The City is Back!

Only if you've been under a rock for all this time, the City of Heroes and Villains is back! In rogue form...

If you want to read the back story on how it all happened, take a gander a MassivelyOP: 

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/whats-going-on-with-city-of-heroes-now-this-game-is-a-unicorn/

I think it pretty much all started with a video of some disgruntled dude showing footage of a secret server and then everyone losing their shit about how some people/groups kept it secret for so long while outwardly making a show of other efforts publicly. 

I can see both sides of the story, but honestly? The game is back and I really don't care about the drama. I just really hope NCSoft isn't a big asshole about it and that it doesn't go away any time soon. Either way, the codebase is out in the wild now, so they will have to make a lot of efforts to shut down and keep shutting down private servers and they won't be able to get them all. 

Anyways, if you are looking for instructions on how to get on, here you go: 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,950.0.html

I haven't really been able to play much when it launched because it was going right into my busy season at work (60-70 hour work weeks) so I didn't have time for anything. Not to mention, I am learning to program and may be considering a coding bootcamp in a few months so am preparing for it (or at the very least, trying really hard to teach myself and change careers so I don't have to pay all that money for a bootcamp). 

This past weekend, I was finally able to play for more than an hour! 

When the game was live, I stopped playing right around the time the game went free-to-play and only poked around in the servers occasionally after that, but didn't stay very long. Lots have changed and it was a bit rough trying to remember the UI or how to do stuff, but some of the muscle memory actually came back. Oh boy!

And yes, I did reference the If the City Came Back post I wrote a couple of years ago. Obviously, some of my sentiments have changed. 

So far, the only complete full remake is Zetsumei (Nin/Poison MM) with her costume, powers and everything. She is just such a great solo character and concept that I couldn't picture her as anything else. I also made a new Annzilla (new power combo Bio/Fire, seems to fit better conceptually), Paradoxic (new powers of DA/Psi Tank, Psi is really great so far), Ann (Elec/SD Brute, is basically Zazza, just really love playing this set), Zazza (to Rad/SD Brute), Infernadoll (Fire/DM Corruptor, basically is Vixona). 

So far, my highest level is Annzilla and Zazza at 18. I think I am probably going to stick with Annzilla for team play since I am really enjoying the Bio primary and then solo level up Ann and Zetsumei.

I know I want to throw a Kin in the mix in there, but not sure if I want to remake Sixty entirely or pick a new power set for her, though I do really love playing her and her character concept. 

I am eventually going to restart the Tanker Project up again, but will probably re-conceptualize some of the characters because for the most part, I don't want to play the same old thing again. 

And before I am out, here's the updated Hero Designer, updated by Pine: 

https://www.cityofforums.net/threads/pines-hero-designer.6/

In the City of.. to Champions Online

Annzilla!
Everyone's favorite lizard lady!

I've had a Champions Online lifetime account since the first week they announced sale of it. I forgot how much I paid for it, as the price now is $300 and I am not sure if I paid for it when it was on sale or not. So let's just say I paid anywhere from $200 to $300 for it and thought the game will be my be all and end all.

I leveled my main to the max 40... and then I kind of got bored of it. The Freeform AT was kind of overwhelming at first, but it also broke the game because you can make some really OP characters at that time.. and you can make some really gimped characters if you didn't read up on the process. Also, for some reason, it just wasn't as fun as the City of.

She translated nicely to CO!

Champions Online lacked that fun and powerful feeling that I received from playing CoX... a feeling that I describe as "crunchy." CO was not crunchy enough for me. The game-play felt sluggish. And tried as I might, I just couldn't click with the CO community, so I didn't stick with the game for as long as I had initially hoped.

The Lifetime Sub was a real regret of mine at the time as I was in between jobs then. The amount I paid for it was a stretch for me. I could have used that money elsewhere. =/

Sixty, ready to hand out the
SB cookies! If only...

But now that I am getting a bit desperate to make a character and beat some faces in a persistent world, I've recently logged in CO.. and found out that I had made Annzilla way back when. She's still level 2. I'll play her when I remember how to play again. I think I'll have to make a new character to re-learn everything.

Sixty also exists as a Freeform character in my CO account as well. She is currently sitting at level 6 and will probably continue to sit there. I'm not sure CO has a Kinetics/Speed Boost type of AT/power. I'll need to do a bit of research.

Not the best CO remake. And the
shade of pink is all wrong!

Having the Lifetime subscription inactive and forgotten about these many years had left me with a bunch of Zen points (the CO "real money" currency) once I logged back on. I feel so rich in-game and can buy all sorts of neato costume pieces, vehicles, and other things. That should keep me occupied for a little bit.

