It happened to me just recently. I sold delta force land warrior (new) for about $3 on Ebay. I sent it and then went to North Carolina to visit my brother at Camp Laguene.
Two weeks later I got back and had about 46 emails from the buyer saying "Where is it?" (I left him feedback the same day he made payment.) So I emailed him, tried to calm him and let him know it was sent, I was away and to give it another week (only 3 weeks) and if still nothing, email me again and I'd either refund him or send another copy of the game. (EB sells them for 25 cents each here!) So no big deal, $3 plus $2 shipping, a $5 item..
The buyer, obviously a young kid, didn't want to hear it though. He made up all kinds of stories why he didn't get it, mainly because I wanted to "keep the game for myself".
For the first time in Ebay history, a buyer pissed me off and it was over FIVE DOLLARS!
Not only did he threaten negative feedback, but he also said he would make it a personal crusade to make sure that whenever I sell items on Ebay he would email all the bidders telling them I ripped people off.
The funny part? I had close to 200 different feedbacks from different users and only of them were positives. 100%. This kid was going to screw up my 100%. I told him once again, if you don't get it in a week I'll refund you or send you a new game, it's your choice. He said "keep your stupid game it's revenge now".
Why the hell would I want to keep a 25 cent game?

Anyway to make a long story short (too late right lol) I said nobody would believe his immaturity I have 100% feedback, so what is 1 negative out of 200 positives? It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I would make sure that I'd get him a negative one way or another and I "knew people" so I would get back at him.
Never heard from him again and he never left the negative.

From that one experience though, I learned, don't leave the buyer positive feedback until you know he got it and is ready to do the same for you. There are far too many children and immature people on Ebay to leave positive feedback so blindly.

Thanks for the tip, I turned off windows firewall (it's turned on by default with SP2) and my connection seems to be back to normal. I didn't think the firewall would have made much of a difference on speed.

I've held off installing windows service pack 2 all this time because I never heard anything good about it, only problems. Some games don't even support it. (Alexander to name one. They conviently place the warning INSIDE the box that SP2 isn't support.)
Since my gateway (anyone considering a gateway, I made the mistake of my life buying a $2500 notebook, really wish I had gone dell but the 17" widescreen got the best of me) has been having problems, crashes, lockups, slowdowns, I've re-installed windows xp several times and finally I figured what the hell maybe SP2 will do some good.
Downloaded and installed last night, and now my internet connection is like being on dial-up all over again. The webpages are taking 4 times as long to load. My downloads are about half the speed as they were before, and sometimes pages just sit there loading and then an error comes up. Refresh, slow, slow, slow... loading.. loading.. (even Consolegold) and finally, there it is.

Anyone else experience anything like this since installing SP2? I knew there was a reason why I went this long without updating. If it's SP2 that's screwing my connection I might have to go back to original XP or SP1.
Any suggestions?

That woman on the auction link isn't very attractive.
If anything those pictures would make me want to buy the laptop even less.

Add that to the "Bushwacked" speech (http://www.bobrivers.com/audiovault/downloads/files/Bushwacked_Speech.mp3) and it all starts to come together.

Sounds like she deserved it. They broke up and she wanted to get back at him so she went and deleted his personal files, that he probably spent a lot of time getting his character to where it was until she destroyed it. How would you like if someone came to your house - an ex girlfriend perhaps - and deleted some files on your computer that she knew you would have a hard time without? (Such as your porno?)
Justice has been served!

Leisure Suit Larry
The Guy Game
and possibly upcoming
Playboy: The Mansion

Good luck  :wink:

That sounds like Israel. How many UN resolutions have they violated? How many times has the counsel come up to condemn Israel's actions, only to be vetoed by one country - the United States?
They have WMD, they've invaded their neighbors, and they attacked us in 1967 killing 34 of our sailors. http://www.ussliberty.com

There were far more dangerous countries out there than Iraq ever was. As you surely know, the search for WMD is officially over. Why did we go to war? The report says Iraq gave up their weapons after the first gulf war. Hans Blix (pre-war Iraq) has said the same thing and has spoken out against the war in Iraq.
So has the ex-marine ex head weapons inspector for the first gulf war, Scott something.. (If you need his name I'll look it up)
Bush is just a warmongering blood thirsty president. What's worse is that he is the image of America. No wonder so much of the world hates us when we have a president who forces his views on other countries. He's already made it clear he's going to invade new countries in his next 4 years. I wonder who will be next. Iran? North Korea? Maybe even Cuba?

