Widescreen Gaming Forum

I am looking for some suggestions and advice with regards to finding a good MMO game to play. I just finished building a new system (primarily for work but hey, it's there) and I'm looking for some casual entertainment after the kids go to bed. :) The system is a Core 2 Duo box (E6600 overclocked to 3GHz), 2G ram, with two PCI-E GeForce 7600GT cards driving three LCDs (3840x1024 total resolution.)

I have a number of requirements and desires, and not a lot of free time, so I'm hoping I can get some good suggestions here, I'm hoping this forum is a good place to start. So, here's my list.

1. Gotta have multi-monitor support, preferably with the ability to play windowed. I played shadowbane a bit and it could do this, for example.

2. Doesn't require a massive time investment; something I can play an hour here and an hour there.

3. Preferably an older player base. A lot of what caused me to quit playing Shadowbane was the "pwned j00" type comments from the under 15 crowd. Not that you don't get that type of attitude from the over 30 group on occasion, it's just not as common. :)

4. I'd prefer a space sim. I played all the Wing Commander games and really enjoyed them, that style would be great. I'm flexible tho, fantasy or sci-fi works for me.

So, any suggestions for a casual gamer with not a lot of time to spend but a good box to spend it on? :) Thanks.

Hi schnark, welcome to the forums. :)

Just off the top of my head: Eve Online or Star Wars Galaxies. Both fulfill the sci-fi setting requirement and I believe Galaxies was recently retooled to allow for simpler gameplay that doesn't take a long time. Eve Online's time requirement I'm not too sure about, but it looks like a gorgeous game with a fairly mature user base. This may be b/c of the learning curve.

Multi Monitor support? Hm. I was just discussing this in another thread, and there is definitely a big dearth of support for multiple displays. I think that Star Wars Galaxies has multi monitor support. In fact it is one of the few games were i've heard dual-monitor display mentioned within the context of its video options.

I've just spent a frustrating several hours downloading and messing with a few different demos - anarchy online, EVE online, etc. nothing I've tried has supported multiple monitors. Apparently EVE did in the past, but that option has been disabled or removed.

I can stretch the EVE window via "The Wonderful Icon" (http://www.thewonderfulicon.com/) across all three monitors and it works, but it's just stretched and the click locations are wrong. I can look around and such and the performance is just fine, so it WOULD work... just not supported right. :(

This is really frustrating... sigh. How about any suggestions that AREN'T online games? Besides FPS quake-style games, what else is out there that would meet my want list? Anything?

Haven't tried SWG yet... I've heard that it's been really ruined with the changes.

Unfortunately aside from using a TH2G, there is very very little support for multi-monitors.

Yeah, that's what it looks like to me. Oh well... ordered a TH2G today, I'll return one of the 7600 cards I have. I'm running at 3840x1024 res anyway, so the TH2G should fit the need.

I did get EVE Online running widescreen - sort of. :) I set two monitors up in the horizontal span mode and then set to windowed, 2560x960. That showed a framerate of ~120-140fps. I could drag that window around, when I dragged it so that it was overlapping all three monitors it was showing a framerate of about 16fps. :) Guess it must disable all the hardware accel to do that.

X3 Reunion has muli-mon support. Surpreme Commander does as well. CoH works well with TH2G, but you'll need major SLI.

Haven't tried SWG yet... I've heard that it's been really ruined with the changes.

I tried playing the game right after it was released, and found it to be unintuitive and hard to get into. To each his own of course, but after hearing about the massive changes the SWG team made to the gameplay and watching some movies of it i'm actually tempted to give it a try again. It actually looks fun to play this time around.

Alas for the dual-monitor inclined, here is what I found on the official SW: Galaxies tech support forums:

Thank you for posting, dual monitors is not supported for use with StarWarsGalaxies.

From what i've observed in other threads it looks like it is possible to run the game in one window and all of your other windows clients, Word, IM, etc on the other. Anyway, if you are interested here is a nifty thread where we were talking about dual monitors a while back:

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=51718&highlight=jupix#51718

I guess I wasn't really distinguishing between multi-monitor and surround gaming, and I should have been. It sounds like "multi-monitor gaming" is generally considered to be where you play a game on a single monitor, and are able to do stuff on other monitors at the same time - spreadsheets, communications, whatever. What I'm really wanting is surround gaming, where your main game screen extends over multiple monitors.

In any case, the TH2G is going to do what I'm looking for, I'm sure.

FYI, EVE at 3840x1024 (TH2G) is simply awesome. :) Got the TH2G today. :)