I'm still somewhat overwhelmed with Freeform, because I forgot everything since the last time I've played. I am stuck with the problem of overchoice that leaves me with a case of inactivity due to indecision. And of course there were nerfs and changes and such.. and now they have actual archetypes. Maybe I will re-start with one of those.

Either way, I guess this is an OK alternative to getting some superhero action while waiting for the City to come back in the meantime. It still doesn't give me the crunchy feeling I want. But I suppose it's better than nothing.

You know, I really wished that the Perfect World/Arc bought the City of Heroes IP instead of NCSoft. Why couldn't they buy CO instead...

If the City Came Back...

I guess it's going to be one of those posts. You know, the wishful thinking kind of posts. Sort of like when you buy a lottery ticket and then fantasize a bit about winning a bunch of money... what would you do with all that money? (Buy the COH/CPV IP!) In this case, what would I do if the game came back?

This post will probably be used to reference when the game comes back to serve as a game plan of sorts (pun intended!).

Money, Accounts, Servers, and Names

Whatever the payment model is: pay once to play (like Diablo 3), monthly subscription, free to play/micro-transactions, a mix of all of the above, I am so ready to give them my money. If there is a subscription model, I will buy a year right off the bat. Hell, if there is a lifetime subscription that doesn't cost more than $300, I would go ahead and pay for that too! (I would even consider it up to $500 for the lifetime sub, but ONLY if there are guarantees that the game will stay around longer than 5 years.)

In fact, I think it is likely that I may have 2 accounts. One will serve as a main account which belongs to me with the proper long term subscription. Another to have subbed on a monthly or quarterly basis in case family members or friends want to play as well.. and also, so I can have some separate-account alts to invite myself to my private SG. I would also level pact the more painful-to-level-up ATs (for me at least) so I can have them get past the low level hump and enjoy playing them at a higher level. Something like that. I wouldn't be surprised if I found myself with 3 accounts at the start (which I've had going all at one time before sunset), though it would likely taper down to 2 at most during normal play.

Once the accounts are established, the first thing I would do is squat a certain name in all the servers, starting with what would presumably be the VIP "subscribers" server. Before you complain, I do intend on leveling them all up to 50 and slotting them out, as I was in the process of doing so when the game was live. At the very least, I just want to have my special name in my main server!

And you can bet your buttons that I will be dragging my boyfriend and family back to the game as well. So that's at least 6 accounts right there.

Ahh, the market. 

Where to Begin with the Characters

What would I first roll when the game comes back? Well, in all likelihood, I will be rolling my "New Main" (name currently unknown), who at the time of this writing will likely be a SD/FM Tanker. Her power set selection is based on my desire for a character that will be useful in teaming situations, as well as a powerhouse in farming. Yes, I know, Ms Ann will no longer be the main. She will be rerolled, actually. Maybe to Invulnerability & Titan Weapons.

A new character development courtesy of Titan Icon

So once the primary server is determined and the main is settled in, I would then go about re-creating most of my characters. As mentioned, some of the more annoying ones will be level-pact over time or recreated entirely, but most, I think would be back and be replayed.

Aside from the main, the first few characters would be the solo-farm types. You know, like Zazza (though she was mostly content and teaming until 50 and then got slotted out to farming duty).. or some others that I was experimenting with and/or have heard was very good for these types of situations. They would kind of hang out strictly in AE to fund my mains/alts and/or to PL myself and some level-pacted alt to get through the low level hump.

I would be re-rolling my favorite alts as they were before sunset and playing them through again, like Zetsumei (technically my villain/solo main), Sixty, Combustidoll, Zazza, and Thermonuclea. The non-tanker alts will be re-created, for the most part, but modified a bit (for example, Theophelia will be a Mind or Fire/Kin Controller instead.. and might even be renamed!).

