Halo 2 Online Preservation Effort Ends 201
A couple weeks ago, we discussed news that some dedicated Halo 2 fans were keeping the game's multiplayer alive after support for online play was dropped. Now, a few days shy of a month after support ended, the last users have been knocked off the server.
"[A user named] Apache N4SIR outlasted everyone. 'May 11th @ 0158hrs I was FORCEFULLY REMOVED!!' he wrote on the forums at Bungie.net. 'I thought I'd be the one turning off the lights but that was done for me. Good night everyone, my Elite needs a rest.' His last comrade in arms, Agent Windex, was still signed on, as spotted by Kotaku at 4 p.m. US Pacific Time on May 10, but their adventure, which began on April 15, ended after Windex announced 21 minutes later that he had been removed from play and Apache N4SIR suffered a similar fate hours later, as he described in his post."
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And nothing of value was lost.
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BTW, you can still play Halo 2:
Using XLink or XBConnect. Both of which are basically just VPNs that trick your xbox into thinking your buddy across the pond (or down the road) is on your LAN.
On Windows Vista (Halo 2 PC)
Local Splitscreen.
Better yet, why not try something new?!
Re:and... (Score:5, Interesting)
XBConnect is pretty sweet.
Allowed playing of the Original Halo online before Xboxlive existed.
Also allowed for playing of Halo 2 online well before the official release date
Not to mention all the modded Halo versions that can only be played online via a VPN
VPN allowed for much more freedom with regards to game choices and banning of cheating players.
Once again the community compiled something more useful than the locked down mainstream service.
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Unfortunately the future of PC gaming through traditional (dedicated server) means is in jeopardy as far as mainstream titles are concerned.
PC games used to have an online edge because even if a game was created across many platforms the PC game would have Modding capabilities as well as dedicated servers. This edge would continue as games would become timeless and online play would only be limited by community support rather than some douche behind a desk crunching numbers.
Unfortunately this differentiatio
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That's why no serious PC gamer seriously considers MW2 for purchase.
The sky is not falling. The beauty of PCs is you don't need anyone's permission to do what you want with your hardware. Multiplayer gaming where the customers are in control is not going away.
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Re:and... (Score:4, Insightful)
And what if 3,500,000 people take their $50 elsewhere? What then?
This is why I don't own a console, and probably never will. A console doesn't give me enough control, and is nothing but a money pit. Far more so than a PC.
Control is what it comes down to. I insist on controlling the equipment I own. Excepting my Cable box (which I'm basically renting) I have ultimate authority over all electronics in my house. Nobody else can tell me how to use it., and nobody can remotely disable any of it's capabilities.
Think about it: What good are those old X-boxes now? You can't play online with them, and Single player was NEVER very impressive on them. They don't have HD capabilities, so even XBMC isn't useful anymore. They are junk. Not even useful for nostalgia's sake like an old Atari, NES, or SNES. And the old games? Money down the drain. Hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars per person just gone.
With PC games, even if my PC dies and I have to build a new one, I can still play my old games. Even if I change OSes I can still play most of them because community groups are porting them over. So even though I've changed PC's multiple times since MW4 came out, I can still bust it out and play it, any time I want. (and I do. MW4 was and is a great game.)
Long live PC gaming.
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That same $50 means a lot more to a little indie game developer who is in the business of giving gamers what they want, instead of telling gamers what they want and delivering crap. I don't care if I hurt EA or Ubisoft or whoever. I care about helping the little guy.
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So if pirate it, will they miss my $50 then?
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PC makers shoulder much of the blame for the decline in PC gaming. A console isn't a moving target--you know exactly what the hardware will be, barring a few variables (hard disk size, online capability, etc.)
Today, we have brand-new computers being sold with everything from low-power Atom CPUs with atrocious integrated video cards up to 64-bit quad-core behemoths with 2GB video cards. Where the hell do you target your game? You could aim for the low end, which is going to make your game look like a piece o
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Think about it: What good are those old X-boxes now? You can't play online with them, and Single player was NEVER very impressive on them. They don't have HD capabilities, so even XBMC isn't useful anymore. They are junk. Not even useful for nostalgia's sake like an old Atari, NES, or SNES. And the old games? Money down the drain. Hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars per person just gone.
