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Minecraft has to be my most played game by far (countless servers over the 13 year span I have played). Star Trek Online has managed to hit 2111 (plus n hours on other accounts), but for the past 5+ years I have only gone back for the Q's Winter Wonderland. On my main GW2 account I have 1900 hours, but the truckload of alts I have have hundreds more (acquiring Skyscale over and over again is my schtick. Sadly I'm getting less active in GW2 too (but always resuming for The Shadow of the Mad King (halloween)). I have significant but sub 1K hours in some other MMORPGs, 7DtD, and Satisfactory. Forza Horizons might also have pretty decent hours. First fulltime work reduced my gaming hours, and then I got cats. It's for the better, I can still play enough, just not 16 hours straight days.

Looking something up that I enjoy using doesn't really change the experience, but if I bend your topic a little and make it "products I didn't research adequately beforehand" I have a few products that fell short. Sennheiser HS 175, they're wireless over-ear headphones that use AAA batteries, take two inputs, and transmit the audio in some fancy digital manner. They work well, sound good to me, batteries last all day, but. When they are low on power, they start to beep, very loudly - regardless of the volume they're set to. It's the stupidest design decision I have ever come across. Samsung Q70T TV, menus are a complete mess (ads is the most popular complaint). Instead of giving me a static list of inputs, it tries to guess what's plugged in. Game mode is on, off, on, off, on, off. My first and last Samsung TV. But hey, at least it doesn't play an airhorn when it's about to automatically shut itself off. (And since I'm already ranting, Apple's decision to give Face ID a few tries before it allows you to input the pin instead is bad design. Just pop the damn keypad up after the first try.)

Lenovo Legion 5 Pro with 3060 should be around that price point. They have upgradeable RAM and storage, so starting with lower specs and bumping them up later is possible. I just bought one (16IAH7H), and I'm thoroughly impressed with the build quality. IIRC TUF A15 has cooling issues, but if that 2022 implies a refresh those may have been addressed.

Yes, absolutely. But on a related tangent, if you provide localization they should be more than mere machine translations. Microsoft has dropped this ball hard with Xbox. Console is for recreation, and having it set on my own language used to make it a premium experience, but lately the quality has just been all over the place. In all fairness they seem to have fixed the issues I had on my mind, but that took months. I know we're a marginal market and yadda yadda, but maybe that's because so few stores even stock Xboxes, and when you get one it speaks broken language... Doesn't help that there's zero marketing, but that's not my problem. I just want my 500€+ console to make sense without having to relate the nonsense back to English to decipher it. I bet you get more consistent translation picking any random Linux and localizing it. SMH

I'm just a fat guy who bought a cheap mountain bike from a large sports chain store, but excited for the summer nonetheless. I assembled the bike Yesterday and test drove to work and back today, whopping 7km. It was fun and surprisingly quick, my neighbourhood is generally pretty hilly, but I have a great mostly flat route to work. It has been about a decade since the last time I cycled any noteworthy amount. My original bike got stolen and I didn't replace it until a couple of years ago. My second bike was locked in a locked storage, yet it still got vandalised for parts. Fun. This time around I'm going to keep the bike in my apartment, thankfully even these cheap bikes have gotten absurdly light (I think mine is 14kg). I also got a decent chain with a good lock (thanks LPL), but I'll be trying my hardest never to leave it unsupervised anywhere but work. Each time I have bought a bike I have also had to get a new pump. Figuring out Presta was fun.

Guild Wars 2.

The way Microsoft seems to be "pathching" this up is the removal of 12mo Gold cards/sub-options. It's plausible it'll work until the existing supply runs out. The way this works is: Wait until your previous subscriptions run out. Top up as much Live Gold as you can, the max is 36 months. Purchase a month of Game Pass Ultimate. Conversion rate should be 1:1. If you go for the full three years, you'll lose one month (since again, the max is 36 months). It's also entirely conceivable that Microsoft could put an end to this at any moment. Conversion rates they offer during active Game Pass subscription are far worse (around 3:1). I dug through Reddit to find recent confirmations before the last time I did this (last spring), I'd recommend doing the same.

Did you do a chargeback on a purchase you made? That's a popular way to get banned, and (re)payment could plausibly be offered as a resolution.

Updates are unfortunately rather frequent. You can however play fully offline just fine. Achievements will sync once you go online again. Up-to-date specifics are readily available with a quick Google search. "--- phone --- has unlimited data, but WiFi is limited to 10 gigs a month" makes no sense.

