Zekiran_Immortal

Which as I said before, was why the policy was changed before. Because no one was really 'getting' those "good names".

It's not necessarily Merlin - but it might be a clever use of words which two people happen to have both decided they want. If one's not active and hasn't paid, the other *should* be allowed to claim that name. *shrug* I'm not sure why that's such a huge issue. People still seem to be clinging to the mistaken idea that these things affect *paid accounts* where they *do not and should never*.

I posted Retail Retali8r's origin up in the Roleplaying forum, here

Meh, I whipped it out in 20 minutes and am still finding things I should have added.

But it does I hope go a long way to "why Rita fawns over that Akarist traitor everywhere else she goes". Her two kids (split up on my other accounts lol) with one world's version prove that yes, the Oranbegans CAN be nice people... But that things are always a little different everywhere you go.

.... I can't count the number of times she's had to hand Statesman his beating heart - as she's already healing his body to keep him aware of his pwntness. I wish we had combat teleportation. I really, really do. I'd switch it out from dark any day.

At this point I'll be surprised if the City Vault launches at all. :/ It was meant to go live a long time ago, and remember: it only covers active characters anyway. Unless a GM is *allowed* to give a name out, which they aren't that I know of, the point would be moot.

Hi all. I finally got some words down about my main, my first 50, Retail Retali8r. I may add more, but this is probably as close to her 'origin' as I'll get.

***

Exchanges Only, No Refunds


It was the longest day Paragon City ever saw.

I hunkered in a crouch, terrified to stand really, on the edge of what was left of Valor Bridge. I looked around, and could hardly see past the edge of the docks, it was all smoke and debris. The air too was clogged with muck, burning buildings… I think the water was on fire below me, too. Tankers had been blasted open and ignited easily with all the powers and gunfire going on. I could see to the south, Terra Volta had gone down. All the walls were dead, all power to the city was stopped.

The sound above literally made my blood turn cold. It was another ship, another Mother-ship, the Rikti had come in force, finally, their scouts having blasted away almost the entire fighting force that Earth could throw at them.

It was over.

How had I come to this miserable point? It was hardly a few years ago, really. My heart broke when I realized – down there, the third attack ship which had been ploughed into the side of Paragon’s fragile hollowed-out coastline and burned brightly still… My husband was under that ship, in the ruins of his city, Oranbega.

I drew in a long, shaking breath, and stood. Suddenly it didn’t matter whether I was terrified of heights or the winds. The winds were tainted with blood, vaporized life – I could feel it. I could feel death everywhere. There were people still out there, but they soon would fall to disease, hunger, or a Rikti blade.

***

I had come to Paragon like many, when the first scout ships had arrived. Hero One and so many others fell to the first wave of attacks, and plenty of young, stupid heroes and heroines just like me came to the calling. I was from the West Coast, my powers had just really started coming on. I didn’t use magic spells, I had no nanites coursing through my bloodstream, I didn’t even tinker with computers or assemble machinery – I was just me. I listened, well. And if you got on my bad side, well that was something you didn’t really want to do, unless you decided you liked coming away with a depressing, sorrowful mood.

My empathy had grown strong over years of working a crappy job in a moderately successful comic book shop. Running interference between a callous boss and the demanding customers was hard work, but I pulled it off I think admirably well. Listening to the woes of shoppers, but regulars came and chatted. They needed advice, they got it honestly from me. It got so that I could seemingly heal wounds just by giving a smile and a hug.

Turned out I really was healing wounds, and it turned out I could concentrate on that effect at a distance soon enough. The coming of the Rikti scout ships changed everything. The world was thrown into chaos momentarily, and then – unity. Every country’s heroes knew, we had to fight back, because this threat was not going to just go away and ignore all our petty bickering. I’d always voted for the powered candidates in office, always made sure to read up on legislation – several of my friends, even a co-worker, had turned up with some kind of abilities.

Of course, Drew wound up becoming a zombie-hunter, and Zam went to Paragon at least half a year before I did. So I quit my job abruptly, it was hardly worth attending to any more, no one was making product. Everyone had all but mobilized, there was literally no time for pleasantries and entertainment. That, we all thought, would come back later when we had the luxury of time and safety.

The only way to assure safety, I reasoned, was to head to Paragon where the attacks had centered, and do my best to help heal injured people. I was quite good at that. I had no idea then that my abilities would need to be honed far sharper before I could mess with the Rikti.

