Blizzard lost touch with their original fanbase since they fired the D2 team. These silly ideas are proof that the magic is in the marketing, not the actual game.

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

Well, I guess that explains why a lot of reviews are, quite frankly, way off like Mrs. Obama's wardrobe. Every time Brett Todd reviews a game, I simply add a +2 to his score and I have my number. Frankly, I go to Metacritic and read customer comments for the real unbiased truth from those who produced $50 to buy DRM riddled, bugged, uninspired corporate titles. The opinion of just one man is that man's opinion alone, not the Ten Commandments cast in stone. I just wish the sheep would realize that before funding more crappy games to fuel the junk pile.

it's the same old story we have been seeing for a couple years now. The new catchphrase in gaming is now "Steamlining"...which is essentially a very polite way of describing a bare-bones, stripped down economy version of something that could have been revolutionary and innovative. We've seen at least 15 top blockbuster releases over the past 18 months which have followed this path and the the only ones enthused about it are the 12 year old X-Boys and the Kotlicks of the world. Don't pull out features and mechanics; add more! Don't scale down to fit on a console that is 10 times slower than the rest of the world; add more! Don't worry about printing out a 200 page manual; use PDF format and hire a writer! And since we are talking about a supposed RPG here, make it NON-LINEAR and EPIC like it should be; don't "Mass Effect" the thing and throw it at die hard gamers and expect applause afterward. I certainly hope Skyrim doesn't fall in this horribly ill devised mockery and pull it together for the big win because I need a REAL RPG for the modern day, not a watered down console port that tells me how to play the game with help screens and guides me around the map like a hungry mule. Sorry, but I'm not one of the infamous Bioware fans who will buy their games without question. All retail concerns aside, I want a living, breathing work of art that I can call a masterpiece for many years after its' release...and let me tell ya', it's WAY overdue.

My rig plays Civ 5 like a dream on my newly built system; i5-750, 4 Gig 1333, nVidia 250. It runs the game in native 1080p resolution very smoothly with no crashing even after 12 hours running. I built this system for a little over $700 (the GF 250 card helped bring this down quite a bit) and runs everything quite well. I can run either the DX10 or DX11 version with no problems, but I ended up choosing the DX10 shortcut since my card is the 250 and not 260+.