On the other side, each year more and more people start talking about how they are sick of Call of Duty. Message boards and comments sections were full of complaints about this year’s game, and people were jumping on the Battlefield 3 bandwagon as if it was going out of style. Analysts said Battlefield would close the gap and sell almost as much as Call of Duty. Then COD came out, and sold more copies than ever before. What does this mean? Is it all talk, or are people really getting sick of Call of Duty?

Why People Are Not Sick of Call of Duty

The obvious argument is that the game is still selling bazillions of copies with each release. People are lining up at their local game retailers at midnight just to get a copy a few hours earlier. Each year, Call of Duty breaks its own record for the highest selling entertainment product. How can you argue with these numbers?

The fact is; you cannot. Until I see a tangible slip in the sale of Call of Duty games, I will not believe that gamers are sick of them. People can cry about lack of change and innovation until they are blue in the face, but until they stop buying the games, they are just crying for no reason.

Not only does COD continue to sell well, it sees gamers investing hundreds of hours. Log into Modern Warfare 3 any time of the day, and you will see hundreds of thousands of active players at any time, and even more during peak hours. Look up and down the leaderboard and you will see millions of high-level players, meaning they put a substantial chunk of time into the game. This means that not only are they still buying the game, but that they are continuing to play it, which will lead them right into buying next year’s game without question.

Nothing else can compete with Call of Duty. Until a viable competitor comes along, Call of Duty will sit atop the throne as the king of shooters. Battlefield 3 was supposed to be the great savior, and while it was certainly a smash success, it appeared to have no effect on the sales of COD. Someone needs to find a way to create that feeling that hooked gamers into the first Modern Warfare, and until they do, it is likely that Call of Duty will be the king until gamers get bored with shooters all together (which I do not ever see happening).

Why People Are Sick of Call of Duty

The message boards are blowing up. Complaints are pouring in about how sick people are of the Call of Duty formula. They are sick of seeing the same game over and over again. Five years of shooters that follow the exact same formula can become stale. Look what happened to Guitar Hero. It was bigger than sliced bread, and then it was forgotten because it became boring.

Go listen to video game podcasts like the Giant Bombcast and Weekend Confirmed, and you will hear some of the best video game journalists talking about Call of Duty fatigue. They will tell you how the formula of the game is wearing thin on them. It is a scary proposition for Activision, who even acknowledge that they think about gamers becoming bored with the franchise. It is a real possibility that the public could get sick of COD.

With most of the previous COD games, the one thing people never complained about was the quality. Every map was amazing, and overall game play mechanics were spot on, but with this one, complaints started happening. It still had a solid 89 on GameRankings, but Call of Duty 4 had a 94 and Modern Warfare 2 had a 93. That is an appreciable drop, and it shows that critics might be getting a little sick of COD.

The Verdict

No, people are not sick of Call of Duty – yet. The facts do not lie; each COD is selling progressively more than the last. Until we see a downward trend in these numbers, it is impossible to say that Call of Duty is on the down-swing. The people who are claiming to be sick of it are a vocal minority, and they just do not have significant enough numbers to provide any noticeable effect on the sales of the franchise.

The review scores are a little scary, but in the end, there is nothing wrong with an 89. Many games would kill for an average review score of 89, so I do not think this is anything to sweat over yet. I think the time will come when Call of Duty will sail into the sunset, but I do not see it happening until something better comes along. Battlefield left a blip on COD’s radar, but it was not enough to hurt them. It will happen, but I do not think it be will for a few more years.

What do you think? Is Call of Duty in its prime, or on the down swing? Are you sick of it personally, or do you still love it? Let us know in the comments!

One thing that is going to be changing, though, is my vantage point. No longer will I be telling you how to install cool little modifications to your Minecraft client. This time, I’m showing you how to install plugins when you get your very own server up and running through Bukkit. Straight from Minecraft’s wiki, Bukkit is described as “the name of a set of community-built, open source tools envisioned and developed to ease the creation of SMP plugins.” It is a little bit like the ModLoader of SMP features.