AT&T might not have enough local mobile capacity, it's the only reason I can think of why they'd refuse to sell you a new plan. (My Internet varies from barely tolerable to Morse-like during the day, but works well at night.) If you don't need open ports for stuff like hosting servers, you don't need any special plan - the same plan you'd use in a phone works the same in a dedicated modem. ISP can tell the difference, so if the contract is silly enough to forbid any specific use, it's better to find something else. Prepaids are the simplest way to go (assuming the US has those), they're also the smallest commitment. An old phone works just fine as a trial modem. Around here operators don't publicly list all the plans they currently sell, and support might not have access to any extra deals either. What you really want, for once in this wretched world, is an actual sales person. Don't be afraid to say no/that you'll need to think about it/that it's too expensive. Repeat (over time) until you get a rep that wants to make a sale.

LPT: You can convert Live Gold to Game Pass Ultimate for even cheaper price. Here's the process in a nutshell: If you have previously subscribed to GPU, you have to wait until it expires. Stock up as much Gold as you can, limit is 36 months. Purchase one month of GPU, it'll convert existing Gold to GPU in 1:1 ratio. Do not add more Gold until the subscription expires. I repeated this last Sunday. Microsoft is probably phasing it out as they have stopped selling 12 month subscriptions directly, but there's still plenty of subscription cards out in the wild. New console with a fresh controller and a full warranty is always nice. I have seen some nightmarish used controllers, "a display product" gave me chills. Nothing wrong with One X, I love mine, but even with an SSD it doesn't reach the level of the Series consoles (and won't play games that require a Series console). And while the storage size is a bummer, in reality there's never enough anyway. We learn to live with it. Remember to claim your "free" monthly Games With Gold -games!

Well there's your problem. Legitimacy of the activation keys is completely irrelevant if you're downloading the actual game files from third party sources. Either there'll soon be a massive story about newest Windows update deleting user files (again), or you have fucked up your system yourself. There's no conspiracy, your Windows is not unique nor sentient, and you're not being targeted by Microsoft. If you're confident about your own actions, report the issue to Microsoft and wait. We don't care about your pirated games, but no one has magical fingers they can just snap your problems away with. The less you tell, the less anyone is able to help. Albeit the obvious tip would be that anything that requires you to disable your antivirus is rather obviously malicious, so if I were you I'd start there. And please wear a mask in public.

GW2 is more a "show up and play with people without worrying about parties" (dungeons are long ago abandoned content, GW2 has substituted them with other stuff like Fractals/Strike Missions). The open world itself is full of regular events that require several people, but doesn't force you to be a part of a group. Just show up. Some maps are locked behind doing the first steps of story content, but once you complete those/get someone to help you teleport there, you don't actually need to play the story. An MMO doesn't get much more casual than GW2. It's just a bit of an oddball to understand how it works, and pretty smooth after that. If that still doesn't work for you, I too would suggest FFXIV. Playing a DPS will have a bit longer queues, but you can play most of the game (certainly all of the F2P content) without worrying too much about how much you actually contribute. In later content you will be expected to know how to play your DPS class, but by then you either have learned to enjoy the game, or have moved on. (And I suspect you still get away with story required content , people know people in those may just the trying to get through the game, and the community overall is great). If you really just want to play with people, without any worrisome weight tied to your performance (casual), GW2 is still likely the best match. It just doesn't play like traditional MMOs (forget dungeons.) Most maps have periodically spawning events/chains of events, many change depending on player activity. HoT maps in particular have multigroup events that require that several conditions are simultaneously fulfilled or the map event fails. And most of these are timed: they go on and fail if no one works on them. Guilds can plan participation in these, but they'll keep happening all day every day regardless. Even if you lean towards PvP, the WvWvW three-way-(multi)server-PvP delivers. You can join the ~50 member hordes clashing with other similarly large hordes, or roam by yourself. Daily activity gives you softer daily shifting PvP content: sometimes it's a running race, sometimes you threw kegs to score points. The game's so old there's tons of variety available. TL;DR: Most of the stuff you find a queue for in GW2, is practically abandoned content. The game is 99% "just show up", with the twist that if it's your first time, you often can't tell the major events apart from other randomly occurring chains of events. Stuff happens all the time, everywhere.

I quit wasting my money on those when "10 Random Steam Keys" had the same games twice in a row (same games, different keys, separate purchases), and the seller figured holding onto 2.99€ was worth it to lose a customer with a history going back five years. PayPal naturally refunded me regardless. Scammers scam, it's easy to forget that when you are normally one of the benefiting parties. There are legitimate alternatives. IndieGala rotates cheap variably sized bundles of indie games. Might not seem as exciting/fun, but it's ultimately equivalent experience just with the option to look the games up beforehand. (They seem to have a couple of hentai bundles right now, if that seems questionable rest assured they cater wide range of themes, for example I got 16 (out of at least 20 unique) VR bundles back when I still had an interest in amassing random games.) If you're considering those random lots because they're advertising specific games you may get from them: don't. It's either an outright scam or pointless gamble. As long as you expect a pile of games that at most entertain you for 5-15 minutes each, you at least won't be cheating yourself. But please, get your keys from reputable sources.

