A lot less. I raid twice a week, 3 hours a night. Some weeks that's all I play. The most is maybe 15 hours a week, for some dungeons after raid time or on Sunday nights. I typically log on two to three nights a week. Most of my guild members average about the same although we do have a group that play MUCH more (multiple raid capable character, achievement seekers, pet collectors etc.).

You know the WoW server emulators don't handle most scripted events (such as raid encounters). It isn't really the same thing. There's also the fact that gear can be modified and made deliberately over powered by people running the private server. Not much fun to PVP if mr. admin has a one-shot-and-you're-dead bat.

Private servers make sense for simpler games like FPS (although cheating can still be an issue) but not as much for MMOs. They're okay if you want to dick around but they don't replicate the experience of the MMO fully (at least in most cases) and they generally aren't running on server and network setups that can handle the kind of load that a large company can handle.

They aren't games in the sense of I bought the box and I have it forever. They are SERVICES and like other services, when the moneys no longer there to be made they tend to get shutdown.

I agree that Terraria has more game elements but it's far less compelling as a sandbox to build things. Constructed environments can't be as complex or interesting in two dimensions, and of course this is nothing like redstone circuits in Terraria.

Also as far as the content in Terraria, it doesn't really have THAT much. There are only 3 bosses, all of which can be soloed without the top gear (better gear makes it easier but you don't need the best in the game to kill them). I got kind of bored with just loot farming when I already had good enough items to defeat everything in the game. Even so, it's a lot of fun and easily worth the ten bucks.

With Minecraft I didn't find the combat to be interesting. In fact I found it annoying to have to stop whatever construction project I was working on to go hide inside for the night or risk having a creeper blow up my building. When I want to concentrate on building stuff, I usually turn the monsters off. The "game" portion to me is less interesting than the sand box play.

I love both Minecraft and Terraria but for different reasons. Despite some similarities they don't play the same and each game has its own strengths.

Prior to the first commercial ISPs the Internet wasn't available to the general public. Military, government, educational organizations yes, Joe public, no. My first exposure to the Internet was through Usenet via UUCP dumps to personal BBS systems. It wasn't until I got a university account that I had access to the Internet proper.

The first commercial ISPs came in the early 90s with the rise of the web and HTTP. You are right in saying that the Internet was around, but the commercial Internet was not. If you were in your early 20s in the early 90s and could spell the word "computer" odds are you worked at some company associated to the early Internet boom. I know I did. I know all my friends did. Whether it was at ISPs or infrastructure or at companies that build on top of it such as Yahoo and Google.

I find it odd that Blizzard offers more security for a World of Warcraft account than your average bank.

You underestimate 10 year olds. Sure there are lots of ways to min/max class builds and gear in Titan Quest but you can get through it without an intimate understanding of the mechanics. It's not really more complex than the games I played when I was ten years old (Ultima series for example). I would have loved Titan Quest's depictions of mythology and the classical Greek and Egyptian environments when I was a kid.

I agree with Torchlight as a move up from Fate though. Easy co-op and nice cartoony graphics. Doesn't require a lot of horsepower to run.

"Both flavors of Cell processor are only slightly customized from IBM's other Cell offerings."

I think the word you are looking for is Power, not Cell. The SPE processors and interconnect bus were the big difference in the Cell architecture. The CPU in Cell and the Xenon chip are Power architecture as for that matter is the Wii's CPU.

If you want to buy or rent a game and play it at your home with people at your home, you can do this with both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 without additional cost. Online play for the PS3 is free, the PS network plus paid option adds additional features but is not necessary (I don't use it). Online multiplayer on the Xbox 360 is a paid only option - so in that case you are correct.

I thought it was the best daft punk video I've ever seen.

iWork supports WebDAV. Most other applications require syncing through iTunes.

The cloud gui I use has version control, history and version diffing for all scripts. If for whatever reason I don't want to use the gui anymore I can just pull the scripts and roll it the old way.

Snow on Mauna Kea doesn't really put a damper on things in Hawaii, unless I guess if you are an astronomer.

Expressing disdain for the practice of suicide bombing does not say anything about that person's opinion on using drone aircraft strikes or manned aircraft strikes or assault with an army of bazooka laden smurfs for that matter.

Sid Meier started out with flight sims in the early 80s, well before Civilization. Spitfire Ace, Hellcat Ace and Solo flight as well as the submarine simulator Silent Service. The first game with his name on the box was Pirates though.

Uh, that it's okay to be a planet destroying mass murderer just so long as you have a change of heart at the last moment?