Essentials

Essentials is, well… essential.

As teased at above, Essentials adds more than 100 very efficient and important commands and permissions to your SMP server. God mode, heal, repair, pay, worth, AFK, spawnmob, tempban, and teleport are just a few. This plugin should (and maybe will?) be built directly into the Minecraft release. Some of these commands are too important and integral to the growth of a server that I can’t possibly see how they were overlooked and left out. The Essentials package comes in several modules, such as EssentialsSpawn, EssentialsProtect, EssentialsChat, etc. Essentials contributes to the functionality of just about every part of a server.

NoCheat

If you run a server without NoCheat and it manages to make its way onto Planet Minecraft, good luck. Ever since I’ve started to manage my own server, I’ve been completely stunned and disgusted by just how many people use a hack or modded client. NoCheat will alert you whenever this activity is detected.

NoCheat thwarts hacks that are very difficult to see with a trained eye. I expected lots of false positives and poor feedback, but this thing works beautifully. Never again will another player speed, fly, or use complicated PvP hacks on your server without you knowing.

Orebfuscator

While this should have really been built into NoCheat, it is definitely a great and important plugin to any server that values its economy. What Orebfuscator basically does is disable true “x-ray” hacks on your server. Players won’t be able to mine right down to diamond anymore.

As shown in that official plugin screenshot, Orebfuscator obfuscates the many important ore blocks of Minecraft so that even users who have modified clients that allow “x-raying” won’t be able to put their beady eyes on the goods. While people do complain that it’s heavy and adds a little lag to the server, I can’t imagine playing without it.

Multiverse

Multiverse is the one and only true solution to managing your multi-world server. This thing has got everything:

• Create worlds from seeds or generators.
• Set your game mode per world.
• Restrict users from going to worlds using permissions.
• Restrict animals, monsters, and other spawns per world.

Many, many more features are packed into this beautiful bukkit plugin.

This plugin is a little heavy on resources so I’d really only suggest you get going with it if you definitely need a second world!

WorldEdit

WorldEdit practically turns your cursor into a virtual paintbrush where the Minecraft world is your canvas. We all know about creative mode, but this takes things to a whole different level.

You can smooth an entire mountain in seconds. You can copy and paste areas into another location. You can select one chunk radius and have it restored from a backup. You can automatically generate any of the Minecraft biomes. There’s a whole lot in this plugin and even though it cuts down building time tenfold, it’ll still manage to keep you busy for hours!

I can think of plenty more bukkit plugins that are quality mentions, but let’s keep the list short. How about you? I’d like to hear about your favorites in the comments. Oh, and check out our Minecraft overview if you haven’t!

Now that hurdle has been passed, however, the game faces a larger one – longevity. Does the game have what it takes to last? I think so, and here’s why.

There’s A Story

This point is simultaneously the most shocking and most predictable – shocking because MMOs generally don’t have a good story, but predictable because this is a Bioware game, and that’s what the studio is known for.

All MMOs have a story, of course. The problem is that it’s generally not interesting. Each character in your typical MMO goes through the same story events, and the outcome is the same no matter what you do. Players catch on to this quickly, and stop caring. Questing becomes a grind.

With SW:TOR, it’s different. You have choices, and sometimes they’re difficult. What you choose not only impacts your collection of light or dark side points, but also can change plot points further down the road. There are still some boring side-quests, but the main quests are interesting and well written.

Better yet, every single class has its own story, and all the dialogue is voice-acted. Some players will probably re-roll constantly just to see the outcome of each separate tale.

Your Computer Can Play It

I won’t lie. SW:TOR is not a pretty game. It has a style that feels very Star Wars, but the graphics are technically quite simple. Polygon counts are low, texture resolutions are low, and even at its highest settings it looks like a game from several years ago.

That’s a bummer. Fortunately for Bioware and Electronic Arts, it doesn’t matter. People might check out a game for its graphics, but they don’t stay for them.  And for a game like this, which is supposed to draw a dedicated audience, it’s more important to make sure that potential fans can play the game.