Utter bullshit. I never played my Xbox online, so I don't miss it at all. There are plenty of good single player gam
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It's hard and adds development time, which is a tough sell when you have a deadline and budget to meet.
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You're not kidding. I just picked up X-Com UFO Defense. This is a game that could keep me busy all year, if not longer. And that's just the first title.
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Huh...they have Master of Magic. A truly "good old game" surpassed, surprisingly, by Age of Wonders (and especially Age of Wonder II: Shadow Magic). Essentially the same gameplay only better in Age of Wonders. Yes, I was surprised too since MoM was a childhood favorite.
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Pretty much. I played through MW2's single player campaign, and it was pretty good...but I haven't logged a single minute in multiplayer.
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I considered purchasing it.
But then I realized I want to play using a keyboard and mouse, and I don't know if the PS3 version supports them.
...what, you didn't think I was talking about buying the PC version did you? While I am a PC gamer (I clock between 10-20 hours in Team Fortress 2 a week), I certainly wouldn't buy the PC version of MW2.
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Ah... But that's only with the "oooh...shiny..." stuff that the big-boys are making. The indie space is doing fine and well- and it's doing so well that it scraped up over a million dollars in a couple of days' time.
As long as there's programmable computers, there'll be a market. And there'll be machines you can add an application to for some time to come.
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I'm more concerned about dishonest modifications. Modding is great, but modding in order to cheat just makes me nerd rage like that time they randomly killed Yar. These days you can't play two rounds in a row without some twelve year old breaking the game with a ridiculous aimbot or teleport glitch. It's no longer a game if you don't follow the few rules.
At least on a console, most cheaters are limited to lag hacks and controller mods, which are quite annoying but at least the rep system gets them banned
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As an "idiot console gamer", I'm more than happy with the compromise. I play more SP than MP these days anyway (lack of time to learn maps and submit to multiple humiliations to learn the nuances of a game that I'd only get to play a couple of hours a week) and I rarely play old console games, I'll fire up a PC emulator if I need to play really old suff. For me, the trade-off of not having to deal with driver issues and patch issues and DRM issues and OS issues and the hardware arms race of constantly upgra
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They don't need to provide legacy support for old games though - if their games are created in such a way that users can run their own game servers, someone else can do it as long as there's someone that still wants to play the game.
As others have pointed out in this discussion, PC games from as far back as Quake (1996) are still perfectly playable because it uses an 'open', dedicated server based framework for its multiplayer services.
Sadly, the PC world is catching up to the console world in this respect - because developers are less interested in having you play their game for more than ten years. They don't see the advantages in having a game that lives that long and instead want you to continue buying the next version every year or so. Unfortunately for people that care about having good games that will last for a really long time (like me), this model is proving super-successful.
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Halo2 can be played peer-peer. Microsoft is shutting down (has shutdown?) the original Xbox live service presumably to retire legacy support in order to make it easier to bring out new features (I'm guessing its not a hardware cost since most have since migrated to 360, XBL2). So this was more about supporting the matchmaking and whatnot. I can't remember if Halo2 supports LAN or not, but presumably you could play that way, or on one of the internet tunnels like Halo1 had when it came out.
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So this was more about supporting the matchmaking and whatnot.
Right - but with an open dedicated server based model, /they can't take this away/, because people can just create their own matchmaking systems. Often ones that will be superior to the original because they can be done on a per-community basis.
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There is a difference between peer to peer lan play, and an online system with pickup games.
I run a battlenet server for local diablo2 and warcraft3 players that has about 15 people online at any given time. this is great considering that the local isp offers 5mb links between local users but only has about 10mb shared for all of us to use.
We also have a few quake servers and are running a jedi outcast server that gets some frequent use.
Try that without a full-blown dedicated server.
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Dedicated server doesn't have to mean some machine in a data center. I have hosted plenty of games with my home server.
Besides, you can have *both*, like most FPSs.
