EMpulse

Hi everyone! I hope your 2011 has been a positive and eventful one so far. It definitely has been for Paragon’s Community Relations Team, as we’re growing this year to best support the needs of our studio and of course, our players!


That is why I am especially excited to introduce to you our brand spanking new Community Manager, Andy “Zwillinger” Belford. Zwillinger is no stranger to MMO’s. Not only has he been a Community professional for years now and associated with multiple games, but he is of course, a huge player himself. In fact, this might not be the first time you’ve seen or heard his name, for you might have come across it on the “big screen,” as Andy was featured in the MMO documentary “Second Skin.”


And yes…before you even ask (how did I know you would?), he does have experience with City of Heroes! Zwillinger played the duration of the CoH Beta and continued with the game for quite some time post-launch. Over the years, he has re-subbed periodically to check out all the latest and greatest things that have come to the game…so while he might have a little catching up to do, he has already hit the ground running!


You should definitely get ready to see a lot of communication from Zwillinger here on the boards. He is going to be a BIG face of the Community Team and he’s eager to get to know you. Although Avatea is going to be the Community Rep attending PAX East this year, you can look forward to Zwillinger being front-and-center at future CoH Meet and Greets. There’s no doubt that you’ll have plenty of opportunities to meet him in person.


So please join me in welcoming him to the team and Paragon! And now I present you with the opportunity to officially make his acquaintance in this thread!


Have fun getting to know the community, Zwillinger. We’re lucky to have you joining us, but you’re lucky to now be a CM over one of the best group of gamers on the Internet!


-EMpulse

This is the discussion thread to talk about this announcement!

Hey everyone!

For your purchasing pleasure, Going Rogue is also available on Steam! So if you're looking to get your hands on this super fun expansion, it's another great option of your. Check it out here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/29680/

Happy Playing!

-EMpulse

Hi all!

I went ahead and posted a follow-up to my original message, here. Thanks again for all the great feedback and we hope to see as many of you as possible at our Meet and Greets this year!

-EMpulse

Hi again everyone!

I want to thank you all for the suggestions on where our 5^th Meet and Greet of the year should be. You may have noticed that it has taken me a little time to get back to all of you (okay, maybe more than a little) …but that is because there was a lot to consider when making this decision. The biggest consideration is, of course, the fact that Going Rogue is quickly approaching and we need all hands on deck prior to and after the release of it. Boy, you sure would think that the “powers that be” scheduled some of these convention dates to make them as inconvenient as possible for us!

In the end, timing and location were the big factors for us this year. Because we’re a super-hero game, because we want to continue showing love to our East Coasters in 2010, and perhaps most importantly, because Going Rogue will be released by the time it rolls around… we’re going to be attending New York Comic-Con this year for the very first time! We hope those of you in the area that weren’t able to attend the PAX Boston Meet and Greet will be able to join us this time around in October.

Other strong contenders for the 5^th Meet and Greet were DragonCon and GenCon, Indy. We want to make sure you all know that we will seriously consider these Cons again next year when our circumstances will be different.

Again, thanks for the feedback and we plan on bringing you more specific convention and Meet and Greet news soon!

-EMpulse


To join in the community discussion of this announcement, please go here.

Hi everyone!

I wanted to take a few minutes to talk to you about Paragon Studio’s strategy for real-world “meet-ups” with our player base for the remainder of 2010.

We’re doing things a little different this time around and I hope you’ll like the approach, for I think it’s important for us to take into account feedback we’ve gotten and try new ways to make ourselves more accessible to our players.

Let me start by saying that we learned a lot from our fans who showed up to our Boston, MA “Meet and Greet” at the very end of February. In fact, we’ve been talking about it ever since. Not only did we have a blast with our East Coasters, but the people we met couldn’t tell us enough how appreciative they were that we made the effort to travel to them. Most folks cited that travel time and cost were the main hurdles preventing them from participating in our prior events like Hero-Con.

Naturally, this got us thinking. How could we lessen the financial burden on our players and give them more opportunities to meet us in person? Well, we came up with a strategy and if you hate it you can feel free to yell at me because I’m the one taking us down this road – it’s alright, I can take it! My goal here is just to try and offer the best of both worlds to the widest variety of our community members.