If you have a system with a discrete video card that was built within the last three years, you can probably play this game at medium to high detail. If it was built in the last five years, you can probably play at least on low. In the long run this will be to the game’s advantage.

Crafting Doesn’t Suck

Crafting is one of those things that are supposed to keep players engaged in the end-game, but rarely succeeds in doing so. Why? Because crafting isn’t fun. And why isn’t crafting fun? Because you have to stop doing everything else.

SW:TOR solves this problem with companions. Players gain their first companion at an early level, and will gain more over time. One companion can be deployed with the player to help in combat, but the rest stay back at the ship. Using an interface window, they can be tasked with all matter of crafting missions, building your overall crafting skill while you continue to quest, PvP, or trade on the auction house.

I’ll admit this is a cynical solution. Bioware recognized that sitting around and crafting isn’t fun, so rather than finding a way to make it fun, they simply made sure that players don’t have to sit around to do it. Still, it’s effective and opens up a new line of progression that many players simply don’t have the patience to pursue in other games.

There’s A Lot Of Things To Do

It’s a good thing that you don’t have to sit around in your ship to craft, because there are plenty of other fun things to do in the game.

I’ve already gone over the story and its related questing, which can keep players occupied for hundreds of hours. Beyond that, there’s PvP, which is a lot of fun and can be entered by level 10.

Unlike most MMOs, this game does not involve PvP brackets. Instead, low-level players are simply given comparable stats (but not comparable skills) to higher-level players.  The result of this is that you can enjoy the arenas at any time without feeling insignificant. And since there is a large pool of players trying to enter an arena, you spend less time waiting.

There’s also raiding, of course, which is still a bit up in the air (not enough people have played it yet) but looks promising. And then there are the space combat missions, fun Starfox-like diversions that let players get their pew-pew on. The space combat quests are daily, and the rewards great.

It’s Star Wars!

Yep. It’s Star Wars.

That’s an important point. Not only because it brings in a lot of players at first, but also because it makes the game easy to remember. From this point on the game is “that Star Wars MMO,” which means that people looking for some sci-fi multiplayer action are likely to check it out.

World of Warcraft has recently been grasping at straws with its racial choices, choosing Pandas for its latest expansion. It’s hard to see Star Wars ever being in a similar situation. There’s the Wookies, the Rodian, the Bothans, the Mon Calamari – the list goes on and on.

Each new expansion will provide the chance to continue individual characters stories, as well – something Bioware already has experience doing with its Mass Effect and Dragon Age games.

Conclusion

Bioware has crafted another hit, and in typical style, have succeeded in a way that’s different from what many thought necessary. Rather than revamping MMO combat (a common complaint among old-school MMO players), Bioware has kept the combat familiar and molded everything else to its own preferences.  The result is a game that I think people will be enjoying for many, many years to come.

When network gaming came out and became wildly popular along with the Internet itself, the late night gaming episodes increased in frequency.

However, as I’ve gotten older and the kids and job have become more demanding and time consuming, those late-night episodes eventually faded away into a distant memory.

But I must admit, there are times when I discover yet another game – another highly addictive, networked game – when I am brought back to my heyday college years of binge-gaming and lots of caffeine. Recently, I stumbled across just such a tank war game called BZFlag, and I had to share.

A Strategic Tank Battle

I first caught wind of BZFlag in Tim’s article on open source games. Tim didn’t actually write about it, but one of the readers briefly mentioned, and I quote, “bzflag rules!!!”

Once I downloaded and installed BZFlag, I realized why the excitement. It is a really cool tank war game.

BZFlag stands for Battle Zone capture the Flag. It’s a 3D tank battle game that’s fast paced and at times pretty intense. There is no single-player game – it’s all about team-match network gaming. Some of the games may be set up as one huge team against a second huge team in a classic capture the flag game. Other games are set up in smaller teams – much more intense.

From what I can tell, there are lots of active game servers almost always available, with plenty of players available.

My favorite part of the game is just how much information is on the screen at once in a pretty cool heads-up display. There are a lot of controls, which take a little bit of time to get used to…it took me a while to realize why all of the other players were flying around whenever I tried to shoot them – you can jump with the Tab key!

