Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

The saddest thing is that I get 90% of my (purchaced) game patches from a site like gamecopyworld. In fact, much of the crap I've bought requires a CD in the drive or some kind of asinine registration to get patches. Why game companies insist on making owning a legal copy of a piece of software more tedious than simply stealing it is beyond me. I have downloaded "illegal" Versions of several games I already own, simply because the pirated stuff comes without spyware or requiring me to email my life story to some anonymous server. The fact that I actually pay for the game seems more like a paypall donation to your favorite website. Thanks for the hard work, keep it up. You want your unopened box back?

[ July 16, 2004, 07:07: Message edited by: Blitz ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

I legally own all the games I have, despite having several excellent CD copying tools and knowing how to use them effectively. I also have downloaded no-CD cracks (from gamecopyworld) for every one of them that has such annoying copy protection. IMO, according to the Fair Use laws, once I buy something, it's my right to use that product however I wish so long as I don't abuse "Fair Use" (ie, give copies to other people, etc.). If I want to create 20 backup copies for myself, or install it on 5 machines, that's my right. So long as my legally-owned copy is only played on one machine at a time, the game publisher has no right whatsoever to dictate how I use what I have paid for.

I don't approve of software "piracy", but the software industry, with its utter lack of concern for such things as fitness for intended use, and fascist licensing, just begs for piracy. Software is the only product I can think of that you can buy without any consumer protection as to getting what you ostensibly paid for. Be it a functional game (countless example of games that won't even run out of the box, such as UFO:Aftermath or MOO3) or million-dollar enterprise accounting apps from Oracle (that won't install or even if you get them installed won't actually work).

Sorry about the rant.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As far as what they have done with it is to release what is a mod of Jagged Alliance called "Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire". It is a mod created already in the strong mod community for Jagged Alliance by this russian guy named Popov. It adds more guns, notably a lot of russian type ones, makes the game harder in that the easy setting for "Wildfire" is harder than the hard setting on the original game. By harder I mean they throw more men at you, make town loyalty harder to gain and easier to lose, and the AI will tend to dogpile you in daylight ops. Dressen airport, for instance, is extremely time consuming and difficult to take now and the AI makes damn good use of roof-tops. It is also designed so that you can run it on windows xp and down. Other than that it is essentually the same game as the original JA:2. It also has some really annoying bugs such as the sam site number 8 crash, game corrupts saves if you quick save and if you save in mine areas of a town and unfortunately because of a legal dispute between the russian modders and Strategy First over not getting payed there will be no patch fixes to the game forth comming except those fixes the JA community have been able to come up with.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is absolutely nothing I loathe more than being told I have to install YET ANOTHER PIECE OF CRAP just to download a freaking file! Frankly, this simply adds yet another point of failure to the computer, as if Windoze wasn't unstable enough. I don't *WANT* another piece of crap which may or may not conflict with something I actually want installed on my computer! I want my freaking patch.

And trying to download it elsewhere? At the time I was still trying to put up with the game, this was a royal pain in the ***. You certainly couldn't simply download it off their webpage. I couldn't even *FIND* it on their webpage. In fact, the only place I could actually find the patch at all was from piracy sites.

I ask myself, why should I pay for the game so I can have to resort to this? I have since returned the game(which in itself required a loud argument and several shots to be fired). This game is entirely not worth the hassle, and I dread the idea of going through this BS with the proposed MOM2. I think this time, I'm definitely going to exercise "try before you buy".

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

JA2:Wildfire is one of the buggiest pieces of code I've ever had the misfortune to use. And the fact that I paid $20 for it, when the by far bigger and better mod JA2UC (Urban Chaos) is available free, just rankles that much more. Popov wasn't supporting his mod worth a damn even before the dispute with Strategy First arose. Worse yet, to essentially screw over the JA2 player community by not supporting the product you agreed to accept money for, because of a dispute between the dev and the publisher, something the players/customers are not at fault for and have no control over, is outrageous. Perhaps Popov wouldn't be having a money dispute if he'd released a stable product that lived up to its hype, and supported it as he was obligated to. Personally, I think SF is doing the right thing by not paying him. He doesn't deserve it. Regardless of reason, it's the game players that get screwed in the end though.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, always buy games (or most anything else) with a credit card. If you are unable to get proper satisfaction (typically a refund) from whomever you bought it from, the threat of disputing & refusing to pay the charges on your credit card will almost always work, and have the seller cave in to your rights as a consumer. This works even at places that have posted policies in-store of "no refunds on opened merchandise ... yadda yadda" (CompUSA is one such place that comes to mind).

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I greatly prefer to avoid credit cards, for the precise reason that every single one of your purchasing habits is logged for posterity. There's something inherently fishy about this, and I don't like it. Combine this with the increasingly obnoxious spyware tracking habits employed by software developers today, and you can see why I greatly prefer to minimize any element of traceabilty. Such behaviors greatly strain whatever faith I had in the company, and I never really had any to begin with. Clearly, these companies are abusing their freedom from being shot by irate customers. In my day, if somebody tried to peddle bad merchandise, he could reasonably be expect to be killed gruesomely by his surviving customers.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh come on! That is a little extreme don't you think? You lightly maim them at first and see if their merchandise improves a bit THEN you kill them if it doesn't. I mean if we were to kill them first then we would have nothing to spend that yankee dollar on and that would be UNAMERICAN! Only a bunch of pinko, commie slack-jawed hippies kills em first!

[ July 16, 2004, 09:48: Message edited by: Anglachel ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh, I know you're just kidding here, but I don't think you realize the seriousness of bad merchandise: When somebody sells you a defective weapons or armor, this can get you killed. You will be understandably very angry if you survive the discovery. Perhaps some of your teammates didn't. This will make you even more unhappy. In such cases, blood is required. Otherwise your teammates think you don't care, and others are encouraged to peddle their bad merchandise. Thus it is not as common to see people dishonestly peddling shoddy goods, as these sorts do not Last very long. One should never trust a dealer who hasn't been there for a month or so.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh, I know you're just kidding here, but I don't think you realize the seriousness of bad merchandise: When somebody sells you a defective weapons or armor, this can get you killed. You will be understandably very angry if you survive the discovery. Perhaps some of your teammates didn't. This will make you even more unhappy. In such cases, blood is required. Otherwise your teammates think you don't care, and others are encouraged to peddle their bad merchandise. Thus it is not as common to see people dishonestly peddling shoddy goods, as these sorts do not Last very long. One should never trust a dealer who hasn't been there for a month or so. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah I can see how way back in the day if you were a young freelance merc and wanted to go off and fight in some war and you purchased a new sword from a merchant only to have it snap in two with the first swing you do and a splinter of it flies into your left eye blinding it for good and how you would want to go back to said merchant, cut off his manhood, and feed it to him. Reminds me of that movie "Remo Williams" where they are field testing some contractor's shoddy machine gun and it blows up in some soldier's face killing him. The soldier's buddy, close to tears, brandishes the mangled gun saying "I like to tell you what I think of this new gun, sir! It's worthless, sir!"