First real problem is WoTC. The Second one is Atari and their bean counting idiots. The third one and complicated is Hasbro who are at odds with Atari on how to do things. D&D needs to be in hands of people who 1, know it and 2. care about it.

Magic was nice and all that about the cards but now WoTC are trying the cards for everything almost now. Maybe I'm just old and mad that I can't play pnp here in Japan in my local area.

I didn't realize they had finished their acquisition of Atari in 2008. No, in 2001 Inforgrames bought "part" of Atari, though I have no true idea what part they bought, I just know it wasn't all of it. But by now you're right, they finished in 2008, about which I had no idea.

Atari has always been f'ed up, no amount of ownership changes seems to ever fix them...

If you spread $10,000 over a lifetime it probably seems relatively small, but I don't want to pay $10,000 for an online gaming service either. It's all relative. The point is that Xbox Live charges you $50 a year for things you get free on the PC.

I'm not making it a platform argument, or at least I don't mean to. If you think it's worth the money then fine, your call. I'm just saying using "dirt cheap" as a plus side to the service is funny considering all the competition is free.

But the competition is offering apples and Live Gold is oranges. As stated, a lot of folks pay less than 50 per year, just saying, in my opinion, and it's just an opinion, for what you get Gold is dirt cheap, I think the really fast servers are an often looked benefit of Gold, so I pointed it out especially.

It goes without saying that if you don't need oranges and apples would do, you should get the free apples.

A buddy from work was pretty psyched about this game, so I got the XBOX live edition.

It's.... eh, so-so. It'll scratch my hack and slash itch until Dungeon Siege 3 comes out, at least. Pretty ugly, and I've never paid less attention to a plot, nor have I ever seen a console game cause so much screen tearing. I've never seen a console game that needed vsync so badly, period :|

Still, it's early in the game yet, and it could pick up later. Might be a bit more fun multiplayer, too, so the jury is still out for me.

For those reading reviews I can say the game does not suffer from the technical issues mentioned in them on the PC. Textures do not pop-in for example, and the framerate is 60fps locked on my mid-range machine.

Not saying the game is good mind you.

Do you have the boxed game or the DL one?

Boxy box, but it is just a Steam code in a box anyway.

So that's why I've been hearing about the steam blues from others. Kind of odd but I guess nothing that can be done at this point, ne?

Will check out other places that the box is being sold. Country wise that is.