The Tanker Project

And then there's the Tanker Project. Well, I most certainly am going to have to re-roll all of them and level them all up again. It wouldn't feel right if I just level-pact the ones I already played up. Some will be modified. For example, Anwyn will not be an Energy Melee (I seriously hate EM). I would probably start with the Tanker sets that I haven't played to 50 yet. The ones I have already played, like Ice Minx, Tropica, and Paradoxic will be lower on the play list since I've played them before and it was not terribly fun on the way up (they did mature very nicely once they got their IOs in). It's probably going to look something like this:

1. TBD Main new (Shield Defense/Fiery Melee)
2. TBD new (Bio Armor/?) *only if it is the i24 image upon release
3. NeoGeode, reroll (Super Reflexes/Stone Melee) may also rename/reconceptualize
4. TBD new (Electric Armor/?)
5. Annzilla (Stone Armor/Fiery Melee)
6. Anwyn, reroll (Willpower/Dual Blades)
7. Paradoxic (Dark Armor/Dark Melee)
8. Ms Ann, reroll (Invulnerability/Titan Weapons)
9. Ice Minx (Ice Armor/Ice Melee)
10. Tropica (Fiery Aura/Fiery Melee)

I guess I will fiddle around on builds for the new ones as well as all the rerolls. Fun! Damn, I really want to play them already.

The Melee Project & the Mastermind Project

Zet, my darling MM. 

You know what? While the Tanker project is going on, I will likely be starting a Brute/Scrapper project as well for a little variety. It's going to be a much slower project than the Tanker project. This is the project to level up all the melee powers. I know, the powers are different between ATs, but that would just give me a bit of leeway to pick the more fun stuff as opposed to feeling as I have to do it out of obligation, right? *wink*wink* Most of them will likely be Brutes. I was actually starting to get into Brutes as an AT before the end. I would like to pick up where I left off.

The other project will be the Mastermind project: leveling up all the primaries for the Mastermind AT. I was sort of doing that in various other servers than Virtue before the sunset. But will likely just stick to one server as the MM server for me on the main account. Something like that. This is just a project for when I feel like soloing. You know how it is.

Zetsumei, however, will be on the main server.

Community & Super Groups

Once the game goes live, I will be active-ish in the various forums. Maybe I will actually post things instead of lurking. It's just so much easier to lurk, really. I would be active as much as possible in my SG though, given that life, work, and school obligations are attended to first.

As for super groups. I know right off the bat, I will be creating my own personal SG and SVG. This will be the place to park all of the alts and such. The more active characters or the in-progress characters will be in actual SGs.

Without the game now, there are no SGs so it's not like I can research or apply to them. As for the Paragonian Knights, who knows? Maybe? Maybe not? If I establish myself in a different server than where they are, its a definite no. If we're in the same server, who knows? I was honestly never really fond of that SG name in particular. I always wished it had less of a medieval slant to it. I'd probably join whatever active community spawns from the Penny Arcade forums. Or I will try to wrangle IRL friends and family together to set up our own. We'll see how it is at the time when it relaunches.

Taking Some Vacation Time

Assuming that there would be advanced warning about the re-release of the game, I am SO going to take some vacation time to get some play in. Omg. I would take that whole damn week off. If the game comes back soon, I hope that it would be in between semesters so I don't have to worry about classes and homework. If it comes back later (like in a year or two), hopefully I would be done with my graduate degree by then (this depends on how many classes I want to cram in each semester while working a full time job).

Other Musings

There's some discussion on the Titan Forum, which asks the question of what would stop me from coming back to the city?

Some people's reasons for not coming back include: losing all their account information and associated bonuses and things purchased, which includes having to re-roll and re-level all the characters, having to repay for all of the items, losing all those veteran rewards. Other reasons include having a forced PVP, the gaming forcing a "holy trinity" style of ATs, the game being altered in a fundamental way as to be unrecognizable to what we know as COH, having a pay-to-win scenario, having NCSuck's involvement, etc.

If you can't already tell, I am totally ready to start all over again,  from the bottom up. I think it would fun to have everyone start all over again together, actually. I was there since the first week of release and was able to see everyone leveling up together. Many of us didn't know how to play, so we were all learning together. Of course, if the game came back, many vets will come back, so it will be interesting to see how the leveling and such goes with many experienced people starting at the bottom.

The other main reason why I am OK with everyone starting over is because I can get the chance to snag the name that I want in the main server (at least). I had tried sending messages to the person who had the name I wanted, but I am assuming that their account was inactive and that they never got my messages... or they just ignored me.

I am OK with having to re-purchase the games and items again, though it won't happen right away with all of the accounts. I'd just buy the bare minimum, that's all. How much I buy right away depends on the item below...

If NCSoft itself is the entity that brings back the game, I will be VERY leery of the amount of money I give them (most likely will just stick to 1 monthly paid account with the bare essentials, and a 1 free account), but if they have very minimal involvement, say, they're only leasing the license of the IP but an entirely different entity runs the company and everything else, I will go all in with my wallet. So either way, if NCSuck is involved, I will still be back. How wide my wallet opens depends on how much they are involved.