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Unfortunately for people that care about having good games that will last for a really long time (like me), this model is proving super-successful.
Its not that it's proving successful, its more of a lack of options. Sure you can still play your older games and wish that the newer ones would do that same in being usable as long as you wish, but what would the alternative be? Not buy the new games and then you are left playing the same games over and over. And I don't think your looking at this in the right angle. Hardware fails and that will render all these old tech and games obsolete no matter how much you don't want to lose these games. Systems like
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Its not that it's proving successful, its more of a lack of options
Right, but the reason there's a lack of options (for, say, dedicated server-based multiplayer PC games) is because we're seeing less of a focus on creating dedicated server based games. There is more focus on /controlling/ the multiplayer infrastructure now - and one reason is probably so they can simply turn it off when they want you to upgrade to the latest version.
Hardware fails and that will render all these old tech and games obsolete no matter how much you don't want to lose these games. Systems like NES, SNES, Genesis, they are mostly gone aside from a rare special-built system but then the games are going away to, as time really does kill all things material.
Those are all examples of closed systems though. Nintendo don't want people thinking SNES or NES - they want them thinking Wii and Wii game
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bnetd [wikipedia.org]
PvPGN [wikipedia.org] - Supports Diablo 1,2,LoD, Star Craft:bw, Warcraft 3 and it's expansion.
PvPGN even supports westwood games! Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge.
Now it supports two dune games and NOX even!
It's quite a piece of work.
MMO servers have also been reverse engineered traditionally:
Coun
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Wanna bet big money on that? [wikipedia.org] BNetd's no longer maintained by the original developers, who LOST BIG on the suit that Vivendi filed against their happy backsides. Sure it's lurking around- but if Activision so much as smells a big open rollout of that thing like it did previously, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will sue again over it.
The only reason you'v
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Meanwhile some online games on the PS3 like Warhawk support LAN play and dedicated server modes just fine.
Re:and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else feel it sad when people reference a whole six years as an eternity, after which a product should surely be dropped?
Stuff used to be made to last a lifetime. I have an old double-barreled shotgun my granddad passed down to me. My mother has dresses, dolls, and other heirlooms passed down to her by her mother. Most of this stuff is 50-75 years old, and I envision it to be around a lot longer. Even in content - I've got movies and such that are as old as I am (original release Star Wars VHS for example). Yet with this type of thing, well, it's SIX years old. It's obvious that you shouldn't expect to keep using it.
Re:and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Monopoly, Risk, Axis & Allies, Diplomacy (50 years old).
Yea-- hard to believe ANYONE would want to play a game 7 years after it was published.
Games Workshop is getting bad about this (as is Magic the Gathering).
Sure- you can play on your own, but convention play requires the current figures and rules. Which are arbitrarily changed about every 24-36 months.
Business wants you to RENT everything- no ownership.
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Anyone else feel it sad when people reference a whole six years as an eternity, after which a product should surely be dropped?
Stuff used to be made to last a lifetime. I have an old double-barreled shotgun my granddad passed down to me. My mother has dresses, dolls, and other heirlooms passed down to her by her mother. Most of this stuff is 50-75 years old, and I envision it to be around a lot longer. Even in content - I've got movies and such that are as old as I am (original release Star Wars VHS for example). Yet with this type of thing, well, it's SIX years old. It's obvious that you shouldn't expect to keep using it.
And how much of it is still supported by the manufacturer? Most items you can buy and have been able to buy for decades normally are supported by the manufacturer for 30 to 90 days after purchase. Most products you can buy are only made to have usage for a year then its dropped by the maker in favor of the next years model and most won't help you with a product thats 2+ years old since it's no long for sale.
As for the Halo 2, while some support for the product has been dropped on what is technically somethi
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I imagine if you sent a 40 year old shotgun in to Mossberg for repairs they'd be able to do it with very little issue and have it back to you in under a month.
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Dunno about Mossberg, but I know that in the 90's, Beretta did this with a handgun that was more than 40 years old.
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Heh... MOST gun manufacturers, if they're still in business and are either making the parts or can make them will service a gun, decades after it's made, for a price. Well, every one of them except the people making saturday night specials, that is.
