Chad Gulzow-Man

You've just described every PUG in every MMO ever.

This is correct.

OP:
And IF they ever allow you to buy specific recipes with tickets, they'll cost a lot more than twice the price of a random roll. If memory serves, the cheapest IO recipe you can buy with reward merits costs 100 merits, which is five times the cost of a random roll. Thus a pool C recipe (the pool in which your coveted Regenerative Tissue: +Regen recipe falls) would cost a minimum of 15,000 tickets... which far exceeds the personal ticket cap.

I know you covered the ticket cap and everything, but your proposed method would yet again unbalance the market and would allow for faster rewards than can be earned through standard content. Everything in the MA would become farms (again) for tickets and the devs would have no choice but to nerf the bejeezus out of it (again), which would in turn bring up the "I didn't know I was exploiting the system/devs hate us and don't want us to have fun" debates (again) and then I'd want to headbutt everybody (again). Please think of my poor skull--it can't handle that many headbutts!

Fixed. The first time I ran it (during the live test), we entered from Atlas park. There were maybe 4-5 level 50s, a couple in the 40s and 30s, and probably about 10 people under level 20. There were at least 15 people in the zone, and we still failed by a pretty wide margin.

The first you get simply for logging in.

The second is part of the new event. After hunting presents and defeating a certain number the Winter Horde spawned by the "You've been naughty!" messages, a Winter Lord giant monster will spawn. When he's defeated, he'll leave behind a larger-than-normal present. A timer will appear in your navigation bar and, when it counts down, you're allowed to click the present. Anyone who clicks it will be transported to Lord Winter's Realm, a "new" frozen zone for a battle with a new giant monster.

The new boss requires at least one full, well-designed team of very solidly-built characters. However, multiple teams can meet up in the zone to challenge the boss. The zone is only open for a short time, so you generally have to be pretty quick on the attack.

Pay attention to the cues that he gives during the battle, and be warned that he has an attack that can drop any toggles. Once he's defeated, everyone who participated in the battle will earn the badge.

(Note that there is also a hospital in the new event zone, so don't be afraid of respawning after you've been defeated!)

As an added bonus, defeating the Winter Horde in the new event zone gives you a chance at Candy Cane salvage drops.

Yes, you absolutely need an open slot on the destination server.

As Eric stated in the other thread, you'd be more than welcome to come hang out on Victory. We can also recommend a few good groups to join around the server, if you're looking.

Your character slot will not move with the character. It stays on the server it was initially unlocked on.

It's not that they "took them out." BaBs said the doves were actually added specifically as a joke Easter egg for that particular presentation. He also said (joked?) that they wouldn't be in the final version because then people would complain that they wanted to color the doves.

That said, a "flyingdoves" emote would make the people who want doves to appear when using their pistols happy, while not annoying the people who don't want them. Ohhhh BaaaaBs...

I was just in Bloody Bay this weekend grabbing Shivans for a TF. I had all my level 30 powers available.

I know it was (briefly) complained about by PVPers when Issue 16 was in beta, as many liked the fact that Siren's Call didn't allow access to Tier 9 secondary powers, but the discussion seemed to dry up pretty quickly.

It has been said that changing sides won't exclude you from the additional rewards, but it will take you longer to earn them.

It took me 35 months to get to level 50. I'm not worried about taking a little extra time to "power up."

We can most certainly forget about Easter. I make a habit to ignore it every year. And it would be unwise to make an event based off a day geared towards religious worship (hence the "winter holidays" event rather than any specific holiday)--you'd risk either alienating a part of the playerbase that doesn't celebrate said religious holiday, or insulting those with strong beliefs tied to the holiday.

As far as additional holidays that we "should" be celebrating in game that we're not already, I can think of only two: April Fool's Day and the 4th of July. (Since the game is set in the US, it makes contextual sense.)

I'd like to see the former deal more with our holiday gift-giving friend The Trickster and unravelling his clues and keeping him from playing pranks on the citizens of Paragon and the Rogue Isles. Pie in the Face temporary power (low mag, short duration stun) is a must.

The latter, 4th of July, be nothing more than a temporary "Fireworks" power or a fireworks emote that is only available for the first week of July. Perhaps have a chance at a "Fireworks Show" zone event that occurs randomly in standard zones during the night hours and spawns fireworks exploding in the air. No new missions, no badges, no game-affecting rewards. Just RP stuff. (And this is coming from a non-roleplayer.)

Other events, like Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, etc? Sure, they're important to our culture and for remembering the efforts of those who protect our country, but there's no real "celebration" associated with them. Any in-game event based on them would feel like a non sequitor at worst, or shoe-horned/contrived at best. If they want to schedule a Double XP or a Free Reactivation Weekend (or both together) around those dates, fantastic, that's a great idea! ... but no in-game events for them.

But here's the thing... the game doesn't need these events. As many have said before and will probably continue to say, the development team (which, while much larger than they were this time two years ago) is still pretty small when you consider the size of those from other games like WoW. Paragon Studios' budget is much smaller than WoW's, too. WoW could probably have a different event for every day of the year if they wanted to--they've probably got at least 365 people working development, and several million subscribers at $15 a month gives them enough funding to take over a good-sized country... really, you should be complaing to Blizzard that they don't have enough events given their resources!

Couple the fact that Paragon Studios have fewer developers and less funding with the fact that everybody in the company is working on the new expansion to have it ready to release in Spring 2010, and it's pretty apparent why this year's new holiday additions are comparitively small.

((FYI, the Deadly Apocalypse event for Halloween this year? That was designed by Warwitch, who normally designs zones. She had a little bit of free time, and was able to secure a little bit of help from the graphics and coding teams to set it up. If it wasn't for her, we would have just recycled last year's event.))

And finally, out of the 5+ years the game has been live, only for one year did they announce the start and end dates of all their events. Every other year, they've said, "Hey, there's going to be a holiday event for Halloween and around mid-December. We'll let you know when they're live."

***Super-ultra-omega-finally, it's not the developers' jobs to make announcements. If you have a beef about them not announcing things in a timely manner, take it up with the marketting department.