Category Archives: General

Misc Games on Windows 8

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Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to try out a few miscellaneous games in my Steam Library. It didn’t go so well.

Avernum: Escape From the Pit

Runs fine.

Civilization 5

My favorite Civ was Civ 2, but that was also the one I played the most. I played a bit just to check, and it seems to run fine.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

This game ran just fine on Windows 8. Good news since I’m a fan of Tower Defense games and this is a pretty good one.

Fallout 3

I just peeked in, and this also runs fine.

FTL: Faster Than Light

Lots of people talked about how this game is really good, so I wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, it is unplayable for me. Not sure if that is a Windows 8 thing or not. The problem is that the mouse movement is terribly slow and very erratic. I googled around and see many others reporting this problem, which apparently has to do with mouse drivers. Nothing I tried fixed it.

I do have a backup plan: see if this game plays better on my Mac.

DEFCON

Has the same problem as FTL does: unusable mouse.

HOARD

This bombs out almost immediately, before displaying the splash screen:

Error launching HOARD

Error launching HOARD

A quick google shows this happens to others, and the general advice is “update your video drivers”. Well that’s interesting, my OS is even newer than the most recent WHQL drivers on the nVidia site. But what the heck, I downloaded and tried to install the GeForce 306.97 drivers.

And that didn’t work! Yes, the nVidia drivers failed to find compatible graphics hardware. That’s funny, except it really is annoying as heck.

nVidia error

nVidia error

You can see that I’m installing the notebook, Windows 8, 64 bit drivers – the name of the freaking binary – yet it can’t find my video card. Or more likely, the detection is messed up. Argh, video drivers, the bane of PC gaming.

(I’m a LoTRO fan at heart, I use their calendar wallpapers for my background!)

Psychonauts

Runs just fine.

Skyrim

Also runs fine on Windows 8. It’s been a while since I played. My first char was a “pure” archer, but I found that pretty tough going. Next char was a dual sword wielding Redguard. That’s going better but I think I’d rather play a single sword char, since freeing up the other hand would allow for a shield or magic use. Anyway, things to ponder if I restart. It wasn’t like I was far along anyway. ;)

SpaceChem

A favorite puzzler of mine. Glad to see if runs fine on Windows 8.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP

I bought this for my iPhone, played it a little and really liked the music. It was part of an Indie Humble Bundle I bought, so I get it through Steam as well. Unfortunately, it doesn’t run properly – it shows the main loading page (“record” circle and 3 small triangles) but nothing else. I had to kill the game via Task Manager, and I noticed it was a 32-bit executable. Maybe it isn’t handling a 64-bit OS and/or Windows 8 well. Same backup plan as FTL – see if it works better on my Mac.

SWTOR

This game runs fine. I’ve been playing a little bit since it went F2P and plan on a post later to give my impressions.

Overall

Overall, most games run fine on Windows 8. The ones that gave the problems were the indie games, but I have a bunch of those due to Humble Bundle purchases, plus the occasional recommendation I catch from other blogs. At least I can retry FTL, HOARD, DEFCON, Superbrothers over on my Mac.

The one game I did not get around to trying was XCOM: Enemy Unknown. That’s mostly because I didn’t have a good time block available and I knew I’d want to play a few hours. I’m sure that over the upcoming weeks I’ll find some time!

The most annoying thing was the nVidia driver problem, the fact that the supposedly correct package, straight from nVidia, wouldn’t even install. Grrrr. That is my hope for playing GW2 again (I’m still hitting the video timeout issues that plagued me before under Windows 7. It isn’t worse or better under Windows 8 thus pointing to video drivers at fault).

P.S. Mac quick check

I popped over to my Mac and tried out the games that failed to run properly on Windows 8.

DEFCON – runs fine, no jerky mouse movement
FTL – runs fine, no jerky mouse movement
HOARD – launches and plays without OpenGL errors
Superbrothers – launches and runs fine. I’m so glad the soundtrack came with the Humble Bundle purchase!

Glad that my Mac is able to play the games that don’t work on Windows 8! I’m considering a Mac upgrade soon. If that does happen, I’ll be able to try the LoTRO and GW2 Mac clients! That could also be my ultimate solution to my GW2 problems.