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So are Steam and the PlayStation Network (PSN), but oddly enough, those are free to the end user.
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That would depend entirely upon the price they're charging for the repairs and whether people would be willing to pay it. If you've framed it in right, there's a business there that'd be viable for a while yet to come. It's just that businesses rarely frame it in right these days.
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In addition to the business brought in from repairing older shotguns, the manufacturer can expect to sell more new guns based on their reputation for continued support and service.
That happens to be one of the big draws of buying from the old school gun makers, they do tend to support their products for a long long time. The Mossberg 500 is a fantastic example. It is probably the best selling shotgun in the world, and the basic design has been unchanged for literally 50 years. People buy them because the
Re:and... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all part of the rentification. At one time when you bought something you owned it. You could expect to pass it on to your children one day. Your wealth would tend to increase over time.
Now, it's all essentially a multi-year rental. Even major appliances may be expected to conk out in a decade or so and become landfill (yeah, that's really green!). You may rest assured that replacement parts will not be available should you decide to try to fix it or they will only be available to the brand X authorized repair shop that will (because of the costs to become authorized) charge you nearly as much as the cost of a new unit to replace the $20 part (that cost $2 to make and $8 to ship from China). Yeah, perhaps you were thinking one of those fancy new ones would be nice anyway, but it might have been nice to sell the old one to someone who needed a good deal on a basic appliance.
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Yeah, my grandmother still has a working 40 year fridge. You know what? It uses much more energy than ours, and it's much smaller.
Besides, I don't know about there, but here appliances are recycled. In fact, when you buy a new one, the shop is *obligated* to take care of your old one and make sure it's recycled.
It's very often less "green" to continue using an old appliance (much less efficient) than buying a new one, even wasting the energy used to recycle the old and manufacture the new.
Another example is
Re:and... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are operating under the assumption that you did not put more energy and resources into the manufacture of the new equipment or that it was going to be done anyway. Now if you really needed a new computer to do something you could not do before that holds up. You should always use the newer more energy efficent model. On the otherhand if that P4 was doing everything you needed it to do the truely green thing would probably have been to never create a market for that new computer and therefore avoid its constuction in the first place.
There is more to greeness than just carbon emmissions; people seem to have forgotten this! Losts of really awful chemicals get used to manufacture chips; computers are full plastics that don't biodegrade and are made from limited petrol resources. Oh and on the carbon front manufacture of the thing probably consumed quite a lot of engergy all told; possibly years worth of the delta between the efficencies of the two units; and released lots of carbon.
People whine and cry about efficent this but really most of it is feel good nonsense so people can create an excuse to make and have new toys. The disposability of our society is doing more harm to our enviornment than anything else. Which is not to say that when we do make new things we should not make them as efficent as can be. Its also true that old things which can be retrofited to improve them possibly should not be. Adding more insulation to an existing house probably makes all kinds of sense. Replacing something like an old boiler where almost everything can be recycled might be good too. Retering a perfectly servicable computer or automobile probably not so much.
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Well, I had to replace it because it was failing all over the place. Bad ram, bad disk, bad motherboard. The few components working fine (DVD drives, screen, mouse+keyboard) will be reused in my new PC.
If the computers are recycled, is that such a big problem? Aren't
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Halo 2 was released in 2004, its now 2010. Thats almost 6 years. Don't know of many (if any) console games that have had that much online support made for them. I don't feel thats really screwing over your loyal customers as have some of the longest online multiplayer support. And there is a time for a business to have to cut legacy support.
I'm still playing Halo's online multiplayer on my PC and that's a Microsoft/Bungie game.
What makes consoles so special?
Re:and... (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes consoles so special?
It's easier to screw owners over.
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First they take multiplayer away after 6 yrs, next it will be DRM disabling of single player after 6 yrs... then 5... 4.... 3.... or whenever the sequal comes out. Slippery slope, and I'm sure some kid will say "Come on that game is 2 yrs old and they have a sequal they have to stop support someday!". No, they didn't, they designed the game so multiplayer support could be shut-off and use that as an excuse.
