I joined the Army in 03 just in time for Emilpo to be released. I was the pivot class(42F) not trained on the old and not having any training on the new but we had AIT for just as long for no reason. In 05 I started hearing about its replacement coming down the line and when I finally left in 09 it was still "just going to be released soon"

Damn you John Titor!!!

Shiv - please, ever step on a d4? I still have the scar.

Add the Army too... I worked in a postal unit for a month and saw everything just get thrown in the back of the truck. Fragile got thrown harder.

Taking a different hobby of mine - miniature wargaming as example. There are a lot of commercial products out there, and a lot of homemade free systems. But once a person develops a set of rules and tries to give it away for free no one wants to try it... they move to making people spend a couple bucks for it and all the sudden there is interest in it. Even at a $1 it is worth more to than free to the people getting it. I don't know if that price makes people feel they are getting a "real" product or what. But most of the people who go on to make smaller rule sets all say that until they start charging for it no one want it.

I agree with you, I really don't get upset about the DLC in games as long as they don't give the upper hand by having them. I mean that if the games play is skewed by player one downloading the BFG that does extra damage and the only way for player two to have a chance is to buy it as well to keep the arms racing going. I am against something like that. For the boardgames and RPG's I think it is more of a mindset of time. I can pull out my boxes of munchkin now or 2 years down the line and use all the expansions and have fun. I can start a 2nd ed AD&D campaign now or in 20 years and it is still the same. Video games are more disposable I think. Not taking into count the people who still throw in the classic and play them on their loved NES's or Dosbox out some Populus. Take for example Call of duty MW2, I have bought the game 2 times - For the PS3 and the 360 I have also bought the map-packs for both of them. Math wise it was something like ... 60+60+15+15+15+15 = $180 on one game. Now I have spent around 30 full days playing the game on the 360 and something like 10 days on the PS3 that is 960 hours of game time. I feel that I got my money's worth for what I paid. Now BLACK OPS is out, will I go back and play the DLC on the older game... most likely not. Will my buddies around the world want to link up and play it? Not really. It will gather dust in the corner. I can leaf through my old source books or shift through my game boxes but DLC is not physical. It sits there as long as the game's servers run. At a point it is forgotten about like that old ring-tone you bought when you first got your phone.

When it first came out I had friends/family members go out and buy it as it is the "new: windows and they had to have it. In the early days if you got it on a new system built with Vista in mind it wasn't bad. The problems came with all those that tried to upgrade had issues getting drivers for hardware, software that ran just fine on XP was having problems, and it forced people who were sitting on almost 10 year old computers to have to buy new ones to be able to run it. So really the problem was early adopters had trouble until support started rolling out, so they told friends how bad it was and to avoid it. Those systems that I got to run Vista never seemed to as well as stock Vista systems, but then again they were XP systems barely keeping up with the system needs.

Take care when you say military outcry. Six years in the Army myself, one tour to Iraq under my belt. I keep in contact with my far flung buddies by playing MW2. My whole friend list is comprised of only military members from across the different branches, and MOS's. From a Marine that was injured in Fallujah, to a National Guardsmen(11B) who lost a highschool buddy to a IED on their deployment one vehicle in front of his, MP's, Medics, Admin, Infantry, even one Ranger. Not one of them has a problem with playing against the taliban(or as them either). From what I had read it was a mother of a fallen officer who wants the game pulled as it offended her... Granted I don't know every member of every branch and their moral outrage at the topic but from every soldier, marines, airmen and sailor I have talked to none have had a problem with it.

So Gamestop stops selling it, most bases have Gamestop right outside their PX - I am sure the Soldier can walk the extra few feet to the Electronics section and pick it up there... Where is the problem other than Gamestop making a stupid choice? I mean it's not like they are not going to sell it in any gamestops around the Pentagon, or near ground zero right?

I wholeheartedly agree with you. If you want to teach religious view in schools don't stop at just your religion.

I stopped pirating games years ago, but once I got a steam account I purchased a number of games that I had pirated in the past.

I still have the "Blizzard" notepad that came with Warcraft - Use it from time to time too!