But hey, it's our job to police the rest of the world. That's just.. our job! So if X country which isn't a democracy doesn't like our government, they should be able to come over here and force their government on us too. Then when we revolt (much like the american revolution) against the occupation they start calling us "terrorists" and telling us they are only occupying us to liberate us. Imagine that.

This post isn't directed at any CG member by the way - I'm just disgusted with Bush, his lies, his wars, and his stupidity.

Except Clinton didn't put our troops in harms way without giving them the proper protection and we weren't at war during his inaguration.

Army charges Soldier refusing deployment:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=5&u=/ap/20050121/ap_on_re_us/objecting_soldier

He mentions not having the proper protection for their vehicles.
Besides our taxes are already paying 1 billion a week in Iraq for this war that was based on a lie, so what's another 40 million for Bush's party?

Also I voted Bush in 2000. I'm a registered republican. However when the president lies to his country about taking us to war, you have to draw the line.

Very good examples! I forgot about the Devil's Advocate. To find out later in life you have a demonic sister that HOT? I would have joined my father and taken over the world as the prince of darkness, too.  

I was thinking that one of the newer StarWars had an episode where one of the good characters had a chance to join the dark side, but he turned them down.
Even if the "Good guy" is offered to join the bad guys to save his life, he turns them down anyway. Happens in all the movies. Even if the good guy still wants to be good - he can at least pretend and say sure I'll join you, then he gets free and doesn't get killed, and he can't save the battle for another day.
But no he must say something like "I'd rather die than join the dark side!"

And SWAT was an example of a near-perfect movie! I love those "cops gone bad" stories (I'm an ex-correctional officer gone bad myself  :wink:) so really looking forward to Assault on Precinct 13 tommorow night.  

Anyone remember those older "Choose Your own adventure" books they used to make in the fantasy/D&D type of universe? You might start out as a warrior, and then along the way you meet new characters, have different paths to take, some of them are the right decisions, and some are the wrong ones.
You might meet a warrior elf, who wants to join you. But your instincts tell you she's not to be trusted. The book describes her as a scantily clad good looking elf woman though, and so you decide to let her join you. Later on, you choose to setup camp for the night, and she kills you in your sleep. (I remember a scenario exactly like that from one of those books.)

Maybe some day.. right? Maybe some day we'll have some VR set we can put on our heads and take us into a virtual world and do whatever we want. We might be the King of some country, and we might choose to be a good King and have the people love us, or we might choose to be an evil King, and have the population revolt and then get into sword fights and killing people left and right.
One day, I truly hope.

Fox News is VERY biased. They are pro-war, pro-bush and anti anything that goes against the first two. Look at the interviewer, she can't even be curteous to her guest because her guest wanted to see more money go to the troops than to Bush's party. Can't say I'm suprised though, and I don't watch FOX news exactly for their "one sided" views and lack of respect for other peoples opinions.
Even Joe Scarrabough (sp?) has more respect for his guests with opposing views than FOX.

Sometimes I wish movies could be more like a "Choose your own adventure" type of book or game, where you make the decisions.
There are so many movies out there where I wish I would see the character do one thing (which would probably change the outcome fo the entire movie) instead of what he does.
One example is the movie SWAT, where the two partners get put in the cage for disobeying an order.
Gamble asks his partner to leave with him, but Jimmy decides to stay. Their friendship is ended there.
Later in the movie, the ex-SWAT member "Gamble" is the brain of operation to get the french criminal and collect on the 100m reward.

For some reaosn when I watch a movie, if it's a good one, I can usually "fall in" to the movie, meaning it almost feels like you are right there in the movie as everything happens.
If I was Jimmy - I would have left with my partner, and probably would have taken part in getting that 100 million at the end of the story.

Unfortunately a movie can't be like a choose your own adventure book or a computer game with a multiple story ending, because you can watch the same movie over and over, and the same thing just happens over and over. If you could choose a different scenario at some point in the movie, even if only 2 or 3 times, it would make movies seem so much more interactive.
It would cost Hollywood tons of money to do something like that, but IMO, that would give so much more life to movies. Why do the good guys always win?
What if you actually agree with the bad guys (like the movie Rogue Force with the rogue swat team who take the law to their own hands but only go after criminals) and want to see them win?

Kind of a strange post I suppose, but after watching SWAT for the third time since it came out, I can't help but to wonder What If.. Jimmy had gone with his partner Gamble. Instead, you can't change the outcome, you already know what's going to happen, and to me at least, that kind of defeats being able to enjoy watching a movie over again that you've already seen.