The HUD display has the real-time scoreboard in the upper left corner, status updates at the top, team scores at the upper right, a scrolling kill roll at the bottom, and most importantly – the radar at the lower left. The radar is the area of the screen you’re going to want to watch the most often, because it’s where you can aim your shots to ricochet off walls to destroy the enemy tanks. Trust me – it’s a lot harder than it sounds, as you can see from the screenshot below.

That’s the screen you’ll see when you get destroyed – I saw it more often than not. Some of these folks have gotten really good. At first you’ll want to try to get up close and personal and blast tanks away like a first-person shooter. Most of the time the enemy tank will launch itself into the air before you can do anything.

After a while, you’ll see that the real art of this game is carefully planning your shots so that it cuts off the path of the enemy tank when he or she least expects it. Or bouncing your shot off a wall nearby and blasting the tank from behind. Getting the knack of jumping helps too. Here I am soaring over the battlefield after some dude tried to blast me.

Another helpful tactic is shooting through the barrier/shield doors (enemy bullets can’t get through, but yours can), and taking pot shots at the enemy tanks through the slots in the walls, like the one I’m peeking through in the screenshot below.

Most of the strategy of this game takes place in that little radar window at the lower left. In the screenshot below, you can see my tank in the center of the screen against a square wall. If you look closely, you can see where my shots (just little specks on the radar) went through the openings in the walls, bounced off the corner wall, and headed for the red cluster of enemy tanks. The goal is to outsmart them before they outsmart you.

Is BZFlag worthy of being called one of the most popular open source tank war games ever? I’m not sure about that, but I do know that it’s very easy to get addicted to it. I was informed by my wife that I had been playing the game for three hours (it felt like 30 minutes). That’s the sign of a great game.

Give BZFlag a shot (get it?) and let us know what you think. Is it fun, or do you find it boring? What’s you’re take? Give your feedback in the comments section below.

Here at MakeUseOf, we’ve already thrown nine websites that ought to help enhance your Minecraft at you. This time, I’m here to give you a step-by-step walk-through on how to get ModLoader up and running smoothly.

ModLoader was made by Risugami with hopes to make the process of installing Minecraft mods much simpler. It achieves just that. After installing ModLoader manually, you’ll only have to save the archived files of each new mod that you want to install in a specific folder. No more annoying editing of minecraft.jar!

Windows

The first step is to go and download ModLoader by clicking here. Open the archive and do nothing more.

What you’ll want to do next is go to your Windows Start Menu, go to Run, and input “%appdata%”. This should bring up your applications data folder. From there, go to “.minecraft” and then navigate into “bin”.

You then need to open minecraft.jar with WinRAR or 7zip, or whatever other archiving program you use. From there, you want to drag and drop the files from the ModLoader archive into the minecraft.jar archive.

You can just drag all of the files from the one archive into another. Make sure not to drag them into a folder, but into the “bin” folder root. A window asking if you want to extract may come up and you’ll want to proceed if it does.

After that, there is a folder called “META-INF” in the root of this archive. Delete that entire folder. This is important and necessary.

Macintosh

1. Go to “Applications” then “Utilities” and open the terminal.

2. Type in the following:

cd ~
mkdir mctmp
cd mctmp
jar xf ~/Library/Application\ Support/minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar

3. Away from the terminal now, you’ll want to copy all files into the “mctmp” directory

4. Back in the terminal, type the following:

rm META-INF/MOJANG_C.*
jar uf ~/Library/Application\ Support/minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar ./
cd ..
rm -rf mctmp

Now you’re all done. Instead of having to do a similar procedure every time you want to try out a mod, you now only have to save the mod’s archive in the “mods” folder. This folder is located at “%appdata%/.minecraft/mods”.

Let’s try it out using Rei’s Minimap mod. Simply download and save the archive in the “mods” directory.

From there, well, you’re done. Start up Minecraft and let’s see what we’ve got.