In a nutshell, we’re taking our show “on the road” (so to speak), dropping any potential barriers of “entry costs” and doing our best to come to YOU.

Instead of throwing one big event this year that requires a ticket fee and which only a certain amount of players can make it to, we want to offer several in the hope that more of you can make it to at least one of them! So, we are going to forego executing two real-world events for the year like we usually do-- one Meet and Greet (usually at San Diego Comic-Con or PAX West in Seattle) and one Hero-Con (in Northern CA), and instead we’re going to piggyback off of existing conventions and throw a total of 5 Meet and Greets in 2010.

What this means is that we’re not going to be holding a traditional Hero-Con this year. Instead, we’ll be throwing a free event reminiscent of the 2007 Northern CA get-together – the one that eventually turned into Hero-Con. Now, I wasn’t here for this event, but I hear it was more fun than you could shake a stick at.

Does this mean that we’re never having Hero-Con again? Nope. It just means that we’re trying something new this year and if it goes well maybe we’ll continue in this direction. If the overall reception doesn’t meet our expectations, we’ll consider more options in the future to bring you more of what you want.

We’ve already hit the East Coast and Boston, Mass for a PAX East Meet and Greet this year. Here are the other ones we’re planning to throw in 2010:

• San Diego Comic-Con Meet and Greet (San Diego, CA)

• PAX West Meet and Greet (Seattle, WA)

• Northern CA Meet and Greet (Bay Area, CA. Exact city TBD)

Keep in mind that although this event won’t be a “Hero-Con” it may contain some familiar Hero-Con elements. For example, we have a unique opportunity with a Northern CA event that we don’t have with the others. The fact that our entire development team is in the area and available to participate gives us a few more options!

You may have noticed that there are only 4 events listed above. That’s because we’re not entirely set on our 5th one yet…and we want you to help us decide where to go. We have a feeling we know where we’re headed (and what your preference will be), but we’d still like your input. Just keep in mind that we would prefer to base it around an already existing convention or show that several of you may be attending and ideally this event would be nearer the East Coast. Also, it needs to be one that doesn’t conflict date-wise with the Meet and Greets listed above that we’re already planning on attending – we only have so many resources, after all!

So let us know where you think our final Meet and Greet event should be! We’ll take that under consideration and then let you know where we’ll be going.

We hope you can get behind our strategy of going on tour and ‘coming to you’ this year – we really hope it increases our chances of getting to meet and interact with you in person. On this end, we’re pretty excited about it!

Thanks for listening,

-EMpulse


To join in the community discussion of this announcement, please go here.

Hey everyone!

We thought we’d create a fun (but also serious) thread to find out the kinds of individuals you’d like to see participate in the Guest Author Program for Mission Architect. As you know, we’ve had people like Scott Kurtz, Mercedes Lackey and Troy Hickman participate already – just to name a few.

So go ahead and give us your suggestions. You can give us exact names of people like “Joss Whedon” or “Wil Wheaton” or types like “actors” or “comic book writers” or “comedians.”

No promises of course, but we just want to get a general feel for what kinds of Guest Authors would be of most interest to you.

By the way, feel free to repeat any of the examples I gave above if you like them.

Ready….set….GO!!!!


Thanks ahead of time for your participation!


-EMpulse

Hi all!

Since my last post about changes that have happened at Paragon Studios, we have more good news to share!

Many of you already know our artist extraordinaire, David Nakayama, and some of you have even met him in person at one or more of the conventions we have attended over the last couple of years. As a matter of fact, several players have amazing color drawings of their CoH characters thanks to David’s sketching talent.

After so much hard work and dedication, it was only a matter of time until David's accomplishments were recognized within Paragon Studios, and therefore, we are happy to announce that the studio management and Ken Morse have promoted him to the Art Lead position! We are all truly excited to see David use his new position to help push City of Heroes forward from an artistic standpoint.

Like other recently promoted members of the development team, you can expect to see David Nakayama participate in the “Ask A Dev” Program and other community related initiatives moving forward. He will also be with us at PAX East, representing the Art Department on our panel session entitled “Re-Inventing a Super-Heroic MMO.”

