Creole Ned

It's unfortunate news but Zwill has been upfront and presented it about as best as we could hope for. And the servers themselves will be remaining open, so that's certainly better than the alternative.

In fact, I'm impressed that there have been no server closures/mergers after eight years (in fact, six have been added since launch -- Triumph, the four euro servers and the VIP-only Exalted).

Hopefully I haven't jinxed any servers by pointing this out.

Excellent work, Dink. Very much looking forward to this costume pack.

Insert pic of 'shut up and take my money' here.

For reference, Matt 'Positron' Miller on Statesman's death:

The thing that has always surprised me is the sheer number of typos and grammatical errors in the game, more than I've seen in all other MMOs I've played combined. It's as if whatever tool the designers use to enter text into the game randomly rearranges some of the letters.

Nethergoat, since you mentioned that Dark Astoria was your favorite zone you might like to know that the original version of it has been preserved as Echo: Dark Astoria. It can be accessed through an SG base with the old DA teleporter beacon or through a portal in Ouroboros (that also gives you the option to go to Echo: Galaxy City).

Since DA never originally had any story arcs in it, you will find the Echo version exactly as you remembered it.

Heck, some missions will still try to send you to the old version of the zone, so it's important to know how to get there! (this is probably unintended and may be fixed at some point)

Scrappers should be able to summon a pet lizard. The lizard would generate a taunt aura that would attract underlings. This would allow the scrappers to kill the important things without distraction.

I'll occasionally craft grenades or one of the knockback powers because they can come in handy.

Other than those the only one I'll craft regularly is the St. Louis Slammer because something about whacking an enemy with a baseball bat (and that awesome 'thock' sound effect) endlessly amuses me.

You'll still be able to use any base that belongs to any SG you're in. I guess the worst case scenario in the case of something like the Crazy 88s would be if *everyone* in the SG was either not playing or were free/premium-only. Then there would be no one to pay the SG rent and ultimately you'd lose access to the base.

With four years of vet status, you may find a surprising amount of the game is open for you. The big VIP-only things are the Incarnate system, SG creation/base support and access to the VIP server Exalted.

Welcome back, Goat!

Unfortunately there are a couple of restrictions for non-subscribed players that will affect you. One of them is that you can't pay SG rent. You can still use an existing SG base but you need VIP access to pay rent to keep the lights on. Check this link for more details.

The thing that struck me about SSA #1 is just how unfun the whole thing is. The story is miserable, convoluted and needlessly kills off established characters in a lame attempt to generate drama (but really to get rid of Jack Emmert's characters, which is even worse). All the angst just feels like pretension. And I still say they should have titled it WHO WON'T DIE?! :P

It's a comic book game. Have some fun with it -- and make the player the hero, not someone watching a story play out with minimal input (I haven't played the villain version yet -- does it handle this part of it better?)

Oh, and no more cutscenes while I'm at it! Make the story work in the mission or don't bother. This is a game, not a movie.

There, that ought to fill my grumpy old man quota for the week.

I ran the new tutorial a few times but I actually get more enjoyment fighting the mugs in Atlas Park to get to level 2 than running the largely on-rails tutorial experience.

Staff Fighting is being delayed while they adjust the volume of its sound effects up by 400% to make it feel more powerful.

(I think some of the devs must be hard of hearing based on some of the recent sound FX work.)

On-topic: Pricing would be nice for the OP and the two thumbnail images do not link to the full size pictures (here and here).

The takeaway so far seems to be many people will pay for anything they want and that should be music to NCsoft's ears. It doesn't matter if you think it's 'crappy' if in the end you are willing to pay.

My answer is a firm no. Power customization started as something given to the players. It's good for the game, so it benefits the devs as much as the players. It should remain free.

I used to like the war walls. I thought it was a neat way of addressing the 'bowl' design of MMO zones by openly acknowledging the bowl and putting literal walls around each zone and then coming up with a story to explain the walls.

With newer zones, the Rogue Isles and Praetoria dispensing with them they seem like more of an anachronism now. And story-wise to say they have proven ineffective would be an understatement (hello Dark Astoria, Galaxy City, countless Rikti, zombie and other invasions).

Combining zones would be interesting, though I imagine the technical headaches involved would prevent that from ever happening.

If they revamped Skyway they should remove all the elevated highways except one and make it the centerpiece of the zone (and also create new assets for it so it doesn't look like they just deleted all the other freeway sections). And have more than three cars on it!

I've always regarded Skyway City as a bit of a disaster, design-wise. Its one notable feature, the series of elevated highways, is nonsensical. Even in a world of super-powered heroes it defies all logic. :P And there's nothing else memorable about the zone, it's utterly bland and lifeless. Instead of revamping it, I'd actually scrap it entirely and leave an echo version in Ouroboros.

Move the entrance to Overbrook/Faultline to another zone, move Synapse (and revamp his TF while you're at it) and the helicopter leading to Bloody Bay and call it good!

A good KR revamp would put in some story arcs, expand the level range to 20 or so (make it an alternate to Steel Canyon/Skyway) and maybe add some more unique structures to certain areas of the zone, to better distinguish the districts. Like many of the game's original zones, KR suffers from copy/paste design where a small set of buildings have been stamped over the map in semi-random (and sometimes nonsensical) arrangements, especially with regard to street layout, though it fares better than other original zones, partly due to its generally more intimate scale.

I would also not want to see it 'Gothamized'. It doesn't need the gritty equivalent of Dark Astoria's red (EVIL!) war walls.

Adding my voice to the 'this is way too expensive' camp. No plans on buying this, not even slightly tempted.

I wouldn't be surprised if the new project is a spiritual successor to CoH -- a superhero game but one not set in the CoH universe so they are free to depict it however they like without having to carry over lore/baggage from CoH.

The old videos remind me how much I dislike the way interiors in the game now are almost entirely divorced from the area you enter them from. It makes the world seem fake.