Creole Ned

Updates (free or otherwise) are the main way a game can retain existing players, however, a paid expansion has the advantage of allowing more staff to work on it since the company can expect to recoup a lot of the costs by charging players for it, something they obviously can't do with a free update.

Players are generally not resentful for paying because the expansion goes above and beyond what they could typically get for 'free'.

With regards to advertisements, a few points I would make are:

1. The game is nearing six years old. NCsoft will be working hard to retain players rather than focusing more on getting new ones, since a) it's a lot easier to keep a player than woo him back after he leaves and b) the playerbase is not going to grow significantly with the game being as old as it is. That window, I think, closed several years back.

2. A superhero (and villain) MMO is a niche inside a niche. The appeal is limited no matter how good the game is. Spending marketing dollars that may drum up little interest would be a wasted investment.

I do think NCsoft marketing dropped the ball by announcing Going Rogue so early and then following up with virtually no information for months on end. Look at the way other comparable MMOs have handled publicizing their expansions (LOTRO, EQ2, EVE) and you won't see the same thing. Heck, even after getting some updates at HeroCon, the official Going Rogue website remains moribund well over three months later, with only a character bio added. It's rather baffling to me that they didn't at least refresh it with the information released at HeroCon.

This should be corrected as the rules state the contest is open to residents of Canada (excluding Quebec).

I don't think this is a bad idea per se, but are there any specific restrictions you'd lift?

This is a great idea for a vet reward because it fits all the right criteria:

a) doesn't confer a gameplay advantage to the player
b) offers convenience/streamlines non-mission or atypical missions contacts (regular contact streamlining should not be tied to a vet reward)
c) is useful to characters in a broad level range

I, too, think the vet rewards should have stopped at the five year mark. I'd rather the minimal time that goes into developing them go into developing stuff available to all players, regardless of account age (I have all but the last vet reward myself). But if they keep adding innocuous things like costume tokens and respecs (or the one that clears the fog on a map), I won't object.

My guess is the expansion will include the full game so new players will not need to buy two boxes (EQ2 has done this for its past three paid expansions). I think the $40 price is a good bet.

This will, naturally, lead to DOOOM from people who already own the game and just want to buy the expansion because they will mistakenly assume that the all-in-one box they need to get GR will cost more than if GR was offered on its own.

Heh, it is the kind of thing I could see slipping through the cracks during a busy beta.

/bug "Uh, drones keep killing me when I try to PvP..."

Erm, this only applies if you stop the process midway, by becoming a rogue. If you keep going and have your brute become a full-fledged hero, your brute will have no more restrictions than any other hero in Paragon City.

See this thread for word from Positron himself.

Yeah, along the same lines, I'd like it if we had, say, these three options for mission dropping/completion:

You have chosen to drop this mission. Would you like to:

1. Drop the mission for full rewards and mission complete. This option will give you full rewards for completing the mission and mark it as completed. If it is part of a story arc, it will advance the story arc. You may only use this option once every 3 days.
2. Drop the mission for no rewards and no mission complete. This option will remove the mission from your mission queue as if you had never taken it. You will be able to take the mission again later if you choose to. If it is part of a story arc you will not be able to complete the arc until you take the mission again.
3. Drop the mission for no rewards and mission complete. This option will give you no rewards but will mark the mission as completed. You will not be able to take the mission again. This option will not work with missions that are part of story arcs.

Option #1 is what we have now.
Option #2 would be handy for bailing on a mission that you don't feel like running at the time or if you want to free up one of your three mission slots.
Option #3 would be ideal for all the "Go talk to X" missions: Wincott, PvP liaison, HeroCorp rep, etc.

What do you mean you you say "too easy" and what are the consequences of this?

The AE buildings are in nearly every zone in the game (too many, really). If crowds were a problem, all you had to do was go to one that the crowds ignored, like the ones in Founders' Falls or Indy Port.

Of course, now there aren't crowds in any of them, so the problem has solved itself. Convenient!

This should be in the game.

It shouldn't be a Vet Reward, though.