If the game forces PVP, I'm fine with it. I've played those types of games before. I also imagine if they force it on us, many players will band together to create an unofficial "non-pvp" server where everyone plays nice.. and that we'd set up a group of vigilantes for those that do not play nicely.

If the game changes to a "holy trinity" style or fundamentally changes the game, then I will not be ok with it, but then I wouldn't know until I played. I also don't see these 3 items above happening because it involves considerable development time before the re-release of the game. I would imagine that whoever takes it over would rather just get it set up and running right away so they can get some return on investment as oppose to investing more development time to change the game before seeing a dime. It's still about money after all. Which brings me to the last point...

If they created a pay-to-win scenario.. I guess it depends on what they want us to pay for and how much they want us to pay for it. I would not come back if it was like a Clash of Clans type scenario... slowing things down, putting up pay walls everywhere, or just paying to advance at all. But then again, those type of games were designed from the ground up to be pay-to-win and CoH was not, so I don't see that being implemented without fundamentally changing the game itself. And you already know how likely I think that will happen based on the development costs, at least right off the bat.

It'll take a lot more than that to get rid of us!

In Conclusion

I am so ready to come back. I miss this game dearly.

I know many of the terms are spoken in absolutes in my blog (like "when the game comes back.."), but the truth is that I do not know when the game will be back or if this current deal will work. And if this deal does not go through, I do know that one day, the game will be back eventually. Like I said, the CoH community is that persistent. I know the sun will rise again.

Updates on the "City of" IP Buyout

I received an email asking if I had any updates about the ongoing talks on the IP buyout.

Nope. No special information here. I know as much as everyone else does. 

I do want to admit that I check the Titan Network forum threads like every single freaking day, several times a day. So if you're looking for updates, it's best to check there too:

• And the Mask Comes Off  
• New Efforts

I am sure when someone hears about something concrete, or if there is news posted up on Titan, that everyone will know and it will spread like wildfire.

Also relevant is this article on MMOGames.com, where they had interviewed Nate Downes right after the big reveal.

Other Speculation

Yes, there is speculation on the whole Nexon doing a hostile take over of NCSoft that may slow down the progress, but meh. Who the heck knows? These business dealings often do not make sense to me. Why wouldn't they bother selling the IP in the first place? Money is important, right? So it boggles my mind. Everything is just speculation.

So right now, no news is good news, right? Just wait patiently folks.

I did recently re-watch the City of Heroes Post-Mortem with Matt "Positron" Miller on YouTube... and he did mention that if it did succeed, and the buyer looked at the source code, that he can't imagine how they'd figure out the code, how the original team was able to make it to work. So yeah, that's a bit worrisome. If it does go through, I hope that they can get some of the original developers back to sort out the mess. I hope the investors have a lot of money!

P.S. I occasionally buy lottery tickets.. and if I won like 100 million bucks, I would spend so much money to get COH back! Fun/funny to think about..

Spiritual Successors

For those who are not in the know, there are several projects under way 

• The Phoenix Project for the City of Titans - unfortunately, I didn't contribute when the campaign was going on. I was in between jobs at the time and it was a little tough to spare some extra cash. I wish they would run another kickstarter campaign. I think I have about $500 bucks to give right now! 
• Atlas Revival Project - This is a team of people building the various CoH neighborhoods in the Unreal 4 Engine. Looks great (pics on Facebook). Looks like they may work with the City of Titan folks since they're both using the same engine. Hope it works out. 
• Valiance Online - I checked out the game in the pre-alpha state.. it's still obviously in development, but what we see now is looking fantastic! It does really have a CoH feel about it. The team is doing a really great job. The other bit of good news is that the game has been greenlit on Steam. 
• Heroes and Villains - I haven't really seen much in terms of new developments. 
• Titan Icon - Basically if you really want to play around with the character creator again and jump around in an empty city for old times sake. 

Let me know if there are other projects in the work if I miss any. 

Other Games in the Meantime

My super duper, awesome, wonderful boyfriend bought me/upgraded my computer for XMas. He's a serious gamer so he took pity on me and helped me out on that aspect of my life. So my gaming life is pretty fantastic. I wish I had this computer around back when CoH was alive. It would have been glorious.

So in the meantime, what games am I playing to get my mind off of CoH?

I'm playing Final Fantasy 14, The Secret World, Champions Online, The Sims 3 (not 4, bleh), Heroes of Might & Magic 3, 5, and 6, and Fantasy Life (one of the most fun game I have played in a very long time!).

Of course, this is if I even have the time to play games. Aside from the usual day job and daily life things, I'm also in the middle of working on a graduate degree so much of spare time is spent on that. In between semesters, however, I do get a little fun in!