We just wanted to take this opportunity to pass along the good news and publicly acknowledge David Nakayama on a job well done. Congratulations, David, on your well deserved promotion to City of Heroes Art Lead!

-EMpulse

Join in the community discussion here!

Hi all!

Since my last post about changes that have happened at Paragon Studios, we have more good news to share!

Many of you already know our artist extraordinaire, David Nakayama, and some of you have even met him in person at one or more of the conventions we have attended over the last couple of years. As a matter of fact, several players have amazing color drawings of their CoH characters thanks to David’s sketching talent.

After so much hard work and dedication, it was only a matter of time until David's accomplishments were recognized within Paragon Studios, and therefore, we are happy to announce that the studio management and Ken Morse have promoted him to the Art Lead position! We are all truly excited to see David use his new position to help push City of Heroes forward from an artistic standpoint.

Like other recently promoted members of the development team, you can expect to see David Nakayama participate in the “Ask A Dev” Program and other community related initiatives moving forward. He will also be with us at PAX East, representing the Art Department on our panel session entitled “Re-Inventing a Super-Heroic MMO.”

We just wanted to take this opportunity to pass along the good news and publicly acknowledge David Nakayama on a job well done. Congratulations, David, on your well deserved promotion to City of Heroes Art Lead!

-EMpulse

Hi everyone!


Whew! There have been a lot of great things going on over here at Paragon Studios lately which have had the unintended side effect of slowing our information flow out to you players.


In regards to Going Rogue, we know you are all chomping at the bit for some new information. Please know that regular status updates are a top priority for us and you’ll be hearing more about the expansion in upcoming weeks.


Meanwhile, we’ve been growing in size and have had some exciting staffing promotions and changes occur recently that we’d like to share with you – especially because some of the individuals involved are about to start interacting here on the boards as new red names!


Always willing to jump in and get his hands dirty, Matt “Positron” Miller has handed over day-to-day management of the Design Team to Melissa “War Witch” Bianco so that he can focus on the critically important End Game system in addition to a few other “top secret” initiatives. We’re certain that Posi has made this selfless hands-on sacrifice not only to ensure that the End Game is the best it can possibly be, but also to make Melissa’s life a living…er… a lovely educational and professional growth experience. So congratulations and good luck to War Witch who now leads the Design team, boldly forging CoH’s path into the future.


Our long-time Publishing Producer Jesse “Ghost Falcon” Caceres also has something to celebrate, as he has taken on a larger role with the team as our Development Producer. Therefore, we’re pleased to introduce C. “Doc Delilah” Bales who is new to Paragon Studios, but brings a wealth of MMO experience and will be assuming Ghost Falcon’s previous role. Congrats to Ghost Falcon and please join us in welcoming Doc Delilah to CoH and the forums!


But the congratulations don’t stop there. Vince “Dark Watcher” D’Amelio has asked that we announce that Matt “The Television” Stults, is now leading the Programming team. The team will be in great hands with Matt who has been on the project for well over a year enabling Vince to work on a variety of initiatives throughout the studio. Please join me in welcoming programming guru Matt as he enters the world of red names on the forums!


We want you to get to know a lot of these folks better in their new roles, so you can expect to see them participate in the “Ask A Dev” Program where you get to submit questions to a designated Dev Team Member and then they pick a handful to answer on the forums. First up is Melissa “War Witch” Bianco, so go here to read her bio and submit your question!


Speaking of War Witch, Melissa has conducted her first interview as Design Lead with MMORPG.com. See what she has to say about Game Design, Going Rogue and a whole lot more. Go here to read the interview.


Thanks for listening, everyone, and congratulations one last time to the CoH team members mentioned above. Something tells me that they’ll all be popping onto the boards to say their hellos and chat with you soon!


-EMpulse

Hi everyone!


Whew! There have been a lot of great things going on over here at Paragon Studios lately which have had the unintended side effect of slowing our information flow out to you players.


In regards to Going Rogue, we know you are all chomping at the bit for some new information. Please know that regular status updates are a top priority for us and you’ll be hearing more about the expansion in upcoming weeks.


Meanwhile, we’ve been growing in size and have had some exciting staffing promotions and changes occur recently that we’d like to share with you – especially because some of the individuals involved are about to start interacting here on the boards as new red names!


