HyBriD54

Vista's new Service Pack has improved the speed of the OS quite drastically according to my friend. "I can feel the boost already".But yes, I agree that XP is alot better than Vista, especially when the two OS's got realised, and people had bought XP alot more than Vista. Heck, theres even sites about how bad Vista is (with Microsoft's "spyware" kind of software, I forgot what it was though).Personally I'm going to stick to XP until they fix some of the Vista problems and performance...

I play DoTA Allstars online, generally playing SD, AP, AR on public games but I don't play Inhouse all that often (although I have). I've played it since the 5.48 version came out (the one from TrueRuss) and I've been playing it ever since.All in all, I can play like almost every hero no problem apart from Goblin Techies, Templar Assassin and the New Visage. Other than that I have no real urge to -repick whenever I receive a hero (many people scream at me to -repick Keeper of the Light. What's wrong with KoTL? o_O).I tend to find Intelligence heroes more fun than Hack-and-Slash Agility heroes or the Tanker Strength heros (although most are still fun), while it is still hilarious when you Time Walk in as Faceless Void and 1v5 against the enemy team and still win from his late gaming power. Icefrog is starting to make DoTA a bit more caster oriented (you can have Euls and Guinsoo at the same time now and they don't share casting times as well as Euls boost giving a bonus +20 to help run + chase with). Balance is still an issue though...

Yes! I am a Blizzard Entertainment gaming freak XD. <=== Includes WoW.As posters have stated before me, play Starcraft (and perhaps the sequel which is going to be released at an unknown date) and Warcraft III (and their respective expansions). I've played online for years on both of them now and I'll offer my views. Starcraft is more balanced than Warcraft III IMO. It also tends to focus on building up and army and destroying the other one while Warcraft III is more about powerful casters, supporters, heros and microing them efficiently to achieve victory over the other players. Also, Starcraft is more about guns and spaceships etc. while Warcraft is... partially medieval.The online Starcraft community tends to concentrate more around the Blizzard standard Melee/Free for all/Top Vs Bottom although some still play Use Maps Settings while Warcraft has a HUGE custom maps community (since the Warcraft III Frozen Throne World Editor completely PWNS Starcraft's StarEdit by FAR). You may have heard of a map named DoTA Allstars (which in actuality came from Starcraft's old map of the Three Corridors).In the past few years though, a lot of Starcraft players have migrated to the newer games, but theres still alot of players playing on Starcraft (they need a damned Australian Battle net server, I can't stand playing on like 200ms ping all the time). Aside from that though, there shouldn't be any internet problems after you've settled your firewall problems (although people have reported that Vista has had some problems with Starcraft) and games are quite stable. Warcraft III also tends to be more cheater free (hackers are still a problem, although players have used things like BanLists to blacklist many known Hackers onto their lists) as they have anonymous game match-making unlike in Starcraft where players could play maps such as 7 players against 1 computer to gain a VERY easy victory and "fake" their scores.Well, give those two games a go, and if you like it, play online where most of the fun is!And about Command and Conquer Generals and its expansion, it's quite enjoyable, the expansion in particular, but you need a pretty decent rig to run it properly or it will be hideously slow. And I mean hideously slow. Lucky EA had eased that problem in Zero Hour. The game tends to play more similar to the Blizzard RTS's rather than the traditional Command and Conquer with the sidebar etc. You can give it a go, it shouldn't cost much. I got both for 14 dollars. Bargain .

Starcraft remains the one of the most balanced RTS's out there to date. The three races were so different in aspects (Zerg using larva instead of the typical queueing), and yet, the races were so balanced.The outcome of the games were more likely determined by setting of the map and luck, rather than the game balance between the three races. There were strategies you could use, some more effective against some races while another strategy was needed for another situation. In an even situation however, there were opening you could take advantage of and openings you could effectively defend against if you were skilled enough.Skill is a very important factor in playing, and because of that, new players on the online service Battle.net tend to be swamped very easily by more skilled players.EDIT: Absolute_Zer0: It does have online play, but it MUST be a legit copy of the game (CD key only required for the original Starcraft, not the Expansion Set Brood War or the Starcraft Spawn). There have been problems about Vista and its compatibility issues with Starcraft but there was a fix avaliable for it.