Anyways, here's to hoping for some good news soon!

The Stars of Virtue SG

After taking an extended break from COH (around 2009-10ish?), I came back to Virtue and looked for a new SG. I joined the "Stars of Virtue" for a period of time. Ultimately, they were too small, too new, and did not have the membership or activity to sustain the SG. Here's a picture for the memories.

I'm sure I wasn't much help, as I believe I was transitioning to a new job at the time and could not dedicate much time to the group.

About Supergroups/Guilds

I've learned from experience in CoH and in other games that it helps if you join the same group as someone you know IRL, particularly the group is already established. When you join the group, there's a vetting process, for both sides. Just because a group is large and well known, doesn't mean that it would be a good fit for you as a person and a player. It's sort of like looking for a new job in that respect.

A funny example would be that time I joined an "all girl" group. I thought it would be cool to get to know other girl-gamers like myself, but did not realize that the whole "all girl" thing only applied to one's character. Lots of pink and chat had so much "hugs" and "teehees" and /giggle and stereotypical things that goddamn tweens would do. They also didn't have a vent server. And ultimately, I found out that it was mostly a bunch of dudes with female characters with the breast slider on max, RPing as what they think women would be like. Yeesh.

My perfect group would be an active and friendly smallish-medium group that is established, but growing and are open to new members. The size is dependent on the actual activity of the group. It could be small but very active, or medium and mostly active. Teams and events getting filled up with group members is what makes or breaks a guild, I think. And like I mentioned, it helps if you were introduced to the group through an existing member that you know personally. But as long as they are open to new folks and want to help them, then why the heck not?

Major Nostalgia

It started when I received an email from Brinkster about how they will be discontinuing their free hosting service and provided instructions on how to save the data. I had forgotten that I even had an account there.

I fired up the old site.. and low and behold, it was an old CoH site with instructions on how to use GuildPortal that I had made for my SG at the time. There was also my little RPish site, the one that served as the fake storefront for my "Comic Shop." I do have a few dummy domains lying about, and will have to see about uploading all the content there.. or somewhere reliable for fun and prosperity. You can imagine who wary I am of having another entity to save these things for me.

After all that, I became curious about CoH. Obviously, I knew that the game had closed its doors and that several projects were in the works to be a successor of sorts.

So I checked with old reliable, the Titan Network... and found this bit of news... And the Mask Comes Off and the companion post New Efforts!

Dang. That is great news.

Yeah, yeah, it's not like it's definitely going to happen, but this is the first real glimmer of hope.

Honestly, I think if the most recent effort doesn't work out, I also feel like it another group will try. It will get to the point where NCshit will have to give in eventually, even if it's ten years out. I think the CoH community is that persistent. What we ultimately get again might not be the original, but it will be something.

So with that little glimmer of hope, I started looking at this website, my old builds, screenshots... and everything. And damn, the memories came back in full force.

I really, really, really hope that the latest efforts will work. If it does, I will be back. I'll re-roll most all of my toons (probably not Ms Ann.. because well, BA is fine, but I need more damage =X).

In the meantime, please indulge me a little as I go through my nostalgia. I will be posting things soon. I figure why not? This is a great place to keep everything. Since Google owns Blogspot, hopefully, the likelihood of it shutting down isn't too great. I just want a place to hold my memories.

Breaking Lately

Yeah, I'm on another COH break due to work. I've been breaking for about 2 weeks now. The holiday season is the busiest time of year for me, so I have to focus on making some moola so I can pay the bills and such. Either way, I'm kind of bored with the game (so the withdrawal symptoms wasn't so bad this time around) and I'm just waiting until i19 to launch (ETA is Nov 16, 2010) to play it again.

Here are some updates so far:

• Anwyn is lvl 47. She is 100% slotted out with her cheap build and pretty much has the reaming IOs waiting in her tray for when she gets to 50. She will probably stay at lvl 47 until I feel like teaming and running regular missions again (and I'm not sure when that'd be). She has the Maria Jenkins arc ready to go, so it should be easy as heck to get her to 50 after facing off a few AVs. 
• Ambrozia: she is lvl 35 right now and was the side project until I got bored. Like I said, I don't really like teaming all that much anymore, and its even worse as a Controller. I hate not being the tanker/brute/meatshield, because then I can't really set the pace of the missions. I'm not quite sure when I'm going to pick up playing this toon regularly anymore. 
• i19: so we're all getting inherent fitness. I'm kind of not looking forward to respeccing everyone, but I kind of am. Heck, I might even take another look at all the retired characters and try to fill them out with the missing IOs, since I have much more inf this time around. I am excited about the new TFs and the incarnate system, but I'm not sure how I'm going to find the time to play it properly. 