But I arrived, hardly fresh-faced and bright-eyed, the flight was hellish – crying children and a pall of silence otherwise, on a plane which held more than just one would-be hero. The airport was reasonably placed near Skyway but was connected by two tram lines. I hated trains. Oh how I hated trains. But this was the East Coast, they had pretty good rail systems, and within days I had gotten used to the sound of the tram above the streets. I still had nightmares about being cornered by them – but that was being replaced by dreams of this city: Paragon.

Atlas Park impressed me, a lot. I was hardly the first in line that day, getting my registration finalized and going in for my first assignments. It seemed like another life.

I went through all the proper channels, all the motions of becoming a stock in trade heroine. When Eastgate had its little… Incident… I decided I’d remain there – my apartment wasn’t damaged, and there was still readily available power and supplies. Besides, I was able to teleport to safety rather quickly.

Don’t even ask me how I learned to do that. Probably my day-dreaming self remembering pleasant nooks and rooftops – and then suddenly boom there I am.

Healing people wasn’t enough. I had to learn to control those mood swings and gloomy darkity-dark emotions that I could cause. That wasn’t too hard, plenty of people to practice on here too. I spent several weeks just learning where to go around this huge city, but many more learning its ins and outs. There were plenty of threats from all sides, mostly small-time gangsters and wannabe hero-lets. At the street level here in Paragon, it was oddly secure. It was strangely calm.

We had to be calm, because the world was relying upon us to train up and become strong. As though all was in preparation for the final battles we’d have with the Rikti.

Along the way I tried so hard to convince people they didn’t have to fight us. The Outcasts – they had powers! They thought of themselves not really as a gang, but more misunderstood heroes in training. That was fine: but they still got a teleport to the Zig’s legal department when they crossed the line. And those idiot Mobsters… They squandered their valuable psionic abilities on drugs and control over the docks. Freakshow were… probably the most entertaining of my enemy-friends, at least for a while. They knew how to party, they knew how to let loose. Plus, a lot of them were much smarter than they looked. But even so, most of them didn’t take my advice, most of them wound up back in jail.

The Tsoo gang, they were almost subsumed by the Circle of Thorns. The Warriors too, both gangs once rivals, had been swallowed up for use by the ancient mages below the city. They now served as go-betweens, like many heroes also did, between Paragon’s administration, and the much older hidden city. It gave both groups different ways of gaining power, and honing their abilities in the process. Warriors had good, strong arms and bodies, and became the ‘knights’. The Tsoo, always much more wily and using mental abilities, were of more use defending and body-guarding.

I’d met Akarist once I started working the Founders Falls beat – he and his library were open to the magic-wielding heroes and when the Rikti invaded even the Mu priests and Oranbegan leadership realized we were all in plenty of danger, there would be no more bodies to take if we didn’t stop our common threat.

He had on a body that must have been rather young, though like almost all the top mages, whatever shell they were using would age quickly enough. I had the effect on him of being able to preserve it, and while I was only running messages for my contacts and borrowing books on anatomy and art for myself, we both seemed to relish the hours I’d spend there.

It blossomed reasonably fast – my last relationship had gone sour, but here in a new city, with an absolutely amazing new partner? I felt more alive than ever, and frankly so did he. It was visible: I practiced on him, and eventually Akarist didn’t need to go looking for a new host shell. This one wasn’t aging any more, though he kept the white hair, it looked wonderful on him.

We were married by the opening to Oranbega that was farthest east, in the bay, a lovely little island with a beautiful waterfall and a sheltered cove. Of course, we could see the city in the distance, but that was good. That was safety.

That was two years ago. We both had our own distinct roles, of course. Neither he nor I would be trading spaces, and in fact, aside from nice long weekends that we afforded ourselves, we hardly had time to talk before one of us was called off.

My powers continued to grow. My grasp over darkness was strong, but my ability with teleportation had come into its own so fully that people wondered why I didn’t just ‘do the job’ myself: go into the heart of the ship, kill their leaders.

I didn’t think it would help. Rikti were now everywhere, posing as humans. Were they shapeshifters? Or were they, like the Lost, converted physically to somewhere between Rikti and Human? Little did I know, and honestly never found out then, what they really were.

