Cdr_Chaos

Simply put; is it still possible to enter the Beta phase of the game?

My first character started in Galaxy City, back when the Arena was just a big hole in the middle of the map that no bad guys would ever enter and my pc didn't have A) The memory to run the game for more than 5 minutes and 2) A graphics card that could run the game at any level of quality. I'll be there, in the shard version from Ourobourous, where Back Alley Brawler used to stand.

When the Coming Storm arrives, I plan on riding it out in Freedom Court in Galaxy City. Or in Gemini Park. Galaxy is where my first character started, even though my pc couldn't handle the game and ran out of memory and crashed after 5 minutes in the open world map and took 4 minutes to load an instance. It remained my favorite city zone after all these years.

I'm OperativeEmeral on XboxLive. I'm mainly on War for Cybertron (till I can buy Fall of Cybertron), Halo 3, Soul Calibur 4 (love the Star Wars characters), Rock Band 2 from time to time and when it comes out and I can afford it, Halo 4.

Dunno if it counts for much, but I also play GoldenEye and Monster Hunter Tri on my Wii alot. Both are fun, and both are free online, Monster Hunter plays just like Phantasy Star Online but without the sci-fi setting.

None of the games i'd recommend (LOTRO, STO, DCUO, SWTOR) run on Mac as far as I know. You can always install Steam and play Team Fortress 2 since it's free and now on Macs. The new Co-Op mode is crazy hard but crazy fun at the same time.

Rikti Flight Club? PDP? What are those?

The thing I liked best was the explanations given for both; MxO was losing money and had been for some time and had a very low subscriber base. SWG was a subscriber base issue but the main reason was the licensing of the Star Wars brand with EA and The Old Republic. Legally SOE had to shut the game down. The game closed just days prior to SWTOR's launch.

NCSoft has said...well, nothing so far as to why. That's what hurts.

To answer your question, SWTOR has great gameplay and story, but is tied to the gear drops problem of most MMOs; your character's look is determined by your gear.

DCUO gives you the option however to pick and choose armor pieces for your character's look. For example, my character looks like he's wearing the Robin PvP armor set, when in reality he's wearing a mix of the Fortress of Solitude armor and the magic pve armor for level 30. (30 is the cap there). You can pick and choose which items appear in your costume and lock them so even if you switch armor or weapons your character's look remains unchanged. The color customizer isn't anywhere near CoH's however.

The only other two MMOs i've played seriously are Star Trek Online and Lord of the Rings Online, both allow you to customize your character's appearance and pick and choose items for their 'costume' that allows you to hide ugly armor pieces under an aesthetically pleasing wardrobe.

You can always use one of your character's spare builds and use regular SOs and HOs. You wont be uber without your Incarnate and IO stuff but you can still play.

This was the first MMO I ever played. This was the game that taught me what PC requirements are, how to talk to people online, the difference a faster internet speed can make, and with it's character customization helped me find my creative side that made me realize that's what I want to do with my life. I wasn't always subscribed; I was in high school when the game came out and didn't have a steady job till I was almost 19, I couldn't afford a constant subscription. But everytime I had spare cash, or just missed the skyscrapers of Steel Canyon and the parks of Galaxy City i'd resubscribe. And no matter what, without fail, the game always found new ways to surprise me when I came back. Finding new things to do, new powers, archetypes, city zones and storylines, coming back to the game after every break was like...coming home.

Sadly, i'm not new to saying goodbye to an MMO or the friends I make in them; the first was The Matrix Online, and I had to learn to let go; that soon enough the game I came back to time and again would gone forever, and I had to make the best of the time I had left with it. This lesson served me well when Star Wars Galaxies was closing. The forums were full of people ranting, raving, crying foul, the game servers were full of them too. I could've joined them, but I realized; the game would be gone soon, I didn't have time to waste on things like that. While other people crowded the cantinas weeping, I was with a group of players i'd never met before playing through the Battle of Echo Base. Blowing up AT-ATs, flying Snowspeeders, fighting endless waves of Snowtroopers, and just enjoying the game to it's fullest, and that's how I remember that game.

November 30th is 87 days away. Granted I might chime in time to time here on the forums, but in that time, what I really want to do, is enjoy the game while I can. I want to fight Lord Recluse in what's been my favorite Task Force since it was released. They changed it's name, but I still call it the Statesman Task Force. He was my favorite signature hero, and that's how I choose to honor him. I want to explore the Shadow Shard, fight in Recluse's Victory, help the Menders of Ourobouros save the future, stop Nemesis' newest plot, time travel, save innocents, redeem my Villain characters, I just want to enjoy the game as much as I can in the time left.

Alot of people have said what they'll do with their time, I wanted to post this on the Virtue server where nearly all my characters are, but that forum's locked to me. So i'll leave it here, for anyone in-game from now until The Coming Storm, if you just want to enjoy the game while we can, just look me up, my global handle is @CdrChaos. If i'm not in the middle of a Task Force or other team, then i'll probably be forming one. I had friends who said they added the Task Force Commander accolade for guys like me who run them so much. I'll admit, for the time it can sometimes take to form them, I prefer them to regular missions. Cause when you start a Task Force, or Strike Force or Trial, you know the people on your team will be with you till the end of it (barring any real life dilemma), whereas on a regular team people drop whenever they please.