I guess that's it for now. See you all in i19.

Halloween 2010

So the City of Heroes/City of Villains Halloween event is upon us once again!  This year, the new thing is a Trick or Treat tip mission and a bunch of badges you can get from them.

I think after all that is done, the most important part (to me at least) is that this is a great time to quickly level up that hard-to-level-up (for whatever reason) character. People are just more receptive to form teams because of the event, and all you do is just park and click on doors, which cuts down on travel time in between missions. Thats how I got Annzilla and Theophelia through their leveling slumps years ago.

My dilemma is who to level up now? (other than my current Tanker project, Anwyn)

I think I am leaning towards working on my Plant/Rad Controller, Ambrozia. I tend to have a hard time leveling up Controllers or Doms since their low level game really do not fit my playstyle at all.

Or should I roll a totally new toon?

Server Problems Since 10/5/2010

I've been having some bad problems since the 10/5/2010 patch. I'm not sure what they did aside from the patch notes, but I've been laggy and rubberbanding waaaaaay more than usual. Its near unplayable at times.

This leads me to say.. I need to upgrade my computer. It hasn't been touched since 4 years ago when I built it.

Right now its running with the AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ at 2.01 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, and the NVidia GeForce 7900 GS.

I hate looking up the hardware because I get so tempted to buy a whole bunch of stuff I can't afford right now. I'm probably going to spend $100 on getting better RAM and probably put the old RAM into my other comp (so it would be able to play Sims 2). If you have any other suggestions on a single cost effective upgrade, do tell.

At the very least, since my gaming computer is also my work computer, that I can write this off as a business expense.

In other (game related) news.. they finally posted up the Issue 19 Overview. It looks pretty neat so far. Hopefully it will be out by the end of this year. Also... Reactivation Weekend starts tomorrow and ends on Sunday. I'll only get 1.5 days to play since I have one of my best friend's wedding this weekend. I'm only excited about it because my brother's account will be reactivated, and now that I have a bunch of characters that can run at +2x8 settings, I will be spending most of my time in AE getting myself powerleveled. The way I'm going to do it is get my characters in a level pact with my brother's character, log on to my main farmer and level up my brother's character. That way, I make inf/recipes/salvage on my farmer, my brother gets his character leveled up, and so will I.... its a win-win-win!

Got Reported on Zazzle

You see the Zazzle panel on the right? Yeah, I thought it would be fun to make a bunch of COH/COV related t-shirts. Hell, I spent about 4 hours on Photoshop re-creating that stupid super boost icon after playing as my Kinetics defender and getting spammed by my own teammates. I know other Kin players should be able to relate. I also made a bunch of other icons too, but those probably aren't going to be put up anymore, at least not to the public (just me and close friends).

The shop has been up for almost 3 months now. I rarely get any hits (woohoo 49 hits after 3 months!). I haven't sold a thing. It's not like going to make big bucks from COH and live off of it. Its just a bunch of dumb t-shirts I wanted to make for fun mostly for myself to attend PAX with and if other people liked them, then thats cool.

So I got reported and got yelled at by Zazzle. I explained my case and I'm still waiting to hear back from them.

Maybe they won't shut down the account. If they don't like the images, I will just comply and take it down. Then I'll just do what everyone else does and write a bunch of text on the t-shirts.

Omg, thats like, so hard to do!

Just ranting a bit. Going to take a nap now.

UPDATE: They ended up just wiping everything in the store... even the stuff that was not immediately based off COH like the "Say no to supradine" shirt (like you had to play the game to get it). Ah well, I guess I'll just put only text on the shirts like that other guy if I ever make them again.

Random Stuff About My Characters and Going Rogue

I'm trying to procrastinate from getting any work done, so I thought I'd post here about some (random) thoughts and plans I have once Going Rogue goes live.

I've gotten my brother into playing COX and have created a few new characters to team with him as a result.

There's Zazza, an Elec/SD Brute that I've created for farming purposes. She is currently sitting at lvl 25 and I am anxious to get her to 50, but am moving slowly at it due to level pacting with my brother. I'll probably end up getting out of the pact once I hit 30ish, but that remains to be seen.

I've also created Arbiter Ann, an Arachnos Soldier who will likely be branching off into the Crab Spider track. This toon is also level pacted with my brother's other toon, a Soldier also. So far, I am having a blast with her on teams (with my brother) and we were able to get from lvl 11 to 23 in one night teaming on a mostly VEAT team. Its really a sight to behold with all those buffs.

