drive, I suppose, as the other one I tried was from the same purchase and perhaps the same manufactured batch.

If anyone has any other ideas I would love to hear them.

A Christmas Carol
Not kidding

I'm sure he's a superhero.

I've had a gigabyte product in the past as well and apart from some audio issues it ran very well. Hell the laptop I'm using has Realtek in it and it works just fine. And yes I would agree that it isn't hard to find someone with a negative issue concerning hardware. What is really important to me, and will keep me as a customer, is how a company handles the failures. At least with computers the simple fact that you are talking about pieces of hardware that you have installed yourself just might indicate that your tech knowledge is a bit higher than an ordinary user. Which should reflect in the support you receive.

Here's the latest gem from their support. Note that I'm 17 days and 5 questions/4 responses into this conversation.
"are you using the onboard LAN or you are using an separate PCI ethernet card?"

Really? Didn't we already cover this in the initial question?

Out of curiousity, which OS are you running?

Have you checked the gigabyte tech forums? They're actually not on the GB website.. they're here.. http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/ Don't ask me why, cause I dunno

Using XP. Checking the forums right now.

This is also going to be a Realtek rant as well, as they are the ones from which most of the problems stem.

Motherboard is the MA790XT-UD4P

Got all the parts I ordered from Newegg and put it together. Pretty quickly ran into problems that I've found out many others have had. The Realtek audio is a piece of garbage. It was pretty rare for me to be able to boot windows and run a game without needing to hard reset, on average, three times. The problems would either be a total lock w/wo an audio screech or a blue screen pointing back to the audio. While it was very annoying I put up with it, just because that is who I am and I figured worse comes to worse I can always grab an audio card and disable the on-board. But then the ethernet (Again Realtek) failed. It would switch between either not seeing the hardware at all to it working fine, to finally it dying. Oh did I forget to mention that the USB controllers thought that everything plugged in was 1.1 not 2.0.

Sent it to Gigabyte repair, as by that time my Newegg warranty was over, for the USB and ethernet to be fixed. Couple weeks later got it back. USB was fixed and so was the NIC, for about an hour then it dies again. You can't send a product back in for repair a second time until you talk to support, which I've started back on the 30th. The support is, well it's slow and stupid. I'm currently in a back and forth about the drivers for the ethernet. They are telling me to grab the ones for a PCI 10/100 while I'm reiterating that I have a PCI Express 10/100/1000. I've pointed out that the drivers I have installed specifically include the chipset I have while theirs' do not. Provided a link to support that fact, and they ignored it and again stated that the version they are referencing are universal across all sets. Which definitely contradicts Realteks site.

So here I am waiting yet again for another response that surely won't help at all. Though to be honest unless they offer to cover shipping or send me a motherboard without requiring me to return it yet again I'm going to bite the money I spent and grab an ASUS. Which conveniently doesn't have anything Realtek.

Big Hand for the Little Lady

Woo I found it! Don't know if anyone else would appreciate it or not, but here it is anyway. I was also pretty spot on for remembering something I saw back in september of '08. http://vimeo.com/877053?pg=embed&sec=877053

Zombie Restaurant

First though was that would be made better by a zombie lolcat.

From Sora's DevianArt if anyone is interested.

I think you are all missing the important question here, which is, "Do fish get thirsty?".

Here's what I can remember. It was animated, but not like morning cartoons (Wish I could remember more). The scene was a classroom, shot mostly through a window, focusing on a little girl (Age of 5 or 6 maybe). Through some deduction you find out she likes a boy in the class. She starts daydreaming about them growing up together, falling in love and getting married. They have kids and continue getting older. Just shows shots of them together and happy. Believe it ends back in the classroom with her looking at a crayon drawing that she did with her, the boy, and a house. There was also no voices, just music.

Thought I found it through Yonkis.com but went through their archive of 2008 and didn't see it. Know that it was on a site that featured multiple short films and allowed the filmmaker to have a profile so you could see the other films they did. Remember that the video playing was on the left with their other films listed on top right with comments below that. Want to say that the guy that made it, and others, was from Spain or around that region. Tried iFilm which apparently died when MTV got a hold of them a couple years ago. Will try looking through the 2007 archive but am pretty sure I saw it last year.

Blackjack nailed the reason why. It is a lot easier to go after a company that has a smaller chance of destroying you afterwords. That being said, there was already prior art long before they even filed for this patent. Which makes me really hope that sometime in the future we set up a law that punishes companies that try this.

I've done a good job of blocking out the first two (Wardrobe and Caspian/Dawn Treader) but can say that the Silver Chair was pretty faithful to the book. If you really want a Narnia fix would highly recommend the audio dramas put out by Focus on the Family.