BlueRaptor

The French-speaking part of Canada? Lets see. French-speaking population in Europe: France (65.5M) + a third of Switzerland (=2.5M) + half of Belgium (=5M) = some 73 millions. German-speaking population in Europe: Germany (82M) + Austria (8M) + a third of Switzerland (=2.5M) = roughly 92.5 millions, together 165.5 millions, as opposed to one fourth of Canada = some 8.5 millions?

(I dont see your problem though. The European version gets along fine with switching between German, French, AND English servers. So if everyone uses the European version after a merge, everything will be fine, not? Only that it then has not 2 but 13 English servers to choose from.)

No, pretty sure there's not. A lot of boxes like, *looks at shelf* this Fallout2 e.g. (bought in Germany), have only English text and at the bottom an "ELSPA" european age restriction label (with lots of eurpoean languages on it), a french warning label, "Der grüne Punkt" German recycling logo, and a German USK-16 age suggestion icon. Looks pretty much like that box sold like that in most european countries. I think about half of the games I bought had the goodie books that were not really required to play the game in English and only a little flyer with the basics and required local legal information (Do not play 50 hours a day, dont eat the CD... ) in other languages. The actual game instructions hardly come in paper anymore anyway. I recall occassional listing how much of the game and box contents are in English on the back of the box too. ("...German manual on the CD...")
Maybe France has such a law, they are bit more afraid that English may kill their language?

So yes, maybe they want to print a German and French version of the box too if they plan on keeping those two foreign language servers to include those few who dont (want to) speak English to the target audience, but for every other server you need to speak English anyway.

Well... they could call it advertising. A novelty if they really didnt advertise in the US either, so could be worth trying, not?
And treat it as a re-Release of the entire game instead of just as an add-on for those few who already play it...

If they merge the two games so the CDs/DvDs and game codes work for both they can even sell them EU boxes in the US if they really dont sell. They'd likely just have an additional instructions flyer in foreign languages inside and maybe a strange sticker with additional rating icons for one or several European countries on the box. They dont even have to translate any booklet or whatever they have in mind, it's not uncommon to have that in English only regardless of the country the box was supposed to be sold in.

How to completely purposefully ruin an MMO game on a new market:

Release the game to the new market at the same time as another great MMORPG (WoW): check.

Instead of that rival game that advertises all over everything, dont advertise it at all: check.

Make up some ridiculous concept, like a different regional version that is incompatible with those who already run the game, so that even those who heard about it via friends in the US cant use it to play with them: check.

Keep strictly not-advertising it until even no boxes are on the shelves anywhere anymore: check.

Blame the regional market and withdraw what little resources were assigned to it: check.

Watch server population and subscriptions go down, keep refusing to merge the games to help that: check.

Pretend you still care and that you are only not doing anything because an upgrade will make the servers full again, even though that is no reason at all not to merge the games, then neither shelf-release nor advertise it for that region to keep people from learning about it: ...

I really wish they merged the server lists. Today. And release that box as a decently advertised game.
It deserves it.

That, too.
Those videos are amazing. First one gave me goosebumps. No, I had never seen them before. It's a shame that you have to find such things after years of playing the game on a side note in a forum post. Just like it needed friends in the US to tell me about that game, even though it wasnt new at all, it had already vanished from stores here in Europe by then.

How happy would I be to read just something like that more often. A lot of the frustration about the not so great things in this great game comes from feeling that the concerns of dozens to hundreds that agree are going unheard. Thank you.

Be also aware that to the devs what you want to do reads like "I want to cheat and get lolXP for free."

Which will be the reason for there not being a button for it, even if it still can be done.

Something along the lines of that is the main reason why PvP sucks right now imo.
I only casually PvPed, but before I13, when I defeated someone quickly, I felt that I got lucky or came upon someone that was really unskilled or inexperienced. When it was a long good fight, I was proud, almost regardless of outcome. When I got defeated, I felt it was because the one that did so was more skilled/experienced or maybe I didnt use my powers right, and I admired the ones good enough to defeat what was a good build in PvE and could stomach what I threw at them that had effects close to PvE.
It felt like you could play basically everything in PvP, and what mattered was mostly skill and experience, to an extent your build, and then some what you had slotted and some luck.

Now, when someone survives against more than one skilled player it's because they are /Regen, when someone can break from such a fight it's because they have at least one of very few powers that you have to have for that, and whenever I defeat someone it is always because I was in a team, for I am no use alone because PvP rules break my powerset.
I dont feel proud for the few kills I do, nor do I think it is a sign of skill or good thinking to get the better of me, and I definitely dont think someone is more skilled than I am when they can survive with the help of cool powers or benefits that my powerset or AT does not have or cannot take.

I dont think anyone here wants such a number.
A single good player that put powers into his build to stop a runner that didn't put lots of building effort into preventing just that should have a fair chance to get that runner, while if the runner did put something for that into his build and is more skilled or experience than his pursuers he should have a fair chance of escaping even a team of 8.