He's just not a very good president.

It seems http://www.gamestop.com still has copies available online. You can also check your local area on gamestop - I just entered my zip code and noticed 4 of the stores in my area have "4+" copies in stock.
Haven't had much luck looking at the recent prices on Ebay though because some fool completely spammed Ebay with "Gold for sale". There are pages after pages of it it's hard to see any genuine auctions for WoW anymore.
Do people really pay for COMPUTER GOLD?! $139.99!!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4596&item=8162768815&rd=1

The one we've been using on our laptop seems to work fine with email, news, downloading, etc. Since the laptop is a celeron I woudn't dare use it for gaming. I tried Rome Total War on it and after the 18 minutes it took to load, it took another 5 minutes just to get the cursor over the menu to exit back out of it.
So no comment on gaming, but for downloading, emailing, etc. it works perfectly (for me at least) - I don't see why gaming would be any different, but I can't comment on that.
Over all a nice feature if your laptop/pc doesn't have a built-in wireless card already.

Well you know hispanic women, even overweight they still look good.

Thanks I'll have to check out the Omega drivers. Apparently ATI officially doesn't even support notebooks at all with their officially released drivers. Two more days and Gateway's latest posted drivers will be 1 year old. I should of got a dell, dude.

That whole napster thing let me down as a fan of Metallica as well. I got over it though and am still a fan of everything Pre-Saint Anger. Their next album sounds like it will be even worse than Saint Anger (and Saint Anger just doesn't get any worse, so you can imagine).

For anyone that followed the metallica vs napster here's a song you'll definitely like "Internet Sandman" by Johnny Crass:

http://johnnycrass.home.comcast.net/internetsandman.mp3

Interesting that I've enjoyed every Metallica album up until Saint Anger. The last CD I bought was Garage Days. "Turn the page" was the best one of all. Tuesday's Gone.
Other songs I've enjoyed were Low Man's Lyric, The Unforgiven, The Unforgiven II, Mama Said, and all of these songs were 1990+.
However with Saint Anger, they've just lost it IMO.

Even if we might agree with the petition, it's not really going to accomplish anything. They even started a petition telling Ashlee Simpson to get out of the music industry. I happen to agree with that after the slipup on SNL and of course, the horrible performance at the Orange Bowl, even her looks can't save her lack of singing skills. Still though, the only one who's going to get Ashlee Simpson out of the music industry is herself, which I just don't see happening, same thing with Metallica. I wish they'd go back to the "Black Album" despite what the petition says, it was one of my all-time favorites.

Jessica Alba..  

Their "official" warning is that you should only use drivers from your manufacturer?
I use a gateway notebook - 17" widescreen that came installed with a Radeon 9700. Since Gateway's latest drivers for the video card are almost a year old now, I went to get the latest drivers from the ATI website, and it said something about using drivers from your computer manufacturer for best performance and that some drivers are customized due to things like widescreen display. (Which I have.)
That concerned me a little, if I install the drivers directly from ATI, is it going to screw up my widescreen display? I'm getting tired of waiting around for Gateway to get with the program and as long as it's been now, I wonder if they'll ever release new video drivers. Too many improvements in Catalyst to keep using these old, old video drivers. And some games crash, like Planetside, wasted $20 on it and every time I get into it, it crashes back to the desktop. On the tech support it says "Make sure you upgrade to your latest video card drivers." Well, thanks to gateway, I am updated to my latest ones, which are almost a year old.
Any suggestions?

I highly recommend SpySubtract (http://www.intermute.com/products/spysubtract.html) You can download a 30 day (fully featured no limitations) free trial of it. SpySubtract picked up things that not only did SpyBot not find, but also that Microsoft AntiSpyware coudn't find.
Remember that sound from Quake when you were in lava and you were hurting? That's the same sound SpySubtract plays whenever it finds a "suspect" (spyware/adware/etc) on your computer. Very nice program.

I haven't played Half-Life in a while (only thing that still interests me is Team Fortress, and I'm praying they release TF2 sometime this century) but I remember getting that same error message. I believe it's with the initial (1.0) release of Half-Life. You can install it anyway and ignore the message and it still plays fine, or at least for me it did.
When you upgrade to the latest patch (dont know the version offhand, but you can find it on www.fileplanet.com, just look for the most downloaded one that's the latest) it fixes the xp problem. I woudn't suggest running 1.0 anyway because it was the first ever release of Half Life and they fixed (and added) so much since the latest patch.