I plan on forming a Task Force or Trial every day, even the old ones in the Shadow Shard nobody likes. Again, my Global handle is @CdrChaos, just look me up. If there's a TF or SF or Trial you wanna run, i'll help you run it. Bringing people together to run stuff is the one thing i've always been good at.

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Heroes
Sapphire Saber - Lvl 50 Science Scrapper Katanna/Regeneration
Blue Rose Knight - Lvl 50 Magic Scrapper Broadsword/Invulnerability
Zach Gemini - Lvl 50 Magic Scrapper Broadword/Shield
Ionic-04 - Lvl 50 Science Tanker Super Strength/Invulnerability
Pallax Gemini - Lvl 21 Magic Scrapper Dual Blades/Willpower
Commander Bluestar - Lvl 20 Mutation Tanker Martial Arts/Shield
Commander Chaos - Lvl 30 Technology Scrapper Kinetic Melee/Super Reflexes
Commander 8-Bit - Lvl 36 Natural Scrapper Kinetic Melee/Regeneration
Auron Gemini - Lvl 28 Peacebringer
Villains
Operative Emeral - Lvl 50 Bane Spider Executioner /Wolf Spider Huntsman
Operative Gemini - Lvl 50 Crab Spider Soldier
Operative Rose - Lvl 20 Blood Widow

By prep time I meant this; when SWG was going to close, players were told 6 months ahead of time, and were given until a certain date to resubscribe if they wanted to play the final months of the game. They had the option. With City of Heroes...nothing. If i'd known this was going to be the end i'd have found the money somehow.

And I DID support the game when it was subscription only. When Freedom launched I had nearly enough Veteran Rewards to get free access to the Invention System. That's alot of paid subscription time over the game's 8 years, not to mention buying the game's retail box, the CoV collector's edition, the Good vs Evil edition, the Going Rogue complete collection...I gave this game more money than I've given to any other over the years.

I know that the folks at Paragon Studios are in a horrible spot now. And i'm angry for them, unless they were told ahead of time, they came in to work one morning to work on future content for the game and were told that the studio was closing that day. That sucks. No way around that. No way to justify that.

What I meant by the free VIP time thing is that if these are the last months of the game they (NCSoft) should at least let us enjoy the game fully with what little time is left. That's all I meant. Just a chance to play the Apex TF or the Incarnate trials one more time. That content is locked now and i'll never get to play it again. I gave this game years and alot of my money. Not getting to fully enjoy it one last time feels like being cheated.

I know the feeling.

When The Matrix Online closed, it was explained why, and a cutoff date for subscribers was given; anyone who had an account in good standing (even if it's subscription had run out) could come back and play for free the last months of the game. They increased XP gain and in the last month gave players free abilities and upgrades to play any class they wanted. The last week they artificially leveled everyone from 50 (level cap) to 99, and then 101. And gave them dev powers and powers Neo had for the last three days. THAT was a sendoff.

When Star Wars Galaxies was going to close, they announced it ahead of time, and gave a cutoff date for subscribers; anyone still subscribed by the date could play the last months free, and would get the equivalent of Paragon Points to use on other SOE games. Those last months they turned off the instance timers, increased xp gain, let the devs finish the updates they'd been planning all year, and had the Galactic Civil War battles happen twice every hour (way more than normal), and had other events where players could fight Star Destroyers and other cool stuff. Another awesome send off. And again, they explained the reason why the game was being closed down.

City of Heroes; all we hear is the devs working on the next update, then out of the blue we are told the studio is closed and the game will close later in the year. No announcement of free VIP time, cutoff dates, explanations why, none of that.

I always talked bad about other MMO companies in comparison to how well this game was run, but 8 years of all that is worth nothing if they can't give the game a proper send off or an explanation to the game's players. The ball is in NCSoft's hands now; whether they get remembered for killing the game off in a bad way or giving the players closure after 8 years.

I've always enjoyed talking down about SOE because of how they handled MxO's closure, SWG and the network haxoring. But for the record, for both games, they announced a cutoff date for players. For The Matrx Online, anyone who'd had an account in good standing was allowed back into the game for free the last three months. Star Wars Galaxies; anyone subscribed by the cutoff date in any capacity would be allowed to play the last three months. They also removed all instance timers and lvl restrictions during the last months, so lvling characters took hours, not days, heck the MxO devs made everyone level 99, then 100, then 101 and gave them dev abilities and powers Neo had. Granted the lvl cap there was only 50.

NCSoft gave people no prep time, at all. Unless they want to go down as worse than SOE at handling an MMO, they owe it to the players to give us all VIP status before the end. That or make us all fully leveled Incarnates.

Signed, and shared on my FB.

Then is it no longer possible to subscribe? I was hoping to run the Incarnate Trials one more time.

I just tried the tool your friend made. It's working AMAZINGLY. I think I might just use the original game's Load screen. I saw that screen for years before Freedom came along. I miss it.

Texas, i'm afraid i'm gonna have to borrow your loading screen, cause that drawing of Statesman and the Phalanx in battle is just...epicness.

When you first start up the game or zone between areas you get the current loading screen (the blue bear guy and the pink pink psychic knife thing), Is there a way to change it to one of the older loading screens? No offense but the current one is well...lame.