When the second ship arrived, it spelled disaster for many places around Paragon. It had hovered low and menacingly over the city, even hitting one of the tallest sky-scrapers in Steel Canyon. It took a month before the ship fell.

And it fell. Not like the little one, that little scout ship that wound up on the hillside far West of the city. This was a massive ship, probably fifty times that size. This was the war ship. We’d been putting up so much resistance that they finally felt it was time to pull out the big guns.

It was about that time when I realized that my contacts with Freaks and Outcasts had to pay off. We weren’t at war with one another. This was about saving the world. I had gathered with a couple of them at a time, here and there, and while Akarist was busy trying to work up shields with magic and all the pains that demon-contracts might entail, I was on the docks of Independence Port, talking sense into a Freak Tank.

“So you’ll get them?” I asked, and he nodded, the bulk of his shoulders moving along with his head, since his neck had long since been buried in metal. “Good – and remember, if it looks Human, it’s Human until I say otherwise. If it looks like one of them,” I pointed at the hastily applied billboard reminding people of the Rikti threat, “shoot them, cut them, stomp them, no questions asked.”

He gave off a terrifying giggle, pushed his metallic hands together in a huge thudding taunt. “Oh, we will.”

I was about to head to Eastgate, to talk to Flux again about the guys he’d recruited off the Outcasts. Having stood up and looked around for clear spots in the sky over the Harbor to teleport into, I just kept looking up. The mother ship was wobbling.

Wobbling. In the air. They’d gotten in? I clenched my fists, bit my lip, and prayed. Do that job. Do it. They were heroes stronger than I could ever be, I had gotten used to teleporting injured people around, healing them, and heading back to a fire zone. My fighting skills would have been useless up there, though I considered applying for the backups because I was a really good empath.

The ship shuddered, almost from the inside out. The blue-white field around it sputtered, blinked, and went out abruptly. And the sound it made while it powered down, was almost as terrifying as the thing that happened next.

This ship, almost a mile wide, was no longer powered. I could hear the cheering – which rapidly, all too rapidly turned to screaming – from the city below. The Freak Tank near me gave a grunt.

“Well that doesn’t look good,” he said. He thundered toward it, it would be an hour before he’d make it on foot (especially lumbering like that with half a ton of metal attached to him).

“No,” I said, “it doesn’t look good at all.”

It was hardly aerodynamic, if it had been in motion perhaps it might have glided a bit over the ocean. But it wasn’t. It had merely been hovering there for almost five weeks, as it sent down landing parties and invasion forces in fits and starts. They were still playing with their food, I realized. This was just a game to them. They could easily wipe us all out. That’s not what they wanted, though. They didn’t want full destruction.

I’d spoken to one, a captive that had died before I could get them to our destination. He claimed that our world was ‘needed’. Whatever that meant. If they needed it, they could have just asked. Instead, they chose violence, and this was the result.

Hundreds of heroes aboard that ship, now. Hundreds had died before them. But what I was hearing now, the quick words of a newscaster blurting things out on a half-abandoned electronics shop television, was that a dozen groups of heroes had entered the ship, having discovered one single portal that could be kept on long enough for them all.

They swarmed it, she was saying, she’d been there and been removed as her team’s leader was injured. I hadn’t known they were embedding reporters in this battlefield. But she had a fierce expression, “we will take it down,” she said, and she was right.

They did take it down. Onto Paragon City.

***

It had landed fully flat, directly over Eastgate. It covered that whole area, in addition to half Paragon Bay, most of Talos Island, and onto the East edges of Atlas Park and Skyway.

My home was gone. Half the city was in ruins, and the other half – quickly – gave way.

The first impact was huge, it had shaken me off my feet even standing on the dock’s sturdy pavement. A cloud of debris rose, and then, once we all thought it was over, there was a second, far worse shudder.

The sound of Oranbega giving way after thousands of years. Millions of tons of rubble above it, a starship carrying hundreds of thousands of people… Just landed on a hollow city. My throat twisted, and I couldn’t help myself, I cried long and hard, even as I jumped back into the air.

I teleported back and forth, I knew that here in Independence Port at least, there would be survivors to tend. We’d all seen the damage, and then… Then the other ship came into view. Where had it been? Possibly cloaked, we were all concentrating too heavily on the first. It was on the West side, where its companion had been hovering over the East. We’d been trapped.