This photo makes me happy

I don't know what's going on there but it's HOT!

Here this is something along the lines of what we have on our laptop:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=589853&CatId=369

Yes there are external wireless "doodads" as vegabond wrote. We use one on our laptop - it plugs into an available usb port and has a little bit of a wire and at the end of it, the receiver. Very convient and easy to use as you can take it wherever you go, we used it at a hotel room that had wireless internet to check email, catch up on the latest news, download porn, etc.

They aren't very expensive either, would sure beat the $300 you had in mind. Another $200 and you just about buy a brand new PC for that much.

lol did the same thing when i got my copy. I dont remember exactly how it was, but I remember entering the code (it was two lines, it looked like it broke off and then started again) really fast, hit enter and was ready to go and got the invalid code thing.
I spent about 5 minutes until I got frustrated and thought about it for a minute. Was about to email valve (to which I probably woudnt get a response anyway) but then I thought.. maybe it's just the first line? Tried it and bingo.
Big applause for the person who thought of adding those numbers right underneath the registraiton code, looks like it's part of the serial. I even tried the "half life 2" at the end or whatever it said.

Sarkus - if what you say is what the future is, that would put stores like EB and Gamestop out of business. I do agree with you that in the future we may see more "steam" types of games, but I mean WAY into the future - 10+ years from now. Probably by the time we are grandpas and are too old to use computers anymore. When our grandkids are buying PC games, it'll be online.
Then again I do see your point after thinking about Blockbuster. There was a lot of talk about companies like Netflix taking over blockbuster because people were too "Lazy" to go to the store and rent the movie they could just do it online.
However taking into account that a HUGE number of computer users are still without internet or on 56k modems, having games like half-life 2 that are 4GB+ in size just isn't reasonable for the time we are in now.
Even on my DSL connection I woudn't want to waste all tha time downloading half-life 2. It shoudn't be your job paying full price for a game and then having to burn it to your own cd's.
I guess that also means the end to manuals, unless you want some cheap pdf manual that you can "print". That is taking the cheap way out, just like the paper sleeves that a lot of games come in now.

While I could easily be wrong, I just don't seem Steam as something becoming popular in the near future. I believe the Phantom console will be proof of this when they go bankrupt right after (if ever) they release their "pay to download games" console. The phantom is a big steammy pile of.. all in one.

THanks, I still use Spybot S&D but unfortunately it doesn't pick up even 50% of what Microsoft AntiSpyware or SpySubtract pick up.

I have 27 days left on a program called "SpySubtract" and I'd even go as far as saying it's BETTER than Microsoft's antispyware. (It picked up some files that microsoft didn't.)
It also has something called "Venus Spytrap" which is real-time like you mentioned. If anything tries to install, or if anything is running - that has adware/spyware, it picks it up immediately.
And the scans it does, amazing.. after a full scan by microsoft antispyware - I then ran SpySubtract and it picked up what microsoft missed.
VERY good program. Ill probably end up buying it because they deserve the support (more than microsoft does).

Still would be nice for an all-in-one though as having all those programs running like you mentioned just isn't my cup of beer. I would rather have just one protection program running in the background that can do everything. The best I've found are anti virus/trojan in one, and then we need a second program for the spyware. Spyware subtract looks to be it.. (I"ve tried the ones you mentioned by the way, during my spyware cleaning "Frenzy"  :wink: )

Normally if something like this happened I would just reboot, but I'm in the middle of downloading something without an option to resume it, I dont even know if it's still downloading actually but I hope it is. I can't see anything on the bottom of my screen anymore, I even was coming here to post and for a second I minimized the window to change songs and then I forgot - the minimized window disappeared too! So starting up yet another web page. I'm so used to minmizing things..

Any ideas on what could have happened? Last thing I remember I was changing mp3s and somehow I right clicked it and then hit properties to get out of it, (I think) and now the entire bottom screen (where it says start - and on the right where it has all your icons and what's going on) is gone.
Is there something I can do to get it back without having to reboot?

Oh man you broke up a CATFIGHT? What were you thinking!

I take it you are in law enforcement? (I'm ex law enforcement, terminated for being too rough with an inmate.)

If you are working for a police department and it sounds like obviously a bad city, I'm with Rage, head somewhere else. There are some REALLY nice small sheriff departments out there. I mean the kind you see in the movies, with a small population, very peaceful, and you can kick back in your chair and eat donuts and drink coffee all day long.

