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.

7 Year Anniversary Infographic

I found this on the interwebs. I thought it was just worth sharing, that's all.

It's missing several years worth of data.. =( I wish I knew what it looked like had the game kept going. Gah, I hate NCSuck.

Titan Icon

I tried to hold off for as long as I could, but guess what I'm doing now?...

Yep, I'm going on to download Titan Icon.

Titan Icon is a freestanding executable file created by Codewalker which allows players of City of Heroes to access the character creation module of City of Heroes and to be able to enter and view the maps of City of Heroes. The program files and maps of City of Heroes were distributed for free to anyone who wished to play for free by NCsoft while the game was in operation.

My old computer with the i23 install is still at my parent's house (I think). So I didn't install Icon because space is limited in my new computer. Also I held out because I didn't want to make myself sad from all the reminiscing. But the "busy" season for work is starting to taper down, and my new hard drive finally came in, so.. well.. here I am.

I wonder if this is going to make me cry =(

Forum Signatures of My Characters

Told ya I was going through some old pictures. I found the forum signatures files. There is an evolution of sorts because the mains will change.. and/or I took some better pictures. Unfortunately, I kind of stopped being too active on the forums for me to continue editing the signature. Hence, why there's really not many images on the Tanker Project Tanks. Also, if I recall, some of the alts were actually re-rolled/deleted entirely for whatever reason. Ah well, so it goes.

So here's a post for the memories:

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!

Super Duper Old Builds

As you know, I am looking up old screenshots and such. And I found these goofy things.

This was how one used to show off their builds. I don't quite remember when Mid's Hero Builder started, but I feel like they only came to the public's radar when IO's became a reality when you actually need to use tools to manage the increased complexity of the game.

Based on the image properties data, these images were created in 2006. Lol, good times.

Disco Fever Queen (8/20/06)

Ms Ann (5/15/06)

Sixty (6/28/06)

Theophelia (5/15/06)

Thermonuclea (8/20/06)

Zetsumei (8/20/06)

Annx (8/20/06)

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?

Some History on my Fan-Made Trading Cards

Back when I was playing, one of the things that kept me going was making trading cards for my characters. I got to play around with Photoshop and get to continue the fun outside of the game by creating a little something for myself. 

I am going through all my archives of content and found the ones that started it all. The trading cards for the Legends of Victory.. a SG that consisted of me and my two younger brothers. Ha!

View the deck here. I'll post up some others as soon as I find them and organize them.

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.