A set of sleek, arrowhead shaped ships carried bombs down, and I saw them head directly over Terra Volta. But I was concentrating my efforts on those who still tried running, attempted to gather them at Bell Medical. But it was quickly futile. The dust and smoke from the crashed ship overtook even the war walls, I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like near one of them, as a storm of black and burning metal and glass came over them. Like a wave. The ground shuddered again.

My home was gone. Akarist’s home was gone.

He was gone. I felt it, I knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it. Some of the Family took up spots to aid in the rescues, but it was hardly worth the effort now. I saw troop ships now, to the south.

I teleported up onto Valor Bridge, a place where I’d been only once before. It had taken everything out of me to get there, fear always tripped me up. But there was a platform. The light on it, servicing for low flying planes and the like, had gone out. It wasn’t blinking any more. The city below was dark, illuminated only by fires.

My hands shook, I pounded the rusted red surface of the bridge tower and screamed. The Rikti had won.

I teleported to the edge of my ability, eighteen times. That brought me to the edge of what would have been Atlas Park. But Atlas was gone. The statue was toppled, onto the park beside it fortunately. But three sky-scrapers had also fallen, and with the tunnels below riddling Paragon City, soon enough, there would be no solid ground to walk upon. The city itself couldn’t hold on much longer, physically. It was gone.

If the heroes inside the ship had survived, I suddenly didn’t even care. I wondered though, absently, while teleporting into the oddly fresh blown air that came over the place now, had they caused this by destroying the ship’s engines? Did they even realize for one minute what they’d done?

The ship sank, deeper and deeper. Oranbega after all was huge, bigger than Paragon City was but all sprawled out under ground. Long, twisting tunnels led from libraries and grottos to war rooms and summoning chambers. Akarist had shown me many of those sights when we were trying to get more to the cause of fighting above.

The whole place was going to collapse. I stood on the ruined war wall near where the edge of Skyway met Talos. The airport, since closed because of air restrictions since I’d been here, was the only bit of flat ground anywhere for a mile, and it had a cavernous hole under it that was quickly caving down toward the Rikti ship.

Water was covering everything below. Like a huge wound, being flushed. Thousands of people, dead, were swept out to sea already, and thousands more probably would be. The second ship continued its barrage.

It had to be morning, but even though the breeze felt fresh, it was still dark overhead. As dark as night, only without the safety of the stars visible beyond the glow of the once-comforting blue force field walls. I trembled. I cried again, knowing that this was it. Everything was lost.

I stood up, healed myself of wounds I’d gotten just by the travel to this point. My clothes were shredded. I’d have to get new ones somehow.

I concentrated hard. This was the only way, I couldn’t live here and I wasn’t going to die here. Everything had gone. But I was still alive. And … since I’d been out there, I knew that there were other places. Portal Corp had shut down their portal services, but I knew. I just knew.

I opened my eyes and it was a sunny, warm day, a blimp overhead buzzing eternally promoting a sports game in a nearby town. Atlas’ huge statue stood with a line of fresh-faced kids in their uniforms and outfits being addressed happily by someone who wanted to select the best of them as a team mate.

I closed my eyes, opened them again, I really was here.

In a new, still-living Paragon City.

I walked toward City Hall, and hoped that I didn’t have to present identification, to get a new card…

But they already do penalize them: 2 purges later, and I haven't yet heard of ONE peep from someone who "came back" to find their characters had been genericed. Not a one. If there is one, sadly I suspect it'd have been lost to time. But this is nothing new, and nothing more than a logical extention of what the company *already does*.

For your suggestion, this would place a LOT of problems on people like me, who have 100+ alts: why would I have to click box all of them, I'm a paying customer. I'm not even refering to paying customers. I only mean to penalize those who *do not care* or *will never notice*.

And like I said: if someone tracked me down and said, "hey are you the owner of X name?" "Yah, why?" "Well I've got a great character concept but it sucks not to have that name. Are you playing it?" "No, actually I'm not. I'll check - I don't even think it's high level, I could probably stand to remove it for you."

Not everyone WOULD, and certainly there would be names that I'd keep - but again, ones which are very, very unlikely to be needed by other active players.

