I've had just about every problem with this game that everyone else is having. I've also seen some dramatic improvements just since last week. However, I did make some choices about what I was going to do that affected my performance.

Once I get logged in, which is still tricky as hell sometimes, I get as far from a city (especially Newland, Athen, Tir, Omni, etc.) as possible. The reason is there are too many people there and the game is (in those places) unplayable. Once out in the world I find a remote outpost with bank, mission, insurance and reclaim terminals and use that as my base. I'd tell you all where some of them are, but for now I like my privacy. ;)

Once in these remote areas I have no problems with frame rate and only rare problems with lag, crashes and no problems with frame rate. Also, the money and reward items tend to be better since you have to go a litte farther for your missions.

As for the missions not working, I only saw that for non-assassination missions *within* city limits. In Borealis last night I accepted 4 missions that were for in town. 2 were assassinations, the other two were item retrieval and observation. The assassinations ones worked fine. The other two didn't and I heard others shouting the same results. Then I took a couple of modification missions that took place in Stret West Bank. Guess what? They worked great.

As for tech support, I did send a message in last week regarding graphics display and login issues I was having. I got a replay 3 days later asking if I was still having the problem. I responded that I had corrected those problems but listed a whole lot of others I was having in detail. The next day I got back a response asking me to send them a copy of a file from my AO directory which details all your system specs. I sent them the file and am just waiting for the next response. To me that shows me that they are listening and trying to follow up which goes a long way in my book. I'm guessing that part of the reason I may be getting better response than some is that I took the time to calmly detail my symptoms, what I had tried so far to fix them and then *asked* them for help.

Having worked tech support for a few years I can tell you that if you yell, scream and threaten the support folks you're shooting yourself in the foot. They'll just tune you right out and move on to the next person. Sure, you paid for the game and want it to work. Guess what, they want it to work too. If it works, people will keep playing, they keep making money and they can make more money by being able to reduce the number of support staff they need.

And to all those who compare buying a $50.00 computer game to purchasing a new car or other high ticket item, give it a rest. There is no comparison. You buy a car and you expect it to transport you and your loved ones safely and reliably around town and that's a justified expectation. That's why they have warranties. You spend $50.00 on a game to relax and have fun (hopefully). Your personal safety and that of those around you are not at stake (unless you're homocidally psychotic to begin with) like it is with a car. That means the developers don't have to spend billions (which, except for MicroSloth, they don't have) on testing every component for many years before they can even think about releasing it to the market.

If the game doesn't work to your satisfaction you have a couple of options...

1. Quit the game and try to get your money back for the purchase price. Depending on where you bought it, you might have little or no trouble doing this.

2. Be patient and wait for them to work the problems out. If they don't, you can still quit.

3. Fly into a apoplectic fit because you can't play with the whizbang new toy you got and blame and threaten everyone in the world over it due to your psychological shortcomings.

That's about it. Flame on.