Why can't you resign anyway? If you have your certification, as far as I know, it's good anywhere in the state. You just might have to pass a small pretest before getting into a new department. And if you can't resign because you signed a contract (like I did) then I say the hell with it, resign anyway and go to another department. (First let the other department hire you though of course.) It's better to pay back whatever money you owe than to stay working where you don't want to work. Work and life seem to go together, and if you're unhappy with work, chances are you'll be unhappy in life. Why work where you dont want to? If there is another reason why you can't resign forgive my post.

Remember all the negative reviews Battlefield Earth got? Despite the reviews I went with my gut feeling and it turned out to be one of my favorite movies of all time.
Don't trust the reviews, trust your instinct! It's usually always right.

they don't have to pay people to write out manuals and print them and stuff them in boxes

Except they didn't even give us a manual with the boxed version of Half-Life 2.

I highly doubt that Steam is the way PC games are going. There are so many people against Steam (take a look at the official forums) that I don't think the PC gaming community would put up with another steam from another company.

Since there are so many of us out there, it's likely that if another company pulled a "Steam" on us, that we'd organize into a boycott and not buy the game. That's the only way we can ever get our message across, is to organize and stick together and not buy the product. It didn't work with Half-Life 2. I woudn't be suprised if half the people who bought Half-Life 2 were against steam. (There are plenty of people who don't even have internet access who bought it. That should say something.)

What might happen instead of Steam though is an activation windows-xp type of thing, where you can either connect online and register your key with the server (so that way people cant use key generators or steal your key and try to use it) or you call the 800 number, giving you both chances.
Even that is up in the air though, could you imagine every game having it's own "Steam"? Just not going to happen. At least not in the next 10 years.

And I agree, I like being able to hold on to my boxed games, and bring them back out when I want to play again. I just installed Alpha Centauri and Quake *1* a week or so ago and am playing them again.
Who wants to download GB's of files? And what happens if Valve turns into another Dynamix and goes out of business, or is bought out, or goes bunkrupt.. what then? Steam is a risk and a lot of us see that. If you want "Steam" get a Phantom console. If it even does come out, it's going to go right back out of business because not enough people want a system where you can only download games and have to pay for them.
We can only hope though, that if by the rare chance that Steam does try to lead the way into the future of PC gaming, that we will actually organize next time around and stage an effective boycott.

I agree with you Big Jake. If you feel that strongly, I'd highly recommend that you don't buy Half-Life 2. If you do, you are supporting Steam. (I too am supporting Steam even though I dislike it.)
The are a few good singleplayer maps out there as well, two in particular - antlion_troopers and the bunker. Both have the starship troopers setting. On antlion troopers you are stationed at a tiny base in the middle of the desert with your squad (just like starship troopers) and in 1 minute, the alien bugs begin their invasion. You and your squad have to defend the base, and trust me it's TOUGH! In fact I can't beat it. The alien bugs super-jump over the walls and land all over us. While I'm fighting off the bugs on one side of the wall, they're jumping in from every other side. I turn around and see my comrades falling to the bug attacks. It's not long before the bugs over run our base and I myself am on the run.

I just have to say.. maps like antlion_troopers and the_bunker are one of the reasons why I bought Half-Life 2. (I had my eye on antlion_troopers well before buying Half-Life 2. I was holding back because of Steam, but when it went on sale for $39.99 at Circuit City, I coudn't resist anymore.)

What I'm trying to get at though is that there are plenty of other singleplayer games out there that could use your support more than Steam can.
Have you tried Star Trek Elite Force 1 and Elite Force 2? Elite Force 1 was the first game I ever played through the entire singleplayer campaign in. Naturally Elite Force 2 was a must by.
There's also Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Maybe even Breed. Or the Call of Duty series. Vietcong. Warhammer 40,000 Firewarrior. Operation Flashpoint.
In all the above games you are part of a team, not the typical "you against the world" type of scenario (Not to mention you don't need an internet connection just to play it.)So far in Half-Life 2 (I'm still towards the beginning) I have been by myself all the time. No allies like in the other games.

If you check the official steam forums you'll see that a large number of the posts there are directed at their hate towards Steam. Yet everyone bought it anyway.
If you do buy Half-Life 2, I'd suggest you just get steam so you can get the full benefit of the game. After you get registered on steam, convert your half-life 2 to steam, get all the updates, then you can be offline and play only singleplayer. Still it doesn't change the fact that an internet connection is required for Half-Life 2.