The problem of non-paying people losing their character names is essentially a non-issue. To my knowledge not one person has complained about it, because they *have not returned*. I'd love to hear about someone who did, *and is still paying now after returning* (ie: not someone who jumps on during the free weekend and complains, because they WILL NOT HAVE PAID again anyway).

"Blackmailing"?! Lol! As a business, I'd expect people who come in only once in 3 months or less and *don't pay* to play, to be the least of my concerns. Those who actually are putting up the cash? They get the developments and benefits of it.

Here is the thing: if you left your apartment, unpaid and unvisited, for 5 months with no forwarding address and no information behind, would you expect the people you're renting from to just ... keep everything? For you?

I wouldn't. If I came back after 6 months and said, "well, I'm back!" I'd expect people to be worried about me, but also, realistically, I'd expect everything that was being held to have been sold off or taken back by family. After only 1 or 2 months unpaid space rent at the storage facility where I have 2 full units, they break open the lock, and sell/trash/give away everything in a locker regardless. Someone comes back then, they're completely SOL. You only garner the benefits of the game while you are *paying to play it*.

And your statement - "it's okay to pull" - no, it would not be, not even by any stretch of MY imagination, as I've repeatedly stated. The MAIN qualifier is "UNPAID, UNPLAYED" accounts. Not "unplayed characters" on paid up and active accounts! Please understand the HUGE difference there.

I don't have to VISIT my storage units, I only have to PAY for them. Exactly the same deal here: I don't have to play all my alts - all I need to do is pay up on them to secure my right to keep their name. People who do NOT do so, those are the ones I'm talking about.

And remember: the people posting here are the ones who, primarily, are "in the know" about things happening in and around the game. A LOT of people inside the game itself don't even KNOW there are forums, even though there's a link right on the updater. Military? They're a little more aware because they DO know they can be deployed.

But folks who don't even know they should be GETTING emails from the game? I know a bunch here that have had to make corrections, because for whatever reason they stopped - but they made the effort. The people I'm talking about who may lose a name, do NOT make the effort. To keep, play, pay for or maintain their accounts.

So please stop making the weird assumption - that I've repeatedly said otherwise - that I mean to take away names from paid up, active accounts. That is NOT what I'm talking about. Only those who are NOT paying. That's how NC worked it anyway: 90 days unpaid accounts. That's only 3 months.

I'm talking about "what about the people who haven't been back, EVER, after their first stint" or "they don't bother paying, but they come back for a free weekend".

I would rather have one or two people dedicated to the task, if need be, yes.

There would be plenty of other changes which would also be required, of course.

** "I'm leaving my account" information. As I said before, if someone doesn't care to leave information, or says in plain words 'I don't like this game' they are low priority. Someone clicks the box for "military, deployment, I'll be back" they keep their names. I know that this is done in other games (as purely feedback, I mean), to some extent, that's where I got the idea from. This in itself would clue in any manual information search where to NEVER bother to snag a name from.

** Perhaps the request could actually be forwarded to the account holder. 3rd party only, obviously - "Someone in the game has requested a name which we believe your account uses. If you would like to keep this name, please reactivate your account." or something similar. Thus: if someone hasn't bothered to update their email info, and won't get the info, they are *very unlikely* to want the account anyway.

** Yes, train and keep people on board whose job it is to handle *specific things*. Why not? Their cost of support has already been increased, and with all the additional things we can buy for the game... my money is well spent. Heck, they could even *charge for the petition* to make it less likely to be abused. You REALLY REALLY want the name? Well someone's paying to ask about it, get back on the game and 'rescue' your abandoned character. (and again: not a guarantee - this would be a risky move, to want to pay for something that you might not even be able to get. It should be a last ditch effort. But an effort I think might be worth it for the few people who would decide 'I really, really do want that name, and if it's on an account being ignored by its old owner for 2 years+, I'm willing to get it from them.')

I don't think it'd be something that would ever be implemented, mind you. But I think that tossing the idea out at all might spark some discussion in the higher-ups about it.

I understand that, but I'm not necessarily advocating taking all their names away either:

Only that: if someone asks for a name that they haven't been able to get, that they are allowed to petition to have a GM check on the account which owns it. If the account is paid up, obviously there's no issue: they can't have it. If the account's NOT paid up, there are other conditions to think about including whether the account's ONLY active during "Free weekends".