Surely enough, we’ve managed to install a whole new capability by just saving a file into a certain directory. ModLoader handles all the rest of the work for us.

ModLoader is compatible with almost every single mod out there. There isn’t a complete list, but you can find a good bunch to start with at the mod’s official forum thread.

One thing to note is that ModLoader will require reinstallation if you’ve upgraded your Minecraft. What’s awesome is that your mods that have been installed using ModLoader won’t, however. ModLoader is a very useful tool that should make the process of installing mods simple and quick for even the most novice of users.

If you’re just browsing through this post and you’ve yet to pick up Minecraft, here’s why you should. Here are even more reasons, as of recent! If you need help finding the perfect multiplayer server to play on, check out this post.

Drop me a line in the comments and let me know how ModLoader has been working out for you. Leave me any questions or concerns and I’ll be sure to follow up.

It could take forever to go through each individual website of every MMO you may be interested in to check out screenshots and gameplay. However, I’m here to share five MMO directories that I’ve had plenty of luck with in narrowing doing the choices.

These directories do all the work for you and present the most enjoyable, sustainable, and free games to the user. All you’ve got to do is make the decision on which to play or download.

Free MMORPG List

Despite the name, Free MMORPG List features much more than just massively-multiplayer online roleplaying games. It’s first on the list because it’s probably my favorite. The site features categories for free, action, strategy (or RTS), kids, simulation, sports, browser-based, and social games. The site features 28 pages of games in total with a dozen of games displayed per page. The listing of each game offers a high-quality description, screenshot, and immediate links to download and visit the game’s official website.

What MMORPG

If you’re specifically searching for a MMORPG, What MMORPG is the absolute best resource you’re going to find online. What MMORPG takes this MMO genre and breaks it down into subgenres of fantasy, horror, modern, space, superhero, historical, racing, and so many more.

You can also narrow games down to their cost (free included), their play style (PvE vs. PvP), their developer, and their artistic style (2D, 3D, etc.). This is a very extensive resource. Game listing pages also include ratings of every game, contributed by players like yourself.

F2P Games

F2P Games is 100% dedicated to bringing you MMOs that are completely free. This directory also separates free browser-based games. F2P Games also includes a very interactive and informative forum where you can go to get all the latest user-contributed F2P news.

This directory contains a little over 100 games for you to choose from. It’s got a simple list style: not as descriptive as the rest in this list, but you can browse and choose what you want quickly.

MMO Games.com

This directory has the benefit of having one of the better eye-pleasing designs compared to the rest. Not much sets MMO Games.com apart from the rest, but they do have specific categories for mobile and Facebook games.

The site features MMOs in general with a slight bias towards the MMORPG genre.

TIGdb

The Indie Game Database is a lot different from the previous directories we’ve mentioned. This website currently features 757 games, all created by indie developers. Not all of them are free and not all of them are MMO. You will be able to narrow down your selection using their filters though.

This directory is really cool and unique and a refreshing change from the rest. I managed to find one of my favorite indie games ever, Altitude, using this very website.

We’ve wrote before on MMO Hut, a similar directory. We’ve also whipped up a nice little article showing you three of the very best MMOs to try out. Got any more suggestions on where we can go to find these games, or fun and free MMOs in specific? Share them with us in the comments!

However, the game is complicated. There is a lot to it, and I cannot tell you how many players I have seen completely whipped off the map because they didn’t think before they acted. It is easy to get over-excited and just want to jump in feet first, but this game is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to take everything slow and steady. Fear not, brave new soldier, armed with these tips, I will make sure you are ready to take on the world of Lord of Ultima.

Join A Good Alliance

This is crucial. As soon as you get to the part of the game where you are going to war, an alliance will help you in so many ways. Do not join just any alliance though – look around and find an organized alliance with leadership and a plan in place.

Not only will an alliance be able to lend support if you come under duress, but they will also be able to offer tips to help with developing your empire. The higher-level members of the alliance will have previously been in the position of a newer player, and they will be happy to offer you some tricks of the trade to speed up your advancement.

