Pthppt Games

So a few weeks back I was playing “Lord of the Rings Online” (LOTRO), and my wife saw me messing around at my Hobbit’s house, and became enthralled with the game. I told her it was going Free-to-Play this fall (which we now know will officially be launched on September 10th, or Sept. 8th for current subscribers), and she said “Well, maybe I’ll play it with you then”.

If you’ve read my previous articles, you already know all this so far, but it’s important for what we’ll be discussing today, so bear with me.

Anyway, a week ago I installed LOTRO on my wifey’s beloved netbook, that I bought her last Christmas. Now I didn’t really think it would be playable on that machine, even with the graphics all the way down, but she wanted me to give it a try. Well, predictably, it didn’t work. 12 frames per second when staring at your shoes, 1 to 8 fps if you were doing anything else. And this was in a very unpopulated area, on a netbook that had double its normal amount of RAM (2GB instead of the one it came with), so that wasn’t the issue. I’d hate to think what it would have been like in a very populated area like Moria 21st Hall.

With this crushing defeat, our fate was set. If Karen was to play LOTRO with me, we’d need to get her a gaming laptop. She will not use the desktop rig in the office, as it is far too crowded in there, and she wants to be able to play and surf from anywhere. So, with this in mind, I started doing my research…

It took all of five minutes.

Now, I have an Asus G50vt-x5 gaming laptop, that I bought around 18 months ago. It has been nothing but reliable in that time, and after I upgraded it with 4 additional GBs of RAM, a 250GB solid-state drive (SSD), and went from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium, the rig literally screams! So, with that in mind, I knew an Asus was what we’d be buying for my sweetie.

It came down to two models: The G72GX and G73JH. Both are very good machines, with very minute differences in cost and features. The idea was now for Karen to try both out in a store, see which she preferred, and that would be the one we bought. Alas, the G72 line is no longer carried in Best Buy stores (online shopping item only), but they carry the G73JH in stores, and I confirmed with our local store that they not only have them in stock, but that there is a display model from my lovely bride to play with.

So yesterday, Karen and I went down to our local Best Buy to see this machine. It was easy enough to find, and the first thing that struck us both was “That is a huge laptop!”

Yes, it comes in at a whopping 16.5 inches wide, with a 17.1″ widescreen display. Furthermore, it’s a whole 2 inches deep when closed, making it a challenge to fit into, well, any laptop bag! But once we’d decided this was a laptop she’d like to own (I suggested she check out others, but no, this was her rig), we went about finding a laptop bag. It came down to two that would hold the G73JH, not because they looked nicer than the rest, but because they were the only ones that would hold it period!

The first was the Targus bag I currently use for my laptop bag, and Karen shot it down because I already have one of those, and we might mix them up. Doubtful, considering what we’ll discuss later on, but okay… it’s her choice. So we went with a Swiss Gear backpack that has all kinds of pouches and clips and pockets and zippers and lions and tigers and bears (OH MY!). I have to admit, it’s kinda cool, especially with the stabilization system it includes to keep it standing upright. Not sure how it works, but it does!

So, with both choices made, back we went to stand by the Asus display to wait for a clerk to help us. They were all either on the phone or assisting other customers, so had not come by once to even say “Hi, welcome to Best Buy, the 5th circle of Hell!” yet. We waited, and waited, and waited, then waited some more. Karen could tell the guy on the phone ten feet away was eyeing us like a predatory animal, seeing a nice, fat commission waiting for him once he could get off the line. I swear just before he hung up, the gentleman who had been helping an elderly couple pick out a gaming rig for Nameless Family Member They Intend To Spoil And Will Only Disappoint By Buying Exactly The Wrong Machine For Them came by and asked if he could give us a hand.

“Yes, you can take the large amounts of money I’d like to throw at your company, and get us this Asus laptop”, I replied. Karen noted the clerk getting off the phone glaring at the other clerk as he traipsed over to the racks to retrieve her machine. I suspect a workplace ‘accident’ was being planned at that point. What’s the commission on a $1300 laptop and $100 backpack? Maybe $140, at most? It must have been good, whatever it was, because it looked like someone was going to die over this.

