What Do I Get By Purchasing ARMA2 AND ARROWHEAD

[buchawk 1]

I have the free version and I'm finally figuring out how to play. I would like to purchase the full game, but I'm not really sure what it gets me above the Arma2Free.

Here is my biggest problem with ARMA2FREE--lack of servers and players. It seems like most of the populated servers are higher than 100ping or some kind of stupid cops and robbers mod. Will the full game have more servers and players available?

Is the teamwork better and with better admin monitoring to get rid of stupid team-killers and hackers better on servers? (Funny side story, playing the other day, some hacker placed a fully loaded enemy naval missile frigate in our permanent HQ).

If anybody can answer those questions and just in general tell me what good stuff I can get by upgrading I would appreciate it.

[PuFu 4591]

100 ping in A2 is more than enough. Most of the time i play on 50-100ms servers anyhow

For public servers, the teamwork is close to none. Things change dramatically when we talk about closed servers own by different communities and squads/clans. Same goes for hackers and alike, especially when the servers are being admined properly (public or not).

Arrowhead has some engine improvements over A2, as well as more content. That said, it is the norm in todays bis community

[Banshee 9]

If you really want to get your hands dirty, I recomend buying Arma2:CO (Arma2 + Arma2:OA) and maybe the additional DLC's BAF and PMC, but that's optional.

Then try out some servers. Or you go the pro path and look out for a community that suits your timezone. I've read out of your post, that you're looking for teamwork and some sort of coordinated gameplay.

That's often very little on public servers. There are groups out there that run public servers with proper administration on it. Or groups that only play on private servers at all.

Your choice, there are many of them out there. :)

[Guest]

http://www.arma2.com/free

Look at the bottom of the page, there you can easily see whats different between Arma 2: Free and the full game(s).

[[frl]myke 14]

I think most servers are "Combined Operations" (ArmA 2 & Operation Arrowhead combined) and there you still have the option to just launch ArmA 2 without the expansion if you need to. So CO gives you the biggest versatility possible. Also BAF and PMC are as "lite" version (low (really low) textures) present and playable.

Also Engine improvements are an argument IMHO.

[kylania 567]

Everything is gonna be 66% off soon from the BIS store, so just wait and get CO or A2 and OA separately while they are on sale, right from the source!

[Bee8190 10]

Well you will be able to use one of many mods if you decide to get the full game.There are hundreds of them, including units, sound mods all kind of replacemant packages etc..

Also if your after teamwork, check out project reality mod.It requires full game indeed which is arma 2 and arma op. arrowhead aka combined ops.

hope this helps ;)

[Lonestar 11]

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ARMA2_PackageCombination

[metalcraze 290]

ArmA is playable up to 200ms ping

Comfortable play up to 150ms

[bars91 956]

Also patch 1.60 is inbound soon(ish) and it will bring(judging by all the public beta patches) ArmA2 to a new optimisation level(both single and especially multiplayer) compared to what it is now(let alone A2FREE) + literally gigabytes of mods(I have about 12GB's of mods in my CO folder).

[Nito 10]

Looks like this runs better than ArmA 1 then. I think I'll go for Arma X then, or is there a reason why I should buy separate. I'm downloading the demo for arrohead right now to have an idea of how this will run in my PC.

[badshot 10]

Combined operations all the way! After playing around with Free and OA-only I learned that this

>teamwork better and with better admin monitoring to get rid of stupid team-killers and hackers

is to be found on servers by communities that base their missions on the best combination of software: Arma2, OA (combined), ACRE, ACE. With lots of serious fun.

By a bundle, save a buck

Cheers

[DurbanPoison_VoD 2]

What do you get?? Are you for real?!

You get to support the greatest game designers on the planet who in turn will provide the world (and you) with the greatest game to date.

:)

[Bee8190 10]

Looks like this runs better than ArmA 1 then. I think I'll go for Arma X then, or is there a reason why I should buy separate. I'm downloading the demo for arrohead right now to have an idea of how this will run in my PC.

I wouldn't really bother DL the demo unless it includes the latest patch (1.59) , plus once 1.60 pach is released the performance ll be a whole lot better.( having full game patched to BETA i can tell huge improvements over previous patches )

Also if you have low to medium powerful PC try -

( would help if you posted your rig specs )

switch off Vsync

Vram (GFX card ) memory to default

shadows high / very high

View distance - as you feel (or ur PC ;) comfortable but its very heavily CPU dependant so i recon something like 3k should do :)

Hope this helps and once again, patches make huge difference ;)

[Nito 10]

Oh yes, it helps. Thank you.

Not that I need to put this here, but since you mentioned I'll add my specs to the post, and I'm not about my glasses.

XP sp3

AMD Athlon dual core processor 4600+2.41GHz

2 GB of RAM, I'll get some more, probably take this to 4 GB, I know BI games tend to be quite demanding, I played OFP and ArmA.

NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS 256MB (This I may change for something with more memory)