Will

No worries here. I've had fun playing Reikland Factory. Day before yesterday, I got it to pop three times in a row with little wait. I just do maintenance stuff in between like visit merchants, &c.

This week has been a highlight for me. Including the HM events, there's been lots of back and forth in T3 oRvR and I even tried to put my toe in the T4 pond but alas, being bolstered to level 36 just results in a pounding for this poor witch hunter when confronted with a Level 40 zerg!

Well, I've been having a great time with this game. yes, on occasion the population is a little low on the Iron Rock where our guild resides, but I don't expect as brand new game to be going great guns 24 hours a day.

If I'm bored, I do something else. I am getting about 3 great nights a week out of this game. It's one of my favorites.

Here's how it went down for me. My strat failed on opening night and I went to the website at about midnight. The site was relatively impressive, and I was happy to give them my CC information and wait for the '2 day shipping.

Thanksgiving came and went, and my concern wasn't that I had not gotten a guitar, but that I hadn't gotten a confirmation email. I went to the support site again and emailed them. It was in reply to that that I received my 'you'll get a free game offer soon' email.

As other have indicated, I don't think that broken guitar = free game for everyone. I think only a relative few got it. Yesterday I got the email with the link. I believe that they sent me the email with the link when they got my broken guitar back. It went to a plain website with one drop down and a button. Presumably, my information was in the referrer from the email.

In any case, the list was fairly cool. Tiberium Wars, skate., Simpsons Game, Rock Band, and a bunch of Sports (Soccer, Football, Basketball, Hockey, NASCAR and Tiger WOods of some sort as I recall). For us it was between another RB copy (2x 360 here in the house) or Tiberium Wars as we already beat a rented copy of the Simpsons and we already have skate. Not a fan of really any kind of sports games.

All in all I am pretty happy with this turn of events. I am looking forward to the extra copy of Rock Band for a couple of reasons.

No news here. I figured this out last year when I got my 360. I am sure that it's the 'polling' signal that the 360 sends out to listen for controllers for startup.

I have: a 2.4 GHz phone, a 802.11g network (with three different transmission points, running 3 different computers and the Wii as well as both of my 360s) AND one of those TV transmission things (that works in the same band). ANytime that I would put the TV transmitter near the 360, static. Unplug the 360, no static.

I now have an uneasy wireless truce in the house; everything seems to somehow work. Probably giving everyone brain cancer, but you know...

I also noticed that putting the 360 power brick near the TV wireless receiver caused static on it. Weird. Gott ago, feeling light heade....

I got that email. What happened was, I used the warranty site (on launch day, no less), and then waited patiently through Thanksgiving. I THOUGHT I had gotten a confirmation email, but when I went to look for it, I had not. So I went back to the site and emailed them asking if they had, indeed, gotten my request (along with credit card number, yikes). I got a reply with my reference number a day later.

A few days later (this last Friday, I think), I got the 'more to come' free game email. I got my new Strat today and so far it seems fine. We shall see.

To: Leonard Nimrod

You might also ask, why don't people get real guns and play Halo.. or go play real football of golf...

My kids and I can pick up Rock Band for a nominal price and have some fun time in the garage with a lot less invested that learning and buying all of the 'real' instruments. After tinkering with guitar for a couple of years, I'm just not willing, at 38, to invest a lot of time into learning 50+ songs.

So I guess the answer is: Rock BAnd is more fun for me and my kids than learning real instruments. I played all kinds of band/orchestra instruments in school (clarinet, violin, trumpet, flute, piccolo and even drums for a bit), and it takes months to play anything competently.

Oh yeah, and some of the strats are built a little differently; mine had some screws on the front, under the pick guard that had to be removed to separate the two halves of the body. Also, the strum switches are a simpler looking mechanism, and they are all plastic. No metal in there, switch-wise. I am hoping to get something different on replacement from the warranty. we shall see.

Oh, Speedster. You know not what you criticize.

This really is a problem, and it's not 'UE' as we used to say in development circles.
This is simple as pie to test, and many have. When you are using menus, the strum bar moves your selection up and down. When it stops allowing you to move up consistently, or down consistently, then that's a problem.

Or, to insert your alternative into the situation, maybe these people (dare I say *I*), just don't know how to strum through menus properly.

Oh, that and my GHII Gibson works fine in all cases. Oops.

My problem started about six hours in, and it's sporadic in an odd way. Each time I attempt to use the strat, it plays for a few songs, then starts to have problems. As I mentioned, when I go out to menus, I just can't move up (and sometimes, down), anymore. After a few hours, it works again, only to fail after a few songs. Strange.

Although I kind of understand where you're coming from, Speedster. I have never had a problem with either of my 360s, and I have had one of them for over a year. I often think that the people who are losing them to defects all the time are really abusing them in some fashion- probably a mindset that will go away if one of mine fails. Kanpai.

I ordered a replacement on the release date but have only gotten the robot-got-your-submission email. Still waiting for a confirmation.

Mine stopped working after about the first 6 hours. I switched to my GHII Gibson, and didn't have any trouble. Tried it again the next day and it lasted a couple of songs and then no down strum again.

I noticed that someone had posted fix-it instructions and, having take apart our couple of GHII Gibsons for custom paint work, I felt pretty comfortable opening up the Fender.

I was intrigued to make a couple of notes.

1) My guitar had a couple of screws holding the body together from the FRONT under the the pick guard, which I had to remove.

2) My strum switches are plastic, not metal like the models I have seen gutted on the internet.

Everything looked fine, though, so I put it back together and fired it up. About 4 songs in, same problem.

My theory is that the plastic switches are bending after some (even very ginger), use, and setting it aside lets them stiffen up or whatever so it works for a few songs.

I applied for the warranty replacement on midnight of launch day after that first six hours of play, but have not gotten any kind of confirmation of shipment yet.

"They were dead... every last one of them..."