Being in an alliance will also make the game more fun once you are ready to start fighting because it will give you people to attack and a reason to attack them. The larger alliances are always at war with someone, and it is very satisfying to be able to take part in large battles.

Do Not Build A Castle Too Soon

This is the single most important tip that anyone can possibly give you while playing Lord of Ultima. Building your castle is what allows you to attack other players, but it also allows you to be attacked. I understand you want to get involved in the actual wars and battles, but if you castle before you have proper defenses in order, I can guarantee that you will be destroyed, and you will have to start over from square one. Either way, you can have your resources taken, whether you have a castle or not, so playing good defense is always wise.

It takes commitment; you are going to have to play for a long time, maybe more than a month. You should not castle any sooner than your third city. You will need to have at least ten thousand soldiers available for defense, and you really should make sure you are in a strong alliance that can lend support. It might seem crazy to play a game for over a month without engaging in combat, but I can promise one thing; if you castle a city too soon, starting over and doing it the right way a second time will take even longer.

Use A City Planner

Before you jump in and start building a city, take the time to use a city planner. You are only allowed a limited number of buildings, so you need make them count. A city planner allows you to accomplish this. With the city planner, you will know exactly how you are going to lay out your city before you even start.

Efficiency is paramount in this game, and having a good plan for your city will help a lot. In addition, if you are in an alliance you can ask one of the more experienced players to look at your plan and give you some tips and make some improvements. Overall, they are an incredibly valuable resource.

Check Out Some Lord Of Ultima Websites

Lord Of Ultima Wiki

This is a great resource with almost every piece of information on the game imaginable. They offer everything from the history of the game to recruitment time for units. They also have many useful tips and tricks to help get your city off the ground.

Lord Of Ultima Strategy

This is a fantastic Lord of Ultima site. They have a wealth of information for new players, and players who have been around for a while. Read their articles and become much more informed on how to play this massive game.

Lord Of Ultima Forums

The Lord of Ultima forums are a great place to interact with other players and learn what they do to improve. You can also use the forums to help find a solid alliance.

Conclusion

If you are just getting into Lord of Ultima, these tips will help you get your empire off the ground. Let me say this one more time; do not castle too soon. I cannot say that enough. Another last-minute tip is to have fun! This is a game, and the most important part of any game is to have lots of fun and enjoy!

Although the game is quite addictive, as I have bought it myself, those who’d rather save the money can still get a taste of what Minecraft has to offer for free.

Minecraft vs. Minecraft Classic

Minecraft has evolved from its early beginnings (which has been put aside as Minecraft Classic) to the intricate and unique world that people know today. During this evolution, Minecraft has begun to offer two different modes of gameplay, survival and creation. While survival is more the main focus of the game, in which you have to use your resources to protect yourself, build tools, and discover new materials, creation is more focused on the Lego-type aspect of the game. In Creation mode, instead of having to worry about creepers sneaking up behind you to take you out, you can concentrate on building your own imaginative structures using all the different kinds of blocks that are offered in the game.

Where To Play

Minecraft Classic is available for free, so anyone can play it. The game is available only as an in-browser game, which is different from the full Minecraft version where you can play in-browser or in its own client. You also have the option between single-player mode and multiplayer mode.

Under multiplayer mode, you can choose between a couple of preset servers. These servers are regularly visited by enough people, so you don’t have to be worried about playing by yourself on a server. You can find the links to play both single-player and multiplayer versions of Minecraft Classic on the homepage, under the Buy Now button. Make sure that you have Java installed on your computer before you try to play.

Gameplay Differences

Once you have the game loaded, you’ll immediately start seeing some differences compared to the full version of Minecraft, if you have already experienced it. You start in the game with all ten spots filled with certain kinds of blocks. As in the full version, you can lay them down with a single right-click, but unlike the full version, blocks fall apart with a single left-click. While this makes it slightly less realistic, it does make the creation process a whole lot easier and faster.

