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I encountered the netiquette of camp checks in Everquest, which was my first MMO. I came late to the game, I will say.

Spawns which dropped popular loot, or simply spawns hunted for xp, were all public. Instanced dungeons came along later, and were a specialized case to boot. Everything was "open world" - that is all dungeons, opponents, missions, etc. were visible to everyone and anyone could interact with them.

So it became typical to wait at given points on the maps and wait for opponents to spawn, or especially rare spawns involved in quests for very rare loot. It was good etiquette, when entering a popular map, to broadcast "camp check" - ie requesting that players camping specific sites reply that they were camping such and such a location.

Mind you, this was all player-developed protocol, so you had to know the slang for said sites. And similarly, you had to know the spawn sites, so if the southern end of the gnoll mound in the Karanas didn't show up on the list, you had a fair chance that you could go hunt there without someone claiming you were infringing their camp.

Of course, there was no enforced rule that one had to respect camps, but most players went along with it, and storms of controversy would break about the heads of those who didn't.

I have once - and once only - been street sweeping in a given zone (Terra Volta, forsooth) in this game and had someone try to argue that I should not hunt there because he was camping the area. I responded that this was not a custom in CoX and that if he looked around he would see more spawns popping up than either he or I could deplete if we fought non stop and never lost. This was many years ago, and I assume he came in from a game where camping was the norm.

Hated it in EQ, and would hate to see it sneak into CoX.

1) Trials can't send emails.
2) Spammers are deleted as reported and verified.
3) As noted, I16 adds the long-desired filters to email to limit incoming to friends lists and supergroup mates 9or turn it off entirely).

Ta-daa.

There has been considerable resistance to selling items that significantly change gameplay for RealBucks (tm). Heack, there has been considerable resistance to selling things like Vet Rewards, which don't particularly.

So you have the issue of players who feel that someone buying something they gamed for cheapens their sense of accomplishment. They may be right or wrong about that, but it is how they feel, which is not amenable to arguments based on cost/benefit analysis.

There is the issue, with purples or similar accoutrements, that people are buying performance they cannot obtain by patience or skill. The nightmare image is getting owned in PvP (assumnig one plays PvP - I myself do not) by someone who is able to beat you because he paid money for an advantage (OK, the nightmare image is getting owned by someone like that who then talks trash about how awesome he is and how pathetic you are).

There is the issue of social class of players entering the relationship between characters. Many Americans are allergic to even recognizing class issues when they walk up and kick them in the fork in real life situations, much less in niches like this one.

And of course there is the moral ambiguity many gamers feel at even a hint of "corporate sponsored RMT."

So this idea is unlikely to gain much traction.

We do get something nice for Labor Day - I don't have to work!

As noted, Peregrine Island is aboout it. There is a circuit of spawn sites that produce different enemies in the under 45 range (Malta, Crey, Carnies, Nemesis, Rikti). Of course the area is also lousy with Nemesis, Rikti, and DE spawns on their own as well.

The two freighters have been mentioned. Usually you get one set of enemies standing around the stern looking bad, with two other spawns, one amidships, and one at the prow, composed of two factions fighting.

Next is further up the island, bearing towards the midline, about 2-3 blocks. A little courtyard will spawn enemies of different types in rotation. Work along that section from the corner to the open shed.

Across the street, further up the island, is a big parking lot which will have mid-40s enemies (some all-Nemesis spawns). Work to the right, and along the promenade between the skyscraper and the beach you also get mid-40s enemies of different types, with bunches of Rikti on the open grass next to it. Cut through the little alley at the far end of that area, and there will be a last low-40s spawn site around the corner from the dumpster.

If a spot is spawning Carnies or Rikti and you need Nemesis or Malta, you can kill what you find and work back down the circuit seeking your current prey. Or just go away and come back in a few minutes, but clearing the "wrong" spawn moves the process along faster.

I am told that the time of game-day determines what spawns when, but don't know if this is so or what the cycles are.

The modern fan's insistence on knowing every detail of a popular universe (and the downside of that, when you look at the really inane tropes invoked again and again and again in fan-written expansions) is accelerated by the web, and the wikification of knowledge, where every nitwit with a keyboard thinks that makes his opinions sacrosanct.

One of the foundations of literature for the last few millenia is dramatic overview, and its converse. If we are the audience of, say, Richard III, we know what Gloucester is up to because he tells us (Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous...to place my brother Clarence and the King in deadly hate, the one against the other) - and indeed, the genius of the piece is that by telling us, he involves the audience almost as his co-conspirators as he kills his way to the crown.

But if we are involved in the story - if we are, perhaps, poor old false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, or Hastings, so dedicated to his late master's sons' claim to the crown, or Anne, Buckingham, Rivers, Grey, or any of the other soon-to-be-corpses, then our whole role is based on not seeing the approaching doom, at least until it is too late.

In RP, we absolutely don't know everything that is going on. As an audience, we may or may not, depending on the author's intention (and skill, to be sure).

When I GM'd more regularly, I warned my players that I reserved the right to know more about their characters than they did (especially in supers campaigns, as regarded the source of powers, their visbility on the radar of Big Bads, etc.).

I just finished rereading The Tombs of Atuan, and Le Guin makes some play with the transient episode in Wizard of Earthsea, where the old women gives Sparrowhawk her piece of the Ring of Ereth-Akbe, and his realization years later (prompted by the amusement of a dragon) of just what he has, that sends him to Atuan for the other half.

We, as an audience, enjoy the dramatic overview of that story, the filled in history that Tenar provides of who the old couple were and why they had such a treasure in their possession - but neither Sparrowhawk nor Tenar could know how the piece fit together (as it were) until that moment of revelation.

Nalrok summed it up - what do you enjoy?

I seem to build a lot of scrappers, blasters, tanks, and brutes. Fewer controllers, defenders, doms, corrupters. MMs - I have a few, but have to be in the mood to play them.

I do indeed enjoy in-yer-face hand to hand with the scrappers, tanks, and brutes. Or with the blasters, the high speed, occasionally white knuckle, tactical game. Very different fights with my fire/fire/fire blaster (in, hit, dodge, kill, heal, in again) versus the ice/ice blaster (freeze and attrition), versus the archery/dev blaster (careful tactical preparation of the kill zone then drive the enemies into it).

More emotes or skins for movement? Excellent.
Arbitrary limits based on AT, Origin, sun sign etc.? Bad.

Especially when/if color and look customization is extended to pools. Players should have the maximum freedom to choose look and feel for their characters.

Back in my SCA days, Dame Trudi Lacklandia didn't look all that different from the other fighters with weapon and shield before ringing my chimes.