Always willing to jump in and get his hands dirty, Matt “Positron” Miller has handed over day-to-day management of the Design Team to Melissa “War Witch” Bianco so that he can focus on the critically important End Game system in addition to a few other “top secret” initiatives. We’re certain that Posi has made this selfless hands-on sacrifice not only to ensure that the End Game is the best it can possibly be, but also to make Melissa’s life a living…er… a lovely educational and professional growth experience. So congratulations and good luck to War Witch who now leads the Design team, boldly forging CoH’s path into the future.


Our long-time Publishing Producer Jesse “Ghost Falcon” Caceres also has something to celebrate, as he has taken on a larger role with the team as our Development Producer. Therefore, we’re pleased to introduce C. “Doc Delilah” Bales who is new to Paragon Studios, but brings a wealth of MMO experience and will be assuming Ghost Falcon’s previous role. Congrats to Ghost Falcon and please join us in welcoming Doc Delilah to CoH and the forums!


But the congratulations don’t stop there. Vince “Dark Watcher” D’Amelio has asked that we announce that Matt “The Television” Stults, is now leading the Programming team. The team will be in great hands with Matt who has been on the project for well over a year enabling Vince to work on a variety of initiatives throughout the studio. Please join me in welcoming programming guru Matt as he enters the world of red names on the forums!


We want you to get to know a lot of these folks better in their new roles, so you can expect to see them participate in the “Ask A Dev” Program where you get to submit questions to a designated Dev Team Member and then they pick a handful to answer on the forums. First up is Melissa “War Witch” Bianco, so go here to read her bio and submit your question!


Speaking of War Witch, Melissa has conducted her first interview as Design Lead with MMORPG.com. See what she has to say about Game Design, Going Rogue and a whole lot more. Go here to read the interview.


Thanks for listening, everyone, and congratulations one last time to the CoH team members mentioned above. Something tells me that they’ll all be popping onto the boards to say their hellos and chat with you soon!


-EMpulse

Join in the Community discussion!

Happy Holiday everyone! Please enjoy what time you have off and be safe!

Avatea is laying on a beach somewhere so she is already enjoying herself, but if she was here, she'd be wishing you all a joyous holiday as well.

Have fun and cheers to 2010!

-EMpulse

Hi again everyone!

The servers have been restored at this time.

Thanks for your patience!

-EMpulse

Hi again!

The servers have been restored at this time.

Cheers,

-EMpulse

Hi folks -

I just posted about this elsewhere but also wanted to acknowledge in this thread.

We are aware that the Justice, Virtue and Guardian servers are currently unavailable. We're working on the issue but it may take some additional time to resolve. Thanks for your patience in the meantime and we'll keep you posted!

-EMpulse

All -

We are aware that the Justice, Virtue and Guardian servers are currently unavailable. We are working to resolve the issue, but additional downtime may occur until the problem has been fully addressed. We very much appreciate your patience in the meantime and will keep you updated as more information becomes available.

Thanks much!

-EMpulse

Hi all--

I am sooo thrilled to be here with you! As Ex Libris mentioned, I've been scheming and plotting behind-the-scenes for a little while now... letting her, Niviene, Avatea, and Moderator 08 take center stage here on the boards. Although I won't be here nearly as much as they will, I'll make it a point not to become a stranger.

I am blessed to have been working in the Online Community Relations field for a looooooooooooong time now, so I'm really excited to be able to focus my efforts on CoH/CoV. I hope you will enjoy some of the programs and activities that will be coming your way this year.

I just want to end this introductory post with a big THANK YOU to Ex Libris for being the fantastic community professional that she is. We wish her the best of luck in her new adventure but will miss her greatly. :0/

Thanks for listening, folks, and I look forward to getting to know all of you a little better!

-EMpulse

Please be aware that the Protector Server is currently down but our Network Administration Team is working to resolve as quickly as possible. We'll bring you updates as they become available and apologize for any inconvenience.

Hi everyone.

Just wanted to inform you that we are indeed aware of the issues regarding the Guardian server which has been available since approximately 12am this morning. The issue is currently being resolved and the server is expected to be up-and-running again shortly. In the meanwhile, as always, we appreciate your patience.

-The EMpaler