IF <player encounters a big team> THEN
{
. <player gets mezzed because mez protection is not allowed>
. <player get slowed down because Travel Surpression kicks in>
. IF <player is /Regenerate* and other players are not PvP builds> THEN
. {
. . <player can survive and tiptoe to base very slowly in between mezzes>
. }
. ELSE
. {
. . IF <player has Hibernate or Phase*> THEN
. . {
. . . <player can get away>
. . }
. . ELSE
. . {
. . . <player is dead>
. . }
. }
}
is not fun.

*maybe I forgot some set/power/combination here that can do that too, but you get the idea

But (yet ), that is what American English is all about! O: )

*whistles innocently*
... there wasn't another spelling topic around and I didn't want to open up a new one just to be a smart*** about that one word...

Maybe with just a few shrubberies that randomly explode?

As for Hibernate, not-surviving it is only so much an issue if you are the only one of your side in the zone.
On the two big servers' RV, going into ice age mode usually isnt done in a void, but with other players of both sides around you, so the iceberg's enemies are too busy fighting its side-mates to siege the ice to catch the very millisecond before it burst off, or the encapsuled has all the time in the world to tell his teammates that he is frozen at the train station, there are three villains around, one stalker that has gone into hiding right under the station, another stalker and a corrupter that are standing right next to me too busy staring to notice you coming, together with a /WP brute that doesnt really count because Willpower is worthless in PvP, so please come over to save me, ask anybody around you to come too, come quick but there is no need to utterly rush it because I still have half a minute in here.
Basically.

How about, you can fill neither? Would seem more fair to me to those that decide for one side instead of trying to get both at once to pwn.

There was at least time when it felt like every archetype and power set could do it, to an extent.

(That's something I really dont get. Every shabby Counter Strike server had auto-team-switching after a while, because winning-team-joining is so annoying but so popular. Can it be so hard to not allow any more of one side when there's already both x% and n players more of that side already? Oh, woo, some people might not be able to get in if one side always has way more than the other. Perhaps some start rolling a villain then after all... )

*goes back to his poor whimpy /WP brute... O: )*

The first rule of PvP seems to be to forget all you ever learned in PvE, sadly.

There are powers, powersets and even archetypes concepts that work totally different or even not at all in PvP.

Reptiles and lizards dont have boobs, to start with.

Definitely. And to be fair, a (male) (anthro) dragon is about the only animal character that you CAN decently build in this game. Its the only of the few monster heads that actually looks good, the reptile torso has the classical fantasy "dragon" stripe underside pattern (no real reptile that has legs has such stripes, so it doesnt even work for something dinosaur-y or lizardy, only for snakes), the reptile head has lots of horns that put in into a fantasy creature setting, there is even wings specifically made for dragons (even though bat wings may work better for some), and with the wings a dragon character has less need for a prominent tail feature as dino or lizard characters.

Fair's fair, as much as I'd also like to see more dragon options, a decent feline head and a canine tail e.g. are much more needed.
(though just options to have the female OR male dragon head, with or without spines, dragon horns or head crest or a combination thereof would already be awesome while not requiring tons of new modeling)

But... playing in SG mode to get prestige instead of inf to avoid the bad exchange rate is an inf sink too...

A little unrelated and a little biased. You could also say that PvP in CoX just never was really good, never was given much love, and implementing it as an afterthought when the playerbase consisted of course only of people that are happy with just PvE didnt help either, so players that were really into PvP went somewhere else.
Whatever the point of view tough, yes, CoX has indeed never been much of a PvP game.

-
But no, I dont think they hate bases. Its more like they have a master plan that says which parts of the game are finished now and have to stay untouched until the plan says they will be worked on again.
There are a lot of other things in the game that have blatantly obvious glitches or missing things that have been pointed out for years, that could be fixed or added, or at least made a lot better in a matter of mere hours.
(e.g. the wrong (showing broken) image for the Grandville beacon in bases. More animal costume parts, even if its just those that are already in the game. Setting PvP back to I13 rules. Having AE custom critters give less but not zero rewards when you remove powers but still leave attacks in. Renaming "Single" guard group setting to "None" as that is what it does. I am sure everybody knows a lot of well-known yet long-living bugs and glitches.)
But it seems the master plan doesnt allow those to be looked into, so they go ignored for long times, sometimes years.
Or maybe they ARE working on a so super overhaul that the fixes become obsolete, but they dont say anything then and make it look like they ignored it.

It is very strange and seems wrong, yes. But I assure you it's not only happening to bases.

Only that people have no way of knowing whether the story is good before they played it. It's not like there were rating options for "good story" or "good enemies" and "good XP" so you can look for the one and ignore the other.
Its, as you say yourself, only 5 stars or they great beyond to be lost in. So very sadly.

Well, there is still hope. Not all that much in me anymore, but I am sure there is.