Dragon Age 2 - Merrill the Mage, GameStop Demo Cancelled and More

I think "excluded" is the wrong term here anyways. DA2 will run just fine on WinXP and will have full support. You'll just be missing out on a few non-essential, and probably insignificant, graphical effects.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I think "excluded" is the wrong term here anyways. DA2 will run just fine on WinXP and will have full support. You'll just be missing out on a few non-essential, and probably insignificant, graphical effects.

Exactly. No offence, Alrik, but the only exclusion is going on in your head. You work too hard to find conspiracies.

Of course MS would like you to buy Win7 to get the extra video effects…is there are company out there that wouldn't like you to buy their latest offering? You are, however, free to ignore it.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I just don't want to.

That's your choice of course.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Why should I ?

To play DX10+ only games like Just Cause 2 or Battlefield 3, or to access DX11 features. Same as upgrading a video card to get higher graphics settings.

I guess my point was that when you use old hardware or software you should expect to miss out on some newer experiences. Sticking with a decade old OS means you will miss out on some things, and that makes sense. Imagine using a decade old GPU.

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
To play DX10+ only games like Just Cause 2 or Battlefield 3, or to access DX11 features. Same as upgrading a video card to get higher graphics settings.

I guess my point was that when you use old hardware or software you should expect to miss out on some newer experiences. Sticking with a decade old OS means you will miss out on some things, and that makes sense. Imagine using a decade old GPU.

If I had a spare heap of cash that is needed for an upgrade to make things run smoothly in DX10+ perhaps I would invest. But I don`t. And few good-but-not-so great games and a few good-but-completely-unessential graphic doodas is not gonna motivate me to start saving either.

Apart from that, I`m running a super stable/resource efficient system that has no problems with older/newer games or anything for that matter. Cool, eh? :P

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
To play DX10+ only games like Just Cause 2 or Battlefield 3

Huh ? These games are not my taste at all.
I'm glad that Adventure games have gone this way so far …

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Exactly. No offence, Alrik, but the only exclusion is going on in your head. You work too hard to find conspiracies.

I assume I'm thinking too much, then …

Originally Posted by zadokAllen
If I had a spare heap of cash that is needed for an upgrade to make things run smoothly in DX10+ perhaps I would invest. But I don`t. And few good-but-not-so great games and a few good-but-completely-unessential graphic doodas is not gonna motivate me to start saving either.

And that is your choice.

I am not saying OH MY GOD GUYS UPGRADE I am just saying it is natural to miss out on certain things when running such an old OS. Alrik mentioned he wanted the DX11 features so I said it was time to upgrade, because he wants that stuff. If he doesn't really though then hey, don't upgrade. No skin off my back

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Huh ? These games are not my taste at all.
I'm glad that Adventure games have gone this way so far …

I was just listing examples of DX10+ exclusives and those are the only two I know of. I am sure it will be getting more and more common though.

Of course it will become more and more common !

But until this is so, I'll turn to my back catalogue …

And on the other hand … This is also one of many reasons, imho, why LInux will never "arrive on the desktop", at least not of he masses : Because of this Direktx thing … But on the other hand I often believe that Linux fans and developers just don't want Linux to become a mass thing …

MacOS has a similar problem … (apart from Bootcamp)

You can buy a mid-level Direct X 11 capable video card for around $150 now. Very affordable imo, even for people on tight budgets.

"Capable" means low framerates. Plus you will most likely need more memory/fan/PSU.

I don't quite know what's in my gaming PC …

Edit : Just checked, it says its an Geforce-based card of a 9800GT type …

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Edit : Just checked, it says its an Geforce-based card of a 9800GT type …

It was a wicked card…few years ago though. You might still be ok for some time if you play in ~1280 resolution, but i`d start thinking of upgrading …

I thought it was the OS he was more lacking. Windows 7 which is just a great OS no one should fear moving to, it's much better than XP. I understand being comfortable and not wanting to reformat and change everything, but at the end of the day it's gonna happen sometime no matter what, why not reap the benefits sooner rather than later?

As for the GPU, A GTX 460 is a good buy… I have the 480 and it's pretty amazing, though I need a better processor to get more out of it (I have a Q9550, I need an i7).

It's not like you have to leave WinXP behind anyways, you can simply dual-boot if you want to have both. That's what I've done, and it works out great.

I probably spend at least 90% of my time in Windows 7 though. It's just so much smoother and more responsive than XP (or Vista) once you get used to it.

Heh. I only switched to XP because I couldn't run the Witcher or Jade Empire on 2k. It will take a while before I feel forced to switch again. *shrugs*

I do sort of wonder if this "delay" because of "security reasons" has something to do with the recent Crysis 2 disaster.

Also, I'm assuming there will still be XP support. Call of Pripyat (which I believe was one of the first DX11 games) didn't force you into using either Vista or Win7, right? So as long as DX9 is supported, there should be no problem. I'm not upgrading to Win7 until I have a system that has more than 4 Gigs of RAM. But then again, I don't expect to be able to run DA2 before that.

Originally Posted by TheGameSquid
Also, I'm assuming there will still be XP support. Call of Pripyat (which I believe was one of the first DX11 games) didn't force you into using either Vista or Win7, right? So as long as DX9 is supported, there should be no problem. I'm not upgrading to Win7 until I have a system that has more than 4 Gigs of RAM. But then again, I don't expect to be able to run DA2 before that.

Oh yeah, it supports DX9. The only DX10 required game I know of is Just Cause 2, and Battlefield 3 is so far going to be DX10 required, but anything could change before it comes out.

It will start happening more and more though, it saves you a great deal of time to only support and test one DX version, let alone 2, never mind 3 at once.

Stormrise was the first game released that was DX10 only, afaik. That was back in 2009.

The only other games I know of that didn't run in WinXP were Halo 2 and Shadowrun. That was due to Microsoft's brilliant decision to cripple them in an attempt to push copies of Windows Vista. Of course both of those games were eventually hacked to run on WinXP.