Windows 8

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Something as terrifying as the Eye of Sauron was released recently… duh duh duhnnn… Windows 8!

Okay, maybe that is a little dramatic. A few weeks ago I decided to make some minor upgrades to my gaming notebook. I bought a 256 GB SSD, and Windows 8. They arrived and I did the SSD swap, and then plunged ahead and installed Windows 8. I like some of the enhancements (mostly under the hood improvements to the system) especially the newer file copy dialog and task manager. However, my gaming notebook isn’t touch-screen so I lose about half of the design benefit. That’s OK because I spend 99% in desktop mode where it is pretty much like Windows 7, just with a very different Start Menu.

The first thing I installed was Google Chrome. Next was Steam, and I started the download of LoTRO. Then I installed Guild Wars 2 and started it downloading. I took an overnight of downloading to get the bare minimum games from my Steam Library installed. Other than a handful of games, that’s gonna be it except for (maybe) Virtual Box. I’m going to be crazy fascist about keeping this system “clean”, to the point of setting up a VM to contain other stuff, like Adobe Reader, Flash, java anything, compilers/debuggers and so on. This is my gaming system!

After LoTRO installed, I fired it up and it ran just fine. WHEW! I was worried about that actually. Some other games I wanted to try (after all, this blog is MMO Juggler, whereby I dabble amongst the many MMOs) didn’t fare so well.

Vindictus locked up big time, and even after I managed to terminate the process, it left a thread in the System process pounding my disk at 100%. Yes I have an SSD now, but 100% disk activity still drags the system down. Since this system has none of my usual triage tools, such as the SysInterals suite, or a debugger of any kind, I couldn’t see what was going on. Not that it would have told me much anyway, other than “yep, busted on Windows 8″. I had to restart my notebook so for now, bye bye Vindictus.

Vindictus Lock Up

Vindictus Lock Up

I also tried cranking up Everquest II. Back in the day, when the “big three” were UO, EQ, and AC, I played Asheron’s Call. I never did play EQ so when I saw that EQ2 went free-to-play I thought, hey I’ll check it out. Unfortunately, EQ2 did not start either. More specifically, it never exited the first time install “setting up DirectX” portion after launching from Steam. It just sat there, claiming to be installing DX9. I guess the detection method is confused on Windows 8. I’m not sure if this is a Steam thing or a app thing – LoTRO popped up the same “installing DX9″ dialog, but it moved on. Another uninstall. Sorry but I’m a little tighter on disk space now (currently ~90 GB free) and I’m not going to have an MMO that doesn’t even run sucking up disk space.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes had no problems – it installed, launched, and popped up the Login screen. I don’t have an account, so I just exited and will make one later.

Star Trek Online hasn’t completed the download yet.

Other MMOs I have also run fine: Guild Wars 2, DDO, and Fallen Earth. I logged into both and played a little bit of each. I also fired up other games I enjoy (Defense Grid: The Awakening, Skyrim, SpaceChem, a few others) just to see if they ran on Windows 8, and they also had no problems. Overall Windows 8 works for the games most important to me. I gave most games a cursory play, but I’ve played LoTRO several hours on Windows 8 at this point and it is fine. If LoTRO didn’t work, that’s a 100% deal breaker and I would have wiped the disk, dug out my Windows 7 DVD, and installed that instead.

One odd thing with GW2 – I linked my account with the mobile authenticator, an app from Google that implements two-factor authentication. I’m not asked for the authentication code when I log in, but still have it enabled according to my account profile. Not sure what is going on there, maybe I need to unlink/relink to get that working again (due to my reinstall)?

In conclusion, most my games are working fine under Windows 8. I’m sure the issues that prevent EQ2 and Vindictus from running are straightfoward, so if those are your top games, don’t worry just be patient. Besides, only crazy people jump on an OS upgrade so soon after release. ;)

EDIT (Mon Nov 12):

STO finally downloaded (I guess the servers were busy) and I went to install it. It hit the same “Installing DirectX” dialog that EQ2 appeared hung at, but I decided to let to go because I had some other minor errands I could finish up. About 10-15 minutes later (seriously, it was about that long), it finally continued on and I got the splash screen.

Now I couldn’t actually start the game, due to an issue obtaining an account. That’s just the usual “create an account vs send me password reminder” thing so I anticipate having that squared away soon.