Lastly there is Annzebub, who is a Demon/Therm MM. I rolled her about a month ago to check out the Demon set, but I really should have waited until GR hit before creating her. Oh well. She is still pretty fun to solo with on occasion.

Once GR goes live, I will be creating a Fire/SD scrapper, Flambedoll, to solo through the new content as a Praetorian (Loyalist). I'm going to take my time with her and probably keep her there until they come out with lvl 20+ content there. She was originally to be the farming toon, but seeing how as I am leveling up Zazza, and that the market is merging for easier access to IOs and recipes, I may just have her be the farmer now. But then again, it doesn't hurt to have a second, third, or even fourth back up farmer!

In other news, with GR coming out, I guess my burning question is whether or not there will be new recipes! I've checked all possible forums and there is little to no mention of that particular aspect of GR. I really need to know because I'm planning to respec a bunch of my characters to existing recipes. I'm holding back on this right now because I don't want to miss out on recipes that may be better than what I'm planning.

In site news, with the ability to switch sides and the like, I am going to have to change some of the labels I've been using for this site. Thats lame.

Lastly, there will be free server transfers coming out soon. So now I am debating about whether or not I should move my very first character that I created on Pinnacle to Virtue... or whether or not I should move some less played characters on Virtue to elsewhere, to free up space? I know free transfers will come again in the future and I do feel that this is all kind of rushed for me, so I am going to have to think about this. And besides, with the free server transfers, you can game the system to be able to get a free character name change by moving the character out of the server, creating a character with the same name on the original server, then moving the character back to the original server for a free name change token since that name would now be taken. Now I am wondering if I should change a few names.. like Ms Ann's? I really HATE the "Ms" in front of it, but "Ann" was already taken when I moved to Virtue. So I'm not sure what else to name her. Decisions, decisions. There are also a few other character names that I haven't mentioned here yet (mostly because I don't play them because I don't like their names), that I am thinking about changing as well.

We'll see.

Okay, that's it for the random thoughts. Back to work.

New Powerset Preview: Kinetics Melee

I was at PAX East 2010 and was able to attend the "Re-Inventing A Super-Heroic MMO" Panel where the COH devs discussed Going Rogue and other upcoming issues.

The devs announced 2 new powersets that will be launched with Going Rogue: Kinetics Melee and Electrical Control.

They previewed the Kinetics Melee animation where I was able to record below:



Keep in mind that they said that the animation was "very crude" so the timing of the animation will likely be tweaked. 

Unfortunately, they did not have the preview for the Electric Control set ready.

I was able to meet the COH devs at a later meet n greet. Had a blast!

Makes me want to play COH right now!

My City of Hero & Etc Updates

I figured I ought to post in this blog after a year. =)

I've been busy working mostly and haven't had much time to play any sort of game. With that, at best, I would just reactivate CoH once a year when work is slow to check things out.

The reactivation weekend recently passed and I was able to get in 2 days of playing time. I managed to level my Gravity/Kinetics Controller, Theophelia and my Ice/Ice Tanker, Iceminx to 50. They were both hovering in the high 40s so it was not a hard thing to do given the double XP going on. I did also get my Fire/Fire blaster to level 22. Not much really, but it was nice to be able to catch up with some friends there.

I actually spent most of the playing time buying IOs for Theophelia and ended up spending about 50 million in influence. I think I have more fun doing that than actually playing. hehe.

Well, I guess that's it for the updates. I hope everyone is well.

Until the next reactivation weekend, I bid you adieu!

I Like to Complian

Why do powerlevel? I suppose I highlighted it a bit in my little rant about MA, but I'd like to give it a full explanation as to why.

Anti-powerlevel says that it isn't a challenge therefore it is unfair for those that are power-leveled to be rewarded without facing little risk or challenge.

But my argument is that low level grinding through tedious and repetitive missions are not challenging either, but it has that added con of wasting time. As mentioned previously, its about the mechanics of the game. Its designed in such a way that there is no real challenge and no real strategy to succeed in (about 99% of) the game. Any halfwit who knows how to push and click can play fairly well in this game.

