Category Archives: Windows Games

A place to write about Windows Games.

Age of Conan loses something at higher levels..

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So I was very addicted to Age of Conan for a short time.. but I quickly started to feel like it was the same old thing around middle 30’s.  Turns out, there is a reason for this.  The starter area where you are at up till level 20 is the only area they let the Beta Testers into.. So it was very well balanced and tweaked, but the rest of it really had not been that well tested according to what Bleys has been reading on the forums.

Ah well.. I had bought Warhammer Online Collectors Edition, but after my disgust with Conan going to crap so quick, I decided to cancel it.  I guess they need to make some bigger leaps in MMORPGs for me to get interested in them again. 🙁  I really want a game that brings adventure.  Not just treadmill leveling and killing of monsters.  It gets old.  What did you do tonight?  Killed monsters and quested.  What for? So I could get bigger and get better equipment.  How come?  So I could kill more monsters and do more quests.  Huh, why do you wanna do that?  So I can get bigger, and get better equipment… Wait a minute… I see a pattern here.

I really want a game where there is true adventure.  Not just adventure for the sake of getting the best equipment in the game and getting bigger…..  I mean, true adventure.  I want it to be a challenge to cross a river through the strong current.  I want a piece of rope to be useful.  I want to be able to repell into caves, or to be able to climb a dangerous cliff.  I want to be able to do more then just kill monsters and click on an item.  I would like to be able to have a real profession, like Blacksmith, and be able to build a shop in a town and compete price wise against other player blacksmiths.  Or to be a miner, that does more then just walks around and hammer at piles of rock sticking out of the ground.. How about being able to build a real mine?  Or become an herb farmer?  How about magic that requires some components?  And make it so the components take some work to grow, not just make them impossible to find out in the wild so they become ungodly expensive?

Everytime I play a new MMORPG, I have such high hopes, then I play them, and quickly realize that they still fall way short of all my expectations. 🙁  Ah well. Maybe I will be lucky enough to see such a game in my lifetime?

Age of Conan

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So I am addicted to a new MMORPG. It is pretty awesome. The graphics are cool, even in the slimmed down settings I have to run in because my computer is like 7 years old. 🙁 I am strongly encouraged to upgrade so that the game is much more playable.

The graphics are truly amazing. Some of the battles, even in the single player missions are truly epic. I have enjoyed what I have played so far greatly. Sadly, the slow computer makes it frustrating to play for any real length of time, so I play a while, log off, play a while, log off.. I can not even move at night when the servers are real busy. It is a truly awesome game. You can read more about it in my MMORPG tab.

My one real disappointment was that I was completely unable to get it running in Linux. 🙁

How can I play Dos or Windows Games in Linux?

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Ok, so you just decided to make the switch! Now you are trying to figure out how do I play my old Dos Games? Or how do I play my favorite Windows Game? Well, we are going to try and cover that!

Dos Games : The best, and easiest method is DosBox! It is available in many different formats. You can get it from apt-get, source, portage, for the Mac, or for Windows even. Somebody else left a comment on the Space Games entry with a link to this Dosbox Guide for playing Orion 2. I also found several good guides just by Googling.

You can also try DosEMU, which is a tad bit more difficult to get working correctly in my opinion, and has as good, or worse results then Dosbox. There is a good howto for DosEMU here.

Wine is a good free way to run Windows Games. It is not an exact science though, so it will be hit and miss on how well some games will work. You will probably find many will not run at all. A good place to get some guides on how to get some games running on Wine can be found at Frankscorner. Pay close attention to what version of Wine they got it running in, it does make a difference!

Cedega is the way to run Windows games on Linux. They aim at making sure the newest latest games for Windows that are highly popular run. That does not mean all do, but if you become a member, they hold a regular vote to see where you, the paying customer, want their time spent. They also have a decent Wiki. Pay close attention to what is officially supported, what version someone got it running in, and what bugs they found in it. It all makes a difference. The nice part is, if you pay to be a member of Cedega, all versions are downloadable for you. So it is well worth supporting them!

Crossover Office is another possibility. Some games may work better on this then something else. Like I said with Wine, it is often a case of hit and miss, and the more things you have to try, the better chance you get some hits.
Most full out emulators will not run 3D Games, as the graphics are not well enough supported, so do not expect to run the newest latest greatest windows game in something like Virtual Machine, or Parallels.

Another up and possibly coming system is Falling Leaf Systems. Still not sure how great it will be, but if it works as well as it looks like it might, it could be pretty awesome. 🙂

I also have some useful gaming links on my Games page.

I found a fairly decent list of Emulators and such here, which work great for most “Gotta have em” windows apps, just not games sadly enough.