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[Deleted]

With 3d monitors having reached 2nd gen and quite a few new ones slated for release this year (and several decent ones already out on the market ie Asus' VG236), I wonder why chaud chooses to go with a similarly priced but subpar Dell LCD panel at the 300 dollar price range. The 120hz from 3D monitors is definitely worth it for people building rigs for gaming purposes + with the decent ones you're getting a better overall monitor than the Dell E2311

Heya ! The link on the 3rd spec is not E2311h but u2311h which is a IPS panel monitor (e2311h is TN). Ips has more accurate colours and better viewing angles than TN but worse ms response and usually frequency ( cons are not important IMO). 3D should be very annoying for hc gamers IMO ( I can't even stand movies on 3D. That said u2311h is a good option and pretty cheap for a IPS monitor.

[Switchshot]

True comic.... It's about the goal now, not about the experience

[Toejhomas]

That computer guide is all sorts of jacked, if you want a better one check out tinyurl.com/falconguide - it's updated every month.

[Titan]

There is no point in suggesting the P8P67 PRO to anyone who isn't going to be using it for crossfire/sli as 80 percent of the features are the same as the non pro. Anyone who doesn't know how to pick components themselves won't be doing serious, 5ghz overclocks. So the non-pro board will not only do everything they want, but cost $30 less.

Also, you should point out the aftermarket HSF is OPTIONAL. Only buy it if you are overclocking. the I5 2500k can run up to a maximum of 80C before fail. With the stock cooler on a chip that isn't overclocked it runs in the high 30's under load and in the high 20's while idle. Which, in Intel chip standards is freezing. So if someone does not plan to SLI and overclock to 4.5ghz they could save $90 by switching to the non-pro bored and going with the stock HSF. They could then put that $90 into a higher end GPU and have a machine that would outperform the one listed with all the same features.

[F-Minus]

When in comes to PSUs, Enermax is where it's at.

[Meugly]

I don't understand why so many of these ultimate system kind of things recommend inferior SSDs. I always check benchmarks, like this one:
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html

Probably the most interesting thing in consumer SSD right now is the Revo Drive X2. Gotta be the X2, not the first version. This baby has 4 Sandforce controllers on it, and maybe best of all, is on a PCI card.

[keLston]

I don't understand why so many of these ultimate system kind of things recommend inferior SSDs. I always check benchmarks, like this one:
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html

Probably the most interesting thing in consumer SSD right now is the Revo Drive X2. Gotta be the X2, not the first version. This baby has 4 Sandforce controllers on it, and maybe best of all, is on a PCI card.

Because cost is still a consideration. The revodrive x2 is also not a standard drive, PCI express drives have been around for a couple of years, not sure why they are suddenly more "interesting" now. They just happen to cost, oh I don't know, 4 times the price and the reliability of their data storage has been called into question.

Everyone knows the Crucial C300 series is the fastest on the market. Only caveat is that you're required to make sure you can support it (SATA3) and it costs nearly double other SSD drives but you're not getting double the performance. That priceerformance ratio is at the level of absurdity. It's beyond the point of reason. Are you really going to notice the 0.6 seconds?

[Lemons]

I hate the idea of guild rep. It just overcomplicates things. Really guilds should be something people either do or don't do at their own discretion, and putting a bunch of little rewards in is stupid. I mean, aren't there already enough rewards for being in a guild vs. solo play? Access to timely and reliable groups? Access to the professions of the guild? Maybe guild repairs? Epic loot? Etc? Being in a guild is its own fucking reward without having extra rewards piled onto that.

Right now, if you're not in a guild, or not in a high level guild, I bet you feel left out big time. I know I would.

[Scythen]

That comic resonated with me on a different level, mainly because I feel it's as much the games fault as it is the players for coming to the state it is in now.

Using the "Curious piece of landscape, I will explore it later" one as an example. I used to be that guy too... and now I'm not. Not just because WoWhead or any other wiki site says there is nothing there, but because there really is nothing there. Even back in the old Asheron's Call days if people remember that game, there were "Point of Interests" on the map you would go to and there would be Stonehenge type ruins or an abandoned castle. Problem was, they were interesting to look at, or as decorations, but you couldn't interact with them at all. They had virtually no purpose other than eye candy. WoW suffers heavily from the same thing.

Newmans Landing being a prime example of this problem. You can't interact with the little house there. You can't find any lore or anything related to it in game, who built it, why are goblins there. You can't read any of the books on the shelves. You can't do nothing there. You can't make a note about it on your map. You can't ask any NPC about it. When the artist created that house, he wasn't creating it with a backstory and lore. He wasn't thinking about who built it or why. He modeled it in Maya or whatever 3d program he uses, plopped it down in the world 3d space somewhere, added some non-interactive doodads to it. And submitted it for approval to his boss. His boss said "looks good" and it got put into the game. The most exciting thing about it now is it can be mentioned in the dozens of threads that have popped up over the years "Weird places in WoW", "Secret places in WoW".

