Ever since the first Playstation began to threaten the world of PC gaming, I have stood upon my midtower case and proclaimed "PC gaming is KING!" For the first time, in 15 years of PC ownership, I may have to eat my words. One of the hottest topics I have spent recent time debating with friends, is whether to keep up with the PC gaming race. I have never owned a cutting edge machine. Within a year of a new PC purchase, I've either upgraded some part of the system, or found my machine to be lacking in some area related to gaming. Usually, it was the video card. A new gaming rig still runs in $1500+ range (depending, of course, what you have to upgrade). Let's face it, with the desktop PC I have now, I'd need to buy a whole new system (mine's a 1.8 Pentium 4, with older PC2100 RAM). Ever component, except maybe the hard drives, needs and upgrade. The fact of the matter is, I no longer use my PCs much for gaming. If I do, it's older games like Quake 3, or others I put aside long ago that still run fine. I didn't buy Doom 3, heck I didn't even buy Quake 4!
If a new machine is going to run $1500 (or more), every 2-3 years, it simply isn't logical to keep upgrading, when the XBox360 will end up playing most of the games I'd want to play. Well, a decked out XBox360 will run likely around $600 (with extra controllers, etc). If it can support a mouse and keyboard, and play like a PC, why should I bother with a PC? Now, I am no XBox fanboy; ours was free and we own maybe 10 games for it. I wouldn't have purchased one. I love our Playstation 2 infinitely more. The bottom line is, if I can kill two birds with one stone (console action and PC gaming) with one machine, saving me $1500 (closer to $3000 if an XBox lasts 4-5 years between models), why not? Even if I ended up buying a Playstation each generation, that's still only $1000 every 4-5 years, instead of $3000. If I take into account my wife's machine, then the cost is just astronomical. She plays PC games so seldom.
So, even though I may end up jumping on the XBox fanwagon, at least I have solid logic behind it. I am tired of trying to keep up with PC hardware. Now that the XBox360 has media center features, it can serve as the family music jukebox and so much more. Essentially, it is the family PC for gaming.
What do you think? Are you a diehard PC gamer that refuses to give into the consoles? Are you a console addict that chucked your PC long ago? Or, are you a hopeful convert like me?
EverQuest never ceases to amaze me. Even though we left the game (we were last playing EQ2) last summer, I still like to read about new expansions and happenings. Regardless of what you may think about pay-to-play games, the experience is really unique in any of the persistent world types. These would include World of Warcraft, Asheron's Call, EverQuest, and even the legendary Ultima Online.
EQ2 is about to see its second expansion. The first, Desert of Flames, was released last fall. The new one, called Kingdom of Sky, brings back one of the truly unique parts of the original game. The Plane of Sky, in EverQuest 1, was interesting in that the entire level consisted of islands floating high into the heavens. The zone was one of the first to have a quest progression to complete it, paving the way for other expansions, like my favorite, Planes of Power to use the same system. The screenshots for this expansion are just amazing. EQ2 is stil the best looking MMORPG and likely will remain so for some time. Looking at the dragons, beautiful landscapes, and hearing the legendary music almost brings a tear to my eye. I feel like those places really existed and that I was there. Well, we were, in a way. Here's to EQ (and EQ2)! Fond memories...
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