Infinite Resources

You’ll also know that any blocks you break don’t leave something behind that you can pick up, not even dirt. This is because you have infinite resources, as there are no numbers placed next to the blocks you hold, yet they don’t disappear, and picking them up would be pointless. Again, this simplifies things so you can concentrate more on your construction.

Choose Your Materials

A crucial part of good construction is good design. This requires the use of certain blocks to attain a desired look for your structure. As you can see, you only have ten different spots to hold blocks. However, you’re not restricted to only those blocks that you see. If you press the B button, you’ll be presented with a screen of all the different blocks available in the game. Here you can change one block for another so that you have access to that new block. Now you can build that gold house you’ve always wanted.

Conclusion

Minecraft is a fantastic game, and I’m happy to see that the developers offer a free version of their game on their website for anyone to play. This way, people can still have fun playing Minecraft without having to pay for it. With some co-ordination, you can have plenty of fun with friends, building mega structures or exploring what other people have already made.

What’s your favorite feature in Minecraft? What would you like to see as the next addition? Let us know in the comments!

You may be worried if your computer is ready for it. Thankfully, the system specifications are mild, so you may not need to upgrade your PC – but there are other steps you may need to take to prepare your PC.

Clean Up Your Hard Drive – Or Buy A Solid State Drive

MMOs typically are not hard on your processor or video card, and will run on most hardware made within the last five years. Storage capacity can sometimes be a problem however, because of the massive size of these games. World of Warcraft now weighs in at over 20GB, so it would not be unusual if Star Wars: The Old Republic was of a similar size.

Upgrading your hard drive is one possibility, but as we recently reported, hard drive prices have risen significantly because of flooding in Thailand. This means your best bet is to clean up your current drive. Obviously, you can do that by deleting old files that you don’t need. You can also usually save several gigabytes by turning off hibernate, emptying your recycle bin, and deleting temporary files.

Another, much more expensive choice is to buy a solid state drive, as production of the memory chips they use is not impacted by the flooding. A 64GB Crucial M4 can now be had for about $110, and will nicely fit both your operating system and SW: TOR. Besides the space for the game, you will also receive a nice decrease in load times.

Buy A Second Monitor

Playing an MMO is about knowledge as much as it is skill. If you don’t know the best skills, the best character builds, and the best items, even an excellent player will be behind the curve.

Finding this information in the game usually isn’t possible, however. It wouldn’t be very sporting for the game to tell you the best way to play it.  There are many websites that solve this, but alt-tabbing out of the game is an annoyance. Hence, the second monitor.

It’s possible to buy a 20 inch monitor for under $100, which isn’t bad. But if you’re really on a budget, you can pick up a monitor at a second-hand shop for about $20 or $30.

Beef Up Your Network Connection

Network connectivity is another important part of playing a MMO. A moment of lag at the wrong time, or a disconnection, can seriously disrupt the gaming experience of both you and your group.

Purchasing a faster connection from your ISP will obviously help, but you may still run into problems if you connect over wireless, particularly the older 802.11g standard. Upgrading to 802.11n will be reduce or eliminate signal issues and periods of lag because of the standard’s higher bandwidth and better range. However, both your computer and your router need to support 802.11 in order to use it.

Another alternative is powerline networking. This technology makes it possible to connect your PC directly to your router via Ethernet by piggy-backing on your existing electrical wires in your apartment or home. It provides high bandwidth and, more importantly, an extremely reliable connection that won’t suffer from the lag peaks and occasional disconnects that can make wireless a poor choice for gamers.

Conclusion

Hyped up for SW:TOR? Feel free to share your own tips on how to prepare for the game in the comments. It won’t be long until the release, so now is the time to get ready, or put a few gaming-related items on your wishlist. Who knows – Santa might just be a Star Wars fan as well.

Image Credit: Andreas.com

What makes this year so great is that two out of the three on this list are games that you can easily spend hundreds of hours playing, and the other one is no short game either. This means that only these three games are going to be necessary to play because they will satisfy my gaming needs for the entire winter. All three of these games bring something a little different to the table, and they all look amazing.