Samsung is my go-to brand for SSDs. I went with 1TB 870 QVO since that's what happened to be in stock, and it has been performing as expected. Any SSD in One X is not going to blow your mind if you have been watching videos about the Series X/S, but compared to the stock 5400RPM spinner it's still nice, and the opportunity to swap the pads and paste at the same time helps justify the work (I went with 2mm pads). Just a PSA for anyone else that has been considering this but haven't done the research yet: Microsoft now offers a way to reinstall the OS, so there's no longer need to mess with cloning the original drive. One X is also by far the easiest Xbox One to open. Today is a good day to give your trusty Xbox some love.

Does the BIOS of the PC recognize the drive? Have you checked the cables (both ends)? Have you tried power cycling (Google) the drive (and have you tried putting it back after connecting it to the Mac)? Contents of the drive don't affect the PCs ability to recognize the device, so until you sort that out, breaking the stored Windows shouldn't be a priority. Once that's sorted, here's some additional steps: Have you disconnected all external storage devices from the PC? Have you reconnected any internal drives you have disconnected since the last successful boot, if any? (The extend of Windows' stupidity is beyond human imagination. "This is my boot drive? Nah, Imma put some shit on that other thing too!") What power saving options you had in place? Was is expected that the system would power down during your absence, or did it crash? Did you try to forcefully mount it? (The second option.) Since the Mac reads the drive, consider creating a virtual machine and using that to wake the Windows up to remove the lock. I suspect that anything not Windows and macOS will ignore the hibernating Windows, so if you have something like a game console or a router with external storage features, those might be more willing to wipe the drive. (Linux is a safe bet, even if they notice the Windows, they are unlikely to pamper you.)

Eleven and a half years later, yes, still have mine. Plugged in and ready to go. 360 apps need more love, but otherwise the platform is still great. Thanks to GwG it keeps getting better (since you get to keep the games without active sub). Guide (in-game system menu) was perfection (and now that Xbone no longer has Snap, 360 gets additional points). I have my original phat, a replacement twin, and an S just in case. My daily has an upgraded 500GB drive that frankly sounds like it's dying. Once it dies I'll replace it with an original 60GB drive for BC (I did a bad job upgrading the drive) and just get a bigger external drive (I currently have 1TB, I think I want 3TB just so I never need to think about space again). ...I mostly play Minecraft. 4J did amazing work, and I want those achievements.

Minecraft's EULA forbids all of this. The only legal way to get an account is to buy one yourself. That's the end of it, stop being delusional. The obvious risk is that you may lose your illegal account at any time (and any money you have put in), and additional risks depend on just how shady site you manage to find. You do realize that they won't have any more respect for your information than they have for anyone else's? If you start openly distributing illegal copies, you start attracting more serious consequences. That crap is one step worse than plain piracy, as you're trading tangible, already paid for property rather than just digital copies you made yourself.

Really well made, system-wide controller remapping could be a solid reason to install their launcher. If they did something amazing with VR I might take a look, but that's far from a guarantee. An MMORPG could also do the trick. Perfect Discord integration, aka "Open Discord" -button, instead of having their own social features would be appreciated. Edit/ Some sort of "VPN Mode" for 2FA would also be nice. "Shh, save the freakouts for when I try to spend money. Just recognise the machine, stay calm, and let me in."

I doubt any S775 processor is enough to run a decent server these days. When you're not running mods, a realm is the sensible choice. Ask your friends to skip one soda a month and you'll be set. If you and your friends have been playing long enough, you might all be able to get the Bedrock version for free. Since it's far less resource intensive on the clients, I'd bet it's also much easier (and optimised) on the server. They haven't really advertised it yet, but hosting Bedrock servers has been a thing for long enough for there to be plenty of resources regarding it. Your friends might also appreciate the added benefit of much wider client support (PC/VR/Xbone/phones, probably even fridges by now).

It's such an odd game. The nature is incredibly beautiful, stunning in VR, but the proportions of some random things are so off it hurts the immersion. I just want an unending forest like that to listen to audio books in.

Gaps on OG and 360 title availability is for the most part a licensing issue. That shouldn't be a problem with the new iteration of the current platform. They're not reinventing the wheel anymore, just upgrading it. Cough. They also haven't really been that worried about a game running properly, regardless of if that's a good or a bad thing. ? "We can let them play it? Then let them play it. Who cares." #theAtariwayorhighway

I thought it stood for In My Honest Opinion, and your status update pretty much supports that one, as it makes effortlessly more sense.

Microsoft is pretty good with this thing called backwards compatibility, so that won't be an issue at least in the next few years.