fixes posts

Big Iron had the opportunity to catch up with Funcom's Jorgen Tharaldsen (JT) at Dragon*Con, and was able to ask him some questions about what's in store for the hardware freaks as far as Age of Conan is concerned. Their willingness to speak frankly about what the player base has brought up as points of concern is great to see, and the fact that they're so up-front about what they're doing to address these items is laudable.

From their July Developer's Note (for those who haven't seen it):

PC gaming isn't dead. Far from it. Especially if you look at the amount of money being made by Blizzard and others. But that doesn't mean it can't use a few tweaks under the hood. Extremetech has five things that would "fix" PC gaming once and for all. While all five are dead-on, two of those fixes are vitally important and have gained a tremendous amount of traction in the last year.

Computer builders need to stop using Intel's onboard graphics chip. They suck. Unless of course you don't want to play anything more graphically intense then Free Cell or Solitaire. If you want to play any of today's near-cinematic looking games -- you can't. Oh sure those chips are cheap, but the old adage that you get what you pay for couldn't be more accurate in this case. Consumers need to be able to walk in and buy a gaming rig straight off the shelf already equipped to handle games like Unreal Tournament III without doing anything to it. That's the simplistic beauty of consoles -- they're so easy to use a monkey can operate them.