When I ran a comic shop we would have reasonably regular sales. There was one customer who bought a LOT of manga for her daughter and some of her kid's friends. Thing was, we ordered the books specifically for her - and she would often wait until we had a deep-sale on books to buy them. She cut directly into the profit we could make, by doing this, even though we were making the effort to provide her with the books *on time* when they were available.

On one hand, I see her point: the books cost 10 bucks a pop. On the other hand: my business *suffered* because all she did was essentially leech a box and hold on to those products - or worse, put them back on the shelves until the sale. From a business standpoint, I did have to change the rules: if they were ordered for you or subscribed, no matter *what* product it was (comic, book, manga, etc) it *did not get the sale price*.

She stopped buying regularly and continued to shop only during sales. That's the kind of customer I actually resent - for her cheap attitude. The books still cost us the same to order, whether she bought them full price or not - and in an ailing market with a huge bookstore right across the street which carried the books too - she forced our hand. (and no, she wasn't the only one who would only show up at sales and then demand deeper discounts for buying 'so much' stuff... sigh.)

To me, as someone who *has* seen both angles of this, it still strikes me as 'give the paying customer, the regular customer, MORE'. Because those who do wander off and come back - unless they come back and PAY for several months again, then fall off again, there's no reason to support a bunch of people who will only arrive for the free lunch.

Add to that: those names have never, ever been a huge deal to anyone. Only a few specific names, some near and dear to individuals, but obviously - great minds think alike. There have been plenty of discussions about this in the past. There's no such thing as 'hoarding' a name, because there ARE plenty of good names.

The reason that the policy was even rescinded long ago in the first place, was that it wasn't freeing up and actually USING enough of those names. It wasn't worth their effort, in other words. So to have a much more specific-use rule, petition for a gm to go search for info. Not saying they should SHARE that info of course! Just "yes, you can use this name, we determined it'd be okay" or "no, sorry there are circumstances that won't let you use it." In, I would imagine almost all cases, there should be no issue at all: a 30 month absence or a fly-by-night appearance during freebie weekends does *not* constitute a player who is worth fawning over. Those who are here, consistantly, paying up month by month - or those who have to skip and come back regularly and play actively - those are the ones who honestly, from a business standpoint, will always mean *more* to a company. Been there, done that.

I am thinking of my own names. If you'd read: I have over 150 toons with unique names. I have two which I've ever had to do something with to make them in game: Blaque Ice and Dream.Weaver.

How many other people will need "Xanax Queen" or "Cannibal Petey Bones"?

I'm thinking of the people who, recently, have been having issues - as NEW players, PAYING customers - if someone's gone, *they are gone*. I'm not advocating removing their character, I'm saying "let them search and see" if that character's likely to be played *ever again*. Period. Not "immediately hand over the name" - are they Military? stationed at a place without access to the game? Well then *hold those names thank you.* Are they a "wannabe fan" who comes back *only when it's free*? Screw them. Folks who are fair-weather players can have "generic temp hero 1 - 100" for all I care, but what I am saying is: if someone is paying, they take priority. If someone's gone away from the game for 2 years? They are GONE and done with the game, if they want to try getting their name back after it's been taken? Go for it. Same process.

"Hey! This character lost their name!? How! I've only been gone 34 months!! And what are all these 'badge' things?"

I've been playing - and paying - for several accounts for 45 months (just got my badge the other day). I keep my names. Someone that fell off the game after 6 months? They do not get their names. It's not as harsh as it could be, we keep our characters. Anyone who's been gone that long will be complaining more about ED and Big Zones and too much extra stuff coming at them and how their computer can't handle Grandville. They'll already have lost out on most of the game already, and will - most likely - have to create a NEW character anyway. Oooh - wait, what about if they want their own name! They'd have to delete and re-roll - freeing up that name *anyway*.

Sorry, I don't have pity at this point for people who've gone so long from the game that more than half the issues existing will have come out in the meantime. I'm not saying delete the characters, nor on anyone's paid-up account. I would never, ever suggest that. Merely that those who are not going to come back, not be given the preference.

If they work.

Whatever... too bad you can't actually use Oroborous to travel to the future and be happy...

[ QUOTE ]
Why haven't these made the Scoop, these kill me...

[/ QUOTE ]

We should definitely have a lolCOH section.

... 14 days for your corruptor.

