Oh, I do love me a good RTS; I'm a huge AoE fan, for example. I spent many a class playing it on my tablet (did you know it works epically mouse-only, so it's perfectly-suited to a tablet?). I also like several of the railroad simulation games, although Sid Meier's Railroads!, which is the best of them, is plagued with a bunch of truly horrific bugs that are widely villified on the internet.

I like TBS games much better for mouse-only interfaces. After too much WC3 and SC2 I get freaked out by not having hotkeys, but I suppose if everyone has the same limitation it would be fine.

I never played Railroads! but I did like a couple other old-school simulation games like SimAnt and some of the "Tycoon" games (notably Dinopark Tycoon).

I've been struggling to run StarCraft II. I have 1 computer that actually has the video card requirements to run it, but due to mobo ram limitations it takes 20 minutes to load each map. What I've been able to load and play in the last few weeks is awesome, it's just the loading times on my hardware are so frustrating it makes it unplayable, and I have no money or job to get better hardware. If only they'd made it just a little bit more scalable and able to run on the home/office machines everyone has, rather than stick to high-end gaming PC elites. *sigh*.

Well, I would usually play against an AI or three, so it wasn't too bad. Just to clarify, there are tons of hotkeys and such, and in fact other than targeting and choosing build areas you can do almost everything without the mouse, but in tablet mode I was restricted otherwise.

Ah, very nice; I think the only Tycoon games I've tried are Railroad Tycoon and Roller-Coaster Tycoon.

Or more accurately, you wish they targeted super old computers like yours rather than the far more common average systems which can all easily run SC2, outside of needing a video card upgrade.

The system requirements are fairly low: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=26242&locale=en_US

It is not a demanding game nor does it target the "high-end gaming PC elites". Honestly, my video card takes a nap while the game is playing.

The fact that it can operate on 1GB of total system RAM tells me it's on the low end of system specs, at least for today's games. Forget about a last-last-last-generation game like UT2004. As Kllrnohj said, the graphics card requirements are the only things on the moderately high side.

Agreed. I can run custom graphics settings with a mostly a mixture of medium and low settings, but also with higher quality models and textures and my 9600m, and if I forget to switch to high power mode, the loading times are a bit longer (and the frame rate lower) but my 9400 (which is definitely a low end card) steps up to the plate okay.

The only problem with this logic is that most, if not all, of today's home/office machines make use of integrated intel graphic chipsets, and cannot accept a new video card. I have a good enough video card, it's just that none of the newer home/office machines in my house can make use of it. As far as I can tell, this is why most successful games either have console ports(like mass effect, gears of war, halo, fallout, etc.) or can run on all the home/office machines people have(like WoW, Plants Vs. Zombies, etc.). Starcraft II did neither of these, and as a result I won't be able to play it for a while, until long after sales matter. I can't imagine I'm unique in this, which I feel makes it a poor design decision on Blizzard's part that will cost them, especially given their tremendous success with the ridiculously scalable WoW.

Why do you have a video card without a machine to put it in? This seems a bit silly.

That's not entirely true. The cheap HPs that BestBuy sells have a PCIe x16 slot, for example. The biggest problem is usually an insufficient power supply, which typically are barely adequate to power the system itself.

But your problem is you want to play games on something sold as a home office desktop. They sell cheap gaming systems. Blizzard didn't screw anything up, you're just SOL.

It's in a machine; the machine it's in was first custom built a decade ago. All the other working computers in my house are either laptops, or have integrated Intel video chipsets.

My problem is that everyone(or at least everyone I know) has a home/office desktop as their primary computer, and Blizzard didn't take them into account with SC2 like they did with WoW.

ahem, no double posting

sorry I got ninja'd by Kllr and can't delete my older post.

system spec griping aside, it's an incredible game, which I'd totally buy if there were a console port, or if I could run it on anything I own.

It would seem like upgrading that machine would be one solution. RAM is stupidly cheap, and I'm sure you could find a new processor to fit the socket on your motherboard. 10 years ago is still P4 territory.

The processor isn't the problem, I have a newer P4 computer I can swap with. The problem is the motherboard's in-built limit of 512mb of ram. When I upgrade, I'll have to to buy a whole new motherboard, which would likely require newer PCIe replacements for all my current PCI peripherals(USB hub, router, etc.). I'd also probably need new SATA drives if I want to do things right. Essentially, if I want to upgrade, I need to buy a whole new computer. The only things I can carry over are the chassis, the 430watt 10-12 pin universal power supply, and the video card if the new mobo has AGP.