That’s just rose tinted glasses, there are loads of unique games that are leaps and bounds above Mario 64 or Halo, even from AAA studios. Off top of my head (so probably skewed toward recent releases): Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Tears of the Kingdom, Unicorn Overlord, Helldivers 2, Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, Returnal, Half Life: Alyx. Saying there are no impactful games is disrespectful to amazing work that’s still being done. They don’t have as much of a visible impact because new generation of gamers chose to play Fortnite and Genshin Impact instead.

This low power mode has RAM running at half the bandwidth which will really kneecap performance but is a common way to increase efficiency in mobile devices. If it was about saving power they wouldn’t make adapting existing games this hard IMO.

Web browsers are the most resource intensive apps these days. Dedicated app doesn’t have to run JavaScript or ask for UI elements over network so it’s better for both battery and bandwidth.

Sony just introduced a low-power mode for PS5 that looks like groundwork for some kind of PS5-compatible handheld so this ”leak” sounds very unlikely from the get go.

Never let an opportunity to sell more stuff go to waste. GOG probably haven’t been targeted by payment processors yet so they can play tough.

Experience curve was such a slog at level 70 and upwards that I never understood how people ever got to 99 (or rebirth for that matter). I’m not sure anyone was ever very good at RO, even at high level guild battlegrounds it only ever looked like random mayhem. I think most of us were there to sink time and escape reality via cute hats.

It hasn’t been that long, I’m just 40 and was playing RO maniacally until I was 20 or so.

I have very fond memories of hanging out south of Prontera gate on one of the first independently developed private servers where it was like maybe 3 maps, monsters and items implemented. It was running for an hour every day because the dev was running it straight off his PC. That handful of people I met there was my pack for many years and we migrated from one public beta to another because we couldn’t afford official servers. Fun times. I feel a relapse coming.

As a RO addict I can say it looks very tempting. I’m pretty sure that monetisation will kill my enthusiasm and I’ll be back to relapsing into private RO servers every couple of years.