Vista - I'm a new user and i really want to know, why do games just NOT work with Vista..?

I'm a pretty new user to this forum, and i joined mainly for one reason. I need an answer, why does Vista ruin so many great games. After playing several games, some old some new, I can only notice one consistent theme..issues with my games. While some issues may be attributed to games themselves, i am however finding a very aggravating connection between my new laptop and vista and a huge jump in computer game problems.
My specs: 2 GB RAM, 32bit OS, 2.50 Ghz processors (dual processors), and 100 GB of memory
To start i have problems with the following games:
Diablo II
Warcraft III
StarLancer (god i'll be damned if anyone has heard of it)
Unreal Tournament 2004
D2, WC3 and UT2004 i played ludicrous amounts of, so the errors i really noticed, however starlancer i restarted playing only recently and arleady found bugs with it.
For starters, D2. I know that utilizing add ons and various programs to help me through the game is 'cheating' and against the rules, however it still does NOT explain the massive lack of programs such as Maphacks and other things. I mean, for christs sake, its such a harmless hack and SOOO many people use it (not to mention there are far worse, more common, more easily found hacks like bots) but yet, almost not ONE maphack for diablo 2 works on vista (the main reason i quit the game). The only i that DID work, crashed the game persistently after several map reveals.
Ok, so lets pause for a second, i'm ranting about a game addon that's illegal, but why the hell is vista the OS that's giving me the biggest headache ever with this..
Next, WC3. my favorite game. Well, only a recent problem, but MASSIVE issue. Whenever i log on my account to B.net (for those that are unfamilar, the program/servers that support multiplaying online), it crashes the game (window freezes completely). Never had any problems till only recently (played on my vista laptop for like a year and suddenly after doing updates i noticed this issue). Ok, so maybe this is the game's fault..
Moving on..Starlancer..i used to have SOME issues with playing the game, specifically, at the end of specific missions, the game would crash. Well god help me, cause now its happening after every mission..Let's assume that, god forbid, there's something wrong with the damn cd...
Next UT2004, the harbinger of troubles for me. Before i always had resolution setup problems with D2 and WC3 (always in the wrong resolution until a friend fixed it) but UT2004 really pushed this issue to resurface for me. The game crashes randomly, but most annyoingly of all, the computer randomly (after leaving games and whatnot) changes the resolution to the most minimum it can have. So now i randomly have chaging resolutions...
Now, while my old computer sucked hard and this laptop im using is a massive step up (as much as 7 times better than my old computer in some specs), i have never ever had issues such as these playing my games. Sure it could have been laggy as hell or my games were a bit slow, but for christs sake at least my games worked. When i recieved my laptop, i actually thought that my days of stressing over video games were actually over. HA! What a joke, in fact, my days became different and in some ways worse. I have come to realize that vista is indeed a massive joke, ruining gaming and other things amongst many, draining processing power from the computer and doing absolutely nothing good.
If anyone can tell me anything about my errors, the help is appreciated, however after searching for answers through google and being unable to find any to my problems, i have simply given up and can only hope these issues stay at a minimum.

But more importantly, can someone please tell me, what the hell is it about Vista that just RUINS games compeletely?

I can't say I've experienced any issues with gaming on Vista, although I don't play any on your list anymore. Have you tried running any of the offending games in compatibility mode? I imagine you're a prime candidate for running windows 7 when it comes out (or even the RC) as I've heard it runs XP programs better then vista. I wouldn't know as I'm only 30% complete in downloading it. Hopefully someone can chime in for you, I may have a copy of UT2004 with me that I can try installing and running, I'm away from home so I don't have my software book.

And just because I'm petty, you wouldn't say 100GB of memory, it's a 100GB Hard Drive (memory generally refers to RAM). Disregard if you don't care.

truthkid, thanks for the suggestion and correction (didn't realize my mistake)

Again I'm petty, so flaming/thanking are both in order. But back to your original question. Are you running the latest versions of all your programs that run like crap? I'm not going to say Vista is without flaws, but running older games on newer hardware/os generally doesn't result in an ideal experience (this is heavily dependent on how the game is coded). I'll be off work in a few hours, I probably have a copy of UT2004, I'll see how it runs.

Wc3 and D2 Were indeed new versions. UT2004 and SL (starlancer) i am unaware of any patches for.
Interestingly, i played another mission in starlancer just now, i finished it like usual, and game crashed. then i loaded the game as an administrator (something i never had to do for anything to work) and it worked without a single error. I have no idea if the two events are connected or maybe the game just stopped glitching, but at least one problem disapearred, if not temporarily.
However i am still curious to see why these things happen. I understand vista has its flaws, but is there anything in its programming that makes it less compatible for video games and more viable for say..programs for work. I understand that Vista Business is probably intended for..well..work.

Don't let the business suffix throw you off, that just indicates its vista with X features turned on, and Y features turned off. Try running all your games as administrator, perhaps UAC is ruining the party. If they all run better, well then we have at least one perp in the lineup identified.

I tried it again, and i was right. I ran the program again normally, ended a mission and game crashed but when i ran as administrator the problem never occured again. Also noticed a difference in the sounds my CD/DVD drive was making (normally was MUCH louder than as administrator).
What exactly is going on here? you said UAC, what is that?

UAC is User Access Control. (User Account Control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Essentially it makes an admin account function like a user account unless specifically asking for administrator rights. It's a measure that Vista added to protect users from programs taking advantage of most people assigning their primary login as an administrator for convenience sake. You could right click the shortcuts of your games and go into the Compatibility tab and check "Run the process as an Administrator" and that may or may not clear it up per game.

If you would like to turn it off (which trades of some security with convenience):

User Account Control (UAC)

I think it worked.
So that's one game that's been fixed, thanks a lot for the help, i'll try the others this weekend or sometime.

Great, I hope this clears up the issues on your other games. No luck on having a copy of UT myself, I'll see if anyone I work with has the games you mentioned.