Here's an idea then if thats how you look at these things. Don't buy consoles. Buy PC only games. Sure they can remove these functions as well, but as with hacks and cracks and whatever else you can think of, people can and will find a way to get around these problems when they are on a computer. That way you'll never had to really worry about these issues as they only become minor setbacks and never total problems.
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Here's a better idea: don't buy PC games that are apt to have these functions removed in the first place, don't support scum developers regardless of whether they develop for the PC or consoles.
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Wait, that's not right...
Your argument is invalid because they didn't specifically shut down Halo 2 multiplayer, they shut down the original XBox Live servers. They did this for a legitimate reason too; the legacy system was holding back the modern Live service, applying specific limitations that couldn't be overcome without shutting it down like this. Hell, a minority of users have been constantly complaining about the 100 person limit on Live frien
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I don't see an issue with MS retiring
Well, they could have had the decency to post a warning in-game:
This will be your Last Game. No respawn, no requests for
immediate evac, just shoot to kill, and the last medikits
(whatever they're called) are up for grabs. So long, and
Microsoft would like to honor your loyalty by engraving your
frags on a monument that sadly no one will see. Don't worry, it
will be an easter egg in our next edition of Excel: The
Spreadsheet. When that gets ported to Xbox, that is.
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Meanwhile on the PC (Score:5, Informative)
People are still playing everything from Quake's Team Fortress to Tribes 2, with their own dedicated servers and authentication systems.
Re:Meanwhile on the PC (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Meanwhile on the PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterstrike. I seriously doubt it will decommision in my lifetime
It's the Pacman of FPS.
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People are still having Duke Matches?
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Re:Meanwhile on the PC (Score:5, Informative)
In related news: the lack of LAN play in Starcraft II means that it is going to horizon eventually, while Starcraft will always be around. Go figure.
But seriously, game producers - an established fan base is extremely valuable even if they've already paid for the game. If you can't figure out how to sell them something else on the basis of their existing fandom, you need a new job. If you can't figure out that it's good marketing to find a way to continue supporting a game that still has fans and would rather spend the money on another television commercial, you need a new job.
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As b0lt said, battle.net has been around and supported for Diablo1 much longer than it took Microsoft to shut down Halo. Blizzard, like Valve, is a company that has earned a lot of trust with gamers, and has always had the money to do The Right Thing.
Having merged with Activision may thrown a big ugly wrench into the works though.
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If you think that's crazy, Counter-Strike: Source currently has a new update in Beta [steampowered.com]... to upgrade it to the Orange Box (Team Fortress 2) engine, as well as incorporate some other miscellaneous changes from their newer games (updated Scoreboard, etc...).
Unfortunately, going by the server mailing list, CS:S will no longer work on machines without SSE2 support. This includes server machines.
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Halo is considered to be the FPS that was actually playable on a console. Sure there were FPS on a console before, but every
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there is, there are multiple VPN-alike solutions for 'emulating' xbox live through system link.
This way even halo 1 was played online before xbox live existed..
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Yes, but you can host your own masterserver, and the game lets you switch between them; even without masterservers, you can connect directly to known server IP addresses. Neither of these is possible with console games.
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So was Tribes 2, but again people are still playing "with their own dedicated servers and authentication systems". I don't see how stating a fact about what people are indeed doing at this very moment is misleading.
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Welp, I think this is just one of those things thats gotten me to realize I need to avoid contributing to the consoles completely.
I refuse to buy another sony product for multiple reasons, the most important to this discussion is the fact that I went through 3 of them in a year or so, but you all know of the plethora of reasons Sony needs to die.
I understand not wanting to maintain the servers forever, but not giving anyway for people to continue on is unacceptable, just like DRM that requires a server.
I've
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I stopped buying consoles with the N64. Damn, that was a good machine. Still working fine after 13 years.
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Some of us are still playing Doom 2 multiplayer without dedicated servers.
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Exactly. One of the reasons I will never ever quit PC gaming for some "console" in any form, shape or color.
Tell me again, Mr. Big Console Manufacturer, why should I ever bother to buy your products...