Battlefield 3

BF3 is not only my most anticipated game of the 2011 holiday season, it just might be my most anticipated game of all time. I could not begin to imagine the amount of hours I spent playing Battlefield 2, and since then no other shooter has been nearly as satisfying.

The feature set in Battlefield 3 is awesome, and it looks like they are trying to capture the essence of what made the Battlefield games before the Bad Company series so great. It’s not that the Bad Company games were terrible, because they were perfectly competent shooters, they just didn’t capture the feel of a Battlefield game.

It seems like the people at Dice really remembered what made Battlefield 2 so great and they are trying to include that in 3. They even went as far as including some of my favorite maps from BF2 as a preorder bonus for BF3. Sharqi Peninsula and Strike at Karkand were the two maps I spent the most time in BF3.

I could easily write a whole article detailing the reasons I am excited for Battlefield 3, but I will just say, for me, October 25th cannot come soon enough.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

After a couple of weeks playing Battlefield 3 you might be ready for a little break from shooting people in the face, and if so, Skyrim is here for you. On November 11th 2011, Skyrim hits the market.

It’s been way too long since Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion came out, and while Bethesda has put out Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, both of which play similarly to Elder Scrolls, it just isn’t the same.

Besides walking around a massive world and doing pretty much whatever your heart desires, which is standard for Bethesda RPGs, the feature that really got my attention are the free roaming dragons in Skyrim. Imagine walking around the game world and a giant dragon comes out of nowhere and decides he wants to make you his afternoon snack. What makes these dragons so amazing is that they are not running a predetermined path laid out by the developers. They are given some rules and limits to follow and then sent on their way.

Another feature of Skyrim that has been greatly improved from Oblivion is the third person camera. For anyone who spent time in the last installment of the Elder Scrolls series, you know what I mean. The third person camera looked like complete trash in the last Oblivion game, and thankfully, they are addressing that and making the game actually playable in the 3rd person. In Elder Scrolls IV, the third person view looked so disconnected from the world that it was essentially unplayable. Now, they are building the game with the third person in mind, so for those players who prefer their RPGs in the third person you will be good to go.

Assassins Creed: Revelations

Assassins Creed is, in my opinion, the most improved game franchise ever. I played through AC1 and thought it was a game with great potential that was incredibly poorly executed. Then, AC2 came out and fixed everything that was wrong with the first one. The changes from AC2 to Brotherhood were much smaller, but still brought the franchise to an even higher level.

They are promising some improvements to the multiplayer. They are bringing new modes and improved matchmaking. To me, the online play is an afterthought in Assassins Creed, because I come for the amazing open world and the well done (albeit somewhat confusing) story.

It looks like the core game play is going to stay much the same in Revelations so if you are familiar with Assassins Creed you know just what to expect. The controls will remain the same, and the main objective of the game is intact. That is just fine with me, because it didn’t need much work in the first place. Basically, I just want more Ezio running around the city stabbing people, and it looks like on November 15th, Ubisoft is happy to deliver.

Check out the trailer!

Honorable Mention

Here are a few games that didn’t make the top 3 list, but I am still looking forward to playing them this holiday season.

Modern Warfare 3 – More Call of Duty is never a bad thing.

Forza Motorsport 4 – Forza and Gran Turismo are back and forth for the number 1 and 2 racing games, and I can’t wait for the Forza to swing the pendulum back to Forza’s favor.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: A Star Wars MMO made by the RPG geniuses at BioWare? Sounds like a recipe for a winner! That is if it actually comes out this year; I’ll believe it when I see it.

Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception: Uncharted is known for a great story line, great game play and awesome visuals, and the third looks to be no exception.

Batman: Arkham City: If this is anywhere near as good as Arkham Asylum, we are in for a winner.

Conclusion

The holiday video game rush looks like it is going to be a good one this year, and I cannot wait. You really can’t go wrong with any of these games.

Check out some other gaming related articles on MakeUseOf:

3 Best Multiplayer First Person Shooters Of All Time
5 Reasons Why You Should Not Give Up On Pokemon Games Even As An Adult

What games are you looking forward to this holiday season? Let us know in the comments!