I remember back in the day when the Terra Volta trials used to be hard. You and your teammates had to know your stuff and strategize in order to win. The result was that the trials were nerfed because people complained that it was too hard. True, the level 24 trial might be a bit rough for barely SO'ed toons, but the level 34 and level 44 trials were nerfed at the same level, effectively making it a joke to play -even on the invincible difficulty setting with Tankers and Scrappers on the team not bothering to get the radiation shields (red bubbles) during the Reactor Core room. Everytime I run the stupid trial, as I am beating up blue, green, and grey conned bad guys, I find myself wishing (out loud) that the devs would make a button or trigger where we can just spawn all the stupid mobs at once to make it more fun. Because as it is, its no challenge, and no challenge, no fun.

I also remember when the Preatorian Infernal mission was actually hard. This was when he had gobs of spawns from the portal. They kept coming and coming, and you and your team had to be on your toes, and know what the heck you're doing to beat him and win. And when you did beat it, you felt like a million bucks. But because people complained -again, how hard it was, that the mission was nerfed and portal now only spawns once, and thats it. I remember being so very disappointed when that happened. That used to be one of the best missions ever. It was short, difficult, and when you beat it, it was pretty sweet.

But in both instances, the TV trials and the Infernal missions were neutered to the point where anyone with half a brain can beat it.

So to make it actually fun? I was drawn to playing my Tank -all the time. Because as a Tanker, I was able to set the pace of the game. I made it challenging by pulling two different 4+ purple conned groups, capping my argo limit and keep myself and my teammates alive and well. We were able to steamroll the crap out of those missions. It was fun, but even that gets boring.

As it is, the only real challenging gameplay I can think of is running a Master of Statesman task force. Beating it (as my Inv/BA Tanker as the main and only Tanker) was one of my most exhilarating and memorable moments in this game. My only complaint is that its 3-5 hours long and if you screw up anywhere, you'd have to start over, and that can get tedious (and you know how I feel about tedium, bleh).

So there are a few things wrong here. The core of the game is tedious as shit. There is no real challenge to the game. Any existing challenges will be nerfed into tedium due to complaints from less that able players. The end game content is pretty much creating another character to play through the same tedious content.

And no, tedious and repetitive missions is not challenging gameplay (but it is quite challenging to my sanity), hence my preference to get power leveled to at least level 20 to skip the bulk of the drudgery.

Issue 15

In case you've been under a rock (as far as the City of Heroes and City of Villains), they'll be coming out with the new expansion, Issue 15: Anniversary soon. In fact, its already out on the test servers.

I'm really not sure why its even an issue as it is a glorified booster pack full or new emotes and skins that they'll be giving us for free. I understand that the devs wanted to release something for the 5 year mark of the game, but honestly, there's no need to call it an "issue."

True, there's a single new task force or strike force, for each respective side, but that's still not quite enough to make it an issue. Check out the Dev diary on Issue 15 you want to read up on this particular strike/task force. They did mention that they are making it challenging. And honestly, I really hope its true. Not that I'll be around after the issue hits.

Meh.

Thoughts on my Dark Armor + Dark Melee Tanker, Paradoxic

So I've been playing all sorts of different toons in the City of Heroes (as well as a Fire/Dark Cor in the City of Villains) with all different archetypes lately. I am soloing most of the time with a bunch of lowbies. It happens mostly while I watch the news, so I just take my time while slogging through the boring lowbie stuff.

But after tonight, I guess Paradoxic will be my next real Tanker to focus on leveling up.

I got her from level 24 to 28 in four hours. The real surprise is that I actually gave her some playing time, and in doing so, I'm finding that the Dark Armor and Dark Melee set is maturing quite nicely and is starting to be fun to play.

Oh, and having several people complement me on Paradoxic's costume is a nice addition too.

A Dark Armor Tanker plays similarly to a Fiery Aura Tanker where the initial resistance isn't really great so it makes the alpha strike for jumping into mobs a bit rough. There isn't the HP boost + Heal that Invulnerability, Stone, and even Ice Tankers have, but just a plain old heal with no HP boost. There isn't much knockback protection either, so that makes getting acrobatics (or a unique KB prot IO) a must.

When I tank in COH, I like to jump right smack dab in the middle of the mob, taunt, pop a pbaoe attack to get their attention (am thinking of 'whirling axe' on my Inv/BA), and taunt again to get a good hold on the argo management. DM attacks do not really give me that option, at least not at this level. The heal in DA sort of works, but the recharge time is too long and the damage is too low to adequately make use of the Tanker's gauntlet in this case.

I believe I will be getting the damage aura in the DA set to balance this out, something I've never really had to do with any of my tankers. But again, it does make things interesting because it is a change in playstyle to accommodate for the lack of pbaoe attacks for argo management.

As for her build, right now, I am kind of playing it by ear. I'll post up something for her eventually.