Since EQ2 looked stuck at the same point, I thought I would give it another chance too. I gave up after about 5 minutes the previous time, maybe there is some quirk that makes it take so long. So I re-downloaded EQ2, went to run it… and boom it zipped through the dialog in seconds. I already have a SOE account, and EQ2 launched just fine.

Since letting the DirectX setup take its own sweet time for STO somehow corrected the issue for EQ2, I think the most likely explanation is that DirectX version check isn’t matching what Steam or the game expects, so it goes to download it. The download is the unusually long delay.

I ran EQ2 long enough to create two characters and do the combat training, so it seems to work under Windows 8 as well. As soon as I get my account info straightened out for STO I’ll try there as well.

Juggling Act, So Far

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I took stock of the games I’m currently playing (LoTRO, DDO, Fallen Earth).

So far so good, but this isn’t an equal juggling act – my time splits out to approximately 70% LoTRO, 15% DDO, 15% Fallen Earth. I would expect that to trend towards 60-20-20, but next month Guild Wars 2 releases and that may upset the unequal balance I have carefully achieved. ;)

The thing is, I really enjoyed Guild Wars (playing it obsessively for two years, to the point where I burned out midway through taking one char through EoTN) but Guild Wars 2 will be different for me. First: it has competition from other MMOs, so my time is naturally constrained – Guild Wars had no consistent rival when I played it the most. Second: it is a new and different game – related, but different. I’m sure I will enjoy it quite a bit, but probably not to the exclusion of the other games I am also having fun playing.

The real “losers” in this situation are some games I’m interested in, but can’t squeeze in: SWTOR, and EVE (subbing again, in this case). Trying to play 4 MMOs is already crazy enough, so adding more isn’t worth it. This isn’t even directly about paying a monthly fee – I just can’t imagine trying to split time between 5 or 6 games and actually rotating through consistently enough to remember what to do ;) or feel like I’m making progress! I remember playing EVE ~2 years ago; if I only could spend 2 hours a week playing, I’d spend all my in-game time fiddling with my skill queue. Maybe that is specific to EVE – I think it requires a certain minimum amount of time per week to be worthwhile. Possible exceptions included training a very long skill. But that wouldn’t be the case for starting up a new character.

Newbie Bloggers Initiative (Newbie Blogs)

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My small value-add is an attempt to categorize the NBI blogs into the games they cover. That makes it more useful to me, and perhaps to you too. There is a catch-all “General” category as well, for blogs that are more difficult to categorize (ones that aren’t obviously about a few MMOs, very new blogs, etc). I made a best effort, so results not guaranteed, warranty not included, void where prohibited, and so on.

Apologies if I missed a few. I’ll make corrections as needed, when I notice or if somebody points it out. ;) You can always check Syp’s master list, or the NBI HQ forums.

General

Aion

Anarchy Online

A Tale in the Desert

Diablo 3

EVE Online

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2

Lord of the Rings Online

Runes of Magic

Secret World

Starcraft 2

Star Trek Online

Star Wars – The Old Republic

Team Fortress 2

Tera

World of Tanks

World of Warcraft

Wurm Online

Newbie Bloggers Initiative (Sponsors)

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The team of bloggers collectively known as Syp, publishing as BioBreak1, started a Newbies Blogger Initiative to encourage and foster new MMO bloggers.

Most folks posted a greeting and link when starting… I figured I’d wait until the last day(s) of the initiative in order to link to all the new blogs started, the sponsor bloggers, and toss out more publicity for the NBI project. Due to overwhelming participation, I decided to split this into two posts: sponsors and new blogs.

Also, I hope to figure out how to add a blogroll and link thing-a-ma-gizmo to the right column. I figured out how to make a bundle in Google Reader, now I just need to export it somehow. I see this all over so I know it can be done!

What is a little surprising is the number of NBI wrap-up posts. I thought the initiative ran through the end of May, so there is still tomorrow. Right?! In any case, the sponsor list is unlikely to change, so here are links to the sponsor’s blogs, and the next post will be a link to all Newbie blogs.