Meanwhile on consoles (Score:2)
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The problem is Xbox Live's architecture was hobbled by one game. It's not a server issue, it's just that the overwhelming popularity of Halo 2 on Xbox was keeping Microsoft from being able to make more significant changes to Xbox Live because of compatibility reasons. Now, Microsoft was being kind in tolerating it that long (I think Halo 2 really only accounted for about 10
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Go suck...
Were they the famous last words from the last person to get fragged on the Halo 2 servers?
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Based on my experiences with the typical gamer in Halo 2 it was probably "I'm Rick James, bitch".
hmmmm (Score:2)
I wonder how long it will be before the FTC or some attorney general forces the industry to label all games with online content with bold warnings of when support for online play will end.
Re:hmmmm (Score:4, Informative)
What I really expected to read (Score:4, Funny)
What I really expected was:
"Halo 2 preservation ends", six die in a fire believed to be caused by their game consoles.
Ok, so we now all agree that Ms is unreliable ? (Score:3, Interesting)
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This is more or less an issue with Consoles in general than it is Microsoft. The idea is that all the server and hosting architecture is much more accessible on a PC. You can choose to set up your own server and have people find you just by IP Address alone, this basic functionality has been built into most PC games since 1996. However, with consoles, everything is built to go through their online system. You can't simply choose to host a game and give people your address. You must set up a game, have it br
Sad to hear.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a Halo fan myself at all, but it does seem rather sad that someone's favourite online game can be suddenly taken away like this. When you're almost 40, 6 years really isn't such a long time, and currently I'm replaying Deus Ex which is, gasp, 10 years old. And you have even more extreme versions; for example, Mercenaries 2's multiplayer being turned off after only 1.5 years. Whether it's for reasons of costs, or do force players to purchase the latest games, is open for debate.
One of the benefits of PC gaming is that old games are readily available and indeed are revamped (either by unofficial graphical enhancement mods or by companies such as GOG.com re-released old games but compatible with modern GUIs).
P.
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Re:And I thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the main selling points of games like these is their multiplayer. You'd want it to go on forever--and well you should, you certainly paid for it!
You can still compile and run FORTRAN programs--in fact, if you run Linux, you might have a FORTRAN compiler installed and not know it (I'm in Windows, so I can't see if I do right now). Hell, when you install mingw, the compilers offered are C, C++, and FORTRAN. (Probably Java too, but I don't remember. Wikipedia says there is also Pascal and Ada support.)
The problem with Microsoft's treatment of their fanbase is "This product has reached end-of-life, we're killing it. Tough. What, you want more? No. And don't think about setting up your own master servers, etc., or we'll sue you." (Or something to that effect.)
Re:And I thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
...the Windows XP hangers-on were annoying. Sheesh...let it go guys. Like that one wizened old-timer in the back warehouse blathering on how FORTRAN is still relevant...
Ehmm, it works. It supports all the hardware in my gaming machine. It has been rock stable for the past few years.
Why *would* I change to a different OS? I already paid for this one...
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Also don't forget the new hardware you'll be needing that would run your new fangled os.
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This is actually misleading; you need to have bought the Battle.NET re-release to be able to play it online still, without using some third-party system like Kali.
The Battle.NET edition wasn't released until 1999.
They're not the only one. Valve still supports the master servers for every game they've ever released that h
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Well, warcraft 2 was released before battle.net even existed, and only had IPX support, and didn't know anything about TCP connections.
Kali made a lot of games playable over the internet, but all these games were made before there really was an internet, or the concept of multiplayer game was either new or unexplored.
Ahh war 2 kali, to find that gaming high again in my life, never again, never again :)
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The battle.net edition of WC2 was still a minor re-release of a Very Old Game, so I think the OP's point stands.
I take it they never released an "enable battle.net play" patch for the original WC2? I supposed the original WC2 was before the time of cd-keys, which may have prevented the corporate overlords from accepting the risk of allowing "pirates" to use the online service?
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No it doesn't. His point was that a 15 year-old game still has a working online system... and it doesn't. You had to purchase a