Anyway good luck and I hope you check out some of the other singleplayer games out there.. the developers could really use your support much more than Valve/Steam do!

Btw, have you tried Doom 3?

Even on a cable modem it's going to take a good long while to download. I believe the download is over 4GB.

Disarm is right you can probably find it cheaper in store, plus you get the box and cd's so if you have to reinstall windows or get another computer you don't have to waste all that time downloading 4+GB of files again, just the updates.

I got my Half-Life 2 for $39.99 at Circuit City. Check sunday's ads. (You can also visit the sites directly, bestbuy.com compusa.com and circuitcity.com and look up store ads.)

If there were more people and we were organized, I woudn't have bought Half-Life 2 either because of Steam. I didn't buy it at first thinking that if enough of us stuck together and didn't buy it, we'd be sending a message to Valve, but unfortunately it seems everyone (even people without internet!) went out and bought Half-Life 2 anyway. On the official forums there's really nothing but complaints against Steam. Yet, everyone bought the game..
So if you can't beat them, join them, right?

On a final note, even as much as I dislike Steam, Half-Life 2 is a VERY good game. I just barely scratched the surfance of the singleplayer game and am enjoying every moment of it.  :wink:

My computer was infected with spyware/adware and so I downloaded about 6 different trials (most free, like Spybot and AdAware) some wanted you to pay (BPS spyware, spyware sweeper, couple others) I figured at least one of them would get my computer 100% spyware free. It worked too, because some that Spybot didn't pick up, AdAware did, and some that AdAware didn't get, Spy Sweepr did. I think I got it all now except there's a problem.
Every time I load a program (any program) I get one of those installation notices. "SpywareRemover  - The feature is on a CD-ROM or other removable disk that is not available. Please insert disk and click OK."
I dont know which program this is, except that it's annoying me because when I click "cancel" it just pops right back up again, until about 5 cancels it finally stops. Then when I go to load steam or any other app/game, it comes up again!
I uninstalled my spyware programs (all of them) and no I have no spyware protection on my computer.
I figured one of them was causing this, except I'm STILL getting the popup! And I have no "SpywareRemover" on my computer!

This is getting frustrating as I don't know what could be causing it. Any ideas on what to do? Where to look to find out what's causing this? Maybe one of the uninstallations left something behind? I'm clueless as to what to do so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks, I'm using it now as my standard player. It plays the windows files without any problems and even almost looks like windows media player. Very nice.

I would think the value of an item depends on the availability of it.

While that may be true in some cases, it seems that the value of both games and movies lose value over time. I bought the original Alpha Centauri (with box and manual) for less than $10 on Ebay a few months ago. In five years it'll probably be even harder to find it, but there will be those selling preowned copies because they're tired of it and because it's such an old game, chances are it won't sell for very well.
Before the holidays when there was the mad playstation 2 slimline rush, a lot of people took advantage of it (I'm guilty as well because I made enough of a profit to buy two new playstation 2's plus have over $50 cash left over) ps2's selling at well over $200. Now they've (pretty much) restocked the supply of the new slimlines and the retail price is $150 - I even feel sorry for this lady who paid me $390 for a ps2 when there were SO MANY of them in stock at a gamestop by me that nobody ever went to. (But hey, she knew what she was getting herself into before bidding, or at least should should have.)

That's not to say that the WOW Collector's Edition will be restocked. They may not make anymore after whats left runs out.
But IMO, who cares? Is it really worth paying $150+ for some game with a nice little card and maybe an autograph? (Or whatever it comes with.) I guess some people like that and I'll never understand why.
I remember Warcraft 3 collector's edition though, which I got for around $40 I think. I waited about a year after War3 came out and at the local EB they were putting their remaining collector's editions on clearance. Went ahead and bought one since it was only a few dollars more than the regular edition.

Elvis, if you want WOW at $50 (IMO way too much for a MMO game because you have to pay just to play it when so many MMO games are free to download or you just pay for shipping, then pay the monthly fee) you can try buying it online. Most places have it in stock so you won't have to pay those redicilous $80 Ebay prices.
If you want though, you can go buy some gold to get you started on Ebay, only $54.99, and shipping is FREE as it goes right to your email box.  :wink:

I stand corrected, people can be just plain helpless on Ebay. Doing a search for World of Warcraft, the standard edition is selling on average for close to $80, and the Collector's Edition at over $160, and even "gold" for over $50 per 50 pieces of gold. Even CD keys going at over $60.