Sponsors:

  1. ALT:ernative
  2. The Ancient Gaming Noob
  3. Ardent Defender
  4. Ardwulf’s Lair
  5. Ark’s Ark
  6. Avatars of Steel
  7. Beau Hindman
  8. Berath’s Brain Burps
  9. Blog of the Vagabond
  10. Blue Kae
  11. Blog de la Burro
  12. Bullet Points
  13. Casting a Shaddoe
  14. Casual is as Casual Does
  15. Casual Stroll to Mordor
  16. Contains Moderate Peril
  17. Creep of the Prophet
  18. A Ding World
  19. DocHoliday’s MMO Saloon
  20. Dragonchasers
  21. Epic Slant
  22. ETCmmo
  23. Gamer BC
  24. Games and Geekery
  25. Gamer LadyP
  26. Gankalicious
  27. A Green Mushroom
  28. Grimnir’s Grudge
  29. High Latency Life
  30. Hunter’s Insight
  31. I Have Touched the Sky
  32. Inventory Full
  33. Jaded Alt
  34. The Jedi Gambit
  35. Journeys With Jaye
  36. Just One MMOre
  37. Just One More Unlock
  38. Kill Ten Rats
  39. Levelcapped
  40. Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle
  41. Live Like a Nerd
  42. LOTRO Fashion
  43. Malchome’s Mind
  44. Mana Obscura
  45. MMO Compendium
  46. MMO Fallout
  47. MMO Gamer Chick
  48. Mr. Meh’s Supplication
  49. Nerdy Bookahs
  50. Nomnom.info
  51. Parallel Context
  52. Professor Beej
  53. Psychochild
  54. Restokin
  55. Roll One Hundred
  56. Scary Worlds
  57. Screaming Monkeys
  58. Shards of Imagination
  59. Sheep the Diamond
  60. Skycandy
  61. Star Shadow
  62. The Stories of O
  63. Stropp’s World
  64. Tales of the Aggronaut
  65. Tastes like Battle Chicken
  66. Tiger Ears
  67. Tish Tosh Tesh
  68. Tremayne’s Law
  69. T.R. Red Skies
  70. Vicarious Existence
  71. Wadstomp
  72. Welcome to Spinksville
  73. West Karana
  74. The Wild Boar Inn
  75. World of Matticus
  76. Yeebo Fernbottom’s MMO Love In

76 Sponsors! That’s a lot of support; thanks folks! Apologies if I missed any blogs… leave a note and I will add to the list.

1. See reference post.

Soaking up Info

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I have this OCD condition about gaming and MMOs in particular – I read/study tons of information about a game, before ever playing it.

Part of that is due to the nature of these games, with so many choices about a character (race, class/profession, skills, etc.) that I hate feeling lost right off the bat, and for some largely unfounded reason, fear making a “wrong” decision early on. While I do like to have a vague idea of what’s going on, I think it may be excessive when I find myself digging up too much info on character design (classes and skills), quest optimization, things to avoid, etc. all before I’ve even created a char!

This is easy to do these days, with the wealth of info available on wikis, forums, strategy guides, blogs, youtube videos… when I catch myself diving in too deep, I stop. It isn’t that I think I’ll ruin the game, it is more that I tell myself it is silly past a certain point, because I can’t really get a feel for a game by just reading about it.

My new goal along these lines is to limit myself to reading tips for newbies, and then actually try the game out. That would be kinda fun, to be a bit clueless at the start, and have to experiment.

Impulse Fighting

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I read Syp’s post about playing STO and realized I’m in that position concerning LoTRO. As you may have noticed from recent posts, I’ve been ignoring Guild Wars and DDO. Oh well. ;) I’m having tons of fun and enjoying various characters in LoTRO, and don’t see the need to switch games just because. I would like to advance in the Guild Wars quest “War in Kryta”, but it is on the back burner for now.

Monthly Fees

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I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m currently only playing Free-to-Play (a.k.a. f2p, freemium, microtransaction supported, whatever you want to call them) MMOs right now.

But I also don’t mind subscribing to one game at a time. After all, $15 a month is a bargain, there isn’t much else that gives the same entertainment value (time-wise) for the money. Plus, multi-month subscriptions are typically discounted a bit. And I’m not talking about playing every waking moment either – I think even if you just play 5 hours a week, 20 hours a month, the subscription is worth it. Heck, only Netflix might be a better deal than an MMO subscription.

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