it truly is sad, all game companies are doing one of two things, both of which are removing single player games on a pc. 1: is the push to this vastly wasted effort to try to make everything MMO style where they can bill you each month for a couple lines of script and a few new graphics, or penny pinch you with the $1 $2 charges to get this small bit or that small bit ALONG with the monthly payment. I have another gripe about that in a minute. Sure WoW made money, but no one else in that arena has ever come close, and I never played WoW or any other version requiring monthly payments.... I know I am NOT the only person out there that refuses to continue to pay for a game that was already paid for and pay the cable company for internet, and pay this and pay that each month... not gonna happen.
2: is the push to the consoles, and that push is harder and harder by each game company. Sure, from a developer point of view, it is soooo much easier to create something that will run on the intended hardware since there can be NO difference in ANY of them, other than possibly having extra memory. The hardware doesn't change, or when it does, it is such a minor change that the old code will always work anyway. Well, I also don't have a console, except for a Wii, and the only games that I have for that were bought on the same day as the console as an xmas gift to a family member... beyond that? No other purchases have ever been made.
P.S. The 'other gripe' regarding these MMO's is that they charge you upwards of $100 to 'purchase' something, that you can't even use as it is already out of date before you insert the disk or you must spend hours downloading gigs of data to get the thing to run AND you still must pay monthly for access to the game you just installed. So, here you invested for the simple feature of then being able to join the club of clowns willing to pay an additional monthly amount to rent time to play the game. You can't play without a LIVE internet connect, so no taking a laptop to the outback for a couple hours of play, unless you pay for a satellite connection or an overcharged, very slow, what 4g? 4gigbit? You realize that is slower than your old home lan at 10meg right? Much slower if every one around you is sending their youtube vids or watching a youtube or whatever else that always overloads the bandwidth on a given cell tower. Heck, out where I live, there is 1, count them 1 cell tower, and it is on the other side of a mountain, so our signal strength is very low out here, and spotty at best, even voice breaks up all the time.
Not me folks. Not for me. And yes, I know you may be able to find one or two variations on the theme regarding MMO's whereby some will give you 3 months free play time, or unlimited updates as long as you pay your monthly fee (they claim) etc... but all in all, once they decide that it was all a big mistake and that they couldn't find enough suckers to line their pockets with, they pull the plug and now you have $xxxx in wasted money that you will NEVER be able to play again. Regardless of your wishes. At least with the good old standard, buy a game on cd, you could re-install and re-play to your hearts content. MMO? Nope. Someone has to pay for all the hardware and bandwidth that the game requires. Heck, just this vault closure shows how likely any company is to keep running a system that only costs them pennies in comparison to other expenses they have. In Fact, I would seriously doubt they have much in the way of expenses directly related to the vault as it is surely just a system running as a task on a multi-use server in room loaded with hundreds or thousands of other shared resources.
Shoot.... I am getting more and more pissed the more I think about this stuff... sorry for the rant.