I can't even stay on a villain longer than 3 hours at a time. *shrug* the new VEATs do look pretty cool though

It's not all "add twits" trying to use the very same name that "you" came up with.

I know a lot of people who've had to add a . or 1 to their name, because the person who play(ed) the character with it is long gone.

My suggestion in the other thread about this was:

Create a 'petition for name' which allows a player to actively say "Hey I want this name, please find out if the name is being used by an active player." A GM would be assigned to looking up through the database whether the account a name is on is in use, how long it's been out of use, and decide whether to award a name to an active, PAID UP player.

I'm sorry but if you were gone for 18 months - tough. I've been here 4 years. There are plenty of people who are new who want a name and it's gone because someone pl'd their character to level 50 and will *always* be outside the purge range - even if they played for 5 months and have *never come back*.

Honestly: people who continue to pay for their accounts, even if they're not playing the game, SHOULD have priority over those who repeatedly use the "come back for 10 days! please pay for another month!" folks. And I know there are plenty of THOSE accounts out there too.

If you're not paying for your account, you're also not PLAYING the characters.

** Does the character have plenty of badges? Or were they created and *abandoned* after badges were even inserted into the game? (a badge-collecting character on hiatus would obviously have a higher chance of retaining a name than one which never got a single badge put on it)

** Does the account have a record of on-again-off-again? (accounts which have been put on only at times of freebie access should be on a lower priority than those which had been paid up and abruptly ended payment.)

** How many OTHER characters are on the account? (Altitis hits a lot of us - and though it pains me to say it, someone with plenty of alternative characters should be LOWER on the priority scale than one which has only 2 or 3 high-level characters on it. The ones with a high level and nothing else, have and will PLAY that character, where as people like myself are likely to have a bazillion names scattered everywhere - if I stopped paying for my account, and someone wanted to use "Blaque Ice" - LET THEM. I have 20 others that aren't as likely to be wanted.)

** Give both accounts name change tokens. If a name change is needed because someone else 'took' the name: get creative yourself. If you've been gone, you lose.

All this within reason: minimum 90 days unpaid, unplayed, inactive accounts only. Not "active" in any way.

I'd like to see NC institute a feedback form which allows us to click a box: I'm coming back, but financial hardship means I can't pay. I'm coming back, I'm on military duty for x months. I'm not bothering to come back, because x and y. etc. If any of thsoe tags came up, obviously, reserve the ones who state why they had to leave versus ones who either didn't give feedback (they don't care) or gave negative feedback (they won't be back).

"Getting creative" IS a high priority for me. But even then: aforementioned Blaque Ice is a 'creative spelling' for a character that would otherwise have been named several times over Black Ice, Black Icee, Black Yce, Blaaak Ice, etc. It happens that it's in character, as Blaque is his last name... But I did try naming him Black Ice. And Black Axe, and Blaque Axe in fact. All taken.

Do I play the character? No. If someone managed to contact my account about it, I'd say SURE - have it, and delete him, because he's like level 8. It's no huge deal for heavy alters like myself, but if he was my ONLY character? Yeah I'd pitch a fit.

..... You do realize that I12 is IN closed beta now, right? You know: for players to test? And make sure that people don't whine "but that doesn't WOOOOORRRRRK!"

Do you want it NOW or do you want it WORKING? You can't have both.

I think what they have there is a bug, and it should be sent in as much detail to the guys as possible. If you can't view the numbers on SOME characters (i'm guessing older ones?) but you can on others, that's a bug. What Pohsyb listed there was merely the ability they've improved upon, to show you *before creation* what the numbers are like in the generator. if the character data itself is buggy, that has to be corrected by them on a different level. I would HOPE that this would change, but I don't think it would, just by having added code in another part of the generation/game program.

Why, because you feel entitled to something that *no one should have* yet?

I don't get it.

The anniversary isn't for another few weeks. You can live until then, just like everyone else who joined the game when you did. You're not being cheated nor singled out - you merely want something that is a glitch and now feel entitled to it, or so it sounds by your attitude. And wasn't Ex replying TO your post?

Not firing away per say, but... I think maybe you've never worked in a high-demand job. Say, fast food - have you ever run the counter, done fries, cleaned tables, AND counted cash at the end of the night - mostly positions filled by different people during the course of a day?

15 people cannot miraculously whip up all the changes you want. 30 people CAN. They can get on top of it, back track in here and see "hey there really is a lot of complaints about x maybe I'll look into that now that we're done with Y".