It all comes back to human psychology. If you consider people who live in cities with landmarks... the landmarks are not exciting to them. If you live in Toronto, and see the CN Tower everyday on your way to work, you don't go "Ooooh ahhh look at that" everytime you see it. You don't even look at it most of the time. Tourists however, will take their picture with it in the background, show it to their family and friends when they get home... say "look I was there". You show that same picture to someone in Toronto however, and they shrug because if they turn their head, the tower is right there. The WoW world is like you live in a city with a landmark, but so does everyone else. So there is nobody to show the picture to who will care because they all see the same landmarks everyday on their way to work.

Same principle applies to the "Abyssals killing fisherman for sport" quest. You stop caring about the story behind the quest because you really have no effect on it. With phasing now, you have some effect on some things to a limited extent... but after not having that for so long... and making it limited to only some facets of the world, it doesn't resonate enough to make a difference. If you kill those 15 Abyssal creatures and finish the quest, then go back to the beach, chances are they are still there killing fisherman. So what was the point of even bothering? Oh right, the gold or experience you got for turning in the quest. Which goes back to why it doesn't matter what the story is behind it. It could've been a white untextured box banging up against a blue box and psychologically it would be exactly the same. The only reward was the gold or exp or item, there was no reward in the form of closure to the original problem which was the fisherman being killed for sport. So psychologically, when you later get asked to help a village that is being attacked by rabid grizzly bears, in your mind you know that even if you killed every grizzly in the forest, they will keep coming, so your mind dismisses the information about the bears and the village altogether and focuses only on the information that is relevant to you... the reward.

Anyway, this is already too long... and there really isn't any way to "fix" the problem. These are businesses that make these games to make a profit... and none of them have unlimited manpower, time and resources to create a fully interactive, fully immersive, fully living virtual world without the issues that result in the mindset illustrated in that comic. There's nothing we can do about it, so just like the quests in the game, our human minds dismiss that information and focus on what's relevant to us.... EPIC LOOTS!!!

It is what it is...

[Deleted]

how well will wow run on dolphin?

[Scythen]

That comic resonated with me on a different level, mainly because I feel it's as much the games fault as it is the players for coming to the state it is in now.

Using the "Curious piece of landscape, I will explore it later" one as an example. I used to be that guy too... and now I'm not. Not just because WoWhead or any other wiki site says there is nothing there, but because there really is nothing there. Even back in the old Asheron's Call days if people remember that game, there were "Point of Interests" on the map you would go to and there would be Stonehenge type ruins or an abandoned castle. Problem was, they were interesting to look at, or as decorations, but you couldn't interact with them at all. They had virtually no purpose other than eye candy. WoW suffers heavily from the same thing.

Newmans Landing being a prime example of this problem. You can't interact with the little house there. You can't find any lore or anything related to it in game, who built it, why are goblins there. You can't read any of the books on the shelves. You can't do nothing there. You can't make a note about it on your map. You can't ask any NPC about it. When the artist created that house, he wasn't creating it with a backstory and lore. He wasn't thinking about who built it or why. He modeled it in Maya or whatever 3d program he uses, plopped it down in the world 3d space somewhere, added some non-interactive doodads to it. And submitted it for approval to his boss. His boss said "looks good" and it got put into the game. The most exciting thing about it now is it can be mentioned in the dozens of threads that have popped up over the years "Weird places in WoW", "Secret places in WoW".

It all comes back to human psychology. If you consider people who live in cities with landmarks... the landmarks are not exciting to them. If you live in Toronto, and see the CN Tower everyday on your way to work, you don't go "Ooooh ahhh look at that" everytime you see it. You don't even look at it most of the time. Tourists however, will take their picture with it in the background, show it to their family and friends when they get home... say "look I was there". You show that same picture to someone in Toronto however, and they shrug because if they turn their head, the tower is right there. The WoW world is like you live in a city with a landmark, but so does everyone else. So there is nobody to show the picture to who will care because they all see the same landmarks everyday on their way to work.

Same principle applies to the "Abyssals killing fisherman for sport" quest. You stop caring about the story behind the quest because you really have no effect on it. With phasing now, you have some effect on some things to a limited extent... but after not having that for so long... and making it limited to only some facets of the world, it doesn't resonate enough to make a difference. If you kill those 15 Abyssal creatures and finish the quest, then go back to the beach, chances are they are still there killing fisherman. So what was the point of even bothering? Oh right, the gold or experience you got for turning in the quest. Which goes back to why it doesn't matter what the story is behind it. It could've been a white untextured box banging up against a blue box and psychologically it would be exactly the same. The only reward was the gold or exp or item, there was no reward in the form of closure to the original problem which was the fisherman being killed for sport. So psychologically, when you later get asked to help a village that is being attacked by rabid grizzly bears, in your mind you know that even if you killed every grizzly in the forest, they will keep coming, so your mind dismisses the information about the bears and the village altogether and focuses only on the information that is relevant to you... the reward.

Anyway, this is already too long... and there really isn't any way to "fix" the problem. These are businesses that make these games to make a profit... and none of them have unlimited manpower, time and resources to create a fully interactive, fully immersive, fully living virtual world without the issues that result in the mindset illustrated in that comic. There's nothing we can do about it, so just like the quests in the game, our human minds dismiss that information and focus on what's relevant to us.... EPIC LOOTS!!!

It is what it is...

[Pexxle]

The comic is pure LOL and Truthpaste.