lazykoala

Age of Empires 2 HD edition is coming in April exclusively on steam!



It will supposedly include all content from AOE and the AOK expansion, be integrated through steam, include the steam workshop for mods, will be digitally remastered for high resolution 1080p displays, and include an enhanced visual engine for textures, terrain, lighting, etc...

Personally, this is in my top 2 of favorite games all time and for sure top 2 in most hours logged on a game (I think 2nd is probably bf2 or madden). I still play it from time to time and I hope this remastered version is even better. I don't know if the trailer shows actual enhanced footage or not or whether people who already own the game will get any sort of discount or bonus. I believe if you pre-purchase you get 10% off of whatever price will be. Pretty neat though that one of the best games of all time will get a remastered version!

I heard rumors about a decent size price drop for the 660ti that is supposed to occur soon in Jan/Feb 2013. Anyone have a more specific date on when this will happen? Will it get close to $200 even or stay around the $250 mark? Or at this point is it better to just wait for the 700 series? I've been monitoring newegg and amazon, but haven't seen any price movement.

This seems to be debated more and more as the next gen xbox and playstation get closer to release and from what I can tell, the divide between opinions is pretty strong. Just by googling this question, hundreds of articles pop up and I find some of them hard to believe. Some say the future is innovation (or gimmicks depending on your point of view) like the Wii U with unique and new controllers/systems. Personally, I agree with the other half who just want more powerful consoles with the basically the same controllers that have proven to be tried and true for so many years. I want backwards compatibility, massive internal + cloud storage, bluray, ownership of games I buy, and on and on....

Some even go so far as to say consoles will become extinct and the new upcoming consoles will be the last of a dying breed. Personally, I think that is a load of BS and consoles are here to stay for many more years. Just look at black friday and microsoft selling 750k consoles in the US in a 5 day span and the Wii, Wii U, and PS3 all selling pretty well too. Some think consoles will become cloud only with no hardware at all, but I think there is something to be said about owning your own physical console and not having to deal with DRM and other stuff if you can avoid it which is getting rare these days.

I know the Wii U has sold pretty well, but honestly I can't understand why. The standard version has 8GB of storage half of which is dedicated to the OS?! Specs on par with current gen consoles, a controller with a tiny battery life and is a pain to hold for long periods, slow load times, USB 2.0, no DVD or bluray player(I think?), etc.... I know it's not for everyone, but I guess I don't understand why so many people bought into it. I guess if it's still fun, all the other shortcomings don't really matter?

I will be putting all my hope into mostly the PS4 just wondering what everyone else wants in the next console.

So I have like 30+ basic transmutation stones for level 79 items or below piled into my bank because I never really felt the urge to use any of them plus I have the hom rewards that I can use if I want. Is there any other use for these stones? They are soulbound so not sell-able on the TP and not vendor-able either. I guess I could just destroy them all, but that seems like such a waste. Does anyone think there will be another use for them in the future?

When will we see more promotions for the gem store? I realize this is probably low on there list of priorities, but I feel like the 2 black lion promotions have been up forever lol. It's bad enough they don't give a discount for bulk gem purchases and it seems like they aren't going to change their minds on that any time soon. If that's the case, then it would be nice if they did weekly or at least monthly promotions on different items in the gem store. What other types of promotions would you all like to see?

Personally, I just want bank slots to be cheaper. I think it's practically impossible to play through lvl 80 without upgrading your bank slots. The crafting material slots are nice and bag slots can be upgraded with bigger bags, but I think they should have at least given us 50 main bank slots to start with. I find 30 is just a tad too small even for a f2p game, especially since a lot of crafting materials won't even go in the crafting tabs.