Patience. The team hasn't gotten back up to full steam just yet. Your subscription dollars give you the right to open an account and access the game, nothing more. Their salaries give them the right to create the game, but their salaries have been limited, as well as their time and ways to get things done.

Now that they've got a little more of everything, give them that time to work on those little fixes. Plus: just because you believe something is a bug, does not mean it's worth their time to work on at all, but they may still look into things.

Create a full bug list (i'm pretty sure someone has, was it you recently?) and send it in a PM to Positron. Top dog, will know what to do with it.

Pwnt.

FOUR YEARS!

>_> Four freaking years! AH LOVE THIS GAME! I can't wait to have my 48 month badge. Just to HAVE it.

What planet are you living on? *costs are increasing*.

The physical hardware? Yes, it can be purchased at around the same price everywhere right now. But the *electricity to run it* and the *cost of the overhead?*

You're telling me rent in your area's gone down? because I just got a 50$ increase in mine. And I'd like to remind you that though it's a great place for growth - San Jose is the 3rd costliest city in California to put roots down in, and that's including businesses.

Sorry to burst your bubble: but things increase. Cars have never gone down in price, and the only thing which does really *change* is the *quality* of what you get for a dollar these days, especially in electronics.

So no: costs will never go *down* for something which relies entirely upon electricity to be of any use. We still haven't even been apologized to in California for the electric-cost debacle from 5 or 6 years ago - AND never gotten a rate cut even though the government admitted it was allowing price gouging and fixing.

A boost of up to 1/3 more players is still a boost. Just because it might not hit imaginary "good" numbers to you, it's still *excellent* boosting. COV underperforms *to you*. Not to the investors, sorry. Seeing as how the games, I dunno, still being played? And supported? Guess again. ED was no deal *whatsoever*. I was in beta, been there, done that. I thought it was a fantastic idea. And frankly: I don't know where your numbers are coming from, but you only know raw numbers, and not "numbers left because of X or Y." Your supposition is just that, not fact.

Every single game on the market - and I'm not including the obvious exception because it's so out of the realm of reality that it's not worth comparing to - takes dips constantly. This game has been consistant, and every issue brings BACK players who have otherwise decided "I must go!" Not too many games do that - none, that I know of, really. This is the game that players come BACK to. Read up on some of the 'I'm back!' threads to see that much. This is just the top of the heap, in the forums. I've run into plenty of people in game who have come back, after a long absence, and asked what's going on with the new stuff.

They are impressed as most of us are, with the things that the FREEMY FIFTEEN have done. Why not take your head from your nethers, and admit they've done a fine job? I mean.... that IS what the thread's supposed to be about, not more venting about very, very old news.

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due to the high volume of bad word of mouth this game got from ED that statesman cut the staff is no surprise at all.

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lol - make up more stuff please, you're good.

* No word of mouth existed about ED: COV launched to huge results, and everyone who started the game at that point *never knew the difference* because COV *included it to begin with*. No one who owned only COV at the start had a CLUE why there was any issue with slotting. it's a perfectly good change, that some people (ie: map-hoarding tankers) didn't like. Get over it. It's old news.

And: Statesman didn't cut the budget. Others did. Read up on the history before you start making stuff up dude.

None of this is a surprise? Really? Because it seems to me that like the rest of us, YOU are also still here, PLAYING the game. A GREAT game at that. ED and all.

They've done a huge amount of work, essentially on a shoestring, for so long. They deserve all the kudos they can get.

[ QUOTE ]


Ross was at the M&G, but he doesn't have a redname, log into the game as a sig, or post here on the forums as far as I know.

[/ QUOTE ]

He really should. He was a very nice guy, I talked to him for quite a while at the M&G, he should be here After all, we ARE the market....

[ QUOTE ]
Add Manticore to that list too.

Lighthouse and Ex Libris are design support?

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you think you could get them to *not* say something while looking over the shoulders of their coworkers?

Manti's not in the NC building, is he though? I was under the impression he was still in Austin?

QFT! Oh man, that is so absolutely true. I just replied to a post about such a thing too.

THANK YOU you small tiny group of devs, for sticking with it and toughing out the lean times, because we KNOW you're going to do great with flunkys at your feet.

What a trial by fire, huh?