But I digress.

I spent the better part of Saturday getting Karen’s new laptop charged up, updated, new software installed, old (useless) software removed, and with transferring all of Karen’s music, data and pictures over from the ‘old’ netbook. I then performed a complete format-&-reinstall on the netbook, as Karen planned to give it to her sister, so her sister could then pass her current netbook on to her son for school. I told Karen she should have held onto it, because her laptop isn’t as easy to carry around as the netbook, but no. Karen is a giving person, and her nephew needs a computer, so it was getting passed on.

But I digress. Again.

I want one, meaning a G73JH. It has less ram than my rig (6GB, as opposed to my 8), and it doesn’t have a super-fast SSD like mine has, but… turns out, it doesn’t need them!

This morning, after we’d gotten LOTRO fully installed on her rig, we went to give it a test run, to see how it performed. I logged into my account, and the game loaded about as fast as it would have on my machine. In regards to initial loading, from choosing server to initial loading screen, it is faster than my rig, which surprised me. The first thing that struck me though was that on Fullscreen, the game looked Windowed, taking up only about 2/3rds of her screen. Why? Because her resolution was 1600×900, and mine is maxed out at 1380×768.

So I made an adjustment, moving my game resolution up to 1600×900, and took a look around. First of all, the ATI Mobility Radeon 5870 the G73JH employs is simply stunning! It renders LOTRO effortlessly, pulling ~100+ FPS in even the most crowded areas, with full weather effects and graphics cranked as high as the game will go! Under similar conditions on my rig, I’d be churning in the sub-60 frames-per-second range, not bad by any means, but not nearly as good by comparison.

I shudder to think what her machine will be like with 8GB of RAM and an SSD as primary hard drive, like in my machine.

Just from that test, Karen tossed out her previous plan of joining me in LOTRO when it goes Free-to-Play next month, and insisted on making an account right bloody now! Unfortunately, Turbine stopped offering 10-day Trial accounts last week (in preparation for the coming service changes), which meant in order for Karen to have an account today, we’d be buying expansions. The Complete Mirkwood Package, which includes the original game, and both “Mines of Moria” and “Siege of Mirkwood” expansions, was priced at $29.99, but includes 30 days free playtime, so that was doable. Considering she was wanting to sign up for a Trial and drop $15 on it for one month of additional playtime, an extra $15 to get everything in the game is a pretty good deal.

So, just like that, Karen’s a subscriber to another MMO. After the failed attempt to get her to play WoW over a year ago (she had an account for a year, with all expansions, and only got to level 17 on her Main), I was feeling a little trepidation. This was interesting in hindsight: I had no problem dropping well over a grand on buying a laptop for Karen to play LOTRO as a Free account, but now that we’d bought expansions and set her up with a monthly account subscription I was concerned that she might not stick with the game.

In fact, at first, it looked like she wouldn’t make it out of the character tutorial. Karen was having exteme difficulty with mouse-turning, so she switched to moving via the keyboard keys, and then had all manner of problems targeting, using skills, and whatnot. Eventually she got on to the starter zone where I was waiting to run around with her (both elves, she a Hunter, I rolled a Champion), and I had her try using the WASD keys for movement. She didn’t like that, either, so grabbed the mouse and spent a good half-hour just practicing moving with the mouse, changing view angles, etc.

We worked through the entire Elven/Dwarven starter zone, and by the time we left, she had mouse control down. I think part of the problem was her mouse, which is tiny, but she likes it and would not try another. Her choice.

Anyway, we eventually took a break from playing, because her knees were starting to hurt. Yes, her knees. Did I neglect to mention that the laptop we bought her is simply massive? It easily weighs half again what my already rather heavy rig does! It barely fits into the laptop bag we got her, and only if you don’t put it in the special pocket designed to secure your rig.

So it’s a few hours later, and Karen is sleeping. The more she played LOTRO, the more she loves it, and she’s tickled pink by her sweet gaming rig. It’s big, bulky, and looks like stealth bomber (by design, actually), but that badass machine is HER badass machine! She is now one very contented fledgling gamer, who is already planning to buying Diablo III for herself.

It’s been a good weekend.