Dark Sweater

That's the normal speed for me with the NCsoft Launcher, which is a huge improvement over the CoH Updater, which used to be in the 0-3K/s.

Anyone else getting that message? Just went to Protector and got the message:

IMPORTANT

Please read carefully!

Your existing characters have been locked as a result of having become a free player. In order to play your existing characters they will first need to be unlocked. You will need to spend a Global or Server Slot it order to unlock a character. Server slots are only available on this server, Global Slots, once claimed, become Server Slots linked to the server on which they were claimed

You have 6 Global Slots.

You have 11 Server Slots on Protector.

My guess is that this appears because I have a character which is in backup storage, and needs to be moved to the live database if I want to play it (the rest of the slots are unlocked).

The problem isn't the message as much as the division of that panel. Make the leftmost (breadcrumb) panel a little bigger and it will all take less space.

What's strange to me is that if the points are awarded at the end of the cycle, then the OP should have received a token for the end of the previous cycle. If they are awarded at the start he should have received one for the next cycle. Either way it looks to me like he should have received a token. So I think it's worth contacting support to clarify it.

I have two accounts, one with 1200 points, the other with 800 (these are my third and second accounts). The only thing I have definite plans for buying is First Ward content, but Street Justice isn't out of the question.

As for real money, I had plans to pay a little to go up the tiers, but that plan included a lot of optimistic calculations based on a re-referral programme being active and getting a token during the transition to head start. Without that (which happens to be the case) I'll be a little too far from the next tiers to be within my budget. I will probably still go VIP for a little while on my main account if and when solo Incarnate content becomes available. I'm willing to spend up to about $50 (half my yearly gaming budget) on CoH, but only if I feel I'm getting a significant benefit from it.

When I created my toon on Exalted the name I wanted was too long, so I shortened it and found that was taken. The first thing I wondered is what that character was like. While it's entirely possible that the character was just a place holder, it's also possible that in many cases a real character would come up. I would like to compare the concept. If someone made what I wanted, only better, maybe I'll just bow and move to another character. Maybe I'll decide to revise my character to be even better. Or maybe I'll just smugly decide that the other character is a worthwhile impostor. Either way it would be nice to know what the competition is.

I think that having two levels of enhancements would be fine. Currently the TO's really don't provide much benefit, since they're weak and there are few slots at these levels. But they're useful as an introduction to enhancements because they aren't limited by origin. DO's are a strange hybrid, since it doesn't make that much sense that two origins will share an enhancement. I think it would be good to drop DO's and upgrade TO's to provide half as much as SO's. In any case, I think the trial shouldn't drop SO's if these aren't otherwise available.

That said, this is just the solution that's closest to what's available now. I think it would be better to make the dropped inventions similar to basic IO's. The idea of having enhancements change effectiveness relative to the character's level is bizarre. You character ends up becoming weaker as the level grows up, then suddenly stronger as you reach 5 level higher and can buy new enhancements. How IO's work is a lot more reasonable, as they provide the same benefit, and higher level ones provide more benefit.

It's possible to create a hybrid system, such as single original IO style enhancements, just change SO's to work like IO's in terms of what they provide, but still have them origin dependent.

Currently I think VIP making someone become VIP again would be simplest, because it will be consistent with what was before, but I can also envision taking point purchases into account, so someone who hasn't bought points or subscribed for a while could be a target of this and would then have to either subscribed or purchase at least $15 worth of points to get a free VIP month. For now though only subscribers are playing (Freedom has not been launched) so there's not much of a question.

Still, it would be nice to at least make it so there's either a programme or it's clear there isn't.

I remember that the "refer a friend" programme was discontinued, but I don't remember seeing an announcement regarding "invite a friend back", and it's still advertised on the main page and the NCsoft launcher. Yet the link is gone from the NCsoft account.

Either it's dead and then references to it should be removed, or it's alive and the NCsoft account page should be updated to support it.

I think that all the arguments that these prices are too high fall flat when considering that quite a few people have already spent $100+ on the market, amongst other things to buy the exact things you say are overprices.

Sure at one point, maybe soon, all the people willing to pay these prices will already have these items and it would be necessary to reduce the price to get more people to buy, but seeing that many people do buy these items makes it clear that it wasn't a mistake to leave them that high.

Looks to me like the VIP Head Start will be enough to finance City of Heroes 2.

The main CoH webpage has a "Come work for us" banner, and it points to the NCsoft recruiting page. There it's unfortunately impossible to tell which jobs are for Paragon Studios. I think it would be better to point to the Careers page on the Paragon Studios website. Speaking of which, how about some details about the "Next Gen MMO"? I promise not to tell anyone.

I'm sure it will happen, but I think now would be a good point to upgrade Freedom from a menu item under News to its own category, the level of Going Rogue for example. Sure there are several other ways to get the Freedom pages (not least of what the site entrance), but this really does belong on the main menu.

I must say it's an eye-catching part of the site. More so than previous banners for buying the game.

Still, it only makes sense for the VIP Head Start. The price of the Starter Kit is the same as a month and it doesn't seem to give anything else. My current free (trial and veteran) accounts show an easy path to upgrade to VIP, and presumably when Freedom launches it will be easy to create an account. So there will be no need for this.